From: alert@...(CAMERA Alert) Date: Wed, Dec 9, 2009, 6:13pm
(CST+1)
 COMMITTEE FOR ACCURACY IN MIDDLE EAST REPORTING IN AMERICA
 
Technology Journal, IEEE Spectrum, Showcases Biased Gaza Story
Dec. 9, 2009
 
Shalom CAMERA E-Mail Team:

Once more a professional journal has veered off the track into Middle
East politics. In the December 2009 cover story of IEEE Spectrum, a
monthly publication of the world's largest professional technology
association, freelance reporter Sharon Weinberger's cover story focuses
on challenges facing Gaza's sole power plant. But the article is short
on technological content and long on skewed characterization of events
in Gaza.
Had the author written an honest account, conveying the difficulty of
those Palestinians who want simply to provide for the needs of their
community, the emphasis would have been on the self-destructive actions
of the PA and Hamas leadership in subverting the best interests of their
own people. Instead, the article scapegoats Israel.

The cover headline — "Powerless in Gaza" — signals where the story
is headed, casting Gazans as victims lacking both electrical and
political power who bear, in the author's presentation, little if any
fault for their own circumstances. The author, who seems to have scant
knowledge of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and frequently makes
statements reflecting this, relies primarily for her story on
Palestinian Rafiq Maliha, a manager of Gaza's power plant. He laments
the difficulties of his situation, offering a partisan, incomplete and
misleading account of events. An Israeli spokesman is quoted only
briefly in the closing paragraphs. The article is flawed by distortions
and omission of critical information.

Chiefly, Weinberger's account neglects the key role of
Palestinian-initiated violence in disrupting the lives of Palestinians
and interfering with the normal functioning of facilities such as the
Gaza power plant. Nor is there indication, for example, that Gazans
could have dramatically improved their lot at many points, as, for
example, in 2005 when Israel pulled out of the area, leaving behind
million-dollar greenhouses intended to help Gazan agricultural
development. Instead, as is well known, the greenhouses were quickly
destroyed by Gazans and the rocket barrages and other violence against
Israel intensified.

None of this is conveyed in the IEEE Spectrum article. (The IEEE is the
Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers, an organization of
more than 350,000 engineers and scientists around the world.) The
article by Weinberger was funded by The Nation Institute's Investigative
Fund, a project of the far-left Nation magazine. Not surprisingly given
its funders, the story glosses over Hamas and its assault on Israel to
relay instead the views and charges of Palestinians.

Missing from the article too is any comment on the striking situation in
which Israel is simply expected to provide — as it currently does —
more than 60% of Gaza's electricity, even though the government of Hamas
seeks to destroy Israel, denigrates the Jewish people in odious
anti-Semitic terms, teaches its children the same bigotry and is doing
all in its power to make ever-wider swathes of territory around Gaza
uninhabitable by Israelis.
See further details about the article below.
 
ACTION ITEMS
Please use the information in the alert as background for your own
letter. Do not copy and paste directly from the alert and do not
forward it to the media.
 
• Politely ask the the Editors of IEEE Spectrum as well as the
President of IEEE why the flagship publication of the IEEE is devoting a
cover story to a highly partisan political issue — and, moreover,
presenting a biased perspective. Urge the editors to adhere to the same
standards applicable in good science, including presenting information
factually, fully, from all sides and without prejudice.

Contact:
Editor-in-Chief Susan Hassler s.hassler@...
Executive Editor Glenn Zorpette g.zorpette@...
President of IEEE (2009) John R. Vig j.vig@...

• Please send blind copies (bcc) to letters@...

IN DETAIL

Repeatedly throughout the article, which is ostensibly about the
hardships of completing and maintaining Gaza's power plant, Weinberger
blurs and omits crucial facts about who has caused the problems. Thus
Gaza is said to have "endured a devastating run of strife, death, and
dysfunction," to have suffered "catastrophe" and to be "stuck in a kind
of chaotic limbo" – with the barest hint that Gazans themselves chose
strife and chaos by their own actions in terrorizing and killing
Israelis.

** Regarding the 2008-09 Gaza conflict, Weinberger writes: "The most
recent war, which began on 27 December 2008, brought yet another
catastrophe to Gaza. Israel launched Operation Cast Lead, a three-week
military offensive retaliating against Hamas for a series of rocket
attacks that fell on civilian areas in southern Israel. (Emphasis
added)"
Suggestive of the whitewashing of Hamas is the gentle language here,
including the reference to rockets that weren't fired or shot — but
merely "fell." The euphemistically termed "series" of rockets included
more than 8,000 missiles fired into Israel since 2000. More than 3,000
of those rockets and mortar shells landed in 2008 before Israel took
action, falling not just on "civilian areas" but on civilian people,
killing eight and injuring dozens. Another 21 people were killed as a
result of terrorist attacks originating from the Gaza Strip.

** Similarly, according to Weinberger, construction of the Gaza power
plant was set back "when the second Palestinian uprising, or intifada,
began in 2000." But that "uprising," an unprecedented onslaught against
Israel including suicide bombings, did not simply begin. It was launched
by Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasir Arafat, as PA Communications
Minister Imad Faluji explained in 2001 when he said: "This intifada was
planned in advance, ever since President Arafat's return from the Camp
David negotiations, where he turned the table upside down on President
Clinton... [Arafat] rejected the American terms and he did it in the
heart of the US."
In a factual error, Weinberger erroneously inflates the war's casualty
toll, saying "1660 Palestinians" were killed. However, according to
Palestinian sources (Palestinian Center for Human Rights), the number
killed is 1419. According to the Israelis the number is 1166.

Glaring Omissions
 
1) Weinberger raises the problem of diesel fuel supplies for the power
plant and cites Israel's curtailing of those supplies and various
ramification of fuel shortages and interruptions. She writes:
"Today one of the biggest problems is getting enough fuel. Its's one of
the many problems you encounter running a power plant in a war zone."

Again, though, the account neglects the role of Palestinian violence in
causing the "problems." There is no mention that crossing points such as
Nahal Oz between Israel and Gaza where fuel is transferred, have been
targeted. On April 9, 2008, for instance, Israeli truck drivers Oleg
Lipson, 37 and Lev Cherniak, 53, were killed by terrorists at the Nahal
Oz terminal near Karni, which supplies the Gaza Strip with most of its
fuel.
On April 16, 2008, three IDF soldiers were killed in a confrontation
with armed Palestinian gunmen approaching the Gaza security fence south
of the Nahal Oz fuel terminal. Three other soldiers were wounded.

In many other instances, mortar and rocket fire on Nahal Oz have
interrupted deliveries.

The IDF's commander of Gaza Coordination and Liaison Administration,
Col. Nir Press, is quoted in an April 13, 2008 Jerusalem Post story
saying he strongly disputed the claims of Rafiq Maliha who was alleging
another fuel crisis. Press charged that Israel was continuously
supplying fuel to Gaza, but for propaganda purposes it was not being
distributed to gas stations and civilian use.

Weinberger omits all this.

2) Any fair story about fuel for the Gaza power plant would need to
include Hamas's theatrical public relations gambits about lack of fuel
for the plant. On January 2008, Hamas staged a parliamentary session by
candle light — but, in fact, the meeting was being held in day light
with curtains drawn for dramatic effect. Hamas also staged candle-lit
vigils in downtown Gaza City. During this propaganda effort, Israel and
Egypt continued supplying 75% of Gaza's electricity and Israel's Foreign
Ministry observed:

While the fuel supply from Israel into Gaza has indeed been reduced, due
to the Hamas rocket attacks, the diversion of this fuel from domestic
power generators to other uses is wholly a Hamas decision - apparently
taken due to media and propaganda considerations.

Weinberger omits any mention of repeated Hamas manipulations of the
media and its own people.

3) Weinberger quotes Palestinians who decry the lack of concrete and
spare parts for the plant, and refers to an Israeli spokesman who cites
"security concerns." Whether the spokesman elaborated or not — and he
no doubt would have — a more honest, complete account would make clear
for readers that Israel monitors materials brought into Gaza because,
for example, concrete is often diverted to create underground bunkers
and smuggling tunnels. Related to this, there is no mention of the vast
arms and explosives smuggling by Gazans from Egypt that has promoted the
ongoing violence.
 
With thanks,
Andrea Levin
Executive Director
CAMERA
 
To subscribe to CAMERA's E-Mail Team alerts, send a note with your name,
address, email, telephone number and how you heard about these alerts to
alert@...

Terrorist Marwan Barghouti: I Have Not Changed
by Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu
Published: 12/11/09, 10:32 AM / Last Update: 12/11/09, 11:11 AM
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/134935

(IsraelNN.com) Marwan Barghouti, serving five life terms in prison for
involvement in murderous attacks on Israelis, told CNN that he has not changed
his political views and that he expects to be one of hundreds of terrorists
Hamas wants released for the safe return of kidnapped soldier Gilad Shalit.
Barghouti evaded answering whether he would return to violence if freed.

Barghouti is considered the most popular personality in the Palestinian
Authority, and although he is a member of the Fatah faction, the rival Hamas
party is interested in including him in an exchange for Shalit in order to pave
the road for a reunification of the two parties. Several months ago, Barghouti
said he does not see any difference between Hamas and Fatah.

"I have high hopes and expectations to be released in this deal," he told the
interviewer.

Barghouti dodged giving direct answers to several questions. When asked if the
"resistance" movement includes bombings, Barghouti answered, "What I mean by
resistance is the one that is permitted under international law and has
international legitimacy…. It is the right of the Palestinian people to resist
the Israeli military and settlement occupation."

Concerning the likelihood that he would run in elections for PA chairman if
freed, Barghouti answered that he would make the "appropriate decision…when we
are capable of holding elections."

He explicitly said that his years in prison have not changed his political views
and added be believes "in a two-state solution living side by side in peace and
security, based on a total Israel surrender from all land restored to the Jewish
State in the Six-Day War in 1967.

The convicted terrorist stated that several Knesset Members have visited him in
his Negev cell, where he has been granted special conditions, but that "not one
single Israeli official has met with me." He referred to his arrest in 2002 as a
"kidnapping."

Sh'lom  Y'all,

If you don't subscribe to the Rubin Reports, you should.

This is the most accurate analysis of Obama's foreign policy that I have read so
far.

I agree with everything Barry Rubin wrote, except:

"....This Administration doesn’t understand the use of threats, leverage,
credibility, and deterrence in international relations. It has only one gear in
its policy: be nice and hope the other side will reciprocate....."

In my opinion Mr. Rubin has misspoken.  This Administration is not stupid. 
Smart people do some times act unwisely.  Obama certainly must understand the
use of threats, leverage, credibilitiy, deterrence, etc...iin international
relations.  So why does he choose to behave otherwise?

He chooses, however, not to use any of the above, and instead, chooses to
"...take pride in being weak, refusing to face up to confrontations, rejecting
pressure, always seeing the other (enemy) guy’s point of view, and seeking
consensus as the highest priority......(and so).... it.... (appears as though
the current Administration)....has only one gear in its policy: be nice and hope
the other side will reciprocate."

Why does Obama make such a seemingly unwise (and to date quite unsuccessful)
choice?  I see three possibilities:

a.  he is truly naif and has discounted the value of threats, leverage,
etc....., in the belief that his "mr. nice guy" approach will bear fruit and
achieve the USA's goals.  A bona fide naif should not be the commander-in-chief
of our armed forces.

b. he is truly sly and macchiavellian and is playing the "mr nice guy" role very
adroitly (he has many, including Mr. Rubin, fooled) in order to give Iran and
el-Qaeda plenty of rope with which to hang themselves; because, after so much
refusal to be nice in reciprocation to Obama's being nice, a strong and
effective american military response against Iran and Taliban and el-qaeda will
be morally and legally and politically unassailable.

c. he is the manchurian candidate, and wants Iran to have the bomb, wants the
taliban to win in Afghanistan, wants Israel to be weakened enough that the arab
terrorist forces seeking its destruction can win. By ignoring his own deadlines
for Iran, he gives the mullahs plenty of time to build the bomb.  By giving the
Taliban his deadline after which they will have a free hand in Afghanistan, he
lets them determine the fate of this war and the fate of afghanistan and, later,
the fate of Pakistan.  By pressuring Israel to make perilous concessions, and by
ignoring the bottom-line Hamas/Hezbollah goal of Israel's destruction, he
weakens Israel and strengthens the terrorist side.

I am hoping for #b....but, as I am sure you all know, hope is not a
contraceptive.

david ml

=======================================================x


Let’s Get Real: Obama’s Foreign Policy is Failing; Time to Wake Up, Change
Course, and Do It Right

Posted: 10 Dec 2009 06:09 AM PST
By Barry Rubin

It's astonishing to watch people try to pretend or convince themselves that this
U.S. government has the knowledge, ideas, and attitudes needed to deal with the
vital Middle East issues facing by the Unied States. Maybe next year but not at
present.

Don’t get me wrong. I’d be delighted to think, but foolish to pretend,
otherwise. The best outcome of all would be if the Obama Administration itself
took the blindfold off its eyes, pulled the stoppers out of its ears, and faced
reality without flinching.

A number of friends and colleagues have been asking, in amazement, if they truly
understand President Barack Obama’s plan for Afghanistan. Is he really saying
what we think he's saying? Yes, indeed. In effect, Obama’s signaling the Taliban
and their al-Qaida allies:

Hey, we’re sending in some troops for 18 months but don’t worry. If you don’t
surrender by then we’ll be leaving. So you have two choices: attack hard and
claim victory when the U.S. withdraws or lay low and just emerge when the troops
go home.

In his West Point speech on Afghanistan, Obama sounded like a Winston Churchill
impersonator reading a speech written by Neville Chamberlain.

This is what he’s asking American soldiers to risk or even give their lives for:
A show that says to hawks that the administration has done something tough and
to doves that it is really getting out of Afghanistan?

The Afghan policy--and I say this as someone who opposes a big troop commitment
to Afghanistan--follows the same pattern as the administration’s Iran policy,
though in that case there's even less of a false veneer of toughness.

What is the real problem? In Afghanistan as with almost every other
international issue, the Obama Administration takes pride in being weak,
refusing to face up to confrontations, rejecting pressure, always seeing the
other (enemy) guy’s point of view, and seeking consensus as the highest
priority.

This Administration doesn’t understand the use of threats, leverage,
credibility, and deterrence in international relations. It has only one gear in
its policy: be nice and hope the other side will reciprocate. [I reread that
previous sentence several times. Is it an exaggeration? Not at all.] Perhaps
Obama's Nobel prize acceptance speech in which he laid out conditions for
fighting wars is the beginning of a turning point; perhaps not.

