Friday, May 09, 2014
Khaled Abu Toameh: Hamas' "Gift" To Israel on Independence Day
The new video released by Hamas should also be seen as a response to Abbas's recent claim that the unity government with Hamas will renounce violence and accept Israel.Michael Lumish: Blaming Israel for the Failure of Talks
Hamas leaders have repeated over the past few days that the unity deal with Abbas's Fatah faction does not mean that their movement will ever recognize Israel's right to exist. They have also emphasized their intention to pursue terrorist attacks against Israel.
Abbas and the Palestinian Authority have chosen to ignore Hamas's ongoing threats to destroy Israel and continue terrorist attacks. Instead, Abbas is obviously determined to pursue his efforts to achieve unity with the terrorist movement, while at the same time trying to persuade gullible Westerners that the radical Islamists are marching toward moderation and pragmatism.
Even worse, Abbas is now seeking to expose Palestinians in the West Bank to Hamas's poisonous messages. Earlier this week, the Palestinian Authority leader issued an order permitting all newspapers published in the Gaza Strip, including those belonging to Hamas and Islamic Jihad, to be distributed in the West Bank areas under his control.
The bottom line is that the Obama administration has taken the racist Arab view that Jews should not be allowed to live in any "Palestinian" state and therefore if we build housing for ourselves on traditional Jewish land it somehow prevents Abbas and Netanyahu from drawing a line on a map.Sarah Honig: Now Livni is livid
From a strategic stand-point Obama administration policy has been a wretched failure in the Middle East for the obvious reason that it has not seriously encouraged the Palestinian-Arabs to come to a peace agreement with the Palestinian-Jews. This is bad enough, of course, but from an ethical stand-point Barack Obama and his people are encouraging the notion that the Palestinian-Jewish minority are malicious trespassers on their own land.
And that is considerably worse because it encourages ongoing malice and violence toward the Jewish people, more generally.
At this point Obama simply needs to get out of the Middle East because he clearly has no idea what he is doing.
Our Justice Minister and chief peace negotiator, Tzipi Livni, has just served notice on a far-from-enthralled nation that, regardless of what we may believe, she is somehow the boss. She put herself in charge of our collective conscience. She is the ultimate arbitrator of what’s proper and what’s not.
And in that capacity she denounced Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s intention to enshrine in law Israel’s status as the nation-state of the Jewish people. We might of course expect that she’d cheer Netanyahu’s initiative. After all, she enthusiastically extolled the 2005 Disengagement as ensuring the Jewishness of Israel. She never retracted her words, not even when unilateral retreat proved an unmitigated disaster.
A fable for dumb American negotiators
Suppose two men living in the same house are in love with the same woman, the wife of one of them. The other can think of nothing else, and even has come to believe an elaborate fantasy of how she was originally his wife, and the first man stole her away. He has tried several times to murder his rival, without success. He would cut his throat in a moment if he could. He is not only greatly frustrated because he doesn’t have what he desires, but the situation makes him feel less a man, which drives him insane with rage. He wants the woman, he wants revenge, and he wants to obtain them in a way that will demonstrate that he is a man.Israel’s Plan B
The woman, of course, is eretz yisrael and you know who the men are.
You can’t solve a problem like this with compromise or technical solutions, because the problem is not in the objective situation, it is in the mental condition — face it, the insanity — of one of the men.
Such over-the-top and fallacious salesmanship of the leftist Plan B – unilateral withdrawal in the “best traditions” (sic) of Zionism! – has me very worried.US envoy Indyk insists peace process not dead
Former IDF Military Intelligence chief Maj.-Gen. (res.) Amos Yadlin and Ehud Barak’s former bureau chief Gilad Sher (both of whom are ensconced at Tel Aviv University’s Institute for National Security Studies) are leading the drive for unilateral Israeli withdrawal. This will “advance Israel towards a two-state situation, even if there is no twostate solution,” and “help take the wind out of the growing BDS movement,” they have speciously written.
With Abbas embracing Hamas and the negotiating track shut down, it’s not too hard to see Yesh Atid chairman Yair Lapid, Hatnua head Tzipi Livni and Labor Party chairman Isaac Herzog jumping on the unilateral withdrawal bandwagon soon, too.
I say that Israel needs perseverance, not impatience, from its diplomats, generals and politicians.
Israel should sit tight and wait out the Palestinians until they crawl back to the real peace negotiating table with mature leaders and realistic expectations.
Netanyahu should publicly dismiss the risible, risky and irresponsible ideas for unilateral Israeli withdrawal.
Instead, he should adhere to the one course that has best served Israel for many years: manage the conflict and continue to build where it suits our strategic interests.
This may not be as satisfying a “solution” as a supposedly heroic withdrawal (or a defiant annexation), but it is Israel’s best Plan B.
