Dear Family & Friends,

We had a wonderful finale of Pesach week! All the children around the seudah tables – lots of songs, yummy food, laughs & some nice wildness!

Today we had drenching rain which actually began Friday at 3 pm. The temperature was icy cold for Jerusalem’s heights…10-12º Cent. With huge gusty winds on Saturday. Heavy rain off & on. Today in only one hour we had powerful thunder, hail, rain & – some flakes of lacy snow! In that same hour, the sun emerged as I sat at the window holding the sleeping 7 week old babe. I even got a patch of sunburn through the window. Summer is really coming. Maybe we’ve had so much rain this year because it’s the Shmitta (Seventh) year when the farmers are supposed to rest their land, not plant, not water. So, Hashem is watering our Land beautifully for us on this Seventh Year in our religiously structured agricultural cycle.

G-d gave us our rules for taking care of our Land environmentally & ecologically – kind & smart. “If you continually harken to My commandments that I command you today, to love Hashem, your G-d, and to serve Him, with all your heart and with all your soul – then I will provide rain for your land in its proper time, the early rain and late rains, and the winds in their seasons so you may gather your grain (Chale), your Wine & your (Olive) oil [which we bless on Shabbat]. I will provide grass in your field for your cattle and you will eat and be satisfied. Beware, lest your heart be seduced and you turn astray and serve gods of others and bow to them. Then the wrath of Hashem will blaze against you. He will restrain the heaven so there will be no rain and the ground will not yield its produce. And you will be swiftly banished from the goodly land which HASHEM gives you.” (Third paragraph in the Shema prayer said several appropriate times during the daily services. It’s also in our Mezuzahs which we affix to all of our doorposts – at every room’s entrance. Wherever in the world we may live, we carry our “love of our Land” in our Mezuzot with prayers for the rain & crops in Eretz Yisrael.)

So, Baruch HASHEM, thank you for your wonderful rains – breaking a drought of almost Biblical proportions.

Have a wonderful night & a great day, All the very best, Gail/Geula/Savta/Savta Raba/Mom

1.The IRAN DEAL & ITS CONSEQUENCES by Henry Kissinger & George Shultz

2.Unravel the Deal BY WILLIAM KRISTOL

3.Netanyahu Addresses Obama Via YouTube, Since the Telephone is Broken

4.Obama Mocks Netanyahu’s ‘Red Line’ Cartoon with Inaccurate Sketch

5. Rage Of The New York Times By: Andrea Levin, President of CAMERA

6.Developing Israel’s ‘Regional Superpower’

Mixing shrewd diplomacy with defiance of U.N. resolutions, Iran has turned the negotiation on its head.

bY hENRY KISSINGER & GEORGE P. SHULTZ Wall St. Journal

 Frmr Secretaries of State: Henry Kissinger & George P. Shultz

http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-iran-deal-and-its-consequences-1428447582 Updated April 7, 2015

The announced framework for an agreement on Iran’s nuclear program has the potential to generate a seminal national debate. Advocates exult over the nuclear constraints it would impose on Iran. Critics question the verifiability of these constraints and their longer-term impact on regional and world stability. The historic significance of t agreement and indeed its sustainability depend on whether these emotions, valid by themselves, can be reconciled.

Debate regarding technical details of the deal has thus far inhibited the soul-searching necessary regarding its deeper implications. For 20 years, three presidents of both major parties proclaimed that an Iranian nuclear weapon was contrary to American and global interests—and that they were prepared to use force to prevent it. Yet negotiations that began 12 years ago as an international effort to prevent an Iranian capability to develop a nuclear arsenal are ending with an agreement that concedes this very capability, albeit short of its full capacity in the first 10 years.

Mixing shrewd diplomacy with open defiance of U.N. resolutions, Iran has gradually turned the negotiation on its head. Iran’s centrifuges have multiplied from about 100 at the beginning of the negotiation to almost 20,000 today. The threat of war now constrains the West more than Iran. While Iran treated the mere fact of its willingness to negotiate as a concession[W1] [W2] , the West has felt compelled to break every deadlock with a new proposal. In the process, the Iranian program has reached a point officially described as being within two to three months of building a nuclear weapon. Under the proposed agreement, for 10 years Iran will never be further than one year from a nuclear weapon and, after a decade, will be significantly closer.

Inspections and Enforcement

The president deserves respect for the commitment with which he has pursued the objective of reducing nuclear peril, as does Secretary of State John Kerry for the persistence, patience and ingenuity with which he has striven to impose significant constraints on Iran’s nuclear program.

Progress has been made on shrinking the size of Iran’s enriched stockpile, confining the enrichment of uranium to one facility, and limiting aspects of the enrichment process. Still, the ultimate significance of the framework will depend on its verifiability and enforceability.

Negotiating the final agreement will be extremely challenging. For one thing, no official text has yet been published. The so-called framework represents a unilateral American interpretation. Some of its clauses have been dismissed by the principal Iranian negotiator as “spin.” A joint EU-Iran statement differs in important respects, especially with regard to the lifting of sanctions and permitted research and development.

Comparable ambiguities apply to the one-year window for a presumed Iranian breakout. Emerging at a relatively late stage in the negotiation, this concept replaced the previous baseline—that Iran might be permitted a technical capacity compatible with a plausible civilian nuclear program. The new approach complicates verification and makes it more political because of the vagueness of the criteria.

Under the new approach, Iran permanently gives up none of its equipment, facilities or fissile product to achieve the proposed constraints. It only places them under temporary restriction and safeguard—amounting in many cases to a seal at the door of a depot or periodic visits by inspectors to declared sites. The physical magnitude of the effort is daunting. Is the International Atomic Energy Agency technically, and in terms of human resources, up to so complex and vast an assignment?

In a large country with multiple facilities and ample experience in nuclear concealment, violations will be inherently difficult to detect. Devising theoretical models of inspection. The announced framework for an agreement on Iran’s nuclear program has the potential to generate a seminal national debate. Advocates exult over the nuclear constraints it would impose on Iran. Critics question the verifiability of these constraints and their longer-term impact on regional and world stability. The historic significance of the agreement and indeed its sustainability depend on whether these emotions, valid by themselves, can be reconciled.

Debate regarding technical details of the deal has thus far inhibited the soul-searching necessary regarding its deeper implications. For 20 years, three presidents of both major parties proclaimed that an Iranian nuclear weapon was contrary to American and global interests—and that they were prepared to use force to prevent it. Yet negotiations that began 12 years ago as an international effort to prevent an Iranian capability to develop a nuclear arsenal are ending with an agreement that concedes this very capability, albeit short of its full capacity in the first 10 years.

Mixing shrewd diplomacy with open defiance of U.N. resolutions, Iran has gradually turned the negotiation on its head. Iran’s centrifuges have multiplied from about 100 at the beginning of the negotiation to almost 20,000 today. The threat of war now constrains the West more than Iran.

While Iran treated the mere fact of its willingness to negotiate as a concession[W3] [W4] , the West has felt compelled to break every deadlock with a new proposal. In the process, the Iranian program has reached a point officially described as being within two to three months of building a nuclear weapon. Under the proposed agreement, for 10 years Iran will never be further than one year from a nuclear weapon and, after a decade, will be significantly closer.

Inspections and Enforcement

The president deserves respect for the commitment with which he has pursued the objective of reducing nuclear peril, as does Secretary of State John Kerry for the persistence, patience and ingenuity with which he has striven to impose significant constraints on Iran’s nuclear program.

