Israel Badly Needs To Face Reality

There's a name for trying the same thing over and over again and expecting different result, thanks to Albert Einstein. It's called insanity.And sadly, we're once again witnessing the Israeli government doing just that.

Anyone who still thinks there's any life in the so called 'peace process' and the so-called 'two state solution' is playing this game and wearing blinders.

First, this nonsense has been tried several times with absolutely no success. This was what Oslo was supposed to be all about, remember? And remember how it turned out, with a terrorist squat in Judea and Samaria and one in Gaza? Exactly. 

If we look at the facts, there have been several times when the Arabs who refer to themselves as 'Palestinians' have been offered peace deals...at one time, three different Israeli left wing prime ministers offered the Palestinian Authority ninety-five, and then ninety-six percent of the “occupied” territories. And the 'Palestinians; refused, just as they're refusing now. I wonder why....wait, of course it's an easy one to figure out...this is what they really want:

Why yes! What they want isn't peace. They want no Israel to exist at all. How hard is that to figure out? OK, it's obvious They never intended at all to live in peace with the Jews. After all, they have never kept a single part of any agreement they've signed and have actively promoted terrorism in their mosques, media and schools.  Abbas habitually refers to imprisoned terrorists as 'holy martyrs' for deliberately targeting and killing Jews and Palestinian media actually encourages this...and then of course there's the money you get whether your killed or just thrown in jail, $500 and up depending on how many Jews you killed. It's a nice income by Palestinian standards.

Oslo, of course was a product of Bill Clinton, who had Arafat to the White House more than any other foreign leader.Since Labor leader Yizhak Rabin owed President Clinton for some clandestine aid in getting him elected Prime Minister, Oslo was a done deal, a terrorist enemy right next door to Israel that resulted in zero peace and a lot of dead and maimed Jews.

And guess what? Nothing, I mean nothing has changed. It wasn't so long ago that PLO leader Jibril Rajoub said openly that "If we had a nuclear weapon I'd use it on Israel tomorrow."  This is the same terrorist who the Israelis actually gave medical care to. They also gave Medical care to Abbas and to his wife. Can you imagine doing this for  someone who hates you with all his heart and wants to exterminate you?

And we haven't even mentioned Hamas yet. My point is simply this...the Arabs who call themselves 'Palestinians' have no interest in peace with Israel. We can accept that as a given, simply because it's be proven numerous times.

The latest manifestation of this fairy tale about peace is known as 'The Deal Of The Century' presented by the Trump administration. And as much as I respect President Trump, it's at least a viable attempt. But it won't ever work since its just another attempt to get the PLO to accept something they will never accept and don't want.

And frankly, as written, it's not really that good a deal for Israel. Let's look at why, shall we?

First of all,Israel is being asked to give up something it owns anyway.

The land in question is Judea and Samaria, AKA The 'West Bank' although it's only that if you're looking at it from Jordan. After WWI, the UK was given a Mandate by the League of Nations to administer all of what was then the former Turkish province known as Palestine. Originally, all of this was supposed to be the Jewish State. A couple of years later, The Brits asked the League for permission to divide the area, the reason being that they wanted a kingdom for one of the Sharif of Mecca's sons, Abdullah. He wanted Syria but so did the French, so what he got was 78% of 'Palestine' as the Arab State, Jordan which consisted of everything east of the Jordan River.  The Jews were to get the other 22%, everything west of the Jordan River for the Jewish state. This division was agreed on and signed on to by the Brits, The Jews, the Arabs and the League in 1922 in a treaty called the San Remo Accords.

The Brits saw to it that the Arabs got their state very quickly. And then proceeded to do everything they could to stop the Jews from establishing theirs in numerous ways. They deliberately limited Jewish migration to what became Israel while allowing unlimited Arab migration. This came to a head when the Brits chose to violate the San Remo accords and stopped all Jewish migration . In 1939, Britain anti-Semitic Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain issued an order not to let any Jews into Palestine at all... at a time when thousands of Jewish refugees from Germany and other countries who had fled to France and other countries had nowhere else to go.

Not content with that,  after WWII, when Labour's Clem Atlee took over, he made the decision to not allow Jews into Palestine. The Brits  even had their own concentration camp on Cyprus for any survivors of the Holocaust they caught trying to get in, and in some cases, they even sent Jews back to the very same camps in Europe they had been  imprisoned in.

In 1948, when Israel declared its independence  the UN recognized it, although  Britain didn't. The UN also made the San Remo Accords part of its charter, in Article 80...which has never been  removed or repealed.

So under international law, Everything west of the Jordan River belongs to Israel. They have no need to bargain about it or make any exchange that will only result in more terrorist violence.

