The ‘pressure-Israel’ machine kicks into high gear

By Stephen M. Flatow

For several weeks now, various editors, journalists and pundits have been busily manufacturing a mini-crisis, presumably in order to provoke tension between the American and Israeli governments.

The critics of Israel are so predictable, it’s almost funny.

Over the past two weeks, as if on cue, The New York Times published an op-ed urging steps to facilitate the creation of a Palestinian state; the RAND Corporation released a new study pushing for the creation of a Palestinian state; and the news media manufactured a mini-crisis between President Joe Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in order to put more pressure on Israel to—you guessed it—agree to the creation of a Palestinian state.

I say “as if on cue” and not “on cue” because there’s no evidence that any of this is the product of some kind of coordination or conspiracy. Rather, it’s just the same old alignment of pundits, partisans and self-appointed experts who champion Palestinian statehood and see the Biden administration as a vehicle to accomplish that goal.

This latest wave of pro-Palestinian pressure began on Feb. 10 with the RAND Corporation’s release of a new study, “Alternatives in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.”

RAND held meetings with 33 “focus groups,” consisting of a grand total of 270 Arabs and Jews in Israel and abroad, and then concluded from those discussions that creating a Palestinian state is “the most politically viable alternative” of the possible “solutions” to the Arab-Israeli conflict. 

Obviously, a bunch of “focus groups” don’t have any magical insight for solving a conflict that has raged for more than a century. But when you wrap a “study” in the prestigious name of a prominent and well-heeled institution such as the RAND Corporation, you get media attention, which in turn influences public opinion and maybe even political leaders. 

Two days after RAND’s announcement, the Times devoted a large portion of its op-ed page to an essay by Bernard Avishai and Sam Bahour calling on Israel to facilitate various economic steps that would lay the groundwork for the creation of a Palestinian state. Their plan includes “dividing sovereignty in Jerusalem,” by the way. 

Bahour is an American-Palestinian Arab businessman who lives in Ramallah, so it’s almost comical when he and his co-author complain about Palestinians wanting to be “free from military occupation,” as they put it. Bahour should look out his window. He won’t see any Israeli soldiers or Israeli military governor; they left in 1995. Bahour has been living under Palestinian military occupation—the Palestinian Authority, not Israeli military occupation—for the past 26 years. 

His co-author, Bernard Avishai, has penned The Tragedy of Zionism. According to CAMERA, Avishai’s writings about Israel are “hate-filled,” “full of malice” and “drip with loathing of Israel.” Of course, his identification line in the Times op-ed did not mention anything about him viewing Israel as a tragedy; Avishai is just “an American-Israeli professor and writer.” 

The same day that the Bahour-Avishai op-ed appeared, the White House, responding to media inquiries, publicly denied that Biden was “snubbing” Netanyahu by not including him among the first phone calls that the newly elected president made during his first month in office. But evidently, that denial meant nothing to The Los Angeles Times, which five days later ran this headline: “Biden’s Snub of Netanyahu Sets the Tone for More Evenhanded U.S.-Israel Relationship.” 

For several weeks now, various editors, journalists and pundits have been busily manufacturing a mini-crisis over the non-snub, presumably in order to provoke tension between the American and Israeli governments. The critics don’t want the new U.S. administration getting too friendly with the Israelis. They want Biden to be pressuring Israel for that Palestinian state. 

One of those quoted in the various news articles about the non-snub was Aaron Miller, a longtime State Department Arabist who worked hard to get several previous administrations to support Palestinian demands. He seems anxious to push Biden down a similar path. 

In an op-ed on CNN.com last week, Miller trotted out an 11-year-old incident to remind everyone of a previous time Biden got mad at Israel—from which Miller no doubt derives encouragement that maybe Biden can be turned against the Israelis again. 

According to Miller, Biden “was deeply embarrassed by Israel’s 2010 announcement of major expansion of housing units in East Jerusalem.” Almost everything in that sentence is inaccurate. It wasn’t “Israel’s announcement”; it was a routine publication, by the office of Jerusalem’s mayor, of an administrative step. It wasn’t a “major expansion of housing units”; it was a routine approval in the bureaucratic process leading to the eventual construction of housing units. And it wasn’t in “East Jerusalem.” It was in the neighborhood of Ramat Shlomo in northern Jerusalem. 

I’ll give Miller the benefit of the doubt and assume that he is simply ignorant of the geography—which, I admit, is pretty surprising for somebody who was one of the U.S. State Department’s Arab-Israeli “experts” for more than two decades. 

