Wednesday, August 26, 2009




PAN AM 103 VICTIMS' FAMILIES AND SUPPORTERS PROTEST RELEASE OF BOMBER MASTERMIND AT UNITED KINGDOM UN MISSION

Wednesday, August 26, 2009
AMCHA-CJC
3700 Henry Hudson Parkway
Bronx, NY 10463
P. 718.796.4730
F. 718.884.3206
E. info@amchacjc.org
www.amchacjc.org

The parents' faces are etched with nearly 21 more years of grief. But their
children remain young, frozen in time, their bodies blasted apart in the
terror bomb which downed Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland in December
1988.

Kathleen and Jack Flynn stood outside the United Kingdom UN Mission in
mid-Manhattan on Tuesday afternoon, for their murdered son John Patrick,
then 21. Hope Asrelsky stood for her daughter Rachel, also 21. Babette
Hollister stood for her daughter Katharine, then 20. Gathered about them
were demonstrators organized by Amcha-Coalition for Jewish Concerns. They
protested the release by Scotland of Libyan intelligence agent Abdel Basset
Ali al-Megrahi, sentenced to life for orchestrating the murder of the 270
victims of Pan Am 103, 189 of them Americans. It is widely believed that
al-Megrahi's release to a hero's welcome in Tripoli was in exchange for
British commercial oil and gas contracts with Libya.

"When there is such a miscarriage of justice we cry out", declared Amcha-CJC
national president Rabbi Avi Weiss. "In God's words, 'your brother's blood
cries out to me from the ground', here, the blood of 270 Pan Am 103 victims.
To the parents of the victims, there are no words which can give you proper
solace. But across the denominations and faiths, each soul of good
conscience is trying to emphasize with you. You have not forgotten;
millions of people have not forgotten. Every passenger on any airline in
the world has been affected.

"Al-Megrahi was released on 'compassionate' grounds. Misplaced compassion
doesn't help, but hurts. Letting al-Megrahi go sends a message to
terrorists, you can do it and get away with it. And certainly no one
believes that only one person took down the plane. To Libya and, I believe,
Syria, we say, we have not forgotten. When Muammar Qaddafi comes to the
United Nations, as expected in a few weeks, he should be absolutely shunned.
Col. Qadaffi: The voice of moral conscience will follow you from the UN to
the Libyan compound in Englewood, NJ, where you may stay. You will not be
safe from the souls of Pan Am 103."

"To lose your oldest son in such a horrific act of terrorism is such an
incredible happening," Kathleen Flynn explained. It has certainly impacted
our entire life. God has blessed us with three other children and seven
grandchildren, but the pain is there every day. Terrorism is here to stay,
and we have to be ever vigilant and make sure that the nations which
participate in terrorist acts are punished. We should not be doing business
with terrorist nations."

"It's an appropriate day for me to be here," Babette Hollister told the
crowd and assembled media. "I spent the morning up in the cemetery because
tomorrow would have been my daughter's 41st birthday. I didn't even attempt
to explain to her what I would be doing this afternoon. It seems such a wild
thing that a person would be released after murdering 270 people."

"I don't speak the language in Scotland", Hope Asrelsky declared. "But I
think they've changed the word 'compassion' to mean the release in exchange
for oil exports and contracts."

Rabbi Jason Herman of the West Side Jewish Center, posed the question, "What
would happen if 21 years from now America, in an act of 'compassion', would
release 9/11 organizer Khalid Sheikh Mohammed? In these upcoming days of
Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, we speak of forgiveness and compassion. But not
holding someone accountable is not an act of compassion. The most ultimate
act of compassion is to hold someone accountable because it means that what
they did matters. Scotland hasn't learned that lesson; I hope the rest of
the world does."

Although the voices of the speakers were amplified to the many passersby on
the busy street a block from the United Nations, the protest also became
moments of healing. Rabbi Weiss gathered the protesters in a large circle.
"Let's close our eyes and try to feel the hurt", he told them. "Let's do
all we can to empathize with the families, to unite our souls, to stand as
one."

