| There's no moral virtue in talking to one's enemies My frequent readers already know what I think about the latest visit of Jimmy Carter to the Middle East. Last week I wrote this:
The choice of those who still continue to insist on the need to listen to Carter is based on lies - it is possible to ignore him, protest his manipulative tricks, and still continue to work for true peace between Israel and the Arabs. There is no contradiction.
A couple of days ago, though, I wrote another piece on Carter for Slate, essentially analyzing his latest OpEd published in the New York Times. You can read it in full on Slate, or a couple of paragraphs here:
How Carter is helping Hamas
In his op-ed, two reasons emerged for the necessity of such talks, but Carter, misleadingly, turned them into one.
The first is that "Hamas [is] steadily gaining popularity." That's the let's-just-deal-with-reality argument: Hamas is strong, Hamas makes the rules, and we have to talk to the party in power. The second is "there can be no peace with Palestinians divided." That's the what-we're-trying-to-do-here-is-help-make-peace argument. Presumably, Carter is not in the business of sabotaging the peace talks being conducted by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas or undermining his efforts to rebuild a moderate, democratic Palestinian Authority. It just looks that way.
It is no accident that in Carter's version, these two arguments are mushed together and left unrecognizable. Carter is a calculating diplomat, and he knows his way around land mines. He needs the arguments to be confusingly entangled, because neither can stand on its own feet. Helping the cause of peace by engaging a party that expresses no interest in a two-state solution makes no sense. Talking to a villain because he is strong while giving up on the possibility of moderates being able to overcome their difficulties is a despairingly defeatist goal.
"This policy" Carter argues, "makes difficult the possibility that such leaders might moderate their policies." The hope of eventual moderation is another easy argument made by proponents of engagement, who fail to recognize that in some cases, moderation is not a reasonable expectation. Here, Carter is guilty not only of miscalculation but of hubris. He apparently believes that by the force of his personality and powers of persuasion, he can make Hamas change a deeply rooted ideology. Unfortunately, he can't.
There's no moral virtue in talking to one's enemies. Engagement is a tool, but so are disengagement and isolation. Both are effective, if used wisely; both can be damaging if used in haste. Talking to one's enemies is a tool - as is complaining about one's reluctance to talk to one's enemies. This is the tool now being used by Hamas and Syria - assisted by Carter - as they try to escape and counter the isolation being applied to them. Making the case for engagement helps them achieve their strategic goal.
De brieven van Zipporah Porat, die in Jeruzalem leefde tijdens Israëls onafhankelijkheidsoorlog en de gewonden verpleegde, zijn een broodnodig tegenwicht tegen alle eenzijdige verhalen van Palestijnse vluchtelingen die 'zomaar' uit hun huizen werden gejaagd door die gemene Zionisten. Ratna or call Tel/Fax: 972-3-635-1835.
It was February 1948 when Zipporah Porath arrived at Jerusalem's Ben Yehuda Street, moments after three car bombs had exploded in an attack that killed more than 50 people and fueled already seething tensions in the city. She had just completed a medic's course and was eager to help, but when guards heard her speak English - "the language of the enemy" - they wouldn't let her pass into the scene of the attack. It took some arguing and stubbornness until she was finally allowed in and soon after, Porath took out her lipstick, drew a red Star of David on a doorway and established a makeshift first aid station putting her, as she recalled this week, "in business." That night, Porath wrote to her parents about her transformation into an Israeli. "From then on, I was one of them," she recalled this week. "Instead of saying 'them,' it became 'we.'"
Porath, who lives in Ganei Tikvah, is currently in her 80s, though she won't divulge her age now or when she first arrived at the Haifa port as a young and idealistic Zionist from Brooklyn. A student at the Hebrew University, she was inducted into the Haganah in December 1947, despite pleas from her family to return home before the war. Five other Americans were inducted at the same time, with a Bible in one hand and a rifle in another. She recalls giggling the whole way home out of excitement and nervousness. "It was clear no one would hand us the state on a silver platter, but I didn't know what that would mean," she said. "With the tension mounting, I could either pack up and go home or join in defending Jerusalem. I couldn't just sit on the sidelines."
