David Singer: Hamas and PFLP Embroil USA and EU in Plans to Destroy Israel

Here's the latest article by Sydney lawyer and international affairs analyst David Singer.

He writes:

Israel’s Ministry of Strategic Affairs has issued a 79-page report exposing a network of members of Hamas and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) embedded in Pro-Palestinian non-Government organisations (NGOs) based outside Israel that openly operate in the USA and European Union (EU).

The Report  –  “Terrorists in suits” – is a must-read – detailing:

“How terrorists came to hold key positions in NGOs promoting the Boycott Divestment and Sanction (BDS) campaign against the State of Israel; and how, through these NGOs, they exploit Western governmental funding, philanthropic foundations, financial platforms and civil society to advance their goal of dismantling the State of Israel.”

The PFLP was designated a terrorist organization by Israel in 1986, the USA (1997) and the European Union (2002) – as was Hamas by Israel (1989), the USA (1997) and the European Union (2014).

Both Hamas and PFLP Charters openly seek the elimination of the State of Israel and use NGO’s to influence public opinion against Israel in furtherance of this heinous objective.

The Report names and shames the following NGO’s, identifies their areas of operation, their ties to Hamas and the PFLP and outs Hamas and PFLP members – many of them convicted terrorists – who are or have been actively involved in these organisations’ campaigns aimed at denigrating and delegitimising Israel:

• The Palestinian BDS National Committee
• Samidoun
• Addameer
• Al-Haq
• Defence For Children International – Palestine
• The European Coordination of Committees and Associations for Palestine
• Palestinian Center For Human Rights
• The Palestinian Return Centre
• The Palestine Solidarity Campaign
• Friends of Al-Aqsa
• American Muslims For Palestine
• Hamas Operatives active in NGO’s in the UK: Muhammad Sawalha and Zaher Birawi

A look at just one organisation – Al-Haq – headquartered in Ramallah and operating in Judea and Samaria (West Bank), the Netherlands, France, and Northern Europe – indicates the modus operandi that similarly exist in the others.

Al-Haq (established in 1979):

• Has Governmental Sponsors: European Union, Norway, Switzerland, Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands and Ireland
• Received Grants from Governmental Sources, 2014-2018: Over $3 million
• Published with a group of French NGOs a report in March 2017 entitled “The Dangerous Liaisons of French Banks with the Israeli Colonization”.
• Leads the legal effort to delegitimize Israel at the International Criminal Court in The Hague

Shawan Jabarin, General Director of Al-Haq since 2006, served as a senior PFLP official in the past and at least until recently maintained close ties with PFLP operatives in Judea and Samaria. Jabarin was tried and convicted for his military activity in the PFLP and has served multiple prison sentences.
Jabarin was described in a 2007 Israeli Supreme Court case by the presiding judge as:

 “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Some of his time is spent in conducting a human rights organization, and some as an operative in an organization which has no qualms regarding murder and attempted murder, which have no relation whatsoever to rights. Quite the opposite, they reject the most basic right of all, without which there are no other rights, that is, the right to life.”

Three other PFLP members arrested by Israel are also identified as working or having worked for Al-Haq: Ziyad Hmeidan, Zahi Jaradat and Majed Abbadi.

European and American funding of these organisations should be banned, their offices in the USA and EU closed – and those identified as Hamas and PFLP members deported.

Terrorists in suits denigrating and delegitimising Israel in slick racist and ongoing deceptive public relations campaigns of lies and half-truths – can be just as dangerous as terrorists armed to the teeth.

The EU and America must stop being played for suckers by these Jew-hating organisations.

(Author’s note: The cartoon — commissioned exclusively for this article — is by Yaakov Kirschen aka “Dry Bones”- one of Israel’s foremost political and social commentators — whose cartoons have graced the columns of Israeli and international media publications for decades. His cartoons can be viewed at Drybonesblog)

David Singer: United Nations Loses the Plot in Ignoring Israel-Jordan Reality

Here's the latest article by Sydney lawyer and international affairs analyst David Singer.

He writes:

29th November 2017 marks the 70th anniversary of United Nations General Assembly Resolution 181 (II) (Resolution) calling for the creation in Western Palestine of independent Arab and Jewish States and a Special International Regime for the City of Jerusalem (Partition Plan).

The Resolution did not mention:

· the “West Bank” (a term dreamt-up in 1950) – using instead the terms “Judea” and “Samaria” - their correct geographical place names for the previous 3000 years

· a “Palestinian State” – only an “Arab State”

· one Arab State had already been created in Eastern Palestine on 25 May 1946 named the Hashemite Kingdom of Transjordan covering 78% of the territory comprised in the 1922 League of Nations Mandate for Palestine (Mandate).

The Partition Plan was accepted by the Jews but vehemently rejected by the Arabs.

H. R. H. Amir FAISAL AL SAUD (Saudi Arabia) fulminated:

We have felt, like many others, the pressure exerted on various representatives of this Organization by some of the big Powers in order that the vote should be in favour of partition. For these reasons, the Government of Saudi Arabia registers, on this historic occasion, the fact that it does not consider itself bound by the resolution adopted today by the General Assembly. Furthermore, it reserves to itself the full right to act freely in whatever way it deems fit, in accordance with the principles of right and justice. 

Mr. JAMALI (Iraq) protested:

In the name of my Government, I wish to state that it feels that this decision is antidemocratic, illegal, impractical and contrary to the Charter. It contradicts the spirit and letter of the Charter. Therefore, in the name of my Government, I wish to put on record that Iraq does not recognize the validity of this decision, will reserve freedom of action towards its implementation, and holds those who were influential in passing it against the free conscience of mankind responsible for the consequences. 

