Pro-Palestinian-in-Chief (Obama’s hard-Left tilt is real)
May 27, 2011 - Leave a Response
by Stanley Kurtz
May 26, 2011 4:00 A.M.
It’s time to revisit the issue of President Obama’s Palestinian ties. During his time in the Illinois state senate, Obama forged close alliances with the most prominent Palestinian political leaders in America. Substantial evidence also indicates that during his pre-Washington years, Obama was both supportive of the Palestinian cause and critical of America’s stance toward Israel. Although Obama began to voice undifferentiated support for Israel around 2004 (as he ran for U.S. Senate and his national visibility rose), critics and even some backers have long suspected that his pro-Palestinian inclinations survive.
The continuing influence of Obama’s pro-Palestinian sentiments is the best way to make sense of the president’s recent tilt away from Israel. This is why supporters of Israel should fear Obama’s reelection. In 2013, with his political vulnerability a thing of the past, Obama’s pro-Palestinian sympathies would be released from hibernation, leaving Israel without support from its indispensable American defender.
To see this, we need to reconstruct Obama’s pro-Palestinian past and assess its influence on the present. Taken in context, and followed through the years, the evidence strongly suggests that Obama’s long-held pro-Palestinian sentiments were sincere, while his post-2004 pro-Israel stance has been dictated by political necessity.
Let’s begin at the beginning — with the controversial question of whether Obama’s cultural heritage through his nominally Muslim Kenyan father and his Muslim Indonesian stepfather, along with his having been raised for a time in predominantly Muslim Indonesia, might have had some effect on the president’s mature foreign-policy views. Obama supporters often mock this idea, but we have it on high authority that Obama’s unusual heritage and upbringing have had an effect on his adult views.
Top presidential aide and longtime Obama family friend Valerie Jarrett was born and raised in Iran for the first five years of her life. In explaining how she first grew close to Obama, Jarrett says they traded stories of their youthful travels. As Jarrett told Obama biographer David Remnick: “He and I shared a view of where the United States fit in the world, which is often different from the view people have who have not traveled outside the United States as young children.” Remnick continues: “Through her travels, Jarrett felt that she had come to see the United States with a greater objectivity as one country among many, rather than as the center of all wisdom and experience.” Speaking with the authority of a close personal friend and top political adviser, then, Jarrett affirms that she and Obama reject traditional American exceptionalism. One hallmark of America’s exceptionalist perspective, of course, is our unique alliance with a democratic Israel, even in the face of intense criticism of that alliance from much of the rest of the world.
Obama’s close friend and longtime ally, Rashid Khalidi, Edward Said’s successor as the most prominent American advocate for the Palestinians, goes further. Khalidi told the Los Angeles Times that as president, Obama, “because of his unusual background, with family ties in Kenya and Indonesia, would be more understanding of the Palestinian experience than typical American politicians.” Khalidi’s testimony is important, since he speaks on the basis of years of friendship with Obama.
Those who know Obama best, then, affirm that his foreign-policy views are atypical for an American politician, and are grounded in his unique international heritage and upbringing. That is important, because our core task is to decide whether Obama’s pro-Palestinian past was a stance rooted in sincere sympathy, or nothing but a convenient sop to his leftist Hyde Park supporters. Jarrett and Khalidi give us reason to believe that Obama’s decidedly pro-Palestinian inclinations are rooted in his core conception of who he is.
Obama came to political consciousness at college, and prior to his discovery of community organizing late in his senior year, his focus was on international issues. Obama’s memoir, Dreams from My Father, highlights his anti-apartheid activism during his sophomore year at California’s Occidental College. Obama’s anti-apartheid stance, however, was part of a far broader and more radical rejection of the West’s alleged imperialism. Obama himself tells us, in a famous passage in Dreams, that he was taken with criticism of “neocolonialism” and “Eurocentrism” during these early college years.
What Obama doesn’t tell us, but what I reveal in Radical-in-Chief, my political biography of the president, is that he was a convinced Marxist during his college years. More important, once Obama graduated and entered the world of community organizing, he absorbed the sophisticated and intentionally stealthy socialism of his mentors. Obama’s socialist mentors strongly supported what they saw as the “liberation struggles” carried on by rebels against American “oppression” throughout the world. So Obama’s continuous radical political history strongly suggests that his early support for Palestine’s “liberation struggle” grew out of authentic political conviction, not pandering.
Although Obama has long withheld his college transcripts from the public, the Los Angeles Times reported in 2008 that Obama took a course from Edward Said sometime during his final two undergraduate years at Columbia University. This was just around the time Obama’s ties to organized socialism were deepening, and certainly suggests a sincere interest in Said’s radical views. As Martin Kramer points out, in his superb 2008 review of Obama’s Palestinian ties, Said had just then published his book The Question of Palestine, definitively setting the terms of the academic Left’s stance on the issue for decades to come.
After Obama finished his initial community-organizing stint in Chicago and graduated from Harvard Law School, he settled down to a teaching job at the University of Chicago around 1992, and went about laying the foundations of a political career. Sometime not long after his arrival at the University of Chicago, Obama connected with Rashid Khalidi.
To say the least, Rashid Khalidi is a controversial fellow. To begin with, although Khalidi denies it, Martin Kramer has unearthed powerful evidence suggesting that Khalidi was at one time an official spokesman for the Palestine Liberation Organization. Also, in the years immediately prior to his friendship with Obama, Khalidi was a leading opponent of the first Gulf War, which successfully reversed Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait. According to Kramer, Khalidi condemned that action as an American “colonial war,” insisting that before we could end Saddam’s occupation of Kuwait, we would first have to end Israel’s supposedly equivalent occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. As Kramer puts it, Khalidi’s influence helped turn the University of Chicago of the Nineties into “the hot place to be for . . . trendy postcolonialist, blame-America, trash-Israel” scholarship.
While we don’t know exactly when their friendship began, Khalidi was reportedly present at the famous 1995 kickoff reception for Obama’s first political campaign, held at the home of Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn. That is no minor point. We’ll see that as Khalidi’s close friend and political ally, Ayers played an integral role in the story of Obama’s relationship with Khalidi.
In May 1998, Edward Said traveled from Columbia to Chicago to present the keynote address at a dinner organized by the Arab American Action Network, a group founded by Rashid and Mona Khalidi. We’ve known for some time that Barack and Michelle Obama sat next to Edward and Mariam Said at that event. (Pictures are available.) It has not been noticed, however, that a detailed report on Said’s address exists, along with an article by Said published just days before the event (Arab American News, May 22, June 12, 1998). Between those two reports, we can reconstruct at least an approximate picture of what Obama might have heard from his former professor that day.
