June 11, 2008
Missed Opportunities
In my last post I promised to review missed opportunities for peace in the Arab-Israeli conflict. Here it is, as promised.
One: The Arabs could have accepted the 1948 UN plan which would have divided the area and created two countries; Palestine and Israel. But instead they invaded with 8 armies.
Two: If it was so important for the Palestinians to have a homeland on what is termed the "West Bank", then Jordan could have given them this land at any time between 1948 and 1967, because they controlled it. But they didn't, and King Hussein's bad decisions during the Six Day War cost him this land.
Three: After the 1967 Six Day War Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Dayan famously said that he was "expecting a phone call"; from the Arab governments. He expected them to agree to peace treaties in return for getting their land back. He never got any calls.
Four: The Arabs could have taken Anwar Sadat's lead and approached Israel to make similar deals. Instead, they threw Egypt out of the Arab League and made Sadat a pariah. When he was murdered they celebrated throughout the Arab world.
Five: Yassir Arafat could have agreed to the deal offered him at Camp David in 2000 by President Clinton and Israeli PM Ehud Barak. But instead of taking an offer that would have created a Palestinian state, he started an intifada that took hundreds if not thousands of lives.
Yes yes I know the objections; the 1948 plan was unfair to the Arabs and the Zionists would have chased them off the land anyway, that it was unrealistic to expect Jordan to give up part of their territory for the Palestinians, that the Arabs would have lost face had they called Moshe Dayan in 1967, that the situation with regard to Egypt and the Sinai was different, and that the 2000 deal would have left too many Israeli settlements.
But by rejecting every opportunity for peace, the Arabs miss something else too. If they had accepted the UN plan in 1948 and the Zionists had then chased them off the UN designated land, they'd have a case. If Jordan had given them land on the "West Bank" after 1948 and Israel had invaded without provocation, they'd have a case. If the Israeli's hadn't returned the land they won in the 1967 Six Day War after reasonable negotiations they'd have a case. If they'd tried to follow up on the Carter-Sadat-Begin settlement and been rebuffed they'd have a case. And if they'd accepted Clinton and Baruk's proposal at Camp David in 2000 and the Israelis reneged they'd have a case.
But in each case they didn't. They missed their opportunity and thus have no case, or at least have a weaker one.
And no I am not saying that the Israelis have been perfect. I wish they had not built so many settlements, and that they would stop building new ones.
For the sake of argumentation we'll take take every Arab objection at face value. But what have the Palestinians got now? Only a rump Palestinian Authority and no real nation. Isn't half a loaf better than none?
Further, as time goes on the land available to the Palestinians grows smaller and smaller. It's like a declining stock; if you sell you lose money, but the longer you wait the more money you lose. Eventually you figure out it's not going to go back up again and you cut your losses, sell, and move on.
As the Israeli diplomat and politician Abba Eban said, "the Arabs never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity"
Posted by Tom at 9:00 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
June 4, 2008
No, the Settlements are Not the Problem
Once again we have a news story that spectacularly misses the point. All the more disappointing since it's in The Washington Times:
Israeli settlements seen subverting peace talksTop Palestinian negotiators complained Tuesday that continuing Israeli settlement construction on contested land was undermining chances of a peace deal this year, even as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the Bush administration still hoped to nail down at least the outlines of a peace deal before Mr. Bush leaves office in January.
With embattled Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in Washington for talks with President Bush on Wednesday, Maen Areikat, deputy general of the Palestine Liberation Organization's negotiating department, said Israel's continued settlement building since the U.S.-sponsored Annapolis conference in November had dimmed prospects of a breakthrough.
"Unfortunately, the situation on the ground has not changed significantly" since Annapolis, Mr. Areikat said on a Washington visit. "On the contrary, Israel is trying to change the facts on the ground to its advantage."
Another story in the Times earlier this week made essentially the same point about the Golan Heights
KATZRIN, Golan Heights | Life has suddenly become very uncertain for the residents of the 32 Israeli communities in these highlands captured from Syria in 1967.Recent peace overtures with Syria have put their homes on the trading block, raising the prospect that they could be evicted in scenes reminiscent of the evacuation of the Gaza Strip in 2005.
But the Golan occupies a very different place in the Israeli national psyche from Gaza or the West Bank, where ideologically driven settlers live in tense proximity to a Palestinian majority....
Israelis feel more at home in the Golan than in the West Bank and even Jerusalem's Arab neighborhoods. Now that the Golan is back on the bargaining table, Israeli residents there bristle at comparisons with the religious nationalist settlers of the West Bank and the former Jewish communities in the Gaza Strip....
Tourists, a rare sight in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, browse for upscale wine at a Golan Heights shop. Residents there do not consider themselves to be nationalist settlers.
Since the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, the Golan Heights' border between Israel and Syria has been the calmest of any border zone. Despite the ubiquitous presence of military vehicles on the roads, residents ask rhetorically why a treaty with Syria is necessary when the Golan is more tranquil and more secure than Tel Aviv.
The message is clear: If it wasn't for those darn settlements there would be peace in between Israel and Palestine.
What rubbish.
Answer Me This
If the settlements are the problem today, what was the problem before 1967?
The "West Bank"
Suppose Israel removed every settlement from what we call the West Bank, and what they call Judea and Samaria. Fatah would be nominally in control, at least for a short period. However, Hamas would undoubtably make a play for total control, and would likely succeed just as they did in Gaza. What we would then have is a terrorist state that would spend it's time attacking Israel.
If Fatah retained control, however, the situation would not be much if any better. Fatah, as I have written, is basically a terrorist organization that has no intention of accepting the existence of Israel. As Andy McCarthy wrote last year
The Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades are Fatah's terrorist wing. They have been a specially designated Foreign Terrorist Organization under U.S. law since 2002, and, as I noted here, have now taken to directly threatening the United States. ("We won't remain idle in the face of the siege imposed on the Palestinian people by Israel, the U.S. and other countries[.]...We will strike at the economic and civilian interests of these countries, here and abroad.")Fatah's Abbas, our "moderate" "peace partner," maintains close ties to the Brigades -- even if he didn't want to (which I doubt) he has no choice as they are very popular among Palestinians.
Even as the administration announced its strong support for Fatah in the wake of Fatah's ouster from Gaza by Hamas, Fatah's al Aqsa Brigades have continued to carry out attacks against Israel, in coordination with Palestinian Islamic Jihad, another designated terrorist organization with a long history of working with Fatah.
The reason for all this is simple; the Palestinians do not want a "two-state solution". They want to destroy Israel. Notably missing from most stories, including the ones in the Times above, is any mention of the Palestinian demand for a "right of return".
The "right of return" is what the Palestinians is their right to return to land "stolen" from them in the 1948 War of Independence. What they want to do is to be able to go into Israel proper, ie the pre-1967 borders, and take land that they claim is theirs. Four million or more Palestinians want to exercise this "right." Given that the population of Israel is currently only 7 million, with 1 million being Arabs, clearly this is a recipe for the end of Israel.
Some might propose a trade; the Palestinians give up their "right of return" and the Israelis the settlements, but one neither side will give in, and anyway it doesn't answer the question of Palestinian terrorism.
Lastly, I don't see any evidence that granting the Palestinians their own state would "pull the ideological rug out from under the terrorists", or "take away their issue", as we are commonly told. As it is, about 50% of Palestinians support "resistance operations" against Israel.
The Golan Heights
Readers will recall that in early May I visited Israel and as part of out tour went up on the Golan Heights. On the Golan plateau we went up on Mount Avital, at the top of which is an old Israeli fort since turned into a park. Here's the view from the top into Syria
As with Gaza, the West Bank, and the Sinai, Israel captured the Golan in the 1967 war. It's essentially a plateau to the northeast of Israel proper.
Some say that Israel should give it back in return for a peace treaty with Syria. As the Times story above implies, if only the settlements weren't in the way there'd be peace.
Again, what rubbish.
To this day Syria supplies and funnels arms from Iran to Hezbollah in Lebanon. Yet United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701 demands the disarming of Hezbollah. There are UN peacekeeping troops in Lebanon who are charged with enforcing 1701. Yet they do not, and Hezbollah remains well armed.
So there is no reason to suppose that if Syria regained control of Golan they would not let in Hezbollah and continue to supply them with arms. Hezbollah would use Golan as they do Lebanon; as a base with which to attack Israel. The idea that peacekeepers from the UN or anywhere else would do anything about it is silly.
"Peace for Land"
Peace for land worked with Egypt because Anwar Sadat was a sane man with whom the Israelis could work. He was a dictator, to be sure, but rational and pragmatic. This cannot be said about Mahmud Abbas or Bashir Assad.
Once Israel gives up territory, it's gone for good. Taking it back would require a bloody war.
When Israel left Gaza, the Palestinians there a golden opportunity to show the world that they could govern themselves in peace. Instead they massacred each other and have turned it into a terrorist sanctuary.
Right now there's simply no good reason to believe that they do anything different anywhere else.
Missed Opportunities
The Arabs have had, by my count, at least five chances to make peace with Israel since 1948. In my next post I am going to go through them.
Whatever you think about the settlements, however, they are not the barrier to peace.
Update
Here it is: Missed Opportunities.
