We welcome your comments to this and any other CIJR publication. Please address your response to: Rob Coles, Publications Chairman, Canadian Institute for Jewish Research, PO Box 175, Station H, Montreal QC H3G 2K7 –
Contents:
The Palestinians’ UN Charade Collapses: Jonathan S. Tobin, Commentary, Dec. 18, 2014— In the end, there wasn’t much suspense about the Obama administration’s decision whether to support a United Nations Security Council resolution endorsing a Palestinian state.
Genocide by General Assembly: The UN’s Latest Resolution to Disarm Israel: Louis René Beres, Jerusalem Post, Dec. 15, 2014— Sometimes, what may first sound altogether reasonable is potentially genocidal.
UN: Turning Back the Clock to Pre-1948 is the Real Endgame: Anne Bayefsky, Jerusalem Post, Dec. 17— Incitement against the Jewish state is directly related to the stabbings, raping and killing of Jews inside and outside of Israel.
The Dictators’ Mutual Praise Club: Sohrab Ahmari, Wall Street Journal, Nov. 4, 2014 — Thanks to a linguistic quirk, representatives from Qatar and Syria here at the loftily named Human Rights and Alliance of Civilizations Room have ended up seated next to each other, where delegates are placed alphabetically according to their countries’ French names.
‘The Media Fiddles While Sony Burns’: David Auerbach, National Post, Dec. 19, 2014
Sony Just Made Kim Jong-un the Most Influential Film Critic in the World: Robyn Urback, National Post, Dec. 18, 2014
EU Backs Palestinian Dictatorship: Khaled Abu Toameh, Gatestone Institute, Dec. 18, 2014
The Security Council Intifada: David Bosco, Foreign Policy, Dec. 18, 2014
THE PALESTINIANS’ UN CHARADE COLLAPSES
Jonathan S. Tobin
Commentary, Dec. 18, 2014
In the end, there wasn’t much suspense about the Obama administration’s decision whether to support a United Nations Security Council resolution endorsing a Palestinian state. After weeks of pointless negotiations over proposed texts, including a compromise endorsed by the French and other European nations, the wording of the proposal that the Palestinians persuaded Arab nations to put forward was so outrageous that even President Obama couldn’t even think about letting it pass because it would undermine his own policies. And the rest of the international community is just as unenthusiastic about it. In a very real sense this episode is the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict in a nutshell: the world wants to do something for the Palestinians but their leaders are more interested in pointless shows than in actually negotiating peace or doing something to improve the lives of their people.
The resolution that was presented to the Security Council was so extreme that Jordan, the sole Arab nation that is currently a member, didn’t want anything to do with it. But, after intense lobbying by the Palestinian Authority representative, the rest of the Arab nations prevailed upon Jordan and they put it forward where it will almost certainly languish indefinitely without a vote since its fate is preordained. The terms it put forward were of Israeli surrender and nothing more. The Jewish state would be given one year to withdraw from all of the territory it won in a defensive war of survival in 1967 where a Palestinian state would be created. That state would not be demilitarized nor would there be any guarantees of security for Israel which would not be granted mutual recognition as the nation state of the Jewish people, a clear sign that the Palestinians are not ready to give up their century-long war against Zionism even inside the pre-1967 lines.
This is a diktat, not a peace proposal, since there would be nothing for Israel to negotiate about during the 12-month period of preparation. Of course, even if the Palestinians had accepted the slightly more reasonable terms proposed by the French, that would have also been true. But that measure would have at least given the appearance of a mutual cessation of hostilities and an acceptance of the principle of coexistence. But even those concessions, let alone a renunciation of the “right of return,” was not possible for a PA that is rightly fearful of being supplanted by Hamas. So long as Palestinian nationalism remains wedded to rejection of a Jewish state, no matter where its borders might be drawn, no one should expect the PA to end the conflict or actually make peace.
