Top Ten Lies About Israel

By Sam Sokolove on Wednesday, May 5th, 2010 at 10:19 am
Categories: Advocacy, Israel

By Rabbi Marvin Hier, founder and dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center

It’s no secret to anyone that relations between the United States and Israel reflect a new reality and are not what they once were. The last few months have seen a worldwide frenzy of intimidation and threats directed against Israel that has backed its supporters into a corner. Very few have raised their voices in response.

For this reason, the Simon Wiesenthal Center has produced a new brochure, “2010 Top Ten Anti-Israel Lies,” that we will be distributing to millions of people worldwide. The brochure also provides contact information for U.S. and world leaders and key news bureaus.

Here is a condensed summary of the 10 top lies and the center’s responses:

Lie No. 1: Israel was created by European guilt over the Nazi Holocaust. Why should Palestinians pay the price?

Three thousand years before the Holocaust, before there was a Roman Empire, Israel’s kings and prophets walked the streets of Jerusalem. The whole world knows that Isaiah did not speak his prophesies from Portugal, nor Jeremiah his lamentations from France. Revered by its people, Jerusalem is mentioned in the Hebrew Scriptures 600 times, but not once in the Koran. Throughout the 2,000-year exile of the Jews, there was a continuous Jewish presence in the Holy Land.

Lie No. 2: Had Israel withdrawn to its June 1967 borders, peace would have come long ago.

Since 1967, Israel repeatedly has conceded “land for peace.” Following Egyptian President Sadat’s historic 1977 visit to Jerusalem, Israel withdrew from the vast Sinai Peninsula and has been at peace with Egypt ever since. But the Palestinian Authority has never fulfilled its promise to end propaganda attacks nor drop the Palestinian National Charter’s call for Israel’s destruction. In 2000, Prime Minister Barak offered Yasser Arafat full sovereignty more than 97 percent of the West Bank, a corridor to Gaza, and a capital in the Arab section of Jerusalem. Arafat said no.

Lie No. 3: Israel is the main stumbling block to achieving a two-state solution.

The Palestinians themselves are the only stumbling block to achieving a two-state solution. With whom should Israel negotiate? With President Abbas, who for four years has been barred by Hamas from visiting 1.5 million constituents in Gaza? With his Palestinian Authority, which continues to glorify terrorists and preaches hate in its educational system and the media? With Hamas, whose Iranian-backed leaders deny the Holocaust and use fanatical Jihadist rhetoric to call for Israel’s destruction?

Lie No. 4: Nuclear Israel, not Iran, is the greatest threat to peace and stability.

The United States and Europe can afford to wait to see what the Iranian regime does with its nuclear ambitions, but Israel cannot. Israel is on the front lines and remembers every day the price the Jewish people paid for not taking Hitler at his word. Israel is not prepared to sacrifice another 6 million Jews on the altar of the world’s indifference.

Lie No. 5: Israel is an apartheid state deserving of international boycott, divestment and sanctions campaigns.

In fact, Israel is a democratic state. Its 20 percent Arab minority enjoys all the political, economic and religious rights and freedoms of citizenship, including electing members of their choice to the Knesset (Parliament).

Lie No. 6: Plans to build 1,600 more homes in East Jerusalem prove Israel is “Judaizing” the Holy City.

Ramat Shlomo was not about Arab neighborhoods in East Jerusalem but about a long established, heavily populated Jewish neighborhood in northern Jerusalem, where 250,000 Jews live (about the size of Newark, N.J.) — an area that will never be relinquished by Israel.

Lie No. 7: Israeli policies endanger U.S. troops in Afghanistan and Iraq.

A resolution of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict would benefit everyone, including the United States. But an imposed return to what Abba Eban called “1967 Auschwitz borders” would endanger Israel’s survival and ultimately be disastrous for American interests and credibility in the world.

Lie No. 8: Israeli policies are the cause of worldwide anti-Semitism.

From the Inquisition to the pogroms, to the 6 million Jews murdered by the Nazis, history proves that Jew hatred existed on a global scale before the creation of the State of Israel. It would still exist in 2010 even if Israel had never been created. For example, one poll indicates that 40 percent of Europeans blame the recent global economic crisis on “Jews having too much economic power” — a canard that has nothing to do with Israel.

Lie No. 9: Israel, not Hamas, is responsible for the “humanitarian catastrophe” in Gaza. Goldstone was right when he charged that Israel was guilty of war crimes against civilians.

The United Nations Human Rights Council is obsessed with false anti-Israel resolutions. It refuses to address grievous human rights abuses in Iran, North Korea, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Cuba and beyond. Faced with similar attacks, every U.N. member-state, including the United States and Canada, surely would have acted more aggressively than the Israel Defense Forces did in Gaza.

Lie No. 10: The only hope for peace is a single, binational state eliminating the Jewish State of Israel.

The one-state solution is a non-starter because it would eliminate the Jewish homeland. However, the current pressures on Israel are equally dangerous. In effect, the world is demanding that Israel, the size of New Jersey, shrink further by accepting a three-state solution: a P.A. state on the West Bank and a Hamas terrorist one in Gaza. All this as Hezbollah, Iran’s proxy in Lebanon, stockpiles 50,000 rockets, threatening northern and central Israel’s main population centers. Current polls show that while most Israelis favor a two-state solution, most Palestinians continue to oppose it.

Full versions of the brochure are available by e-mailing toptenlies@wiesenthal.net or calling (800) 900-9036. The online edition is available at http://www.wiesenthal.com/toptenlies.

