LONDON — Parliaments across Europe — in Britain, Spain, France, Ireland and now the European Parliament — are acting to preserve the prospect of peaceful coexistence between Israelis and Palestinians. They seek recognition of Palestine on the basis of the 1967 borders as a contribution to a negotiated peace, not a substitute for it.
The following post by Rabbi Yehiel Grenimann of Rabbis for Human Rights was originally posted on RHR's web site on November 14, 2014, and is reprinted here by permission from the author.
A mosque was badly arsoned, presumably by Jewish extremists, in the early hours of November 12 2014 in the village of Al Mughayir. About a month prior, another mosque, in a different Palestinian village in the Occupied Territories, was also burned. Rabbi Yehiel Grenimann of RHR visited the mosque in Al Mughayir and writes of his shock at the severity of the arson.
APN Board member Jo-Ann Mort in Haaretz - Shattering a Jewish American myth: Jerusalem is no Disneyland
Most American Jewish tour groups are shown a historical-religious theme park version of a nominally 'united' Jerusalem - in which the Arabic-speaking, Palestinian east of the city and its grievances is simply invisible.
Imagine this is your city.
Imagine that one of its neighborhoods is Shuafat, a walled-off refugee camp with 80,000 people and no legal order or adequate city services, where zealots who recognize the rule of a Supreme Being not a Supreme Court judge, take actions that are daily heightening tensions in the city and new tenants take over the top floor of a home under the veil of darkness and proclaim that they are "Judaizing" the street of an overwhelmingly Arab neighborhood, throwing out the belongings of the family who is living there and camping on the top floor with their children, and their guns.
Welcome to Jerusalem, yes, Jerusalem.
translation: Israel News Today
Generals’ Letter
Yedioth Ahronoth (p. B14) by Nehama Duek -- [October 31] If one were to add up all their years of service in the army, the police and the Mossad, one would reach an unbelievable number of more than 3,500 years of service in the security of the State of Israel. A total of 105 IDF major generals and brigadier generals in reserves, retired Israel Police commanders and lieutenant commanders and former Mossad directors decided to emerge together from their private comfort zones and to sign a letter calling on Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu “not to join those who use threats as an excuse for inaction and to initiate a political process.”
The signatories are neither professional petition-signers and their names are not the ones that one commonly finds penned to the bottom of petitions either in support of peace or the Greater Land of Israel. This time, the names are different. Some of them are generals who doffed their uniforms many years ago, such as the former Mossad director, Zvi Zamir, and Maj. Gen. (res.) Amiram Levine. There are other, such as generals Danny Bitton and Avi Mizrahi, who retired from the army just recently and were members of the IDF General Staff that oversaw Operation Cast Lead. They are more familiar with the situation on the ground than others. There are also three former police commissioners—Assaf Hefetz, Yaakov Turner and Herzl Shafir.
“We, the undersigned, IDF commanders in reserves and retired police officers, who fought in Israel’s wars, are intimately familiar with the severe and painful price that war exacts,” reads the letter, which was initiated by Maj. Gen. (res.) Amnon Reshef, formerly a commander of the Armored Corps, who says he has grown fed up with the reality in which Israel has to engage in rounds of warfare every few years instead of a sincere effort being made to adopt the Saudi peace initiative. “We fought valiantly on behalf of the state in hope that our children would live here in peace,” reads the letter. “Except reality has proved us wrong, and we are once again sending our children to the battlegrounds, watching them putting on their uniforms and battle vests, and going out to fight in Operation Protective Edge… there is no question here of left and right. There is one idea here for resolving the conflict, which is not based only on bilateral negotiations with the Palestinians, which has failed time and time again… we expect of you a courageous initiative, leadership. You lead—and we will stand behind you.”
[…] Q: Ever few months a petition gets published by either the left or the right. What is different about the current one?
Reshef: “The difference is in the message, and mainly in the quantity of signatures at the end of the letter that was addressed to the prime minister, but via him to the entire public. Read the names of the signatories. They’re all combat soldiers, major generals and brigadier generals, and my fellow combatants of the other ranks will forgive me for not having managed to get to them. I felt it was urgent. I saw how Sisi called on Israel to hold negotiations, and no one in Israel picked up the gauntlet. I saw [Israel] head into Operation Protective Edge and the sense that we’ve grown accustomed to the fact that every three years there’s another round of warfare. I felt it was urgent. I wrote the petition and I thought that I’d get 40 or 50 high-ranking officers to sign it. I was glad when one friend brought another, and hardly anyone refused. The strength that exists in those names is unique and singular.”
Reshef: “In the letter we argue that the Yom Kippur War stemmed from political blindness. I also say that if Operation Protective Edge doesn’t have political follow-through, its casualties will have been in vain. And if so, what did the residents of the Gaza periphery suffer for and why did the entire population need to be traumatized, if we’re already talking about a second a third round. God, after all, there’s a solution that can prevent the next rounds. We have to reach an arrangement with the moderate Arab states, which have more leverage and influence over the Palestinians than we do.”
Q: Do you really believe that a comprehensive peace agreement can be reached?
“Absolutely. To establish a Palestinian state and to reach a comprehensive agreement with the tens of Arab countries that are in the region.”
[…] Maj. Gen. (res.) Avi Mizrahi: “That’s a tricky question because everyone has their own definition of ‘comprehensive regional peace.’ Up until now, incidentally, we’ve failed when we’ve tried to talk only with the Palestinians, so maybe a comprehensive initiative will be more successful. But if you’ll permit me to take the bird’s eye view, there is a [joint] Egyptian and Israeli interest in resolving this problem. For example, Sinai is a large swathe of land that overwhelmingly is neither developed nor populated. If the Egyptians donate a few tens of square kilometers to the [Gaza] Strip, that could help the joint development of the area and produce a situation in which it isn’t just us and them in the game.”
