Middle East

Over the years, we've seen a number of different presidents, each with his own approach to the Middle East. For example:

• Carter favored the Arabs, and even today shows a clear bias against Israel.
• George W. Bush tried to be more even-handed, and during his 8-year term never invited Arafat to the White House -- unlike his predecessor, Bill Clinton.
• Obama showed a clear bias towards the Arabs. His first trip was to address the Arab world from Cairo.

But nothing Obama said to the Arab world compares to this appeal, ostensibly by Franklin Delano Roosevelt to the Arabs of West Africa:
Praise be unto the only God. In the name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful. O ye Moslems. O ye beloved sons of the Maghreb. May the blessing of God be upon you.

This is a great day for you and us, for all the sons of Adam who love freedom. Our numbers are as the leaves on the forest tress and as the grains of sand in the sea.

Behold. We the American Holy Warriors have arrived. We have come here to fight the great Jihad of Freedom.


We have come to set you free. We have sailed across the great sea in many ships, on many beaches we are landing, and our fighters swarm across the sands and into the city streets, and into the wide country sides, and along the highways.

Light fires on the hilltops; shout from your housetops, and from the high places, and say the sound of the drum be heard in the land, and the ululation of the women, and the voices even of small children.

Assemble along the highways to welcome your brothers.

We have come to set you free.

Speak with our fighting men and you will find them pleasing to the eye and gladdening to the heart. We are not as some other Christians whom ye have known, and who trample you under foot. Our soldiers consider you as their brothers, for we have been reared in the way of free men. Our soldiers have been told about your country and about their Moslem brothers and they will treat you with respect and with a friendly spirit in the eyes of God.

Look in their eyes and smiling faces, for they are Holy Warriors happy in their holy work. Greet us therefore as brothers as we will greet you, and help us.

If we are thirsty, show us the way to water. If we lose our way, lead us back to our camping places. Show us the paths over the mountains if need be, and if you see our enemies, the Germans or Italians, making trouble for us, kill them with knives or with stones or with any other weapon that you may have set your hands upon.

Help us as we have come to help you, and rich will be the reward unto us all who love justice and righteousness and freedom.

Pray for our success in battle, and help us, and God will help us both.

Lo, the day of freedom hath come.

May God grant his blessing upon you and upon us.

--Roosevelt [emphasis added]

This is from October 1942, when the British were able to stop Hitler's Afrika Korps at El Alamein during WWII. The Allies were finally confident they could keep the Nazis out of the Middle East. Leaflets containing Arabic translations of the appeal were distributed as part of the effort to exploit the situation by winning over the Muslims to their side.

The text was actually written by 2 US agents with help from one of their Muslim spies. Still, one would imagine that Roosevelt would have had to give his approval since his name appeared at the end of the text.

The text goes pretty far in order to win over his audience:

• The text uses the phrase "Holy Warriors," likely translated as Mujahideen, a term for those engaged in Jihad.
• The term Jihad implies more than a war. It was a religious obligation, so calling it a Jihad of Freedom might have sounded a bit strange to the Arab ear. Apparently, unlike today, there was no doubt as to the meaning of the word.
• Referring to the enemy as "other Christians" seems odd and unnecessary. Later, FDR identifies them as "Germans or Italians." But why identify them by religion? What is to be gained by establishing them as kuffar when the Allied forces themselves were Christian?
• The phrase "kill them with knives or with stones or with any other weapon that you may have set your hands upon" is one that could easily have been written by Hamas, or ISIS, today. That was a simpler time, when it was acknowledged that a stone was a weapon. Basically, the US itself was encouraging terrorism -- even lone wolf terrorism -- against its enemies.

It's not clear that the leaflets had any effect.
Meanwhile, the Germans made their own attempt to win over the Arabs.
In the spring of 1943, in an attempt to win over the Arabs to the Nazi side, Himmler wanted to "find out which passages of the Qur'an provide Muslims with the basis for the opinion that the Fuhrer has already been forecast in the Qur'an and that he has been authorized to complete the work of the Prophet."

Himmler was disappointed - there were no verses to support that claim, so something a bit more modest was suggested. Hitler could be advertised as “the returned ‘Isa (Jesus), who is forecast in the Qur’an and who, similar to the figure of the Knight George, defeats the giant and Jew-King Dajjal at the end of the world."

That led to printing one million pamphlets in Arabic to convince the Arabs to side with Germany. A sample:
O Arabs, do you see that the time of the Dajjal has come? Do you recognize him, the fat, curly-haired Jew who deceives and rules the whole world and who steals the land of the Arabs?… O Arabs, do you know the servant of God? He [Hitler] has already appeared in the world and already turned his lance against the Dajjal and his allies…. He will kill the Dajjal, as it is written, destroy his places and cast his allies into hell.The effort was a failure. The Arabs ended up preferring to fight on the side of the British in North Africa and the Middle East.

The efforts of the Nazis to enlist the help of the Arabs were based purely on pragmatic reasons, and not out of admiration for the Muslims themselves.

There are Nazi writing that refer to Islam as "the great retarder, which prevented all progress."

However, Hitler himself preferred Islam over Christianity, and felt that the actual problem was that Arabs didn't make the best Muslims:
...He reportedly described Islam as a more muscular belief system than Christianity and thus better suited for the Germany he wished to build.

According to Albert Speer, Hitler once offered a remarkable counterfactual history of Europe. He speculated about what might have been if the Muslim forces that invaded France during the eighth century had prevailed against their Frankish enemies at the Battle of Tours. “Hitler said that the conquering Arabs, because of their racial inferiority, would in the long run have been unable to contend with the harsher climate” of Northern Europe. Therefore, “ultimately not Arabs but Islamized Germans could have stood at the head of this Mohammedan Empire.Whether adopting The Muslim terminology, like the US or adapting and remaking Islam as the Nazis attempted, a lot of effort was put into winning over the Muslims as part of the war effort.

In the end, the Nazis failed miserably and the US pursuit of a 'Jihad of Freedom' is as distant as ever, and even their own "Arab Spring" did not last.

And no president since Roosevelt appears to have any better grasp of the Middle East.







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The other day, the following tweet got me thinking:

My favorite part of 2017 has been all the woke children. pic.twitter.com/r75SgiNkvn— Danielle Butcher (@DaniSButcher) August 18, 2017

Here is one of those favorites


Here is another:



It got me to thinking about how adults pass on their opinions, and sometimes their hate, on to their children.

But while it got me to thinking about how Palestinian Arabs in general, and Hamas in particular, do this, it also got me thinking closer to home.

I recall when I was teaching, I passed by a class learning Sefer Bamidbar (Numbers). They were learning about the quail mentioned in Chapter 11 and I could see one girl was confused. I went over and asked her what was puzzling her and she said she did not know what the Hebrew word "slav" meant. Rather than just tell her, I asked her "well, what is the name of the Vice-President?" With eyes wide, she turned to me and asked "it means idiot?"

Weeks later, at parent-teacher conferences, the parents assured me they had no idea where their daughter got the idea to say that, and insisted they did not talk that way at home. I had every reason to believe them. I was not concerned.

But I am concerned about something else I remember.

I remember a post on Michelle Malkin's blog years ago in 2005. She wrote about products that were then on sale online on CafePress.

Products such as this:

Anti-Tom Delay T-Shirt, suggesting he kill himself.
Credit: Mike's America
But also this:
“Kill Bush” magnet depicting the president holding a gun to his head
with the caption “End Terrorism Now” Credit: Michelle MalkinAnd this:
Bright yellow “Kill Bush” t-shirt splattered with blood.
Credit: Michelle MalkinAnd this:
“Kill Bush” messenger bag with a macho pic of John Kerry.
Credit: Michelle Malkin
And this:
Cartoon based on Hadith encouraging murder of JewsActually, the cartoon encourages the killing of Jews, not Bush -- but is the incitement really that much different?

Malkin links to an article about a columnist at The Guardian who wanted Bush assassinated:On Saturday, columnist Charlie Brooker told the readers of the far-Left British newspaper Guardian:

On November 2, the entire civilised world will be praying, praying Bush loses. And Sod's law dictates he'll probably win, thereby disproving the existence of God once and for all. The world will endure four more years of idiocy, arrogance and unwarranted bloodshed, with no benevolent deity to watch over and save us. John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald, John Hinckley Jr. - where are you now that we need you?Brooker did "apologize" later to those who misunderstood his ironic humor :
The final sentence of a column in The Guide on Saturday caused offence to some readers. The Guardian associates itself with the following statement from the writer.

"Charlie Brooker apologises for any offence caused by his comments relating to President Bush in his TV column, Screen Burn. The views expressed in this column are not those of the Guardian. Although flippant and tasteless, his closing comments were intended as an ironic joke, not as a call to action - an intention he believed regular readers of his humorous column would understand. He deplores violence of any kind."

The article has now been removed from the Guardian Unlimited website.Malkin goes on to note that in April 2005, Pat Buchanan suffered multiple assaults on campus. He was not the only one. The Washington Times reported back then about William Kristol and Patrick Buchanan at two separate campus events having pies and salad dressing tossed at them, while the media played it as a joke. The editorial concluded:
Violence, of course, should be intolerable no matter who is on the receiving end, and must be rejected by people of goodwill, whatever their political ideology. It is ironic that college campuses — which typically style themselves as bastions of free speech and tolerance — are increasingly the scene of intolerant, thuggish behavior. These days it is being directed at folks who don’t subscribe to the prevailing liberal orthodoxies.This was over a decade ago. What we see happening now on college campuses around the country is nothing new. The cynic in me wonders if the media taking this seriously now might be because of whom this can be blamed on.

No, I am not claiming that this is a purely left wing phenomenon. I am not interested in pointing a finger in that regard.

My concern is that the kind of hate exhibited against President Bush may be likely to emerge against President Trump, especially considering how the media, both the old media and especially the newer social media, have early on indicated the lack of any line which they will not cross, or at least test.

And I wonder again how different this is from what we regularly read about Abbas and Hamas doing to demonize Israel and incite hatred -- and much worse -- against Israel. The government, laws and cultural are very different, but we are still only into the first year of Trump's term, and the media onslaught shows no sign of abating. It continues to demonize, delegitimize and apply a double standard to Trump. If the worst that people say is that want to impeach Trump, I can live with that.

And no, I am not a fan of Donald Trump.

As a side note, in some cases, the cure being offered on those campuses is worse than the disease -- and in fact is nothing more than the disease claiming to be the cure in order to pursue its agenda.

Purdue University's Bill Mullen and Stanford University's David Palumbo-Liu have created what they are calling the Campus Antifascist Network (CAN), which they claim is dedicated to combating "fascists" who use "‘free speech' as a façade for attacking faculty who have stood in solidarity with [targeted] students."

But neither Palumbo-Liu nor Mullen are very particular about the kind of free speech they are willing to protect:
Meanwhile, both Palumbo-Liu and Mullen have been leading figures in the academic campaign to boycott, divest from, and sanction Israel. In 2014, Mullen issued a call on anti-Israel site Electronic Intifada to "de-Zionize our campuses." Palumbo-Liu, in a 2016 piece titled, "9 things you need to know about the Israeli occupation of Palestine," recommended readers look to alternative news sources for their information on the region, including several sites accused of publishing anti-Semitic content. He later updated the article to remove If Americans Knew from the list, after receiving backlash for recommending an outlet that has repeatedly published conspiracy theories about Jews. IAK has been marginalized even by virulently anti-Israel groups, such as the U.S. Campaign to End the Occupation and Jewish Voice for Peace. So yes, while threats against Israel in the Middle East grow stronger, so too the threats against both Israel and Jews in the US and on college campuses grow stronger as well. But the heated language on campuses is spreading into society in general and into the media in particular.

The hate being exploited by Abbas and Hamas is one of the reasons for the dysfunctional leadership of the Palestinian Arabs.

We cannot afford for a similar language of hate to be exploited to undercut the US.





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We know that historically, there has never been a sovereign, Palestinian state.

But if there has never been a state, a country, called Palestine -- then what did the Arabs call themselves when that territory was under Muslim rule?

In his book, From Babel to Dragomans, Bernard Lewis includes a talk he gave in 2001, under the title "The British Mandate for Palestine in Historical Perspective." In just a few understated paragraphs, Lewis hints at the importance of The British Mandate for the Palestinian Arabs:

The name [Palestine] survived briefly in the early Arab Empire, and then disappeared. The Crusaders called the country the Holy Land and their state the Kingdom of Jerusalem After the end of the ancient Jewish states, the capital of the administrative districts called Palestine were not in Jerusalem but elsewhere, in Caesarea, in Ramleh, in Lydda, in various other places The only time between the ancient and modern Jewish states when Jerusalem was the capital was the Crusader Kingdom, the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem as it was called. And that was a comparatively brief interlude. [emphasis added]When Arabs today call themselves Palestinians, that is a new phenomenon. For centuries, the name "Palestine" had fallen into disuse and had actually disappeared altogether.

A secondary point Lewis raises is that outside of the crusaders, the city of Jerusalem was considered a capital only 2 times in history: as the capital of ancient Israel and of the modern reestablished state of Israel.

Jerusalem has never been the capital of an Arab territory, despite being the "3rd most holy" place in Islam, directly contradicting the current claims to East Jerusalem made by Abbas and by UNESCO.

Lewis continues:
Even the adjective Palestinian is comparatively new. This, I need hardly remind you, is a region of ancient civilization and of deep-rooted and often complex identities. But Palestine was not one of them. People might identify themselves for various purposed, by religion, by descent, or by allegiance to a particular state or ruler, or  sometimes locality, But when they did it locally it was general either the city and immediate district or the larger province, so they would have been Jerusalemites or Jaffaites or the like, or Syrians, identifying either the larger province of Syria, in classical Arabic usage, ShamWhile the name "Palestine" is the one that Rome assigned in order to erase the Jewish connection to the land, that name "Palestine" was itself forgotten as well. Using the name Palestine today is itself a modern anomaly in a land of ancient and deep-rooted history. Those who lived in the land during the Ottoman occupation of the land did not call themselves Palestinians -- that is something that would come later, in the 20th century.

If not as Palestinians, then how did the Arabs in the identify themselves?

In The Case for Israel, Alan Dershowitz explains:
Under Ottoman rule, which prevailed between 1516 and 1918, Palestine was divided into several districts, called sanjaks. These sanjaks were part of administrative units called vilayets. The Largest portion of Palestine was part of the vilayet of Syria and was governed from Damascus by a pasha, thus explaining why Palestine was commonly referred to as southern Syria. Following a ten-year occupation by Egypt in the 1830s, Palestine was divided into the vilayet of Beirut, which covered Lebanon and the northern part of Palestine (down to what is now Tel Aviv); and the independent sanjak of Jerusalem, was covered roughly from Jaffa to Jerusalem and south to Gaza and Be'er Sheva. It is thus unclear what it would mean to say the the Palestinians were the people who originally populated the "nation" of Palestine [italicizes in original]. The map below, published by Carta, illustrates the division of the land in the 1830s as described by Dershowitz:

Map from "Israel's Right to Live in Peace Within Defensible Frontiers:
Secure and Recognized Boundaries," by Carta, Jerusalem 1971, p.19. Posted with permission
There were no set boundaries to Palestine, which is what you would expect when there was no political, sovereign state -- just another Ottoman territory.

So if the name "Palestine" was forgotten for centuries, who revived the name -- thus making it possible for the Arabs to take the name Palestine and Palestinian for their own?

Lewis continues:
The constitution or the formation of a political entity called Palestine which eventually gave rise to a nationality called Palestinian and the reconstitution of Jerusalem as the capital were, it seems to me, very important, and as it turns out, lasting innovations of the British Mandate... (p. 154)Instead of Abbas demanding an apology from Great Britain for the Balfour Declaration, he and all of those who want to call themselves "Palestinians" owe a debt of gratitude to the British. After the Arabs had long forgotten the name "Palestine" it was the British, whose Mandate was based on the Balfour Declaration, who themselves re-established the name of Palestine.

Just as the British re-established the name Palestine as the name for land, it was naturally used for coins and stamps:




This was during the time of the British Mandate.
But what about during the 400 years of the Ottoman Empire preceding it?

