Terror pays, terrorists don't pay; especially if they are Palestinian

 

Abbas cheers shooting of Americans (but gets a big check from U.S. anyway)

The Office for Justice for US Overseas Terror Victims has never arrested a Palestinian terrorist involved in attacks on Americans.

By Stephen M. Flatow

As five Americans and three Israelis lie wounded in a Jerusalem hospital, some of them fighting for their lives, the official web site of Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas is praising the terrorist who shot them.

Yes, the same Abbas who will be receiving more than $500 million in aid from the Biden administration this year. Most of the money will be channeled through third parties, but it’s all fungible—it covers bills that Abbas and the PA would have to pay if the U.S. wasn’t paying them.

Abbas is chairman of both the PA and Fatah, which is the largest faction of the PA. Abbas was a leader of Fatah for many years under Yasir Arafat, before succeeding him as chairman.

Here is what Abbas’s official Fatah website had to say about the shooting attack on the Americans and Israelis in Jerusalem:

“Praise to the one whose rifle only speaks against his enemy. Long live our people’s unity and long live the free hero. Praise to the rifle muzzles, our people will fight the occupation with all kinds of resistance.” (Translation courtesy of Palestinian Media Watch)

According to my data base, at least 146 American citizens have been murdered by Palestinian Arab terrorists since the 1968. The international community has largely forgotten them.

Read the full column at Israel National News.

Munich terror - title to face the truth about the attack

 

Mahmoud Abbas and the Munich massacre: Time to face the truth

“Black September” was a fiction—so says the U.S. State Department.

The families of the Israeli athletes massacred at the 1972 Munich Olympics have announced a boycott of an upcoming 50th-anniversary commemoration in Germany. They’re protesting the inadequate level of compensation provided by the German government, and I fully support their position.

German plaque commemorating the Munich Massacre victims

But let’s not forget that one of the masterminds of the massacre heads a regime that is currently receiving hundreds of millions of dollars in direct and indirect aid each year from the United States, Germany and numerous other countries.

I am referring to Mahmoud Abbas, the chairman of both the Palestinian Authority and its main faction, Fatah.

The autobiography of the late Mohammed Oudeh, better known as Abu Daoud, named Abbas as one of the three senior officials of Fatah who assisted Daoud in planning the Munich massacre.

Officially, the Munich attack was carried out by the “Black September” group that pretended to be independent of Fatah.

But the myth of an “independent” Black September was shattered many years ago with the declassifying of a telegram sent by the U.S. State Department to American embassies around the world on March 13, 1973.

Read the full column at JNS.ORG

Rabbi Jill Jacobs calls Mahmoud Abbas an antisemite. Oops.

 

Jewish left leader accidentally calls Palestinian Authority chief an anti-Semite

I hope she will confront the powerful implications of her own words.

 By Stephen M. Flatow

 (February 14, 2022 / JNS) Jewish left-wing critics of Israel say the darnedest things—sometimes by accident.

Last week, Rabbi Jill Jacobs—a prominent and oft-quoted figure on the American Jewish left—declared that “denying Jewish history” is anti-Semitic. She probably didn’t realize that she was thereby declaring Mahmoud Abbas, the leader of the Palestinian Authority, to be an anti-Semite. But she said it, and she was right, and it’s too late to take it back.

Jacobs is the longtime CEO of “T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights,” which is the U.S. arm of an extreme-left Israeli group called Rabbis for Human Rights. It’s a small organization, but it garners a lot of attention because many journalists sympathize with its pro-Palestinian positions. Thus, Jacobs is frequently quoted in the news media and invited to appear on radio and television programs.

Last week, for example, Jacobs was quoted by The Washington Post in its article about the Senate hearing concerning the nomination of Holocaust historian and Emory University professor Deborah Lipstadt as U.S. envoy for combating anti-Semitism. Jacobs has no particular connection to Lipstadt and no particular expertise on anti-Semitism; nonetheless, the Post chose to present her as a Jewish leader commenting on the issue.

Now here’s where things got interesting.

Jacobs made a few general, unremarkable statements about examples of anti-Semitism. One of her examples was “denying Jewish history.” And that’s obviously true.

But Jacobs, who fervently supports the Palestinian statehood cause, does not seem to have considered the implications of her statement with regard to the man who would become the head of the Palestinian state that she wants to see established in Judea and Samaria, and the Old City of Jerusalem.

I’m talking about the fact that Abbas is one of the most outspoken deniers of Jewish history in the world today. He has made so many statements denying Jewish history that they could fill a book—and, in fact, they have; he is the author of an entire book claiming that the Nazis killed only 1 million Jews and accusing Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, of collaborating with the Nazis. But for now, I’m going to cite just two of his speeches because they are particularly revealing.

