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	<title>FrontPage Magazine &#187; East Jerusalem</title>
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	<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com</link>
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		<title>Racist Muslim Settlers&#8217; &#8220;Day of Rage&#8221; Against Jews in Jerusalem Fizzles When They Can&#8217;t Handle the Rain</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/racist-muslim-settlers-day-of-rage-against-jews-in-jerusalem-fizzles-when-they-cant-handle-the-rain/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=racist-muslim-settlers-day-of-rage-against-jews-in-jerusalem-fizzles-when-they-cant-handle-the-rain</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/racist-muslim-settlers-day-of-rage-against-jews-in-jerusalem-fizzles-when-they-cant-handle-the-rain/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 31 Oct 2014 21:09:22 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[The Point]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[East Jerusalem]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Muslim Racism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Muslim settlers]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=244276</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Maybe it's time Muslims traded up to a deity that can do something about the weather]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<div id="attachment_244277" style="width: 460px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/F141030HP09.jpg"><img class="size-medium wp-image-244277" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/F141030HP09-450x253.jpg" alt="&quot;Yeah, I'm wearing my mother's Hijab. What about it?&quot;" width="450" height="253" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text">&#8220;Yeah, I&#8217;m wearing my mother&#8217;s Hijab. What about it?&#8221;</p></div>
<p>The Religion of Rage Boys is big on temper tantrums, but like the Wicked Witch it doesn&#8217;t seem to hold up well against the water.</p>
<p>The racist Muslim settlers occupying Jerusalem, a legacy of their conquests and ethnic cleansing of the indigenous Jewish population, most recently during their <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/the-islamization-of-jerusalem/">occupation of the city from 1948 to 1967</a>, have been throwing a lot of murderous tantrums lately.</p>
<p>Unfortunately their hate crimes continue to be supported by the Obama administration while <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/kerry-says-only-muslims-not-jews-should-be-allowed-to-pray-at-jewish-holy-site/">John Kerry just now insisted that Jews</a> should not be allowed to pray in the holiest site of their religion&#8230; but that it should be reserved for Muslims only.</p>
<p>But the Day of Rage for Muslim settlers in Jerusalem, which would involve throwing stones and Molotov cocktails at the indigenous Jewish population, turned out to be all wet. The supposedly passionate advocates of a mythical Palestine <a href="http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/186864#.VFOiq_lbV8E">didn&#8217;t want to be inconvenienced by the rain</a>.</p>
<p>It&#8217;s a real Nakba when your Molotov cocktail keeps fizzling because of the rain.</p>
<blockquote><p>Police were on high alert in Jerusalem on Friday, deploying 3,000 officers after Palestinian Authority (PA) Chairman Mahmoud Abbas&#8217;s Fatah faction pledged a &#8220;day of rage&#8221; &#8211; but aside from a few incidents, it has been more of a &#8220;day of rain&#8221; in the wet capital after Jews changed to reciting the ten tal u&#8217;matar seasonal prayer for rain Thursday night.</p>
<p>Not all Arab rioters took a rain check however, as several of them shot fireworks from rooftops adjacent to the Council Gate (Bab al-Majlis in Arabic) which leads to the Temple Mount.</p></blockquote>
<p>So much for Allah.</p>
<p>Maybe it&#8217;s time Muslims traded up to a deity that can do something about the weather, instead of one that spends all its time telling its followers to kill cartoonists.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
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		<slash:comments>12</slash:comments>
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		<title>Rejecting U.S. Support for Palestinian &#8216;Ethnic Purification&#8217;</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/moshe-phillips-and-benyamin-korn/rejecting-u-s-support-for-palestinian-ethnic-purification/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=rejecting-u-s-support-for-palestinian-ethnic-purification</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/moshe-phillips-and-benyamin-korn/rejecting-u-s-support-for-palestinian-ethnic-purification/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 07 Oct 2014 04:10:02 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Moshe Phillips and Benyamin Korn]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[building]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[East Jerusalem]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ethnic purification]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Jerusalem]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Netanyahu]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[settlement]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=242520</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Benjamin Netanyahu's bold rebuke of Obama's push for segregation in Jerusalem. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><span style="color: #222222;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/benjamin-netanyahu-on-his-relati.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-242521" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/benjamin-netanyahu-on-his-relati-450x330.jpg" alt="benjamin-netanyahu-on-his-relati" width="310" height="227" /></a>Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told “Face the Nation” on Sunday, October 5 that preventing Jews from living and building in mostly-Arab neighborhoods of Jerusalem would mean a policy of &#8220;ethnic purification” that is unacceptable in democratic societies. In so doing, Netanyahu once again showed his mastery of nuance in American politics &#8212; a nuance, as it turns out, that even American presidential candidates do not always recognize.</span><br style="color: #222222;" /><br style="color: #222222;" /><span style="color: #222222;">Appearing on the CBS-TV interview program opposite anchor Bob Schieffer, Netanyahu strongly defended the recent purchase by Jewish families of apartments from Arabs in Jerusalem&#8217;s Shiloach neighborhood, as well as the Israeli government&#8217;s plans to build homes for Jews and Arabs in the city&#8217;s Givat Hamatos section.</span><br style="color: #222222;" /><br style="color: #222222;" /><span style="color: #222222;">Netanyahu told Schieffer that he was baffled by President Obama&#8217;s criticism of the latest Jerusalem developments, since the idea of barring members of a particular ethnic group from living in specific areas is clearly against American values. He said that neither the United States nor Israel should ever have a policy of enforcing &#8220;ethnic purification.&#8221;</span><br style="color: #222222;" /><br style="color: #222222;" /><span style="color: #222222;">That phrase brings to mind a generation-old controversy in American political history.</span><br style="color: #222222;" /><br style="color: #222222;" /><span style="color: #222222;">The year was 1976. Jimmy Carter, the former governor of Georgia, was locked in a tight race for the Democratic presidential nomination. The hot issues of the day included the busing of African-American children to mostly-white schools and the building of low-income housing in higher-income neighborhoods. A significant number of Democratic primary voters in some states were strongly opposed to both.</span><br style="color: #222222;" /><br style="color: #222222;" /><span style="color: #222222;">When a reporter asked Carter about the housing issue, Carter evidently tried to appeal to conservative white voters by declaring: &#8220;I see nothing wrong with ethnic purity being maintained. I would not force racial integration on a neighborhood by government action.&#8221;</span><br style="color: #222222;" /><br style="color: #222222;" /><span style="color: #222222;">That comment ignited a firestorm of questions from reporters. At first, Carter stood his ground. At a news conference in Indianapolis two days later, he reiterated: &#8220;I see nothing wrong with ethnic purity being maintained in Indianapolis. I have nothing against a community trying to maintain the ethnic purity of their neighborhoods.&#8221;</span><br style="color: #222222;" /><br style="color: #222222;" /><span style="color: #222222;">By the next day, the condemnations were coming thick and fast. Seventeen black members of Congress and the National Urban League denounced Carter&#8217;s statements.</span><br style="color: #222222;" /><br style="color: #222222;" /><span style="color: #222222;">Carter buckled. He publicly apologized, announced his endorsement of employment legislation that the Congressional Black Caucus had been promoting, and declared: &#8220;I don&#8217;t stand behind any sort of connotation of ethnic purity. I don&#8217;t want any community to maintain its ethnic purity. If someone from a different ethnic group wants to go into a neighborhood, I would fight for that person&#8217;s right to do that.&#8221;</span><br style="color: #222222;" /><br style="color: #222222;" /><span style="color: #222222;">Nowadays, Carter is much more likely to be seen hugging a leader of Hamas, than standing on the same political side as an Israeli prime minister. After all, Carter has authored an entire book accusing Israel of &#8220;apartheid,&#8221; and has even publicly claimed that &#8220;obviously the Palestinians have a worse time than the Rwandans.&#8221; (Not so obvious to those who know that one million people were slaughtered in the 1994 Rwanda genocide.)</span><br style="color: #222222;" /><br style="color: #222222;" /><span style="color: #222222;">But Carter&#8217;s amended declaration speaks for itself: &#8220;If someone from a different ethnic group wants to go into a neighborhood, I would fight for that person&#8217;s right to do that.&#8221;</span><br style="color: #222222;" /><br style="color: #222222;" /><span style="color: #222222;">The new Jewish residents of Jerusalem&#8217;s Shiloach and Givat HaMatos neighborhoods no doubt appreciate that principle, regardless of who is the person articulating it.</span><br style="color: #222222;" /><br style="color: #222222;" /><span style="color: #222222;">And Prime Minister Netanyahu was spot-on to use the argument to a nationwide American audience in rejecting the Obama administration&#8217;s latest criticism.</span></p>
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		<title>All of Jerusalem Belongs to the State of Israel</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/ronn-torossian/all-of-jerusalem-belongs-to-the-state-of-israel/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=all-of-jerusalem-belongs-to-the-state-of-israel</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/ronn-torossian/all-of-jerusalem-belongs-to-the-state-of-israel/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 03 Oct 2014 04:10:44 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Ronn Torossian]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[East Jerusalem]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Jerusalem]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[land]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Peace]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Settlements]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=242284</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Building in the holy city prompts threats from the Obama administration. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Jerusalem_from_mt_olives.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-242288" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Jerusalem_from_mt_olives-450x294.jpg" alt="Old City from the Mount of the Olives" width="292" height="191" /></a>Amongst the news that Washington told Israel if they move forward with building in Eastern Jerusalem,<span style="color: #232323;"> it would distance Israel from, &#8220;even its closest allies.&#8221;  This is simply <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/ronn-torossian/pr-agency-proclaims-israel-is-controversial-muslim-brotherhood-is-not/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">offensive rhetoric</span></a>.</span></p>
<p><span style="color: #232323;">As Prime Minister <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/ronn-torossian/zeev-jabotinsky-to-benjamin-netanyahu-on-hamas/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Benjamin Netanyahu</span></a> said, </span>it’s worth learning the information properly before deciding to take a position like that.  “I think they [the Obama administration] should be acquainted with the facts first. You know? First of all, these are <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/ronn-torossian/a-call-for-restraint-against-isis/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">not settlements</span></a>. These are neighborhoods of Jerusalem. We have Arab neighborhoods and we have Jewish neighborhoods.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Jerusalem is the eternal capital of the Jewish people &#8211; some strong quotes to better understand:</p>
<p>•&#8221;It is the right of Jews to buy an apartment in Jerusalem &#8211; I stand firm by my decision, there will not be a situation where Jews will not be able to buy an apartment in Jerusalem.&#8221; &#8212; Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu</p>
<p>• “I say this firmly and clearly: building in Jerusalem is not poisonous and harmful – rather, it is essential, important and will continue with full force. I will not freeze construction for anyone in Israel&#8217;s capital. Discrimination based on religion, race or gender is illegal in the United States and in any other civilized country.&#8221; &#8212; Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat</p>
<p>•“The oldest and holiest Jewish cemetery on Mount of Olives is in East Jerusalem, (3,000 years old) as is the Western Wall, so to call new Jewish suburbs in East Jerusalem, settlements, is absurd, and designed to undermine Jewish legitimacy there.” &#8212; Mervyn Bufton</p>
<p>• “[Jerusalem is the] &#8220;unified capital of Israel and the capital of the Jewish people, and sovereignty over it is indisputable.” &#8212; Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu</p>
<p>•“We are joyful and honored to commence the construction of our new neighborhood which strengthens the Jewish presence in united Jerusalem and stresses the fact that Jerusalem is the home of every Jew in Israel and throughout the world.” &#8212; Rabbi Dani Isaac</p>
<p>• “The Land of Israel without Jerusalem is merely &#8216;Palestine.&#8217; Down the generations the Jews have been saying not &#8216;Next year in the Land of Israel&#8217; but &#8216;Next year in Jerusalem&#8217;&#8230; One can create Tel-Aviv out of Jaffa but one cannot create a second Jerusalem. Zion lies within the walls, not outside them.” &#8212; Menachem Mendel Ussishkin</p>
<p>•“After 2,000 years of sacrifice for the dream of returning to Jerusalem, we cannot allow it to be taken away.” &#8212; Irving Moskowitz</p>
<p>•“All countries of the world should understand that attempts to endanger Jerusalem’s unity and Israel’s sovereignty in it, will be rejected immediately.” &#8212; MK Ofir Akunis</p>
<p>•“It’s a noise of construction, not of destruction, thank God. And it will always be like this. Development in Jerusalem, it’s a good thing. Not to the studio but for other things.” &#8212; Benny Elon</p>
<p>•“The Jewish people are in Jerusalem, not as settlers or invaders, but as of right. These rights are clearly spelt out in International Law and should be respected by the international community.” &#8212; Jacques Gauthier</p>
<p>•“A non-broken series of treaties and resolutions, as laid out by the San Remo Resolution, the League of Nations and the United Nations, gives the Jewish People title to the city of Jerusalem.” &#8212; Hillel Fendel</p>
<p>•“You ought to let the Jews have Jerusalem; it was they who made it famous.” &#8212; Winston Churchill</p>
<p>•“Jerusalem was the focal point for the historical connection of the Jewish people to the land of Israel.” &#8212; Dore Gold</p>
<p>•“The Jewish connection to Jerusalem is an ancient and powerful one. Judaism made Jerusalem a holy city over three thousand years ago and through all that time Jews remained steadfast to it.” &#8212; Daniel Pipes</p>
<p>•“This means praying and working for a just and lasting peace. Dividing Jerusalem will not lead to peace but will only further fuel the conflict. A lasting peace needs to be based on historical facts and international law and not on unilateral declarations or international pressure.” &#8212; Tomas Sandell</p>
<p>•“There is no justice, no law, and no God in heaven, only a single law which decides and supersedes all — [Jewish] settlement [of the land].” &#8211; <a href="http://www.truthrevolt.org/israel-revolt/torossian-zeev-jabotinsky-had-it-right-justice-must-be-done"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Ze’ev Jabotinsky</span></a></p>
<p>•“2,600 apartments in Givat HaMatos that we approved two years ago will enable more young people from all sectors and religions to live in Jerusalem and build their future here, thereby strengthening the capital of Israel. We will not apologize for that.” &#8212; Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat</p>
<p>•“Jerusalem is not a settlement but the historical capital of Israel. If Jerusalem were to be divided along the armistice demarcation lines of 1967, it would place the Old City under Palestinian rule. This would contradict the legal commitments made to the Jewish people in the San Remo Resolution of 1920, the Mandate for Palestine in 1922, as well as Article 80 in the United Nations Charter.” &#8212; Jacques Gauthier</p>
<p>•“In terms of numbers, Jerusalem – not even including Zion – is mentioned directly in the Bible approximately 650 times. By way of comparison, it is not mentioned even once in the Koran – and Muslims actually turn their backs on Jerusalem when they pray.” &#8212; Chaim Silberstein</p>
<p>• “Anyone who doesn’t recognize Jerusalem as the capital of the state of Israel does not recognize the State of Israel.” &#8212; Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat</p>
<p>•“Jerusalem is the eternal, undivided capital of the nation of Israel and the Jewish people.” &#8212; Former Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin</p>
