Is Lithuania Sincere About Owning Up to its Holocaust Role?

Tevet 17, 5771, 24 December 10 08:00, by David Lev

(Israelnationalnews.com) This past week, the Prime Minister of Lithuania, Andrius Kubilius, was a guest of the Israeli government, on a state visit to Israel. For many Jews, just the mention of the name “Lithuania” is painful; after all, the Lithuanians were among the most enthusiastic supporters of Nazis outside Germany, with Lithuanians from various backgrounds volunteering to help round up and kill Jews eve before the Nazis arrived in the country in 1941. Jews were rounded up by the thousands, brought to the forests surrounding the towns where they were massacred, falling into the huge pits they had been forced to dig. Lithuanian forests, beautiful and green, abound in these large, now- covered mounds.   
The assistance rendered by the Lithuanians, historians say, was one of the reasons the German killing machine that operated in the country between 1941 and 1945 was the among the most efficient in the entire Nazi empire – with 95% of Lithuanian Jews murdered by the time it was all over.

For years, Lithuania failed to own up to its responsibilities and its past, and it was only in 1995, five years after the fall of communism, that Lithuanian leaders apologized for their countrymen's role in murdering Jews. According to some Israelis and Jewish leaders, however, the Lithuanians' efforts to build bridges with Israel and the Jewish people today are, if not a sham, then a convenient way to build up its relations with Europe, which requires Vilnius to put on a mask of “introspection,” at least where the Holocaust is concerned.

Writing in the Jerusalem Post, for example, is Nazi war criminal researcher Efraim Zuroff, who is very critical of Lithuania's relentless efforts to equate Lithuania's suffering under communism with the brutality of the Nazi occupation. The result, writes Zuroff, is a perversion of justice, such as Lithuania's “campaign to prosecute Jewish anti-Nazi Soviet partisans for supposed war crimes to create a false symmetry between crimes by Lithuanians against Jews [pillage and murder] and those by Jews against Lithuanians [being pro-Russian, ed.].”

However, Rabbi Yisrael Rosenson, an expert on Lithuanian Jewry, says that the country may deserve more credit than many Jews are willing to give it. “I would be hesitant to dispute anyone else's perception of modern Lithuania, but it seems to me that at least some elements of the country's society are making a very sincere effort to reevaluate their behavior, to make an honest accounting of their crimes against the Jews.”

Rabbi Rosenson, director of Michlelet Efrata, is the author of the Hebrew work “Jersusalem is No Longer in Lithuania,” an account of the history of the Jewish community before and during the war. The book's title alludes to the flourishing Jewish community in Vilna, once called "Jerusalem of Lithuania".
Speaking to Israel National News, Rabbi Rosenson says he understands why many Jews think of Lithuania as an unreformed land of Nazi sympathizers.  “While the Holocaust was of course  a horror everywhere, it was unique in Lithuania. Before the war, there were almost no public manifestations of anti-Semitism, yet even before the Nazis took over the country, many jumped on board with the Nazi agenda and began persecuting Jews, often outdoing the Germans.”

After the war, Lithuania fell into the hands of the Communists, being absorbed directly into the Soviet Union – further cause for anti-Semitism, as many Lithuanians identified Communism as a “Jewish plot.” During those years – under Soviet influence – the destruction of the Jews was ignored, and the only thing generations of Lithuanians learned about the war years was the Nazi hatred of Russians and Germany's war against Russia. As the Lithuanians felt persecuted by the Soviets, says Rabbi Rosenson, some even saw the Nazis as allies against Communism.

As soon as Communism in Lithuania fell in 1990, though many of those attitudes changed,  Rabbi Rosenson says, and today, the Holocaust – and the persecution of the Jews during the war period – is taken very seriously. “Lithuania has its own Holocaust Memorial Day – September 23rd, the day the Vilna Ghetto fell, and this day is taken very seriously by everyone, to the highest levels of leadership and society. The country also has many citizens who themselves, or whose parents, helped hide Jews – what we call “the righteous of the nations” - and these people are highly honored in Lithuania.

“Lithuania has its own Holocaust educational center, which coordinates programs for all children in the country's schools. Teacher delegations from Lithuania come to Israel at least twice a year, and the teachers run the programs in the schools. There are Holocaust research centers in Lithuanian universities, with many studies discussing the Lithuanian people's failures regarding their Jews. It seems to me,” says Rabbi Rosenson, “that these efforts are sincere, and that there has been a true effort among Lithuanians to analyze their behavior during the war.”

