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Volume
VI:5 (No. 65)
January 2007 – Tevet-Shevet 5767
FOGBOUND – Part I
Fog is made up by droplets of water in the atmosphere dense enough to
obscure view of objects within or beyond the fog. Those who are fogbound cannot
be sure of what lies around or ahead of them, the nature of shapes but dimly
perceived, the right direction to take through the fog or even if path leads
toward the edge of a cliff.[They] hear indeed, but do not understand.
See, indeed,
but do not grasp. -- Isaiah 6:8
But where can wisdom be found?
Where does understanding dwell? -- Job 28:12Mists of fog obscure realities about Israel, its Arab foes, "Palestine," the Middle East, and Islamist Jihad. The fog may be sprayed by those who seek such obscurity for their own reasons, and lead others into fogbound misperception and misunderstanding.
Besides the propaganda of Muslim governments and other entities, droplets are added to the fog by others who:
-- pursue career and financial ambitions that may be advanced via largesse from Saudi princes and other dispensers of petrodollars. They include government personnel, especially in the field of foreign affairs, executives of international corporations, and administrators of university and foundations. {See Issue No. 25}
-- nourish personal spite against Jews. This motive is strong in the European Union that
1. seeks to rid itself of 2,000-year-long guilt toward the Jews by demonstrating that the victims really deserved it, and
2. cannot endure that the Jews, now free in their own land, should survive and flourish while Europe sinks into the decay its elites have chosen for it. {See Issue No. 15}
-- weakly accept the prospect that their own societies will be overcome by Islamist Jihad and want to be on the winning side.
-- are professional intellectual-humanitarians, propping up their own egos and self-esteem by patronizing the "poor Palestinians". Israel is too successful to qualify for patronage.
-- who dance any step to any tune that is the fad of the moment. Academics {see Issue
No. 27} and journalists {see Issues Nos. 13, 64} are prominent among the choreographers, composers, and performers.
In the fogs thus created wander the fogbound: Those who do not bother to take a close look at the figures within the fog, but accept what they are told by incompetent and corrupt popular
news media and ill-informed teachers. Indeed, it may be more comfortable to remain fogbound than to get a clear view of a harsh and challenging reality.
COMMENT: The government and officials of the State of Israel ought to stand first and foremost in directing beams of light to cut the fog. But a political fluke has brought to power a clique that is reckless and feckless, and despised by a large majority of the Israeli people.
Instead of dispelling fogs, it blows its own fog in which Israel may be misunderstood as
"exhausted" or "gone soft on terror" or ready to make suicidal surrenders. These misconceptions can dissipate when the light is switched back on.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
"The most grossly obvious facts can be ignored when they are unwelcome." -- George Orwell
Among international issues, the long-playing Palestine Problem gets excessive attention, often short on knowledge and logic and/or honesty and objectivity. It is befogged by doctrines
and delusions and obsession about an area that can scarcely be found on a map of the world without a magnifying glass. Lurking in the swirls of that fog is a monster mistaken for a pet.
[1] The Palestine Problem or Palestine-Israel Conflict, is central to all of the problems in
the Middle East, or even in the whole world. It is the cause of troubled relations between Islam and the West. Therefore, it must be the most urgent concern of the International Community
This is jargon for "Israel's refusal to surrender to the Arabs puts them in a bad mood, so all the trouble Muslims make for the rest of us is Israel's fault". It co-exists peacefully with the refusal
to admit Israel as an ally in the War on Terror, on the grounds that it – and it alone -- ought to surrender to terror, not resist it.
A chorus-master leading this chant is Tony Blair, Prime Minister of Great Britain – the nation
that created the Palestine Problem by its bungling treachery on its Palestine Mandate, and whose Foreign Office has not guessed right since 1922. {See Issues Nos. 2, 5, 7} He goes so far as to write: "How can we bring peace to the Middle East unless we resolve the question of Israel and Palestine? [Achieving peace] would not only silence reactionary Islam's most effective rallying call but fatally undermine its basic ideology."
Blair revealed this insight while large gatherings of Muslims in London shouted their intent to take over Great Britain and impose Muslim shariya law there, and demanded the execution of Pope Benedict XVI.