Other speakers included Maharat Sara Hurwitz of the Hebrew Institute of
Riverdale and Rabbi Israel Stein, rabbi emeritus of Rodeph Sholom,
Bridgeport, Ct.

Rabbi Weiss urged participation in the noontime September 24th rally at Dag
Hammerskjold Plaza against the expected presence of Iranian president
Ahmadinejad at the UN General Assembly.


Monday, August 24, 2009

Grobman: Israelis Denouncing Israel: Legitimate or Arrogant?


When Israelis Denounce Israel: Legitimate Criticism of Israel or Arrogant Self-Delusion

Dr. Alex Grobman

Critics of Israel abound. Some are antisemites who seek the demise of the Jewish state. Others have legitimate concerns about particular Israeli policies. Among the most vocal are a number of Israeli intellectuals who challenge the country’s raison d’être.

In an August 20, 2009 editorial in the Los Angeles Times, Neve Gordon, a professor of political science at Ben-Gurion University, accused Israel of being an apartheid state. He said a two-state solution was the “more realistic” way to end this inequity. Since only “massive international pressure,” will bring about this state and thus save Israel, Gordon recently joined the Arab sponsored Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement founded in July 2005.1

Vilification of Israel by Jews is not a new phenomenon. As early as May 1, 1936 Labor Zionist leader Berl Katznelson asked: “Is there another people on earth whose sons are so emotionally twisted that they consider everything their nation does despicable and hateful, while every murder, rape and robbery committed by their enemies fills their hearts with admiration and awe? As long as a Jewish child…can come to the land of Israel, and here catch the virus of self-hate…let not our conscience be still.”2 For Katznelson this was aberrant behavior, not the norm. Today, criticism of Israel has become ubiquitous among a significant portion of Israeli intellectuals.3

In the 1950s, psychologist Gordon Allport explained that Jewish self-hate is the process in which the victim identifies with his aggressor and “sees his own group through their eyes.” The Jew “may hate his historic religion…or he may blame some one class of Jews…or he may hate the Yiddish language. Since he cannot escape his own group, he does in a real sense hate himself—or at least the part of himself that is Jewish.”4 Self-hating Jews play a significant role in anti-Israel campaigns of the Western media. Historian Robert Wistrich noted that Jews highly critical of Israel are featured in the British media.5

Manfred Gerstenfeld, chairman of the Board of Fellows of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, found that the French elite and media adore Jews and Israelis who are highly critical of Israel.

A number of marginal Jews, who are not known in Israel, are presented as part of the Israeli mainstream. 6 Israeli’s condemnation of their country is a result of living under “a state of chronic siege,” posits Kenneth Levin, a historian and psychiatrist. Israelis have been abused for so long, that they escape their pain by espousing anti-Israel sentiments. Appeasing the terrorists, they believe, will end hostilities. Israel only has to acquiesce to Arab demands, cease obsessing about defensible borders and other strategic issues, and peace would ensue and such concerns would become irrelevant.7

