Peres: Goldstone Report is a mockery of history

President Peres' reply to the Goldstone Mission Report

16 Sep 2009 President Shimon Peres: "Those in pursuit of peace have justice on their side. Those who monger war will forever be criminals." STATEMENT BY PRESIDENT SHIMON PERES: “GOLDSTONE MISSION REPORT IS A MOCKERY OF HISTORY” The Goldstone Mission report is a mockery of history. It fails to distinguish between the aggressor and a state exercising its right for self defense. War itself is a crime. The aggressor is the criminal. The side exercising self-defense has no other alternative. The Hamas terrorist organization has opened war and perpetrated other horrible crimes. For years, Hamas carried out attacks against the children of Israel, sending suicide bombers into city centers, injuring and killing civilians. They fired over 12,000 rockets and mortar shells at towns and villages with one clear aim - to kill innocent civilians. The report legitimizes terrorist activity, the pursuit of murder and death. The report disregards the duty and right of self defense, held by every sovereign state as enshrined in the UN Charter. Israel withdrew all of its troops and settlers from the Gaza Strip, opened the border crossings and actively supported its reconstruction. The Israeli presence in Gaza was terminated. But after Israel completed its redeployment from Gaza, a murderous and illegitimate terror group violently revolted against the legitimate Fatah leadership, overthrowing it by force. Hamas operatives murdered Fatah leaders, at times throwing them from rooftops in broad daylight. While Hamas continued firing, Israel employed, time and time again, the diplomatic channels, including many appeals to the UN – in an attempt to bring about a cessation of rocket fire. Israel redeployed and terminated its presence in Gaza. Hamas responded with incessant rocket fire aimed at killing children, women and innocent civilians. Instead of building Gaza and caring for the welfare of its citizens, Hamas built tunnels to attack Israel, cruelly using children and innocent Palestinians to hide terrorists and ammunition. Hamas terrorists built rocket launching pads and storage facilities near schools, in mosques and kindergartens. They booby-trapped urban neighborhoods and used Palestinian children as human-shields in order to hide terrorists and war materiel. The State of Israel was forced to defend itself. It acted out of obligation to its citizens, like any sister state in the family of nations would. Israel has been criticized for its actions against Hizbullah attacks from Lebanon and Hamas attacks from the Gaza Strip, as well as for building the security barrier in the West Bank to prevent suicide bombers from entering the country. This criticism did not stop the rockets from hitting the South and the North, nor did it stop terrorists from blowing themselves up in our central cities. IDF operations enabled economic prosperity in the West Bank, relieved southern Lebanese citizens from the terror of Hezbollah and have enabled Gazans to have normal lives again. Those in pursuit of peace have justice on their side. Those who monger war will forever be criminals. Members of the Goldstone Mission would have never compiled such a report if their children resided in Sderot and suffered the terrorism of daily rocket fire.

"The Goldstone Mission is unjust and wanting in truth. It has, therefore, harmed the prospects for peace in the Middle East."

--Warren Goldstein, who has a PhD. in Human Rights Law, is the chief rabbi of South Africa

It looks like law, but it's just politics

Oct. 14, 2009
WARREN GOLDSTEIN , THE JERUSALEM POST excerpt

Much has been written and said about the inaccuracies, shortcomings and the moral inversion of the United Nations Human Rights Council's Mission presided over by Judge Richard Goldstone and his three fellow members. Most critics have understandably addressed the political and military issues involved. It is important, however, also to deconstruct the Goldstone Mission's Report from a legal point of view.

This is so because the report uses the veneer of respectability that comes with legal methodology, and with the presence of an internationally respected judge, to gain credibility. Law is a very powerful weapon to give respectability to contemptible actions and opinions. The South African Apartheid Government was very legalistic in its approach to racial oppression, and was punctilious about promulgating proper laws, and about maintaining a fully functioning judiciary to give the façade of respectability to its repugnant policies.

