Israfax
August 21, 2001/5761 - Volume XIII, Number 237

ISRAFAX EDITORIAL
CIJR's Bar Mitzvah: Thirteen Years of Defending Democratic Israel
Frederick Krantz
The Canadian Institute for Jewish Research, founded thirteen years ago in my basement, is celebrating its bar-mitzvah this month. We were a small group of like-minded academics, who decided to respond to the widespread media delegitimation of Israel tied to the then-new "intifada".

CIJR has grown today into an internationally-respected pro-Israel research center. Its ISRAFAX monthly and new daily Isranet Briefings, and our unique website-carried Israel & Jewish World DataBank, reach a global audience. We work closely with students, whose Institute-supported Dateline: Middle East magazine stands alone in North America.
Today, a new "intifada" is soon to be a year old, and CIJR is once again countering a vicious anti-Israel and anti-Jewish propaganda war waged by the Palestinians and their Arab (and non-Arab) allies. Arafat's war against Israel reflects his utter rejection, without counter-offer, of Ehud Barak's unbelievably generous Camp David peace offer. The goal of Arafat's war is first to force Israel to accept an inevitably pro-Palestinian international observer force, and then to dictate maximal terms concerning a Palestinian state. The final step is the destruction of Israel itself.

Arafat's war is accompanied by the worst world-wide campaign of obscenely anti-Semitic propaganda since the defeat of Hitler's Germany. This campaign denies not only a Jewish presence on the Temple Mount, but the very historicity of the Jewish people in the Holy Land. Its attempt to obliterate historical memory mirrors what the fate of the Jews of Israel would be were Arafat's war to succeed.

In the media, the terrorists are equated with their victims as, incredibly, the vicious "Zionism equals racism" canard once again echoes down the UN's corridors.
It is perhaps besherrt, fated, that CIJR, a "child" born in crisis thirteen years ago, has survived, to confront this new crisis. But to survive, CIJR, which receives no financial aid from the organized Jewish community, needs your help.

Please, then, help celebrate this bar-mitzvah by making a generous tax-free contribution to our crucial work with students and the community, for Israel and the Jewish people.

(Prof. Krantz, Editor of ISRAFAX, is Director of CIJR/ICRJ)

ISRAEL IS NO LONGER DIVIDED
Gerald M. Steinberg
For the first time in two decades, there is no significant Israeli partner to support soft American or European peace initiatives based on concessions to the PLO and Yasser Arafat. This is an extremely important development...

The collapse of the Oslo peace process and 10 months of terror have ended the era in which overly optimistic proposals could be assured of automatic support from the Israeli Labor Party and left. Even during periods when Likud and the right were in power, the alliance between the U.S. and the Israeli "peace camp" pressured the government in Jerusalem to press on with the process. No longer...With very active democratic institutions, Israelis...are not about to blindly swallow initiatives that will not provide security...

Until the violence began last September, Israeli society was divided almost evenly. About half the country supported an activist "peace policy," including the Oslo agreements, the creation of a Palestinian state, and the dismantling of many settlements. The other half was opposed, predicting...that the Palestinians were not ready for peace...The spectacular failure of the Oslo process and the ensuing war and terrorism has led a large number of formerly optimistic doves and Peace Now activists to...feel betrayed...

At the same time, Israelis have not given up entirely on the possibilities for a better and more peaceful...future. However...prospective peace plans will have to be anchored in reality, rather than wishful thinking. American initiatives...based on disengagement and perhaps even the creation of a Palestinian State, and taking Israeli security requirements seriously, would gain wide support.

Resolution of other issues such as Jerusalem and refugee claims would have to be shelved for some time. Under current conditions, anything more ambitious will be sharply rejected by the Israeli public and doomed to failure.

(Gerald M. Steinberg, a member of CIJR's Academic Council, was the special guest speaker at a 21 August cocktail reception in support of the Institute. Wall Street Journal, August 8, 2001)

WEEKLY QUOTES
"Israel will continue to reserve its basic right to self-defense and to fulfill its obligation to protect the lives of its citizens. Israel calls on the international community to demand that Palestinian leaders immediately halt all terror, violence, and incitement, and arrest terrorist elements, in accordance with their commitments." -- Statement by the Prime Minister's Office, communicating that since the Tenet understandings of June 13, there have been over 950 Palestinian terrorist attacks resulting in 94 Israeli casualties, 17 of them fatalities. (Jerusalem Post, Aug. 2)

