Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, May 17, 2012

Oh, by the way, Iran's leader said he wants to destroy Israel

And defeat the US, too.

From Israel HaYom:

Israel has, for years, cautioned against Iran's intentions and the dangers of its nuclear ambitions, but on Wednesday former Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar gave the world yet another reason to heed those warnings. Aznar, speaking to a crowd in Jerusalem, recalled a meeting with Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in which he expressed his intention to destroy Israel.

"In a private discussion we held in Tehran in October of 2000, Ali Khamenei told me that Israel must be burned to the ground and made to disappear from the face of the Earth," Aznar told the audience. The former Spanish prime minister went on to say that Iran's spiritual leader also said that "Iran's war against the United States and Israel is inevitable."

Aznar was in Israel as a guest of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, currently headed by former Israeli ambassador to the United Nations Dr. Dore Gold.

Gold asked him, "When Khamenei was talking about wiping Israel off the map, was he referring to a gradual historical process involving the collapse of the Zionist state, or rather its physical-military termination?"

Aznar answered, "He meant physical termination through military force." The former Spanish leader also told the crowd that Khamenei described Israel as "an historical cancer, an anomaly," and said that he was "working toward Iran defeating the United States and Israel in an inevitable war against them."

This is only surprising to Juan Cole's acolytes, who won't believe it anyway.

Abbas targets corruption - but only of his enemies

Ma'an reports:

A former adviser to late President Yasser Arafat is accused of embezzling tens of millions of dollars, the head of the PA anti-corruption commission said Wednesday.

Rafiq Natsheh told Ma'an his commission sought an international arrest warrant for Muhammad Rashid after he failed to respond to earlier summons by the foreign and justice ministers.

Rashid, who was an economic adviser to Arafat, is accused of embezzling money from the Palestinian Investment Fund by setting up front companies.

Corruption in the Palestine Investment Fund? That rings a bell:

[T]he Palestine Investment Fund [is] a sovereign wealth fund that Abbas controls through a board he handpicked and whose by-laws he rewrote. Since 2006, the PIF has awarded contracts exclusively to Abbas’s cronies, including his sons, Yasser and Tareq. The PIF-backed Wataniya cellular phone company, which drew on international-donor funding, inked a lucrative advertising contract with Tareq, while his brother Yasser sat on its board.

The Abbas family is now said to be worth millions, with lavish property holdings and investments throughout the Middle East.

Moreover, the Abbas machine quietly enriches Hamas as it enriches itself. According to a former Palestinian Authority adviser, Yasser Abbas staffed the Karni Crossing cargo terminal in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip with the stated purpose of ensuring that goods and aid reached Gaza without reaching Hamas. But the customs and border unit at the crossing is not on the Palestinian Authority payroll, and it abuses its monopoly on Gaza’s only cargo terminal to pocket fees and kick them back to Hamas.

The pieces all fit together when you read Challah Hu Akbar's great reporting of the issue:

In February I reported that the Palestinian Authority was targeting Mohammad Rashid, a former advisor to Yasir Arafat. At the time Rashid was being targeted for his alleged ties to InLightPress, a website critical of the Palestinian Authority and Mahmoud Abbas, which the Palestinian Authority blocked access to along with a number of other websites.

However, the targeting of Rachid has been ongoing for a number of years.

Mohammed Rashid is an Iraqi Kurd, who was Yasir Arafat’s senior economic adviser. He was formerly the head of the Palestine Investment Fund, however, he resigned in October 2004. In March 2008, Ahmad Al-Mughani, the Attorney General of the Palestinian Authority, began an investigation into Rashid’s finances.

It isn't that the PA is rooting out corruption. They are only going after people who are already on their enemy list and using corruption as an excuse. (Not that Rashid isn't corrupt - he probably is. But so is Abbas.)

Latest nonsense from Shlomo Sand - "The Land of Israel is a myth"

Shlomo Sand, the academic with no background in history who wrote an absurdly ridiculous book "The Invention of the Jewish People" to much acclaim by anti-semites, has now come out with a new piece of fiction masquerading as scholarship.

And the anti-Zionists are lapping it up.

I don't have the book, titled "The Invention of the Land of Israel," but Yossi Gurwitz's worshipful review at 972mag shows enough to prove that this book is as absurd as Sand's previous work (and that Gurwitz is as much of a fraud as Sand is.)

