Category: Thought

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IDF CHAOS: What Does the Guilty Verdict in the Elor Azaria Trial Mean for the IDF and Israel?

After nine long months of indescribable torture towards Sgt. Elor Azariya and his family, the army court has handed down a verdict of guilty of manslaughter.  What a black day in the history of the State of Israel.

The left has been licking their chops since March when they discovered that they could take a soldier who is defending his/our country and turn him into a scapegoat.  What a treasure Elor became for them.  The left took it to the max and to the media and started a nonstop attack of character assassination towards Elor.  Through one method or another, they have managed to control the trial.  It appeared as if the trial was already signed, sealed, and delivered as time went on.

The attack continued on Elor by bringing in top officers from the IDF to testify that Elor allegedly shot an arab while not being in a situation of self defense and that he do not operate according to the rules opening of fire of the IDF.  What does that mean that Elor went against firing orders?  Who can know what went through Elor’s mind at the time of the alleged incident?  Elor probably can’t even know.  In the heat of battle you do what you have to do.  Its kill or be killed.  The arab came into the area in Hebron with the intention of killing Jews.  No less and no more.  Any soldier or for that matter any civilian who is in that situation, it is clear as day what must be done.  Yes the arab was on the ground however he was not subdued, he was not handcuffed and the danger still existed that the arab could get up, and continue to kill Jews.  It would not have been the first time that an arab on the ground got up and continued trying to kill Jews.  The orders for opening fire are very clear in that if the soldier is in fear for his life or others around him, he can open fire on the enemy.  Doesn’t IDF stand for Israel Defense Forces?  Elor was just trying to defend himself and all others around him.

The judge during the handing down of the verdict, said that Elor killed a man as opposed to saying that Elor killed a terrorist.  This shows how the judges themselves are corrupt and have for a long time already decided what the verdict will be.  This goes hand in hand that the arab who was allegedly shot by Elor was suddenly turned into a martyr.

Elor testified that the arab in question was wearing clothes that were not appropriate for that time of year and that he was moving around the area in a very suspicious way.

At the base of this whole trial is the constant attempt by the left to regain control of the government.  They have done everything in their power to make this the case of the year if not decade so that the right will fall.

Even more is what happens now?  In the future we could have an eighteen year old who is getting ready to go into the army.  He has to think twice now (no matter what the verdict is today), does he really want to enlist in a combat unit?  What if he gets into the same situation as Elor was and thinks twice about shooting the arab and the arab gets up and Heaven forbid kills him and or other Jews and Jewish soldiers.  Or what if there is a soldier who is already in a combat unit.  In a normal situation he can come into contact with arab attackers on a daily basis and then what does he do?  Freeze up because he doesn’t want to be arrested and therefore by doing that he can endanger his life and others.  Here is where the left wants to take the People Of Israel.

This is a sad  day for Israel.  The People Of Israel have been taken down to a new low by the left.  The country now is really torn in two.  The fifth column has managed to destroy us once again from within.

The judge spoke for almost THREE hours before giving the verdict.  The judge went over section by section of the charges against Elor.  What an embarrassment.  If Elor is innocent, then pronounce that Elor is innocent.  If Elor is guilty, Heaven forbid, then pronounce that he is guilty.  What an embarrassment  to all of Am Yisrael.  The arabs and the fifth column inside Israel will have a field day now.

The chief of staff just yesterday said that an eighteen year old is not everyone’s soldier but the army’s soldier.  What happened to the ethic that all of Israel is responsible for one another?  What happened to the ideal that our children who are in the army are everyone’s child?  The defense minister must come out right now and censure the chief of staff for this outrageous remark.  The People Of Israel do not want and do not deserve such a person to be the chief of staff.  It will only lead to military disasters.

Minister of Education Naftali Bennett said this week that if Elor is found guilty he must be pardoned immediately.  Prime Minster Netanyahu also spoke in favor of Elor during the trial.  Similar quotes have been made by various Knesset members, from all sides of the political spectrum.  With the help of God, this will happen very quickly and the fifth column here in Israel will once and for all be silenced and destroyed.

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[watch] “Judenrein” Jerusalem? New Zealand’s shame

A respected British commentator recently described New Zealand as “a stupid country of no other significance”. She was referencing NZ co-sponsoring UN resolution 2334, which effectively bans Jews from living in certain areas.

