Category Archives: Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

Update III: East Jerusalem Or One Jerusalem? (Gunning For A Jewish Neighborhood)

Barack Obama, Foreign Policy, Hillary Clinton, History, Israel, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

“In a 45-minute telephone call Friday to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, [Secretary of State Hillary] Clinton upbraided him and demanded that he take more steps to show his nation’s commitment to peace,” writes the LA Times. The confrontation between the shrewd and the shrew was the latest round in a “dispute this week between the Obama administration and Israel,” which “has ballooned into the biggest U.S.-Israeli clash in 20 years, adding to months of strain between Washington and one of its closest allies,” the LA Times again.

Israel’s decision to move ahead with 1,600 new housing units in East Jerusalem, announced during a visit by Vice President Joe Biden, drew criticism from Washington in language rarely directed at even Iran or North Korea. …
Clinton’s criticism, authorized by President Obama, was aimed at trying to obtain concessions from the conservative Israeli government at a moment when Netanyahu may be politically vulnerable, officials said.
The U.S. goal is to win Israeli agreement to back off the housing project and to forgo announcements of additional Jewish construction in East Jerusalem, officials said. The administration also wants Israel to agree to discuss substantive issues in new peace talks that could begin in coming days, U.S. officials said.

Netanyahu responded today:

“With regard to commitments to peace, the government of Israel has proven over the last year that it is commitment to peace, both in words and actions,” said the statement.”
The statement cited as examples Netanyahu’s inaugural foreign policy speech made at Bar Ilan University, the removal of hundreds of roadblocks across the West Bank, and its decision to freeze temporarily construction in West Bank settlements. The latter, said the statement, was even called by Clinton an “unprecedented” move.
Netanyahu’s office added in its statement that the Palestinians were continuing to thwart the political process by demanding preconditions before the resumption of peace talks. “They are orchestrating a de-legitimization campaign against Israel in international institutions.”

East Jerusalem is the issue here. Netanyahu will have to stand strong on the unity of Jerusalem. The rest is a sideshow the Obama administration has chosen to amplify, or so I suspect.

“The Muslim Claim to Jerusalem” is political, not religious or historic, argues Daniel Pipes. It is also a recent project.

Centuries of neglect, as Pipes puts it, “came to an abrupt end after June 1967, when the Old City came under Israeli control. Palestinians again made Jerusalem the centerpiece of their political program. “Mecca, of course, is the eternal city of Islam, the place from which non-Muslims are strictly forbidden. Very roughly speaking, what Jerusalem is to Jews.”

[SNIP]
HISTORY NOTWITHSTANDING, What of Palestinian families who’ve resided in the city for generations? Sure, they will have soaked in the disingenuous, bogus political case for a Palestinian religious or historical claim on the Holy City. This, I would go further than Pipes and argue, is of a piece with the Palestinian historical identity theft project. That aside, the question of generational attachment to place and property is a simple one to solve if intentions are good. People remain on their properties and extend to their Israeli neighbors—residents of the 1,600 new housing units Biden protested included—-the courtesy their brethren receive in Israel proper.

Update I (March 17): Daniel Pipes provides an updated analysis of the Washington-Jerusalem spat:

“A recent poll of American voters shows an astonishing 8-to-1 sympathy for Israel over the Palestinians,” Pipes points out. So, “picking a fight with Israel harms Obama politically – precisely what a president sinking in the polls and attempting to transform one-sixth of the economy does not need”:

“On the surface, that the Obama administration decided one fine day to pick a fight with the government of Israel looks like an unmitigated disaster for the Jewish state. What could be worse than its most important ally provoking the worst crisis (according to the Israeli ambassador to Washington) since 1975?

A closer look, however, suggests that this gratuitous little spat might turn out better for Jerusalem than for the White House.