On Bad Causes

By Sam Sokolove on Thursday, April 22nd, 2010 at 10:48 am
Categories: Opinion

“We yield to evil, we are zealots for bad causes,” goes our chest-thumping confession. Yet the zealots remain as eternal as this centerpiece of the Yom Kippur liturgy.

An opponent of the Jewish State waves a handwritten sign on Central Avenue imploring his government to “Stop sending money to Israel.” Others hold court at a grocery market to encourage shoppers to treat Israeli products as one would radioactive waste, and again the “Stop 30 Billion” billboard, the crowning achievement of the local Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) crowd, rises over Albuquerque streets.

It’s easy to dismiss these folks as peripheral malcontents, but the fact is that they are constituents, and therefore get the ear of elected officials along with the vast majority of Americans – Jews and non-Jews – who believe that Israel is and should remain the United State’s closest ally in the Mideast. Sixties activist Mark Rudd recently made this point chillingly clear at his February debate in Taos with Jewish Federation of New Mexico President Robert Efroymson when he announced that members of New Mexico’s Congressional Delegation are “increasingly open” to halting U.S. aid to Israel.

Often this ideology offers apologies for some of the most brutal dictatorships in the world while Israel is accused of being the misbegotten child of Jewish racialist supremacy, poisoning everything by its mere existence.

As Noel Pugach, Professor Emeritus at UNM’s History Department explained to me recently, Jewish nationalism has always been a sticking point for the extreme left; communism, socialism, humanism and Marxism and various “social justice” movements were meant to make anti-Semitism and “The Jewish Problem” disappear, thus making a Jewish homeland irrelevant. When none of these “isms” came to pass, Israel was viewed with resentment as a reminder of the gods that failed.

In New Mexico, of course, many proponents of these views are Baby Boomers with a nostalgic taste for guerilla street theatre, hectoring placards and scores to settle – with the sterile Judaism of their native Great Neck, West Bloomfield and Elkins Park; with the establishment Judaism that they believed quelled their righteous calls of truth to power; the grumpy rabbis and Hebrew school teachers of their youth and the suburban, materialistic parents who grudgingly stewarded the trust funds that facilitated their departures in the seventies or eighties for the promise of New Age enlightenment and Native American chic.

To its credit, New Mexico’s Jewish community has always been uncommonly fertile ground for helping Jewish boomers transform these often legitimate grievances into innovative, positive connections to Jewish identity. As a result, we have seen individuals awaken themselves and others to sacred text; to the uniquely Jewish call to social justice and the emergence of vibrant institutions and programs that capture the colors of being Jewish in the Southwest.

However, when the connections are lost, these individuals remain painfully alienated from the community that has bloomed around them, their Jewishness in a perpetual infantilized state. Now approaching their twilight years, they finally find their Jewish voices as those of defiance; “Not in my name!” they declare, the sad irony being that the community from which they now claim to be moral emissaries is all but alien to them, and perhaps even more tragically, their own children.

There is an unmistakable poignancy in this need to be heard as Jews, a reflexive yiddishkeit so neglected that when voiced it finally emerges as a distorted, narcissistic language. But for all this benign sentimentality, there may be no mistaking that they mean what they say: they really, truly want to see an end to the Jewish State, punishment for the sins committed in the hallows of their own injured psyches, with BDS now the punishment stick of choice.

Henry Roth, the Jewish sage of Albuquerque, once had that muddled furor. In a 1963 essay titled “The Meaning of Galut in America Today,” the still-Communistically minded Roth offered his fervent hope that Jews would, “(orient) themselves towards ceasing to be Jews.” In an interview thirteen years later, Roth marveled at his thinking at the time, a feeling that would be – in his own words – “diametrically” changed by the Six-Day War.

“I’ve thought about that statement many times because it shows how definitely one can be in a certain phase or stage,” he reflected. “I (now) think of myself as a partisan of a country… It’s like a regeneration process when a person like me can think of patriotism and valor.”

Like Roth, we should see the misguided zealots with Jewish compassion, just as the concluding prayer on the Day of Atonement , Ne’ilah pleads “open for us the gate at the time of the closing of the gates,” and hope that one day they will walk through the gate that separates them from our community. We should hope as well that some will recognize the truth in The Atlantic correspondent Jeffrey Goldberg’s blunt assertion that “Israel has problems, yes, but the hard-left boycott-Israel folks are so discriminatory it’s repulsive.”

With this realization they can turn their activist passion and organizing acumen towards fostering initiatives for cooperation and dialogue that leads to a meaningful peace between Israelis and Palestinians.

And until then, those of good conscience must take them at their word and do everything to minimize the damage left in the wake of their run towards causes bad and worse.

The Ugly Truth about Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (DBS)

By Sam Sokolove on Thursday, March 25th, 2010 at 1:54 pm
Categories: Advocacy, Israel

“Every war against the Jews has begun with first demonizing us.”

Michael Oren, Israel’s ambassador to the U.S.

In recent years, the campaign to delegitimize and demonize Israel, which began in earnest at the 2001 UN Conference against Racism in Durban, has intensified. This campaign distorts the history and national aspirations of the Jewish people to live in peace in a homeland to which they have been connected continuously and profoundly for more than three millennia.

The legitimate right of Israel to defend itself from terror often is ignored. Israeli policy and actions are not beyond criticism; but we have witnessed a continuing flow of inaccurate charges of human rights violations and outrageous comparisons of Israel to apartheid South Africa and even to Nazi Germany.

Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions is part of a grand design to destroy Israel and her credibility in the world.

According to Abraham Foxman, National Director of the Anti-Defamation League, “(BDS”) is about the three ‘D’s”: Demonization, Deligitimization, and Applying a Double Standard.”

Tactics of BDS:

  • Denying Israel’s cultural products;
  • Denying Israel’s emissaries the right to be heard;
  • Equating Israel to Apartheid-era South Africa;
  • Delegitimizing the Jewish historical ties to Israel;
  • Portraying Zionism not as an expression of Peoplehood, but as an extension of European colonialization;
  •  Equating Zionism to Nazism.

This is all anti-Semitism

BDS may seem innocuous, but we must understand what BDS proponents really want: Israel could be strangled economically and culturally if people of good concemeince do not counter this campaign.

  • The campaign to delegitimize Israel and the BDS movement, serves as a distraction from the critical task of trying to bring peace to the Middle East;
  • The promotion of boycotts, divestment, and sanctions against Israel evidences a troubling double standard – singling out Israel for blame;
  • The use of boycotts, divestment, and sanctions in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian-Arab conflict is an effort to reward intransigence by suggesting that international pressure can replace efforts to negotiate in good faith.

Those opposed to the existence of the State of Israel are tenacious and will continue to intensify their campaign globally, within local communities and on the campuses.

You Can Fight Back!

  • Confront boycott campaigns with campaigns to purchase Israeli goods or partner with Israeli organizations, with the aim of ensuring that every boycott campaign is a net failure;
  • Respond swiftly to false or distorted media statements about Israel;
  • Invest in programs that promote peace and reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians;
  • Vigorously combat slanderous attacks, including anti-Semitic fabrications that have been levied against Israelis that are reminiscent of the ancient blood libel.

Boycott Fails: Thank you for Standing with Israel!

By Sam Sokolove on Thursday, March 4th, 2010 at 9:54 am
Categories: Uncategorized

From: Jewish Federation of New Mexico and Anti-Defamation League, New Mexico

Thanks to the efforts of a mobilized community, we are delighted to report that the efforts of an anti-Israel group calling itself the New Mexico Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Committee failed dismally in their efforts last Sunday to encourage shoppers at Trader Joe’s Uptown Albuquerque location to boycott the store’s supply of Israeli consumer products .

Ironically, the misguided boycott attempt only helped encourage community members to buy-out Trader Joe’s stock of Israeli products. A similar, national boycott of Israeli products sold at Trader Joe’s backfired last summer when Israel supporters flooded the stores specifically to buy Israeli products.

We commend Trader Joe’s for refusing to remove Israeli products based on pressure from this group, and for responding quickly to concerns from the Jewish community. More is available about Trader Joe’s response here:

http://www.adl.org/PresRele/IslME_62/Trader_Joe’s_Boycott.htm

The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement – or “BDS” — is part of an aggressive, global campaign to delegitimize and demonize the Jewish State. The below article by Martin Raffel, Senior vice president of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, offers more background on this campaign while urging our community and friends of Israel to respond to it with vigor.

Stay educated. Continue to visit www.nmisrael.org to learn more about how you can counter anti-Israel efforts in New Mexico.

Action needed to combat campaign delegitimizing Israel

By Sam Sokolove on Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010 at 2:53 pm
Categories: Advocacy, Media

By Martin J. Raffel

The organized American Jewish community and our non-Jewish allies, with broad representation from across political and religious lines, are poised to launch a major initiative to counter the campaign to delegitimize Israel.

The sky is not falling. President Obama and the U.S. Congress remain firmly committed to Israel’s fundamental security, and opinion polls consistently reflect broad American public support for the Jewish state. But there are clouds gathering on the horizon that must not be ignored.

The delegitimization campaign — and make no mistake, it is a global campaign — has its roots in the international NGO gathering that took place alongside the 2001 U.N. conference on racism in Durban, South Africa. With the second intifada (more aptly described as “Arafat’s terror war”) raging, these anti-Israel NGOs decided to open up a second front to paint Israel as a pariah/apartheid state deserving of political and economic isolation.

Through the years, the principal weapons used by these groups are the boycott of Israeli products, people and events; divestment from Israeli companies and institutions, including Israel Bonds, as well as from certain foreign companies doing business in Israel; and sanctions. This explains why the campaign to delegitimize Israel often is referred to, inadequately and misleadingly, simply as the BDS movement.

There is no central address orchestrating all of the delegitimization activity. Rather we see a loose network of NGOs across the globe, sometimes coalescing around particular spheres, such as the U.S. Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel.

Mainline Protestant churches, universities, municipalities and corporations have processed divestment initiatives, which in virtually every case have failed to gain traction. The divestment language in a 2004 resolution adopted by the Presbyterian Church USA has since been rescinded, but the issue continues to capture the imagination of Israel’s detractors in that church and others.

Israeli cultural events have been subject to boycott attempts, such as the performances of the Israeli ballet now touring the United States and the Toronto Film Festival last fall, which was dedicated to Tel Aviv’s 100th anniversary.

Campuses have been particular targets, with Israel Apartheid Week taking place the first two weeks in March. The delegitimizers prey on those who lack basic knowledge about the complex nature of Middle East politics — people who can easily fall victim to their simplistic and often inaccurate narratives.

In parallel to the NGOs, governments, especially operating through deeply biased U.N. bodies such as the Geneva-based Human Rights Council, continue to promulgate material that fairly can be described as delegitimizing long after revocation of the 1975 resolution equating Zionism with racism.