 Israel lost this land for 19 years  because in 1948,  Brit PM Clem Atlee armed the surrounding Arab armies to the teeth, even though they were openly promising a second Holocaust three years after Auschwitz was liberated. Not only that, but he sent British officers to command the Jordanian Arab Legion under Colonel John Glubb, a known anti-semite. It was these officers who oversaw the ethnic cleansing of every Jew in Judea, Samaria and East Jerusalem as well as the destruction of many Jewish shrines and synagogues. While the UN never recognized THAT illegal occupation, they never did anything about it either.

To add insult to injury, the areas Israel is going to be allowed to regain officially involve established Israeli communities already existing  for years. You know, what the UN and EU like to refer to as 'settlements.'

In fact, most of this area was promised to Israel as part of GW Bush's 'Road Map' in exchange for giving up Gaza. These are the same commitments Barack Hussein Obama and Hillary Clinton swore didn't exist even though  they were referred to in a Bush speech and in the agreement itself. Arik Sharon, who made the agreement with GW Bush was in a coma at that point, and of course Bushie Boy kept his mouth shut.

Not only that, but the EU is threatening Israel with sanctions if they make these areas an official part of Israel. And the US is still thinking it over, whether Israel gets even this much.Some deal hmm? And here's the cherry on top. Israel has to give the PLO 4 years to decide if they'll abide by any part of this, And during those 4 years Israel is not allowed to build anything in areas they've lived in for years!

Some sovereignty!

And here's the real loser......some of the land the 'Palestinians' and the PLO would retain based on this 'deal' are within easy shooting distance of some of these Jewish communities. These attackson Jewish communities are even actually happening now in Judea and Samaria.

Second, Israel is being asked to give any 'Palestinians' living in these areas Israeli citizenship.

True there aren't that many of them, but would Trump and the US give citizenship automatically to people who had been brain washed to hate America for three generations? People who may conceivably have blood on their hands? People who in many cases have citizenship in a country that has a 'treaty' which is basically a cease fire and which still is extremely hostile to America? That's exactly the situation between Israel and Jordan. There have been numerous instances when 'Palestinians' given work permits in Israel have committed terrorism.

Third, the map lines as now drawn simply give the 'Palestinians' a closer range to shoot from. Several of the Israeli communities we're talking about would be easy targets.

And finally, Fourth,the object here, 'peace' between Israel and the PLO is a non-starter. They're not interested in peace and they never have been. It's that simple. And both the Trump Administration and Israel's current government are fooling themselves if they think this means peace with the PLO and Hamas.

Allow me to present a way to actually achieve peace that will definitely work and end this once and for all.

And the irony of it is that it could have been done years ago.

In the Six Day War, Jordan attacked Israel. The IDF pushed the Jordanian troops back across the river. At that time, they could easily have sent the 'Palestinians' who all had Jordanian citizenship back across the Jordan River as well, and this entire mess would have been avoided. However, Israel's Labor government made a mess of things. They made the mistake of thinking these Arabs would be able to live in peace with them, and it turned out to be a huge mistake.

The Israelis built virtually the entire infrastructure in Judea and Samaria....the power grid, the water systems, schools, houses, roads, sewage, irrigation,hospitals, even a university. Their reward of course was that first Intifada. They definitely should have seen that coming.

The way to finally solve this problem is to do what should have been down back in 1967. Simply move the Arabs who call themselves 'Palestinians' across the river, perhaps with cash settlements for people who can actually prove they purchased and own property. This  is certainly more than the Arabs gave the almost one million Jews they ethnically cleansed from the Arab world after 1948. They plundered them for everything they had and these Jews left with the clothes on their backs. 

Jordan of course would not like this but there's not much they could do about it, especially since they have already agreed to abandon all claim to Judea and Samaria. Jordan's  midget King Abdullah would also be upset because many of these  people tend to cause problems where ever they go...Iraq, Kuwait,Lebanon, Egypt and yes, Jordan, which Arafat almost took over in 1970's Black September.

Odd, isn't it? All refugees are supposedly taken care of by UNHCR(also known as the UN Refugee Agency) except one...the almost 1 million penniless Jews ethnically cleansed by the Arab world in1948.Most of them ended up living in tent cities in Israel.  They never received a dime except from Jewish charities. President Trump, to his credit, mentioned this in his peace plan, although without actually suggesting any, kind of payback by the countries involved in stealing well over a billion and a half dollars US in property, homes, businesses, bank accounts and personal property according to the most conservative estimates.

Oh, but wait, there's another group the UNHCR doesn't handle They're handled by one of the UN's biggest and well funded sections,  UNRWA which is solely devoted to the care and welfare of these alleged 'Palestinian' refugees many who left willingly under orders from the Arab States attacking Israel and their leader, Haj Amin al-Husseini. Except these refugees were never refugees at all! In 1954, the Jordanian Parliament gave Jordanian citizenship to all of them including the ones in the UNRWA facilities. And even UNRWA's first American Chief Executive to the US Congress admitted that since they didn't bother checking, many of these 'refugees might never have lived in 'Palestine' at all, but were given food, lodging etc anyway. And unlike any other group of refugees, the train just keeps on rolling.