On Jan. 14, 2018, Abbas addressed the Palestinian Central Council at P.A. headquarters in Ramallah. A few excerpts from his lie-filled tirade:

— “Israel … is a colonial project that has nothing to do with Judaism.”

— It was not the British White Paper or mass murder by the Nazis that kept Jews from going to Palestine, but rather, “the Jews did not want to emigrate, even with murder and slaughter.”

— Jews in Yemen and Iraq “didn’t want to come” to Israel, but Ben-Gurion forced them to by collaborating with Iraqi officials “to take away the citizenship of Jews and force them to emigrate.”

— When Theodor Herzl visited Palestine, he said: “We must wipe out the Palestinians from Palestine so that Palestine will be a land without a people for a people without a land.”

On April 20, 2018, Abbas addressed the legislature of the Palestine Liberation Organization, which he chairs. Here are a few of the slurs, lies and assorted absurdities that he mouthed:

— The Jews in Europe provoked the Holocaust because of their “social function” as money-lenders.

— Jews are to blame for communism because Josef Stalin was a secret Jew.

— Today’s Jews are not authentically Jewish, but are actually descendants of the Khazars, a medieval Turkish tribe, “which means they are not Semitic and have no relation to Semitism and have nothing to do with the prophets Abraham or Jacob.”

— There were never any pogroms in Arab countries, as proven by the fact “that there were Jews in Arab countries. Why wasn’t there ever one incident against Jews because they’re Jews? Not even once … in over 1,400 years.”

Abbas’s denials of Jewish history were so egregious that even some of Jacobs’s closest allies on the American Jewish left were compelled to condemn him. Americans for Peace Now charged that Abbas made “vile anti-Semitic statements.” J Street acknowledged that Abbas’s address “featured absurd anti-Semitic tropes and deeply offensive comments on the history of the Jewish people and Israel.”

Even The New York Times, despite its strong pro-Palestinian leanings, reported that Abbas’s remarks were “laced with deeply anti-Semitic tropes.” And Nickolay Mladenov, the U.N. special coordinator for the Middle East, said Abbas was “perpetuating conspiracy theories that fuel anti-Semitism.”

All of which creates a bit of a problem for Rabbi Jill Jacobs and her colleagues at T’ruah.

According to her own definition, the P.A. boss is an anti-Semite. Which means that she will now either drop her call for a Palestinian state—since, of course, it’s crazy to give a sovereign state to a rabid anti-Semite; or she will argue that even though Abbas is an anti-Semite, he should be given a sovereign state just a few miles from Israel’s major cities—which, of course, is crazy since it would mean putting millions of lives in direct danger.

I suppose the rabbi may look for the easy way out—that is, to hope that nobody asks her that question so she can go on pursuing her political agenda. But I hope she will choose a different path; I hope she will choose to be intellectually honest and confront the powerful implications of her own words.

Stephen M. Flatow is 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 first appeared on 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.”

Yoram Hazony - Trump in the Middle East: Note Who Curses America, and Who Blesses It - National Review

Hazony says -

The administration’s foreign policy is a welcome break from the preexisting Washington consensus.

He's right!  Some excerpts-

President Donald Trump has promised that in the Middle East under his presidency, “there are many things that can happen now that would never have happened before.” Two speeches of the last ten days offer dramatic confirmation of the emerging reconfiguration of America’s relationship with Israel and the Middle East under his leadership. 

In a two-hour speech before the Council of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) last week, Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority, denounced the British, Dutch, French, and Americans for having conspired, ever since the 1650s, to create a Jewish colonial outpost that would “erase the Palestinians from Palestine.” As Abbas tells it, all this reached a climax on the eve of World War I, when the West realized that it was on the verge of collapse and that the Islamic world was “poised to inherit European civilization.” To put an end to this threat, the Western nations went about carving up the Muslim world so that it would be forever “divided, backward, and engulfed in infighting.” As for the United States, it has been “playing games” of this sort ever since then, importing, for example, the disastrous Arab Spring into Middle East.

More - 

But in the ensuing 30 years of talk, the only major agreements signed have been those the PLO leadership could find a way to fit into its narrative: Agreements such as the 1993 Oslo Accords, which could be portrayed as inflicting a bitter defeat on Israel and the West — and as a step on the road to ultimate triumph.

