(no nuance to HillaryClinton's views) she made it clear in her recent book

IN THE MIDDLE EAST CHAPTER OF HER BOOK MS CLINTON MAKES STATEMENTS THAT AT BEST COULD BE CONSIDERED INSENSITIVE TO ISRAEL, OR AT WORST THAT ARE CLEARLY ANTI-ISRAEL

Israel Revolt

Supporters of the Jewish State of Israel may be concerned about a section of Hillary Clinton's new book "Hard Choices." In the Middle East chapter of her book Clinton makes statements that at best could be considered insensitive to Israel, or at worst, clearly anti-Israel. That chapter features the former Secretary of State calling the disputed territories of Judea and Samaria "occupied territories," ignoring the negotiations which occurred during her husband's administration, drawing a false moral equivalence terrorism and Israel's defense of terror, echoing John Kerry's gaffe describing Israel as a potential apartheid state, and ignoring any Israeli claim to East Jerusalem.

On page 302, Clinton writes:

When we left the city and visited Jericho, in the West Bank, I got my first glimpse of life under occupation for Palestinians, who were denied the dignity and self-determination that Americans take for granted

Clinton fails to recognize a truism of peace negotiations, "It takes two to tango." During her husband’s presidency, Israel offered Yasser Arafat a deal that would have given him about 98% of what he wanted. Bill Clinton said after Arafat broke off talks, "I regret that in 2000 Arafat missed the opportunity to bring that nation into being and pray for the day when the dreams of the Palestinian people for a state and a better life will be realized in a just and lasting peace." PA President Abbas turned down a similar deal offered by Ehud Olmert during the Bush presidency.
It is important to note that when Chris Christie called Judea and Samaria “occupied,” supporters of Israel forced him to apologize.  But when Hillary Clinton writes it in a book, her liberal supporters are at a loss for words.
Clinton says on page 308:

There has been nearly a decade of terror, arising from the second intifada, which started in September 2000. About a thousand Israelis were killed and eight thousand wounded in terrorist attacks from September 2000 to February 2005. Three times as many Palestinians were killed and thousands more were injured in the same period.

Like many whose political leanings are anti-Israel, Hillary Clinton draws a false equivalency between the terrorist attacks on Israel and Israel's attempts at self-defense. The second intifada was a bloody and violent period of Palestinian terrorism against Israeli civilians: busloads of children blown up on the way to school, pizza places bombed, even families peacefully celebrating the Passover Seder in a hotel massacred. There is no moral equivalency between an act of terror and a nation's attempts at self-defense.

By writing that more Palestinians were hurt than Israelis, Clinton is alluding to the anti-Israel meme of the IDF's unequal response to Palestinian terror. If one were to follow Clinton's logic, the US should be chastised because Americans in the War on Terror killed more Al Qaeda terrorists than the number of Americans killed during the 9/11/01 attacks.
On page 312, the former Secretary of State writes:

Because of higher birth rates among Palestinians and lower birth rates among Israelis, we were approaching the day when Palestinians would make up a majority of the combined population of Israel and the Palestinian territories, and most of those Palestinians would be relegated to second-class citizenship and unable to vote.

In addition to being factually inaccurate, her comment is essentially a rewording of what current Secretary of State John Kerry said two months ago, that Israel was on the road to becoming an apartheid state. Israel's deputy defense minister Danny Danon gave the best answer to Kerry's remark, a response which is apropos to the Clinton passage as well:

To suggest that the Jewish people would ever establish an apartheid regime was particularly hurtful. Equally hurtful was the implied double standard. Although the administration has from time to time chided the Palestinians for “unhelpful” steps, those comments have not come close to the pointed criticism that has been leveled at our government. This policy of sharing the blame for the collapse of the peace talks, which from the outset was deemed by most independent experts as a long-shot attempt at best, has created the illusion of parity between the two sides. The secretary’s comments make it seem that Israel’s decisions to issue housing tenders, or to exhaustively debate whether to release convicted murders who would have very likely received the death penalty in U.S. courts, were just as damaging to the peace process as the “unity” pact that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has now signed with Hamas, a virulently anti-Semitic terrorist organization.
 All citizens of Israel, including the more than 20 percent of the population who are non-Jews, enjoy the same democratic freedoms as well as full human and civil rights. Minorities in Israel participate in our vigorous democracy, are elected to parliament, have served as ministers and preside at all levels of our judicial system, including the Supreme Court. Even the Palestinians of Judea and Samira enjoy full autonomy via the Palestinian Authority. This stands in stark contrast to the rest of the Middle East, where Christian minorities are persecuted and women and homosexuals routinely oppressed. This includes, of course, Hamas-controlled Gaza.

The final entry in Hillary's anti-Israel screed appears on page 317, where Clinton writes:

The sticking point would be Jerusalem. East Jerusalem had been captured along with the West Bank in 1967, and Palestinians dreamed of one day establishing the capital of their future state there.

Clinton ignores the possibility of any validity to Israel’s claim to Jerusalem. Israel didn't capture Jerusalem; Jordan did in 1948. Jews were the majority of Jerusalem's population from the first records in 1844 through the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948 when Jordan kicked out all the Jews.  In fact, Muslims were the third largest religion in the city until roughly 1890.
The Palestinians didn’t want East Jerusalem as their capital until after 1967. Their reason for desiring it is based on the fact that they refuse to recognize any Jewish claim of a historical heritage to Jerusalem or any other part of the Holy land. This despite the fact that there is even a Koranic passage (Koran, Sura 2:145, "The Cow") indicating that Jerusalem is not quite so holy to Muslims, and is passed on to the Jews. The 13th-century Arab biographer and geographer Yakut noted: "Mecca is holy to Muslims, and Jerusalem to the Jews."

In all probability, Hillary Clinton is running for President. She will campaign on the basis that she is a friend of Israel, just as Barack Obama did in 2008. As TruthRevolt reportedlast week, as Secretary of State; Hillary Clinton was the architect of the policy for the most anti-Israel president since the rebirth of Israel in 1948. It was a policy that reflected views Hillary Clinton has held her entire life, with the exception of the nine-year period where she ran for and held the office of U.S. Senator from New York State and relied on Jewish voters. Her lifetime of views about Israel is repeated in her book "Hard Choices." 

(Man In Glass House Dress In Basement)

You don't recognize us, We don't recognize you

(So sorry we can not cooperate with your attempt to create the demise of Jews by building Muslim homes in a predominently Jewish area, but you said you didn't recognize Jews living here... so just keep on pretending the people living in Judea don't exist)

(Carl) Europe is whining The Israeli official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon had decided to suspend contacts with the EU in the West Bank.Ya'alon has "frozen projects, canceled meetings, curtailed coordination and permits for Europe's operations" for Palestinians living in what is known as Area C, a West Bank area fully administered by Israel, he said.In Brussels, Maja Kocijancic, spokeswoman for EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, said: "The EU is concerned by reports in the Israeli media that the Israeli Minister of Defense has announced a number of restrictions affecting EU activities supporting the Palestinian people.""We have not received any official communication from the Israeli authorities. Our delegations on the spot are seeking urgent clarifications," Kocijancic added. A Western diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that due to the Israeli measures, several European humanitarian aid staff had failed to receive permits to enter the Palestinian-ruled Gaza Strip.

