David Singer: Jordan-Israel Peace Agenda Trumps PLO-UN War Agenda

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

He writes:

Jordan and Israel are becoming enmeshed in a bi-national agenda requiring urgent direct negotiations – which if successfully concluded – could end the 100-years old Jewish-Arab conflict.

That agenda includes:

1. Redrawing the existing Jordan-Israel international boundary after allocating sovereignty in Judea and Samaria (West Bank) between their two respective States.
2. Clarifying the right of Jews to enter and pray at the Temple Mount in Jerusalem – currently controlled by Jordan as Custodian of the Islamic holy sites
3. Renewing 25-year leases of two areas leased by Jordan to Israel for agricultural use that expire next year.
4. Increasing the amount of water currently being supplied by Israel to Jordan
5. Progressing the feasibility of constructing the Mediterranean-Dead Sea Canal
6. Financing the Red Sea–Dead Sea Water Conveyance – a planned pipeline that runs from the coastal city of Aqaba to the Lisan area in the Dead Sea.

Jordan and Israel’s Peace Treaty – signed in 1994 – has successfully withstood serious pressures that could have seen its revocation in:

• September 1997 – when an Israeli attempt to assassinate Hamas leader Khaled Meshall was botched
• May 2014 – when Jordan recalled its ambassador from Israel “in protest at the increasing and unprecedented Israeli escalation in the Noble Sanctuary, and the repeated Israeli violations of Jerusalem,”
• July 2017 – when an armed guard at the Israeli embassy in Amman opened fire after being attacked with a screwdriver by a teenager who was delivering furniture to a home within the embassy compound – killing his attacker and the owner of the property.

However cool heads and common-sense prevailed on both sides on those occasions to prevent the Peace Treaty being trashed.

In contrast – the lack of any peace agreement with the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) has caused negotiations between Israel and the PLO to be conducted over the last 25 years under an atmosphere of confrontation and mutual distrust.

Jerusalem-based journalist Khaled Abu Toameh has pointed out that PLO Chairman Mahmoud Abbas has vowed at least 15 times in recent months to thwart President Trump’s upcoming plan to end the Jewish-Arab conflict – even though Abbas hasn’t yet seen its contents.

Toameh continues:

“Abbas and his representatives in Ramallah have radicalized their people against the Israeli government to a point where meeting or doing business with any Israeli official is tantamount to treason. That is why Abbas does not and cannot return to the negotiating table with Israel and also why Abbas cannot change his position toward the Trump administration.”

Abbas has instead sought to advance the PLO’s stated aim to destroy both Israel and Jordan by using the United Nations as the Trojan horse to initially try to impose the creation of a second Arab state in former Palestine – in addition to Jordan – over Israel’s objections.

The UN General Assembly recognition of the fictitious and non-existent “State of Palestine” as Chair of the 144 nation G77 bloc at the United Nations for 2019 indicates the lack of credibility and integrity to which an acquiescent and fawning United Nations is prepared to sink in supporting the PLO’s agenda.

Trump’s plan could represent the last chance to resolve the Jewish-Arab conflict peacefully. Should Jordan and Israel simultaneously agree to negotiate on its final terms – then the prospect of Trump actually pulling off “the deal of the century” becomes realistically achievable.

Redefining the boundary between two countries sharing a signed peace treaty is infinitely easier to achieve than creating a potentially-hostile third state between them that seeks both their destruction.
Jordan-Israel negotiations offer hope for an enduring peace.

The PLO-UN flight into fantasy promises war, chaos and upheaval.

(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)

Jerusalem, Jihad: Views from Sydney

In the wake of his party's poor showing in last Saturday's Victoria state election, one of the best prime ministers Australia has ever had, the Liberal John Howard, tells the left-leaning national broadcaster the ABC, inter alia, why the Australian embassy should be relocated to Jerusalem, a step mooted recently by current prime minister Scott Morrison:


    LEIGH SALES: The former Liberal prime Minister, John Howard, joined me in the studio earlier.