(1) It concerns not a life-and-death issue, such as the menace of Iran’s nuclear buildup or Israel’s right to defend itself from Hamas predations, but the triviality of the timing of a decision to build new housing units in Israel’s capital city. Wiser heads will insist that White House amateurs end this tempest in a teapot and revert to normal relations.

(2) If Obama et al. hope to bring down Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s government, they can’t count Knesset seats. Peeling away Labor will lead to its replacement by rightist parties.

(3) An Israeli consensus exists to maintain sovereignty over eastern Jerusalem, so provoking a crisis on this issue strengthens Netanyahu.

(4) Conversely, U.S. histrionics make the Palestinian Authority’s Mahmoud Abbas more reluctant to enter into Washington’s counterproductive negotiations.”

Update II (March 18): Petraeus’ Palestinian Protectorate. According to Debkafile:

“President Obama and secretary of state Hillary Clinton turned down their initial proposals for easing the upset and laid down three pre-conditions for restoring normal relations with Jerusalem:
1. The Netanyahu government must extend the 10-month freeze on West Bank settlement construction to include East Jerusalem;

2. When the moratorium runs out in September, it must be renewed for the duration of peace negotiations with the Palestinians;
3. Israeli must make more concessions to the Palestinian Authority and its chairman Mahmoud Abbas.
The Israeli government was informed that until those conditions were met, its ministers would not be received in Washington by high-level American officials …”

American officials are openly insinuating that, “Israel’s settlement policy is the root-cause of Iran’s drive for a nuclear bomb and of the conflicts endangering American lives in combat in Afghanistan and Iraq. … Vice President Joe Biden … reportedly attacked Netanyahu for the announcement of 1,600 new homes in East Jerusalem by saying: ‘What you are doing here undermines the security of our troops who are fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan.’

It is rumored that, “A much-admired American military figure, CENTCOM chief, Gen. David Petraeus, wants the Palestinian Authority added to CENTCOM’s turf” so that the US can protect the PA from Israel.

Update III (March 19): Gunning For A Jewish Neighborhood. The American Thinker (via Larry Auster):

Ramat Shlomo, is a Jewish neighborhood and has been so for thirty years. It is surrounded by other Jewish neighborhoods, and no Israeli in his right mind would consider surrendering it in any final peace deal with the Palestinians. Giving up Ramat Shlomo would be the equivalent of giving up the world-famous Hebrew University on Mount Scopus, the tony Jerusalem suburb of French Hill, and even the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City. All three are just as integrated into the Jewish identity of Jerusalem as Ramat Shlomo. Only by accepting the Palestinian narrative — that all of Jerusalem belongs to the Palestinians — could anyone possibly envision the suburb as future Palestinian territory.

AND:

There is absolutely no connection between the construction of apartment units in Ramat Shlomo (still two years distant) and the intent of Islamic martyrs to kill American soldiers thousands of miles away. The same number of American servicemen will be targeted and killed in the Middle East no matter what happens in northern Jerusalem.

So from what playbook are Barack Obama and his administration reading in breathing life into a crisis that should never have been? It is, I believe, simply this: Obama sees the world in terms of a rather protean struggle between the weak and the strong, the poor and the rich. The weak in his eyes are almost always innocent purveyors of righteousness while the powerful personify greed and oppression. The same worldview permeates his domestic policies…

Updated: The Golem* Goldstone Goes To Gaza

Israel, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Judaism & Jews, Just War, Law, Palestinian Authority, South-Africa, UN

From my new WND column, “The Golem Goldstone Goes To Gaza”:

“When introducing Judge Goldstone, Fareed Zakaria described the judge as having made his name, among other acts of greatness, in pursuing an end to the political violence that came with apartheid in his home country of South Africa.

Ostracized for his convictions, this writer’s father – Rabbi Ben Isaacson – was a leading anti-apartheid activist. Goldstone had no such history of protest, father assures me. The roaming judge attached himself like a limpet mine to the anti-apartheid cause only once it became fashionable, safe and professionally expedient.