Sol Stern, a former editor of the New Left Ramparts magazine, adds that this assumes both sides act rationally. According to this scenario, when Israel’s concessions are considered equitable, amity will compensate for any remaining differences. Didn’t the enmity between the U.S. and the former Soviet Union end in détente? Hadn’t President Richard Nixon gone to China? Aren’t “the Arabs rational” people? 8 Any “peace process” is intrinsically superior to war. Regardless of all previously failed attempts, isn’t another peace overture worth trying? To suggest there might be “something inherently violent and unreasonable in Arab Muslim political culture” could be interpreted as racist.9 Instead, Israeli intellectuals began disparaging their own culture and re-writing their country’s history. When they concluded that the Arabs had legitimate grievances, they decided “it was time to try again to split the difference.”10 In the 1980s and 1990s two different Israeli administrations offered “land for peace’ to Syria, but were rebuffed. Under terms of the 1993 Oslo Accords, the Israeli government permitted terrorist organizations to return to the West Bank and Gaza and gave tens of thousands of weapons to Yasser Arafat’s security services, before he signed a peace treaty or an irrefutable security agreement. Arab failure to rescind the Palestine National Covenant’s demand for Israel’s demise and replacement by a Palestinian state was either ignored or minimized.11 “No nation in the world has taken so many mortal risks for a putative peace with its most implacable enemies,” Stern observes. Even after the Oslo Accords were shattered when the Arabs began blowing up civilians in pizza shops and on buses, Ehud Barak offered another proposal at Camp David. Instead of accepting this offer, Arafat unleashed “yet another savage wave of extermination against Israel’s civilian population” with weapons Israel had provided him.

Stern credits neoconservatives with understanding that Israel’s right to exist as a democratic Jewish state has always been the main problem for the Arabs, not the “disputed territories.” Arab attempts to bring their case to the attention of the world are not arbitrary.

Suicide bombings are a cleverly planned strategy that has produced considerable advantages. After the first series of attacks against Israeli supermarkets, cafés, malls and buses, the Arab cause was championed by European governments and on American campuses.12 Israeli victims receive little sympathy, historian Tony Judt and a severe critic of Israel claims, because they are not seen as victims of terror, but as “collateral damage of their own government’s mistaken policies.”13 Israeli offers to exchange land for peace have not succeeded. Appeasement has only increased hatred of Israel. Yet Israel is continually pressured to make concessions.

The reason, Stern believes, is that progressive critics cannot acknowledge a fundamental truth: “that there can be political movements, like Islamic terrorism—in which the jihad and the intifada merge—that are so pathological in their hatreds that we can solve the problems they purport to care about only after they are defeated.” 14

Levin sees an element of arrogance in “this self-delusion” by Israelis who believe they can affect change. Jews assume a responsibility for something over which they have no control, to ward off despair. This is similar to an abused child who feels responsible for his plight and views himself as “bad.” The child maintains, “the fantasy that if he becomes good enough,” his father will stop hitting him, his mother will give him attention and whatever other form of abuse he suffered will end.

In the same way, some Israelis are delusional when they assume they can control Arab behavior.

Dr. Alex Grobman is a Hebrew University trained historian. He is the author of a number of books, including Nations United: How The U.N. Undermines Israel and The West, Denying History: Who Says The Holocaust Never Happened and Why Do They Say It? and a forthcoming book on Israel's moral and legal right to exist as a Jewish State.

1. Never Gordon, “Boycott Israel: An Israeli comes to the painful conclusion that it’s the only way to save his country,” latimes.com (August 20, 2009).2. Edward Alexander, “Israelis Against Themselves.” In The Jewish Divide Over Israel: Accusers and Defenders. Edward Alexander and Paul Bogdanor, Eds. (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction Publishers, 2006), 35.
3. Ibid., 35-36.
4. Manfred Gerstenfeld, “Jews Against Israel,” Post-Holocaust and Anti-Semitism Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs No.30 (March 1, 2005).
5. Ibid.
6. Manfred Gerstenfeld, “European-Israeli Relations: Between Confusion and Change? An American Watching Anti-Israeli Bias in France, Interview with Nidra Poller.” Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs (September 2006).
7. Kenneth Levin, The Oslo Syndrome: Delusions of a People Under Siege (Hanover, New Hampshire: Smith and Kraus Global, 2005), vii-viii, xv, xix-xx.
8. Sol Stern, “Israel Without Apology.” City Journal. (Summer 2003), Online.
9. Ibid.
10. Ibid.
11. Ibid.
12. Ibid.
13. Tony Judt, “The country that wouldn’t grow up.” Haaretz. (May 5, 2006), Online.
14. Stern, op.cit.
15. Levin, op.cit. xvi-xx.


