The Clash of Ideas
Herbert Zweibon

From the Editor
Rael Jean Isaac

Kosovo- A Cautionary Tale
Ruth King

Life in Jewish Hebron
David Wilder

Chinese Christians and Israel
Rael Jean Isaac

Israel’s “Groundhog Day”
Steven Shanok

Outpost
Editor: Rael Jean Isaac
Editorial Board: Herbert Zweibon, Ruth King

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Herbert Zweibon

In Imprimis, the publication of the Hillsdale Institute, Professor John Marini describes two fundamentally different philosophies that have underpinned American political debate for the last sixty years, the first typified by Franklin Roosevelt, the second by Ronald Reagan. Roosevelt and his followers believed in “government as the source of benevolence, the moral embodiment of the collective desire to bring about social justice as a practical reality” while Reagan saw “the bureaucratic state as increasingly tyrannical and destructive of inalienable rights.”

While the clash of these ideas has admittedly in some cases become ugly, we are fortunate in this country to have people who believe ardently in different philosophies of government and are prepared to organize and work for them. I attended the CPAC (Conservative Political Action Committee) conference in Washington in February and was deeply impressed by the huge turnout of young people, their level of knowledge, enthusiasm and determination to pursue the political principles in which they believed.

Contrast this with Israel. In the almost sixty years since independence, the bedrock principles of the major parties have disappeared. In the first thirty years there were competing views of the Zionist mission, with the dominant socialist labor Zionist perspective pitted against that of the Herut Party led by Menachem Begin, which focused on Jewish rights to the entire Land of Israel. But once Begin became Prime Minister in 1977 he gave away the Sinai peninsula and at Camp David formally accepted Arab rights to Judea and Samaria, Israel’s patrimony.

Since Oslo the political elite, regardless of the party in power, has been devoid of any principles, flinging away territory to terrorists, competing which leader can outbid the other in appeasing Israel’s enemies by preemptive concessions. In the absence of any guiding ideas, the political arena has become a battle of individuals greedy for office, prepared to induce the public to swallow poisoned Kool-Aid in the form of the most absurd peace fantasies.

We need only look at the current political choice, between the Olmert-led Kadima and the Netanyahu-led Likud. Unbelievably, Olmert says he is prepared to “treat seriously” the Saudi “peace initiative” first floated in 2002 and rejected out of hand by Israel at the time. Nor has the plan been modified – it calls for Israel to return to the 1967 borders (i.e. the uprooting of hundreds of thousands of Jews from their homes) and return of the “refugees” to pre-1967 Israel. Jordan’s King Abdullah, whom Jewish leaders, for unfathomable reasons, continue to claim is “a friend” has announced this last item (i.e. an end to the Jewish state in any borders) is “non-negotiable.”

And Netanyahu? While he is forthright about the danger from Iran, he spouts similar nonsense about the Saudis and Israel’s supposedly “moderate” Arab neighbors. “I see a unique opportunity for progress in the peace process with moderate Arab partners, for a simple reason: There is identification of a shared threat…and that allows for the creation of alliances with various elements in the Arab world as well as in Palestinian society.” In fact, Sunni concern over growing Shia power has merely led to a Sunni effort to outbid Iran in the effort to win credit in the region for annihilating Israel. Hence the Saudi imposition of the Mecca Accord, which forced Fatah to surrender to Hamas, paving the way for international acceptance of the Hamas government.

Israel has desperate need of a leadership willing to speak the truth and act on principle. Such leaders would once again give Israelis the sense of the justice of their claim to the land in which they live. Such leaders would articulate the need for sacrifice and standing firm. Such leaders would be honest about the depths of Arab/Moslem opposition to the state’s existence and explain that appeasement is precisely

Rael Jean Isaac

GLOBAL CLIMATE SCARE

“There are ominous signs that the earth’s weather patterns have begun to change dramatically and that these changes may portend a drastic decline in food production—with serious political implications for just about every nation on earth. The drop in food output could begin quite soon, perhaps only ten years from now….The evidence in support of these predictions has now begun to accumulate so massively that meteorologists are hard-pressed to keep up with it…. the resulting famines could be catastrophic. ‘A major climatic change would force economic and social adjustments on a worldwide scale,’ warns a recent report by the National Academy of Sciences ‘because the global patterns of food production and population that have evolved are implicitly dependent on the climate of the present century.’”

While this sounds like the familiar apocalyptic rhetoric of global warming, these quotes from the Science section of Newsweek date from April 28, 1975 and describe the then-consensus on global cooling. There were the same complaints about politicians slow to act. Newsweek cites a few of the “more spectacular solutions” including “melting the arctic ice cap by covering it with black soot.“ While today the world trembles that arctic ice caps may be thinning, Newsweek’s conclusion could be tacked on to any of today’s Gore-ish media effusions: “The longer the planners delay, the more difficult will they find it to cope with climatic change once the results become grim reality.”

In favor of the earlier climate scare, critics were not, as they are now, threatened and silenced, which makes it all the more remarkable that British Channel 4 has aired a documentary called “The Great Global Warming Swindle” in which, as Thomas Sowell sums it up, “distinguished scientists specializing in climate and climate-related fields talk in plain English and present readily understood graphs showing what a crock the current global-warming hysteria is.” No American TV station at this writing has dared to air it. To see this absolutely indispensable film, go to http://video.google.com and search for "global warming swindle."

Today’s quasi-religious global warming orthodoxy offers yet another instance of how easy it is for bad ideas to become group-think. In this issue we describe the enthusiasm with which right and left have pursued a policy in Kosovo unjust to Serbia and destructive to the West. The “two state” solution to “solve” the Arab-Israel conflict is another example of a well-nigh universal consensus that is hokum.

Causes to which all right-thinking people subscribe are often the political version of stock market bubbles—unfortunately by the time they ultimately burst the damage is far greater.

PERES THE POET

Our apologies to readers who may have looked for the last few months in vain to this column for the latest gems from Israel’s Premier Dunce, the incomparable Shimon. We have a special treat this month, Shimon’s paean to himself. We print it in its entirety:

"Shimon, Shimon
A man without a watch
The poorest of Israel's tribes
And the richest in the world's dreams
Innocently, feverishly dreaming
Dream after dream.
He'll bring the dawn to morn
He'll cast the yesterday into tomorrow
And when he falls, he'll rise again
And will soar to great heights
And he'll return to the lake of poetry
And a silver wave will wake him up
Your light, Shimon, will shine.
For God has heard my words."