For the most part, Said focused his article (and likely his talk as well) on harsh criticisms of Israel, which he equated with both South Africa’s apartheid state and Nazi Germany. Said’s criticisms of the Palestinian Authority also were harsh. Why, he wondered, weren’t the 50,000 security people employed by the Palestinian Authority heading up resistance to Israel’s settlement building? In his talk, Said called for large-scale marches and civilian blockades of Israeli settlement building. To prevent Palestinian workers from participating in any Israeli construction, Said also proposed the establishment of a fund that would pay these laborers not to work for Israel. Presciently, Said’s talk also called on Palestinians to orchestrate an international campaign to stigmatize Israel as an illegitimate apartheid state.
So broadly speaking, this is what Obama would have heard from his former teacher at that May 1998 encounter. Yet Obama was clearly comfortable enough with Said’s take on Israel to deepen his relationship with Khalidi and his Arab American Action Network (AAAN). We know this, because Ali Abunimah, longtime vice president of the AAAN, has told us so.
In many ways, Abunimah is the neglected key to reconstructing the story of Obama’s alliance with Khalidi and AAAN. While Abunimah’s accounts of Obama’s alliance with AAAN have long been public, they are not widely known. Nor have Abunimah’s writings been pieced together with Obama’s history of support for AAAN. Doing so creates a disturbing picture of Obama’s political convictions on the Palestinian question.
In late summer 1998, for example, a few months after Obama’s encounter with Edward Said, Abunimah and AAAN were caught up in a national controversy over the alleged blacklisting of respected terrorism expert Steve Emerson by National Public Radio. In August of that year, NPR had interviewed Emerson on air about Osama bin Laden’s terror network. According to columnist Jeff Jacoby, however, Abunimah managed to obtain a promise from NPR to ban Emerson from its airwaves, on the grounds that Emerson was an anti-Arab bigot. It took Jacoby’s research and public objections to lift the ban.
Attempting to bar an expert on Osama bin Laden’s terror network from the airwaves is not exactly a feather in AAAN’s cap. Yet Obama continued his relationship with AAAN. Abunimah himself introduced Obama at a major fundraiser for a West Bank Palestinian community center a short time later in 1999. And that, says Abunimah, was “just one example of how Barack Obama used to be very comfortable speaking up for and being associated with Palestinian rights and opposing the Israeli occupation.”
The year 2000 saw yet another public clash between Ali Abunimah and Jeff Jacoby over terrorism, along with a deepening alliance between Obama, Khalidi, Abunimah, and AAAN. In May 2000, Abunimah published a New York Times op-ed taking issue with a State Department report on the rising threat of terrorism from the Middle East and South Asia. The report focused on al-Qaeda, in particular. This was one of the most timely and accurate warnings we received in the run-up to 9/11. Yet Abunimah trashed the report. In a longer studyreleased around the time of his op-ed, Abunimah went further, questioning Hezbollah’s designation as a terrorist organization, and suggesting that we ought to be, at the very least, “deeply skeptical” of the State Department’s warnings about Osama bin Laden.
As Abunimah continued to downplay the threat from bin Laden, his ties to Obama deepened. In 2000, AAAN founder Rashid Khalidi held a fundraiser for Obama’s ultimately unsuccessful congressional campaign. Abunimah remembers that Obama “came with his wife. That’s where I had a chance to really talk to him. It was an intimate setting. He convinced me he was very aware of the issues [and] critical of U.S. bias toward Israel and lack of sensitivity to Arabs. . . . He was very supportive of U.S. pressure on Israel.” Obama’s numerous statements over the years criticizing American policy for leaning too much toward Israel were vivid in Abunimah’s memory, he says, because “these were the kind of statements I’d never heard from a U.S. politician who seemed like he was going somewhere rather than at the end of his career.” Obama’s criticism of America’s Middle East policy was sufficient to inspire Abunimah to pull out his checkbook and, for the first time, contribute to an American political campaign.
Within a year, Obama did Khalidi and Abunimah a good turn as well. From his position on the board of Chicago’s Woods Fund, Obama, along with Ayers and the other five members of the board, began to channel funds to AAAN, totaling $75,000 in grants during 2001 and 2002. Now Obama and Ayers were effectively supporting the pro-Palestinian activism of AAAN’s vice-president, Abunimah, and funding an organization founded by their mutual friends, the Khalidis, in the process.
In the first year of the Woods Fund grant, Abunimah was the focus of a critical Chicago Tribune op-ed by Gidon Remba, a former translator in the Israeli prime minister’s office. Pointing to Abunimah, among others, Remba decried attempts by “Yasser Arafat’s Arab-American cheerleaders” to “vindicate the resurgence of attacks on Israeli civilians by Palestinian gunmen and Islamic suicide bombers.” Yet Obama and Ayers re-upped AAAN’s money in 2002.
An August 2002 profile of Abunimah in the Chicago Tribune quotes a supporter of Israel noting that, while he has heard Abunimah deplore terrorism, he has never heard Abunimah affirm that he “supports the continued right of Israel to exist alongside a future Palestine.” That is because Abunimah does not appear to recognize such a right. Instead, Abunimah favors a “one-state solution,” in which Israel’s identity as a Jewish state would be drowned out by an influx of Palestinian immigrants seeking the “right of return.” Abunimah’s book, One Country, which spells out his one-state solution, features an extended comparison between Israel and South African apartheid.
For Bill Ayers, Abunimah’s claims that Israel is an apartheid state, along with his arguments that international law at times licences violent resistance against Israel, surely resonate. As I show in Radical-in-Chief, Ayers has never abandoned his Weatherman ideology. The reason Ayers refuses to repudiate the Weathermen’s terrorist past is that he sees the group’s violent actions as justified resistance to the “internal colonialism” and apartheid of a racist American society. That likely explains why Ayers happily channeled grant money to AAAN, which makes a Weatherman-style argument against Israel.
In the acknowledgments of Resurrecting Empire, a monograph he worked on toward the end of his time in Chicago, Khalidi credits Ayers with persuading him to write it. A core theme of Resurrecting Empire is that the problems of the Middle East largely turn on America’s failure to force Israel to resolve the Palestinian question. This claim that Israel is the true root of the Middle East’s problems is what Martin Kramer identifies, correctly, I think, as the key lesson imparted to Obama by Khalidi.
Khalidi left Chicago in 2003, after the now-famous farewell dinner at which Obama thanked Khalidi for years of beneficial intellectual exchange. The article in which the Los Angeles Timesreports on that dinner adds that many of Obama’s Palestinian allies and associates are convinced that, despite his public statements in support of Israel, Obama remains far more sympathetic to the Palestinian cause then he has publicly let on.
