Solutions? Here We Are!

The long-awaited speech by the President of the United States of America on the cusp of meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been received with truly mixed feelings. Mostly the feelings are mixed between incredulous and disbelieving.

Mind, the president relieved himself of his impressions and feelings about the eventuality of a Palestinian state alongside that of the State of Israel, in the context of a longer, large speech of the general conditions currently prevailing in the Middle East and North Africa. Where support of long-time allies were disposed of, and a selective attack mounted on another.

It isn't entirely clear why a speech focusing primarily on the "Arab Spring" also mentioned Israel and President Barack Obama's view of how Israel should comport itself officially in the prosecution of reaching a peace agreement with the Palestinian Authority, for the 'political awakening', confrontations and state brutality taking place really have nothing to do with Israel.

Other than the occasional reported outburst from protesters in Libya, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and Egypt about the Israeli aggressors. And the equally pointed expressions of exasperation by the ruling elite masquerading as benevolent dictators that the protests have been fomented by the Israeli Mossad.

But it is President Obama's considered opinion, one to which he has given great weight, that Israel must seriously consider and follow through with a series of concessions to the demands of the Palestinians to create an environment where the Palestinians might consider sitting down at the negotiating table for serious talks about peace with the Israelis.

No one seems to expect any manner of concessions to be available from the Palestinians.

The 'right of return' remains sacrosanct; the PA's Prime Minister Salam Fayyad's admission of his belief that returning Palestinians should be absorbed within the new Palestinian State is not favoured by the Palestinian Authority, Fatah and Hamas, and Mr. Fayyad is definitely out of favour.

The borders issue has received an unequivocal - almost - endorsement by President Obama; back to 1948, and bargain if you can for 'mutually agreed swaps'.

With a Palestinian Authority that has visions of sugar plums in the shape, colour and fragrance of swapping promises for accessing the entirety of the region, usurping the very ground that the State of Israel sits upon. The mourning of the Nakba will be concluded in the triumph of accession, righting a wrong that the United Nations imposed upon the poor Palestinians.

And the accursed, usurping Jews can just go back from where they came from - anywhere but the Middle East. And that nicely settles the issue of an undivided Jerusalem.

A State By Any Other Name

As Israel finishes celebrating the anniversary of its creation the Palestinian Authority with help from Palestinians in Syria and Lebanon and Gaza converge at border points to express their peaceful protest against the existence of the State of Israel. Molotov cocktails and rocks aside, the issue was that people have a right to protest that which grieves them. And the existence of a State within the Middle East, comprised of Jews is horribly aggravating.

Uriel Sinai/Getty Images Two Palestinian men with rocks during clashes with the Israeli police on Sunday near Ramallah.

As the Middle East and the Arab States within it are gripped with the drama of people agitating for their rights and the obligations of those who govern them to recognize their human rights, the core issues slip by as protesters are urged to vent their frustration not at those who govern them but at the existence of a Jewish State. Positioned where it is for the express purpose of irritating the Arab population to infuriated distraction.

The United Nation's plan for Partition was unacceptable to Arab Palestinians, and no less so to to the Arab States surrounding Israel. One attempt after another with combined Arab armies was launched to dislodge the new country from existence in a rage of exclusion and hatred. The original 1948 borders were increased to reflect the last of those attacks, enabling Israel to better defend itself.

And now that the Palestinians are united politically as well as in their incessant and indomitable need to express their outrage at the existence of Israel and to continue mounting their 'resistance' against the 'occupier', there is no longer any need at the pretense of searching for a peace agreement. United, Fatah and Hamas see themselves as conquerors.

But for international consumption the fable of the search for peace continues, and the Palestinian Authority has laid out its preconditions. These preconditions have a limited shelf life, for when, once again, elections take place at a time when Fatah can no longer stave them off, it may very well be Hamas that constructs the preconditions, and Hamas's precondition for peace is war.

Meanwhile the PLO's call for the right of "return" of the Palestinian people to land upon which Israel now sits is considered an 'inalienable right' under international law. A newly-constructed international law that has been practised nowhere else in the world. The popular' struggle' against the West Bank settlements must be re-commenced.

The infamous "refugee camps" for which the international community has footed the bill for over 60 years must remain as a living blight. Until such time - and it cannot be too soon - as the State of Israel is but a dim and bad memory. When such profound errors of judgement from within the international community take place, they must be reversed. There is a first time for everything.

The United Nations must recognize the racist character of the State of Israel which designates itself a Jewish State. That characterization of a Jewish state is clearly apartheid in nature, placing the status of Arabs in question for what kind of Arab would agree to live in a Jewish state? The fact that the Jewish state still honours equitable justice and citizenship for all is insultingly irrelevant.

With the dissolution of the Jewish state and the eventual absence of the State of Israel, there will be but one state, that of the Palestinians. It will be named the State of Palestine. And it will be recognized as an Islamic state.

Like Oil and Water

How many countries of the world are there who while celebrating their creation, must contemplate that their neighbours view that event as a black day of mourning? Pakistan came into being at roughly the same time, Bangladesh some years later; who contests their creation? British colonial rule left arbitrary borders around geographic areas that later became 'nations', countries whose tribal adversities have never resulted in peace; who suggests their destruction?

Palestinians continue to claim that Israel exists on land that is rightfully that of the Palestinians. Yet the Palestinians who remained within Israel at its declaration remain there yet, with full civil rights equally administered under the law. It is claimed that 700,000 Palestinians fled out of fear and at the urging of surrounding Arab governments that they could return once the new state was demolished by a combined Arab military assault.

That original 700,000 now numbers roughly six million who live in neighbouring Arab state as refugees for their neighbours, other Arabs, always refused them citizenship and equality, with the exception of Jordan. The world, through the United Nations which established a special refugee agency just for the Palestinians, have paid ever since for their welfare.

It is estimated that some 800,000 Jews were expelled at the same time from the Arab countries they had lived in for millennia. Their worldly goods were confiscated, there was never any compensation, nor was any offered since 1948. Their long history in Arab lands was simply an inconvenience; the affront of the creation of Israel resulted in their expulsion.

No international outcry was heard at that event, nor did the world offer assistance to the refugee Jews. But the endless plight of refugee Arabs whom other states refused to absorb, while Israel absorbed the refugee Jews remains highly visible and an ongoing incendiary issue. The Palestinians urge a return to Israel, but it would not be Israel, it would be Palestine; a Jewish state no longer.

Because of a heritage tradition within Islam of land consecrated to Islam never permitted to be absorbed into another religion or heritage, just as within Islam secession from Islam is considered a capital offence, it is not the 1948 or 1969 borders that are contested for a new Palestinian State; it is the entirety of the geography dedicated to the State of Israel that is to be re-claimed; in Arabic, not English.

While Middle East countries are grappling with inner unrest fomented by civil protests against authoritarian governments, Israel waited warily for the inevitable. And Syria's administration has sought a diversion from its brutal crackdown on regime protests by urging Palestinians to cross their border into Israel. Another FaceBook revolution taking place, ushering in the Third Intifada with young Palestinians planning a concerted mass entry into Israel.

