In the immediate and intermediate future, the detailed plan and map put forward by President Trump will be rejected out of hand by the Palestinian leadership. For them it is indeed "dead on arrival." Both Fatah and Hamas joined the choir of condemnation. Some violence may ensue, although Mahmud 'Abbas speaks of "popular" rather than terrorist pressure. And yet the plan is of great importance, for the future of the Palestinians as well as for Israel: it is an experiment in breaking the bonds of past perceptions and offering both sides from the opportunity to shake off the effects of their illusions.
Israelis who thought that there was a "free trump lunch" are being disabused of the expectation that he will herald a messianic era, in which all will be given to us and none to the Palestinians. There is nothing to validate the claim, made by some, that a firm Israeli stand would have secured American consent for a total annexation. Trump sees himself as a deal maker – not as an Israeli enforcer.
On the Palestinian side, the problem runs deeper. For years, specifically since the Annapolis process and even more so since the days of the Obama Administration, they have built up expectations based on what may be called the "EKP" – "Everybody Knows" Paradigm. The latter is focused mainly on the territorial dimension: A full return to the 1967 Armistice lines with minor swaps and a partition of Jerusalem, alongside some (symbolic?) concessions on the Right of Return, etc.
"Everybody" – except the broad range of Israelis who find the EKP objectionable and impractical. Well beyond the settler communities and the vocal minority who reject any concessions to the Palestinians, many Israelis find fault with the ideas enshrined in UN Security Council Resolution 2334 for several good reasons:
1. To begin with, the great majority of Israelis feel strongly that Jerusalem must remain Israel's undivided capital – give or take some of the outlying neighborhoods beyond the security barrier.
2. Moreover, the idea of another round of violent displacement of tens of thousands of Jews, from their homes in their homeland, raises traumatic memories of the sad summer of 2005 and the disengagement from Gaza.
3. The notion that Israel will be safe, even without a permanent military presence on the Jordan river and firm control of our eastern approaches, became less and less persuasive as chaotic events engulfed the entire region and the danger of destabilization became more acute.
4. Moreover, the experience in Lebanon since 2006 provided proof positive that it would be a deadly mistake to rely on some UN-mandated foreign military forces in the Jordan Valley (or elsewhere): UNIFIL's record in apprehending Hizbullah weapons or curbing Hizbullah's huge arsenal is outright dismal.
Thus, those in Europe, in American progressive circles, and among the Israeli Left who still advocate acceptance of the EKP (rather than the Trump baseline) are actually doing the Palestinians no favor. They help lock the leadership in Ramallah, and the Palestinian political class, into a set of specific expectations that cannot be delivered upon: and thus perpetuate a deadlock they may be of use to 'Abbas or to Hamas but does little to ameliorate the conditions of people in the West Bank or in Gaza.
The Ben Shapiro Show: The First Real Peace Plan (3:30 to 36min)
This plan isn’t just about Israeli-Palestine. It’s central to the administration’s Middle East strategy. For decades, the international consensus has been that peace cannot blossom in the region unless the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is addressed first. But as the conflict becomes more marginal to the interests of key actors, and the U.S. has generally become less interested, that’s no longer true. Arab-Israeli normalization is only a matter of time, and the Palestinians are at risk of missing that train.
This peace plan is directly connected to the current political situation in both Israel and the U.S. Although U.S. officials insist they’re not taking sides in the Israeli elections slated for March 2, the timing of the plan’s release is useful for Netanyahu, who was indicted today on charges of bribery, fraud, and breach of public trust. Given Netanyahu’s troubles (and the likely prospect that he’s not Prime Minister for much longer), the administration was committed to bringing Gantz on board with the plan as well. Kushner told me: “It’s good to see how two competitors in the Israel elections can put aside their differences to promote the interests of their country ahead of their political interests.” That wasn’t the Gantz’s initial position—he first publicly objected to the release of the plan before the election; after weeks of diplomacy he reversed his position and expressed support. Meanwhile, while Netanyahu will receive receive a temporary boost, he will have trouble guarding his right flank. The far-right parties on which he relies for political survival will decry his endorsement of a Palestinian state, whatever else the plan says.
Meanwhile, from the US side, the Middle East peace plan will further energize Trump’s base. Already this year, Trump has secured a “Phase One” trade deal with China, killed a prominent Iranian general, and proposed a fix to one of the most intractable political problems in history with the full support of Israeli leaders. Tomorrow, he will sign a trade agreement with Canada and Mexico. This is significant counter-programming to the Democratic Party’s Iowa Caucus and the impeachment hearings in the Senate.
We should consider the release of this plan the end of the beginning of the Trump peace plan. The administration told me they consider it an opening bid. Former secretary of state Henry Kissinger told me that he thought the plan was “a responsible first stage and broader approach to the world’s most intractable geopolitical issue.” Whether this bid draws a constructive counter-offer and longer bargaining process plan will depends on a new set of factors in the region, ultimately determining whether (and which) Palestinians will engage. The ball’s heading to their court, whether they want it or not.
Nobody will benefit less from a curt dismissal of the U.S. peace plan than the Palestinians themselves, whose leaders are again letting history pass them by. Nearly every time the Arab side said "no," it wound up with less. That was true after it rejected the 1947 UN Partition Plan, which would have created a Palestinian state on a much larger footprint. It was true in 1967, after Jordan refused Israel's entreaties not to attack, which resulted in the end of Jordanian rule in the West Bank.
It was true in 2000, when Syria rejected an Israeli offer to return the Golan Heights, which ultimately led to U.S. recognition of Israeli sovereignty of that territory. It was true later the same year, after Yasir Arafat refused Israel's offer of a Palestinian state with a capital in east Jerusalem.
