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Richard on Hamas Occupies Palestinian Lands.
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A couple of years ago, a Palestinian refugee camp was encircled and laid siege to by an army of tanks and Armored Personnel Carriers. Attacks initiated by Palestinian militants triggered an overwhelming response from the army that took the life of almost 500 people, including many civilians. International organizations struggled to send aid to the refugee camps, where the inhabitants were left without basic amenities like electricity and running water. During the conflict, six U.N. personnel were killed when their car was bombed.
Government ministers and spokesmen tried to explain to the international community that the Palestinian militants were backed by Syria and global jihadist elements. Al Qaeda condemned the government and the army, declaring that the attack was part of a “crusade” against their Palestinian brothers.
AFP/Getty ImagesA Palestinian refugee collects metal and plastic objects at a garbage dump in the Palestinian refugee camp of Beddawi near Tripoli.
While most will assume that the events described above took place in the West Bank or Gaza, they actually took place in Lebanon in the summer of 2007, when Palestinian terrorists attacked the Lebanese Army, which struck back with deadly force. The scene of most of the fighting was the Nahr al-Bared refugee camp in Northern Lebanon, which was home to the Islamist Fatah al-Islam, a group that has links with al Qaeda.
At the time, there was little international outcry. No world leader decried the “prison camps” in Lebanon. No demonstrations took place around the world; no U.N. investigation panels were created and little media attention was attracted. In fact, the plight of the Palestinians in Lebanon garners very little attention internationally. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Islam, Middle East Report, Opinion, Recent Posts on July 29, 2010 - י"ח אב תש"ע at 8:50 am
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This year, Tisha B’Av (the annual Jewish fast day commemorating the destruction of both the First and Second Temples in Jerusalem) once again reminded us of the dangers of “gratuitous hatred” without rhyme or reason for one’s fellow Jews; the kind of hatred for its own sake, which seems more recently to have become part of our everyday Israeli reality. Divisions between Ultra-Orthodox and Secular Jews or the bitter antagonism towards the settlers in the West Bank are of course not new, but they have lost nothing of their malevolent edge. No less distressing are the actions of those Israeli lecturers who defend the international anti-Israel boycott in the name of academic freedom and the much larger numbers of those who denounce any criticism or sanctions against these boycotters as “McCarthyism”.
Such harsh polemics are happening at a time of unprecedented hatred towards Israel as a nation within the international community. The hysteria surrounding the Gaza flotilla brought this trend to new heights of hypocrisy. It reflects the ongoing campaign of branding Israel as the “Jew” of nations – libeling it as a racist, bloodthirsty, pariah-state. At the same time, American Jewish support for Israel’s policies, especially among liberals, has also been increasingly eroded. This has potentially dangerous consequences for our relations with the Diaspora, already tense over the issue of non-Orthodox conversions.True, the majority of Americans still show remarkable empathy with Israel’s dilemmas and President Obama has more recently chosen to adopt a somewhat friendlier tone to Israel’s prime minister. Many European leaders, while less supportive than the United States, are by no means blind to Israel’s security needs, to the Iranian threat or to the disastrous implications of Hamas’s violent rule in Gaza. Nevertheless, the international weakening of Israel’s legitimacy as a state remains deeply troubling. It has been accompanied by an unprecedented explosion of global anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism during the past few years. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Education, Judaism, Middle East Report, Opinion, Recent Posts on July 28, 2010 - י"ז אב תש"ע at 9:43 am
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The Palestinian Right to Israelby Dr. Alex Grobman
[Note: Readers who purchase through www.balfourstore.com will get a discount and an extra 10% discount on the price of the book, so it will cost $16. Please use the following password:INN2010 when purchasing]
The Arab/Israeli conflict is among the most intractable disputes in the world today. In this meticulously researched and well-written work, Dr. Alex Grobman, a renowned historian trained at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, systematically and methodically exposes the myths and lies about the Arab right to the land of Israel.
Grobman traces the historical, religious and spiritual connection of the Jewish people to the land of Israel after the end of Jewish sovereignty in 70 CE; dispels the Arab claim that Palestine is a “twice promised land,” because the British pledged it to both the Arabs and the Jews; examines the Arab reaction to the Balfour Declaration and Jewish immigration to Palestine that established a precedent for dealing with Arabs that continues to this day; and examines Arab activities during WWII to thwart an Allied victory.
