In This Issue

The Three Nos of Beit Shalom: Hebert Zweibon

From The Editor : Rael Jean Isaac

Stop Them With Victory: Moshe Sharon

Farewell Israel—A New Documentary: Rael Jean Isaac

Fortune Favors Fools : David Isaac

The Cult Of Israel Hatred: Joel Pollak

Identity Theft : Ruth King

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

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Herbert Zweibon

After years of negotiations and careful legal process, the Jewish community of Hebron closed on the purchase of Beit HaShalom, a large four story building between Kiryat Arba and Hebron, and families began moving in at the end of March. Eight families, including many children (the youngest at this writing a few days old, the grandchild of longtime leader in the Hebron community David Wilder) are now in residence. The Israeli military commander of the Hebron region has been supportive, saying this was a highly strategic location, so much so that he is using its roof as a lookout post to monitor the surrounding area.

Unfortunately the story does not end here. When the identity of one of the Arabs involved in the transaction came to light, in danger of being tortured and murdered by fellow Arabs, he denounced the sale documents as forgeries. (He shrugged off film of himself counting the money he’d received for the building.) The Israeli Supreme Court ordered an investigation and the police found the papers in order, the purchase legal. Not satisfied the highly politicized Supreme Court ordered a second investigation, with the police ordered to present their findings within 45 days. But the police repeatedly asked for extensions (probably because they could find nothing wrong).

With winter approaching this has meant severe hardship for the families in the building, which is little more than a shell. Without a special permit from the Defense Ministry or the quasi-military Israeli Civil Administration which is under its jurisdiction, they are forbidden to make any changes during “the investigation.” The Hebron community leadership applied for a permit on humanitarian grounds to install windows, put in electric lines for heat and tar the badly leaking roof. The request reached Defense Minister Barak who said no to all three. This decision was appealed to the Civil Administration military panel—again the same response, no, no, no.

What is going on here? David Wilder points out that the Israeli courts have ruled that the government must allow illegal Bedouin settlements in the Negev proper infrastructure on humanitarian grounds. Why the rank discrimination against Jews?

The surface reasons are obvious enough. The Olmert government makes no secret that it wants to make the home of the patriarchs an all-Arab city. When in 1979 Jews moved into the abandoned Beit Hadassah building it was against the wish of the Israeli government and subsequent governments have also been hostile. If the Israeli government callously expelled 8,000 Jews from their communities in Gaza, despite the fact they had built their model communities at the urging of successive Labor and Likud governments, how can the relatively small number of Jews in Hebron expect sensitivity to their needs?

But there are more fundamental reasons. Yossi ben Aharon, who served as chief of staff to Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, recently described the transmutation of the terrible hostility toward the Irgun that during Israel’s War of Independence led to Jews firing on fellow Jews on the Altalena into today’s hatred of “settlers,” especially religious Jews in Judea, Samaria and (until their expulsion) Gaza. Once again it is a one-sided hatred, motivated this time by an irrational projection of blame for Arab (and Moslem) hostility on Jews living outside the 1949 Green (armistice) Line. It is this mindset of much of the secular public that has allowed the Olmert government to behave ruthlessly to the eight families of Beit HaShalom–and to pursue the morally and strategically insane policies leading it on a Roadmap to Nowhere.

Now the Jews of Beit HaShalom face expulsion. Ignoring that the case is before the Supreme Court (i.e. the rule of law), Olmert arbitrarily revoked the purchase and according to PA officials has “guaranteed” them that evicting the Jewish families from Beit HaShalom tops his agenda. •

Rael Jean Isaac

Lebanon, Moderate?

Journalist Tom Gross observes that while the Lebanese government is routinely described as “moderate,” the crazy anti-Semitic venom emanating from Lebanon rivals that from Egypt, Syria and Iran. For example, on October 22 the TV channel affiliated with Parliamentary Speaker Nabih Beri aired a program that stated “Jews use drug trafficking to control the world and subjugate other nations.” The program quotes that notorious forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion (which, Gross notes, is being distributed courtesy of Saudi money in mosques in London and Western Europe): “The third Zionist protocol states that other nations must be left sick, poor, and lacking any determination or strength. Naturally, drugs are the most effective means to accomplish this goal.”

The Triumph of Bad Ideas

The notion that a Palestinian state in Judea, Samaria and Gaza will resolve the problems of the Middle East is not the only false belief with terrible consequences now sweeping the Western world. The belief in man-made global warming is right up there, an artificially contrived “consensus” that has the potential, if enough actions are taken against the alleged environmental culprits, to wreck Western economies.

Latest to go on explosive record against the phony consensus is John Coleman, founder of the Weather Channel, who calls global warming (on the website Icecap) “the greatest scam in history.” Says Coleman: “I have read dozens of scientific papers. I have talked with numerous scientists. I have studied. I have thought about it. I know I am correct. There is no runaway climate change. The impact of humans on climate is not catastrophic. Our planet is not in peril. I am incensed by the incredible media glamour, the politically correct silliness and rude dismissal of counter arguments by the high priest of Global Warming.”

Kosovo

John Bolton has spoken out against what he calls the State Department’s anti-Serbian policy of the last fifteen years, the first important former administration official to do so. In a Voice of America interview he declared that the U.S. should not recognize a unilateral declaration of Kosovo independence, which would simply reward bad behavior.

Such voices, alas, are still being drowned out by a left-right “consensus.” Incredibly, as Julia Gorin points out on Frontpage (Nov. 19) the Wall Street Journal recently published an article on the “inevitability” and “rightness” of Kosovo independence by none other than Agim Ceku, the “former” terrorist chieftain (among many other crimes he was the officer responsible for slaughtering 200 Serbians–female rape victims were burned alive–in the Croatian village of Medak) and current “prime minister” of the province. Needless to say the Journal did not provide readers with his terrorist resume.

The Bush administration soldiers on, intent on encouraging another Moslem terror base. In a paper published by the Begin-Sadat Center, James Jatras and Serge Trifkovic write that with a veto by Russia blocking UN recognition of an independent Kosovo, the U.S. threatens to recognize a unilateral Kosovo declaration of independence and hopes to entice other EU countries (along with Canada, Turkey and Israel) to go along. For Israel to do so would be the height of folly. As the authors point out: “The theory that outside powers can award part of a state’s sovereign territory to a violent ethnic or religious minority would put in question not only Judea and Samaria…but even such areas as the southern Galilee and parts of the Negev, where non-Jews have, or may eventually acquire, local majorities.”

