Showing posts with label Opinion. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Opinion. Show all posts

Tuesday, January 24, 2017

The debate about moving the American embassy to Jerusalem emphasizes, once again, the lack of comprehension of the importance of Jerusalem to the Nation of Israel.
The destruction of the Jewish Temple meant the destruction of the most holy, pivotal location to the Jewish religion, culture and people. Destruction of the Temple was an attempt to destroy the Jewish nation – take out the cultural linchpin, the one element that ties everyone together and everything will fall apart.
It is written:
As the navel is set in the centre of the human body,
so is the land of Israel the navel of the world…
situated in the centre of the world,
and Jerusalem in the centre of the land of Israel,
and the sanctuary in the centre of Jerusalem,
and the holy place in the centre of the sanctuary,
and the ark in the centre of the holy place,
and the Foundation Stone before the holy place,
because from it the world was founded.
(Roman-Era Midrash Tanchuma)
It is believed that the Foundation Stone is the foundation God used to create the world. Around this stone the Temple was built and within the Temple, on the Foundation Stone, the Ark of the Covenant was placed. This is the source of the holiness of the Temple and its importance to Judaism.
The image people around the world today have of the Temple Mount is that of the golden domed mosque which was built on the ruins of the Temple in 691 C.E. Since that time the Dome of the Rock has been a holy place for the Moslem people – although not central to their religion. Considered the third holiest location in Islam, it is not mentioned a single time in the Koran.

It was once common practice for a conquering people to build holy sites on top of existing holy places. Historically this was a successful way to both show domination of the location as well as a way to incorporate the local population in the new religion.
The Temple has been central to the Jewish people since the construction of the first Temple (957 B.C.E.). To this day, Jews around the world pray facing the direction of the site of the Temple Mount.
The Kotel is the Western Wall of the Temple which remains standing (an external supporting wall). The wall is so important that it has become in Jewish consciousness THE Wall. It needs no other name. Millions of Jews come to the Kotel every year, it is always open and people can be found there, every day, 24/7, around the clock. The Kotel is never empty and it is in fact one of the most frequented locations in the world, seeing approximately 11 million guests each year.
Jews in exile in Babylon are described in Psalm 137 as stubbornly remembering the full glory of Jerusalem, explaining to their captors that they would always look towards the holy city: “May my tongue cleave to my mouth, if I ever think not of thee, if I ever prize not Jerusalem above all joys!”
To this day, in Jewish weddings, before the couple is formally married, the groom proclaims this statement before the guests and breaks a cup with his foot to symbolize sorrow for the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem.
On what is supposed to be the happiest day in the life of the couple, they stop, putting sorrow and longing for the Temple first. This is a powerful statement.
The 9th day of the month of Av (Jewish calendar) is the day when both the first and second Temples were destroyed, the first by the Babylonians in 586 B.C.E.; the second by the Romans in 70 C.E. It is a day of fasting and mourning for religious Jews around the world.
Thinking about the meaning of Tisha B’Av, the day of mourning, I am beginning to see, (or maybe feel is a better word) that this is symbolic of all our problems – Israel’s and those of the world.
The Foundation Stone of the world, the site of the Temple mount, is dominated by a mosque. It is known that active destruction of antiquities has been occurring since the Waqf was given control of the Temple Mount. Dr. Mordechai Kedar, (Department of Arabic, Bar-Ilan University) explains: “These actions are being carried out in the context of a practice known in Arabic as Tams al-ma’alem, an expression that means ‘erasing the signs’ in the sense of destroying the relics of all cultures that preceded Islam.”
Jews are allowed to enter the site of the Temple but ironically are not allowed to pray there. In fear of Moslem rioting, to avoid violence, Jews who enter the Temple Mount must not be heard praying or show any signs of prayer. If they bow to the Holy of Holies, they are escorted out of the site.
Imagine having other people in your home who, because they had been there for so long, you do not attempt to evict, but only request to share the space with them. Imagine being told that you are allowed to stand outside the back door, outside the cellar, that you can watch while others enter and leave, doing as they please in your home…
Secular Jews do not fast on Tisha B’Av and though most Israelis have visited the Kotel, only a minority has actually ascended to the Temple Mount. The drifting away from putting Jerusalem above all other joys has significance that surpasses religion, encompasses history and has direct influence on our future.
The spiritual explanation says that ramifications of being disconnected or even barred from the source of the holiness of the world deeply impacts not only on the Jewish people but the entire planet as well.
History says that the cultural significance of Jerusalem and yearning for the Temple was a key factor in keeping the Jewish people intact over the centuries. When other nations rose and fell, the Nation of Israel remained, stubborn in their focus, insisting on returning to Israel and to Jerusalem – no matter how long it took or how much suffering was experienced along the way.
The Temple is what ties us to Jerusalem and Jerusalem is what ties us to Israel. Without either of these, we risk losing all.
This is an issue of priorities, of belonging, respect and freedom. These are magnified to extreme intensity here, at the navel of the world, but they have direct impact on the lives of all people, everywhere.
America under Obama, with the support of the UN and their latest anti-Israel resolution has done much to damage Israel’s connection to Jerusalem. America under Trump can help amend this. Moving the US embassy to Jerusalem is a good start.