According to the Encyclopedia Judaica
Both Turkish and European coins circulated in Erez Israel during Ottoman rule. Tokens issued by various communities, such as the Jews and the German Templers, and by some business firms, were also in circulation...granted special rights to some European powers and resulted in French gold napoleons and Egyptian coins being brought into circulation alongside Turkish coins (5:723)Contrast this multiplicity of currencies and the lack of an official local currenciy with the situation that developed under the British:
On the British occupation of Palestine, the Egyptian pound was made legal tender in the territory. It was replaced in 1927 by the Palestine pound...the designs, prepared by the Mandatory government, were intended to be as politically innocuous as possible, the only feature besides the inscriptions being an olive branch or wreath of olive leaves. The inscriptions were trilingual, giving the name of the country, Palestine, and the value in English, Hebrew, and Arabic. As a concession to the Jewish community, the initials "Alef Yud" ("Erez Israel") appeared in brackets following the name Palestine. (5:723-4)The only coins ever minted with the name "Palestine" on them were the ones issued during the British Mandate while it governed that territory under the authority granted it by League of Nations. No coins with the name Palestine were ever minted before then. There was no reason to, since there was no country called Palestine and no Palestinian identity.

In his book, Islam in History: Ideas, People, and Events in the Middle East And the Jews has a chapter on "Palestine: On the History and Geography of a Name" Lewis notes that the name Palestine has a very different meaning for Arabs and Jews:
It [the name Palestine] had never been used by Jews, for whom the normal name of the country, from the time of the Exodus to the present day, was Eretz Israel. It was no longer used by Muslims, for whom it had never meant more than an administrative su-district, and it had been forgotten even in that limited sense.The British use of the name Palestine was a convenience, renewing a word that held no special meaning for Arabs and had fallen into disuse. The Arabs went along with the British usage. The Jews on the other had not only historical but indigenous roots to the land, spanning 3 millennia. They preserved that connection wherever they could by incorporating the ancient name, whenever the official name Palestine was used.

Without the Balfour Declaration, and the British Mandate that was based on it, the name Palestine -- which had been forgotten in the region -- would have continued to be forgotten.

But Jews will always have Eretz Yisrael.




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Remember after Trump won the election, how the media suddenly became so concerned about antisemitism? We were bombarded with editorials and op-eds about a sharp rise in Jew-hatred, insisting that Trump bore the brunt of responsibility.

You might have forgotten.

After it saw the potential in attacking Trump for alleged ties to Russia, the media apparently dropped the "Trump encourages antisemitism!" meme and decided to pursue a more promising line of attack.

But over the course of one week, from February 15 through 21, the media claimed antisemitism was on the rise because of Trump, and The Washington Post featured pieces such as these:

• Trump was asked a question about anti-Semitism. His answer was about the electoral college.
• A CNN panel debates the president’s anti-Semitism trump card: His daughter Ivanka
• President Trump thinks asking him to condemn anti-Semitism is ‘insulting.’ Why?
• Why was it so darned hard to get Trump to condemn anti-Semitism?
• A brief history of Donald Trump addressing questions about racism and anti-Semitism

Matters had gone so far that by March 8, David Bernstein wrote a piece at The Washington Post on how out of proportion the claims of a rise in antisemitism had become:
...I’ve been rather taken aback by the panic in the Jewish community over American anti-Semitism since Donald Trump won the election. The recent spate of hoax bombing threats to Jewish community centers and other Jewish institutions around the country has been a precipitating factor, but the fear is drastically out of proportion to the threat; no bombs have been found, and there are no indications that there is any real physical threat to Jews.Meanwhile, from February 21 to 23, The New York Times chimed in with:

• At Jewish Cemetery, Seeking Answers Amid Heartbreak
• The New American Anti-Semitism
• When Hate Haunts a Graveyard

At the end of that month, Ira Stoll wrote about Trump’s Big Achievement: Making the New York Times Care About Antisemitism, noting that while there were 10 incidents of Jewish graveyard desecration from 2008 to 2016, only 2 of them were reported by The New York Times.

Well -- good news!

Judging by the media's change in focus over the last few months, antisemitism is apparently no longer a problem.
Or is it just that the media has gone back to ignoring antisemitism again?

That would explain the media's reaction to 2 actual cases of antisemitism, cases that cannot be blamed on Donald Trump.

Imam Ammar Shahin. Source: YouTube screenshot
On July 21, Imam Ammar Shahin delivered a sermon at the Islamic Center of Davis, northern California -- inciting hatred against Jews:
Allah does not change the situation of people 'until they change their own situation.' The Prophet Muhammad said: 'Judgment Day will not come until the Muslims fight the Jews, and the Jews hide behind stones and trees, and the stones and the trees say: Oh Muslim, oh servant of Allah...' They will not say: Oh Egyptian, oh Palestinian, oh Jordanian, oh Syrian, oh Afghan, oh Pakistani. The Prophet Muhammad says that they time will come, the Last Hour will not take place until the Muslims fight the Jews. We don't say if it is in Palestine or another place. Until they fight... When that war breaks out, they will run and hide behind every rock, and house, and wall, and trees. The house, the wall, and the trees will call upon the Muslims. It will say: Oh Muslim... It will not say: Oh Palestinian, oh Egyptian, oh Syrian, oh Afghan, oh Pakistani, oh Indian... No, it will say: Oh Muslim. Muslim. When Muslims come back... 'Come, there is someone behind me – except for the Gharqad tree, which is the tree of the Jews. Except for a certain tree that they are growing today in Palestine, in that area, except this form of tree, which they are growing today... That's the tree that will not speak to the Muslims. [emphasis added]In that sermon, Shahin quotes a Hadith known for its inclusion by Hamas terrorists in their charter:
The hour of judgment shall not come until the Muslims fight the Jews and kill them, so that the Jews hide behind trees and stones, and each tree and stone will say: 'Oh Muslim, oh servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him,' except for the Gharqad tree, for it is the tree of the Jews." (Recorded in the Hadith collections of Bukhari and Muslim)While he does not quote the last part about the trees telling Muslims to kill the Jews, Shahin's audience that day was likely familiar with the Hadith and could guess the point he was making, based on the rest of his sermon.

Jews in the area got the Imam's point too:
“He spelled out what he wishes for every Muslim who follows the Quran and the Hadith to follow what the Hadith says which is …find the Jews hiding behind trees and stones and kill them,” said Sorele Brownstein.

“To me, it’s clear this is direct incitement,” said Shmary Brownstein.

Rabbi Shmary Brownstein and his wife Sorele are the leaders of the Chabad in Davis. They say they’ve been on guard since the video was posted online. Their family is now being harassed by drivers passing by their home, which is also a house of worship.Following the outcry over his sermon, and before his "apology" Shahin's gave an interview to CBS News -- and Shahin was not inclined to be apologetic:



The mosque where Shahin preaches was also not in an apologizing mood:
The mosque said in a statement Tuesday: “MEMRI, an extremist agenda driven organization that supports Israel’s occupation of Palestinian land, and other Islamophobic news organizations, accused Imam Shahin of anti-Semitism, quoting edited, mistranslated, passages of the sermon out of context.

“If the sermon was misconstrued, we sincerely apologize to anyone offended,” it said. “We will continue our commitment to interfaith and community harmony.” [emphasis added]Only after the outcry persisted, did Shahin finally apologize.

Meanwhile, on the same day Shahin preached against Jews, another California Imam, Mahmoud Harmoush, was praying for the destruction of Israel:



"Between World War I and World War II, so much of the immigration that came from Europe toward the Islamic world, whether North Africa or the Mediterranean area – Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, and all of this... Muslims were opening their homes and saying: Those are our brethren, persecuted by the Christians in Europe. The Jews were coming from Germany, Poland, Italy, and everywhere else, and [the Muslims] would give them rooms, shelter them, and help them out, not knowing that there was a plan. Within the thirty years between the two incidents, until 1948 and the British occupation, everything was plotted to take over that beautiful land, in the way that we all know – with killing, crime, and massacres..."One brother sent me a video, showing a naked woman walking into the holy mosque under the occupation forces, just to insult more and more the psyche, honor, and dignity of the Muslims..."Allah wants us to have jihad in our lives, no matter what and where we are and what is happening. That's until in our hearts, we accept what is true and we reject what is false..."When you happen to be in Jerusalem, for example, around the holy mosque, and people are shooting you, putting you in the hospital, or killing you, you have to resist and fight back as much as you can. Otherwise our life will be meaningless..."Dear brothers and sisters, the conflict is not only in Palestine. They are going there, and they will be demanding that next..."I promise you, it is not only Palestine. If you are going to be like that, most of the Middle East, and even, as I said, Mecca and Medina...They will say: 'Muhammad has died. He left only daughters.' Muhammad died, and he left female children, who cannot fight. Then they will call, in their fighting: 'Oh, we will take revenge for Khaybar.' Where is Khaybar? They will go back to it. They will make every Muslim pay, one way or the other. Wake up, it is time to be a Muslim. Prayer is not the only thing..."Oh Allah, liberate the Al-Aqsa Mosque and all the Muslim lands from the unjust tyrants and the occupiers. Oh Allah, destroy them, they are no match for You. Oh Allah, disperse them, and rend them asunder. Turn them into booty in the hands of the Muslims. [emphasis]Like Shahin, Harmoush, does not directly mention Israel; he directs their hatred -- and Allah's destruction -- toward Jews.

So how did the media -- the same media that was so concerned about antisemitism early in the year -- react to these antisemitic sermons?

The reaction of the Washington Post was not to report on the antisemitic sermon when it was actually given. Instead, the newspaper waited until after Shahin finally apologized.

At Legal Insurrection, David Gerstman wrote that the Washington Post whitewashes California Imam’s “Annihilate the Jews” sermon:
For a full week The Washington Post was silent about this crude anti-Semitism. Only a week later did the Post cover it and a number of things are readily apparent.

1. The Post only reported once Shahin offered a dubious apology.
2. The Post never reported on Harmoush’s sermon. Harmoush did not apologize.
3. The Post reported uncritically a false claim made by Shahin and one of his supporters.
4. The Post got an expert to reinterpret part of his sermon so that it was somewhat less offensive.

The first two items are related. The news, which was first reported by MEMRI, on July 21 was that two California imams gave virulently anti-Semitic speeches calling for the killing of the Jews. That was the news.The false claim referred to is that Israel supposedly closed the Al Aqsa Mosque. The truth is that it was closed at first after Arab terrorists killed 2 Israeli guards at the Temple Mount, while Israel finished its investigation. The Al Aqsa Mosque was then reopened, but Muslims were urged by the Waqf not to enter, because of the cameras and metal detectors installed for security.

The expert reinterpretation referred to was done by Nair Harb Michel, who basically substituted "desecrations of the Jews" for "filth of the Jews" and "defeat each of them" for "annihilate them".

Gerstman also notices that the reporter, Boorstein, acknowledges receiving a statement from Shahin on Wednesday -- 2 days before her article came out -- but held off until Shahin officially offered his public "apology". Again, The Washington Post appeared more interested in the damage control than in reporting about the kind of antisemitism they were apparently so keen on reporting earlier this year.

But regardless of how you translate the sermon, the fact remains that Shahin quoted a Hadith  which clearly describes, if not encourages, killing Jews.

The Washington Post was not the only newspaper to play down the threatening nature of Shahin's sermon.

CAMERA noted that the Sacramento Bee Sanitizes Anti-Semitic Sermon. Among the criticisms made about the newspaper story:

• The Sacramento Bee  reported the sermon's content as "Islamic texts about an end-times battle," deliberately concealing from its readers Shahin's actual language about Muslims fighting Jews.
• The Sacramento Bee reported that Mosque officials claimed the imam was mistranslated and thus taken out of context, yet in his sermon Shahin made statements about a "corrupted" Jewish Torah and the "Muslims fight the Jews," which were made in English and clearly illustrate his intent.
• The reporter, Anita Chabria, asked University of California, Berkeley, Near East professor Hatem Bazian to check the MEMRI translation, which he said "missed nuanced distinctions". However, CAMERA notes that Bazian
  is the founder of the radical anti-Israel group Students for Justice in Palestine, slurs Israel as an apartheid state, and is affiliated with, and fund-raised for, groups and individuals that have illegally financed Hamas, a designated terror organization committed to Israel's destruction.

CAMERA also refers to MEMRI, which notes that Shahin's sermon from the previous week was along the same antisemitic lines:
May Allah protect the Al-Aqsa Mosque from the harm of the Jews. Oh Allah, protect our brothers in the land of Palestine. Oh Allah, let us pray in the Al-Aqsa Mosque before we die. Oh Allah, allow Jerusalem to be liberated. Oh Allah, liberate the Al-Aqsa Mosque from the filth of the Jews. Oh Allah, show us the wonders of Your ability that you inflict upon them. Oh Allah, show us the black day that You inflict upon them. Oh Allah, show us the black day that You inflict upon those who wish ill upon [the Al-Aqsa] Mosque. Oh Allah, keep them preoccupied with one another, and make a deterrent example out of them. Oh Allah, count them one by one and destroy them down to the very last one. Do not spare any of them. Oh Allah, destroy them and do not spare their young or their elderly. Oh Allah, show us the black day that You inflict upon those who occupy Palestine. Oh Allah, show us the wonders of Your ability that you inflict upon them. Oh Allah, turn Jerusalem and Palestine into a graveyard for the Jews.On the other hand, The New York Times settled for a bare-bones report about the sermon, provided by the Associated Press. It noted:
In a July 21 sermon, Shahin condoned the annihilation of Jews and those restricting access to the Al-Aqsa Mosque.The truth of course is that Shahin did not condone the annihilation of Jews -- he was encouraging it. His apology is noted, but leaves unclear how an imam can talk about annihilating Jews yet can apologize -- and apparently have his apology accepted.

As opposed to The Washington Post (30 paragraphs) and the Sacramento Bee (23 paragraphs) which go into depth in their whitewash of Shahin's sermon, The New York Times uses the AP story, which amounts to playing down the incident in 9 short paragraphs, as if the whole thing is not worth the reader's attention.

How did Jew-hatred suddenly become so unworthy of being considered a news item?

Trump should only be so lucky.





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Just last week, the ordeal of the parents of 3 Green Berets who were murdered last year by a Jordanian soldier came to an end. M'aarek Abu Tayeh was convicted of murder by a Jordanian court and sentenced to life in prison.

Staff Sgt. Matthew C. Lewellen, Staff Sgt. Kevin J. McEnroe, Staff Sgt. James F. Moriarty.
 Photo Credit: US Army

But the parents are not finished.


One of the fathers, James Moriarty, wrote a letter to Dina Kawar, the Jordanian ambassador to the United States:


So, while Mr. Moriarty agreed that Jordan had met the demand that Jordan successfully prosecute Abu Tayeh, he still had 5 further requests:
o That Tamimi be extradited to the US within 30 days to face trial for the murder of Malki Roth and Shoshana Yehudit Greenbaum, who was 5 months pregnant at the time

o That charges be filed against the Jordanian soldiers who stood idly by, enabling al-Tawayha to murder the 3 American Green Berets

o That the FBI be allowed to interview al-Tawayha to see if he is ready to admit to why he murdered those men

o That the video that captured the events of the murder of the soldiers be released to the families immediately

o That following the fulfillment of all of the preceding preconditions, restitution to the families of the soldiers be discussedThat the murderer of 3 American soldiers was convicted in a Jordanian court and sentenced to life imprisonment is news.

That there were further requests the parents made of Jordan is news as well.

The media faithfully reported the former story.

The latter story?
Not so much.

CBS News reports Jordanian soldier gets life sentence for killing 3 U.S. trainers, and makes no mention of either the letter nor of the requests being made of Jordan. The same goes for The Atlantic. Also CNN.

But there are also reports that do mention the letter and mention the requests -- but do not mention all of them.

ABC News in Texas, ABC13, runs the story with the headline Green Beret's father speaks about conviction of son's killer, but does not report on everything he said.

According to that article:
He [James Moriarty] is now pushing for the Jordanian soldiers who stood by and watched the shooting to be charged. He also wants the security video showing the killings to be made public.The article leaves out any mention that these requests were part of a letter, and that Moriarty also requested an FBI interview with Abu Tayeh, restitution from the Jordanian government -- and a response from Jordan within 30 days regarding extraditing Tamimi to the US.

In addition to Eyewitness news, AP completely omitted that part of the Moriary letter as well:
Moriarty’s father, Jim, wrote in a letter Monday to the Jordanian Embassy in the U.S. that the “successful prosecution” was a “good first step, but it is only the first step.”

In the letter, a copy of which was given to the AP, Moriarty listed several demands to Jordan. These included allowing the defendant to be re-interviewed by the FBI about his motive and releasing the security video to the families. Moriarty, a lawyer, said the video had been entered into evidence at the trial.That is the version that The Chicago Tribune uses.
And The New York Times.
And The Washington Post

And obviously many more. After all, newspapers all over use the news feed from the Associated Press and pay for the privilege.