The "Question of Israel and Palestine" does not cause the lack of peace in the Middle East or beyond it. The "basic ideology" that creates it also creates many other troubles and wars in the Middle East and beyond it.
Among them:
-- intra-Arab wars
Egypt's poison-gas attack on Yemen
Iraq's invasion of Kuwait
the long, bloody war between Iraq and Iran
a series of civil wars in Lebanon
-- Syria's occupation of Lebanon
-- a Syrian government's annihilation of its own city of Hama and its inhabitants.
-- the government of Iraq's persecution of Kurds and Marsh Arabs
-- persecutions by Muslim governments of Christians and Ba'hai
-- the Sudanese government's long, bloody war against the Christians and Animists
-- the ongoing slaughters and sufferings in Darfur
-- the Taliban regime in Afghanistan
-- strife between India and Muslim Pakistan for control of Kashmir
-- the campaign of Albanian Muslims to drive Christian Serbs out of Kosovo
-- the strife between Russia and Muslim Chechyna
-- jihadi killings in Thailand, Indonesia, and other parts of southeast Asia
-- attempts of Islamist jihadis to take over Somalia, and Ethiopia's resistance thereto
-- dictatorship, tyranny, repression, poverty, sickness, and ignorance throughout the region
-- Saudi Arabia's establishment of institutions of Wahhabi Islam within Western societies.
-- Al-Qaeda terrorism worldwide
-- Jihadi infiltration throughout Western Europe.
Casting upon Israel the onus for lack of peace does not "silence reactionary Islam's most effective rallying call" because that rallying call is Islamist world domination. And it will strengthen not "fatally undermine its basic ideology".
[2] Arabs make war on Israel because they have real grievances that must be rectified.
The grievance of Arabs and other Muslims against Israel is that it exists. All other complaints derive from the consequences of Arab efforts to destroy it.
The Arabs are not attacking Israel because they lost the Golan and Judea/Samaria. They lost them because they attacked Israel. The intended destruction began in 1947 and is still going on. The results of each defeated aggression beget excuses for more aggression.
In Muslim doctrine, all the earth is divided into two parts: Dar al-Islam [House of Islam] and Dar al-Harb [House of War]. Any land once acquired by Dar al-Islam must remain within it forever and ever. If it is lost -- as in Spain -- it must one day be regained. All of Dar al-Harb will eventually be conquered by jihad, military or otherwise.
The Ottoman Turkish Caliphate that once held Palestine as its province is gone, but the land is still Dar al-Islam that must never be yielded to any infidel, least of all to the Jews, who were once downtrodden dhimmis, a people cursed in the Koran and despised as "sons of apes and pigs"
To quote the Deputy Minister for Religious Affairs of the Palestine Authority: "The conflict with the Jews is a religious, existential struggle and is not a conflict over borders." Therefore, though a temporary truce might be permissible, peace is forever forbidden.
That Israel thrives while its neighbors do not aggravates the grievance. That Israel successfully defends itself against the aggressions of its neighbors aggravates the grievance. The more Israel advances in the arts and sciences of civil life, while Arab societies sink further into squalor, the greater the hatred.
Nothing can remove the grievance and satisfy the hatred short of the total extirpation of this hated entity.
Taqiyyah [deception of the infidel] permits talk of "peace" if only Israel agrees to the right terms, but this kind of talk is not heard in Arabic where the key word is always "destruction" not "peace". {See further Issue No. 5}
Any policies or plans formed by Israel or any other nation or group of nations that does not
grasp this basic reality is futile and dangerous.
[3] Solving the Palestine Problem will forward international peace and security
Islamist jihad is soaring over the globe, confident and assertive. It does not disguise its goal of bringing all the earth into Dar al-Islam, ruled by a Caliph under Islamic shariya law. In the United States, CAIR [Council on American Islamic Relations] flaunts its intent to make America an Islamic country, with the flag of the caliphate flying over the White House.
Israel is the first target of this jihad, but it is not the only one and will not be the last one.