The U.S. plan offers Palestinians a sovereign state, mostly contiguous territory, and $50 billion in economic assistance. What it demands is an end to anti-Jewish bigotry in school curriculums, the restoration of legitimate political authority in Gaza, and the dismantling of terrorist militias.
The Jewish state has thrived in part because it has always been prepared to make do with less. The Palestinian tragedy has been the direct result of taking the opposite approach: of insisting on the maximum rather than working toward the plausible.
Author of Arabic translation of the "Protocols," left, with a smiling customer
The annual Cairo International Book Fair is in full swing, and as we've reported in previous years, it is featuring antisemitic books.
The Dar Al Kitab Al Arabi Publishing Company again has an exhibit there where you can see their antisemitic book collection. Here are the covers of:
Arabic "Protocols of the Elders of Zion: The Masonic Plots to Dominate the World - 10th Edition" by Mansour Abdelhakeem;
"Pawns in the Game..The Practical Implementation of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion," by William Guy Carr (translated by Magdy Kamel); and Mein Kampf, trasnslated by Farid al-Falluji
You can see these books in these screenshots from video from the Fair.
The US Embassy in Cairo has its own booth at the fair, and as in previous years, the presence of antisemitic books doesn't cause any concern.
(h/t WC)
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A tweet from Carl Bildt, Co-Chair of the European Council on Foreign Relations:
He's referring to the peace plan's tripling the size of Gaza to add agricultural and industrial areas as well as more residential areas:
Of course, there are Israeli communities dotting the Negev, including near the Egyptian border. A quick look at Google Maps identifies Naveh, Bnei Netzarim, Be'er Milka, Kadesh Barnea, Nitzana, Ezuz, Yevul, Avshalom, Dekel, Yated, Sdei Avraham, among others.
Note the sarcasm of "generous" when referring to tripling the area that Gazans can live and work.
Obviously, Israel isn't going to agree to uproot citizens if it doesn't have to, so the offer is going to be for areas of the Negev that have not yet been cultivated. But Israel has proven that wonderful and beautiful communities and businesses can thrive in the desert.
Bildt knows this, because when he used Google Earth he had to manipulate the screenshot to avoid the Israeli communities and farms to the north and south:
This hardly shows the size of the communities. Here I zoom in on the Shefa Vines Essential Oils farm immediately to the south of his desert shot, where residents offer an Airbnb for anyone who wants to visit their farm and vineyard.
Bildt is knowingly lying.
He wants to characterize the desert as an impossible place to live and thrive. Not only has Israel proven that wrong, but Israeli expertise would be available to help any Palestinians who would want to build successful communities there in the context of peace.
Something Bildt apparently opposes.
His tweet is even worse than that. He refers to the Israeli communities within the Green Line as "settlements," meaning that he seemingly feels that Jews have no right to live in any part of Israel (besides his implication that any land given to Palestinians must already have Jews to deport.)
Bildt is not only a liar but a hypocrite. As Tundra Tabloids has documented, at the same time that Bildt says that a non-contiguous Palestinian state is unacceptable and horrible, he actually celebrates bizarre and non-contiguous borders between different European states with citizens who live in areas dominated by another state:
Belgians and Dutch citizens can live in disconnected enclaves in the others' areas and Bildt celebrates it as a creative solution. But Jews living among Arabs is unacceptable under any circumstances.
The hypocrisy is stunning, but par for the course.
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When Palestinians say that they cannot possibly have a state without their preconditions, which include:
* "Right of return" (to Israel, not to their own state!)
* Jerusalem as their capital
* Israels' release of terrorist prisoners
* 1967 lines
They are lying. None of those are prerequisites for a state. They are completely separate demands.
When Palestinians insist that they will not agree to any peace plan without those demands, they are saying that statehood is really not that important to them. Neither is peace.
A little thought reveals that each of these demands does not even strengthen an independent Palestinian state nor do they help peace. However, every single one of those demands weakens Israel:
* "Right of return" to destroy the Jewish state demographically
* Jerusalem, specifically the Old City, to sever Jewish emotional and religious ties to the holy city
* Israels' release of terrorist prisoners to allow them to attack again (as has happened numerous times with previous prisoner releases)
* 1967 lines to ensure that Israel is only nine miles wide and vulnerable to ground attack
These demands are not only not peaceful - they are the antithesis of peace. They have nothing to do with an independent state. They are only designed to hurt Israel.
Yet Palestinian leaders, and anti-Israel activists, act as if these demands are preconditions for peace and not addressing them dooms any chance for peace. This is the opposite of the truth.
There is another argument to support Palestinian intransigence. It was described in an Atlantic article by Shadi Hamid last year:
I recently took part in a study tour on religion and nationalism in Israel and the West Bank organized by the Philos Project. One Palestinian official whom we met told us, “I’m not going to compromise my dignity.”
Our Palestinian interlocutor’s refusal to cede his dignity wasn’t a performance; it was despair. It felt to me like an epitaph. There have been conflicts in which leaders have made compromises that may have seemed like betrayals, only for history to view them as both bold and necessary. But those conflicts are not this conflict.
Palestinian activists tend to speak in terms of justice. An injustice was done, so it must be undone. Christopher Hitchens, in his valediction for the Palestinian American author Edward Said, wrote that his friend’s “feeling for the injustice done to Palestine was, in the best sense of this overused term, a visceral one. He simply could not reconcile himself to the dispossession of a people or to the lies and evasions that were used to cover up this offense.”
Pro-Palestinian protesters often chant the mantra of “no justice, no peace.” One former Israeli official we spoke with in Jerusalem had a different view. He said, “If we make this about justice, there will not be peace.” Too many Palestinians celebrate victimhood—fueled by a profound sense of injustice—rather than overcome it, he suggested.
But then we return to the question of dignity. No one should be asked to overcome their victimhood by giving up their dignity, the one thing even an occupier shouldn’t be able to take away. That might sound naive and impractical, especially for those who would rather Palestinians just get on with it, but that doesn’t make it any less true.
