JPost Editorial: Palestinian views
Polisar examined more than 330 surveys carried out by four major independent Palestinian research institutes to determine what Palestinians think of Israel and Jews, Zionism and the value of carrying out terrorist attacks:Michael Lumish: The Departure of European Jewry
• With regard to the Gaza wars, a large majority of Palestinians are convinced that Israel deliberately targeted civilians and that Hamas was blameless for positioning its leadership, fighters and weapons in residential areas.
• With regard to Israel’s goals, an average of 59% think Israel wants to “extend its borders to cover all the area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea and to expel its Arab citizens.”
• A 51% majority of Palestinians believes Israel will destroy al-Aksa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock shrine and replace them with a synagogue.
• “Palestinians characterize Israelis as belligerent and untrustworthy but clever and strong, and finger Judaism as the most violent of all religions.”
• The Palestinian Center for Public Opinion asked residents of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip: “Do you think that Jews have some rights to the land along with Palestinians?” Only 12% agreed that “Both Jews and Palestinians have rights to the land,” while more than 80% asserted that “This is Palestinian land and Jews have no rights to it.”
• In a 2001 PSR poll 98% of Palestinians said the killing of 29 Palestinians in Hebron by Baruch Goldstein in 1994 was terrorism, but only 15% were willing to say the same for an attack by suicide bombers that killed 21 Israelis at the Dolphinarium discotheque in Tel Aviv in 2001. An average finding of six Pew polls over the past decade is that 59% of Palestinians see suicide bombings as justified.
• With regard to the efficacy of violence, a 2005 poll by the PSR found that “Sharon’s plan to evacuate the Israeli settlements from Gaza was a victory for the Palestinian armed resistance against Israel.”
Just as significant percentages of the Arab nation are on the march into Europe - taking the Middle East with them - so a significant percentage of European Jews are packing it in for Israel. This past year is a record among French Jews for the making of aliyah, i.e., Jews returning to the Jewish national home.Jonathan Pollard’s lawyer still hopes to get his client to Israel
In fact, French aliyah is up 118 percent.
Does anyone doubt that there is a direct correlation between Arab-Muslim immigration into Europe and Jewish emigration out of Europe? I would posit that the two are intimately connected due to the fact that the demographic moving into Europe has rates of anti-Semitism around the 80th percentile and is often not the least bit shy about demonstrating that tendency, sometimes violently and sometimes murderously.
French Jews understand very well that the slaughter of Jewish people in the kosher market in Paris, concurrent with the Charlie Hebdo murders, and the 2012 slaughter at the Ozar Hatorah school in Toulouse, means that the Jihad has arrived in Europe.
Many Europeans - those who were cognizant during the March 2004 Madrid train bombings that took 191 lives or the July 2005 suicide bombings in the London underground that took the lives of 52 commuters or the May 2013 murder and near-beheading of British soldier Lee Rigby in Woolwich - have noticed, as well.
Just two weeks before the release of his pro bono client, Jonathan Pollard, New York lawyer Eliot Lauer is hopeful that US President Barack Obama will grant the convicted spy his biggest wish: to move to Israel.
The former civilian Navy analyst was given a life sentence in 1987 for espionage for Israel. He was granted citizenship by the Jewish state 20 years ago.
Following the 15 years of lobbying US government since they took on the Pollard case, Lauer and his partner Jacques Semmelman announced in July that the Parole Commission had decided to set Pollard free on November 20 — after some 30 years in prison.
One question that remains is where Pollard will go upon his release.
“President Obama … has the authority … to allow Mr. Pollard to leave the United States and move to Israel immediately. We respectfully urge the president to exercise his clemency power in this manner,” Lauer and Semmelman said in a written statement issued July 28.
That day, a White House spokesman announced that Obama had no intention of altering Pollard’s terms of parole, which state that he must not leave the US for five years. The White House said Pollard had committed “very serious crimes” and would serve his sentence under the law.
