Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, October 18, 2007

Hamas/Fatah fighting in Gaza, five dead

Whenever there is a period of relative calm in Gaza, it is always followed by a real explosion. This one was between Hamas and a pro-Fatah family, where they battled overnight using RPGs and other peaceful weapons smuggled in from Egypt, and the death toll has hit 5.

Our 2007 Palestinian Arab self-death count is now at 545.

UPDATE: One of those "mysterious explosions " at a training camp in Gaza, killing a 19-year old. Palestine Press Agency quotes people who think that this man was actually killed during the fighting mentioned above but they try to cover up any of their battlefield losses. 546.

Saudi prince: "Islam guarantees justice for all"

From Arab News:

Crown Prince Sultan said yesterday that the newly issued Judiciary Law and Court of Grievances Law were important turning points in the Kingdom’s judicial history. He said the new laws would ensure justice and protect public rights. Prince Sultan made this statement as he opened an international conference on engineering arbitration organized by the Saudi Council of Engineers. “Islam guarantees justice for all,” the prince said. Eastern Province Gov. Prince Muhammad ibn Fahd and his deputy Prince Jalawi also attended the opening session.

This may be the most unintentionally ironic quote of the decade.

The US State Department 2005 report on human rights in Saudi Arabia found:

• no right to change the government
• infliction of severe pain by judicially sanctioned corporal punishments
• beatings and other abuses
• arbitrary arrest
• incommunicado detention
• denial of fair public trials
• exemption from the rule of law for some individuals and lack of judicial independence
• political prisoners
• infringement of privacy rights
• significant restriction of civil liberties--freedoms of speech and press, assembly, association, and movement
• no religious freedom
• widespread perception of corruption
• lack of government transparency
• legal and societal discrimination against women, religious and other minorities
• strict limitations on worker rights.

The government does not provide legal protection for freedom of religion, and such protection did not exist. Islam is the official religion, and Islamic law as interpreted by the government requires that all citizens be Muslims. Government leaders called for tolerance and moderation, and King Abdullah and other leaders made public pronouncements condemning religious extremism.

...Christians were detained for practicing their religion. For example, the newspaper Al-Jazeerah reported that 40 Pakistani citizens, including one Muslim, were arrested on April 12 after conducting Christian religious services in an apartment in Riyadh.

...Proselytizing by non-Muslims, including the distribution of non‑Islamic religious materials such as Bibles, was illegal. Anyone publicly wearing any kind of religious symbols risked a confrontation with the religious police.

Under the Hanbali interpretation of Shari'a, judges may discount the testimony of persons who are not practicing Muslims or who do not adhere to "correct doctrine".

...There continued to be instances in which mosque speakers prayed for the death of Jews, including from the Grand Mosque in Mecca and the Prophet's Mosque in Medina.

...Male citizens have the freedom to travel within the country and abroad; however, the government restricted these rights for women based on its interpretation of Islamic Law. All women in the country were prohibited from driving and were dependent upon men for transportation. Likewise, they must obtain written permission from a male relative or guardian before the authorities allow them to travel abroad.

...Women were not permitted either to vote or to stand for office.

It looks like we need to amend "justice for all" to "justice for all Muslim Sunni religious adult males who don't upset the Muttawa."

Remember the roadmap?

Here are some of the requirements for the Palestinian Arabs under the "roadmap" that are considered way too onerous by them, so much so that they want to skip all of these Phase I steps and go right to the final status negotiations. We've also added a helpful description of why the Roadmap requirements are untenable from the Arab perspective.

At the outset of Phase I:

* Palestinian leadership issues unequivocal statement reiterating Israel's right to exist in peace and security and calling for an immediate and unconditional ceasefire to end armed activity and all acts of violence against Israelis anywhere. All official Palestinian institutions end incitement against Israel.

We can all understand how this is simply unacceptable. Ending violence and incitement would be antithetical to Palestinian Arab culture and is just a Western attempt to impose colonialist hegemony on the poor, semi-indigenous people.

