Posts by BarryShaw:
- Drive America out of Iraq.
- Create a Caliphate in Iraq.
- Use that as a base to attack other countries.
- Attack Israel.
Syrian attacks: Lessons and repercussions
April 11th, 2017
By Barry Shaw.
The news in early April circled two attacks in Syria.
One was the horrendous chemical weapons launched from Syrian warplanes. The world was sickened by the sight of dead and dying children and babies chocking on the poison that descended on them from a threatening Syrian sky.
The other was the decisive response when President Trump spoke for the outraged world by destroying the Syrian airbase from which the planes carried their lethal loads against the civilian population of Idlib.
Seventy died and hundreds were injured in the Syrian attack executed with the collusion of Russia.
Faced with global outrage, the Syrian regime pointed the finger of blame against Israel, the Martians, anyone except themselves.
Assad told a Croatian newspaper that he blamed Israel “for supporting terrorists” and that he was engaged in a “Syrian-Israeli war” because “the same terrorists fighting on Syrian soil serve Israel, even if they are not members of Israel’s standing army. Israel is a partner with the same goals as the United States, Turkey, France, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and other countries,” which basically points to Assad’s sense of isolation.
On April 5, the same day as the Syrian chemical attack against civilians in the Khan Sheikhoun district of Idlib, the Syrian delegate to the United Nations Disarmament Commission accused Israel of “intolerable and immoral” practices of introducing “nuclear terrorism, chemical, biological and radioactive terrorism” into the region.
Ever heard the expression “getting away with murder”? Play smoke and mirrors at the UN by blaming Israel of gross violations of, well, anything from global terrorism or the abuse of children’s and women’s rights. It diverts attention away from your crimes as you are slaughtering women and children.
In the face of such gross injustices perpetrated by regimes that have been emboldened by the dangerously vacuous foreign policy of the Obama Administration, the caring world took a collective sigh of relief when newly-elected President Trump stepped up to the plate and knocked out twenty warplanes and the destruction of one of Syria’s primary airbases. This warning shot told dictators everywhere that America is back after eight failed years of Obama.
On December 2, 2012, when Obama warned that “the use of chemical weapons is totally unacceptable,” he told Assad that, “if you make the tragic mistake of using this weapon you will accountable and there will be consequences.”
In August, 2013, in defiance of the American president, Assad launched a massive poison gas attack in Adra that reportedly killed more than 1,400 including over 500 children. The response form the Obama Administration was confined to a few vacuous words and zero action.
By June 2014, the Wall Street Journal was heralding the headline, “Removal of Chemical Weapons from Syria is Completed” as Obama sent out his envoys to declare; “We were able to find a solution that actually removed chemical weapons from the use of Syria in a way that the use of force would never have accomplished.”
This was Susan Rice on NPR’s ‘Morning Edition’ on January 16 this year. Why is it that whenever Susan Rice goes public she talks such crock? Remember Benghazi and the video? Remember Susan Rice saying that deserter Bergdahl served with ‘honor and distinction’?
Not that John Kerry was any brighter, or more honest. On ‘Meet the Press’ on July 20, 2014, he boasted that “we struck a deal where we got 100% of the Syrian chemical weapons out.”
Assad kept his chemical weapons stockpile. What else would a rough regime do when a naïve US Administration lamely relied on trust without extreme verification? They would lie and cheat. That’s what a rogue regime does in the face of supine naivety.
This inevitably brings us to consider what if the Obama Administration was as totally impotent and wrong about Iran’s nuclear capability as they have been proven to be over Assad’s chemical weapons? What then?
The specter of Adra and Idlib raises grave questions.
They were adamant there were no chemical weapons in Syria. They lined up in front of the media to brag about it. They were wrong. They were dead wrong.
In retrospect, the Obama doctrine was if you say it is so, it has to be so. The deadly result of that fallacy hangs heavily over Israel.
What if the mad mullahs of Tehran have, as we suspect, amassed stockpiles of nuclear material and are now being allowed to develop their long-range launch capabilities to deliver their version of Adra and Idlib to the civilians of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem?
The uncertainty of idle boasts from the previous US has led Israel to worry even more about the Iranian nuclear threat over our heads.
We never trusted the Obama-Kerry deal then. We sure as hell don’t trust it today. But that is not the only concern for Israelis.
What of the repercussions for Israel of the Trump strike in Syria?
There has been media talk of Syria or their proxies taking revenge against American targets for the destruction of their airbase.
Certainly, the vast majority of Israelis applauded the president’s decisive action. However, it is certain that there will be blow-back from one of Syria’s close allies, probably not Russia but surely Iran or Hezbollah.
Assad is not in a position to inflict damage on either America or Israel, but Iran and absolutely Hezbollah are. Any Israeli national security assessment must take into consideration the possibility of Hezbollah striking either an Israeli or Jewish target sometime this year.
Knowing Hezbollah’s past record, the target will probably not be in Israel or the States. They will select either a Jewish facility or Israeli embassy in South America, or against Israeli or Jewish tourist targets in Europe.
Hezbollah terrorists will give cover for Syria and Iran. They have always been a useful terror proxy for these rogue regimes. It would be hard for America or Israel to strike against Syria, Iran or even Lebanon should a deadly Hezbollah terror attack occur abroad.
Barry Shaw is the Senior Associate for Public Diplomacy at the Israel Institute for Strategic Studies. He is the author of the new book ‘1917. From Palestine to the Land of Israel.’
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The Temple Mount: The UNESCO Vote And Western Shame
October 16th, 2016
By Barry Shaw.
UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization voted on 13th October against the very principles that it was created.
UNESCO was founded in 1945 after World War Two to establish humanity’s moral and intellectual solidarity. It says it strives to build networks among nations to enable this kind of solidarity.
These were its founding principles. Oh, how have the mighty fallen.
With shocking disregard to historic evidence, it insulted and denied the heritage of two of the world’s greatest religions, Judaism and Christianity, when it passed a resolution that denied Jewish, and therefore Christian, ties to the Temple Mount
The October vote shattered thousands of years of faith, belief, historical, archaeological and literal fact.
Questions must be raised about why they made such an egregious mistake. Some will point to the Islamic regimes and undemocratic countries that dominate too many United Nations forums and are now dictating how they see the world.
But my beef is with the cynical politics of countries that should know better and must act with moral authority but went missing at this significant resolution.
It is time to name and shame those responsible for the passing of this historic upheaval.
It is hardly surprising to learn that among the nations that eagerly voted for the UNESCO principle that Jerusalem’s Temple Mount is strictly Islamic were Algeria, Bangladesh, China, Egypt, Iran, Lebanon, Malaysia, Morocco, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Oman, and Vietnam.
For the most part that is a given. They are all in denial, ignorant or uncaring about the Scriptures as geographic and historic evidence that the Temple Mount was a Jewish construct.
If the tale of Abraham sacrificing Isaac on Mount Moriah, the site on which the Temple was built is too far-fetched, how about the recorded histories of King Solomon and King David who built the first and second Temples together with the corroborating historic timeline that links both events?
And if that doesn’t convince you there is a treasure trove of artefacts that are scientifically proven to be intricately traceable back to specific periods that prove the authenticity of the Jewish temples and the events that unfolded there.
Russia voted in favor of the motion, ignoring the millions of Russian Orthodox Christians it insulted by its vote. But, shockingly, both South Africa and Mexico also voted that the Temple Mount is Islamic. Where was their Christian-based conscience?
Will we be hearing from the radical South African Christian leader, Archbishop Desmond Tutu who often struts the world stage spouting moral and humanitarian values now that the deep center of his religious heart has been surgically removed by UNESCO? For, if there was never a Jewish Temple on the Temple Mount there couldn’t have been a Jesus. Ergo – no Christianity!
Not only has UNESCO, with this vote, announced that the Old Testament is a lie, a historical fiction. It also declared that the New Testament is null and void.
There were only six nations that voted against the motion that the Temple Mount has always been and will continue to be an exclusive Islamic holy site were the United States, Great Britain, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Germany and Estonia. That’s it! Only six nations had the moral courage to deny an obvious and internationally impactful lie.
Perhaps the greatest shame lies with some of the nations that, with the moral cowardice and political cynicism we have come to expect from them in other UN chambers, decided to go along with the intolerant and stupid regimes by abstaining.
These nations included Albania, Argentina, SPAIN, FRANCE, Ghana, Cameroon, GREECE, Guinea, Haiti, India, ITALY, Japan, Kenya, South Korea, SWEDEN, Togo and Ukraine.
I know that Europe was once a Christian continent but I did not suspect that the religious disorientation of countries like Spain, France, Sweden and Greece would lead them to not look at the meaning of this UNESCO resolution and vote against it for the lie that it is. Have they really abandoned their Christian origins so much that they have already disowned them? Perhaps Sweden will now remove the cross from its national flag?
As for Italy, what can I say? Together with Spain, they were the strong upholders of Catholicism, the Jews will say to an intolerant and anti-Semitic degree. Jews suffered badly in the past in both these countries. We recall the Spanish Expulsion and Inquisition of its Jews, a genocide inspired by the leaders of the Catholic Church.
But Italy? I invite all Italians, especially their politicians and diplomats that enabled the passing of this obscene vote to revisit the Roman Forum in Rome and stand under the Arch of Titus to look at the ancient carvings depicting the Roman rape of the Jewish Temple. They will see the Hebrew slaves being forced to carry the Jewish relics they plundered from Jerusalem during their conquest, pillage and destruction of our Jewish Temple.
How could they abstain from this motion? Were they reliving yet another plunder of the Jewish Temple by cohorting with the Islamic world? For that’s what it looks like to me.
Can we now expect the Pope, as head of the Catholic Church, speak up to denounce UNESCO? Can we expect to hear the voices of any Christian leader as we are starting to hear those from rabbis in every branch of Judaism?
The shame of UNESCO displays itself in the myopia of countries that once were considered “enlightened nations.”
It seems the light of truth and courageous honesty has dimmed in the democratic world. Will we see a new reformation and a return to the moral leadership that the world so desperately needs right now as a result of the profoundly disturbing lurch of UNESCO that has failed in its educational, scientific and cultural responsibilities?
Don’t hold your breath.
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The Death of Progressivism and Israel
August 26th, 2016
By Barry Shaw.
In my book “Fighting Hamas, BDS and Anti-Semitism” I detail the discovery of a new strain of anti-Semitism that I noticed in Europe, namely the urge by haters to drive a wedge between the local Jew and the Jewish State.
I wrote of several examples of the modern form of Jew hatred in the section entitled “The Malmo Symptom.”
I named it that to reflect the experience suffered by the local Jews of Malmo when their mayor, Ilmar Reepalu, insisted that they must “denounce Israeli violations against the civilian population in Gaza. Instead, it decides to hold a (pro-Israel) demonstration in the Grand Square, which could send the wrong signal.”
