AS PALESTINIANS’ “VICTIMHOOD” INCITES VIOLENCE, ISRAEL’S FOCUS, AMIDST REGIONAL CHAOS, IS ON SURVIVAL

Intifada or Not, Palestinians Have Anger Without Leadership: Ben Cohen, JNS, Oct. 8, 2015 — In the days that have passed since Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas declared before the U.N, General Assembly that he was abrogating previous agreements with Israel, Palestinians in the West Bank and eastern Jerusalem have carried out dozens of terror attacks, some of them deadly, against Israelis.

Abbas Calls for Murder, Palestinians Attack: Khaled Abu Toameh, Gatestone Institute, Oct. 7, 2015— The Palestinian Authority (PA) and its leaders, including President Mahmoud Abbas, cannot evade responsibility for the latest wave of terror attacks against Israelis in Jerusalem and the West Bank.

The Palestinian Victimhood Narrative as an Obstacle to Peace: Col. (res.) Dr. Eran Lerman, BESA, Oct. 7, 2015 — The speech delivered by Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas at the UN General Assembly last week was proof, once again, that the Palestinian “narrative” of victimhood has become a threat to any practical prospect for peace.

Israel’s Survival Amid Expanding Chaos: Louis Rene Beres, Breaking Israel News, Oct. 7, 2015 — In world politics, preserving order has an understandably sacramental function.

On Topic Links

Behind the Headlines: Palestinian Incitement and Terrorism: Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Oct. 8, 2015

Abbas’ UN Speech and the Unrest in Jerusalem: Lt. Col. (ret.) Jonathan D. Halevi, JCPA, Oct. 7, 2015

The Social Media Intifada: Facebook, Twitter and YouTube Used Extensively for Promoting Violence Against Israelis: Ruthie Blum, Algemeiner,  Oct. 8, 2015

Why is Jaffa Being Attacked?: Itamar Marcus & Nan Jacques Zilberdik, Jerusalem Post, Oct. 8, 2015

INTIFADA OR NOT, PALESTINIANS HAVE ANGER WITHOUT LEADERSHIP                                                       

Ben Cohen

JNS, Oct. 8, 2015

In the days that have passed since Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas declared before the U.N, General Assembly that he was abrogating previous agreements with Israel, Palestinians in the West Bank and eastern Jerusalem have carried out dozens of terror attacks, some of them deadly, against Israelis.

It’s a situation that has led many analysts to speculate about the possibility of a third intifada (uprising) against Israel, and to worry about where such an enterprise will lead. Not that the first two intifadas were exactly picnics.

Intifada number one broke out in 1987 and petered out in the early 1990s. In propaganda terms, it was a definite victory for the Palestinians, as the world media was peppered with images of masked, protesting Palestinians throwing rocks at the well-armed IDF. Politically, it was distinguished by the fact that it was led by the nationalist and leftist Palestinian factions.

Intifada number two, launched by the late PLO leader Yasser Arafat in 2000, was a far more dangerous affair, involving both the armed wing of Fatah, the main nationalist faction, as well as the Islamists of Hamas. Throughout the early part of the previous decade, Israel was under physical and psychological siege from suicide bombings and other atrocities perpetrated by Palestinian terrorists who demonstrated that, like Islamic State now, there are no limits to what they will do. The March 2002 bombing of a Passover seder at a hotel in Netanya, in which 30 Jews were murdered and more than 100 injured, was the bloodiest confirmation of that.

Yet that intifada petered out too, for many reasons, not least Israel’s construction—in the teeth of heavy Arab and world opposition, along with a rising tide of anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism among Western publics—of a security barrier along its border with the West Bank. One can only shudder at the thought of how many Israelis might have been killed in the current round of violence had the barrier not been there.

In that sense, the Palestinians have a strategic decision to make. If they do launch intifada number three, what is their ultimate goal? How will they prevent it from failing like the last two? Put another way, will it leave their people in a better or worse position, both during and after its execution? Palestinian leaders, whether nationalists or Islamists, don’t care about the day-to-day welfare of their people. They view the entire Palestinian population as an instrument of struggle, rather than as a collection of individuals and families who aim for a better quality of life for themselves and their nation.  