From Lebanon, from Jordan and from Syria and Gaza, they came, declaring their intention to return to the land their grandparents occupied. A clear diversion for the heads of government, and an obvious disavowal of recognition of a Jewish State in the midst of Arab Muslim states.

The Enduring Holocaust

Here speaks irony. That Nazi Germany even while it was in the throes of fighting for its very existence when its plans for world domination through the Third Reich began to fall apart - when the Allies started to edge toward winning the battle against ultimate Fascism - still remained fixated on destroying European Jewry. Germany took increasingly scarce resources away from the war effort to devote to its malevolent task of ridding the world of Jews.

And the Allies, knowing by that time full well what was being planned for European Jews, knowing what had been accomplished - and it was devastatingly considerable - simply could not manage to spare war-time resources to halt the killing machine by taking the transport systems out of commission, by bombing the crematoria, by utilizing any means to slow down the orderly and determined mass execution of the Jews.

Dreadful information had been seeping out to the world about what was happening in the death camps. If it were just a question of slave labour, starvation, working people to death, dread disease running rampant through concentration camps, it would have represented a horrible enough indication of man's inhumanity to man, through a concerted effort to commit genocide by ridding the world of its hated Jews.

The knowledge was there, the full horror of what was proceeding apace. But the will was not there for those civilized countries of the world - who did rigorous battle with a delusional, hateful Nazi ideology that was intent on installing itself as a master race and subjugating the rest of the world to its will as lesser human beings - to come to the aid of the beleaguered Jews.

They could fend for themselves - and some did, joining resistance groups if they were able to escape the prison camps, and by organizing uprisings in the ghettos and resisting to the last of their fading energies and hopes, the catastrophic will of a powerful enemy to destroy them. A people destined for annihilation, hoping the world would notice and might care.

The world did notice, but it did not care.

When what was left of the inmates of concentration camps ultimately found freedom from their certain fate, the world wrung its hands in despair that human beings could descend to such depths of depravity. And of course, there were many who claimed themselves to be innocent of the knowledge of what was occurring. In the death camps outside of Germany the indigenous population claimed they were themselves victims, how could they assist the Jews?

Not that, in Poland, in Lithuania, in Ukraine, in Austria, in Latvia, in Estonia, in Germany, people were unaware of the camps and their purpose. But they pleaded innocence; there was nothing they could do, they were themselves occupied peoples. And they did suffer. And some rare individuals did care, and did lend themselves to securing Jewish lives.

But Europe was never free of anti-Semitism, and the Nazi propaganda machine churned out proof of Jews as being sub-human, a canker living within Europe, deserving of extermination, to make the world a finer place. And there were many who applauded that effort, willing and eager to assist, apart from those who simply had no opinion and didn't much care.

From villagers whose meagre lives were deleteriously impacted by the war, to socialites who had designs on the property of Jews, easily acquired through confiscation, and elite religious figures who never much liked the Jews in any event, a general aura of complicity ensued; better the Jews than them, in any event.

With the creation of the State of Israel as a singular haven for world Jewry which the United Nations sanctioned finally to expunge a sense of collective guilt for inaction when it was needed, Jews knew they had a homeland reflective of their heritage. Now world events have come full circle, and once again the Jews are despised and slandered, and with the return of anti-Semitism has come the stealthy and effective de-legitimization of Israel.

Jews as the perennial scapegoat of the world. Guilty by birth of all that is implied they plot to achieve. World domination, of course.

By securing the world's news networks, banking systems and claiming exceptionality as victims of the Holocaust. The six million men, women and children who were sacrificed to the alter of hatred have scarcely been replenished. The memory of their horrendous fate has dimmed; the world no longer cares.

And in Israel, a haven not only for Jews, but for Christians in an increasingly hostile Middle East, and a place which offers equality and justice to all its citizens; Jews, Christians and Muslims alike, the struggle for survival continues.

Disappearing Holocaust Survivors

Generation of Holocaust Survivors Disappearing
by Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu

Holocaust survivors, who are first-person testimony to the Nazi death machine, are disappearing. On the eve of Holocaust Memorial and Remembrance Day, statistics show that their death rate in Israel is 35 a day – 13,000 a year.

The Welfare of Holocaust Survivors Foundation reported that 208,000 Holocaust survivors remain in Israel, a decline of 26,000 from 2009. The decline of the number of living survivors coincides with increasing anti-Semitic campaigns that deny, belittle and even mock the Holocaust. The Palestinian Authority teaches the Holocaust denial doctoral dissertation of PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas throughout its educational curriculum.

Only three percent of Holocaust survivors in Israel are under the age of 70, while half of them are over the age of 80. Projected figures indicate that only 145,000 survivors will still be alive in 2015.

Their most common health problems are hypertension, heart disease, chronic neck and back pain and arthritis. A study has shown that 92 percent of Holocaust survivors live in their home community, while the others are in institutional housing.

The Holocaust Welfare fund assists approximately 60,000 survivors, nearly three times the number of those who required financial help in 2005.

Chairman of the Foundation for Holocaust Victims Elazar Stern said, "Our data show that in the coming years due to aging, the needs of needy Holocaust survivors still will continue to grow…. The younger generation will not forgive us if we do not deal respectfully with the older generation."

As published online at ArutzSheva, 1 May 2011

Reason, Logic, Humanity Denied

How do you make peace with a people whose instincts, culture and continual incitements lead to ongoing attacks against your existence? Those who see you not as like themselves and worthy of consideration as other human beings, but as impediments to their own aspirations and existence. The primeval gut instinct inbred in humans to distrust to the point of violent hatred those unlike themselves alive and well in the Middle East.

Where tribalism and sectarian religious strife among Arabs have always contributed to violence and unrest; from bellicose warning to vicious slaughter as clan and tribe and versions of religious adherence traditionally led disparate groups to war one upon the other. What brings the various Muslim states together is the presence of a non-Muslim state.

The single unifying principle that brings all the factions together in agreement is the presence of an historical group quite unlike their own with another religion entirely in the geography. Land held to be consecrated to Islam is not to be tolerated for use of others who worship another religion. Even if that other religion pre-dated Islam and the presence of the Palestinians.

And then the cries of Allahu Akbar! ring out. As occurred when a group of settlers set out to worship at Joseph's Tomb in the West Bank without first contacting the IDF to accompany them, pre-arranging with the PA military to allow Jews to access their holy site. The settlers, in a convoy of vehicles, sought to spontaneously, without notifying the IDF, pray at the tomb.

"When we got back to the vehicles the police shot at the vehicles, they were screaming 'Allahu Akbar'. It was crazy, they were shooting to kill. I screamed at the driver to drive out of there quickly. When we got to Har Bracha we attended to the wounded."

But there was one death, a 24-year-old settler, father of four young children. In the Middle East, one does not take precautions lightly, spontaneity can result in death. Enraged Palestinians then attacked the funeral procession of the young father, with rocks. And then Palestinians desecrated Joseph's Tomb, as they have done also in the past.

