by Hussein Ibish | Daily Beast,May 17, 2012

It’s easy to understand why so many people are giving up on negotiations and a two-state solution, and instead are looking for “creative alternatives.” Israeli-Palestinian talks are at an impasse. The two sides haven’t seemed this far apart since the second intifada. The number of settlers and settlements continues to baloon relentlessly. Israel’s government appears united behind recalcitrant policies, while the Palestinians appear hopelessly divided.

But any purported “creative alternatives” to a negotiated two-state solution need to be subjected to a simple litmus test before they can be taken seriously. They have to be plausibly acceptable to all parties that would need to agree in order for them to be realized. If any such “alternatives” are by definition unacceptable to any of the parties, then they’re not serious ideas. In most cases, they quickly reveal themselves to be thinly disguised versions of long-standing maximalist fantasies.

A man places a sticker on a car in Jerusalem. (Awad Awad / AFP / Getty Images)

Take, for instance, the perennial fantasy on the pro-Israeli right that “Jordan is Palestine” or that Egypt can somehow be induced to take responsibility for Gaza. Palestinians, Jordanians and Egyptians all categorically reject any such idea, so it can’t happen.

Similarly, in pro-Palestinian circles the idea of a South Africa-style “one-state” solution of a single entity for all Israelis and Palestinians, including refugees, based on "one-person one-vote," is a total nonstarter for the overwhelming majority of Israelis. So that, too, simply won’t happen.

Some of the most dangerous “creative alternatives” are being increasingly floated on the pro-Israeli right, especially the idea of a greater Israel including the occupied territories but without full or equal citizenship, or voting rights, for its Palestinian population. In other words, formalized, permanent apartheid.

Recent articles advocating or describing some version of such an approach have been published by MK Danny Danon, Rep. Joe Walsh, Jay Bushinsky, and Caroline Glick, among many others. This is also the clear implication of resolutions adopted by several US state legislatures and, apparently, the Republican National Committee.

There seems to be a real willingness on the pro-Israeli right to sacrifice Israel’s “democracy” in order to retain the West Bank, and reduce its “Jewish character” to despotic minority rule and unapologetic, discriminatory, ethnocracy.

Of course any effort to impose such a system would simply be to formalize what already exists, and has since 1967. It can’t possibly be anything but a recipe for further, intensified and unrelenting conflict since it deprives millions of Palestinians of their most basic human and political rights on a permanent basis.

Others have tried to elaborate alternative approaches that present themselves as more constructive and grounded in the understanding that nothing that is categorically rejected by one of the key parties can offer a conflict-ending solution.

Ami Ayalon, Orni Petruschka and Gilead Sher, writing in the New York Times, proposed another form of unilateralism, essentially proposing that Israel create provisional borders based on the West Bank separation barrier, end all settlement activity beyond those territories and in Arab parts of occupied East Jerusalem, and create a plan to relocate 100,000 settlers behind the wall. Palestinians would be tempted to see the imposition of this unilaterally-created “temporary” border as being, in effect, permanent, but the authors insist Israel should remain open to negotiating final status issues in the future.

A similar "alternative idea" has been floated in the past by the new Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Shaul Mofaz. He suggested creating “an independent, disarmed Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza” with “temporary borders” and negotiations on all final status issues as a first phase, to be followed by the implementation of agreements as a second phase.

Whatever the intentions behind such ideas, perceptions on the other side will be very difficult to manage. When the 2000 Camp David summit failed, my father asked me what I thought the Israelis would do. My response was immediate: over time, and carefully, they will seek to impose by force the borders Palestinians have rejected at the negotiating table. The creation of the separation barrier has added to widespread Arab concerns that Israel intends, and welcomes the opportunity for rationalizing, a unilaterally imposed “solution.”

But if they cannot be accepted, either immediately or over the long run, by the other side, none of these “creative alternatives” offer what a negotiated two state agreement does: a conflict-ending solution in which both sides have an equal and inescapable national imperative to uphold.

As Israel’s experiences in Gaza and southern Lebanon demonstrate, when there isn’t a party on the other side with a vested interest in making an arrangement work, unilateralism in this conflict provides no solutions whatsoever. By contrast, Israel’s peace treaties with Jordan and Egypt have been maintained by all sides, because they all have a stake in making them work.

Whatever “creative alternatives” might seem appealing during the current interregnum, remember all roads ultimately lead back to the negotiating table.

Reprinted from Daily Alert, May 16. 2012

• The Meaning of Nakba Day – Jonathan S. Tobin
  Nakba is an Arabic word which means disaster, and that is what those who participated in the protests consider the founding of the State of Israel on May 15, 1948. The focus on 1948 is significant. For those who claim the Middle East conflict is about borders or Jewish settlements in the West Bank, the prominence given Nakba commemorations ought to be an embarrassment. It highlights that the goal of the Palestinians isn’t an independent state alongside Israel. Their goal is to eradicate Israel and replace it with yet another Arab majority country.
      The Nakba narrative draws no distinction between the pre- and post-1967 borders. The Jewish presence within the internationally recognized borders of the State of Israel is treated as just as illegitimate as that of the settlers in the territories. This is not a minor point, because for the Palestinians, the desire for the descendants of the 1948 refugees to "return" to Israel is tantamount to demanding the dismantling of the Jewish state.
      The war that created the refugees was one started by Arabs whose goal was not to share the land but to prevent Jewish sovereignty on any part of it. That they and their descendants still regret this reversal of fortune may be understandable, but it is not a point on which they have any right to demand the world’s sympathy. (Commentary)
• For Jews from Arab Lands, a Different History of Displacement and Loss – Matti Friedman
  I have spent a great deal of time in the past four years interviewing people born and raised in Aleppo, Syria. Some are descended from families with roots in Aleppo going back more than two millennia, to Roman times. None of them lives there now. On November 30, 1947, a day after the UN voted to partition Palestine into two states, one for Arabs and one for Jews, mobs in Aleppo stalked Jewish neighborhoods, looting houses and burning synagogues.
      One man I interviewed remembered fleeing his home, a barefoot nine-year-old, moments before it was set on fire. Abetted by the government, the rioters burned 50 Jewish shops, five schools, 18 synagogues and an unknown number of homes. In Damascus, rioters killed 13 Jews, including eight children, in August 1948, and there were similar events in other Arab cities.
      At the time of the UN vote, there were about 10,000 Jews in Aleppo. By the mid-1950s there were 2,000, living in fear. Today there are none. Similar scripts played out across the Islamic world as some 850,000 Jews were forced from their homes. In Aleppo, Tripoli, Baghdad and elsewhere, the people who live in or around the Jews’ old homes still know who used to own them and how they left.
      Roughly half of the 6 million Jews in Israel today came from the Muslim world or are descended from people who did. The simple narrative of Nakba Day conveniently erases the uncomfortable truth that half of Israel’s Jews are there not because of the Nazis but because of the Arabs themselves. (Times of Israel)