No Jews allowed in Judea says NY Jews, Muslims and Christians only

Excerpt from... Arutz 7 Op-Ed: NY Federation has Its Own Boycott of Judea and Samaria Ron Jager, July 23, 2013 ...The New York Federation does not cross the 'green line' (known as the pre-1967 borders) unless of course it's to assist Palestinian Arabs, meaning that Jews who could benefit from the many programs that are funded and provided by the New York Federation for the citizens of Israel are effectively barred if they reside in Judea and Samaria. Jews living beyond the green line have been voluntarily boycotted by the New York Federation despite the fact that there is no legal prohibition to support organizations or communities located in these areas, not only according to Israeli law, but also in accordance with American tax law. Any American dollar donated is fully tax deductible to the extent provided by law. This has not stopped the New York Federation from voluntarily boycotting 700,000 Jews along with the Europeans and the many enemies of Israel who have been behind the boycott movements throughout the world. (MORE)

Shit

(stinky)

Even the Feminists on Israel's side don't get it

YNET: MK: Must give Israeli citizenship to Palestinians June 20, 2013 Deputy Transport Minister Knesset Member Tzipi Hotovely (Likud) participated in an event marking 20 years for the Oslo Accords and said: "The Oslo paradigm has crashed. It is time to abandon the two-state solution in favor of an annexation resolution, meaning applying Israeli sovereignty in Judea and Samaria and giving an Israeli citizenship to all Palestinians." Hotovely added that in order to "keep a demographic advantage", a national goal of bringing a million Jews to Israel in the next decade should be set. (Moran Azulay)

...as if Israel did not already have this goal?   (yeah... that is a Likud rep sounding like a bleeding heart because she doesn't know who is trying to kill her. Can you identify the female sensitivity that is killing you yet? The Feminists will rot common sense from within)

Dead Sea Scrolls written by settlers

Obama White House acknowledges 'West Bank' part of Israel:

(Carl)The Obama White House, in announcing President Obama's visit to the Dead Sea Scrolls while in Israel, has acknowledged that the 'West Bank' (Judea and Samaria) is part of Israel, and that the Jewish people have an historical connection to it.

In describing President Obama’s itinerary during his trip to Israel and Jordan next week, Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes conceded that the Jewish connection to the West Bank is as strong as it is to Israel, and indeed, spoke of the two interchangeably:

Thursday, the President will begin by going to the Israel Museum. At the Israel Museum, he will view the Dead Sea Scrolls, which are a testament, of course, to the ancient Jewish connection to Israel and, frankly, a marvel that the Israelis have restored within the Israel Museum in a very substantial, impressive way. So the President very much looks forward to the opportunity to see the Dead Sea Scrolls.

The Dead Sea Scrolls were first discovered in the Qumran caves in 1947, when it was part of the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine. Thus the White House seems to recognize that Israel’s history and borders are rooted in the Mandate – what happened in the “West Bank” in 1947 is somehow “connected” to Israel.

Moreover, most the the scrolls were recovered in the the 1950s, after this portion of the Mandate was illegally invaded and occupied by the Jordan. To put it simply, the Dead Sea Scrolls are from the West Bank, otherwise known as “Occupied Palestinian Territory.” The Dead Sea Scrolls, one might say, are written by settlers.

Read the whole thing.It's likely that this was an unintentional slip of the tongue and is likely to be walked back by the White House when and if they become aware of it. But it would be nice if it got enough publicity to force them to have to do that before Obama even gets here.

Will Obama make Israel "an offer it can't refuse?"

Israel, Jews, and Judaism: Will Obama make Israel “an offer it can’t refuse?

There is a report making the rounds that unnamed “Israeli sources” claim that Barack Obama will shortly “demand a timetable for Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank,” presumably in return for the US dealing with Iran. A 2014 deadline to establish a Palestinian state is mentioned.

Things like this surface all the time, and mostly they are simply nonsense. It is irresponsible for a journalist, or even a blogger, to publish what is essentially a rumor based on a single report which does not even include a source.

And yet…

There are certainly people in the White House who would think this is a good idea. Everyone knows, they would say, that only details prevent a two-state solution, and the main obstacle to moving forward is right-wing influence on the Israeli PM. Here’s an opportunity, they are saying, let’s take it.

The simple reason that there can be no two-state solution is that it entails the acceptance by the Palestinians of the continued existence of the Jewish state west of the Green Line, and that contradicts the essence of the Palestinian national project. Indeed, one could — I would — go so far as to say that Arabs who would accept a peaceful state alongside Israel as a permanent goal could not properly be called ‘Palestinians’, since the very definition of a ‘Palestinian people’ negates Zionism (but perhaps I digress).

Dennis Ross, who knows as much about ‘peace processing’ as anyone, recently put forward a 14-point plan to bring about a two-state solution. It illustrates two things: one, that Ross possesses a paradoxical combination of intelligence, experience and the inability to see his nose in front of his face; and two, that the concessions it would require from the Palestinians are, as I said above, unthinkable.

Regardless, while a ‘solution’ — that is, an agreement that ends the conflict — is impossible, a coerced Israeli withdrawal in the context of an agreement that pretends to end the conflict is. And that is the danger.

Whether those who would like to force a withdrawal cynically understand that it would be disastrous for Israel’s security and don’t care (or welcome such a disaster), or whether they actually believe it would be a step toward peace is not important. What is important is that they might be able to sell the idea to a public — particularly liberal Jews — that to a great extent continues to believe in the two-state idea. And if they don’t object strongly enough, how could it be stopped?

The confirmation of Chuck Hagel, and particularly the collapse of Sen. Charles Schumer should be instructive. When push comes to shove, today’s liberals — even “strong supporters of Israel” like Schumer are Obama supporters first.

There is another aspect of the situation. That is that the combination of a blow against Iran with a blow against Israel would be a win-win for Sunni Muslim interests in the Middle East: the Saudis, the Muslim Brotherhood and Turkey would all like to see Iran defanged and Israel weakened vis-a-vis the Palestinians. Interestingly, Islamist Turkey, the Brotherhood and the Saudis seem to be the people that President Obama finds the most congenial in the region.

Everything seems to be lining up to their advantage. Israel withdraws, the US bombs Iran, Hizballah responds by attacking Israel. Sunni forces, in particular those supported by Turkey, take advantage of the chaos (and the preoccupation of Hizballah) to finish off Assad and take control of Syria. Although the US will support the Palestinian Authority for a time, Hamas — don’t forget, it is the Palestinian branch of the Brotherhood — will soon get control of Judea and Samaria one way or another.

There are other unpleasant possibilities — US-led UN or NATO troops in Judea/Samaria to ‘protect’ the peace agreement, which will end up protecting Palestinian terrorists against Israel, even the possibility of the IDF and Americans shooting at each other. Sound impossible? Chuck Hagel thought it was a good idea, as did Samantha Power, Obama’s “Senior Director of Multilateral Affairs on the staff of the National Security Council.