These people supposedly 'fled ' from Israel 72 years ago but the UN makes sure their refugee status is hereditary! No other group of refugees gets this kind of gravy train. Could it be because they picked the right enemies, the Jews?

I have to give President Trump credit for finally ending US funding of UNRWA. Among other things, UNRWA's schools teach 'Palestinian' kids to hate Jews and that terrorism against Jews is a holy act that will make them 'holy martyrs' as Abbas calls them.  UNRWA has even been caught hiding terrorists and arms in their schools, Mosques and other buildings. 

In short, Jordan is the Arab 'Palestinian' State and the Jordan River the logical and legal boundary between that and Israel. It's time Israel realized  this, instead of wasting time with so called peace plans that have never and will never work.

It's time Israel faced reality.

Rob Miller writes for Joshuapundit. His articles have appeared in The Jerusalem Post, The Washington Examiner, American Thinker, The Los Angeles Times, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The San Francisco Chronicle, Real Clear Politics, The Times Of Israel, Breitbart.Com, Yediot and other publications

The Blood Of Zion Cries Out

 

Early this morning, four Jews at morning prayers were murdered in a synagogue in Jerusalem after two Palestinian broke in and assaulted the worshipers with gunfire and meat cleavers.

Many others were wounded and four are in critical condition.

The terrorist attack took place in Har Hof a predominantly Orthodox neighborhood at the at the Kehilat Yaakov synagogue on Agasi Street.

The Murder victims were identified as Rabbi Moshe Twersky, the head of the Torat Moshe yeshiva, 59; 40-year-old  Rabbi Aryeh Kupinsky; 50-year-old Rabbi Kalman Levine; and 68-year-old Rabbi Avraham Shmuel Goldberg(HY"D). Rabbi Kupinsky, Rabbi Levine and Rabbi Twersky were all American citizens, while Rabbi Goldberg was a British subject. A Druze policeman, 30-year-old Master Sergeant Zidan Sif subsequently died of his wounds as well, and all Israel will mourn and honor him.

The killers stormed the synagogue at 7 AM local time. There was no warning and no way for the victims to defend themselves.The rabbis were murdered during the sacred prayer of Shimoneh Esrei, with siddurim (prayer books) in their hands and their tefillum on.

Eye witness Ya'akov Amos said: 'The terrorist moved to within a metre of me then started shooting. One, two, three, bang, bang, bang. I immediately hit the ground and tried to protect myself with a prayer stand. He kept screaming 'Allah hu'Akbar'.

 

There was blood everywhere, so much that one of the medical workers slipped in it and broke his leg.

The international reaction was interesting. Even U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry seemed shocked, with his voice quavering. He even used the "T" word and called for an end to incitement against Jews.

Phillip Hammond, Britain's Foreign Secretary contented himself with a bloodless statement that 'both sides' should seek to 'reduce tension.' President Obama, of course, said much the same thing. Somehow, I doubt they would have merely talked about both sides reducing tension if four imams had been murdered by a Jew and Qu'rans profaned in this way.

Israel's economics minister Naftali Bennett was interviewed by the BBC today, and provides us with another indication of exactly how sick and depraved Britain has become when it comes to Israel and the Jews.



(just a hint - when Bennett mentions Abu Mazen, he is using Mahmoud Abbas's nom de guerre, the terrorist name he used as Arafat's second-in-command.)

Notice how the interviewer doesn't even address the issue of Abbas inciting terrorism, but pulls the case of an Arab bus driver who died yesterday, as though that made the savage murder of four Jews at prayer legitimate. That Arab driver, by the way, had a full investigation and an autopsy done on him and there is no doubt he committed suicide. Unlike the Palestinian Authority, Israel jails murderers no matter who they are.

I really felt like saying 'Kol Hakavod' when Bennett held up a picture of one of the victims, which the interviewer hastily told him to put down lest he upset the gentle sensibilities of her viewers. I think it is absolutely essential to do just that - to let the British public see what their government is funding and supporting. And I hope it upsets them to the point of utter shame.

At the end of the interview, Bennett says that Britain is going to have to make a choice of whether they support the Free World or not. As I'm sure Bennett knows, the British Government has already made that choice.Which is why, perhaps, they feel compelled to put up with soldiers being beheaded in broad daylight and no go areas for police and non-Muslims in London and other large British cities.



The murderers were both killed in a shootout with police at the scene. They were Ghassan and Oday Abu Jamal from the Jabal Mukaber neighborhood in east Jerusalem. Needless to say, they were acclaimed as heroes and martyrs by all the factions of the Arabs whom call themselves Palestinians.