Take Iran, for example, the administration gave Tehran a September deadline for
raising sanctions and then abandoned it. Apparently the December 31 deadline
will be missed also, despite endless warnings of U.S. patience wearing thin, now
the butt of jokes among America’s enemies.

The Europeans now say they will consider higher sanctions at their January 25-26
meeting which means the earliest possible time for higher sanctions will be
February 2010. If things go later than that you will know that the Iranian
challenge is going to go unmet.

Meanwhile, U.S. national security adviser Jim Jones said on December 6 that
Washington is still open to nuclear negotiations with Iran, but that the picture
is not a "good one." Jones said, the "clock is ticking."

Yes, we know the clock is ticking but when will the alarm sound and wake these
people up? Or rather will it be a case of ask not for whom the bell tolls
because, buddy, it tolls for thee.

What, then, should the president of the United States be doing?

Showing leadership; displaying toughness. The British, French, Germans,
Italians, Canadians, and others are ready to stop coddling Iran. Announce much
higher sanctions with these partners and anyone else who will agree. That won't
be perfect but would send a signal and others would be encouraged to join in
especially if faced by problems for those who break the sanctions, i.e., a Dutch
company selling gasoline to Iran.

Also, he should start sounding credible, as if he would actually do something to
a country insulting the United States, trampling on U.S. interests, and acting
aggressively toward U.S. allies. Let him show there's a new Obama. Make one of
those, "My fellow Americans" speeches which in effect says, no more Mr. Nice
Guy. Point out the stolen election; the repression; the defense minister who is
a wanted terrorist. Say enough is enough. We tried sincerely, they don't want
engagement. The door has closed. (Even while secretly being ready to reassess if
Iran--don't hold your breath--made some real concessions. That's how a president
should behave.

and yet the need to write that previous paragraph as a reminder demonstrates all
too well how far things have gone wrong, how much the first principles of
statecraft have been forgotten, how bizarre  is American leaders' misreading of
how international affairs work or how anti-American aggressive dictatorships
áct. It shows even more how far things have gone that such simple, obvious, and
traditional restatements of reality are taken in many circles as crazed
reactionary nonsense.

Analysts and journalists who know better are now struggling hard to maintain the
emperor has clothes, that the president knows what he’s doing and is behaving in
a competent manner. That he is trying to balance toughness with the new
America—non-adversarial, collegial, using all types of diplomacy.

But it’s a transparent lie, I’m sorry to say. More people are understanding this
fact. The things I was writing about such things six months ago are starting to
appear with increasing regularity in the mainstream media.

Here’s the simple bottom line: If the United States is strong and shows
leadership it is a force for global stability. If it is weak and indecisive,
that is a source of more instability, new violence, fleeing allies cutting a
deal to save themselves or changing side altogether, and extended influence for
America’s enemies.

Basically, we and much of the world may be in the same situation as the Taliban:
trying to survive a set period of time—three or seven years in our case--waiting
for Obama to go away.

Since all articles like this must end on a note of hope, here it is for the U.S.
government: Please learn fast or be swept away. We prefer you learn fast.

Here’s a series of historical precedents of how presidents have fallen that
should greatly sharpen your mind:

Herbert Hoover: Great Depression

Lyndon Johnson: Vietnam

Jimmy Carter: Iran hostage crisis and Nicaraguan Marxist revolution

George W. Bush: Iraq war and U.S. unpopularity

Barack H. Obama: Iran, Afghanistan, and the United States become a laughing
stock for half the world and a source of bitter disappointed hopes for the other
half.

Or if that’s not enough, ponder the wonderful poem by Percy Shelley, Ozymandias,
about another world leader who failed despite the pomp and glory that surrounded
him:

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said:—Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things,
The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains: round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Orrin Hatch, the senior senator from Utah!  terrific!! Who would have known?

The song:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=121240561

The story in the New York Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/09/us/politics/09hanukkah.html?_r=1&emc=eta1


Special thanks to Sherri and others who sent this.

David ML


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

JEWISH ACTIVIST NETWORK RADIO

When: Wednesday night/early Thursday morning, 12 midnight - 1 AM
Where: 620 on the AM dial (NYC, nearby NJ and parts of LI) and streaming at
www.jewishactivistnetwork.com (click link on top)

Following the "Jewish Datelines" segment, 12-12:30,
At 12:30-1:00 AM

'I rejoiced when they said unto me: 'Let us go unto the house of the LORD.
<http://www.mechon-mamre.org/e/et/et26c2.htm> [Psalms 122:1]'

Positive commands - Mitzvoth Asei that one has the chance to do when going up to
the Temple Mount (non-exhaustive)

.  To fear the sanctuary [Rambam Sefer hamitvoth Mitzvah 21: one
example given is "Do not enter the Temple Mount with a staff, your shoes etc..."

"Even though the Mikdash today is destroyed due to our sins, a person is
obligated to fear it (today) the same as is done when it is built: one should
only enter the places that is permitted, one may not sit in the Temple's
courtyard (the Azarah), one should not be frivolous opposite the Eastern Gate
etc ... even though it is destroyed it remains in its holiness." 
<http://www.mechon-mamre.org/i/8107.htm> [Rambam, Laws of the Sanctuary 7:6-7]

.  To pray in the sanctuary [Rambam Sefer hamitvoth Mitzvah 5: "
'Serve Him in his Mikdash' in other words attempt to pray there"

.  To build the Sanctuary [Rambam Sefer hamitvoth Mitzvah 20]

.  To blow both the shofar and trumpets on the Temple Mount when there
is a danger to Israel as a nation.

.  To cry out in prayer to the almighty for a private individual
problem such as over a sickness affecting a family member, someone who is
withheld from having children, a woman who has difficulty giving birth or any
other personal problem.

Please join us, listen and call!

To hear the last week's programs please visit:
http://www.jewishactivistnetwork.com

For more information, contact us at media@...
or leave a message at 718-569-0921


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Court: Visiting Jailed Terrorists not an Overriding Need
by Hillel Fendel
Published: 12/10/09, 5:32 PM / Last Update: 12/10/09, 5:42 PM
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/134918

(IsraelNN.com) The Supreme Court ruled that residents of Hamas-run Gaza who wish
to visit their imprisoned terrorist relatives in Israel do not have an a-priori
humanitarian right to do so.

A three-justice panel of the Supreme Court rejected a petition by 14 Gaza
residents, relatives of terrorists jailed in Israel, who demand to be able to
visit them. Until 2007, Gazans were permitted into Israel for this purpose – but
this stopped when Hamas took over Gaza following bloody battles with Fatah.

"Allowing residents of Gaza to enter Israel for this purpose is not included in
the framework of their basic humanitarian needs that Israel is obligated to
enable today," ruled Judges Eliezer Rivlin, Esther Chayot and Yoram Danziger.

They explained that the government and IDF have solid diplomatic and security
reasons for not allowing Gazans to enter Israel, "in accordance with a
ministerial committee decision" on this matter.

"It is unnecessary to emphasize that Israel's control over the Gaza border does
not provide a solution for all the security risks inherent in allowing the
visits, in light of the foreseen increase in activity and movement at the
crossings if the visits would be allowed, and in light of the fact that the
crossings have often been a target of terrorist activities," the judges stated.

The judges noted that the ruling does not negate terrorists' rights to receive
family visits in principle, but rather deals only with the State's prerogative
to prevent Gazans from entering Israel.

[Chaim T: All visits to Hamas prisoners should be stopped.  Not just Gazans, but
Arabs from Judea and Samaria, as well as Jerusalem Arabs, and Citizens of
Israel.  They should get no visits until they allow Gilad Shallit to recieve
visitors.]

Sovereignty Bill Braves Another Hurdle
by Hillel Fendel
Published: 12/09/09, 4:15 PM / Last Update: 12/09/09, 4:22 PM
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/134897

(IsraelNN.com) Jerusalem and the Golan Heights received more support for the
sometimes faltering status of their Israeli sovereignty on Wednesday. The
Knesset voted overwhelmingly to apply the "Rule of Continuity" to legislation
ensuring that a withdrawal from those areas – or any change in Israel's borders
- would require both an outright 61-MK majority and a national referendum.

The bill requiring these measures passed its first reading in the previous
Knesset, and supporters wished to ensure that it would not have to "start all
over" in the current Knesset. However, this attempt was thwarted several weeks
ago by the Likud's Minister Dan Meridor in the Ministerial Committee for
Legislation – the committee that overturned this very decision on Tuesday,
paving the way for today's Knesset vote.

The Knesset voted by a 68-22 margin not to require the legislation to "start all
over." Among the supporters, surprisingly, was Meridor himself. Defense Minister
Ehud Barak of Labor also voted in favor, as a member of the government, but said
that a referendum is not necessary.

The proposal is now back to where it was at the end of the last Knesset: Having
passed its first Knesset reading, it must now be reviewed by a Knesset
committee, most likely Foreign Affairs and Defense. If it passes there, it will
be placed on the agenda for two final Knesset votes.

Minister Uzi Landau said the referendum bill "states something very simple:
Every far-reaching decision on a change in Israel's sovereignty... must be
accepted by a clear majority of the nation and the public, without secret deals
that the government might be able to make with MKs to get them to support it."

Sammy Bar-Lev, mayor of the Golan's only city, Katzrin, told Arutz 7, "This bill
guarantees that the sovereignty of the state will be watched over not by
politicians, but by the citizens. It is very important, and we are confident
that it will be passed into law."

Avigdor Kahalani, co-leader of the now-defunct political party The Third Way
that strongly opposed a Golan withdrawal, said, "We must ensure that no Jew is
forced to leave the Golan, and that Israel [continues to] have control of the
high places there. Other issues, such as whether we might lease it from the
Syrians for a few decades, can be negotiated."

Hi Everyone!

Tonight (December 9), I was at the demonstration to stop the
settlement freeze. The demonstration took place at Kikar Paris in
Jerusalem. I took photos and posted them online at:

http://www.jr.co.il/rally/r119.htm

Please forward this message to anyone that may be interested.
Thank you.

Have a good day,
Jacob

Bride, Father Arrested for Crime of Moving Lips on Temple Mount
by Hana Levi Julian
Published: 12/09/09, 1:02 PM / Last Update: 12/09/09, 1:09 PM
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/134891

(IsraelNN.com) A Jewish bride and her father were arrested on the Temple Mount
the day before her wedding, after an Arab policeman claimed he saw the father
muttering prayers and the bride nodding her head.

The father and daughter were being taken around the site on Wednesday morning by
her brother Eli, a volunteer who conducts regular tours at the Temple Mount,
when suddenly they were accosted by the Jerusalem policeman.

"We were in the northern part, and I was showing them the archaeological
evidence when suddenly a police officer came over to us, Mahmoud Hativ was his
name, and h claimed that my father had muttered prayers. "We tried to argue with
him and said it wasn't true, but he said, `You can't fool me,' and insisted that
my father had prayed," Eli told Israel National News.

"My sister was just standing there silently, not moving at all. She didn't say a
word. It was her first time at the Mount. Other cops came over, Mahmoud said
that she had also been involved, and they decided to arrest them both," he
continued. "He let me go right away, because he couldn't make any claim against
me." His sister and father were taken to the Kishla police station near the
Jaffa Gate in the Old City of Jerusalem.


`Lack of Will to Exercise Israeli Sovereignty'

"The fact that a father comes to the holiest place of the Jewish people and can
be arrested simply for allegedly moving his lips is an outrage," Eli said.

"The Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that the holy sites of all religions
have to be protected and respected – that explicitly includes the rights of Jews
on the Temple Mount. Jerusalem police continue to ignore that ruling."

Asked if he believes U.S. pressure on Israel to make concessions to the
Palestinian Authority had anything to do with the incident, Eli said, `No. It is
a result of the lack of will of the Jerusalem police to exercise Israeli
sovereignty over the Jewish holy places in Jerusalem, not U.S. pressure on
Israel. It is unheard of to arrest someone just for praying in their own
religion. In the U.S. that wouldn't fly. There is no public place in the U.S.
where a Jew could not pray. It is unfortunate, and sad."

The family, which immigrated to Israel from New York in 1996, lives in Beit
Shemesh.


`Police Misled Them to Sign Confession'

The two were held for several hours. At approximately 11:30 a.m., the two were
ordered to sign a declaration which they were told said they would promise not
to return to the Temple Mount for 15 days.

However, the father, who spoke with Israel National News from the courtyard of
the police station while waiting to be questioned by the police commander, said
that further examination of the paper showed they had been misinformed. The
declaration actually said that they were confessing to have violated a law about
disturbing the public order.

It was also made equally clear that if they did not sign the paper, they might
not be freed for hours – perhaps not even in time for the young woman to make it
to her own wedding.


Officers at Jaffa Gate Station Mocked the Bride

"The police officers talked very improperly to my daughter. She was very upset –
in tears – and they ridiculed her. `What's the matter, are you baby?' they
mocked her."  Her father immediately fired back, "That's how you talk to
someone?"

The father said that the officer in charge threatened to keep them longer in
response. "Be careful," the cop warned. "If you talk to me that way, I can keep
you here for a few more hours."

"So I asked them: `How would it be if we arrested a young lady for praying
anywhere else in the State of Israel? Or maybe a Muslim woman for praying in
Mecca? This is about police enforcement – so enforce the law! And they answered
me, `It's a very sensitive issue. This is the law.' That's what they answered
me," said the father. "So I shut up, because I wanted to get out of there, and
he would have kept us for hours. We signed the paper, and we will deal with it
in the court of public opinion."

The father was not praying although he was, in fact, moving his lips. "They
asked me if my daughter was nodding her head. I said I didn't know – but if she
can now be arrested for nodding her head… well, anyway, in the end, that's what
they got her for. Nodding her head. That's the nature of the public order."

One Jerusalem
by Larry Domnitch
Kislev 19, 5770, 06 December 09 12:19
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/9188

(Israelnationalnews.com) Jerusalem today, as so many times in the past, is
occupying a center stage in the world theatre, and once again, Jerusalem is
under siege.

President Obama, the appeaser, who as a presidential candidate stated regarding
Israel "this constant wound, this constant sore does infect all of our foreign
policy," has tightened the pressure on Israel to stop any further construction
in Eastern Jerusalem. Israel's plan to construct nine hundred units in the
Jerusalem Gilo neighborhood elicited the President's `outrage.' Sweden decided
to announce its support for the division of Jerusalem to make it the capital of
a Palestinian State and convince the European Union to promote that idea.

Will American Jews stand aside as bystanders or will they raise their voices?

These are the moments when each Jew will be asked where he was when the pressure
mounted.

Jerusalem beckons our prayers, good deeds, and action. Jerusalem needs the
`Voice of Jacob.' Jerusalem needs the fulfillment of Isaiah's words uttered over
2500 years ago, "For Zion's sake I will not be silent, for Jerusalem, I will not
be still."

For Jerusalem, we will never again be silent.