It is also the first line of defense against global jihad. In Middle East policy, the Western World has two options:
a. Render Israel defenseless against the jihadis, in hopes this may mollify Dar al-Islam and
postpone Jihad against other parts of Dar al-Harb – for a little while at least.
b. Strengthen, not weaken, Israel because it is the frontline of defense against jihad, and if the jihadis can overcome so staunch a nation they will be emboldened to move on to other prey.
Pressures on Israel to make concessions to Palestinianist demands are rewards and encouragement to jihad. If Israel submits to such demands, whether from foreign friends or domestic appeaseniks can have no other result than to make Israel weaker and jihad
stronger. They cannot and will not lead to peace.
Any policies or plans formed by Israel or any other nation or group of nations that are not based on this harsh reality are futile and dangerous.
[4] To bring about a just and lasting peace, Israel must end its occupation of Palestinian Territory and withdraw itself and its settlements therefrom.
This decree is based on a doctrine unique in international law and without historic precedent, promulgated for this occasion and no other: "To The Defeated Aggressor Belong the Spoils".
It also bandies the word "occupation" in ignorance or disregard of the meaning to the Arabs who harp upon it. It means all of Israel, not only to the Administered Territories of Judea-Samaria. The start of the Occupation is dated to 1948, when Israel became a sovereign state and the war to destroy it began even before its Declaration of Independence came into effect in 1948. By Arab
doctrine, Tel-Aviv is an Illegal Israeli Settlement in Palestiniian Territory. By Arab doctrine, the end of Occupation will be achieved only when Israel all together ceases to exist. They will never be satisfied with anything less. {See further Issue No. 5}
Furthermore, any program dealing with "Palestinian Territory" cannot be carried out for the simple reason that there is no such thing. There has never been a nation of Palestine, and a Palestinian political identity is a fiction spun after 1967. The bulk of the Arab population west of
the Jordan River derives from immigration in the 20th century, into a region where it had no historic roots or national identity.
What is glibly called "Palestinian Territory" is actually Judea-Samaria, the heartland of
biblical Israel. The name West Bank was stamped on it only during the Jordanian occupation of 1949-1967. It has not been part of any independent sovereign state since the Roman conquest of Judea in 70 C.E. "Palastina" is a geographic not national name, designating a province of the Roman Empire. Thereafter, it was a province of one foreign empire after another, the last of them the Ottoman Turkish Empire ruled from Istanbul. In that period it was desolate and scarcely
inhabited. The bulk of the Arabs who now claim to be the aboriginal inhabitants of Palastina filtered into the region in the 20th century – after the start of the modern Jewish rebuilding of the Land. {See Issues Nos. 2, 6, 8, 24}
Since the collapse of the Ottoman empire at the end of World War I, part of this province has become the State of Israel and part of it has become the Kingdom of Jordan, and part of it is biblical heartland of Judea-Samaria. In 1948, Jordan seized it by aggression. In 1967, Jordan lost it by aggression.
That Israel now administers this land is not "occupation" because it has never been the sovereign territory of any other independent state. The Jewish communities damned as "settlements" or "illegal settlements" are in no way illegal. {See Issues Nos. } The right of the Children of Israel to "settle" and dwell in their historic homeland is at the very least equal to the right of
Americans to "settle" from Plymouth Rock to Waikiki.
The calls for "withdrawal" means to the ceasefire lines of the War of Independence of 1948.
There is nothing sacred about these lines, that were never recognized as permanent borders. A study by the highest military experts of the United States, the Join Chiefs of Staff, determined that these lines would be indefensible. Any government of Israel that perpetrates a withdrawal to these lines is nothing short of traitorous. {See Issue No. 39}
Sovereignty over Judea-Samaria has not yet been declared, but there is no informed or fair-minded or prudent reason to take it for granted that it should and must be bestowed according to the fantasy claims of the newcomer Arabs in a fantasy Palestine.
In the meantime, securing for them merely part of the Land of Israel, it will have no
effect but to weaken Israel and encourage the Arab belief that since war and terrorism got them something, more war and terrorism will get them everything.
[5] Mighty Israel oppresses the Helpless Palestinians, who are thus the underdog deserving the sympathy of all nice persons.