The Goldstone report, which grossly distorts the reality of Israel’s efforts to combat an amoral adversary in Gaza that uses civilians as human shields — is the latest in a long line of hostile actions emanating from the council.

Accusations of war crimes and crimes against humanity eagerly get picked up by the delegitimization organizations and coalitions as valuable weapons in their arsenals.

Indeed, public international law has increasingly been utilized as a rationale for imposing political and economic sanctions against Israel.

Re’ut, an Israel-based think tank, recently completed an analysis of the issue and concluded that “while Israel’s delegitimizers come from relatively marginal forces in Europe, their effectiveness stems from their ability to engage and mobilize others. This is accomplished by branding Israel as a pariah and ‘apartheid’ state, identifying ‘outstanding issues’ — such as the ‘Gaza blockade,’ ’settlements,’ ‘the separation wall,’ ‘occupation,’ ‘disproportionate use of force,’ or ‘human rights violations’ — and rallying their coalition around it; making pro-Palestinian activity trendy; promoting boycotts, divestments and sanctions; and, most importantly, blurring the line separating them from those that criticize Israeli policy yet do not delegitimize it.”

Re’ut points out that “the delegitimizers work ‘from the periphery to the center’ and ‘bottom-up, thriving in social networks and on the Internet. Hence, while in formal policy spheres Israel’s diplomatic position remains relatively strong and solid, its standing among the general public and intellectual elites is being eroded.”

It is true that Israel’s “diplomatic position” for the time being remains strong both with the U.S. government and the American people. However, as the JCPA resolution on countering the delegitimization campaign adopted at our recent annual conference maintains, “unless effectively countered, over time it may have the corrosive effect of changing the culture of political discussion and making it harder for people of goodwill to publicly support Israel. If support for Israel begins to be seen as de facto racism, this could provide fertile ground for the growth of anti-Semitism.”

The delegitimization campaign, unfortunately, has made significant inroads in other parts of the world. Friends of Israel in this country cannot afford to be complacent. The community relations field — with motivated activists in our own community joined by non-Jewish allies who come to this cause based on relationships forged around a range of joint efforts in the social justice and human rights arenas — is well positioned to develop a strategic and comprehensive response to this challenge.

We must act now to prevent the clouds from becoming a full-fledged storm.

HELP COUNTER ANTI-ISRAEL EFFORTS IN NEW MEXICO

By Sam Sokolove on Wednesday, February 24th, 2010 at 6:15 pm
Categories: Advocacy

An anti-Israel group calling itself the New Mexico Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Committee will be leading an effort on Sunday, February 28th, between 12:00pm and 2:00pm at Trader Joe’s in Albuquerque (Uptown) in their on-going “de-shelving campaign of Israeli consumer products.” This is part of the same group responsible for the anti-Israel billboards seen around Albuquerque.

While some may dismiss this as the efforts of a small group of local anti-Israel activists, we regard BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) groups with the utmost seriousness and urgency.

Trader Joe’s has assured the Anti-Defamation League that they will not acquiesce to this boycott demand and will continue to sell Israeli products. We urge friends of Israel to make a point of thanking Trader Joe’s management for stocking Israel products and by purchasing Israeli foods anytime you shop.

Israeli products at Trader Joe’s include: Dorot Crushed Garlic; Dorot Chopped Cilantro; Holyland Matzos; Pastures of Eden Feta Imported; Trader Joe’s Israeli Couscous, and Trader Joe’s Harvest Grains Blend.

Background

• In recent years, the campaign to delegitimize and demonize Israel has intensified. This campaign distorts the history and national aspirations of the Jewish people to live in peace in a homeland to which we have been connected continuously and profoundly for more than three millennia.

• The legitimate right of Israel to defend itself from terror often is ignored, and the campaign to delegitimize Israel serves as a distraction from the critical task of trying to bring peace to the Middle East.

• BDS campaigns suggest that international pressure can replace efforts to negotiate in good faith. These activities detract from the goal of a lasting and solid peace based on co-existence and productive economic relations.

• To be clear: Israeli policy and actions are not beyond criticism; but we have witnessed a continuing flow of inaccurate charges of human rights violations and outrageous comparisons of Israel to apartheid South Africa and even to Nazi Germany.

• Common to most BDS calls are distortions and outright fabrications of facts, misrepresentations of international law, and a false assertion that the proffered action somehow will improve the prospects for Israeli-Palestinian peace. Often, the very existence of a state for the Jewish people is perceived as the root of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

• Those opposed to the existence of the State of Israel are tenacious and will continue to intensify their campaign globally, within local communities and on the campuses. It is imperative that our community remain vigilant to the BDS campaign and respond to it with vigor.

• Unless effectively countered, over time BDS efforts may have the corrosive effect of changing the culture of political discussion and making it harder for people of goodwill to publicly support Israel. If support for Israel begins to be seen as de facto racism, this could provide fertile ground for the growth of anti-Semitism.

• Those seeking to hasten peace should focus on efforts of reconciliation, including investment in the many meaningful coexistence programs that are necessary to foster a generation of Israelis and Palestinians, which will work and live side-by-side and move past the teaching of hate and violence.

ISRAEL’ DISPROPORTIONATE RESPONSE

By Sam Sokolove on Wednesday, January 20th, 2010 at 8:26 am
Categories: News, Uncategorized

By  David Yehezkel

Many countries and world leaders have accused Israel of responding
disproportionately to aggression from Hizballah in Lebanon and
Hamas in Gaza.