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Monday, January 23, 2017

By Petra Marquardt-Bigman

It was perhaps inevitable that during this weekend’s women’s marches, some “progressives” would feel the need to show off their complete cluelessness about the utter lack of support for women’s rights in Palestinian society – where, e.g., 87% believe a wife “must always obey her husband”. Compared with the prevalent Palestinian views on women’s rights, Trump should have no problem to pass as a feminist.

But since facts don’t matter, “legendary activist” Angela Davis could ignore the ultra-conservative Muslim preferences of Palestinian society and firmly declare: “Women’s rights are human rights all over the planet, and that is why we say freedom and justice for Palestine.” Others proudly displayed their cluelessness (and perhaps their flippancy) on signs demanding “Free birth control and Palestine,” while still others felt oh-so “emotional” when march participants used American flag-style scarves to cover women in accordance with the 1400 years-old female “modesty” requirements of Islam’s founder.



All of this was probably very much to the liking of Linda Sarsour, the “award-winning, Brooklyn-born Palestinian-American-Muslim racial justice and civil rights activist, community organizer, [and] social media maverick,” who was one of the four national co-chairs organizing the women’s marches. But while the ambitious Sarsour certainly enjoyed the limelight at this occasion, her prominent role in the organization of the protest marches also resulted in some not so flattering revelations. I wrote about Sarsour’s fake progressivism a few months ago, but it turns out that Sarsour is much more of a hypocrite than I realized. As the Chilean Palestinian commentator Lalo Dagach showed, Sarsour has repeatedly defended Saudi Arabia against criticism, arguing that there are women in parliament and that it is ridiculous to focus on the fact that Saudi women are not allowed to drive because they get 10 weeks of paid maternity leave – which they of course only get if their male guardian allows them to work and if there is a male driver to take them to work...  Astonishingly, Sarsour has also promoted Sharia Law, claiming that it would mean that “all your loans & credit cards become interest free.”




I then discovered that seven years ago, Daniel Pipes began to compile Sarsour’s greatest hits, after she falsely claimed that he had written about her (at a time when he had actually never heard of her) and that his criticism (which at that point didn’t exist) had greatly increased her popularity. Pipes’ compilation includes much revealing material concerning Sarsour’s views, and there are also some truly bizarre posts – for example, Sarsour proudly presenting herself as a Muslim mermaid; or an unintentionally funny post where Sarsour is swooning about her own good looks and taste while appearing in the colors of the Israeli flag…




But the most revealing statement is perhaps her declaration in a video for World Hijab Day 2014: 

“Without my hijab, I don’t really have an identity on the outside.” 

Pretty sad if your identity consists of a piece of cloth wrapped around your head – and pretty sad if this passes as “progressive”.





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Before going on hiatus, I published an extended essay called Like Romans that looks at the fight against BDS (and pro-Israel activism generally) through the lens of warfare.

The starting point for that work was not academic analysis based on abstract principles.  Rather, I tried to connect dots between the results of work done by heroic on-the-ground activists who have been experimenting with different ways to defeat the propaganda campaign traveling under the banner of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions.  And few experiments have been as successful (and thus as informative) as the recent defeat of academic boycott resolutions at the Modern Language Association (MLA).

