By Eli E. Hertz
MythsandFacts.org,
Copyright May 13, 2010

Jerusalem and the Jewish people are so intertwined that telling the history of one is telling the history of the other. For more than 3,000 years, Jerusalem has played a central role in the history of the Jews, culturally, politically, and spiritually, a role first documented in the Scriptures. All through the 2,000 years of the diaspora, Jews have called Jerusalem their ancestral home. This sharply contrasts the relationship between Jerusalem and the new Islamists who artificially inflate Islam’s links to Jerusalem.

The Arab rulers who controlled Jerusalem through the 1950s and 1960s demonstrated no religious tolerance in a city that gave birth to two major Western religions. That changed after the Six-Day War in 1967, when Israel regained control of the whole city. Symbolically, one of Israel’s first steps was to officially recognize and respect all religious interests in Jerusalem. But the war for control of Jerusalem and its religious sites is not over.

Palestinian terrorism has targeted Jerusalem particularly in an attempt to gain control of the city from Israel. The result is that they have turned Jerusalem, the City of Peace, into a bloody battleground and have thus forfeited their claim to share in the city’s destiny.
“Pray for the peace of Jerusalem.” Psalm 122:6

Jerusalem`s Jewish Link: Historic, Religious, Political

Jerusalem, wrote historian Martin Gilbert, is not a ”˜mere` city. “It holds the central spiritual and physical place in the history of the Jews as a people.”

For more than 3,000 years, the Jewish people have looked to Jerusalem as their spiritual, political, and historical capital, even when they did not physically rule over the city.

Throughout its long history, Jerusalem has served, and still serves, as the political capital of only one nation ”“ the one belonging to the Jews. Its prominence in Jewish history began in 1004 BCE, when King David declared the city the capital of the first Jewish kingdom. Davids successor and son, King Solomon, built the First Temple there, according to the Bible, as a holy place to worship the Almighty. Unfortunately, history would not be kind to the Jewish people. Four hundred and ten years after King Solomon completed construction of Jerusalem, the Babylonians (early ancestors to todays Iraqis) seized and destroyed the city, forcing the Jews into exile.

Fifty years later, the Jews, or Israelites as they were called, were permitted to return after Persia (present-day Iran) conquered Babylon. The Jews` first order of business was to reclaim Jerusalem as their capital and rebuild the Holy Temple, recorded in history as the Second Temple.

Jerusalem was more than the Jewish kingdom`s political capital ”“ it was a spiritual beacon. During the First and Second Temple periods, Jews throughout the kingdom would travel to Jerusalem three times yearly for the pilgrimages of the Jewish holy days of Sukkot, Passover, and Shavuot, until the Roman Empire destroyed the Second Temple in 70 CE and ended Jewish sovereignty over Jerusalem for the next 2,000 years. Despite that fate, Jews never relinquished their bond to Jerusalem or, for that matter, to Eretz Yisrael, the Land of Israel.

No matter where Jews lived throughout the world for those two millennia, their thoughts and prayers were directed toward Jerusalem. Even today, whether in Israel, the United States or anywhere else, Jewish ritual practice, holiday celebration and lifecycle events include recognition of Jerusalem as a core element of the Jewish experience. Consider that:

Ӣ Jews in prayer always turn toward Jerusalem.

Ӣ Arks (the sacred chests) that hold Torah scrolls in synagogues throughout the world face Jerusalem.

”¢ Jews end Passover Seders each year with the words: “Next year in Jerusalem”; the same words are pronounced at the end of Yom Kippur, the most solemn day of the Jewish year.

”¢ A three-week moratorium on weddings in the summer recalls the breaching of the walls of Jerusalem by the Babylonian army in 586 BCE. That period culminates in a special day of mourning ”“ Tisha B`Av (the 9th day of the Hebrew month Av) ”“ commemorating the destruction of both the First and Second Temples.

”¢ Jewish wedding ceremonies ”“ joyous occasions, are marked by sorrow over the loss of Jerusalem. The groom recites a biblical verse from the Babylonian Exile: “If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning,”4 and breaks a glass in commemoration of the destruction of the Temples.

Even body language, often said to tell volumes about a person, reflects the importance of Jerusalem to Jews as a people and, arguably, the lower priority the city holds for Muslims:

Ӣ When Jews pray they face Jerusalem; in Jerusalem Israelis pray facing the Temple Mount.

Ӣ When Muslims pray, they face Mecca; in Jerusalem Muslims pray with their backs to the city.

Ӣ Even at burial, a Muslim face, is turned toward Mecca.

Finally, consider the number of times ”˜Jerusalem` is mentioned in the two religions’ holy books:

”¢ The Old Testament mentions ”˜Jerusalem349 times. Zion, another name for ”˜Jerusalem, is mentioned 108 times.

”¢ The Quran never mentions Jerusalem ”“ not even once.

Even when others controlled Jerusalem, Jews maintained a physical presence in the city, despite being persecuted and impoverished. Before the advent of modern Zionism in the 1880s, Jews were moved by a form of religious Zionism to live in the Holy Land, settling particularly in four holy cities: Safed, Tiberias, Hebron, and most importantly ”“ Jerusalem. Consequently, Jews constituted a majority of the citys population for generations. In 1898, “In this City of the Jews, where the Jewish population outnumbers all others three to one ”¦” Jews constituted 75 percent of the Old City population in what Secretary-General Kofi Annan called ”˜East Jerusalem.

In 1914, when the Ottoman Turks ruled the city, 45,000 Jews made up a majority of the 65,000 residents. And at the time of Israeli statehood in 1948, 100,000 Jews lived in the city, compared to only 65,000 Arabs.7 Prior to unification, Jordanian-controlled ”˜East Jerusalemwas a mere 6 square kilometers, compared to 38 square kilometers on the ”˜Jewish side.

Islam`s Tenuous Connection

Despite 1,300 years of Muslim Arab rule, Jerusalem was never the capital of an Arab entity, nor was it ever mentioned in the Palestine Liberation Organization`s covenant until Israel regained control of East Jerusalem in the Six-Day War of 1967.

Overall, the role of Jerusalem in Islam is best understood as the outcome of political exigencies impacting on religious belief.

Mohammed, who founded Islam in 622 CE, was born and raised in present-day Saudi Arabia; he never set foot in Jerusalem. His connection to the city came years after his death when the Dome of the Rock shrine and the al-Aqsa mosque were built in 688 and 691, respectively, their construction spurred by political and religious rivalries. In 638 CE, the Caliph (or successor to Mohammed) Omar and his invading armies captured Jerusalem from the Byzantine Empire. One reason they wanted to erect a holy structure in Jerusalem was to proclaim Islam`s supremacy8 over Christianity and its most important shrine, the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.

More important was the power struggle within Islam itself. The Damascus-based Umayyad Caliphs who controlled Jerusalem wanted to establish an alternative holy site if their rivals blocked access to Mecca. That was important because the Hajj or pilgrimage to Mecca was (and remains today) one of the Five Pillars of Islam. As a result, they built what became known as the Dome of the Rock shrine and the adjacent mosque.

To enhance the prestige of the ”˜substitute Mecca,the Jerusalem mosque was named al-Aqsa. It means ”˜the furthest mosque in Arabic, but has far broader implications, since it is the same phrase used in a key passage of the Quran called “The Night Journey.” In that passage, Mohammed arrives at ”˜al-Aqsa` on a winged steed accompanied by the Archangel Gabriel; from there they ascend into heaven for a divine meeting with Allah, after which Mohammed returns to Mecca. Naming the Jerusalem mosque al-Aqsa was an attempt to say the Dome of the Rock was the very spot from which Mohammed ascended to heaven, thus tying Jerusalem to divine revelation in Islamic belief.

The problem however, is that Mohammed died in the year 632, nearly 50 years before the first construction of the al-Aqsa Mosque was completed. Jerusalem never replaced the importance of Mecca in the Islamic world. When the Umayyad dynasty fell in 750, Jerusalem also fell into near obscurity for 350 years, until the Crusades. During those centuries, many Islamic sites in Jerusalem fell into disrepair and in 1016 the Dome of the Rock collapsed.

Still, for 1,300 years, various Islamic dynasties (Syrian, Egyptian, and Turkish) continued to govern Jerusalem as part of their overall control of the Land of Israel, disrupted only by the Crusaders. What is amazing is that over that period, not one Islamic dynasty ever made Jerusalem its capital.11 By the 19th century, Jerusalem had been so neglected by Islamic rulers that several prominent Western writers who visited Jerusalem were moved to write about it. French writer Gustav Flaubert, for example, found “ruins everywhere” during his visit in 1850 when it was part of the Turkish Empire (1516-1917). Seventeen years later Mark Twain wrote that Jerusalem had “become a pauper village.”

Indeed, Jerusalems importance in the Islamic world only appears evident when non-Muslims (including the Crusaders, the British, and the Jews) control or capture the city.13 Only at those points in history did Islamic leaders claim Jerusalem as their third most holy city after Mecca and Medina.14 That was again the case in 1967, when Israel captured Jordanian-controlled East Jerusalem (and the Old City) during the 1967 Six-Day War. Oddly, the PLOs National Covenant, written in 1964, never mentioned Jerusalem. Only after Israel regained control of the entire city did the PLO updated its Covenant to include Jerusalem.

Jordan`s Shameful Record

As recently as the mid-20th century, when Arabs last controlled parts of Jerusalem, they exhibited no respect for the Holy City.

In 1948, when Jordan took control of the eastern part of Jerusalem, including the Old City, it divided the city for the first time in its 3,000-year history. Under the 1949 armistice agreement with Israel, Jordan pledged to allow free access to all holy places but failed to honor that commitment. From 1948 until the Six-Day War in 1967, the part of Jerusalem controlled by the Jordanians again became an isolated and underdeveloped provincial town, with its religious sites the target of religious intolerance.

The Old City was rendered void of Jews. Jewish sites such as the Mount of Olives were desecrated. Jordan destroyed more than 50 synagogues15, and erased all evidence of a Jewish presence. In addition, all Jews were forced out of the Jewish Quarter of the Old City adjacent to the Western Wall, an area where Jews had lived for generations.