According to his hagiographic biographer, Michael Bar Zohar, Peres himself was initially abashed by his own poetic flight, putting it aside as “pretentious.” However Israel’s Narcissus seems to have thought better of his own modesty, giving his poetic self-assessment to Bar Zohar to include in the biography (where the reader can find it on p. 463 of Bar Zohar’s Shimon Peres).

Peres launched the promotion of Bar Zohar’s “official, authorized biography” at the French consulate in New York, following up with a “conversation” with Bar Zohar at Manhattan’s 92nd Street Y. There he recycled his familiar gems of anti-wisdom: “I don’t have the slightest interest in the past. I tell our children, ‘Don’t study history, it’s a waste of time. You can’t change it.’ ”

WHO'S OUT OF STEP?

Dutch politicians may have turned out Ayaan Hirsi Ali (her book Infidel is fascinating, even more for its account of her early years in Africa than for her experiences in Holland) but despite the efforts of the new government coalition of center and left parties to bury them, the issues she raised are not going away as easily. Freedom Party leader Geert Wilders protests the “tsunami of Islamization” and zeroes in on Islam (not militant Islam, not extremist Islam) as the problem. With polls showing his party rising from 6% to 10% support in a few months, Wilders is forcing the government, which planned to ditch a decision by the previous government to ban the burqa (which Wilders calls “a medieval token of a barbaric time”), to reconsider. Polls show 66% of Dutch citizens support a ban.

THE MUGRABI GATE ROMP

When the Israel Antiquities Authority began work in the Jerusalem Archaeological Park on a permanent ramp to replace a hazardous wooden structure leading to the Temple Mount, the Moslem world ramped up its normal high level of anti-Israel hysteria. (Never mind that the ramp in no way affected the Al Aqsa Mosque or Dome of the Rock and Israel had coordinated with and received permission of Islamic leaders in Jerusalem.) Sample of the reaction from Israel’s “peace partners” in Egypt: “That cursed Israel is trying to destroy Al Aqsa mosque,” Mohammed el-Katatny of President Mubarak’s National Democratic Party told an excited session of Parliament. “Nothing will work with Israel except for a nuclear bomb that wipes it out of existence.”

While this may be par for the Arab course, the fraudulent charges have been taken up by U.S. churches. United Methodist minister Kent Svendsen reports that Churches for Middle East Peace, a self-described “coalition of 21 public policy offices of national churches and agencies” has echoed the phony charges and called on the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs to pressure Israel to halt work on the ramp. They claim otherwise there will be violent protests in Israel. Svendsen quotes approvingly the Rev. Peter Pettit, director of the Institute for Jewish-Christian Understanding who accuses the church coalition of “spreading disinformation” and “neglecting to call upon the Palestinians to cease rioting.” Pettit sums up what so many mainline Christian church leaders need (but refuse) to hear: “Shouldn’t our role as Christian peacemakers be to restore calm to the situation by explaining the facts and encouraging a peaceful return to a project intended only to provide safety to visitors to a site holy to all three religions?”

SPEAKING TRUTH TO FOLLY

Frontpage quotes a Christian Arab living in the Galilee: "I have to tell you something which very few of you seem to comprehend. Your [Israel's] bungling war against a few thousand Hizbullah fighters which you should have crushed no matter what, considering the importance of the outcome, has created a completely new situation, not only for this area, but globally. Your inept leadership totally misunderstood the importance of winning this war.
"As a matter of fact, the whole Moslem world, not only the Arabs, simply couldn't believe that the mighty Israeli Army that defeated the combined Arab forces in six days in 1967, and almost captured Cairo and Damascus in 1973, couldn't defeat a small army of Hizbullah men. As usual the Moslems see things the way they want to see things. Most think that the present generation of Israelis have gone soft and can be defeated.

"The American bungling of the war in Iraq only added to their conviction that victory not only over Israel but also over the West is not only possible, but certain….When will you Westerners realize that half-measures don't work with people who are willing to die by the thousands for Allah to achieve their goal? In their eyes the Western World is simply an abomination on earth that has to be wiped out.”

CHUTZPAH

King Abdullah is aiming for the Guinness Book as chutzpah champion. First he told a joint session of Congress assembled in his honor that all the problems of the Middle East had their source in “the denial of justice and peace in Palestine.” (This is on the intellectual level of the Saudi women in Mecca whom Ayaan Hirsi Ali describes in Infidel -- when the air conditioning broke or suddenly the tap stopped running they would say the Jews did it.)

Fresh from his performance on Capitol Hill the little kinglet chugged off to meet Jewish leaders from AIPAC and the President’s Conference to urge them to press Israel to accept the Saudi “peace” plan, which calls for Israel’s return to the 1967 borders and the right of Arab refugees to return to pre-1967 Israel, i.e. an end to the Jewish state. Abdullah affirmed to the assembled Jewish leaders that the “right to return” was non-negotiable.

UNDERSTANDING ANTI-SEMITISM

Why does anti-Semitism never die, endlessly resurfacing in new shapes? Perhaps Shakespeare has the answer:
“For slander lives upon succession
For ever hous’d where it gets possession.”
(The Comedy of Errors. III, I)

IN MEMORIUM DON WINTON

We mourn the loss of noted sculptor and Christian Zionist Don Winton, co-chair of the Orange County chapter of AFSI. His last sculpture is of Simon Wiesenthal, soon to be unveiled in the Wiesenthal center in Los Angeles. Some of his busts of famous Americans include those of President Reagan at the Reagan Library, Brigadier General Jimmy Doolittle at March Field and coach John Wooden at UCLA. He also sculpted famous Israeli leaders. Don and his wife Norma traveled to Israel often, and organized tours for Christian Zionists.

