BARRY RUBIN: THE SYRIANS DUPING OF A COUPLE OF DOPES

The trouble is, they keep making fools of themselves in their foreign policy making in spite of all the obvious evidence to the contrary. This happens to be one of the most ruinous, disaster prone administrations ever. Assad is laughing his chinless face off. KGS By Barry Rubin

Since I have written about how easily fooled Western politicians, officials, journalists, and academics are by Middle Eastern radicals, I’m going to try to provide examples in a regular feature called Dopes of the Day. This is a good starting point.

There is a newspaper in Lebanon called al-Akhbar. Curiously, while other newspapers are in decline or starved for funds, al-Akhbar is expanding. The New York Times reporter fell for the foolish notion that this newspaper is some model of independence and enterprise. In fact, it is not exactly a secret in Lebanon that it is a hard-line, Syrian backed newspaper that repeatedly slanders the moderate forces there as well as delivers propaganda for Hizballah. And that’s where the money comes from.

So the Times is cheering a Syrian propaganda operation just as, not long ago, the Guardian went into rhapsodies about a supposedly wonderful publication in Turkey that is a front for the Islamists and producing false material that enabled the regime there to throw innocent people into prison on trumped-up charges of conspiring to overthrow the government.

Any serious investigation should have shown the true nature of al-Akhbar but the reporter couldn’t even find anyone to quote on this point, apparently not even trying to produce a balanced article, much less an accurate one.

Instead here’s what we get:

“It was the latest coup for a five-year-old paper that has become the most dynamic and daring in Lebanon, and perhaps anywhere in the Arab world. In a region where the news media are still full of obsequious propaganda, Al Akhbar is now required reading, even for those who abhor its politics.”

But perhaps this free advertising for a Hizballah and Syrian parrot can be explained by the article’s lead:

“Ibrahim al-Amine, the hawk-eyed editorial chairman of Al Akhbar, describes his newspaper’s founding ambitions this way: `We wanted the U.S. ambassador to wake up in the morning, read it and get upset.’”

Read the rest here at Barry’s

NGO Monitor Submission to the International Criminal Court Office of the Prosecutor Regarding the 'Situation in Palestine'

Anne Herzberg
NGO Monitor

Abstract:
This paper argues that the Office of the Prosecutor (OTP) of the International Criminal Court (ICC) should immediately reject the attempt of the Palestinian Authority to accede to the jurisdiction of the court. On January 21, 2009, Ali Khashan, Minister of Justice for the “Palestinian National Authority” (PNA) submitted a declaration to the OTP purporting to accept the ICC’s jurisdiction under Article 12(3) of the Rome Statute. Article 12(3) referrals, however, can only be effected by States and the PNA has not yet achieved the status of statehood nor claims to be a state. Nevertheless, supporters of the PNA declaration have argued that the court should take an “expansive approach” in “interpreting the meaning of ‘state’” solely for purposes of the Rome Statute. This position, known as the “teleological approach,” must be rejected because it is nothing more than a thinly veiled attempt to transform the ICC into a court of universal jurisdiction – an approach that was expressly rejected by the drafters of the Statute. Supporters of the “teleological” approach also ask the court to ignore the plain language of the Statute in order to prevent Palestinians from being denied “recourse to justice”. Despite this allegation, there is no “lack of recourse” or a “zone of impunity” in this case. The Rome Statute, the UN Charter, and the Israeli justice system all offer adequate remedies. The OTP should also reject the declaration because the PNA is marred by “unclean hands” by openly defying the authority of the Court, violating its representations to be in compliance with Part 9 of the Statute, and by failing to adhere to the Court’s principles and objectives. Finally, the PNA declaration is a part of the “Durban Strategy” – a political campaign that uses the rhetoric of human rights and international law in order to attack the legitimacy of the State of Israel. The ICC should not allow itself to be exploited as part of a cynical political campaign. For all of these reasons, the declaration has no merit and should be immediately rejected.

Delegitimizing the Jewish State

Bat Ye'or
Middle East Quarterly
Winter 2011, pp. 3-14 (view PDF)

http://www.meforum.org/2813/delegitimizing-the-jewish-state

In a move that caught the Israeli government and the Jewish world by complete surprise, on October 21, 2010, the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) declared the Tomb of the Hebrew Patriarchs in Hebron and Rachel's Tomb in Bethlehem "an integral part of the occupied Palestinian territories," admonishing the Israeli decision to add these biblical shrines to the list of Jewish historical and archaeological sites as "a violation of international law."[1] What is less known, however, is that the driving force behind "the attempt to detach the Nation of Israel from its heritage" (to use Israeli prime minister Netanyahu's words)[2] was the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), which pressured UNESCO to issue the declaration and drafted its initial version.[3] U.N. secretary-general Ban Ki-moon has recently described the OIC as "a strategic and important partner of the U.N."[4] In fact, it has been the OIC that has successfully exploited its marked preponderance at the U.N.—where it constitutes the largest single voting bloc—to turn the world organization and its specialized agencies into effective tools in the attempt to achieve its goals, two of which are to bring about Israel's eventual demise and to "galvanize the umma [Islamic world] into a unified body."[5]
The OIC's Israel Obsession

Established in September 1969 as the "collective voice of the Muslim world," the OIC has evolved into the second largest intergovernmental organization after the U.N., bringing together fifty-six Muslim and other states, as well as the Palestinian Authority.[6] Though boasting a global range of objectives from the "promotion of tolerance and moderation, modernization, [and] extensive reforms in all spheres of activities," to the cultivation of "good governance and promotion of human rights in the Muslim world,"[7] this body has constantly and disproportionately focused on Israel and its supposed misdeeds. It was established in response to an attempt by a deranged Australian to set fire to the al-Aqsa mosque, which was duly blamed on "the military occupation by Israel of Al-Quds—the Holy City of Jerusalem."[8] The "State of Palestine" (i.e., the then-five-year-old Palestine Liberation Organization or PLO, established as a tool for promoting the expansionist ambitions of Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser) was among the OIC's original twenty-five founding members, and the pledge of "full support to the Palestinian people for the restitution of their rights, which were usurped"[9]—the standard Arab euphemism for Israel's destruction—has become a central plank of the organization's policy, reiterated in countless decisions and resolutions on issues that have nothing to do with questions concerning the Palestinians.[10]

The Islamic Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (ISESCO), an OIC organ mandated "to strengthen cooperation among member states in the field of education, science, and culture,"[11] has occupied pride of place in the campaign to delegitimize Israel. Since its inception in 1982, it has run dozens of programs and symposia on the Jewish state's supposed desecration of Islamic and Christian holy sites and the attendant need to wrest them from the Israelis' control. The most important of these were the international conferences on the "Protection of Islamic and Christian Holy Sites in Palestine," held in Rabat in 1993 and 2002 and in Amman in November 2004 respectively under the patronage of the Moroccan and Jordanian monarchs. An examination of conference activities reveals a systematic effort to devise an anti-Israeli media strategy that was to be adopted not only by Arab and Muslim states but also by international groups and organizations, including some of the U.N.'s most powerful agencies.
Unifying the Umma, Bashing the Jews

In his address to the 2002 Rabat conference, King Muhammad VI of Morocco stated:

The acts of destruction and distortion committed by the occupation authorities to distort the facts and truths of history cause serious damage to the Islamic and Christian holy sites and violate their sanctity and the values they embody for all the believers of the different religions.[12]

For the Moroccan monarch, as president of the OIC's al-Quds Committee, such actions as archaeological excavations and the placement of artifacts in museums constituted an attack against all believers. In fact, Christian churches that had been reduced to ruins by centuries of Islamic occupation were restored by successive Israeli governments because, unlike Shari'a or Islamic law, the Jewish state has no laws prohibiting the restoration or construction of churches. The king could have also benefitted from a measure of introspection: Morocco, like the other Maghreb states, is a place where virtually no vestiges of pre-Islamic Christian history have survived.

Abdulaziz Othman Altwaijri, the Saudi-born, University of Oregon-educated ISESCO director-general, went a step further, asserting that "the crimes against humanity committed by Israel have reached an extent of oppression, injustice, and aggression that humanity has never witnessed, neither in this age nor in previous ages."[13] He amplified this diatribe at the Amman conference where he claimed that Muslim responsibilities toward the Islamic and Christian holy sites in the Palestinian territories sprang from ISESCO's commitment to the Palestinian cause, which in his opinion, constituted the essence of all issues and the supreme task of both the Muslim world and those Eastern Christian circles that were part of the Arab and Islamic civilization.[14]

The proceedings of the Rabat and the Amman conferences represent a monument to anti-Jewish hatred and incitement, featuring such assertions as "Jews are the enemies of Allah, the enemies of faith, and of the worship of Allah."[15] They also brim with denials of Jewish attachment to the Land of Israel and claims to its Arab (and later Muslim) character since the third millennium BCE. The Jews are accused of having "judaized" the biblical prophets who were in fact Muslim and of having usurped the antiquity of other peoples since they themselves have no history. In the words of Adnan Ibrahim Hassan al-Subah, president of the Jenin Information Center:

People familiar with the Torah, which we believe to have been distorted, know the extent of the evils they attribute to their prophets: corruption, treachery, fornication or approval of it. It is with these facts that we need to arm ourselves when we confront the Zionist propaganda in the world with tangible facts, as part of our defence of the faith and the faithful on earth, wherever they may be.[16]

These examples of incitement to religious hatred were on display at the U.N.'s Palais des Nations in Geneva at a reception given by the OIC on December 19, 2008, to commemorate the sixtieth anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. And why not? After all, the OIC is not only "the collective voice of the Muslim world"[17] but also the U.N.'s largest single voting bloc and a prominent collaborator with many of its specialized agencies.
Influencing the U.N.