<p>•“There are two reasons Jerusalem was chosen the capital of Israel. The first, from David’s perspective, is political. The second, from God’s perspective, and more importantly, is spiritual.” &#8212; Gordon Franz</p>
<p>• “Objecting to ‘Judaisation of Jerusalem’, so to speak, is absurd and is equatable to an objection to the Catholic nature of the Vatican or the Islamisation of Mecca, it is naturally unthinkable.” &#8212; Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor</p>
<p>• “I can imagine what would happen if someone proposed that Jews could not live or buy in certain neighborhoods of London, New York, Paris or Rome. A huge international outcry would surely ensue. It is even more impossible to agree to such an edict in East Jerusalem.” &#8212; Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu</p>
<p>•“It is unthinkable that any sovereign nation does not have the right to determine where in its territory its capital will reside. How ludicrous it is for one country to demand of another where it should or should not locate its capital! This is especially true of a city which has had strong emotional and spiritual significance to the Jewish people for many centuries.” &#8212; Bob Westbrook</p>
<p style="color: #252324;">•“Anyone who thinks that Jews buying a few handfuls of homes in areas of Jerusalem in any way contributes to the problems in the Middle East just doesn’t understand the reality of how deep the antagonism is to the nation state of the Jewish people,” &#8212; Professor Alan Dershowitz.</p>
<p>Jerusalem will never be divided.</p>
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		<title>Muslims Protest Christian School in Jerusalem Over Hijab Ban</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/muslims-protest-christian-school-in-jerusalem-over-hijab-ban/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=muslims-protest-christian-school-in-jerusalem-over-hijab-ban</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/muslims-protest-christian-school-in-jerusalem-over-hijab-ban/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 27 May 2014 15:07:33 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[The Point]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[East Jerusalem]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Islamic supremacism]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=226350</guid>
		<description><![CDATA["No To Racism" and "Hijab Is A Personal Freedom" ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/513.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-226352" alt="513" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/513-450x299.jpg" width="450" height="299" /></a></p>
<p>If Obama and Kerry were to succeed in their plan to hand over parts of Jerusalem to the PLO, this Hijab ban, which they would oppose if they knew about it, would be history.</p>
<p>The story, like so many untold stories from the Arab and Muslim sector in Jerusalem <a href="http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/4330/jerusalem-christian-school">comes from journalist Khaled Abu Toameh</a>.</p>
<blockquote><p>Pope Francis was probably unaware that during his visit to Bethlehem earlier this week, a Christian school in east Jerusalem was being attacked by Palestinian families for allegedly banning their daughters from wearing the hijab, the veil that covers the head of Muslim women.</p>
<p>Of course the Palestinian Authority did not tell Pope Francis anything about the smear campaign that was being waged by Muslims against the Rosary Sisters&#8217; School in east Jerusalem.</p>
<p>At the demonstration outside the girls&#8217; school in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Beit Hanina, protesters shouted slogans against the administration and carried placards that read, &#8220;No To Racism,&#8221; &#8220;Hijab Is A Personal Freedom&#8221; and &#8220;Enough To Racism.&#8221;</p>
<p>Some of the protesters pointed out that the hijab had &#8220;triumphed in France and Europe&#8221; while it was being banned by a school in east Jerusalem.</p>
<p>Other Muslims demanded that the nuns running the school also remove their head covers in return for the ban on the hijab. A school teacher, who also refused to be identified, called for the closure of the school for failing to respect girls wearing the hijab.</p>
<p>Some Muslims went so far as to use derogatory terms to denounce the nuns who are in charge of the school.</p>
<p>Another Palestinian named Rami pointed out that the Rosary Sisters&#8217; School was a private institution that has its own regulations. &#8220;Would an Islamic school or college allow a Christian girl to enter its premises without a hijab?&#8221; he asked.</p></blockquote>
<p>Obviously not, but that&#8217;s the larger point here. As Arab nationalism has become Islamic supremacism, as it was bound to all along, Islamic law rules.</p>
<p>Under Islam, minorities, religious and otherwise, have to know their place. A Palestinian state means another state of Islamic supremacism and intolerance, along with the accompanying discrimination, violence and terror.</p>
<p>Finally, if a Christian girl wouldn&#8217;t be allowed to not wear a Hijab, it clearly is not a &#8220;personal freedom&#8221;. It&#8217;s Islamic authoritarianism.</p>
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		<title>Remembering the 65th Anniversary of the Hadassah Medical Convoy Massacre</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/remembering-the-65th-anniversary-of-the-hadassah-medical-convoy-massacre/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=remembering-the-65th-anniversary-of-the-hadassah-medical-convoy-massacre</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 15 Mar 2013 15:34:14 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[The Point]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[East Jerusalem]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=181588</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The Hadassah Convoy Massacre was not the worst of the atrocities, but the burning alive of doctors and nurses in a medical convoy, showed Israelis that peace was impossible.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/remembering-the-65th-anniversary-of-the-hadassah-medical-convoy-massacre/800px-hadassah_convoy6/" rel="attachment wp-att-181589"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-181589" title="800px-hadassah_convoy6" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/800px-hadassah_convoy6-450x231.jpg" alt="" width="450" height="231" /></a></p>
<p>While the State Department denounces Israel for building houses in Jerusalem, the 65th anniversary of the <a href="http://israelmatzav.blogspot.com/2013/03/65th-anniversary-of-hadassah-convoy.html">Hadassah Medical Convoy Massacre</a> reminds us that the Muslim terrorists worked to ethnically cleanse the native Jewish population from their city, engaging in attacks on civil and communal institutions, a wave of violence that concluded with the destruction of the synagogues of East Jerusalem and the expulsion of its Jewish population.</p>
<p>Condemnations of Jewish life in East Jerusalem are really an endorsement of this ethnic cleansing.</p>
<p>The <a href="http://zionism-israel.com/his/Hadassah_convoy_Massacre.htm">Hadassah Convoy Massacre</a> was not the worst of the atrocities, but the burning alive of doctors and nurses in a medical convoy, showed Israelis that peace was impossible. And so it has proven to be.</p>
<p>The barbarity of the attack was then followed by snapshots of the dead, who in some cases had been decapitated, being sold as postcards as yet another reminder that the enemy was operating on a whole other notion of morality.</p>
<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/remembering-the-65th-anniversary-of-the-hadassah-medical-convoy-massacre/hadassah-convoy-massacre-1948/" rel="attachment wp-att-181590"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-181590" title="Hadassah Convoy Massacre 1948" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/Hadassah-Convoy-Massacre-1948-450x253.jpg" alt="" width="450" height="253" /></a></p>
<p>There are those <a href="http://www.jpost.com/LocalIsrael/InJerusalem/Article.aspx?id=99928">who still remember</a>&#8230;</p>
<blockquote><p>On April 13, 1948, a medical convoy left the Hadassah clinic on Rehov Hasollel (today Rehov Hahavatzelet), with doctors, nurses, patients, Hebrew University staff and students, making its way to the Mount Scopus enclave. Accompanying the armored ambulance, two armored Hamekasher buses and supply trucks were armored cars at either end of the convoy. British policemen assured the convoy that the route was safe, but at close to 10 a.m. the convoy was ambushed by Arabs in Sheikh Jarrah. The attack went on for hours, with some armed convoy members defending the passengers. Five of the vehicles managed to extricate themselves to safety. The buses were set afire by the Arab attackers, and passengers who escaped were shot.</p>
<p>&#8220;I wasn&#8217;t in school that day,&#8221; recalls Tamar Fuchs, who was 12 at the time and lived nearby. &#8220;At about 10 a.m., a neighbor burst in shouting, &#8216;They&#8217;re attacking the convoy to Mt. Scopus.&#8217; From the roof, we saw black smoke and passing British cars which did not offer help. The sharp smells of burnt flesh drifted with the eastern winds in our direction. Until 2 p.m. we saw smoke and heard explosions. My friend&#8217;s sister, nurse Ziva Barazani, was in the convoy. Her remains were not found.&#8221;</p></blockquote>
<p>Unlike the lie of the Deir Yassin massacre, the Hadassah Medical Convoy Massacre isn&#8217;t likely to be remembered much outside of limited Jewish circles. While the death of terrorists is a war crime, <a href="http://vladtepesblog.com/?p=6853">burning alive doctors and nurses is just not spoken about</a>.</p>
<blockquote><p>During World War II, the staff of Hadassah Hospital played a significant role in helping Allied military forces throughout the Middle East. They offered weekly lectures and meetings to British medical personnel that acquainted them with regional medical issues including blood diseases, jaundice, dysentery, anemia and high blood pressure. Courses were also given on how to deal with infestations of sand-flies, worms, poisonous snakes, mosquitoes and other disease carrying insects.</p>
<p>The Hebrew University’s Department of Bacteriology and Hygiene provided anti-typhus and anti-dysentery vaccines. The Zoology Department’s research on relapsing cave fever taught the British army to avoid encampments near caves.</p>
<p>Malaria was a major debilitating threat to Allied forces.  As a result, the British Army established ten anti-malaria units that were sent to Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Iran, India, Burma, Greece and Italy in advance of their troops. Four of these units were under the command of Jewish malaria experts, who pioneered the use of aerial use of pesticides to kill nests of mosquitoes. Medical expertise was provided by the Parasitology Department.</p>
<p>While Hadassah and Hebrew University were assisting the British, Arabs led by the Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin el-Husseini, were fighting a guerrilla war against the British and Jews. In late 1941, as a refugee in Berlin, the Mufti used radio broadcasts to urge Arabs to become fifth columns in the lands where they lived and to commit sabotage and to murder Allied troops and Jews.</p>
<p>&#8230;</p>
<p>Once the partition of Palestine was approved by the United Nations on November 29, 1947, the violence against the Jews intensified. The equivalent of a Red Cross medical convoy comprised of non-combatants including doctors, nurses and university faculty and students was ambushed by Arabs in the Sheikh Jarrah section of Jerusalem. Although The British High Commissioner and the British Secretary of State personally gave their assurances that these convoys would be protected by British troops and police, seventy-eight Jews were murdered.</p>
<p>The attack, which lasted seven hours, began at 9:30 a.m. and took place less than 600 feet from the British military post. The British watched from the sidelines. Jewish appeals for help were ignored until mid-afternoon.  But by then the Jews had either been burned alive in buses or shot. There were 28 survivors, only eight had no injuries.</p>
<p>Among the dead were the founders of the new faculty of medicine, a physicist, a philologist, a cancer researcher, the head of the university’s department of psychology, and an authority on Jewish law. A doctor who waited four years to marry the nurse he loved was killed when he went to say good bye to his patients before leaving on his honeymoon.</p>
<p>One victim, a doctor, treated the Arab peasants in the village of Isawiye on Mount Scopus two weeks prior to the attack. Yet Arabs claimed that the ambush was a heroic act, and the British had no business intervening even at the last-minute: They did not want a single Jewish passenger to remain alive.</p></blockquote>
<p>They failed. And the liberation and reunification of Jerusalem undid Muslim ethnic cleansing efforts. But Obama Inc&#8217;s attacks on Jews living in East Jerusalem is trying to finish their work for them.</p>
<p>It wasn&#8217;t the first time that Hadassah medical personnel were <a href="http://www.sullivan-county.com/x/hum_fun.htm">repaid for their kindness with Muslim atrocities</a>.</p>
<blockquote><p>The story of Ben Tzion Gershon was typical. Ben Tzion, who had worked for years as a pharmacist in the Hadassah clinic in Hebron, was known for his acts of kindness to his Arab neighbors. He was so sure of their gratitude, so compassionate for their plight, that he opened his door to an Arab woman feigning labor pains on the first night of the rampage.</p>
<p>The mob, hiding in the shadows, rushed in, tied up Ben Tzion, and gang-raped his wife. When he pleaded with them, calling them by their names to stop, they replied, &#8220;If you don&#8217;t want to see it, you don&#8217;t have to,&#8221; and proceeded to poke out his eyes.</p>
<p>In front of the Gershons&#8217; two daughters, their neighbors dismembered both Ben Tzion and his wife. The story was testified to by one of the daughters, who lived for a week before dying of her wounds. The other daughter spent the rest of her life in a mental institution.</p>
<p>Danny Pearl&#8217;s captors knew him for six days. Ben Tzion Gershon&#8217;s murderers had known him &#8212; had benefited from his kindnesses &#8212; for decades. The assumption that if they only knew how good, how humane we are, they wouldn&#8217;t hate us is a tenet of humanistic fundamentalist that its proponents hold despite all the historical evidence to the contrary.</p>
<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/remembering-the-65th-anniversary-of-the-hadassah-medical-convoy-massacre/180309bhadassahe/" rel="attachment wp-att-181591"><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-181591" title="180309bhadassahe" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/180309bhadassahe.jpg" alt="" width="250" height="190" /></a></p></blockquote>
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		<title>West Longs for Jew-Free Zones in Jerusalem</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/davidhornik/west-longs-for-jew-free-zones-in-jerusalem/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=west-longs-for-jew-free-zones-in-jerusalem</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/davidhornik/west-longs-for-jew-free-zones-in-jerusalem/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 27 Dec 2012 04:56:05 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[P. David Hornik]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[christianity]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[East Jerusalem]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Islam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Jerusalem]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[jordan]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=171100</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[For a preview of a Palestinian-controlled "East Jerusalem" look to the disaster of Bethlehem. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2012/davidhornik/west-longs-for-jew-free-zones-in-jerusalem/jerusalem-panorama-500/" rel="attachment wp-att-171106"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-171106" title="jerusalem-panorama-500" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/jerusalem-panorama-500-450x314.jpg" alt="" width="270" height="188" /></a>Israel plans to step up the building of residences within the settlement blocs and—drawing particular ire—in parts of Jerusalem that were under Jordanian occupation from 1949 to 1967. The Jerusalem plans include housing for both Jews and Arabs.</p>
<p>In this holiday season, those plans should be cause for rejoicing instead of heightened rebukes. The city’s status as a hub of three religions, and also of tolerance, pluralism, and across-the-board demographic growth, is being strengthened.</p>
<p>Instead, official Western reactions have been harshly critical (reports <a href="http://www.jpost.com/DiplomacyAndPolitics/Article.aspx?id=296506">here</a>, <a href="http://www.jpost.com/DiplomacyAndPolitics/Article.aspx?id=296634">here</a>, and <a href="http://www.jpost.com/DiplomacyAndPolitics/Article.aspx?id=296844">here</a>).</p>
<p>U.S. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said: “We are deeply disappointed that Israel insists on continuing this pattern of provocative action.” The French Foreign Ministry called the building plans “a provocation that further undermines…trust…and leads us to question Israel’s commitment to the two-state solution.” British foreign secretary William Hague called the plans “a serious provocation and an obstacle to peace.”</p>
<p>EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton even hinted at repercussions, saying the EU would “closely monitor the situation…and act accordingly.”</p>
<p>And 14 of the 15 countries on the UN Security Council—with the U.S. as the only exception—issued condemnations as well. Four of them—Britain, France, Germany, and Portugal—said in a joint statement that they were “extremely concerned by, and strongly opposed, the plans…all settlement activity, including in east Jerusalem, must cease immediately.”</p>
<p>It should be noted that, except the U.S., all of the abovementioned countries either voted aye or abstained in last month’s <a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2012/davidhornik/u-n-says-aye-to-palestinian-terror-state/">UN General Assembly vote</a> conferring a watered-down form of statehood on the Palestinian Authority. It was partly in reaction to the Palestinians’ move, which <a href="http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4321400,00.html">blatantly violated</a> the Israeli-Palestinian Oslo Accords that the EU once sanctioned, that Israel announced the new building plans.</p>
<p>Israel, though, couldn’t win. It couldn’t persuade the European states to oppose the Palestinian move; and once it reacted to the move, it was roundly condemned.</p>