Ruth King

It looks increasingly probable that Kosovo will gain its independence from Serbia, an outcome that should be of serious concern to Israel and its supporters. Ariel Sharon, to his credit, heard the alarm bells during the American bombing of Serbia in 1999, when he warned American Jewish leaders: "If Israel supports the type of action that's going on in Kosovo, it risks becoming the next victim. Brutal intervention must not be legitimized as a way to try to impose a solution in regional conflicts." And, it is no coincidence, as journalist Julia Gorin reminds us, that during the bombing of Serbia on behalf of Moslem Albanians in 1999 Saudi Prince Khaled Bin Sultan, commander of the allied Saudi troops during the first Gulf War, called on the US to do the same against Israel on behalf of Palestinians.

The fate of Jews and Serbs, which has intersected in the past, is doing so again. The jihadist effort to expunge Jews from Palestine mirrors the Moslem goal of incorporating Kosovo into a “greater Moslem Albania” while expelling Christian Serbs.

When Serbia became independent of Byzantine rule in the 12th century, its economic, cultural, social and religious institutions were among the most advanced in Europe. Serbia functioned as a bridge between Greco-Byzantine civilization and the developing Western Renaissance. The center of the Serbian Orthodox Church was in Kosovo where churches, monasteries and monastic communities were established. A form of census in 1330, the “Decani Charter,” detailed the list of chartered villages and households, of which only two percent were Albanian.

The Ottomans invaded Serbia in 1389 and consolidated their rule in 1459, propelling major parts of the Balkan peninsula and adjacent southeast Europe into a Koran-dictated Dark Ages. While a significant proportion of Serbian and Croatian nobility converted to Islam to escape the harsh conditions imposed on non-Moslems, most Serbian peasants clung to their Christian faith. Historian G. Richard Jansen reports: “Serbs and Jews became dhimmis subject to the dhimma or protection offered to Christians and Jews in newly Islamized lands in exchange for their lives.

Similarly Bat Ye’or, in Islam and Dhimmitude: Where Civilizations Collide writes: “For the Orthodox Serbs… this same period [the centuries of Moslem rule] is considered one of massacre, pillage, slavery, deportation, and the exile of Christian populations. In their eyes it was a regime which found its justification in the usurpation of their land and denial of their rights....In their wars of emancipation-and, later, of liberation—the Orthodox Serbs found that their bitterest adversaries were their Muslim compatriots attached to their religious privileges and their domination over the humiliated Christians.”

In spite of forced migrations and oppression, like their Jewish counterparts, and unlike other Balkan nations, Serbs maintained their cultural and religious ties to their faith and shrines in Kosovo which, reinforcing the parallel, they called their Jerusalem. It was the Serbs who first mounted, in 1804 and 1813, insurgencies which spread through the region, culminating in the 1912 Balkan War which essentially eliminated the Ottomans from the Balkans.

Early in the twentieth century Serbian Christians were roughly two-thirds of the population of Kosovo, Moslem Albanians one-third. During World War I (triggered by the assassination in Serbia of the Austrian arch-duke) Serbs held off the Austrians for more than a year, before they were overwhelmed. Almost 800,000 Serbs perished, a fourth of the population. With full Serb support, the peace treaties of 1919-1920 established a state with the name "The Kingdom of Slovenians, Croats and Serbs." The awkward name was shortly changed to Yugoslavia with Kosovo an integral part of Serbia. At roughly the same time, the Balfour Declaration promised the Jews a restored homeland in Palestine which included what became the present day kingdom of Jordan.

From then on Kosovo’s population underwent sharp population shifts. During World War II, when Yugoslav Serbs refused to join a Nazi “community of nations,” an angry Hitler ordered the destruction of Yugoslavia. Following the Yugoslav army’s capitulation in 1941, Serbia was divided by the Nazis between the Italians and the Bulgarians, who encouraged armed gangs of pro-Nazi ethnic Albanians to attack the Serbs and to torch, destroy and desecrate ancient churches and shrines. The Moslem Albanians, who surprised their mentors with their barbarity and zeal for atrocities, were rewarded when parts of Kosovo, Montenegro and Macedonia were annexed to “Greater Albania.”

In 1943 the Nazis formed the 21st SS "Skanderbeg" division of Moslem Albanian volunteers to perform an “ethnic cleansing” (of Jews and Serbs) in Yugoslavia. Tens of thousands of Serbs were sent to a Croatian death camp and as noted by Raul Hilberg in The Destruction of the European Jews (1961) Skanderbeg played a major role in the Holocaust, rounding up Jews who were subsequently sent to Bergen-Belsen and various death camps. A Kosovar Moslem, Bedri Pejani, was appointed by the Nazis to rule occupied Kosovo. He promptly announced a plan to create a Great Islamic State in the region with the blessings of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin el Husseini. The Grand Mufti, who had led a jihad in Palestine, escaped capture by fleeing to German-occupied Europe where, from Sarajevo he urged the Nazis not to flag in their destruction of the Jews. Needless to say the Serbian Christian population dwindled under this onslaught and the proportion of Albanian Moslems surged. By the end of World War II, Yugoslav deaths totaled more than a million, roughly half of them Serbs.

Although the province was restored to Yugoslavia after the war, the population balance in Kosovo did not shift in favor of Serbia. Tito, aiming for leadership of a wider Balkan alliance, did not allow Serbs who fled from their homes during the war to return. He did not enforce border controls and many thousands of Albanians infiltrated through the porous borders. (Like the Moslems in areas adjacent to Palestine in the interwar years, they were attracted by the superior economic conditions.) Seeking to pacify the restive Moslems, in 1974 Tito offered the province political, cultural, economic and juridical “autonomy,” along with large subsidies for agricultural and other projects, which merely had the effect of prompting a further influx of Moslems from across the border. For example, a new university was established in Pristina, with faculty from the University of Belgrade commuting by air.

All this did not pacify the restive Moslems who as early as 1960 demanded independence for Kosovo. There were intermittent riots which escalated and an emergent Kosovo Liberation Army gave as its stated goal “an ethnic greater Albania” to include portions of Macedonia and Montenegro, parts of southern Serbia and an “ethnically pure” (read Moslem-only) Kosovo.

In 1979 Menachem Begin, hectored by Jimmy Carter whose predilection for the Arab cause is well known, also offered the rioting Arabs of Judea and Samaria “autonomy” with the same disastrous results. As Henry Kissinger has noted, “autonomy” is a euphemism for independence.