 Amir ARSLAN (Syria) joined the chorus:

Gentlemen, the Charter is dead. But it did not die a natural death; it was murdered, and you all know who is guilty.

My country will never recognize such a decision. It will never agree to be responsible for it. Let the consequences be on the heads of others, not on ours. 

H. R. H. Prince Seif El ISLAM ABDULLAH (Yemen) was just as condemnatory:

The Yemen delegation has stated previously that the partition plan is contrary to justice and to the Charter of the United Nations. Therefore, the Government of Yemen does not consider itself bound by such a decision for it is contrary to the letter and spirit of the Charter. The Government of Yemen will reserve its freedom of action to-wards the implementation of this decision.

This implacable Arab rejectionism was the catalyst for the 1948 invasion of Western Palestine by six Arab armies and the perpetuation of the Arab-Jewish conflict for the next 70 years.

2017 sees:

· Iraq, Syria and Yemen as failed states - with Saudi Arabia in danger of joining them.

· The General Assembly sinking in quicksand of its own making after creating “The Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People” in 1975 and adopting countless resolutions using emotive and artificially-contrived terms such as:

· “West Bank”

· “Occupied Palestinian Territory”

· “historic Palestine”

· “Palestinian People”

· “Palestinians”

· “Palestinian State”

· “two-state solution”

 The United Nations continues to lose the plot whilst it:

(i) Uses such deceptive and misleading language

(ii) Fails to recognise that Jordan and Israel are the two successor states currently exercising sovereignty in 95% of former Palestine.

The United Nations must resurrect 1947 reality and abandon 2017 fiction.

"Ridiculous", Rant the Routed

Amid wailing and whimpering and gnashing of teeth and tugging of hair in the wake of Bibi Netanyahu's spectacularly successful visit Down Under, the routed forces of Bishop Browning's APAN (which sought to keep him out) limply regroup and rally, in response to an article in the Sydney Morning Herald by Dr Colin Rubenstein, executive director of the Australia/Israel Public Affairs Council (AIJAC) and Jamie Hyams, a senior policy analyst at AIJAC. 

It will indeed be difficult to represent as "ridiculous" the eminently justified and sensible points made in the article.  Inter alia:

 'Israel captured the West Bank in a defensive war in 1967 and, when its offer to exchange land for peace was unequivocally rebuffed by the Arab League, began establishing settlements in the area.

This was partly for the need for security, given the hostile intentions and actions of its neighbours, and partly to allow some Jews to live in places that had Jewish communities going back hundreds if not thousands of years, until the Jordanians ethnically cleansed them in 1948.

Jordanian troops expelling Jews from their Jerusalem homes

 Jerusalem, which has always had a substantial Jewish population and been the centre of the Jewish world, was annexed.

 The United Nations passed the pivotal Security Council resolution 242, requiring Israel to withdraw from territory in return for peace, with the borders to be negotiated.

 Under the 1993 Oslo accords, the Palestinians finally accepted Israel's existence, and the Palestinian Authority was formed. Ninety-five per cent of West Bank Palestinians now live under the authority's rule. Travel between Israel and the West Bank was relatively unfettered, and many Palestinians worked in Israel, travelling home to the West Bank each night. In 2000, then authority president Yasser Arafat infamously refused the Camp David offer of a Palestinian state and launched the second intifada, characterised by widespread terrorism inside pre-1967 Israel, most notably suicide bombings. The terrorism killed more than 1000 Israelis and maimed thousands more.

Some Israeli child victims of Palestinian Arab terrorism

 It was in those circumstances that Israel set up the checkpoints to monitor the movement of terrorists, and the security barrier, which for most of its length is a fence, and is only a wall where Palestinian terrorists were in the habit of taking pot shots at Israeli civilians.... The barrier was erected to save lives by keeping terrorists out, and has been markedly successful. The Berlin Wall was to keep a captive population in. The checkpoints between Palestinian towns are now largely non-existent – they are just at the entries to Israel.

Despite the rebuff at Camp David, and the terrorism, Israel again offered the Palestinian Authority a state on increasingly generous terms in 2001 and 2008, only for the authority to again walk away. A unilateral total Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, intended to allow the Palestinians there to rule themselves as a peaceful entity alongside Israel, instead resulted in a Hamas takeover, more than 10,000 rockets and mortars, terror tunnels and three wars.

 Since Benjamin Netanyahu resumed power in 2009, he has repeatedly offered to negotiate without preconditions, repeatedly confirmed his support for a two-state peace, and instituted goodwill measures including an unprecedented 10-month freeze on building in settlements and releasing Palestinian prisoners who have killed Israelis. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, however, has refused to negotiate in good faith. US Middle East envoy Martin Indyk has said that, in 2014, Netanyahu was sweating bullets to make peace, but Abbas just walked away.

The settlements, as even Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat has admitted, occupy less than 2 per cent of the West Bank. Furthermore, the vast majority of settlers live in blocs that it is generally accepted Israel will retain as part of land swaps in any peace deal. Israel has not established a new settlement since 1999, and the settlements have hardly expanded beyond their geographic boundaries since 2003, while population growth has not even kept pace with natural growth. Settlements did not prevent the previous Israeli offers of statehood, and they would not prevent a two-state outcome if the Israelis had a genuine peace partner....