    Mr Howard, good to see you. Thank you for coming in.

    JOHN HOWARD, FORMER PRIME MINISTER (1996-2007): Thank you.

    LEIGH SALES: Is the Liberal Party in danger of splitting into two parties?

    JOHN HOWARD: No, that is absolutely not going to happen.

    The Liberal Party is obviously going through a difficult time at the moment, but I am still convinced that we can win the next federal election and I think one of the things people have got to understand is that there is a long history in Australian politics of a disconnect between a heavy defeat at a state level and victory at a federal level....

    LEIGH SALES: When you look at the Liberal Party broadly, though, the Victorian state election result is just one of a number of things that has gone on.

    We've had centrist independence elected in a number of formally Coalition seats; Indi, Wentworth, Mayo among them. We've had today a federal Liberal MP defect to sit on the crossbench as an independent. We have had numerous Liberal MPs publicly share their concerns about the direction of party.

    You have got ageing and declining membership, there were money troubles. Malcolm Turnbull had to chip in at the last election.

    Why do all of those things, when you take them together, not signal a crisis in the state of the Liberal Party?

    JOHN HOWARD: Well, one of the reasons why it doesn't suggest a crisis is that on all the fundamentals, the federal Liberal Government is doing well....

     Sure, we are disappointed about what happened in Victoria, but one of the things that we have to do is not automatically extrapolate that into the federal scene. There are separately challenges federally, I accept that and they have to be addressed, but the last thing that we should do is to allow our political opponents to define us ideologically.

    LEIGH SALES: Well, on the point of how the Liberal Party should be defined ideologically, we know that Australian society has changed quite a bit since you left politics 11 years ago.

    It has changed an enormous amount since you became prime minister. Would you agree that the Liberal Party has to adapt to stay relevant and, if so, how should the party present itself in 2018?

    JOHN HOWARD: Well, I think all political parties have got to remain relevant and they can't live in the past, of course but when I described the Liberal Party as a broad church, what I say is that it is the custodian of two liberal traditions.

    One of them is the classical liberal one and the other is the conservative one.

    It doesn't mean that the Liberal Party is made up of half of classical liberals and half of conservatives. I mean I am a mixture of the two. I am a classical liberal on economic issues. That is why I believed in labour market deregulation, that's why I believe in lower taxes and smaller government. That is why I am against tariff protection.

    Adam Smith, if he were alive today, would agree with all of those positions but on other issues such as the monarchy and the attitude I took on same-sex marriage, which the public disagreed with, anyway that is behind us now, I am more conservative and that applies to most of us.

    But the one thing we mustn't do is to allow our political enemies and commentators to start describing people specifically as a classical liberal or a conservative.

    LEIGH SALES: But it is not, sorry to interrupt, Mr Howard, but it is not in this case your political enemies - it is people from within the parties.

    JOHN HOWARD: My warning is for those people not to allow people who are not friendly to us, as a liberal collective, to define us.

    I hear expressions like "hard right". What is meant by hard right? Someone who has got a conservative social position? That is not hard right. That is just being an ordinary conservative who sees value in preserving things from the past that are working well.

    There is nothing hard right about that. That is just common sense.

    LEIGH SALES: Let me put to you what the Senate President, Scott Ryan, said yesterday about his view that he wanted, like you say, the Liberal Party to be a broad church.

    He said, "We don't want litmus tests that you've somehow got to adopt this position particularly on social issues and if you don't you are not a real Liberal."

    Haven't we seen evidence of that taking hold? That people in one side of the party say that the other side, they are not real Liberals?

    JOHN HOWARD: I think some people have fallen for that on both sides. I mean, some people are running around saying the only real Liberal is someone who agrees with this and this and you don't want any of that and people who foolishly say, "Oh, what Bob Menzies would have said..."