* Palestinians declare an unequivocal end to violence and terrorism and undertake visible efforts on the ground to arrest, disrupt, and restrain individuals and groups conduction and planning violent attacks on Israelis anywhere.

Another insane demand. Planning attacks against Israel helps foster community and unity among the PalArabs and to ask them to stop would be like asking them to stop breathing itself.

* Rebuilt and refocused Palestinian Authority security apparatus begins sustained, targeted, and effective operations aimed at confronting all those engaged in terror and dismantlement of terrorist capabilities and infrastructure. This includes commencing confiscation of illegal weapons and consolidation of security authority, free of association with terror and corruption.

Pure insanity. Expecting some 80,000 police to actually stop terror attacks is clearly untenable when the policemen are the people doing the attacks. One cannot expect the police to arrest each other, as that would negatively affect morale.

* Arab states cut off public and private funding and all other forms of support for groups supporting and engaging in violence and terror.

Clearly the infidel crusaders who drafted this obscene requirement do not understand the Muslim concept of Zaka, where Arab states give millions of dollars of charity towards Hamas and other charitable organizations dedicated to defending poor Palestinian Arabs from aggression by purchasing weapons and explosives. This is a religious and moral obligation!

One can now easily understand why Palestinian Arabs do not want to agree to any sort of preconditions to getting 100% of their demands met. It is obvious that these conditions are way beyond their capability - the roadmap was drafted back in 2003 and they have still not begun most of the Phase 1 requirements.

The fundamental problem is that the roadmap expects the PalArabs to act like human beings who actually respect life, and that is really a deal-breaker for them.

The West Bank economy is booming - for weapons

From the peaceful, moderate West Bank:

Two years ago, an M16 automatic rifle could fetch $5,400 or more in the Palestinian West Bank. Now buyers at Hebron's clandestine gun market are asked to pay more than double.

Four months after Islamist Hamas routed secular Fatah in the Gaza Strip, fears that clashes between the Palestinian rivals could erupt in the West Bank and uncertainty ahead of a U.S.-led peace conference are fueling a scramble for guns.

Dealers at the gun market in Hebron, the West Bank's most populous city, say weapons sales have jumped by up to 70 percent since Hamas took control of Gaza, while buoyant demand and supply bottlenecks due to tighter security have inflated prices.

In the northern West Bank city of Jenin, every bullet for an AK-47 rifle costs 35 Israeli shekels, or more than $8. In Hamas-controlled Gaza, an AK-47 bullet goes for 4-6 Israeli shekels, $1-1.50.

Militants from both Hamas and Fatah, and the powerful family clans who are often called in to deal with West Bank crime or land disputes, are driving the market, according to gun dealers and senior Palestinian security sources.

But ordinary West Bankers, too, are taking no risks.

"I don't feel safe anymore," said 28-year-old Abo Abdo, who sold his car this month to buy a rifle to protect his wife and two children. "Everyone is buying guns."
Since the Gaza takeover, Western powers have started pumping cash into the West Bank in an attempt to bolster Abbas and further isolate Hamas in Gaza, and are training police and security forces loyal to the Fatah-backed administration.

But despite the drive to support him, many Palestinians doubt Abbas has the clout to keep the peace.

"We are facing a very grave situation," a Palestinian security source said. "People distrust the Palestinian police. They are buying guns to defend themselves."

Hebron restaurant owner Salam Shabanah is a case in point. He wants guns to protect his property, but says the scramble by militants and family clans for guns is inflating prices to the point he can barely afford them.

"The money I am saving is not enough to buy the guns I need," he said.

The Palestinian Authority, with tens of thousands of "security forces," cannot be trusted to keep the basic minimu standards of public safety. Hundreds of millions of dollars are going towards this sham of a government which is utterly incompetent.

The West trusts the PA far more than its own people do.

