Israel’s Right to Exist

 The question of whether Israel exists by "right" is a central, deeply contested issue in international politics, law, and philosophy. Perspectives on this claim range from legal recognition to moral, historical, and ideological arguments. 

 Here is a breakdown of the different viewpoints based on current discourse:

1.    1. Legal and Diplomatic Perspective (Recognition by Right)

 UN Recognition: Israel was admitted as a member state of the United Nations on May 11, 1949. Under international law, this recognized its sovereignty and legitimacy.

• International Recognition: As of early 2026, Israel is recognized as a sovereign state by approximately 163 of the 192 other United Nations member states.
• The Oslo Accords: In the 1990s, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) officially recognized Israel's right to exist in peace and security, a cornerstone for diplomacy, according to the U.S. Department of State. 

2. Legal Skepticism (No Inherent "Right")

 International Law Argument: Many scholars argue that international law does not confer an inherent "right to exist" on any state. States are created, recognized, or dissolved based on historical, political, and military factors, rather than a codified legal right.

• Unique Application: Some critics and commentators note that Israel is often the only country asked to defend its "right to exist," a phrase that is rarely applied to other nations.
• Challenging the Basis: Some observers, such as those at the Mises Institute, argue that existence is not a legal right but a geopolitical reality, according to mises.org. 

3. Historical and Ideological Perspectives

 Self-Determination: Proponents argue that Israel exists by the right of Jewish self-determination, fulfilling a historical and religious connection to the land. This includes references to the Balfour Declaration and the UN Partition Plan of 1947.

• Contested Legitimacy: Opponents often point to the Nakba (the displacement of Palestinians in 1948) to challenge the legality of Israel's founding, arguing it was achieved through the violation of Palestinian rights, according to Jewish Voice for Labour. 

4. Current Context (Right to Exist vs. Right of Function)

• Right to Security: Many defenders emphasize that Israel’s right to exist is synonymous with the right of Jewish people not to be targeted and to have a secure state, a position reinforced by groups like the Israel Policy Forum.
• Conditions of Existence: Some, including many critics and human rights organizations (e.g., Amnesty International), argue that while Israel may exist, its actions—such as occupation, settlement expansion, and policies in the West Bank and Gaza—violate international law. 

In summary, for many, Israel's existence is a legitimate right based on international law and self-determination. For others, particularly critics of its policies, the focus is on challenging the legitimacy of its actions rather than its mere existence, or arguing that no state has an inherent "right" to exist. 

Why Most Arab Countries Do Not Want Palestinians

 by Khaled Abu Toameh  •  

• [C]ountries such as Jordan and Lebanon had extremely negative experiences with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and other Palestinian armed groups who were trying to overthrow or destabilize their governments (Black September in Jordan in 1970 and the Lebanese Civil War 1975-1990).
• Arab leaders often make strong statements, issue condemnations of Israeli actions, and attend high-profile summits that express solidarity with the Palestinians. Their gestures, however -- apart from Iran and Qatar -- are often not matched by decisive steps...
• The refusal of the Arab countries to absorb Palestinians (including the ex-prisoners) is... proof why it would be a mistake to rely on the Arab countries to help rebuild and demilitarize the Gaza Strip.
• US President Donald J. Trump, who seems to be pinning his hopes on the Arabs to assist in funding and establishing a new government as well as deploying an international force in the Gaza Strip, needs to bear in mind that most of the Arab heads of state and regimes actually do not care about the Palestinians.
• By now, most Arab heads of state see Palestinians as having caused immeasurable harm wherever they went and as having rewarded with treachery whoever stretched out a hand to them.
• For the Arab leaders, the Palestinian issue is just another tool to advance their own political objectives, shore up their own popular support at home, or unite various factions against a common enemy.
• Most Arab leaders, in short, will continue to pretend that they are eager to help the US administration with its efforts to implement Trump's 20-point plan for peace in the Gaza Strip. In reality, the Arabs will continue to do their utmost to stay away from the Palestinians -- apart from helping them to regroup in the Gaza Strip.
• For the full article go to: https://tinyurl.com/3687yfyf

