"Hamas Supporting Flotilla" Organizers IHH Suspected Of Having Links to Al-Qaeda

"You can fool some people sometime, but you can't fool all the people all of the time..." -- Bob Marley

Turkish counter-terrorism police have raided the offices of an aid agency on the border with Syria, in what local media described as an operation in six cities against individuals suspected of having links to al-Qaeda.

[Link to the original Al-Jazeera story of arrests]

Hamas supporting Flotilla" organizers IHH who told the world they were bringing humanitarian aid to Gaza, have been raided by Turkish authorities for ties to Al Qaeda.

Please see this video:



Israel has always maintained that the IHH could have brought the aid through Israel after screening for weapons, as is done every day. The IHH instead chose to attack the soldiers boarding the ship in order to create a media stunt -- which worked. 9 people were killed because of the melee those seeking "martyrdom" cased.

SUPPORTING TERRORISTS IS NOT "#HUMANITARIAN AID". DON'T BE FOOLED AGAIN.

EXCLUSIVE - With Muslim Brotherhood crushed, Egypt sets sights on Hamas

(Reuters) - After crushing the Muslim Brotherhood at home, Egypt's military rulers plan to undermine the Palestinian militant group Hamas, which runs the neighbouring Gaza Strip, senior Egyptian security officials told Reuters.

The aim, which the officials say could take years to pull off, includes working with Hamas's political rivals Fatah and supporting popular anti-Hamas activities in Gaza, four security and diplomatic officials said.

Since it seized power in Egypt last summer, Egypt's military has squeezed Gaza's economy by destroying most of the 1,200 tunnels used to smuggle food, cars and weapons to the coastal enclave, which is under an Israeli blockade.

Now Cairo is becoming even more ambitious in its drive to eradicate what it says are militant organisations that threaten its national security.

Intelligence operatives, with help from Hamas's political rivals and activists, plan to undermine the credibility of Hamas, which seized control of Gaza in 2007 after a brief civil war against the Fatah movement led by Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

According to the Egyptian officials, Hamas will face growing resistance by activists who will launch protests similar to those in Egypt that have led to the downfall of two presidents since the Arab Spring in 2011. Cairo plans to support such protests in an effort to cripple Hamas.

"Gaza is next," said one senior security official, who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue. "We cannot get liberated from the terrorism of the Brotherhood in Egypt without ending it in Gaza, which lies on our borders."

Asked why Egyptian intelligence is not going after Hamas now, another senior security official said: "Their day will come."

Egypt accuses Hamas of backing al Qaeda-linked militant groups which have stepped up attacks against security forces in Egypt's Sinai peninsula over the past few months. The attacks have spread to Cairo and other cities.

Both the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas deny accusations of terrorism, and the Brotherhood says it is committed to peaceful activism. The group was ousted from power in Egypt after the military threw its weight behind street protests last summer.

Freely-elected president Mohamed Mursi is now on trial on charges of inciting the murder of protesters during his presidency. Egypt's military-backed government has cracked down hard on the Brotherhood, arresting almost its entire leadership and thousands of its backers as well as formally declaring it a terrorist organisation.

But the situation is very different in Gaza, where Hamas, an offshoot of the Brotherhood, is heavily armed, has years of experience fighting Israel, and moves swiftly to squash dissent.

A Hamas official said the comments made to Reuters by Egyptian officials showed Cairo was inciting violence and trying to provoke chaos.

"We reaffirm that Hamas did not and never would intervene in the internal Egyptian affairs," Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri told Reuters. "No one should ever dream to weaken Hamas.

"A LOT OF ANGER"

So far, contacts between Egypt and Fatah have been limited to discussing ways to help Fatah undermine Hamas, said the officials. They declined to name Palestinians involved in those discussions or give details of how many meetings have been held.

Hamas keeps Fatah party officials under very close watch in Gaza. A senior Fatah official in the occupied West Bank, where the party is far more powerful, denied any plot to oust Hamas.

"There is a lot of anger in Gaza. People are suffering, but protest is not easy. We cannot hope that Hamas will vanish tomorrow," he said.

Hamas has an estimated 20,000 fighters, with another 20,000 in its police and security forces. Despite growing economic hardship in Gaza, the group can still draw on significant support from among the territory's 1.8 million people.

But Egyptian officials hope to exploit tensions with rival militant groups, even if there are no signs of major splits yet.

"We know that Hamas is powerful and armed but we also know that there are other armed groups in Gaza that are not on good terms with Hamas and they could be used to face Hamas," another Egyptian security source said.

"All people want is to eat, drink and have a decent living, and if a government, armed or not, fails to provide that, then the people will rise against it in the end," the source said.

"THE FIRST SPARK"

In early January, Cairo publicly hosted the first conference of a new anti-Hamas youth group called Tamarud, or rebel, the same name used by the Egyptian youth movement that led last year's protests against Mursi.

Members of the Palestinian Tamarud stood with the Palestinian flag wrapped around their necks to highlight what they called Hamas's crimes against activists in Gaza.

The event was attended by representatives from Egyptian liberal parties and Fatah.

"We support the movement and any peaceful movement against the cruelty of the Islamist group that is part of the terrorist Muslim Brotherhood organisation," said Ayman al-Raqb, a Fatah official in Cairo in his speech at the conference.

The activists showed video clips of masked gunmen chasing and dragging away protesters, and posted banners showing activists who they said had been tortured by Hamas for their opposition.

The Gaza-based Palestinian Centre for Human Rights last year accused Hamas of orchestrating a fierce crackdown against activists suspected of trying to organise a Tamarud-like protest in November. It said some of those detained were tortured and the mooted rally never materialised.

Hamas has accused Tamarud members of being Israeli agents, but has denied allegations of torture.

Activists in Cairo have called for protests in Gaza on March 21.

Egyptian officials hope that future Hamas crackdowns may turn the tide against the movement's leadership.

"Surely, the world will not stand still and allow Hamas to kill Palestinians. Someone will interfere," said the Egyptian security official. "But so far we are only working on firing the first spark."

But officials also concede that the plan is likely to take years.

"The aid Egypt will mainly provide to the anti-Hamas groups will be logistical not financial. Tamaruds don't cost much," one Egyptian security official said.

TUNNELS

The plan to undermine Hamas reflects renewed confidence among Egypt's security forces after being sidelined following the fall of long-time president Hosni Mubarak in 2011. Senior security officials are now determined to eliminate their Islamist foes for good - inside and outside Egypt.

They were angry when Mursi became the first Egyptian president to meet Hamas leaders in the presidential palace. Mursi also sent his prime minister to Gaza on the second day of an Israeli offensive on the enclave in November 2012.

Many Egyptians believe the Brotherhood intended to give part of the Sinai to Hamas. The Brotherhood has consistently denied the allegation.

Mursi's administration did acknowledge the problem posed by the tunnels under the border between Egypt and Gaza. His national security adviser last year said the government was flooding a number of tunnels he described as illegal.

But the Rafah border crossing between Egypt and Gaza was kept open for much of Mursi's rule, allowing vital food and goods to flow into Gaza.

After Mursi's overthrow, the army took over command of the Sinai and started destroying hundreds of tunnels. No Hamas official has been allowed to travel into Egypt since then.

Last month, Egypt's public prosecutor accused Hamas of conspiring with Mursi and Iran to stage terrorist attacks in Egypt.

"We know Hamas is the Brotherhood and the Brotherhood (members) are terrorists and no country could develop with terrorists in or around it," the security official said.

Gaza prime minister and Hamas deputy leader Ismail Haniyeh has said repeatedly since July that his group is focused exclusively on confronting arch-foe Israel and has no armed presence in Egypt.

"We do not intervene in Egyptian internal affairs," he told supporters last month. "Egypt cannot do without us and we cannot do without Egypt. This historical, geographic and security link can never be severed."

However, an Egyptian security official, who declined to be named, dismissed his words. "They (Hamas leaders) can say what they want on their role in Sinai. We don't base our judgment on them, but on intelligence and information."

(Additional reporting by Crispian Balmer and Nidal Al Mughrabi; Editing by Michael Georgy and Simon Robinson)

Poster's Note: Egypt, don't stop, it's about time to destroy HamAss, and to wipe this terrorist organization OFF the global map!

Time For New Thinking About the 'Peace Process'

Notion that Palestinians should get greater sovereignty a recipe for violence, instability.

Yoel Meltzer - Ynet

Roughly 20 years ago Israel made a decision to bring back from exile in faraway Tunisia its most bitter enemy, Yasser Arafat, and deposit him together with his close associates on our own doorstep. Still further, not content with the shock value of such a startling move, the leaders of the day outdid themselves by actually helping to arm and train Arafat’s newly created “police force.”

Underlying this odd yet bold course of action was the assumption that the only way to achieve stability in the region is to boost Arab sovereignty - a kinder way of referring to the minimization of Israeli sovereignty. By now, there is no doubt that this belief has had an enormous influence in shaping the policies of successive Israeli leaders for nearly two decades.

Moreover, although it's true that when the Oslo process was launched many observers believed that the reasoning behind such gamble was sufficiently sound, two decades of experience have demonstrated the fact that the essential assumption was clearly wrong: Reduced Israeli sovereignty does not lead to local or regional stability. It never did and it never will.

In fact, the very opposite is true, as this school of thought exudes a defeatist attitude and projects a message that "we're wrong, the land is not ours." This, in turn, empowers our enemies to act in a more brazen manner. The result is that local and regional instability is perpetuated, not eradicated.