Progress has been made on shrinking the size of Iran’s enriched stockpile, confining the enrichment of uranium to one facility, and limiting aspects of the enrichment process. Still, the ultimate significance of the framework will depend on its verifiability and enforceability.

Negotiating the final agreement will be extremely challenging. For one thing, no official text has yet been published. The so-called framework represents a unilateral American interpretation. Some of its clauses have been dismissed by the principal Iranian negotiator as “spin.” A joint EU-Iran statement differs in important respects, especially with regard to the lifting of sanctions and permitted research and development.

Comparable ambiguities apply to the one-year window for a presumed Iranian breakout. Emerging at a relatively late stage in the negotiation, this concept replaced the previous baseline—that Iran might be permitted a technical capacity compatible with a plausible civilian nuclear program. The new approach complicates verification and makes it more political because of the vagueness of the criteria.

Under the new approach, Iran permanently gives up none of its equipment, facilities or fissile product to achieve the proposed constraints. It only places them under temporary restriction and safeguard—amounting in many cases to a seal at the door of a depot or periodic visits by inspectors to declared sites. The physical magnitude of the effort is daunting. Is the International Atomic Energy Agency technically, and in terms of human resources, up to so complex and vast an assignment?

In a large country with multiple facilities and ample experience in nuclear concealment, violations will be inherently difficult to detect. Devising theoretical models of inspection The gradual expiration of the framework agreement, beginning in a decade, will enable Iran to become a significant nuclear, industrial and military power after that time—in the scope and sophistication of its nuclear program and its latent capacity to weaponize at a time of its choosing. Limits on Iran’s research and development have not been publicly disclosed (or perhaps agreed). Therefore Iran will be in a position to bolster its advanced nuclear technology during the period of the agreement and rapidly deploy more advanced centrifuges—of at least five times the capacity of the current model—after the agreement expires or is broken.

The follow-on negotiations must carefully address a number of key issues, including the mechanism for reducing Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium from 10,000 to 300 kilograms, the scale of uranium enrichment after 10 years, and the IAEA’s concerns regarding previous Iranian weapons efforts. The ability to resolve these and similar issues should determine the decision over whether or when the U.S. might still walk away from the negotiations.

The Framework Agreement and Long-Term Deterrence

Even when these issues are resolved, another set of problems emerges because the negotiating process has created its own realities. The interim agreement accepted Iranian enrichment; the new agreement makes it an integral part of the architecture. For the U.S., a decade-long restriction on Iran’s nuclear capacity is a possibly hopeful interlude. For Iran’s neighbors—who perceive their imperatives in terms of millennial rivalries—it is a dangerous prelude to an even more dangerous permanent fact of life. Some of the chief actors in the Middle East are likely to view the U.S. as willing to concede a nuclear military capability to the country they consider their principal threat. Several will insist on at least an equivalent capability. Saudi Arabia has signaled that it will enter the lists; others are likely to follow. In that sense, the implications of the negotiation are irreversible.

If the Middle East is “proliferated” and becomes host to a plethora of nuclear-threshold states, several in mortal rivalry with each other, on what concept of nuclear deterrence or strategic stability will international security be based? Traditional theories of deterrence assumed a series of bilateral equations. Do we now envision an interlocking series of rivalries, with each new nuclear program counterbalancing others in the region?

Previous thinking on nuclear strategy also assumed the existence of stable state actors. Among the original nuclear powers, geographic distances and the relatively large size of programs combined with moral revulsion to make surprise attack all but inconceivable. How will these doctrines translate into a region where sponsorship of non-state proxies is common, the state structure is under assault, and death on behalf of jihad is a kind of fulfillment?

Some have suggested the U.S. can dissuade Iran’s neighbors from developing individual deterrent capacities by extending an American nuclear umbrella to them. But how will these guarantees be defined? What factors will govern their implementation? Are the guarantees extended against the use of nuclear weapons—or against any military attack, conventional or nuclear? Is it the domination by Iran that we oppose or the method for achieving it? What if nuclear weapons are employed as psychological blackmail? And how will such guarantees be expressed, or reconciled with public opinion and constitutional practices?

Regional Order

For some, the greatest value in an agreement lies in the prospect of an end, or at least a moderation, of Iran’s 3½ decades of militant hostility to the West and established international institutions, and an opportunity to draw Iran into an effort to stabilize the Middle East. Having both served in government during a period of American-Iranian strategic alignment and experienced its benefits for both countries as well as the Middle East, we would greatly welcome such an outcome. Iran is a significant national state with a historic culture, a fierce national identity, and a relatively youthful, educated population; its re-emergence as a partner would be a consequential event.

But partnership in what task? Cooperation is not an exercise in good feeling; it presupposes congruent definitions of stability. There exists no current evidence that Iran and the U.S. are remotely near such an understanding. Even while combating common enemies, such as ISIS, Iran has declined to embrace common objectives. Iran’s representatives (including its Supreme Leader) continue to profess a revolutionary anti-Western concept of international order; domestically, some senior Iranians describe nuclear negotiations as a form of jihad by other means.

The final stages of the nuclear talks have coincided with Iran’s intensified efforts to expand and entrench its power in neighboring states. Iranian or Iranian client forces are now the pre-eminent military or political element in multiple Arab countries, operating beyond the control of national authorities. With the recent addition of Yemen as a battlefield, Tehran occupies positions along all of the Middle East’s strategic waterways and encircles archrival Saudi Arabia, an American ally. Unless political restraint is linked to nuclear restraint, an agreement freeing Iran from sanctions risks empowering Iran’s hegemonic efforts.

Some have argued that these concerns are secondary, since the nuclear deal is a way station toward the eventual domestic transformation of Iran. But what gives us the confidence that we will prove more astute at predicting Iran’s domestic course than Vietnam’s, Afghanistan’s, Iraq’s, Syria’s, Egypt’s or Libya’s?

Absent the linkage between nuclear and political restraint, America’s traditional allies will conclude that the U.S. has traded temporary nuclear cooperation for acquiescence to Iranian hegemony. They will increasingly look to create their own nuclear balances and, if necessary, call in other powers to sustain their integrity. Does America still hope to arrest the region’s trends toward sectarian upheaval, state collapse and the disequilibrium of power tilting toward Tehran, or do we now accept this as an irremediable aspect of the regional balance?

Some advocates have suggested that the agreement can serve as a way to dissociate America from Middle East conflicts, culminating in the military retreat from the region initiated by the current administration. As Sunni states gear up to resist a new Shiite empire, the opposite is likely to be the case. The Middle East will not stabilize itself, nor will a balance of power naturally assert itself out of Iranian-Sunni competition. (Even if that were our aim, traditional balance of power theory suggests the need to bolster the weaker side, not the rising or expanding power.) Beyond stability, it is in America’s strategic interest to prevent the outbreak of nuclear war and its catastrophic consequences. Nuclear arms must not be permitted to turn into conventional weapons. The passions of the region allied with weapons of mass destruction may impel deepening American involvement.

If the world is to be spared even worse turmoil, the U.S. must develop a strategic doctrine for the region. Stability requires an active American role. For Iran to be a valuable member of the international community, the prerequisite is that it accepts restraint on its ability to destabilize the Middle East and challenge the broader international order.