Associated Press logo

For a newspaper to report on the conviction but leave out the letter may be understandable. One can explain that the conviction is the main story and is the point that readers are primarily interested in.

However, for a news organization like AP to report on the conviction, go the extra step to report the families feel there is still more to be done, but then edit what those other requests are and provide that abridged version of the letter to other news outlets -- that is irresponsible.

There were some that reported the full story.

Military.com got the story right:
Moriarty's letter requests the extradition of Ahlam Aref Ahmad Al-Tamimi to the United States for criminal prosecution and that "military or criminal charges against all the Jordanian military gate guards and the barrel truck operators for dereliction of duty for failing to protect the lives of our soldiers or cowardly conduct under fire."The Jewish Press wrote about Moriarty's reference to Tamimi as well:
The families, Moriarty pointed out, “requested the extradition of Ahlam Aref Ahmad Al-Tamimi for criminal prosecution in the United States. This has not been acted on and we request that he be extradited within the next 30 days.”Even The New York Times, which came out with an article based on the AP and did not mention Tamimi, came out with a second article, Jordanian Sentenced to Life in Prison for Killing 3 U.S. Soldiers, on the very same day and reported on all of the requests made:
In an open letter on Monday to Jordan’s ambassador to the United States, Sergeant Moriarty’s father, James R. Moriarty, who is a lawyer in Houston, called the conviction “a good first step” but said that the victims’ families had made other demands, which had not been met.

The families asked that the video be released publicly; that the F.B.I. be given a fresh chance to interview Sergeant Tawayha about his motives; that other guards who were at the gate that day be held responsible; and that Jordan extradite Ahlam Aref Ahmad Al-Tamimi, who has been charged in the United States with involvement in a 2001 attack on a pizza restaurant in Jerusalem that killed 15 people, including two Americans. [emphasis added]It should not be too much to expect the media to report accurately and completely on the story of families seeking justice for the sons murdered in a foreign country, especially when they have yet to have achieved all of their goals in seeking that justice.

As for the request in the letter for the extradition of Ahlam Tamimi, who is on the FBI Most Wanted List, to the US, the families of the US soldiers - Lewellen, McEnroe and Moriarty - joining with the families of the Americans killed by a Jordanian terrorist, should be a news story that the media should want to report on, rather than allow it to fall between the cracks.

FBI Mosted Wanted Poster for Ahlam Tamimi. Source: FBI



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Now that the smoke has cleared, we can see that Secretary of State Tillerson was wrong. His announcement that Abbas agreed to end stipends to imprisoned Palestinian terrorists was greeted with scepticism from the start. While on Tuesday Tillerson claimed the Palestinian Authority "changed their policy" about terrorist salaries, just a day later he had changed his tune and said instead there were "active discussions" and made reference to vague "assurances" given to Trump during his visit in Israel.

Official portrait of Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson
Credit: US State Department
Similarly, on June 5 it seemed that Abbas had cut off salaries to Hamas. It could be that Abbas was referring to those cuts when he spoke to Trump, but there too, Hamas ended up getting their salaries.

In any case, the payment terrorist salaries -- and the anti-Israel incitement caused by rewarding attacks on Jews -- continues.

But just how long have Palestinian terrorists been receiving these stipends?


To answer that question, Palestinian Media Watch focuses on the PA Government Resolution of 2010, while acknowledging that the resolution merely "formalized what has long been a PA practice."

In their article The Department of Pay-for-Slay, Douglas J. Feith and Sander Gerber point to the Amended Palestinian Prisoners Law No. 19 (2004), noting:
Legalism is a trait common among authoritarians. Nondemocratic societies lack rule of law, but they generally don’t lack laws. Their laws, in fact, tell us a lot about them.Their point is that Abbas and the Palestinian Authority go beyond words to incite hatred of Israel. The stipends represent the lengths they go to encourage attacks against Israel, enacting legislation to spur violence, while at the same time maintaining that are willing to negotiate for peace.

Feith and Gerber note that the PA's success can be measured by the fact that in 2014, President Obama said that Abbas “has consistently renounced violence” and has consistently pursued a “peaceful solution” that allows Israelis “to feel secure and at peace.”

But these terrorist payments actually go much further back.

In her book, Humanitarian Rackets and their Moral Hazards: The Case of the Palestinian Refugee Camps in Lebanon, Rayyar Marron writes that these payments began long before Abbas -- and originate with Arafat back in 1964:


Yasser Arafat with Gaddafi in 1977. Credit: Rex Features; Wikipedia
The purpose of the fund at the time was to help establish the centrality of Arafat and the PLO. Marron goes on to detail other methods that Arafat used as well, all of which had the result of
providing them [Palestinian Arabs] with jobs, but it simultaneously destroyed the pre-existing civilian bureaucracy, built on utilising people's competence, rather than on nepotism as increasingly was the case under Fatah's domination.Abbas apparently learned from the master manipulator. In recent weeks, we have seen Abbas exploiting the funds at his disposal to pressure Hamas by cutting off payments for electricity as well as threatening to cut off salaries.

Mahmoud Abbas Credit: www.kremlin.ru.(Wikipedia)Maybe that explains why the terrorist stipends have been controversial for years and not for decades.

At first, originating with Arafat, the stipends were a political tool to gain and centralize power.. It was only much later, especially under Abbas, that  funding the imprisoned terrorists has been recognized as a subtle form of encouragement -- along with naming buildings and events after terrorists while allowing incendiary sermons by Imams -- to incite attacks on Israelis.

Abbas has demonstrated that he is a good student that would make his teacher Arafat proud.

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On November 4, 2016, 3 US soldiers - Staff Sgt. Matthew Lewellen, Staff Sgt. Kevin McEnroe and Staff Sgt. James Moriarty died after coming under fire from a Jordanian soldier as they were entering a Jordanian military base.

On November 17, Eric Barbee, spokesman for US Embassy in Jordan, issued a short statement, reflecting the possibility of a terrorist motive on the one hand, and the rumors being spread that the soldiers themselves had accidentally brought the incident upon themselves.






A segment from the CBS morning news revealed more about what happened, and a taste of the various stories that were to come from the Jordanian government.



As early as November 19, two days later, it was already known that there was video footage of what had happened. Even then, the strong possibility was raised that this was a deliberate attack by a Jordanian soldier on US soldiers, Green Berets. The security footage showed a lone Jordanian gunman at a checkpoint shooting at the convoy of Green Berets who were there to conduct training at the King Faisal Air Base in al-Jafr.

It was reported at the time that a US official had, on condition of anonymity, confirmed the video showed the Jordanian soldier waived the first vehicle through the checkpoint and then opened fire on the second vehicle, killing two of the Americans inside. When US troops in the third vehicle returned fire, a third American was killed.

The video itself was not made public at the time

As for the Jordanian soldier, M'aarek Abu Tayeh, he was wounded and placed in a medically induced coma at a Jordanian hospital.

Both an FBI and a military investigation were begun.

By March, a summary of the key findings of the military investigation was revealed in a United States Special Operations Command Press Release. It provided the following outline of what actually happened:
o  On the afternoon of Nov. 4, 2016, a Jordanian Air Force guard shot and killed three Special Forces Soldiers at the entry gate to King Faisal Air Base, Jordan.

o  The three Soldiers were returning to the base in a four-vehicle convoy after conducting weapons familiarization training on a nearby military range.

o  The Jordanian Air Force guard opened fire on the second vehicle of the convoy with his M-16 rifle, killing Staff Sgt. McEnroe and mortally wounding Staff Sgt.(P) Lewellen.

o  Within seconds of coming under fire, Staff Sgt. Moriarty and another Soldier exited the third and fourth vehicles in the convoy in order to seek cover as the shooter closed in on their location. After unsuccessfully trying to communicate to the shooter that they posed no threat, the Soldiers returned fire. While the other Soldier maneuvered to gain a better position, Staff Sgt. Moriarty stood and fired his pistol directly at the shooter, who was wearing body armor. After closing in on their position, the shooter hit Staff Sgt. Moriarty with two rounds, mortally wounding him. Staff Sgt. Moriarty’s actions enabled the remaining Soldier to maneuver and engage the shooter, seriously wounding him.

o  Staff Sgt. McEnroe died at the scene. Staff Sgt. (P) Lewellen and Staff Sgt. Moriarty were medically evacuated after receiving initial treatment at the local medical treatment facility but died en route to King Hussein Hospital in Amman. Autopsy results show that no amount of medical care could have saved the three Soldiers due to the nature of their wounds.

o  All three Soldiers died in honorable service to their country. All three Soldiers were properly trained, equipped, and armed, and were acting in compliance with all procedures and accepted practices. In maintaining their position and engaging the shooter, the Soldiers acted with great valor.Along with the summary, a redacted version of the results of the military investigation, which had been concluded on February 16, was released as well. It included 2 photos illustrating the scene of the shooting.




A March 6 letter from Dina Kawar, ambassador of the Kingdom of Jordan, to Representative Ted Poe, a Republican from Texas claimed that a joint US-Jordanian investigation concluded that there was an "absence of premeditated intentions by M'aarek Abu Tayeh," the shooter. Instead, the Jordanians accused the American soldiers not only of failing to stop at the gate but also of having negligently discharged their weapons, causing the security guards to panic and open fire.

The parents of the soldiers responded that the video, which they had been shown, refuted the Jordanian version of events. The video shows that none of the Jordanians showed any reaction, as would be expected if there had been a loud noise, until the Jordanian guard himself opened fire. The video also showed that the Jordanian guard had deliberately murdered their sons at close range.

The parents turned to the Trump Administration, demanding that action be taken against Jordan and that if the Jordanians refused to take action, that US aid to the country be cut off.

One of the parents, Mr. McEnroe expressed their feelings about Jordan:
"Over four months have passed since our boys were murdered. None of our families has heard any apology, condolences or explanation from the Jordanians other than these false narratives," McEnroe said. "In my mind, Jordan is at the very least guilty of complicity in the murder of three American brave servicemen," he said. "We are told that Jordan is an important ally in the war on terror -- a war which I support -- but I encourage our president and our administration to take a hard look at our relationship with an ally who would so callously disrespect the sacrifice made by our boys," McEnroe said.Congressman Poe, who serves as the chairman House Subcommittee on Terrorism, Nonproliferation, and Trade, spoke about Jordan’s changing story about what had happened:
"I wrote the Jordanian king after I talked to Jim Moriarty about his son," the lawmaker said. "The response seem to say that this entire incident was a mistake and that the Americans were at fault for this whole incident." Last night, Poe said he received a second letter from the embassy of Jordan. "They now say 'it was not a mistake but that the shooter was following the rules of engagement," Poe said.In addition, there were indications that Abu Tayeh did not act alone.
o  A second guard who manned the post with Abu Tayeh had left to use the restroom
o  A third soldier left to open the gate, leaving Abu Tayeh along
o  Other Jordanian soldiers in the area, as many as 11, did not nothing to help the American soldiers
o  Those same Jordanian soldiers fired warning shots at a US truck entering behind the Green Berets’ vehicles, preventing the truck from assisting the US Green Berets.It was suggested that the reason for the lack of an immediate apology from the Jordanian government was the implications behind such an apology. An apology would be an admission that the elite Hashemite force that guards Jordan’s King Abdullah II had made a mistake -- or worse, that the guard had been turned by ISIS.

The FBI told the families that when Abu Tayeh came out of his coma, they had interviewed him. He admitted that he had used excessive force and was away from his assigned guard position. However, he claimed that he had heard a loud noise and that was what set him off.

The FBI also told the families that the shooter had previously been convicted of sexual on a woman with a knife. He also had anger management issues.

For their part, the military investigation was unable to find any indication for the reason behind the attack. No group ever took responsibility and there was no evidence that Abu Tayeh had actual terrorist sympathies. What they did find was that sloppiness by the Jordanian army was par for the course and it was usual for them to wave US soldiers in without coming out and personally confirm the identities as required and that gate guards “often displayed negligence for basic weapons handling and safety which could be improved.”

What was left was the series of lie after lie offered by the Jordanian government:
o  First the Jordanian government claimed that the US soldiers had failed to stop at the gate
o  When the video disproved that, the Jordanians claimed that there had been an “accidental discharge” by one of the soldiers.
o  When that was disproven, the Jordanians claimed there had been a loud noiseThe video, though it had no audio, disproved all three claims.

Finally, in mid-April, the Jordanian government admitted that Abu Tayeh had not followed proper military protocol and said they would prosecute him over the death of the US soldiers. However, it was not immediately made clear what exactly the charges would be nor when the trial would take place.

Dana Daoud, a spokeswoman for the Jordanian Embassy indicated that an apology was finally going to be issued by the Jordanian king to the families and added that “the Jordanian government will do everything to ensure that justice is enacted fully.”

Mr. Moriarty was doubtful in his response:
“Any statement that doesn’t include an admission of total guilt and plans for prosecution for the murderer who killed my son and the Jordanians who have failed to do anything about it, will not be enough.”Finally, last week, on June 1, it was reported that the Jordanian government had formally charged Abu Tayeh with murder:
o  The official charge is murder with intent to kill more than one person
o  A second charge included “insulting the dignity and reputation of the military”
o  Another charge is “violating orders and instructions of the military”If convicted by the military court, Abu Tayeh could face the rest of his life in prison -- but a spokeswoman at Jordan's embassy in Washington was unable to confirm whether Abu Tayeh had actually been charged with murder.

There are 3 basic things the parents of the US soldiers are looking for:
o  Prosecution of Abu Tayeh
o  Prosecution of the Jordanians who did nothing to help their sons
o  Serious sentences for both Abu Tayeh and the other Jordanian soldiers involvedAnd that is why -- based on everything the families of these soldiers have had to put up with till now -- the road ahead may still be a long one.

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In its new General Principles and Policies, Hamas proclaims:
Resisting the occupation with all means and methods is a legitimate right guaranteed by divine laws and by international norms and laws. At the heart of these lies armed resistance, which is regarded as the strategic choice for protecting the principles and the rights of the Palestinian people.This is actually something new for Hamas that is not found in the actual Hamas Covenant.


But the claim that the Palestinian Arabs have a right under international law to "resist" Israel "with all means and methods" -- implying including the targeting of civilians as well, is not specific to Hamas terrorists.

This latitude was already made in a 2004 post on the Electronic Intifada website by John Sigler, Palestine: Legitimate Armed Resistance vs. Terrorism:
However, among these legal forms of violence there is also the right to use force in the struggle for “liberation from colonial and foreign domination”. To quote United Nations General Assembly Resolution A/RES/33/24 of 29 November 1978:
“2. Reaffirms the legitimacy of the struggle of peoples for independence, territorial integrity, national unity and liberation from colonial and foreign domination and foreign occupation by all available means, particularly armed struggle;”Electronic Intifada also notes that the United Nations applies this concept to the Palestinian Arabs, and goes one step further:
This justification for legitimate armed resistance has been specifically applied to the Palestinian struggle repeatedly. To quote General Assembly Resolution A/RES/3246 (XXIX) of 29 November 1974:
3. Reaffirms the legitimacy of the peoples’ struggle for liberation form colonial and foreign domination and alien subjugation by all available means, including armed struggle; [emphasis added]…

7. Strongly condemns all Governments which do not recognize the right to self-determination and independence of peoples under colonial and foreign domination and alien subjugation, notably the peoples of Africa and the Palestinian people;Sigler does make 2 concessions:
o He admits that General Assembly Resolutions do not have the force of law, though he then goes on to claim, "when they [UNGA resolutions] address legal issues they do accurately reflect the customary international legal opinion among the majority of the world’s sovereign states." (Keep in mind that international law is not decided by a poll of countries)

o Sigler also will agree that civilians are off-limits. (Pity that Hamas do not make that distinction and that most of their targets actually are civilian, not military)United Nations. Credit: Neptuul, Wikipedia

One problem -- with both Sigler's and the United Nations approach -- is that the language adopted in the resolutions do not apply.

To claim that the Jewish State of Israel constitutes "colonial and foreign domination and foreign occupation" ignores the fact that Jews are indigenous to the land and have been living there uninterruptedly for over 3,000 years. Since when is a people with historical, cultural, and religious ties to the land considered "colonial" or "foreign"? When archaeologists uncover finds that reveal the earlier history of the land, it is the history of the Jews -- not the Arabs. The name "Jew" comes from Judea, while the Arabs come from and are indigenous to Arabia.

But there is another issue here: since when does the United Nations sanction violence?