Later, in a Q&A session, Indyk expanded on his argument, saying that settlement activity had “sabotaged negotiations” and now represented “a roadblock to resumption of negotiations.Minister Slams Indyk's 'Lies'
“The expansion of settlements on land that the Palestinians believe is supposed to be part of their state and the prevention of their ability to build on the same land is a very problematic situation in the resolution of this conflict,” he added.
"It is unfortunate that a Palestinian lie also affects our friends," Akunis stated. "There are not two truths here, only one: the Palestinians torpedoed the negotiations by choosing to reconcile with Hamas and take unilateral steps to apply to UN agencies."Thank you Mr. President but you’re no Harry Truman
Akunis also noted the flaws in Indyk's logic that construction over the 1949 Armistice lines destroyed chances for peace.
"There were no 'settlements' until 1967," he said. "Why didn't the Palestinians extend a hand in peace before that?"
President Obama congratulated Israel on its 66th year of independence referring to the Jewish State as a “diverse and vibrant democracy” and stressed the fact that the United States was the first country to recognize Israel after it declared its independence. Obama is a master of sound bites and his oratory on the subject strikes the right chord but it also begs the question, how would the United States have acted had Obama been president in 1948? Would he have had the fortitude and conviction of President Truman? Sadly, the answer is almost certainly no. His statements as well as choice of advisors, from John “poof” Kerry to CIA director John “al-Quds” Brennan, leave no doubt that any attempt to recognize or assist Israel would have been met with an avalanche of overt hostility and promptly quashed.Zero Tolerance for Incitement to Genocide: a message to Susan Rice
No doubt the administration would have cautioned Israel to refrain from declaring statehood and would have termed any such declaration as a “provocation.” It would have urged Israel to “exercise restraint” when dealing with roadside ambushes and relentless onslaughts by Arab gangs. Kerry, who once infamously referred to Bashar Assad as “a man who wants change,” would have characterized Palestinian leader and Nazi collaborator, Haj Amin el-Husseini, in similar fashion. And of course, oil would have figured prominently into the equation.
Rice knows first hand, from her being a staffer at the State Department during the Rwandan Genocide, about the horrific effects of intense incitement in triggering the Hutu’s mass murder–all with machetes–of 800,000 Tutsis –and Hutus who were seen as identifying with Tutsis–during a 3 month period in 1995. According to an account by Samantha Power in her book America and the Age of Genocide, Rice advised against calling the mass murder of the Tutsis a genocide, because using the g-word would obligate President Bill Clinton to act to stop the genocide.Rice: Every $1 spent on Israel’s security is an investment
The shadow of what happens when outsiders fail to stop state sponsored hate language and incitement hangs over Rice’s visit to Israel. It is not a good portent if we do not heed the lessons of the Rwandan genocide on the relationship between mass hate education and incitement to mass murder.
Rice said that the new deal “will take our total investment in Iron Dome, which has saved countless of Israeli lives, to nearly $900 million, a sign of our continued commitment to Israel’s security.”The Obama Administration's Anti-Israel Whisper Campaign
“Every American dollar spent on Israel’s security is an investment in protecting the many interests that our nations share. Whether that’s preventing rockets from terrorizing the Israeli people, defending against the growing ballistic missile threat in the region, or advancing our commitment to defend freedom and democracy,” she went on.
The Israel-Palestinian talks are dead, and the Obama administration is doing its best to let the world know it blames Israel. Not by blatantly coming out and saying it, because that would cause Israel to fight back against the slander, but by sneaking around and creating a whisper campaign.“Apartheid”? Blame the Geneva Convention
Most famous was John Kerry’s statement about Israel becoming an apartheid state made in an off-the-record speech at the Trilateral Commission. Not as well known was a recent interview senior member of the State Department, now thought to be Clinton confidante Martin Indyk who acted as Kerry's chief negotiator. The interview was given to Ynet News’ Nahum Barnea (on the condition of anonymity) where he suggests Israel may have earned a third intifada, echoing a previous Kerry statement.
Time and again, Secretary Kerry’s erroneous declarations have suggested moral equivalency between Israel and its adversaries. With the possible exception of agreeing to negotiate, Kerry has never announced any concession by the Palestinian side. The reason for that is there hasn’t been any. It is clear that to the Obama administration it is up to Israel to make all the concessions.