I am not convinced that New Zealand is a stupid country but in this matter some of our leaders are surely morally deficient.

First, some background:

Jews have been subject to expulsion and persecution for millennia. In the 1930’s and 40’s, for example, the Germans implemented a policy of Jewish expulsion. Their goal was to make Europe Judenrein* or Judenfrei – free of Jews. Jewish communities, many of which had been resident in their host countries for hundreds of years, were expelled or eliminated. I have a number of Jewish friends who lived through this dark period.

Forbidding Jews to live in a particular area was, of course, antisemitism. And it is a matter of historical record that the Judenrein policy was a step on the road to genocide. Ultimately six million Jews were murdered.

On Christmas Eve, the UNSC, with New Zealand support, implemented a new Judenrein-esque policy. Jews have once again been declared illegal in certain areas. But this time it is not Germany, Austria or Poland from which Jews should be expelled. No, it is portions of the ancestral homeland of the Jewish people that is to be ethnically cleansed.

Rational observers acknowledge that the Judenrein of the 30’s and 40’s was antisemitism. To deny that the new Judenrein is antisemitic is absurd.

There is only one Jewish state. And yet more than twenty percent of Israel’s population are Arabs. They enjoy the rights, freedom and protection of the only democracy in the Middle East. None of the 22 Arab countries surrounding Israel grants its citizens the rights and freedoms enjoyed by Arabs living in Israel.

And under the so-called two state solution it was a given that those Arabs could remain in Israel. And yet, throughout the so-called peace process, Fatah and Hamas have insisted that any eventual Palestinian state must be Judenrein – that it must be ethnically cleansed of Jews.

And now the ethnic cleansing of Judea, Samaria – and even suburbs of Jerusalem – has been endorsed and granted an air of legitimacy by the UN.

The moral confusion and hypocrisy of the international community is breathtaking.

All over the world indigenous rights have gained currency in recent decades. Here in New Zealand, for example, Māori have regained some of their ancestral land and a number of historical grievances have been addressed.

The indigenous status of the Jewish people, however, appears to have little or no traction in the world community. Although the Jews have maintained a devotion to Jerusalem and a continuous presence in their historic homeland for more than three thousand years, rather than being recognised as indigenous to their land, they are branded occupiers or colonisers. And now such falsehoods have been granted the full weight of a Security Council resolution.

No people group on the face of the earth can present stronger evidence for their connection to their ancestral homeland. Archaeology, genetic studies, and historical texts all confirm that Judea and Samaria are the Jewish homelands. And yet the world community has now declared Judea, Samaria and even East Jerusalem must be Judenrein.

If the UN chose to ban Ngapuhi from Waitangi or Te Arawa from Rotorua it would be considered outrageous. There ought to be outrage at the banning of Jews from their ancestral homelands.

The lie that settlements are the significant obstacle to peace persists. Between 1949 and 1967 there were no settlements in the now disputed territories and yet Arab terror was a continual problem. And consider Gaza: in 2005 Israel unilaterally removed all settlers and terrorism grew far worse.

None of this means anything to a world that in the 30’s and 40’s abandoned the Jewish people to a genocidal enemy. The world appears willing to do so again.

The Judenrein policy of the 30’s and 40’s was the precursor to genocide. Today the intention of the parties with whom Israel is supposed to negotiate is once again genocide. One need only read the Hamas charter and watch the habitual incitement to murder on government run Palestinian TV.

And yet the international community, co-lead by New Zealand on this occasion, chides Israel and declares her an illegal occupier in her ancestral homeland.

In 2015 a survey of world antisemitism was published. The most antisemitic nation in Asia was Malaysia and Senegal the worst in sub-Saharan Africa. The very poor human rights record of Venezuela is well known. These are nations with whom New Zealand chose to stand in demanding the ethnic cleansing of Jews from the Jewish heartland.

This is a time of great shame for New Zealand. To have promoted and facilitated the new Judenrein is a disgrace.

On behalf of those New Zealand citizens still in possession of their moral faculties I apologize to the people of Israel.

