Tag: palestinians

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Turkey Wants Jerusalem…Again

While the Palestinians seem to relish at being useful tools for the Islamic world’s obssession with Israel, the rage the President of Turkey has expressed “on behalf of the Palestinians” seems a bit self absorbed.  Was it not the Ottomon Turks who ruled Jerusalem for centuries before they lost to the British in World War One? What happened to their Palestnian brethren during that time, because as they say the Palestinians were in the Land of Israel for millenia.

The truth is and Turkey’s leaders know it to be true, is that the Ottoman Turks ran Jerusalem into the ground.  More than that, the majority population in Jerusalem at the time of Turkish rule was in fact Jewish.

Turkey cares as much as any other Islamic nation for the so called Palestinians, which is not much. What Erdogan wants is to dial the clock back to the days before the British ruled the Land of Israel and thus named the province Palestine, which was Western name for a province called something else completely different by the Ottoman Turks.

Erdogan completely believes and lives for the goal of returning Turkey to the zenith of the Ottoman Empire, including Jerusalem.  The problem is, everyone else see through it except for Erdogan, who is never content just being President of Turkey. Erdogan wants to be seen as a sort of neo-Sultan of the reformed Ottoman Empire recast as a modern day Islamic hero reconquering Israel from the “filthy Zionists.”

“Because it [Jerusalem] is under occupation we can’t just go there and open an embassy,” Erdogan was reported to have said today. “But, (God willing) those days are near and… we will officially open our embassy there,” he said, without giving any precise timetable.

Of course the chances of any of this actually happening is close to none, but Erdogan’s rant has a whole other purpose.  In the currently forming between Turkey, Iran, Russia, Syria, and Iran, it is Turkey that plays the part of the outsider who has at the last moment decided to switch teams.  For this Erdogan must curry favor with the Arab street and position himself as the leader of the Islamic world.




Although the Turkish embassy will not move to “East Jerusalem” anytime soon, Erdogan’s rant can have far reaching consequences in the region.  It certainly gives the Shiites a cause to rally around pushes those Sunni allies of the US into a tight spot. The more this back and forth drags on Erdogan can find himself igniting the flames of another intifada.

With enemies surrounding Israel and Turkey, Jordan, and others promoting a violent insurrection from within, the need to push back against the growing Shiite-Russo axis becomes all the more necessary.

Turkey’s role in the growing Shiite-Russo axis is not clear, but what is obvious is that Erdogan believes he is its rightful leader.

 

 

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“Palestinians” Lie and Count on Your Ignorance

In the Arab-Israel conflict the one issue which rises above every other is the accuracy of what is presented. The Palestinians are relying on people not knowing history in order to advance their narrative.  Israel on the other hand is relying on people knowing history.  From where I sit, over the past 2 – 3 decades it appears most people do not know history very well. Thus, the Palestinian narrative has gained popularity and has shaped much of public opinion.

What’s especially troubling is mainstream media has adopted most of the Palestinian propaganda, or sympathizes with it. Sadly, the days of objective news reporting appear to be gone. Today’s news reporting has pretty much turned into op-eds, rather than simple straight forward  news.

Regarding the Arab-Israeli conflict, we hear noble words such as “just solution,” “dignity,” “peace,” etc.  on a regular basis. Who has fault with these?

Yet, if this conflict ever stands a chance of being resolved isn’t it incumbent upon the world to know the actual facts and to stand for the truth, so these noble goals actually apply to its resolution?

If so, we need to understand whose narrative reflects the truth and whose are false. For this we need to unpack what we frequently hear and apply a litmus test.

For example:

  • CLAIM: Palestinians are  an ethnically unique people or nationality

The Facts:

The Palestinians are Arabs They are a mix of Jordanians, Egyptians, Lebanese, Syrian, etc. Several hundred thousand of them were displaced, many be choice, as result of the 1948 and 1967 wars. In both wars the goal of the Arab nations was to destroy the Jewish state.  They failed.  After this their tactics changed. Not that destroying Israel militarily was dropped, it remains their goal. However, in 1964 the  Palestine Liberation  Organization (PLO), was formed for the specific purpose of destroying the Jewish state of Israel.