Posted by Tom at 9:27 PM | Comments (8) | TrackBack
May 16, 2008
Bush in Israel and the Democrat Melt Down
Well well, so Senator Obama and a whole slew of Democrats are all bent out of shape over what President Bush said in Israel. Here's the part of his speech before the Knesset yesterday that has them all in a tizzy:
Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along. We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: "Lord, if I could only have talked to Hitler, all this might have been avoided." We have an obligation to call this what it is -- the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history. (Applause.)
Note, of course, that no Democrat is actually named. If the currently outraged Democrats had been thinking, they would have issued statements that went something like this:
"One thing all Americans agree on is that appeasement doesn't work. As president, I will engage in tough, principled, and direct diplomacy just like Kennedy, Nixon and Reagan before me. And of course, no American president will engage with terrorists, least of all those who seek to destroy our stalwart ally, Israel. I look forward to celebrating the 65th anniversary of Israel's independence."
But nooooo, they had to all go off and through a big hissy fit.
Senator Obama showed why he'll never be qualified to be president:
I'm a strong believer in civility and I'm a strong believer in a bipartisan foreign policy, but that cause is not served with dishonest, divisive attacks of the sort that we've seen out of George Bush and John McCain over the last couple days
and
That's exactly the kind of appalling attack that's divided our country and that alienates us from the world
"Divisive"? This from a senator who's party wants to force "gay marriage" on us through the courts; the most undemocratic branch of government? That is in bed with Movon.org, one of the most "divisive" groups out there? That panders to the nutroots crowd who regularly deride Bush and Cheney in the most vile terms?
Mark Salter nails Obama's M.O.
We have all become familiar with Senator Obama's new brand of politics. First, you demand civility from your opponent, then you attack him, distort his record and send out surrogates to question his integrity. It is called hypocrisy, and it is the oldest kind of politics there is.
Rich Lowry lists Obama's "rules", and what is "off limits"
He can't be called a "liberal" ("the same names and labels they pin on everyone," as Obama puts it); his toughness on the war on terror can't be questioned ("attempts to play on our fears"); his extreme positions on social issues can't be exposed ("the same efforts to distract us from the issues that affect our lives" and "turn us against each other"); and his Chicago background too is off-limits ("pouncing on every gaffe and association and fake controversy").
Should we on the right take Obama up on his stated desire to have an oh-so-clean campaign?
We could take Obama's rules in good faith if he never calls John McCain a "conservative" or labels him in any other way. If he never criticizes him for his association with George Bush. If he doesn't jump on his gaffes (like McCain's 100-years-in-Iraq comment that Obama distorted and harped on for weeks). And if he never says anything that would tend to make Americans fearful about the future or divide them (i.e., say things that some people agree with and others don't).
Oh, and he would have to stop lying about the meaning of Senator McCain's "100 years in Iraq" statement.
Obama's not alone, though, in his whining. Michael Goldfarb, blogging at The Weekly Standard, has usefully compiled a list of reactions. Here's one
(Senator Joe) Biden again did not mince words when discussing Bush's remarks, accusing the president of engaging in "long-distance swiftboating" with his speech in Israel. Biden also cited numerous examples of the Bush Administration reaching out to unfriendly regimes in Libya, North Korea and Iran, arguing that Bush's insinuation that the Democrats were soft on terrorism was "truly delusional ... and truly disgraceful."
The Democrats can sure dish it out but they can't take it.
So What of Appeasement?
The Democrats claim that they're not appeasers of dictators and terrorists. Are they?
Since Senator Obama is the one in the limelight, let's look briefly at his record:
Senator Obama: yesterday "George Bush knows that I have never supported engagement with terrorists..."Senator Obama November 1, 2007: "I would meet directly with Iranian leaders. I would meet directly with Syrian leaders. "
A quick look at the relevant website for the State Department confirms what we already know
Iran remained the most active state sponsor of terrorism....Since Syria's 1979 designation as a state sponsor of terrorism, it has continued to provide political support to Palestinian terrorist groups.....
What really is the difference between meeting with Hamas, Hezbollah, and the leaders of those who sponsor them? Neither group could survive were it not for their sponsors.
Want more? Here's Obama at one of the Democrat debates last year:
Asked if he would be willing to meet separately "without precondition" during the first year of his administration with the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba, and North Korea, Obama said, "I would."
Here he is again:
"The notion that somehow not talking to countries is punishment to them...is ridiculous," Sen. Obama said in a debate last year. "One of the first things that I would do in terms of moving a diplomatic effort in the region forward is to send a signal that we need to talk to Iran and Syria."
What's ridiculous is the notion that such a meeting will not be trumpeted as a victory by the Jihadists. What Obama does not seem to realize is that the United States is not just an average run-of-the-mill nation. The President, Democrat or Republican, is not called "the leader of the free world" for nothing. Simply meeting with the President will be interpreted as lending legitimacy to regimes that are illegitimate and worried about it. Dictators, by their very nature, have no real legitimacy. The pseudo-elections in Iran and Venezuela (they probably have them in Syria, Cuba, and North Korea too) change this not at all.
So even if nothing is decided at these "talks", they will be portrayed as a victory by the other side. We can say all we want that no, they're not a victory for Iran/Syria/Cuba/North Korea/Venezuela, but it won't matter. The propaganda organs of our opponents will be out in full force, and in one of Bush's biggest failings he hasn't beefed up ours, so there won't be much of a response.
Not Just Obama
It's not just Sen. Obama who is an appeaser. Kathryn Jean Lopez has helpfully compiled a list of other Democrats the President could have been talking about, such as
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, freelance diplomat, who in December 2007 said: "the road to Damascus is a road to peace."Or, perhaps he meant Speaker Pelosi in April 2007: "I believe in dialogue. As my colleagues have said over and over again, unless you communicate, you cannot understand each other. You cannot reach agreement."
Or maybe he meant recent Obama endorser and former North Carolina senator John Edwards, who, according to his own press release in February of last year, believes "the U.S. should step up our diplomatic efforts by engaging in direct talks with all the nations in the region, including Iran and Syria."
...Or former Democratic presidential candidates and senators Chris Dodd and John Kerry, who met with Syria's al-Assad and said: "As senior Democrats on the Foreign Relations Committee, we felt it was important to make clear that while we believe in resuming dialogue, our message is no different: Syria can and should play a more constructive role in the region ...
Liberals typically bring up the fact that U.S. presidents from Roosevelt to Reagan met with Soviet leaders. This is true, but misleading. These were meetings well scripted out in advance, with little being left to chance. Reykjavik in 1986 was the exception, not the rule.
Further, Obama seems blissfully unaware that unscripted high-level meetings are highly risky. As often as not they backfire. Reykjavik backfired on Gorbachev. Khrushchev sized up Kennedy as a "weakling" in their initial meeting, prompting the former to believe he could get away with sneaking nuclear-armed missiles into Cuba. It's widely thought that Stalin snookered Roosevelt at Yalta. If nothing else, Obama should read Khrushchev's rants at Eisenhower or Nixon during some of their meetings. That alone would give him second thoughts.
So should we not "talk" with these regimes? I hate to sound Clintonian, but it depends on what you mean by "talk". A meeting with an Iranian representative in the back room of the Canadian embassy in Madrid? No problem. President-to-President talks surrounded by thousands of reporters? Hold your horses.
Lastly, in fairness I will say that President Bush's tough talk hasn't extended to the Saudis, who's export of Wahhabism is designed to destroy the West. Also, our dopey Secretary of State has been "pressuring Israel to meet with Hamas representatives". Side
On the upside, Senator John McCain tells it like it is
If Senator Obama wants to sit down across the table with the leader of a nation that calls Israel a stinking corpse--what is it that he wants to talk about with him?
Nothing.
Meaningful negotiations could take place if they stop sponsoring terrorist organizations...those are the preconditions for sitting down with the Iranians.
Exactly right.
Update
This is the guy who wants to negotiate with the dictators of Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, and Cuba (h/t Dagney's Rant)
I'm sure they'll all take him very seriously after he destroys our ability to respond to anything militarily.
What we need to do is spend more money on weapons, not less.
Posted by Tom at 8:00 PM | Comments (8) | TrackBack
May 11, 2008
Israel Trip 2008
We visited the Mount of Beatitudes, watched Israeli F-15s and 16s fly in formation over Jerusalem, contemplated Jesus agony in the Garden of Gethsemane, saw one place where David hid from Saul, went to an Independence Day concert, spoke with Israeli soldiers, swam in the Dead Sea, peered into Syria from an old Israeli fort on the Golan, and stuffed ourselves with all manner of delicacies morning, noon, and night. Oh, and the weather was perfect.
It was a fantastic trip. Nothing I write here can do justice to all that we saw and experienced, and I can only post a few of the photos. Speaking of which I took 461 photos in 7 days of touring, more than on any other trip. Thank heavens for digital photography.
I've uploaded all of my photos to photobucket, but unfortunately they're out of chronological order, and I can't figure out why. They run from #IM000539 to IM001000, so that's your clue as you scroll through. I'll try and fix it when I get time. Even if I can't fix the order, I will go through and label as many as I can.
This was a trip set up by my church, and was mainly a tour of the holy land, to see where the various events occurred in both Old and New Testaments. My pastor, who went with us, said that once you've been to the holy land you'll never read the bible the same way again. I can already see that he was right. I can't say that it made me stronger in my faith, as I'm pretty strong now, but there's nothing quite like seeing the landscape where it all took place.