 The Netanyahu government still supports a two-state peace, but its concerns about the present circumstances are understandable. If Hamas was to take over the West Bank as it did Gaza, the rockets would hit Israel's population and economic heartland, and its airport, and the country, would be shut down.

 Meanwhile, the Palestinian Authority, Israel's supposed peace partner, demonises Israel internationally, incites its people against Israel with false claims of Israeli intentions to take over the Temple Mount, and rewards terrorists by lionising them and giving them and their families generous lifetime pensions.

[P]ressure must be brought to bear on the Palestinians to cease their destructive behaviour, to genuinely accept Israel's right to exist in peace and to negotiate in good faith, if they are genuine about wanting a two-state outcome.'

David Singer: Israel Sheds PLO As Negotiating Partner

Here's the latest article by Sydney lawyer and international affairs analyst David Singer.  Bibi Netanyahu's speech to the Sabon Forum, to which David refers, can be seen on video on my blog here

Writes David Singer:

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has concluded that completing successful negotiations with the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) on the allocation of territorial sovereignty in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank), Gaza and East Jerusalem is a mission impossible to achieve.

Addressing the Saban Forum on 6 December, Netanyahu made his position clear and unequivocal:

“I have said and I continue to say it, that ultimately the only workable solution is not a unitary state, but a demilitarized Palestinian state that recognizes the Jewish state. That’s the solution. But the Palestinians have to recognize the Jewish state and they persistently refuse to do so. They refuse to recognize a nation-state for the Jewish people in any boundary. That was and remains the core of the conflict. Not this or that gesture or the absence of this or that gesture, but the inability or unwillingness of the Palestinian leadership to make the leap.”

Whilst the issue of a “demilitarized Palestinian State” is one possibly capable of being further negotiated – the issue of recognizing the Jewish State is definitely not.

Recognition of the right of Jewish self-determination in Palestine – whilst simultaneously recognizing the right of Arab self-determination in Syria, Lebanon and Mesopotamia (now Iraq) – has always been an issue with the Arabs – since these decisions were first made at the San Remo Conference in April 1920 establishing the Mandates for Palestine, Mesopotamia and Syria and Lebanon.

These decisions delivered to the Arabs 99.99 per cent of the lands won from the defeated Ottoman Empire in World War 1 whilst setting aside the remaining 0.01 per cent for the Jews.

95 years of bloody conflict between Jews and Arabs has ensued since then because the Arabs wanted – and still want – 100 per cent of the Ottoman Empire pie and have never been prepared to settle for 99.99 per cent.

Netanyahu points out where the Arab world now finds itself in 2015 because of such Arab irredentism:

 “And what we see is the old order established after the Ottoman Empire collapsing and militant Islam, either of the Shiites, Shiite hue led by Iran, or the Sunni hue, led by ISIS, rushing in to fill the void.”

The PLO has never accepted the San Remo carve up of the Ottoman Empire between Jews and Arabs – as its current Charter declares:

 “The Balfour Declaration, the Mandate for Palestine, and everything that has been based upon them, are deemed null and void.” 

The PLO’s rejection of the right of Jews to have one State whilst the Arabs presently have 22 States is also virulently expressed in the PLO Charter:

 “Claims of historical or religious ties of Jews with Palestine are incompatible with the facts of history and the true conception of what constitutes statehood.”

The PLO leader Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) has no intention of changing this racist and utterly offensive position – as Netanyahu points out:

 'You got a hint of that the other day when Abu Mazen spoke about the “occupation of Palestinian lands for the last 67 years.  Did you hear that? Occupation of Palestinian lands? For the last 67 years?   

Sixty-seven years ago was 1948. That’s when the State of Israel was established. Does Abu Mazen mean that Tel Aviv is occupied Palestinian territory? Or Haifa? Or Beer Sheba?'

The demise of the PLO as Israel’s negotiating partner is long overdue.

President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry must urgently move to fill this negotiating void by replacing the PLO with Israel’s Arab partners in two long-standing signed peace agreements – Jordan and Egypt.

The Jewish-Arab conflict can still be peacefully resolved with the right partners sitting at the negotiating table.

"I Came To You, Israel, Wanting To Hate You": David Singer recites a poem (plus video)

In this, his latest article, Sydney lawyer and international affairs analyst David Singer, finding inspiration in a poem, considers the topic "Beating the BDS Jew-Haters".

He writes:

Recently, a group of 52 Harvard students – of all backgrounds and faiths – visited Israel for 10 days during the Harvard Israel Trek 2015

Sometimes the impact of such a trip cannot be expressed in prose – but can only be captured in poetry.

What follows is a poem – posted on the Harvard trek blog by Oliver Marjot – a British PhD candidate studying Medieval Latin at Harvard – that reflects his transformative experience.

Oliver expected that the Trek would confirm his reasonable European certainty of Israel’s arrogant oppression. That’s not quite the way things turned out.

Oliver's Poem eloquently answers those who continue their vicious attempts to denigrate and delegitimize Israel by exhorting the boycott and isolation of Israel, its people, products, commercial enterprises, medical breakthroughs, academics and artists:

 “To my newfound Love,

I came to you, Israel, wanting to hate you. To be confirmed in my reasonable European certainty of your arrogant oppression, lounging along the Mediterranean coast, facing West in your vast carelessness and American wealth. I wanted to appreciate your history, but tut over the arrogant folly of your present. I wanted to cross my arms smugly, and shake my head over you, and then leave you to fight your unjust wars.