For 19 years, Jews and Christians residing in Israel (and even Israeli Muslims) were barred from their holy places, despite Jordans pledge to allow free access. Jews, for example, were unable to pray at the Western Wall; Christian Arabs living in Israel were denied access to churches and other religious sites in the Old City and nearby Bethlehem, also under Jordanian control.16 During Jordans reign over eastern Jerusalem, its restrictive laws on Christian institutions led to a dramatic decline in the holy city`s Christian population by more than half ”“ from 25,000 to 11,000,17 a pattern that characterized Christian Arabs in other Arab countries throughout the Middle East where religious freedom is not honored.

It was only after the Six-Day War that the Jewish Quarter was rebuilt and free access to holy places was reestablished. It is worth noting that after Jordan annexed the West Bank in the 1950s, it too failed to make Jerusalem ”“ a city that Arabs now claim as ”˜the third most holy site of Islam` ”“ its capital.

Reunited Jerusalem

Israel reunited Jerusalem as one city in 1967, after Jordan joined the Egyptian and Syrian war offensive and shelled the Jewish part of Jerusalem. One of Israel`s first acts was to grant unprecedented freedom to all religions in the city. Israeli leaders vowed it would never again be divided.

Despite the disgraceful treatment of the Jewish Quarter and the Mount of Olives under the Jordanians and despite the Arabsviolation of their pledges to make all holy sites accessible to Jews and Christians, one of the first acts Israel undertook after reuniting the city was to guarantee and safeguard the rights of all citizens of Jerusalem. This included not only free access to holy sites for all faiths but also represented an unprecedented act of religious tolerance. Israel granted Muslim and Christian religious authorities responsibility for managing their respective holy sites18 ”“ including Muslim administration of Judaisms holiest site, the Temple Mount. Eventually, however, the Waqf, which holds administrative responsibility over the Temple Mount, violated the trust with which it was invested to respect and protect the holiness of the Temple Mount for both Muslims and Jews.

Jerusalem was Never an Arab City

Arab leaders continue to insist that Jerusalem is an Arab city. That myth is used to implement a strategy to wrest partial control of Jerusalem from Israel and to make Jerusalem the capital of a Palestinian state.

It is also part of a long-range strategy to destroy the Jewish state. This is one reason PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat rejected the unprecedented now-or-never Israeli proposal at peace talks in 2000 at Camp David. The proposal sought to solve the impasse over the status of Jerusalem by offering Arabs a share in the administration of parts of the city. Afterwards, Arafat revealed his real position in a post-summit statement that declared the PLO`s demand for sovereignty over Jerusalem included the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, the Temple Mount mosques, the Armenian Quarter, “and Jerusalem in its entirety, entirety, entirety.”

The ”˜Two Jerusalems` Myth

Palestinians have nurtured a myth that historically there were two Jerusalems ”“ an Arab ”˜East Jerusalemand a Jewish ”˜West Jerusalem.

Jerusalem was never an Arab city; Jews have held a majority in Jerusalem since 187020, and ”˜east-west` is a geographic, not political designation. It is no different than claiming the Eastern shore of Maryland should be a separate political entity from the rest of the state.

In 1880, Jews constituted 52 percent of the Old City population in East Jerusalem and were still inhabiting 42 percent of the Old City in 1914.21 In 1948, there were 100,000 Jews in Jerusalem, with 65,000 Arabs. A joint Jordanian-Israeli census reported that 67.7 percent of the citys population in 1961 was Jewish. A 1967 aerial photo reveals the truth about the area called ”˜East Jerusalem: it was no more than an overcrowded walled city with a few scattered neighborhoods surrounded by villages.

Although uniting the city transformed all of Jerusalem into the largest city in Israel and a bustling metropolis, even moderate Palestinian leaders reject the idea of a united city. Their minimal demand for ”˜just East Jerusalemreally means the Jewish holy sites (including the Jewish Quarter and the Western Wall), which Arabs have failed to protect, and the return of neighborhoods that house a significant percentage of Jerusalems present-day Jewish population. Most of that city is built on rock-strewn empty land around the city that was in the public domain for the past 42 years. With an overall population of nearly 750,000 today, separating East Jerusalem and West Jerusalem is as viable and acceptable as the notion of splitting Berlin into two cities again, or separating East Harlem from the rest of Manhattan. Arab claims to Jerusalem, a Jewish city by all definitions, reflect the “whats-mine-is-mine, whats-yours-is-mine” mentality underlying Palestinian concepts of how to end the Arab-Israeli conflict. That concept is also expressed in the demand for the ”˜Right of Return,22 not just in Jerusalem ”“ Israels capital, but ”˜inside the Green Line` as well.

Arab Fantasies, Destroying History

Arabs deny the bond between Jews and Jerusalem; they sabotage and destroy archaeological evidence, even at the holiest place in Judaism ”“ the Temple Mount.

Arabs continually denied the legitimacy of the Jewish people`s connection to Jerusalem. Arafat and other Arab leaders insisted that there never were Jewish temples on the Temple Mount. They also claim the Western Wall was really an Islamic holy site to which Muslims have historical rights.23 Putting rhetoric into action, Islamic clerics who manage the Temple Mount have demonstrated flagrant disrespect and contempt for the archaeological evidence of a Jewish presence.

Between 1999 and 2001, the Muslim Waqf removed and dumped more than 13,000 tons of what it termed rubble from the Mount and its substructure, including archaeological remains from the First and Second Temple periods, which Israelis found at dumping sites. During construction of a new underground mosque in a subterranean hall believed to date back to the time of Herod,24 and the paving of an ”˜open airmosque elsewhere on the Temple Mount, the Waqf barred the Israel Antiquities Authority from supervising, or even observing, work. When archaeological finds from any period ”“ Jewish or otherwise ”“ are uncovered in the course of construction work, the Authority is mandated by law to supervise and observe everywhere in Israel ”“ legislation that dates back to 1922 and documented in the international accord of the League of Nations ”“ the “Mandate for Palestine.” Such gross disregard for the pre-Islamic Jewish heritage of Jerusalem ”“ particularly on Judaism`s holiest historic site ”“ is a far more insidious form of the same Islamic intolerance that motivated the Taliban to demolish two gigantic pre-Islamic statues of Buddha carved into a cliff in Afghanistan.

The Holy Places and Jerusalem

Jerusalem, it seems, is at the physical center of the Arab-Israeli conflict. In fact, two distinct issues exist: the issue of Jerusalem and the issue of the Holy Places.

Sir Elihu Lauterpacht, a former judge ad hoc on the bench of the International Court of Justice and a renowned and respected scholar of international law at Cambridge University, has said:

“Not only are the two problems separate; they are also quite distinct in nature from one another. So far as the Holy Places are concerned, the question is for the most part one of assuring respect for the existing interests of the three religions and of providing the necessary guarantees of freedom of access, worship, and religious administration. Questions of this nature are only marginally an issue between Israel and her neighbors and their solution should not complicate the peace negotiations.

“As far as the City of Jerusalem itself is concerned, the question is one of establishing an effective administration of the City which can protect the rights of the various elements of its permanent population – Christian, Arab and Jewish – and ensure the governmental stability and physical security which are essential requirements for the city of the Holy Places.”

Internationalization of Jerusalem

Judge, Sir Elihu Lauterpacht underscored in his investigation of the legal issues surrounding the status of Jerusalem and the Holy Places that the notion of internationalizing Jerusalem was not part of the original international mandate: “Nothing was said in the Mandate about the internationalization of Jerusalem. Indeed Jerusalem as such is not mentioned, ”“ though the Holy Places are. And this in itself is a fact of relevance now. For it shows that in 1922 there was no inclination to identify the question of the Holy Places with that of the internationalization of Jerusalem.” Arab leaders, including Palestinians, have sought to justify their right to Jerusalem by distorting the meaning of United Nations resolutions that apply to the city. UN Resolution 181, for example, adopted by the General Assembly in 1947, recommended turning Jerusalem and its environs into an international city, or corpus separatum. However, Arab spokesmen conveniently ignore the fact that Resolution 181 was a non-binding recommendation.

Professor Julius Stone, one of the 20th century’s best-known authorities in Jurisprudence and international law,28 notes that Resolution 181 “lacked binding force” from the outset, since it required acceptance by all parties concerned: “While the State of Israel did for her part express willingness to accept it, the other states concerned both rejected it and took up arms unlawfully against it.”

Judge Lauterpacht wrote in 1968 about the new conditions that had arisen since 1948 with regard to the original thoughts of internationalization of Jerusalem:

“-The Arab States rejected the Partition Plan and the proposal for the internationalization of Jerusalem.

-The Arab States physically opposed the implementation of the General Assembly Resolution. They sought by force of arms to expel the Jewish inhabitants of Jerusalem and to achieve sole occupation of the City.

-In the event, Jordan obtained control only of the Eastern part of the City, including the Walled City.

-While Jordan permitted reasonably free access to Christian Holy Places, it denied the Jews any access to the Jewish Holy Places.29 This was a fundamental departure from the tradition of freedom of religious worship in the Holy Land, which had evolved over centuries. It was also a clear violation of the undertaking given by Jordan in the Armistice Agreement concluded with Israel on 3rd April, 1949.

Article VIII of this Agreement called for the establishment of a Special Committee of Israeli and Jordanian representatives to formulate agreed plans on certain matters “which, in any case, shall include the following, on which agreement in principle already exists … free access to the Holy Places and cultural institutions and use of the Cemetery on the Mount of Olives.”

-The U.N. displayed no concern over the discrimination thus practiced against persons of the Jewish faith.

-The U.N. accepted as tolerable the unsupervised control of the Old City of Jerusalem by Jordanian forces – notwithstanding the fact that the presence of Jordanian forces west of the Jordan River was entirely lacking in any legal justification.

-During the period 1948-1952 the General Assembly gradually came to accept that the plan for the territorial internationalization of Jerusalem had been quite overtaken by events. From 1952 to the present time virtually nothing more has been heard of the idea in the General Assembly. On 5th June, 1967, Jordan deliberately overthrew the Armistice Agreement by attacking the Israeli-held part of Jerusalem. There was no question of this Jordanian action being a reaction to any Israeli attack. It took place notwithstanding explicit Israeli assurances, conveyed to King Hussein through the U.N. Commander, that if Jordan did not attack Israel, Israel would not attack Jordan. Although the charge of aggression is freely made against Israel in relation to the Six-Day War the fact remains that the two attempts made in the General Assembly in June-July 1967 to secure the condemnation of Israel as an aggressor failed. A clear and striking majority of the members of the U.N. voted against the proposition that Israel was an aggressor.”