Palestinians Riot on Nakba Day – Khaled Abu Toameh and Tovah Lazaroff
One Israeli soldier, three border policemen and 270 Palestinians were lightly hurt, mostly from tear gas inhalation, in clashes in the West Bank and eastern Jerusalem Tuesday as Palestinians marked the "Nakba," meaning "catastrophe," their loss to Israel in 1948. In Ramallah, children marched into Martyr Yasser Arafat Square beating drums and wearing black T-shirts that read "1948." PA representatives including Prime Minister Salam Fayyad led the rally. "The right of return is sacred and cannot be compromised," Fayyad told the crowd. (Jerusalem Post)

    See also Nakba Day Defanged – Mitch Ginsburg
On May 15, "Nakba Day" demonstrations were limited to the West Bank. Bassem Eid, a Palestinian human rights worker, attributed the relative calm to the state of Palestinian society, which he described as frustrated, fractured, tired and hopeless. "The back of Palestinian society has been broken by the Hamas-Fatah separation," he said, noting that within the West Bank, the rifts within Fatah were so deep there was no hope of any coordinated uprising. "There cannot be an intifada so long as we have an intrafada," he said. (Times of Israel)

    See also Israel: Palestinians Should Direct Anger at Their Own Leaders – Herb Keinon
Rather than demonstrating against Israel, the Palestinians should be directing their "Nakba Day" anger at the extremist Palestinian leadership that 64 years ago rejected any accommodation, Prime Minister Netanyahu’s spokesman Mark Regev said Tuesday. "The Palestinian leadership in 1947 and 1948 adopted an extremist and maximalist position. Unlike the Jewish leadership, they rejected partition and refused to accept a Jewish state even in truncated borders."  (Jerusalem Post)

“People are fed up with politics and are looking how to improve their daily lives. If they have skills, they can get work.”

by Kathleen Peratis | May 15, 2012 10:01 AM EDT

Gaza City, Gaza—

Is the two state solution dead? I don’t think so but the conversation is being radically transformed into one that no longer accepts the binary “two states or bust” paradigm and begins to imagine—or live—alternatives.

I spoke to young people, officials and activists in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza over the last two weeks.  I was surprised at what I heard.

Palestinian school children do their homework on candle light during a power cut in Gaza City. (Mohammed Abed / AFP / Getty Images)

A large chunk of the Gaza economy comes from international donations, money from UNHRW and other multilateral organizations.  A pretty young blogger in Gaza City, Jehan Al Farr, told me that these governmental programs for job creation are “nothing but machines that pull people in and suck out their creativity and motivation.”  True entrepreneurship, she says, occurs outside the box, not inside a donor-welfare society. I told her she sounded like a member of the Tea Party.  Having spent a year at a Colorado high school (she speaks perfect English), she knew exactly what I meant. She laughed and told me that she is fed up with politics (she is 25) and believes she and her generation can only end the occupation when they stop caring about it and instead, try to go about a normal life of book clubs and social events.  “No more death, no more blood.  Just focus on the positive.” The siege has become “more mental and internalized,” she said.  For her, the survival technique is evading that box that is affected by borders and the siegek with blogging and other IT enterprise. Gaza City hotelier Jawdat Al Khodary said much the same thing.  “People are fed up with politics and are looking how to improve their daily lives.  If they have skills, they can get work.”

These coping strategies and this hopefulness seem to me to be a lot of whistling in the dark.  Things look worse than they did six months ago when I was here last—more garbage on the streets, more closed shops, less construction.  And while Jehan told me she didn’t feel constrained by her sex at all, the statistics tell a different story. Everything that goes wrong for women in poor and depressed places happens here too. One trivial but stark visual was the offices of the Hamas-affiliated media group Airessaiah (print, web and radio station). The editor in chief, Wasam Afifa, regaled me with his liberal values and harsh critique of Hamas and then showed me around the offices. The main reporters’ space is large, light and airy; the women reporters’ room (at least there are some) is small dark and shabby. When I told Jehan and showed her the pictures I had taken, she shrugged and said, “Well, that is the culture.”

I also asked her about the lack of any palpable reaction on the street to the hunger strikers, the settlement of which was, on the day of our conversation, two days away.  She said she blogs about it, but as for activism in the old sense, there is none.  In fact, shop owners in Gaza City had previously been asked by local activists to close up for two hours in support of the hunger strikers. Hotelier Al Khodary told me that only two agreed to do so.  He himself thought the effort fatuous. The demonstration in Gaza City—about 1000 people—on the day the settlement was announced had been carefully managed by Hamas.

The West Bank too is remarkably quiet, apart from important but small-scale nonviolent resistance to the path of the security barrier.  I asked people in the West Bank and in Israel what they make of that. Are Palestinians just ground down from oppression, knowing any protest might be (and sometimes is) met with fierce Israeli opposition?  Is the footprint of military occupation getting a bit smaller, with fewer checkpoints and fewer nighttime raids? Is increased prosperity enough to make the “struggle” not worth the candle?

Palestinian Israeli human rights activist Ghaida Renawie-Zoabi  was stunned by my question and a little shamed by what looks like Palestinian passivity. She promised me that she will give much thought to this question, so I am staying tuned.

Khaled Sabawi, a young Canadian-born Palestinian entrepreneur in Ramallah, credits both apparent prosperity and exhaustion. And, he says, sounding what was becoming a familiar theme, he just wants to get down to business. He has given up thinking about one state-two states, and believes his people will gain their freedom through economic freedom and human rights, which are “more important than the flag.” He goes further and accuses Salam Fayyad and Abu Abbas of perpetuating the illusion of a dynamic Palestinian economy, which is in fact systemically dependent on donor aid. 

Regarding the continuing struggle for a Palestinian state, Sari Nusseibeh, now president of Al Quds University in East Jerusalem, made much the same point several years ago. Forget statehood for now, he urged.  Focus on human rights and improving day-to-day life. Nusseibeh was never a nationalist, and so he was always an odd duck in the Palestinian nationalist struggle, but this thesis marginalized him even more.