So, yes, the rumor about a planned offer that Israel can’t refuse is only a rumor. But it could be a true rumor. We’ll find out very shortly.

http://fresnozionism.org/2013/03/will-obama-make-israel-an-offer-it-cant-refuse/

(Video) Caroline Glick - The presence of Jews on the West Bank

Video of Intelligence Squared debate in London

Caroline Glick..
carolineglick.com..
29 January '13..

Since I came home from London, subsequent events have borne out my dim assessment of England, and done so at break-neck pace. As one of Britain's great righteous gentiles Douglas Murray wrote in an essay published yesterday by the Gatestone Institute, England is no longer even trying to hide its anti-Semitism. At this point, to live well in the kingdom, Jews are required to accept or at least express minimal objection to the dominant narrative that Israel is the current Nazi Germany.

Back in 2005, I felt it was a mistake for Israel to push for the UN to establish an international Holocaust remembrance day. What did we need it for?

The UN emerged at the 2001 Durban conference as the epicenter of global anti-Semitism. Why should we give it an out for its hostility towards live Jews by letting it pretend it isn't a anti-Semitic institution because it mourns dead Jews?

At any rate, it took no time at all for the UN and its member states to use the new International Holocaust Remembrance Day as a means of defaming Israel and so gunning for a new Holocaust of Jewry.

In England in the space of a week, a British parliament member from the Liberal-Democrat Pary named David Ward said that Israel is perpetrating a Holocaust on the Palestinians Arabs, and the Sunday Times published the above anti-Semitic, Nazi-styled cartoon. The cartoon came out on the ill-conceived International Holocaust Memorial Day.

So I am sad to say, I am right.

Britain is no place for Jews.

Anyway, here are my opening remarks at the debate.

And here's the link to the entire debate.

Link: http://www.carolineglick.com/e/2013/01/video-of-intelligence-squared.php

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via calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com

Bennett Reminds Peres: Oslo Killed 1,600 Israelis

Naftali Bennett, who heads the Bayit Yehudi (merged Jewish Home-National Union) slate of Knesset candidates, reminded President Shimon Peres Monday that the Oslo Accords “brought us more than 1,600 murdered Israelis.”

(Medics remove bodies of 'Oslo War' victims)

Responding to the President’s controversial remarks on political issues in the middle of the election campaign, Bennett stated, “Enough, already. The President of the country is supposed to represent all of the country, not just a part of it.”
Peres said on Sunday that PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas wants peace and is the only man with whom Israel can sign an agreement.
“Mr. President, it is clear that your intentions were good, but that does not make any difference. The time has come for some soul searching. Perhaps giving land to our enemies does not work?
“Perhaps you are mistaken? It is reasonable to have a Palestinian Authority country that will rain thousands of missiles on Tel Aviv?”
Bennett recalled that the Arab public in Judea, Samaria and Gaza went to the polls eight years ago and “elected a legislature with a decisive majority for Hamas – 57 percent of the legislature. Hamas – which calls for the destruction of Israel. With them, you want to make peace?”
Abbas’ Fatah party is in the midst of reconciliation with the rival Hamas terrorist organization, and Hamas has allowed Fatah to hold on Friday its first public rally in Gaza in six years, to mark the founding of the terrorist party founded by Yasser Arafat.
Bennett said Peres should stop saying that “there is no alternative” other than to accept to Abbas’ demands for a Palestinian Authority state.
"There is an alternative – sovereignty over Area 'C' with citizenship for Arabs,” Bennett said, referring to the areas of Judea and Samaria that include all of the Jewish population in Judea and Samaria of approximately 300,000 and only 4% of PA Arabs..
Bennett reminded Peres, “The bottom line is that public elected the government of Israel, and you have no right to advance policies that are surrounded by deep differences of opinion."

via israelnationalnews.com

88 percent of Palestinians believe armed struggle is the best way to achieve independence

(timesofisrael.com)For first time since 2006, more West Bank Palestinians favor Hamas’s political strategy over Fatah’s, poll finds
For the first time since 2006, more West Bank Palestinians support the political approach of Hamas as opposed to that of Fatah and its leader, Mahmoud Abbas, a new poll shows. And an overwhelming majority of Palestinians believe the results of the latest Hamas-Israel escalation that included Operation Pillar of Defense — Israel’s eight-day operation against terror targets in Gaza last month — prove that the armed struggle represents the best path to Palestinian independence.
The poll, conducted earlier this month by the Arab World Research and Development (AWRAD), a Ramallah-based research center, sampled 1,200 Palestinians from both Gaza and the West Bank. It set out to examine political opinions among Palestinians following Operation Pillar of Defense in Gaza and Mahmoud Abbas’s successful UN nonmember statehood bid.
While both events are overwhelmingly viewed as positive by Palestinians, adding popularity to both Palestinian factions, 42% of West Bank respondents said they preferred the approach of Hamas to that of Fatah, as opposed to only 28% who preferred Fatah’s approach.
Interestingly, more Gazans, 40%, said they preferred Fatah’s approach to that of Hamas, which rules over them. Thirty-seven percent of Gazans said Hamas’s approach was better.
While Abbas tends to favor a two-state solution reached by negotiations, Hamas — recognized internationally as a terrorist group — refuses to recognize Israel and vows eternal Jihad against the Jewish “infidels” who reside here.
An overwhelming 88% of the entire sample believed that the result of Operation Pillar of Defense proved that armed struggle is the best means of achieving Palestinian independence.
Another trend revealed by the poll is a sharp decline in support for negotiations with Israel among West Bank residents.
In May 2011, 59% of West Bank residents supported an immediate return to negotiations with Israel. That number dropped to 52% in May 2012, but declined sharply to 43% in the most recent poll. Meanwhile, support for negotiations remained largely stable in the Gaza Strip at around 50%.
Hillel Frisch, an expert on Palestinian politics at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Bar Ilan University, said he was not surprised with the results of the poll, given Hamas’s perceived victory in Operation Pillar of Defense and Israel’s recent decision to withhold tax money collected on behalf of the PA.
“Palestinians are becoming more frustrated and losing hope in negotiations,” Frisch told The Times of Israel. “They may turn to Hamas not because it’s Hamas, but because it’s the movement that opposes negotiations with Israel.”
For the first time since 2006, the Palestinian Authority allowed pro-Hamas demonstrations to take place last week across the West Bank in celebration of the movement’s 25th anniversary.

Into the Fray: Ill-considered, inappropriate and inadequate

By MARTIN SHERMAN

12/13/2012 21:40

In response to the Palestinians UN initiative for non-member statehood, Israel must impose permanent penalties, not make provocative proclamations.