It is a time when every Jewish organization will have to answer for their
response. Did they broach the issue on their web pages while engaging in some
lobbying, or did they lead a public outcry on behalf of Jewry's beleaguered
capital?

Jewish organizations, the eyes of history are once again upon you.

Mount Zion, the Old City, the Western Wall, the Temple Mount, are all in the
united city in which every Jew has a stake.

Plans to construct nine hundred new units in Gilo section of Jerusalem anger the
current U.S. administration. The President calls for an Israeli retreat to
pre1967 borders. What will it take for American Jewry awaken, stand up and say a
resounding NO to the President?

Will American Jews proclaim that the Arabs have more than ample lands with many
capital cities, while the Jews have a small sliver of territory with just one
eternal capital?

Will they say that true peace is about coexistence, not surrendering one's
capital, giving up one's birth right.

Israel's enemies and detractors can excavate and clear out the Temple Mount area
of all its ancient treasures from Temple days, but they can never sever the
eternal bond between Jewry and Jerusalem.

The Israeli government has made its position clear-they will continue to build
in Jerusalem. They have told the European Union that Jerusalem is not on the
Agenda.

Will American Jewry stand up, show courage, and follow suit?

The world is watching! The people of America are watching! History is watching!

http://www.paltoday.com/arabic/News-64161.html

My Muslim background left me unprepared for this shocking discovery.
by Mark Halawa
  <http://www.aish.com/sp/so/70138567.html#share_hook>

Growing up in Kuwait, I had the best of everything. My father owned a
successful construction company, and provided us five children with
amenities like piano lessons, swimming, calligraphy and trips all over the
world. Although we were Muslims like everyone else, we were totally secular
and my father always aimed to shield us from religious people whom he
described as crazies.

I grew up being told that Israelis and Jews were the lowest type of creature
in existence, put on Earth only to kill us Arabs. In math class the teacher
would say, “If one rocket killed X number of Jews, how many would six
rockets kill?”

My father was rabidly anti-Israel. He was a product of Nasser's school of
thought: secular from a Muslim point of view, yet deeply dedicated to the
idea of pan-Arab unity. Israel, he believed, was an American proxy in the
post-colonial Middle East.

My father was a supporter of the PLO since the 1960s when Yasser Arafat (who
founded the PLO while living in Kuwait) was raising money from wealthy
Palestinians working in Gulf States. As an engineer, my father participated
in a program where the engineering association in Kuwait would deduct money
from his monthly salary to be sent directly to the PLO. He insisted that war
and resistance was the only way to deal with Israel.

In the summer of 1990, when I was 12 years old, our lives changed
completely. We were on vacation when Saddam Hussein invaded and annexed
Kuwait. My father's business -- along with much of the country -- was
ravaged. Our savings became worthless pieces of paper. We could not go back
to Kuwait, so we immigrated to Canada. My father did manage to sneak back in
for a few days to retrieve important business documents that would later be
useful in recovering compensation from a United Nations fund.

*Praying in the Dark*

Of my family, I’m the only one who stayed in Canada. My father never really
adjusted to life in the New World, and he had good business contacts back in
Jordan, so my parents returned there. All my siblings also moved back to the
Middle East. One brother runs a successful company in Jordan, two brothers
are studying in Egypt (one dentistry and the other business), and my sister
lives in Dubai where she works in the banking industry.

One evening in 2003, I was studying at the university library in London,
Ontario, when I happened to notice an older man. From his chassidic garb, he
looked like a religious Jew. My curiosity was aroused, so I approached him
and asked, "Are you Jewish?"

With a gentle smile on his face, he said, "No, but I like to dress this
way." I didn't know whether he was joking or not. All the religious people I
had come across in the past were pretty scary. Are Jews supposed to be
funny?

His name was Dr. Yitzhak Block, a retired professor of philosophy. We
exchanged a few words and then he asked about my background. My family
history is pretty complex, and I get a headache every time I have to explain
it all. So I simply told him that I'm an Arab from Kuwait, and mentioned
that my grandmother from my mother’s side is Jewish.

My mother’s parents met in Jerusalem when my grandfather, an Arab from the
West Bank, was serving in the Jordanian army fighting the Zionists. He was
18 years old and my grandmother was 16. Her father ran a school in Jerusalem
-- the same school where she would jump off the wall to meet my handsome,
uniformed grandfather. They fell in love, got married, and lived for a
number of years in Shechem (Nablus).

After my grandfather was discharged from the Jordanian army, the family
moved to Kuwait, where oil profits were fueling huge business and
construction projects. That’s where my mother met my father and got married.

Knowing about my grandmother’s Jewish background always made me curious
about Jews. Whenever we were on vacation in Amman, Jordan, I used to
constantly watch the Israeli channel -- when my parents weren't around. My
favorite was the Israeli national anthem, and I would stay up late waiting
to hear them play it at the end of the TV transmission.

Standing there in the university library, this religious Jew, Dr. Block,
looked at me and said, “In Muslim law, you’re considered Muslim, since the
religion goes by the father. But according to Jewish law, you’re Jewish,
since Jewish identity is transmitted by the mother.”

My head started to spin and memories of my childhood in Kuwait began to
surface. I recalled how my grandmother had a funny name on her documents,
Mizrachi, which I never heard before. She also had a small prayer book with
Hebrew letters, and she prayed in the dark crying. (I thought the Wailing
Wall was so named because crying was a part of prayer.)

Aside from a vague family legend, my grandmother never mentioned anything
about being Jewish -- but now the pieces were fitting into place. I thanked
Dr. Block for the conversation, and ran home to tell my roommate what I
heard. He smiled and said, “So you're a Mus-Jew!” I was not amused.

I went to my room and called my mother. She rebuffed the story, saying,
"Don't listen to people like that. We are Muslims and that's that."

I decided to call my grandmother myself and bring up the subject.

I beat around the bush a bit -- after all, she’d been denying it for the
past 50 years -- and then finally blurted out, “Grandma, are you Jewish?”

She didn’t answer the question directly, but she started crying and spoke
about the years of Arab-Israeli conflict. She told me how her brother Zaki
had been killed in Jerusalem before the rebirth of the State. To me that was
sufficient confirmation of her Jewishness and I decided to leave it at that.

Over the next few months, I avoided the whole issue of Judaism, mainly for
the sake of not upsetting my mother. Besides, I was just finishing
university, and career was my main priority. I was content with telling
myself that I belonged to a mixed-faith family.

*Streaming Tears*

About a year later, I was rollerblading one day in my neighborhood when I
took a hard fall and badly sprained my wrist. The road was smooth so I
couldn't figure out why I had fallen. I couldn’t stop thinking that it
seemed like a push from Above. These thoughts caught me by surprise, since I
wasn't into spirituality and I never had any religious connection. I was a
bodybuilder, had tons of friends, and was on the heels of a successful
career as a foreign exchange trader. So why had this happened?

Because my wrist was heavily bandaged, I was forced to take off work for a
few days. Dr. Block had mentioned the name of his synagogue, so that
Saturday morning, I decided to go check out the scene. I was hesitant at the
thought of everyone being from European background and me the only Middle
Easterner, but I decided to go anyway.

I called a cab and got dropped off at the synagogue. As I walked in, the
first person I saw looked Indian. He shook my hand, said “Shabbat Shalom,”
and handed me a kippah. Then I saw a black man which really surprised me.
And Dr. Block was there, too.

I was handed a prayer book, shown the proper page, and before I knew it
everyone was singing, V'Shamru:

*"And the Children of Israel shall keep the Sabbath, to make the Sabbath an
eternal covenant for their generations. Between Me and the Children of
Israel, it is a sign forever that in six days God made heaven and earth, and
on the seventh day He rested and was refreshed."*

Something hit me and I felt as though I knew this song. I just stood there
taking in the sounds, the smells and the sights. Everything felt whole and
perfect. It was the opposite of everything I'd ever heard about Jews or
Judaism. At this point my tears were streaming in freefall.

It was the opposite of everything I'd heard about Jews.

After the services finished, I met everyone over Kiddush. I spoke with an
Egyptian couple and we shared our personal stories. Jews from all
backgrounds were gathered together and I was another piece of this puzzle.

After Kiddush, I accepted Dr. Block’s invitation to join him for lunch. I
told him: “I can’t believe I'm here, singing and praying in Hebrew. I could
never have imagined it.”

He smiled and said, "It's not so hard to believe. Every Jew is born with a
little Torah and a little Menorah inside.” He then pressed his shoulder up
against mine and said, “All it takes is for another Jew to bump into him and
light it up."

*Dreams of Peace*

My interest grew from there, and I began studying Torah and keeping Shabbat.
Last year I spent a month in Israel touring and studying on Aish HaTorah’s
Jerusalem Fellowships program. It was a great “homecoming.”

I still keep in close contact with my family and old friends. They’re
wonderful people and I love them very much. Yet it’s hard to relate to them
on many levels. In the Arab world there are tons of misconceptions and
misinformation regarding Israel. So I am working to develop a program to
educate Arabs about Jews and Judaism, to dissolve the stereotypes propagated
by the Muslim media and schools. I hope that my unique background can help
bridge some of that divide.

Another way I hope to achieve this is to help establish economic relations
between Israel and Arab countries. That would create trust and shared
experience, which could be directed toward the goal of a genuine and lasting
peace.

Another issue I’m trying to address is how the Arab world is filled with
Holocaust denial. This past summer I went to Auschwitz, and I am working to
produce the first-ever Arabic documentary about the Holocaust. I want to
explain to Muslims in their own language exactly what happened.

It often seems like the Arab-Israeli conflict is intractable. Yet I believe
in today’s world, there is a real opportunity for a breakthrough. Arabs
today have a more universal education, which makes them more open and
curious. Also they are meeting Israelis and Jews in their travels around the
world, which breaks down misconceptions. And as we saw during the recent
protests in Iran, many young people in the Muslim world are yearning for
reform. On top of all this, they have high-speed Internet access which opens
up all kinds of new avenues of communication, and the possibility of forming
new friendships unrestricted by borders or political agendas. Perhaps this
can be the basis of a grassroots movement to mend relations and hopefully
one day achieve peace.

My Jewish cousins are all living as Muslims in the Middle East.

The other issue that needs urgent attention is intermarriage in Israel.
Unfortunately, a story like my grandmother's is not so rare. Many young
Jewish women are wooed by Arab men and brought back to live in their
villages. The children and grandchildren are never told the truth,
especially with political tensions and the emotional unrest this would cause
a family. As a result, many Jews are lost to our people. My mother has five
sisters, and from there I have a few dozen cousins who are all Jewish -- all
living as Muslims in the Middle East. I recently met a seventh-generation
Israeli, whose cousin married a Palestinian and went to live in Saudi
Arabia; her descendents are Jews living in Saudi Arabia.

All my relatives know that I’m practicing Judaism, and for the most part
they’re accepting. I can talk to them about Judaism and they’re politely
interested. We love and respect each other. My father is resistant, however,
given that secularism and war against Israel are the two ideological pillars
of his life. When I first became interested in Judaism, I didn’t tell him
straight out. We were having a political discussion and I mentioned that I
support the State of Israel. That ignited a big clash and I’ve learned to
only discuss these matters with him in an indirect way. I always know when
I’ve crossed the line; he gets angry and calls me a “Zionist.”

The other big exception -- not surprisingly -- is my grandmother. I’ve asked
her a number of times for more information about her family background, but
she refuses to talk about it. Maybe one day I will find the key to opening
her up.

Growing up, I was taught that Jews were the source of all evil, descended
from monkeys and pigs. On the other hand, I had the image of my grandmother
holding her small prayer book with the Hebrew letters, praying with tender
devotion. She is the sweetest person I know and there's no way she came from
a bloodthirsty gang of murderers. She gave me a Jewish soul, and in her own
way, it was she who kept my Jewish spark alive.


*Click on a player below to hear Mark speak about his experience.*

http://www.aish.com/sp/so/70138567.html


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Teenage Girls 'Freeze' Building Inspectors in Their Tracks
by Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu
Published: 12/07/09, 2:12 PM / Last Update: 12/07/09, 3:29 PM
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/134844

(IsraelNN.com) Dozens of girls succeeded early Monday afternoon in preventing
building freeze inspectors from entering the community of Maaleh Levonah in
Samaria while a second group of girls surrounded inspectors in Revava until
special Yassam policemen arrived and pushed the youth out of the way, allowing
the inspectors to make a quick getaway. Police remained and punched Deputy
Regional Council Chairman Reuven Ben Aryeh, who required hospitalization.

In Maaleh Levonah, Border Police eventually managed to enter the community but
quickly left, apparently wanting to avoid a confrontation.

Border Police and special "Yassam" police units were caught on video on Sunday
manhandling girls in non-violent protests in Kedumim, in violation of standard
operating procedures.

One 11th grade girl from Kedumim told Arutz 7, "I told the police they have not
right to touch me. What can they do to me? Arrest me? They won't put me in jail,
but I am prepared to sit in prison for the sake of the Land of Israel. The
government is shooting itself in the foot. Netanyahu does what the Americans
tell him to do.

"What are we? Ragdolls of the Americans? We are fed up."

New 'JNF' to Help Jews Rebuild Destroyed Homes
by Hillel Fendel
Published: 12/07/09, 11:27 AM / Last Update: 12/07/09, 11:26 AM
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/134839

(IsraelNN.com) An alternative Jewish National Fund? Land of Israel supporters
seek to establish a fund, based on nickels and dimes - and more - of
contributors around the world, to ensure that Jews whose homes are destroyed by
security forces be able to build another one.

The fund is to be specifically for homes in Judea and Samaria, and will allow
young families to invest their savings confidently, knowing that even if their
home is deemed illegal or in violation of the construction freeze, they will be
able to rebuild.

"This fund has an important place and function specifically at these times,"
says MK Prof. Michael Ben-Ari (National Union party) one of the organizers of
the initiative. "Precisely when a hand is raised to chop down the glorious
settlement enterprise in Judea and Samaria, Jews in Israel and around the world
will arise to perpetuate the Zionist enterprise with large and small
contributions in every home and in every town."

The Jewish National Fund (JNF) had many tens of thousands of little blue
collection boxes (pushkes) placed in Jewish homes in 40 countries around the
world in which was placed small change that enabled the purchase of parts of the
Land of Israel for the Jewish People.

"The Jewish People will not allow a meek, degraded government to destroy the
hopes of generations," Ben-Ari said.

Some ten days ago, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and his
mini-security/diplomatic cabinet decided on a 10-month construction freeze in
all Jewish towns in Judea and Samaria.

The organizers of the new fund say there has already been broad interest in the
new idea, and several people have expressed interest in donating "not
insignificant" amounts to those who wish to build in Judea and Samaria. For more
information, send email to rebuild.ey@....

