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GREENBLATT AT ADL, NYT, UN & LEFTISTS IGNORE ISRAEL’S PROGRESS TOWARD MIDDLE EAST PEACE

 

 

Finally, something good comes out of Chicago!  A richly-deserved tribute to Hillel's remarkable human-rights work in Geneva–the Canadian Institute for Jewish Research, where Hillel was a student Intern and editor of our Dateline: Middle East student magazine (now in its 28th consecutive year!), is delighted, as are all of us at Liberal Arts College, Concordia University, who were privileged to teach him.  A great day all around, for Chicago, Montreal, Israel, the Jewish People, and above all for Hillel himself.

                                                                                                —Prof. Frederick Krantz, Director, CIJR

 

 

           CITY OF CHICAGO DECLARES TODAY “HILLEL NEUER DAY”

UN Watch, Sept. 15, 2016

 

In honor of the visit by the executive director of UN Watch, the Chicago City Council adopted a resolution declaring today, September 15, 2016, to be Hillel Neuer Day, in recognition of his “contributions to promote peace, justice and human rights around the world.” Before an audience of 1,300 delegates, including diplomats and elected officials, Neuer delivered the keynote address today at the annual meeting of the Chicago Jewish Federation.

 

The city council resolution reads in part: Whereas, UN Watch is a non-governmental organization based in Geneva, Switzerland that monitors the United Nations, fights bias against the State of Israel and promotes human rights; and whereas, In his role as one of the world’s foremost human rights advocates, Hillel Neuer has drawn global attention to both atrocities and injustice;

 

Be it resolved, That we, the Mayor and the members of the Chicago City Council, assembled this fourteenth day of September, 2016, do hereby welcome Hillel Neuer to the City of Chicago and do hereby recognize his contributions to promote peace, justice and human rights around the world; and be it further resolved, That Thursday, September 15, 2016, shall be officially recognized as Hillel Neuer Day throughout the City of Chicago.

 

Shame on the ADL: Isi Leibler, Candidly Speaking, Sept. 15, 2016 — Irrespective of one’s personal opinion of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s videotaped remarks on Palestinian “ethnic cleansing” of Jews from any future Palestinian state, Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt’s scornful public condemnation is simply beyond the pale.

Does the Times Want Middle East Peace?: Jonathan S. Tobin, Commentary, Aug. 30, 2016 — Something very odd has been happening in the Middle East and, as Sunday’s editorial in the New York Times illustrates, it has a lot of liberals seriously depressed.

Why the Oslo Process Doomed Peace: Efraim Karsh, Middle East Quarterly, Fall 2016 — Twenty-three years after its euphoric launch on the White House lawn, the Oslo "peace process" between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) stands out as one of the worst calamities to have afflicted the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

 

 

On Topic Links

 

Shimon Peres and the Mirage of Peace: Pini Dunner, Algemeiner, Sept. 16, 2016

Major Jewish Group: Newsweek Must Take Action to Save Its ‘Hard-Earned Journalist Brand From Bigots and Propagandists’: Barney Breen-Portnoy, Algemeiner, Sept. 12, 2016

Journalist Jeffrey Goldberg Stirs Storm After Tweeting he Might Stop Reading Haaretz: JTA, Aug. 2, 2016

Hillary’s Media is Torching its Standards to Cover the Election: Michael Goodwin, New York Post, Sept. 11, 2016

 

 

SHAME ON THE ADL

Isi Leibler

Candidly Speaking, Sept. 15, 2016

 

Irrespective of one’s personal opinion of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s videotaped remarks on Palestinian “ethnic cleansing” of Jews from any future Palestinian state, Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt’s scornful public condemnation is simply beyond the pale. On numerous occasions over the past few months, I have expressed incredulity and anger at the statements of Greenblatt for determinedly tilting the ADL policy away from its primary mandate of combating anti-Semitism and steering it toward partisan social action issues.

