As the Israel Policy Forum stated in its recent newsletter (below), enough is enough. Atlanta Jewish Times owner Andew Adler’s call for PM Netanyahu to allow for Mossad agents to take out the US president and replace him with someone more friendly towards Israel is shocking and appalling. His point of view is extreme and will not aid Israel in the ways that he may imagine.
Spotted by Daniel Lubetzky, by Adeena Schlussel
The Harry S. Truman Research Institute for Advancement of Peace at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research in Ramallah recently completed an interesting poll. The quest was to understand how Israelis and Palestinians feel about the Clinton/Geneva permanent settlement framework, and the results proved that 50% of Palestinians and 58% of Israelis support the package ( with numbers that were higher than last years). Another interesting finding from the poll is that only 34% of Israelis believed the majority of their fellow citizens support the framework, while 55% believe their peers are in opposition. And more unfortunately, the poll indicates that both sides feel it’s almost impossible to reach such a settlement at present.
Spotted by Daniel Lubetzky, by Adeena Schlussel
In the article below, Gershon Baskin addresses a rumor that Fatah member Hatem Abdel Qader Eid has decided to boycott meetings between Israelis and Palestinians. If the rumor is true, this opposition will be a step in the obviously wrong direction for the peace process, however the author explains the thinking behind this opposition as it is crucial in understanding why anti-normalization campaigns are so detrimental.
Spotted by Daniel Lubetzky, by Adeena Schlussel
IPF (with great leadership from David Halperin) has been putting out great content, including this really eloquent interview with Hussein Ibish on the forces at play that are pressuring Hamas and Fatah, and what can people expect from them.
I’ve been engaged in a debate with my cousin from Mexico, who loves how GOP candidates fight over who is a better friend of Israel and who was insisting that they were superior friends of Israel over the current US Administration.
I had tried to explain the following:
That is because you don’t see how Gingrich’s and Romney’s pandering to us (American Jews) ends up hurting the US and Israel. For one, Arabs then feel the US will not be balanced and they stop trusting the US and don’t want anything to do with it. A weak US is bad for Israel. Gingrich denying the Palestinians’ identity is harmful to Israel. For Israel’s sake, it needs to separate from the Palestinians and have them have their State and Israel its State. If Gingrich insists there are no Palestinians, where are all the Arabs living in the West Bank going to go? They are not going anywhere. If Israel annexes that land along with millions of Palestinians, not only will we have a demographic challenge where Palestinians will eventually make up the majority, but also we’ll end up with a balkanized divided country as a permanent condition, as in Lebanon.
Shimon Peres once said something very wise to a group of us: when you negotiate, you need to be careful not to weaken your counterpart on the other side so much that they can’t then do their job. We have a Palestinian government willing to achieve a lasting two state solution. If we keep undermining Fayyad and Abbas, we’ll end up with Hamas alone. Not a good idea.
Even Elliot Abrams, one of the most right wing pro-Israel supporters EVER, mocked Gingrich’s position.
And Romney is just a panderer who will just say what he thinks the particular audience wants to hear. He has no moral compass.
Israel is not well-served by people trying to say they are our friends and making extremist pronouncements.
An analogy is how Iran always says they are friends of the Palestinians and they try to hijack the Palestinian cause, with their extremist positions. They are not helping the Palestinian people, and the moderate Palestinians eventually start calling them on it. But in national conflicts, it is very hard for moderates to call the extremists out, for fear of not appearing as nationalistic. That is why when foreigners try to appear as friends of either side with extremist positions, they harm the process.
I don’t think I was sufficiently persuasive.
Tom Friedman fortunately came to the rescue with this column, which quite painfully highlights the challenges Israel is facing from within and from outside, from extremist ideologues and pandering politicians who’d sell out Israeli democracy and freedom for political or extremist ideological purposes.
Check out this great video of Daniel shot at the Skoll World Forum in Oxford. This video is part of a series called Innovators in Action, and features Daniel breaking down the need for peace in the Middle East and how he and OneVoice are going about achieving it.
By Adeena Schlussel
Although this video has many flaws, what I like about it is how crisply, succinctly and clearly the Geneva Initiative highlights the realistic contours of the agreement between Israel and Palestine, whenever it ends up coming…
According to a message from All for Peace radio, the organization will be going off air due to false allegations from the Israeli police accusing the group of incitement, and will be petitioning the Supreme Court accordingly.
Spotted by Daniel Lubetzky, by Adeena Schlussel
Further to the previous post, this article depicts the Palestinians proposal to the international quartet, and Netanyahu’s decline to submit a counterproposal; Netanyahu would prefer to reengage in direct talks, a preference that some interpret as Netanyahu’s insubordination.
Spotted by Daniel Lubetzky, by Adeena Schlussel