Yesterday, I had a perhaps historic conversation in Gaza with nine Islamists, eight of them Hamas members or supporters, in which we spoke for over two hours about the American Jewish community. We spoke of the anti-occupation tool of massive nonviolent resistance. They told me that just as the second intifada was not launched until Arafat approved it, no mass non-violent demonstrations will be allowed anywhere in Palestine until President Abbas gives his hekhsher. Which he will not, they assured me, knowing the risk that such demonstrations could turn violent and perhaps be directed against the Palestinian Authority itself.

What about mass protests in Israel?  Activists are gearing up for another summer of social protests focusing on economic inequality.  However, no one has confidence that the protest leaders will explicitly connect social gaps with the price of occupation. And more surprising to me, plenty of traditional lefties and long-time peace activists do not condemn that strategy.

Dan Goldenblatt, new director of the Israel Palestine Center for Resarch and Information (IPCRI), told me that all his life, he had believed it the “two states or bust” paradigm.  Now, he too and a group of intellectuals he is leading are at least start imagining other alternatives, alternatives that will afford human rights and dignity to Palestinians.

I for one have not given up hope, but I believe the keys, or at least one of them, is in the hands of the Palestinians themselves, in the form of the very collective action that seems so out of reach—but is it?

My hotel in Gaza City has 80 rooms.  Eight are occupied.  There are blackouts repeatedly throughout the day and night and blocks of time with no electricity at all, due largely to the decreased fuel supplies from Egypt. A meeting I had on the twelfth floor of an office building could not be scheduled in the morning because there is no electricity until 11 AM.

Gazans, who have been tolerant of siege-related deprivation because they regard it as collective punishment from Israel, are now blaming Hamas for the current fuel crisis.  “After five years, the government has a responsibility,” Afifa, the newspaper editor, said.

If I ever heard a universal message, that was it.

©2011 The Newsweek/Daily Beast Company LLC

The Decade for Peace in Israel-Palestine

By Peter T. Coleman, Ph.D.

Created May 14 2012 – 6:38am

Having just returned from a visit to Israel where I spoke at a meeting of government scholars which included several negotiators who had been directly involved in past peace processes, one thing is clear: peace with the Palestinians seems impossible. The message I heard was that the Israeli government is stuck; oriented, incentivized and institutionalized for war, politically hand-cuffed by its own internal party-politics, uninformed about their own history of negotiations with the Palestinians because of this infighting, and clueless about how to proceed on the main issues of contention. It seems that it is not simply that the Netanyahu government won’t negotiate for peace, they can’t. Peace is not just off the table, there is no table.

This is at a time when unemployment for the 4 million Palestinians living in the territories is at roughly 30 percent (more than 40 percent in Gaza), exports have flat-lined and imports have skyrocketed for 10 years, the ratio of Palestinian deaths to Israeli deaths since 2000 is 6:1 (10:1 for children), and the military actions and settlements of Israel have called into question the legitimacy of the current government, isolating them increasingly internationally. Yet the barrier wall constructed around the territories has reduced violence against Jews in Israel substantially, leading to a creeping sense of complacency for many Israeli citizens. Yet Israel will soon be exposed to increasing danger from long-range missiles able to hit its large population centers. In other words, the status quo of the conflict and occupation today feels like the only option and is completely unsustainable. That’s the bad news.

The good news is that radical change is today unfolding everywhere in the Middle East. Beyond the turmoil of the Arab Spring we are now seeing televised political debates in Egypt (the first ever in the region), civil war in neighboring Syria, signs of life in the multiparty talks over Iran’s nuclear program, and this week thousands of young protestors again taking the streets in Tel Aviv under the slogan “Returning the state to its citizens”.

Why is such tumult in the region good news?

Because radical change can be good for peace in areas that have been stuck in intractable conflict for decades.

Experts estimate that about five percent of international conflicts become intractable: highly destructive, enduring and resistant to multiple good-faith attempts at resolution. These conflicts seem to develop a power of their own that is inexplicable and total, driving groups to act in ways that go against their best interests and sow the seeds of their own ruin. And although uncommon, they last an average of 36 years and have accounted for 49 percent of international wars since 1816, 76 percent of civil wars since 1946, and evoke disproportionate levels of expense, misery, hopelessness and instability. What is particularly daunting about this 5 percent of protracted conflicts is their substantial resistance to resolution. In these settings, the traditional methods of diplomacy, negotiation and mediation – and even military victory – seem to have little impact on the persistence of the conflict. In fact, there is some evidence that these strategies may only make matters worse.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is such a conflict. An immensely complicated hundred-year-old conflict that today operates and is reinforced across a multitude of issues, time periods, stakeholders and lands. It has become what Stephen Cohen, founder of the Institute for Middle East Peace and Development describes as “the crucible of multiple conflicts in the region and multiple grievances that feed upon one another and that produce reoccurring eruptions of violence.” Unfortunately, every large-scale effort at peacemaking to date – at Oslo, Wye, Camp David, Taba, Geneva, all 26 proposals and counting – have been overwhelmed by the conflict and seem to have only contributed to peace fatigue.

So it is good news is that the status quo is unsustainable.

Fortunately, the resolution of other seemingly intractable conflicts elsewhere in the world offer Israel-Palestine important lessons, particularly in light of the changes currently taking place in the region. In South Africa, Mozambique, Liberia, and Northern Ireland, we witnessed conflicts that were locked in violent cycles for decades, even generations, where many attempts at peacemaking failed, and where, eventually, peace emerged.

What have we learned?

Leaders can capitalize on current regional instability. In studies by Paul Diehl and Gary Goetz of the approximately 850 enduring conflicts that occurred throughout the world between 1816 to 1992, over three-quarters of them were found to have ended within ten years of a major political shock (world wars, civil wars, significant changes in territory and power relations, regime change, independence movements, or transitions to democracy). Events such as those erupting in the Middle East today promote optimal conditions for dramatic realignment of sociopolitical systems.

For example, ten years ago 9/11 shocked the world, and on its heels the U.S. invaded Afghanistan and Iraq, deposed their leaders, and triggered an unprecedented level of turmoil and instability in the region. Such events, as horrible and costly as they are, provide ideal conditions for repositioning of socio-political systems, even those well beyond the borders of the countries directly affected. However, the effects of such destabilization are often not immediately apparent and do not ensure radical or positive change; it is therefore only a necessary but insufficient condition for peace. Nevertheless, instability does present unique opportunities to steer the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in a new direction.