It is hardly surprising, therefore, that these conferences did not content themselves with anti-Jewish diatribes but sought to devise a strategy to harness the international community to the anti-Israel campaign in general and the re-Islamization of Jerusalem (al-Quds) in particular. As one of the speakers explained, "Jerusalem is the cornerstone of the spiritual edifice and the Zionist Jewish entity. Were it to be dislodged, the whole edifice and the Zionist entity itself would crumble like a deck of cards."[18]

Action plans show a media strategy of employing an attractive style and scientific language and magnifying Palestinian suffering since the establishment of the "racist Zionist entity" in 1948. These plans would be effectively replicated by the U.N.'s Alliance of Civilizations' Report of the High Level Group (HLG), which would endeavor to "make it clear to the Palestinian people that the price of decades of occupation, misunderstanding, and stigmatization is being fully acknowledged," although this "story had been left untold or deliberately ignored by the community of nations."[19]

This assertion is not merely false but the inverse of the truth. The Palestinians have benefitted like no other nation from world indulgence. Europe, for one, has vigorously championed their cause since 1973, devising a string of political schemes on their behalf and pouring immeasurable sums of money into the bottomless Palestinian pit.

If anything, it was the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Jews from the Arab countries during and after the 1948 war and the expropriation of their worldly possessions, that was entirely ignored by the Alliance of Civilizations, as was the history of the Jews in their ancestral homeland where they had suffered ethnic and religious oppression by a long succession of foreign occupiers.

While claiming to promote peace, the HLG report added yet another page to both the defamation of Israel and the perennial Palestinian sense of victimization. One wonders what prompted it to begin the historical survey with the establishment of the state of Israel, ignoring the millenarian Jewish attachment to the Land of Israel that had been acknowledged as early as 1920 by the U.N.'s predecessor—the League of Nations.

Moreover, the report sought to rewrite, under U.N. aegis, the story of the nakba (the "catastrophe," as Palestinians and Arabs call their 1948 failure to destroy Israel at its birth) as a counterweight to the Holocaust, and to impose this narrative on Israel and the international community. In the words of the report, it is "essential for Palestinians as well as for the Arab-Muslim world and Muslims in general to understand and acknowledge the fact that we … now know and take responsibility for ensuring everyone knows the price and weight of these sixty years of misunderstanding, stigmatization, as well as veiled and abused truths."[20] Indeed, while the Alliance was established in 2005 with the specific goal "to explore the roots of polarization between societies and cultures today and to recommend a practical program of action to address this issue," it has quickly become an anti-Israel lobbying machine on a global scale. This is evidenced not only from its implementation plan, which places "a priority on addressing relations between Western and Muslim societies"[21] at the expense of other faiths and civilizations, but also by its close collaboration with numerous anti-Israel nongovernmental organizations and bodies, notably the Organization of the Islamic Conference.

The OIC's influence on the Alliance has been manifested in a wide range of historical and cultural issues, including the presentation of Islam as the source of modern Western civilization; the contrasting of Islamic tolerance with European culpability for the Crusades, imperialism and colonization; and the whitewashing of jihad's true nature and its misrepresentation as a struggle for individual self-improvement.[22]

The Alliance's views on social issues often echo OIC charges about the pervasive discrimination against Muslim migrants in the West and the Western media's deliberate dissemination of "Islamophobia." This state of affairs required, in the words, of the HLG report, that "American and European universities and research centers should expand research into the significant economic, cultural, and social contributions of immigrant communities to American and European life. Likewise, they should promote publications coming from the Muslim world on a range of subjects related to Islam and the Muslim world."[23]

Such recommendations follow the injunctions of the religious scholars (ulema) who attended the OIC's 2005 summit in Mecca.[24]
Plotting the Anti-Israel Campaign

Speakers at the OIC's Amman conference stressed the media's crucial role and importance in the fight against Israel. They recommended that the Islamic world should demonstrate its unwavering commitment to Arab and Palestinian rights, alongside the conviction that the re-Islamization of Jerusalem would restore the city's spiritual preeminence and peaceful religious coexistence, enable the flourishing of faith, and make Jerusalem a worldwide agent of culture and civilization.[25]

In fact, this picture in no way corresponds to the actual Islamic history of Jerusalem, which for most of the time was a sleepy and neglected backwater. Rather it is a usurpation of the Biblical vision of Jerusalem as "a light unto the nations," developed by generations of Hebrew prophets more than a millennium before Muhammad.

Abdullah Kan'an, secretary-general of the Royal Committee for al-Quds Affairs in Jordan—whose government signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1994—presented a comprehensive plan for inculcating Islamic policy into all Western cultural and media sectors and delegitimizing the Jewish state, starting with turning the Muslim and Christian holy places in Jerusalem into a central world problem. As a first step, he suggested publicizing the history of Jerusalem as he saw it—from the city's foundation by the "Canaanite Jebusites" to date—so as to negate "the Torah-based history." He also proposed to popularize Islamic and Christian holy sites in the same manner, starting with al-Aqsa Mosque, which "according to the noble Hadith, is only forty years older than the first shrine ever created for humanity, al-Haram Mosque in Makkah."[26]

In enumerating the themes of ISESCO's media war against Israel in the West, Kan'an evoked arguments repeated by many Western journalists, intellectuals, ministers, and heads of state. These included,

*

Convincing the EU that a solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict was in its vital interest, thus helping Europeans (especially Germans) free themselves of their guilt complex vis-à-vis the Jews and the weight of history more generally.
*

Persuading Western leaders that as long as the Palestinians did not have their own state, relations between the EU and the Arab world would remain unstable. Once this goal had been achieved, Europe could look forward to an expanded partnership with the Arab world and full access to its markets.
*

Emphasizing that America's pro-Israel position was in contravention of international law, threatened U.S. vital interests as well as those of Europe, and jeopardized world peace and security. This argument, consistently inculcated in European leaders and journalists by the OIC, was hammered home by the Western media and became an important catalyst of European hostility toward the United States, especially during the George W. Bush administration.
*

Underscoring the alleged threats to Western interests as a result of supporting Israel. This support had to be presented as one of the foremost causes of anti-Western violence, both in the Middle East and in the Western countries themselves, by individuals and groups who reacted emotionally to personal and collective tragedies. This argument was frequently used by Romano Prodi, then-president of the European Commission, and French president Jacques Chirac, among other European politicians, to explain away the resurgence of European anti-Semitism during 2000-05, and was also invoked by President Obama in March 2010 when he publicly humiliated Israel's prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.[27]
*

Convincing Westerners that peace was only possible through the creation of an independent Palestinian state in the entire territory occupied in 1967 with al-Quds as its capital, the "return" of Palestinian refugees, and the abandonment of Israel's "Zionist, racist character"—standard Arab and Muslim euphemisms for the destruction of the Jewish state.
*

Persuading Westerners that their shared interests with Arabs and Muslims far exceeded those they shared with Israel.[28]

Kan'an then summarized the long-term objectives of the media plan, two of which are of special note:

*

Persuading the EU to abandon its slavish trailing of Washington and to form its own independent vision and positions, which "would be more in harmony with the international will vis-à-vis the Arab-Israeli conflict, the Israeli occupation of Arab territories, including Jerusalem, and the right of the Arab Palestinian people to self-determination and to the establishment of its independent state with Al Quds as its capital."[29]
*

Transforming the Palestinian question and the Arab-Israeli conflict from internal U.S. issues to external problems, primarily governed by the mutual interests of Americans, Muslims, and Arabs. This would break the immunity of the Israeli policies and force the Israeli government to bow to the will of the international community and adhere to all of the U.N. resolutions.[30]

To achieve these goals, Kan'an recommended obtaining the support of certain intellectuals, literary figures, and influential political movements that were capable of molding Western public opinion within the context of the Arab-Israeli conflict and especially with regard to the Jerusalem question. This campaign would refer to U.N. resolutions that formed the basis for the media plan. Here, too, EU support for the U.N.'s international law amounted to endorsement of the strategy and policies of the OIC, whose position as the U.N.'s largest single voting bloc gave it the unrivalled ability to predominate the world organization and its specialized agencies.

Another proposed tactic was to infiltrate the media as well as influential cultural, intellectual, and economic circles with a view to exposing them to the Arab perspective and convincing them that their countries' policies were subservient to "the interests of the Zionist movement with its various formations and bodies and not [to] the interests of their own countries"[31] Other themes included:

*

Discreetly and indirectly encouraging trends critical of Zionism and the Israeli government's "judaization policies" in Jerusalem within Western circles, so as to make them effective opponents of the "Zionist lobby and the coalition of Jewish and Christian Zionists" and defenders of their countries' vital interests.
*

Delegitimizing laws against anti-Semitism, such as France's 1990 Gayssot Act, which made it an offence to question the occurrence or scope of crimes against humanity,[32] and George W. Bush's 2004 law requiring the Department of State to monitor global anti-Semitism,[33] as laws that have no bearing on Western interests but are rather a part of a Zionist ploy to feed Westerners' guilt feelings so as to keep them subservient to Zionist machinations.