Specifically, Abunimah has said that, in the winter of 2004, Obama commended an op-ed Abunimah had just published in the Chicago Tribune, saying, “Keep up the good work!” (This is likely the op-ed in question.) According to Abunimah, Obama then apologized for not having said more publicly about Palestine, but also said he hoped that after his race for the U.S. Senate was over he could be “more up front” about his actual views.
It didn’t turn out that way. Once Obama’s new-found stardom gave him national political prospects, he swiftly shifted into the pro-Israeli camp, to Abunimah’s great frustration. Would a reelected Obama finally be able to be “more up front” about his pro-Palestinian views, belatedly fulfilling his promise to Abunimah? In short, was Obama’s pro-Palestinian past nothing but a way of placating a hard-Left constituency whose views he never truly shared? Or is Obama’s post-2004 tilt toward Israel the real charade?
The record is clear. Obama’s heritage, his largely hidden history of leftist radicalism, and his close friendship with Rashid Khalidi, all bespeak sincerity, as Obama’s other Palestinian associates agree. This is not to mention Reverend Wright — whose rabidly anti-Israel sentiments, I show in Radical-in-Chief, Obama had to know about — or Obama’s longtime foreign-policy adviser Samantha Power, who once apparently recommended imposing a two-state solution on Israel through American military action. Decades of intimate alliances in a hard-Left world are a great deal harder to fake than a few years of speeches at AIPAC conferences.
The real Obama is the first Obama, and depending on how the next presidential election turns out, we’re going to meet him again in 2013.
Stanley Kurtz is a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, and the author of Radical-in-Chief.
President Obama and the 1967 Borders, “What Israel Should Do Now”
May 27, 2011 - Leave a Response
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President Obama presented yesterday his blueprint for Mideast peace: Israel must withdraw to its pre-1967 borders. A Palestinian State needs to be created, viable and sovereign. Israel must be recognized and its security guaranteed.
I wish it was otherwise, but the words of the President demonstrate profound ignorance of the reality. Let us clarify some of the vital issues at hand, not based on illusions, but on facts.
Question:
Why can’t Israel just withdraw to its pre-1967 borders and put an end to the present conflict?
Answer:
The present conflict between Israel and the Arabs has absolutely nothing to do with the 1967 occupation. Consider the following facts:
1) The Palestinian Liberation Organization, known today as The Palestinian Authority, was founded in 1964 at a time when the “occupied territories” were under Jordanian control. There was not one Jewish settlement in the territories, nor any Jewish “occupation.” Yet the charter of the PLO from 1964 till this very day states as its goal “the destruction of Israel.”
2) What compelled Israel in 1967 to capture the territories? Five Arab countries-Jordan, Syria, Egypt, Iraq and Lebanon joined by Saudi Arabia-contrived a plan to annihilate Israel and “drive the Jews into the sea.” Israel fought back and won the war, including the territories from which they were attacked.
Israel never sought to occupy the West Bank, East Jerusalem, the Golan Heights, or Gaza. The war which brought about the “occupation” was thrust upon Israel. Yet this crucial point is almost never conveyed in the international and American press.
Keep in mind that in 1967 the Arabs controlled 99.9 percent of the Middle East lands. Israel represented less than one-tenth of 1 percent of the land mass. But even that was too much for the Arabs. They wanted it all. No matter how many land concessions the Israelis make, it will never be enough.
3) During the summer of 2000 at Camp David, Yasser Arafat was offered by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak 98 percent of the “occupied territories” and a first time ever Palestinian state with its capital in East Jerusalem. Arafat rejected the Israeli offer and initiated 20 months of bloodshed in Israel. Arafat pocketed every Israeli concession, turned his territory into an armed camp and then launched a vicious terror war that has lasted more than three years and killed more than 1,000 Israelis.
4) In the summer of 2005, Israel withdrew completely from Gaza, which it obtained in the 1967 war. Not even on an inch of land remained under Israeli occupation. The then Prime Minister Ariel Sharon believed that with not a single Jew left in Gaza and with the Israeli occupation over, the Arabs living there would now be driven to create a functioning state, and security would increase for both sides.
Alas, the exact opposite occurred. Hamas swept into Gaza and turned it into a terrorist infrastructure, with a clear objective: to destroy Israel. The result was increased rocket attacks from unoccupied Gaza targeting Israeli civilians on a daily basis.
The widespread notion that the murder of Jews in Israel has anything to do with the “occupied territories” is a myth. The territories are merely being used as a justification to exterminate Jews and destroy their land.
Question:
Still, why can’t Israel demonstrate goodwill by putting an end to the “occupation” and declaring Palestinian statehood? This would foster hope and put an end to the psychology of violence.
Answer:
For one to demand this gesture from Israel one needs to be either foolish or cruel. It is akin to demanding that a person with cancer give his malignant tumor uncontrolled rein in one part of his body. Such a “gesture” would secure his death.
Arab terror, just like the terror we experienced on 9/11, is a cancer. The thousands of fighters in the territories are not opposing Israel’s right to a particular piece of land. They don’t recognize Israel’s right to any of the land. They do not recognize Israel’s right to exist. To make peace with cancer is an act of war; to declare war against cancer is an act of peace.
Sadly, even today, the charter of the so called moderate Palestinian Authority calls for the destruction of Israel. Every single territorial concession Israel has ever made, only increased violence, and never brought peace even an inch closer. Arabs have used the ceded territory to launch attacks on Israel and murder its civilians from closer proximity. Concessions have also demonstrated to the Arabs, that terror is effective, and if the terror continues, they will receive yet more land.
Has the education curriculum in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza been altered to start teaching children about the importance of peace and co-existence? Have the Imams during their weekly sermons in the Mosques changed their jargon exclaiming that Israel is not the face of the devil? Have Arab communities stopped naming streets and quarters after suicide bombers who murdered Israeli civilians?
Sadly, nothing of this has occurred. No one in the international community even demands it as a prerequisite for peace negotiations. While Israeli schools teach that peace is our greatest ideal, in every single Arab school without exception Israel is portrayed as the enemy of G-d which must be obliterated. With these realities unaltered, giving away more territories, removing roadblocks, ceasing construction of Jewish homes, would bring more war not peace.
The creation of a Palestinian state would be a tragedy for innocent people throughout the region, Jews and Arabs alike. You don’t give a state to people who want to see your children burned alive and your teenagers blown to pieces. Such people you destroy. If not, they will destroy you and thousands of more innocent people the world over.