As for the U.S., its policy of currying favor with the Islamic world is dhimmi-witted. Illegally tearing Kosovo from Serbia to fashion it into a second Islamic state in the Balkans (after Croatia) will merely stimulate jihadists in their campaign to subjugate the world to Islam.

Hatikvah

Dr. Ron Breiman of Professors for a Strong Israel explains the rationale for Hatikvah, a new nationalist movement—and political party in the making. The party hopes to attract secular Jews who believe the Land of Israel belongs to the Jewish people and who have no real address for their vote. Says Breiman: “We want to be that address for them, in order to return the State of Israel to Zionism. Instead of worrying about the ‘right of return’ for Arabs, worry about our return to Zionism.”

Chief of the planks of the new movement/party is rejection of a Palestinian state and making army or national service a precondition for the right to vote.

We wish Hatikvah well. Although new parties tend to garner only a few seats (the ghastly Kadima is an exception only because of Sharon’s decision to head it when rebellion threatened within the Likud), the current political choices in Israel are so terrible that one can only hope that there are many Israelis, religious and secular, ready to vote for Hatikva (Hope) as against national suicide (the other parties).

“Debating” Israel’s End

Oxford University planned a “debate” on October 23 on the proposition “This house believes that One State is the Only Solution to the Israel-Palestine Conflict.” Some debate. Steven Plaut notes that while “some Israeli anti-Semites were to be on the side for the One State Solution” the notorious, viciously anti-Israel Norman Finkelstein was supposed to represent the pro-Israel side! After Alan Dershowitz and others embarrassed Oxford by denouncing this scandalous “debate,” it was cancelled.

But similar anti-Israel hate-fests go on sponsored by British universities. On Nov. 17 and 18 a Conference at the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) attracted 300 people for a destroy-Israel conference entitled “Challenging the Boundaries: A Single State in Palestine/Israel.” Naturally there were a goodly sprinkling of “Israelis,” including Ilan Pappe (until recently at the University of Haifa), Haim Bresheeth (now on the faculty of the University of East London and an instigator of the British academic boycott-Israel movement), As’ad Ghanem of the University of Haifa, Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin of Ben Gurion University and Eyal Sivan, an Israeli filmmaker. A reporter for Haaaretz who attended says the very word Zionism was an immoral utterance at the conference.

Plaut makes the excellent suggestion that the heads of the University of Haifa and Ben Gurion University be told what readers think of the participation of their faculty members in such an event.

Choudhury Needs Help

Dr. Richard Benkin chief champion of Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury in this country, warns of a sharp turn for the worse in the position of this immensely courageous voice for good relations with Israel in Pakistan. Choudhury, on trial for his life on phony charges (his crime, attempting to attend a conference of journalists in Israel), on Nov. 15 appeared in court for the 36th time in the 31 months since he was released from prison. So far it’s been pure harassment: he is forced to sit for many hours and then the judge tells him to return in a few weeks. But this time, in a Catch 22 ploy, the judge wanted to revoke his bail on the grounds the Supreme Court had not yet heard his appeal!

Eventually his bail was restored but only until December 13 when he faces reincarceration. The actions of the judge and public prosecutor are in violation of the law (bail is guaranteed while an appeal is pending) but radical Islamists call the government’s tune and they are out for Choudhury’s blood.

Benkin points out that textile exports are Bangladesh’s lifeline and asks that people concerned for Choudhury’s welfare write to major U.S. retailers, asking them to boycott these goods until the government ends its persecution of Choudhury. That means contacting Wal-Mart’s offices (479-273-4000) and its global ethics office at ethics@wal-mart.com, the board of the Gap at board@gap.com and Nike at nikeresponsibility@nike.com along with Senators and Congressmen, especially Nancy Pelosi, Diane Feinstein, Barbara Boxer, Ron Wyden and Gordon Smith.

Moshe Sharon

The Western world, in particular the United States and Israel, have not yet come to grips with the gravity of the global conflict. This is a war that fanatic Islam, which now engulfs the whole Islamic world, has declared on the West. The eradication of Israel by force from the heart of the Islamic world is seen as a necessary step for the successful march to victory in the rest of the world. The naming of Israel as the “Small Satan” represents this idea: once the small abomination is eliminated, the big one will also be destructible.

The failure of Israel and the United States, as well as Europe, to see that the world is in a state of war is characterized by the seasonal birth of “peace initiatives.” That Israel has convinced itself that “peace is an option,” even “the only option,” in spite of the fact that its enemies are actively preparing its destruction, is one of the astonishing phenomena of our times. These “peace plans” always contain three components: the withdrawal of Israel to the pre-1967 armistice lines, the establishment of a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital and “the return of the Arab refugees” into the diminished state of Israel. The aim of such plans is clear: to create the strategic conditions that render Israel defenseless, and to destroy it from within by flooding it with the Arab “refugees.”

Who are these “refugees?” How is it that they have been on the world’s agenda for the past 60 years? To understand this, the most astounding abnormality of modern times, it should be emphasized that the term “refugees,” in the case of the Arab ones, has been constantly used by the media, the international community, the United Nations and every individual country inaccurately and dishonestly. Every war creates refugees, but in all other cases, the term “refugee” describes a temporary condition. Only in the case of the “Arab refugees” (“Palestinian” is a rather new term) has this temporary condition been successfully turned into a permanent status bequeathed and transmitted from one generation to another. The United Nations has spent billions in creating and maintaining the sophisticated machinery of UNRWA, formed not to solve the refugee problem but to keep it alive, knowing very well that by now hardly a few thousand of the original refugees from 1948 are still alive.

The dishonesty of the international community cries out to heaven because it is clear that the Arabs are keeping this ever-multiplying, unique refugee problem for only one purpose – the destruction of the Jewish state. Nobody is interested in the over six hundred and fifty thousand Jewish refugees who were thrown out of Arab countries following the establishment of the State of Israel, and were settled by Israel. These Jewish refugees have also multiplied, but as free and rehabilitated human beings. They and their descendents also number several million people. However Israel, like any other civilized country, does not consider “refugee” to be an inherited status.

