A Story for Yom HaZikaron/Yom Ha'atzmaut - By Katie Green

A STORY FOR YOM HAZIKARON & YOM HA’ATZMAUT

I would like to share with you a “coincidence” that happened in our family just before Pesach, as I believe the story has relevance to Yom Ha’atzmaut and the miracle of our living here. The hours of Yom HaZikaron will are dark ones, so I am hoping this story will offer some comfort.

A few weeks ago, I got a phonecall from my parents’ friend Becky. Becky is now in her seventies, but my family first came to know her in 1939 when she and her parents and sister fled Germany and came to live in rented rooms on the upper floor of my grandmother’s house. My grandparents lived in Stamford Hill, London, which even then was a very Jewish area, but my grandparents were not observant Jews, not even traditional Jews. My grandpa had a grocery store and I am not even going to tell you what kinds of foods were for sale in that shop!

My grandparents loved the refugee family living upstairs, and a warm friendship sprung up between them. Similarly, my father who was then seven years old and had no sisters, welcomed little Becky, also seven, and included her in his circle of friends. But although my father bestowed upon Becky the gift of friendship, Becky had an even greater gift to bestow upon him, the gift of Yahadut.

Becky’s family were devoutly religious and staunch Zionists. Every Shabbat, Becky dragged my father to the local shul for Bnei Akiva meetings. (In those days, Bnei Akiva was called “Torah Ve’Avodah”). What did my father learn at these weekly meetings? It was not much, but it was everything. A little of the weekly Torah portion, some geography and history of Palestine, a few songs, a few dances.To this day my father loves to sing those Zionist songs of the 1940's, songs about clearing away the rocks in the Galilee, songs of the muscled young pioneers working in the fields. My father became a dentist and never did get to Israel himself, but you can see when he sings those songs today, how he would love to have drained a swamp or two.

My father's introduction to a Bnei Akiva altered his life forever. He developed a longing to become religiously observant. After the war was over in 1945, and when Berlin was divided into four parts, my father would listen on the radio to the Jewish army chaplain of the American forces stationed in Berlin. This Rabbi, whoever he was, sang the entire Seder service on radio about a week before Pesach. My father memorized the tunes to "Ma Nishtana" and "Dayeinu", and held the first family Seder in his home when he was about fourteen.

Becky and her family emigrated to the newly formed Jewish State in 1948. Although they could not attend each other's weddings, Becky and my father stayed in touch over the years. To this day, Becky and her husband Walter run a Judaica store in Haifa. My parents visited Becky on their first trips to Israel in 1968 and 1969, and the two families have visited each other on many occasions since. Becky and Walter's children, grandchildren and greatgrandchildren are all living in Israel.

Becky's son Abie was one of the earliest settlers of Karnei Shomron, where he and his wife bought their home about twenty years ago.A few weeks ago, Abie's son looked around him at Friday night minyan to see if there were any soldiers who would like to be invited for Shabbat dinner. Soldiers from the nearby base are always welcome at the table of Karnei Shomron families. Abie's son approached a young soldier and asked him if he would like to come back with him for Friday night dinner. This soldier was my son, Yonatan.

That evening at Shabbat dinner, my father's grandson and Becky's grandchildren sat around the table together,laughing and talking and singing zmirot. Never at any point did they make the connnection. It was only after Shabbat, when Abie was on the phone to his mother, that Becky said: "This boy has an American father and an English mother? His name's Yonatan and he lives in Bet Shemesh? I think I know who this must be!"I didn't want to tell Becky, when she phoned me with such excitement in her voice on Motzei Shabbat, that her "clues" fit the description of about a hundred boys living in the Bet Shemesh area! It was irrelevant, anyway. Bckey's sixth sense had told her that this was Peter's grandson, and indeed it was.

Yonatan was invited again to Abie's homefor Shvi''i of Pesach, and this time was Becky was there. You can imagine what a very festive meal that was.

On that same shvi'i of Pesach, my daughter Moriyah spent the afternoon taking her group of twelve year old Ethiopian girls. Moriyah is a madricha in the special snif set up by Bnei Akiva for Ethiopian children. What does Moriyah teach her chanichot on Shabbat and Chag afternoons? A little of the weekly Torah portion, some geography and history of the Land of Israel, a few songs and dances.

It is not much, but it is everything.

Chag Ha'atzmaut sameach to all the family of Israel, and may we blessed with peace and besurot tovot.

Katie

Holocaust Remembrance Day - A Personal Perspective

My wife Katie wrote this for Holocaust Remembrance Day (May 1 ’08) and I thought it worth sharing. I stood on our balcony with my daughter Michal that morning as the air-raid siren brought us to a stand-still. We listened to it as the birds, apparently unaware of the tradition to stand silently, sang and flew all around the garden – and as I looked out over the hills and valleys and houses around us, I thought “this is the best way to memorialize the millions – making Israel a vibrant, passionate testimony of ‘never again’….”

A

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MRS. H.

It is Yom HaShoah today - Holocaust Day.