The United Nations, through its various organs, but particularly through its Human Rights Commission, uses the superficial veneer of law and legal methodology to give credence and credibility to its anti-Israel agenda. The Goldstone Mission is a case in point. Careful analysis reveals that the legalities utilized are merely a cover for a political strategy of deligitimizing Israel. Judge Goldstone claims that the Mission "is not a judicial enquiry [but is] a fact-finding mission."

This is a distinction without a difference. The Mission's Report makes numerous factual findings, and some legal, just as if it were a judicial body.

Why Palestinian Incitement Matters So Much

By Jonathan Rosenblum excerpt

[Palestinian] incitement and demonization [of Israel] are not just one more treaty violation. They reflect the failure of the Palestinians since the beginning of Oslo to create a constituency for peace with Israel, to educate the Palestinian population to the idea of living side-by-side with a Jewish state. Such an education would have included Palestinian leaders telling their people that they too would have to make painful concessions for peace, that all the so-called refugees and their descendants will not return to Israel, that the clock cannot be turned back entirely to 1947 or even 1966. That has never happened. Even worse, there has been no education to accept the existence of Israel in any borders or to renounce once and for all the dream of throwing all the Jews into the sea.

Napolitano says al Qaeda-type terrorists are in the U.S.

Walid Phares

"It is fair to say there are individuals in the United States who ascribe to Al Qaeda-type beliefs," DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano told Bloomberg

Walid Phares comment: "No kidding, they are really here inside the United States? And by ...the way what are al Qaeda-type beliefs? Can we explain further to the US public how to identify these beliefs? That would be helpful.."Read More

Napolitano Says Al Qaeda-Type Terrorists in U.S. - Political News - FOXNews.com

Source: www.foxnews.com

Law enforcement authorities are tracking terrorists with Al Qaeda leanings in the U.S., Homeland security Secretary Janet Napolitano told Bloomberg Television.

 

The Cruel Dilemma Facing the Jews of Israel

Mort Zuckerman, Editor, U.S. News & World Report

Posted: October 8, 2009

  

The Jews of Israel are facing a cruel dilemma. They came home to find peace and safety in their homeland of Israel; to find an end to that vulnerable status of a perpetual wandering minority; an end to exile, alienation, and powerlessness; and the beginning of a normal national existence. Instead, they found neighbors who were not reconciled to their living again together in this tiny piece of land the Jews have regarded as home for 4,000 years. How do you share a home with someone who says, "You have no right to be here"?

The Arab assault on the Jews that began immediately and has continued for more than half a century made it clear the Jews could not control 2 million Arabs without eroding the moral character of their tiny state and, with that, its support in the world. So leader after leader decided to end the Israeli occupation of Palestine and any pretense that Israel could become a binational state in which one people ruled another. After Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres promoted the Oslo agreements, Ehud Barak, Ariel Sharon, and Ehud Olmert, prime ministers all, made dramatic proposals in search of a live-and-let-live relationship with the Palestinians -- and all were rejected. They offered to withdraw from the West Bank and Gaza in words and withdrew from them in deeds. Did this bring peace? No, it brought terrorist attacks by suicide bombers who menaced any kind of normal life within Israel. Prime Minister Sharon voluntarily withdrew every last Jewish settler and soldier from Gaza. It meant forcing close to 10,000 Jews out of their homes. Did it bring peace? Did the Gazans say, "Good riddance," and get on with building their own society? No, they hunted the Jews who had left. They turned Gaza into a launching pad for thousands of rockets against the Jewish people. Never even for one day did they cease. This was true even before Hamas seized control. Then, when Hamas did take control, the terrorism escalated.