The very negotiations about a “Palestinian state” are dangerous. It is these types of negotiations that have granted legitimacy to terrorists and have encouraged them to continue on their path of destruction.
How could intelligent people say, “In the end Israel will have to return to the negotiations table?” Israel has been negotiating land for peace for years now; it has given the Arabs virtual control over 90 percent of the territories. What has it brought Jews? Blood, blood and more blood. Clearly, another solution must be sought.
Question:
What about the moral injustice of occupation? How could Israel hold on to the homeland of another nation, the Palestinian nation?
Answer:
To call Israel occupiers of the West Bank and Eastern Jerusalem is akin to calling the U.S. occupiers of New Jersey.
First and foremost, the Bible-a book embraced by billions of Muslims and Christians as the word of G-d-states clearly that the entire country, including the West Bank, Gaza and Jerusalem, is G-d’s eternal gift to the Jewish people. Read the Bible and draw your own conclusion.
The American people are a moral people who bow their heads before truth. It is about time that Jews begin stating the truth without shame: “Israel is occupying nothing but its own land; the Creator and Master of the entire world gave this land to the Jews.”
Second, the entire concept of a “Palestinian people fighting for their ancient homeland occupied by the Jews,” is nothing short of a lie, a myth that has become an accepted truth in the American press.
Let us reflect on some history:
Israel became a nation in 1312 B.C.E., 2,000 years before the birth of Islam. Forty years later, in 1272 B.C.E. the Jews conquered Eretz Israel and enjoyed dominion over the land for a thousand years. Even after the Babylonians and then the Romans put an end to the Jewish sovereignty, Jews continued to reside there throughout all of their history. In short, the Jews have had a continuous presence in the land of Israel for the past 3,300 years.
What about the “Palestinian people”? Israel did not seize the West Bank and Old Jerusalem from a “Palestinian nation.” Such a nation never existed in the history of mankind. Israel captured these territories from Jordan’s King Hussein and the Gaza Strip from Egypt after they declared war against the Jewish state. It was only in 1967, following the Six-day War that Arab refugees in Israel began identifying themselves as part of a “Palestinian people.” One can’t help but wonder why all these Palestinians suddenly discovered their national identity after Israel won the war but not during the “Jordanian occupation”?
The answer to this enigma is that there has never been a land known as Palestine governed by Palestinians. Palestinians are regular Arabs, indistinguishable from Jordanians, Syrians, Lebanese, Iraqis, Egyptians, etc., who have all lived for hundreds of years under Turkish rule, and then, after World War I, under British rule. There is no language known as Palestinian. There is no distinct Palestinian culture. There is no such an entity as a “Palestinian people.”
The first time the name Palestine was used was in 70 C.E. when the Romans committed genocide against the Jews, smashed the Temple and declared the land of Israel would be no more. From then on, the Romans promised, it would be known as Palestine. This region was ruled alternately by Rome, by Islamic and Christian crusaders, by the Ottoman Empire and, after World War I, by the British.
(The name was derived from the Philistines, a Goliathian people conquered by the Jews centuries earlier. It was a way for the Romans to add insult to injury. They also tried to change the name of Jerusalem to Aelia Capitolina, but that had even less staying power.)
Mark Twain took a tour of Palestine in 1867. This is how he described that land: “A desolate country whose soil is rich enough but is given over wholly to weeds. A silent, mournful expanse. We never saw a human being on the whole route. There was hardly a tree or a shrub anywhere. Even the olive and the cactus, those fast friends of a worthless soil, had almost deserted the country.”
Where was this great Palestinian nation? It did not exist. It was not there. Palestine was a region under the control of Turkey.
Many people are unaware that Saudi Arabia was not created until 1913, Lebanon until 1920. Iraq did not exist as a nation until 1932, Syria until 1941. The borders of Jordan were established in 1946 and Kuwait in 1961. To state that Israel “robbed” the Palestinian people from their homeland is simply not true.
Question:
How can Israel justify the suffering of so many innocent Arabs in the territories?
Answer:
Every decent human heart goes out to the pain of innocent Arab children, women and men. Their suffering should evoke the compassion of all moral men. But let us be clear on the matter: Their suffering has absolutely nothing to do with Israel. Their profound agony is the result of the Arab and Palestinian leaders who have in a most cynical way used them as weapons in their bloody battle against Israel, robbing them from any prospect of a brighter future.
This abuse of the Arab refugees by their leaders began back in 1948. The refugees were encouraged by Arab leaders to leave Israel, promising to purge the land of Jews. Sixty-eight percent left their homes without ever seeing an Israeli soldier.
Out of the 100 million refugees after World War II, theirs is the only refugee group in the world that was not absorbed or integrated into their own peoples’ lands. As Prime Minister Netanyahu pointed out today in the White House, Jewish refugees were completely absorbed into Israel, a country no larger than the state of New Jersey. Yet the Arab refugees were intentionally not absorbed or integrated into the Arab lands to which they fled, despite the vast Arab territory. Why? Because cynical Arab leaders realized that the true value of the refugees was not as Arab brothers but as pawns to be used against Israel.
Question:
Much of the international community, the academia and the press condemn Israel. Many claim that Israel abused and sometimes even massacres Palestinians in the territories. Is it possible that Israel is right and the whole world is wrong?
Answer:
Let us not be ashamed to respond with clarity: You bet your life it’s possible! It is true now and it’s always been true. Abraham gave the world ethical monotheism and the whole world fought him. Moses taught the world individual freedom and universal morality and the world’s super-power was against him. Just 65 years ago the entire world watched in silence as 1.5 million Jewish children went up in smoke. Was the whole world right then, too?
Universal morality and the value of life was the Jewish gift to the world. At a time when the whole world was accustomed to slaughtering children to the pagan gods, the Jewish people, alone in a hostile world, declared the word of G-d, “Thou shall not kill.”
If we had listened to the world then, murder today would be legal. If we listen to the world now, terrorism tomorrow will become the norm.
How cynical, how cruel it is to accuse Israel of the massacre of civilian Palestinians. The entire culture of the Jewish state is based on the value of every single human life. Israel has always sacrificed its children in order to secure the safety of Arab civilians. Israel restrained itself for years in the territories despite ongoing killings of Jewish children, women and men.
In the history of the Jewish state, how many Jewish suicide bombers have blown themselves up in Arab communities?
How many Arab buses were blown up by Jews?
How many Arab pizza parlors, malls, discotheques and restaurants were destroyed by Jewish terrorists?
How many airplanes have been hijacked by Jews?