After the devastating defeat in the Six Day War, and the refusal of the surrounding Arab nations to absorb the displaced Arabs,  PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat embarked on a campaign to bring their plight to the world stage. Part of his effort included calling them “Palestinians.” This took root and the world has bought into calling them Palestinians to this day.

Answer to the claim: FALSE

Ironically, what many people forget, or are unaware of is that prior to 1948 the Jews were called Palestinians!




  • CLAIM:  Israel is illegally occupying ‘Palestinian’ land and violating international law

The Facts:
After the British Empiredefeated the Ottoman Empire during  WW1 they controlled a large swath of the Middle East. By virtue of the Balfour Declaration written in 1917 the British committed to set aside 43,000 sq. miles of land as a national homeland for the Jewish people, which included the area where ancient Israel was located. Since they had militarily defeated the Ottomans, under international law they had the right to determine the future of the area they controlled. In 1922 the British gave away 75% of the ‘promised land’ to become Transjordan, today’s Jordan.

After many years of upheaval, which included WWll and the Holocaust, the British decided they wanted to pull their troops out of the region. They turned the matter over to the United Nations.

In November 1947 the UN voted 33 to 13 with 10 abstentions to partition the remaining 25% of the land into two states, one Arab, the other Jewish. Jerusalem was not contiguously connected to the Jewish state of Israel. This infuriated the Jews. However, they accepted the UN vote.

The Arab nations did not.

Ignoring the UN vote, one day after the Jewish state of Israel declared independence in May 1948 the surrounding Arab nations attacked it.

In my view it is the refusal of the Arabs to accept the vote of the UN which bears the most responsibility for what we are dealing with today. This cannot be overstated.

The war lasted until July 1949 at which time an armistice was signed. The original partition called for the Jewish state to have roughly 5,000 sq. miles. As a result of the defensive war Israel was forced into, they gained control of additional land, including Jerusalem. However, Jordan remained in control of the Old City.

In 1967 Israel gained control over all of Jerusalem.

Under international law when a defensive war in fought, any territory gained by the victor belongs to them. In plain language whatever territory Israel gained is theirs to keep.

Many people consider the ‘rebirth’ of modern Israel, along with the Jewish people gaining control over all of Jerusalem in 1967 as prophetic.

Whether prophetic or procedural through a legally designated organization (UN) there is no illegal occupation, and Israel is not violating international law.

Answer to claim: FALSE

 

  • CLAIM:  Jews have no connection to Jerusalem

 

The Facts:
King David made Jerusalem the capital of Israel over 3,000 years ago. Jerusalem is mentioned in the Bible over 600 times. It is not mentioned once in the Quran. To go on would give too much undeserved attention to this claim.

Answer to claim: FALSE

  • CLAIM: Temple Mount never housed a Jewish Temple, it is an exclusively Muslim site

The Facts:
Temple Mount is the location of the First Temple built by King Solomon 3,000 years ago. It was destroyed in 586 BC. The Second Temple was completed roughly 70 years later and was destroyed in 70 AD. This is confirmed in the Bible as well as countless historical and archaeological records. The current Muslim Dome of the Rock and Al Aqsa was completed in 692 AD. Jewish temples predate any Muslim presence on Temple Mount by at least 1,700 years.

Answer to Claim: FALSE

More Claims

If you are shaking your head at the aforementioned  claims you may be even more surprised to find out some others.

For example:

It seems the ‘Palestinian’ narrative has no limits as to how absurd their claims are.

Resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict is unquestionably a daunting task. There are political, geographical, economic, historical, theological, and cultural issues which are entwined. However, one element which must not be overlooked is the importance of knowing the facts. Without facts one cannot come to appropriate conclusions.

This piece has provided proof that the so-called ‘Palestinians’ have been  manufactured and marketed for a specific purpose. That purpose includes promoting a false narrative based on rewriting history in order to delegitimize Israel and the Jewish people. They are counting on people’s ignorance, and frankly some degree of anti-Semitism to be their ally. In short they are intentionally lying to the entire world.

