Israel's Indivisible Legitimacy

By Caroline B. Glick
Friday, March 18, 2011

Over the past several years, a growing number of patriotic Israelis have begun to despair. We can't stand up to the whole world, they say. At the end of the day, we will have to give in and surrender most of the land or all of the land we took control over in the 1967 Six Day War. The world won't accept anything less.

These statements have grown more strident in the wake of the slaughter of the Fogel family last Friday night in Itamar. For example, on Thursday Ha'aretz columnist Ari Shavit called Israeli communities built beyond the 1949 armistice line the local equivalent of Japan's nuclear reactors. Like the reactors, he wrote, they seemed like a good idea at the time. But they have become our undoing.

The international community's response to the Palestinian atrocity in Itamar is pointed to as proof that Israel must surrender. Instead of considering what the savage murder of an Israeli family tells us about the nature of Palestinian society, the world media have turned the massacre of the Fogel family into a story about "settlements."

Take The Los Angeles Times for example. From the Times' perspective, the Fogels were not Israeli civilians. They were "Jewish settlers." They weren't murdered in their home. They were killed in their "tightly guarded compound."

And, in the end, the Times effectively justified the murder of the Fogel children when it helpfully added, "Most of the international community... views Israel's settlements as illegal."

The Times report was actually comparatively sympathetic. At least it mentioned the murders. Most European papers began their coverage with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's announcement that the government would permit Israelis to build 400 homes in Judea and Samaria.

As for the governments of the world, most were far swifter and more aggressive in their condemnation of Netanyahu's announcement of the building permits than they were in their condemnation of the murders.

Then there is the US Jewish community.

According to New York's Jewish Week, there is a new consensus in the American Jewish community that imposing an economic boycott on Israeli communities outside the 1949 armistice lines is a legitimate position. The paper interviewed Martin Raffel, the head of the new Israel Action Network, a multimillion-dollar effort by the Jewish Federations of North America and other major Jewish groups to counter the delegitimization of Israel.

Raffel called the boycott movement misguided, rather than wrong. Then he justified it by arguing, "Being misguided in one's policies doesn't mean one necessarily has become part of the ranks of the delegitimizers."

If that wasn't enough, Ron Kampeas, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency's Washington bureau chief, wrote Tuesday that we shouldn't rush to conclude that Palestinians carried out the attack.

Kampeas wrote, "We do not yet know who committed the awful butchery in Itamar over the weekend."

With American Jews taking a lead role in delegitimizing Israel; with the international media ignoring the massacre of the Fogel family and attacking Israel for its response to the event they didn't cover; and with the US government united with the nations of the world in condemning the government's decision to allow Israelis who are Jewish to build on land they own, the despair of a growing chorus of Israelis is understandable.

But while understandable, the notion that Israel has no choice but to surrender Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem to the Palestinians is wrong and dangerous.

Like his fellow defeatists, Shavit argues that Jewish communities in these areas are the cause of international moves to delegitimize Israel. If they were gone, so the argument goes, then neither the Palestinians nor the international community would have a problem with Israel.

The first problem with this view is that it confuses the focus of Palestinian and international attacks on Israel with the rationale behind those attacks. This is a mistake Israelis have made repeatedly since the establishment of the Fatah-led PA in 1994.

Immediately after the PA was set up and IDF forces transferred security control over Palestinian cities and towns in Judea and Samaria to Yasser Arafat's armies, Palestinian terrorists began attacking Israeli motorists driving through PA-controlled areas with rocks, pipe bombs and bullets.

Then-prime minister and defense minister Yitzhak Rabin blamed the attacks on "friction." If the Palestinians didn't have contact with Israeli motorists, then they wouldn't attack them. So Israel built the bypass roads around the Palestinian towns and cities to prevent friction.

For its efforts, the Palestinians and the international community accused Israel of building "Jews-only, apartheid roads." Moreover, Palestinian terrorists left their towns and cities and stoned, bombed and shot at Israeli motorists on the bypass roads.

Then there was Gaza. When in 2001 Palestinians first began shelling the Israeli communities in Gaza and the Western Negev with mortars and rockets, we were told they were attacking because of Israel's presence in Gaza. When the IDF took action to defend the country from mortar and rocket attacks, Israel was accused of committing war crimes.

