DELEGITIMISATION OF ISRAEL. THE TIDE IS TURNING by Barry Shaw.

DELEGITIMISATION OF ISRAEL. THE TIDE IS TURNING, by Barry Shaw.

At the deep dark heart of the Palestinian statehood bid at the United Nations was a desire to continue their demonization and delegitimisation of Israel. Mahmoud Abbas’s speech at the podium of the General Assembly on September 23, 2011 was forty minutes of hateful rhetoric against Israel that paved the way for the diplomatic intifada of delegitimisation campaigns using the various United Nations institutions. These are intended to be utilized less to advance their statehood than to sideline and eliminate the Jewish state of Israel by accusing it of all the world’s worst crimes.

The Palestinians fully expect that their way will be paved by the automatic majority and support they enjoy from the non democratic regimes, theocracies, tyrannical regimes, that control the infected body known as the UN.  As Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, rightly pointed out minutes after Abbas‘s poison had won rapturous applause, the United Nations is an ailing body in which Hizbollah-controlled Lebanon chairs the Security Council. This is an Islamic terror regime heading the UN organization governing world security. As Bibi said, you couldn’t make this up!

On the way to achieving this goal there are a number of stations of the Cross. One of those is the Russell Tribunal, commonly known as the “International People’s Court” that will gather in Cape Town at the end of November for a lynch mob trial of Israel. In the eyes of the participants Israel has been found guilty of the crime of Apartheid. All they have to do now is have a show trial, make accusations, call a biased jury to being in the verdict, and have Israel taken out and executed for Apartheid crimes against the Palestinians.

What they will studiously not do is to put the acid test of Apartheid against Palestinians and apply it to the Arab regimes that surround Israel. One only has to look at Syria, Jordan, Egypt, and Lebanon to see real Apartheid perpetrated against Palestinians. In these countries Palestinians are segregated in camps from the indigenous population. The home regime fails to maintain them. Instead, they leave it up to international organizations to provide sustenance to Palestinian Arabs. They are deprived of citizenship, of civil rights, of proper education, of work opportunities. They cannot vote or attain high office. They have no voice.

So why won’t Archbishop Tutu, Winnie Mandela, Ronnie Kasrils, and others involved with the Russell Tribunal, address this obvious crime if they truly care about Palestinian rights, and the Apartheid being applied against them?  

They fail to do so because, for them, it’s a game of colours. If it’s white against brown or black it is a crime. If it’s black or brown against whites, it’s justified. And if it’s brown against brown, or even brown against black, it’s ignored. In this case, Israel is considered as white and the Palestinians as brown. This colour game clouds their political judgment. It is a perverted political philosophy which declares that brown and black people cannot be oppressors because they are black or brown and are, therefore, the weak and oppressed so can never be condemned as oppressors. 

This is despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary. It is far more convenient to portray tiny nation states like Israel as the brutal oppressor and the Palestinians as the weak and oppressed. It plays well on the ears of the liberal middle class in the West who overlook decades of Arab incited wars against the nascent Jewish state, decades of horrific Islamic terror, thousands of rocket attacks on Israel from Hizbollah and Hamas in support of the elimination of Israel. It’s all, you see, Israel’s fault for not surrendering their rights to the poor Palestinians. Oh, I forgot, Israel doesn’t have any rights!

This is the background train of thought that has led to “Zionism is Racism!”. This is the agenda that forged the Durban Conference into a “Hate Israel” campaign of constant demonization and delegitimisation of Israel. Every tool was to be applied against Israel as they set out to do to Israel in the 21^st Century what they said they did to South Africa in the 20^th Century, namely to eliminate it by declaring it illegitimate in the eyes of the international community.
Durban died on the streets of New York in September. The latest reworking of the racist fraud against Israel in the form of Durban 3 was boycotted by all sensible democratic nations, leaving the UN sponsored event echoing with the empty speeches of irrelevant and discredited regimes and organisations.

International boycott campaign have been launched. Israel is the sole country to be targeted. Israel has been unaffected by boycotts. In fact, the Israeli economy has burgeoned while the economies of countries on whose soil boycott campaigns have hatched have been damaged.