Tit-for-tat reprisals

This flawed line of reasoning, despite some good intentions, is the real driving force behind the many diversified attacks on Israel since the dawn of Oslo. Moreover, it makes no difference whether the attacks are against Israel's legitimacy, such as the international BDS campaign or annual "Apartheid Week," or against Israel's very existence, such as the countless terrorist attacks or missile barrages from Gaza. Ultimately, they're all a result of Israel's indefatigable attempt to grant further Arab sovereignty at the expense of Israeli sovereignty.

What's more, when facing military attacks, Israel is reluctantly drawn into yet another round of tit-for-tat reprisals – you kill, we kill, you kill, we kill – which do little, if anything, in diminishing the constant Arab-Israeli tension.

In order to finally change the seemingly endless cycle of insanity for both Jews and Arabs, Israel needs to take a clear look at reality and change the paradigm. As the only source of real stability in the entire Middle East, it’s a no-brainer that the exact opposite of the Oslo assumption is true. Namely, real stability can be achieved only by increasing Israeli sovereignty, not reducing it, while increasing Arab sovereignty will only lead to Israel's demise.

Although such change in direction at this late stage of the game would not be easy for Israel, it's simply a must, not just for those of us who happen to be alive today but for future generations as well.

A response to Israel’s haters

By Joseph A. Klein

My article appearing in Canada Free Press last Friday entitled “Hamas apologist Norman Finkelstein attacks Israel again” (along with its publication by FrontPage Magazine under the title “Finkelstein’s Slander Against Israel”) has apparently brought the haters of the Jewish state of Israel out from under their rocks. And I mean that literally, since the terrorist organization Hamas, which they so zealously defend, still has its founding Charter in force which quotes the prophet Mohammed:

“The Day of Judgment will not come about until Muslims fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Muslims, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.”

Those who take what the Hamas Charter says seriously about the goal of obliterating the Jewish state are told not to worry. Hamas has changed and wants peace, its supporters argue. It is the villainous Jewish state that refuses to negotiate a peaceful resolution of the conflict, we are told.

Yet, would any sane person trust an organization whose leaders have made statements in the last few years such as the following?

Sheik Yunus al-Astal, a Hamas legislator and imam, in a column in the weekly newspaper Al Risalah in 2008 discussed a Koranic verse suggesting that “suffering by fire is the Jews’ destiny in this world and the next.” Astal concluded “Therefore we are sure that the Holocaust is still to come upon the Jews.”

“We will not rest until we destroy the Zionist entity” stated Hamas leader Fathi Hammad in Gaza on Friday January 2nd 2009.

In a sermon aired on Hamas’ Al-Aqsa television, cleric Yunis Al Astal stated, “Today, Rome is the capital of the Catholics, or the Crusader capital, which has declared its hostility to Islam, and has planted the brothers of apes and pigs in Palestine in order to prevent the reawakening of Islam.” He went on to say that Rome would become, “an advanced post for the Islamic conquests, which will spread though Europe in its entirety, and then will turn to the two Americas, even Eastern Europe.”

Hamas has repeatedly refused to recognize the right of Israel to exist, refused to disown its Charter and refused to abide by the previous commitments of the Palestinian Authority.

With that as background, let’s examine a few of the arguments that the Israel haters have thrown my way, when they weren’t engaging in their customary ad hominem attacks.

The Jewish Zionists stole the Palestinians’ land and are not entitled to have a state of their own on any portion of “Palestine.”

Hamas’ apologists love to cite international law when it suits their purposes in holding Israel to account, but then reject the international legal framework under which the Palestinians could have had their own state more than 60 years ago. They have nothing to say that would justify why the surrounding Arab states torpedoed the original UN-sponsored two-state solution in 1947-8.

All they do is whine that the land of “Palestine” was stolen from the “Palestinian” Muslim inhabitants. Aside from the long historical connection of the Jewish people to the land, including Jerusalem, that pre-dated Islam by well more than a thousand years, the region the British called the Palestine Mandate (the area that included Jordan, Israel and the “West Bank”) and out of which the British offered the two state solution adopted by the United Nations, emerged out of the pre-World War I Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman Empire had been ruled for 400 years by the Turks who lost it when they, fighting on the German side, were defeated in World War I.

Many Jews who were living in this area had bought their homes from the absentee Turk landlords. Arab masses immigrated from outside this area along with the Jews. Most of those who were called “Palestinian Arabs” were members of families who migrated into the same region that Jews were migrating into beginning in the late 19th century. And there had been a continuous Jewish presence in the region for many centuries.

To say that European Jews had less of a right to emigrate to the ancient Jewish homeland starting in the late 19th century (and develop the land from a desolate swamp) than did Arabs who emigrated during the same period from other regions outside of the Palestine Mandate is racist, not Zionism. In any case, the majority of Jews living in Israel today are non-European – some from Africa and many expelled from their homes in surrounding Arab countries.

Jordan was created on about 75% percent of the Palestine Mandate. The majority of its population was, and still is, Palestinian. Thus, even before the two-state solution was offered with respect to the 25% remainder of the Palestine Mandate, a state made up of a majority Palestinian population was already in existence. The fact that the minority rulers of a different Arab tribe run things in Jordan is a problem for the Palestinian majority that pre-dated the creation of the state of Israel.

The 1947 UN Resolution 181 partition plan was to divide the remaining 25% of Palestine into a Jewish state and a second Arab Palestinian state (Trans-Jordan being the first) based upon population demographics. The partition was offered even though the Arab inhabitants’ leaders had sided with the Nazis in World War II.

The Jewish inhabitants accepted the partition. The Arab inhabitants rejected the partition and the rest, as they say, is history. The Palestinians could have had their own independent state more than 60 years ago but for the rejectionism of their Arab neighbors who violated international law in trying to drive “the Jews into the sea” and the refusal of the Palestinian inhabitants themselves to negotiate a two-state solution in good faith.

Israel has illegally occupied the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem since 1967 and “oppressed” the Palestinian people in violation of international law.

Isn’t it strange how the friends of Hamas blithely skip over 20 years of history? Why weren’t the Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza, while those territories were in Arab hands, provided the land to create their own independent state? Where was the outcry for justice under international law back then?

After Israel took over the territories following the June 1967 war, the United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 242 which (i) called on Israel to withdraw its armed forces “from territories occupied in the recent conflict”; and (ii) called for “termination of all claims or states of belligerency and respect for and acknowledgment of the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of every State in the area and their right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force.”

The resolution deliberately omitted the word “all” before “territories” in (i) above to allow the parties to negotiate a peaceful solution that would best achieve the goals set forth in (ii) above.

Israel has since returned the Sinai to Egypt as part of a peace treaty, normalized relations with Jordan, withdrawn unilaterally from Gaza and offered to give back 90% of the West Bank and negotiate the fate of Jerusalem – all of which was rebuffed by Arafat and his successors.

There were no security fences or elaborate checkpoints in the years immediately following 1967. What has Israel received in return?

Every year Israeli civilians have been murdered by Fatah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Al Aqsa Martyr’s Brigade, Hezbollah or some other terrorist group. Islamic terrorists use suicide bombers and increasingly sophisticated rockets, launched from lands relinquished by Israel to the Palestinians, to kill innocent Israeli civilians. Their killing machines of choice tomorrow will be whatever weapons of mass destruction they can get their hands on, including from their buddies in Iran whose president has vowed to wipe Israel off the map.

Israel is falsely accused of ‘collective punishment’ when it strikes back to defend its citizens. Yet it is the Palestinian and other Islamic terrorists who continually violate the Israelis’ human rights under the Geneva Conventions, which state that “Collective penalties and likewise all measures of intimidation or of terrorism are prohibited.” The innocent Israeli women and children, who have been slaughtered while going about their daily lives in their homes, their schools, on buses, at shopping malls, and places of worship, have committed no wrong against the Palestinian people. They are the victims of the Islamic terrorists’ measures of intimidation and terrorism, which violate their most basic of human rights - life itself. The Islamic terrorists are pursuing nothing less than the collective annihilation of the Israeli people. Just look at the Hamas Charter and the statements of their own leaders.

When the Israeli government responded with stern but non-violent, defensive measures to protect its most vulnerable citizens from murder – for example, with border closures, security checks, economic sanctions and a separation wall which came years after the 1967 war – the terrorists’ apologists complain that it is Israel which is violating the Palestinians’ human rights under international law. Although Hamas has controlled Gaza since 2005, it is Israel’s citizens who continued to suffer intimidation and terrorism launched from Gaza in violation of their international human rights. Israel ceded the Gaza Strip to the Palestinians in a good faith effort to advance peace. Gaza turned instead into hostile territory under Hamas’s control. More than 4200 rockets were launched from Gaza into Israeli residential areas after Gaza was no longer “occupied territory.”

Israel broke the cease-fire with Hamas and launched Operation Cast Lead that turned into a “massacre” of innocent Palestinian civilians. Israel’s “war crimes” are incontrovertibly documented in the Goldstone Report.

Hamas Does Not Honor Truces 


Hamas, not Israel, unilaterally decided against extending the six month ceasefire that had expired in mid-December 2008.

One fundamental problem overlooked by the Goldstone Report and other so-called “human rights” reports is that Hamas does not abide by truces or cease-fires for very long, even when it decides to enter into one. To Hamas, truces are just stalling tactics to use as lulls during which the terrorists build up their military capability. Don’t take my word for it. When asked if he could envision a 50-year hudna (cease-fire) with Israel, Hamas leader Nizar Rayyan (who was since killed in an Israeli bombing attack) responded, “The only reason to have a hudna is to prepare yourself for the final battle. We don’t need 50 years to prepare ourselves for the final battle with Israel. Israel is an impossibility. It is an offense against God.”

