Land without peace: Why Abbas went to the U.N.

By Charles Krauthammer,   Published: September 29, 2011

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/land-without-peace-why-abbas-went-to-the-un/2011/09/29/gIQACaoI8K_story.html

Territorial disputes are solvable; existential conflicts are not.

Land for peace, yes. Land without peace is nothing but an invitation to national suicide.

While diplomatically inconvenient for the Western powers, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s attempt to get the United Nations to unilaterally declare a Palestinian state has elicited widespread sympathy. After all, what choice did he have? According to the accepted narrative, Middle East peace is made impossible by a hard-line Likud-led Israel that refuses to accept a Palestinian state and continues to build settlements.

It is remarkable how this gross inversion of the truth has become conventional wisdom. In fact, Benjamin Netanyahu brought his Likud-led coalition to open recognition of a Palestinian state, thereby creating Israel’s first national consensus for a two-state solution. He is also the only prime minister to agree to a settlement freeze — 10 months — something no Labor or Kadima government has ever done.

To which Abbas responded by boycotting the talks for nine months, showing up in the 10th, then walking out when the freeze expired. Last week he reiterated that he will continue to boycott peace talks unless Israel gives up — in advance — claim to any territory beyond the 1967 lines. Meaning, for example, that the Jewish Quarter in Jerusalem is Palestinian territory. This is not just absurd. It violates every prior peace agreement. They all stipulate that such demands are to be the subject of negotiations, not their precondition.

Abbas unwaveringly insists on the so-called “right of return,” which would demographically destroy Israel by swamping it with millions of Arabs, thereby turning the world’s only Jewish state into the world’s 23rd Arab state. And he has repeatedly declared, as recently as last week in New York: “We shall not recognize a Jewish state.”

Nor is this new. It is perfectly consistent with the long history of Palestinian rejectionism. Consider:

●Camp David, 2000. At a U.S.-sponsored summit, Prime Minister Ehud Barak offers Yasser Arafat a Palestinian state on the West Bank and Gaza — and, astonishingly, the previously inconceivable division of Jerusalem. Arafat refuses. And makes no counteroffer, thereby demonstrating his unseriousness about making any deal. Instead, within two months, he launches a savage terror war that kills a thousand Israelis.

●Taba, 2001. An even sweeter deal — the Clinton Parameters — is offered. Arafat walks away again.

●Israel, 2008. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert makes the ultimate capitulation to Palestinian demands — 100 percent of the West Bank (with land swaps), Palestinian statehood, the division of Jerusalem with the Muslim parts becoming the capital of the new Palestine. And incredibly, he offers to turn over the city’s holy places, including the Western Wall — Judaism’s most sacred site, its Kaaba — to an international body on which sit Jordan and Saudi Arabia.

Did Abbas accept? Of course not. If he had, the conflict would be over and Palestine would already be a member of the United Nations.

This is not ancient history. All three peace talks occurred over the past decade. And every one completely contradicts the current mindless narrative of Israeli “intransigence” as the obstacle to peace.

Settlements? Every settlement remaining within the new Palestine would be destroyed and emptied, precisely as happened in Gaza.

So why did the Palestinians say no? Because saying yes would have required them to sign a final peace agreement that accepted a Jewish state on what they consider the Muslim patrimony.

The key word here is “final.” The Palestinians are quite prepared to sign interim agreements, like Oslo. Framework agreements, like Annapolis. Cease-fires, like the 1949 armistice. Anything but a final deal. Anything but a final peace. Anything but a treaty that ends the conflict once and for all — while leaving a Jewish state still standing.

After all, why did Abbas go to the United Nations last week? For nearly half a century, the United States has pursued a Middle East settlement on the basis of the formula of land for peace. Land for peace produced the Israel-Egypt peace of 1979 and the Israel-Jordan peace of 1994. Israel has offered the Palestinians land for peace three times since. And been refused every time.

Why? For exactly the same reason Abbas went to the United Nations last week: to get land without peace. Sovereignty with no reciprocal recognition of a Jewish state. Statehood without negotiations. An independent Palestine in a continued state of war with Israel.

Israel gave up land without peace in south Lebanon in 2000 and, in return, received war (the Lebanon war of 2006) and 50,000 Hezbollah missiles now targeted on the Israeli homeland. In 2005, Israel gave up land without peace in Gaza, and again was rewarded with war — and constant rocket attack from an openly genocidal Palestinian mini-state.

Israel is prepared to give up land, but never again without peace. A final peace. Which is exactly what every Palestinian leader from Haj Amin al-Husseini to Yasser Arafat to Mahmoud Abbas has refused to accept. Which is why, regardless of who is governing Israel, there has never been peace. Territorial disputes are solvable; existential conflicts are not.

Land for peace, yes. Land without peace is nothing but an invitation to national suicide

THE KHOMEINIST DOME: IRAN’S TRUE NUCLEAR INTENTIONS   

Walid Phares 4-28-14

http://www.algemeiner.com/2014/04/28/the-khomeinist-dome-irans-true-nuclear-

intentions/As a reader of Khomeinist global strategies since the early 1980s, and as I have argued over decades in books and articles, Tehran’s regime possesses a much larger nuclear strategy than the simple acquisition of mass destruction weapons.

Over the last few years, the United States and its Western allies have been led to focus on the visible part of the Iranian buildup, missing the much greater construct undertaken over several generations of rulers of the same Iranian regime. Since the so-called “Iran nuclear deal” was inked last fall, Washington acts as if it has somewhat halted (or at least slowed) the strategic program of Tehran and thus has been rewarding the Ayatollahs, but the reality flies in the face of this assumption and agreement.

Iran’s regime is employing a much larger strategy in order to reach the level of an armed nuclear power, and – perhaps ironically – one of the regime’s strategic policies is to mislead the international community, particularly the U.S., in its campaign to irreversibly transform itself into a nuclear power.

The Iranian global construct can be perceived as a “Khomeinist Dome.” Iran’s strategy has been twofold – and sustained over decades, not simply implemented over the past few years and months.

The regime has two simultaneous goals. One is to create a defensive sphere over the forthcoming strategic weapon before it is unveiled, and two is to suppress any internal opposition to the regime’s policies. The “dome” is a complex integration of Iranian foreign policy: Terrorism backing, using financial luring, exploiting Western weaknesses while at the same time expanding influence in the region so that by the time the greater shield is established, most U.S. and allied measures will be useless.