I wanted to take from you. To steal away some spiritual satisfaction, and sigh and pray, and shake my head over your spiritual folly as well. To see the sad spectacle of the Western wall, and bitterly laugh at your backward-looking notion that God sits high on Moriah Mount, distant and approachable. I wanted to smirk in my Protestant confidence, knowing that God is with me, even if you refuse to turn to him, standing instead starting blankly at a wall of cold stone, pushing scribbled slips of paper into the Holy mountain, not daring to raise your face, and ask with words.

I wanted to see your sights, to bask in your sun, to tramp my feet over your soil, to swim in your seas, to eat the fruit of your fields. I wanted to be amazed, to be interested, to be engaged. I wanted.

I didn’t realise you were broken as well as wealthy, fragile as well as strong. I didn’t realise that you suffer from a thousand voices clamouring in your head, and that some of those voices care about justice and democracy, and that some of them love their neighbours. I didn’t realise that a thousand enemies press on your borders, hoarding instruments of death, as chaos and darkness and madness consume the world every way you look. I didn’t realise that you care about your past - that some of those voices of yours treasure the stories of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob every bit as much as I do. I didn’t realise. Nobody told me. Or maybe they did, and I refused to listen

I didn’t expect to fall in love with you. Your beauty caught me like a hook. Seeing you, I see what Solomon saw when he wrote about his Beloved. I see that homeland that Jesus loved. The lush green of your Galilee, the stark strength of your desert, the bare whiteness of your Judean hills. I love the Hebrew you speak, the churches your wear like flowers in your hair, the proud golden dome that crowns your head. I love the strength of your soldiers, the warmth of your sun, the joy of your songs, the peace of your kibbutzim.

This cold Boston air is a mockery of your spring warmth, and in this vast sprawl of concrete and red brick it’s no exaggeration to say that I yearn for your troubled horizons, your ancient hills. I’m not ashamed to say it. I love you.

I’m sorry I had to leave you. I know I have no right to love you. What’s ten days compared to a year, a childhood, a lifetime? Or the five-thousand year lifetime of a people? I know that you won’t remember me, that you probably barely even registered my short time with you. I’m sure my love means nothing to you amid the whispers of a million other lovers, and you’re so very far away.

But I will come back to you. I will. I’ll leave these busy, harried, Western shores, and come to you, to the East. I’ll learn your Hebrew, I’ll share your troubles, I’ll breath your air, I’ll walk in your fields again.

I will. I will.

Until then, Israel, mon amour, my love. Until then, shalom.” 

The Boycott Divestment and Sanctions Movement (BDS) started in 2005 by “Palestinian Civil Society” falsely claims that Israel is persistently violating international law – whilst that Society’s Government – the Palestine Liberation Organisation – continues to reject substantive segments of international law formulated over the last 95 years legalizing Jewish self-determination:

“The Balfour Declaration, the Mandate for Palestine, and everything that has been based upon them, are deemed null and void.

Claims of historical or religious ties of Jews with Palestine are incompatible with the facts of history and the true conception of what constitutes statehood. Judaism, being a religion, is not an independent nationality. Nor do Jews constitute a single nation with an identity of its own; they are citizens of the states to which they belong.”

The European Union – threatening to join these racist-inspired, Jew-hating BDS campaigners – is being well and truly conned.

Think again Europe. A Harvard student has – so should you.

Adds Daphne:

Meanwhile, here are those familiar fanatical BDSers of London again, this time ranting against the Gala opening at BAFTA of the Seret festival, which took a number of film makers to Britain's capital fromTel Aviv.

Professor Efraim Karsh: "Adherence to Islamist ideals has subordinated Palestinian identity to the far wider ambition of Islamic world domination"

Professor Efraim Karsh's typically learned yet typically lucid and accessible article in the current (Summer 2014) Middle East Quarterly deserves to be widely read and widely shared.

Titled "Palestinian Leaders Don't Want An Independent State", it traces the sorry sinister saga of Arab rejectionism, its causes, and its implications.

Inter alia, Efraim Karsh's article observes:

'The Palestinian leadership's serial rejection of the numerous opportunities for statehood since the Peel Commission report of 1937 casts a serious doubt on its interest in the creation of an independent state. Instead of engaging in the daunting tasks of nation-building and state creation, all Palestinian leaders without any exception—from the Jerusalem mufti Hajj Amin Husseini, who led the Palestinian Arabs from the early 1920s to the late 1940s; to Yasser Arafat, who dominated Palestinian politics from the mid-1960s to his death in November 2004; to Mahmoud Abbas—have preferred to immerse their hapless constituents in disastrous conflicts that culminated in their collective undoing and continued statelessness. At the same time, of course, these leaders have lined their pockets from the proceeds of this ongoing tragedy.

It can be shown that the main sources of this self-destructive conduct are pan-Arab delusions, Islamist ideals, and the vast financial and political gains attending the perpetuation of Palestinian misery....

If subscription to the pan-Arab dream has made the Palestinian cause captive to inter-Arab machinations, stirring unrealistic hopes and expectations in Palestinian political circles and, at key junctures, inciting widespread and horrifically destructive violence that has made the likelihood of Palestinian statehood ever more remote, adherence to Islamist ideals has subordinated Palestinian identity to the far wider ambition of Islamic world domination....

Nor is this supremacist worldview limited to Hamas. Since its rise in the early seventh century, Islam has constituted the linchpin of Middle Eastern politics, and its hold on Palestinian society is far stronger than is commonly recognized. Contrary to the received wisdom in the West, the PLO is hardly a secular organization. Arafat was a devout Muslim, associated in his early days with the Muslim Brotherhood, as were other founding fathers of Fatah, the PLO's foremost constituent organization. And while the new generation of Fatah leaders in the territories may be less religious, they, nevertheless, have a draft constitution for a prospective Palestinian state stipulating that "Islam is the official religion in Palestine" and Shari'a is "a main source for legislation."

