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Christian supporters of Israel who gathered in Washington last week did not just sit through policy briefings and lobbying sessions; they danced the hora, blew a shofar, sang Hatikva and celebrated all that they love about Israel.
Whether repeatedly standing up to cheer for speakers or dancing to Israeli tunes, the over 4,000 animated attendees of the fourth annual Christians United for Israel (CUFI) Washington conference made their passion for the State of Israel absolutely clear.
For two days, the participants learned about Israel, its history, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, how to effectively defend Israel, what America’s government should do, how to deal with Iran and how to lobby elected officials. On Wednesday participants met with their elected officials in Congress to voice their support for Israel.
“We’re here to tell you and the people of Israel that there are 50 million Christians in this nation who support you and the State of Israel,” said CUFI founder John Hagee to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, who joined the conference via satellite.
“Your unwavering friendship strengthens us,” said Netanyahu, noting that CUFI is helping open a new chapter in Jewish-Christian relations.
Within the Jewish community, there has been disagreement over how to deal with this vocal support.
The most common concerns expressed are that CUFI supports Israel in order to bring about Jesus’s “second coming”; that the organization is too right-wing politically and that allying with a group with controversial views on a range of other issues might hurt the community.
In response to The Israel Project’s Jennifer Laszlo Mizrahi’s decision to speak at the CUFI conference, left-wing Israel advocate J Street, on its blog, asked, “Does allying the pro-Israel community further with Pastor John Hagee by appearing at his conference hurt or help Israel’s cause?”
Laszlo Mizrahi said that in her quest to form an effective Israel coalition, she does not rule out allies because of their views on other issues.
“The fact that I am speaking at a CUFI event doesn’t mean that I endorse every thought all their leaders ever had,” she said in an e-mail, echoing the sentiments of other Jewish organizations who cooperate with CUFI on Israel advocacy while setting aside other differences.
For their part, CUFI agrees that groups should join it in support of Israel, even of their views on other issues do not line up. Leaders did make clear, however, that CUFI has no conversion goals.
As for the “end of days” theory, Western Regional Coordinator Randy Neal said that while some people do believe that the second coming will occur when all the Jews inhabit the land of Israel, “That’s not what drives us.”
“What drives us is the biblical mandate to stand with Israel and the Jewish people,” said Neal.
Speakers at the conference also acknowledged that the Jewish community is justified in being initially skeptical of Christians suddenly forming a strong coalition in support of Israel.
“Christians have brought it on themselves,” said Florida Director Pastor Scott Thomas, referencing historical Christian violence towards Jews.
Founded in 2006, CUFI now claims over 220,000 followers throughout the US.
Recurring themes brought up by most of the conference speakers were the many aspects of Israel’s right to exist and expand, a sense that the Obama administration was unfairly pressuring Israel to stop expanding and an urgent need to address Iran.
Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, joined in criticizing Obama’s Middle East policy. He said he did not believe in Obama’s theory that sowing some discord between America and Israel will give America legitimacy to negotiate with Arab states.
While CUFI is still confident of its ability to advocate for Israel under the Obama administration and a heavily Democratic Congress, some experts and CUFI leaders expressed concerns that with the current political climate, advocating CUFI’s position might become slightly more difficult. However, there was no doubt that Congress remains a strong ally of Israel.
“Support for Israel in America I think has been so strong largely because Americans have been so pro-Israel, and we dare not let that erode,” CUFI Executive Director David Brog said.
To continue advocating for Israel, CUFI’s newest frontiers are establishing CUFI chapters on college campuses and pioneering the first CUFI trip to Poland and Israel, to take place this year.
“We want to broaden our base in three ways: We want to broaden it theologically, demographically, and politically,” Brog said.
At the Night to Honor Israel, Sen. Joseph Lieberman was given the Defender of Israel Award.
“This convention is a miracle,” said Lieberman, who has previously spoken at the conference. “It is all of you… who are the most important defenders of Israel.”
Ambassador to the US Michael Oren and Tourism Minister Stas Meseznikov expressed similar sentiments in their remarks.
Israel is also trying to reach out to the Christian community, establishing the Prime Minister’s Task Force on Global Christian Relationships, on which Hagee will serve.
Jesus supports the IDF and he wants his believers to be the best soldiers they can be.
That was the message conveyed by members of the local Messianic Jewish community via sacred texts, prayer and talks, to a group of 18-year-olds who took part this week in a premilitary program called Netsor.
“I am a soldier of God,” said Boris, an intense redhead accepted to an elite combat unit, who is one of the 28 young men and women who participated in Netsor.
“I will do my best during my service in the IDF to serve God spiritually and physically. Not for the sake of state authorities but for the sake of God and Jesus,” added Boris, as we sat in the dining room of a guest house that overlooks Lake Kinneret on Wednesday.
Not far from here, according to Christian tradition, Jesus walked on water, healed the sick and preached. Now, nearly two millennia later, young “believers,” as they call themselves, convinced they are walking in Jesus’s footsteps, hope to become the next fighter pilots, reconnaissance soldiers, paratroopers, tank commanders and sailors.