The regime knew all too well, years ago, that if they produced one atomic weapon (or even two) without being able to protect it, they would run into the almost certainty of military action by the West and/or by Israel to disable it. They were unable to circumvent this strategic theorem for decades, at least since the end of the Iraq-Iran war of 1980-1987. The issue for them was not about obtaining the nuclear weapon, but how to deter their enemies from destroying it.

Iran did not have the geopolitical or economic capacities, nor the international stature of either India or Pakistan, to produce large scale numbers of bombs and later announce them the way south Asia’s nuclear powers detonated their devices in 1999. Hence Iran’s grand strategy to equip itself with the ultimate weapon was different – and thus far successful.

After the Soviet collapse, Tehran knew Israel, or possibly a U.S. administration, would bomb the nuclear installations, not to mention the location of a potential weapon. The Israeli raid on Osirak in 1981 was clear evidence of Western determination to strike at a nuclear weapon in the hands of a dangerous regime. The Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and the coalition’s massive response in 1990-1991 also told the Khomeinists that a post-Cold War West is more assertive than under the previously bipolar world. Finally, the U.S. invasions of Afghanistan in 2001 and of Iraq in 2003 brought two powerful and hostile armies to Iran’s two borders. Tehran’s reading of the landscape change was so nervous that it declared itself as abandoning its nuclear ambitions, almost simultaneously with Moammar Gaddafi. The fear of being toppled by outside military forces pushed Iran to hide its nuclear ambitions while awaiting the outcome of the regional evolution.

By 2005, as the U.S. offensive in the Middle East came to a halt, the Iranian regime displayed its hardliner face with the coming of Mahmoud Ahmedinijad to power. From then on, the grand strategy of the atomic conquest went full steam ahead. On one track, Iran activated the production of nuclear material, making Bushehr and its sister sites the center of international focus. Washington responded with targeted sanctions, well-crafted but aiming at pressuring Tehran to halt the project.

The failure of the sanctions-only policies to exert a full strategic halt was caused by the inability of the West to support a strong and organized Iranian opposition inside the country with a significant presence in neighboring Iraq. Sanctions to pressure, without a real resistance movement to push the regime into a corner, were doomed to fail and they did.

But the Iranian regime’s wider strategy was to create a shield for the nuclear weapons as they were produced. In fact, the Ayatollahs calculated that they would only unveil the weapon if and when it is protected. Hence, while the U.S. focused primarily on the fissile material, the fast track production of missiles was never stopped. The greater dome strategy includes missiles, anti-aircraft systems, geopolitical space, and terrorism.

A large missile force, which would target a wide spectrum of cities and sites, has been under construction for years. In addition, the regime has been attempting to obtain advanced anti-aircraft missile systems to protect the potential offensive missiles. And when the two structures are fully ready it will be a greater challenge to eliminate the entire network as it would be armed with nukes and other WMDs while also surrounded with a vast anti-aircraft system; all the while, the uranium production is moving forward.

In parallel, Tehran has been expanding its reach in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, the Arabian Peninsula, and parts of East Africa with its influence and through terror networks. Once the combination of all the above systems is in place, the bomb will come, but not before.

The Khomeinist dome is about preparing for the nukes before they are displayed and claimed. It is about signaling to the West that once the greater Iranian power is asserted, there will not be a first indefensible bomb. Rather, Iran will jump to the level of unstoppable power with a vast network of retaliation as deterrence will have been achieved.

Unfortunately, Western posture towards Tehran has only helped in the building of the dome: sanctions worked but were limited, all Iran’s other military systems were unchecked, and its interventions in the region unstopped. Worse, a nuclear deal with the U.S. injected time and energy into the regime’s veins.

At this point, the regime is out to complete the buildup of its strategic shield while offering to slow down its fissile material production. Once the dome is complete, the nuclear material production will speed up, and by the time the West realizes the maneuver, the Middle East will have changed forever.

Dr. Walid Phares is the author of The Lost Spring: US Policy in the Middle East and Catastrophes to Avoid. He advises members of Congress on Terrorism and the Middle East.

ISRAEL CAN’T ACCEPT THE EMERGING US-IRAN ACCORD   

  Yakov Amidor  Jerusalem Post 4-24-14

With such a flimsy agreement, I wonder what will be left of Western commitment to preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. And Israel will have to draw its own conclusions.

Maj.-Gen. (res.) Yaakov Amidror  served as national security adviser to the prime minister and chairman of the National Security Council until the end of 2013. Previously, he was commander of the IDF Military Colleges, military secretary to the defense minister, and director of the Intelligence Analysis Division in IDF Military Intelligence.

Ostensibly, official US policy on Iran’s nuclear program is clear: The US will not allow Iran to produce a nuclear bomb. Moreover, US President Barack Obama has said that, for this purpose, “all options are on the table” – implying a military option as well. In addition, according to many reports in American newspapers, Obama has ordered the development of diversified US military capabilities with which to attack Iranian nuclear facilities, far beyond what existed in the previous administration – providing further evidence of the president’s seriousness.

But many people do not understand the meaning behind the vague statement, “We will not allow Iran to manufacture a nuclear bomb.” When will this happen? Who will decide that this is the time for action? How? What does “manufacture” mean? Robert Einhorn seeks to answer these questions in a 56-page comprehensive paper, just published by the Brookings Institution, titled “Preventing a Nuclear-Armed Iran: Requirements for a Comprehensive Nuclear Agreement.”

This paper cannot be ignored, since until a few months ago Einhorn was one of the top officials on Iran in the Obama administration, and he is very knowledgeable on the topic. (Einhorn was the secretary of state’s special adviser for nonproliferation and arms control. During the Clinton administration, he was assistant secretary for nonproliferation.) In addition to analyzing Iran’s intentions toward nuclear weapons and discussing the principal issues in the negotiations, Einhorn outlines the key requirements for an acceptable comprehensive agreement that, in his view, “would prevent Iran from having a rapid nuclear breakout capability and deter a future Iranian decision to build nuclear weapons.”

According to Einhorn, the essence of an agreement between Iran and the P5+1 could be as follows: Iran will retain the capability to produce the material necessary for a bomb (full fuel cycle), so theoretically it will be able to produce a bomb should it decide to do so. But the agreement that the US should try to reach will include the most sophisticated and exacting controls and monitoring, which will immediately spot any breakthrough in Iran’s nuclear program. The capability that Iran will be permitted under the agreement will be greatly reduced compared with its current capability (for example, far fewer centrifuges), so that from the moment of the breach and its identification, the US will have enough time to respond with very severe sanctions, and with force too, if necessary.