Gaza’s fellow Arab neighbors in Egypt have witnessed first hand Hamas’s destructive ways. In the wake of the militants’ blasting of the barrier between Gaza and Egypt, more Egyptians finally realized themselves where the source of the Palestinians’ problems and of the real threat to peace lies.

For example, Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies director Dr. ‘Abd Al-Mun’im Sa’id criticized Hamas’s failed policies in a column he wrote for Egypt’s ruling National Democratic Party weekly Al-Watani Al-Yawm:

“Hamas’s election by the majority of the Palestinian people has invested it with the formidable responsibility of leading the Palestinian people, protecting its interests, developing its abilities, and managing its relations with the world and with Israel. Its military coup against the Palestinian Authority and its [currently] exclusive control of the Gaza Strip have forced it to assume complete responsibility over the Gazans, in financial, social, and security matters.

However, Hamas has failed to fulfill this responsibility, both after it was elected and following its [Gaza] coup. In fact, it has done nothing but publicly condemn Israel and the PA, on television and in daily communiqués to the world, and to the Islamic Arab countries…

The rockets, [which are being used] as a means of opposing the peace process and applying pressure [on it], are not for pressuring Israel, but for gaining popularity among the Palestinians…”

The editor of the Egyptian government daily Al-Gumhouriyya and Egyptian MP Muhammad ‘Ali Ibrahim was even blunter in his column:

“The Hamas fighters are not satisfied with Abu Mazen’s [i.e. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s] way of reaching a permanent and definitive solution with the Hebrew state that will ensure the establishment and continuity of the Palestinian state. This is because the only aim of [Hamas Political Bureau head] Khaled Mash’al and his men is to keep this issue hot, so that regional [forces] such as Iran and Syria can continue playing the card of the Palestinian problem to promote their private interests – that is, Iran’s nuclear dossier, the liberation of the Golan Heights, etc…

The Egyptians know their Gazan neighbors very well. They blame Hamas for sabotaging any prospects for peace with Israel and for the Gazan residents’ current suffering. Egypt wants to be left alone from Hamas’s aggression and interference with its sovereignty. So does Israel. And don’t tell me that Egypt is in cahoots with Israel. They have what is called a cold peace. They are barely on speaking terms.

Hamas uses its own civilians as human shields

This is not some wild charge of Israeli propagandists. It is based on the boasts of Hamas officials themselves. 

Following are excerpts from a speech delivered by Hamas MP Fathi Hammad, which aired on Al-Aqsa TV on February 29, 2008: 


Fathi Hammad: [The enemies of Allah] do not know that the Palestinian people has developed its [methods] of death and death-seeking. For the Palestinian people, death has become an industry, at which women excel, and so do all the people living on this land. The elderly excel at this, and so do the mujahideen and the children. This is why they have formed human shields of the women, the children, the elderly, and the mujahideen, in order to challenge the Zionist bombing machine. It is as if they were saying to the Zionist enemy: “We desire death like you desire life.” (Emphasis added)

The Goldstone Report

The Goldstone fact-finding panel, commissioned by the anti-Israel United Nations Human Rights Council, concluded that Israel “may” be guilty of war crimes based on the assumption that the country’s military forces and leaders deliberately targeted civilians. Israel’s enemies have seized on this conclusion to brand Israel’s military operation a “massacre,” to use Norman Finkelstein’s term. It is worth noting that not once in its 575 page report did the Goldstone panel actually use the term “massacre” to describe Israel’s actions during the Gaza conflict.

One of the most serious charges leveled against Israel’s operation during Project Cast Lead was its use of white phosphorous. Yet while the Goldstone Report concluded that Israel was reckless in its use in built-up areas it also noted that “white phosphorous is not at this stage proscribed under international law.” The report cited one specific example of a family in which children were alleged to have died as a result of injuries from white phosphorous. This is tragic to be sure, but it hardly demonstrates a widespread pattern of deliberate and indiscriminate burning to death of Palestinian children by Israel’s military that Norman Finkelstein and his followers try to portray.

It is curious why Israel’s enemies felt they had to exaggerate the Goldstone Report’s findings since the Goldstone panel was biased against Israel in the first place. It consisted of four members, three of whom considered Israel guilty before their investigation began. Judge Goldstone was outnumbered 3-1, even giving him all the credit in the world for his own objective judicial temperament.

Here are just a few examples of the Goldstone Report’s distortions of the facts as compiled and written up by the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America: 



REPORT:
There is no evidence of Palestinian fighters using civilian clothes. 


FACT:
Journalists and eyewitnesses repeatedly noted the use of civilian clothes by Hamas fighters. 



REPORT:
There is no evidence of armed groups directing civilians to areas where attacks were being launched or forcing them to remain in the vicinity of attacks. 


FACT:
Palestinian witnesses and video evidence reveal that fighters did direct civilians to areas where attacks were being launched.

REPORT:
There is no evidence that hospitals or ambulances were used for military activities.

FACT:
Eyewitnesses describe Palestinian firing from hospitals and using ambulances. Why, for example, did the Goldstone fact-finding mission choose not to visit the al-Shifa Hospital or investigate allegations that Hamas leaders and fighters used this hospital as a base, especially given the testimony by a captured Islamic Jihad fighter to this effect?

REPORT:
The mission could not determine whether mosques were used for military purposes.

FACT:
There is video evidence of weaponry stored in a mosque, and of secondary explosions of mosques consistent with the storage of explosives. While the Report refers to allegations of mosques being used for military purposes and notes that it cannot rule out the inappropriate use of other mosques by Palestinians, the Mission nevertheless chose not to fuhrther investigate these possible war crimes by Palestinians and dismissed or ignored the readily available pictorial and testimonial evidence indicating that this was indeed the case.

CONCLUSION

I could go on and on, but one thing is clear. There can be no real peace so long as the Palestinian terrorists and their state sponsors such as Iran want more innocent Jews to die for death’s sake and will settle for nothing short of Israel’s extermination. As long as they allow Hamas and other extremists to rule them, the Palestinians will remain their own worst enemies.



Canada Press

The End of Palestine

by Daniel Greenfield

In the spring of 1964, while the Vietnam War was underway, the space program had brought close up photos of the moon, and the Beatles were topping the charts; the Arab League convened to try and find a way to complete the ethnic cleansing of Jews from Israel. They had tried it once before in 1948, with incomplete results. Back then, the Arab forces had managed to capture and ethnically cleanse the eastern half of Jerusalem, as well as seizing and annexing the West Bank and Gaza. But for 16 years, Israel had managed to frustrate their designs by stubbornly continuing to exist.

What the Arab governments wanted was a terrorist organization that could cross the border and carry out attacks inside Israel. And they wanted plausible deniability so that Israel and the UN couldn't hold them responsible for those attacks. And so cloaked in a lot of smoke and mirrors about "Palestinian Arab nationhood", the Palestine Liberation Organization was born. The PLO had three tasks, to harass Israel through terror, to cultivate a fifth column inside the country that would come into play in an invasion, and to make it seem as if the Arab world wasn't a bunch of genocidal maniacs, but wanted to destroy Israel in the name of "Palestinian rights".

The Arab League had never believed in an independent Palestinian state. Even while they were creating the PLO, Jordan had already annexed the West Bank. And Gaza was in Egyptian hands. The PLO's purpose was not to liberate these areas, or even to govern them. Its own charter made that abundantly clear.

Article 24. This Organization does not exercise any regional sovereignty over the West Bank in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, in the Gaza Strip or the Himmah area. Its activities will be on the national popular level in the liberational, organizational, political and financial fields.

The PLO's own founding charter had already conceded that the West Bank was not part of Palestine, and instead recognized Jordan's annexation of the area. When the PLO talked about "liberating" Palestine, it only meant the parts of Israel that the Arab League members had not succeeded in seizing in 1948. When the PLO talked about liberating Palestine, up until 1967, it had nothing to do with the West Bank or Gaza, it simply meant destroying Israel.

It was not until 1967, when the latest Arab League attempt to "drive the Jews into the sea" failed, that the PLO began talking about their rights to Gaza and the West Bank. Previously they had staged terrorist attacks on Israel from bases in Gaza and the West Bank, under the sponsorship of Egypt and Jordan. After Israel reclaimed Gaza and the West Bank, and reversed the ethnic cleansing of Jews carried out in 1948, the PLO began focusing on the territories that their sponsors had lost in 1967, rather than just those they had lost in 1948.

From its founding, the PLO had always been a tool of larger movements in the Arab Muslim world. It began as a tool of Arab Socialism, and Pan-Arabism, the dream of a single Arab state encompassing the entire Arab world. An Arab socialist Caliphate. Even while agitating for the Palestinian cause, Shukairy went on promoting Pan-Arabism, in which there would be no independent Palestine. But then again an independent Palestine had never been the point.

By the 70's and 80's, the PLO had become a poisoned knife that cut the hands of its wielders. This is the common enough fate of those who create terrorist groups and imagine that they can control them. The PLO had managed to commit a number of terrorist atrocities in Israel, and Arafat, the 3rd successor to Shukairy, had become a household name. But it had achieved nothing except headlines.

In the seventies, the PLO attempted to seize control of part of Jordan, which after all had comprised the majority of the Palestine Mandate. But the PLO was brutally suppressed by the Jordanian regime of King Hussein, and was expelled from the country. It tried the same thing again in Beirut a few years later, trying to carve a "Second Palestine" out of Lebanon. It failed again, with horrifying results for the entire country.

By the late eighties, the PLO was done. Egypt had made a peace deal with Israel. Jordan had a tacit understanding with Israel under the table. Syria was the only Arab country bordering Israel that was still somewhat supportive of the PLO, but it had little use for the PLO as a terrorist organization inside Israel, because the PLO was Arab, and the Golan Heights which Syria hoped to conquer was Druze. Instead Syria was far more interested in using the PLO to spread chaos in Lebanon for its own purposes.