There are little more than 6,000,000 million Jews in Israel. There are some 15,000,000 Jews in the entire world. That is about 0.002 percent of the human race.
There are some 250,000,000-280,000,000 Arabs, and some 1,500,000,000-1,750,000,000
Muslims.
The territory of pre-1967 State of Israel was 8,000 square miles. That was 17 percent of Mandate Palestine designated to be the Jewish National Home. The "territories" of Judea-Samaria are another 2,000 square miles.
The 22 states of the Arab League have territory of almost 6,000,000 square miles. (The territory of the United States is less than 4,000,000). Of all the land the Arabs demanded for themselves since World War I, they were given 99.5 percent. The Palestine Problem consists of the other one-half of one percent.
Taqiyya and those who believe it present the Arab residents west of the Jordan River as standing alone against the big bully Israel. In fact, almost all Arabs and other Muslims are active in one way or another in the war against Israel, through fighting, terrorism, supplying weapons, economic pressure, diplomacy, rhetoric, and propaganda.
In the War of Independence of 1948, Israel was attacked by the military forces of six
Arab states, aided, abetted, supplied and sometimes commanded by Great Britain. In the Sinai Campaign of 1956, the Six-Day War of 1967, and the Yom Kippur War 1973, the Arabs were aided, abetted, supplied and sometimes commanded by the Soviet Union.
Since then, Egypt signed a peace treaty as the only way gain the Sinai and use the Suez Canal, but misses no opportunity to do harm to Israel and/or the Jews. Jordan also signed a peace treaty but the bulk of its population remains almost unanimously hostile.
Even the most fogbound viewer should be able to discern which is David and which is Goliath.
[6] Israel must make Good Will Gestures and put forth Confidence Building Measures and obey International Humanitarian Law
Israel has a long record of good-will gestures and confidence building gestures. None of them
were answered by the tiniest grain of reciprocal Good Will. All of them Built Confidence among its enemies that they had gained something through terrorism and would gain more through more terrorism.
Some of the gestures and measures were made through the foolishness of its own governments, some imposed by harsh outside pressure. In every instance they have been not merely futile
but lethal, increasing the toll of death and injury
They are always unilateral. The Palestine Authority never indulges in Good Will or Confidence
Building, and is never expected to. Rather, it takes Israel's concessions as evidence of weakness, fear, and lack of resolve and the assumption that if pushed harder Israel will yield more and eventually all.
Among the demands upon Israel from distant monitors:
a. Do not inconvenience and humiliate Palestine-Arabs by checking whether they are carrying bombs
Palestine-Arab terrorists who were not identified and stopped in time have murdered thousands of Israelis and injured, crippled, and bereaved many thousands more.
Some disguise themselves to mingle among Jews, so all Israelis also routinely go through security checks in public places. But only if a Palestine-Arab is asked to open a shopping bag when going through a checkpoint does that simple and essential precaution become unfair inconvenience and humiliation.
President George W. Bush professes great distress on their behalf -- while, because of jihad terrorists, myriads of his own citizens cannot board an airplane in an American airport without extreme and sometimes grotesque investigation.
When Israeli officials succumb to pressure to reduce security measures, their own citizens are placed in danger. For example: when Israel's faux-government gave up all control over Gaza, Madam Doctor Secretary Condoleeza Rice literally shrieked and screamed that it must also give up security checkpoints at Gaza crossing points. Israeli cabinet ministers gave in.
Israelis have been killed and injured because of her arrogance and their pusillanimity.
