"P is for Palestine" author got one thing right

The "P is for Palestine" children’s book that is causing so much controversy features anti-Israel propaganda and deeply disturbing justifications for “intifada” violence. But it also contains one very important truth.

Golbarg Bashi, the tome’s Iranian-born author, decided to use the device of an alphabet book to indoctrinate children with anti-Israel messages. The most incendiary part of the book, which has been at the center of much of the public debate, declares: “I is for Intifada, Arabic for rising up for what is right, if you are a kid or grownup!”

The accompanying illustration shows a father and child, wearing keffiyahs, standing near barbed wire (a symbol of “Israeli oppression”) and flashing the V-for-victory sign. Victory over Israel, that is.

Not surprisingly, many Jews are troubled by Bashi’s attempt to justify and glorify the waves of Palestinian “intifada” violence, in which more than 1,300 Israeli Jews have been murdered in recent years.

Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch of Manhattan’s Stephen Wise Free Synagogue, a leading critic of the book, correctly described it as “the glorification of the Palestinian intifada — a cruel, murderous, and terroristic campaign that purposely targeted innocent Israelis, including children, in restaurants, buses, hospitals, schools and shopping malls. … The intifada was not ‘a rising up for what is right.’ It was a mass descent into immorality.” 

In a Facebook post, Bashi blamed criticism of her book on what she called “self-proclaimed powerful neighborhoods of New York City.” That’s pretty obvious code language for “the Jews.” 

But it’s also important to pay close attention to the explanations that Bashi and her supporters have presented in several recent interviews. “Intifada is part of Palestinian life, to resist occupation,” she told JTA. In an interview with Haaretz, Bashi elaborated: “Intifada is an aspect of Palestinian life just as Bethlehem is the birthplace of Jesus Christ.” An Israeli-Arab educator named Areej Masarwa added that, “It’s part of Palestinian identity.” 

Exactly right. 

Mass violence against Jews is indeed a central part of “Palestinian” identity. And that tells us a lot about Palestinian identity. 

Palestinian Arab nationalism did not arise because of any major historical, linguistic, religious or cultural differences between Palestinian Arabs and, say, Jordanian Arabs or Syrian Arabs. That’s because there aren’t any. Palestinian nationalism arose as an anti-nationalism. Its raison d’être is to murder Jews and destroy the State of Israel. 

Other nations express their distinctive identity through positive cultural expressions. The Palestinians express their identity by bombing, shooting, hijacking, stabbing and stoning Jews. Witness Sunday’s stabbing attack at Jerusalem’s Central Bus Station. 

And why does the character of Palestinian-Arab identity matter? Because the fight for Israel’s survival is not just a military conflict. It’s also a war of ideas. Understanding the legitimacy of Jewish nationalism, and the falseness of Palestinian nationalism, is vital. We must understand why our side is right — and why their side is wrong. So, thank you, Golbarg Bashi, for helping to remind us of the true nature of Palestinian nationalism. 

Stephen M. Flatow, a vice president of the Religious Zionists of America, is an attorney in New Jersey. He is the father of Alisa Flatow, who was murdered in an Iranian-sponsored Palestinian terrorist attack in 1995.

This post is from my archive of published writings and appeared in Heritage Florida Jewish News and other newspapers in 2017.

Follow me on Twitter @StephenFlatow

Why Polls on a Palestinian State are a Mirage

Why Polls on a Palestinian State are a Mirage

My Jewish Press Column

http://www.jewishpress.com/indepth/opinions/why-polls-on-a-palestinian-state-are-a-mirage/2018/02/05/

How can it be that despite the Palestinian Authority’s (PA) support for terrorism, violations of the Oslo Accords and non-stop anti-Israel incitement, so many Israelis seem to be in favor of establishing a Palestinian state next door? Could it be that the answer is found in the asking?

Just last week, newspaper headlines announced that according to a new poll, 47 percent of Israeli Jews still support Palestinian statehood. The poll was carried out by the Tami Steinmetz Center for Peace Research, at Tel Aviv University.