In order to dissuade the Iranians from advancing toward a bomb, it will be made clear to them by various means that Iran will pay a heavy price for violating the agreement, and that the US will respond quickly in the event of a violation to prevent any possibility of the Iranians reaping the rewards of the violation.

Einhorn proposes a new world of “deterrence” – not against the use of nuclear weapons, but against producing nuclear weapons. This deterrence is needed because this approach would permit the Iranians to keep the capability to produce a nuclear weapon. The West (and Israel) will have to live with this Iranian production capability, because it is a fact that, Einhorn says, cannot be change.

In short, violating the agreement will be cause for penalizing Iran, not the fact that Iran will have the capability to produce a nuclear weapon.

In my opinion, Israel should oppose such an agreement for three reasons.

• The proposal assumes that it will be possible to build a control and monitoring system that the Iranians won’t be able to deceive. This system will be partly built on the basis of monitoring arrangements agreed to by the Iranians, stricter than what the International Atomic Energy Agency currently carries out; and partly based on covert intelligence efforts that have been in place for many years.

However, the reality in other places as well as Iran itself indicates that there is no such thing as a monitoring system that cannot be sidestepped. There is no way to guarantee that the world will spot Iran’s efforts to cheat. American intelligence officials have publicly admitted that they cannot guarantee identification in real time of an Iranian breakout move to produce a nuclear weapon.

The Iraqis, Syrians, Libyans, and North Koreans, just like the Iranians, succeeded in tricking the world and concealing large parts of their system for building nuclear capabilities – for a very long time. Israel, too, failed to discover these nuclear programs for a long time. In each of these cases, there are specific reasons how and why the West did not see what was happening. But the accumulation of cases forces the assessment that Iran, too, will be able to deceive the West even after signing a monitoring agreement, and in my opinion is likely to do so, with a high degree of probability.

• Assuming that a violation of a nuclear agreement is identified, will the US respond immediately or begin a plodding process to clarify, verify, and confirm the alleged violation? Afterward, won’t the US, with or without its P5+1 partners, enter into negotiations with Iran about the situation? Would not the US, in line with international practice, compromise under the new circumstances? Such compromise can be expected to further facilitate slow but steady progress of the Iranian nuclear effort, to the point where it will be completely impossible to stop Iran’s program.

Anyone who thinks that a US administration would respond immediately to an Iranian agreement violation, without negotiations, is deluding himself. This will be especially true of a US administration years down the road in the indeterminate future, which will undoubtedly be less committed to the dictates of the agreement than its predecessor. Israel cannot accept the existential threat caused by this delusion. Our experience in this matter is clear and unequivocal.

How do I know that such an erosion in P5+1 determination to halt the Iranians will develop in the future? Doesn’t everyone want to prevent Iran from going nuclear? From a thorough study of the ongoing chain of P5+1 concessions ever since the negotiations with Iran began 15 years ago, I fear, and am certain of, an erosion of P5+1 resolve.

Over time, first the Europeans, and then the P5+1, together and separately, including the US, repeatedly lowered their demands of Iran.

The current excuse for a lower threshold of demands on Iran is not that the threshold is sufficient, but rather the very sad admission that “the Iranians will not agree to a higher and more strict threshold.” This statement reveals the defeatist mind-set of today’s P5+1 negotiators. In other words, for the world, the agreement is more important than the content; and in order to secure this desired agreement, it is worth waiving or forgoing the demands of Iran that two or three years earlier were considered essential. And thus, instead of asking how to bring the Iranians to an agreement, the threshold of world demands is constantly lowered.

The Iranians understand this, which is why they are dragging out the negotiations as long as possible while intensifying their efforts to get closer to the bomb. Over the years they have won significant concessions even before starting serious discussions about an agreement.

According to US Secretary of State John Kerry, the Iranians are just two months away from a bomb, a reality which is the end result of years of negotiations.

• The third leg on which the conciliatory approach rests is deterrence. The assumption is that Iran will understand that, if a breach is identified, the US will get into the thick of things and respond extremely harshly, up to and including the use of force against Iran.

Is this assumption valid in the contemporary world? Does anyone believe that the use of force is a possible option for the US? What are the chances that the US would obtain the support of the Security Council for the use of force against Iran? What are the chances that Washington would act without UN support? Is there any reason to think that, at the moment of truth, Iran would truly fear American military action for violating the agreement in a way that does not include an act of war or violation of the sovereignty of a neighboring state? What if the circumstances that will be chosen for violating the agreement by the Iranians will be when the US is engaged in another international crisis? In that case, would the administration really have the necessary energy to apply military force? Today, we more or less know that the Iranians assess the likelihood of an American military action against Iran’s nuclear program as very, very low, close to negligible – unless Iran precipitates hostilities in the Persian Gulf. Why should Iran think that the chances of this will increase in the future? If the past proves anything, it proves that the chances of American force in the future will only diminish.

Finally, we cannot ignore the fact that the world is dealing with Iran, a murderous Shi’ite revolutionary regime that seeks regional and even global hegemony; that sponsors international terrorism and stands behind the slaughter in Syria on Syrian President Bashar Assad’s side; and that has purposefully deceived the West time and time again regarding its nuclear program. Thus, Iran cannot at all be trusted to abide by any accord with the West.

Thus, the solution to the Iranian crisis proposed in the Brookings Institution paper – which I fear represents mainstream administration thinking – is unsound. None of its assumptions can be used as a good basis for an agreement: neither the assumption that a monitoring regime can guarantee identification, in real time, of Iranian violations; nor the assumption that the US will act with alacrity if a breach is identified; nor the assumption that, in the real world, Iran will truly be deterred by US threats.

Einhorn’s proposals for an agreement with Iran are important because of his expertise, and they are worrying because they probably represent mainstream thinking in today’s Washington. In any case, the proposals fall far from meeting the needs of Israel on this very existential matter. An agreement along the lines proposed in the Brookings paper would be far worse than the absence of an agreement, because it would improperly calm the nations of the world and permit full commercial relations with Iran.

With such a flimsy agreement, I wonder what will be left of Western commitment to preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. And Israel will have to draw its own conclusions.

Maj.-Gen. (res.) Yaakov Amidror is the Anne and Greg Rosshandler Senior Fellow at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies. Until the end of 2013, he served as national security adviser to the prime minister and chairman of the National Security Council. Previously, he was commander of the IDF Military Colleges, military secretary to the defense minister, and director of the Intelligence Analysis Division in IDF Military Intelligence.

Former Congressman Prompts DePaul Campus Walkout of Israel Speech Joshua Levitt  4-25-14

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Allen B. West, the former Florida Congressman and retired U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel, prompted a walk-out at Chicago’s DePaul University from students who “couldn’t handle the truth” about Israel.