Are we going to allow this to triumph? Aren’t we better than that?

Dan Calic is a writer, history student and speaker.
For more of his material visit his Facebook page.

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A CREDIBLE PEACE PLAN, AT LAST

But will the Palestinians agree to it?

Monday, The New York Times published the Palestinian response to an alleged Saudi peace plan. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman reportedly presented it to PLO chief and Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas last month.
According to the Times’ report, Mohammed told Abbas he has two months to either accept the Saudi proposal or leave office to make way for a new Palestinian leader who will accept it.
The Palestinians and their European supporters are up in arms about the content of Mohammed’s plan. It reportedly proposes the establishment of limited Palestinian sovereignty over small portions of Judea and Samaria. The Gaza Strip, over which the Palestinians have had full sovereignty since Israel pulled its military forces and civilians out in 2005, would be expanded into the northern Sinai, thus providing economic and territorial viability to the envisioned Palestinian state. While the Palestinians would not receive sovereignty over Jerusalem, they would be able to establish their capital in the Jerusalem suburb of Abu Dis.
There are several aspects of the alleged Saudi peace plan that are notable. First, the Palestinians and their many allies insist that it is a nonstarter. No Palestinian leader could ever accept the offer and survive in power, they told the Times. The same Palestinian leaders from Hamas and Fatah, and their allies, also noted that the Saudi plan as reported strongly resembles past Israeli proposals.
Another aspect of the report that is notable is that the Saudis did not acknowledge that Mohammed presented the plan to Abbas.
Unlike the situation in 2002 when Times columnist Thomas Friedman presented what he claimed was then Saudi king Abdullah’s peace plan, the Saudi regime has not admitted that the characterization of their peace plan by the Times reflects their thinking.
It makes sense that the Palestinians and their Lebanese and European allies are upset at the alleged contents of the new Saudi plan. It is also reasonable that the Saudis are not willing today to publicly present the plan laid out in the Times.
The fact is that the alleged Saudi peace plan represents a radical break with the all the peace plans presented by the Arabs, the Europeans and the US for the past 40 years.
Unlike all of the previous plans, the contours of the plan reported by the  Times guarantee that Israel will remain a strong, viable state in an era of peace with the Palestinians. All the previous plans required Israel to accept indefensible borders that would have invited aggression both from the Palestinians and from its Arab neighbors east of the Jordan River.
The purported Saudi plan is the first peace plan that foresees two viable states living in peace. All the other plans were based on transforming Israel into a non-viable state with a non-viable Palestinian state in its heartland.
While the Times report cites Western sources claiming that Egypt has rejected the prospect of merging Gaza with the northern Sinai under Palestinian sovereignty, there is no reason to assume that the option is dead. To the contrary, in the aftermath of last week’s massacre of 305 Muslim worshipers in a mosque in the northern Sinai, it is arguably more relevant now than at any previous time.
The mosque massacre makes clear that the Egyptian regime is incapable of defeating the Islamic State (ISIS) insurgency in Sinai on its own. Egypt’s incapacity is as much a function of economic priorities as military capabilities. With Egypt constantly on the brink of economic collapse and in need of constant support from the World Bank, the US and the Gulf States, it is hard to make the argument for preferring economic investment in Sinai to economic investment west of the Suez Canal. And in the absence of significant economic support for developing the Sinai, it is hard to see an end to the ISIS insurgency.
If the Europeans, Americans and Arab League member states chose to develop the northern Sinai for a Palestinian state with half the enthusiasm they have devoted to building a non-viable Palestinian state in Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria that would render Israel indefensible and enfeebled, the Palestinians would have a viable, developed state in short order.
