Ynet News: Ignoring Israel’s goodness

Op-ed: Israel’s amazing altruism largely ignored by media as it doesn’t fit with Zionist stereotypes

Giulio Meotti Published: 03.29.11, 17:36 / Israel Opinion

Israel was the first country in the world to send aid to Haiti after the earthquake. An impressive mass of goods, people and emergency facilities was sent to the Caribbean island after the natural disaster. It happened also with the tsunami in Asia, when Israel was among the most generous countries. And now again, when disaster struck in Japan, Israel was the first to dispatch a field hospital to assist in the recovery effort.

IDF clinic in Japan Photo: IDF Spokesperson's Unit

However, Israel’s amazing altruism never had its legitimate space in the global media, because this radical goodness doesn’t fit in with the Zionist stereotype of the colonialist, fascist and apartheid occupier.

In Haiti, an IDF team worked to identify the victims. After the 9/11 attacks, Israeli pathologists helped their fellow Americans at Ground Zero. In 1979, Israel sent a delegation of medical staff to provide medical relief to thousands of displaced people in Cambodia following the downfall of genocidal communist Pol Pot. The Israelis also ran a pediatric field hospital in Rwanda during the Tutsi genocide, assisted the Albanians during the Kosovo war and helped Turkey following the 1999 earthquake.

There is an untold, sad reason for Israel’s ability to offer such help. For the Jewish State, terrorism has always been an involuntary master of speed, precision and caring. There is an amazing quantity of research, inventions and new techniques for helping the disabled and the paralyzed return to normal life after terrorist destruction.

During the Second Intifada, Dr. David Applebaum invented a special method to treat wounded people transported to the emergency room. In New York, Dr. Applebaum showed slides illustrating how it is possible to treat “44 injured people in 28 minutes,” as he had done after a terrorist attack in Jerusalem. Then he returned to Israel and took his daughter Nava to Cafe Hillel, the day before her wedding was supposed to take place. Both of them were killed by a suicide bomber. Applebaum’s method has been copied around the world.

Boycotters hurting themselves

Israel’s ignored goodness can be extended to the incredible record of scientific and medical discoveries. Especially now that the “light among nations”, as Israel was called by David Ben Gurion, is boycotted by universities around the world. The Jewish State is one of the world’s leaders in the per capita registration of US patents by its scientists and doctors. One of the most important tumor suppressor genes was cloned in 1983 by scientists at the Weizmann Institute in Rehovot (defective copies of this gene are found in more than half of all human cancers.)

A non-invasive diagnostic method for detecting breast and prostate cancer was developed by another Weizmann’s pioneer. Israel developed the early diagnosis of “Mad Cow” bovine disease in Creutzfeldt Jakob genetic disease in humans with a urine test instead of a brain biopsy. The list of miracles includes the identification of the gene that causes muscular dystrophy, a revolutionary supportive metal in a coronary arteries to prevent a heart attack, a vaccine that prevents the development of juvenile diabetes, the discovery of a gene linked to post-traumatic stress disorder, the development of drugs to combat Alzheimer, cancer, Parkinson and multiple sclerosis and the late deciphering of the structure of the ribosome - the cell’s protein factory.
 
Israel is also the definitive model for finding solutions to major climate challenges, from the fight against desertification to water shortages. The boycotters and the haters of Israel are damaging their own interests, because the Jewish State truly is a light that benefits humanity as a whole.
 
The first child born after the Haiti earthquake came into the world in the tents of the Israeli army. The mother had no doubts about the child’s name: Israel.

IDF Delegation in Port-au-Prince (Archives) Photo: IDF Spokesperson's Office

Giulio Meotti, a journalist with Il Foglio, is the author of the book A New Shoah. The Untold Story of Israel's Victims of Terrorism

The hypocrites who claim against committing human crimes of IDF (Israeli Defence Forces)

The video clips that are following are just showing the brutality of the regime in Syria. They are the people who are claiming about crimes against humanity done by Israel (IDF). I wonder where is the Humans Rights Committee and Judge Goldstone to make an investigation. Oh, how fast was it established for the "crimes" of IDF in Gaza? Where are those leaders/figures like Erdogan, Mahathir and others? I wonder why are they so silent?

Sure when an anti-Semite is an anti-Semite he will forever remain an anti-Semite. And they just wonder why we call them anti-Semites.

A few video clips are better than 1000 words to describe the brutality of those people. I just wonder from where are they nursing it. Is it education? Is it their religion? Is it their "beasts schools" with hatred brainwashing. I just know that who teaches to hate the Jews blindly, the hatred will become a sward against him. Maybe that time is arriving.

