Sabra and Shatilla, Damour, and Karantina Massacres

Karantina Massacre

The Karantina massacre took place early in the Lebanese Civil War on January 18, 1976. With the breakdown in authority of the Lebanese government the militancy of radical factions increased. Black Saturday preceded Karantina by six weeks. Karantina was a predominantly Muslim slum district in Christian east Beirut controlled by forces of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), inhabited by Kurds, Syrians, Armenians and Palestinians. The fighting and subsequent killings also involved an old quarantine area near the port and nearby Maslakh quarter. Karantina was overrun by the Lebanese Christian militias, resulting in the deaths of approximately 1,000-1,500 people. After Kataeb Regulatory Forces (KRF), Guardians of the Cedars (GoC), NLP Tiger militia and Lebanese Youth Movement (LYM) forces took control of the Karantina district on 18 January 1976, Tel al-Zaatar was placed under siege. The Damour massacre was a reprisal for Karantina.

Damour Massacre

Islamists "Palestinians" massacre of Christians in Damour that brought Christian Arabs killing "Palestinians" in Sabra Shatila. You might have only heard about the massacre at Sabra Shatila through a pro "Palestinian" propagandist that have one, and nothing but one issue, no, nothing that has to with justice whatsoever, but to persecute Israel and denigrate it. It is only natural that they blame ANYTHING on the Zionists, even though the only connection to the case where Arab Christians killed the Arab Palestinians in Sabra Shatila is the "charge" that Sharon did not prevent the Arab Christians from doing that... in other words Sharon did not rush to help the "Palestinians"... Truth is however, that not much is known what proceeded it, the Damour Massacre is almost not talked about, it was one of the major reasons why the Arab Christians in Lebanon decided the had enough with the "Palestinian" continuing crimes in coordination with Syria's occupying forces, in their country.

Sabra and Shatila Massacre

The 1982 massacre of Palestinian innocents at Sabra & Shatilla was committed in revenge for a massacre of Christians by Palestinians 6 years earlier at Damour in Lebanon. That massacre in turn was revenge for a previous one by Christians. All were part of a savage civil war. Ariel Sharon was cynically blamed by PLO propagandists and Israeli hard leftists, but he was cleared of responsibility by a Jury in New York. Israel's government commission also cleared him of direct responsibility but chided him for not preventing the crime committed by others, an exceptionally high standard.

Know the Facts!

List of Lebanese Massacres

The Land-for-Peace Hoax

The rise of the forces of jihadist Islam in Egypt places the US and other Western powers in an uncomfortable position. The US is the guarantor of Egypt's peace treaty with Israel. That treaty is based on the proposition of land for peace. Israel gave Egypt the Sinai in 1982 and in exchange it received a peace treaty with Egypt. Now that the Islamists are poised to take power, the treaty is effectively null and void.

The question naturally arises: Will the US act in accordance with its role as guarantor of the peace and demand that the new Egyptian government give Sinai back to Israel? Because if the Obama administration or whatever administration is in power when Egypt abrogates the treaty does not issue such a demand, and stand behind it, and if the EU does not support the demand, the entire concept of land-for-peace will be exposed as a hoax.

Indeed the land-for-peace formula will be exposed as a twofold fiction. First, it is based on the false proposition that the peace process is a two-way street. Israel gives land, the Arabs give peace. But the inevitable death of the Egyptian-Israeli peace accord under an Egyptian jihadist regime makes clear that the land-for-peace formula is a one-way street. Israeli land giveaways are permanent. Arab commitments to peace can be revoked at any time.

Then there are the supposedly iron-clad US and European security guarantees that accompany signed treaties. All the American and European promises to Israel - that they will stand by the Jewish state when it takes risks for peace - will be exposed as worthless lies. As we are already seeing today, no one will stand up for Israel's rights. No one will insist that the Egyptians honor their bargain.

As it has become more apparent that the Muslim Brotherhood and Salafist parties will hold an absolute majority in Egypt's democratically elected parliament, Western governments and media outlets have insistently argued that these anti-Western, and anti-Jewish, movements have become moderate and pragmatic. Leading the charge to make the case has been the Obama administration. Its senior officials have eagerly embraced the Muslim Brotherhood. Indeed, the spiritual head of the Muslim Brotherhood Yusuf Qaradawi is reportedly mediating negotiations between the US and the Taliban.

Qaradawi, an Egyptian who has been based in Qatar since 1961, when he was forced to flee Egypt due to his jihadist politics, made a triumphant return to his native land last February following the overthrow of president Hosni Mubarak. Speaking to a crowd of an estimated two million people in Cairo's Tahrir Square, Qaradawi led them in a chant calling for them to invade Jerusalem.

Over the years, Qaradawi has issued numerous religious ruling permitting, indeed requiring, the massacre of Jews. In 2009, he called for the Muslim world to complete Hitler's goal of eradicating the Jewish people.

As for the US, in 2003, Qaradawi issued a religious ruling calling for the killing of US forces in Iraq.

BOTH THE Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafists are happy to cater to the propaganda needs of Western journalists and politicians and pretend that they are willing to continue to uphold the peace treaty with Israel. But even as they make conditional statements to eager Americans and Europeans, they consistently tell their own people that they seek the destruction of Israel and the abrogation of the peace deal between Egypt and Israel.

As the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs' Jonathan D. Halevi documented last week in a report on Muslim Brotherhood and Salafist positions on the future of the peace between Egypt and Israel, while speaking to Westerners in general terms about their willingness to respect the treaty, both groups place numerous conditions on their willingness to maintain it. These conditions make clear that there is no way that they will continue to respect the peace treaty. Indeed, they will use any excuse to justify its abrogation and blame it on Israel. And they will do so at the earliest available opportunity.

It is possible, and perhaps likely, that the US will cut off military aid to Egypt in the wake of Cairo's abrogation of the peace treaty. But it is impossible to imagine that the Obama administration will abide by the US's commitment as the guarantor of the deal and demand that Egypt return Sinai to Israel. Indeed, it is only slightly more likely that a Republican administration would fulfill the US's commitment as guarantor of the peace and demand the return of Sinai to Israel after Egypt's democratically elected Islamist regime finds an excuse to abrogate the peace treaty.

It is important to keep this sorry state of affairs in mind when we assess the prospects for a land-for-peace deal between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. This week, following months of intense pressure from the US and the EU, Israeli and Palestinian negotiators met face to face for the first time in 16 months. According to Jordanian Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh, who hosted the meeting, the Palestinians submitted their proposal on security and border issues to Israel. The sides are supposed to meet again next week and Israel is expected to present its proposals on these issues.

There are several reasons that these talks are doomed to failure. The most important reason they will fail is that even if they lead to an agreement, no agreement between Israel and the Palestinians is sustainable. Assuming for a moment that PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas goes against everything he has said for the past three years and signs a peace deal with Israel in which he promises Israel peace in exchange for Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, this agreement will have little impact on the Palestinians' view of Israel. Abbas today represents no one. His term of office ended three years ago. Hamas won the last Palestinian elections in 2006.

And Hamas's leaders - like their counterparts in the Muslim Brotherhood - make no bones about their intention to destroy Israel. Two weeks ago at a speech in Gaza, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh proclaimed, "We say today explicitly so it cannot be explained otherwise, that the armed resistance and the armed struggle are the path and the strategic choice for liberating the Palestinian land, from the [Mediterranean] sea to the [Jordan] river, and for the expulsion of the invaders and usurpers [Israel]... We won't relinquish one inch of the land of Palestine."

In his visit with his Muslim Brotherhood counterpart, Mohammad Badie, in Cairo this week Haniyeh said, "The Islamic resistance movement of Hamas by definition is a jihadist movement by the Muslim Brotherhood, Palestinian on the surface, Islamic at its core, and its goal is liberation."


WITH HAMAS'S Brotherhood colleagues taking power from Cairo to Casablanca, it is hard to imagine a scenario in which supposedly peaceseeking Fatah will win Palestinian elections. It is in recognition of this fact that Abbas has signed a series of unity agreements with Hamas since May.