An Unspeakable Atrocity

Video Of The Week -  Rabbi Dee speaks from the heart -  https://tinyurl.com/yycmkx7u

For the full article by Melanie Philips go to - https://tinyurl.com/yxnphkwp

On Friday, as the rabbi drove towards Tiberias in northern Israel for a Passover break with his family, the car following him carrying his wife Lucy (Leah) and two of his daughters, Maia and Rina, was ambushed by Palestinian Arab gunmen and crashed into the barrier. The gunmen then approached the car and shot Lucy and her daughters at point blank range with 20 bullets from a Kalashnikov rifle.

This unspeakable atrocity has united Israel in horror. Once again, Israeli Jews have been murdered for nothing other than the fact that they are Jews living in their ancestral homeland.

Since September 2000, Palestinian Arabs have murdered at least 1420 Israelis. Over the past year, at least 30 Israelis have been murdered in such attacks. For months, there have been multiple attempted attacks against Israeli citizens almost every day.

For Anglo-Jews, however, the attack on the Dee family isn’t just close to home. It is home. Rabbi Dee was a community rabbi in Radlett, just outside London, from 2011-2014 when the family moved to Israel.

The atrocity was unspeakable. What makes it all the more unbearable is the reaction from so much of the west to such horror. The Dee family lives in Efrat and the attack happened in the Jordan valley, all part of the disputed territories of Judea and Samaria. Israeli Jews who are attacked in these territories tend to be dehumanised by western commentators as “settlers'“ in the “occupied territories” who were “asking for it”; or they are airbrushed out of media coverage altogether. 

This is even though the Palestinian Arabs have been murdering Jews in Israel and these territories for more than a century, decades before the so-called “occupation of the West Bank” after the 1967 six day war, and decades before the State of Israel even came into existence in 1948. The initial response of the UK government was shocking. As Israel’s former ambassador to the US Michael Oren tweeted in disgust: 

“The British government was “saddened to hear about the deaths of British-Israeli citizens and the serious injuries sustained by a third individual” and called on “all parties to de-escalate tensions”. No mention of Palestinians or terror, no outrage. The sisters merely “died” and a third person was somehow injured. The citizens are not really British but a  qualified “British-Israelis”. And “all” parties, including the Israeli victims, are urged to de-escalate”.

Shame on Britain. The dead were from a British family. You might have thought the British government would be outraged at the murder of three of its citizens. You might have thought that it would seek to hold the Palestinian Arabs to account for their incitement and complicity.

But of course, the British government is itself complicit in this and in all the other attacks on Israelis. That’s because it connives at the incitement to murder Israeli Jews by continuing to insist falsely that Israel is in “illegal occupation”; it continues to sanitise or ignore fanatical Palestinian Arab Islamic incitement to murder Israeli Jews and steal their land; it continues to refuse to exert any pressure on the Palestinian Arabs to cease its war of extermination against the State of Israel. Instead, it calls on both sides to “de-escalate” — an obscene moral equivalence between terrorists and terrorised, which means in practice telling Israel not to take the action that’s necessary to protect its people.

After the death of Lucy Dee, and doubtless aware of the gathering outrage over the British government’s initial response, the Foreign Secretary James Cleverly tweeted:

Tragic news that Leah Dee has also died following the abhorrent attacks in the West Bank. There can be no justification for the murder of Leah and her two daughters, Maia and Rina. We will continue to work with the Israeli authorities to end this senseless violence.