Until clarity on an American strategic political concept is reached, the projected nuclear agreement will reinforce, not resolve, the world’s challenges in the region. Rather than enabling American disengagement from the Middle East, the nuclear framework is more likely to necessitate deepening involvement there—on complex new terms. History will not do our work for us; it helps only those who seek to help themselves.

THE MAGAZINE

APR 20, 2015, VOL. 20, NO. 30 •

What is to be done about Obama’s Iran “deal”? We could, fatalistically, lament the collapse of American foreign policy. We could, indignantly, gnash our teeth in frustration at the current administration. We could, constructively, work to secure congressional review of the deal and urge presidential candidates to commit to altering or abrogating it.

Or we can stop it now.

How? The best chance is to prevent a final deal from being signed on June 30. And the best way to do that is to spend the next 80 days pulling on the loose threads and poking at the fraying parts of the framework announced last week in Lausanne. Those loose threads are the ambiguities, those fraying parts are the uncertainties, in what was agreed to. Those ambiguities and uncertainties are there to obscure concessions the Obama administration made to get Iranian acquiescence, concessions that the administration knew it couldn’t sell at home. Can a final deal be achieved if the American public and Congress insist on clarity rather than ambiguity?

Perhaps not. We have the Obama administration saying Iran agreed not to operate advanced centrifuges, and the Iranians saying they will begin operating them the day after a deal is signed. We have the Obama administration saying sanctions can snap back, and the Iranians saying they’ll be gone once and for all the very day the deal is signed. We have the Obama administration saying there will be a strict inspections and verification regime, and the Iranians saying there won’t be anytime/anywhere inspections. We have the Obama administration trying to reassure us that it won concessions on the underground site at Fordow and the heavy-water reactor at Arak (and, indirectly, on the military testing site at Parchin), and the Iranians boasting they’ve given up nothing serious with respect to any of them. We have the Obama administration reassuring us that Israel will be fine—but saying that it’s crazy to ask the Iranian regime to recognize Israel’s right to exist.

It’s hard to see Barack Obama or John Kerry ever walking away from a deal. But it might be possible to put enough pressure on Obama and Kerry that they would have to clarify various aspects of the deal in ways that might cause Iran’s supreme leader to decide it’s not worth it. Khamenei thinks we’re the Great Satan. We can take a cue from this. We can find devilish details to highlight. We can heighten the contradictions, exacerbate the tensions, make unacceptable the ambiguities, and thus tempt the Iranians to decide to walk away.

All other fronts of opposition should be pursued as well. The case against the deal should be made comprehensively, emphasizing the nature of the Iranian regime, the overall impact of this deal on the Middle East, the ways the deal will make war more likely. But the best prospect for victory is to stop the deal before it happens. The three months until the planned final signing ceremony are an opportunity for disrupting, and indeed derailing, the deal.

Members of Congress have a major role to play. Let them by all means advance the Corker-Menendez bill to ensure a congressional vote on a deal if there is one. But let them also try to prevent a deal. Why not simple pieces of legislation that say: No closing of the underground site at Fordow (which President Obama himself said was unnecessary for a peaceful nuclear program), no deal. No anywhere/anytime inspections, no deal. No sanctions that remain for at least the first couple of years, no deal. No cessation of support for terror, no deal. No visit by a congressional delegation, accompanied by impartial experts and scientists, to Fordow and Parchin, no deal. No recognition of Israel, no deal.

As to why the deal should never be allowed to come into existence, don’t take our word for it. Read the devastating analysis published on April 8 in the Wall Street Journal by Henry Kissinger and George Shultz, perhaps the first time in modern American history that two former secretaries of state—and distinguished ones at that—have come out against an agreement negotiated by a president with a foreign country.

And read the powerful article by the liberal Israeli journalist Ari Shavit in the left-wing newspaper Ha’aretz on April 9. Since American readers are less likely to have seen this piece, let me quote some key paragraphs:

Since the Lausanne deal was announced a week ago, it has provoked innumerable worrisome questions. Why is there no similarity between the Farsi and English versions of the text? Why do the Iranians insist that the sanctions will be lifted immediately and that they will be able to continue enriching uranium in high quantities and developing advanced centrifuges without restrictions?

Why, even according to the American version, will the Iranians be able to keep an underground nuclear facility at Fordo and a nuclear reactor at Arak? Why, even according to the American version, is it not clear whether the fissionable material (approximately 10 tons) will be leaving Iran and whether international inspectors will have free access to every site in the country?

And what’s supposed to happen 10 years from now? Don’t we want to live after 2025? Doesn’t the Lausanne deal pave the way for a nightmarish not-so-distant future in which Iran is nuclear, the Middle East is nuclear and the world order collapses?

Shavit continues:

The next 80 days are critical. History is watching us all closely. Where did we stand, what did we say and what did we do when the most important decision of our time was made? There will be no forgiveness for our mistakes. There will be no pardon for weakness, apathy or pettiness.

It’s wonderful, in politics, to be able to say “Yes,” to seek to achieve positive things, to pass legislation, to ratify treaties, to take a step forward arm-in-arm with others into the broad, sunlit uplands of peace and prosperity. But there are times when the greatest contribution one can make is to strongly and decisively say “No,” in order to prevent disaster and a descent into the abyss. This too is statesmanship. This too can be a political movement’s duty, and a democracy’s finest hour.

3.Netanyahu Addresses Obama Via YouTube, Since the Telephone is Broken: Netanyahu is hoping Obama will finally hear his recommendations if he posts them on YouTube, since Obama is claiming he doesn’t hear them at all.

By: Video of the Day

Published: April 12th, 2015

Photo Credit: PM Netanyahu

The entire world, except President Obama, seems to have heard Prime Minister Netanyahu’s very specific criticisms and recommended amendments and alternatives to Obama’s current nuclear proliferation deal with the Islamic Republic of Iran.

The You-Tube link is this? sentence in this photo of PM Netanyahu. Right Click on this sentence at the bottom of the picture; right click on “Open Hyperlink”; click on the red arrow in the middle of his picture.

Perhaps hoping the President will pay attention if he hears the message through a more hip venue, Netanyahu has released his criticisms and recommendations via a YouTube video.

Next time the President says he’s still waiting to hear Netanyahu’s alternative plan, just send him this link.

Netanyahu points out that Iran is continuing its support of global terrorism, while refusing to agree to even the most basic of terms, including effective inspections and dismantling its nuclear capabilities with which it can still produce nuclear weapons.

Netanyahu reiterated “again” the two main components of his alternative to Obama’s “bad deal”.

1) “A better deal would significantly roll back these [nuclear development] capabilities”, and that includes shutting down the illicit underground nuclear facilities that Iran hid from the international community for years – something, quite surprising, Obama’s bad deal doesn’t do.

2) “Instead of lifting the restrictions on Iran’s nuclear facilities and program at a fixed date, a better deal would link the lifting of the restrictions to an end of Iran’s aggression in the region, its worldwide terrorism and its threats to annihilate Israel.” – In simple terms, Iran must not have the capability right now to make nuclear weapons, and the only time it should be allowed to have that capability, and apparently even have it completely unrestricted, is when it decides to join the community of nations as a member in good standing, and not as the neighborhood thug.

Netanyahu points out that Iran needs this deal more than anyone, and as such, this is the opportunity to reassert the world’s original demands, from which Obama has backed down.

He finishes off saying the global community should not allow Iran to have an easy path to nuclear weapons which will threaten the entire world.

A very clear message.

