Chance to win a free apartment in Jerusalem

Raffle tickets are a little pricey at $360 each, but it goes to a good cause.

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Jordanian prince speaks at William and Mary

It is an interesting speech. Although it seems that Hassan is certainly moderate compared to almost all other Arabs, this "moderation" still would be considered extreme if a mirror of these views were expressed by Israelis.

His interest in unity for Muslims happens to be shared by Hamas and Al Qaeda, although I'm sure his vision is more secular. He states offhandedly that he is for Palestinian "right of return" which means the destruction of Israel. He frankly speaks about Arab problems but his solutions do not include the possibility of Jews having their own land in a final Middle East solution. And he seems to have no problem ignoring Jordan's history of killing thousands of Palestinian Arabs.

But he's moderate enough to get an honorary doctorate!

WILLIAMSBURG -- With humor and urgency, former Jordanian Crown Prince El Hassan bin Talal pushed for unity in the world's Arab and Islamic regions Friday, in an address at the College of William and Mary's Commonwealth Auditorium.

He offered Mecca, Saudi Arabia, not only as a place of Islamic ritual and pilgrimage but as a place where Islamic nations could gather in an annual conference - "a conference on everything from stem cell research to opposition to terror," El Hassan said.

"I don't want to be told by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi how to think," he said, as a moderate or centrist who feels more like a radical these days. He referred to the leader of the al-Qaida in Iraq terrorist organization.

"Real conversations have to develop between Arabs and Arabs, Arabs and Muslims, Sunni and Shia - 'Sunny Muslims' - but maybe I just belong to the Cloudy Muslims."

El Hassan was the brother and closest adviser to Jordan's late King Hussein. He's a veteran advocate for Middle East peace and cooperation among all faiths and cultures. He also helps lead humanitarian organizations like the World Conference on Religion and Peace and the International Crisis Group.

In the packed auditorium, the spirited prince fielded questions on the effects of the U.S. invasion of Iraq on Jordan and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

"We're good hosts to refugees," he said of Jordan. There are more than 250,000 Iraqis now in Jordan, he said, including the megarich, the middle class - academics and doctors who fled persecution by insurgents - and the unemployed. "The threat of the movement of extremism is not so far beneath the surface. We happen to be Iraq's neighbor."

He hoped for an Arab capital in part of a greater Jerusalem - an international city like Brussels, Belgium, was for the Flemish.

It's perhaps a pipe dream, he said, but he would extend a right of return to Palestinians. But he also wondered whether Jews might have the right to return to other Arab lands.

He said, "We're really all hypocrites in our part of the world - Israel and all the Arab communities included. It's about time to smell the coffee."

Old Dominion University will give El Hassan an honorary doctorate Monday.

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Faux pas trifecta (Diana West, Washington Times Op-Ed)

Interesting article about the incredibly naive "listening tour" that President Bush sent Karen Hughes on.