This veiled threat that his Jews must toe his anti-Israel line, at a time when Israeli civilians (some related to the Malmo Jews) were being targeted by intense Hamas rocket bombardments from Gaza, is shockingly revealing.
It was followed by the vandalizing of Malmo’s main synagogue and a physical attack on Rabbi Shneur Kesselman as he was walking away from the synagogue.
A similar attack left Rabbi Binyamin Jacobs as the victim in Holland when anti-Israel thugs targeted him as rockets were falling on Israel in 2014.
In the book, I predicted that this Jew-hating virus would jump the Atlantic and metastasize in America. I anticipated this would inevitably happen based on the rapid radicalization that is rampant on American campuses. Added to that, we now have the anarchy of the inner cities and the polarization of the American political system which would be controlled by radical far-left rabble-rousers.
Linking the fate of Jews to Israel in a disparaging anti-Semitic manner is not new. What is sinister is the moral tone taken by Israel haters against Jews as they insist that Jews must decide what side they are on. This means they must be anti-Israel, or their participation in liberal and progressive campaigns they care about will be blocked. This is the pernicious spread of modern-day political anti-Semitism into America.
The intolerance of the anti-Israel, anti-Jew, bias reverses the progressive movement into a regressive radicalism.
This regressive radicalism is epitomized by the anarchist Black Lives Matter group who decided to become joined at the hip with the BDS movement. They have rejected Jewish activists who fail to share their false rhetoric that a “genocide is taking place against the Palestinian people.” Rabid propaganda and lies is part of the BLM political platform, and if you stand with Israel you can have no place advocating for better lives for Afro-Americans in the BLM movement.
Similarly, the National Women’s Studies Association BDS resolution stated that “this resolution makes it explicit that BDS is a feminist issue…that one cannot call themselves a feminist without taking a stand on Palestine.”
This makes it difficult for women who love Israel to be members of the NWSA without feeling hypocritical.
As Dershowitz rightly pointed out in his stinging article, apparently one can call oneself a feminist without taking a stand on Syria, Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, or any other nation that grossly violates women, gay and human rights, but not if you support Israel or point out Palestinian should follow Israel’s shining example when it comes to women’s and gay rights.
The sheer hypocrisy and blind anti-Jewish state hatred of the intolerant masters of the so-called progressive movement was demonstrated when BDS activists together with their Black Lives Matter henchmen broke up a LGBTQ gay pride event because it featured a presentation given by an Israeli gay group.
Apparently, you can’t be proudly gay if you are a proud supporter of Israel.
Perhaps one of the more hypocritical organizations is PACBI (Palestinian Academic and Cultural Boycott). This group does not boycott Palestinians. It boycotts Israeli academics and attempts to block cultural or academic participation by Israelis.
This organization, which is firmly based on BDS against Israel for perceived wrongs against Palestinian Arabs, has nothing to say, and take no action, against Jordan, a country that is clearly guilty of the most sustained apartheid policies against the Palestinians. In Jordan, millions of Arabs who profess to be Palestinians have been kept in refugee status for seventy years, into their fifth generation.
Yet PACBI has nothing to say, no protest, and no boycotts, against a country practicing apartheid against the people they claim to represent. Could it be that they fail to act because that country is not the Jewish state? PACBI is shedding crocodile tears and is only using the Palestinian cause as a club to beat Israel.
What must be done? Clearly, the first thing that open-minded liberal thinkers can do is to distance themselves from movements whose bias and intolerance is the antithesis of all liberal values.
If hate and bias, built on propaganda and lies, is the platform of groups, organizations or associations that bar you from pursuing your values, or picks on one country and one country only to the exclusion of any other, these bodies should be outlawed, not pandered or supported
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The Myth of Palestinian Sovereignty Claims.
May 17th, 2016By Barry Shaw.
The Israeli Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), of which I am a proud member and the Senior Associate for Public Diplomacy, is dedicated to presenting hard facts to politicians, diplomats, journalists, think tanks and the general public on issues relating to Israel and its dispute with the Arab world and the broader international community.
By addressing reality and truth, rather than attaching itself to current utopian fantasies in pursuit of peace, IISS presents clear-eyed analysis of problems and causes and, by doing so, lays bare the shallow proposals meant to solve the Israeli-Arab conflicts.
One such myth is the international desire to create a Palestinian state. None of the diplomatic proposers have ever addressed the official positions of the dysfunctional Palestinian political bodies on what constitutes the territorial sovereignty of such a Palestine.
The so-called ‘moderate’ arm of Palestinian politics, the Palestinian Authority, claims to operate under the Palestine National Charter.
It is enlightening to learn over what sovereign territory the Palestinian hierarchy intended to rule. It is even more interesting to learn which territory they rejected as being any part of a future state.
While brushing aside offensive statements in their 1964 National Charter that Israel is illegal, that the Balfour Declaration and the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine are all frauds, that Zionism is racism, statements that should automatically disqualify them from statehood, the articles dealing with sovereign territory, are a guide to the perplexed.
Article 2 reads “Palestine with its boundaries at the time of the British Mandate (the aforementioned ‘fraud’) is a regional indivisible unit.”
Having disclaimed the UN Partition Plan (UN Resolution 181) as “illegal,” an eye-brow raising read is Article 24 of the Palestine National Charter which contradicts Article 2 by, amazingly, rejecting the West Bank and Gaza as being part of a sovereign Palestinian state!
Article 24: “This Organization does not exercise any regional sovereignty over the West Bank in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, and on the Gaza Strip”
It is stunning to remind ourselves that the Palestinians not only had no intention of claiming the West Bank and Gaza as part of their future homeland, but they expressly and officially excluded them from any part of a sovereign Palestine!
They did so because, at the time, they were under the patronage of the Arab world. The Palestinian leadership presented itself as a national liberation movement. As Yasser Arafat said, they saw themselves as part of the Pan-Arab movement to destroy the Jewish State of Israel.
“The PLO is fighting Israel in the name of Pan-Arabism. What you call Jordan is nothing more than Palestine,” Arafat said dismissingly to Italian journalist, Arianna Palazzi, in 1970.
So here we have Palestinians rejecting the West Bank and Gaza and admitting they are fighting to destroy Israel under the flag of Pan-Arabism, not as a national liberation movement. Could this be the reason they have consistently rejected generous offers by Israel for a two-state solution in return for recognition of Israel’s right to exist in peace and security as the Jewish state?
This leaves only one question hanging in the air.
What is the intended target and sovereign territory so desirous for Palestinians?
Their National Charter was redrafted in 1968 and, in many ways, became more radical and threatening than the original version.
Territorially, they claim every inch of Palestine as it was under the British Mandate. In other words, no Israel.
They devote articles in denying the legitimacy of the Jewish people and Zionism, thereby demonizing and rejecting their neighbor’s rights to self-determination.
They have articles lauding the use of terrorism (“armed struggle” and “commando actions”) to achieve their aims.
They boldly state that the UN Resolution 181, known as the Partition Plan, and the establishment of the State of Israel “are entirely illegal.”
After trashing Jewish rights to exist in peace, and in a shocking twist of hypocrisy, their Article 24 states, “The Palestinian people believe in the principles of justice, freedom, sovereignty, self-determination, human dignity, and in the rights of all peoples to exercise them.
All peoples, it seems, except the Jewish people in Israel.
Their Charter continues with its jingoistic violence repeating the calls for a war of liberation, fighting and carrying arms.
In 2003, a Permanent Constitution was drafted which claims that Jerusalem has to be the capital of Palestine. The question is why? They already have two de-facto capitals. One in Gaza City, the other in Ramallah. Why a third?
No further reference to territory was escribed into this Basic Law draft. Neither has this draft been accepted into Palestinian law. This is mainly due to the domestic conflict between Fatah in Ramallah and Palestinian Hamas controlling Gaza.
The Hamas Charter pledges its allegiance to the Muslim Brotherhood and is dedicated to the destruction of Israel. Its anti-Semitism is there in its opening preamble;
“Our struggle against the Jews is very great and very serious.”
Note it says “the Jews” not “Israelis.”
Article 7 pledges Palestinian Islamic Hamas to the global Caliphate and to its everlasting anti-Semitism. Its final sentence warns;
“The Day of Judgment will not come until Moslems fight the Jews, when the stones and the trees will say, ‘O Moslems, O Abdulla! There is a Jew hiding behind me. Come out and kill him!’”
Article 15 calls for Jihad and the liberation of Palestine, the eradication of Israel, which is the responsibility and duty of every Muslim, according to Article 14.
Everything to do with the establishment and existence of Israel is “illegal” and null and void in the eyes of Palestinian Hamas. Israel, according to the Hamas Charter and every word from Hamas leaders, must be utterly destroyed.
Finally, if anyone assumes that the creation of a Palestinian state, on whatever stretch of territory it is granted and approved by the international community, will result in Middle East peace, they should think again.
By the ballot, or by the bullet, Hamas will usurp power in a future Palestine. They say so, in their Charter. Hamas pays lip service to the Palestinian Liberal Organization in Article 27, but end with this ominous note;
“Secularism completely contradicts religious ideology. Attitudes, conducts and decisions stem from ideologies.… With all our appreciation for the Palestinian Liberation Organization…we are unable to exchange the present or future Islamic Palestine with the secular idea…Whoever takes his religion lightly is a loser.”
This then is the Palestine that a dangerously misguided international community, foolishly led by the United States and Europe, is pressing to establish.
As an example, France recently denied Jewish heritage to Jerusalem’s Temple Mount in an anti-Israel UNESCO resolution.
When secular Europe denies not only thousands of years of Jewish belonging, but also Christian scriptures, to appease the Islamic world and placate a Palestinian cause in the name of peace, it paves the way to future Middle East turmoil as a result of their continuing dhimmi attitude to Muslim demands.
There is nothing in the stated intentions and agenda of either faction of the Palestinian divide lead us with any confidence or clarity that current attempts to create a Palestinian state, in any borders, will result in peace.
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The Insanity of a Palestinian State
April 14th, 2016By Barry Shaw.
Incitement and anti-Semitic hate spewing out of the mouths of Palestinian leaders, empty words designed to perpetuate Palestinian self-promotion as the perennial victim when, in truth, they are only the victims of their own emptiness, the constant eruption of violence against Israelis from Palestinian Arabs raised to hate Jews and destroy Israel.
If anyone is so utterly unworthy of statehood it is the Palestinian Arabs.
Fraudulent history, internal divisiveness, wastage of massive global assistance, the diversion of international funding to propaganda purposes, incitement, lessons of hate, the financing and support of terrorism, their predilection to violence and the total inability to display to the world any respect for their neighbors, whether it be Israel from the Palestinian Authority, or to Egypt from Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
How can any international diplomat or journalist worth his salt in honesty make out a case to grant this dysfunctional, inefficient, unwilling entity sovereignty?