Sunday, August 23, 2009

Support Trader Joe's and Israel this Sunday!

Support Trader Joe's and Israel this Sunday!

Dear Friends,

Recently, anti-Israel protestors have rallied at local Trader Joe’s stores throughout the bay area of San Francisco and bombarded customers and store managers with anti-Israel propaganda.

These "activists" have been vandalizing the Israeli products by disfiguring them with labels depicting an Israeli Orange that is half a hand grenade and stickers that read “Don’t Buy into Apartheid; Boycott Israeli Goods.”

This issue has come to light with a highly disturbing video on YouTube “Dishelving Israeli Goods at Trader Joe’s.” Click on the title or the picture below. Please view this video and see why it is so imperative for all of us o act now. This is a deliberate campaign to employ boycott, divestment and sanction initiatives against Israel.

The Galilee Institute echoes the calls of the local Jewish and non-Jewish communities of San Fran to show support for Trader Joe’s and Israel by buying these quality and delicious products along with our regular groceries for the week.

Many email messages have been sent out by the synagogues and organizations on the North Peninsula inviting you and your family to visit your local Trader Joe’s store this Sunday, August 23rd at 11 a.m. and then again on Wednesday, August 26 at 7 p.m. to buy these great products.

We hope to have as many people there as possible to thank the Managers and Assistant Managers for their support and for stocking Israeli products.

The goal is to support Trader Joe’s and to show our deep appreciation as they continue to stock Israeli products and for not bowing to the pressure of anti-Israel organizations and sentiments.

Please join in on one of these very important days at your local Trader Joe’s www.traderjoes.com

1820 S. Grant St., San Mateo,
765 Broadway, Millbrae,
1482 El Camino Real, San Carlos

The Israeli products include:

Harvest Grains Israeli Couscous
Pastures of Eden Feta Cheese
Dorot garlic, cilantro and basic cubes (frozen food section)

Let us stand together as one, with our hearts, our feet and our dollars to help Israel.

With the abundant blessings of Jerusalem!

The Galilee Institute Staff







Caroline Glick : Netanyahu's Perilous Statecraft

Caroline Glick :: Netanyahu"s perilous statecraft

This week we discovered that we have been deceived. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's principled rejection of US President Barack Obama's bigoted demand that Israel bar Jews from building new homes and expanding existing ones in Judea and Samaria does not reflect his actual policy.

Construction and Housing Minister Ariel Attias let the cat out of the bag.

Attias said that the government has been barring Jews from building in the areas since it took office four months ago, in the hopes that by preemptively capitulating to US demands, the US will treat Israel better.

And that's not all. Today Netanyahu is reportedly working in earnest to reach a deal with the Obama administration that would formalize the government's effective construction ban through 2010. Netanyahu is set to finalize such a deal at his meeting with Obama's Middle East envoy George Mitchell in London on Wednesday.

Unfortunately, far from treating Israel better as a result of Netanyahu's willingness to capitulate on the fundamental right of Jews to live and build homes in the land of Israel, the Obama administration is planning to pocket Israel's concession and then up the ante. Administration officials have stated that their next move will be to set a date for a new international Middle East peace conference that Obama will chair. There, Israel will be isolated and relentlessly attacked as the US, the Arabs, the Europeans, the UN and the Russians all gang up on our representatives and demand that Israel accept the so-called "Arab peace plan."

That deceptively named plan, which Obama has all but adopted as his own, involves Israel committing national suicide in exchange for nothing. The Arab plan - formerly the "Saudi Plan," and before that, the Tom Friedman "stick it to Israel 'peace' plan" - calls for Israel to retreat to the indefensible 1949 armistice lines and expel hundreds of thousands of Jews from their homes in Judea, Samaria, Jerusalem and the Golan Heights. It also involves Israel agreeing to cease being a Jewish state by accepting millions of foreign, hostile Arabs as citizens within its truncated borders.