Today, Israel has reunited Jerusalem and provided unrestricted freedom of religion. Access of all faiths to the Holy Places in the unified City of Peace is assured. Judge, Sir Elihu Lauterpracht confirm this:

“Moslems have enjoyed, under Israeli control, the very freedom which Jews were denied during Jordanian occupation.” Lastly, it should be noted: If UN Resolution 181 was valid today (which it is not), then so would be the provision in Part III-D that stipulates that after 10 years, the citys international status could be subject to a referendum of all Jerusalemites regarding a change in the status of the city ”“ a decision that today, as in the past, would have been made by the citys decisive Jewish majority.

The UN and Jerusalem

Both the General Assembly and the Security Council have limited influence on the future of Jerusalem. Judge Sir Lauterpacht explained in 1968:

“The General Assembly has no power of disposition over Jerusalem and no right to lay down regulations for the Holy Places. The Security Council, of course, retains its powers under Chapter VII of the Charter in relation to threats to the peace, breaches of the peace and acts of aggression, but these powers do not extend to the adoption of any general position regarding the future of Jerusalem and the Holy Places.” Originally, internationalization of Jerusalem was part of a much broader proposal that the Arab states rejected ”“ both at the UN and ”˜on the ground,` by

“a rejection underlined by armed invasion of Palestine by the forces of Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, and Saudi Arabia ”¦ aimed at destroying Israel.”

The outcome of consistent Arab aggression was best described by Professor, Judge Schwebel, former President of the International Court of Justice in the Hague:

“As between Israel, acting defensively in 1948 and 1967, on the one hand, and her Arab neighbors, acting aggressively in 1948 and 1967, on the other, Israel has better title in the territory of what was Palestine, including the whole of Jerusalem.”

Arab Leaders Point to UN Resolution 242 as a Basis for their Claim to Jerusalem

Resolution 242 was adopted after the 1967 War, when Israel captured territory from Egypt, Jordan, and Syria, after they attacked Israel. However, the resolution never mentions Jerusalem, nor does UN Resolution 242 call for a full withdrawal from territory captured but merely a withdrawal to “secure and recognized boundaries” that are to be negotiated by the parties concerned. Arab Palestinians were not a party to the resolution.

Arthur Goldberg, the former U.S. Ambassador to the UN (in 1967) who helped draft the resolution, testified in regard to the omission of Jerusalem from Resolution 242:

“I never described Jerusalem as occupied territory. Resolution 242 in no way refers to Jerusalem and this omission was deliberate.”

In conclusion of the role the UN and international law may play in determining the future of Jerusalem, one may again quote Judge Lauterpacht:

“(i) Israel’s governmental measures in relation to Jerusalem – both New and Old – are lawful and valid.

(ii) The future regulation of the Holy Places is a matter to be determined quite separately from the political administration of Jerusalem. Territorial internationalization of Jerusalem is dead – but the possibility of functional internationalization is not. The latter means, in effect, the recognition of the universal interest in the Holy Places situated in Jerusalem and the adoption of links between Israel and the world community to give formal expression to that interest.”

Palestinian Terror in the City of Peace

Palestinian Arabs have concentrated many of their terrorist attacks on Jews in Jerusalem, hoping to win the city by an onslaught of suicide bombers who will make life in the City of Peace unbearable. But this is not a new tactic. Arab strategy to turn Jerusalem into a battleground began in 1920. Unfortunately, Arab leaders often turn to violence to gain what they were unable to achieve at the negotiating table. When talks broke down at Camp David in 2000, Palestinian Arab leaders unleashed the al-Aqsa Intifada, which amounted to a full-blown guerrilla war against Israel.

It began the day before Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, when Arab mobs hurled rocks from the Temple Mount onto Jewish worshipers praying at the Western Wall below. That rock attack turned into a steady campaign of terrorist attacks. As the priming powder for the Intifada, Palestinian leaders incited Palestinians and Muslims throughout the world with fables that falsely suggested that Jews began an assault on al-Aqsa when Ariel Sharon made a half-hour visit to the Temple Mount during tourist hours. The truth is that Palestinians` plans for warfare had begun immediately after Arafat walked out of the Camp David talks.

Why do Palestinians focus terrorist attacks on the City of Peace? Because Palestinians despite their rhetoric fully understand Jerusalem`s symbolic and spiritual significance to the Jews.

Suicide attacks ”“ on public buses and cafes, malls, and other crowded sites in the heart of the city ”“ since the 1993 Oslo Accords are designed to make life hell for Jewish Jerusalemites. Atrocities like the February and March 1996 bombings of two #18 buses that killed 26 people and the August 2001 bombing of a Sbarro pizzeria that killed 15 (including five members of one family), are part of an ongoing 120-year-old battle for Jerusalem that Arabs have waged in opposition to Zionism. In April 1920, a three-day rampage by religiously incited anti-Zionist Arab mobs left six dead and 200 injured in the Jewish Quarter. The attackers gutted synagogues and yeshivot and ransacked homes. Arabs planted time bombs in public places as far back as February 1947, when they blasted Ben-Yehuda Street, Jerusalem`s main thoroughfare, leaving 50 dead.

This was all done before the establishment of the State of Israel. In the 1950s, Jordanians periodically shot at Jewish neighborhoods from the walls of the Old City. And after the city was united in 1967, Arabs renewed their battle for the city by planting bombs in cinemas and supermarkets.

The first terrorist attack in that renewed battle came with the 1968 bombing of Jerusalems Machane Yehuda, the open market, that left 12 dead. The plain facts about Palestinians behavior clearly demonstrate that they have forfeited any claims ”“ historical, religious or political ”“ to the City of Peace.

IN A NUTSHELL

Ӣ Jerusalem`s Jewish connection dates back more than 3,000 years. Even after Jews lost control of the city in 70 CE, a Jewish spiritual and physical bond with Jerusalem remained unbroken, despite 2,000 years of dispersion.

Ӣ Given the central role Jerusalem plays throughout Jewish history; given Arabs dismal record toward the rights of Jews and Christians in a sensitive, sacred city like Jerusalem; and together with the Arabs` horrific record of bringing carnage to the City of Peace, Israel has a legal, historical and moral right to control Jerusalem as its undivided capital.

Ӣ Jerusalem must remain a unified capital under Israel`s exclusive sovereignty in order to protect the interests of the Jewish people and as the only guarantee that the interests of all other faiths will be protected.

Author unknown

Geography

Israel is only 1/6 of 1% of the landmass of the Middle East.
Israel is roughly half the size of Lake Michigan.
The Sea of Galilee, at 695 ft. Below sea level, is the lowest freshwater lake in the world.
The Dead Sea is the lowest surface point on earth, at about 1,373 feet below sea level.
Israel is the only nation in the world that entered the 21st century with a net gain in it’s number of trees.
Jericho is the oldest continuously inhabited town in the world.
The Mount of Olives in Jerusalem is the oldest, continually used cemetery in the world.

Demographics

Israel’s population is half the size of Metro New York City.
Israel has only 2% of the population of the Middle East.
Israel has the highest ratio of university degrees per capita in the world.
Israel produces more scientific papers per capita than any other nation in the world .
Israel has the highest number of scientists and technicians per capita in the world .
Israel has the highest number of engineers per capita in the world.
Israel has the highest number of PhD’s per capita in the world.
Israel has the highest number of physicians per capita in the world.
Israel has the largest percentage of it’s workforce employed in technical professions in the world.
Israel is the largest immigrant-absorbing nation in the world, per capita.
Israel is the only country in the Mid East where the Christian population has grown over the last 50 years.
br> Israel is the only country in the Mid East where Christians, Muslims and Jews are all free to vote.
Israel is the only country in the Mid East where women enjoy full political rights.

Economics

Israel has the largest number of startup companies per capita in the world.
Israel is the world’s largest wholesale diamond center, finally surpassing Antwerp in the 1970’s.
Most of the cut & polished diamonds in the world come from Israel.
Israel has the largest number of NASDAQ listed companies outside of the US and Canada.
Israel was the first country to have a free trade agreement with the United States.
Apart from the Silicon Valley, Israel has the highest concentration of hi-tech companies in the world.

Electronics

The cell phone was developed in Israel at Motorola’s largest development center.
The Voice Mail technology was developed in Israel.
IBM chose an Israeli-designed computer chip as the brains for it’s first personal computers.
The first anti-virus software for computers was developed in Israel in 1979.
Most of the Windows NT and XP operating systems were developed in Israel by Microsoft.
Both the Pentium-4 and Centrino processors were entirely designed, developed and produced in Israel.
The Pentium MMX Chip technology was designed in Israel at Intel.
Israel has the highest number of home computers per capita in the world.
The technology for the AOL Instant Messenger and ICQ was developed in 1996 by 4 young Israelis.
Israel was the first Middle Eastern country to launch a satellite, the Ofek 1, on September 19, 1988.

Culture

Hebrew is the only case of a dead national language being revived in all of world history.
Hebrew had not been spoken as a native tongue by anyone for centuries.
Today it is the native tongue of millions of people.
Israel has more museums per capita than any other nation in the world.
Israel has more orchestras per capita than any other nation in the world.
Israel publishes more books per capita than any other nation in the world.
Israel publishes more books translated from other languages than any other nation in the world.
Israel reads more books per capita than any other nation in the world.
The most independent and free Arabic press in the Middle East is in Israel.

Military/Security

Israel has the largest fleet of F-16 aircraft outside of the US.
Israel has the world’s most impenetrable airline security.
Israel spends more money per capita on it’s own protection than any country in the world.

Other

Israel’s dairy cows are the most productive dairy cows in the world.
They average 25,432 pounds of milk per cow per year, compared to just 18,747 pounds I USA.
Israel has more in-vitro fertilization per capita than anywhere in the world, and it’s free.
Israelis, per capita, are the world’s biggest consumers of fruits and vegetables.

Of the 175 UN Security Council resolutions passed before 1990, 97 were directed against Israel.
Of the 690 UN General Assembly resolutions voted on before 1990, 429 were directed against Israel.

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April 6, 2010

The Editor, The Jerusalem Post.

Sir,

The Arabs fought us 3 times in the past 62 years and lost each time. They had three war aims. One, to push us into the sea or into mass graves. Two, to increase the size of their territories. Three to wipe Israel off the map of the world.

Genocide was their master plan and they made no bones about it. But they were frustrated each time because we fought back and beat them.