<p>Israel was particularly disappointed by Germany’s abstention in the UN vote, after Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government had seemed to be intending to vote nay. Germany, as already mentioned, then joined three other countries in demanding that even “East Jerusalem”—where 200,000 Jews now live, 40 percent of Jerusalem’s total Jewish population—be treated as a Jew-free zone.</p>
<p>Beyond these specific points, though, stands the ongoing spectacle of the world’s leading Western powers seeming to pine for a redivided Jerusalem, this time with the Palestinians ruling the Jew-free part. Even if a Palestinian sovereign entity were to arise in the West Bank, “Ramallah,” as David Solway notes in his <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&amp;field-keywords=david%20solway%20the%20boxthorn%20tree">new book</a>, “…is a good enough Palestinian capital.” Why, then, the insistence on East Jerusalem?</p>
<p>It doesn’t seem reasonable that Washington, London, Paris, Berlin et al. would be nostalgic for the previous period of Muslim Arab rule over that part of the city. The Jordanian occupation was particularly hard on Jews, who were denied all access to their holy sites while Jordanian snipers fired repeatedly into the Jewish part of the city. But the Christians under Jordan’s control suffered as well, their number dwindling from 25,000 in 1949 to 10,000 in 1967 as they were given only paltry access to their holy sites and forced to teach the Koran in their church schools (accounts <a href="http://www.theettingerreport.com/Jerusalem-Cloakroom/Jerusalem/The-Land-of-Israel-%E2%80%93-Cradle-of-Jewish-History.aspx">here</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerusalem">here</a>).</p>
<p>Would it be better under the Palestinians? Not if one takes Bethlehem—where the Palestinian Authority has wielded autonomy since late 1995—as a test case. Palestinian Muslim control there has caused ongoing steep demographic decline for the town’s Christians as they suffer from terror, intimidation, land theft, sexual assault, forced marriages, and the like (accounts <a href="http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=3107">here</a>, <a href="http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/11000">here</a>, and <a href="http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/501/the-beleaguered-christians-in-bethlehem">here</a>)—not surprisingly in light of the continuing <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/9762745/Christianity-close-to-extinction-in-Middle-East.html">severe persecution</a> of Christians throughout the region.</p>
<p>Indeed, however eager the West is for Palestinian rule in East Jerusalem, it turns out that even the predominantly Muslim Palestinians there don’t want it. As Evelyn Gordon <a href="http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2012/12/21/un-return-golan-residents-to-syrian-slaughterhouse-forthwith/">notes</a>, the numbers of these Palestinians requesting Israeli citizenship has <a href="http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/3-374-east-jerusalem-residents-received-full-israeli-citizenship-in-past-decade.premium-1.471189">dramatically climbed</a> in recent years. Polls find that, <em>even if the Palestinian state was established</em>, most East Jerusalem Palestinians would <a href="http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2012/02/02/palestinians-divided-jerusalem/">prefer to remain Israeli</a>.</p>
<p>Considering that the Palestinians’ supposed desire to shake off Israeli rule is a shibboleth of Western diplomacy, one might ask why that would be so. But anyone who has been both to Israel and the Palestinian Authority—one is tempted to say, anyone but Western diplomats—knows that the former is an island of Western democracy, prosperity, tolerance, and pluralism in a harsh region. Jerusalem Palestinians, exposed to those upsides since Israel reunited the city in 1967, have come to know their worth.</p>
<p>As Jerusalem mayor Nir Barkat put it in a recent <em>Wall Street Journal</em> <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324024004578170023901240846.html">op-ed</a>,</p>
<blockquote><p>Since [1967] the city has maintained freedom of access, movement and religion. Peace-seeking pilgrims of all faiths can again visit the holy places without limitation or restriction. Tourism to Jerusalem is thriving, as is the city’s economy, and its per capita crime rate is among the world’s lowest….</p>
<p>Isn’t it ironic that many in Europe who recently celebrated 25 years of the reunification of Berlin are at the same time calling for the division of another capital on another continent?</p></blockquote>
<p>And as Barkat went on to ask: “By 2030, the city’s population will expand to one million residents from 800,000 today (33% Muslim, 2% Christian and 65% Jewish). Where does the world suggest we put these extra 200,000 residents?”</p>
<p>If the answer is, “Put them where you want, but make sure you keep some parts off-limits to Jews,” Israel’s answer is: no.</p>
<p>Peace and goodwill to all.</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>Jerusalem&#8217;s Day in Court</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2011/joseph-klein/jerusalems-day-in-court/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=jerusalems-day-in-court</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 03 Oct 2011 04:12:00 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Joseph Klein]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[american citizenship]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[East Jerusalem]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[foreign relations authorization act]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[passport requirement]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[west bank territory]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=107371</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The Obama administration again takes a position more Palestinian than that of the Palestinians. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Giving-up-Obama.png"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-107374" title="Giving-up-Obama" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Giving-up-Obama.png" alt="" width="400" height="309" /></a></p>
<p>The State Department refuses to comply with a provision in a  congressional statute, the Foreign Relations Authorization Act for  Fiscal Year 2003, which requires the State Department to record a  Jerusalem-born U.S. citizen&#8217;s place of birth as &#8220;Israel&#8221; if requested to  do so by the citizen or his or her legal guardian. This particular  instance of dereliction of the president&#8217;s constitutional duty to &#8220;take  care that the laws be faithfully executed&#8221; began during the Bush  administration and is continuing apace during the Obama administration.  An estimated 50,000 individuals, who were born in Jerusalem but are  considered American citizens because of their parents&#8217; American  citizenship, are affected.</p>
<p>Now a case challenging the State Department&#8217;s refusal to comply with  the law is going to the Supreme Court, against the wishes of the Obama  administration. The Supreme Court directed the parties in the case of <em>Zivotofsky</em> v. <em>Clinton</em> to address the broad question of whether the law “impermissibly  infringes the president’s power to recognize foreign sovereigns.” After  losing its argument that the Supreme Court should not hear the case at  all, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton&#8217;s State Department filed a brief  last month with the Supreme Court sharply attacking the  Jerusalem-related portion of the Foreign Relations Authorization Act  that Clinton had voted in favor of while serving as New York&#8217;s junior  senator.</p>
<p>The Obama administration brief makes unprecedentedly broad claims of  exclusive presidential power. And it also misrepresents the Obama  administration&#8217;s stance toward the final status of Jerusalem as one of  neutrality, which it claims would be undermined by the Foreign Relations  Authorization Act&#8217;s passport requirement.</p>
<p>The truth is that the Obama administration is not neutral. It has  conflated the Palestinians&#8217; claims to &#8220;East Jerusalem&#8221; with their claims  to West Bank territory. By failing to distinguish between the building  of Jewish residences within Jerusalem versus settlements on West Bank  territory, the Obama administration has sided with the Palestinians  against Israel on a critical issue.</p>
<p>As Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, &#8220;Jerusalem is not a  settlement. It&#8217;s our capital.&#8221; He has history on his side. Jews have  been living in Jerusalem continuously for more than three millennia. In  more recent times, they have constituted the largest single group of  inhabitants there since at least the 1840s.</p>
<p>Whatever the reason for the Obama administration&#8217;s embrace of the  Palestinians&#8217; claims, it should not be entitled to disregard the law on  the books concerning the issuance of passports and substitute its own  arbitrary edicts.</p>
<p>Contrary to the Obama administration&#8217;s assertion of exclusive power  with regard to the issuance of passports, Congress&#8217; constitutional power  to regulate the conditions for issuing passports has long been  recognized by the Supreme Court. True, the Supreme Court has said in the  past that when there is broad rulemaking authority granted in an  applicable statute to the executive branch and Congress does not  override the consistent administrative construction of the statute by  the executive branch, the courts must generally defer to the  administrative determination. However, this case involves precisely the  opposite situation. The Foreign Relations Authorization Act&#8217;s Jerusalem  provision expressly limits powers that Congress had granted to the  executive branch with respect to making rules for the issuance of  passports in one specific respect. It said: &#8220;For … a United States  citizen born in the city of Jerusalem, the Secretary <em>shall</em>,  upon the request of the citizen or the citizen&#8217;s legal guardian, record  the place of birth as Israel&#8221; (emphasis added). &#8220;Shall,&#8221; not &#8220;may,&#8221; is  the operative word.</p>
<p>Congress exercised its constitutional power to regulate the issuance  of passports by expressly directing the executive branch to designate  Israel on the passport of a U.S. citizen born in Jerusalem if requested  to do so. The State Department cannot simply disregard a directive  imposed by Congress on the issuance of passports.</p>
<p>This case is especially important at a time when President Obama has  effectively endorsed the division of Jerusalem, with so-called East  Jerusalem becoming a part of a new Palestine state, in calling for a  return to the 1967 lines as the basis for negotiations. An overwhelming  majority of Congress supports defensible borders and a united Jerusalem  under Israeli sovereignty. They recognize not only Israel&#8217;s unique  historical claim to Jerusalem. They also know from recent history that  if Arabs regain control of access to the holy sites of all three major  religions, they will most likely defile the holy sites of Judaism and  Christianity and will prevent Jews and Christians from freely  worshipping in their synagogues and churches located in the old section  of the city. This is precisely what happened the last time Arabs  controlled the old section of Jerusalem between 1949 and 1967, following  Jordan&#8217;s illegal occupation of &#8220;East Jerusalem&#8221; that divided the city  for the first time in its history. During that occupation, Jordanian  Arabs forced the Jewish residents out of the Old City and the  neighboring Jewish villages in a frenzy of ethnic cleansing. They  desecrated Jewish graves and synagogues. They would not permit Jewish  pilgrims to worship at their holy sites, including the Western Wall,  which the Arabs used literally as a public pissoir. Those Christian  pilgrims who were lucky enough to be permitted to walk the Via Delarosa,  or the Way of the Cross, encountered filth and sewage. Christians were  subjected to discriminatory laws passed by Jordan, including taking away  the right of Christian religious and charitable institutions to acquire  real estate in Jerusalem.</p>
<p>When Israel restored Jerusalem as a unified city, ended religious  discrimination and ensured freedom of access of the members of all  religions to the places sacred to them after defeating Jordan&#8217;s  aggressive push to take over all of Jerusalem during the 1967 Six Day  War, Israel established its moral and legal right to claim sovereignty  over an undivided Jerusalem.</p>
<p>In representing the United States abroad in diplomatic matters,  President Obama has decided to tilt towards the Palestinian position on  certain key issues such as their bogus claims to &#8220;East Jerusalem&#8221; in  attempting to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. However, that  does not give him the right to overrule Congress in all matters that the  president claims might possibly affect his credibility in asserting  that position. If Congress decides to place requirements on the issuance  of passports in a law that has duly gone into effect, as is its right  to do under the Constitution, the fact that the implementation of these  requirements may collaterally embarrass the president is just too bad.  The president cannot avoid such embarrassment by failing to carry out  the law.</p>
<p>The legal case leading up to the Supreme Court had its origins during  the early days of the Bush administration. It stems from an attempt by  the mother of a boy born in Jerusalem, who is a U.S. citizen because  both of his parents are U.S. citizens, to file an application for a  consular report of birth abroad and a United States passport for her  son, Menachem Binyamin, listing his place of birth as “Jerusalem,  Israel.” The State Department denied her request, despite the fact that  he was born in West Jerusalem, which even the Palestinians are not  claiming belongs to them. The passport shows only that he was born in  Jerusalem.<br />
<img title="Next page..." src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-includes/js/tinymce/plugins/wordpress/img/trans.gif" alt="" /><br />
&#8220;If a US citizen is born in Tel Aviv, his passport will designate his  place of birth as Israel. But in the case of Jerusalem, the US Consular  Department will not give the country of birth as Israel,” said  Menachem&#8217;s father to the <em>Jerusalem Post</em>. &#8220;Even though our son  was born in Shaare Zedek Hospital, which is in West Jerusalem, the US  Consular Department does not recognize it as being Israel.”</p>
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		<title>No Honorary Degree for Israel-Hater Tony Kushner</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2011/arnold-ahlert/no-honorary-degree-for-israel-hater-tony-kushner-2/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=no-honorary-degree-for-israel-hater-tony-kushner-2</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 06 May 2011 04:43:25 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Arnold Ahlert]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=92506</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[CUNY holds an Israel-basher accountable for libelous statements against the Jewish State.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/Kushner.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-92507" title="Kushner" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/Kushner.jpg" alt="" width="320" height="412" /></a></p>
<p>For the first time since 1961, the <a href="http://www.cuny.edu/index.html">City University of New York</a> (CUNY) has rejected a candidate for an honorary degree. Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/topics/reference/timestopics/people/k/tony_kushner/index.html">Tony Kushner&#8217;s</a> nomination was tabled at a meeting of the board of trustees at member  college John Jay on Monday, when board member Jeffrey Wiesenfeld  objected. &#8220;If his libelous statements against Israel were made by anyone  outside the Jewish community, that person would be correctly labeled an  anti-Semite&#8230;when you spew libel against our sole regional democratic  ally for &#8216;crimes&#8217; concocted by delegitimizers, you are an anti-Semite,&#8221;  explained Wiesenfeld. &#8220;I would no differently oppose a racist for an  honorary degree who personifies himself by calumny against a people,&#8221; he  added. Kushner, an unapologetic Israel-basher and notorious  propagandist for the genocidal Palestinian campaign against the Jewish  State, characterized the rejection as &#8220;McCarthyite nonsense.&#8221;</p>
<p>It&#8217;s hardly nonsense. Kushner has been engaged in activities with <a href="https://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/301/images/JVPdivestv2-1.pdf">Jewish Voice for Peace,</a> an organization whose principal strategy hinges around economic warfare  (boycott, divestment and sanctions) against Israel &#8220;to end the Israeli  occupation of Gaza and West Bank, including East Jerusalem.&#8221; Kushner  claims he does not support the boycott, but such claims ring utterly  hollow given the playwright&#8217;s outrageous statements and background. Even in his <a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/54643560/Letter-to-CUNY-Trustees-05-04-11">letter</a> to the board of trustees in response to his rejection, Kushner accused  Israel of &#8220;ethnic cleansing&#8221; and, in an even greater departure from  reality, also asserted that the &#8220;brunt&#8221; of the &#8220;ongoing horror in the  Middle East..has been borne by the Palestinian people.&#8221;</p>
<p>But this only scratches the surface. Kushner is currently out in the  sympathetic press peddling the worst of his obscurantist rhetoric. In an  interview with <em>Jewish Week</em> nine days ago, Kushner claimed  there &#8220;has never been a moment in my entire life when I haven&#8217;t  expressed complete and full support of the State of Israel.&#8221; Evidently,  one can be a supporter of Israel’s existence while also having “a  problem with the idea of a Jewish state. It would have been better if it  never happened,” as he told the <em>New York Sun</em>. In 2002, he told the <a href="http://www.chicagotribune.com/"><em>Chicago Tribune</em></a> that it&#8217;s “the shame of American Jews” for &#8220;failing to denounce Israel.” In 2004, <a href="http://www.haaretz.com/culture/books/the-freedom-to-dissent-1.118846">Ha&#8217;aretz</a> quoted Kushner saying that &#8220;[E]stablishing a state means f***ing people  over,&#8221; and reiterated his contention that the creation of Israel was  &#8220;mistake.&#8221;</p>
