Middle East Analysis and Opinion
Lev HaOlam, the Israel based movement that connects thousands of Israel supporters around the world to Judea and Samaria through monthly packages was represented in the wide spread demonstrations today in Paris, France against the “Peace” Summit.
Founded by activist Nati Rom more than three years ago, Lev HaOlam supports countless artisans, craftsmen, and pioneers in Israel’s Heartland by buying their products and making them available to thousands of customers.
Peaceful demonstrators gather in front of the Israeli embassy in Paris to protest the 70 nations that have gathered to divide Israel. The conference organized by France is set to finalize the international community’s “solution” to the “final” borders of Israel by creating a “Palestinian” State on indigenous Jewish Land.
Donald Trump has made it clear his administration opposes all efforts by the international community to force a “final solution” on Israel.
A week and a half ago President Obama gave the order for the U.S. to abstain on UN Security Council Resolution 2334, thereby—effectively—voting in favor and allowing the resolution to pass.
As I noted, the resolution goes beyond “moral equivalency” by obfuscating Palestinian terror and incitement while branding Jewish life beyond the 1949 Armistice Lines a “flagrant violation under international law” and a “major obstacle…to peace.”
But the administration wasn’t through with Israel. A few days later, with the Middle East aflame from Yemen to Iraq to Syria to Libya to Sudan and Iranian expansionism on the march, Secretary of State Kerry delivered a 75-minute harangue against what he called Israel’s “pernicious policy of settlement construction that is making peace impossible.”
Critics have noted that—in the real world—Israeli construction in settlements under the recent Netanyahu governments has been so modest that it has not affected the Israeli-Palestinian population balance in the West Bank; and that if any and all Israeli presence beyond the 1949 Armistice Lines is “illegal,” then the idea of a “peace process” to settle claims over disputed land appears to be invalidated, since Israel is then nothing but a rapacious thief and the Palestinians its victims seeking redress.
As international-law scholar Eugene Kontorovich notes in the Washington Post:
The…condemnation of any Jewish presence whatsoever in eastern Jerusalem and the West Bank is a unique rule invented for Israel. There has never been a prolonged belligerent occupation—from the U.S. occupation of West Berlin to Turkey’s ongoing occupation of Cyprus to Russia’s of Crimea—where the occupying power has blocked its citizens from living in the territory under its control. Moreover, neither the United Nations nor any other international body has ever suggested they must do so. What is being demanded of Israel in its historical homeland has never been demanded of any other state, and never will be.
The Obama administration’s stepped-up diplomatic and verbal assault on Israel in the last weeks of its tenure has not gone unnoticed, sparking bitter criticism even from Democratic lawmakers and mainstream American Jewish organizations that are far from any right-wing agenda.
But the extent to which the administration listens to such protests, or can be budged from its wholesale endorsement of Palestinian claims regarding the West Bank and Jerusalem, can be gauged from the fact that the Obama-Kerry team has still more in store for Israel.
It’s set to take place in Paris on January 15, under the aegis of the Hollande government, and it’s expected that some 70 countries will be attending.
The ostensible subject: “Middle East peace.” The translation: more invalidation of any and all Israeli claims to land captured from Jordan (not the Palestinians) in a defensive war in 1967, and more support for what—under present circumstances—would almost certainly be a Palestinian terror state in that territory.
American Jewish leaders have demanded that France call off this “ill-conceived, poorly timed and damaging” event, also pointing to “the impending transition to a new US administration, just five days later.”
But according to The Times of Israel, that—the Obama administration’s exploitation of its last days in office to do more harm to Israel—is exactly what Prime Minister Netanyahu is concerned about.
The Times of Israel cites an Israeli news broadcast saying Netanyahu believes the Middle East Quartet—which includes the U.S., UN, Russia, and the EU—“will coordinate positions at the Paris summit, and then return to the Security Council in the very last days of Obama’s presidency to cement these new parameters on Mideast peacemaking.”
“Cement these new parameters” would, of course, mean another Security Council resolution that is ruinous to Israel’s stance in favor of a negotiated settlement, tars it as a rogue state and international outlaw, and gives another major boost to the ongoing international effort to delegitimize and ultimately dismantle the Jewish state.
The Obama administration that came into office calling for “daylight” between the U.S. and Israel and slamming “natural growth” in Israeli communities, will be leaving office having learned nothing about the real sources of Middle Eastern violence and instability, Palestinian intransigence and outright rejection of Israel in any contours, and Israel’s unique nature in its region as a stable, faithfully pro-U.S. democracy seeking a genuine peace that would not merely imperil it.