 They have, moreover, utilized the immense inflammatory potential of Islam to discredit the two-state solution—and by implication, the prospect of Palestinian statehood—and to express their grandiose supremacist delusions....

Within these grand overlapping schemes of pan-Arab regional unity and Islamic world domination, the notion of Palestinian statehood is but a single transient element whose supposed centrality looms far greater in Western than in Islamic and Arab eyes....

For nearly a century, Palestinian leaders have missed no opportunity to impede the development of Palestinian civil society and the attainment of Palestinian statehood. Had Hajj Amin Husseini chosen to lead his constituents to peace and reconciliation with their Jewish neighbors, the Palestinians would have had their independent state over a substantial part of mandate Palestine by 1948, if not a decade earlier, and would have been spared the traumatic experience of dispersal and exile. Had Arafat set the PLO from the start on the path to peace and reconciliation instead of turning it into one of the most murderous and corrupt terrorist organizations in modern times, a Palestinian state could have been established in the late 1960s or the early 1970s; in 1979, as a corollary to the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty; by May 1999, as part of the Oslo process; or at the very latest, with the Camp David summit of July 2000. Had Abbas abandoned his predecessors' rejectionist path, a Palestinian state could have been established after the Annapolis summit of November 2007, or during President Obama's first term after Benjamin Netanyahu broke with the longstanding Likud precept by publicly accepting in June 2009 the two-state solution and agreeing to the establishment of a Palestinian state.

But then, the attainment of statehood would have shattered Palestinian leaders' pan-Arab and Islamist delusions, not to mention the kleptocratic paradise established on the backs of their long suffering subjects. It would have transformed the Palestinians in one fell swoop from the world's ultimate victim into an ordinary (and most likely failing) nation-state thus terminating decades of unprecedented international indulgence. It would have also driven the final nail in the PLO's false pretense to be "the sole representative of the Palestinian people" (already dealt a devastating blow by Hamas's 2006 electoral rout) and would have forced any governing authority to abide, for the first time in Palestinian history, by the principles of accountability and transparency. Small wonder, therefore, that whenever confronted with an international or Israeli offer of statehood, Palestinian leaders would never take "yes" for an answer.'

Read the entire (footnoted and illustrated) article here
On the same topic, see also here

"One Side Wants The Other Side Dead" (video)

The always cogent Dennis Prager explains,  in terms that even Al Beeb's Jeremy Bowen (see my previous post) might be expected to understand, why the Middle East problem remains unsolved:

Caroline Glick Answers A Question (video)

"Do Palestinians really want to live next to Israel?"

"A Concerted Arab & Moslem Campaign to Relegate the Jewish State from World Atlases Back into the Bible": David Singer on Palestinian Arab Rejectionism

Here is the latest astute article by Sydney lawyer and international affairs analyst David Singer.  It's entitled "Palestine – Abbas Dismantles Kerry's Framework Agreement".

Writes David Singer:

PLO Chairman Mahmoud Abbas has wasted no time dismantling US Secretary of State John Kerry's proposed framework agreement with an intemperate outburst affirming the PLO will never recognise Israel as the Jewish State.

Jerusalem Post reporter Khaled Abu Toameh quotes Abbas as stating on 11 January:

'"We won’t recognize and accept the Jewishness of Israel. We have many excuses and reasons that prevent us from doing ...

Israel’s problem is that the Palestinians know more than the Israelis about history and geography, he said. “We talk about what we know,” he said.'

Kerry had alluded to the daunting problems he faced producing his framework agreement as the basis for ongoing negotiations between Israel and the PLO at a joint press conference with chief PLO negotiator Saeb Erekat in Ramallah on 4 January.

"There are narrative issues; difficult, complicated years of mistrust that have been built up, all of which has to be worked through and undone, and a pathway has to be laid down in which the parties can have confidence that they know what is happening and that the road ahead is real, not illusory."

The narrative issues raised by Abbas's latest comments underscore the two very different Jewish and Arab perspectives of their 130-years-old conflict which appear certain to continue to remain irreconcilable.

These issues goes to the very heart of the conflict, and – short of a complete retraction by Abbas – will continue to be the quicksand into which Kerry's framework agreement will collapse into political oblivion.

Abbas has clearly signalled the continuing refusal of the PLO to accept the unanimous decision of the League of Nations on 24 July 1922 legally sanctioning the reconstitution of the Jewish National Home in its ancient and biblical homeland – as promulgated in the Mandate for Palestine.

The site for the Jewish National Home – originally intended to be established within 100 per cent of the Mandate territory – was restricted to being created within just 22 per cent of that area (now Israel and the West Bank) by virtue of the application of article 25 of the Palestine Mandate on 23 September 1922.

The "two state" solution now being pursued by Kerry had its actual genesis in this decision – when the remaining 78 per cent of Palestine (now Jordan) was set aside for Arab self determination.

The League of Nations found no identifiable indigenous people then existing in Palestine – referring only to

1.    the "civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine"

2.    "safeguarding the civil and religious rights of all the inhabitants of Palestine, irrespective of race and religion"

3.    "The Administration of Palestine, while ensuring that the rights and position of other sections of the population are not prejudiced, shall facilitate Jewish immigration... and shall encourage ... close settlement by Jews on the land, including State lands and waste lands not required for public purposes."