So the best case scenario for a peace deal with the Palestinians is that Abbas will sign a deal that Israel will implement by withdrawing from Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria and expelling up to a half a million Israeli citizens from their homes. Hamas will then take power and abrogate the treaty, just as its brethren in Cairo are planning to do with their country's peace treaty.

This leads us to the question of what the diplomatic forces from the US, the EU, and the UN who have worked so hard to get the present negotiations started are really after. What are they trying to achieve by pressuring Israel to negotiate a deal that they know will not be respected by the Palestinians?

In the case of some of the parties involved it is fairly obvious that they want to weaken Israel. Take the UN for example. In 2005, Israel withdrew all of its military forces and civilians from Gaza. Rather than reward Israel for giving up land with peace, the Palestinians transformed Gaza into a launching pad for missile attacks against Israel. And in June 2007, Hamas took over the territory.

Despite the fact that Israel is wholly absent from Gaza, and indeed is being attacked from Gaza, no one has called for the Palestinians to give the territory back to Israel. The UN doesn't even recognize that Israel left.

Last September, the UN published yet another report labeling Israel as the occupier of Gaza. And in accordance with this fiction, the UN - along with the EU and the US - continues to hold Israel responsible for Gaza's welfare.

Ironically, Hamas itself denies that Gaza is under Israeli occupation. In an interview with the Ma'an news agency on Tuesday, Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahar openly admitted that Gaza is not under occupation. Speaking of Fatah's plan to launch massive demonstrations against Israel, Zahar said, "Against whom could we demonstrate in the Gaza Strip? When Gaza was occupied, that model was applicable."

Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood and Fatah can all freely tell the truth about Israel and their commitment to its destruction without fear of any repercussions. They know that the Western powers will not listen to them. They know that they will never have to pay a price for their actions. Indeed, they know they will be rewarded for them.

Since the inauguration of the land-for-peace process between Israel and the PLO 19 years ago, the Palestinians have repeatedly demonstrated their bad faith. Israeli land giveaways have consistently been met with increased Palestinian terrorism. Since 1996, US- and European- trained Palestinian security forces have repeatedly used their guns to kill Israelis. Since 1994, the PA has made it standard practice to enlist terrorists in its US- and European-funded and trained security forces.

The US and Europe have continued to train and arm them despite their bad faith. Despite their continued commitment to Israel's destruction and involvement in terrorism, the US and the EU have continued to demand that Israel fork over more territory. At no point have either the US or the EU seriously considered ending their support for the Palestinians or the demonstrably fictitious land-for-peace formula.

As Israel bows now to still more US and EU pressure and conducts land-for-peace talks with Fatah, our leadership may be seduced by the faint praise they receive from the likes of The Washington Post or even from the Obama administration. But this praise should not turn their heads.

To understand its feckless emptiness, all they need to do is direct their attention to what happened this week in Cairo, as the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafists secured their absolute control over Egypt's parliament. Specifically, our leaders should note the absence of any voices demanding that Egypt respect the peace treaty with Israel or return Sinai.

The time has come for Israel to admit the truth. Land-for-peace is a confidence game and we are the mark.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

Obama Throws Israel to the Dogs

by Robert Spencer

America is on the verge of abandoning its most reliable ally in the Middle East, thanks to Barack Hussein Obama.

He began his betrayal with lip service to Israel’s concerns about defending itself from the relentless jihad that has been waged against it throughout the sixty-three years of its lifetime as a sovereign state: “For the Palestinians, efforts to delegitimize Israel will end in failure. Symbolic actions to isolate Israel at the United Nations in September won’t create an independent state. Palestinian leaders will not achieve peace or prosperity if Hamas insists on a path of terror and rejection. And Palestinians will never realize their independence by denying the right of Israel to exist.”

Yet after saying that “Palestinians will never realize their independence by denying the right of Israel to exist,” Obama called for the establishment of a Palestinian state. Yet neither Hamas nor Fatah have acknowledged Israel’s right to exist, and Obama did not make that acknowledgment a condition of the establishment of a Palestinian state. He was merely making an observation, akin to something like: “You’ll never get a good job by sleeping in the sun all day” – more on the order of a polite request, a mild nag, rather than a firm condition.

Obama also called for “two states,” explaining that “the borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps, so that secure and recognized borders are established for both states.”

It was widely reported Thursday evening that Obama was calling for a return to the 1967 borders, but this is not the case. He actually called for the creation of a “sovereign and contiguous state” for the Palestinian Arabs, and said that “the borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines.” Thus he wasn’t calling for a return to the 1967 lines, but new borders “based on the 1967 lines.”

There were, however, no 1967 lines in which Palestinian Arab territory was contiguous. For the territory of Palestine to be contiguous, that of Israel will have to be substantially reduced. Israel’s 1967 borders were indefensible, and Obama is calling for Israel to be reduced even further so that a contiguous Palestinian state can be established.

What’s more, Obama specified that the new Palestinian state should have “borders with Israel, Jordan, and Egypt,” while Israel should have “borders with Palestine.” The implication was that Israel, in Obama’s vision, will border on neither Jordan nor Egypt — only on “Palestine.” Yet currently Israel has substantial borders with both Jordan and Egypt. Obama was implying that his contiguous Palestine would comprise not just Gaza and Judea and Samaria, but large expanses of Israeli territory bordering on those two states.

That would leave a truncated, reduced Israeli rump state, reminiscent of the reduced and defenseless Czechoslovakia that remained after Neville Chamberlain fed the Nazi beast at Munich. And if Obama did not mean that the diminished Israel he envisioned would have no territory bordering on Jordan or Egypt, the establishment of a contiguous Palestinian state including Gaza and the West Bank would cut Israel in two: Palestine’s contiguous territory would come at the expense of Israel’s.

Whatever Obama meant about Israel’s borders, the establishment of a Palestinian state will come at the expense of Israel’s security. It will not make for peace any more than the withdrawal from Gaza did. In those days the learned analysts were predicting that a withdrawal from Gaza would pacify the Palestinians and normalize their sick society. I said, in contrast, that it would just be another jihad base for more attacks on Israel. That’s what it became. And that’s what a Palestinian state would be also.

The Kuwaiti MP Jama’an Al-Harbash summed it up on Al-Jazeera on March 29, 2010. First he quoted the notorious genocidal hadith in which Muhammad predicts a Muslim genocide of Jews: “Allah willing, a war will be waged between us and them – the war foretold by the Prophet Muhammad: ‘Judgment Day will not come before you fight the Jews – with them on the west bank of the river, and you on the east bank – and the trees and the stones will say: Oh Muslim, oh servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me. Come and kill him.’ This war is drawing near, Allah willing.”

With eerie prescience, al-Harbash then declared of the now-toppled regimes in the Middle East that “the countries of surrender and appeasement, and those who have forsaken the holy places and the land, in their efforts to cling to their seats and pass them on [to their sons] – they will be trampled underfoot by the mujahideen.”

Finally al-Harbash explained the nature of the conflict: “This is a war of religion, not just a war between Arabs and Israelis, or a war between liberators and occupiers. This is an ideological war, an Islamic war, which will end in victory only under the banner of Jihad.”

Those who believe that will not be pacified by the creation of a Palestinian state. They will not lay down their arms and accept Israel’s existence, even its truncated, bisected existence, because the Palestinians have statehood. Not only will they not be pacified; they will be emboldened – emboldened to fight on against their bloodied and weakened adversary. Emboldened to move in for the kill.

Obama’s Thursday address thus amounted to a betrayal of Israel, and an attempt to sign its death warrant. Binyamin Netanyahu immediately issued a statement saying that he was going to seek “a reaffirmation from President Obama of U.S. commitments made to Israel in 2004, which were overwhelmingly supported by both Houses of Congress,” including commitments about Israel “not having to withdraw to the 1967 lines which are both indefensible and which would leave major Israeli population centers in Judea and Samaria beyond those lines.”

