Israeli Ambassador to Ireland: Outsiders Fuelling Propaganda War Against Israel Are Not Helping to Bring Peace
Sir, – As someone who worked closely with the late Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin during the early days of the Oslo peace process, I can scarcely recognise the argument put forth by Ben Ehrenreich “The Arab-Israeli conflict in 10 points” (August 16th).The ‘Altruistic Evil’ of Social Justice for the Palestinians
Ben Ehrenreich blithely ignores the deep historic connection of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel going back 3,000 years. While noting the 700,000 Muslim Arabs who fled the fighting in 1948, he says nothing about the expulsion of nearly a million Jews at the same time from Arab countries and that whereas Israel absorbed Jewish refugees and gave them equal rights, Arab countries kept Palestinian refugees in camps to be used as political fodder against Israel.
In reference to the 1967 Six-Day War, Ben Ehrenreich does not clarify that UN Security Council resolution 242 which called for the withdrawal of territories acquired by Israel also required the Arab states to recognise Israel’s right to exist. They refused, that is until the signing of the peace treaty between Israel and Egypt in 1979.
It is wrong to say the security barrier built along the West Bank border was designed to seize Palestinian land. The barrier was a response to the murder of 1,100 Israeli civilians by terrorists who easily crossed from the West Bank into Israel during the Second Intifada. The purpose of the barrier is entirely to protect the lives of Israeli civilians, and the Supreme Court, which adjudicates in territorial disputes regarding the barrier, sometimes in fact decides against the Israeli government.
Nor is it fair to call the peace process in the 1990s “the peace that wasn’t”. Israel, under Mr Rabin and his successors such as Ariel Sharon, was desperate to find a partner for peace on the Palestinian side. Time and again Israel made concessions on land, giving up parts of the West Bank and in 2005 the whole of Gaza, but every concession made by Israel resulted only in more terrorism from the other side. Israel still hopes to find a partner for peace so that there can be a final agreement based on bilateral negotiations resulting in two states for two peoples, the State of Israel as the homeland of the Jewish people and a Palestinian state for the Palestinian people.
As yet another indication that the university campus has become “an island of repression in a sea of freedom,” last March a pro-Israel group, Hasbara Fellowships Canada, was barred from participating in a “Social Justice Week” event organized by the Student Association of Durham College and University of Ontario Institute of Technology (UOIT). The stated reason for the exclusion? The student association (which, not coincidentally, had just approved a pro-BDS resolution against Israel) informed the Hasbara group that since the “organization seems closely tied to the state of Israel . . . it would be against the motion to provide any type of resources to your organization.”IsraellyCool: Facebook Is For Terrorists
While the term “social justice” has a seemingly benign and positive connation—and certainly to those who so vigorous fight for it—the reality is that, as columnist Jonah Goldberg observed in his book, The Tyranny of Clichés: How Liberals Cheat in the War of Ideas, social justice is actually “an empty vessel to be filled with any and all leftist ideals, and then promptly wielded as a political bludgeon against any and all dissenters . . . .”
So while social justice warriors on campus are quick to welcome a collection of perceived victim groups into their tent—Muslims, African-Americans, gays, Hispanics, women—they have been decidedly more hostile when dealing with the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, the result being that pro-Israel groups (such as the Hasbara Fellowships in Ontario) are regularly excluded as being part of the oppressor class responsible for such evils as imperialism, colonialism, racism, and sexism.
What are the defining characteristics of those well-meaning, but often misguided individuals who promiscuously proclaim their commitment to social justice? A number of tactics and behaviors are common to their efforts:
While Facebook has banned Zahava and myself, lets take a look at who continues to operate freely on Mark Zuckerberg’s social media site.
Then there’s this
- The Facebook presence of Ahlam Tamimi’s weekly TV program, beamed throughout the Arabic speaking world, widely watched on every continent, and devoted to glorifying the Palestinian Arab terrorist prisoners and their unspeakable deeds.
- The Facebook page of “Princess of the Free” (alternative translation: “Princess Liberal”) The avatar is a drawing of Izzadin Al Masri, the human bomb planted by Tamimi at the Sbarro pizzeria – the explosion murdered 16. This account was fully active as of 17-Mar-16, the last time I checked.
- This is the Facebook page of “Ahlam Tamimi | Public Figure”. It seems to have stopped being active in 2012 but might have come back.
- Another of Ahlam Tamimi’s Facebook personae, under the name “Princess Liberal” (which is a play on the name of her TV program). When I checked a few months ago, it was then-currently active.
The Facebook presence of the convicted and unrepentant murderer/terrorist Nizar Tamimi, Ahlam Tamimi’s first cousin and also her husband, released like Ahlam Tamimi without pardon by the Israelis and without any expression of remorse by the prisoners in the extortionate Gilad Shalit transaction of 2011.