The day an Israeli government accepts the plan - which again will form the basis of the Obama "peace conference" - is the day that the State of Israel signs its own death warrant.

Then there is the other Obama plan in the works. Obama also intends to host an international summit on nuclear security in March 2010. Arab states are already pushing for Israel's nuclear program to be placed on the agenda.

Together with Obama administration officials' calls for Israel to join the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty - which would compel Israel to relinquish its purported nuclear arsenal - and their stated interest in having Israel sign the Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty - which would arguably force Israel to allow international inspections of its nuclear facility in Dimona - Obama's planned nuclear conclave will place Israel in an untenable position.

Recognizing the Obama administration's inherent and unprecedented hostility to Israel, Netanyahu sought to deflect its pressure by giving his speech at Bar-Ilan University in June. There he gave his conditional acceptance of Obama's most cherished foreign policy goal - the establishment of a Palestinian state in Israel's heartland.

Netanyahu's conditions - that the Arabs generally and the Palestinians specifically recognize Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state; that they relinquish their demand that Israel accept millions of hostile Arabs as citizens under the so-called "right of return"; that the Palestinian state be a "demilitarized" state; and that Arab states normalize their relations with Israel were supposed to put a monkey wrench in Obama's policy of pressuring Israel.

Since it is obvious that the Arabs do not accept these eminently reasonable conditions, Netanyahu presumed that Obama would be forced to stand down.

What the prime minister failed to take into consideration was the notion that Obama and the Arabs would not act in good faith - that they would pretend to accept at least some of his demands in order to force him to accept all of their's, and so keep US pressure relentlessly focused on Israel.

Unfortunately, this is precisely what has happened.

Ahead of Obama's meeting on Tuesday with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, Al-Quds al-Arabi reported that Obama has accepted Netanyahu's call for a demilitarized Palestinian state. Although Netanyahu is touting Obama's new position as evidence of his own diplomatic prowess, the fact is that Obama's new position is both disingenuous and meaningless.

Obama's supposed support for a demilitarized Palestinian state is mendacious on two counts. First, Palestinian society is already one of the most militarized societies in the world. According to the World Bank, 43 percent of wages paid by the Palestinian Authority go to Palestinian militias. Since Obama has never called for any fundamental reordering of Palestinian society or for a reform of the PA's budgetary priorities, it is obvious that he doesn't have a problem with a militarized Palestinian state.

The second reason his statements in support of a demilitarized Palestinian state are not credible is because one of the central pillars of the Obama administration's Palestinian policy is its involvement in training of the Fatah-led Palestinian army. US Lt.-Gen. Keith Dayton is overseeing the training of this army in Jordan and pressuring Israel to expand its deployment in Judea and Samaria.

The US claims that the forces it is training will be responsible for counterterror operations and regular police work, and therefore, it is wrong to say that Dayton is raising a Palestinian army. But even if this is true today, there is no reason not to assume that these forces will form the backbone of a future Palestinian army. After all, the Palestinian militias trained by the CIA in the 1990s were trained in counterterror tactics. This then enabled them to serve as the commanders of the Palestinian terror apparatus from 2000 until 2004, when Israel finally defeated them. It is the uncertainty about these forces that renders Obama's statement meaningless.

And that gets to the heart of the problem with Netanyahu's conditional support for Palestinian statehood. Far from deflecting pressure on Israel to make further concessions, it trapped Israel into a position that serves none of its vital interests.

For Israel to secure its long-term vital national interests vis-a-vis the Palestinians, it doesn't need for the US and the Palestinians to declare they agree to a demilitarized state or for a Palestinian leader to announce that he recognizes Israel's right to exist or even agrees that Israel doesn't have to commit national suicide by accepting millions of Arab immigrants. For Israel to secure its national interests, Palestinian society needs to be fundamentally reorganized.