President Trump, Vice President Pence, and United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley are pioneering an alternative policy, which can be summed up in Haley’s words: “We’re not going to pay to be abused.” If players like the PLO, North Korea, Pakistan, and Iran (hopefully, Turkey gets added to this list soon) want to cultivate a civilizational hatred of America, double-talking while they give aid to global terrorism and conjure diplomatic scandals at the U.N. — well, then they don’t get to be allies. They don’t get funded. They don’t get grants of land, authority, and prestige. Those things will be reserved for actual allies.

For long decades, Washington has crafted policies based on the tacit assumption that America needs the PLO if it is to bring peace to the Middle East. In its effort to “balance” the demands of this extremist organization against Israel’s concerns, American policy inflated the PLO’s importance, and it learned to tolerate and even embrace an organization whose views have always been profoundly anti-Western, not to mention anti-Semitic.

Read the full article - National Review

France's push for an international peace conference would be a disaster for Israel

Yitzhak Rabin would have opposed it, too.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has rejected France’s call for an international conference to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But before anyone concludes that only “right-wingers” oppose such a conference, it’s worth recalling that one of the most outspoken critics of the conference idea was Yitzhak Rabin.

The year was 1985, and Rabin was Israel’s minister of defense. Arab leaders had been pushing for the convening of an international peace conference. Rabin and other Israeli leaders were insisting on direct Arab-Israeli negotiations.

The Reagan administration had always supported Israel’s position. But in the spring of 1985, there were media reports that Secretary of State George Shultz was starting to warm up to the idea of an international conference. A worried Rabin flew to the United States for top-level discussions.

Upon his arrival in the U.S., Rabin “made it clear he was concerned about Washington’s apparent weakening on the question of an international conference on the Middle East,” according to AIPAC’s weekly newsletter, Near East Report.
“If they are ready to make peace, let’s negotiate [directly],” Rabin was quoted as saying. “If someone wants to undermine any hope of peace, an international conference and bringing in the Syrians is the best way.”

Rabin said that in his meetings with U.S. officials, “I heard about the ‘international umbrella.’ ” That was a phrase that some administration officials had begun using to try to sugarcoat the bitter pill. The idea was that if the conference took place under the “umbrella” of international auspices, it would somehow increase the chances of achieving peace.

Rabin disagreed. “Whenever anyone mentions umbrella, it reminds me of Chamberlain and Munich,” he declared.

Rabin’s statements were pretty remarkable, when you think about it. He had formerly served as Israel’s ambassador in Washington, so he was keenly sensitive to the need not to anger U.S. officials. Yet he publicly leaked the fact that they were using that deceptive “international umbrella” term. Not only did he leak it, he openly criticized it, right there in Washington.

And he didn’t just criticize it, he used the analogy of Chamberlain selling out to Hitler at Munich. For Rabin to stand in Washington and blast the U.S. administration, even invoking a Nazi analogy, was nothing less than astonishing. It really showed what a terrible threat an international conference (or “umbrella”) poses to Israel.

Such a conference, if held today, would consist of a dozen or more Arab and European countries ganging up on Israel and demanding unilateral concessions to the Palestinians. And given reports that the Obama administration wants to see “progress” on this front before the president leaves office, one must assume the U.S. would side with the Arabs and Europeans.

The purpose of the conference would not be to achieve a genuine peace. How do we know? Because the sponsor, France, already declared earlier this year that if the conference failed to produce a Palestinian state, the French would unilaterally recognize one. That’s the goal – not peace, but a Palestinian state, as quickly as possible, no matter the risks to Israel. Which is why the Palestinian Authority’s inciter-in-chief, Mahmoud Abbas, is energetically supporting the conference idea.

During the past year, France has suffered the worst terrorist attacks in the world since 9/11. One would think the French would understand the folly of appeasing Islamic terrorists and oppose creating what would be an overwhelmingly Muslim Palestinian terrorist state. Yet just the opposite has happened.

Why? Because the French are afraid. They are afraid of angering the Muslim world, afraid of more Muslim terrorism. The French believe that since they are defending themselves against ISIS – French planes are bombing Muslim terrorists in Syria and the French police have been shutting down pro-terror mosques – they have to prove they champion Muslim causes. Supporting Palestinian statehood is France’s way of trying to appease the Muslim world.


The international conference proposal is just another way of throwing Israel under the bus. No wonder Israelis – Likud or Labor, right or left – aren’t too excited about that prospect.

A version of this post appears in the Jewish Press.

U.S. response to Palestinian terror attack is disappointing

U.S. response to Jerusalem synagogue attack disappoints

By Stephen M. Flatow/JNS.org

The scenario has been repeated more times than I can remember: Palestinian terrorists murder Israelis. The Obama administration condemns the attack. And that’s it. No change in U.S. policy, no penalties or consequences for those who encourage and praise the killers. The Palestinians are, quite literally, getting away with murder.