Goldstone’s Wiki biography corroborates father’s recollection. The judge joined the cause du jour in ‘the latter years of apartheid in South Africa.’ Goldstone’s “courageous” judicial decisions in the cause of freedom, moreover, comported with what South Africa’s Western system of Dutch-Roman law provided – a system currently being replaced, by the African National Congress, with a blend of tribal and totalitarian laws.

To this expatriate South African, the most anodyne assertion Goldstone made to zombie Zakaria was this one…”

Read the complete column, “The Golem Goldstone Goes To Gaza.”

And do read my libertarian manifesto, Broad Sides: One Woman’s Clash With A Corrupt Society.

The Second Edition features bonus material. Get your copy (or copies) now!

Update (Jan. 9): A few readers, some via my WND mail box, have told me I’ve erred as far as the meaning of Golem goes. I’m relatively confident that my commonplace use of the term is accurate (if perhaps not true to the original meaning), so I’ve left it. Usually, I hurry to correct blatant errors.

So why am I comfortable with the column’s usage?

I’m an ex-Israeli. My first language is Hebrew. Although I once spoke and wrote a sharp Hebrew (much like my English), slang has since (as in the US and the UK) changed older, popular usage. As old-timers like myself are in the habit of saying, no one speaks Yerushalmic Hebrew on the news any longer as the wonderful Haim Yavin used to. Yavin was the most elegant anchorman in looks and language.

Back to the topic. “Golem” in popular, modern usage is a derogatory term. Call an Israeli of my age group (still way younger than Yavin, of course) a Golem, and, while you’ve not wounded him mortally, you have, in good humor, berated him.

Even Peres Thinks Goldstone's Bonkers

Israel, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, South-Africa, Terrorism, UN

Shimon Peres of the Labor Party is Israel’s president (Bibi is Prime Minister). Now even the leftist Peres has disavowed Richard Goldstone’s report for the U.N., the culmination of the South African justice’s “investigation” into the Israeli offensive in “Gaza from December 27 to January 18.” “The supremely smug Richard Goldstone” accused Israel of committing “actions amounting to war crimes, possibly crimes against humanity.”

To which Peres responded:

“Out of the 26 suggestions that the [Goldstone] Commission made, none deal with how to fight terrorism.” … “The Goldstone Commission Report says that the Palestinians have the right ‘to forceful resistance based on the right of self-determination.’ What is ‘the right to forceful resistance?’ To fire on civilians?”

Some days back I reminded readers of Godstone’s proud pedigree: “He began his career by helping to demote a lesser evil (the National Party) and promote the quintessential evil (Mandela’s African National Congress).

Updated: The Gormless Judge Goldstone

Crime, Israel, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Justice, South-Africa, Terrorism

The supremely smug Richard Goldstone began his career by helping to demote a lesser evil (the National Party) and promote the quintessential evil (Mandela’s African National Congress). “We now have, I’m proud to say, a working, wonderful democracy in South Africa,” boasted the venerated singularly charmless gentleman to CNN’s Fareed Zakaria.

The South African justice, who presided over “the United Nations International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and for Rwanda from 15 August 1994 to September 1996,” continues his celebrity career with a report about Israel’s alleged war crimes in Gaza. “The report,” writes Ha’aretz, “which accuses both Israel and Hamas of war crimes, was formally presented to the United Nations Human Rights Council on Tuesday.”

I suggest Goldstone might want to look in his own plate before he goes passing judgment on (an admittedly imperfect) Israel. Since he helped usher in this “wonderful democracy,” upward of 300,000 innocents have been murdered. The New savage South Africa is now the most violent country in the world.

Here is the CNN interview the singularity boring Zakaria conducted with the singularly smug justice:

ZAKARIA: South African Justice Richard Goldstone made his name with legal cases of world importance but also of great delicacy and sensitivity. First in his home country of South Africa, pursuing an end to the political violence that came with apartheid, then on to the international stage as Chief Prosecutor of the UN Tribunals for War Crimes in Yugoslavia and Rwanda.

