Replacing Israel With A Palestinian State From The River To The Sea?

BY ERIC MARGULES/ALGEMEINER.COM

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Marc Lamont Hill, a political commentator was recently fired by CNN after a video surfaced of him calling for “a free Palestine from the river to the sea”.  This phrase is often the rallying call of the terrorist group Hamas, Students For Justice In Palestine and other Islamic groups that would like to see Israel replaced by a Palestinian state.

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So you think that Israel should be replaced by a Palestinian state from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea? That Israel should cease to exist as the world’s only Jewish nation-state — and the only democracy in the Middle East — and be replaced by a country with a Palestinian majority?

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Have you thought about what would happen if Israel disappeared? You center your debate on whether Israel has a right to exist. Perhaps we should instead imagine the hypothetical replacement of Israel with a Palestinian-majority state, and answer some obvious questions:

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What would happen to the six million Jews who live in present-day Israel? Can they count on a Palestinian-led government to protect them? Will they feel safe? Will they be safe? And if they don’t feel safe and need to flee, where will they go? Arab countries expelled them, and surely won’t allow them back in; Europe tried to annihilate them and remains a hostile environment for Jews. Perhaps Jews could flee to North America or other places that are not as hostile, but it’s quite a lot to demand of a people to give up their homeland.

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What will happen to women? Women in Israel have full and equal rights. Women in Arab countries are treated as chattel and second class citizens, often punished severely for daring to exercise rights that Muslim men take for granted.

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What will happen to minority groups? In Israel, non-Jewish minorities have full legal rights. They can vote, are members of the Knesset, and sit on the Israeli Supreme Court. In Arab countries, non-Muslims (and Muslims of the wrong sect) are not full citizens, and never treated as equals. They have no voting rights, no right for governmental representation, and restricted rights in many other aspects of life.

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Who will take over as leading the way in providing disaster aid to the rest of the world? Israel has a long, valuable, and proven track record of helping countries in disaster situations. Arab countries have no record of helping. In fact, they often don’t honor the rare pledges of money or help that they do make.

How will the government of the new country be formed? Despite opportunities, Palestinians have never formed anything but a kleptocracy fueled by foreign aid and terror. Elections haven’t been held in the West Bank in over a decade, and the government in the Gaza Strip obtained power through a violent takeover. Will Jews have any role in the new government? How will Palestinians and Jews work together with such a long history of animosity?

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What kind of government will be formed in the new country? Will it be a democracy, as Israel is? Almost no Arab state is a democracy. Will it be a dictatorship? Will it be a military-run government? Will it be a theocracy? Will there be any place in the government for non-Arabs or non-Muslims?

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What will happen to Jews who don’t live in Israel, and live as minorities in their host countries? Will Jews return to times like World War II, where they had no place to go in desperate situations? Will Jews once again be weak, downtrodden, and vulnerable in their host countries? Will the new country help Jews living elsewhere in any way?

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What will happen to the tremendous first-world economy that has been developed in Israel? Israel is a major incubator of cutting edge technology that helps the world immeasurably. Arab countries have little or no record of helping the world with any kind of product invented by them. No Arab economy is thriving, and many in the Arab world live in squalor.

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It’s not enough to argue about what may or may not have happened in Israel 70 years ago, 100 years ago, or 10 years ago. Certainly, Jews can argue their rights to the land on many levels. But those advocating the replacement of Israel by a Palestinian state need to consider the above.

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There is room for compromise, but replacing Israel should not be an option. To replace Israel with yet another oppressive dictatorship with few or no human rights or protections for minority rights would be a catastrophe. It would not be good for anybody — not Jews, not Arabs living in Israel, and not the rest of world.

Your Tax Dollars At Work: Inciting Next Generation Of Israel-Haters On Campus

BY GARY SCHIFF/JNS.ORG

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It’s hard to believe, but this administration, as well state governments, are funding anti-Israel incitement on college campuses across the nation.

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How? By sending millions of dollars to support Middle East Studies programs, which are dominated by Israel-hating, anti-Semitic professors.

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Almost half of the programs are led by faculty who have endorsed academic boycotts of Israel, and develop and lead BDS rallies and other anti-Israel activities. Even worse, in order to get these government grants, they must conduct teacher-training workshops for teachers of K-12 public schools. This, according to Sarah Stern of EMET (The Endowment for Middle East Truth), who has been working on this issue for years, amounts to little more than “trickle down propaganda.”

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Nurturing and growing the anti-Israel movement in the United States, which has been going on for decades, has horrific long-term ramifications for Israel and the Jewish people. We are funding the academic headquarters for anti-Israel incitement. This funding has to stop.