Mobilizing Western Muslims

No less importantly, the ISESCO campaign envisaged the mobilization of members of Arab and Muslim communities in the West, especially in the United States, who were to be enticed into becoming politically active so as to end their marginalization and gain major political weight. This was believed to be feasible given that these communities comprised high quality populations, including important scientists, intellectuals, and politicians. Arab and Muslim thinkers, religious scholars, and intellectuals living in Western societies ought to recommend to Muslims to reject extremism, fanaticism and violence "as this tends to be detrimental and generates negative reactions to Arab and Islamic issues." [34]

Another step would involve blocking attempts in Europe and the United States to ban Islamist charitable societies, which according to Kan'an were purely humanitarian organizations but in fact were funneling funds for jihadist and terrorist groups.[35] Within this framework, he recommended:

*

Encouraging the investment of Arab and Muslim capital in all forms of the media (written, audio, and visual), especially in the United States, thus paving the way for breaking the alleged Jewish monopoly in the field. Arab radio stations and satellite television channels such as al-Jazeera and al-Arabia should broadcast "weekly programs in English [about al-Quds], targeting Western public opinion, benefiting from media personalities knowledgeable about the Western mentality and capable of influencing it to the benefit of the issue of al-Quds with the help of U.N. resolutions." Programs about al-Quds in English, French, Spanish, German, Russian, and other languages should be created, and a multilingual satellite channel called al-Quds would be created, "staffed with a media, information, intellectual, and historical team knowledgeable about the question of al-Quds and its various dimensions."[36]
*

Encouraging Muslim and Arab investments in modern information and communication technologies, notably the Internet, and the filming of television and cinema documentaries with a view to shaping Western public opinion, which is heavily reliant on this type of educational and media sources. A special emphasis should be placed on the possibilities of "utilizing modern communication technologies, especially the opening of websites dedicated to al-Quds, and encouraging Muslims to embark on an Internet-supported war for al-Quds to counterbalance the activities of the Zionist movement and its octopus-like formations, the most dangerous of which is Christian Zionism and its mastermind, the Neo-Conservatives."[37]

On a broader level, Kan'an advised Arab and Muslim communities "to integrate as much as possible within the societies where they live, in order to gain credibility," especially in universities and institutions of higher learning. "Friends of al-Quds" associations in U.S. and European universities, organizations, and working places were to be established to support those NGOs working for the cause of al-Quds. To this would be added the worldwide distribution of propaganda materials "issued by Americans, Europeans, and Jews against Israel, its policies, and Zionism," including specifically-produced films that "reveal the barbarity of Israel, the dangers inherent in the policy of demolishing houses, murder and massacre of the Arab Palestinian people, and distributing these films as widely as possible in the Islamic world."[38]

Finally, specialists and experts in Western affairs should be drawn into "the discussion of the broad lines of the media plan in order to enrich it and guarantee all conditions of its success." Such experts would specialize in Western media, politics, public opinion, psychology, religions, law and culture, as well as in history of al-Quds. In two notes that appear in the French text but are omitted from the English proceedings, the lecturer ridicules the "Zionist stories of alleged Nazi slaughters."[39]
The OIC's World Collaborators

These were by no means novel, let alone maverick ideas. The intention to extend the OIC's influence to Western countries through immigrant populations and their growing weight in the host societies had been insinuated on previous occasions, notably by OIC secretary-general Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu at the European parliament in 2005,[40] and by the founders of the Euro-Arab Dialogue, which evolved from a French initiative in the late 1960s.[41]

According to unpublished sources from the Euro-Arab Dialogue movement,[42] in November 1973, Christopher Mayhew, a member of the British parliament, and Raymond Offroy, a member of the French national assembly, envisaged the creation of an association for improving Europe's relations with the Arab world.[43] Its launching coincided with the European Commission (EC)'s Brussels declaration that urged Israel to return to the pre-1967 lines and, for the first time, recognized the PLO.[44] Mayhew and Offroy, now supported by the EC, were the first to create a Euro-Arab network, the European Parliamentary Association for Euro-Arab Cooperation (PAEAC), at a conference in Paris on March 23-25, 1975. Its secretary-general, Robert Swann, a former foreign office diplomat, had been a secretary-general of Amnesty International. The funds for PAEAC came from a Swiss foundation, ANAF, set up in 1969 and managed by an administrative committee consisting of European political personalities. PAEAC benefited from the financial aid and support of the EC and its networks, in liaison with the Council of Europe. The minutes of the PAEAC meetings were published over the years in the Documents d'Actualité Internationale by the French foreign office. These reveal the effective extension of OIC strategy to Europe, combining a policy of immigration with the cultural and political Islamization of Europe.[45]

Extensive U.N.-sponsored networks, bringing together the EU, the OIC, and ISESCO, would effectively implement this strategy in all Western countries. Europe, for example, has lavished millions of Euros on Palestinian NGOs and organs of "civil society," which advocate the economic, political, educational, and cultural boycotting of Israel and which have systematically demonized and delegitimized the Jewish state in schools, the media, Palestinian publications, and on the international scene.[46]

Since 2005, a "Palestinian Week against Israeli Apartheid" has become a regular feature on campuses and in major cities throughout Europe, Canada, and the United States, calling for divestments, sanctions, and boycotts against Israel. According to NGO Monitor, most speakers at these demonstrations belong to organizations financed by European governments, the European Commission, and the New Israel Fund, created following Obama's election.[47]

To these NGOs must be added "The Elders"—a newly-established "independent group of eminent global leaders brought together by Nelson Mandela, who offer their collective influence and experience to support peace building, help address major causes of human suffering, and promote the shared interests of humanity." [48] Generating much international influence and considerable funds, the group comprises twelve leaders and dignitaries, quite a few of whom—notably former U.S. president Jimmy Carter and former Irish president Mary Robinson of Durban conference infamy—are harsh critics of Israel. It is chaired by former South African archbishop Desmond Tutu—the spiritual instigator of the world campaign of cultural and economic apartheid against Israel.

Small wonder that the group, in line with the former policies of its members while in power, has consistently misrepresented the Israelis as the unjust and warlike party and the Palestinians as hapless victims of their predatory neighbor. For The Elders, the Palestinian denial of Israel's right to exist embodies natural justice (hence, for example, their advocacy of "engaging" Hamas) while Israel's attempts to protect its citizens from sustained terror attacks—from the erection of the security fence, to Operation Cast Lead, to the naval blockade of Hamas—are illegal and disproportionate uses of force. Tutu congratulated Turkey for having sent its flotilla of supposed humanitarians in May 2010 while the Elders condemned Israel's attempt to stop this effort on behalf of Hamas, a terror organization, whose constitution openly calls for Israel's destruction.[49] They also urged the U.N. Security Council "to debate the situation with a view to mandating action to end the closure of the Gaza Strip."[50]

In what had by now become an instinctive reaction, the European parliament joined the Elders and condemned Israel by a crushing majority, insinuating its massive support for Hamas. Catherine Ashton, the EU's high representative for foreign affairs and security policy and vice president of the European Commission, argued that lifting the blockade would bring peace,[51] conveniently overlooking the fact that the blockade was a defensive response to Hamas' genocidal policies rather than their catalyst.
Exploiting the Palestinian Christians

Nor has the OIC, together with its willing international collaborators, shied away from exploiting West Bank and Gaza Christians—discriminated against and oppressed by both Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, which have ruled over them for the past fifteen years—for its anti-Israel propaganda campaign.

Consider the document titled Kairos Palestine, drawn up by Palestinian theologians and published in Bethlehem on December 11, 2009, by the Geneva World Council of Churches.[52] In the name of love, peace, and justice, the paper portrays Israel as the epitome of evil and oppression, urging all Western churches to initiate a policy of economic strangulation and defamation of the Jewish state. This was followed by a letter from the Greek Catholic patriarch of Antioch, Alexandria, and Jerusalem, Gregorios III, to Pope Benedict XVI,[53] in preparation for the October 2010 Synod, planned to bring together the Catholic churches of the Middle East to discuss the greater problems facing the local Christians and to devise ways and means for stopping their ongoing flight from the region.

Invoking his duty to inform the pope on the dangers in the region, the patriarch had no qualms about blaming Israeli actions for the surge of militant Islamism throughout the region and its adverse implications for the local Christian communities. He wrote:

There is a diffuse but sure rise of Islamic extremism, provoked by the threats of the Israeli government against Palestinians, Lebanon, Syria, [and Iran], which is spreading throughout all the countries in the region. Even in Syria, where such extremism has been up to now very limited, its advance has become more and more evident, despite efforts from the government against it.

Gregorios lamented the widespread terror attacks by these Islamists on local Christians, especially in Iraq and Egypt. Yet rather than ask the pope to help restrain the perpetrators of this violence, he begged that

the Holy See's diplomacy redouble its efforts to persuade the Tel Aviv government, despite the views of its most intransigent wing—probably via the United States and those European countries which, having sponsored the birth of the State of Israel and supported it ever since, should be able to exert effective pressure on it—of the grave danger of this development which in the medium and perhaps short term, runs against the interests and future of the State of Israel itself, which needs peace in the region just as much as Arab countries, to be able eventually to live normally all together. [54]

Conclusion

Judging by Israel's growing international isolation, the OIC's sustained effort to delegitimize the Jewish state has borne substantial fruit. Not only is Israel's right to exist constantly debated and challenged in Western public opinion forums, but sixty-three years after establishing the Jewish state in an internationally recognized act of self-determination, the United Nations has become a foremost purveyor of anti-Israel and anti-Semitic incitement.