Some 150 highly motivated believers will join the IDF this year. Many of them will serve in combat units. Some of them have been through Netsor’s week of mental and spiritual preparation offered by the Messianic community. Netsor is a Hebrew word that means “to guard” or “to stand vigilant.”
The return of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel with the establishment of the State of Israel brought with it a small but growing group of Messianic Jews, numbering today between 10,000 and 15,000. These Christians celebrate their own version of Jewish holidays such as Pessah and Succot and set aside Friday night and Saturday as a day of rest.
But they also believe that Jesus is the messiah and that he is the only path to redemption. Messianic Jews are very open about their beliefs, including their conviction that traditional Jewish faith is not sufficient for redemption.
Due to their religious beliefs, Messianic Jews have been subjected over the years to physical attacks and discrimination, including in the IDF.
M., a platoon commander in an elite demolition unit who is one of the founders of Netsor, asked The Jerusalem Post to leave out identifiable personal details of individuals who agreed to be interviewed out of concern that they would be singled out and blackballed by antagonistic elements with connections in the army.
“In the end, we believe that God opens and closes doors,” said M. “And if he does not want someone to advance in the IDF it won’t happen. But we don’t want to make any mistakes that will hurt someone’s IDF career.”
For Messianic Jews, military service in the IDF is not only a mandatory civil duty, it is a religious obligation. Lacking an exegetical tradition but serious about the sacredness and relevance of the biblical text, “believers” learn this obligation to serve in the army right out of the New Testament.
Romans (13:1-7) warns not to resist political authority, because it is “the ordinance of God.”
Colossians (3:22,23) teaches that one must excel as a faithful servant of one’s superiors, not for personal aggrandizement but to serve God.
The group’s interpretation of these texts, combined with a strong religious faith, transform them into soldiers of God determined to do his will during their stint in the army of the Jewish state.
Other verses, such as the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew, 5-7), which some Christians interpret as Jesus’s support for pacifism, are seen by Messianic Jews as an obligation to love one’s enemies while fighting and killing them.
“I hate what Palestinian terrorists do, therefore I will do anything, including kill, if necessary, to stop them,” said Tzvi, an educator and counselor at Netsor. “But I do not allow that to prevent me from loving them as human beings.”
Many Messianic Jews see their obligation to serve in the IDF as no different from the obligation of other Christians in the US, Britain or even Jordan and Egypt to serve their respective countries.
“If I lived in Jordan I would have the same feelings for the Jordanian army,” said Tzvi.
But for some, serving in the IDF has special theological meaning. Yoel, who was an officer in an IDF combat unit, believes the return of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel is part of God’s plans.
“The IDF is an instrument in the hands of God because it facilitates his plan,” said Yoel. “But I would not call it a holy army or the army of God.”
The Netsor program, which began three years ago, has quadrupled the number of students from seven in 2007 to 28 this year.
Yoel, one of Netsor’s founders, hopes one day to create a premilitary academy for Messianic Jews modeled after existing academies for religious and secular Israelis.
“We pray that sometime in the future we will succeed in establishing a full-fledged premilitary academy that will offer a one-year program; with God’s help.”
Internet reports are now circulating that Obama’s Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, John Holdren, penned a 1977 book that approved of and recommended compulsory sterilization and even abortion in some cases, as part of a government population control regime.
Given the general unreliability of Internet quotations, I wanted to go straight to this now-rare text and make sure the reports were both accurate and kept Holdren’s writings in context. Generally speaking, they are, and they do.
The Holdren book, titled Ecoscience and co-authored with Malthus enthusiasts Paul and Anne Ehrlich, weighs in at more than 1,000 pages. Of greatest importance to its discussion of how to limit the human population is its disregard for any ethical considerations.
Holdren (with the Ehrlichs) notes the existence of “moral objections to some proposals…especially to any kind of compulsion.” But his approach is completely amoral. He implies that compulsory population control is less preferable, because of some people’s objections, but he argues repeatedly that it is sometimes necessary, and necessity trumps all ethical objections.
He writes:
Several coercive proposals deserve discussion, mainly because some countries may ultimately have to resort to them unless current trends in birth rates are rapidly reversed by other means. Some involuntary measures could be less repressive or discriminatory, in fact, than some of the socioeconomic measures suggested.
Holdren refers approvingly, for example, to Indira Gandhi’s government for its then-recent attempt at a compulsory sterilization program:
India in the mid-1970s not only entertained the idea of compulsory sterilization, but moved toward implementing it…This decision was greeted with dismay abroad, but Indira Gandhi’s government felt it had little other choice. There is too little time left to experiment further with educational programs and hope that social change will generate a spontaneous fertility decline, and most of the Indian population is too poor for direct economic pressures (especially penalties) to be effective.
