Egyptian forces on Saturday seized two vehicles in the Sinai peninsula with fuel destined for the Gaza Strip, security sources said.
The vehicles had broken through a checkpoint between the city of El-Arish and Sheikh Zweid before Egyptian security fired at their tires, bringing the vehicles to a halt.
One of the vehicles was carrying 1,100 liters of fuel in nine barrels and 10 jerrycans. The other vehicle contained 900 liters of petrol destined for sale on the black market.
The drivers admitted to police that they were delivering the fuel to smugglers who would transport it into the Gaza Strip.
Last week, Egyptian security forces seized four vehicles transporting unlicensed fuel in the northern Sinai.
In early May, security forces confiscated a truck in the Sinai carrying 10 thousand liters of fuel headed to tunnels under the border with Gaza Strip.
Egypt moved in February to shut down fuel deliveries to Gaza via the tunnel network — used to bring goods into the blockaded coastal strip — sparking a fuel shortage that caused widespread blackouts.
Officials have already agreed to stave off the electricity blackouts by upgrading the sole power plant, a project due for completion this month.
Odd that a so-called friendly country, Egypt, is restricting access to fuel when there’s a shortage.
These deliveries and transfers are made every week, week after week, except when the crossing points are under fire, or so threatened. Let me drop the coy act: Israel is described as an occupier of a god-forsaken (fly) strip it turned judenrein seven years ago, yet has seen fit to supply since that time.
Those of us looking for lasting peace in the Middle East (the kind that doesn’t require the elimination of every Jew in the region, that is) look beyond the daily headlines of this so-called settlement or that white phosphorous-laced Qassam rocket.
Two weeks ago, US Congressman Joe Walsh published an op-ed in the The Washington Times in which he called for the US and Israel to abandon the two-state solution.
After running through the record of Palestinian duplicity, failed governance, terrorism and bad faith, he called for Israel to apply its sovereignty to Judea and Samaria. In his words, Israel should “adopt the only solution that will bring true peace to the Middle East: a single Israeli state from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. Israel is the only country in the region dedicated to peace and the only power capable of stable, just and democratic government in the region.”
That is precisely my view, as I’ve stated here explicitly for maybe two years now. It makes sense geographically, culturally, historically, and, not least, for reasons of security.
Given the abject failure of the two-state paradigm, it is abundantly clear that for all the complications that may be associated with the application of Israeli sovereignty over Judea and Samaria, it is a better option for Israel than Israeli surrender of the areas.
Walsh’s op-ed is not his first statement of support for Israeli annexation. Last September, ahead of the UN general assembly, Walsh authored Congressional Resolution 394 supporting Israel’s right to annex Judea and Samaria in the event that the Palestinians asked the UN to recognize a Palestinian state outside the framework of a peace treaty with Israel. Forty-four other congressmen co-sponsored the resolution.
And this makes sense.
But American Jews, motivated more by liberal orthodoxy than religious orthodoxy, are apoplectic.
It is hard to know where to begin a discussion of this assault in which Jewish Americans attacked one of Israel’s strongest supporters simply because he had the temerity to recognize reality and call for the US to support an Israeli victory against our enemies who seek our destruction.
First, it is important to consider the claim that Walsh went against the grain of American ideals by suggesting, “Those Palestinians who wish to may leave their Fatah- and Hamas-created slums and move to the original Palestinian state: Jordan. The British Mandate for Palestine created Jordan as the country for the Palestinians. That is the only justification for its creation. Even now, 75% of its population is of Palestinian descent.”
A quick correction: initially, a Jewish homeland was to be permitted in the entirety of the British Mandate. So stated the Balfour Declaration:
According to the Peel Commission, appointed by the British Government to investigate the cause of the 1936 Arab riots, “the field in which the Jewish National Home was to be established was understood, at the time of the Balfour Declaration, to be the whole of historic Palestine, including Transjordan.”
Only later—the first step in a long march toward ghettoization—did Britain and the League of Nations amend the intention to establish a Jewish homeland from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. Which is all Walsh et al are asking for.
The demands of the Arabs and the “international community” today are not only dangerous and bigoted, they repudiate recent decades and distant millennia of history.