So now they want to claim the spoils of their war losses by demanding that we return the land we conquered. And though we are willing to talk to them they cannot abide talking to us.

In civilized societies criminals guilty of breaking the law are fined or imprisoned, or both. Our enemies did us wrong and deserve to be punished. But Arab nations don`t see it that way at all – they want punish us for their wrongdoing!

The nations of the world who believe in this remarkable value system are patting them on the back and encouraging them to stick to their guns. Because where Arab oil is concerned they win right or wrong. And tough cookie for Israel.

Though what the Arabs will do for money if they don`t sell their oil beats me.

Sincerely,

By Dr. Alex Grobman

There are many attempts to understand why the Arab/Israel conflict remains unresolved. Among the reasons advanced for this impasse are: years of suspicion, fear, feelings of injustice and stereotyping have created a psychological barrier between Israelis and Arabs.1 Negative perceptions have reduced incentives to accept peace proposals, prejudice the viability of these proposals and preclude feelings of empathy.2

On the most personal level, there are differences in Arab and Jewish life-styles. Meron Benvenisti, a former deputy mayor of Jerusalem, laments the gulf dividing Arabs and Jews even when they live together as neighbors. They patronage the same stores, exchange information on common neighborhood issues, drink coffee in the afternoon, and watch their children growing up from opposite sides of the fence.3

Yet they do not share common holidays, days of rest, or free time activities. Holidays are especially alienating. Benvenisti would not invite his neighbors to sit in his sukkah (booths used during the Feast of Tabernacles) lest they be offended when he recites the prayer over the wine. Similarly, when one of his neighbor`s children returned from the hajj, the annual religious pilgrimage to Mecca, his family would not be invited to celebrate to save them embarrassment for not knowing how to behave.4

Estrangement is even more pronounced the moment visible symbols are involved. When Benvenisti displays the flag on Israeli Independence Day, he knows his neighbors will be upset. On Yom Kippur, work ceases throughout the country. During the month of Ramadan, Arabs rise at 3: 00 a.m. A blind man in his neighborhood, who is escorted by a drummer, wakes-up the pious at 3:a.m. to prepare the meal before the fast. 5

Security issues add another layer of distance. Every one of his Arab neighbors homes has been searched at least once during the 14 years the Benvenistis lived in Jerusalem. Every single male over the age of 18 has been detained by the security forces during the same period. “We are simultaneously enemies and neighbors,” he concludes.5

The many wars, endless clashes and threats of total annihilation have left memories of “hatred, paranoia, brutality, dehumanization, and tribalism.” Even as Israel becomes more powerful, many Israelis still feel “vulnerable and weak.” The Holocaust continues to be a “national trauma.” Fear remains an overwhelming emotion.6

Sari Nusseibeh, scion of one Jerusalems most prominent Muslim Arab families, president of Al Quds University in Jerusalem, and a former PLO representative in the city, posits that the “inability to imagine the lives of the ”˜other, is main reason why the conflict persists. Everyone is so absorbed in their own adversity they are unaware of each other`s experiences and even antagonistic to them.7

The late Edward Said, a pro-Palestinian activist and a professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, underlined the fundamental reason why when he spoke of Palestinians becoming the victims of Zionism, of the Zionists being responsible for the destruction of their society, the loss of their land, and the painful exile they are forced to endure.8

He accused the Zionists of being a “tool of imperialism” who usurped their land, established settler colonies and a sovereign state whose only means of preservation is by aggression and expansion. Some Arabs believe that Israel is by nature an expansionist nation, and will continue to take more land at Arab expense.9

Seizing Arab land cannot be tolerated. Bernard Lewis, one of the world`s leading experts on Islam, explains that once a territory has become part of Islam”˜s domain, it can never be relinquished or surrendered to anyone. No land is more significant than Arabia and Iraq. And of the two, Arabia is clearly the most important.10

The sacredness of Muslim land led to the eviction of Jews and Christians from their homes and property. In 641, 20 years after Muhammad moved from Mecca to Medina, Caliph Umar decreed that Jews and Christians be expelled from Arabia in accordance with the Prophet`s deathbed pronouncement: “Let there not be two religions in Arabia.” This meant Jews of the oasis of Khybar in the north and Christians of Najran in the south were to be banished even though both groups had very deep roots in the region and differed from their Muslim neighbors only in their religion.11

The Jews were relocated to Syria and Palestine and the Christians to Iraq. Compared to the expulsions Jews experienced in Europe, this was more limited. Jews were not forced out immediately. They left gradually, but the decision to expel them was irrevocable. From then on, non-Muslims were forbidden to walk on this sacred soil, which became a major transgression. Elsewhere in the Saudi Kingdom, non-Muslims could enter as temporary visitors, but could not become residents or practice their religion.12

Arabs call Israeli Independence Day, the Nakba (Catastrophe), and regard it as a day of mourning. Hanan Ashrawi, a leading Palestinian advocate, regards the establishment of the Jewish state was as an “unimaginable aberration.”13 Other Arab leaders portray Zionism as “a disaster”14 and a “sword ”¦at the necks of the Palestinian people.”15

What Benvenisti, Nusseibeh and others fail to mention is that the fundamental objective of the militant and violent Arabs is to destroy Western culture and civilization and replace it with their own “civilization of dhimmitude,” where non-Muslims will be forced to become a “protected” minority subordinating themselves to restrictive and degrading Islamic law to avoid death or enslavement. For 1,300 years, this jihad political force has subjugated and even eliminated major areas of Judeo-Christian, Buddhist, Hindu and other religious civilizations in Europe, Asia and Africa. Non-Muslims either converted, disappeared or were rendered incapable of further development.16

The goal of conquering the West is avowed in the introduction to The Charter of Allah: The Platform of Hamas: “We say to this West, which does not act reasonably, and does not learn its lessons: By Allah, you will be defeated. You will be defeated in Palestine, and your defeat there has already begun. True, it is Israel that is being defeated there, but when Israel is defeated, its path is defeated, those who call to support it are defeated, and the cowards who hide behind it and support it are defeated. Israel will be defeated, and so will whoever supported or supports it.”17

That is why the Israeli and American war on terrorism in the twenty- first century is one and the same. 18 Hamas prime minister Isma`il Haniya, confirmed this when he said: “”¦the march of resistance will continue until the Islamic flag is raised, not only over the minarets of Jerusalem, but over the whole universe.”19 The delusion that they are separate conflicts has conferred an element of legitimacy on the vicious acts of terrorism in Israel.20

The attacks against the U.S. on September 11, 2001 were the latest manifestation of the Islamic jihad to establish universal world domination.21This goal can be realized through demographic growth and conversion of the local population. Large numbers of teachers and religious leaders will be mobilized to teach Islam in every language and dialect. Should peaceful methods prove inadequate, physical force can be used. 22

Even if Hamas agreed to a hunda (truce) with Israel, this would only be a strategic tactic that would not signal an end to the struggle or a change in objectives. Abbas al-Sayyid, (the political leader of Hamas in Tulkarm and the convicted Izz-ad-Din al- Qassam Brigades commander of Hamas` military wing), who was the architect of the bombing of the Park Hotel in Netanya on March 27, 2002 in which 30 people were killed and 140 injured, made this clear.23 Hamas, he said, is prepared for a truce for an extensive period of time, but for religious reasons could not allow Israel to occupy Islamic lands. If Abbas did not succeed in obtaining the land that is “rightfully mine” then perhaps his “son or grandson will.” 24

What will happen to the people who allegedly stole Arab lands? Mahmoud Darwish, a very popular poet of the Palestinian resistance, provided the answer in a powerful poem “Bitaqit Hawia,” (Identity Card) written in 1964. Although professing not to “hate people,” Darwish warned, “The usurper`s flesh will be my food. Beware, beware of my hunger and my anger!”25

“The curious power of this little poem is that when it first appeared in the late sixties, it did not represent as much as embody the Palestinian whose political identity in the world had been pretty much reduced to a name on an identity card,” Edward Said noted. 26

Is there any Zionist poetry or statement that describes the Palestinians in comparable ways? And if any does exist, who could claim that it is the “embodiment of the Israelis,” that it represents the view of the Jewish people? 27

For many Arabs, the conflict with Zionism is a religious war against the Jewish people. Since the Jews are not going to leave their homeland voluntarily, the solution is clear according to Abdallah Jarbu’, Hamas deputy minister of religious endowments: “May He annihilate this filthy people who have neither religion nor conscience. I condemn whoever believes in normalizing relations with them, whoever supports sitting down with them, and whoever believes that they are human beings. They are not human beings. They are not people. They have no religion, no conscience, and no moral values.”28

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Dr. Grobman, a Hebrew University trained historian, is the author of The Palestinian Right To Israel (Balfour Books, 2010). He is the president of Balfour Trust, an educational outreach to help Christians understand the Jewish roots of their faith, Zionism and the State of Israel.

By Prof. Jack Cohen

The two extreme views of the West Bank situation are the liberal view, that the Palestinians are a poor, colonized people who were there before Israel was founded and who deserve a state of their own, and the religious view that the land was promised to the Jews in the Bible, and who can argue with God. Frankly, I reject both of these views, I argue from a legal and historical point of view, taking into account the facts.

Let us start with the Balfour Declaration of 1917, in which the British Government “viewed with favor the establishment of a national home for the Jews in Palestine.” This policy would not have had any significance had not Britain conquered the area from the Turks and then the Balfour Declaration was accepted both by the US Congress and Pres. Wilson in 1918.

The Paris Peace Conference of 1919 was supposed to resolve all matters arising from WWI. Pres. Wilson of the US was strongly against his erstwhile allies, Britain and France, taking any colonial advantage from the defeat and subsequent break-up of the Ottoman Empire. But, not having declared war on Turkey he had little influence on the outcome in the Middle East. As a compromise to satisfy him, Britain and France agreed to a Mandate system, whereby they would each take control of areas of the previous Ottoman Empire but for a limited period of time with a view to eventually granting independence to the subject peoples. Because various issues were left unresolved and each leader had to consult his own country, the final disposition was left to a follow-up conference.

This was held in San Remo in 1920, and it was here that the Mandates were actually assigned. Britain of course got Palestine (actually called Southern Syria until then) and Iraq (a country invented by the British) and France got Syria, from which it separated Lebanon. These assignments accorded with the secret Sykes-Picot agreement between Britain and France negotiated during the War. Britain also had nominal control over Iran. Although it was offered Armenia and central Turkey, America refused any Mandates because it rejected colonialism and foreign entanglements.