Article 1 of the United Nations Charter clearly states that its purpose is
To maintain international peace and security, and to that end: to take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace, and for the suppression of acts of aggression or other breaches of the peace, and to bring about by peaceful means, and in conformity with the principles of justice and international law, adjustment or settlement of international disputes or situations which might lead to a breach of the peace;Article 33 adds
The parties to any dispute, the continuance of which is likely to endanger the maintenance of international peace and security, shall, first of all, seek a solution by negotiation, enquiry, mediation, conciliation, arbitration, judicial settlement, resort to regional agencies or arrangements, or other peaceful means of their own choice.Nowhere does the charter say that in the event that you just cannot resolve your differences -- go ahead and have at it.

The aftermath of a bus bombing in Haifa in 2003. Credit: Wikipedia, B. Železník

This discrepancy between these language of the UN resolutions and its original charter is the point made by Joshua Muravchik in The UN and Israel: A History of Discrimination. Muravchik sheds light on some of the history behind those UN resolutions that Electronic Intifada quotes. On the UN apparent sanctioning of violence, Muravchik writes:
This stance, which contradicts the UN Charter, originated in the struggles for African independence and then was carried over to the Arab-Israel conflict. In the 1960s, the General Assembly passed several resolutions regarding Portugal’s colonies and the white-ruled states of southern Africa, affirming “the legitimacy of the struggle of the colonial peoples to exercise their right to self-determination and independence” (e.g., Resolution 2548). In 1970, an important modification was added in the phrase “by all the necessary means at their disposal” (Resolution 2708).

The PLO, backed by the Arab states and the Islamic Conference, was to cite this language as sanctioning its deliberate attacks on civilians. In his famous speech to the General Assembly, Arafat claimed that “the difference between the revolutionary and the terrorist lies in the reason for which each fights. Whoever stands by a just cause . . . cannot possibly be called [a] terrorist.”

Just a week after Arafat’s appearance, the General Assembly affirmed “the right of the Palestinian people to regain its rights by all means” (Resolution 3236). Any ambiguity in this phrase was wiped away in a 1982 resolution that lumped the Palestinian case together with lingering cases of white rule in southern Africa and affirmed “the legitimacy of the struggle of peoples against foreign occupation by all available means, including armed struggle” (Resolution 37/43). Since the Palestinians were engaged neither in conventional nor even, for the most part, guerrilla war with Israel, but rather a campaign of bombings and murders aimed at civilian targets, this is what was meant by “armed struggle.” [emphasis added]From Portuguese territories to Israel is a slippery slope.

Leave it to the UN to go from UN Resolution 3236 recognizing "the right of the Palestinian people to regain its rights by all means in accordance with the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations" to using all available means, including armed struggle.

The bottom line is that just as there is no unalienable right of the remaining Palestinian Arab refugees to return, neither is there a right under international law to allow Palestinian Arab to violently attack Israelis.

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Jordan has a very mixed record when it comes to extraditing murderers of Americans who flee to their country to avoid punishment for their crimes

Jordan Pardons An Honor Killer 
As has been pointed out before, in 1994 when Mohammad Abequa and his wife were going through a divorce, Abequa committed an "honor killing" and fled to Jordan.

Once he was there, Jordan

• refused to extradite Abequa to the US
• he was tried in Jordan instead and was sentenced to 15 years, instead of hanging, because it was an honor killing -- which under Jordanian law is grounds for leniency.
• after 5 years, in 2000, one year after Abdullah became king, Abequa was pardoned and set free

Jordan Gets One Right
In 1993, Eyad Ismoil helped Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, the mastermind of the World Trade Center bombing, by driving a van packed with explosives into the garage below the Trade Center. That evening, Ismoil fled to Jordan. The US could not arrest him until King Hussein of Jordan signed an extradition treaty with the United States in 1995. Not only was the US then able to extradite Ismoil, the US agents were permitted to personally land on Jordanian soil, where the terrorist was handed over to them

Jordan's One-Use-Only Extradition Treaty
Today, the word is that the extradition treaty signed by King Hussein of Jordan is no long in effect under his son King Abdullah. The high court of Jordan claims the reason is because the extradition treaty was never ratified by the Jordanian Parliament. Since we know Ismoil was extradited, we know this means either that this is not true and there was a valid treaty, or that for all intents and purposes the extradition was done under the authority of the king -- which at the time was sufficient.

Either way, nothing prevents Jordan from having Ahlam Tamimi tried in a specialized Jordanian court, a policy that Jordan has pursued in the past.

Instead, Tamimi has been active on Twitter.

Israel opens the door of hell after murder AL_FUQHA— أحلام التميمي (@dreamsnnn) March 24, 2017

Tamimi had also been hosting a weekly television show broadcasted on Hamas’s satellite station, where she continued to support terrorist attacks -- until September 2016, when she suddenly stopped hosting the show, possibly because she was tipped off about the US indictment and quit her show in order to be less high-profile.

It is because Tamimi had been actively inciting against Israel that she has broken the condition of her release in 2011 and therefore can be retried in a US court without an incurring double jeopardy.

Caroline Glick writes that it is time to test Jordan's King Abdullah:
...Zahran, who seeks to replace the Hashemites with a Palestinian majority regime, which would allow Jordan to serve as the national home of the Palestinians in Judea and Samaria, argues that Jordan is a state run by the military and intelligence services, which themselves are controlled by the US military’s Central Command.

In his words, Jordanian forces cannot “relocate an armored vehicle” without first getting “permission from US Central Command.”

... it is time for the US and Israel to test Abdullah, the moderate man we cannot do without.

The first test should be an ultimatum. Abdullah should be told that he must either extradite Tamimi to the US for trial or send her back to Israel to serve the remainder of her sentence. If he refuses, then either Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or US President Donald Trump, or both, should meet publicly with Zahran to discuss his vision for the future of Jordan.


King Abdullah is visiting the White House tomorrow.

It is all very well for Trump to seek to create a coalition in the Middle East to counter the instability caused by Iran and its drive to expand its influence.

Trump has spoken often about putting America first.
Having Jordan extradite the terrorist who murdered an American citizen would be a good start.

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According to the Jordanian government, the terrorist Ahlam Tamimi, who masterminded the Sbarro massacre in 2001, cannot be extradited to the US, because there is no treaty. According to the Jordanian High Court an extradition treaty was signed with the US in 1995, but that it is null:
The Court of Cassation approved a decision taken by the Amman Court of Appeal not to extradite Jordanian citizen Ahlam Tamimi, to the US authorities.

A judicial source told Jordan News Agency, Petra that Kingdom and the United States singed [sic] an extradition treaty on March 28, 1995, but was not approved by the Jordanian parliament.


The source said that a request sent by a foreign country to concerned authorities in Jordan to extradite criminals, are not usually accepted as long as the extradition treaty is not effective.

Al Tamimi was accused of conspiring to use a weapon of mass destruction against a U.S national. (emphasis added)The problem is that this is not true.

The extradition treaty between the US and Jordan may or may not have been approved by the Parliament, but it was signed by King Hussein.

More importantly, in 1995 Jordan did recognize the treaty. The New York Times reports that the same treaty the Jordanian court is now saying is null, was in fact used to allow US agents onto Jordanian soil and extradite a terrorist, a Jordanian national, to the US for the World Trade Center bombing.
At 1 A.M. on Feb. 9, 1993, Federal prosecutors say, Eyad Ismoil, a Palestinian immigrant working in a grocery store in Dallas, received an urgent phone call from a boyhood friend.

A few hours later, Mr. Ismoil bought a plane ticket, and on Feb. 21, he flew to New York to join the friend, Ramzi Ahmed Yousef -- the man prosecutors call the mastermind of the World Trade Center bombing. Five days later, prosecutors say, with Mr. Yousef in the passenger seat, Mr. Ismoil drove a van packed with explosives into the garage below the Trade Center.

...Using airline records, the F.B.I. discovered that Mr. Ismoil had flown to Jordan on the night of the bombing. With the help of the local police, agents tracked him to his home in a refugee camp near Jerash, about 30 miles north of Amman.

Although the F.B.I. knew his whereabouts last winter, the Americans could not arrest him until King Hussein of Jordan signed a new extradition treaty with the United States last week.

...At 2:15 P.M. yesterday, Mr. Ismoil, wearing a bright orange prison suit, was led in handcuffs into Federal District Court in lower Manhattan. The 24-year-old suspect was arraigned in five minutes before Judge Kevin Thomas Duffy on bombing and conspiracy charges. He pleaded not guilty.
Eyad Ismoil. Credit: Total War History Wiki

While The New York Times refers to him as a Palestinian immigrant, Ismoil's family originated in Nablus, then moved to Kuwait, where he was born. The family then resettled in Jordan in 1990 after the Iraqi invasion. Ismoil is a Jordanian national.

On the one hand, if the extradition treaty was in effect in 1995 to bring terrorist Ayed Ismoil to justice, why can't it be used now to extradite the terrorist Tamimi?

On the other hand, if the extradition treaty was not in effect in 1995 because it was not approved by the Parliament, then why were the Jordanians able to hand Ismoil over?

In his book Relentless Pursuit: The DSS and the Manhunt for the Al-Qaeda Terrorists, Samuel M. Katz writes about how Eyad Ismoil, who drove the explosives to the World Trade Center garage, was tracked down -- and extradicted to the US by Jordan.

Amazon describes Katz as an internationally recognized expert on Middle East security issues, international terrorism, military special operations and counterterrorism who has written books and articles and has served as a commentator on television networks.

On page the bottom of page 219 of his book, Katz describes the problem of extradition and how a treaty was drawn up and signed by King Hussein. There is no mention of the Jordanian Parliament being needed to approve in order for the treaty to be valid.


While there is no mention of the Jordanian Parliament approving the treaty, what is mentioned on the next page is that the treaty was signed into law in a ceremony in Amman a few months later. Furthermore, as the bottom of page 220 makes clear, not only was Ismoil extradited -- he was handed over to US agents on Jordanian soil.

Considering the sensitivity of the Jordanian government to non-Muslim outsiders, the treaty surely must have been valid in order to allow agents of a foreign country to enter Jordan and remove the suspect.

So what happened since then that makes the exptradition now impossible? In the third paragraph on page 221, Katz talks about the blowback from the first ever extradition from Jordan:


It is clear that the treaty was valid in 1995. The only question is what Katz meant by the Parliament "scrapping" the treaty -- did it actually repeal it, or did it choose to do something less formal, like just ignoring it.

The fact remains that if the only reason that the extradition treaty is not effective now is because the Jordanian Parliament decided to "scrap" it, then the Jordanian king, parliament and courts need to stop playing games and tell the truth about why it is refusing to hand an admitted terrorist over to the US.

Even better, Jordan could right this wrong by signing a new extradition treaty with the US so that terrorist Ahlam Tamimi can be brought to justice.

Jordan cannot be allowed to ignore justice as it has been able to do time after time in the past with other countries:

France: Jordan Finds Another Technicality
Just last year, Jordan turned down a French request that it extradite 2 terrorist suspects in the 1982 murder of six people in a Jewish restaurant in Paris. Two terrorists entered the Chez Jo Goldenberg restaurant in a predominantly Jewish neighborhood in Paris and murdered 6 people, while wounding 22 others.

The Jordanian government rejected extradition in that case because of a technicality. It turned out that one of the murderers, 62-year-old Zuhair Mohamad al-Abassi, a Palestinian, was arrested while he was in Jordan in 2015, before the extradition treaty between Jordan and France became valid. The other suspect, 54-year-old Nizar Tawfiq Hamada, never went to trial because the statute of limitation expired.

The Chez Jo Goldenberg restaurant in Paris. Credit: © 2005 David Monniaux via Wikimedia Commons. From jns.org
An anonymous source told AFP a different reason why Jordan would not extradite the suspected terrorist:
Jordan does not usually extradite its citizens to other countries, even in the case of an extradition agreement. In such a case, they are generally tried in specialized Jordanian courts.But the matter is a little different when the shoe is on the other foot --

United Kingdom: It's Different When Jordan Demands Extradition
Back in 1999, a Jordanian military court sentenced a radical Muslim preacher to death in absentia. Abu Qatada was suspected of being a key al-Qaida operative tried for conspiracy to carry out terror attacks, including a plot on the country’s American school in Amman. The sentence was immediately commuted to life in jail with hard labor. The following year, he was sentenced, also in absentia, to 15 years for plotting terrorist attacks on Israeli and American tourists and Western diplomats during Jordan's millennium celebrations.

But that was only the beginning.

Abu Qatada. Credit: Wikipedia
Abu Qatada, accused of being bin Laden's right hand man in Europe, was in London. In 1993 he entered England on a forged passport and in 1994 he was granted asylum. In 2001, Jordan requested that Great Britain extradite Abu Qatada. But then it was the British and European courts that refused the request -- based on human rights concerns over Jordan's use of torture. In the meantime, Abu Qatada had been arrested more than once.

Finally, in 2013, Great Britain and Jordan signed an extradition treaty and Abu Qatada was sent to Jordan, with a guarantee that he would not be tortured. Apparently the fact that he had been arrested prior to the signing of the treaty was not an issue to Jordan, unlike in the extradition treaty it had with France.

As a postscript, upon his return to Jordan Abu Qatada was retried -- and cleared of all charges. Evidence used in the trials when he was tried in absentia while he was in Great Britain was ruled inadmissible in accordance with the agreement with Great Britain, because of the possibility it was obtained under torture.

Abu Qatada is now free.

At the time of the deportation, Jordanian Information Minister Mohammed Momani said the kingdom “is keen on credibility and transparency” in handling Abu Qatada, and that the deportation of the Palestinian-born Jordanian cleric “sends a message to all fugitives that they will face justice in Jordan.”

No doubt.

If it's any consolation to France, Jordan is no better at extraditing terrorists when the request comes from other Arab countries.

Iraq: Jordan Does Not Play Favorites
Iraq has been requesting the extradition of Raghad Hussein, the daughter of Saddam Hussein. Known as "little Saddam," she has been a vocal supporter of Isis, accused of funding Iraqi militants and in 2010 Interpol posted an arrest warrant for her in connection with her alleged direct involvement in Iraqi terrorism.

Raghad Hussein. Credit: Al Arabiya

Iraq's repeated requests that Raghad Hussein be returned to Iraq have been turned down.

Nor is Jordan's refusal to deport Tamimi the first time that it has denied a US request.

United States: Jordan Pardons An Honor Killer 
Mohammad Abequa murdered his wife in New Jersey in 1994 and fled to Jordan -- along with their two young children. Once in Jordan, he was sentenced to 15 years by a court, but then pardoned after only 5 years in prison and set free. At the time, the US had no extradition treaty with Jordan. Even after personal pleas to King Hussein by President Clinton, Attorney General Janet Reno and New Jersey's US representatives and senators, Jordan refused to return Abequa for trial.

At the trial, he faced the possibility of death by hanging, but was sentenced to 15 years instead because of his testimony that the murder was an honor killing. Abequa, whose brother was a general in the Jordanian army, claimed he killed his wife to protect his honor, which under Jordanian law is a reason for a reduced sentence. He told the courtroom he lost his temper when his wife told him the man he saw leaving her house was her boyfriend and she showed him a new tattoo on her thigh that he had given her. Jordanian law allows leniency in the case of 'honor killing' cases when the man kills his wife or sister because he suspects her of adultery or premarital sex.

Jordan Will Deport Terrorists - When It's In Their Own Interests
Actually, Jordan does not always refuse to deport known terrorists out of the country -- even when they are nationals. In 1999, Jordan exiled 4 senior members of Hamas. Khaled Mashal, now a leader of Hamas, as well as Ibrahim Ghosheh, Izzat Rushuq and Sami Khater, were released from prison and flown to Qatar. All of them had Jordanian nationality. They were accused of inciting hardline Islamist sentiment in Jordan, and the government claimed the four left willingly as part of a deal with Qatar.

Mashal (left) and Ghohshe flanking another exiled Hamas activist Mousa Abu Marzouq. Credit: BBC
Also, there is also an unverified report that security agencies in Jordan at one point planned to deport 7 Libyans back to Libya. They were married to Jordanian citizens, who were legal residents of Jordan.

It's easy to forget that Jordan, for all of its supposed modernity, is really not that much different from the surrounding Arab countries. Its views on justice are not much more advanced than its views on honor killing. Even an extradition treaty is no guarantee that justice will be done, when it comes to Jordanian nationals. Supposedly in such cases, nationals can be judged in specialized Jordanian courts. However, based on Jordan's past record -- that is no comfort to the relatives of the victims of Islamist terrorism.