It goes beyond the immediate security problem - the entire Palestinian Arab culture is conditioned to look at violence as the solution to all problems. The thought process that a man needs to sell his car to buy a rifle is bad enough, but even worse is the idea that his owning a single rifle will actually protect him from the roving gangs in the streets with their RPGs and machine guns. This is the PalArab culture - glorifying violence - and since it was so successful at making heroes out of terrorists it is natural that the same mindset would spill over into intra-Arab relations.

The PA owns the media. It has had since at least Oslo to turn around this mentality from terror to co-existence, from violence to peace - but instead it has done the opposite. An entire new generation has been raised to romanticize death and terror.

It is difficult to imagine a group of people, and a leadership, that are less qualified to run their own affairs than the Palestinian Arabs and the PA.

More law and order from Hamas in Gaza

From Ma'an:

Unidentified gunmen hurled two grenades at a house in Nusayrat refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip on Monday.

The grenades caused material damage to the house, which belongs to the Abu Marahil family. None of the residents was hurt.

Eyewitnesses told Ma'an's reporter that the attack came after the house owners prevented Hamas activists spraying mottos on their walls on Sunday. They said a heated argument then erupted between both sides.

Great to see how life in Gaza has improved under the Hamas government.

Sure looks like child-killer Kuntar will be released

The recent deal between Israel and Hezbollah and statements by both Olmert and Nasrallah seem to strongly indicate that any prisoner swap will include Samir Kuntar, one of the most loathsome terrorists in history (despite Israeli denials.)

Kuntar, it will be remembered, murdered a father in front of his four-year old daughter before smashing her skull, among other atrocities. (And this sickening piece of human garbage is also considered a hero to Palestinian Arabs, with the "moderates" demanding his release.)

I am not wise enough to know whether it is worth trading him for Goldwasser and Regev today. I just want to point out that Nasrallah planned the kidnapping of Israelis specifically to get Kuntar in a swap, by his own statements. A prisoner swap would, as always, encourage more kidnappings in the future.

And if Israel would have had the death penalty for uberterrorists like Kuntar back in 1979, the incentive for kidnapping the two Israelis would have not existed - and the Lebanon war may never have occurred.

Gaza City Syndrome and its treatment

Sometimes, visitors to Jerusalem have intense psychotic episodes of a religious nature, often claiming to be Biblical figures or the Messiah. This phenomenon is known as "Jerusalem syndrome." When it happens, the Israeli authorities hospitalize the deluded individual and it usually clears up in a few weeks.

Not to be outdone, we now have the first known case of Gaza City Syndrome, where a man claimed to be the Mahdi who is mentioned in the Koran to herald the Resurrection:

The self-professed Mahdi went to a Hamas-affiliated Imam in Rafah to state his claims, stressing that people follow his divine direction.

According to eyewitnesses, an enraged Imam contacted the police.

The Gaza police treated this case with all the sensitivity one has come to expect from Palestinian Arabs:

The man was arrested and ordered to revoke his claims. When he refused, the police shot at his feet, before releasing him.

This treatment of Gaza City Syndrome seems to be as effective as the infidel Zionist treatment of Jerusalem Syndrome - plus it saves much money.

Quick question

What exactly would Palestinian Arabs have to do for the US to decide that maybe they don't deserve their own state?

Anything I can think of, they've already done.

PalArab "negotiator" says his side has nothing to negotiate

The chief Palestinian Arab "negotiator" has today repeated what I reported him saying last week in an Arabic autotranslation, now being quoted in a real translation saying the same things - and more:

Ahmad Abed al Rahman, the spokesperson of the Fatah movement and President Abbas' advisor said in a statement on Tuesday that the Palestinian side focuses in its meetings and negotiations on two basic issues.

Firstly, is the need for Israel to abide by its commitments to remove military checkpoints, release detainees and halt the construction of settlements and the Separation Wall.

Did Israel ever commit to any of these? Plus, this sounds like four issues, not one.