Of course, there were – and are – genuine Nazi sympathizers in Lithuania, Rabbi Rosenson says. “And there are many issues that have not been addressed. No discussion on compensation for property Jews lost has yet begun, and after independence in 1990, the country was very resistant to try its own war criminals who helped the Nazis during the Holocaust. On the other hand, we must remember that it wasn't until the 1980s that France tried Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie – and unlike Lithuania, France was not under Soviet occupation, with Moscow refusing to even discuss the murder of Jews.”

Lithuania's relationship with the state of Israel reflects this change, Rabbi Rosenson says. “Lithuania is striving to be a European country, so it has adopted European attitudes, which are sometimes critical of Israel. But in 1995, the Lithuanian Prime Minister came to the Knesset and apologized for what his people did – long before former leaders of other former Communist countries, like Ukraine, did. And the fact that Lithuania has an embassy in Israel is significant as well,” he says. “Lithuania is a small country with a limited budget for foreign representation, and it does not have embassies in Jordan and Egypt.

“By rights it shouldn't have an embassy in Israel either, as Lithuania has no diplomatic interest in this part of the world – but it does have a moral interest, and the establishment of their embassy here, along with their activities in commemorating the Holocaust, indicates to me that many Lithuanians have done a great deal of thinking in recent years. I wouldn't dispute those who feel differently, considering what we are talking about,” Rabbi Rosenson says. “But personally, I think this is more than a show to impress Europe – or us.”
On his visit here. Kubilius met with President Shimon Peres, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, and other top officials. He visited the Kotel, Yad Vashem, and the Carmel forest, and he planted a tree in the JNF's Grove of Nations. At the tree plantin, Kubilius said that Israel had done a wonderful job of rebuilding the Land. "Over the last 2,000 years, the land was neglected, so much that in his famous novel about his trip to the Holy Land 150 years ago, the American writer Mark Twain describes it as deserted and ugly. But if you travel around Israel today, you will see a beautiful country, uniquely positioned as a bridge between Europe, Asia and Africa. If you study Israel's plants and birds, you will discover that there are so many different species in such a small country.”
 
www.IsraelNationalNews.com

Russia disappointed by U.S. vote against resolution condemning glorification of Nazism

19:14 22/12/2010

Russia is disappointed that the United States voted against a draft resolution condemning the glorification of Nazism, and a number of states, including all members of the European Union, abstained from voting on the draft, the Russian Foreign Ministry said Wednesday.

United States voted against a draft resolution condemning the glorification of Nazism, and a number of states, including all members of the European Union, abstained from voting on the draft, the Russian Foreign Ministry said Wednesday.
Russia introduced to the UN a resolution condemning the glorification of Nazism and the desecration of World War II monuments in November.

"It is extremely puzzling and regrettable that the United States voted against the resolution, supported by an overwhelming majority of UN member states, and that several other countries, including all the European Union members abstained from voting on the draft," the ministry said in a statement.

The resolution condemns the construction of memorials in honor of former Nazis and Waffen-SS soldiers and the holding of public pro-Nazi demonstrations. It also includes recommendations to prevent the proliferation of neo-Nazi ideas on the Internet.

Russia has been introducing similar resolutions to the UN since 2005. Every year, the resolutions are supported by an increasing number of countries. Last year 124 countries voted in favor of the resolution, while 55 delegations abstained. The United States was the only nation to vote against it.

Parades in honor of Waffen-SS veterans, involving veterans from the Latvian Legion and the 20th Estonian SS Division and their supporters, are held annually in Latvia and Estonia. Russia has repeatedly criticized the Baltic States for allowing these parades to take place.

In April 2007, a Soviet war memorial was dismantled in the Estonian capital of Tallinn just before the May 9Victory Day celebrations in Russia. The move led to street protests in which over 1,000 people were arrested and one Russian national was killed.
MOSCOW, December 22 (RIA Novosti)

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/SendMail.aspx?print=print&type=0&item=141263 The Big Lie: ‘1967 Borders’ is a Fallacy, Says Former Ambassador

Tevet 14, 5771, 21 December 10 06:26 by Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu

(Israelnationalnews.com) The term “1967 borders,” the Arab world’s mantra for the borders of a PA state, never existed, says former Ambassador to Canada Alan Baker in a research paper for the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.

Ever since neighboring Arab countries attacked Israel in 1948 as it became an independent country for the first time in 2,000 years, there were no borders, only temporary military lines defined by the 1949 “Armistice Lines” that ended, at least formally, the War for Independence.