On his blog on Tuesday, West, currently a Fox News Contributor and Senior Fellow at the London Center for Policy Research, wrote, “As I stood waiting to speak and surveyed the crowd, it was easy to pick out the ones there to make some protest statement — especially on a college campus where the topic was the Middle East and the Israeli-Arab situation.”

West said he prefaced his lecture on today’s politics with a historical view:

“I began by explaining the history of the introduction of the term ‘Palestine.’ It came after the Bar Kokhba revolt during 132-136 AD by the Jewish people against the Romans. It would end up being the last revolt.”

He explained how Emperor Hadrian vowed to eliminate and eradicate Judaism, which he blamed for the insurrections. Hadrian moved to prohibit Torah law, ban the Hebrew calendar, and execute Judaic scholars.

“But the part of Hadrian’s decree which had the most lasting impact was his goal to wipe the name of Judea and ancient Israel from the map, as he renamed the region Syria Palaestina –seems Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had a similar idea,” wrote West. “He also renamed Jerusalem, Aeolia Capitolina. The name Palaestina was a derivative of the word Philistia and the ancient Philistines traced their lineage to the Greeks. So, these words, Palestine and Palestinian, had nothing to do with Arabs, but were meant as punishment and symbolic of a genocidal objective by a Roman emperor.”

From there, West spoke about how modern Israel emerged from post-World War I policies, including the Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916 and the McMahon Agreement and Balfour Declaration. He then addressed post-World War II British mandates and the partition of Israel and Jordan as the two-state solution, and analyzed the declaration of the modern day State of Israel, on May 14 1948, through the conflagrations of the Six Day War of 1967 and the Yom Kippur War of 1973.

West said the tone changed when the history lesson focused on the origins of the Palestinian Authority.

“I think what broke the backs of the ‘pro-Palestinian’ supporters in the crowd was when I talked about the history of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) and the emergence of the Fatah movement. I reminded the crowd of the civil war of 1970 when King Hussein sought to expel Yasser Arafat and the PLO from Jordan, where they were founded in 1964. And we all remember the attack by ‘Black September’ at the 1972 Munich Olympics.”

“And so the ‘tolerant’ members of the audience, at the command of some individual, stood and walked out — about 30 of them — leaving about 40 people remaining. To me they were cowards who refused to hear anything that countered their radical agenda.”

After the crowd left, West continued to speak: “And so I continued to address the issues of the Middle East and what we could look to as resolutions — stressing that Egyptian leader Anwar Sadat was assassinated by the Muslim Brotherhood for seeking peace and a diplomatic solution to coexistence. I told those remaining, especially the DePaul students, to always stand upon truth and know their history, and I reminded them, ‘In a universe of deceit, truth becomes a revolutionary act.’”

“If we are to resolve the issue between Israel and the Arabs, it has to be based upon truth. It has to be a recognition of the right for the Jewish state to exist. There has to be a renouncing of Islamic terrorism,” West wrote.

He described the walk-out as “a one-way street” and said he “also saw clearly how our children are being sent to college and university campuses that are petri dishes for radical thought, not intellectual debate, which is supported by a complicit administration and teaching staff.”

“As to those individuals who walked out, I’m not exactly sure why they attended in the first place — perhaps they believed they were making a statement, but about what? Because obviously, to paraphrase COL Nathan Jessup in ‘A Few Good Men,’ they couldn’t handle the truth.”

3 COMMENTS

• rulierose
  April 25, 2014 
• 5:51 pm
  
  well, I can tell you why they “attended in the first place” Col. West: so fewer pro-Israel students could attend.
  I’ve seen it happen on my own campus in Michigan. the more seats taken up by the haters, the fewer seats left for the students who actually want to hear to speaker.
  it’s SOP for the anti-Israel crowd.
  REPLY
  
  
• Richard Rivette
  April 25, 2014 
• 3:20 pm
  
  It should come as no surprise to intelligent people everywhere that this land of “Palestine” that is hyped, never existed. There are no such people as Palestinians, yet by acceding to that unreality we are now faced with being defensive about having Israel exist at all.
  One of the world’s oldest countries, and the only democracy in the Middle East is under assault. Why? Because young people are basically ignorant of facts, and when presented with them will refuse to believe them.
  Just as the horrors of the holocaust seem to unbelievable at first exposure, they happened. And we must ensure that they never happen again. That starts with stating the truth as the Honorable Allen West has done, repetitively, and in every venue possible. People will eventually listen.
  REPLY
  
  

Tony Blair spoke the truth about Islamism. But not the whole truth

Douglas Murray  4-23-14

As so often (in my opinion) Tony Blair is almost right. In a wide-ranging speech at Bloomberg this morning he roamed over Syria, Libya, the Middle East and the West’s withdrawal of interest, let alone engagement, in the region.

But it is Blair’s comments on Islam that are most interesting, are already garnering headlines and merit most attention. Referring to the problems across the Middle East he said:

‘At the root of the crisis lies a radicalised and politicised view of Islam, an ideology that distorts and warps Islam’s true message. The threat of this radical Islam is not abating. It is growing. It is spreading across the world. It is de-stabilising communities and even nations. It is undermining the possibility of peaceful co-existence in an era of globalisation. And in the face of this threat we seem curiously reluctant to acknowledge it and powerless to counter it effectively.’

All of which is frustrating, because Tony Blair is so nearly there. After all, this is a man who, in office, only ever trotted out (as George Bush did, as David Cameron does, as absolutely everyone does when they are in office) the message that Islam is a ‘religion of peace.’

Nowadays, with interviews and speeches like this one, Blair gets huge headlines and is occasionally congratulated for admitting that it may be more complicated than this. But as he edges towards the truth of the situation, he is still a step away from facing up to the reality.

Here is what he would say if he wanted to be wholly truthful:

‘At the root of the crisis lies a radicalised and politicised view of Islam, an ideology that – while obviously the worst version of Islam going – nevertheless has a long tradition. The extremists do not make their claims based on some wild misreading, but on a plausible reading of the texts and traditions which have existed within the religion since its founding. In order to confront this, and defeat the extremists, we cannot simply pretend that these problems do not exist. Non-Muslims must be unafraid to point them out and to say that there are extremist attitudes which remain permissible in mainstream Islam – such as the second-class status of women, the mandating of death for those who leave Islam – which go wholly against our own most deeply held beliefs. And it is vital that Muslims do everything they can to face up to the challenges which these extreme elements pose within their faith. Rather than denying that these questions of interpretation exist, or brushing them under the carpet, it is incumbent upon Muslims everywhere to do everything they can to anathematise and stigmatise the extremists and to chase them and their readings out of the religion. Muslims must face up to the problems of the tradition and overcome them, rather than deny that they exist. The process of denial only emboldens and strengthens the extremists while simultaneously making it easier for some non-Muslims to crudely and cruelly lump all Muslims in the extremist camp. This is a matter of urgency. The threat of this radical Islam is not abating. It is growing. It is spreading across the world. It is de-stabilising communities and even nations. It is undermining the possibility of peaceful co-existence in an era of globalisation. And in the face of this threat we seem curiously reluctant to acknowledge it and powerless to counter it effectively.’