Instead the administration appears bent on compounding ignorance and incorrigibility by cementing a lasting legacy of shame.
Originally Posted on FrontPageMag.
[huge_it_share]
Israel Makes UN History: Ambassador Danny Danon to Head UN Legal Committee
[The Jewish Press]
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu on Monday lifted the ban on Knesset Members and cabinet ministers visiting the Temple Mount.
[Arutz Sheva]
Paris Police Officer Stabbed To Death; ISIS Reportedly Claims Responsibility
[The Huffington Post]
Brazil regrets its vote negating Israel’s tie to Western Wall, Temple Mount
[The Jerusalem Post]
Johannes Hahn, the European Commission’s Commissioner for European Neighbourhood Policy and Enlargement Negotiations, arrived in Israel on an official visit to initiate a process of consultations with Israel ahead of the launch of the new Israel-EU bilateral cooperation program.
[Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs]
Miracle: Shot twice in the head, victim recounts Tel Aviv attack
[Arutz Sheva]
My first visit to Hevron in the summer of 2001 put me face to face with what would become a sign of things to come for the world over the last 15 years. I was a very different person in those days. 23 years old and idealistic about learning Torah in the Holy Land. The second intifada had already been raging for the better part of the previous year and Sharon had yet to undertake Operation Defensive Shield. In those days Arafat’s Fatah controlled up to the main road and Gross square right across the street to the Jewish neighborhood of Avraham Avinu.
The world was still silent. The World Trade Center had yet to be taken down. George Bush was focused on other things. Israel was the epicenter of terror. Before my Shabbat in Hevron I had been one of many who had run down to Sbarro’s in downtown Jerusalem after it was blown up. Despite seeing the aftermath there, nothing would prepare me for what should have been a quick walk back to where I was staying from our Shabbat meal.
A few others and I started our walk back from the Beit Hadassah neighborhood down the main street. A few moments passed and then like drilling in a construction site a hail of bullets were sent at us. We did the only thing we knew how to do…we ran. I still remember feeling the bullets go passed me and down by my feet. Miraculously we made it to a concrete barrier, diving behind it. A soldier was there and as the bullets whizzed passed all of us, he told us to run. We reached the Avraham Avinu neighborhood. The bullets continued, hitting the sandbags that were up in those days. The IDF returned fire and that is how it went for a better part of the night. The next afternoon and evening was more of the same.
Today, Hevron is different. New neighborhoods have grown. Children play in the streets. The army is based in positions well inside the Arab areas. There are problems and tensions, but no more machine gun fire or wanton killing. The Jews of Hevron have continued to be resilient in reestablishing King David’s first capital city.
The Jewish community in Hevron is ancient. From the time of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob through the first and second commonwealth, Hevron played a central role to the Nation of Israel. The Jewish community lived there until the year 1929, when their Arab neighbors turned on them and massacred them. The Hevron Riots were part of the larger 1929 Arab pogroms that saw Jews being pushed out of historically Jewish neighborhoods in the Old City and the Kfar Shiloach (today Silwan).
Jews returned to Hevron in 1967 and for the first time in 500 years were allowed to enter the Cave of the Patriarchs where our forefathers and mothers are buried. The community has expanded and grown since then.
In the last 15 years since those tense and very dangerous moments in Hevron, the world has become engulfed in multiple wars and a seemingly unstoppable rising flood of Jihadist terror. The Arab world seeks to challenge the root of monotheism and claim it as their own. Their fight in many ways burst into a new stage in 1929. There they killed the “people of the book.” It is this root between Isaac and Ishmael that is at the heart of the struggle here and around the world. Hevron is that root. It is where our fathers established their covenant with the Almighty and David established his Kingdom. Despite all of our setbacks we have returned to our roots in Hevron and grown. For this Ishamel is angry for in his collective mind the root is his, but his root is chaos and destruction, the Jihad.
In many ways what we have witnessed over the last decade and a half and especially in the last few months with the attacks in the Sinai, Paris, and now San Bernadino is that the Jihad of 1929 is live and well throughout the world. It is a mentality the Jewish people have faced since our return to our ancient homeland as a sovereign entity. It is this reason why we have no choice but to hold onto our roots. We must embrace the ethics and morality of our fathers and most importantly attach ourselves to the Creator. For this reason Hevron is key. It is our source and corridor to our past and an example of how the Jewish people can be resilient and come out on top.
In order to defeat the army of Ishmael the World must reconnect to the source of its faith. That faith is rooted in the Jewish presence in Hevron. Following the Jewish Nation’s example in its ancient birthright the world can overcome this chaotic time and build a new future.