Will Obama honor this request? Unlikely. But it is good that it is going to be made. Netanyahu has made clear that Israel will not acquiesce to Obama’s betrayal and go gently into the night.

And so now more than ever, all free people must stand with Israel.

Robert Spencer is a scholar of Islamic history, theology, and law and the director of Jihad Watch. He is the author of ten books, eleven monographs, and hundreds of articles about jihad and Islamic terrorism, including the New York Times Bestsellers The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) and The Truth About Muhammad. His latest book is The Complete Infidel’s Guide to the Koran (Regnery), and he is coauthor (with Pamela Geller) of The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration’s War on America (Simon http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifand Schuster).



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Front Page Magazine

Revisiting the Jordan Option

With hopes fading for two-state solution, ‘Jordan is Palestine’ option may be best alternative

by: Asaf Romirowsky

Amid the unrest now sweeping the Middle East, Israeli government and security officials are quietly discussing an unusual strategy that would pass the Palestinians’ political future off to Jordan. With the odds of a negotiated two-state solution at an all-time low, former Defense Minister Moshe Arens, Knesset Member Arieh Eldad, and Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin resurrected the “Jordan is Palestine” model for regional peace.

Israeli officials fear that a Palestinian Intifada could break out on both sides of the Jordan River, and they seek to make it as much a Jordanian problem as an Israeli one.

In February, Human Rights Watch, the world’s self-proclaimed defender of minority rights, produced a 60-page report entitled, “Stateless Again: Palestinian-Origin Jordanians Deprived of their Nationality.” The paper details how Jordan deprives its Palestinian citizens of West Bank origins their basic rights, such education and healthcare. The report received scant attention back then. But the problem of Jordanian Palestinians, amidst growing unrest in the Hashemite Kingdom, has put the issue back on the front burner.

Israeli analysts worry that if the Jordanian government is to become more representative, it is possible that the country’s 72% Palestinian population could effectively take control. Jordan, in effect, could become “Palestine.”

The notion of a Palestinian controlled polity in Jordan is not new. From the war of Israeli independence in 1948 through the Six-Day War in 1967, Israeli politicians on the Left and Right advanced a policy of “Jordan is Palestine.” While defending Israel from Arab aggression, they proposed that Jordan become the Palestinian homeland. Israeli officials proposed various scenarios for a Jordanian-Palestinian confederation that fused the East Bank and West Bank of the Jordan River under one administration.

However, it is not as simple as that. Dan Schueftan, author of A Jordanian Option, correctly noted in 1986 that such an arrangement would be dependent on Israeli-Jordanian relations and how the two parties view potential threats from the Palestinian populations in their midst.

Inseparable security needs

To be sure, in the years after the Six-Day War, the Jordanian monarchy was wary of the Palestinians. Palestine Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat challenged the sovereignty of the country in 1970. After that, the kingdom had blocked the flow of Palestinians from the West Bank into the East Bank in order to preserve the kingdom’s Hashemite political structure. To a certain extent, the Jordanians renounced all claims to the West Bank in 1988, backed the creation of the Palestinian Authority in the early 1990s, and then made peace with Israel in 1994 in an attempt to prevent further flooding of Palestinians into their country.

To a certain extent Jerusalem has long looked to the Hashemite monarchy to maintain stability and security on both sides of the river. Both Amman and Jerusalem, in fact, recognize that their security needs are inseparable. Jordan has benefited from the periods of relative quiet and prosperity in Israel. Accordingly, Jordanian security forces have been increasingly involved in the West Bank, where they conduct joint training sessions with Palestinian forces. It has been a win-win-win situation for Jordan, Israel and the Palestinians.

The problem now is that Jordan’s traditional power centers are unhappy with the rise of Palestinian influence in the country. Tribal leaders resent Jordan’s Queen Rania, born in Kuwait to a family with roots in the West Bank, for her vocal advocacy of the Palestinian cause. In fact, 36 tribal leaders recently published their objections to Rania’s position, fearing that it will accelerate a slow Palestinian takeover of the kingdom.

With hopes fading for a two-state solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, this seemingly far-flung notion may become the last, best option. The problem is that it could embolden Palestinian radical groups, as well as the Muslim Brotherhood, which derive much of their power from disillusioned Palestinians in the West and East Banks. With the rise of such groups in Jordan, the peace agreement between Amman and Jerusalem would be in peril.

Nevertheless, as uncomfortable as it might be for Palestinians, Israelis and Jordanians to admit, the Jordanian option might be the best one they have.

Asaf Romirowsky is an adjunct scholar at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a former liaison officer from the Israeli Defense Forces to the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.



Ynet News

Israeli Arabs Don't Want to Live Under Palestinian Rule

JERUSALEM – If given the option of living in a future Palestinian state, most Israeli Arabs would prefer to remain citizens of Israel, according to a new survey released this week.

Arabs make up about 20 percent of Israel's population, with a large concentration living in eastern Jerusalem, including in peripheral neighborhoods Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's government has stated could be given to the Palestinians for a future state.

Last month, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni hinted Israeli Arabs living in eastern Jerusalem could remain there and be ruled by a new Palestinian state.

"The future Palestinian state would serve as a national solution for the Palestinians of the West Bank, those living in the refugee camps and those who are citizens with equal rights in the Jewish state," stated Livni at a November press conference with France's foreign minister.

Why Israeli-Arabs Don’t Want to Live in a PA State?

Accounts of a two-week-long arrest under cruel conditions and humiliating tax collection practices are indications of the “quality of life” in the Palestinian Authority.

The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) has issued a condemnation of two recent major human-rights abuses in the Palestinian Authority. One, a relatively minor incident, involved the sudden arrest and interrogation of a writer named Walid Ibrahim al-Hodali, 50, in Ramallah; he was interrogated about his political affiliations for an hour, but his computer was confiscated and not returned.

The second case involved the arrest of journalist Muhannad Salahat, a resident of both Jordan and the Palestinian Authority, on charges that were never explained to him. The representative of the Palestinian Society for Human Rights (RASED) in Jordan, Salahat said afterwards that his interrogators concentrated on a newspaper report he had prepared in 2007 "on the state of lawlessness and chaos in the West Bank and also Gaza following the Hamas takeover." He also said he was abused for criticizing the PA.

The conditions of his detention included, at various times, interrogations until the early morning hours, threats and insults, and not being allowed to wash or go to the bathroom, as well as no contact at all with a lawyer or family members. He was abruptly released after two weeks, only to find that information had been disseminated to the effect that his arrest was not of a political nature, but rather on criminal charges. Three days after his release, his computer was returned to him, with much information deleted, and he was prevented from traveling to Jordan.

PFLP: Hamas is Too Harsh
At the same time, in a separate incident, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), long notorious for its decades of terrorism and murder in its bid to achieve Arab independence in Israel – now complains that the Hamas government is too strict, levies unfairly high taxes, and acts in "baseless and humiliating ways."

Specifically, the PA’s Ma'an news agency reports that the PFLP condemns the Hamas-Gaza government’s harsh collection of unfair taxes. It accuses the Hamas government of seizing the homes and apartments of those living abroad and giving them to Hamas security officers.

The PFLP also said that despite all the hardships caused by the war of last winter – which Hamas often cites as a “humanitarian crisis” caused by Israel - falafel vendors and taxi drivers are being overcharged to keep their businesses running, and a new 60% tax on cigarettes has been imposed.

In addition, civilians are interrogated in "baseless and humiliating ways" regarding their incomes and taxes, and “strange taxes" have been imposed on the scales in vegetable and meat shops.

Majority of Israeli-Arabs Prefer Israel
A December 2007 survey showed that a majority (62%) of Arab citizens of Israel would prefer to remain Israeli citizens rather than become citizens of a future Palestinian state. Similarly, a poll conducted by Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government in June 2008 found that 77% of Israeli-Arabs would rather remain in their native land as Israeli citizens than in any other country in the world.