You never let a serious crisis go to waste.... What I mean by that it’s an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before. – Rahm Emanuel
The Palestinian leadership, abetted by many Western governments, has now torn up every agreement made with Israel... By essentially unilaterally declaring the existence of an Arab Palestine, the world has abrogated that [Oslo] agreement. – Prof. Barry Rubin
The Palestinian Authority is a fictional entity. It continues to exist only because of the IDF.... We should let it fall apart.... – Prof. Efraim Inbar
The recent decision to announce approval for construction of thousands of housing units in the E1 area east of Jerusalem in response to the Palestinian unilateral bid for statehood at the UN reflected yet another grave error of judgment by the Israeli authorities.
Relegating rights to retaliation
Of course, this is not to say that Israel should refrain from building on the 11.7-sq.km. area atop the barren hills, adjacent to the eastern fringes of the capital, joining it to the town of Ma’aleh Adumim, with its 40,000 strong Jewish population.
Of course it should not. The development of Jerusalem’s east flank should be considered no more than the natural urban growth of the city — an indisputable Zionist imperative, expressed and endorsed by virtually every government over the past four decades.
Indeed, it was none other than Israel’s current president Shimon Peres, who as minister of defense in Yitzhak Rabin’s government in 1977, urged Israel to “create a continuous stretch of new settlements; to bolster Jerusalem and the surrounding hills, from the north, from the east, and from the south and from the west, by means of the establishment of townships, suburbs and villages – Ma’aleh Adumin, Ofra, Gilo, Beit El, Givon...to ensure that the capital and its flanks are secured, and underpinned by urban and rural settlements.”
Significantly, most the locations cited by Peres in the above except are considerably farther from Jerusalem than the much maligned E1 site, which is less than 6.5 km. from the city center and the historic King David Hotel, itself some 1.5 km. from the Knesset.
But lamentably, by deciding to approve construction plans hard on the heels of UN General Assembly Resolution A/67/L.28 granting the Palestinians non-member state status, the government gave the unfortunate impression that its action was more one of retaliation, rather than an exercise of a self-evident, nonnegotiable right.
The timing and context of the E1 approval conveyed the unequivocal impression that had the Palestinians refrained from the UN bid, Israel would have refrained from authorizing the construction.
It thus reduced what should have been considered an unconditional right to a conditioned tit-for-tat response. Rather than being seen as a substantively valid initiative, an indispensable Zionist initiative was perceived as being relegated to a spiteful reaction.
An unavoidable imperative
Paradoxically – or is that perversely? – even figures on the far Left have articulated the rationale for the development of E1. For example, in a recent posting on the radical — indeed as designated by some, anti- Zionist – website +972Magazine, perennial Palestinian apologist Larry Derfner made a presumably unintentional, but compelling, case for construction in the disputed area.
In a piece titled “Israeli consensus much prefers Ma'aleh Adumim to peace,” he writes: “Ma’aleh Adumim, 4.5 kilometers east of Jerusalem, built in 1975, is...deep in the heart of the national consensus. Ma’aleh Adumim is thought of, correctly, as a suburb of Jerusalem; the people aren’t popularly regarded as settlers but as average middle-class Israelis; in past elections, a decent percentage of them voted Labor, and a few even voted Meretz.”
In what one can only assume is an attempt at disparaging sarcasm, he continues, peppering his prose with profanities, presumably permissible in progressive postings:
“It’s not one of those ‘tiny, isolated settlements,’ it’s a ‘settlement bloc,’ it’s one of the ‘Jerusalem-area’ settlements, it ‘protects Jerusalem’ by being on the high ground nearby, it gives Israel ‘defensible borders’ – it’s a Jerusalem security defensible borders settlement bloc with 40,000 people, for fuck’s sake, do you want to give that up, are you crazy?”
Then, apparently endeavoring to show that Ma’aleh Adumin and peace are incompatible, Derfner drives the following point home powerfully: “And here’s the thing – to keep Ma’aleh Adumim, Israel has to build E1, those thousands of homes connecting it to Jerusalem, because otherwise the only thing connecting it to the capital will be a thin highway with nothing but Palestine on either side. Indefensible. Not viable. Ma’aleh Adumim would be isolated. So if you want to keep it – and who doesn’t, except the left-wing fringe? – you have to build E1.”
Couldn’t have put it better myself, Larry.
Inescapable conclusions
Whatever his motivations, Derfner’s analysis is spot on and underscores dramatically why it was a serious misjudgment to allow the development of E1 to be seen as a response precipitated by the Palestinian UN initiative. For unless Ma’aleh Adumim is to be abandoned — something which no Israeli government over the last 40 years has ever contemplated – it can only be secured by “welding” it to Jerusalem — which in turn requires undertaking the construction planned in E1.
It therefore makes little sense to predicate such a national necessity on what the Palestinians may or may not do. After all, even if the Palestinians were to take the inconceivable step of rescinding their UN accomplishment, it would not diminish the need to build in the contentious area.
This brings up several interesting questions on the issue of territorial contiguity, which opponents of the E1 project have raised vociferously, wailing that it would cut Bethlehem off from Ramallah, thus dooming any possibility of a two-state solution (TSS).
These claims are demonstrably bogus, as even a cursory glance at the map would reveal.
One can only wonder whether TSS advocates realize how such claims undermine the basic rationale of their case. For if the viability of a Palestinian state can be irreparably jeopardized by a construction project on 11.7 uninhabited sq.km., if the whole notion of Palestinian independence stands or falls on whether such a project is implemented or not, surely then the entire TSS-concept is so ludicrously fragile that it is operationally untenable.
The question of contiguity
But of course the question of territorial contiguity is entirely contrived.
Even without going into the discussion of the options of connecting these two towns, barely 15 km. miles apart, by elaborate systems of tunnels/ over-passes that traverse E1, laying down a new road bypassing Ma’aleh Adumim from the west, rather than from the east, would hardly be an insurmountable engineering feat. True, this might make Palestinians’ journey somewhat longer, but it would still probably be shorter than the drive from downtown Los Angeles to Malibu along Sunset Boulevard.
By contrast, however, if the E1 project is not implemented, Ma’aleh Adumim and its tens of thousands of Jewish residents would have a real problem of contiguity. As Derfer points out — or perhaps, hopes — it would be an isolated enclave “with nothing but Palestine on either side. Indefensible. Not viable...”
It is more than a little bewildering to hear howls of hysteria from TSS-proponents, protesting that the possible need for a detour in the route between Bethlehem and Ramallah would critically undermine the viability of a Palestinian state, yet who see no problem in including the far-more detached, and far-more distant Gaza Strip in their envisioned entity.
One can only shake one’s head in puzzlement as to why they would raise such a bogus brouhaha over an essentially nonexistent contiguity problem, yet accept with total equanimity the virtually insoluble difficulty of the geographical disconnect between the “West Bank” and Gaza, where almost 40 percent of the population of the putative Palestine state reside.
Go figure.
Ill-considered, inappropriate, inadequate
The preceding paragraphs underscore why the government’s E1 decision, while substantively valid, was, in the context that it was taken, strategically inappropriate, politically ill-considered and operationally inadequate.
It inflicted no real retribution on the Palestinians in practical terms, yet it precipitated a maelstrom of diplomatic censure and again raised evermore tangibly the threat of economic sanctions, which may, as in the past, result in the declared Israeli measures being suspended or even totally abandoned, and in effect reward rather than punish the Palestinians.
I am not suggesting that Israel balk at the unwarranted display of international ire, but that if it is going to incur the wrath of the world, it might as well be for measures that have real and lasting — indeed permanent — strategic effects.
What would such measures entail?
The required recipe is implicit in the three introductory excerpts, which lay out:
1. The principle enunciated by Rahm Emanuel (Utilizing a crisis to facilitate actions which otherwise would not be undertaken);
2. The opportunity identified by Barry Rubin (The effective abrogation of the Oslo Accords by the world); and
3. The measures prescribed by Efraim Inbar (Let the Palestinian Authority fall apart).
Punitive penalties not provocative proclamations
The policy that flows from this prescription, and constitutes the fitting Israeli response to the Palestinians’ internationally endorsed “diplomatic aggression” at the UN, should comprise penalties that are permanently punitive – not mere proclamations that are little more than politically provocative.
As I hinted at last week, the first measure is to make it clear to the Palestinians — and to their international supporters — that if it is independence they demand, then independent they will have to be.
Accordingly, Israel must convey in unequivocal terms that forthwith it will cease to provide every service and merchandise that it provides them today. In other words, no water, no electricity, no fuel, no postal services, no communications, no port facilities, no tax collection or remittances will be supplied by Israel.
If sovereignty is their goal, then sovereign they will have to be.
After all, what possible claim could be invoked to coerce one sovereign entity to provide for another purportedly sovereign entity – and an overtly adversarial one at that? When Israel declared its independence in 1948, no Arab country rushed to help it develop and evolve.
Quite the opposite. The Arab world imposed embargoes and boycotts on it — and on anyone with the temerity to conduct commerce with it.
Mitigating the humanitarian impact
This message need not be delivered in a provocative, confrontational public statement but through confidential diplomatic channels to all concerned parties.
Although discretely conveyed, there should be no doubt as to Israel’s resolve to implement its stated intent — or as to the repercussions thereof: The Palestinians will have to find alternative sources for their utility requirements and day-to-day needs.
Without Israeli support — both military and monetary — it is an open question as to whether the Palestinian Authority will implode within a matter of weeks or months.
The mendacious mantle of Palestinian nationhood must once and for all be ripped asunder. It must be underscored that the burden of maintaining this fictional fabrication will fall to those nations that endorsed it – should they care to shoulder such an onerous and expensive responsibility.
It may be surprising how rapidly international appetite for Palestinian statehood wanes if its sponsors realize that they will have to bear the financial consequences of its sustenance.
Such measures are undoubtedly likely to precipitate great socioeconomic hardships for the Palestinians, which Israel should endeavor to mitigate.
It should do so — as I have prescribed in detail in numerous columns – by offering Palestinians wishing to extricate themselves from the unenviable predicament wrought upon them by their incompetent, corrupt leadership – and by their myopic and malevolent supporters abroad — generous relocation grants that will enable them to seek happier lives in some alternative country of their choice.
Far-fetched or feasible?
Of course, there will be those who are skeptical as to the feasibility of such prescriptions. And indeed, numerous operational aspects of its implementation —which regrettably cannot be detailed in a single column — need to be fleshed out.
But the skeptical and the fainthearted should remember that with sufficient resources, Israel managed to develop and deploy unprecedented defense systems such as the Iron Dome to withstand physical attacks.
There is no reason to believe that, with a commensurate investment of ingenuity and resources, an “Iron Dome” to withstand political attacks could not be devised and deployed.
After all, in the grim days of the 1950s when the country was hanging on by a thread, engulfed by waves of immigration, with its fledgling economy teetering on collapse and surrounded by a sea of Arab aggression, who would have believed that Zionism would outlast Communism; that the nascent nano-state Israel would outlive the mega-Soviet empire; that a struggling agrarian economy would within a few decades become one of the world’s leaders in industry and technology.
As once someone said: If you will it, it is no dream.
Martin Sherman (www.martinsherman.net) is the founder and executive director of the Israel Institute for Strategic Studies.

