Posts Tagged ‘Palestine’

Confusion Abounds

Thursday, May 7th, 2009

More evidence of the administration’s confusion in foreign policy and national security was offered recently when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton suggested that dealing with Iran’s nuclear threat was somehow connected to more Israeli concessions in the so-called “peace process” with the Palestinians. In case there are doubts as to the administration’s position on that issue, the Jerusalem Post reports that White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel reiterated the point this weekend in a briefing to pro-Israel activists.

This is very discouraging news for many reasons, not the least of which is that Iran’s Holocaust-denying dictator wants Israel “wiped off the map” and Hamas refuses to recognize Israel’s right to exist. Last week, General Ataollah Salehi, commander of the Iranian army, said in a televised interview, “I don’t think we will need more than 11 days to wipe Israel out of existence.”

Israel is a key ally, a democratic republic on the front line in the war against Islamofascism. Iran is an Islamic theocracy led by a fanatical madman who is frantically seeking nuclear weapons. Israel is facing an existential threat and a second Holocaust from Iran. And yet we are pressuring Israel to make concessions to the Jew-hating terrorists in Hamas in exchange for support in confronting Iran. It’s like being told to pick your poison.

And what kind of state are we asking the Israelis to help create? Consider this report from last week’s Jerusalem Post:

“…a Palestinian Authority ‘military court’ on Tuesday sentenced a Palestinian man to death by hanging after finding him guilty of selling land to Jews. The verdict came shortly after the PA’s chief Islamic judge, Sheikh Tayseer Tamimi, issued yet another fatwa (religious decree) banning Muslims from selling land or houses to Jews. …The man sentenced to death is Anwar Brigith, 59, from the village of Bet Umar, north of Hebron.

“The three-judge panel found the defendant guilty of violating PA laws that bar Palestinians from selling property to ‘the enemy.’ In its ruling, the court, which convened in Hebron, said that Brigith had acted in violation of a Palestinian ‘military law’ dating back to 1979, which states that it is forbidden for a Palestinian to sell land to Jews. The accused was also found guilty of violating a law dating back to 1958 that calls for a boycott against Israel, as well as another law from 1953 that bans trade with Israelis.

“The judges issued the verdict unanimously and pointed out that the defendant did not have the right to appeal…”

This is the evil we are demanding Israel make concessions to in exchange for support in dealing with Iran. It is obscene, but I bet you didn’t hear about it from Big Media, because it completely undermines the administration’s push for the creation of a Palestinian state.

Shlomo Mostofsky, president of the National Council of Young Israel representing 150 synagogues in the United States, issued a statement demanding action from the Obama Administration.

He said, “The United States cannot in good faith engage in a conversation about peace with the Palestinians while they continue to advocate a policy that is so deeply rooted in hatred. Before the U.S. can contemplate partnering with the Palestinian Authority … it must insist that they abandon these bigoted policies that incite hatred and ill-will against the state of Israel and the Jewish people.”

I couldn’t agree more.

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Sally Field — Meet Miriam Farahat

Wednesday, January 14th, 2009

“And, let’s face it, if the mothers ruled the world, there would be no (expletive) wars in the first place.”

So declared Sally Field upon receiving her trophy for best actress in a drama series at the recent Emmy Awards. To many, Field’s comment seemed charmingly idealistic — reminiscent perhaps of Sheryl Crow’s proclamation in 2003 that “the best way to solve problems is not to have enemies.” But politically astute observers should recognize Field’s remark as desperately inaccurate. For in the fight against radical Islam, it is too often the mothers who are the problem.

Consider Miriam Farahat, a Palestinian mother who has raised three sons to be homicide bombers for Hamas. Known throughout Gaza as Um Nidal, or “the mother of the struggle,” Farahat is featured in a Hamas recruitment video telling one 17-year-old son to attack Israelis and telling him not to return. And Farahat — who is now an elected member of the Hamas parliament — says she is willing to sacrifice all her 10 sons to the war against Israel because “Israelis are not civilians and there are no prohibitions on killing them.”