John Kerry’s infamous apartheid comment continues to make waves in Israel, eliciting pushback from some surprising places–like yesterday’s Haaretz column by Zvi Bar’el. Bar’el, whom nobody could accuse of being an Israel apologist (his column asserts Israeli control over the West Bank is even worse than the apartheid), points out that under apartheid, the legal regime discriminates between citizens of the same country. That’s fundamentally different from an occupation, under which the legal regime discriminates between the occupying power’s citizens and the occupied noncitizens. All occupying powers have given their own citizens more rights than the occupied noncitizens, from the British in India through the French in Algeria to the Americans in Iraq, he noted; yet none of these were ever labeled apartheid. Why should Israel be any different?Blair Denies Reports of Peres-Abbas Agreement in 2011
But Bar’el neglects to mention one important point: The legal distinction all occupations make between citizens and noncitizens isn’t just a whim of “racist” occupiers; it’s mandated by the Fourth Geneva Convention.
When asked about Peres’s report of a deal, Blair denied knowing anything about it.The Misleading Nakba Narrative
"Middle East Quartet envoy Tony Blair said Wednesday that he was unaware of a covert 2011 draft peace agreement between President Shimon Peres and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas — which Peres said had been torpedoed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu."
Contemporaneous accounts of the Peres-Abbas meetings make no mention that Peres and Abbas were close to a peace agreement. At the time Abbas was quoted as saying, “I met Shimon Peres four times in Amman and London in an attempt to restart negotiations and the peace process on a correct foundation.”
In 2010 Prime Minister Netanyahu, under American pressure, agreed to a settlement freeze in order to coax Abbas to return to negotiations. The PA didn’t come to the table until the very end of the freeze and then refused to negotiate further once the freeze ended. After that Abbas threatened to go to the United Nations with his statehood bid. Peres engaged in talks with Abbas in an effort to stave off the UN bid and get negotiations back on track.
But what is most troubling is that many on the Jewish left have adopted this same point of view. As Joshua Muravchick wrote in a definitive article on the subject in the June 2013 issue of COMMENTARY, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz has been “Trashing Israel Daily” for years. But its editorial last week days before the celebration of Israel’s Independence Day, which called for the state to not only accept the Palestinian narrative of victimization for which Israel bears sole responsibility but have it taught in its schools, was so over the top it prompted one of the country’s veteran left-wing thinkers and advocates of peace with the Palestinians to call them out.Killers of IDF soldier Tomer Hazan convicted
Shlomo Avineri, a leading Israeli scholar and at one time the director general of its Foreign Ministry, was among the first in the country to advocate negotiations with the PLO in the 1970s when such dealings were illegal. As such, his credentials as an advocate of negotiations and reconciliation with the Palestinians are impeccable. But Avineri was shocked at what he read in a paper whose opinion columns often read more like Palestinian propaganda than anything else. His dissection of the editorial that was published today is must reading for anyone who cares about peace or about the truth. While acknowledging that the history of the conflict is complex, he believes those who accept the idea that Israel alone is responsible for Palestinian suffering are wrong.
The killer of 20-year-old Bat Yam native Sgt. Tomer Hazan was convicted of murder and kidnapping in a military court Thursday, as was the murderer’s brother, himself a jailed terrorist.Abbas' advisor honors terrorist Dalal Mughrabi, killer of 37
Nidal Amar, a 42-year-old Palestinian resident of Beit Amin south of Qalqilya, lured Hazan to his West Bank village on September 21, 2013, where he murdered him.
Amar’s brother, Nuraddin, a member of the Fatah Tanzim terror group, serving time in an Israeli jail since 2003 for his role in several terror attacks, was also convicted of persuading Nidal to kidnap the soldier in the hope of trading Hazan’s body for his release.
Recently, one of Abbas' advisors, Sultan Abu Al-Einein, chose to "salute the soul" of the terrorist who led the most lethal attack in Israel's history that killed 37 civilians:Mahmoud Abbas is Still Lying About the Holocaust
"Martyr Dalal Mughrabi - I salute her soul and the souls of all the Martyrs - [Dalal] who established her Palestinian Republic in her own special way between Jaffa and Tel Aviv." [Official PA TV, March 30, 2014]
Establishing the "Palestinian Republic in her own special way" refers to the 1978 Coastal Road Massacre, when Mughrabi and other Fatah terrorists hijacked a bus on Israel's Coastal Highway, killing 37 civilians, 12 of them children, and wounding over 70.
Abbas' advisor also advocated dying for "Palestine": "On this land and for this land it is worth giving our blood in order to expel these invaders from every inch of our Palestinian land."
Interviewed by the Lebanese Television station Al-Mayadeen in January 1983, Abbas reiterated: “I challenge anyone to deny the relationship between Zionism and Nazism before World War Two.”PLO Flag on Public School in Jerusalem's Old City
Nothing in Abbas’s so-called “reversal” last week in reality reverses any of his previous assertions. His new statement is completely compatible with all his previous statements about the Holocaust. Fewer than one million Jews were killed – but sure, it’s “heinous” to kill, “a few hundred thousand” people. The Zionist leaders collaborated with the Nazis then – and they’re still acting like Nazis today, towards the Palestinians.