Envision complex networks of causation. Although the sources and responsibility for the conflict is always under dispute, at this point they are almost irrelevant. For over time such conflicts gather new problems and grievances and disputants which combine in complicated ways to increase their intractability. It helps to understand this, even to map-out the different parts of the conflict, in order to get a better sense of what is operating. This is particularly important when the polarizing tide of Us vs. Them becomes strong and leads to the oversimplification of the sources of the conflict (‘Them!’).

Decouple the conflict. Because the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is embedded in a complex network of independent but related conflicts, change will require a period in which it delinks from other, more distant conflicts. For instance, the Arab-Israeli conflict became less severe as Jordan chose not to take part in the 1973 war and Egypt made peace with Israel.

Work from the bottom up. Shifting focus from top leaders negotiating global ideals and principles (territorial ownership, sovereignty) to community leaders problem-solving achievable, on-the-ground goals can loosen the conflict’s stranglehold on the peace process and ignite it from the bottom up. During the round-table negotiations over solidarity in Poland, focusing first on moving the practical aspects of the society forward (functional health care, agriculture, transportation, tourism, etc.) went a long way toward a peaceful transition. Working at a lower level, while temporarily circumventing the global issues of power, control and identity, can help to initiate an altogether new emergent dynamic.

Welcome weak power. Case studies of intractable conflicts like Mozambique in the 1980s-90s where sustainable resolutions eventually emerged have taught us that forceful interventions by powerful authorities or third-parties rarely help for long. Paradoxically, they have shown that it is often weaker third-parties who employ softer forms of power (are trust-worthy, unthreatening, reliable, and without a strong independent agenda) who often are most effective as catalysts for change.

Support existing islands of agreement. Harvard Law Professor Gabriella Blum has found that during many protracted conflicts, the disputing parties often maintain areas in their relationship where they continue to communicate and cooperate, despite the severity of the conflict. In international affairs this can occur with some forms of trade, civilian exchanges or medical care. Bolstering such islands can not only mitigate tensions and help contain conflict, but also offers some of the most promising sources of constructive change for moving forward toward peace.

Rethink cause and effect. Research has also shown that the changes brought on by destabilizing shocks to systems often do not manifest right away. In fact with intractable international conflicts, changes can take up to ten years after a major political shock before their effects take hold. Thus, conflicts of this nature require us to rethink our tendency to think in terms of immediate cause-and-effect, and to understand that changes in some complex systems operate in radically different time frames.

Work incrementally to affect radical change. The real work for the advocates of peace, justice and freedom in the region, the Arab world, the U.S. and the international community begins now. This entails essentially two tasks. First, the arduous work of bolstering or establishing a complex array of institutions, mechanisms and social norms – through grassroots NGOs, schools, government initiatives and international agencies – which encourage tolerance, cooperation, inclusion and justice. But in parallel each community must begin to actively dismantle the institutions and mechanisms that have for decades fomented inequality, resentment, exclusion and contempt. The effects of this work, like those of political shocks, may take a decade or more to surface. But without them, the status quo of Israel-Palestine will soon detonate.

Peter T. Coleman, PhD is a psychologist on faculty at Teachers College and The Earth Institute at Columbia University, and author of the books: The Five Percent: Finding Solutions to Seemingly Impossible Conflicts (2011) and The Psychological Components of Sustainable Peace (2012).

Copyright Peter T. Coleman

Source URL: http://www.psychologytoday.com/node/95613

Links:
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[2] http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-five-percent
[3] http://www.psychologytoday.com/taxonomy/term/1063
[4] http://www.psychologytoday.com/tags/barrier-wall
[5] http://www.psychologytoday.com/tags/complacency
[6] http://www.psychologytoday.com/tags/conflict-resolution
[7] http://www.psychologytoday.com/tags/government-scholars
[8] http://www.psychologytoday.com/tags/infighting-2
[9] http://www.psychologytoday.com/tags/israeli-citizens
[10] http://www.psychologytoday.com/tags/israeli-government-0
[11] http://www.psychologytoday.com/tags/jews-in-israel
[12] http://www.psychologytoday.com/tags/legitimacy
[13] http://www.psychologytoday.com/tags/military-actions
[14] http://www.psychologytoday.com/tags/negotiators
[15] http://www.psychologytoday.com/tags/netanyahu-government
[16] http://www.psychologytoday.com/tags/nuclear-program-0
[17] http://www.psychologytoday.com/tags/palestinian-deaths
[18] http://www.psychologytoday.com/tags/palestinians-and-israelis
[19] http://www.psychologytoday.com/tags/party-politics-0
[20] http://www.psychologytoday.com/tags/peace
[21] http://www.psychologytoday.com/tags/peace-processes
[22] http://www.psychologytoday.com/tags/political-debates
[23] http://www.psychologytoday.com/tags/population-centers-0
[24] http://www.psychologytoday.com/tags/radical-change
[25] http://www.psychologytoday.com/tags/range-missiles
[26] http://www.psychologytoday.com/tags/signs-life-1

Minister Gilad Erdan’s proposal to cut off Strip’s electricity supply is logical, not racist

Hanoch Daum, YNet News, April 14, 2012

Many people are apparently unaware of the history of the past 20 years, and we can assume that they did not read the words written by Dennis Ross, Shlomo Ben Ami, Gilad Sher, Dan Meridor, Bill Clinton and others.

These people also did not hear apparently what Ehud Olmert and Ehud Barak had to say about the six times where Israel offered a comprehensive peace agreement, which included the division of Jerusalem, but the Palestinians rejected it.

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For that reason, these people are now happy to slam Minister Gilad Erdan and explain that he is a primitive, ignorant person for suggesting to cut off Gaza’s electricity supply in case of a power shortage in Israel. After all, the details are of no significance for these people.

So what if a local power plant in Gaza, which is supposed to provide about half of the Strip’s electricity supply, has been paralyzed in recent months because of a conflict between Hamas and Fatah.

So what if Hamas activists get extra electricity for free, and so what if Israel cannot assume responsibility for the injustice done by the Hamas government to residents of the Gaza Strip, just like Israel is not responsible for President Bashar Assad’s crimes in Syria.

So what if 4.5% of Israel’s electricity supply is directed to Gaza, a place that Israel left some seven years ago. So what if Israeli citizens were expelled from their homes in order to enable the Palestinians to live in Gaza under an autonomous government, a move that prompted rocket attacks on southern Israel residents.

So what if Minister Erdan brought an expert delegation from Gaza to Israel in order to learn about desalination, saving energy and other issues, and the Ministry he heads treats the environment as an issue that cuts across borders.