The second issue relates to the final status issues and the necessity for Israel to be ready for dialogue over these issues in order to arrive at a solution. Otherwise everything that has been done up to this point will be useless.

Abed al Rahman denied the rumours in some of the media, that the US Secretary of State is trying to convince the Palestinian to lower their demands regarding a joint agreement between them and the Israelis, on the kind of document to be presented to the international conference in Annapolis in November. He declared that Palestinian participation in the conference will help them to restore their legitimate rights.

He also said that the ongoing meetings between the Palestinians and the Israelis in recent weeks have been mainly aimed at reaching a final agreement to end the Israeli occupation. He added that negotiations are another form of resistance through which Palestinians can bring an end to the occupation. He clarified that one form of struggle is the international conference which President Bush had called for, especially as most officials are saying that had this is the moment for the establishment of an indepenent Palestinian state.

Abed al Rahman went on to say that even if the Israeli side was behaving in an arrogant way, this does not mean the Palestinians should despair as the negotiating team will continue to work with all means possible.

In response to reports that Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has demanded more compromises as a condition of his government's acceptance of a formula for a joint document, he said that " The Israeli side does not want to end the occupation and the settlements. All they think about is plastic surgery for the reality of occupation; this will not lead to peace. The Israelis should take a historical decision to end their occupation of Palestinian territory."

He concluded by saying that the Palestinian side has nothing to give up.

Apparently, the chief "negotiator's" entire role is to try to extract everything he can from Israel and not to give anything in return - and then prepare for the next summit, where the exercise will be repeated. This farce is official PA policy.

By any reasonable standard, this would be considered "extremist" or "hard-line" or "intransigent" - but since we are talking about the Good Terrorists from Fatah, who are the darlings of the West, one will never hear any of those pejorative words applied to the PalArabs, only the Israelis. (And Hamas conveniently seems to exist to make Fatah look good in comparison. We'll just sweep under the rug that Hamas was democratically elected by the peaceful Palestinian Arabs, and probably would be again.)

What kind of a joke is going on here? Why on earth would Israel even consider attending this absurd exercise in being demonized, not to mention outnumbered? What can Israel possibly get in return when the Palestinian Arab negotiator cannot even say that he would try to stop terror attacks?

IDF buying produce from Gaza???

From the Jerusalem Post:

During the shmita [Sabbatical] year the IDF will accommodate the stringent kashrut demands of about 2,000 Nahal Haredi soldiers by providing fruits and vegetables grown by Arab Israelis and Palestinians, including those living in Gaza, Judea and Samaria.

The vast majority of IDF soldiers, who do not adhere to haredi standards of kashrut, will eat fruits and vegetables provided by Jewish farmers according to a halachic loophole called heter mechira [permitted sale] in which farmers' land is "sold" to a non-Jew for the duration of the shmita year.

However, haredim reject heter mechira as a halachic option and are careful to eat only fruits and vegetables that are grown by non-Jewish farmers in land that does not belong to Jews.

The first shipment of vegetables under the supervision of Rabbi Yosef Yekutiel Efrati, who is closely associated with Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv, the most important halachic authority of Lithuanian Ashkenazi Jewry, will be delivered on Chanukah, which begins December 5.

It is bad enough to buy vegetables from the PA and its corrupt, terrorist government - but the IDF buying vegetables from Hamas?

I hope this was a mistake on the JPost's part.

Another peaceful day in Hamastan

Just this morning's headlines in the Palestine Press Agency Arabic website:
- Internal Hamas fighting in Gaza City, a number injured (autotranslate says "killed" but I believe that is a mistranslation of "shot" from the context)
- The PA Health Ministry condemned Hamas taking over medical and pharmacy services
- Hamas attacked two Palestinian Arab journalists and destroyed their cameras
- Another Hamas attack on the "courts compound" in Gaza
- Someone burned a Hamas car in Jabaliya

All of these events were reported today.

Peace is at hand!