Hamid suggests that the conflict is not about land or statehood - from the Palestinian perspective, it is about "justice" and "dignity."
Yet these supposedly "dignified" people happily take charity from UNRWA and the EU. (In fact, when they don't get the free aid they are used to, they riot for their handouts.)
These "dignified" people keep their fellow Palestinians in "refugee camps" even if they live in the areas of British Mandate Palestine or if they are full Jordanian citizens. They choose to use their own people as pawns by pretending to be refugees. What is dignified about that?
And the "justice" argument is similar to the "dignity" argument. When people say that they will not accept any compromise that violates their own sense of dignity or justice, that means that they are the judge and jury as to what kind of peace plan is acceptable. It gives them veto power over any possible plan, no matter how generous, because they are the only people who can say that their dignity is restored or justice is served.
As long as Israel exists, they will not feel like they have any dignity nor justice. Because they consider the entire land theirs. Their maps show the entire British Mandate territory. They are taught that Jaffa and Nazareth are Palestinian cities. Anyone can see that people who believe that will never say that any peace plan will be good enough to make them feel dignified and that justice was served.
Nobody says that Israelis must have "justice" and "dignity" in any peace plan. The reason is obvious: because when that is demanded from both sides, peace is impossible. Yet no one sees any problem with using these terms that are anti-peace as demands for the Palestinian side.
Like it or not, any two state solution will involve compromise on both sides. The concepts of "dignity" and "justice" is incompatible with compromise - which makes them anti-peace.
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First, divest yourself from the idea that this plan is just a trick to divert attention from Trump’s impeachment or Bibi’s indictment. The document describing it is 181 pages long. It is not a diversion. I am not interested in the question of whether its release now will help Trump (I suspect it won’t matter) or Bibi (it’s unclear). Also, if you are one of my readers who hates Trump – if I still have any, after proposing that he get the Nobel Peace Prize – please put that aside. This paragraph is the last one in this post that will mention him. I want to focus on the proposal itself.
I will not pretend to have read all 181 pages yet. But the broad outline of the proposal, including maps, is contained in the first 40-odd pages. It is a thoughtful attempt to arrive at a solution, and it takes into account the failure of previous efforts. There is a huge amount of material here, and I could write essays about the presuppositions and the implications of every page, but I will try to limit myself to describing the proposal in general terms and discussing its significance in the long and depressing saga of the “peace process.” In recent years, proposals have centered around the ideas first expressed in the Clinton parameters of 2000-1, which envision most of Judea, Samaria, and Gaza as a Palestinian entity, with swaps to allow the large settlement blocs to continue to exist. The new proposal diverges sharply from these plans.
Summary of the plan
The plan (the official name is “Peace to Prosperity: A Vision to Improve the Lives of the Palestinian and Israeli People”) is a two-state solution which preserves the original intention of UN Security Council Resolution 242, in which Israel withdraws from some of the territory taken in 1967, while keeping secure boundaries. The Palestinian “state” here is more like Rabin’s vision of something “less than a state,” because Palestine will be demilitarized, and its borders and airspace will be controlled by Israel for an unlimited time.
The plan is intended as a statement of concepts, although it is a pretty detailed one. It calls for an Israeli-Palestinian negotiation whose product will be a final “peace agreement” with all the details worked out. During the period of negotiations, Israel will freeze construction or expansion of settlements (for a maximum of four years) in those areas that are defined as Palestinian in the plan.
The agreement would create a “state” of Palestine that encompasses most of today’s Areas A and B and some of Area C. Israel will receive most of Area C, including the Jordan Valley. 97% of Palestinians will find themselves in Palestine and 97% of Israeli residents of Judea and Samaria will be in Israel. The remainder will be in Palestinian enclaves in Israel, or Israeli enclaves in Palestine. Enclaves will be under civil control of their respective governments, but Israel will be responsible for security in both cases. Israel will provide land swaps (attached to Gaza along the border with Egypt) which will give Palestine roughly the same area as the pre-1967 “West Bank” and Gaza. There will be a high-speed rail link (on the map it is shown as a tunnel) between the eastern part of Palestine and Gaza, and special roads across the Jordan Valley to the Allenby Bridge with Jordan. Infrastructure will be built to ensure that Israeli and Palestinian enclaves are not isolated. It’s possible that some Israeli Arab communities in the “Arab Triangle” near Umm al-Fahm might be included in Palestine.
In no case will any Jews or Arabs be required to move from their homes, a principle that diverges significantly from previous plans which included the removal of Jewish settlements.
I’ve included the two “conceptual maps” from the proposal at the end of this post. They show the borders and other features envisioned by the proposal.
Jerusalem will continue to be the capital of Israel, and Israel will continue to provide security for the holy sites of all the religions. The city will not be re-divided along the 1949 armistice line, but the areas east and north of the existing security barrier (“including Kafr Aqab, the eastern part of Shuafat and Abu Dis”) will become the capital of the State of Palestine, and may be renamed “Al Quds” or whatever the Palestinians decide. Arabs living in Jerusalem inside the security barrier will have the option to become citizens of Israel or Palestine, or retain the status of Permanent Resident of Israel (most Jerusalem Arabs chose this status after 1967 rather than becoming citizens).
The “Vision” provides for an economic plan to provide for a viable Palestinian state rather than one that relies on international donors. I won’t discuss this here.
Overall security for both states will be Israel’s responsibility from Day One, “with the aspiration that the Palestinians will be responsible for as much of their internal security as possible, subject to the provisions of this Vision.”
Israel will retain control of airspace and electromagnetic spectrum from the river to the sea. Special arrangements will be made to protect Ben-Gurion airport from nearby Palestinian areas.