Hugely expensive exercises such as Gaza flotillas were put together to highlight false claims of nonexistent humanitarian crises in Gaza that would have prominent politicians like David Cameron declare that Gaza is “a prison camp” as they were opening their Olympic-sized swimming pool, a new Water Park, and a new super Shopping Mall in Gaza City.


The Gaza flotilla of 2011 was sidelined and trapped in Pireaus due to the coordinated efforts of European Governments, social media activists, and NGOs, who acted against the nonsense of a non-existent humanitarian crisis in Gaza that had been the failed slogan of an expensive and unsuccessful exercise in fraud. In fact, the social media aspect succeeded in convincing public opinion that the flotilla activists were radicals who exploited naïve and misinformed people to spout empty epithets in favour of Hamas-controlled Gaza, and against a country who were suffering rocket attacks against its civilians.

Israeli, or pro-Israeli, speakers are prevented from speaking on many campuses, or in debating halls, in Britain, Canada, and the United States, while radical anti-Israeli activists and extremists imams, who justify suicide bombers, are treated like rock stars. This is part of the activism that denies a voice to the Israeli side.

Recently, an Orange County jury found ten Muslim students guilty of conspiring to disrupt, and then disrupting a speech, given by Michael Oren, Israel’s Ambassador to the United States, at the University of California in Irvine in 2010.  These students face up to a year in prison for infringing free speech laws in America. This should act as a precedent for other cases of abuse of free speech on behalf of Israel. We can expect other legal claims to be made against disrupters of Israeli speakers, not only in America, but also in Britain and in Canada.

In the Irvine case, the statement made by Shakeed Syed, director of the Islamic Shura Council of Southern California, who said that “the heart of America died today” as he heard of the result of the trial, says a lot about the divide between Islamic organizations in America and basic American values.

In certain Western countries, usually in English speaking nations, local councils and unions impose boycotts against Israeli goods. These boycotts are introduced by one sided resolutions which are adopted without the executive or members considering inviting an Israeli representation to present their side of the debate. In places like West Dunbarton in Scotland, or Marrickville in Australia, the council members passed boycott proposals with no thought of considering if Israel had anything to say that would challenge the truth behind the anti-Israel proposals. 

This is a troubling phenomenon that introduces a malevolent Frank Kafka world of minor officials imposing their narrow and faulted worldview onto their constituents in the name of a greater good. The danger to Western democratic values by such moves is deepened by West Dunbarton’s refusal to allow books published in Israel, books that explain Israel’s position, to be allowed into their public libraries. By this act, a small cadre of councilmen decided what their citizens can, and cannot, read. They strengthen their anti democratic regime by censoring and preventing the ability of their electorate from reading any tract that may contradict the legitimacy of their political decisions.

The economic harm against Israel of a boycott by an impoverished local council is meaningless. There is, however, significant damage caused to the heritage of Western democracies by far left radicals hijacking local and regional councils and imposing resolutions in a manner that chips away at the foundations of unbiased fairness and free speech that should be cornerstones of the higher values practiced by countries such as Britain and Australia.

In Australia, a concerted boycott campaign against a Max Brenner chocolate store was seriously challenged by the high profile involvement of senior members of the Australian Parliament, who associated themselves with the store by publicly dining out in the store as a statement against the principle of boycotts.Public opinion has turned against the boycotters in Australia.

While it is true that the United Nations' various forums will witness increasing and official delegimitisation motions against Israel by the Palestinian Authority, including claims made to the International Criminal Court at The Hague, all is not lost.
The counter offensive has begun, and notable victories have been achieved.

The iniquitous universal jurisdiction that allowed radicals to apply to a local magistrate for the summary arrest of Israeli politicians and security people has been reversed in Britain. Now people like Tzipi Livni, leader of the Opposition in Israel, can travel to London without fear of summary arrest as she steps of a plane at Heathrow Airport.

Increasingly, pro-Israeli NGOs are prosecuting lawfare against the radical anti-Israel lobby that are using suspect methods to get their tainted message across. They are questioning the lies and dubious actions of the activists in law, and in court.