Consider also Fatima Zak. The pregnant mother of eight children was arrested along with her niece, a mother of four, in May by Israeli intelligence for planning a double homicide bombing.

And how would Field explain last summer’s foiled British terror bombing plot, where one husband and wife team allegedly planned to hide a liquid bomb in their baby’s bottle to bring down an airliner en route from London?

Field’s naiveté is perhaps understandable. After all, what sort of mother exploits her own children as tools of terror? The answer lies in understanding a culture that embraces death in the cause of global Jihad. As psychology professor Anne Speckhard has noted, there currently exists a “cult of martyrdom” in parts of the Muslim world. Speckhard writes:

“From a very young age children are socialized into a group consciousness that honors ‘martyrs,’ including human bombers who have given their lives for the fight against what is perceived by Palestinians to be the unjust occupation of their lands. Young children are told stories of ‘martyrs.’ Many young people wear necklaces venerating particular ‘martyrs,’ posters decorate the walls of towns and rock and music videos extol the virtues of bombers.”

This “cult of martyrdom” even infects children’s cartoons. One popular weekly Hamas TV show called “Tomorrow’s Pioneers” is co-hosted by an 11-year-old girl who aspires to be a homicide bomber. The show encourages children to call in and recite poems with images of hate and violence. And a Mickey Mouse look-alike instructs young viewers to fight the “Zionist Occupation” and even instructs boys and girls how to slay non-Muslims. The giant mouse, called Farfour, has since been written out of the script—killed off by Israeli interrogators!

Given the culture of terror and martyrdom that defines life for many Muslims, it is no wonder that Israeli military reports have detailed hundreds of cases of children involved in military attacks on Israelis.

Of course, there’s an irony that’s been lost in the uproar over Ms. Field’s comments: At the heart of some anti-Americanism is the belief that our country no longer exports the idea of liberty under God but instead, particularly through Hollywood culture, exports sexual license and moral relativism in our music and films. Our cultural elites want to replace a “Shining City Upon a Hill” with a red light district, but if America is going to defeat an enemy who worships death, we are going to have to rediscover the God who told us to choose life.

In the end, while the bond that exists between a mother and child is the first and most essential and sacred of human ties, that bond shatters like glass when contaminated by an ideology that extols death as a blessing and preaches that to sacrifice one’s child for jihad is one of the holiest acts one can commit. We must confront our enemy for the sake of our children and grandchildren, because, as cruel and tragic as war is, losing Western Civilization to this cruel enemy would be the worst tragedy of all.

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Palestinian statehood: a reward for terror

Thursday, January 1st, 2009

Two weeks ago, Muslim terrorists fired shoulder- launched missiles at an Israeli civilian aircraft as it took off from an airport in Kenya, in an attempt to murder its 260 passengers.

If a Palestinian state is created, its western border will be just a few miles from Ben-Gurion airport, and terrorists carrying shoulder-launched missiles will be able to take aim at every plane taking off from or landing there.

Despite such grave dangers, US President George W. Bush, who has said that there must be an end to terrorist states, is now laying the groundwork for the creation of what will be a terrorist state. The Middle East “Road Map” that the Bush administration is promoting proposes to create a “provisional” Palestinian state next year. This plan sends a wrong and dangerous message to the terrorists who are murdering innocent Israelis in buses and cafes. It tells them that their massacres will reap political dividends - that the more Jews they kill, the more the United States will seek to meet their demands.

Can the administration really believe that giving a sovereign state to the Palestinians will create a civilized democracy? Sovereignty does not necessarily put an end to terrorism. In fact, it only strengthens the existing pro- terrorist culture to wreak even more havoc. Iraq, Iran, Libya and Syria are sovereign states; yet sovereignty has not transformed them into civilized democracies.

A recent poll commissioned by the Zionist Organization of America and carried out by the Hanoch Smith Institute found 68percent of Israeli Jews believe that “regardless of the size or strength of a Palestinian state, if one is established it will constitute a threat to the State of Israel.” Only 9% of Israeli Jews believe that creating a Palestinian state would reduce the Arab states’ threat to Israel.