"The [Hamas] political leadership has freed the hand of the brigades [the group's military wing Izzadin Kassam] to do whatever they want against the brothers of monkeys and pigs...I urge all the brigades to pursue and target the Israeli political leaders and MKs, the killer [Prime Minister Ariel] Sharon and the criminal [Foreign Minister] Shimon Peres." - -Senior Hamas official, Abdel Aziz Rantisi, promising future terror attacks against Israel. (New York Times, Aug. 1)

"The government of Israel has become a gang of assassins." -- Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher, referring to Israel's policy of "targeted killings". (Ha'aretz, Aug. 8)

"Israel does not assassinate people. It goes after leaders who dispatch young men to blow themselves up in the midst of Israelis. Suicide bombers cannot be threatened by death. The only way to stop them is to intercept those who send them." -- F.M. Shimon Peres, defending Israel's policy to target terrorists before they commit their murderous acts. (New York Times, Aug. 5)

"What could be better than a repetition of what happened in 1973? What we need is Egyptian-Syrian cooperation, with the back up of the oil states...and the rest of the Arab states...Such a military confrontation, especially while the Intifada is going on, and at a time when the possibility [is ripe] for the Arab community within Israel to take action, will turn all the tables and all of the facts upside down." -- Saudi Ambassador to the U.S., Ghazi Al-Quseibi, in the London daily Al-Hayat, calling on the Arabs not to rule out the possibility of war against Israel. (MEMRI, Special Dispatch No. 251, Aug. 6)

"The agenda of the U.N. World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Racial Intolerance contains some of the worst expressions of deligitimization of Jews that we have ever experienced." -- Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Michael Melchior, referring to draft statements by the Conference, charging that Israeli policy is "a new kind of apartheid, a crime against humanity and a threat to international peace and security". Other statements accuse Israel of "ethnic cleansing of the Arab population in historical Palestine". All Holocaust references have been replaced by the generic term "holocausts," which now includes Israeli settlements. (New York Post, July 22)

"You have sent troops to the Balkans, into Macedonia, southern Lebanon without approval from the parties involved. Why not do the same thing in our region?" -- P.A. Chairman Yasser Arafat calling on the U.N. to send an international observer force to the Middle East (National Post, Aug. 3)

"All we are asking for is a return to a normal life. We don't want to live in a prison, in bulletproof rooms. We want to get our lives back again." -- Gilo resident Yaffe Levy, following Israel's decision to begin bulletproofing the Jerusalem neighborhood-apartments on Gilo's periphery. (Jerusalem Post, Aug. 6)

SHORT TAKES

PALESTINIANS REJECT ISRAEL'S "MOST-WANTED" LIST -- (Jerusalem) The Palestinian Authority refuses to arrest the seven men on an Israeli most-wanted list for terrorists. Releasing its list on August 5, the Israeli Defense Ministry said the men "continue to carry out attacks" despite Israeli appeals to the P.A. to arrest them and dozens of other activists. The men are members of Islamic Jihad, Hamas, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestinian, and Yasser Arafat's Fatah faction. (National Post, Aug. 7)

PROGRESS SEEN IN REMOVING ANTI-ZIONISM CLAUSE -- (Geneva) Over 100 countries preparing for the U.N. World Conference Against Racism have moved toward dropping an attack on Zionism from key documents, as demanded by Israel and the United States. The weeklong conference opens in Durban, South Africa, on Aug. 31. In an informal session of delegates, only Syria held out against an agreement to eliminate the allegation that Zionism equals racism. The draft revives a 1975 U.N. attack on Zionism. (Ha'aretz, Aug. 2)

VATICAN: "DEFAMATORY" CAMPAIGN CONDUCTED BY JEWISH HISTORIANS -- (Vatican City) The Vatican accused Jewish historians on a Catholic-Jewish commission studying the Holocaust of conducting a "defamatory campaign" against the church. The exchange was triggered by the commission's announcement that it is suspending its study of the controversial World War II role of Pope Pius XII. Prof. Michael Marrus (University of Toronto) said last month that a Vatican cardinal had imposed unacceptable conditions on the historians. The Vatican insists that its archives remain closed from 1923 onward. (New York Post, Aug. 8)

POLISH MAYOR RESIGNS OVER JEDWABNE MEMORIAL -- (Warsaw) Krzysztof Godlewski, mayor of the town of Jedwabne where Poles murdered hundreds of their Jewish neighbors in 1941, has resigned because town councillors failed to support his efforts to memorialize the massacre. The head of the town council resigned as well, in solidarity. Godlewski claims that councillors and townspeople refuse to acknowledge the truth, and also have refused to approve spending to build a road to a memorial to the slain Jews. (Associated Press, Aug. 6)

Last Updated: May 13, 2002