Why not blame him for racism when we can?

It is noteworthy in this context that the Jewish people constitute the ultimate success of an indigenous people reclaiming sovereignty and rights in their historic space. Jews have been there from the time of the Bible.

by Shoshana Bryen
American Thinker
May 11, 2012

In early 2011, President Obama announced that the United States would sign the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Now the U.N. wants us to give Mt. Rushmore to the Indians. James Anaya, U.N. special rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples, spent twelve days in the U.S. meeting with representatives of Native Americans. Returning to Geneva, he urged the government to turn over control of lands considered sacred to the tribes, including the Mt. Rushmore site.

It was bound to happen.

With typical overstatement, the president said as he announced U.S. participation in the Declaration, “The aspiration it affirms, including respect for the institutions and rich cultures of native peoples, are ones we must always seek to fulfill.”

Always? Americans happily adapt and adopt parts of other people’s cultures (Chinese food unlike anything served in Beijing, pizza Italians wouldn’t recognize, St. Patrick’s Day and Cinco de Mayo parties) and respect other parts (forms of dress, holy days and fasting for Ramadan). But there are aspects of “native” cultures that simply do not warrant respect: honor killings, female genital mutilation, slavery, stripping trees for cooking fuel, clubbing baby seals, and governance by the sword come to mind.

The Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples is a prescription for endless warfare. “Indigenous peoples have the right to the lands, territories and resources which they have traditionally owned, occupied or otherwise used or acquired,” according to Article 26. Article 28 states that qualified groups “have the right to redress,” which can include “restitution” or “just, fair and equitable compensation” for land or resources that have been “confiscated, taken (or) occupied.”

Applied to American Indian tribes, it not only covers Mt. Rushmore, but also may include reparations and mineral rights.

Applied to Palestinians and Kurds, not to mention minorities from Azeris in Iran to Uighurs in China to Armenians, Hmong tribesmen, and Guatemalan Indians, it could wreak havoc.

The Kurds form a tribal/national grouping that spans Iraq, Iran, Turkey, and Syria. They are unquestionably an “indigenous people” with a distinct language and culture. Is the United States prepared to support border changes to allow them the right of self-determination? American lives were expended in the quest for a unitary Iraq, and we supported Turkey’s determination not to allow Kurds to secede during the PKK war. But how can we deny the Kurds while supporting a Palestinian “right to self determination”?

This raises the question of whether the Palestinians are actually a separate grouping outside their multigenerational refugee status and determination to erase Israel. Certainly they are less separated from West Bank, Israeli, and Jordanian Arabs than the Kurds are from Turks and the Arabs of Iraq. Palestinians are largely descended from the people of the Ottoman vilayet of Syria and the British Mandate. But Jordan’s King Abdullah is a Hashemite from the Hejaz of Arabia.

This in turn raises the question of which set of people is the “indigenous” one, and which is the usurper. How long does it take before a former indigenous people are lost to history and their usurpers become the new indigenous people? Those who call themselves “Palestinians” are not the descendants of the indigenous Philistines; they are the descendants of Arab tribes that arrived in the 7^th century.

Today, one of the few things upon which Hamas and Fatah agree is that all of Israel and Jordan are “occupied” Palestinian territory. While it is surely pushing for the establishment of Palestine in part of the old British Mandate territory, is the United States prepared to turn Jordan over to its “indigenous peoples” so they can have the rest of it? Or replace Israel with “Palestine”?

It is noteworthy in this context that the Jewish people constitute the ultimate success of an indigenous people reclaiming sovereignty and rights in their historic space. Jews have been there from the time of the Bible. Most but not all of them were expelled in the early part of the last millennium, but Jews maintained religious, cultural, linguistic, and tribal ties to the land until the establishment of the Third Jewish Commonwealth in 1948.

The conferring of “rights” on “peoples” implies a corresponding debt to be paid to them by others. Doing so without responsibility (the Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples is non-binding) is a prescription for demands by people determined to wrest something from others who may not be prepared to pay or even acknowledge that the debt is real. And the debt may not be real.

Far from a harmless exercise in multicultural sensitivity, the Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples sets the stage for an endless series of “small wars” that may have big consequences. Mt. Rushmore is only the beginning.

Palestinians fighting Israel and each other put peace out of reach

By Rep. Joe Walsh

Thursday, May 3, 2012 , Washington Times

It has been 64 years since the United Nations General Assembly approved the Partition Plan for Palestine and the struggle to implement a "two-state solution" began. Today, we are no closer to that end. That reminds me of the definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. By that definition, everyone who continues to cling to the delusion of a two-state solution is insane. There is no such thing as a two-state solution. It cannot work, it has not worked, and it will not work.

The only viable solution for the Middle East is a one-state solution: one contiguous Israeli state from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. There will not and cannot be lasting peace in the Middle East until then.

Ever since the Palestinians and Arab countries refused to accept the Mandate for Palestine in the 1920s, the original two-state solution, the international community has been catering to Palestinian and Arab demands for a divided Israel. The Palestinians and Arabs, however, repeatedly have rejected those proposals, including the 1947 U.N. Partition Plan, which they are using to justify their demands for a divided Israel. Enough is enough. Why is the international community continuing to kowtow to these demands when, for 64 years, the Palestinians and Arabs have worked against peace? Israel is the only country in the region that has shown that it wants and will work toward peace. Since 1947, the Palestinians and Arab countries have fought more than five wars against Israel over territory, and at each opportunity, a victorious Israel has returned land it acquired in exchange for peace.

The Palestinians have broken their word again and again. They continue to fire rockets directly at innocent Israeli families and children, and they have betrayed the fundamental tenet of the two-state solution they tout by cutting Israel out of negotiations and going directly to the United Nations. Moreover, the Palestinian Authority (PA) continues to incite violence against Israelis. It pays the salaries of imprisoned terrorists convicted of killing Israelis and glorifies suicide bombers at public events. The PA’s magazine Zayzafuna recently presented Hitler as a role model for Palestinian youth because of all the Jews he killed.

Most important, how can a people divided between radically different and violently opposed factions possibly govern a single state overnight? Right now, the Palestinians are divided between Hamas in the Gaza Strip and Fatah in the West Bank. Those factions fought a civil war no more than five years ago and are fundamentally irreconcilable. Who would govern a unified Palestinian state?