How many Ramadan feasts were targeted by Jewish bombs?
How many Arabs have been lynched in Israeli cities, or Arab Olympic athletes murdered by Jews? How many Arab embassies have been bombed by Jews?
How many mosques, cemeteries and religious schools were fire bombed or desecrated by Jews in North Africa, France, Belgium, Germany, England or any other country?
How many Jewish schools contain books claiming that Arabs poison wells, use Christian blood to bake pita, control world finance and are the work of the devil? How many claim that Arab elders meet secretly to plot a world takeover?
And now, the Arabs have the chutzpah to continuously accuse Israel of massacres! And the entire world follows suit?
Question:
The Arabs claim that they are fighting against the brutal Israeli occupation, which has stripped them from their dignity and humanity.
Answer:
It would be foolish to claim that “Israel never did any wrong” to Arabs living throughout the territories. Of course, Israel has made errors. Yet the fact remains that the Arabs living under Israeli rule enjoyed more civil rights than Arabs living in almost any Arab state. The Arab press in the West Bank has been among the liveliest and freest in the Arab world, and it routinely attacks its “occupier.”
When was the last time a Syrian, Iraqi, Libyan or Saudi publicly attacked one of his or her leaders? How is Syria treating its protesters as I write? And Iran? And Libya?
Question:
So, what is the solution to the conflict?
Answer:
As long as the status of the entire country remains ambiguous, the terror campaign against Israel will continue. As long terrorists see the opportunity to seize more land and attack Israel from closer proximity, they will not cease their agenda. Israel should stand up and put an end to the ambivalence around Jewish ownership of the land; it must stop intoxicating the terrorists. Israel must state clearly that “Until the culture and education of the entire Palestinian population does not change, there will be no more negotiations on even a single inch of the land of Israel. We have attempted to negotiate land for peace with our neighbors; we have offered them 98 percent of the territories and an independent state side-by-side with our state. Yet they have reciprocated by sending suicide bombers to our pizza shops, cafés, supermarkets and streets. They have blown to pieces hundreds of innocent Jewish men and women. One cannot give land to leaders who have taught their people to celebrate Jewish death.”
Israel should allow anybody who wishes to depart for another country to do so. Then it should go in and reclaim its permanent sovereignty over all of the territories. This will save not only countless Jewish lives, but also scores of Arab lives. It will once and for all purge the region from continuous bloodshed and terror.
Israel’s concessions due to intense world pressure were foolish. Politics superseded security; morality was defeated by fear. To demand Israel’s withdrawal from any territory is asking the Jewish State to help commit suicide. That it should get any encouragement from the United States or from its secretary of state is a disgrace
is similar to one demanding from a surgeon to stop the surgery before finishing because the sight of blood is repulsive. The short-term cover-up of the terror nests will only allow the long-term blossoming of the terror organizations.
The best way to bring about genuine peace in the Arab-Israeli war is by Israel putting an end to any future negotiations on the land. Israel must assume full security and military control over all of the territories under the united banner of a single country, Eretz Israel.
This is not an occupation. It is the land of Israel, given by G-d to the Jewish people. It is moral and just. Let’s set the record clear once and for all: This is Jewish land, not Arab land. The Arabs who wish to desist from killing Jews will enjoy cultural and religious freedom, civil rights, gender equality and freedom of expression, privileges most of them have never experienced in their own countries. Those who cannot tolerate living under a united Jewish country should be welcomed to emigrate.
All other suggested paths are merely romantic delusions that will bring continued grief to innocent Jews and Arabs. Let all Jews and people of moral standing unite and encourage Israel in its campaign to bring life and peace to all good people in the region, Jew and Arab.
Open Letter to Bob Kunst
May 27, 2011 - Leave a Response
Submitted on 2011/05/20 at 8:00 am
Hi Bob. Blog letter to the Herald today. Thought it might interest you.
http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/05/20/2225728/israeli-official-washington-does.html
OBAMA SELLS OUT ISREAL. FLORIDA JEWS, STILL VOTING FOR HIM?
Everybody predicted it and now it has happened, Obama is selling out Israel, the only civilized democratic country in the middle east and our only true ally. This comes as no surprise to those of us who actually paid attention to his ideas-philosophy, dominated by Marxist “third world” advocacy. He has been an enemy of the Jewish state his whole life regardless of his verbal protestations to “Zionism.”
Now, prior to meeting with Isreali premier Netanyahu, he’s reversed decades of US policy and called for an indefensible Isreal limited to the 1967 boundaries, next door to a Palestinian state pledged to the its destruction. Israel will no more return to 1967 borders than the USA will return to our pre Mexican war boundaries; giving up California and the entire southwest. We won it fair and square, in WAR. The Arabs have repeatedly attacked the Jewish state since 1948 and thousands of young Israelis have died defending their people whom Hamas (the elected real government of “Palestine” has vowed to exterminate.) So, before negotiations, Obama has taken away any bargaining power Israel might have and, in so doing, made uncertain future US support. Obama’s WORDS reassure, but ACTIONS speak far louder. Paper treaties are NO defensein the real world. Hamas, like thier much admired Hitler, will break ‘em in a heartbeat.
As a Irish American “Schagitz,” I’ve long been astounded at American Jews continually voting for their enemies; Obama & Co. Yesterday AIPAC, the US’s principal pro-Isreal lobbying group, had to advise its members to “react with moderation” (not hiss and boo) Obama next week when he speaks at their convention. My Jewish friends, how long are you going to “take it” and watch the beginning of Isreal’s destruction? Ever notice that virtually EVERY Republican is a strong supporter of the Jewish state? Maybe it is time to reconsider your political affiliations. The days of restricted hotels and “gentleman’s agreement” are long gone. You are welcome to the Tea Party and the GOP.