 

The latest example of this was his kumbaya remarks to a J Street audience when he effectively endorsed moral equivalence between Israelis and Palestinians, complained of our failure to recognize the legitimacy of the Palestinian narrative, questioned Israel’s democratic structure, engaged in partisan electoral politics and condemned the Republican platform as “anti-Zionist for omitting a two-state structure, and insisted that groups supporting the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement, which he admittedly condemns, are “animated by a desire for justice.”

 

Greenblatt also continues to align the ADL with the Black Lives Matter movement, despite that the movement has accused Israel of ethnic cleansing and genocide and called on black institutions to support BDS. He refuses to disassociate from them and continues to promote Black Lives Matter in the ADL’s educational and family discussion guides in schools and elsewhere. He considers that this organization, despite its anti-Semitism, is promoting “critical civil rights issues that merit attention” and that only “a small minority of the leaders” are responsible for the anti-Semitic campaigns.

 

Greenblatt, formerly employed in the Obama administration, does not seem to appreciate that his current organization — which has a charity budget in excess of $50 million — has a primary role to resist the growing tide of anti-Israelism and anti-Semitism that is sweeping the United States, especially on college campuses. Instead, in what is utterly unprecedented from a purportedly mainstream American Jewish organization, he has publicly excoriated the position adopted by the democratically elected head of the Israeli government. Netanyahu’s video was, as expected, criticized within Israel by the traditional left wing, but endorsed by the vast majority of Israelis.

 

Netanyahu simply stated facts. The Palestinians have made it eminently clear again and again that a Palestinian state would be Judenrein. One only has to review the ethnic-cleansing policy adopted by the Jordanians in 1948 when Jews were expelled from east Jerusalem and the Etzion Bloc. Despite the slick PR of Palestinian spokesmen denying that this is the case to naïve Western audiences, there is no question in the mind of anyone who understands the situation that Jews would not be tolerated in any Palestinian hegemony — and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has publicly said it repeatedly.

 

The Palestinian Authority officially supports this approach and I can only express regret that, presumably out of sensitivities to liberal Americans who refuse to confront this reality, it took so long for Netanyahu to shine the spotlight on this despicable abomination. After all, this highlights the outrageous fact that the Palestinians seek to delegitimize a Jewish presence throughout the biblical homeland. Other than some Muslim countries, there is no place in the world today where Jews are prohibited from living.

 

Netanyahu is paving the way for Israel’s response to a predictable United Nations assault on its policies later in the year. The reference to Israel’s Arab citizens makes the valid point that, despite the inevitable upheavals during the 1948 war when the nascent Jewish state was invaded by the combined armies of multiple Arab states, at no stage has Israel engaged in systematic ethnic cleansing of its Arab inhabitants. Not surprisingly, the U.S. State Department responded that “using this type of terminology is inappropriate and unhelpful” and reiterated that settlement construction was an obstacle to peace. In so doing, they failed to address the legitimate question raised by Netanyahu as to whether they accept that a Palestinian state should be Judenrein.

 

American Jews can agree or disagree with Netanyahu. But for the head of the ADL, a major Jewish organization, to condemn Netanyahu in the journal Foreign Policy, and accuse him of choosing “to raise an inappropriate straw man regarding Palestinian policy toward Israeli settlements” was unprecedented and totally unacceptable. He stated further that “like the term ‘genocide,’ the term ‘ethnic cleansing’ should be restricted to actually describing the atrocity it suggests — rather than distorted to suit political ends.” Despite all the evidence to the contrary, he emphatically repudiated Netanyahu’s charge that the Palestinians seek ethnic cleansing.

 

Under such circumstances, one would have expected that every major Jewish organization would dissociate itself from Greenblatt’s statement, noting that it is not the role of an organization whose primary objective is combating anti-Semitism to engage in public condemnations of views expressed by the democratically elected leader of Israel. But aside from the Zionist Organization of America, a curtain of silence has again enveloped the major Jewish organizations.

 

It would seem that in the post Abe Foxman era, the ADL board has knowingly empowered an individual whose outlook is not only liberal but effectively represents an echo chamber of left-wing Democratic politics. In fact, despite Greenblatt’s protestations of love for Israel and reiteration that the U.S.-Israel nexus is strong, especially after finalization of the defense agreement, the ADL’s approach to Israel is similar to that of J Street, having no hesitation in telling Israelis that it knows better than they do what is good for them.