A major academic conference is in the works in Israel. Several top level panels of international lawyers, experts in their own fields, will assemble to discuss many of the legal aspects of countering delegitimisation of Israel. Working papers will include law, guidelines, and legal instructions will be distributed at the conclusion of this important event. The results will be seen with actions, cautions, and prosecutions for any one or any body testing the limits of accepted legal standards when attacking Israel.

The delegitimisation campaign is a battlefield on which Israel is being forced to fight as aggressively as any military campaign. In this battle the soldiers are increasingly lawyers.  Victories highlight the criminal intent of the words and actions of the anti-Israel extremists. It is a necessary campaign of delegitimising the delegitimisers that will be won, not by ignoring the narrative of Israel’s enemies, but by confronting them in law.

Let's call the Palestinian spade what it really is - a bloody shovel.

Let's make no bones about it. Let's call a spade a bloody shovel!

The evil behind the unilateral Palestinian ploy at the United Nations is bringing the infamous Khartoum Resolution of 1967 into practice and give it authoritative status in the international community.

To remind ourselves, the Arab League assault on the Jewish state degenerated into their conference of September 1, 1967 in which all the heads of the Arab regimes determined to punish Israel with the three notorious "No's".   No to peace with Israel. No to recognition of Israel. No to negotiations with Israel.

In the last few years, since Abbas rejected the most generous and far reaching Israeli concessions, he has turned his back on Israel and set about putting the Khartoum No's into top gear.

Despite the current Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, publicly declaring his acceptance of the need to create a Palestinian state, freezing settlement construction for a period in a failed attempt to invite the Palestinians into face to face talks, continuing the flow of goods, services, and money into Palestinian controlled territories, the Palestinian leadership have taken what's given to them and, at the same time, scorned, insulted, and attacked Israel.

Ignoring pleas to enter into direct talks, Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian leadership plotted their unilateral route through the United Nations corridors of power that will allow them to pursue recognition of sorts, and improve their status to a level where they can reactivate their delegimitisation campaign against Israel through UN bodies such as the International Criminal Court in the Hague, and biased organisations top heavy with sinister regimes that are brothers in arms with the Palestinians.

They have refused to negotiate in good faith with Israel. Instead, they formed a new alliance between Fatah that control much of the West Bank and Hamas, the terror rulers of the Gaza Strip. They have barely managed to control the hate spewed rhetoric of Hamas who divulged their United Nations bid as  "a political scam."

All the statements emanating from the "moderate" Palestinian Authority confirm their total lack of recognition of Israel, neither as a Jewish state and neither as a permanent entity.

Their schoolbooks, their TV programs, their mosques, their state-run print media, their slogans, all cry out for the elimination of Israel to be replaced by a Greater Palestine with Jerusalem as their capital.
In their glorification of their mass murdering terrorist heroes they perpetuate their cult of blood - Jewish blood.
They retain the right to "armed struggle" and "resistance". These are slogans for war.

In total - no peace, no recognition, no negotiations.

This is the aim and intention of the Palestinians. Let's put an end to the pretense that they are nice people simply seeking self determination in their own land so that they can get on with their own peaceful lives. If only it were so. They would have had a state decades ago. Instead, let's get real. Let's call a spade what it really is.
In the case of the Palestinians, it is a bloody shovel designed to bury Israel.

A Prayer for Israel written by Barry Shaw.

They're coming with their murder.
They're coming with their hate.
They're coming with their lies,
that win the great debate.


The world has lost its reason.
The world has lost its soul.
The world has caved to treason
against one that was its own.


Once courage was a virtue,
Now is lost and gone.
Now appeasement is the purview
and honesty's day is done.


They talk of human rights
when people are around.
But human wrongs are hidden
when hypocrisy abounds.


Let's shine the light on those that point
yet hide the guilt of sinners.
Let truth protect the moral ones
and expose the false deceivers.


Let the curses of the cursed ones
fall short of true believers.


For facts and rights belong in truth
with those brave souls with God.
While wicked lies and evil plots
rot in hearts that God forgot.


So worship life, be strong and brave,
for truth, in the end, will out.
And evil ones who make the noise
will, one day, have no clout.

God supports Israel. Do you?

