Polish anti-refugee demonstrators burned effigies of an Orthodox Jew holding the flag of the European Union on a stage in front of Wroclaw city hall yesterday, the Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza reported. Poland has officially agreed to accept 5,000 Syrian refugees.
As bad as this anti-Semitism is, it is (in my opinion) less dangerous than the insidious anti-Semitism that has characterized much of the New York Times’s news coverage of the Paris terror attacks in recent days. Or the blaming of Israel for the Paris attacks by Sweden’s foreign minister.
* Please “like” these dispatches on Facebook here www.facebook.com/TomGrossMedia, where you can also find other items that are not in these dispatches.
CONTENTS
1. Five killed, several wounded in Tel Aviv, Gush Etzion terror attacks
2. Turkish fans boo moment of silence for victims of Paris attacks
3. Video: the true face of BDS
4. “The Jews of France can go to Israel, but where can the French go?”
5. “Declaring war on terror is good rhetoric, bad policy” (By Noah Feldman, Bloomberg, Nov. 16, 2015)
6. “ISIL: Who’s calling the shots?” (By Graeme Wood, Politico, Nov. 14, 2015)
7. “In the battle against IS, where is the Arab coalition?” (By Bruce Riedel, Al-Monitor, Nov. 18, 2015)
8. “Islamic State understands one thing: force” (By Naftali Bennett, Wall Street Journal, Nov. 18, 2015)
[Note by Tom Gross]
There have been a great many of articles in recent days on the Paris terror attacks. I attach four of the more interesting ones below.
Before that some other notes.
5 KILLED, SEVERAL WOUNDED IN TEL AVIV, GUSH ETZION TERROR ATTACKS
Three people, including two Jews (one of whom was an American tourist -- Ezra Schwartz, an undergrad student) and a Palestinian*, were killed in a shooting and car ramming attack by a Palestinian motorist armed with an Uzi submachine gun who opened fire on them in Gush Etzion this afternoon.
Earlier today, two Israelis were killed in another stabbing attack in Tel Aviv. The assailants in both incidents were detained. (No doubt they will later be released in a “goodwill gesture” of the kind Barack Obama and John Kerry have forced upon Israel in recent years. The government of Benjamin Netanyahu has been forced by the Obama administration to release dozens of convicted terrorist murderers in return for nothing.)
The official Palestinian Authority news agency praised the attacks today and referred to the victims in Tel Aviv as “Zionist settlers.”
(* No doubt many western media will in future include the Palestinian murdered today by a Palestinian terrorist in their tally of “Palestinians killed” implying that Israel killed him. Such is the duplicitous ways of outlets such as the New York Times.)
TURKISH FANS BOO MOMENT OF SILENCE FOR VICTIMS OF PARIS ATTACKS
Turkish supporters attending an international football friendly against Greece on Tuesday evening booed during a minute of silence being held following the recent terror attacks on Paris, reports the Turkish paper Hurriyet Daily News.
The paper says that the Istanbul crowd first booed and then chanted “Allah-u Akbar” during the moment of silence.
VIDEO: THE TRUE FACE OF BDS
I think it may be worth setting aside some time to watch this video on the BDS movement on American campuses.
“THE JEWS OF FRANCE CAN GO TO ISRAEL, BUT WHERE CAN THE FRENCH GO?”
Last month before the recent Paris attacks, when writing for Commentary magazine about the Jewish future, I headlined my piece “The Jews of France can go to Israel, but where can the French go?”
Several news outlets have now noted that sentence, for example, here.
Yesterday another French Jew (a teacher) was wounded in a stabbing by a gang of anti-Semites in Marseilles.
-- Tom Gross
ARTICLES
DECLARING WAR IS “A MISTAKE”
Declaring War on Terror Is Good Rhetoric, Bad Policy
By Noah Feldman
Bloomberg
November 16, 2015
When French President Francois Hollande said Friday’s attacks on Paris were an “act of war,” he was following a script set by George W. Bush in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks. Rhetorically, invoking the language of war to describe a terrorist attack sends a message of seriousness and outrage. But as U.S.’s post 9/11 wars show, it isn’t always wise to elevate a terrorist group to the level of the sovereign entities that traditionally have the authority to make war.
This was a mistake with respect to al-Qaeda, but it’s a greater mistake when it comes to Islamic State, whose primary aspiration is to achieve statehood. By saying that Islamic State is in a war with France, Hollande is unwittingly giving the ragtag group the international stature it seeks.
The consequences of Hollande’s declaration go beyond the public relations boon to the Sunni militant group, which has otherwise been struggling to stay in the headlines and gain the adherents it needs to control territory. A head of state who says that war has been made against his country must have a credible response in mind.
The appropriate response depends on whether the state of war is construed legally or metaphorically. The legal angle is somewhat important. Under Article 5 of NATO’s Washington Treaty, an act of war from outside the North Atlantic Treaty Organization against one of the member states triggers obligations of support from the other treaty members.
The Sept. 11 attacks marked the first time Article 5 was invoked. That required all the NATO members to support the U.S. war against al-Qaeda. (When it came to Iraq, several NATO members famously balked, reasoning that there was no proof the terrorist attack had anything to do with Saddam Hussein.)
If France invoked Article 5, NATO members would be obligated to support it in a war against Islamic State. Yet the disillusioning aspect of this legal position is that France has been bombing Islamic State strongholds in Syria since late September, and its attacks on the group in Iraq are old news.
In other words, France is already at war with Islamic State. The Paris attacks aren’t the first salvo. They are, at most, the Islamic State response to French assaults that expanded after the terrorist attacks on Charlie Hebdo and a Jewish market in January.
As a result, considering the recent terrorist attacks to be an act of war won’t change the basic legal state between France and Islamic State. The newspaper Le Parisien ran the headline, “Cette fois, c’est la guerre” -- “This time, it’s war.” But whatever French public perception may have been, France was already engaged.
That leaves the metaphorical sense of war. Here it’s useful to review Hollande’s options.
Saying that the attacks were an act of war could motivate public opinion for a more rigorous response than France has so far pursued against Islamic State. Because France is already bombing, that would mean a significantly stepped-up participation in the air war -- or the introduction of French ground troops.
To be sure, the war against Islamic State almost certainly can’t be won without ground troops. The remarkable longevity the group has so far shown is primarily attributable to the fact that no regional power has been prepared to commit such troops. Kurdish militias backed by Western air power and Iranian-backed Shiite militias in Iraq are the only troops to have made any real inroads against Islamic State, unless you consider the Syrian regular forces supported by Soviet planes.
French ground troops, then, would be a great boon to the battle. But it seems overwhelmingly likely that Hollande has no intention of sending French troops, no matter how angry the public may be.
The strategic rationale for withholding ground troops hasn’t changed. The U.S. won’t provide any because of public skepticism after the Afghan and Iraqi disasters. And if the U.S. isn’t willing to commit troops, neither is anybody else, from Saudi Arabia to Jordan to, yes, France. The Paris attacks won’t move the needle sufficiently for Hollande to pursue a different course.
That leaves Hollande with no military option but contributing more to the air war. That’s fine, but it points to a deep flaw in his declaration. If Islamic State has really committed an act of war against France, shouldn’t France do more than send a few planes?
More concretely, Hollande must certainly realize that by acknowledging a war against France, he’s acknowledging a war that France can’t win, at least in the short to medium term. More air attacks won’t defeat Islamic State definitively. Thus, the metaphor of the “act of war” puts France into a disadvantageous position: It’s at war with an enemy, but it lacks the political will or military capacity to defeat that enemy. The best it can hope for is to degrade the enemy’s capacities. Yet given that the enemy isn’t even a proper state, the failure to beat it in fact looks very much like defeat.
Painful as it might have been, the right course for Hollande would have been to denounce the terrorists as murderers unworthy to be considered in a war against the great republic of France. He should’ve said that a handful of ideologues who killed innocent civilians couldn’t threaten or move the republic -- and that France wouldn’t allow Islamic State to dictate its domestic or foreign policies.
If President Bush had treated al-Qaeda this way, it would’ve enabled a calmer, more rational approach to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The U.S. almost certainly would’ve still bombed the Taliban. But it might not have committed itself to destroying that regime. It might’ve been sufficient to force the Taliban to stop harboring al-Qaeda terrorists.
Meanwhile, eschewing the notion that al-Qaeda had made war on the U.S. would’ve made it much harder to say that Iraq should be invaded on national security grounds. The elision of the threat from al-Qaeda with the threat from Iraq was eased by the idea that al-Qaeda was an entity capable of making war on a great nation.
Morally speaking, a terrorist attack may be as evil as an act of war. But practically, the two are very different -- and preserving the distinction is wise foreign policy.
DID ISIS REALLY DIRECTLY ORDER THE PARIS ATTACKS?
(I carried Graeme Wood’s important piece on ISIS here: #GenerationKhilafah. (It’s more dangerous than you might think
***
ISIL: Who’s Calling the Shots?