Ynet News: Israel to open field clinic in Japan

Two planes carrying 50 doctors, tons of equipment leave Saturday. Israeli doc: Japanese are grateful

Itamar Eichner Published: 03.23.11, 12:48 / Israel News

Israeli mission to aid Japan crisis on its way: A medical delegation, including 50 doctors, is expected to fly from Ben-Gurion Airport on Saturday and head to Japan.

Israel will send two planes, one holding nearly 20 tons worth of humanitarian aid and the other full of 50 tons worth of medical equipment intended for an Israeli field clinic which will be established in the town of Minamisanriku.
 
"The view here is extremely harsh. Everything is destroyed. Nothing is left of this town," IDF Home Front Medical Corps Commander, Colonel Dr. Ariel Bar, told Yediot Ahronot about the sights he had seen in the town.
 
"In this area alone there are about 10,000 homeless people. People sleep on the floor and seem unresponsive. They definitely need help and fast."

The Israeli clinic will provide the Japanese with pediatrics, internal and orthopedic medicine. A field X-ray lab and a blood test lab will also be built on location.

"The Japanese think very highly of Israeli knowledge and especially our ability to act independently in the field," said Bar. "When it comes to Japanese culture it's not an easy thing to ask for help or admit their inability to do something. But this crisis is hard enough so that they do. They are grateful."

Israel's ambassador to Japan Nissim Ben Shitrit is the one in charge of contacts between local authorities. Director of the North East Asia Department of the MFA (Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs), Hagai Shagrir, is assisting Ben Shitrit from Israel.
 
"Not one building is left standing. Everything is in ruins," said Bar. "Those who are still alive suffer from different diseases. That's why we're going to establish a field clinic and provide various medical services."

Ynet News: 'Assad using Hezbollah to suppress civil unrest'

Opposition figures say members of Lebanese Shiite group working alongside Syrian security forces to quell Deraa riots; local hospital says bodies of 25 protestors brought in, 'all with gunshot wounds'

Roee Nahmias, agencies Published: 03.24.11, 13:33 / Israel News

At least 25 bodies of protestors who were killed in clashes with Syrian security forces were evacuated to the main hospital in the southern city of Deraa, a medical official reported Thursday.

"They all had gunshot wounds," the official said.

'Massacre in Deraa' Photo: AP

Meanwhile, Syrian opposition leaders have accused President Bashar Assad of using Hezbollah to suppress the anti-government protests. Abd el-Razek told BBC Arabic that Hezbollah operatives were working alongside Syrian security forces to quell the riots in Deraa. Other opposition leaders have made similar claims.

'Corrupt government is butchering us'

An independent Syrian human rights organization condemned the wave of arrests of anti-government activists in the country. The group reported that blogger and communications student Ahmad Hadifa was detained in Damascus Thursday by secret police. Last month Hadifa was held in police custody for six days.

According to the organization, Hadifa was arrested due to his "activity on Facebook in support of the protest in Deraa."

Amnesty International published the names of 93 activists it claims were arrested this month in cities throughout Syria. It said the actual number of those arrested was much higher.

A video posted on YouTube showed an activist pleading with Arab and foreign news networks to "Save us, there is a massacre in Deraa. This corrupt government is butchering us. There are tanks and other armored vehicles here. Save us. Deraa calls out to you; Deraa is dead; I beg of you."

The official Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) reported that late Wednesday an "armed gang attacked an ambulance crew that drove by the al-Omari mosque in Deraa, resulting in the deaths of a physician, medic and ambulance driver."

SANA said security forces would "continue to hunt down armed gangs that terrorize civilians and murder, steal and torch public buildings and homes in Deraa."

Hurriyet Daily News: You shall not kill!

I found this article written by a Turkish journalist who is pointing out exactly the hypocrisy of the Muslim leaders. I also wonder how those hot blooded angry Muslims, among them so called "moderate" were so silent and not condemning the Itamar family massacre (as well as other past events). None of them said that he/she is sorry. How can I believe that Muslims and Islam is the religion and nation of peace? It is not for me or us to prove that they are peaceful, but they need to strive and show the world that they are. Islamophobia is not baseless.

Hanan.

Tuesday, March 15, 2011



BURAK BEKDİL

It was 2010, and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was speaking, as tempered as always, to a crowd as tempered as the prime minister could be.

“These [people] even see babies in their cradles as a threat. They have killed babies in their mothers’ arms,” he boomed.

“These people,” naturally, were the Israelis.

Addressing Israel’s leaders from a public rally in Turkey, Mr. Erdoğan said in both Turkish and English: “You shall not kill.” Then he showed his linguistic capabilities and went on: “You still don’t get it? Then I shall speak to you in your own language: Lo tir’tsach!” He was referring to the sixth of the 10 commandments in the Old Testament.