But the alternative would be worse. The alternative explanation would be that Miller knows full well it’s not in “East Jerusalem,” yet he deliberately used that term in order to make it seem as if the apartments were built in Arab territory. 

Whether the result of ignorance, self-interest or old-fashioned bias, the self-proclaimed experts are cranking up their pressure-Israel propaganda machine into high gear. Friends of Israel need to respond—and quickly.

 Stephen M. Flatow is a vice president of the Religious Zionists of America, an attorney in New Jersey and the father of Alisa Flatow, who was murdered in an Iranian-sponsored Palestinian terrorist attack in 1995. He is the author of “A Father’s Story: My Fight for Justice Against Iranian Terror.”

This column and others by the author may be read at jns.org.

Biden urges democracy abroad, but will it apply to Palestinians?

Biden urges democracy abroad, but will it apply to Palestinians? 

His strong words about human rights were welcome. Now we’ll see if he means them when it comes to one of the main offenders.

My latest column on jns.org.

In a stirring speech last week, U.S. President Joe Biden spoke eloquently of America’s commitment to fostering democracy and civil rights around the world. I wonder if any leaders of the Palestinian Authority were listening.

P.A. leaders have been practically giddy over the results of America’s presidential election. And with good reason, it seemed. Spokespeople for the Biden administration are already vowing to resume its financial aid and restore various other aspects of U.S.-P.A. relations.

But Biden’s Feb. 4 remarks at the U.S. State Department articulated principles which—if the new president and his administration are serious—will create a serious problem in relations between the United States and the Palestinian Arabs.

Former Pres. Obama, Biden and Abbas
Official White House Photo 2009

The problem is that America reveres democracy, while the P.A.  practices authoritarianism. For decades, successive U.S. administrations have shied away from confronting this issue. But Biden said that under his leadership, America will “meet this new moment of advancing authoritarianism.” It’s about time.

He identified “America’s most cherished democratic values” as these five principles: “defending freedom, championing opportunity, upholding universal rights, respecting the rule of law and treating every person with dignity.”

The president didn’t just praise those concepts as admirable. He called them “our inexhaustible strength” and “the grounding wire of our global policy—our global power.”

If Biden really meant what he said, then the P.A. is going to either completely transform itself or face a major clash with the Biden administration.

The P.A. does not “defend freedom.” It jails its critics. Just ask Hussam Khader, a member of the Palestinian Legislative Council. He was recently jailed for the “crime” of remarking on Facebook that P.A. dictator Mahmoud Abbas was wrong to call striking Palestinian physicians “despicable.”

The P.A. does not “champion opportunity.” According to Human Rights Watch, opportunity exists only for favored groups. The P.A.’s laws “discriminate against women,” the P.A. has “no comprehensive domestic violence law to prevent abuse and protect survivors,” and the LGBT group “Al-Qaws for Sexual and Gender Diversity” has been banned.

The P.A. does not “uphold universal rights.” Surely, the right of a legislator to express her opinion is a universal right. Yet P.A. council member Najat Abu Baker spent 17 days hiding in the parliament building when the police demanded that she surrender herself to be charged with the crime of publicly criticizing Abbas for not paying teachers adequately.

The P.A. does not “respect the rule of law.” Well, to be precise—it only respects the draconian laws that it decrees. Like the outrageous “Cyber Crime Law” of 2017, mandating prison sentences and fines for anyone who establishes a website that, in the P.A.’s view, could “undermine the safety of the state or its internal or external security.”

The P.A. does not “treat every person with dignity.” According to Amnesty International, “torture and other ill-treatment of detainees” is “committed with impunity” by the P.A. police.

 In his remarks last week, Biden cited two foreign governments whose behavior his administration repudiates: Burma (Myanmar) and Russia. He demanded the “restoration of democracy” in Burma and the “immediate release” of jailed Russian dissident Alexei Navalny.

Abbas must have cringed when he heard those words. After all, he is now in the 16th year of his four-term as chairman of the P.A. Burma’s rulers have a long way to go before they approach Abbas’s record. And as for poor Alexei Navalny—well, there are plenty like him rotting in P.A. prisons.

Biden’s strong words about democracy and human rights were welcome. Now we’ll see if he means them when it comes to one of the main offenders.

 

The above column and others may be found here.

Stephen M. Flatow is a vice president of the Religious Zionists of America, an attorney in New Jersey and the father of Alisa Flatow, who was murdered in an Iranian-sponsored Palestinian terrorist attack in 1995. He is the author of, “A Father’s Story: My Fight for Justice Against Iranian Terror.”

Joe Biden returns to immoral equivalency

 My column- 

Biden returns to immoral equivalency

Halting incitement and stopping policies that incentivize terrorism are not “good ideas” or “confidence-building measures.” They are the P.A.’s signed, sworn obligations.