Time and again, year after year, its Commission on Human Rights discusses Israel's supposed abuses while turning a blind eye to scores of actual atrocities around the globe. This world organization has 192 member nations, but its Security Council has devoted about a third of its activity and criticism to only one of those states—Israel. Nowhere has this obsession been more starkly demonstrated than in the World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance, held in September 2001 in the South African town of Durban where, for eight full days, delegates from numerous countries and thousands of nongovernmental organizations indulged in a xenophobic orgy of anti-Israel and anti-Semitic incitement that made a mockery of the conference's original purpose.[55]

As UNESCO follows suit by denying the Jews some of their most cherished historical and religious symbols, the OIC scores yet another palpable hit in its ceaseless hate campaign.

Bat Ye'or is the author, most recently, of Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2005). This article contains extracts from her forthcoming book Europe, Globalization and the Coming Universal Caliphate (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2011).

[1] "Executive Board adopts five decisions concerning UNESCO's work in the occupied Palestinian and Arab Territories," UNESCO Media Services, Paris, Oct. 21, 2010.
[2] Jerusalem Post, Oct. 29, 2010.
[3] See, for example, International Islamic News Agency (Jeddah), Mar. 3, 2010; "Decisions Adopted by the Executive Board at its 184th Session," UNESCO, executive board, Paris, May 14, 2010.
[4] World Bulletin (Istanbul), Sept. 28, 2010.
[5] "About OIC," Organization of the Islamic Conference, Jeddah, accessed Nov. 7, 2010.
[6] Ibid.
[7] Ibid.
[8] "Declaration of the First Rabat Islamic Conference," Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), Rabat, Sept. 1969.
[9] Ibid.
[10] "Resolutions," Second Islamic Conference of the Ministers of Health, OIC, Tehran, Mar. 1-4, 2009.
[11] "Islamic Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (ISESCO)," Specialized Institutions and Organs, OIC, Rabat, 2009, accessed, Nov. 7, 2010.
[12] "Message of His Majesty Mohammed VI, King of Morocco," June 6, 2002, Protection of Islamic and Christian Holy Sites in Palestine International Conference, Rabat, June 7-8, 2002 (Rabat: ISESCO, 2004), p. 11.
[13] "Address of Dr. Abdulaziz Othman Altwaijri," Protection of Islamic and Christian Holy Sites in Palestine, First International Conference, Rabat, June 7-8, 2002 (Rabat: ISESCO, 2004), p. 15.
[14] "Address by Dr. Abdulaziz Othman Altwaijri," Protection of Islamic and Christian Holy Sites in Palestine, Second International Conference, Amman, Nov. 23-25, 2004, (Rabat: ISESCO, 2007), p. 18.
[15] Adnan Ibrahim Hassan al-Subah, "Role of Palestinian Civil Society in the Protection of Holy Sites in Palestine," Protection of Islamic and Christian Holy Sites in Palestine, Second International Conference, Amman, Nov. 23-25, 2004 (Rabat: ISESCO, 2007), p. 253.
[16] Ibid., p. 254.
[17] "About OIC."
[18] Abdullah Kan'an, "Media Plan for Publicising the Cause of Al Quds, Al Sharif in the West and Mechanisms for Its Implementation," Protection of Islamic and Christian Holy Sites in Palestine, Second International Conference, Amman, Nov. 23-25, 2004 (Rabat: ISESCO, 2007), p. 195.
[19] "Report of the High Level Group," Alliance of Civilizations, United Nations, New York, Nov. 13, 2006, p.18, art. 5.7.
[20] Ibid., p. 53.
[21] "Implementation Plan, 2007-2009," Alliance of Civilizations, United Nations, New York, p. 2.
[22] "Report of the High Level Group," pp. 11, 15.
[23] Ibid., p. 39, italicized in the text.
[24] "Recommendations of the OIC Commission of Eminent Persons (CEP)," Makkah al-Mukarramah, Saudi Arabia, Dec. 7-8, 2005.
[25] Protection of Islamic and Christian Holy Sites in Palestine, Second International Conference, Amman, Nov. 23-25, 2004 (Rabat: ISESCO, 2007), p. 175.
[26] Kan'an, "Media Plan," p. 201.
[27] The Sunday Times (London), Mar. 26, 2010.
[28] Kan'an, "Media Plan," pp. 202-3.
[29] Ibid, p. 205.
[30] Ibid.
[31] Ibid., p. 204.
[32] Tendant à réprimer tout acte raciste, antisémite ou xénophobe, République Française, Paris, July 13, 1990.
[33] Global Anti-Semitism Review Act of 2004, PL 108-332, U.S. Congress, Oct. 16, 2004; BBC News, Oct. 20, 2004.
[34] Kan'an, "Media Plan," pp. 205-6.
[35] See for example, Daniel Pipes and Sharon Chadha, "CAIR: Islamists Fooling the Establishment," Middle East Quarterly, Spring 2006, pp. 3-20.
[36] Kan'an, "Media Plan," pp. 206-7.
[37] Ibid.
[38] Ibid., pp. 207-8.
[39] Ibid., p. 208.
[40] Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, secretary-general, Organization of the Islamic Conference, address to Parliamentary Assembly, Council of Europe, Oct. 4, 2005.
[41] Roy H. Ginsberg, The European Union in International Politics. Baptism by Fire (New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2001), pp. 112-3.
[42] 1974-1994 Association Parlementaire pour la Coopération Euro-Arabe, association archives, unpublished document in author's possession, pp. 6-12.
[43] Ibid.
[44] Joint statement, European Economic Community, Copenhagen, Nov. 6, 1973.
[45] Bat Ye'or, Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis (Cranbury, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2005), pp. 93-5.
[46] Gerald M. Steinberg, "Europe's Hidden Hand. EU Funding for Political NGOs in the Arab-Israeli Conflict. Analyzing Processes and Impact," NGO Monitor Monograph Series, Apr. 2008.
[47] "Israeli Apartheid Week 2010: NGO Involvement," NGO Monitor, updated Mar. 3, 2010.
[48] "About the Elders," The Elders website, accessed Oct. 13, 2010.
[49] "Hamas Covenant 1988," Yale Law School Avalon Project, Aug. 18, 1988.
[50] "The Elders Condemn Israeli Attack on Gaza relief Ships," The Elders, May 31, 2010.
[51] Catherine Ashton, speech to the European Parliament, Strasbourg, June 16, 2010.
[52] Kairos Palestine, Bethlehem, Dec. 11, 2009; Al-Jazeerah: Cross-Cultural Understanding (Dalton, Ga.), Dec. 15, 2009 .
[53] Gregorios III, Patriarch to Pope Benedict XVI, Melkite Greek Catholic Patriarchate of Antioch and All the East of Alexandria and of Jerusalem, Mar. 1, 2010.
[54] Ibid.
[55] Gerald M. Steinberg "NGOs Make War on Israel," Middle East Quarterly, Summer 2004, pp. 13-25.

The Mullen War Strategy

Herbert London

Recently the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, said there are “new ways of deterrence that address those factors that make individuals vulnerable to coercion…”. In a speech delivered at the Hoover Institution, Admiral Mullen noted that the Taliban, Hamas, Hezbollah, and al Qaida can be deterred by a traditional method of military retaliation and by nontraditional means of attacking extremism at its core. “Attacking the humiliation, the hopelessness, the illiteracy and abject poverty which lie at the core of the attraction to extremist thought will do more to turn the tide against terrorism than anything else,” he announced.

Presumably an understanding of the Koran, rather than an interpreter’s view, a higher standard of living and understanding wives and friends will convert swords into plowshares. It would seem that even military leaders are vulnerable to Opry-logic. Surely Admiral Mullen must be aware of several incontrovertible conditions: Muslim leaders who espouse violence are often from wealthy families, vide: Osama bin Laden; being able to read doesn’t translate into understanding; sitting on a couch with a psychologist who identifies with your angst may be comforting, but as a strategy for peace it lacks staying power.

The admiral’s psychobabble has as much validity as alchemy. In fact, one wonders what happened to a military culture predicated on “kill or be killed”? No sensible person wants the bloodshed of war, but there have been times in history when the choice is slavery or battle. Some, perhaps many, prefer battle.

As it turns out, Admiral’s Mullen’s words were turned on their head in any case. In Iran, one headline noted that Admiral Mullen wants the “U.S. to deter Qur’an followers.” Hezbollah T.V. in Lebanon reported, U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mile Mullen says “people learning the way of the Qur’an are the subject of new American deterrence.” ‘And the Iran Broadcasting Station accused Mullen of using “insulting words against Islamic scholars.”

Apparently Admiral Mullen has forgotten the incident at Fort Hood in which a Muslim physician wantonly killed fellow soldiers at the base. Was he suffering from deprivation, a lack of understanding, a low standard of living? The part of this equation Admiral Mullen doesn’t address, the part he intentionally ignores, is that violence is inherent in Islamic thought as Verses of The Sword suggests.