A brief explanation of Palestinian terrorism shows the inanity of such a proposition. The spectrum and ideologies of Palestinian terrorism range from Hamas and Islamic Jihad, which are both Islamic terror organizations pledging allegiance to the creation of an Islamic state under Sharia law, to the Marxist PFLP (Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine). This is the largest group in the Palestine Liberation Organization of which most of the Palestinian Authority leaders, including Mahmoud Abbas, belong. Both terror organizations are openly bent on the destruction of Israel and have founding charters declaring this aim.
If you think that the Palestinians are not all about terror, think again. Just as Arafat was the commander in chief of all the Palestinian terror groups, so Abbas and his henchmen, including Jibril Rajoub are intimately involved with the minutiae of the terror groups under the wing of the PLO.
So the establishment of a Palestinian state would comprise two major terror organizations, one Islamic, the other Communist, currently at logger-heads with each other but united in their desire to see an end of Israel, regardless of signed agreements. And yet, the world has nothing to say about this apart from their ridiculous belief that the creation of Palestine is the only way to achieve peace!
Puzzling!
A little known dangerous fact that more knowledgeable two-staters prefer to keep under wraps is that in the case of Mahmoud Abbas stepping down as Palestinian president or dying while in office, his replacement would be the speaker of the Palestinian parliament – and he happens to be a member of HAMAS!
This is supposed to be for an interim period, but we know that Abbas was elected for a 4 year term and that was way back in 2004!
So much for Palestinian obligations to abide by the rule of law and respect the democratic process. Can we expect any better from Hamas? I think not.
Can anyone doubt another certainty wrapped in silence that, either by the ballot or by the bullet, Hamas will take control of this new Palestine? So I ask my diplomatic contacts, is this the new peaceful state you have expended your energies on establishing for several decades?
By the way, the Palestinian parliament hasn’t sat since 2007.
Some democracy!
This is the Palestine that naive liberal Westerners are so frenetic to create? Give me a break!
Marwan Barghouti sits in an Israeli jail. He is serving five consecutive life sentences for orchestrating the murder of Israeli civilians in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Givat Zeev, and injured others.
The Palestinian Fatah party of Mahmoud Abbas calls his imprisonment a “war crime.” Now the Palestinians are running a global campaign to have this unrepentant murderer nominated to receive the Nobel Peace Prize no less.
Why not, the Norwegians gave one to arch-terrorist Yasser Arafat who launched his fatal intifada after flying to Oslo to pick up his award.
This campaign on behalf of Barghouti is supported by Adolfo Perez Esquivel, an Argentinian who is called a pacifist and a human rights activist and who was himself awarded the Peace Prize back in 1980. You really couldn’t make up such an insane story.
Barghouti is also touted as the leading candidate to replace Abbas and has been endorsed by Saeb Erekat.
Is this the best alternative the Palestinians have for their next president? Well, sadly, yes it is, unless they vote for Hamas.
Barghouti’s election to be the next Palestinian president, irrespective of him receiving the nonsensical Nobel Peace Prize, will further perpetuate the conflict.
In the meantime, the Palestinian on Palestinian violence continues. A Palestinian Fatah official, Fathi Zaydan, was killed by a bomb in Mieh Mieh, Lebanon, in a camp operated by UNWRA. This place has been the scene of numerous violent disputes between rival Palestinian factions. In Gaza, members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (a title which stands for the elimination of Israel) burnt images of Mahmoud Abbas.
When they are killing Israelis they are killing each other. Several thousand Palestinians have been killed by other Palestinians due to their internal political and religious enmity? Palestinian society is, within itself, divisive and violent.
If the international community wishes to continue promoting the benefits of a Palestinian state it really needs to address the deep Arab schisms that make such a notion not only impossible to execute, but insanely impossible to execute.
Putting aside the moral inversion of Western governments applying one-sided pressure on the only liberal democracy in the Middle East in order to establish another Arab state that cannot decide which way it wants to go, one need question why apparently reasonable logical-thinking European diplomats can abstain from United Nations resolutions brought to the vote by Palestinian-supporting regimes proposing that Israel is the world’s worst offender on women’s and children’s rights as well of other obnoxious allegations.
Why do they not, in all honesty, object to such slanders and vote against these preposterous proposals? Where is their political morality? Why do they close their eyes to these obsessive assaults on Israel?
Currying favor to these Israel-hating regimes is not an option for those who try to tell us of their commitment to a better Middle East.
Neither is the lack of interest in the diplomatic world of the consequences of a Palestinian state gone wrong. Too many diplomats have told me that “it is up to the parties to make an agreement work.”
Sorry, not good enough! They cannot force their “solution” to the Palestinian problem on the parties and simply walk away when the consequences hit the proverbial fan. It will be primarily Israelis, but also the Arab citizens of this errant forced-birth state, that will inevitably suffer those consequences, and Israel would suffer them from a strategically weaker position that where we are right now.
All in all, the consequences of the establishment of a Palestinian state, based on the reality of Palestinian politics and Palestinian society, are too intensely frightening to be seriously considered.
Barry Shaw is the Senior Associate for Public Diplomacy at the Israel Institute for Strategic Studies. He is the author of ‘Fighting Hamas, BDS and Anti-Semitism’ and was the co-founder of the Netanya Terror Victims Organization.
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Europe – and echoes from the past.
November 9th, 2015
By Barry Shaw.
As a million anti-Semitic, anti-Zionist migrants flood Europe they find a host continent in support of their anti-Israel passion.
As Jews commemorate Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass, when Nazi brown-shirts burnt Jewish books, burnt down synagogues with Jews inside, and led a boycott against Jewish businesses; European politicians are drafting a plan to stick another Yellow Star on Jewish products from Judea & Samaria.
They call it ‘labeling West Bank products’ but this takes no account of the fact that, as a result of any permanent peace agreement which is impossible given the anti-Semitic, rejectionist and violent character of the Palestinians, both the Barkan and Mishor Adumim industrial areas will remain as an integral part of Israel.
These factories give gainful employment to hundreds of Arabs who work alongside Israeli Jews.
Yet, the European Union seeks to brand Israel with a discrimination they fail to employ against any other country.
They take no consideration of the fact that they were witnesses, in effect guarantors, of the Oslo Accords that gave Israel the authorized civil and military administration over what is known as Area C in the disputed territories.
When their double standard and delegitimization tactics are used exclusively against the Jewish state it can only been seen by fair-minded thinkers as a resurrection of European Kristallnacht.
Some fair-minded European politicians joined their Israeli counterparts in Berlin to forge a push-back against the impending EU policy against Israel.
Although European bureaucrats would deny their steps are in any way anti-Semitic their blatant double standards does raise questions.
Why is it that they were so passionately against the notion that a major city like Berlin should be divided and celebrated the fall of the Berlin Wall as a historically significant event, yet they are equally passionate about dividing another major city – Jerusalem?
Anti-Semitism is now rife throughout Europe. It is targeted mainly against Israel. It seems, from an Israeli perspective, there can be no other explanation of European politicians turning their backs on facts and Israel while pressing an agenda that puts back peace and any chance of a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, except it is forged out of a biased political mind-set they fail to apply to other global trouble-spots.
The Palestinian mind-set, by the way, is the same that is shared by the vast majority of Europe’s new immigrants.
As they grudgingly accept hundreds of thousands of Middle East migrants that they admit will put an insufferable strain on their future, they make demands of Israel to surrender essential security and territory to accommodate an enemy bent on our destruction. This also would put an insufferable strain on our future.
It is up to Israel to display the wit and the will to resist this European pressure, because the Europeans, as with much of what they are doing to themselves and to us, are simply wrong.
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Israel is the Rainbow nation
May 5th, 2015
By Barry Shaw.
Much fuss has been made about the Israeli decision to block Blade Nzinmande, the South African minister for higher education, from visiting Bir Zeit University.
It must be noted that this Communist Party leader supported the suspension of academic cooperation between Johannesburg University and Ben Gurion University, so this education minister can hardly be described as a shining example of free academic exchange. On the contrary, he is a champion of the dogma of academic boycotts.
What makes his example particularly harmful is that the boycott of Ben Gurion’s joint research with South Africa damages this minister’s own people.
The academic cooperation, which began in 2009, centered on helping South Africans improve their water purification and micro-algal biotechnology research. South Africa has a desperate shortage of good drinking water.
Kenneth Meshoe, a rare voice for Israel and a tireless worker for his people in the South African parliament, told me last year of politicians in his country whose hatred for Israel outweigh the best interests of their own people. Nzinmande is one of them.
Nzinmande advocates the removal of the Israeli ambassador to South Africa, and the BDS movement is threatening to march on Pretoria and physically eject Israel’s representative from their country. Such is the level of diplomacy that the education minister employs.
What healthy relationship is possible with a South Africa whose leading politicians and diplomats look on Hamas as a liberation organization? Hamas is the radical Islamic regime that controls Gaza and has a charter that threatens to destroy my country and kill Jews in the name of Allah and jihad, the same ideology that is conducting the wholesale slaughter of Christians in Africa and the Middle East. Despite this, and despite him living under a barrage of Hamas rockets last year, the view that Hamas is a liberation organization is still shared by the current South African Ambassador to Israel.
You know that BDS is bankrupt when they have to invite a Palestinian terrorist to help their fund-raising efforts in South Africa. This is what happened when Leila Khaled visited that country in February of this year.
Khaled successfully hi-jacked a TWA plane in 1969 and then tried to hi-jack an El Al flight between Amsterdam and New York in 1970. She was holding two hand grenades as she was tackled by alert Israeli air marshals.
In South Africa, they call this type of person, ‘a freedom fighter.’
The BDS movement and Palestinians such as Khaled work, not for a two–state solution, but for the total destruction of Israel, but this did not prevent Khaled from being warmly welcomed by Home Affairs minister Malusi Gigaba as she landed in his country. She was also received as a special guest at the South African parliament.
People like South Africa’s Archbishop Desmond Tutu regularly and falsely calls Israel ‘an apartheid state.’ They are unable to get past the empty slogans and realize that it is the Palestinians they favor against a liberal democratic freedom-loving Israel that practices an apartheid and an anti-Semitism of massive proportions.
People such as Tutu need to learn that the flight of Christians from Palestinian-controlled territory has nothing to do with Israeli occupation, but has an awful lot to do with how Palestinian occupation is practiced. Ramallah, the capital of the Palestinian Authority, had a 20% Christian population when Israel handed the town over to Arafat’s PLO. Now the Christian population is less than 2%. If this fall in numbers had to do with ‘occupation’ how is it that the Muslim population of Ramallah has grown, not shrunk?
So I ask, who is doing the ethnic cleansing when it comes to Christians living threatened lives in Palestinian-controlled societies. This is a question that the Archbishop, and other South African Christians, ought to be asking.
The time has come for South Africa to take a more level-headed world view as its post-Mandela reputation takes a beating at the hands of his inheritors.