Ritual Murders of Jews in Paris  By: Alyssa A. Lappen
FrontPageMagazine.com
Thursday, December 04, 2003
http://97.74.65.51/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=15223

After a European Union poll found that nearly 60% of Europeans consider Israel
the greatest threat to world peace, the British Broadcasting Corp. on November
26, asked if anti-Semitism is really increasing. “There was outrage and shock
over the recent EU poll,” observed Robert Wistrich, director of Jerusalem’s
Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of anti-Semitism. Many Israelis
consider mainstream labeling of “Israel as a Nazi state” a sort of
anti-Semitism.

But the BBC gave the final word to Vienna’s Edward Serotta. The increasingly
“shrill” debate often “paints the entire European continent as a cesspool of
hatred for Jews,” griped the Central Europe Center for Research and
Documentation director. “One prominent Jewish leader recently said the climate
was just like 1933 - this is absolutely absurd.”

Oh really? Serotta made this bizarre claim precisely a week after two Paris Jews
were brutally murdered and disfigured—because they were Jewish. A minor tabloid,
Le Parisien, reported the grisly events. But not a single major French
newspaper—Le Monde, Figaro or Libération—covered the stories, according to an
interview with a victim’s mother, distributed by Rosenpress in
Revue-Politique.com. In one case, the police advised the family not to call the
crime anti-Semitic. [1]

Sebastian Sellam, 23, was a popular disc jockey at a hot Parisian night club
called Queen. At about 11:45 p.m. on Wednesday November 19, the young man known
as DJ Lam C (a reverse play on his surname) left the apartment he shared with
his parents in a modest building in of Paris’ 10th arrondissement near la Place
Colonel Fabien, heading to work as usual. In the underground parking lot, a
Muslim neighbor slit Sellam’s throat twice, according to the Rosenpress
interview. His face was completely mutilated with a fork. Even his eyes were
gouged out.

Following the crime, Rosenpress correspondent Alain Azria reported, Sellam’s
mother said the Muslim perpetrator mounted the stairs, his hands still bloody,
and announced his crime. “I have killed my Jew. I will go to heaven,” he
reportedly said. The alleged murderer’s family was well known for rabid
anti-Semitism, Mrs. Sellam reportedly told Rosenpress, a point confirmed by the
victim’s brother. Within the previous year, Sellam’s mother reportedly said, the
family found a dead rooster outside their apartment door with its throat slit,
and their Mezuzah was ripped from their door post. Leaving dead roosters is
reportedly a traditional warning of impending murder.

The homicide especially traumatized the Paris Jewish community: According to
Rosenpress, another gruesome murder, also allegedly committed by a Muslim,
occurred earlier that evening. Chantal Piekolek, 53, was working in her Avenue
de Clichy shoe store when Mohamed Ghrib, 37, stabbed her 27 times in the neck
and chest.

Piekolek’s 10-year-old daughter hid in the storeroom behind the shop with a
girlfriend and heard the entire crime. There was no evidence of sexual assault,
according to Rosenpress. Paris reporters believe the cash remained in the shop’s
register, but this detail remained unconfirmed at press time.

A report apparently based on Le Parisien story, also appeared in France’s
biggest Jewish newspaper, Actualité Juive, but added little. The report
strangely named the DJ’s alleged murderer only by his first name. No surname was
given. A reliable Paris journalist says the story is correct.

Initial reports in small news outlets naturally terrified and confused the
French Jewish community. Intense anti-Semitism has been building for more than a
decade, according to Nidra Poller, an American expatriate in Paris for several
decades. Anti-Semitic crimes frequently go unreported in the major press, she
said, suppressed by French authorities, victims fearing retribution—and news
agencies. Jewish community members thus usually learn of attacks as they did
during previous centuries in North African and Eastern European ghettoes—by word
of mouth.

In 2001, a rabbi in Poller’s neighborhood was kidnapped and held hostage in a
car for two hours. Another religious Jew was kidnapped in similar fashion,
Poller reported. A Jewish woman and her husband, whom she had just picked up at
a local hospital, were abused and threatened with murder for several hours by
their Muslim taxi driver, she said.

The charged, anti-Semitic atmosphere in France engenders panic each time a
Jewish community member suffers an attack. Crimes typically include harassment,
kidnapping, assault, rock-throwing, arson and other abuse, Poller said. Victims
usually report the incidents to officials, families and friends. Stories thus
spread like wildfire, terrifying people, she noted. Just as frequently,
authorities refuse to investigate. Reports are then followed by official and
other denials—stoking the community’s fear. People don’t know what to believe,
Poller said. Desperate for verifiable data, they attempt to trace reports
through sources back to the victims. But those seeking information are generally
told to back off. “They are left wondering whether their sources are correcting
wild rumors or covering up dastardly anti-Semitism,” said Poller.

French Jews live in constant fear, Poller said. Everyday activities, such as
taking a taxi, going to synagogue or shopping can bring attacks. The entire
community is traumatized. This pattern was effectively repeated with the
November murders in Paris after initial reports indicated that both cases were
anti-Semitic crimes.

Then the respected Guysen Israel News clarified essential details. It seemed,
the news service claimed, that Piekolek was not Jewish, although her husband
was. In a subsequent editorial, Guysen opined that while Sellam’s murderer was a
known anti-Semite, he was also mad and jealous of the successful DJ he had known
since boyhood. The news agency insists that it would label the crimes
anti-Semitic if they really were. But other reporters and agencies disagree, and
label the murders anti-Semitic.

Parisian Jews are frightened and confused, Poller said. If Sellam’s murderer was
mad, why wasn’t he previously committed to psychiatric confinement? Were initial
Rosenpress and Revue-Politique reports on Piekolek correct? Was her murder
verifiably not an anti-Semitic crime? Or are subsequent denials based on
terrified rejection of facts? (Her husband was Jewish, so it was not
“anti-Semitic.”) Are Paris Muslims really starting to slaughter Jews?

“In Paris, a lot of Jews already had to leave countries in North Africa,” Poller
said. “Now, they are told not to talk about anti-Semitism. And they are going to
have to flee again.”

Alas, it is easy to believe the worst. A few days earlier, an anti-Semitic arson
attack hit the Jewish Merkatz Hatorah boys’ school on the outskirts of Paris.
Prime-Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin later said he hoped to identify “those who
carried out this shameful attack.”

Given intense and worsening anti-Semitism in France and Europe, there seems
little hope that the government will actually investigate the arson, much less
prosecute the perpetrator if it finds one. After all, EU officials deny the
severity of the problem. Last week, they shelved an EU report on the subject for
fear of antagonizing Muslims, who were behind many of the incidents examined.

Two Muslim students at Paris’ well-regarded Lycée Montaigne recently beat an
11-year-old Jewish classmate while reportedly yelling at him, “We’ll finish
Hitler’s job.” Headmaster Jean-Marie Renault sued the accused aggressors and
plans “a debate on the dangers of xenophobia” next term. Complaints rarely
produce criminal sanctions, however. Many anti-Semitic crimes are never even
reported, Poller said—especially in the housing project cités that ring Paris,
where residents are one third North African Muslims. “La Zone is foreign
country,” writes Theodore Dalrymple.

But is it? Poller left France for a U.S. speaking tour in November with one
week’s news publications to read on her flight—two weekly magazines and three
major newspapers. All of them, she said, were “reeking with hatred [for Jews].”
They also sympathized extensively with terrorists. News reports are not factual.
“They are sermons,” Poller said. A profile of philosopher Gilles Deleuze in the
weekly Nouvel Observateur, for example, praised his defense of the Palestinians,
citing an article he wrote on “le grandeur de Arafat,” despite his personal
responsibility for more than 1,000 civilian murders.

EU officials may not want to admit it. But attacks on Jews have been mounting
since the terrorist war on Israel began in September 2000. In the last year,
however, anti-Semitic attacks in France have grown increasingly bold. In
January, Paris Rabbi Gabriel Farhi was attacked several times. In April 2002
alone, the French Interior Ministry recorded nearly 360 anti-Semitic crimes
against Jews and Jewish institutions, according to Washington Times reporter Al
Webb.  [2] In May 2002, a mysterious fire erupted at the Israeli embassy in
Paris.

“Yes, a synagogue was burned,” Frenchmen routinely admit, according to Poller.
“But how do we know this was anti-Semitic?” Sellam’s murder was handled in much
the same way, she said, although 2,000 mourners attended the popular young disc
jockey’s funeral. Le Parisien, according to Poller the only print newspaper to
report the crime, noted that Sellam was Jewish and his alleged murderer Muslim,
but explained the crime as an outburst of jealousy by a lifelong friend.
“Sebastian was successful and his murderer was unsuccessful and jealous.”

Something considerably darker than professional jealousy must be at work,
however, when a murderer completely mutilates his victim’s face with a fork and
gouges out his eyes or stabs a 53-year-old mother 27 times in the chest and
neck.

Indeed, in Sura 8, verse 12, the Qu’ran instructs Muslims, “Remember thy Lord
inspired the angels (with the message): ‘I am with you: give firmness to the
Believers: I will instil terror into the hearts of the Unbelievers: smite ye
above their necks and smite all their finger-tips off them’.”

Evidently, some Muslims take this literally. The theme repeats in Sura 47, verse
4: “Therefore, when ye meet the Unbelievers (in fight), smite at their necks.”
Citing this verse, Shafi’i jurist al-Mawardi (d. 1058) prescribes exactly such
behavior. When Allah gives Muslims victory over mushrikun in “The Amirate of
Jihad”—the non-Muslim region of war, or Dar al-Harb—he advises, “their women and
children are taken prisoner, and their wealth is taken as booty, and those who
are not taken captive are put to death.” [3]

Meanwhile, in Germany, neo-Nazis were arrested in September for planning an
arson attack on a Munich synagogue to commemorate Hitler’s November 9
Kristallnacht of 1938, in which thousands of Jewish homes and shops were
destroyed, hundreds murdered and thousands arrested and sent to concentration
camps.

Right. And two grisly ritual murders last week in Paris, France were not
anti-Semitic.

Notes

[1] Digital video film interview by © Alain Azria / Avi Rosen / Rosenpress
Agency

For further information: redaction@...

[2] Al Webb, “Synagogues Burn as Europe Rages,” Washington Times, Apr. 23, 2002

[3] Abu’l-Hasan al-Mawardi, al-Ahkam as-Sultaniyyah: The Laws of Islamic
Governance (Ta-Ha, 1996), p. 76.
Alyssa A. Lappen is a former Senior Fellow of the American Center for Democracy,
former Senior Editor of Institutional Investor, Working Woman and Corporate
Finance, and former Associate Editor of Forbes. Her website is
www.AlyssaaLappen.org.



[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Does the UN support the existence of a Jewish state?


Forgetting the Two-State Solution
By Joseph Klein
Frontpage Magazine
December 4, 2009 @ 12:04 am
http://frontpagemag.com/2009/12/04/forgetting-the-two-state-solution-by-joseph-k\
lein/

Ever since 1977, the United Nations has sponsored the "International Day of
Solidarity with the Palestinian People" to mark November 29th, the date in 1947
when the UN General Assembly approved its partition resolution. Former UN
Secretary General Kofi Annan called November 29th a "day of mourning and a day
of grief." It takes place every year at UN headquarters in New York and at the
UN Offices at Geneva and Vienna and elsewhere. This year it was observed on
November 30th since the 29th was a Sunday.

In honor of this year's "International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian
People," Secretary General Ban Ki-moon issued a special "Message" stating that
sixty-two years ago, "the General Assembly, resolution 181, put forth a vision
of two States." He said that the "State of Israel exists" but the "State of
Palestine does not."

I asked the Secretary General's spokesperson at the press briefing at UN
headquarters on that day if Ban Ki-moon has a position on whether the two-state
solution should include specific protection of Israel as a Jewish state. After
all, the whole purpose of establishing the state of Israel in the first place
was to create a Jewish homeland where Jews would no longer be a persecuted
minority who were told that they do not belong in the country in which they
happened to reside. The international community at the time passed the partition
resolution knowing full well that its vision of two states included a Jewish
state living side by side with a Palestinian state. But the Arab states rejected
the UN partition resolution – the original two-state solution. The Jewish state
accepted it.

Fast forward sixty-two years. President Obama, when he addressed the General
Assembly in September, talked about a Jewish state of Israel living side-by-side
in peace with a Palestinian sovereign state. But in a press briefing at UN
headquarters on September 22nd, Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayad
rejected the idea of a Jewish state. He said it "was not part of the Palestinian
Authority's recognition of Israel's right to exist in peace and security."

My question to the Secretary General's spokesperson was meant to elicit whether
Ban Ki-moon had the courage to reaffirm the UN General Assembly's original
vision – a Jewish state of Israel and a Palestinian state living side-by-side in
peace and security. The answer was, No.

"We don't have a position on that," said Ban Ki-moon's spokesperson. "We have
said it over and over again. What we do recognize is the need for the existence
of two States, living side-by-side. We don't actually want to venture into
determining what each State will be like. I think it's for the people of those
States to determine what those States will be. What I would say is that, for us,
it is important that the two-State solution be carried through."

Every November the United Nations makes a public spectacle of mourning what it
had recommended as a peaceful solution to the Arab-Jewish dispute over the
Palestine Mandate territory sixty-two years ago. The UN is effectively
repudiating its own original two-state solution, spurned by all of the Arab
countries back in 1947 but accepted by Israel and backed back then by the
international community.

The Palestinians continue to insist on their own state, to be governed as they
wish – very likely under Islamic law. The UN is rallying to their cause and
blaming Israel for defending itself against unremitting terrorist attacks. And
gone is the clear international recognition of the reason that Israel was
established in the first place.

The Palestinians will not even come to the negotiating table until they get
their way completely on certain pre-conditions, such as a total freeze of all
settlement activity. But negotiations, if they ever start in earnest, are doomed
to fail if the Palestinians and their enablers refuse to recognize Israel's
right of self-determination to live in peace and security as a Jewish state.


Article printed from FrontPage Magazine: http://frontpagemag.com

URL to article:
http://frontpagemag.com/2009/12/04/forgetting-the-two-state-solution-by-joseph-k\
lein/

Normally law-abiding citizens resisting Netanyahu's misguided policy


Tea-Parties, Israeli-Style
by Moshe Dann
Published:  12.06.09, 11:26 / Israel Opinion
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3815645,00.html

In response to PM Netanyahu's declaration prohibiting Jews from building in
Judea and Samaria, a grass-roots resistance movement is beginning to emerge.

Generally averse to confrontations and violence, Israeli Jews would prefer
boring demonstrations and prayers. Numbed by the illusion that elections mean
democracy, they tend to obey constituted authorities.