Now, that would be a speech worthy of a former Prime Minister who – having made a good living, and with no need to search for higher office – should speak the whole truth, rather than portions of it, without favour or fear.

National Intel Misled Congress About Brotherhood Contacts

BY RYAN MAURO   April 23, 2014

AUTHOR'S COMMENT: The members of Congress – and the American people – have a right to know the truth: The Office of the Director of National Intelligence does have a relationship with domestic organizations linked to the Muslim Brotherhood.

 Clarion’s  report on ISNA  http://www.clarionproject.org/analysis/islamic-society-north-america-isna

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• Newly declassified documents obtained by the Clarion Project show that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) misled members of Congress in 2012 about its involvement with Muslim Brotherhood-linked entities.

Further, the documents show that there were even a number of internal communications within the Office of the Director of National Intelligence expressing concerns about the Brotherhood links of these entities.

The story of the deception began when the Director of National Intelligence James Clapper testified to Congress on February 10, 2011 saying that the Muslim Brotherhood is “a very heterogeneous group, largely secular, which has eschewed violence and has described Al-Qaeda as a perversion of Islam.”

In the same hearing, Clapper was asked by Rep. Jeff Miller (R-FL) about the administration’s relationship with the Muslim Brotherhood. He answered, “There have been outreaches to the Muslim community in general, but I guess we’re not aware of any direct outreach to these particular organizations. That is, if you’re speaking domestically.”

FBI Director Mueller then chimed in, saying there is “no relationship with the Brotherhood. Period.” The CIA Director Leon Panetta then agreed, dismissively laughing in the process.

Clapper’s office later issued a clarification, backtracking on his inaccurate statement that the Brotherhood is “secular.”

Just four months later, on June 12, 2012, a 90-minute “Roundtable Discussion” took place at National Intelligence’s headquarters in McLean, Virginia. At the meeting, Clapper met in person with a representative of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA). Also present were National Counter-Terrorism Center Director Matthew Olson and Alexander Joel, ODNI Civil Liberties Protection Officer.

The email invitation ISNA received to participate in a "Round-Table" discussion

In 2007, the Justice Department listed ISNA as a U.S. Muslim Brotherhood entity and designated them as an unindicted co-conspirator in the largest terrorism-financing trial of the history of the U.S. In that trial, the Holy Land Foundation, a Muslim Brotherhood front, was found guilty of funding Hamas.

Yet in 2012, the president of ISNA, Imam Mohamed Magid, was invited to meet with the Director of National Intelligence. Unable to attend, he sent a substitute in his place.

The email that went out inviting ISNA’s president (among others) stated that he was chosen because, “We believe you have important insights to share with the Intelligence Community (IC) about how the IC pursues its mandate of providing the most insightful intelligence possible, while simultaneously safeguarding civil liberties and privacy.”

Magid’s replacement was ISNA’s Director of Community Outreach, Mohamed Elsanousi.

Email to ISNA's Director of Community Outreach Elsanousi to participate in the discussion with the Direcotr of National Intelligence

Elsanousi's apparent supervisor is former ISNA-Secretary General, Sayyid Syeed, the National Director of ISNA’s Office of Interfaith and Community Alliances. In the Grand Deception, a documentary about the Muslim Brotherhood in America, Syeed appears in footage taken in 2006 declaring, “Our job is to change the Constitution of America.”

Shortly after meeting Clapper, Elsanousi accompanied Magid to a conference in Mauritania hosted by a top leader of a major Muslim Brotherhood organization named the International Union of Muslim Scholars.

The day after the meeting, on June 13, 2012, five members of Congress asked the Director of National Intelligence’s Intelligence Community Inspector-General, I. Charles McCullough III, to begin a formal investigation or evaluation of the Director of National Intelligence’s work with groups linked to the Brotherhood, specifically mentioning the Islamic Society of North America and its leader, Magid.

One month later, on July 11, 2012, the Inspector-General denied the congresspersons’ request, citing Clapper’s earlier statement that there was no relationship with domestic organizations linked to the Muslim Brotherhood. He said, “These statements remain accurate.” 

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence’s denial of any government engagement with U.S. Muslim Brotherhood entities is even more shocking considering the history of internal emails sent around the ODNI.

Declassified emails obtained by the Clarion Project show that staff inside the ODNI expressed concern about ISNA, even suggesting interagency intelligence-gathering on the organization. The author(s) of the internal emails also wanted intelligence gathering on the Council on American-Islamic Relations, another group labeled by the Justice Department as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation trial. Like ISNA, the Justice Department listed CAIR as a U.S. Muslim Brotherhood entity.

The heavily redacted ODNI emails, written sometime between January 2009 and August 2012, read: 

“I’m also interested if our team could work with the FBI and DHS on any Muslim Brotherhood collection and analysis opportunities such as looking at the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) ongoing relationships with MB int’l leadership and enterprises.”

Another internal email says: 

“The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has a similarly checkered background, spotlighted by prominent deportations and indictments of CAIR members for support to Hamas and other extremist organizations.”

On June 10, 2010 an email was written by someone within the ODNI’s National Counter-Terrorism Center referencing internal discussions about engagement with Muslim Brotherhood-linked groups. It reads, “We have a large MB [Muslim Brotherhood] presence on the West Coast, and there has been some discussion here about engagement—both state and federal—with folks who are also MB members.” The author then gives examples, but they are censored from viewing.

 

Further, by the time ISNA was invited to a “discussion” with Clapper at the National Intelligence headquarters, ISNA’s history was a Muslim Brotherhood entity was well known to everyone.

Two years after the Holy Land trial, in 2009, Federal Judge Jorge A.Solis upheld the designation of ISNA as an unindicted co-conspirator, citing “ample” evidence linking it to the Brotherhood network assisting Hamas. He specifically said that the Holy Land Foundation “operated from within ISNA” and checks destined for Hamas reached the Foundation through an ISNA bank account.