Arabs importing poisonous "holy water" to UK

From Arab News:

Allegations that poisonous Zamzam water is being smuggled into Britain are exercising the minds of UK Muslims. The containers, which sell for the equivalent of SR25 each, are purporting to come from Makkah on their labels.
Containers that have been analyzed by UK health and safety officials have been found to hold water that contains raised levels of arsenic and nitrates that, if consumed over extended periods of time, could prove fatal.
Saudi Arabia forbids the sale of Zamzam. The holy water is freely distributed at its source. Its bottling and distribution is strictly controlled and monitored by the government and commercial export is illegal. Each year, however, millions of foreign pilgrims carry containers home as private export.
Genuine Zamzam, analyzed in 1971, contains greater quantities of calcium and magnesium salts than most other waters. It also contains fluorides that strengthen teeth’s enamel.
However, some of the fake Zamzam has been analyzed and found to contain almost three times as much nitrate and twice as much arsenic as the World Health Organization believes is safe. Children under six months and elderly people are particularly vulnerable to excessive nitrate while regular consumption of arsenic in water is responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths a year in southeast Asia.
...The Health and Social Services website of the Central London Mosque (www.iccservices.org.uk) quotes a BBC article reporting the seizure of a consignment of suspected fake Zamzam at the start of Ramadan by Westminster City Council.
The “Muslim Weekly” in the UK reported last week that inspectors in the London Borough of Hackney seized a vanload of contaminated counterfeit cases of the water.
Similar seizures have been carried out in Gloucester, Barnsley and Leicester.
The potential for fraud and the profit in sale of fake Zamzam to the unwary is huge. In a recent case quoted by Teinaz, an Islamic bookshop was selling an estimated 20,000 liters of Zamzam water a week.
Teinaz said he “was aware” of examples of vans transporting vast quantities of the fake water to mosques where their imams ordered their followers to buy the substance. Some of the water, according to customs officials, is smuggled into Britain in crates of vegetables and furniture.
Speaking to “Muslim Weekly”, Teinaz said traders had misled the authority at air and seaports for years telling them that Zamzam was for external use.
“I would like to urge those selling the water to fear Allah. They’re making money at the expense of their brothers and sisters’ health who will end up very ill by consuming the contaminated water,” he said. “It is very sad to see a Muslim cheating another Muslim.”

As opposed to....?

The Arab News is adamant that this water is not from the real Zamzam well, seemingly based on a chemical analysis from 1971. It would be interesting to see if newer analysis confirms that.

Misoziony at a San Francisco art gallery

From Oy Bay:

Himmelberger Gallery, a well-known art gallery located in San Francisco’s tony Union Square, has decided to cancel plans to publish an art catalogue of one of its represented artists, noted author Alan Kaufman, who is under contract to the gallery. The decision is due to use of the word Zionism in the catalogue’s title ‘Visionary Expressionism: A Zionist Art.” Kaufman said in response:
For myself, I want to say that to see oneself and ones colleagues censored for expression of a Zionist perspective is one of the most shocking experiences I’ve ever had as an artist, or writer. But what made it especially hard was to see my fellow writers, David Twersky, David Rosenberg, Etgar Keret, Polly Zavadivker, also censored. It was then that I understood that this was not merely censorship of me: this was censorship of an entire community, of my people, the Jewish People; of my colleagues, my fellow writers and artists. This drove home to me like nothing else that I must never accept such censorship from anyone, under any circumstances. I must stand up proudly as a Zionist and express myself freely, without shame or reservation.

The gallery objects to the expressly Zionist focus of several essay contributions to the catalogue by well-known authors and journalists, including David Twersky, contributing editor of the New York Sun and senior adviser, International Affairs for American Jewish Congress; noted scholar David Rosenberg, author (with Harold Bloom) of The Book of J and most recently of Abraham: The First Historical Biography; Etgar Keret, widely acknowledged as Israel’s most popular young writer, and whose books include The Nimrod Flip-Out and The Bus Driver Who Wanted To Be G-d ; and Polly Zavadivker, a young scholar completing graduate studies in Hebrew and Judaics at New York University and currently working as a grants officer at the Jewish Federation in Oakland, California. Kaufman, whose critically acclaimed books include the memoir Jew Boy and the novel Matches has an essay and an interview, conducted by Zavadivker, in the catalogue.