LET’S LOOK at the Palestinian record. During the past 25 months, the Palestinians have carried out thousands of terrorist attacks against Israelis, murdering nearly 700 and maiming many more. Most of the attacks - including many of the recent suicide bombings - are being executed by forces under Yasser Arafat’s control: Fatah, Force 17, and the Palestinian Authority’s own police and security officers.

Israel has revealed numerous documents proving that the PA pays for and orders the murder of Jews.

Furthermore, the PA has not disarmed or outlawed terrorist groups. It has not seized their tens of thousands of illegal weapons or shut down their bomb factories; nor has it honored any of Israel’s 45 requests for the extradition of terrorists. It has not closed down the terrorists’ training camps. It has rewarded terrorists with jobs in the PA police force. In short, the PA has actively collaborated with and sheltered the terrorists. It has also created an entire culture of anti-Jewish hatred in its official media, schools, summer camps, sermons by PA- appointed clergy, and speeches by PA representatives.

A Palestinian state would be a mini-Iraq, sharing a long border with Israel, flanking the areas that contain 70% of Israel’s population, including Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, and Haifa - plenty of tempting targets for cross-border attacks. The attackers could then slip back into “Palestine,” where they would find refuge behind the protective border of a sovereign state.

A Palestinian state would have its own airports and seaports, as well as share borders with Egypt and Jordan, making it relatively easy to import heavy weapons. The PA already has the nucleus of an army; statehood would give it the freedom to establish a full-fledged military force.

The same kind of Iranian “volunteers” who have been sent to aid the Hizbullah in southern Lebanon would no doubt be dispatched to “Palestine.”

A Palestinian state would virtually force Israel back to the pre-1967 borders, stripping it of the protective Judea-Samaria mountain ranges and leaving it just nine miles wide at its mid-section.

US Lieutenant-General Thomas Kelly, director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the Gulf War, said this would leave Israel indefensible: “I look out from those heights and look onto the West Bank and say to myself, ‘If I’m the chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces, I cannot defend this land without that terrain.’”

Advocates of Palestinian statehood claim such a state would be demilitarized. But there is no way to ensure that it would be. The Versailles agreement after World War I required Germany to be demilitarized, yet Germany built the most powerful army in Europe.

A Palestinian state would also endanger Jewish religious rights. The PA has already destroyed one key Jewish religious site, the Tomb of Joseph, turning it into a mosque and barring Jews from the area. PA officials have called for banning Jewish prayer from Jerusalem’s Western Wall and Hebron’s Cave of the Patriarchs, and PA police officers regularly carry out shooting attacks on Rachel’s Tomb, near Bethlehem.

A Palestinian state would also endanger Israel’s water sources, a significant portion of which originates in Judea and Samaria. If the PA had sovereignty, it could shut off the flow of that water. There would also be the danger of Palestinian Arab terrorists sabotaging the Israeli water supply.

The last thing the world needs now is yet another totalitarian, anti-American terrorist state. Yet that is exactly what a Palestinian state would be, to judge by the behavior of the PA during the eight years since it was created. The PA is a brutal Muslim dictatorship which tortures dissidents, silences newspapers that deviate from Arafat’s line, and persecutes Christians. The official PA media actively incite hatred against America, and the PA maintains warm relations with the most anti-American regimes in the world, including Iraq, Iran, Syria, Sudan, Libya, North Korea, and Cuba.

The only way to advance the chance for peace is, first, by defeating the terrorist regime. The training camps must be shut down; the weapons must be seized; the terrorists must be apprehended and brought to trial; and the PA-controlled areas must be completely demilitarized. These actions must be followed by a lengthy period in which the PA’s culture of hatred is stamped out, comparable to the de-Nazification process that the Allies imposed on Germany after World War II and the de-Saddamization plan that has been proposed for Iraq after Saddam Hussein’s regime is ousted.

The only long-term hope for Middle East peace lies in permanently weaning the Palestinians off their diet of hatred.

Terrorists, whether led by bin Laden or Arafat, should be fought and defeated, not appeased with offers of statehood. Sending a message that terrorism pays is the worst possible move at a time when terrorists are threatening America, Israel, and the entire Free World.

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