Yossi Beilin, still undermining Israel after all these years

It’s been more than a decade since Yossi Beilin retired from Israeli politics, yet he continues to use his stature as a former government official to sometimes take positions that blacken Israel’s good name.

 This past summer, he appeared alongside Israel-haters Hanan Ashrawi and James Zogby in a panel discussion organized and hosted by the U.N.’s Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People.

The Anti-Defamation League describes that committee as “the single most prolific source of material bearing the official imprimatur of the U.N. which maligns and debases the Jewish State. … The meetings and conferences organized by [the committee] are replete with anti-Israel statements such as false claims that Israel is an ‘apartheid state’ and blatantly anti-Semitic comparisons to the Nazis.” How sad that Beilin would choose to grant legitimacy to the committee by appearing at its forum.

Former Israeli minister Yossi Beilin attends a Constitution, Law and Justice,
 Committee meeting at the Knesset on July 9, 2017.
 Photo by Yonatan Sindel/Flash90.

Beilin is best known for his role in Israeli diplomatic and political affairs. As deputy foreign minister in 1993, he was one of the architects of the Oslo Accords. He claimed that he had brought peace in our time, but PLO chief Yasser Arafat used the accords to create a de facto mini-state, smuggle in tons of weapons and launch wave after wave of suicide bombings.

 In 1997, Beilin established a movement within the Knesset to lobby for a unilateral Israeli withdrawal from southern Lebanon. Three years later, Israel pulled out. Hezbollah took over the vacated area and began stockpiling tens of thousands of missiles, terrorizing northern Israel and kidnapping Israeli soldiers—eventually provoking the 2006 Second Lebanon War. Today, Hezbollah has more than 150,000 missiles stationed along the Israel-Lebanon border.

 Beilin competed for the leadership of the Labor Party, was defeated, and then defected to the far-left Meretz Party. In 2004, he became chairman of Meretz, promising to lead the party to greater glory. At the time, it had six seats in the Knesset. In the next election, under Beilin’s leadership, it dropped to five. When it became clear that he would be defeated in the next race for the party’s chairmanship, Beilin withdrew his candidacy and retired from politics.

Over the past decade-and-a-half, he has taken some positions that have surprised and alarmed many friends of Israel.

 One involved former U.S. President Jimmy Carter. In late 2006, Carter shocked and outraged the American Jewish community by authoring a book titled Palestine Peace Not Apartheid. Abraham Foxman, then the national director of the Anti-Defamation League, charged that Carter was “engaging in anti-Semitism” by promoting the apartheid libel. Fourteen board members of the Jimmy Carter Center in Atlanta resigned in protest over the book. Even the ultra-liberal Central Conference of American Rabbis announced that it was canceling its forthcoming visit to the Carter Center. It seemed as if the entire Jewish world was—with justification—furious at the former world leader.

 But not Beilin. Writing in The Forward, he heaped praise on Carter as “one of the world’s most accomplished statesmen” and “a public figure of enormous moral clout.” Then, while not directly endorsing the apartheid charge, Beilin in effect justified it by claiming that Carter’s accusation was no different from what “has been said by Israelis themselves.”

 It’s true that there have been a few Israeli extremists, including some of Beilin’s Meretz colleagues, who have accused Israel of apartheid. But the overwhelming majority of Israelis reject that charge as an outrageous falsehood.

An incident earlier this year suggests that Beilin has no real quarrel with the “apartheid” libel. A small group of current and former Meretz leaders, including Beilin, staged a “protest tour” of the Jordan Valley in June. The group’s spokesman absurdly declared to reporters that if Israeli law is extended to the 30 percent of Judea and Samaria where Jewish communities are located, it would create “an apartheid map” reminiscent of South Africa.

Not only did Beilin not dispute the apartheid accusation, but he piled on, telling the reporters that the Israeli government secretly plans to carry out “more annexation” beyond the 30 percent, even though there is no evidence of that.