As with the previous book, when Sand makes a blanket statement as fact, all one needs to do is provide a single counterexample to prove that he is a fraud. And as with his previous work, it is trivial to do exactly that.

The heart of Sand’s thesis is the intentional confusion in Zionism between the Halachic – Jewish law – concept of Eretz Israel (“The Land of Israel”, EI) and the concept of a place which is under Jewish sovereignty, and yearning for such a place. “Eretz Israel” is, originally, a Talmudic concept – not a biblical one – which delineates it as a territory that imposes extra religious obligations on Jews living in it, which Jews living outside of it are unburdened of.

Really? There was no concept of Eretz Yisrael in the Bible? It originated in the Talmud?

Tell that to Ezekiel, who quoted God as using that exact term when delineating the borders of the Land in Ezekiel 47.

The term is also used in Ezekiel 40:2, in 1 Samuel 13:19, and in 2 Chronicles 34:7.

Of course, for much of the times of the Prophets, it was divided into two kingdoms - Israel and Judah. The latter phrase is used another half dozen times in the Bible. Moreover, the phrase "Kingdom of Israel" was used a number of times, as it was more specific designation than "Land of Israel."

Is that enough to show that Sand is just making stuff up? Well, there's more:

The rabbis came up with the Three Vows, which forbade Jews from massively emigrating to Eretz Israel, forbade them from rebelling against the nations of the world (it’s worth noting the rabbis, servitors of the emperors, gave divine sanction to their rule), and the third vow is directed at the nations: “That they should not enslave Israel too much.” Rabbinical Judaism left Eretz Israel behind. Sand quotes some later rabbis who opposed emigrating to EI since the Halachic demands on those living in it are very high, and failure to meet them would make the land impure.

The Three Oaths are based on a Midrash and it is far from clear that they are legally binding. But even here Sand is being deceptive, because the relevant oath was not against Jews "massively emigrating to Eretz Israel" but against "storming the wall." What that exactly means is not clear but it probably means forcibly returning to Israel by war.

The Talmudic discussion about this Midrash was referring to the desire of a single rabbi to move to Israel, not a "massive emigration."

It was clearly not forbidden for Jews to move to Israel, because many of these rabbis who Sand say ignored the Land did in fact make aliyah. Encyclopedia Judaica gives details:

During the time of the Second Temple there were many immigrants to Ereẓ Israel. A famous example is the aliyah of Hillel, who went from Babylonia (Pes. 66a) poor and without means, and later became the head of the Sanhedrin (Suk. 20a), founding a long line of nesi'im (see *nasi). One of the high priests appointed by Herod was Hananel ha-Bavli, i.e., of Babylonia. Aliyah, mainly from Babylonia, did not cease after the destruction of the Second Temple (70 c.e.). Sources cite many immigrant scholars who achieved a prominent place in the Jewish community of Ereẓ Israel. In the third generation of tannaim after the destruction of the Temple (110–135 c.e.), Hanan ha-Miẓri ("of Egypt"; Yoma 63b) and Yose b. Dormaskos, who went from Damascus (Sif. Deut. 1), are mentioned. The next generation (135–170 c.e.) included R. Johanan ha-Sandelar of Alexandria (tj, Ḥag. 3:1, 78d) and R. Nathan ha-Bavli, who was the son of the exilarch in Babylonia. Among the fifth generation of tannaim are (170–200) R. Ḥiyya the Great, the disciple and colleague of Judah ha-Nasi (Er. 73a), and Issi b. Judah (Pes. 113b), both of whom emigrated from Babylonia, and Menahem the Gaul (i.e., France; tj, Ber. 4:4, 8b).

