Op-d: No reason why Israel shouldn’t execute terrorists who murdered innocent, defenseless civilians

Gideon Friedman, YNET

Ahead of the resumption of peace talks with the Palestinians Israel is being asked to release numerous murderers as a “gesture.” This is very difficult because we are talking about terrorists who murdered many civilians. Some of them are even Israeli citizens who were tried here like any other prisoner, so why should they be released? 

First of all, we should internalize the fact that this is not about making a gesture – there is a deal at play here. The release of prisoners as part of the negotiations is far more worthy than releasing prisoners as part of a deal to return kidnapped soldiers or civilians. At least here there is hope that the release, and the subsequent talks, will reduce the number of casualties in the future.  Read more…

Danon (right) is widely seen as a thorn in Netanyahu’s side, as in this Ha’aretz cartoon.

Danon’s ability to denounce his own prime minister’s actions points to his not being a routine politician. Three qualities stand out: a devotion to principle, a mastery of tactics, and the ability to articulate a vision. Read more…

by JOEL B. POLLAK, BREITBART

Israel’s decision to forego U.S. military aid that is set to be cut by the federal budget sequester might be seen as the latest security risk taken by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the sake of appeasing the Obama administration. In fact, Netanyahu’s gesture is aimed beyond the White House, and beyond the present debate, acknowledging that the advent of the Tea Party has changed the future direction of American policy.

Netanyahu is a canny observer of U.S. politics, and both his outgoing and incoming ambassadors to the U.S. have American roots. Newcomer Ron Dermer, who will take over from Michael Oren this fall, has extensive political contacts in U.S. conservative circles that he will have to downplay quickly, but that doubtless inform the counsel he has given Netanyahu in his recent capacity as a senior adviser to the Prime Minister.
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FARS News Agency

By EVELYN GORDON, JPOST

Acting like he thinks Israel is doomed without a peace deal, the prime minister encourages the Palestinians not to sign one.
Someone unfamiliar with Israeli politics might think the decision to free 104 Palestinian murderers became inevitable only once the cabinet approved it last week. Those more familiar with Israel’s political dynamics might date it a few weeks earlier, to whenever US Secretary of State John Kerry shamefully decided to demand that Israel do something America would never do itself.

But in truth, it has been inevitable for years – at least since October 20, 2010, which is when I first heard Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu say that Israel couldn’t “survive in the long run without a political settlement.” For once a prime minister convinces himself that the country’s very survival depends on an Israeli-Palestinian agreement, the inexorable consequence is that almost no concession is too high to pay for a deal, or even for the faintest chance of one. He’ll obviously try to get the best deal he can. But ultimately, he’ll feel justified in crawling to any Palestinian demand, even one as wildly unpopular as the prisoner release, to save Israel from the doom he foresees.

CONTINUE TO PREMIUM ZONE

US president must focus on preventing nuclear Iran regardless of how Israel-PA talks develop

By Dan Calic, YNET

President Obama apparently is at it again. A report has emerged citing an unnamed source, that any effort by the US to curtail Iran’s development of their nuclear program will be directly tied to Israel’s commitment to peace with the Palestinians.

Some of the details remain rather ambiguous. For example, when did Obama communicate this to Prime Minister Netanyahu? Another unknown is whether he’s referring to peace talks taking place, or if they are successful?

While certain details remain unclear, this is not the first time Obama has in essence blackmailed Israel. Virtually the same suggestion was floated early his first term. Along with this, he engaged in some other activities which brought serious strain to relations between the two countries.
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By Yori Yanover, JEWISH PRESS

Since the beginning of 2013, not a single housing unit was built in East Jerusalem, Housing and Construction Minister Uri Ariel told Army Radio last week. “The figures speak for themselves,” Ariel said. “You should ask the prime minister’s office about it.”

Prime Minister Netanyahu for his part said last week that, regarding construction in east Jerusalem, Israel is better off “being smart and not being right.” And so, in line with that statement, there has been a standing order from the PM, given under heavy American pressure and in accordance with a vehement recommendation from NSC chief Ya’akov Amidror, Minister Ariel has not been given a green light to issue new construction bids in East Jerusalem. There is a construction freeze in the settlement blocks of Judea and Samaria as well, but the freeze in Jerusalem is particularly dramatic, in light of the fact that it has been lingering through the second term of what is supposed to be a right wing government.
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Beyond this historical claim, we should also be emphazing our political and legal claims. Ted Belman

By Dror Eydar, ISRAEL HAYOM

[..]
Zahalka’s remarks stem from a broader line of argument which claims that the Jews have no history in their land, that the Temple never stood on the Temple Mount, and that Zionism is a colonialist and racist movement whose goal is to disinherit the “real owners” of the land.