Though many of us have been understandably focused on the question of how far President Obama might go to vent his spleen at Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and his government, that petty drama is, as it has always been, a sideshow distraction from the real problem at the core of the Middle East peace process: Palestinian rejectionism. Though the administration has tirelessly praised PA leader Mahmoud Abbas as a champion of peace in order to encourage him to live up to that reputation, he had other priorities. Rather than negotiate in good faith with the Israelis, Abbas blew up the talks last year by signing a unity pact with Hamas that he never had any intention of keeping. The purpose of that stunt, like the current UN drama, isn’t to make a Palestinian state more likely or even to increase Abbas’s leverage in the talks. Rather, it is merely a delaying tactic, and a gimmick intended to waste time, avoid negotiations, and to deflect any pressure on the PA to either sign an agreement with Israel or to turn it down. That’s not just because the Palestinians wrongly believe that time is on their side in the conflict, a dubious assumption that some on the Israeli left also believe. The reason for these tactics is that Abbas is as incapable of making peace as he is of making war.
This is not just another case of the Palestinians “never missing an opportunity to miss an opportunity,” in Abba Eban’s immortal and quite accurate summary of their actions over the years. It’s that they are so wedded to unrealistic expectations about Israel’s decline that it would be inconceivable for them to take advantage of any opening to peace. That is why they turned down Israeli offers of statehood, including control of Gaza, almost all of the West Bank, and a share of Jerusalem, three times and refused to deal seriously with a fourth such negotiation with Netanyahu last year. And it’s why the endless quarrels between Obama and Netanyahu over the peace process are so pointless. No matter how much Obama tilts the diplomatic playing field in the Palestinians’ direction or how often he and his supporters prattle on about time running out for Israel, Abbas has no intention of signing a peace agreement. The negotiations as well as their maneuverings at the UN and elsewhere are nothing but a charade for the PA and nothing Netanyahu could do, including offering dangerous concessions, would change that. The sooner Western leaders stop playing along with their game, the better it will be for the Palestinian people who continue to be exploited by their leaders.
THE UN’S LATEST RESOLUTION TO DISARM ISRAEL
Louis René Beres
Jerusalem Post, Dec. 15, 2014
Sometimes, what may first sound altogether reasonable is potentially genocidal. On December 2, 2014, the UN General Assembly called upon Israel to renounce its nuclear weapons, and to join a Nuclear Weapon-Free Zone for the Middle East. Significantly, were Israel ever to abide by such a seemingly benign proposal, it could effectively become complicit in its own annihilation. International law is never a suicide pact. Since prime minister David Ben-Gurion first recognized the need for a critical security equalizer, Israel’s survival has ultimately depended upon nuclear weapons. Although still ambiguous and still undisclosed, this Israeli “bomb in the basement” has managed to keep a substantial number of potentially existential enemies at bay. While it never became a purposeful deterrent against “normal” wars, or against acts of terrorism, the nuclear option has successfully prevented what enemy states have wanted most of all – Israel’s disappearance.
From the perspective of Israel’s enemies, there has never been any ambiguity. Presently, with Iran approaching full and effectively unobstructed membership in the Nuclear Club – a manifestly disingenuous approach, one assumed in stunning defiance of its NPT Treaty obligations – nuclear weapons and strategy have become indispensable to Israel’s physical survival. “Mass counts,” wrote the classic Prussian military theorist Carl von Clausewitz (1780-1831), and only Israel’s enemies have mass. Each year, without fail, these determined enemies call sanctimoniously for some form or other of Israeli disarmament. Now, it is high time to acknowledge that nuclear weapons are never truly evil in themselves, and that their potential harmfulness is contingent upon which individual state or alliance is in control of them. In certain circumstances, as should be cartographically obvious to anyone who can see that Israel is less than half the size of America’s Lake Michigan, these weapons can be vital to self-defense and population survival. Looking ahead, once an enemy state, and possibly its allies, believed Israel had been bent sufficiently to “nonproliferation” demands, adversarial military strategies – either singly, or in carefully calculated collaboration – could embrace extermination warfare. This sinister embrace could occur even if all of Israel’s major adversaries were to remain non-nuclear themselves. Over time, moreover, such extermination warfare, by definition, could meet the literal tests of genocide under codified international law. In such authoritative jurisprudential considerations, aggressive war and genocide would not need to be considered as mutually exclusive. Rather, they could qualify as fully complementary and mutually reinforcing categories of international criminality.