Aliyah from Babylonia did not cease in the amoraic period, despite the fact that the great centers of Jewish scholarship were located there. Of the first generation of amoraim (220–250), R. Ḥanina b. Ḥama, a disciple of Judah ha-Nasi and one of the greatest amoraim in Ereẓ Israel, emigrated from Babylonia (tj, Pe'ah 7:4, 20a). In the second generation (250–290), Eleazar b. Pedat, rosh yeshivah in Tiberias (Ḥul. 111b), R. Zakkai (tj, Shab. 7:1, 9a) and R. Ḥiyya b. Joseph (Ḥul. 54a), who emigrated from Babylonia, and Ḥinena Kartigna'ah (of Carthage; tj, Shab. 16:2, 15c) are mentioned. The latter attests emigration from Africa. Two amoraim called Rav Kahana also emigrated from Babylonia (Zev. 59a). There was a particularly large aliyah among the third generation of amoraim (290–320), some of the immigrants forming the leadership of the Jewish community in Ereẓ Israel. Prominent among them were: R. Abba (Ket. 112a); R. Avina (tj, Shev. 4:2, 35a); R. Oshaiah and his brother Hananiah (Sanh. 14a); R. Assi, the colleague of R. Ammi, who was rosh yeshivah of Tiberias (mk 25a); R. Zera, a central figure of both Talmuds (Ket. 112a); R. Ḥiyya b. Abba (Shab. 105b); and R. Ḥelbo (Yev. 64b; tj, Ta'an. 2:1, 65a); R. Yudan of Gaul (Lev. R. 20:4); R. Jeremiah, who later became rosh yeshivah at Tiberias (Ket. 75a); R. Samuel b. Isaac (tj, Ber. 3:5, 6d); R. Samuel of Cappadocia in Asia Minor (Ḥul. 27b); R. Simlai (tj, Pes. 5:3, 32a); and others. In the fourth generation (320–350) the well-known immigrants included: Ray Huna b. R. Avin (tj, rh 2:2, 59a), R. Haggai (mk, 25a), R. Yudan of Cappadocia (tj, Ber. 3:1, 6a), and R. Kahana (tj, rh 2:6, 59b).

So far from Sand's thesis that the rabbis abandoned Israel and discouraged aliyah, many prominent members of their ranks actually moved to Israel themselves. If the Land of Israel was unimportant in Talmudic times, why would they do that?

Oh well, Sand is proven a liar again. And his selective quoting of "some later rabbis" discouraging aliyah is shown to be more of an anomaly than a mainstream view, and proves that he is using sources selectively.

As the article goes on to say, it was Christian persecution of Jews in Israel that slowed aliyah down dramatically after this, not any supposed "oath" based on a non-halachic midrash. Indeed, Maimonides himself - who counseled the Jews of Yemen not to rebel against their rulers based on his interpretation of the three oaths - moved to Israel himself, and Nachmanides declared moving to Israel to be obligatory.

All of this of course predated Zionism by the better part of a millennium.

So Sand is again shown to be an academic fraud, cherry picking sources that he pretends proves his point and even taking them out of context when it suits him.

The only people who take him seriously are those who desperately want to believe him, because they have already made up their minds that Zionism is the world's biggest evil.

Israel's space program (Scientific American)

Pretty cool:

The Israeli space program is a minuscule operation compared to NASA or the European Space Agency—not surprising for a nation with about the land area and population of New Jersey. “The Israeli Space Agency does not have its own industries,” Hershkowitz says. “It’s just a very small body that coordinates in the activities of the other industries, and also coordinates between the civilian and the military applications.” To do that, he says, the agency has an annual budget of about $50 million. Israel’s presence in space is defined primarily by a network of Earth observation, communication and reconnaissance satellites. But Hershkowitz notes that his nation takes the overall enterprise of scientific research quite seriously. Israel leads the world in terms of percentage of GDP spent on research and development, and he notes that by some criteria its space program is fairly advanced:

"In fact, nowadays Israel belongs to the very exclusive club of about 10 countries in the world that have all capabilities in space. When we say all, I mean producing satellites, both the bus and the payload, launching them and communicating with them. There are only about 10 such states in the world, and Israel belongs to that exclusive club."

Hershkowitz estimates that “close to half of what we invest nowadays in space has to do with scientific applications and civilian applications,” such as monitoring water pollution and soil conditions for agriculture. But he acknowledges that Middle East turmoil will ensure that reconnaissance remains a top priority:

"I think that Israel will continue to be in a leading position in observation satellites, and that’s because of our strategic needs. With observation satellites, of course I would focus on the TecSAR satellites, which are based on radar. This is today the cutting-edge technology; Israel is very much in a leading position. Some of the abilities are still even secret, because you don’t want to reveal the ability of what you can see through."

This is about Israel's official space program. It doesn't even cover the Israeli entry for the Google Lunar X Prize competition. Here's their webpage, although I don't see any recent updates.