Although the British secretly expected to control the area in perpetuity as a means to defend the Suez Canal, a vital link with the British colonies in India and elsewhere, the Mandate for Palestine was understood in the legal documents to be for the purpose of establishing a Jewish homeland. The Arabs were expected to eventually have independence in Syria and Iraq, to satisfy the agreements that the British had made with the Hashemite Sherif Feisal of Mecca.

These arrangements were formally ratified by the League of Nations in 1922. However, Britain, under Winston Churchill unilaterally divided the Palestine Mandate in 1922 to form an Arab State, Trans-Jordan. Meanwhile, taking advantage of the weakness of Turkey, Greece invaded in order to reclaim the lands in western Anatolia that had previously been Greek. But the Turkish Army under Kemal Attaturk counter-attacked, defeated the Greek forces and then proceeded to massacre the Greek civilians around Smyrna, that became Izmir. The existence of the Turkish Republic was recognized de facto at the further Treaty of Lausanne in 1923. In 1932, an alliance of Ibn Saud and the Wahhabi sect of Islam conquered Mecca and Medina from the Hashemites and established Saudi Arabia, thus negating any previous understandings.

During this period, the Arabs, while themselves denied self-determination by Britain and France, agitated against the Palestine Mandate’s provision for a Jewish entity. The Arab revolt of 1936 in Palestine massacred many Jews, but was defeated by the colonial British Army. However, a tacit agreement was reached between them, that in order for the British to avoid further outbreaks of Arab violence they would restrict Jewish immigration into Palestine. This the British did in the so-called White Paper of 1938, which in effect (illegally) reversed the terms of the Balfour Declaration and the Mandate provisions. As we know this had tragic consequences for the Jews caught in the Holocaust during WWII. The Jewish Yishuv (settlement) fought against the British before and after WWII and eventually forced the British to surrender their Mandate.

The State of Israel was then declared by Ben Gurion and was recognized by the UN and all major powers. As a result of the War of Independence of 1948 Trans-Jordanian forces (they subsequently dropped the “trans”) occupied the so-called West Bank of the Jordan River. This occupation was never recognized internationally (only Pakistan and Britain recognized it) and consequently the legal disposition of the West Bank was in no way made distinct from that of the rest of Palestine that had become the Jewish State of Israel.

Israel recaptured the territories as a result of the Six-Day War of 1967. The claim of Israel to the West Bank and East Jerusalem remains legally intact. Whether or not to build settlements there is a political decision. This territory under international law is “disputed” between Israel and a putative sovereign Palestinian entity, and in fact has had no recognized sovereignty since the defunct Ottoman Empire.

This is also true of the Gaza Strip that was occupied by Egypt from 1948-1956 and by Israel from 1956-2006. According to UN resolution 242 of 1967 the fate of these territories is supposed to be determined in negotiations between the parties. Simply because Arabs live there does not mean that it should automatically become an Arab State, the world is replete with groups that have not achieved sovereignty (the Kurds for example). After the Israel-Egypt Peace Treaty of 1979, the Madrid Peace Conference of 1991, the Israel-Jordan Peace Treaty of 1994 and various wars in almost every decade, this is how the situation remains. After direct talks for 16 years, the Palestine Authority, that was formed as a result of the Olso Accords of 1993, has reverted to requiring preconditions and indirect talks. We Israelis would be happy if we thought that the Palestinians are ready for peaceful coexistence, but according to the Bush “Road Map” plan of 2003, the PA was supposed to stop incitement and terrorism. When that happens let us know.

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By David Soakell

Amid the gunfire this tiny country, the size of Wales and with a population of just under 7.5 million, leads the world in developing and exporting green technologies that could save the planet.

Ironically it is precisely because of its precarious position that such eco-inventions have flourished. Surrounded by hostile neighbors, with few natural resources of its own and two-thirds of its area inhospitable desert, Israel has had to use its wits to survive. When Warren Buffett, the worlds wealthiest man, decided to make his first investment outside the United States, he chose Israel. “Some Americans have come to the Middle East looking for oil so they didnt stop in Israel. We came to the Middle East looking for brains and we stopped in Israel,” Buffett explained as he put $4 billion into Iscar, a precision tool maker.

“We found that the real trick in business is not to be a genius yourself but to go around associating with geniuses who are already doing a good job and stay out of their way.” Israeli innovations range from Intel microprocessors to messaging systems that ensure the safety of nearly all the world`s financial transactions. Micro soft Intel, IBM and NDS, a firm that designs TV set-top boxes to unscramble cable and satellite signals, all have research and development centers in Israel drawing on the brainpower of their geniuses.

There are more than 1,000 clean-technology start-up companies in Israel, a country that has attracted more foreign investment in high-tech businesses in the past decade than all of Europe. It has more companies quoted on the high-tech NASDAQ stock exchange in New York than any other country outside the United States. In innovation it outshines all its neighbors. Between 1980 and 2000, Egyptians registered 77 patents in the US, Saudis registered 171, Israelis registered 7,652.

“We are flexible and we are smart because we know that we have to be to survive,” says Shraga Brosh, chairman of the Israeli Manufacturers` Association. A primary motivator of this technical innovation is the Israeli army. Its units cream off the top teenagers, ram them through accelerated university training and give them sophisticated military assignments. Agassi of Better Place, like the founders of computer security pioneers Check-point, demobbed from Unit 8200, a top-secret division of military intelligence where every other soldier is a computer whiz-kid.

TALPIOT, another military program veiled in secrecy, whips its high-achieving teenagers through electronics, engineering or physics degrees before setting them up in state-of-the-art laboratories to build next-generation defense solutions. “The ingenuity in technology is tremendous. Israel is a fountain of knowledge,” says Avishay Braverman, an Israeli cabinet minister and former World Bank economist.

“The reason for the success in high-tech industry is that the army invested so much in research. Where else do you have men and women operating the most sophisticated computers in the world at such a young age?” The ingenuity and training is mixed with a need to solve Israel`s problems due to its geography and political isolation. Its main water sources are controlled by its enemies, Syria and the Hezbollah in Lebanon.

The land is sandy and infertile. “Israel has become a world power in terms of green technology because of our long experience in dealing with scarcity,” says Jon Medved, head of the pioneering video ringtone company Vringo and an investor in Israeli clean technology companies. “ We`ve created these technologies to solve problems that are acute here.”

Israel and experts such as Dov Pasternak lead the world in countering the creeping desertification that has made large swathes of Africa and Asia uninhabitable. Satellite photographs show that only two countries have increased the area of land covered by forest and agriculture ”“ the United States and Israel. Israeli farmers revolutionized the watering of agricultural crops more than 40 years ago through the drip irrigation system which has since been adopted worldwide.

Water is carried directly to the roots of the plant through tiny holes in small tubes that can be easily redeployed according to need. The system is set on a timer, reducing evaporation and eliminating run-off. Because the water is delivered direct to the roots of the crop there is less moisture on the leaves and surrounding soil, suppressing mould and weeds. That reduces the need for chemicals and pesticides.

Netafim, which markets the technology, says it is now used in more than 110 countries and has helped create self-sustaining agricultural communities in drought-stricken areas, particularly in Africa. Israel now recycles 70 per cent of its waste water ”“ a huge amount that puts it way ahead of any other country. The water is used for agriculture, waste management and for fish farms in the desert.

Israel is also a pioneer in geothermal and solar energy. The worlds leading company in geothermal power ”“ harnessing Earths heat to generate electricity ”“ is Ormat, an Israeli company. For decades visitors to Israel have been struck by the solar heating panels and water tanks on the top of almost every building. These provide solar-heated water to just about every home and business.

Now Israel is leading the way in a new technology that harnesses solar power for clean electricity production. One company, Solel, was snapped up by the German industrial giant Siemens last year for more than $400 million. It is competing with Brightsource, another Israeli company, for contracts to supply more than two million homes in California with electricity produced without any fossil fuels.

But Israeli ingenuity in electricity is not limited to the sun. Innowattech is developing a system to generate electricity from the pressure of traffic driving along roads. Piezo-electric generators are installed inches beneath the upper layer of asphalt and convert the mechanical energy of traffic passing over them into electrical energy.

INNOWATTECH estimates that its generators placed along a half-mile stretch of a four-lane motorway would produce about 1MWh of electricity ”“ enough to power 2,500 households. It is testing prototypes for roads, railways, pedestrian walkways and airport runways ”“ all of which could generate completely clean electricity.

Before too long it will be possible to drive an electric car powered by a battery whose electricity was generated by the sun or by other cars driving across sub-surface generator, and whose engine is cooled by recycled water.

By Jock L. Falkson

Plus excerpts from the writings of Nonie Darwish, David Bedein, Mitchell Bard and Irshid Manji.

I offer this 98 point compendium of factual evidence that Israel is not an apartheid state. Furthermore that the Palestinians with their Islamic way of life are those who practice apartheid. Though I`m so naïve as to believe that this will in any way prevent another Israel apartheid week from happening. On the contrary I have little doubt that the hypocritical universities involved in this dishonest publicity scheme will again scapegoat innocent Israel this time next year.

In these circumstances, when so much evidence points in one direction, what accounts for the fact that our accusers point the opposite way?

There is only one conclusion that fits this situation and that is anti-Semitism ”“ hating Jews for what we are and not for what we do. I believe that if we are ever to overcome our opponents in coming years we will have to succeed in attaching that anti-Semitic label to our opponents. (Oddly enough anti-Semites dislike being called anti-Semitic!)

Here now is the evidence from yours truly, to be followed evidence from Nonie Darwish, David Bedein, Mitchell Bard and Irshid Manji:

1. It takes sheer ignorance and criminal chutzpah to attach the South African apartheid label to democratic Israel. One might think theyre protesting because Israel segregates the Arabs in their midst but thats not true.
   
   
2. While Israel`s not quite 6 million Jews stand accused of apartheid, more than a billion Indians who oppress some 180 million (Wiki) untouchables (Dalits) are not. How on earth the universities which castigate Israel for being an apartheid state when India and China (in Tibet) have such appalling apartheid records is beyond honest belief. Except when it is accepted that anti-Semitism is the Joker that trumps all.
   
   
3. The Muslim world is not only the enemy of the Jews but equally the enemy of the Christians. The Muslim faith requires non-Muslims within their sovereignty to convert or die. Jews may however, be toleratedas second rate citizens provided they pay their annual Poll Tax, called Jizya.
   