And so as a medic, she served during the siege of Jerusalem, volunteering with various missions and traveling to the center of the city amid rubble and sniper fire to pick up rationed food. She was also on the first United Nations - accompanied convoy of wounded from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv in June 1948, soothing amputees on the convoy along rocky and rugged terrain, with no morphine and little more than a smile.
During that period, she said her alarm clock - a staple many of the American students brought with them - made her particularly popular among Haganah soldiers who needed to wake up at all hours of the night for their training or patrols. Throughout the siege, she continued to write letters she had no way of sending.
'This is now my home'
The letters were later discovered at her parents' home in 1987 and have since been published in English and Hebrew, under the title Letters from Jerusalem: 1947-1948. In the last letter of the collection, she wrote to her parents: "I can't believe this year. So much has happened, but the most important thing by far is the birth of the State. I've been a part of it and it will forever be a part of me. I guess that means I am telling you that I intend to see this war through and then remain on, whatever happens. This is now my home."
Porath has since told her story hundreds of times. She knows her narrative nearly by heart and doesn't take well to questions that disturb it. And now is an especially busy period for her, when she gives interviews and talks to groups-though she tells her story throughout the year to synagogue missions or Hadassah groups as well. "This was the most important period of my life and the most meaningful as a Zionist," she said. "In the last years, it has become the focus of my life. I see it as a very important mission, especially for young people who were born into a state and know very little about how it came into being."
Hier is een voorbeeld van hoe Hamas vanuit burgergebied opereert:
This is how Abu Rajah, a resident of Beit Hanoun in the Gaza Strip, described how Hamas gunmen take over apartment buildings when Israeli forces approach the area::
"Scores of masked men rushed to the area. Most of them carried large bags full of weapons. They invaded our apartment buildings and demanded that the resident leave. In response the women asked the gunmen to distance themselves from the buildings and children. The atmosphere became tense and some of the residents were beaten by the gunmen, who were mostly from Hamas. In the end most of the residents left the buildings. We left the buildings in their hands. They brought sandbags into our bedrooms and living room. They set up heavy machine guns in the windows and planted large explosive devices in the sidewalks. "
Fatah website as quoted by Maariv correspondent Amit Cohen - 1 May 2008.
Het is een mirakel waarom de media weigeren te zien en te rapporteren wat zelfs de Palestijnen zelf vertellen, en hoe zij Hamas de hand boven het hoofd blijven houden.
Ratna
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Friday, May 2, 2008 The Jerusalem Post
'Beit Hanun family not killed by IDF'
A blast in northern Gaza that killed a Palestinian mother and her four children on Monday was not caused by the Israeli Air Force, a probe into the explosion conducted by the IDF Southern Command concluded on Friday.
Col. Shai Alkilai from the Southern Command conducted the probe over the last few days under orders from OC Maj. Gen. Yoav Galant and IAF Commander Maj. Gen. Elazar Shkedi.
The blast under investigation occurred Monday morning in the northern Gaza town of Beit Hanun, when according to Palestinians, an IDF tank shell hit the home of the Abu Meatak family, as the mother Miyasar was preparing breakfast for her children. She was killed together with the four children.
According to the findings of the probe four terrorists were spotted carrying weaponry and explosives on their backs. The IAF fire was on target and only hit the armed terrorists. As a result there occurred secondary explosions which destroyed the home and killed the mother and her children.
The IDF probe ruled out the possibility that the family was hit by IDF fire. The IDF probe also revealed that the secondary explosion was far greater than the type of explosion caused by the initial IDF bombing and the munitions it had used.
The IDF said that it was unfortunate that innocent people were killed in the incident, but stressed that the blame lay with Hamas which operated from populated areas, using civilians as human shields.
In een eerdere post schreef ik dat vandaag (2 mei) Holocaust Remembrance Day zou zijn. Dat had ik blijkbaar verkeerd overgenomen van een kalender op internet: het was woensdagavond en donderdag.. Voor een verduidelijking van de relatie tussen de Holocaust en het stichten van Israël, zie Ami Isseroff's commentaar: Holocaust, Israel, Zionism The foundation of Israel was born out of the Holocaust. For me, the fact that murderous antisemitism still exists more than justifies the Jewish state
Benjamin Pogrund
May 1, 2008 2:00 PM
The sirens went off throughout Israel at 10am today. They wailed for two long minutes. In cities, towns and villages, people stopped doing whatever they were doing and stood still and silent. Cars and buses stopped, on city streets and on highways.