Grobman shows that the Arabs have never accepted the right of Jews to re-establish their sovereignty in the land of Israel, and how they continually try to refute the Jewish connection to Israel, especially the city of Jerusalem: by destroying Temple Mount artifacts to eliminate any evidence of a Jewish past, by accusing Israeli archeologists of manipulating authentic archeological evidence to justify the Jewish people’s right to Israel and by charging that the Jews are not a people at all, and are consequently not entitled to a country of their own. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Education, Islam, Judaism, Middle East Report, Monotheistic Religions, News Articles, Opinion, Recent Posts on July 25, 2010 - י"ד אב תש"ע at 8:10 am
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By STEVE LINDE, Jerusalem Post, July 25, 2010
Imagine naming a gifted diplomat from the professional ranks of the Foreign Ministry rather than the usual political appointee, someone who happens to be an excellent native English speaker, as ambassador to the United Nations? What an incredible idea! Not since Abba Eban has anyone dared to do something so logical. Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t it primarily English they speak at the UN?
Eban was Israel’s first and probably most eloquent ambassador to the world body. At the age of 34, he was appointed permanent representative when the fledgling Jewish state was admitted to the four-year-old United Nations in 1949. At the UN, who could forget his brilliant speeches rebuffing the Arab states’ rejection of Israel’s existence? “Whether they want peace or war,” he famously declared, “they can have it only with the State of Israel.”
When Eban died in 2002 at the age of 87, then foreign minister Binyamin Netanyahu said: “With his prodigious intellect and renowned eloquence, Abba Eban was not only one of Israel’s finest diplomats, but also was one of the great diplomats of his era. He was a powerful advocate for the Jewish state and for the rights of the Jewish people. Eban set the standard for defending Israel in the courts of world opinion.
“During many difficult periods, his voice was a stirring reminder of the justice of the Zionist cause and Israel’s eternal hope to live in peace with its neighbors. Through years of dedicated service, he laid the foundations for Israel’s foreign service and proved that even though we are a small nation, our moral voice can be heard loud and clear across the world.”
Over the years, I interviewed Eban several times for Israel Radio’s English News, and on every occasion was impressed anew by his uncanny ability to convince his interlocutors through his beautifully expressed arguments. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Middle East Report, Opinion, Recent Posts on July 25, 2010 - י"ד אב תש"ע at 7:43 am
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By KHALED ABU TOAMEH, Jerusalem Post, July 23, 2010
Five years after Israel’s unilateral disengagement from the Gaza Strip, Palestinians living there are still waiting for the housing projects and factories the international community promised them.
The areas where most of the settlements once stood have yet to be transformed into apartments and working places for thousands of unemployed Palestinians who used to work in the Jewish communities.
Promises that the Gaza Strip would be turned into the Middle East’s Hong Kong or Singapore sound today like a joke to many Palestinians.
These promises were made on the eve of the disengagement by many governments and leaders all around the world, including Israel.
It’s hard today to find one Palestinian who would point to anything positive that has come out of the pullout. In fact, Palestinians across the political spectrum agree that the situation inside the Gaza Strip is not much better than it was before the disengagement.
The Palestinian Authority continues to argue that the unilateral disengagement was one of the reasons why Hamas is in power today. Not that the PA didn’t want Israel to leave the Gaza Strip. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Islam, Middle East Report, Opinion, Recent Posts on July 23, 2010 - י"ב אב תש"ע at 6:09 pm
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by Gil Ronen, Arutz Sheva
(Israelnationalnews.com) MK Danny Danon (Likud) toured the Temple Mount Tuesday in a visit timed for Tisha B’Av, 1940 years after the sacking of the Second Jewish Temple. He bemoaned the ongoing discrimination against Jews’ freedom of worship.