<p>Kushner has also rarely missed a moment to promulgate the false  narrative perpetrated by Palestinian Nazis, whose charges of Israeli ethnic cleansing, racism, apartheid, imperialism, etc. are used to justify their terror and  legitimize their desire to annihilate Israel. He has claimed in the <a href="http://www.nysun.com/"><em>New York Sun</em></a> that “[Israel is involved in] a deliberate destruction of Palestinian culture and a systematic attempt to destroy the identity of the Palestinian people.” He told the <a href="http://www.jewishtimes.com/"><em>Baltimore Jewish Times</em></a><em> </em>that  &#8220;[T]he Israeli-built security wall should come down, the homeland for  the Palestinians should be built up, with a strictly enforced peace, not  enforced by the Israel Defense Forces, but by the United Nations.” In a  book entitled “<a href="http://press.umich.edu/titleDetailDesc.do?id=11102">Tony Kushner in Conversation</a>” (1998),  the playwright offered up this assessment: &#8220;The biggest supporters of  Israel are the most repulsive members of the Jewish community and Israel  itself has got this disgraceful record…Israel is a creation of the  U.S., bought and paid for[.]&#8221;</p>
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		<title>Hanging Israel Out to Dry</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/larry-elder/hanging-israel-out-to-dry/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=hanging-israel-out-to-dry</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 04 Jun 2010 04:00:03 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Larry Elder]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=62037</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Obama turns his back on the only safe-haven of freedom in the Middle East.  ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/1269443148obama_netanyahu_wash_nyt.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-62062" title="1269443148obama_netanyahu_wash_nyt" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/1269443148obama_netanyahu_wash_nyt-300x225.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="225" /></a></p>
<p>Vice President Joe Biden, wrong on virtually every major foreign policy issue since his election to the Senate in 1972, nailed this one: He warned that actors on the international stage would test the new, inexperienced President.</p>
<p>He knew that President Barack Obama&#8217;s enemies would perceive his strength-through-peace (versus peace-through-strength) approach as weakness. They do and are acting accordingly.</p>
<p>Candidate Obama vowed to hold high-level talks with Iran and North Korea without &#8220;preconditions.&#8221; Obama promised a &#8220;reset&#8221; of all things President George W. Bush, with no more talk of &#8220;victory&#8221; in Iraq and Afghanistan. He reneged on the promised missile shield defense in Poland and the Czech Republic. He waits for countries like China and Russia, both of which have business interests in Iran, to agree to &#8220;tough, crippling&#8221; sanctions.</p>
<p>The President dropped the term &#8220;war on terror&#8221; and refuses to call Islamofascists &#8220;Islamofascists.&#8221; He apologetically says America is vital in maintaining world peace &#8220;whether we like it or not.&#8221; He sent a videotaped message to Iran telling of our willingness to re-engage the country — if only it would unclench its fist. It unclenched more time for Iran to pursue a nuclear bomb. The administration was painfully slow to acknowledge that the Times Square truck bomb attempt involved foreign Islamic terrorists.</p>
<p>The administration chastised Israel for settlement construction in an area of east Jerusalem that President Bill Clinton, President George W. Bush and even Palestine Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat assumed would be part of Israel in any peace agreement. During Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu&#8217;s state visit, Obama treated him worse than a White House dinner gate-crasher.</p>
<p>How&#8217;s the hope and change working out?</p>
<p>North Korea, in an act of war, sank a South Korean ship. Iran may now have sufficient materiel and technical knowledge to build a nuclear bomb. The Iranian-backed terrorist group Hezbollah — under the nose of United Nations &#8220;peacekeepers&#8221; — continues to stock southern Lebanon with weapons that threaten Israel.</p>
<p>Now comes the anti-Israel &#8220;humanitarian&#8221; flotilla.</p>
<p>After Israel unilaterally withdrew from Gaza, the terror group Hamas seized power. Israel and Egypt began a naval blockade of ships in and out of Gaza. Though Israel had uprooted every Israeli settler from Gaza, Hamas fired thousands of rockets into Israel, a bombardment that continues today.</p>
<p>Israel already sends humanitarian aid into Gaza and allows others to do so.</p>
<p>Israel even agreed to allow the supposed humanitarian flotilla cargo to enter, provided Israeli security could check it for weapons. And never mind that some of the flotilla&#8217;s &#8220;humanitarian activists&#8221; appear to have ties to terror organizations.</p>
<p>The flotilla&#8217;s attempt to run the blockade resulted in nine deaths when the Israeli military boarded ships to inspect the cargo. As Israel&#8217;s enemies hoped, Israel stands accused of a &#8220;disproportionate&#8221; response.</p>
<p>But why the flotilla now?</p>
<p>The most significant intervening event is the election of President Obama. Now Israel&#8217;s most important ally considers Israeli intransigence the principal obstacle to peace with the Palestinians in particular and in the Middle East in general. The activists got the message: Israel is on the defensive.</p>
<p>Israel, with good reason, feels alone.</p>
<p>Obama, like Bush in his second term, seems willing to accept a nuclear-armed Iran — even as Iran threatens Israel with annihilation. Obama apparently considers a nuclear-armed Iran inevitable, even if it ignites a regional nuclear arms race — since Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan fear Iran more than they do Israel.</p>
<p>Give Obama credit for continuing many of Bush&#8217;s policies. Gitmo remains open, the administration finally understanding that the prison exists for a reason. He continued rendition, the terror surveillance program and the increased use of drone predators in Pakistan. He used the same &#8220;state secrets&#8221; argument to fight courtroom disclosure of sources and methods. He increased troop strength in Afghanistan and continues the Bush &#8220;clear and hold&#8221; strategy for that country and Iraq.</p>
<p>But Jimmy Carter governed as a strength-through-peace president. He pressured the Shah of Iran to release &#8220;political prisoners.&#8221; The shah was toppled, only to be followed by the repressive and threatening Islamic Republic of Iran. Carter urged Americans to abandon their &#8220;inordinate fear of communism.&#8221; Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev considered Carter weak and rewarded him by invading Afghanistan. This triggered a chain reaction from which the world continues to suffer. The Arabs and Muslims who fought to expel the Soviet Union then turned on the United States and the West in a grand plan for an Islamic world.</p>
<p>Israel&#8217;s response to the flotilla was an act of self-defense. The Western world&#8217;s reaction has been shameful. Western countries once again fail to distinguish the arsonist from the firefighter.</p>
<p>In 1962, the United States imposed a naval blockade — a &#8220;quarantine&#8221; — on Cuba. What would we have done to a &#8220;humanitarian&#8221; flotilla determined to help Fidel Castro place Soviet missiles 90 miles from Florida?</p>
<p><em>Larry Elder is a syndicated radio talk show host and best-selling author. His latest book, &#8220;What&#8217;s Race Got to Do with It?&#8221; is available now. To find out more about Larry Elder, visit his Web page at www.WeveGotACountryToSav</em><em>e.com.</em></p>
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		<title>The Last Best Hope</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/dennis-prager/the-last-best-hope/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-last-best-hope</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 26 May 2010 04:01:50 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Dennis Prager]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=61098</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The world is a cruel place -- and if America weakens, it will get crueler.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/american_flag4.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-61138" title="american_flag4" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/american_flag4.jpg" alt="" width="375" height="284" /></a></p>
<p>One of the many beliefs — i.e., non-empirically based doctrines — of the post-Christian West has been that moral progress is the human norm, especially so with the demise of religion. In a secular world, the self-described enlightened thinking goes, superstition is replaced by reason, and reason leads to the moral good.</p>
<p>Of course, it turned out that the post-Christian West produced considerably more evil than the Christian world had. No mass cruelty in the name of Christianity approximated the vastness of the cruelty unleashed by secular doctrines and regimes in the post-Christian world. The argument against religion that more people have been killed in the name of religion than by any other doctrine is false propaganda on behalf of secularism and Leftism.</p>
<p>The amount of evil done by Christians — against, for example, &#8220;heretics&#8221; and Jews — in both the Western and Eastern branches of Christianity — was extensive, as was the failure of most European Christians to see Nazism for the evil that it was. The good news is that Christian evils have been acknowledged and addressed by most Christian leaders and thinkers.</p>
<p>But there were never any Christian Auschwitzes — i.e., systematic genocides of every man, woman and child of a particular race or religion. Nor were there Christian Gulags — the shipping of millions of innocents to conditions so horrific that prolonged suffering leading to death was the almost -inevitable end.</p>
<p>The anti-religious Left offers two responses to these facts: The first is that modern technology made the Nazi and Communist murders of scores of millions possible; had the church been technologically able to do so, it would have made its own Auschwitz and Gulag. The second is that Nazism and Communism were religions and not secular doctrines.</p>
<p>The response to the first is that technology was not necessary for the Communist murders of over a hundred million innocent people in the Soviet Union, China, Cambodia and elsewhere. In Cambodia, millions were murdered with hammers, in Rwanda with machetes.</p>
<p>The response to the second is that Communism and Nazism were secular movements and to deny that is to tell a gargantuan lie. Even if one argues that Nazism and Communism were religions, they were nevertheless secular religions. That too many Christians morally failed when confronted with Nazism is true, but irrelevant to the fact that Nazism was in no way a Christian movement.</p>
<p>And now the post-Christian world is getting worse.</p>
<p>The moral news about the world in which we live is almost unremittingly negative.</p>
<p>Russia</p>
<p>Russia is devoid of a moral values system. Whatever moral role the Russian Orthodox Church played was largely extinguished during the seven decades of Communist suppression of religion. Today, pockets of religious morality notwithstanding, Russia is essentially a nihilistic state. Under the leadership of a former KGB director, Russia now plays a destructive role in world affairs. Russia today is characterized by major arms shipments to Syria, protecting Iran while it becomes a nuclear power, forcing its will on Ukraine and other neighboring states, and the violent suppression of domestic critics who shed any light on the organized crime syndicate that rules the geographically largest nation in the world.</p>
<p>Turkey</p>
<p>The Ataturk Revolution is being undone. Turkey, the country long regarded as the bridge between the West and Islam, is rapidly moving away from the West and to an increasingly anti-Western Islam.</p>
<p>Iran</p>
<p>Iran is ruled by the heirs of Nazism, if that word still means anything after being cheapened by the Left for decades, most recently by the Left&#8217;s comparison of Arizona to a Nazi state. The rulers of Iran boast of their desire to initiate a second Holocaust against the Jews, all the while denying that the first Holocaust took place. And the country&#8217;s treatment of Iranians who seek elementary human freedoms and of Iranian women is among the worst on earth.</p>
<p>Congo</p>
<p>According to all reports, nearly 6 million people have been killed in the Congo in the last decade. The great secular liberal hope in &#8220;humanity&#8221; and &#8220;world opinion&#8221; has once again been shown to be the false hope it is. World opinion and &#8220;humanity&#8221; have rarely done anything to help the truly persecuted.</p>
<p>But there is more to the Congolese genocide — the absence of reporting about it in the world&#8217;s media and its being a non-issue at the United Nations. If an Israeli soldier kills a rock-throwing Palestinian, or even worse, makes plans to build 1,600 apartments in east Jerusalem, the U.N., world opinion and the world media cover it as if it were the primary evil on earth. But the Congolese deaths are barely worth a mention.</p>
<p>Mexico</p>
<p>Mexico is fighting for its life against narcotics gangs that compete with Islamists in their sadism. Mexico could become the largest narco-state in the world. To be a good person in Mexico today, i.e., to oppose the drug lords in any way, is to put oneself in danger of being slowly tortured to death.</p>
<p>Europe</p>
<p>Europe long ago gave up fighting for or believing in anything other than living a life with as much economic security, as many days off and as young a retirement age as possible. World War I killed off European idealism. And whatever remained was destroyed by World War II. What I have written about the Germans is true for nearly all of Europe: Instead of learning to fight evil, Europe has learned that fighting is evil.</p>
<p>Other consequences of European secularism and the demise of non-materialistic ideals include a low birthrate (children cost money and limit the number of fine restaurants in which one can afford to dine), and appeasement of evil. Thus most European nations are slowly disappearing and nearly every European country has compromised Western liberties in order to appease radical Muslims.</p>
<p>Radical Islam</p>
<p>Polls taken in the Muslim world regularly report that about 10 percent of the world&#8217;s Muslims say they support radical Islam — meaning Islamic totalitarianism as practiced by the Taliban and terror as practiced by Al-Qaida. That means at least one hundred million people. Add to that the unspecified number of Muslims who support the Nazi-level and Nazi-like anti-Semitism promulgated in much of the Middle East and you have an enormous body of people committed to the death of the West.</p>
<p>China</p>
<p>As in Russia, traditional Chinese virtues were largely destroyed by Communism, and China, too, is essentially a nihilistic state whose government spends its vast sums of foreign currency in buying influence in some of the cruelest places on earth (Zimbabwe, for example) and protecting the genocide-advocating regime of Iran.</p>
<p>The United Nations</p>
<p>The net result of the United Nations is an increase in evil on earth. Whatever good is performed by some of its institutions, like the World Health Organization or UNICEF, that good is outweighed by the amount of evil the U.N. either abets or allows. It has supervised genocide in Rwanda, done nothing to stop genocide elsewhere (e.g., Congo and Sudan), gives a respectable forum to tyrannies, and is preoccupied with vilifying one of its relatively few humane states, Israel. Its contributing to human suffering is exemplified by Libya being elected to its Human Rights Commission and Iran&#8217;s election to its Commission on the Status of Women.</p>
<p>The United States</p>
<p>The United States was described by President Abraham Lincoln as The Last Best Hope of Earth. Most Americans agreed then. However, with the ascent of the Left in America — in our educational institutions, news and entertainment media, and arts world — fewer and fewer Americans believe this. On the contrary, the Leftist view of America, which pervades American life, is of a country deeply morally compromised by endemic racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, militarism, imperialism and a rapacious capitalism, leading to immoral levels of economic inequality.</p>
<p>As in Europe, these views are leading America to avoid offending its enemies. The American attorney general recently refused to answer a congressman&#8217;s repeated question about whether he believes that radical Islam might have been one factor motivating recent Muslim terrorists in America.</p>
<p>With America more interested in being like Europe and being liked rather than in fighting its enemies, more and more countries are identifying with America&#8217;s enemies than with America. Last week&#8217;s three-way hug among the leaders of Brazil, Turkey and Iran was a clear example of such.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, America is rapidly accumulating unpayable debts that will render it not very different from Greece. Indeed, California, once the grease of the American economy, has become the Greece of the American economy.</p>
<p>As the Left&#8217;s power increases, America&#8217;s power recedes — and the world further deteriorates. Under Democratic Party rule, the Last Best Hope of Earth has decided that the United Nations and Western Europe deserve that title, not the United States.</p>
<p>Those of us working to remove Democrats from power regard this November&#8217;s election as not only a referendum on the direction of America, but of the world itself.</p>
<p><em>Dennis Prager hosts a nationally syndicated radio talk show and is a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. He is the author of four books, most recently &#8220;Happiness Is a Serious Problem&#8221; (HarperCollins). His website is www.dennisprager.com.</em></p>
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		<title>The Anti-Israel Lobby</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/alan-m-dershowitz/the-anti-israel-lobby/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-anti-israel-lobby</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 23 Apr 2010 04:08:00 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Alan M. Dershowitz]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=58719</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[J-Street can no longer claim to support the Jewish state. 