It was the annual observance of the Day of the Holocaust, Yom Ha'Shoah, to remember the six million Jews murdered by the Nazis.
Last night, television and radio stations were shut down. Restaurants and cafes were closed. The streets were deserted.
One television channel was open. Until the early hours of this morning I watched the rescreening of the brilliant, harrowing BBC documentary Auschwitz: The Nazis and the Final Solution, produced by Laurence Rees.
As anyone who has seen the series knows, it raises more questions than it can answer: how so many people, and from the land of Beethoven, Bach, Mozart, Goethe and Schiller at that, were capable of inflicting such cruelty and death on Jews (and for that matter, on Gypsies and three million Russian prisoners of war who were regarded as subhuman).
I was born and grew up in South Africa. My family escaped the Holocaust. But aunts and uncles and cousins who had remained behind in Lithuania, from where my parents came in the 1920s, perished.
The sirens, and the reminder of what happened during my lifetime, confirmed my awareness of why I live in Israel. I want to contribute towards ensuring that Jews have a haven in this world, so that no Holocaust can ever again befall us. I want a state to stand up for the rights of Jews wherever they might be threatened. I want a state that can tell the antisemites in the world, whether they are nakedly so, crypto- or whatever, to go to hell. It's as rudimentary as that.
I am sorry that the creation of the state of Israel in 1948 created so much loss and suffering for Palestinians. There were no angels on either side, just as there aren't now. Israel came into being through the UN. Jews accepted partition and Arabs didn't. The conflict continues to this day.
I want peace between Jews and Arabs. We cannot unscramble the omelette of 1948, but we can and must work to heal and to end Arab anger and deprivation.
Israel's accomplishments in 60 years are astonishing. It is not a perfect society: it has problems of education and problems related to minority groups and immigrants and corruption which are common to many other countries, and it has unique problems in terms of the conflict with Palestinians, unending armed vigilance and care for Holocaust survivors.
No doubt this expression of my feelings will bring into the open those readers of the Comment is free who rant at every mention of Israel. They cannot abide the existence of a Jewish state, and a proud and successful one at that, and they are not open to rational arguments. Our survival is the best answer.
Voor het geval het staakt-het-vuren er niet van komt, is hieronder het advies van IMRA voor het IDF optreden tegen de terroristen. Wouter _______________ Weekly Commentary: False morality handicaps IDF Planning for Gaza
Dr. Aaron Lerner (IMRA) - Date: May l, 2008
This is how Abu Rajah, a resident of Beit Hanoun in the Gaza Strip, described how Hamas gunmen take over apartment buildings when Israeli forces approach the area::
"Scores of masked men rushed to the area. Most of them carried large bags full of weapons. They invaded our apartment buildings and demanded that the resident leave. In response the women asked the gunmen to distance themselves from the buildings and children. The atmosphere became tense and some of the residents were beaten by the gunmen, who were mostly from Hamas. In the end most of the residents left the buildings. We left the buildings in their hands. They brought sandbags into our bedrooms and living room. They set up heavy machine guns in the windows and planted large explosive devices in the sidewalks. "
Fatah website as quoted by Maariv correspondent Amit Cohen - 1 May 2008.
What is the operative message for Israeli policy makers from this report?
Clearly, from an operational standpoint, the message is that the gunmen in Gaza are transforming civilian locations into dangerous military positions whose elimination and/or neutralization is required in order to insure the safety and efficacy of the IDF forces operating in the area.
The Palestinian civilians certainly have every right to complain and protest that Palestinian gunmen commandeer their properties.
But this is not Israel's problem.
This is an internal Palestinian problem.
Again.
Israel's problem is dealing with the gunmen and the military positions they occupy. That these military positions were previously civilian apartment buildings makes them no less dangerous.