South Africa prides itself on being the Rainbow nation. As I told an audience in South Africa a couple of years ago, if there is one country, north of Cape Town, up the huge continent of Africa and across the crescent sweep of the Middle East, that can be called ‘The Rainbow Nation’ that country can only be Israel.
Israel in a very dark part of the world is, indeed, the Rainbow Nation.
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Europeans are trapped in their self-made loop of political and security incorrectness
January 15th, 2015
By Barry Shaw.
When European countries voluntarily surrender territory and control to a strong immigrant minority that, unlike the once immigrant Jewish community, refuses to integrate, you know that country is on its way to disastrous consequences and in Paris we recently saw where these consequences can lead.
Politicians in other countries threaten that Jews cannot remain Jewish and also be members of their nations. This has been heard in Greece, Hungary, Sweden and other European countries.One of those consequences is that, with rising anti-Semitism, a part of the intolerance of a growing intransigent minority, Jews are fearful, unsettled, and a growing number are packing their bags and leaving. This is a major loss to the host country as expressed by French Prime Minister, Manuel Valls, who said, “If 100,000 Jews leave, France will not be France.”
In other cases, organizations and politicians have attempted to drive a wedge between their Jews and Israel. Perhaps the most notorious was the mayor of the Swedish town of Malmo who threatened his Jews with abandoning their support for Israel during anti-Israel demonstrations in his town. I named such a phenomenon, which has spread to places such as Britain and Ireland, as the “Malmo Symptom.”
Jews in Britain, it seemed, had to decide if they were Jewish or pro-Israel. They couldn’t be both
This is a new form of anti-Semitism that targets the identity and sympathy of Jews to Israel, the Jewish state. We saw this with the Tricycle Theater in London who refused to host the UK Jewish Film Festival because the Jewish organizers were receiving partial funding from the Israeli Embassy. Jews in Britain, it seemed, had to decide if they were Jewish or pro-Israel. They couldn’t be both.
Depressingly, the Malmo Symptom showed itself in the Irish Holocaust Memorial Trust which demanded that no mention of Israel or the Jewish state must be made in the upcoming Holocaust Memorial ceremony in February. Fortunately this was rescinded following widespread objections.
Jews in Europe feel a triple danger. They feel vulnerable to the anti-Semitic threats and insults from sections of the population, increasingly from the Muslim community. They feel that their political representatives are more concerned with the growing Muslim constituency and their pleas are ignored. They see this expressed in the anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian stance of politicians at local and national level.
They are justified in viewing this as a metaphor for their isolation within their own country. In both cases, European politicians seem to favor the Muslim side against the Jews in their words and resolutions. This increases the feeling of isolation and vulnerability of European Jews. Both they and Israel see Europe turning against them. If European countries want to keep their Jews they have to improve their relationship with Israel
If European countries want to keep their Jews they have to improve their relationship with Israel. To understand the fears of Israel they need to understand the reluctance of Israel to take dangerous steps for peace against a threatening, anti-Semitic and violent Palestinian entity.
To understand the fears of their Jews they need to understand their trepidation of a threatening, anti-Semitic and violent Muslim population.
They have underestimated, or closed their eyes, to the danger of a minority of their Muslim population and their leaders who are radicalized and anti-Semitic, just as they closed their eyes to the dangers of a minority of the Palestinian population and their leaders who are radicalized and anti-Semitic.
The similarities of what both European Jews and Israel are facing from incoherent and appeasing European politicians are too stark to ignore. Both Israel and European Jews have reached their tipping points.
Israel is not prepared to continue the impossible task of peace talks with a rejectionist, anti-Semitic, corrupt and violent adversary under unilateral pressure from a Europe that gives the Palestinians a free pass and an inordinate amount of funding. European Jews are not prepared to continue to quake in fear while their politicians are incapable of protecting them and they hear their politicians and media put mounting pressure on Israel, giving the Palestinians a free pass as they do with their intolerant Muslim population. In both cases, the one-sided approach of European countries has become too painful a burden to bear. Jews and Israel are objecting to this bias.
It is time for European leaders to reform their incorrect political thinking and give both Israel and their Jews a break which must include their full support. They must review their faulty policies. They must regain their domestic control, their political equilibrium, and see both their Jews and Israel through fresh eyes. Both are shining examples of enlightenment and liberal democracy and must be supported. The concerns of both must be taken on board as never before. If pressure needs to be applied it has to be against the intolerant, rejectionist and violent part of the community. In Europe it is the section of society that refuses to integrate, rejects the norms of the host country and adopts violence. In the case of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict it is the side that rejects solutions and concessions, refuses to recognize the Jewish state and adopts violence.
Proof that both Israel and European Jews see things differently from European politicians is evidenced by the increasing number of Jews who are leaving their home countries in which they feel growing despair and hopelessness. They share the concerns of Israel in a dangerous Middle East and a failing and weakening Europe having experienced it firsthand in the countries of their birth.
Despite this, they find hope and protection in the strength and determination of the Jewish State of Israel, and many are finding redemption in a new life in a country that welcomes them with open arms.
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The danger of Obama’s strategy of linking Iran and ISIS for Israel
October 18th, 2014
By Barry Shaw.
In fifty days of Gaza conflict, Israel launched 5500 precision air strikes against terror targets. In 70+ days the US launched less than 400 strikes in Iraq and Syria against ISIS. Why?
It’s not lack of planes and fire power. It’s a lack of political will, despite all the rhetoric of having to degrade and defeat the Islamic State rampage and mayhem.
Part of the reason for Obama’s reticence in attacking ISIS with more force seems to be contained in a think tank policy document he commissioned entitled ”The Iran Project. Iran and its Neighbors. Regional Implications for US Policy of a Nuclear Agreement.”Despite Obama’s late decision to launch air strikes he has only tickled the enemy. He could do more. He won’t. He doesn’t want to. What is the reason for this procrastination?
Experts who signed off on this document include Thomas Pickering, Brent Scowcroft, Daniel Kurtzer, Nicholas Platt, and Zbigniew Brzezinski.
The document mistakenly sees the possibility of using ISIS to drive Iran and Israel closer together in a common cause. This misguided strategic fantasy is described thus,“If ISIS were to continue to progress, Israel and Iran might find themselves with a common enemy.”
The dream of bringing Iran and Israel together seems so devoutly to be wished by the Obama Administration that it surmounts any political reality to facts on the ground.
Could this be the reason that America has not applied the full measure of air power at its disposal in killing and driving back ISIS?
If it is, it’s dangerous and false thinking. It appears as if the US president is cynically allowing thousands to be slaughtered in front of our eyes for a strategy that will never happen.US president is cynically allowing thousands to be slaughtered in front of our eyes for a strategy that will never happen
Does he, or his experts, really think that Iran and Israel will join his feckless coalition out of joint fear of ISIS? If so, he is dead wrong.
In contrast to President Obama’s recent statements, the document does call ISIS a state of sorts. “ISIS is no longer just aterrorist group but represents a hybrid state/non-state threat.”
The top strategic experts explain themselves thus,“In parts of the territory it now controls, ISIS exercises akind of governance: it collects revenue, executes brutal Islamist law, has apolice force, andcontrols a jihadist conventional army.”
The only force that is bravely standing and confronting ISIS on the ground are the Kurds, and yet Obama is still not arming them directly. He should. Instead, the documents points to the US Administration playing a double game by recruiting not only Iran but also Tehran’s ally Assad to fight against ISIS;
“Syrian forces should be urged by Tehran to attack ISIS directly in Syria. Syrian military commanders, security personnel, and top government officials should be motivated to avoid an ISIS victory.”
However you read this, the Administration think tank policy document is calling on the White House to back an Iranian, Assad, even Hezbollah coalition to fight ISIS in Syria.
A nuclear agreement with Iran runs through the document. It is the center piece of a US Middle East policy. At parts it reads like an illusion world of smoke and mirrors. “A nuclear agreement could help the United States and its allies find common ground with Iran for a creative response to ISIS, although the United States must avoid seeming to ally itself with the Shi’a and thereby enhance the appeal of radicals to Sunnis.”
It is hard to comprehend a policy in which the ISIS threat is seemingly put off until after the signing of a nuclear agreement with Iran on the supposition that it will make for closer buddies between the rival states in the region. As if Saudi Arabia and Erdogan would link arms with Ayatollahs and Assad to defeat ISIS. If only! Putting off a strong direct attack on ISIS until after a nuclear deal with Iran is dangerous wishful thinking, not foreign policy.
The mixing of two unrelated issues, a nuclear deal with Iran and the threat of ISIS, leads to a muddling Middle East strategy. The dangers implied here is that it is impossible to defeat ISIS without a nuclear deal, and from that stems the desire to rush through a nuclear deal in order to solve the ISIS issue.
“The degradation and defeat of ISIS presents an opportunity for America to work even-handedly with the nations of the region to achieve a common goal. Cooperation with Iran would thus take place within a larger regional grouping that should include the Gulf States and Turkey in addition to the Government of Iraq.”
The reason this is doomed to failure is in the description of the nuclear deal that the Administration is trying to reach. It talks of “limiting” the Iranian program, “lengthening”the time for Iran to reach nuclear breakout, and “reducing” the risk that Iran “might”acquire nuclear weapons. It does not talk of stopping Iran’s march to a nuclear weapon.
Israel sees ISIS creeping closer to its border. It can visibly see the Al-Nusra terror group on the Golan Heights. ISIS is not far away, and the document states the threat for Israel;
“The ‘Islamic State’ declared an end tothe 1916 British and French-imposed Sykes—Picot borders, and announced that its next goal would be to free Palestine.”
This threat would give Israel a justification to get into the fight. If it did, it is more likely to assist the Kurds than get into bed with Iran, as the document wrongly suggests. Albeit indirectly arming and trained the brave Kurds, before the ISIS threat becomes a face-to-face confrontation for Israel, could become a necessity for Israel.
There is a case to be made for Israel to arm the Kurds, particularly in Iraq. The Kurds are as close to America and sympathetic to Israel’s plight in a radical region. They are more democratically minded than other players in the region. They have proven themselves to be the only courageous fighters on the ground in Iraq.
Israel sees convergence of interests with Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Egypt over the growing threat of the ISIS brand of Islamic terror. As happened with its conflict against Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza, it is reasonable to assume that these countries will turn a blind eye to Israel arming the Kurds.
Israel looks on the Kurds with great sympathy, but it could do more. Helping them overcome their confrontation with ISIS would be one way for Israel to demonstrate to the world what a small, but courageous and just, coalition can achieve in a regional war against radical Islamic terror.
As the document states, “if allowed to consolidate its control over large parts of Syria and Iraq, ISIS would also represent a terrorist threat to the American homeland.”
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The ISIS conquest of Iraq leads to Jerusalem
June 21st, 2014
By Barry Shaw.
As we witness the brutalization of Iraq by the ISIS terror organization consider this. This Islamic march of death leads to Jerusalem.