Any Nuclear Weapon-Free Zone for the Middle East, even if seemingly well-intentioned, would render Israel uniquely vulnerable. In principle, although such existential vulnerability might be prevented by instituting certain parallel forms of chemical/ biological weapons disarmament among Israel’s adversaries, these disarmament measures would never actually be implemented. Already, as Israel’s enemies recognize, any needed verifications of compliance would prove conveniently impossible. In the Middle East, underlying security problems have nothing to do with Israel’s nuclear weapons and posture – defensive assets which have never been used to threaten or to intimidate recalcitrant enemies. Instead, these problems remain founded upon a persisting and unreconstructed Islamic/jihadist commitment to “excise the Jewish cancer.” Moreover, this openly annihilatory commitment is more-or-less common to both Israel’s Sunni Arab foes and to Shi’ite, non-Arab Iran. Among other regional security benefits, Israel’s nuclear weapons represent an unacknowledged but critical impediment to the actual use of nuclear weapons, and even to the commencement of an area nuclear war. UN resolutions notwithstanding, these weapons must remain at the vital center of Israel’s national security policy, and should also be guided by continuously updated and refined strategic doctrine. Some essential elements of any such doctrine comprise a carefully calibrated end to “deliberate ambiguity,” more recognizable emphases on “counter value” or counter-city targeting, and recognizably expanding evidence of secure “triad” nuclear forces. Of course, such forces, which must include some forms of submarine basing, will have to appear capable of penetrating any foreseeable nuclear aggressor’s active defenses.
Israel’s latest efforts at diversified sea-basing of nuclear retaliatory forces are costly, but still prudent. Similarly important efforts are needed for the Israel Air Force. To prepare for anticipated strikes at distances of approximately 1,000 kilometers, whether preemptive, retaliatory, or counter-retaliatory, the IAF needs the “full envelope” of air refueling capabilities, upgraded satellite communications, state-of-the-art electronic warfare technologies, armaments fully appropriate to inflicting maximum target damage, and, always, the latest-generation UAVs to accompany selected missions. “Mass counts.” In the Middle East, multiple UN resolutions notwithstanding, Israel’s nuclear weapons represent an essential barrier to laststage enemy aggressions, and to an eventual nuclear war. The United States, which voted correctly against the recent General Assembly resolution, should continue to reject any and all proposals for a Nuclear Weapon- Free Zone in the region. As for Jerusalem, it must not forget what ought already to be perfectly obvious: Even the United Nations can never require a member state to submit to genocide. International law, it is time to remind the UN General Assembly, is never a suicide pact.
UN: TURNING BACK THE CLOCK TO PRE-1948 IS THE REAL ENDGAME
Anne Bayefsky
Jerusalem Post, Dec. 17, 2014
Incitement against the Jewish state is directly related to the stabbings, raping and killing of Jews inside and outside of Israel. But doing something to stop it requires confronting a very troubling fact: the global epicenter for incitement is the “human rights” leviathan, the United Nations. From November 24, 2014 until December 5, 2014, UN human rights headquarters in Geneva mounted a public exhibit that was pure incitement. UN-driven antisemitism that takes the form of seeking to demonize, disable and ultimately destroy the Jewish state. The exhibit was entitled: “La Nakba: Exode et Expulsion des Palestiniens en 1948” – or “The Nakba: Exodus and Expulsion of the Palestinians in 1948.” The occasion was the annual UN Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People. Solidarity Day marks the adoption by the General Assembly on November 29, 1947 of the resolution that approved the partitioning of Palestine into an Arab and a Jewish state. The partition resolution was rejected by Arab states and celebrated by the Jewish people. Thus the Arab war to deny Israel’s right to exist began. But in 2014, the UN overtly jettisoned the usual diplomatic lie that the 1967 occupation is the root cause of the Arab-Israeli conflict. The exhibit focused on the alleged crime of creating a Jewish state in 1948 and openly justified the rejection of the partition resolution. The display was located in the UN’s Palais des Nations just outside the home room of the UN Human Rights Council. It consisted of 13 panels in French and an accompanying catalogue with English reproductions of each item. The catalogue was distributed by UN conference services.