*My use of Judenrein is simply to highlight the similarities between the events of the 30’s and 40’s and the intentions of Fatah and Hamas: the removal of Jews from a region and the murder of Jews.

This video was originally published on Middle East Voices and the transcript on Times of Israel.

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Civilized Savages and the Lessons They Teach

Tel Aviv, British Mandate Palestine:

Heart pounding, a 12 year old girl Jewish girl runs down the street. Her legs pumping as fast as they can go. She looks behind her. Fear gripping her stomach, she sees that the gang of Arab men is gaining on her, their knives flashing in the sunlight.

If they catch her they will kill her.

To them it is a game. Sport. She knows that what’s at stake is her life.

She hears laughter from above. Looking up, she sees British soldiers on the rooftops.

For a fleeting moment, she thinks they will help her. They could stop the men. They could save her!

To her horror, she realizes that the British soldiers are laughing at HER. They were taking wagers, betting on the chances of the Jewish girl escaping death.

Hope fades as quickly as it had been ignited.

She runs till she feels her heart is about to burst, her little legs collapse beneath her. Then, suddenly, a door opens. A hand stretches out and grabs her, pulling her inside.

An Arab woman was bending over her, gesturing for the Jewish girl to be quiet. Urgently she pulled the girl to the back of her house.

What did this woman want from her? It took the girl a moment to understand that the woman was ushering her out the back door of the house. The Arab woman was providing an escape route, offering the girl life.

I am alive today because that Arab woman saved my grandmother’s life.

The 12 year old girl grew up to be my grandmother. My Jewish Palestinian grandmother had an Israeli daughter. The Arab woman was also a Palestinian. At the time the term referred to Jews and Arabs who lived in the land of Zion. The land was renamed by the foreign occupying power to diminish its legacy as the home of the Jewish people but at the same time the Jews of Europe were being told to “go home to Palestine.” Everyone knew that Palestine was Zion, the land of Israel, home of the Jewish people.

The Arab woman who saved my grandmother was a hero. She, not the British soldiers, rescued my grandmother from the lynch mob of Arab men. She saw the danger, understood how terrible the consequences would be and acted morally – at her own personal risk. The soldiers also saw the danger, they also understood the consequences. Their reaction was to laugh.

Oh, so civilized…

Fast forward to 2016, the UN Security Council. The representatives of the world vote, declaring biblical Israel, Judea and Samaria, the Golan and Jewish Jerusalem occupied Palestinian land. Jewish presence is, they declare, illegal. Israeli towns, holy sites including the Western Wall and the Temple Mount in the heart of Jerusalem are “illegal settlements.” Suddenly, everything that tied Jews to Zion for thousands of years, the places that served as inspiration for the world, have nothing to do with Jews and Israelis have no right to be there.

One after another the representatives of the world vote to wipe Israel’s legacy off the books of history, knowing what this will mean for Israel’s present and future.

Israel’s eyes lifted to the American representative. America has a history of standing for right when the rest of the world is wrong. America, the land whose founders declared it the New Zion wouldn’t let the rest of the world declare that Zion never existed… would she?

The wars against Israel, fought and lost could not disconnect the Jews from Zion.

The terror tactics meant to push Jews off the land only made the Jewish people cling harder to their only homeland.

Now, in the comfort of a room half way around the world, the nations of the world declared victory for those who wish to remove Israel from Zion.

And they laughed. The crowd of spectators applauding, gleefully. History doesn’t matter, scientific proof doesn’t matter, international law doesn’t matter. “Getting the Jews” is fun. Sport. A reason to cheer.

How civilized.

And then there are the Egyptians. At first, they were convinced that submitting the UN resolution was a good idea. Realizing the damage it would do to Israel, they pulled the resolution.

Then the Americans found a different way to make sure the resolution was submitted and passed. The Egyptians were privy to the American betrayal of Israel and wanted to no part in it.

Even though Israel decided to hold back the details of the American plot, the Egyptians rushed to release the information, signaling to Israel: “We want peace, not your destruction. We want to help, not create damage.”

Watching these events unfold I am left to wonder, who is civilized and who is the savage?

We may have advanced but the world hasn’t changed. Sometimes the most “civilized” people or nations are the most vicious and to this day, many consider “getting the Jew” good sport.