However, the Arab world has repeated the term “1967 borders” so much that it has been adopted as fact by mainstream media and most international leaders. The term refers to the 1949 ceasefire line from which Israel military forces advanced at the beginning of the Six-Day War on June 4, 1967 and should  be called  "pre-1967 War Armistice Lines" or "1949 Armistice Lines". INN, it should be noted,  has used those accurate terms consistently..

Even Brazil, which recently decided to “recognize” the Palestinian Authority based on the supposed 1967 borders, stated during a United Nation debate on Resolution 242 in 1967 calling for negotiations for boundaries, “Its acceptance does not imply that borderlines cannot be rectified as a result of an agreement freely concluded among the interested States. We keep constantly in mind that a just and lasting peace in the Middle East has necessarily to be based on secure permanent boundaries freely agreed upon and negotiated by the neighboring States."

Baker (pictured) noted that Jordan, which also has adopted the fallacy of “1967 borders,” said in the same debate, "There is an Armistice Agreement. The Agreement did not fix boundaries; it fixed a demarcation line. The Agreement did not pass judgment on rights political, military or otherwise. Thus I know of no territory; I know of no boundary; I know of a situation frozen by an Armistice Agreement."
Although the “1967 borders” denote lines of separation, they have no basis in history, law, or fact,” Baker explained. “The 1949 armistice agreements specifically stated that such lines have no political or legal significance and do not prejudice future negotiations on boundaries,” he continued.

“There are no provisions in any of the agreements signed between Israel and the Palestinians that require withdrawal to the ‘1967 borders.’ There were never any geographic imperatives that sanctify the 1967 lines."
The "Armistice Lines” of 1949 were determined in agreements signed by Israel, Egypt, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon. They  were not borders, Baker pointed out. “The armistice demarcation line represented nothing more than the forward lines of deployment of the forces on the day a ceasefire was declared…. The line was demarcated on the map attached to the armistice agreement with a green marker pen and hence received the name ‘Green Line.’

“The Security Council in its resolution stressed the temporary nature of the armistice lines that were to be maintained ‘during the transition to permanent peace in Palestine.'"

The Armistice Agreement stated, “The basic purpose of the Armistice Demarcation Lines is to delineate the lines beyond which the armed forces of the respective Parties shall not move. The provisions of this article shall not be interpreted as prejudicing, in any sense, an ultimate political settlement between the Parties to this Agreement.  

"The Armistice Demarcation Lines defined in...this Agreement are agreed upon by the Parties without prejudice to future territorial settlements or boundary lines or to claims of either Party relating thereto." %ad%

Baker quoted Judge Steven Schwebel, former President of the International Court of Justice, who stated in 1994, "The armistice agreements of 1949 expressly preserved the territorial claims of all parties and did not purport to establish definitive boundaries between them."

The current Arab campaign for recognizing the Palestinian Authority according to the supposed “1967 borders”  ironically is often based on the oft-quoted UN Resolution 242.  This is the resolution which Baker noted emphasizes in its very first paragraph the “...respect for and acknowledgement of the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of every State in the area and their right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force."

The Palestinian Authority has accepted in previous agreements the concept that borders will be negotiated, but the Arab world’s “diplomatic war of attrition” has virtually erased this perception in the media and in the international community. A 1993 agreement signed by Arafat states that there are, "...remaining issues, including: Jerusalem, refugees, settlements, security arrangements, borders, relations and cooperation with other neighbors, and other issues of common interest."
The PA in the past several months has called for “negotiations” but in reality has demanded that Israel accept the so-called “1967 borders” without negotiation, lines which Baker’s research paper shows havs no legal or historical foundation as borders.

The Arab Lobby In America

By: Mitchell Bard, Date: Wednesday, December 08 2010

U.S. policy is not controlled by an omnipotent Israeli lobby but rather heavily influenced by an equally potent - yet much less visible - Arab lobby that is driven by ideology, oil, and arms to support Middle Eastern regimes that often oppose American values and interests.

It is understandable if this statement is surprising, given that few books or articles examine the Arab lobby, while there is a long history of conspiracy theories suggesting that Jews control everything from the media to the U.S. Congress to the global financial system. The Israel Lobby by Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer is the most recent screed to reinforce such beliefs.

Israel's detractors have embraced Walt and Mearsheimer's book because its argument fits in neatly with their fantasies about an all-powerful group of Jews who control U.S. foreign policy, but they should be offended by the racist, paternalistic tone of the book, which portrays the Arabs as impotent, unable to affect their own fate or influence U.S. actions. While the Israeli lobby is obsessively scrutinized, mischaracterized, and demonized, the role of the Arab lobby is denied, minimized, or ignored.