In yet another effort to find peace, the Israelis risked their own security by dismantling security barriers and checkpoints -- down from 147 to 14 in the West Bank -- and so providing mobility for people in commerce. They have "not been getting much credit for it," in the words of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, but the economic results are dramatic. Wages in the West Bank were up 24 percent in 2008 over 2007; agricultural exports from the Palestinian Authority to Israel increased from 30,000 tons in 2007 to 92,000 tons in 2008; the number of permits for Palestinians to work in Israel rose from 21,000 to 23,000.

The trouble has been the absence of any responsible governance among the Palestinians -- no capacity to deal with terrorism and violence, no command-and-control structure, no political backing for Palestinian officers to go after sensitive targets, and no legal apparatus to try those who might be arrested. Terrorist operatives have gone in one door one day and out the next. So when successive American administrations have pushed for negotiation between the parties, the Americans have all discovered, as the Israeli columnist Nahum Barnea put it, "that they want an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement more than the Israelis and the Palestinians want it."

The Obama administration began unwisely. The president made an uncompromising demand for a full freeze on construction in the settlements, imposing no requirement on the Arabs. That missed the real point of contention. According to a recent poll of Palestinians, halting construction in the settlements is not important to them. The evacuation of the settlement outposts is much more important to them. For the Israeli public, the settlement issue was a nonstarter without a compensating concession by the Palestinians. In any event, the previous Olmert government had greatly reduced permits for construction settlements, and very few permits remain.

Now the administration has initiated a more promising policy. At September's three-way summit in New York, it achieved an agreement by all parties to commence negotiations with no preconditions. Everything is on the table.

Israel is now committed fully to two states for two peoples. At the United Nations, Obama voiced his unreserved support for Israel as the state of the Jewish people, one of the core issues. The peace negotiations were to begin in a matter of weeks.

Obama's previous efforts had been rebuffed. His speech in Cairo in June, which he thought would open a door to the Muslim world, did not gain any takers. The Arab rulers refused to enter the room, and most kept their distance. According to a recent poll released by the International Peace Institute, public hostility to the United States and to Obama remained high, and it appeared that only 1 in 6 Palestinians has a positive opinion of America, and only 1 in 4 has a positive opinion of Obama. The only one who responded to Obama was Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, who made public his commitment to have two states for two peoples. Here we had a government built around right-wing parties yet able to pass a resolution supporting the two-state solution.

Netanyahu's approach holds that peace will come from the bottom up, not the top down. It is both about economic development and about bringing security under control. The PA had been paralyzed, its security organizations scattered and ineffective, so it was left to the Israeli Defense Forces to control things on the ground while the terrorists hid. Several hundred gang leaders created chaos in the territories, holding back commercial and economic life, demanding protection money, killing and wounding Arabs and Jews alike. The PA simply didn't have the capacity to deal with these gangs.

A new approach came from Israel's General Security Services in 2007. The GSS director approached the Palestinian prime minister, Salam Fayyad, offering the wanted men a deal. If they ended their involvement in terrorism and violence, gave up their weapons, and placed themselves under the protection of the PA, they would be taken off the wanted list and would neither be arrested nor killed.

There was to be a three-stage trial period. First, the wanted men would be under the protection of the security services, restricting their movements; second, they would be given relative freedom of movement in the area; and third, they would be allowed to return home and live a normal life as long as they adhered to the terms of the agreement.

The plan worked. Nine rounds of wanted men who have been processed, almost 80 percent of the members of the original list of gang leaders, have left the world of crime and terrorism, and the ground is quiet. Now terrorists from other organizations such as Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front have approached the Palestinian security organizations wanting to come in from the cold and get on the list of parolees. They want to go home, and they are willing to abandon terrorist attacks and crime.

The security organizations that had lacked control over the territory were suddenly in charge. Add to this the projects of American Lt. Gen. Keith Dayton, who, also in 2007, began training the special Palestinian forces and helped begin security cooperation with Israel. The new security forces began to take over responsibilities for the cities. Nablus was the first city, Jenin the second. Terrorist activities in these cities virtually collapsed, as the terrorist infrastructures were located and dismantled and the public police took over on the ground and, this time, did it seriously.