When necessary, then, compulsory sterilization is justified. This attitude suffuses the following passage, in which the possibility of putting a “sterilant” into a population’s drinking water is seriously discussed. Holdren and his co-authors do not recommend this particular method, but their objections to it are merely practical and health-related, not moral or stemming from any concern for human freedom:
Adding a sterilant to drinking water or staple foods is a suggestion that seems to horrify people more than most proposals for involuntary fertility control. Indeed, this would pose some very difficult political, legal, and social questions, to say nothing of the technical problems. No such sterilant exists today, nor does one appear to be under development. To be acceptable, such a substance would have to meet some rather stiff requirements: it must be uniformly effective, despite widely varying doses received by individuals, and despite varying degrees of fertility and sensitivity among individuals; it must be free of dangerous or unpleasant side effects; and it must have no effect on members of the oposite sex, children, old people, pets, or livestock…Again, there is no sign of such an agent on the horizon. And the risk of serious, unforeseen side effects would, in our opinion, militate against the use of any such agent, even though this plan has the advantage of avoiding the need for socioeconomic pressures that might tend to discriminate against particular groups or penalize children.
Even though they do not recommend it, note that Holdren and his co-authors treat this as a serious policy proposal with serious drawbacks — not as an insane idea unworthy of consideration.
They look with more favor on this “milder” form of coercive sterilization:
Of course, a government might require only implantation of the contraceptive capsule, leaving its removal to the individual’s discretion but requiring reimplantation after childbirth. Since having a child would require positive action (removal of the capsule), many more births would be prevented than in the reverse situation.
Holdren and his co-authors also tackle the problem of illegitimacy, recognizing that it could be one consequence of a society which, in its effort to limit births, downgrades the value of intact nuclear families and encourages lifelong bachelorhood:
Responsible parenthood ought to be encouraged and illegitimate childbearing could be strongly discouraged. One way to carry out this disapproval might be to insist that all illegitimate babies be put up for adoption — especially those born to minors, who generally are not capable of caring properly for a child alone…It would even be possible to require pregnant single women to marry or have abortions, perhaps as an alternative to placement for adoption, depending on the society.
Holdren’s suggestion here is presented perfectly in context. It stands alone in the text without any accompanying reservations.
President Obama has spoken repeatedly in favor of putting science before ideology. The real debate, however, has never been about whether ethics are needed in science, but rather over whose ethics should determine where science will or will not go.
Nowhere has Obama suggested that science should be completely ethics-free. But Holdren is his Science Czar all the same.
A joint U.S.-Israeli upgraded Arrow missile defense test conducted off the coast of California resulted in failure today despite a Pentagon effort to paint the effort as a partial success, an informed Israeli defense official told WND.
“The technical conditions for the meaningful part of the test, actually launching the Arrow interceptor, were not met. Instead, engineers were only able to obtain and exchange data on the target missile but not launch an interceptor missile,” the Israeli official said.
“In other words, it would be like Iran launching a missile at Israel and we were only able to trace the missile but not to stop it,” the official said.
The Arrow system, partly funded by the U.S., has been touted by Washington as appropriate defense for Israel against missile attacks from Syria and Iran.
Just yesterday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton drew heavy Israeli criticism when she implied the U.S. policy against Iran would be to provide Gulf nations with a U.S. “defense umbrella.”
Speaking later at a press conference, Clinton suggested her remarks were misunderstood.
“I’m not suggesting a new policy. In fact we all believe that Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons is unacceptable, and I’ve said that many times,” she said.
“I’m simply pointing out that Iran needs to understand that it’s pursuit of nuclear weapons will not advance its security or achieve its goals of enhancing its power regionally and globally,” she said.
Still, Jerusalem officials expressed disappointment with her sentiments.
Israeli Intelligence Services Minister Dan Meridor told reporters, “I heard without enthusiasm the American declarations according to which the United States will defend their allies in the event that Iran uses nuclear weapons, as if they were already resigned to such a possibility.”
“This is a mistake,” Meridor said. “We cannot act now by assuming that Iran will be able to arm itself with a nuclear weapon, but to prevent such a possibility.”
Israel’s Arrow II missile defense system, developed jointly with the American military, was tested at a U.S. range off the California coast, but the Pentagon said problems prevented the launch of the system’s interceptor.
The test was called off after the “enemy missile” was launched in the air, due to communication problems between the control room located on the coast and the missile launcher, deployed hundreds of miles away on an island opposite Los Angeles.
Still, the Arrow managed to track the target missile, dropped from a C-17 aircraft, the Pentagon said in a statement. The missile was meant to mimic an Iranian Shihab missile, but the interceptor was not launched due to a communications glitch.
The Israeli system today exchanged data on the target in real time with elements of the U.S. missile defense system, the Pentagon statement said.
“Not all test conditions to launch the Arrow Interceptor were met, and it was not launched,” the Pentagon said.
Other objectives were achieved, and the results were being analyzed, the Pentagon said.
Israel’s Haaretz newspaper reported three tests in the U.S. of the missile defense system have been aborted over the past week. The tests were carried out in the U.S. because that would allow for greater distances than would be possible in Israel, Defense Ministry spokesman Shlomo Dror said.
Dror said tests of the same Arrow system in Israel earlier this year were very successful.
American Jewish leaders are up in arms over recent U.S demands against Jewish construction in Jerusalem, pointing out that during the presidential campaign President Obama repeatedly told Jewish audiences that Jerusalem must remain undivided.
“I believe that on the issue of Jerusalem and the issue of Iran Obama intentionally misled both Jewish and Christian supporters of Israel,” Mort Klein, president of the Zionist Organization of America, told WND.