Yes, “bigoted”:
The fact of the matter is that the two-state paradigm rests on the assumption that the Palestinian state will be ethnically cleansed of Jews before it is established. Whereas Walsh somehow stands in opposition to American ideals for suggesting that the Palestinians may voluntarily immigrate to Jordan, Kampeas, Ben- Ami and their cohorts have no problem with the concept of a Jew-free Palestine and the forcible expulsion of up to 675,000 Jews from their homes in Judea, Samaria and eastern Jerusalem simply because they are Jewish.
Those seeking peace—real peace, not a hudna (strategic ceasefire)—must first recognize the lay of the land.
A Hamas leader said Thursday that if his militant group came to power in a future Palestinian state, it would not abide by any previous Palestinian peace deals with Israel.
Moussa Abu Marzouk, the Islamic militant group’s number two figure, said any potential deal between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, even if ratified in a Palestinian referendum, would be considered only as a temporary truce. “We will not recognize Israel as a state.”
Following are excerpts from an interview with former PA Mufti Sheik Ikrima Sabri, which aired on Al-Arabiya TV on May 11, 2012:
Interviewer: Do you agree that in Jerusalem, there are places that are holy to the Muslims, the Jews and the Christians?
Ikrima Sabri: No, not to the Jews. I didn’t say to the Jews. Omar Ibn Al-Khattab didn’t find any synagogues of the Jews. There weren’t any.
Interviewer: So in your opinion, today there are no places whatsoever in Jerusalem that are holy to the Jews?
Ikrima Sabri: No, none. They build new synagogues, but there are no archaeological remains [pertaining to the Jews]. For many years, they have been digging for archaeological remains, but they haven’t found anything. How can we acknowledge something when they themselves admit that they have found nothing?
I would ask what he thinks the Temple is, but I’m sure I don’t want to know.
I encourage all our readers to reject the racist ideology of the Arab nationalists and their liberal Democrat (and sometimes Jewish) enablers. Israel is a pluralistic, Democratic state (larger may it grow, long may it live), offering more rights to Arabs than any other country in the region. The Arab enclave of Gaza is a human rights septic tank and a burial ground for religious liberty. It is free of Jews, yet full of hate.
Muhammad Rashid, the former economic adviser to Yasser Arafat who is wanted by the Palestinian Authority for embezzling hundreds of millions of dollars, revealed on Thursday that the PA had provided financial aid to Arab parties during general elections in Israel.
He also demanded an investigation into the source of PA President Mahmoud Abbas’s wealth.
Rashid, who is currently in London, said that Abbas used to “take millions of dollars from the Palestinian Authority and the private sector under the pretext of helping Arab parties in Israeli elections.”
This may surprise some of you ignorant types (who do stumble into our enlightened space from time to time, attracted, like moths, to the brilliance of our colloquy). Arabs run for and serve in the Knesset. Some of them are as hostile to the Zionist entity—from within—as any Hamass or Hezbollah blowhard. I’m not sure how healthy it is to the body politic, but that’s Democracy, baby.
But to learn that they are receiving money from outside Arab sources, bent on Israel’s destruction? That would be like learning—oh, I don’t know—that Democrats like Clinton, Gore, and Obama received illegal contribtutions from Chinese communists. Can you imagine?
The PA’s Anti-Corruption Commission, which issued the arrest warrant against him, is itself very corrupt, Rashid said.
He pointed out that two ministers in Prime Minister Salam Fayyad’s new cabinet have been accused of involvement in corruption scandals, but the commission did not take any measures against them.
The former adviser, who is considered one of the wealthiest Palestinians in the world, launched a scathing attack on Abbas, holding him and his two businessmen sons responsible for corruption.
“When Mahmoud Abbas returned to the Palestinian territories [after the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993], I gave him $25,000 at the request of the late president Yasser Arafat,” Rashid claimed.
“Today, he and his sons have palaces and property estimated at 15 million Jordanian dinars [approximately $21m.] in Palestine, Jordan, Tunisia and other places.”
