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1. US Proposed Resettling 'Palestinians' in South America
by Gil Ronen
The United States proposed giving 'Palestinian' refugees land in South
America to settle in, during a June 2008 meeting with Israeli and
Palestinian Authority negotiators in Berlin, the British paper Guardian
reported Thursday.
Condoleezza Rice, who was U.S. secretary of state under President
George W. Bush, offered the idea as a way to bypass the PA's demand for
the "return" of displaced Arabs and their progeny to the Land of Israel.
During a discussion about international funding to compensate refugees,
Rice said: "Maybe we will be able to find countries that can contribute
in kind. Chile, Argentina, etc.."
"In kind" refers to land, according to the newspaper, which says that
the proposal "seems based on the fact that Chile has a large Palestinian
community dating back a century and, like Argentina, has large tracts
of sparsely populated land." Next to the quotes, which were "not
verbatim," appeared the initials CR. No one else in the meeting had
those initials, exept for Rice.
The Guardian explained that the idea "flew in the face of Palestinian
insistence that the refugees have the right to return to their ancestral
land – a demand Israel has resisted since its foundation in 1948.
Carving out a new Palestinian homeland 8,000 miles away in the Andes
could theoretically reduce pressure on Israel to return land."
The paper noted that the proposal "appears to have been influenced by
the transfer of 117 Palestinian refugees to Chile between March and
April 2008, a few months before the Berlin meeting" and that it is "a
twist on suggestions made in the last century to settle Jews in
Madagascar and what is present-day Kenya."
Jewish colonies were also established in Argentina in the 19th century
by the Jewish Colonization Association founded by Baron Maurice Hirsch,
in an attempt to solve the "Jewish problem" that eventually failed. By
1930, at the peak of ICA settlement in Argentina, over 20,000 Jewiah
colonists farmed approximately 500,000 hectares of land.
Chile has Latin America's largest Palestinian population – estimated at
more than 200,000 – and previously accepted refugees from war-torn
Afghanistan and the former Yugoslavia.
2. US Wastes Chance to Support Mubarak
by Hillel Fendel
Second day in a row: Thousands of Egyptians defied a government ban on
protests today and angrily called on President Hosni Mubarak to resign.
The U.S.seems to have partially abandoned its long-time Arab ally, with
Secretary of State Hilary Clinton telling the Mubarak government it
must implement democratic reforms and allow peaceful protests.
Six people are reported dead and hundreds have been arrested following
the second day of protests in several Egyptian cities. In the city of
Suez, rioting demonstrators set fire to a government building on
Thursday.
The ailing Mubarak, 82, has been in power since 1981, after the
assassination of his predecessor Anwar Sadat. He has not said whether he
will run in the September elections; he has long been considering
backing his son Jamal.
A leading figure in the pro-reforms movement is Mohamed ElBaradei, who
is set to return to Egypt as the anti-government protests give his bid
for the presidency a powerful boost.
The White House pointedly turned down a direct opportunity to affirm
support for Mubarak. Asked if the Obama administration still backed
Mubarak, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said only, "Egypt is a
strong ally."
"I do think it's possible for there to be reforms,” Clinton said at a
State Department press conference with visiting Jordanian Foreign
Minister Nasser Judeh, “and that is what we are urging and calling for."
The U.S.position is somewhat surprising, seeing as if Mubarak’s regime
falls, it is likely that the extremist anti-Israel and anti-West Islamic
Brotherhood will gain much power.
%InAd1%
3. Ashkenazi to NATO: Stop the Spread of Non-Conventional Weapons
by Elad Benari
IDF Chief of Staff, Gabi Ashkenazi, spoke on Wednesday at the NATO
Conference in Brussels, during a special plenary for the chiefs of staff
of the armies of Mediterranean countries.
During his speech Ashkenazi addressed the change in the battlefield as
he has seen it during his term as Chief of Staff, which is scheduled to
conclude in several weeks.
“Radical regimes and terrorist organizations brought into the
battlefield weapons with both high and low technological qualities,
cynical use of civilians as human shields, use of global systems of
disinformation and more,” said Ashkenazi. “All these have created a
significant change on the battlefield.”
Ashkenazi added that “NATO is facing the same challenges in Afghanistan
and the Allied Forces are forced to deal with complex strategic,
tactical, and logistical issues in different areas.” He noted that he
appreciates the work of NATO “which leads more than forty countries in
fighting these threats. These joint efforts ensure that the extremists
who want to ruin our lives will never be able to do so. If we are to
eradicate this phenomenon significantly, we must stand directly against
those challenges and overcome the legal, operational and intelligence
challenges. We must take advantage of all the means to prevent the
spread of non-conventional weapons.”