The State of Palestine will be expected to take serious measures to prevent terrorism, which should be evaluated in terms “no less stringent” than those applied to Jordan or Egypt.
The Israeli Navy will be able to block the import of “prohibited weapons and weapon-making materials” to Palestine, including of course Gaza. Palestine will be demilitarized, and Israel will have the right to destroy any Palestinian facility used for hostile purposes. There is a list of weapons and systems that the Palestinians are forbidden to procure. Palestine will not be allowed to make agreements with any state or organization that threatens Israel’s security. Any expansion of Palestinian security capabilities will require Israel’s permission. Israel retains the right to “engage in necessary security measures” to maintain demilitarization and fight terrorism, including incursions into Palestinian territory. There will be “early warning stations” manned by Israeli security personnel in Palestine.
Gaza has always been problematic, and with the Hamas takeover in 2007, it became a hostile enclave which has caused several small wars. The plan explicitly calls for the removal of Hamas, saying that Israel will not be required to meet any of its obligations under the agreement unless the Palestinian Authority is in control of Gaza, Hamas and other terrorist factions are disarmed, and Gaza is demilitarized. If Hamas will “play any role” in the government of Palestine, it must first agree to “explicitly recognizing the State of Israel, committing to nonviolence, and accepting previous agreements and obligations between the parties, including the disarming of all terrorist groups.”
The plan calls for Israel to release Palestinian (not Israeli Arab) prisoners held in Israeli jails, except those convicted of murder or conspiracy to commit murder.
There will be no “right of return” to Israel for people with Palestinian refugee status. Those registered as refugees with UNRWA will have the option of absorption into the State of Palestine or their present host countries, or to a limited extent, to other Organization of Islamic Cooperation states that agree to take them. Once the agreement is signed, Palestinian refugee status and UNRWA will cease to exist.
The Palestinian state will not necessarily be created upon the signing of the agreement; the transition from the Palestinian Authority to the State of Palestine will occur only after the Palestinians have created a Western-style democracy and legal and banking systems, and have stopped incitement and education for hatred in its schools and other institutions. Palestinians will be required to “create a culture of peace” which will not glorify terrorism or martyrdom, and will not deny the right of Israel to exist as a Jewish state.
The agreement will include mutual recognition of Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people and Palestine as the nation state of the Palestinian people. It will end all claims between the two, and this will be proposed as Security Council and General Assembly resolutions in the UN.
During the period of negotiations or for a maximum of four years, Israel will commit not to build or expand settlements in those areas of Judea and Samaria that are proposed to become part of Palestine. This “settlement freeze” does not apply to settlements in the Jordan Valley, eastern Jerusalem inside the security barrier, or other areas that are expected to become part of Israel. It does apply to Israeli enclaves in Palestinian areas. This is different from previous “freezes” which were applied to the entire area across the Green Line.
At the same time, Palestinians will agree not to join international organizations without permission from Israel, will end its legal actions (e.g., in the International Criminal Court) against Israel, and end the “pay-to-slay” program.
The US will agree to reopen the PLO mission in Washington and provide various kinds of aid.
What do the Palestinians think?
Of course they vehemently reject it. They couldn’t possibly accept the plan without almost as many caveats are there are items in it. The proposed Palestinian “state” is no more a state than Vatican City. The requirements to end what we consider incitement (and they consider education in the fundamental principles of the Palestinian Movement) will be unacceptable to them. Pay-to-slay is inviolable. The “right of return” has always been sacrosanct. Hamas will never disarm. And Palestinians have never been prepared to admit that Israel belongs to the Jewish people, not one inch of it.
What does the Left think?
Leftist organizations in Israel and the US oppose the agreement because of the small size of the proposed Palestinian state and the limitations on its sovereignty, and – in the case of the American Left – because they hate the president and have to oppose anything he does.
What does the Right think?
Many members of the Israeli Right oppose any Palestinian state, because they believe that the restrictions on sovereignty and militarization ultimately aren’t maintainable, and the result of allowing its creation would be another terror entity on our border. They also disagree in principle with any concession of territory that’s part of the Land of Israel. But some think it’s worth the gamble in order to restart building in at least part of Judea and Samaria, and to obtain sovereignty in the Jordan Valley and other parts of Area C.
What do I think?
The plan can’t possibly be translated into an agreement that the Palestinians would agree with, even as a pretense. It pays lip service to the idea that Palestinians want normal lives in a well-run, economically flourishing state. Certainly there are those that do want this, but the leadership and what Barry Rubin, z”l, used to refer to as “the young men with guns” who determine what happens on the street do not feel this way. In Palestinian politics and culture, nothing overrides the prime objective, which is the removal of the Jewish presence from the land that Palestinians believe belongs to them alone. Anyone who says different may be held accountable by the young men with guns. To accept the plan would be to betray their Palestinian identity and their Islamic religion in return for an attenuated, emasculated “state” that would be dependent on the hated Jews.
Having said that, I think the authors of the plan understand Palestinian political culture, and what they want to do is help the West to stop appeasing it. The proposal breaks the sterile consensus that has developed since Oslo, in which the conflict is seen as entirely Israel’s fault, nothing is expected from the Palestinians, and “solutions” are just different approaches to forcing Israel to make concessions. One example of this is that for the first time since 2000, the proposal rejects the holiness of the 1949 armistice lines, and calls for secure borders instead. In my opinion, the paradigm shift embodied in the proposal is its most important feature.
The objection that a Palestinian state, once created, would not remain benign and demilitarized is definitely a concern, but it will not become relevant for some time. Judging by the conditions placed on the Palestinians before they will be granted whatever bit of sovereignty they will have, it’s hard to imagine that it will actually come into being. Accepting the deal now would allow to Israel to take actions immediately, like building in areas that are expected to be part of Israel, annexing the Jordan Valley, and applying Israeli law to existing Jewish communities.