The Arab goal of eliminating Israel is now shared by the Arab citizens of Israel who openly define the establishment of the State, whose prosperity and security, freedom and democracy they enjoy, as “nakbah”—“catastrophe.” Their representatives in the Knesset, who swear allegiance to “the State and its laws,” demand the elimination of the Jewish character of Israel and the abolition of the “Law of Return” which guarantees that the State of Israel is the Jewish Home. They also demand that all its Jewish symbols (flag, emblems, national anthem) be eliminated, that it become “the State of all its citizens”—in other words, it should be prepared to turn into an Arab state.

The Europeans and to a large extent American political leaders and media have fallen victim to years of Arab-Leftist-anti-Jewish-anti-Zionist propaganda and are convinced that by establishing another Arab state on the tiny territory of Palestine, all the conflicts in the world, or at least most of them, will come to an end. There is no need to explain, yet again, the fallacy of these ideas.

There is no way that the Arabs in particular, and the Muslims in general, can or will accept the permanent existence of a Jewish, that is to say a non-Arab, non-Muslim state, in the heart of what they regard as the Arab-Islamic homeland. Palestine, in their eyes, is exclusively Islamic and the claim of any non-Muslim to any part of it on historical or religious grounds is false. Any Muslim who dares to give up any of the Muslim rights to it signs his own death warrant.

Moreover, any agreement with the Jews, which goes beyond a limited armistice or ceasefire is by its very nature null and void. The only agreement with non-believers that is permitted by Islamic law is one that enables Islam to strengthen itself, so that when the time comes it can resume the war of Jihad under better conditions. Such a ceasefire or armistice is based on the postulate that the infidel enemy will mistake it for peace, lower its defenses and slide into a slumber of tranquility, thus turning itself into an easy target. In Arabic armistice is called hudnah but it can be rendered by the word sulh, which is the term used by the Muslims to describe a treaty concluded with a defeated enemy. In European languages and in Hebrew the last term is mistakenly translated as “peace.” This translation suits the Muslim Jihadi plans very well: the infidels rejoice in the “peace” and Islam can meanwhile gather its forces for the “next round.”

Thus the maximum that Israel can expect is a limited ceasefire, taking into consideration that the Arab side will violate it at any time, as the Palestinians have been proving on a daily basis since the signing of the Oslo Accords in September 1993. There is, therefore, only one guarantee against war and the annihilation of Israel: military strength and the constant display of this strength by winning small skirmishes as well as major wars. Anything that even seems like an Israeli military setback is an invitation to another war. The Arabs and Muslims observe ceasefires only under the threat of terrible retribution. Nothing else. Any Israeli or Western leader who thinks that the Arab signature on a document guarantees that it will be kept is deluding himself and displaying dangerous ignorance.

The “peace treaty” between Israel and Egypt is usually quoted as being a successful agreement, which has been kept for nearly thirty years. This is an impressive length of time but it is also a false assessment. There is no real peace between Israel and Egypt. To begin with, President Sadat was assassinated soon after signing the treaty, precisely because Muslim fanatics in his own country regarded his mere signing it as an act of treason. In their eyes, and in the eyes of countless Muslims all over the world, he broke a golden rule by legitimizing the Jewish state. Since then, the Egyptians have turned the treaty into a mere armistice agreement. Israel is not treated as an independent partner to peace but more as a dhimmi state, subordinate to Egyptian whims and compelled to accept Egyptian self-declared superiority. At the same time, eager to prove to itself that the peace is “working,” Israel chooses to ignore all the Egyptian violations of the treaty, including Egyptian anti-Semitism and the intensive Egyptian anti-Israeli activity in every international forum.

Apart from the no-war situation that exists between the countries, which admittedly, is not a minor matter, and the maintenance of a minimal diplomatic representation, none of the lofty expressions adorning the peace agreement have been honoured. Examples can be found in some of the provisions in Annex III to the peace treaty that deal with economic and cultural relations. Article 2, item 2 of Annex III says: “ As soon as possible … the Parties will enter negotiations with a view to concluding an agreement on trade and commerce for the purpose of promoting beneficial economic relations.” Article 3, item 2 of the same annex says: “They agree on the desirability of cultural exchanges in all fields, and shall, as soon as possible and not later than six months after completion of the interim withdrawal, enter into negotiations with a view to concluding a cultural agreement for this purpose.” Article 5, item 3 of the same annex states: “The Parties shall seek to foster mutual understanding and tolerance and will, accordingly, abstain from hostile propaganda against each other.”

The most blatant violation of the agreement is the anti-Semitic propaganda which has been spreading from Egypt to the whole world and which includes anti-Semitic publications such as the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and Mein Kampf as well as countless “original” publications by Egyptian and other Arab “intellectuals.” In this horrific anti-Semitic festival, the most prolific is the state-controlled and state-directed media. Israel is presented as the ultimate enemy that must be annihilated. Jews are portrayed as the scum of the earth and Egyptian writers, artists, cartoonists, and intellectuals in general compete with each other as to who can be more inventive in degrading the Jews and vilifying Israel.

If there is any tourism, it is one-sided: A few Israelis go to Egypt but no Egyptians come to Israel. The economic relations between the two countries consist of not much more than the purchase of oil and gas from Egypt by Israel. In spite of great efforts made by Israel, there are no real cultural relations between the countries. An exception is the Israeli Academic Centre in Cairo that Israel virtually compelled Egypt to accept. Hardly any Egyptian dares to come near the Centre, and the Hebrew courses it offers have been used mainly by Egyptian intelligence officers. No similar Egyptian academic centre has been established in Israel.

In short, it is peace on paper for which Israel has paid dearly, foolishly setting a precedent according to which the aggressor is rewarded by the victim of his aggression. Egypt lost four wars that it initiated against Israel. In the 1967 war, it lost the whole of Sinai and the Gaza Strip, both of which it had been holding illegally. However, under the 1979 peace agreement, Israel returned to the Egyptian aggressor everything it had lost (Egypt never demanded the return of Gaza). Such a thing has never happened before. No aggressor has ever been rewarded for his aggression by the victorious victim of his aggression. However, in the case of Israel and the Arabs, Israel has created the precedent, making aggression a “no-lose gamble” for the aggressor. The Israel-Egypt agreement established the model for all the later “peace” negotiations between Israel and the Arab countries (including the Palestinian Arabs) that are actively contemplating its destruction. They are all looking for the same style of “no-lose” treaty. The latest bid of Syria is the most striking.