The Jewish people must never be beholden to the mercy of the “civilized.” There is no one we can count on for security – but ourselves.

It is actions that count, not words. Content of character is all that matters – moral clarity, not titles or declarations of friendship.

Sometimes true friends are found in unexpected places. Sometimes they are the ones that pull us out of the jaws of death. Or at least they try.

Originally Posted on Inspiration by Zion

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THE PLO’S ZERO-SUM GAME

The time has come for the Israeli government to make some bold moves.

Since its inception in the late 1970s, the Israeli peace movement has been based on one thing: hope.

Members of the peace movement hoped the PLO’s war with Israel could be resolved through compromise. Proponents of peace with the PLO hoped that Yasser Arafat and his terrorist minions weren’t truly committed to Israel’s destruction.

The two-state formula was based on the hope that Israel could reach an accommodation with the PLO. To wit, in exchange for parts of Judea and Samaria and Gaza (no one was talking about Jerusalem), Israeli peaceniks, who over time came to encompass all factions of the Left in Israel, hoped the PLO would bury the hatchet, build a state, or federate with Jordan, and that would be that.

In 1992, the peace camp took over the government. Under the leadership of then prime minister Yitzhak Rabin and then foreign minister Shimon Peres, hope became the basis for Israel’s national security strategy. That strategy was followed by every Israeli government since. The basic idea was clear enough. In exchange for land and guns and legitimacy, Arafat and his goons would be domesticated.

The peace camp’s hope was never based on evidence. Indeed, it flew in the face of the PLO’s track record. By the time the Israeli peaceniks began negotiating with Arafat and his deputies in the late 1980s, the PLO had already controlled two autonomous areas. In both Jordan and Lebanon, Arafat and his terrorists transformed peaceful areas into bases for global terrorism and launching points for massacres of Israelis and of victims from Africa to Europe to the Americas.

The secret of the PLO’s success was that it didn’t simply kill people. It combined murder with political warfare. The PLO’s political war had two goals. First, it aimed to make killing Jews politically acceptable a mere generation after the Holocaust.

Second, the PLO devoted great resources to wooing the Israeli and Western Left. It sought to convince a sufficient core of leftists that the PLO wasn’t really committed to its goal of eradicating Israel. It actually was a peace movement in terrorist disguise.

Arafat and his deputies whispered in the ears of their gullible Israeli “partners” that they weren’t an implacable foe. They were partners for peace just waiting to be convinced that they could make a deal.

The success of both political warfare strategies has been on prominent display of late. On December 23, the ambassadors of state members of the UN Security Council broke out in spontaneous applause after they unanimously passed Resolution 2334, which declares Israel an outlaw state populated by criminals and bereft of all rights to its capital and its historic heartland.

A week later, the PLO’s largest terrorist faction Fatah celebrated its founding day. The largest celebration this year reportedly took place in Bethlehem.

Fatah was actually founded in 1958. But Arafat chose December 31, 1964 as its founding day because that was the day his terrorists carried out their first terrorist attack against Israel.

In Bethlehem Saturday, thousands of Palestinian youths – starting at the age of four or five – marked the day with a march through town.

This was no ticker tape parade.

In classic PLO fashion, the young people – including the preschoolers – were clad in military uniforms and had their faces covered with sheets. They marched through the streets behind banners sporting the images of Fatah terrorists like mass murderer Dalal Mughrabi and pledged to complete their heroes’ mission.

The message of the spectacle was straightforward enough. Fatah remains utterly committed to eradicating Israel through terrorism and war.

Covering the march for the Israeli media was Channel 2’s far-left correspondent Ohad Hemo. In a manner comprehensible only to true believers, Hemo stared at the march and saw a reason for restored hope for peace.

Speaking to masked grand masters, without a tinge of embarrassment, Hemo asked if they supported the two-state solution.

Lo and behold, as they marched behind banners of Mughrabi, who led the PLO terrorist cell that massacred 38 Israelis including 13 children in 1978, Hemo’s minders told him that indeed, they support a two-state solution!

Hemo was exultant.

Even with its chokehold on the media and its control of the judicial system and state prosecution, the Israeli Left would have never been successful in maintaining this murderous joke without outside help.