Some groups, like the Al-Aqsa Brigades of Fatah or the Qassam Brigades of Hamas, engage Palestinians in violence: sniper attacks on Israeli vehicles in the West Bank, rocket attacks from Gaza, stabbings of the sort witnessed this week in Jerusalem and other locations, training and building up of terror cells across the West Bank, organizing confrontations with the Israeli army, and so on. As the three wars in Gaza over the last decade have proven, their overarching goal is to drag the Israelis into a prolonged armed conflict that will turn the world against the Jewish state.

Abbas himself goes both ways. Sometimes he encourages violence, other times he urges a quieting of confrontation. In terms of the Israelis, Abbas approaches them in a spirit of diplomatic confrontation. Domestically, for example, he rebuffs attempts by the Jerusalem municipality to improve living conditions for Palestinians in the eastern part of the united city. Internationally, he continues to pursue a strategy of gaining unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state with or without the Israelis. But that is not leadership, and Abbas is not really the leader of the Palestinians anymore. That, perhaps, is the gravest crisis they face. Abbas has become a classic Arab gerontocrat, an old man clinging onto power through corruption and bullying, and with no obvious successor in the wings. Indeed, as the Israeli journalist Nahum Barnea explained in a recent Yediot Ahronoth article, it’s quite possible that the succession battle that will follow the departure of Abbas could result in a civil war—for the second time, in fact, when you remember the bloody conflict between Hamas and Fatah in Gaza in 2007.

As any revolutionary worth his or her salt will tell you, without proper leadership you can’t win. It was the Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin who came up with the widely adopted concept of the “vanguard party”: In essence, a cadre of professional revolutionaries who will guide, shape, and direct the struggle of the working class and the oppressed. Right now, Hamas looks a much more credible candidate for that position than does Fatah…

[To Read the Full Article Click the Following Link—ED.]                                                                                                                            

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ABBAS CALLS FOR MURDER, PALESTINIANS ATTACK                                                                        

Khaled Abu Toameh                                                                                           

Gatestone Institute, Oct. 7, 2015

The Palestinian Authority (PA) and its leaders, including President Mahmoud Abbas, cannot evade responsibility for the latest wave of terror attacks against Israelis in Jerusalem and the West Bank. True, in the end it turned out that Hamas was behind the murder of Eitam and Naama Henkin in front of their four children, but there is no ignoring the fact that the anti-Israel incitement of Abbas and other Palestinian leaders in Ramallah paved the way for the terrorists to carry out this and other attacks.

The incitement, which has been around for many years, intensified after the arson attack that killed three members of the Dawabsha family in the West Bank village of Duma in July. Since then, Abbas and his senior officials have been waging an unprecedented campaign of incitement against Israel in general and Jewish settlers in particular, although the perpetrators of the Duma attack still have not been identified or caught. Palestinian Authority leaders have since accused the Israeli government of committing "war crimes," and have told their people that the arson attack was actually part of an Israeli conspiracy against all Palestinians.

Abbas has even gone as far as accusing Israel of promoting a "culture of terror and apartheid." That claim came in addition to threats by senior Palestinian officials to launch retaliatory "operations" against Israel in response to the arson attack. The West Bank's Palestinian media, which are controlled by the PA, have also played a role in the massive campaign of incitement against Israel and settlers. Jewish settlers are depicted in Palestinian media outlets as "gangsters" and "terrorists" and the Israeli government is dubbed the "Occupation Government."

The recent tensions at the Aqsa Mosque compound on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem have also been exploited by Abbas and the Palestinian Authority leadership to delegitimize Israel and demonize "Jewish extremists and settlers." For several months now, Abbas and his senior officials and media outlets have been accusing Jewish visitors to the holy site of "contaminating" and "desecrating" one of Islam's holiest shrines. Palestinian officials and journalists have been telling their people that the Jews are plotting to demolish the Aqsa Mosque. Moreover, they have been urging and encouraging Palestinians to converge on the Aqsa Mosque compound to "defend" it against purported Jewish schemes. 