In 1964 – when the PLO was formed – article 18 of its founding Charter consigned the Mandate and all subsequent decisions of the League of Nations and its successor, the United Nations, to the garbage bin – considering them all to be "fraud".

These longstanding international legally binding commitments were dismissed with even more contempt when the Charter was revised in 1968 – article 20 unequivocally declaring:

"The Balfour Declaration, the Mandate for Palestine, and everything that has been based upon them, are deemed null and void. Claims of historical or religious ties of Jews with Palestine are incompatible with the facts of history and the true conception of what constitutes statehood. Judaism, being a religion, is not an independent nationality. Nor do Jews constitute a single nation with an identity of its own; they are citizens of the states to which they belong."

Palestine had also been miraculously transformed by the PLO Charter to become:

1.    "the homeland of the Arab Palestinian people"
2.    "an indivisible part of the Arab homeland
3.    "the Palestinian people are an integral part of the Arab nation"
4.    "an indivisible territorial unit with the boundaries it had during the British Mandate"

This amazing metamorphosis has been the driver seeking to delegitimise and denigrate the Jewish People's legal right to establish a state of their own sitting alongside 57 Arab and Moslem nations in the United Nations on equal terms and with mutual diplomatic recognition.

This narrative has resulted in the majority of those Arab and Moslem States  Abbas Dismantles Kerry's Framework Agreement Abbas Dismantles Kerry's Framework Agreement – and regretably many other UN  member States – seeking to subvert the legal right of Jews to reconstitute their national home in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) as laid down by article 6 of the Mandate and article 80 of the United Nations Charter.

Having become members of the United Nations – thereby having agreed to accept the obligations set out in the Charter,  including article 80, these rejectionist States have become involved in a concerted Arab and Moslem campaign to relegate the Jewish State from world atlases back into the Bible  – where its birth and history was first recorded.

No amount of doublespeak, winks or nudges will enable Kerry to present a framework agreement that has any chance of a diplomatic breakthrough unless this disingenuous Abbas narrative is abandoned.

Abbas's knowledge of history and geography is demonstrably false and misleading.

Entrapped by a fictitious narrative that rejects binding international law, history and geography whilst maintaining an illusory belief they can be re-written a concerted Arab and Moslem campaign to relegate the Jewish State from world atlases back into the Bible the Arab League and the PLO will surely miss yet another historic opportunity to end their conflict with the Jewish People.

So will Kerry.'

Diplomacy, Intransigence, & "The Salutary Lesson Of The Yom Kippur War"

Over at BBC Watch Israel-based analyst Hadar Sela, with her customary scholarship and skill, identifies the lamentable and totally inexcusable inaccuracies that the British Broadcasting Corporation (once trusted for the accuracy and integrity of its reportage) has made in its look back at 1973's Yom Kippur War.

Here she points, for instance, to this statement:

“Unable to regain the territory they had lost in 1967 by diplomatic means, Egypt and Syria launched major offensives against Israel on the Jewish festival of the Day of Atonement or Yom Kippur.”

And, launching into a suitable demolition job, she reasonably comments:

"That statement of course suggests that Egypt and Syria had tried engagement in diplomacy – i.e. negotiation between the parties involved – and failed. A reasonable reader would also understand from that statement that it was the failure of negotiations which lead those countries to initiate the Yom Kippur war. But is that actually the case?

With regard to Egypt, the statement over-simplifies the issue and ignores multiple additional factors, including domestic ones, but with regard to Syria, it is obviously inaccurate. 

Neither in this entry or in the one preceding it (1967) is any mention made of the Khartoum Declaration of September 1st 1967, according to which the Arab states rejected negotiations with Israel...."

See her other relevant posts here, here, here, and here 

(I'm sure I'm not alone in considering the BBC's description of Yom Kippur as a "Jewish festival" rather inadequate as a backgrounder: surely pointing out that Israel was attacked on the holiest day in the Jewish calendar, when the country had all but shut down, would show the mindset of its attackers more clearly.  Ignorance on the BBC's part?  Or unwillingness to paint Israel as a victim?)

I'm sure all of us who were around at the time have vivid memories of where we were when we heard the terrible news of the sneak onslaught against Israel.  I was at the time in London, where I recall long lines of people waiting outside the Marble Arch Synagogue to donate blood for Israeli casualties, and I attended a big Solidarity for Israel rally on a Sunday afternoon in Trafalgar Square. I'll never forget that one of the participants at that rally (I see him now, in my mind's eye, standing tall and erect despite his very advanced years, proudly sharing the dais with Jewish communal leaders), was a right-wing Tory peer, Lord Barnby (1884-1982).  He was an instinctive supporter of Israel, and like not a view MPs in the Conservative Party who crossed the floor of the Commons to vote with Labour despite a three-line whip, he was disgusted with the Conservative Heath government's decision to ban spare parts for British-made Israeli tanks. (Alas, the principal non-Jewish speaker at the rally was a well-known British writer whose stirring speech on Israel's behalf belies the fact that she's now to be counted among Israel's inveterate critics.  Deep sigh.)

Like other Jewish newspapers around the world, the current Australian Jewish News has a series of articles on the Yom Kippur War, including an outstandingly evocative and touching reminiscence by the paper's publisher Robert Magid (the guy whose hard-headed views on so-called "asylum seekers" coming to Australia's shores by queue-jumping has made him something of a hate figure for elements in the Jewish Left as well as a punching bag for others, not on the Left, who should know better), who was at that time living in Herzliya Petuach and who with the outbreak of hostilities went to work as a volunteer at a local hospital.