via jpost.com

contiguous for you. contiguous for me. contiguous money to get the fuck out of our way and no we won't fund our own destruction because of Oslo anymore

The Deadly Israeli House

There are few weapons as deadly as the Israeli house. When its bricks and mortar are combined together, the house, whether it is one of those modest one story hilltop affairs or a five floor apartment building complete with hot and cold running water, becomes far more dangerous than anything green and glowing that comes out of the Iranian centrifuges.

Forget the cluster bomb and the mine, the poison gas shell and even tailored viruses. Iran can keep its nuclear bombs. They don't impress anyone in Europe or in Washington DC. Genocide is equally not worthy of attention when in the presence of the fearsome weapon of terror that is an Israeli family of four moving into a new apartment downwind from Jerusalem.
Sudan may have built a small mountain of African corpses, but it can't expect to command the full and undivided attention of the world until it does something truly outrageous like building a house and filling it with Jews. Since the Sudanese Jews are as gone as the Jews of Egypt, Iraq, Syria and good old Afghanistan, the chances of Bashir the Butcher pulling off that trick are rather slim.
Due to the Muslim world's shortsightedness in driving out its Jews from Cairo, Aleppo and Baghdad  to Jerusalem, the ultimate weapon in international affairs is entirely controlled by the Jewish State. The Jewish State's stockpile of Jews should worry the international community far more than its hypothetical stockpiles of nuclear weapons. No one besides Israel, and possibly Saudi Arabia, cares much about the Iranian bomb. But when Israel builds a house, then the international community tears its clothes, wails, threatens to recall its ambassadors and boycott Israeli peaches.
You can spit on the White House carpets and steal all the gold in Greece. You can blow up anything you like and threaten anyone you will, but you had better not lift a drill near Gilgal, where Joshua and a few million escaped Hebrew slaves pitched their camp.
Some may think that genocide or nuclear weapons are the ultimate weapons, but as we see, time and time again, the ultimate weapon is a hammer and a fistful of nails in a Jewish hand. How can even the most talented Iranian nuclear scientist hope to compete with the humble tools of a Jewish carpenter?
Obama has yet to respond to the Muslim Brotherhood coup in Egypt. The gangs of paid rapists assaulting women in Tahrir Square on behalf of the Sharia state are nothing for the White House to worry about. Tunisian protesters against Islamist rule are losing their eyes, but Tunisian eyes come and go, Jewish houses are forever.
Everyone has their standards and he and the international community have theirs. There are things that we all cannot abide. And for all the Miss America answers about ending war, hunger and people who wear plaid in public, the one thing that everyone will stand up against or sit down in opposition to is the Israeli house.
White House officials are already insisting that Netanyahu "humiliated" Obama by authorizing the building of houses. This is the worst Israeli crime since two years ago when the city of Jerusalem passed some houses through one stage of a multi-stage approval process while Biden was visiting the country.
Hillary called it an insult and spent two hours yelling at Netanyahu over the phone. Axelrod declared it an affront. Biden was so furious that he refused to come down for dinner until an hour later. For weeks the media howled that Netanyahu had humiliated Obama through the dastardly act of allowing one of the country's mayors to approve housing while the sacred presence of Joseph Robinette Biden Jr was intersecting with Israeli airspace.
While Russia may threaten war against the United States, China may mock the United States at a ceremonial banquet in the White House, Iran and North Korea may play Obama for a fool, but only Israel has managed to achieve official recognition for "insulting and humiliating" Obama, without even trying, proving once again that the Jewish race is so talented that it often achieves things that other people may only dream of, without even realizing that they are doing it.
Now that Netanyahu has gone to the mattresses, literally, by authorizing new housing, the media has begun braying that Israel has humiliated Obama all over again. They say that every time a bell rings, an angel gets his wings. But every time an Israeli jackhammer roars, Obama stands, like that famous trash-mourning fake Indian, off Highway 1 between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, with a tear slowly making its way down one glistening cheek at the sight of another humiliating Israeli house.

