In light of repeated acts of mega-barbarism deliberately directed against Israeli innocents (many proudly claimed by Yasser Arafat's own Al-Aqsa affiliate), it is time to take a closer look at some of the underlying issues that have frequently been ignored. Consider the following, for starters:
Pick your paper, as diverse as the Washington Post or the Daytona Beach News-Journal of Florida. Chances are pretty good that editors and columnists are ready to give advice or offer condemnation on the matter. And this just reflects the American press. It is often far worse elsewhere.
The Post's Richard Cohen, The New York Times' Nicholas Kristof, and many of their colleagues elsewhere, don't like Prime Minister Ariel Sharon very much, especially those settlements he has frequently insisted upon.
The News-Journal's editorialist Pierre Tristam -- one of the point men for the paper's own slant -- writes such objective essays as "Barbarism Under Israel's Boot." Kristof compares Sharon to Arafat. In a piece that appeared in the News-Journal on May 27, 2004, he blamed Sharon for "knocking the legs out from under the Palestinian moderates." For those of Kristof's persuasion, the fact that the Arabs responded to Camp David and Taba 2000, in which they were offered everything but the kitchen sink, by starting the bloody intifada, "of course" had nothing to do with hurting the so-called peace camps on both sides of the conflict.
Having their own bully pulpits, more often than not, attempts by the public at meaningful response to such "truths" are then suppressed. And those few snippets that are permitted usually appear in the paper long after the original extensive editorial and op-ed attacks, skewed news reporting and the like have had a chance to be digested and absorbed as "fact" by readers.
While living in the safety and comfort of their own homes and having to travel farther to work than the width of Israel in its pre-'67, 1949 UN-imposed armistice lines, such folks as these in the media, academia and -- alas -- too often in our own State Department, seem to prefer a breed of Jew that bares his neck much easier. But, then again, most of them complained about former Prime Minister Ehud Barak as well, even though, had Arabs agreed to have a state alongside Israel instead of in place of it under his watch, virtually all of those settlements would have been history by now.
Not to mention the fact that when Sharon himself earlier believed that Israel had a true partner for peace in Egypt, he dismantled settlements in the Sinai for Menachem Begin. All of this is totally ignored by the Richard Cohens, Thomas Friedmans, Nicholas Kristofs and Molly Moores of the media world. It's also worth noting that originating in "peaceful" Egypt, recipient of over sixty billion dollars in American top of the line armaments and aid, are those tunnels that supply Hamas, Islamic Jihad & Co. with explosives and such to carry out a terror campaign against Jews. So much for what kind of faith Israel can place in alleged "peace" agreements with dictatorial Arab regimes.
As of April 2004, Sharon had gotten into political trouble in Israel for declaring, in the absence of another Arab partner for peace, that he would dismantle settlements in the strategically important Gaza Strip and West Bank anyway. Many saw this as simply a unilateral reward for terrorism, thereby only encouraging more of it. True to form, there was no gratitude shown by Arabs for these concessions, just more one-sided demands. Their post-'67 destruction in phases scenario for Israel was playing out nicely. Nevertheless, the media largely kept up its attacks upon Sharon anyway.
So, all of this begs the question: Why is there seldom an attempt, in the name of fair journalism, to determine why those Jews are so adamant on the issues of territory and settlements?
As a concession to the so-called "Road Map", it had earlier been reported that Arafat and his former Holocaust-denying Prime Minister, Mahmoud Abbas, were seeking to limit Arab disembowelment and incineration of Jews to "just" the West Bank and Gaza. They would thus supposedly be able to show the world that they were only against "occupation and settlers," not Israel itself. A mere look, however, at the material in their own websites, textbooks, etc. soon explains what "occupied" territory really means - Tel Aviv as well as Hebron. And this is even more so for the Hamas crew. After its war to oust Saddam from Iraq, the United States banned the Baath Party in Iraq. Regardless of one's thoughts about this, Hamas openly declares that no Israel, regardless of size, has a right to even exist. So what should a much more vulnerable Israel insist upon?