The paper also includes a typically shrewd opinion piece ("Lessons from Israel's 9/11") from Melbourne academic and communal figure Dr Dvir Abramovich, a sabra, who notes, inter alia:

"...In a way, the Yom Kippur War was to Israel what 9/11 was to the United States, a stealth attack by a determined enemy, hell bent on destruction, whose menace should have been plainly obvious.

Of course, the circumstances and motives for the assault were very different.

Still, the Israelis, just like the Americans, underestimated how hatred fuelled by fanaticism can result in such havoc.

The salutary lesson of the Yom Kippur War is that Israel always needs to be alert and on guard.  A small country, with big problems, it lives in a bad neighbourhood where states use poison gas on their own people and seek nuclear weapons.

So many articles marking this occasion are underwritten by a sense of shame and guilt that one is tempted to forget that Israel's heroic warriors repelled the invading forces and were only kilometres away from the Syrian and Egyptian capitals.

Their mindset of total self-blame chimes with much of the prevailing discourse about Israel today....

.... We need to remember and celebrate the magnitude of Israel's achievements and stunning reversal of fortune.

That the Israeli army was able to turn the tide and bring the war to an end after 19 days is a monumental triumph that should be taught to every student learning about this remarkable chapter.

 One commentator maintains that the Yom Kippur War was the IDF's greatest victory, and one of the most spectacular in the annals of military history....

Tellingly, the Arab states understood that prevailing over Israel in the battlefield was now out of reach.

President Sadat of Egypt recognised the harsh reality that he needed to negotiate a peaceful resolution to the conflict.

A true two-state solution will only be achieved when the Palestinians and Arab states, like Sadat, accept that Israel is not a passing phenomenon, but an irremovable entity in the Middle East.  Diplomacy is the only route.

The Palestinians have continually rejected all generous offers tabled by successive Israeli prime ministers.

Yet it is Israel that's constantly pressured to capitulate to the irrational demands of the international community...."

At a time when many denizens of academia's ivory towers seem to be seduced by the blandishments of J-Street and the New Israel Fund, it's heartening to be reminded that there are still academic opinion-formers who appreciate the situation for what it actually is and not what wishful thinking imagines it to be.

The Nub Of The Matter: A British Muslim on Israel & the Palestinians

“How do you relinquish control when there’s a virulent Jihadist ideology and many Muslim leaders outside the region who say that not only shouldn’t Israel be recognized, but it shouldn’t be there at all?”

That question regarding Israel's presence in the Disputed Territories, came out of the mouth of a British Muslim physician of Pakistani heritage, Dr Qanta Ahmed, who visited Israel in May.

Observes an article by Evelyn Gordon in Commentary magazine picking up on the interview Dr Ahmed gave to Ha'aretz:

'[Although] Ahmed, whose parents became refugees when the 1947 partition of India and Pakistan sent 10 to 12 million people fleeing in both directions (the Ahmeds fled to Pakistan) .... understands how wrenching refugeehood can be, she’s seen her own parents create new lives–and “I also see how people came to Israel, some of them barely surviving the Holocaust, to a land where they were not used to the climate and where they had no family, and yet somehow managed to build this extraordinary, complicated nation.”

While she never says it explicitly, the implication is clear: The Palestinians’ current plight is due less to Israel’s creation than to their own insistence on living in the past, and Arab countries’ insistence on keeping them there. Instead of building new lives for themselves as other refugees have done, they clung to the dream of eradicating Israel and “returning” to its territory–a dream that has precluded peace for 65 years now, and shows no sign of dying. In 2011, for instance, the PLO’s ambassador to Lebanon asserted that a Palestinian state would still deny citizenship to all Palestinian refugees, even those already living there, in order to preserve the demand for their “return” to Israel.

Moreover ... this issue shows Israel to be “a just and moral actor,” in sharp contrast to Arab states: While it absorbed the Jewish refugees and allowed them to build new lives, Arab states refused to absorb Palestinians: They denied them citizenship and kept them in squalid camps to preserve them as a weapon against Israel.

Finally, it sheds new light even on “the occupation.” Ahmed, for instance, considers it unjustified, but admitted there’s no obvious alternative: “How do you relinquish control when there’s a virulent Jihadist ideology and many Muslin leaders outside the region who say that not only shouldn’t Israel be recognized, but it shouldn’t be there at all?” That’s a problem too few Westerners are willing to acknowledge. Yet the refugee issue highlights this ongoing desire to eradicate Israel....'

Read Evelyn Gordon's entire piece here

Peace Calling; No Answer (video)

In the words of the uploader:

"Concerned that U.S. policies toward Israel and Palestinians are hampering, not helping the peace process, an organization of Rabbis and peace advocates turn to Hollywood for a new script...a trilogy of satirical videos of which this is the third. For more information, please visit Real Peace Middle East (www.rpme.org)"

Danny Ayalon On The Truth About The Peace Process (video)

In this new video from StandWithUs.com, Israel's deputy foreign minister Danny Ayalon sets out in simple terms the history of Palestinian Arab rejectionism of the right of Israel to exist, citing among the examples the fact that the PLO was founded in 1964, well before the Israeli presence in the West Bank.  He explains that if peace is to be achieved, the Palestinian Arabs must say "Yes" instead of their customary "No" ...