And to all of this sickening reaction by the British establishment, there has been (at time of writing) not a peep of protest from Britain’s Jewish leadership. But wait — a headline in Ha’aretz says:

British Jews Are Finally Speaking Out”… 

Oh dear, not against the appeasement of the terrorist Palestinian Arabs but against Netanyahu and the Israeli Far-Right. These cowardly people have been put to shame by a decent Muslim, Noor Dahri. He tweeted:

“I feel so sorry and have no words to express my grief. Two innocent British teen sisters were murdered by my co-religious people (Palestinians) in the name of my faith. My religion hasn’t permitted them to kill innocent people in its name at all. They don’t belong to my religious principles but unfortunately most of my Muslim followers (whom I know) are supporting them in killing Jews and call these acts resistance and reaction which I feel ashamed of them. I am so sorry but my unconditional support will always remain with you. Jews have absolute right in the holy land to celebrate and enjoy Passover with peace. Never feel weak because you aren’t born helpless. Never Again. May Allah rest victims in peace. Amen. “

Palestinian Arabs committed this vile deed. But they are consistently backed, encouraged, sanitised, excused and incentivised by many others who have accordingly kept this war of extermination going for the past century. Lucy Dee and her two daughters, along with Alessandro Parini, are the latest victims of it and they won’t be the last.

Remarkably, there have been no words of hatred from Rabbi Dee. No words of bitterness, no calls for revenge. Only an expression of trust that justice will be done; a reiteration of the balance within Judaism between justice and love; and the beyond-moving hope  — after his wife finally succumbed to her injuries — that by choosing good over evil we can all make the world a better place.

May the memory of Lucy, Maia and Rina Dee be a blessing.

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Israel’s Two-Faced Allies

Video Of The Week.United Hatzalah (Rescue) Volunteers https://tinyurl.com/673kt94v

For the full article from  Israel Hayom, by Melanie Philips go to - https://tinyurl.com/4pac558n

America and Britain claim to be allies of Israel. There is no gainsaying the deep links between them of military assistance, intelligence and trade. Israel is the invaluable strategic asset for America and Britain in the Middle East, a crucial bulwark in the defence of the west.  And yet both America and Britain undermine Israel’s security and defence against existential attack by sanitising, promoting and funding Palestinian Arabs, whose active cause remains the destruction of the Jewish state.

A recent event illustrated this particularly sharply when British diplomatic officials in Jerusalem effectively endorsed the Palestinian Authority’s agenda to eradicate Israel.  Palestinian Media Watch has revealed that at last Friday’s annual “Palestine Marathon” held by the PA, seven British officials taking part as “#TeamUK” wore marathon T-shirts displaying the PA’s map that erases Israel and represents the whole country as Palestine.  The Jewish Chronicle reports that the team consisted of the UK’s Deputy Consul General Alison McEwen and Foreign Office colleagues. A picture of the team was tweeted from the official account of the British Consulate in Jerusalem, hailing “the incredible Palestine Marathon to support #FREEDOMOFMOVEMENT for all Palestinians”.

Palestinian Media Watch observes that this hashtag was conceived to support the PA’s demand that Israel remove the security measures it has adopted to prevent the flow of Palestinian terrorists from PA-controlled areas into Israel’s cities.  According to The Jewish Chronicle, the marathon was organised by a group called “Right to Movement,” which campaigns against “the many obstacles that we live daily under fascist racist occupation”.  The race was held under the auspices of the Palestine Liberation Organisation Supreme Council for Youth and Sports headed by Jibril Rajoub, a man who has been convicted of numerous terrorist offences and who persistently glorifies Palestinian terrorist murderers.

So these British diplomats took part in an event supervised by a terrorist sympathiser; openly supported the Palestinian Arabs’ lie that Israel is subjecting them to “fascist racist occupation”; openly opposed Israel’s measures to protect its citizens against attack; and openly endorsed the eradication of Israel altogether.

The current British government under Prime Minister Rishi Sunak contains an unprecedented number of Israel supporters. So how can its diplomats have displayed such egregious hostility to Israel’s security and even its very existence?  The consular bodies run by both Britain and America in Jerusalem, which provide assistance to the Palestinian Arabs in the east of the city, the disputed territories and in the Gaza Strip, have long been viewed by the Israeli government as working against Israeli interests.

What is the reason for this two-faced attitude? There’s a charitable explanation and a less charitable one.