Moreover, the "freeze" on Jewish building and its strict implementation exposes
the hypocrisy of Israel's legal and judicial system. If the police and army can
be mobilized to enforce the prohibition against Jews, why can't they be used to
stop vastly more illegal Arab buildings?

The continuing trauma of Israel's withdrawal from Gaza, however, was over the
expulsion of only 10,000 Jews. Now, PM Netanyahu's seemingly futile gesture to
appease President Obama threatens 300,000 residents of Judea and Samaria,
thousands of families waiting to build homes in this area and has implications
for 250,000 residents of new neighborhoods in Jerusalem, like Gilo, Givat Zeev,
Har Homa, and Pisgat Zeev.

Drawing the line around Jerusalem and a few large settlements, moreover, blurs
the historical and strategic importance of the rest of the Land of Israel to the
Jewish people.

Connected to relatives and friends throughout Israel, the "settler" network is
extensive; that means virtually the entire country is affected, in one way or
another. The result has been a spontaneous rebellion, led by heads of local
communities who, under normal circumstances, would duly follow orders. Instead,
they are organizing resistance to PM Netanyahu's edicts.

I refer to these restrictive orders as those of Netanyahu, rather than "the
government," since they were approved only by an inner "security cabinet,"
rather than the entire cabinet. It seems clear that the fear was that these
orders would not be approved by the full cabinet, let alone by Knesset.

This brings striking clarity to the nature of what many call, generously,
"Israeli democracy." That a few people can implement decisions contrary to their
electoral promises and, in Netanyahu's case, against the mandate of the
political party which he leads is hardly new. Such actions, while they may be
legal, strike at the heart of what a democratic system is all about and the
issue of accountability.


What's the point?

One might be willing to cut the PM some slack, give him the benefit of the
doubt, if what he proposes would accomplish something – anything! But he himself
dismissed such thoughts, pleading that a building freeze is only temporary, and
an attempt to "jump-start negotiations." The US is biding its time, planning to
demand an extension; the PA has rejected this ploy outright.

So what's the point? As a meaningless gesture, it serves no one and antagonizes
everyone. Like trying to sell fools gold on the commodity exchange, it's an
embarrassment that creates doubt about any kind of reliability.

Having initiated a disastrously unpopular policy, there is little Netanyahu can
do to assuage those who oppose him; nor can he back down citing public pressure.
He might turn to the opposition, Kadima, for support, but that would further
alienate him from his own constituency. And he can crack down on those who
resist – as he is doing.

All of this may become even more complicated and volatile if Netanyahu decides
to release 1,000 Arab "Palestinian" killers ("activists," "militants") who are
likely to fuel a new wave of terrorism.Nearly 25 years ago, under PM Shimon
Peres and DM Yitzhak Rabin, a similar prisoner exchange strengthened terrorists
and led to violence against Israel. There is nothing to assume this won't happen
again

Resistance to Netanyahu's policies by normally law-abiding folks in Jewish
communities throughout Judea and Samaria may signal the emergence of new
political bloc within Likud, as frustration becomes more widespread. The
prospect of new elections is not thrilling, but there is an emerging alternative
to the political leadership that now exists.

If Netanyahu hunkers down and tries to ride out the resistance, he will have to
enforce his policies, or rescind them. Either way, he has lost the trust of many
of his most loyal supporters and displayed an appalling lack of political
awareness.

If politics is the art, or business of making the best of poor choices,
Netanyahu may have made a serious mistake in thinking that he could satisfy
President Obama at the expense of the people who elected him.

This is not only a test of his political wisdom, but of his moral leadership as
well. Caught between competing demands, his choices gauge his strength of
character. At very least he must make a reasonable case for what he does. Don't
count on it.


The author is a writer and journalist living in Jerusalem

Goldstein: Freeze Lawsuits will Total More than NIS 1 Billion
by Gil Ronen
Kislev 19, 5770, 06 December 09 02:07
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/134815

(Israelnationalnews.com) The Chairman of the Gush Etzion Regional Council,
Sha'ul Goldstein, sent a letter to his constituents Sunday in an attempt to ease
tensions over the order to freeze construction in Judea and Samaria. "Along with
other heads of councils, we are checking how the order can be challenged through
the courts," he wrote. "In my estimate, the lawsuits will total more than NIS 1
billion."

Goldstein estimated that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu was influenced by
"wild incitement" from within Israel and without. "The freeze decree that has
landed on us is a continuation of the unfortunate recognition of a Palestinian
state by the Prime Minister," he explained. "This incitement turns things upside
down through lies and mischaracterizations of the reality." As a result, he
said, "aggressors receive rewards and victims pay a double prize."

Goldstein wrote that he has met with government ministers and Likud MKs in an
effort to cancel or water down the orders. "It seems that American pressure is
much more frightening than the threats by Likud members," he said.

"I would like to send you a very clear and strong message," he added in an
attempt to rally spirits. "Do not falter! We will continue to live in Gush
Etzion and develop it for our children and our children's children! We have been
through tough times in the past and it always seems like this is the worst it
has ever been. Despite this, we have grown and we have built magnificent
communities! This time, too, we shall continue to build and we shall emerge
stronger and more resolute."

"The holiday of Chanukah symbolizes the victory of the eternal spirit over
matter, which is temporary, but it also represents the victory of the few who
are right over the many who are wrong. With modesty and an effort to perform
tikkun [improving the world], we too will pray for better times for the Nation
of Israel," he concluded.

Tzipora Liron-Pinner: Parashat
Vayeshev - Forgetting vs. Remembering
by Rabbi Meir David Kahane ZT"L
HY"D
 
When a Jew is away from Israel, he must
constantly acknowledge that he is a stranger in a foreign land, living among a
foreign nation, like one who is with a woman whom he does not know. As
Solomon expressed it: And why should you stray, my son, with an alien woman,
and hug the bosom of a foreign woman (Proverbs 5:20). [...] Human nature is
to forget suffering after some time has passed and one finds refuge and starts
to live in peace; then the נֵכָר, nekhar (“unknown�) and the
נָכְרִי, nokhri
(“foreigner, stranger�) become נִכָּר, nikkar (“recognized�) and
מֻכָּר, mukkar
(“known�), and the alien land becomes homeland.



And indeed, this happened even to Joseph
himself:

Joseph thought: When I was in my father’s house…my
brothers envied me; now that I am here [in Egypt], I thank You that I live in
wealth. G-d said to him: It is so good for you here that you are rebelling. By
your life! I will incite the bears against you (Genesis Rabbah 87:4). The
Tanhuma says something similar: When Joseph saw himself such [so great, in
Potiphar’s service], he began to eat and drink, he curled his hair, and said:
Blessed be the Omnipresent Who has caused me to forget my father’s
house. G-d said to him: Your father is mourning for you in sackcloth
and ashes, and you eat and drink and curl your hair?! For this, your
mistress [Potiphar’s wife] will seduce you and cause you grief
(Tanhuma, Vayeshev 8).

This teaches that it is not enough
for the tzaddik to recognize G-d’s kindness; he must also understand that the
purpose of His kindness is solely in order to help him to fulfil his obligation
and his destiny. Joseph was indeed obligated to thank G-d for having been saved,
and for having found a good life – but he should not have celebrated and
rejoiced as long as his father was mourning and suffering. We further see that
even though his personal situation in Israel with his family was far worse than
his current situation in exile, this feeling was considered a sin, for a
Jew is forbidden to forget his true home – and far more so, is
forbidden to erase the memory of his true home. And Joseph was punished for this
twice over: the first time, when he was thrown into prison; and the second time,
when he forgot all [the Torah knowledge] that he had learned, as the Midrash
says:

And Jacob arrived unblemished (Genesis
33:18) – Rabbi Yohanan said: unblemished in his learning. But Joseph had
forgotten, as he said, G-d has caused me to forget my hardship; and subsequently
it is said, The toiling spirit toils for itself (Proverbs
16:26) [in the verse which speaks of toiling in the
Torah].

While he was in prison, Joseph failed in his trust in G-d when
he asked the chief steward to save him. As our sages said (Shemot Rabbah
7:1), “Joseph really only deserved ten years in prison...yet because he
asked the chief steward, 'Remember that I was with you...Say
something about me to Pharaoh' (Gen. 40:14), two years were added.�


A Jew who seeks help from a non-Jew out of despair and fear,
lest G-d not help him, commits a grave sin. Had Joseph approached the
steward with a demand because the steward owed him a favor , that would not have
been considered a sin. Yet by petitioning him with a request, indicating that we
need a favor from a non-Jew, he profaned G-d's name, showing that he did
not trust in G-d but only in flesh and blood. From here we derive a
major principle regarding aid from a non-Jew: If the non-Jew gives it as part of
mutual aid, or payment for what he owes the Jew, that is allowed. If, however,
we approach a non-Jew or a country with a request, like a pauper standing at the
door, there is no more severe Chilul HaShem and lack of trust in G-d than this.



It is an unatonable sin for a Jew to
despair. It constitutes national denial of G-d for Israel to turn to human
strength, to non-Jewish allies, and to lean on them while scorning G-d's ability
to help. On the national level, this means : [...] whoever relies on
the non-Jew and his aid, and fears that without such aid the Jews and their land
will be unable to survive, has been caught by lack of complete trust in G-d,
bordering on denial of His existence. The individual Jew and the Jewish people
as a whole will not be forgiven if they abandon their faith in G-d, the Supreme,
Omnipotent King Who rules over the world and over the nations. He alone is our
salvation.


Even totally righteous, G-d fearing
people fall prey to the terrible sin of lack of trust in G-d. As our
sages said (Sotah 48b), “What is meant by 'Who has despised [baz] the day of
small things?'(Zechariah 4:10)? What causes the future heavenly reward of the
righteous to be squandered [yitbazbez]? Their smallness in not believing in
G-d.�
Had our sages not said this, we would not dare to put this thought to
words.

Yet our sages established a great and frightening principle:
that it is possible to be a righteous person, i.e. one who observes
Torah and mitzvot, who keeps all of Torah ritual, and still be small of
faith.

It is appropriate to cry over this, for the signs of this
terrible sin can be seen openly in this orphan generation.King David
said, “He will bless them that fear the L-rd, both children and adults [lit.,
'great and small']� (Ps. 115:14). This hints that some among the G-d
fearing have little fear of G-d and little faith. King Solomon warned
against the terrible sin of fearing mortal man when he said, “The fear of man
brings a snare; but whoever puts his trust in the L-rd shall be set up on
high. Many seek the ruler's favor, but a man's judgment comes from the
L-rd� (Prov. 29:25-26).

This week's Parasha ends accordingly
with “Yet the [non-Jewish] chief steward [whom Joseph had asked to
remember him] did not remember Joseph, but he forgot
him.� (Gen. 40:32)

Interestingly, at the beginning of the
redemption from Egypt G-d told Moses to address the Jewish people with a
reference to remembrance (although a different word for remembering is used):


“I have assuredly remembered you - פָּקֹד פָּקַדְתִּי, pakod
pakad’ti:�
G-d commanded Moses to use specifically these words
because the elders had a tradition that the redeemer would use these words when
he would come, and they would thereby know that this was no false messiah:


He [G-d] said to him [Moses]: They have a tradition from Joseph
that I will redeem them with this word
[פָּקֹד, pakod (“remember�)]. Go, address them with this sign.
(Exodus Rabbah 3:18.)

This also applies to the future redemption of
Israel:
פָּקֹד פָּקַדְתִּי, pakod pakad’ti: I
have remembered you, and not forgotten you. I have remembered My promise and not
forgotten it; I have not redeemed you until now – not because I have
forgotten,
but because the appointed time has not yet come, the number of years needed to
redeem you has not yet passed.

These excerpts were gleaned from
Rabbi Meir Kahane's Peirush HaMaccabee – Shemot – Chapter 2 and 3 and
from The Jewish Idea, Chapter 'Faith and Trust'.




[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

There's nothing like a challenge, and this week's Havel Havelim certainly
challenged my blog carnivalling skills.

It's posted on both me-ander and Shiloh Musings.
http://me-ander.blogspot.com/2009/12/havel-havelim-balagan.html
http://shilohmusings.blogspot.com/2009/12/havel-havelim-balagan.html

I found a way to host the veteran jblog carnival and am willing to mentor future
hosts.  If you're interested in hosting HH contact Jack,
talktojacknow@...

For the Kosher Cooking Carnival, contact me shilohmuse@..., and for JPIX,
Leora's in charge, blog@...

And considering that at present at least sending posts to blog carnival is a
waste, hedge your bets by also sending your links to us with the appropriate
carnival name in the subject box.

Click onto the latest Havel Havelim and then publicize it by blogging about it
and sending the links to your nearest and dearest.

http://me-ander.blogspot.com/2009/12/havel-havelim-balagan.html
http://shilohmusings.blogspot.com/2009/12/havel-havelim-balagan.html

Thanks,

Batya
Shiloh Musings  me-ander   The Eye of the Storm   the muse's pics   Blog Free!



[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Settler Leaders: We Must Break Netanyahu's 'White Paper'
by Tovah Lazaroff and Herb Keinon
THE JERUSALEM POST
Dec 5, 2009 22:15 | Updated Dec 6, 2009 1:17

Settler leaders warned Saturday night that the 10-month moratorium on new
settlement construction was a prelude to the evacuation of their communities, as
they urged their residents to mount a stiff non-violent campaign against the
decree.

They called on settlers to build immediately and to join Wednesday's mass rally
in Jerusalem's Paris Square, near Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's residence.

"We have to come out in force to break Netanyahu's 'White Paper,'" said Dani
Dayan, who heads the Council of Jewish Communities of Judea, Samaria and the
Gaza Strip. He spoke at an emergency meeting in the Ofra settlement in the
Binyamin region.

"Our fight is to prevent another evacuation of Jews," said Itzik Shadmi, who
heads the Binyamin Citizens Committee.

"You have to understand that what is happening here is the prelude to an
evacuation, and anyone who does not understand this is not facing the truth,"
Shadmi told a room of settlers and their supporters.

He urged everyone to start building immediately.

"You have to build a lot and you have to do it intelligently," Shadmi said.

This is the time, he said, to build that basement, extra room, porch or gazebo,
said Shadmi.

"Do not hide it, make sure it can be seen," said Shadmi.

Settlements should also put up cheap communal structures, such as an extra club
house for teens. They should erect the structures as far away from the
settlement gate as possible, so that the inspectors have to pass through the
length and breadth of the community to get to them, said Shadmi.

This will give residents the maximum amount of opportunity to thwart them from
reaching the structures, said Shadmi. He added that it would also be best if a
structure was constructed somewhere beyond the reach of a tractor, which could
destroy it in seconds.

He added that whatever steps were taken, it was important that settlers refrain
from violence.

"We can win without violence," said Shadmi, who added that violence only harmed
their cause.