In an interview following the killing of the settler and the wounding of his companions, Palestinian Authority security forces' spokesman General Adnan Damiri, stated that Jewish settlers "are not normal people", and as a result there was no need to issue any kind of statement that might be taken as an apology for the attack.

How does one reason with such people?

Suing for Statehood, Suing for Peace

The Palestinian Authority has pronounced itself ready for statehood. The United Nations has congratulated the Palestinian Authority for its work in resulting in producing nascent government departments, the administrative instruments of government required for the functioning of an independent state. Infrastructure development has been produced that will assist a new Palestinian State to govern well.

And there are 100 UN member-states prepared to support the PA's unilateral push for sovereign statehood.

Of these 100 state governments allied with the United Nations in the General Assembly and the United Nations administration itself, where are the questions looking for answers related to the PA's intentions toward its neighbour? Not much in the way of good will when the Palestinian Authority abrogates the necessary first step to living adjacent an established neighbour before seeking statehood.

That first step being a commitment to living in peace with Israel, the neighbour that the Palestinians have been attempting to dislodge from the geography since 1948.

Israel remains adamant that first things must be settled first, a not-unreasonable assumption that this would be in the best interests of both solitudes and by extension the entire Middle East. Agree on a peace settlement and in the process clean up the outstanding issues that have been a prickly matter of contention between both Israel and the Palestinians.

But to do so would be to clearly acknowledge that the Jewish State has a right to exist as a Jewish State. And that by extension the Palestinians agree to accept their portion of the geography, inside borders agreeable and practically useful to each.

The international community sees a Palestinian Authority claiming it has matured politically and socially and is prepared to take its place as a nation within a community of nations.

This is also the administration that continues to honour suicide bombers as 'martyrs'. In the process recruiting others to emulate the passionate and violent rejection of Israel's survival as a state. As a good neighbour the PA has chosen to use Passover as a jumping board to honour the PA terrorist responsible for the 2002 "Passover Massacre" in which 30 Israelis died.

The family of Abbas Al-Sayed who masterminded the deadly attack was officially awarded a "festive plaque, in celebration of the anniversary of the massacre". The bomber, Abdel-Basset Odeh detonated a bomb contained in a suitcase, killing outright 30 elderly civilians celebrating Passover, and maiming dozens more at the Park Hotel in Netanya.

Of more recent vintage was the attack on the Fogel family of five, one an infant, by two young men arrested later by Israeli Security. Amjad Awad, 19, and Hakim Awad, 18, both residents of the Arab village of Awarta, next to the Jewish community of Itamar, where the slaughter took place, were raised in families that had dedicated themselves to martyrdom.

They were proud of what they had accomplished, telling their interlocutors that had they known that two other children of the Fogel family were asleep in their rooms they would have killed them as well. They will be tried of the crimes of which they are accused in an Israeli court of law.

But not if Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas has anything to say about it. For the Palestinian Authority and its Chairman now call upon Israel to release Palestinian prisoners as yet another condition of sitting down to discuss peace options. That these Palestinian prisoners languishing in Israeli jails are terrorists and murderers is not lost on the PA who consider them honourable martyrs.

This then, is the partner for peace that Israel is matched against. And to whom the international community and the United Nations is prepared to grant statehood on the basis of their having achieved the basic determinants for responsible governance. Absent the intention to live in peace with their neighbour.

Absent the determination to instruct their people otherwise than to continue to conduct violent raids against their neighbour. Reflecting, in fact, the issue seen but not recognized when Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad stated, speaking at the United Nations, that Israel should be wiped from the map of the Middle East.

This is the responsible governing entity prepared to enter statehood, one that insists upon the release of all Palestinians in Israeli jails, encouraging its public to hold protests across the West Bank for the release of prisoners in Israeli jails. They speak not of Israel, but of the "1948 territories".

The PA's "Minister of Prisoner Affairs, Issa Qarage who has praised terrorists in his official capacity, was out encouraging people to mount their protests, stating "Struggle is the story of the Palestinian people". "Struggle" being code for conducting violent attacks against the "oppressor"; Israel.

In the PA's school system an hour was dedicated to the indoctrination of students that all Palestinian Authority prisoners, regardless of their crimes, irrespective of the lawful judgements brought against them, must be released. In the West Bank mosques and churches added their encouragement calling for the release of prisoners in speeches, and clanging bells in solidarity.

This is Israel's partner for peace; not eschewing violence and entreating its citizens to do likewise, but celebrating violence; encouraging and honouring it. And this is the Palestinian Authority that will present itself as the new administration of a new country to be respected for its ability to govern itself well and be a credit to the United Nations in its human rights record.

Palestinian Authority, Partner for Peace

PA Demands Release of Terrorist Killers
by Maayana Miskin

The Palestinian Authority called Sunday for the release of all PA Arab prisoners held by Israel, including terrorists and other murderers. PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas announced that he will not make peace with Israel until all prisoners are released.

Abbas' demand came as Israeli forces announced that they had captured two PA Arab men responsible for the murder of five members of the Fogel family in Itamar. He is asking for the release of the men, along with many others convicted of similar crimes.

The face of the PA campaign for prisoner release, Nael Barghouti, is also a murderer. Barghouti has served 33 years of a life sentence for a murder committed in the course of a terrorist attack. He has spent the longest term in prison of any PA Arab, and is referred to as “dean of the Palestinian prisoners” or by the honorific “Abu An-Nur” (lit. “Father of the light”).

PA officials referred to Nael Barghouti as a “political prisoner” during Sunday's events calling for prisoner release.

Events to promote the release of all PA Arabs in Israeli jails were held throughout Judea, Samaria and Gaza. In Jenin, prisoners' families protested outside the local Red Cross building. Mayor Kadoura Moussa expressed hope that “This year will be the year in which all prisoners from the West Bank, Gaza, Al-Quds [Jerusalem], and the 1948 territories [Israel], in all Israeli prison, will be released.”

In Shechem, a rally on behalf of terrorist prisoners was attended by Issa Qaraqe, the PA's “Minister of Prisoners' Affairs.” Qaraqe has frequently praised terrorists in the course of his work for the PA. On Sunday, he said, “Struggle is the story of the Palestinian people.”

Schools under PA rule dedicated one hour on Sunday to teaching students that all PA Arab prisoners should be released from jail. Mosques and churches joined the cause as well, calling to free prisoners in speeches and ringing the bells in a display of solidarity.

In Gaza, Hamas called to secure the release of PA terrorists by kidnapping Israeli soldiers.

As published online at ArutzSheva, 18 April 2011

Palestinian State Solution

Now, that is a dilemma. One that has been used as a threat, and now finally as an entitlement whose time has come. Or so its supporters claim.

The United Nations report Palestinian State-building: A Decisive Period is both congratulatory to the Palestinian Authority and to the United Nations itself which has helped guide the PA through a process of infrastructure-building. There has been another notable area of assistance which has helped guide the PA in the West Bank to realize prosperity and that is Israel.

On the theory that a budding and healthy economy with employment for a population eager to have a state of their own would leave them less inclined to restiveness at their unsolved condition as 'refugees' on their own land, and less willing to express violent tendencies toward a neighbour whom they see as an 'occupier', it has always been in everyone's best interests to guide the Palestinians toward nationhood.