For now, the focus is on bringing the terrorist Ahlan Tamimi to justice.
Terrorist Ahlam Tamimi, mastermind of the Sbarro massacre

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[T]he reintegration of the refugees into the economic life of the Near East, either by repatriation or resettlement, is essential in preparation for the time when international assistance is no longer available, and for the realization of conditions of peace and stability in the area
United Nations General Assembly Resolution 393 (V), December 2, 1950
The goal and purpose of UNRWA is simple and straightforward -- if not immensely challenging: to either repatriate Palestine refugees into what is now Israel or to resettle them elsewhere, while recognizing the obvious reality that there will come a time "when international assistance is no longer available."

Yet here we are, 67 years later.

Those Palestine refugees have not been either repatriated nor resettled.
And that international assistance?
Lo and behold: its being offered and provided.

So what happened to the whole purpose of UNRWA?
It changed.


First of all -- in case you didn't get the memo -- UNRWA is no longer dedicating its resources towards reintegrating those Palestine refugees. Just ask the people who should know:

• Former UNRWA general counsel James G. Lindsay: "neither the donors nor the General Assembly has pressed UNRWA on 'reintegration' in quite some time."
• Lance Bartholomeusz, former head of the International Law Division of UNRWA: "This part of the mandate probably ended by 1960 when reference to 'reintegration' was dropped from General Assembly resolutions relating to UNRWA, reflecting some acknowledgment that this objective had been defeated."
• Peter Hansen, former commissioner-general of UNRWA: "The agency's mandate has repeatedly been refined and shaped by other General Assembly resolutions, which have allowed it to shift its focus from reintegration efforts in its early years to human development projects through to this very day."

Basically, there was an admission that UNRWA failed in its mandate to find hosts for the Palestine refugees. But instead of replacing UNRWA with an agency that would deal with the new reality, UNRWA just replaced its mandate instead.

It was able to do this because of its much-vaunted flexibility.

In his article, The Mandate of UNRWA at Sixty Lance Bartholomeusz writes
As stated at the outset, in broad terms, UNRWA’s “mandate” means what the Agency may or must do. We have seen that UNRWA’s mandate is rarely expressed in terms of what UNRWA may not do. Even though the language used in some resolutions such as “directs”, “instructs”, “essential”, and “necessary” might indicate a compulsory nature, considering the context – in particular that UNRWA is almost entirely voluntarily funded and its actual income has generally fallen far short of budgeted income – most of the Agency’s operational mandate can be seen to be permissive, albeit strongly encouraged in parts....For almost sixty years, in response to developments in the region, the General Assembly has mandated the Agency to engage in a rich and evolving variety of activities, for many purposes and for several classes of beneficiaries. The Assembly has provided UNRWA with a flexible mandate designed to facilitate, rather than restrict, the Agency’s ability to act as and when the Commissioner-General [of UNRWA], in consultation with the Advisory Commission as appropriate, sees fit. [emphasis added]So, according to Bartholomeusz:

• Its mandate gives UNRWA a lot of leeway.
• Even when the language implies a "compulsory" obligation for UNRWA, most of the "operational mandate" is actually "permissive" (read: optional).
• UNRWA's mandate is "rich" and "flexible"
• UNRWA's Commissioner-General and the Advisory Commission are the final arbiter of what UNRWA's mandate actually is.

How has UNRWA exercised this flexibility?

According to UN General Assembly Resolution 302, part of the UNRWA mandate is for "direct relief and works programmes." Yet 10 years later, the incoming UNRWA director John Davis suggested a new focus, which emphasized a shift to education:

• providing general education, both elementary and secondary
• teaching vocational skills, and awarding university scholarships
• offering small loans and grants to individual refugees who have skills and want to become self-employed

UNRWA has branched out beyond just relief and works
The new focus allowed UNRWA to increase from 64 schools, with 800 teachers instructing 41,000 students in 1950 -- to 699 schools, with 19,217 instructors and 486,754 students in the 2011-2012 school year.

For all the good this may have done over the years, there are major concerns over the abuse this has led to, as documented by UN Watch in its latest report Poisoning Palestinian Children: A Report UNRWA teachers' incitement to jihadist terrorism and antisemitism:
This report exposes more than 40 Facebook pages operated by school teachers, principals, and other employees of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), which incite to terrorism or antisemitism. The report is divided by region, and includes UNRWA staffers in Lebanon, Jordan, Gaza and Syria. These cases are additional to the 30 cases of incitement revealed at the end of 2015 by UN Watch.

The examples of incitement in this report include UNRWA teachers and staffers celebrating the terrorist kidnapping of Israeli teenagers, cheering rockets being fired at Israeli civilian centers, endorsing various forms of violence, erasing Israel from the map, praising Hitler and posting his photo, and posting overtly antisemitic videos, caricatures, and statements.The results of this report were summarized in a video:



The report and video point to the growing problem of the unchecked influence that Palestinian Arabs have on the very agency that is supposed to be aiding them. In an email correspondence, Dr. Alexander Joffe, who has written extensively on various aspects of UNRWA, expanded on this issue and the growing threat it poses:
UNRWA basically shifted its entire operation towards education by the end of the 1950s, ending any hopes of repatriation or resettlement. It then rode the anti-colonialism wave at the UN through the 1960s and 1970s (which saw the growth of the UN's immense pro-Palestinian infrastructure) and by the 1980s had become a full service health and welfare provider.

But during the 1990s, especially the Oslo years, the concept of promoting Palestinian 'rights' and 'protections' grew, partially in response to Oslo and also as part of the global trend towards casting all claims in terms of legalisms and human rights. This advocacy role makes UNRWA a kind of competitor to the PA or at least a shadow foreign ministry.

In short, the organization adapts to changing conditions. Because it is basically run by and for Palestinians (we've called this an example of 'regulatory capture') it reacts to its own needs, those of the Palestinian street which it serves and cultivates, especially through the educational system, and to changes in the rhetorical ecosystem of international organizations. Its promotion of the 'right of return' is a recent adaptation from the last decade or so. And everything it does is against the background of 'financial emergency,' which has been its stock response since the 1950s. Currently, UNRWA is still remaking itself. In line with the advocacy role that Dr. Joffe describes, as early as 2007 UNRWA described itself in a report, UNRWA in 2006, as
a global advocate for the protection and care of Palestine refugees. In circumstances of humanitarian crisis and armed conflict, the Agency’s emergency interventions – as well as its presence – serve as tangible symbols of the international community’s concern, helping to create a stable environment. [emphasis added]This is a far cry from the temporary agency with a mandate to help Palestine refugees resettle.

The claim that UNRWA protects as well as cares for the refugees seems something of a stretch. In 2002, when US Representative Tom Lantos complained to then-UN Secretary General Kofi Annan that "UNRWA officials have not only failed to prevent their camps from becoming centers of terrorist activity, but have also failed to report these developments to you," Annan responded:
the United Nations has no responsibility for security matters in refugee camps, or indeed anywhere else in the occupied territoryUNRWA will have to make up its mind just how global -- or how limited -- their protection is going to be, and who they intend to protect from whom.

Just how UNRWA intends to be a stable influence when it assumes a responsibility that overlaps with the Palestinian Authority on the one hand, while it encourages antisemitism on the other, remains to be seen.

And if it can't -- no problem.
UNRWA can always remake its mandate.

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“[Besides Egypt and Jordan,] many other states in the region recognize that Israel is not their enemy. They recognize that Israel is their ally. Our common enemies are ISIS and Iran. Our common goals are security, prosperity and peace. I believe that in the years ahead we will work together to achieve these goals.”
Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, in speech to UN General Assembly, September 22, 2016
Is The Enemy of My Enemy -- My Friend, or My Ally?
At a time when there are still some who insist that Israel is isolated in the international community, it is becoming increasingly clear that Israel is in fact building new friendships and alliances. In his speech at the end of December last year, criticizing Israel, Kerry described Israel's friends as United Kingdom, France and Russia. But Netanyahu's recent trip to Singapore and Australia extends Israel's circle beyond that. Meanwhile closer to home, Netanyahu has visited Africa, visiting Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda and Ethiopia.

And then, even closer to home, are the Arab countries.

Israel has diplomatic relations with Egypt and Jordan.
It has no relations with Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Iran.
Israel has unofficial relations with Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, UAE and Oman.


Map of Israel and surrounding countries. Credit: Altapedia
Putting aside Egypt and Jordan and those Arab countries with which Israel has no diplomatic relations at all, where does Israel really stand with the countries which make up the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC)?

The prevailing wisdom is that Obama has practically pushed Israel and these Gulf countries into each others arms by strengthening Iran through the Iran deal and giving them billions of dollars.

But does having a common enemy make Israel and these Arab countries friends or does it make them allies?
Is it the beginning of a growing bond of understanding and cooperation or is it a temporary marriage of convenience?


Saudi ArabiaJust last year, Maj.-Gen. (ret.) Anwar Eshki, chairman of the Middle East Center for Strategic and Legal Studies in Jeddah, headed a Saudi delegation to Israel. He claimed that he was representing only himself and said all of the other right things to avoid putting his government into a corner. Naturally, the visit was still attacked as an attempt by the Saudi Arabian government to normalize relations with Israel.


Anwar Eshki, standing in the middle with striped tie, with members of the Israeli Knesset. Credit: Haaretz
MEMRI describes how the Saudis took other steps to ease relations with Israel.

A Saudi columnist, Siham Al-Qahtani, wrote that descriptions in the Quran portraying Jews as infidels, warmongers, and usurers - were meant to apply only to a particular group of Jews that lived during that time. Contrary to the Arab traditional view that Jews were to be blamed for both Arab and world problems, blaming the Jews was merely a way for Arabs to use them as scapegoats, and had to stop.

Another Saudi Columnist, Yasser Hijazi, went a step further and wrote that Arabs had to take part in the fight against "Judophobia." In another article Hijazi suggested that fighting antisemitism would not only help in the fight against terrorism, but would also counter Western arguments against Islam.

"Netanyahu does not represent Judaism... any more than [ISIS leader] Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi represents Islam..."But that does not mean that the Saudis and the Israelis are going to be friends.

In addition to the above quote, implying a comparison between Netanyahu and Al Baghdadi, Hijazi made it clear that there was a red line. Fighting antisemitism does not mean they are going to normalize relations with Israel:
The meaning [of this] is not normalization, softening [positions], or relinquishing negotiations to establish a Palestinian state within internationally-recognized borders... The two religions cannot resolve the conflict on the ground... The conflict is not between Islam and Judaism - even if our Israeli enemy seeks to present it as such - but rather between the [rightful] owners of the land and of the rights and occupiers and war criminals… [emphasis added]The Saudi Writer Ibrahim Al-Matroudi put it a little less harshly, that there was a need for "overcoming the hostility towards the Jews and for benefiting from their experience and successes, even though they are enemies."

You can enlist your enemy as an ally in a fight against a common foe, but the message from some in the Saudi elite is that the alliance will end there -- and Israel remains an enemy.

Some do offer more.

Salman Al-Ansari, the Founder and President of the DC-based Saudi American Public Relation Affairs Committee offers being more than just allies against Iran:
In fact, there are some opinions suggesting that having a common enemy in Iran will help accelerate any sort of rapprochement between two of the Middle East’s most powerful nations. While that could be partially true, a more solid foundation for establishing deep-rooted ties between the two countries could manifest in the context of a mutually beneficial economic partnership.The way Al-Ansari puts it, the potential exists for a partnership that goes beyond Iran to an economic bond and a true friendly relationship.

Except for one thing.

“The Palestinians are still the gatekeepers.”Wherever a Saudi-Israeli alliance may go, the issue of the Palestinian Arabs remains the ball and chain that is never far behind.

Netanyahu is fond of saying there are 3 reasons that the Arabs are interested in Israel: "technology, technology and technology", which makes sense. Why should Israel make relations with a country dependent on a danger of the moment?

But the Saudis, let alone the rest of the Arab world, still insist that the path to a regional alliance requires a settlement of the Palestinian Arab issue.

That may explain why Trump and his aids are no longer talking about moving the US embassy to Jerusalem.

Even a Saudi journalist like Muhammad Al-Sheikh, who writes that the  Middle East is in turmoil and the Palestinian Arabs can no longer consider themselves the center of attention in the Arab world -- only uses that fact to advise that they give up armed resistance and settle down to negotiating a two-state solution.

The result of this could be that while the US tries to assemble an Arab coalition to get Abbas to the negotiating table, the Palestinians could just as easily try to form their own coalition to get Israel to make concessions. As it is, the Palestinian Arabs are offering to form a confederation with Jordan with the backing of some of the same Arab states Israel is looking to forming alliances with.


Peace Without Normalization
This same uncertainty about whether to consider Israel a friend, an ally or an enemy, exists among other Arab states as well -- and no matter what the potential for future relations between Israel and the Arab world, those relations may progress no further than they have with Egypt.

The war with Egypt ended in 1973.
The peace treaty with Egypt was signed in 1979.

But what do Egypt and Israel have to show for all that after 38 years?

Egypt and Israel share a high level of security and intelligence cooperation in the face of the common security threats they face in Sinai, but without the common threat posed by ISIS in the Sinai and dealing with Hamas -- what would relations between the 2 countries be like?

Is that what Israel has to look forward to with the Arab Gulf states?

The difference may be that in Egypt both the education and the media encourage antisemitism and picture Jews in a negative light, while the Saudis seem to be making an effort to change that.

In addition, there are elements of Egyptian society among the elite, the bureaucrats and the military who feel they have an interest in discouraging normalization with Israel.
There exists a fear of Israel, of Western principles, a fear the military uses to consolidate its role.

Are things that different in Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf states?

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Though these days Israel does not find itself in the midst of one of the major conflicts engulfing the world, its situation is no less complicated.

There is a potential for game-changing alliances, assuming that age-old hatreds can be truly be overcome. At the same time, it is unclear whether those alliances can help to finally help resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict -- or whether the Palestinian Arabs will play the spoiler in preventing a new regional alliance.

Between Netanyahu's new penchant for making friends and the possibilities opened up by having a US president friendly towards Israel, things won't be boring.


Cartoon by Moshe Gulst, The Israeli Cartoon Project


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A couple of weeks ago, Israeli Defense Minister Liberman offered to provide Gaza with a huge level of assistance in return for Hamas shutting down their rocket attacks and closing their attack tunnels. In return, senior Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Zahar turned down the offer, claiming that if Gaza wanted to be like Singapore, it would have already done so.

The truth is that for a while, in the 1970's, Gaza rivalled -- and even surpassed -- Singapore.


In "What Occupation?", Efraim Karsh writes about how severe the situation of the Palestinian Arabs was before the start of Israeli control following the 1967 War.that following the 1967 War:
The larger part, still untold in all its detail, is of the astounding social and economic progress made by the Palestinian Arabs under Israeli "oppression." At the inception of the occupation, conditions in the territories were quite dire. Life expectancy was low; malnutrition, infectious diseases, and child mortality were rife; and the level of education was very poor. Prior to the 1967 war, fewer than 60 percent of all male adults had been employed, with unemployment among refugees running as high as 83 percent. Within a brief period after the war, Israeli occupation had led to dramatic improvements in general well-being, placing the population of the territories ahead of most of their Arab neighbors.

...During the 1970's, the West Bank and Gaza constituted the fourth fastest-growing economy in the world-ahead of such "wonders" as Singapore, Hong Kong, and Korea, and substantially ahead of Israel itself.[emphasis added] Similarly, CAMERA notes that
the Palestinian territories had one of the ten fastest growing economies during the 1970's, just behind Saudi Arabia (which benefited from the oil shock of 1973), and ahead of Singapore, Hong Kong and South Korea. What both Karsh and CAMERA write is substantiated by the World Bank.

In 1993, The World Bank published Developing the Occupied Territories: The Economy

According to the World Bank report (paragraph 2.3):
This picture of crisis contrasts sharply with a longer-term view of past development. The Occupied Territories [OT] were among the top ten fastest growing economies in the world during the 1970s period when measured in terms of GNP growth (Figure 2). The expansion in GDP per capita was somewhat lower, but was still large by international standards.



That all came to an end with the Intifada -- but not quite.

In March 1995, the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs suggested Soon The Gaza Strip Will Be Competing with Singapore, thanks to
industrial parks which the leadership of the [Israeli] Foreign, Industry and Finance Ministries is planning at this very moment, under total secrecy. The goal: to establish between 8 to 11 such parks on the cease-fire line between Israel and the autonomous areas, which the Palestinian Authority will control within the next few months.

Foreign Minister Shimon Peres is the one who envisioned all this, and those close to him say with pride: We are getting closer to Singapore, Taiwan and Hong-Kong, in huge steps.