Had Israeli and American leaders not chosen to engage in act of breathtaking stupidity bordering on treason, the PLO would have faded away by now, much the same way that Habash's PFLP has. Its Arab Socialism was already dated. It had been created to pave the way for another invasion of Israel by the Arab Powers that after 1973 seemed to be permanently on hold. After Jordan and Lebanon, no one in the Arab world trusted Arafat anymore. And with the Soviet Union in decline, the PLO was swiftly running out of backers. In a better world, by 2004, Arafat's death would been a historical footnote putting an end to what had once been a serious terrorist threat.

But instead the PLO was rescued, given its own state and army, along with billions of dollars from the United States and Europe. A terrorist organization created in order to destroy Israel, that had been brutally expelled from two Arab countries, was given its own autonomous territory inside Israel. Words like madness and treason are almost too good and rational a description for this course of action. But corruption is the only one that properly suits.

In the late eighties, the PLO had become a weapon without a wielder. The PLO had gained its influence from its ability to cause chaos, but Israel's intervention in Lebanon had robbed it of even that. While the foreign press couldn't get enough photos of masked stone throwers onto their front pages, the reality is that the PLO's influence existed mainly in the media. The PLO had come full circle, to become just as irrelevant as it had been in 1964. But then the United States decided that it could become the PLO's wielder.

The Saudi infiltration of the American government meant there was still a small body of very influential people in the foreign policy establishment who kept repeating over and over again, that a "settlement" to the Israeli-Palestinian was vital to the stability of the region. The media helped keep this slogan in circulation with editorials and news stories. And successive administrations kept on pressuring Israel to reach a "settlement".

In 1991, the US pressured a conservative Israeli government into participating in the Madrid Conference. The negotiations failed to achieve anything, but for the first time Israel was forced to negotiate with terrorists. Israel's conservative government collapsed, and was replaced with a left wing coalition that conducted further illegal negotiations with the PLO. Those negotiations ratified under Clinton's benevolent smirk in the Rose Garden, brought the PLO back with a vengeance.

Given territory and troops, Arafat reverted back to his old formula. He would cause chaos through terrorism in order to gain more power. The plan worked like a charm. Arafat recognized that Arab Socialism was done, and he Islamized the Palestinian Authority. The educational system under the authority of the PA taught a primal Islamic hatred for Jews and other infidels. The cult of the suicide bomber provided religious authority to support PLO terrorism. And what had been a mild terrorist problem before Arafat was given a state inside Israel, became a horrifying nightmare afterward.

Via Fatah, the PLO was treated as a political party. Through Fatah's control over the Palestinian Authority, it was treated as a government. Terrorist attacks were attributed to various "extremist" or "militant" subgroups, whom naturally Arafat couldn't control. Even though Arafat's own militias were engaging in terrorism, the US pretended that it had nothing to do with Arafat or the PA or Fatah. Just more "extremists" and "militants" trying to disrupt the peace process. A process which involved Israel making concessions while under fire.

Clinton had taken ownership of the accords, and predictably refused to admit that anything was wrong, until the very end, when Arafat laughed at his dreams of a final status agreement. Only then did Clinton belatedly realize that Arafat was not interested in peace. But then why would Arafat have ever been interested in peace? The PLO was a terrorist organization. Its ideology called for the destruction of Israel. It gained nothing from peace, except the end of its legitimacy.

The new Bush Administration initially got it. It treated Arafat as a pariah, and avoided the constant drumbeat of criticism and demands for concessions from Israel that had been common under Clinton. Colin Powell as Secretary of State had little power and influence over Bush, and was in any case busy with the War on Terror. Once again the PLO seemed to have reached a dead end. Without American political influence protecting Arafat, Israel was able to respond to PLO terrorism by smashing into Arafat's compound and seizing important documents that showed Arafat's involvement in terrorism.

But in 2004 Arafat died. Colin Powell announced his resignation that same year. The old Bush Dream Team of people like Rumsfeld and Cheney lost their influence. And the new single most influential figure was the new Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice. Rice had been heavily influenced by James Baker, the architect of the Madrid disaster. She had been a board member of Chevron, a company that had been formerly known as the Arabian American Oil Company or ARAMCO. Like Baker, Rice was an eager tool of the Saudis, and the old foreign policy came back with a vengeance.

The PLO's prospects were revived again under Rice. The death of Arafat had brought forward a seemingly more suitable replacement. Mahmoud Abbas, a KGB trained operative, had become a useful compromise candidate. Abbas wore a suit, spoke softly and was generally considered ineffectual and useless by potential rivals who allowed him to hold the top spot as a figurehead. Bush Jr liked Abbas a good deal more than he had liked Arafat. Once again weapons and money began flowing to the PLO. And once again Israel was pressured to make more concessions to the terrorists.

There was one problem. The PLO had become a hollow shell. The Palestinian Authority government that the US and the EU had spent billions on, was nothing more than a facade. The real money was going into the bank accounts of top officials and used to buy the loyalty of street militias. But money wasn't enough anymore. And the tide was coming in.

Arafat had accurately foreseen that Islamic terrorism was the future, but he hadn't hopped far enough or fast enough on the bandwagon. Hamas had gotten there before him. And Hamas had its own sources of financing and weapons, primarily from Iran. Like the PLO, Hamas was a weapon, but not of Pan-Arabism, but of Pan-Islamism. Hamas had been carved out of the Muslim Brotherhood, its ideal was that of the Caliphate, its mission was Jihad or religious war. Like the PLO, Hamas did not take the idea of Palestinian independence seriously. But unlike the PLO, its allegiance to a Global Caliphate was part of a rising tide of Islamic terrorism.

Hamas was a weapon with a purpose. The PLO no longer had a purpose anymore. As Fatah, it bought loyalty with American dollars and European euros. As the PA, it denounced Israel and demanded negotiations which it had no interest in participating in. Its only real backers anymore were in Washington D.C. and in Brussels, which meant that it had become the foreign element in the region. When Rice pushed for open elections, Hamas won, and Fatah lost. When Rice pushed Abbas to suppress Hamas, the militias that had been happy to take American dollars, ran as fast as they could. Hamas took Gaza. And Abbas has been left sitting in Ramallah, while pretending to run a state.

And so now we come to the latest turn of the wheel. The PLO is reaching the very end of its relevance. There is no chance whatsoever of Fatah retaking Gaza. The only reason Hamas hasn't taken the West Bank, is because Israeli soldiers are in the way. But Israel's blockade of Gaza, has allowed Hamas to build ties with Western anti-war groups. Regionally, Egypt is still backing Fatah, but Erdogan's Turkey has thrown its weight behind Hamas. Syria and Iran are heavy Hamas supporters.

There are only so many ways this can play out. The likeliest of them is that some key Fatah leaders will broker a compromise with Hamas, and change sides. Iranian money will be used to buy the loyalty of key militias. There will be a few days of light fighting, followed by a few hundred executions. Maybe more. And then Hamas will rule in both Gaza and the West Bank. No amount of effort by American generals to train Palestinian Authority "police" will change that. And extracting concessions from Israel will only put more territory in the hands of Hamas.

But US foreign policy on Palestine has never been based on any kind of reality. In Washington D.C., they're certain that Salam Fayyad's reforms will fix everything. That all Abbas needs is a "modern" police force and the situation will reverse itself. Of course it will not. And any attempt at another election will quickly show why. Meanwhile the refusal to hold elections, exposes Abbas and Fayyad as a sham, a puppet regime without any legal authority.

So naturally in the face of all this, Abbas is declaring statehood. It's an insane last gamble by a leader with a vanishing base of authority and no real future. Instead of stepping back though, Abbas and Fayyad are playing out their final gamble at the UN.

Abbas doesn't represent anyone, except the militias and bureaucracy that he pays with US and EU money. His term has expired. He has no legal status for conducting any negotiations. But you won't read that in the press, which takes great care to blame Netanyahu for delaying negotiations, when in fact it was Abbas who repeatedly rejected direct talks, primarily because they may well end up being his death warrant.

The media and the Obama Administration remain wired into a purely "Blame Israel" mode. One story after another insists that the main obstacle to peace is a few private Israeli homes going up in Jerusalem or Judea and Samaria. It is as if Hamas' control of Gaza doesn't exist for them. The elephant in the room armed with rockets and suicide bombers, controlling all of Gaza, might as well be a non-issue, as far as they're concerned. No one in the media asks when was the last time Abbas won an election. A minor issue that goes to the minor question of whether Abbas is even actually empowered to reach any binding agreements.

It might be 2011, but it might as well be 1996 or 2003 or any year in between. Except that the PLO's power is about done. The negotiations don't matter. Abbas will do his best to see that they fail, because it's the only way he can survive his own people. And he needs to have the blame for the failure fall on Israel, because it's the only way he can hang on to US and European support. As usual, nothing Israel can do will work, and whatever it does, it will get the blame. The media will go on chattering about settlements, as if that were the endgame here.

Statehood is a fiction that will move more money into the pockets of the Fatah elite, but it's also a double-edged sword. Fatah's only defense against a Hamas takeover is that it can extract territory through negotiations-- something Hamas cannot do because it refuses to negotiate for anything but temporary truces. A unilateral statehood declaration, if taken seriously, would also mean the end of negotiations. That's something Abbas can't afford because then his usefulness to Hamas is at an end.

Abbas needs Israel to keep from being overrun by Hamas, but he needs Hamas to keep his image as the moderate alternative to those crazy guys in Gaza. The balancing act has drawn billions in foreign aid, but infuriated everyone. Now Abbas is playing an even more dangerous game, going for broke to shake down Israel and the world into giving him some breathing room. It's a desperate move, but it may also work in the short term. In the long term though, the whole shebang is still doomed.