For those without a grasp of history, both recent and a bit farther back, this ploy focusing on occupation and settlements will work. And it will do so for those who simply like to believe that Israel is the devil incarnate, as well. Unfortunately, it also seems to work with a media afflicted too often with a severe case of amnesia when it comes to such issues. The reality is that this proposed gesture by Arafat was just another staged fiction for, at best, a naive West.
Just who is a settler in the Middle East, and how is that word defined?
Of course, Arabs, Cohen, Kristof & Co. point to Jews. So, unless the "West Bank" is ethnically cleansed of the Jewish presence, as the fiction goes, there will be no chance for peace. Much, if not most, of the press constantly supports this position. Countless editorials and columns have appeared spouting such wisdom.
Consider the November 16, 2002 Associated Press report by Nasser Shiyoukhi. Listen to his description of the situation in Hebron: "The Muslims here are among the most devout and the Jewish settlers among the most radical."
Notice the adjectives. Unlike the Arabs, the Jews -- who know that they are risking their lives living among hostile Arabs, but do so anyway out of deep religious conviction and faith -- were not described as "devout," a positive concept, but were labeled, instead, as being "radical," with negative connotations. Yet, the Tomb of the Patriarchs was sacred to Jews for over two thousand years before the Prophet of Islam ever lived and before the vast majority of Arabs ever knew that the Hebrew Patriarch, Abraham, even existed. The same folks who claim that there was no Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem (Arafat calls it Buraq's Mount in honor of Muhammad's winged horse who supposedly took him on a flight to the holy site) deny any Jewish connections to Hebron as well.
Now for a dose of reality.
There's very good evidence that Arafat was born in Cairo, Egypt. Scores of thousands of other Arabs came from Egypt earlier in the 19th century with Muhammad Ali's armies and, like Arafat a bit later, settled in Palestine.
During the Mandatory period after World War I, the League of Nations Permanent Mandates Commission recorded additional scores of thousands of Egyptian, Syrian and other Arabs entering into Palestine and settling there. Hamas' patron saint, Sheikh Izzedin Al-Qassam, for whom its militant wing (the folks who blow up the teen clubs, pizzerias, buses, etc.) was named, was from Aleppo, Syria. He too settled in Palestine. It is estimated that for each one of these people who were recorded, many others crossed the border under cover of darkness to enter into one of the few areas in the region where any economic development was going on, because of the influx of Jewish capital. These folks later became known as "native Palestinians."
While this is not to say that there were not native Arabs also living in Palestine, it is to say that many, if not most, of these folks were also newcomers -- settlers -- themselves. Many of the villages set up in the West Bank and elsewhere were settlements established by Arab settlers. And there were Jews whose families never left Israel/Judaea/Palestine as well over the centuries, despite the tragedies of the Roman Wars, forced conversions of the Byzantines, the Diaspora, Crusades, etc.
So, why is it acceptable to Cohen, Kristof, Friedman, Tristam and their fellow amnesiacs for Arabs from the surrounding lands to settle in Palestine, but not for Israel's Jews, half of whom were refugees themselves from Arab Muslim lands? These Jews are the other side of the refugee coin nobody talks about.
Jews owned land and lived in Judea and Samaria until they were massacred by Arabs in the 1920s. Those lands weren't known as the "West Bank" until the 20th century, when purely Arab Transjordan -- itself created in 1922 from 80% of the Mandate for Palestine that Britain received on April 25, 1920 -- annexed the "west bank" of the Jordan River after the 1948 fighting.
Saying Jews have no rights in places like Hebron is like claiming that if China conquers the Vatican, then Catholics will no longer have rights there. Again, the world would not know of the significance of places like Hebron if not for the Holy Scriptures of the Jews. If one million Arabs can live as citizens without fear in Israel, then why is it that Arabs insist that lands where both peoples have historical ties must be made Judenrein?
UN Resolution No. 242 emerged in the aftermath of the Six Day War. It did not call for Israel to return to those suicidal, pre-'67 armistice lines. Among other things, those lines had made Israel a mere nine miles wide, a constant temptation to its enemies. Notice, please, that the vast majority of the settlements are built on strategic high ground, areas designed to provide precisely that to which Israel is entitled under Resolution No. 242 - a slightly increased buffer against those who would destroy it. Furthermore, any eventual Israeli withdrawal was to be linked to the establishment of "secure and recognized borders" to replace those fragile lines.