When an agreement was made between the State of Israel and Fatah led by Yasser Arafat, with the creation of the Palestinian Authority and co-operation between Israel and the PA initiated, Arafat chose instead to declare an Intifada. The PA has since seen fit to incur a few other such sanctioned violent clashes with Israel, abrogating the mentor-client relationship, and expressing themselves through victimhood and hate-filled violence instead.

Having turned away from one opportunity after another to wrest a peace agreement out of hostile resentment and ongoing violence, the PA finally decided on two significant changes; an overt dismissal of violence even while covertly encouraging it among the population, and a refusal to continue peace talks with Israel. The international community has witnessed the PA speaking of peace, and Israel has heard the PA speaking martyrdom to its people.

Now, however, with a healthy economy and the infrastructure for a functioning state government at hand due to some needed internal discipline and a lot of help from the international community and its neighbour, the PA declares itself prepared for statehood. One it plans to achieve with the agreement of the General Assembly of the United Nations - 100 nations have already signed on - and without bothering to work out a peace agreement with Israel.

The Palestinians refuse to budge on their outright demands for 'right of return', division of Jerusalem and state borders, even though they are aware that it is entirely practicable and feasible to debate the borders, accept the return of Palestinians within a new Palestinian state and not Israel, and discuss side-by-side seats-of-government in Jerusalem; not necessarily that portion they envisage.

There would be no guarantees that any body, international or within the Middle East, could proffer to Israel that might guarantee its safety and security with the unilateral creation of a Palestinian State. The issue of a half-million Israelis living within the 'new borders' of a Palestinian state requiring the protection of the IDF from violent assaults by Palestinians would create a dilemma of huge proportions.

The two states existing side by side would create for Israel an even greater existential threat than currently presents if, having achieved statehood, the West Bank Authority continued to exhort its people to martyrdom, while the Gaza-Hamas faction stepped up its attacks against Israel. The resulting scenario would resemble a scene straight out of hell.

Unless that is precisely what the international community along with the Palestinian Authority and Hamas, and onlooking Arab states have in mind, to begin with.

J'Accuse!

Hamas Blames Israel for ISM Activist's Murder in Gaza
by Gavriel Queenann

Islamic organizations and terror groups in Gaza rushed to distance themselves from the murder-kidnapping of Italian ISM activist Vottorio Arrigoni.

Islamic terrorist organizations in Gaza decried the murder of Italian ISM activist Vittoria Arrigoni, who was kidnapped on Thursday. Arrigoni was found dead early Friday morning in the Strip.

Among those groups denouncing the murder was none other than Tawhid wal-Jihad, the al-Qaida-linked group who initially claimed responsibility for Arrigoni's kidnapping. Tawhid wal-Jihad said they were holding an Italian national and said they would only release him if their leader, held in Hamas custody, was released.

Hamas security personnel found Arrigoni's body in an abandoned house in Gaza following his abduction by 'militants,' a Hamas official said on Friday.

Two men were arrested and others were being sought in relation to Arrigoni's murder, the official added

Hamas condemned the murder and characterized it as "a shameful act, contrary to the tradition of the Palestinian people."

Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum said, "the goal of this depraved band of outlaws is to spread chaos and anarchy in the Gaza Strip, a desperate attempt to strike at the stable security situation."

Barhoum claimed the kidnapping and murder of Arrigoni was intended to scuttle the next Gaza flotilla, expected to depart next month. Barhoum explained that he believed the murder was meant to dissuade other foreign activists from arriving in the Strip.

In that vein, the Hamas spokesman accused Israel of perpetrating the murder noting Arrigoni had been a vocal opponent of Israel's policies in Gaza, and frequently blogged about 'Israeli crimes against Palestinians' equating Israeli policies to 'Nazi' crimes. Arrigoni had also been arrested twice by Israeli authorities, Barhoum alleged.

Accusing Israel of acts perpetrated by the terrorist groups themselves is a time-honored tradition among Arab terror leaders in Israel.

Tawhid wal-Jihad, a Jihadist Salafi group in Gaza, had threatened on Thursday to execute Arrigoni by 5 p.m. local time (2 p.m. GMT) unless their demands were met.

As published online at ArutzSheva, 15 April 2011

Not Our Fault, But Theirs!

He is described as a peace activist. One can only wonder what kind of mind it is that accommodates itself to living as a 'peace activist' concerned with the human rights of Palestinians living in Gaza, who finds that it accords with his vision of 'peace' to live under a Hamas-controlled society. Someone who identifies with the mission of Hamas, a jihadist group that clearly states its major concern is to destroy the State of Israel, while considering Israel, concerned with defending itself and its people from mayhem and slaughter, to be genocidal in intention.

A young Italian man who was obviously an idealist. He apparently eschewed the opportunities available to him to campaign against endemic corruption in Italy, against the customary sexual predations on women in Italy, against the violence of organized crime in Italy, against the poverty-stricken condition of many Italians, and opted instead for the more exotic allure of joining the pro-Palestinian, anti-Israeli movement intent on breaking an internationally lawful sea blockade.

So inspired by his mission to travel on one of the "Free Gaza" flotillas he decided to remain in Gaza, and from that vantage point write about the intolerable conditions defying human rights imposed upon Palestinians in Gaza - not by the rigorously theocratic Hamas, but by the IDF, charged by their nation to protect and defend the Israeli population from ongoing rocket attacks, and attempted suicide attacks that continually breached Israeli security and civilian lives.

He was abducted as a potential person of value to be exchanged for rival Islamist gang members whom Hamas has imprisoned. The same rabid-Islamist-Wahhabist inspiration that inspired bin Laden and al-Qaeda, a Salafist faction of Sunni Islam. A-Tawheed wal Jihad used him as a bargaining chip to free some of their own from incarceration. They may have used the abduction of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, held by Hamas as a template for their own escapade, kidnapping Vittorio Arrigoni.

Whom, when threats to kill him did not convince Hamas to free the Salafist prisoners they hold - quite unlike the actions of the State of Israel in permitting hundreds of Palestinian prisoners to be released in exchange for a single Israeli held by Palestinians - tortured and killed the Italian man who had dedicated his life to the Palestinian cause. One supposes that Hamas did not feel sufficiently co-dedicated to the cause of Mr. Arrigoni's continued lifespan.

Palestinians are now in the throes of bewailing the man's unfortunate death. Another instance of Muslim Arabs dispatching their own, as it were. Here was a foreigner sacrificing his time, energies, passion and future to the cause of the Palestinians. And he is used as a chess piece, a disposable, dispensable object whose life can be bargained away with a check-mate. And then, the grieving Palestinians look about for answers to another of their little bloody tragedies.

A former member of Yasser Arafat's inner circle, now a fervent member of Hamas, bemoans the fact that it is more than obvious to him that the Salafist Muslim group has been infiltrated; no other way to explain how and why they would murder someone dedicated to the cause of the Palestinians. He could see, he said, furiously, Netanyahu's hand in all of this. It was an Israeli plot to avenge themselves on Mr. Arrigoni and upon Hamas.