]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/jstreet.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-58721" title="jstreet" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/jstreet.jpg" alt="" width="450" height="323" /></a></p>
<p>J Street has gone over to the dark side. It claims to be &#8220;a pro-Israel, pro peace lobby.&#8221; It has now become neither. Its Executive Director, Jeremy Ben-Ami, has joined the off key chorus of those who falsely claim that Israel, by refusing to make peace with the Palestinians, is placing the lives of American soldiers at risk.</p>
<p>This claim was first attributed to Vice President Joe Biden and to General David Petraeus. It was quickly denied by them but continued to have a life of its own in the anti-Israel media. It was picked up by Steven Walt and John Mearsheimer, Pat Buchanan and others on the hard right and hard left who share a common disdain for the Jewish state. It is the most dangerous argument ever put forward by Israel bashers. It is also totally false.</p>
<p>It is dangerous for two reasons. First, it seeks to reduce support for Israel among Americans who, quite understandably and correctly, care deeply about American soldiers being killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. Israel has always understood this and that&#8217;s why it is one of the few American allies who has never asked the United States to put its troops in harm&#8217;s way in defense of Israeli citizens. If Americans were to believe the falsehood that Israel were to blame for American deaths caused by Islamic extremists in Iraq and Afghanistan, support for the Jewish state would suffer considerably.</p>
<p>It is also dangerous because its implication is that Israel must cease to exist: the basic complaint that Muslim extremists have against Israel is not what the Jewish state <span style="text-decoration: underline;">does</span>, but what it <span style="text-decoration: underline;">is</span>: a secular, non-Muslim, democracy that promotes equal rights for women, gays, Christians and others. Regardless of what Israel does or doesn&#8217;t do, its very existence will be anathema to Muslim extremists. So if Israel&#8217;s actions were in fact a cause of American deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan&#8211;which they are not&#8211;then the only logical solution would be Israel&#8217;s disappearance. This might be acceptable to the Walts, Mearsheimers and Buchanans of the world, but it is surely not acceptable to Israel or anyone who claims to be pro-Israel.</p>
<p>Finally, the argument is totally false as a matter of fact. At the same time that Israel was seeking to make peace in 2000-2001 by creating a Palestinian state on the West Bank and in Gaza with a capital in East Jerusalem, Al Qaeda was planning the 9/11 attack. So Israel&#8217;s &#8220;good&#8221; actions did nothing to make America safe from Islamic terrorism. On the other hand, when Israel took tough action against Gaza last year in Operation Cast Lead, Israel&#8217;s &#8220;bad&#8221; actions did not increase American casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan. In fact, there is absolutely no relationship between Israel&#8217;s actions and the extent of American casualties. It is a totally phony argument based on equal parts of surmise and bigotry.</p>
<p>Yet this dangerous and false argument, which is being hotly debated within the Obama Administration, has now received the imprimatur of J Street. In the letter to the <em>New York Times</em> on April 21, 2010, Jeremy Ben-Ami, speaking on behalf of J Street, included the following paragraph:</p>
<blockquote><p>&#8220;An analysis of the Obama administration’s calculus on Middle East policy should reflect that many in the Jewish community recognize that resolving the conflict is not only necessary to secure Israel’s future, but also critical to regional stability and American strategic interests.&#8221;</p></blockquote>
<p>Although Ben-Ami doesn&#8217;t explicitly make a direct connection between Israeli actions and American casualties, his use of the phrase &#8220;critical to…American strategic interests,&#8221; is a well-known code word, especially these days, for the argument that there is a connection between Israeli actions and American casualties.</p>
<p>In lending support to that dangerous and false argument, J Street has disqualified itself from being considered &#8220;pro-Israel.&#8221; The argument is also anything but &#8220;pro peace,&#8221; since it will actually encourage Islamic extremists to target American interests in the hope that American casualties will be blamed on Israel. It will also encourage the Palestinian leadership to harden its position, in the expectation that lack of progress toward peace will result in Israel being blamed for American casualties.</p>
<p>Truth in advertising requires that at the very least J Street stop proclaiming itself as pro-Israel. As long as it was limiting its lobbying activities to ending the settlements, dividing Jerusalem and pressing for negotiations, it could plausibly claim the mantle of pro-Israel, despite the reality that many of its members, supporters, speakers and invited guests are virulently anti-Israel. But now that it has crossed the line into legitimating the most dangerous and false argument ever made against Israel&#8217;s security, it must stop calling itself pro-Israel. Some of its college affiliate groups have already done that. They now describe themselves as pro peace because they don&#8217;t want to burden themselves with the pro Israel label. J Street should follow their lead and end its false advertising. Or else it should abandon its anti-Israel claim that Israel is damaging American strategic interests.</p>
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		<title>Selective Outrage</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/joseph-klein/selective-outrage-2/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=selective-outrage-2</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 20 Apr 2010 04:04:40 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Joseph Klein]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[Silence on the brutal occupation of Georgia reveals global double standard toward Israel.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/Georgian-Refugees.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-58495" title="Georgian-Refugees" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/Georgian-Refugees.jpg" alt="" width="375" height="242" /></a></p>
<p>While the United Nations Human Rights Council continues to trump up charges against Israel for defending itself against Islamic extremist terrorists seeking its destruction, the Council continues to ignore real illegal occupation of territory within the democratic nation of Georgia by the Russian Federation.  The Obama administration is also guilty of sternly condemning Israel for planning to build additional housing in the Jewish section of East Jerusalem, while remaining largely silent in the face of continuing illegal evictions of Georgians from their homes in the Russian occupied territories.</p>
<p>By way of background, after a series of Russian and separatist provocations in the summer 2008, Georgian action to restore order in South Ossetia in early August of that year led to a Russian military crack-down that occupied the breakaway areas of both South Ossetia and Abkhazia, and other portions of Georgia as well. More than 200 Georgian civilians were killed during five days of the Russian invasion.</p>
<p>Russian troops and secret police remain in the breakaway areas which, in late August 2008, Russia unilaterally declared to be independent states. This action, in violation of international law, was strongly condemned by most of the world’s nations and international organizations.</p>
<p>H.E. Mr. Grigol Vashadze, Foreign Minister of Georgia, briefed United Nations correspondents on April 19, 2010 concerning the “deplorable” living conditions that still exist in these territories.  Ten thousand Russian soldiers and additional Russian secret police (successors to the dreaded KGB) continue to occupy approximately 20% of what was once an integrated Georgian republic before the Russian invasion. Five additional military bases are being opened.</p>
<p>The Georgian Foreign Minister accused the Russian occupiers of engaging in “ethnic cleansing.”  At least 400,000 Georgians are currently categorized as refugees or internally displaced persons.  Georgian civilians have been raped, abducted and evicted from their homes.  The evictions continue to this day.</p>
<p>Priests and nuns have been expelled from the occupied territories, making it practically impossible for Catholic Georgians still remaining there to practice their religion. There is a ban on the teaching of the Georgian language in the schools.  Georgian agricultural exports are under Russian embargo.</p>
<p>The International Court of Justice, in a case between two states where it had actual jurisdiction to issue a binding ruling, has ordered Russia to “refrain from any act of racial discrimination” against ethnic Georgians, including “sponsoring, defending or supporting” discriminatory acts in areas occupied by Russian military forces.  Russia has disobeyed the order.  Yet all we hear about from so-called human rights activists is Israel’s disregard of a non-binding advisory opinion by the International Court of Justice regarding the separation fence that has saved Israeli civilians from Palestinian suicide bombers.</p>
<p>Russia used its veto in the UN Security Council to block the continuation of the United Nations ground presence in Georgia.  However, over Russian objections, the UN General Assembly did support a Georgian-proposed draft resolution concerning people who had fled the occupied territories.  The resolution, passed last September, condemned the “forced displacement” of the population from Georgia’s Abkhazia and South Ossetia territories, strongly upheld the displaced populations’ right to return there, and defined these territories as parts of Georgia. It stressed the need to work out a schedule of voluntary, secure and unhindered return of all displaced persons and refugees.  Russia has disregarded the resolution and refuses to allow any refugees or displaced persons to return to their homes.</p>
<p>The General Assembly resolution called on Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to submit to the General Assembly a comprehensive report on the resolution’s implementation.  The report is due next month.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, the Georgian people continue to suffer at the hands of the Russian occupying forces.  The UN Human Rights Council does nothing about the daily violations of Georgian civilians’ human rights.  The Security Council is paralyzed.  Russia refuses to deal directly with the Georgian government, using its puppet regimes installed in Abkhazia and South Ossetia to communicate in the Geneva talks that were supposed to help resolve the outstanding issues.</p>
<p>Foreign Minister Vashadze praised President Obama for taking the time to meet personally with Georgia’s president and for continuing the positive strategic relationship between the two countries.  Fair enough. But we are still waiting for President Obama or Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to issue a stern public rebuke of Russia’s occupation of Georgian territories and of the eviction of Georgians from their homes at the same decibel level they directed towards Israel.</p>
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		<title>Will the Palestinians Just Declare a State?</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/davidhornik/will-the-palestinians-just-declare-a-state/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=will-the-palestinians-just-declare-a-state</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 08 Apr 2010 04:04:12 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[P. David Hornik]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[As cold winds blow from Washington, Israel is worried.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><strong> </strong></p>
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<p>In the aftermath of last month’s diplomatic ruckus—Israeli bureaucrats referred, with Vice-President Biden in town, to building apartments for Jews in East Jerusalem; the Obama administration took severe umbrage; the Palestinians pulled out of the nascent proximity talks—things, at this moment, remain stuck. Does that mean no progress toward the administration’s cherished goal of a Palestinian state, and frustration all around?</p>
<p>Not necessarily. Moshe Elad, a columnist for Israel’s largest daily <em>Yediot Aharonot</em>, <a href="http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3871745,00.html">notes</a> that the Palestinian Authority’s president, Mahmoud Abbas, and prime minister, Salaam Fayyad, have been talking about unilaterally declaring such a state in 2011—and that while “in the past, such statements would anger the Americans…this time around, even if we heard a response from the White House or the State Department, it was rather meek.”</p>
<p>Palestinians, Elad reports, have been setting aside their traditional anti-Americanism and “taking pleasure in feeling that ‘America is with us’”; and are “coordinating with the Americans the building of infrastructure across the West Bank as preparation for economic independence and detachment from Israel’s hold.” Elad goes on to ask “What will Israel’s position be in respect to the long list of guests invited to the ceremony that will seek to land in Ben-Gurion Airport?”—that is, if and when the Palestinians declare their state next year and invite many of the world’s dignitaries to honor the event.</p>
<p>Yaakov Katz, military correspondent for the <em>Jerusalem Post</em>, <a href="http://www.jpost.com/Features/FrontLines/Article.aspx?id=171356">describes</a> Israel as “extremely worried” about the prospect “because it may lead to a third intifada, during which Israel would be fighting a 20,000-strong militia”—much of which would be American-trained. As Katz explains,</p>
<blockquote><p>Five battalions of 500 soldiers each and trained by US security coordinator Lt.-Gen. Keith Dayton in Jordan have already deployed throughout the West Bank alongside seven regional battalions.</p>
<p>By 2011, another five battalions will have undergone training. Fayyad’s plan is to then dismantle the regional battalions and expand the Dayton-trained battalions to close to 1,000 soldiers each, bringing the total number to around 10,000. Add the police and the presidential guard and the number of armed PA security officers comes out to around 20,000.</p></blockquote>
<p>The Palestinians would still then have to face the fact that about 300,000 Israelis live in settlements in the West  Bank. “The solution—an official PA decision to launch a violent terror campaign branded around the world as a war for freedom.”</p>
<p>Or, in another scenario, Fayyad goes to the UN Security Council to get his state recognized; with the Europeans, Russians, and Chinese likely to assent, the question mark is the United States.</p>
<p>Traditionally the U.S. has vetoed anti-Israeli resolutions in the Security Council, and also has upheld the principle of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations as the way to resolve the dispute. But given what is now known about President Obama’s identification with Palestinian goals, delegitimization of any Israeli presence in the West Bank and even East Jerusalem, contemptuous treatment of Israel’s prime minister, and hurried timetable for Palestinian statehood—augmented by General Dayton’s activities that started under President Bush—Israelis can no longer be confident of U.S. backing in such a situation.</p>
<p>Some say these fears are exaggerated because Abbas and Fayyad lack sufficient Palestinian support. While Abbas’s Fatah movement (with which Fayyad, while not a member, is effectively aligned) is thought likely to defeat Hamas in this summer’s municipal elections, Fatah is itself deeply divided with its young guard scorning Abbas and Fayyad as weaklings—to the point that even a civil war is not ruled out.</p>
<p>Israel, though—as if not already pressured enough by the Hamas, Hezbollah and, ultimately, Iranian threats—has to take all scenarios into account, and now would be the time to start emphasizing to friends in the U.S. the dangers posed by a Palestinian state. True, in his speech at Bar-Ilan University last June, Prime Minister Netanyahu said he could accept such a state as the outcome of negotiations if it, in turn, was genuinely accepting of Israel and effectively demilitarized.</p>
<p>Clearly, a unilaterally declared Palestinian state would be neither. It would be bristling with hatred instilled by the seventeen years of hate-education enabled by the “peace process,” and with largely American-provided forces that would only grow as further weapons, trainers, and fighters flowed in from the Arab and Muslim world.</p>
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		<title>Obama&#8217;s Victim: The &#8220;Peace Process&#8221;</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/alan-m-dershowitz/obamas-victim-the-peace-process/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=obamas-victim-the-peace-process</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 05 Apr 2010 04:07:35 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Alan M. Dershowitz]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[And the winners are . . .]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/obamar.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-56984" title="obamar" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/obamar.jpg" alt="" width="375" height="239" /></a></p>
<p>The apparently escalating conflict between the US and Israel did not have to occur. It must be resolved now, before it does irreparable harm to prospects for peace.</p>
<p>The conflict was largely contrived by people with agendas.  The initial impetus for the brouhaha was an ill-timed announcement that permits had been issued for building 1,600 additional residences in a part of Jerusalem that had been captured by Israel in the 1967 war.  The Netanyahu government had been praised by President Obama for agreeing to a freeze on building permits on the West Bank, despite the fact that the freeze did not extend to any part of Jerusalem.  Thus the announcement of new building permits did not violate any agreement by Israel.  Nonetheless, the timing of the announcement embarrassed Vice President Joe Biden who was in Israel at the time.  The timing was neither an accident nor was it purposely done by Prime Minister Netanyahu to embarrass Biden.  Many believe that the announcement was purposely timed by opponents of the peace process in order to embarrass Netanyahu.  Whatever the motivation, the announcement deserved a rebuke from Vice President Biden.  It also warranted an apology and explanation from the Israeli government, which immediately came from Netanyahu.  That should have ended the contretemps.</p>
<p>But some in the Obama Administration apparently decided that they too had an agenda beyond responding to the ill-timed announcement, and they decided to take advantage of Israel&#8217;s gaffe.  They began to pile on and on and on.  Instead of it being a one day story, the controversy continues to escalate and harden positions on all sides to this day and perhaps beyond.  The real victim is the peace process and the winners are those&#8211;like Iran, Hamas and extremist Israelis&#8211;who oppose the two-state solution.</p>