In various other speeches, Mr. Erdoğan claimed that his fits of anger toward the death of children were “indiscriminative” of race and religion. “Wherever, whenever,” he often said, “a child has been killed,” he would fiercely stand against the murderers. All the same, he has been mute since Saturday.

In the early hours of Saturday, a Palestinian broke into a house in the settlement of Itamar and stabbed to death a couple and their three children, aged 3 months, 4 years and 10 years old. The slain bodies were discovered by the couple’s 12-year-old daughter who was not at home when the murder was committed.

The “Imad Mughniyeh” cell, with alleged links to the al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade, claimed responsibility for the attack. The terrorist group is named after the “phantom” terrorist Imad Mughniyeh who was killed in a car bomb attack in Damascus which Hezbollah blamed on Israeli agents. Mr. Mughniyeh, or the “Shia bin-Laden,” was one of the world’s most wanted men (wanted in 42 countries) while he was enjoying a safe haven in the Syrian capital prior to his assassination.

Most predictably, we have not heard Mr. Erdoğan saying "You shall not kill" in Arabic, and we probably never will. That’s hardly surprising since we have never heard Mr. Erdoğan speaking “indiscriminately” in the past against the killing of children and defenseless people in Itamar, or elsewhere in Israel – for Saturday’s attack in Itamar was not the first of its kind. In May 2002, a Palestinian killed a 14-year-old boy and wounded another teenager in the same settlement. A month later, another Palestinian killed a woman and her three children. In July the same year another Palestinian stabbed and wounded a couple. And in August 2004, a Palestinian killed a resident of Itamar.

The killing of a 3-month old baby reminded me, inevitably, of what a “Palestinian warrior” told me in Ramallah in 2006. When he praised his suicide bomber sister who had injured a 95-year-old woman (and killed herself) in an attack, I asked him what was the point of injuring or killing elderly women or toddlers when young Palestinians also died in these attacks. He smiled and explained as simply as he could: “For us, even a 1-year-old Israeli baby is a soldier. And that [95-year-old] woman was also an Israeli soldier!” I thought it might not be safe to ask him any further questions.

But in 2008, this time in London and speaking to another Palestinian, I felt more comfortable and dared question the logic of the act that “indiscriminately angers our prime minister.” I reminded him of a verse in the Quran (4:93): “Whoever kills a believer intentionally, his recompense is Hell wherein he will abide eternally, and Allah has become angry with him and has cursed him and has prepared for him a great punishment.”

My Palestinian friend counter-attacked with another verse (17:33): “And do not kill the soul which Allah has forbidden, except by right.” Then came his loud and tempered explanation: “The verse 4:93 forbids killing a believer. Israelis are not believers.” I looked out from the window of the pub where his orange juice vs. my wine stood on the table like two objects silently telling us why we could never agree.

For a moment, I thought about reminding him that Jews, too, are believers, like other non-Muslim believers, or ask him if the Quran (in verse 4:93) permitted the killing of atheists. But he loudly went back to verse 17:33, with radiating eyes satisfied with the near victory in our little intellectual duel. “You see, that verse forbids killing ‘except by right.’ And it is evident that some killings fall into the category of ‘exception by right.’”

I sipped my wine and got lost in thought, wondering how a doctoral candidate of engineering from a decent British university could defend the murder of innocent people only because they belonged to a faith other than his. How could he twist his own (and my) holy book so as to find holy justifications for the killing of innocent people?

“Never mind,” he interrupted my thoughts, “You are not Muslim anyway. It is normal that you don’t understand.” “Wait a minute,” I protested, “What does it mean ‘you are not Muslim anyway?’” “I see that you are drinking wine,” he replied. “I hope you don’t mind if I leave you alone now. I have an appointment,” he smiled and left the pub.

I didn’t mind because he left. But one does mind when someone tells him that he does not belong to the religion to which he thinks he belongs. I cursed the missed opportunity of reminding him of the verses and hadiths that forbid Muslims from judging other people’s faith by a man-made faith-meter. But then I thought my cute friend would find a way to twist them, too.

The hypocrisy over the killing of innocent people is not coincidental in any way. Last month, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad hosted, in Tehran, a delegation from the disastrous Turkish flotilla Mavi Marmara, comprising the “Mavi Marmara mujahedeen, ghazis and families of the shahids.”

The delegates participated in Iran's Revolution Day ceremonies, and the head of the Turkish delegation noted that: “We are here today with the longing and the determination to build a Middle East without Israel and America, and to refresh our pledge to continue on the path of the Mavi Marmara shahids.”

On Feb. 12, the same Mavi Marmara activist reiterated “the promising words of the President of the Islamic Republic of Iran… that 'only a short time is left for the building of a Middle East without Israel or America in it, and we are praying for the quick arrival of that bright day, when all of us will meet in a free al-Quds [Jerusalem].’”