When Uri asked me to talk in our synagogue on the Shabbat that the Palestinians were presenting their statehood bid at the United Nations, I hesitated. I admit to being a secular, rather than religious, Jew. But, in my advocacy work for Israel, I use as a cornerstone of my hasbara the fact that we share a God-given land as an integral part of our rights as the Jewish people possessing our national home.

I only agreed to give this talk if I could link this week’s Bible portion to my recent intensive advocacy activities for Israel, particularly taking into consideration this weekend’s events at the UN.

I have also been involved in highlighting the association of an increasing number of Jews with the pro-Palestinian lobby, and against Israel. When it goes beyond criticism to delegitimisation is when they have crossed all red lines.

I even have one who is a leading member of the Palestinian Solidarity Movement in Britain. He insists that Israel should stop its Law of Return. Let everyone living here share full and equal rights as Israelis and stop calling ourselves a Jewish state. Of course he feels it fair to allow all the Arabs who once had any claims here to return as, to him, they were once an indigenous part of the land. They, apparently, do have the right of return.

In other words, we would become Palestine. Anything else would be, for him, a racist state.

So, when Uri pointed me to this week’s portion, several passages leapt off the page. Let me share with you some of these passages that, for me, a passionate advocate for Israel, have special relevance.   With the growing Jewish support for anti-Israel activism this took my eye;

“Lest there be among you man, or woman, or family, or tribe, whose heart has turned away this day from the Lord our God to go serve the gods of those other nations.”

This, for me, speaks of the Jews who not only criticize Israel, but actively plot and act against us. For our God is one who promised us the land of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and who led the Jewish people out of bondage to the Promised Land as mentioned in Vayalech.

Then it makes reference to a strange expression of these people who say “I walk in the stubbornness of my heart – that the watered be swept away with the dry.”  What does this mean?  The Commentary describes it as those people who should be in our tent, that devour the narrative of our enemy to the extent that they add drunkenness to their thirst. In other words, they add hate to criticism of Israel to the extent that they demonise and delegitimize us. I know this is true. I know this happens. As I said, I am currently writing to one such person.

It seems that, on this matter, we have God on our side as it is written, “The Lord will not be willing to pardon him, and the anger of the Lord shall be kindled against that man, and all the curses that is written in this book shall be upon him, and the Lord shall blot out his name from under heaven.” 

Wow! I would hate to be in that man’s shoes!

And it is written, if these people, these Jews, reject God’s Covenant to the Jewish people, the Covenant that He made with us when He brought us out of Egyptian slavery, the Covenant He made with us as He guided His Chosen People to our Promised Land. If they then go over to serve our enemies, then surely they will feel God’s wrath.

The portion mentions the choice that God gives us in the form of the blessing and the curse. Choose which path you choose. Are you with us, or against us? And here God asks these people to return to the fold, to our tent, to avoid the curse.

He also promises to gather in the Jews from the four corners of the globe, and we have seen this in action. I am involved with the recent revelation of the Anusim, known as the Secret Jews, who are slowly emerging from centuries of Christian persecution and reclaiming their Judaism here in Israel.

He also vows that we will multiply and we have surely seen that in Israel. He also says that we will live and rejoice, and we have seen that in our developing economy in a world of financial woes.

For those who think this command is somewhat holy, mystical, supernatural, think again!

It clearly says that this promise and commitment is not something out of reach, or made in heaven. It is not something that is inaccessible, or beyond the seas, in some distant land, among strangers, but the act is here at home. As it says, it is in your mouth, and in your soul. So speak up for Israel, bravely.

He gives us another choice. To choose good, and live, or evil and death.

What I found astounding in NITZAVIM and VAYELECH is that it clearly states Israel’s rights to a land that is God-given, and it says where it is.

It says  Choose life. Love God. Listen to His voice. Read His words. For it is His Covenant that we will dwell in the land that is west of the Jordan that God swore to our forefathers Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as an inheritance. And this is where we are today.

VAYELECH clearly commands us to live in the land over the Jordan, that means here in Israel, to possess it. To read this, this week, of all weeks, is mind blowing.  

It closes by saying “Be strong and of good courage!”

If you want a supreme example of advocacy for Israel - this is it. Israel cannot have a better advocate than God.