But as with most news about Israel, you need to dig behind the headlines to find out the real story. In this case, the real story is the wording that the Steinmetz Center used. The question which got that 47 percent figure was loaded with false assumptions and completely unrealistic expectations. In other words, the poll offered a fantasy.

The Steinmetz Center asked respondents if they supported a “two-state solution” that would include:

1. It would be a “permanent settlement.” In reality, of course, nobody can guarantee that any settlement would be “permanent.” The Palestinian leader who signs an agreement could be overthrown the next day. Arab leaders are constantly being ousted and replaced by arch-rivals.
2. The agreement would include “demilitarization of the Palestinian state.” This, despite the fact that every Palestinian leader has rejected the idea of demilitarization. Even if they signed an agreement saying it would be demilitarized, what’s the likelihood they would abide by that? If a “demilitarized” Palestinian state started importing tanks that it claimed were needed for self-defense, Israel would face international condemnation and sanctions if it tried to intervene.
3. There would be “family unification in Israel of 100,000 Palestinian refugees.” Notice the use of the sympathetic term “family unification.” What cruel person would oppose unifying families? More important, the PA’s position has always been that millions of Palestinian “refugees”—not a mere 100,000—must be allowed to settle in Israel. The 100,000 figure is an illusion that Jewish supporters of the Palestinians trot out to try to sell their imaginary deal.
4. “The Palestinian state will fight terror against Israelis.” What a joke. The heart and soul of the Oslo Accords was that the PA would stamp out terrorist groups. Yet here we are, 25 years later, and the PA has never disarmed or outlawed any of the terrorist groups, never extradited any terrorists to Israel, never even expelled terror factions from the PLO. But now, when they have a state, they will suddenly “fight terror?”

So there you have it: The “Palestinian state” that 47 percent of Israeli Jews would favor is a creature of the Steinmetz Center’s imagination. A permanently peaceful, totally demilitarized, terror-fighting Palestinian state that won’t insist on flooding Israel with “refugees.” Who wouldn’t want such a neighbor? Frankly, I’m surprised only 47 percent of Israeli Jews voiced their support.

It’s not hard to understand why advocates of the Palestinian cause are so enamored of the Steinmetz Center. The center’s website reports that its polls of Israeli public opinion are undertaken “with funding from the European Union and the Netherlands Representative Office in Ramallah.” I guess the EU and the Dutch government, both of which are passionately pro-Palestinian, see the center’s work as helpful to the Palestinian cause.

You can bet the EU and the Dutch would be mighty unhappy if the Steinmetz Center asked questions that included factual statements about Palestinian statehood. How about questions such as these:

1. If a Palestinian state is established, Israel will be nine miles wide at its midsection. Is that a risk you are willing to take?
2. If a Palestinian state is established, a terrorist with a shoulder-fired missile, standing inside the borders of “Palestine,” will be able to shoot down a plane taking off from Ben Gurion Airport. Do you believe the PA can be relied upon to stop such attacks?
3. The PA has never honored its Oslo obligations to disarm our outlaw terrorist groups. Do you believe that a Palestinian state would take those actions?

Any chance of the Steinmetz Center ever asking such questions? I’m not holding my breath, and you shouldn’t either.

****

Well, that's what I think.  Feel free to share.

Stephen M. Flatow

From the New York Sun - Understanding Israel can't be pushed

Well, opening the editorial page of the New York Sun, brought this:
Hope for Talks in Middle East Lies in Recognition That Israel Can Not Be Pushed

Some highlights-

The recent exchange of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit for a thousand Palestinian prisoners in Israeli hands is regarded as a cautiously hopeful sign even by Israeli hawks, as it appears the only possible de-escalation from the absolute collapse of the peace process that was almost implicit in the Palestinian bid for full membership as a state in the United Nations. The Israeli Right was fiercely opposed to Palestinian statehood from 1948 until relatively recently, when it realized that the Palestinians could not be induced to leave territory Israel occupied after the 1967 war; could not be physically expelled, because neither domestic nor international opinion would tolerate such an outrage; and could not be assimilated, both because of natural Arab resistance, and because of the danger of Israel’s ceasing to be a Jewish state and homeland, which has always been its only raison d’être. (There were Israeli bi-nationalists, jolly progressives who wanted to share; Canaanites, i.e. complete secularists; and territorialists who had wispy dreams of settling in Uganda or Ethiopia — but none of them ever had any grasp of reality.)