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It all started innocently enough. In 1965, in the wake of the Cold War, Congress passed an education act that included developing Regional Studies Departments. The objective was to develop proficiency in languages such as Russian and Arabic, and their cultures, so that the Defense establishment would have a candidate pool to draw from to combat existential threats to the United States. As with many good intentions, it didn’t work out exactly as planned, particularly in regards to the Middle East Studies Departments.

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Over the past decades, these programs have been overtaken by rabid anti-Israel leadership and staff. At New York University and Columbia University, fully 24 faculty members, including the department chairs, are actively supporting an academic boycott of Israel. Department chairs at NYU and the University of Michigan recently led BDS rallies. Though some modicum of objectivity is required in order to receive the grants, many of the chairs of these programs are simply lying and no one is holding them accountable.

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Worse yet, the material that is being given to elementary-school teachers can only poison the minds of the young, impressionable children who are in their charge. Just one example “in 1948, Israel had three times the military force of its Arab neighbors who merely wanted to enter Israel to save their brothers and sisters from the Zionists.”

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The teacher’s guide that is most widely used is Audrey Shabbas’s The Arab World Studies Notebook, which characterizes Israelis as villainous racists. They are also openly teaching curriculums that include substantial teachings of Muhammed, and the practice of Islam and Islamic prayer. Can you imagine the outcry if public schools were openly teaching about Jesus and Christianity?

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Despite the fact that in 2008, EMET had successfully worked with Congress to amend the law authorizing this program, so that it reflects “a diversity of perspectives,” nowhere is there a hint of anything resembling the Jewish perspective in these studies. There is nothing taught about the persecution of Jews in Arab lands or the mufti of Jerusalem’s attempted partnership with Hitler.

More importantly, there is nothing taught about the miracle, thank G-d, of how over half of the world’s Jews have returned to our historic homeland; how Israel does everything it can to avoid war; how Israel has the most moral army in the world, notifying residents of Gaza with a 90-minute warning before striking; how we give help to our neighbors with critical medical care and agricultural development; or the force for incredible good we have been to the region and the world.

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Educational incitement is ultimately as great or greater a threat to Israel and our people as weapons. Israel-bashers and Jew-haters have to be taught to hate. Followers of Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan and Woman’s March leader Linda Sarsour have to be taught. Through our tax dollars, we are unfortunately, helping to train the next generation.

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Spearheaded by Tammi Benjamin of the AMCHA initiative, 69 organizations recently sent a letter to U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos asking her to address this insanity. No doubt the “deep state” within the department, especially those who oversee the program, will push back and find allies to cry about academic freedom. But federally and state funded academic freedom does not mean freedom to lie nor freedom to incite.

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The typical administration response to this campaign would be to “slow-roll” the organizations who signed the letter. We can envision yet another program review, which will take a year or more to complete. It would likely include a few findings and some watered-down unenforceable action items, all while the incitement gathers more followers.

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The national security question to ask is: “Does this program still meet the original intent of the Defense establishment?” It seems to be working at cross-purposes to national security interests. Does the U.S. government and state governments still need to fund these programs? If it can be demonstrated that there is a dearth of Arabic or Farsi speakers, one could appreciate the need for funding the learning of those languages. Barring that, is there still a case to be made to spend millions of taxpayer dollars on these programs?

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The truth is that this has been going on for decades now. And, as Sarah Stern says, “It is no wonder that by the time students go to university, there is only one nation state in the entire world that they are eager to rally against: the State of Israel.” It’s time to put an end to this insanity.

The next Hezbollah-Israel war

by Caroline Glick

 

Israelis woke up last Tuesday morning to the news that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) had initiated a new campaign called “Northern Shield.”

The mission, which began in the middle of the night between Monday and Tuesday, is to destroy attack tunnels that Hezbollah, the Iranian-controlled terror army in Lebanon, has excavated. These tunnels begin in Lebanon and end in Israel. The terror tunnel Israel exposed on Tuesday was excavated over a period of two years. Dug 25 meters below the surface, the tunnel was more than 200 meters long, two meters wide, and two meters tall. It penetrated 40 meters into Israeli territory, ending in a field in the agricultural border town of Metulla. According to the IDF, its purpose was to cut Metulla off from the rest of the country.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – who is now also serving as defense minister – and IDF Chief of General Staff Gadi Eisenkott held a press briefing Tuesday night where they explained that the tunnel sealed on Tuesday is just one of multiple attack tunnels Hezbollah has built that traverse the border. Netanyahu said that the terror group intends to use these tunnels as part of its plan to conquer the Galilee in the next war.

The current operation, which aims to destroy these tunnels, therefore needs to be seen in the context of shaping the conditions on the ground ahead of that war.

Hezbollah has made no attempt to hide that it intends to invade Israel with ground forces in the next war. Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah laid out the plans – put together with his bosses from Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps – in 2007, the year after the last war. Nasrallah said then that the next war will see Hezbollah overrunning Israeli border towns in the Galilee with the intention of conquering northern Israel.