This is a message I have rushed to deliver to the thousands I have on Facebook, email, LinkedIn, Twitter. They will send it out to thousands more.

So, thank you Uri. God works in mysterious ways.

WHY DID THE PALESTINIANS GOING TO THE UNITED NATIONS?

“Why did the Palestinians going to the United Nations ?” by Barry Shaw.

It is obvious that the Palestinians will not achieve the legal stamp of statehood after they turned up at the United Nations on September 20. They were aware that, despite having the bulk of the votes in the General Assembly, their statehood bid will fail with an American veto in the Security Council.  So, why did they go?

They went for two reasons.

What they wanted to achieve from their UN tactics was, firstly, to win the consensus of widely covered international recognition for their cause of a state within 1967 borders and with Jerusalem as their capital.   Although the phrase “mutually agreed land swops” is often included in this formula this has no relevance in Palestinian intentions with regard to Jerusalem.

The simple understanding of a Palestinian state within 1967 borders will be the cause of a prolonged public opinion campaign to force Israel into conceding to indefensible borders. Failure to comply with this will make Israel appear to be the ongoing obstacle to peace.

By placing Jerusalem as their Palestinian capital on the public record they will attempt to pull the rug out of Israel’s cherished position that Jerusalem must remain the undivided capital of Israel. Why do they need Jerusalem as their capital? Surely one of their claims is that they have built up their national institutions and infrastructure of statehood, and they did that in Ramallah. That is where their president sits. That is where the Prime Minister's office is. That is where their "national" legislature resides. That is where their founding hero, Yasser Arafat is buried. So, surely, Ramallah should be touted by them as their capital? But no. They want to split apart the  Jewish notion that Jerusalem should remain as the undivided capital of Israel.

The majority of those that will vote in favour of this proposal know the radical implications of this resolution. Those who are ignorant of the significance of 1967 lines need to be reminded that this would include Israel being forced to cede to the Palestinians such valuable real estate assets as The Temple Mount, The Wailing Wall, The Hurva Synagogue, The Jewish Quarter of the Old City, The Rockefeller Museum, Hadassah Hospital, the Mount of Olives, the Garden of Gethsemane, the Room of the Last Supper, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. 

This is happening at a time when the Palestinian Ambassador to the United States confirmed his President Abbas’s statements that the PLO opposes the presence of Jews and gays in an independent Palestinian state. In other words Judenrein - free of Jews.

But this is not the main thrust of Palestinian representation at the UN. The main item on their agenda is to improve their standing within the fabric of the United Nations. The Palestinian Authority Foreign Minister, Raid Maliki, announced from Ramallah that his President, Mahmoud Abbas, intends to request full U.N. membership. He is not likely to get it, but the Palestinians are seeking to accept increased U.N. status from observer to non-member status. 

This would put them on a par with the Vatican, but the Pope has no intention of eliminating Italy, and the Swiss Guard are not suicide bombers and are not armed with rockets. Neither do they subscribe to “the armed struggle.”  In the important scenario that the Vatican took the violent course of action that Palestinian society has taken against Israel they would immediately lose any preferred status at the United Nations. So why should the Palestinian enjoy parity with the Vatican?

Their increased stature would allow them to lodge claims and complaints with United Nations bodies, top heavy with Palestinian cheerleaders, such as the United Nations Human Rights Council, and also to the International Criminal Court in the Hague.

In January, 2009, The Palestinians tried to take advantage of an obscure provision in the Rome Statute (the treaty establishing the ICC) that allows states that have not joined the ICC to grant the prosecutor authority to investigate crimes on its soil. The provision, Article 12.3, says that a state "which is not a party" to the Rome Stature may lodge a declaration to the ICC registrar accepting the "exercise of jurisdiction by the court with respect to the crime in question."  They did so in order to attempt to bring claims of “war crimes” to the Hague.

The ICC's chief prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, has mulled over a decision on whether to accept the investigation and is unlikely to do so before the General Assembly acts. A decision by the General Assembly recognizing Palestine, while not legally binding, will increase pressure on Moreno-Ocampo to make up his mind, according to legal experts.