By Graeme Wood
Politico
November 14, 2015
At last count, France had contributed thousands of foreign fighters to the civil war in Syria, the vast majority as foot soldiers of the Islamic State. These include countless young miscreants from the Parisian suburbs but also oddball elderly types, such as a red-bearded man named Abu Suhayb al Faransi, who starred in a propaganda video earlier this year. According to today’s reports, the squad of assassins in last night’s mayhem numbered only eight. One is bound to wonder, then: if the Islamic State required so few people to cause so much harm, then why hasn’t it perpetrated many other massacres already?
This morning, Islamic State channels pushed out official statements praising the attacks. Many have read this message, which gloated and moralized and promised a torrent of future attacks, as a claim of credit. The assassins are described as “a group of believers from the soldiers of the Caliphate,” and the message notes that the Islamic State is pleased with them (“They were truthful with Allah -- we consider them so”).
But the statement gave no indication of having planned or funded the attack, and indeed the message contained no information other than what the authors could have learned from reading their doorstep copy of The Washington Post. It did not give the martyrs their customary send-off to Paradise, with smiling photos showing hairy faces and index fingers extended to heaven, nor an interview, or even mention of a nom de guerre. Moreover, the statement contained infelicities of style and spelling, as if it had been written and translated without the Islamic State’s usual editorial punctiliousness. (Marc Hecker of IFRI, in Paris, tells me the IS materials in French often fail to match the standards of their IS English counterparts.)
One explanation for this hurried claim of credit or endorsement may be that there exists a third possibility, somewhere between “IS did it” and the increasingly far-fetched “IS didn’t.” That possibility is something like “IS was surprised by what its supporters did -- and maybe not altogether pleased.”
As in the case of the downing of Metrojet Flight 9268 over Sinai last month, the IS statement that initially claimed credit lacks critical details to confirm its truth. And we might, in the end, find that IS supporters carried out these operations semi-autonomously, with at most partial appreciation of the group’s larger strategy. And they may have seriously imperiled that strategy by attacking a Western target in such spectacular fashion.
So we have no evidence that this third option is the case. But the break from previous strategy is pronounced. IS’s previous inspired attacks on the West have been spectacular duds, averaging perhaps one corpse apiece. Consider the sinister clownish incompetence of Ayoub El Khazzani, who according to varying accounts either did not know how to unjam his rifle or did not think to lock the train lavatory door while loading it; the Garland, Texas, assassins, who were both shot dead by a local cop; or Man Haron Munis, whose mental problems were apparent to all when he took over a chocolate shop in Sydney.
If IS intends the highest possible body count, as the attackers clearly did in the machine-gunning of a crowd last night, its own propaganda and doctrine have crippled it. Anyone who has spent time with IS messages knows that the first obligation impressed on followers is immigration to the Caliphate, and only if immigration is impossible should they attack at home. On this point, the propaganda has been relentless. Dabiq, the infamous in-flight magazine of the Islamic State, stated:
Come, make your way to dārul-islām [the abode of Islam]. And I remind you of the individual obligation on every Muslim and Muslimah to make hijrah from dārul-kufr [the abode of disbelief] to dārul-islām.... Either one performs hijrah to the wilāyāt of the Khilāfah or if he is unable to do so, he must attack the crusaders.
Since an even minimally functional person can direct his browser to Expedia and get a ticket to IS territory in Sinai, Syria, Iraq, Libya, or Nigeria, those who remain to attack are often incompetent.
The Paris attackers, alas, showed real competence. They planned, and they acquired weapons not easily found in Europe. And if their attack, and the downing of commercial flights as in Sinai, truly represent a new modus operandi for IS, then IS has completely reworked its strategy – or re-estimated its ability to withstand a direct military assault by a NATO alliance. Needless to say, the threat of another nightmare like yesterday could provoke exactly such a response. Unless God intervenes on IS’s side, a full assault on IS in Syria and Iraq will not end with IS still holding its beloved territory and administering a Shariah-compliant state. The Taliban, after all, might still control Kabul today, if they had kept Al Qaeda’s atrocities local. And that is one good reason why the decision-makers in Raqqa might have aggressively lobbied their foreign fighters to immigrate to Syria and join the battle there, rather than stay in Europe and commit their atrocities at home.
Shadi Hamid of The Brookings Institution posed a solution to this paradox today on Twitter: “ISIS’s state-building & apocalyptic messianism had co-existed in uneasy tension. Perhaps, yesterday, the latter finally eclipsed the former.” That would be one explanation: IS has mustered such confidence in its prophetic vision that it is ready to test its strength against the most powerful of earthly enemies. Of course, its recent setbacks against Kurdish fighters might give it pause, zealotry notwithstanding. A further possibility is that IS’s own supporters have put it in a strategically uncomfortable corner by carrying out an attack more gruesome and successful than its leaders wished.
We may yet find that IS’s leaders were simply fools, and that they ordered exactly this attack and were pleased with its results, even if their PR department wasn’t quite ready to capitalize on it. But in the meantime the possibility remains that their ability to inspire got ahead of their ability to control the results of that inspiration. Along with its loud rejoicing over Paris, IS in Syria may also be quietly worrying about what comes next.
WHERE ARE THE SAUDIS?
In the battle against IS, where is the Arab coalition?
By Bruce Riedel
Al-Monitor
November 18, 2015
In the wake of the Islamic State’s (IS) attacks in the Sinai, Beirut and Paris, there is an urgent need to mobilize resources to deal with the threat, especially resources in the Arab world. Instead, Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies are devoting their resources and efforts to a floundering and expensive military campaign in Yemen.
When the air campaign against IS began more than a year ago, the Royal Saudi Air Force was an early participant. But it has not flown a mission against IS targets since September, according to The New York Times. Bahrain last flew a mission against IS in February. The United Arab Emirates stopped in March – even Jordan stopped in August.
There has been no formal or public announcement of the stand-down. The Arab governments all reiterate their strong opposition to IS. This week, Riyadh’s skyscrapers were lit in the French colors to express solidarity with Paris. King Salman bin Abdul-Aziz Al Saud told President Barack Obama in Ankara that Saudi Arabia will play a major role in Syria. But in practice, American military officials report the war in Yemen has drained Arab air power away from the fight with the terrorists in Syria and Iraq. Yemen is the priority even if some token operations occasionally are taken to strike IS targets.
The absence of Arab air forces creates a political – not military – void, even though Russia, France and America are fully capable of waging an air war against IS. The coalition is missing the Muslim answer to the self-proclaimed “Caliph Ibrahim.” This is a waste of symbolically important resources.
The war is also expensive. No official estimates of the cost have been released, but it must now be running into the tens of billions in armaments, maintenance and other expenses.
For example, this week the Pentagon announced the sale of $1.29 billion in air-to-ground munitions and associated equipment to restock RSAF bombs used in the Yemen campaign. The sale provides close to 20,000 new munitions to replace those used already. The United Kingdom, another major source of the RSAF’s inventory of aircraft, is also replenishing Saudi stocks. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have raised questions about the use of these weapons and possible war crimes.
The kingdom of Saudi Arabia has itself been targeted by IS repeatedly, as IS has carried out suicide bombings in both Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. It promises to overthrow the House of Saud and raise its black flags over Mecca. Hundreds of Saudi citizens are fighting with the terrorist group in Iraq and Syria, while Jordan has been a target of IS, with one of its pilots locked in a cage and burned to death. These states have a stake in this war.
But Riyadh’s attention and resources are focused on Yemen as the war there has come to a stalemate. After some successes over the summer, the Saudi-led coalition had promised to capture Sanaa (Yemen’s capital) this fall. That looks unlikely today. The war is also a humanitarian catastrophe for 25 million Yemenis, as the blockade prevents supply of food and medicine.
Even worse is that the major beneficiaries of the war so far are al-Qaeda and Iran. Al-Qaeda has seized control of large parts of southeastern Yemen since the war began. Its black flags fly in Aden, the temporary capital of the pro-Saudi government. Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula has grown stronger in the months since it attacked Paris in January, not weaker. That is a disturbing portent for those now promising to defeat IS.
Iran is fighting to the last Houthi, laughing at the Saudis and Emiratis as they spend resources in what Tehran hopes will be an endless quagmire. Iran gains in Iraq and Syria from the Sunni forces’ diversion to Yemen.
Washington and Paris have both indulged Riyadh’s Yemen mission, as both have hosted Saudi Defense Minister Prince Mohammed bin Salman – the 30-year-old architect of the Yemen war – and have done far too little to bring an end to this disaster. They have the leverage, along with London, since they control the pipeline of military resupply to the RSAF and its allies, but their half-hearted attempts to start a political process need much greater urgency. Both sides have accepted UN mediation and the UN Security Council resolution for a cease-fire, but the conflict drags on without pause.
After the Charlie Hebdo massacre in January, there were promises that the terrorists in Yemen who launched the attack would face a global response. Instead, they are stronger than ever and Yemen has become another battleground in the sectarian Sunni-Shiite war that is devastating the Islamic world.