As most readers probably know, academic associations have become a battleground for BDS activity, ever since the American Studies Association (ASA) became the largest academic group to pass a resolution calling for a boycott of their Israeli counterparts.  Some very tiny associations (including those representing Asian-American, Women’s and Native American studies) have passed similar resolutions before and since.  But their victory with ASA gave BDS activists the belief that it was just a matter of time before their program swept through large swaths of the academy.

Unfortunately for them (but fortunately for us – as well as for academia in general) all efforts to drag fields like history, anthropology, and even Middle East studies into the BDS swamp have failed.  But the large (25,000-member) Modern Language Association, professional home to professors of language and literature, has been the boycotter’s coveted prize for years.

The strategy the BDSers pursue within academic associations is a variation on what they do everywhere else (a playbook outlined in Chapter 9 of Like Romans): take over the decision-making machinery of an association, propose anti-Israel resolutions before the wider membership knows what’s going on, restrict communication so that only supporters of a boycott get access to members, and do everything possible to rig a vote so that the barest majority of a minority can pass something that can then be passed off as the will of the organization (if not the entire discipline). 

And if the boycotters fail, then it’s try try again as the same resolutions (possibly with superficial variations) are proposed year after year until members finally do what they’re told.

While there are a number of strategies and tactics one can choose when dealing with an enemy that outnumbers your own forces (as was the case at MLA), it is generally impossible to defeat a foe if you’ve got nothing on the ground.  Fortunately, years of battling BDS within MLA (and academic associations generally) provided a small but highly skilled force (which travels under the banner MLA Members for Scholar’s Rights) which managed to not just defeat this year’s proto-boycott resolutions, but get an anti-boycott resolution passed in its place.

The number of things this group did right began with the nature of the group itself.  Members were internal to the organization (which gave them credibility and deep understanding of MLA’s culture), and having battled the BDS plague within academia for many years, they were skilled veterans able to leverage previous experience and contacts.

Their background knowledge included understanding their own strengths (the aforementioned credibility and experience) and weaknesses (like limited influence over the administrative machinery of MLA), as well as those of their enemies (such as fanaticism, predictability and a tendency towards overreach).   Most importantly, they understood the field of battle: an academic association where the majority of members don’t have strong opinions about the Middle East (even if the general zeitgeist of the academy might go against Israel), but who do care about scholarship and the reputation of the humanities in the wider culture.

With this understanding in place, their communication strategy focused on the appalling lack of scholarship represented by pro-BDS “research,” and the impact an academic boycott vote would have not on Israel, but on MLA, the fields of humanities, and the academy as a whole.  Thus they were able to avoid getting dragged into a debate on the Middle East (the BDSers preferred terrain), and make the vote a referendum on MLA’s own scholarly reputation.

Clever tactics also allowed the group to use their minority position to advantage, finding alternative mechanisms to communicate with MLA members that avoided going through leaders who had already proven themselves to be dishonest brokers.  They were then able to use their need to find these alternative communication channels to illustrate those leaders’ lack of integrity, while fitting themselves into a storyline of rebels speaking truth to power.

Finally, the choice to propose both an anti-boycott resolution and a second resolution condemning Palestinians for violating academic rights meant that voting against boycotts generally became the middle-of-the-road (usually preferred) position.  While there were some complaints when the proposal condemning the Palestinian Authority and Hamas was withdrawn after the anti-boycott measure won, in terms of tactics that second proposal was serving as a feint, withdrawal of which positioned anti-boycott activists as both moderate and magnanimous.


Not every anti-BDS effort has the fortune (and misfortune) of fighting a fight you know is coming years in advance against a foe whose tactics (and personnel) are well known and understood.  But any individual or group can learn lessons from the experience of other civic organizations fighting the same fight against the BDS propaganda war against Israel.  Like names, faces and personalities; strategies and tactics will be different from situation to situation.  But there are common elements to fighting a war, the first of which is to recognize you are in one.




