Friday, June 19, 2015
Dear Family & Friends,
Hope you’re having a wonderful summer. Today is Rosh Chodosh Tammuz. Chodosh Tov! Have a good night, a great day & a blessed Shabbos.
All the very best, Gail/Geula/Savta/Savta Raba x 2/Mom
Our Website awaits you: WinstonIsraelInsight.com
1.Being a Jew Trumps Assimilation by Steven Shamrak
2.Ten Ways the Nations Treat Israel Differently By David Harris
3.Arlene Kushner “Ongoing” June 17
4.U.S. State Department is three years late in applying certain sanctions on Iran
5.Boycotting Israel? Just Do It by Michael Ordman
6.The Two-State Solution is What Causes BDS by Mark Langfan
7.Netanyahu refuses U.S. request to disavow Michael Oren’s claims Obama abandoned Israel
8.Arlene Kushner: “Dealing As It Comes” June 15
1.Being a Jew Trumps Assimilation by Steven Shamrak
Melbourne, Australia – Phone: 61 – 412 186 026 – StevenShamrak@gmail.com
Assimilation is the biggest threat to the existence of Jewish people! There were around 9 million Jews during the Roman Empire, similar to number of ethnic Hans in ancient China. Two thousand years later we are just 14 million-weak (the population of Han Chinese is 1.2 billion now). After WW2 there were eleven million Jews. Most nations have at least tripled their number since then – Jewish population has increased by three million only!
Some Judo-Christians groups celebrate Christmas and Hanukah. Many reform Jewish organizations, advocate changes to Jewish Halachic practice and adaptation to ‘current environment’. Usually they all disappear within one or two generations. Most Jews, who chose the pass of assimilation, do not realize that the ‘Integration’ of Jews is still official policy of many Christian Churches and organizations. By converting or facilitating disappearance of Jews they satisfy their schizoid, delusional need for acceptance and also ‘prove’ that Christianity is true Abrahamic religion.
Not long ago, being a Jew has always meant that one either religious or ethnic Jew, most often both. Our ‘Jew-loving’ neighbours in Europe had never failed to remind us about this! Jewish ethnicity, even in total absence of religious practice, had secured the continuation of family traditions even in secular countries like the Soviet Union.
Breaking this duality of Jewish identity is encouraged by Jew-haters and anti-Semitic religious ‘nutters’, as well as by self-hating Jews, in order to facilitate assimilation and elimination of Jewish people. You just need to ask why there are only about 14 million Jews in the world now. It is almost the same number as 60 years ago (after WW2 there were 11 million Jews)! During the same time most nations tripled or quadrupled their number.
The biggest mistake many of our rabbis and Jewish community leaders make is by insisting that Jewishness is religious observance only. Being a Jew has always meant, for Jews and our enemies – the peoplehood, belonging to the tribe, ethnicity or nation – whichever term you feel comfortable with – combined with Judaism when it was possible!
We also have a very unique and advanced religion, deep seated spiritual tradition, common history and aspirations that bond us all, observant and secular Jews.
We need to focus and promote our uniqueness and to be proud of it. Our leaders must do more to bring unity and purposefulness to the life of Jewish communities in Israel and the Diaspora!
This tradition was the only cause of our survival for two millennia of persecution in exile!
Being a Jew Trumps Assimilation by Steven Shamrak
Summary … You don’t have to be a pro-Israel activist to be troubled by the grotesquely unjust treatment of Israel. All it takes is a capacity for moral outrage that things like this are happening today.
It’s appalling to see how Israel is treated by a totally different standard than other countries in the international system. Of course, Israel deserves scrutiny, as does every other nation. But it also merits equal treatment — nothing more, nothing less.
1. Israel is the only UN member state whose very right to exist is under constant challenge.
Notwithstanding the fact that Israel embodies an age-old connection with the Jewish people as repeatedly cited in the most widely read book in the world, the Bible, that it was created based on the 1947 recommendation of the UN, and that it has been a member of the world body since 1949, there’s a relentless chorus of nations, institutions, and individuals denying Israel’s very political legitimacy.
No one would dare question the right to exist of many other countries whose basis for legitimacy is infinitely more questionable than Israel’s, including those that were created by brute force, occupation, or distant mapmakers. Just look around at how many nations fit those categories, including, by the way, quite a few Arab countries. Why, then, is it open hunting season only on Israel? Could it possibly have anything to do with the fact that it’s the only Jewish-majority country in the world?
2. Israel is the only UN member state that’s been targeted for annihilation by another UN member state.
Think about it. The leadership of Iran, together with Iran-funded proxies in Lebanon and Gaza, has repeatedly called for wiping Israel off the map. Is there any other country facing the threat of genocidal destruction?
3. Israel is the only nation whose capital city, Jerusalem, is not recognized by other nations.
Imagine the absurdity of this. Foreign diplomats live in Tel Aviv while conducting virtually all their business in Jerusalem. Though no Western nation questions Israel’s presence in the city’s western half, where the prime minister’s office, Knesset (Parliament), and Ministry of Foreign Affairs are located, there are no embassies there.
In fact, look at listings of world cities, including places of birth in passports, and you’ll see something striking — Paris, France; Tokyo, Japan; Pretoria, South Africa; Lima, Peru; and Jerusalem, sans country — orphaned, if you will.
4. The UN has two agencies dealing with refugees.
Israel in the UN’s crosshairs [source: Before It’s News Inc.]
One, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), focuses on all the world’s refugee populations, save one. The other, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine (UNRWA), handles only the Palestinians.
But the difference goes beyond two structures and two bureaucracies. In fact, they have two different mandates.
UNHCR seeks to resettle refugees; UNRWA does not. When, in 1951, John Blanford, UNRWA’s then-director, proposed resettling up to 250,000 refugees in nearby Arab countries, those countries were enraged and refused, leading to his departure. The message got through. No UN official since has pushed for resettlement.
Moreover, the UNRWA and UNHCR definitions of a refugee differ markedly. Whereas the UNHCR targets only those who’ve actually fled their homelands, the UNRWA definition covers “the descendants of persons who became refugees in 1948,” without any generational limitations.
5. Israel is the only country that has won all its major wars for survival and self-defense, yet is confronted by defeated adversaries who have insisted on dictating the terms of peace.
In doing so, ironically, they’ve found support from many countries who, victorious in war themselves, demanded — and, yes, got — border adjustments.
6. Israel is the only country in the world with a separate — and permanent — agenda item, #7, at the Geneva-based UN Human Rights Council.
No other member state, including serial human-rights violators like North Korea, Syria, Iran, and Sudan, gets its own agenda item. Only the sole liberal democracy in the Middle East is treated in this blatantly biased manner because that’s the way it works — the bad guys circle the wagons to protect one another, and, at the same time, gang up on Israel, creating an automatic majority against it.
7. Israel is the only country condemned by name this year at the World Health Organization annual assembly as a “violator” of health rights.
This canard takes place despite the fact that Israel provides world-class medical assistance to Syrians wounded in the country’s civil war and Palestinians living in Hamas-ruled Gaza; has achieved one of the world’s highest life expectancy rates for all its citizens, Jewish and non-Jewish alike; is among the very first medical responders to humanitarian crises wherever they may occur, from Haiti to Nepal; and is daily advancing the frontiers of medicine for everyone, something that can’t be said for too many other nations.
8. Israel is the only country that’s the daily target of three UN bodies established and staffed solely for the purpose of advancing the Palestinian cause and bashing Israel — the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People; the Special Committee to Investigate Israeli Practices Affecting the Human Rights of the Palestinian People; and the Division for Palestinian Rights in the UN’s Department of Political Affairs.
9. Israel is the only country annually targeted by up to 20 UN General Assembly resolutions and countless measures in other UN bodies, such as the Human Rights Council.
Indeed, astonishingly, each year, Israel is on the receiving end of more such efforts than the other 192 UN member states combined. No one can seriously argue that this is remotely warranted, but it’s a reality because in every UN body, except the Security Council where each of the five permanent members has a veto, it’s all about majority voting.
When close to two-thirds of the world’s nations today belong to the Non-Aligned Movement, and when they elect a country like Iran as its chair, with Venezuela on deck, that just about says it all.
10. Israel is the only country targeted by the BDS (boycott, divestment, and sanctions) movement.
Has anyone seen any significant campus activity that takes aim at true human rights offenders, including some in Israel’s neighborhood, who behead, forcibly convert, and expel Christians; drop chemically-laced barrel bombs on civilians; deny Palestinians full rights; and use capital punishment, including for minors, with abandon?
Has any student group tried to prevent undergraduates from traveling to any country other than Israel, as was the case with a recent “pledge” circulated at UCLA?
Has anyone seen any flotillas or flytillas organized by European far-left groups that don’t involve an anti-Israel angle?
Has anyone seen movements for companies to pull out of any country other than Israel?
Turkey, as but one example, has brazenly and unjustifiably occupied one-third of the island nation of Cyprus for 41 years, deployed an estimated 40,000 Turkish troops there, and transferred countless settlers from Anatolia, yet there’s not a peep against Ankara from those who purport to act in the name of “justice” and against “occupation.”
Given political realities, tackling any of these instances of egregious double standards and blatant hypocrisy can be a daunting challenge. And, still worse, this list is not complete.
The old advertisement proclaimed that you don’t have to be Jewish to love Levy’s Jewish rye bread. Well, surely, you don’t have to be a pro-Israel activist to be troubled by the grotesquely unjust treatment of Israel. All it takes is a capacity for moral outrage that things like this are happening today.
Ten Ways the Nations Treat Israel Differently By David Harris
3.Arlene Kushner “Ongoing” June 17, 2015
It’s obvious that many of the happenings I write about, rather than being discrete events, are snapshots of a continuing situation. And so, I must return to these continuing situations repeatedly.
It is only a couple of days since I wrote about Obama’s horrific policies regarding Iran. I said then that every time I indicate that the situation has deteriorated, it proceeds to get even worse. And hello! Here we are again.
With regard to the negotiations, I had last written about the need for Iran to reveal all past nuclear military activity. This was being insisted upon by the IAEA, for base-lining the Iranian nuclear program was a critical prerequisite to any verification scheme. As recently as April 8, John Kerry stated definitively that there would be no final deal without this Iranian disclosure.
This Kerry statement was in response to news that the Obama administration was restructuring the demand because Iran was balking. What the WSJ had reported was that the West was prepared to “frontload sanctions relief and insist the Iranians come clean some time later lest they face snapback.” This means removing sanctions before the Iranians have provided the required information, and makes it enormously unlikely that the Iranians would ever be forthcoming with anything. The “snapback” that Obama refers to so blithely is a farce.
That’s the recent history of the situation.
And here we have the latest:
Yesterday, Kerry addressed the State Department press corps by teleconference. Michael Gordon of the NY Times raised a question about whether issues concerning atomic work by Iran’s military would “need to be fully resolved before sanctions are eased or released or removed or suspended on Iran as part of that agreement.”
Kerry’s response, in part (my emphasis added):
“Michael, the possible military dimensions, frankly, gets distorted a little bit in some of the discussion, in that we’re not fixated on Iran specifically accounting for what they did at one point in time or another. We know what they did. We have no doubt. We have absolute knowledge with respect to the certain military activities they were engaged in. “What we’re concerned about is going forward….”
http://www.state.gov/secretary/remarks/2015/06/243892.htm
Credit: Alex Wong/Getty
WHAT? “We know what they did. We have no doubt. We have absolute knowledge…” “Absolute,” yet, not just ordinary knowledge. Talk about overplaying your hand.
You do not have to have a doctorate in political science to know this cannot be. For if the US had absolute knowledge of what Iran has been doing regarding military nuclear development until now, why would there have been all those discussions about getting Iran to reveal information? How is it that this spring IAEA Director Yukiya Amano declared that Iran was withholding key information and that thus, his agency was “not in a position…to conclude that all nuclear material in Iran is in peaceful activities”?
http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2015/3/2/un-nuclear-watchdog-says-iran-still-withholding-key-information.html
Omri Ceren of The Israel Project believes this line by Kerry was rather inevitable. Once the US government caved on their promise to secure information on what Iran has been doing before easing sanctions, this was the next logical step: See, we don’t have to get the Iranians to reveal pertinent military data, we can ease sanctions, because we already have all the information we need.
My friends, this is not simply a distortion of the facts or a creative reinterpretation of the situation. This is out and out falsehood. The secretary of state has offered a lie to the American people on an issue of critical importance.
Ceren catalogues some of the information about Iran that is not known:
[] how far Iran got on testing nuclear detonators
[] whether Iran maintains the infrastructure to do further tests and build on that work
[] whether Iran diverted nuclear material, including enriched material, for past or future clandestine purposes
[] what nuclear assets and knowledge Iran acquired from North Korea and is keeping on the shelf
[] same about nuclear assets and knowledge acquired from Russia
[] how Iran skirted inspectors in the past and whether they could repeat those tricks in the future
[] what the Iranians managed to destroy when it literally paved over the Parchin site where it did nuclear work
And this is just a partial list.
The question then is whether the American people will sit still for this. Will you?
I would suggest that a hue and cry go up – and that everyone who is incensed and frightened give voice to this fact in all the ways I regularly talk about: letters to the editor, talkbacks on the Internet, postings on websites and FB pages and discussion lines, etc.
But here I also suggest something else to American citizens: Contact your Senators and Congresspersons. Express your outrage and your concern in a brief and polite message.
Of course some of your Senators and Congresspersons are already solidly in opposition to Obama’s plans. But it does not hurt for them to hear from you anyway: thank them for their positions and ask them to stand strong for the sake of the country and the world.
Other Senators and Congresspersons may be on the edge – not quite prepared to stand against Obama, but not happy about his policies. They, most of all, need to hear from you.
I would guess that there are likely some Senators and Congresspersons who have been minimally supportive of Obama (or reluctant to buck him, at any rate), but are now thoroughly enraged by the position Kerry has just embraced. As Ceren writes: “It’s a collapse of the administration’s core promise to lawmakers on any deal…The administration told Congress to hold off pressuring Iran by declaring they were going to bring home a deal in which the Iranians capitulated on PMDs [possible military dimensions]. They failed. Now they’re claiming it never mattered anyway.”
But don’t rely on the likelihood that they are furious – contact them anyway.
For your Congresspersons: http://www.house.gov/representatives/find/
For your Senators: http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm
And please, suggest to others that they do the same.
Then let me return here to the matter of the Druze community in Syria that is endangered by Islamists – primarily the Nusra Front, which is loosely connected to al-Qaeda.
Credit: Reuters
It is anything but a simple situation. Yesterday Nusra Front launched an attack on the village of Hader, home to 25,000 Druze who have until now been loyal to Assad. Hader is right on the other side of Mt. Hermon, across from the Israeli Druze village of Majd al-Shams.
For an interval of time following the attack, matters were said to have calmed down. But that was fleeting. The latest report, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, is that Hader has been surrounded by rebel forces.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4669701,00.html
Alarmed Israeli Druze are demonstrating in large numbers, and have raised some $2 million to purchase weapons so that their cousins in Syria can defend themselves. Additionally, MK Ayoub Kara (Likud) is seeking permission for Israeli Druze to cross the border to lend humanitarian assistance in Hader. Israeli law forbids Israeli citizens from entering enemy territory. There has been talk of an IDF hospital for Druze to be set up at the border, but there seem to be some doubts about the viability of this.
Israel has sent a message to Nusra Front via the Free Syria Army, warning them to leave the Druze alone. Chief of General Staff Lt. Gen. Gadi Eisenkot said yesterday that the IDF would act to protect refugees [read Druze refugees] fleeing to the area near the Israeli border from being slaughtered. He is obviously not eager, however, to see hundreds of thousands of Syrian Druze flock to the border and attempt to cross into Israel.
While the focus at the moment is on the Druze, implications of the movement of Nusra Front into the Syrian Golan area are even larger: There is concern that this group may be seeking to take Hader as a first step in moving to control the Golan region of Syria immediately adjacent to Israel. Israel has, until now, scrupulously avoided direct military involvement in Syria (other than launching a missile or mortar into Syria in response to munitions shot into Israel). That there is now concern about the situation at the highest levels of the IDF is clear; matters may well be shifting.
http://www.jpost.com/Arab-Israeli-Conflict/Israel-sends-message-to-Nusra-Front-Cease-attacks-on-Syrias-Druse-406183
There have been press reports in the last couple of days regarding indirect talks between Hamas and Israel – via European contacts or Arab states (with Qatar said to be involved). It is all too vague at present to be able to make definitive sense of what is going on (or not going on). The rumor mill is working over-time.
One of the things that has been suggested is that a long-term (five or ten year) “truce” is being discussed. I felt a fleeting alarm, on reading these reports, lest this appeal to some Israeli decision makers.
One analysis had it that the dynamic between Israel and Hamas is shifting because of the presence in Gaza of more radical jihadi movements. I think that may be so. And then, with the great concern about what’s going to be happening in the north, it might seem to make sense to take the possibility of conflict in the south out of the defense equation for an extended period. I could imagine some thinking this way.
Whatever the case, whatever the perceived benefits, I say unequivocally that it is a very bad idea. For what is being referred to as a “truce,” is in the Muslim ideology, in Arabic, a hudna. This is a contracted period of calm, agreed to by the Muslim party, which is suffering a disadvantage in terms of strength. The goal is not permanent peace, but rather the ability to buy enough time to garner additional strength. This harkens back to Mohammad [Gail sez: & the Huydabaiya Treaty. Please read in our Website: WinstonIsraelInsight.org: “Why Pretend? Read the Hydabaiya Treaty!” ] At the end of the hudna, the Muslim party attacks. [GW: Mohammad attacked & decapitated 800 Jewish men, selling the women & children into slavery.]
A quick look at some of the possible parameters of a “truce,” as they are being discussed. What Hamas wants is opening of crossings and easing of the sea blockade, as well as reconstruction (which means bringing in construction materials that can be diverted for rocket development or bunkers to store rockets [GW: OR TUNNELS INTO ISRAEL]). They would also demand that there be no Israeli fly-overs above Gaza. Israel, at least one source suggested, would require absolute quiet – no “drizzle” of rockets.
The catch is obvious: Hamas would have to refrain from launching rockets (would appear “peaceful”), but would find ways to smuggle in rockets and rocket parts via the open seaways and to continue to manufacture rockets and train troops. In fact, I have not read anything that suggests that as part of a truce Hamas would be required to stop establishing a stockpile of weapons. Even now Hamas is preparing for eventual war. At the end of five or ten years, they would be ever so much better equipped to hit Israel. They have the patience to wait.
A very bad idea.
At any rate, Hamas leader Khalil al-Hayya denies that there is a truce being discussed. It’s just a “distraction” he says. Let’s hope so.
While we are on the subject of Hamas, I share additional news – also lacking in firm details and actually providing a bit of comedy relief:
Abbas has announced the dissolution of the Fatah-Hamas unity government that had been established last year. He accepted the resignation of unity government prime minister Rami Hamdallah and told him to form a new government, likely to consist of politicians and not technocrats.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4669631,00.html
Credit: Getty
There are reports that this was in part because Abbas was miffed about Hamas-Israel meetings.
Meanwhile…
“’Hamas rejects any one-sided change in the government without the agreement of all parties,’ Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri told AFP.
“’No one told us anything about any decision to change and no one consulted with us about any change in the unity government. Fatah acted on its own in all regards.’” http://www.timesofisrael.com/hamas-rejects-unilateral-dissolution-of-palestinian-unity/ Wait? If Fatah decides to quit the unity government, do they need Hamas’s permission to do so? We’re on a roll, so now consider this: Tonight begins the holy Muslim month of Ramadan, during which time observant Muslims fast from sunup to sundown. Israel is making a number of “gestures” for this month. Including making it easier for Muslims to travel to the Temple Mount, in order to pray at the Al-Aqsa mosque.
Officials of the Palestinian Authority are having second thoughts about this however: “top officials in the Palestinian Authority have been calling for PA Arabs to boycott the Al-Aqsa Mosque – for fear that Arabs will spend money while they are there, enhancing the Israeli economy.” http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/196881#.VYHW05uJjIV This is in the spirit of BDS, obviously. But if they want to stay away, that is very fine with us. They are going to have a final meeting on this matter, and my guess is that in the end they will encourage people to go. But talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face. How crazy it all is. © Arlene Kushner. This material is produced by Arlene Kushner, functioning as an independent journalist. Permission is granted for it to be reproduced only with proper attribution.If it is reproduced and emphasis is added, the fact that it has been added must be noted. See my website at www.arlenefromisrael.info Contact Arlene at akushner18@gmail.com
Arlene Kushner “Ongoing”
4.U.S. State Department is three years late in applying certain sanctions on Iran
The news outlet Al-Monitor reported that according to a government watchdog, the U.S. State Department is three years late in applying certain sanctions on Iran. The report raises questions over whether the State Department is intentionally delaying sanctions on Iran as negotiations over its nuclear program proceed. The report, issued by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), was submitted to the House Foreign Affairs Committee and made public on Wednesday.
The Iran, North Korea, and Syria Nonproliferation Act (INKSNA) mandates that the State Department apply sanctions if those countries attempt to procure missile technologies or weapons of mass destruction. The State Department’s delayed compliance with INKSNA undermines its ability to effectively apply sanctions. The GAO wrote that the three year delay “may diminish the credibility of the threatened sanction.”
The GAO report also indicated that the State Department failed to adequately comply with INKSNA’s requirement that it report to Congress every six months on whether Iran, North Korea, or Syria attempted to acquire the aforementioned materials. Congress received the 2011 report only in December 2014.
When asked why the committee held the hearing so close to the deadline with Iran, Al-Monitor reported that Chairman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.) responded that “she wanted to point [to] what she called the administration’s ‘hypocrisy’ when it comes to applying congressional sanctions on Iran.” She continued, “It’s unbelievable. Iran keeps demanding more of us, and we keep on giving them more kind signals.”
Al-Monitor also wrote that “[t]he GAO report is but the latest example of questionable sanctions enforcement that has raised congressional ire in recent months.” The U.S. failed to respond in time to the illegal sale of airplanes to the Iranian airline, Mahan Air. The UN Panel of Experts reported that countries were withholding intelligence on Iranian sanctions violations due to a “political decision” to ensure that the nuclear talks were not disrupted. The Wall Street Journal reported that the administration has pressured the CIA so that its analysts are now in an “impossible position regarding analysis of Iran’s nuclear program.”
U.S. State Department is three years late in applying certain sanctions on Iran
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