Rashid said the timing of the arrest warrant against him was linked to a series of interviews he gave to Al-Arabiya and to the PA’s fear that he would expose various corruption scandals.
Ah, they’re all rats as far as I’m concerned. Let them gnaw on each other. Just leave Israel the hell alone.
*Post title courtesy of W. Somerset Maugham, who coined it for Monaco, I believe, though it serves well here. One of the pithiest comments in all English.
Let’s see, silver is for 25th anniversaries, gold is for 50th.
What do you suppose is for 64th anniversaries? In this case, chicken [bleep] seems appropriate:
Zionist activists confronted Arabs and leftist sympathizers in Israeli campuses Tuesday for the second straight day as Arabs marked “Nakba Day,” in which they mourn their failure to annihilate the Jews in the Land of Israel in 1948.
Arabs in the Har Hatzofim campus of Hebrew University waved PLO flags and chanted the PLO battle cry, “with blood and fire we will redeem Palestine.”
They were confronted by activists from the grassroots Zionist Im Tirtzu movement, who handed out copies of their booklet – Nakba Harta – which dispels Arab lies about the 1948 War of Independence.
On Monday, hundreds of student activists and protesters showed up in Tel Aviv University to protest the radical left’s attempt to mark “Nakba Day” on campus. The demonstrators were led by MKs Michael Ben Ari and Aryeh Eldad (National Union).
The nationalist activists succeeded in disrupting a leftist ceremony honoring Arab victims of the war in 1948. MK Ben Ari denounced the “hypocrites in the university,” which itself sits upon land that belonged to an Arab village, Sheikh Munis. “They dare to lecture us on occupied land? I wish our enemies many more Nakba days,” he declared. “Happy Nakba Day.”
According to your lot, it’s all “occupied land”, right? So what’s the difference?
Regardless, Happy Nakba Day, indeed, to all our Arab readers! As if every day isn’t Nakba Day to them.
The Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) condemns the break-up of the concluding colloquium of the Palestine Festival of Literature, which was being held in the ancient al-Bahash Castle in Gaza City, by Palestinian security forces on Wednesday, 09 May 2012. PCHR stresses that this measure constitutes a violation of the right to freedom of opinion and expression, and the right to peaceful assembly, which are ensured under the Palestinian Basic Law.
The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) condemns the prevention of the al-Quds satellite channel’s crew from carrying out their work at Shifa Hospital in Gaza City and their detention by the security officers of Shifa Hospital on Monday, 07 May 2012. PCHR calls upon the Palestinian police in Gaza to respect the press freedom and the freedom of opinion and expression which are ensured under the Palestinian Basic Law and relevant international standards.
April 7th, man, that was a real Nakba (especially if you were one of these guys):
The Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) condemns the implementation of death sentences against 3 Palestinians by the Ministry of Interior in Gaza this morning. These death sentences were implemented without the ratification of the Palestinian President. PCHR reiterates that the ratification of death sentences is an exclusive power of the President of the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) under the Code of Criminal Procedures (3) of 2001; the implementation of any death sentences without the President’s ratification constitutes a violation of the law and constitution.
According to a statement issued by the Ministry of Interior in Gaza, on Saturday morning, 07 April 2012, three men were executed by hanging.
And how does that little Arab ditty go? “With blood and fire we will redeem Palestine”?
Arab terrorists attacked southern Israel with a Kassam rocket early Tuesday and attacked Jews in the Hevron area with two firebombs overnight as “Nakba Day” began. No one was injured.
Like St. Patrick’s Day and Cinco de Mayo, however, Nakba Day has degenerated from whatever historical truth it intended to remember into just another day of loutish behavior:
A freelance journalist and blogger, Richard Millett, was assaulted and subjected to abuse Monday evening at an anti-Israel event at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) at the University of London.
Millett was attacked after he refused to stop filming the viciously anti-Israel meeting, which was organized by the university’s Palestine Society and the General Union of Palestine Students.
The speakers included Karma Nabulsi, a professor at Oxford and former Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) representative, and Abdel-Bari Atwan, a ‘Palestinian’ journalist who revealed his deep-rooted desire to see the obliteration of the Jewish state when he stated, “If the Iranian missiles strike Israel — by Allah, I will go to Trafalgar Square, and dance with delight if the Iranian missiles strike Israel.”