 "We responded with shouts of joy when we received the news about their deaths," Ala'a Abu Jamal said of his cousins Ghassan and Uday Abu Jamal to Yedioth Aharonoth. "People here distributed candies to guests who visited us, and there was joy for the martyrs."

In a message published on its official new website Al-Resalah, Hamas said the attack was “a quality development in fighting the occupation. We highly value the heroism of its operatives.” Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri praised the attack on Qatari news channel Al-Jazeera as “heroic,” calling for more attacks of the same kind.

 Hamas MP Mushir Al-Masri happily wrote on Twitter that “Jerusalem has nothing but men who love martyrdom. The heroes of the knife are in Jerusalem. The heroes of the run-over [car attacks] are in Jerusalem. In Jerusalem men take revenge.”

And he posted this on his Facebook page:

The Arab killer is asking 'Where are they hiding?" Needless to say, in spite of what this cartoon shows none of the worshipers were armed.

And Fatah? Mahmoud Abbas, AKA Abu Mazen issued a 'condemnation' that wasn't one. In a statement (in English, not Arabic)it said that “The Palestinian presidency" condemns violence "from whatever source" and "demands an end to the invasions of Al-Aqsa Mosque and the provocations of the Settlers."

In other words, 'So sorry, but unless you surrender Jerusalem to us expect more of the same.'

This is the same Mahmoud Abbas who accused Jews of “contaminating” Al-Aqsa Mosque last week, who just a few days ago was telling his people, in Arabic, to 'defend Jerusalem' by any means necessary. This is the same Mahmoud Abbas who said nothing when Fatah published cartoons and Facebook posts encouraging terrorist attacks on Jews and “days of rage” to defend the 'threatened' Al-Aqsa.

Tawfik Tirawi, former chief of the Palestinian General Security in the West Bank and a member of Fatah’s Central Committee made it even plainer, and in Arabic. Today he told a radio station in Hebron that the attack was “nothing but a reaction to the recent crimes of the occupation and the settlers in occupied Jerusalem and across the nation. The threats of the occupation against our people and the Palestinian leadership, represented by the president, will only increase our efforts in safeguarding our rights.”

His remarks were reprinted on Fatah's official Facebook page.

I should make something clear here. This is not the fault of Abbas, or Hamas, or any of the Arabs who identify themselves as Palestinians.

It is the fault of the Israeli government.

A significant number of the Palestinians are simply acting as they have always acted since the 1920's, and these tendencies were unleashed even further once Arafat and the PLO were allowed in to take over after Oslo.



Israeli governments since Oslo have always allowed themselves to be pressured to ignore these instances of sheer horror...to release  convicted murderers, to make concessions to the terrorist entities on Israel's borders, and most of all to avoid  finishing them off entirely when their violence and bloodshed mandated a response. This has been especially true since Barack Obama, who styles himself as the Palestinian's very own community organizer entered the White House.

Is it any wonder that this sort of thing continues to happen? Is it really so puzzling that after allowing Hamas to continue in Gaza and maintaining any kind of relationship with Abbas and the PLO once they allied themselves openly with Hamas that they would resort back to Arafat's tactics?

Yasser Arafat himself outlined for his followers what this war was really about. On Jordanian TV, right after signing the Oslo Accords he was criticized for signing a peace agreement with the Jews. He responded by reminding his audience of the Peace of Hubidiyeh, a treaty Mohammed made with the Quraysh tribe that he violated as soon as he was strong enough to massacre them, a story every Muslim knows. And then he outlined exactly what this war was about, saying that "either the Jews will push us into the sea or we will push them into the sea."

Arafat, the leaders of Hamas and numerous members of Fatah have sung the same songs for years. Is it their fault that Israeli governments for years have refused to take them seriously?



It is time they did.

The violence in Jerusalem can be curtailed, not by more security patrols and not by putting guards in front of every synagogue and public building but by teaching the Arabs whom call themselves Palestinians that there are real world consequences for their actions.

As you may have noticed, no matter how much innocent Jewish blood is spilled, it is always Israel who is advised to 'reduce tensions' and 'avoid provocation.'  It is always Israel who is castigated for building homes for its people, in spite of over an estimated 40,000 illegal Arab-built structures in East Jerusalem, and an entire city  being constructed from scratch with EU and US Aid money that encroaches on Israeli communities in Area C of Judea.

This is the first time I have ever heard John Kerry mention the constant hatred being spewed by the mosques, media and schools in both Gaza and in the PLO occupied areas of Judea and Samaria as something counterproductive to any real peace. And even his condemnation of this horror as well as the other ones from the UN and EU that will no doubt be voiced are maddeningly hollow..because they still fund and support this evil.

As Naftali Bennett said, they are going to have to choose sides, and that particularly applies to the United States.But Israel has some choices to make as well.

Are they going to settle for the status quo and a war of attrition that favors Israel's enemies? Or are they are they going to do what's necessary to end it and win the right to live peacefully?