We landed in Tel Aviv on Thursday May 1 after what seemed two never-ending flights, and spent our first night there. The next day we boarded the tour bus and headed north to Tiberius by the Sea of Galilee, stopping at several placed along the way. We spent three days in Tiberius, and then headed south to Jersusalem, skirting the border with Jordan. We then spend the last three days in and around Jerusalem.
We'll start with this; for almost 2,000 years the doubters said that Pontius Pilate was a myth, a legend invented by Christians. There being no records in the Roman archive referring to him, Christians could only defend themselves by referring to scripture. Then, in 1961, a block of limestone was uncovered in Caesarea that referred to him, and was dated to the 1st century A.D. Once again, the scriptures were confirmed. Known as the "Pilate Stone", the original is in the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. Here's our Israeli tour guide, Ronnie Cohen, beside a facsimile of the stone at Caesarea, explaining its significance.
Here's Pastor Gary teaching from atop Mt Carmel
Our typical procedure when we arrived at a site was that Ronnie would first provide an overview, explaining the site's historical and religious significance and perhaps some geography. Then, Pastor Gary would lead us in a bible study. At Mt Carmel we studied 1 Kings 18, especially verses 16 - 45.
Long story short, Mt Carmel was where the prophet Elijah confronted the prophets of Baal, and challenged them to a contest, one that they failed miserably. The key is perhaps in verse 21
Elijah went before the people and said, "How long will you waver between two opinions? If the LORD is God, follow him; but if Baal is God, follow him." But the people said nothing
There's a point in life where you have to make a choice. You either follow the way of God or you choose the pleasures of the world. The prophets of Baal choose poorly.
Here's me in the small Catholic chapel built in 1939 atop the Mount of Beatitudes, the site of where Jesus gave his famous "Sermon on the Mount"
The event is recorded in Matthew 5-7, and probably in Luke 6:17-49 (there's some disagreement over whether they're the same or different sermons).
Either way, the basic message is that we as believers are commanded to live the uncommon life. We should live to a higher standard, to a higher degree.
At various times over the centuries, the Catholic Church has purchased the land in and around holy sites in Israel. The advantage is that this has prevented commercial developers from spoiling the sites. The downside is that the churches really have nothing per se to do with the significance of the site.
We stopped off at a spot alongside the Jordan River and Pastor Gary did a mass baptism. The river water was somewhat stagnant, I've been baptized as an adult already, and and all-in-all I'd rather not have done it, but I figured there was no point in going all that way to Israel and not participate in everything.
Baptism is not required for salvation, but, as with works, is evidence of faith.
North to the Golan Heights
The next day we headed north to the Golan Heights. We stopped at several places, but our ultimate destination was an Israeli fort that had been turned into a national park. The Golan is essentially a plateau that rises above Galilee to a maximum height of 1,700 feet. It is a strategic location that Israel captured in the 1967 Six Day War, and managed to retain during the 1973 Yom Kippur War. In my opinion they've have to be nuts to give it back to the government of Bashir Assad in return for a piece of paper promising peace.
Along the way we passed several Israeli Army bases. Here is a photo of some Merkava tanks that I took from the bus (as always, click on the photo to enlarge).
The fort was atop Mt Avital, just a few miles from the Syrian border. Our guide, Ronnie, had been stationed here as part of his tour in the Israeli Army, Here's the fort
And here's a view eastward from the fort. The farmland in the foreground is Israeli, and the treeline and beyond is Syria. Syrian military positions are hidden in the trees.
I had the same feeling here as I did while standing on the beaches of Normandy some years ago. These are places that if you're like me you've read about dozens of times, and seen innumerable History Channel programs about. In Normandy I could almost see the American troops make their way through the villages, tossing a hand grenade over a wall before going around it. Here I could almost feel the victory of 1967 and the desperation of Yom Kippur some six years later.
South to Jerusalem
After three days at Tiberius we packed up and headed south. If you don't stop the trip from Tiberius to Jerusalem is only a few hours, but we took a whole day to do it since we made several stops along the way; Mount Arbel, of no biblical significance but a great view of Galilee, Beit Shean (or "Beth Shan"), where among other things Saul and his son's bodies were hung from the city walls1 Samuel 31, Gideon's Spring, where the Israelites won a victory over the Midianites because they obeyed God (Judges 7), and had dinner in a tent at Genesis Land hosted by none other than "Abraham" himself. It was kind of hokey but in the end pretty neat and well worth doing.
As we drove south the land went from green to arid. As mentioned earlier, we drove on route 90, which runs just parallel to the Jordan River, which is the border. As such, most of the Israeli "settlements" and Palestinian territory was well to the west of us. We did see a few settlements, however. What was striking was the Israeli ability to turn the desert into productive farmland, something that the Arabs never did when it was all theirs.
Jerusalem
We spent two of the next three days in Jerusalem itself, and one day went to the Dead Sea area. We did so much in the city it's hard to know what to exclude from this brief overview, but no account would be complete without the Garden of Gethsemane, which is at the bottom of the Mount of Olives, just outside the Old City (Matthew 26:36-46, Mark 14: 32-41, Luke 22:39-46 and John 17, although Gethsemane is not directly mentioned in the latter two.
And here it is, the "Western Wall", or "Wailing Wall"; all that stands of Herod the Great's expansion of the second temple in 19 B.C.
The photo above was taken the evening we arrived in the city. The soldiers in the foreground are there for a rehearsal of their Memorial Day observances (more about which later). You can't see it in this photo, but just to the right are a lot more soldiers milling about.
The photo below was taken on Thursday May 8, the last day we were in Israel. As you can see, there was a multitude of people up at the wall. Anyone could go up to it; they don't check your religion. The only requirements were that men and women were segregated (the women's section is to the right beyond a small wall in the photo) and all men had to have some sort of head covering.
Despite the history and religious significance, one of the most moving and important stops was at a small shop called Shorashim Biblical Shop, owned and operated by Moshe and Dov Kempinski.
As we sat in a semi-circle in their shop, Moshe explained the unique mission he and his brother have set forth on: It's all about "bridge building". The fall of the Iron Curtain led to a fall of another curtain between Judaism and Christianity. Though they set up their shop 25 years ago, it has only been in the past 16 the Christians became interested in their store. We need to listen to each other, he stressed, and learn each other's language. God brought you to Jerusalem, he said. Sure, everyone has their own excuse for coming; to see the sights, where Jesus walked, to learn the history... all tricks God used to get you here. The fact is that why you think you're here is a trick played by God to get you here so that he could spend some time with you in His house. Of course, in the end, it's all about more than "god talk"; if you can't walk the walk don't talk the talk.
Because of the upcoming Israeli Remembrance Day (May 7. It's similar to our Memorial Day, but they're actually solemn about it) and Independence Day (May 8) observances, security was very tight, and soldiers were posted everywhere. I saw throughout the Old City, but also at toll booths and shopping centers. Geek that I am, I noticed that most carried the American M-4 carbine, some had the M16A2, but a few the Vietnam-era M16A1.
Here's a representative photo of the Old City. If I have it right, the large Menorah at right is a recreation by The Temple Institute of the original one in Solomon's temple (the First Temple, which lasted from 1000 B.C. to 586B.C. when it was destroyed by the Babylonian King Nebuchadrezzar).
On May 8 we were just outside Jersusalem on a hill looking over into Bethlehem when what came flying overhead but several formations of F-16s, F-15s, old A-4s (!) and even a KC-135 tanker escorted by more F-16s. It was quite a thrill!
There are two places where Christians believe Jesus may have been crucified and buried. One is at Calvary (sometimes called "Golgotha"), and what is now the site of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. The other is the Garden Tomb, the site of a tomb where he may have been buried (still having been crucified at Calvary). Of the two we only visited the latter.
Of course, no one really knows the location, so it may have been one of the above sites or neither. As our guide (an entertaining old gentleman) at the Garden Tomb stressed, it doesn't really matter.
The Dead Sea Area
While the Sea of Galilee is about 900ft below sea level, and Death Valley only 281ft below sea level, the Dead Sea is a whopping 1,378ft below sea level. At 30% salinity vs 3.5% for the ocean, it is the second saltiest body of water on earth, with only a lake a remote part of east Africa being saltier. The Dead Sea is also quite large, at 42mi x 11 mi, versus 13mi x 8mi for the Sea of Galilee. The Great Salt Lake in Utah is 75mi x 28mi, but has an average depth of only 14ft and maximum depth of 33ft, versus 394ft and 1,083ft respectively for the Dead Sea. In other words, it is darn huge and very salty. As its name implies, nothing can live in it.
Unfortunately I didn't get any photos of me or the other swimming in it, but it is incredibly bouyant. You can float no problem on either you back or your stomach without any effort. If you try and stand straight up (in deep water without your feet touching), your feet want to pop up as if they have floats on them. It was very weird and quite fun.
However, before going in there were a few soldiers stationed outside, and I overheard they both speaking fairly good English. I approached them, said I was a tourist from the U.S.A., said that I appreciated what they were doing, and that our fight in Iraq and Afghanistan against AQI and the Taliban was part of their fight against Hamas and Hezbollah; "they're all jihadists". They enthusiastically agreed and let me have my picture taken with them.