“IT WORKED. WITHIN WEEKS OF THE OPERATION, THE NUMBER OF ATTACKS AND ISRAELI CASUALTIES DROPPED BY MORE THAN 80%”
Islamic State Understands One Thing: Force
By Naftali Bennett
Wall Street Journal
November 18, 2015
On March 27, 2002, a suicide bomber walked into the Park Hotel in the Israeli city of Netanya and blew up the explosives belt he had strapped around his waist. Thirty people, who moments earlier were sitting down for the Passover Seder, were murdered. A celebratory and civilized scene, like those in Paris last week, had suddenly become a field of carnage.
The Park Hotel attack came at the height of the Second Intifada, a conflict that would ultimately claim the lives of more than 1,000 Israelis. More than 130 people were killed that March, and by then there had already been thousands of terror attacks.
My country, Israel, seemed paralyzed and the national sentiment was that the military would be unable to defeat the terror campaign. The only real way to stop the attacks, many supposed experts said, was by political means.
They were wrong. Two days after the hotel massacre, the Israeli government launched a military operation called Defensive Shield to stop the suicide bombers and retake control of Palestinian cities in the West Bank.
It worked. Within weeks of the operation, the number of attacks and Israeli casualties dropped by more than 80%, and while it took time, we eventually succeeded in bringing suicide attacks down to zero. We proved that terror can be defeated.
Europe, the U.S. and their allies can defeat the terrorists of Islamic State, or ISIS. The first step is making the decision to fight back. The next step is understanding that drones and standoff missiles will not be enough. Ground troops will be needed.
In 2002 Israel went on the offensive in the West Bank cities of Nablus, Jenin, Jericho and Tulkarm, going house-to-house and door-to-door to hunt down Palestinian terror suspects. We found and demolished bomb labs, arms caches and terrorist command centers.
I remember the period well. At the time I was in New York running a high-tech company. As an officer in an elite Israel Defense Forces (IDF) commando unit, I got on a plane, flew back to Israel and joined my fellow soldiers as we fought to stop the terror wave that had struck our country.
We succeeded because we understood that when fighting Islamic terror, there is no middle ground. There is no halfway solution. There is one path to victory and that is taking the fight to the enemy. I know that “boots on the ground” is a scary phrase and that the Western world has gotten used to sterile attacks. But we need to be honest – while these attacks hurt ISIS, they will not destroy it.
To win, the world needs to go on the offensive. There is no other way. What Israel did in 2002 is a model for how terror can be defeated. Soldiers may be put in harm’s way, but the number of civilian lives saved will be much higher.
Europe must also share intelligence within and outside the continent. Israel can help on that front. We maintain powerful counterterrorism intelligence tools because we are in the thick of the Middle East turmoil, with borders surrounded by Islamic State, Hamas and Hezbollah. But you don’t have to live next to terrorist lands to be able to defeat the enemy. The West has demonstrated its ability in the past to project power and move troops to distant regions.
What Israel showed in 2002 was that when you take the fight to enemy territory, the enemy will have difficulty taking the fight to you. This is not currently the case with ISIS. Yes, the jihadists face occasional airstrikes and missile bombardments, but they aren’t on the run. They don’t go to sleep worried that soldiers may burst in during the night and seize them. Their command centers are not really threatened. Only when that happens will the ability of ISIS to direct attacks in Europe or America be hindered.
Like Israel, Europe and the U.S. also face terrorists who lurk in their own cities. Hundreds of young Westerners have inexplicably been drawn to the ISIS death cult; they fight in Syria or Iraq and return home with orders to attack. Europe is especially vulnerable to terrorists who may hide among the refugees pouring across its borders.
To detect these threats, European countries and the U.S. must strengthen their surveillance techniques. Liberty, freedom of speech and human rights are pillars of our democracies, but in Israel we balance them with national-security needs. Privacy is occasionally and under certain circumstances invaded, passports are confiscated and administrative detention is used to lock up terror suspects. We also demolish terrorists’ homes to deter future attacks.
These steps can be highly effective. Last week a Palestinian terrorist ambushed an Israeli car, murdering a father and his son. The terrorist’s family turned him in on Sunday to prevent their house from being demolished.
Europe can adopt some of these models. French President François Hollande on Monday called for amending France’s constitution to allow for more effective and aggressive measures against terrorists. This is an important step. No time can be wasted.
The historic upheaval currently engulfing the Middle East is not going away. The world needs to be determined, to show resolve and not to blink when challenged by adversaries like ISIS. These terrorists understand only one language: force.
(Naftali Bennett, Israel’s minister of education and diaspora affairs, is a major in the IDF reserve corps.)
STUDENTS IN SUPPORT OF TERRORISM
[Note by Tom Gross]
Western apologists for Al-Quds University in east Jerusalem continue to insist that the “militancy” at the university is -- to quote Leon Botstein, president of New York’s prestigious Bard college which partners with Al-Quds -- a one-off “incident” involving “only a very small group of students.”
For the eighth time in these Middle East dispatches, I attach evidence of what continues to happen on the main campus of Al-Quds University without a word of criticism from the U.S. and European government departments that provide funding for it.
These videos are from today (November 17, 2015):
Footage of the rally today at Al-Quds University to honor students “martyred” in the act of stabbing Israeli civilians to death last month. Note the stiff-armed Nazi-type salutes. No Western media outlet has picked this up despite the fact that professors at the university participated in this rally and hundreds of Western journalists are based nearby.
A second clip from Al-Quds University today.
Here is another rally I haven’t included in my previous Al-Quds dispatches. This one was held outside the engineering school of the Al-Quds campus on October 11, 2015. Again students were incited to murder Jews and that is exactly what has happened.
If you watch this video, it certainly doesn’t seem like “only a couple of dozen students” participated, as some American academic champions of Al-Quds claim.
Among other recent dispatches on Al-Quds University:
Palestinian businessman Mohamed Abdel-Hadi’s West Bank home, one of a number of such luxury villas the Western press prefer not to report on.
I attach a few items from recent days. This dispatch can also be viewed here.
-- Tom Gross
* Please “like” these dispatches on Facebook here www.facebook.com/TomGrossMedia, where you can also find other items that are not in these dispatches.
CONTENTS
1. “A Photo Album of Palestinian Luxury in the West Bank”
2. Widespread condemnation of Zoabi’s Kristallnacht comparison of Israel, Nazis
3. Jews not invited to Swedish Kristallnacht commemoration
4. “Name of shop is Hitler and I like him”: window displays encourage knifing of Jews
5. Israel asks UN to condemn organ-harvesting “blood libel”
6. Orthodox Jew stabbed multiple times in organized attack in Milan
7. Lashed Saudi blogger Raif Badawi wins EU’s Sakharov rights prize
8. Forbes magazine: Khamenei more powerful than Netanyahu
9. Sean Penn to visit Israel for 1st time; Seinfeld to play Tel Aviv
10. Helen Mirren: “I love Israel”; Robert Winston, Boris Johnson condemn BDS
[Notes below by Tom Gross]
“A PHOTO ALBUM OF PALESTINIAN LUXURY IN THE WEST BANK”
Over the last few years, I have occasionally published photos of the more luxurious side of life in the West Bank and Gaza – territories which some European politicians, academics and journalists continue to liken to a concentration camp.
In addition to publishing photo essays (for example, Fancy restaurants and Olympic-size swim pools: what the media won’t report about Gaza , May 25, 2010), I have also added photos to various dispatches.
Among them: “When we talked about ‘Starvation’ we Meant Plasma TVs and Café Latte” (October 19, 2010).
Now the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs has made a wider compilation of such photos, including photos I have published in past dispatches and various new ones, here:
A Photo Album of Palestinian Luxury in the West Bank
Their research also draws on an article I wrote for the Wall Street Journal:
Building Peace Without Obama's Interference: A promising, independent Palestine is quietly being developed, with Israeli assistance. (Dec. 2, 2009) (Of course, Obama did then interfere, and things are now worse.)
WIDESPREAD CONDEMNATION OF ZOABI’S ‘DESPICABLE KRISTALLNACHT COMPARISON’ OF ISRAEL, NAZIS
Politicians across the Israeli political spectrum have condemned Israeli-Arab Member of the Knesset Hanin Zoabi, for comparing contemporary Israel to Nazi Germany during Kristallnacht, when Jews in Germany and Austria were killed and thousands were sent to concentration camps. Many historians regard the so-called “Night of Broken Glass” on November 9, 1938, as marking the start of the Holocaust.
Zoabi was making a 1400 word speech at a Kristallnacht commemoration event in Amsterdam organized by “Platform Stop Racism and Exclusion” – a group widely condemned for its racism against Jews.
ADL director Jonathan Greenblatt said “To compare Israel with dictatorial Nazi Germany, which was driven by the most extreme ideology of hate, is not only factually and historically incorrect, it is an affront to those who are dedicated to learning the lessons of Kristallnacht to ensure that such hate and discrimination have no place in modern society.”