The significance of the deal, therefore, is not that it will ever be fully implemented. It is that it will change people’s thinking about the conflict, freeing Israel from the chains of the Oslo/Clinton paradigm.
Israelis, therefore, should welcome the change in direction and take the opportunities offered, even if they have problems with specific parts of the program.
The PM promised to bring the program to the Cabinet for approval on Sunday, and I would be happy to see this.
Maps
How the proposal views the final configurations of Israel and Palestine:
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Unfortunately, de Blasio’s effort to explain anti-Semitism as merely right-wing does not make him unique. As anti-Semitism has reared its ugly head, liberals have gone out of their way to categorize it in a way that fits neatly with their partisan interests.
Sen. Bernie Sanders, whose campaign has provided a safe haven to anti-Semites of the Left, argued that the spike in anti-Semitic attacks nationwide was “a result of a dangerous political ideology that targets Jews and anyone who does not fit a narrow vision of a whites-only America.”
One of Sanders’s prized endorsements came from Rep. Ilhan Omar, who has brought anti-Semitic conspiracies about all-powerful Jewish puppet masters to the halls of Congress. She has claimed that Israel “hypnotized the world,” that congressional support for Israel was “all about the Benjamins,” and that her critics “push for allegiance to a foreign country.”
Yet Omar’s communications director, Jeremy Slevin, had the temerity to rant on Twitter, “Anti-semitism is a right-wing force Anti-semitism is a right-wing force Anti-semitism is a right-wing force Anti-semitism is a right-wing force Anti-semitism is a right-wing force Anti-semitism is a right-wing force Anti-semitism is a right-wing force.”
If ever there were a reason to kill off the myth that hatred of Jews is an exclusively right-wing phenomenon, it would be the deadly attacks on Jews in the New York area during the holiday season. On Dec. 10, a shooting at a kosher grocery store in Jersey City, New Jersey, killed three. One of the assailants turned out to be a member of the Black Hebrew Israelite movement, a revelation that awkwardly forced Rep. Rashida Tlaib to delete a condolence tweet that claimed “white supremacy kills.” On Dec. 28, an African American male invaded the home of a rabbi during a Hanukkah celebration, slashing five with a machete.
From college campuses, to the streets of New York, to the ugly corners of the internet, to the poison coming from the U.K. Labour Party, to the inferno of hatred sweeping through Europe, the targeting of Jews is not confined to any one political group. There are right-wing anti-Semites for sure, but anti-Semitism is also a burgeoning problem on the Left. What’s more, the pure hatred of Jews is often not identified with any ideology at all. It is, as scholars have pointed out for years, a virus that mutates and adapts according to the time and place.
The trope that anti-Semitism is a right-wing phenomenon also made politicians such as de Blasio and Omar appear as if they were living in a parallel universe. A passing awareness of the violent Jew-hatred in Europe explodes the myth. “The identity of the German synagogue attacker may have sounded familiar to American Jews, who have endured multiple attacks by far-right extremists over the past year,” reported the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in October after an armed man tried to break into a synagogue in Halle. “But the suspect’s identity was more surprising for Jews in Western Europe.”
Why? “The murder of two people in Halle on Yom Kippur was the first lethal anti-Semitic assault in decades in that region by a far-right extremist. Most of the terrorist attacks against Jews there over the past 30 years have been carried out by radical Muslims.”
In Toms River, the Orthodox areas see vehicles from the police department on patrols, affording them an extra level of protection as they spend their days in prayer and celebration. In Jackson, Reina and Nixon focused on denying permits for Jews who sought to build sukkot, the small huts Jews put on their porches or in their yards for a week during the holiday of that name.
Sadly, the Toms River approach seems to be more the exception than the rule.
The same sort of denial of a Jew’s right to live wherever he or she might choose played itself out in other New Jersey towns such as Mahwah, where the town council passed two ordinances that one resident characterized as intended to “keep the Hasidic Jewish people from moving into Mahwah.” The state attorney general agreed. Mahwah eventually repealed those ordinances as part of a settlement that also included an agreement to notify the attorney general’s office before passing any further ordinances of that sort over the next four years and to release a public statement that it would enforce laws in a “non-discriminatory manner.”
It also continues to play out in upstate New York towns such as Chester, where Attorney General Tish James just filed suit against the town for what she called a “campaign to deny housing to members of the Jewish community” by “blocking the construction of homes [solely] to prevent a religious group from living” there. At issue is a 117-acre piece of property the town already had granted permits for — before it learned that Hasidic Jews bought the property from the original owner.
That would not do. Former town supervisor Alexander Jamieson said at a May 2018 public meeting that officials are “doing what we can to alleviate 432 Hasidic houses in the town of Chester,” a sentiment echoed by the current supervisor, Robert Valentine, at the same meeting. So, they have been denying the building permits, unapologetic about their intent, with Valentine even telling the New York Times in July that “if there was any way we could choose who could live there, we would do it. But we can’t.”
The concept of the shtetl is a throwback to old Europe. So are special laws designed to restrict where Jews can live and what they can build. Let’s hope America’s flirtation with heading down Europe’s path ends there.
Ahlam Ahmad al-Tamimi is the most wanted woman in the world, with a $5 million bounty for information that leads to her arrest or conviction.
Tamimi is accused by U.S. officials of conspiring to use--and using--a weapon of mass destruction, and masterminding a brazen Hamas terrorist attack that killed 15 – including eight children and two Americans, one of whom was pregnant.
Despite being on the run from American authorities, Tamimi has been hiding in plain sight for years-- under the eye of one of the United States' longest and closest allies in the Middle East: Jordan.