I've always favored Israel simply delineating its own borders and annexing that land,along with a transfer of populations to the respective sides of those borders. But at the very least Israel should answer every terrorist attack with the outright annexation of more land in Judea and Samaria, showing the Arabs whom call themselves Palestinians that they are there to stay, and that attacks on Israel cost them dearly. Build on the land, and call the EU's bluff. In the unlikely event that they follow through on their threats to indulge in sanctions,they have a lot more to lose than Israel does right now economically.

When there are violent riots, as there were in Jabal Mukaber today, simply arrest the perpetrators,take away their Israeli ID cards and expel them to Gaza or to Area A for Abbas to deal with.Aside from providing real world consequences, it will also separate those Arabs who like the good life in Israel and are willing to live in peace (and there are more of them them you think) from those whom want to poison the well with violence.

Make the disarmament of Hamas an iron clad condition for any further reconstruction aid, especially since Hamas is already diverting money and materials to remaking its terrorist infrastructure. Both the EU and Secretary of State Kerry have given lip service to the importance of disarming Hamas for peace. Hold them to it.

If the Muslim Waqf that is in charge of the al-Aqsa Mosque continues to incite riots and stone throwing on the Temple Mount and refuses to allow Jews to enjoy it peacefully, simply explain to them that the next time it happens the police will respond in force, the Waqf's control of al-Aqsa and the Mount will be ended, the members of the Waqf expelled from Israel and the mosque shut down.

And allow Israelis to sue the PLO and Hamas in Israelis courts for damages to property and person, taking the judgments out of the tax monies Israel collects for the PLO.

These are the sort of steps that are ultimately going to defeat the Third Intifada. It's long past time to treat Hamas/Fatah like the hostile entity it is. And if it becomes necessary to dismantle the Palestinian Authority, so be it.

I am tired of seeing headlines like I saw today, tired of seeing the Arabs whom identify themselves as Palestinians celebrating each new atrocity, tired of seeing world leaders being complicit with this evil.

And I am especially tired of Israel accepting this hypocrisy. I am sick to death of it. It is one thing to be the Jew among nations, but something else entirely to live on your knees and internalize it.

Selah.

An Awesome Quote On Israel That Sheds Real Light By Robert F. Kennedy

I remember working on Bobby Kennedy's campaign as a very, very young teenage precinct captain in California. He was by far the most able and intelligent of all the Kennedys, and I've always felt it was a national tragedy that he never made it into the White House.There's a lot more I could say about his assassination, which occurred while I was attending the victory party over his winning the California primary,but I'm going to censor myself. Suffice it to say that had certain members - one in particular- of Kennedy's security team been doing the job they were getting paid for that night, Robert Kennedy wouldn't have been killed.

Let it be noted however that current leftist darling and Obama ally Bill Ayers dedicated his book, 'Prairie Fire' to Kennedy's murderer.

I never saw this quote before, but it's typically insightful. The Ottoman sultan encouraged Jewish migration to Palestine because he wanted tax revenues out of the villayat, and he saw that the only two even marginally successful areas in what was mostly a depopulated barren wasteland were Jerusalem and Safed, Jewish majority cities. It was Jewish migration, starting in the1880's that created the farms and commerce that drew Arabs from the Hejaz, Egypt, Syria and Lebanon to the region. And in the period Kennedy mentions, there was further migration from Arabs in these areas because over one third of Palestine's Jews were in uniform fighting the Nazis and the British allowed unlimited Arab migration to deal with the resulting labor shortage. At the same time, to its eternal shame, Britain  prohibited  any Jews from coming to Palestine and doomed them to the Nazi death camps.

Now you know where most of the Arabs who identify themselves as Palestinians came from. That includes Yasser Arafat, an Egyptian.

' Palestine's' Choice To Succeed Abbas - A Convicted Terrorist Leader And Murderer

 

In view of the upcoming Fatah-Hamas unity government and the anticipated elections, a Palestinian think tank, the Palestinian Center for Public Opinion polled 1,015 of the Arabs whom identify themselves as Palestinians living in East Jerusalem, the Arab occupied parts of Judea and Samaria, and Gaza as to their preference for a future leader.

Their choice? Convicted murderer and terrorist leader Marwan Barghouti, who is currently serving five life terms for his activities during the Second Intifada.

Barghouti easily won out over Hamas Prime Minister Ismael Haniyeh, current Palestinian Authority dictator Mahmoud Abbas, and Hamas politburo chief Khaled Masha'al. The closest one to Barghouti was Mahmoud Abbas, who Bargouti out polled 33% to 26%. The two Hamas politicos finished a lot further behind Barghouti, which makes me wonder how much of the Hamas 'electorate' in Gaza was sampled as opposed to Jerusalem and the other Arab occupied areas of Judea and Samaria.

