What If Jews Had Followed the Palestinian Path?

An interesting perspective on what the world would look like if Israel had not been created and instead the survivors of the Holocaust had taken a different path.

It is doubtful that there has ever been a more miserable human refuse than Jewish survivors after World War II. Starving, emaciated, stateless—they were not welcomed back by countries where they had lived for generations as assimilated and educated citizens. Germany was no place to return to and in Kielce, Poland, 40 Jews who survived the Holocaust were killed in a pogrom one year after the war ended. The European Jew, circa 1945, quickly went from victim to international refugee disaster.

Yet within a very brief time, this epic calamity disappeared, so much so that few people today even remember the period. How did this happen in an era when Palestinian refugees have continued to be stateless for generations?

In 1945, there were hundreds of thousands of Jewish survivors living in DP Camps (displaced persons) across Europe. They were fed and clothed by Jewish and international relief organizations. Had the world's Jewish population played this situation as the Arabs and Palestinians have, everything would look very different today.

Read more at The Wall Street Journal

Hamas rejects Fayyad for Palestinian prime minister

Since signing a reconciliation accord more than a month ago, the Palestinian factions Fatah and Hamas have made only slow progress in carrying it out, and on Sunday the pact hit its first significant snag with a public disagreement over who should be prime minister of a joint government.

The dispute over Fatah’s nomination Saturday of Salam Fayyad, a political independent who is the Palestinian Authority premier, cast a shadow over planned talks in Cairo on Tuesday on the composition of the new cabinet.

The candidacy of Fayyad is key to whether a unified Palestinian government will continue to have the Western backing that the Palestinian Authority has received during his term in office. The U.S.-educated economist is respected by foreign donors and has been credited internationally with revamping Palestinian finances and building government institutions necessary for statehood.

 Read more at the Washington Post

Remembering Six Days in 1967

Ambassador Michael Oren reviews the history and lessons of the 1967 Six Day War on its anniversary.

"We shall destroy Israel and its inhabitants," declared Palestine Liberation Organization leader Ahmad al-Shuqayri. "As for the survivors -- if there are any -- the boats are ready to deport them." A half-million Arab soldiers and more than 5,000 tanks converged on Israel from every direction, including the West Bank, then part of Jordan. Their plans called for obliterating Israel's army, conquering the country, and killing large numbers of civilians. Iraqi President Abdul Rahman Arif said the Arab goal was to wipe Israel off the map: "We shall, God willing, meet in Tel Aviv and Haifa."

This was the fate awaiting Israel on June 4, 1967. Many Israelis feverishly dug trenches and filled sandbags, while others secretly dug 10,000 graves for the presumed victims. Some 14,000 hospital beds were arranged and gas masks distributed to the civilian population. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) prepared to launch a pre-emptive strike to neutralize Egypt, the most powerful Arab state, but the threat of invasion by other Arab armies remained.  

Israel's borders at the time were demarcated by the armistice lines established at the end of Israel's war of independence 18 years earlier. These lines left Israel a mere 9 miles wide at its most populous area. Israelis faced mountains to the east and the sea to their backs and, in West Jerusalem, were virtually surrounded by hostile forces. In 1948, Arab troops nearly cut the country in half at its narrow waist and laid siege to Jerusalem, depriving 100,000 Jews of food and water.

Read more at Foreign Policy

PM Netanyahu's Address at the Knesset Herzl Day

Prime Minister Netanyahu addressed the Knesset yesterday.  Here are some excerpts.

Two days ago, on the Tenth of Iyar, it was the 107th anniversary of Theodore Herzl's death.  It is no coincidence that his is the only portrait hanging on these walls.  Herzl was the greatest leader the Jewish people has had in modern times.  He was well aware of the condition of the Jewish people.  He recognized the transformations that were taking place everywhere; and he clearly saw that a Jewish state was required in order for the Jewish people to survive, and that having an army was a necessity for the survival of this state.  And not just an army, but a strong, modern army, equipped with advanced technology.

...What can we learn today from Herzl's work?  What is relevant to us today?  The first lesson is that we must recognize changing reality.  The Middle East is changing rapidly and drastically.  Hundreds of millions of people around us yearn for political and financial freedom and are fighting to obtain these freedoms.  These are inevitable changes.  It is very possible that in the long term, these changes will be for the best, and I hope they will, for the good of these people and because at the end of the day, if this struggle is successful, it will promote the chance for peace and the peace's resilience.  But in the short term, in the interim, our situation could possibly worsen, be more problematic and more challenging.  We can see what is happening in Egypt, in Syria and in Lebanon.  Lebanon is now controlled by Hezbollah, under the sponsorship of Iran, when only five years ago there was such great hope for freedom and progress.  We saw what happened along the borders of Israel yesterday.  Thousands thronged against our fences in an attempt to invade our territory and challenge our sovereignty.  I must say that from the point of view of yesterday's rioters, 63 years of Israeli independence have changed nothing.