 A prominent Jewish columnist writing recently in The Forward surprisingly included Beilin on a list of six notable “Jewish thought-leaders” who are “fostering identity-building” among young Jews. Including Beilin on that list was a serious error. His actions and statements are more likely to erode, not foster, Jewish and Zionist pride and identity. Whether by pushing for territorial concessions to Arafat and the terrorist group Hezbollah, taking part in that anti-Israel U.N. forum or siding with promoters of the apartheid slur, Yossi Beilin has proven that he is not a thought-leader at all, but rather, an utterly thoughtless leader.

 Recent events demonstrate that while he and his ilk remain mired in the tired old clichés of yesterday, more thoughtful leaders in the Middle East are beginning to recognize that there are new options for finding ways to a better tomorrow.

* * * 

Well, that's what I have to say.

Stephen M. Flatow

To read more of my columns go to JNS.ORG.

 San Francisco State University hosts a terrorist

PFLP's Leila Khaled to be a program panelist 

Leila Khaled, a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a terrorist organization, is an unrepentant terrorist responsible for airplane hijackings and other acts of terror in the Middle East is to be a panelist in a program at San Francisco State University.

California's Jewish newspapers are covering the story.  This is from the Jewish News of Northern California:

“It is bitterly ironic that a notorious hijacker and convicted terrorist will be welcomed at an institution of higher learning where the free exchange of ideas ought to be paramount,” said Seth Brysk, director of the ADL’s Central Pacific region. “An individual with a demonstrated commitment to violent extremism will undoubtedly discourage students from free expression and exploration.”

Commons.Wikipedia.org

I decided to get into the fray and have sent the following letter to Dr. Lynn Mahoney, SFSU president.  I do not expect a response.

Here's the text of my letter.

Dr. Lynn Mahoney, President

San Francisco State University

1600 Holloway Avenue

San Francisco, CA 94132

Dear Dr. Mahoney:

I am writing to you as the father of Alisa Flatow who was murdered in a Palestinian Arab terror attack while she was a student studying in Israel in 1995.  She was 20 years old and on leave of absence from Brandeis University when the public bus she was riding was bombed by Palestinian Islamic Jihad.  Eight died in that attack.

My experiences over the 25 years since Alisa was murdered have convinced me that Palestinian Arab terrorists are resolute in their hatred for Jews worldwide.

Thus, I am at a loss to understand why San Francisco State University would lend its name to an appearance by an unrepentant terrorist, Leila Khaled, in a program to be held by the Arab and Muslim Ethnicities Diaspora. Khaled remains in the leadership of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a designated a terrorist organization, which is still very much in the terror business.  She is an advocate for the destruction of the State of Israel, which includes all its residents.

While you have publicly stated that “an invitation to a public figure to speak to a class should not be construed as an endorsement of point of view” and SFSU “supports the rights of all individuals to express their viewpoints and other speech protected by law, even when those viewpoints may be controversial,” I must tell you that terrorism, and the terrorists who perpetrate it, is not “controversial;” terrorism is a crime against humanity.

Khaled’s appearance at a San Francisco State University sponsored program is an insult to her victims and to all victims of Arab terror worldwide. I urge you to cancel her appearance.

---

Stephen M. Flatow

A terrorist finds a safe-harbor in Turkey.

Sami Al-Arian, admitted terror sponsor, finds a new home in Turkey. 

Old terrorists do not die, they just move to Turkey.

Announcement of United Arab Emirates and Israel normalizing relations has one repentant terrorist up in arms.

My latest JNS column:

 

Condemnation of Israel and Jews from terrorists and their supporters is not new, it just comes from different directions. One case in point is Sami Al-Arian, who was deported from the United States following a prison sentence for his guilt as a sponsor of the terrorist organization, Islamic Jihad.

Today, the Kuwaiti-born Al-Arian lives in Turkey, the only country that would accept him after his deportation, where he heads the Istanbul-based Center for Islam and Global Affairs. He’s often interviewed and quoted by Arab news outlets—most recently, about the announcement of the normalization of relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates.

To many in the United States, Sami Al-Arian was the victim of a U.S. government conspiring with Israel to punish him for his pro-Palestinian views. To those of us who have suffered the loss of loved ones because of his support—financial and moral—of terror, he is an unrepentant murderer.