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Sunday, January 22, 2017


"Traditional labels are becoming increasingly meaningless as people realize that the battle is no longer Democrat versus Republican, nor is it 'us' versus 'them.' The battle lines are now those who are truly for freedom versus those who would stifle it in the name of tolerance or in the name of security." - Dave Rubin
This is, without question, the single most interesting and horrendous political moment in my lifetime. It is fun. It is frightening. It is painful.

And it makes absolutely no sense.

For decades, since the rise of the New Left during the Vietnam War, the progressive-left has relentlessly banged the drums of race, gender, and class into the American political consciousness.

This is because the most important strides in American social well-being, from the abolition of slavery to the rise of feminism and the labor movement, resulted directly from competing political trends concerned with notions of the "common good" in conflict with notions of "individual liberty" as derived from European Enlightenment political principles going back to Magna Carta.

It is for this reason that they are embedded in the Preamble to the Constitution of the United States as the imperative to "promote the general Welfare" while securing "the Blessings of Liberty." These twin western ideals, however, are in constant tension. The more government promotes the "general Welfare" the more it tends to infringe upon the rights of the individual, as we learned from the communist experiment in the twentieth-century. However, the more government emphasizes the freedom of the individual the more it tends to infringe upon the common good, as we learned from laissez-faire nineteenth-century industrial capitalism.

As I write this I am looking at a very old pamphlet that a dear friend gave me a number of years ago.

It is entitled, The Injustice and Impolicy of the Slave Trade, And of the Slavery of the Africans: Illustrated in a Sermon. It is an original edition of an address "Preached before the Connecticut Society for the Promotion of Freedom, and for the Relief of Persons Unlawfully Holden in Bondage." 

It was delivered by Jonathan Edwards, Doctor of Divinity, in New Haven, Connecticut, on September 15, 1791 and published by Thomas and Samual Green in that year. Edwards was the son of the famous American theologian of the same name who published in 1741 "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God", one of the very first great works of American letters.

I treasure this gift because it serves as a constant reminder of living history and the progress toward justice from Hebraic Scripture to the present.

Questions around justice for marginalized groups are at the very heart of the ongoing western conversation which is precisely why issues of race, gender, and class are stressed by the progressive-left. It is through addressing race, gender, and class that the intelligentsia hoped to moderate the social, political, and economic playing fields.

In recent decades, however, the drumbeat has grown steadily louder, wider in scope, and more unremitting throughout the Obama administration.

It was evident to me a number of years ago that left-leaning disgust with the United States increased in direct proportion to American gains in social justice. Also, for the first time ever, the United States has a First Family with Jewish people in it. Holy smoke! I never saw that before. 

Yet a Jewish friend of mine calls President Trump, Reichsführer Trump.

This amazing anger, coming from not only the hard-left but also the center-left, has less to do with Trump, himself, then it has to do with the fact that neo-progressivism has turned issues of genuine social concern into ham-fisted clubs with which to beat back political infidels. Having come to its greatest power under the Obama administration, the Left used the political weaponry at hand - charges of racism, sexism, and homophobia - as a means to kick anyone who failed to meet politically-correct imperatives.

Some people suggested that the malice would soften in the weeks and months coming into the inauguration and then the media (and the people) would simply judge this presidency in the normal illiberal and highly partisan manner that we judge all US presidencies.

This has turned out not to be the case.

Instead the pitch of screaming anti-Trump hysteria actually increased, which is why we have close to forty congressional Democrats outspokenly refusing to attend the ceremonies today and a movement for impeachment already underway. All of this obviously reflects the roiling social-political divisions within the United States at this crux in history.

There has been nothing like this moment since 1968 and some people will pay with their lives... that is, when they aren't being tortured for being the wrong skin color while live-streamed onto youtube.

Following the Vietnam War neo-progressivism made remarkable advances in this country. Despite robust challenges by the New Right (under Reagan) and the Evangelicals in the 1980s, American women, Gay people, and ethnic minorities fought for, and earned, far greater political acceptance and opportunities today than at anytime in the past. Not only has the United States overcome de jure racism but it has institutionalized a series of measures, such as Affirmative Action, which are designed to push in the opposite direction... an advantage that my grandparents did not have when they were chased out of Medzhybizh, Ukraine, in the early 1920s and came to the United States.