<p>The building permits themselves were for residences not in East Jerusalem, but rather in North Jerusalem, and not in an Arab section, but rather in an entirely Jewish neighborhood.  This neighborhood, Ramat Shlomo, is part of the area that everybody acknowledges should and will remain part of Israel even if an agreement for a two state solution and the division of Jerusalem is eventually reached.  In that respect, it is much like the ancient Jewish quarter of Jerusalem, which was illegally captured from the Jewish residents by the Jordanian army in the 1948 war.  The Jordanians then desecrated Jewish holy places during its illegal occupation, and the Israelis legally recaptured it during the defensive war of 1967.  No one in their right mind believes that Israel has any obligation to give up the Jewish quarter of Jerusalem, including the Western Wall, the holiest Jewish site in the world, despite the fact that it was recaptured during the 1967 war.</p>
<p>Because the Palestinians understand and acknowledge that these entirely Jewish areas of Jerusalem will remain part of the Jewish state even after an agreement, the ill-timed announcement of building permits during the Biden visit generated a relatively mild and routine complaint, rather than a bellicose response, from the Palestinian Authority leadership.  The bellicose response came from the American leadership, which refused to let the issue go.  Once this piling on occurred, the Palestinian leadership had no choice but to join the chorus of condemnation, lest they be perceived as being less Palestinian than the Obama Administration.</p>
<p>Now positions have hardened on both sides, due largely to the public and persistent nature of the American condemnation.  This rebuke culminated in the very public dissing of Prime Minister Netanyahu by President Obama during their recent White House meeting.  Obama treated Netanyahu far worse than he treated Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who is corrupt to the core and who had invited Iranian dictator Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to deliver an anti-American tirade inside Afghanistan&#8217;s presidential palace.  According to a high ranking Afghan source, Karzai &#8220;invited Ahmadinejad to spite the Americans.&#8221;  Nonetheless, President Obama flew to Afghanistan and had a very public dinner with Karzai, according him the red carpet treatment, thus granting him legitimacy following his fraudulent re-election.</p>
<p>Prime Minister Netanyahu, on the other hand, has been treated with disrespect in what many Israelis see as an effort to delegitimize him in the eyes of Israeli voters who know how important the US-Israeli relationship is in the Jewish state.</p>
<p>The shabby treatment accorded Israel&#8217;s duly elected leader has also stimulated an ugly campaign by some of Israel&#8217;s enemies to delegitimize the US-Israeli strategic relationship, and indeed the Jewish nation itself, in the eyes of American voters.  The newest, and most dangerous, argument being offered by those who seek to damage the US-Israel alliance is that Israeli actions, such as issuing building permits in Jerusalem, endanger the lives of American troops fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.</p>
<p>This phony argument&#8211;originally attributed to Vice President Biden and General David Petraeus but categorically denied by both of them&#8211;has now taken on a life of its own in the media.  A CNN headline on the Rick Sanchez Show blared &#8220;Israel a danger to US Troops.&#8221;  Other headlines conveyed a similar message:  &#8220;US Tells Israel: &#8216;You&#8217;re undermining America, endangering troops.&#8217;&#8221;  Variations on this dangerous and false argument have been picked up by commentators such as Joe Klein in Time Magazine, Roger Cohen in The New York Times, DeWayne Wickham in USA Today and not surprisingly, Patrick Buchanan and Professors Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer.</p>
<p>It is a dangerous and false argument.  It is dangerous because its goal is to reduce support for Israel among mainstream Americans who understandably worry about our troops fighting abroad.  This is ironic since the major pillar of Israel&#8217;s policy with regard to US troops is that Israel never wants to endanger our troops.  That&#8217;s why it has never asked US soldiers to fight for Israel, as other allies have asked our soldiers to fight for them.  By seeking to scapegoat Israel for the death of American troops at the hands of Islamic terrorists, this argument blames those who love America for deaths caused by those who hate America.</p>
<p>Most of all, it is an entirely false argument.  There is absolutely no correlation between Israeli actions and the safety of American troops&#8211;none.</p>
<p>No one has ever shown any relationship between what Israel does and the rate of American casualties, because there is no such relationship&#8211;none</p>
<p>Consider two significant time periods.  The first is the end of 2000 and the beginning of 2001, when Israel offered the Palestinians virtually everything they could have wanted:  a state on 100% of the Gaza and 97% of the West Bank, a capital in a divided Jerusalem and a $35 billion reparation package for refugees.  Virtually the entire Arab world urged Arafat to accept this generous offer, but he declined it.  During the very months that Israel was doing everything possible to promote peace with the Palestinians, Al Queda was planning its devastating attack on the World Trade Center.  No correlation between Israeli actions and American casualties.</p>
<p>Then consider the end of 2008 and the beginning of 2009 when Israel was engaged in Operation Cast Lead, which caused significant Palestinian casualties.  During that difficult period, there was no increase in American casualties.  Again, no correlation.</p>
<p>Those offering up this phony empirical argument have an obligation to present evidence in support of this fallacious correlation, or else to stop making this bigoted argument.</p>
<p>The reason there is no correlation is because extremist Muslims who kill American troops are not outraged at what Israel <span style="text-decoration: underline;">does,</span> but rather at what Israel <span style="text-decoration: underline;">is</span>&#8211;a secular Jewish, democratic state.  As long as Israel exists, there will be Islamic extremists who regard that fact as a provocation.  The same is true of the United States:  as long we continue to exist as a secular democracy with equal rights for women, Christians and Jews, the Osama Bin Laden&#8217;s of the world will seek our destruction.  Certainly as long as American troops remain in any part of the Arab world&#8211;whether it be Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Iraq or Afghanistan&#8211;Muslim fanatics will try to kill our soldiers.  Blame for the murder of American troops should be placed on those who kill them, rather than on those who stand for the same values of democracy and equality as America does.</p>
<p>In considering the relationship between the United states and Israel, several points must be kept in mind.  First and foremost, the US and Israel are on the same side in the continuing struggle against Islamic extremists who endanger the lives of American troops and American civilians.  Second, Israel is one of America&#8217;s most important strategic allies, providing us with essential intelligence, research and developments and other important assets.  Third, there is nothing that Israel or the United States can do that will turn these extremist enemies into friends.  It is what we are, rather than what we do, that enrages those who wish to turn the entire world into an Islamic caliphate and subject us all to Islamic Sharia law.  Fourth, any weakening of the alliance between the United States and Israel will make it far less likely that Israelis&#8211;who get to vote on these matters&#8211;will take significant risks for peace.  Fifth, the Obama Administration&#8217;s public attacks on Israel will harden Palestinian demand and make it less likely that they will accept a compromise peace.  Sixth, if Israel&#8217;s enemies were to lay down their arms and stop terrorist and rocket attacks against Israel, there would be peace.  Seventh, if Israel were to lay down its arms, there would be genocide.  And eighth, when the Palestinian leadership and population want their own state <span style="text-decoration: underline;">more</span> than they want there not to be a Jewish state, there will be a two-state solution.</p>
<p>It is in the best interest of the United States, of the peace process and of Israel for disagreements between allies to be resolved quietly and constructively, so that progress can be made toward achieving a two-state solution that assures Israel&#8217;s security and Palestinian statehood.</p>
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		<title>Obama’s Disgraceful Conduct Toward Israel</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/davidhornik/obama%e2%80%99s-disgraceful-conduct-toward-israel/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=obama%25e2%2580%2599s-disgraceful-conduct-toward-israel</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/davidhornik/obama%e2%80%99s-disgraceful-conduct-toward-israel/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 26 Mar 2010 04:27:35 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[P. David Hornik]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[Treating Netanyahu as if he were an unsavory Third World dictator.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><strong> </strong></p>
<p><strong> </strong></p>
<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/net.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-55971" title="net" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/net.jpg" alt="" width="450" height="267" /></a></p>
<p>On Wednesday night in Washington Israeli and American officials worked feverishly—but failed—to produce a document stating Israel’s commitments regarding proximity talks with the Palestinian Authority. The U.S. was <a href="http://www.jpost.com/Israel/Article.aspx?id=171738">reportedly</a> supposed to take the document to the Palestinians and then to the Arab League meeting in Tripoli, Libya, this weekend.</p>
<p>Days earlier Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu had outlined such commitments in a letter to secretary of state Hillary Clinton. It was deemed insufficient and, in Washington, President Barack Obama sent Netanyahu and his accompanying officials back to the drawing board. According to one <a href="http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3868248,00.html">report</a>, Israeli foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman advised Netanyahu not to sign any such document that night, and to wait to return home and discuss the matter with the Israeli inner cabinet.</p>
<p>The commitments Obama seeks are variously reported to be: some sort of Israeli undertaking about a construction moratorium in the West Bank (where one is already in place) and East Jerusalem; a promise to engage in such final-status issues as refugees, borders, and Jerusalem in the proximity talks; and “gestures” to the Palestinian Authority such as the removal of additional checkpoints and the freeing of Palestinian security prisoners.</p>
<p>The pressures Obama directed at Netanyahu were severe, in one account even inducing a <a href="http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3868248,00.html">“panic”</a> reaction in the Israeli leader. The total media blackout that accompanied their meeting led the <em>Washington Post</em>’s Jackson Diehl to <a href="http://voices.washingtonpost.com/postpartisan/2010/03/obama_and_netanyahu_pointless.html?hpid=opinionsbox1">comment</a> that “Netanyahu is being treated as if he were an unsavory Third World dictator, needed for strategic reasons but conspicuously held at arm’s length.” Obama was further riled by news about an approval to build 20 apartments for Jews in a compound in East Jerusalem owned by an American Jewish millionaire since 1985—situated in a mostly-Arab neighborhood.</p>
<p>By Thursday night, with Netanyahu and his inner cabinet set to convene, many of his ministers had praised his refusal while in Washington to cave on the Jerusalem-construction issue, Netanyahu having stated to AIPAC on Monday night that “The Jewish people were building Jerusalem 3,000 year ago and the Jewish people are building Jerusalem today.”</p>
<p>Meanwhile an Arab-affairs correspondent of <em>Yediot Aharonot</em><em>,</em> Israel’s largest newspaper, <a href="http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3867768,00.html">reported</a> on Thursday based on Palestinian Authority sources that</p>
<blockquote><p>“the drama taking place on Wednesday in Washington has not gone unnoticed by the Palestinians, but…as of now there is no change in their position regarding the possibility for proximity talks.… even a declaration that indirect talks will address core issues such as Jerusalem and borders is not sufficient. ‘What is necessary [said a senior Palestinian official] is a clear American commitment that building in the settlements will be frozen completely, both in Jerusalem and in the West Bank.’”</p></blockquote>
<p>As many have noted, just as Obama’s earlier call for a total freeze on Israeli settlements apparently led Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas to stonewall direct talks with Israel, so the recent brouhaha Obama created over Israeli building in Jerusalem seems to have led Abbas to back out, for now, from the proximity talks as well. In other words, even those who see such talks as leading to peace should not be happy with how Obama has handled the matter. What such optimists are likely to miss, though, is that the Palestinian Authority is hardly eager for either talks or peace and jumps at opportunities to back out of the former.</p>
<p>The larger Arab world is almost very much part of Obama’s grandiose plans for peace between Israel and its neighbors, but there too <a href="http://www.themedialine.org/news/news_detail.asp?NewsID=28345">discouraging news</a> surfaced on Thursday. It was reported that the Saudi MBC1 television network, along with Dubai Television, had bought and started airing <em>Ayrilik</em>, a 13-part anti-Semitic Turkish series. <em>Ayrilik</em> depicts Israeli soldiers as satanic and shows them engaging in such acts as murdering Palestinians of all ages, including a newborn baby, and kicking the corpses.</p>
<p>Dubai is, of course, considered an amenable Arab country, a financial hub and tourist playground. It’s suggested that Dubai may be broadcasting the series to get back at Israel for the alleged assassination on its soil of a single Hamas terrorist two months ago. As for Saudi Arabia, it’s the famed source of the “Saudi peace plan” and one of the reputedly “moderate” Arab countries Obama supplicated some months ago to make “gestures” to Israel—only to be contemptuously rebuffed.</p>
<p>In light of all this, the spectacle of the intensive, harried American-Israeli consultations lasting well into Wednesday night emerges as grotesque. The face the Obama administration has turned toward Israel these past two weeks is an ugly one. The news about 20 apartments for Jews in a Jerusalem neighborhood that the U.S. president sees as off limits for Jews has him incensed. Neither the Palestinians’ obvious disdain for his obsessive efforts to induce them into talks, nor ongoing Palestinian and Arab barbaric anti-Semitism, has ever been seen to evoke even a twinge of annoyance in him. Instead Obama’s capacity to insult and humiliate the Israeli prime minister—the only one to <a href="http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3868224,00.html">make an effort to go along with his plans</a>—is ongoing and disgraceful.</p>
<p>Meanwhile over 250 members of Congress from both parties have <a href="http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1159159.html">written to Clinton</a> to “reaffirm our commitment to the unbreakable bond that exists between our country and the State of Israel and to express to you our deep concern over recent tension,” stating that “differences are best resolved quietly, in trust and confidence, as befits longstanding strategic allies.” It is a relief to see the authentic, decent face of America again. Obama’s policy toward Israel shames that decency.</p>
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		<title>Obama&#8217;s Dangerous Diplomacy</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/jlaksin/obamas-dangerous-diplomacy/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=obamas-dangerous-diplomacy</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/jlaksin/obamas-dangerous-diplomacy/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 24 Mar 2010 04:05:59 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Jacob Laksin]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=55630</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[How the Obama administration’s policies have undermined Israel, inflamed Palestinian extremism, and emboldened Iran. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><em><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/2010-03-11T050425Z_01_NOOTR_RTRMDNP_2_India-468030-4-pic0.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-55643" title="2010-03-11T050425Z_01_NOOTR_RTRMDNP_2_India-468030-4-pic0" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/2010-03-11T050425Z_01_NOOTR_RTRMDNP_2_India-468030-4-pic0.jpg" alt="" width="450" height="325" /></a></em></p>
<p><em>[Editor&#8217;s note: As a presidential aspirant, Hillary Clinton <a href="http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalradar/2007/10/giuliani-taken-.html">condemned</a> “cowboy diplomacy” that alienated America’s allies; as secretary of state in the Obama administration, she has practiced it, leading the recent onslaught against Israel for its decision to construct housing in a city that it considers its rightful capital. For some perspective on the administration’s disproportionate response, </em>Front Page<em> is joined by <a href="http://www.pollakforcongress.com/about.php">Joel Pollak</a>, a human rights lawyer and author from Skokie, Illinois. Pollak is currently the <a href="http://www.pollakforcongress.com/">Republican nominee</a> challenging Democratic Rep. Jan Schakowsky in Illinois’ 9th congressional district. Pollak discussed the radical shift in the administration’s policy toward Israel, why human rights law does not support the administration’s terrorist detention policies, and standing up to Rep. Barney Frank.]</em></p>
<p><em><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/Pollak.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-55645" title="Pollak" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/Pollak.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="199" /></a><br />
</em></p>