The Palestinian Authority is not a government, it's a terrorist organization in suits and ties. It has shown that it is not self-supporting and not capable of running anything besides a rocket launcher. It existed only as long as it was useful to someone.

The PLO began life because it was useful to the Syrians and Egyptians. When they no longer wanted it, it was still useful to the USSR. When the USSR no longer wanted it, it became useful to America. But now it's running out of sponsors.

The United States has been funding the Palestinian Authority since 1992 and it has gotten nothing for it, and while the foreign policy establishment insists on blaming Israel for that, there's only so long that game can go as well. The Bush Administration dumped Arafat and Abbas knows that sooner or later his turn will come. With no more options, no ability to reach a final status agreement and Western patrons whose foreign aid budgets will start tightening in the face of the bankruptcy, he is playing his only remaining card.

Either way the Palestinian myth is on the verge of flickering out. Hamas may talk about Palestinian rights, but it has even less interest in them than the PLO did. Hamas was spawned by the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. Its goal is an Islamic state in Egypt and Gaza, and then all of Israel. It has replaced the Pan-Arabism of a Shukairy with a Pan-Islamism, that it meant to lead to a Global Caliphate. The leaders of Hamas are no less corrupt than Arafat's cronies were, but it will take longer for the average Israeli Arab to figure that out.

The Arab and Muslim world has made very effective use of Israeli Arabs as terrorists and bullies. From the Lebanese Civil War, to the streets of Iran, where Palestinian Arab terrorists are being used as snipers and gunmen to suppress protests against Ahmadinejad, they have always been weapons. Ideology has served to frame a mythical Palestinian identity for them in terms that make them all into mercenaries, terrorists and martyrs. Where Israel took in Jewish refugees, the Arab world deliberately perpetuated an Arab refugee problem in order to turn them into weapons. Once they were the weapons of Arab Socialism. Now they are the weapons of Islam.

Sultan Knish

Palestinian Islamic Jihad

by Alden Oreck

Harakat al-Jihad al-Islami al-Filastini, better known as Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), was formed in 1979 by Islamic fundamentalist Fathi Shaqaqi and other radical Palestinian students in Egypt who had split from the Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood in the Gaza Strip whom they deemed too moderate. The 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran influenced the group's founder, Shaqaqi, who believed the liberation of Palestine would unite the Arab and Muslim world into a single great Islamic state. Today, PIJ is committed to the creation of an Islamic Palestinian state and the destruction of Israel through a jihad (holy war).

The Egyptian government expelled the PIJ to the Gaza Strip after learning of their close relations with radical Egyptian students who assassinated President Anwar Sadat in 1981. Still, PIJ members remained active in Egypt, attacking a tour bus in Egypt in February 1990 that killed 11 people, including nine Israelis. PIJ agents were arrested in Egypt in September 1991 while attempting to enter the country to conduct terrorism.

The PIJ began its terrorist campaign against Israel in the 1980s. In 1987, prior to the intifada, it carried out several terrorist attacks in the Gaza Strip. In August 1988, the faction`s leaders, Shaqaqi and `Abd al-`Aziz `Odah, were expelled to Lebanon, where Shaqaqi reorganized the faction, maintaining close contacts with the Iranian Revolutionary Guards unit stationed in Lebanon and with Hizballah. Although several other factions of Palestinian Islamic Jihad were formed in the 1980s, the main faction remains the group founded by Shaqaqi. After the 1993 Olso Peace Accords between Israeli and the Palestinians, Shaqaqi expanded the political connections of the organization to become a member of the new Syrian influenced Rejection Front.

PIJ and Hamas (The Islamic Resistance Movement), a separate Palestinian terrorist organization, were regarded as rivals in the Gaza Strip until after the foundation of the Palestinian Authority (PA) in 1994 when Hamas adopted the strategy suicide terrorist bombings. Since then, there has been some operational cooperation between the two organizations in carrying out attacks like the one in Beit-Lid, in February 1995, where two suicide bombers killed eight Israelis and wounded 50.

When PIJ leader Shaqaqi was killed in October 1995 in Malta, allegedly by Israeli agents, the PIJ position among Palestinian terrorist organizations dipped because his successor, Ramadan Abdallah Muhammad Shalah, who lived in the United States for several years, lacked Shaqaqi's charisma and intellectual and organizational skills. That did not stop PIJ's terror campaign, however, which included the March 1996 suicide bombing of the Dizengoff Center in downtown Tel Aviv, which killed 20 civilians and wounded more than 75, including two Americans.

The group is currently based in Damascus and its financial backing is believed to come from there and Iran. PIJ also has offices in Beirut, Tehran and Khartoum. It has some influence in the Gaza Strip, mainly in the Islamic University, but not in a way that can endanger the dominant position of Hamas as the leading Islamic Palestinian organization. Unlike Hamas, PIJ has no social or political role in the PA.

Aside from Israel, PIJ also considers the United States an enemy because of its support for Israel. The PIJ also opposes moderate Arab governments that it believes have been tainted by Western secularism and has carried out attacks in Jordan, Lebanon and Egypt.

Since September 2000, PIJ has been responsible for scores of terrorist attacks, including 15 suicide and car bombings, which have claimed the lives of more than 25 Israelis and wounded almost 400. On December 22, 2001, despite a declaration by Hamas to halt suicide bombings inside Israel, in response to a crackdown on militants by Yassir Arafat, PIJ vowed to continue its terror campaign. PIJ's representative in Lebanon, Abu Imad Al Rifai, told Reuters, "Our position is to continue. We have no other choice. We are not willing to compromise."

Pictured above is the emblem of Islamic Jihad. In the center, on a background of the Dome of the Rock, the map of greater Palestine is represented flanked by assault rifles. Above it and between the rifles appears the inscription Allah huAkbar [“Allah is Great,” the famous Islamic battle cry and usually the last words of a suicide bomber]. It is an excellent example of the radical Islamic religious message promulgated by the organization, whose goals are the destruction of the State of Israel (which they refer to as “the full liberation of the Palestinian lands”) by means of an armed and uncompromising jihad (holy war) and the establishment of a religious Islamic Palestinian state in its place.



Jewish Virtual Library

Middle East Conflict isn’t Territorial

Deputy PM Ya'alon says Israel must be recognized as Jewish state for peace to prevail

Moshe (Bogi) Ya'alon

The key sentence in the prime minister's speech before Congress made it clear that the main reason for the failure of all attempts to secure Israel-Palestinian peace is the Palestinian refusal to recognize Israel as a Jewish State; that is, to recognize the Jewish people's right to maintain a Jewish nation-state, the State of Israel, on the land of its forefathers.

Israel's Palestinian dialogue partner in peace talks is the PLO; all members of this umbrella organization, including Fatah, reject Israel's right to exist, while accepting it (because of the IDF's military power) on the condition that it would be an entity that lacks an ethnic identity – that is, that it will not be the Jewish people's nation-state.

The Palestinians always stress that they are in favor of the "two-state" solution, rather than a solution based on "two states for two peoples." According to Palestinian leader Abbas, the Jews are not entitled to a state. He rejects a connection between the Jews, as a religion, and the Land of Israel, even though he admits to a Jewish presence in Eretz Yisrael in the distant past, as the Koran often refers to it. Indeed, Abbas defines Jewishness as a religion, rather than a nationality.

Ever since the Oslo Accords, the Palestinians have resorted to a series of verbal maneuvers in order to reject Israel's identity as the Jewish people's nation-state, and they have never renounced the return of refugees. This approach is not only espoused by some sly statesmen. It is the main message conveyed to the Palestinian public in general and Palestinian youth in particular, via the media, textbooks, constitutive documents of political organizations, religious authorities and cultural work.

Palestinian maps make no mention of Israel, and the PMW website, which monitors the Palestinian media, shows us the Palestinian leadership, headed by Abbas, beaming while a talented singer promises that Haifa and other areas within Israel will again be part of Palestine. Moreover, Palestinian children are being educated from young age to hate Israel and adore suicide bombers. This is not the way to make true peace. This is not how one prepares for coexistence.

Rockets in response to concessions

Promoting an atmosphere that encourages violence and terror, combined with incitement for hatred of Israel and the Jews, is the reason for the ongoing suffering of the Palestinians rather than the steps adopted by Israel to defend itself in the face of this incitement. An Israeli concession on this matter will prompt the establishment of a hostile (and apparently failed) state near our population centers.

The heart of the conflict with the Palestinians is existential and not just territorial, as proven by Nakba Day events and as the prime minister made clear in his speech. As far as the Palestinians are concerned, the occupation started in 1948 and not in 1967. Hence, Palestinian recognition of Israel as the Jewish people's nation-state is a required condition for viable peace with the Palestinians, although it is not a condition for entering negotiations.

Imparting this realization to the Palestinian public is a condition for implementing a peace deal and will require significant time. We should not delude ourselves and cultivate false hopes.

Past experience taught us that for any territory we gave up in order to move closer to the peace we seek, we got terror and rockets rather than peace. I'm glad to see that more and more Israelis are aware of this danger, and the more united Israel is on this front vis-à-vis the Palestinians and the international system, the higher our chances will be of prompting the Palestinians and the world to address the issue, and as result to secure stable, agreed-upon peace that will meet the national demands of both peoples.

The writer is Israel's deputy prime minister and minister for strategic affairs

There is No Peace Process

Even if Arafat and his fellow Arab "Palestinians" were given the beautiful land of Switzerland, they'd turn it into a sewer!