Many of those states now demanding Israel to forsake this have conquered nations and acquired territories hundreds or thousands of miles away from home in the name of their own national security interests.
Legal experts such as William O'Brien, Eugene Rostow, and others have repeatedly stated that the non-apportioned areas (the West Bank, in particular) of the Palestinian Mandate were open to settlement by all residents of the Mandate, not just Arabs. That Arabs disagree is not a shock. They don't believe Jews have rights in any part of Israel. Keep in mind that most of the almost two dozen so-called "Arab" states were themselves conquered and forcibly Arabized from non-Arab peoples like Berbers, Copts, Kurds, Jews, Black Africans, and others, as well.
Lastly, at Camp David 2000 and Taba, Ehud Barak's Israel offered to end the occupation. 97% of the territories, half of Jerusalem, a $33 billion fund, and other concessions were offered to Arafat in a contiguous state, not disconnected cantons, as Arab spin doctors now claim. Ambassador Dennis Ross was there as US chief negotiator and confirmed all of this. I'll take his word over Arafat's. So much for occupation being the cause of the problem.
Unfortunately, the predominant Arab "vision of peace" still has no room for a permanent Israel. Some have made a tactical decision to play the game to win as much concessions diplomatically from Israel as possible, making their end goal that much easier to achieve.
Arafat and others speak of the "peace of the Quraysh." The Quraysh were a pagan tribe with whom the Muslim Prophet, Muhammad, made a temporary peace until he gained enough strength to deal the final blow. Even the PLO's late model moderate, Faisal Al-Husseini, called for a purely Arab Palestine "from the River to the Sea."
If one is really interested in seeing what Arab thinking is in these regards, all that is required is an online visit to the Palestinian Authority websites, or a look at its textbooks, maps, insignias and such. There is no Israel present. And these are the "good cops." Go to the Hamas site and then understand why the sole, miniscule state of the Jews cannot be expected to commit national suicide so that Arabs can obtain their 22nd or 23rd state - and the second one in Palestine.
Pick your paper, as diverse as the Washington Post or the Daytona Beach News-Journal of Florida. Chances are pretty good that editors and columnists are ready to give advice or offer condemnation on the matter. And this just reflects the American press. It is often far worse elsewhere.
The Post's Richard Cohen, The New York Times' Nicholas Kristof, and many of their colleagues elsewhere, don't like Prime Minister Ariel Sharon very much, especially those settlements he has frequently insisted upon.
The News-Journal's editorialist Pierre Tristam -- one of the point men for the paper's own slant -- writes such objective essays as "Barbarism Under Israel's Boot." Kristof compares Sharon to Arafat. In a piece that appeared in the News-Journal on May 27, 2004, he blamed Sharon for "knocking the legs out from under the Palestinian moderates." For those of Kristof's persuasion, the fact that the Arabs responded to Camp David and Taba 2000, in which they were offered everything but the kitchen sink, by starting the bloody intifada, "of course" had nothing to do with hurting the so-called peace camps on both sides of the conflict.
Having their own bully pulpits, more often than not, attempts by the public at meaningful response to such "truths" are then suppressed. And those few snippets that are permitted usually appear in the paper long after the original extensive editorial and op-ed attacks, skewed news reporting and the like have had a chance to be digested and absorbed as "fact" by readers.
While living in the safety and comfort of their own homes and having to travel farther to work than the width of Israel in its pre-'67, 1949 UN-imposed armistice lines, such folks as these in the media, academia and -- alas -- too often in our own State Department, seem to prefer a breed of Jew that bares his neck much easier. But, then again, most of them complained about former Prime Minister Ehud Barak as well, even though, had Arabs agreed to have a state alongside Israel instead of in place of it under his watch, virtually all of those settlements would have been history by now.
