Churchill and the Jews

Jewish World Review Nov. 1, 2007 20 Mar-Cheshvan 5768
‘The Kosher Conspiracy’
By Suzanne Fields

http://www.JewishWorldReview.com The wraiths and witches of Halloween have retreated once more to the crevices of youthful imagination, but real ghosts continue to stalk our humanity. None are so spooky as the costumes of the anti-Semites who once more grow bold. When the grim outlines of the Holocaust were first revealed, a mantra of "never again" echoed sympathy for the Jews and translated into support for the state of Israel. Nowhere was this more dramatic than in Europe, where six million Jews died as bystanders insisted they didn't know what was going on.
A new hostility toward Jews is emerging in England, like Germany, one of the most civilized of nations. This time it's difficult to avert the eyes. The anti-Semites of Nazi Germany are easy to characterize as thugs and brutes who threw people and pianos out windows, but other anti-Semites listened to Mozart, Beethoven and Bach while plotting the Holocaust.
In England today anti-Semites read poetry, enjoy fine arts and sip fine wines, sneering at Jews with haughty abandon. Anti-Jewish themes gain acceptability. "In public and private discourse in Britain . . . there is a danger that this trend will become more and more mainstream," a Parliamentary survey warned only last year. Melanie Phillips, author of "Londonistan," documents how rife the Jew-hating disease is in the growing Muslim communities of England. But she shows how it also permeates the elite cultures of the media, the political and academic Left and even the Church of England. The targeting has been recalibrated from the Jewish race to the Jewish state.
"Zionism is now a dirty word in Britain, and opposition to Israel has become a fig leaf for a resurgence of the oldest hatred," she writes in City Journal. "What anti-Semitism once did to Jews as people, it now does to Jews as a people." The old Jew haters wanted the religion to disappear. The new haters want Israel with all those Jews to disappear.
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The ghost of Winston Churchill, who admired Jews for their energy, their intellect and their creative drive, is surely spinning in a narrow English coffin. "He was both a friend in their hours of need and a friend in deed," writes British historian Martin Gilbert in his new book "Churchill and the Jews." It has never been more relevant. America's favorite prime minister couldn't understand why the Arabs refused to learn agricultural techniques from the Jews of Palestine eight decades ago. He couldn't understand why the presence of Jews was considered an injustice to Arabs, nor why certain Englishmen thought they had more to gain from the Arab occupation of the unworked arid land than the Jews who transformed the desert into a vast oasis.
"Why is there harsh injustice done if people come and make a livelihood for more and make the desert into palm groves and orange groves?" Sir Winston asked. "Why is it injustice because there is more work and wealth for everyone? There is no injustice. The injustice is when those who live in the country leave it to be a desert for a thousand years."
He defended the Jewish presence in Palestine as historical precedent. Jews arrived before the Arabs, who arrived as outsiders and conquerors. "In the time of Christ," Churchill observed, "the population of Palestine was much greater when it was a Roman province." The majority in that Roman province were Jews.

Rabbi Jonathan Ginsburg

Watch out for new Carter film

Someone sent me this

Subject: Carter Film to be Released: Should we hand out information telling the truth?


I would like to alert you about the latest (subject to change) danger to American support of Israel and threat against American Jewry.

Next Friday, Nov. 9, a film will open in theaters nationwide (it has already opened in New York and L.A. ) called "A Man From Plains." It is a documentary approx. two hours and 10 minutes long directed by Academy-Award winner Jonathan Demme ("Silence of the Lambs") and financed by the folks who gave the world the movie "An Inconvenient Truth" (Al Gore) that follows Jimmy Carter around on his nationwide book tour for Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid.

The film is a total, unadulterated anti-Israel diatribe which seeks to rob us of any claim of our legitimate rights to Judea and Samaria (of course, the film calls those areas the "West Bank") and casts (as does his book) Jewish/Israeli actions outside of the "Green Line" as more horrific and barbaric than that of the South African regime, and perhaps even Genghis Khan. As the same time, Carter is portrayed as grandfatherly, kind, hard-working, gentle, sincere, committed to making the world better, beloved and honest to a fault.