The mountaintop fort of Masada is not part of biblical history, but is such an important part of Jewish and Israelite history that no trip to Israel is complete without a visit. Overlooking the Dead Sea, it was the "last stand" of a Jewish group known as the Zealots after Rome destroyed the Second Temple in Jerusalem in 70 A.D. and ended the existence of Israel until modern times.
Long story short, the Zealots held out against a Roman seige for three years. Finally, when the Romans broke through and entered the fortress city, they found no one alive but two women and five children. Why were the rest all dead? The Roman seize machines hadn't killed that many.
The answer is that the Jews knew that rape, torture, and slavery awaited them if taken alive. But Jewish law forbade suicide.
They way they got around it was the each man killed his family, then the men killed each other, until they were down to twelve. These then drew lots, with the loser killing his fellows, and finally falling on his sword, so that only he violated the law.
The story of Masada is not part of the Talmud, and was largely forgotten by Jews until the 1920s. That we know of it at all is only due to the writings of Flavius Josephus, who accompanied the Romans during their seige.
Because of the situation of modern Israel, it is therefore natural that they look to Masada as Americans look at The Alamo; "never again". Indeed, all or some Israeli soldiers take their oath atop Masada and repeat the oath "Masada shall not fall again."
Masada today is a national park, with the easiest way to get up by cable car. Atop the mountain they've got all the usual markers just as you find at any park in the U.S. Our tour guide Ronnie did his excellent job. But then, during the tour, something different happened. Something special.
At exactly 11:00 a voice came through a speaker (in Hebrew, of course), followed by a one minute siren. This happened all throughout Israel, not just through loundspeakers, but on radio and television. The speaker asked for a minute of silence in observance of Israeli war dead.
It was their Memorial Day.
One of the places where David hid from King Saul was at the oasis of Ein Gedi (1 Samuel 23 - 24) Situated in a mountain crevice, it's just what you think of when you think of an "oasis"; a beautiful stream and waterfall surrounded by palm trees in the middle of the desert. The land surrounding the Dead Sea is a stark and harsh deseert; kind of like what you see in much the American southwest. Here's a representative scene
Then here's Ein Gedi
Pretty nice, huh? It doesn't take you long to figure out why David selected this place as a hideout.
We did much more in Israel than I can write about here. See the photobucket page for all photos, which I promise to label some day.
I've been fortunate to have been to a half a dozen or so European countries, and enjoyed every one. That said, most are only worth one visit. Before Israel, Greece is the only one I'd really like to go back to. Now Israel is on that list too.
Posted by Tom at 9:00 PM | Comments (8) | TrackBack
November 21, 2007
A Counterproductive Attempt at Legacy
I've wanted to write about this for a few weeks, not, but another story or issue always won out. This today from the AP in the Washington Times sent me over the top
The United States will try to close an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal before President Bush's term expires, giving the administration a little over a year to help the two sides craft a resolution to one of the world's longest and most intractable conflicts. ..."The parties have said they are going to make efforts to conclude it in this president's term, and it's no secret that means about a year," Rice said. "That's what we'll try and do. Nobody can guarantee that - all you can do is make your best effort."
Just what I suspected; Bush wants to go out a "peacemaker". This might be bearable, but for this, reported by Agence France Presse
US President George W. Bush made more calls to Middle East leaders Tuesday as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice pinned the success of next week's Annapolis conference on simply opening negotiations for a Palestinian state, even without a work plan."The success of this meeting is really in the launch of negotiations between the Israelis and Palestinians for the establishment of a Palestinian state and therefore a two-state solution," Rice said about the conference planned for Annapolis, Maryland, near Washington.
As with so many others, the President and his Secretary of State have it exactly wrong. The problem is not the lack of a "two state solution." The problem is that the Palestinians are ruled by terrorists who want to destroy it. Specifically, neither Fatah nor Hamas have given up their "right of return"
The "Right of return" is one in which the Palestinians insist that the refugees, and their descendants, allegedly displaced during the 1948 war of independence, have the right to return to Israel proper and claim the land that they say they owned. Depending on which website you believe, this would mean anywhere from 3.5 to 6 million Arabs moving into Israel, a country of 6 million Jews and 1 million Arabs. The clear purpose of the "right of return" is to destroy Israel.
Fatah (or "Fateh"), is supposedly the "good" organization with whom we can make peace. Yet on their website they insist on this "Right of return"
The inalienable rights of the Palestinian people include the right to self-determination, the right of return, the establishment of a sovereign state with Jerusalem as its capital.
Also, as part of their constitution (somehow now missing from their website) is this
Obstacles to Peace
The first obstacle to a settlement, then is the Palestinian insistence on a "right of return"
The second obstacle, though, is the Israeli fear that if they give the Palestinians a state terrorist and rocket attacks will continue as before.
The settlements are not an obstacle. If you want to know why, read what I wrote here. The short version, however is this: If the settlements are the problem today, what was the problem before 1967?
But perhaps the bigglest obstacle to peace is that the Palestians are in a state of near chaos. As it is, the Palestinian territories are split; Fatah rules the West Bank and Hamas Gaza.
If Mahmud Abbas ("Abu Mazen", or whatever name he goes by these days) reaches a settlement, will the rest of Fatah go along? What about the other political parties that make up the Palestinian Authority? Will Hamas agree to any settlement?
Of course, it's unlikely in the extreme that anyone except Abbas and his closest associates will agree to anything. The rest of them will reject the settlement, and will continue with their terrorism and Qassam rockets.
Just consider this: Ismail Haniyeh is a senior Hamas official. On March 29, 2006 he was sworn in as Prime Minister of the Palestinian Authority. Abbas dismissed him on June 14 2007, but Haneyeh refuses to accept Abbas' authority and says that he is still PM, governing what he can from Gaza. There is a big dispute over the legality of Abbas' dismissal of him but the point is that they can't govern themselves. Haniyeh is part of the rejectionist camp, having declared in December of 2006 that "we will never recognize the usurper Zionist government and will continue our jihad-like movement until the liberation of Jerusalem."
Some say that if we give them (or allow them to have) a country the infighting will cease and they'll behave. I consider this argument unpersuasive.
I used to think that the Palestinians (as they are called, a whole debate unto itself) should have their own country. No more. Until they can behave with a minimum of decency they should not be allowed to rule anything.
As such, any meeting in Annapolis will be counterproductive. The Palestinians will be promised a country before having had to make any concessions. They will then refuse to give up their "right of return" or make any meaningful concessions of their own. Because of this refusal they will not be given a state, just promised one at some indefinate time in the future. Abbas and his cronies will get mad, and this will be a signal to the terror masters that it is time to unleash their minions and start another Intifada. Israel will retaliate, and the world will condem Israel.
Andrew McCarthy, writing in National Review this past June, summed up his analysis if Fatah and the prospects for a peace agreement with them by saying that
The Palestinians are a backward people, indoctrinated toward brutality. They don’t rate a sovereign state or anyone’s help until they civilize themselves. Sovereignty is a privilege that implies acceptance of civilized norms — that is why we speak of states like Iran and North Korea as “rogues.” Regardless of whether there really are scattered Palestinian moderates, it is a dangerous fantasy to assume the Palestinian people, as a whole, are ready to be anyone’s peace partner.We are enabling their hatred when we provide support without insisting that the Palestinian people — not just Abbas and Fatah, but the people — convincingly foreswear revolution, terrorism, violence, ethnic-cleansing, and the goal of eliminating Israel. We are a generation or more, at least, from any hope of such developments. In the meantime, as long as we subsidize the hatred, we shall be buying more of it, while giving the Palestinians no incentive to reform.
My thoughts exactly.
Posted by Tom at 9:00 PM | Comments (7) | TrackBack
September 1, 2007
MEMRI TV
Let's take a minute to recognize an organization that is absolutely invaluable for anyone who wishes to understand the Middle East.
MEMRI, the Middle East Media Research Institute, is or should be a national treasure. From their mission statement
The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) explores the Middle East through the region's media. MEMRI bridges the language gap which exists between the West and the Middle East, providing timely translations of Arabic, Persian, and Turkish media, as well as original analysis of political, ideological, intellectual, social, cultural, and religious trends in the Middle East.
What you have are translators who sift through all manner of newspapers, magazines, blog sites, radio broadcasts and television shows that originate out of the Middle East. Material deemed important is posted in English on their website. You can also sign up for their email newsletter, which I have done.
Translated are the good, the bad, and the ugly. Contrary to what detractors no doubt say, any fair survey of MEMRI translations shows that they are not simply trying to make Arabs or Persions look bad. But there will be no pleasing some people.
Recently launched isMEMRI TV, which is fast becoming an indespensible resource. . Middle Eastern television shows are monitored and posted with English subtitles. Transcripts for each show are also available.
Unfortunately they don't allow you to post clips on other sites, like what you can do with YouTube or other videosites. Hopefully this will change, but until then head over and check out what they've got.
Posted by Tom at 8:35 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 1, 2007
What A Waste
Today's news tells us that in it's infinite wisdom the Bush Administration is going to send millions in aid to the Palestinian authority
The U.S. is beginning work on tens of millions of dollars worth of aid projects aimed at boosting the Palestinian economy and President Mahmoud Abbas at the expense of Hamas. ...The $2.5 million project, commissioned by the U.S. Agency for International Development, had been suspended after the January 2006 victory by the militant movement Hamas in Palestinian elections. The project got the green light after Mr. Abbas dismissed the Hamas government because of its violent takeover of the Gaza Strip.