With five “Jooos” having disappeared from earth after the Itamar attack, that bright day must be arriving sooner.

I am still curious, however, about what rank the 3-month old Israeli “soldier” held. Captain? Lieutenant colonel? Certainly too young to be a general.

Ynet News: Unmasking Israel’s critics

Op-ed: Mideast chaos an opportunity to expose those who ignored Arab world crimes

Manfred Gerstenfeld Published: 03.16.11, 10:32 / Israel Opinion

Gaddafi’s murderous behavior toward his country’s citizens is probably the closest current example to what invading Arab countries and their Palestinian allies would have done to the Jews here had they been successful after Israel’s independence. This is extremely politically incorrect to say. However, that does not make it less true. To prove the point, one only needs to collect statements from prominent Arab figures in 1947 and 1948 and testimonies from Israeli witnesses of the war.

The recent chaotic events in many Arab countries may provide a unique opportunity for Israel to fully unmask many of those who are causing it damage. This includes those who have heavily criticized or delegitimized the country for years, as well as those who have looked away consistently from the massive crimes in the Arab world.

Many categories fit this bill. One can start with a long list of human rights NGOs. NGO Monitor has already accused Human Rights Watch of covering up human rights violations in Libya. How many of the human rights NGOs, if any, have protested against the membership of Libya in the United Nations Human Rights Council? Can they claim today that they didn’t know Gaddafi’s Libya is a nation that should regularly have been on the agenda of the UNRHC, rather than on its board?

Muammar Gaddafi. Violent crackdown Photo: Reuters

This is only one of a long list of questions that will enable Israel to correctly label substantial parts of the international human rights community as imposters. Also included in this category are those who voted for the anti-Israel resolution at the 2001 Durban conference.

Gaddafi’s visit to France

A second category is a selection of Western politicians. Regarding some, one doesn’t even have to ask questions about the policies of their country. British Prime Minister David Cameron admitted a few days ago, during a visit to Kuwait, that the popular uprisings in the Middle East showed that the West had been wrong to back dictators and undemocratic regimes. He added that British foreign policy had put economic self interest above promoting Western democratic values.

This was followed by Cameron telling students in Qatar that some Middle Eastern rulers were using the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a distraction from their own oppressive regimes. In this framework it would, for instance, be very useful to investigate what the High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Catherine Ashton said about the Arab states since she was appointed in December 2009 and compare that with her statements on Israel.

As all is relative, French president Nicolas Sarkozy is far from being one of Israel’s major critics. He is the first one to recognize the Libyan opposition, which in the future may no longer have any territory to rule over. Sarkozy received Gaddafi for a state visit in December 2007. The French president announced then that the Libyan ruler would sign a 10 billion euro agreement for military hardware and a nuclear reactor. He also said that he had asked the Libyan ruler to progress on the road to human rights.

The next category in line for exposure is a number of mainstream Christian bodies, mainly liberal Protestants. They have almost consistently looked away from how Christians of many denominations have been oppressed in a variety of Arab and Muslim countries. The murderous attacks on Copts in Egypt over the past decades are one example. These have been followed by several more murders of Copts during the Egyptian revolution of the past few weeks.

It would not be too much work for an Israeli official to peruse the websites of a few of these anti-Israeli Christian organizations and examine whether and how they have dealt with this. A few suggestions of bodies to expose are: the United Church of Christ in the US, the Methodist Church in Great Britain, the United Church of Canada, as well as organizations such as Diakonia in Sweden, Icco in the Netherlands and in particular, the friends of Sabeel in many countries. Israel’s embassy in Norway can help by checking how much or how little a few notoriously anti-Israeli Lutheran bishops in that country have spoken about these abuses against other Christians in Arab countries.

Exposing so-called journalists

In the academic world, the prestigious London School of Economic provides an excellent example of hypocrisy. At the beginning of March its director Sit Howard Davies resigned because the university had accepted money from the Gaddafi foundation run by one the Libyan dictator’s sons. Davies had also travelled to Libya to advise the country about financial reforms. However, what bothered the LSE student union in 2008 was Israel. They voted with a great majority to divest from companies that support Israel’s “apartheid regime.”

Yet another category that merits public exposure is the so-called Mideast journalists. Many of them are decent people. Many others have withheld, in line with their papers’ policies, essential negative information about the Arab world. Will anybody believe these media that there was little or nothing to report about what was wrong in Arab countries in recent years - in comparison to Israel?

In the past, one had trouble proving that a substantial number of journalists reporting from here were mainly news manipulators. Occasionally there was an easy case such as that of Riccardo Cristiano when he was correspondent of the Italian state network Rai in the Palestinian territories. In October 2000, two Israeli reserve soldiers were lynched by a Palestinian mob in Ramallah. Italian network Mediaset filmed the murder and then smuggled the pictures out of the country.