And that’s where the American Jewish establishment came in.

For more than 20 years, led by AIPAC, the American Jewish establishment has insisted that the two-state solution is the only option. That is, empty faith in a terrorist organization fully committed to Israel’s destruction is the only acceptable policy for Republicans and Democrats alike to follow in respect to Israel.

For 23 years, despite the ever increasing dubiousness of Republican leaders and a few Democratic lawmakers, the consensus view was maintained.

The Jewish community’s slavish devotion to the PLO stemmed from two sources. First, by insisting that the PLO is a credible force, the American Jewish community has been able to keep peace in its ranks, which are populated overwhelmingly by leftists.

Second, by promoting a policy at odds with reality, communal leaders have been able to pretend that there is no qualitative distinction between Democratic and Republican support for Israel. This claim, which has become downright implausible during President Barack Obama’s tenure in the White House, is vital for enabling American Jews to pretend that Israel is a voting issue for them and that they aren’t simply motivated by their leftist world views.

It would appear that the jig is up on this position.

Obama’s lame-duck war against Israel and the rise of anti-Jewish forces in the Democratic Party led by Rep. Keith Ellison make it practically impossible to continue to claim that the Democratic Party is a home for pro-Israel forces in America.

On the other hand, President-elect Donald Trump’s full-throated support for Israel and promotion of advisers who openly oppose a PLO state has opened the door for Republican lawmakers to abandon their half-hearted support for the PLO. Beginning this month, they may very well begin ending US recognition of the PLO and cut off taxpayer funds to its terrorism-cultivating autonomy in Judea and Samaria.

In this state of affairs, American Jewish groups will either support Trump and the Republicans or lose their ability to influence events. In either case, for at least the next two years, they have lost their capacity to support the Israeli Left in a significant way.

This is important for Israel to understand because the clock is ticking. Obama’s onslaught has made clear that the Democratic Party no longer supports Israel. Like the PLO, Obama and his advisers view the PLO’s conflict with Israel as a zero-sum game and they have cast their lots with the terrorists against the Jewish state.

It is to be expected that under the leadership of former president Obama and Ellison the Democrats will expand the openness of their hostility to Israel.

Under these circumstance, Israel has but two years – until the mid-term congressional elections when the Democrats may be empowered in Congress – to decide what it wants to do with Judea and Samaria.

Last week the government signaled that its first step will be to apply Israeli law to Ma’ale Adumim. A bill to this effect is expected to be brought before the government shortly after Obama leaves office.

While a good first move, our leaders must recognize that it needs to be quickly followed up by additional administrative changes. The goal of those additional steps is to dismantle the military government which administers Area C – 60% of Judea and Samaria – by 2019 and transfer full administrative responsibility for the area, which includes Israel’s border with Jordan and all the Israeli communities of Judea and Samaria, to the government.

The time has come for the government to move ahead boldly. In their post-Obama, post-2334 state, the Israeli Left and its American Jewish supporters are in no position to stop the government from doing what needs to be done. But, if the government fails to act now, when the Democrats return in two or four years, the opportunity now upon us may be lost forever as the PLO comes back to win its zero sum game against Israel.

Originally published by the Jerusalem Post. 
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Obama and Israel, strike and counterstrike

UN Security Council Resolution 2334 was the first prong of outgoing US President Barack Obama’s lame duck campaign against Israel.

Secretary of State John Kerry’s speech on Wednesday was the second.

On January 15, stage 3 will commence in Paris. At France’s lame duck President Francois Hollande’s international conference, the foreign ministers of some fifty states are expected to adopt as their own the anti-Israel principles Kerry set forth in his speech.

The next day it will be Obama’s turn. Obama can be expected to use the occasion of Martin Luther King Jr. Day to present the Palestinian war to annihilate Israel as a natural progression from the American civil rights movement that King led fifty years ago.

Finally, sometime between January 17 and 19, Obama intends for the Security Council to reconvene and follow the gang at the Paris conference by adopting Kerry’s positions as a new Security Council resolution. That follow-on resolution may also recognize “Palestine” and grant it full membership in the UN.

True, Kerry said the administration will not put forward another Security Council resolution. But as Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu explained in his response to Kerry’s address, there is ample reason to suspect that France or Sweden, or both, will put forth such a resolution. Since the draft will simply be a restatement of Kerry’s speech, Obama will not veto it.