Oh, shut the [bleep] up and pass me another green beer, you Nak-kneed Arab bigot.
I’ve treated this story sarcastically before, but, you know, after a while, even intellectual genocide—a Holocaust of the mind—isn’t very funny anymore:
PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority continue to deny Israel’s 3,000 years of history in Jerusalem, claiming it is solely an Arab, Muslim and Christian city. Earlier this month, Abbas referred to Israel’s presence and activities in Jerusalem as “Judaization” and stated that Israel is stealing what he called the “cultural, human, and Islamic-Christian religious history.”
…
“President Mahmoud Abbas held a series of meetings in Tunis… the President met with the Arab ambassadors to Tunisia… He explained to the guests the policies that are being adopted by the occupation authorities (i.e., Israel) – Judaization, destruction of homes, causing the emigration of Palestinian inhabitants, and imposition of high taxes; the continued excavations under the Al-Aqsa Mosque; [and he explained] the need for Arab cohesion in order to protect what remains of the holy city, and the [Israeli] attempts to steal its cultural, human, and Islamic-Christian religious history.”
[Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, May 1, 2012]
“Advisor on Jerusalem affairs to the Palestinian President’s Office, Ahmed Al-Ruweidi… said: ‘Israel is managing to seize the land in the city; at the same time, the chances of maintaining its Arab and Islamic identity are small, since the occupation authorities are carrying out the 2020 plan, which is meant to establish the Jewishness of Jerusalem and to create a new and fabricated facade with an artificial heritage… about Jewish existence in Jerusalem… It is not befitting a city with the importance of Jerusalem, with what it represents, that it should continue to be subject to occupation… and that there should be repeated, ongoing attempts to change its geographical, demographic and cultural characteristics, and to create an artificial heritage with a Jewish spirit at the expense of its true and authentic [identity] as an Arab, Islamic and Christian city.’”
[Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, April 25, 2012]
These comments are just from the past two weeks, but they have been repeated over the years: millennia of history, culture, faith denied, rejected as a lie. The “Judaization of Jerusalem”? What a monstrous phrase, as offensive as if the Westboro Baptist Church protested in Mecca with signs that read “G-d Hates Moslem F*gs”. (But then, so does Ahmadinejad.)
And any of you Christians out there who buy into this, or harbor even the least sympathy: how long do you think they’ll tolerate your stain on their “Arab, Islamic” city? Remember, first they came for the Jews…
PS: One remarkable thing I remember about my trip to India many years ago was the tradition of the Moguls (the Muslim conquerers) to build their temples atop the ruins (which they ruined) of Hindu shrines. Typical of most invader cultures—you should hear what the Incas did to smaller tribes in South America. (No surprise Elizabeth Warren didn’t claim to 1/32nd—or even 1/512th!—Incan. Nasty folk, though excellent architects!) So, to find the Al Aqsa Mosque built latterly atop the site of the Second Temple is to be expected. Second, by the way, as in after the First Temple—just so we’re clear. But in all my stay in India, I never once heard anyone suggest the Hindu “occupation” was unjust and illegitimate. Never did I hear of the “Hinduization” of India.
“The physical education department at Al-Quds University in Abu Dis completed the 12th educational [program] for its scouts team. It was held in cooperation with the university, and under the auspices and with the support of the [PLO's] Supreme Council for Youth and Sports, at the Martyr (Shahid) Salah Khalaf Center in Al-Fari’a, for 40 male and female scouts…
Participants were divided into four small groups, named for Martyrs: the Martyr Izz a-Din Al-Qassam group; the Martyr Abd Al-Rahim Mahmoud group; the Martyr Bajes Abu Atwan group; and the Martyr Dalal Mughrabi group.”
[Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, May 2, 2012]
…
Salah Khalaf (Abu Iyad) – a founder of Fatah and head of the Black September terror group. Attacks he planned included the murder of two American diplomats, as well as the murders of 11 Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics in 1972.
Izz a-Din Al-Qassam – influential Islamic preacher in British Mandate Palestine during the 1930s, who led a Muslim terror group.