The reality being evaded is that Israel’s yearning for peace was shared neither by the Arab world in general nor by the Palestinians in particular. Their rejection to Israel's overtures had nothing at all to do with what Israel had done or failed to do... but to the very fact that Israel existed!

The question REALLY is how did Israel get itself into this mess! It all began with a backroom deal among Yitzhak Rabin, the weasel Shimon Peres and representatives of a gang of Jew-murdering Arabs. In case you forgot, Rabin was the soft-headed Jew who Ehud Barak and Yasser Arafat. A Marriage Made in Hell prided himself on a "brilliant" military career which included the killing of fellow Jews on the Irgun ship, Altelena. And Peres never got elected to any office except head of the Peres Peace Center which he humbly named after himself! BOTH whackos would sell their mother's graves for a Nobel Peace Prize! These are the two Leftist dreamers who got Israel boxed into a corner after the wedding between Prime Minister Ehud Barak and his lover Yasser Arafat, culminating in the afterbirth of their bastard child, "Oslo!" Oh what a pity that the Jewish People have been cursed with self-hating, groveling leaders who still view themselves as losers!

The idea of the Oslo Peace Accords was to turn over Gaza and Jericho to the PLO leadership, now sanitized and repackaged as the PA (Palestinian Authority), to see if they could put aside their obsession of murdering Jews and try to administer their fellow Arab Palestinians in a responsible way. Yet to talk about the PLO and democracy in one breath is to reveal unfathomable depths of ignorance. With this chance for limited "autonomy," Rabin and the weasel Peres hoped the Palestinians would show their appreciation by killing fewer Jews! As an added bonus, the "moderate" Arafat was given Israeli-made automatic weaponry for his "police force" so as to counter the "extremists." Unfortunately, Rabin and Peres forgot that "moderates" still kill Jews moderately. Thus they had taken Yasser Arafat, the most vile Jew-hater in the world, and made him their personal "friend!" Arafat returned the favor by making Rabin and Peres his personal whores. Stupid is too kind a word for people who think it possible to have a new era of peace with murderers! And so is Treason!

What a sight it was in Gaza and Jericho... Israeli flags ripped off their mountings and replaced by the red, black, green and white flag of "Palestine." There was Arafat and his fellow Nazi Muslims firing Israeli-made bullets (none rubber-coated) from Israeli-made machine guns into the "liberated" air with promises from Arafat to "Liberate ALL of Palestine!" Even Prime Minister Rabin, the initiator of this suicidal Oslo disaster, publicly stated that should the PLO ever use any of our weapons against Jews, Israel would take everything back and throw the PLO out of our country. Why has this not happened? Countless Jews have been murdered by weapons given to them by the Israeli government in the asinine assumption that they would be used to fight terror. The Jew-murderer himself, Yasser Arafat, was given the Nobel Peace Prize in the hope that it would inspire him to end his terrorism. It didn't work. He has always been a terrorist. He continues to murder innocent Jews. He will ALWAYS remain a terrorist.

The deal was to have a 20,000 man Palestinian "police force." Estimates now have it well over 60,000 and they're even receiving military training from "outside" experts. Additional guns and even anti-tankFATAH summer camp for young Nazi Arabs missiles and anti-aircraft missiles are being smuggled in from Jordan, Egypt and via their new air and sea ports in Gaza. Small explosive factories are popping up inside West Bank Arab homes. The "policemen" are undergoing military training. Children are sent to FATAH military "summer camps," not to learn how to dance the hora or prepare felafels, but rather how to strap dynamite sticks onto their chests for Allah! Who can blame Arafat for murdering Jews after the Israeli government itself gave him money, guns, ammunition, training, and bases within Israel from which to launch attacks against Israelis? Did the Israeli government really think that Arafat would use these things to protect the Jewish People! Ahhhh, if only the Jews had a clever leader like Arafat!

In exchange for her "bold steps for peace," Israel has asked the United States for some financial assistance. This, of course, will be needed to build reinforced fences, trenches, by-pass roads, sophisticated electronic surveillance devices, bulletproof vehicles and bulletproof windows for civilian homes. If all THIS is for "peace," then why must Israel invest so much to defend herself from her "peace partners!" The money would be much better spent expelling the Arab citizens of Israel (the Enemy Within) along with the so-called Arab "PalestinEEEEEEnians" of Judea-Samaria and Gaza and relocating ALL of them somewhere else...like in Jordan, the Arab-Palestinian state in all but its name or perhaps next to Senator Hiliary Clinton's New York home where she might bake them all a cake!

Let Israel learn a most important lesson from this impossible Oslo "peace" deal. Whether they be from Judea-Samaria (West Bank), Gaza Strip on any of the 24 Arab nations in the Middle East, ALL ARABS seek the destruction of the Jewish State. The Palestinian Arabs would certainly prefer that they be handed a State on a silver platter (for "peace" of course) but would be just as willing to take it from Israel in a war as soon as they feel they are strong enough to do so. Right now, the ONLY reason Israel HAS a semblance of peace is because of its strong, well-trained Israeli Defense Forces and its nuclear stockpile. How comforting it is to know that the ONLY reason the Arabs are talking peace is because of Jewish nukes! Does that mean that as soon as the Arab world develops Muslim nukes it's "Let the war games begin?"

Shall we carry this nightmare called "peace" a step further? Let's say that Arafat, Hamas, Hizbullah, Islamic Jihad, or one of the other Palestinian "Liberation" groups calls for massive armed assaults on Jewish towns and cities in some of the more heavily-populated Arab areas within Judea-Samaria/Gaza or perhaps even WITHIN Israel herself. So as not to be thought of as "Zionist sympathizers," Israel's Arab citizens would join in with their Palestinian brothers and sisters. In a scenario such as this, nuclear weapons have little value. But wait, the nightmare isn't over. While the Israeli Army mobilizes internally to meet all these attacks, Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and maybe even Iraq launch a coordinated surprise attack upon Israel's borders to finally finish off Israel. Am I dreaming the impossible... or can you not imagine the unimaginable?

A two-state solution is just not feasible if they are squeezed in the the tiny sliver of land nestled between the River Jordan and the Mediterranean Sea. Two sovereign governments and their two armies, cheek to cheek, eyeball to eyeball and fist to fist all the while squabbling over a field here, a hilltop there and, all the while, continuous Arab terror against Israel. The experiment from 1993 until now called "Oslo" has proven one undeniable fact... a two-state solution [one Jewish and one Arab-Palestinian] west of the Jordan doesn't stand a chance!

This "Peace Process" between Israel and the "Palestinians" is all but dead except in the sick minds of Yossi Sarid, Yossi Beilin, Shimon Peres, Ehud Barak (at right) and the Peace Now crew?. Continuing it would be no different than continuing to eat poison pudding so as not to offend the U.S. host who helped baked it. The Jews of Israel cannot make peace by themselves. Judaism teaches "Shalom" ... Peace. Islam teaches "Jihad" ... Holy War Against All Non-Moslems. Thus it would seem that the only way for peace to have any chance of success would be to have the Arabs convert to Judaism!!!

O.K., so Israel Gave Peace a Chance. It was a good try. It is not working! She was dealt a bad hand and now it's time to fold. The culture of peace that was supposedly nurtured over the last decade was nothing more than a delusion. The only thing nurtured by the Arabs was hatred and incitement to kill Jews. So where does Israel go from here? Any normal country would take back Jericho, Hebron, Shekhem (Nablus), Umm el Fahm, West Jerusalem, the Galilee... and all the other Biblical Jewish towns from which the Arab enemy has removed its Jews.

If Israel does not remove ALL the Arabs, she is inviting further acts of violence and murder against its Jewish population. Some will call this "Racism." And indeed it WOULD be racism if the Arabs were removed simply because they were Arabs. Unfortunately the Arabs have been murdering Jews LONG before the Oslo Accords of '93 and even long before the creation of the Jewish State itself. So call it racism if you like but if Israel does not do what must be done, she won't be around to be called anything!

NOTE:
If you feel like getting a preview on what sort of state a new Arab "Palestine" might be like, just listen to their lovely proposed national anthem!



Masada2000

Three Cheers for Terroristine

We need a terrorist state. Where the politicians are terrorists, the police are terrorists and even the men sitting at the desk when you come in to drop off a form are terrorists. There are states that support terrorists, and give safe harbor to them, but that's not good enough. We don't want another Pakistan or Iran. We're not half-assing it this time. What we want is the genuine article. Terrorists from the top down. Terrorists everywhere. A state where every branch of government and the entire country is nothing but terrorists.

Terroristine has been an ancient dream since 1973 or was it 1967. A generation of keffiyah draped thugs, KGB operatives and human rights activists have looked out into the darkness and called it into being. It is a vision of a country where everyone is a murderer and children are taught from a very young age that their purpose in life is to die killing people who don't share their religion and way of life.

And now after 20 years of negotiations, treaties, suicide bombings, mutilations, billions of dollars in vanishing into Swiss bank accounts and the death of its Egyptian born leader of AIDS-- Terroristine is closer than ever to coming into being. Only one thing stands in its way. The people whose country is in the way. Who have to be thrown out of their homes so that Terroristinians can plant their rockets on the rubble of their houses, the charred remains of their fields, and point them at their cities.

Trying to end terrorism by creating a terrorist state makes is like trying to put out a fire with more fire. It can't work, but we must try. So that we can say that we tried. Over and over again. We'll keep trying until we run out of land to try with. And people to try with. Until there's nothing left but Terroristines everywhere. Until all the world is Terroristine.

The question is can we make it happen? Yes, we can. Oh sweet Allah, yes we can.