Whether or not Obama gets his second Security Council resolution remains to be seen. But if he succeeds or fails, he’s already caused most the damage. A follow-on resolution will only amplify the blow Israel absorbed with 2334.

Resolution 2334 harms Israel in two ways. First, it effectively abrogates Security Council resolution 242 from 1967 which formed the basis of Israeli policymaking for the past 49 years. Second, 2334 gives a strategic boost to the international campaign to boycott the Jewish state.

Resolution 242 anchored the ceasefire between Israel and its neighbors at the end of the Six Day War. It stipulated that in exchange for Arab recognition of Israel’s right to exist in secure and defensible borders, Israel would cede some of the territories it took control over during the war. 242 assumed that Israel has a right to hold these areas and that an Israeli decision to cede some of them to its neighbors in exchange for peace would constitute a major concession.

242 is deliberately phrased to ensure that Israel would not be expected to cede all of the lands it took control over in the Six Day War. The resolution speaks of “territories,” rather than “the territories” or “all the territories” that Israel took control over during the war.

Resolution 2334 rejects 242’s founding assumptions. 2334 asserts that Israel has no right to any of the lands it took control over during the war. From the Western Wall to Shiloh from Hebron to Ariel, 2334 says all Israeli presence in the areas beyond the 1949 armistice lines is crime.

Given that Israel has no right to hold territory under 2334, it naturally follows that the Palestinians have no incentive to give Israel peace. So they won’t. The peace process, like the two-state solution ended last Friday night to the raucous applause of all Security Council members.

As for the boycott campaign against Israel, contrary to what has been widely argued, 2334 does not strengthen the boycott of “settlements.” 2334 gives a strategic boost to the boycott of Israel as a whole.

2334 calls on states “to distinguish in their relevant dealings, between the territory of the State of Israel and the territories occupied since 1967.” Since no Israeli firms make that distinction, all Israeli economic activity is now threatened with boycott. Tnuva is an “occupation” dairy because it supplies communities beyond the 1949 lines with dairy products.

Bank Hapoalim is an “occupation” bank because it operates ATM machines in post-1967 neighborhoods in Jerusalem.

Fox clothing chain is an “occupation” chain because it has a store in Gush Etzion. And so on and so forth.

Resolution 2334 gives Europe and its NGOs a green light to wage a complete trade and cultural boycotts against all of Israel.

Obama is not using his final weeks in office to wage war on Israel because he hates Netanyahu. He is not deliberately denying 3,500 years of Jewish history in the Land of Israel because the Knesset it set to pass the Regulations Law that will make it marginally easier for Jews to exercise property rights in Judea and Samaria, as Kerry and UN ambassador Samantha Power claimed.

Obama’s onslaught against Israel is the natural endpoint of a policy he has consistently followed since he first entered the White House. In June 2009, Obama denied the Jews’ 3,500 years of history in the land of Israel in his speech in Cairo before an audience packed with members of the Muslim Brotherhood. Instead of the truth, Obama adopted the Islamist propaganda lie that Israel was established because Europe felt guilty about the Holocaust.

Throughout his presidency, Obama has rejected the guiding principle of resolution 242. His anti-Semitic demand that Israel deny its Jewish citizens their civil and property rights in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria simply because they are Jews is just as antithetical to 242 as resolution 2334.

In his address on Wednesday, Kerry repeatedly castigated the government while flattering the Israeli Left in yet another attempt to divide and polarize Israeli society. Kerry’s professed support for the Israeli Left is deeply ironic because Israeli leftists are the primary casualties of Obama’s anti-Israel assault.

In the post-242 world that Obama initiated, the UN makes no distinction between Jerusalem and Nablus, between Gush Etzion and Jenin, or between Maaleh Adumim and Ramallah. In this world, Labor Party leader Yitzhak Herzog’s plan to retain a mere 2-3 percent of Judea and Samaria is no more acceptable than Bayit Yehudi leader Naftali Bennett’s plan to apply Israeli law to 60 percent of the area or to other plans calling for Israeli law to be applied to all of Judea and Samaria. All are equally unlawful. All are equally unacceptable.