Israel National News

Israel's Red Lines

Bibi must make clear to our US allies where we stand on key issues

by Ari Harow

For those who closely follow American politics, there was a strong sense of déjà vu as last week's elections results started coming in. Once again a newly elected popular president watched his poll numbers drop as initial euphoria evaporates once the harsh economic realities refuse to disappear and it becomes apparent that all can not be cured with a few speeches.

Here in Israel the immediate question that inevitably crops up once the dust has settled is: "what does this mean for us?" While the long-term answer to this question is heatedly debated, what is clear is that this new political reality offers a unique window of opportunity for Prime Minister Netanyahu to further clarify and crystallize Israel's red lines in negotiation with the Palestinians when he meets with key administration officials in the United States this week.

The professional pundit class seems split in their predictions on how President Obama will react to last weeks "shellacking" of Democrats.

Some think that the president will realize that the American public is disappointed with his performance to date, resulting in a refocusing of his efforts on his domestic agenda and attempting to turn the economy around with the hope of salvaging the remainder of his term, and winning reelection in 2012.

Other experts warn that once it becomes apparent to Obama that there is little he can do within his power to actually lower the stubbornly high unemployment rate, he will turn to overseas adventures where the president has much more authority to act without congressional approval. This path may very well result in a renewed effort by the Administration to reach their stated goal of a comprehensive Israeli-Palestinian agreement within a year. Needless to say, Israel's best interests may not be at the top of the agenda for an Administration that is racing to hold a South Lawn ceremony within 10 months.

As President Obama and his advisors contemplate which of these paths to chose, it is vital that Prime Minister Netanyahu take this opportunity to once again clearly state Israel's red lines in negotiating with the Palestinians. Whether this clarification serves to bolster our friends in Congress, or remind the Administration as they plan any new initiatives, it is crucial that our American allies understand where we stand on these issues as we inch closer to returning to direct negotiations with the Palestinians.

Thankfully, the prime minister does not need to start from scratch. In his historic speech at Bar Ilan University in June of 2009, Netanyahu laid out three key areas where Israel's red lines cannot be crossed.

The Palestinians must agree to recognize Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people. While some Palestinians have belittled this demand as an unnecessary game of semantics, nothing can be further from the truth. We unfortunately are witnesses on a daily basis to the indoctrination of the next generation of Palestinians as children are taught to deny the Jewish people's right to a state in ANY part of the Land of Israel.

This is the message that Palestinian youths are taught in official Palestinian Authority schools, broadcasts and even in children programming. We cannot hope to live in peace with neighbors who do not believe that we have even the most basic right of existence in this land.

Jerusalem cannot be divided
Israel must remain within defensible borders as the result of any peace agreement. We cannot compromise on territorial concessions in the Jordan Valley or on the mountain ridges of Judea and Samaria which overlook the center of our country. We have learned the lessons of the Lebanon and Gaza withdrawals and we simply cannot let ourselves repeat these mistakes when the population centers of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv and the strategic Ben Gurion Airport are at stake.

Finally, Jerusalem can never be divided again. Jerusalem – Zion itself – is the raison d'être for our national existence here in Israel and it is the glue that holds the entire Jewish people together. We are already witness to a steady elimination of our sovereignty in the capital. Daily news reports are full of stories of PA officials funding schools and social clubs, ambulances refusing to serve certain neighborhoods due to stone throwing, and Jews fearing to visit the graves of their ancestors on the Mount of Olives where they are subjected to daily violent attacks.

Without a clear stance on this most basic issue we will soon find ourselves chased out of the city we dreamed of for 2,000 years.

As fate (or good planning) would have it, the prime minister finds himself in the US this week meeting with Vice President Biden and Secretary of State Clinton during this pivotal period. Now is the time to explain to these and other Administration officials that just as the US has vital interests that it works tirelessly to safeguard, Israel too must stand strong on our principles or the chance of reaching a just, lasting and true peace will quickly fade and collapse as happened too many times in the past.

The new Congress in Washington, and the policy choices that the Administration will soon make, present an opportunity for the prime minister to reiterate and elaborate on the important points that he made in his Bar Ilan speech. These points are all vital in ensuring that Israel's basic interests are protected.

I hope that the prime minister makes the most of his trip to the US this week and ensures that all of our friends in Washington know that while our yearning for peace is genuine and strong, Israel will not waver on these key fundamental issues.




Ynet News

Gaza Conflict Moves to Virtual World

A shadow war between pro-Israeli and pro-Hamas forces is taking place on the Internet — and it is getting fierce.

If you're one of millions of Americans who use social-networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter or participate in virtual worlds like "Second Life," don't be surprised if you get sucked into a war thousands of miles away in Gaza.

Support groups have sprouted up on Facebook, drawing in thousands of members on both sides of the conflict. Protests erupted in "Second Life"'s virtual Israel, where demonstrators showed up to voice support for Hamas and the Palestinians.

People are using Twitter updates to tell the world what they're witnessing on the ground or how they feel about the news. And videos of the carnage in Gaza have been posted on YouTube, including some from the Israeli government.

On Facebook, the pro-Hamas group "Stop Genocide in Palestine" has more than 117,500 members. On the other side, "I Support the Israel Defense Forces in Preventing Terror Attacks from Gaza" has more than 65,000 members.

Some Facebook users have changed their profile pictures to Israeli or Palestinian flags, bloody images of war or other partisan graphics to get their messages across.

Facebook users can use applications to set messages in their status bars expressing affiliation with one side or the other. An application called "Qassam Count" enables users to voice their support for Israel by automatically updating their status bar when rockets are fired from Gaza into the Jewish state.

Joel Leyden, an American working in Israel, said he founded the "Support the Israel Defense Forces in Preventing Terror Attacks from Gaza" group to give members a place to voice their opinions and grievances about the conflict.

"Facebook, as we all know, was created by a university student for university students, and it's turned into the number one watering hole for the international community," Leyden said. "That can't be better illustrated than how it's being used today with the war here that we have with Hamas."

Thousands of messages have been posted to the group. Moderators watch over the conversation in Israel, Europe and North America.

Leyden said he's received dozens of death threats since he started the group.

"I've served in [the Israeli army] in combat and in the spokesperson's office and with the border police," he said. "I've never felt more in a dangerous environment than I do here. Everyone is trying to make as much noise as they can to break through."

Messages like "death to the Jews" and "we can't wait to murder you" have been posted to the group, he said, but since positing pro-peace messages to the site in Arabic, Leyden said things have toned down considerably.

None of the pro-Palestinian groups on Facebook responded to a request for comment.

The operators of Facebook, meanwhile, are taking pains to ensure that the online war doesn't get out of hand.

Facebook takes its "Terms of Use" policy seriously and removes groups that violate that policy from the Web site, spokeswoman Elizabeth Linder told FOXNews.com in an e-mail.

"We are sensitive to and subsequently take down Groups that threaten violence towards people. We also remove groups that express hatred towards individuals and groups that are sponsored by recognized terrorist organizations," Linder wrote.

Facebook on Thursday removed a Web site called "Hitler Took the Right Decision With Jewish People," saying the group violated its policies.

"We want Facebook to be a place where people can openly discuss issues and express their views," Linder wrote. "As such, we do not aim to control the discourse on Facebook.

"Rather, we take swift action to remove content that violates our policies. Our goal is to strike a very delicate balance between giving Facebook users the freedom to express their opinions and beliefs, while also ensuring that individuals and groups of people do not feel threatened or endangered."

In the virtual world "Second Life," SL Israel saw protests from virtual pro-Palestinian activists when the violence in Gaza flared up.

"Lots of people yelling," the founder of SL Israel, who goes by Beth Odets in the game, told Second Life blogger Wagner James Au. "They were going on and on with slurring obscenities about murderous Israeli forces, etc."

Odets began ejecting the most offensive protesters from the area, she told Au.

"I had to be careful not to boot people who didn't actually do anything wrong," she said.