Others asked why this Dutch “charity” would choose to fly over Zoabi, who is well-known for her anti-Semitic remarks, to be its main speaker at its Kristallnacht commemoration.
Zoabi made her speech in front of the former site of a centuries-old Jewish orphanage whose children were murdered during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands.
Leading up to Zoabi’s keynote speech, several others (including some extreme left-wing Jews) delivered remarks comparing Israel to the Nazis. At least half a dozen pro-Israel protesters were escorted from the gathering by security personnel and the Amsterdam police. One elderly protester who was shoved away by security personnel shouted, “This is a Jewish monument, how dare you!”
For its 2009 Kristallnacht commemoration, the same Dutch “anti-racism” charity hosted an imam who had accused Jews of using blood to make matzah in Damascus.
JEWS NOT INVITED TO SWEDISH KRISTALLNACHT COMMEMORATION
The organizers of a Kristallnacht commemoration event in Sweden have been criticized after declining to invite the Jewish community to participate, claiming the presence of Jews would be a “security risk”.
“Umea against Nazism” took place in the Swedish city of Umea on Tuesday and Wednesday.
The organizers claim that inviting the Jewish community would present a security risk, Swedish media reported, citing anti-Semitic and anti-Israel protests at past events.
The organizers were also criticized for downplaying the anti-Semitic centrality of the Holocaust at the event, and “conveying a generalized, vanilla message of tolerance – not opposition to anti-Semitism.”
In protest, one local municipal worker Anders Agren, organized a separate ceremony to which he invited the town’s small Jewish community, where memorial candles were lit and a moment of silence held.
***
Elsewhere in Sweden, the university town of Uppsala was criticized for holding a Kristallnacht gathering using promotional materials that did not include the words Jews or synagogues. (Many synagogues were looted and burned down on Kristallnacht.)
-
“NAME OF SHOP IS HITLER AND I LIKE HIM” – AS SHOP MANNEQUINS ENCOURAGE KNIFING OF JEWS
This is an important story by Reuters. The question is why, when almost all the world’s major news outlets subscribe to Reuters, so few of them have chosen to run this?
Reuters reports that a clothing store in Gaza City named “Hitler 2” is displaying mannequins with knives strapped to their hands as an encouragement to Palestinians to continue to murder Jews.
Hijaz Abu Shanab, a 20-year-old shopper, said: “The name of the shop is ‘Hitler’ and I like him... I like the clothes and the name, it is fantastic.”
The mannequins are also wearing balaclavas, masks and can be seen holding Palestinian flags. The photo of the storefront has gone viral, with pictures being shared widely on Facebook.
Here is the Reuters article.
Only a very few non-Israeli news outlets have run a version of this story, for example, here.
ISRAEL ASKS UN TO CONDEMN ORGAN-HARVESTING “BLOOD LIBEL”
Israel’s Ambassador to the UN Danny Danon has called on Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to condemn the recent Palestinian accusations that Israel harvested the organs of Palestinians killed last month while they were in the act of stabbing Jews.
Palestinian representative at the UN Riyad Mansour wrote a letter to British Ambassador Matthew Rycroft, the current president of the Security Council, in which he alleged that “after returning the seized bodies of Palestinians killed by the occupying forces through October, and following medical examinations, it has been reported that the bodies were returned with missing corneas and other organs, further confirming past reports of organ harvesting by the occupying power.”
Danon urged Ban to repudiate Mansur’s organ-harvesting accusations and “condemn the ongoing incitement by Palestinian leaders.”
“This blood libel by the Palestinian representative exposes his anti-Semitic motives and his true colors,” Danon said. “Anti-Semitism has no place in the halls of the United Nations and must be denounced.”
The secretary-general and the Security Council have not commented on the accusations.
Tom Gross adds: As has been noted in Israeli media, Mansour has a long history of accusing Jews of organ-harvesting and of promoting other lies about Israel – but none of this was mentioned when he was given free rein to make (largely fabricated) charges against Israel in both the New York Times and the Washington Post, and during past appearances on NBC’s Meet the Press and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.
ORTHODOX JEW STABBED IN ORGANIZED ATTACK AT KOSHER PIZZERIA IN MILAN; JEWS MURDERED IN HEBRON
I pointed out in other recent dispatches that internet companies including Facebook, YouTube and Twitter are continuing to allow anti-Semitic hate videos by Muslims that encourage the stabbing of Jews in Islamic State-style attacks.
Following recent such stabbings in Marseilles, New York and elsewhere, an orthodox Jewish man has been stabbed up to ten times at a kosher pizzeria in the Jewish Quarter of Milan. A brave passerby intervened to help the Jewish man. The attacker, who witnesses say appeared to be of Arab descent, fled to a car in which two accomplices were waiting. They sped away, according to police.
More here in Italian, with photos:
* La Repubblica
* Corriere della Sera
***
Two more Israeli civilians (including a teenager) were also murdered today and five others injured by Palestinian gunmen in Hebron, Judaism’s second most Holy city.
LASHED SAUDI BLOGGER RAIF BADAWI WINS EU’S SAKHAROV RIGHTS PRIZE
Saudi blogger Raif Badawi, who was sentenced to 1,000 lashes and 10 years in jail for supposedly insulting Islam, has been awarded the European Union’s Sakharov prize for human rights and freedom of thought. Badawi received the first 50 lashes in January.
British Conservative MEP Syed Kamall, who nominated Badawi for the EU prize, said “Saudi Arabia can lock up the man and they can lash him, but they will only strengthen amongst his countrymen the yearning for free speech and debate that he stands for.”
In a new law, Saudi Arabia deemed atheism to be a “terrorist offence”.
The prize is named in honor of Soviet scientist and dissident Andrei Sakharov.
For related dispatches, please see:
* “Je suis Raif Badawi” (January 16, 2015)
* Video appeal from Raif Badawi’s wife: item 3 here (February 27, 2015)
FORBES MAGAZINE: KHAMENEI MORE POWERFUL THAN NETANYAHU
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei appears ahead of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Forbes magazine’s annual list of the world’s most powerful people. Khamenei was 20th on the list, Netanyahu 21st.
The ranking is still high for the prime minister of Israel, a small country of 8 million people. Only eight other heads of state or prime ministers were above Netanyahu on the list.
Forbes placed Russian President Vladimir Putin first on its list, German Chancellor Angela Merkel second, U.S. President Barack Obama third, and Pope Francis fourth.
Netanyahu was also behind Google CEO Larry Page, who was ranked No. 10. and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg who was No. 19.
SEAN PENN TO VISIT ISRAEL FOR 1ST TIME; SEINFELD TO PLAY TEL AVIV
Defying the boycott-Israel movement, actor Sean Penn (who has been highly critical of Israel in the past) is to visit Israel for first time later this month.
Penn, who has twice won an Oscar for Best Actor, will be the guest of the Israeli humanitarian organization IsraAID, and will participate in a conference on the reconstruction of Haiti, which was hit by a devastating earthquake in 2010.
Penn has repeatedly been to Haiti, assisted in relief efforts there and worked side by side with Israeli volunteers. Penn, who was previously married to Madonna, has a Jewish father. (There were press reports this week in the Daily Mail and other papers asking whether Sean Penn and Madonna might be back together, 26 years after they divorced. They have been spotted having what are described as “intimate dinners” together in recent weeks.)
Comedian Jerry Seinfeld will also visit Israel next month, where he will perform to sold-out audiences in a Tel Aviv stadium.
HELEN MIRREN: “I LOVE ISRAEL”; ROBERT WINSTON, BORIS JOHNSON CONDEMN BDS
The Oscar-winning British actress Helen Mirren has also spoken out on behalf of Israel and against boycotts.
She said that “the people who are the most inspiring in Israel tend to be from the cultural community… To cut them off is the craziest idea, I don’t agree with it at all.”
She also praised the Israeli film industry and said she agreed with British cultural figures who signed an open letter, published in The Guardian, that endorsed cultural engagement with Israel rather than a cultural boycott, as a way to promote peace between Israel and the Palestinians.
She also said she had worked in Israel and also been on holiday there twice: “I love Israel, I think it is a great, great country. I think that through all the difficulties, and all the pain that Israel has suffered in the past and will in the future, the great thing that Israel has is Israelis, and they will guide it through.”
Two short videos of Helen Mirren here:
* https://youtu.be/sqP-DSLD7Q8
* https://youtu.be/1vIHtlmrsLU
***
Lord (Robert) Winston, the British-Jewish scientist who pioneered IVF treatment for women, also criticized the BDS movement in a speech he made in Israel this week. When asked about the hundreds of British academics who called, in The Guardian, for a boycott of Israel last month, he told Haaretz “They are not exactly at the cutting edge of British intellectual thought.”
And London Mayor Boris Johnson, who also visited Israel this week (and who is a subscriber to this email list), made a speech in Tel Aviv strongly criticizing BDS.