According to the New York Times, which is never wrong, building more houses makes peace impossible. Peace, which is not in any way obstructed by rockets, suicide bombers, unilateral statehood bids and declarations of war, comes up against only one obstacle. The stout unyielding wall of the Israeli house. You can shell Israeli houses, bomb them and break inside to massacre the people living inside, but then after all that, Israel goes and builds more of those damn things.
Hamas shoots thousands of rockets and Israel builds thousands of houses. But Israeli houses generally stay where they're built, while Hamas rockets are as likely to kill Gazans as they are to put holes in the roofs of those dastardly houses. And in the arms race between houses and rockets, the Israelis appear to be winning. And that's not good for peace. If Israelis get the dangerous idea that they can just keep building houses and outlast all the talented rocketeers who spend their time with the Koran in front of one eye and the Anarchist's Cookbook in front of the other, then what hope is there for peace?
That is why no one cares much about Hamas rockets, which only kill Israelis, who most reasonable people in London, Paris and Brussels think have it coming anyway, but get into a foaming lather about an Israeli house. Killing Israelis has never been any obstacle to peace. Twenty years of killing Israelis has not dissuaded a single Israeli government from sitting down at the table to dicker with the terrorists. But an Israeli family living in a house is holding down territory that it will be harder to then cede to terrorists when the angels have blown their horns, the seas have all gone dry and peace is carried in on a golden platter by 72 virgins accompanied by their flying suicide bomber mates.
The problem is an old one. Pharaoh struggled with it. So did Hitler. And so does Hamas. What do you do when there are too many Jews living. The answer is usually obvious.
Israel's Peace Partners tried to go back to the time-honored Egyptian tradition of throwing all the Jews into the sea. But despite an entire officer corps temporarily "on leave" from the armed forces of the United Kingdom, they only got as far as half of Jerusalem, where they blew up every synagogue, and took the West Bank of Israel, or as the non-indigenous Zionist invaders with no roots in the region call it, Judea and Samaria.
Nineteen years later, Israel's Peace Partners had traded in their British officer corps for a Soviet officer corps, and lost Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza, proving that when it came to killing Jews, the Communists were better at it when the Jews weren't shooting back. Ever since then the world, or those portions of it populated entirely by diplomats and the better class of journalists, has been urging Israel to give back the land to an imaginary country to be populated entirely by terrorists.
This peace plan, which has worked as well as fighting fire with gasoline, has not in any way been endangered by two decades of terror, but trembles down to its toes every time an Israeli hammer falls on an Israeli nail in the vicinity of Jerusalem. Because that land must go back so that rockets can be shot from it into Israel, so that Israel can invade it and reclaim it, and then sit down for another peace process to return the land from which the rockets will be fired, which will be invaded, which will be given back... for peace.
And Israeli houses endanger this cycle of peace and violence. They endanger it by creating "facts on the ground", a piquant phrase that only seems to apply to houses with Jews. Muslim houses in no way create facts on the ground, even though they are built out of the same material and filled with people. Or perhaps they create the good kind of facts on the ground. The kind of preemption of negotiations that the professional peacemakers approve of.
But it's hard to know what exactly the peacemakers approve of, because their arguments and their definitions keep changing all the time. All that we know is that they disapprove of Israeli houses.
The United States repeatedly assured Israel that Jerusalem would in no way be endangered by the peace process. No less a personality than Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. co-sponsored three Senate resolutions urging that Jerusalem should remain Israel's undivided capital. Then like all good politicians, he was horribly offended when the Israelis actually took him at his word.
Obama gave an election speech four years ago where he declared that Jerusalem should be undivided. A day later he explained that he meant "undivided" in some spiritual sense that did not preclude it from actually being divided.
UN Chief Ban Ki-moon has declared Israeli houses to be an "almost fatal blow" to the peace process. It is, of course, only an "almost fatal blow"  because the peace process, like Dracula, cannot be killed. Israeli houses, fearsome as they may be with their balconies and poor heating in winter, are never quite enough to kill it.

Like the monster of a horror movie, the peace process always comes back and no matter how many blows the Israeli house delivers to it, a year later there's a sequel where the Israeli house is being stalked by the peace process monster all over again.
The army of lethal Israeli houses, which may not be built for another five years, if ever, seem formidable in the black newsprint of the New York Times, in the fulminations of Guardian columnists and the shrill talkingpointation of CNN talking heads, but its actual potency is limited to housing Jewish families and infuriating international diplomats and their media coathangers.
Europe is furious, Obama is seething, the UN is energized, and somewhere in Tehran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad wipes the grease out of his mustache and wonders what he could do to get this much attention. He briefly scribbles down some thoughts on a napkin but then dismisses it as being too implausible. As much as it might get the world's attention, there is just no way Iran can put up apartment buildings in Jerusalem.

via sultanknish.blogspot.com

It continues: Obama pressuring Netanyahu not to respond to 'Palestinian statehood' bid by building in E-1 (Jerusalem - Maaleh Adumim corridor)

At least since 2005, there has been talk in Israel about building in E-1 (see map above), the area between Jerusalem and Maaleh Adumim. The advantages would be obvious. Building in E-1 and expanding the city eastward would be a lot less destructive to the environment than building westward. There is much more room to build to the east than to the west. And most importantly, E-1 would serve as a buffer between Judea and Jerusalem, precluding a contiguous 'Palestinian state' that reaches Jerusalem at that point. It is for that final reason that the United States and the 'international community' have opposed Jewish building in E-1. In fact, Israel has built some infrastructure in E-1, but backed off opening a police station there that would have asserted Israeli control.
Now, it's happened again. JPost reports this morning that one of Israel's possible responses to a unilateral declaration of a 'Palestinian' reichlet with UN approval would be construction on E-1. And the Hussein Obama administration is 'urging' (read: threatening) Israel not to do it.
In the meantime, the Europeans have not yet decided how they will vote at the UN on Thursday (yes, this Thursday, the annual day to deprecate Israel and call for a 'Palestinian' reichlet.

via israelmatzav.blogspot.com

I'd like to know what kind of threats Obama made to Netanyahu concerning E1 building and if this does not see the light of day there is a little thing in Israel called Democracy. Bibi could lose power to the right... and that would be the end of Obama's leverage. Obama might of won the election, but he got caught as a tyrant with the Benghazi riot. When the public knows the president blamed a Youtube video and asked for censorship to cover up his own sins, Obama is in no position to take the higher ground with a country he claims friendship with.

