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WHILE THE LEFT BETRAYS ISRAEL, THE WORLD IS SILENT ON IRANIAN & PALESTINIAN ANTISEMITISM

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US Policy on Iran: Jerusalem Post, June 21, 2015— Like a cacophonous orchestra or a badly coordinated sports team, US foreign policy-makers seem to be working at cross purposes vis-à-vis Tehran’s nuclear weapons program.

The Palestinians' Real Strategy: Khaled Abu Toameh, Gatestone Institute, June 22, 2015 — All signs indicate that the Palestinians are planning to step up their efforts to force Israel to comply with their demands.

World’s Silent Acquiescence of Palestinian Jew-Hatred is Helping to Destroy any Chance for Peace: Abraham Cooper, Jewish Journal, June  1, 2015 — There have been repeated calls for President Barack Obama and the leaders of the P5+1 to denounce the Ayatollah Khamenei’s genocidal threats against the Jewish state.

The Left’s Betrayal Of Israel: Prof. Robert S. Wistrich, Jewish Press, June 18, 2015 — I grew up in 1950s England. In 1961 I first visited Israel, spending a month on a far-left kibbutz – fascinated but also slightly repelled by its intense collectivist ethos.

 

On Topic Links

 

The Iranian President Toes the Supreme Leader’s Red Lines: Lt. Col. (ret.) Michael Segall, JCPA, June 18, 2015

Shaking Hands With Iran: Daniel Mael, Gatestone Institute, June 19, 2015

Israel Shifts to Offense Ahead of UN Report on Gaza War: Mitch Ginsburg, Times of Israel, June 15, 2015

The Nature of the Abbas Regime: Yoram Ettinger, Algemeiner, June 21, 2015

 

                                               

US POLICY ON IRAN                                                                                                  

Jerusalem Post, June 21, 2015

 

Like a cacophonous orchestra or a badly coordinated sports team, US foreign policy-makers seem to be working at cross purposes vis-à-vis Tehran’s nuclear weapons program. On the one hand, the Obama administration appears to be bent on cutting a deal with the Iranians even if it is bad.

This explains Secretary of State John Kerry’s latest concession to the mullahs. This one has to do with the past military dimensions of Iran’s nuclear program. Up until last week, the consensus among the P5+1 nations (at least the Americans and Europeans) and the International Atomic Energy Agency was that it was absolutely essential that Iran fess up to past transgressions. Failing to do so would make it difficult if not impossible to know where to look for current and future violations.

 

But now Kerry is telling us that knowing about Iran’s past is no longer important. “The possible military dimensions, frankly, get distorted a little bit in some of the discussion, in that we’re not fixated on Iran specifically accounting for what they did at one point in time or another. We know what they did. We have no doubt. We have absolute knowledge with respect to the certain military activities they were engaged in,” Kerry said last week.

President Barack Obama has tried to make the case on a number of occasions that no other feasible option exists for stopping Iran’s nuclear weapons program besides a negotiated agreement. He has also claimed such a deal would have a moderating effect on the Islamic Republic. Obama has insisted that the Iranians are rational actors who will inevitably adhere to the basic contours of such an agreement.

While Kerry and Obama strive to reach a deal with the Islamic Republic, the US State Department, in its annual report on terrorism issued on Friday, has a very different message to relay. Iran, it turns out, is one of the world’s biggest state supporters of terrorism. Throughout 2014 and into 2015 – the period during which negotiations were going on between the P5+1 and Iran – the Islamic Republic continued its terrorist-related activities unabated. The State Department assessment suggests that neither the election of the supposedly “moderate” President Hassan Rouhani nor the prospect of a nuclear accord with the P5+1 has had a moderating effect on Iran’s activities in the Middle East and the world as a whole.

“We continue to be very, very concerned about IRGC (Iran Revolutionary Guard Corps) activity as well as proxies that act on behalf of Iran,” said Tina S. Kaidanow, the State Department’s senior counterterrorism official, referring to the Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen and Palestinian terrorist organizations in Gaza. “We watch that extremely carefully.” The report also found that Iran expanded its foreign operations in Africa, Asia and South America. Just last week, yet another dummy bomb was found near the Israeli Embassy in Montevideo, Uruguay. In February, Tehran’s ambassador to Uruguay was summoned to the country’s Foreign Ministry to explain why an Iranian diplomat was spotted close to a dummy bomb planted in November of last year.