On her Middle East tour of mid-January 2007, she demanded that Israel remove more checkpoints, even while Israeli military intelligence was dealing with warnings of plans for terrorist attacks.
b. Exercise Restraint after terrorist attacks
A standard foreign response after an Arab terrorist atrocity is to deplore it and urge Israel to exercise restraint. Sometimes this is given an egalitarian phraseology of "Both sides should
exercise the utmost restraint", said only after the attack on Israel has already been perpetrated, and only an Israeli response has yet to come.
c. Supply money, food, medical care, utilities and other goods and services to Gaza in the name of International Humanitarian Law
It is not specified just what that Law is, and which provisions require the victim of terrorism to
provide for the comfort of the terrorists. Neither are there examples cited of how International Humanitarian Law protected Jewish victims of genocide and terrorism.
d. Release convicted terrorists from Israeli prisons
This is a standard Good Will Gesture expected from Israel on various occasions. Often the released terrorists return to their trade and cause more casualties. The release of thousands of such prisoners as ransom for abducted Israelis – or for the remains of murdered Israelis – is considered a reasonable transaction.
e. Do not endanger innocent civilians
This applies only to civilians among Israel's sworn foes, who are always "innocent" even when
they choose to be human shields for terrorists and terrorist installations. Under real international law, combatants and terrorists do not win impunity by placing themselves in the midst of civilians, even when those civilians are unwilling, much less when they are eager volunteers.
It is a respectable doctrine that military forces, even when waging a defensive war, do not
deliberately harm defenseless non-combatants. There is no doctrine that requires a nation that has been attacked to sacrifice or endanger the lives of its own people, civilian or military, or even to eschew measures that would end the aggression against it.
The real violation of the doctrine has been committed by faux-governments of Israel that do so endanger and sacrifice the lives of its own people, as in
-- the military action against terrorist installations in Jenin, when the lives of 23 young Israeli soldiers were sacrificed to protect Arabs in those installations
-- refusal to take any action against the terrorist bases in Gaza that almost daily fire rockets at
towns in Israel that kill and injure Israeli civilians and endanger vital installations.
News media and international organizations are so eager to convict Israel of violating this doctrine that they even invent crimes that never happened, among them the make-believe killing of young Muhammad al-Dura and make-believe attack on a Lebanese Ambulance {See Issues Nos. 21, 47, 64}. At the same time, deliberate and calculated murders of Israeli civilians, including babies and children, are given little note and evoke little reaction.
f. A ceasefire must always be imposed when there is fighting
A ceasefire becomes urgent as soon as the aggressors are losing, as in the War of Independence, the Six-Day War and the Yom Kippur War. This saves the aggressors from the full cost of defeat, and leaves them free to resume fighting at their earliest convenience.
A common variant is the unilateral ceasefire, in which the Arab states or terrorist entities can go on with their attacks and terrorism, and the ceasefire is only deemed broken if and when Israel responds.
The Hamas government in Gaza now and then speaks of a hudna – a term for "truce" that in this context can be translated as "Don't Shoot at Me While I Stop to Reload". Hamas even hints that if Israel first meets its immediate demands and withdraws entirely to the [indefensible] 1949 ceasefire lines, then Hamas will thereafter consider a hudna for up to ten years.
g. Get the Peace Process back on track
The Peace Process, since its inception, has run along a track to folly, failure, danger, and disaster. Common sense would urge that it be flagged to a stop rather then set into more motion.
[7] It is necessary to support and bolster moderate Muslim governments and leaders.
Mahmoud Abbas, also known as Abu Mazen, is a moderate. Therefore, Israel as well as other nations must strengthen him against his immoderate rivals in Hamas.
The Palestine Authority is an entity of the terrorists, for the terrorists, and by the terrorists. If moderates exist in its midst, they do not win or long hold public office or even influence. They will be brave indeed if they even dare to say a word.
The present Chairman of the Palestine Authority – who uses and is allowed the title of President to which he has no right – is the direct successor to Yasser Arafat. Abbas was Arafat's
second-in-command for forty years. He is a lifelong professional terrorist. He was the director and paymaster for the massacre of the Israeli athletes at the Olympic Games in 1972. He holds a Ph.D. from a Soviet university earned with a doctoral thesis proving the Holocaust never happened – or, if it did happen, was not as bad as made out to be.
He heads the Fatah faction of the Palestine Authority and its terrorist Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade. However, the voters of the PA entity freely and democratically elected a government from the
rival Hamas faction, so its leader Ismail Hanniyeh is prime minister.