<p><strong>FPM: The Obama administration’s recent row over Israel’s announcement of new settlements in Jerusalem seems much ado about nothing. When Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu earlier announced a 10-month moratorium on settlement construction as a good-faith gesture, he specifically excluded Jerusalem, a position that has been held by all Israeli prime ministers in recent decades and which, initially at least, was not protested by the Obama administration. Moreover, as you’ve <a href="../2010/03/19/obamas-war-against-israel/">pointed out</a> in these pages, Ramat Shlomo, the neighborhood where the 1,600 homes are to be built, is not some remote outpost; it is in a part of East Jerusalem that is almost certain to remain part of Israel in any future Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement. How then do you account for the severity of the Obama administration’s response – everyone from Vice President Biden to Secretary Clinton to presidential advisor David Axelrod has publically condemned Israel in the past few weeks – and the hard line it has taken against Israel?</strong></p>
<p><strong>Pollak:</strong> There are two reasons for the severity of the response. One is a radical shift in policy. This administration is abandoning the commitments of its predecessors to allow Israel defensible borders that would include some territory across the 1949 armistice line (the 1967 line, or Green Line). Instead, it is adopting the Arab (Saudi) peace initiative, which seeks complete withdrawal to the armistice line. The difference might not amount to much, in terms of total land area, but it is a radical and dangerous shift in the way we approach the conflict, and it has severe implications for the future of Jerusalem.</p>
<p>The second reason for the severity of the response is that this administration&#8211;even more than its predecessor&#8211;cannot admit its mistakes. It refuses, for example, to acknowledge that its first year of Mideast diplomacy, based entirely on Israeli and American concessions, has been a failure. So it has doubled down on Israeli concessions, much the way it has doubled down on unpopular domestic policies in the belief that people will eventually submit to exhortation by the president.</p>
<p>I also think there was a degree of blunder in the whole crisis&#8211;not just on the Israeli side. Vice-President Biden responded in a (sadly) characteristic way to a perceived slight. He insulted the U.S. more than Israel ever did by making a show of being humiliated. Great nations do not fly into hysterics over housing decisions by friendly foreign governments. Biden’s antics&#8211;and the administration’s follow-up&#8211;also made the U.S look weak by showing that we were not prepared to support our strongest ally. Even if we had truly been damaged by Israel’s housing announcement, the administration wasted whatever leverage it might have had by backing Israeli PM Netanyahu into a corner. For an administration that purports to believe in diplomacy, this was a poor example of it.</p>
<p><strong>FPM: The Obama administration’s position seems to be that Israel’s settlement activity in East Jerusalem is sabotaging the “peace process” with the Palestinians and preventing negotiations from taking place. David Axelrod has <a href="http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2010/03/axelrod-israel-settlement-approval-an-affront-insult.html">put it</a> in nearly those exact terms. What do you make of this argument?</strong></p>
<p><strong>Pollak:</strong> Settlements are not the problem. The Gaza disengagement in 2005, which uprooted all settlements and soldiers from the territory, was met with an escalation of terror. The fact that the Obama administration does not seem to remember that is very troubling.</p>
<p><strong> </strong></p>
<p><strong>FPM: It has been suggested that the U.S.-Israel relationship is the most strained that it has been in nearly four decades. How would you describe the current state of that relationship and what can both sides do to mend it?</strong></p>
<p><strong>Pollak:</strong> The relationship between the American people and the Israeli people is stronger than ever. The relationship between the two administrations is functional. But the relationship between the Israeli people and the American administration will not be repaired easily. What Israel can do to repair the relationship is to remain committed to its own defense. Self-reliance and strength breed respect. That is the basis on which the close relationship was built after Israel’s victory in the Six Day War. What the U.S. can do to repair the relationship is to get serious about Iran. Announce that we will support a pre-emptive Israeli strike against Iran if the need arises. Indicate that we will target Iranian political institutions as well as military institutions if the nuclear program is not stopped. Offer real and active support to the Iranian democracy movement. I believe that would go a long way to restoring the trust of the Israeli public in the Obama administration. Also, recognizing Jewish claims in at least the Jewish parts of East Jerusalem would have some effect in moving both administrations past the most recent debacle.</p>
<p><strong> </strong></p>
<p><strong>FPM: Some have <a href="http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/Article.aspx?id=171365">argued</a> that the administration’s disproportionate condemnation of Israel will only embolden anti-Israel extremism in the Middle East – whether from Palestinians or from Iran. Do you agree and how big of a concern is that?</strong></p>
<p><strong>Pollak:</strong> I agree. It has already emboldened anti-Israel extremism elsewhere, including in the U.S. It is a huge concern because it makes diplomacy&#8211;the very diplomacy to which this administration is committed&#8211;far more difficult. It resets Palestinian and Iranian expectations at impossible levels, and encourages a culture of incitement against Israel. For example, Hamas used the Obama administration’s criticism of settlements to attack the re-construction of a centuries-old synagogue in the Jewish Quarter of the Old City, which Jordan had destroyed after it occupied the area in 1948. They turned a housing issue into an international religious conflagration. It was a foreseeable outcome.</p>
<p><strong> </strong></p>
<p><strong>FPM: When Obama advisor <a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/Articles/davidaxelrod.html">David Axelrod</a> recently went on cable news shows to condemn Israel, it highlighted the fact that some Americans Jews, particularly on the Left, have a vision of what it means to be supportive of Israel that is radically different from how most Jews would understand the concept. Another example might be <a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=7458">J-Street</a>, the self-styled “pro-Israel, pro-peace” activist group that, despite its claim of supporting Israel, nevertheless opposed Israel’s military campaign against Hamas. How do you explain the disconnect between the putatively pro-Israel aims of such people and groups and the actual implications of the positions they take?</strong></p>
<p><strong>Pollak:</strong> I think many well-meaning people on that side of the issue fail to understand the disconnect between sentiment on one hand and logic on the other. I met someone involved in J Street the other day, who told me he was opposed to a military option on Iran, partly because the Iraq war had gone badly. Fine&#8211;that is a defensible position, even if I don’t agree with it. He then went on to say he opposed sanctions against Iran as well. Now, if you oppose military action, and you oppose sanctions, what are you left with? Defeat and destruction. I think after a certain point, when idealism stands in bold defiance of reality, it ceases to be excusable. As Orwell argued during WWII, at some point the subjective impulse of pacifism crosses over into effective support for fascism. I think many of those folks don’t realize what they’re arguing, though some should by now.</p>
<p><strong>FPM: You are a human rights lawyer and a graduate of Harvard Law School, so I am interested in how you see the Obama administration’s decision to close Guantanamo Bay and to hold civilian trials for terrorist detainees like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. For instance, the administration has indicated that it may seek to <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/05/AR2009120502795.html">transfer</a> some of the detainees to Thompson prison in your home state of Illinois. Are such policies what human rights law prescribes, as the administration has repeatedly suggested?</strong></p>
<p><strong>Pollak:</strong> Human rights law, in my view, prescribes exactly the opposite&#8211;namely, that we maintain a separation between the military and civilian worlds. Granting war criminals access to the generous protections of the civilian court system may also encourage terrorists to attack civilian rather than military targets, especially since the administration still intends to try the bombers of the U.S.S. Cole in the military system. I believe there are better alternatives to holding all of our detainees at Guantanamo  Bay&#8211;we could use several different military prisons overseas, for example&#8211;but until we find those alternatives, we should not rush to implement decisions made for political rather than security reasons. In my state, the majority of people do not want terror detainees captured on foreign battlefields to be brought to U.S. soil&#8211;neither to Illinois nor to any other state.</p>
<p><strong>FPM: You first gained fame (or infamy, in some quarters) in 2008 when you <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=od1tVGtiTAI&amp;NR=1">asked</a> Rep. Barney Frank during his appearance at Harvard how much responsibility he bore for the financial crisis. At the time, you <a href="http://blog.infinitemonkeysblog.com/?q=node/6338">didn’t get much of an answer</a>. So, let me ask you: How much responsibility do politicians from both parties have for the financial crisis and how would you rate the government’s handling of that economic crisis to date? </strong></p>
<p><strong>Pollak:</strong> I believe they bear a great deal of responsibility. They weakened the principles of risk and reward that provide the foundation of our economy and our financial system. I think the government has not handled the crisis well at all. Both the outgoing Bush administration and the incoming Obama administration seem to have made the problems worse, if they can be said to have addressed them at all. The massive spending and bailouts have placed this country’s future growth&#8211;its future solvency&#8211;in danger. To the extent that our economy has begun to show some positive signs, I believe credit is due to the persistence and faith of the American people, not to the self-interested interventions of politicians.</p>
<p><strong>FPM: This past weekend, the Democrats finally passed the health care bill that they have been pushing for the past year, though they did so using procedural tactics that were controversial, to say the least. What do you make of the substance of the bill and did the Democrats’ ends in this instance justify the means? </strong></p>
<p><strong>Pollak:</strong> The bill prepares the way for the nationalization of health care in America. It does nothing to address the problem of cost, while placing the quality of care at risk. The goal&#8211;as Democrats stated openly on many occasions&#8211;was to show that radical change could be accomplished, in order to prepare the way for further radical changes and a massive redistribution of wealth. In the process, they undermined public faith in democracy by casting aside the ordinary rules of political deliberation. We need to start over&#8211;not just on health care, but on restoring the faith of the American people in our constitution and in our institutions of representative government. It took only one year to destroy what took many years to build: trust. It may take many more years to restore that trust. As difficult as that will be, and as long as it will take us, we have to begin today.</p>
<p><strong>FPM: Joel Pollak, thanks very much for joining us. </strong></p>
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		<title>Obama&#8217;s War Against Israel</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/joel-b-pollak/obamas-war-against-israel/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=obamas-war-against-israel</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/joel-b-pollak/obamas-war-against-israel/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 19 Mar 2010 04:00:18 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Joel B. Pollak]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=55089</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The administration has turned a public relations snafu into a diplomatic crisis. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p style="text-align: left;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/obama_and_israel.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-55092" title="Obama 2008" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/obama_and_israel.jpg" alt="" width="480" height="373" /></a></p>
<p style="text-align: left;">There’s a joke making the rounds in my suburban Chicago neighborhood about the clash between the Obama administration and the Netanyahu government: Why did Vice-President Joe Biden get angry when Israel embarrassed him by announcing new construction in Jerusalem’s Ramat Shlomo neighborhood? Because it’s usually Biden’s job to embarrass himself.</p>
<p>The joke has carried on far too long. The tension between the two governments is being stoked by President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in a deliberate attempt to weaken the coalition of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. If Israel had committed a real foul, the Obama administration could have used a quiet threat of public condemnation to force Israeli concessions, and the Netanyahu government would have little choice but to comply.</p>
<p>Instead, the Obama administration has turned a public relations snafu into a public test of Israeli sovereignty, leaving the Netanyahu government little choice but to resist. The neighborhood where 1600 homes were to be built is not a remote outpost. It is mere meters from the Green Line, in a part of East Jerusalem that is actually west of the Old City. It is likely to remain part of Israel in any future Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement.</p>
<p>The timing of the administration’s attack is unfortunate, for two reasons. One is that Iran continues to move towards becoming a nuclear power. Each day the U.S. and Israel spend on the Ramat Shlomo question is a day wasted, a day that ought to have been spent dealing with our common enemy.</p>
<p>The second reason is that thousands of pro-Israel activists will arrive in Washington, D.C., next week for the AIPAC policy conference. The contrived crisis is a provocation, a message to the grassroots representing the pro-Israel majority of Americans that bipartisan support for Israel is over.</p>
<p>Too late, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has tried to undo the damage that her 45-minute tirade against Netanyahu has done. She denied this week that there was any crisis at all. Yet, Israel&#8217;s ambassador to the U.S., Michael Oren&#8211;a historian who has chronicled the history of American involvement in the Middle East&#8211;has said that &#8220;Israel&#8217;s ties with the United States are in their worst crisis since 1975.&#8221; (Oren has since denied making that statement, but there can be little doubt that the sentiment is widely held among the Israeli leadership).</p>
<p>Riots broke out across Jerusalem yesterday, orchestrated by Palestinian leaders, who have linked the argument over settlement construction to Israel&#8217;s reconstruction of a synagogue in the Old City that was destroyed by Jordan after 1948. Their goal is to spark a third intifada by appealing to religious passions among Palestinians and throughout the Arab and Muslim worlds. If they succeed, the administration will not only have harmed U.S.-Israel ties, but it will also have sparked a new terrorist war that could threaten American interests.</p>
<p>As the White House escalates its attacks on Israel, the chorus of anti-Israel voices in Washington grows louder. In 2008, only 27 congressmen&#8211;almost all Democrats&#8211;could be found to vote against Israel’s Gaza offensive, Operation Cast Lead. In 2009, the anti-Israel ranks swelled to 39 in a vote on the Goldstone Report. And this year, 54 congressmen&#8211;all Democrats&#8211;signed a letter protesting the Israeli “blockade” of Gaza. Obama leads, and they follow.</p>
<p>The White House wants to make pro-Israel Americans decide: either an Israel within the 1949 armistice lines, or no Israel at all. It is a false choice, because the two options yield the same result. A forced retreat to the Green Line&#8211;rejected by U.N. Security Council Resolution 242, rejected by every previous U.S. President, and rejected over two decades of Israeli-Palestinian diplomacy&#8211;is an invitation to Israel’s enemies to press ever further.</p>
<p>It is time that pro-Israel activists turned the tables. We must make our elected officials decide: either continue with the current policy of appeasement, which finds new ways to separate the U.S. from Israel; or a policy of strength, which focuses on the values and interests the countries share. A world that is not safe for Jews and for Israel is not safe for America, either. That is the grim lesson of history and, under the Obama administration, we seem doomed to repeat it.</p>
<p><em><a href="http://www.pollakforcongress.com/"> Joel B. Pollak</a> is the Republican nominee for U.S. Congress in the 9th district of Illinois.</em></p>
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		<title>No Compromise Over Jerusalem</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/steven-plaut/no-compromise-over-jerusalem/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=no-compromise-over-jerusalem</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 17 Mar 2010 04:10:28 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Steven Plaut]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=54577</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Arab rioting and violence betray the folly of negotiations over East Jerusalem.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/article-1222849-06F53A07000005DC-71_634x407.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-54579" title="article-1222849-06F53A07000005DC-71_634x407" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/article-1222849-06F53A07000005DC-71_634x407.jpg" alt="" width="444" height="285" /></a></p>
<p>No sooner did the Obama administration denounce Israel for its building activities in Jerusalem than hordes of violent Palestinian thugs took to the city&#8217;s streets. As usual, the Palestinians decided to show the world how sacred Jerusalem is to them by filling it with violence.</p>
<p>That the Arab riots followed so closely after the Obama administration’s very public recriminations against Israel was no coincidence. Vice President Biden, <a href="http://www.jewishjournal.com/opinion/article/a_self_proclaimed_zionist_joe_biden_is_a_friend_of_israel_20080910/">a self-proclaimed Zionist</a>, had trouble containing his anger at Israel. On an official state visit to Israel, his Kodak moments were interrupted when an Israeli official announced that Israel has plans to build a lot of new housing in East Jerusalem. Biden was aghast at the chutzpah. Secretary of State Clinton issued a series of shrill verbal attacks against Israel. Talk about a “disproportionate response!”</p>