As we saw at the Fatah conclave in Bethlehem last week, even if Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas were to accept Netanyahu's conditions, he wouldn't be speaking for anyone but himself. Fatah's conclave - like Hamas's terror state in Gaza - gave Israel every reason to believe that the Palestinians will continue their war against Israel after pocketing their state in Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem. There is no Palestinian leader with any following that accepts Israel. Consequently, negotiating the establishment of a Palestinian state before Palestinian society is fundamentally changed is a recipe for disaster.

Furthermore, even if Netanyahu is right to seek an agreement with Mitchell next week, he showed poor negotiating skill by preemptively freezing Jewish construction. Domestically, Netanyahu has lost credibility now that the public knows that he misled it. And by preemptively capitulating, the prime minister showed Obama that he is not a serious opponent. Why should Obama take Netanyahu's positions seriously if Netanyahu abandons before them before Obama even begins to seriously challenge him?

Beyond the damage Netanyahu's actions have inflicted on his domestic and international credibility is the damage they have caused to Netanyahu's ability to refocus US attention and resolve where it belongs.

As the prime minister has repeatedly stated, the Palestinian issue is a side issue.

The greatest impediment to Middle East peace and the greatest threat to international security today is Iran's nuclear weapons program. A nuclear-armed Iran will all but guarantee that the region will at best be plagued by continuous war, and at worst be destroyed in a nuclear conflagration.

Netanyahu had hoped that his conditional support for Palestinian statehood, and his current willingness to bar Jews from building homes in Judea and Samaria would neutralize US pressure on Israel and facilitate his efforts to convince Obama to recognize and deal rationally with the issue of Iran's nuclear weapons program. But as Ambassador Michael Oren made clear on Sunday, the opposite has occurred.

In an interview with CNN, Oren said that Israel is "far from even contemplating" a military strike against the Islamic republic's nuclear installations. He also said, "The government of Israel has supported President Obama in his approach to Iran, initially the engagement, the outreach to Iran."

From this it appears that Israel has not only made no headway in convincing the administration to take Iran seriously. It appears that Jerusalem has joined the administration in accepting a nuclear-armed Iran.

It is possible that Oren purposely misrepresented Israel's position. But this too would be a disturbing turn of events. Israel gains nothing from lying. Oren's statement neutralizes domestic pressure on the administration to get serious about Iran. And if Israel attacks Iran's nuclear installations in the coming months, Oren's statement will undoubtedly be used by Israel's detractors to attack the government.

Some critics of Netanyahu from the Right like Ariel Mayor Ron Nachman claim that it may well be time to begin bringing down Netanyahu's government. They are wrong. We have been down this road before. In 1992, the Right brought down Yitzhak Shamir's government and brought the Rabin-Peres government to power and Yassir Arafat to the gates of Jerusalem. In 1999, the Right brought down the first Netanyahu government and gave Israel Camp David and the Palestinian terror war.

There is another way. It is being forged by the likes of Vice Premier Moshe Ya'alon on the one hand and former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee on the other.

Ya'alon argues that not capitulating to American pressure is a viable policy option for Israel. There is no reason to reach an agreement with Mitchell on the administration's bigoted demand that Jews not build in Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem. If the US wants to have a fight with Israel, a fight against American anti-Jewish discrimination is not a bad one for Israel to have.

Ya'alon's argument was borne out by Huckabee's visit this week to Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria. Huckabee's trip showed that the administration is not operating in a policy vacuum. There is plenty of strong American support for an Israeli government that would stand up to the administration on the Palestinian issue and Iran alike.

Netanyahu's policies have taken a wrong turn. But Netanyahu is not Tzipi Livni or Ehud Olmert. He is neither an ideologue nor an opportunist. He understands why what he is doing is wrong. He just needs to be convinced that he has another option.

Originally published in the Jerusalem Post.

Posted on August 21, 2009 at 5:37 PM


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