MISREMEMBERING YITZHAK RABIN
* Tablet commentator: “‘Rabin came as close to a final agreement as any Israeli leader ever has, and since his murder there’s been flight from negotiation,’ opined one commentator. But as one can see from the history of Israeli peace offers after Rabin, this is decidedly not so. In fact, the impact of Rabin’s murder was quite the opposite. His assassination presaged a massive shift in Israeli public opinion toward peace and the two-state solution. Following Rabin’s shooting, the Israeli left moved to his left, while the Israeli right gradually adopted Rabin’s own positions from when he led the Israeli left. (Recent Israeli skepticism about the peace process has far more to do with Gaza’s rockets than Amir’s bullets.) …The untold story of the peace process is the fact that by any objective measure, Benjamin Netanyahu today is to the left of where Yitzhak Rabin was in the 90s.”
* Haaretz commentator: “Ever since Rabin’s murder, there has been a need for both Israelis and foreigners to imbue his death with a higher meaning… As the years passed and Oslo became a byword for a stagnating diplomatic process and eternal deadlock between Israel and the Palestinians, a new narrative emerged. Rabin was no longer just the martyr of peace, he was the embodiment of the elusive solution to the conflict. Amir had not just ended a man’s life, he had succeeded in dashing all hope for a peaceful resolution… The only problem with this dream scenario is that almost nothing in it tallies with reality.
“Rabin never contemplated dividing Jerusalem or relinquishing control of strategic locations in the West Bank such as the Jordan Valley… The assumption that had Rabin lived he could have brought the Oslo process to its final station ignores the role of the Palestinians and all the other players…
“To say that with Rabin’s assassination the peace process was also murdered is lazy thinking. And this ties in with other lazy assumptions about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict such as the one that it’s actually quite simple to solve, if you just get the two sides in a room, bang their heads together, then split the territory along the Green Line.”
MIGHT NETANYAHU TURN OUT TO BE THE TRUE SUCCESSOR TO RABIN?
[Notes by Tom Gross]
Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated just over 20 years ago, on November 4, 1995. In the past two weeks, to mark the Hebrew and secular anniversaries of his death, hundreds of articles have appeared about him in the media. Many have promoted false accounts of the political views Rabin held. And several TV broadcasts, such as the recent one by the BBC’s chief Middle East Correspondent Jeremy Bowen, have completely misrepresented Rabin in an effort to try and further Bowen’s and the BBC’s own agenda of undermining the current Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
As a corrective to the widespread misreporting, I attach two articles below -- rare accounts of Rabin’s true positions -- from the left-of-center publications Haaretz and Tablet.
Rabin’s children have tried to keep the record accurate, but to no avail as left-wing journalists in the American and European media continue to re-write history.
For example, Rabin’s daughter Dalia said in an interview with the Israeli daily Yediot Ahronot in October 2010:
“Many people who were close to father told me that on the eve of the murder he considered stopping the Oslo process because of the terror that was running rampant in the streets and that Arafat wasn’t delivering the goods. Father after all wasn’t a blind man running forward without thought.”
(Dalia Rabin has repeated similar sentiments in interviews this year, for example in this interview with the Times of Israel.)
Rabin’s son Yuval has also sought to correct some of the misreporting about his father and even criticized his nephew’s comments at the large left-wing rally commemorating Rabin held a week ago in Tel Aviv, which was addressed by Bill Clinton.
Today Netanyahu meets President Obama in Washington, the first time in over a year that the leaders of these two closely allied nations have met.
(You can read the full text of Rabin’s final speech to the Knesset referred to in the articles below, here.)
ATTACKS CONTINUE
Meanwhile the Palestinian attacks on Israelis continue, largely unreported by the western media. There have been more attacks this morning.
And here is footage of a stabbing yesterday morning of an Israeli security guard by a Palestinian woman dressed in a hijab. The reason the security guard was there in the first place, of course, was to protect Jewish children in the nearby building.
Another Israeli teenager, 19-year-old Binyamin Yakobovich, who was badly hurt on November 4 when a Palestinian driver deliberately rammed into him at high speed, was pronounced dead by doctors in Jerusalem’s Hadassah Hospital Ein Kerem last night. He is survived by his parents, brother and two sisters. His parents announced they would donate his organs to patients in urgent need of transplants.
FATAH POSTS NAZI CHILDREN’S BOOK COVER
The daily incitement to kill Israelis continues on official Palestinian Authority media, with hardly a word of criticism from most of the western governments that fund it. The New York Times continues to describe Palestinian Authority and Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas as a “moderate”.
Here is a compilation of clips from Memri showing Palestinian officials, clerics, parents, and even small children praising the wave of knifings and other terror attacks against Israelis and encouraging more Palestinians to attack Israelis and Jews.
And here are a few of the bulletins from Palestinian Media Watch from recent days:
Palestinian football tournament named after murderer who stabbed two to death last month
Fatah posts Nazi children’s book cover
Fatah: Israel murders Palestinians and plants knives next to bodies
Palestinian Authority street named after murderer who stabbed 2 Israeli civilians to death
Songs promoting violence become Palestinian hits
Palestinian baby named “Knife of Jerusalem”
All of Israel is “Palestine’ according to Abbas’ National Security Forces and Governor of Ramallah
More Palestinian blood worship and Martyr glorification
Anti-Semitic hate speech by Abbas; advisor on Islam: Jews are the agents of Satan
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ARTICLES
MISREMEMBERING YITZHAK RABIN
Misremembering Yitzhak Rabin
The paragon of peace held positions nearly identical to Netanyahu
By Yair Rosenberg
Tablet magazine
November 4, 2014
http://www.tabletmag.com/scroll/186789/yitzhak-rabin-benjamin-netanyahu
Nineteen years ago today, on November 4, 1995, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated by a far-right extremist. In a yearly ritual, he is being remembered as a peacemaker and as someone whose death “changed history.” Rabin, it is widely said, could have ended the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, something the Anti-Defamation League vividly portrayed in its alternate history viral video, “Imagine a World Without Hate.”
But if you read Rabin’s final speech to the Israeli parliament, delivered just a month before he died, the picture seems more complicated than this narrative. On October 5, 1995, Rabin laid out his vision for peace, telling the Knesset:
We view the permanent solution in the framework of State of Israel which will include most of the area of the Land of Israel as it was under the rule of the British Mandate, and alongside it a Palestinian entity which will be a home to most of the Palestinian residents living in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.
We would like this to be an entity which is less than a state, and which will independently run the lives of the Palestinians under its authority. The borders of the State of Israel, during the permanent solution, will be beyond the lines which existed before the Six Day War. We will not return to the 4 June 1967 lines.
And these are the main changes, not all of them, which we envision and want in the permanent solution:
A. First and foremost, united Jerusalem, which will include both Ma’ale Adumim and Givat Ze’ev – as the capital of Israel, under Israeli sovereignty, while preserving the rights of the members of the other faiths, Christianity and Islam, to freedom of access and freedom of worship in their holy places, according to the customs of their faiths.
B. The security border of the State of Israel will be located in the Jordan Valley, in the broadest meaning of that term.
C. Changes which will include the addition of Gush Etzion, Efrat, Beitar and other communities, most of which are in the area east of what was the “Green Line,” prior to the Six Day War.
D. The establishment of blocs of settlements in Judea and Samaria, like the one in Gush Katif.
***
It’s an address that could have been given by Benjamin Netanyahu, who has pointedly opposed withdrawal to the 1967 borders – most famously alongside President Obama in the Oval Office – and insisted upon a long-term Israeli security presence in the Jordan Valley and a united Jerusalem. Far more generous peace offers than Rabin’s, which included the division of Jerusalem, were made by his left-wing successors as prime minister, Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert. Meanwhile, Gush Katif, one of the settlements singled out by Rabin for preservation, was evacuated by right-wing prime minister Ariel Sharon – along with the rest of Israel’s settlements in Gaza.
If anyone can be said to be carrying on Rabin’s legacy, it is Netanyahu, who, like Rabin in 1995, is more skeptical of the stability and good intentions of a potential Palestinian neighbor, and insists on more defensible borders and stronger security guarantees in any peace deal. But even Netanyahu has been willing to grant the Palestinians a state – rather than Rabin’s “entity which is less than a state” – telling CNN’s Fareed Zakaria just last month that “I remain committed to a vision of peace, of two states for two peoples, two nation-states, one for the Palestinian people, one for the Jewish people.”
And unlike Rabin, the Likud leader froze West Bank settlements for 10 months to jumpstart negotiations, and initiated a “silent freeze” on building in Israel’s contentious capital of Jerusalem. Even Netanyahu, in other words, has governed – both in word and deed – from Rabin’s left. Needless to say, this is not so much a reflection of Bibi’s dovishness as Rabin’s hawkishness.
But if Rabin didn’t actually possess the most prophetic positions on peace, what then is his true legacy? To answer this question, it helps to look at what it is not. In a series of tweets today, Canadian scholar Jeet Heer claimed that “[Yigal] Amir’s bullets achieved what the right wanted: a definitive end to the last real chance for a 2-state solution.” Added Heer, “Rabin came as close to a final agreement as any Israeli leader ever has, and since his murder there’s been flight from negotiation.”