To be fair, Walt and Mearsheimer are not the only ones who give short shrift to the Arab lobby. For example, when DePaul professor Khalil Marrar contacted Arab American organizations to interview their representatives for his research on the subject, he was told, "There is no Arab lobby in Washington, DC."

Even one of the most prominent Arab Americans engaged in promoting the Palestinian cause, James Zogby, said in 1982, "There is no Arab lobby." In the Foreign Affairs Oral History Project of the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training, former State Department officials who dealt with Middle East affairs were repeatedly asked about the Israeli lobby, but the Arab lobby was never discussed.

Walt and Mearsheimer do not subject the Arab lobby to the same analysis they apply to the Israeli lobby; they simply dismiss its influence. Claiming that oil companies have not exerted influence, they conclude that their case is proven.

Though it is largely unknown to the public, the Arab lobby in the United States is at least as old as, and perhaps older than, the Israeli lobby. The first organization established to present an Arab perspective in the United States was the Arab National League of America in the 1930s. Other groups followed. In 1951, King Saud of Saudi Arabia asked U.S. officials to finance a pro-Arab lobby to counter the pro-Israel lobby, and the CIA obliged. Even before that, oil companies and sympathetic officials in the State Department, Pentagon, and intelligence agencies were trying to influence policy.

When the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General George Brown, launched an attack on the Jewish lobby and Jewish ownership of banks and newspapers in 1974, Senator Thomas McIntyre (D-NH), a member of the Armed Services Committee, acknowledged the influence of the Israeli lobby, which he said "reflects the will of a strong majority of all Americans." But what about the oil lobby? he asked. "The influence of Big Oil is far more insidious, and far more pervasive than the influence of the Jewish lobby, for oil and influence seep across ideological as well as party lines, without public approval or support."

He added that "the Jewish lobby isn't in the same league with the General's own lobby - the Pentagon and the Defense establishment."
McIntyre expressed a reality well known to Washington players, but alien to ivory tower denizens with no real-world political experience. Since the establishment of Israel in 1948, the Arab lobby - which is in large part, but not exclusively, an anti-Israel lobby - has grown to include defense contractors, former government officials employed by Arab states, corporations with business interests in the Middle East, NGOs (especially human rights organizations), the United Nations, academics (particularly from Middle East studies departments), Israel haters, a significant percentage of the media and cultural elite, non-evangelical Christian groups, European elites, hired guns, American Arabs and Muslims, and the leaders and diplomats from no fewer than twenty-one Arab governments (as well as from a number of non-Arab Islamic nations).
* * * * *
 
One of the most important distinguishing characteristics of the Arab lobby is that it has no popular support. While the Israeli lobby has hundreds of thousands of active grassroots members and public opinion polls consistently reveal a huge gap between support for Israel and the Arab nations/Palestinians, the Arab lobby has almost no foot soldiers or public sympathy. Its most powerful elements tend to be bureaucrats who represent only their personal views or what they believe are their institutional interests, and foreign governments that care only about their national interests, not those of the United States. What they lack in human capital, in terms of American advocates, they make up for with almost unlimited resources to try to buy what they usually cannot win on the merits of their arguments.

The heart of the Arab lobby has long been Saudi Arabia, its supporters within the U.S. government, and the various PR firms, lobbyists, and other hired guns employed on the kingdom's behalf to make its case to decision makers and the public. In the past, the Arab lobby was focused on keeping Saudi Arabia happy, preventing the spread of Soviet influence in the Middle East, and weakening America's relationship with Israel. Today, the Arab lobby in the United States is focused on feeding the American addiction to petroleum products, expanding economic ties between the United States and the Arab/Muslim Middle East, securing American political support in international forums, obtaining the most sophisticated weaponry, and trying to weaken the U.S.-Israel alliance.

Unlike critics of the Israeli lobby who suggest it has no redeeming qualities, I would acknowledge that some elements of the Arab lobby, usually those inside the U.S. government, do often take positions that are in the interest of the country and express valid concerns. For example, State Department officials were understandably concerned about Soviet penetration of the region during the Cold War and also have legitimate reasons to promote U.S. trade and the protection of American oil supplies. The problems arise when they abandon core American principles to support policies that are less clearly in the national interest.

The Arab lobby has demonstrated its power by ensuring that the U.S. pays disproportionate attention to the interests of Arab states and supports countries that share none of our values and few of our interests. These states are all dictatorial regimes with abysmal human rights records that have been fawned over by every president, including Jimmy Carter, who made human rights the centerpiece of his foreign policy. While this may be partly attributable to Cold War realism, the U.S. was also constantly seeking better relations with Soviet clients such as Egypt and supporting the Saudis even as they threatened to turn to the Soviets and financed Soviet allies such as Syria. Worse, some of these nations, especially the Saudis, subvert American interests by supporting terrorism and promoting radical Islamic views on a global scale.