What a waste of money.
Sarcasm aside, the reality is that there isn't much to choose from between Abbas' Fatah and Hamas.
Fatah is only "better" than Hamas in that at the moment they're shooting fewer people. Abbas, like Yassir Arafat, has learned to play the PR game. He's now considered the "moderate".
Fatah is a terrorist organization. It's charter calls for the destruction of Israel, and it's leaders still insist on the "right of return". Mahmud Abbas, Abu Mazen, or whatever name he goes by these days, is a holocaust denier who in his 1983 Ph.D disseration says that the "Zionists" were involved in a scheme with the Nazis to steal Arab land.
It is foolish of us to try and play Fatah off against Hamas. Ever since at least the 1993 Oslo Accords the United States and Israel have been trying to "strengthen" the "moderate" fatah against those we perceived were more radical. This strategy has resulted in neither a peace settlement nor a reduction in the strength of the radicals.
Despite what I just said I do not blame President Clinton for our current situation. While I think his strategy flawed, he did do the right thing in 2000 by inviting Yassir Arafat and Israeli PM Ehud Barak to Camp David in an attempt to hammer out an agreement. That it failed was soley the fault of Arafat.
I do blame the Bush Administration for continuing this flawed strategy. Not only does it not work for reasons discussed above, it puts a lie to the "with us or against us" regarding terrorism. Apparently only al Qaeda, and maybe Hezbollah, count as terrorist groups.
No Aid and No State
Not only do the Palestianians not deserve our aid, they do not deserve their own country. I used to buy into the "two state solution", but not anymore. It's not simply that they squander our aid, they vote terrorist organizations like Hamas into power. Those who say that we must "respect" the vote because it was (allegedly) "free and fair" are at best making a fake argument, at worst are moral idiots.
If the Palestinians vote for Hamas or Fatah they need to bear the consequences. And part of those consequences is that we stop sending them aid and refuse to meet with their leaders.
What I Would Do
My strategy would revolve around the recommendations made by Natan Sharansky in his 2004 book The Case for Democracy: The Power of Freedom to Overcome Tyranny and Terror. The idea would be to set up a series of preconditions that the Palestinian Authority would have to meet before they got any aid. More importantly, they would have to meet these requirements before we would resume peace talks.
Until then, let the Israelis finish their wall and have nothing more to do with them.
Posted by Tom at 8:18 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
July 15, 2007
Consequences of Failure
What would happen if we left Iraq as soon as possible, as many now want? What if we just immediately halted offensive operations, returned to our bases, and began packing?
Austin Bay has come up with seven scenarios. Summarized, they are
1) Three new countries are formed; Kurdistan, Southern Iraq dominated by the Shia, and Anbar, controlled by the Sunni. The latter two fight over Baghdad, but the rest of the country is relatively peaceful.2) Full-scale civil war between Sunnis and Shias breaks out. Sunni Arab states aid the former, and Iran the latter. Iran sees this as an opportunity to expand its border. The Kurdish north remains relatively peaceful.
3) Turkey invades the Kurdish north. This scenario can be combined with others.
4) The Iraqi state quickly becomes a Shia dictatorship. Sunnis are either massacred or flee (or a little of both). The Kurds throw in their lot with the Shia in return for limited autonomy.
5) Chaos. This differes from #2 in that the country devolves into many factions, instead of two or more large warring parties. More than in any of the other scenarios, in this al Qaeda is able to use the situation to build up a series of terrorist training camps in the country.
6) The Shia tribes "gang up" and expel virtually all Sunnis from the country (note; I am not clear on how this differs from #4)
7) The democratic government holds, and ultimately proves popular. After several months, the Iraqi Army defeats all major rivals.
As Bay accurately concludes, only numbers 1 and 7 benefit all Iraqis, the US, and the civilized world.
At this point there's no way I'm going to try and predict which would happen if we withdraw.
Ralph Peters, along with Austin Bay a retired Army colonel, thinks that the result will be a massacre along the lines of what happened in Cambodia when the Khmer Rouge took over.
I'll tell you what happens: massacres. And while I have nothing against Shia militiamen and Sunni insurgents killing each other 24/7, the overwhelming number of victims will be innocent women, children and the elderlyBosnia? That was just rough-necking at recess compared to what Islamist fanatics and ethnic beasts will do. Given that Senate Majority Misleader Harry Reid and Commissar of the House Nancy Pelosi won't tell us what they foresee after we quit, let me lay it out:
* After suffering a strategic defeat, al-Qaeda-in-Iraq comes back from the dead (those zombies again . . .) and gets to declare a strategic victory over the Great Satan.
* Iran establishes hegemony over Iraq's southern oil fields and menaces the other Persian Gulf producers. (Sorry, Comrade Gore, even that Toyota Prius needs some gasoline . . . )
* Our troops will have died in vain. Of course, that doesn't really matter to much of anyone in Washington, Democrat or Republican. So we'll just write off those young Americans stupid enough to join the military when they could've ducked out the way most members of Congress did.
* A slaughter of the innocents - so many dead, the bodies will never be counted.
Obviously Peters does not subscribe to Bay's scenario numbers 1 or 7.
Assuming neither 1 or 7 occur, we should not think that repercussions will be limited to Iraq. As Michael Rubin points out
The idea floating around Washington that Iraq can be separated from Afghanistan is naive. The Iranians, who interfere in both, have the same objectives in both. Iraq is a laboratory. If strategies applied there cause the U.S. Congress to embrace defeat, then those same strategies will be applied in Afghanistan.
And how long before those who tell us we need to "redeploy" so as to better fight al Qaeda will decide that Afghanistan isn't worth it after all? Not too long, I'll wager.
Posted by Tom at 9:30 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack
June 25, 2007
Our New Friends at Fatah
The other day I wrote about the Bush Administration's plans to send Fatah $60 million in aid money in a post I titled "The Dead Bush Doctrine". Fatah, I wrote, is basically a terrorist organization that has no intention of accepting the existance of Israel. I provided some information about them which I thought bolstered my case.
In case you doubt me here's a tidbit from the Jerusalem Post (h/t NRO)
A Fatah faction and the Islamic Jihad both claimed responsibility for Sunday morning's Kassam rocket attack on Sderot, which damaged a home and left three people lightly wounded.
Love that "faction" bit.
These clowns aren't even a coherent organization. They're more an armed mob. The "faction" business only serves to give Abu Mazen Mahmoud Abbas an excuse to say he had nothing to do with it.
Andy McCarthy also reminds us of another faction, er, wing, within Fatah; Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades (love that name).
Let's connect the dots here:The Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades are Fatah's terrorist wing. They have been a specially designated Foreign Terrorist Organization under U.S. law since 2002, and, as I noted here, have now taken to directly threatening the United States. (“We won't remain idle in the face of the siege imposed on the Palestinian people by Israel, the U.S. and other countries[.]…We will strike at the economic and civilian interests of these countries, here and abroad.”)
Fatah's Abbas, our "moderate" "peace partner," maintains close ties to the Brigades — even if he didn't want to (which I doubt) he has no choice as they are very popular among Palestinians.
Even as the administration announced its strong support for Fatah in the wake of Fatah's ouster from Gaza by Hamas, Fatah's al Aqsa Brigades have continued to carry out attacks against Israel, in coordination with Palestinian Islamic Jihad, another designated terrorist organization with a long history of working with Fatah.
As predicted here last week, Abbas will not try to disband the al Aqsa Brigades. Instead, he will be incorporating them into the Palestinian Authority Security Forces.
The administration, meanwhile, is pushing for a renewal of millions of foreign aid dollars for the PA, including for its security forces to buck them up against Hamas. Thus, our tax dollars will be directly underwriting and arming the al Aqsa Brigades (instead of indirectly underwriting and arming them, as they have been doing up until now).
BONUS ROUND: We were arming Abbas even before the latest outbreak of fighting between Hamas and Fatah. As a result, when Fatah got run out of Gaza, Hamas took control of caches of American assault rifles, rocket-propelled grenades, rocket launchers and ammunition.
So our new policy both arms terrorist factions designated as such under U.S. law and throws U.S. support behind an organization, Fatah, with a long history of terrorism, a constitution that dedicates the organization to the annihilation of Israel, an academic and media program that relentlessly inculcates hatred of Jews and the illegitimacy of Israel, and which doesn't even have the good grace, ability or will to stop its terrorist wing from launching attacks on Israel while the U.S. and Europe are publicly pressing for a renewal of financial and political support.
Super.
Hamas is in full bragging mode about the U.S. weapons they seized. Here's Mahmoud Zahar, a co-founder of the organization, as interviewed by the German magazine Spiegel (h/t LGF)
SPIEGEL ONLINE: What will improve for people in Gaza now that Hamas is in control?Zahar: The good thing is that we can now collect information about our enemies and informants from foreign powers. We will look for Israel’s spies.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Last week there were street battles in the West Bank between Fatah and Hamas militias. Fatah maintained the upper hand. How will Hamas loyalists defend themselves in the event of any new fighting?
Zahar: Let me ask you: How have we defended ourselves so far against the Israeli occupation?
SPIEGEL ONLINE: With bombs and attacks?
Zahar: Exactly. But you said that, not me. ...