    Now you talk about moving on, I mean, I admire, all Liberals do, Bob Menzies. He founded our party and governed for 16 brilliant years but the world in the 1950s and '60s was quite different from the world that I was prime minister in and the world that now operates.

    But in the end the Liberal Party is a broad church. It is a broad church of people who hold classical liberal views and conservative views and most of us, my experience has been, that we are each a mixture of the two.

    I certainly was and remain and I am sure that is the case with Scott Morrison and I am sure it was the case with his two predecessors as Liberal leaders....

      I mean, I would never have achieved anything in politics without the Liberal Party. I owe the Liberal Party so much and I think it is always important for people who are elected to Parliament, whether it is on the Labor side or our side, to remember that they are overwhelmingly there because of their patronage from their own party and they should never forget that....

    LEIGH SALES: On the point of loyalty to the party, what do you think of the way that Tony Abbott and Malcolm Turnbull have behaved post-leadership?

    JOHN HOWARD: Look, I am not going to give a commentary on that. That doesn't help anybody.

    When Tony Abbott was the prime minister, I supported him 100 per cent. When Malcolm Turnbull was the prime minister, I supported him and I believe I retain the friendship of both men, but now Scott Morrison is there, I am going the give him total support because I want him to win.

    I believe it would be better for Australia if he does and I want all of the members of the Liberal Party to bear in mind the importance of working together.

    Don't get too despairing about what happened in Victoria....

    LEIGH SALES: Do you think the Australian embassy in Israel should be moved to Jerusalem?

    JOHN HOWARD: Look, I am personally in favour and I have said this before, of our embassy being in Jerusalem because Jerusalem is the capital of Israel.

    LEIGH SALES: You don't worry about the cost of the relationship say with Indonesia?

    JOHN HOWARD: No, hang on, in the end, this is a matter between Australia and Israel and the idea that other countries should micromanage our foreign policy, I don't think people would find that acceptable.

    Now, as to the priority or otherwise of when it should happen, that is another matter. That is a matter for the government to determine.

    If you ask me as an issue of principle, I have said before on the public record, that I support it because I think it is logical to have it in the capital and also because I have enormous respect of the fact of what Israel has achieved and also the fact that it is the one true great democracy in the Middle East. [Emphasis added]

    LEIGH SALES: Mr Howard, thanks for your time.

    JOHN HOWARD: Pleasure.  (Video here)

 Meanwhile, Sydney medico Dr David Adler, president of the Australian Jewish Association, an undeservedly maligned (in certain Jewish circles) conservative organisation formed last year, talks frankly to a Sydney radio host about the Islamic terror threat in this country:

A Hate Crime in California

If only more leftists, including Jewish leftists, would be as vocal in condemning Islamic antisemitism as they are in condemning the far right kind.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Tm5Xl9iE1Y

For Friends of Israel, a Frosty Swarthmore February

Ah, those earnest left-leaning bastions of a "liberal" education.  Don't you just love 'em?

I've written before (see here and here) of the zeal for the anti-Israel pro-Palestinian cause that seems to have taken hold at Swarthmore College, Pennsylvania, one of the top liberal arts colleges in the United States.

And now here's a look at Swarthmore College's 2019 calendar, where alumni and others turning to the February page will be confronted by this image:

Was it really necessary to depict a student wearing a keffiyeh, that universal symbol of Israel-hate among wearers in the West, in a publication that should surely be non-political and inclusive?

Presumably the keffiyeh reflects the "change, and impact on the world" that the college is fostering, according to the accompanying blurb.

Shame, Swatties, shame.

David Singer: Australia's Jerusalem Embassy move sinks in a sea of Islamic threats

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

He writes:

Forget about Australia moving its Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

Indonesian threats to not sign a free trade agreement with Australia – coupled with veiled Malaysian suggestions of terrorist attacks on Australian targets if the Embassy is moved – will suffice to burst Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s thought-bubble.

Australia gave Indonesia $360 million in aid in 2016 and was the world’s 16^thlargest donor in giving $15 million to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA). Indonesia gave UNRWA $5000.

