Fayyad’s Advisor Libels and Demonizes Israel

By Itamar Marcus and Barbara Crook

On the same day as the official Palestinian Authority daily newspaper ran a positive front-page story about a solidarity visit by Israelis to condemn last week’s arson attack at a mosque near Bethlehem [see PMW bulletin], the office of PA Prime Minister Salam Fayyad used the incident as an opportunity to libel and demonize Israel.

PM Fayyad’s national affairs advisor accused Israel of being behind the arson attack, and added that the arson “represents part of a policy of state terror, which the Zionist apartheid state is carrying out against the Palestinians.”

The following is the full reaction from the office of PM Fayyad:

“Advisor to the Prime Minister [Fayyad] on national affairs, Minister Omar Hilmi Al-Ghoul: ‘Herds of settlers throughout the Palestinian territories and the occupation army complement each other as regards the crimes and the new provocative violations, which are targeting our people, its places of worship, its property, its land and its interests. This is done with the aim of stirring up emotions and arousing the Palestinian residents to respond to the unceasing racist Israeli offensive, aimed at igniting a fire on the Palestinian front, so that the eyes of the world will turn away from the Israeli violations…’. In a press release, the advisor to the Prime Minister added that what happened in Beit Fajar was not incidental, but rather represents part of a policy of state terror, which the Zionist apartheid state is carrying out against the Palestinians.”

Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Oct. 6, 2010

© Palestinian Media Watch – www.palwatch.org

Read more informative articles at Palestinian Media Watch

A (Consistently) Dishonest Broker?

By David Isaac

On September 2nd, direct talks began between Arabs and Israelis. During the August 20 press conference announcing the talks, Special Envoy for Middle East Peace George Mitchell was asked by a reporter whether President Obama would be seen as an “honest broker” by the two sides. In the case of Israel, the answer, to put it bluntly, is no.

There are, of course, the obvious concerns about our current president: His acceptance of the Palestinian-Arab narrative, revealed during his Cairo speech when he rejected “the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements,” his attempt to make political hay out of Israel’s announcement of new home construction in Jerusalem, and his obnoxious behavior towards Israel’s prime minister during their March meeting. The pieces create a whole that would disturb any Israeli negotiator’s night’s sleep.

But the fact of the matter is, regardless of whether a U.S. president is more or less favorably disposed to the Jewish state – and in this case, certainly less – the United States has consistently pursued a policy that is inimical to Israel and accepting of the Arab position. This policy entails Israel’s return to the strategically indefensible 1949 Armistice lines – what Abba Eban called a “death trap.”

Since 1967, every administration has put forth plans that pushed for Israel’s surrender of the territories it captured in the Six Day War. Policy-makers ignore the fact that areas like Judea and Samaria (the “West Bank”) never belonged to the Arabs. Legally, they remained part of the British Mandate for Palestine. They were seized illegally by Jordan in a war of aggression. They were then wrested from Jordan by Israel in a war of defense. The idea that these are ‘illegally occupied lands’ is the language of anti-Israel Arab propaganda, a figment of a fictional history.

Yet, it’s on this fabrication that the U.S. bases its policy, arguing for Israeli withdrawal. What happens when Israel does surrender territory is clear from the case of Gaza – now a Hamas launching pad for missiles into Israeli population centers. Gaza’s decline has not shaken the belief of American policy-makers that Israel must continue to cede captured territory.

Largely to blame is the State Department, which has a well-documented antagonism to Zionism dating from the First World War. Its motives are two-fold: A desire not to antagonize the Arabs and a fear of risking the flow of oil. For each incoming president, it trots out the same old policy dressed up in new clothes. Unless a U.S. president has strong views to the contrary and the will to impose them, the State Department’s policy will emerge triumphant.

From the start, America has shown itself to be an untrustworthy ally. In 1948, only three years after the Holocaust, when five well-armed Arab states with the support of the British attempted to annihilate the newly formed Jewish state, the U.S. incongruously declared an arms embargo on both sides. In 1967, America attempted to restrain Israel even as Arab forces gathered on its border.

In the Yom Kippur War, it was the U.S. that turned Israeli victory to defeat by pressuring Israel to refrain from destroying the Egyptian Third Army. Nor let us forget how Israel was restrained by the first Bush administration from retaliating when Iraqi Scud missiles rained down on it.

FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributor David Isaac is a former executive director of Americans for A Safe Israel and currently serves as editor of the Web site ShmuelKatz.com.

Strings of Peace

Yup. On Sunday, March 29, 2009, Palestinian officials in Jenin announced that they have disbanded a youth orchestra after it played for Holocaust survivors in Israel. The youth orchestra was founded three years ago and was called "The Strings of Peace". The group began their concert with an Arabic song called We Sing For Peace.

The story in the BBC is here. The NY Times report is here.

The Strings of Peace

Read More Dry Bones by Yaakov Kirschen

Banks

Actually it seems to me that it is the whole world that is now "caught in the cross-hairs"

We are all exposed!

Read More Dry Bones by Yaakov Kirschen