How are we to understand these conflicting messages? On one hand, President Obama is bringing to bear all of his influence to convince Americans, Saudis, Israelis and others in the region and elsewhere of the importance of reaching an agreement with the Iranians. And the Obama administration has shown a willingness to facilitate reaching a deal by abandoning its redlines – such as the demand that Iran reveal the history of its nuclear weapons program. On the other hand, the US State Department acknowledges that Tehran continues to support terrorism around the world. Could it be there is a connection between Iran’s continued aggression and the US’s conciliatory approach to Iran? After all, the Iranians have no reason to believe that the Obama administration’s assurance that “all options are on the table” is anything but an empty mantra.

Tehran has not been forced to face military or even diplomatic retribution from the US for remaining a leading state sponsor of terrorism. If anything, the Iranians have learned from the very different fates of Libya and North Korea the importance of obtaining nuclear weapons as quickly as possible. While Washington helped overthrow Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi after he gave up his nuclear program, the White House has avoided a military confrontation over North Korea’s nuclear program.

Harmony and consistency must be brought to US foreign policy. This will only happen when Congress, on a bipartisan basis, insists that Iran stops supporting international terrorism and the administration reassesses the merits of the nuclear arms agreement currently being negotiated with Tehran.                                

                                                                                   

Contents                                                                            

   

THE PALESTINIANS' REAL STRATEGY                                                                             

Khaled Abu Toameh                                                                                                                              

Gatestone Institute, June 22, 2015

 

All signs indicate that the Palestinians are planning to step up their efforts to force Israel to comply with their demands. But as the Palestinians are not united, they are working on two fronts to achieve their goal.

 

One party, headed by the Palestinian Authority (PA), believes that, with the help of the international community, Israel will be forced to fully withdraw to the pre-1967 lines, including east Jerusalem, and accept the "right of return" for millions of refugees and their descendants to their former homes inside Israel.

 

The second party, represented by Hamas, Islamic Jihad and several other terror groups, continues to reject any form of compromise, and insists that the only solution lies in the elimination of Israel. Unlike the first party, this one believes that direct or indirect negotiations with the "Zionist enemy" are a waste of time and that terrorism is the only means for the Palestinians to achieve their goal.

 

The two Palestinian parties, the PA and Hamas, have been at war with each other since 2007, when Hamas seized full control over the Gaza Strip and forced the Palestinian Authority to flee to the West Bank. But while the two rival parties are fighting each other, they are also working separately to overpower Israel. On June 19, a Hamas-affiliated group claimed responsibility for the shooting attack that killed Danny Gonen, a 25-year-old man who was visiting the West Bank. Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other Palestinian groups rushed to "welcome" the killing of the young Israeli man who, by the way, was not a "settler," but a resident of the Israeli city of Lod, near Ben Gurion Airport.

 

In separate statements, these terror groups explained that the attack came in the context of Palestinian efforts to "preserve the resistance" against Israel in the West Bank. They said that such attacks were "legitimate means" to achieve Palestinian rights and aspirations.  These groups made it unavoidably clear that their real objective is not to "liberate" the West Bank, but to wipe Israel off the face of the earth. As one of them said, "We will continue to support any resistance action on the land of Palestine until it is liberated, from the (Mediterranean) sea to the (Jordan) river, and cleansed from all Zionist usurpers."

 

Hours after the West Bank attack, a senior Hamas leader, Musa Abu Marzouk, repeated that his movement was seeking to replace Israel with an Islamist state: "Hamas wants a state not only in the Gaza Strip, but in all of Palestine; we won't give up our weapons and will continue to fight in order to liberate our land." Marzouk's remarks refute claims by some Arab and Western media that Hamas has been moving toward pragmatism and moderation, and that it is now willing, for the first time, to recognize Israel's right to exist. Many in the West often fail to understand Hamas's true position because they do not follow what Hamas says in Arabic — to its own people. In Arabic, Hamas makes no secret of its call for the destruction of Israel. To Hamas's credit, this message is often repeated in English and other languages.