   
4. Israel is the only country in the Middle East where Christians have increased in number these past 40 years, and where the Bahai religion is not only tolerated but profoundly respected.
   
   
5. The Arab states are the only states where Muslim apartheid in the world does not permit building a church or a synagogue.
   
   
6. Apartheid in South Africa was based on race and color. It was the whites (the “Europeans”) versus the “non-Europeans” (Blacks, Coloreds [mixed race], Indians, Malays and Chinese).
   
   
7. All suffered from legalized deprivations decreed by the South African government determined to impose white domination on the rest.
   
   
8. The philosophy of apartheid was encapsulated in the slogan of the ruling National Party in South Africa which came into power in 1948. “Die kaffir op sy plek en die koolie uit die land” (“The kaffir (indigenous black) in his place and the koolie (Indian) out of the country.”) Israel never practiced such racist ideology. Indeed there is no color or racial apartheid in Israel.
   
   
9. Blacks had to carry a “Pass Book”. Employers had to sign the pass books monthly. Pass book infringements by blacks led to jail sentences and often to deportation to the black homelands.
   
   
10. Blacks, Coloreds, Indians, Malays and Chinese were legally classified as “Non-Europeans” and did not have the vote in apartheid South Africa.
    
    
11. Job Reservation laws kept non-Whites from a wide range of jobs.
    
    
12. Black-white sex was a serious jail time crime in South Africa. Not in Israel.
    
    
13. Hospitals were segregated, ambulances too.
    
    
14. There was free education for whites till matriculation. Not so for blacks whose educational prowess was strictly limited by an oppressive Bantu Education Act.
    
    
15. No mixed sport was allowed ”“ by law.
    
    
16. “Europeans Only” benches were available in parks.
17. Blacks were not permitted to use the main entrance of buildings. They had to use the “tradesmen`s” entrance at back.
    
    
18. Strikes were banned and strikers severely repressed.
    
    
19. Non-whites were not entitled to pensions of any kind.
    
    
20. Public beaches, swimming pools, transport, libraries and cinemas were racially segregated.
    
    
21. There were practically no pools or libraries for Non-whites.
    
    
22. Blacks were not permitted to buy, nor to imbibe, alcoholic drinks until very recently.
    
    
23. Non ”“whites were not permitted to dine in white restaurants.
    
    
24. No mixed sport was allowed by law.
    
    
25. “Europeans Only” benches were available in parks.
    
    
26. Blacks were not permitted to use the main entrance of buildings. They had to use the “tradesmen`s” entrance at back.
    
    
27. Strikes were banned and strikers severely punished by law.
    
    
28. Non-whites were not entitled to pensions of any kind.
    
    
29. Public beaches, swimming pools, transport, libraries and cinemas were racially segregated. Even so there were practically no pools or libraries for non-whites.
    
    
30. Non-whites were not permitted to buy, nor to imbibe, alcoholic drinks. Nor to dine in white restaurants.
    
    
31. Israel has a;ready absorbed 70,000 Ethiopian Jews and plans to absorb 10,000 more.
    
    
32. Circassians, Druze, Kurds, Armenians, Beduin and other non-Jews enjoy full citizen privileges and equal rights. Many Druze and Bedouin Arabs serve in Israel`s army.
    
    
33. Some years ago a small shipload of 200 Vietnamese refugees sought asylum in Israel. Then Prime Minister Begin issued immediate instructions to accept them. They have since become full citizens. No Arab country took in a single boatload of the fleeing Vietnamese.
    
    
34. Israel has also granted permanent residence and full citizen rights to quite a large number of illegal foreign workers and their families from the Philippines, Eritrea, Thailand, Columbia, Nigeria, Mauritius, Romania and Turkestan. No one was forced or required to convert to Judaism.
    
    
35. Arab students may and do study in all Israel universities.
    
    
36. Palestinians dishonestly imply that Israel`s security was built to oppress them. Fact is the world knows full well Israel decided to build this costly anti-terrorist barrier to keep Palestinian suicide bombers from entering Israel and killing and maiming our people. Thankfully the barrier has successfully achieved its intention.
    
    
37. All Israels Arab citizens, some 20% or more of the population, have enjoyed equal voting rights from Israels day one. Eleven Arabs presently sit in Israels Knesset. Three are Deputy Speakers. Israels permanent minorities all vote in Israel`s elections.
    
    
38. All children in Israel are entitled to publicly subsidized education till matriculation. There are no apartheid, racial or color restrictions.
    
    
39. Fact is Arabs can do everything in Israel which non-whites in South Africa could not.
    
    
40. Arab states still continue to execute criminals found guilty of murder. Hanging takes place in the public square.
    
    
41. This punishment is meted out to homosexuals too.
    
    
42. Male evidence is accepted by courts over female witnesses.
    
    
43. Women have no choice as to whom they marry. They can be married off while still children.
    
    
44. Incest is permitted.
    
    
45. Palestinians who sell land or property to Jews face the death sentence.
    
    
46. Women sentenced to death are stoned ”“ by members of the public.
    
    
47. Palestinians dishonestly imply that Israel`s security fence was built to oppress them. Fact is the world knows full well Israel decided to build this costly anti-terrorist barrier to keep Palestinian suicide bombers from entering Israel and killing and maiming our people. Thankfully the barrier has successfully achieved its intention.

Cruel and Unusual Punishment By Nonie Darwish. Excerpts from a review of her book by Bill Muehlenberg. Darwish was an Egyptian Muslim for the first 30 years of her life. She fled to America and is now a Christian. She has written Now They Call Me Infidel, Why I Renounced Jihad for America and Israel and War on Terror.

1. Muslim women are prohibited under sharia from marrying non-Muslim men.
   
   
2. Muslim men can marry Christian or Jewish women.
   
   
3. The sharia marriage contract “is essentially a document granting sexual intercourse rights to the male and giving him total control over his four wives”.
   
   
4. There are temporary marriages purely for the purposes of (giving) sexual pleasure to the male, This “marriage” can last as little as an hour.
   
   
5. There is also misyar, or traveller`s marriage to accommodate the male sexual appetite while travelling.
   
   
6. Men can divorce their wives instantly by saying “I divorce you” three times.
   
   
7. A Muslim woman cannot initiate a divorce.
   
   
8. In custody cases, children after the age of seven (or sometimes nine) belong to the father.
   
   
9. A male can beat his wife and sexually abandon her.
   
   
10. Husbands deserve total submission and gratitude.
    
    
11. Muslim scholar, Imam Ghazali has said, “Marriage is a form of slavery. The woman is man`s slave, and her duty therefore is absolute obedience”.
    
    
12. Polygamy is also the right of Muslim men.
    
    
13. There is no legal age for marriage under sharia. Ayatollah Khomeini said in an offici
    
    al statement, “A man can quench his sexual lusts with a child as young as a baby.”
    
    
14. Muhammad himself had a six-year-old wife with whom he consummated relations when she was just nine.
    
    
15. Women adulterers are to be stoned to death.
    
    
16. Girls who fornicate are to be flogged.
    
    
17. A womans testimony in a court of law is only worth half that of a mans.
    
    
18. Women cannot be in the company of men who are not her relatives.
    
    
19. Female genital mutilation is rife.
    
    
20. A Muslim wife needs her husband`s permission to travel.
    
    
21. While there is no sharia law that expressly gives men the right to kill their women to protect their family honor, there are existing laws which protect men who do commit such killings.
    
    
22. The killer of an apostate, a robber or an adulterer cannot be punished for murder.
    
    
23. Non-Muslim women are treated almost as poorly as in Muslim-majority countries.
    
    
24. Jews and Christians are under dhimmitude, or second-class citizenship.
    
    
25. Non-Muslims are oppressed, discriminated against, and denied basic human rights.
    
    
26. Criticism of Islam is of course punishable by death.
    
    
27. Muslim preachers regard Westerners and Jews as the embodiment of evil, the personification of Satan.
    
    Therefore they can be cursed, deceived and killed.
28. The aims of the Islamists are the very opposite of those who champion freedom and democracy.
    
    

David Bedein is a community organizer who has run Israel Resource News Agency since 1987. He is also as the Middle East correspondent for the Philadelphia Bulletin. The following excerpts are from his article titled “Palestine is an apartheid state in the making”.**

1. In 1948, the Arab League of Nations applied the Apartheid model to Palestine, and declared that Jews must be denied rights as citizens of Israel, while declaring a total state of war to eradicate the new Jewish entity.
   
   
2. Since its inception in 1994, the newly constituted Palestinian Authority, created by the PLO, has prepared the rudiments of a Palestinian State, modeled on the rules of Apartheid and institutionalized discrimination.
   
   
3. While 20% of Israel`s citizens are Arabs, not one Jew will be allowed to live in a Palestinian State.
   
   
4. Anyone who sells land to a Jew is liable to the death penalty in the Palestinian State.
   
   
5. Those who murder Jews are honored on all official Palestinian media outlets.
   
   
6. Palestinian Authority maps prepared for the Palestinian State depict all of Palestine under Palestinian rule.
   
   
7. PA maps of Jerusalem for the Palestinian State do not show the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem.
   
   
8. Recent PA documents claim all of Jerusalem for the future Palestinian State.
   
   
9. The right of Jewish access to Jewish holy places is to be denied in the new Palestinian State.
   
   
10. The Draft Palestinian State Constitution denies juridical status to any religion except for Islam.
    
    
11. No system which protects human rights or civil liberties will exist in a Palestinian State.
    

Mitchell Bard is an American foreign policy analyst who specializes in U.S.-Middle East policy. He is the Executive Director of the American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise and director of the Jewish Virtual Library and author/editor of 18 books. The excerpts below are from his article titled “Is Israel is an apartheid state?”

1. Whites and nonwhites lived in separate regions of South Africa.
   
   
2. Nonwhites were prohibited from running businesses or professional practices in the white areas without permits.
   
   
3. Nonwhites had separate amenities (i.e. beaches, buses, schools, benches, drinking fountains, restrooms).
   
   
4. Nonwhites received inferior education, medical care, and other public services.
   
   
5. Nonwhites could not vote or become citizens.
   
   
6. By contrast, Israel`s Declaration of Independence called upon the Arab inhabitants of Israel to “participate in the upbuilding of the State on the basis of full and equal citizenship and due representation in all its provisional and permanent institutions.”
   