Yet this is also the moment of the greatest social unrest in the last fifty years.

The first question, obviously, is why now?

The answer taken for granted out of the Left is that the Trump campaign gave the symbolic go-ahead to the white, sexist, nationalist "alt-right"... that virtually none of us even heard of until suddenly Pepe the Frog dropped in for a chat.

{Just look at that sly evil smile.}

Left-leaning fear is that whatever gains, if any, that "marginalized groups" made during the Obama years will be drowned in a wave of backward-looking conservatism and the kind of neo-racism represented by figures as unlikely as Milo Yiannopoulos and his Breitbart partner-in-crime, Trump chief strategist Steve Bannon.

The second question is, how do we want to approach our politics going forward?

Anyone reading this is engaged in social media. 

Within social media there are new political seedlings poking up through the digital rubble.

Although I find him to my right on economic issues - because he classifies himself as a "classical liberal" - Dave Rubin of the Rubin Report is an exceedingly interesting guy who exemplifies what he calls "the new center." If so, it owes something to both Jon Stewart and the "New Atheism" of scholars and scientists like Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens and Daniel Dennett, collectively known as the "Four Horsemen of the Non-Apocalypse."

This "movement" - if it even warrants such a term at this point - is not centered on atheism, despite its atheistic influences.  Its primary values are rationality and liberalism in contrast to political emotionalism and authoritarianism, whether coming from the traditionalist right-wing or the politically-correct Left. For this reason it honors open discussion and freedom of speech over the kind of in-group / out-group political bullying that we have become so accustomed to and that Political Islam has taken to its ultimate expression.

Those of us who come out of the progressive-left and the Democratic Party, but who are no longer interested in either, might consider this emerging new American politics.

If you have read this far, you should take six minutes and give this guy a listen.



Michael Lumish is a blogger at the Israel Thrives blog as well as a regular contributor/blogger at Times of Israel and Jews Down Under.









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Thursday, January 19, 2017


 Vic Rosenthal's Weekly Column

On Tuesday, President Obama selected his aide Ben Rhodes for the US Holocaust Memorial Council.

Ben Rhodes wrote the section of the 2006 Iran Study Group report that advised sacrificing Israel to help convince Iran and Syria to leave Iraq alone. Later, as Obama’s Deputy National Security Adviser, he worked to sell the Iran deal to the public, even admitting that he falsified facts and created an “echo chamber” to make it seem that there was expert support for the administration’s policies. More recently, he justified the decision to promote an anti-Israel Security Council resolution by blaming Netanyahu. Rhodes is very close to Obama and has had an important role in policy-making as well as communications.

He is also one of the likely suspects for the anonymous administration official that called Netanyahu “a chickenshit” (other suspects include Obama himself). Israeli officials consider him one of the most anti-Israel operatives in the administration.

The Council, which is also the board of trustees of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, was created to “lead the nation in commemorating the Holocaust.” It has 55 members, and it seems unlikely that Rhodes’ joining has anything other than symbolic significance.

But what a symbol! Rhodes, who has been one of the public point men for the Obama Administration’s policy of rapprochement with the Holocaust-denying (and perhaps -aspiring) Iranian regime, will now play a role in teaching the lessons of the historical Holocaust.

So why did Obama do it? 

This appointment, following so quickly after the passage of UNSC resolution 2334, which the Israeli government says the administration “helped craft,” and the accusatory speech by John Kerry, suggests that in his last days in office, Obama is venting his spleen against Israel and especially PM Binyamin Netanyahu. One tweeter called Obama a “spite machine.”

Obama’s tactics, from the first, have been intended not only to try to objectively weaken Israel diplomatically and militarily (I don’t believe that the large amount of military aid does Israel any favors, and the conditions under which it will be given are much worse than before) but also psychologically, and to contribute to the delegitimization of the Jewish state.

But doesn’t Obama always preface his remarks about Israel by  a reference to the “unbreakable bonds” between Israel and the US, and by affirming his absolute commitment to Israel’s security? Yes, he does say these things. But what always follows is an attack on Israel on behalf of the Palestinians, in which he accuses Israel of denying them their “dignity” and “aspirations for freedom,” and yearning for a state of their own.