These lies have gained traction internationally because Israel mainly makes security arguments when it talks about the danger of a Palestinian state in the mountains of Judea and Samaria. While these security arguments are true, as evidenced by the Gaza Strip with its thousands of rockets, that does not stop the European Union and BDS movement from moving forward with sanctions against Israel. The reason for this is that we have attenuated our claims that have to do with the justice of our right to the land.
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Transcript of the Eidelberg Report, Israel National Radio, November 24, 2008.

Shortly after his election as Prime Minister in May 1996, Binyamin Netanyahu addressed a joint session of the United States Congress. There he denied any clash of civilizations between Israel and her Arab-Islamic neighbors. This denial—disingenuous or not—underlies Netanyahu’s current economic plan to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. By building up the Palestinian economy … peace between Jews and Arabs will eventually follow. [This reflect the Marxist mentality that animates Shimon Peres, who read chapters of Das Kapital while wooing his wife!]

Before examining the mode thought of these odd bedfellows, note that Netanyahu and Peres are secularists. I mention this because Abdallah al-Tall, an Egyptian spokesman, has said that “The propagandists of secularism, who leave out of account the religious factor in the Palestine problem, ignore the fact that this is the only bone of contention in the world which has persisted for thirty centuries and is still based on religious and spiritual foundations.”
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[See also: Op-Ed: Benghazi Leads to Iran, Not Al Qaeda]

GATEWAY PUNDIT

[Dr. Mark Christian, an obstetrician/gynecologist by profession, was destined to become a Sunni religious leader in Egypt. Mark was groomed from boyhood to become an influential leader of the Muslim faith. He later converted to Christianity and moved to America. Mark now hopes to educate a sleeping American public to the actuality of Islamic intention in this country.]

Dr. Mark Christian from the Global Faith Institute sent The Gateway Pundit his account of the Benghazi attack on September 11, 2012:

Syrian president Bashar el Assad, Russia, Iran, and Hezbollah of Lebanon are fully responsible for the death of United States Ambassador Christopher Stevens. President Obama has known this fact since the minute he first learned about the attack. Read more…

By CAROLINE B. GLICK, JPOST

In bowing to US pressure and approving the release of 104 terrorist murderers from prison, Netanyahu behaved like a coward.

Standing next to US Secretary of State John Kerry on Tuesday morning, Justice Minister Tzipi Livni gushed that through his indefatigable efforts to bring Israeli and Palestinian officials to Washington, Kerry proved that “nothing can stop true believers.”

As usual, the cognitively challenged Livni told us something she hadn’t intended to say. The term “true believer” was coined by Eric Hoffer in his classic work The True Believer from 1951, which Livni has obviously not read. Hoffer’s epic study of the psychological roots of fanaticism described a true believer as a person so fanatically committed to a cause that no amount of reality can make him abandon it.
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By Evelyn Gordon, commentarymagazine.com

As I noted yesterday, the coming months will be decisive with regard to Iran’s nuclear program. This is an issue on which everyone would prefer if crunch time were never reached. But if a showdown must come, the timing couldn’t be more fortuitous-because it’s impossible to imagine a better geostrategic moment for military action against Iran than now.

One of the biggest concerns that opponents of military action in both Israel and America have always raised is the havoc Iran could wreak in response an attack. For Israelis, the main fear is massive missile attacks by both Iran and its allies; for Washington, the main concern is Iran’s ability to disrupt oil trade from the Gulf and attack American allies in that region.
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By Adam Kredo, FREE BEACON

Lawmakers on Capitol Hill petitioned the Qatari ambassador on Friday to explain his government’s “expanding diplomatic and economic ties” with Hamas in a letter that highlights the increasingly strained ties between the United States and Qatar.

The lawmakers call on Qatar’s ambassador to Washington, Mohammed Bin Abdullah al-Rumaihi, to explain why the oil rich country has pledged to give the Hamas government in the Gaza Strip $400 million, money they fear will go to fund terrorism.
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By Josh Goodman & James Parks, Breitbart

In recent weeks, the international outcry that followed the overthrow of Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi serves to confirm how fundamental the lie that Morsi was democratically elected has become in our perception of the Egyptian government. This oft-repeated inaccuracy is entirely unfounded in facts, and it is imperative that we understand what it actually means to be duly elected.