   
7. The 156,000 Arabs within Israel`s borders in 1948 were given citizenship in the new State of Israel. Today, this Arab minority comprises 20% of the population.
   
   
8. It is illegal for employers to discriminate on the basis of race.
   
   
9. Arab citizens of Israel are represented in all walks of Israeli life ”“ in senior diplomatic and government positions and an Arab currently serves on the Supreme Court.
   
   
10. Israeli Arabs have formed their own political parties and won representation in the Knesset. Arabs are also members of the major Israeli parties. Twelve non-Jews (10 Arabs, two Druze) are members of the Seventeenth Knesset.
    
    
11. Israel allows freedom of movement, assembly and speech. Some of the government`s harshest critics are Israeli Arabs in the Knesset.
    
    
12. Arab students and professors study, research, and teach at Israeli universities. At Haifa University 20 percent of the students are Arabs.
    
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The Editor, The Jerusalem Post.

Sir,

The Arabs fought us 3 times in the past 62 years and lost each time. They had three war aims. One, to push us into the sea or into mass graves. Two, to increase the size of their territories. Three to wipe Israel off the map of the world.

Genocide was their master plan and they made no bones about it. But they were frustrated each time because we fought back and beat them.

So now they want to claim the spoils of their war losses by demanding that we return the land we conquered. And though we are willing to talk to them they cannot abide talking to us.

In civilized societies criminals guilty of breaking the law are fined or imprisoned, or both. Our enemies did us wrong and deserve to be punished. But Arab nations don`t see it that way at all – they want to punish us for their wrongdoing!

The nations of the world who believe in this remarkable value system are patting them on the back and encouraging them to stick to their guns. Because where Arab oil is concerned they win right or wrong. And tough cookie for Israel.

Though what the Arabs will do for money if they don`t sell their oil beats me.

Sincerely,

By Prof. Steven Plaut

We have nothing against Jews as such. We just hate Zionism and Zionists. We think Israel does not have a right to exist. But that does not mean we have anything against Jews as such. Heavens to Mergatroyd. Marx forbid. We are humanists. Progressives. Peace lovers.

Anti-Semitism is the hatred of Jews. Anti-Zionism is opposition to Zionism and Israeli policies. The two have nothing to do with one another. Venus and Mars. Night and Day. Trust us.

Sure, we think the only country on the earth that must be annihilated is Israel. But that does not mean we have anything against Jews as such.

Sure, we think that the only children on earth who are being blown up is ok if it serves a good cause are Jewish children. But that does not mean we have anything against Jews as such.

Sure we think that if Palestinians have legitimate grievances this entitles them to mass murder Jews. But that does not mean we have anything against Jews as such.

Naturally, we think that the only people on earth who should never be allowed to exercise the right of self-defense are the Jews. Jews should only resolve the aggression against them through capitulation, never through self-defense. But that does not mean we have anything against Jews as such. We only denounce racist apartheid in the one country in the Middle East that is NOT a racist apartheid country. But that does not mean we have anything against Jews as such.

We refuse to acknowledge the Jews as a people, and think they are only a religion. We do not have an answer to how people who do NOT practice the Jewish religion can still be regarded as Jews. But that does not mean we have anything against Jews as such.

We think that all peoples have the right to self-determination, except Jews, and including even the make-pretend Palestinian “people”. But that does not mean we have anything against Jews as such.

We hate it when people blame the victims, except of course when people blame the Jews for the jihads and terrorist campaigns against them. But that does not mean we have anything against Jews as such.

We think the only country in the Middle East that is a fascist anti-democratic one is the one that has free elections. But that does not mean we have anything against Jews as such.

We demand that the only country in the Middle East with free speech, free press, or free courts be destroyed. But that does not mean we have anything against Jews as such.

We oppose military aggression, except when it is directed at Israel. But that does not mean we have anything against Jews as such.

We really understand suicide bombers who murder bus loads of Jewish children and we insist that their demands be met in full. But that does not mean we have anything against Jews as such.

We think the only conflict on earth that must be solved through dismembering one of the parties to that conflict is the one involving Israel. But that does not mean we have anything against Jews as such.

We do not think that Jews have any human rights that need to be respected and especially not the right to ride a bus without being murdered. But that does not mean we have anything against Jews as such.

There are Jewish leftist anti-Zionists and we consider this proof that anti-Zionists could not possibly be anti-Semitic. Not even the ones who cheer when Jews are mass murdered. These are the only Jews we think need be acknowledged or respected. But that does not mean we have anything against Jews as such.

We do not think murder proves how righteous and just the cause of the murderer is, except when it comes to murderers of Jews. But that does not mean we have anything against Jews as such.

We do not think the Jews are entitled to their own state and must submit to being a minority in a Rwanda-style “bi-national state”, although no other state on earth, including the 22 Arab countries, should be similarly expected to be deprived of its sovereignty. But that does not mean we have anything against Jews as such.

We think that Israel’s having a Jewish majority and a star on its flag makes it a racist apartheid state. We do not think any other country having an ethnic-religious majority or having crosses or crescents or “Allah Akbar” on its flag is racist or needs dismemberment. But that does not mean we have anything against Jews as such.

We condemn the “mistreatment” of women in the only country of the Middle East in which they are not mistreated. But that does not mean we have anything against Jews as such.

We condemn the “mistreatment” of minorities in the only country in the Middle East in which minorities are NOT brutally suppressed and mass murdered. But that does not mean we have anything against Jews as such.

We demand equal citizen rights, which is why the only country in the Middle East in need of extermination is the only one in which they exist. But that does not mean we have anything against Jews as such.

We have no trouble with the fact that there is no freedom of religion in any Arab countries. But we are mad at hell at Israel for violating religious freedom, and never mind that we are never quite sure where or when it does so. But that does not mean we have anything against Jews as such.

So how can you possibly say we are anti-Semites? We are simply anti-Zionists. We seek peace and justice, that’s all. And surely that does not mean we have anything against Jews as such.

Copyright by By Prof. Steven Plaut

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By Prof. Louis René Beres

The core of Israel’s active defense plan remains the phased Arrow anti-ballistic missile program. Designed to intercept medium and short-range ballistic missiles, the various operationalized forms of Arrow (Hetz in Hebrew) are expected to deal especially with Iran’s surface-to-surface missile threat. Basically a high stratospheric system, Arrow is also capable of low-altitude and multi-tactical ballistic missile interceptions.

For the moment, things seem to be looking good. Test results for the Arrow continue to be significant and promising. Indeed, they indicate not only the substantial mutual benefits of ongoing strategic cooperation between Washington and Tel-Aviv, but also the intrinsic technical promise of Israel’s primary active defense system.

Yet, there are also some very important and underlying conceptual problems. Still faced with a steadily nuclearizing Iran, Israel must carefully consider whether it can rely entirely upon a suitable combination of deterrence and active defenses, or whether it must still also prepare for preemption. Can Israel live with a nuclear Iran? The answer to this question will have genuinely existential consequences for the Jewish State.

Israel’s preemption option should now appear less urgent. Many strategic planners and scientists believe that the Arrow’s repeated success in testing confirms that Israel is suitably prepared to deal with any Iranian nuclear missile attack. After all, on many occasions, the Israel Air Force has already successfully tested the Arrow against a missile precisely mocking Iran’s Shihab-3.

In Israel, it seems, optimism should abound. On its face, it would appear that if Arrow were efficient in its expected reliability of interception, even an irrational Iranian adversary armed with nuclear and/or biological weapons could be dealt with effectively. Indeed, even if Israel’s nuclear deterrent were somehow made irrelevant by an enemy state willing to risk an almost certain and massive “counter-value” Israeli reprisal, that aggressor’s ensuing first-strike could still presumably be blocked by Arrow. So, we should now inquire, why even still consider preemption against Iran?

The meaningful answer lies in certain untenable assumptions about any system of ballistic missile defense. Israel’s problem is essentially a generic one. No system of ballistic missile defense, anywhere, can ever be appraised as simply reliable or unreliable.

Operational reliability of intercept is a distinctly “soft” concept, and any missile defense system – however successful in its test results – will have “leakage.” Of course, whether or not such leakage would fall within acceptable levels must ultimately depend largely upon the kinds of warheads fitted upon an enemy’s incoming missiles. In this connection, the Arrow’s commendable test successes might not necessarily be reproducible against faster and more advanced Iranian missiles.

Shall Israel now bet its collective life on a defensive capacity to fully anticipate and nullify offensive enemy capabilities?

In evaluating its rapidly disappearing preemption option vis-à-vis Iran, Israeli planners will need to consider very carefully the expected leakage rate of the Arrow. In principle, a tiny number of enemy missiles penetrating Arrow defenses could still be “acceptable” if their warheads contained “only” conventional high explosive, or even chemical high explosive. But if the incoming warheads were nuclear and/or biological, even an extremely low rate of leakage would certainly be intolerable.

A fully zero leakage-rate would be necessary to adequately protect Israel against any nuclear and/or biological warheads, and such a zero leakage-rate is unattainable. This means that Israel can never depend entirely upon its anti-ballistic missiles to defend against any future WMD attack from Iran, and that even a thoroughly capable Arrow system cannot obviate altogether Israel’s preemption option. Moreover, even if Israel could somehow expect a 100% reliability of interception for Arrow- a technically inconceivable expectation – this would do nothing to blunt the unconventional threat from terrorist surrogates opting to use much shorter-range missiles, and/or delivery systems from ships, trucks or automobiles. Special points of vulnerability for Israel would obviously be in Lebanon, with Hezbollah proxies acting for Iran, and possibly also Gaza, where Iran-supported Hamas is currently developing dangerous new ties with al-Qaeda.

Israel must immediately strengthen its nuclear deterrence posture. To be deterred, a rational adversary will need to calculate that Israel’s second-strike forces are plainly invulnerable to any first-strike aggressions. Facing the Arrow, this adversary will now require increasing numbers of missiles to achieve an assuredly destructive first-strike against Israel. The Arrow, therefore, will compel any rational adversary, including Iran, to at least delay an intended first-strike attack against Israel. With any non-rational adversary, however, all Israeli bets on deterrence would necessarily be off. A non-rational adversary would be one that does not value its own continued survival more highly than all other preferences.

In Iran, Israel still faces a state enemy whose undisguised preparations for attacking the Jewish State are authentically genocidal, and which may not always remain rational. Aware of this, Israel is not obligated to sit back passively, and simply respond after a nuclear and/or biological attack has already been absorbed.