I am proud of Obama for finally standing up to the Israelis and telling them that they must ethnically cleanse hundreds of thousands of Jews, from their ancient towns, villages and cities, to make way for Terroristine. Someone had to say it. And it was either going to be Carter or Obama.

By endorsing the 1967 borders, he endorsed the outcome of the Arab invasion of Israel in 1948. Every time his administration condemns a Jewish house in Jerusalem, he endorses the Jordanian conquest of the city. Why are the borders of the 1948 war, so much better than the borders of the Six Day War? Because the Terroristinians came closer to winning that war. Came closer to driving the Yahood into the sea and ululating over mile after mile of their corpses.

But the dream failed. Farmers armed with outdated rifles. Volunteer pilots from America and Canada. Refitted cargo ships filled with half-dead men, women and children straight from the camps. Used Czech artillery. They held off the armies of seven Terroristinian nations. Farm by farm, they stood off tanks and infantry. In Jerusalem, they fought for every house. And so the Zionist entity survived. Allah curse them. They survived.

But now it's back to 1948 again. Every war undone. Every defeat turned to victory. Cut Jerusalem in two. Drive out the farmers. Burn their land. Dig up their graves. March the borders back to 1948. And fly the Terroristinian flag over dust and rubble.

Had they won in 1948 or 1967 or 1973, there would be no Israel and no Terroristine. The land would have become part of Syria, Egypt and Jordan. And only when the mobs of the faithful would drive out the tyrants to replace them with Islamic states, would there finally be a Terroristine. But now there is hope for a two state solution. A state of civilization on one side and a state of terrorists on the other. Hospitals here, launching pads there. Schools here, bomb factories there. Life here, death here.

We all know the story. Olive trees and bomb belts. Rocks and dead families in burning cars by the side of the road. Children with their throats cut. A dream. A nightmare. Who even knows anymore.

Why do we need Terroristine? Peace. There can be no peace without a terrorist state. Not a chance of it. The only way we'll ever have peace is to give the terrorists a country of their own. A country dedicated to terrorism. Only then will the Terroristinians finally give up on all the killing, and dedicate themselves to medical research, quantum physics and the arts. It hasn't happened yet to. But it's bound to.

After almost two decades as an autonomous territory, spreading death and destruction, it's time for Terroristine to finally be recognized as an independent state. With contiguous borders cutting Israel in half. It is the only hope for peace in the region.

Would Kaddafi or Assad be killing protesters in the streets if there was a Terroristinian state? Would there be turmoil in Tunisia or Egypt? Would Saudi tanks be rolling over Shiites and Coptic churches burning if there was a Terroristine? Assuredly not. The moment the flag of Terroristine rises above the wounded hills, and its peaceful anthem, "Palestine is My Revenge" is heard in the land, then a great echoing sigh will rise up from the mouths of one billion Muslims. And the violence will cease.

The international community is impatient. Damn impatient. They want Terroristine and they want it now. The negotiations must lead to immediate productive results. Whatever Israel has offered in the past, it isn't enough. It must offer more and more. Whatever it takes.

We know the Terroristinians want their own state. Every time they walk out of negotiations or end them with a round of terrorist attacks, it shows their deep and abiding passion for a state. They want it so badly they aren't willing to make a single concession for it. So committed are they to Terroristine. And who can blame them?

Have any people suffered the way the Terroristinians have? (Besides the Jews, Kurds, Armenians and pretty much everyone else that is.) Have any other people been wholly subsidized by a UN agency dedicated only to them? Have any other people inspired such a stylish fashion statement?

No more excuses. The world demands Terroristine. Middle East peace demands Terroristine. How much longer can Israel expect to draw out negotiations with weak justifications about terrorism. We know they're terrorists. That's why we're giving them a state. If they weren't terrorists, they could go to the back of the line with the Jews, Kurds and Armenians.

From one corner of the Muslim world to the other, a cry goes out. "We Are All Terroristinians." They cry it it Cairo and Damascus, in Tehran and Islamabad, in Dubai and Paris. They mosques go up, the asses go up and the bombs go off. And off to the peace negotiations we go. Everyone is impatient. Everyone is on fire. Especially the Terroristinians.

Jewish store windows are smashed in London, outside Joseph's Tomb, the Terroristinian police open fire on Jewish worshipers Terroristinian male models prepare bombs for synagogues. And the crowds cheer. "We Are All Terroristinians Now."

It is a great day, I tell you. A great day for negotiating. The majority of Pakistan grieves for Bin Laden. In Afghanistan the word goes out, "We are the Taliban, we are the Afghan people, we are Terroristinians." In Egypt and Turkey, they cry, "Khaybar Ya Yahood". Hamas mourns for Bin Laden. Cairo mourns for Hamas. Turkey sends out flotillas. Churches burn. Soldiers die. The smoke rises to heaven. A man waits in line at the airport. His passport is Dutch, Welsh, German, American, it doesn't matter. He is a Terroristinian.

Yallah. One day the borders of Terroristine will stretch from Spain to Pakistan. Or beyond Why settle for Jerusalem, when we can have London, Paris and Hamburg too. Why settle for anything at all? Allah is generous to the believers. Our people are in Africa. Evehttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifn China. The Great Satan himself bows toward Mecca. The old governments are falling. The Arab Spring is here. The pawns of the Kufir are fleeing before our eyes. We are all Terroristinians now. There is no other book on our shelves than the Koran. No law but Sharia in our hearts. And no nation but Terroristine.

The ghost of Chamberlain stands outside No. 10 Downing Street. It is raining, but the drops pass right through his umbrella. He holds up a soggy piece of paper. "Shalom," he says. "Shalom in our time." But no one understands him. Rockets sail through the sky. The crowd cheers. Hip Hip Hooray. Hierosylma Est Perdita. Three cheers for Terroristine.



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Right Side News

Debunking the 2-State Myth

Counting on Palestinian state to improve our security situation is absolute madness.

by: Yoel Meltzer

One of the assumed benefits of the proposed two-state solution is that the creation of a Palestinian state will finally make the Palestinians fully accountable for their actions. Thus, any acts of aggression from the new entity against Israel will be considered an attack on Israel from a sovereign country rather than from a terrorist organization. Moreover, it is this distinction, so we are told, that will not only allow Israel to forcefully respond to any acts of Palestinian aggression but also do so with the full support and understanding of the international community.

Although such line of reasoning sounds very enticing and has even managed to win over some former skeptics, we shouldn’t buy it. In fact, a quick survey of the last 20 years seems to indicate otherwise.

At the height of the Gulf War in 1991, Iraq launched scud missiles at Israel in an attempt to draw it into the conflict. This was a classic case of a sovereign Arab country attacking Israel with powerfully destructive missiles, aimed at some of its most populous regions. Nonetheless, despite the numerous missiles that landed in Israel, due to various geopolitical considerations and behind-the-door pressure Jerusalem did not respond.

Roughly 10 years later, Israel speedily removed all of its troops from southern Lebanon. At the time we were promised that Israeli positions would be taken over by the South Lebanese Army (SLA) in order to prevent Hezbollah forces from stationing themselves within spitball range of Israel’s northern border. In addition, we were assured by then-Prime Minister Ehud Barak that should Hezbollah ever commit an act of aggression against Israel our response would be very painful.

Like usual, Israel fulfilled its side of the agreement while the Arabs failed to uphold their part. As a result, rather than having the SLA parked across the border we received Hezbollah. This change of events afforded Hezbollah the opportunity to closely watch our troop movements, something they quickly cashed in on. After a mere few months of up-close surveillance, Hezbollah men dashed across the border and kidnapped three Israeli soldiers.

Israeli restraint

However, despite our hard-earned justification to retaliate to such an unprovoked act of aggression and even the prime minister's own guarantee to respond with might in such situation, in the end we did very little. Thus, the promises meant nothing and unfortunately the kidnapped soldiers were killed.

Five years after the tragic kidnappings in Lebanon, Israel removed all Jewish presence from Gaza. At the time we were told that the removal of Israeli troops from the Strip would shift the burden of accountability to the Palestinian Authority, thereby forcing it to rein in the various terrorist organizations. This, like every other promised benefit, turned out to be false as attacks against Israel only increased.

While Israel did eventually reenter Gaza at the end of 2008 as part of Operation Cast Lead, this happened only after thousands of missiles were fired at Jewish communities close to the Gaza border. Moreover, the promised admiration of the world we supposedly were to acquire following our unilateral pullout quickly melted away, as many in the international community hypocritically condemned Israel for its actions in Gaza.

Although there were times when Israel responded forcefully to cross-border attacks, such as in the Second Lebanon War, the growing trend through the years has been for a limited Israeli response or total restraint. Moreover, rather than winning the world's approval based upon our polite and considerate behavior, this trend has been accompanied by the growth of an increasingly hostile anti-Israel environment worldwide.

This being the case, why should we believe that things will be different next time? It is far more plausible to assume that acts of aggression emanating from a Palestinian state in Judea and Samaria will be met with the usual limited Israeli response. Moreover, even in the rare instance where Israel responds more forcefully, it is safe to assume that the world will quickly condemn the Jewish state regardless of the circumstances.

In light of the above, how on earth can we use an unproven assumption as the basis for severely weakening our national security, something which is sure to happen if a Palestinian state is created in Judea and Samaria? Indeed, it's absolute madness.



Ynet News

Palestine Betrayed

Palestine Betrayed......The truth about the nakba!

"None of the 170,000–180,000 Arabs fleeing urban centers, and only a handful of the 130,000–160,000 villagers who left their homes, had been forced out by Jews."

Efraim Karsh's new book, "Palestine Betrayed"

Nakba, the Arabic word for "catastrophe," has entered the English language in reference to the Arab–Israeli conflict. As defined by the anti-Israel website The Electronic Intifada, Nakba means "the expulsion and dispossession of hundreds of thousands [of] Palestinians from their homes and land in 1948."