The two-state solution can never work when one of the domains, the Palestinian state, does not even acknowledge the other state’s (Israel’s) right to exist and has as its entire purpose in life wiping Israel off the face of the earth. Never will peace come when one side possesses such hate and routinely expresses that hate through violence and blood. It is time to let go of the two-state-solution insanity and adopt the only solution that will bring true peace to the Middle East: a single Israeli state from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. Israel is the only country in the region dedicated to peace and the only power capable of stable, just and democratic government in the region.

This solution is the best for everyone, especially the Palestinians. They will trade their two corrupt and inept governments and societies for a stable, free and prosperous one. Those Palestinians who wish to may leave their Fatah- and Hamas-created slums and move to the original Palestinian state: Jordan. The British Mandate for Palestine created Jordan as the country for the Palestinians. That is the only justification for its creation. Even now, 75 percent of its population is of Palestinian descent. Those Palestinians who remain behind in Israel will maintain limited voting power but will be awarded all the economic and civil rights of Israeli citizens. They will be free to raise families, start businesses and live in peace, all of which are impossible under current Arab rule.

The two-state solution has failed. Only a one-state solution – a single, undivided Israel – will bring peace, security and prosperity to Israelis and Palestinians alike. It’s time for the United States to lead toward this. For more than 60 years, though peace has been the goal, common sense and basic human morality have been ignored. So peace has never come. We’ve had it backward all these years: The goal should not be peace at all costs. The goal should be a strong, free and prosperous Israel. The United States should not be some honest broker between two sides, but rather should stand publicly with one side – Israel. Then, and only then, will real peace truly come.

Rep. Joe Walsh is an Illinois Republican.

By BRUCE ACKS
May 1, 2012

Most Palestinians and Israelis, Jews and Muslims, could live in secure peace with each other, if only their leaders gave them a real chance.

Almost every visitor to Jerusalem knows about the Central Bus Station. It is beautifully built, made from white Jerusalem stone, and a large clock sits in the center against a background of dark blue windows. What many tourists (and Israelis) do not know, however, is that there is actually another Central Bus Station in Jerusalem. This station is not as grand, fancy, or comfortable as the first, but its buses go to destinations that only they can reach.
This is the Central Bus Station in east Jerusalem. For almost 30 years, on dozens of visits to Jerusalem, I was ignorant of its existence. Yet on many occasions I stood less than 100 feet away from it. On my most recent visit, solely by chance, I finally discovered it.
One day, after touring the Old City, I exited through the Damascus Gate. That day, curiosity led me to explore Nablus Road, which pretty much juts straight out from the gate. To my astonishment, I encountered an active and lively bus station. Learning about this station led to a most amazing journey.
It is amazing how one can live in complete ignorance for so many years. Although I am a curious person by nature, I never really wondered how the nearly 300,000 Arab residents of east Jerusalem get around. Egged buses are certainly not commonly seen on the streets of east Jerusalem. So, if they do not walk, and do not have a car, how do they traverse the “other” half of Jerusalem? The answer is east Jerusalem bus lines.
The station, however, does not only deal with intercity travel. Buses also depart to all the areas of the West Bank that are under Palestinian control. For less than seven and a half shekels, you can find yourself walking around in Ramallah. The ride, which takes less than an hour, takes you to a completely different world.

It is strange how most tourists in Jerusalem are likelier to travel to Eilat (312 km.) or Meron (197 km.), than to a city only 14 km. away.
Why would someone travel so far north to see the grave of Rabbi Shimon bar Yohai, the second most visited religious site in Israel, when it is far closer and cheaper to visit Joseph’s tomb in Nablus (63km.)? Of course, traveling that short distance can be quite difficult. Not because of the walls, checkpoints or barriers, rather, the most difficult hurdle to overcome is psychological.
As an American Jew, an ordained rabbi, and a fervent Zionist since early childhood, my focus was never on Palestinian cities. For many years, I even believed that the term “Palestinian” was an invented description hijacked by the Arab inhabitants of the West Bank and Gaza.
Discovering the ease and simplicity of travel to Ramallah led me to want to go there myself. Usually, however, travel is more enjoyable with company. Therefore, I started thinking about who would accompany me. I contacted everyone in Jerusalem I knew, but not even one person was willing to join me on this trip. I went anyway.
The data show that reluctance to travel to Palestinian-controlled areas is common. Unfortunately, finding exact statistics for tourism in the Palestinian areas is extremely difficult.
Finding data for the same periods in both Israel and Palestinian cities is that much more difficult.
However, 2008 is one year where a semblance of data is available for both locations.
That year, the total number of tourists arriving in Israel was 2.6 million people. Jewish tourists accounted for 25 percent of that number, or roughly 650,000 people.
For the same year, an estimated 1.3 million tourists visited the West Bank. How many of those tourists were Jewish? It is hard to know, but data collected in Bethlehem, one of the most visited Palestinian cities, during the months of July and August indicate that only about 1% of tourists were Jewish. Such data were unavailable for Ramallah or other Palestinian cities, but they can be assumed to be roughly similar.
Why would people who spend countless dollars travelling the world ignore a vibrant and interesting culture that is so close to Jerusalem? Practically every tourist to Israel visits Jerusalem. The Western Wall is in fact the most visited tourist site in Israel. Once in Jerusalem, why do these same tourists not even consider traveling the short distance to Ramallah, or any of the other Palestinian-controlled cities? I think the answer, in a single word, is fear. Of course, nothing in life is as simple as one word. For Israeli citizens it is actually illegal to enter Palestinian-controlled areas.
Though it is not the Palestinians who prohibit their entry, but the government of Israel. Still, the multitudes of foreign Jewish tourists who visit Israel do not entertain the idea of visiting Ramallah, or even Nablus and Jericho for that matter.
The last two cities have significance to Judaism. They include, respectively, the burial site of Joseph and the Prophet Elisha’s well (as described in the Bible), among other sites. Even if the tourist was completely uninterested in anything Palestinian, there are enough sites important to Judaism to justify traveling there.
Jews travel to Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco and other Arab countries to visit Jewish heritage sites. Yet the thought of visiting sites that are less than an hour away does not cross their mind.
What prevents them? Why would none of my American friends join me? In fact, most told me I was foolish to go, and some even predicted my death. Again, I think the reason is unfounded fear. For so many years, Palestinian and Israeli leaders have been demonizing the other side that it has become very difficult to differentiate fact from fiction.
The only emotion that exists now is blind fear. Is it possible, perhaps, that Palestinians would welcome Jewish tourists, especially given the economic boost that they provide to the Palestinian economy? I had a positive and welcoming experience in all the Palestinian areas that I visited. Over a few days, I traveled to Ramallah, Nablus, Bethlehem and two refugee camps. Not once was I intimidated or frightened. In most places, I was greeted with open arms, and the locals eagerly directed me to the sites I sought. I even met two English-speaking Palestinian university students who gladly accompanied me to Nablus in a shared taxi, and made sure that I saw the important sites, such as Joseph’s tomb.
I believe that both sides have become so used to thinking in broad, overarching terms, that the common, individual person has been forgotten. Does every single Israeli or Palestinian like each other? Probably not. But most, I believe, could get along just fine. Most are able to view each other as fellow human beings. Most can interact with each other without being afraid that they will be murdered because of their religion or nationality.
Perhaps, most importantly, most Palestinians and Israelis, Jews and Muslims, could live in secure peace with each other, if only their leaders gave them a real chance.