The charitable one is that neither the American nor British government accepts that the PA’s objective is the extermination of Israel. This is because these governments are committed to the “two-state solution”. It requires them to define the problem to which this is the solution as the division of land between two sets of people with legitimate claims to that land.  This is clearly untrue. The PA’s own repeated statements, its maps and insignia depicting a state of Palestine that erases Israel, its incitement to seize Israeli cities such as Haifa and Jaffa and its support for terrorism all show that its aim is Israel’s destruction.

Yet the American and British governments can’t allow themselves to acknowledge this. Partly, this is due to pressure from the Arab world. Mostly, though, it’s due to the implacable liberal belief in conflict resolution and peace processes.

Since the Americans and British can’t allow anything to disrupt such a peace process, they ignore any evidence of a non-negotiable and unconscionable agenda.  So Israel, which has always been willing to negotiate and has indeed offered a Palestinian state on numerous occasions, gets blamed for endangering the peace process when it insists on defending itself against never-ending Palestinian Arab terrorism.  That liberal tunnel vision helps explain why the Biden administration funds the PA even though it continues its “pay-for-slay” stipends to terrorists’ families.

The less charitable explanation, meanwhile, is that some of those promoting the Palestinian Arab cause are motivated by malign hatred of Israel and the Jewish people.

 

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Abbas’ Message of Hopelessness at the UN

Video Of The Week -2700 Year Old Toilet Discovered in Jerusalem - https://tinyurl.com/3mt8y34m

For the full article go to JPCA - https://tinyurl.com/m57tkcb7

• PLO Chairman Mahmoud Abbas’ statement to the UN General Assembly on September 24, 2021, was almost identical to Yasser Arafat’s statement at the 2001 Durban Conference. Nothing has changed in the Palestinian message and narrative.
• Citing the “Nakba” (catastrophe), Abbas deliberately inverted history and ignored decades of organized violence by Arab groups and forces against Jewish communities, including massacres of Jews in 1920, 1921, 1929, 1936, and 1938, all aimed at terrorizing the Jewish residents and removing any Jewish presence from the area.
• He misled the General Assembly into believing that General Assembly Resolution 194 (III) created a “right of return” for Palestinians. The truth is that the resolution was a non-obligatory recommendation and did not create legal rights.
• In violation of UN resolutions and international conventions criminalizing the financing of terror, Abbas blatantly and unabashedly defended and justified the PA’s “pay to slay” policy that provides salaries to prisoners guilty of acts of terror and murder, knowing that such payments serve as incentives and encouragement for more acts of terror.
• To come to the UN General Assembly with delusional, misleading, and misguided accusations and threats does not serve the interests of peace and does not advance the chances of a return to peace negotiations one iota.

Anybody reading or listening to the PLO Chairman Mahmoud Abbas’ statement to the UN General Assembly on September 24, 2021,¹ could not but be transformed back to the almost identical statement made by then-head of the PLO, Yasser Arafat, at the 2001 Durban Conference.

Evidently, nothing has changed in the Palestinian message and narrative.

Abbas presented the same re-hashing of the familiar Palestinian accusations, clichés, and buzzwords of racism, colonialism, apartheid, nakba, and ethnic cleansing; unceasing whining about having been neglected by the international community; misrepresentation of, and delusional reliance on old, non-binding UN General Assembly resolutions, none of which have any legal authority or practical relevance; and finally their penchant for threatening – whether to continue their “peaceful popular resistance” of rocket-firing, terror infiltration, stabbings, ecological and agricultural terror, or complaining to international juridical bodies.

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EU. should Propose Peace not Violence

Video Of The Week - Israeli Rescue Operation in Florida - https://tinyurl.com/t5czja7j

For the full Article from “Jewishwebsight” by Fiamma Nirenstein go to - https://tinyurl.com/238pn8fd

 It’s been 30 years since the Madrid Conference, the aim of which was to revive the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. Yet, after three decades, Europe still hasn’t grasped what a failure it and all other such attempts have been.

The Palestinian delegation—including Hanan Ashrawi and Saeb Erekat—was engaging in “peace” chitchat by day and rushing by night to report to PLO chief Yasser Arafat in Tunis by night. They returned from the latter full of hatred and contempt for the Jewish people, which they expressed in vitriolic declarations that about Israel’s being a “colonialist occupier, and a “racist apartheid state.”