It turns out that the highly controversial exhibit has been circulating in churches and community centers in Germany, Austria and Switzerland since April 2008…Ingrid Rumpf,…curator of the exhibit, explained her motivation in a 2011 interview by comparing Israelis to Nazis: “My involvement in the Palestinian problem is significantly influenced by my confrontation with Nazism.” Over the years, the litigious Ms. Rumpf has evidently enjoyed casting herself as a victim, launching repeated objections to bad press and other criticism over the exhibit before German courts and administrative tribunals. In the exhibition catalogue, the organizer explicitly asks and answers the question: “Why did we create this exhibition on the Nakba?” The answer given: to reeducate all those whose “perceptions” have been “hindered” by “German guilt” and “the mass media” in order to “evoke understanding” that in 1948, Palestinians were “robbed of their homeland and their property.”
According to UN regulations, the exhibit was required to have been authorized by the highest UN authority in Geneva. UN guidelines spell out that a request – in this case from “the mission of Palestine” – must be sent to the Cultural Activities Committee of the UN Office in Geneva “who shall make recommendations for approval by the Director-General.” Michael Møller of Denmark. In other words, the UN itself approved an exhibit proclaiming that “the partition resolution violates fundamental principles of the UN Charter.” According to the exhibit, the problem with the partition plan was that it was prepared and adopted “without consulting the Palestinian people,” and “the General Assembly is not authorized to pass binding laws or create new states.” Actually, the General Assembly decision not to hand Arab rejectionists a veto over Jewish self-determination was deliberate and well-justified. And the partition resolution never purported to be a law or “create” a state. The resolution represented a stamp of moral and political approval for the creation of Israel, which was accomplished by a declaration of its own people almost six months later.
The “source” identified in the exhibit for this bogus contention is one Norman Paech. He is a former German Left Party parliamentarian, who distinguished himself by voting against a 2008 resolution establishing a committee to report on antisemitic crimes and to support the growth of Jewish life in Germany. A prolific inciter, Paech has also claimed that there is a “right to armed resistance” against anyone living in a Jewish settlement, Israel is an “apartheid state,” and Israel waged “a war of extermination” in Lebanon. The UN-sponsored exhibit contains a litany of other fabrications and hate speech. These include: “The roots of the Palestine problem date back to the late nineteenth century, when…Zionism developed in Europe.” “The Balfour Declaration was legally, politically, and morally dubious.” The 1948 war consisted of “acts of terrorism…by the Zionists.” Jews were busy conducting “massacres,” while Arabs were busy fleeing. The “leading Zionist representatives headed by the subsequent Prime Minister of Israel David Ben Gurion, planned and implemented the ethnic purge.” The case for Arab rejection of a Jewish state, indicates the exhibit, is that “the Palestinians failed to see why they should be made to pay for the Holocaust.” The exhibit used the word “indigenous” only to describe Arabs and their “ancestral soil.” The presence of Jews, and the association of Judaism with the land of Israel, for almost 4,000 years were never mentioned.