Faux pas trifecta

By Diana West
September 30, 2005

The president's confidante has been on a "listening tour" to "start a conversation with the rest of the world"—namely, the Muslim world, beginning with Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Turkey — but there were too many times when she just didn't know what to say.
A Washington Post anecdote from Day One captures the disconnect. Asked in Egypt whether she was going to meet with the Muslim Brotherhood, the Mubarak-banned opposition party with deep roots in terrorism and the catchy motto — "Allah is our objective. The Prophet is our leader. The Qur'an is our law. Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope" — Mrs. Hughes "turned uncertainly to an aide and indicated she was wasn't quite sure of the answer. The aide whisperedbackand Hughes replied,'We arerespectfulof Egypt's laws.' "
I guess that means no, but the non-denial denial is open to interpretation. Maybe she wanted to meet with the Muslim Brotherhood, but couldn't? Or maybe she didn't want to say something as harshly non-conversational as "no" because the popular MB might be elected one of these days. (This which would chalk one up for sharia-to-the-people — the Arab democracy doctrine of the Bush administration.) Or maybe she just didn't know.
But worse than not knowing what to say is saying too much. Or saying the wrong thing. Or even saying anything at all. Mrs. Hughes committed all of the above, a faux pas trifecta, after meeting with Sheikh Muhammad Sayyed Tantawi, the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar University, the academic center of Sunni Islam. It was a "wonderful meeting," she explained, because the two of them were able to talk "about the common language of the heart."
Oh, brother. Is this an Undersecretary of State or a sorority sister? Mrs. Hughes burbled on about the leadership of Al-Azhar "in speaking out against extremism, against terrorism, [which] is not in keeping with the tenets of Islam" — natch. The sheikh "made the point that all divine religions are built on a spirit of love," she said, "and [that] it is important that all of us work together to fight extremism, to fight terrorism." What a guy. Hearing Mrs. Hughes talk about him, you could almost forget what he said in 2002, as translated from a report by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), when he called on Palestinian Muslims to "intensify the martyrdom operations [suicide attacks] against the Zionist enemy" — men, women, and children — and described the barbarous slaughter as "the highest form of Jihad operations," and "a legitimate act according to [Islamic] law." Maybe that's the "spirit of love" Mrs. Hughes was gushing about.
Then there was what Sheikh Tantawi said in 2003, also reported by MEMRI, when he called for jihad against U.S. forces in Iraq. "Jihad is an obligation for every Muslim when Muslim countries are subject to aggression," he explained. "The gates of Jihad are open until the Day of Judgment, and he who denies this is an infidel or one who abandons his religion." This he said during a sermon at — where else? — Al-Azhar. (Speaking of Al-Azhar, MEMRI reports that Sharia faculty chief Abd Al-Sabour Shahin just last month denied that "a single Arab or Muslim" had anything to do with destroying the Empire State Building [sic] on September 11. He blamed "dirty Zionists.")
I juxtapose Mrs. Hughes' hearts-and-flowers assessment with the hate-and-fanaticism reality for a reason. Obviously, the resources available to me — the invaluable MEMRI Web site — are available to the State Department. I find it difficult to believe that Mrs. Hughes or her advisors were unaware of the jihadist incitement Sheikh Tantawi is prone to, even though he's also on record with contradictory statements. Why did the Bush administration determine that this meeting was in the best interests of our nation? If the war on terror — always a PC-punch-pulling moniker — is turning into the accommodation of terror, maybe it makes sense to make nice. There is, actually, a long tradition of such accommodation between the non-Muslim world and the Muslim world, and it is contained within the blighted history of "dhimmitude." This is the term coined by historian Bat Ye'or to describe the institutionalized inferiority of non-Muslims (dhimmi) under Muslim rule. Mrs. Hughes' paying tribute to the likes of Sheikh Tantawi is dhimmi behavior. As is, frankly, the whole "listening tour" — an ill-conceived campaign to improve Uncle Sam's "image" with a Muslim world whose opposition to a viable Israel and a free Iraq is hardly skin-deep.
Me, I'd like to see a "like it or lump it tour." But that, of course, would mean keeping up the fight.

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Best. Comment. Ever.

I was stunned at the sheer intellect and clarity of the comment put on my blog a few hours ago by a King Ubu. Best as I can tell, he was upset at something written here, and his blog has a Palestinian flag on it.

Here is his comment in its entirety:

Flock of bastards stupids! The Bin goes to eat the mother of all land of Sion!

A thing of beauty.

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Bizarre algorithm rates this blog highly

The Truth Laid Bear has evidently started a "topic list" for blogs where you can see postings on specified topics, somewhat like Technorati's tags. TTLB also ranks blogs within a topic. For reasons I cannot quite fathom, here are the top 20 blogs that talk about Israel according to their algorithm:

1. Power Line
2. Marathon Pundit
3. Desde Sefarad
4. Apropos Of Nothing
5. Doug Ross @ Journal
6. Spartacus
7. Jewish Current Issues
8. The Politburo Diktat
9. Daniel in Brookline
10. GayandRight
11. Elder of Ziyon
12. Soccer Dad
13. Donklephant
14. Bird of Paradise
15. Doubting Thomas
16. This Blog Is Full Of Crap
17. PoliPundit.com
18. Drink this...
19. THE DAILY BLITZ
20. Der Blatt

So even though I rank pretty low in TTLB's general rankings, somehow I made it to number 11 in the Israel topic blogs (today.) Why blogs like Israpundit aren't mentioned at all, I have no idea.