The Binyamin Citizens Committee handed out a two-page sheet to meeting
participants with suggestions, some of which, it said, it understood might be
premature, such as refusal to do reserve duty or to enter the IDF for the
10-month duration of the freeze.

It also suggested that IDF soldiers be evicted from structures they inhabited
within the settlements. Shadmi added that they should be forced instead to camp
out in tents outside the community's gate, so that residents could use the
buildings.

Dayan adamantly opposed any suggestions to defer reserve duty or army service.

The meeting is one of at least six that the settlers have held since Netanyahu
announced the moratorium 12 days ago.

On Thursday, after inspectors had pushed their way into most West Bank
settlements, settler leaders met with Netanyahu and urged him to rescind the
moratorium. They also spoke of the immediate hardship the decree had caused.

On Friday, Netanyahu announced the establishment of a committee to look into
ways to smooth implementation of the moratorium.

Much of Netanyahu's meeting Thursday with the settler leaders dealt with their
complaints about the way the moratorium order was being implemented, with
Netanyahu taking down 30 points and promising to discuss them with Defense
Minister Ehud Barak.

Netanyahu and Barak decided Friday to establish the committee to deal with those
issues, as well as other issues that may arise during the moratorium period. The
committee will be made up of Barak, Minister Bennie Begin - viewed as a key
settlement proponent inside the government - Cabinet Secretary Zvi Hauser, and
the new Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, Brig.-Gen.
Eitan Dangot.

According to a statement put out by the Prime Minister's Office, the committee
will look at ways to strictly implement the moratorium order, while taking into
consideration the needs of the residents.

Among the issues that the settlement leaders raised were the need to ensure that
infrastructure projects, such as sewage and road projects, be allowed to
continue, and that people be allowed to carry out home improvements such as
closing in patios or adding rooms.

The committee's first meeting was held on Friday, and another one is scheduled
for Sunday.

But in Ofra on Saturday night, Dayan said that the settlers would not be
satisfied until the decree had been rescinded altogether.

"Establishing a new committee will not help. It will not cause us to give up our
fight or to change our focus.

"We are not looking for leniency, we have one single objective - and that is to
abolish the decree," said Dayan.

This is not about people's ability to install air-conditioning in their
apartments or to build gazebos in their yards, said Dayan.

"We are not willing to accept a policy that says you cannot build in Judea and
Samaria," said Dayan.

When he met with Netanyahu, said Dayan, the prime minister told them that the
step was necessary so that the world would see that Israel was not a country
that refused to pursue peace.

"There is not a minimum of diplomatic logic to this," said Dayan.

He said he believed that even with the moratorium the world would still view
Israel as a "peace refuser."

"The sacrifice of Jewish flesh," he said, would not change international
perceptions of Israel.

The international community will say that this step did not go far enough and
that Israel should have stopped building in Jerusalem, said Dayan.

He rejected any claim that the settlers were undermining the rule of law by
working against the moratorium.

"There are some things that are so anti-Jewish and anti-Zionist that we can not
comply with them," said Dayan.

MK Tzipi Hotovely (Likud) said it was important to widen the argument beyond the
historic, religious and strategic importance of Judea and Samaria and to hammer
in the point that the Likud Party in declaring this moratorium was itself
subverting the democratic process.

Israeli voters brought the Likud to power because it promised to build in Judea
and Samaria and to support the settlement movement, said Hotovely.

Voters have a right to insist that their politicians be held accountable to the
pre-election promises that they made, she said.

"This is not just a fight for the land of Israel, but for Israeli democracy,"
she said.


---------------------------
This article can also be read at:
http://www.jpost.com
/servlet/Satellite?cid=1259831465821&pagename=JPArticle%2FShowFull

Call to Tear Down Illegal Arab 'Castles'
by Gil Ronen
Published: 12/05/09, 10:12 PM / Last Update: 12/05/09, 10:05 PM
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/134805

(IsraelNN.com) The Regavim Movement for safeguarding national lands appealed to
the Minister of Defense Friday and demanded the immediate destruction of illegal
mansions built by Arabs near Hussan and El Hadr, west of Bethlehem.


Photos of some of the illegally built arab mansions:
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/static/blogs/20091205100828.jpg
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/static/blogs/20091205100905.jpg


Attorney Amir Fisher, who represents the movement, noted in a letter that there
should be no problem to carry out the demolition immediately, now that the
Civilian Administration has recruited dozens of new building inspectors.

The movement appealed to the High Court a year ago and demanded that the
buildings be torn down, and the State admitted that the structures were illegal.
It stated, however, that it is the body authorized to determine the order of
priority in enforcing the law, and that due to a lack of manpower, it wants to
delay the demolitions. The High Court expressed "discomfort" with the illegal
building but accepted the state's position.

Now that dozens of inspectors are being added to the ranks of the Civilian
Administration, Attorney Fisher turned anew to the Minister of Defense and to
the Central Command head in a demand to tear down the villas. "In view of the
meaningful increase in the enforcement authorities' manpower in the last few
days, the State can no longer hide behind the claim that it lacks the resources
for carrying out the necessary enforcement actions," he wrote.

Fisher said that destruction of buildings in advanced stages of construction is
at the top of the enforcement authorities' priorities, according to past
statements by the State in the High Court.

Regavim noted that the buildings are huge villas, and some can be considered
"luxurious castles" in the final stages of construction. "While inspectors chase
after foundations or half-empty lots [owned by Jews]," the movement stated, "it
is strange that they ignore illegal outposts containing dozens of houses."

---------------------*
**http://www.israelmybeloved.com/channel/word_from_zion
*<http://www.israelmybeloved.com/channel/word_from_zion>

*My soul has dwelt too long
With one who hates peace.
I am for peace;
But when I speak, they are for war.* (Psalm 120:5-7)

To ease the settlers' concerns, Defense Minister Ehud Barak assured them -
as *The Jerusalem Post* of December 3, 2009 reported: "settlement blocs will
be an integral part of Israel in any future peace deal."

Thus has Israel's fairly leftist Labor leader left the "Peace Camp." *Everyone
knows that the Palestinian leadership - whether Fatah or Hammas - will not
dream of making peace, say temporary truce, with Israel without receiving
back at least as much as Egypt did* - namely 100 percent (for even Egypt
that included the last grains of Taba's sand). *For the Palestinians*, *100
percent includes all of* "East*" Jerusalem together with the holiest place
to the Jewish people*: *the Temple Mount*!

And now, some to the moderate left of Israel's political spectrum who are
saying that in a future deal the settlement blocs will be an integral part
of Israel - they have put themselves OUTSIDE the peace camp. No Palestinian
leader will ever be found who would sign such a peace - say truce -
agreement.

If, on top of this, Israel's leaders will think themselves clever and try to
first settle the score by making a separate agreement with the murderous
Assad of Syria - for which surely Israel will have to give back ALL of the
Golan Heights - why, this will only cause the Palestinian leadership to
further harden its position: "If Egypt got 100 percent and Syria got 100
percent we certainly will not settle for anything less than 100 percent."

Thus the Israelis who are NOT willing to give up everything to the
Palestinians ARE IN REALITY not for peace with the Palestinians; no
Palestinian leader will make peace without at least getting what Egypt and
Syria got/may get.

Yes, with all their supposed intellect as they talk back and forth about
what each would be willing to pay for peace, the *Israelis are just talking
to themselves*. *FOR THERE IS NO - ABSOLUTELY NO - ARAB OR PALESTINIAN
LEADER who is even willing to enter into discussion for peace with Israel
without knowing beforehand that they too will receive - as Egypt did - 100
percent of their demands*.

And even then it won't be a real peace but a further step towards Israel's
final dismantling.

Most of the violent conflicts in the world today are initiated and
perpetrated by adherents to ISLAM: Whether in the Sudan, the Philippines,
Indonesia, India, the Middle East, London, Madrid or the U.S - each is
ISLAM-inspired

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu may, in a politically correct way,
announce that the State of Israel is not at war with Islam - and that is
true. But for honesty sake he should have lamented that, unfortunately, most
of the ISLAMIC world IS at war against the notion of an independent Jewish
state called Israel. (Turkey's recent behavior, after all Israel's careful
investment into a good relationship with this Muslim-directed state, only
proves this point.)

It would have been just as nonsensical for Britain or the Jewish people in
Europe to have declared - on the eve of Hitler's war of extermination
against them - that they at least were not at war with Nazi Germany!

So let us say it clearly as it is - for any of Israel's left who still has
the intellect to face the honest facts:

ANY Israeli who wants to hold onto any of the following cherished concepts:

    - A Jewish sovereign state of Israel however small in size;
    - Jewish sovereignty over any part of ancient Jerusalem, including the
    Temple Mount;
    - Any large settlement blocs, etc.


is therefore NOT for a peace or truce with the Arabs. They simply want it
all - and if not, they will not start talking peace.

So, what is all the so-called intellectual talk among many Israeli
politicians and journalists concerning the "peace" negotiations about? Don't
they know these facts? And if they do know, then how do they each - in utter
folly - go on talking about peace prospects which under the present
circumstances are NON EXISTENT, no matter how many concessions some of them
are parading their willingness to make?

It will never be enough - not even settling for a Jewish democratic state in
what little scraps will finally be left to the people of Israel.

So what are we talking about? We are just talking to ourselves - in a
typically Jewish way - each saying what he/she is prepared to do; what
clever plans for peace.

NO Israeli parliament ever will come into existence that would ratify such a
suicidal pact. So, again, what's all the peace talk about?

And all the while Israel's Muslim enemies stick to their guns - and they
will have plenty of them shortly, even 'guns' of mass-destruction. They want
it all. While the foolish Israeli elite keep talking about their wish for
peace, the Muslim foes are planning their next intifada to settle the
dispute!

As the psalmist says: *"I am for peace, but when I speak they are for
war!"*(Psalm 120:7)


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Former Guantamano detainee now al-Qaida brass

United Press Int. Dec. 4 2009

http://www.upi.com/Top_News/Special/2009/12/04/Former-GITMO-detainee-now-al-Qaid\
a-brass/UPI-74051259944600/

WASHINGTON, Dec. 4 (UPI) -- A former Guantanamo Bay detainee released to Saudi
Arabia in 2006 has become a top ideologue for al-Qaida in the Arabian peninsula,
an intelligence review said.

Pakistani officials captured Ibrahim Suleiman al-Rubaish in 2001 and turned him
over to U.S. officials who then sent him to the naval detention facility at
Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Rubaish while in U.S. custody at Guantanamo told his interrogators he received
training at al-Farouq camp run by al-Qaida near Kandahar, Afghanistan, prior to
the U.S.-led invasion in 2001.

He was transferred to Saudi Arabia in 2006 where he was placed in a national
rehabilitation project.

At some point, he escaped across the southern border of Saudi Arabia into Yemen
and has now emerged as a top theologian for al-Qaida, the online Long War
Journal reports.

His rank as a top ideologue in al-Qaida puts him in charge of countering the
theological arguments from the Saudi regime and his statements have been used as
justification to target top officials in Riyadh, the report adds.

Riyadh placed him on its list of most-wanted terrorists in February. Two of his
associates were reportedly killed by Yemeni forces during their simmering battle
with al-Houthi rebels in the north of the country.


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

i encourage  y'all to write.

david ml


=====================================================x
To the Editor, (200 words)

Munayyer’s “Israeli concession is no concession at all” (SF Chronicle, 12.4.09)
is a litany of misrepresentations. Space precludes a full list, but exemplary
are:

“..the Road Map…set forth that the first Israeli obligation was to stop
settlements.” The first sentence of Paragraph I states that the Palestinian
Authority must unilaterally and unconditionally and immediately stop terrorism
and incitement. When, far from stopping terrorism, the Palestinian Authority
supported it, the Israeli government saw no reason to stop the expansion of
Jewish communities in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

“Settlements contravene U.S. policy and international law.”  There is no US
policy about the legitimacy of Israeli communities in the West Bank and Gaza
Strip. Most presidents have approved, while President Carter stated once that
they are illegal.

“..the Fourth Geneva Convention…decry the colonization of Palestinian land.” 
The Fourth Geneva Convention does not relate to the West Bank. The growth of
Jewish communities in the West Bank (and in the Gaza Strip until 2005) in no way
contravenes the Convention.  Moreover, the Convention has no jurisdiction in
this conflict because the Palestinian Authority is not a signatory to it.

Munayyer is ignorant of the facts, or he hopes that your readers are.

David Meir-Levi
3760 el Centro avenue
Palo Alto, CA 94306
650 857 9072 (offfice)
650 269 7021 (cell)



====================================================x
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/12/04/EDI91AUGM4.DTL

Israeli concession is no concession at all
by Yousef Munayyer
Friday, December 4, 2009

The Israelis finally agreed to a 10-month moratorium on settlements in the
occupied West Bank. This proposal does not include East Jerusalem, also occupied
in 1967, and the would-be capital of a Palestinian state.

Israel will attempt to characterize this as a painful concession in a sincere
quest for peace, but in reality this is no concession at all.
In 2003, the Road Map for Peace adopted by the United States, the United
Nations, the European Union and the Russian Federation, set forth that the first
Israeli obligation was to stop settlements.

FALSE. THE FIRST LINE OF THE FIRST SENTENCE OF THE FIRST PARAGRAPH OF THE FIRST
SECTION OF PART I OF THE ROAD MAP SAYS UNEQUIVOCALLY THAT THE PALESTINIAN
AUTHORITY IMMEDIATELY AND UNCONDITIONALLY PUT A STOP TO ALL TERRORISM AND
INCITEMENT.

ISRAEL MUST STOP SETTLEMENTS….BUT THAT CAME LATER IN THE DOCUMENT.
WHEN ISRAEL SAW THAT, FAR FROM STOPPING TERRORISM AND INCITEMENT, THE
PALESTINIAN AUTHORITY WAS SUPPORTING IT, THE ISRAELI GOVERNMENT SAW NO REASON TO
STOP SETTLEMENTS.

Yet, in every year since 1994, when the Oslo Accords established a framework for
peace negotiations, the world has seen more settlers, settlements and the
expansion of existing settlements.
Settlements contravene U.S. policy on this issue and international law.

FALSE. THERE IS NO US POLICY REGARDING THE LEGITIMACY OF ISRAELI SETTLEMENTS. 
MOST PRESIDENTS HAVE APPROVED OF THEM, JIMMY CARTER CONSIDERED THEM ILLEGAL. BUT
A PRESIDENT’S OPINION IS NOT POLICY.

A plethora of U.N. resolutions and the Fourth Geneva Convention (to which Israel
is a signatory) decry the colonization of Palestinian land.