Abd Al-Rahim Mahmoud – poet who composed the “Song of the Martyr.” He was killed in 1948 fighting against Israel.
Bajes Abu Atwan – killed fighting against Israel in the ’70s.
Dalal Mughrabi – led the most lethal terror attack in Israel’s history in 1978, when she and other terrorists hijacked a bus and killed 37 civilians, 12 of them children.
There’s our girl!
To be fair, terrorism against Jews is the national pastime for youth in that part of the world. They’re pretty good at it:
Though it’s an activity not without hazard if you’re not quick on your feet!
[...] forces launched a large scale security crackdown in the Jenin district on Saturday.
…
“There will be detentions all around Jenin,” he added.
The occupation is unjust! Israel is an imperialist, colonizing, occupying… beg pardon? What’s that again?
Oh, Palestinian Arab forces! Why didn’t you say so?
“Security services are sending summons to all suspects who possibly partook in the shooting at the house of the late Jenin governor Qaddura Musa, and suspects involved in murder, blackmailing or other assaults,” the commander of Jenin’s security forces Radi Asida told Ma’an.
The governor of Jenin died from a heart attack on Wednesday, which officials say was brought on by an attack on his home by gunmen.
…
A number of members of the PA security forces have also been questioned on suspicion of involvement in different illicit activities, Asida said.
The security campaign also aims to collect illegally possessed weapons in the Jenin district which could pose a threat to public security, he added.
The northern West Bank city of Jenin became known as a center for Palestinian fighters during the second intifada, with many militant groups launching attacks on Israeli targets from the Jenin refugee camp.
Remember how “Jenin” was once used as a code word for Israeli fascism—how it symbolized the brutality of the Zionist entity? Yeah… good times. Too bad it had to come out that the psychopathic Arab terrorists booby-trapped buildings and fought block-by-block as Israeli forces tried to restore order. No “massacre”, it was an ambush. (Why does the truth have to be such a buzz-kill?)
Anyhow, this is your “Jenin”: same as it ever was.
Caroline Glick articles are intricate and difficult to summarize, but I’ll try. She begins by comparing the most popular musical events of two Independence Days: 1998 and 2012.
As he is today, in 1998 Binyamin Netanyahu was prime minister, and then as now there were prominent voices seeking to blame him for the absence of peace and every other terrible blight on the planet.
In 1998, the government invested a fortune in marking Israel’s 50th Independence Day.
The main official celebration was a massive affair called Jubilee Bells that took place at Teddy Stadium in Jerusalem. More than 2,000 performers participated. But rather than serve as an event that unified Israeli society in celebration of 50 years of sovereign freedom, the event exposed just how far Israel’s political and cultural elite were willing to go in attacking basic societal values.
The Bat Sheva Dance Troupe was scheduled to participate in the program and present a dance set to the traditional Passover song “Ehad mi yodea,” (Who knows one). The song contains 13 stanzas that praise God, praise Jewish law, and outline the Jewish life cycle. In the number Bat Sheva was scheduled to perform, the dancers come on stage dressed as ultra-Orthodox Jewish men and by the end of the song, all they are wearing is underwear.
The choreography enraged members of Netanyahu’s cabinet including education minister Yitzhak Levy. They insisted that the program shouldn’t contain material that insulted sectors of Israeli society. The organizers tried to forge a compromise. But the dancers chose to boycott the festival.
Israel’s cultural and media establishment expressed shock and horror at what they viewed as the government’s attempt to infringe on artistic freedom. The Association of Israeli Artists demanded that a public commission be formed to ensure that the government would be unable to interfere in artistic freedom in the future. Major cultural icons declared cultural war against religious Jews.
The question of whether the dance was appropriate for an official, state- financed celebration of Independence Day was never asked. So, too, no one asked whether a dance portraying ultra-Orthodox Jews moving sensuously to a traditional Jewish song while taking off their clothes reflected the values of society.
To understand the distance Israel has traveled since then, consider Tuesday night’s Memorial Day ceremony at Rabin Square in Tel Aviv. None of the performers attacked their fellow Israelis. And the best-received artist and song was Mosh Ben-Ari and his rendition of Psalm 121 – A Song of Ascent.