Maybe I'll rank higher if I write ISRAEL ISRAEL ISRAEL ISRAEL ISRAEL ISRAEL ISRAEL ISRAEL ISRAEL ISRAEL ISRAEL ISRAEL ISRAEL ISRAEL ISRAEL ISRAEL ISRAEL ISRAEL ISRAEL ISRAEL ISRAEL ISRAEL ISRAEL ISRAEL ISRAEL ISRAEL ISRAEL ISRAEL ISRAEL ISRAEL ISRAEL ISRAEL.

Worth a shot! :)

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Letter to Palestinians (Yossi Klein HaLevi)

A long article from an iconoclastic Israeli journalist that is worth reading. I disagree with his still too-optimistic conclusion but it has some excellent parts. Excerpts:

During my journey into Islam in Gaza, I met General Nasser Youssef (who at the time of our meeting was head of one of the Palestinian security forces and is now the PA Interior Minister). At one point during our conversation, I asked the general to describe his vision of the relations between a Jewish state and a Palestinian state after we signed a peace agreement.

Let's assume, I said, that Israel withdraws to the 1967 borders, uproots the settlements and redivides Jerusalem: What then? He replied that, once the refugees begin returning to the area, so many would gravitate to those areas in Israel where their families once lived, that eventually we would realize there was no need for an artificial border between Israel and Palestine.

The next step, continued the general, was that the two states would merge. "And then we'll invite Jordan to join our federation. And Iraq and Syria. Why not? We'll show the whole world what a beautiful country Jews and Arabs can create together."

But, I asked the general, aren't we negotiating today over a two-state solution? Yes, he replied, as an interim step. And then he added, "You aren't separate from us; you are part of us. Just as there are Muslim Arabs and Christian Arabs, you are Jewish Arabs."

This story is particularly relevant because General Youssef is widely known as a moderate, deeply opposed to terror as counter-productive to the Palestinian cause. And so what I learned in my journeys into your society is that moderation means one thing on the Israeli side and quite another on the Palestinian side.

AN ISRAELI moderate recognizes the Palestinian-Israeli conflict as a struggle between two legitimate national narratives.

A Palestinian moderate, by contrast, tends to disagree with the extremists about method, not goal: He opposes the destruction of Israel through terror and war, perhaps because that option isn't realistic; yet he advocates the disappearance of Israel through more gradualist means, like demographic subversion. Like General Yusuf, he sees a two state solution as an interim agreement, a step toward Greater Palestine. When your moderates speak of peace and justice, then, they usually mean a one-state solution.

My journey into the faiths of my neighbors was part of a much broader attempt among Israelis, begun during the first intifada, to understand your narrative, how the conflict looks through your eyes.

Your society, on the other hand, has made virtually no effort to understand our narrative.

Instead, you have developed what can be called a "culture of denial," that denies the most basic truths of the Jewish story. According to this culture of denial, which is widespread not only among your people but throughout the Arab world, there was no Temple in Jerusalem, no ancient Jewish presence in the land, no Holocaust.

Nowhere is The Protocols of the Elders of Zion as popular as in the Arab world, which has also become the international center for Holocaust denial.
The real problem, then, is not terrorism, which is only a symptom for a deeper affront: your assault on my history and identity, your refusal to allow me to define myself, which is a form of intellectual terror.

IN YOUR society's official embrace, through media and schools and mosques, of the culture of denial, you have tried to reinvent us, to redefine us out of our national existence.

Your political and spiritual leadership routinely insists that there is no Jewish people – only a Jewish faith, or an invented identity like General Yusuf's "Arab Jews," or an ersatz people descended from the Khazars. In so doing, you ignore how Jews have always defined themselves: as a people with a faith.

Your inability to understand who we are has been a disaster not only for us but also for you, because it has repeatedly led you to underestimate our vitality and ability to persevere. And now, it seems, you are once again about to disastrously misread the Israeli public.

According to polls, a majority of Palestinians believe that the decision to withdraw from Gaza was prompted by terror. And that conclusion may well lead you to the next round of terror.

In fact, we are leaving Gaza because a majority of Israelis concluded – already in the first intifada – that it is in our existential interest to minimize the demographic threat to a Jewish majority and the moral threat of permanent occupation to our souls. At the same time, we are strengthening our hold on those areas that we believe are essential for our well-being: the settlement blocs and greater Jerusalem.

Here, then, is the irony of what you call Al-Aksa Intifada: In choosing terror, you lost the Jerusalem capital you could have gained through negotiations.