Obama is not a stupid man, and he is not ignorant about the attitudes of Muslims and Arabs, including Palestinian Arabs. He knows that “dignity” and “freedom” are understood by Palestinians as the return of their honor by the violent expulsion of the Jews from the land between the river and the sea, and that the only state they want is the one that Israel has. Nevertheless, he still pushes for Israeli concessions that would radically endanger the country, quickly contradicting his initial assurances of protecting Israel’s security.

He places the responsibility for the conflict on Israel’s (and Netanyahu’s) shoulders, ignoring the Palestinians’ refusal to negotiate. He draws analogies between Palestinian Arabs and black Americans, something calculated to tug at the heartstrings of American liberals, but so far from reality as to fall in “big lie” territory. He dishonestly suggests that Israeli settlements are “gobbling up” larger and larger amounts of land. He uses the deliberately misleading expression “settlement construction” which suggests that new settlements are being constructed, when he means that homes are being built within existing settlements. He refers to existing Jewish neighborhoods in Jerusalem as “settlements.”

He often lets it be known that he is angry, even “furious” or “enraged” at Netanyahu, especially in connection with Jewish construction, or even announcements of possible future construction (he has never said a word about illegal Arab construction). He and his surrogates have called Netanyahu names and tried to humiliate him on visits to the White House. He took or pretended to take Netanyahu’s opposition to the Iran deal as a personal insult, and arranged for members of the Congressional Black Caucus to absent themselves from Netanyahu’s speech (he himself did not attend or, he said, even watch it on TV). In 2015, he tried to intervene in Israel’s election to get Netanyahu ousted. And he lost his hair-trigger temper yet again, when Bibi made comments during the election that Obama didn’t like.

During the last Gaza mini-war in 2014, he responded to Hamas propaganda about civilian casualties with anger, demands, and even a cutoff in supplies of ammunition and an FAA ban on flights to Ben Gurion airport (just in case we forgot who is the superpower here).

He has embraced the phony “pro-Israel” J Street organization, inviting it to White House events in place of older, Zionist Jewish groups. It’s important to understand that J Street is not simply “controversial” or “dovish” – it has consistently taken anti-Israel positions on every issue, from calling for an immediate cease-fire at the beginning of the 2008-9 Gaza war through supporting the Iran deal. Its funds come mostly from anti-Israel sources (e.g., George Soros). Indeed, the J Street line about being “pro-Israel” is much like Obama’s own insistence that he is committed to  Israel’s security: a general statement that is the opposite of the real truth, which emerges from countless particular actions and policies.

Some of Obama’s actions seem to advance his geopolitical goals, while others – the “chickenshit” remark, for example – seem to be just gratuitous slaps at Netanyahu and Israel. It seems to be as important for Obama to insult or humiliate as it is to obtain concrete concessions. But in almost all cases, an initial abstract statement of support is followed by a more concrete punishment.

This technique is a common form of the emotional abuse found in dysfunctional families. The abuser pretends to care about the victims, but then harms them in various ways, such as spreading lies about them, relentlessly criticizing them, challenging their perceptions of reality (gaslighting), physically hurting them, calling them names, embarrassing them, withholding sustenance, displaying violent anger, irrationally blaming them for problems that are not their fault, and so on.

Obama’s behavior toward Israel and her Prime Minister is classic abuser behavior. The nomination of a man, Rhodes, who is known as an enemy of the state of the Jewish people, to a position in which he will (at least symbolically) have control of an important part of the identity of the Jewish people – and unfortunately, the Holocaust is such a part – is a way to humiliate us. The way he emphatically expresses support for Israel’s security in the abstract and then proposes concrete concessions that are wholly incompatible with it is a form of gaslighting. The insults to our Prime Minister followed by expressions of undying love for our country, which are in turn followed by slaps in the face like resolution 2334, and relentless criticism from the like of John Kerry – what is this if not sadistic abuse?

In two days the US will have a new President, about as different from Obama as can be imagined. There will be good things and bad things about the US-Israel relationship in the future. But one lesson can be learned from our painful experience with Obama: like the woman who finally succeeds in dumping her abusive husband, maybe we ought to insist on a little more personal space in our next relationship!