Secretary of State John Kerry condemned the Nov. 18 slaughter of four Jews in a synagogue in Jerusalem’s Har Nof neighborhood. He even acknowledged that it was “a pure result of incitement, of calls for days of rage” by the Palestinian leadership. Indeed it was. It’s too bad it took a massacre to get Secretary Kerry to admit that. If only he had spoken out against Palestinian incitement weeks or months ago.

But “speaking out” is not enough. Bland verbal condemnations of incitement don’t make any difference. Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas and has colleagues don’t take America’s words seriously. There have to be actions. The Palestinian leaders need to see that there will be real consequences for their incitement.

Secretary Kerry said that Palestinian leaders “must begin to take serious steps to restrain any kind of incitement that comes from their language, from other people’s language, and exhibit the kind of leadership that is necessary to put this region on a different path.”

But what if they don’t?  What’s he going to do about it?

Back in 1998, President Bill Clinton’s administration established a Trilateral Committee on Incitement. (That’s what Israel received in exchange for agreeing to the Wye River Memorandum.) But the committee turned out to be a farce. The Israeli members of the committee would complain about Palestinian leaders making inciting statements, and the Palestinians would respond by pointing to some individual Israeli newspaper columnist who said something strongly critical of the Palestinians, and they would say that, too, was incitement.

The problem was that the Clinton administration refused to define “incitement.” It refused to acknowledge the difference between what a Palestinian official said and what an individual Israeli pundit said. The U.S. preferred to play the “both sides are guilty” game. It was like putting Holocaust survivors and Holocaust deniers in a room together and declaring that each side has its own equally valid perspective.

President Obama’s response to the Har Nof massacre took the same “both sides” approach. He declared, “At this sensitive moment in Jerusalem, it is all the more important for Israeli and Palestinian leaders and ordinary citizens to work cooperatively together to lower tensions, reject violence, and seek a path forward towards peace.”

Calling on “Israeli and Palestinian leaders” to “lower tensions and reject violence” is saying that they are both currently not doing enough to lower tensions or reject violence. Both sides are to blame. Both sides need to act. This kind of moral equivalency is false and outrageous. Israel has done everything possible to lower tensions. Israel is the victim. The Palestinians are the aggressors. But President Obama refuses to acknowledge that simple truth.

If the Obama administration is really interested in lowering tensions and getting the Palestinians to reject violence, there is plenty it can do. Here are a few first steps:

—Revive the Trilateral Commission on Incitement, but start by defining incitement, and then impose real penalties on the inciters.

—The PA has a policy of paying salaries to Palestinian terrorists who are imprisoned by Israel. Whatever they pay the prisoners should be deducted from America’s $500-million annual aid to the PA. The PA also pays the families of terrorists who are killed in action--meaning that the families of the Jamal cousins, who carried out the Har Nof massacre, are about to receive large checks from the PA. Deduct that from the U.S. aid package, too.

—The Har Nof attack was perpetrated by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. It’s the second-largest faction in the PLO, of which Abbas is chairman. The U.S. should demand that Abbas expel the PFLP from the PLO. If he refuses, declare him to be partially responsible for the Har Nof attack, and put him on the “U.S. Watch List,” which prohibits terrorists from entering the U.S.

—There is a park in Ramallah, Mahmoud Abbas’s capital, that is named after Dalal Mughrabi, leader of the Palestinian terror squad that murdered 38 Israelis in a 1978 attack, including the niece of U.S. Senator Abraham Ribicoff. Every Palestinian child who walks those streets gets the message—he sees who is regarded as a hero, who he is supposed to emulate. The U.S. should demand that Mughrabi’s name be removed. And if Abbas refuses, there need to be consequences.

I am flying to Israel this week with a heavy heart. I am filled with grief for the families of the latest terror victims. I am worried about my children who live there and have to go to work every morning, not knowing if they will return home that night. And I am anguished by the thought that my own government could do so much to combat Palestinian terrorism—and yet chooses to do next to nothing.

Stephen M. Flatow is a New Jersey attorney whose daughter Alisa was murdered in a 1995 bus bombing by the Palestinian terrorist group Islamic Jihad.

Lake Failure - an editorial from The New York Sun

We tend to not remember that The New  York Sun remains on the Internet. This editorial was posted on September 24, 2011 in response to the Palestinian effort to have the United Nations to declare a state of Palestine.

(For the young, Lake Failure is a parody on the name of the community in the suburbs of New York City that hosted the United Nations at the end of World War II.)