Malaysia gave nothing to UNRWA in 2016.

Read on for artiForget about Australia moving its Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.Indonesian threats to not sign a free trade agreement with Australia – coupled with veiled Malaysian suggestions of terrorist attacks on Australian targets if the Embassy is moved – will suffice to burst Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s thought-bubbleAustralia gave Indonesia $360 million in aid in 2016 and was the world’s 16^thlargest donor in giving $15 million to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA). Indonesia gave UNRWA $5000.

Indonesia and Malaysia – two Islamic states – flex their muscles on Islamic claims to Jerusalem – yet do not financially support their Islamic brethren.
Morrison first flagged the Embassy move on 16 October at a joint press conference with Foreign Affairs Minister Marise Payne:

“Now, in relation to our diplomatic presence in Israel. What I have simply said is this – we’re committed to a two-state solution. Australia’s position on this issue has to date assumed that it is not possible to consider the question of the recognition of Israel’s capital in Jerusalem and that be consistent with pursuing a two-state solution.
Now, Dave Sharma, who was the Ambassador to Israel, has proposed some months ago a way forward that challenges that thinking and it says that you can achieve both and indeed by pursuing both, you are actually aiding the cause for a two-state solution. Now, when people say sensible things, I think it is important to listen to them” 

Australia’s commitment to the two-state solution– the creation of a second Arab state – in addition to Jordan – in the territory that comprised the 1922 Mandate for Palestine –  is based on:

• The 1993 Oslo Accords and
• The 2002 President Bush Roadmap:

Intensive negotiations between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organisation spanning the last 25 years have failed to achieve this two-state solution– being unable to agree on whether the new State should:

• Be demilitarised
• Include all the territory of Judea and Samaria (West Bank) with East Jerusalem as its capital
• Exclude all Jews currently living there necessitating their resettlement in Israel.

Australia is not alone in clinging to this outdated two-state solution. Countless UN Resolutions calling for this two-state solution continue to consume reams of paper and dominate meetings of UN committees, the General Assembly and Security Council – rather than considering alternative solutions to ending the Jewish-Arab conflict.

Morrison probably did not realise how close he was to committing Australia to a very different two-state solution when he told the press conference:

“The whole point of a two-state solution is two nations recognised living side by side. And so, opening up that discussion does provide us with the opportunity, I think, to do what Australians have always done and that is to apply a practical and common-sense and innovative role in trying to work with partners around the world to aid our broader objectives, in this case a two-state solution.”

That alternative two-state solution involves Jordan and Israel – the two successor states to the Mandate for Palestine – currently exercising sovereignty in 95% of the territory comprised in the Mandate – negotiating the allocation of sovereignty in the last remaining 5% between their two respective States.

This solution was first suggested by the League of Nations in 1922: one Jewish State and one Arab state living side by side in former Palestine in peace with each other. Redrawing the international border between Jordan and Israel in direct negotiations would complete this two-state solution.
Moving Australia’s Embassy to Jerusalem would be a no-brainer under the 1922 two-state solution.

(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)

Milady's Cobber Down Under Pontificates on Antisemitism

Peter Garcia-Webb has apparently been a friend of Baroness Tonge since their respective medical training at Guy's Hospital.

Now living in Perth, Western Australia, the distinguished research scientist, London-born of Jewish parentage, is a derider of Israel, posting this on Facebook, for example, at the time of Bibi's highly successful visit to Australia early last year, when the recently deposed Malcolm Turnbull was prime minister:

 Nor does he like President Trump's Middle East policy.  For instance:

Or the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA)'s working definition of antisemitism:

In fact, he dislikes the latter so much that he's now written a long screed of his own about the definition of antisemitism:

Which is very much liked by Baroness Tonge:

As I showed here, the talented Garcia-Webb's forays into "social fiction" make no secret of his antipathy to Zionism.