 

This is a worrisome situation. American Jews should inform the ADL board that by enabling their CEO to make such partisan statements, they are causing enormous harm to Israel during this critical period when retaining U.S. public opinion is of crucial importance. If the ADL fails to act, American Jews should question whether they should continue supporting what was until recently a venerable mainstream Jewish organization, which has now been hijacked by a CEO whose outlook has more in common with J Street and less with combating anti-Semitism and supporting the embattled Jewish state.

 

 

Contents                                                                                                                                   

                                                             

DOES THE TIMES WANT MIDDLE EAST PEACE?                                                                           

Jonathan S. Tobin                                                                                                           

Commentary, Aug. 30, 2016

 

Something very odd has been happening in the Middle East and, as Sunday’s editorial in the New York Times illustrates, it has a lot of liberals seriously depressed. What’s bothering them? It turns out their collective noses are out of joint about progress toward Middle East peace and the fact that the Palestinian campaign that seeks to avoid direct talks and isolate Israel is failing. If that wasn’t bad enough, a series of diplomatic breakthroughs are happening on the watch of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the man that the Times and the so-called “peace camp” has been busy slandering as an opponent of peace.

 

After several decades of unremitting hostility, some of the fiercest opponents of Israel are starting to view the Jewish state very differently. Covert ties with Saudi Arabia are now becoming more open. Egypt, whose cold peace with Israel remained frozen in open hostility since Anwar Sadat’s assassination, has a government that is no longer shy about treating Israel as an ally if not a friend. Jerusalem’s relations with much of the Third World, especially African nations, are also warming up.

 

Those who care about thawing tensions between Jews and Arabs should be applauding all of this. That’s especially true of those voices that spend so much time deploring Israel’s isolation and the idea that it is an armed camp that is locked in perpetual combat with the entire Muslim and Arab world. But the Times and others on the left are lukewarm about these positive developments for their own reasons.

 

The first is that Israel and its Arab neighbors have been drawn together in large part through their mutual antipathy for Obama administration policies, and most specifically about the Iran nuclear deal. The Times has been one of the principal cheerleaders of the pact, which its advocates incorrectly claim has ended the nuclear threat to Israel and the Arab states. But those nations that are targeted most directly by Iran—Israel and Saudi Arabia—understand that U.S. appeasement of Iran advances the latter’s drive for regional hegemony as well as merely postponing the moment when it will achieve nuclear capability. The coming together of other Middle East nations in reaction to this travesty is evidence that those most at risk consider Obama’s false promises and his desire for a general U.S. retreat from the region a clear and present danger to the region.

 

Just as important is the Palestinian dismay about the willingness of many in the Arab world to embrace Israel as an ally. The irony is that both the Saudis and Egyptians hope to use their new ties with Israel to jump-start peace talks and Israel has signaled its willingness to try again. But that is exactly the opposite of what the Palestinian Authority wants. PA leader Mahmoud Abbas is appalled about the idea of being pushed into negotiations with Israel again because it will force him to either refuse peace offers (as he did in 2008) or to blow up the talks (as he did in 2014) to avoid being cornered again. The PA prefers to stick to its strategy of refusing negotiations while asking the United Nations to recognize their independence without first requiring them to make peace with Israel. New talks with Israel mean that strategy, which allows the PA to keep refusing to recognize the legitimacy of a Jewish state no matter where its borders are drawn, would be thwarted.

 

Ever since 1967, any hope of Arab reconciliation with Israel has been frustrated by Palestinian rejectionism. But that is a luxury that Cairo and Riyadh can no longer afford because of the nuclear deal and the rise of Islamist terror groups such as Hamas in Gaza, Iran’s Hezbollah auxiliaries in Lebanon as well as ISIS. Egypt rightly sees Hamas and ISIS as direct threats that must be faced. Moreover, Israel’s fears that a withdrawal from the West Bank would lead to a Hamas takeover there are viewed with more understanding in Cairo than they are at the Times.