The catalogue was to present 15 of Kaufman’s paintings which are under contract to the gallery and whose subjects range from the Holocaust to Israel to the New Antisemitism. The gallery’s prices for the works in question have been cited at between $3,275 and $36,000. The works have hung in the gallery and a cross-section of them also appeared on the gallery website .

At a meeting between gallery head David Himmelberger and Kaufman, Himmelberger surprised the artist and author with an eleventh hour decision not to proceed with the catalogue due to the Zionist “agenda” of the essays as well as some of the paintings. Himmelberger said that such a presentation was antithetical to the aims of the gallery, which promotes “international understanding” and forswears all forms of nationalism and religion. But the authors see this as a transparent example of the way in which the word Zionism has been exiled from civil discourse and has been turned by the cultural establishment into a refugee of a word, a pariah of an idea, and a euphemism for Antisemitism.

The Himmelberger Gallery website seems to have deleted its web pages that used to feature Alan Kaufman (the Google cached versions are here. )

The reason given by Himmelberger, that the gallery "forswears all forms of nationalism and religion," seems highly improbable - it did once feature some 9/11-themed paintings that included the artist's interpretation of the American flag.

It seems far more likely that the very word "Zionist" used in a positive context is so viscerally disgusting to the gallery owner that he had to invent a reason to stop the exhibition that would save face.

Aspen station decides not to air Holocaust denial film

An Aspen public-access TV station has decided not to air a Holocaust-denial video that was being pushed by a 9/11 "truther":

The GrassRoots TV board of directors voted Monday to ban a controversial Holocaust-denial film.

Steve Campbell, founder of Citizens for 9/11 Truth, asked the station to air "Judea Declares War on Germany: A Critical Look at World War II" on Oct. 1.

But after prescreening the film, which questions conventional wisdom about the Holocaust, GrassRoots TV board members stopped the airing, pending further debate.

The board held an open forum on the matter Oct. 11 to gauge community reaction.

"The GrassRoots Television board has decided not to air the film 'Judea declares War on Germany,'" GrassRoots TV board chairman Alan Feldman said in a statement after the board meeting Monday.

"After careful consideration and community input, the board concluded that this film is obscene, repugnant to the generally accepted notion of what is appropriate in our community. GrassRoots TV will not allow the station to be used as a vehicle to incite hatred against any group. GrassRoots Television will issue a more detailed statement to our community in coming days."

Feldman promised a board policy in the future: "Our community spoke, and we have given it a lot of rational thinking," Feldman said. "We have the ability to refuse to air something if we believe it's obscene."

Campbell called it a "poor decision."

"Unfortunately, it shows basically what I and others have tried to say about this whole issue," Campbell said. "There are those who don't want you to see this information, and they'll do anything they can to stop you from watching it. And that's just what they're doing."

Campbell has shown other controversial films on GrassRoots, as well as on Rifle's public access station, he said.

He called the debate over "Judea Declares War on Germany: A Critical Look at World War II" a matter of "conscious-raising."

"I just think that it's a travesty what's going on," Campbell said.

Campbell said he is not planning any legal action against GrassRoots but added, "By censoring this film, it's only going to make people watch it more."

Campbell said that while he is being censored now, "The truth will come out. It's just like the grass that grows between the cracks in the sidewalk."

He said he might try and air the film in another venue, but he was disappointed that the large audience in Aspen wouldn't see it.

"This is part of the beginning of the loss of our freedoms of expression and speech and the dissemination of information just so certain people can maintain their status quo," Campbell said.