(h/t Brian at Israellycool)

Iranian physicist sentenced to prison for spying with no evidence

From Nature:

Omid Kokabee, an Iranian graduate student who has been imprisoned in Tehran for the past 15 months, was sentenced to 10 years on Sunday for allegedly conspiring with foreign countries against Iran.

Judge Abolghasem Salavati of Branch 15 of Tehran's Revolution Court — who is famous for his harsh sentences — tried 10 to 15 people in the same trial, under the collective charge of collaborating with Israel’s intelligence agency, Mossad.

Kokabee, a graduate student who previously worked on the physics of optics at the Institute of Photonic Sciences (ICFO) in Barcelona, Spain, and more recently at the University of Texas in Austin, was arrested in Tehran in February 2011 on charges of “communicating with a hostile government” and “illegal earnings” (see 'A year in jail without trial for Iranian student accused of spying').

Close contacts of Kokabee in Iran have lamented the fact that no proof was presented at the trial to justify the sentence. Whereas other prisoners in the group declared themselves guilty in a television broadcast on the evening before the trial, the physics student has consistently denied all charges and refused to speak in court. (Faces are obscured in the broadcast, but Kokabee may be the person who appears at 24 seconds in a blue shirt.) He plans to appeal the sentence, according to his contacts.

International concern

Since Nature first highlighted Kokabee's case (see ‘Missing physicist may have been jailed in Iran’), various organizations have written to the Iranian authorities asserting his innocence and asking for a fair trial — including the Committee of Concerned Scientists, a human-rights group based in New York; the American Physical Society in College Park, Maryland; and a group of four international optics organizations. His case has been included as a cause for concern in the report of Ahmed Shaheed, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on human rights in Iran.

In an open letter written while in prison, Kokabee claimed that the authorities were trying to obtain his “collaboration” through threats to him and his family; in another, he insisted that he was not a political activist, something that his friends confirm. Kokabee’s friends speculate that his frequent trips to Iran — totalling four or five in 2010 — may have aroused the suspicions of the Iranian authorities.

“This will send chills through the Iranian higher-education system, particularly scholars and students who seek to enhance and expand their horizons abroad,” says Hadi Ghaemi, a physicist previously at City University in New York and director of the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, an association that has recently promoted an initiative for imprisoned students.

Maybe he should try a hunger strike. I'm sure that would be effective in an enlightened government like Iran's.

(h/t L. King)

Former PA Mufti says Jerusalem not holy to Jews

From Al Arabiya via MEMRI:

Following are excerpts from an interview with former PA Mufti Sheik Ikrima Sabri, which aired on Al-Arabiya TV on May 11, 2012:

Interviewer: Do you agree that in Jerusalem, there are places that are holy to the Muslims, the Jews and the Christians?

Ikrima Sabri: No, not to the Jews. I didn't say to the Jews. Omar Ibn Al-Khattab didn't find any synagogues of the Jews. There weren't any.

Interviewer: So in your opinion, today there are no places whatsoever in Jerusalem that are holy to the Jews?

Ikrima Sabri: No, none. They build new synagogues, but there are no archaeological remains [pertaining to the Jews]. For many years, they have been digging for archaeological remains, but they haven't found anything. How can we acknowledge something when they themselves admit that they have found nothing?

Except for this. And this. And this. And this. And this. And this....

And that's only from the past couple of years.

Why peace is impossible, reason #6350

Two articles in the mainstream Arabic press about yesterday's "Nakba Day" prove that as long as Israel exists in any form, Arabs will not accept it. No matter what.

The first comes from the popular pan-Arab Al Quds al Arabi site. The title is all you need to know: "The 64-Year Occupation of Palestine." If the "occupation" is 64 years old, that means that even if Israel accedes to all the current PLO demands, there will still not be peace.

The second comes from Jordan's Addastour site, which is titled "Palestine Nakba is a dagger in the side of the Arab nation." It goes through a ridiculous history lesson (did you know that one reason Arabs fled Palestine is because the Jews stole their water?) but the main point is that Israel is a dagger that must be removed for the Arab people to be healed.