 Now again, Madrid and Rome are proposing an Israeli-Palestinian peace conference. This is ironic, given the 20-year anniversary of the “World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance” in Durban, South Africa—itself a festival of hatred.

Europe is well aware of the above conferences and other such failed endeavors, not one of which I have missed as a journalist. All have gone the same way. The Oslo Accords, for example—subsequently signed by then-Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Arafat—resulted in the bloodbath of the Second Intifada.

Cities were evacuated in order to allow 98 percent of Palestinians to live under the jurisdiction of their government, the Palestinian Authority, where they still reside. But this was nothing meaningful for those who wished for the death of the “enemy,” Israel.

Israel also evacuated every last Jew from Gaza in August 2005. Despite this complete withdrawal from the Strip, the Palestinians and their apologists still called it “occupied”—illustrating perfectly that there is no territorial solution to the conflict. Perhaps the leaders of Spain and Italy haven’t been paying attention.

Perhaps they have forgotten, as well, the numerous other peace conferences that ended with multiple lucrative offers of land to the Palestinians—from Israeli prime ministers Shimon Peres, Ehud Barak, Ehud Olmert and Benjamin Netanyahu—each of which were met not only with resounding “noes,” but accompanying waves of terrorism.

What European leaders continually seem to ignore is the Palestinian belief that Israel shouldn’t and has no right to exist. It’s an ideology that’s woven into the fabric of Palestinian Authority propaganda, which includes accusations of Israeli “apartheid” and “genocide.”

Still, “occupation” is the only word that the E.U. knows how to utter while accusing Israel of violating international law. It’s a comfortable mantra that has been proven false again and again, with every Israeli overture.

It’s time for the European Union to finally understand this if it truly wants peace and stability in the Middle East—where, in addition to Palestinian intransigence, Iran and its proxy Hezbollah wield influence through money, weapons and warfare—it has to look beyond useless peace conferences.

If the Palestinians ever come to understand that friendship with Israel—based on peace for peace and tolerance for tolerance—is both possible and advantageous for anyone who truly seeks it, perhaps their racist hunger for destruction will subside.

Peace can be a goal that bears actual fruit—such as advancement in all realms of health, agriculture and water technology—not empty words. Indeed, it can provide hope for a better future for all the children of the region.

If Europe really wants to involve the Palestinians in a peace process, it should invite them to Brussels within the framework of the Abraham Accords. To do this, however, it needs to be honest with itself about P.A. leader Mahmoud Abbas. It must realize that he’s not a potential partner for peace, but rather a dictator who murders his rivals—one who canceled the Palestinian elections slated for May in order to retain his useless and harmful 17-year grip on power, and keep his hands on all the European money given to the P.A., with which he lines his pockets and funds his “pay for slay” program.

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It is the Season to Nail Israel

 Video Of The Week - Christian. Israeli. IDF Officer -https://tinyurl.com/yale4cl

By David m. Weinberg   December 24, 2020

For the full article go to Israel Hayom: https://tinyurl.com/y7nyelwm

 ‘Intersectionality” is the idea that race, class, gender, and other individual characteristics “intersect” with one another and overlap, and that all injustices are interconnected.

 Intersectionality has risen to smash Israel for Christmas. Two weeks ago, the “Irish Unity Movement” tweeted, “If Mary and Joseph set off to Bethlehem today, they’d cross 15 Israeli checkpoints and a 30-foot wall,” setting-off a Twitter-storm.

 One diplomatic correspondent responded that Mary and Joseph were Jews (!), who today would have been barred from visiting Bethlehem by Palestinian police. Others responded bluntly that “If Mary and Joseph somehow made it to Bethlehem they probably would be raped and lynched by a Palestinian mob.” Others noted correctly that the Christian population in Bethlehem has dropped drastically since the PLO took over.

 Intersectionality aside, the Western media annually devotes considerable Christmas ink, and many Christian NGOs dedicate their Christmas appeals, to purveying the false impression that Christians are under assault by Israelis. And worse still, that Jews are crucifying Christians smack in the heart of Bethlehem.