As I mentioned last week, the Aspen Times newspaper editorialized that the film be shown.

Notice how they cover this story above: giving far more space to the illiterate anti-semite ("conscious-raising"?) than to the people who made the decision. Not to mention the oh-so-politically correct way of referring to one of the purest forms of hate speech as simply "controversial" and as "question(ing the) conventional wisdom about the Holocaust."

The "censored" video is available at Amazon (one reviewer, 4 stars) and can be seen on-line if you care to look for it.

The name of the production company, believe it or not, is Amalek Productions.

Sixty years ago: Wishful Western thinking about Arab goals

Sixty years ago, in October 1947, the big news from Palestine was that both the US and the Soviet Union had accepted the idea of partition. It was still very unclear how exactly partition would occur - the prevailing thoughts were that a multinational force, perhaps the UN, would go into Palestine and enforce the partition.

The entire world was very concerned as to what would happen. The Arab League met in Beirut, plotting a response, and there were reports of Arab armies mobilizing on the borders of Palestine, getting ready to attack.

In the October 13th Palestine Post, Great Britain sought to assure the world that the Arabs were only posturing, and had no intent to actually attack. American experts concurred:

Arab leaders in Haifa rushed to assure everyone that while Arabs might want to use oil as a weapon against America for their support for partition, they would never attack anyone:

Three additional stories in the October 15 Palestine Post quoted various people who assured the world that there was nothing to worry about.

Great Britain had this to add:

Yes, everything would be orderly. They wouldn't just leave and allow the Jews to be indiscriminately slaughtered, would they?

And the Arabs also were at pains to show that they had no intentions of provoking violence, and any reports to the contrary were Zionist lies:

Experts had no problem weighing in as well. After all, the very idea of Arabs attacking was simply not logical:

On the 16th, it was reported that Egypt was sending troops to the Sinai border - but this move was also dismissed as just posturing:

Meanwhile, Syria and Lebanon openly called for war. But the all-knowing analysts for the Great Powers knew that they were not serious:

So sixty years ago the Middle East was on the verge of a momentous decision; a meeting at the UN to happen in November that would have far-reaching implications. The best and brightest political minds on the planet had an array of facts before them - Arab threats and statements, how Arabs had acted in the recent past, the seething hatred Arabs had for the Jews. And almost every single one of them chose to ignore anything bad that the Arabs did or said, and replace cold facts with wishful thinking and assumptions that Arabs are more pragmatic than they had shown themselves to be in the past.

Over this four day period, as the region was hurtling towards a war whose impact is still being felt, the prevailing conventional wisdom was that everything would be all right. Immediately after the UN partition vote would start a string of major Arab attacks against Jewish civilians from all directions.

In the months to come it would become more and more clear that despite all of these assurances, despite all these rosy predictions, despite promises that everything would be done to keep things peaceful - despite all that, no one would protect the Jews from the Arab armies who were preparing even this early to destroy them. The Zionists realized this and they knew that they could only rely on themselves, and God, to help them.

Sixty years later, the Arabs are making it clear that if things don't go the way they want, they will start a new round of violence. Even so, the world's superpower is assuring Israel that the Arabs have no intention of continuing their murderous ways, and is pressuring Israel to turn itself back towards how things were in1947, with hostile Arabs living once again amidst the Jews they hate with a passion. The great powers are promising that there will be no rockets from the West Bank, that Hamas is not biding its time for the PA to gain land diplomatically that could then become the basis for a West Bank Hamastan, and that - however improbably - Gaza will once again come under "moderate" PA control.

Once again, wishful thinking is replacing real analysis and observations, and empty promises are being offered in exchange for Israel's security.

The Arabs are highly sensitive to symbolism, and they are looking at November 2007 to be the watershed event that will help turn back the events of November 1947. And so far, they have willing partners in the UN, EU and United States - and even the Israeli government itself - all anxious to risk everything on the basis of blind hope.

After all, it is easy to gamble with lives when they are not yours.