FALSE. WHILE A PLETHORA OF RESOLUTIONS EMMINATING FROM THE ARAB-CONTROLLED
GENERAL ASSEMBLY DO INDEED BASH ISRAEL ABOUT A VARIETY OF ISSUES, THE STATE OF
ISRAEL IN NO WAY TRANSGRESSES THE THE FOURTH GENEVA CONVENTION IN ITS SUPPORT
FOR ISRAELI RESIDENCE IN COMMUNITIES IN THE WEST BANK (AND FORMERLY IN THE GAZA
STRIP).
MOREOVER, THE FOURTH GENEVA CONVENTION HAS NO AUTHORITY OVER THE WEST BANK OR
THE GAZA STRIP BECAUSE THE PALESTINIAN AUTHORITY IS NOT A SIGNATORY TO IT.

MOREOVER, THE WEST BANK AND GAZA STRIP ARE NOT “PALESTINIAN LAND.”  LEGALLY
THESE ARE “DISPUTED TERRITORIES” WITH TWO OR MORE CLAIMANTS TO THE SAME
TERRITORY.  HISTORICALLY, THESE WERE PART OF THE TURKISH EMPIRE FOR 400 YEARS. 
THEN THEY CAME UNDER THE JURISDICTION OF THE BRITISH MANDATE FOR PALESTINE AFTER
WORLD WAR I.  THEN THE UN PASSED ITS PARTITION PLAN RESOLUTION #181 IN 1947 AND
ALLOCATED LAND TO BOTH ISRAEL AND AN AS YET UNNAMED ARAB STATE.  WHILE ISRAEL
SUCCEEDED IN DEFEATING THE 7 ARAB ARMIES WHICH INVADED, CONTRARY TO THE UN
RESOLUTION, THE ARABS OF THE WEST BANK AND GAZA STRIP FELL PREY TO THE INVADING
ARAB FORCES SUCH THAT THE LAND THAT WAS SUPPOSED TO BECOME AN ARAB STATE IN
BRITISH MANDATORY PALESTINE BECAME INSTEAD PART OF THE KINGDOM OF JORDAN (WEST
BANK) AND PART OF EGYPT (THE GAZA STRIP).

NOWHERE, AND AT NO TIME, IN ALL OF HISTORY, HAS THERE EVER BEEN ANY TERRITORY
WHICH BELONGED TO OR WAS PART OF ANY PALESTINIAN COUNTRY OR STATE.

In effect, what the Israeli prime minister has said is "I'll stop breaking the
law, in only some places, and only for a limited period of time."

This does not meet the Road Map expectations of 2003, so to frame this as a
concession in 2009 makes it clear to the Palestinians that Israel will not be
held accountable by any American administration.

PROBLEM: ISRAEL ACCEPTED THE ROAD MAP, WITH RESERVATIONS. THE PALESTINIAN
AUTHORITY AND HAMAS BOTH REJECTED THE ROAD MAP. HAMAS IN WORD AND DEED, BY
CONTINUING TERRORISM AND INCITEMENT; AND THE PALESTINIAN AUTHORITY IN DEED ONLY,
OFFERING VERBAL ACCEPTANCE OF THE ROAD MAP BUT CONTINUING TERRORISM AND
INCITEMENT.

WHEN THE ARAB TERRORISM AND INCITEMENT CONTINUED, ISRAEL WAS LEGALLY AND MORALLY
NO LONGER BOUND BY THE ROAD MAP AGREEMENTS.
WHY DOES MUNAYYER BEMOAN ISRAEL’S SETTLEMENTS WHILE IGNORING THE TERRORISM AND
INCITEMENT OF THE ARAB SIDE?

Israeli spokesmen tell Americans that they want peace, but their consistent acts
of colonization speak to different intentions.

QUESTION: WHAT IS A GREATER DETERRENT TO PEACE: 28,000 TERROR ATTACKS IN WHICH
ALMOST 2000 ARE KILLED AND 7000 WOUNDED, AND 10,000 ROCKET ATTACKS, AND
VITRIOLIC HATE-FILLED INCITEMENT TO MURDER AND GENOCIDE, OR BUILDING APARTMENT
HOUSES ON LAND THAT INTERNATIONAL LAW DECLARES IS DISPUTED?

WHY DOES MUNAYYER HEAP OPROBRIUM ON ISRAEL FOR ITS BUILDING ACTIVITY WHILE
IGNORING THE MURDER AND MASS MURDER AND ATTEMPTED MASS MURDER BY THE ARAB
TERRORISTS?

Palestinians would be fools to fall for this ploy again after years of seeing
Israel disregard its obligations while Palestinians continue to live under
occupation and the threat of sanctions if they do not march to the beat of
Washington's drum. In fact, only days after the announcement of this moratorium,
Israel has approved many new settlement homes in the West Bank.

FALSE: NETANYAHU HAS AGREED TO A 10-MONTH MORATORIUM.  THE PALESTINIAN AUTHORITY
HAS AGREED TO NOTHING. HAMAS CONTINUES ITS TERRORISM. WHICH IS THE REAL ROAD
BLOCK TO PEACE?

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's exclusion of East Jerusalem is especially
problematic. When Israel occupied the West Bank in 1967, it unilaterally
increased the municipal boundaries of Jerusalem from 6.5 square kilometers to 71
square kilometers. This encompassed many Palestinian towns, including all of
Arab East Jerusalem - home to more than 260,000 Palestinians.

Through active policies of home demolition, evictions and the revocation of
residencies, Israel pursues ethnic cleansing in the epicenter of this conflict.

FALSE.  HOME DEMOLITIONS WERE EFFECTIVE AS A DETERRENT TO SUICIDE BOMBERS. 
ISRAEL DECLARED A MORATORIUM ON HOME DEMOLITIONS SEVEAL YEARS AGO.  EVICTIONS
AND REVOCATIONS OF RESIDENCY HAVE BEEN ALMOST ENTIRELY BECAUSE OF NON-PAYMENT OF
RENT.  ONLY THE PROPAGANDA PROFLIGACY OF THE PALESTINIAN AUTHORITY CAN
TRANSMOGRIFY SUCH LEGAL ACTIONS IN TO AN ISRAELI CAMPAIGN OF “ETHNIC CLEANSING”.

AND SPEAKING OF ETHNIC CLEANSING: MUNAYYER SEEMS NOT TO KNOW THAT THE ARAB
POPULATION OF THE WEST BANK AND GAZA STRIP IN 1967 WAS C. 995,000.  IN 1994,
AFTER 27 YEARS OF ISRAELI SOVEREIGNTY, THAT POPULATION WAS ALMOST 3,000,000. 
ETHNIC CLEANSING?

In fact, Israel has revoked the residencies of 4,500 Palestinians from Jerusalem
in 2008, far more than any other year since 1967.

TRUE: PER ABOVE, DUE TO ILLEGAL ACTIVITY OR COLLABORATION WITH TERRORISTS OR
PERPETRATING TERROR ACTS.

To enter into negotiations without a complete stop to expanding or creating
settlements, including in Jerusalem, would be a de facto relinquishing of
Jerusalem as a central demand for Palestinians and political suicide for any
Palestinian leader.

THIS IS UTTER NONSENSE. MUNAYYER SIMPLY MADE IT UP. ABBAS HAS BEEN INVOLVED IN
NUMEROUS NEGOTIATIONS WHILE SETTLEMENTS WERE EXPANDING, AND SETTLEMENT ACTIVITY
WAS ON THE AGENDA FOR NEGOTIATION….NOT A PRE-CONDITION TO BE ACHIEVED BEFORE
NEGOTIATION.

Netanyahu knows neither Mahmoud Abbas, nor any Palestinian, could accept this.
He also knows that he can spin this to seem as if he made a generous offer and
the Palestinians missed another opportunity. In short, he knows this is not a
concession. That's why he made it.

Because of this, Abbas seems unsure about the American position, stating last
week that Obama is "doing nothing for peace."

If the United States welcomes Netanyahu's duplicitous offer and pressures Abbas
to re-enter peace negotiations while East Jerusalem continues to be colonized
and cleansed, Abbas will get the message.

It's a message that many have feared to be true since that start of the peace
process: The United States is incapable of being a fair mediator between the
Palestinians and Israel.

FALSE: THE USA HAS LABORED HARD AND LONG, OVER DECADES AND A DOZEN PRESIDENTIAL
TERMS, TO PRESSURE ISRAEL INTO MORE AND MORE CONCESSIONS, AND TO SUPPORT
LEGITIMATE ARAB ASPIRATIONS OF STATEHOOD IN THE WEST BANK AND GAZA STRIP.  HAMAS
AND FATAH AND THE PLO AND ISLAMIC JIHAD AND THE PFLP AND THE DFLP AND THE
PFLP-GC AND HEZBOLLAH AND ANSAR-AL-ISLAM AND SAYYIF-ALLAH AND  JAYYISH-EL-JIHAD
AND A DOZEN OTHER ARAB TERROR ORGANIZATIONS HAVE LABORED HARD AND LONG, OVER
DECADES, TO DESTROY THE STATE OF ISRAEL AND GENOCIDE ITS JEWS.

THE USA DOES NOT SUPPORT THESE ARAB ASPIRATIONS.

AND LET’S NOT FORGET THAT ISRAEL RETURNED LAND IN EXCHANGE FOR PEACE WITH IT HAD
A TRUE PEACE PARTNER IN ANWAR ES-SADAT (EGYPT PEACE AGREEMENT, 1979) AND IN KING
HUSSEIN OF JORDAN (JORDAN PEACE AGREEMENT, 1994).

ISRAEL’S OFFER HAS BEEN SIMPLE, HONEST, AND CONSISTANT OVER DECADES: STOP
BLOWING US UP, STOP TRYING TO EXTERMINATE US, SIT DOWN AND TALK, AND WE CAN MAKE
PEACE.

THE SIMPLE, AND TRAGIC, FACT IS THAT IF THE TERRORISTS PUT DOWN THEIR WEAPONS,
THERE WOULD BE NO MORE VIOLENCE.

BUT IF ISRAEL PUT DOWN HER WEAPONS, THERE WOULD BE NO MORE ISRAEL.

Yousef Munayyer is the executive director of the Palestine Center. To learn
more, go to www.thejerusalemfund.org.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/12/04/EDI91AUGM4.DTL
This article appeared on page A - 22 of the San Francisco Chronicle
=====================x


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

If there will ever be a "palestinian state" it will be thanks only to Israel.


david ml


=====================================================x

Israel quietly helps build Palestine.

WELCOME TO PALESTINE

Building peace without Obama's interference.  A promising, independent Palestine
is quietly being developed, with Israeli assistance.
By Tom Gross
The Wall Street Journal
December 3, 2009

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704107104574571491401847518.html

It is difficult to turn on a TV or radio or pick up a newspaper these days,
without finding some pundit or other deploring the dismal prospects for
Israeli-Palestinian peace or the dreadful living conditions of the Palestinians.
Even supposedly neutral news reporters regularly repeat this sad tale. "Very
little is changing for the Palestinian people on the ground," I heard BBC World
Service Cairo correspondent Christian Fraser tell listeners three times in a 45
minute period the other evening.

In fact nothing could be further from the truth. I had spent that day in the
West Bank's largest city, Nablus. The city is bursting with energy, life and
signs of prosperity, in a way I have not previously seen in many years of
covering the region.

As I sat in the plush office of Ahmad Aweidah, the suave British-educated banker
who heads the Palestinian Securities Exchange, he told me that the Nablus stock
market was the second best-performing in the world so far in 2009, after
Shanghai. (Aweidah's office looks directly across from the palatial residence of
Palestinian billionaire Munib al-Masri, the wealthiest man in the West Bank.)

Later I met Bashir al-Shakah, director of Nablus's gleaming new cinema, where
four of the latest Hollywood hits were playing that day. Most movies were sold
out, he noted, proudly adding that the venue had already hosted a film festival
since it opened in June.


MORE MERCEDES THAN IN TEL AVIV

Wandering around downtown Nablus the shops and restaurants I saw were full.
There were plenty of expensive cars on the streets. Indeed I counted
considerably more BMWs and Mercedes than I've seen, for example, in downtown
Jerusalem or Tel Aviv.

And perhaps most importantly of all, we had driven from Jerusalem to Nablus
without going through any Israeli checkpoints. The government of Benjamin
Netanyahu has removed them all since the Israeli security services (with the
encouragement and support of President George W. Bush) were allowed, over recent
years, to crush the intifada, restore security to the West Bank and set up the
conditions for the economic boom that is now occurring. (There was one border
post on the return leg of the journey, on the outskirts of Jerusalem, but the
young female guard just waved me and the two Palestinians I was traveling with,
through.)

The shops and restaurants were also full when I visited Hebron recently, and I
was surprised to see villas comparable in size to those on the Cote d'Azur or
Bel Air had sprung up on the hills around the city. Life is even better in
Ramallah, where it is difficult to get a table in a good restaurant. New
apartment buildings, banks, brokerage firms, luxury car dealerships and health
clubs are to be seen. In Qalqilya, another West Bank city that was previously a
hotbed of terrorists and bomb-makers, the first ever strawberry crop is being
harvested in time to cash in on the lucrative Christmas markets in Europe. Local
Palestinian farmers have been trained by Israeli agriculture experts and Israel
supplied them with irrigation equipment and pesticides.


A NEW PLANNED CITY

A new Palestinian city, Ruwabi, is to be built soon north of Ramallah. Two weeks
ago, the Jewish National Fund, an Israeli charity, helped plant 3,000 tree
seedlings for a forested area the Palestinian planners say they would like to
develop on the edge of the new city. Israeli experts are also helping the
Palestinians plan public parks and other civic amenities.

Outsiders are beginning to take note of the turnaround too. The official PLO
Wafa news agency reported last week that the 3rd quarter of 2009 witnessed near
record tourism in the Palestinian Authority, with 135,939 overnight hotel stays
in 89 hotels that are now open. Almost half the guests come from the U.S or
Europe.

Palestinian economic growth so far this year - in a year dominated by economic
crisis elsewhere - has been an impressive 7 percent according to the IMF, though
Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayad, himself a former World Bank and IMF
employee, says it is in fact 11 percent, partly helped along by strong economic
performances in neighboring Israel.


NO, NOT A CONCENTRATION CAMP

In Gaza too, the shops and markets are crammed with food and goods - see for
example, the photos from last Friday's Palestine Today newspaper about the Eid
celebrations in Gaza: www.paltoday.com/arabic/News-64161.html. These are not the
pictures you are ever likely to see on the BBC or Le Monde or The New York
Times. No, Gaza is not like a "concentration camp," nor is the "humanitarian
crisis in Gaza is on the scale of Darfur," as British journalist Lauren Booth
(who is also Tony Blair's sister-in-law) has said.