The U.N. General Assembly's "recognition of Palestinian statehood would likely bolster the argument that the Palestinian territory is a state for purposes of Article 12 of the Rome Statute," said James Goldston, a former ICC trial attorney and executive director of the Open Society's Justice Initiative. "Once the statehood legal hurdle is surmounted -- by no means a sure thing -- the question would arise of how far back jurisdiction attaches."

At that time, the Palestinians asked the prosecutor to exercise jurisdiction over major war crimes dating back to 2002, opening the door to possible investigations of Operation Cast Lead. But legal scholars remained divided over whether the prosecutor can open cases dating back that far. Once the Palestinians achieve higher standing in the United Nations such restrictions may no longer apply.

It is clear that if this is the aim of the Palestinians.  Mahmoud Abbas admitted this in his newspaper article which appeared in the New York Times of May 16, 2011 in which he wrote “Palestine’s admission to the United Nations would pave the way for the internationalization of the conflict as a legal matter, not only a political one. It would also pave the way for us to pursue claims against Israel at the United Nations, human rights treaty bodies and the International Court of Justice”.

So, a prime purpose of the United Nations exercise is not to establish a secular Palestinian state living in peace alongside Israel. Rather it is one that will begin as a racist Islamic state that excludes Jews as they continue to pursue their delegitimisation campaign against Israel. As Abbas admits, we can expect to see constant resolutions, tribunals, claims, and accusations aimed to diminish the legitimacy of the Jewish state.  The Palestinians are already plotting massive riots dressed up as “civil disobedience”. They, together with the Israeli far left, are organising huge photo-op demonstrations that will echo scenes being played out in other Arab regimes. They hope to provoke an Israeli response that can be portrayed as similar to unpleasant footage being viewed daily on our TV screens from Arab and Muslim countries.    Mohammed Shtayyeh, a ranking member of Fatah, said that all Palestinian medical services will be in a state of emergency next week in anticipation of violence. This, despite the statements of their leaders that demonstrations will be “peaceful”.  

The warning signs are there. Their aim is to try and equate Israel with the brutal regimes of Assad, Mubarak, and Qaddafi. The big difference, a difference that will be kept from the viewers, is that their angry protesters will be marching into Israel and on to Israeli property, and not marching against their own regime. Should these mass demonstrations get out of hand the Israeli forces will have no choice but to defend Israel and Israelis from a potentially murderous scenario.

If there is any doubt that the ultimate aim of the Palestinian delegitimisation ambitions is not to eventually eliminate Israel one only has to look to statements from leading Palestinian politicians. It was vitally important to Mahmoud Abbas that he goes to the United Nations with a signed agreement with Hamas to show wall to wall Palestinian unity. But the Hamas representative responsible for international relations, Osama Hamdan, said at a conference in Cairo, Egypt on July 24, 2011 that was covered on Al Aqsa TV that "the conflict will never come to an end until Israel comes to an end." He went on, "Regarding what some have demanded of us, to recognize the enemy, that matter is behind us. We then clearly said that we will never recognize Israel, and today I say more than that: Israel completely doesn't exist in our political or intellectual dictionary."    Hamdan was quoted on the El-Amal website the following day where he defined the Palestinian state as being "until the liberation of the lands of Palestine from the [Mediterranean] sea to the [Jordan] river."

The United Nations approach was described by Khalil al-Hayeh, a member of Hamas' political bureau, on July 31, 2011, who said at a reception for a Malaysian delegation visiting the Gaza Strip, that the appeal to the UN was “only an illusion.”

The Palestinians may try to display unity for the United Nations cameras but the truth is that their delegation does not represent the majority of the Palestinian people. Hamas, despite their signature to a unity agreement, are against the UN move.  
Many within the ruling Fatah political group are opposed to this move. Several leading tribal chiefs have told Abbas that they are against his exercise. Even Palestinian Prime Minister, Salim Fayyad, voiced his scepticism in an AP interview on June 28, 2011. He admitted that anything achieved at the UN would only be symbolic and the reality on the ground will only change with Israeli consensus.