 THESE SCREEDS demonize Israel and seek to cover up the real reason for Christian decline in Bethlehem: the Palestinian Authority and radical Islam.

 It started with Yasser Arafat. Arriving from Tunis, Arafat immediately set out to suppress the Palestinian middle class across the West Bank, which he understood could be the only real opposition to his planned dictatorial authority. He nationalized most business sectors and squeezed Palestinian small businessmen out of business. Especially hard hit were middle-class businessmen of Bethlehem, mainly Christian.

 Arafat then sidelined the long-time Christian mayor of Bethlehem, Elias Freij, and Arafat’s henchmen led a campaign of terrorism and intimidation against Christian institutions and families in the city. Land theft, beatings and harassment of Christians in Bethlehem by PA security services and other gangs became routine. Forced marriages between Christian women and Muslim men were reported. In 2002,

 The result was an inexorable and ongoing Christian exodus from Bethlehem; a city captured by the PA and taken over by a very intolerant strain of Islam.

 Nevertheless, PA President Mahmoud Abbas annually releases a malevolent Christmas message in which he cynically calls Jesus Christ a “Palestinian messenger,” and goes on to blast Israel for denying “millions” of Christians their “right to worship in their homeland.”

 This is an ugly attempt to apply “replacement theology” (in which Christians are said to have superseded the Jews in a covenant with God) to the Palestinian assault on Israel. In Abbas’s reversed and warped world, the Jewish-Christian Jesus has been replaced by a Palestinian Christ, and Christianity is under attack by the Jews, not the Arabs and Muslims. Not only is this untrue, but it ignores the radical Islamic assault on Christians across the Middle East, often with government encouragement and support.

 In Gaza, Islamic terrorists have bombed churches, killed prominent Christians (mostly Greek Orthodox), and forced others to convert to Islam. In the West Bank, Arab Christians are better off than almost anywhere in the region, but only an estimated 50,000 live there – about 2% of the population, down from 10% in 1920.

 Overall, Christians now make up only 4% of the population of the Middle East, down from 20% a century ago.

 It should be the season for a rigorous world defense campaign on behalf of beleaguered Christians in the Middle East. Instead,‘tis the season to nail Israel.

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Why Israel Chose to aid an Ailing Enemy

 Video Of The Week -3,200-Year-Old Canaanite Fortress https://tinyurl.com/y32a3g7v

Saeb Erekat repeatedly libeled Israel, aided terrorists and was an obstacle to peace. But Jewish values will always dictate that Israelis help those in need.

(October 19, 2020 / JNS) It’s the kind of story that drives a lot of friends of Israel nuts. One of its chief opponents, Palestinian Liberation Organization senior leader Saeb Erekat recently fell ill with COVID-19. Faced with the decision as to where to be treated, it was only natural that instead of going to a Palestinian hospital or even one in neighboring Jordan, he chose to go to Hadassah Medical Center in Jerusalem.

This is, after all, the same person who spent his career lying about Israel, and smearing it as a nation of oppressors and war criminals. He’s part of a government that spends far more on paying salaries and pensions to terrorists and their families than on hospitals. Indeed, in March of this year, he actually went as far as to falsely allege that Israelis were spitting on Palestinian cars so as to spread the coronavirus to them. And though he has served as the P.A.’s chief peace negotiator, he’s spent his tenure in that position working to make peace negotiations impossible, swearing that he will never recognize Israel as a Jewish state and end the ongoing conflict. 

However, when faced with the question of where was the best place in the region to seek help, Israel was the obvious answer. One of the region’s pre-eminent health-care facilities, Hadassah and its doctors took him in. 

Some Israelis and friends of the Jewish state can’t understand it. They see this willingness to help even enemies as a particular form of weakness. They cite the passage from the Midrash of the sages that says, “He who becomes compassionate to the cruel will ultimately become cruel to the compassionate” as a good reason to turn Erekat down.