The campaign of incitement reached its peak recently when Abbas was quoted as accusing Jews of "defiling the Aqsa Mosque with their filthy feet." Abbas also announced that, "Every drop of blood spilled in Jerusalem is pure blood." The Hamas terrorists who murdered the Henkins live in the West Bank, and were undoubtedly exposed to the incitement by Abbas and the PA. The terrorists did not need permission from the Hamas leadership in the Gaza Strip or Turkey to go out and murder the first Jews they ran into. The inflammatory rhetoric of Abbas and Palestinian Authority officials and media outlets was sufficient to drive any Palestinian to murder Jews.

The two Palestinian assailants who carried out last week's stabbing attacks in Jerusalem wanted to kill Jews because they were led to believe that this was the only means to stop them from "contaminating" the Aqsa Mosque. After all, this is precisely what Abbas and other PA officials have been telling them for the past few months. Again, while the two stabbers were not Abbas loyalists (one of them, Muhannad Halabi, was affiliated with Palestinian Islamic Jihad), there is no doubt that the incitement of the Palestinian Authority played a major role in increasing their motivation to murder Jews.

Halabi, who stabbed and shot four Israelis in the Old City of Jerusalem, killing Rabbi Nehemia Lavi and Aharon Banita, and wounding Adele Banita and her baby, wrote on his Facebook page hours before the attack: "What is happening to al-Aqsa Mosque is what is happening to our holy sites, and what is happening to the women of al-Aqsa is what is happening to our mothers and women. I don't believe that our people will succumb to humiliation. The people will indeed rise up." Halabi's statements are not much different from those made by several senior PA officials in recent weeks and months…

[To Read the Full Article Click the Following Link—ED.]

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THE PALESTINIAN VICTIMHOOD NARRATIVE AS AN OBSTACLE TO PEACE                                          

Col. (res.) Dr. Eran Lerman                            

BESA, Oct. 7, 2015

The speech delivered by Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas at the UN General Assembly last week was proof, once again, that the Palestinian “narrative” of victimhood has become a threat to any practical prospect for peace. Palestinian leaders consistently advance an interpretation of history which is at odds not only with the facts but also with their people’s best interests. At the core of Abbas’ plaintive narration is the notion of the Palestinians as innocent victims, whose right to statehood and independence has been taken away and brutally ignored for much too long. In this telling of history, the Palestinians deserve to be backed by coercive intervention, as soon as possible, so as to impose on Israel a solution which would implement their “”rights.”

This would include implementation of “all relevant UN resolutions” – meaning UN General Assembly resolution 194 (the so-called “right of return”) as well as the Arab (mis)interpretation of resolution 242 as demanding withdrawal to the June 4, 1967 lines. Moreover, this is translated into the demand, explicitly made by Abbas, for “international protection” (Himayah Duwwaliyyah); a term of uncertain practical import, yet indicative of the Palestinian reluctance to settle down to the hard work of striking a workable compromise with Israel.

There is no room, therein, for the long litany of Palestinian past mistakes and misjudgments. These are deftly expunged from the record. No mention can be made of the recent rise in Palestinian terror activities; no mention of the Palestinian decision to walk away from the framework advanced by US Secretary of State John Kerry; no word on Hamas’ habitual shelling of Israeli civilian targets. There is also no mention of the collapse of all past peace efforts; of the fact that only in 1988 did PLO (putatively) recognize Israel’s right to exist. No reference is made to the long years of terror, including the brazen attack on the Olympic Games in 1972; no hint of their rejection of partition in 1947; no mention of Hajj Amin al-Husseini’s relationship with Hitler and Himmler; no mention of the massacres of Jews in Hebron in 1929 and Jaffa in 1921.