But as one can see from the history of Israeli peace offers after Rabin, this is decidedly not so. In fact, as those offers demonstrate, the impact of Rabin’s murder was quite the opposite. His assassination presaged a massive shift in Israeli public opinion toward peace and the two-state solution. Following Rabin’s shooting, the Israeli left moved to his left, while the Israeli right gradually adopted Rabin’s own positions from when he led the Israeli left. (Recent Israeli skepticism about the peace process has far more to do with Gaza’s rockets than Amir’s bullets.) As Ben Birnbaum, the journalist who co-wrote the definitive account of the most recent peace talks for The New Republic, has put it, “The untold story of the peace process is the fact that by any objective measure, Benjamin Netanyahu today is to the left of where Yitzhak Rabin was in the 90s.”
This is what Rabin achieved. He might not have been the revolutionary peacemaker that some of today’s hagiography makes him out to be. Few elected leaders in modern democracies can be so far ahead of their time and people within the constraints of politics and history. But what Rabin did accomplish was creating the space for Israelis to recognize the need for Palestinian autonomy. By daring to imagine a different future, and taking the first courageous steps towards it, he set in motion the trends that would ultimately remake Israeli society, and open the door for leaders like Barak, Olmert, and yes, Netanyahu, to take positions far beyond what he initially envisioned.
WOULD IT ALL BE DIFFERENT IF YITZHAK RABIN HAD LIVED?
Would it all be different if Yitzhak Rabin had lived?
Historians and journalists love to imagine that Rabin would have beaten Netanyahu at the polls and gone on to sign peace agreements with Arafat and Assad. But that doesn’t tally with reality.
By Anshel Pfeffer
Haaretz
Oct. 27, 2015
www.haaretz.com/misc/article-print-page/.premium-1.682451
Yitzhak Rabin, a heavy smoker and habitual drinker could have keeled over and died of perfectly natural causes at the age of 73. There were certainly many Israelis who were praying for such an outcome in November 1995. But Yigal Amir wasn’t prepared to let nature take its course.
Ever since Rabin’s murder, there has been a need for both Israelis and foreigners to imbue his death with a higher meaning, beyond the obvious one of the peak of ideological violence – political assassination. For years his allies and followers talked of “Rabin’s legacy” but it never really caught on. Never a noted orator, he left few memorable quotes and his autobiography was mainly remembered for the snide remarks at the expense of his old rival, Shimon Peres. Other more articulate members of Rabin’s generation slyly reminded us that Oslo was the brainchild of the coterie of advisers around Peres, whom he despised and that on the eve of the crowning achievement of his military career, the Six-Day War, he had collapsed from tension and nicotine poisoning.
For the purposes of preserving a largely false sense of national unity, Rabin couldn’t be regarded as a symbol of the ideological struggle at the heart of Zionism. Besides, once the trauma of a prime minister’s assassination at the hand of a fellow Jew had subsided and the right wing was back in power, Rabin had to be depoliticized so everyone could join in his veneration. But as the years passed and Oslo became a byword for a stagnating diplomatic process and eternal deadlock between Israel and the Palestinians, a new narrative emerged. Rabin was no longer just the martyr of peace, he was the embodiment of the elusive solution to the conflict. Amir had not just ended a man’s life, he had succeeded in dashing all hope for a peaceful resolution.
Historians and journalists love to play with the great what-ifs of history and this is one of the neatest ones. Rabin survives, wins the next elections, Israel’s rightward shift is reversed, Benjamin Netanyahu never comes to power and in his third term Rabin signs comprehensive agreements with Yasser Arafat and Hafez Assad followed by peace across the Middle East. The only problem with this dream scenario is that almost nothing in it tallies with reality.
In the months leading to the assassination, Rabin was trailing Netanyahu in most polls, in some by as much as 13 points. There was a year for those polls to reverse, certainly Netanyahu’s propaganda machine would have had a much harder time portraying war-hero Rabin, rather than Peres, as a limp-wristed leftist. But it still looked more likely at the time that Netanyahu was headed for the prime minister’s office.
But even if Rabin had lived and won in 1996, there is no proof whatsoever that he was prepared to go all the way. He had never contemplated dividing Jerusalem or relinquishing control of strategic locations in the West Bank such as the Jordan Valley. As Joint Arab List MK Ahmed Tibi, a former advisor to Arafat, once said, the Israeli prime minister who is capable of delivering the minimum that the Palestinians are willing to accept has not yet been born. The assumption that had Rabin lived he could have brought the Oslo process to its final station ignores the role of the Palestinians and all the other players. It also overlooks the fact that Rabin was not the only Israeli leader to try to reach an agreement.
It may be easy to forget that three other prime ministers led Israel in the intervening period – not just Netanyahu. Ehud Barak spend most of his short premiership negotiating with Arafat and Assad. Ariel Sharon withdrew unilaterally from Gaza. Ehud Olmert and Tzipi Livni met dozens of times with Arafat’s successors. And Peres was around as well for all this time. They all had a mandate from the Israeli public to make major concessions. You could perhaps argue that Rabin would have negotiated with greater skill and in better faith but there is little proof that would have been the case.
If the Shin Bet security service bodyguards had reacted a second earlier, if Rabin had agreed to wear a bulletproof vest, if Yigal Amir’s aim had been slightly off or his gun jammed, the history of the Middle East may have been totally different. But it’s just as likely that had Rabin lived, he would today be a hyperactive nonagenarian pensioner like Peres, and Netanyahu would still be prime minister, explaining why it’s all the Palestinians’ fault.
To say that with Rabin’s assassination the peace process was also murdered is lazy thinking. And this ties in with other lazy assumptions about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict such as the one that it’s actually quite simple to solve, if you just get the two sides in a room, bang their heads together, then split the territory along the Green Line. People too easily forget that the Oslo process wasn’t happening in a bubble. The Cold War had just ended, the United States had established itself as the sole global policeman in the Gulf War of 1991 and for a brief optimistic moment you could believe in a world turning away from confrontation.
The past 15 years have been everything but peaceful, particularly in this part of the world. There is no reason to believe that solving the Palestinian issue would have been any easier than any of the other intractable messes blighting the Middle East. Clinging to the notion that if only Rabin had survived, we would be living in a better place now, is just an excuse not to acknowledge how hard this is to solve and avoid re-examining tired formulas.
[Note by Tom Gross]
Photos below:
Muslims praying in the main departure terminal of Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport yesterday.
It is doubtful whether Orthodox Jews could freely pray in the airport of Israel’s neighboring Muslim countries. And yet it is Israel that opinion writers at the New York Times, Guardian and elsewhere repeatedly (and wrongly) label an “Apartheid state”.
Meanwhile, today’s (London) Daily Mail (and other papers) report:
The worldwide incitement against Jews is not only being promoted in many mosques in the Islamic world and elsewhere, but also by some journalists, academics and NGOs in the supposedly respectable media and universities of western democracies. The BBC World Service radio, with its near daily invective against Israel, is widely listened to in Africa.
(Photos above courtesy of Yaron Carni/StandWithUs)
For an everyday scene at Tel Aviv’s beach in “apartheid Israel,” see here.
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Egged on by the official European-funded Palestinian Authority media, terror attacks on Israeli civilians continue: A woman in her 80s, who was out shopping, is in serious condition after she and two other Israelis were stabbed by a Palestinian Jihadist in the Tel Aviv suburb of Rishon Lezion, this afternoon.
SPY GAMES
[Notes by Tom Gross]
* Israeli Channel 2 reports that Israeli Military Intelligence has sent a letter to all Israeli officers and soldiers to be aware of recruitment attempts by the CIA. The advisory called on soldiers to “remain alert and report any unusual incidences.”
* Israeli Military Intelligence often warns soldiers to be careful about what they post on Facebook or discuss on non-encrypted phone lines. However, it is highly unusual for a letter to be sent to the entire army, concerning recruiting attempts by the spy agency of a friendly nation.
* Israeli daily Yediot Ahronot: Since 2012, an increasing number of young post-army Israelis (who will still do regular army reserve duty), upon arrival for vacation in the United States, have been taken in for extensive questioning lasting many hours by American authorities in an attempt to recruit them for the CIA.
* Source: IDF chose to issue the warning now, following the latest leaks by the Obama administration aimed at damaging Israeli interests.
* In contrast to U.S. President Obama’s frostiness to Israel, Russian President Putin continues his charm offensive. Isi Leibler: “Putin has ruthlessly suppressed violent anti-Semitism. He has gone out of his way to attend Jewish functions, such as the opening of a Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center in Moscow, to which he contributed $50 million of state funds and even symbolically personally donated a month’s salary. He also attended Hanukkah celebrations and conveyed warm messages of praise and goodwill to Jews on the advent of the Jewish New Year -- utterly unprecedented, especially from a nationalist Russian leader.”