 

Contrary to the Times assertion that neither Israel nor the Palestinians want peace, the Arab states understand that it is the latter that is unwilling to negotiate, let alone end the conflict for all time. As the Times notes, better relations between Israel and the Arab nations do not preclude a peace deal with the Palestinians. But those nations can’t wait for a sea change in Palestinian political culture that might permit them to finally say “yes” to peace to occur before they can cooperate with the Israelis to provide for their mutual security.

 

The outrage here is that when faced with a development that represents genuine progress toward ending the conflict, the Obama administration, its media cheerleaders and the rest of the left are nonplussed. They’re not only still stuck in an outdated concept about the centrality of the Palestinian problem but would prefer to see Netanyahu’s outreach fail rather than concede that they were wrong. 

 

 

Contents          

WHY THE OSLO PROCESS DOOMED PEACE

Efraim Karsh

Middle East Quarterly, Fall 2016

 

Twenty-three years after its euphoric launch on the White House lawn, the Oslo "peace process" between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) stands out as one of the worst calamities to have afflicted the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. For Israel, it has been the starkest strategic blunder in its history, establishing an ineradicable terror entity on its doorstep, deepening its internal cleavages, destabilizing its political system, and weakening its international standing. For the West Bank and Gaza Palestinians, it has brought subjugation to the corrupt and repressive PLO and Hamas regimes, which reversed the hesitant advent of civil society in these territories, shattered their socioeconomic wellbeing, and made the prospects of peace and reconciliation with Israel ever more remote. This in turn means that, even if the territories were to be internationally recognized as a fully-fledged Palestinian state (with or without a formal peace treaty with Israel), this will be a failed entity in the worst tradition of Arab dictatorships at permanent war with both Israel and its own subjects.

 

"We make peace with enemies," Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin reassured a concerned citizen shortly after the September 13, 1993 conclusion of the Israel-PLO Declaration of Principles on Interim Self-Government Arrangements (DOP, or Oslo I). "I would like to remind you that the [March 1979] peace treaty with Egypt had many opponents, and this peace has held for 15 years now." True enough. But peace can only be made with enemies who have been either comprehensively routed (e.g., post-World War II Germany and Japan) or disillusioned with the use of violence—not with those who remain wedded to conflict and war. And while Egyptian president Anwar Sadat was a "reformed enemy" eager to extricate his country from its futile conflict with Israel, Yasser Arafat and the PLO leadership viewed the Oslo process not as a springboard to peace but as a "Trojan Horse" (in the words of prominent PLO official Faisal Husseini) designed to promote the organization's strategic goal of "Palestine from the [Jordan] river to the [Mediterranean] sea"—that is, a Palestine in place of Israel.

 

Arafat admitted as much five days before signing the accords when he told an Israeli journalist, "In the future, Israel and Palestine will be one united state in which Israelis and Palestinians will live together"—that is, Israel would cease to exist. And even as he shook Rabin's hand on the White House lawn, the PLO chairman was assuring the Palestinians in a pre-recorded, Arabic-language message that the agreement was merely an implementation of the organization's "phased strategy" of June 1974. This stipulated that the Palestinians would seize whatever territory Israel surrendered to them, then use it as a springboard for further territorial gains until achieving the "complete liberation of Palestine."

 

The next eleven years until Arafat's death on November 11, 2004, offered a recapitulation, over and over again, of the same story. In addressing Israeli or Western audiences, the PLO chairman (and his erstwhile henchmen) would laud the "peace" signed with "my partner Yitzhak Rabin." To his Palestinian constituents, he depicted the accords as transient arrangements required by the needs of the moment. He made constant allusion to the "phased strategy" and the Treaty of Hudaibiya—signed by Muhammad with the people of Mecca in 628, only to be disavowed a couple of years later when the situation shifted in the prophet's favor—and insisted on the "right of return," the standard Palestinian/Arab euphemism for Israel's destruction through demographic subversion. As he told a skeptical associate shortly before moving to Gaza in July 1994 to take control of the newly established Palestinian Authority (PA):

 

    I know that you are opposed to the Oslo accords, but you must always remember what I'm going to tell you. The day will come when you will see thousands of Jews fleeing Palestine. I will not live to see this, but you will definitely see it in your lifetime. The Oslo accords will help bring this about.