In 1917, in the desperate days of World War I, British foreign secretary Arthur Balfour promised “a Jewish homeland” in what was called, resurrecting Roman terminology, Palestine. In the same declaration, it was assured that this would not compromise the rights of the Muslim and Christian Arabs in the same and adjoining territory. As Britain was selling the same real estate to two different and hostile parties, before it was itself in possession of it, there was never going to be a solution that didn’t divide it in two. Nor has there been.

Apart from Anwar Sadat and the kings of Morocco and a few relatively enlightened people in the Persian Gulf, no Arab leader has really accepted the legitimacy of the Jewish state, despite promises at Oslo and elsewhere, and this was confirmed by Mahmoud Abbas in his address to the U.N. a few weeks ago. Every agreement except the Sinai-Suez Camp David agreement with Sadat (who was rewarded with assassination by the Muslim Brotherhood, now contending with the military for control in Egypt) has been designed to exploit Israel’s desire for peace with promises of what amounted to a truce, in exchange for concessions on the ground by Israel. And a vast swath of world opinion, partly thirsting for Arab oil, has cravenly accepted this protracted Arab confidence trick: land for a truce that is cancelable without notice.

Actually, this is a disservice.  Read the full article and learn something.

Well, that's what I have to say.

Stephen M. Flatow

Alisa kfar darom terrorism

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

PLO official: Palestine should be free of Jews. So what's the surprise?

YNET is reporting on comments made by the PLO ambassador to the US that Palestine must be free of Jews.  The people need "separation" he says.  And they gripe about apartheid?

I have seen Palestinian Arabs interact with Jews on many levels.  (I'm talking about the average Palestinian in the street, before you think otherwise.)  And the interactions are good.

Elliott Abrams, a former US National Security Council official, said in response that according to such plans, Palestine will be the first to officially prohibit Jews or any other faith since Nazi Germany, which sought a country that was judenrein, or cleansed of Jews.

Before we get worked up, remember, the PLO is headed by, in the words of Yitzhak Rabin, a terrorist, Abu Mazen, who also moonlights as a Holocaust denier.

We should expect nothing less from people trying to have their own state, should we?  Sad, very sad.

Read the full post from YNET.

stephen flatow alisa israel

Free Palestine!

Bret Stephens' column in the 11/23/10 edition of WSJ.com is worth reading in full.

Free Palestine!
Can Palestinians abide a single free-thinking blogger in their midst?

Should the United States offer—and Israel accept—diplomatic guarantees, plus $2 billion worth of fighter jets, for the sake of a 90-day settlement freeze? Er, no. Israel can afford the planes, or at least it can afford them better than the perception that it's getting a free ride from U.S. taxpayers. The U.S. should not put a price on things it ought not to do anyway, like recognizing a unilateral declaration of Palestinian statehood. And bribery is generally a bad idea, particularly between friends.

Then again, bad ideas are what you get when you're operating from bad premises. Premises such as: There is a deal to be had between Israelis and Palestinians, or that the settlements are the core of the problem.

So what is the core of the problem? Consider the predicament faced by a Palestinian named Walid Husayin from the West Bank city of Qalqilya. Mr. Husayin, 26, is suspected of being the blogger known as Waleed al-Husseini and author of an essay, posted on the Proud Atheist Web site (proud-a.blogspot.com), titled "Why I Left Islam."

The pseudonymous Husseini makes no bones about his opposition to religions generally, which he says "compete with each other in terms of stupidity." But nothing seems to exercise his indignation more than the religion he used to call his own. Islam, he writes, is "an authoritarian religion that does not respect the individual's freedom of choice, which is easily noticeable from its barbaric verdicts such as stoning the adulterous, pushing homosexuals off a cliff and killing the apostates for daring to express a different viewpoint."