The Syrian lost the Golan Heights in two successive wars of aggression against Israel in 1967 and 1973. Only an abnormal country would seriously think of rewarding the Syrian aggressors by turning over to them the highly strategic territory they lost. It is as if Germany were to be given back the 44,310 square miles it lost following its aggression in World War II. Regarding this, Professor Lloyd Cohen of the School of Law, George Mason University, remarked: “The Israeli case is even stronger. Unlike belligerent Syria, Germany is now a peaceful country, and an ally to its neighbors. In addition, the land taken from Germany was land of historic German settlement and development (East Prussia, Lower Silesia, Breslau). Under those circumstances were it to be given sovereignty over, let us say, the Kaliningrad Oblast (East Prussia) it would be far more reasonable than granting Syria sovereignty over Jewish villages in the Golan.”

Meanwhile Egypt is preparing for war. It has built an army of one million soldiers. Who are the enemies of Egypt that compel her to keep such a huge army backed by many thousands of the best American tanks produced locally by permission of the U.S., a huge air force, and a gigantic arsenal of missiles? Whom are the soldiers urged to fight? Whom are they taught to hate? Isn’t it clear that Israel, its people, its land, and its army are the targets of these extensive, intensive and expensive Egyptian preparations? Isn’t it rather strange, even treacherous that the building, equipping and supporting of this huge Egyptian military buildup against Israel is carried out with the full knowledge, support and encouragement of the United States of America, and financed by the American taxpayer? It is treacherous because while Israel is the most faithful ally of the United States, it is impossible that the American government does not realize that this huge Egyptian army could at any moment move on Israel with or without a pretext.

As far as the Palestinian signature on agreements with Israel is concerned, it took Arafat just a few days after he had signed the Oslo agreements before he announced, on May 10, 1994, in front of a cheering Muslim crowd in Johannesburg: “I do not consider this agreement to be more than the agreement which was signed between our Prophet Muhammad and Quraysh.”

There was hardly a Muslim who did not understand the message: the Prophet Muhammad concluded a ten years armistice agreement with the tribe of Quraysh at Hudaybiyah near Mecca in 628. He annulled it unilaterally once he had finished building up a strong army. At the time of Muhammad, the agreement held for about two years; Arafat sent his bombs to explode in buses and restaurants in Jerusalem, and elsewhere in Israel, within weeks of solemnly signing the document announcing the inauguration of the “era of peace.”

Arafat never planned to keep the agreement. ‘Abd al-Bari ‘Atwan the famous editor of al-Quds al-Arabi felt free to report on Lebanese television an interview he had conducted with Arafat in Tunisia in 1994. Arafat told him: “By God I shall drive them mad. I shall turn these agreements into a disaster for them. Not in my days, but in your time you shall see the Jews running away from Palestine. Only be patient.”

The Arabs, led by the Saudis, have now issued an ultimatum to Israel: either Israel accepts the Arab “peace” plan which means putting her on a direct route to disappearance or “bear the consequences.” The government of Israel and the U.S. are elated: the Arabs are “talking peace.”

The most frightening part of this Arab plot is that it excited President Bush so much that he decided to convene a “peace conference” to promote it. At this conference Israel is in the role of defendant facing its accusers: the Arab League, the Egyptians, the Jordanians, the Americans (influenced, to some extent at least, by the traditional pro-Arab views of the State Department), and the European Union as well.

What do the Muslims, particularly the perpetrators of the concentrated attacks on the Americans and Israel that began in the early 1990s, make of this development? Wouldn’t they think that they are on the way to victory not only over Israel but also over the West in general?

The Muslims are now convinced that terror is the most effective weapon in their arsenal. They have discovered that no matter what they do, the chorus of the Western media will condemn the Israelis and the Americans. Some writers in the West have even defined terror as “the weapon of the weak.” This is an understanding, even supportive, definition: since the weak are the under-privileged, according to the false concepts of the Left in the Western world, it follows that its weapon of terror should gain our sympathy.

The hasty Israeli withdrawal from Gaza for no reason and without any gains whatever, the destruction of two-score thriving and productive villages, and the turning of ten thousand Jews into refugees has been the best proof that terror is an efficient tool. The high-flown words and fiery promises of the Israeli government that “now”, following the unilateral withdrawal from Gaza, Israel would retaliate with full force against even a single shot, was proved within one day to be as empty as such hollow pronouncements in the past.

Gaza has become the forefront of Muslim terror. Israeli towns and villages are being attacked from it daily. The border with Egypt is open for the constant flow of arms, ammunition, missiles and explosives in huge quantities and of excellent quality. Israel goes on talking about the need of the Palestinian Authority “to do more” to fight terror. The army has been given orders to shoot into open spaces that, in the Israeli laundering of words, are defined as “spaces used for launching missiles.”

For more than a year now three Israeli soldiers, two in Lebanon and one in Gaza, have been kept captive and Israel’s only reaction is an offer to release thousands of terrorists to get at least one of them back. What the Arabs understand from this behavior is that the Israelis have lost the ability to defend themselves let alone to retaliate. When they retaliate as they did in Lebanon it was with so many restrictions that the retaliation ended with the Islamic side stronger, bolder, more daring and ready for the next encounter, and the Israeli side divided, frightened and indecisive.

There is no reason for the Palestinian Authority to fight terror when it is a terrorist body itself, organizing and supporting terror groups like the Tanzim, the Aqsa Brigades and similar bodies, some even disguised as the armed forces of “Abu Mazen”—the walking joke called the Chairman of the Palestinian Authority who, in reality, is one of the small warlords of the Palestinians, supported by American, Israeli and European money.

Neither America nor Israel need another false and damaging “Peace Conference." What Israel and America really need on all fronts is a clear-cut victory. Victory is the key word, not peace. Victory is needed to prove to the Moslems in general and the Arabs in particular that against their ethos of death stands the ethos of life, protected by the arms of democracies that are resolved to punish them where it hurts most. This is the only way to stop the warlords of Syria who were encouraged by Hizbullah’s performance in the last encounter with Israel. This is the only way to stop in mid-course the messianic saber-rattling of Ahmadinejad who aims at using the atom bomb whenever he can produce it.