However, it is time that the world press and media speak of another
disproportionate response from Israel.

The terrible disastrous earthquake in Haiti has generated responses
from many nations. The US has sent supplies and personnel, Britain
sent 64 firemen and 8 volunteers, France sent troops for Search and
Rescue. Many large and wealthy nations of the world sent money. The
Arab and Moslem world nothing.

Israel, a nation of 7.5 million people has sent a team of 220
people that include Medical personnel and will establish the
largest field hospital in Haiti, treating up to 5000 people a day,
an experienced Search and Rescue team and medical supplies. As in
previous earthquake disasters, such as in Gujarat India in 2001 and
in Turkey, in the bombings in Kenya, Israel has been one of the
most generous givers of aid and assistance

Turkey seems to have forgotten this help as its extreme Moslem
Government is cozying up to Iran.

Judge Goldstone, where are you now? Eating your heart out and
hanging your head down in shame I hope.

The favorite occupation in the UN is Israel bashing. More
resolutions have been passed condemning Israel than all the so
called democratic nations such as Sudan, China, Russia and others
for their crimes against their minorities.

I think it is time that the world should know about Israel’s
disproportionate response.

David Harris: It’s Not About Israel

By Sam Sokolove on Monday, January 11th, 2010 at 9:06 am
Categories: Israel

by David Harris
Executive Director, American Jewish Committee

There are those in the international community who claim that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the root cause of the Middle East’s problems. Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair has been among the most prominent of these voices.

In his article “A Battle For Global Values” (Foreign Affairs, January/February 2007), Tony Blair reiterated what he has expressed in previous public statements: “How can we bring peace to the Middle East unless we resolve the question of Israel and Palestine?” Achieving peace, he continues, “would not only silence reactionary Islam’s most effective rallying call but fatally undermine its basic ideology.”

More recently, in a speech at the Istanbul Forum in October, Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan named the lack of a Palestinian state as the crux of all problems in the Middle East. In so saying, he echoed a speech by his own Foreign Minister, Ali Babacan, at the Annapolis conference, who declared that “the Palestinian question is at the epicenter of all problems in the Middle East. The resulting climate of despair, hatred and pessimism continues to haunt the region and create a breeding ground for extremism.”

Similarly, Aijaz Zaka Syed, a columnist for the Dubai-based, English-language newspaper Khaleej Times, wrote in November that “the key to…world peace lies in Jerusalem.”

True, genuine peace between Israel and the Palestinians would remove one of the long-standing conflicts in the Middle East. Moreover, to state the painfully obvious, peace would serve the best interests of those involved.
But the suggestion made by Prime Ministers Blair, Erdogan and others that such a settlement is a necessary precondition for wider peace in the Middle East and would take the wind out of radical Islam’s sails is unsupported by the facts.

Let’s assume for a moment that Israel did not exist. Would that have changed the basic story line of the bulk of events in the Middle East?
Would Yemen today be fighting a war on three fronts against its own rebel movements and al Qaeda?

Would Iraq and Iran have chosen not to pursue an eight-year war that cost more than a million fatalities? Would Iraq have decided not to invade Kuwait in 1990? Would it have rethought its use of chemical weapons against both its own Kurdish population and Iran?

Would Syria have refrained from slaughtering over 10,000 of its own citizens in Hama in 1982? Would it have withheld its central role in the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri?
Would Saudi Arabia have stopped exporting its Wahhabi model of Islam, with its narrow, doctrinaire view of the world and rejection of non-Muslims as so-called infidels, across the globe?

Would al Qaeda not have attacked the U.S. in 2001, when, it should be remembered, the Israeli-Palestinian issue was never even mentioned among Osama bin Laden’s list of “grievances?”

Would the danger posed by the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Jordan magically disappear absent the Israel factor?

Would Iran today abandon its nuclear and hegemonic ambitions in the region?
Would the Shi’ite-Sunni split, with its profound political and strategic ramifications, evaporate into thin air?

Would the Sudanese government have stopped its collusion with the Arab Janjaweed militias to end the massive murder and displacement in Darfur?
Would the desperate poverty and widespread illiteracy that dampen hope and create a fertile recruiting ground for radical Islamic movements suddenly be alleviated?

Would Saudi women instantaneously have the right to drive, would non-Muslims finally enjoy equal rights in all those Arab countries where Islam is the official religion, and would the Baha’i no longer experience persecution at the hands of the Iranian government?

In reality, the destabilizing factors in the Middle East run far deeper than the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Strikingly, while most Western political leaders mince their words, the courageous Arab authors of the annual Arab Human Development Report have not. They have spoken of three overarching explanatory factors for the region’s unsatisfactory condition: the knowledge deficit, the gender deficit and the freedom deficit.

Unless these three areas are addressed in a sustained manner, the Middle East, which ought to be one of the world’s most dynamic regions, is likely to continue suffering from instability, violence and fundamentalism, irrespective of what happens on the Israeli-Palestinian front.