The key to understanding the meaning of unilateral withdrawal – a point missed not only by your people but by the Israeli Right as well – is that "unilateral" is no less important than "withdrawal." Most Israelis have concluded that our Left was correct in its warnings against the moral and demographic dangers of occupation, and our Right was correct in its warnings that the Palestinian national movement had no intention of living in peace with a Jewish state in any borders. And so, if we cannot occupy you and we cannot make peace with you, the only option left to us is unilateral withdrawal and the fence – that is, determining our own borders in the absence of a negotiated peace.

The new Israeli determination to stop waiting for a nonexistent Palestinian partner and take our fate in our own hands is an Israeli, not a Palestinian, victory.

The Terror War has given Israeli society another crucial victory: a restored faith in the justness of our position. Aside from a vocal but fringe Left, most Israelis know that, at every crucial historic juncture in the last 70 years, when an offer to end the conflict was placed on the table, our side said yes and your side said no. That has given us the strength to withstand the current jihadist assault.

During the Oslo process, leaders of the Israeli peace camp assured the Israeli public, increasingly anxious over Palestinian incitement against our existence, that legitimacy would follow reconciliation – that is, first the occupation needed to end and the formal mechanics of peace implemented, and then the Palestinians would gradually accept Israel's right to exist. We now realize that the reverse is true: Legitimacy is the precondition for reconciliation.

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More words of peace from the PA

When Hamas lies and pretends to be a tiny bit more moderate, headlines explode across the globe.

When the Palestinian Authority threatens war (and says that the Palestinians are preparing for war) against Israel, the media doesn't notice. This is the only article in Google News that mentions the name "Muhammad Ranaim."

Muhammad Ranaim, a member of the Palestinian Legislative Council, and a Fatah leader, said a third intifada was very possible. "There could be a third intifada, which would be much more severe than its predecessor. This will be the intifada against the fence," he told Ynet.

Ranaim said Palestinians won't live in peace in a Palestinian state which has the settlements of Ariel and Gush Etzion "stuck in its heart," also mentioning Maaleh Adumim and the Jerusalem area.

"On this matter, we are preparing a difficult struggle for Israel. We'll go to the U.N., to the Security Council, and demand that the decisions of the court be applied regarding the separation fence. If we fail, we'll go to the General Assembly, and if we don't succeed, we have a third option, and that is more resistance, another intifada, and this will be a lot more severe than its predecessor," said Ranaim.

He added: "The resistance is a historic phenomenon created during these years, and it is created from the fact that there is no life with the occupation. If Abu Mazen does not succeed in the diplomatic path, the only option remaining is the resistance, the intifada. From my perspective, the bottom line is that Israel did not defeat the Palestinian resistance. Israel withdrew from Gaza and accepted the road map, so everyone should realize that this intifada achieved."

His words are virtually indistinguishable from those of Hamas, yet the world media still portrays the PA as being "moderate."

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Plight of Jews from Arab lands highlighted

It always amazes me to see how much attention the world pays to Palestinian refugees and their descendents, and how little to the larger number of Jewish refugees, direct victims of bigotry by Arab nations.

It is equally amazing how the Arab countries, who pride themselves on their hospitality, have kept Palestinian Arabs in refugee camps for decades while Israel, which was extraordinarily poor in the late 40s and 50s, was able to absorb the Jewish refugees.

An international conference promoting the rights of Jews from Arab lands, held in London, is intended to be the springboard for a worldwide campaign to highlight the plight of Jews who fled or were pushed out of Arab lands.

It is Hosted by the British Board of Deputies, the umbrella group of British Jewry, this conference is intended to be the springboard for a worldwide campaign to highlight the plight of Jews who fled or were pushed out of Arab lands.

The conference, held last Sunday and Monday, was attended by Jews from 14 nations across the globe. Organised by the World Organization for Jews from Arab Countries and Justice for Jews from Arab Countries, Jewish representatives from 14 nations met to create the steering committee for the International Campaign for Rights and Redress.

The conference was hosted by the Board of Deputies, the umbrella group of British Jewry.

The Jews from Arab lands were expelled or fled when Israel was created. They came from all Arab lands, eg Libya, Egypt, Syria, Morrocco, Algeria, Lebanon.