Call it Lake Failure — and what a bitter sea it is. This was reflected in the crabbed remarks of the president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas. After delivering his request for the recognition of a Palestinian Arab state, he treated the world to yet another speech of rejection of Israel. He’d already, at a meeting Friday of 200 representatives of the Palestinian Arab community in America, made it clear that the Palestinian Arabs would never recognize a Jewish state. “They talk to us about the Jewish state, but I respond to them with a final answer: We shall not recognize a Jewish state,” Mr. Abbas was quoted by ynetnews.com as telling the meeting.

You can read the full editorial here, Lake Failure.  What do you think?

stephen flatow alisa

Defeat the So-called Unilateral Declaration of Independence

SPEAK OUT IN OPPOSITION TO THE PALESTINIAN

UNILATERAL DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE.

SIGN THE PETITION THAT WILL BE SENT TO THE UN.

On September 20, the Palestinians are going to the United Nations to pursue unilateral statehood recognition. Israel does not oppose a Palestinian state, only its unilateral declaration. The Israeli government is dedicated to mutually negotiated resolutions that result in two states for two peoples, living side by side in peace and security. Both the United States and Israel believe that unilateral action will not lead to peace, but will instead complicate any peace process and possibly lead to violence.

• A UN resolution will not resolve the core issues - including borders, Jerusalem, the status of refugees, or the sharing of water.

• The Palestinian Authority recently signed an agreement with Hamas, a terrorist organization that calls for the destruction of Israel and continues to fire rockets into Israeli towns and schoolyards.

• A unilateral declaration of Palestinian statehood is counter to all internationally accepted frameworks for Mideast peace, which all call for a mutually negotiated and agreed upon resolution of the conflict and prohibit unilateral action by either side.

Mahmoud Abbas must sit down at the negotiating table instead of standing up at the UN.

Sign the Petition - Now

Well, that's what I think.


stephen flatow alisa udi

From JPost.com - Analysis: PA cabinet changes show Abbas is freaking out

The "freaking out" reference is from the article headline; I didn't make it up.

In any event, could the chickens be coming home to roost for Mr. Abbas, aka Abu Mazen, after all these years? Abbas, I was personally told by the late Yitzhak Rabin, was a terrorist, and he, therefore, most likely has the penchant as his comrade in arms Arafat had for pocketing cash intended for Palestinians on the street, and working to keep power rather than democratically share it.

The uproar in Tunisia and Egypt may hit the streets of Ramallah, then what? An Islamist government takeover (read here Hamas) or will the moderates in Palestinian society gain a voice they have been forced to suppress for so many years?

Read the full JPost.com article - Analysis: PA cabinet changes show Abbas is freaking out

A fair voice in the Middle East?

When it comes to Middle East politics we are all familiar with the claims made about Israel-- it's an apartheid state, it's a colonizer, and on and on. So, it raises the question, can Israel be properly portrayed in the media?

There is a columnist that we've been reading for years, Israeli Arab journalist Khaled Abu Toameh, who seems to defy the stereotype of Middle East report.

In mid-November Abu Toameh was interviewed by Arsen Ostrovsky who posted what follows on FrumForum. I recommend reading it in full. If you want to read it where originally posted, go here.

Abu Toameh: What the Western Media Misses


A few days ago, I was fortunate to attend a talk by Israeli Arab journalist Khaled Abu Toameh in Jerusalem.

Toameh gave an incredibly wide ranging talk about the peace process, the double standards rife in the West and the media when it comes to coverage of the Middle East and his perspective as a Muslim Arab of Palestinian descent living in Israel (and you thought you had identity issues!).

Toameh has been working as a journalist for almost 30 years now, covering Palestinian affairs, focusing predominantly on the West Bank and Gaza, including for the Palestinian press under the PLO and for various international media outlets in the US and Europe. He is currently at the Jerusalem Post writing on Palestinian issues. Toameh is also an Israeli citizen living in Jerusalem. In other words, he is aptly qualified to comment on the issues of his discussion.

However, if you expected Toameh to jump on the anti-Israel bandwagon with the familiar cries that Israel is an un-democratic apartheid state responsible for all that is wrong including the bubonic plague or to have a single-minded focus on the occupation, you would have been sorely disappointed.

Instead, he spoke openly, courageously and in his words, said it “as it is”. Asked what he thought was the essence of the conflict, Toameh said it was not about money or even settlements, as many so called pundits often imply, as a precursor to blaming Israel. Rather, his answer was very simple: “This conflict is about Israel’s very existence in this part of the world.”