About the Author: Every day we try to bring you an interesting video of the day related to Israel or the Jewish People. If you have a video you’d like to submit, send the YouTube URL to us with this submission form.

4.Obama Mocks Netanyahu’s ‘Red Line’ Cartoon with Inaccurate Sketch Obama proves once again that Netanyahu is smarter than he is.

By: Tzvi Ben-Gedalyahu The Jewish Press.com Published: April 9th, 2015

Cartoon competition. Which one wins?

The White House Wednesday tweeted a diagram promoting the nuclear deal with Iran that directly ridiculed Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s “red line” cartoon in the United Nations three years ago — but the White House version also was full of inaccuracies.

Netanyahu’s cartoon, which was headlined around the world, show a red near the top of a bomb to get across his point that “there is only one way to peacefully prevent Iran from getting atomic bombs and that is by placing a clear red line on Iran’s nuclear weapons program.”

Wise guys at the White House dreamed up a similar diagram with an opposite message and with the help of a blue line at the bottom of the bomb to illustrate that Iran has a zero chance of developing a nuclear bomb under the administration’s proposed deal.

“Under the framework for an Iran nuclear deal, Iran uranium enrichment pathway to a weapon will be shut down,” the chart reads.

There is one problem with the diagram. It is not true.

President Obama has actually bragged that Iran will be limited to “only” 6,000 centrifuges, all of which can produce uranium, which would be low-grade. The sketch accurately states that under the deal, there will be “no production or stockpile of highly enriched uranium.”

Experts have said that 6000 centrifuges is enough to produce a bomb.

But a picture tells a thousand words, in and this case, they all are wrong because that little blue line clearly shows Iran would have “0%” enriched uranium, which is a lie.

The Obama administration’s diagram also claims that Iran would be 90 percent on the way to a bomb if there is no deal, but that statement only makes Netanyahu’s argument stronger as Iran is so close to achieving that, it could easily violate the deal and achieve its goal while the world argues about whether to impose stiff sanctions after the fact.

President Obama also admitted this week, that in just over a decade — with the deal, Iran would be able to get the bomb before anyone would even notice. The State Department tried to walk that one back.

Jacques Hymans, an associate professor of international relations at the University of Southern California and an expert on nuclear proliferation, told Vox.com last year:

As long as they have those centrifuges sitting there, the deal is really walking on thin ice.

Below is the White House’s latest gimmick to sell the nuclear deal with Iran.

The White House’s inaccurate sketch.

About the Author: Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu is a graduate in journalism and economics from The George Washington University. He has worked as a cub reporter in rural Virginia and as senior copy editor for major Canadian metropolitan dailies. Tzvi wrote for Arutz Sheva for several years before joining the Jewish Press.

5.The Rage Of The New York Times By: Andrea Levin, President of CAMERA

The Jewish Press.com Published: April 8th, 2015

A three-story billboard opposite the newsroom of The New York Times sponsored by CAMERA currently reads “The New York Times Against Israel: All Rant, All Slant, All the Time. Stop the Bias!”

The same message and others dot billboards on expressways in and out of the city as well as avenues in Manhattan, including approaches to tunnels traversed daily by tens of thousands of commuters.

Across the metropolitan area, millions of people are reading the messages of the billboards.

The massages are not an overstatement. The unhinged fury of The New York Times over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his reelection by the people of Israel is only the latest event that points powerfully to underlying attitudes that permeate the publication’s acrimonious obsession with the Jewish state.

The editorial tirade against Netanyahu on the occasion of his victory – calling him “craven” and “racist,” a builder of expansive settlements and a duplicitous obstacle to peace – underscores the extreme and factually distorted sentiment about not only the Israeli prime minister but the nation of Israel, sentiment that pervades all too much of the news coverage as well as the opinion pages.

The Times presents Israel continuously as the cause of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the only real actor on the stage. Palestinians and their leadership are foils and backdrop, victims with little or no political or moral responsibility for their own actions. Their own culture, faults, corruption, and human rights issues are almost entirely invisible. They are primarily rung in to denounce Israel in one guise or another.

A sampling of reports before and after the vote gives a taste of the bias.

* * * * *

The Times’s indictment of Israel often centers on settlements as the greatest impediment to ending the conflict – despite Palestinian rejection of peace offers entailing Israeli concessions on the issue and despite Israel’s unilateral removal of all settlements from Gaza, a move that, of course, did not reduce tensions there.

Thus, among the news stories prior to the election that seemingly aimed to tar the incumbent prime minister was a striking 3,000-plus word, front-page, above-the-fold article on Jewish settlements that appeared on March 13, four days before the election. The piece, by Jodi Rudoren and Jeremy Ashkenas, included an entire two-page spread on inside pages with an enormous photo and aerial images of individual settlements expanding – it was implied – cancer-like over decades. The online version was titled: “Netanyahu and the Settlements.”

Since Jewish settlements are the leitmotif of the Times’s criticism of Israel, such a major story could be the moment for serious probing of the issue. But the account, illustrated by the enormous color photo of Orthodox Jews against a hilltop of housing, was clichéd and opinion-laden – just another (and bigger) opportunity to focus the cause of conflict on Israeli actions.

Three times in the first three paragraphs readers were told settlements would impede a “future state” for Palestinians, “threaten prospects of a two-state solution” and complicate “creation of a viable Palestine.” Repeatedly the story came back to this – that Netanyahu’s settlement policies “deepened the dilemma for peacemakers.”

Martin Indyk was quoted harshly charging that in the failed 2014 peace negotiations, “Mr. Netanyahu’s ‘rampant settlement activity’ had a ‘dramatically damaging impact.’” (Unmentioned was the fact that Indyk was outed six months ago in the Times itself as a recipient of $14.8 million in Qatari funding to the Brookings Institute where he’s executive vice president. Qatar supports Hamas and al Jazeera and is the largest funder of Brookings.)

There was not a word in the story to convey that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, and before him Yassir Arafat, rejected Israeli peace offers that would have curtailed settlement expansion and removed some outlying settlements.

Other basic counterpoints to the story line were also simply omitted. For example, no hint was given that there might not be any impediment to a future Palestinian state if the Palestinians did not insist that their state be Judenrein but rather were open to including Jews and their communities the way Israel includes one and a half million Arabs – over 20 percent of its population.

Pro forma references to international “ire” regarding Jewish settlements were cited but there was no exploration of the contending positions. In 3,000 words there was no mention of any of the core legal issues. There are obviously differing views about the political advisability and future of settlement development, but there are also basic facts that can aid in understanding the merit of each side.

For example, as literally hundreds of international jurists have attested, the right of Jews to live in these areas was clearly established by the original League of Nations Mandate for Palestine (1922), which called for “close settlement by Jews on the land, including State lands” of the Mandate. This Jewish right was reaffirmed by Article 80 of the United Nations charter, which preserved the application of the League of Nations Mandate’s stipulations.

The contending argument is that Israeli settlements violate Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention relating to the transfer of populations. Israel disputes the relevance here, arguing the Convention is not applicable because there is no forcible transfer; Jews have moved voluntarily to the disputed areas to establish communities.

In a few sentences, the Times could have added to reader awareness about the differing views on this contentious subject. But the thrust of this story was to tar Netanyahu as a settlement zealot, an effort that’s actually made difficult when even the Times’s own charts show the prime minister doing about the same – or sometimes less – than previous Israeli leaders in housing starts in settlements.