This image provided by the FBI is the most wanted poster for Ahlam Aref Ahmad Al-Tamimi, a Jordanian woman charged in connection with a 2001 bombing of a Jerusalem pizza restaurant that killed 15 people and injured dozens of others. The case against Ahlam Aref Ahmad Al-Tamimi was filed under seal in 2013 but announced publicly by the Justice Department on March 14, 2017. (FBI via AP) (The Associated Press)
Despite requests from Washington, the Kingdom has been publicly steadfast in its refusal to extradite Tamimi, who at just 20 years old masterminded the suicide bombing on the Sbarro pizza restaurant in Jerusalem three weeks before planes struck the U.S on Sept. 11, 2001.
The attack claimed the lives of two Americans, 15-year-old Malki Roth, and Shoshana Yehudit Greenbaum, who was five months pregnant with her first child at the time. In addition to the two murdered Americans and the unborn infant, four more U.S. nationals were among the some 122 injured. At least one of the victims remains in a vegetative state.
For Roth's parents, the fight for some semblance of justice has already been a long one – and the bumpy road stretches on.
Shai Glick, the founder of Btsalmo,
is a really good guy who is working hard for human rights. He’s not just
working hard for the people of Israel, but for the wider world Jewish
community. Yet Glick also believes that his work benefits humanity in general,
as more Muslims are killed by extremists than any other people today. Fighting
against incitement to terror helps these Muslims as much as it helps the Jews.
I decided that someone should
tell the world about Shai Glick and the important almost unknown work of
Btsalmo. But in the end, I decided to let Shai do the talking himself. In long
form. Because I believe in giving a person a platform to say everything he
wants to say about himself. Everything he wants to say to the world.
So here is where I let Shai
step in to give you a bit of background information about himself, followed by
our written question and answer session (with translation help from Sheri Oz of
Israel Diaries):
My name is Shai Glick and I am 32 years old from Beit Shemesh, married
to an amazing woman who supports me in all I do even though I can sometimes be
very irritating, always singing and talking or just issuing public
clarifications.
I am also the father of three children.
Shai Glick of Btsalmo
I was born in Jerusalem to a Haredi family that always was open to help
and host people. I always knew that I needed to protect my people and while I was studying in the American branch of the Mir Yeshiva, imediately following my
wedding, I was drafted into the army and I served in the 8200 Intelligence
Unit.
During my army service I gained expertise in classified intelligence
and truly became familiar with the intelligence situation. During Operation Protective
Edge, I was assigned to intelligence. While in the IDF's underground command
center (the “Bor”) in the Kirya, I was exposed to the fact that there was a hospital
in Gaza (Shifa) from which missiles were launched at us. At the same time, we
were forbidden from responding to the launching site because there were
patients there and I understood that we are the most ethical army in the world,
even more than was necessary.
Our goal at Btsalmo is very, very simple.
Human rights – but true human
rights.
The right for Israeli citizens to live without terrorism.
The right of the Jews to live without antisemitism and boycotts which are,
in fact, Jew-hatred under the guise of freedom of expression – not hatred of
Israelis but hatred of Jews.
The right to live. Our organization helps each and every human being in
every possible domain with emphasis on the fight against incitement, boycotts, and
terrorism.
It’s unacceptable that every time terrorists are arrested, there are
those who speak of their rights while nobody talks about the rights of their
victims. It is insanity, pure and simple.
There are dozens of organizations that speak about the rights of
terrorists and condemn those who challenge those rights (The Public Committee
against Torture in Israel, Hamoked, Amnesty, The Association for Civil Rights
in Israel, Adalah, and more). This is not only true in Israel but around the
globe. Everyone is constantly talking about the rights of terrorists and of
Muslim religious leaders who incite terror. Who is talking about our right not
to be hurt by them? About your right to walk in the street without being
stabbed in the back?
Nobody!
***
Varda Epstein: You have a lot of famous people in your family. Tell us
about your grandfather, your father, uncles. Anything you like about your
family, as far back as you’d like to go. (We’re listening.)
Shai Glick: I was born to a
family with a good heart and with helpfulness in our blood and as I wrote
above, we never ate alone. To this day, I remember breaking the Yom Kippur
fast, everyone returning home hungry, but my mother waited for guests to arrive
and only then did we begin to eat.
The guests were homeless.
Everyone came to us.
This family tradition began
with my great-grandfather, Shlomo Zalman Glick, who always worked for charity
and when he immigrated to Israel he immediately set up a charitable
organization that exists to this day.
My beloved grandfather, Professor Shimon Glick,
always believed in helping others and made the change from being the high
status department director in the United States to living in a “hole” in Beer
Sheva, with the main focus of developing the Negev and helping people.
To this day, my grandfather has
been awarded dozens of prizes for his work. My grandfather has held dozens of
roles, among them, Dean of the Medical School in Beer Sheva and the
introduction of an important dimension to the faculty – the human dimension. It
was not only important to be a quality professional, but to be a good person,
too.
And exactly because of this, my
grandfather fought with all his strength against terrorist hunger strikes and took
charge of this fight on behalf of the government. While most doctors were in
favor of letting terrorists engage in hunger strikes, my grandfather was not. He
understood that their hunger strikes could cause their deaths and lead to
outbreaks of violence. He called for force feeding these terrorists because he
truly understood the meaning of human rights.
By the way, my grandfather
believed in preserving and saving lives and did not agree to such hunger strikes
for any reason because hunger strikes are the opposite of supporting the preservation
and saving of lives.
My father was the rabbi in an
American yeshiva in the Neve Yaakov neighborhood of Jerusalem, and for the
students of his yeshiva, our home was always their home.
Human rights was our way of
life.
One of my uncles, Dr
Yitzchak Glick, is a doctor whose life’s work was saving thousands of lives
every day and his center serves as a hospital for everyone regardless of
ethnicity or origin. He founded a mini-hospital in Efrat that has provided
medical services for tens of thousands of Jews and Palestinian Arabs in the
region.