In truth, the lobby is more amorphous than its Israeli counterpart and is not centrally directed. Though defined similarly, the Israeli lobby does have one organization, AIPAC, which has effectively been deputized to lobby on behalf of Americans who believe that a strong U.S.-Israel alliance is in the interests of the United States. Supporters of Israel have the advantage of lobbying on behalf of a relationship with a single country, whereas the Arab lobby, at least in theory, has to reflect the interests of twenty-one Arab states and the Palestinians.

Representatives of the Arab lobby rarely attempt to express the view of "the Arabs."
In some ways the term Arab lobby is a misnomer. Most lobbies focus on a single issue - abortion/choice, second amendment/gun control, Israel, Cuba, China - but the Arab lobby really has two issues, which occasionally overlap. One is pro-Saudi, based on oil, and is represented primarily by the Saudi government, Arabists, defense contractors, and other corporations with commercial interests in the kingdom. American companies are not interested in regional politics; they care only about profits, so their principal concern is expanding trade opportunities.
The Pentagon also lobbies the arms dealers to sell weapons to the Arabs. The justification is typically the need for these countries, especially the oil-producing Gulf States, to defend themselves from external enemies, originally the USSR and now Iran. While many of these sales are justified by national security interests, they often have less to do with defending the Arabs than with the Pentagon's desire to lower the unit cost of systems it wants for U.S. forces and to extend the life of production lines.

Thus, the Arab lobby has had the petrodiplomatic complex led by Saudi Arabia at its heart from the beginning, but has incorporated a variety of other interested parties at different times. Some corporate executives may be hostile to Israel, but for the most part companies have been coaxed to join the lobby in specific instances where it satisfied their selfish business interests rather than because of a desire to weaken U.S.-Israel ties.
* * * * *
 
The other issue of concern to the Arab lobby is the Palestinian question. Though the first group sometimes gets involved in this, it is primarily Arab American groups, Christians, and Arabists who lobby on behalf of the Palestinians or, more often, against Israel. "Arab lobby" is also misleading. It suggests that the principal members are Arabs and that their focus is on the Arab world; but Arab Americans are only a small and mostly impotent part of the overall lobby that is being eclipsed by Islamic groups.

Moreover, the lobby has no real interest in any other Arab nations or issues. The lobby does not campaign for human rights in any of these countries, does not defend Christians or other minorities, does not even try to get aid for Arab states. The only time any interest is shown in another country is if Israel is somehow involved, as in the case of Israel-Lebanon clashes, when suddenly the lobby expresses great concern for the people of Lebanon. Otherwise, the lobby never talks about such issues as the Syrian occupation, Hizbullah's takeover, the undermining of democracy, or the various massacres perpetrated by Lebanese factions against each other or Syrian assassinations of their opponents.

While detractors of Israel see a lobbyist, philanthropist, or other Jew behind each Middle East policy decision, they ignore all those non-Jews (and sometimes Jews!) who are agitating behind the scenes for the adoption of policies favorable to the Arabs and/or hostile toward Israel. Thus, while Louis Brandeis may have lobbied Woodrow Wilson for American support for the Balfour Declaration, the president's closest adviser, Colonel Edward House, was vigorously opposing it. Harry Truman's friend Eddie Jacobson asked for the president's support for Israel, while his secretary of state threatened not to vote for Truman if he recognized the newly established state. Similar examples can be found in every administration.
What's more, the critics of U.S. Middle East policy never can explain anomalies in their conspiracy theories; first and foremost, why American policy is so often at odds with the "powerful" Israeli lobby. The Israeli lobby, for example, failed for years to convince U.S. administrations to provide sophisticated arms to Israel, was unable to prevent Eisenhower from issuing dire threats that forced Israel's withdrawal from the Sinai after 1956, did not deter Ronald Reagan from imposing sanctions in the 1980s and George W. Bush from punishing Israel during his term, and cannot, even now, prevent dangerous arms sales to Arab countries or the adoption of critical resolutions at the United Nations. The reasons for the Israeli lobby's failures are sometimes complex - Cold War calculations, competition with allies, presidential lobbying, economic considerations - but the Arab lobby often plays a role.
* * * * *
 
One obstacle the Arab lobby faces is the negative image of Muslims and Arabs; consequently one of its principal objectives is to fight the stereotyping of Muslims and Arabs as terrorists. Members of the lobby complain, for example, about the portrayal of Muslims in films as if they expect screenwriters to choose Norwegians or Swedes as villains rather than Arabs who have committed the types of atrocities reenacted in the movies. They have also tried to tar critics with the epithet Islamophobe, implying that anyone who dares suggest that radical Muslims may pose a danger to the United States is a racist. This is a conscious effort by the Arab lobby to imitate what it sees as the successful and cynical use by Jews of the term "anti-Semitism" to silence critics of Israel.