Palestinians, the exhibit claims, were “an entirely uninvolved people” in Nazi persecution of Jews. In fact, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, closely collaborated with the Nazis. Living lavishly under German auspices during much of the war, and still considered a hero by many Palestinians, al-Husseini pressed Hitler to extend his solution of the Jewish problem to Palestine. Nowhere in its history of Israel’s creation is there any mention that the armies of five neighboring Arab states – exclusively equipped with the standard weapons of a regular army – invaded the day old Jewish state on multiple fronts. Instead, the exhibit gives a revisionist account of impoverished Arab “troop strength.” As for the 800,000 persecuted Jews who were forced to flee Arab states, the exhibit blames Israel: “Israel’s expansionist policy had grave effects on the mainly peaceful coexistence of Muslims, Jews and Christians that had prevailed for centuries in the Arab countries of Asia and Africa. The result was massive immigration of Jews from these countries to Israel.” The exhibit concludes with the final message that Israel is the “lost homeland” of Palestinians to which they are “longing” to return. The visual images include signs saying “no return = no peace” and pictures of a title deed and front door key. Nowhere does the exhibit talk about recognition of, and peaceful co-existence with, the Jewish state…
[To Read the Full Article Click the Following Link—Ed.]
THE DICTATORS’ MUTUAL PRAISE CLUB
Sohrab Ahmari
Wall Street Journal, Nov. 4, 2014
Thanks to a linguistic quirk, representatives from Qatar and Syria here at the loftily named Human Rights and Alliance of Civilizations Room have ended up seated next to each other, where delegates are placed alphabetically according to their countries’ French names. Looking at these ultra-chic, impeccably polite diplomats at the Palace of Nations, you wouldn’t know that their respective regimes are two of the Middle East’s most bitter foes. And that wasn’t the biggest charade afoot last week at the United Nations Human Rights Council. On Friday, it was Iran’s turn to undergo its Universal Periodic Review, or UPR, a process that invites all member states to judge each other’s rights records.
The North Koreans praised the ayatollahs for making “commendable achievements in the field of political, economic, social and cultural rights,” and they urged Tehran to “continue adequate measures for addressing the special needs of women and protecting children from violence” and to “make continued efforts to improve the social security system.” The Syrians commended Tehran for “the adoption of new law and regulations” that allegedly promote human rights. Sudan “warmly welcomed” Iran’s human-rights progress in the face of international sanctions. Zimbabwe hailed Iran’s adoption of human-rights-friendly textbooks. All this during a week when Iran executed Reyhaneh Jabbari, a 26-year-old woman convicted in 2007 for killing an Iranian intelligence officer who she said had attempted to rape her.
Welcome to the crown jewel of the U.N. human-rights system. Established in 2006, the Human Rights Council was supposed to be an improvement over its predecessor, the Human Rights Commission. That earlier body had devolved into a dictators’ mutual-praise society that spent most of its time bashing Israel. The nadir came in 2003, when Moammar Gadhafi’s Libya assumed its presidency. In 2005, then-U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan launched a reform effort to remedy what he called the “declining credibility” of the commission, and thus was born the 47-seat Human Rights Council. To land a seat, states now had to win an absolute majority of votes among all members, rather than merely the support of their own regional group, as was the case under the old commission. But no reform, it turns out, could fix the problem at the heart of the previous commission’s failure and now dogs the current council: the fundamental dissonance between the U.S. and its democratic allies, on the one hand, and the illiberal states that dominate most U.N. bodies, on the other. China, Cuba, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Russia were elected to the inaugural council by a majority of U.N. member states. The Bush administration, spotting the impending train wreck, declined to run for a seat.
Signs of improvement are still hard to find despite the Obama administration’s own noisy six-year engagement with the council. Of the 47 current members of the council, 23 are classified as unfree or partly free by Freedom House. These include some of the world’s most repressive regimes, such as China, Cuba, Saudi Arabia and Vietnam. Meanwhile, Israel remains the only country to be subject to a permanent agenda item, and more than half of the council’s country-specific resolutions and condemnations are directed at the Jewish state, according to U.N. Watch, a Geneva-based civil-society group. At Iran’s UPR, the world’s authoritarians offered thousands of words of praise for their brother dictators in Tehran: “Belarus notes with satisfaction the practical steps taken to protect women’s and children’s rights.” Criticism from the U.S., Israel and some European states offered the occasional break from this dictatorial backslapping. But all states “welcomed the participation” of the Iranian delegation. In Geneva, everyone is perpetually “encouraged by progress,” and everyone gets a medal for showing up.