In a nod to the obvious reality that statistics regarding settlement building don’t set Netanyahu notably apart from his fellow prime ministers, especially during his second administration, the reporters inject other negative innuendo, charging: “He has taken more heat over settlements than his predecessors, analysts said, in part because of his broader intransigence on the Palestinian issue and the use of construction as a retaliatory tool.”

Which “analysts” are leveling these charges? What is their expertise on the topic? What exactly was the “broader intransigence on the Palestinian issue”? What and when was the “use of construction as a retaliatory tool?”

This is insinuation and editorializing. The Times’s own public editor, Margaret Sullivan, has deplored reliance on anonymous sources such as the unnamed “analysts” who assail Netanyahu as intransigent.

Similarly problematic, the reporters rely almost entirely on the anti-settlement group Peace Now for statistics, charts, aerial photos, and quotes. The Times does so despite the fact that several years ago the paper was burned when it published grossly false information by the group claiming that Ma’ale Adumim, the largest West Bank settlement, was built on land that was 86.4 percent private Palestinian property. In fact, less than 1 percent, or only .54 percent, was private, a discrepancy of 15,900 percent.

Peace Now has been prone to such false charges. In 2008, the settlement of Revava won a court case against the organization because of its false allegation the community was built on 71.15 percent private Palestinian land. Revava representatives insisted there was no private land at all involved and won a court case and damages against Peace Now affirming their position that the community was not built on private land.

These are not small matters. What the examples and others underscore is that the organization is driven by ideology and Peace Now data are questionable. Yet the Times, despite being a news organization, is evidently so aligned with Peace Now’s political viewpoint it is prepared to ignore the group’s record of prior false claims.

Lastly, the settlement story buries a crucial piece of information that undermines its caricature of Netanyahu. In 2009, the Likud leader broke all precedent and implemented a ten-month freeze on settlements at the behest of President Obama to entice the Palestinians back to the negotiating table.

The PA’s Abbas returned to the table only in the final month of the freeze and then insisted it be continued as a condition for his participation in talks.

These important facts would have been more prominent in the story (the former is only noted in paragraph 39, the latter not at all) if its objective were to look honestly at the issues.

President Obama’s special envoy George Mitchell had praised Netanyahu, saying: “For the first time ever, an Israeli government will stop housing approvals and all new construction of housing units and related infrastructure in West Bank settlements. That’s a positive development.”

* * * * *

In contrast to the Times’s obsessive focus on settlements, deemed by editors to be the core cause of the Arab-Israeli conflict, Israel considers the primary obstacle to peace to be Palestinian opposition to coexistence, to living side by side with a Jewish state. The profound impact of decades of virulent anti-Jewish indoctrination by Palestinian officials, schools, media, mosques, and cultural institutions opposing and demonizing Jews and Jewish nationhood is seen by Israel as the greatest threat to reconciliation and normalcy.

Never, however, has the Times offered readers a massive story – like the 3,000-plus word March 13 settlement piece — exposing the history, chronology, visual record, and impact of hate-indoctrination. An occasional story appears tied to an Israeli government campaign seeking to expose incitement, typically with the Times framing the issue not as an actual phenomenon but as an accusation or complaint lodged by an Israeli official.

In January 2014, for instance, a story headlined “Israeli Official Points to ‘Incitement’ by Palestinians” reported on anti-Israel rhetoric, citing examples and presenting the issue as a matter being promoted – or pointed to – by Israel. The page 4 article was a positive addition to the coverage, but it was an exceedingly rare reference to the subject and, again, framed the issue not as an objectively serious matter with direct bearing on achievement of a lasting peace but as an Israeli government position, a talking point disputed, in fact, by Palestinians who are quoted blaming Israel for incitement.

The daily denigration of Jews that embeds hatred in the minds of Palestinians and drives them ever further from neighborly relations with Israel and toward ferocious acts of brutality is, in effect, unreported. Such disregard of the deplorable actions of the Palestinians is of a piece with the Times’s general treatment of Arabs as a population outside the expected norms of conduct, as mere backdrop to the main drama in the conflict.

Indeed, the Times deems the bigoted rants against Jews of so little importance that editors have on occasion concealed information about anti-Jewish rhetoric, as the paper did in the case of Secretary of State Kerry’s strong denunciation of incitement in the wake of the massacre of worshipers at the Har Nof synagogue in November 2014.

As CAMERA reported, Kerry said, in part, that the atrocity was “a pure result of incitement, of calls for days of rage, of just an irresponsibility.” He termed the incitement “unacceptable.”

He went on to say: “So the Palestinian leadership must condemn this and they must begin to take serious steps to restrain any kind of incitement that comes from their language, from other people’s language, and exhibit the kind of leadership that is necessary to put this region on a different path.”

Although the first stories posted online by the Times contained quotes by Kerry deploring incitement, the citations were entirely deleted by the time the print edition reached readers – with no sense whatsoever that the American secretary of state had spoken forcefully to connect the savage attack on innocents to the inculcation of hatred.

In conversation with editors, CAMERA staff members have faulted the lack of coverage of Palestinian hate-indoctrination and been told that reporting on the torrent of invective is difficult because it is “so repetitious” and lacks a fresh news hook interesting and valuable to readers. The response is deceptive on multiple counts.

First, it suggests the lack of coverage is driven by a lack of reader interest but there’s no indication of this at all. On the contrary, compelling stories on the subject have as much inherent news interest as any other story if the information is powerfully and fully reported.

Second, such coverage can have great positive impact. On one, rare occasion when the Times prominently reported anti-Jewish bigotry by a high profile figure, there were swift and positive repercussions. That case concerned the former president of Egypt, Mohamed Morsi, whose record of primitive anti-Semitic slurs – that Jews are descended from apes and pigs – was reported on the Times’s front page in January 2013. There quickly followed denunciations by world leaders and Morsi was compelled to disavow the sentiments and retreat on the matter. The global denunciation of anti-Semitism was an important message.

One can hope that some day The New York Times will cover Israel and the Palestinian issue with the objectivity and integrity expected of a responsible news organization. Almost daily, however, the Times generates additional evidence that – as with all behemoth media organizations challenged by CAMERA for their shoddiness, misrepresentation of facts, and anti-Israel bias – change will require an ongoing, determined effort demanding full, fair, and accurate coverage of the Arab-Israeli conflict.

About the Author: Andrea Levin is executive director and president of CAMERA, Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America.

6.Developing Israel’s ‘Regional Superpower': Israel punches above its weight, but the country needs more than a military strategy to amplify its strength, says Eytan Gilboa. by Gedalyah Reback First Publish: Arutz Sheva -4/12/2015, 12:04 PM

Is Israel a superpower? The question comes up and meets a number of answers and reactions. Some would answer that it is a miniature superpower, while others feel Israel is treated like a vassal state of the US.

Power in international affairs is an academic issue and is never black and white. Some countries are categorized as powers in some fields but hardly so in others. There are also levels of power that countries are assigned to. According to Professor Eytan Gilboa of Bar Ilan University, Israel is a unique kind of “Middle Power.”

“A middle power is any state that has much more power than its resources permit. Israel has much more influence,” says Gilboa, who is also Director of the Center for International Communication at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies. “I’ve argued that the difference between small states and a middle power is public diplomacy, but Israel would be an exception.”

“Most regional powers are middle powers. If they’ve got a strong position in the region and if you considered by those around you as a power then almost automatically you are considered a middle power.