The writer, a frequent visitor to Israel, is an ordained rabbi and practicing social worker who lives in Brooklyn, New York.

by Khaled Abu Toameh
April 26, 2012 at 5:00 am

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3035/pro-palestinian-anti-israel

It would also help immensely of these activists came to the West Bank and Gaza Strip to offer advice on, and help in building, proper government institutions, and in combatting administrative and financial corruption. But as far as many of the pro-Palestinian activists in the West Bank and Gaze are concerned, the interests of the Palestinians are not as important as hating Israel.

Pro-Palestinian groups and individuals in the US and Europe are doing Palestinians injustice by devoting all their energies only against Israel.

There is a feeling in the West Bank and Gaza Strip that most of these groups and individuals are more interested in campaigning against Israel than helping the Palestinians.

Being pro-Palestinian does not necessarily mean that one also has to be anti-Israel.

The pro-Palestinian camp in the West should raise its voice against violations of human rights and media freedoms under the Palestinian Authority and Hamas.

In the past few weeks, six Palestinian journalists, bloggers and cartoonists were arrested by security forces belonging to the Palestinian government in the West Bank.

The pro-Palestinian activists around the world chose to turn a blind eye to the ongoing crackdown on freedom of expression in the West Bank.

They also failed — even refused — to condemn the Palestinian Authority government’s decision to block web sites that are critical of Palestinian leaders in the West Bank.

The pro-Palestinian activists in the West also refuse to examine what is happening under Hamas in the Gaza Strip. They apparently do not care, or do not want to see, that there are executions, arbitrary arrests, and assaults against women and torture in Hamas prisons.

The pro-Palestinian activists and organizations also do not seem to care if the Palestinian Authority and Hamas are brainwashing Palestinian children and filling their minds and hearts with hatred.

Those who care about the Palestinians should come to the Gaza Strip and work toward promoting human rights under Hamas — of children, women, and journalists.

It would help immensely if hundreds of pro-Palestinian activists came to the West Bank and Gaza Strip to teach Palestinian children English and expose them to the benefits of democracy and Western values, such as equal justice under law, free speech and a free press, and financial transparency and accountability

It would also help immensely if these activists came to the West Bank and Gaza Strip to offer advice on, and help in building, proper government institutions, and in combatting administrative and financial corruption.

But as far as many of the pro-Palestinian activists in the West are concerned, the interests of the Palestinians are not as important as hating Israel.

Anti-Israel messages and campaigns serve only the radicals in this region who do not want either peace or coexistence.

The time has come for the emergence of a genuine pro-Palestinian camp in the West that would focus less on Israel and more on helping the Palestinians.

By Caroline Glick, April 27, 2012

Israel is a great country and a great nation. Zionism is in. Judaism is in. Post-Zionism is out. Post-Judaism is out. It’s taken decades, but Israel is finally learning not to hate itself

JewishWorldReview.com |You can learn a lot about a nation’s health by watching how it celebrates its national holidays. In Israel’s case, compare how we celebrated our fiftieth Independence Day in 1998 to what celebrations involve today.

During the 1990s, Israel’s elite took a vacation from reality and history and they brought much of the public with them. Then foreign minister Shimon Peres said that history was overrated. The so-called "New Historians," who rummaged through David Ben Gurion’s closet looking for skeletons were the toast of the academic world. Radicals like Yossi Beilin, Shulamit Aloni and Avrum Burg were dictating government policy. The media, the entertainment establishment, and the Education Ministry embraced and massively promoted plays, movies, television shows, songs, dances, art and books that "slayed sacred cows."

Everywhere you turned, post-Zionism was in. Post-Judaism was in. And Zionism and Judaism were both decidedly out.

As he is today, in 1998 Binyamin Netanyahu was Prime Minister, and then as now there were prominent voices seeking to blame him for the absence of peace and every other terrible blight on the planet.

In 1998, the government invested a fortune in marking Israel’s 50th Independence Day. The main official celebration was a massive affair called Jubilee Bells that took place at Teddy Stadium in Jerusalem. More than two thousand performers participated. But rather than serve as an event that unified Israeli society in celebration of fifty years of sovereign freedom, the event exposed just how far Israel’s political and cultural elite were willing to go in attacking basic societal values.

The Bat Sheva Dance Troupe was scheduled to participate in the program and present a dance set to the traditional Passover song "Echad mi yodea," (Who knows one). The song contains 13 stanzas that praise the Almighty, praise Jewish law, and outline the Jewish life cycle. In the number Bat Sheva was scheduled to perform, the dancers come on stage dressed as ultra Orthodox Jewish men and by the end of the song, all they are wearing is underwear.

The choreography enraged members of Netanyahu’s cabinet including then Education Minister Yitzhak Levy. They insisted that the program shouldn’t contain material that insulted sectors of Israeli society. The organizers tried to forge a compromise. But the dancers chose to boycott festival.

Israel’s cultural and media establishment expressed shock and horror at what they viewed as the government’s attempt to infringe on artistic freedom. The Association of Israeli Artists demanded that a public commission be formed to ensure that the government would be unable to interfere in artistic freedom in the future. Major cultural icons declared cultural war against religious Jews.

The question of whether the dance was appropriate for an official, state financed celebration of Independence Day was never asked. So too, no one asked whether a dance portraying ultra-Orthodox Jews moving sensuously to a traditional Jewish song while taking off their clothes reflected the values of society.

To understand the distance Israel has traveled since then, consider Tuesday night’s Memorial Day ceremony at Rabin Square in Tel Aviv. None of the performers attacked their fellow Israelis. And the best received artist and song was Mosh Ben Ari and his rendition of Psalm 121 — A Song of Ascent. The psalm, which praises the Almighty as the eternal guardian of Israel became the unofficial anthem of Operation Cast Lead in Gaza in 2008-2009. And Ben Ari’s rendition of the song propelled the dreadlock bedecked, hoop earring wearing world music artist into superstardom in Israel.