Special Report May 18, 2011
May 19, 2011 - Leave a Response
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Caricature in the official PA daily, depicting the establishment of the state (“1948″) as a shark devouring “Palestine.”SHALOM INTERNATIONAL RALLIES AT WHITE HOUSE, 5/20/11, CONDEMNS OBAMA’S SPPECH AS ‘PACK OF ARAB LIES’
May 19, 2011 - Leave a Response
Obama’s speech today was a total pack of lies, while he ignored the Iranian students protesting or the Christians killed and churches burned in Egypt. Obama’s treachery extends to ignoring Israel “Occupying the Holyland” for 5000 yrs., and Jerusalem, Jewish for 3000 yrs., and 5 Arab wars and 2 Intifadas to ‘kill all Jews’, and 900,000 Jews thrown out of Arab countries, while Obama keeps pushing Israel to give it all up for ‘peace’ with the same forces of Fatah and Hamas, Hezbollah, Muslim Brotherhood, Al Qaeda, who all are screaming “Death to America” and “Death to Israel” as part of the Mufti of Jerusalem alligned with Hitler. Obama’s betrayal will only lead to the next war and Holocaust. What planet is Obama living on? Bob Kunst, Pres., Shalom International, 305-864-5110
NEWS RELEASE
RALLY AT THE WHITE HOUSE
WHEN BIBI NETAYAHU IS THERE
10 A.M., FRIDAY, MAY 20, 2011
JOIN SHALOM INTERNATIONAL, CONTACT: BOB KUNST, 305-864-5110
OUR 449TH RALLY TO “KEEP JERUSALEM UNITED” AND TO “FIGHT TERRORISM AND SUPPORT ISRAEL, SINCE OCT. 2007 AND 1400 NEWS INTERVIEWS.
B I B I:
D O N ‘ T G I V E T H E N A Z I S A V I C T O R Y!
O U R C O V E N A N T W I T H G – D,
J E R U S A L E M A N D I S R A E L
A R E N O T F O R S A L E!
—————————————————————-
WE ALSO RALLY ON
M A Y 22. 2011, 8:00 A.M
.
AT A.I.P.A.C. CONVENTION
WASHINGTON CONVENTION CENTER
CORNER OF 9TH ST.
A N D AGAIN ON MAY 23, 201,
5P.M. WHEN BIBI WILL BE SPEAKING
_____________________________________________________________
CONTACT: BOB KUNST, PRESIDENT, SHALOM INTERNATIONAL 305-864-5110
THIS WILL BE OUR 450TH RALLY/EVENT SINCE OCT. 2007, TO “KEEP JERUSALEM UNITED” AND TO “FIGHT TERRORISM-SUPPORT ISRAEL” AND 1,400 NEWS INTERVIEWS.
“WILL BIBI STAND WITH OUR COVENANT WITH G-D, THAT’S 5000 YRS. OLD…. OR LET THE ANTI-SEMITES ATTACK OUR FAITH, HISTORY, IDENTITY AND BETRAY ALL THE MILLIONS OF JEWS MURDERED, BECAUSE THEY WERE JEWS?
THIS IS THE TURNING POINT IN OUR JEWISH HISTORY. WILL BIBI CAVE IN TO OBAMA WHO WANTS TO DIVIDE JERUSALEM AND GIVE IT TO THE VERY PEOPLE WHO DANCED IN THE STREETS AFTER 9/11…..WHO IN CAIRO, 2009, EQUATED THE HOLOCAUST WITH ‘MUSLIM HUMILIATION’, WHILE COWARDLY IGNORING 5 ARAB WARS AND 2 INTIFADAS TO KILL ALL JEWS…..WHO IN 2010, SIDED WITH NAZI INSURANCE COMPANIES AGAINST HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS WANTING TO SUE FOR STOLEN POLICIES AND COMPENSATION….WHO SINCE 2008, HAS VIOLATED TITLE 18 OF U.S. CODE, NOT TO GIVE MATERIAL SUPPORT TO TERRORISTS AND INSTEAD HAS GIVEN $1.3BILLIONS TO FATAH/HAMAS BOTH COMMITTED TO ISRAEL’S DESTRUCTION….WHO IS ALLOWING IRAN TO BUILD ITS NUKES IT WILL USE AGAINST ISRAEL AND AMERICA….WHO SIDES WITH THOSE SCREAMING ‘DEATH TO AMERICA’ AND ‘DEATH TO ISRAEL’….WHO BACKS THE VICTORY MOSQUE AT GROUND ZERO….WHO WANTS TERRORIST TRIALS IN NY….WHO BLACKMAILS ISRAEL TO COMMIT SUICIDE AND MOVE THE MONSTERS CLOSER TO ATTACKING EVERY PART OF ISRAEL.
THIS ISN’T ‘SECURITY’, BUT A TOTAL SLAP UPON OUR JEWISH FAITH, OUR HISTORY AND SUFFERINGS, BY THE VERY FORCES WHO SUPPORTED HITLER AND THE HOLOCAUST, BUT COWARDLY DENY IT AND WANT TO FINISH THE JOB, OBAMA IS HELPING WITH HIS ANTI-ISRAEL AND ANTI-JEWISH POLITICS.
OBAMA ‘CURSES’ ISRAEL AND AMERICA IS ‘CURSED’ INSTEAD OF BEING BLESSED.
THE JEWISH VOTE MADE OBAMA’S VICTORY POSSIBLE AND HIS MIDDLE EAST POLITICS HAVE BEEN A MAJOR DISASTER WITH MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD TAKING OVER WITH HAMAS, HEZBOLLAH, AL QAEDA, ETC. AND ALLIGNED WITH IRAN AND ANOTHER MAJOR WAR ON THE HORIZON. THE JEWISH VOTE WILL NOT BACK THIS OUTRAGE ANY LONGER THAT IS THREATENING ISRAEL’S AND AMERICA’S EXISTANCE.
WE HOPE BIBI UNDERSTANDS WHAT HE IS DOING AND IS BEING PUSHED TO DO AND WHY WE RALLY!
NEWS RELEASE
May 13, 2011 - Leave a Response
!!!EMERGENCY REPORT !!!
WE MUST STOP THIS NOW!
BEFORE ITS TOO LATE!
Palestinians are preparing to assemble tens of thousands of protesters in cites all across the nation to spread their propaganda and lies.
WE MUST STOP THEM!
SUNDAY, MAY 15
THEY ARE CALLING FOR A 3RD INTIFADA
AGAINST ISRAEL AND JEWS WORLDWIDE
THEY PLAN TO DEMONSTRATE IN FRONT OF
THE ISRAELI CONSULATE,
100 BISCAYNE BLVD. IN DOWNTOWN MIAMI, FLA
SUNDAY, MAY 15, 2011, AT NOON
WE MUST STOP THEM!
rally will include the Students for Justice in Palestine, SFBDS, International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network, Miami-Dade Green Party and the Palestinian American Organization. The rally will encourage participants to join in the Boycott of Divestment and Sanctions movement.
ZOA is against this protest and needs your support to defend Israel and denounce their claims, negative propaganda and lies
THIS SUNDAY
STAND WITH ISRAEL
SUNDAY, MAY 15, 2011, AT NOON
ISRAELI CONSULATE IN DOWNTOWN MIAMI
ACROSS FROM “The Torch of Friendship”
BAYFRONT PARK ON BISCAYNE BLVD
PROTECT AND DEFEND
STAND WITH US!