<p>To put the Obama Administration’s temper tantrum over Jerusalem into perspective, one has to try to imagine the following reasoning. How dare the Jews construct housing in their own capital? Just because Washington builds housing in the District of Columbia without asking its allies for permission does not mean that the Israelis can build the same way in their capital! Don’t those Israelis realize that the United  States has plans to transfer East  Jerusalem to the terrorists of the Palestinian Authority or its Hamas overlords?</p>
<p>The official American anger has yet to die down. The State Department is in a huff over Israel allowing Jews to move into the Simon the Righteous neighborhood in East  Jerusalem, also known as Sheikh Jarrah. You may recall that Sheikh Jarrah was where a horrific massacre of a convoy of Jewish medical personnel headed for the Hadassah Hospital on Mt. Scopus took place in 1948. Seventy nine Jews were murdered in cold blood and their bodies mutilated.</p>
<p>East Jerusalem was made <em>Judenrein</em>, with its Jews ethnically cleansed, in Israel’s 1948-49 war of independence. Before that Jews had lived in East  Jerusalem almost without interruption since King David conquered it. Those attacking Israel are insisting that it leave that crime of ethnic cleansing in tact, un-redressed.</p>
<p>So why does the State Department object to Jews moving into homes in East Jerusalem, homes they legally and legitimately own? One answer may be that the State Department plans to force Israel to turn East Jerusalem over to some future Palestinian terror state, and that will be harder to do if East Jerusalem is filled up with Jews. But that is precisely the reason why Israel should<strong><em> </em></strong>build housing in East Jerusalem.</p>
<p>Israel’s position should be simply that if the Arab world refuses to come to terms and make peace with an Israel controlling all of Jerusalem, then we do not believe that they will come to terms or make peace with any Israel that has relinquished Jerusalem either. The Arabs can threaten Israel all they want about the dire consequences if Israel refuses to turn Jerusalem over to them. Israel’s response should be, “You can’t have it, period.”</p>
<p>And if there were any doubts as to who has the moral and legal right to control East Jerusalem, they were removed in the violent rioting by Palestinians over the opening of the rebuilt Hurva synagogue this week. Tradition has it that it stands on the site of synagogues going back to the second century AD. One synagogue standing there in the 1700s was destroyed, leading to the nickname of the site, the “Hurva” or “the Destruction.”  A later synagogue was constructed on the site in 1864. It remained there until Jordanian soldiers, who were illegally holding the Old City after 1948, demolished it.</p>
<p>The Hurva synagogue is nowhere near the Mosque of al-Aqsa or any other Islamic shrines in Jerusalem. It is located close to the Ramban or Nachmanides synagogue, which was converted by the pro-Nazi Grand Mufti into a mosque in 1948 and used as a factory under the Jordanian occupation. The Arabs have absolutely no legitimate claims to the site. Indeed, the reign of intentional destruction carried out by Jordan after 1948 should nullify altogether once and for all any claims the Arab world has to East  Jerusalem.</p>
<p>Under Arab rule (by Jordan), the religious shrines of Jerusalem were systematically demolished, profaned and violated. Under Israeli rule, every religious group is free to practice its religion in Jerusalem and its shrines are protected. Thus, Arabs forfeited any moral claims they might have once had to govern the city when they trashed the Jewish shrines of the city. And if Arabs continue to take to violence when Jews open a synagogue, then there is only one conclusion that Israel can draw: there is nothing to negotiate.</p>
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		<title>When Peace Is Not a Priority</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/davidhornik/when-peace-is-not-a-priority/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=when-peace-is-not-a-priority</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 25 Jan 2010 05:09:04 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[P. David Hornik]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=47502</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Why the Middle East “peace process” keeps going wrong.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-47503" title="pales_poster_wideweb__430x353" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/pales_poster_wideweb__430x353.jpg" alt="pales_poster_wideweb__430x353" width="430" height="353" /></p>
<p>U.S. Middle East envoy George Mitchell is here in Israel again, and it’s not stirring much excitement or even interest. On Sunday he <a href="http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3838598,00.html">met</a> with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, with the latter saying Mitchell had “interesting ideas” on how to get Israeli-Palestinian talks going again but not saying what the ideas were.</p>
<p>On Friday Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas <a href="http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1263147955549&amp;pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull">reiterated</a> to Mitchell his refusal to talk with Netanyahu absent a total ban on Jewish building in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) and East Jerusalem. Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said the fact that Israel had positions at all—on not giving up every inch of the West Bank, on the demilitarization of a future Palestinian state—made negotiating with Israel impossible.</p>
<p>Based on his statements to <em>Time</em> magazine’s Joe Klein last week, it can be surmised that President Barack Obama is not all that surprised by Mitchell’s inability to get anything moving. “This is just really hard,” Obama <a href="http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1955072-6,00.html">told</a> Klein.</p>
<blockquote><p>“Even for a guy like George Mitchell…. Both sides—the Israelis and the Palestinians—have found that the political environment, the nature of their coalitions or the divisions within their societies, were such that it was very hard for them to start engaging in a meaningful conversation…. From Abbas’ perspective, he’s got Hamas looking over his shoulder and, I think, an environment generally within the Arab world that feels impatient with any process.</p>
<p>“And on the Israeli front—although the Israelis, I think, after a lot of time showed a willingness to make some modifications in their policies, they still found it very hard to move with any bold gestures….”</p></blockquote>
<p>It is easy to poke holes in Obama’s evenhandedness here: the fact that while Netanyahu has been ready at all times to negotiate with Abbas, with not even his most right-wing coalition partners objecting to negotiations per se, it is Abbas who has stonewalled; the fact that it was not “after a lot of time,” but very quickly—in a matter of months since taking office—that Netanyahu made quite bold gestures of reversing his lifelong opposition to a Palestinian state and then announcing an unprecedented ten-month settlement freeze in Judea and Samaria, none of which has sufficed to lure Abbas back to the table.</p>
<p>It is also easy to cite the usual political reasons for the stalemate—that Obama, by hitting Israel hard on the settlements issue particularly in his Cairo speech in June, forced Abbas into an uncompromising stance where he could not appear less Catholic than the pope; that the Palestinians, more generally, saw Obama as an ally and were disappointed when he showed understanding for some of Israel’s positions. All of which is valid—but only grazes the truth.</p>
<p>Looking more deeply into what has “gone wrong”—and has kept going wrong ever since the formal Israeli-Palestinian diplomatic process began in 1993—would require taking account, for a change, of the <em>cultural</em> difference between Israel and the Palestinian side.</p>
<p>It was less than three weeks ago that Netanyahu <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE60650Y20100107">complained</a> to the White House and State Department about Palestinian incitement—and not by Hamas in Gaza, but by the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. Netanyahu was reacting to two particularly egregious incidents. In one, Palestinian prime minister Salam Fayyad paid homage to three Palestinian terrorists who had been killed by Israeli forces after murdering an Israeli rabbi and father of seven. In the other, Abbas named a square in Ramallah after Dalal Mughrabi, the Palestinian woman terrorist who led the “Coastal Road Massacre” in 1978—the worst terror attack in Israel’s history, killing 37 including 10 children. (More details about the Palestinian Authority’s lionization of these killers <a href="http://palwatch.org/">here</a> and <a href="http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/About+the+Ministry/Behind+the+Headlines/Palestinian_incitement_distances_peace_11-Jan-2010.htm">here</a>.)</p>
<p>Obama, for his part, had no public reaction to Abbas and Fayyad’s behavior, did not mention it in his interview to Klein, and clearly was not deterred by it from sending Mitchell for another round of attempted diplomacy. As Obama <em>did </em>say to Klein: “we are going to continue to work with both parties to recognize what I think is ultimately their deep-seated interest in a two-state solution in which Israel is secure and the Palestinians have sovereignty and can start focusing on developing their economy and improving the lives of their children and grandchildren.”</p>
<p>In other words, even-steven—both sides wanting their peaceful place in the sun. The possibility that peace is not a value for the Palestinian Authority in the way it is for Israel—that there may be an unbridgeable gap between a Western democracy and a non-Western entity that glorifies and perpetrates terrorism—does not, from the evidence available, exist in Obama’s, or Mitchell’s, mental lexicon.</p>
<p>But it is high time that it did, high time that the administration start giving its democratic ally, Israel, more credit and start reexamining the assumption that achieving sovereignty for the Palestinians—Dalal Mughrabi Square and all—is an American interest. Which is, alas, too much to hope for from this administration.</p>
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		<title>Jimmy Carter and the Politics of Apology – by Jacob Laksin</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2009/jlaksin/jimmy-carter-and-the-politics-of-apology-%e2%80%93-by-jacob-laksin/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=jimmy-carter-and-the-politics-of-apology-%25e2%2580%2593-by-jacob-laksin</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 29 Dec 2009 05:11:15 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Jacob Laksin]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[The ex-president never meant to stigmatize Israel – except when he did. 
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				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-43911" title="jimmycarter" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/jimmycarter1.jpg" alt="jimmycarter" width="533" height="342" /></p>
<p>When it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, <a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=1655">Jimmy Carter</a> is no stranger to apologies. The former president has spent years making excuses for Hamas, championing the Palestinian jihadists as the embattled victims of Israeli aggression – the group’s exterminationist founding charter and record of terrorism notwithstanding. Now it’s Israel’s turn to profit from Carter’s dubious public relations tactics.</p>
<p>After years of demonizing the Jewish state on the world stage, Carter at last has seen the error of his ways. Or so he says: Last week, Carter issued a statement to the Jewish community in which he <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/12/23/carter-says-sorry-jews-apology-linked-grandsons-political-ambitions/?test=latestnews">apologized</a> for his role in tarnishing Israel’s image and, invoking a traditional Jewish prayer, asked for forgiveness.</p>
<p>“I never intended or wanted to stigmatize the nation of Israel, even though I have disagreed with the settlement policy all the way back to the White House,” Carter reportedly said. He also urged that “[w]e must recognize Israel&#8217;s achievements under difficult circumstances,” and that “we must not permit criticisms for improvement to stigmatize Israel.”</p>
<p>In completely unrelated news, Carter’s grandson, 34-year old Atlanta attorney Jason Carter, is <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/12/23/carter-says-sorry-jews-apology-linked-grandsons-political-ambitions/?test=latestnews">running for a state senate seat</a> in a suburban Georgia community that just happens to be home to a proportionally small but politically significant Jewish population.</p>
<p>If Carter’s conversion to nuance on the issue he has long viewed through a thoroughly anti-Israel lens seems more than a trifle expedient, it is. This after all is the man whose 2007 book, <em><a href="http://97.74.65.51/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=25478">Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid</a></em>, notoriously equated democratic Israel with South Africa’s regime of racist discrimination. The author now suggests that he overstated his case, and that he regrets the book’s inflammatory title. Carter remains critical of Israeli settlements, but he now allows that Palestinians aren’t actually suffering under the yoke of racist apartheid. His mistake</p>
<p>For Israel’s supporters, that concession, however self-evident, could still be welcome. Yet it’s difficult to see Carter’s mea culpa as a genuinely good-faith effort to undo the damage his campaigning has done to Israel’s reputation. Most conspicuously, there is the convenient timing of his contrition, which comes as his grandson aims to fill a post vacated by Jewish politician – David Adelman, now the Obama administration’s nominee for ambassador to Singapore – in a <a href="http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/1209/Carter_grandson_courting_Jewish_voters.html?showall">district with an influential Jewish community</a>. In such circumstances, having one of the world’s preeminent detractors of the Jewish state as a direct relative is not exactly a selling point.</p>
<p>Even if opportunism doesn’t fully explain Carter’s apology, his second thoughts remain deeply suspect. Just days before airing his regrets, Carter published an <a href="http://cartercenter.org/news/editorials_speeches/gaza-121909.html">op-ed</a> in London’s <em>Guardian </em>that rehearsed many of the anti-Israel tropes for which he now purports to be sorry.</p>
<p>In making a case for a renewed Middle Eastern peace process, Carter excused Arab intransigence (“no Arab or Islamic nation will accept any comprehensive agreement while Israel retains control of East Jerusalem”); whitewashed Palestinian terrorism (Carter made only an oblique reference “Palestinian recalcitrance”); and blamed Israel and Israeli leaders for the failure of past negotiations even as he exempted Palestinians from comparable scrutiny.</p>
<p>Equally deplorable, if typical, was Carter’s one-sided and selective account of the background of the conflict. Though lamenting the “intense personal suffering” of Palestinians living “under siege in Gaza” in the aftermath of last year’s war, Carter never mentioned the relentless eight-year rocket bombardment of Israeli cities and villages that forced the Israeli offensive. Similarly, Carter denounced Israel’s reluctance to allow the shipment of construction materials like cement into Gaza, but failed to note both that Israel has indeed <a href="http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1103770.html">allowed some limited shipment of materials</a> and the reason why it has to screen such shipments in the first place: Construction materials are routinely used by Palestinian terrorists to build rockets and fortifications. In yet another revisionist flourish, Carter accused Israel of destroying Palestinian <a href="http://www.israeltoday.co.il/default.aspx?tabid=178&amp;nid=17984">schools</a> and <a href="http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1054569.html">hospitals</a> with “precision bombs missiles” during the Gaza war, while omitting the critical fact that they often served as <a href="http://www.israeltoday.co.il/default.aspx?tabid=178&amp;nid=15634">havens for Hamas gunmen</a> who tried to exploit the Israeli military’s restraint and its reluctance to strike civilian targets.</p>
<p>But nothing betrayed Carter’s biases as plainly as the one concrete proposal he offered to begin the peace process: urging the United Nations Security Council to pass <em>even more</em> resolutions condemning Israel. It was precisely the kind of stigmatization of Israel for which Carter would reject within days. Apologizing for such attacks apparently did not mean abandoning them.</p>
<p>Unfairly singling out Israel for criticism is not the worst of Carter’s sins. After all, the United Nations, whose <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704500604574480932924540724.html">Goldstone report</a> is only the most recent example of the agency’s anti-Israel animus, has long made a habit of doing just that. Far more harmful to the interests of enduring peace in the Middle East is the ex-president’s longtime courtship of Hamas terrorists.</p>
<p>Carter has made no secret of that sinister partnership. On his travels to the Palestinian territories, Carter routinely sings the terrorist group’s praises, assuring all who will listen that, were it not for Israel’s belligerence, Hamas long ago would have accepted a ceasefire and laid down its arms. At times, Carter’s apologetics have gone from the merely credulous to the pernicious, as when he claimed that the tunnel networks that Hamas used to attack and kidnap Israeli soldiers were really “defensive” structures.</p>
<p>That the United States and Europe consider Hamas a terrorist group has not dampened Carter’s enthusiasm for the jihadists. In January 2006, he called on the international community to defy laws on terrorism financing and launder money to Hamas in the form of relief aid. Not even Hamas leaders themselves can convince Carter that peace is the furthest thing from their intentions. Hamas leader-in-exile Khaled Meshal has never hidden his support for suicide terrorism and has called destroying Israel the “destiny” of the Palestinian people. That didn’t keep Carter from <a href="http://97.74.65.51/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=30596">seeking out Meshal</a> for a friendly chat about peace negotiations in the spring of 2008.</p>
<p>If Carter truly feels that an apology is in order, he might consider atoning for his role in promoting a terrorist organization that has murdered thousands of Israelis, <a href="http://97.74.65.51/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=33619">brutalized its fellow Palestinians</a>, poisoned the political climate in the region, and destroyed any hope for a present-day peace settlement. But that sorry contribution to the peacemaking that Carter still claims as his life’s work would require something more substantial than a bankrupt and cynically proffered apology.</p>
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