America’s attention was first called to Al-Arian in 1994 by Steven Emerson in his documentary, “Jihad in America,” where Al-Arian’s links to Islamic Jihad were outlined. But it was 1995 that would be the terror group’s defining year. It was in that year that Islamic Jihad conducted a series of deadly suicide bomb attacks in Israel, one of the victims being my 20-year-old daughter, Alisa.

Following the October 1995 death of Islamic Jihad leader Fathi Shikaki, an associate of Al-Arian—Ramadan Abdullah Shallah—surfaced in Damascus as new the leader of Islamic Jihad. A month later, Al-Arian’s business records were seized by the FBI in a raid on his home and office at the University of South Florida, where he was working as a computer-science teacher.

Al-Arian used his role at the university to establish two organizations: the Islamic Committee for Palestine (ICP), and the World and Islam Studies Enterprise (WISE). According to the Immigration and Naturalization Service, both of these “think tanks” were nothing more than fronts used by Al-Arian to assist terrorists such as Abdullah Shallah to enter the United States.

Like many Americans at the time, the raids on Al-Arian’s home and office surprised me. Although Islamic Jihad had murdered my daughter just a few months earlier, no one in the Israeli or American governments made any assertion at the time that fundraising and moral support was coming from within America.

Despite my own meetings with U.S. Justice Department officials in the Clinton administration urging that something be done, the case against Al-Arian, if there was one, languished.

Al-Arian would continue to have photo ops with prominent politicians, including presidents Clinton

Pres. Bush & Al-Arian

and Bush; receive invitations to the White House and meet with

Justice Department officials; and go about his business defending his 

right to free speech—all the time denying any link to Islamic Jihad or 

terrorism in the Middle East.

Justice Department officials told me that the delays in the prosecution were due to difficulties translating faxes and other documents from Arabic to English, the fact that the Israelis were not providing information, and that they did not have the staff resources to pursue the case. All the while, President Clinton was trying to breathe life into a moribund Middle East peace process. I wondered, could the delay be attributable to a calculation that a prosecution of Al-Arian would embarrass the Palestinian leadership? I do not know.

What I do know is that in the summer of 2001, there was a new administration in the White House and a new attorney general at the Justice Department. In July, my attorney and I met with the FBI and Justice Department team working on the links between Al-Arian and Islamic Jihad in this country. The goal, I was told, was to bring Al-Arian to trial.

Many have subsequently ascribed the indictment of Al-Arian in February 2003 as a test of the Patriot Act. But the time line is clear to me that and the Justice Department was on his trail long before the law came into existence, and while the Patriot Act might have made the gathering of information against Al-Arian easier, it was not the impetus or the reason for his indictment. The fact of the matter remains that Al-Arian was accused of working for Islamic Jihad, which had killed Americans, and the crime could be addressed here.

I welcomed the idea of putting Al-Arian on trial. Let Americans and the world see the lengths that terror’s supporters go in order to murder civilians riding a public bus. But the trial turned out to be a disaster.

Experts arguing over the interpretations of Arabic words used in intercepted fax transmissions to Al-Arian from Islamic jihad headquarters in Gaza and Damascus asking for money and announcing terror attacks confused the jury. The jury acquitted Al-Arian on most charges and deadlocked on several others.

He eventually entered a guilty plea to supporting terrorism, and after serving a short prison sentence, he was to be deported from the United States. Denied access to Egypt, which has its own problems dealing with terror organizations, Turkey welcomed him and provided him with a platform to lambaste anything positive coming out of the Middle East when it involves Israel.

News of the breakthrough quickly brought Al-Arian’s condemnation. According to Turkey’s Anadolu Agency, Al-Arian says the move to normalization “grants Israel the keys to Al-Aqsa [mosque] and Jerusalem,” and “[T]his is betrayal, not only of the trust that has been given to the Muslim world over 1,400 years ago, but also of the Palestinian cause and people.”