May 1, 2011 - One Response
”T H A N K G – D O S A M A B IN L A D E N IS D E A D “ EMERGENCY RALLY
NOON AT “TORCH OF FRIENDSHIP”
BISCAYNE BLVD AND 4TH ST
DOWNTOWN MIAMI
MAY 2, 2011
AND EVERY AMERICAN SERVING FOR OUR FREEDOMS.
We’ll be giving out candy, as the Arabs did while
dancing in the streets after ’9/11′ and every time
they kill innocent Jews.
CONTACT BOB KUNST, PRESIDENT OF SHALOM INTERNATIONAL
305-864-5110
2nd Rally, Tuesday, May 3, Fed. Bldg., Ft. Laud.
Broward Blvd. and 3rd Ave., 5 P.M.
The West supports a Judenrein Palestine
March 28, 2011 - Leave a Response
March 27, 2011
The West supports a Judenrein Palestine
By Matthew M. Hausman,
In seeking to impose a Palestinian state on Israel, the Obama Administration, European Union, and western media have displayed a cynical contempt for history that is astounding in its breadth and scope. Pressure is brought to bear solely on Israel, who is expected to sacrifice sovereignty and security in the name of an ideal that is premised on a repudiation of the Jews’ right to self-determination in their ancient homeland.
The Palestinians are expected to concede nothing — not even their oft-stated goal of the phased destruction of Israel. Nothing illustrates the hypocrisy better than a comparison of their demand that Israel accept an Arab “right of return” with their ambition for a state that would be ethnically cleansed of all Jews. Like the Nazis with whom the Mufti and other Arab leaders were so closely allied during the Second World War, they seek to create a Judenrein state as a springboard for the elimination of a Jewish presence in the Mideast. Ironically, western progressives are enabling the process, even though it entails human rights violations that would certainly be illegal in liberal democracies.
The continuing support for the Palestinian cause by the United States and European Union — and their contribution of billions of dollars that fund antisemitic propaganda masquerading as school curriculum, line the pockets of the corrupt Abbas regime or end up in the coffers of Hamas — would indicate an abdication of reason if the true goal were to achieve a lasting, substantive peace. However, such behavior is not incongruous if the real purpose is political realignment with the Arab-Muslim world at the expense of Israel’s integrity as a democratic, Jewish nation. Although Obama and the EU claim only to support the rights of the Palestinians as an indigenous people, they have adopted the cause by uncritically promoting a revisionist narrative that is built on a denial of Jewish history. However, the Jews’ rights as an indigenous people were recognized historically and under international law long before the term “Palestinian” was ever used to refer to an Arab population that accreted largely through immigration during the sunset years of the Ottoman Empire. The Jewish people originated in ancient Israel; the Palestinians did not.
The Arab-Muslim world’s true intentions regarding peace with Israel should be apparent from its centuries-long oppression and subjugation of Jews in Arab lands and its stated refusal to recognize Israel as a Jewish nation. The two-state solution is proffered as a ruse for the destabilization of Israel, and western apologists are complicit in the charade by their refusal to insist on Arab recognition of Jewish historical rights, and by their failure to condemn the Palestinian goal of state building through ethnic cleansing. Whereas any perceived attempt by Israel to transfer Arab populations would certainly inspire international condemnation, the Palestinians’ open and notorious aim of expelling Jews from historically Jewish lands — lands that were never part of any sovereign Arab nation — is met with conspicuous silence or tacit approval. Indeed, President Obama’s demand last year for a building freeze in Jerusalem was a blatant attempt to coerce Israel to implement apartheid-like measures against her own citizens in order to limit the Jewish population of her capital.
Nevertheless, Jewish habitation in Judea, Samaria, and Israel proper, including Jerusalem, was a fact from antiquity into modern times — until Jordan conquered the territories and dispossessed their Jewish inhabitants during Israel’s War of Independence. When Jordan (then known as Transjordan) conquered Judea and Samaria in 1948, it expelled the Jews living there, collectively dubbed these territories the “West Bank,” and annexed them in violation of international law. Israel’s subsequent acquisition of these lands in 1967 in truth effectuated their liberation from foreign occupation; and renewed Jewish habitation thereafter constituted nothing more than repatriation. Israel’s liberation and administration of Judea and Samaria were perfectly legitimate under prevailing standards of international law, despite Palestinian claims to the contrary. In fact, it is Palestinian land-claims that are dubious, based as they are on Jordan’s transfer of its negotiating “rights” over these territories to the Palestinian Authority as part of the Oslo process. Because Jordan seized these lands illegally, however, it never possessed lawful title in the first place, and accordingly had no legitimate rights to convey to the PA.
In consideration of these facts, it is reasonable to question why Israel should even entertain the notion of a two-state solution, particularly as it requires her to discount the indigenous heritage of her own people and surrender ancestral lands to those who unapologetically call for her destruction. One must also question the wisdom of negotiating with the PA, which could easily be displaced by Hamas through open revolt or by an Islamist-influenced election such as occurred in Gaza. This is a particular concern in view of the political upheavals currently sweeping across the Arab world, where popular unrest has reinforced the legitimacy of military juntas and strengthened the political profile of Islamist groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood.
Alternative Solutions
In determining the permanent status of Judea and Samaria, many advocates believe Israel instead should be guided by the principles laid out at the San Remo Conference of 1920, during which the Supreme Council of Principal Allied Powers made decisions implicating the future of the territories they liberated from the Ottoman Empire during the First World War. The Council among other things incorporated the Balfour Declaration into its program and recognized that the Jews comprised a people defined not solely by religion, but by nationality and descent as well. Moreover, it recognized that the Jews were indigenous to the Land of Israel and, accordingly, that they had the right to self-determination in their homeland. The Mandate for Palestine of 1922 further guaranteed the right of “close settlement,” which recognized that Jews could settle anywhere west of the Jordan. No similar recognition was accorded Palestinian-Arab nationality at that time because it simply did not exist. Rather, the local Arabs considered themselves to be culturally part of the greater Syrian community, and much of their population had accrued through late migration into the area only after the Jews had begun rehabilitating the land and creating economic opportunities that did not exist elsewhere in the Mideast.
The acceptance of the San Remo program by the League of Nations — and the restatement of its ambitions in the 1922 Mandate for Palestine — evidenced an acknowledgment of the Jews’ status as an indigenous people and their right to settle anywhere in their homeland, including Judea and Samaria, and thus underscored the legal basis for the reestablishment of the Jewish state. Consequently, traditional recognition of the Jews’ indigenous rights should inform any proposals for resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict. This would be consistent with the ideals set forth in the “Declaration on Rights of Indigenous Peoples,” voted on by the U.N. in 2007. Of particular relevance is the language contained in Article 10, which states:
Indigenous peoples shall not be forcibly removed from their lands or territories. No relocation shall take place without the free, prior and informed consent of the indigenous peoples concerned and after agreement on just and fair compensation and, where possible, with the option of return.