Others think that it was wrong of the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu not to exact concessions from the Palestinians in exchange for what may well be the best chance of saving Erekat’s life. And it wasn’t just right-wingers saying that. Michal Cotler-Wunsh, a moderate member of the Knesset from the Blue and White Party, asserted that prior to admitting him, Israel should have gotten the P.A. to agree to reciprocal humanitarian gestures, such as returning the bodies of slain Israeli soldiers being held by Hamas terrorists in the Gaza Strip or freeing two Israeli Arabs who wandered over the border in that terrorist enclave.

That sounds only fair; still, the supposedly hardline government led by Netanyahu didn’t try to extract such concessions or at least didn’t try very hard to do so quietly. Why not?

One pragmatic answer is that for all of the antagonism between Israel and the P.A., in addition to the latter’s refusal to make peace, the day-to-day working relationship between them continues. Contrary to the incessant talk about the occupation, almost all Palestinians live under the dictatorial rule of P.A. leader Mahmoud Abbas and his corrupt Fatah Party. There is a fair amount of security coordination going on that is partly aimed at reducing Palestinian attacks on Israelis, yet also focused on keeping Abbas alive against threats from his Hamas rivals.

Doing favors for Palestinian leaders is part of this uneasy relationship, so it’s hardly surprising that Israel would reserve a bed at Hadassah for the use of a person who has done so much to hurt the Jewish state.

But the real reason goes far deeper than that.

As much as Israel is depicted as a modern day Sparta—a militarized state that is dominated and governed by its security establishment—Jewish values still play a crucial part in its decision-making. Being a Jewish state necessarily involves considerations that a purely utilitarian approach to life would reject.

Much like Netanyahu’s highly controversial decision to trade more than 1,000 convicted Palestinian terrorists, including many with blood on their hands, for the freedom of a kidnapped young soldier, Israeli leaders often wind up doing things that objectively make little sense. The Gilad Shalit prisoner exchange let murderers of children walk free; however, the obligation to redeem a captive took precedence and rather than suffer politically for the decision, Netanyahu was applauded by voters even as security experts deplored the precedent he had set.

By the same token, the generally tough-minded premier likely felt that it was impossible for him to refuse a humanitarian request, even from a bitter foe.

It’s doubtful that any other country would be so generous to an enemy, yet somehow, the notion that Israel would turn away a person in need is inconceivable. Unlike the English common-law tradition, there is a specific Jewish obligation to help others rather than to stand by only watching their plight.

Israel isn't perfect but it is often unfairly judged by a double standard about its conduct towards enemies that is not applied to any other democracy at war. Though it is far more scrupulous about trying to avoid hurting civilians when it fights its foes, it is continually blamed for any casualties in ways that others are not.

Like the peace offers that Erekat and his comrades have repeatedly rejected, no one will give Israel credit for its unilateral humanitarianism. But it’s entirely natural, if also frustrating, that Netanyahu would help a Palestinian leader in need even when we know that if the shoe were on the other foot, Israel’s foes would not do the same.

The instinctual application of traditional Jewish values by the Jewish state’s secular government should not surprise anyone. Even when it will not advance Israel’s cause, behaving decently to those who would not reciprocate such a gesture is still the default position of any government of the Jewish state. 

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Serial Liar and Failed Diplomat Erekat to Lecture on Diplomacy

 

Video Of The Week - BBC smears Roman Abramovich https://tinyurl.com/y6qoqxvn

Based on an Article from the “Algemeiner”

 Erekat will mentor students and give virtual seminars as a fellow in The Future of Diplomacy Project at the Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.

Erekat, also the secretary general of the Executive Committee of the PLO, said in a 2014 interview with Al Jazeera that “I will never recognize Israel as a Jewish state.”

Saeb Erakat has been extensively involved in all negotiations with Israel, including those conducted at Camp David (2000) and in Taba (2001). In 1991, he was the Vice-Chair of the Madrid Peace Delegation and was later the Vice-Chair at the Washington negotiations of 1992. Previously, he served as the Minister of Local Government for the Palestinian National Authority and is also Head of the Palestinian Side of the Steering and Monitoring Committee. He is the author of fourteen books on foreign policy, oil, conflict resolution, and negotiations.