Consider some of the important findings in recent Arab Human Development Reports and related studies:
• The total number of books translated into Arabic in the last 1,000 years is fewer than those translated in Spain in one year.
• Greece – with a population of fewer than 11 million – translates five times as many books from abroad into Greek annually as the 22 Arab countries combined – with a total population of more than 300 million – translate into Arabic.
• According to a Council on Foreign Relations report, “in the 1950s, per-capita income in Egypt was similar to South Korea, whereas Egypt’s per-capita income today is less than 20 percent of South Korea’s. Saudi Arabia had a higher gross domestic product than Taiwan in the 1950s; today it is about 50 percent of Taiwan’s.”
As Dr. A.B. Zahlan, a Palestinian physicist, has noted: “A regressive political culture is at the root of the Arab world’s failure to fund scientific research or to sustain a vibrant, innovative community of scientists.” He further asserted that “Egypt, in 1950, had more engineers than all of China.” That is hardly the case today.

A recent UN Human Development Report revealed that only two Egyptians per million people were granted patents (for Syria the figure was zero), compared to 30 in Greece and 35 in Israel.

In the same UN report, the adult literacy rate for women aged 15 and older was 43.6 percent in Egypt and 74 percent in Syria, while for the world’s top 20 countries it was nearly 100 percent.

And finally, according to the current Freedom House rankings, no Arab country in the Middle East is listed as “free.” Each is described at best as “partly free” or, worse, “not free.”

The sad truth is that it is precisely political oppression, intellectual suffocation and gender discrimination that explain, far more than other factors, the chronic difficulties of the Middle East.

To be sure, there exist no overnight or over-the-counter remedies for these maladies that would allow the region to unleash its vast potential, but let’s be clear: they, not the straw man of Israel, are at the heart of the problem.

It would be illusory to think otherwise.

Iran: The Truth Hurts (By David Harris)

By Sam Sokolove on Monday, December 21st, 2009 at 12:14 pm
Categories: Iran

by David Harris

It’s as predictable as day follows night.

Raise the issue of Iran’s nuclear program, as I have more than once, and all Tehran’s flacks and flunkies, including Israel-bashers galore, come out of the woodwork.

They rush to Iran’s defense, portraying it as a peace-loving, law-abiding, misunderstood nation.

There is no evidence whatsoever, they allege, that Iran is hell-bent on acquiring nuclear weapons capability.

Oh, and by the way, on the off chance it is, they add, it’s strictly for defensive purposes. Iran has never hurt a soul in its history, so why the concern?

They accuse all kinds of alleged miscreants - warmongers, neoconservatives, Zionists, you name it - of besmirching Iran’s good name in pursuit of nefarious aims. The label is meant to say it all.

If heaven forbid, you’re a Zionist, as I am, then it’s abundantly clear what you must be up to. Nothing more need be said. Were it not for you, Iran would enjoy the reputation for democracy and decency it so richly deserves.

And they seek to divert the discussion to Israel’s nuclear program and a whole host of other misdeeds, falling just short of holding Jerusalem responsible for the melting of the ice caps.

You see, they contend, the problem in the Middle East is Israel, not Iran. Anything that focuses on Iran is off-limits, as it’s only a ploy to divert the world’s attention from the root cause of all evil and instability, Israel, in an otherwise serene and sedate region.

Gee, if only Israel would go away - hmm, come to think of it, that Iranian nuclear bomb just might help - the region would overnight resemble Europe or North America in its commitment to peace, development, and human rights.

All these spin doctors, whether they comment in the Huffington Post or Bahrain’s Gulf Daily News, offer a variant of these themes.

Frankly, they do themselves a disservice. Strip away the huffing and puffing and their arguments don’t amount to a hill of beans.

Iran’s stock has been dropping like a rock, and the responsibility lies solely and exclusively with Iran. Trying to blame this state of affairs on others may play to the bleachers, but won’t wash on the street.

First, consider what’s been going on.

The UN Security Council has adopted three sanctions resolutions against Iran because of its nuclear program, each with the support of the five permanent members - China, France, Russia, United Kingdom and United States. And a fourth resolution appears to be just around the corner.

The International Atomic Energy Agency has censured Iran as recently as last month for developing in secret a uranium enrichment site near Qom. The vote was 25 to 3. Those voting against were Cuba, Malaysia, and Venezuela. Right afterwards, Malaysia indicated that its vote was in error, leaving just Cuba and Venezuela, quite a support group for Iran. As the saying goes, “Tell me who your friends are and I’ll tell you who you are.”

Interpol has issued “red notices” for five Iranians, including Iran’s current defense minister. These red notices indicate that Argentina seeks the arrest and extradition of the five in connection with a terror attack against the Jewish community center in Buenos Aires in 1994 that killed 85 people.

In February, Bahrain suspended talks with Iran on a gas deal after Iranian officials referred to the country as “the 14th province of Iran,” evoking memories of Saddam Hussein’s claim that Kuwait was an integral part of Iraq - and all that followed.

In March, Morocco broke diplomatic ties with Iran. Rabat accused Tehran of “intolerable interference in the internal affairs of the kingdom.”

In April, Egypt lodged an official protest with Iran over Tehran’s “blatant interference in internal Egyptian affairs.”

In June, President Barack Obama visited Saudi Arabia. The Saudi king pressed for tougher U.S. action against Iran, fearing the geostrategic implications for his country and all the Arab Gulf states of a nuclear Iran.

That’s just a small taste of Iran’s dealings with the larger world. What about inside the country?

Each day brings new reports about human rights abuses, as the current regime, besieged since the rigged June elections, tightens the noose - literally and figuratively.

Literally, as public hangings have been among the favored methods of capital punishment practiced by the Iranian government. Figuratively, as nervous leaders attempt to quash the demonstrations that keep popping up, despite efforts to intimidate and cow the protesters.