My uncle is a doctor and a kind
of mukhtar to the entire region. He
delivered the babies of hundreds of Palestinian women and travels freely in all
the villages in the area. To me, that is true peace and co-existence.
Another uncle is Yehudah Glick, who works
day and night to connect people to each other and to bring peace and shed
light. Thank God, more and more people understand that the Temple Mount is a
focus for peace and not terror, thanks to this uncle. At the beginning he was
thought to be crazy, but today everyone understands that he is the one who is
right and spoke wisely the whole time.
My uncle, Yehudah Glick, who
never hurt a fly, was shot and seriously wounded by an Arab he had never met
who had come to him for the express purpose of hurting a Jew. This is the
result of incitement.
A moment before the incident,
the terrorist told my uncle he was sorry, but that he had harmed Al Aqsa (the
mosque on the Temple Mount). Then he shot him.
This terrorist was fed
incitement the same as the murderer of Dafna Meir of Otniel. A 15-year-old
adolescent saw an anti-Israel television program and immediately set out to find
and stab her. During his interrogation, the terrorist admitted that he already
regretted what he had done and confessed that he had been overwhelmed by the
propaganda he saw on his television screen.
The same was true of the four
15-year-olds who threw rocks and murdered Alexander Leibovitz in Armon Hanatziv
during Rosh Hashana. In their interrogation, they admitted that they had just
emerged from a lecture in Um el Fahm given by the inciteful sheikh Raed Salah.
The sheikh had filled them with the passionate belief that they had to protect
the Al Aqsa Mosque from Jewish vandals. Right after the lecture they went out
and murdered Leibovitz. They also expressed remorse for this but it was, of
course, too late.
Shai Glick at a coexistence event
Varda Epstein: Elder of Ziyon wrote about a recent achievement of
Btsalmo that impacted Israel’s official high school curriculum for cinema.
Can you tell us about that, please?
Shai Glick: It was the case in
which I was exposed to the fact that whoever dreams about the destruction of
Israel in fact teaches this idea, or more accurately, their terrorist propaganda
films are taught in school. For me, the most important battle in our generation
is the battle against terrorism.
Terror does not begin with the
terrorist but with an atmosphere that leads to murder. Therefore, anyone who
fans the flames, in my opinion, is the cause of death and terrorism and murder
and must be arrested and put away for life. Certainly we should not teach our
youth about him, or teach students about his writings or films.
What I did is simple. I turned
to the Minister of Education and made him aware of all the writings of that
Palestinian that call for our extermination. And he immediately removed the
film from the list of educational films to be shown in schools.
I acted in a similar fashion
regarding the play about the terrorist Walid Daka who viciously murdered the
soldier Moshe Tamam. The play was called “A Parallel Time” and it was to be
performed at Al-Midan in Haifa. The play appeared on the list of cultural
activities for Israeli children and exposed them to the violent murderer who, under
direct orders, killed an Israeli soldier who had been bound and restrained.
This is a war crime.
I did the same regarding a play
called “The Admission” that was supposed to be performed in Jaffa. I contacted
the Minister of Education, Naftali Bennett. The play argues that Israel is
guilty of the false “Nakba” the Arab word for “Disaster,” which they use to
describe the founding of the State of Israel. Both these plays were removed
from the list of cultural events for school pupils.
I actually succeeded in closing
Al-Midan Theatre entirely. The place disappeared into the trash bin of history.
Jaffa Theatre, unfortunately, is still open in spite of the fact that it serves
as a stage for incitement to terror and the boycotting of the Jewish State. The
theatre participated in the past in the international Apartheid Week events of
the BDS movement and continually hosts events calling for a boycott in
conjunction with organizations such as Amnesty International, the Women’s
Coalition for Peace, and more.
Demonstrating for the cancellation of the screening of the film, Born in Deir Yassin. The film argues that a massacre was carried out against women and children by Etzel and Lehi soldiers. Because of the pressure Btsalmo brought to bear, the film received no prize and was not entered in the Oscars.
Varda Epstein: Haaretz accuses you of “silencing
the left,” and the truth is, they make you sound a bissel meshuga, a little
crazy. Is shutting down a poetry reading by Dareen Tatour, for instance,
shutting down free speech? Do you regret the article? How would you respond, if
you could? (Here’s your chance!)
Shai Glick: As I have already
said, incitement and antisemitism are the biggest danger in the world and they
hide, today, in a variety of disguises, for example, in films and programs,
poems, Facebook, and on YouTube. For that reason, I fight them.
The battlefield today is not
within the boundaries we have known in the past, but hidden in plain sight on YouTube
and in films. The incitement we find there causes murder, and it is against
that, which I fight.
I am proud to censor calls for
murder that are framed within poetry, art and culture. In the end, they call
for murder, period. In the past few years I have caused dozens of events to be
cancelled, events that incite against Israeli soldiers and Israeli citizens. I
have had festivals cancelled. I have caused the closure of a variety of venues.
And I have made sure that many people will be investigated and imprisoned for
incitement and I am proud of that. In my opinion, this is lifesaving. (A
partial list of closures I am responsible for includes the Barbur Art Gallery, the
Negev Co-Existence Forum, the Acco Festival, Al-Midan Theatre, along with many
performances and terror-supporting events.)
Varda Epstein: Btsalmo has been working on pushing forward the
demolition of the homes of Rina Shnerb’s murderers. Doesn’t the IDF order the
demolition of a terrorist’s house automatically in the case of murder? I know
the terrorists’ families always appeal and the courts delay, but usually it
goes through, right? (Of course, they let the families take out the fixtures
and stuff first and then they only fill a single room—the terrorist’s
bedroom—with cement. Then the PA rebuilds. Right? I mean, is it even a
deterrent, such demolitions??)
Shai Glick: Terrorists do not
wake up one morning to commit murder. There is an entire system behind them
that causes them to do so. A large part of this system includes the family
members who encourage and support terror along with the sheikhs and other
religious leaders.