It was impossible to imagine Pslam 121 or any other traditional Jewish poem or prayer being performed as anything other than an object of scorn in 1998. Back then, it would have been impossible to contemplate a crowd of tens of thousands of non-religious Israelis reverently singing along as Ben Ari crooned, "My help is from G0d/ Maker of Heaven and Earth/ He will not allow your foot to falter/ Your Guardian will not slumber/ Behold he neither slumbers nor sleeps – the Guardian of Israel."

It’s not that the crowd would have necessarily booed him off the stage. He simply never would have been allowed on the stage to begin with. The 1990s was the decade that launched Aviv Gefen, the most prominent secular draft evader to stardom.

Israel is no longer in the throes of an adolescent rebellion. It has regained its senses. True, its celebrities look like Ben Ari and not like Naomi Shemer. But the message is the same. Israel is a great country and a great nation. Zionism is in. Judaism is in. Post-Zionism is out. Post-Judaism is out.

When last year a group of performers announced they would boycott the Ariel Center for Performing Arts, the public reacted with anger and disgust, not understanding. Fearing a loss of state funding, their theater bosses quickly sought to distance themselves from the performers.

Israel’s return to its Zionist roots is the greatest cultural event of the last decade. It is also an event that occurred under the radar screen of the rest of the world. No one outside the country seems to have noticed at all.

The outside world’s failure to take note of Israel’s cultural shift owes to its failure to recognize the significance of the failure of the peace process with the Palestinians on the one hand and the failure of Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza on the other hand. The demise of the peace process at Camp David in July 2000 and the terror war that followed launched the Israeli public on its path away from its radical post-Zionist rebellion and back to its Zionist roots. The failure of the withdrawal from Gaza, and the international community’s response to Operation Cast Lead marked the conclusion of the journey.

The Oslo peace process was based on the radical belief that it is possible to make peace by empowering terrorists and giving them land, political legitimacy, money and guns. To embrace this nonsense, the public had to be willing to tolerate the notion that there was something unjust about the Zionist revolution. Because if Zionism and the cause of Jewish national liberation are just, then it is impossible to justify empowering the PLO, a terrorist movement dedicated to the destruction of Israel and the delegitimization of Zionism.

Most Israelis never adopted the post-Zionist narrative. But they did accept the doctrine of appeasement. And they shared the belief that if appeasement failed, the world would rally to Israel’s side.

Consequently, the beginning of society’s awakening to the lie of post-Zionism at the heart of the peace process was a function not only of the massive Palestinian terror onslaught that began after Yasser Arafat rejected peace and statehood at Camp David. It was also a function of the August 2000 UN Durban Conference and its aftermath in which the international community rallied to the Palestinians’ side. The latter demonstrated that just as Israel’s transfer of land and guns to the PLO had endangered the lives of its citizens, Israel’s conferral of political legitimacy on the PLO endangered the international standing of the country.

The lesson that Israelis took from the failure of the peace process was that Israel has no Palestinian partner for peace. And until the Palestinians change, Israel has no one to talk to. While a slight majority of Israelis still support partitioning the land between Israel and a Palestinian state, the overwhelming majority of Israelis believe that Israel has no one to make peace with and therefore no possibility of successfully partitioning the land.

This is not the lesson that foreigners took. From Bill Clinton to George W. Bush to Tony Blair to Barack Obama to Nicolas Sarkozy, foreign leaders have insisted that the Oslo process had nearly succeeded and that its failure was a fluke. The most the parts of the international community that are not completely anti-Israel have been willing to grant about the failure of the peace process is that it failed due to a lack of courage. By this telling, the problem isn’t the concept of appeasing terrorists with land, guns and legitimacy. Rather the problem is narrow minded, cowardly leaders. And so the way forward for them is also clear: figure out a more attractive appeasement package for the Palestinians and put Israel’s feet to the fire to make it cough up the required concessions.

Then there is the aftermath of the withdrawal from Gaza. Israel’s unilateral withdrawal from Gaza was a traumatic national event. The forced expulsion of thousands of Israelis from their homes led Israeli society to the brink of disintegration.

The move represented the last hope of the peace movement. If the Palestinians won’t sit down with Israel, so the thinking went, Israel can still appease them by simply giving them what they want without an agreement.

But not only did the withdrawal bring no peace. It brought Hamas to power. It brought tens of thousands of projectiles down on southern Israel. Israelis expected the world to recognize the significance of this string of events. But that didn’t happen.

Instead of seeing the lengths Israel had gone to appease the Palestinians and side with it when its appeasement failed again, the international community refused to even acknowledge that Israel had withdrawn from Gaza. Condoleezza Rice forced Israel to continue supplying electricity and water to Gaza and providing medical care for Gazans in Israeli hospitals as if nothing had happened. No one accepted that Israel was no longer in charge.

As far as most Israelis were concerned, the final end of our vacation from reality came with the publication of the Goldstone Report in the aftermath of Cast Lead. Here was Israel, forced to defend itself from Hamas-ruled Gaza that was waging an illegal missile war against Israeli civilians. Rather than stand by Israel that had done everything for peace, the UN’s commission accused Israel of committing war crimes.

Undoubtedly one of the reasons so few outsiders have drawn the same lessons as the Israeli public from the failure of the peace process and the Gaza withdrawal is because the only Israelis they listen to are the few remaining holdouts from the 1990s. People like former Shin Bet Director Ami Ayalon can expect to have every withdrawal-from-territory and destroy-the-settlements op-ed they write published in the New York Times whereas Richard Goldstone wasn’t even able to get the Times to publish his admission that his eponymous commission’s conclusions were false.

This open door policy for Israeli radicals was defensible in the 1990s when a significant portion of the Israeli public supported them. Now it constitutes nothing more than an anti-Israel propaganda campaign.

From Obama to J Street to the EU, international actors interested in forcing Israel to make more concessions to the Palestinians cannot understand why their attempts continue to fail. How is it possible that despite their best efforts, Netanyahu remains in power and the Left can’t get any traction with the public?

For the answer, they need to look no farther than Mosh Ben Ari, his dreadlocks, and his rendition of Psalm 121. Israel’s adolescent rebellion is over. Post-Zionism is so 1990s.

JWR contributor Caroline B. Glick is the senior Middle East Fellow at the Center for Security Policy in Washington, DC and the deputy managing editor of The Jerusalem Post, where her column appears.