Declassified FBI memos and internal Muslim Brotherhood documents identify ISNA as a Brotherhood entity. A 1991 U.S. Brotherhood explanatory memorandum lists ISNA as the first of 29 of “our organizations and the organizations of our friends.” ISNA-Canada lost its status as a charity last year because of evidence linking it to Pakistani terrorists and major accounting discrepancies.

Director Of national Intelligence James Clapper's Claims The Muslim Brotherhood Is 'Secular'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f16z6_tr-4o

The Case of Libya: Material Support to Terrorism Clare M. Lopez  April 22, 2014

Libya in 2011 marks the place and the time that the United States (U.S.) and the Obama administration formally switched sides in the Global War on Terror (GWOT). A mere 10 years after al-Qa’eda (supported by Hizballah and Iran) attacked the American homeland in the worst act of terrorism ever suffered by this country, U.S. leadership decided to facilitate the provision of weapons to jihadist militias known to be affiliated with al-Qa’eda and the Muslim Brotherhood in order to bring down a brutal dictator who also just happened to be a U.S. ally in the GWOT at the time.

And the U.S. media were silent. The major broadcast, print, and Internet outlets said not a word about this astonishing turnabout in American foreign policy. To this day, they have not seemed even to recognize that the pivot to support al-Qa’eda took place. But it needs to be said. The American people deserve to understand that their most senior leaders, both elected and appointed, have violated their oaths to “preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.”

United States law is quite explicit about providing material support to terrorists: it’s prohibited. Period. 18 U.S. Code § 2339A and 18 U.S. Code § 2339B address Providing Material Support to Terrorists or Designated Foreign Terrorist Organizations. Together, these two sections outlaw the actions of any U.S. person who attempts or conspires to provide, or actually does provide, material support to a foreign terrorist organization knowing that it has been designated a foreign terrorist organization or engages, or has engaged, in “terrorism” or “terrorist activity.” Conspiracy means agreeing or planning to provide such support, whether or not such support ever is actually delivered. Penalties for conspiracy to provide material support to terrorism are stiff: imprisonment for up to 15 years and/or a fine of not more than $250,000. Penalties for actually providing or attempting to provide material support to terrorism are even harsher: imprisonment from 15 years to life, with a life sentence applicable if the death of any person results from such crime. Aiding, abetting, counseling, or procuring in support of a violation of Section 2339B is punishable by the same penalties as for the offense itself.

The Arms Export Control Act is another law that makes it illegal for the U.S. government to export “munitions” to any country determined by the Secretary of State to have “repeatedly provided support for acts of international terrorism.” While this provision applies specifically to those countries—Cuba, North Korea, Iran, and Syria—that are designated as state sponsors of terrorism, the case of Libya stands out nevertheless. Removed from the State Department’s list of state sponsors of terrorism in 2006, Libya by early 2011 was swarming with al-Qa’eda and Muslim Brotherhood militias and affiliates fighting to overthrow Muamar Qaddafi’s regime.

The identities of those jihadis and their al-Qa’eda affiliations were well known to the U.S. Intelligence Community, Department of State, and Tripoli Embassy long before the 17 February 2011 revolt broke out against Muamar Qaddafi. As with other al-Qa’eda branches, the Libyan al-Qa’eda affiliates such as the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) trace their origins back to the Muslim Brotherhood in Libya, which was founded in 1949 when Egyptian Brotherhood members “fled a crackdown in Cairo and took refuge in Benghazi,” according to a May 2012 study by the Brookings Doha Center. Colonel Muamar Qaddafi took over Libya in a 1969 coup d’état and showed little tolerance for Brotherhood activities. Brutal waves of repression kept the Brotherhood in check through the 1980s and 1990s when many Libyan fighters went to Afghanistan to join the mujahedeen in their battle against the Soviet Army. Some of those who fought there, like Abu Anas al-Libi and Abdelhakim Belhadj, would figure prominently in the revolt that ultimately ousted Qaddafi in 2011.

The LIFG was founded in 1990 by Libyan fighters returning from the Afghan jihad who were now intent on waging jihad at home. Qaddafi came down hard on the group, though, and crushed the LIFG’s 1995-1998 insurgency. Some LIFG members had moved to Sudan when Usama bin-Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri found refuge with Omar al-Bashir’s Muslim Brotherhood regime in the early 1990s and others (including Belhadj) eventually fled back to Afghanistan, where both bin-Laden and al-Zawahiri also had relocated by the mid-1990s. Abu Anas al-Libi is alleged to have taken part in the pre-attack casing and surveillance of the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya a few years prior to the 1998 al-Qa’eda attack there.

By 1995, things were becoming hot for the jihadis in Sudan and while bin Laden and al-Zawahiri returned to Afghanistan about this time, others such as Anas al-Libi were offered safehaven by the British. In return for political asylum in the UK, MI 6 recruited Anas al-Libi’s support for a failed 1996 plot to assassinate Qaddafi. In all, Anas al-Libi lived in Manchester from 1995-2000—despite his known history of association with bin Laden, al-Zawahiri, and other AQ leaders, as well as willingness to participate in assassination plots against national leaders, as I wrote in an October 2013 piece at The Clarion Project. The U.S.’s British partners also provided asylum to Abu Abdullah As-Sadeq, the LIFG’s top commander and allowed the LIFG to publish an Arabic language newspaper called al-Wasat in London. By 2000, though, as the FBI and other Western security services began to close in, Anas al-Libi and others were on the move again, leaving behind a 180-page al-Qa’eda terror training manual that became known as the “Manchester Document.” In the run-up to the 11 September 2001 attacks, Anas al-Libi, Abdelhakim Belhadj, Abu Sufian bin Qumu, and other known LIFG members reconnected with bin Laden in Afghanistan. As John Rosenthal points out in a 10 October 2013 posting, “The Inevitable Rise of Al-Qaeda in Libya,” in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, “the history of close cooperation between the LIFG and al-Qa’eda was so extensive that the Libyan group figured among the very first organizations to be designated as al-Qaeda affiliates by the UN Security Council.” In fact, according to Rosenthal who cites former LIFG member, Norman Benotman, Belhadj was actually present with bin Laden at Tora Bora in December 2001. The LIFG was formally accepted as an al-Qa’eda franchise by Ayman al-Zawahiri, the AQ deputy at the time, in 2007.