Initially, the media reported the situation in Kosovo fairly. For example, in July 1982 The New York Times noted: "Serbs have been harassed by Albanians and have packed up and left the region. The Albanian nationalists have a two-point platform, first to establish what they call an ethnically clean Albanian republic and then to merge with Albania for a greater Albania. Some 57,000 Serbs have left Kosovo in the last decade.” Five years later, in 1987, the Times was still reporting the persecution of Serbs within Kosovo. "Slavic Orthodox churches have been attacked, wells poisoned, crops burned, Slavic boys knifed. Young Albanians have been told to rape Serbian girls…. Officials in Belgrade view the ethnic Albanian challenge as imperiling the foundations of the multinational experiment called federal Yugoslavia….Ethnic Albanians already control almost every phase of life in the autonomous province of Kosovo, including the police, judiciary, civil service, schools, and factories."

Milosevic rose to power with the promise of reversing this intolerable situation, restoring peace and Yugoslav control in Kosovo. But now international perception of the crisis turned against Serbia as Milosevic abolished the “autonomy” of Kosovo in 1989. There were arrests and house searches of Kosovar Albanians. And then the media went into a frenzy of accusations against the Serbs, much as it has against Israel and with similar distortions. The media depicted the armed, violent and jihadist Moslem Albanians as “unarmed civilians” despite the fact they called themselves an army and perpetrated assaults, bombings, murder of civilians and targeted assassinations of Albanians loyal to Serbia. President Clinton outrageously referred to a “holocaust” perpetrated by Serbia and compared the Moslems of Kosovo to the Jews—this, even though the Serbs had behaved well toward the Jews during the real Holocaust and Clinton himself was pressing Israel’s Jews to accept the “peace partnership” of Arafat, a brutal terrorist far worse than Milosevic, admittedly a dictator and a Communist thug.

The right was as vehement as the left in demanding action. In September 1998 such luminaries of the right as John Bolton, Jeane Kirkpatrick, William Kristol and Paul Wolfowitz joined such far leftists as Morton Halperin in a petition to President Clinton demanding that he not only stop “the carnage in Kosovo” but use “massive Western pressure” to obtain “a new political status for Kosovo.”

In March of 1999, the United States drew up a document, the “Rambouillet Agreement” which was, as Madeleine Albright boasted later, an absolute ultimatum to Serbia. It was a demand for Serbia to withdraw from Kosovo in favor of a NATO occupying force, something that no sovereign nation could or should accept. Incredibly, as The New York Times of April 8, 1999 reported, Milosevic accepted the entire package with the exception of NATO occupation of Yugoslavia itself. He wanted the troops to be under UN command. Dan Goure, then Deputy Director of the Center for Security and International Studies and a Pentagon official under the first President Bush said, "Rambouillet was not a negotiation, it was a setup, a lynch party." All this was in direct contravention of previously stated U.S. policy which declared that no national minority had the right to form a new state on other state territories…a policy which still guides the U.S. government in respect to recognizing Taiwan’s independence.

An interesting provision of the so-called “negotiations” demanded that the Serb army and police forces withdraw and a new Kosovar police force be formed to include members of the Kosovo Liberation Party, which was supposed to disarm. Sound familiar?

What happened subsequently is better known. In 1999 in concert with NATO, the Clinton administration commenced a 78 day bombing of Serbia. This action met with almost no objection in the West, hailed not only by liberal politicians and the media but by Margaret Thatcher, The Wall Street Journal and assorted conservative pundits and politicians.

To sum up: the demand for Kosovo's independence led to KLA terrorism which led to repression and expulsion of Albanians by Serbian military and police, which led to the assault by the United States and NATO. While the brutality of the Milosevic regime was indeed a complicating factor, he is long gone, but the KLA continues its assault on Serbs, on their churches, priests, homes, even on civilians sitting in cafes, this under the nose of the U.S. and UN troops which have now occupied Kosovo for eight years. Never mind that the State Department in 1998 listed the KLA as a terrorist organization, indicating (as Interpol’s assistant director for Criminal Intelligence Ralph Mutschke reminded Congress in December 2000) “that it was financing its operations with money from the international heroin trade and loans from Islamic countries and individuals, among them allegedly Osama bin Laden.”

Media and politicians alike, vastly indignant over Milosevic’s behavior, turn a blind eye. Speaking of Kosovo’s major city Pristina, where 40,000 Serbs lived before the UN took over (and where only 100 live now) Senator Joseph Biden, presidential aspirant and Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, declared proudly that Kosovo was a “victory for Moslem democracy” and “Pristina is one of the rare Moslem cities in the world where the U.S. is not only respected but adored.” (Indeed there is a street named for Madeleine Albright, who played an especially scurvy role in ramping up pressure against the Serbs). Similarly the media takes notice of Kosovo only to berate the Serbs for failing to acquiesce speedily and gracefully to the loss of their “Jerusalem.”

Western leaders are blind to the danger to themselves in the principle they are establishing, namely that recent illegal immigrants from another state have the right to declare independence over territory long recognized as part of a different sovereign state whose inhabitants they have ruthlessly forced to flee.

The United States, the EU and the vast majority of UN member states, now pushing strongly to establish Kosovo’s independence from Serbia, are also establishing a terrible precedent in flouting the very international law under which the UN’s occupation of Kosovo rests. UN Security Council Resolution 1244, drafted to end the NATO bombing, specifically reaffirmed that Kosovo belongs to Serbia. Detaching Kosovo from Serbia against Serbia’s will is to violate the UN Charter. Serbian President Vojislav Kostunica reports that “when we mention the need for legality, some of these officials [UN, EU, U.S.] become exasperated, even agitated. They respond with various comments to the effect that we should not be bound by ’mere’ legality.” (The UN’s ambassador to the “negotiations” with President Kostunica is former Finnish president Martii Ahtisaari, a close associate of George Soros and the openly pro-Albanian Soros-funded International Crisis Group.)

Finally, there is an additional peril for the West here. The “two state solution” which aims to strip Israel of its ancient Jewish heartland, and the demand for Serbia to surrender Kosovo, the locus of its Serbian Orthodox faith, both advance the cause of resurgent Islam and worldwide jihad. To quote Bat Ye’or again: “In 1991, before the conflict erupted, the English edition of [Moslem Bosnian President] Alija Izetbegovic's Islamic Declaration (1970) specifically stated: ‘There can be neither peace nor coexistence between Arabia, the cradle of Islam and non-Islamic social and political institutions.’" And he concluded: “The Islamic movement must, and can, take over power as soon as it is morally and numerically so strong that it can not only destroy the existing non-Islamic power, but also build up a new Islamic one.”