In other words, all that the Palestinians have ever suffered – and their suffering was real enough, even if it pales in comparison with what has befallen the Syrian people and others in the region in recent times – is someone else’s fault. It is Israel’s fault, above all, and the world’s. Over the years, this narrative of victimhood has become so entrenched as to be an integral part of Palestinian identity.  Yasser Arafat even had a way of insinuating that Jesus of Nazareth must have been a Palestinian, given his suffering. Acknowledgement of the tragic aspects of Palestinian history, including the “Nakba” (catastrophe) which befell them in 1948, has become commonplace in Israel and elsewhere.

However, references to the Palestinians’ own role in the chain of events which led to their defeats remain quite rare – even more so at higher political echelons. This, in turn, feeds not only the sense of grievance and the ensuing justifications for violence. It is an active barrier to any practical compromise, and to reconciliation and peace…

[To Read the Full Article Click the Following Link—ED.]

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ISRAEL’S SURVIVAL AMID EXPANDING CHAOS                                                                                     

Louis Rene Beres                         

Breaking Israel News, Oct. 7, 2015

In world politics, preserving order has an understandably sacramental function. The reason is plain. Without minimum public order, planetary relations would descend rapidly and perhaps irremediably into a “profane” disharmony. It has happened before, since time immemorial. To be sure, generalized anarchy is not entirely new. In fact, in one form or another, it has long been an integral feature of international relations. This unsteady condition of structurally decentralized authority was even codified at the Peace of Westphalia, in1648. Nonetheless, it should be borne in mind, anarchy is always less threatening or destabilizing than true chaos.

Today, in the Middle East especially, the fully “normal” absence of supranational authority is being transformed and worsened by something unique and potentially devastating. This “something” is the palpable and simultaneous disintegration of national boundaries, classical power balances, and collective security remedies. Within this literally dreadful pattern of system-wide dissolution, tens of millions of stateless refugees now wander desperately across the earth. At the same time, presumptively sober jurisprudential limits on the spread of nuclear weapons have come to represent little more than a humiliating parody of effective legal controls.

Soon, too, a conspicuously stark juxtaposition of pre-modern ideologies with futuristic weapons could define an unprecedented challenge for dealing with chaos. In the most uncontroversial narratives of counter-terrorist obligation, even our most industrially backward enemies will have ready recourse to advanced strategies of cyber-defense and cyber-warfare. For the United States, the implications of all this expanding access are deeply profound and predictably worrisome. For Israel a beleaguered mini-state, the implications are far greater. For Israel, the implications are unambiguously existential.

It is time for candor. International law will not save Israel. Assorted agreement expectations notwithstanding, including those of the sordid new pact with Iran, certain of Israel’s Islamic enemies will inevitably “go nuclear.” When this happens, there will be foreseeable interactions between individual catastrophic threats, so-called “synergies.” These interactions will make the risks of an already-expanding chaos still more pressing. When this occurs, the imperiled region could slip into the primordial chaos of marooned boys in William Golding’s great novel, Lord of the Flies. Then, all cultivated expectations and ordinary protocols of civilized existence would lie in tatters, mercilessly torn to shreds by what W.B.Yeats had called a “blood-dimmed tide.” Then, prophetically, the Irish poet’s symbolic “ceremony of innocence” will finally have been “drowned.”

For Israel, the pertinent dangers of chaos are both particular and unique. Facing not only an unprecedented nuclear threat from Iran, but also the appearance of Palestine, the Jewish State could quickly find itself engulfed in mass-casualty terrorism, and/or in unconventional war. In time, as we must now realistically expect, chaos would have its retrograde pride of place. Even together with elements of “international community,” there would then be no safety in arms, no rescues from higher political authority, and no comforting reassurances from science. New wars could rage until every flower of culture is trampled, and until all things human were leveled in a vast and more or less primal disorder.

Although counterintuitive, chaos and anarchy actually represent opposite end points of the same global continuum. Perversely, mere anarchy, or the absence of central world authority, is “normal.” Chaos, however, is sui generis. It is “abnormal.” Since the seventeenth century and the end of the Thirty Years’ War, the last of the major religious wars sparked by the Reformation, our anarchic world can be best described as a “system.” What happens in any one part of this world, therefore, necessarily affects what will happen in some or even all of the other parts. When a particular deterioration is marked, and begins to spread from one nation to another, the corrosive effects could speedily undermine regional and/or international stability.