The psalm, which praises God as the eternal guardian of Israel, became the unofficial anthem of Operation Cast Lead in Gaza in 2008-2009. And Ben-Ari’s rendition of the song propelled the dreadlock bedecked, hoop earring wearing world music artist into super-stardom in Israel.
IT WAS impossible to imagine Pslam 121 or any other traditional Jewish poem or prayer being performed as anything other than an object of scorn in 1998. Back then, it would have been impossible to contemplate a crowd of tens of thousands of non-religious Israelis reverently singing along as Ben-Ari crooned, “My help is from God/ Maker of Heaven and Earth/ He will not allow your foot to falter/ Your Guardian will not slumber/ Behold he neither slumbers nor sleeps – the Guardian of Israel.”
It’s not that the crowd would have necessarily booed him off the stage. He simply never would have been allowed on the stage to begin with. The 1990s was the decade that launched Aviv Gefen, the most prominent secular draft-evader, to stardom.
In other words, Israel grew up. As for the Western world, Europe, the US, etc., not so much. We would still prefer the religious people dancing in their underwear, or maybe naked. We are still angry and unserious because we have never been tested. That’s me talking, not Ms. Glick. She goes on to explain why Israel took a different path from Obama worship, from the metrosexual (again, my word, my thought) male elite.
Israel is no longer in the throes of an adolescent rebellion. It has regained its senses.
True, its celebrities look like Ben-Ari and not like Naomi Shemer [the woman who wrote Jerusalem of Gold - Aggie]. But the message is the same. Israel is a great country and a great nation. Zionism is in. Judaism is in. Post- Zionism is out. Post-Judaism is out.
When last year a group of performers announced they would boycott the Ariel Center for Performing Arts, the public reacted with anger and disgust, not understanding.
Fearing a loss of state funding, their theater bosses quickly sought to distance themselves from the performers.
Israel’s return to its Zionist roots is the greatest cultural event of the past decade. It is also an event that occurred under the radar screen of the rest of the world. No one outside the country seems to have noticed at all.
The outside world’s failure to take note of Israel’s cultural shift owes to its failure to recognize the significance of the failure of the peace process with the Palestinians on the one hand and the failure of Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza on the other hand. The demise of the peace process at Camp David in July 2000 and the terror war that followed launched the Israeli public on its path away from its radical post-Zionist rebellion and back to its Zionist roots. The failure of the withdrawal from Gaza, and the international community’s response to Operation Cast Lead, marked the conclusion of the journey.
The Oslo peace process was based on the radical belief that it is possible to make peace by empowering terrorists and giving them land, political legitimacy, money and guns. To embrace this nonsense, the public had to be willing to tolerate the notion that there was something unjust about the Zionist revolution. Because if Zionism and the cause of Jewish national liberation are just, then it is impossible to justify empowering the PLO, a terrorist movement dedicated to the destruction of Israel and the delegitimization of Zionism.
Most Israelis never adopted the post-Zionist narrative. But they did accept the doctrine of appeasement. And they shared the belief that if appeasement failed, the world would rally to Israel’s side.
Consequently, the beginning of society’s awakening to the lie of post-Zionism at the heart of the peace process was a function not only of the massive Palestinian terror onslaught that began after Yasser Arafat rejected peace and statehood at Camp David. It was also a function of the August 2000 UN Durban Conference and its aftermath in which the international community rallied to the Palestinians’ side. The latter demonstrated that just as Israel’s transfer of land and guns to the PLO had endangered the lives of its citizens, Israel’s conferral of political legitimacy on the PLO endangered the international standing of the country.
The lesson that Israelis took from the failure of the peace process was that Israel has no Palestinian partner for peace.
And until the Palestinians change, Israel has no one to talk to. While a slight majority of Israelis still support partitioning the land between Israel and a Palestinian state, the overwhelming majority of Israelis believe that Israel has no one to make peace with and therefore no possibility of successfully partitioning the land.