In the years following 9/11, various LIFG members were detained: Abu Sufian bin Qumu was captured in 2002 and sent to Guantanamo Bay (GITMO) and in 2004, both Abu Anas al-Libi and Abdelhakim Belhadj were captured. By the mid-2000s, GITMO detainees were being released to their home countries. Abu Sufian bin Qumu, for example, was released from GITMO and returned to Libya in 2007. Beginning about 2005, Qaddafi was under pressure from both the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli and his own son, Seif, to begin what came to be known as “the reconciliation process,” in which LIFG and other jihadist prisoners were released from Libyan jails. In this process, LIFG Muslim Brotherhood cleric Ali Mohammad Al-Sallabi was a key mediator. Abdelhakim Belhadj was released in 2008 (just as Christopher Stevens was appointed Deputy Chief of Mission to Tripoli) and Abu Sufian bin Qumu in 2010, after which he returned to Derna to begin plotting the revolt against Qaddafi.

Even as this “reconciliation process” was underway and Christopher Stevens was preparing for his new posting, Libyan jihadis were flowing out of eastern Libya in droves to join the al-Qa’eda jihad against U.S. and coalition forces in Iraq. According to a June 2010 study compiled by the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, “Al-Qa’ida’s Foreign Fighters in Iraq,” coalition forces in Iraq captured a stash of documents in October 2007 which documented the origins of the foreign fighters who’d traveled to Iraq to join al-Qa’eda between August 2006 and August 2007. Termed the “Sinjar Records” after the nearest town where these personnel records were found, the data showed that by far the largest contingent of foreign fighters per capita came from Libya. Across the spectrum, the most common cities of origin for foreign fighters in Iraq were Darnah, Libya and Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Darnah is located in the eastern Cyrenaica region of Libya, long known as an incubator of jihadist ideology and the place which would become the cradle of the 2011 Islamic uprising against Muammar Qaddafi.

Nor was the new Deputy Chief of Mission (DCM) Christopher Stevens unaware of what was going on. A June 2008 cable from the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli that went out over Stevens’ signature was obtained by the London Telegraph from Wikileaks. The report was given the name “Die Hard in Derna,” after the Bruce Willis movie, and described the determination of the young jihadis of this eastern Libyan town to bring down the Qaddafi regime. Because they believed the U.S. government supported the Qaddafi regime and would not allow it to fall after it had abandoned its Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) programs and begun to provide counter-terrorism support, and as documented in the West Point study of the “Sinjar Records,” the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) instead sent its fighters to confront the U.S. in Iraq, believing that was a way to strike a blow against both Qaddafi and his U.S. backers. A local Derna resident told the visiting Embassy officer that Libyan fighters who had returned from earlier battlefields in Afghanistan (1980s) and elsewhere sometimes went on for additional “religious training” in Lebanon and Syria; when they eventually returned to Libya in the late 1980s and early 1990s, they began the process of preparing the ground for “the eventual overthrow by the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) of Muammar Qadhafi’s regime…”

Career Foreign Service Officer Christopher Stevens was first posted to the American Embassy in Tripoli, Libya in June 2007 as the DCM and later as charge d’affaires until 2009. For his second tour in Libya, Stevens was sent to rebel headquarters in Benghazi, Libya, to serve as special representative to the Libyan Transitional National Council. He arrived on a Greek cargo ship on April 5, 2011 and stayed until November. His mission was to forge stronger links with the Interim Transitional National Council, and gain a better understanding of the various factions fighting the Qaddafi regime. His reports back to Washington were said to have encouraged the U.S. to support and recognize the rebel council, which the Obama administration did formally in July 2011.

As is now known, under urging from Sen. John McCain and other Congressional members, the White House endorsed Qatar’s plan to send weapons to the Libyan rebels shortly after Yousef al-Qaradawi, the senior jurist of the Muslim Brotherhood, issued a 21 February 2011 fatwa that called for the killing of Qaddafi. Seeking a “zero footprint,” no-paperwork-trail profile itself, the U.S. instead encouraged both Qatar and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to arm the Libyan jihadis, according to a key New York Times article published in December 2012. Knowing full well exactly who those rebel militias and their leadership were, and how closely they were connected with al-Qa’eda (and perhaps even mindful of the legal restrictions on providing material support to terrorism), the U.S. sought to distance itself as the source of these weapons, which included small arms such as automatic rifles, machine guns, and ammunition. The NY Times piece noted that U.S. officials made sure to stipulate the weapons provided would come from elsewhere, but not from the U.S.

But the fact that from the end of March 2011 onward, U.S. and other NATO forces completely controlled Libyan air space and the sea approaches to Libya means that the cargo planes and freighters transporting the arms into Libya from Qatar and elsewhere were being waved through with full U.S. knowledge and support. The U.S. mission in Libya, and especially in Benghazi, ramped up in this period to facilitate the delivery of the weapons to the Libyan al-Qa’eda terrorists.

What followed should hardly have come as a surprise to anyone. After NATO air support cleared the way to Tripoli, the Qaddafi regime fell in October 2011 and the Muslim Brotherhood political leadership and al-Qa’eda fighters took over. Abdelhakim Belhadj was named Tripoli military commander. Chaos reigned, especially in the eastern regions, and now the weapons flow reversed—out of Libya, and into the hands of jihadis in West Africa, the Sinai, and Syria. Some of that flow was wildly disorganized and some of it was directed, with the U.S. mission in Benghazi once again playing a key role as its teams on the ground facilitated the weapons delivery, now destined for the Syrian rebels, dominated by al-Qa’eda and the Muslim Brotherhood, who were fighting to overthrow the Bashar al-Assad regime. In this endeavor, the U.S. was allied with its new Libyan partner, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and once again, with Qatar.

The next chapter in the U.S. jihad wars was underway, with a new Presidential Finding, and material support to terrorism firmly established as official policy. Congress and the media and the military remained silent. The American people barely noticed.

SAN REMO ANNIVERSARY…..TODAY IN HISTORY

Salomon Benzimra, P.Eng

Canadians for Israel’s Legal Rights – CILR

The Middle East keeps making the headlines.  The carnage in Syria, the weekly violence in Iraq, the political instability in Lebanon, the uncertainty in Turkey, the threat posed by Iran in the region, all seem to take a backseat to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the perennial pursuit of the “peace process.”  A lasting peace seems like a chimera chased by indefatigable peace processors – U.S. Secretary Kerry’s initiative being the last one in a long line of failed attempts since 1993.

When the resolution of a complex problem hits a stalemate repeatedly and almost predictably since its inception, the smart thing to do is to revisit the fundamentals, long forgotten in the past twenty years of diplomatic frenzy.  A look back at recent history is essential.