I must tell you that the directors do a very convincing job. All but the most ardent Zionist will leave the theater thinking the worst of Israel and our people, and, since the film is more likely to attract those who are more politically active, many who see the film may be compelled to urge the White House, Congress and the media to "get tough with Israel," to use a euphenism. In fact, in several scenes in the documentary, Carter and those asking questions in assorted Q&A sessions represented in the film make that very point: that the media needs to be more critical of Israel and report all the really bad things Israel is doing to the "Palestinians," and that Israel -- through AIPAC -- has our government and politicians intimidated and wrapped around its little finger.
Carter repeatedly refers to the area as "Palestine;" calls the security barrier a "wall"; talks about roads for Jews only; accuses Jews of stealing land that Palestinians have lived on for generations and cutting down ancient and valuable olive trees, and on and on. There is much footage of Israeli bulldozers uprooting trees and demolishing houses, and sad, tearful Arab faces.

Jews who protested at the Carter book-signing and speeches are shown as practically foaming at the mouth and nasty, while the Arabs are respectful and just want "their" land "back" and peace.

Carter is shown at Camp David making "peace" between Begin and Sadat, building houses in Katrina-ravaged New Orleans , shaking hands and well, walking on water. Yes, the audience is told several times, he reads the Bible every night. It is ghastly.

As you may know, Al Gore's film won an Oscar, and has been shown in public schools as gospel throughout the land.

We can expect at least such a push with this film about Carter.

The film will serve as a "Cliff's Notes" version of Carter's book; the people who did not read it but rather decided to "wait for the movie."

As I said, this film is a threat to US support for Israel and to the safety and security of Jews in America . We dare-not ignore it or think: "It's only a movie."

Rabbi Jonathan Ginsburg

Richard Baehr's latest

1. Middle East Forum reviews some new books:
http://www.meforum.org/article/1794
2. Eli Hertz has written a Mandate for Palestine, a study of Jewish legal rights to the land. If this subject interests you, I will be speaking Sunday morning, November 11th at North Shore Congregation Israel , 1185 Sheridan Road , Glencoe and will address the topic. I will be debating Sam Fleischacker of Americans for Peace Now on the topic of the legality and wisdom of Israeli settlements. A part of the legality argument is in Hertz' s document below. The event begins at 9:15 AM. This is a lefty shul, so I would not mind some allies showing up, or the attendees might think I am the only crazy right winger in their midst.
http://www.mythsandfacts.com/Conflict/mandate_for_palestine/MandateN2%20-%2010-29-07-English.pdf
3. Ruth Wisse thinks Walt and Mearsheimer are wrong- that American Jews are not powerful enough
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/02/AR2007110201659.html
4. Caroline Glick thinks Ehud Olmert and other Israeli leaders have crossed the line into anti-Zionism. Incompetent as well, but that does not explain all that is going on.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1192380742618&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
5. The Powerline writers think the push for Israeli Palestinian peace at this time is delusional. David Samuels does not buy some of Condi Rice's analogies .
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives2/2007/11/018940.php
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives2/2007/11/018938.php
http://www.www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=782D5222-0CC5-4CDE-ABF3-1C403097CDCB
6. Melanie Phillips on the ugly anti-Semitism breaking out in Britain
http://www.city-journal.org/html/17_4_anti-semitism.html
7. Gabriel Schoenfeld say the two accused former AIPAC employees (remember them?) were lobbying, not spying. This is a case that should have collapsed a long time back.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119431884738883588.html
8. Daniel Hannan says Iran wants the bomb so it can use it. Imagine that.
http://www.iranfocus.com/modules/news/article.php?storyid=13051
9. Turkish US relations were already in pretty bad shape before Nancy Pelosi decided to play moral crusader and please Armenian Californians.. Now they are even worse.
http://www.memri.org/bin/latestnews.cgi?ID=IA40107
10. Has Rupert Murdoch taken over the New York Times? First a decent health care article , and now this on Jewish refugees from Arab countries after the 48 war..
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/05/world/middleeast/05nations.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin
11. Want to fight malaria? Burn your Rachel Carson book ,and use DDT
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119423194366082213.html
12. I think Rudy Giuliani can get elected President, if nominated (definitely not assured at this point). . But he might also help elect some other Republicans in states where the Party is comatose. It is no wonder the left wing media is trashing him so hard so early.
http://washingtontimes.com/article/20071105/NATION/111050057/1001
13. Martin Kramer is not too impressed with what Hillary Clinton wrote about Israel in her Foreign Affairs piece (do you really think she wrote it?)
http://sandbox.blog-city.com/hillary_clinton_triangulation_on_israel.htm
Other Events:
You could learn about Israel all day on Sunday, November 11th. My debate at North Shore Congregation Israel is at 9:15 AM. Have a nice leisurely lunch,and then this at 4:30PM:
Sunday, November 11, at 4:30 pm - CAMERA invites you to hear strategy and policy expert Dr. Shmuel Bar on "Challenges for Israel and the West: Islamist Strategy – in Iran and Globally" at Sephardic Congregation, 1819 West Howard Street (just east of California), Evanston. Parking information available. RSVP to Sari@camera.org or 847... (name, phone number, and email address.) $5 suggested donation.
More on Shmuel Bar: http://www.herzliyaconference.org/Eng/_Articles/Article.asp?ArticleID=149&CategoryID=74
After a quick dinner, show up at North Suburban Synagogue Beth El, 1175 Sheridan Road in Highland Park at 7 PM to hear 10th district Congressman Mark Kirk talk about the threats to Israel. One threat to Israel would be if Kirk were replaced after the next election. There is no better informed, harder working, more passionate defender of Israel in Congress than Mark Kirk. Show up, listen and learn, and support him.
.
=Rabbi Jonathan Ginsburg