The leading phenomenon that resulted from the call of the people in the Arab world against unsatisfactory leaders has been their cause being hijacked by insurgent jihadi terrorists. We saw that in Libya with the fall of Gadhafi. We saw it in Egypt where Mubarak was replaced by the Muslim Brotherhood, in this case an in-house jihadi movement. We see it in Syria where the people’s cry against Assad has led to an influx of Al-Qaida type groups vying for dominance. Now we witness the fall of Iraq by a vicious Islamic terror regime against which Al-Qaida pales into moderation.
The Islamic State of Iraq (ISIS) is headed by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. He transformed a few small terror cells into the most brutal and lethal terror group on earth. Mercy is not in this man’s vocabulary. Abu Bakr picked up the mantle after Abu Omar al Baghdadi was killed in a joint U.S.-Iraqi operation in 2010.
Al-Qaida in Iraq was under the leadership of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi who, in a 2005 letter to the head of Al-Qaida, Ayman al-Zawahiri, put the aims of Al-Qaida in Iraq into four stages;
When both al-Zarqawi and al-Baghdadi were killed by American forces it looked as if Al-Qaida was decimated in Iraq, but Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi reformed a weakening terror group by leading it in battle, honing its fighters training and experience in Iraq and Syria, and by using political savvy by linking his growing group to local and tribal demands and interests. It became both a fighting force and social benefactor, winning local hearts and minds along a bloody path of victory. He absorbed the al-Nusra Front terror group in Syria into his ranks, demanding their obedience. Seeing the growing threat, Al-Qaida’s al-Zarqawi , from his hiding place somewhere in Afghanistan or Pakistan, criticized ISIS for not concentrating on Iraq. In response, a confident ISIS hit back, accusing the Al-Qaida chief of “Sheikh Osama (bin Laden) gathered all the mujahedeen with one word, but you divided them and tore them apart.”
ISIS has attracted thousands of foreign fighters to its ranks, increasing its power and size. The shockwaves caused by its Iraqi Blitzkreig in seizing the towns of Mosul, Tikrit, and Fallujah was met by a mocking response by ISIS. “The battle is not yet raging, but it will rage in Baghdad and Karbala. Put on your belts and get ready” as they contemptuously called Iraqi leader, Nouri al-Maliki, an “underwear salesman.”
Clearly, the battle for Iraq is along sectarian lines with the Sunni ISIS, representing the majority of Iraqis, challenging the Shia al-Maliki rule. Clearly also was al-Maliki’s refusal to allow American forces to stay on in Iraq, but the ISIS victories were enhanced by the military vacuum in Iraq following the American pull-out, and this responsibility can be put at Obama’s White House door.
Obama’s self-proclaimed foreign policy “achievements” have been US troop withdrawals from Iraq, and “Al-Qaida has been decimated and is on the run!” These two boasts have now come back to haunt him. Al-Qaida has morphed into a bigger monster that is about to take over Iraq. And what was President Obama’s response? “We don’t have the resources. Let the local leaders deal with them.” This is short-sighted weakness, and dangerous. This was emphasized on Friday, 13 June, when Obama, confronted by the deteriorating situation in Iraq, decided to head off to California for a fund-raising event and some golf.
America spilled blood and treasure in Iraq including 4500 lives, $17 billion in military training to Iraqi forces, and $15 billion in military equipment. Now ISIS terrorists are seen driving around in American military Humvees.
The United States embassy in Baghdad is the largest global American embassy. It has 15,000 workers. It would be wrong to say that they did not pick up intelligence on the gathering Islamic terror storm. They did, and it fed it up the chain to the State Department and the White House, for months. Neither of those bodies acted on the intel. As one staffer told Lt. Colonel Ralph Peters, “We couldn’t convince the President that this is serious!”
Now the Baghdad embassy could be under ISIS fire, making Benghazi look like child’s play. And attack on Americans will not end there.
Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was captured, imprisoned, and then released by America in Iraq, just as Obama recently released the five top Al-Qaida/Taliban prisoners at Gitmo. America, and others, will pay for both these foolish gestures. As Ken King, the Commander of the Bucco Camp that was ordered to release al-Baghdadi, related on the Fox News “Kelly Files” program, as a parting shot the ISIS leader glared at King and warned, “I’ll see you in New York!”
In a strange twist on “the enemy of my enemy is my friend,” Republican lawmakers called for a partnership with Iran to stop ISIS from attacking Baghdad. Senator Lindsey Graham warned that ISIS “will eventually march on Jordan and Lebanon. They’re going to take the King of Jordan down.” The unspoken implication is that Israel will be next.
ISIS is now pumping Iraqi oil. It grabbed half a trillion dollars when it seized Iraq’s central bank in Mosul making it the richest terrorist organization in the world.
ISIS has been called too extreme for Al-Qaida with justification. Al-Baghdadi is being crowned “the next Bin Laden.”
ISIS is guilty of wholesale massacres in Syria, leaving the bodies to rot for all to see. It beheaded a top rival rebel commander, leaving his head in the middle of the market where everyone could see their handiwork. Amnesty International listed a few of their atrocities in their 18 page report “Rule of fear; ISIS abuses in detention is northern Syria.” They have conducted hundreds of executions, beheadings, even crucifixions in Mosul, Iraq. They destroy anything that is not Islamic, such as the Assyrian Church in Mosul. Hundreds have been slain for being “infidels.”
Once Islamic ISIS establishes its permanent presence in Iraq, as Hezbollah has done in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza, it will strengthen its grip on Syria. While looking down on Israel from the Golan Heights, it is likely to turn its attention to a militarily weak Lebanon, seeking to remove the Shiite Hezbollah from power, taking over its armoury of a hundred thousand rockets, and taking control of that country. From its northern hegemony in Iraq, Lebanon, and Syria it will target Jordan with the intention of deposing, or killing, the Hashemite king, as a preliminary step to taking over his country. If America, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia do not immediately move to strengthen the Kingdom, King Abdullah will be exposed to mortal danger, granting ISIS control over Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan in their march to a global Caliphate, and Stage 4 of their original plan.
Israel would be advised to keep a sharp eye on a future move by ISIS to attack or infiltrate Jordan via Syria. Who is to say that radical Palestinians and Islamists in Jordan will not open the gates of that country to ISIS, just as Syrians reached out to them at their cost?
When that scenario is achieved, Israel will be exposed to a threatening and powerful terror enemy stretching from Rosh HaNikra on the northern Mediterranean to Mount Hermon in the north east of Israel, sweeping through the Golan Heights and down the Jordan Valley to the Dead Sea and the Red Sea in the south.
In the turmoil that is the Middle East, where regimes are falling and nations are toppling, who is to say that such a nightmare scenario is not possible unless ISIS is stopped in its tracks now?
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America in Decline
March 31st, 2014
By Barry Shaw.
When Barack Obama was running for president he promised, some say threatened, to fundamentally change America. The doubters now say he has fundamentally ruined America. Whichever way one views it, America is in serious decline.
For a president that promised to reduce the national debt, Obama has added a massive seven trillion dollars to that debt. Under his presidency, America has accumulated as much new debt as it did in its first 227 years.
He heads an Administration that produces food stamps, pries into people’s private lives, and sets government agencies against political opponents. Obama is following the guidebook of Saul Alinsky, “Rules for Radicals,” and is putting Alinsky’s primer into practice from the White House. The results of his experiment are devastating.
Under Obama, prices and taxes rose while take home pay fell 7%. Government hand-outs increased dramatically as the national debt has exploded. Recent estimates put 50 million Americans on food stamps, and millions without healthcare.
Obama, the community organizer, preferred social justice over a robust market place, but, under his presidency, people are worse off today than they were back in 2009 when he promised them change. By the end of the first quarter of 2014 America had six million people not only unemployed but also not even looking for jobs, the vast majority under the age of 55. This implies they had given up all hope of finding work. More than forty million Americans lived below the poverty line.
Increasingly, America is becoming a nation of dysfunctional families. 41% of babies are born out of wedlock. Under America’s first black president, American blacks are increasingly unemployed, and 72% of black kids are born out of wedlock, a terrible indictment of American society. The corrosive results of government hand-outs are now rampant in America. A nanny-state produces a population of dependency, not independence or an entrepreneurial spirit.
Obama has ratings in the 30s and falling on issues such as security, healthcare, economy, jobs, transparency in government, and the US image abroad. It seems that Obama doesn’t care. Deep into a second term, this lame duck president is determined to press on with his failed agenda, even if it takes executive powers to do it. American democracy is in jeopardy as Obama takes steps that are clearly unconstitutional.
The president’s credibility is trashed, and a major part of that is his failure to launch the unpopular healthcare policy that carries his name, “Obamacare.” March 2014, saw the thirty-first delay in a public display of total inefficiency.
Scandals follow in the wake of Obama appointees to key governmental jobs. Kathleen Sebelius, Obama’s Health and Human Services Secretary, apologized, last October, for the abject failure of the computer system that was supposed to deliver the Obamacare plan to the American public.
“In these early weeks, access to health care has been a miserably frustrating experience. You deserve better,” she said. The planning team had been working on the computer system for years.
On the popular “The Daily Show,” Jon Stewart accused Sebelius of lying about parts of Obamacare. When that happens, you know you’re in trouble.
There is an ongoing investigation into wrongdoings by America’s tax authority, the IRS. They are accused of targeting opposition groups. In a TV interview with Fox News’s Bill O’Reilly, President Obama claimed there was “not a smidgeon of evidence” about tax attacks on conservative and libertine groups. However, Obama appointee, Lois Lerner, head of the IRS Exempt Organization division, twice took the Fifth while refusing to divulge information to the Congressional Oversight Committee. Chairman Darrell Issa complained, “In the wake of Ms. Lerner’s refusal to testify and answer questions, this report offers detailed evidence about steps she took to crack down on organizations that exercised their constitutional rights to free political speech.”
Obama’s nomination of Debo Adegbile to head the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division sent shockwaves through the American political system. Adegbile represented an unrepentant cop-killer and spoke to rallies held in his defense. This brought vocal opposition from national law-enforcement officials. The president’s judgment was badly flawed in selecting this candidate.
Obama followed up with yet another dubious choice of Vivek Murthy to be the next US Surgeon-General. Murthy, yet another political activist and the founder of “Doctors for Obama,” repeatedly described gun ownership as “a public health issue.” He is opposed by the National Rifle Association, a powerful lobbying force in America.
He is also facing strong opposition by many Democrats. The right to bear arms is an integral part of the US Constitution. The job of Surgeon-General is not gun control. It is about disease and disease prevention. The usual criterion for Surgeon-General is someone who has run a major hospital or headed a state healthcare system. Murthy has only been an attending doctor for eight years. His political activism far outweighs his public health experience.
Obama’s record of nominating radical politocos, rather than efficient and successful technocrats, particularly at the expense of the US Constitution, is a symptom of the demise of America.
It goes on. Recently, Obama nominated several of his campaign donors to ambassadorships. The problem was that they had never visited their nominated countries, Iceland, Norway, and Argentina. The nominee for Norway, George Tsunis, didn’t even know that country had a king, and not a president. Such is the level of presidential incompetence in Obama’s personal nominees to major positions of government.
Revelations concerning widespread governmental electronic surveillance of law-abiding citizens set alarm bells ringing when whistleblower, Edward Snowden, divulged that the National Security Agency had been snooping on 340 million cell phones in the United States. A Federal judge described it as “almost Orwellian.” It is, in fact, a direct violation of the Fourth Amendment.
A Guardian newspaper report on March 5, 2014, divulged that President Obama knew the CIA had spied on the Senate intelligence committee using agency computers. “I find these actions to be incredibly troubling for the Committee’s oversight powers and for our democracy,” Democratic Congressman Mark Udall wrote to Obama.
President Obama lied to the people. The mid-term elections in November will hinge on which Democratic candidates echoed the Obama mantra “under Obamacare you can keep your health plan and you can keep your doctor.”Neither of these claims is true.
When you have a foreign policy of “leading from behind” you lose the political momentum to advance values.
With Obama, it began with his apology tour to Muslim nations which included his bowing to the Saudi Arabian king, a gesture interpreted in the Islamic world as submission. From that point it spiraled downward.
On his watch and that of his Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, an American ambassador and three CIA operatives were murdered in Benghazi, Libya. They claimed, for weeks, that their deaths were caused by a mob angry at an amateur video, when, in fact, it was an organized terror attack that killed them. It was revealed that repeated calls for help were ignored by both the White House and the State Department. Knowing the truth, according to recent evidence, both Obama and Clinton lied to the nation, and worse, to the families of the dead Americans.
Since Benghazi, Obama touted Al Qaeda’s demise thirty two times, according to White House transcripts. “Decimated” is a word that Obama likes to use to describe Al-Qaida. However, on January 29, 2014, the Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, testified on Capitol Hill that the threat from Al Qaeda is not less than it was a decade ago and that it is “much more globally dispersed.” The question arises, how is it that the president is out of touch with his national security advisors? Al Qaeda is on the rise because of a feckless American leadership.
Back in September, John Kerry told Democrats that America faced “its Munich moment” over the Syrian use of chemical weapons. Considering that six months later Assad still possesses the vast majority of his stockpile, it appears that this has been a failure of American leadership. Another Munich moment is taking place with the smiley, touchy, talks that are taking place with the Iranians over their nuclear ambitions.
Neither Israel nor Saudi Arabia is convinced that the softly-softly approach with Tehran is the way to prevent Iran from getting the bomb. A third Munich moment is taking place over the Russian domination of the Ukraine. This also looks doomed to failure in light of a massive vote in the Crimea for Russian patronage. With the Israeli-Palestinian talks about to crash into the buffers of failure, the Kerry initiative looks impressive in its impotence to persuade Mahmoud Abbas to recognize the Jewish State. Kerry even called it a“mistake” for Israel even to make this elementary condition a demand, thereby showing his total lack of understanding of what lies as the root cause of this conflict.
We know what happened post-Munich. We are witnessing American Munich moments on a global scale. We dread for the future.
The Wall Street Journal printed an article written by Mitt Romney. Although he can be seen as a biased observer, he stated something that is patently obvious.
“President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton traveled the world in pursuit of their promise to reset relations and to build friendships across the globe. Their failure has been painfully evident. It is hard to name even a single country that has more respect and admiration for America today than when President Obama took office, and now Russia is in Ukraine. Part of their failure is due to their failure to act when action was possible and needed.”
When American power draws back it leaves a dangerous vacuum. With the US withdrawing from Afghanistan, Afghanistan’s Karzai will pivot to whoever keeps him in power. US out/Taliban in!
This vacuum allowed Russia to become high profile and active in the Middle East. In August, 2013, the White House cut off military aid to Egypt. This was a misreading of the political map in Egypt. Egypt refused to take phone calls from Defense Secretary Hagel and turned to Russia for aid. Cairo’s Al Tahrir newspaper ran the headline, “Let the US aid go to hell!” So much for the Obama apology tour, that began in Cairo.
Russia is emboldened to assert itself in Europe. Crimea is a Russian test of the extent of American weakness. The White House sanctioned seven Russian businessmen. They shrugged off that threat causing Putin’s deputy Prime Minister to tweet that he thought some joker wrote the US Presidential order.
With Saudi Arabia and Egypt turning to Russia, with major oil-trading nations negotiating to deal in a currency other than the US dollar, with the contempt felt for America’s weakness in foreign policy, with Iran, Al-Qaida, and the Taliban resurgent in Iraq, Afghanistan, the Middle East and Africa, can anyone doubt that America is in decline?
There is no reason to assume that a Hillary Clinton presidency will improve America’s foreign strength. She flunked the 3 a.m. phone call test as Secretary of State when Benghazi called. She simply turned over and went back to sleep. Her tour of duty did nothing to affirm US values. It is doubtful she will move away from Obama’s bad habits of upsetting allies and cuddling up to their enemies.
Political bungling at home and abroad is appalling. When his record is etched, Obama will go down as the worst, most damaging president, in American history until, perhaps, the next one.
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Original Thinking: No going back
February 21st, 2014By Barry Shaw.
Why should Israel give in to international pressure without a guaranteed right to regain land if it is attacked from the territory it gives away?
You know what the one major problem would be should Israel foolishly agree to surrender territory to an aggressive new Palestinian state? There is no going back. The world will never allow Israel to reconquer any territory.
Why should Israel give in to international pressure without a guaranteed right to regain land if it is attacked from the territory it gives away? Mark Langfan, expert on national security, has not been able to get a proper answer from any of Israel’s top national security experts to the “what ifs” of a peace deal with the Palestinians.
For example, say Israel agrees to surrender land back to 1967 lines, including minor land swaps? What if the Palestinian leadership make good on their threat to eliminate what is left of the “Zionist regime”? What if the next Arab Islamic state, Palestine, is taken over by radical forces that then choose to target Israel? What then? What if rockets are fired into Ben-Gurion Airport and no airline dares fly to Israel? What happens when missiles start landing on sensitive targets in Tel Aviv from the West Bank heights overlooking the slim coastal plain of rump-state Israel – where 70 percent of our population is cowering in fear? As US Senator Lindsey Graham said at a press conference at the King David Citadel Hotel in Jerusalem, after meeting with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu on January 3, 2014, “Once you withdraw the ability to go back is almost impossible.”
Are we allowed to invade a sovereign state in self-defense? Yes, under the right conditions – but international law will require that we retreat within a very limited timeframe. So we would be in the same situation we are now in with respect to Gaza, where neither invading nor responding to aggressive acts give us any permanent quiet.
We will be suspended in a state of limbo, between bouts of nervous tension as our enemies build up stockpiles of ever-improving and more deadly weaponry, as we see withHezbollah in Lebanon and with Hamas in Gaza, until they feel the time is ripe to, once again, launch deadly attacks against our exposed belly in the central heartland of our reduced state.
Langfan questioned Amos Yadlin, head of the Institute of National Security Studies. Yadlin is considered one of Israel’s top security advisors. He has the ear of Prime Minister Netanyahu.
Yet even Yadlin couldn’t adequately answer Langfan’s puzzle of what would be Israel’s military and political answer to a life under threat following aggressive action, slaughter and destruction of infrastructure? What would be permissible, and what would be forbidden, for an Israel under attack? Dr. Menachem Klein, Senior Lecturer at Bar-Ilan University, addressed the Carnegie Endowment for International Peacein Washington on “A New Approach to the Israel-Palestinian Conflict” in which he laid out the parameters of Israeli concessions.
But nowhere did he outline Israel’s legitimate responses should a new Palestinian nation launch war or terror against a reduced Israel.
Ziad Asali, the founder of a pro-Palestinian think tank and advocacy group in Washington, said an independent Palestinian state would end the conflict so Israel needn’t worry about security. Can we believe him with Hamas waiting in the wings? US Secretary of State John Kerry assures Israel of America’s commitment to Israel’s security, but will he be around when short-range missiles start falling on Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Netanya and Haifa? What exactly would America’s role be under such a scenario? The Israeli public has not been given any satisfactory answer to such a potential scenario, not by our politicians, not by our generals and certainly not by our national security experts. In fact, they haven’t been given any answer at all.
We, the public, have not heard one leader openly address this issue, save to say that any Palestinian state will be demilitarized.
Not good enough.
Israelis absolutely deserve to have our leaders come up with clear answers to this critically important scenario before being asked to expose themselves to life-threatening danger. This is, after all, the prime fear that prevents so many Israelis from accepting the notion of a two-state solution.
Those I have spoken to who approve of surrendering land for peace seem not to have thought deeply about the potential downside of such a deal. They blithely leave that headache to those in power. This is naïve, wishful thinking.
Certainly, the world would accept an Israeli response to any aggressive act from another country, but to what extent? Would it allow Israel to declare that we have the right, based on agreements that a new Palestinian state would not indulge in future violence, to reinvade and retake territory if it infringed on such an agreement? Would the international community agree to such a move? It is highly unlikely.
If a future Palestinian state is controlled by Hamas or worse, democratically elected or otherwise, and they begin to take violent actions against Israel, would the Jewish state have the right, under international law, to invade and remove this enemy leadership? Almost certainly not.
The international community would ensure that any response be strictly limited in power and length and be within acceptable norms. We can be sure that the United Nations Security Council will quickly insist that “all violence will cease immediately.”
Foreign “peace keeping” forces, be they United Nations orNATO, would step aside when conflict begins. So they would not be there to protect any party, neither Israel nor a new Palestine.
There is a total lack of commitment or guarantee by the international community on how they will protect Israelis and Israeli sovereignty should the new Palestine they are pressuring Israel to accept become a rogue state.
Should an essential condition of any peace agreement be that any Palestinian state would jeopardize and forfeit its right to exist if it continues the radical terror tactics that endanger the Jewish State of Israel? A two-state solution is essential for any Palestinian leader to initially push for their self-determination, but where is the Israeli self-defense element should a Palestinian regime continue a staged plan for Israel’s destruction? Whichever way you look at it, the vast majority of Israel’s population will endure a future of fear given a new Palestinian state on the heights above the exposed Jewish state’s central plain.
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The European Parliament President’s poor remarks in Israel may have a silver lining
February 14th, 2014
By Barry Shaw.
Israel’s Knesset erupted in uproar when the President of the European Parliament, Martin Shultz, stood at the podium on February 12 and told Israel’s lawmakers that they were depriving Palestinian of water.
He questioned why Israelis can use 70 liters of water while a Palestinian can only use 17. These are grossly false figures. That is not the point. The point is that someone as high as the European parliamentary president stood in the home of Israeli democracy and threw such ridiculous figures at Israeli lawmakers is an insult and an embarrassment to Europe.