And the Egyptians in turn would have the international support they need both economically and militarily to defeat ISIS completely and to rebuild their national economy. Indeed, as advocates of the plan note, by yielding control over the northern Sinai to the Palestinians, and so enabling a viable Palestinian state to form, Egypt would become again the indisputable leader of the Arab world. With the good will of the Europeans and Americans, Sisi would secure Egypt’s position indefinitely.
This then brings us to the third notable aspect of the purported Saudi plan. The backlash against the plan, like the backlash against Mohammed, has been furious. Abbas has reportedly been calling every international leader he can think of to oppose the deal. The Europeans reportedly also oppose it. French President Emmanuel Macron’s adviser reportedly contacted the Americans to make clear that the French are not on board with the proposal.
And whereas the opposition to Mohammed’s purported proposal has been largely behind the scenes, since Mohammed did not make it public, the Palestinians and their international supporters have been grabbing every available microphone to condemn US President Donald Trump’s reported plan to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and perhaps begin taking concrete steps to move the US embassy to Jerusalem.
With or without a public announcement of his alleged peace plan, Mohammed has become a hated figure in wide circles of the foreign policy establishment in the West due to his trenchant opposition to Iran’s rise as a hegemonic power in the region. The Times portrayed him as a serial bungler in its article about his alleged peace plan.
As Lee Smith revealed in a recent article in Tablet magazine, the voices leading the charge against Mohammed are the same ones that developed the media echo chamber in pursuit of then president Barack Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran.
As Smith explained, the onslaught against Mohammed is “an information campaign designed to protect the pro-Iran policies of the Obama administration.”
As these operatives see it, Smith argues, Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran is the foundation of Obama’s foreign policy legacy in the Middle East. “If Trump pulls the plug, then Obama’s ‘legacy’ in the Middle East collapses.”
Trump’s visits to Israel and Saudi Arabia in May made clear that renewing US alliances with Saudi Arabia and Israel, and using them as a means to scale back Iranian power in the region, is in fact the central plank of his Middle East policy. Trump’s subsequent moves in support of Mohammed and Israel have reinforced this conclusion.
And so the backlash against Mohammed by the likes of former US ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro and Robert Malley, Obama’s former adviser for the Middle East on his national security council makes sense. If they can discredit him, and pretend that an Iranian-controlled Lebanon and Syria are better than the alternatives, then they can force Trump to maintain faith with Obama’s policies.
It’s a hard sell though. Mohammed’s peace plan is the first peace plan that has ever offered the Palestinians a chance at a real state. It’s the first plan that ever envisioned a situation where the Palestinians have a state that doesn’t imperil Israel. People who actually care about the Palestinians and Israel should welcome and support his position.
People who oppose it have to explain why they insist on remaining faithful to a peace paradigm that has brought only war and instability. Why do they prefer to retain Abbas’s authoritarian regime over a non-sovereign kleptocracy in Judea and Samaria with a Hamas terrorist state in Gaza to an alternative without either? Why doesn’t Abbas support it if his chief aspiration is the establishment of a viable Palestinian state and actually wants peace with Israel?
The New York Times article may or may not be an accurate portrayal of a real plan presented by the actual crown prince of Saudi Arabia. But if it isn’t his plan, it should be. Or it should be Trump’s plan.
Because it is the first peace plan anyone has ever put forward that makes sense. Not only does it secure the future of both Israel and the Palestinians, it enables Arab states like Saudi Arabia to work openly with Israel to defeat their joint Iranian enemy, while ensuring that Israel can survive and remain a credible ally to its Arab neighbors for decades to come.
Originally published by the Jerusalem Post. 
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Trump, Jerusalem, and the Coming War