And that's just Husseini getting started. The essay proceeds by way of a series of questions, such as "Is Islam a religion of tolerance?" Answer: "The sacred texts of Islam also encourage blatant war and conquest of new territories." What about equality? "Islam has legitimized slavery, reinforced the gap between social classes and allowed stealing from the infidels." Women's rights? "I have a mother, a sister and a lover and I cannot stand for them to be humiliated and stigmatized in this bone-chilling way." The prophet? "A sex maniac" who "was no different than barbaric thugs who slaughtered, robbed and raped women." And so on.

This being the Arab world, it should come as no surprise that Mr. Husayin has spent the past 24 days in detention, that he has been forbidden from receiving visitors or speaking to a lawyer, that he faces a potential life sentence, and that people in Qalqilya have called for him to be burned alive.

The systematic violation of Palestinian rights by Palestinian officials is an old story, as is the increasingly Islamist tilt of what was once supposed to be a relatively secular, progressive society. Whatever might be said in favor of freedom for Palestine, there has been to date precious little freedom in Palestine, whether in the Hamas-controlled statelet of Gaza or in the parts of the West Bank under Fatah's dominion.

That's a problem. It's also a problem that when the Associated Press covered Mr. Husayin's ordeal, reporter Diaa Hadid offered that "the Western-backed Palestinian Authority is among the more religiously liberal Arab governments in the region," and that "Husayin's high public profile and prickly style . . . left authorities no choice but to take action."

How nice to see AP reporters sticking up for free expression. Indeed, the consistent willingness of Western news organizations to downplay stories about Palestinian illiberalism and thuggery goes far to explain why so much of the world misdiagnoses the nature of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Settlements are a convenient alibi: They foster the illusion that the conflict can be resolved by Israeli territorial concessions alone. But if that were true, Gaza would have turned peaceful the moment settlements were withdrawn five years ago. The opposite happened.

Why did Gaza become more violent, internally as well as toward Israel and Egypt, the moment it was rid of Israelis? That's the central question, and one too few observers seem willing to address for fear of where the answer might lead. Yet it ought to be self-evident. The culture of Palestinian illiberalism gave rise to the discontents that brought about civil war and then Hamas's swift rise to power. Hamas is theologically committed to Israel's destruction. That commitment is politically popular: It shapes, and limits, what even the most progressive Palestinian leaders might be willing to concede to Israel in any deal. The result is what we now have: Negotiations that are going nowhere, at an increasingly heavy price for all parties, including the United States.

Like George W. Bush before him, President Obama has observed that the U.S. can't want peace more than Israelis or Palestinians themselves do. But America can, uniquely, stand for freedom like no other country. Mr. Husayin—assuming he's the author of those blog posts—surely knew how much he risked by speaking his mind, and it's tempting to conclude he had it coming.

But if Palestinians cannot abide a single free-thinker in their midst, they cannot be free in any meaningful sense of the word. And if the U.S. can't speak up on his behalf, then neither, in the long run, can we.

If you want to read the column on-line go here but I do not guarantee the link will work because of WSJ.com policies.

A Price for Everything

There is no country on Earth as blessed as the United States of America. While no longer a melting pot where immigrants eagerly sought to speak the English language and adopt American customs, we still maintain the freedom of ideas of all shapes and colors and sizes and beliefs. However, as long ago stated by Justice Cardozo, freedom of speech is not absolute. He stated that there is no right to shout fire in a theater. That phrase has long been used to limit speech that we find hateful or derogatory or inflammatory.

So now we turn to the real topic at hand, the Caryl Churchill play "Seven Jewish Children." Don't let the title fool you. The play is not about little Jewish children running around a park. It's an attempt to mask anti-Israel and anti-Semitic attitudes.

Seen in London in February 2009, the play drew many complaints. Now it is making its way to the New York stage through the efforts of the New York Theatre Workshop that has scheduled three readings of the play followed by a panel discussion led by noted Israel basher Tony Kushner.