Though the true intent of this nonbinding declaration may have been to promote the Palestinian cause at Israel’s expense, it cannot be divorced from the long-standing recognition under international legal conventions that the Jews are indigenous to the Land of Israel. Accordingly, it implicitly reinforces the Jewish connection to lands the Palestinians now attempt to claim as their own, and provides justification for potential resolutions that are premised on legally-cognizable Jewish claims, rather than on politically-motivated or apocryphal Palestinian pretensions.
If a state of Palestine were to be created, any policies requiring the ethnic cleansing of Jewish inhabitants would violate international law as recognized at San Remo and under the original Mandate for Palestine, which the United Nations is currently bound to honor by virtue of Section 80 of the U.N. Charter. Such ethnic cleansing would also contravene the precepts set forth in the Declaration on Rights of Indigenous Peoples and other conventions. Thus, in order to exist in compliance with international law, such a state would have to provide for the Jews — as indigenous people — to remain on their ancestral lands in Judea and Samaria. It would also need to recognize the Jewish right of close settlement. Jewish residents of such a state would have to retain Israeli citizenship and be governed by Israeli law, and the Arab state subsuming their communities would have to recognize Israeli sovereignty within their enclaves. Jews wishing to travel to Israel proper would have to be free to do so without harassment. Such arrangements exist in other parts of the world, for example, in North America, where Alaskans cut off from the mainland United States are permitted to travel through Canada in order to visit the lower Forty-Eight, or in Europe where citizens of EU countries are permitted to travel across national borders unimpeded. Indeed, the Quartet seeks to impose just such an arrangement on Israel by demanding that Gaza be connected by a corridor to a Palestinian State in Judea and Samaria.
It is unlikely, however, that a Palestinian state would recognize any Jewish rights or permit Jewish residency. It is equally unlikely that it would recognize Jewish autonomy or Israeli sovereignty. Thus, a more realistic scenario — if there is to be a Palestinian entity — might be the creation of a federation or confederation in which some of the territories currently under Israeli administration would be linked with Jordan, where a majority of the population already identifies as Palestinian. A “confederation” could be created by ceding some territory for a semi-autonomous region that would then be joined with Jordan under an umbrella government of general, limited powers. The concept of confederation provides that Jordan and a Palestinian entity would each maintain individual sovereignty and would exercise unilateral powers outside the scope of the general government’s jurisdiction. The authority of the general government would be limited to those powers specifically agreed upon by the constituent entities. The risk of confederation, however, is that the entities could elect to separate in order to establish an independent Palestinian state.
A similar but distinct concept is “federation,” in which sovereign authority would be constitutionally allocated among the member states and the general government, but in which the structure of government could not be altered by the unilateral acts of its constituents. That is, neither entity could dissolve the union in order to establish an independent Palestinian state. Such a federation would consist of Jordan and a Palestinian entity created on land transferred from Judea and Samaria, but would not include Jewish towns or population centers. Likewise, Israel would retain control of all land necessary to ensure her security and to protect her water rights in the Jordan valley. These same constraints on land transfers would apply to a confederation as well.
Regardless of the technical form, the resulting Palestinian-Jordanian entity would be independent from Israel and would include no land or power sharing in Jerusalem, which would remain exclusively under Israel’s dominion and control. Jerusalem was never the capital of any sovereign Arab nation, and Jordan’s illegal occupation from 1948 to 1967 does not provide a legal basis for Palestinian claims over the city. In contrast, Israel does have a lawful historical claim to Jerusalem, in which Jews have constituted the majority population for generations, since long before Israeli independence to the present day. Moreover, Jerusalem was the ancient capital of Jewish kingdoms that were the only sovereign nations ever to occupy the land. Consequently, there can be no justification for dividing the city. Arabs residing in Jerusalem would remain subject to Israeli civil and criminal law, and Israel would continue to protect and facilitate access to all religious sites and shrines as she always has done.
Israel could enforce a similar arrangement between Gaza and Egypt, after which Israel would sever any remaining connection to Gaza. Thus, Egypt would be solely responsible for servicing Gaza’s infrastructure, utility, and humanitarian needs, leaving Israel to concentrate on consolidating and enhancing her security presence along her southern border.
These concepts are not new or unique, but rather were the subject of analysis and debate in the 1990s by the late Daniel J. Elazar, founder of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, and others. Proposals involving these and similar models were put forth as alternatives to a free-standing Palestinian state. At the time, a federal model was considered by many to be a more workable paradigm than independent Palestinian statehood for protecting Israeli security, particularly by those who recognized that the Oslo process tended to sacrifice Israeli rights and security concerns. Proponents of some kind of Arab federal union believed that the costs of administering a hostile population would continue to grow, but that an independent state of Palestine would threaten Israel’s security and pose an existential challenge to her long-term survival. These ideas are regaining currency today in part because the political unrest now rocking the Arab world emphasizes the risk that an independent Palestinian state would be subject to the same destabilizing influences. It is likely that such a state would quickly become a terrorist haven and a hostile military threat, particularly if it were to be created from lands that currently provide Israel with strategic security buffers.
Not everyone believes that the creation of such entities will resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict. In fact, there is growing support in some segments of Israeli society for formal annexation of Judea and Samaria, in whole or in part, or for de facto annexation through the extension of Israeli civil law into these territories. Although there may be disagreement regarding the most appropriate strategy, there is increasing consensus among Israelis that they must create their own solutions based on their own needs and concerns, instead of waiting passively while a two-state plan is foisted upon them by outside powers who have no regard for Israeli sovereignty.
Despite international pressure for the creation of a Palestinian state devoid of Jews, Israel must be guided by her own priorities, and must not lose sight of the rights of Jews as indigenous people in their homeland, including those rights recognized at San Remo and reinforced by the Mandate. A Palestinian state created by dispossessing Jews from their ancestral lands would be in violation of international law and would represent a repudiation of history. Unfortunately, American and European support for a Judenrein Arab state illustrates that international law is not applied equitably when the net effect would be the validation of historical Jewish rights or Israeli national integrity. Therefore, Israel must resist all calls for her to sacrifice her security needs and Jewish character, and should work instead to expose the double standard underlying the international community’s unjust and unreasonable demands.