So who is this Marwan Barghouti? What did he do to deserve five life terms in prison? And why are the Palestinians so enamored of him?

Barghouti ran the Tanzim and the al-Aksa Martyr's Brigade for Yasser Arafat during the Second Intifada, both terrorist groups affiliated with Fatah. They deliberately targeted civilians for murder,and Barghouti planned numerous 'operations', including the murder of 9-month-old Shalhevet Pas, who was shot by a Tanzim sniper while she was sitting in her stroller in a park surrounded by other children, none of whom by grace of G-d were killed.Her killer, Mahmud Amro admitted deliberately targeting the baby with his U.S. - supplied M-16 and is still in prison, drawing a salary from the Palestinian Authority.

Another good friend of Marwan Barghouti was Samir Kuntar shown here with Barghouti on your right:


This picture was taken of the two of them together at Ashkelon's Hadarim prison,when they were both serving their life sentences there.

One night in April back in 1979, Kuntar and three accomplices landed at the Israeli coastal town of Nahariya from the sea and kidnapped  Danny Haran, 28, and his daughter Einat, 4, from their home. They shot Danny dead in front of his daughter, so that was the last sight she ever saw.  Then Kuntar  murdered the four-year-old Einat by smashing the child's  head on a rock with his rifle butt.

Barghouti and Kuntar got on so well that the Palestinians made Kuntar an 'honorary Palestinian citizen' and gave him a hero's welcome when Kuntar was released in exchange for the tortured and mutilated bodies of the two Israeli servicemen who were kidnapped by Hezbollah, the act that along with Hezbollah's missile attacks on Israel precipitated the Lebanon War.

Barghouti himself was convicted in Israeli civil court of being personally involved in five murders - a shooting and grenade attack on a Tel Aviv restaurant in on March 5, 2002 that killed three Israeli civilians and wounded 15 people including 5 Arabs,some of them critically, the brutal murder of a harmless Greek monk in Ma'ale Adunim,  an attack on a gas station in Givat Ze'ev, and a car bombing in Jerusalem that murdered an Israeli woman and injured 8 people, including two children.

While he was in prison, the same Palestinians who elected Hamas by an overwhelming majority also elected Barghouti to represent them in what passed for a parliament.

Needless to say, this new poll will probably spark cries on the Israeli Left, the Eu and of course the Obama team to pressure Israel to free Barghouti. MK Zahava Gal-on from the EU funded far Left Meretz party was quoted as saying “The only figure who can replace Abu Mazen [Abbas] is Barghouti.”

“Knowledgeable people say that the only one capable of stabilizing the situation after [Abbas] is Barghouti,” Gal-on said.

Knowledgeable people...the same sort of knowledgeable people that brought Israel Oslo, who talked about Barghouti's old boss Yasser Arafat the same way they're talking about Barghouti now. The same knowledgeable people who have blood on their hands they still refuse to acknowledge.

I do take one bit of comfort from this. Now that the Arabs whom identify themselves as Palestinians continue to make their choice for new leadership clear, it's becoming apparent to all but the most blind and clueless Israelis that the two state solution so beloved of people like MK Gal-on is simply a recipe for giving Israel's genocidal enemies a closer platform to attack them from.

The citizens of the sort of 'democratic peaceful state living next door to Israel' so beloved of those creatures still working to get Israel to retreat to indefensible borders and give away the country's birthright wouldn't choose a murderer like Barghouti to lead them if they were at all serious about peace.

A significant number of them aren't serious about it in the least. They favor Barghouti as a war chief, another Arafat - because of his record of success at Jew killing.

Such men are best suited to be the guests of honor at what the pioneers of the Old West called a necktie party under a sturdy tree. Barring that, keeping them under lock and key for the rest of their lives is a poor substitute, but it's the next best thing.

Crossposted at  Jews Down Under

'Nice Little Jewish State Ya Got There..Shame If Anything Were to Happen To It'

 

While Israeli PM Benyamin Netanyahu was already en route to the United States to discuss the Middle East peace process,  President Obama gave an interview at the beginning of last week to a friendly journalist, Jeffrey Goldberg.The shock waves from what the president had to say are still reverberating.

President Obama started by talking about the Israeli-Arab peace process.

The president, to summarize briefly, embraces the tired idea of 'linkage' wholeheartedly. In his view, Israel catering to the demands of the Palestinian Authority, giving up strategic territory in exchange for vague promises from Mahmoud Abbas and accepting the establishment of a hostile state on Israel's borders will magically lead to peace in the Middle East. Israel's Arab neighbors will all immediately become allies and friends, the Iranians will stop their quest for nuclear weapons and stop threatening to destroy Israel every two weeks or so and Hamas and Hezbollah will close up shop, disarm and go out of business.