Cristiano thereafter wrote a letter published on October 16th in Palestinian newspaper Al Hayat al Jedida. He disclosed that it had been Mediaset that had taken the pictures. Cristiano also indicated that he would never have published the pictures had they been his own. In his open letter, he also offered "congratulations and dear blessings" to his dear friends in Palestine.

The above list of Western whitewashers of Arab crimes, hypocrites and imposters to be exposed is only the beginning. The blatant misconduct in all the above categories, and a few others, merit far more detailed documentation. This is the moment for the Israeli government to get its act together.
 
Due to present developments in the Arab world, shortly there will be even more proof of how large numbers of Western individuals and organizations cheated when focusing their moral indignation on Israel. What in the past could be done only by time-consuming exposure of individual cases, can now already be done wholesale. Many more such cases are likely to come to light in the near future.
 
Dr. Manfred Gerstenfeld has published 19 books, several of which deal with Israel’s international relations

Ynet News: Abbas’ hate education

Op-ed: While speaking softly, Palestinian leader carries horrendous stick of hate education

Yoram Ettinger Published: 03.15.11, 18:08 / Israel Opinion

The March 11, 2011 heinous stabbing to death of a Jewish family - while asleep on the eve of the Sabbath - including a three month old baby, a four year old toddler, an 11 year old child and their parents was carried out by graduates of Mahmoud Abbas' hate education. This slaughter was not an anomalous phenomenon.

 The slaughter was a derivative of the infrastructure of hate education and incitement via school text books, Abbas-controlled media and Abbas-controlled mosques. It was installed in 1994 by Abbas, then Arafat's deputy, and perpetuated, since 2005, by Abbas, the Chairman of the Palestinian Authority. It is an extension of Palestinian incitement and terrorism, introduced by Haj Amin al-Husseini in the 1920s, and 1,400 years of Arab/Muslim hate-mongering and terrorism toward each other, but mostly against "the infidel."

While speaking softly, Abbas carries a horrendous stick of hate education, which is largely funded by US foreign aid (over $2BN since 2007.) Since 1994, he has brainwashed Palestinian youth, producing manufacturing lines of hundreds of thousands of potential terrorists/suicide bombers.

One's education is the most authentic reflection of one's ideology, vision, goals and character.

According to Prof. Efraim Karsh, Head of the Middle East and Mediterranean Studies program at King's College in London (Palestine Betrayed, Yale University Press, 2010, pp. 255-6), "For all their drastically different personalities and political styles, Arafat and Abbas are warp and woof of the same fabric: dogmatic PLO veterans who have never eschewed their commitment to Israel's destruction and who have viewed the 'peace process' as the continuation by other means of their lifelong war…He (Abbas) described the proclamation of Israel as an unprecedented historic injustice and vowed his unwavering refusal to ever accept this injustice…(There is) no fundamental difference between the ultimate goals of Hamas and the PLO vis-à-vis Israel: neither accepts the Jewish state's right to exist and both are committed to its eventual destruction…."

On August 13, 2009, Abbas – who enrolled in KGB courses and coordinated PLO ties with the Communist Bloc - ratified the resolutions of Fatah's 6th General Conference, which state (article 19):"The struggle shall not end until the Zionist entity is eliminated and Palestine is liberated."

Honoring terrorists

Holocaust denial is promoted by Abbas' school textbooks, such as Modern World History for tenth graders (p.83). Prof. Karsh notes that Abbas' doctoral dissertation, submitted at the Moscow University, and published in 1984 in Amman, "endeavored to prove…the existence of a close ideological and political association between Zionism and Nazism…(that) fewer than a million Jews had been killed in the Holocaust, and that the Zionist movement played a role in their slaughter." Hence, Mein Kampf and the anti-Semitic Protocols of the Elders of Zion are best sellers in the Palestinian Authority.

Abbas' school textbooks reaffirm the founding document of the PLO, the Palestinian Covenant. It was compiled in June, 1964, aiming at the pre-1967 Israel. Two thirds of the Covenant is dedicated to the destruction of the Jewish State, as a prerequisite for the attainment of Palestinian goals.

Abbas and Salam Fayyad pay condolence visits - and authorize the transfer of monthly allowances - to families of suicide bombers. In February, 2011 they named a soccer tournament in honor of Wafa Idris, a suicide bomber. On January 16, 2010 they named a major square in El Bireh (in addition to two schools and a summer camp) in honor of Dalal Mughrabi, who commanded the March 11, 1978 massacre of 38 bus passengers on Israel's coastal road.