In the Middle East negotiations are a method to win time. Time is what Hamas and some dozen Palestinian terrorist groups need: they need time to arm themselves with more deadly missiles. The Syrians need time to absorb the huge amounts of modern weapons supplied by the Russians and paid for by the Iranians. The Hizbullah needs time to upgrade its arsenal of weapons and entrench itself deeper in South Lebanon. Ahmadinejad needs time to complete the enrichment of enough nuclear material to produce his first A-bombs.

Negotiations come only after victory, not before victory and not instead of victory. Negotiations before victory are the ultimate sign of weakness and are a clear sign of fear and defeatism; it is a sure recipe for a devastating war. The enemy aim in negotiations such as these is to improve its positions in the forthcoming war, which it has planned before the negotiations and while negotiating. Thus, Syria wishes, by negotiations, to improve its strategic position by luring Israel into giving up the Golan Heights and exposing the whole north of Israel to a Syrian surprise attack. The same can be said of the Palestinians and their Arab brethren who wish to turn Israel into a coastal, indefensible strip of land. The Arabs have learnt from recent history that democracies can be lured to agree to terms that endanger their very existence if these terms are written down on paper and are accompanied by a signature.

Who can forget Neville Chamberlain returning from Munich after succumbing to Hitler’s demands, waving a piece of paper and announcing “peace in our time”? This was the introduction to the most horrible war in human annals. Similarly, one can hardly forget the pictures of Rabin, Peres and Arafat first at the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony in 1994 and then in front of the White House in 1995 (“Oslo 2”)—all smiles and handshakes, announcing the end of the conflict. These “peace” prizes and promises led to the most terrible terror war Israel has experienced, resulting in the death of over 1500 men women and children, the injury of over 5000 and the creation of a permanent terror entity in its midst.

Unfortunately not every one is ready to learn the lessons of the past. Most of the Oslo fools are ready to go the same way again. After all it was Peres who said more than once that there is nothing to learn from history.

The deadly words “peace” and “negotiations” should have long been obliterated from Israeli and Western lexicons. These are seductive words; they addle the brain and lead one to do stupid things. As long as they are not replaced by that one wonderful word victory, Israel and Western civilization are in mortal danger. Islam thrives on the ethos of Jihad and therefore does not know any concept save “victory.” From its inception, Islam has been guided by the principles of war against non-Muslims: triumph and conquest. These have always been regarded as signs of divine approval and support. If Israel and the West wish to live, the Islamic triumphal drive must be confronted on the battleground with the same principle of victory and triumph backed by the moral superiority of life-cherishing civilizations and the scientific superiority of modern weaponry.

Moshe Sharon is professor of Islamic History at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

Rael Jean Isaac

Joel Gilbert has pulled off a remarkable tour de force: in “Farewell Israel” he has produced a technically sophisticated, visually imaginative, scholarly documentary that manages in the space of 145 minutes to investigate the belief system and history of Islam, the development of the Arab-Israel conflict (more accurately the Muslim-Jewish conflict) and the aftermath of 9/11. The documentary’s enormous achievement is in bringing all this together to show incontrovertibly the total misunderstanding of Islam that shapes the policy follies of the West in general and the U.S. and Israel in particular. The potentially deadly results are summed up in the foreboding title—Farewell Israel.

Following a striking opening in which Iran’s Ahmadinejad calls for “Death to Israel,” the first half of the documentary offers a crash course on Islam, which Gilbert makes visually interesting through the skilful use of Islamic art, maps and graphics. (Himself a musician, Gilbert also makes good use of an original score.) This first section is centered visually by a mosque, with doors which Gilbert opens to reveal facets of Islamic doctrine and history. While lengthy and dense with information, this part of the documentary is essential to understanding more recent events. For example, Gilbert shows how Mohammad’s conflicts with the Jewish tribes of the Arabian peninsula formed the basis for the development of Islam’s relationship with both Jews and Christians, both tolerated in an inferior dhimmi status to a superior Islam.

Gilbert describes the amazingly rapid conquests of Islam (within a century its empire grew to be larger than the Roman empire at its height) which fortified Believers in their sense of Islam’s superiority, the Golden Age of Islamic cultural achievements, and the crushing blow to Believers when the West, thanks to its growing technological edge, first turned back Islam from its European conquests and eventually assumed imperial control of much of the Islamic heartland. Given the framework of Islamic beliefs, all of this was difficult to understand and impossible for Muslims to accept. The feeling grew that Islam had lost its way and would have to turn inward, that in the phrase that has become famous, “Islam is the solution!”

Gilbert depicts the rise of Zionism and shows how the establishment of Israel and the military victory over the combined Arab states by the despised Jews posed an unbearable challenge to Islam that had to be reversed at all costs. By conveying the tremendous shock posed to Islamic beliefs, which were scrupulously laid out in the first part of the documentary, Gilbert is able to make the viewer understand Islamic attitudes and assertions that otherwise seem wildly overstated and hard to credit seriously. For example, Egypt’s Nasser is shown declaring that Israel is the greatest crime in the history of mankind, while Muslim religious leaders fulminate that Israel must be destroyed lest Zionism succeed in replacing Islam and destroying Islamic identity.

But the key theme of this film is the lethal misunderstanding of the Islamic world view and its goals which bedevils Israeli policies as well as those of the United States. One of my favorite passages in the film, because it typifies the theme so perfectly, is the juxtaposition of a huge peace rally in Israel, with blue and white balloons flying and Israeli singer Miri Aloni belting out Shir Lashalom (Song to the Peace) with Arafat’s urging his people to fight on. The camera goes back and forth, interlarding snippets from the Israeli rally with Arafat’s incitement. The singer thrusts the microphone first before Peres, then Rabin, standing on the platform with her, who join in singing “Don’t just say the day will arrive, cheer only for peace” while Arafat shouts “Fight, fight, fight” and “Jihad, jihad, jihad” and “We will march to Jerusalem.”

In another fine section, Gilbert examines Sadat’s strategy in coming to Jerusalem in 1977, the performance that so bedazzled the Jews and indeed the entire world. We see him address the Knesset and Gilbert shows how Sadat’s words had different meanings than the way they were understood by his audience. (This too is an important underlying theme of the documentary—the way in which the same words, including “peace,” “freedom,” “tyranny” are understood differently by Islam and the West.)