“Israel is unusual as a regional power because of its limited natural and human resources. While its military is qualitatively stronger than many other countries, Israel only discovered natural gas reserves off its shore several years ago. Its population is also under 9 million, puny compared to the 80 million Turks, 80 million Iranians, 90 million Egyptians and 30 million Saudis. When asked if Israel did not fit the bill because of its relatively small population and that lack of natural resources, Gilboa said that this would have been more likely an issue in the past but not today.

“It has to do with resources and population, but these are the traditional definitions of power and today things are very different.”

Gilboa points out countries can be powers in certain ways but not so much in others. While lacking natural resources and manpower, Israel is bountiful in technology, research and startups – #2 in the world. All this only covers so called ‘soft powers,’ without addressing Israel’s hard, military strength. On top of its state-of-the-art military technology and experience, Israel also is widely believed to have a nuclear option.

“Their public diplomacy (PD) is weak but other components make up for that,” notes Gilboa, who is also an expert in PD. “It would be worth arguing that Israel is stronger than Saudi Arabia but similar to Turkey and Iran who both have larger populations, large economic potential and ambition.”

According to Gilboa, it is indisputable Israel’s public diplomacy needs to take a front seat in order for the country to assert itself as the middle power it is already considered to be.

Resolving Domestic Issues to Focus on External

“The most important thing would be public diplomacy because it determines your image and standing in the world. Israel has to fight on many fronts, especially in places like Europe, to isolate BDS. This is something that must be adopted with a huge investment.”

There are other elements to amplifying Israel’s cultural influence, namely stabilizing conflicts inside Israeli society. While the economy and issues within it have been framed as political ones over the last several months, Gilboa says that the state should take issues like the cost of living more seriously in order to justifiably steer focus from pressing domestic issues in order to strengthen Israeli influence abroad.

“Certain things have to improve inside Israeli society. Security is not just in military power but also in social cohesion, cost of living, too much friction inside society it could erode the overall power of the state.”

Don’t Give Up Fighting Palestinians in Diplomatic Arena

Diplomatic experts argue Israel has failed to see the need for diplomacy relative to its military strength. While not dismissing the doctrine Israel needs to retain a qualitative military edge in the region, those experts argue that cannot stand alone. Chief among those critics is political scientist Joseph Nye. Nye, speaking at the John F. Kennedy School of Government in 2004, he stated:

“If you look at efforts to help develop the region—in other words, if you think of the attraction that Israel has as a successful economy [and] laborers who wanted to work there, Arab students who wanted to go there—these were ways to enhance Israeli soft power. But, alas, in the last—under the current government, the Likud government, there has been much more emphasis on hard power and very little emphasis on soft power.”

“I think I agree with Nye that Israel has relied primarily on hard power,” answers Gilboa who notes he has studied under Nye in the past. “Yet, there is much more awareness of the challenges Israel faces. The Palestinians are mostly using soft power.”

Israel faces a difficult hurdle to challenge the Palestinians in the international arena. On top of what Gilboa characterizes as a weak public diplomacy effort, the Palestinians know they have an automatic advantage in the public diplomacy arena. Still, Israel is not exempt from making the effort to counter their advantage.

“The Palestinians have an automatic advantage based on the number of Islamic states and the 50+ states in the Islamic bloc. The Third World also responds to them. This is something that requires an effective response. I think what we’ll see is a more extensive use of soft power and public diplomacy.”

Again, Gilboa asserts Israel has relied too much on its military prowess for security and ignored the diplomatic field. Agreeing with Nye, the Jewish state needs to develop its own network of allies and not resign itself to avoid the diplomatic battlefield entirely when it comes to the Palestinians.

“Against a network you develop your own network. But if you use soft power against soft power, then it is ‘fair play’ or ‘even in the game’. Resources and man power have to be invested. Much of Israel’s PD should be carried out not by the state but public organizations that have much more credibility than Israel.”

“I think the most damaging thing is the peace process. While I think the evidence is clear that the Palestinians are responsible for the deadlock, Israel continues to be the one blamed. This is something that has to be reversed. This is the arena of soft power and diplomacy. You need to extensively use the tools available to you to show this is not the case and present a case that the other side is undermining peace.”

7.Report: Netanyahu Promises Talmud Will Be Israeli Law From: Professor Paul Eidelberg

Magnificent News!

This is by far greatest and most promising news I have read since immigrating to Israel from the United States in 1976!!!

This news points the way toward Israel’s salvation and glory – and to the benefit of mankind!

This news heralds a giant step toward the goal I have advocated in ten of the books I have written in Israel.

Report: Netanyahu Promises Talmud Will Be Israeli Law

Netanyahu tells Likud hareidi leader Hebrew calendar will be official calendar of state in new Basic Law, Jewish law basis of legal system.

By Ari Yashar Arutz Sheva IsraelNationalNews.com First Publish: 5/9/2014, 9:49 AM

Binyamin Netanyahu at the Likud Conference Flash 90

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu reportedly revealed at a Likud conference on Wednesday some remarkable facets of the Basic Law he submitted last Thursday, which would enshrine Israel’s status as the nation-state of the Jewish people.

Netanyahu told the head of Likud’s hareidi division Yaakov Vider at the conference that he intends to make the Hebrew calendar, which is based on Jewish law, the official calendar of Israel, reports Kikar Hashabat.

The new law also would establish the Talmud, the core work of Jewish law, as an official basis for Israeli state law.

“I’m going to personally be involved in the law defining the state of Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people,” Netanyahu reportedly told Vider. “It’s a very important law that will influence how Israel will look in the future.”

“I want to anchor in this law, that it will be a Basic Law that the state of Israel arose and exists on the basis of the Torah and the Jewish tradition,” Netanyahu explained, promising to define the Hebrew calendar as the official state calendar.

Netanyahu also promised that “we will define in the law the Gemara as a basis for the Israeli legal system,” referencing the Jewish legal text analyzing the Mishnah, a legal work of the Jewish sages, which together form the Talmud.

Discussing the new Basic Law on Sunday in a cabinet meeting,

Netanyahu stated “the existence of the State of Israel as a Jewish state does not actualize itself enough in our Basic Laws, which is what the proposed law aims to fix.”

Netanyahu stressed the law would not restrict the rights of non-Jewish citizens of Israel. He further dismissed opposition to the law by leftist MKs, foremost among them Justice Minister Tzipi Livni who pledged to block the law.

“They want a Palestinian national state to be built beside us, and to turn the State of Israel, meanwhile, into a bi-national state, Jewish-Arab, within our restricted borders,” Netanyahu argued, saying the new Basic Law would prevent such a situation.

Netanyahu tells Likud hareidi leader Hebrew calendar will be official calendar of state in new Basic Law, Jewish law basis of legal system.

The height of the unusual storm that struck Israel in mid April was recorded in the afternoon. More than 100 mm of rain fell in the north regions of Israel and 20 cm of snow piled up on Mount Hermon. The rain will gradually weaken this evening and will end completely by tomorrow. Watch the precipitations. “…Jerusalem had 29 mm of rain….”Today Sunday, we had thunderous thunder, torrential rain, noisy hail, & some filmy flakes of snow! Then, in the same one hour, the sun came out & I got a sunburn sitting at the window!”

Apr 12, 2015, 05:30PM | Ateret Horowitz

Winter: The peak is over

The winter is behind us but the rain is still here: the rare rainstorm that that hit Israel in mid April started towards the end of last week, and only by the end of today (Sunday), will we begin to see the end of it.