“He said as a candidate in 2008 that he supports an undivided Jerusalem and will never permit Iran to obtain nuclear weapons, and now we see that these claims were simply false,” said Klein.
Pessach Lerner, executive vice president of the National Council of Young Israel, told WND, “The Jewish community, in fact, the American community, has the right to expect that what they are told before an election will be what is acted upon after an election.
“Add to this the rights of a sovereign country, an ally, the only democratic state in the Middle East – and we find it very disturbing that the current U.S. administration is dictating to the state of Israel where it can and cannot build in Jerusalem,” Lerner said.
During last year’s presidential campaign, Obama numerous times told Jewish audiences he supports an undivided Jerusalem.
Replying to a 2008 questionnaire that asked about “the likely final status of Jerusalem,” Obama wrote: “The United States cannot dictate the terms of a final status agreement. … Jerusalem will remain Israel’s capital, and no one should want or expect it to be re-divided.”
In June 2008, Obama delivered a major speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, in which he stated that if elected “Jerusalem would remain the capital of Israel and it must remain undivided.”
Immediately following the speech, WND reported Obama flip-flopped during a CNN appearance, explaining he meant Jerusalem shouldn’t be physically divided with a partition.
“Well, obviously, it’s going to be up to the parties to negotiate a range of these issues. And Jerusalem will be part of those negotiations,” he said in response to a question about whether Palestinians have a legitimate claim to the city.
Obama said “as a practical matter, it would be very difficult to execute” a division of the city. “And I think that it is smart for us to, to work through a system in which everybody has access to the extraordinary religious sites in Old Jerusalem but that Israel has a legitimate claim on that city.”
The State Department last weekend summoned Israel’s ambassador to Washington to demand a Jewish construction project in eastern Jerusalem be immediately halted, it has been confirmed.
The Obama administration has called for a halt to Jewish construction in eastern Jerusalem and the strategic West Bank in line with Palestinian claims on eastern Jerusalem as a future capital, even though the city was never a part of any Palestinian entity.
The construction project at the center of attention, financed by Miami Beach philanthropist Irving Moskowitz, is located just yards from Israel’s national police headquarters and other government ministries. It is a few blocks from the country’s prestigious Hebrew University, underscoring the centrality of the Jewish real estate being condemned by the U.S.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu strongly rejected the State Department demand, telling a cabinet meeting Sunday that Israel’s sovereignty over Jerusalem was not a matter up for discussion.
“Imagine what would happen if someone were to suggest Jews could not live in or purchase property in certain neighborhoods in London, New York, Paris or Rome,” he said.
“The international community would certainly raise protest. Likewise, we cannot accept such a ruling on East Jerusalem,” Netanyahu told ministers.
In a statement released to WND yesterday, the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, long considered one of the most powerful Jewish groups in the U.S., took strong issue with the U.S. demand against Jewish construction in Jerusalem.
“We find disturbing the objections raised to the proposed construction of residential units on property that was legally purchased and approved by the appropriate authorities. The area in question houses major Israeli governmental agencies, including the national police headquarters.”
“The U.S. has in the past and recently raised objections to the removal of illegal structures built by Arabs in eastern Jerusalem even though they were built in violation of zoning and other requirements often on usurped land,” read the statement.
The Jewish organization’s statement pointed out Moskowitz’s housing project formerly was the house of the infamous mufti of Jerusalem Haj Amin al-Husseini, who spent the war years in Berlin as a close ally of Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, aiding and abetting the Nazi extermination of Jews.
Al-Husseini was also linked to the 1929 massacre of Jews in Jerusalem and Hebron and to other acts of incitement that resulted in deaths and destruction in what was then called Palestine. Some Palestinians have expressed a desire to preserve the building in question as a tribute to Husseini.
Historically, there was never any separation between eastern and western Jerusalem. The terminology came after Jordan occupied the eastern section of the city, including the Temple Mount, from 1947 until it used the territory to attack the Jewish state in 1967. Israel reunited Jerusalem when it won the 1967 Six Day War.
While the U.S. strongly protests any Jewish construction in eastern Jerusalem, it has been actively aiding Palestinians building illegally on Jewish-owned land in eastern sections of the city, WND has exposed.
In a disturbing new projection, health officials say up to 40 percent of Americans could get swine flu this year and next and several hundred thousand could die without a successful vaccine campaign and other measures.
The estimates by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are roughly twice the number of those who catch flu in a normal season and add greater weight to hurried efforts to get a new vaccine ready for the fall flu season.
Swine flu has already hit the United States harder than any other nation, but it has struck something of a glancing blow that’s more surprising than devastating. The virus has killed about 300 Americans and experts believe it has sickened more than 1 million, comparable to a seasonal flu with the weird ability to keep spreading in the summer.
Health officials say flu cases may explode in the fall, when schools open and become germ factories, and the new estimates dramatize the need to have vaccines and other measures in place.
A world health official said the first vaccines are expected in September and October. The United States expects to begin testing on some volunteers in August, with 160 million doses ready in October.
The CDC came up with the new projections for the virus’ spread last month, but it was first disclosed in an interview this week with The Associated Press.