As Israel prepares plans for a massive operation in the Gaza Strip it is imperative that this be understood.
Unfortunately, there are indications that a distorted PC mentality may still have a heavy influence in the IDF.
Yesterday Jerusalem Post correspondent Yaakov Katz reported that Col. Shai Alkilai, who was appointed by OC Southern Command Maj.-Gen.Yoav Galant to investigate the cause of Monday's explosion in northern Gaza that killed a mother and her four children, is looking into whether IDF commanders took into account the possibility that the terrorist duo was carrying large bombs - that could cause damage to nearby homes - when the decision was made to target them from the air.
IDF forces were operating in the area at the time.
The terrorists intended to use those bombs to kill IDF soldiers at the very first opportunity.
Col. Alkilai's line of inquiry sends the wrong message to the commanders in the field and a disturbing message to the combat forces and their families regarding the apparent value placed on the lives of IDF soldiers.
This is no time for vague positions that only serve to embolden and strengthen the terrorists.
Dr. Aaron Lerner, Director IMRA (Independent Media Review & Analysis)
(Mail POB 982 Kfar Sava)
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IMRA - Independent Media Review and Analysis
Website: www.imra.org.il
Officiëel onderhandelt Israël niet met Hamas, maar via Egyptische bemiddeling zou er toch een staakt-het-vuren kunnen komen binnenkort: According to top Israeli defense officials, Defense Minister Ehud Barak is leaning toward accepting the cease-fire offer. Egyptian Intelligence Minister Omar Suleiman is expected to visit Israel in the coming days to present the offer to Israel and to hear its response. He will likely meet with Barak as well as with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.
On Wednesday, a dozen small Palestinian factions, including Islamic Jihad and the Popular Resistance Committees, gave their consent to the cease-fire proposal during a meeting with Egyptian officials in Cairo. Last week, Hamas said it would accept a six-month Gaza-first cease-fire, and dropped an earlier demand that the truce also include the West Bank. Zes maanden? De afgelopen jaren is er geen maand voorbij gegaan zonder Palestijnse raketten op Israël, ondanks zogenaamde 'staakt-het-vuren's. Hamas hielt zich daar zogenaamd een tijdlang aan, maar applaudiseerde wel als de 'Volksverzetscomités' of Islamitische Jihad hun terreur voortzetten. Wouter ________________
Cease-fire will be boost for Schalit release, says official
yaakov katz and herb keinon , THE JERUSALEM POST
Israel's expected acceptance of a Cairo-brokered cease-fire with Hamas in the Gaza Strip will "significantly" expedite the release of kidnapped Cpl. Gilad Schalit, a top official involved in the negotiations told The Jerusalem Post on Wednesday.
According to the official, while Schalit's release was being negotiated on a second, parallel track to the cease-fire talks, Israel's agreement to a truce in Gaza would "open doors" with Hamas and have an impact on the talks concerning a prisoner swap in exchange for the soldier abducted in June 2006.
The Post has also learned that a clause in the Egyptian-brokered cease-fire, which has already been accepted by Hamas, is the reopening of the Rafah crossing between Gaza and Sinai according to the terms of the 2005 agreement reached by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Hamas, according to the deal, would not be allowed to maintain a presence at the crossing.
Based on the 2005 agreement, European monitors would deploy at the crossing and assist Palestinian Authority officers from the Force 17 Presidential Guard - loyal to President Mahmoud Abbas - in running the border terminal.
"The acceptance of the terms of the deal will enable the PA to deploy in Rafah and essentially return to Gaza for the first time since Hamas took over last June," the official said.
According to top Israeli defense officials, Defense Minister Ehud Barak is leaning toward accepting the cease-fire offer. Egyptian Intelligence Minister Omar Suleiman is expected to visit Israel in the coming days to present the offer to Israel and to hear its response. He will likely meet with Barak as well as with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.
On Wednesday, a dozen small Palestinian factions, including Islamic Jihad and the Popular Resistance Committees, gave their consent to the cease-fire proposal during a meeting with Egyptian officials in Cairo. Last week, Hamas said it would accept a six-month Gaza-first cease-fire, and dropped an earlier demand that the truce also include the West Bank.