We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

Wednesday, January 18, 2017


For weeks now, those who care about Israel have been worried about what the Paris summit would portend. We were told that in Paris, impossible parameters for "peace" would be foisted upon us complete with Auschwitz borders. We were told that after Paris, Israel would be well and truly a pariah state, in complete isolation from the West. Finally, we were told that what was decided in Paris would embolden the terrorists, the knowledge of which woke up that sick feeling in the bellies of all Israelis, the flickering fear  and the panic sowing visions of knives and blood and fire.
In the end, however, Paris was a big, fat, zero. It wussed out, a giant anticlimax. We wondered why we worried, lost sleep, and experienced all that fear.
It was a lot like Y2K.
But the media must still report what happened (even if not very much happened) and of course, since all the mainstream media wants to do these days is bash Trump, that figured largely in how the Paris summit was reported. The Wall Street Journal, in particular, took the Trump thread and ran with it.
Top diplomats from world powers gathered in Paris to affirm their stance on peace talks between the Israelis and Palestinians, days before U.S. President-elect Donald Trump takes office threatening to upend the international consensus behind addressing the long-running conflict.
Some 75 governments and international organizations used Sunday’s meeting to send a message to Mr. Trump that the only viable solution to the conflict is the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel.
Yeah. 'Cause that's worked so well until now.
Noting that a new administration was poised to take power in Washington, French President François Hollande said that decades of talks to create a Palestinian state can’t be “improvised or overturned.”
Wait. So because this is the way you did it for decades with the result that it didn't work, we have to keep doing it without changing a single thing? See Einstein's theory of insanity.
“This solution is the only one possible for peace and security,” Mr. Hollande said during the meeting.
But the Arabs reject this solution. And if they reject this solution, it can't be implemented. Also, just because you say it's the only solution, does not make it true. Even if you say it very firmly in front of a whole bunch of people, the representatives of 75 countries.
The conference marks another flashpoint over Israel between the international community and Mr. Trump, who has forcefully backed the Israeli government since winning the election. Mr. Trump’s team objected to the conference in talks with French diplomats ahead of the meeting, a French official involved in the discussions said.
“They made it clear that they did not think it was a good idea,” the official said. The Trump transition team couldn’t be immediately reached for comment.
Could it be that Trump thinks the Wall Street Journal is a "pile of garbage" reporting fake news and therefore refused to comment? (Heh heh.)
Mr. Trump’s moves on Middle East policy have threatened to upset the delicate balance that the U.S., Israel’s most important ally, has striven to preserve between Israel and the Palestinians. He has pledged to move the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, a step seen by Palestinians as backing Israel’s claim on the contested city as its exclusive capital.

DING DING DING. Media bias. This is supposed to be a straight news piece, not an opinion piece. Yet right here authors Matthew Dalton and Rory Jones reveal their blatant anti-Trump bias with phrases such as "Trump's moves," "threatened," and "upset the delicate balance."

The authors' bias is based on Trump's perceived but as yet untried policy toward Israel. But actually, it is the Paris summit and not anything Trump said or did that threatened the delicate balance. That would be the "delicate balance" between war and peace in Israel on any given day.

The Arabs, we know, were watching and waiting for their cue from Paris to terrorize Israeli civilians. The more concessions made toward the Arab narrative, the greater the censure of Israel in Paris, the more likely it would be that the Arabs would respond by unleashing terror against Israeli civilians. That was the very real existential threat we were feeling in our bellies these past few weeks. Obama's final present to Israel.

And by the way, Jerusalem is not "contested." It belongs to Israel exclusively and Israel has made it clear that it will not negotiate it away. Israel is a sovereign nation and has decided that Jerusalem is her capital, and this is her (exclusive) right.