 

While Hamas and its allies work toward destroying Israel through terrorism, the Palestinian Authority seems more determined than ever to step up its worldwide campaign to delegitimize and isolate Israel with the help of various international parties, such as the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. Some senior Palestinian officials like to describe this campaign as a "diplomatic war" against Israel. They argue that this war has thus far proven to be much more "effective" than rockets and suicide bombings. "When we launch rockets at Israel, we don't get any sympathy," explained one official. "But everyone in the international community is now supporting our diplomatic efforts. That's why we believe that what Hamas is doing right now is harmful to Palestinian interests."

 

Shortly before the Israeli man was fatally shot in the West Bank, the chief Palestinian negotiator, Saeb Erekat, revealed his plan to rally the world against Israel so that it would be forced to submit to the Palestinian Authority's demands, above all a complete withdrawal to the pre-1967 lines. Erekat's plan calls for working very closely with EU countries and members of the UN Security Council, to increase pressure on Israel to comply with the Palestinian demands. It also calls for recruiting international support for recognition of a Palestinian state and paving the way for it to join various international organizations and conventions…

 

The Palestinian Authority's current strategy is to negotiate with the international community, and not with Israel, about achieving peace in the Middle East. The PA knows that it is not going to get from Israel all that it is asking for. That is why the Palestinian leaders have chosen to negotiate with France, Britain, Sweden and the US. The Palestinians are hoping that these countries will give them what Israel cannot and is not prepared to offer at the negotiating table. Even if Israel wanted to give one hundred percent of what it gained in 1967, the reality on he ground does not allow it. Since 1967, both Jews and Arabs have created irreversible "facts in the ground," such as the construction of tens of thousands of houses for both Arabs and Jews. A full withdrawal would mean that tens of thousands of Jews and Arabs would lose their homes both in the West Bank and in Jerusalem.

 

The ultimate goal of the Palestinian Authority is, with the help of the international community, to force Israel to its knees. For the PA, rallying the international community and Europe is about punishing and weakening Israel, not making peace with it. The PA wants to see Israel degraded, isolated and turned into a rogue state. It wants to see Israelis brought before the International Criminal Court and expelled from as many international organizations as possible…                                                                                                [To Read the Full Article Click the Following Link—Ed.]

                                                                                   

 

Contents                                                                   

                                          

WORLD’S SILENT ACQUIESCENCE OF PALESTINIAN JEW-HATRED                              

IS HELPING TO DESTROY ANY CHANCE FOR PEACE                                                                          

Rabbi Abraham Cooper                                                                                                        

Jewish Journal, June 1, 2015

 

There have been repeated calls for President Barack Obama and the leaders of the P5+1 to denounce the Ayatollah Khamenei’s genocidal threats against the Jewish state. No such public protest has been or is likely to be made in the frantic push leading up to the June 30th deadline for a nuclear deal with Tehran.  President Obama has made it clear that he sees the Iranian regime’s anti-Semitic rants as meant only for internal consumption, with no broader global impact.

 

I guess the same mindset informs US Secretary of State John Kerry and European Union leaders who also maintain a public silence as Palestinian leadership—The Palestinian Authority (PA), not only Hamas– continue to deploy Jew-hatred in the society they control. World leaders apparently want to focus all their diplomatic energies on “the bigger picture”. Denouncing Palestinian anti-Semitism would deflect attention from the ultimate goal: A Two-State solution that would birth a Palestinian state and assure Israel’s security. But they are dead wrong. Silence in the face of hate may actually be helping to kill any chances for peace in our time.

 

Two recent developments in recent days, one in Hamas-controlled Gaza and the other in the PA-controlled West Bank, reveal the depths of officially sanctioned anti-Semitic depravity on full-blown public display in Palestinian society. Last Sunday, the Palestine Cup Final took place in Gaza between Shujaeiya and Rafah soccer clubs. One can only imagine the enthusiasm of local sports fans to cheer their respective teams at this pivotal match. For a few hours, at least, young people in Gaza could escape the harsh reality of the seemingly endless confrontation between Hamas and Israel. But that was not be. Before the match, the above flyer was distributed on the streets of Gaza. It presents the game as a playoff between the kidnappers of Oron Shaul and the killers of Hadar Goldin, Israelis, both killed in the Protective Edge confrontation last summer but whose bodies continue to be held captive by Hamas.