The estimates are based on a flu pandemic from 1957, which killed nearly 70,000 in the United States but was not as severe as the infamous Spanish flu pandemic of 1918-19. The number of deaths and illnesses from the new swine flu virus would drop if the pandemic peters out or if efforts to slow its spread are successful, said CDC spokesman Tom Skinner.
“Hopefully, mitigation efforts will have a big impact on future cases,” he said. Besides pushing flu shots, health officials might urge measures such as avoiding crowded places, handwashing, cough covering and timely use of medicines like Tamiflu.
Because so many more people are expected to catch the new flu, the number of deaths over two years could range from 90,000 to several hundred thousand, the CDC calculated. Again, that is if a new vaccine and other efforts fail.
In a normal flu season, about 36,000 people die from flu and its complications, according to the American Medical Association. That too is an estimate, because death certificates don’t typically list flu as a cause of death. Instead, they attribute a fatality to pneumonia or other complications.
Influenza is notoriously hard to predict, and some experts have shied away from a forecast. At a CDC swine flu briefing Friday, one official declined to answer repeated questions about her agency’s own estimate.
“I don’t think that influenza and its behavior in the population lends itself very well to these kinds of models,” said the official, Dr. Anne Schuchat, who oversees the CDC’s flu vaccination programs.
The World Health Organization says as many as 2 billion people could become infected in the next two years — nearly a third of the world population. The estimates look at potential impacts in a two-year period because past flu pandemics have occurred in waves over more than one year.
Swine flu has been an escalating concern in Britain and some other European nations, where the virus’ late arrival has grabbed attention and some officials at times have sounded alarmed.
In an interview Friday, the WHO’s flu chief told the AP the global epidemic is still in its early stages.
“Even if we have hundreds of thousands of cases or a few millions of cases … we’re relatively early in the pandemic,” Keiji Fukuda said at WHO headquarters in Geneva.
The first vaccines are expected in September and October, Fukuda said. Other vaccines won’t be ready until well into the flu season when a further dramatic rise in swine flu cases is expected.
First identified in April, swine flu has likely infected more than 1 million Americans, the CDC believes, with many of those suffering mild cases never reported. There have been 302 deaths and nearly 44,000 laboratory-identified cases, according to numbers released Friday morning.
Because the swine flu virus is new, most people haven’t developed an immunity to it. So far, most of those who have died from it in the United States have had other health problems, such as asthma.
The virus has caused an unusual number of serious illnesses in teens and young adults; seasonal flu usually is toughest on the elderly and very young children.
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A reporter just wrote me a letter that contains a single sentence which I think reflects on why the Western world is in such trouble today. After understandably discussing such real problems of reporting as short deadlines, complex issues, and the duty of the reporter to report what people say, the letter concludes with this sentence:
“And when it comes to the Middle East, one man’s [obscenity deleted] is another man’s truth.”
Woe to us that a journalist thinks this way. Of course, this is very similar to the older version that one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.
Recently, I heard that latter one from the Danish ambassador to the Council of Europe who said that Hamas and Hizballah were like the Danish resistance in World War Two. I replied, among other things, that I don’t remember the Danish or other World War Two European resistance movements bombing German kindergartens and glorying in getting Danish civilians killed as human shields.
I also don’t think that the Danes and other European resistance movements were attempting to commit genocide on the Germans. I do believe it was the other way around.
(PS: More Danes fought in the German army than in the Resistance, and that was true of other countries as well. Forgive me for remembering who was the main victim of terrorism and “freedom fighter” terrorists then and today. But I digress)
That a European country—and one of the more astute ones, to make matters worse–is represented by someone like that says something pretty sad about the state of the world today.
Regarding that dangerous kind of claim:
People who murder civilians on purpose and organizations which have a strategy of mass murder are terrorists. The fact that these same organizations seek to put into power repressive dictatorships makes them even less like anything that might be called freedom fighters.
People who try their best not to murder civilians or to inflict suffering on them as an end in itself and who seek to create democratic governments with liberty are freedom fighters.
Those responsible for the Terror in the French Revolution, Nazis, Stalinists, Hamas, al-Qaida, etc., can be called terrorists. That list was not meant to be exhaustive.
Individuals can act in a terrorist manner but if the movements in which they participate are freedom fighter movements, they will limit, restrain, and punish such people. In terrorist groups—like say the PLO historically—such acts were glorified and rewarded.
Moreover, this concept is equally dangerous in implying that popularity is a rationale for crime. The government of the Third Reich was genuinely popular among its citizenry. When genocide was committed recently in Rwanda, it enjoyed broad support. Many such examples of such behavior can be offered. This, too, is a terrible and even criminal assumption.
Now obviously if one wants to try to come up with complex situations regarding the issues discussed briefly above where the answers aren’t so easy, this can be done without difficulty. But this does not prove such distinctions don’t exist, just that they are not always simple ones.
Democratic countries have rogue individuals, they make mistakes, and governments may have to be reined in by the rule of law. But that doesn’t make them the same as those for whom terrorism is their basic philosophy and strategy.