Police admit to slandering Jews from Judea and Samaria

After months of slandering residents of Judea and Samaria as 'price tag attackers,' the Israel police have finally admitted that - surprise - most of the attackers do not come from Judea or Samaria after all (Hat Tip: Aryeh Z).

Speaking to the Walla! news website on Sunday, Judea and Samaria District Police chief Major General Amos Yaakov admitted that "most of the people who carry out these offenses are people who come from outside of Judea and Samaria. This needs to be emphasized. Most of them come from central Israel, from Beit Shemesh or from Tzfat. In one case of a vandalized mosque the main suspect is from Netanya.”

He added, “We know, in at least four cases of arson of mosques, who are the perpetrators. We even matched DNA that was found on a box of matches at one of the mosques that was set on fire - but apparently it was not enough to indict the suspects.”

Yaakov said that “there is pretty solid evidence in one case where a person was caught, arrested and interrogated - but it was not enough. At the interrogations, you should see how they behave. It's crazy. These guys come well-prepared, with explanations and instructions on how not to talk during an interrogation. Children aged 14, 15 and even 12 sit during an interrogation and don’t speak one word for days. In such cases, nothing can be done against the right to remain silent.”

During the interview, Yaakov was asked about the case in which five Jews from Judea and Samaria were accused by police of espionage, simply because they warned other Jews of impending demolitions of homes. The government later withdrew charges that the five detainees were spies.

Asked whether the police overstepped their boundaries with the espionage charges, Yaakov said, “If people collect information about military movements, conduct observations, have maps and lists with the names of all the senior officers in the area and where they live – what is the purpose of all this, to create a game? I see this incident as more than serious. Disrupting IDF operations is not a terrorist act? This is very serious. We tried to go for the most severe offense, but there was hesitation.”

After the police dropped the espionage charges against the five, it was speculated that a relatively large protest outside a police detention facility at the Russian Compound in Jerusalem may have influenced the decision to omit the charges from the indictments.
In the interview Yaakov also attacked the leftist activists who, as he put it, fan the flames in Judea and Samaria.

“Some of the conflicts are caused only by leftists and anarchists, without whom the Palestinians would never leave their homes,” he said. “They force them to leave. There are regular provocateurs here but we are having trouble getting our hands on them because they are always walking the thin line between breaking the law and obeying it.”

 Waiting to see how many of Israel's mainstream media outlets report this story....

via israelmatzav.blogspot.com

Demographic trends in the Land of Israel

As this study clearly documented,
“the shifting sands of demography”
in the Middle East work in favor
of the Jewish state,
not against it, as Mr. Emanuel argued.

Doomsday scenario?:
Demographic time bomb?Read it all!

via
daledamos.blogspot.comvia
Demographic Trends in the Land of Israel
(excerpts)
Yakov Faitelson
January 15, 2011
@
theettingerreport.com

via
israelmatzav.blogspot.com

Clearly, Obama and Rahm Emanuel anchored their arguments in the conjured estimates of the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics. A 2006 World Bank study found a “32% ‘inflation’ in the number of Arab births, ” alleged by the Palestinians.

A more recent comprehensive study on Jewish-Arab Demographic Trends in the Land of Israel, published earlier this year by Yakov Faitelson, found that “ in 2011 there is a 66% Jewish majority … in the combined area of pre-1967 Israel, Judea and Samaria.”

The study demonstrated that “Despite 120 years of demographic calamity projections, the Jewish population in the Land of Israel succeeded to grow from a 5% minority to a 60% majority.”

“In 2010, the Jewish fertility rate is 63% higher than Lebanon’s, 53% higher than Iran’s, 33% higher than Turkey’s and Kuwait’s, 23% higher than Saudi Arabia’s, slightly higher than Egypt’s and only 7% and 4% lower than Jordan’s and Syria’s respectively.” “Israeli Arab fertility rate has collapsed since the 1970s [due to a most successful integration into the infrastructures of education, employment, finance, politics, culture, sports, etc.]…It declined to 3.5 births per woman in 2009.”
“In 1995, there were 2.34 Jewish births per 1 Arab birth. In 2009-10, there were 3.12 Jewish births per 1 Arab birth.”

“The demographic trends within pre-1967 Israel are identical to those in Judea and Samaria…but, in a much faster pace. The fertility rate of Judea and Samaria Arabs dropped from 6.44 births per woman in 1990 to 3.12 births in 2010…lower than Israeli Arabs and substantially lower than the Jewish fertility rate in the Jerusalem region.”

1.  "Despite 120 years of demographic calamity projections, the Jewish population in the Land of Israel succeeded to grow from a 5% minority to a 60% majority."
2.  "The expanded Jewish population (6,122,000) grows faster than the highest scenario of the 2007 projection made by Israel's Central Bureau of Statistics.  The Arab population (1,573,000) grows in accordance with the lowest scenario."
3. "According to the UN Population Division, the overall Middle East fertility rate peaked during the 1950s (6.33 births per woman) and declined gradually to 2.95 births in 2010."
4. "The Jewish fertility rate has risen since 1995, reaching 2.9 in 2010."
5. "In 2010, the Jewish fertility rate is 63% higher than Lebanon's, 53% higher than Iran's, 33% higher than Turkey's and Kuwait's, 23% higher than Saudi Arabia's, slightly higher than Egypt's and only 7% and 4% lower than Jordan's and Syria's respectively."
6. "The growth in Jewish fertility is driven by secular and not by religious or ultra-religious Jews. Since 2003, there has been a decline in ultra-religious fertility…The surge in secular fertility is driven mainly by the Olim (immigrants) from the former USSR…Their children and grandchildren has adopted typical Israeli fertility rates. According to Israel's Central Bureau of Statistics, Israeli-born Jewish fertility rate was over 3 births in 2009."
7. "Israeli Arab fertility rate has collapsed since the 1970s [due to a most successful integration into the infrastructures of education, employment, finance, politics, culture, sports, etc.]…It declined to 3.5 births per woman in 2009…By 2009 only 8.4% of 15 year old Arab women did not enroll in school."
8. "In 1995, there were 2.34 Jewish births per 1 Arab birth. In 2009-10, there were 3.12 Jewish births per 1 Arab birth."
9. "The demographic trends within pre-1967 Israel are identical to those in Judea and Samaria…but, in a much faster pace. The fertility rate of Judea and Samaria Arabs dropped from 6.44 births per woman in 1990 to 3.12 births in 2010...lower than Israeli Arabs and substantially lower than the Jewish fertility rate in the Jerusalem region."
10. "Net-emigration from the Palestinian Authority was 321,239 during 2007-1994, averaging about 23,000 annually."
11. "Mustafa Khawaja of the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics: Net-emigration in 2007 reached about 60,000…Jordan recorded 44,000 and 63,000 net-emigration, during the first eight months in 2009 and 2008 respectively, through its-controlled international passages along the Jordan River."