SPIEGEL ONLINE: The militant wings of Fatah and Hamas have been fully armed over the last few months. Are these weapons still in circulation?
Zahar: There are naturally very many weapons around now. Two years ago, one bullet in Gaza cost around €3.50 — now it would cost 35 cents. The American aid money has been translated into weapons. Thank you, America!
(emphasis added)
What are they going to do with their new weapons? "We Will Try to Form an Islamic Society" says Zahar.
But of course.
I suppose, though, I shouldn't be too hard on our president. After all, Israeli President Ehud Olmert said he would release "hundreds of millions" of dollars tied up in frozen accounts to Fatah, " a gesture to bolster the moderate Palestinian leader in his standoff against the Islamic militant group Hamas."
All through the 90s we propped up Arafat for just the same reason and look where it's gotten us. We never learn.
As a final bit of depressing news, Michael Rubin reminds us that the Bush Administration was once committed to democracy for the Palestinians. How times have changed.
Posted by Tom at 9:18 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
June 23, 2007
The Dead Bush Doctrine
This past February Secretary Rice announced that the United States was going to "talk" with Iran and Syria over the future of Iraq. Although she quiclkly "clarified" that the talks would't be direct, it didn't really matter. After 9-11 President Bush announced that "you're either with us or against us in the fight against terror." Because both Iran and Syria are state sponsors of terror, at the time I announced that the Bush Doctrine was dead.
Now the Bush Administration has pledged it's support for Fatah in the wake of Hamas' takover of Gaza. We're even going to send them $60 million to "upgrade Mahmoud Abbas's presidential guard and for other security expenses". No doubt in the months to come we'll see more announcements of programs designed to prop up Fatah, as our "partner in peace".
We allowed al Qaeda in Iraq and other insurgent terrorist groups refuge in Iran and Syria. We refused to attack their bases or supply depots there. We have done nothing about Hezbollah in Lebanon, other than force a "peace" settlement on Israel that does nothinb but give the terrorist group time to rearm.
For a few years Bush insisted on the "six party talks" format with North Korea, but has now seeminly abandoned that and has rewarded the DPRK with direct talks.
At the beginning of his term he refused to buy into the global warming hype, but at the recent G8 summit appeared to acquiese to at least part of the environmental agenda. While this isn't directly related to the "Bush Doctrine", I think it does show how far the administration has fallen in holding onto it's original beliefs.
All this is making the left chortle with glee. But then they've always wanted us to abandon Iraq to it's fate, make nice with every Palestinian terrorist group and Arab dictator (witness Speaker Pelosi's trip to Damascus).
Regarding the Bush Administration's new policy, I think that Andrew McCarthy has it right when he describes it as "Our Terrorists Are Better Than Your Terrorists"
The Palestinians are a backward people, indoctrinated toward brutality. They don’t rate a sovereign state or anyone’s help until they civilize themselves. Sovereignty is a privilege that implies acceptance of civilized norms — that is why we speak of states like Iran and North Korea as “rogues.” Regardless of whether there really are scattered Palestinian moderates, it is a dangerous fantasy to assume the Palestinian people, as a whole, are ready to be anyone’s peace partner.We are enabling their hatred when we provide support without insisting that the Palestinian people — not just Abbas and Fatah, but the people — convincingly foreswear revolution, terrorism, violence, ethnic-cleansing, and the goal of eliminating Israel. We are a generation or more, at least, from any hope of such developments. In the meantime, as long as we subsidize the hatred, we shall be buying more of it, while giving the Palestinians no incentive to reform.
Tough words about the Palestinians, but it's hard to see things otherwise. If by some magic every Israeli settlement disppeared and the Palestinians got an internationally recognized state tomorrow with at least part of Jerusalem as it's capital, all they'd do is use it as a base from which to attack Israel. And murder each other.
There isn't going to be any "two state solution", as long as either Fatah or Hamas are in charge. Neither wants to live side by side with Israel. We're only fooling ourselves by trying to play one off of the other.
What Fatah Stands For
Fatah is basically a terrorist organization. Its very name means "conquest", that which is supposed to happen during or after a jihad; the holy war leads to conquest. They don't choose these names by accident or without considering their meaning. Fatah was created by the late terror master himself, Yasser Arafat. It was operatives from Fatah which formed Black September, the group which carried out the massacre of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympic games in Munich.
Today the organization is led by Mahmoud Abbas (or "Abu Mazen", or whatever name he goes by these days). If Arafat was a street punk grown up to be the local crime boss,
...suggested that the figure of six million Jews murdered by the Nazis was a false one, "peddled" by the Jews. To bolster that thesis, he quotes known Holocaust revisionists as authoritative sources. Seeking conspiracy theories that would serve Arab interests, Abu Mazen also wrote that the Zionist movement "led a broad campaign of incitement against the Jews living under Nazi rule... to expand the mass extermination." Zionists, he contends, collaborated with the Nazis to murder Jews, in order to gain sympathy for the creation of the State of Israel.
And this is the guy we're trying to make nice with. This is insane.
Look at Fatah's Constitution. Under "Goals", we have
Article (12) Complete liberation of Palestine, and eradication of Zionist economic, political, military and cultural existence.Article (13) Establishing an independent democratic state with complete sovereignty on all Palestinian lands, and Jerusalem is its capital city, and protecting the citizens' legal and equal rights without any racial or religious discrimination.
"Complete liberation" does not mean the West Bank and Gaza. It means that and the whole of Israel too.
Here's the Fatah logo, which you get get straight off of their website at Fateh.net
According to Wikipedia
The Fatah official emblem shows two fists holding rifles and a hand grenade superimposed on a map of historic Palestine (i.e. British Mandate borders, including present-day Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip)
In other words, they want the whole thing.
Elsewhere, on their website, Fatah insists on the "right of return".
The Right of Return is one in which the Palestinians insist that the refugees, and their descendants, allegedly displaced during the 1948 war of independence, have the right to return to Israel proper and claim the land that they say they owned. Depending on which website you believe, this would mean anywhere from 3.5 to 6 million Arabs moving into Israel, a country of 6 million Jews and 1 million Arabs. The clear purpose of the "right of return" is to destroy Israel.
See now why peace with Fatah is impossible?
Until they change their ways we are wasting our time with them. President Clinton was probably smart when he invited Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak to Camp David in 2000 to try and hammer out an agreement based on the 1993 Oslo Accords (the ones which established the "roadmap for peace". Arafat refused all reasonable offers, and the situation has deteriorated every since. Anything we do for them needs to be conditioned on improving their record on human rights, corruption, and terrorism, as Eric Cantor suggests. To do otherwise is to lend aid to our enemies. You know, the ones the President Bush at one time said we were against.
Posted by Tom at 11:10 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
March 25, 2007
The Moral Blindness of Omar Shakir
When I decided to file this under two categories; the Middle East and Moral Clarity I had to smile. Rarely do Muslims or those on the left have moral clarity when it comes to the Middle East. They go to great lengths to excuse the terrorism and human rights abuses committed by every Muslim regime in the region, while complaining incessantly and loudly about their favorite whipping boy; Israel.
I open this mornings paper and find an article titled "Student urges Stanford divestment from Israel".
Grrr
You just know what such a story is going to be about, and you just know how awful it's going to be. This one didn't disappoint.
Student Omar Shakir wants Stanford University to divest from a country that he says engages in an apartheid-style system of oppression and human rights abuses against a beleaguered minority.Bosnia? Sudan? Not quite. Mr. Shakir is referring to Israel and its treatment of the Palestinians, and his campaign has become this year's hot political topic on the Stanford campus.
"We don't want our university to profit from abuses of human rights and violations of international law," said Mr. Shakir, a senior international-relations major who heads Students Confronting Apartheid in Israel.
This Omar Shakir sounds about as vile as Jimmy Carter.
Shakir is head of a group caleld Students Confronting Apartheid in Israel. They're beyond disgraceful.
I've no idea whether Shakir will achieve his goals. On the one hand I rather doubt it. The article does mention that he has "legions" of critics. On the other hand these leftists are nothing if not persistent, and if not countered quickly and forcefully they will get their ideas adopted.
Some time ago on this blog I laid out my position on the Israeli settlements. Since there's no point in reinventing the wheel, here it is again
Today we hear from the Arabs that the settlements are the major obstacle to peace. And, if you read the papers, you can be forgiven for thinking that if only the Israelis would give up their settlements a peace could be quickly worked out. The solution, it is said, is to give the Palestinians a country on the West Bank, and to let (demand, really) that Israel live within it's pre-1967 borders.This is not true for a number of reasons.
1. If the settlements are the problem today, then what was the problem before 1967? Terrorism against Israel did not begin with the end of the Six Day War. The PLO, for example was formed in 1964.
2. If the West Bank is such a perfect home for the Palestinians, why didn't Jordan give them this land as their country when they had the chance (i.e. before 1967)?
3. The fact is that Israel is willing to negotiate with the Arab countries but with the exception of Egypt and Jordan the Arab countries still refuse to recognize Israel's right to exist.
4. The Palestinian "right of return" must be abandoned. This is not something that you read about often (if at all) in your daily newspaper but it is one of the most important things that must be resolved. In short, during the 1948 War of Independence, some 800,000 Arabs fled the area (for reasons that are disputed). Today their ancestors demand the right to return to Israel and claim the land they left, or at least to take up Israeli citizenship. One need not be a demographer to see that these ancestors (and anyone could claim to be one as documentation would be impossible to verify) would now number in the tens of millions. They would simply flood Israel with Arabs, and, in the next election, vote the state of Israel out of existance.