On Wednesday, diplomatic officials in Jerusalem made it clear that if Egypt and Hamas were waiting for a formal and public Israeli acceptance of the cease-fire agreement, they would be waiting in vain. However, a careful reading of the statement the government put out on the matter shows an Israeli readiness to accept the deal.
"We are not in any way referring specifically to what went on in Cairo," Olmert's spokesman Mark Regev said in a carefully worded statement. "We don't need words, but rather tangible steps."
Regev said the government's goal was "calm in the South, and for calm to be sustainable it has to embody three vital elements: the total absence of hostile fire from Gaza, the end of terrorist attacks and the complete end of arms transfers into Gaza."
This was a marked change in tone for the Prime Minister's Office, which previously had largely dismissed the Egyptian-Hamas talks as little more than an attempt by Hamas to buy time so it could reorganize and re-arm.
Regev said that if the three conditions were met in Gaza tomorrow, there would be calm there tomorrow.
When asked whether the IDF would stop operations in the West Bank if there were quiet in Gaza, Regev said that if there were quiet in Gaza, Israel would stop operations in Gaza, not in the West Bank.
One diplomatic source said that the third condition, ending the arms smuggling into the Gaza Strip, made Egypt a party to the deal and placed a greater responsibility on it to do more to end the smuggling.
Even though Suleiman is expected here next week to inform Israel of the arrangements, and even though the Defense Ministry's Amos Gilad has been a frequent visitor in Cairo over the last few months, the Prime Minister's Office continues to say that Israel is not negotiating with Hamas, either directly or indirectly. This is widely viewed as an attempt by Israel to keep other countries from feeling that if Israel were concluding a deal with Hamas through Egyptian mediation, then they too can begin engaging with Hamas.
Diplomatic officials said it was no coincidence that this agreement was being finalized on the eve of Rice's visit to the region - she is scheduled to arrive on Saturday night - and a little more than a week before US President George W. Bush visit here.
Bush is expected to arrive on May 13, and after taking part in Independence Day ceremonies here and then go on to Saudi Arabia to mark 75 years of US-Saudi ties. From there he is scheduled to go to Egypt. Cairo, according to diplomatic officials in Jerusalem, was certainly eager to broker the cease-fire deal with Hamas before Bush visited, to win US favor.
But while Bush will likely praise Egypt for its role, Public Security Minister Avi Dichter on Wednesday criticized Egypt for its handling of the situation in the Gaza Strip.
"A problematic terror state has risen that is built on the Hizbullah model," Dichter said during a security cabinet meeting. "There is ongoing weapons smuggling of worrying quantity and quality from Egypt, and this terror state is getting legitimacy from Egypt and maybe even more than that."
Since the start of the year, 900 rockets have been fired from Gaza into Israel, the minister told the ministers.
Israel was transferring fuel to the Gaza Strip, Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilna'i reported, but the Palestinians were not picking it up at the Nahal Oz fuel terminal.
Olmert, meanwhile, raised the issue of Egypt's attempt to broker a truce with Hamas but said it wasn't appropriate to expand on the issue since Barak was not present.
Olmert criticized Barak's absence, saying, "It would have been fitting for him to take part in a ministerial discussion about security issues."
Barak missed the meeting because he was at a Golani Brigade training exercise on the Golan. At the end of the drill, Barak told the soldiers: "My gut feeling is to respond immediately and with all our strength to every attack from the Gaza Strip."
"However," he continued, "We must act with the proper judgment and at the correct time."
Ik blijf graag geloven in de kans op vrede tussen Israël en de Palestijnen, maar artikelen als onderstaande maken het me zwaar. Abbas heeft toch zeer frequent ongepaste uitspraken (dat is eufemistisch bedoeld) gedaan, en de opiniepeilingen over steun voor het terrorisme stemmen ook niet gerust. Wouter _______________ The Myth of Palestinian Moderation
By Michael Freund
Even for a president prone to misusing the English language, George W. Bush outdid himself last week.
Sitting next to Mahmoud Abbas at the White House, Bush gushed and swooned over the visiting Palestinian leader, describing him in terms usually reserved for heroes and saints.