That would be the same Hamas that pondered the choice of saving Mr. Arrigoni's life in exchange for Salafist prisoners they held, and their discretionary choice condemned Mr. Arrigono who had doubly dedicated his life in vain, to an untimely, and most unfortunate death. Which, of course, Hamas is not responsible for. But Israel, most decidedly is.

"Israel has every right to laugh and sing, even while it massacres its neighbour. Palestinians are only asking to die a different death, one of old age." Vittorio Arrigoni

Racism and Bigotry

Mainstream media seems to detest the active presence on the Internet of bloggers, interfering with their professional investigations searching out stories and printing reliable versions of events. But it seems that when on occasion, news items are picked up and circulated by bloggers who offer their version and interpretation of events through clever sleuthing, the professionals are not above using those stories, with their own spin, without attribution.

Professional jealousies. And withering scorn for the untrustworthy and irritatingly exasperating presence of on-line bloggers beating them at their own game. Characterizing the bloggers as rank amateurs, unlettered and unprofessional. And if they're all of that and more, then how is it possible to give them credit where credit is due?

The blog site Blazingcatfur.blogspot.com was a little put out with the unfairness of it all when the National Post picked up an item that emanated from a source other than the reporter who signed off on it: Stewart Bell. And so, Blazingcatfur puckishly sent an irate letter and an invoice to indicate annoyance with that lack of professionalism:

Dear Mr. Bell, your story in todays National Post entitled "Ex-KKK leader featured on Muslim group's website" is why people are sick of the the Dead Tree Tree media. Your story on the Muslim group CASMO was lifted directly from our blogs at Sassywire and Blazingcatfur respectively.Our posts appeared on April 5 2011 a full 6 days before your "me too" effort. One would think you would have at least had the decency to credit your sources.

Sassywire in fact deserves full credit for this story.

An invoice in the amount of $1000.00 dollars will be issued shortly for which we expect full payment for our services.

Thank you,

Blazingcatfur

And the follow-up to that was the Canadian Jewish Congress alerting Toronto-area police to a hate crime, with the Canadian Shia Muslims Organization posting not one, but two videos on their site - dedicated in support of "multiculturalism" and "interfaith dialogue" - of none other than far-right former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard David Duke expounding on his anti-Jewish conspiracy theories.

David Duke was present as a collaborator-guest in Tehran when Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad famously hosted a 2006 Holocaust denial conference, inviting participation from all the world's scholars and academics, deniers and racists who support the quasi-alternative-reality that the Holocaust simply did not occur, and was a pretext for the creation of the State of Israel.

Which State of Israel Iran's theocratic Islamic Republic and social theorists like David Duke dedicated to white power and racism would dearly love to dislodge from the geography of the Middle East. The two videos, after having had a solid presence on the Shia Muslim web site suddenly disappeared, although the York Region Police are intent on "moving ahead with it as a full-scale investigation" into propagating hate.

That the online journal The American Muslim has condemned the Canadian Shia Muslims Organization for its clasping to its bosom of the racist right, classifying it now as being among "the Muslim lunatic fringe", is a welcome sign that certainly not all Muslim groups are so tainted with hatred and bigotry.

That Palestinian State

The United Nations representatives in the Palestinian Territories are jubilantly self-congratulating. Their mission to assist the Palestinian Authority to finally establish civil authority and infrastructure as a precursor to establishing a sovereign Palestinian State has succeeded. The newly-issued United Nations report, Palestinian State-building: A Decisive Period, claims with pride that a functioning government is finally possible.

The Palestinian Authority can now boast, thanks to the invaluable assistance of the United Nations and funding by the international community, that it is governmentally functional in the areas of rule of law and human rights; livelihoods; education and culture; health; social protection; and infrastructure and water. Which is a considerable advance from the inchoate state it represented under Yasser Arafat.

Who preferred to launch the first destructive Intifada rather than continue on the imperfect road to establishing a decent civil infrastructure for his nascent country. He was unable to see past his violent militant wing's intention to entirely dislodge Israel from the map of the Middle East, and retake all of what Palestinians claim to be their rightful inheritance.

A declaration through the United Nations General Assembly, supported by over 100 countries prepared to recognize a unilateral declaration of statement for the Palestinians on pre-1967-war land, would most certainly present as a problem for neighbouring Israel. Without the establishment of a firm peace agreement that would settle the problems of Jerusalem and West Bank settlements such a declaration would be fraught with tension and danger and the prospect of another war.

Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad is prepared to proceed with a unilateral declaration of statehood approved by the United Nations. He has issued a call for the international community to fund the transition to statehood over a period of years to the tune of a total of $5-billion in investment support. Which will assist the process immeasurably. And the initiative will proceed.

This, despite that the Palestinian Authority agreed a few years back that final status would best be achieved through negotiations with Israel beforehand. Now Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, having two years ago cut off peace talks, has turned instead to gaining of international support for a PA state. Leaving Israel with the massive headache of considering the half-million Jews now living in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

While The UN's Middle East envoy, Robert Serry, states that ideally it is vital yet that Israelis and Palestinians resume serious peace talks with an aim to settle all disputes, and while Israel's Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu is prepared to pledge Israel to those talks, the PA's Mahmoud Abbas remains talk-shy, preferring to opt for unilateralism.

Leaving Israel in a truly untenable position.

Vanguard Leadership Group

US Black Students Demand Arabs Stop Calling Israel Apartheid
by Maayana Miskin

The African-American student organization Vanguard Leadership Group is standing with Israel when it comes to use of the term “apartheid.” The term is “false and deeply offensive” when applied to Israel, the group said in advertisements published on Thursday.

The Vanguard Leadership Group spoke out in response to “apartheid” claims from the group Students for Justice in Palestine. Under an ad titled, “Words matter,” the group said, “We request that you immediately stop referring to Israel as an apartheid society and to acknowledge that the Arab minority in Israel enjoys full citizenship with voting rights and representation in the government.”

“It is highly objectionable to those who know the truth about the Israelis' record on human rights and how it so clearly contrasts with South Africa's,” the group said.

Students for Justice in Palestine “has chosen to manipulate rather than inform with this illegitimate analogy,” Vanguard Leadership said. “Decency, justice, and the hope of peace and reconciliation in the Middle East compel us to demand an immediate cessation to the deliberate mischaracterizations of Israel.”

Ceasing use of the term “apartheid” when discussing Israel would be a “first step toward raising the level of discourse,” the letter concluded.

Anti-Israel groups have long accused Israel of being an “apartheid state,” borrowing the term from South Africa, where for many decades a small white minority ruled the black majority by force. Racial discrimination was enforced by law, and black residents were denied citizenship, given inferior public services, barred from using white theaters, pools, churches, and other facilities, and judged under different laws.

In Israel, Arabs and other non-Jewish minorities are full citizens, with the same rights and obligations as any other Israeli. One exception is the fact that Arab citizens are not required to serve in the IDF, although they are allowed to do so, and a handful choose to enlist.