As Hamas is, to all intents and purposes, a Palestinian partner to this United Nations bid, it could be construed as recognition in the UN of Hamas as a partner to this statehood bid while Hamas is still recognised as a terrorist organisation. Further, the United Nations would be conferring statehood on a new state in which one of the leading player’s objects to Israel’s right to exist and calls for its destruction.

The only benign excuse given for Mahmoud Abbas’s unilateral act is that he is defining his legacy. He has repeatedly told anyone within earshot that he intends to retire soon. Perhaps his hurry to rush to the UN to claim Palestinian statehood before the international community is his parting shot. If it is, he is likely to set back genuine statehood for his people for decades, as did Arafat when he refused to pick up the pen and sign an agreement at Camp David in 2000. 

What this Palestinian unilateral declaration of independence is, in law, is a breach of all signed agreements with Israel, including The Israeli-Palestinian Interim Agreement signed by Yizhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat on the White House lawn on September 28, 1995 which clearly states in Article 7 that  “Neither side shall initiate or take any step that will change the status of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip pending the outcome of the permanent status negotiations.”  Further, Article 6 states that “Nothing in this Agreement shall prejudice or pre-empt the outcome of the negotiations on the permanent status to be conducted pursuant to the DOP. “

The Palestinians are displaying dangerous bad faith by reneging on their signature. How can Israel possibly trust any future agreement, in which they reduce their security in the hope of a future peace with a party that, years later, defaults on their commitment?

This brings us to a final critical question that must be asked before September 20, and maybe for years following.  Several countries signed on to the Israeli-Palestinian Interim Agreement not only as witnesses, but also as guarantors of this agreement. They are the United States, Russia, Egypt, Jordan, Norway, and the European Union. It will be instructive to see which of these nations vote for, or against, the unilateral Palestinian bid that will make this internationally recognised legal document null and void?  

Those who vote for the Palestinian motion will do so knowing that they have dishonoured their responsibilities according to international law.

Barry Shaw is the author of ISRAEL – RECLAIMING THE NARRATIVE.
www.israelnarrative.com

I used to be left. Now I am right.

This article is a reworking of a chapter in my new book “ISRAEL – RECLAIMING THE NARRATIVE” available on Amazon Kindle or in paperback from www.israelnarrative.com)

I have no problem with the liberal left. Actually, I do, but I have a bigger problem with the far left that have seduced the liberal left with the lies that cloak a dark secret they are scared to expose.

Hasn’t it always been thus? Consider the history of Communism and Marxism. Isn’t it riddled with persuading the masses into purgatory?  So it is today. 

Today, they disguise themselves as human rights activists, progressives, fighters for a better world, for social justice. They are deceivers. They are plotters. They are for upheaval. They are against peace and pragmatism.

As an example, close to my home and close to my heart, they mean to destroy Israel.  They saw that decades of war and terror failed to dislodge or frighten a tiny but courageous Israeli population. They imposed boycotts, yet saw Israel become the Start Up Nation, a powerhouse of initiative and inventiveness. They try to disqualify Israel with trumped up charges that will not stand in any reputable international court, so they fill the court with representatives from nations of despots and human rights abusers to file prosecutions against the one free, democratic shining star, in a sea of mud.

Their actions repel and appall me.

The tainted chamber of the United Nations, replete with those who tried for decades to kill the Jews, or at least drive them into the sea, rob the Jews of their national home, and replace it with a holy Islamic Palestine from the river to the sea, will approve the imposition of yet another corrupt and riven Arab regime into the region. They will impose this divisive regime on land once guaranteed in law to the Jewish people as their national home. Their decision will be endorsed by nations so morally lacking that they usurp Israel’s legal rights for their own financial interests that are vested in the immoral and abusive Arab world. And they have the gall to accuse the Jews of usury and greed!

All pretence to what is right and proper is swept aside. Once the Europeans insisted that the authoritarian regimes, exhausted from the gross failure of the Communist system,  that splintered away from the Soviet bloc must reform themselves first into democratic entities with the rule of law, respecting minority rights, democratic principles, and committed to good and peaceful neighborly relations. That was before they crumbled into multicultural Socialism.  Today, they betray all of these values by encouraging a new regime whose very Charters scream the message of anti-Semitism, racism, genocide, death, and violence.  In their appeasing cowardice, the diplomats and bureaucrats welcome a regime with decades of blood on their hands who have vowed to continue their arms struggle until their neighbor is no more. Most of these voters represent a socialism that has failed completely, and nations in internal turmoil.