While Walt/Mearsheimer and others may rage against a Middle East policy that they believe is counter to American interests, most Americans themselves disagree. The public believes that Israel is a reliable ally, and that support for Israel is in our interest. By contrast, little public support is demonstrable for closer ties with the Arab/Muslim world. Frustration with American public opinion also explains the Arab lobby's propaganda efforts in the media and, especially, in schools to try to change attitudes.

Hundreds of millions of dollars have been invested in a long-term campaign to prettify the Arab world, especially Saudi Arabia, vilify Israel, sanitize radical Islam, and glorify the Palestinian struggle for independence. In the short run, the Saudis have taken a different tack from the Israeli lobby, focusing on a top-down rather than bottom-up approach to lobbying. As hired gun J. Crawford Cook wrote in laying out his proposed strategy for the kingdom, "Saudi Arabia has a need to influence the few that influence the many, rather than the need to influence the many to whom the few must respond."

For seventy years, the Arab lobby has persistently tried to influence policy, directly, by lobbying decision makers, and indirectly, by seeking to manipulate the media and propagandize the American educational system, often to the detriment of the national interest.

Dr. Mitchell Bard is a leading authority on U.S.-Israel relations who has written or edited more than 20 books, including "48 Hours of Kristallnacht," "Myths and Facts: A Guide to the Arab-Israeli Conflict," and "Will Israel Survive?"
This essay is excerpted from the book "THE ARAB LOBBY: The Invisible Alliance That Undermines America's Interests in the Middle East," Copyright © 2010 by Mitchell Bard. Reprinted by arrangement with Harper, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers

Dutch MP Wilders and Israeli MK Eldad: Jordan is Palestine

Kislev 29, 5771, 06 December 10 12:50, by Elad Benari

(Israelnationalnews.com) Dutch politician Geert Wilders was in Israel on Sunday and gave a speech in Tel Aviv at a conference of the HaTikvah movement, headed MK Prof. Aryeh Eldad (National Union). 

Before the conference, MK Eldad spoke with Israel National News TV and explained his own proposed two-state solution in which two states refers to the State of Israel and the Kingdom of Jordan.

Wilders, who is the leader of the Dutch Party for Freedom and who has been a staunch critic of Islam, started his speech by saying that Israel “is an immense source of inspiration for me.”  He added that he is “not ashamed to stand with Israel, but proud. I am grateful to Israel. I will always defend Israel. Your country is the cradle of Western civilization. We call it the Judeo-Christian civilization with good reason.”

Wilders blamed the Arab leaders as well as Islam for what he called “the plight of the Palestinians in refugee camps in Lebanon, Gaza, and other places,” and said that ‘Palestine’, where many say that the PA Arabs should return, is, in fact located in Jordan.

“Israel, including Judea and Samaria, has been the land of the Jews since time immemorial,” said Wilders. “Judea means Land of the Jews. Never in the history of the world has there been an autonomous state in the area that was not Jewish. The Diaspora of the Jews, which began after their defeat by the Romans in 70 [C.E.], did not lead to the departure of all the Jews from their ancient homeland. Jews had been living in the Jordan Valley for centuries until the Arab invaders drove them out in 1948, when the provinces of Judea and Samaria were occupied by the Hashemite Kingdom of Transjordan, which abbreviated its name to Jordan in 1950. And until 1967, when Israel regained the ancient Jewish heartland of Judea and Samaria, no one, not a single Islamic scholar or Western politician, ever demanded that there be an independent Palestinian state in the so-called West Bank.”

He added that Israel must not trade land for peace and not “assign Judea and Samaria to another Palestinian state – a second one, next to Jordan,” since, as he said, the conflict in the Middle East is not a conflict over territory, but rather an ideological battle.

Wilders mentioned the expulsion from Gaza of 2005 and said that this “sacrificing” of land by Israel did not attain peace but rather made the situation worse, simply because the conflict is ideological.