The school textbooks of Abbas – who supervised the 1972 Munich Massacre of 11 Israeli athletes and the March 1973 murder of two US ambassadors in Sudan - idolize suicide-bombing, fuel anti-Semitism and repudiate Israel's right to exist. For example, fifth grade Our Beautiful Language (pp. 26, 31, 32, 36, 70), tenth grade Grammar (pp. 30, 146) and Islamic Education (pp. 42-4, 48, 50) and tenth grade Modern World History (p.64).

On October 12, 2010 Abbas' official TV channel heralded the terrorists who murdered six Israeli civilians in 1975 (Kfar Yuval) and 1980 (Misgav Am.) On January 29, 2010 Abbas' official TV channel broadcast the weekly sermon, referring to Jews as "the enemies of Allah and humanity, modern day Nazis, who must be annihilated."

Hate education is the root cause of the Arab-Israeli conflict, which has always been over the existence – and not over the size – of the Jewish State. Hate education on one hand, and peace negotiation on the other hand, constitute an oxymoron.

Japan and Germany were transformed from hateful to peaceful countries by uprooting regimes of hate education; not merely by condemning hate education. To ignore the centrality of hate education, is to reward and fuel terrorism at the expense of peace and Western democratic values.

Ynet News: End Palestinian game

Op-ed: Israel should make it clear that Abbas will pay heavy price for his two-faced game

Guy Bechor Published: 03.15.11, 00:40 / Israel Opinion

There are naïve people among us who are impressed by Salam Fayyad’s and Mahmoud Abbas’ condemnations of the Itamar massacre. However, the time has come to understand that the current Palestinian Authority plays a much more sophisticated and dangerous game against Israel than Yasser Arafat’s PA.

Arafat played a two-faced game, engaging in both a diplomatic process vis-à-vis Israel and terror against it simultaneously. However, Abbas and Fayyad realized that terror against Israel in fact strengthens the Jewish State, both domestically and internationally. Hence, they shifted to a more refined game, engaging in both a diplomatic process vis-à-vis Israel as well as a de-legitimization campaign against it.

Abbas’ Palestinian Authority is the one that manages an anti-Israel campaign in the United Nations, at other international forums, and in global public opinion. In September of this year, the PA also wants to force a Palestinian state upon Israel. Indeed, Abbas’ PA makes an effort to embarrass us at every opportunity and work against our very existence.

This de-legitimization is more dangerous than Hamas’ terror, so paradoxically Hamas rule in the Arab parts of Judea and Samaria is better for Israel than Abbas’ duplicitous game, as it would make clear to the world who the good and bad guys are in this story.

The time has come to put an end to this game. Those who engage in peace negotiations cannot at the same time work against the other side’s right to exist. That is, not only fail to recognize it, but undermine its existence, embarrass it, and insult it at every opportunity.

Israel keeps PA alive

The Palestinian Authority is currently being kept alive by Israel. Had it not been for the IDF’s presence in the West Bank and had it not been for the arrests of wanted suspects night after night, this Authority would no longer exist. Hamas would topple and eliminate it within a few days, as it did in Gaza in 2007.

At the time, Hamas activists threw down their Fatah “brethren” from high-rises to their death. Strangely, no international inquiry was established in the wake of that massacre, just like no commission of inquiry will be formed in the wake of massacres committed by authorities against their own people in Libya, Egypt, Bahrain, Yemen and so on and so forth throughout the Arab Middle East.

Israel must not accept the Palestinian Authority’s two-faced game, played at the Jewish State’s expense, while the latter keeps the PA alive only to be hit with insults and anti-Israel activity. We should also not wait until September for the PA’s international moves against Israel. The time has come to exert counter-pressure.

At this time we should already make it clear to Abbas that should his game of de-legitimization continue, Israel will change realities: It will fully withdraw from populated Palestinian areas in Judea and Samaria and set a new boundary in the territories, even at the price of moving isolated settlements. The world shall laud this move, yet by undertaking this step Israel will leave Abbas and his comrades at the mercy of Hamas, which will not treat them as kindly as Israel does.

This should not just be a threat. The government must prepare to carry out this move, thereby putting an end to the Palestinian Authority’s existence. Hamas will finish the job, as it was able to do in Gaza.
 
This warning should be presented to Abbas and Fayyad now. Should they continue to embarrass Israel and the United States and demand a unilateral state at the UN, they will pay an existential price. Even condemnations of a despicable massacre won’t help them.

Pictures and video clips from Itamar family massacre by Palestinian terrorists (beasts)

A single picture is more than thousand words.

Ynet News: Horror in Samaria: Terrorist murders family of 5

Terrorist stabs five family members to death in settlement of Itamar early Saturday; three children, including baby girl, among victims. Paramedic describes horrific sight, toys next to pools of blood

Yair Altman Latest Update: 03.12.11, 06:20 / Israel News

Horror in Samaria: A terrorist infiltrated the West Bank settlement of Itamar, southeast of Nablus, early Saturday and stabbed five family members to death.