Despite this legislative attack, Israel will stand. Yet Israel is not divorced from its own seditious Marxists. It has its share of plotters. Plotters, who call their comrades in Ramallah and ask them to look carefully at the upheavals in the Arab world.  These Jewish and Arab plotters tell them to do the same against the Zionist state.  Israel braces itself against the potential tsunami of marching masses of crazed Arabs, whipped up by the incitement and exhortation to go out and claim their holy land from the Jews, a mob that will not stop at the checkpoints and the settlements but will keep on marching in an effort to swamp the Jewish nation with their numbers. The plotters plot a scenario in which the Israelis have to defend themselves forcefully. The plotters plot a scenario in which the demonstrators become cannon fodder for the cameras. For the plotters, bodies become propaganda gains. For the plotters, bodies become evidence to bring before the corrupt international courts of opinion and law. The plotters intend to dominate the agenda by friction, not by peace, by confrontation, not by negotiation.

The organizers, the instigators, are the usual suspects. They are the combined malevolent allies that are international socialists and Islamists. They are infiltrated the media who have adopted their agenda. When was the last time, if at all, you heard a studio debate, or read informed articles, that proposed the notion that it would be national suicide for Israel to make further radical gestures and concessions to the Jekyll and Hyde that is the current Palestinian leadership? When do you hear, if ever, that the Palestinians must commit to recognizing the legitimacy of Israel and respect the historic and legitimate rights of Israel as the national home of the Jewish people?  When do you hear that the Palestinians must condition their people to a peaceful future alongside the Jewish state, and renounce violence? Instead, their post United Nations exercise include their planned “civil disobedience”, which is a codename for the Third Intifada. Why don’t you hear the pro-Palestinian left putting as much effort into turning the Palestinian leadership and population into pragmatic peace partners as they are into making them into martyrs and rejectionists?

I admit that I used to be in their camp. Not any more. I saw, what I perceived to be moral values turn into seditious plotting that endangers my country. These people have never been for a Two State Solution. They stand for the Final Solution of the Jewish people that will eradicate Israel and turn it into a One State Solution in favour of the Arabs.

I was a liberal. I became a realist. Better to listen to the threats of your enemy than to believe in the promise of your friend. So I listened to what Arafat, and later Abbas, told their people in their own language. There you will find the truth. There, not in the utopian dream of the political naïve. I see how they honour and glorify their terrorists. I listen and read what they plan for Israel. They dispossess me of my rights, legitimacy, history and heritage. I know they intend to march on to claim possession of what I have left. So who should I believe when the liberal left tell me to give the Palestinians what they want to achieve peace, and the far left and the Palestinian leadership plot a Trojan horse strategy in advance of achieving their final goal of leaving me stateless? The answer, to me, is clear. It is time to draw a line in the sand.

The far left have a plan for Israel. It is one founded on its destruction. The liberal left and the progressives are delusional. They hold on to their dream of a new Middle East in which the surrounding states, including Palestine, will live in peace with Israel, despite the compelling evidence to the contrary. Little or no effort is expended into transforming a dogmatic and rejectionist Palestinian leadership into a pragmatic and flexible peace partner. Instead, blame and criticism is hurled solely upon Israel. As Ramallah heads for confrontation with Jerusalem following their September United Nations campaign it is time to draw a line in the sand.

We see the colour of that line as blue and white. They see it as red, or the colour of the Palestinian flag. We want peace, but not on these terms, and not with this duplicitous enemy. We know what they plot. Therefore, we draw a line in the sand.

The world may try to push us back to indefensible borders, but we draw a line in the sand and say, they shall not pass. They may try to claim we have no rights. We say that right is on our side. And so we draw a line in the sand.

I used to be in their camp. Not any more. My country is under attack. The enemies are outside our gates, but also within. This position does not make me right wing. It just makes me right.  I am mainstream Israel, defending my country.

I used to be left. Now I am right.