This fact is made all the more important with the backdrop of the manic attempts to avoid calling the military overthrow a “coup” in the debate over Section 7008 of the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2012; it provides, in part, that funds shall not be made available to the government of a country whose “duly elected head of government,” is deposed by military coup d’etat or decree.
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THIS IS ABSOLUTELY BRILLIANT

By Martin Sherman
 
Recent developments reveal a dramatic erosion in Netanyahu’s strategic perspectives that makes it impossible to justify his continued incumbency.
 
Prisoner releases only embolden terrorists…they encourage precisely the terrorist blackmail they are supposed to defuse. – Binyamin Netanyahu, Fighting Terrorism (1995)
 
What sort of people and government would agree to free the murderers of its own children and do it in the name of a presumed “goodwill” toward irreconcilable enemies? What might this people and government be thinking, especially when its hoped for quid pro quo is an obvious delusion? – Prof. Louis Rene Beres, “A crime without a punishment,” July 16, 2013
 
Binyamin Netanyahu must resign or be induced to do so.
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By Michael Curtis, AMERICAN THINKER

At the Maccabiah games held in Israel during July 2013, a contingent of 28 Indian Jews competed with 9000 Jewish athletes from more than 70 countries in the 38 sports contested. The members of the contingent won no medals but their team did beat the British team at cricket. Impressive though this triumph in Tel Aviv may be, far more important is the increasingly cordial relationship between Israel and India.

Cordiality was not always the case. India voted against the November 29, 1947 United Nations Partition Resolution that led to the creation of Israel. It voted in 1949 against Israel becoming a member of the United Nations. It did recognize the existence of Israel as a state in 1950. This position was supported by Hindu organizations throughout the country while the ruling Congress party appeased the Muslim population. But India, a founding member of the nonaligned movement and essentially pro-Arab in its policy positions, did not establish formal diplomatic relations with the Jewish state until January 1992. At that point J. N. Dixit, the Indian foreign minister, complained, “What have the Arabs given us?”
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by David P. Goldman, PJ Media

Earlier today, Egypt’s military government arrested former prime minister Mohammed Mursi on charges of conspiring with the terrorist organization Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood’s Palestinian affiliate. That is as good as it gets in this part of the world. Hamas has murdered 457 Israelis and wounded more than 3,000 since 2000, according to the Israeli government. It is an implacable enemy of the United States as well as the State of Israel. Since taking power, the Egyptian military has shut down illegal tunnel traffic with Gaza, Hamas’ stronghold, and strangled its economy.
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This article coming from the far left is very biased. It presumes that Israel has the obligation to end the occupation by giving the Palestinians what they want rather than that the Palestinians have the opportunity to end the occupation by accepting to what is offered. The author also believes that the US is giving too much support to Israel by letting her avoid satisfying Palestinian demands. Everyone should be reminded that the Palestinians agreed to the terms of occupation in the Oslo Accords which have never been abrogated. There is no obligation on Israel to end the occupation. Both parties have the right to reject any offer they want but neither can complain if the consequence of such rejection is the continuance of the occupation. Ted Belman

Don’t cheer these peace talks

By Noam Sheizaf, 972Mag

To register their recent success, Secretary of State Kerry and the Obama administration destroyed whatever was achieved in the last two decades. For the first time since the 1991 Madrid Conference, the starting point for the negotiations are the positions of the Israeli right.

The headlines celebrating the fact that “Israelis and Palestinians are talking again” were misleading. The Palestinian Authority is no more than a regional council in a territory controlled by Israel. Since the PA is completely dependent on Israel for almost all of its functions, Israelis and Palestinians are talking all the time, including on the political level.
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[I just came upon this article which was published in March 2013  by +972Mag, an Israeli a pro-Palestine Blog. It is well worth reading for the numbers disclosed. Ted Belman]

The Israeli negotiator who thinks the two-state solution is still possible

Veteran Israeli negotiator Shaul Arieli discusses the failure of the Oslo Accords,various Israeli prime ministers’ commitment (or lack thereof) to ending the occupation, and the only solution he believes both sides could live with, however unsatisfied they might be with it. 

Shaul Arieli is a man on a dual mission: educating Israelis about the conflict and diplomatic process with the Palestinians, and making the point that the two-state solution is both possible and necessary. His latest publication in Hebrew, A Border between Us and You (Yeditoth Ahronoth Books 2013), is a 500-page handbook to the history of the conflict, with an emphasis on the diplomatic and political process. It is written in very simple (and sometimes simplistic) language, with lots of maps, tables and even entries describing notable leaders on both sides. Arieli was thinking about Israeli teenagers when he wrote his book, but lately I find myself going back to it again and again to find a figure or to check historical details for one of my posts.
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