Hours before the operation began, Netanyahu flew to Brussels to meet with U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. The purpose of the meeting, which lasted for three hours ,was to discuss the rapidly deteriorating security situation along Israel’s borders with Lebanon and Syria. In the last week alone, several events have happened that expose just how dangerous things have become.

One was Iran’s test of a medium-range ballistic missile capable reaching Israel and Europe with multiple warheads.

Iran has also been delivering components for precision guided missiles to Hezbollah through Beirut International Airport. Hezbollah has some 150,000 missiles, all pointed at Israel. Iran has long sought to upgrade Hezbollah’s missile capabilities by providing it with guidance systems that will enable it to conduct pinpoint strikes against Israeli civilian and military targets. As it stands, Hezbollah’s missiles cover all of Israel’s territory.

In Syria, reports have abounded of Iran’s campaign to repopulate Syria with Shiite members of Iranian-controlled militias and their families, particularly in formerly Sunni areas. Syrian President Bashar Assad — now an Iranian puppet — is reportedly naturalizing these Shiite fighters and their families. In part, the move is seen as a way to bypass Russia’s promise to Israel to prevent non-Syrian forces from deploying along the Syrian border with Israel.

Netanyahu’s decision last month to leave Hamas’s massive rocket and mortar barrage against southern Israel largely unanswered was a clear bid to keep IDF forces available for the coming conflict in the north with Hezbollah. Netanyahu and Eisenkot loudly declared that Israel has deployed its commando brigade, augmented by regular armored and infantry units, as well as naval and air force assets.

Some Israeli commentators see the rising threat from Hezbollah and Iran and scratch their heads at the bold headlines that accompanied the initiation of Operation Northern Defense. How can the IDF refer to a few bulldozers sealing a tunnel as an “operation”?

These analysts also note with worry that the IDF is scrupulously avoiding any action inside of Lebanese territory, and sealed only the section of the tunnel that penetrated into Israeli territory. Israel’s avoidance of all contact with Lebanese territory is likely to be seen as a sign of fear and weakness by its enemies. That is particularly the case given that Hezbollah violated Israeli sovereignty by digging its tunnel into Israeli territory.

Are Israel’s leaders so intimidated by Hezbollah that they will not take the simple step of destroying the entire tunnel? Israel has destroyed dozens of Hamas attack tunnels in full, rather than limiting its operations to the sections of the tunnels that entered Israeli territory. Far from showing that Israel is willing to stand up to Hezbollah, the analysts contend, Israel’s limited, careful, almost apologetic operation transmitted a message of fear.

That could be true. But on the other hand, it is hard to see the operation ending with the sealing of one or two tunnels.

In acting as it has, Israel has accomplished three things. First, it secured U.S. support for its operation against Hezbollah. Russia, too, has also backed Israel’s actions. By securing support from both, Israel sets the conditions for a wider operations against Hezbollah from a strong diplomatic position.

Second, Israel’s tunnel-sealing operations expose the fecklessness of UN operations in southern Lebanon. UN Security Council Resolution 1701 from August 2006 set the termsfor the ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah following the last war. The resolution charged the UN International Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) with preventing Hezbollah forces from deploying along the border with Israel.

For years, Israel has presented mountains of evidence that Hezbollah is openly operating along its border and that UNIFIL has done nothing. In the case at hand, Hezbollah used a greenhouse along the border to hide its quarrying activities as it excavated the tunnel. According to IDF Spokesman Ronen Manalis, the greenhouse is located just meters from a UNIFIL post.

In the next round of war, UNIFIL forces will have no constructive role to play. By pointing out their inaction and failure to fulfill their duties, Israel may be paving the way for the disbanding of UNIFIL. This is important because for the past 12 years, Hezbollah has used UN forces as human shields to protect its operations along Israel’s borders.

The final thing Israel is accomplishing through its small operation against the tunnels is to set events in motion on its terms. In previous rounds of war, Hezbollah has struck first, and often taken Israel by surprise, whether by kidnapping its forces or opening major barrages of missile attacks against Israel, or both. If the tunnel operation is followed or carried out in tandem with operations against Hezbollah’s missile arsenals and precision missile factories recently set up by Iran in Lebanon, then Israel will be able to shape the conditions for the next war to its advantage — and to do so while receiving international backing for its actions.

In his Hebrew-language briefing Tuesday evening, Netanyahu assured the public, repeatedly, that there is much more going on behind the scenes than is going on in front of them.

It is impossible to know precisely how events will develop over the next several weeks, but it is reasonable to assess that Netanyahu was telling the truth. If so, Tuesday appears to have marked the beginning of a serious bid by Israel finally to confront and defeat Iran’s growing military power along its borders.