The International Herald Tribune, a sister publication of the New York Times, recently ran a story entitled “Is Global Re-branding What Israel Needs?” The article opened by recognizing Israel as the world’s pariah state:
Israeli sports teams have met hostility and violent protests in Sweden, Spain and Turkey. Mauritania has closed the Israeli Embassy. Relations with Turkey, an important Muslim ally, have suffered severely. A group of top international judges and human rights investigators recently called for an investigation into Israel’s actions in Gaza. “Israel Apartheid Week” drew participants in 54 cities around the world this month, twice the number of last year, according to its organizers. Even among the American Jewish community, there is a chill. The IHT columnist, Ethan Bronner, went on to build his case that everybody hates Israel (even liberal Jews), and Israel deserves it.
Israel’s critics say that four decades of occupation, the settling of half a million Israeli Jews on land captured in 1967, the economic strangling of Gaza for the past few years and the society’s growing indifference toward a Palestinian state are all reasons Israel has lost favor abroad. Now it appears that the international community has forgotten how Israel ended up occupying the land it “captured” in 1967.
Long before there was an Israel, the world tried to exterminate the Jews. The Jews’ return to their ancestral homeland was spurred by the Holocaust. The Holocaust wasn’t personally perpetrated by Adolph Hitler, as Hitler never killed a single Jew. It was perpetrated by the Germans – aided by Frenchmen, Italians, Romanians, Ukrainians, Arabs, and others, while the Allies did their best not to notice. Israel captured the land after defeating the combined forces of the Arab world, that had launched a war of annihilation against them.
This was not the first such attempt against the Jews. Previous attempts included times Israel fought these enemies in 1948, in 1956, and again in 1973. This strip of land, so coveted by the Arab world, amounts to less than one-sixth of one percent of the Muslim Middle East. The Palestinian State, that the rest of the world insists that Israel owes the Palestinians could have been theirs in 1947, however they turned it down in favor of a war of annihilation.
Fast forward to 2008: Why did Israel go back into Gaza? It was because Palestinian terrorists fired more than six thousand rockets into Israeli cities and towns. Israel waited six months before they took steps to defend themselves. The Israeli offensive was designed to cut down Palestinian rocket attacks.
BBC News reports since the ceasefire: “The flow of explosives and weapons smuggled into Gaza has continued since Israel’s military operation, a senior Israeli intelligence official has said. Shin Bet security service head Yuval Diskin said 22 tons of explosives, dozens of rockets and hundreds of mortar rounds have entered Gaza. He added that rocket attacks were reduced, and Egyptian attempts to combat the smuggling had improved. Among the items smuggled through tunnels under the border with Egypt in recent weeks, were also 45 tons of raw materials for the production of weapons, hundreds of mortar shells and dozens of anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles, he said. The tunnels are also used for smuggling in goods that cannot enter Gaza under Israel’s blockade of the strip, which allows only humanitarian basics in through the crossings from Israel…”
Israel National News reports: “The Arab League is formulating an ultimatum to be issued Monday warning Israel that it must accept the League’s terms for an Arab-Israel agreement. If Israel refuses, the Arab League statement indicates, the offer will be off the table. Meanwhile, the Arab League is hosting a leader charged with racist massacres of non-Arabs in his own country.
If approved by the Arab leaders attending the Arab League meeting in Qatar on Monday, the statement will declare that the proposed agreement, credited to Saudi Arabia, will soon be rescinded if Israel fails to accept it. The draft was composed by Arab foreign ministers meeting ahead of the 2009 G-20 Summit.
The 2002 Saudi Initiative, as it has come to be known, called for: 1) full Israeli withdrawal from all lands under Jewish sovereignty since 1967, including Jerusalem, the Golan Heights and all of Judea and Samaria; 2) Israeli agreement to accept Arab war refugees; 3) Israeli acceptance of a Palestinian Arab state in Judea, Samaria and Gaza, with Jerusalem as its capital. In exchange, the Arab states would agree to enter into a peace agreement with Israel, and “consider the Arab-Israeli conflict ended.”
Knesset Member Ahmed Tibi, head of the Arab Renewal Movement faction, will be attending some Arab League meetings. According to the Hebrew-language Ha’aretz newspaper, Tibi is pushing for the Arab League to call on the international community to force Israel to accept the creation of a Palestinian state…”
In his briefing to the cabinet on Sunday, Mr. Diskin also noted a drop in the number of rockets fired into Israel in recent weeks. He said Hamas, which controls Gaza, was carrying out arrests of members of smaller militant factions to stop attacks, and had signed an agreement with the Islamic Jihad group to end attacks.
Despite his deficiencies, the prime minister has throughout his term demonstrated a steely determination in leading military operations into enemy territory. A series of decisions, some of which we only hear of through reports in foreign media, reflect a willingness to take risks in approving distant, secret operations aimed at ensuring Israel’s strategic position.
Associated Press Writer Steven Gutkin reported from Jerusalem, that Benjamin Netanyahu, taking office as Israel’s new leader Tuesday, promised to seek “full peace” with the Arab and Muslim world, but refused to utter the words the world was waiting to hear: “Palestinian state.” The well-spoken, U.S.-educated leader took pains to portray himself as a pragmatist, telling a packed parliament that Israel does not want to rule the Palestinians.
“Under the permanent status agreement, the Palestinians will have all the authority to rule themselves,” Netanyahu said. His words drew a sharp reaction from Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat. “I want to say to Mr. Netanyahu that the only way the Palestinians can rule themselves, by themselves, is through ending the Israeli occupation that began in 1967 and establishing an independent Palestinian state,” Erekat said.
Netanyahu’s refusal to embrace the idea of Palestinian statehood could put him at odds with the Obama administration and much of the rest of the world, as could his decision to appoint ultranationalist politician Avigdor Lieberman as foreign minister.
‘We have to wait a little while to see how things will evolve and how the situation changes,’ Assad wrote as Israel voted in a new government headed by Benjamin Netanyahu. ‘We still believe that we need to conclude a serious dialogue to lead us to peace,’ he declared.
In the interview, Assad argued that Israel understands that the return of the Golan Heights, which Israel captured from Syria during the 1967 Six-Day War, is not negotiable…”
Assad urged Arab leaders convened in Qatar for a regional summit to reject a 2002 Saudi peace initiative, as Israel had demonstrated that it was not a ‘real partner’ to peace. ‘We Arabs, since we offered the Arab initiative, do not have a real partner in the peace process,’ he told the leaders.
Assad told the weekly magazine the New Yorker that though it may take some time, Syria still believes in the power of serious dialogue to produce a lasting peace with Israel.
What do we learn from all this? That Israel possesses exceptional intelligence, a willingness to take great risk, and an ability to act successfully against targets far from Israel’s borders.
By Marcene Taff, The Underground staff writer
