Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Creating a Desert and Calling it "Peace"

By Kenneth Levin
FrontPageMagazine.com 10/24/2008

Among deluded policies that enjoy the status of accepted wisdom, few have had the staying power of the American foreign policy establishment's slant on the Arab-Israeli conflict. The mantras on the path to Middle East peace routinely emanating from the State Department, its foreign service alumni, and private organizations, as well as government figures that tend to follow the lead of State, bear little relation to reality.

A recent addition to the literature in this vein is Negotiating Arab-Israeli Peace, authored by Daniel C. Kurtzer and Scott B. Lasensky - the former himself, of course, a foreign service alumnus and seemingly the main shaper of the volume. Kurtzer is also a chief foreign policy adviser to Barack Obama. (read full article)

Wednesday, October 22, 2008

View from America: Who's obsessed about 'Obsession'? - THE JERUSALEM POST

Oct. 21, 2008Jonathan Tobin ,

Last month, millions of Americans opened their Sunday newspapers and found amid the usual pile of coupons and advertising flyers something unusual: a free DVD of a documentary called Obsession: Radical Islam's War with the West.

The film, a well-researched foray into the world of Islamo-fascism, features an array of scholars, such as Sir Martin Gilbert, Robert Wistrich and Daniel Pipes, and investigative journalist Steven Emerson, as well as extensive footage of the anti-Semitic and anti-American fare that is par for the course on Arab and Islamic television.

The documentary's thesis is simple: Radical Islam is at war with the West, and its hatred of Jews and Western democracy isn't based on misunderstandings but on a faith-based fanaticism that will brook no opposition. Its prime tactic is to educate Muslim youth into believing that such hatred is a divine imperative, so as to create new generations of jihadist suicide bombers.
(click here to read full article)

Cooking the "Islamophobia" Books

October 17.08
By Debbie Schlussel

The next time you hear about alleged "attacks on Muslims" and how the number is allegedly "going up" (it isn't, it's gone down, and pales in comparison to anti-Jewish attacks), keep in mind that CAIR, ADC, and all the other Arab and Muslim groups that keep a "tally" of these figures, cook the books with stories like that of Safia Jilani.

A Muslim student who claimed she was attacked at Elmhurst College in what school officials described as a hate crime has now been charged with making up the story.
Safia Z. Jilani, 19, of Oak Brook, told police that on Oct. 9, a masked, male attacker struck her in the head with a handgun after she entered a restroom in the Schaible Science Center on campus, according to a release from Elmhurst police.

Safia Jilani: Muslim Fabricated Story of "Anti-Muslim Hate Crime"
Police found threatening graffiti -- "Kill the Muslims" -- written on a mirror in the restroom, students and police said. Earlier Thursday, the victim had spoken at a demonstration called to denounce anti-Islamic slurs and a swastika she had discovered Oct. 2 on her locker, school officials said.

But late Friday afternoon, Elmhurst police announced that a weeklong investigation determined the assault never occurred; there was no gunman; and Jilani was arrested on a warrant for filing a false police report, a Class 4 felony punishable by up to 3 years in prison.
The announcement -- made jointly by Elmhurst Police, the college and the DuPage County state's attorneys office -- concluded there was no merit to her complaint.

"The totality of all the evidence, and interviews with staff and students at the college ... concluded that this incident never happened," Neubauer said in a phone interview.
Bond was set at $10,000 for Jilani, who posted $1,000 and was released, according to DuPage County State's Attorney's office spokesman Paul Darrah. Her next court hearing is Nov. 17 at 8:30 a.m. before Judge Kathryn Creswell.

The initial report of the attack triggered a lockdown at the college while police searched the campus and prompted hundreds of students to rally again the following day to protest the incident.
Officials at the 3,300-student private college -- which has about 30 Muslim students -- denounced the attack and promised to increase security on campus, including offers of rides for Muslim students to and from classes.

As officials at the private college affiliated with the United Church of Christ last Friday called the incident a hate crime, hundreds of students rallied to show solidarity with their Muslim peers, who constitute about 25 of the school's 3,300 students.

I've often compared the interlocking Muslim pro-terrorist fundraising charities and activist organizations in the U.S. to the way organized crime does business. The only difference is that instead of fronts for olive oil selling cement shoes, these organizations are fronts for "Muslim civil rights."

But, just like organized crime, the Islamic organizations cook their books. In this case, they cook the books on alleged "hate crimes" against Muslims that never happened.
Posted by Debbie on October 20, 2008 10:25 AM
http://www.debbieschlussel.com/archives/004324print.html

Thursday, October 16, 2008

Can Israel approach peace from the bottom up?- JPost

Oct. 15, 2008

NATAN SHARANSKY , THE JERUSALEM POST

Last month, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert gave an explosive farewell interview to Yediot Aharonot. In it, Olmert, not known for his reticence to criticize political and ideological opponents, chose to mention only one by name: Moshe (Bogie) Ya'alon, the former chief of General Staff and my colleague at the Adelson Institute for Strategic Studies, whose much anticipated book, The Long-Short Road, was published last month. It was fitting that Ya'alon should be singled out for criticism because the policy approach of these two men could not be more different.

For Olmert, peace is decidedly a top-down affair. The entire Annapolis process, like the Oslo process it mimics, is based on strengthening a "moderate" Palestinian leader in the hope that he will be "strong enough" to make peace. How to strengthen the Palestinian leader? Among other things, by releasing prisoners, transferring money and making concessions in negotiations. For him, the health of the peace process is a function of the dynamics of negotiations. Are people meeting and talking? Are there summits of world leaders supporting the process? Are Arab leaders making the right statements?