Will the whitewashers of the Khamenei-Ahmadinejad regime defend the government’s repressive practices against students, reform politicians, independent journalists, women activists, gays, or religious minorities?

And then there’s the Israel argument. But that doesn’t hold any more water than the others.

If Israel has a nuclear arsenal, it is for one purpose - and one purpose only. It serves as the ultimate guarantor of the security of a state that has been the target of its enemies since its very establishment in 1948.

Last time I checked, Israel, unlike Iran, had never called for the destruction of any country in the region. Israel has never questioned Iran’s right to exist. It is Iran that questions Israel’s right to exist.

And last time I checked, Israel had never resorted to the use of nuclear weapons, though faced with devastating wars since the 1950s, when reports suggest it first developed those weapons. If that doesn’t indicate rational, responsible behavior, what does?

I understand that being Iran’s lawyers in the court of public opinion these days can be rather tough. It’s not easy to find salient arguments to make. Iran has become its own worst enemy - practicing deceit and deception abroad, repression and brute force at home.

Sorry, but no smokescreens, straw men, name-calling, or truth-twisting can deny the stark, unassailable facts about Iran today.

U.S. House Approves Resolution Condemning Goldstone Report

By Sam Sokolove on Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009 at 5:10 pm
Categories: News

The U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved a resolution (H. Res. 867) condemning a UN report as “irredeemably biased” against Israel Tuesday (Nov. 3),[1] a day before the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) convenes to debate the report’s findings. The resolution, co-sponsored by House Foreign Affairs Committee senior members Reps. Howard Berman (D-Calif.) and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.), passed by a vote of 344 to 36.[2]

The so-called Goldstone report accuses Israel and Hamas of committing war crimes during the December-January conflict in Gaza. But a new bi-partisan poll shows that Americans believe Israeli military action in Gaza was indeed a defensive war and many reject the UN report accusing Israel of war crimes.

The poll, conducted in October by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research (GQRR) and commissioned by The Israel Project (TIP) shows Americans have significant doubts about the findings of the report commissioned by the UN Human Rights Council accusing Israel of war crimes. The UNGA meeting is being held at the urging of the United Nations’ Arab representatives.[3]

Following is the text of House Resolution 867 condemning the Goldstone report

HRES 867 IH
111th CONGRESS

1st Session

H. RES. 867
Calling on the President and the Secretary of State to oppose unequivocally any endorsement or further consideration of the ‘Report of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict’ in multilateral fora.

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

October 23, 2009

Ms. ROS-LEHTINEN (for herself, Mr. BERMAN, Mr. BURTON of Indiana, and Mr. ACKERMAN) submitted the following resolution; which was referred to the Committee on Foreign Affairs
________________________________________

RESOLUTION

Calling on the President and the Secretary of State to oppose unequivocally any endorsement or further consideration of the ‘Report of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict’ in multilateral fora.

Whereas, on January 12, 2009, the United Nations Human Rights Council passed Resolution A/HRC/S-9/L.1, which authorized a ‘fact-finding mission’ regarding Israel’s conduct of Operation Cast Lead against violent militants in the Gaza Strip between December 27, 2008, and January 18, 2009;

Whereas the resolution pre-judged the outcome of its investigation, by one-sidedly mandating the ‘fact-finding mission’ to ‘investigate all violations of international human rights law and International Humanitarian Law by . . . Israel, against the Palestinian people . . . particularly in the occupied Gaza Strip, due to the current aggression’;

Whereas the mandate of the ‘fact-finding mission’ makes no mention of the relentless rocket and mortar attacks, which numbered in the thousands and spanned a period of eight years, by Hamas and other violent militant groups in Gaza against civilian targets in Israel, that necessitated Israel’s defensive measures;

Whereas the ‘fact-finding mission’ included a member who, before joining the mission, had already declared Israel guilty of committing atrocities in Operation Cast Lead by signing a public letter on January 11, 2009, published in the Sunday Times, that called Israel’s actions ‘war crimes’;

Whereas the mission’s flawed and biased mandate gave serious concern to many United Nations Human Rights Council Member States which refused to support it, including Bosnia and Herzegovina, Cameroon, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, the Republic of Korea, Slovakia, Slovenia, Switzerland, Ukraine, and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland;

Whereas the mission’s flawed and biased mandate troubled many distinguished individuals who refused invitations to head the mission;

Whereas, on September 15, 2009, the ‘United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict’ released its report;

Whereas the report repeatedly made sweeping and unsubstantiated determinations that the Israeli military had deliberately attacked civilians during Operation Cast Lead;

Whereas the authors of the report, in the body of the report itself, admit that ‘we did not deal with the issues . . . regarding the problems of conducting military operations in civilian areas and second-guessing decisions made by soldiers and their commanding officers ‘in the fog of war.’;

Whereas in the October 16th edition of the Jewish Daily Forward, Richard Goldstone, the head of the ‘United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict’, is quoted as saying, with respect to the mission’s evidence-collection methods, ‘If this was a court of law, there would have been nothing proven.’;

Whereas the report, in effect, denied the State of Israel the right to self-defense, and never noted the fact that Israel had the right to defend its citizens from the repeated violent attacks committed against civilian targets in southern Israel by Hamas and other Foreign Terrorist Organizations operating from Gaza;

Whereas the report largely ignored the culpability of the Government of Iran and the Government of Syria, both of whom sponsor Hamas and other Foreign Terrorist Organizations;