"The president is a man of peace," Bush assured the gaggle of reporters who were present. "He's a man of vision. He rejects the idea of using violence to achieve objectives, which distinguishes him from other people in the region."
While Bush's grammar may have been uncommonly accurate that day, his description of Abbas was anything but. For even a cursory glance at some of the Palestinian president's outbursts in recent months reveal a man wholly undeserving of such praise.
On March 1, Abbas had the gall to insult the memory of the six million Jews murdered by the Nazis when he declared that Israel's counter-terror operations in Gaza were "worse than the Holocaust" (Jerusalem Post, March 2).
And in an interview with the Jordanian newspaper Al-Dustur on February 28, Abbas boasted that he had been the first Palestinian to fire a bullet at Israel after the birth of the PLO in 1965.
This ostensible "man of peace" then took pride in the fact that his Fatah movement had trained Hizbullah terrorists, and he did not rule out a return to the "armed struggle" against Israel in the future.
And just two weeks ago, Abbas was planning to confer the Al-Quds Mark of Honor, the PLO's highest award, to two female Palestinian terrorists who took part in the killing of Israelis (Israel Radio, April 16). The event was cancelled only after it was publicized widely in the media.
Need we also mention the Palestinian president's refusal late last year to recognize Israel as a "Jewish state"?
THIS OF course puts the lie to Bush's stubborn embrace of Abbas as a reasonable and judicious leader that can be counted on to forge a peace deal. If anything, the Palestinian president has repeatedly shown himself to be an intemperate hot-head.
Nonetheless, that doesn't seem to stop Washington and much of the media from bestowing upon him the coveted title of a "moderate" leader that Israel can do business with.
"Abbas's moderate and Western-backed government rules the West Bank," the Associated Press (April 25) helpfully explained in a recent report. According to Reuters (April 24), Abbas is "a pro-Western moderate," while Agence France-Presse referred to him on Monday as "moderate Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas," as though the appellation "moderate" was an integral part of his title.
All of this shameful fawning on the Palestinian thug-in-chief raises a simple, yet rarely-asked, question: why is there such a widespread insistence on deluding the public into thinking that Abbas is a "moderate" leader who epitomizes the majority of Palestinians?
The issue is more than academic. In fact, it goes directly to the core of current US and Israeli government policy.
After all, the entire intellectual basis for the notion of granting the Palestinians a state rests on the dubious assumption that a majority of them are actually reasonable, peace-loving people.
Too bad that all the available evidence appears to indicate otherwise.
Last week, for example, the Palestinian-run Jerusalem Media and Communications Center published the results of a survey revealing that a majority of Palestinians (50.7%) support suicide-bombing attacks against Israeli civilians.
This was in line with previous polls, which have consistently shown overwhelming Palestinian backing for anti-Israel terror.
Indeed, just last month, the Ramallah-based Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research found that an astonishing 84% of Palestinians supported the gruesome execution-style murder of 8 Israeli teens by a Palestinian terrorist at the Mercaz HaRav Yeshiva in Jerusalem.
And by a margin of 64% to 33%, or nearly two to one, Palestinians were in favor of continued rocket attacks against Israeli towns and cities.
THESE COLD, hard facts present supporters of the peace process with a major problem, if only because they confirm that the very idea of Palestinian moderation is a myth. It is a figment of the imagination, a flight of fantasy that bears little resemblance to reality.
After all, it is not as if a tiny minority of Palestinians support the murder of Jews. The bulk of them do. And wishing it were otherwise simply doesn't make it so.
So let's stop fooling ourselves. Giving the Palestinians a state when a majority of them want us dead is both reckless and irresponsible.
It is a recipe for disaster, and will only serve to create yet another radical, terror-sponsoring state in the region.
And let's cease calling Mahmoud Abbas a "moderate." Anyone who refuses to recognize Israel as a "Jewish state," makes a mockery of the Holocaust, and threatens a return to violence, is certainly not deserving of such a characterization.
Instead, let's call Abbas what he really is. For if he looks like an extremist, sounds like an extremist, and acts like an extremist, chances are that he is one.
And more importantly, let's start treating him as such.
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