She temporarily had to close SL Israel to outsiders to quell the protests, but protesters kept coming. Eventually, however, people came who wanted to talk.

Twitter user Ahuvah Berger, who lives in Israel, said she has been using the network to update her contacts about terrorism for years.

"I believe it is very important to help get our side of the story using a medium in which I already have a large audience who 'know' me," she wrote in an e-mail to FOXNews.com.

"As we know Israel is not good at PR, and as the perceived aggressor it needs to show the world why it does and continues to do what it feels necessary to protect its citizens," she wrote.

"I have encountered a lot of nasty Twitter users who believe in their own propaganda and when confronted with facts, not only facts emerging from Israel, they resort to calling me a Nazi and a perpetrator of a Palestinian holocaust."

Ron Kutas of Stand With Us, a pro-Israel group, said taking the war onto the Internet has its problems.

"It's opening up the door to anybody who wants to say anything," Kutas said. "It's very hard for people to distinguish between emotional commentary about the conflict and factual journalism about the conflict ... you have an open forum and people who are not educated about the conflict are being told misinformation all the time."

Kutas said he uses Qassam Count to spark discussion with friends who oppose Israel's actions in Gaza.

"People who I'm friends with who have opinions that are not the same as mine, we have dialogues about real issues and real facts. When that happens it's a great thing," he said.

Asked if any of his friends had chosen not to associate with him on Facebook because of his pro-Israel activism, Kutas replied, "I don't know of anything of that sort, but I should look into that."





Fox News

The Lie That is PLO

by Emanuel A. Winston, a Middle East analyst & commentator

Liars must be fast dancers in order not to get caught. They either must have an excellent memory, or know that their trail has been erased or feel certain their audience will accept the lie knowing that it’s a lie. The PLO and the Palestinian people may be one of the greatest fabrications of our time. To construct a fabricated background, you must do it in small increments, piece by piece. It’s a shaky house of cards but only if its audience cares to shake the table. So, let’s look at the separate pieces.

Today an icon, carefully constructed for credibility, has fallen. Professor Edward W. Said, the eloquent voice of Palestinian causes has turned out to be a self-promoted fabrication. Often and loudly, he has impressed the world of Liberals with his eloquent description of his early life as a professional Palestinian refugee, turned out of his house by invading Israelis. Here, as is popular among the Palestinians, he remembers his alleged ‘roots’, his home, the trees around him and his youthful years - only to become a sympathetic refugee - now a voice for the Palestinians.

Careful research by Justus Reid Weiner has disclosed that Said did not live in Jerusalem; his parents did not own a house there; nor did he go to school there. Weiner shows that Said lived a life of luxury in Cairo, Egypt with his well-to-do father who operated a successful stationary business. But, when Said launched his emotional diatribes against the Jews, it was from the soapbox of a terribly deprived and wronged Palestinian, forced from his home by Jews. He was the quintessential refugee, haranguing against the Jewish people against whom he pledged to seek vengeance - violently.

Said’s invented ‘life story’ infused his advocacy with moral authority. Weiner’s devastating article -- "‘My Beautiful Old House’ and Other Fabrications by Edward Said" -- drives a stake through Said’s integrity. If he were a reporter, he’d be fired. But, even though he has been exposed as a rank liar, he will not be fired from Columbia University where he is a tenured professor. For years he was a member of the Palestine National Council, the parent body of the PLO, which he resigned in 1991. Today he calls Arafat a traitor for signing peace agreements with Israel.

Of course, in his propagandizing for the Arabs, Said rarely mentioned the reality of seven well-armed Arab armies (Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen and Saudi Arabia) pledged to attack the Jews and wipe out every man, woman and child. I will not repeat the methodical research that uncovered the Said Sham. You can find it in August 26th WALL ST. JOURNAL and NEW YORK TIMES. However, Said isn’t the first to fabricate his origins nor those of the "Palestinian people".

Let us consider Yassir Arafat, so carefully cleaned up by the West, particularly by the Clintons, from a well-documented terrorist into a diplomat and world statesman. Yassir Arafat also claimed to be born in Jerusalem but was actually born in Cairo, August 29, 1929, named Mohammed Abdel Rahman al Qudwa al-Husseini. Nor as he has claimed, is he related to the late Grand Mufti of Jerusalem (Amin al-Husseini) or Faisel Husseini or any other Husseini clan of Jerusalem. There are 4 Husseini clans in the Land of Israel, none related. The Grand Mufti spent World War II in Berlin, urging Hitler to bring his killing machine to kill the Palestinian Jews to cleanse the land of Jews for the Arab people and Islam. Arafat learned with the Mufti about the politics of Arab nationalism in Palestine during that brief period. Clearly, Arafat desperately wanted to emulate the Grand Mufti and so invented his lineage, completing the fabrication.

Like Said, Arafat has played his "Palestinian" lie to the hilt.

However, before we go further, we must admit there are certain mitigating circumstances. The culture in the Middle East often finds that a fantasy is offered in place of reality as an explanation of why something happened, particularly when it has to do with a loss of pride and shame. The fabrication initially offered as the reason soon becomes irrefutable history - even to its inventor. As it is passed around, it becomes history with all of the supporting evidence simply pulled out of the air.

When seven Arab armies lost to untrained Jewish refugees straight out of Europe’s death camps in 1948, the Arabs claimed that the American military had interceded with superior force and air cover. Meanwhile, the vaunted Israeli Air Force of 1948 consisted of Piper Cubs forced to drop empty bottles with whistlers, merely to get the advancing Arab forces to duck. They ran, leaving their shoes in the sand. The embarrassment was humiliating, having bragged to the world and each other that the land would run with Jewish blood. Thus was born the fabrication that America had intervened because, clearly, the heroic Arab could not have lost to the lowly Jew.

The Arabs lost their second war in 1956 when Israel took over the Sinai. During the 1967 War, Egypt broadcast how it was winning the war and the Jews were retreating across all fronts. They invited Jordan’s King Hussein to join the attack to enjoy the expected victory. The Jordanians believed the fantasy and wishful thinking of victory. The Israelis, knowing better, begged Hussein to stay out of the war. Instead, the Jordanians attacked and lost all the land it had illegally occupied for 19 years from1948 to 1967, including the eastern half of Jerusalem. The Jordanians expelled all the Jews, destroyed all 58 synagogues in the Old City, defiled the Jewish cemeteries (especially the Mount of Olives), And they invented the fabrication that "east" Jerusalem was always Arab - a lie readily accepted by the West.

In 1964, 3 years before the 1967 Six Days War when Israelis retook the occupied Judea, Samaria, Gaza, the Old City of Jerusalem and the Sinai, the Egyptians backed the creation of the PLO terrorists to recover their lost pride. This was to be Yassir Arafat’s vehicle to fame and fortune.

Already in 1992, according to British Intelligence, even as Arafat claimed poverty, he had a personal fortune of $8-10 Billion dollars with an annual income of $1,500,000. Yet, none of this money which was obtained from Arab nations (much by blackmail) was to be shared with the Palestinian people. Here again, the fiction of poverty was peddled to the Liberals of the world. Arafat, playing the poor rag-head, begging for alms to help his people, never intended to share his wealth or the money from the donor countries with his own people. His funds did build a terror organization which one day will be the key to disrupt Jordan, Saudi Arabia and export terror into America and Europe.

Perhaps the best and most believed fabrication are the claims that the Palestinians lived for hundreds and even thousands of years in the land the Romans named "Palestina" to conceal the Jew in Judea and the Israel in Eretz Yisrael. The well-researched and referenced book, "From Time Immemorial" by Joan Peters tells the true story of Arab immigration into Eretz Yisrael. It tracks the opportunistic immigration of Arabs from Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, etc. where poor fellaheen (peasants) moved from their poverty-stricken nations toward the prospects of employment and better health conditions from the Jews. The Arabs kept the Hebrew root of the original Israeli name within the Arabized name of their new settlements. When one looks at the foundations of these houses the Arabs claim, one finds the building foundation of Hebrew houses from ancient times. But, this does not stop the construction of a past that borrows the names of the extinct Philistines who were the adversaries of King Saul and King David. Say it and poof...it is a fact of history the West is supposed to honor and not ask questions.