How can one deter an enemy when there is a refusal to understand him? Even those in the Arab world are perplexed. Middle East tradition indicates you side with the “strong horse.” But if you do not know how to apply your strength, you become the “weak horse.” At the moment, U.S. psychologizing is having a paralyzing influence in fighting a war against radical Islam.

Can you imagine a strategy in World War II in which we argued the most effective way to deter the Nazis would be classes on Mein Kampf? Or perhaps we should have sent psychologists to Berlin instead of Patten’s army.

It boggles the imagination to consider how misguided military strategists have become. From battlefield action based on lethality we have seemingly moved to Dr. Phil on the military couch. The question that remains is whether the U.S. can subdue an enemy committed to our destruction with psychological, economic and social tactics. Obviously Admiral Mullen thinks we can; I have considerable doubt.

FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Herbert London is president of Hudson Institute and professor emeritus of New York University. He is the author of Decade of Denial (Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books, 2001), America's Secular Challenge (Encounter Books) and Decline and Revival in Higher Education (Transaction).

The PM-FM blow-up: Confrontation or mechanism?

MICHAEL FRIEDSON
12/27/2010

Lieberman has served Netanyahu well by placing into the public debate cautions and concerns the prime minister himself doesn’t dare to utter.

When the Netanyahu government was formed, the Israeli media was filled with predictions of how long it would be before Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman would be forced to resign to face criminal charges and whether his departure would signal a coalition re-shuffling or a new government altogether. Just shy of two years later, Lieberman remains in his post Based on media references, the uninformed might believe he serves as Israel’s “controversial” rather than “foreign” minister. During his tenure, Lieberman has filled the role of lightning rod for international angst, espousing what his supporters see as common sense, diplo-speak-free solutions that his detractors see as racist and anti-peace. And while he has no shortage of critics, Lieberman has amassed a significant cadre of boosters along the way. Typical of the Lieberman-Netanyahu dialectic, when the prime minister speaks of the nation’s commitment to the US-brokered peace process, the foreign minister will assert the futility of the talks and disparage the legitimacy of Israel’s Palestinian negotiating partners. Some have suggested that far from presenting a dysfunctional point-counterpoint between prime minister and foreign minister, Lieberman has served the PM well by placing into the public debate cautions and concerns Netanyahu himself doesn’t dare to utter for fear of upsetting a delicate balance with his American patrons.

AGAINST THIS background, the recent blow-up between Netanyahu and Lieberman presents intriguing permutations.

It’s no-doubt irritating to the anti-Lieberman crowd that, like it or not, the Moldovan émigré offers plans rather than ad hominem attacks to back up his positions. This, of course, fuels speculation that his outbursts are more coordinated with the Prime Minster’s Office than is let on. While Lieberman is often tarred with the “racist” epithet for suggesting a transfer of population, successive Israeli-Palestinian negotiating teams have accepted in-principle the idea of several Israeli settlement-blocs remaining after any final agreement inside of territory Israel acquired in the 1967-war; and that compensation would be made to the Palestinians in an equal amount of territory now located inside of pre-1967 Israel. (A detailed rendering of the concept has been painstakingly created under former Ambassador Edward Djerjian’s watch at the James A. Baker III Institute at Rice University in Houston). An objective reading of Lieberman’s plan adds little more than to identify the subject land to be transferred as predominantly Israeli Arab (or Palestinian) communities.

The timing of Lieberman’s most recent outbursts is newfound nourishment for conspiracy theorists. They come amid a stagnant process that the American administration is desperately trying to paint with signs of life and direction. Having given up on the failed formula of cajoling (and even bribing) the parties back to the table, US interlocutors are struggling for believability and capability while the Palestinians’ ”Plan B” – turning to the international community for endorsement of statehood absent Israeli assent – is resonating beyond the expectations of many inside the world of international diplomacy.

What better time for Israel to put forth its own “Plan B” – and one that contains within it a mechanism to forestall a final agreement (which Lieberman says is “impossible” and Netanyahu arguably wants to postpone) – all while covering the points nearest and dearest to PA Prime Minister Salam Fayyad: turning over more security responsibility to the Palestinians; improving Palestinians’ freedom of movement; and setting the goal of economic parity between the West Bank and Israel as the trigger for eventual (and consensual) statehood.

After all, had Netanyahu offered the same suggestions, they would have been dismissed no less decisively than they are now but added to the downside would be incalculable collateral damage between Jerusalem and Washington.

Veteran Israeli political junkies will probably dismiss this entire thesis, opting instead to be entertained by predictions of the perfect political storm that will blow away the current government. But stripped of political theatre, what is laid bare could be a Rube Walker-esque system of injecting new ideas into an un-accepting culture of conventional wisdoms. And new ideas – regardless of how they enter the system – trump stagnation.

The writer is executive editor of The Media Line news agency (www.themedialine.org). He can be reached at editor@themedialine.org.

A Conservative New Year’s Resolution

Heritage Foundation

This year has been quite a journey for conservatives.

An overzealous liberal majority in Congress, revved up by their Christmas Eve health care victory in the House of Representatives, greeted 2010 with an agenda that was far left and far removed from the will of the American people.

From Obamacare and the New START to defense cuts and tax hikes, we conservatives have had our work cut out for us this past year. Yes, we lost important battles in Congress – Obamacare is now the law of the land and we have a new START Treaty. But conservatives have continued the debate and expanded it.

It is no longer just about health care, harmful treaties, tax hikes, defense cuts or any one item in between. It is about America’s First Principles. Take a moment and reflect on what we as a nation have seen unfold over the past twelve months. Across the country, people who had never before been engaged in politics have sprung to action. They’re calling for fiscal sanity, individual responsibility, and limited government – all Constitutional principles. And it’s working.

While liberals try to place us on a road to serfdom, conservatives are winning where it matters most – and not just at the ballot box. We are winning the war of ideas. And liberals are taking notice.

In recent months, the Obama administration has begun to take ideas directly from the conservative playbook.

* On national security, they’ve canceled civilian trials for terrorists, kept Guantanamo Bay open, and extended key provisions of the Patriot Act;
* On federal spending, they have proposed a federal pay freeze as a first step towards fiscal sanity;
* On immigration, the Left has abandoned its pursuit of comprehensive immigration reform; and
* On economic recovery, they have admitted that the Obama tax hikes are wrong for America.

Each of these ideas can be found in The Heritage Foundation’s Solutions for America, a comprehensive policy guide for getting our nation back on the right track. But there are over 120 policy recommendations outlined in our Solutions for America. And much remains to be done.

My hope is that the new Congress will follow through on this momentum and fulfill the conservative mandate that handed them victory in November. Standing firmly on principles, conservatives can push for repealing Obamacare, rein in government spending and regulations, stop all tax hikes and return power to the people by getting control of the federal government.

And in this battle of ideas, The Heritage Foundation will be on the front lines, making sure that all in power know the truth about the policies they recommend and the people they affect.

That’s why I hope you’ll continue to stand with us by helping us to reach our year end goal with your tax-deductible contribution before Midnight on December 31st. Join us as we bid farewell to 2010 and help us to prepare for the many challenges that await conservatives in the coming year.

From all of us at The Heritage Foundation, thank you. And have a very happy and healthy New Year.

Sincerely,
Edwin J. Feulner
President

Quick Hits:

* The federal government has accumulated more new debt ($3.22 trillion) during the tenure of the 111th Congress, than it did during the first 100 Congresses combined.
* According to a new Associated Press poll, 43% of baby boomers say they don’t expect to be able to depend on Medicare forever.
* Bypassing Congress, President Barack Obama announced six recess appointments yesterday, including the first U.S. ambassador to Syria in nearly six years.
* Georgia, Mississippi, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina and Tennessee are all pursuing immigration enforcement laws similar to those recently adopted by Arizona.
* The fight between Texas and the EPA over increased regulation is escalating.

How to Defame Israel - NPR edition

ElderofZiyon

When it comes down to it, all of the anti-Israel agitators, protesters and complainers use the same method for their smears. It is easy, effective and sometimes even partially truthful.

The method is to simply compare Israel with their idea of perfection, and note where it falls short. It is insidious, because when it is done well, it is difficult to argue against on a point by point basis, and that tends to make people think that Israel is guilty of horrendous crimes. It is criticism without context, calumnies without comparisons, arguments without considering the alternative.

A classic example is being broadcast today on NPR, on the very real problem of tens of thousands of illegal African immigrants who are sneaking into Israel:

In Israel, No Welcome Mat For African Migrants

Israeli officials have stepped up efforts to stem the flow of African asylum seekers and migrant workers into Israel. With numbers reaching into the tens of thousands, Israeli officials are pressed to find a policy to combat the ever-increasing flow of people.

Israeli construction workers are battling against the blustery wind and sandstorms to build a fence across one stretch of desert.

The $270 million fence will cover 87 miles of Israel's southern border with Egypt. African refugees are smuggled through this area almost daily. They travel thousands of miles and often spend their life savings to try to reach Israel, a country they see as their doorstep to the West.

Israel, however, is far from laying down the welcome mat.

Sigal Rosen is an organizer at the Hotline for Migrant Workers, an advocacy group for refugees, in Tel Aviv. She says that though Israel signed the Geneva Convention relating to refugees, it regularly violates it.