“Despite the deal, the Palestinian people will remain defiant and vigilant against such attempts” and “will never give up their secret (sic) right, not only in Jerusalem and Al-Aqsa, but across Palestine,” said Al-Arian.

Always eager to burn his bridges, he now claims that the “United Arab Emirates has been involved in every aspect of evil doing across the region” and calls for “another wave of an Arab Spring movement in which the people will have their final say.”

There’s nothing like a call for revolution to make friends and influence people. But Al-Arian is never interested in building bridges, just destroying them. And his Turkish hosts give him the forum to do so.

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. His book, “A Father’s Story: My Fight for Justice Against Iranian Terror,” is now available on Kindle.  He divides his time between Jerusalem and New Jersey.

 

How do you say chutzpa in French?

Annexation driving EU countries crazy.

While Israeli leadership considers applying sovereignty to portions of Judea and Samaria, and the public rallies for and against that move, European states are having a meltdown.  Well, I think it’s time to look at the blatant hypocrisy of European Union members warning Israel against annexation.

Let’s start with the French as France recently urged the European Union to take punitive measures against Israel if it annexes anything.

That’s right, France—which has been ruling the 890-square mile Reunion Island, off the southeast coast of Africa, for more than 300 years. And the 144-square mile Mayotte Island for nearly 200 years. The area of the Gush Etzion communities is all of 45 square miles.

France, which has been occupying the five so-called “Scattered Islands” in the Indian Ocean in defiance of a 1979 U.N. resolution demanding that those islands be surrendered to Madagascar.

France, which in 1955 announced that the thousands of miles of what it calls “French Southern and Antarctic Lands” would henceforth be considered an official French Overseas Territory. By what right, exactly?

And France, the Grand Annexer, lectures Israel on annexation? How do you say chutzpah in French?

While it has one foot in and the other out of the European Union, England, too, has weighed in. The Brits are furious at the thought of Israeli annexation. Cabinet minister (and chairman of the ruling Conservative Party) James Cleverly told parliament that such Israeli action would be make it “harder” to achieve peace.

I wonder why the British never had such concerns when Jordan annexed all of Judea and Samaria—not just the tiny portion Israel is considering—back in 1950. In fact, England was one of only two countries in the entire world (the other was Pakistan) that recognized the Jordanian annexation.

So, it was OK for Jordan—a country that didn’t even exist until the British created it out of whole cloth in 1922—to annex it. But not Israel, even though the area has been at the heart of the Jewish homeland for 3,000 years.

London is hoping the rest of us won’t notice that there are no less than 14 “British Overseas Territories” that they have forcibly made and kept a part of the British Empire—from the Falkland Islands (that Britain went to war with Argentina in 1982 over the latter’s claims to the islands) to Bermuda. Some are in the South Atlantic, some in the North Atlantic, some in the Caribbean—pretty much everywhere you look on the globe, you can find pieces of the old British Empire still in operation.

What are some of the other E.U. member states who presume to lecture and threaten Israel?

There’s Portugal, which annexed the 908 square-mile Azores Islands some 500 years ago. Spain, illegal occupier of the 3,000 square-mile Canary Islands since the 15th century. Greenland was forcibly made part of Denmark in 1814. Don’t forget Curaçao and Aruba, which were annexed by Holland, along with Saint Martin, Saba, and Bonaire. There are many more examples.

The issue is not just that these countries are incredibly hypocritical for haranguing Israel about annexation while themselves annexing any territory they can get their hands on.

No, the main issue is that France, England, and the rest have no moral, historical or legal right to annex those territories, while Israel has every right to incorporate the parts of Judea and Samaria under discussion. Those areas have been at the center of the Jewish national home since biblical times. Israel won them in self-defense and by international law has no obligation to surrender them. And they have only a small Arab population, so annexation— “reunification” is more accurate—poses no demographic danger to Israel.

So, here’s my message to the European annexationists that criticize Israeli annexation: Mind your own business. I mean that literally. Go attend to the business of convincing your own governments to release the many lands that they have occupied and annexed—and then you can come talk to Israel about the subject.