The likes of Shavit said then that if Israel left Gaza, the Palestinian attacks would stop. They said that if they didn't stop and the IDF was forced to take action, the world would support Israel.

Shavit himself engaged in shocking demonization of the Israelis living in Gaza. In May 2004 he wrote that they were undeserving of IDF protection and that no soldier should defend them because they weren't real Israelis.

But then the Palestinians and the international community threw Shavit and his friends yet another curveball. After Israel expelled every last so-called settler and removed every last soldier from Gaza in August 2005, Palestinian rocket attacks increased tenfold. The first Katyusha was fired at Ashkelon seven months after Israel withdrew. Hamas won the elections and Gaza became an Iranian proxy. Now it has missiles capable of reaching Tel Aviv.

As for the international community, not only did it continue blaming Israel for Palestinian terrorism, it refused to accept that Israel had ended its so-called occupation of Gaza. It has condemned every step Israel has taken to defend itself from Palestinian aggression since the withdrawal as a war crime.

The lesson of these experiences is that Israeli towns and villages in Judea and Samaria are not castigated as "illegitimate" because there is anything inherently illegitimate about them. Like the bypass roads and the Israeli presence in Gaza, they are singled out because those interested in attacking Israel militarily or politically think are an easy target.

The Arabs, the UN, the Obama administration, the EU, anti-Israel American and Israeli Jews, university professors and the legions of self-proclaimed human rights organizations in Israel and throughout the world allege these Israeli communities are illegitimate because by doing so they weaken Israel as a whole.

If Israel is convinced that it has no choice but to bow to these people's demands, they will not be appeased. They will simply move on to the next easy target. Israeli Jewish communities in the Galilee and the Negev, Jaffa and Lod will be deemed illegitimate.

In a bid to pretend that the communities in Judea and Samaria are somehow different from communities in the Galilee, proponents of surrender point to the non-binding 2004 International Court of Justice opinion that the communities in Judea and Samaria are illegal.

But Israelis who accept the non-binding opinion as a binding ruling for Judea and Samaria ignore that the opinion also asserted that Israel has no right to self defense.

The same people who think that so-called settlements are illegal also believe that opposition leader Tzipi Livni is a war criminal. The same people who think the so-called settlements are illegal would condemn as a war crime any attempt to enforce the law against irredentist Israeli Arabs.

Israel's bitter experience proves incontrovertibly that bowing to international pressure just invites more pressure.

So what can Israel do?

The first thing we must do is recognize that legitimacy is indivisible. In the eyes of Israel's enemies there is no difference between Itamar and Ma'aleh Adumim on the one hand and Ramle and Tel Aviv on the other hand. And so we must make no distinction between them.

Just as law abiding citizens are permitted to build homes in Ramle and Tel Aviv, so they must be permitted to build in Itamar and Ma'aleh Adumim. If Israel's assertion of its sovereignty is legitimate in Tel Aviv, then it is legitimate in Judea and Samaria. We cannot accept that one has a different status from the other.

Likewise, it is an act of economic warfare to boycott Israeli products, whether they are made in Haifa or Mishor Adumim. Anyone who says it is permissible to boycott Mishor Adumim is engaging in economic warfare against Haifa.

Once we understand that Israel's legitimacy is indivisible, we need to take actions that will put the Palestinians and their international supporters on the defensive. There are any number of moves Israel can make in this vein.

For example, following the Palestinian massacre of the Fogel family, Netanyahu highlighted the fact that the PA routinely glorifies terrorist murderers and pays them and their families handsome pensions for their illegal acts of war. He also highlighted the genocidal anti-Jewish incitement endemic in Palestinian society.

While all of this is useful, talk is cheap. It is time to make the Palestinians pay a price for their depravity and to put their international supporters on the defensive.

Specifically, Netanyahu should ask the US to cut off all US economic and military assistance to the PA. Two PA intelligence officers were arrested as part of the Fogel murder investigation.

The US is training and equipping the Palestinian intelligence services. This should stop.

Two days after the massacre in Itamar, the PA dedicated a public square in El-Bireh to terror commander Dalal Mughrabi. Mughrabi commanded the 1978 bus attack on the coastal highway in which 37 Israelis - including 12 children - were murdered. The PA previously named a street, a dormitory, a summer camp and a sports tournament after her. Several popular songs have been written to glorify her crimes.

The US is underwriting the PA's budget. This should stop.