As this is the last gathering of chiefs of staff that Ashkenazi will
participate in, he pointed out that he is “sure that those who come
after me will receive a warm welcome from you just like the one I got.”
Ashkenazi also said that “I was honored, as I'm sure are those sitting
around me, to have lead for many years brave soldiers and officers, and
unfortunately, also heroes who fall as they defend our countries.”
Ashkenazi departed on Tuesday
for the two day conference of the Chiefs of Defense of NATO member
countries, where he is conducting work meetings with his counterparts
from around the world. As part of the Conference a ceremonial dinner
will be held in the home of the Chairman of the NATO Military Committee,
Admiral Giampaolo Di Paola, where he will bid a farewell to Ashkenazi.
4. Poll: No Future for the Labor Party
by Maayana Miskin
Most Israelis think the Labor party has lost touch with its roots,
according to a poll conducted by Dr. Mina Tzemach of Dachaf for Channel
99, the Knesset channel.
Just 1% of respondents believe there is a strong connection between
today's Labor party and the historic Mapai party in terms of values,
while 45% believe there is no connection at all.
Many doubt Labor's future as well, with 69% saying they do not believe the party will recover from the recent split in its ranks. Labor head Ehud Barak and several supporters left Labor last week to form a new party that they are calling “Independence.”
Twenty-four percent believe that Labor will go on to be a successful party despite the split.
Those polled expressed doubts about the new Independence faction as
well. A full 75% said they believe the new party has no diplomatic
platform, while just 8% said they believe it does.
Similarly, 70% said they believe the new party has no social platform,
while 8% believe it does. Among those who believe there is an
Independence social platform, respondents were split as to whether that
platform is socialist – like that of the historic Labor party – or
capitalist.
The full survey will be published Thursday on the Knesset channel.
%InAd2%
5. Al-Jazeera Against Fatah, Abbas
by Hillel Fendel
A position paper by a senior policy analyst at the Jerusalem Center for
Public Affairs states that leaks of Israel-PA talks by Al-Jazeera are
designed to harm the PA and block resumption of talks with Israel.
Pinhas Inbari, a veteran Palestinian Authority affairs correspondent
and the author of books such as “The Palestinians: Between Terrorism and
Statehood,” writes that Al-Jazeera has an agenda to de-legitimize the
PA in the eyes of its residents and the Arab world.
Over the past week, the Qatar-based Arabic-language satellite TV
station and international news network has been publishing documents
leaked to it from the PLO Negotiations Support Unit – causing great
damage to the PA negotiators. “Now, after Al-Jazeera has brainwashed
Arab minds with charges of PLO treason,” Inbari writes, “no declaration
of statehood can be expected. Neither will there be a resumption of
negotiations with Israel since the Palestinian team will stick to the
most hard-line positions possible.”
The leaked documents indicate that the PLO negotiators and leadership
conceded to Israel on three main points: The relatively small number of
Arab “refugees” to be allowed to enter Israel; allowing Israel to keep
most Jewish neighborhoods in what is known as eastern Jerusalem; and
collaborating with Israel in fighting Hamas terrorists.
According to the leaked documents, Inbari writes, the PLO negotiating
team “relinquished all Jewish neighborhoods in east Jerusalem except for
Har Homa - including Ramot Shlomo, the Jewish neighborhood that sparked
the crisis between Israel and the U.S., and Sheikh Jarrah, now a
location for demonstrations by international supporters of the
Palestinian cause.”
The papers also quote PA chief Mahmoud Abbas in an internal briefing to
PA officials as saying, "We cannot demand the return of millions, as
this will end Israel."
Inbari indicates that Al-Jazeera purposely overlooks the firmness with
which the PA adhered to some of its positions. For instance, the PLO
team "was adamant in refusing to agree to Israeli demands to keep the
settlement blocs. For example, the Palestinians demanded the dismantling
of the city of Ariel (pop. 17,559), and they were ready to consider
leaving Israelis living in Ma'ale Adumim (pop. 34,324) only if the
Jewish city adjacent to Jerusalem was under Palestinian sovereignty.” He
also raises the possibility that some of the leaked documents are
simply forgeries.
In response to the Al-Jazeera campaign against Abbas and his Fatah
organization, Fatah gunmen attacked Al-Jazeera studios in Shechem
(Nablus) on Wednesday. They damaged equipment, though no one was hurt.
6. Revealed: How ISA Nabbed Terrorist Killers
by Maayana Miskin
The Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet) has revealed details of its
investigation into the murder of a Christian tourist, an investigation
that led to the capture of a terrorist cell
that was discovered to have carried out a second murder as well as
other violent assaults. The investigation was made public Wednesday.
Investigators were able to nab the Palestinian Authority terrorists
thanks to Kaye Wilson, who survived the vicious stabbing attack that
killed her friend, tourist Christine Logan.