Troops launch manhunt for terrorist Photo: Ido Erez

The shocking attack occurred around 1 am as the terrorist entered the family home and murdered three children aged 11, 3, and a baby girl along with their parents. The victims were apparently sleeping as the killer came in.

Itamar residents reported that shots were heard in the area; the terrorist managed to flee the scene.

Ambulance in Itamar (Photo: Ido Erez)

Three other children at the home, a 12-year-old girl and her two brothers, aged 6 and 2, were able to escape to a nearby house and inform their neighbors of the attack.

The terrorist who carried out the massacre cut the fence surrounding Itamar and entered the home of the victims through the window, an initial probe of the murder showed. Authorities could not immediately discount the possibility that more than one attacker was involved in the murder.

'Toys next to pools of blood'

Following an initial report of the incident, large IDF and police forces rushed to the site. The Air Force also joined the effort to track down the terrorist, deploying numerous aircraft in the area. The night’s sky was lit up with flares, as special IDF and police forces were called in to assist in the manhunt.

The IDF Spokesman’s Office said “troops are scouring the area in search of the suspect. The IDF is performing inspections at all crossing points set up in the region.”

IDF troops near Itamar (Photo: Ido Erez)

Magen David Adom ambulance service teams pronounced the victims dead at the scene. MDA spokesman Zaki Heller said the ambulance service got a call around 1 am and dispatched large teams of paramedics to the area.

“When rescue forces entered the house they encountered a very difficult sight...There were five people there who were hurt. We could do nothing but pronounce them dead,” he said.

Paramedic Kabaha Muayua was among the first responders at the site and described the horrific scene he encountered.

“We could not help the first four stab victims. Following an inspection of the scene I spotted an infant of about three who still had a pulse. We engaged in lengthy resuscitation efforts but had to pronounce him dead,” he said. “The murder scene was shocking. Kids’ toys right next to pools of blood.”

Paramedic Gil Moscowitz, who serves as MDA’s director of operations, said teams dispatched to the home discovered “parents and three children who were brutally murdered.”

“The parents were lying next to each other in their room…we found three bodies in the master bedroom; the two parents and a baby,” he said.

‘Government must back settlers’

Yesha Council Chairman Danny Dayan, who arrived at the site, appeared shocked by the brutal attack.

“This is no doubt one of the most terrible attacks in recent years," he told the reporters on hand.

Dayan at entrance to Itamar Photo: Ido Erez

“Words cannot describe the extent of the horror and pain,” he said. “Those tempted to think that the Palestinians ceased their acts of murder see that they do not shy away from any tactic and any Jewish victims, regardless of how young they are.”

“The time has come for the government to regain its senses and start backing up the settlement enterprise, which remains vulnerable on the frontlines,” he said.

The settlement of Itamar, which is surrounded by Palestinian villages, has been the site of murderous attacks in the past. In June of 2002, a terrorist entered the community and opened fire, killing Rachel Shabo and three of her seven children, Neriya, Tzvika, and Avishai. Yossi Twito, who commanded the local security team at the settlement, was also shot to death in the attack.

Ynet News: The price of moderation

Op-ed: Supporters of two-state solution have sown seeds for the de-legitimization of Israel

Martin Sherman Published: 03.06.11, 19:13 / Israel Opinion

“…The maximum that any government of Israel will be ready to offer the Palestinians … is much less than the minimum that any Palestinian leader can accept.” Maj.-Gen. (res.) Giora Eiland, Febuary 2009

The foregoing citation from the former chairman of Israel's National Security Council underscores the essential futility of pursuing what has become to be regarded as the sine qua non for a resolution of the Palestinian issue and hence a lasting Middle East Peace - and by implication for eradicating the basic cause of friction between the West and Islam: The two state solution.

Future historians will be baffled as to how such a manifestly disastrous and unworkable concept came to be so widely and warmly embraced - not only by those who had a vested interested in feigning support for it, but by those who had a vested interest in exposing it as the duplicitous subterfuge it is. They will be mystified as to why - despite the fact that it entailed devastatingly detrimental consequences for all involved - both Arabs and Jews - it became the acknowledged hallmark of refined reason.

An instructive example was the recent defense, by prominent Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, of Israel's right to present its case which focused on the February 2010 incident at UC, Irvine, when Ambassador Michael Oren was prevented from addressing students by Palestinian hecklers. What made this particularly egregious in Dershowitz's eyes was the fact that Oren was "a moderate supporter of the two-state solution", thus, inadvertently perhaps, hinting that this would not be so had he opposed such an approach.