It is not a secret that many
would be terrorists are apprehensive about what will happen to their families
after a terror event. When they know that their families will be evicted from
their homes, their homes destroyed, and that they will only suffer, the terror
attack can often be prevented and lives saved.
Therefore, in spite of the fact
that, unfortunately, in the terrorist’s house there are infants who are not
guilty of the acts of their fathers, the terrorist’s environment must be
destroyed in order to prevent all payment connected with the attack and all
potential glorification of the terrorist by the presence of a mourning tent to
which masses of people can come, something that can inspire other young people
to follow in the footsteps of the terrorist.
There is a reason why
terrorists fight to have their houses remain standing.
To this day, there have been
hundreds of cases that, because of this fear, the terrorists did not carry out
an attack or family members turned the potential terrorist in to the Israeli
army before the attack, thus saving lives.
The demolition of a terrorist’s
home prevents terror attacks and therefore the equation is simple: demolition
of the house equals human rights.
I believe in human rights and
because of that I understand that we must totally destroy and punish the
terrorist in order that all of us may live! The terrorists must be afraid and
deterred and that is the only consideration, the only equation.
Shai in front of the Kfar Saba courthouse where he sued Breaking the Silence for libel
Varda Epstein: Tell us about the Israeli
flag-flying issue with the Beit HaGefen Arab-Jewish Center in Haifa. What
did Btsalmo do there? Should we be forcing unpatriotic people to be patriotic?
Or is this about something else?
Shai Glick: We must remember
one simple thing: those who are hurt most in the world by terror are not the
Jews and not the Christians but the Muslims. It is simply insane how many
Muslims are murdered. The killing has reached the millions in Syria, Yemen, Libya,
Nigeria, Iran, Gaza and dozens of other places. Most Muslims are against terror
but they have no power to change the situation. Anyone who voices opposition is
killed. And unfortunately, most of the human rights organization silence the moderate
Muslims. At Btsalmo, we work to strengthen the moderates and understand that
victory will only be achieved when the moderates gain the upper hand over the
extremists. We are working to integrate the moderates within Israeli society.
The fight to have the Israeli
flag flying over Bet Hagefen, an Arab cultural center in Haifa, is based on the
simple assertion that the Arabs are part of Israel. Yes, they are part of
Israel and we must integrate them and give them the strength to fight the
global war against extremism in the world. Because that is the truth: the
extremists are not acting in the name of religion but in the name of murder and
insanity. They kill their wives and sisters in the context of family honor or
whatever they feel at the moment. They are murderers and not religious people.
Period.
Lecturing on human right for members of the Film and Television Council
Varda Epstein: Tell us about the Heba
Yazbak case. Where are you on that?
Shai Glick: Heba Yazbak is an
excellent example of an antisemite in disguise and false human rights. She is a
member of the Knesset but in actuality she supports terror, for example the
brutal killing of women, children and infants. She does not care about simple
people but about killers. And therefore she has to be in prison and not in the
Knesset.
Btsalmo represents the families
of the victims of the murderer Samir Kuntar, the Hezbollah terrorist who
committed a vicious act of murder years ago. Yazbak supports this very murderer
and glorifies him. Yes, the same killer of women and children.
And we approached the Attorney
General and the Elections Committee in order to have Yazbak’s candidacy
cancelled and to have her investigated for criminal charges involving her
support of terror. We hope that just as right-wing
candidates were denied the right to run because of things they have said that
were far less inflammatory than what she has said, that these bodies will deem
Yazbak unsuitable to run in the next elections.
We have not yet received an
official response but we know that the topic is under discussion at the highest
levels and we believe that we will be successful.
Varda Epstein: Btsalmo was working on getting an anti-Israel activist banned
from speaking at the site of a former concentration camp. Tell us about that.
Also, can you tell us why this is something we need to fight?
Shai Glick: As I have said, the
world today is full of disguises. One such disguise is “freedom of expression.”
In the name of freedom of expression, Hitler would have had a free hand to
incite and call for the Final Solution and to put on exhibitions together with Goebbels,
his Propaganda Minister and he would have been protected in the name of freedom
of expression in arts and culture. For that reason, I understand that we must
fight boycotts, antisemitism, and hate because that is just like incitement to
murder and therefore I fight it in every place where it raises its head, in
every exhibit of antisemitism and boycott around the world, because that is
what will cause the next Holocaust. That is today’s battle and we must
understand it and raise the resources needed to fight.
Shai with Tuvia Tenenbom
Varda Epstein: What’s next for Shai Glick?
Shai Glick: My dream is to be like
the New Israel Fund, but totally opposite. To found a national and
international legal unit that will protect the rights of Jews everywhere, in
Israel and the entire world, and that will give strength to moderate Arabs and
encourage initiatives on their part and that will raise the voice of human
rights around the world.
Unfortunately, that is
extremely expensive and would require enormous resources. All the organizations
operating opposite to the way Btsalmo anticipates operating, have hundreds of
funders and governments, such as the European Union, Norway, Switzerland,
Germany and more. There is no government that supports true human rights as
Btsalmo understands them and far fewer sources of funding. But I believe that
we will succeed and in another ten years the term “human rights” will mean
human rights for all people but not for terrorists.
I will make a difference in
this world. From Israel will emerge the understanding that human rights is the
fight against terror!
That will be a global
revolution.
Shai Glick of Btsalmo
UPDATE: Within 12 hours of the publication of this interview, the Jewish Press announced that a Knesset committee had banned Heba Yazbak from running as a candidate in Israel's upcoming election. Another human rights victory for Shai Glick and Btsalmo, who represented Ron Keren, brother of terror victim Danny Haran in the battle to disqualify Yazbak's candidacy.
***
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Thursday, January 30, 2020