Were the government to go after international aid to the PA, not only would it begin a debate in the US and perhaps Europe about the nature of Fatah specifically and Palestinian society generally, it would force the Palestinians' myriad supporters to justify their support for a society that is defined by its goal of annihilating Israel.

It is hard to stand up to the massive pressure being brought to bear against Israel every day. But it is possible.

And whether defying our foes is hard or easy, it is our only chance at survival. Either all of Israel is legitimate, or none of it is.

Story source
here

A Teachable Mid East Moment

09.09.2009 by Michael Freund

For a president who has been in office for just over seven months, Barack Obama can at last point to some meaningful change that he has brought about in the Middle East.

Thanks to his administration's arm-twisting and bullying of Jerusalem over settlements, Obama has unwittingly succeeded in galvanizing the Israeli public like never before. The result is a broad coalition that extends all the way from the moderate left, through the center and over to the reasonable right, giving Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu plenty of political breathing space. ( Praise God!!-- Mid)

Consider the following: On Monday, left-wing Defense Minister Ehud Barak signed permits approving the construction of 455 housing units in various Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria. This is the same Barak who, as prime minister, sat down with Yasser Arafat at Camp David nine years ago and offered the Palestinians virtually the entire West Bank and Gaza on a silver platter.

Yet here he is, lending a hand to building the Land of Israel, in defiance of the dictates from Washington. This is no small achievement. Thousands of additional Jews will now be able to make their homes over the so-called Green Line, strengthening the Jewish presence in the very areas that Washington so desperately wants to tear away from us.

Ironically, in this respect, Obama has managed to attain what various right-wing MKs and settler lobby groups could only dream of. Through his obstinacy, the American president has inadvertently brought about a resumption of construction in the territories by unfairly pressing Israel to agree to a "freeze."

No matter how one looks at it, Obama misplayed his hand, thinking he could push Israel around. But this approach has clearly backfired. Instead of dividing and conquering the Israeli public, Obama has instead riled them up and united them.

In this regard, Obama can also point to another significant achievement on his watch. Previous American presidents, regardless of their stature at home, have consistently enjoyed high approval ratings among Israelis. Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush were all adored by the general Israeli public, which viewed them as true friends. The result was that Israelis trusted them and their judgment, even when they took stands inimical to our interests, thereby making it more difficult for our leaders to openly defy Washington.

Yet here too Obama has managed to alter reality. As a recent Smith Research poll conducted on behalf of The Jerusalem Post revealed (August 28), just 4 percent of Israelis now think Obama's policies are pro-Israel, while 51% consider his administration to be pro-Palestinian.

In effect, Obama has changed the way Israelis view America. It was once considered unthinkable for a prime minister to say no to the United States, yet that is exactly what is happening now, and the bulk of Israelis support it.

Indeed, when Netanyahu's coalition was sworn in on April 1, could anyone have imagined that within just a few months it would successfully stand up to Washington over the issue of settlements? Sure, Obama can and will point to the six-month moratorium on further West Bank construction as a concession that he squeezed out of Jerusalem. But the fact is that the cranes and bulldozers will continue apace in Judea and Samaria for a long time to come, both on the 2,500 units already under construction and the new ones approved this week.

And that is what makes the Netanyahu government's achievement here so noteworthy. For instead of simply acquiescing to Obama's demands on settlements, he has outmaneuvered him, ostensibly giving him what he wants while in effect rendering it moot. And so, the building will carry on, but without the brouhaha that would otherwise have accompanied it.

More importantly, Netanyahu has succeeded in changing the narrative of the Middle East peace process. For the first time in recent memory, Israel has actually said no to America on an issue of major importance.

Supporters of Israel should breathe a sigh of relief at this development. It signifies a much healthier attitude on the part of the country's decision-makers and marks a new maturity in the relationship between Jerusalem and Washington.

If and when a final-status deal is ever negotiated, it is crucial that the Americans and Palestinians go into the talks aware that Israel is self-confident enough to stand firm on issues it views as vital to its existence.

This is what Obama himself would likely refer to as a "teachable moment" on the Middle East - one from which he still has a lot to learn. In a short period, he has hardened the Palestinian position, strengthened the hand of Israel's settlement enterprise and led the Israeli public to reassess its blind faith in Washington.

That's quite a record of achievement.
Read the article HERE
Baruch atem b'Shem, Yeshua