Regarding the newer version of this concept as voiced by the reporter in his letter, it is even worse. No, truth is not just a matter of opinion, even in the Middle East. And the belief that it is so has been one of the diseases so damaging contemporary intellectual life, politics, and international affairs.
There is something accurately to be called truth and even if we cannot quite reach it, the aspiration to try and the determination to attain the closest possible approximation should be the basis of academic and intellectual and professional life.
All civilizations have been working for a long time to come up with ways to do this. Western civilization has tried especially hard and succeeded—I’m tempted to add, up until recently?—in doing so.
What are these methods? Here are a few. For any statement, claim, or argument:
–Examining the internal consistency.
–Its compatibility with known facts and accepted postulates.
–Occam’s razor, the idea that excessive complexity can indicate an inaccurate explanation (thus, distrust in conspiracy theories)
–Usefulness in predictability, if it accurately describes the workings of some mechanism it should be able to tell us something about what has happed in the past and in the future.
–Replicability, can the result from the hypothesis be duplicated.
–The reliability of sources used.
–The accumulation of very specific evidence which all can pass the tests mentioned above.
–The construction and testing of hypotheses to see if they fit the facts and work.
–Extremely high standards of personal integrity including constant self-examination to see if one’s personal viewpoint was getting in the way of being accurate.
–A willingness to change one’s mind in light of additional facts.
–A reusal to hide relevant facts even if they contradict one’s thesis
–Discussion and exchanges of ideas with others in the context of freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and other things to ensure that ideas can battle it out and the truth emerge to the best possible extent.
[I’d be happy to hear your additions and, of course, a great deal more could be written about each of the points above.]
We call these things: logic, reason, the scientific method, the product of the Enlightenment; the Greek philosophical, Talmudic analytical, and the Scholastic methods; and many other names.
But recently, these have been shoved aside by the idea that truth is relative, there is no truth, and everyone’s opinion (narrative) is of the same value.
So it’s no accident that someone who thinks this way would give equal time to what my correspondent referred to as (expletive deleted). Actually, the (expletive deleted) usually gets the upper hand. Nowhere do we see this more than in the Middle East and the “scholarship” and “journalism” applied to this part of the world.
Let me suggest an experiment. Take an apple or other handy piece of fruit or vegetable. Hold it in one hand. Then take a very sharp knife. Hold it in your other hand.
Then, say out loud: One man’s [expletive deleted] is another man’s truth.
Next, assuming that the location of the piece of fruit is a matter of personal opinion which has no relationship to spatial dimensions, slash out with the knife until you fall to the floor bleeding profusely.
Congratulations, you now understand the effect of such a doctrine on the Middle East.
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This could be the most important article I write this year. Israel has entered a new era of thinking and policy in which old categories of left or right, hawk or dove are irrelevant under a national unity government bringing together the two main ruling parties.
How did this new paradigm arise?
Between 1948 and 1992, the Israeli consensus was that the PLO and most Arab states want to destroy Israel. When—or if–the day comes that they’re ready to negotiate seriously we’ll see what happens.
Then came the Oslo agreement and a huge shift. The governing view was that maybe the Palestinians and Arab states learned the cost of their intransigence enough to make peace possible. The left thought a deal could bring real peace; the right thought it was a trick leading to another stage of conflict on terms less favorable to Israel. But both expected a deal to materialize.
The year 2000, the Camp David failure, the Syrian and Palestinian rejection of generous offers, and Second Intifada destroyed illusions in Israel.
Since then, Israel has groped for a new paradigm. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon offered unilateralism; Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Foreign Minister Tsipi Livni constantly offered more in exchange for nothing. But the more they did so, the more international abuse Israel received.
Now a new approach has finally emerged capable of reversing this situation. It goes like this: Israel wants peace but doesn’t hesitate to express not only what it wants and needs but also what’s required to create a stable and better situation. To ensure that violence and instability really ceases requires:
–Recognition of Israel as a Jewish state. Without this step, the aftermath of any “peace” agreement would be additional decades of Arab effort to destroy Israel in all but—temporarily—name.
–Absolute clarity that a peace agreement ends the conflict and all claims on Israel. Otherwise, the Palestinian leadership and much of the Arab world would regard any “peace” agreement as a license for a new stage of battle using Palestine as a base for renewed attacks and demands.
–Strong security arrangements and serious international guarantees for them. Have no doubt; these will be tested by cross-border attacks from Palestine.
–An unmilitarized Palestinian state (a better description than “demilitarized”), with the large security forces they already have: enough for internal security and legitimate defense but not aggression.
–Palestinian refugees resettled in Palestine. The demand for a “Right of Return” is just a rationale for wiping Israel off the map through internal subversion and civil war.
If Israel gets what it requires—and what successful peace requires—it will accept a two-state solution, a Palestinian Arab Muslim state (the Palestinian Authority’s own definition) alongside a Jewish state, living in peace.
Part of the new thinking is to understand that precise borders and east Jerusalem’s status, while important, are secondary to these basic issues. If those principles are resolved, all else can follow.