It is, however, understandable that this mix of people would want the deep and recorded history similar to Egypt, Syria, Iraq. I do not blame them for inventing the past - but when the fabrication goes on to justify killing off of a truly ancient people - then it is time to call a halt to the fantasy.

There are big lies; there are little lies, but these Arab lies all add up to a very, very, very big lie.

The world media collaborates in these fabrications. Recently, when an Arab apartment building in the Palestinian Authority collapsed, trapping people inside, the Israelis instantly sent an extraction crew who masterminded the rescue, working with the Palestinians. However, when Israeli ambulances tried to come in to assist, they were turned away. Photos in the Arab and world press did not show the Israelis working to save Palestinians. Same thing during the Israelis very heroic efforts, arriving first, to assist those stricken in Turkey’s August 17th earthquake. You had to look hard in the world press to find the photos and stories of the Israeli rescues and health care, including finding several people still alive and delivering 13 babies. Creating the Biggest Lie necessitates never showing the Israelis in favorable or heroic light - only the negatives. Even some non-Zionist, Leftist Israelis are participating in the creation of this illusion. Israel’ s history books have been re-written by a confirmed non-Zionist and are being inserted into the impressionable minds of Israeli ninth graders this year, under the new Minister of Education, Yossi Sarid.

When agreements are made with the Arabs, signed and then abrogated, stories are floated as to why the agreements were not broken but that it was the other side who broke the agreements. Carl Jung, the renowned psychoanalyst, identified this syndrome where the aggressor blames the victim for what he intends to do, justifying the criminal’s planned aggression.

When hundreds of millions of dollars of American and European donor monies disappeared into the pockets of Arafat and his cronies, they simply stated that it wasn’t true, even ignoring the protests of their own Palestinian Committees. The Donors’ countries at first were frustrated but, finally accepted the idea that their money would simply not make it into building of the Palestinian infrastructure. The money was now to be considered ‘baksheesh’, a bribe to buy the good will of surrounding Arab countries, not to mention the trouble making capabilities of the PLO and its affiliates.

A wanna-be nation conceived in lies and nurtured in lies cannot but help to conduct all their business with the attitude that lying is OK because it gets them what they want without payment. With Billions of dollars flowing in without question or accountability, merely by pledging anything the donor wants to hear, why not continue the same modus operandi on all matters?

So, when Arafat subjugates his people as is the way with this friend of Saddam and Assad of Syria, then that will always be the way of the neo-State of Palestine. When Arafat and his top echelon become instant partners with Palestinian corporations; when Palestinian policemen terrorize small Palestinian businessmen to petty shake down schemes then that is the kind of a country, born out of lies and fantasies that it will always be.

IDF & Shin Bet Confirm Involvement in Gaza Car Blast

Hamas says Army of Islam commander killed in airstrike near police headquarters, but eyewitnesses say explosion occurred inside vehicle.

IDF strike: The IDF and Shin Bet confirmed on Wednesday that they were responsible for the Gaza operation in which Army of Islam commander Muhammad Jamal al-Namnam was killed.

Earlier on Wednesday, a car exploded near a Hamas police station in Gaza City. The al-Arabiya network reported that one person was killed in the blast and another three were injured.

The man killed in the explosion was a senior field commander in the Army of Islam, one of the organizations affiliated with al-Qaeda in the Strip.

According to a source in one of the Gaza organizations, the man was killed in a new Hyundai car which recently arrived in the Strip from Israel as part of the easing of the blockade.

Israel has allowed dozens of vehicles to enter Gaza.

The source told Ynet that the Hamas interior ministry had recently called on Palestinian buying the new cars to have them checked thoroughly, "for fear that Israel has planted listening devices or even booby-trapped them."

Palestinian sources said the explosion rocked the Ansar area, where many of the security headquarters are located, sending up a plume of thick black smoke. Emergency teams and Hamas security forces rushed to the scene.

Eyewitnesses said the car was travelling on the road parallel to the police headquarters when the explosion occurred. Despite the claims of an airstrike, other residents said the explosion occurred inside the vehicle.

Adham Abu Selmia, a spokesman for the Strip's medical services, told Hamas journal al-Risala that the man killed in the incident was Muhammad Jamal al-Namnam, 27, a resident of the al-Shati refugee camo.

The man was said to be a senior commander in the extreme Army of Islam organization, whose members have clashed with Hamas forces. He was previously involved in terror attacks on Israeli targets, and recently conspired with Hamas members to carry out terror attacks through Sinai, against American and Israeli targets.





Ynet news

Jordan is Palestine

Where is the Kingdom of Jordan? What is its history?

Jordan was created in the part of the British Mandate of Palestine east of the Jordan River, the majority of the Mandate. It was carved out of the Mandate and given to the Hashemite tribe of Arabia as payment for the Hashemites cooperation with the British in World War I. In todays Jordan, the Hashemites are a minority, but control the state's power - the Monarchy. As a product of the British Mandate of Palestine, the majority non-Hashemite population identify themselves as 'Palestinians', or 'Southern Syrians' depending on the political climate.

- Society for Rational Peace -

If Jordan's majority population is Palestinian, why are we trying to give them a second homeland?

Concerning Palestine East Of The River Jordan:
On August 23,1959, the Prime Minister of Jordan, Hazza' al-Majali, stated: "We are the Government of Palestine, the army of Palestine and the refugees of Palestine."

Each day brings me closer to the realization that Palestine, as it wants to exist within the boundary of Israel, and impose this view on the world community, is a farce... an imaginative place with imaginative people. History proves over and over again that JORDAN IS INDEED PALESTINE.

Here are several quotes from "officials" in the so-called Palestinian community.

LET THEM SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES!!!!

"Palestine and Transjordan are one, for Palestine is the coastline and Transjordan the hinterland of the same country."

- King Abdullah, at the Meeting of the Arab League, Cairo, 12th April 1948 -

"Let us not forget the East Bank of the (River) Jordan, where seventy per cent of the inhabitants belong to the Palestinian nation."

- George Habash, leader of the PFLP section of the PLO, writing in the PLO publication Sha-un Falastinia, February 1970 -

"Palestine is Jordan and Jordan is Palestine; there is one people and one land, with one history and one and the same fate."

- Prince Hassan, brother of King Hussein, addressing the Jordanian National Assembly, 2nd February 1970 -

"There is no family on the East Bank of the river (Jordan) that does not have relatives on the West Bank ... no family in the west that does not have branches in the east."

- King Hussein, addressing the Jordanian National Assembly, 2nd February 1972 -

"We consider it necessary to clarify to one and all, in the Arab world and outside, that the PALESTINIAN PEOPLE with its nobility and conscience is to be found HERE on the EAST Bank (of the Jordan River), The WEST Bank and the Gaza Strip. Its overwhelming majority is HERE and nowhere else."

- King Hussein, quoted in An-Hahar, Beirut, 24th August 1972 -

"The Palestinians here constitute not less than one half of the members of the armed forces. They and their brothers, the sons of Transjordan, constitute the members of one family who are equal in everything, in rights and duties." (Quoted by BBC Monitoring Service)

- King Hussein, on Amman Radio, 3rd February 1973 -

"There are, as well, links of geography and history, and a wide range of interests between the two Banks (of the River Jordan) which have grown stronger over the past twenty years. Let us not forget that el-Salt and Nablus were within the same district - el-Balka - during the Ottoman period, and that family and commercial ties bound the two cities together."

- Hamdi Ken'an, former Mayor of Nablus, writing in the newspaper Al-Quds, 14th March 1973 -

"The new Jordan, which emerged in 1949, was the creation of the Palestinians of the West Bank and their brothers in the East. While Israel was the negation of the Palestinian right of self-determination, unified Jordan was the expression of it."