Jean-Marc Ayrault, the French foreign minister, on Sunday called Mr. Trump’s remarks a provocation. “A question as sensitive as Jerusalem can only be addressed in the framework of negotiations between the parties,” Mr. Ayrault told reporters after the conference.
Sorry. No. The French foreign minister does not get to decide how the "question" of Jerusalem will be addressed. Jerusalem belongs to Israel. Forever. Europe does not get to kill 6 million Jews and then tell us that our holy city is held over as some kind of "question." There is no question. There never was. Jerusalem is ours. Forever.
Mr. Trump’s pick to serve as U.S. ambassador to Israel, his personal lawyer David Friedman, has further fueled international concern. Mr. Friedman is known for his hard-line, pro-Israel views and has provided financial backing to Israeli settlements in the West Bank, which are a key stumbling block in the talks.
Why does anyone call Judea and Samaria the "West Bank?" You can't see the Jordan River from anywhere in Judea and Samaria. The only body of water you can see glimpses of, and then only very rarely, on the clearest of days, is the Dead Sea. If you want to pay lip service to the lie that Israel stole its own indigenous territory from Jordan then don't talk about giving the land to a third party: one that is neither Jordan nor Israel.

The authors speak of Israeli settlements as a "key stumbling block in the talks." This is a lie. Homes are not a stumbling block to talks. Arabs and their terror are a stumbling block to talks. They refuse to sit and talk and negotiate. They refuse to stop attacking Israelis.

The stalemate on peace has nothing to do with settlements and nothing to do with homes. This is just the authors editorializing and exposing their bias anew. They're repeating themselves. Repeating the same old platitudes.

So let me spell it out for them: It's not the settlements, Stupid. It's that the Arabs don't want to wheel and deal or negotiate on any level with the Jews whatsoever. It's that Arabs don't want to talk to Jews. The Arabs don't want to recognize Israel. The Arabs don't want the Jews to have even a single inch of Israel. They want all the land, all to themselves, and they want it Judenrein.

In short, it is the Arabs that are the key stumbling block to talks. Not homes, for crying out loud. Arabs. Arabs and Arab terror.

Late last year, Mr. Trump slammed the Obama administration’s decision not to veto a United Nations resolution condemning Israeli settlements. Western diplomats worry that without peace talks under way, tensions between the two sides remain at risk of exploding into full-blown conflict. A truck attack earlier this month by a Palestinian killed four Israeli soldiers in Jerusalem, breaking a period of relative calm.

Now here's a quizzical statement. The authors tell us that it's the lack of peace talks that caused the truck ramming in Jerusalem. That's another big whopper of a lie. Actually, Israelis are quite convinced it was UN Security Council Resolution 2334 that ignited the terror in Jerusalem, emboldening the terrorists into thinking that the West is on their side.

Why not? Resolution 2334 says that it is illegal for Jews to be in Jerusalem!

That's all the license a terrorist needed to kill Jews in Jerusalem and that is what that terrorist did on that no-good, tragic, awful day, thanks to all those horrible people who clapped as Resolution 2334 was passed. Four dead Israeli youths can thank Obama's abstention for their deaths, with that abstention breaking the long-standing pact between the U.S. and Israel, and killing those soldiers as surely as bullets shot from a gun.




The international summit comes as support for the two-state solution is waning domestically in Israel and the Palestinian territories.
Here is the truest statement in the entire piece. One that belies the conclusions of the authors as well as those attending the summit. Neither Arabs nor Jewish Israelis believe in the two-state solution. The Arabs don't want it, so the two-state solution doesn't work as the basis for talks. The Jews have no way to give this solution to the Arabs without sacrificing their security, so they don't want it either. We saw and see, what happened with giving them Gaza.

Besides, the Arabs already have Jordan. They have Gaza. They have 22 other states in the region which could absorb them in two shakes of a lamb's tail with some economic pressure applied judiciously by the worthless UN. In any of those Arab states, the Arabs of Israel might speak their own language, be among their coreligionists, and feel culturally right at home.

But Israel? It's the only Jewish State there is. And it's all we've got. It's tiny.

Moreover, Europe, you have NO RIGHT to cut up our land and give it to others. You have no right to decide the future of Jerusalem. You killed 6 million of us. But we are done satisfying your evil whims. Done.

“This conference is among the last twitches of yesterday’s world,” Mr. Netanyahu said on Sunday after the weekly cabinet meeting. “Tomorrow’s world will be different and it is very near.”

A-frickin' men.



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