This is not the lesson that foreigners learned. From Bill Clinton to George W. Bush to Tony Blair to Barack Obama to Nicolas Sarkozy, foreign leaders have insisted that the Oslo process had nearly succeeded and that its failure was a fluke.
…
THEN THERE is the aftermath of the withdrawal from Gaza.
Israel’s unilateral withdrawal from Gaza was a traumatic national event. The forced expulsion of thousands of Israelis from their homes led Israeli society to the brink of disintegration.
The move represented the last hope of the peace movement.
If the Palestinians won’t sit down with Israel, so the thinking went, Israel can still appease them by simply giving them what they want without an agreement.
But not only did the withdrawal bring no peace. It brought Hamas to power. It brought tens of thousands of projectiles down on southern Israel. Israelis expected the world to recognize the significance of this string of events.
But that didn’t happen.
Instead of seeing the lengths Israel had gone to appease the Palestinians and side with it when its appeasement failed again, the international community refused to even acknowledge that Israel had withdrawn from Gaza. Condoleezza Rice forced Israel to continue supplying electricity and water to Gaza and providing medical care for Gazans in Israeli hospitals as if nothing had happened. No one accepted that Israel was no longer in charge.
As far as most Israelis were concerned, the final end of our vacation from reality came with the publication of the Goldstone Report in the aftermath of Cast Lead. Here was Israel, forced to defend itself from Hamas-ruled Gaza that was waging an illegal missile war against Israeli civilians.
Rather than stand by Israel that had done everything for peace, the UN’s commission accused Israel of committing war crimes.
Undoubtedly one of the reasons so few outsiders have drawn the same lessons as the Israeli public from the failure of the peace process and the Gaza withdrawal is because the only Israelis they listen to are the few remaining holdouts from the 1990s. People like former Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) director Ami Ayalon can expect to have every withdrawal-from-territory and destroy-the-settlements op-ed they write published in The New York Times, whereas Richard Goldstone wasn’t even able to get the Times to publish his admission that his eponymous commission’s conclusions were false.
This open door policy for Israeli radicals was defensible in the 1990s when a significant portion of the Israeli public supported them. Now it constitutes nothing more than an anti-Israel propaganda campaign.
From Obama to J Street to the EU, international actors interested in forcing Israel to make more concessions to the Palestinians cannot understand why their attempts continue to fail. How is it possible that despite their best efforts, Netanyahu remains in power and the Left can’t get any traction with the public? For the answer, they need to look no farther than Mosh Ben-Ari, his dreadlocks, and his rendition of Psalm 121. Israel’s adolescent rebellion is over.
Impossible to improve on what Ms. Glick is saying. I thank her for saying it in English so that interested Americans can read it and understand it. That is a limited number of people, for sure. But we can take heart in the fact that Israel is doing just fine. Her economy is strong and her population is not at each other’s throats. That is a by-product of dealing with reality.
Oh, and for all the idiots that believe that Israel is a white, colonialist country, this is for you. This is the performer mentioned above, the guy that did the musical rendition of the Psalm. Notice, morons, that he has dark skin. This is because his parents fled persecution in Yemen and Iraq.
US President Barack Obama has lifted a ban on financial aid to the Palestinian Authority.
Obama stated that the aid was “important to the security interests of the United States.”
The US Congress froze a $192 million aid package to the Palestinian Authority after its president, Mahmoud Abbas, defied US pressure and sought to attain UN endorsement of Palestinian statehood last September. The presidential waiver means that aid can now be delivered.
…
Section 3 of Congress’s Palestinian Accountability Act, which applies to 2012, stipulates that “no funds available to any United States Government department or agency … may be obligated or expended with respect to providing funds to the Palestinian Authority.” Obama has now signed a waiver, however, the White House said Friday, and asked Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to inform Congress accordingly.
The AFP news agency quoted White House spokesman Tommy Vietor as saying the $192 million aid package would be devoted to “ensuring the continued viability of the moderate PA government under the leadership of [Palestinian Authority] President Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Salam Fayyad.”
Vietor added that the PA had fulfilled its major obligations, such as recognizing Israel’s right to exist, renouncing violence and accepting the Road Map for Peace.