"During the last years, Israel is sending a very clear message to all asylum seekers: Beware. We are not interested in your presence here. We will do whatever is in our power to prevent you from being here, even if the price is violating our legal commitments," Rosen says.

...On Nov. 22, the same day that work began on the fence along the Egyptian border, Yishai presented his four-part plan to make Israel a less desirable locale for refugees.

In addition to the fence, Israel is building a detention center that will operate as a yet undefined "open facility" for any would-be refugee who decides to remain in Israel.

The third step in Yishai's plan is to punish any employer who hires African migrants or supports their employment.

The last step is the repatriation of refugees who are already in Israel. Israel took that step for the first time — last week — when it removed 150 southern Sudanese who agreed to leave voluntarily in exchange for some pocket money and a flight home in time to vote in the upcoming referendum on the region's independence.

...At the Hotline for Migrant Workers, Rosen says she knows many more who would consider leaving Israel if they were given a similar deal. Most of them, she says, have become fed up.

"Actually, Israel doesn't have an immigration policy. What we have is a big mess," she says.

Now for some context.

Let's start with the headline: Israel does not roll out the "welcome mat" for African migrants.

Is there any country in the world that actively seeks or welcomes migrants from Africa? Has a single country gone to Israel and said "We would love to take them in?" The idea is absurd, but to NPR, Israel is to be castigated for not openly allowing itself to be overrun with hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants.

Not all of the migrants are refugees. In fact, there is a process that must be gone through to determine whether they can legally seek asylum. UNHCR in Israel used to do it, but a couple of years ago Israel took over that function partially because UNHCR was getting overwhelmed.

Many of the African migrants are not fleeing persecution and personal danger, but simply seeking a better life in the nearest Western-style state. Which means that they are not "refugees." It gets complicated though because once many of them step foot in Israel they really cannot go back to their own countries. In those cases Israel has a very good reason to discourage them from coming to begin with.

Notice that these African migrants usually pass through Egypt on their way to Israel. That indicates that they are not simply escaping persecution but illegally seeking a better life. (There are also a significant number from West Africa who visit Israel on religious pilgrimages and then never leave.)

Israel really is a tiny nation, While Israel in the past has welcomed small numbers of refugees in need (Vietnamese "boat people" in 1977, Bosnian Muslim refugees in 1993, southern Lebanese Christians in 2000) it simply cannot have the open door policy that NPR seems to demand. Even the US, 450 times the size of Israel, cannot survive with such a policy. It is a matter of national survival.

Moreover, UNHCR credits Israel with great strides in improving its policies on dealing with asylum seekers, creating a program from scratch in only a few years.

The UNHCR itself is concerned not only in resettlement when necessary but in repatriation when possible, meaning that Israel's attempts to send migrants back to their original homes is quite consistent with preferred international standards.

Not only that, but Israel now has a serious crime problem from these illegal African immigrants.

One doesn't even have to mention the fact that Egyptian policies are to shoot migrants on sight.

All of these facts are easily ascertained and they took me only a few minutes to learn. But NPR's Sheera Frenkel could not be bothered to find out the facts.

The methodology of the report is also very biased. Only one side is humanized; the Israeli policies are presented purely as malicious. You won't find Frenkel interviewing Israeli victims of crimes by Africans, nor Israeli officials who are dedicating their lives to making the lives of the Africans as bearable as possible while keeping within Israeli policies and respecting Israel's citizens, and not even UNHCR officials in Israel. Instead she interviews only two people - an advocate for the illegal migrants and an actual migrant - whose views are hardly unbiased.

In other words, NPR is presenting a hatchet job, solely for the purpose of demonizing Israel.

The methods are familiar, because we have seen countless similar articles from the media that use the same format: find people who are unhappy with some aspect of Israeli society, de-contextualize it while humanizing only one side of the story and making the Israeli side seem cold and heartless, and highlighting where Israel is supposedly falling short to some idealized standards that are literally impossible or that would cause worse human rights problems in themselves.

This is merely one of thousands of examples of how the media slyly and subtly tries to undermine Israel.

Bloomberg's Snow Job

Daniel Greenfield

Had Mayor Bloomberg spent as much time preparing for a massive snowfall, as he did promoting the construction of the Ground Zero Mosque, New Yorkers might have been able to get to work, receive emergency help and be able to walk down the street without injury. But the Mayor who spent the summer lecturing us on everything from the salt content of our food to the evils of Islamophobia--ignored the one thing he should have actually been preparing for. Winter.

It's possible that Bloomberg's ideology fooled him into thinking that winter just wasn't coming this year. Back in 2008, he had compared Global Warming to the threat of terrorism, and focused the city's resources on buying into the eco-scam. Last winter, in response to his special Global Warming panel's alarmist claims of coastal flooding and higher temperatures in the city by 2080, the Mayor said, "We cannot wait until after our infrastructure has been compromised to begin to plan for the effects of climate change now." And so last winter, instead of planning for the next winter, Bloomy began planning for the apocalyptic New York City of 2080, where everyone has to live on melted ice floes and battle for parking spots with marauding polar bears.

Bloomberg's incompetence highlights the danger of decision makers falling under the influence of the Global Warming scam. And now a woman is dead and many more are injured because municipal resources were diverted from preparing for an entirely predictable snowstorm, to preparing for an imaginary disaster toward the end of the century. We had ample warning, when the Mayor of the city that suffered the worst terrorist attack in the nation's history, announced in all seriousness that Global Warming was just as dangerous as terrorism. Now we have suffered a snowstorm, and we found out that city was unprepared. What happens if we were to suffer another 9/11. Does anyone seriously think that an administration obsessed with Global Warming will be ready?

And New York's example might scale up to the whole country and the world, as we stop to consider how many resources were diverted from planning for preventable disasters and terrorist attacks to hold conferences on global warming. How many schoolchildren have lost educational time memorizing environmentalist dogma, instead of learning to explore science as a field, rather than a dogma. No wonder American students are falling behind in mathematics and science, in an educational environment where rainbow colored globes matter more than actual knowledge. Soviet science was not second-rate because of a lack of resources or education, but because of its dogmatic indoctrination which inhibited independent thinking and exploration. In the name of Global Warming, we dismantled NASA, suppressed scientific dissent and destroyed the potential of a generation of our children. That certainly puts a snowstorm into perspective.

But it's not just about Global Warming, it's about the attitude of the political elite in a nanny state.

While Bloomberg's administration made nanny state causes like nutrition, global warming and public schools its priority-- it failed abysmally at its core mission. Crime has gone up. Services have gone down. The World Trade Center has not been rebuilt. And now even in the face of a predictable snowstorm, instead of showing leadership, Bloomberg tried to show off his liberal side, by going on television and delivering an announcement in his best High School Spanish. It was an embarrassing moment not just for him, but for that whole arrogant elite which presumes to dictate the minutiae of everyone's behavior, yet can't do the job it was elected to do.

Like so many politicians, Bloomberg mistook his role overseeing a municipality that provides taxpayer funded services, for a role as urban moralist, social critic and dispenser of condescending liberal platitudes. And somehow in between mandating that restaurants display calories on their menus and trying to control their ingredients-- he didn't bother preparing for a severe winter. What's the difference? The difference is one of self-image.

Providing services during a winter emergency is something that garbage men are supposed to do. It's not something that an elitist like Bloomberg wants to be bothered with. Bloomberg didn't spend a fortune getting elected three times, in order to oversee a giant snow plow operation. He did it on a Linday-esque quest to teach New Yorkers to be better people. To manage them, the way he had managed his employees. The Mayor never saw himself as a public servant, but as a reluctant master tasked with educating and taking care of a bunch of imbeciles, who would eat themselves fat, stone mosques and emit carbon from their big mouths, if someone like him didn't step forward to pat them on the head and tell them what to do.

New Yorkers never liked Bloomberg, but they tolerated him for the one and only good quality that he had going for him. His competence. Unlike his Democratic rivals, he had come out of the business world and knew how to run a large operation. But Bloomberg liked that part of himself the least. Inside his broad suits and horsey face, beneath the cold tones and patrician dignity of a mortician, beat the heart of a man certain that he was destined for great things. Being a billionaire wasn't enough. Neither was being mayor. Unlike Giuliani, Bloomberg was never cursed with any love for the city, or concern for its inhabitants. They were just stepping stones on his way up to bigger things.

After teasing a run for the White House, auditioning to be Obama's new treasury secretary, and spending the fall advocating furiously for the Ground Zero Mosque-- the snowstorm of late December made it clear that he had completely neglected his responsibilities. Bloomberg appointed himself the conscience of the city and the nation, but he forgot that he wasn't elected to be our conscience, but to see that our streets were clean.

That's the humiliating lesson that American democracy regularly serves up to arrogant politicians who act like messiahs and gurus, only to discover what we really think of them when the laundry doesn't get done. After the fortune spent on turning Obama into the "Hope of All Mankind", he was shocked to learn that the country was mad at him because the economy was bad. And all those people, whom he thought loved and adored him, really just wanted to be able to buy a new pair of pants at the mall, without worrying about upcoming layoffs.