In Congressional testimony, our intelligence agencies have now disclosed that there are 16 terror training camps and arms depots in Kosovo. Julia Gorin warns: “Even conservatives, who support the war on terror and the war in Iraq, have a blind spot and an apathy when it comes to the Balkans, as well as to the fact that a lot of the terrorist attacks in Europe and elsewhere are connected to the Balkans.” Gorin notes wryly that when America needs to burnish its credentials among Moslems, it gloats about intervention on behalf of Moslems in Bosnia and Kosovo – and, of course, demands a solution to the “Palestine” problem. While Israel is not threatened with bombing by US/NATO forces, economic sanctions and threats will be enough to squeeze Israel into surrender.

Statesmen, commentators and pundits who urge solutions and negotiations both in Serbia and "Palestine" brush all historical claims off the table. They simply ignore the geographical facts of the Palestine Mandate where the Hashemites obtained over 82% of the land assigned as the Jewish National Home. They ignore the ancient and religious ties of the Jewish people to Palestine. They ignore the migrations of Arabs to Jewish towns in what Mark Twain called "The Wasteland". They ignore the strategic danger of a jihadist state in Palestine. With respect to Serbia, the “solution groupies” show the same disregard for historical and religious ties and sovereignty; the same indifference to the enforced migrations and immigrations which created an ethnic Albanian majority in Kosovo; and the same blindness to the dangers of a jihadist “greater Albania” anxious to incorporate Kosovo into a Balkan caliphate.

And so Kosovo may become independent. Welcome to a new Moslem jihadist state, which will no doubt eagerly await the exchange of ambassadors with a jihadist Moslem state in Judea and Samaria.

David Wilder

(Editor’s Note: This is the first in a series of articles Outpost will publish on the most important Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria, the much maligned “settlements.”)

If the Jewish people has undeniable rights anywhere on earth it is in Hebron. Hebron, numbered among the four holy cities (with Jerusalem, Tiberias and Safed) is the first Jewish city in history. It is the place where the Jewish national patriarchs lived and were buried. Their burial plot – Ma’arat HaMachpela, the Tomb of the Patriarchs—was the first Jewish property purchased in the Land of Israel, and one of the Jewish people’s most impressive monuments was built atop it.

The Jewish community in Hebron existed for thousands of years until it was brutally displaced in 1929—after Arab marauders murdered, raped and burned to death scores of Jews and dispossessed the community of properties that included hundreds of acres of real estate. Not surprisingly, after Israel’s conquest of Judea and Samaria in the Six Day War of 1967, the restoration of Hebron loomed large as a goal for many Jews. In 1967 a group of religious Jews rented the Park Hotel in Hebron for the Passover period – and refused to leave. Pressure grew upon a reluctant government, which then allowed the group to settle on empty land adjoining the city, which became Kiryat Arba. But the Jews of Kiryat Arba did not give up on their goal of returning to Hebron itself.
A tragedy paved the way for the renewal of Jewish life in Hebron. In 1975 a baby boy named Avraham Yedidya was born to famous Hasidic artist Baruch Nachshon and his wife Sarah, who were among the first Jews to come to Kiryat Arba in 1968. Three months later Sarah found her newborn baby lifeless in his crib. The young mother was beside herself. “Everything in this world has a purpose,” she thought to herself. “What was the purpose of her three- month old son?”

Sarah Nachshon decided that Avraham Yedidya would be buried in the ancient Jewish cemetery in Hebron. The cemetery had been last used to inter Jews slaughtered in the 1929 riots in Hebron. It is minutes from the traditional graves of Ruth and Jesse and overlooks Ma'arat HaMachpela. Perhaps, Sarah thought, this was the purpose of Avraham Yedidya, to take part in a sad but vital part of renewing Jewish Hebron. After almost fifty years, the Jewish cemetery of Hebron would again be utilized as a Jew's last resting place.

Late in the afternoon the funeral procession left Kiryat Arba for the ancient Jewish cemetery in Hebron. Then, suddenly, the mourners encountered soldiers and roadblocks. "No, you may not proceed to the cemetery," the soldiers ordered the mourners, "the cemetery is off-limits. You must bury the baby in Jerusalem."

One of the car doors opened. A short woman stepped out, with a bundle in her arms. "Are you looking for me—are you looking for my baby? My name is Sarah Nachshon. Here is my baby, in my arms. If you won't let us drive to the cemetery we will walk!"

Men with shovels and flashlights, and women, Kiryat Arba residents, walked through ancient Hebron in the early evening. They passed Ma'arat HaMachpela. They passed the sheep sty atop the 450 year-old Abraham Avinu synagogue, left in ruins, destroyed by the Jordanian occupiers and Hebron Arabs. Blockades, set up to stop the crowd, were pushed aside. Senior officers gave orders over their walkie-talkies: "Stop them—don't let them proceed"—but the soldiers, overcome by the scene, radioed back: "We can't stop them. If you want, come here and do it yourselves." The procession continued, past Beit Romano, Beit Shneerson, home of Menucha Rachel Shneerson Slonim, granddaughter of the "Ba'al HaTanya," up the steep hill to the ancient cemetery.

Sarah Nachshon released the body of her tiny son and it was lowered into the freshly dug grave, only meters from the mass grave of the 1929-Tarpat riot victims. Mustering her voice, Sarah spoke: "Four thousand years ago our Patriarch Abraham purchased Hebron for the Jewish People by burying here his wife Sarah. Tonight Sarah is repurchasing Hebron for the Jewish People by burying here her son Avraham."

Four years later a group of 10 Jewish women and 40 children resettled Hebron, moving into the abandoned Beit Hadassah building, just minutes from the cemetery. One of those ten women was Sarah Nachshon.

One of the most common questions I receive, from journalists and tourists alike is: What's it like to live in Hebron? What's everyday life all about?

There is a stereotype attached to places like Hebron, similar to the Wild West. In all honesty, it's generally not like that.