And then, after the vision arrives to develop the cities Gaza, Dir Al- Balah, Ofakim and Sderot it will be copied in the cease-fire line between Afula and Jenin, to Mt. Hebron and Tul-Karm, and will reach the entrance of Kochav Yair.

Each industrial park will be established for about 10,000 employees, and will sit on 2,000 dunam of land, with considerable financial assistance from foreign investors and also governmental subsidies. The Palestinians will run them, and be its workers, for the most part.None of that came to pass.

And now Hamas says with pride not only that it has no interest interest in becoming another Singapore, but that if it really wanted to, it could do it without any help from Israel.

Regarding the former -- there is little doubt.
Regarding the latter -- there is little likelihood.
Either way, Gazans themselves have no say in the matter.

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The Report of the Commissioner-General of UNRWA in 2007 indicates that
...The mission of UNRWA is to contribute to the human development of Palestine refugees in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, Jordan, Lebanon and the Syrian Arab Republic until a durable and just solution is found to the refugee issue. The Agency fulfills this purpose by providing a variety of essential services within the framework of international standards...

The Agency’s vision is for every Palestine refugee to enjoy the best possible standards of human development, including attaining his or her full potential individually and as a family and community member; being an active and productive participant in socio-economic and cultural life; and feeling assured that his or her rights are being defended, protected and preserved.

UNRWA is a global advocate for the protection and care of Palestine refugees. In humanitarian crisis and armed conflict, the Agency’s emergency interventions, and its presence, serve as tangible symbols of the international community’s concern and ultimately contribute to a stable environment.This is UNRWA?


UNRWA is supposed to address the problem of Palestine Refugees and find them permanent homes in host countries. Yet, in the entire report, there is not a single mention of "repatriation", "reintegration" or "resettlement" of Palestine refugees. In fact, there is only one time the word "return" is even used -- and that is in a reference not to refugees going back to their homes but rather to "a return to normal Palestinian life" for Palestinian Arabs already living in the West Bank.

So why doesn't the report emphasize its primary mandate of finding a permanent home for refugees?
And since when is UNRWA a "global advocate for the protection and care of Palestine refugees"?

UNRWA logo

What happened?

On December 11, 1948, the UN adopted Resolution 149 regarding the Arabs who fled during the war. Paragraph 11:
Resolves that the refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date...Instructs the Conciliation Commission to facilitate the repatriation, resettlement and economic and social rehabilitation of the refugees and the payment of compensation.Clearly the original intent was to either repatriate the Arab refugees back to their original homes -- in Israel -- or to resettle them elsewhere in the area.

One year later, on December 9, 1949, UN Resolution 302 established UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East) for that purpose:
without prejudice to the provisions of paragraph 11 of General Assembly resolution 194 (III) of 11 December 1948, continued assistance for the relief of the Palestine refugees is necessary to prevent conditions of starvation and distress among them and to further conditions of peace and stability, and that constructive measures should be undertaken at an early date with a view to the termination of international assistance for relief.We already saw that the provisions of paragraph 11 require either repatriation and resettlement, which becomes part of the UNRWA mandate. In fact, a year later, on December 2, 1950, Resolution 393 reviews a report by UNRWA and reiterates that "the reintegration of the refugees into the economic life of the Near East, either by repatriation or resettlement, is essential."

Another point that Resolution 302 makes clear is that the creation of UNRWA is "with a view to the termination of international assistance for relief" -- clearly "global advocacy" for Palestinian rights was not intended to be part of UNRWA's job.

From the beginning, UNRWA was not intended to be a permanent agency of the UN.

But there is a bigger problem.

Who qualifies to be considered a Palestine Refugee?

Apparently, the answer must have been obvious -- because in defining UNRWA's job, Resolution 302 never actually defines who is a Palestine Refugee.

Yet UNRWA has defined -- and redefined -- who qualifies as a Palestine Refugee multiple times over the years.

• Originally, in 1950 UNRWA based its definition of a refugee on need alone:  the "agency has decided that a refugee is a needy person, who, as a result of the war in Palestine, has lost his home and his means of livelihood."
  
  
• In 1954, a refugee was specified in terms of a time frame: "one whose normal residence was Palestine for a minimum period of two years preceding the outbreak of the conflict in 1948 and who, as a result of this conflict, has lost both his home and means of livelihood.
  
  
• In 1955, Arabs who were not necessarily displaced during the war -- for example, lived in Jordan -- but who lost some or all of their livelihood as a result of it were included as being qualified for aid.
  
  
• In 1965, UNRWA extended refugee status to third generation Palestinian Arabs, i.e. grandchildren.
  
  
• In 1971, because of the additional refugees as a result of the 1967 war, the definition was again redefined:
  A Palestine refugee, by UNRWA's working definition, is a person whose normal residence was Palestine for a minimum of two years preceding the conflict in 1948 and who, as a result of this conflict, lost both his home and means of livelihood and took refuge, in 1948, in one of the countries where UNRWA provides relief [limited to Gaza, West Bank, Lebanon, Syria and Jordan]. Refugees within this definition or the children or grandchildren of such refugees are eligible for agency assistance if they are (a) registered with UNRWA, (b) living in the area of UNRWA's operations, and (c) in need.
• In 1982, UNRWA went one step further, extending eligibility to all generations of descendants, as a result of a General Assembly resolution that
  Requests the Secretary-General, in co-operation with the Commissioner- General of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, to issue identification cards to all Palestine refugees and their descendants, irrespective of whether they are recipients or not of rations and services from the Agency, as well as to all displaced persons and to those who have been prevented from returning to their home as a result of the 1967 hostilities, and their descendants;

Why the changes?

Some of the changes, like the original definition itself, were the result of purely humanitarian grounds.

Joan Peters, in her book From Time Immemorial, suggests that the two-year minimum initiated in 1954 could have been in order to include the Arabs who were recent arrivals to the coastal areas from where many had fled. (p.398)

According to political scientist Benjamin Schiff, the reason for extending refugee status to 3 generations was actually because of budgetary problems caused by the inflated rolls of refugees. UNRWA's Commissioner-general, Laurence Michelmore, wanted to "enlist the host-states' assistance in cut­ting the rolls ... he had offered a trade: If the governments would help rectify the rolls, he would be willing to ... add third-generation refugees to the rolls."

But extending aid to third-generation Palestinians created a unique dilemma for UNRWA:
With regard to the Palestine Liberation Organization, the names of the refugees in its army should be struck from UNRWA's rolls; the Palestine Liberation Organization was committed to renewed military struggle and thus confronted the Agency with the paradox of United Nations funds being used to provide rations for refugees recruited for armed action against a Member State. Israel, however, supported the extension of the Mandate of UNRWA and was in full agreement with the imperative need to rectify the relief rolls.This seems to be part of an ongoing problem for the agency. We saw in the last Israel-Hamas war that UNRWA has difficulty staying out of the ongoing conflict and Hamas weapons were found being stored in UNRWA schools.

With all of these changing definitions, is there really any limit to how UNRWA can define a Palestine refugee under its jurisdiction? Apparently not. In 1991, when Kuwait expelled thousands of Palestinian Arabs who supported Saddam during the war, UNRWA claimed jurisdiction:
During a meeting of the agency's major donors in June 1991, its commissioner general, Ilter Turkmen, affirmed that UNRWA did have an obligation toward Palestinians who were being "persecuted, hounded, and expelled by the Kuwaiti government for supposed support of the Iraqi occupation … I consider that the responsibility of UNRWA extends to Palestinians in all parts of the Middle East [including Kuwait]." Despite UNRWA's supposedly restricted fields of operation, Lance Bartholomeusz, former chief of the agency's International Law Division, noted that "General Assembly resolutions do not explicitly exclude UNRWA from operating in other areas."Somewhere along the way, humanitarian concerns have become infected with political interests that have created an agency that has rejected the fact that it was meant to be temporary and has given itself an unlimited, global sphere of influence among Palestine refugees.

The full extent of the politics of UNRWA become more evident when we examine the change and redefinition of the actual role of UNRWA and how the agency views itself.

That will be examined in the next post.

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There are many aspects to the issue of Palestinian Arab refugees, a problem that persists nearly 70 years after the 1948 War that created the current situation. One question is whether Israel is actually obligated to allow those Arabs back in.

In other words, do the Palestinian Arabs have a legal "Right of Return"?

That is the argument made by pro-Arab advocate Hussein Ibish and Electronic Intifada founder Ali Abunimah in The Palestinian Right of Return, an article they wrote together in 2001, using many of the basic arguments still being used to make the case.

They start with establishing a right according to international law -- and immediately run into a problem.


The first source is a quote by "prominent legal scholars" Mallison and Mallison that
"[h]istorically, the right of return was so universally accepted and practiced that it was not deemed necessary to prescribe or codify it in a formal manner.Putting aside the possibility that the absence of such a codification could be because no such absolute right exists, the quote itself is problematic.

Tracing the origins of the quote -- the authors' paper provides no links or footnotes -- we find the full quote is a claim that the Palestinian Right of Return can be based on the Magna Carta:
Historically, the right of return was so universally accepted and practi­ced that it was not deemed necessary to prescribe or codify it in a formal manner. In 1215, at a time when rights were being questioned in England, the Magna Carta was agreed to by King John. It provided that: "It shall be lawful in the future for anyone... to leave our kingdom and to return, safe and secure by land and water..."Mallison and Mallison then go on to connect the Magna Carta's guarantee of return "in armed conflict and belligerent occupation situations" with the Geneva Convention's protection of war victims and repatriation.

Noting that Now, Arabs claim the Magna Carta provides the "right to return" Elder of Ziyon gives the full quote to fill in the gap created by the ellipses:
In the future it shall be lawful for any man to leave and return to our kingdom unharmed and without fear, by land or water, preserving his allegiance to us, except in time of war, for some short period, for the common benefit of the realm. People that have been imprisoned or outlawed in accordance with the law of the land, people from a country that is at war with us, and merchants - who shall be dealt with as stated above - are excepted from this provision.So contrary to Ibish and Abunimah, Mallison and Mallison have found a source for international law for a "universally accepted and practiced" right of return that

• only applies to people who are citizens of the country they left
• does not apply to members of an entity that is hostile to the country
• does not apply to descendants (contrary to UNRWA policy).

John sealing the Magna Carta by Frank Wood, 1925
Photo: www.bridgemanimages.com. Source: The Telegraph
Another source they quote is The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, specifically Article 13(2), "Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country" and 15(2) "No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality nor denied the right to change his nationality."

CAMERA, in a backgrounder on The Palestinian Claim to a “Right of Return”, notes the limitations on using the declaration as a source for the rights of refugees in international law.

Firstly, while granting its importance, The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is not legally binding -- see, for example, here. More to the point, while UDHR is the basis for
International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, not one of these 3 documents actually mentions refugees.

Secondly, the reference to  a "return to his country" would not include the Arabs who left then-Palestine, seeking entrance to Israel.

Ibish and Abunimah anticipate this argument and counter "It is a generally recognized principle of international law that when sovereignty or political control over an area changes hands, there is a concurrent transfer of responsibility for the population of that territory." -- but bring no source for their claim.

Thirdly, Article 29 of UDHR notes the rights of the citizens of the country itself, namely:
In the exercise of his rights and freedoms, everyone shall be subject only to such limitations as are determined by law solely for the purpose of securing due recognition and respect for the rights of others and of meeting the just requirements of morality, public order and the general welfare in a democratic society.Obviously the influx of millions of Palestinian Arabs would raise concerns about the "rights" and "general welfare" of the citizens of Israel.

Ibish and Abunimah claim that Israel particularly has a responsibility for Arab refugees because they were expelled from the land. That is a whole topic unto itself, but the fact remains that

• the Jewish state was involved in a war of survival not of its own choosing. It was inevitable that some of the population would be forced out because of security issues
• it is documented that many of the Arabs who left did so not only to get out of harms way but also at the encouragement of the surrounding Arab countries.

A key part of the argument for a right of return is of course UN General Assembly Resolution 194, which directly addresses the issue of Palestinian Arab refugees. According to paragraph 11, the resolution:
Resolves that the refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return and for loss of or damage to property which, under principles of international law or in equity, should be made good by the Governments or authorities responsible;Key points to keep in mind:

First, General Assembly resolutions are not binding -- thus the UN is not establishing a right of return.

Second, the language of the resolution, "should" instead of "shall" again points to the lack of an actual right or legal obligation.

Lastly, left unmentioned by Ibish and Abunimah is the second paragraph of Article 11, indicating that the UN:
Instructs the Conciliation Commission to facilitate the repatriation, resettlement and economic and social rehabilitation of the refugees and the payment of compensation, and to maintain close relations with the Director of the United Nations Relief for Palestine Refugees and, through him, with the appropriate organs and agencies of the United Nations;The UN is not establishing an absolute right of return. Instead it is establishing the options of either return (repatriation) or resettlement in another country.

CAMERA points out that is why the same language reflecting 2 options occurs in

• UN Resolution 393: "either by repatriation or resettlement"
• UN Resolution 394: "whether repatriated or resettled"
• UN Resolution 513: “reintegration either by repatriation or resettlement”

Could it be that the lack of a guaranteed right of return in Resolution 194 would explain why the Arab countries at the time voted against the resolution?

Ibish and Abunimah finish off with an argument for rights based on a comparison between the Palestinian Arabs and the situation in Kosovo -- and with the Jewish rights following Holocaust.

Without going into a discussion of their examples, one can come up with another example -- quoting Benjamin Franklin. Mitchell Bard points out that during the American Revolution, many colonists loyal to England fled to Canada. After the war, the British wanted the loyalists to be allowed to return to claim their property. Benjamin Franklin rejected this suggestion, writing:
Your ministers require that we should receive again into our bosom those who have been our bitterest enemies and restore their properties who have destroyed ours: and this while the wounds they have given us are still bleeding!Portrait of Benjamin Franklin by Michael J. Dean
Based on continued Palestinian terrorism to this day, the comparison still holds.

Similarly, Bard notes that after WWII, 12.5, million Germans in Poland and then-Czechoslovakia were expelled, allowed to take only the possessions they could carry. World War II’s effects on Poland’s boundaries and population were considered a fait accompli that could not be undone after the war. Those expelled did not receive compensation for confiscated property and no one in Germany petitions for the right of the millions of deportees, and their children, to return to the countries from which they were expelled. This is in spite of the fact that they and their ancestors had lived in those countries for hundreds of years.

The bottom line is that while refugees in general, and Palestinian Arab refugees in particular, retain an option to return -- this is not considered an absolute right. Instead it is one option to measured against existing circumstances and the consequences of repatriation. This is established based on the resolutions of the UN itself, something that perhaps should be pointed out to UNRWA.


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Technorati Tag: Israel and Right of Return and UNRWQ and Palestine Refugees.

It is 1967. What would become known as the Six Day War has begun and Menachem Begin, invited by Prime Minister Levi Eshkol to join an expanded emergency cabinet, has an idea.

There is a meeting in the basement shelter of the Knesset and the news is announced that Jordan has decided to join Egypt and Syria in battle. Begin and Labor Minister Yigal Allon suggest that the reaction to Jordan's shelling of Israel should be the liberation of the Old City of Jerusalem, lost in the 1948 War following a UN ceasefire. Begin urges quick action before a similar ceasefire again leave the city divided.

Moshe Dayan opposes the idea based on the human cost of expected house-to-house fighting in addition to the potential damage to Christian and Muslim holy places -- leading to a world-wide outcry against Israel and opposition to Israeli control over Christian and Muslim holy places. Instead, Dayan suggests it would be enough to just surround the Old City and wait for it to fall.


Allon responds that the Jordanian lines were crumbling and Israel could go in. More to the point, it is essential for there to be a Jewish presence both deep within the Old City and on the Temple Mount itself.

In the end, a 4am news report from the BBC that the UN is planning to declare a ceasefire leads to another meeting where it is agreed to recapture the Old City. [Source: The Prime Minsters, by Yehuda Avner, p157-9]

The rest is history.

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The issues then have not changed over the years when discussing the step of moving the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

The Israeli reaction has.

The question of Congressional legislation to move the embassy came up during the 1984 presidential campaign. Democrats Walter Mondale and Gary Hart both came out in favor of the bill introduced by Senator Daniel Patrick Moynnihan, while President Reagen threatened to veto such a bill.

The response of an Israeli Foreign Ministry official at the time was less warm: "I'm very leery of trying to tread on a Congressional debate and an argument between the President and Congress, a constitutional problem of who runs foreign policy."

A decade later, in May 1995, news about what would become enacted that November as the Jerusalem Embassy Act, did not excite Israelis either. Prime Minister Rabin, suggested the Likud was behind it with the aim of "torpedoing" peace negotiations. Foreign Minister Peres tried to distance Israel from the bill, saying there was "no need for our involvement."