 

The other incident was broadcast on a local Palestinian television station on June 1st and translated by MEMRI: At a graduation ceremony of a kindergarten, sponsored by a women’s charity organization in the West Bank town of Anabta, preschoolers wearing uniforms and carrying toy guns performed a song routine. A picture of PLO founder, Yasser Arafat is visible on stage. Here is an excerpt of one of the songs these little kids performed:

 

"On the mountains, behind the hills, within the valleys – you will be defeated, you will be defeated. Whether you come by land, by sea, or by air – you will be crushed, you will be crushed. If you stretch your hand, it will be chopped off. If you just look with your eye, it will be gouged out. The defeated army will be too terrified to come back. We come for you before, and woe betide you if we come back again. You come to this land alive, but you will leave it as body part. On the mountains, behind the hills, within the valleys – you will be defeated, you will be defeated. Whether you come by land, by sea, or by air – you will be crushed, you will be crushed. ”

 

The Gaza flyer and the West Bank broadcast came just as Israelis paused to mark the first Yahrtzeit of three teenage boys who were kidnapped from a bus stop and brutally murdered by Palestinian terrorists, a particularly heinous crime that touched every Israeli home. These two horrific incidents and countless other examples of Palestinian Jew-hatred are poisoning the already depleted well of peace, and leaves appalled Israelis- of all political affiliations– facing this fundamental question: “One State, Two States, or Three States: Are these people who we are supposed to believe are ready to live with us in peace?”

 

The history of grand peace processes for The Holy Land, dating back to Bill Clinton, has been a history of false dawns. In 2015, with the entire Middle East aflame and littered with failed states, it is hard to see how President Obama working with French President Hollande on a UN Security Council scheme can succeed in forcing a timetable for peace. Not even the findings of a new Rand Corporation Study that a Two State solution could create a windfall of $173 billion dollars over ten years, is likely alone to incentivize the two ruling factions who dominate Palestinian political and social life to stop their cancerous hatred of Israelis.

 

PA President Abbas is clear what he wants and that he expects the international community to deliver a state. But no Israeli leader—whether Bibi or Boogie—can bring his nation to the negotiating table unless the genocidal hate stops. Only the world leaders, whose largess—financial and diplomatic—legitimizes Palestinian aspirations, can make that happen. It is past due for Presidents Obama, Hollande, Prime Minister Cameron, and Chancellor Merkel to tell the Palestinians: If you actually want your own state, then prove- to your Israeli neighbors in word and deed– that Palestinians are finally ready to tell their young that a state means embracing peace, not preparing for the next war.                                

                                                                       

Contents                                                                                      

   

THE LEFT’S BETRAYAL OF ISRAEL                                                                               

Prof. Robert S. Wistrich                                      

Jewish Press, June 18, 2015

                       

I grew up in 1950s England. In 1961 I first visited Israel, spending a month on a far-left kibbutz – fascinated but also slightly repelled by its intense collectivist ethos. It was also the time of the Eichmann trial which made me even more intensely aware (at the age of 15) of the Holocaust, in which so many of my own relatives had been killed.

 

I would return to Israel in 1969 after two years of study and radical protest (mainly in Stanford, California) against the “capitalist alienation,” racism, and militarism of the West. The intellectual baggage I came with did not predispose me to any special sympathy with a country that struck me then as being dangerously intoxicated with its stunning military victory of June 1967. The result had been to greatly expand Israel’s borders from the frighteningly narrow dimensions of the cease-fire lines after the 1948 war, to something that seemingly offered secure and defensible boundaries. The other side of that coin was a certain degree of hubris which seemed to me frankly alarming.

 

As the literary editor of the peace-oriented left-wing magazine New Outlook (in Tel Aviv) I found myself at the age of twenty-four suddenly and unexpectedly thrust into the internal political debates of the Israeli Left. I did not get on with the principal editor of the journal, Simha Flapan, who came from the left wing of the Mapam movement – a Marxist-Zionist party whose power base was in the kibbutzim. Though no Communist fellow traveler, his view of the Cold War and the Soviet Union struck me as naïve. Even at the height of my own anti-American feelings in the late 1960s as a result of the Vietnam War, I had never seen the United States as being morally equivalent to the USSR.