For the next three weeks, the government’s focus must be centered on Obama and minimizing the damage he is able to cause Israel. Since Israel cannot convince Hollande to cancel his conference or Obama not to give his speech, Israel efforts must be concentrated on scuttling Obama’s plan to enact a follow-on Security Council resolution.

To scuttle another resolution, Israel needs to convince seven members of the Security Council not to support it. Only measures that secure the support of 9 out of 15 Security Council members are permitted to come to a vote. The states that are most susceptible to Israeli lobbying are Italy, Ethiopia, Japan, Egypt, Uruguay, Kazakhstan, Ukraine and Russia.

Netanyahu’s furious response to 2334 advance the goal of blocking a vote on a follow-on resolution in two ways. First, they create Israeli leverage in seeking to convince member states to oppose voting on an additional resolution before January 20.

Second, Netanyahu’s seemingly unrestrained response to the Obama administration’s onslaught enables President-elect Donald Trump to join him in pressuring Security Council members to oppose bringing a new resolution for a vote.

By taking an extreme position of total rejection of Obama’s actions, Netanyahu is enabling Trump to block a vote while striking a moderate tone.

In three weeks, Obama’s war with Israel will end. His final legacy – the destruction of the land for peace paradigm and the two-state policymaking model obligate Israel, for the first time in fifty years, to determine its long-term goals in relation to the international community, the Palestinians and Judea and Samaria themselves.

Regarding the international community, the Security Council opened the door for its members to boycott Israel. As a result, Israel should show the UN and its factotums the door. Israel should work to de-internationalize the Palestinian conflict by expelling UN personnel from its territory.

The same is the case with the EU. Once Britain exits the EU, Israel should end the EU’s illegal operations in Judea and Samaria and declare EU personnel acting illegally persona non grata.

As for the Palestinians, resolution 2334 obligates Israel to reconsider its recognition of the PLO. Since 1993, Israel has recognized the PLO despite its deep and continuous engagement in terrorism. Israel legitimized the PLO because the terror group was ostensibly its partner in peace.

Now, after the PLO successfully killed the peace process by getting the Security Council to abrogate 242, Israel’s continued recognition of the PLO makes little sense. Neither PLO chief Mahmoud Abbas nor his deputies in Fatah – convicted, imprisoned mass murderer and terror master Marwan Barghouti and Jibril Rajoub who said he wishes he had a nuclear bomb so he could drop it on Israel and tried to get Israel expelled from FIFA — have any interest in recognizing Israel, let alone making peace with it. The same of course can be said for the PLO’s coalition partner Hamas.

An Israeli decision to stop recognizing the PLO will also have implications for the Trump administration. In the aftermath of 2334, calls in Congress are steadily mounting for the US cancel its recognition of the PLO and end US financial support for the Palestinian Authority. If Israel has already ended its recognition of the PLO, chances will rise that the US will follow suit. Such a US move will have positive strategic implications for Israel.

There is also the question of the Palestinian militias that are deployed to Judea and Samaria as part of the peace process that Obama and the PLO officially ended last Friday. In the coming weeks and months, Israel will need to decide what to do about these hostile militias that take their orders from leaders who reject peaceful coexistence with Israel.

Finally, there are the territories themselves. For 50 years, Israel has used the land for peace paradigm as a way not to decide what to do with Judea and Samaria. Now that 242 has been effectively abrogated, Israel has to decide what it wants. The no brainer is to allow Jews to build wherever they have the legal right to build. If the UN says Israel has no rights to Jerusalem, then Israel has no reason to distinguish between Jerusalem and Elon Moreh.

More broadly, given that for the foreseeable future, there will be no Palestinian Authority interested in making peace with Israel, Israel needs to think about the best way to administer them going forward. The obvious step of applying Israeli law to Area C now becomes almost inarguable.

Shortly before Obama took office eight years ago, he promised to “fundamentally transform” America. Trump’s election scuttled any chance he had of doing so.

But by enabling resolution 2334 to pass in the Security Council, Obama has succeeded in fundamentally transforming the nature of the Palestinian conflict with Israel. Israel’s actions in the coming weeks will determine whether it is fundamentally transformed for better or for worse.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post. 

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