5. In short, if the Arabs had not opposed Israel's right to exist from the beginning, had negotiated a peace, had given the Palestinians a homeland on the West Bank, stopped their terrorism, formed democratic (or at least representative) governments, the present situation could have been entirely avoided.
6. Further, the Security Fence that Israel is building is not preventing peace as some alledge. It is stopping terrorism, and that is a good thing. My only question is why didn't the Israelis think of it earlier. And I don't care what any "world court" has to say about it.So "the settlements" per se are not really the issue preventing peace.
The Real Issues
The main issues preventing peace are the following
1. Lack of Moral Clarity. I've written on this before here. Here are two of the essential elements of moral clarity lacking in some people:
A. Israel is an imperfect democracy, but it is a democracy. No Arab state is a democracy. This does not mean that Israel may do anything it wishes, but it does mean that we should give them the benefit of the doubt.
B. Israeli forces practice discrimination in warfare. That is, they only attack military targets. Civilians are sometimes killed as a byproduct, but the civilians are not the target themselves. Arab/Muslim terrorists deliberately target civilians. Why this is hard for some people to understand is beyond me.
2. Lack of Democracy among the Arab States. Natan Scharansky wrote about this in his excellent book "The Case for Democracy". Simply put, democracies do not fight each other. We in the west are partly responsible for the current state of affairs, since in the past we did not pressure Arab governments to reform.
3. Palestinian terrorism - until the Arab states and/or the PA put and end to terrorism by organizations such as Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and the others there will be no peace.
4. The expansion of the settlements should stop. Ok, I know I said earlier that "the settlements per se" are not the problem. And that is true. But it is also true that in my opinion Israel does not need new settlements, and by expanding them they give Palestinian extremists a propaganda message that is useful in recruiting terrorists.
I'll even add that Israel should abandon most of the setttlements. Not all, but most.
The Bottom Line
In the end the Arabs have had many opportunities for peace and have blown every one of them. They could have accepted the UN partition in 1948. Jordan could have given the Palestinians the West Bank at any time before 1967. They could have at least offered to join Sadat in his peace talks with Begin. Arafat could have listened to President Clinton at Camp David in 2000 and accepted what Prime Minister Baruk offered him.
And when Israel unilaterally handed over Gaza they could have shown the world what wonderfully peaceful people they were by spending their time trying to make the place better, instead of turning it into a base from which to attack Israel.
But no, they can't do this. And they cry foul when Israel does the only sensible thing and builds a wall to keep the terrorists out. But then, such is the moral blindness of people like Omar Shakir
Posted by Tom at 8:30 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 19, 2006
Reasons for Hope Amid Despair
Some of my recent posts have been pretty pessimistic, and while sometimes that's needed, it's also never a good thing to wallow in despair. No situation is so bad that it cannot be salvaged, and so despite out current troubles there is hope.
First up, is the media. Victor Davis Hanson in "Hope Amid Despair" points out, for example, that if there was ever any doubt that much of the media was helping the terrorists (unwittingly or otherwise), they are now completely discredited.
The globalized media is absolutely discredited after the coverage of Lebanon. Reuters has destroyed its reputation, gained from 150 years of world reporting, by releasing doctored pictures and tolerating staged photo-ops. Almost all the Western media outlets failed to distinguish Lebanese civilian from military casualties — as if the Hezbollah terrorists they never filmed and never interviewed never died.
Indeed, thanks to the unprofessional reporters abroad, and their disingenuous chiefs back home, the world never saw the killers who sent the rockets nor many of their civilian victims on the ground in Israel. Nor did the reporters apprise their audience of the different landscapes in which they worked: candor in Israel might win loud disagreement; truth in Lebanon meant death. It would be as if Reuters, AP, or the New York Times embedded its reporters within the Waffen SS, beaming daily reports back home about the great morale and noble suffering of the Wehrmacht as it advanced into the snowy Ardennes.
Next, up are Iran and Syria
Iran and Syria unleashed Hezbollah because they were both facing global scrutiny, one over nuclear acquisition and the other over the assassination of Lebanese reformer Rafik Hariri. Those problems won’t go away for either of them — nor, if we persist, will the democratic fervor in Afghanistan and Iraq on their borders.
Let't also not forget that Israel did significant damage to Hezbollah. The latter may have claimed victory, but it's not as if they are still the fighting force they were a month ago.
We still don’t know the extent of the damage that Hezbollah suffered, but it perhaps took casualties ten times the Israelis’ — losses — not to be dismissed even in the asymmetrical laws of postmodern warfare. Hezbollah’s leaders were hiding in embassies and bunkers; Israel’s were not. For all the newfound magnetism of Nasrallah, he brought ruin to his flock, and fright to the Arab establishment around Israel.
Further, the war may have simply taught Israel how to do it right next time. When the ceasefire proves to be a fraud, for surely it will, won't it reveal the impotence of the UN and those who always drone on about "international solutions"?
A surprised Israel now has a good glimpse of the terrorists’ new way of war, and probably next time will attack the supplier, not the launcher, of the rocketry. And when the Reuters stringers go away, the “civilians” of southern Lebanon, off-camera, might not be so eager to see more real fireworks lighting up their skies — or far-off, pristine Syria and Iran in safety praising the courage of the ruined amid the rubble. Note how Hezbollah already is desperately racing around the craters to assure its homeless constituency that it has enough Iranian cash to buy back lost sympathies.Even the ceasefire can come back to bite the Islamists and their supporters. Hezbollah won’t be disarmed as promised, much less stay out of Katyusha range of the border. And that defiance will only reveal the impotence of the Lebanese and the U.N., reminding both that they have talked themselves into a corner and now are responsible to keep caged their own pet 7th-century vipers. This can only work to Israel’s favor when the next rockets go off, since no one then will be proposing an “international” solution — although it will be interesting to see whether Jacques Chirac talks of the “nuclear” option once his soldiers begin to be picked off by Hezbollah
Lastly, the London airplane bomb plot proved the fallacy of dealing with domestic Muslim extremists through "multiculturalism" once and for all. To this I would also add the terrorist plot in Canada revealed a few months ago. Both countries worshiped at the altars of "tolerance", "diversity" and "multiculturism", and all it got them was hatred and bombs.
In a larger sense, the foiled London terrorist plot won’t endear either Islamists or their appeasers to millions in the world who face travel delays, cancelled flights, and body searches — on top of paying billions more to the Arab oil producers who in response whine even more in their victimhood.
In the light of recent developments in the Middle East, this might not seem like much. Those who are blind to the threat of Muslim extremism because of their hatred of George W Bush or Tony Blair will not change. We see this in their chortling over their "victory" in court over the Terrorist Survelience Program. But perhaps the average citizen has learned a bit this past month, and, as Hanson says, " that is a sort of progress after all."
Posted by Tom at 12:23 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 4, 2006
1938 Redux?
Several commentators at National Review have written recently that what they see happening in the world resembles nothing so much as the 1930s.
In the 1930s Britain and France appeased Hitler. Anything to prevent the horrors of what they called The Great War, they said. The United States stood on the sidelines, naively thinking we were secure in our isolationist policies. The elite mocked Churchill as a drunkard alarmist.
Today many in the West so no danger from Iran or the various terrorist groups that cannot be negotiated away. The elite today mock George Bush and Tony Blair.
First up is Michael Ledeen, who points out that although "9/11 was supposed to have been the wakeup call," "we are again asleep". The problem now, he says, is that we fail to recognize that it's not just about fighing "insurgents" in Iraq, or Hezbollah in Lebanon. Iran and Syria are behind much or most of it, and behind that is a virulent form of radical Islam. Although I still say that going into Iraq put us on the strategic offensive, Ledeen points out that since the invasion we have been playing defense.
Meanwhile, a collection of frauds, writing in places like Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, and Mother Jones, continuously recycles a story saying that a neocon (code for “Jewish”) conspiracy duped Bush into going to war in Iraq, and is now arranging the invasion of Iran.
For those that forget, President Roosevelt was treated to the same sort of nonsense from the likes of people like Father Coughlin, who accused the president of "leaning toward international socialism or sovietism on the Spanish question." Indeed, as Ledeen says
It is the Thirties again. Many of the statements above apply to Franklin Roosevelt’s first two administrations, and to the political atmosphere of those dreadful years. Then, too, the mounting power of what became the Axis was ignored. As my father often reminded me, a few months before Pearl Harbor, at a time when Nazi armies were long since on the march, the draft passed by a single vote. Apologists for Hitler and Mussolini were legion, and some of our leading intellectuals were saying that American democratic capitalism was a failure, and we would do well to emulate the European totalitarians.
Continuing this same theme, Victor Davis Hanson reviews some of the apologists of that era
...nevertheless it is still surreal to reread the fantasies of Chamberlain, Daladier, and Pope Pius, or the stump speeches by Charles Lindbergh (“Their [the Jews’] greatest danger to this country lies in their large ownership and influence in our motion pictures, our press, our radio, and our government”) or Father Coughlin (“Many people are beginning to wonder whom they should fear most — the Roosevelt-Churchill combination or the Hitler-Mussolini combination.”) — and baffling to consider that such men ever had any influence.