Jews expelled from Arab lands

Group Spotlights Jews Who Left Arab Lands
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By WARREN HOGE
Published: November 5, 2007
UNITED NATIONS, Nov. 2 — With assertions of the rights of Palestinians to reclaim land in Israel expected to arise at an planned Middle East peace conference in Annapolis, Md., a Jewish advocacy group has scheduled a meeting in New York on Monday to call attention to people it terms “forgotten refugees.”
The organizing group, Justice for Jews from Arab Countries, says it is referring to the more than 850,000 Jews who left their homes in Arab lands after the declaration of the state of Israel in 1948.
“This did not occur by happenstance, as is sometimes said,” said Stanley A. Urman, executive director of the group, a five-year-old New-York-based organization. “In fact, we have found evidence that there was collusion among the Arab nations to persecute and exploit their Jewish populations.”
To back the claim, the group has reproduced copies of a draft law composed by the Arab League in 1947 that called for measures to be taken against Jews living in Arab countries. The proposals range from imprisonment, confiscation of assets and forced induction into Arab armies to beatings, officially incited acts of violence and pogroms.
Subsequent legislation and discriminatory decrees enacted by Arab governments against Jews were “strikingly similar” to the actions laid out in the draft law, Mr. Urman said.
In January 1948, the World Jewish Congress submitted a memo with the text of the draft to the United Nations Economic and Social Council. It accompanied the submission with a warning that “all Jews residing in the Near and Middle East face extreme and imminent danger.”
At a meeting two months later, however, Charles Malik, the Lebanese ambassador and president of the council, succeeded in a parliamentary maneuver that ended consideration of the memo. Though the event drew news coverage at the time, it has apparently gone unnoticed since.
The Arab League draft law had been drawn up in response to the Nov. 29, 1947, vote in the General Assembly to partition Palestine into two states, one Arab and one Jewish.
With the creation of the state of Israel in 1948, the status of Jews in Arab countries changed dramatically, because most of those countries either declared war on Israel or supported the war to destroy the new state.
The group cites United Nations figures showing that 856,000 Jewish residents left Arab countries in 1948.
“This was not just a forced exodus, it was a forgotten exodus,” said Irwin Cotler, a former Canadian minister of justice who is scheduled to be the main speaker at Monday’s program to open the campaign on behalf of the Jewish refugees.
For that reason, he said, the main goal of the campaign was to raise public awareness rather than to seek compensation. “It’s not about the money, it’s about the other components of redress, recognition, remembrance and acknowledgment of the wrongs committed,” he said.
He said that a particular focus of the campaign would be the United Nations, where Palestinian concerns got regular attention and Israel was frequently the object of condemning resolutions. “The U.N. has participated in expunging this experience from the Mideast narrative and from the U.N. narrative,” Mr. Cotler said.
The campaign is aimed at assuring that mention of Jewish refugees is included in future General Assembly and Human Rights Council resolutions and commemorations.
The next opportunity would be Nov. 29, the 60th anniversary of the partition vote, which is officially recognized by the United Nations as the International Day of Solidarity With the Palestinian People.
The United Nations says that 711,000 Palestinians left Israel-controlled territory in 1948 and 1949 and that today, along with their descendants, the number of Palestinian refugees is at least four million.
“There is mention, as there should be, of Palestinian refugees, but no mention of Jewish refugees,” Mr. Cotler said of the annual commemoration.
Another objective is to push for early passage of resolutions introduced in the United States Senate and House that say that any explicit reference to Palestinian refugees in any official document must be matched by a similar explicit reference to Jewish and other refugees.
The American-sponsored peace conference in Annapolis is planned to take place before the end of the year to address core issues of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict like borders, the status of Jerusalem and the Palestinian refugees.
“We want to have this meeting now, in advance of the Annapolis conference, to ensure that this issue is front and center in the international awareness as it should be,” Mr. Urman said.
Daniel Carmon, an ambassador at the Israeli mission, said that while there ought to be a change in attitude at the United Nations, no one expected it to occur soon.
“This has not been forgotten because it does not exist,” he said. “It is a reflection of the dynamic at the U.N.”
Mr. Cotler said a change in perception would help bring the region’s antagonists together.
“I know this may sound Pollyannaish, but I believe that if we allow people to understand the truth of what occurred, then they will be able to recognize the other,” he said. “Right now the other is being demonized.”