International law is not a suicide pact. Israel has the same right granted to all states to act preemptively when facing an existential assault. Known formally as anticipatory self-defense, this general right is strongly affirmed in customary international law and in “the general principles of law recognized by civilized nations.” It is also supported by the authoritative 1996 Advisory Opinion issued by the International Court of Justice.

Israel must continue to develop, test and implement an Arrow-based interception capability to match the growing threat dictated by enemy ballistic missiles. Simultaneously, it must also continue to prepare for certain possible preemptions, and to suitably enhance the credibility of its nuclear deterrent. Regarding such enhanced credibility, Israel must appropriately operationalize a recognizable second-strike force, one that is sufficiently hardened and dispersed, and that is ready to inflict a decisive retaliatory salvo against identifiable enemy cities. Arrow is necessary for Israeli security, but it is not sufficient. To achieve a maximum level of security, Israel will also have to take appropriate and coordinated preparations for both deterrence and preemption. Moreover, ballistic missile defense will do nothing to thwart certain terrorist surrogates of Iran who could someday utilize ordinary modes of travel and transport as nuclear delivery vehicles.

Together with the U.S, Israel exists in the cross hairs of a far-reaching Jihad that that will likely not conform to any of the settled international rules of diplomacy and negotiation. Under no circumstances, can Israel and the U.S afford to allow a seventh-century view of the world to be combined with twenty-first century weapons of mass destruction. Left unimpeded in its relentless plan to nuclearize for war (so-called “economic sanctions” are not an impediment), Iran, in the future, could share certain of its atomic munitions with anti-American proxies in Iraq.

The Arrow-based ballistic missile defense is indispensable for Israel. But it is now critical for both Jerusalem and Washington to remember that it is also not enough. In the end, therefore, both Israel and the United States may still have to destroy Iran’s pertinent nuclear infrastructures at their source.

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LOUIS RENÉ BERES (Ph.D., Princeton, 1971), is Strategic and Military Affairs columnist for The Jewish Press. Professor of International Law at Purdue, he was chair of Project Daniel, a private nuclear advisory group to counsel former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. He is also the author of many books and articles on nuclear strategy and nuclear war.

Copyright by The Jewish Press

By Ruth R. Wisse, professor of Yiddish and comparative literature at Harvard. Author of “Jews and Power”

When she is surrounded by a swirl of conversation she cannot understand, my two-year-old granddaughter turns to me expectantly: “What they talking about, Bubbe?” Right now, I would have to confess to her that the hubbub over 1,600 new housing units in Jerusalem defies rational explanation.

Of the children of Abraham, the descendants of Ishmael currently occupy at least 800 times more land than descendants of Isaac. The 21 states of the Arab League routinely announce plans of building expansion. Saudi Arabia estimates that 555,000 housing units were built over the past several years. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki announced during a meeting in Baghdad last year that “Some 10,000 units will be built in each province [of Iraq] with 100 square meters per unit” to accommodate citizens whose housing needs have not been met for a long time. Egypt has established 10 new cities since 1996. They are Tenth of Ramadan, Sixth of October, Al Sadat, Al Shurouq, Al Obour, New Damietta, New Beni Sueif, New Assiut, New Luxor, and New Cairo.

In 2006 the Syrian Prime Minister, Mohammad Naji Atri, announced a new five-year development plan that aims to supply 687,000 housing units. Kuwait expects to have a demand for approximately 100,000 private housing units by 2010. Last year Jordan’s King Abdullah launched a National Housing Initiative, which aims to build 120,000 properties for low-income Jordanians.

Arab populations grow. And neighborhoods expand to house them. What’s more, Arab countries benefited disproportionately from the exchange of populations between Jews and Arabs that resulted from the Arab wars against Israel. Since 1948 upward of 800,000 Jews abandoned their homes and forfeited their goods in Egypt, Iraq, Morocco and Yemen. In addition to assets valued at hundreds of billions of dollars, the property deeds of Jews from Arab lands is estimated at a total area of 100,000 square miles, which is five times the size of the state of Israel, and more than Israel would include even if it were to stretch over all the disputed territories of the West Bank.

These preposterous disparities are a result of contrasting political cultures. The Arab League was founded at the same time as Israel with the express aim of undoing the Jewish state’s existence. Although much has changed over the ensuing decades, opposition to the Jewish state remains the strongest unifying tool of inter-Arab and Arab-Muslim politics. Trying to eliminate the Jews rather than compete with them has never benefited nations.

It is unfortunate that Arabs obsess about building in Israel rather than aiming for the development of their own superabundant lands. But why should America encourage their hegemonic ambitions? In December the White House issued a statement opposing “new construction in East Jerusalem” without delineating where or what East Jerusalem is.

Ramat Shlomo, the neighborhood at the center of the present altercation, is actually in northern Jerusalem, west of the Jewish neighborhoods of Ramot, home to 40,000 Jewish residents. Why does the White House take issue with the construction of housing for Jewish citizens within the boundaries of their own country? The same White House raised no objection when Jordan recently began systematically stripping citizenship from thousands of its Palestinian citizens rather than providing new housing units for them in a land much larger than Israel.

Perhaps Israel has been at fault for not doggedly insisting on unconditional acceptance of its sovereign existence, and for not demanding that Arab rulers adhere to the U.N. Charter’s guarantee of “equal rights of . . . nations large and small.” Preposterous as they would have thought it, perhaps Israelis ought to have called for a freeze on Arab settlements to correspond to unreasonable Arab demands on them.

Any peaceful resolution to the Middle East conflict will begin with a hard look at the map of the region in which 21 countries with 800 times more land are consumed with their Jewish neighbors’ natural increase.

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By Prof. Alan Dershowitz

When Irish Colonel Desmond Travers eagerly accepted an appointment to the Goldstone Commission, he was hell-bent on revenge against Israel based on paranoid fantasies and hard left anti-Israel propaganda. He actually believed, as he put it in a recent interview, that “so many Irish soldiers had been killed by Israelis,” with “a significant number who were taken out deliberately and shot (in southern Lebanon.)” This is of course complete and utter fantasy, but it was obviously part of Col. Travers’ bigoted reality.

Travers came to the job having already made up his mind not to believe anything Israel said and to accept everything Hamas put forward. For example, Israel produced hard photographic evidence that Gaza mosques were used to store rockets and other weapons. Other photographs, taken by journalists, also proved what everybody now acknowledges to be true: namely that Hamas, as its leaders frequently boasted, routinely use mosques as military munitions depots. When confronted with this evidence, Travers said, “I don’t believe the photographs.” Of course not; they don’t comport with his politically correct and ideologically skewed world-view. This is what he had previously said about why he didn’t believe that Hamas used the mosques to store weapons:

We also found no evidence that mosques were used to store munitions. Those charges reflect Western perceptions in some quarters that Islam is a violent religion. …If I were a Hamas operative the last place I’d store munitions would be in a mosque. It’s not secure, is very visible, and would probably be pre-targeted by Israeli surveillance. There are a [sic] many better places to store munitions.”

But that is exactly what Hamas did, despite Travers’ insistence on paraphrasing Groucho Marx’s famous quip, “Who are you going to believe? Me, or your lying eyes?”

Most disturbing, however, was Travers’ categorical rejection of Israel’s claim that it attacked Gaza only after enduring thousands of anti-personnel rockets intended to target Israeli civilians, mainly schoolchildren. In fact, Hamas rockets hit several schools, though fortunately the teachers had dismissed the students just before the rockets would have killed dozens, perhaps hundreds, of them.

This is what Travers said about Hamas rockets:

“…the number of rockets that had been fired into Israel in the month preceding their operations was something like two. The Hamas rockets had ceased being fired into Israel and not only that but Hamas sought a continuation of the cease-fire. Two had been fired from Gaza, but they are likely to have been fired by dissident groups, [i.e. groups that were violating a Hamas order not to fire rockets].”

Again, Travers’ rendition defies the historical record and tells us more about Travers than it does about what actually provoked Israel into finally taking action to protect some million civilians in range of Hamas’ rockets. In fact Israel complied with the cease-fire, under the terms of which Israel reserved the right to engage in self-defense actions such as attacking terrorists who were in the process of firing rockets at its civilians.

Just before the hostilities began, Israel offered Hamas both a carrot and a stick: it reopened a checkpoint to allow humanitarian aid to enter Gaza. It had closed the point of entry after the checkpoint was targeted by Gazan rockets. Israel’s prime minister, Ehud Olmert, also issued a stern, final warning to Hamas that unless it stopped the rockets, there would be a full-scale military response.

This is the way Reuters reported it: “Israel reopened border crossings with the Gaza Strip on Friday, a day after Prime Minister Ehud Olmert warned militants there to stop firing rockets or they would pay a heavy price. Despite the movement of relief supplies, militants fired about a dozen rockets and mortar shafts from Gaza at Israel on Friday. One accidentally struck a house in Gaza, killing two Palestinian sisters, ages 5 and 13.”

Despite the opening of the crossings, the Hamas rockets continued – not none, not “something like two,” but many – and Israel kept its word, implementing a targeted air attack against Hamas facilities and combatants.

Not surprisingly, Travers said that he “rejected … entirely” Israel’s claim that its “attack on Gaza was based on self-defense.” Instead, he compared Israel’s attack on Hamas to the unprovoked bombing of Guernica.”

Travers has repeatedly claimed that “no substantive critique of the [Goldstone] report has been received.” This is an out-and-out lie. I have read dozens of substantive critiques, and have written a 49-page one myself. The truth is that Travers has studiously ignored and refused to respond to these critiques. And of course he blames everything on “Jewish lobbyists.”

Nor was Travers the only member of the commission with predetermined views and an anti-Israel agenda. Christine Chinken had already declared Israel guilty of war crimes before seeing any evidence. Hina Jilani had also condemned Israel before her appointment to the group, and then said that it would be “very cruel to not give credence to [the] voices” of the victims, apparently without regard to whether they were telling the truth. And then there is Richard Goldstone, who told friends that he too took the job with an agenda, which he says was to help Israel! Why any reasonable person would pay any attention to a report written by four people who had prejudged the evidence and came to their jobs with agendas and biases is beyond comprehension.

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Copyright by the writer who blogs at: http://cgis.jpost.com/Blogs/dershowitz/entry