- Sherif Al-Hamid Sharaf, Representative of Jordan at the UN Security Council, 11th June 1973 -

Past "President Bourguiba (of Tunisia) considers Jordan an artificial creation presented by Great Britain to King Abdullah. But he accepts Palestine and the Palestinians as an existing and primary fact since the days of the Pharaohs. Israel, too, he considers as a primary entity. However, Arab history makes no distinction between Jordanians, Syrians and Palestinians. Most of them hail from the same Arab race, which arrived in the region with the Arab Moslem conquest."

- Editorial Comment in the Jordanian Armed Forces' weekly, Al-Aqsa, Amman, 11th July 1973 -

"With all respect to King Hussein, I suggest that the Emirate of Transjordan was created from oil cloth by Great Britain, which for this purpose cut up ancient Palestine. To this desert territory to the bast of the Jordan (River)., it gave the name Transjordan. But there is nothing in history which carries this name. While since our earliest time there was Palestine and Palestinians. I maintain that the matter of Transjordan is an artificial one, and that Palestine is the basic problem. King Hussein should submit to the wishes of the people, in accordance with the principles of democracy and self-determination, so as-to avoid the fate of his grandfather, Abdullah, or of his cousin, Feisal, both of whom were assassinated."

- Past President Bourguiba of Tunisia, in a public statement, July 1973 -

"The Palestinians and the Jordanians have created on this soil since 1948 one family - all of whose children have equal rights and obligations."

- King Hussein, addressing an American Delegation, 19th February 1975 -

"How much better off Hussein would be if he had been induced to abandon his pose as a benevolent 'host' to 'refugees' and to affirm the fact that Jordan is the Palestinian Arab nation-state, just as Israel is the Palestinian Jewish nation-state."

- Editorial Comment in the publication The Economist of 19th July 1975 -

"Palestine and Jordan were both (by then) under British Mandate, but as my grandfather pointed out in his memoirs, they were hardly separate countries. Transjordan being to the east of the River Jordan, it formed in a sense, the interior of Palestine."

- King Hussein, writing in his Memoirs -

"...those fishing in troubled waters will not succeed in dividing our people, which extends to both sides of the (River) Jordan, in spite of the artificial boundaries established by the Colonial Office and Winston Churchill half a century ago."

- Yassir Arafat, in a statement to Eric Roleau -

"Palestinian Arabs hold seventy-five per cent of all government jobs in Jordan."

- The Sunday newspaper The Observer of 2nd March 1976 -

"Palestinian Arabs control over seventy per cent of Jordan's economy."

- The Egyptian newspaper Al Ahram of 5th March 1976 -

"There should be a kind of linkage because Jordanians and Palestinians are considered by the PLO as one people."

- Farouk Kadoumi, head of the PLO Political Department, quoted in Newsweek, 14th March 1977 -

"Along these lines, the West German Der Spiegel magazine this month cited Dr George Habash, leader of one of the Palestinian organizations, as saying that 70 per cent of Jordan's population are Palestinians and that the power in Jordan should be seized." (Translated by BBC Monitoring Service)

- From a commentary which was broadcast by Radio Amman, 30th June 1980 -

"Jordan is not just another Arab state with regard to Palestine but, rather, Jordan is Palestine and Palestine is Jordan in terms of territory, national identity, sufferings, hopes and aspirations, both day and night. Though we are all Arabs and our point of departure is that we are all members of the same people, the Palestinian-Jordanian nation is one and unique, and different from those of the other Arab states."

- Marwan al Hamoud, member of the Jordanian National Consultative Council and former Minister of Agriculture, quoted by Al Rai, Amman, 24th September 1980 -

"The potential weak spot in Jordan is that most of the population are not, strictly speaking, Jordanian at all, but Palestinian. An estimated 60 per cent of the country's 2,500,000 people are Palestinians ... Most of these hold Jordanian passports, and many are integrated into Jordanian society."

- Richard Owen, in an article published in The Times, 14th November 1980 -

"There is no moral justification for a second Palestine."

- The Freeman Center (September 3, 1993) -

↑Above Quotes researched by HMAVERIK.↑


Did the concept of Palestine East of the River Jordan exist before the British Mandate?

The Dead Sea, as you have heard ever since you were children at school, has no outlet, and you can see at once that if it had any connection with the great body of seas and oceans, it would be an inlet. If, as Chinese Gordon proposed a few years ago, a canal were cut so that the waters of the Mediterranean Sea might pour in, they would swell the surface of the Dead Sea thirteen hundred feet up the sides of the mountains on either side; they would rise above the Jordan proportionately; the river Jordan would disappear; the Dead Sea and the lake of Galilee would disappear; and in the place of these a long body of sea water would divide western from eastern Palestine. These characteristics distinguish the Jordan from all the other rivers of the earth, and make its formation a profound study to the geologist--one that has never yet been explained in attempting to trace back the history of this old world.

- J. W. McGarvey, Louisville, Kentucky, August 27, 1893 -

What happened when the Palestinian Arabs tried to take control of Jordan?

King Hussein of Jordan ejected Arafat's Palestinians in September 1970, called Black September because they were trying to take over his kingdom. King Hussein drove them into Lebanon after killing more than 10,000. The Lebanese welcomed the fleeing Palestinians into their bosom, but suddenly found themselves under attack by Arafat's Palestinians who set up a mini Terror State within Lebanon. For the next 12 years terror raged and over 100,000 Lebanese were murdered by their Palestinian brothers.

- Emanuel A. Winston, Middle East analyst & commentator -

West Bank Terrorists Target Israeli Vehicle

Terrorists fire at settler couple traveling near Bethlehem; No injuries reported in attack.

Another West Bank terror attack: An Israeli vehicle was fired at Saturday evening northwest of Bethlehem.

No injuries were reported in the shooting attack.

A couple residing in the settlement of Har Gilo was traveling from the Mount Hebron area to Jerusalem when it came under fire. Security forces identified bullet holes on the vehicle.

The driver of the car reported the attack when he arrived at the Ein Yael roadblock in the area. IDF troops were promptly dispatched to the shooting site and are scouring the area in an effort to apprehend the shooters.

More than a month ago, an Israeli couple sustained wounds in a shooting attack in the south Mount Hebron area. The woman hurt in that attack was at late stages of pregnancy and gave birth the same night at the hospital.

In late August, four Israelis were murdered in a West Bank shooting attack perpetrated by Hamas terrorists. About three weeks ago, IDF troops killed two terrorists involved in the attack.

Terrorists fire at Israeli vehicle

Ynet News

Hamas Uses Children For Digging Tunnels

Arabic documentation!!!

An Israeli asks: Did we with greater compassion for their children, more than that of their parents?







Hamas Uses Small Children Digging Smuggling Tunnels


Most of the houses of Hamas, with the way underground to escape, and with weapons, and not to believe. See, private house

Everyone Hamas

Bibi, Do the Opposite

Given Peres, Barak and Olmert's track record, Netanyahu should ignore their advice.

Last week, three senior figures – Shimon Peres, Ehud Barak, and Ehud Olmert - demanded that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu do everything, immediately, in order to salvage the talks with the Palestinians.

The tone of their voice not only conveyed great concern for our future, but also moral validity. The demanding tone of these words, and the eagerness with which they were quoted by the media, portrayed these message as though they were a supreme diplomatic decree.

After all, all three figures are former prime ministers. Their full life experience is at the basis of their incisive recommendation to freeze, at once, settlement construction and establish a Palestinian state.

The problem is that their experience is bad. Very bad even. Peres, Barak, and Olmert already led Israel in the past through the paths of the diplomatic process and brought it to a dead-end.

One of them initiated a sensational agreement with Arafat that ended up exploding in our faces. The second one dragged us to the infamous conference at Camp David. The third one came up with the foolish disengagement idea. All three of them were sent to the opposition before their terms in office expired, or alternately, dragged their party to the opposition because of their great failures.