Starting from Friday, until today at 3PM, no less than 102 millimeters of rain have been measured at the communal settlement of Harashim of the Misgav Regional Council in northern Israel. Harashim is leading in the amount of rain measured up until this afternoon.

Following Harashim is Haifa, with 76mm of rain; Beit Dagan with 55 mm, Safed with 55 mm and 47 mm at the Sea of Galilee area. Lake levels rose by 4.5 mm since Friday.

Nahariya, this morning. Oren Kadosh and Ruthy Weiner/Channel 2 News

In Tel Aviv were measured, up until to 3PM, 38 mm of rain; 33 mm in Ariel and 29 mm in Jerusalem. Even the South received relatively high amounts of rain: In Ashkelon 15 mm were measured; 7 mm in Sde Boker and 3 mm in Arad.

Haifa, this morning. Eyal Mizrahi/Channel 2 news

The storm, which included thunder, lightning and hail, caused damage in some areas.

At the Mt. Hermon site, the winter has reached its peak and 20 mm of snow were piled up over the weekend. The rain will weaken during the evening and night. Tomorrow very little rain will fall, and it will stop gradually.

9.A Call for Boycott & Divestment: History repeating itself. By Steven Plaut

Published: April 12th, 2015

Czechoslovakia

We thought you would be interested in the following document, uncovered by archeologists in Britain. It is a statement that was issued by the Union of British University Lecturers in the year 1938, and was endorsed by the civil servants union of Canada, by the Presbyterian Church, and by a host of progressive Jewish professors.

In the interests of history scholarship and accuracy, we reprint the document here in full:

A Call for Divestment in Czechoslovakia
From the Union of British University Lecturers February 12, 1938

Dear Learned Comrades:

The Union of British University Lecturers is calling upon lovers of justice and peace throughout the world to boycott all official institutions of Czechoslovakia and especially the Czechoslovak universities. While we have tried other forms of persuasion, the racist regime in Czechoslovakia continues to abuse the human rights of the country’s ethnic Germans, denying the Sudeten Germans their right to self-determination.

As was declared by our representatives to the recent goodwill conference held in Berlin, sent there to express our friendship and understanding for the Reich’s peace proposals, we must unambiguously denounce the racist apartheid regime that has long been operating in Czechoslovakia. The Czechoslovak colonialists are illegally occupying the lands of the Sudeten Germans. This occupation must end.

In recent months the Sudeten victims of Bohemian occupation have launched a protest movement, which we fully endorse. Regretfully, some the victims of occupation have also engaged in terrorist activities directed against the Czechoslovak apartheid regime. We believe that blame for this should not be assigned to the victims of racism, the Sudetens, and understand the desperation that underlies these Sudeten German operations. Indeed, we urge peace-loving states and churches around the world to join the authorities in Berlin in providing funding to the political groups now operating among the Sudetens and representing them.

Recently, the main political group speaking on behalf of the Sudetens has been the Sudeten-German Party (SdP), headed by Konrad Henlein. While some in the world are justifying the Czechoslovak decision not to conduct negotiations with the SdP because of its openly Nazi orientation, we demand that Czechoslovakia open immediate talks with it. After all, the SdP enjoys the popular support of the bulk of the Sudeten population and refusal to conduct negotiations with it is anti-democratic.

And besides, who are the Czechs to dictate which party and leaders should represent the Sudeten people?

Oppressed people unfortunately often are forced into use of violence. And in this case, the Sudetens were victimized by Czechoslovak state terrorism and racism for well over a generation.

So what if Czechoslovakia has free and open elections, freedom of speech, and other manifestations of liberal democracy? We consider Czechoslovakia to be a phony democracy, with false freedoms existing only on paper, so long as the Sudeten Germans are second-class citizens. That is why we cooperate with the anti-apartheid groups and movements operating within the Third Reich, which are heralding the struggle against Czechoslovak oppression of Germans.

Sure, the Czechoslovak political leaders have offered to consider some forms of local autonomy for the Sudetens. But these offers are humiliating and amount to little more than the creation of German Bantustans for the Sudetens, who would continue to suffer from Czechoslovakian domination. Why should the Sudetens be denied complete self-determination and the control of their own state and army? Why are Sudetens any less entitled to statehood than Czechs and Slovakians? So what if the German Reich already controls most of Central Europe? That should not preclude the rights of the Sudetens to have their own state? Czechoslovakian universities must be boycotted because of their collaboration with the racist regime in Prague! The universities continue to discriminate against Germans by conducting their classes in Czech, and by refusing to allow swastika banners to be hoisted on campus. We have also received reports that there were attempts in one university to expel a pro-German professor, although those attempts failed. Another university conducts courses in a satellite campus located inside occupied Sudetenland!

Accordingly, we believe that researchers and scholars at Czechoslovakian universities need to be taught a firm lesson. This can only be accomplished using the same divestment tactics that were so successfully utilized in other struggles, such as against the Italian conquest of Ethiopia.

Part of the statement for divestment includes this: “Czechoslovakia continues to grab the lands of the Sudeten people for ever-expanding Bohemian settlements, building Czechoslovakian-only roadways, and the construction of a giant wall and fence that is confiscating a significant portion of the Sudetenland. 83% of the Sudetenland water has been taken for Czechoslovakian use, leaving Sudetens with desperate water shortages. Czechoslovakia has destroyed the homes of more than 28,000 Sudetens in four and a half years. Hundreds of thousands of ancient fir trees and vast tracts of agricultural land have also been destroyed.”

The Union of British University Lecturers has also voted for and hereby demands the divesting of funds from all companies that support the Czechoslovak occupation of the Sudeten Territories. Our resolution contains statements of action:

– That a committee be convened in the conference to create and maintain a list of companies that support in a significant way the Czechoslovak occupation of Sudeten territories. The list will be delivered to all university associations, conference churches and conference investment managers.

– We call upon Czechoslovakia, as well as the U.S. government, Britain, the government of Poland, and the newly-elected Sudeten leadership to respect all people and find solutions based on international law and human rights.

– We affirm the right of Sudeten Germans to freedom of movement in all lands, and believe that Prague should be declared an open city for people of all faiths and creeds.

Peace can yet be achieved! Boycott Czechoslovakia Now! http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/…/a/a5/Sudetenland.png

Steven Plaut is a professor at the University of Haifa. He can be reached at steveneplaut@yahoo.com.

Iran has violated the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty time after time, often undetected; it also continues to violate Article 2, clause 4, of the United Nations Charter: “All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state…”

During the British Mandate, the entire area was known as Palestine. The official listing for “Place of Birth” on all passports at the time — for everyone, including Jews — was Palestine.

One can only hope that what clearly seems such a fatally dangerous deal — that threatens the existence of not only Israel, the Middle East and Europe, but, with Iran’s intercontinental ballistic missile program, also the United States — will not be allowed to happen.

The notion of Israel’s “right to exist” has been in the news twice in recent days.

First, the University of Southampton, in Britain, announced that due to “safety fears,” it was cancelling a conference, scheduled for later this month, to question Israel’s right to exist.

Were the “security concerns” related to the fact that the conference would promote the rising infestation of Jew-hatred in Britain? A recent U.K. parliamentary report shows that hate crimes against British Jews have doubled in the past decade, and has called upon the British government to take urgent action.

The second time was when Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, addressing the Obama Administration’s nuclear “framework” with Iran, said that in any deal, Iran should recognize Israel’s right to exist.