 It took less than a week for the Biden administration to return to the Obama-Biden policy of moral equivalency, or what I prefer to call immoral equivalency—the policy of viewing Israel and the Palestinian Authority, and their respective actions, as being on the same moral plane.

On Jan. 26—just six days after the inauguration—U.S. President Joe Biden’s acting representative at the United Nations, Deputy Ambassador Richard Mills, announced that the administration supports creating a Palestinian state. In practical terms, that means making Israel nine miles wide again, as it was before 1967.

In order to facilitate that goal, Mills said, the United States is “urging” Israel and the Palestinian Authority “to avoid unilateral steps” that would make the creation of a Palestinian state “more difficult.” Those steps include “settlement activity,” “demolitions,” “incitement to violence” and “providing compensation for individuals imprisoned for acts of terrorism.”

Thus, the Biden administration is putting two Israeli actions that are legal, peaceful and permitted by the Oslo Accords in the same category as two P.A. policies that are illegal, violent and prohibited by the Oslo Accords. That’s outrageous.

There is nothing in the Oslo Accords that prevents the creation of Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria. It happens that since 1992 (prior to Oslo), the consistent policy of successive Israeli governments has been to refrain from authorizing the establishment of new communities there. But that’s a matter of choice, not an Oslo obligation.

There is also nothing in the Oslo agreements that prohibits construction within existing Jewish communities in the territories, which is probably what the Biden administration means by the term “settlement activity.” Building apartments, or anything else, there is legal and peaceful. It does not deprive Arabs of their homes. It does not interfere with the possibility of peace. All it does is continue normal life in those communities.

And there is nothing in the Oslo Accords that prevents Israel from continuing its longstanding policy—fully authorized by Israel’s left-leaning High Court—of dismantling the homes of terrorists.

By contrast, what Mills called “incitement to violence” and paying “compensation” to imprisoned terrorists—that is, incentivizing terrorism—are prohibited by the many anti-terrorism provisions in the Oslo Accords.

I’ll cite just a few. These come from the September 1995 agreement known as Oslo II.

• Article XV, paragraph 1 says that the P.A. must “prevent acts of terrorism” and “take legal measures against offenders.” Obviously, inciting and incentivizing acts of terrorism violates that provision, and also violate these similar provisions:
• Annex 1, Article II, Paragraph 1(b): “The Palestinian police will act systematically against all expressions of violence and terror.”
• Annex 1, Article II, Paragraph 2: The P.A. must “immediately and effectively respond to the occurrence of anticipated occurrence of an act of terrorism, violence or incitement and shall take all necessary measures to prevent such an occurrence.”
• Annex 1, Article II, Paragraph 3(b): The P.A. must “actively prevent incitement to violence.”
• Annex 1, Article II, Paragraph 1(c): The P.A. must “apprehend, investigate and prosecute perpetrators and all other persons directly or indirectly involved in acts of terrorism, violence and incitement.”

There are more passages like these, but you get the idea.

Halting incitement and stopping policies that incentivize terrorism are not “good ideas” or “confidence-building measures.” They are the P.A.’s signed, sworn obligations. The Biden administration cannot just hope that the P.A. fulfills them; it has to insist that they do. Because otherwise, no treaty or agreement ever signed by the P.A. will ever have any value.

And that goes to the heart of the problem with the Biden administration’s emerging policy towards Israel and the P.A.: It appears to be based on ideology, not behavior. Biden’s Mideast advisers are shaping an approach based on ideological predilections—what they believe an ideal peace settlement would look like, what they believe would be appropriate borders, what they believe is fair or reasonable. It’s all based on belief—not on how the P.A. has actually behaved since the signing of the Oslo accords in 1993.

A realistic Mideast policy would look to what happened between 1993 and 2020 in order to gauge expectations for the years ahead. See what the P.A. has done in order to understand what it is likely to do in the future. See whether it has fulfilled its Oslo obligations before asking Israel to make more concessions in exchange for more promises.

That would be a sensible U.S. policy. Right now, the Biden administration is moving in exactly the opposite direction.

Stephen M. Flatow

Stephen M. Flatow is a vice president of the Religious Zionists of America, an attorney in New Jersey and the father of Alisa Flatow, who was murdered in an Iranian-sponsored Palestinian terrorist attack in 1995. He is the author of “A Father’s Story: My Fight for Justice Against Iranian Terror.”

This column may be read on JNS.ORG.

#Israel #moralequivalency #Osloaccords #PalestinianAuthority #violence # terror