Ninety-four years ago today, on April 25, 1920, the Supreme Council of the Allied Powers (Britain, France, Italy, Japan and the U.S. as an observer) gathered in San Remo, Italy, and ruled on the disposition of the Middle East territories previously held by the defeated Ottoman Empire, after having heard the claims of both the Zionist Organization, headed by Chaim Weizmann, and the Arab Delegation, headed by Emir Faisal, at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919.

The San Remo Conference was a momentous event in that it drafted the map of the Middle East as we know it today: Over 97% of the land was adjudicated to the Arabs, which resulted in the creation of the new exclusively Arab states of Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and, later, Jordan.  The geographic region known as “Palestine” was designated as the Jewish National Home, to be reconstituted there in consideration of the historical connection of the Jewish people to the land. National rights were exclusively granted to the Jewish people collectively, while the non-Jewish people of Palestine were granted individual civil and religious rights.

These were the terms used in the San Remo Resolution – later confirmed in the Mandate for Palestine (1922) and approved by the 52 members of the League of Nations – to highlight the pre-existing rights of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel, hitherto known as “Palestine” since Roman times. These documents, and the ensuing Franco-British and Anglo-American treaties that were separately signed in the early 1920s, are based on the Mandates System stipulated in the Covenant of the League of Nations and are therefore binding to this day under international law.  The acquired rights of the Jewish people to the land west of the Jordan River are preserved in the UN Charter and in the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, even though the Mandate for Palestine expired in 1948 when the State of Israel was proclaimed.

The usual detractors of Israel regularly ignore, dismiss or strongly reject the validity of the provisions listed above.  But their arguments ring hollow:

They claim that the Supreme Council of the Allied Powers had no authority to create a new political entity in Palestine.  They forget that in the wake of World War One, the same Supreme Council created new countries in Europe (Yugoslavia, Hungary, the Baltic States and a reborn Poland) on the ashes of the German and Austro-Hungarian Empires.

They claim that a Jewish home “in Palestine” was not intended to be “in all of Palestine.” Had they read the full text of the Mandate for Palestine, they would find 15 instances of the phrase “in Palestine” which cannot leave any doubt as to the inclusion of the whole territory.

They claim that the purpose of the “Jewish National Home” mentioned in the Mandate was not to lead to a sovereign Jewish state.  Here again, they are most selective in their singling out Israel, because not only all the neighbouring Arab states were created through the same Mandates System, but even Mandate territories in far less developed areas in Africa and elsewhere became sovereign states in the second half of the 20^th century, such as Cameroon, Togo, Benin, Rwanda, Burundi, Tanzania, Namibia, Papua New Guinea and Samoa.

But among all Israel’s detractors, the Palestinian Authority showed a particular animosity against San Remo.   A document issued on April 25, 2011, by WAFA, the official press agency of the Palestinian Authority, shows that “[San Remo] is the root of all Palestinian catastrophes and sufferings” and bashes the San Remo Resolution as the work of “Zionist gangs.”

Now is the time to give precedence to factual evidence over biased opinion.  On this 94^th anniversary, we should remember that territorial claims on Palestine were finally settled at the San Remo Conference. Diplomacy should not be forever divorced from international law.

Salomon Benzimra, P.Eng.

Canadians for Israel’s Legal Rights – CILR

www.cilr.org

sbenzi@sympatico.ca

Why I Loathe the Israeli Elite

 Giulio Meotti 4-22-14

Israel's oligarchy has no time or interest to spare for the tragic murder of Baruch Mizrahi.

There is an expression in the Mishna: "In a place where there is no one else [doing what needs to be done], try to be a man".Baruch Mizrahi was that man.

A strange atmosphere of heavy acquiescence, guilty silence and moral equivalence followed his assassination on the road to Hevron. Then, when I saw the photos from his funeral, the face of his wife and the pain of his children and friends, I understood something even more intolerable, even though it needs to be said.

Israel today is dominated by a cold and cynical oligarchy, a self proclaimed élite which made possible the last unpunished assassination near Hevron.

These are the well-connected billionaires, who turned Judaism's aspirations into a quest for a materialist “quality of life”; the privileged politicians, the new “doves” who are pushing Israel to talk to its existential enemies; the mainstream journalists whose writings exude political hatred, moral hypocrisy and defeatism in every sentence; the army personnel, who act as though they are there to protect the Arabs, not the Jews; the judiciary bureaucrats, who turn Jewish homes in Judea and Samaria to rubble, as they did in Yitzhar; the educators who taught a generation of Jews that the Torah Judaism which they so loved was silly, primitive and childish.

Hatred is not considered so bad in Israel. As long as one hates the right people. And there is no better target than the religious - the nationalist camp and the hareidim.

Zeev Sternhal, a leading expert on fascism, once suggested that destroying the “settlements” with IDF tanks would be salutary for the nation and advised terrorists to aim at "settlers" rather than other Israelis.

And artist Yigal Tumarkin proclaimed that “when I see the black-coated hareidim with the children they spawn I can understand the Holocaust”.

Nothing happened to Sternhal and Tumarkin. In fact, Sternhal received the Israel Prize despite those immoral statements.

The pious and brave people who live in Judea and Samaria, who serve in the IDF elite units, who defend the borders with their bodies, who give meaning to being Jewish: these are the people, like the Mizrahis, who are collectively labelled “freedom-haters”, “monsters”, “sadists”, “madmen”, “gangsters”, “criminals”, “thugs” and “pogromists" who spend their time "rampaging, cursing, threatening, beating, going wild".

It is also because of that failed Israeli oligarchy, the embodiment of  Israel's inner anti-Semitism, that the day after Mizrahi was murdered, I didn’t see the sad news in the European media. The frontpage story was about graffiti painted on a mosque. Not a word about the Jewish father of five assassinated on the road to the City of the Patriarchs on his way to the Passover Seder.

The Israeli élite would have been a little more convincing in their condemnation of Mizrahi’s killing had they not been so damnably selective and insufferably pious about it. Censure of Arab-Islamic hatred for Jews is to be found almost nowhere in the Jewish media.

Even scarcer is any rebuke of the intellectual hatred for the “settlers” and the religious.

Giulio Meotti  The writer, an Italian journalist with Il Foglio, writes a twice-weekly column for Arutz Sheva. He is the author of the book "A New Shoah", that researched the personal stories of Israel's terror victims, published by Encounter. His writing has appeared in publications, such as the Wall Street Journal, Frontpage and Commentary. He has just prblished a book about the Vatican and Israel titled "J'Accuse: the Vatican Against Israel" published by Mantua Books