So, what is it like? Usually, life is a routine, just as it is elsewhere in Israel and around the world. I can speak for myself and I think this fairly represents most people here. I get up in the morning, pray, eat breakfast, and then go to work. There are many men who arise early for prayers at Ma'arat HaMachpela and then attend a daily Talmud class.

Each person has his/her own employment: there are men who study Torah in a yeshiva or kollel; a few men are sofrim (scribes); others work in some aspect of education, many here in Hebron or in Kiryat Arba. There's a doctor who lives in Hebron who has clinics around the county. We also have musicians, artists, nurses and office workers living in Hebron. Of course, during the day, the kids are in school, either in Hebron or Kiryat Arba. Those of high school age and above may study and live away from home, as is wont in Israeli religious society. After-school youth groups, clubs, library and homework assistance are all part of every day life.

Shopping, a post office, doctors and dentists, a medical center with up-to-date technology can all be found in Kiryat Arba. There are several supermarkets that are less than 5-10 minutes from our homes. Orders can also be given over the phone and delivered to our door. In other words, for the most part, it's not difficult to be self-sufficient within a radius of 10 minutes from our homes.

So when is life not so normal? One day last week my cell phone rang at about 4:50 in the morning. One of my colleagues was on the phone: Excitedly she said, "Get here fast, the police are here…" (In truth, not even my wife can get me out of bed so fast, especially at that time of the morning, but…)

And of course, as I write ( March 20), the Hebron community's purchase of Beit HaShalom (The House of Peace), between Kiryat Arba and Hebron, and our moving into the building, has radically changed my personal daily schedule and the lives of many others. Many Hebron families have, as a result of the purchase, moved into the new building, albeit temporarily, in order to maintain possession of the structure. People are spending days and nights there, helping with necessary renovations. Hebron's Talmud Torah has started giving classes there. A neighborhood, where up until a few days ago Jews had no presence, is now thriving with Jewish life: men, women, many children and multitudes of visitors.

This kind of event generally does not occur elsewhere. In Hebron, this is the second time in a year that this type of 'adventure' has transpired. So in some ways it could be concluded that life in Hebron is quite different from just about anywhere else in the world.

And of course it’s not normal for your own government to restrict your movements and ignore your most basic rights in the city where you live. Today Jews are allowed to enter only three percent of the municipal area of Hebron. Yet thousands of Arabs continue to live in the Israeli zone. The Palestinian Authority is deliberately establishing institutions in this area for the express purpose of “strangling” the Jewish community by attracting masses of Arabs.

Although the 1997 “Hebron Accord” stipulated that Jews should enjoy total freedom of movement in Hebron and the right to visit and worship at shrines such as Elonei Mamre and the Tomb of Otniel ben Katz, its provisions are totally ignored. Jews find it virtually impossible to register title to land. In the past 20 years the Israeli government has issued permits for only three buildings. Offspring of the Jewish community who marry and wish to live in their community cannot do so—due to the racist Jews-only building restrictions.

Under blatantly discriminatory guidelines from the State Attorney’s Office, the Israeli government uses law-enforcement as a technique to harass the Jewish community. The procedures require the police to invest unprecedented resources in personnel, funds and motor vehicles in order to monitor the Jews. As a direct result of this over-enforcement there is wholesale opening of investigation files for trifling offenses and inconsequential activities, often ending with acquittals or closure of files on technical grounds. This adds up to a grievous, ongoing blow to the personal freedoms of the Jewish residents of Hebron, coupled with cumulative damage in the form of files that besmirch the inhabitants with criminal records—files that would not have been opened anywhere else in Israel.

One last point: it is important to keep in mind that no one is being forced to live in Hebron. All the people who reside here do so because they want to be here. Anyone who wishes to leave, for any reason, can do so. However, most people stay, regardless of the difficulties and the 'abnormalities,' despite the terror attacks and murders that have claimed dozens of casualties in Hebron’s Jewish community since the “second Intifada” that began in September 2000.

They remain because it is a privilege to live in Israel's first Jewish city, and to walk in the footsteps of Avraham and Sarah, and King David. Despite the problems, Hebron is our home, and we are honored to be residents of such a holy city.

Of course, there are those who would say that we are crazy for wanting to live here. So be it: Crazy or not, Hebron is here to stay, and so are its Jewish inhabitants.

David Wilder is the spokesman of the Jewish Community

Rael Jean Isaac

While the support of most U.S. evangelicals for Israel is well-known, few are aware that evangelicals in China, a small and beleaguered minority but growing in numbers, offer similar support.

This emerges from Jesus in Beijing by David Aikman, former Beijing bureau chief for Time magazine. The book, published by Regnery, was first published in 2003 and an updated version reissued in 2006.

First, some background provided by Aikman: in February 2002, leaders of Chinese major house church networks met with Korean and American church leaders including Dr. Luis Bush, chairman of the AD 2000 movement, which seeks to coordinate world missionary efforts. Aikman points out that while it was astonishing that the leaders of the house networks would dare to meet in the heavily policed Chinese capital, what was even more surprising was the presence of clergy from churches connected to the Three-Self Patriotic Movement, which has in the past either denied that house churches exist or cooperated with government persecution of unregistered Protestant groups.

Some of the goals enunciated by what became known as the Beijing Forum were breathtakingly ambitious (and unrealistic), including implementation of the “Back to Jerusalem” program. This involved sending out 100,000 Christian missionaries from China in 2007 with the focus on evangelizing Islamic countries. The idea behind “Back to Jerusalem” is that the Gospel has spread, for the most part, westward from Jerusalem; it is now time for the circle to be completed and the Gospel to go west from China to Jerusalem.

The idea was born during World War II when Chinese Christian seminaries and missionaries, those who escaped the Japanese invaders, relocated in China’s western provinces. The vice principal of one of these Christian training centers was a recent convert named Mark Ma who had a vision telling him to go to China’s most northwestern region and to go west from there toward Jerusalem to preach the Gospel. Aikman reports Ma’s testimony that he argued with God. “That section of territory is under the power of Islam and the Mohammedans are the hardest of all peoples to reach with the Gospel.” The Almighty replied, “Even you Chinese, yourself included, are hard enough, but you have been conquered by the Gospel.” Ma then asked why Western missionaries had no luck in preaching the Gospel to Muslims and received the reply that success in this task had been preserved as an inheritance for Chinese Christians.