Rabbi Jonathan Ginsburg

Hollywood and Islamofascists actions

1. How Hollywood treats Islamofascistic actions---------------------------------------------------------------------- HOLLYWOOD GOES TO WAR Michael Fumento New York Sun, October 25, 2007 Critics have labelled the new movie Rendition a "politicalthriller." Whether it thrills or not is subjective. But "political"?Absolutely. It's merely the latest in an unbroken series of major filmsabout the war on terror that range from those seeking to assure us thatIslamist terrorism isn't the threat we might think, to those depicting theterrorists as no worse than those who fight them-and by implication theAmerican people as a whole. In 1942, Hollywood went to war. It began pumping out countlessmovies designed both to entertain the public and bolster its will to fight.A lot of them were cheap, hokey, or both. But even in a nation thatseemingly needed little reminder of the dastardly attack on Pearl Harbor orthe evils of the Nazis, they kept drilling home the message that we mustpersevere no matter the costs or the duration. Well that they did. PresidentFranklin Roosevelt lived in constant fear that the public would turn againstthe war. . Fast forward that reel to the post-9/11 era. Just how manyHollywood movies (not documentaries) have been made in which the bad guysare Islamist terrorists that do not specifically concern the Sept. 11attacks? If you have to guess, guess "none." Consider the film that came out this June, Live Free or Die Hard.Early on in the story the FBI believes a massive cyber-attack is the work ofIslamists. But it's the Department of Homeland Security that proves to bemore or less responsible.. In one of last year's most critically acclaimedfilms, the severely disjointed Babel, what is treated as a terroristshooting of an American tourist woman in Morocco proves to have beenaccidental. But the Moroccan police, fearful of losing tourist dollars,stage a desperate manhunt that ultimately leads only to the shooting of acute little boy. Consider, too, the odyssey of the conversion of Tom Clancy'smassive bestselling 1991 book, The Sum of All Fears, in which a nuclear bombdestroys an American city, into the 2002 film of the same name. In the bookand the original script, the bad guys were Islamist terrorists. Little did Mr. Clancy know how realistic his choices of villainswere: Federal court hearings in February 2001 revealed that as early as1993, Osama bin Laden offered $1.5 million to buy uranium for a nuclearweapon. But ultimately the Paramount movie depicted the bomber as yetanother comic book character villain, an Austrian neo-Nazi. (Though at leasthe never says, "Vee haff vays uf making you talk!") Mr. Clancy, who unfortunately had no control over the process, tooka swipe at director Phil Alden Robinson on the special features section ofthe DVD. Mr. Robinson, for his part, made the incredible claim on the DVDextra that the change was in the name of realism. In reality, the Council onAmerican-Islamic Relations had lobbied to change the villains and won. "Ihope you will be reassured that I have no intention of promoting negativeimages of Muslims or Arabs," Mr. Robinson wrote to them, "and I wish you thebest in your continuing efforts to combat discrimination." Paramount's CEOat the time, Sherry Lansing, also suggested that she would steer clear ofmovies with Muslim villains.. As for CAIR, former FBI assistant director and chief of the FBI'scounterterrorism section, Steven Pomerantz, has charged that theorganization has "effectively given aid to international terrorist groups."In June federal prosecutors named CAIR an "unindicted co-conspirator" in aplot to fund the designated terrorist organization Hamas. CAIR's 1996publication, The Price of Ignorance, listed "incidents of anti-Muslim biasand violence" that included the trial of Omar Abdel Rahman. Mr. Abdel Rahmanwas convicted of conspiring to blow up the Lincoln Tunnel and other New YorkCity landmarks.. The most one-sided of these films, however, are The Kingdom andRendition. In The Kingdom, Islamist terrorists blow up 200 American men,women, and children. [T]he film is a fairly straight-forward action filmwith a bit of forensics tossed in. Until the last few seconds, that is. That'swhen we discover that the FBI agents, and America as a whole, are really nobetter than the terrorists.. [I]n the film.an Egyptian-born American and"dedicated family man" who is clearly innocent of any wrongdoing. U.S.authorities nonetheless snatch him from American soil and deliver him to acountry where he's horrifically interrogated. The authorities deny anyknowledge of the incident. They are liars and they are torturers-by-proxy.. [Yet] it's hardly the case that Islamists don't make believable andcaptivating villains, much less more believable than evil cyber-geniuses andneo-Nazis. Islamists have killed about 3,000 American civilians on 9/11,killed almost 200 people in the Madrid Train Bombings, and 52 more in theLondon subway bombings. Islamic terrorists routinely explode bombs inmarkets and launch chlorine gas attacks. They build torture chambers andmake and display videos of beheadings in which the victim screams in agonyas his head is sawed off with a dull knife.. As to not wanting to stereotype either Arabs or Muslims, the vastmajority of whom want nothing to do with violence done in Mohammed's name,has it occurred to the Tinseltown terror apologists that nobody suffers morefrom Islamic terror than Muslims themselves?. Whether or not CAIR cares about them, we should. So should themoguls in La La Land. Instead, they're giving us the equivalent of 1943movies equating FDR with Hitler.. (Michael Fumento has been embedded three times in Iraq and once inAfghanistan.)

Rabbi Jonathan Ginsburg

Richard Baehr's latest

Richard Baehr's latest


Thanks to all those who attended my talks on the West Coast and to those have taken the time to correspond afterwards.

1. A surprising article in the New York Times from Gregory Mankiw that rebuts some of the conventional wisdom on American health care. And the British are increasingly unhappy with their national healthcare system.http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/04/business/04view.html? _r=2&ex=1351918800&en=3d64fb9624df7a4e&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&or ef=slogin&oref=sloginhttp://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/11/04/ nhs104.xml

2. Jim Hoagland, a sensible Washington Post columnist, says that if China and Russia want to avoid an American or Israeli war with Iran, they need to step up the pressure, rather than interfere with sanctions efforts .Gerald Steinberg takes on Mohammed El Baradei, a major enabler of Iran's nuclear program. Aluf Benn on the view of Iran's program from Israel. Bill Gertz on US military capabilities to deal with Iranhttp://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/02/ AR2007110201781.html?nav=rss_opinion/columnshttp://www.jcpa.org/JCPA/Templates/ShowPage.asp? DRIT=1&DBID=1&LNGID=1&TMID=111&FID=443&PID=0&IID=1906&TTL=Why_Are_the_IA EA_and_Dr._Mohammed_El-Baradei_Protecting_Iran?http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/914858.htmlhttp://washingtontimes.com/article/20071019/NATION/110190089/10023.