But before you get any conclusions, Toameh is not a card carrying Zionist or as somebody once asked him “when did you get on the Israel lobby payroll”. In his own words, he says:
I’m not pro-Israel, I’m not pro-Palestinian and I’m not pro-American. But as a journalist, I’m pro the facts and pro the truth.

Here are some of Toameh’s illuminating comments:

I asked Toameh how, as an Arab Muslim Israeli, he responds to accusations that Israel is an apartheid state.

His response:

Israel is not an apartheid state. But there are problems and some discrimination with the Arab minority inside Israel. If Israel were an apartheid state, I, for example, would not be allowed to work for a Jewish newspaper or live in a Jewish neighborhood or own a home. The real apartheid is in Lebanon, where there is a law that bans Palestinians from working in over 50 professions. Can you imagine if the Knesset passed a law banning Arabs from working even in one profession? The real apartheid is also in many Arab and Muslim nations, like Kuwait, where my Palestinian uncle, who has been living there for 35 years is banned from buying a house. The law of Israel does not distinguish between a Jew and an Arab.

As for the uniqueness of the Israeli media in the middle East, Toameh added:

Israel is a free and open country with a democracy, that respects the freedom of the media. You can basically write any anti-Israel story and still walk in downtown Jerusalem or Tel Aviv without having to worry about your safety. Anyone can be a journalist in Israel.

Toameh says he finds it ironic that as an Arab Muslim living in this part of the world, the only place he can express himself freely is in a ‘Jewish newspaper’, noting that:

We don’t have a free media in the Palestinian area, we didn’t have one when I was working there in the late 70’s and early 80’s, we didn’t have one when the PLO came here after the signing of the Oslo accords and we still don’t have one under Fatah and Hamas.

But what about the media’s need for an anti-Israeli angle on stories? Toameh says that when he tried to alert many of his foreign colleagues that Palestinians were dying because of an internal power struggle or gross corruption by Arafat and the Palestinian Authority, their reflex response was:

Where’s the anti-Israel angle to the story? Give us an anti-occupation story. Make our lives much easier. An Arab killing an Arab, that’s not a story for us.

Toameh notes that the same foreign journalists would then ask him: “are you on the payroll of the Israel lobby?” Do they [the Jews] pay you to say these things against Arafat and the PLO?’ Toameh’s response to them:

what do the Jews have to do with this? I’m telling you what the Palestinians are saying about there being corruption in the Palestinian Authority. I’m even telling you that the PA is saying that the PA is corrupt.

It is a sad reflection on the state of society, and in particular, the media industry, that not only are they not sufficiently concerned or outraged at the death of Arabs by Arabs (which coincidentally has claimed many more lives than the Israel – Palestinian conflict), but that they will only muster even an iota of concern if they can put in an ‘anti-Israel’ angle.

On the proposed loyalty oath as well, Toameh offered a pragmatic response: “I have no problem with it because it applies equally to both Jews and non-Jews alike.”

One of the biggest and most intractable sticking points has consistently been the Palestinian demand for a right of return, which Israel will not agree to because it would mean the death knell of Israel as a Jewish state.

However, Toameh offers a very simple and pragmatic three stage solution, where the Palestinian refugees could:

1. Go to the future Palestinian state;

2. Resettle elsewhere, including other Arab states; and

3. Be offered compensation.

Most tellingly though, and in a statement seldom ever heard from Arabs (or the West), Toameh then asked: “and what about Jewish refugees that were forced to flee Arab nations”, suggesting that the issue of Jewish refugees must also be part of any future solution.

Focusing on the problem from Arab dictatorships and their insistence on inciting their people against Israel, Toameh says that we have a problem in the West in failing to believe what people tell us.

If Hamas say they want to destroy you, you have no reason not to believe them. And if Ahmadinejad says he wants to destroy you, there’s no need to start analysing what he means by that. Stop fooling ourselves and if anyone thinks that Hamas will ever recognise Israel’s right to exist, you’re also living in an illusion. Take it from their mouth directly…the PLO however is different – they will tell you one thing in English and then another in Arabic.

On the subject of Arab dictatorship, Toameh says:

Arab dictators survive by constantly blaming the misery of their people on Jews and the West and never accepting responsibility for anything. And by inciting against Israel and the West, you divert attention from problems at home. Why? Because you always need to make sure that your people are busy hating someone else. If they’re not hating Israel and the West, they might wake up one day and come to you, and God forbid, demand reform and democracy.

The crux of the message is:

If you keep inciting your people, then they ask ‘well, why are we then making peace with the Jews?’ We should be killing them as Hamas is saying’.

So what does Toameh think about Mahmoud Abbas, the PA President?