Not to mention the fact that when Sharon himself earlier believed that Israel had a true partner for peace in Egypt, he dismantled settlements in the Sinai for Menachem Begin. All of this is totally ignored by the Richard Cohens, Thomas Friedmans, Nicholas Kristofs and Molly Moores of the media world. It's also worth noting that originating in "peaceful" Egypt, recipient of over sixty billion dollars in American top of the line armaments and aid, are those tunnels that supply Hamas, Islamic Jihad & Co. with explosives and such to carry out a terror campaign against Jews. So much for what kind of faith Israel can place in alleged "peace" agreements with dictatorial Arab regimes.
As of April 2004, Sharon had gotten into political trouble in Israel for declaring, in the absence of another Arab partner for peace, that he would dismantle settlements in the strategically important Gaza Strip and West Bank anyway. Many saw this as simply a unilateral reward for terrorism, thereby only encouraging more of it. True to form, there was no gratitude shown by Arabs for these concessions, just more one-sided demands. Their post-'67 destruction in phases scenario for Israel was playing out nicely. Nevertheless, the media largely kept up its attacks upon Sharon anyway.
So, all of this begs the question: Why is there seldom an attempt, in the name of fair journalism, to determine why those Jews are so adamant on the issues of territory and settlements?
As a concession to the so-called "Road Map", it had earlier been reported that Arafat and his former Holocaust-denying Prime Minister, Mahmoud Abbas, were seeking to limit Arab disembowelment and incineration of Jews to "just" the West Bank and Gaza. They would thus supposedly be able to show the world that they were only against "occupation and settlers," not Israel itself. A mere look, however, at the material in their own websites, textbooks, etc. soon explains what "occupied" territory really means - Tel Aviv as well as Hebron. And this is even more so for the Hamas crew. After its war to oust Saddam from Iraq, the United States banned the Baath Party in Iraq. Regardless of one's thoughts about this, Hamas openly declares that no Israel, regardless of size, has a right to even exist. So what should a much more vulnerable Israel insist upon?
For those without a grasp of history, both recent and a bit farther back, this ploy focusing on occupation and settlements will work. And it will do so for those who simply like to believe that Israel is the devil incarnate, as well. Unfortunately, it also seems to work with a media afflicted too often with a severe case of amnesia when it comes to such issues. The reality is that this proposed gesture by Arafat was just another staged fiction for, at best, a naive West.
Just who is a settler in the Middle East, and how is that word defined?
Of course, Arabs, Cohen, Kristof & Co. point to Jews. So, unless the "West Bank" is ethnically cleansed of the Jewish presence, as the fiction goes, there will be no chance for peace. Much, if not most, of the press constantly supports this position. Countless editorials and columns have appeared spouting such wisdom.
Consider the November 16, 2002 Associated Press report by Nasser Shiyoukhi. Listen to his description of the situation in Hebron: "The Muslims here are among the most devout and the Jewish settlers among the most radical."
Notice the adjectives. Unlike the Arabs, the Jews -- who know that they are risking their lives living among hostile Arabs, but do so anyway out of deep religious conviction and faith -- were not described as "devout," a positive concept, but were labeled, instead, as being "radical," with negative connotations. Yet, the Tomb of the Patriarchs was sacred to Jews for over two thousand years before the Prophet of Islam ever lived and before the vast majority of Arabs ever knew that the Hebrew Patriarch, Abraham, even existed. The same folks who claim that there was no Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem (Arafat calls it Buraq's Mount in honor of Muhammad's winged horse who supposedly took him on a flight to the holy site) deny any Jewish connections to Hebron as well.
Now for a dose of reality.
There's very good evidence that Arafat was born in Cairo, Egypt. Scores of thousands of other Arabs came from Egypt earlier in the 19th century with Muhammad Ali's armies and, like Arafat a bit later, settled in Palestine.
During the Mandatory period after World War I, the League of Nations Permanent Mandates Commission recorded additional scores of thousands of Egyptian, Syrian and other Arabs entering into Palestine and settling there. Hamas' patron saint, Sheikh Izzedin Al-Qassam, for whom its militant wing (the folks who blow up the teen clubs, pizzerias, buses, etc.) was named, was from Aleppo, Syria. He too settled in Palestine. It is estimated that for each one of these people who were recorded, many others crossed the border under cover of darkness to enter into one of the few areas in the region where any economic development was going on, because of the influx of Jewish capital. These folks later became known as "native Palestinians."