Say what you will about President Donald Trump, he knows how to make an impact.  The voices and cries against the president’s potential decision to move the US Embassy to Jerusalem or at the very least announce that the US recognizes a united Jerusalem as Israel’s eternal capital have reached fevered pitch. These antagonists, whether they are Democratic leaders like Keith Ellison or the President of Turkey understand that such a decision would burst the “peace” bubble and render the ultimate trojan horse, the Palestinians, weaponless from here on out.

Furthermore, these leaders who have sojourned with the Jihadists while accepting US funds will have to make a decision about their future.  Denying the truth and using Israel as a distraction for their own abysmal policies can seemingly no longer be tolerated by Trump, Israel, and the growing list of trading partners the Netanyahu government has succeeded in creating around the globe.

There is a war coming and Trump understands the value of trusted partners.  Afterall, as a businessman his success has been built on loyalty and trust.  For Trump, creating a situation where Israel is strengthened and not weakened as its enemies begin to surround it, is crucial.  The USA cannot economically or even militarily fight a two-front war against North Korea and Iran, but by ensuring a strong Israel and brokering a partnership between it and Saudi Arabia is a necessary step for pushing back America’s enemies.




What those people who are complaining about when thy complain about the unilateralism of Trump’s impending decision don’t get is the same thing they have never gotten about him from the beginning.  Donald Trump is no politician.  He is approaching his job as if he is running a business.  For him the Palestinians are an investment who has done more damage and created more loss than profit.

With Saudi Arabia and seemingly Egypt and other Gulf States on board, the thorniest issue is about to be taken off the table. It’s true Jordan will scream as the King’s claim to the holy city falls apart and the Palestinians will riot, but with war on a global scale drawing near, there is no time to play nice with falsehoods, especially when your real allies are at risk.

No one knows what the president is going to say, but the fact that he has now let the embassy waiver pass without signing it is an indication that he is no longer willing to play a game built around false narratives and terror entities. No matter what Trump’s final statement and decision on Jerusalem is, he has already changed the narrative and for that we should all be thankful.

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American Jewry’s Necessary Moral Reckoning

The main source of American Jewish antagonism toward Israel is divergent views on the Palestinians.

It is no longer a secret that Israel and much of the American Jewish community are moving in different directions. Leftist American commentators like Peter Beinart and Roger Cohen, and the Jewish organizations that keep them on perpetual speaking tours insist that Israel no longer merits American Jewish support.

Aside from their pique at Israel’s refusal to equalize the positions of the Reform and Conservative movements to that of the Orthodox rabbinate in Israel and their refusal to recognize that so long as the Reform and Conservative movements have next to no following in Israel they cannot expect to receive the same consideration as Orthodox religious authorities, the main source of American Jewish antagonism toward Israel is divergent views on the Palestinians.

Specifically, Israel’s political leadership and the public that voted them into office rejects the American Jewish leadership’s positions on the Palestinian conflict with Israel. Labor Party leader Avi Gabbay’s statements last week proclaiming that he doesn’t support destroying Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria in the framework of a peace deal with the Palestinians made clear that it isn’t just the Israeli Right that rejects the position of the majority of the American Jewish community. The head of the leftist Labor Party also rejects their position that Israel should expel hundreds of thousands of its citizens from their homes in the framework of a peace deal and discriminate against them for as long as no deal has been reached.

Facing the likes of Cohen and Beinart and their supporters are Israel’s defenders who argue that the primary reason for the increased estrangement between Israel and the American Jewish community is the radicalization of the American Left, and the Left’s concomitant embrace of anti-Israel positions.

Since the 1920s, the American Jewish community has identified with the political Left. So long as the Left – and particularly the Soviet Union – supported the Jewish national liberation movement, Zionism and the Jewish state, the American Jewish Left was happy to be both leftist and Zionist.

The American Jewish movement away from Israel began after the Soviet Union cut off diplomatic relations with Israel in 1967. The cleavage grew wider in successive decades as Western Europe incrementally aligned its policies on Israel with those of the Soviets and after the Cold War, replaced the Soviet Union as the epicenter of anti-Israel political rhetoric.

Today, anti-Israel activists are the rising force in the Democratic Party. Progressive politics have been so thoroughly suffused with anti-Zionism and its concomitant rejection of the civil rights of American Jewish Zionists that Democratic presidential hopefuls like senators Kirsten Gillibrand and Cory Booker are abandoning their previously pro-Israel positions to ingratiate themselves with their party base.

While there is little doubt that the American Jewish Left’s increasing hostility toward Israel is a function of its membership’s abiding allegiance to their ideological camp, there is also something else at play.