Tell me, what is the difference between any of the above cited men and Michael Moore or Markos "Screw them" Moulitsas? Or Pat Buchanan, for that matter?
And how are our "allies" In Europe responding to all this? Hanson continues
There is no need to mention Europe, an entire continent now returning to the cowardice of the 1930s. Its cartoonists are terrified of offending Muslim sensibilities, so they now portray the Jews as Nazis, secure that no offended Israeli terrorist might chop off their heads. The French foreign minister meets with the Iranians to show solidarity with the terrorists who promise to wipe Israel off the map (“In the region there is of course a country such as Iran — a great country, a great people and a great civilization which is respected and which plays a stabilizing role in the region”) — and manages to outdo Chamberlain at Munich.
Our enemy, as I mentioned, is not just a few Taliban remnants, or "insurgents" in Iraq, it is Islaofascism (or whatever you want to call it) in general. Principal among the villans is the government of Iran. And before we congratulate ourselves, Barbara Lerner says that far from confronting Iran,
...we have yet to admit that Iran is at war with us, or to seriously consider striking back at her, and, in speaking of our own war aims, we never dare use the v-word — victory — anymore. Instead, we make head-in-the-sand happy-talk about “peace,” “democracy,” and “ceasefires,” rejecting any military action against Iran for fear of “widening the war” — as if Iran were not already at war with us — and rely on the U.N. and “the international community” to thwart Iran’s nuclear ambitions and to prevent her proxies, Hamas and Hezbollah, from continuing to bring death and destruction to our smallest, truest, and most vulnerable ally, Israel. ...Worse, we meet the jackals halfway by endlessly apologizing for sins our soldiers and guards are falsely accused of, in Iraq and Guantanamo, and by urging “restraint” on Israel — as if she weren’t employing near-suicidal restraint already. Then, we congratulate ourselves for our “courage” in standing up to international pressure by not forcing Israel to stop fighting for her life immediately, and promising, in return, to “protect” her with a “peace-keeping” force of enemies, led by the reborn Vichy France of Jacques Chirac and Phillipe Douste-Blazy — the French foreign minister who just called Iran “a stabilizing force.”
So is this were we are, again on the brink of the precipice? After 9/11 we said "never again", but even a casual reading of any newspaper reveals a large segment of opinion-makers who believe that George W Bush and Tony Blair are the greatest threats to world peace. Sorry, but I don't buy the notion that all would be well if only we hadn't invaded Iraq.
It also doesn't explain current attitudes on the left towards Iran. This article at Mother Jones typifies the "what me worry?" attitude the left has towards Iran: "The confrontation with Iran has very little to do with nukes—and a lot with the agenda of empire".
The good news is that the Bush Administration is letting Israel have a go at destroying Hezbollah. The bad news is that we are not serious about dealing with Iran or Syria. Barbara Lerner, in her article linked to above, has some good ideas for dealing with Iran. All too many of our elites, however, seem mired in the attitudes of the 1930s. And we all know what that got us.
Posted by Tom at 9:15 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
August 2, 2006
The Contrarian Views
Two days ago I wrote that "There seems general consensus that the military campaign is not destroying Hezbollah as hoped." Yesterday's post cited several astute analysists who said that Israel was not winning it's war, and that the United States was not doing so well either in the larger war on Islamofascism.
Perhaps I spoke too soon regarding a consensus. American Thinker certainly disagrees that Israel is losing. He says that the current war most resembles the battle for Iwo Jima. The Japanese defenders thought they had constructed the perfect fort, which would surely hold off the Americans. Instead, they were slaughtered, with only 1020 of the 21,000 defenders surviving.
The Israeli strategy, he says, is more subtle than many have supposed.
It is Hezbollah that has been outsmarted here, though uninformed, mainstream reporting of the initial results obscure this fact. For in banking on a massive Israeli offensive, Hezbollah apparently posted a sizeable force in the Lebanese border towns that are being picked apart one by one by the IDF. Already there are IDF reports of as many as 230 Hezbollah terrorists killed in Maroun al-Ras and Bint Jbeil. The Bint Jbeil meat-grinder, where Hezbollah appeared determined to make an ill-advised last stand, has done its work.
The IDF and the Israeli Air Force (IAF) have destroyed an estimated 1,300 Hezbollah missiles that range from the Katyushas to Farj-3s, Farj5s, and Zelzal-2s. Meanwhile, Hezbollah has expended an estimated 2,000 missiles and has little to show for it. Israeli military officials report soldiers have found and destroyed Katyusha rocket launchers, antitank missile launchers and large caches of ammunition. Few launchers are reported available. Like the Japanese at Iwo Jima, Hezbollah has stored enormous quantities of ammunition in the Lebanese border towns, perhaps planning to wage a hit-and-run guerrilla war on Israel’s supply convoys as the IDF repeats the 1982 invasion. But Israel’s been there, done that, and she is not going to make the same mistake twice. “‘This battle against Hezbollah is going to last,’ Avi Dichter, Israel’s public security minister” informed reporters. “‘We’re not in any hurry.’”Over whatever time remains before the conflict is forced to end, the IDF will take apart the Hezbollah terrorist-guerrillas that made the ultimate error of remaining in fixed positions. It is Hezbollah that is stoked in the passions and delusions of over-confidence. If Hezbollah takes comfort from fighting in fixed positions, they need only brush up on Napoleon, who said “the army that remains in its forts is beaten.”
Steve Schippert of ThreatsWatch believes that Hezbollah is on the ropes
...in a radio interview with John Batchelor, retired Air Force General Tom McInerney detailed a debriefing with a senior IDF official in which he detailed that Israel believes their airstrikes have eliminated 70% of the long-range Iranian ZelZal missile systems in Hizballah hands. McInerney noted that over 1000 Hizballah infrastructure targets have been struck by Israeli air power up and down the Bekaa Valley (once called the most heavily defended air corridor on the planet) and throughout Southern Lebanon, including weapons storage facilities, command and control centers, vehicle repair facilities and 18 Hizballah financial centers which serve in the place of banks.While sustaining these enormous losses, Hizballah is having difficulty re-supplying across the Syrian border. Convoys from Syria are struck by F-16’s and drones once they are within Lebanese borders, often with the massive secondary explosions that indicate arms shipments. The Israelis believe that Bashar Assad is “directly involved” in the attempts to smuggle rockets, other arms and ammunition to Hizballah, and the release of the results of ‘defense establishment’ intelligence is Israel’s way of sending a message to the Syrian president.
Lastly, Haaretz Correspondent Yoav Stern says that "Hezbollah's reports have become less and less believable
On Monday, Al-Manar television - the central component of Hezbollah's well-oiled media empire - reported that the organization had destroyed an Israeli ship off the coast of Tyre, which had some 50 sailors aboard - a charge the IDF dismissed completely."It's not clear what incident, if any, the report was referring to, and the Arab world has been asking questions. Al-Arabiya television asked Mahmoud Kamati, a member of the Hezbollah political bureau, about the Hezbollah claim and he repeated that an Israeli ship had been hit, but said no pictures were broadcast because visibility was poor.
Given that much of the msm seems to consider Hezbollah and Israeli statments of equal value, we need to consider that the view of the war we have been receiving is not entirely honest.
So who is right? I don't know. We hear that all Hezbollah has to do to win is survive. Since propaganda is a very important part of war, this has some validity. But Israel is fighting because most of the people in it's northern cities are living underground, and it's economy has ground to a halt in these areas. It simply cannot survive under these conditions. Simply ending the rocket attacks is a victory for Israel.
The good news is that politicians in the United States are fairly united in their support for Israel. With the exception of a few moonbats on the left, most all Democrats and Republicans are in opposition to Hezbollah and are willing to give Israel the time it needs. I can't find the link, but I recall reading that the IDF thought it needed just another 10-14 days. Let's make sure they get it.
Posted by Tom at 9:43 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
August 1, 2006
Book Review: Why We Fight: Moral Clarity And The War on Terrorism
To put it mildly, the war on radical Islam is getting more difficult by the day. For those of us who have been ardent supporters of what we call the War on Terror, and believe firmly the invasion of Iraq was the right thing to do, and that "of course" we should support Israel, these are difficult times.
We've all seen the headlines, and most of you visit the same websites that I do. National Review says that we may not be winning the war (either Iraq or the larger one on terror) , but we're not winning it either. Bret Stevens and Ralph Peters think that Israel is losing it's war agaist Hezbollah.
Michael Ledeen thinks it's the 1930s all over again. That's never good. Supposedly we got over that the day after 9-11.
The greatest failure of our leaders, with rare exceptions, is their refusal to see the war plain, which means Iran and Syria (might as well call them “Syran,” since they operate in tandem, with Tehran pushing most of the buttons). It was never possible to “win in Iraq” so long as we insisted on fighting in Iraq alone. You can not win a regional war by playing defense in one country. It was, and remains, a sucker’s game. Syran pays no price at all for killing our kids and our allies in Iraq and Afghanistan, and now in Gaza and Lebanon/Israel.Syran reasonably concluded that there was no price to pay for killing us, and so they predictably expanded the scope of the war. Our leaders do not see this whole; they see each component as a separate issue. They see that Hezbollah is an Iranian entity. Th