Three more global warming skeptics, James Lewis, Debra Saunders and John Stosselhttp://www.americanthinker.com/2007/11/ global_warming_as_pathological.htmlhttp://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2007/11/ polar_bear_pandering.htmlhttp://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2007/10/ the_globalwarming_debate_isnt.html

4. Bib Netanyahu speaks to American Jewish communal leaders on Annapolis and Jerusalem,http://www.onejerusalem.org/blog/archives/2007/11/post_28.asp

5. Talks from a conference on Israeli missile defensehttp://imda-video-archive.media-line.co.il/Videos-archive-eng.aspx

6 Amir Oren on Israel's military challenges and its capabilitieshttp://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/914590.html


7. Saudi Arabia is not an ally. Repeat 3 times.http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/ article2801017.ece

8. Greg Richards on favorable trends in Iraq. At this point, Iraq is safer than Philadelphia, Atlanta,Washington DC, New Orleans, Detroit, St. Louis and many other American cities. I just noticed that al the unsafe American cities listed are in the NFC,and not the AFC. Is there any hidden meaning to this?The Times of London on the Petraeus curve, which also demonstrates favorable trends, largely unreported in American papers. .http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2007/11/ favorable_trends_in_iraq_1.htmlhttp://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/leading_article/ article2796318.ece_______________________________________________