The point that many well-intentioned pro-Israeli advocates seem be to missing is that it is precisely "moderate supporters of the two-state solution" that have in large measure sown the seeds for the de-legitimization of Israel. While initially this contention may appear somewhat counter-intuitive, the logic behind it is unassailable. For, once the legitimacy of a Palestinian state is conceded, the de-legitimization of Israel cannot be avoided. The chain of reasoning for this is clear:

If the legitimacy of a Palestinian state is accepted, then necessarily any measures incompatible with its viability are illegitimate. However, Israel's minimum security requirements necessarily obviate the viability of Palestinian state.

Israel’s security requirements

Ever since Abba Eban's characterization of the 1967 Green Line as "Auschwitz Borders" it has been generally accepted that such a frontier cannot afford Israel acceptable levels of security – except under wildly optimistic and unrealistic assumptions. Iconic Labor party moderates such as Yigal Allon declared that "One does not have to a military expert to easily identify the critical defects of the armistice lines that existed until June 4, 1967," warning that for Israel they could herald "the physical extinction of a large part of its population and the political elimination of the Jewish state."

Shimon Peres concurred that the 1967 lines "constituted almost compulsive temptation to attack Israel from all directions …" and warned that "without a border which affords security, a country is doomed to destruction in war."

Significantly, both Allon and Peres derided the oft-aired claim that modern weaponry largely diminished the strategic value of geographical expanse and topological structures. Allon observed that it "... not only fail to diminish the value of strategic depth and natural barriers, but in fact enhance their importance; while Peres again concurred that with the advances in modern military prowess "the defensive importance of territorial expanse has increased."

This view has been endorsed by US military experts. A study conducted by the US Joint Chiefs of Staff to inform the president on the security concerns of Israel advised that "the security of Israel required Israel to receive parts of the territory of the West Bank as essential to its defense….(including) the prominent high ground running north-south."

Eugene Rostow, who as under-secretary of state was the senior US diplomat involved in the formulation of UN Security Council Resolution 242 and hence clearly familiar with the its intent, remarked that "all the studies of the Israeli security problem reached the same conclusion – from the security point of view, Israel must hold the high points in the West Bank and areas along the Jordan River."

The position of the Joint Chiefs of Staff was reaffirmed by a 1974 US Army Command and Staff College study which also concluded that Israel must control the high ground east of the central axis along the West Bank's mountain ridge.

In a recent study by a host of senior Israeli military and diplomatic figures - including a former IDF chief of staff, a former head of Military Intelligence and the National Security Council, and ambassadors to the UN, US and France – concluded that to maintain minimum security requirements Israel must retain control of the mountain range in Judea and Samaria that commands the coastal metropolis, the Jordan Valley, and the air space up to the Jordan River

So what do these minimum requirements, which require Israeli control of wide swathes of territory in the "West Bank," entail for the viability of Palestinian statehood?

Solomon’s wisdom

The answer is provided by an article, The Myth of Defensible Borders, in the January edition of Foreign Affairs. In it, the authors Omar Dajani and Ezzedine correctly point out that:

“A policy of defensible borders would...perpetuate the current sources of Palestinian insecurity, further delegitimizing an agreement in the public's eyes. Israel would retain the discretion to impose arbitrary and crippling constraints on the movement of people and goods... For these reasons, Palestinians are likely to regard defensible borders as little more than occupation by another name.”

Recent events in the Mid-East, with the specter of an ascendant Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan and Egypt, are hardly likely to contribute to reducing Israeli threat perception and thus serve only to heighten the incompatibility between a viable Palestinian state and a secure Israel.

Thus, by accepting the admissibility of a Palestinian state, one necessarily admits the inadmissibility of measures required to ensure Israeli security. Conversely any measures required to ensure the viability of Israeli security, necessarily negate the viability of a Palestinian state.

Accordingly for Israel to regain legitimacy, the notion of a Palestinian state must be discredited and removed from the discourse over the resolution of the Israel-Arab conflict.

This of course easier said than done. For rolling back the accumulated decades of distortion, deception and delusion that have become entrenched in the collective international consciousness will be a Herculean task. But the immense scale of the task cannot diminish the imperative of its implementation.

For the unpalatable - and unfashionable - truth is that between the (Jordan) River and the (Mediterranean) Sea, there can prevail (and eventually will prevail) either total Jewish sovereignty or total Arab sovereignty.

The side that will prevail is the side whose political acumen is the sharper and whose political will is the stronger. Indeed, never has the biblical wisdom of Solomon been more apt: Whoever agrees to divide that which is dear to him, will – at the end of the day- lose all of it. The Jews must realize that they can either be master of all the land west of the Jordan or none of it – and sooner that the better.