Leading the Iranian delegation was Mohammad Javad Larijani, secretary of the country’s own Human Rights Council…In Geneva, Mr. Larijani responded to criticism of Iran’s treatment of its Baha’i minority. The Baha’i, he said, “have professors at university, they have students at university.” Yet a 1991 edict bars Baha’i from the country’s postsecondary institutions. To his credit, Mr. Larijani didn’t deny the fact that the legal age of marriage for girls in the Islamic Republic is 9. Instead, he lamented that some young Iranian women are marrying as late as in their 20s and 30s. He added: “My recommendation to my daughters are get married at least around 20 years old.” Mr. Larijani also washed the Iranian regime’s hands of Ms. Jabbari’s execution. “The judiciary is not in a position to execute,” he said, but merely carried out the murder-victim’s family members’ private right to avenge their loved one’s death. The Iranian judiciary, he added, had attempted to dissuade the victim’s heirs from exercising this right and may have succeeded but for the international “media blitz” surrounding the case… The Universal Periodic Review, Mr. Larijani concluded, “is a fantastic place,” and judging by his beaming smile at the end of the event, the Iranian meant it. The question is how the cause of human rights is served by America’s legitimating presence as the world’s despots rub shoulders and sip tea together.
CIJR Wishes All Our Friends and Supporters: Shabbat Shalom!
‘The Media Fiddles While Sony Burns’: David Auerbach, National Post, Dec. 19, 2014— The Sony Pictures hack is important, and the Sony Pictures hack is terrifying.
Sony Just Made Kim Jong-un the Most Influential Film Critic in the World: Robyn Urback, National Post, Dec. 18, 2014— In the spring of 2010, South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone received a threat from a New York-based group called “Revolution Muslim,” which warned that they would “wind up like Theo Van Gogh” if they released an episode depicting the Prophet Muhammad.
EU Backs Palestinian Dictatorship: Khaled Abu Toameh, Gatestone Institute, Dec. 18, 2014 European parliaments that are rushing to recognize a Palestinian state are ignoring the fact that the Palestinians have been without a functioning parliament for the past seven years.
The Security Council Intifada: David Bosco, Foreign Policy, Dec. 18, 2014— For the last several weeks, the United Nations Security Council has been the focus of unusually intense activity related to the Israel-Palestine conflict.
Contents:
Visit CIJR’s Bi-Weekly Webzine: Israzine.
CIJR’s ISRANET Daily Briefing is available by e-mail.
Please urge colleagues, friends, and family to visit our website for more information on our ISRANET series.
To join our distribution list, or to unsubscribe, visit us at https://isranet.org/.
The ISRANET Daily Briefing is a service of CIJR. We hope that you find it useful and that you will support it and our pro-Israel educational work by forwarding a minimum $90.00 tax-deductible contribution [please send a cheque or VISA/MasterCard information to CIJR (see cover page for address)]. All donations include a membership-subscription to our respected quarterly ISRAFAX print magazine, which will be mailed to your home.
CIJR’s ISRANET Daily Briefing attempts to convey a wide variety of opinions on Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world for its readers’ educational and research purposes. Reprinted articles and documents express the opinions of their authors, and do not necessarily reflect the viewpoint of the Canadian Institute for Jewish Research.
Rob Coles, Publications Chairman, Canadian Institute for Jewish Research/ L’institut Canadien de recherches sur le Judaïsme, www.isranet.org
Tel: (514) 486-5544 – Fax:(514) 486-8284 ; ber@isranet.wpsitie.com