Ma decided to call the group he founded the Back to Jerusalem Evangelistic Band and told the group God was calling Chinese evangelists not only to China’s outlying provinces but to Afghanistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Syria, Turkey and Palestine (then still under the British Mandate). Aikman reports that by 1949 Ma’s followers, as well as other Christian groups, had made several daring expeditions to China’s far west. However, the Communist victory halted their efforts, with several members undergoing many years of imprisonment, torture and humiliation. The leader of one group, Zhao Haizhen of the Northwest Spiritual Movement, survived forty-five years of imprisonment and on his release spent the last few years of his life imparting the “Back to Jerusalem” vision to China’s current house church networks. According to Aikman, enthusiasm for the project of using the Silk Road to take the Gospel to Jerusalem is not limited to any one network but is common throughout Christian China.

A small number of house church leaders have actually been to Jerusalem. In sharp contrast to the Chinese government, these Chinese Christians are overwhelmingly pro-Israel. (Indeed many have said they pray for a U.S. victory in Iraq.). They do not seek to evangelize Jews, Jerusalem itself serving as the symbol of the Gospel having traveled round the earth and returned to its starting point (once the obstacle of Islam, standing athwart the road to Jerusalem, can be overcome). Paradoxically Chinese Christians view
their government’s stance, despite their strong opposition to it, as a benefit in their missionary efforts. Aikman quotes Zhang Rongliang: “Chinese people are more suitable than Americans to go to the Muslim world….The Chinese government supports [Middle Eastern] terrorism, so the Muslim nations support China.”

While there is no way 100,000 missionaries will be going out this year, there are several small missionary seminaries in different parts of China preparing Christians to serve as missionaries in the Moslem world. Some Americans who encourage the effort estimate there may already be several hundred in Moslem countries, filling professional positions such as engineers and interpreters. To quote Aikman: “Along with Chinese arms sales and petroleum import agreements will go hundreds and eventually thousands of Chinese technicians and workers. Some of these, without question, will be as eager to spread the Gospel as many Americans have been when given similar opportunities to work in the Islamic world. There will, no doubt, be strong resistance by the government and by the Islamic authorities of the Arab world to the presence of Chinese Christian missionaries presumed to have been merely technical experts or actual workers.”

Will Chinese Christians have any better luck than Western missionaries in supplanting Islam? It’s certainly a long shot, but as Dick Cavett used to say in his pitch for the New York lottery, “Hey, you never know.”

Steven Shanok

“What would you do if you were stuck in one place, everything is the same, and nothing you did mattered?" This is the lament of TV weatherman Phil (played by actor Bill Murray) in the modern classic movie Groundhog Day.

Resentful over his yearly assignment of having to cover the Groundhog Day ceremonies in the small town of Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, TV Phil is irritable and uncooperative with his news team, and increasingly sarcastic in his reporting. His behavior towards the local town people is condescending and dismissive. He just wants to finish and get out. But fate intervenes, as a snowstorm closes the road back to Pittsburgh and Phil must stay the night. When he awakes in the morning, it is still February 2, Groundhog Day, all over again, and again, and again. He is reliving the same day over and over and tries to tell his TV producer and anyone else who will listen that he has been there and done that, but they think he's loony and ignore his complaints.

The Israeli people are experiencing the same nightmarish time warp as TV Phil. Only the stakes are much higher, and the time warp far longer. The Israelis are reliving not the same day but the same decades over and over. And the reliving is not just a singular experience; the same nightmare is inherited from father and mother to son and daughter—dor l'dor, generation to generation.

Thus, in 1947, some 25 years after Winston Churchill cut away 80% of the Jewish Mandated Palestine and gave it to the ousted (Arabian) King Abdullah, the United Nations Partition Plan confiscated half of the remaining 20% of the land in an effort to appease the Arabs and gain their agreement to live in peace with a Jewish State. Notwithstanding that the Arabs would now possess 90% of the original mandated land, a reluctant David Ben-Gurion, on behalf of the Jewish population, accepted the give away. The die was cast: land for peace; and Arab rejection. Day one of "Groundhog Day."

Awaken to July 1967. Israel, acting in self-defense from an aggressive war launched in part from the 10% of land previously extorted from the Jews and given to the Arabs (so-called "land for peace" became land for war), repatriated Judea, Samaria and Gaza. As if reliving the era of the imposed Partition Plan, Israeli citizens awoke to the nightmare of Israel Defense Minister Moshe Dayan unilaterally returning the keys of the Temple Mount to the Moslem Waqf, and their Labor Party-led government pronouncing that it was willingly awaiting a "phone call" from the Arabs so that it could voluntarily give them the recently repatriated land. The Arabs did respond to the Labor Party's gift: Arab leaders meeting in Khartoum in November 1967 adopted a formula of three noes: "No peace with Israel, no negotiation with Israel, no recognition of Israel." Once again: land offered for peace, and Arab rejection. Day two of "Groundhog Day."

Wake to 1968. The United States elects Richard Nixon to his first term as President. Nixon appoints William Rogers as Secretary of State, who gives birth to the "Rogers Plan," demanding a unilateral withdrawal by Israel to the pre-1967 borders without any corresponding Arab commitment to the peace and security of Israel. But the Arabs cannot stomach being in the same room with an Israeli to even accept Roger's gift of Israeli land—a real deal killer! Day three of "Groundhog Day."

Toss and turn and wake to post-Yom Kippur, 1973. A bloodied but victorious Israel rouses itself only to learn of the "Kissinger Disengagement Plan," in which the American Secretary of State declared that the Israelis should return a "few lousy kilometers," including the conquered town of Kuneitra on the Golan Heights to Syria, notwithstanding its unprovoked sneak attack on Israel. This "roadmap" would display

Israel's good intentions in allowing Syrian civilians to return to their homes, and might encourage the Palestinian Arabs to take note and then accept land for peace. Israel relented; Syria was allowed to reoccupy Kuneitra on condition that it normalize the town with civilian residents, not soldiers. They never have to this day. The message of Kuneitra is not lost on the Palestinian Arabs: take what you can get, and never give what you promised in return. Day four of "Groundhog Day."