This is a critical point that Westerners cannot quite grasp. The conflict is not solvable. The Arab masses, brought up on generations of hate, are not going to accept Israel peacefully. The best anyone can hope for is a series of tactical truces and long term management of the conflict. And it is Israeli strength, not Israeli concessions, that is a prerequisite to having the Arab nations (including the PLO) grudgingly accept that Israel cannot be defeated and learn to deal with it.

Gaza export totals this season

From Israel's COGAT:

During the current season, more than 600 tons of strawberries, 250 tons of tomatoes, 50 tons of pepper and approximately 10,000,000 flowers, were exported thus far.

This is besides the 2000 sweaters exported yesterday to England and the furniture exports earlier this year.

If you are famous fact-challenged academic Juan Cole, this adds up to "zero."

Sorry, BDSers, but Israel's economy continues to grow

From Globes:

The Israeli economy grew by 3% on an annualized basis in the first quarter of 2012, the Central Bureau of Statistics reported today. The growth rate was above the 2.5% growth predicted in a "Bloomberg" poll of analysts, GDP growth in the first quarter was nevertheless less than in the two preceding quarters: 3.2% in the fourth quarter of 2011 and 3.3% in the third quarter.

The Central Bureau of Statistics said that GDP growth in the first quarter was due to higher exports and imports of goods and services, and higher private consumption, investment in fixed assets, and modest growth in public spending.

The GDP growth report includes some worrying data, however. Business product growth fell to 2.8% in the first quarter from 3.5% in the preceding quarter and 4.5% in the third quarter of 2011. The figure highlights the slowdown in the business sector, the economy's growth engine.

The good news is that, despite the worsening crisis in Europe, exports of goods and services rose by an annualized 14.2% in the first quarter, after falling by 0.2% in the preceding quarter. Exports of services rose by an annualized 45% in the first quarter (9.7% on a quarterly basis), and industrial exports, excluding diamonds, rose by 4.8%. Agricultural exports rose by an annualized 18.9% in the first quarter.

Sorry, haters, but it does not appear that BDS is making a dent in Israel's economy.

In fact, on a daily basis, individual Israeli companies seem to be making deals that are worth more than the entire loss to Israel's economy from BDS in a decade of loud posturing and next to zero accomplishments.

"Muslim Brotherhood sent convoy of doctors to mutilate girls"

From Bikya Masr:

A number of Egyptian human rights groups have submitted a communication to the Attorney General Abdel Meguid Mahmoud against the Muslim Brotherhood`s political arm, the Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) to investigate the complaints of people in the village of Abu Aziz in the Minya governorate, south of Cairo, over the existence of a large medical convoy organized by the party that wanders streets and does medical examination on people, including female circumcision, or female genital mutilation, in violation of Egyptian law, conventions and treaties signed by Egypt.

In Egypt’s legal code, Female Genital Mutilation is criminalized, as well as the inciting by doctors to convince families of the young girls of the need to agree to circumcise their daughters, “as a matter of preserving chastity.”

The communication demanded Mervat Tallawy, the head of the National Council for Women (NCW) and Major General Seraj EL Din El Rouby, the Governor of Minya, and Nasr El Sayed , Assistant Minister for primary health care, and preventive medicine, and family planning, to intervene to stop what it called “a farce propaganda for free circumcision, which was organized by one of the political parties, in Minya governorate to promote circumcision.”

The communication came after reports were circulated on news websites and social networking websites, including Facebook and Twitter about a convoy organized by the FJP to promote circumcision among girls in Minya.

It is unclear whether the story is true. The FJP denies it:

The Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) Minya Secretary Dr. Diaa El-Maghazy said, "This report is completely false. The newspaper has republished it, although the FJP and Minya province health officials did refute the claims when first published by other papers and certain websites, three weeks ago".

El-Maghazy affirmed that the medical convoy in question was absolutely innocent, pointing out that it was organized and run under the supervision of Ministry of Health officials, and included the local Health Office Manager, the Vice President of the city's board of trustees and a member of the local health unit.

Al Arabiya reports on the Egyptian media claims about the convoy.

Recently, an FJP member of Parliament voiced support for female genital mutilation so it is plausible that this medical convoy was doing things that are a bit unsavory; perhaps when asked, or perhaps volunteering. As the above story illustrates there seem to be many doctors in Egypt who recommend FGM for their patients.

In the Arab world where rumors spread quickly, it is hard to know the truth and even respected newspapers are susceptible to printing unsubstantiated facts.