Rabbi Jonathan Ginsburg

abbas and peace conference

Editor's notes: Abbas's opportunityDavid Horovitz , THE JERUSALEM POSTOct. 25, 2007Branded an incompetent failure last spring by the Winograd Committee's interim report on the Second Lebanon War, told publicly by his foreign minister that he ought to resign, and since further discredited by the opening of three criminal investigations into alleged financial improprieties, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is nonetheless rising in the polls.Not, it should be stressed, rising high, but moving inexorably out of the abysmal single figures of a few months ago and on through the teens. This is not because the Israeli public is slowly learning to love its prime minister. And though there may be a grudging admiration in some quarters for his sheer bloody-minded determination to retain a job that so much of his electorate so plainly regrets giving him, that's not the secret of his slow float upward in the polls, either.It is, rather, a consequence of Israelis' near-desperate desire for peace - or, more accurately, for a means to sever our connection to the Palestinians. Having concluded years ago that the conflict that had so obsessed his predecessor was unsolvable for the foreseeable future, US President George W. Bush has now U-turned and is engaged in a last-ditch, end-of-second-term bid to secure progress. And since Olmert is making discernible efforts to crown this improbable mission with glory, a proportion of the Israeli public, as so often in the past, is apparently willing to suspend its disbelief, put aside the bitter skepticism born of brutal experience, and give Olmert its backing.With each passing year, the strategy of delegitimizing Israel by depicting it as the recalcitrant holdout against viable compromise with the Palestinians gains more adherents. It was hugely boosted by Yasser Arafat's post-Camp David peddling of a mendacious account of Israeli rejectionism, is now the dominant narrative in most of Europe and, thanks to the efforts of Messrs. Carter, Walt, Mearsheimer et al, is taking an ever-greater grip in the United States as well. (The campaign is enhanced by the rewriting of Middle Eastern history, notably by Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, to present the establishment and maintenance of the modern State of Israel not as the belated restoration of an ancient sovereign power, but as the implantation of an alien and intransigent entity imposed on a blameless Arab world in order to salve Europe's Holocaust-scarred conscience.)In truth, however, mainstream Israel is prepared to go to extraordinary lengths, and contemplate extraordinary risks, in the cause of a viable separation. When Ehud Barak returned from Camp David seven years ago, having offered to relinquish far more territory than he had previously intimated and to concede a sovereign Palestinian role in Jerusalem, he was met with greater demonstrations of support than denunciation. Since then, Israel has risked rending its own social fabric to drag 8,000 Jews out of their homes in Gaza without even the cover of an accord, and would have reelected Ariel Sharon, with his unstated blueprint for a likely withdrawal from 90 percent of the West Bank, had his own failed health not intervened.Now the Olmert government is publicly contemplating the previously unthinkable notion of a 100% West Bank pullout, with one-for-one land-swap adjustments to maintain the larger settlement blocs. Like Barak before him, the prime minister is openly questioning Israel's need for a united Jerusalem that takes in the Arab neighborhoods. And the peace-parched Israeli public's response is less hysterical opposition than gentle encouragement in the shape of an upturn in the prime ministerial personal popularity ratings.Of all the "final status" issues, it is only on the question of refugees that the government, and public opinion, are holding firm, rejecting the national suicide inherent in a capitulation to the notion of a "right of return" to Israel for millions of Palestinians. Barely 20 years ago, mainstream Israeli public opinion resisted the very idea of Palestinian statehood. Today, the only substantive Israeli objection to a Palestinian state is that it not be achieved, whether by violence or demographics, at the expense of ours.Here is where Mahmoud Abbas and the "moderate Arab states" might be expected to make their voices heard, to mirror the energetic ideas for compromise