Sadat keeps saying that peace must be based on “justice” (Gilbert notes that he uses the word fifteen times in that one speech) and defines justice (if only his listeners had paid more attention) as Israel’s disappearance. “Justice,” says Sadat, requires Israel to give up all the territories taken in the 1967 conflict and the return of Palestinian Arab refugees. Sadat also proclaims that Jewish independence in Palestine is illegitimate in its totality (“the land did not belong to you”). As Gilbert notes, the “peace and justice” which Sadat offers Israel in that famous speech is really only dhimmi rights in a Muslim Palestine.

And so, at the end of the Camp David negotiations, when we see Begin declaring “peace now celebrates a great victory” we can understand how Sadat saw the situation in a wholly different way – Islam had taken a major step in reducing Israel’s territory on the path to her elimination.

Gilbert has assembled some wonderful historical footage. As Nazism gathered force, we see Vladimir Jabotinsky testifying on behalf of Jewish statehood before the British Royal Commission in 1936, delivering those famous lines in which he compared the claims of the Arabs and Jews to Palestine to the claims of appetite as against the claims of starvation. And, we see Chaim Weizmann and David Ben Gurion testifying with surprisingly little conviction to that same commission, the first saying Jewish statehood might have to be put off for “hundreds of years.” We also see the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini (Arafat’s uncle and Adolph Eichmann’s close friend) inspecting the Bosnian Moslem troops he had mobilized in Hitler’s service.

Coming closer to the present, Gilbert shows how Arafat (banished to Tunisia, discredited and defeated in the wake of the first Gulf war when the PLO sided with Saddam) was rescued from oblivion by Israel’s Labor government. In another visual gem, Gilbert shows Peres, in the aftermath of Oslo, echoing Sadat’s demands for Israeli withdrawals one by one, this time as Israeli policy. Israel, Gilbert notes, was now in agreement with Sadat’s diplomatic strategy “of stages” against her, believing this would bring peace! And Gilbert produces some fantastic recent footage of a hapless Peres falling asleep as he is asked about Iran’s intentions and coming to consciousness looking as lost and foolish as he – and the government he represents – has come to be.

Gilbert rightly sums up the Netanyahu years with a single pithy sentence: promising to revoke the Oslo Accords, he simply continued them at a slower pace and having accomplished nothing was replaced by Labor.

Where does the peace process come into all this? Nowhere at all. Gilbert demonstrates conclusively that there is, and can be, no peace process that leaves Israel standing as a Jewish sovereign state. Gilbert shows how after 300 years of decline Islam is undergoing a revival, and central to that revival is the rock-solid determination that the land occupied by Israel be returned to Dar al-Islam, the territory of Islam. Gilbert says “Islam must reacquire Palestine to redeem itself from Westernization on the path to successful Islamic revival.”

But it is not only Israel that misreads Islam. Gilbert takes us into the aftermath of 9/11 in which he argues that President Bush fell into the Islamist trap. In a sobering, if indirect slap at the “Bush doctrine,” i.e. bringing democracy to the Middle East -- and the doctrine’s neoconservative supporters -- Gilbert argues that given the current “Revolt of Islam” genuinely free elections will only bring Islamists to power. This is precisely what happened in the Palestinian elections which the Bush administration insisted be held. With his talent for unearthing the perfect film clip, Gilbert shows Chamberlain on his return from Munich in 1938, but rather than seeing him pronounce the famous sentence promising “peace in our time,” we see England’s Prime Minister say that after his meeting with Herr Hitler he feels satisfied that “each of us fully understands what is in the mind of the other.” What better way of making the point that Bush has as much insight into Islam (the religion of peace!) as Chamberlain had into the mind of Herr Hitler?

Gilbert makes no bones that Israel—and the Jews of the world not far behind—will bear the most lethal consequences of Islam’s obsession with destroying Israel on the path to Islamic revival. But he offers scant comfort to the West. The documentary concludes with Gilbert’s warning that the loss of Israel will erode, not enhance, the West’s security, for the goal of the revived Islamist movement that we see enunciated by Ahmadinejad – bringing the whole world to Islam – will now only be pressed the harder.

I have one small cavil and that concerns the documentary’s subtitle “Bush, Iran and the Revolt of Islam.” In terms of accurately reflecting what the film is about, a better subtitle would focus on the West’s misunderstanding of Islam.

Most documentaries are specially suited to a particular audience, but in this case the audience should rightfully be huge. For starters, every single reader of Outpost should see and see again this documentary, for there is no way to fully absorb it in one viewing. (This much is easily accomplished by ordering the DVD from AFSI.) It should be required viewing for every politician and bureaucrat, beginning with the President and his Secretary of State. It should be seen by every American who thinks Islam is similar to Christianity or Judaism. It should be seen by everyone who believes there is such a thing as a Middle East peace process.

Perhaps most important of all, every Israeli needs to see this documentary (which means the narration must be translated into Hebrew). Farewell Israel cannot fail to wake up at least some people from the delusional somnolent state into which most of the population has lapsed. But perhaps the last word belongs to a viewer from San Diego who wrote into the documentary’s website: “Where it should go is on national TV and replayed at least three times a week for a year.”

Farewell Israel: Bush, Iran and The Revolt Of Islam—Written and Directed by Joel Gilbert. $14.95 (includes postage)

Order from:
Americans For A Safe Israel
1751 Second Ave (at 91st Street)
New York, N.Y. 10128

David Isaac

This saying may not seem like much of a counter-strategy but when hearing American and Israeli leaders offer their expert Mideast analysis, it may be Israel’s best hope. This writer finds repeating it like a mantra helps keep him from acute bouts of a new illness he calls political vertigo. This is when people in power say things that are so stupid it makes your head spin.

A recent head-spinner was Condoleezza Rice’s speech to the United Jewish Communities (UJC) National Assembly in the run-up to the Annapolis summit. In order to win Arab support for a move on Iran– something they won’t get anyway—the administration has decided to push on the Arab-Israel front, which really means pushing Israel to retreat on all fronts.