Stanley Urman, Executive Director of Justice for Jews from Arab Countries spoke about the importance of this first step. "It is a commitment by Jewish communities in 14 countries on five continents to once and for all document the historical injustice perpetrated against Jews in Arab countries," Urman said. "It is not just a theoretical and educational exercise, it is concrete."

The campaign will document and collate information about the Jews who were dispersed. Urman spoke of the need to create this campaign as attempts to collect information thus far had not been successful. "At the moment it is woefully inadequate and it will not allow anyone to assert the issue of Jewish refugees with credibility and efficiency."

Moroccan Jew craftsman

“When people speak of refugees, everyone thinks immediately of Palestinian refugees. It’s not well known that there were more Jews displaced from Arab countries (856,000) than Palestinian refugees (725,000) in 1948, according to UN estimates. It’s time for this issue to assume its rightful place on the international agenda,” Urman continued.

The displaced Jews were recognized as refugees by the United Nations, but there was virtually no international response to their plight. Palestinian refugees frequently cite UN General Assembly Resolution 181 as a justification for redress, but it is almost always forgotten that this resolution applies to Jewish refugee’s as well.

The Board of Deputies hosting this important event has given it an important stamp of approval and validation.

"We are delighted to play a key role in this crucial project," said Henry Grunwald, President of the Board of Deputies. "The plight of Jews from Arab countries is all too often a cause that we in the wider Jewish community forget, and we must act to educate and raise awareness of this important issue."

The International Campaign for Rights and Redress will launch officially in March with a special month of commemoration to highlight the torture, detention, loss of citizenship and seizure of property suffered by many Jewish refugees.

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Hamas and Assad and Al Qaeda, oh my!

Today's news is more of the same - Palestinian Arab terror and lies, Arabs blaming Israel, and not a peep from Abbas.

Syrian leader Bashir Assad told Hamas and Islamic Jihad to escalate attacks so as to take pressure off of his adventures in Lebanon and Iraq.

The terrorists seems to have gladly done so, continuing to send rockets into Israel even after their "promise" to stop.

Meanwhile, the IDF Intelligence chief says "Al-Qaeda is in Gaza," and Hamas copied a method from Qaeda's playbook by releasing a video of the Israeli they kidnapped before he was murdered.

The IDF found a weapons factory near Jenin and also arrested a Jerusalem-based Hamas liaison to Saudi Arabia Hamas terrorists (Hamas has people in SA? Hmmmm.)

Of course, amidst all these peaceful Palestinian gestures, you can always count on Hosni Mubarak to blame Israel for the stall in the "peace process."

How will Abbas react to all this? The way he always does - by doing nothing but receive more money from idiotic world governments that will eventually filter to the terrorists.

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The German who saved 7200 Jews

On September 28, 1943, two days before Rosh Hashanah, a German diplomat in Denmark, Georg Ferdinand Duckwitz, warned the Danish political leaders (one of whom later became the Danish Prime Minister, as this article indicates) that the Germans were planning to deport all of Danish Jewry to Theresienstadt within days. Duckwitz, a maritime attache, arranged for Sweden to accept the Jewish refugees and delayed the German patrol boats that would have caught the escaping Jews by placing them in dry-dock.

The citizenry of Denmark immediately worked together en masse to arrange for the incredible logistics of transporting thousands of Jews safely to Sweden in only three days. It appears that the final number saved was 7220 Jews and 680 non-Jewish relatives. Of the 500 remaining Jews that were deported, only 51 died, mostly due to Danish pressure on Germany for the well-being of their citizens.

More details can be seen in this article, with additional information here and here.

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Two Haaretz op-eds that actually make sense

Moshe Arens used to be my favorite Israeli politician before he withdrew from politics (and before Natan Sharansky emerged from the Gulag.) His stuff is worth reading.

One mistake after another
By Moshe Arens

Author and columnist Hillel Halkin, who initially had not been critical of the Oslo accords, writes in the September issue of Commentary: "It has long been obvious to all but the incurably or willfully blind that the 1993 agreement signed in Oslo between the government of Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization was a horrendous blunder on Israel's part. Rarely in history has a country so foolishly opened its gates to a Trojan horse as Israel did when it welcomed Yasser Arafat and his PLO brigades, handed over to them most of the Gaza Strip and much of the West Bank, and gave them the arms to impose their rule on the local inhabitants. How could such a mistake have been made by experienced political and military leaders?"