Fast-forward to today. During his presidential campaign, Trump made a point of talking about moving the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

And now he is the President.
Again, it is not so simple.

Moshe Feiglin, founder and chairman of the Zehut party, was interviewed the day after the elections -- and he predicted that once moving the embassy became a very real possibility, Netanyahu would not be any more enthusiastic or outspoken than past Israeli officials. See the video below, starting at 1:03:




Events seem to justify Feiglin's pessimism.

This past Friday, Marc Zell, chairman of Republicans overseas Israel indicated that the Israeli government did in fact have cold feet:

Jerusalem Embassy delay not due to #Trump. Sadly Israeli government is dragging feet. Time to grow a backbonehttps://t.co/r6JMcKH4ub— Marc Zell (@GOPIsrael) January 27, 2017He followed up on his criticism the following day:

Now if Bibi @netanyahu would only give the green light to the Embassy move. That's also a Great Idea. https://t.co/mCN0fuYmiy— Marc Zell (@GOPIsrael) January 28, 2017Zell even went so far as to imply that once Israel indicated its approval, plans for the embassy move could proceed right away

As soon as the Israeli PM gives the green light https://t.co/qbewReVugz— Marc Zell (@GOPIsrael) January 28, 2017

But when Haaretz published an interview with him the same day:
The co-chair of the Republicans Overseas organization in Israel, Marc Zell, says that recent foot-dragging by Donald Trump's White House on moving the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, is happening at Israel’s request.

Zell told Haaretz, citing both Israeli and U.S. sources, that “Trump has been unequivocally in favor of moving the embassy and remains so” but “he is proceeding cautiously because of concerns raised by Israeli officials.”...Zell used Twitter again -- this time to walk back what he said:
Well I didn't quite put it that way. However it would be a shame to miss this historic opportunity. https://t.co/E0B7m5O1Ve— Marc Zell (@GOPIsrael) January 28, 2017For his part, Netanyahu came out out Sunday with an apparent response to Zell:

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu voiced support on Sunday for moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem but mentioned no time frame, after a Republican activist accused Israel of pressing the Trump administration to delay the pledged step.Even in welcoming the idea, Netanyahu appears cautious.

Now as in 1967, a mix of of the threat of Arab violence and world disapproval appears to be the issue.

Back then, there was no time to delay, as the threat of a missed opportunity was very real. Then again, who today is as blunt and influencial as Menachem Begin?

The question is how much time does Israel really have to take Trump up on his offer, before he too decides to put the offer on the back burner or take it off the table altogether.

After all, at heart -- Trump is a businessman, and even now, Trump appears more wary about the idea

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It did seem like a straightforward statement by Press Secretary Sean Spicer on Israeli settlements:
“The American desire for peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians has remained unchanged for 50 years. While we don’t believe the existence of settlements is an impediment to peace, the construction of new settlements or the expansion of existing settlements beyond their current borders may not be helpful in achieving that goal. As the President has expressed many times, he hopes to achieve peace throughout the Middle East region. The Trump administration has not taken an official position on settlement activity and looks forward to continuing discussions, including with Prime Minister Netanyahu when he visits with President Trump later this month.”
The key takeaway from this short statement is:

• Israeli settlements are not an impediment to peace
• Construction of new settlements "may not be helpful" in achieving peace
• Expansion of existing settlements "may not be helpful" in achieving peace
• The Trump administration has not taken an official position on settlement activity
• Trump looks forward to discussing settlements with Netanyahyu

The emphasis on actual settlements -- both new and expanding existing ones -- leaves the way open to the building of homes within the already existing settlements, since they do not expand the settlements themselves.

Seems pretty straightforward. The US is open to the construction of homes within and withholds final judgment on expansion without until Trump meets Netanyahu later in February.

And it is positive and favorable to Israel.

Until the media gets a hold of it.

According to The New York Times, President Trump unexpectedly shifted his stance on Israel, warning Prime Minister Netanyahu to hold off on settlement construction:
President Trump, who has made support for Israel a cornerstone of his foreign policy, shifted gears on Thursday and for the first time warned the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to hold off new settlement construction.

...The statement resembled those issued routinely by previous administrations of both parties for decades, but Mr. Trump has positioned himself as an unabashed ally of Israel and until now had never questioned Mr. Netanyahu’s approach. That's a stretch.

Yes, Trump's statement is a shift -- not a shift from his position on Israel, but a shift from previous administrations whose official policy has been that the settlements are "illegitimate," and that means that contrary to The New York Times, this statement decidedly does not "resemble" previous administrations.

The White House statement itself is a response to a tweet by the Jerusalem Post's Michael Wilner:

Exclusive: Donald Trump supports a two-state solution and is warning #Israel to cease settlement announcements. https://t.co/4AmbhR0blu— Michael Wilner (@mawilner) February 2, 2017

That tweet was followed up later by fellow Jerusalem Post reporter Yaakov Katz:

And here we go. Now official statement by @PressSec. "Expansion of settlements...may not be helpful". Follow up to @mawilner's scoop. pic.twitter.com/FRhbpfzQ9m— Yaakov Katz (@yaakovkatz) February 2, 2017There are 3 points to keep in mind:

• Israel has been building homes all along -- that is what the statement would have addressed if the intent was for Israel to stop building homes.
• Israel has not built a new settlement, despite exaggerated media reports, in 25 years
• Wilner's tweet and the Trump Administration's statement is happening against the backdrop that in response to the evacuation of Amona, Netanyahu announced his intent to build a new settlement.

At a time when for years Israeli construction of homes has been confused by the media and the Obama Administration with the building of new settlements, now the media insists that discouraging the building of new settlements for the time being is equivalent to opposing the building at homes.

In doing so, the media is sidestepping the huge significance of the Trump Administration being the first US administration to legitimize settlements and clearly state that they are not an impediment to peace.

Netanyahu met Trump in September last year. Credit: Jerusalem Post



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As of Friday, January 20, we have a new president -- President Donald Trump.

Comparisons have been made between Trump and Obama, and we can expect many more comparisons to be made over the next four years. One of those comparisons is in connection with Israel.

Obama allowed passage of United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334, calling the settlements illegal and putting renewed pressure on Israel. Now along comes Trump, who has promised -- and has reiterated his intention to keep that promise -- to move the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

Yet both claim to be friends of Israel.


We know Obama is a friend of Israel -- after all, he's told us so.

There are some indications that Trump is a friend of Israel as well:

• Trump won an Israeli poll about which presidential candidate would best represent Israel’s interests
• He has won awards from the American Jewish community for his contributions to Israel and American Judaism
• He was the grand marshal of a Salute To Israel Parade

This seems to point to a basic problem that Obama had from the beginning - not just how to prove that he was a friend of Israel, but that he was the bestest friend that Israel has ever had.

Let's take one last look at Obama's relationship with Israel.

During a daily press briefing on November 17, 2009, the following exchange took place between the State Department Spokesperson Ian Kelly and Matt Lee, reporter for the Associated Press on what the Obama administration had accomplished till then in advancing peace between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs
MR. KELLY: Well, I would say that we’ve gotten both sides to commit to this goal. They have – we have – we’ve had a intensive round or rounds of negotiations, the President brought the two leaders together in New York. Look --
QUESTION: But wait, hold on. You haven’t had any intense --
MR. KELLY: Obviously --
QUESTION: There haven’t been any negotiations.
MR. KELLY: Obviously, we’re not even in the red zone yet, okay.
QUESTION: Thank you.
MR. KELLY: I mean, we’re not – but it’s – we are less than a year into this Administration, and I think we’ve accomplished more over the last year than the previous administration did in eight years. [emphasis added]
QUESTION: Well, I – really, because the previous administration actually had them sitting down talking to each other. You guys can’t even get that far.
MR. KELLY: All right.
QUESTION: I’ll drop it.One could argue that this press briefing in 2009 became the template for the drama that would play out during the next 7 years of the Obama Administration: attempts to bring peace between the two sides, resulting in failure, followed by excuses, claims of accomplishments -- and claims of friendship.

That certainly is what we recently saw in the remaining days of the Obama Administration.

During the last week of the Obama Administration, we read about how Kerry defends Obama administration’s record on Israel. During an interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour last Monday, John Kerry bristled at Amanpour's observation that the Obama administration was the last in a long line of American administrations that had failed to bring peace between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs. This of course was true, but instead of admitting to the obvious, Kerry placed the blame elsewhere, dividing it evenly between Israel and Palestinians:
“No, the leaders of the countries involved — one country and one entity — have failed to come to the table and reach an agreement.”Let's save time and put aside the fact that contrary to Kerry's protestations, Netanyahu has consistently offered to sit down and negotiate directly while Abbas has refused.

So just what was Kerry arguing here? By objecting to Amanpour's comment, was he saying that Israel and the Arabs are to blame for the failure -- and therefore the Obama administration attempts at peace have been a success? Make all the excuses you want, and clearly many attempts were made by the White House over the years, but at the end of the day Amanpour was right: “yet another administration has not brought peace.”

The same John Kerry who is blaming Israel for that failure is the same John Kerry who goes on to claim that he speaks "as a good, solid best friend of Israel and we have done more for this government, more for Israel than any other administration.”

US Secretary of State John Kerry speaks to CNN on January 16, 2017.
(Screenshot/CNN). Credit: Times of Israel
Some friend.

Kerry bases his claim of friendship on the $38 billion military aid package that the Obama Administration signed with Israel and on the assistance the US has given Israel in developing Iron Dome.

For both of these, Israel is of course very grateful.
After all, $38 billion is an awful lot of money.

So is $30 billion.

On June 4, 2008, candidate Obama promised the following at an AIPAC convention (the same AIPAC convention where Obama famously declared Jerusalem "must remain undivided"):
I will ensure that Israel can defend itself from any threat - from Gaza to Tehran. Defense cooperation between the United States and Israel is a model of success, and must be deepened. As President, I will implement a Memorandum of Understanding that provides $30 billion in assistance to Israel over the next decade - investments to Israel’s security that will not be tied to any other nation.Not only did Obama make this promise -- he also kept it.

Except that it wasn't exactly his promise to keep. Though he failed to give credit where credit was due, Obama was actually promising to implement not a Memorandum of Understanding, but the Memorandum of Understanding -- the one that George Bush signed in 2007. And yes, Obama allowed the understanding to be fulfilled, unimpeded.

So here's my question.
If we say that George Bush was a good friend because he gave Israel $30 billion -- does that make Obama, who signed off on giving Israel $38 billion, a better friend, a best friend?

That does seem to be the gist of Kerry's argument.
Giving money and weapons to Israel makes the US friends of Israel.

Allowing passage of a UN resolution calling Israeli settlements illegal and strengthening the hand of those who want to boycott Israel is apparently tough-love, and according to Kerry, was intended to "make a statement and frankly ignite a debate" -- a novel idea since the debate over settlements has long been raging in Europe, the UN and in Israel.

And yet Obama's predecessor, George Bush, was able to go beyond funding and weapons and get Israel and the Palestinian Arabs talking.

True, by the end of his administration, Bush also had not brought peace between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs.

But not for lack of trying or lack of some successes.

The Secretaries of State of both administrations made many, many visits to the Middle East. Kerry notes he logged 300 hours discussing peace with Netanyahu -- during 13 trips to Israel and 6 meetings with Israeli officials outside of Israel, while Condoleezza Rice made 25 trips to Israel and met Israeli officials outside of Israel on 2 occasions.

But more than that, in 2003, a speech President Bush gave the previous year was developed into the Road Map for peace, and it was approved not only by the Quartet of the US, UN, the EU and Russia -- but approved also by Israel and the Palestinian Authority as well.

President Bush, center, meets with Israel's Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, left, and
Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas to finalize the road map to peace
at Beit al Bahar Palace in the Jordanian Red Sea resort of Aqaba, June 4, 2003. AP
In 2007, he convened a worldwide conference in Annapolis to begin a year-long period of final status negotiations

Olmert, Abbas and Bush at the opening of the Annapolis talks
(U.S. Navy photo by Gin Kai)
Obama did get Abbas to meet directly with Netanyahu in 2010. After Netanyahu sweetened the deal with a 10 month settlement freeze, Abbas finally agreed to meet during the 10th month, following pressure from Hillary Clinton and persuasion from Jordan and Egypt. Abbas then insisted on another freeze before continuing, and when a frustrated Netanyahu refused, the talks broke down.

Obama with Prime Minister  Netanyahu and Abbas at the White House onSeptember 1, 2010. Reuters.
The bottom line, though, is that both administrations failed.

Bush, though, had the two sides talking to each other -- which was all he could really be expected to do.
Obama never got that far, and was reduced to spending his 8 years in office bragging about being Israel's friend, while giving it arms and money in a Middle East that became increasingly volatile during his term, and then stabbing Israel in the back during his last weeks in office.

We'll have to wait and see what happens with Trump as president.





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"[T]housands of new settlements are being constructed...you saw tens of thousands of settlements being constructed"
Ben Rhodes, deputy national security adviser, December 23, 2016


On December 23rd, United Nations Security Council Resolution 2344 was passed 14-0 with one abstension --  the United States. One of the key points of that resolution was the clear declaration that Israeli settlements are illegal. Not "illegitimate", as per US policy in the past, but "illegal". The settlements were described as an impediment to peace that must be removed.

Are There Tens of Thousands of Israeli Settlements... Or 228?
That same day, Ben Rhodes, the White House deputy security advisor, gave an interview to Judy Woodruff.

Recall that Rhodes is noted for having bragged about his manipulation of the media in creating the narrative that made the Iran deal possible, despite both popular and congressional opposition. He boasted at the time about the media's lack of knowledge of world events:
Most of the outlets are reporting on world events from Washington. The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old, and their only reporting experience consists of being around political campaigns. That’s a sea change. They literally know nothing...We created an echo chamber...They [the seemingly independent experts] were saying things that validated what we had given them to say.
Now, in his interview to Judy Woodruff on the PBS Newshour, quoted above, Rhodes claimed that Israel had built literally thousands of settlements -- and then he doubled down on that claim and asserted that actually tens of thousands of settlements had been built.

White House deputy security advisor Ben Rhodes. Source: Youtube

CAMERA easily rebutted what Rhodes said by pointing out that according to Peace Now there were a total of 228 settlements altogether, 131 settlements and 97 outposts, a far cry from the tens of thousands of settlements that Rhodes claimed, unchallenged.

With the Rhodes embellishment disposed of, we can turn to Secretary of State John Kerry.

3 Settlements Built in 22 Years
In a speech following passing of the UN resolution, Kerry claimed:
We’ve made countless public and private exhortations to the Israelis to stop the march of settlements.But have there really been a steady building of new settlements that would constitute a "march" as implied by Kerry?

Again, all we have to do is just take a look at the Peace Now website.

In April 2012, they posted an article with the headline: For the First Time Since 1990 – the Government is to Approve the Establishment of New Settlements:
According to reports, Prime Minister Netanyahu stated this week that the Government will approve the establishment of three settlements (Bruchin, Sansana and Rechalim), in the upcoming cabinet meeting on Sunday, April 22.That's it. Three settlements.
In 2012.
And no new settlements built since.
And for this Kerry is "exhorting" Israel about stopping the "march" of settlements.

The White House is not alone in exaggerating a growth in settlement construction.

The Media Plays Along
Over the years, the media has conflated building settlements with building houses within the settlements, adding to the confusion and aiding in the creation of this false narrative.

CAMERA has noted the media's sloppiness confusing houses with Israeli settlements:
Whenever Israel approves plans for new housing units in preexisting West Bank settlements, or in established Jewish neighborhoods in Jerusalem beyond the pre-1967 Armistice Line (the Green Line), it seems there's always at least one major media outlet which wrongly states that Israel is building "new settlements."That time, the article in question appeared in Christian Science Monitor with the headline:
"Why New Israeli Settlements Draw Ire".
As a result of CAMERA contacting them about the error, the headline was changed to:
"Why New Building in Israeli Settlements Draws Ire" -- with a note at the end of the article noting the correction.