Those who wish Israel to disappear actively promote the Nakba narrative. For example, Nakba Day serves as a mournful Palestinian counterpart to Israel's Independence Day festivities, annually publicizing Israel's alleged sins. So established has this day become that Ban Ki-moon, secretary general of the United Nations — the very institution that created the State of Israel — has sent his support to "the Palestinian people on Nakba Day." Even Neve Shalom, a Jewish-Palestinian community in Israel claiming to be "engaged in educational work for peace, equality, and understanding between the two peoples," dutifully commemorates Nakba Day.

The Nakba ideology presents Palestinians as victims without choices and therefore without responsibility for the ills that befell them. It blames Israel alone for the Palestinian "re MORE..fugee" problem. This view has an intuitive appeal, for Muslim and Christian Palestinians had long formed a majority on the land that became Israel, whereas most Jews were relative newcomers.

Intuitive sense, however, does not equal historical accuracy. In his new tour de force, Palestine Betrayed, Efraim Karsh of the University of London offers the latter. With his customary in-depth archival research — in this case, relying on masses of recently declassified documents from the period of British rule and of the first Arab–Israeli war, 1917–49 — clear presentation, and meticulous historical sensibility, Karsh argues the opposite case: that Palestinians decided their own destiny and bear near-total responsibility for becoming refugees.

In Karsh's words: "Far from being the hapless victims of a predatory Zionist assault, it was Palestinian Arab leaders who, from the early 1920s onward, and very much against the wishes of their own constituents, launched a relentless campaign to obliterate the Jewish national revival which culminated in the violent attempt to abort the U.N. partition resolution." More broadly, he observes, "there was nothing inevitable about the Palestinian–Jewish confrontation, let alone the Arab–Israeli conflict."

Yet more counter intuitively, Karsh shows that his understanding was the conventional, indeed the undisputed interpretation in the late 1940s. Only with the passage of time did "Palestinians and their Western supporters gradually rewr[i]te their national narrative," thereby making Israel into the unique culprit, the one excoriated in the United Nations, university classrooms, and editorials.

Karsh successfully makes his case by establishing two main points:

(1) the Jewish-Zionist-Israeli side perpetually sought to find a compromise while the Palestinian-Arab-Muslim side rejected nearly all deals; and
(2) Arab intransigence and violence caused the self-inflicted "catastrophe."

The first point is more familiar, especially since the Oslo Accords of 1993, for it remains today's pattern. Karsh demonstrates a consistency of Jewish goodwill and Arab rejectionism going back to the Balfour Declaration and persisting throughout the period of British rule. (To remind, the Balfour Declaration of 1917 expressed London's intention to establish in Palestine a "national home for the Jewish people," and the British conquest of Palestine just 37 days later gave it control of Palestine until 1948.)

In the first years after 1917, Arab reaction was muted, as leaders and masses alike recognized the benefits of the dynamic Zionist enterprise that helped revive a backward, poor, and sparsely populated Palestine. Then emerged, with British facilitation, the noxious figure who would dominate Palestinian politics over the next three decades, Amin al-Husseini. From about 1921 on, Karsh documents, Zionists and Palestinians had many choices to make; while the former invariably opted for compromise, the latter relentlessly decided on extermination.

In various capacities — mufti, head of Islamic and political organizations, Hitler ally, hero of the Arab masses — Husseini drove his constituents to what Karsh calls "a relentless collision course with the Zionist movement." Hating Jews so maniacally that he went on to join the Nazi genocide machine, Husseini refused to accept their presence in any numbers in Palestine, much less any form of Zionist sovereignty.

From the early 1920s, then, one witnessed a pattern still in place and familiar today: Zionist accommodation, "painful concessions," and constructive efforts to bridge differences, met by Palestinian anti-Semitism, rejectionism, and violence.

Complementing this binary dramatis personae, and complicating its stark contrast, stood the generally more accommodating Palestinian masses, the disgracefully anti-Semitic British mandatory authority, a Jordanian king eager to rule the Jews as subjects, feckless Arab state leaders, and an erratic American government.

Despite the radicalization of Palestinian opinion by the mufti and despite the Nazi rise to power, Zionists kept seeking an accommodation. It took some years, but the mufti's zero-sum policy and eliminationism eventually convinced reluctant Labor leaders, including David Ben-Gurion, that good works would not facilitate their dream of acceptance. Still, despite repeated failures, they continued the search for a moderate Arab partner with whom to strike a deal.

In contrast, Ze'ev Jabotinsky, the forerunner of today's Likud party, already in 1923 understood that "there is not even the slightest hope of ever obtaining the agreement of the Arabs of the Land of Israel to 'Palestine' becoming a country with a Jewish majority." Yet even he rejected the idea of expelling Arabs and insisted on their full enfranchisement in a future Jewish state.

This dialectic culminated in November 1947, when the United Nations passed a partition plan that nowadays would be termed a two-state solution. In other words, it handed the Palestinians a state on a silver platter. Zionists rejoiced but Palestinian leaders, foremost the malign Husseini, sourly rejected any solution that endorsed Jewish autonomy. They insisted on everything and so got nothing. Had they accepted the U.N. plan, Palestine would be celebrating its 62nd anniversary this May. And there would have been no Nakba.

The most original part of Palestine Betrayed is the half that contains a detailed review of the flight of Muslims and Christians from Palestine in the years 1947–49. Here Karsh's archival research comes into its own, allowing him to present a uniquely rich picture of the specific circumstances of Arab flight. He goes one by one through the various Arab population centers — Qastel, Deir Yassin, Tiberias, Haifa, Jaffa, Jerusalem, Safad — and then takes a close look at the villages.

Israel's war of independence divides into two parts. Ferocious fighting began within hours of the United Nations vote to partition Palestine on Nov. 29, 1947, and lasted till the eve of the British evacuation on May 14, 1948. The international conflict began on May 15 (the day after Israel came into being), when five Arab state armies invaded, with hostilities lasting until January 1949. The first phase consisted largely of guerrilla warfare, the second primarily of conventional warfare. Over half (between 300,000 and 340,000) of the 600,000 Arab refugees fled before the British evacuation, and most of them in the final month.

Palestinians fled in a wide range of circumstances and for varied reasons. Arab commanders ordered noncombatants out of the way of military maneuvers; or they threatened laggards with treatment as traitors if they stayed; or they demanded that villages be evacuated to improve their standing on the battlefield; or they promised a safe return in a matter of days. Some communities preferred to flee rather than to sign a truce with the Zionists; in the words of Jaffa's mayor, "I do not mind destruction of Jaffa if we secure destruction of Tel Aviv." The mufti's agents attacked Jews to provoke hostilities. Families with the means to do so fled danger. When agricultural tenants heard that their landlords would be punished, they worried about being expelled and preempted by abandoning the land. Bitter internecine enmities hobbled planning. Shortages of food and other necessities spread. Services like water-pumping stations were abandoned. Fears spread of Arab gunmen, as did rumors of Zionist atrocities.

In only one case (Lydda) did Israeli troops push Arabs out. The singularity of this event bears emphasis. Karsh explains about the entire first phase of fighting: "None of the 170,000–180,000 Arabs fleeing urban centers, and only a handful of the 130,000–160,000 villagers who left their homes, had been forced out by Jews."

The Palestinian leadership disapproved of a population return, seeing this as implicitly recognizing the nascent State of Israel. The Israelis were at first ready to take back the evacuees but then hardened their position as the war progressed. Prime Minister Ben-Gurion explained their thinking, on June 16, 1948: "This will be a war of life and death and [the evacuees] must not be able to return to the abandoned places. . . . We did not start the war. They made the war. Jaffa waged war on us, Haifa waged war on us, Beisan waged war on us. And I do not want them again to make war."

In sum, Karsh explains, "it was the actions of the Arab leaders that condemned hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to exile."

In this book, Karsh establishes two momentous facts: that Arabs aborted the Palestinian state and that they caused the Nakba. In the process, he confirms his status as the preeminent historian of the modern Middle East writing today, and extends the arguments of three of his earlier books. His magnum opus, Empires of the Sand: The Struggle for Mastery in the Middle East, 1789-1923 (with Inari Karsh, 1999), argued that Middle Easterners were not, as usually thought, "hapless victims of predatory imperial powers but active participants in the restructuring of their region," a shift with vast political implications. Palestine Betrayed applies that book's thesis to the Arab–Israeli conflict, depriving Palestinians of excuses and victimhood, showing that they actively, if mistakenly, chose their destiny.

In Fabricating Israeli History: The "New Historians" (1997), Karsh exposed the shoddy work, even the fraudulence, of the school of Israeli historians who blame the 1948–49 Palestinian refugee problem on the Jewish state. Palestine Betrayed offers the flip side; if the earlier book refuted mistakes, this one establishes truths. Finally, in Islamic Imperialism: A History (2006), he showed the expansionist core of the Islamic faith in action over the centuries; here he explores that drive in small-bore detail among the Palestinians, connecting the supremacist Islamic mentality with an unwillingness to make practical concessions to Jewish sovereignty.

Palestine Betrayed re-frames today's Arab–Israeli debate by putting it into its proper historical context. Proving that for 90 years the Palestinian political elite has opted to reject "the Jewish national revival and [insisted on] the need for its violent destruction," Karsh correctly concludes that the conflict will end only when the Palestinians give up on their "genocidal hopes."



This article is originally appear at May 17, 2010, Daniel Pipes.Org

Mr. Pipes is a columnist for National Review Online, director of the Middle East Forum, and Taube distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution.

Daniel Pipes