Fatah and Hamas are fighting each other for power and control within the Palestine Authority, but their platforms differ on only one point: Abbas vows in Arabic to destroy Israel and raise an Arab Palestine on its ruins, while in English or other infidel tongues he murmurs of "recognition" and "negotiations" and "co-existence". Hamas vows in Arabic and all other tongues that it will
destroy Israel and raise an Arab Palestine on its ruins.
Abbas says the right word in at least one language, so Western policymakers can embrace him
without violating their own rule of not dealing with terrorists. The United States and the European Union shower him with money. Recent U.S. administrations have forced American taxpayers to donate many billions of dollars to the terrorists of the Palestine Authority and must donate billions more. They supply weapons to PA gunmen, and assign U.S. experts to train them.
Recently, Madam Doctor Secretary Condoleeza Rice had U.S. weapons shipped to Abbas, in
direct violation of U.S. law. She gave assurances that they will be used against Hamas and not against Israel. At the same time, Abbas himself extols terrorist bombers and martyrs, and exhorts his people not to use their weapons against fellow Palestinians but only against the Jews. When it is mentioned that Abbas does absolutely nothing to reduce terrorism or rocket attacks on Israel, it is explained that he cannot because he is too weak and therefore all the money and
weapons have to be given to strengthen him.
When Rice came to visit, she and Abbas stood smiling side by side to be photographed beneath a portrait of Arafat. She declaimed:
"I want everyone to know, particularly the Palestinian people, how much we admire the leadership of President Abbas as a leader of the Palestinian people . . . . we've made a lot of progress over recent years, in particular because of the hard work of President Abbas."
Then she went on to Egypt to praise its long-time President Hosni Mubarak and declare Egypt " really a partner". It is indeed a partner, of terrorists, smugglers of weapons of terror, and all who attack the United States that has him on an allowance of $2,000,000,000 a year.
In other parts of the Arab world, Moderation is supposedly even easier to find. The Gulf Oil
Sheikdom of Bahrein, for example, is Western, Modern, and Rich, and therefore surely Moderate. Its regime recently stripped away the citizenship of one of its champion athletes because he competed and won First Prize in a Marathon Race held in Israel.
[8] The Palestine Problem is one in which all nations so inclined have a right or even duty to meddle
It is not rare in history for those who make and implement a regime's foreign policy to try to bring the policies of other nations into line with their own, whether by persuasion or coercion. This is commonly done under cover of diplomacy.
Rarely is it done with open, flagrant contempt for another nation's independence and
sovereign rights, least of all by supposedly "friendly" powers. The United States, the friendliest of all toward Israel, has often imposed its will by withholding vitally needed support or supplies.
Its Roadmap to Middle East Peace, promulgated in 2002 and periodically dredged up again, goes far beyond such traditional methods. It implicitly negates Israel's sovereignty and reduces it to a vassal of a collective overlord dubbed The Quartet.
Those piping the tune in the Quartet are the U.S. Department of States, the European Union, Russia, and the United Nations.
The terms of the Roadmap are entirely against Israel's rights and legitimate interests. The
powers of the Quartet reduce Israel from a sovereign state to a vassal, denied any say in the fate to be imposed upon it. {See Issues Nos. 23, 28, 29}
This is not denied by the authors. Madam Doctor Secretary Rice ruled "The terms are not negotiable . . . . Israel has no veto".
Recently, her erstwhile boss and mentor, the vulgarly Judeophobic James E. Baker III, attorney
for the Bush family and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, proposed that the problems of the Middle East be settled in an international conference. Israel, however, would be banned from this conference, so that its fate can be dictated "without a Jewish presence".
Other Quartet members, with EU functionary Javier Solana as a mouthpiece, follow the same line. Europe is sinking in decay, Russia reviving its old ambitions, the United Nations is an epicenter of corruption.
The United States, that alone has the power to enforce, does not belong in this kind of company.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
These befogged and befuddled items lead up to the most perniciously befogged and befuddled
conclusion: That the Palestine Problem can be solved by carving up the Land of Israel into separate Jewish and Arab states expected to "live side by side in peace".
This notion is a monster lurking in the fog and mistaken for a pet. It is the planned topic of the forthcoming Issue No. 66.
A Time To Speak, an excellent resource for your edification.
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