In an article published this week in the American Jewish online magazine Tablet titled, “Why do American Jews Idealize Communism?” Prof. Ruth Wisse recalled the prominent role that American Jews played in the American Communist Party in the 1930s. Wisse cites the Jewish Women’s Encyclopedia Archive which notes that according to Communist Party historians, “almost half of the [Communist] party’s membership was Jewish in the 1930s and 1940s.”

This isn’t to say that almost half of American Jews were Communist. There were a mere 83,000 Jews in the Communist Party in 1943, while there were 4.7 million Jews in the US. But those 83,000 Jews – and their even more numerous fellow travelers – played a definitive role in dictating the terms of the political and social discourse in the US during those years.

Wisse quotes then Commentary magazine editor Robert Worshaw who wrote in 1947 that during the 1930s, “If you were not somewhere within the [Communist] party’s wide orbit, then you were likely to be in the opposition, which meant that much of your thought and energy had to be devoted to maintaining yourself in opposition…. It was the Communist Party that ultimately determined what you were to think about and in what terms.”

In other words, there was no way to set a public policy agenda or cultural agenda independently of the Communist Party. If the Communists determined that the public should be focused on subjugation of African Americans and should ignore the Soviet gulag, for instance, and if you felt that the gulag should be discussed, then you could find yourself accused of racism for speaking of the gulag rather than Jim Crow. If you wished to discuss neo-Classical rather than cubist art, then you were considered a throwback with no sense of art. And so on and so forth.

The only party with the power to determine what Americans would speak about, what “right thinking” Americans would think and what subjects were either irrelevant or beyond the pale, was the Communist Party.

And again, a portion of the American Jewish community played an outsized role in the Communist Party.

In her article, Wisse remonstrates with the American Jewish community for failing to conduct a moral reckoning with its historical affiliation with a party and a movement that murdered 30 million of its own citizens and was responsible for the spread of war and misery worldwide, through its totalitarian, inhuman ideology.

In her words, “We Americans and Jews ask nations that once succumbed to fascism and practiced genocide in its name to acknowledge their past evils. We do so not to perpetuate guilt, but because self-awareness alone prevents repetition of the same behavior. How then can Americans and particularly the Jews among them perpetuate the romance – or the innocence – of the Bolshevik regime?” Wisse continues, “We are… obliged to take seriously that many Jews supported one of the most murderous regimes in history and to see how and why and to what extent they went wrong.”

Wisse does not draw a connection between the American Jewish community’s growing antagonism towards Israel today and its avoidance of a moral reckoning with its Communist-supporting past. But it is important to connect the dots.

Earlier this month, the Fatah-controlled Palestinian Authority in Judea and Samaria struck a “unity” deal with Hamas. Under the deal, Fatah agrees to support the Hamas regime in Gaza and take responsibility for the general functioning of governing structures in Gaza. Hamas, for its part, will continue to wage war against Israel and act as an autonomous governing authority, just like Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Hamas insists that it has not tempered its view of Israel. It remains committed to the annihilation of the Jewish state.

The deal paves the way for Hamas to join the PLO, and so replace Fatah as the largest faction of the PLO. Hamas’s leader Khaled Mashaal apparently views the deal as a vehicle for him to eventually replace Fatah and PLO chief Mahmoud Abbas as Palestinian president.

In the face of this unity deal, there is no way to pretend that support for the Palestinians is anything other than support for terrorists who seek to annihilate the Jewish state. There is no way to pretend that support for Israeli land giveaways to the Palestinians constitute anything other than support for the empowerment of terrorists at Israel’s peril.

In other words, the Palestinian unity deal makes it impossible for Israel’s American Jewish antagonists to credibly claim that their disaffection with Israel owes to their commitment to peace and justice rather than moral sanctimony and self-righteousness.

It is difficult to avoid the sense that the American Jewish community’s decreasing support for Israel and increasing support for Palestinian terrorists is a natural extension of its past support for totalitarian Communism. It is equally difficult to avoid the conclusion that so long as the American Jewish community avoids a moral reckoning with that past, it will be incapable of reconsidering its present course.

Originally Published in the Jerusalem Post