When Goldberg prompted him, he made a few pro forma remarks about Netanyahu and about the  American 'commitment to Israel being rock solid'. But as he made plain, he wants Israel to comply with all of the Palestinian demands, and quickly. Or else. Because, you see, there are going to be a lot more Palestinians and Israeli Arabs who will overwhelm Israel demographically, the EU and others are going to isolate Israel internationally and the U.S. is going to not be able to defend Israel diplomatically any longer. Unmentioned is that much of any diplomatic isolation Israel faces is a direct result of the animosity exhibited towards the Jewish State by President Obama and his administration.

Even Goldberg, a long time Obama supporter,  evidenced some shock in a subsequent interview with PBS's Charlie Rose and characterized this as a threat.

The president,of course, focused exclusively on Arab rights rather than Jewish ones, and on Israeli security...which of course, he expects Israel to depend totally on the United States to oversee and handle, something that can be changed at the president's whim. He characterizes the Palestinians as ready for peace, in spite of all the evidence to the contrary, because to the president, it’s those stubborn Jews who are holding things up.

Just for the record, that demographic threat the president and Secretary Kerry keep focusing on that is supposed to doom Israel as a democratic state unless those Jews do what he wants and fast is pure fantasy. The real truth as I write this is that the trends shows a Jewish majority in Judea and Samaria of well over 60%, because the Jewish fertility rate has increased while Palestinian rates have collapsed. In fact, Jewish fertility rates in Judea and Samaria have already overtaken Arab rates at 3.04 vs. 2.91 children per woman. Israel continues to attract a high rate of immigration, with many more to come, especially from Europe, while Palestinian emigration rates have risen sharply. Time is on the side of Israel, not the Palestinians...which is the real reason for the haste to push through a deal by the White House.

President Obama's fantasy world also includes a portrait of Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority as committed to peace.At one point, the president referred to Abbas as 'the most moderate Palestinian leader the Israelis are ever going to get.'

This could have been the cue for Goldberg to remind the president that this is the same Mahmoud Abbas who has repeatedly said that he will not make any concessions to Israel, who insists on a Jew free reichlet and who recently signed a unity agreement with the genocidal Hamas. This is the same 'moderate' who wrote his thesis at Moscow University on how the Holocaust was a myth and made it a required part of the Palestinian educational curriculum, regardless of what he told a group of hand-picked Leftist Israeli students in Ramallah last week. This is the same leader supposedly  committed to peace and co-existence who sees to it that convicted murderers of Israeli civilians are honored as 'holy martyrs', heroes and role models and rewards them financially.

Instead, Goldberg  merely pointed out that Abbas was "also the leader of a weak, corrupt and divided Palestinian entity that is already structurally semi-powerless. Do you think he could deliver anything more than a framework agreement? Is this the guy who can lead the Palestinian people to say, "OK, no more claims against Israel, permanent peace, permanent recognition?"

And President Obama's reply? "I think it has to be tested. The question is: What is lost by testing it?" The answer, of course is the same thing that was lost because of Oslo and the Road Map - hundreds of Jewish lives and hundreds of others maimed for life. President Obama, to be frank, didn't seem all that put out by the idea of Jewish bloodshed, as long as a Palestinian state the way he envisions it is the result.

Israeli PM Netanyahu probably came to the U.S. prepared to accept the non-binding Kerry framework and to try once more to convince President Obama that the Iranians are committed to obtaining nuclear weapons, that they must be stopped and time is running out. Instead, he was hit with this while in mid air.

Not only did President Obama convince a lot of Israelis that his view of an Israeli/Palestinian peace accord isn't rooted in reality and that they can no longer depend on the U.S. as any kind of honest broker, but the president's remarks had to let Netanyahu know in advance that any attempt to get President Obama to look at reality on Iran was a waste of time.

In the interview with Jeffrey Goldberg, President Obama also did some chest thumping about Iran, saying that the Iranians were cooperating because they were afraid of him! To hear President Obama talk, because they're so scared of what he might do, "they've halted their nuclear program, no centrifuges being installed; the 20 percent enriched uranium being drawn down to zero; Arak on hold."

Absolutely none of this is true. The Iranians say flatly that enrichment is continuing, a whole new crop of advanced centrifuges is being installed , and the Iranian heavy water reactor at Arak,which has no peaceful application is not on hold at all.

In the end, instead of publicly accepting the framework, Netanyahu merely took a copy from the president privately without commenting and left for home. Among other things, this completely sandbagged Secretary of State John Kerry, who was not briefed on the interview in advance and according to one of my sources definitely in a position to know, was left scrambling to do damage control.

The latest indication of this president's disdain for Israel occurred after Netanyahu left the White House. One of Israel's written-in-stone conditions for any peace agreement is the formal acceptance by Abbas of Israel as a Jewish State. Israel wants this because it would signal a final end to the conflict,  terminate the Palestinian fiction that Jews are just 'colonists' who have no connection or rights to the land of Israel and end the idea that thousands of those hostile Arabs whom represent themselves as Palestinian 'refugees' somehow have a right to resettle in Israel.