So the White House spins its version of events, where peace is breaking out all over like acne on a 15-year-old and the mood is set for further Israeli concessions. Judging from Rice’s speech, this spin may take more energy than actually getting the parties to the table as Prime Minister Olmert falls over himself with “great joy” at the prospect of another Mideast summit, expressing enthusiasm about Syria’s participation and at least one of his ministers urges him to invite Hamas as well.

Yet the administration still feels it must do its part and build up a head of steam behind the lemmings running off the cliff so Condi troops out to tell it like it isn’t. There must be a specially-built machine installed in Foggy Bottom with settings like “Fantasy” and “Extra Fantasy” where truth is shoved in at one end, spun, stretched and flattened, then spit out as Condoleezza’s speech on the other.

“The fact is conditions between Israelis and Palestinians are now fundamentally different and, frankly, better than they were a few years ago,” Rice said. The UJC audience applauded, greatly relieved.

All that stuff about Sderot getting bombed and those katyushas flying in from Lebanon and Hamas taking over after the Gaza withdrawal and that suicide bombing outside a felafel stand in Tel Aviv last year even though those were supposed to be over now and that worrying news still seeping in about Lebanon and how Hezbollah was able to hack into Israeli radio communications and knew about the IDF’s movements and had special armor-piercing missiles to destroy Israel’s Merkava tanks and how Israel admits that she completely underestimated Hezbollah’s capabilities because she was preparing for peace and the whole time they were preparing for war and, oh, dear, oh, dear, but no, Condi says things are better now. More applause.

“The violent extremism of Hamas stands in contrast to the leadership of Mahmoud Abbas, the legitimately elected president of all Palestinians who won a clear mandate to seek peace with Israel,” Condoleezza continues.

Abbas? Isn’t that the guy who wrote a master’s thesis at Moscow Oriental College denying the Holocaust, kind of like the fellow from Iran, whatshisname, Ahmadinejad, and didn’t he finance the Munich massacre of Olympic athletes and reject the idea that there ever was a Jewish Temple at the site where the Dome of the Rock now sits?

Never mind. That’s in the past. What matters is what he does now. But wait, what was that speech he made in January about “raising our rifles” against Israel and praising Hamas spiritual leader Ahmed Yassin and something about the Jews, oh, yes, "The sons of Israel are mentioned as those who are corrupting humanity on earth." And doesn’t his Fatah party have its own terrorist wing, the al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades which took credit for lots of suicide bombings in Israel including one just last year in an Eilat bakery?

But what’s that? What’s Condoleezza saying? “President Abbas is demonstrating that he is a partner for peace,” she says. Well, Condi knows what she’s about. If he’s a partner for peace, I must have it wrong. The same way I thought Arafat was the “father of modern terror.” Where did I hear that before? I think it was that monthly magazine Outpost that comes to the UJC office. I really must remember to call and tell them to take us off the mailing list. All it does is cause me tzures.

“And among most Arab states, as they recently made clear in reaffirming the Arab League Peace Initiative, the question now is not whether Israel will exist, but on what terms to make peace with Israel,” Condoleezza says.

Now that is truly wonderful news. The Council of the Arab League is ready to recognize Israel. It’s just a matter of the terms. I’ll just pull out my blackberry and check out those terms. Let’s see. Complete withdrawal from Arab territories occupied since 1967, including the Golan Heights and a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital, oh, and a solution to the Palestinian refugee problem according to UN Resolution 194. Seems reasonable.

Wait a sec, according to Resolution 194, Palestinian refugees are to be permitted to return to their homes inside Israel and if the United Nations Relief and Works Agency numbers the refugees at 4 million, why, that would overrun Israel. That means the Arab League’s terms for peace with Israel is no Israel!

What’s Condi saying now? “I believe that most Palestinians and most Arab states are ready to end the conflict.” 

Oh, thank goodness. For a second I was worried.
 
David Isaac is a free-lance writer living in Los Angeles.
 

Joel Pollak

I decided to skip my usual Friday night services and head on down to the Old South Church to attend the opening of the Sabeel conference on “The Apartheid Paradigm in Palestine-Israel.” The church is a beautiful building; what a shame it was to see it defiled by such hatred. The pews were packed with people who dislike Israel in one way or another; one guy wore a t-shirt depicting a burning Israeli flag.

I walked around the room to see where the microphones for question-and-answer would be. There weren’t any, and at the start of the evening we were told that if we wanted to ask a question we’d have to fill out an index card and hand it to one of the ushers. Screened in advance! I should have known. I complained to Phyllis Bennis, one of the moderators, who told me: “This is not an open discussion.” Indeed!

I sat down in a pew near the front and opened the folder of conference materials. The back page of the official program was entitled “Apartheid?” and was filled with quotes and maps aimed at proving the Israel-apartheid analogy. They had a line from Jimmy Carter, a line from Archbishop Desmond Tutu (the conference’s keynote speaker), and a line from—no, wait, really?—Nelson Mandela:

“Apartheid is a crime against humanity. Israel has deprived millions of Palestinians of their liberty and property. It has perpetuated a system of gross racial discrimination and inequality. It has systematically incarcerated and tortured thousands of Palestinians, contrary to the rules of international law. It has, in particular, waged a war against a civilian population, in particular children.”

Sounds rather damning, doesn’t it? And who could disagree with Nelson Mandela? There’s only one problem: Nelson Mandela never said, wrote or endorsed those words. They are the creation of an Arab journalist named Arjan El Fassed. When I exposed El Fassed's fraud earlier this year, he claimed: “There is no possible basis for Pollak to say I intended people to believe the memo was written by anyone other than myself.”

In spite of El Fassed’s admission, the Israel-haters continue to use his Mandela quote to promote their views. But El Fassed’s “Mandela Memo” is a fraud—just as much a lie as the Israel-apartheid equation itself. The entire evening was built on such lies. Keynote speaker Naim Ateek, for example, claimed that the Israeli government has an “intense desire to ethnically cleanse Palestinians.”

But I’m jumping ahead. The evening began with an address by the Right Reverend M. Thomas Shaw, the local Episcopalian bishop, who equated the anti-Israel movement with the anti-apartheid movement: it is “like any movement we’ve had for justice in human history,” he said. “God smiles on this assembly,” he added. This was a feature throughout the evening: religious blessing of hatred agains

After a hymn—“Guide my feet, Lord” (out the door, I wanted to add)—Archbishop Tutu stood up and recited an invocation. “Lead us from prejudice to truth,” he prayed. Amen, I muttered. I flipped through the Bible in front of me and landed on an appropriate verse, Psalm 36:3: “The words of their mouths are mischief and deceit; they have ceased to act wisely and do good.”