Jump to 1979 and Camp David I. For the first time, Israel is governed by a non-Labor Party, the Likud. No matter—the Israelis are destined to relive the same day once again. President Carter obtains Prime Minister Begin's commitment for "autonomy" for the Palestinian Arabs and a freeze on Israeli "settlements." Land for Peace. Or, as Israelis have already learned, Land for No Peace. Day five of "Groundhog Day."

Skip to 1991. The Bush/Baker Madrid Conference, foisted on Israel after the First Gulf War, with Prime Minister Shamir forced to attend under threat of loss of loan guarantees for the resettlement of waves of Russian immigrants. The Conference is an open and unsubtle gift paid with Israeli coinage to the Palestinian Arabs who were resentful over the defeat of their benefactor Saddam Hussein in the first Persian Gulf War. Secretary of State James Baker proposes a unique dual formula to solve the Arab-Israeli problem: freeze all Jewish settlement activity, and land for peace. Day six of "Groundhog Day."

Awake in 1993, but Israel finds itself back to square one. The Labor Party and Yitzhak Rabin are again in control. The Oslo Accords and the American movie Groundhog Day appear in tandem (perhaps not coincidentally, as noted by columnist Sarah Honig in her Jerusalem Post article of July 18, 2003). The former is far more comical than the latter, with Arafat's unconditional promise to forever reject violence as a solution to the dispute. Day seven of "Groundhog Day."

Slumber fitfully to 1998 and awaken to an Israel with Prime Minister Netanyahu but without Shechem (Nablus) and Hevron (Hebron), given by him as succor to Arafat for an end to the very Arab violence previously renounced but actively supported. The comedy continues, as does reliving the same day by another name: the Wye River Memorandum. Day eight of "Groundhog Day."

Jarred awake again by Camp David 2000, an eruption known as Ehud Barak gives forth unimagined concessions overflowing like lava from an active volcano in consideration for which Arafat is once again importuned to eschew violence. But the only ones burned are the Israelis: the Arab response causes 781 killed, 5,471 injured, and 17,633 attacks between September 2000 through May 28, 2003. Day nine of "Groundhog Day."

Another dawn, another plan, 2002-2003, the "Road Map." The Palestinian Arabs are the invited passengers in the stretch limousine driven by the "Quartet" (the European Union, Russia, the United Nations, and the United States) to a destination known as a "Palestinian State." They will arrive in 2005. They need only to dismantle their terrorist organizations, arrest the murderers, and collect their weapons. PA Prime Minister Abbas refuses, citing the need to avoid a civil war (which is exactly what needs to be fought!). The road trip continues nevertheless. It is abundantly clear to even those who sleep that there is more profit to be made in violation of agreements than in compliance. Day 10 of "Groundhog Day."

June 29, 2003, the rooster crows hudna, a temporary cease fire declared by the terrorist organizations. Writing a script only Joseph Heller (author of Catch 22) could love, Prime Minister Sharon, in an effort to prop up Abbas, agrees to release the very type of prisoners from Israeli jails that Abbas is required to arrest and imprison under the terms of the "Road Map." And while Sharon continued to relinquish control of land in Judea and Samaria to the Arabs as good will gestures, there were 180 terrorist attacks during the self-declared "cease fire," resulting in the deaths of 31 Israelis and the wounding of hundreds of others. Land for Pieces of Israelis. Day 11 of "Groundhog Day."

December 2003, the Herzliya Conference. The denizens’ troubled dozing is disrupted by the clamorous sounds of "dismantling and disengaging." Unfortunately, these are not mere hallucinations. They are the stark reality of the "Unilateral Disengagement" plan of Prime Minister Sharon. Thus, in view of the Arab failure to fulfill even one condition of their past agreements, Sharon will show them. He will retreat from Gaza, and in its wake destroy every Jewish home and expel every Jewish person—unconditionally. And if that is not enough, he will throw out more Jews and lay waste to a few more towns in Judea and Samaria as well. So take that! Land for Nothing! Day 12 of "Groundhog Day."

Is the Jewish State capable of ending its time warp? In the movie Groundhog Day, TV Phil slowly began to realize that it was his own repeated misbehavior that was denying him his future.

His capacity to reevaluate and change his change his conduct, goals and values uplifted him over and out of

the time warp and delivered him to his ultimate redemption. Likewise, it is Israel's repeated acceptance of faulty premises which doom it to repeatedly travel a circular road on which the Palestinian Arabs can drive off at their whim (for acts of violence) and then get right back on at the same point, never having been penalized even the loss of one kilometer for their reckless driving. How long is any civilized society expected to accommodate such conduct?

Israel must finally acknowledge the actual Arab motivation in its war against Israel. It is not Arab despair over a poor economy, uneducated youth, or lack of self-determination. The Palestinian Arab economy was flourishing between 1993 and 2000 until Arafat began his latest war against the Jews. Furthermore, data shows that 38 percent of the suicide bombers had university educations, and 47 percent had high school diplomas.

Most importantly, the Arabs never had national aspirations before the coming of Zionism. And thereafter, the national Arab movement never focused its aims at a state within Israel, but rather on eliminating the State of Israel itself. The Arabs could have had their state within Israel in 1947 but refused; and from 1948 to 1967, Palestinian Arab nationalism vanished when the territories were in the hands of Jordan and Egypt. In 2000, Palestinian Arab nationalism could have been satisfied with Barak's willingness to concede virtually all of Judea, Samaria, and Gaza. But it is not what they want.

None other than British Foreign Minister Ernest Bevin, not exactly known for his affection for Jews, stated to the British Parliament in 1947: “To the Jews, the essential point of principle is the creation of a sovereign Jewish State. To the Arabs, the essential point of principle is to resist to the last the establishment of Jewish sovereignty in any part of Palestine.”

Arab motivation is defined by its negative nature and is based upon a simple premise: the elimination of Jewish sovereignty over any part of Israel. Nothing else will satisfy. And as long as Israeli political leaders fail to admit this unimpeachable fact, and continue to give credibility to the same failed "plan," albeit wrapped in new clothes with a different name, Israel will be shackled to the interminable misery of everyday as "Groundhog Day."

Steven Shanok is an attorney and freelance writer. This article appeared in the American Thinker of March 01 2007 (www.americanthinker.com)