Different prisoner agreement lessons between Arabic and English

From Ma'an, by Ali Sawafta of Reuters:

Standing up to Israel through non-violent resistance can produce encouraging results, Palestinians said Tuesday, after a prisoner hunger strike produced some Israeli concessions.

The deal under which thousands of prisoners agreed Monday to end a month-long fast against Israel's prison policy was struck on the eve of Nakba (catastrophe) Day that marks Israel's founding in a 1948 war when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled or were driven out of their homes.

To some, the hunger strike proved the value of "popular resistance" as favored by President Mahmoud Abbas and Fatah. But his rivals in Hamas said their own confrontational attitude had paid dividends.

Some Palestinians said Israel was used to meeting violence with violence, but less adept at countering non-violent tactics.

"The prime lesson here is that resistance, unity and solidarity can bear fruit for the political movement," said West Bank political analyst Hani al-Masri. "Resistance, unity and determination can bring about results."

There are a few two problems with this thesis.

One is that the hunger strikes were accompanied with threats from all parts of Palestinian Arab leadership, from Abbas through Hamas, saying that if any hunger strikers die there will be a huge breakout of violence against Israel (and the Red Cross and UN.)

Another is that this "non-violent" lesson does not seem to be what Palestinian Arab media in Arabic is writing. I could not find this Reuters story in any Palestinian Arab newspaper, only this Egyptian one.

And at the same time that this story was published, Hamas threatened to kidnap more soldiers for more prisoner swaps. I guess they didn't get the memo that "nonviolent resistance" is the way to go.

Moreover, Islamic Jihad took a much different lesson from the episode of the hunger strikers: that Israel is fragile and easily defeated.

Spokesman for al-Quds Brigades, Abu Ahmed, said in that prisoners are the fuel of the confrontation and the leaders of each stage, pointing out that the victory was a new quantum leap, and proved again that the occupying entity is fragile and defeated.

"We have proved the prisoners are able to defeat their enemy, who boasts of his power yet his army is defeated in front of the whole world," he said.

He added: "The issue of prisoners will remain at the top of the priorities of the resistance forces at the top of Al-Quds Brigades," noting that they will spare no effort in order to ensure their freedom by force and that the enemy does not understand the other language."

Here is another case where the Palestinian Arabs seem to give one message to eager Westerners anxious to pretend that the culture of non-violence is widespread throughout the territories, and a different language altogether to their own people.

What Happened to Israel's Reputation? (Oren) (updated)

Nice piece in WSJ by Michael Oren. Since it will be paywalled soon, I'm posting the entire article.

This year Israel is celebrating . . . a series of accomplishments that have surely exceeded the expectations of its most visionary founders. It is one of the most powerful small nations in history. . . . [It] has tamed an arid wilderness [and] welcomed 1.25 million immigrants. . . . The Israelis themselves did the fighting, the struggling, the sacrificing in order to perform the greatest feat of all—forging a new society . . . in which pride and confidence have replaced the despair engendered by age-long suffering and persecution.

So Life magazine described Israel on the occasion of its 25th birthday in May 1973. In a 92-page special issue, "The Spirit of Israel," the magazine extolled the Jewish state as enlightened, robustly democratic and hip, a land of "astonishing achievement" that dared "to dream the dream and make that dream come alive."

Life told the story of Israel's birth from the Bible through the Holocaust and the battle for independence. "The Arabs' bloodthirsty threats," the editors wrote, "lend a deadly seriousness to the vow: Never Again." Four pages documented "Arab terrorist attacks" and the three paragraphs on the West Bank commended Israeli administrators for respecting "Arab community leaders" and hiring "tens of thousands of Arabs." The word "Palestinian" scarcely appeared.

There was a panoramic portrayal of Jerusalem, described as "the focus of Jewish prayers for 2,000 years" and the nucleus of new Jewish neighborhoods. Life emphasized that in its pre-1967 borders, Israel was "a tiny, parched, scarcely defensible toe-hold." The edition's opening photo shows a father embracing his Israeli-born daughter on an early "settlement," a testament to Israel's birthright to the land.

Would a mainstream magazine depict the Jewish state like this today, during the week of its 64th birthday?