Abbas is corrupt, discredited, weak and does not have much power. He is reliant on Israel, whose presence in the West Bank is ironically the only reason he has managed to stay in power.

And if Israel withdrew to the 1967 borders as demanded by Abbas and the PLO:

Abbas will collapse and Hamas will take over the West Bank in less than a day. If I were Israel, I would not give Abbas one inch of land in the West Bank – not for ideological reasons, but to avoid a situation where Hamas and others would take over the area.

When we asked him how best to defeat the extremists, radicals and terrorists like Hamas and Hizbullah, Toameh answered:

The first and most important thing is you go to the Arab governments and tell them stop the incitement that’s feeding these radicals and driving people into their hands. Sometimes there’s no difference between what is written about Israel and the Jews in the papers in Egypt and Saudi Arabia with what is written by Hamas.

Noting again the billions of dollars in aid provided by the US and EU to various Arab dictatorships, Toameh says in other words, and even clearer, they should tell them: “Stop calling for my death with my money.”

I asked Toameh about what steps were needed to move forward. According to him, the answer is “very simple” and involves the following steps:

1) The Palestinians must start investing money (provided to them mainly by the US and EU) for the welfare of their people instead of incitement. Then dismantle all militias, establish a free press and democratic institutions, end the infighting, insist on good governance and speak with one voice so at least we know who we’re talking to. And then he suggests they should go speak with Israel and see what it has to offer them.

2) Deal with the enemies of peace – if you weaken the enemies of peace, like Iran, Hizbullah, Hamas, the moderates will rise and start speaking out. But as long as Iran is breathing down the neck and threatening, together with Hamas and Hizbullah, who are threatening to kill anyone who makes concessions, no moderate Arab will ever dare sign an agreement with Israel. Toameh says:

I don’t even rule out military action against any of them because this is the only language these guys understand. Talking to them and appeasing them is even more dangerous.

3) “We can’t move forward when you don’t have a clear, strong, reliable and credible partner on the Palestinian side” says Toameh. According to him: “Abbas is not a partner. He and Fayaad might be nice guys with good intentions – but they cannot deliver. So the PA are not partners because they cannot deliver and Hamas are not partners because they don’t want to be partners.”

* * *
Well done. What do you think?

Humiliation versus murder, which do you choose?

Pete McDonough, Jr., a former press agent for NJ Governor Christine Whitman, has just returned from the Middle East as an American paid PR consultant to the Palestinian Authority.

His taxpayer paid trip resulted in a column appearing in the Star-Ledger, “For Palestinians, daily humiliation.”

“Ask any Palestinian on the streets of Ramallah to describe his or her life, especially those who travel around the occupied territory, and “humiliation” is among the first words uttered.”

Now, I don’t have any objection to my money going to educate others around the world, and the Palestinians can, in my opinion, use a lot of education when it comes to PR. However, when that teacher, in this case McDonough, enters the political fray, I think he’s crossed the line.

“Travel in the region for Palestinians always involves being stopped at checkpoints, ushered out of their cars and through narrow inspection points before being allowed to go from one part of their country to another.”[“Country?” The P.A. was offered one in 2000 but turned it down.-Ed.]

“As an American with in a consular vehicle, the checkpoints are no bother. If I were Palestinian, I could look forward to possibly being detained and searched for no reason other than my nationality and route of travel.” [The checkpoints exist to stop murderers from entering Israel. Their success is well documented.-Ed.]

“The stories from Palestinians I worked with bear an unsettling resemblance to the tales of racial profiling in states throughout our own country. The profiling in Palestine, though every bit as dehumanizing is omnipresent.” [Young boys and women are recruited as suicide bombers. –Ed.]

“Had I spent the last week working with Israeli officials, I have no doubt that they would have just as profoundly opened my eyes to the daily threats that their own people suffer through. I have no reason to expect that those threats are any less pervasive or pernicious than the humiliation experienced by Palestinians. The Arab-Israeli conflict is more than anyone could hope to understand in a short visit, even one involving meeting with cabinet ministers and other ranking government officials.” [So, he didn’t ask any questions about why the checkpoints exist? –Ed.]

“The situation is even more complicated by the political pressures to which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is subjected by hardliners in his government who insist that he not budge at all on plans to resume the expansion of settlements, and by the irrational demands of Hamas extremists who insist that Palestinian President Mahmood Abbas reject any peace negotiations unless Israelis withdraw completely from any and all occupied territory.”

New Jersey politics may be rough and tumble as McDonough knows, but it doesn’t result in suicide bombings and military retaliation. Yes, Mr. McDonough, the situation is “complicated” and until you learn the difference between sitting shiva for a murdered terror victim (as I did) and humiliation suffered at a checkpoint, I think you should keep your comments to yourself.