While this is not to say that there were not native Arabs also living in Palestine, it is to say that many, if not most, of these folks were also newcomers -- settlers -- themselves. Many of the villages set up in the West Bank and elsewhere were settlements established by Arab settlers. And there were Jews whose families never left Israel/Judaea/Palestine as well over the centuries, despite the tragedies of the Roman Wars, forced conversions of the Byzantines, the Diaspora, Crusades, etc.
So, why is it acceptable to Cohen, Kristof, Friedman, Tristam and their fellow amnesiacs for Arabs from the surrounding lands to settle in Palestine, but not for Israel's Jews, half of whom were refugees themselves from Arab Muslim lands? These Jews are the other side of the refugee coin nobody talks about.
Jews owned land and lived in Judea and Samaria until they were massacred by Arabs in the 1920s. Those lands weren't known as the "West Bank" until the 20th century, when purely Arab Transjordan -- itself created in 1922 from 80% of the Mandate for Palestine that Britain received on April 25, 1920 -- annexed the "west bank" of the Jordan River after the 1948 fighting.
Saying Jews have no rights in places like Hebron is like claiming that if China conquers the Vatican, then Catholics will no longer have rights there. Again, the world would not know of the significance of places like Hebron if not for the Holy Scriptures of the Jews. If one million Arabs can live as citizens without fear in Israel, then why is it that Arabs insist that lands where both peoples have historical ties must be made Judenrein?
UN Resolution No. 242 emerged in the aftermath of the Six Day War. It did not call for Israel to return to those suicidal, pre-'67 armistice lines. Among other things, those lines had made Israel a mere nine miles wide, a constant temptation to its enemies. Notice, please, that the vast majority of the settlements are built on strategic high ground, areas designed to provide precisely that to which Israel is entitled under Resolution No. 242 - a slightly increased buffer against those who would destroy it. Furthermore, any eventual Israeli withdrawal was to be linked to the establishment of "secure and recognized borders" to replace those fragile lines.
Many of those states now demanding Israel to forsake this have conquered nations and acquired territories hundreds or thousands of miles away from home in the name of their own national security interests.
Legal experts such as William O'Brien, Eugene Rostow, and others have repeatedly stated that the non-apportioned areas (the West Bank, in particular) of the Palestinian Mandate were open to settlement by all residents of the Mandate, not just Arabs. That Arabs disagree is not a shock. They don't believe Jews have rights in any part of Israel. Keep in mind that most of the almost two dozen so-called "Arab" states were themselves conquered and forcibly Arabized from non-Arab peoples like Berbers, Copts, Kurds, Jews, Black Africans, and others, as well.
Lastly, at Camp David 2000 and Taba, Ehud Barak's Israel offered to end the occupation. 97% of the territories, half of Jerusalem, a $33 billion fund, and other concessions were offered to Arafat in a contiguous state, not disconnected cantons, as Arab spin doctors now claim. Ambassador Dennis Ross was there as US chief negotiator and confirmed all of this. I'll take his word over Arafat's. So much for occupation being the cause of the problem.
Unfortunately, the predominant Arab "vision of peace" still has no room for a permanent Israel. Some have made a tactical decision to play the game to win as much concessions diplomatically from Israel as possible, making their end goal that much easier to achieve.
Arafat and others speak of the "peace of the Quraysh." The Quraysh were a pagan tribe with whom the Muslim Prophet, Muhammad, made a temporary peace until he gained enough strength to deal the final blow. Even the PLO's late model moderate, Faisal Al-Husseini, called for a purely Arab Palestine "from the River to the Sea."
If one is really interested in seeing what Arab thinking is in these regards, all that is required is an online visit to the Palestinian Authority websites, or a look at its textbooks, maps, insignias and such. There is no Israel present. And these are the "good cops." Go to the Hamas site and then understand why the sole, miniscule state of the Jews cannot be expected to commit national suicide so that Arabs can obtain their 22nd or 23rd state - and the second one in Palestine.