 What diplomatic victory has Erakat ever achieved? He has been instrumental in painting the Palestinians into a corner, stopping negotiations with Israel even after “annexation” is off the table, which only hurts his own people.

His brilliant diplomatic skills have succeeded in turning much of the Arab world from pro-Palestinian to lukewarm or hostile.

He has a long history of the most egregious lies, denying Jewish history, and justifying terror attacks. He’s even lied about his own life and his family’s history.

And that is only scratching the surface.

Erakat is not at all a “respected global leader.” He is a failure at everything he has ever done.

Why would Harvard hire a proven, serial liar, a failed negotiator, and politician who has not helped his own people in any real way, and who is not really even popular among Palestinians, to teach its students?

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The PLO-Hamas divorce is final

Video Of The Week - Hamas is destroying Gaza   https://tinyurl.com/yayd3obt

          

Arutz 7, by Dr. Mordechai Kedar, 17/10/18

This week the Israeli newspaper Yediot Aharonot informed us that Jason Greenblatt, President Trump's special representative for international negotiations, said that the Americans intend to reconnect the Gaza Strip and the Palestinian Authority. If Greenblatt actually did say that, it reveals an important component of the American Peace Plan whose preparation has been going on for over a year.

The Americans hearkened to the Palestinian consensus they observed on this issue and concluded that both the Palestinian leadership and public are all for it, leading them to make it part of their plan, in the hope that the Palestinians would then accept the plan which all – the PLO, Hamas, Fronts and organizations – have refused pointblank even to consider. So if all the Palestinians want reunification and the Americans agree, where does the problem lie? Why don't the Palestinians agree to this part of the peace plan, at the very least? The answer is found in a very important aspect of Middle Eastern culture, one which has no counterpart in Western culture – the varied nuances of speech.

Western culture takes what is said at face value, for example: If I say that I agree with the person I am talking to, it means that I have listened to what he says, thought about it and have decided to accept his opinion. The West has faith in the sincerity of the person talking, believes what he says and accepts it as is. After all, there is free speech and anyone can say what is on their mind, so that when someone says something, it is what he really thinks and feels.

In the Middle East, however, everything anyone say has three layers: The upper and visible layer is the content of what has been said, the middle one is what the person speaking really means and the lowest is what he is hiding. While hearing someone's words, a listener in the Middle East tries to penetrate to the hidden layers, understand the real intention of the speaker and reveal what is being hidden from him.

That is why when any Palestinian Arab politician, PLO or Hamas, declares: "We must reunite Gaza and the West Bank" he means " I understand that this is what the man in the street wants and I am saying what he wants to hear," hiding the fact that he is certain that it will never happen and that he intends to blame the other side for the continued split.

Why won't the reunification happen? Because the two areas differ totally in their culture, language, behavior and thought patterns. Gaza Arabic is a Bedouin dialect, a derivative of Saudi spoken Arabic, while that of the Arabs of Judea and Samaria is a Palestinian dialect similar to the Arabic spoken in Syria.  The language gap is not just a technical factor in communication, it is the expression of cultural differences: Gaza's culture is Bedouin, while that of Arabs in Judea and Samaria is that of farmers and city dwellers.

Gaza's leadership is Hamas, an organization with a religious character that reflects its population's makeup, while the PLO rules the PA with a secular agenda that suits the Arab population of Judea and Samaria, except for the Hevron Hills whose residents are more traditional. The split between Gaza and Judea/Samaria is not only political, but based on cultural differences, with a cultural abyss separating two different populations who have never lived together except for the short period from the establishment of the PLO in 1994 to the split in 2007, fourteen years later, during which time there was no cultural blending between the two regions.  Even more significant is the bad blood flowing between the two ruling organizations, the PLO and Hamas. The expressions they use against one another are the worst in Arabic political language:  "Traitors", "Collaborators with Israel", "corrupt", "bloodsuckers", "Israeli border police" and many other much more malevolent accusations.

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