Months later, the media is still slowly processing the revelation that most Americans did not vote for him in order to be inspired by his teleprompter addresses, but because they accepted the idea that a leader from a new party might be able to fix the economy, where the leader from the last party had failed. And the humiliation of that revelation is incalculable. Far from being some grand coronation and the ushering in of a new age-- the election really came down to a job interview, in which one candidate passed because he seemed like a young, ambitious and energetic go-getter.

But that's the way America has always been. We are not North Korea. We don't elect politicians in order to be inspired by their speechmaking, and we certainly don't elect them so that they can tell us what to do every minute of the day. We certainly don't elect them in order to worship them. We do it so they can keep the city, the state and the country running. We don't remember leaders because they inspire us, but because they get the job done. Had the United States divided permanently on Lincoln's watch, or ceded Hawaii to Japan under FDR or turned over Europe to the Soviet Union on Reagan's-- none of these men would have been viewed as inspiring leaders. But as tragic failures. And we have no use for leaders who think that doing the job we elected them for is beneath them. No use at all.

Obama has found that out the hard way. Now so has Bloomberg. And liberal politicians will go on finding it out over and over again, when they insist on treating their elected office as a platform to show their disdain for the common man.

For Bloomberg, Global Warming and the Ground Zero Mosque were moral crusades pitting him against an apathetic and ignorant citizenry. On the other hand cleaning the streets? Feh. That kind of grunt work is beneath the mayor's dignity. Let the slobs get out shovels and dig for themselves, while the snow plows focus on the important areas, like the street that Bloomberg lives on and Times Square in preparation for his big New Year's Eve event. And that is the other problem with the nanny state.

A system run by people who disdain the title of "public servant" will ultimately fail at meeting the basic needs of the people. And nanny states have a way of overextending themselves into doing everything, while actually doing nothing. The more a nanny state tries to do, the more things it does badly. And eventually it stops being able to do anything at all, except to maintain its own grip on power. The city can tightly regulate public nutrition if it so chooses, but don't expect it to be ready when a snow emergency comes. Because no matter what the press releases say, resources are finite. And so is the attention span of those in charge.

Before the snowstorm made the streets of New York undriveable, Bloomberg had already made much of Manhattan undriveable by narrowing and whittling away entire streets to create bicycle lanes and pedestrian areas, all part of his 2030 plan to fight Global Warming by forcing residents to use public transportation. But Global Warming did not come. Instead the cold and the snow fell. While the city was busy putting up bus stop ads warning about the flooding dangers from Global Warming, the winter came and did what winters so often do. Because winters don't pay attention to Global Warming conferences or the best biased evidence of researchers looking to score some grant money by promoting an imaginary threat. They don't care about the nutritional agenda of an out of touch billionaire. Unlike regulations, research studies and the media-- they are not manipulatable. They just are.

In the midst of Bloomberg's snow job, we have an opportunity to remember what it is we hire politicians to do. And that politicians who go off the reservation and begin doing a job they weren't asked to do-- are not just abusing their power, but neglecting their duties. This week a woman died, because of a liberal mayor who promoted Global Warming, controlled restaurant menus and championed a mosque-- but didn't get around to planning for a snowstorm.

She Told Us So

Cal Thomas

Sarah Palin deserves an apology. When she said that the new health-care law would lead to "death panels" deciding who gets life-saving treatment and who does not, she was roundly denounced and ridiculed.

Now we learn, courtesy of one of the ridiculers -- The New York Times -- that she was right. Under a new policy not included in the law for fear the administration's real end-of-life game would be exposed, a rule issued by the recess-appointed Dr. Donald M. Berwick, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, calls for the government to pay doctors to advise patients on options for ending their lives. These could include directives to forgo aggressive treatment that could extend their lives. This rule will inevitably lead to bureaucrats deciding who is "fit" to live and who is not. The effect this might have on public opinion, which by a solid majority opposes Obamacare, is clear from an e-mail obtained by the Times. It is from Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.), who sent it to people working with him on the issue. Oregon and Washington are the only states with assisted-suicide laws, a preview of what is to come at the federal level if this new regulation is allowed to stand. Blumenauer wrote in his November e-mail: "While we are very happy with the result, we won't be shouting it from the rooftops because we aren't out of the woods yet. This regulation could be modified or reversed, especially if Republican leaders try to use this small provision to perpetuate the 'death panel' myth."

Ah, but it's not a myth, and that's where Palin nailed it. All inhumanities begin with small steps; otherwise the public might rebel against a policy that went straight to the "final solution." All human life was once regarded as having value, because even government saw it as "endowed by our Creator." This doctrine separates us from plants, microorganisms and animals.

Doctors once swore an oath, which reads in part: "I will not give a lethal drug to anyone if I am asked, nor will I advise such a plan; and similarly I will not give a woman a pessary to cause an abortion." Did Dr. Berwick, a fan of rationed care and the British National Health Service, ever take that oath? If he did, it appears he no longer believes it.

Do you see where this leads? First the prohibition against abortion is removed and "doctors" now perform them. Then the assault on the infirm and elderly begins. Once the definition of human life changes, all human lives become potentially expendable if they don't measure up to constantly "evolving" government standards.

It will all be dressed up with the best possible motives behind it and sold to the public as the ultimate benefit. The killings, uh, terminations, will take place out of sight so as not to disturb the masses who might have a few embers of a past morality still burning in their souls. People will sign documents testifying to their desire to die, and the government will see it as a means of "reducing the surplus population," to quote Charles Dickens.

When life is seen as having ultimate value, individuals and their doctors can make decisions about treatment that are in the best interests of patients. But when government is looking to cut costs as the highest good and offers to pay doctors to tell patients during their annual visits that they can choose to end their lives rather than continue treatment, that is more than the proverbial camel's nose under the tent. That is the next step on the way to physician-assisted suicide and, if not stopped, government-mandated euthanasia.

It can't happen here? Based on what standard? Yes it can happen in America, and it will if the new Republican class in Congress doesn't stop it.

THE HYPOCRISY OF THE LEFT

International Christian Zionist Center

Like a mantra they spout their worn out - principally untrue - declarations, insisting that they want to maintain a democratic Jewish state and therefore need to do away with the greater part of the "territories." For if they don't they insist, they will be swallowed up by a majority that is Arab and overwhelmingly Muslim. Whatever they mean by a Jewish democratic state is not defined, but it sounds at least good as an argument that they are willing to part with their biblical historic homeland to PRESERVE the Jewishness of their democracy.



Different researchers and scholars have long ago disproven the premise of this argument. As Ambassador Yoram Ettinger and others, like Paul Morland of Birkbeek College at the University of London, have amply documented, there is in the foreseeable future no demographic danger to Israel shouldshe hold on to all her G-d given land.*



If they are sotroubled by the fears they repeatedly voice - that the Arabs have more children will soon outpopulate them, then why do they not demand an end to the abortions rob Jewish parents of hundreds of thousands of Jewish babies? No. While they ad nauseum complain about the Arabs having more offspring and what a threat this poses, they remain the fiercest upholders of a woman's right to abort her own Jewish baby. What hypocrisy!



So, let's call a spade a spade. It is mainly because the Left hates what is truly Jewish -respect for the God of Israel and His Torah and guidelines - that they are willing to buckle under all the pressures of the often non-believing, corrupt and immoral goyim, to do away with Israel's biblical heartland. For they have already turned back in their own personal lives on what is the heart of being Jewish.



When that is forsaken, it can only follow that you are able to forsake also your geographic heart, inheritance and destiny.



Jan Willem van der Hoeven, Director

International Christian Zionist Center





* See Yoram Ettinger "Freeze of Jewish Construction in Judea and Samaria: Peace or Appeasement Enhancer" http://www.ourjerusalem.com/opinion/story/freeze-of-jewish-construction-in-judea-and-samaria-peace-or-appeasement-enhancer.html

Palestinian Objective: Inheriting the Zionist Success?

Yisrael Ne'eman
Mideast On Target

What does the Palestinian national movement as represented by the Palestinian Authority (PA) truly want in its negotiations with the State of Israel? Despite continuing discussions of a two-state solution it appears they would prefer one bi-national state. A one state solution will award Palestinians with citizenship and inheritance of the economic benefits of living in the State of Israel, all this despite complaints by Israeli Arabs (or "Palestinian Arabs with Israeli citizenship" as they call themselves) of lack of economic success and mobility. In a short amount of time Arabs living from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River will be a majority and may even be so today should we include the Hamas controlled Gaza Strip. If not, then if we just wait for a few years from now, Jews will be the minority. In any case the demographic tipping point appears to be on the way. The Palestinians refuse to recognize Israel as the Jewish State in the ethnic/national sense. Such denial not only infers their unwillingness to accept Jewish nationalism as legitimate but makes clear their future intentions and policies, that of turning Israel into an Arab State with a Jewish minority. Here we return to the Jewish National Home idea as expressed in the Balfour Declaration and the internationally accepted British administered Palestine Mandate. Viewing the moderate secular Arab perspective this is as far as any were willing to go, full Jewish sovereignty will not be recognized nor does Israel have agreements with the Arab world recognizing her as a Jewish State. The Palestinians see no reason to do so and are aware that demography is on their side.