“Ideologies must be confronted with the iron will never to give in, ‘never, never, never, never – in nothing, great or small, large or petty.’ That is the lesson which the world learned from Winston Churchill when he confronted the evil ideology of Nazism,” said Wilders.%ad%

He added that Israel needs defendable borders and that for this reason Jews must settle Judea and Samaria. Wilders called the Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria “an expression of the Jewish right to exist in this land. They are tiny outposts of freedom, defying ideological forces which deny not only Israel but the entire West the right to live in peace, dignity and liberty.”

Wilders also said that Islam threatens not just Israel, but the entire world, and added that “Without Judea and Samaria, Israel cannot protect Jerusalem. The future of the world depends on Jerusalem. If Jerusalem falls, Athens and Rome – and Paris, London and Washington – will be next.”

As for the PA Arabs, Wilders said that “Since Jordan is Palestine, it is the duty of the Jordanian government to welcome all Palestinian refugees who voluntarily want to settle there.”

“Allowing all Palestinians to voluntarily settle in Jordan is a better way towards peace than the current so-called two-states-approach (in reality a three-states-approach) propagated by the United Nations, the U.S. administration, and governing elites all over the world,” he said. “We only want a democratic non-violent solution for the Palestinian problem. This requires that the Palestinian people should be given the right to voluntarily settle in Jordan and freely elect their own government in Amman. If the present Hashemite King is still as popular as today, he can remain in power. That is for the people of Palestine to decide in real democratic elections. My friends, let us adopt a totally new approach. Let us acknowledge that Jordan is Palestine.

Wilders concluded his speech by saying: “Toda raba [thank you]… And shalom to all of you.”
www.IsraelNationalNews.com

The Congenital Liar

http://www.jpost.com/IranianThreat/OpinionAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=197286

Since the earliest days of Barack Obama’s presidency, there have been two major conceptual differences between how Israel and how the US administration view the Middle East.

The first difference has to do with the region. While the US maintains that solving the Israeli-Palestinian conundrum is the key to unlocking peace in the Middle East and getting other countries in the region on board to help stop the Iranian threat, Israel’s position is to first deal with Iran – neutralize it – which will then make it easier to reach an accord with the Palestinians.

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Israel’s logic is that Hamas and Hizbullah – Iran’s two proxies – will be much less able to gum up the works whenever diplomatic progress looms if Iran is defanged.
The second key conceptual difference has to do with how to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, with the US still tied into the land-for peace formula – Israel gives up land and gets peace in return – and much of Israel, bitten badly by reality, no longer convinced that formula is relevant.

And along comes the cache of WikiLeaks documents and reveals that Obama’s linkage of resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to Iran is nothing short of fiction – a fiction he and his key aides have been spinning since the beginning of his tenure.

At his very first White House meeting with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu in May 2009, that famous meeting in which Obama called for a complete halt to all settlement construction, Obama was asked what he thought about Israel’s position that only if the Iranian threat were solved could there be real progress on the Palestinian track.

“Well, let me say this,” Obama said. “There’s no doubt that it is difficult for any Israeli government to negotiate in a situation in which they feel under immediate threat. That’s not conducive to negotiations. And as I’ve said before, I recognize Israel’s legitimate concerns about the possibility of Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon when they have a president who has in the past said that Israel should not exist. That would give any leader of any country pause.

“Having said that,” the president went on, “if there is a linkage between Iran and the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, I personally believe it actually runs the other way. To the extent that we can make peace with the Palestinians – between the Palestinians and the Israelis – then I actually think it strengthens our hand in the international community in dealing with a potential Iranian threat.”

And that position, that progress on the Israeli-Palestinian issue – that stopping settlement construction – would somehow magically mollify the Arab world and get it to put its shoulder to the wheel regarding Iran has been a constant thread throughout the Obama regime. Here it was popularly dubbed “Yitzhar for Bushehr.”



What the WikiLeaks cache revealed, however, was that this argument was a fabrication. There was no need to crack the Palestinian-Israeli nut before getting the “moderate” Arab nations in the region – Saudi Arabia, the Persian Gulf states, Egypt and Jordan – on board regarding Iran, because those nations were already fully camped out on board the deck of the ship, just waiting for action against Iran.

Now this doesn’t mean efforts should not be made toward trying to solve the Israeli-Palestinian issue, but don’t say the reason is to get the Arabs to stop Iran.

The following quotes from Arab leaders culled from the WikiLeaks trove do not exactly portray a picture of leaders who need any further enticements before “getting on board.”

• Saudi Arabian King Abdullah, quoted by the monarchy’s envoy to the US in 2008 as exhorting the US to attack Iran and end its nuclear weapons program, said in reference to Iran – according to one cable – that it was necessary to “cut the head of the snake.”

