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“PEACE PROCESS?” ABBAS, TEMPLE MOUNT RIOTS, UNESCO, LEFTIST IDEOLOGY— ALL PROVE THAT A PEACE AGREEMENT IS NOT AN OPTION

The Never-Ending Peace Process Farce: Isi Leibler, Jerusalem Post, Aug. 23, 2017— Unless the US is willing to bite the bullet and finally confront Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority…

The Temple Mount Riots: Manfred Gerstenfeld, BESA, Aug. 6, 2017— On July 14, two Israeli police officers were murdered in Jerusalem.

Three Ideas Undermining Canada, America, and the West: Philip Carl Salzman, CIJR, 2017— Far more dangerous than a handful of terrorist bombers and assassins are insidious ideas pervasive in universities and the media that undermine and weaken Canada, America, and the West generally.

We Must Leave UNESCO at Once: Paul Merkley, Bayview Review, July 21, 2017 — Once again, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization has rolled up its sleeves to advance its mandate…

 

On Topic Links

 

The Left's Threat to Western Civilization (Video): Dennis Prager, Youtube, Aug. 10, 2017

UNRWA Condemns the Palestinians to Refugee Status in Perpetuity: Amb. Alan Baker, JCPA, Aug. 15, 2017

We Arabs are Damn Lucky that Jews do not Behave Like Arabs: Fred Maroun, Times of Israel, July 8, 2017

Poet Simcha Simchovitch Immortalized Those Lost in the Shoah: M.J. Stone, Globe and Mail, Aug. 22, 2017

 

 

THE NEVER-ENDING PEACE PROCESS FARCE

Isi Leibler

Jerusalem Post, Aug. 23, 2017

 

Unless the US is willing to bite the bullet and finally confront Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority, the forthcoming mission to the region by US representatives Jared Kushner and Jason Greenblatt to “restart the peace process” on behalf of President Donald Trump may prove to be highly counterproductive.

 

Abbas is coming to the end of his reign. A brutal and corrupt dictator, he is determined that his legacy be that of an embattled “freedom fighter” committed to reversal of the Nakba, his ultimate objective being the restoration of Arab hegemony from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. His means to achieve this necessitate the dismemberment of the Jewish state in stages through terrorism and international pressure.

 

Until now, he has basically ignored Trump’s requests and demands. Incitement and calls for “resistance” via the media and imams urging Palestinians to kill Israelis and become shahids (martyrs) have reached a record high. Abbas himself whipped up religious hysteria based on the false cry that Jews were taking over and desecrating the Aksa mosque, thus triggering the recent riots and encouraging further terrorist attacks. Children are brainwashed into regarding Jews as subhuman descendants of apes and pigs, propaganda reminiscent of and frequently replicated from Nazi sources.

 

The PA and its leaders continue honoring mass murders as freedom fighters, dedicating mosques, city squares, schools and other institutions in their names to commemorate their murderous acts. Despite personal demands from Trump, Abbas has vowed that he will never close the Palestine National Fund, which provides generous pensions and massive financial awards for imprisoned or killed terrorists and their families, the amounts proportionate to the success of the terrorist act. Incarcerated murderers top the list with monthly payments of NIS 11,000 (more than $3,000), which is augmented with $25,000 if they are released from jail. This year the fund has distributed $345 million, comprising half of the $693m. the PA receives in foreign aid. Thus the US and European countries have effectively been providing funds to incentivize Palestinians to murder Israelis.

 

The US Congress has now passed legislation to deduct an equivalent of these funds from aid provided to the Palestinians. The Europeans have taken no action, although Germany, the UK and Norway are “reviewing” the situation. Abbas has responded by vowing to maintain the payouts, which he describes as “social welfare,” and in recent weeks has even increased the payments.

 

His recent proclamation that security arrangements with the Israelis had been terminated was never effectively implemented. The reality is that the Abbas regime would be undermined if it annulled the security coordination whereby police constrain the enormous popular resentment by the people against the regime. While the security arrangements did reduce pressure on the IDF, the party with the most to lose if it were terminated would be the corrupt PA – which would then probably collapse or be taken over by Hamas.

 

Abbas has now condemned the US as being biased and unfit to act as an intermediary. The Israelis, on the other hand, appreciate that with the Trump administration in disarray, mixed messages have emerged in relation to the peace process. Trump repeatedly reaffirms that he stands by Israel, but he has yet to fulfill his promise to move the US embassy to Jerusalem. US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley has been exceptionally forthright; the recent flow of statements from Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and his departmental releases, however, are highly disconcerting and ominously reminiscent of the Obama era.

 

Tillerson informed the Senate that the Palestinians were moving forward positively in the peace process and had undertaken to bring an end to “martyr” payments. This was promptly denied. In July, the State Department released a report commending Abbas for having “significantly” addressed incitement. The report also stated that Palestinian terrorism was prompted “by a lack of hope in achieving Palestinian statehood, Israeli settlement construction in the West Bank, settler violence against Palestinians in the West Bank, the perception that the Israeli government was changing the status quo on the Temple Mount and IDF tactics that the Palestinians considered overly aggressive.” Such observations could match those issued two years ago, at the height of then-president Barack Obama’s diplomatic campaign against Israel.

 

This should not be interpreted as an indication that the US has abandoned Israel. It merely reflects the divisions inside the administration, which were unlikely to have emerged had Trump not been diverted by the chaos in other areas. Fortunately, Tillerson has largely been excluded from direct engagement in peace negotiations and Trump has now authorized Kushner and Greenblatt “to restart the peace process.” They will visit the region in the next few days.

 

To further complicate matters, both the Palestinians and Israelis are entangled in domestic turmoil. Abbas, the duplicitous rogue with the forked tongue, rules as a dictator and has created a culture of death. However, he is aged and his people realize that his time in office is limited. He has never been willing to make any meaningful concessions to Israelis, who were desperate to separate themselves from the Palestinians, and is now unlikely to make any moves in that direction. On the contrary, he has been actively strengthening relations with the Iranians and the Turks, who now support him as well as Hamas. But the people are restless and there is already jockeying among those seeking to replace him…

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

 

Contents

THE TEMPLE MOUNT RIOTS

Manfred Gerstenfeld

 BESA, Aug. 6, 2017

 

On July 14, two Israeli police officers were murdered in Jerusalem. They were members of the Druze community, a religious and ethnic minority. The three Muslim murderers came from the town of Umm al-Fahm in the north of Israel. They had hidden their weapons on the Temple Mount, where the al-Aqsa Mosque, which is managed by the Waqf, a Muslim religious trust, stands.  The three terrorists were killed by Israeli police. The day before the killings, one of the perpetrators published a selfie in which he stands before al-Aqsa. The photo is accompanied by the text, “Tomorrow’s smile will be more beautiful, God willing.”

 

Israel reacted to the murders by increasing security measures through the installation of metal detectors. The alternative would have been to wait passively until the next contingent of terrorists arrived, ready to employ the proven formula of bringing in weapons and hiding them at that place of worship. The installation of metal detectors led Palestinian preachers to call upon the worshipers to pray publicly outside the mosque on the morning of Friday, July 21. Riots followed during which three Palestinians were killed and a number wounded. On the same day, a Palestinian terrorist murdered a Jewish father, seriously injured his wife, and killed their two adult children in the village of Halamish during their Shabbat meal. It is estimated that this terrorist’s family will receive more than $3000 per month from the Palestinian Authority for many years to come. These payments are co-financed by Western countries.

 

In the meantime, the metal detectors have been removed. Due to the riots, Israel has opted instead to install more expensive and technologically advanced tools to detect weapons from entering the holy site in the future. Despite the removal of the detectors, Palestinian riots in Jerusalem have continued.

 

When we examine the reactions of the actors in this saga, it becomes possible to discern recurring patterns. In the past, the PLO-dominated Palestinian Authority was able to control riots. A typical case in point was the “al-Aqsa Intifada,” which began in late September 2000. Though presented as a spontaneous response to Ariel Sharon’s Temple Mount visit, several PLO/PA officials (including Marwan Barghouthi and Minister of Communications Imad Faloudji) were to admit that the violence had been planned well in advance by Yasser Arafat. All that was required was a handy pretext to start it.

 

Since then, the stature in the western world of the Palestinian Authority and Mahmoud Abbas has steadily increased. In 2016, many members of the European Parliament gave Abbas a standing ovation after a speech in which he made the vile anti-Semitic accusation that an Israeli rabbi had urged Israelis to poison the water of the Palestinians. Two days later, Abbas had to admit that his libel was a complete falsehood.

 

In contrast to his glowing image among Europeans, Abbas is seen by most Palestinians as very weak. His Fatah movement supports the riots, partly because it fears losing even more influence if it does not. He is playing a dangerous game, however. If the riots continue, Abbas may lose control over them. If it is true that he has canceled the PA’s security collaboration with Israel, he might find himself in immediate danger. If he is without the protection of the Israeli security services, it will be much easier for Hamas sympathizers to target him. Another recurrent pattern is the abuse of holy or protected places. During Israel’s military campaigns against Hamas, the terrorist group often hid weapons in mosques, universities, and schools. This included schools of the UN agency UNRWA. During the December 2008-January 2009 exchange, several Hamas leaders hid in a Gaza hospital because they knew Israel would not target it. Hamas also uses civilians as human shields.

 

Yet another recurrent pattern is the behavior of foreign governments and leaders. Many excuse and condone Palestinian terror, incitement, and violence. Others feel the need to step in with condemnations or recommendations. Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, for example, is a staunch supporter of Hamas, using any available opportunity to condemn Israel. This time, he said:  “By occupying the al-Aqsa Mosque, Israel has exceeded the boundaries.” France issued an anodyne statement mainly to create the illusion that it is still an important international player while it struggles with critical domestic issues. Still another recurrent pattern is the behavior of foreign media, which habitually turns aggressors into victims and vice versa. The media watch organization Honest Reporting Canada created a detailed list of many such distortions in the Canadian media alone during the first days of the riots.

 

In view of these recurrent patterns, a peace agreement is likely to be useless. The Palestinians may one day sign such an agreement, and indeed maintain quiet for a while – but they will ultimately resort once again to riots, violence, and murder, as they invariably have in the past. The Temple Mount riots created a perfect model for such a pattern. Commit a crime against Israel related to al-Aqsa. If Israel reacts with enhanced security measures, incite rioting by declaring the mosque to be in danger. Israel cannot undo the concessions it makes for “peace.” Those concessions are likely to include the removal of isolated West Bank settlements and an exchange of land in return for the larger settlement blocs. The Temple Mount riots provide tangible evidence that as matters stand now, a peace agreement is not a credible option.      

 

 

Contents

THREE IDEAS UNDERMINING WESTERN CIVILIZATION

Philip Carl Salzman                                                                                                                

CIJR, 2017

 

Far more dangerous than a handful of terrorist bombers and assassins are insidious ideas pervasive in universities and the media that undermine and weaken Western civilization generally. Three of the most destructive of these ideas are that the ills of the world are the result of Western and especially American imperialism, that all cultures are inherently valid and equally valuable, and that any criticism of Islam is either racism or madness or both.

 

The idea that everything wrong with any country is the result of Western or American imperialism has been reified into an academic theory called “postcolonialism.” The point is that terrible things were done all around the world by Western colonial powers, and that any current problem can be seen as an effect of Western imperial and colonial acts. This postcolonial theory is widely held by academics in Middle East Studies, anthropology, sociology, political science, and cultural studies, as well as in the humanities.

 

Postcolonial theory derives in base from Marxist-Leninist theory, which argues that capitalist societies externalize exploitation and class conflict to Third World colonies outside the home country. After the Soviet Union fell, marxists in Western universities felt the need to obscure their debt to communist theory, and so re-labelled their approach with such terms as “political economy,” “political ecology,” and postcolonialism.

 

Postcolonialism was developed eloquently in Middle East Studies by Edward Said, a Professor of English at Columbia University, a specialist in Jane Austen. Said wrote several books about the Middle East, although he had no training in Middle East Studies or in any social science discipline. One of his books, Orientalism, became, astonishingly, the most influential book on the Middle East in the last two decades of the 20th century. Orientalism asserts, with alleged examples, that all Western ideas about the Middle East are projections of Western desires and vices, and biased distortions of imagined evils, projected onto the Middle Eastern Other in order to provide justification for attack, invasion, occupation, exploitation, and extermination of defenceless and blameless Middle Easterners. Knowing the Middle East accurately, beyond the Western bias, was impossible, according to Said, because of its diversity.

 

Edward Said became the great hero American Middle East Studies, feted and honoured by the Middle East Studies Association. His books, but especially Orientalism, were widely taught and references in North American universities. A student once told me that she had been taught that Said was a god. Clay feet, I thought. Said=s motivation to venture into fields beyond his competence was his identification as a Palestinian, although he had grown up in a well-to-do family in Egypt, and had lived his adulthood as a privileged professor in a distinguished American university. Said’s writing was defensive, attempting to reject and refute the negative image of the Middle East and Middle Easterners.

 

Said’s publications, and the postcolonialism to which he was a mighty contributor, was and is above all partisan, taking the part of the Middle East and Middle Easterners against the West. Its point is to rehabilitate the reputation and honour of the Middle East. Its strategy to allocate all ill motivation and dastardly deeds to the West, picturing Middle Easterners as hapless and blameless victims of Western imperial and colonial machinations. We cannot find any disinterested and objective research and analysis in postcolonialism; the conclusion is determined a priori: all evil comes from the West. This means that the conflict between Israel and the Arabs is entirely the fault of Israel. Any criticism of Palestinian or Arab politics or actions is disallowed, and attributed to racism or fascism. The brutal barbarism of the Islamic State is attributed to previous actions of America, Israel, and other Western intruders. If South Asians murder their daughters because they fell in love with boys from the wrong caste, it is fault of the British, who, according to postmodernists, invented the caste system, and presumably the ideas of karma and dharma as well. If there are tribal wars in Africa, it is the fault of the British, who, according to postmodernists, invented tribes. If Palestinian men beat up their wives, it is the fault of Israel. No one in the Third World, it appears, is responsible for their actions; it is always the fault of someone else. That such a view takes away the agency and humanity of people in the Third World, and ignores the understandings, beliefs, values, injunctions of their cultures, does not seem to trouble postmodern theorists.

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

                                                                       

           

Contents

WE MUST LEAVE UNESCO AT ONCE                                                  

Paul Merkley

                      Bayview Review, July 21, 2017

 

Once again, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization has rolled up its sleeves to advance its mandate – “to contribute to peace and security by promoting international collaboration through educational, scientific, and cultural reforms in order to increase universal respect for justice, the rule of law, and human rights along with fundamental freedom proclaimed in the United Nations Charter.”

 

To accomplish this, it has cast out the Bible of the Jews and the Christians as a source of truth for anybody on earth. And, in the same act, it has declared invalid, every other source that contains information that anyone might think can be historically proved, and has put in their place fantasies about the glorious prehistoric past of Islam – fantasies that take us back to about twenty-five centuries before Muhammad existed. Once again there has been no hint of complaint from any person or institution whose credibility stands upon either the authority of science or the authority of Scripture.

 

A few months ago, UNESCO piled yet another Resolution on top of the long sequence of Resolutions condemning the State of Israel for its oppression of the “Palestinian people”– the aboriginal inhabitants of what people like to call the Holy Land. (See my essay, UNESCO CASTS OUT CHRISTIANITY,” www.thebayviewreview.com, November 22, 2016.) This purpose it accomplished by its reference to the sites upon and around the Temple Mount exclusively by their Muslim names. This has the intended effect of erasing memory of the Temple and of any belonging of Israel and the Jews – defining Jerusalem as exclusively “Palestinian” and the State of Israel’s presence as that of an illegal occupier. Israelis claim that such a declaration obviously takes away all legitimacy from Israel; furthermore, it legitimizes terrorist acts against the illegal Jewish state and it anathematises all of Israel’s self-defensive activity. And so Israel holds UNSCO responsible for murderous attacks that have taken place recently against the Jewish people in Jerusalem.

 

At the same time, these UNESCO declarations cast out the Old Testament and New Testament texts which amply describe the presence of the Jewish People and of their Temple – not incidentally   leaving Christianity as a religion based on falsehood and undeserving of belief.  In place of all the evidence of Jewish presence in Jerusalem (archeological and literary, including the testimony of both the Old and New Testaments of the Bible) they have put in place simple assertion that the entire region was the habitat of “the Palestinian people”– the exclusive aboriginal denizens of the Holy Land.

 

To accomplish these and similar victories, the Muslim bloc depends on two circumstances: the first is the willingness of a majority of the United Nations to line up, on no notice at all, in support of anything that serves to denigrate Israel and the Jews; the second is the unwillingness of leaders of all nations having Christian majorities to appear friendly towards Christian faith. The Muslim claim to historical primacy in the lands described in our Bible is strictly and merely a theological assertion, utterly incompatible with the historical record, but designed to fill the ideological vacuum left as Western intellectuals cast theology out of consideration. Among the few intellectuals in our part of the world who thinks this is worth challenging is Guy Milliere, a Professor at the University of Paris, who notes:

 

“Although Europe claims to respect human rights and the rights of peoples, it has been a party to violating the most essential right of the Jewish people: the recognition of its existence for more than 3,000 years, and the anchoring of this existence to its sacred monuments. Worse, Europe does so in the name of a people fictitiously invented less than 50 years ago. No serious scholar can find any trace of a “Palestinian people” before the 1960s. Europe has apparently been all too happy to accept lies”…

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

 

CIJR Wishes All Our Friends & Supporters: Shabbat Shalom!

                                   

Contents

 

On Topic Links

 

The Left's Threat to Western Civilization (Video): Dennis Prager, Youtube, Aug. 10, 2017—Dennis Prager speaking about the Left's threat to Western Civilization at the David Horowitz Freedom Center's Aug. 3rd evening honoring Dr. Robert Shillman in Newport Coast, California.

UNRWA Condemns the Palestinians to Refugee Status in Perpetuity: Amb. Alan Baker, JCPA, Aug. 15, 2017—In all the various frameworks envisioned by the international community for reaching a peaceful settlement in the Middle East generally, and between Israel and the Palestinians in particular, the issue of refugees has been perhaps one of the most central and complex.

We Arabs are Damn Lucky that Jews do not Behave Like Arabs: Fred Maroun, Times of Israel, July 8, 2017—When I see Arab hatred directed at Israel, such as the Palestinian Authority’s repeated attempts through UNESCO to deny Jewish history in Jerusalem, I shake my head in disbelief. The hypocrisy is astounding.

Poet Simcha Simchovitch Immortalized Those Lost in the Shoah: M.J. Stone, Globe and Mail, Aug. 22, 2017—After the Nazis murdered his family, it was poetry that freed Simcha (Sam) Simchovitch from darkness and reaffirmed his faith. Although his work echoes Dante’s Divine Comedy, chronicling a descent into the inferno and subsequent rise back into the light, Mr. Simchovitch’s verse was not a fantastical depiction of hell’s deepest circles, but instead offered real-life observations of the diabolical Nazi nightmare that robbed him of everything he cherished.

 

 

 

 

 

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