Wilson was badly wounded in the stabbing, but managed to hike 400
meters through the forest while bleeding, barefoot, and with her hands
tied and her face covered, until she encountered a family that called
for help.
Wilson's insistence that the men who attacked her and Logan had
intended to murder, not rob, led to the Shin Bet joining the
investigation. She had attempted to fight back during the assault,
injuring one attacker and providing critical DNA evidence.
The first killer located was Kifach Raneimat, 34, of the PA village of
Kfar Tzurif in the Etzion bloc. Next, investigators tracked down Iyad
Fatafateh, 33, of Tarkomiyeh, north of Hevron.
Neither man was known to belong to a terrorist group, but both had a criminal background.
The two admitted to the stabbing during questioning, and even reenacted
the crime. They also admitted to another crime: the murder of Israeli
citizen Neta Sorek-Blatt, a schoolteacher who was murdered last year
near Beit Shemesh. They implicated a third PA man, Ibrahim Raneimat, in
Blatt's murder.
Ibrahim Raneimat was arrested, and admitted to his part in the crime as
well. His confession, and those of Kifach Raneimat and of Fatafateh,
led to the arrest of five other PA men, who are suspected of various
crimes.
Kifach Raneimat admitted to a third crime as well: the brutal stabbing
of two teenagers near Beit Shemesh in early 2010. The two victims, a boy
and girl, were badly wounded but survived.
Illegal Entry, Crime, Terrorism
The killers crossed the 1949 armistice line into pre-67 Israel many
times, investigators found. They are suspected of several crimes against
Israelis, including rape, attempted rape, theft, and home invasion.
A Shin Bet investigator said the affair “shows the fluidity of the
connection between illegal entry, crime, and terrorism.” The suspects
“appeared to be cool and collected violent criminals, who did not
hesitate to commit murder and expressed no regret.”
%InAd3%
7. Analysis: Obituaries for Mubarak Are Still Premature
by Dr. Amiel Ungar
Will we get an Egyptian domino? The fact that scores of thousands of
Egyptian demonstrators turned out against the regime of President Hosni
Mubarak was a first for Egypt, not seen since the time of Gamal Abd
al-Nasser in the sixties. The demonstrators' use of the Internet until
it was temporarily shut down by the authorities was also
precedent-setting.
The proximity of the events to the Tunisian Jasmine rebellion led to
speculation about an Arab Domino theory, a scenario in which one
authoritarian Arab regime after another would topple in a chain
reaction.
While appealing image-wise, it is important to remember that states are not really dominoes.
The original Domino Theory surfaced in the 1960s and was employed to
defend American intervention in Vietnam. The argument was that if South
Vietnam would fall to the Communists, all of Southeast Asia would fall.
Vietnam did fall to the Communists in 1975, but the dominoes did not
fall all over Asia, although some defenders of American policy would
argue that America by its intervention in Vietnam allowed other
non-Communist countries to buy time.
A second case of the Domino effect came with the collapse of communist regimes in Eastern Europe in 1988 and 1989.
But this was not a Domino Theory in action, just akin to the removal of
the stopper in the sink. What had maintained all the communist regimes
in Eastern Europe, with the possible exception of the former Yugoslavia,
was the fact demonstrated in the1956 and 1968 rebellions: that if a
country proceeded too far towards independence and the jettisoning of
the Communist regime, it would provoke Soviet intervention.
When Mikhail Gorbachev announced in 1988 that he was embracing the
Frank Sinatra "I did it my way" doctrine, under which the Soviet Union
would not intervene to salvage threatened communist regimes, scrapping
the Brezhnev doctrine of 1968, the stopper was taken out and the
communist regimes went down the drain. Communist rule came to Eastern
Europe on Soviet bayonets after World War II, and it departed once these
bayonets were removed.
Later, during the presidency of George W. Bush. a series of "color"
revolutions in former Soviet republics as well as in Serbia took place,
but again not every domino fell, witness Belarus or some of the former
republics in Asia.
The same holds true of the Arab world.
The historian Crane Brinton has theorized that revolutions succeed when
the ruling elite has fragmented or has lost its will to fight on.
Tunisia was a case where the elite fragmented under the pressure, the
proof being that many members of the new government are those who held
power under the deposed government..
Another factor is the army. Ben Ali was dependent on the police, but did not command the loyalty of the Army.
As long as the Army remains loyal and is willing to crush dissent in a
showdown, a regime brutal enough to employ the Army, or as in the
Iranian case special militias, can usually ride out the storm. The
classic case was in Hama, Syria where the Hafiz Assad regime was willing
to butcher scores of thousands of Muslim Brotherhood rebels even at the
cost of bombarding the city center. One can also recall Tianamen square
in Beijing, where the world moved on from the students crushed under
Chinese tanks.