“It is unacceptable that Muslims can ascend the Mount 24 hours a day, while Jews’ freedom of worship is limited,” he said, after touring the Mount with a police escort, and under the watchful eyes of Muslim Wakf representatives
“It was very exciting to visit the Temple Mount, on Tisha B’Av, the day of mourning for the Temple Mount. I received the impression that freedom of worship is fully implemented toward the Muslims,” Danon said. “They can enter the Mount 24 hours a day, from nine gates. Whereas the Jews can only enter from one gate, under severe restrictions.”
“Religious Jews, who wear kippahs, can only ascend the Mount in groups of fifteen people, with police escort,” he noted, “and they are forbidden from praying on the Mount. Secular [Jews] or tourists, on the other hand, can ascend freely.” Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Judaism, Middle East Report, Monotheistic Religions, Opinion, Recent Posts on July 20, 2010 - ט' אב תש"ע at 6:43 pm
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“…the right is showing that it may be more willing to redefine its paradigms than the Zionist left. And in the end it may confound Washington by proving more capable of peace-making than the architects of Oslo.”
A fascinating debate is entering Israel’s political mainstream on a once-taboo subject: the establishment of a single state as a resolution of the conflict, one in which Jews and Palestinians might potentially live as equal citizens. Surprisingly, those advocating such a solution are to be found chiefly on Israel’s political right.
The debate, which challenges the current orthodoxy of a two-state future, is rapidly exploding traditional conceptions about the Zionist right and left.
Most observers — including a series of US administrations — have supposed that Israel’s peace-makers are to be found exclusively on the Zionist left, with the right dismissed as incorrigible opponents of Palestinian rights.
In keeping with this assumption, the US president Barack Obama tried until recently to sideline the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyhau, Israel’s rightwing prime minister, and bolster instead Ehud Barak, his defence minister from the left-wing Labour party, and the opposition leader Tzipi Livni, of the centrist Kadima party.
But, as the Israeli right often points out, the supposedly “pro-peace” left and centre parties have a long and ignominious record in power of failing to advance Palestinian statehood, including during the Oslo process. The settler population, for example, grew the fastest during the short premiership of Mr Barak a decade ago.
What the new one-state debate reveals is that, while some on the right — and even among the settlers — are showing that they are now open to the idea of sharing a state with the Palestinians, the left continues to adamantly oppose such an outcome. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Middle East Report, Opinion, Recent Posts on July 20, 2010 - ט' אב תש"ע at 6:30 pm
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The Jakarta Post | Mon, 07/19/2010 4:28 PM (http://www.thejakartapost.com)
Dicky Christanto
Some point their finger to poverty, others the hostility of US troops in several Muslim countries, but for security analyst and former journalist Noor Huda Ismail, terrorism is mainly caused by the people’s failure to think critically.
“The culture that has been ingrained within the Jamaah Islamiyah [JI] environment is that members should be subservient to clerics.
As a result, members cannot think critically about clerics’ advice and teachings,” said Noor Huda during the launching of his first book last week.
Titled My Friend the Terrorist, the book provides first hand information on how a close friend of Noor Huda, who graduated from the Al-Mukmin Islamic traditional boarding school in Ngruki, Surakarta, in 1991, became a radical and joined militant groups such as JI.
Al-Mukmin, led by firebrand cleric Abu Bakar Ba’asyir, has been under the public spotlight after some of its alumni, both teachers and students, were found to be involved in a number of terrorist activities throughout the country.
The book follows the journey of Noor Huda and Utomo Pamungkas, widely known as Mubarok, a terrorist convict now serving a life sentence in prison for his involvement in the 2002 Bali bombings.
Huda and Mubarok were roommates when they were in Al-Mukmin. “After graduating from Al-Mukmin, I was heading to the West, meeting people from other religions and cultures, who used to be labeled as infidels by our clerics back then and I found that they didn’t fit this picture,” he said.
Meanwhile, Mubarok was led by his passion to study Islam from its original countries in the Middle East. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Islam, Middle East, Opinion, Recent Posts on July 20, 2010 - ט' אב תש"ע at 10:27 am
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Historical and Investigative Research – 18 July, 2010
by Francisco Gil-White
http://www.hirhome.com/israel/netanyahu_eng.htm
___________________________________________________________
Introduction
A few days ago, speaking to the Conference of Presidents of American Jewish Organizations, the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu made an interesting statement.