When deterioration is rapid and catastrophic, as it would be following the start of any unconventional war and/or act of unconventional terrorism, the corollary effects would be correspondingly immediate and overwhelming. These critical effects would be chaotic. Aware that even an incremental collapse of remaining world authority structures will impact its few friends as well as its many enemies, leaders of the Jewish State will soon need to advance certain precise and plausible premonitions of collapse, in order to chart more durable paths to survival. Such indispensable considerations will be distasteful, of course, and are thus likely not yet underway.

Historically, Israel’s leaders have wasted precious time with purely ritualistic considerations of American “road maps” and “peace plans.” Soon, and in at least partial consequence of such misspent opportunities, they will need to consider just how to respond to international life in a global state of nature. The specific triggering mechanisms of our already-disassembling world’s descent into chaos could originate from a variety of mass-casualty attacks launched against Israel, or from similar attacks against other western democracies. Even the traditionally “powerful” United States, now suffering huge economic, demographic, and infrastructure dislocations, would not be immune to such a remorseless vulnerability.

Jerusalem must take careful note. Any progressively chaotic disintegration of the world system would fundamentally transform the smaller Israeli system. Such a transformation of microcosm by macrocosm could sometime involve total or near-total societal destruction. In prudent anticipation, Israel will have to orient much of its core strategic planning to an assortment of worst-case prospects, now focusing much more deliberately on an expansively wide range of self-help security options. Correspondingly, for Israel, certain once-prominent diplomatic processes of peacemaking that are conveniently but erroneously premised on “scientific” assumptions of reason and rationality will have to be reduced or even renounced.

Israel’s one-sided surrender of territories, its mistaken reluctance to accept certain vital preemption options while still timely, and its periodic terrorist releases may never bring about any direct defeat. Taken together, however, these ominously synergistic policy errors will have a cumulatively weakening effect on Israel. Whether the principal effect here will be one that “merely” impairs the Jewish State’s commitment to endure, or one that also opens it up, operationally, to a devastating missile attack, and/or to major acts of terror, is still unclear. What remains clear is Israel’s unwavering obligation to look beyond the somnolent darkness of expanding global and regional chaos, and to acknowledge that the highest sacramental achievements of the Jewish State must inevitably lie in a triumph of mind over mind, not of mind over matter.

CIJR Wishes All Our Friends & Supporters: Shabbat Shalom!

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On Topic

Behind the Headlines: Palestinian Incitement and Terrorism: Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Oct. 8, 2015—The recent series of attacks against Israelis is the direct result of incitement by radical Islamist and terrorist elements, calling on Palestinian youth to murder Jews.

Abbas’ UN Speech and the Unrest in Jerusalem: Lt. Col. (ret.) Jonathan D. Halevi, JCPA, Oct. 7, 2015 —On September 30, Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas gave a speech to the United Nations General Assembly in which he outlined the unilateral steps he intends to take to achieve Palestinian sovereignty in the territories and east Jerusalem without reaching a peace agreement with Israel.

The Social Media Intifada: Facebook, Twitter and YouTube Used Extensively for Promoting Violence Against Israelis: Ruthie Blum, Algemeiner,  Oct. 8, 2015—Israeli media published an amateur video on Friday showing an incident which occurred earlier in the day in Afula in which Israeli soldiers neutralized a knife-wielding female Israeli Arab terrorist, identified by the Shin Bet as 30-year-old Asraa Zidan Tawfik Abed, from the Israeli city of Nazareth.

Why is Jaffa Being Attacked?: Itamar Marcus & Nan Jacques Zilberdik, Jerusalem Post, Oct. 8, 2015 —Why should anyone be shocked or surprised that Palestinian terrorism is hitting Jaffa, Petah Tikva and Kiryat Gat – all cities that have been part of Israel since its creation? Palestinian leaders are constantly indoctrinating their people with the message that Jaffa and all of Israel are also under “occupation,” eventually to be “liberated” and come under Palestinian rule.