The overall Palestinian perspective is two-pronged – exploit Israeli democracy and economic development to the fullest and eliminate the Jewish/Zionist character of the state. The best example is the theoretical issue of land swaps between Israel and a future Palestinian Arab State in the Wadi Ara region. Umm el-Fahm is an Israeli Arab city of several tens of thousands bordering the West Bank. Over the past decade or so city residents consistently vote for the Islamic Front (akin to Hamas in Israel but a bit more circumspect, as they remain within all legal frameworks). When polled on several occasions as to whether they would prefer living in the future Palestinian State or in Israel, on average some 90% say they would not want a land swap putting them in a Palestinian State where their full national rights would be embodied in all state symbols, authorities and functions.



Over the years PA Chairman Yasir Arafat consistently said "No" or refused to present plans for the implementation of a two-state solution. Full Palestinian refugee return to Israel was always a condition with no compromise in sight. Today's President Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) is a traditional Fatah functionary who may be more refined in his approach, but he holds to the same line both as concerns refusing to recognize Israel as a Jewish State and as it appears concerning refugee return. According to UN Res. 194 (Dec. 1948) refugees can return provided "they live at peace with their neighbors" or they can be paid "compensation". The Palestinians are the only people with permanent refugee status (not two years like all others) that can be passed down onto the furthest generations. No one else has the right to such an eternal internationally recognized status.



As far as the traditional Fatah stalwarts are concerned, they are waiting as time is on their side. They have a point. Much more western oriented and secular, PM Salam Fayyad at least publicly advocates a two-state solution. This may be only for tactical reasons to gain western support, but should such an approach fail he too might decide to let everything slide into a one state solution.



The Palestinians are no fools, they see a sweeping demographic Jerusalemization of Israel in general. Jerusalem has over 35% Arabs whereas in 1967 there were less than 25%. Add into that the haredi or ultra-orthodox residents, most of whom do not support, or are in outright opposition to the secular, non-halachic Jewish State and the majority of Jerusalem's population object or are indifferent to the continued existence of a Jewish and democratic State of Israel with or without its imperfections. We can now extrapolate to the State of Israel as a whole. When we add some 2.5 million West Bank Palestinians and 1.5 million "Palestinians with Israeli citizenship" we arrive at four million. The word on the street (the suggestion is to speak with Arabs living in Israel or the West Bank) is that the average Arab prefers a one-state bi-national solution.



On the political diplomatic side one can scream forever about Israeli settlements in the West Bank (Judea and Samaria) but most of the hysteria originates from the West and particularly the Obama Administration as of late. The Palestinians liked nothing better than the halt to all negotiations as a result of settlements, and in truth they would like nothing better than for Israel to keep up settlement activity to the point of no return, making "disentanglement" impossible. It is only a matter of time until Palestinian Arabs are the majority or close to it. Should there be no two-state solution in sight one can rest assured of continued Arab/Muslim pressure on the nations of the world and international bodies to ensure their "enfranchisement" or acquisition of full Israeli citizenship. Once upon becoming a majority (and more immediately so if one adds in Gaza's 1.5 million residents) Palestinian refugee return is assured through democratic parliamentary process.



Israel is like a pelican attempting to swallow an overly large fish. Stuck in its throat it can neither swallow nor regurgitate its catch - the pelican is far too small. Such is the Jewish State. As mentioned in these columns numerous times, western Jewry never bought into the classical Zionist idea of aliyah, if they did it was Zionism on their own terms and from afar – visits, financial, political and diplomatic support. Not to mention that Diaspora Jewish support is not what it used to be, many have distanced themselves from the Jewish State, especially the younger generation. None of this is a secret to the Palestinian leadership.



As long as the Right/Religious hold the government to a "Greater Land of Israel" policy of absorbing the entire West Bank (Judea and Samaria) in practice the Palestinians know their chances of inheriting the State of Israel and all its achievements are a distinct possibility. With a much higher birth rate than the Jewish population, why negotiate?



Just yesterday in an interview with two Channel 10 reporters Israel's supposedly hard line PM Benyamin Netanyahu explained his willingness for a two-state solution provided the Palestinians recognize Israel as a "Jewish State" and insisted that the Palestinian state-to-be is demilitarized. He too knows the demographic game is up.



And the final factor – as unpleasant as it may sound. No one knows what direction the haredi rabbis representing an estimated population of 700,000 will take. A small minority will certainly support the Palestinians while the "hardalnikim" or nationalist haredi factions will support the State of Israel as they already do. But what of those who are in the middle, the a-Zionists who sit on the fence, demand draft deferments and massive funding for yeshivas and do not actively support the state? Will they take up modern Jewish nationalism or cocoon themselves into closed communities and await Messianic salvation? Will they keep their options open while neither serving in the Israeli army nor participating in the economy? If the Arab world offers a "better deal" or one they cannot refuse they may very well abandon their tenuous alliance with the secular Jewish State and revert to being just a "religious community". In the eyes of the Arabs they will pose no threat and possibly be seen as an asset on the diplomatic front.



All this is known to the Palestinians and if allowed to they will negotiate forever. Seemingly having jettisoned the "armed struggle" it is a matter of Palestinian Arab patience awaiting the pieces to fall into place. They can then inherit a modern state structure from an adversary unvanquished on the battlefield.

Dopes of the Day: Fooled by Syria...Twice

RubinReports
By Barry Rubin

Since I have written about how easily fooled Western politicians, officials, journalists, and academics are by Middle Eastern radicals, I'm going to try to provide examples in a regular feature called Dopes of the Day. This is a good starting point.

There is a newspaper in Lebanon called al-Akhbar. Curiously, while other newspapers are in decline or starved for funds, al-Akhbar is expanding. The New York Times reporter fell for the foolish notion that this newspaper is some model of independence and enterprise. In fact, it is not exactly a secret in Lebanon that it is a hard-line, Syrian backed newspaper that repeatedly slanders the moderate forces there as well as delivers propaganda for Hizballah. So the Times is cheering a Syrian propaganda operation just as, not long ago, the Guardian went into rhapsodies about a supposedly wonderful publication in Turkey that was a front for the Islamists and producing false material that enabled the regime there to throw innocent people into prison on trumped-up charges of conspiring to overthrow the government.

Any serious investigation should have shown the true nature of al-Akhbar but the reporter couldn't even find anyone to quote on this point, apparently not even trying to produce a balanced article, much less an accurate one.

Instead here's what we get:

"It was the latest coup for a five-year-old paper that has become the most dynamic and daring in Lebanon, and perhaps anywhere in the Arab world. In a region where the news media are still full of obsequious propaganda, Al Akhbar is now required reading, even for those who abhor its politics."

But perhaps this free advertising for a Hizballah and Syrian parrot can be explained by the article's lead:

"Ibrahim al-Amine, the hawk-eyed editorial chairman of Al Akhbar, describes his newspaper’s founding ambitions this way: `We wanted the U.S. ambassador to wake up in the morning, read it and get upset.'”

Right, so it's anti-American isn't that recommendation enough? But I don't think Amine would want the Syrian or Iranian ambassador to get upset. If they did they might cut off his funding and cut off other parts as well.

It is like the old Cold War joke about the American insisting that the United States had freedom of speech and the Soviet didn't. "After all, I can go in front of the White House and shout, `Down with Reagan!"

"Oh", replies the Communist, "We have just as much freedom of speech! I can go in front of the Kremlin and shout, `Down with Reagan!' any time I want."

Shameful, especially since several honest journalists in Lebanon have been murdered or had to flee for their lives, while better newspapers are collapsing for want of financing. Yet it's the totalitarians that get the kudos from the New York Times.

Meanwhile, it seems increasingly likely that an international investigation will show that Hizballah, al-Akhbar's favorite organization, was involved in the murder of the opposition leader and former prime minister Rafik Hariri. Guess that will be one story al-Akhbar won't cover.

Speaking of Syria, while the Saudis are worried stiff about the United States being too soft on Syria and Iran, what does President Barack Obama do? Why, of course, he is in such a hurry to name a U.S. ambassador to Syria that he bypasses Congress and does a recess appointment! Even though he has gotten nothing from Syria after two years of engagement.

What this technique does, of course, is shield the Syrian dictatorship from any criticism by Congress. If this administration had more sense it could have used the harder line from Congress as a rationale to get tougher on Syria. But instead of a "good cop/bad cop" approach we get a Keystone cop approach. (Note below)

The administration has argued that sending a U.S. ambassador to Syria is not a gift to that dictatorship (which is helping to murder Americans in Iraq, sponsoring Hamas and Hizballah, and helping Iran in every possible way) but a necessity to have a channel through which the United States can communicate with Damascus. But since this U.S. government only wants to communicate flattery and concessions it is hardly worthwhile.

Indeed, have no doubt that everyone in the Arabic-speaking world will interpret this as a Syrian victory. That's why this action is also worthy of a Dopes of the Day award.

Oh, tremble all of you who depend on the United States as an ally and protector in these days! And tremble, too, if thou doth depend on the New York Times for your understanding of the world!

Note: good cop/bad cop refers to a police interrogation technique in which one policeman would be nasty and tough while the other would act as the suspect's friend to get him to confess or give information. The intimidation made possible the success of a softer approach. The Keystone Cops was a comedy group in the early days of movies who did slapstick comedies making fools of themselves. This name has become something of a slang phrase for people who are total incompetents.

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). The website of the GLORIA Center is at http://www.gloria-center.org and of his blog, Rubin Reports, http://www.rubinreports.blogspot.com.