This new posture is not one of desperately asserting Israel’s yearning for peace but rather saying: We’re serious, we’re ready, we’re not suckers but we’re not unreasonable either. We want peace on real terms, not just more unilateral concessions and higher risk without reward. Not experimenting with our survival to please others. Not some illusory celebration of a two-state solution for a week and then watching it produce another century of violence.
Is it really such a brilliant idea to rush into giving a state without serious conditions to a Palestinian regime which has failed to govern competently what it already has, daily broadcasts incitement to murder Israelis, is profoundly corrupt, has already lost half its patrimony to a rival whose goal is a new genocide but whose own most fervent wish is to merge with that rival, and whose program is merely for the world to pressure Israel into handing it everything?
The best outcome would be if this program was met by Palestinian cooperation. If they are suffering so under alleged occupation, if so desperate for their own state, there’s nothing in this offer they can’t accept.
If, however, they prefer rejectionism, exposing their claims as false, that, too, is acceptable. The truth would be known: the Palestinians and much of the Arab world can’t make peace with Israel because they don’t want peace with Israel. And that is because they don’t want Israel to exist. Period.
Around this program, Jews outside Israel should rally, putting aside old conflicts about who’s more passionate about peace, who more concerned about security. The same applies to other countries and those well-intended who want to see a strategic situation more in accord with both their interests and humanitarian considerations.
In this context, there is no more puerile and misleading notion than that Israel’s government has put forth a program encompassing a two-state solution because of U.S. demands or pressures. This is a plan that organically grew out of the country’s situation, experience, and a broad national consensus.
A second notion Israel’s new paradigm rejects is the argument that either Israel is so strong that it can give without receiving or so weak that it must do so. The country simply does not desperately need a deeply flawed “solution” to be grabbed either out of misplaced “generosity” or “fear.”
Another mistaken conception is that the status quo is intolerable and that any change would be for the better. More risks, concessions, and the establishment of an unstable and hostile Palestinian state–the most likely outcome at present–would make things worse.
Equally wrong is the notion that time is against Israel, a strong and vibrant society surrounded by weak, disorganized neighbors. Israel’s strategic situation has dramatically improved over the decades. It is a strong, confident society visibly meeting the challenge of the modern economic and technical environment.
Finally, and of the greatest importance, is the fact that Israel’s new policy is truly based on a consensus. It merges both the conservative approach–proper suspicions and demands for security and reciprocity—and the liberal approach–a proper readiness to compromise and desire for true peace–into one package.
Both elements are now blended in the thinking of the overwhelming majority of Israelis. A new national consensus has emerged which will be strong, and durable. If the world pays attention to it, there might actually be some real hope for peace.
But as long as Western governments and media are only interested in two things–what the Palestinians demand and new concessions from Israel–the situation will remain frozen for many years to come.
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I’m going to make a bold assertion: I think the U.S.-Israel friction over construction on settlements is largely over, not in terms of verbal criticism but rather in any meaningful way. This doesn’t mean the United States is going to stop talking about settlement construction. That’s the whole point: it will keep talking without taking strong action in real terms.
It was reported recently that the State Department called in new Israel ambassador Michael Oren and gave him a talking-to regarding a construction project in Jerusalem. This was widely perceived as some new example of confrontation. In my view, it proved the opposite.
In fact, it was Israel, not the United States, which made the meeting public. If the United States wanted to escalate pressure on Israel it would have given the criticism a lot of publicity.
But what about this one? A State Department spokesman responded to a question at a press briefing asking whether the U.S. government was considering putting financial pressure on Israel to get it to stop construction, he responded, “It’s premature to talk about that.” This was not a major new U.S. threat, it was simply an official without guidance on what to say, simply answering: No one is talking about that now.
Then he added, “What we’re trying to do…right now is to create an environment which makes it conducive for talks to go forward.” But obviously U.S. sanctions on Israel would sabotage any such climate.
What we are actually seeing is the pretense of pressure without its actual application. There are several reasons for this:
–This administration doesn’t really want a confrontation with anyone. It is averse to applying real pressure. Rather, it measures success on the basis of partnership, cooperation, and popularity.
–President Barack Obama learned during and after the presidential campaign that bashing Israel carries with it a high cost both politically and in terms of negative publicity and criticism.
–Knowing that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is going to resist pressure, it assesses a confrontation will be both costly and unlikely to yield success. In her major foreign policy speech, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton even acknowledged that it would be hard for Netanyahu to make concessions given his own political situation.
–The administration has gotten nothing from the Palestinians. On the contrary, their leaders have made it clear they will make no concession and are not eager for change. They merely are waiting for the United States to deliver Israel to them, which is something the administration understands isn’t going to happen.
–The Arab states, in what must have been another shock for the administration, are giving no help either. All Obama got was a couple of nice speeches from Jordan’s king, some nice media coverage in Egypt and Saudi Arabia, and an op-ed by Bahrain’s crown prince. It must be dawning on Obama’s administration that it is the only one eager for progress in negotiations and cannot expect any help from the region.
–When politicians and policymakers see what they thought was an easy success turn into a messy mess, they lose interest and turn to other issues.
–It is becoming clear that Iran is not interested in engagement either. The administration is becoming focused on the sanctions’ issue. Major G8 and G20 meetings in August and September will focus on the Iran nuclear issue.