Abbas has always refused to do this for exactly these reasons, and once this interview was released, he repeated it once again. Not only that, but those Arabs whom represent themselves as Palestinians and whom President Obama claims are ready for peaceful coexistence refuse to accept Israel as a Jewish state either. Because like Abbas, they still cling to the dream of someday driving the Jews into the sea.

 

When Abbas again repeated his refusal, what was different this time is that our own State Department backed him up on it.

In an interview with Al-Quds, the Palestinian Arabic news outlet, U.S. State Department spokeswoman Jan Psaki made headlines throughout the Middle East when she said, “The American position is clear, Israel is a Jewish state. However, we do not see a need that both sides recognize this position as part of the final agreement.”

Is it any wonder that after that, the Arab League quickly endorsed the same position of non-recognition, something they haven't seen fit to do before?

Actually, President Obama himself has constantly referred to Israel as a Jewish State as part of his mirage of establishing two states, one Jewish and one “Palestinian'. As recently as his speech in Jerusalem in March 2013, Obama said, "Palestinians must recognize that Israel will be a Jewish state".

As late as a month ago, the U.S. ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro was telling Israelis that Kerry's peace framework would insist on recognition of Israel as a Jewish state.

Well, not any more! Things have changed, and the Obama team is essentially backing up Abbas' long time position of no concessions, no recognition and of course, no end to the conflict. To those of you with good memories, this is a mirror image of how the Arab League responded to Israel's attempt to negotiate a peace right after the Six Day War.

Kerry got on board the train fairly quickly, saying that it was "a mistake for some people to be, you know, raising it again and again as the critical decider of their attitude towards the possibility of a state and peace, and we've obviously made that clear."

Well yes, the president and his people have made their attitude clear now. But before the story was different, wasn't it? And to add to the mix, Kerry's rationale for denying the necessity of Abbas and the PLO recognizing Israel as a Jewish State was that it was already done by - wait for it - none other than Yasser Arafat.

Yes, the old rais himself, another 'peace partner' who never ever told a falsehood about anything. There's an old quote of St. Arafat's I'm particularly fond of - "I've killed for my cause. Don't you think I would lie for it?" Actually, Arafat only made a vague nod towards Israel's right to exist, with no mention of it being a Jewish state.

If commitments from Kerry and President Obama are subject to change like that, the Israeli can almost certainly expect to be betrayed on any other commitments the U.S. makes to them,once they give up the strategic areas and put themselves in a vulnerable position. As a matter of fact, there's already a track record on this sort of willful amnesia on U.S. commitments when it comes to President Obama and Israel.

In spite of the Obama Administration's obvious dislike for Israel and Netanyahu, the point of no return beyond which Israel can be pressured has been reached. The recognition of Israel as a Jewish State was supposed to give Netanyahu leverage to compromise in other areas. Instead, President Obama has pretty much stripped away any rationale for the Israelis to trust him or trust Secretary Kerry. The Israelis fully expect that America will abstain from a UN vote giving the Palestinians whatever they want anyway, even a reichlet being governed by Hamas.

In fact, that's fairly likely. There's no guarantee Mahmoud Abbas is going to stick around to implement any deal the Israelis are pressured into signing. As the president himself said to Jeffrey Goldberg, “We do not know what a successor to Abbas will look like.”

But let's do it anyway, because of course, it has to be tested!

Where Secretary Kerry and President Obama might end up being surprised is by a Palestinian 'no'. Since the last thing Abbas will do is to agree to anything that would end the conflict, the recent cave ins on even basic positions by the Obama Administration are a green light to go to the UN anyway after the April 29th deadline and challenge the U.S to veto something the entire Obama team is now on record as supporting.

The way to stop this would be to do something President Obama has never done with the Palestinians; deal with Arab rejectionism and let Abbas know that a refusal this time is going to going to entail serious consequences. He won't.

This is Barack Obama, freed from the necessity of further elections and reverting to his core attitudes and beliefs.He sees himself, above all, as the Palestinian's lawyer and community organizer.

This president, with his long history of associating with anti-semites and Israel haters since his college days came into office announcing that he wanted to create 'daylight' between the U.S. and Israel.He will undoubtedly succeed, at least for awhile. His primary interest is not two states living in peace next to each other but in creating that 'daylight' no matter what it takes.

Just like President Obama's fantasies about Iran, his handling of the relationship with a valuable American ally will not be to America's benefit.Just watch.

(Video) Nelson Mandela And Arafat - Another Part Of His Legacy You Won't Hear About

This is the man our president compared to George Washington, Martin Luther King Jr., Abraham Lincoln And Gandhi.

In English, with French subtitles.

For more on Mandela, go here.