Other examples of similarly incorrect headlines:

• Israel Advances Plans for Settlements in the West Bank, Despite UN Resolution to Stop
  Agence France-Presse, December 27,2016
  Only by reading further does the article admit:"Israel could advance plans this week for thousands of more homes in settlements in annexed east Jerusalem in defiance of a landmark UN resolution demanding an end to such activity."[emphasis added]
  
  
• Israel plans to approve new East Jerusalem settlements in defiance of U.N.
  USA Today, December 27, 2016
  Again, you have to read the actual article to find out "Israel plans Wednesday to approve construction of more than 600 housing units in East Jerusalem..." [emphasis added]
  
  
• Israel Pressing Ahead With Settlements Despite UN Resolution
  Huffington Post, December 27, 2016
  In the first paragraph, the impression in the headline is corrected: "The Jerusalem municipality, undeterred by a U.N. anti-settlement resolution, is due to consider on Wednesday requests for construction permits for hundreds of new homes for Israelis in areas that Israel captured in 1967 and annexed to the city." [emphasis added]
  
  
• Israel okays East Jerusalem settlement just before Kerry's peace visit
  CNN, June 27, 2013
  This time, CNN just compounds its error again: "Israel approved Wednesday the construction of a settlement in East Jerusalem just before U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry is to visit the country on a peace mission."
  And again: "Wednesday's approval of a 69-unit settlement in East Jerusalem..."
  
  In this case, you have to go to The New York Times to get the story straight: "The chief Palestinian negotiator condemned Israel on Thursday for moving closer to constructing 69 apartments in a Jewish neighborhood" [emphases added]

So now it is clear that Israeli settlements are not the issue here.
Housing Construction in Settlements is Down
Having established how few settlements have been constructed, we have to assume that everyone is actually referring not to construction of settlements, but rather to construction inside the settlements, that is, the construction of houses.

Back in 2014, President Obama claimed in an interview
 "If you see no peace deal and continued aggressive settlement construction -- and we have seen more aggressive settlement construction over the last couple years than we've seen in a very long time." [emphasis added]At the time of Obama's claim about "aggessive settlement construction", Evelyn Gordon rebutted Obama's claim with the following facts:
During those five years [2009-2013], housing starts in the settlements averaged 1,443 a year. That’s less than the 1,702 a year they averaged under Ehud Olmert in 2006-08, who is nevertheless internationally acclaimed as a peacemaker (having made the Palestinians an offer so generous that then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice couldn’t believe she was hearing it). It’s also less than the 1,652 per year they averaged under Ariel Sharon in 2001-05, who is similarly lauded internationally as a peacemaker (for having left Gaza); the fact that even Sharon out-built Netanyahu is particularly remarkable, because his term coincided with the second intifada, when demand for housing in the settlements plummeted. And it’s far less than under Ehud Barak, who is also internationally acclaimed as a peacemaker (for his generous offer at Camp David in 2000): One single year under Barak, 2000, produced more housing starts in the settlements (4,683) than the entire first four years of Netanyahu’s term (4,679). [emphasis added]Haaretz, a fan of neither of Netanyahu nor the settlements, looks at houses built from 2009 to 2014 and still comes to the same conclusion: fewer houses have been built under Netanyahu than his predecessors:
According to data from the Housing and Construction Ministry, an average of 1,554 houses a year were built in the settlements from 2009 to 2014 — fewer than under any of his recent predecessors.

By comparison, the annual average was 1,881 under Ariel Sharon and 1,774 under Ehud Olmert. As for Ehud Barak, during his single full year as prime minister, in 2000, he built a whopping 5,000 homes in the settlements.There has been no aggressive increase in Israeli settlements.
There has been no aggressive increase in Israeli houses within the settlements.
Maybe the issue is the increase in the settlement population?

The Number of Houses Built in Settlements Don't Even Meet the Need
Sure enough, that is exactly what the Associated Press claimed in 2014: Netanyahu Years See Surge in West Bank Settlements

But again, the headline is misleading. The reference is actually to the population in the settlements and the impression you get is that the comparison is with the years before Netanyahu started his term in 2009. But if you make it to the 6th paragraph, you find out that the story is very different:
The rate of settler population growth slowed slightly under Netanyahu, from 31 percent during the previous five years under his predecessors Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert. Olmert especially took relatively little heat for the settlements because he was seen as a moderate. [emphasis added]The surge referred to in the article is not based on past years. Instead, the surge is based on a comparison with the increased population of Israel as a whole, noting that the increase in the settlement population is more than double that in the country as a whole -- and that population growth itself has actually slowed, not surged.

So let's go with that comparison between the settlement and national populations, keeping in mind that the Haaretz article quoted earlier notes that 74% of the increase in the settler population from 2009 to 2014 was due to the birthrate and not an influx.

In an article in the Jewish Press in 2014, blogger Joe Settler followed the AP's lead and compared the growth of populations in the settlements and compared it to Israel as a whole.

He found that the construction of houses in the settlements lags behind the rest of Israel:

• Since 2010, under Netanyahu, the settlements’ share of housing completions has declined.
  
  
• From 2010 to 2013, while the settlement population grew by about 50,000 people, the total number of new homes built was only 6,062 – falling short of the population’s needs.
  
  
• From 2010 to 2013, settlers averaged 4.19% of the national population, yet only represented 3.23% of national house starts and 4.1% of national housing completions.
  
  
• In 2013, the settlers were 4.28% of the national population, but only 3.37% of national construction was completed in Judea and Samaria.
  
  
• Bottom line, under Netanyahu, settlements did not receive their fair share of new homes in comparison to the rest of the population.

Construction Completions: Comparing Judea and Samaria to the National Average 2010 - 2013.
Credit: Joe Settler, based on Israel's Central Bureau of Statistics 
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Population Sizes: Comparing Judea and Samaria to the National Average 2008-2013.
Credit: Joe Settler, based on Israel's Central Bureau of Statistics 
The increase in the number of settlers is a natural increase, and the number of  houses that are being built do not even meet the demand.

Settlements Take Up Only 1% of the "West Bank"
That brings us to another misconception.

With all the talk by both the White House on the one hand and the media on the other, just how much land do the settlements take up in the "West Bank / Judea and Samaria?

Not a lot.

In 2002, the settlements took up less than 2% of the West Bank
B'Tselem claimed that settlements took up 1.7% of the area
Peace Now claimed settlements took up 1.36% of the land

And in 2011, chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat, claimed settlements took up 1.1% of the West Bank.

So again, why the fuss?

Peace Now's Argument Debunked
According to Peace Now, that 1% is deceptive:
The "one percent argument" is a classic example of how supporters of the status-quo use a fraction of the truth to misrepresent the truth on the ground in the West Bank. Yes, the actual built-up area of West Bank settlements takes up only a little more than 1% of the West Bank. But the settlements' built-up area is just the tip of the settlements iceberg. The impact of the settlements goes far beyond this 1%.

...In total, more than 40% of the West Bank is under the direct control of settlers or settlements and off-limits to Palestinians, regardless of the fact that only a small portion of this land has been built on by settlers.Let's put aside that in 2010, Dani Dayan, then chairman of the settlers council, countered that settlements control only 9.2 percent of the West Bank.

The point Peace Now is making is that settlements and the control they have over land is an impediment to peace.

Blogger Elder of Ziyon counters that recent history demonstrates that the argument by Peace Now is a red herring:
Somehow, the 40% Israel controls didn't stop Barak and Olmert from offering nearly the entire West Bank for a Palestinian state. If they could offer it, so could the current Israeli government. So the 40% figure is a red herring, meant to obscure the fact that the intransigent party is the Palestinian side.Settlements did not stand in the way of Netanyahu's predecessors from offering major concessions in the interests of peace -- offers that fell through not because of the settlments but because the Palestinian Arabs, including Abbas, have turned down the offers.

So Why All The Fuss Over the Settlements?So far, we have seen:

• There has been no aggresive growth in the number of settlements built
• The number of houses built has decreased and don't meet the need
• The growth in the number of settlers is due to the natural increase of the birthrate
• The settlements take a little more than 1% of the area
• The settlements have not stood in the way of peace deals being offered in the past.
• The reason Israel has not offered a peace deal recently is because Abbas refuses to negotiate.

So why all the fuss over the settlements?
Evelyn Gordon again offers an answer:
In short, if settlement construction were really the death blow to the peace process that Obama and his European counterparts like to claim, Netanyahu ought to be their favorite Israeli prime minister ever instead of the most hated, because never has settlement construction been as low as it has under him. The obvious conclusion is that all the talk about settlement construction is just a smokescreen, and what really makes Western leaders loathe Netanyahu is something else entirely: the fact that unlike Rabin, Barak, Sharon and Olmert, he has so far refused to offer the kind of sweeping territorial concessions that, every time they were tried, have resulted in massive waves of anti-Israel terror.At issue is more than just the sloppy confusion of settlements, houses and settler population. The hyperbole used by both the White House and the media pushes an agenda that clouds what is at stake and puts responsibility for peace on one party alone - Israel.

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Technorati Tag: Israel and Settlements and Abbas and Media_Bias.

In the aftermath of Obama's support for UN Resolution 2334 condemning Israeli, reactions have not been short in coming -- and there are cogent arguments against the resolution.

Beyond what is being said about Obama and his motives or against the United Nations itself and the way the resolution was carried out, the fact remains there are reasons why the UN resolution may have many results -- but none of the ones it claims to support.

Here are some of those arguments being made:


Israeli Settlements Are Not What Is Preventing Peace
UN Resolution 2334 focuses on Israeli settlements. As I've mentioned before on this blog, Obama sabotaged Middle East peace talks early on by letting Abbas know that the President of the United States would unilaterally pressure Israel on the settlements. So its not surprising that in 2014, Abbas Sabotaged American-Sponsored Peace Talks just as Abbas rejected discussing Olmert's offer in 2008.

Now, in its editorial following passage of the resolution, The Washington Post was explicit on this point when it came out with an editorial that The Obama Administration Fires a Dangerous Parting Shot. The Washington Post is no fan of Israeli settlements, but points out that
Nevertheless, settlements do not explain the administration’s repeated failures to broker an Israeli-Palestinian peace. The Palestinian Authority under Mahmoud Abbas proved unwilling to negotiate seriously even during the settlement freeze, and it refused to accept a framework for negotiations painstakingly drawn up by Secretary of State John F. Kerry in 2014. In past negotiations, both sides have acknowledged that any deal will involve the annexation by Israel of settlements near its borders, where most of the current construction takes place — something the U.N. resolution, which was pressed by the Palestinians, did not acknowledge or take into account.The UN sole fixation on Israeli settlements merely picks up where Obama's failed foreign policy leaves off

Peace -- Abbas-style, 2013-2014. Credit: The Israel Project
The UN Resolution Removes Any Reason for Abbas to Negotiate
David Gerstman, writing for The Israel Project's The Tower, explains how Anti-Israel UN Resolution Would Undermine Peace Talks
If the resolution passes, it will signal that the international community has abandoned one of the most important underpinnings of the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks: the idea that peace can only come through direct negotiations.

...Passage of the Security Council resolution will mean that the United Nations has rewarded Mahmoud Abbas, the increasingly authoritarian president of the Palestinian Authority, for his refusal to negotiate with Israel and his internationalization of the conflict. Abbas admitted that his plan was to expand legal warfare against Israel in a 2011 New York Times op-ed. “Palestine’s admission to the United Nations would pave the way for the internationalization of the conflict as a legal matter, not only a political one,” he explained. “It would also pave the way for us to pursue claims against Israel at the United Nations, human rights treaty bodies and the International Court of Justice.”Abbas knows which way the wind is blowing. Credit: Jewish Business News
The UN Has Proven Itself To Not Be An Honest Broker
Prior to the resolution, Senator Charles Schumer noted that the UN was unfit to discuss peace between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs:
“Whatever one’s views are on settlements, anyone who cares about the future of Israel and peace in the region knows that the UN, with its one-sidedness, is exactly the wrong forum to bring about peace,” the New York Democrat said in a statement.

“I have spoken directly to the Administration numerous times … and in the strongest terms possible urged them to veto this resolution. I am strongly opposed to the UN putting pressure on Israel through one-sided resolutions. An abstention is not good enough. The Administration must veto this resolution,” the statement said.
Unilateral Demands That Leave Palestinians Out of the Equation Cannot Bring Peace
AIPAC came out against the resolution, but was not opposed to the supposed goal -- just the means:
By adopting this resolution, the United Nations has once again served as an open forum to isolate and delegitimize Israel—America’s lone stable, democratic ally in the Middle East. The Palestinian leadership has refused to return to talks with Israel and has continued to incite violence. Today’s destructive UNSC resolution only rewards this negative strategy and undermines efforts to truly pursue a lasting peace.

The best way to further the peace process with the goal of a two-state solution—which we support—would have been for the international community to do everything in its power to persuade the Palestinians to return to direct, bilateral negotiations without preconditions with Israel. Unfortunately, the UNSC today irresponsibly adopted a ruinous resolution that can only make the goal of peace even more elusive. [emphasis added]
The UN Resolution Singles Out Israel With Demands That Cannot Be Met
The Israeli government of course is opposed to the resolution. Opposition leader Yair Lapid noted that the UN resolution that denied Israel its indigenous connection to the land:
Lapid added that there was “no coalition or opposition” in the Israeli government when it came to this issue, as the entire political establishment holds similar views. He noted that the resolution condemns Israeli activity in eastern Jerusalem, where the Western Wall and Temple Mount are located, and “there is no Israeli government, ever, that can accept that.”
The UN Resolution Ignores Israel's Legal Claim to Both Gaza and the West Bank
Richard L. Cravatts, past president of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East (SPME) writes about
Defective law and moral incoherence in the UN Security Council vote on the Israel settlements
More to the point, it is erroneous to overlook the fact that not only all of the land that is current­-day Israel, but also Gaza and the West Bank, is part of the land granted to the Jews as part of the League of Nations Palestine Mandate, which recognized the right of the Jewish people to “close settlement” in a portion of those territories gained after the breakup of the Ottoman Empire after World War I. According to Eugene V. Rostow [in Legality of the Israeli Settlements], the late legal scholar and one of the authors of UN Security Council Resolution 242 written after the 1967 war to outline peace negotiations, “the Jewish right of settlement in Palestine west of the Jordan River, that is, in Israel, the West Bank, Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip, was made unassailable. That right has never been terminated and cannot be terminated except by a recognized peace between Israel and its neighbors,” something which Israel’s intransigent Arab neighbors have never seemed prepared to do.

Moreover, Rostow contended, “The Jewish right of settlement in the West Bank is conferred by the same provisions of the Mandate under which Jews settled in Haifa, Tel Aviv, and Jerusalem before the State of Israel was created,” and “the Jewish right of settlement in the area is equivalent in every way to the right of the existing Palestinian population to live there.” The Six Day War of 1967, in which Israel recaptured Gaza and the West Bank, including Jerusalem, resulted in Israel being cast in another perfidious role—in addition to colonial usurper of Arab land, the Jewish state became a brutal “occupier” of Arab Palestine, lands to which the Jews presumably had no right and now occupied, in the opinion of many in the international community, illegally. But that “unhelpful” view again presumes that parts of the territory that may someday comprise a Palestinian state is already Palestinian land, that the borders of the putative Palestinian state are precise and agreed to, and that Jews living anywhere on those lands are now violating international law.

When did the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem become Palestinian land? The answer is: never.
The UN Resolution Fails to Address Israeli Security Concerns
Elliott Abrams, former deputy national security adviser in the George W. Bush administration and Michael Singh, managing director at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy write that by ignoring Israeli concerns, The United States Just Made Middle East Peace Harder:
Yet the resolution is conspicuously silent on Israeli concerns. There is no call for other states to recognize Israel’s existence — much less its status as a Jewish state — and end the conflict against it. On incitement and terrorism, it strikes a false balance by calling on “both parties” to refrain from them, despite the fact that Israel prosecutes its citizens who resort to terrorism while the Palestinian Authority lionizes them.
The UN Resolution Plays to Its One Strength: Encouraging Antisemitism
Writer Phyllis Chesler notes that Resolution 2334 amounts to nothing more than another UN resolution that encourages Antisemitism:
The UN has been unable to stop--or to effectively prosecute--a single atrocity, including genocide, that member nations have committed since the UN came into being. It has never even attempted to punish those who practice gender and religious apartheid. The most barbaric Muslim-on-Muslim violence and Muslim-on-infidel violence has never been addressed by the United Nations.

Indeed, as I have written many times, the UN has been effective in only one thing: Legitimizing and legalizing Jew-hatred in the world."Keep a Close Eye on Them" Cartoon by Patrick Mellemans, The Israeli Cartoon Project
The issue of UN Resolution 2334 is not about Obama's revenge against Netanyahu or the failures of his foreign policy. The point is that when examinging the UN resolution on its own merits, the resolution itself does far more harm than good. UN Resolution 2334 puts the peace that it claims it is designed to achieve that much further out of reach.
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Technorati Tag: Israel and Obama and United Nations and Israeli Settlements.