Aside from this, the administration clearly has nobody who understands anything about Israel. I don’t say that lightly but it is confirmed by sources within that government. The presence of Jews in the administration doesn’t solve that problem.
On the contrary, such people tend to exaggerate their own very limited knowledge. They tend to disregard what Israelis actually think and say believing that they themselves know better what’s good for the country. Yet while they are willing–even eager–to engage in criticism–they are not so eager to punish Israel in damaging ways.
The latest U.S. move was an example of such a miscalculation. To pick an incredibly small housing projects—about 20 apartments—in an area which is at the top of the Israeli list for border modifications (French Hill in Jerusalem), and even to focus on Jerusalem itself is to choose the worst possible case.
On this specific project, the Netanyahu government is guaranteed maximum public support in Israel. Even in the U.S. Congress this is not going to inspire support for the White House. And all these factors, of course, played into the Israeli government’s willingness to go public.
Finally, while the administration spun its meeting with selected Jewish leaders as signaling American Jewish support for the policy on settlement construction, there is a gigantic flaw in this claim. First there was far more criticism than the media and the anti-Israel lobby pretending to be pro-Israel (Peace Now and J Street) asserted. At most, asked if they object to Obama’s opposing settlement construction, the real Jewish leaders there basically said, “It can’t hurt to ask.”
But what If Obama asked them: Do you favor my punishing Israel for not giving in to my demand? Of course, they would respond: Absolutely not. For all practical purposes, then, the meeting was useless for Obama in actual policy terms.
My view is that the administration will keep making speeches and statements in meetings against settlement construction but not do anything vigorous. It feels that such a posture is needed to show the Arabs and Muslims that it is working on the issue and moving further away from Israel but knows that this is an image question. Tough action will gain it nothing and lose it a lot.
Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that the United States reduced aid to Israel by some figure which supposedly coincided with money spent on settlement construction.
Would this make Israel amenable to making more concessions at U.S. request?
Would it increase Israeli respect for future U.S. pledges when this president has broken past ones? (I know enough people who were involved on both sides of past negotiations to know for certain that Obama is indeed breaking past commitments to accept construction within existing settlements.)
Would Congress meekly fall into line and carry out Obama’s demands, especially as his popularity rating continues to sink over other issues?
But Obama himself stated in his meeting with Jewish leaders–along with some of his planted, anti-Israel Jewish activists–that he attributed the previous administration’s “failure” on the issue partly to its very close proximity to Israel. He wants to open up some space between the two countries. But how much space? The gap doesn’t have to be very wide.
The above is an analysis, not a defense, of the Obama administration’s policy. In turn, the policy is one based on misunderstandings and miscalculation, but not on some visceral hatred of Israel.
In some ways, the Obama administration’s view is a return to the approach of several Cold War presidents whose thought the United States needed to prove it wasn’t too “pro-Israel” in order to get Arabs on board for the conflict with the Soviet Union. Now, to some extent, the new motivation for this balancing act is the idea that Arab support is needed against terrorism, radicalism, and Iran.
I can still state that after six months in office the administration has not taken a single material action against Israel. We’ll see if that changes at all in the months to come.
Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition) and The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley). To read and subscribe to MERIA, GLORIA articles, or to order books, go to http://www.gloria-center.org. To see his blog, http://www.rubinreports.blogspot.com
A Brief Guide to the Differences Between Palestinian Authority, Syrian, and Iranian Strategies Toward the West
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Here’s a brief guide to the differences between Palestinian Authority (PA), Syrian, and Iranian strategies toward the United States and the West. While expressing it in a succinct and perhaps amusing way to make it easier to grasp, I really do believe this is an accurate depiction and distinction.
Palestinian Authority line: We benefit greatly from the fact that Western leaders race around talking about how much we are suffering and how desperate we are for change. In reality, though, we are telling you to go solve the problem for us. Pressure Israel to give us what we want. We aren’t going to do anything. On the contrary, we have great patience and prefer to wait a century rather than to make any concessions.
Iranian regime line: We’re going to do whatever we want. You are declining, we are getting stronger. Soon we will have nuclear weapons. You want to talk? Sure, we’ll talk. We’ll make commitments and not keep them. So what are you going to do about it? Nothing? We thought so!
Syrian line: We are very powerful! No matter what the regional issue is you cannot do anything without our help: Iraq, Iran, Lebanon, Palestinians, terrorism, etc. You name it. You need us. So give us what we want and we will help you. (Though of course even if you give us what we want–say, control over Lebanon–we still won’t help you.)
Syria interesting facts 1: A great example of this Syrian behavior was when Iran kidnapped and then released some British navy personnel. The Syrian government claimed credit for the release–though clearly Damascus had nothing to do with it–and the British government actually said “thank you.”
Syria interesting facts 2: Syria does sometimes, however, try the gambit of wanting to be helpful but needing to get some reward in order to be able to do so. The classic example was when the government begged for night-vision goggles from the Europeans for the supposed purpose of stopping arms smuggling into Lebanon (which, of course, the regime itself was supervising). Then it turned the night goggles over to Hizballah to use in fighting Israel.
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