Malcolm Hoenlein, the executive vice-president, asked him about the “direct talks” and about “the final-status issues and especially about Jerusalem.” Netanyahu replied:
“I think that the connection to the Jewish people of Jerusalem is part and parcel of our connection to our land, and I think it, you all know that there are Jewish neighborhoods in Jerusalem that under any peace plan will remain where they are as part of Israel. I don’t think that is really contested and I think the last thing we should do is again pile on grievances and pre-conditions that prevent the joining of Israel’s leadership and the Palestinian leadership to resolve the problems.”[1]
Chiefs of State—and this Israeli prime minister especially—are careful when they speak in public. So let’s see. Netanyahu says that “there are Jewish neighborhoods in Jerusalem that under any peace plan will remain where they are as part of Israel,” and on that point he comments: “I don’t think that is really contested.” In other words, there are other Jerusalem neighborhoods that are under dispute, and these neighborhoods may be separated from Israel in the “final status” negotiations. Here is the confirmation: Netanyahu asserts that “the last thing we need to do is pile on… preconditions” to the talks between Israeli and Palestinian leaders. That is, we must not insist too much on the precondition of an undivided Jerusalem as capital of the Jewish State.
The Jewish Post and News interpreted Netanyahu’s words as we do here, and concluded in its heading that “Netanyahu Hints at Flexibility on Jerusalem.” In the body of the article they wrote: “The implication of Netanyahu’s remark — that other neighborhoods of Jerusalem may not remain “where they are,” becoming part of an eventual Palestinian state — was the first hint that the Israeli leader may be flexible on the subject of Jerusalem. Until now, Netanyahu has insisted that Jerusalem is not up for negotiation.”[2]
It is a pretty dramatic shift from “not up for negotiation” to “the last thing we should do is again pile on… pre-conditions.”
For those of you hoping to interpret that the negotiable Jerusalem neighborhoods are exclusively the Arab ones, I have bad news. Netanyahu did not say “the Jewish neighborhoods in Jerusalem, under any peace plan, will remain where they are as part of Israel,” but this: “there are Jewish neighborhoods in Jerusalem that under any peace plan will remain where they are as part of Israel,” and this is consistent with at least some Jewish neighborhoods being up for grabs.
Many in the Jewish community have been filled with shock and concern by all this. I think concern is called for but not the shock, for what Netanyahu does here is consistent with his political career. So that his behaviors will not elicit ‘shock’ in the future, we offer the following analysis. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Middle East Report, Opinion, Recent Posts on July 19, 2010 - ח' אב תש"ע at 7:08 pm
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By Israel Zwick, CN Publications, July 19, 2010
http://cnpublications.net/category/zwicks-picks/
Every schoolchild knows the story. The haughty hare challenges the tortoise to a race and the tortoise accepts. During the race, the overconfident hare takes a nap while the tortoise plods slowly along and reaches the finish line. This story has been attributed to a slave and storyteller named Aesop who lived in Ancient Greece during the 5th century BCE.
There are hundreds of such ancient fables that use animal characters to teach moral lessons. Throughout the years and throughout the world, these tales have been used to provide moral education for children. According to the Jewish Encyclopedia, these fables were known to the Talmudic sages and may have been the source for some of the 30 fables that appear in the Talmud. They have also inspired Jewish writers in the Middle Ages. The ambiguity of the stories inspired diverse interpretations that have contributed to their popularity and timelessness.
Today, we can use these stories to teach advocates for Israel how to respond to the incessant attacks against Israel from both friend and foe. The story of the tortoise and the hare teaches us that the goal of peace in the Middle East won’t be reached by pompous, inexperienced leaders who believe that they can accomplish in a few years what experienced statesmen failed to accomplish in the last 40 years. The goal will only be reached by plodding along slowly and applying years of peace education to promote acceptance, tolerance, and cooperative ventures that will facilitate peaceful coexistence. Pressuring the parties to sign a “peace agreement’ that they are not prepared for will only push the elusive goal further away from reach. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Fun Stuff, Middle East Report, Opinion, Recent Posts, Zwick's Picks on July 19, 2010 - ח' אב תש"ע at 12:03 am
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