I think it's outrageous that the play is coming to NYC and wrote the following letter:

Mr. James C. Nicola, Artistic Director
Mr. William Russo, Managing Director
New York Theatre Workshop
79 East Fourth Street
New York, NY 10003

Re Seven Jewish Children

Gentlemen:

I am writing to ask you to cancel the readings of Seven Jewish Children now scheduled for March 25 & 27, 2009. I write as the father of Alisa Flatow a 20-year old woman murdered in 1995 by Palestinian terrorists who were brought up on a never ending stream of anti-Israel and anti-Semitic propaganda to hate Israelis and Jews. Seven Jewish Children is just another piece of such propaganda, masked as a play, and will add another log to the bonfire of hatred that has been stoked by the Arab world since 1948.

Despite your stated goal to encourage "public discourse about the myriad of issues surrounding" a "deeply complicated conflict," the play does not address the very context in which this "conflict" takes place. While there is an indirect reference to the Holocaust, the clear implication of the play is that Israel is the new Goliath, that Israeli parents do not want their children playing with Palestinian children, and that all humanitarian issues are on the Palestinian side. Nothing is mentioned of suicide bombers sent to attack innocent civilians on public buses, in restaurants and coffee shops, that the Palestinians declined the offer of a state 8 years ago, that the Palestinians have elected a government with the sworn goal of destroying Israel, or that Israel has left Gaza.

Seven Jewish Children does nothing to advance understanding between peoples or the cause of peace in the Middle East and has no place on the New York Theatre Workshop stage. I urge you to halt the scheduled presentation.

I hope you will join in my protest to the New York Theatre Workshop. You can find their page on the play here.

India's Partition of 1947 - Is the world still paying a price?

Anyone familiar with the motion picture Gandhi will recall the plea made by Hindu leaders to their Muslim counterparts for the latter to drop their demand that India be partitioned and thereby create the Muslim state of Pakistan.

The Mumbai attacks, organized from outside India, and a list of many more, are symptomatic of Muslim "disaffection." Identifying that disaffection is easy according to some. Norman Berdichevsky, writing in New English Review, takes a different approach.

A few academics and editorial writers claiming to be scholars and quite a few liberal pundits/observers, have argued that some blame for the recent atrocious acts of terror in Mumbai should be put on India’s Hindus by stressing that the terrorist group of “disaffected Muslims” carrying out the outrage of random murder of civilians was “probably funded from outside India." They believe as Fareed Zakaria stated in Newsweek, that Indian Hindus “had it coming” because "One of the untold stories of India is that the Muslim population has not shared in the boom the country has enjoyed over the last 10 years. There is still a lot of institutional discrimination, and many remain persecuted."

He continues,

This view is not just wrong and short-sighted, it is symptomatic of why India has become a major target for terrorism that enjoys widespread support not only in Pakistan but in the wider Muslim world. Hatred of India stems from a psychological need to link India and Israel as guilty in the “injustice” Muslims believe they have suffered and to deflect blame and muddy the waters by shifting responsibility for the Partition of India in 1947 to the Hindus and conjuring up the vision that the Jews and Zionism did precisely this in Palestine in 1948. Nothing is further from the truth.

Berdichevsky explores the similarities and dissimilarities between India and Israel and the partitions that created the modern states. But he does not brook the argument that the creation of modern Israel was foisted on a Muslim population.

The truth of the 1948 partition in Palestine is that the Muslims rejected it totally and any possibility of living in peace alongside a tiny Jewish state. Instead they aided in the invasion of the country by the regular armies of six Arab states plunging their homeland into war and ending as defeated refugees. Had they accepted it, the great majority of Palestinian Arabs would today be enjoying the rights of their own independent homeland without the bloodshed of the last sixty years and a minority of them would be citizens of a much more secure, serene and tolerant Israel, untroubled by the threat of constant renewed warfare and terrorism.

Read the full article A Tale of Two Partitions: India 1947 and Palestine 1948 here.