Despite being a member of the United Nations along with Israel, Iran nevertheless does not recognize Israel’s right to exist.

Iran has not only been a long-time sponsor of terrorist groups that for years have targeted and killed Israeli civilians (as well as American servicemen in Africa and Lebanon); it has also repeatedly threatened Israel with genocide. The latest announcement came in late March, when Mohammad Reza Naqdi, commander of the Basij militia of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, said that “erasing Israel off the map” was “non-negotiable.”

As Netanyahu has continually stated, a nuclear Iran is a threat to Israel’s existence and America’s existence.

Under such circumstances, that a British university was even thinking of holding such a conference is perplexing, at best.

The Jewish people have historical ties to the land of Israel that reach back nearly 4,000 years, a longstanding nationalist movement, a government in the post-colonial era and recognition by the United Nations — a similar path to existence as most other countries. Does anyone question, say, Zimbabwe’s right to exist?

Responses to statements that might have been raised, if this conference had gone ahead, include:

False Claim #1: Jews were out of Israel for almost 2,000 years.

The Romans crushed a Jewish revolt in 70 AD, and dispersed Jews throughout the Roman Empire. However, a continuous Jewish presence in the region never ceased. Key events recorded in history include: Jews governing Jerusalem when the Persian Sasanian Empire took over in 614; Jewish scribes working on the final text of the Hebrew Bible in the region between the 7th and 11th centuries; Jews enduring the Crusades; and Napoleon’s plans to invite Jews to form a state in 1799.

In 1799, as Napoleon Bonaparte’s army was besieging the city of Acre, Napoleon issued a letter, offering the Palestine as a homeland to the Jews, referring to them as “Rightful heirs of Palestine.” Above, a painting depicting the siege of Acre.

False Claim #2: Israel came about only because of the Zionist movement in the late 19th century.

The 19th century fostered the rise of nationalist movements throughout much of Europe. They led to the creation of modern Greece, Italy, and Germany, and also rose throughout the 20th century, often to end European colonization. In 1914, there were only 62 countries in the world; today there are 196, most of which were formed through nationalist movements, including, recently, Serbia, Croatia and Moldova, among others.

False Claim #3: Jews used violence to gain control of Israel.

Although some Jewish resistance groups occasionally used violence against Britain in an effort to gain independence, many other people, in a press for independence, have taken up arms, too. These include American colonials, Latin American independence movements, and the Algerians, Irish, and Bangladeshis, as well as countless others in the 20th century.

False Claim #4: The Palestinians controlled the land for centuries.

When the Ottoman Empire lost control of Palestine after World War I, there were no people known as “Palestinians” — only Muslims, Christians, Jews and assorted others living in the area. During the British Mandate, which followed World War I, the entire area was known as Palestine. The official listing for “Place of Birth” on all passports at the time — for everyone, including Jews — was Palestine. The word was coined by the Roman Emperor Hadrian in 132 AD, as part of an effort to obliterate the Jewish presence in the province. He changed the telling name of Judaea, and the land around it, to “Syria Palaestina”, and renamed Jerusalem as “Aelia Capitolina.”

The modern concept of Palestinian nationhood came into fruition only after Israel’s War of Independence in 1948, when five [7 GW] Arab armies attacked Israel literally the day of its birth, hoping to kill it in its crib. Many Arabs left; and many Arabs urged their fellow Arabs to leave, assuring them that in a few weeks, after the Jews were routed, they would be able to return. The problem was that the Arabs were the ones who were routed; the Jews won. When the Arabs who had fled wanted to come back, the Israelis said they were not welcome — they had chosen the hostile side. Instead of settling these Arabs in the countries to which they had fled, as the Jews had settled their countrymen fleeing Arab lands, the Arabs preferred to leave them as stateless people — now known as Palestinians. They were then promised, and still are promised, that they will return one day to the homes that they (or, by now, their great-great-grandparents) had voluntarily abandoned to be out of the way of the shooting.

The Arabs who stayed are still where they were, still in their homes, and are full citizens of Israel. They make up 20% of Israel’s population and have equal rights with Israel’s Jewish citizens. They enjoy full representation in Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, and hold senior positions in all professions.

False Claim #5: The UN Resolution legitimizing the State of Israel did not actually pass.

UN Resolution 181, known as the Partition Plan, was a recommendation that in November of 1947 called for the creation in Palestine of an Arab State and Jewish State. It was rejected by the Arabs, who threatened to use force to prevent it — and did.

Israel declared Independence on May 14, 1948, as the British Mandate on Palestine was set to expire. On May 11, 1949, UN Resolution 273, which admitted Israel to the United Nations, was adopted by the required two-thirds majority.

Currently 83% of the UN member states recognize Israel. Countries that refuse to recognize Israel include some Muslim nations, Cuba and North Korea.

False Claim #6: Israel came about only due to sympathies surrounding the Holocaust.

In 1917, well before the Holocaust, the British put forth the Balfour Declaration, which favored a “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine. Confirmed by the League of Nations in 1922, it put the process to statehood in motion. In 1936, in the midst of Arab violence, the British Peel Commission called for a plan to create a Jewish State, but the plan was not enacted. Had Israel been formed at that point, many more Jews could have fled there to avoid the Holocaust.

False Claim #7: The Palestinians have a right to part of the territory based on the original UN plan.

Palestinians have been offered part of the territory for a Palestinian state again and again. The Palestinians, however, rejected a state of their own offered by the Peel Commission in 1937, and they rejected a state of their own in the UN Resolution 181 Partition Plan, because they would not accept a Jewish state. They came back from the Khartoum Conference in 1967 with three “Nos”: no peace, no recognition, no negotiations; and they twice rejected offers for a Palestinian state from Israel’s Prime Minister Ehud Barak, and later from Israel’s Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, both of whom offered 97% of everything the Palestinians demanded. The Palestinians did not even submit a counter-offer.

One can only conclude that the Palestinians do not actually want state; what they want is to displace the Israeli state. They themselves have confirmed this suspicion at least twice — first in the PLO “Phased Plan” of 1974, never rescinded, which calls for eliminating Israel in stages. The second time was in the Charter of Hamas — now half of a “Palestinian Unity Government” with Fatah. The Hamas Charter calls not just for the destruction of Israel but also for a genocide of all the Jews everywhere. This Charter, too, has never been rescinded.

Israel has granted self-governance to the Palestinians; however, considering the non-stop Arab and Muslim attacks on Israel, Prime Minister Netanyahu and others have said that full autonomy cannot be given to the Palestinians until their terrorist groups are completely demilitarized.

* * *

The “existence” of Israel — the only country in the region with human rights, freedom of expression, and equal justice under law — is not, and should not, even be in question. The more appropriate question is if organizations that ask questions such as that should exist.

Iran has violated the Non-Proliferation Treaty time after time, often undetected; it also continues to violate Article 2, clause 4, of the United Nations Charter: “All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.”

In March 2015, apparently not content with wiping just “Israel off the map,” Iran, in the person of its Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, also called for “Death to America.”

One can only hope that what clearly seems such a fatally dangerous deal as the Obama Administration’s nuclear “framework” with Iran — that threatens not only the existence of Israel, the Middle East and Europe, but, with Iran’s intercontinental ballistic missile program, also the United States — will not be allowed to happen.

George Phillips served as an aide to Congressman Chris Smith of New Jersey, working on human rights issues.