This probably expresses the view of most Israelis today - those who saw the Oslo accords as a major error right from the start, as well as those who supported them at the time they were signed.

After 45 years of war, belligerency and terror, and after the first intifada, one could perhaps excuse the impatience the Yitzhak Rabin government displayed with the ongoing and seemingly endless conflict - an impatience that led to caution being thrown to the wind, and the subsequent haste and disorderly process that led to the Oslo accords. The enthusiasm with which the agreement with Yasser Arafat was greeted throughout the world, together with the Nobel peace prize awarded to Rabin, Shimon Peres and Arafat, were seen by many as confirmation that the Israeli government under Rabin's leadership had finally taken a bold and courageous step toward the resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It took Arafat's erratic behavior, his dictatorial and corrupt rule over the Palestinians under his control, and a quantum leap in the level of Palestinian terror directed against the population of Israel for most Israelis to begin to come to a more sober assessment of these ill-fated accords.

Seven years after the Oslo accords, then prime minister Ehud Barak announced he was going to put an end to the intractable conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. This time, under the watchful eye of the president of the United States at Camp David, and by now presumably knowing full well with whom he was dealing, Barak made Arafat an offer he thought Arafat would not be able to refuse. Arafat was offered major concessions, which had never even been discussed in public, in return for an agreement that would "end the conflict once and for all."

When Arafat, nevertheless, turned down Barak's offer, the latter did not call it quits. With his government by now in tatters and having no mandate for the concessions he had offered, and with an election in the offing, Barak delegated his ministers to offer further concessions in a desperate attempt to reach an agreement before Israelis went to the polls. It didn't work - and not only did it fail, it turned out to be the prelude to Palestinian acts of terror against the Israeli population that set new heights in violence and brutality. It was a major blunder that, in history, will no doubt take its place alongside the Oslo accords. And again, one might ask the question: How could an experienced military leader like Barak commit such foolishness?

But, as is well known, Israelis do not give up easily. If we cannot reach an agreement with the Palestinians, we are just going to solve the problem ourselves - unilaterally. We are going to put some space between us and the Palestinians or, in other words, disengage - even if creating that space means pulling Israeli citizens out of their homes by force. It is almost incomprehensible that this ludicrous idea - that in this tiny country, in which Jews and Arabs live cheek by jowl, we can separate the peoples so as to avoid all contact - has been promoted by another experienced military man and politician, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, and has seized the imagination of many Israelis.

The fortuitous demise of Arafat, the arrival of Mahmoud Abbas as elected leader of the Palestinians, has given another boost to this idea, now embellishing it with the anticipation that disengagement will not only get Jews and Palestinians out of each others' hair, but will actually lead to peace between Israel and a Palestinian state.

As happened after the Oslo adventure, and again at the time of Barak's egregious offers to Arafat at Camp David, Sharon's disengagement plan is being praised as a bold and courageous move in much of the world, and the Nobel peace price committee is probably already preparing next year's award. But if, as seems likely at the moment, the Palestinian mini-state in Gaza turns out to be a nest of terrorist activity against Israel, the Noble prize will have to be mothballed and Israel, sobered up for the nth time, will have to go back to meeting the challenge of handing the Palestinian terrorists a decisive defeat, in the realization that this is the necessary condition for progress toward peace in the area.

Hat tip to Israpundit.

In an amazing turn of events, Haaretz also publishes a second op-ed that doesn't suffer from liberal wishful thinking:

If you lie down with missiles

By Yoel Marcus

I wonder how many times we can go on quoting Abba Eban's immortal observation that the Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity without boring the reader. But what can you do? It still fits. The Palestinians haven't learned a damn thing. They have a morbid knack for making the biggest, most stupid mistakes whenever the door opens a crack and a chance comes their way to establish a state alongside Israel. What prompted them, after the Oslo accords were signed with such pomp and circumstance, to send suicide bombers into the heart of Israeli cities? Why, the moment the Barak, Arafat and Clinton summit ended at Camp David, did they kick off the Al-Aqsa Intifada that left 4,000 people dead on both sides? What is the sense in holding a victory parade in Gaza and then firing a massive volley of Qassam rockets into territories that Israel left of its own will? What is the logic in choosing a critical time, when Sharon is fighting for his political life against rebels in his own party, to bombard Israel with 40 Qassams in one night? What do they want? An Israel led by Bibi and Uzi Landau? For a moment, it seemed that Hamas was abiding by Abu Mazen's request to silence the guns while the disengagement was under way, when Sharon made it clear there would be no withdrawal under fire. But the instant the last Israeli soldier left Gaza, the Hamas chiefs couldn't wait to take credit for "chasing out" the Israel Defense Forces and knocking down the settlements. In a bid to grab the reins when the Palestinian Authority goes to the polls in January, they've been stirring up the crowds as only they know how - until the Qassam explosion that killed 19 Palestinians and wounded 200. Hamas couldn't sell the lie that Israel was behind the blast, even to al-Jazeera. Forty Qassams launched in one night was bad news for Abu Mazen on the eve of his summit with Sharon. Condoleezza Rice raked him over the coals and demanded that he disarm Hamas. Establishing a democracy with armed militias is out of the question, he was told. An analogy would be Lehi and Etzel, Israel's pre-state militias, taking over the country by force after the establishment of the state. David Ben-Gurion, aware of this danger, not only took away the weapons of these militias, but disbanded the Palmach. Those who keep monsters at home shouldn't be surprised when their appetite grows with the eating. The goal of the Hamas leadership is to rule the PA roost. Abu Mazen appears to be too weak to enforce the one government-one army rule. He knows very well that Mussa Arafat, bumped off by Hamas, lived 200 meters from his home in Gaza. Hamas derives its power from the Palestinian street. It would be a strategic error on its part to do anything to bring Israeli artillery, tanks and planes back into firing range, now that the IDF has left the Gaza Strip and the inhabitants have been given a chance to rebuild their lives, free of the shackles of occupation. Put it this way: He who goes to bed with Qassams should not be surprised if he wakes up with a boom. Both Abu Mazen and his interior minister denounced Hamas. When its leaders tried to shift the blame on Israel, it was Abu Mazen who didn't let them get away with it: "Those who brought in combustible materials should have considered the possibility of a match being struck." Nice words, but not sufficient. The president of the Palestinian Authority has enough army and police units, and all the international backing he needs, to deploy them in Gaza in a display of strength against Hamas. Hamas has not only been lambasted by the ministers of the European Union but defined by the Bush administration as a terror organization. For Israel to make more painful concessions for the sake of an agreement, it will take more than the shameful goings-on at the convention of the Likud Central Committee, and more than last night's vote and its consequences. What is needed more than anything is a leader on the other side who is no less forceful than Sharon - a man who is prepared to fight against the extremists and the enemies of peace, and be more than a partner on paper.

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January 22, 1933: Arabs protest Jews leasing land in Transjordan

This small story from 1933 illustrates, more than anything else, the root of the "conflict" between Israel and the Arab countries.

Arabs do not want Jews to own or control land in the Middle East.

Everything else - pretending to care about Palestinian refugees, or about "war crimes", or "international law" or "UN resolutions" - are all lies, window dressing to cover the naked bigotry that stands behind all the bluster. Arab Muslims cannot stomach the weak dhimmi Jews owning any tiny bit of land that was ever under Muslim control. No matter how legally it is acquired, Arabs would be just as livid at the thought of Jews owning land as they are today about "occupation."

Jews are OK as long as they subject themselves to living as second-class citizens in Arab countries, paying their jizya. But once they actually try to act as if they have any real rights, well, that is not acceptable to the mentality of the vast majority of Arabs.

The root of the conflict is pure bigotry against Jews.

It is not even clear if any Jews were interested in leasing (not buying!) the land mentioned in this article, or if it was only a rumor. This doesn't slow down the vitriol, as thousands of Arabs rally against the possibility of Jews controlling any land in sacred Muslim territory.

Notice how at that time the Arabs are not shy in saying their opposition is to Jews, not Zionists; that they call the legal transfer of land "robbery" when it is to Jews; and the now familiar method of subtly threatening the West (in this case, Britain) if they don't cave to the Arab demands.

To understand the Middle East today, read this article from 72 years ago very carefully.

In an ironic footnote, one can find one other mention of Ghor Al Kabad in Transjordan in 1939, where Jews help out the Emir who owns land in the controversial area:

Yes, it truly is awful to let Jews touch "sacred Arab land."

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