being floated by the government's indefatigable trial balloonists with conciliatory scripts of their own, most especially on the refugee issue. And yet, mere weeks before the scheduled convening of the Annapolis summit, from the Palestinian side there is only silence.THE PALESTINIAN academic Sari Nusseibeh, formerly Arafat's PLO representative, observed famously some years ago that the primary right that the Palestinians should be seeking was the right to freedom, and that this right took precedence over the claim to a "right of return." Indeed, he argued that the paramount right to freedom would never be achieved so long as their leadership insisted that millions of refugee descendants be granted permission to live within the sovereign borders of the State of Israel.At a large gathering of Middle East politicians, academics, businesspeople and others, a senior Egyptian minister once assured me that the Arab world in general, and the Palestinian leadership in particular, recognized all this, and that the wording of the Arab peace initiatives now being advanced, with their references to an "agreed" solution to the refugee issue, represented the formal reflection of this shift. That word "agreed," he said, indicated that Israel's needs would have to be satisfied in the determination on the fate of the refugees.And yet today, even while Iran terrifies the likes of Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia by seeking nuclear clout to reinforce its Islamist ambitions, and as the Islamist Hamas cements its hold on Gaza and looks to repeat the feat in the West Bank at Fatah's expense, neither the moderate Arab leaders, nor Abbas, have been able to bring themselves to make this critical compromise explicit and thus begin to pave a constructive road forward. A road forward that would help save their own regimes by proving the emptiness of the extremists' bleak vision.This week, for instance, Abbas has been touring Muslim states in Asia, and expressing optimism about Annapolis yielding "a concrete outcome that is going to be positive for our people." In the run-up to the conference, he has been confirming, Israeli and Palestinian teams are working on a document that will cover the key final status issues, the refugees included. What he has notably not said, however, is that he is ready to endorse anything similar to Nusseibeh's formulation.Though Abbas is regarded by his Israeli interlocutors as both well-intentioned and committed to a viable two-state solution, the sad fact is that, since succeeding Arafat, he has not proved this. As the first serious stab at peacemaking since the disaster at Camp David seven years ago looms, he, like Arafat in 2000, has chosen not to prepare his people for compromise. He has not made explicit that an accommodation will require concessions on both sides, chiefly including the abandonment of the refugee demand. Unlike Arafat, Abbas has not actively fostered terrorism, but nor has he moved decisively to delegitimize and thwart it.He has intermittently and half-heartedly opposed the Kassam rocket crews, and he has taken very public and very personal offense at Hamas's alleged efforts to assassinate him. But overall, Abbas's term as Palestinian No. 1 has to date been a litany of loss, humiliation and, above all, inactivity. He is the Palestinian leader who rearranged the deck chairs as the Fatah ship went down.He lost half his kingdom to Hamas; he lost his parliament to Hamas; he failed to reform Fatah and thus reverse the Palestinian public's disillusion with his party that so helped Hamas; he failed to curb terrorism even within his own Fatah ranks; he failed to stand decisively against incitement to terrorism in his education system and in his media, and he failed to publicly endorse positions that would render a peace process viable and restore more than a modicum of Israeli faith in the notion of a Palestinian partnership.Israel is not without blame for the pitiful performance of the Palestinian president. Leaving Gaza, though bitterly traumatic, was viewed across most of the political spectrum, deep into the Likud, as vital to Israel's long-term demographic interests. But beating a unilateral retreat from the Strip, rather than coordinating with the far-from-ideal Abbas, meant that the withdrawal was understood by the Palestinians as a vindication of terrorism. Similarly, denying calls from Abbas for prisoner releases, but countenancing large-scale asymmetrical prisoner