* Leibler: “Putin has determinedly kept the channels to Israel open, making a point to personally visit Israel and in June 2012, Israel was the first country he visited after his election. He frequently speaks warmly about the Jewish state, expressing pride that it contains the largest diaspora of former Russian citizens. At the Western Wall, accompanied by Russian Chief Rabbi Berel Lazar, he donned a kippah, which would undoubtedly have made his Bolshevik predecessors turn in their graves. He also seemed quite indifferent to the rage this created among his Arab allies.”
* Ehud Ya’ari, the leading Mideast expert on Israel Channel 2: “The Russians have allocated a future role for Israel in their area of influence by offering to buy a substantial chunk of Israel’s newly discovered gas fields and provide military guarantees against Hizbullah attacks on the offshore locations.”
ISRAEL STRIKES AGAINST HIZBULLAH ADVANCED WEAPONS
* Lebanese and Syrian media: Six Israeli warplanes targeted Hizbullah weapons convoys in Syria on Saturday. These are the first Israeli strikes since the Russian air force began its involvement in the Syrian civil war. Hizbullah aims to acquire even more deadly weapons to fire at Israeli civilians.
* Source: Israel gave Russia advance warning so as to avoid any accidental clash between air forces.
* Israel’s defense establishment refused to confirm or deny the reports, but in the past Israel has warned that it will not permit the Iranian-controlled Hizbullah terrorist group to obtain what it calls “game-changing” advanced weaponry.
* Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, after meeting with Putin in Moscow last month: “My goal was to prevent misunderstandings between IDF forces and Russian forces. We have established a mechanism to prevent such misunderstandings. This is very important for Israel’s security… Israel will not tolerate Tehran’s efforts to arm Israel’s enemies in the region, and that Jerusalem has taken and will continue to take action against any such attempts. This is our right and also our duty.”
* Iran intensifies use of ground troops in Syria: 29 senior Iranian Revolutionary Guard Officers killed in Syria in the past two weeks alone, according to Iranian press reports.
* Iran’s official Fars news agency: Iranian navy to send warships to Atlantic Ocean.
http://kayhan.ir/en/print/19997
* On Saturday, Russia and Egypt accepted Israeli offers of aerial surveillance in efforts to locate parts of the Russian civilian airplane that crashed over the Sinai Peninsula.
* Israeli media: Bill Clinton, who gave a speech on Saturday at the Rabin Memorial Rally in Tel Aviv, was in Israel primarily because he was paid to go to Israel by Noble Energy to lobby on their behalf about their stake in Israel’s off shore gas.
I attach two articles below. The first, by Amir Rapaport concerning U.S. spying on Israel, appears in Israel Defense magazine and was published at the end of last week, before the latest revelations about CIA attempts to increase its recruitment efforts in Israel.
The second, by Isi Leibler in today’s Jerusalem Post, deals with Putin’s charm offensive to Israel.
It should also be noted that it is not only Israel that Russia is more friendly towards: Russia has concluded a multibillion-dollar arms sale with Egypt, sold nuclear reactors to Jordan and Egypt and may cooperate on building 16 reactors with Saudi Arabia. By the end of this year, the kings of six Sunni Arab states, including Saudi Arabia’s King Salman and the Crown Prince of the United Arab Emirates, will have visited Putin in Moscow in 2015.
-- Tom Gross\
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ARTICLES
U.S. SPY GAMES
Spy Games: The latest leaks by the US government regarding Israel were intended, presumably, to embarrass the Israeli Minister of Defense and Prime Minister. The tension between the Obama administration and Netanyahu continues and meanwhile, in Syria, the Russians are moving ahead with their military operation to re-consolidate the Assad regime.
By Amir Rapaport
Israel Defense magazine
October 30, 2015
http://www.israeldefense.co.il/en/content/spy-games
Since 2012, hundreds of employees of the Israeli defense establishment encountered a strange phenomenon: the staff of the US embassy in Israel refused to grant them visas to enter the USA.
The applicants included IDF servicemen and employees of IMOD, Israeli defense industries and such intelligence agencies as ISA and Mossad. Numerous testimonies indicated that the US embassy had a list of Israeli defense operatives, and entrance was denied to many of them despite the fact that they never encountered problems obtaining a visa in the past.
According to those testimonies, since 2012, some of the applicants received visas for just a few weeks after they had been ‘given the runaround’, while others were questioned upon their arrival in the USA. Some absurd situations arose. For example, members of the Israeli delegation to the USA were forced to leave the USA for Canada and have their visas renewed in that country, since their visas for staying on US soil had been renewed only for very short periods of time, again and again (or refused).
At the time, the US embassy in Israel refused to provide any explanations regarding this “Visa Refusal Policy”, not even in response to a question submitted to the embassy by this writer, but the reason is being clarified in the last few days: a revelation by the Wall Street Journal last weekend maintains that the USA initiated a massive effort to obtain information from employees of the Israeli defense establishment in an attempt to find out whether Israel intended to attack the nuclear facilities in Iran. One of the methods being mentioned was an attempt to extract the information from Israelis seeking visas to enter the USA, and the questioning officials were not employees of USCIS (US Citizenship and Immigration Services) but investigators of the CIA (US Central Intelligence Agency) working undercover.
The story published by the Wall Street Journal has further revealed that an Israeli aircraft had entered and exited the territory of Iran sometime in 2012, possibly as a trial run in the context of the preparations for a possible attack against the Iranian nuclear facility in Fordu. These claims were supported by quotes of officials in Washington.
According to the same officials, the objective of the flight was to practice the airlifting and landing of IDF commando forces in the area of the nuclear facility for the purpose of capturing it. These officials base their claim on an intercepted transmission out of which the information regarding the Israeli trial was obtained.
The Wall Street Journal revelation about the efforts made by the USA to uncover Israel’s intentions regarding an attack against Iran well in advance is based on leaks from official US sources. The US government has an extensive resume of leaking sensitive defense information pertaining to Israel. Even the information attributing to Israel the attack against the Syrian nuclear reactor in Arak in September 2007 had come from Washington.
On the other hand, Israel has a record of failing to inform the USA in advance of significant military moves. For example, Israel went to such great lengths trying to keep the attack against the Iraqi nuclear reactor (mainly in June 1981) that the commander of IAF, Major-General David Ivry, spent the day prior to the attack with American colleagues in Naples, Italy, just to “put them to sleep”. A message was sent to the USA only after the IAF strike aircraft had completed their mission (at least before the operation was reported in the media).
According to all of the estimates in Israel, the latest report by the Wall Street Journal was intended to embarrass Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon before his recent visit to the USA, which began on Monday and ended on Thursday (earlier than planned, owing to the tense situation in Israel) as well as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who will travel to Washington in early November.
This article conveys the impression that the USA does not trust the Israeli judgment, which could have led to a serious deterioration of the situation in the entire Middle East (and even beyond this region).
It is important to understand, however, that the story, titled “US espionage in Israel”, does not amount to actual espionage but conforms to a more moderate professional term – collection of information. Admittedly, the methods employed in order to collect information in Israel, as reported by the Wall Street Journal, were extremely unusual, but the Israeli defense establishment has assumed anyway, for years now, that the Americans are gathering any information they can lay their hands on. They employ the world’s most extensive monitoring network, code named Echelon, and use supercomputers to sort every sliver of information passing through the Internet in order to obtain the coveted ‘golden nuggets’ of information
The relations between the Israeli and US defense establishments have already experienced more severe espionage scandals, or even suspicions of “intensified collection of information”, not just in the context of the case of Jonathan Pollard, who is expected to be released from prison after 30 years.
Lieutenant-Colonel (res.) Gideon Mitchnik, who had served at the executive office of the Defense Minister during the previous decade and subsequently served as the official historian of the IDF Intelligence Directorate, has reminded us that the Americans had accused Israel, more than a decade ago, of spying in the context of a less well-known affair known as the “AIPAC Espionage Scandal”. In that case, the FBI arrested Lawrence Franklin, a senior employee at the executive office of the US Secretary of Defense and a former USAF officer, and accused him of spying for Israel within the US government. It was alleged that Franklin supplied sensitive information to two AIPAC officials – Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman.
Naor Gilon, an Israeli diplomat in charge of relations with the US Congress at the Israeli embassy in Washington, was also implicated in the suspicions. The affair eventually came to nothing after five years, but only after Franklin had paid a hefty personal price. This is only an example of the fact that both parties assume that the effort to collect information never ceases.
HIGH TENSION
The new “espionage scandal” revealed recently is a late manifestation of the heightened US-Israeli tensions surrounding the “Iranian Issue”, which led to a profound rift between leaders Barack Obama and Benjamin Netanyahu (that is not expected to be mended during their forthcoming meeting).