Read the full column.

Well, that's what I have to say.

Frida Ghitis - "Middle East peace requires courage"

Frida Ghitis writing in the Miami Herald - "Middle East peace requires courage"

One of the most extraordinary moments in recent Middle East history came in 1993, when the world discovered that Israeli and Palestinian teams had held secret peace talks. Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, formerly sworn enemies, came together on the White House lawn, formalizing their commitment to peace. The decision, and that memorably awkward hand-shake, prodded along by President Bill Clinton, required uncommon courage. They called it the Peace of the Brave. [Ed. - Yes, they did and it gave rise to a new vocabulary, such as, a Sacrifice for the Peace, to describe the murders of innocent civilians such as Alisa Flatow.]

The term deserves dusting off because it highlights one of the key requirements for peace, and one whose absence could prove the undoing of the new effort unfolding under U.S. sponsorship. Bravery, courage, are indispensable because no matter how comforting the idea of peace, reaching an agreement between Israelis and Palestinians is a frighteningly dangerous process.

To reach a deal, the leaders -- Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas -- must make compromises that will break the hearts of millions of their followers. They will have to accept terms that will anger some enough that they will kill. And they will have to sign on to borders that could make their land -- especially in Israel's case -- vulnerable to unthinkable risks.

The euphoric events of 1993 gave way to disappointment, but they also helped draw the blueprint guiding the new quest for peace.

No one claims the new effort suffers from unrealistic expectations. Skepticism about its chances for success prevails. I call it skepticism and not pessimism, because many who claim peace is impossible in fact hope for failure. By their standards, they are optimistic.

When the leaders of Iran, Hamas or Hezbollah say the process will fail they remind us of their plan. Their solution is the destruction of Israel and its replacement with a fundamentalist Muslim regime; an alternative, backed by weapons, militias and money, that looms over the peace talks like a thick dark shadow, but also provides some of the impetus to persevere.

Ironically, the negotiating sides already agree on the solution's rough outlines. With the possible exception of the future of Jerusalem, everyone knows what is required for peace.

Even more frustrating is that the subject of closest agreement has become the most contentious. Partly because of missteps by the Obama administration, the issue of settlements has moved front and center and could provide a timid Mahmoud Abbas a way out of the talks. Abbas says without a settlement freeze he will pull out. Netanyahu says that, like all other differences, this should be resolved "through direct continuous talks.''

Already in the Clinton days that problem was essentially solved. Settlements take up about 4 percent of the disputed land. Most settlers live on a few large blocs, which in an agreement would be swapped for equal amounts of land within Israel proper.

To be sure, tough disagreements remain. But a basic obstacle to peace today is that Abbas, the Palestinian representative, appears to lack the power, the legitimacy and, yes, the courage, to close a deal.

Abbas, who rules only over the West Bank, asked for permission not just from Palestinians but from the Arab League, to start negotiations. When talks started in Washington, Hamas, which controls Gaza's 1.5 million Palestinians, signaled its rejection by murdering more Israelis. The London-based Arab newspaper Al-Quds al-Arabi editorialized that Abbas "negotiates without being granted the authorization to do so by his people.''

Adding irony to this sad situation, majorities of Palestinians and Israelis desperately want a peace deal. Contrary to what an ill-informed article in Time recently argued, Israelis are eager for peace. For years a vast majority of Israelis has expressed strong support for a two-state solution. A recent War and Peace Index poll found 80 percent support negotiations, easily outnumbering opponents of compromise.

A majority of Palestinians also back negotiations. But in the Arab world, public opinion carries less weight. Writing in the influential Arab daily Ashar al-Awsat, Mamoun Fandy wrote, ``The Palestinian division is not simply an internal one, as some may think, but is first an Arab division, and secondly a regional one.'' Even if Abbas achieved an agreement, he argued, he would find much of the Arab world pressuring Palestinians to reject it.

That's why Abbas announced shortly after leaving Washington that, "I can't allow myself to make even one concession.'' If he meant that, the new peace process is already over. Clearly, these are not the words from a man with the courage to make the peace of the brave. But then, Arafat ultimately lost his nerve. Maybe Abbas can find his.

Read the column on-line.

I know that Netanyahu has made previous decisions that did not rest well with sectors of his political support, but he made them anyway. Abbas, considered a terrorist by Yitzhak Rabin, does not, in my opinion, have either the willingness or the guts to make similar decisions. Will we back to base one again? The next days and weeks will tell.

What do you think?