Hat tip: reader Shirlee

The Importance of the Whole Truth About Palestine, 1919-48

The following article, entitled "Palestine - Understanding the Present by Remembering the Past," is by Sydney lawyer and international affairs analyst David Singer.  It comes via the antipodean J-Wire service.  The article by retired Saudi commodore Abdulateef Al-Mulhim to which Singer refers was the subject of an earlier post by me and can be accessed here: http://arabnews.com/opinion/columns/article/322715ece

Writes David Singer:

'An article recently written by a retired Commodore of the Royal Saudi Navy – Abdulateef Al-Mulhim - titled “What if Arabs had recognized the State of Israel in 1948?” – has been acknowledged by many as a brave initiative by a prominent Arab to step outside the almost monolithic Arab viewpoint that has consistently refused to recognize Israel in the 73 years since its establishment in 1948.

There have been some significant cracks in the Arab wall of rejectionism since 1948 – Israel’s peace treaties with Egypt in 1979 and Jordan in 1994 and the Oslo Accords signed between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization in 1993.

But none has been sufficient to end the conflict between Jews and Arabs in Palestine that has raged since about 1880.

Particularly noteworthy is the fact that the Commodore’s article was published by Arab News – Saudi Arabia’s first English-language newspaper founded in 1975. Today, it is one of 29 publications produced by Saudi Research & Publishing Company, a subsidiary of Saudi Research & Marketing Group.

Commodore Al-Mulhim however only tells half the story by commencing his narrative in 1948 – rather than 1919. No understanding of the Jewish-Arab conflict in Palestine is possible without including those 29 turbulent years.

By 1948 both Jews and Arabs had become firmly entrenched in their political views over the previous 29 years. Both had by then endured much death and suffering following a series of riots, massacres, Commissions and Inquiries that abruptly ended the high hopes and expectations that had followed Turkey’s defeat in the First World War.

Britain’s failure to resolve the Arab-Jewish conflict in Palestine between 1919-1947 had led to Britain declaring its intention to hand over its League of Nations approved Mandate to a nascent United Nations – whose 1947 plan for partition into an Arab state and a Jewish State was accepted by the Jews but rejected by the Arabs.

By then it was too late to prevent the 1948 War that was to follow Israel’s Declaration of Independence and the immediate invasion of Palestine by six Arab armies intent on eradicating the existence of the Jewish State – creating problems and hatreds that have remained unresolved ever since.

It had all seemed so different and so promising in 1919.

The defeat of the Turks and the capture of huge swathes of the Ottoman Empire ruled by Turkey for 400 years had opened up the exciting prospect for creating independence and self-determination for the Arab populations living there and for the Jews who had been returning since the 1880’s to join a small band of their brethren who had maintained a continuous presence in Palestine – their historic and biblical homeland.

At the Peace Conference in Versailles an Agreement signed on 3 January 1919 had contained the following preamble :

“His Royal Highness the Emir Feisal, representing and acting on behalf of the Arab Kingdom of Hedjaz, and Dr. Chaim Weizmann, representing and acting on behalf of the Zionist Organization. mindful of the racial kinship and ancient bonds existing between the Arabs and the Jewish people, and realising that the surest means of working out the consummation of their national aspirations is through the closest possible collaboration in the development of the Arab State and Palestine, and being desirous further of confirming the good understanding which exists between them … "

The San Remo Conference held between the Principal Allied Powers – Great Britain, France, Italy and Japan – had resolved on 25 April 1920:

“to entrust, by application of the provisions of Article 22 [of the Covenant of the League of Nations], the administration of Palestine, within such boundaries as may be determined by the Principal Allied Powers, to a Mandatory, to be selected by the said Powers. The Mandatory will be responsible for putting into effect the declaration originally made on November 8, 1917, by the British Government, and adopted by the other Allied Powers, in favour of the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non- Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.”

The terms of the Treaty of Sevres agreed on 10 August 1920 by the Principal Allied Powers and the Allied Powers – Armenia, Belgium, Greece, the Hedjaz, Poland, Portugal Roumania, the Serb-Croat-Slovene State and Czecho-Slovakia – unanimously endorsed the San Remo Conference Resolution – paving the way for the creation of separate Mandates for each of Palestine, Syria and Lebanon, and Mesopotamia with the unanimous agreement of all 51 member States of the League of Nations.

The proposed territorial carve up between Jews and Arabs had involved allocating the Arabs 99.999% of the liberated Ottoman territory – whilst the Jews were to receive the right to reconstitute the Jewish National Home in just 0.001% of such land in accordance with the 1917 Balfour Declaration.

The Arabs regrettably were to have none of this perceived meddling in their part of the world.

Britain’s attempt to placate Arab objections by belatedly denying the Jews the right to reconstitute the Jewish National Home in Transjordan – some 78% of the small sliver of land originally to be made available to them – did not help achieve a breakthrough.

The Arabs did not accept – and never have accepted – the disposition of any part of the Ottoman captured territory to the Jews. If they had the Middle East would have been a different place today.

Understanding the history of Palestine between 1919 -1948 is therefore critically important and very relevant in 2011 because it highlights that

■Israel’s establishment in 1948 as the Jewish State had its legal basis in the events that began in and took place during 1919-1947 as part of an internationally endorsed policy of granting self-determination for both Jews and Arabs in the liberated territories of the Ottoman Empire

■The conflict in former Palestine still remains one between “Jews” and “Arabs” – not “Israelis” and “Palestinians”

Telling only half the story – and ignoring the other half – has become a recipe for misunderstanding and confusion and a real impediment to ending the current conflict.'