Huh? Has it done any such things? That’s as brazen a lie as I’ve heard in a long time. That’s just sayin’ [bleep] to see who’s listening.
Of course, he didn’t say how paying the money was “important to the security interests of the United States.” Silly Congress, what part of “I won” didn’t you get?
Israel’s legalizing of three West Bank outposts drew harsh condemnations Tuesday from the U.S. and several other world bodies.
But not this world body. From jowl to love-handle, it jiggles with approval!
A decision by a ministerial committee Monday to give official sanction to the outposts of Bruchin, Sansana, and Rechelim was also slammed by the Palestinian Authority, the United Nations, Jordan, France and Denmark.
The move is considered the first time in about a dozen years that the government officially recognized outposts in the West Bank.
The United States expressed concern about Israel’s intentions by passing the outpost measure. State Department Spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said that they are opposed to building in the settlements, and are seeking a clarification from the government.
“We do not accept the legitimacy of continued settlement activity,” she said.
British Foreign Secretary William Hague condemned the Israeli government’s decision, saying “designating outposts as settlements… sets a dangerous precedent for other outposts, which are illegal under both international and Israeli law.”
The Israeli government “risks sending the message that it is not serious about its stated commitment to the goal of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” Hague added.
The UN Secretary General called the decision a “provocation,” and said all settlement activity runs contrary to Israel’s obligations under the peace Road Map, according to a media statement.
PA President Mahmoud Abbas said the announcement pushes things to a “dead end,” according to the Ma’an news agency. Palestinian official Saeb Erekat added that they will try to secure a UN Security Council condemnation of the decision.
Wanna see these evil, predatory “settlements”? Sure you do:
Bruchin
Sansana
Rechelim
I feel Palestinian Arab manhood shrinking even as I write.
My position hasn’t changed: Israel and the Arabs were supposed to negotiate final borders. If the Arabs choose not to negotiate, somebody has to make a mature decision.
Oh wait, my position has changed! I think Israel should annex all of Judea and Samaria, and be done with the fiction of Palestine. I used to believe in the Easter Bunny, too.
Remember that piece of advice about writing an angry letter? Put it in a drawer for a day or so, then see how you feel.
Who writes letters anymore anyway?
In a letter to be delivered to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in several days, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is demanding that Israel accept the establishment of a Palestinian state “on the 1967 borders” with possible minor adjustments, halt all building over the Green Line, and release all prisoners.
If Israel fails to do this, Abbas vows, the Palestinians will “seek the full and complete implementation of international law” to deal with Israel’s presence “as occupying power in all of the occupied Palestinian territory.” The situation as it stands, he states, “cannot continue.”
The letter is set to be delivered later this week.
I realize public services in the disputed territories might be less than ideal, but why should it take so long to get a letter from Ramallah to Jerusalem? What is it, fifteen to twenty miles?
And pardon my language, but does he really want to come across as such a whining bitch?
“As a result of actions taken by successive Israeli governments,” he writes, “the Palestinian National Authority no longer has any authority, and no meaningful jurisdiction in the political, economic, social, territorial and security spheres. In other words, the P.A. lost its reason d’être.”
Raison d’être, you mean? I thought all you guys spoke French. If the PA has had any raison or authority or jurisdiction, it has been lost on me. You are funded entirely by foreign largesse, you behave like sauvages—it is hardly surprising that you lack an état. Merde-for-brains losers.
Anti-Israeli anarchists fought police at airports in Brussels and Paris after being denied permission to fly to Israel Sunday. Several were arrested.
Air France, Lufthansa and British Airways previously announced the cancellation of more than 400 reservations. The anarchists threatened to sue the airline companies.
The “fly-in,” which has been hyped by mainstream media and particularly those in Israel hoping for demonstrations that would embarrass the Netanyahu government, so far has been a disaster for promoters.
Only a handful of activists managed to land at Ben Gurion Airport, several of them having arrived on an El Al flight.
Shall we meet a Jew-hater or two? Hold your nose:
Dear God, woman, is that a baby you’re carrying, or a third breast?
I’m reminded of Les Miserables for some reason, only these mangy dogs are plus miserable, not less. Which one’s Cosette?