Palestinian Authority Arabs are not granted rights as citizens because they do not wish to become citizens, but rather, hope to create a new Arab state in Judea, Samaria and Gaza. Similarly, Israelis have no rights under PA law, and in fact, are forbidden to own land or even to enter PA-controlled areas.

As published online at ArutzSheva, 11 April 2011

A Terrorist State

What is the definition of a terrorist state?

Well, for starters how about a fanatic theistic political cabal whose edicts stricture every facet of peoples' lives, instructing them on pain of punishment how they must agree to have their children educated - as recruits for future terrorist operations - how women must garb themselves, how they must agree to allow those who rule them to lob high-powered rockets across the border into a neighbouring state, from the crowded confines of their towns.

Since Hamas in Gaza does all of that, added to the fact that their signal purpose is to destroy the State of Israel, and to that end they spare no suicide bombers or rockets or smuggling of arms and armaments to supplement their already-burgeoning stores of weaponry, they must, ipso facto, be considered a terrorist state.

That same terrorist state, when faced with the result of their constant rocket attacks on Israeli border towns, clamoured for the international community and the United Nations to stop Israel's defensive foray into Gaza to quell the incessant attacks.

And the world responded with alacrity, condemning Israel for conducting a 'disproportionate' response to the killing and wounding and traumatizing of their citizens by returning rocket fire into Gaza from whence it emanated. And since Hamas fighters routinely and deliberately fire from the crowded confines of city streets, from schools and from mosques, when fire is returned, civilians, used as human shields by Hamas, are wounded and they die.

What is the definition of a terrorist? One who inspires terror. Armies are trained to battle. Soldiers know they will face an enemy and that they must comport themselves as the military has trained them to do, for the purpose of protecting their country and the civilian population. They also know that in accord with international law, let alone their own domestic judicial practices and law, it is immoral and unlawful to target civilians.

Hamas institutionally targets civilians. And so it was, yet again, that a rocket was fired into Israel and a school bus was hit by a rocket, its driver and a 16-year-old student critically wounded. This is Hamas's response to Israel's targeting of its militants who seek to destroy the country, and who are caught while they fire off rockets, and while they transport missiles and artillery from Sudan through Egypt into Gaza.

All countries have obligations under UN Security Council resolutions to prevent illicit trafficking in arms and ammunition. Which has not stopped Hamas from receiving said illicit arms from Syria and from Iran, which are terrorist countries themselves, sponsoring Hamas and Hezbollah, two creature militias they have spawned, all sharing the aspiration to destroy Israel.

And Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, concerned for Gazan Palestinians, urges the West to intervene "to stop this aggression", referring to the Israel Defence Force's response to Hamas's jihadist attacks against Israel, not the use of an advanced anti-tank weapon in an attack against civilians.

Another Martyr

But this time the cause was somewhat different. A Palestinian Arab whose dedication it was, through the influence of his Israeli-Jewish mother, to teach Palestinian children to reject the societal-taught views of considering Israelis and Jews as enemies to be violently crushed. In honour of his mother who herself dedicated to her life to that very issue, Juliano Mer Khamis continued her work at the theatre co-founded by himself and his mother, Arna Mer.

At that theatre Palestinian children were exposed to theatre arts. They were also exposed to the concept of rejecting murder and terrorism. That if they had a grievance with an authority that they felt violated their rights, that they regard the alternative to violent response: non-violent activism. While Mr. Khamis worked hand-in-glove with his mother, it was as a Palestinian Arab, like his father, with no acknowledgement of his Jewish blood.

In perfect accord with his mother's decision to devote herself to the cause of the Palestinians. Although he was recognized through his professional acting in Israel as an accomplished actor, there could be little doubt that he was a Palestinian Arab through his personal decision-making that saw him accept that mantle and reject the other half of his genetic inheritance. Which did not stop Hamas from loathingly naming him a "Zionist Jew whose hands should be cut off."

For in dedicating himself to encouraging young Palestinians to think of active resistance to an occupying force by rejecting violence, he was deliberately undermining the teaching of Hamas which encourages 'martyrdom' through the odious atrocities of suicide bombings. Mr. Khamis seemed to have little interest in complicating matters by explaining to the young Palestinians he sought to influence that the one-sided view of an 'occupier' nation and a 'victim' population did not reflect reality.

He was a Palestinian of his time and his place, himself tainted by the zeitgeist of Middle East politics, as an Arab who viewed the State of Israel as an affliction upon the victimized Palestinians. The complexities of a state attempting to protect itself and its people against constant physical attacks necessitating that the state use armed methods to meet armed militias seemed of little interest to him.

He accepted the prevailing Palestinian propaganda, that Arabs suffer and Israel oppresses. But the work he was engaged in also highlighted the violence, the aggression, the anger and determination to surmount their inferior state of an occupied people by lashing out and committing mass atrocities that young Palestinians grew up with. Taught that Israelis and Jews are evil, they feared and hated them.

And high-lighted the fact that peace is constantly beyond reach because the Palestinians have learned to cherish their victimhood, preferring it to a peace settlement because viewing themselves as victims allows them to appeal to the outside world to support them against the monstrous state mechanism that grinds them into miserable poverty. An imaginary situation but one supremely satisfying to the angst-ridden Palestinians.

The myth of martyrdom for the cause, the urgent need to 'resist', a camouflage term for mayhem and murder, to avenge themselves against a tormentor that exists only in their delusional minds, mired in tribal antipathies and traditional absorption with their victim status, remains the crown jewel in the Palestinians' heritage game of blame and hatred, slander and violence.

While Hamas detested the man, he was admired and loved within Jenin where the theatre was located. The young Palestinians that he went to such great pains to imbue with a more balanced view of choices open to them, must surely have learned something of value from him. Despite which it would appear that many of the children he taught eventually assumed their destinies as armed fighters and suicide-bombing terrorists.

His arguments not to resort to violence, to think that killing your enemy is the only solution open to intelligent human beings might not have been lost on all the young people he taught, however. His interference with the carefully scripted program of Hamas and the other terror groups who invested in training future generations to take up the cudgel with their foe, was intolerable to the terrorists.

They have no intention of putting a halt to the killing, for this is what motivates and satisfies their aspirations to succeed in destroying their target. And Mr. Khamis simply became one of those targets. A martyr to his own cause.

Mea Culpa? Not Quite

"We know a lot more today about what happened in the Gaza war of 2008-09 than we did when I chaired the fact-finding mission appointed by the UN Human Rights Council that produced what has come to be known as the Goldstone Report. If I had known then what I know now, the Goldstone Report would have been a different document." Judge Richard Goldstone

Admission of failure in apportioning blame? Mildly regretful, more likely. Not his fault, though. He invited the Government of Israel to co-operate, they chose not to. He did what he could, after all. Which was to alter the obvious bias that pertained with the original wording of the UN Human Rights Council's mandate for Judge Richard Goldstone's investigation into the Israel-Gaza conflict.

He iterates his acknowledgement of the UN Human Rights Council's "history of bias against Israel", which "cannot be doubted". Which did not hamper him from accepting the invitation to chair the UN Human Rights Council-sponsored fact-finding mission on the Gaza conflict. He alludes in his article published in The Washington Post, to Israel's disinterest in co-operation with his investigation.