 

This perfidy was sustained by Arafat's successor, Mahmoud Abbas, who has had no qualms about reiterating the vilest anti-Semitic calumnies: In his June 2016 address to the European Parliament, Abbas accused Israeli rabbis of urging the poisoning of Palestinian water. In his doctoral dissertation, written at a Soviet university and subsequently published in book form, he argued that fewer than a million Jews had been killed in the Holocaust, and that the Zionist movement colluded in their slaughter. He has vowed time and again never to accept the idea of Jewish statehood, most recently in March 2014, when he rallied the Arab League behind his "absolute and decisive rejection to recognizing Israel as a Jewish state," and in September 2015, when he derided Israel in his U.N. address as "a historic injustice … inflicted upon a people … that had lived peacefully in their land."

 

An unreconstructed Holocaust denier, PA president Mahmoud Abbas has voiced incessant anti-Semitic and anti-Israel incitement. In his June 2016 address to the European Parliament, Abbas accused Israeli rabbis of urging the poisoning of Palestinian water. He has pledged to prevent the Jews from "defiling al-Aqsa with their filthy feet" and has vowed time and again never to accept the idea of Jewish statehood.

 

Back home in the PA, Abbas was even more forthright, pledging to prevent the Jews from "defiling al-Aqsa with their filthy feet" and stating that "every drop of blood that has been spilled in Jerusalem is holy blood as long as it was for Allah." When this incitement culminated in a sustained wave of violence that killed scores of Israelis in a string of stabbings, car rammings into civilians, and shooting attacks, Abbas applauded the bloodshed as a "peaceful, popular uprising. … We have been under occupation for 67 or 68 years [i.e., since Israel's establishment]," he told his subjects in March 2016. "Others would have sunk into despair and frustration. However, we are determined to reach our goal because our people stand behind us." In other words, more than two decades after the onset of the Oslo process, Israel's "peace partner" would not even accept the Jewish state's right to exist, considering its creation an "illegal occupation of Palestinian lands."…

[To Read the Full Article, with Footnotes, Click the Following Link—Ed.]

 

CIJR Wishes All Our Friends & Supporters: Shabbat Shalom!

Contents                       

           

On Topic Links

 

Shimon Peres and the Mirage of Peace: Pini Dunner, Algemeiner, Sept. 16, 2016 —The news earlier this week that Shimon Peres had suffered a devastating stroke was greeted with shock and sadness across the political spectrum. His onetime rival, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, tweeted: “Shimon, we love you and the whole country is wishing you a speedy recovery.”

Major Jewish Group: Newsweek Must Take Action to Save Its ‘Hard-Earned Journalist Brand From Bigots and Propagandists’: Barney Breen-Portnoy, Algemeiner, Sept. 12, 2016 Newsweek must take action to “save the integrity of its hard-earned journalist brand from bigots and propagandists,” an official with a leading US-based Jewish human rights organization told The Algemeiner on Monday following a string of recent incidents that revealed an apparent animus by the magazine’s Middle East edition toward Israel.

Journalist Jeffrey Goldberg Stirs Storm After Tweeting he Might Stop Reading Haaretz: JTA, Aug. 2, 2016 —U.S. journalist Jeffrey Goldberg stirred up a media dust storm in Israel after he tweeted that he might give up reading Haaretz. “I think I’m getting ready to leave Ha’aretz behind, actually,” Goldberg tweeted, including a link to an article in the left-leaning Israeli daily written by two American-Jewish historians who discuss why they have “left Zionism behind.”

Hillary’s Media is Torching its Standards to Cover the Election: Michael Goodwin, New York Post, Sept. 11, 2016 —There is nothing more to learn about Hillary Clinton’s home-brew server, deleted e-mails, chronic cough or anything else that makes her look bad, according to The Washington Post. And The New York Times, stung by Clinton’s woeful performance at last week’s presidential forum, believes the debates are going to be a total disaster unless moderators get much, much tougher with Donald Trump.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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