IDF Survey: Highest Number of Reservists Per Capita Come from Judea and Samaria

(Algemeiner) IDF reservists. Photo: Tazpit News Agency. By Aryeh Savir and Gil Lavie
A newly released IDF survey has found that the highest number of reservists per capita recruited by the Israeli Defense Forces over the past year have come from the Judea and Samaria region. The survey, conducted annually by the Israeli army, has found that Judea and Samaria residents are the top geographic group of Israeli citizens serving in the army at 34%. Residents of the North followed at 29%, 28% from Jerusalem and Central Israel and 27% from the South. Of the reserves members from Judea and Samaria, a majority of 60% were found to be serving in combat units.
The poll also showed surprising results in the national diversity it found in the Israeli Defense Forces. 1,200 of the reservists were from the Republic of Georgia, 720 originated from Iran, 30 from the Philippines, and 4 from Bahrain. The study highlights a rarely seen picture of reserve duty personnel, showing that minorities and immigrants play a larger role than previously thought. A total of 19% of reserve soldiers were born outside Israel.(MORE)

Moral behavior and Jewish rights

(Fresno)if Israel begins negotiating from the position that it is occupying someone else’s land, then the only thing there is to negotiate is the timetable for withdrawal. This is precisely the Palestinian position, and it is also reflected in the Arab League Peace Initiative.

The recent Levy Commission report — perhaps many years late — tries to reestablish these legitimate rights under international law:

“According to international law, Israelis have a legal right to settle all of Judea and Samaria, at the very least the lands that Israel controls under agreements with the Palestinian Authority,” Levy stated. “Therefore, the establishment of Jewish settlements [in Judea and Samaria] is, in itself, not illegal.” …The committee issued its report on [July 10, 2012], which was subsequently handed over to Attorney-General Yehuda Weinstein. In the report, Levy wrote that “upon completing the committee’s tasks, and considering the testimonies heard, the basic conclusion is that from an international law perspective, the laws of ‘occupation’ do not apply to the unique historic and legal circumstances surrounding Israel’s decades-long presence in Judea and Samaria.”
“Likewise,” the report said, “the Fourth Geneva Convention [relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War] on the transfer of populations does not apply, and wasn’t intended to apply to communities such as those established by Israel in Judea and Samaria.” (MORE)

Legalise the settlements says Israeli judge

(Anne) Map of Mandate era Palestine, showing Israeli sovereignty over the area that was never legally superseded

Justice Edmond Levy, who was appointed by PM Netanyahu to head a committee to review the legal status of the settlements, has issued an extremely important statement (my emphases):

Israel must legalize the majority of illegal West Bank outposts, a committee appointed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to review the legal status of such communities recommended, Ynet learned Monday.
The panel, headed by Supreme Court Justice (Ret.) Edmond Levy, also ruled that the State must devise ways to “ease land acquisition and zoning protocols for Jews residing in Judea and Samaria.”
The Levy Committee, formed in January and comprised of Levy, Tel Aviv District Court Judge (Ret.) Tehiya Shapira and Dr. Alan Baker an international law expert, who was part of the team that devised the Oslo Accords, met harsh criticism from the Left, which claimed it was biased.

That’s rich coming from the Left, since the esteemed Talia Sasson joined the extreme-left Meretz party at the time she issued her damning report. It seems that what is sauce for the goose is not saucy enough for the gander – as we see below.

The committee’s findings stand to significantly change the legal reality in the West Bank, especially when compared to the 2005 Sasson Report on construction in the West Bank, which deemed 120 outposts as illegal.
Tackling the issue of sovereignty, the Levy Committee ruled that in its operations in the West Bank, “Israel does not meet the criteria of ‘military occupation’ as defined under international law.”
The ruling is based on the fact that “no other legal entity has ever had its sovereignty over the area cemented under international law,” the committee said, adding that the latter included Jordan, which ruled the area prior to the Six Day War.
West Bank settlements are legal since that is no provision in the international law that deems that having Jewish population in the area is illegal, the report added.
[...]
As for the matter of Israeli construction in the West Bank – and especially the question of illegal outpost – the committee ruled that the State must find a way to legalize and regulate the construction.
West Bank settlements and outposts were created as the State’s bidding, the report said, and the settlement movement was encouraged to continue its mission.
The report further urges the government to regulate the outposts’ municipal status, enable natural growth, accelerate the regulation of zoning and planning and refrain from executing any demolition orders pending further legal review.
[...]
Justice Levy criticized the “lack of clear government direction and policy” in regards to West Bank settlements.
“The conduct we discovered vis-à-vis the Israeli settlements in Judea and Samaria is unbecoming of a nation that has made the rule of law one of its primary objectives,” he wrote.

Sadly there is a fly in this ointment:

Still, the committee’s recommendations are not mandating. Netanyahu is likely to ask the Ministerial Committee on Settlements to review the report.

I don’t trust Netanyahu and his advisers as far as I can throw them. I suspect these findings will end up buried in committee.

In complete contradiction to the findings of the Levy Committee, James Crawford, an”international law expert”, has provided his legal opinion that a trade ban on Israeli settlements is fully permissible.

European governments, including Britain’s, have received legal opinion from a leading international counsel who argues they would be fully within their rights to ban trade with Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank.
The formal opinion from James Crawford, professor of international law at Cambridge University, is likely to inject fresh momentum into campaigns in the United Kingdom and elsewhere for a ban, at a time when some EU member states are examining ways of hardening their position on the imports of settlement produce.
Israeli settlements in the West Bank are considered illegal under international law, a position upheld by all EU member states.

These EU members states need to read Justice Edmond Levy’s opinion above, read the San Remo Conference resolutions and take a look at the maps of Palestine from the San Remo conference rather urgently. They are talking out of their hat. Further, they need to read Judge Eugene Rostow’s opinion (he helped to formulate UN resolution 242) of the legality of Israel’s capture of the territories in 1967.

Back to the Independent article:

In particular the opinion will be seen as challenging received wisdom in official circles that for a state such as Britain to ban imports of settlement produce, or prohibit banks from financing settlement activity, would contravene European or global trade law. Professor Crawford says in his 60-page opinion, shown to senior officials of EU member states in the past few months and seen by The Independent, that “there do not appear to be any EC laws which could be breached by a member state taking the decision to ban the import of settlement produce on public policy grounds.”
He argues that member states wishing to block the import of produce from settlements could “have recourse” to the EU’s Association Agreement with Israel, which stipulates that the agreement “shall be based on respect for human rights and democratic principles.” He argues that, by executing such a ban on trade with settlements, the EU would not be in breach of its World Trade Organisation obligations since, “as a matter of international law, the West Bank and Gaza cannot be considered to be Israel’s territory”.
The opinion will be published this week by the Trades Union Congress, which has mounted a sustained campaign for a ban on settlement trade – as distinct from a boycott of Israel itself, which the TUC does not support.

Read it all if your blood pressure will allow it.

You might be interested, however, in the background of this international law expert James Crawford.

In the 2004 International Court of Justice ruling about Israel’s defensive separation wall, dubbed the “apartheid wall” by Israel’s opponents, Crawford was one of the lawyers for “Palestine”.

He is as neutral as Talia Sasson and even more prejudiced against Israel. Watch the British media lionise him