The Americans did everything they could to obtain information about Israel’s intentions, while employing the “carrot and stick” method. On the positive side, they made an unprecedented attempt to establish warm relations with the IDF Chief of Staff in the years when an attack against Iran was regarded as imminent: until 2011, the US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin Dempsey, had met IDF Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi not less than 13 times, showering the Israeli general with warmth and goodwill. When Ashkenazi’s replacement, Lieutenant-General Benny Gantz, came to Washington for the first time as IDF Chief of Staff, a special band played all his favorite songs (presumably, the Americans had foreknowledge of Gantz’s musical taste…).
On the less pleasant side, the Americans focused on the questioning of former members of IDF special operations units, and according to recent reports (by Yediot Aharonot), in one case Israel submitted an official protest to the USA pursuant to a less-than-innocent questioning of an Israeli citizen at a US airport that lasted not less than ten hours. In the past, it was reported that the USA deployed on the roof of the US embassy in Tel-Aviv covert monitoring installations the likes of which were seen on the roofs of other US embassies around the world.
USA, RUSSIA
A matter of timing: whether this recent affair is about espionage or just about ‘collection of information’, these reports did not really cloud Ya’alon’s visit to the USA this week. The visit went ahead as planned and according to the reports – the atmosphere was very pleasant. Senior Israeli defense officials claim that the relations between the defense establishments of Israel and the USA are closer today than ever before, as opposed to the hostile wind blowing toward Israel out of the White House and State Department (where the leak to the Wall Street Journal must have originated).
Meanwhile, back in Israel, the bar of violence in the territories seemed to have dropped significantly and violence among Israeli Arabs has subsided almost completely. However, estimates maintain that tranquility is still a far-off prospect and that the terrorist attacks will continue for a long time, with occasional “peaks” – renewed waves of surging violence.
A lot of attention has been paid to occurrences in Syria: while Israel and the USA conducted strategic discussions in Washington, a historic event took place when the Russian Air Force coordinated its strikes with the IAF. The understandings regarding that coordination were achieved last month, during the visit of Prime Minister Netanyahu to Moscow, on which he was accompanied by the IDF Chief of Staff and Head of the IDF Intelligence Directorate.
At the same time, Israeli and US operations associated with Syria were coordinated, too. The world press has reported this week that the Russians employed high-power electronic transmitters out of a submarine in the Mediterranean. These reports seem to be accurate and the Russian submarine was probably detected by Israel. The electronic warfare systems were probably employed by the Russians in order to defend their new bases in Syria as well as their aircraft in the air over Syria. Apparently, the state-of-the-art capabilities demonstrated by the Russians this week have taken intelligence circles in the West by surprise.
PUTIN’S CHARM OFFENSIVE
Putin’s Russia and Israel: A tenuous relationship
By Isi Leibler
Jerusalem Post
November 2, 2015
For over 30 years, my principal public occupation in the global Jewish arena was to promote the struggle for liberation of Soviet Jewry. This brought me into direct contact with Soviet ministers, officials and apparatchiks, enabling me to appreciate firsthand the obsessive anti-Semitism underlying the Kremlin’s policy toward Israel and the Jews.
This contrasts starkly with current Russian President Vladimir Putin’s positive attitude to Jews in general, despite the fact that he was a former officer of the Soviet secret police agency, the KGB, a body notorious for its anti-Semitism. This is even more extraordinary taking into account the fact that Putin today exploits nationalism as a major element to rally public support. And it was Russian nationalism, from the time of the czars and heavily reinforced by the Soviets, that has operated in tandem with a feral anti-Semitism.
There are no rational explanations for Putin’s extraordinary attitude toward Jews, which some have gone as far as to describe as being motivated by philo-Semitism. Some say he was influenced as a youngster by his Jewish German teacher, Mina Yuditskaya, now living in Israel, whom he invited for a social chat to the King David Hotel during his last visit. He may also be highly sophisticated and pragmatic, and having seen the outcome of Soviet anti-Semitism, may have come to a realization that Jewish support would represent an asset at many levels.
Putin has ruthlessly suppressed violent anti-Semitism. He has gone out of his way to attend Jewish functions, such as the opening of a Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center in Moscow, to which he contributed $50 million of state funds and even symbolically personally donated a month’s salary. He also attended Hanukkah celebrations and conveyed warm messages of praise and goodwill to Jews on the advent of the Jewish New Year -- utterly unprecedented, especially from a nationalist Russian leader.
It is also astonishing that, despite his strategic involvement and alliance with the Syrians and Iranians, Putin has determinedly kept the channels to Israel open, making a point to personally visit Israel and in June 2012, Israel was the first country he visited after his election. He frequently speaks warmly about the Jewish state, expressing pride that it contains the largest diaspora of former Russian citizens. At the Western Wall, accompanied by Russian Chief Rabbi Berel Lazar, he donned a kippah, which would undoubtedly have made his Bolshevik predecessors turn in their graves. He also seemed quite indifferent to the rage this created among his Arab allies.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has deftly steered a delicate diplomatic balancing act seeking to retain a good relationship with the Russians without antagonizing the Americans in relation to both Ukraine and Georgia. No Israeli minister has criticized Putin despite his alliance with Syria and Iran.
Indeed, until recently, Netanyahu managed to persuade Putin to postpone providing the Syrians with the S-300 air defense system, whose deployment would make it far more difficult for Israel to penetrate Syrian air space in the event of a military confrontation.
However, due to U.S. President Barack Obama’s incredible mismanagement, Putin’s major geopolitical breakthrough has transformed Russia overnight into a dominant power in the Middle East with greater influence in the region than even at its peak during the Cold War. Even Egypt has been alienated by U.S. support for the Muslim Brotherhood to such an extent that it too has moved closer to the Russian camp.
The U.S. has effectively enabled an economically weak Russia to seal an alliance with the Shiites, purportedly to combat ISIS but in reality concentrating on rescuing Assad, who, despite massive support from Iran and Hezbollah, was close to collapse.
Putin mocked the Americans for trying to promote “democracy” and in so doing created the vacuum that was rapidly filled by ISIS. At the U.N. General Assembly, Putin, speaking about Western support for the so-called Arab Spring, said, “Do you realize what you have done? ... Instead of the triumph of democracy and progress, we got violence, poverty and social disaster – and nobody cares a bit about human rights, including the right to life.”
In contrast to a bumbling Obama, he emerged as a shrewd and tough strategist who can be relied upon to stand by his allies and confront his enemies.
As a consequence, the situation has become immensely more complicated for Israel and there are logical grounds for concern that Russia’s ongoing confrontation with the U.S. will override Putin’s emotional philo-Semitism. His recent meeting in which he expressed solidarity with Assad in Moscow was hardly reassuring.
But the situation remains far from black and white. Immediately after announcing Russia’s intervention, Putin agreed to a three-hour summit meeting with Netanyahu, who flew to Moscow where parameters were drawn in order to minimize any possible military overlap and try to protect some of Israel’s security concerns. Coordination has been maintained at the very highest military levels between both countries, with Russia operating a direct hotline with Yossi Cohen, Israel’s national security adviser, informing him in advance of Russia bombing targets in Syria.
Furthermore, according to Ehud Yaari of Channel 2, the Russians have allocated a future role for Israel in their area of influence by offering to buy a substantial chunk of Israel’s newly discovered gas fields and provide military guarantees against Hezbollah attacks on the offshore locations. It is also proposing to export this gas to Europe.
But Israel remains the meat in the sandwich. It must walk on eggshells to avoid alienating the U.S. Congress, which is bitterly opposed to Putin’s global expansionism.
Some predict that Putin is merely taking advantage of establishing Russia as a Mediterranean Great Power. He is most unlikely to involve his ground forces after its ordeal in Afghanistan. Realizing that a complete victory is not in the cards, Putin may secure Assad, settle on a divided Syria and leverage Assad’s retirement in return for U.S. concessions such as easing sanctions relating to Ukraine.
Profoundly conscious of the Iranian regime’s messianic aspirations to wipe Israel off the face of the planet, optimists consider the possibility that the Russians will inhibit the Iranians from directly attacking Israel. They argue that Shiite fundamentalists like the Iranians also pose long-term threats to the Kremlin with Russia’s growing and increasingly aggressive Muslim minority which is also being affected by ISIS -- a large proportion of whose fighters originate from Russia and former Soviet countries.
The Netanyahu government is to be commended for its efforts to isolate itself from the conflict. But the situation is volatile and could unravel in the course of intensified superpower confrontations in this region. Israel is also cognizant of potential confrontations with the Russians should they continue to intervene when Iranians seek to transfer advanced missiles to Hezbollah.
However, it is a consolation that all things being even, Putin would prefer not to confront Israel and does not aspire to bring about its destruction, as did the Bolsheviks. However, that could change if Putin were to conclude that Israel represents a major barrier to his objective of creating a new Middle East.
It remains somewhat surrealistic for me to juxtapose Putin’s positive attitude with my experiences with Soviet anti-Semites. Neither I nor any of the refuseniks would have remotely dreamed that, living in Israel, we would witness the visit of a former KGB officer as president of Russia who displays friendship rather than malevolence to the Jewish people. We must pray that this will not be swept aside by realpolitik.