Those who want to believe that Palestinian leaders have become moderate and reasonable were handed a Valentine by the Post’s sanitized coverage of Abbas’s statement about the “heinous” Holocaust, which conveniently left out the first part of the statement about Nazi-like Israeli “crimes.” But this kind of selective, politically-motivated journalism cannot alter the fact that Mahmoud Abbas is still lying about the Holocaust.
A flag of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), which has never renounced terrorism, has reportedly been flown for the past several weeks at a public school in Jerusalem's Old City.Fatah Agrees to Release All Hamas Prisoners
Jewish residents of the Old City say they have petitioned the Municipality several times to take action about the flag, which the "Khalil Sakakini" school has been flying for weeks, but that the flag remains untouched, reported Yedioth Ahronoth on Friday.
"Khalil Sakakini" is a public middle school for Arab girls, which is located near Herod's Gate on the north face of the Old City walls, and which receives public funds as a state school.
Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said in an interview with Palestine newspaper on Friday that Fatah had agreed to release all Hamas terrorists from prison - regardless of their crimes or current political affiliation.PA Human Rights Abuses Start with Hamas Flag
Meanwhile, Hamas has allegedly jumped on board as well - allowing journalists from Fatah-backed papers Al-Quds and Al-Ayyam to enter Gaza and releasing Fatah prisoners held in Gaza over their own political affiliations.
The abuses started when PA security forces stopped a car for flying the Hamas flag according to PCHR; the passengers, family members of jailed hunger-striking terrorist Zaid Ismail Abu Fanar, were on their way to a solidarity event at Abu Fanar's father's house in Hevron.PA Insists: Hamas Will Not Be Part of 'Unity' Government
The driver, 22-year-old Mohammed Awdatallah Abu Fanar, drove away ignoring orders by the PA officers for all passengers to exit the car, at which point the officers gave chase in their Volkswagen mini-bus for roughly two miles, PCHR charged according to International Middle East Media Center.
The officers reportedly slammed into Abu Fanar's car several times with their vehicle before causing it to crash into a wall. At that point the officers pulled Mohammed out of his car and began kicking him and beating him with their rifles.
Palestinian Authority (PA) Chairman Mahmoud Abbas stated in a PA TV interview Thursday night that Hamas, its unity pact partner, has not been asked to recognize Israel and will not be part of a transitional government that is to be built soon.Netanyahu Expresses Concerns over “Bad Deal” After Meeting NSA Rice
Abbas also repeated his intention to erect an interim government which will, allegedly, recognize Israel and condemn violence and terror.
Abbas's announcement reiterates the growing cognitive and political dissonance between the two organizations. Hamas continues to be adamant over its full control of a "unity" government, expressing over and over again that it would remain in control of both Gaza and the PA after elections and insisting that Ismail Haniyeh would rule the government.
The Israelis have among other things dismissed an Iranian proposal – which top figures from Tehran’s atomic program have been hyping as a promising development in the talks – that would see the Iranians rejecting a long-standing Western demand that they dismantle or at a minimum downgrade the heavy water reactor being constructed at the country’s Arak facility.Assad has killed with gas 30 times since August
The current IR-40 reactor will be able to produce at least one bomb’s worth of plutonium per year, and once activated is functionally impossible to destroy. The Iranians have rejected any possibility of meeting their international obligations – codified in United Nations Security Council Resolutions – to halt construction at Arak and keep the reactor offline.
They have also drawn a red line against modifying it into a more proliferation-resistant light water model.
Syrian forces loyal to President Bashar Assad have used chemical weapons in over 30 cases since Syria joined the Chemical Weapons Convention last year and agreed to the destruction of its entire arsenal, a senior IDF officer said Thursday.Russia Set to Send 36 Jets to Syrian Government
“From the day that he signed the deal, [Assad] has used chemical weapons over thirty times, and in every case citizens were killed,” the officer said, adding that the weapons were “tactically deployed” with mortars and short-range rockets.
According to the officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity, Assad’s regime was now focused on developing “non-classic” unconventional weapons based on weaker gas such as chlorine.
According to Defense News:
Russia’s state-owned arms exporter Rosoboronexport will deliver the first batch of nine Yakovlev Yak-130 jet trainers to the Syrian government by the end of this year. The contract for 36 aircraft is scheduled to be completed by the end of 2016, a source close to the deal told local business daily Kommersant.
Under the plan, Rosoboronexport will deliver 12 aircraft in 2015, and a further 15 jet trainers in 2016.
“Thus, we will fulfill the obligations under a previously signed contract,” the source was quoted as saying.
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