Today, Hamas is as much of a danger to the PA as it is to Israeli citizens. In fact, these Palestinian security services have now confronted wanted Hamas operators and done it much more brutally than the IDF would have done it. As Ben Caspit reported in Maariv, an Israeli newspaper, "The Palestinians are not fighting for us but for themselves. They are not protecting our lives, but their own. The terrible scenes from Hamas's takeover of Gaza, the executions in the streets, the kneecapping, the officer who was thrown off the 15th floor have all done their part." The Fatah organization realized that if it did not hit Hamas with all its might, Hamas would hit it.

This doesn't mean that the terrorism capability of these organizations is completely gone, but the success has fed on itself. Most of the credit is due to Fayyad, the Palestinian prime minister. He has changed the way things are done. He asserts he will be the Ben Gurion of the Palestinians -- i.e., he will build the foundations of a state before the Palestinians declare a state, so that when they do, the infrastructure of governance will exist. A critical part is that the PA is starting to exert control over the territories.

The president, Mahmoud Abbas, has also gained confidence as the leader of Fatah. He has focused on consolidating his own authority and gaining the upper hand over the rival Hamas movement, breaking both its social infrastructure and its terrorist network. Now his popularity is growing. In a recent poll, he was supported by 55 percent, compared with only 32 percent in support of Ismail Haniyeh, the leader of Hamas in Gaza; 64 percent believe that Haniyeh is harmful to the interests of the Palestinians.

This progress will take more time. The Israelis will not buy words; they will buy only deeds. They will not accept the West Bank as a platform for rocket attacks that could reach every major Israeli population center. That is why they believe that the IDF should have complete freedom of action in the West Bank to respond to terrorism and crime. That is why the only Palestinian state that Israel can accept is, in Blair's words, "one that is secure and properly governed."

The peace process must be the beginning of the future, not the beginning of the end. There is still a ways to go, but the progress being made by the Palestinians, especially in terms of controlling the terrorists and criminal gangs, is one of the most promising developments to have occurred in decades.

PM Netanyahu Congratulates US President Obama Upon His Winning the Nobel Peace Prize

09/10/2009

Dear Mr. President, Congratulations on winning the Nobel Prize for Peace.   You have already inspired so many people around the world, and I know that this award also expresses the hope that your Presidency will usher in a new era of peace and reconciliation.  Nowhere is such a peace needed more than in the Middle East, a region that has been long marked by terror and bloodshed.   I look forward to working closely with you in the years ahead to advance peace and to give hope to the peoples of our region who deserve to live in peace, security and dignity. With respect, Benjamin Netanyahu

New York Times Magazine Whitewashes Palestinian Kids' TV
By Eric Rozenman, for CAMERA.org October 7, 2009 Selected excerpts.

"Can the Muppets Make Friends in On the West Bank?" avoids the real story — 16 years of anti-Israel incitement, based largely on distortion and outright falsehood, aimed at Palestinian Arab children by both the Fatah-controlled Palestinian Authority broadcasting and the Hamas-run Al-Quds channel. ...


Hamas TV preaches the need for Palestinian children to eliminate the filthy Jews.... PA TV children's shows routinely teach that Haifa, Tiberias, Jaffa and other Israeli cities are part of "Palestine" and that "resistance" (terrorism) is laudable.

Palestinian Media Watch (www.pmw.org.il) has chronicled the coverage.

[In her article, the author offers] no explanation of the intifada, no intimation of Palestinian responsibility....

[The author] skates over a 1990s effort to produce a joint Israeli-Palestinian version of Israeli Television's ... spin-off of American public broadcasting's "Sesame Street." She notes that "the official Palestinian TV station was unwilling to show 'Shara'a Simsim' because it was produced jointly with 'Rechov Sumsum,' the Israeli version of 'Sesame Street.'"