Not very woman friendly

Not very woman friendly

The Palestinian Authority honors the wrong folks

Sometimes, I just don’t get Palestinian Arab society.

As the world was celebrating International Women’s Day, the Palestinian Authority took a different track.

In the words of the day’s organizers, “we can actively choose to challenge stereotypes, fight bias, broaden perceptions, improve situations and celebrate women's achievements.”  Not so the PA.

Instead of honoring and celebrating the role women play, the PA marked International Women’s Day by praising and honoring terrorists who murdered women.

Official PA Television, which had been continuously broadcasting Coronavirus news, paused on International Women’s Day to devote some attention to an apparently more important topic. The broadcast began with an interview with Um Nasser Abu Hmeid.  If the name doesn’t ring a bell, she’s the mother of five terrorists who are serving life in prison for multiple murders. The interviewer praised them as heroes and their mother spoke about how proud she was of them.

One is Muhammed Abu Hmeid. On December 14, 1990, he and a fellow-terrorist burst into a factory in Jaffa. Using long knives, they murdered Ms. Iris Asraf, a 22 year-old clerk, and two male employees.

I will spare you the horrific details of what the “hero” Muhammed did to Ms. Asraf; I will note only what the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported at the time: “The body of one victim reportedly was sliced into quarters. Another was nearly decapitated, and the a third was disemboweled.”

After the glowing interview with the murderers’ mother, photographs of Arab women terrorists filled the screen. The narrator described their “heroic” deeds and hailed them as “martyrs.” (Thanks to Palestinian Media Watch for these translations.) The fact that many of their victims were women did not diminish their status as the PA’s heroes of International Women’s Day.

There was Leila Khaled, who twice hijacked airplanes on which there were many women passengers. There was Fatima Barnawi, who planted a bomb in a Jerusalem movie theater which many women were attending.

Most of all, there was Dalal Mughrabi. She occupies a special place in the hearts of the PA regime and the Palestinian Arab public. The PA has named numerous girls’ schools, public squares, and sports tournaments after her.

What did Mughrabi do that so endears her to Palestinian Arabs?

On March 9, 1978, she led a squad of Arab terrorists who set out from Lebanon towards Israel, in several small boats. They were members of Fatah, the largest faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization. At the time, Yasir Arafat was chairman of the PLO and Fatah, and Mahmoud Abbas was his second in command. Today, Abbas is chairman of the PLO, Fatah, and the Palestinian Authority.

The Mughrabi gang’s first victim was a woman.

When Dalal Mughrabi and her fellow-terrorists landed on a northern Israeli beach, they happened to encounter Gail Rubin, an American Jewish nature photographer, who was taking photos of rare birds. Her work had been exhibited at the Jewish Museum in New York City and other prominent venues. She was also a niece of U.S. Senator Abraham Ribicoff (D-Connecticut).

One of the terrorists, Hussain Fayadh, later explained to the Lebanese Television station Al-Manar what happened: "Sister Dalal al-Mughrabi had a conversation with the American journalist. Before killing her, Dalal asked: 'How did you enter Palestine?' [Rubin] answered: 'They gave me a visa.' Dalal said: 'Did you get your visa from me, or from Israel? I have the right to this land. Why didn't you come to me?' Then Dalal opened fire on her."

As Gail laying dying on the beach, Mughrabi and her fellow-terrorists walked to the nearby Coastal Road. An Israeli bus approached. They hijacked it. And they murdered 37 passengers. Eleven of their victims were girls or women.

Tali Aharonovitch. Naomi Elichai. Galit Ankwa. Mathilda Askenazy-Daniel. Rina Bushkenitch. Liat Gal-On. Naama Hadani. Rebecca Hohman. Malka Leibovitch-Weiss. Tziona Lozia-Cohen. Rina Sosensky. Gail Rubin. That is who should be remembered on International Women’s Day.

Instead, the PA turned the occasion into a veritable International Anti-Women’s Day. Where were all the protests from feminist groups who claim to care about women’s rights? Where was the outcry from the all the self-described progressives and peace activists? Do women’s lives mean so little to them?

This post and others like it can be viewed at Times of Israel