" Israel's lack of co-operation with our investigation meant that we were not able to corroborate how many Gazans killed were civilians..." and "...our recommendations based on the record before us, which unfortunately did not include any evidence provided by the Israeli government"

All the while being very aware that Israel had no reason, given the undeniable fact that the UN Human Rights Council constantly focuses on blaming-and-shaming one country alone in the entire Globe, and that as their chosen lead investigator into Israel's presumed crimes in prosecuting a war deliberately targeting civilians (a pre-ordained outcome anticipated) there was no reason to trust him, either.

Judge Goldstone condemns Hamas now for its lack of interest in pursuing its own investigation into charges of human rights abuses conducted by Hamas forces, allowing that he placed too much trust in anticipating that Hamas would pursue such internal investigations as urged by his report. Now, he clearly states that Hamas, though not constituting a "state' entity was guilty of war crimes and possible crimes against humanity.

Hamas administers the Gaza Strip. Hamas in fact was duly and democratically elected to share governance with Fatah, of both Palestinian Territories. Hamas chose to forcibly remove Fatah from Gaza so it could singly govern the Palestinians there and mould them into an Islamist society, one at war with the more secular-minded Fatah. In essence, then, Hamas does constitute a "state" authority.

As for Fatah which heads the Palestinian Authority, the Goldstone Report alleged they were guilty of human rights abuses - assassinations, torture and illegal detentions "perpetrated by Fatah in the West bank, especially against members of Hamas. Most of those allegations were confirmed by this inquiry."

Judge Goldstone mentions the final report of the UN committee of independent experts chaired by former N.Y. Judge Mary McGowan Davis, which weighed the recommendations of his Goldstone Report and Israel's internal fact-finding of allegations of its "operational misconduct in Gaza". Which found that Israel commendably "dedicated significant resources to investigate over 400 allegations...", whereas Hamas committed to not one.

Judge Goldstone's semi-conciliatory explanations, his expressions of regret: "I would have welcomed Israel's co-operation...", his admissions of acknowledgement of the skewed judgement held by the UN's Human Rights Council against Israel, and his insistence that "I have always been clear that Israel, like any other sovereign nation, has the right and obligation to defend itself and its citizens against attacks from abroad and within", seem reproachfully self-serving.

Not his fault that the Goldstone Report issued a condemnation of Israel, assuming that the data collected from Hamas which was eager to "co-operate", in detailing the IDF's vicious intention to destroy Gaza and murder its citizens through state-sponsored genocide (who just happened to be living in very closely crowded conditions precisely where Hamas stored its munitions and shot rockets into Israel), was fact, not fiction.

Israel, after all, was invited to co-operate with the investigation and chose to conduct its own investigation. And did so in such an exemplary manner, although it is not entirely concluded, that its estimate of Palestinian citizens inadvertently killed by IDF forces came very close to the estimate of Hamas detailing the numbers that IDF forces deliberately slaughtered.

Judge Goldstone deplores the fact that Hamas has continued its rocket attacks into Israel. Although he thought that Hamas would "curtail its attacks", this has not occurred. "Sadly that has not been the case. Hundreds more rockets and mortar rounds have been directed at civilian targets in southern Israel.... The UN Human Rights council should condemn these heinous acts in the strongest terms."

As if.

Conclusions Faulted

Judge Richard Goldstone was the right man to be appointed by the United Nations to hold an enquiry into the decision by Israel to dispatch the IDF into Gaza to put an end to the incessant rocket attacks across the border. Judge Goldstone, after all, a South African judge, knew all about apartheid, could recognize it when he saw it. He would be neutral, he would discover, through assiduous research, what occurred, and then apportion blame.

Could the United Nations conceivably have found a more impressive candidate for this mission than Judge Goldstone? A Jew, a seasoned jurist, an avowed Zionist. He loved Israel, he once said, which was why he felt it was his mission to point out, honestly and without favour, where she had diverted from her social conscience to commit a historical moral blot. That kind of 'tough love' is sometimes needed to enable those who should know better, that they have behaved badly.

This kind of sanctimonious righteousness does not however, fully explain why Judge Goldstone barely made mention of the provocations that Israel suffered well in advance of finally deciding it could no longer countenance them. Deciding to act in the very same manner in which other sovereign nations would, to protect their territory, their people, their integrity. For it took integrity to acknowledge that Hamas was using its own dense-neighbourhood centres as covers from which to attack Israel.

Judge Goldstone's characterization of Hamas as a non-state entity which must nonetheless be held to the same standard of moral and ethical behaviour as a state actor does not quite stand upto close scrutiny since effectively Hamas thinks of itself and seeks to comports itself as the political head of a state, governing Gaza with its 'political' wing and imposing its standards, values and priorities upon the population as such.

But Judge Goldstone has had a change of heart. He now expresses reservations and some remorse at his conclusions that have had the effect of casting Israel and its population and its government as an outcast in world opinion. Thanks to the infamous Goldstone Report, those who consider Israel to be a human-rights-denier for the Palestinian people, feel fully vindicated in continuing to portray Israel as an apartheid state.

Thanks to the Goldstone Report, those who passionately espouse the views of the Palestinians as victims to the heartless Israelis, will evermore point at the conclusions that Judge Goldstone reached and was obliged and felt obligated to present as truth incarnate. This will support the schemes to continue de-legitimizing Israel, to boycott its academics, its products, investment in the country, and the constant barrage of left-wing and union-led criticisms.

It will inspire greater efforts at slandering Israel, it will continue to support the left-leaning academic and student movements that make common cause with the Palestinians with their yearly "Israeli Apartheid Week", and the intentions of groups to lease ships and fill them with "humanitarian" supplies and passionate volunteers to make more well-advertised runs to challenge the blockade of Gaza.

It will empower the world's anti-Semites who owe Judge Goldstone a huge hug of appreciation for his complicity in their agenda. For it was he and he alone who is responsible for tarnishing Israel with the brush of deliberately targeting innocent Palestinian civilians. When he should have known and likely did know that Israel's military went to great lengths to attempt to avoid such civilian disasters.

And that when civilians did die under suspicious circumstances those events were investigated and those held responsible lawfully penalized.

"If I had known then what I know now, The Goldstone Report would have been a different document" may soothe the conscience of Judge Goldstone as he now laments what is history. But we know all too well that the charges as originally laid are the ones that stick. Remediation and reconsideration after the fact have never been known to invalidate the original charges.

His mea culpa is not without some self-exculpation. He holds Israel to blame for not fully co-operating with his mission to discover it to be lop-sidedly to blame for the defensive attack on Gaza, for the deaths of Palestinian civilians. His own slender references to terrorist attacks from Gaza on Israel, the stricken Jewish population, the proclivity of Hamas to seek shelter behind the shields of their own population, all given short shrift.

Impressions are indelible when issued from respectable sources. That which has been accepted cannot readily be set aside and honour restored. Neither his nor those whom his conclusion slurred.