But his latest job is more controversial. In April, the UN Human Rights Council appointed Goldstone to head a mission to investigate allegations of human rights violations in the 22-day conflict between Israel and Gaza that began last December. From the start, some on both sides questioned whether a fair inquiry could be made, and in the end Israel, which took much of the blame in the final, almost 600-page report, though not exclusive blame, has reacted angrily.

Listen to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressing the UN General Assembly last week.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BENJAMIN NETANYAHU, PRIME MINISTER OF ISRAEL: A democracy legitimately defending itself against terror is morally hanged, drawn and quartered and given an unfair trial to boot. By these twisted standards, the UN Human Rights Council would have dragged Roosevelt and Churchill to the dock as war criminals.

What a perfect version of truth. What a perversion of justice.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ZAKARIA: Netanyahu said that the report threatens to derail the peace process. Now listen to my conversation with the man at the center of this storm, Justice Goldstone.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ZAKARIA: Judge Goldstone, thank you for doing this.

JUDGE RICHARD GOLDSTONE, HEAD OF UN GAZA INVESTIGATION: It’s a pleasure.

ZAKARIA: The Prime Minister of Israel, as you know, denounced your report effectively on the floor of the United Nations General Assembly, and his basic argument is that the report is morally obtuse because it does not just distinguish between a democratic state that is being threatened by this hail of rockets and a terrorist organization, in his words, that is trying to inflict disproportionate and random violence on civilians.

GOLDSTONE: I think – I think, with respect, Prime Minister Netanyahu, misunderstands the basis on which we investigated. We – we didn’t question the right of Israel to defend itself or to defend its citizens. It clearly has that right. What we looked was the methods used in doing that. So we didn’t – we didn’t question Israel’s right of self-defense. We, in effect, in a way, took it as a given. It was, as I say, the – the – whether it was a proportionate response or a disproportionate response that we looked at.

And the other way, too, we – we didn’t look at whether Hamas is entitled to use military force to – to gain independence for the Palestinian people. We – we looked at what – what methods Hamas used, and we found those to be unlawful.

ZAKARIA: The Israelis claim that Hamas put themselves in hospitals, forced the Israelis to attack – to strike there, and that would produce an international public outrage. What did you find?

GOLDSTONE: Well, we didn’t exclude all of those allegations. We couldn’t. We – we had a short-time line (ph), we had a very, very scarce resources. We investigated specific incidents and we didn’t find, in respect of those incidents, that the Israeli claims had – had been – been justified. But certainly we can’t exclude it across the board.

ZAKARIA: You spoke of the Israeli behavior during Gaza as being part of a pattern that you described as, the Israeli term, ‘dahia’ (ph). What does that mean?

GOLDSTONE: Well, the – the – the attitude of Israel and the policy of Israel, especially since the Hamas victory a few years ago, has been really to turn the screws on – on Gaza. We felt that one of the purposes was to make life so difficult for the people of Gaza that they would turn their back on Hamas and it would lose support. In fact, if anything, it was my personal impression that it’s had the opposite effect.

ZAKARIA: What was the infrastructure damage like? Describe so that people can get a sense of what – what you regard as excessive.

GOLDSTONE: Well, the – the infrastructure damage, first of all, that had no military justification at all, was the bulldozing of agricultural fields. Huge tracks of land were just bulldozed by – by tank bulldozers. The only operating flour factory in Gaza. Obviously, flour is terribly important to feed – for making bread, a staple part of their diet. The only flour factory was – was effectively destroyed. They destroyed most of the egg production. They – they killed tens of thousands of chickens. You know, and this has got nothing to do with firing of rockets and mortars. It was the destruction of infrastructure — of part of the infrastructure of Gaza.