But that aside, some of his tweets have been eyebrow-raising:

Not as grossly startling, granted, as these social media sentiments (brought to public attention by Aussie Dave in his post here), by one of Tonge's Facebook friends, anti-Israel activist and "human rights"lawyer Simone O'Broin (aka Simone Burns).  The same woman whose drunken racist and sexist abuse of Air India cabin staff has gone viral on the internet (interesting take by David Collier here):

As has been widely observed, O'Broin's rant provides a stark reminder of the slime that lurks within the anti-Israel movement:

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9XOioAAr7A

Here's the ghastly Pamela Hardiment aka Pam Arnold, for instance:

I wonder how Milady and her cobber Down Under would define that!

David Singer: Will President Trump Say "West Bank" or "Judea and Samaria"?

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

He writes:

President Trump – having rejected a barrage of criticism since describing himself as a “nationalist” – faces a further torrent of invective should he choose to say “Judea and Samaria” rather than “West Bank” in his soon to-be-released peace proposals.

Arab propaganda has used “West Bank” since 1949 to obliterate any Jewish connection to one of the two remaining pieces of land under the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine where sovereignty still remains undetermined between Jews and Arabs. Even worse, the United Nations and the US State Department have continued using this deceptive and misleading terminology since 1967.

The media and countless political commentators have sought to relegate the historical-geographical term “Judea and Samaria” to some ancient biblical anachronism that fell into disuse centuries ago – yet that term appears in the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica and the UN 1947 Partition Plan resolution.

Incontrovertible Jewish claims to this hotly-disputed territory – about the size of Delaware – were eloquently summarised in the Forward on 12 July 1991:

'As for “Judea” and “Samaria”, they are indeed ancient names, but the notion that they had become “archaic” prior to 1967 is totally false for both English and Hebrew. Indeed, unlike their Moslem counterparts, not only Jewish, but Christian geographers too, from Roman times onward, always considered the mountainous regions north and south of Jerusalem to be discrete entities, since this is how the Old and New Testaments speak of them because of the separate Judean and Israelite kingdoms that existed there. As late as many 18th-, 19th- and early 20th-century atlases, it is possible to find accurate maps of Palestine with the major Arab towns and villages appearing beside the words “Judea” and “Samaria” in large print.

The Hebrew terms, yehuda and shomron have had a slightly more complex history – rather, shomron has had, since yehuda, “Judah” which was originally the name of the tribe that occupied the southern hill country of the Land of Israel, has been in uninterrupted use as a geographical term since the Book of Deuteronomy. We find it and it alone in the Mishnah and the Talmud; in the account of the famous 12th-century Jewish traveller Benjamin of Tudela; in Kaftor u-Ferach, a 16th-century halakhic geography of Palestine composed by the Italian Rabbi Ishtori Haparhi; in all the 19t- and 20th-century literature of Zionist settlement in Palestine; and in thousands of other Hebrew sources from every period of Jewish history as well.

The case of “shomron”, “Samaria”, is somewhat different. The oldest Hebrew name for the mountains north of Jerusalem is not shomron but efrayim, after the tribe whose territory it was. Shomron was originally a site in Efrayim that, in the reign of King Omri, became the capital of the northern Kingdom of Israel, which eventually began to bear its name. Thus, in the Hebrew Bible we find shomron, efrayim, and yisra’el used interchangeably, while in rabbinic literature they are joined by a fourth term: eretz ha-kutim, “the Land of the Cuthites” – a reference to the Samaritans, a population originally transferred from the Babylonian region of Kutu to take the place of the “ten lost” tribes of Israel deported by the Assyrians in 721 B.C.E.

Subsequently, all four of these terms were used by Jewish sources, although the last two dropped out in the Middle Ages; it was not however, until the conquest of the area in 1967 that “Shomron” was finally recognized instead of “Efrayim”.'

President Trump should use “Judea and Samaria” to end 70 years of fraudulent Arab propaganda – aided and abetted by the United Nations, the US State Department and the President’s oft designated “fake news’’.


(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)