Unlikely. Rather, readers would learn about Israel's overwhelming military might, brutal conduct in warfare and eroding democratic values—plus the Palestinians' plight and Israeli intransigence. The photographs would show not cool students and cutting-edge artists but soldiers at checkpoints and religious radicals.

Why has Israel's image deteriorated? After all, Israel today is more democratic and—despite all the threats it faces—even more committed to peace.

Some claim that Israel today is a Middle Eastern power that threatens its neighbors, and that conservative immigrants and extremists have pushed Israel rightward. Most damaging, they contend, are Israel's policies toward the territories it captured in the 1967 Six-Day War, toward the peace process and the Palestinians, and toward the construction of settlements.

Israel may seem like Goliath vis-à-vis the Palestinians, but in a regional context it is David. Gaza is host to 10,000 rockets, many of which can hit Tel Aviv, and Hezbollah in Lebanon has 50,000 missiles that place all of Israel within range. Throughout the Middle East, countries with massive arsenals are in upheaval. And Iran, which regularly pledges to wipe Israel off the map, is developing nuclear weapons. Israel remains the world's only state that is threatened with annihilation.

Whether in Lebanon, the West Bank or Gaza, Israel has acted in self-defense after suffering thousands of rocket and suicide attacks against our civilians. Few countries have fought with clearer justification, fewer still with greater restraint, and none with a lower civilian-to-militant casualty ratio. Israel withdrew from Lebanon and Gaza to advance peace only to receive war in return.

Whereas Israelis in 1973 viewed the creation of a Palestinian state as a mortal threat, it is now the official policy of the Israeli government. Jewish men of European backgrounds once dominated Israel, but today Sephardic Jews, Arabs and women are prominent in every facet of society. This is a country where a Supreme Court panel of two women and an Arab convicted a former president of sexual offenses. It is the sole Middle Eastern country with a growing Christian population. Even in the face of immense security pressures, Israel has never known a second of nondemocratic rule.

In 1967, Israel offered to exchange newly captured territories for peace treaties with Egypt and Syria. The Arab states refused. Israel later evacuated the Sinai, an area 3.5 times its size, for peace with Egypt, and it conceded land and water resources for peace with Jordan.

In 1993, Israel recognized the Palestinian people ignored by Life magazine, along with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), the perpetrator of those "Arab terrorist attacks." Israel facilitated the creation of a Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Gaza and armed its security forces. Twice, in 2000 and 2008, Israel offered the Palestinians a state in Gaza, virtually all of the West Bank, and East Jerusalem. In both cases, the Palestinians refused. Astonishingly, in spite of the Palestinian Authority's praise for terror, a solid majority of Israelis still support the two-state solution.

Israel has built settlements (some before 1973), and it has removed some to promote peace, including 7,000 settlers to fulfill the treaty with Egypt. Palestinians have rebuffed Israel's peace offers not because of the settlements—most of which would have remained in Israel anyway, and which account for less than 2% of the West Bank—but because they reject the Jewish state. When Israel removed all settlements from Gaza, including their 9,000 residents, the result was a terrorist ministate run by Hamas, an organization dedicated to killing Jews world-wide.

Nevertheless, Israeli governments have transferred large areas to the Palestinian Authority and much security responsibility to Palestinian police. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has removed hundreds of checkpoints, eased the Gaza land blockade and joined President Obama in calling for the resumption of direct peace talks without preconditions. Addressing Congress, Mr. Netanyahu declared that the emergence of a Palestinian state would leave some settlements beyond Israel's borders and that "with creativity and with good will a solution can be found" for Jerusalem.

Given all this, why have anti-Israel libels once consigned to hate groups become media mainstays? How can we explain the assertion that an insidious "Israel Lobby" purchases votes in Congress, or that Israel oppresses Christians? Why is Israel's record on gay rights dismissed as camouflage for discrimination against others?

The answer lies in the systematic delegitimization of the Jewish state. Having failed to destroy Israel by conventional arms and terrorism, Israel's enemies alit on a subtler and more sinister tactic that hampers Israel's ability to defend itself, even to justify its existence.

It began with PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat's 1974 speech to the U.N., when he received a standing ovation for equating Zionism with racism—a view the U.N. General Assembly endorsed the following year. It gained credibility on college campuses through anti-Israel courses and "Israel Apartheid Weeks." It burgeoned through the boycott of Israeli scholars, artists and athletes, and the embargo of Israeli products. It was perpetuated by journalists who published doctored photos and false Palestinian accounts of Israeli massacres.