Yet another factor in falling dominoes has been foreign influence. When
dictatorships fell in Western Europe during the 1970s (Portugal, Spain
and Greece,) the lure of joining the then European Economic Community
and now the European Union was much stronger. Democratization was a
precondition for joining.
Today's brutal dictatorships know, particularly when they have natural
resources, that they can turn to China for economic and diplomatic
support to prevent their fall.
When the Shah of Iran capitulated to the revolution that morphed into
the Islamic Republic in 1979, he was weakened by cancer and was under
pressure from the American Carter administration not to use military
force. America had greater influence in the region then. But after the
recent US climb-down in Lebanon (where the US basically acquiesced to a
Hezbollah takeover), it is unlikely that Mubarak or perhaps a successor
from the current establishment will be impressed by American calls to
respect the rights of peaceful demonstrators if the regime's survival is
at stake.
There is, however, a tendency among scholars to magnify a regime's
stability. When Soviet dissident Andrei Amalrik wrote a book entitled
"Will the Soviet Union Survive till 1984" he was dismissed as a crank,
yet he was off by only 6 years. The Mubarak regime may collapse and then
we will in retrospect write analyses explaining why that collapse was
inevitable.
However, it would be equally mistaken to ascribe the fall to a domino-like determinism where "all fall down".
8. Popular Israeli Columnist Notes ‘Incitement’ Hypocrisy
by Kalman Libeskind
(translated by Gil Ronen)
The arrest of Uri Bar’am
two weeks ago, on suspicion of publishing a video against senior state
attorney Shai Nitzan, was a good opportunity to take a serious look at
the media’s role in such incitement.
There is no disputing that people who publish films of this naturet should
be investigated. The question is – what is the point in giving
disproportionate publicity to the crazed creations of every person with a
keyboard? From Channel 10 I learned that up to the moment at which
Bar’am removed the video from the Internet, it had been viewed by 25
people. A short while later, when he became the only subject to interest
news providers for an entire 24-hour time span, several million more
people heard the reasons why eliminating Nitzan would be a good idea.
If the danger of incitement is that radicals who want to do a deed
might get ideas, then Reshet Bet government-run radio host Yaron Dekel –
to give one example – is more responsible than Uri Bar’am for the fact
that in every household in Israel, people know who “needs to be
eliminated.” We shouldn’t belittle the importance that such news reports
have sometimes, in illuminating what we often call the “dark corners of
Israeli society.” But let’s admit the truth: when Reshet Bet decided to
devote an entire day of broadcasting to this video, no one there knew
if it was the initiative of a new extreme terror group or of a bored
child who had stayed home with the flu.
Just for fun, let’s imagine a more extreme example. Let’s pretend that I
am sitting with friends in my living room, sipping beer and telling
them that in my opinion, if someone takes out the prime minister, that
would not be a bad thing for the country. And let’s say that one of
these friends, who is a journalist by trade, places that quote from me
on the top headline of his newspaper’s front page. Which one of us is
the inciter? Is it I, who blurted it out among friends, or he, who
propagated it among all of the country’s crazies?
Stories of this type are usually either ignored or hyped by the media,
depending on their political bent. When Ehud Barak received a
threatening letter from some idiot with childish handwriting, the story
about “extreme right wing threats” opened all the day'snewscasts. When
National Union MK Michael Ben-Ari received a similar letter, no one
thought it was newsworthy.
Roi Philipstal, a young resident of Tel Aviv who has signed various
left-wing petitions, recently wrote a Facebook status message with a
clear call: “Who wants to stick a bullet in the head of
Ketzaleh-Mengele, just for the fun of it?” (Ketzaleh is MK Yaakov Katz,
leader of the National Union party.) Noa Begun, content editor for the
portal Tapuz, added a gleeful response to Philipstal’s post: “Oh yeah,
definitely.”
This matter was not a secret. Katz filed a complaint with the police
and his spokesman put out a press release and sent it to a large mailing
list. Well, did you see Channel 10 opening its evening newscast with
the item? Did you see Philipstal brought arraigned before a judge? Was
Professor Ze’ev Sternhell invited to news talk shows to opine on the
matter as a world-renowned expert on incitement? No sir-ee. If someone
had decided to make an item out of it, Philpstal would have already been
sharing a cell with Uri Bar’am. But it didn’t happen.
And that is why Bar’am is a dangerous inciter who could get 10 years in
the slammer, and Philipstal sleeps soundly at home under his down
blanket.
Note from IsraelNationalNews: The Attorney General has reportedly
decided to investigate the complaint against Roi Philipstal. There has
been no news of his arrest, however.
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