ZAKARIA: How will you describe Hamas’ responsibility here? You dealt with that in the report as well. Would you describe Hamas as guilty of war crimes?

GOLDSTONE: Oh yes, absolutely, of serious war crimes, which do amount crimes against humanity, and that’s the firing of thousands of rockets that have no precision at all into civilian areas. That’s a very serious crime.

But we also criticized its use of civilians and not protecting civilians sufficiently in its launching of rockets. And they put civilians in harm’s way.

ZAKARIA: And you found that both Israel and Hamas in a sense did not take enough precaution about the potential for civilian casualties?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Absolutely.

ZAKARIA: Judge Goldstone, you’re Jewish.

GOLDSTONE: Right.

ZAKARIA: How do you react when you hear Israelis accusing you of anti-Israeli bias, anti-Zionism, some have used the phrase “self- hating Jew”?

GOLDSTONE: First, there’s obviously no truth in it. I’ve got a great love for Israel. It’s a country that, as I said, I’ve been to many times, and I’ve worked for many Israeli causes and continue to do so. So it’s factually incorrect.

But what saddens me is the fact that Jews, whether in Israel or outside Israel, feel that because I’m Jewish I shouldn’t investigate Israel.

If anything, I think I have a greater obligation to do that. If I’ve investigated war crimes in other countries, why should Israel be different? And it seems to me that that should be welcomed and recognized.

ZAKARIA: When you look at these crimes against humanity, these war crimes, how do they compare? You have a long career. You’ve seen many of these kinds of things, investigated some. Where does this stand? How should we think of it?

GOLDSTONE: Well, you know, I don’t like making comparisons because each situation is so different. But certainly one can compare what has happened here to situations that I’ve investigated in the former Yugoslavian genocide. One doesn’t here in respect of Gaza get anywhere in my view anywhere near that sort of situation.

It’s very different. Many people are comparing what’s happening in the occupied territories to apartheid South Africa. I don’t like that comparison. There’s some similarities, but there are more differences.

ZAKARIA: Do you see this as the end of the report and your role?

GOLDSTONE: Absolutely. It’s now in the political arena. I hope that we have provided a road map for both sides to investigate themselves and to come to their own conclusions, their own investigations, and where relevant their own prosecutions.

ZAKARIA: Spending time dealing with this, do you have any thoughts or insights into the Israeli-Palestinian divide? Do you think there will be peace? How do you look at this?

GOLDSTONE: No South African can be pessimistic about the prospects of for peace. We had an impossible situation and a certainty that we were going to have bloodbath, and because we had good leadership it was averted, and we now have, I’m proud to say, a working, wonderful democracy in South Africa. We’ve got problems but we’re moving in a good direction.

ZAKARIA: You will be back in Israel anytime soon?

GOLDSTONE: No plans at the moment, but I certainly expect to. I don’t have close family, but I have many, many friends there. I’d love to see them.

ZAKARIA: Judge Goldstone, thank you for doing this.

GOLDSTONE: Thank you very much.

Update (Oct. 7): My father, who was steeped in the anti-apartheid movement and ostracized for his convictions, informs me that Goldstone had no such history of protest. The judge attached himself to this fashionable cause once it became safe and politically prudent. Goldstone’s bio corroborates my father’s assessment, noting only that he joined the cause du jour in “the latter years of Apartheid in South Africa,” when,

Goldstone served as chairperson of the South African Standing Commission of Inquiry Regarding Public Violence and Intimidation, later known as the Goldstone Commission.[1] The Commission played a critical role in uncovering and publicizing allegations of grave wrongdoing by the Apartheid-era South African security forces and bringing home to “White” South Africans the extensive violence that was being done in their name. The Commission concluded that most of the violence of those years was being orchestrated by shadowy figures within the Apartheid regime, often through the use of a so-called “third force.” The Commission thus provided a first road map for the investigations into security force wrongdoing that, after democratization, were taken up by the country’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission.