Dear Family & Friends,

Yom Hatzmaut began officially at dark last night with fireworks. Today BarBQues in the country. I don’t know why we eat BarBQue on Israel’s Independence Day but, it’s a Tradition! & fun.

So, here’s your Independence Day present. Note that the info is quite unusual but useful in your efforts of Hasbara: Public Diplomacy.

Have a wonderful fun day & night plus a special Shabbat.

All the very best, Gail/Geula/Savta/Savta Raba x 2/Mom

1.Opening ceremonies for Israel’s 68th Independence Day begin at Har Herzl in Jerusalem.

4.Arlene Kushner “Many Bases”

6.Trump to Israel Hayom: Israel is the US’s bastion of hope

Watch: Israel celebrates 68 years 1.Opening ceremonies for Israel’s 68th Independence Day begin at Har Herzl in Jerusalem. By Arutz Sheva Staff First Publish: 5/11/2016, 8:10 PM

The state ceremony celebrating 68 years since the founding of Israel began on Wednesday evening at Har Herzl in Jerusalem, leading up to the traditional Independence Day torch lighting.

The 14 individuals selected to light this year’s torches are:

Herzl Biton, the 57-year old bus driver who saved dozens of passengers in 2015 when he confronted a knife-wielding terrorist. Biton was seriously wounded in the attack.

Gabi Barsheshet, Deputy Director of the Megilot rescue team.

Sgt. Farah Usa Roberto, a 21-year old immigrant soldier who fended off an Arab terrorist in Gush Etzion, foiling the terror attack.

Staff Sgt. Alison Berson, the Border Police officer who shot and neutralized two terrorists during a stabbing attack at the Tapuah Junction in 2015.

Rona Ramon, widow of Israeli astronaut Ilan Ramon – who was killed in the 2003 Columbia shuttle disaster & mother of Asaf Ramon, who perished during a training accident in the Israeli Air Force.

Father Gabriel Naddaf, an Eastern Orthodox priest who has spearheaded the integration of Christian Arabs into the Israeli army.

Avi Toibin, who saved champion rower Yasmin Feingold when her boat overturned in the Yarkon River.

Nili and Moish Levi of Modi’in, who both donated kidneys to save the lives of people they have never met.

Dr. Anan Falah, a dentist who has campaigned for the empowerment of Druze women.

Rotem Elisha, an 18-year old survivor of rape who now works as an activist against sexual violence.

Fainy Sukenik, the founder of an organization which assists haredi women struggling through difficult divorces.

Yaakov Ehrenfeld, an 83-year old Holocaust survivor who is unable to see or speak and has spent years working at the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum to help deaf and mute visitors at the memorial.

Hallel Bareli, a 17-year old youth counselor who has helped residents living near the Gaza Strip respond to emergency situations.

1-A.The Sanctity of Yom Ha’atzmaut by Rav Tzvi Yehuda Kook

Israel’s independence in the light of the teachings of the country’s first Chief Rabbi, founder of Religious Zionism and his son, Dean of Merkaz Harav in Jerusalem.

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Published: Wednesday, May 11, 2016 7:05 PM

Rav Tzvi Yehuda Kook, the late son of iconic Religious Zionist first Chief Rabbi Avraham Yitzchak HaCohen Kook, was revered head of Merkaz HaRav Yeshiva and leader of the return to Judea and Samaria, Yesha. (1891-1982).

Is there more to Israel Independence Day than just fireworks and flagwaving? Is Yom Ha’Atzmaut just a secular holiday commemorating our political independence, or does it hold a deeper meaning for us?

The Holiness of Mitzvot

Rav Kook passed away in 1935, thirteen years before the State of Israel was established, but his son Rav Tzvi Yehudah Kook interpreted the historic events of 1948 in light of his father’s teachings. In an article entitled “Affirming the Sanctity of the Day of Our Independence,” Rav Tzvi Yehudah analyzed the religious significance of Yom Haatzmaut.

In general, our connection to sanctity and holiness is through the mitzvot of the Torah. Thus before performing a mitzvah we say, “Who sanctified us with His mitzvot.” The holiness of Yom Haatzmaut, Rav Tzvi Yehudah explained, is anchored in the holiness of mitzvot. But which particular mitzvah is connected to this historical occasion?

We should be grateful to be alive at this time in history, to witness the hour of redemption that so many great and holy leaders of our people did not merit to see.
The Ramban defined the mitzvah of yishuv ha’aretz, settling the land of Israel, as “we will not abandon it to another nation, or leave it desolate.” This definition makes it clear that the mitzvah is first and foremost an obligation of the nation; the Jewish people are commanded to take possession of the land of Israel and rule over it. On the basis of that national mitzvah, there is a mitzvah for each individual to live in Eretz Yisrael.1

The Ramban emphasized that this mitzvah is in effect at all times. This view is upheld in the Shulchan Aruch (Even Ha’ezer 75:6, Pitchei Teshuvah ad loc).

This then is the significance of Yom Haatzmaut: that we have finally merited, after centuries of exile, to once again fulfill this lofty mitzvah, valued by the Sages as “equal to all the other mitzvot” (Sifre Re’eih), “to return and possess the land that God promised to our fathers” (Ramban). We should be full of gratitude to live here, in Eretz Yisrael, “the place that Moses and Aaron did not merit” (Ketubot 112a).

We should be grateful to be alive at this time in history, to witness the hour of redemption that so many great and holy leaders of our people did not merit to see.

Courageous Spirit

And yet one may ask: why should the fifth day of Iyyar be chosen for celebrating this event? Perhaps a different date, such as the date of the ceasefire after the War of Independence, would be a more appropriate choice?

While the military victory of a fledgling state over the armies of five enemy countries was certainly miraculous, that was not the greatest miracle of the establishment of the State of Israel.

The true miracle was the remarkable courage displayed on the fifth of Iyyar in making the fateful decision & announcing the establishment of an independent state. This decision, in the face of heavy pressure from the U.S. State Department not to declare a state & belligerent threats of the surrounding Arab countries to attack & destroy the Jewish community in Eretz Yisrael, was by no means a trivial matter. The motion to declare a state passed by only a thin majority in Ben-Gurion’s cabinet.

(One of the signers to the Declaration of Independence, Moshe Sharett, later recalled in his diary how he had signed with “a sense of excitement together with a clear premonition of danger, such as one might feel while standing on a cliff, ready to leap into a yawning chasm. We felt as though we stood on a very high crest, where roaring winds were brewing about us, and that we had to stand fast.”)

This courageous decision was the true miracle of Yom Haatzmaut. The Talmud in Baba Metzia 106a states that a shepherd’s rescue of his flock from a lion or a bear may be considered a miracle. Where exactly is the miracle in this act? The Tosafists explained that the miracle is to be found in the shepherd’s “spirit of courage and willingness to fight.” This spirit of valor is a miracle from above, an inspired inner greatness spurring one to rise to the needs of the hour. This is the significance of Ezekiel’s prophetic description of the redemption:

“I will place My spirit in you and you shall live. I will set you on your land, and you will know that I, the Eternal, have spoken and performed it.” (Ezekiel 37:14)

Atchalta DeGeulah

Nevertheless, many people have difficulty reconciling the current moral and spiritual state of Israel with the vision of the redemption as portrayed by the prophets and the sages. Is this the Messianic Era for which we prayed two thousand years?

The Sages determined that “The only difference between the current reality and the Messianic Era is [independence from] the rule of foreign powers” (Berachot 34b; Mishneh Torah, Laws of Kings 12:2). While we have certainly not yet merited the final phase of redemption, we have achieved this criterion of redemption – independence and self-rule over our geographical area.

Many Torah scholars fought against the Zionist movement because they envisioned redemption as a future era that arrives complete from the very start, and not an ongoing process. But the import of the Talmudic statement (Jer. Berachot 1:1) that the redemption will appear “little by little,” like the spreading light of dawn in the morning sky, is exactly this: that the redemption is a process that advances in stages.

We need to examine history with a perspective of faith in God. We need to recognize that the Master of the universe controls and governs all events. The Sages taught:

“What is the meaning of the verse, ‘For who has scorned the day of smallness’ (Zecharia 4:10)? What causes the table of the righteous to be scorned in the future era? Their smallness of faith, that they failed to believe in the Holy One.” (Sotah 48b)

Why is the future portion (the ‘table’) of the tzaddikim marred? Because they are tzaddikim who lack faith in God. They view the world with a narrow outlook, and fail to see God’s hand in the events of history. The redemption does not have to come through great miracles; God can also bring the redemption using natural forces and events.

Ezekiel’s Prophecy of Redemption

The various stages of redemption are clearly described in the order of events in Ezekiel’s prophecy. The prophecy first speaks of the initial stage of redemption, the ingathering of the exiles:

“I will take you from the nations and gather you from all the lands and I will bring you to your land” (36:24).

Only after this initial redemption does the prophet describe the spiritual return and teshuvah of the people:

“I will sprinkle over you purifying water and you will be purified from all of your impurities…. I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will place in you. I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put My spirit within you so that you will walk in My statutes…. And you will be My people, and I will be your God.” (36:25–28)

This narrative of the redemption concurs with the opinion of Rabbi Joshua in Sanhedrin 97b, that the redemption will come regardless of the merits of the Jewish people – “even if they do not repent.”2

(Excerpted from the book Silver from the Land of Israel, pp. 191-195. Adapted from LeNetivot Yisrael vol I, pp. 181-184, 192-200; Sichot HaRav Tzvi Yehudah 19, sent by Rabbi Chanan Morrison, Ravkooktorah.org)

Sources:

1 Rabbi Moshe ben Nachman (Nachmanides) of Gerona, Spain (1194-1270). The Ramban wrote this definition of yishuv ha’aretz in his appendix to Maimonides’ Sefer Hamitzvot, positive mitzvah #4.

2 See LeNetivot Yisrael, pp. 195-196, where Rav Tzvi Yehudah Kook demonstrates that the Halachah follows this opinion.)

2.Ben Rhodes & the Fiction behind the Iran Nuclear Deal

By A.J. Caschetta , GATESTONE INSTITUTE

· Rhodes even acknowledges that there is nothing “moderate” about Rouhani, Zarif or Khamenei.

· The dates and facts conflicted with the narrative, so they were finessed, rewritten and sold to the public with different plot-lines and different themes. Outside Washington, D.C. this behavior is sometimes called lying.

· At best Ben Rhodes is the author of a Pyrrhic victory, ensuring that the next president will face the same choice Obama faced but against an Iran armed with nuclear bombs.

· This is what happens to foreign policy when it is entrusted to the unqualified and undereducated.

That the Obama administration’s Iran deal is a work of fiction has been known all along, but now Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Communications Ben Rhodes is taking credit as its author. In a long interview with New York Times reporter David Samuels on Sunday, the world learned that Rhodes is “the master shaper and retailer of Obama’s foreign policy narratives” who “strategized and ran the successful Iran-deal messaging campaign.” Samuels lauds Rhodes as “a storyteller who uses a writer’s tools to advance an agenda packaged as politics.”

Welcome to the post-modern techno-presidency where everything is a text, easily manipulated by skilled writers and disseminated in 140 or fewer characters. Don’t like the facts? Change the narrative. What really counts is “the optics.”

In the midst of his fawning profile, Samuels exposes a number of lies behind the Iran narrative, or rather quotes Rhodes himself doing so. For instance, the first outreach to Iran came in 2012, not in 2013. I’d bet it came even earlier. Rhodes even acknowledges that there is nothing “moderate” about Iranian leaders Rouhani, Zarif, or Khamenei. But these dates and facts conflicted with the narrative, so they were finessed, rewritten, and sold to the public with different plot lines and different themes. Outside Washington, DC, this behavior is sometimes called lying.

The Rhodes narrative, at its core, is a simple tale in which a hero, armed with special skills and weapons, goes on a quest that requires a fight against the forces of evil. It incorporates elements of the ancient epic, the medieval romance, and the eighteenth-century novel, with elements of drama splashed in here and there.

The hero, of course, is Rhodes’s real-life hero, Barack Obama (with whom he “mind melds,” as he apparently tells anyone who will listen). The hero’s special weapon is diplomacy — in the case of Iran, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), a.k.a., “Iran Deal.” But Rhodes himself is also the hero of his tale. As he tells Samuels in one particularly dewy-eyed moment: “I don’t know anymore where I begin and Obama ends.”

In his tale, Iran is recast into a moderate regime through the magic of fiction, while the new villains are all who oppose the JCPOA, recast into warmongers: Benjamin Netanyahu, Ted Cruz, the majority of Americans. As Samuels puts it: “Framing the deal as a choice between peace and war was Rhodes’s go-to move — and proved to be a winning argument.”

But it was not really a winning argument. Neither the American public nor Congress was persuaded, which is why Obama did not submit it as a treaty for Senate ratification. At best, Ben Rhodes is the author of a Pyrrhic victory ensuring that the 45^th or 46^th president will face the same choice Obama faced, but against an Iran armed with nuclear bombs. At worst, Rhodes is the author of a tragedy he does not understand.

Rhodes’s narrative is not even particularly good fiction. Mistaken identities, fudged timelines, villains in disguise, and a two-dimensional hero are clichés. But the quality of fiction does not matter as long as consumers line up to buy it. This is where Rhodes truly excels, as a relatively shallow thinker, adroit mostly at influencing even shallower thinkers & hoodwinking people too busy to bother learning.

Rhodes is proud of the way he manipulates a gullible and hungry media comprised mostly of repeaters pretending to be reporters. From his White House “war room,” he and his assistant, Ned Price, reach out to their media “compadres” who are waiting by their iPhones, ready to transform the daily storytelling sessions into facts for the uninformed. Boasting that he “created an echo chamber,” and unable to conceal his contempt for the minions who amplify his fiction, Rhodes calls them “27 year olds who literally know nothing.” Enter the storyteller who provides them with lines. Samuels shows us he is in on the joke too, by pointing out that “Rhodes has become adept at ventriloquizing many people at once.”

In his daily conversation, Samuels tells us, Rhodes lumps together nearly everyone who came before Obama (Kissinger, Clinton, Bush, Gates, Panetta) as “the Blob” — the establishment that damaged the world so badly that only a magical hero can repair it. Rhodes tells Samuels that the “complete lack of governance in huge swaths of the Middle East, that is the project of the American establishment.” This is what happens to foreign policy when it is entrusted to the unqualified and undereducated.

In eight months, Ben Rhodes can get back to his former life — as he puts it, “drinking and smoking pot and hanging out in Central Park.” And presumably writing more fiction — this time perhaps the honest kind that does not pretend to be non-fiction. The entire world, except perhaps the world of fiction, will be better for it.

A.J. Caschetta is a senior lecturer at the Rochester Institute of Technology and a Shillman-Ginsburg fellow at the Middle East Forum.

Ben Rhodes & the Fiction behind the Iran Nuclear Deal

3.What Rhodes Revealed By Dr. Michael Makovsky – The Weekly Standard
Dr. Michael Makovsky is President & CEO of JINSA.

Sunday’s New York Times Magazine story by David Samuels on President Obama’s deputy national security advisor Ben Rhodes has created quite a stir. It’s not every day that a senior White House official brags about how the administration has successfully manipulated what he portrays as an ignorant and compliant media, particularly on as critical and contested an issue as last summer’s nuclear deal with Iran. The media has not taken kindly to Rhodes’ remarks, especially after so many of them carried the White House’s water.

The media’s hurt feelings aside, the 9,700-word article was more important for further revealing the Obama’s Administration’s approach to the world: undo much of the approach, strategy and achievements of seventy years of American foreign policy – the alliances and partnerships, the strength and the credibility that has kept us, and much of the world, safe.
Last month, WEEKLY STANDARD editor Bill Kristol and I authored an editorial, “The Costanza Approach,” that analyzed Jeffery Goldberg’s 30,000-word article in The Atlantic on a series of interviews with President Obama. We argued: “Obama’s foreign policy is less about what he stands for than what he rejects-namely, much of what America has stood for and done over many decades. Obama’s doctrine, such as it is, consists of a few simplistic ideas that emerge from a shallow and ideological disdain for the American past.”

Obama, we contended, sought to reverse U.S. foreign policy, by reassuring enemies we unnecessarily alienated in his view, such as Iran, Cuba and Venezuela, and distancing ourselves from traditional allies, such as Israel and Saudi Arabia. The Atlantic article reinforced a comparison we had made a few years earlier between Obama and Clement Attlee, the post-WWII British Prime Minister who sought precipitously to undo what he called the “mess of centuries” of prior British policies. The article on Rhodes further reinforces this interpretation.

In Samuels’ telling, “The buck stops with the establishment, not with Obama, who was left to clean up their mess.” Rhodes blames the “establishment,” or, as he calls it, “the Blob,” for all the world’s ills. Rhodes asserts: “The complete lack of governance in huge swaths of the Middle East, that is the project of the American establishment.” Similarly, Rhodes, according to Samuels, “goes off the record, to suggest, in effect, that the world of the Sunni Arabs that the American establishment built has collapsed.” To lay complete blame on the so-called American establishment for Middle Eastern chaos is absurd.

The modern Middle East structure that is now collapsing was broadly “built” by the victorious powers following the First World War. The United States, led by President Woodrow Wilson, certainly shares blame in believing pursuing self-determination and creating artificial states across irrational borders would better the inhabitants and lead to greater stability. The same approach failed in Europe as well. But that’s not what Rhodes has mind, as he appears oblivious to any such history.

And what is America’s big sin that merits such visceral, reflexive disdain? Iraq, of course. It is the lens through which Rhodes sees all American foreign policy. Samuels writes that “Iraq is his one-word answer to any and all criticism.” Indeed, Rhodes explains Obama’s passivity before the slaughter of over 400,000 in Syria thusly: “I profoundly do not believe that the United States could make things better in Syria by being there. And we have an evidentiary record of what happens when we’re there – nearly a decade in Iraq.” End of discussion. Serious ideas such as possible benefits to carving out a humanitarian enclave in Syria protected by a no-fly zone, for instance, merit no consideration. As Samuels writes about Rhodes’ thinking, “the Iraq war was proof, in black and white, not of the complexity of international affairs or the many perils attendant on political decision-making but of the fact that the decision-makers were morons.”

For Rhodes, history, or at least his historical knowledge, begins with the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, when he was 25. The article does dwell on how Rhodes, living in New York, reacted to 9/11, but it doesn’t seem to have left a big imprint on his thinking. If it did, he might have to pay greater attention to the threat posed by Islamic radicalism, which would interfere with the “narrative” he’s always spinning that the American establishment’s policies are the root of most problems and must be almost mindlessly undone.

The new narrative Rhodes seeks to create is bereft of much if any consideration of strategic interests at all, such as whether empowering Iran serves our strategic interests, or its impact on traditional Middle Eastern allies, such as Israel and Saudi Arabia. Presumably, he considers such details pesky carryovers from an antiquated establishment mode of thinking, which has drawn us in conflicts for decades.

As he argued about Iran, “We don’t have to kind of be in cycles of conflict if we can find other ways to resolve these issues….We can do things that challenge the conventional thinking that, you know, ‘AIPAC doesn’t like this,’ or ‘the Israeli government doesn’t like this,’ or ‘the gulf countries don’t like it.’ It’s the possibility of improved relations with adversaries. It’s nonproliferation.” Of course, the Iran deal encourages proliferation. It is the possibility of improved relations with our adversaries, which we have created unnecessarily, no matter the impact on our strategic position or that of our allies, that does seem to drive Rhodes and Obama.

It should not be surprising that President Obama’s closest aides share his outlook, including a simplistic, reactionary contempt for traditional U.S. foreign policy. But the article raises this troubling question: what does it say about a president with a top advisor on foreign policy who seems very clever but ignorant and shallow?
Dr. Michael Makovsky is President & CEO of JINSA.

INN NEWS

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4.Arlene Kushner “Many Bases” May 10, 2016

Culture and Sports Minister Miri Regev is working on a proposal that would require all institutions that receive state funds, or whose facilities were built by the State of Israel, to fly the Israeli flag. This would include sports centers, soccer fields, cultural institutions and theaters, etc.

Sounds like a no-brainer, does it not? But this is to apply to Jewish and Arab municipalities, and there remains the lingering possibility that there might be push-back somewhere along the line. No, let me be honest: there is a good likelihood of objections being raised somewhere within the Arab community.

Which is why what Regev is doing is good news. This is an instance of Israel moving in the right direction.

“It is unfathomable that flying the flag in cultural institutions and in sports arenas that were built by the state be left to the discretion of one person or the other,” she said. “The institutions that Israel builds should wave the flag with pride.”

http://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/New-proposal-would-require-every-state-funded-culture-center-to-fly-Israeli-flag-453505

Credit: mfa

The Shin Bet (Israel’s national security agency or Shabak) has a new head: Nadav Argaman.  Courtesy Shin Bet

Having grown up on a kibbutz in the Beit She’an, Argaman joined the Sayeret Matkal special forces unit of the IDF and from there moved on to Shin Bet. Most of his career was spent in the most prestigious and highly secretive “Operations Division.” Notable for me is the fact the he was responsible for the assassination of “The Engineer,” Yahya Ayyash, chief bomb-maker for Hamas, and, within that capacity, head of the West Bank battalion of Hamas’s military wing, Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades. A terrorist who very much needed eliminating.

See more: http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4769096,00.html

And speaking of the Shin Bet…

It was announced last Thursday that the Shin Bet had, on April 16, apprehended a Izz ad-Din al-Qassam operative who had slipped into Israel from Gaza carrying knives. Mahmoud Atauna, 29, confessed readily enough that he was on a mission to kill whichever Israelis he encountered. But that was just the beginning of what he revealed to Israeli security – as he had been involved in tunnel activities;

He spoke about “the physical features of tunnels in northern Gaza, about techniques used by Hamas in digging them, and about the use of private homes and institutions by Hamas, from which it digs the tunnels.
“He also provided information on the means and materials Hamas uses. During questioning, Atauna pointed to many digging centers, and to tunnel shafts that are supposed to serve the Nuhba [Hamas’s elite unit] operatives for attacks during fighting with Israel.”

He provided names of others who worked with him, and information on hospitals and private homes used for the storage of weapons. His own home was “a storage center for many weapons, including bombs, assault rifles, and suicide bomb vests, which he was supposed to distribute before a large-scale conflict with Israel broke out.”

http://www.jpost.com/Arab-Israeli-Conflict/Shin-Bet-gleans-vast-tunnel-data-from-Hamas-member-453244

It was also on Thursday that the IDF announced another Hamas tunnel had been discovered emerging from southern Gaza into Israeli territory. It is 28 meters deep and runs close to the tunnel that was discovered last month.

Credit: IDF Spokesman

“The IDF considers above and below-ground terror activity a violation of the State of Israel’s sovereignty and a threat to its citizens and deems Hamas solely responsible,” a spokesperson said. “It is our job to locate and destroy them [tunnels in Israel’s territory].”

http://www.timesofisrael.com/second-gazan-tunnel-reaching-into-israel-found-army-says/

The IDF spokesperson further indicated that the tunnel was uncovered using a combination of intelligence, technology and engineering. What I would say, based on all I’ve read, is that it was the information gleaned from the Hamas operative that did the trick. Once he provided approximate parameters of the tunnel, hi-tech equipment enabled its exposure.

As a result of IDF attempts to unearth Hamas tunnels, the situation at the border grew hot last week. Mortar shells were fired at IDF soldiers who were at work near the border in at least 12 incidents between Tuesday and Friday. Friday night and early Saturday, two rockets were fired into Israel.

Israel responded, first by returning fire in response to the mortar shelling and then via a series of five airstrikes into Gaza aimed at Hamas targets.

Credit: FT

For a period of time, there was serious speculation as to how much these hostilities were going to escalate.

As I write there is quiet, but it is an uneasy quiet.

Israel has begun dismantling the best offensive weapon Hamas had, which was being enhanced in preparation for a war some time down the road. Hamas cannot force the IDF to stop looking for tunnels in Israeli territory (as more most certainly exist). The IDF is in possession of some stunningly detailed intelligence now, as well as machinery that utilizes advanced technology.

As IDF spokesman Peter Lerner said: “The repeated attacks against the IDF activities to locate and destroy cross-border tunnels will not be tolerated. Hamas’s diabolical plan to infiltrate into Israeli communities must be stopped. The IDF has the obligation and a duty to safeguard the people in southern Israel and the sovereignty of our borders, we will continue to do so.” (Emphasis added)

What Hamas could do, however (but apparently chooses not to do at this point) is continue to fire across the border, inviting retaliation from the IDF so that an escalation of major proportions takes place.

The only thing to be said now is that the situation is volatile & the dynamic is shifting.

There have been some international suggestions made regarding a “truce,” in which Hamas would agree to refrain from shooting into Israel in return for Israel’s agreement to stop searching for tunnels. These suggestions infuriate me. A truce is in order when there is aggressive action between two parties. However, Israeli action against the tunnels that have been dug in Israeli territory is absolutely legitimate self-defense and does not constitute aggression against Hamas. We must trust that we can take Lt. Col. Lerner, who is speaking for the IDF, at his word.

The biggest question here, I would imagine, is what Hamas leaders decide is in their best interest. Before the discovery of the tunnels, and the capture of Atauna, it did not seem to be the case that they were on the verge of precipitating another war. That they were preparing to do so down the road, of course. But our greatly enhanced ability to uncover their tunnels has to have them furious and frustrated. Will they see it as wiser to provoke an escalation soon, while there are still tunnels that might be utilized? Or would they prefer to hold off because they haven’t completed other preparations & they’ve barely begun to recover from the last war?

All of this echoes enormously because of what broke in the news the other day: A report on political failures during the 2014 Gaza war by State Controller Yoseph Shapira was leaked.

Credit: Moti Milrad

“According to the leaked report, the comptroller first slams Netanyahu, Ya’alon and former IDF Chief-of Staff Lt. Gen. (res.) Benny Gantz (pictured) for failing to warn the security cabinet about intelligence they had from the Shin Bet about the possibility of war with Hamas prior to the start of Operation Protective Edge…”

Credit: Getty

“Next, the report attacks the trio for failing to hold serious security meetings about the Hamas tunnel threat…” http://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Comptroller-report-leak-on-2014-war-rattles-leadership-453399

Needless to say, the entire situation has been highly politicized. Netanyahu’s defenders say this was leaked simply to damage him and that the information was drawn from a draft that is greatly different from the final document. We will know more in this regard when the final document is released to the public – which apparently is scheduled to happen soon. Shapira has called upon Attorney-General Avichai Mandelblit to investigate the source of the leak, as well.

But even if the charges made by those defending Netanyahu ‘et al’ are true to a degree, this seems to me a case of “where there’s smoke…” I have my own memories of realizing after the fact that there had been tunnels in Israeli territory and that nothing had been done about them until the war started. It was, in fact, Minister Naftali Bennett, who pushed the issue of the necessity of an operation against the tunnels at cabinet meetings, to the great irritation of Defense Minister Ya’alon. http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/187369#.VzF9PHlf3IU

And I remember the wide-scale feeling here that the war had ended prematurely. There was enormous international pressure, and the incessant Hamas PR about how Israel – with the most moral military in the world – was wantonly killing civilians. Huge anti-Israel demonstrations in various nations. It takes tremendous resolve on the part of our leaders to keep going in the face of that. But that is what we must demand of our leaders: spines of steel.

Especially now, we need leaders who are strong and proud.

There have been instances of late of some in leadership positions – not all by any means! – who seem too eager to show the world how tough we can be on our own & how “nice” to others.

There was the rush in certain quarters to prematurely condemn the soldier who killed a wounded terrorist in Hevron – before the facts were known. Chief among these was Ya’alon, who spoke with great harshness, when he should have simply said that he had confidence that the military courts would see justice done – that it was a point of pride with the military that justice would be sought. The soldier, Elor Azaria, is standing trial now and there has been some discomfiting press about that, as well.

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/211702#.VzGDz3lf3IV

Credit: Flash90

One gets the feeling that there may be a fear that if he is found innocent of manslaughter – and it is possible that he is innocent of manslaughter even if his judgment was poor – then the world will accuse us of going easy on murderers of Arabs. In fairness to the IDF, there seems a strongly held conviction that he is guilty and must not get away with what he did. Right now, the court is looking for a plea bargain.

And there was Netanyahu’s maddening but unsurprising reversal of his order – of just weeks previous – not to return bodies of terrorists to their families. He gave the word to Internal Security Minister Gilad Erdan, who has authority regarding terror acts inside the Green Line, and to Defense Minister Moshe Dayan, who oversees the Civil Administration in Judea and Samaria, that they were free to release bodies at their discretion with the proviso that the funerals would be very small and quiet affairs. Bad policy, in my opinion, to have different people making decisions on the same issue in different areas. (I wrote recently about Harry Truman’s motto that “The Buck Stops Here,” but I guess Netanyahu missed that.)

Erdan is opposed to release. But Ya’alon wasted no time.

Ahmed Reyad Shehada was shot dead by IDF forces after ramming his car into a group of soldiers, injuring three, one critically. Forthwith, his body was returned. And guess what? A huge funeral for him attended by thousands took place in a suburb of Ramallah.

http://www.jewishpress.com/news/breaking-news/thousands-at-funeral-for-car-ramming-terrorist/2016/05/04/

Credit: Flash 90

This does not serve us well.

Within hours, a siren will sound signaling the beginning of Yom HaZikaron, Israeli Memorial Day. And so I leave off writing now and will in my next posting look at this most somber day of mourning and the joyous Yom Ha’Atzmaut, Israeli Independence Day, which follows.

I close with Neshama Carlebach singing “Shomer Yisrael” – Guardian of Israel – a traditional prayer.

The video includes a mix of pictures about Israel.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYUE2sDKmqw

Guardian of Israel,
protect the remnant of Israel
Don’t let Israel be destroyed
Those who say “Shma Yisrael”

Guardian of the unique nation
Protect the remnant of the unique people
Don’t let the unique nation be destroyed
Those who proclaim the oneness of your name;
“Hashem is our G-d, Hashem is One”
(Guardian of Israel)

Guardian of the holy nation
Protect the remnant of the holy people
Don’t let the holy nation be destroyed
Those who proclaim three-fold
Sanctifications to the Holy One
(Guardian of Israel)

© 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

‘F-35 designed to deal with threats like S-300,’ Lockheed Martin official in Israel says

Israel’s first stealth fighter jet enters advanced production stage in Texas

WIRED reports that Israel will be alone among the Pentagon’s customers that will be permitted to outfit the warplane with its own technological enhancements.

Three F-35 Joint Strike Fighters (rear to front) AF-2, AF-3 & AF-4 flying over Edwards Air Force Base. (photo credit:Reuters)

Israel is unique among America’s allies in that it is the only country on earth that enjoys special dispensation to install modifications on US-made military hardware, according to an Internet report.
The tech magazine WIRED reported this week that not only will Israel be the first US ally to receive the brand-new stealth F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter jet, but it will be alone among the Pentagon’s customers that will be permitted to outfit the warplane with its own technological enhancements.
The first Lockheed Martin F-35 stealth fighter jet, due to be delivered to Israel in December, has entered an advanced production stage.

Jeff Babione, head of the F-35 program at Lockheed Martin, said the plane would upgrade Israel’s tactical and strategic capabilities, and strengthen relations between the company and the IAF, Defense Ministry, and Israeli defense industries for many decades to come.
Israel has purchased 33 F-35A fighters jets at an average cost of $110 million per aircraft. The first two aircraft are due to arrive at the Negev’s Nevatim airbase in December this year, and the air force is preparing to integrate them into its operations.
According to WIRED, Israel will be permitted to install “customized software and weapons” while also allowing the Israeli Air Force to service the planes independently.
The article states Israel “gets a pass” because of its successful track record with technological enhancements of American-made weaponry, particularly the F-16 & F-15 model fighter jets.
Israel’s defense industries sell many of these enhancements to the US, including weapons systems, sensors, and communications gear.

Yaakov Lappin contributed to this report.
============= Please contribute to The Freeman Center’s essential educational activities. Mail check to address above or by paypal: http://www.freeman.org/paypal.htm

6.Trump to Israel Hayom: Israel is the US’s bastion of hope

Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump says that if he is elected, “we are going to protect Israel” • “We are going to make sure Israel is in very good shape forever,” Trump pledges, declaring that he will be visiting Israel “soon.” By Boaz Bismuth, ISRAEL HAYOM

Q: As we speak, today, Israel remembers the victims of war and terror. Our memorial day is today and in a few hours we will begin celebrating Independence Day. As you know, the threats facing Israel have not gone away. On the contrary. As Israelis remember their dead, and then celebrate their independence, what message would you like to send the Israeli people?

DONALD TRUMP: “I think that the threat to Israel right now is greater than it has ever been because of what happened with Iran and the Iran deal made by President [Barack] Obama. I think it is a horrible, horrible situation that our president has placed Israel in and I think that Obama has been very, very bad for the people of Israel. I just want to tell them that I am extremely strongly in favor of Israel, I respect it and have loved the people of Israel for a long time. I have many friends who are from Israel and we’re going to make sure that Israel is going to be in very good shape forever.”

Q: The people of Israel consider themselves to be America’s strong allies. Some of your critics, even in Israel, claim that you would be bad for Israel because you have said that America’s allies should pay back the military aid they receive. Can you assure us that Israel will be treated differently if you are elected president?

“You are the first person to ever tell me that I have critics in Israel. I have such great support in Israel. I did a campaign commercial for Bibi [Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu]. We are going to protect Israel. Don’t forget, Israel is our great bastion of hope in that region so Israel is very important.”

Q: Congratulations, you are the presumptive Republican nominee. But why is it so difficult for the party leaders to accept that?

“Well, I think it just came upon them very quickly. It was going to be June 6, and maybe even the convention, and all of a sudden I had this tremendous run where I won New York and Pennsylvania and Connecticut and Maryland and then I won Indiana which was going to be a big strength for [former candidate Ted] Cruz and all those other guys and I ended up winning it in a landslide. They all just left the race, it was just amazing. So all of a sudden we had a winner but it took place very quickly. But I think we are going to have very good relationships. Many, many people are coming aboard right now.”

Q: Do you think people like Paul Ryan will ultimately accept the people’s choice?

“I hope so. I think that Paul Ryan and I will get along very well.”

Q: Let’s talk about November. Do you consider Hillary Clinton to be a tough opponent or do you think she will be easy to beat?

“Everybody’s a tough opponent. I consider all the 16 [Republican candidates] that I’ve beaten to get the nomination to be tough opponents. They’re all tough opponents. There are no weak ones at this level. She will be difficult just like anybody else.”

Q: Today we learned that you are neck and neck with Clinton in three battleground states — Florida, Hawaii and Pennsylvania. Do you think that this is the beginning of a trend? Do you think you can win a general election in your home state, New York?

“Yeah, we’re doing very well in the polls against Hillary Clinton, and I think we are going to do very well in New York. I really think I have a chance to win New York whereas no other Republican would even campaign in New York.”

Q: Do you think Obama will help Clinton’s campaign?

“He might help with certain groups of people and with other groups but I don’t think he will be much of a factor one way or the other. People are tired of Obama. They want Obama out. And Hillary is just four more years of Obama.”

Q: Do you consider any of the 16 opponents you had in the race to be potential running mates?

“Yeah, I would consider some of them. I have great respect for some of them. Certainly they would be considered.”

Q: Mazal tov on your grandson. I noticed that he has been named Theodore, which is also the first name of the founder of Zionism, Theodor Herzl. Do you think little Theodore is also destined for greatness?

“He’s a great young man. He’s a great guy, this little one. I can’t believe how small they are at that age, but he’s a beautiful baby. The name Theodore is just a name that they [Trump’s daughter and son-in-law] really liked & it’s probably connected to a lot of different points. But it was just a name they liked.”

Q: I heard that you will be visiting us here in Israel soon, before the election.

“I’ll be there soon.”

Trump to Israel Hayom: Israel is the US’s bastion of hope

7.Iran threatens to sink US warships

Islamic Republic’s naval forces claim secret weapons arsenal at the ready to hit any US warship, brands America ‘absolute evil.’ By Tova Dvorin Arutz Sheva IsraelNationalNews.com

First Publish: 5/11/2016, 5:13 PM The Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) threatened to “drown” any US warships approaching Iran, a top general said Tuesday, according to state-controlled media. “We have informed Americans that their presence in the Persian Gulf is an absolute evil,” Rear Admiral Ali Fadavi stated to state media. “Americans are aware that Iran would destroy their warships if they take a wrong measure in the region.”

He further threatened that the US would “lose control of everything” by drawing others into Middle-East affairs.

“There has never been normal conditions in the Persian Gulf and Americans can feel the presence of IRGC navy forces at any spot,” he added. “Iran’s great power has forced US to consider creation of deterrent capabilities.”

Fadavi also boasted that the West remains unaware of Iran’s alleged naval capabilities, including surface-to-air missiles.

The threats surface just days after top White House adviser Ben Rhodes revealed the US deliberately misled the American public about the 2015 Iran deal.

While the public was led to believe talks began after the election of “moderate” Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, talks with Islamists in the country began far earlier, he said.

In November of 2013, it was revealed that a preliminary deal between Iran and the West was made possible due to secret talks that the United States and Iran held for more than half a year and were authorized by US President Barack Obama himself. Those discussions were kept hidden even from America’s closest friends, including its five negotiating partners and from Israel.

Iran threatens to sink US warships

y 11th, 20168.Guess Where J Street Recruits Its Leaders?

Wednesday May 11, 2016 08:33 JV STAFF Opinion  JV Editorial

The Jewish Council for Public Affairs (JCPA) is a major organization, counting among its member agencies, Hadassah, The Jewish War Veterans, Jewish Community Relations Councils, Jewish Federations, ORT, The American Jewish Committee and on and on. In other words, it has great clout within the Jewish community. But sadly, it’s just another politically Progressive, Leftist led activist group.

Its current head honcho is Susan Turnbull, a former Democrat National Committee Vice-Chair still heavily involved in Democrat politics in Maryland. She supported Obama’s candidacy for president, being fully aware of his anti-Israel stance. Therefore, one has to come to the reasonable conclusion that her leadership of the JCPA will follow a Leftist course. Impartial, she is not.

And none other than its recently retired CEO and longtime leader, Rabbi Steve Gutow, was the founding Executive Director of the National Jewish Democratic Council and a long time Democrat operative in Texas. We just learned that he has been hired by the J Street organization as a Senior Political Advisor. In other words, Gutow is now working for a pro-Palestine, anti-Israel group. Under his leadership and still going strong, the JCPA plenums (conventions to ordinary folk) have been replete with radical Muslim and far Left Jewish speakers including, wouldn’t you know it, from the J Street crowd.

The JCPA has seen, through the years, its executives use that group as a stepping stone to J Street employment. Gutow now joins Hadar Susskind, Hannah Rosenthal and Rachel Lerner, among others, all graduates of the JCPA, who later climbed up the proverbial ladder to vital positions at J Street. Please understand that they would not have been selected without scouting reports of their history and congruency with J Street’s anti-Israel viewpoints. Here are the words of Jeremy Ben-Ami, the head of J Street regarding his employment of Rabbi Gutow: “We’re thrilled that Rabbi Gutow will be part of our team for this cycle in determining the future direction of American foreign policy. Bringing decades of experience with progressive politics and the Jewish community, Rabbi Gutow will help JStreetPAC to demonstrate that support of American diplomatic leadership isn’t just good policy – it’s also a major political asset.”

So, how many current leaders of JCPA are now taking batting practice showing off their skills at stabbing Israel and American Jews in the back in order to impress the likes of Jeremy Ben-Ami who is the major Jewish voice for a shared Jerusalem, a two state solution, BDS and inevitably, the destruction of the state of Israel. If you are a member of any of the JCPA’s affiliated groups, speak up and demand a withdrawal from that radical, anything but Israel supporting umbrella organization. If you pay dues, you have a voice. Use it!

9.Who Can Count the Dust of Jacob by Daniel Greenfield

Posted: 10 May 2016 03:51 PM PDT

“Who can count the dust of Jacob or number the seed of Israel.” Numbers 23:10
The sun sets above the hills. The siren cries out and on the busy highways that wend among the hills, the traffic stops, the people stop, and a moment of silence comes to a noisy country.
Flags fly at half mast, the torch of remembrance is lit, memorial candles are held in shaking hands and the country’s own version of the Flanders Field poppy, the Red Everlasting daisy, dubbed Blood of the Maccabees, adorns lapels. And so begins the Yom Hazikaron, Heroes Remembrance Day, the day of remembrance for fallen soldiers and victims of terror– Israel’s Memorial Day.

What is a memorial day in a country that has always known war and where remembrance means adding the toll of one year’s dead and wounded to the scales of history.
A country where war never ends, where the sirens may pause but never stop, where each generation grows up knowing that they will have to fight or flee. To stand watch or run away.
It is not so much the past that is remembered on this day, but the present and the future. The stillness, a breath in the warm air, before setting out to climb the slopes of tomorrow.
Who can count the dust of Jacob? And yet each memorial day we count the dust. Each name is one among many who have fallen defending the land for thousands of years. Flesh wears out, blood falls to the earth where the red daisies grow, and bone turns to dust. The dust blows across the graves of soldiers and prophets, the tombs of priests hidden behind brush, the caverns where forefathers rest in sacred silence, laid to rest by their sons, who were laid to rest by their own sons, generations burying the past, standing guard over it, being driven away and returning each time for memory’s sake.
On Memorial Day, the hands of memory are dipped in the dust raising it to the blue sky. A prayer, a whisper, a dream of peace. And the wind blows the candles out. War follows. And once again blood flows into the dust. A young lieutenant shading his eyes against the sun. An old man resting with his family on the beach. Children climbing into bed in a village on a hilltop. And more bodies are laid to rest in the dust. Until dust they become.
In this land, the Maker of Stars and Dust vowed to Abraham that his children would be as many as the dust of the earth and the stars of heaven. In their darkest days, they would be as the dust. But there is mercy in the numberless count of the dust. Mercy in not being able to make a full count of the fallen and remaining ignorant of that full measure of woe. Modern technologies permit us terrible estimates. Databanks store the names of millions; digital cemeteries of ghosts. But there is no counting the dust. And when we walk the length and breadth of the land, as the Maker told Abraham to do, it the dust that supports our feet, we walk in the dust of our ancestors.
Some new countries are built to escape from the past, but there is no escaping it in these ancient hills. IDF soldiers patrol over ground once contested by empires, tread over spearheads and the wheels of chariots buried deep in the earth. The Assyrians and the Babylonians came through here in all their glory. Greek and Roman soldiers and mercenaries pitted themselves against the handful of Judeans out of the Babylonian exile. The Ottoman and the Arab raged here, and Crusader battering rams and British Enfield rifles still echo in the quiet hills.
Here in the silence of remembrance the present is always the past and the sky hangs like a thin veil fluttering against the future. The believers cast their prayers out of their mouths against the veil. The soldiers cast their lives and their hearts. And still the future flutters above, like the sky near enough to touch, but out of reach. Beneath it, the sky-blue flag, the stripe of the believer’s shawls adorned with the interlocked star of the House of David.
Can these bones live, the Lord asks Ezekiel. And generations, after each slaughter, they come again, the descendants of the dead to reclaim the hills of their ancestors. Rising like the red flowers out of the soil. Like the bones out of the earth. They come up as slaves out of Egypt and out of the captivity of empires, their tongues as numberless as the earth. Here they set up kingdoms and nations. And there in shadows on the dust, a handful of men fight off a legion; swords, spears and rifles in hand they face down impossible odds. They fight and die, but they go on.
The calendar itself is a memorial. Israel’s Memorial Day, Independence Day and Lag BaOmer; the commemoration of the original Yom Yerushalayim, the brief liberation of Jerusalem from the Romans, still covertly remembered in bonfires and bows shot into the air, all in a season that begins with Passover, the exodus that set over a million people off on a forty-year journey to return to the homeland of their forefathers.

The battles today are new, but they are also very old. The weapons are new, but the struggle is the same. Who will remain and who will be swept away. Some 3,000 years ago, Judge Jephthah and the King of Ammon were exchanging messages not too different from today’s diplomatic communiques. The King of Ammon demanded land for peace and the Judge laid out Israel’s case in a message that he knew the enemy would hardly trouble to read before going to war.

Take a stray path in these hills and you may find a grinning terrorist with a knife, or the young David pitting his slingshot against a lion or bear. This way the Maccabees rush ahead against the armies of a slave empire and that way a helicopter passes low overhead on the way to Gaza. Time is a fluid thing here. And what you remember; you shall find.
The soldier is not so sacred as he once was. The journalist and the judge have taken his place. The actors sneer from their theaters. The politicians gobble their free food and babble of peace. Musicians sing shrilly of flowers in gun barrels and doves everywhere. But the soldier still stands where he must. The borders have shrunk. The old victories have been exchanged for diplomatic defeats. From the old strongholds come missiles and rockets. And children hide in bomb shelters waiting for the worst to pass. This is the doing of the journalist and the judge, the politician and the actor, the lions of literature who send autographed copies of their books to imprisoned terrorists and the grandchildren of great men who hire themselves on in service to the enemy.
The man who serves is still sacred, but the temple of duty is desecrated more and more each year. Leftist academics dismiss the heroes of the past as myths or murderers. Their wives dress in black and harass soldiers at checkpoints, their children wrap their faces in Keffiyahs and throw stones at them. Draft dodging, once a black mark of shame, has become a mark of pride among the left. Some boast about how easy it is, others enlist only to then refuse to serve. They call themselves Refusniks , accepting the Soviet view of Israel as an illegitimate warmongering state, but laying claim to the name of the Zionists who fought to escape the Soviet Union.
Some are only afraid, but some are filled with hate. They have looked into a twisted mirror and drunk of the poisoned wine. They have found their Inner Cain & go to slay their brothers with words.
How shall I curse whom G-d has not cursed, asks Balaam. But the King of Moab is determined to have is curses anyway. And today it is to the UN that they come for curses. Muslim lands boil with blood, but resolution after resolution follows damning Israel. China squats on the mountains of Tibet, Russian government thugs throw dissidents out of windows and Saudi firefighters push girls back into a burning building. And still the resolutions come like curses.
In a land built on memory, it is possible not to remember, but it is impossible to entirely forget. A war of memories comes. A war for the dust. Is this a day of remembrance or a day of shame. Were those men who fought and died for Judea and Samaria, for the Golan and Jerusalem, for every square inch of land when the armies of Muslim dictators came to push them into the sea, heroes or villains. Were Nasser, Hussein, Saddam, Arafat, Assad and the House of Saud the real heroes all along. The tiny minority of 360 million pitted against the overwhelming majority of 6 million.
History has been rewritten before. It may be rewritten again. And yet in the end, the dust prevails.

Though men may forget, the dust remembers. And the men return to it. For some four thousand years they have done it. And they shall do it again. For He who has made men of the dust and made worlds of the dust of stars does not forget. As the stars turn in whirling galaxies and the dust flies across the land, so the people return to the land. And though they forget, they remember again. For the dust is the memory of ages and the children shall always return to the dust of their ancestors.
In the cities, towns and villages– the dead are remembered. Those who died with weapons in their hands and those who simply died. Men, women and children. Drops of blood cast to the dust, reborn as flowers on lapels. Reborn as memory.
All go to one place, said King Solomon, all that lives is of the dust, and all returns to the dust. There is nothing better than that a man should rejoice in his works. And so memorial day precedes the day of independence. That we rejoice in that which those who sleep in the dust have died to protect. The skyscrapers and the orchards, the sheep ranches and the highways, the schools and the synagogues.
For they who drained the swamps and built the roads, who held guard over the air and built the cities, may not have lived to see their works. But we rejoice in their works for them. And a new generation rises to watch over their dust and tend the works that they have built. Until the day when He that counts the dust of Jacob shall count them all, and the land shall stir, and in the words of Daniel, they that sleep in dust shall arise, and then rejoice with us.

10.Sykes-Picot borders are collapsing due to failed Western policy

The international community’s mental fixation in concentrating solely on the Palestinian problem have proved a complete failure over the years, and have contributed nothing to changing the nature of the Middle East. Quite the contrary. Published: Wednesday, May 11, 2016 12:52 PM

Amb. Freddy Eytan, is a former Foreign Ministry senior advisor who served in Israel’s who served in Israel’s embassies in Paris and Brussels, was Israel’s first Ambassador to Mauritania and spokesman of the Israeli delegation in the Israel-Arab peace talks.. Since 2007, he heads the Israel-Europe Project at the JCPA which focuses on analyzing Israeli relations with Europe, seeking to develop ties and avenues of bilateral cooperation. He is also the director of Le Cape, the Jerusalem Center website in French. He has written 20 books about the Israeli-Arab conflict and the policy of France in the Middle East, including La Poudriere (The Powder Keg), Le double jeu (the Double Game) and biographies of Shimon Peres, Ariel Sharon, Benjamin Netanyahu, and The 18 Who Built Israel .

We are now marking 100 years since the signing of the Sykes-Picot Agreement to divide the Middle East between France and Britain. The national borders that were then arbitrarily and irresponsibly drawn are now collapsing before our eyes, threatening chaos in the region as a whole.

With the aim of clarifying the reasons for the collapse and for the emergence of the current situation, the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs (JCPA)’s researchers have conducted a detailed study of the issue and, along with the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, have organized an international conference in Jerusalem that will be attended by the leading experts and by members of the diplomatic community in Israel.

Sykes-Picot Map INN:LK

This is undoubtedly the first conference of its kind that will seek to explain the factors behind the Sykes-Picot Agreement – specifically whether they were political, economic, ethnic, tribal, or religious – as well as the agreement’s repercussions. Was the main reason for the accord, as anti-Zionist activists claim, “the creation of the state of Israel, a foreign body in the Arab-Muslim world,” notwithstanding the fact that the conflict began before the Jewish state was established?

The aim of the research and of the conference is to inspire fruitful thought and to prove, on the basis of historical facts, that over the past 100 years the international powers have pursued a naïve, self-serving, and erroneous approach to understanding the people of the Middle East, and that in reality the Palestinian problem is not the core of the conflict. Indeed, if the Palestinian problem were to be solved here and now, would all of the region’s other problems have been solved? Would the threats posed by Iran and Hezbollah, by the Islamic State, and the waves of terror attacks all fade from the scene? The international community’s mental fixation and stubbornness in concentrating solely on the Palestinian problem have proved a complete failure over the years, and have contributed nothing to changing the nature of the Middle East. On the contrary, it has encouraged terror and sown instability in the entire region.

Today, 100 years after Sykes-Picot, this whole region, which was then under Ottoman control, is in a state of upheaval. Fierce battles rage from Damascus and Aleppo to the Sinai Peninsula, from Baghdad to Tripoli (in Libya) and to Yemen.

The failure of Western diplomacy already began at the time of Sykes-Picot, and it runs like a thread up to the present day. It is clear that the local conflicts, both ethnic and religious, remain unresolved, and that the attempts to overthrow totalitarian regimes in Egypt, Iraq, Syria, Tunisia, and Libya with the ostensible aim of establishing Western democracies in their stead have fallen far short of the mark.

Europe has not only failed in its foreign policy throughout the years. It is now struggling to thwart Islamic terror attacks on its own soil, and it is not coping successfully with the immigration waves of refugees from the Middle Eastern battlefields.

Only recognition of the existence of a Jewish state will lead to real peace. So long as none of the Arab states, let alone the Palestinians, accepts the fact that peace can only result from direct talks, trust, and mutual recognition, no stability will reign here.

The historical facts clearly demonstrate that none of the attempts by the Western states and the United Nations to dictate borders and impose an order, as France and Britain tried to do a century ago, have borne fruit. It is clear to anyone with eyes to see that clinging to this mistaken approach today will only make the Middle East an arena of unceasing violent conflicts.

Amb. Freddy Eytan, a former Foreign Ministry senior advisor who served in Israel’s embassies in Paris and Brussels, was Israel’s first Ambassador to the Islamic Republic of Mauritania. He was also the spokesman of the Israeli delegation in the peace process with the Palestinians. Since 2007, he heads the Israel-Europe Project at the Jerusalem Center, which focuses on analyzing Israeli relations with the countries of Europe and seeks to develop ties and avenues of bilateral cooperation. He is also the director of Le Cape, the Jerusalem Center website in French. Amb. Eytan has written 20 books about the Israeli-Arab conflict and the policy of France in the Middle East, including La Poudriere (The Powder Keg) and Le double jeu (the Double Game). He has also published biographies of Shimon Peres, Ariel Sharon, Benjamin Netanyahu, and a book, The 18 Who Built Israel.

Sykes-Picot borders are collapsing due to failed Western policy