Roosting Clunkers

It is an academic and social disgrace that our institutes of higher learning have become so politically and socially degraded. They appear to have laid aside the notion of a university being a forum for the exchange of ideas, imparting and offering the opportunities to discover and to learn and to become educated. A place where knowledge is revered and striven to achieve. Where diverse opinions are respected and debated.

Most certainly not where divisiveness is deliberately and libellously encouraged, where students are targeted for opprobrium because of their social, ethnic, cultural or religious affiliation. And where a stalwart nation which is a practising democracy with a free judiciary in whose universities all its citizens regardless of religion, ideology and ethnicity are free to learn, with mutual respect, is slandered and deligitimized.

At Kingston's Queen's University when its student-elected rector Nick Day, wrote a scurillous accusation of Israel as a "genocidal" country whose treatment of Palestinians presented as "perhaps the biggest human rights tragedy of my generation" on the web site rabble.ca, he signed off on behalf of the student body that elected him, as rector of Queen's.

His arrogant hyperbole in characterizing a country as beneath contempt, as a nation of genocidairs was not overlooked by the university nor its students. Many of whom no doubt equated genocide with countries like Sudan and Rwanda, Iran and Burma, North Korea and Democratic Republic of Congo, Zimbabwe and Libya whose abuse of their own people through mass slaughter is not unknown.

Some members of the student body set about collecting signatures for a referendum to which 72% of eligible undergraduate voters affixed their names. In the interests of expressing their opposition to Nick Day's continuation as the university rector. A whelming enough number to represent the majority who took offence at the man's hubris in speaking on their behalf to express an indelible hatred.

The University Council will now take the results of the referendum under advisement. They will make a decision whether or not to divest this man of the position he was voted to hold. The message is clear enough; many of those who originally voted for him have expressed their lack of confidence in Nick Day to represent their best interests, let alone their concerns.

If he is divested of his position he will be free to continue his hate-fests. He was free to take part in these deviously divisive celebrations of hatred in any event, but as a private citizen committed to expressing and extending a ferocious hatred toward an entire country, and that without taking into account having adequate knowledge about what it is he detests.

If he is permitted to remain in the position of rector, it will not reflect well on the decision-making capabilities of the University Council, but it will be their decision to make. At the very least, he and they will know of a certainty that the smear campaign and the hatred expressed toward Israel and Jews is not as universally accepted as he appears to feel it is.

On Alert

When one most needs the support of a powerful friend Fortune and Chance intervene and suddenly that powerful friend has slipped away. And so it is with Israel, the country that could always depend on its good relations with the United States to offer support and counselling. Unfortunately for Israel a turn of events that was seen in the most positive light elsewhere in the world - with the election to the U.S. presidency of a a bi-racial American - that man who is now president is not personally enamoured of Israel, and is personally involved with the Muslim world.

It was an imperative for American President Barack Obama on taking office to convince the Arab and the Muslim world that the United States is not their enemy. Rather that the U.S. aspired to be an ally to the Muslim world. And that past misunderstandings could be rectified if both sides in the imagined dispute could reach out to one another to make amends, to finally understand where each stood. Radical Islam responded slapping back the hand of friendship, while moderate Islam stood back, cagily watching and waiting. Ready to be convinced.

It is difficult to convince someone that you mean well when your military is involved in an occupation-status in Arab and Muslim countries, combating rabid political Islamism determined to wreak carnage in the West. The United States of America has taken on the unwelcome mantle of chief policeman of this globe as a moral obligation, despite making many errors on the way to becoming the most respected and feared, called-upon and criticized nation on Earth.

The orientation currently being observed is likely a temporary one, but it is for the present time - until and unless in future years another stalwart American comes forward to take the place of Barack Obama - the current reality. The Democrats continue to enjoy the upper hand in Congress, while the Republicans frustratedly wait out the two years before another election. And Barack Obama's waning popularity may yet rebound, to bring him another term. During which time the stand-offish attitude toward Israel will continue. And blandishments toward Islam also continue.

So when Islamic Jihad, for example, successfully manages to have one of its operatives deposit a disguised bomb in a busy Jerusalem intersection at a time when city buses are conveying hordes of people to various destinations, killing a British tourist and seriously injuring 50 Israelis in the process, comment by the U.S. president is instructive of his very particular view.

Violence is deplored, and in a spirit of equivalence and compassionate outreach, sympathy is extended to the Jewish civilians who have been viciously attacked by a terrorist group, and sympathy equally extended to the families of civilian Palestinians who were inadvertently hit by IDF strikes responding to a series of rocket attacks coming out of Gaza.

The crowded bus stop near the city's central bus station was selected carefully to ensure that maximum damage would ensue from the blast. Far more people would have been killed and injured had not an alert onlooker noted that a young man had deposited a bag, hastily leaving the area, causing the witness to immediately contact security personnel who then undertook to keep additional people away from the area.

In despair and anger that their safety had been breached once again after a years'-long hiatus in armed conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, ultra-Orthodox Jews who assembled after the blast at the side of the road, shouted "Death to Arabs!" This sentiment is an abhorrent one, common enough in the Arab world, repeatedly shouted as a testament of faith, but it is anathema - or should be - to Jews.

The volatile and perplexing situation where PA head Mahmoud Abbas declares that he and his administration would continue to seek a solution to attain their goal of peace and nationhood outside a peace agreement and without resorting again to violence, has led to a stalemate. Where Israel's Prime Minister Netanyahu has continually expressed his willing eagerness to meet any time, anywhere, to continue peace talks.

Mahmoud Abbas's dedication to peacefully resolving the stalemate without resorting to direct talks is puzzling in and of itself. The issue of building new residences within the precincts of existing West Bank settlements should not be seen as a constraint to talks. Successful negotiations could reach agreements about how to dispose of this ongoing irritant to the satisfaction of both parties. Without talks nothing can be resolved.

Precisely how dedicated to a peaceful resolution Mahmoud Abbas might be is questionable in the face of continuing to give public honour as martyrs for the Palestinian cause to terrorists who have ripped the life out of Jewish civilians, the elderly, women and children. Demanding everything and proffering nothing cannot be seen as equal opportunities allotted to each side to make sacrifices for the greater good of a peaceful compromise.

Hamas claims that it too has no wish to continue violent conflagrations with Israel, that it would prefer a return to the relatively quiet period, discounting the occasional rocket lobbed across the border, post IDF invasion of Gaza. If so, it has conversely been permitting provocations to ensure that the IDF will continue to respond to the continued increased rocket attacks because Hamas has not been adequately policing other militias' activities.

On the other hand Hamas could be counting on the continued onslaughts against Israel to consolidate public opinion among Gaza's Palestinian population who might just succumb to the same kind of restiveness and begin opposing Hamas's Islamist rule as seen elsewhere in the geography, which an active low-grade war with their common enemy might forestall.

And with the Arab and Muslim world's autocrats seeing their traditional rule begin to implode around them even as they attempt to counteract the popular rebellions in their various countries, the entire region remains on alert. There is a lot of nervous tension among the various rulers, tyrants and theocracies in that volatile region of the world.

With Israel seated within that very particular ring of fire.