... I know that a huge majority of people understands that we can only make peace with those who want to make peace with us.  Those who wish to obliterate us are no partners for peace.  A Palestinian government with half its members declaring daily that they plan to annihilate the Jewish state is not a partner for peace.  Those who say, and I am familiar with the saying, that you only make peace with your enemies, must complement the statement with a small but important remark. You only make peace with an enemy, but with an enemy who has decided to make peace. 

Read more at the Prime Minister's Office

Media Watch: Most Ignored Story Of 2010? Israel

What was the most ignored story of 2010?

Israel. Really.

Only a handful of mainstream newspapers covered the Palestinian claims to the Western Wall and Rachel’s Tomb; or that Palestinian rockets were still landing in Israel; or the 1930s level of anti-Semitism in the official Palestinian media; or the Palestinian claims that Haifa and Sderot are occupied territory; let alone not covering the transcendent beauty of daily religious life and Jewish culture in Israel.

Read more at The Jewish Week

Gaza militant groups agree to halt rocket attacks on Israel

Over 200 rockets have been fired from Gaza into Israel this year, killing one person and causing some minor injuries.  Palestinian militant groups have agreed to halt these attacks temporarily.

Militant Palestinian groups in the Gaza Strip have agreed to halt rocket attacks against Israel, a senior Islamic Jihad leader said Thursday. 

"We agreed to halt one of the means of armed resistance, which is firing rockets at Israel, to avoid the Israeli threats," Dawood Shihab, a spokesman for the group, said in a statement e-mailed to journalists. 

Read more at Haaretz

A 63-year search for Mideast peace

On the eve of the 63rd anniversary of UN Resolution 181 (Nov. 27), which called for the partition of Palestine into two states, Israel's Ambassador to the US, Michael Oren, reflected on the history of the area since then and where to go from here.

Imagine a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict: a Jewish state living alongside a Palestinian state in permanent peace, with open borders, and even economic union. Sound like fantasy? It wasn’t, 63 years ago tomorrow, when the U.N. General Assembly voted in favor of Resolution 181, dividing what was then known as Palestine into independent Jewish and Arab states. The Arab world was to welcome the Jews, after 2,000 years of exile, back to their homeland. There would have been no Arab-Israeli conflict, no Palestinian refugees, and no suicide bombers. The Middle East would have looked much different. If only.

Read more at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution

An End to Israel’s Invisibility - by Michael Oren

Ambassador Michael Oren has written an Op-Ed in the New York Times in response to comment by Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, refusing to recognize Israel as a Jewish state.

NEARLY 63 years after the United Nations recognized the right of the Jewish people to independence in their homeland — and more than 62 years since Israel’s creation — the Palestinians are still denying the Jewish nature of the state. “Israel can name itself whatever it wants,” said the Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, while, according to the newspaper Haaretz, his chief negotiator, Saeb Erekat, said that the Palestinian Authority will never recognize Israel as the Jewish state. Back in 1948, opposition to the legitimacy of a Jewish state ignited a war. Today it threatens peace.

Read more at The New York Times

Acceptable in Polite Society

The German word Salonfähig doesn’t have a precise English translation. The closest English can do is something along the lines of “acceptable in polite society.” Salonfähig came to mind when I got my first look at the outrageous cover of this week’s Time magazine. Against a light blue background is a Star of David composed of white daisies. “Blue and white” brought to you by Time. But in the middle of the star, in stark black letters, lies the title of this week’s cover story: “Why Israel Doesn’t Care About Peace.”

Read more at Commentary Magazine

Skip the lecture on Israel's 'risks for peace'

George Will discusses how Israel has made concession after concession in the pursuit of peace, while being asked to continually give away more, and have faith that the next "risk" will result in peace for the region.

In the intifada that began in 2000, Palestinian terrorism killed more than 1,000 Israelis. As a portion of U.S. population, that would be 42,000, approaching the toll of America's eight years in Vietnam. During the onslaught, which began 10 Septembers ago, Israeli parents sending two children to a school would put them on separate buses to decrease the chance that neither would return for dinner. Surely most Americans can imagine, even if their tone-deaf leaders cannot, how grating it is when those leaders lecture Israel on the need to take "risks for peace." 

Read more at the Washington Post

The Palestinians, Alone - Op-Ed by Efraim Karsh

An interesting OpEd that looks at how the urgency of the Mid-East Peace Process among some Arab populations seems to be waning in a recent poll.  Mr. Karsh also looks at the history of the support of the Arab world for the Palestinian people, as well as their persecution by these same countries.

It has long been conventional wisdom that the resolution of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is a prerequisite to peace and stability in the Middle East. Since Arabs and Muslims are so passionate about the Palestine problem, this argument runs, the Israeli-Palestinian stalemate feeds regional anger and despair, gives a larger rationale to terrorist groups like Al Qaeda and to the insurgency in Iraq and obstructs the formation of a regional coalition that will help block Iran’s quest for nuclear weapons.

What, then, are we to make of a recent survey for the Al Arabiya television network finding that a staggering 71 percent of the Arabic respondents have no interest in the Palestinian-Israeli peace talks? 

Read more at The New York Times