exchanges with the ruthless extortionists of Hizbullah, represented further reward for hostility and a veritable disincentive to compromise.IT IS not too late, however, for Abbas, and the scheduled convening of the summit at Annapolis represents a perfect opportunity - an opportunity to salvage the beginnings of constructive progress from the engulfing waves of extremism.It is not too late for Abbas, with the support of the purported Arab moderates, to publicly counter Ahmadinejed's rewriting of three millennia of Jewish history and to publicly acknowledge the Jewish historical right to our revived sovereign Middle East homeland. It is not too late for him to endorse the notion of a two-state solution in which Israel is explicitly defined and recognized as the Jewish state. It is not too late for him to publicly stress to his own people that they will never achieve freedom if it is predicated on the demographic destruction of Israel, and that, therefore, the refugee issue will have to be resolved without a "return." (There could be no better exemplar of compromise than the man who was himself born in Safed.)It is not too late for Abbas, in short, to challenge his own people to forego impossible demands in the cause of an accommodation from which they will be the primary beneficiaries.For him personally, such a course would be risky. He would be putting his life on the line. But those who wish to lead their peoples to better futures, those who seek and take on the responsibility of leadership, must be prepared to stand firm in the face of extremism, at whatever personal risk... as reemphasized only days ago by the vicious terrorist attack on the undaunted Pakistani leader Benazir Bhutto and by the terrible anniversary we in Israel marked this week.And it's not as though Abbas would be short of friends worldwide anxious to help him steer his people to that better future - to steer the Palestinians toward statehood by setting up a competent judicial authority, effective institutions of government and capable security forces. At present, the prospect of the Palestinian Authority taking responsibility for territory that might be relinquished by Israel is a bad joke. Israel cannot contemplate any such transfer of power - in areas, remember, that are within easy rocket range of Ben-Gurion Airport and the entire heartland of our country - so long as the phrase "Palestinian Authority security force" remains an oxymoron.Abbas, if he were to seize the moment, would be able to accurately depict his push for moderation as a necessary move to marginalize Hamas and its Iranian extremist paymasters, and to counter the coercion and repression, autocracy and inequality of the Islamist vision that Hamas is gradually introducing into Gaza.The likes of Egypt, Jordan and some in Saudi Arabia and beyond, terrified by the emboldening of Teheran, should rush to back Abbas and support any message of compromise. It is their prime interest, too, to see the rapacious Islamists thwarted. Palestinian self-interest requires that Abbas follow this course. Non-Islamist Arab self-interest requires it, too.The impact on the battered, bloodied Israeli psyche would be enormous - quite dwarfing Olmert's current little poll boost from the optimists - even though, it must be stressed, the most dramatic public comments would mark only the beginning of a long road back to sanity. They would represent only the opening words of good intent that would have to be translated into action, notably in a determined, unrelenting assault on terrorism. We've heard many fine words over the years...Nonetheless, Abbas would serve four sets of interests - Palestinian, Israeli, moderate regional and global - if he severed the line from Arafat, defied Hamas and his own radicals by urging international assistance in the battle against terrorism, and issued an unequivocal public rejection of the refugee "right of return" and an endorsement of Jewish Israel as the first step toward reviving a peace process. A win-win-win-win situation, though pregnant with personal risk.Do I think Abbas is going to seize the moment - to tell his own people where their true interests lie? I do not. Whether or not he has the inclination, I don't think he has the guts. I hope he'll prove me wrong.


Rabbi Jonathan Ginsburgwww.jonathanginsburg.net & www.ehnt.orgcybershull + 300 videos www.esynagogue.org www.rabbireflects.blogspot.com www.jewishconversionchicago.com +blog www.prozion.blogspot.com