Shultz made his statement even more appalling when he excused himself by explaining that he got these figures from a Palestinian boy. Has the European Union become so obsessed with accusing Israel of all the perceived crimes under the sun that their parliamentary leader now hurls an Arab boy’s lies at the Jewish state? Actually, yes. That is where we are right now.
Shultz is not the first to have jaundiced political views about Israel that are tainted with the adoption of a malevolent Palestinian narrative. We have recently witnessed similar manifestations emanating from Oxfam, the British Methodists, and various academic bodies. No doubt we will see many more such vile accusations hurled at Israel in the future for the diseased propaganda of the extremist anti-Israel activists, couched in seductive language, has, indeed, been adopted by the misguided useful idiots in Brussels and other European capitals who are only too keen to finance the festering campaigns against Israel as if they are formed in purity and truth. They are not.
Perhaps the most significant part of Shultz’s absurd comments is that it exposed how susceptible the highest people in the European Union and leading politicians are to the false and blatant propaganda claims of radical groups, like BDS and other sponsored NGOs, and how easily and naively they accept ridiculous claims and adopt them as truths etched in tablets of stone brought down from Mount Sinai by Moses himself.
The Israeli voice may be missing when it comes to efficient public diplomacy, but it is truly shocking to discover the inroads that extreme anti-Israel groups have made in the highest political circles of Europe that an important and leading figure, such as Shultz, can accept patently false statements and quote them at a state event in the heart of Israel.
Europe has fallen foul to the hyper-active propaganda machine that targets Israel. Is Europe naïve, or are they really ready to use such inappropriate measures as part of their pressure to get Israel to make dangerous risks for peace?
Lars Faaborg-Andersen, the head of the EU Delegation to Israel, also came out with a troubling statement. He said “The failure of negotiations, particularly if it would be ascribed to continued settlement construction, would not make it possible for EU-Israel relations to achieve their full potential, and carries a risk of Israel becoming increasingly isolated.”
The unfairness of his remarks is both wicked and irksome. Why should Israel take the wrap for the intransigence of the Palestinians? How is it we never hear from the European how they intend to punish them when talks fail? How about the threat of isolating them and stopping their much needed funding? Why is it only Israel living under the cloud of European sanctions? Why aren’t the Europeans publicly and officially calling out Palestinian crimes of incitement to violence and a world without Israel?
It is unacceptable for people like Shultz or Lars Faaborg-Andersen to hit us with a fraudulent Palestinian narrative. On the contrary, they should censure the Palestinians for promoting a message of demonization in their apparently successful attempt to get European and other nations to sanction, boycott, and delegitimize Israel with tales of fiction and falsehood. They should also demand transparency and threaten withdrawal of funding from groups that spin their web of hate against Israel. They should also temper their language and stop using false terms such as “illegal settlements,” and “occupied Palestinian land,” when discussing the Israeli-Palestinian issue or speaking about disputed territories.
If Schultz’s officially embarrassing faux pas make European politicians and diplomats take stock and reconsider their tactics, his foolish and insulting remarks may have a benefit to both sides.
If it does not, then Europe has no future role in negotiations or peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians.
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Report: Former British Foreign Secretary peddles “Jewish control” trope in Parliament
October 29th, 2013
By Barry Shaw.
A report from an ex-Member of the Israeli Knesset (Parliament) yesterday claimed that during a meeting in the British Houses of Parliament, former Foreign Secretary and Home Secretary Jack Straw (Lab) peddled an anti-Semitic trope about Jewish control over U.S. and Germany foreign policy.
Straw also reportedly claimed that pro-Israel lobby groups such as AIPAC work with this “unlimited” funding to “divert American policy in the region” and stated that “Germany’s “obsession” with defending Israel” was a major problem.
Einat Wilf, who served as a Labor, the Independence Party Member of the Knesset between 2010 and 2013 wrote on her Facebook page:
“I nearly fell off my rickety British chair today when former UK Foreign Secretary Jack Straw spoke at the Round Table Global Diplomatic Forum in the British House of Commons. Listing the greatest obstacles to peace, he said “unlimited” funds available to Jewish organizations and AIPAC in the US are used to control and divert American policy in the region and that Germany’s “obsession” with defending Israel were the problem. I guess he neglected to mention Jewish control of the media….”
The trope about Jewish money and control is recognised as anti-Semitism by EUMC Working Definition, which a part of states: “[Anti-Semitism is]… Making mendacious, dehumanizing, demonizing, or stereotypical allegations about Jews as such or the power of Jews as collective — such as, especially but not exclusively, the myth about a world Jewish conspiracy or of Jews controlling the media, economy, government or other societal institutions.”
Straw was recently featured in the international media expressing favourability towards the new Iranian president Hassan Rouhani. Straw has gone on the record in stating, “You could do business with him, and we were able to do business with him. I very profoundly believe that [this] is a new chance for proper negotiations.”
Straw’s maternal grandmother was from an Eastern European Jewish family, though his father was imprisoned in 1939 for opposing war with Nazi Germany. Both of Straw’s parents were “conscientious objectors” and met in the Peace Pledge Union – an organisation which favoured appeasement of Hitler.
Speaking on his time in the British cabinet, Straw said in 2009: “Clearly there were forces in the U.S. system that disagreed with my views on the Middle East and there were differences with Tony Blair’s Middle East policy, too.”
It is understood that Straw did not share the U.S. or Tony Blair’s passion for the war on terrorism.
Jack Straw’s office has not yet responded to questions on the matter.
Smiling their way to weapons of mass destruction
September 24th, 2013
By Barry Shaw.
When an enemy uses mass destruction on its own people, and also threatens other states, there should be no dilemma between security and morality.
We saw that with Hitler. We saw it with Saddam Hussein. They used massively lethal weapons on civilians and the international community went to war against them. We know of the huge public backlash when WMDs were not found in Iraq but we also know they were used by the Baghdad dictator against the Kurds. Perhaps they were smuggled across the border into the unsafe keeping of Sadaam’s ally, Hafez al-Assad, and have now been used by his dictator son? Some intelligence people suspect, or know, that this is where the missing Iraqi WMD’s ended up, in Syria. George Mason University published “Did the US supply Saddam with Biological Weapons in the 1980’s?” The report included this damning sentence, “Rumsfeld should have trouble sleeping at night given his role in abetting Sadaam’s crimes.” Donald Rumsfeld was Defense Secretary when Saddam Hussein was America’s bad guy against the Iranians back in the 80’s.
Did the US supply the Iraqi dictator with WMD? The Internationalist in May 2003 thought so. In its article “The Great Chemical Weapons Hoax” both Monsanto and Dow Chemicals were implicated in supplying Sadaam with the materials needed to produce the deadly weapons he used against the Kurds.
Many suspect that the desperate hunt for WMD in Iraq was based on the certain knowledge that both American and Britain had covertly provided the rampant dictator of Baghdad with the technology and the materials to wage illegal acts of war against civilians.
Is this the reason that Jonathan Pollard continues to rot in isolation? Could he have provided Israel with the information that now keeps him from obtaining a freedom long due to such prisoners who have shared intelligence with an American ally? Is this the secret that dare not speak its name?
In all cases, the free world failed to recognize and name the perpetrators as their enemy until much too late.
In all cases, the free world chose to appease and delay action until conditions became infinitely worse for them to respond.
As Hitler’s troops were massacring Jews and marching into Poland, America said, “It’s not our fight.”
In 1940, after Nazi Germany was already occupying Poland and Czechoslovakia, presidential candidate Roosevelt said, “I will not allow our boys to fight in a foreign war,” and got himself elected with this slogan. It was only in 1941, after Japan attacked US ships in Pearl Harbor, that
The use of chemical weapons by Saddam Hussein against the Kurds in Halabje did nothing to encourage America and its allies to step in on the basis of morality and a serious breach of international law for the use of chemical weapons on civilians. He had to march into Kuwait and threaten American interests in Saudi Arabia before President Bush One rushed his forces to stop him. Morality and humanitarian causes be damned it seems when others are being slaughtered with mass destruction.
One can assume that the West will only act against Syria, or even Iran, after America itself has been targeted for death and destruction and not before, if history is anything to go by.
The security cushion provided by Russia, China, and Iran, and the impotence of the once-unchallenged leader of the Free World, gives Assad the comfort of knowing his neck is no longer on the chopping block.
Deterrence, it seems, is no longer a factor or a strategic option for the West.
This clearly applies to Iran. We see it with Iran as they race to the ultimate weapon of mass destruction.
We are beginning to see the West hypnotized by the upcoming charm offensive from the new Iranian leadership.
Iran now hints at closing the Fordow nuclear plant, and the West think that Rouhani is a person they can do business with. Meanwhile, progress continues to be made in the numerous hidden facilities spread across the huge country that is Iran.
With an adopted strategic policy of appeasement and wishful thinking, the West will fall in love with nice words and empty promises, rather than hold Iran’s feet to the fire. Viewers of Fox News TV recently saw an Iranian ‘expert’ say that the new Iranian regime wants to be allied with America. Give us a break! This is a prelude of the hoax to come.
The leadership in Tehran has an agenda. It is tinged by the involvement in the West both for, and later against, their past enemy, Sadaam Hussein. They have long memories. They need revenge for the West’s treacherous acts against them. They have an account to settle over this score. They are also boosted by the enmity, but also perceived impotence, of the West against their ally and proxy in Damascus. They have a burning religious yearning to spread their holy message but need to dominate the region in which they operate before launching their crusade globally. Israel is the sacrificial lamb. Israel is to be the target for elimination. A display of omnipotent power that destroys the Jewish state will bring the weaker Sunni states to heal and advance the arrival of the Mahdi. For them, the stage is almost ready for the great event to come.
Barry Shaw is the Special Consultant on Delegitimization Issues to The Strategic Dialogue Center at Netanya Academic College.
He is also the author of ‘Israel Reclaiming the Narrative.’
A tale of Palestinian nonsense
June 28th, 2013
By Barry Shaw.
Mohamoud Zahar, the ugly Hamas spokesman with a wart on the end of his nose, set everyone laughing at the beginning of 2012 with a nonsense statement that Palestinians in Gaza were prevented from demonstrating peacefully because there are no Jews in Gaza to protest against. That is why, he explained, they have no choice but to resort to violence. No, don’t laugh! He was being serious. You couldn’t make this up. Not surprisingly, to those who follow and support the Palestinian narrative, this insanity is perceived as a logical and reasonable argument. It appeals to the Israel haters who accuse Israel of human rights abuses for “occupying” Gaza from the outside rather than the inside. Don’t even try to figure this out. You’ll only tie yourself up in a Gordian knot of maddening Palestinian illogicality.
This endless nonsense is promoted by pro-Palestinian public relations groupies with an inexhaustible amount of funding from wealthy individuals, or from mindless European Governments for whom the mantra “Solve Human Rights Abuses and you Save the World” is pre-eminent. Funding also comes from malevolent sources, such as Arab and Islamic regimes, who have transposed the “Arab-Israel War” into the more appealing “Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.” This new definition allows bleeding heart liberals to side with the underdog and lose sight of reality.