[…] Q: Is Netanyahu made of the right stuff? Is he capable of reaching an agreement?
Reshef: “Theoretically? He’s capable. Does he want to? I don’t have an answer to that.”
Mizrahi: “Of course Bibi is capable. Will he listen to our letter? That’s a different question altogether.”
Reshef: “We’re addressing him in hope that he will realize that he has an opportunity here for us to help him. If it doesn’t work, my next objective is to build an orderly system [i.e. a well-oiled machine] so that by springtime we can organize a demonstration of 200,000-300,000 people with the message [in support] of a regional arrangement that will lead to security-economic-social flourishing.”
Hundreds Join Generals’ Initiative
Yedioth Ahronoth (p. 24) by Nehama Duek -- In the aftermath of the report in Yedioth Ahronoth on Friday, hundreds of officers in reserves have joined the group of 105 generals who called on the prime minister to immediately adopt a political initiative [to resolve the Israeli-Arab conflict].
Yedioth Ahronoth reported on Friday that 105 major generals and brigadier generals in reserves, as well as former Mossad directors and police commissioners, demanded that Netanyahu adopt the Saudi peace initiative as a way out of the political deadlock with the Palestinians, a deadlock that they believe is liable to produce another round of violence.
The sponsor of the initiative, Maj. Gen. (res.) Amnon Reshef, has received hundreds of phone calls, emails and text messages in the wake of the report in Yedioth Ahronoth from veterans who have asked to join the initiative. Reshef said that a symposium on the issue would be held in the near future.
There can be no two-state solution without a compromise in Jerusalem. The latest moves to expand Israel’s presence in the eastern part of the city will make such a compromise impossible.
by Lior Amihai
After the Six-Day War, Israel unilaterally annexed East Jerusalem and another approximately 29 Palestinian villages around it. Other countries and the Palestinians never recognized this annexation and the demand to establish the capital of the Palestinian state in East Jerusalem still stands. And so it is clear that a two-state solution cannot come about without a compromise over Jerusalem.
White House fumes at PM’s 'American values' statement that echoes malicious rhetoric of birthers
and other crazy Obama-haters.
Chemi Shalev
You want to give Benjamin Netanyahu the benefit of the doubt. You prefer to assume that he knew not what he was doing, that he fell in love with his own wisecrack, as he is wont to do, and simply didn’t think things through. You want to believe that we have not reached the stage when the Israeli prime minister would wantonly detonate a stink bomb in an American president’s face, as if he couldn’t care less.
Nonetheless, you have to wonder. You can say a lot of things about Netanyahu: Stupid isn’t one of them. So how could have gone down the route of declaring White House criticism of his government’s moves in East Jerusalem “un-American”? How could he have ignored the multiple numerous alarm bells and whistles that should have warned him to think twice and even thrice before taking this road? How could he have exposed himself to the kind of withering reaction issued by the White House yesterday, summed it up in one loaded little word: “odd.”
The lobbying group AIPAC has consistently fought the Obama Administration on policy. Is it now losing influence?
By Connie Bruck
On July 23rd, officials of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee—the powerful lobbying group known as AIPAC—gathered in a conference room at the Capitol for a closed meeting with a dozen Democratic senators. The agenda of the meeting, which was attended by other Jewish leaders as well, was the war in the Gaza Strip. In the century-long conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians, the previous two weeks had been particularly harrowing. In Israeli towns and cities, families heard sirens warning of incoming rockets and raced to shelters. In Gaza, there were scenes of utter devastation, with hundreds of Palestinian children dead from bombing and mortar fire. The Israeli government claimed that it had taken extraordinary measures to minimize civilian casualties, but the United Nations was launching an inquiry into possible war crimes. Even before the fighting escalated, the United States, Israel’s closest ally, had made little secret of its frustration with the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “How will it have peace if it is unwilling to delineate a border, end the occupation, and allow for Palestinian sovereignty, security, and dignity?” Philip Gordon, the White House coördinator for the Middle East, said in early July. “It cannot maintain military control of another people indefinitely. Doing so is not only wrong but a recipe for resentment and recurring instability.” Although the Administration repeatedly reaffirmed its support for Israel, it was clearly uncomfortable with the scale of Israel’s aggression. AIPAC did not share this unease; it endorsed a Senate resolution in support of Israel’s “right to defend its citizens,” which had seventy-nine co-sponsors and passed without a word of dissent.
Inspired by stories his father told him as a child, Leonard Fein felt called to mend a torn world, in words and deeds.
Cofounding the magazine Moment with Elie Wiesel in the 1970s, he became one of the nation’s most visible writers and thinkers about Jewish ideas and issues. In 1985 he launched Mazon, a nonprofit that has raised tens of millions to help feed the hungry. A dozen years later he helped create the National Jewish Coalition for Literacy to train tutors, and he also was a founder of Americans for Peace Now.
(Translated from Hebrew and reprinted in the Commentary/Analysis section of APN's News Nosh on September 1, 2014)
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Now of all times, when a political initiative is needed, when
Hamas is trying to portray itself as the savior of the Palestinian people, when Abbas was forced to deal with
harsh criticism for not battling enough against Israel - now of all times, Netanyahu decides to declare 4,000
dunams (nearly 1000 acres) in Gush Etzion as state land. How will Abbas explain to his people the disregard
and aggression of the Netanyahu government towards him? While Abbas tried to moderate and calm the area,
Netanyahu humiliates him in front of his people.
According to international law, the decision to make land state land requires the sovereign to designate the land for the benefit of the general population in the area. It's no secret that when it comes to the Territories, the only ones to benefit from state land are settlers.