• King Hamad of Bahrain was quoted in 2009 as saying, “That program [the Iranian nuclear program] must be stopped. The danger of letting it go on is greater than the danger of stopping it.”

• Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Muhammad bin Zayed in 2009 urged the US, according to another cable, not to appease Teheran and said, “Ahmadinejad is Hitler.”

• Maj-Gen. Muhammad al-Assar, assistant to the Egyptian defense minister, was quoted in a cable in 2010 as saying that “Egypt views Iran as a threat to the region.”

Obama was obviously well aware of the views of these leaders, most of whom he personally met, yet he continued to propagate what he must have known to be a falsehood – that these countries would only sign on to sanctions and otherwise support efforts to neutralize Iran if there were progress on the Israeli-Palestinian track.

Obviously these countries wanted to see progress on that track, but this desire had nothing to do with Iran. Nor would an Israeli-Palestinian accord lead them to be supportive of aggressive steps toward Iran, because they were already practically dreaming of those steps.

To link the two issues – the conflict with the Palestinians, and Iran – was to badly muddle the issue. Why exactly Obama felt compelled to do so is one of the key questions the WikiLeaks documents raised in relation to our region.

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/140929

WikiLeaks: Arabs Admit Iranian Threat not Linked to PA Demands
Kislev 23, 5771, 30 November 10 09:20, by Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu

(Israelnationalnews.com) The Arab world contradicted its public stand in private cables and ignored any connection between solving the Iranian threat and meeting PA demands for a state, WikiLeaks revealed.

Most of the diplomatic cables that were revealed are full of gossip and previously known but unconfirmed observations, as well as incorrect predictions. However, one of the most astounding leaks was the Arab world’s overriding concern over the Iranian nuclear threat and not over the establishment of the Palestinian Authority.
Israel has always rejected linking the two issues, but many America officials, especially senior army brass, have maintained that the unsolved issue of the PA is the kingpin of all other Middle East problems.

The WikiLeaks disclosures totally debunked this notion.

“Note that Arab leaders did not condition their opposition to Iran or call for a U.S. attack on settling the Arab-Israeli or Israel-Palestinian conflicts,” said Barry Rubin, the Director of the Gloria Research in International Affairs.
"This is contrary to what Administration officials, academia, and parts of the mass media who argue these issues are basically linked have been claiming, and that is that the conflict must be ‘solved’ before doing much else,” he added. “As I've told you, the Arab regimes worry first and foremost about Iran and have greatly downgraded their interest in the conflict or antagonism toward Israel."
The near obsession with Iran among Arab leaders was documented in leaked cables that point to Bahrain and Saudi Arabia as urging the United States to attack Tehran. Saudi Arabia has denied the documents’ accuracy.

Bahrain, an oil-rich Gulf state, told American officials they could use their country as a base for an attack on Iran if there were guarantees that its security would be protected in the event of a counterattack or sanctions by Iran.
A year ago this month, Bahrain's King Hamad told U.S. Gen. David Petraeus, "That [nuclear] program must be stopped. The danger of letting it go on is greater than the danger of stopping it." As previously reported, Saudi King Abdullah advised the United States to attack Iran. The Saudi ambassador commented to the United States, "He told you to cut off the head of the snake.”

The major exception to fears of Iran is Syria, where Syrian President Bashar Assad has allied himself with the Islamic Republic as part of a northern axis that includes Lebanon and Turkey. He not only doubted that Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons, but he also said it would not attack Israel in order not to harm Arabs in the country.

Although mainstream media have reported Assad’s statements without comment, his remarks cannot be taken at face value. Like the Palestinian Authority’s single minded- goal to become a state based on its demands incorporated in the Saudi Initiative of 2002, Syria has one principal objective – taking the strategic Golan Heights and its valuable water resources away from Israel.

According to the leaked documents, Assad also said that the “Annapolis meeting” on the Middle East two years ago, “I know it [Annapolis] is just a photo op.  But I am sending someone anyway.  We do what we think is good for our interests.”
In another cable, Assad admitted that Hamas is an “uninvited guest” in Damascus, where the terrorist organization’s Khaled Mashaal has made his headquarters. He also verified what Israel has warned for more than a year – that Hizbullah is the most powerful political faction in Lebanon.

One surprising statement in a leaked cable came from Qatar’s Amir Hamad bin Khalifa, who told U.S. Senator John Kerry last February, "When you consider that many in the region perceive that Hizbullah drove Israel out of Lebanon and Hamas kicked them…out ‘of the small piece of land called Gaza,’ it is actually surprising that the Israelis still want peace.”