A Muslim cleric, Imam Mahdi Bray, then stood up and gave a silly speech about how he had personally experienced apartheid because he had grown up as a black American in the South and his house had been firebombed et cetera. He did not explain how that qualified him to speak about Israel, but nevertheless went on and on in fiery style about the rights of the dispersed Palestinian people.

Next up was Sara Roy. She went on at length about “my Holocaust background,” how her parents were survivors and lived through “loneliness and longing,” and how that formed her opinions of Israel. Israelis and Jews, she said, are “racist,” aside from a few exceptions. Though Jews have a strong tradition of dissent, it is unacceptable among Jews to admit “that Palestinians share our humanity,” she said. Spoon-fed this slander from a person with an unimpeachable “Holocaust background,” the audience swallowed every word and rewarded her with a spirited burst of applause.

Ateek was the last to speak, and was introduced by Hilary Rantisi, who claimed that the event organizers had come under pressure to “disinvite” him. She attacked his critics but did not attempt to explain his religious bigotry, reported recently by Jeff Jacoby in the Boston Globe (whose article was distributed with the conference materials, along with a defense of the event by a local reform Rabbi).

Ateek said that he opposed violence on both sides, and supported a two-state solution and Israel’s right to live within the 1967 borders (which only a handful of people in the room applauded). However, he said that the government of Israel doesn’t listen and refuses to end the “evil” occupation. He then quoted a Ha’aretz article in which Israeli Jews themselves had used the word “apartheid.”

He equated the Hebrew word hafradah (separation), used by some Israelis to describe the security barrier, with the Afrikaans apartheid. He claimed this was a sign that Israelis now support an apartheid policy. (What hafradah actually refers to is separation from land, not people—from the occupied territories, not from Arabs, who are more integrated into Israel now than ever before. Sigh.)

There was a break, and after confirming that there were to be no questions from the floor, I decided to leave. Karl Popper once said that a theory is only scientific if it is falsifiable, i.e. if it is open to being disproved. In the same way, any political idea which is not open to challenge and debate cannot possibly be true. However, if you repeat it often enough, as the saying goes, people start to believe it.

Fraudulent accusations against the Jewish state, based on fabricated evidence. Religious endorsement of hatred, couched in the rhetoric of social justice. False caricatures and stereotypes of an entire people. The parading of token Jews to verify everything said from the stage. Sound familiar? They used to have a word for that. But you can’t use “anti-Semitism” anymore. So I’ll just call it a disgrace.

Joel Pollak is the chairperson of Alliance for Israel at Harvard Law School.

Ruth King

The other day on a city bus I saw a sign that warned riders of identity theft. It highlighted the words “It can cost you forever.”

On my left (definitely on my left) a passenger was reading the New York Times appraisal of what Israel must give to the “Palestinians” in order to proceed with the charade at Annapolis. What a fitting example of identity theft which seems to cost forever.

Israel’s defamers have cynically stolen all the terms which define Jewish history and aspirations. It is a phenomenon which started long ago when the word “ghetto” became synonymous with minorities living in poverty in certain boroughs where they constituted the majority. In fact the word ghetto has a significant and uniquely Jewish history. In the fifteenth century in many European cities, the ghetto was the only place Jews could live, frequently behind heavily fortified walls, under curfews, in fear of attacks in spite of the guards they were forced to hire, and permitted to leave only a few days a year.

After the French Revolution and Napoleon, many ghettos were disbanded. They were reintroduced by the Nazis and European countries which colluded in herding together Jews under horrific conditions from whence they were taken to extermination camps.

Now, the neighborhoods of Europe where Arabs live and terrorize their non-Arab neighbors are called “ghettos” in their diurnal complaints to local administrations. And dictionaries—all of them—dismiss the Jewish history of pre-Holocaust ghettos as if they were simply gated communities.

Another favorite stolen term is the “Palestinian Diaspora,” defined in many online dictionaries as including those Arabs who were expelled or ran from Israel during the war against the Jewish state which started in 1947. In fact “diaspora” is unique to the Jewish exile from the land of Israel after the expulsions in the 6th century B.C. and then after the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in 70 A.D.

And, as night follows day, the longing of Jews in the Diaspora to return to the only nation which has restored and sustained their faith and given them an opportunity to live in freedom from the centuries of dislocations, murders, torture and genocide has been turned into the Arab’s “right to return” to Israel—and trust me they don’t just mean the “West Bank.” So swiftly has this theft been legitimated that even Israeli and American diplomats and leaders discuss the Arab “right of return” as if it were a negotiable item.

The word “refugee” in the Middle East now refers exclusively to Arabs, as Jews gladly shed their statelessness and assumed citizenship in Israel and anywhere else in the non-Arab world in which they alighted. There were, in fact, more Jewish refugees from Arab lands than Arabs who left Israel and to whom the entire world headed by the United Nations has given “hereditary status,” with sons, daughters, grandchildren and great grandchildren of those Arabs now called “refugees.”

Even the Temple Mount is being stripped by Arabs and their academic cohorts in American universities of its solely Jewish history.

But the most egregious theft of identity is the word “Palestinian,” now used ubiquitously to describe only the Arabs of Palestine and the putative name for an Arab terrorist state in the heart of Israel. Palestinian was the name accorded to all Jewish cultural, social, and scientific enterprises before the official name became Israel in 1948. Palestine was the land mass that included present day Jordan and Gaza which was deeded to the Jews by the terms of the Balfour Declaration and the League of Nations.

To call only Arabs “Palestinian” and to ignore Israel’s legitimacy in Palestine is to be an accomplice in a massive identity theft which will cost forever.

In a monograph The Palestinians: a Political Masquerade written by Arthur Kahn and Thomas F. Murray published by AFSI in 1977 the authors write: "The Arabs of Palestine have allowed themselves to be defined as an 'anti-nation,' one that derives its entire meaning and purpose from the desire to destroy another nation.”

And this remains the goal of those Arabs now packing their suitcases for their trip to Annapolis to demand more concessions from the Palestinian Jews who have no real "identity" left to squander.