Whereas the report usually considered public statements made by Israeli officials not to be credible, while frequently giving uncritical credence to statements taken from what it called the ‘Gaza authorities’, i.e. the Gaza leadership of Hamas;

Whereas, notwithstanding a great body of evidence that Hamas and other violent Islamist groups committed war crimes by using civilians and civilian institutions, such as mosques, schools, and hospitals, as shields, the report repeatedly downplayed or cast doubt upon that claim;

Whereas in one notable instance, the report stated that it did not consider the admission of a Hamas official that Hamas often ‘created a human shield of women, children, the elderly and the mujahideen, against [the Israeli military]’ specifically to ‘constitute evidence that Hamas forced Palestinian civilians to shield military objectives against attack.’;

Whereas Hamas was able to significantly shape the findings of the investigation mission’s report by selecting and prescreening some of the witnesses and intimidating others, as the report acknowledges when it notes that ‘those interviewed in Gaza appeared reluctant to speak about the presence of or conduct of hostilities by the Palestinian armed groups . . . from a fear of reprisals’;

Whereas even though Israel is a vibrant democracy with a vigorous and free press, the report of the ‘fact-finding mission’ erroneously asserts that ‘actions of the Israeli government . . . have contributed significantly to a political climate in which dissent with the government and its actions . . . is not tolerated’;

Whereas the report recommended that the United Nations Human Rights Council endorse its recommendations, implement them, review their implementation, and refer the report to the United Nations Security Council, the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, and the United Nations General Assembly for further action;

Whereas the report recommended that the United Nations Security Council–

(1) require the Government of Israel to launch further investigations of its conduct during Operation Cast Lead and report back to the Security Council within six months;

(2) simultaneously appoint an ‘independent committee of experts’ to monitor and report on any domestic legal or other proceedings undertaken by the Government of Israel within that six-month period; and

(3) refer the case to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court after that six-month period;
Whereas the report recommended that the United Nations General Assembly consider further action on the report and establish an escrow fund, to be funded entirely by the State of Israel, to ‘pay adequate compensation to Palestinians who have suffered loss and damage’ during Operation Cast Lead;

Whereas the report ignored the issue of compensation to Israelis who have been killed or wounded, or suffered other loss and damage, as a result of years of past and continuing rocket and mortar attacks by Hamas and other violent militant groups in Gaza against civilian targets in southern Israel;

Whereas the report recommended ‘that States Parties to the Geneva Conventions of 1949 start criminal investigations [of Operation Cast Lead] in national courts, using universal jurisdiction’ and that ‘following investigation, alleged perpetrators should be arrested and prosecuted’;

Whereas the concept of ‘universal jurisdiction’ has frequently been used in attempts to detain, charge, and prosecute Israeli and United States officials and former officials in connection with unfounded allegations of war crimes and has often unfairly impeded the travel of those individuals;

Whereas the State of Israel, like many other free democracies, has an independent judicial system with a robust investigatory capacity and has already launched numerous investigations, many of which remain ongoing, of Operation Cast Lead and individual incidents therein;

Whereas Libya and others have indicated that they intend to further pursue consideration of the report and implementation of its recommendations by the United Nations Security Council, the United Nations General Assembly, the United Nations Human Rights Council, and other multilateral fora;

Whereas the President instructed the United States Mission to the United Nations and other international organizations in Geneva to vote against resolution A-HRC-S-12-1, which endorsed the report and condemned Israel, at the special session of the Human Rights Council held on October 15-16, 2009;

Whereas, on September 30, 2009, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton described the mandate for the report as ‘one-sided’;

Whereas, on September 17, 2009, Ambassador Susan Rice, United States Permanent Representative to the United Nations, expressed the United States’ ‘very serious concern with the mandate’ and noted that the United States views the mandate ‘as unbalanced, one-sided and basically unacceptable’;

Whereas the ‘Report of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict’ reflects the longstanding, historic bias at the United Nations against the democratic, Jewish State of Israel;

Whereas the ‘Report of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict’ is being exploited by Israel’s enemies to excuse the actions of violent militant groups and their state sponsors, and to justify isolation of and punitive measures against the democratic, Jewish State of Israel;

Whereas, on October 16, 2009, the United Nations Human Rights Council voted 25-6 (with 11 states abstaining and 5 not voting) to adopt resolution A-HRC-S-12-1, which endorsed the ‘Report of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict’ and condemned Israel, without mentioning Hamas, other such violent militant groups, or their state sponsors; and

Whereas efforts to delegitimize the democratic State of Israel and deny it the right to defend its citizens and its existence can be used to delegitimize other democracies and deny them the same right: Now, therefore, be it

Resolved, That the House of Representatives–

(1) considers the ‘Report of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict’ to be irredeemably biased and unworthy of further consideration or legitimacy;

(2) supports the Administration’s efforts to combat anti-Israel bias at the United Nations, its characterization of the ‘Report of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict’ as ‘unbalanced, one-sided and basically unacceptable’, and its opposition to the resolution on the report;

(3) calls on the President and the Secretary of State to continue to strongly and unequivocally oppose any endorsement of the ‘Report of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict’ in multilateral fora;

(4) calls on the President and the Secretary of State to strongly and unequivocally oppose any further consideration of the ‘Report of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict’ and any other measures stemming from this report in multilateral fora; and

(5) reaffirms its support for the democratic, Jewish State of Israel, for Israel’s security and right to self-defense, and, specifically, for Israel’s right to defend its citizens from violent militant groups and their state sponsors.

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