Israel must confront the acute dangers of delegitimization as it did armies and bombers in the past. Along with celebrating our technology, pioneering science and medicine, we need to stand by the facts of our past. "The Spirit of Israel" has not diminished since 1973—on the contrary, it has flourished. The state that Life once lionized lives even more vibrantly today.

I would say that the plot to delegitimize Israel came a few years before the 1974 speech, in 1968, but otherwise this is right on.

I could not find the Life article online, alas. But here's a copy of the cover (h/t Brad):

(h/t David G)

UPDATE: I found the link the the 1968 PLO document I was referring to.

Lawrence of Judea

An interesting 2009 article by Martin Gilbert:

T.E. Lawrence—better known in Britain and throughout the Middle East as Lawrence of Arabia—was a lifelong friend of Arab national aspirations. In 1917 and 1918 he participated as a British officer in the Arab revolt against the Turks, a revolt led by Sharif Hussein, later King of the Hedjaz. He was also an adviser to Hussein’s son Feisal, whom he hoped to see on the throne of Syria. For generations of British Arabists, Lawrence was and remains a symbol of British understanding of and support for the Arab cause. Virtually unknown, however, is his understanding of and support for Jewish national aspirations in the same era....

[I]ndeed, Lawrence’s view of the potential evolution of the Jewish National Home in British Mandate Palestine was far from hostile to Jewish hopes. In an article entitled “The Changing East,” published in the influential Round Table magazine in 1920, Lawrence wrote of “the Jewish experiment” in Palestine that it was “a conscious effort, on the part of the least European people in Europe, to make head against the drift of the ages, and return once more to the Orient from which they came.”

Lawrence noted of the new Jewish immigrants: “The colonists will take back with them to the land which they occupied for some centuries before the Christian era samples of all the knowledge and technique of Europe. They propose to settle down amongst the existing Arabic-speaking population of the country, a people of kindred origin, but far different social condition. They hope to adjust their mode of life to the climate of Palestine, and by the exercise of their skill and capital to make it as highly organized as a European state.”

As Lawrence envisaged it in his Round Table article, this settlement would be done in a way that would be beneficial to the Arabs. “The success of their scheme,” he wrote of the Zionists, “will involve inevitably the raising of the present Arab population to their own material level, only a little after themselves in point of time, and the consequences might be of the highest importance for the future of the Arab world. It might well prove a source of technical supply rendering them independent of industrial Europe, and in that case the new confederation might become a formidable element of world power.”

Which is exactly how the Zionists at the time felt.

(h/t Aaron)

And now...FemTechWashing

More hasbara from the US Embassy in Israel.

Iran executes "Israeli spy"

From BBC:

Majid Jamali Fashi, 24, was convicted of killing Professor Massoud Ali Mohammadi by detonating a bomb outside his home in January 2010.

Fashi was also accused of being a spy for the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad and receiving $120,000 (£72,000) for the killing.

Israel does not comment on such claims.

"Majid Jamali Fashi, the Mossad spy and the person who assassinated Masoud Ali Mohammadi, our nation's nuclear scientist was hanged on Tuesday morning," Iran's Irna news agency reported.

Professor Massoud Ali Mohammadi was a particle physics professor at Tehran University. He is one of several high-profile nuclear scientists to have been killed in Tehran in recent years.

Iran has repeatedly accused Israel and the US of trying to harm its nuclear programme.

Fashi, who was tried and convicted in August 2011, appeared on Iranian TV in January confessing to the professor's killing, and giving details of the intelligence gathering operation he said he was involved in.

Opposition sources in Iran have accused the government of killing Professor Mohammadi because he was one of their supporters.

Al Arabiya adds that he was convicted of Moharebeh (waging war against God) and notes "Western analysts said Ali-Mohammadi, a 50-year-old Tehran University professor, had little, if any, role in Iran’s sensitive nuclear program. A spokesman for Iran’s Atomic Energy Organisation said at the time he was not involved in its activities."

The Mossad may have been involved in the assassination, but it is far from certain that Fashi had anything to do with it.

Sounds like an Iranian hit job where they got the opportunity to kill 2 people they wanted to get rid of.

(h/t John W.)