Let’s be honest. The world has bought into the Palestinian narrative of victimhood to the extent that, for decades, it has thrown billions of dollars into a lie. Anyone with any legal sense will conclude that if you repeatedly extract money from someone based on a falsehood you eventually risk being dragged into court for fraud. And, if you add violence to your extortion, you will, more than likely, be found guilty of both fraud and assault and be thrown into the slammer. Not so with the Palestinians. They can be as corrupt as they like, they literally get away with murder. They are feted, patted, sympathized with, by an international community that is so blind it cannot see past its tears to see the truth. The Palestinians have been flavor of the month for decades while the rest of the world’s genuine basketcases are ignored. The universal publicity machine endlessly pumps out money for the Palestinian schnorrers. The rest go begging for scraps.
The world has bought into this nonsense so deeply and so intensely that they cannot admit the truth any more. When the Hamas spokesman (yes, the one with the wart) announced that Gaza was no longer “occupied”, the United Nations persisted in declaring the Gaza Strip as still being under Israeli occupation. They continue to perpetrate a lie that even Hamas denies.
In truth, the Palestinians control every aspect of their society. Hamas, in Gaza, runs the courts, the police, the jails, the schools, mosques, the media, and the social services. It has its own economy and banking. It regulated its business activities. It levies taxes. It even imposes Shariah law on its citizens. As Abraham Bell and Dov Shefi, two international legal experts, wrote in a 2010 research paper, Hamas runs “a functioning and fully independent local civil government, buttressed by armed forces.” The Palestinian Authority-controlled West Bank is middle class and successful compared to many Arab regimes. Yet, the world still accepts the victimhood fraud.
This tale of victimhood helps sell newspapers. It is the stuff of poor and biased journalism. It keeps career diplomats in clover. Western societies continue to pump money they don’t have, or can ill afford, into the fiction mill. The Palestinians are building an industry on it. Many are getting wealthy on the false tale of victimhood. They fly from one conference to another. They see the success of this narrative. It serves them well. So well, in fact, that they don’t want to change, don’t want to reach a solution. It’s rather like the guy who drives his big car from his suburban home to the town center, parks his vehicle, takes out a pair of crutches, limps into town, and starts begging and crying. The naïve and sympathetic throw notes and coins into his lap until it’s time for him to drive home and put his feet up at the end of a good days work.
Why should they change, these Palestinians? They’ve got it down to a fine art, and it works for them. They are occupied, they are oppressed and abused by a heartless, brutal, racist, Nazi, regime. Why spoil it by being forced into a negotiating room in which they could end up with an independent state and have to be truly accountable to their people?
Their fiction appeals to the heart, not to the head, and the heart is not easily dissuaded, especially if you can knock up some emotive pictures to strengthen your argument. Public opinion is easily swayed by a good sob story.
Just as people, who abuse the social services of a welfare state, lose the desire to find work and become productive citizens, so the Palestinians are enjoying the status they have achieved as the world’s most appreciated victim. They exploit their inferiority to the extent that they cannot, or will not, escape their inferiority. It works for them; therefore they are trapped in it. Nobody has demanded they become a more pragmatic, open, liberal society, especially not the Western pragmatic, open, and liberal societies. They are the ones who persevere with the nonsense of this false narrative. They simply continue to throw their money at them as you do to a beggar on the street. Nobody has conditioned their funding on the Palestinians discarding their lies and get real, to make biting concessions and put an end to their tale of discontent.
But how can they do that? To do so would put an end to the lies they have spun to their own people. Lies like the holy duty to destroy Israel, lies like how they will eventually possess all the land. To accept a rump state alongside the Jewish state of Israel would be exposed as an ignoble failure of leadership. It would force them to buckle down to real nation-building, instead of looking with greed and envy at Israel’s flourishing land.
The Palestinians and their supporters have taken the nonsense of victimhood and have deliberately prevented progress. They have wrapped the Islamic cloak around their victimhood. This enables them to play both sides of the deck. They are both victim and hero. They glorify their most heinous acts of terror. Their jihad allows them to turn the most inhumane acts of murder into glorious tales of valor. Their narrative turns mass murder into praiseworthy heroism to be rewarded in this life or the next. It produces a culture twisted into a brutal and resentful society. They are trapped in their negative stew of victimhood and brutality. It finds expression in the nonsensical statements of people like Zahar, and those who accuse Israel of being an “Apartheid” and “Nazi” state. Their nonsense, to them, makes sense. Sad tales have their impact. The emotional tale of victimhood is their only power. They can twist every expression they can find to make a point that drips with emotion and useful sound bites, but they fail the test of truth every time.
Basically, the Palestinian narrative is a tale of nonsense.
http://israeltheviewfromhere.blogspot.co.il/2013/06/a-tale-of-palestinian-nonsense.html
A Tale Of Palestinian Nonsense
June 25th, 2013
By Barry Shaw.
Mohamoud Zahar, the ugly Hamas spokesman with a wart on the end of his nose, set everyone laughing at the beginning of 2012 with a nonsense statement that Palestinians in Gaza were prevented from demonstrating peacefully because there are no Jews in Gaza to protest against. That is why, he explained, they have no choice but to resort to violence. No, don’t laugh! He was being serious. You couldn’t make this up. Not surprisingly, to those who follow and support the Palestinian narrative, this insanity is perceived as a logical and reasonable argument. It appeals to the Israel haters who accuse Israel of human rights abuses for “occupying” Gaza from the outside rather than the inside. Don’t even try to figure this out. You’ll only tie yourself up in a Gordian knot of maddening Palestinian illogicality.
This endless nonsense is promoted by pro-Palestinian public relations groupies with an inexhaustible amount of funding from wealthy individuals, or from mindless European Governments for whom the mantra “Solve Human Rights Abuses and you Save the World” is pre-eminent. Funding also comes from malevolent sources, such as Arab and Islamic regimes, who have transposed the “Arab-Israel War” into the more appealing “Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.” This new definition allows bleeding heart liberals to side with the underdog and lose sight of reality.
Let’s be honest. The world has bought into the Palestinian narrative of victimhood to the extent that, for decades, it has thrown billions of dollars into a lie. Anyone with any legal sense will conclude that if you repeatedly extract money from someone based on a falsehood you eventually risk being dragged into court for fraud. And, if you add violence to your extortion, you will, more than likely, be found guilty of both fraud and assault and be thrown into the slammer. Not so with the Palestinians. They can be as corrupt as they like, they literally get away with murder. They are feted, patted, sympathized with, by an international community that is so blind it cannot see past its tears to see the truth. The Palestinians have been flavor of the month for decades while the rest of the world’s genuine basketcases are ignored. The universal publicity machine endlessly pumps out money for the Palestinian schnorrers. The rest go begging for scraps.
The world has bought into this nonsense so deeply and so intensely that they cannot admit the truth any more. When the Hamas spokesman (yes, the one with the wart) announced that Gaza was no longer “occupied”, the United Nations persisted in declaring the Gaza Strip as still being under Israeli occupation. They continue to perpetrate a lie that even Hamas denies.
In truth, the Palestinians control every aspect of their society. Hamas, in Gaza, runs the courts, the police, the jails, the schools, mosques, the media, and the social services. It has its own economy and banking. It regulated its business activities. It levies taxes. It even imposes Shariah law on its citizens. As Abraham Bell and Dov Shefi, two international legal experts, wrote in a 2010 research paper, Hamas runs “a functioning and fully independent local civil government, buttressed by armed forces.” The Palestinian Authority-controlled West Bank is middle class and successful compared to many Arab regimes. Yet, the world still accepts the victimhood fraud.
This tale of victimhood helps sell newspapers. It is the stuff of poor and biased journalism. It keeps career diplomats in clover. Western societies continue to pump money they don’t have, or can ill afford, into the fiction mill. The Palestinians are building an industry on it. Many are getting wealthy on the false tale of victimhood. They fly from one conference to another. They see the success of this narrative. It serves them well. So well, in fact, that they don’t want to change, don’t want to reach a solution. It’s rather like the guy who drives his big car from his suburban home to the town center, parks his vehicle, takes out a pair of crutches, limps into town, and starts begging and crying. The naïve and sympathetic throw notes and coins into his lap until it’s time for him to drive home and put his feet up at the end of a good days work.
Why should they change, these Palestinians? They’ve got it down to a fine art, and it works for them. They are occupied, they are oppressed and abused by a heartless, brutal, racist, Nazi, regime. Why spoil it by being forced into a negotiating room in which they could end up with an independent state and have to be truly accountable to their people?
Their fiction appeals to the heart, not to the head, and the heart is not easily dissuaded, especially if you can knock up some emotive pictures to strengthen your argument. Public opinion is easily swayed by a good sob story.
Just as people, who abuse the social services of a welfare state, lose the desire to find work and become productive citizens, so the Palestinians are enjoying the status they have achieved as the world’s most appreciated victim. They exploit their inferiority to the extent that they cannot, or will not, escape their inferiority. It works for them; therefore they are trapped in it. Nobody has demanded they become a more pragmatic, open, liberal society, especially not the Western pragmatic, open, and liberal societies. They are the ones who persevere with the nonsense of this false narrative. They simply continue to throw their money at them as you do to a beggar on the street. Nobody has conditioned their funding on the Palestinians discarding their lies and get real, to make biting concessions and put an end to their tale of discontent.
But how can they do that? To do so would put an end to the lies they have spun to their own people. Lies like the holy duty to destroy Israel, lies like how they will eventually possess all the land. To accept a rump state alongside the Jewish state of Israel would be exposed as an ignoble failure of leadership. It would force them to buckle down to real nation-building, instead of looking with greed and envy at Israel’s flourishing land.
The Palestinians and their supporters have taken the nonsense of victimhood and have deliberately prevented progress. They have wrapped the Islamic cloak around their victimhood. This enables them to play both sides of the deck. They are both victim and hero. They glorify their most heinous acts of terror. Their jihad allows them to turn the most inhumane acts of murder into glorious tales of valor. Their narrative turns mass murder into praiseworthy heroism to be rewarded in this life or the next. It produces a culture twisted into a brutal and resentful society. They are trapped in their negative stew of victimhood and brutality. It finds expression in the nonsensical statements of people like Zahar, and those who accuse Israel of being an “Apartheid” and “Nazi” state. Their nonsense, to them, makes sense. Sad tales have their impact. The emotional tale of victimhood is their only power. They can twist every expression they can find to make a point that drips with emotion and useful sound bites, but they fail the test of truth every time.
Basically, the Palestinian narrative is a tale of nonsense.
Barry Shaw is the author of “Israel Reclaiming the Narrative” www.israelnarrative.com
He is also the Special Consultant on Delegitimization Issues to The Strategic Dialogue Center at Netanya Academic College.