Trusting the Arabs too much
Reading the political map is apparently not their strong suit. All three of them got terribly lost in the dense topographic area through which they now make pretenses of guiding Netanyahu. They believed the Arabs too much, while doubting the warnings of Jewish defense experts.

For these reasons, there is no need to be overly impressed by the trio's latest recommendations, as incisive as these may be. Olmert, Barak and Peres should even be prevented from serving as diplomatic advisors, based on the same logic that prevents Eli Zeira, the tragic hero of the Yom Kippur War, from making a living through intelligence work.

Should Netanyahu take their advice nonetheless, he too may have trouble making a living in the future. He should therefore listen to them very carefully, and then do the exact opposite.

Ynet News

Peace Process a Disgrace

Why is Israel offering concessions in return for what was agreed to in past deals?

by Moshe Dann

Wait a minute. Wasn't Palestinian recognition of Israel as a Jewish state part of the Oslo Accords?

"The Government of the State of Israel and the PLO team… representing the Palestinian people, agree that it is time to put an end to decades of confrontation and conflict, recognize their mutual legitimate and political rights, and strive to live in peaceful coexistence and mutual dignity and security and achieve a just, lasting and comprehensive peace settlement and historic reconciliation through the agreed political process."

If this isn't what Prime Minister Netanyahu is asking for now, what does this document mean?

And why is PM Netanyahu willing to make more concessions in return for something which was already agreed upon?

True, none of the major issues were dealt with, including "refugees," "settlements," "Jerusalem," etc. According to those behind the negotiations, that would have meant no agreement!

Thank you Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres for an agreement in which one side got most of what they wanted, and the other side got nothing. Thank you Alan Baker, for your legal "expertise," and Yossi Beilin for the PR cloud cover. Nice show.

Excuse me for asking, but, if the Oslo Accords, and Wye, and Hebron Agreements did not mean an end to incitement and terrorism, what do they mean? And, if these agreements do not mean what they say, why did Israel give up territory, help create a Palestinian army, and transfer billions of dollars to the PA?

If all of these agreements and Israeli concessions did not bring Israel closer to "peace," an "end to the conflict," and greater security and world acceptance, why were they made, and why is PM Netanyahu now back at square one?

De-legitimization must stop
If the PA has not lived up to its agreements, why doesn't President Peres object that he was misled? Why isn't he demanding that the Palestinians live up to their side of the bargain? Or, is he part of the campaign of disinformation?

The fact that PM Netanyahu needs to call for recognition, and is rejected by the PA, means that the agreements were a fake, and the Israeli people have been brainwashed.

That the Israeli government offers further concessions in return for what was agreed to during the past 17 years, is a disgrace.

It is a disgrace because it means that the "peace process" was a lie, and those who perpetrated it - deliberately, or, naively - have some explaining to do to the Israeli people. They include not only current and past government officials, but academics who supported this fraud, and especially the media which managed the brainwashing.

Those who oppose "the occupation" owe the Israeli people an explanation for why Palestinians reject any form of recognition of Israel's legitimacy – and why they remain silent in the face of that insult. Why do they call for boycotts of Israel, and refuse to demand PA compliance?

There is no need for further Israeli concessions. The Israeli government can announce that until and unless the PA accepts Israel's legitimacy, there is no basis for ongoing economic assistance, and no further cooperation on infrastructure.

For example, it is totally absurd that the Israeli government assists the PA in building the new city of Rawabi, near Ramallah, without such basic agreements. That this project, and others that are being planned, are supported by the Peres Center for Peace, without PA acceptance of Israel is mind-boggling.

PM Netanyahu's policy of unilaterally "freezing" Jewish construction led to this impasse. It's time to freeze the system that rewards PA non-compliance and contributes to undermining Israel, at home and the international community. PA de-legitimization of Israel must stop now.

An obstacle for Palestinians and those who support their demands, the question of recognition shows that the primary dispute – obviously – is not over territory, but over Israel's existence.

PM Netanyahu's demand that Palestinian leaders recognize Israel as a Jewish state is not a semantic tease; Israel's Jewish character is its raison d'etre, the "Jewish national home," and the essence of its sovereignty.


Ynet News

Israel's False Apartheid Dilemma

Israel does not have to withdraw to 1967 borders to maintain democratic nature

by Yoram Shifftan

There is a growing realization that Israel faces a dilemma: either it withdraws to pre-1967 borders and maintains its Jewish Democratic nature, or it would turn into a "racist" "apartheid" state in the sense that Arabs in the "territories" do not get voting rights for a national parliament.

But in fact this is false dilemma. It is perfectly legitimate for all Jews in Western Palestine, Judea, Samaria and Gaza included, to vote for an Israeli parliament and for Arabs in Judea, Samaria and Gaza to vote for an Arab parliament.

This can be an Arab parliament of an existing Arab state. In particular Jordan's parliament is an appropriate option since Jordan extends on four fifths of Palestine: Eastern Palestine which was given to the Jewish National Home by the unanimous vote of all 51 nations of the League of Nations.

Jewish national rights in Eastern Palestine (Jordan) were only postponed but not cancelled. Yet for peace Israel will be willing to make this concession. Alternatively the Arabs of the territories (Judea, Samaria, Gaza) can vote for an additional new Arab parliament of a new Arab state, for example, in Ramallah.

A variation, or an option, of the above would include the Arabs of pre-1967 Israel who could vote too to such a parliament in Amman or to a new Arab parliament in Western Palestine.

Thus even though all Arabs are members of one nation, and therefore deserve one state only by their own logic - and indeed historically, culturally, linguistically all experts agree they are one nation as they themselves have been saying for many years - and anomalously they have already 21 states whereas people like the Kurds do not have even one state and one parliament, still for peace Israel would be willing to make the concession of increasing the anomaly even further and consider yet another Arab state.

Thus even though Arabs in America or Europe cannot express their national identity in an Arab parliament, Arabs in Western Palestine will be able to express their national identity in an Arab parliament, and simultaneously the settlement of Jews in all of Western Palestine could be encouraged so as to fulfill the requirement of international law, and to respond to the security requirement and to the necessity to settle Jews in the cradle of their civilization.

In order to see the legitimacy and legality of this type of arrangement one should invoke the many precedents of similar arrangements. They all repose on the fact that one needs not have a territorial continuity between the territorial parts of a given nation state.

The Irish example
Take for example Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. These two territories share a common island. Yet their territorial proximity still allows for their belonging to completely different nation states. The people of Northern Ireland belong to the UK and vote for a parliament located in London in another island altogether.

Nobody says that the British or Irish governments are implementing "apartheid" or a "racist" regime because the people of Northern Ireland do not vote to the proximate parliament in Dublin and are not part of the Republic of Ireland. Nobody says that the people of Northern Ireland do not enjoy national self-expression, just because they do not vote for the Irish parliament in Dublin which is their geographical proximate capital, or because they do not vote to a parliament of their own.

This is just one example. The UK alone provides multiple examples of a nation whose parts are spread all over the world, albeit not all these parts are fully-fledged British like Northern Ireland; they may be British to varying degrees and enjoy certain autonomy.

Thus, Gibraltar is British, and the British even fought in the other end of the world only recently in order to keep the "Britishness" of the Falkland Islands. To proponents of the dilemma above, these Islands should be Argentinean just because they are closer to Argentina.

Alaska and Hawaii are not territorially contiguous with mainland US, yet they are part of the US. Spain has got territory in North Africa. Corsica is an island separated from the French mainland. In fact, it is closer to Italy than to the French mainland and yet it is part of France.

The principle that one needs not have a geographical continuity or proximity between parts of a given nation is even demonstrated closer to home by recalling the status of Mount Scopus until 1967. This territory and all the buildings of the Hebrew University located on it were an official part of Israel. Yet it was encircled by Jordanian territory.

Thus, the position that Israel can only be Jewish and democratic in the pre-1967 borders is false.


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