For Ya'alon, however, peace is a bottom-up affair. He believes that it must focus on transforming Palestinian society and on bringing Israeli and Palestinian society closer together. To him, the health of the peace process is a function of what is happening within Palestinian society. Are Palestinian security forces fighting terror? Are Palestinian leaders working to improve the economic and social conditions of Palestinian life? Are Palestinian media outlets inciting against Israel? Are Palestinian schoolchildren being educated to accept the legitimacy of Israel?
Israelis can choose to support either of these two approaches. But one thing is certain: The top-down approach has been tried unsuccessfully by six different Israeli prime ministers and two different American presidents, working with two different Palestinian leaders. There is little evidence to suggest that it will succeed if tried by a seventh prime minister or third president.
A SMARTER idea would be to try Ya'alon's alternative approach, and to link the peace process - Israeli concessions, transfers of money and authority, etc. - to a transformation of Palestinian society. This would indeed be a long-short road, and would no doubt take a number of years to implement. But given the disasters that have befallen Israelis and Palestinians over the last 15 years, it would be infinitely better than the alternative.

Would a new US administration accept such an approach? After meeting with both of the candidates, I have no doubt that regardless of who wins this November, an Israeli government that would embrace this new approach would win the support of the White House.
Barack Obama began his public career as a community organizer and argues persuasively in his books that true change comes from the bottom-up. For his part, John McCain has repeatedly expressed his view that a reformed Palestinian society is critical to any successful peace process. Moreover, either candidate would welcome an approach that would be different than the previous unsuccessful efforts.

Indeed, the real question is not whether this new approach will be supported in Washington, but whether it will be supported in Jerusalem. In the past, initiatives that might have moved the peace process in a constructive new direction were left stillborn by passive governments.
THE MOST famous instance was after President George W. Bush's historic June 2002 speech in which he argued for a bottom-up approach that called for a Palestinian state to emerge only after comprehensive reforms would make that state democratic and peaceful. Rather than seize the opportunity, the Ariel Sharon-led government of which I was then a part dithered. Within a few months, the State Department crafted a road map which paid lip service to this new approach but which was essentially based on the same old tired formulas. In particular, its call for elections to be held "as soon as possible" in an unreformed Palestinian society would snuff out any chance for ever reforming that society.

A year later, Sharon embarked on a misguided unilateral disengagement plan, which initially caught the Americans by surprise and which further undermined any prospect for Palestinian reform. That mistake was compounded after the disengagement, when snap elections were foolishly held in Gaza, which not only killed the prospects for reform but, by bringing Hamas to power, also soured Israelis on the idea that Palestinian society was capable of being reformed.
I believe that reform is possible and that such a reform will bring us closer to peace. But it will require the end of illusions of the type offered by those who argue that peace is only one meeting, one summit, or one concession away. It will demand policies based on the type of hard-headed pragmatism that Moshe Ya'alon offers in his book. It will demand that we let the evidence guide our judgment rather than our judgment guide the evidence.
The writer is chairman of the Adelson Institute for Strategic Studies at the Shalem Center and the author of Defending Identity.

Missing Mandates III (Gaza)






As earlier noted, the American general in charge of training Palestinian security forces declared that Gaza was not in his mandate, and his troops will - at best - only secure the West Bank.
Among the Israelis, several commanders and senior civilians talked about the growing Hamas military capability and said the IDF would - someday - have to "deal" with it. No one thought the "lull" was anything more than an opportunity for Hamas to improve its position. "Massive smuggling," mining and organizing human shields for defense, as well as improved missiles and commandos for offense were noted. Hamas fighters have been training in Iran and taking lessons from Hezbollah on the transformation from terrorist to guerrilla army command structure.
Hamas is putting increasingly large number of Israelis under an increasingly intolerable threat.
Asked by a member of the JINSA delegation in Israel why the IDF didn't take offensive action before Hamas executed a mega-terrorist attack, the deputy commander of the Gaza region said he had no mandate to do so - it would take a government decision. Later, a senior IDF official said Israel "didn't want to be responsible for 1.5 million Palestinians and no one would relieve Israel of that burden of occupation" if they returned to daily control of Gaza.
Consequently, we saw a new, large, empty facility that was supposed to serve as a transit point for Palestinians to work in Israel, and we were briefed on the myriad international aid organizations with which Israel works to bring services into Gaza because Hamas has co-opted and corrupted the economy. An enormous amount of Israeli money and human ingenuity are spent bringing food to Gaza (including use of a grain conveyor belt that sends food into Gaza from Israel because Hamas won't accept the food directly). These are things Israeli can do, so they do them.
Excising Hamas from Gaza or creating effective security control of the Gaza Strip that might make international aid less important (or superfluous) is something the IDF cannot do because there is no mandate to do it. The government, meanwhile, is looking for a "negotiated solution" to the Palestinian-Israeli problem, talking with Abu Mazen/Fatah on the West Bank only, studiously ignoring the implications of the elephant known as Hamas.
phone: 202-667-3900

Sunday, October 12, 2008

The coming train-wreck in Lebanon - THE JERUSALEM POST

Oct. 10, 2008 Caroline Glick

Over the past several weeks, both Washington and Jerusalem have spelled out clear policies relating to the situation in Lebanon. The two policies contradict one another, and by adopting them, the US and Israel are on a collision course. (read full article)

The convenient war against the Jews

Caroline Glick - Oct 07, 2008 The Jerusalem Post

In the end, the global jihad, and the West's fickle response to radical Islam's assault on its civilization, is about hating Jews. This truth, never wholly hidden from view, was exposed in all its ugliness in recent months with startling disclosures by former Italian president and Senator-for-life Francesco Cossiga. (read full article)