 

By the time I left the Middle East during the month of “Black September” 1970 (when King Hussein summarily crushed the PLO challenge to his rule) I had begun to crystallize the theme of my future doctoral research on socialism and the “Jewish Question” in Central Europe. During the next three years I traveled widely, learned a number of new languages, and focused on my research. I also became aware of the Soviet Jewish self-awakening – the first real crack in the Iron Curtain. At that time, the cause of Soviet Jewry, including the demand for “repatriation” to Israel, even enjoyed some support on the non-Communist Left, which condemned the growing manifestations of Soviet anti-Semitism.

 

Yet even in the mid-1970s, when I became more directly involved in debates on British campuses with pro-Palestinian leftists, there was a sharp edge to anti-Israel sentiment which went beyond theory. At one level, this is less surprising when one recalls that much of the Western Left (especially the Communists) had for decades applauded “revolutionary” dictators like Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Colonel Khaddafi, Saddam Hussein, and Castro. Today, it still remains either supportive, indifferent, or silent about populist dictators like Ahmadinejad, Mugabe, or Chávez while rallying its militants on behalf of Hizbullah and Hamas. At the same time, the anti-Zionist Left systematically demonizes Israel, which in terms of its civil society, democratic norms, freedom of criticism, and rule of law is light years ahead of the Arab world.

 

One might well ask if this is not an “anti-colonialism” of frauds and fools. Can we seriously imagine Marx, Engels, Kautsky, or Rosa Luxemburg remaining silent about the advocacy of sharia law, censorship, female genital mutilation, honor killings, suicide bombings, or making the world safe for Allah’s rule? Thirty-five years ago it had been the Soviet Union (together with the Arab states) which initiated the UN Big Lie that Zionism is racism. Today there is no longer any need for a totalitarian Stalinist apparatus to perpetuate such a major moral and intellectual fraud. For it is “freedom-loving” intellectuals in the West (some of them Jews) who voluntarily lend their hands to the “antiracist” masquerade which declares Israel to be an “apartheid state” whose disappearance is the precondition for peace in the Middle East.

 

Never mind that this grotesque apartheid libel is contradicted by all available empirical evidence, never mind that Israel is increasingly threatened by the genocidal anti-Semitism promoted by Iran, the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, Hizbullah, and the global jihad. Such minor details do not for one moment disturb the sleep of left-wing activists (including the Jews among them) whose “humanist” posture evidently does not extend to the idea that Israelis might also be victims.

 

In truth, the Left today is a mere shadow of its former self – not least because it is so deeply mired in the muck of anti-Semitic lies and anti-Zionist delusions, many of them focused on the “monstrosity” of Israel as the most racist, fascist, and criminal state on earth. By focusing attention so obsessively on the “sins” of Israel and its so-called crimes, most of the Left has completely missed the wider picture and will continue to condemn itself to irrelevance until or unless it awakens from its self-induced stupor.

 

Robert Wistrich, widely acknowledged as the world’s foremost academic expert on antisemitism,

died suddenly last month at age 70.

 Contents

                                                                                     

On Topic

 

The Iranian President Toes the Supreme Leader’s Red Lines: Lt. Col. (ret.) Michael Segall, JCPA, June 18, 2015—Amid the allegations that Israel had cyber-spied on the nuclear talks in Europe, and with the approach of the June 30 date for the signing of a nuclear agreement, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani addressed Iranian and foreign journalists on June 14, 2015 to mark the second anniversary of his election. His speech was broadcast live in the Iranian media.

Shaking Hands With Iran: Daniel Mael, Gatestone Institute, June 19, 2015 —As negotiations between the P5+1 countries and Iran continue, human rights concerns under the Iranian regime remain on the periphery.

Israel Shifts to Offense Ahead of UN Report on Gaza War: Mitch Ginsburg, Times of Israel, June 15, 2015—There are, as some have noted, two ways to look at the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. A narrow lens, focused on 10,000 square miles or so of the West Bank and Israel, shows a military power controlling a largely unarmed entity in occupied territory. A wider lens reveals a tiny minority of Jews – one of the Middle East’s only thriving minorities – clinging to a thread of land along the Mediterranean coast.

The Nature of the Abbas Regime: Yoram Ettinger, Algemeiner, June 21, 2015—The nature of President Mahmoud Abbas’ Palestinian Authority has turned most Palestinians against the PA president and has led most Jerusalem Arabs to prefer Israeli sovereignty. It has also catapulted Hamas to prominence on the Palestinian street.

 

 

              

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