In June, The Washington Post's Jackson Diehl related how Palestinian President
Mahmoud Abbas had told him why he had turned down Ehud Olmert's offer last year
to create a Palestinian state on 97 percent of the West Bank (with three percent
of pre-1967 Israeli land being added to make up the shortfall). "In the West
Bank we have a good reality," Abbas told Diehl. "The people are living a normal
life," he added with a candor he rarely employs when addressing Western
journalists

Nablus stock exchange head Ahmad Aweidah went further in explaining to me why
there is no rush to declare statehood, saying ordinary Palestinians need the IDF
to help protect them from Hamas, as their own security forces aren't ready to do
so by themselves yet.


BORDER DISPUTES ALL OVER THE WORLD

The truth is that an independent Palestine is now quietly being built, with
Israeli assistance. So long as the Obama administration and European politicians
don't clumsily meddle as they have in the past and make unrealistic demands for
the process to be completed more quickly than it can be, I am confident the
outcome will be a positive one. (The last time an American president - Bill
Clinton in 2000 - tried to hurry things along unrealistically, it merely
resulted in blowing up in everybody's faces - literally - and set back hopes for
peace by some years.)

Israelis and Palestinians may never agree on borders that will satisfy everyone.
But that doesn't mean they won't live in peace. Not all Germans and French agree
who should control Alsace Lorraine. Poles and Russians, Slovenes and Croats,
Britons and Irish, and peoples all over the world, have border disputes. But
that doesn't keep them from coexisting with one another. Nor - so long as
partisan journalists and human rights groups don't mislead Western politicians
into making bad decisions - will it prevent Israelis and Palestinians from doing
so.

(Tom Gross is the former Jerusalem correspondent of the Sunday Telegraph.)


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

*RED ALERT :: European Union Moves To Recognize Palestinian State with
Jerusalem as Its Capital

*

Dear Friend of Jerusalem,

For months, One Jerusalem has been reporting on the growing support in the
international community to demonize Israel and to reward Arab militants with
a State with its headquarters in Jerusalem.

[image: RED ALERT :: European Union Moves To Recognize Palestinian State with
Jerusalem as Its Capital]
<http://www.onejerusalem.org/donate.php>Yesterday,
this movement came closer to reality
<http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArtVty.jhtml?sw=EU&itemNo=1131988>
.

European countries, led by Sweden, have declared their intent to formally
recognize a Palestinian state and to emasculate Israel's current and historic
capital.

Once again, One Jerusalem has been thrust into a leadership position to lead the
fight against this major campaign to undermine the foundation of the State of
Israel. We have been asked and are working with senior officials in the State of
Israel in developing a strategy that will defend the Jewish State.

Our expertise and our international network are seen as essential assets  in
mobilizing Israel's friends and allies in defense of the Jewish State.

If we are to win this battle, we need your continued support. If you can, please
consider making a donation <http://www.onejerusalem.org/donate.php> today. Any
amount contributed will make a difference. Even five dollars.

The forces against us are formidable but our potential resources are even
greater. They have Saudi oil money, European tax dollars, but we have you and
truth and justice on our side.

Please make a donation today <http://www.onejerusalem.org/donate.php>.

Sincerely,
Allen Roth & David Goder
*www.OneJerusalem.org* <http://www.onejerusalem.org/>


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Expert Calls for Law Against Foreign Political Intervention
by Gil Ronen
Published: 12/03/09, 10:49 PM / Last Update: 12/03/09, 10:57 PM
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/134794

(IsraelNN.com) The influential anti-Zionist organizations in Israel are funded
by European Union member states, a researcher for the Institute for Zionist
Strategy told Arutz Sheva. The researcher, Adi Arbel, said that European states
achieve their aim of influencing Israeli policies by funding groups like Peace
Now, Adallah, Yesh Din and B'Tselem.

Arbel said that it was time to legislate laws that would fight this phenomenon.
"In the United States there is a law called the 'Foreign Agent Registration
Act'," he explained. "Organizations that receive funds from foreign governments
have to work in complete transparency and publish proper disclosure regarding
every position paper or research that they publish, and say who funded it. The
purpose is very clear – to have laws here in Israel, too, that will make it
mandatory to have the same transparency as in the US and that will show everyone
where the money to these groups comes from."

Arbel said he was convinced that if this legislation passes, those countries
would cease transferring funds to Israeli leftist groups. "These countries find
it convenient to work secretly through those non-governmental organizations
(NGOs). It is their indirect way of influencing what goes on in Israel. If those
EU countries are exposed, they will stop transferring contributions."

The NGOs in question cause Israel great damage, he went on to say. "We saw that
they take their information outside. They took out information to the Durban
racism conference which made declarations against Israel, and they sent
information to Judge Goldstone, who based his report on them."

Arbel said that the anti-Zionist groups have been exerting political pressure to
try and prevent the information about their funding: "We organized a conference
with Minister Michael Eitan and we invited those groups to come to the
discussions. In response, they wrote a joint letter asking leftist MKs not to
participate in the conference. That is why MK Daniel Ben Simon from Labor did
not come and other MKs from Meretz also were missing. They want to silence us
and this is strange, considering the fact that these are organizations that
represent democracy."

the video of this startling and beautiful solar eclipse is only 2.25 minutes
long. worth the watch. the light rays form a magen david at the end. quite an
unlikely constelation of solar energy. note the comments below the video screen.



david ml


>
>
http://translate.google.com/translate?client=tmpg&hl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.terre\
disrael.com%2Fwordpress%2F%3Fp%3D12509&langpair=fr|en


My translation of the Hebrew on the screen:

a magen david was seen in the last solar eclipse of this year.

this full solar eclipse seen world-wide was the longest of this century, 7
minutes.

you can see the magen david in the last few seconds of the video as the magen
david is formed by the sun's light rays at the very end of the eclipse.

Per our Sages, a solar eclipse is an evil omen for the non-Jews.
Per our Sages, a solar eclipse in the month of AV is an evil omen for non-Jews
and a portent of war and destruction.

The 7 minutes symbolizes the 7th millennium.....we are near the end.


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

"The Legal Foundation and Borders of Israel under International Law" By Howard
Grief

http://www.think-israel.org/mehlman.griefbook.html

"The Legal Foundation and Borders of Israel under International Law" By Howard
Grief Pub Date: October 2008
ISBN-10: 9657344522, ISBN-13: 9789657344521
Publisher: Mazo (mazopublishers@...)
With The Legal Foundation and Borders of Israel under International Law (Mazo
Publishers, Jerusalem) Canadian-born Israeli constitutional scholar and lawyer
Howard Grief has given us a book that shatters every myth, lie,
misrepresentation and distortion employed over the 61 years of Israel's
existence to negate the sovereign rights of the Jewish People to their national
home.

It is a lengthy treatise - 660 pages plus a 50-page appendix - but the Jewish
people's long and tortuous struggle to retrieve their stolen patrimony deserves
nothing less than full disclosure. Anyone who has ever been at a loss to counter
the slanders and calumnies that are the stock in trade of the Israel-bashers and
anti-Semites on both the Left and Right will treasure every one of its 20
illuminating chapters.

Rooted in the premise that the best antidote to a myriad of small and medium
sized fabrications is the exposure of the whole cloth from which they've been
woven, The Legal Foundation lays bare two dominant myths that have shaped
popular perspectives on Israel. The first is the fallacy that Jewish sovereignty
over the land of Israel was the joint product of the 1947 United Nations
Partition and the May 15th, 1948 termination of the British Mandate for
Palestine. In fact, as Grief points out, Jewish sovereignty in Palestine had
been validated under international law 28 years earlier. "The legal title of the
Jewish People to the mandated territory of Palestine in all of its historical
parts," he informs us, was first recognized on April 24, 1920 when the
post-World War I Allied Supreme Council (Britain, France, Italy and Japan),
meeting in San Remo, Italy, "converted the 1917 'Balfour Declaration' into a
binding legal document."

How "binding" may be construed from the fact that its wording gave effect to the
provisions of Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations and became
incorporated into the Mandate for Palestine. Indeed, the "San Remo Resolution,"
within which the Allied Supreme Council's decision is contained, constitutes
what the author terms "the foundation document of the State of Israel, the legal
existence of which is directly traceable from that document."

That the Jewish People were unable to exercise their sovereignty in Palestine
for 28 years - it being assigned to the British Mandatory power as their de
facto agent - did in no way detract from their ‘de jure’ rights to the land
under international law during that interregnum.

In this thesis, Grief is ironically supported by both a passionate Zionist, U.S.
Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis and one of Zionism's most implacable
opponents, post World War I British Foreign Secretary Lord George Nathaniel
Curzon. Brandeis believed that with the passage of the San Remo Resolution, the
debate over who owned Palestine was effectively over. Curzon called the
Resolution the "Magna Carta" of the Jewish People.

From the initial mis-attribution of Jewish sovereignty in Palestine to the 1947
Partition Plan rather than the 1920 San Remo Resolution, it was just a hop and a
skip to a second major mis-representation of Israel's international legal status
- the erroneous assumption that the Partition Plan and the May 1948 termination
of the British Mandate somehow erased the Jewish People's rights to Palestine in
all its historical parts and dimensions enunciated at San Remo, and implemented
under the terms of the League of Nations Covenant. Those "parts and dimensions"
were defined inter alia, as including the
northwestern portions of the Golan and most of present day Jordan by
the "Franco-British Boundary Convention" in Paris.

The presumptive cancellation of those rights, Grief submits, is thoroughly
discredited by "the principle of acquired rights," codified in the 1969 Vienna
Convention on the "Law of Treaties," and the "doctrine of estoppel." The first,
he asserts, insures that "the fundamental rights of the Jewish people did not
lapse with the international process [the San Remo Resolution] which brought
them into existence. The second further guarantees that these rights cannot
simply be abrogated or denied by those states which previously recognized their
existence."

Taken together, they provide what the author terms a "definitive answer [to]
anyone who claims that Jewish legal rights and title of sovereignty over all of
Palestine and the land of Israel did not continue after the end of the Mandate
for Palestine...except in the allotted boundaries of the UN Partition Plan..."

Noteworthy among the states that wholeheartedly endorsed Jewish sovereignty over
Palestine in all its "historical parts and dimensions" was the United States of
America - the same U.S.A that today regards Israel's presence in Judea and
Samaria as an illegal "occupation" of lands upon which it favors the creation of
a Palestinian State. The Obama administration and the Bush administration that
preceded it are either unaware or have chosen to be unaware of the fact that the
1924 Anglo-American Convention on Palestine made the U.S. a "contracting party"
to the Mandate, further reinforcing a unanimously passed Joint Resolution of the
67th Congress two years earlier, signed by President Warren G. Harding,
recognizing a future Jewish State in "the whole of Palestine."

It needs to be borne in mind, Grief notes, that the Mandate for Palestine that
was ceremoniously incorporated into U.S. law in 1924 "was a constitution for the
projected Jewish state that made no provision for an Arab state and which
especially prohibited the partition of the country." Thus, he concludes, the
fierce exception the U.S. has taken to Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria
and its unremitting pressure for creation of a "Palestinian State" amount to a
repudiation of its signature to the Anglo-American Convention on Palestine. It
is in violation of American law and America's obligations under international
law.

The Legal Foundation and Borders of Israel under International Law is the
product of 25 years of independent research by Grief, a former adviser on
international law to the late Professor Yuval Ne'eman, Minister of Energy and
Infrastructure in the Shamir government and the father of Israel's nuclear
energy program. It is the kind of seminal work that seems destined to become
both an indispensable source for defenders of Israel's rights under
international law and a mirror on the events and personalities that transformed
a November 2, 1917 letter from British Foreign Secretary Lord Arthur James
Balfour to Lord Lionel Walter Rothschild into the trumpet call that awakened
Jewish nationhood from a 1,900-year coma.

The author's unsparing portrayal of France's opposition to the creation of a
Jewish state at San Remo and, when thwarted, its efforts at the Franco-British
Boundary Convention to confine it to the narrowest geographical limits, should
dismiss any notion that French anti-Zionism began with De Gaulle. By the same
token, the Zionist sympathies attributed to Winston Churchill by Martin Gilbert
and other historians withers in the face of the 1922 "White Paper" attached to
his name as then Colonial Secretary. Grief offers irrefutable evidence of its
having not only "negated" the Jewish state in Palestine that the Mandate
"required" of Britain, but of having elevated "Arab pretensions and aspirations
to such an extent that everything thereafter became muddled...subject to
continuous disputes as to what was really intended in the Mandate for
Palestine."

For the actual authorship of that document and the wreckage it made of the
original plan for the establishment of a Jewish state in all its "historic parts
and dimensions" under British tutelage, we have Herbert Samuel to thank the same
Herbert Samuel who worked closely with Chaim Weizmann in the Zionist
Organization and was later to pack it in for a "Lordship" and an appointment as
British High Commissioner to Palestine. In ironic contrast, Lord Curzon,
Balfour's successor as Foreign Secretary, who "detested" the idea of a Jewish
state, put loyalty above personal feelings at San Remo and Paris in arguing
manfully for the realization of Prime Minister David Lloyd George's vision of a
Jewish state comprised of all its ancient Biblical territories.

On the Jewish side, nobody comes off better in this saga than Brandeis, who
Grief portrays as "the only Zionist leader...who properly understood the natural
consequences of the legal recognition of the Balfour Declaration embodied in the
San Remo Resolution." Had Brandeis headed the Zionist Organization, the author
believes, "there is little doubt

that he would have successfully halted Britain's gross violation of its
[Mandatory] obligation ...to rebuild the Jewish state."

At the end of the day, it was Menachem Begin who provided the most heartbreaking
counterpoint to Lloyd George's vision of a Jewish state reconstituted in most,
if not all of its Biblical parts, Grief submits. Begin, national Zionism's
anointed champion, bearer of the torch lit by Herzl and passed to Jabotinsky,
not only failed to make Israel constitutionally whole by annexing Judea, Samaria
and Gaza (as he was expected to do), but in what the author describes as an act
of "unimaginable folly," brought to the Knesset in 1977 a plan to establish Arab
"self-rule" over those critical portions of the Jewish estate. In so doing, he
opened the portals wide for their identification as "unalloted," "disputed" and
finally "occupied" territories.

Nine months later, in September 1978, Begin crowned his "achievement" by
injecting the "self-rule" proposal into the negotiations with Egypt at Camp
David, offering to leave the final determination of sovereignty over Judea,
Samaria and Gaza to their inhabitants and "local representatives." Thirty one
years later, Israel remains bedeviled by that fateful decision.

                                                                                                                                                          
%%%
William Mehlman is Americans for a Safe Israel (AFSI)'s representative in
Israel. Howard Grief's book is sold on Amazon and Barnes & Noble. This article
appeared in the October 2009 issue of Mideast Outpost
(http://mideastoutpost.com/archives/000590.html).


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]