Last night I lit a memorial candle and placed it in my kitchen window. My tiny street was completely dark. The light from the candle flickered and bounced over all the doors and windows of the houses opposite. Such a little light, for such a big thing.

I grew up in a community almost entirely comprised of German Jews. They were refugees who came over to England either before the war, or after it. The surnames of my little friends at shul were all German names: Frei, Beigel, Faber, Nussbaum, Hirsch, Schwarz, Felsenstein.

I knew, internalized long before the story of the Holocaust had been verbalized to me, that the people I davvened with in shul had undergone unimaginable suffering. Some of then had been orphaned as children, and had arrived in England on the Kindertransport. Some had been in the worst of the concentration camps as teenagers. Most of my friends at shul had no grandparents. Most of them were named after their grandparents.

But the person who attracted my attention in shul was Mrs. H. Mrs. H., a very attractive woman with an impressive black sheitl, had two adopted children. This was unusual in those days. There were a good number of childless couples in the community then - it was before the days of fertility treatment. But not many religious couples adopted. It was difficult to find Jewish children available for adoption, and the adoption of non-Jewish children was a halachically complicated process.

Infertility is an agonizingly private issue, but everybody knew why Mrs. H. couldn't have children of her own. She had been experimented on in the camps. She was a teenager at the time, fifteen or sixteen years old.

Every week in shul I looked and looked at Mrs. H., who sat at some distance away from me and my mother. Mrs. H. had a grave, quiet face. She was a devout woman who prayed with composure and focus. For 51 weeks of the year Mrs. H. was always there, in my peripheral vision, taking three steps back, three steps forward into G-d's presence at the beginning of the Amida prayer.

On one day of the year, Yom Kippur, Mrs. H. moved into central view. On that day Mrs. H. was no longer quiet. Her suffering was terrible to behold. She wept and wept, was bent double with weeping. As a small child I watched her. To this day I remember the feeling of my mother's hand on my head, tilting it downwards towards my siddur, teaching me that people's tears on Yom Kippur are their own affair. But I did not feel that Mrs. H.'s tears belonged only to her. Even then, at ten years old, I understood that her tears belonged to all of us.

The English are restrained and polite about grief. Don't shout, don't scream, don't sob. And if you are an observer of grief, don't look, don't touch and don't give away that you have noticed, as this would be an invasion of privacy.

In all the years that Mrs. H.'s body crumpled agianst the mechitza with weeping, I don't recall that anyone ever reached out to her. No one hugged her and no one held her. "I want to give her a cuddle", I used to say to my mother. "Can I go across and cuddle her?"

"No, darling, you can't", my mother would reply. "I'm not sure how she would feel about it." And indeed. It would not have been the done thing.

I think that Mrs. H., stored somewhere deep in my hard disc, is one of the reasons I'm living in Israel today. Israel is that one big hug I could never give to Holocaust survivors. It's also the hug I give to myself, as I walk across Safra Square on a beautiful Jerusalem day - Holocaust Day - in May. I look up at the huge flagpoles of the Jerusalem municipality and I see that they are flying at half-mast.

Half-mast for you, Mrs. H.. And all the other women of the Shoah.

Bush's Mideast U-Turn - By Natan Sharansky and Bassem Eid

Bush's Mideast U-Turn

By BASSEM EID AND NATAN SHARANSKY
Wall St. Journal - February 11, 2008; Page A19

On June 24, 2002, President Bush presented his vision for an Israeli-Palestinian peace. That we both would have greeted Mr. Bush's speech with the same enthusiasm may come as a surprise.

One of us is a former Soviet dissident who spent nine years in the Gulag and, after joining his people in Jerusalem, spent a decade in Israeli political life, serving as a cabinet minister during most of that time. The other is a Palestinian who has devoted his life to exposing human rights abuses perpetrated against his people, regardless of whether the government committing those abuses was Israeli or Palestinian. One is a Jew convinced of his people's just claim to the Land of Israel. The other is an Arab convinced of his people's just claim to the same land.

Yet while we have real disagreements that would make an historic compromise very difficult and painful, we are fully in agreement that the only path to peace lies in building a free Palestinian society -- a path Mr. Bush boldly laid out in his historic speech.

Unfortunately, encouraged by short-sighted Israeli and Palestinian leaders, the Bush administration, now entering its final year in office, has resuscitated the failed policies of the past that have brought nothing but tragedy, terror and war and that have only pushed peace further away.

The real breakthrough of Mr. Bush's vision five-and-a-half years ago was not his call for a two-state solution or even the call for Palestinians to "choose leaders not compromised by terror." Rather, the breakthrough was in making peace conditional on a fundamental transformation of Palestinian society: "I call upon [Palestinians] to build a practicing democracy, based on tolerance and liberty. If the Palestinian people actively pursue these goals, America and the world will actively support their efforts. . . . A Palestinian state will never be created by terror -- it will be built through reform. And reform must be more than cosmetic change, or veiled attempt to preserve the status quo. True reform will require entirely new political and economic institutions, based on democracy, market economics and action against terrorism."

Many critics argued at the time that linking the peace process to a transformation of Palestinian society was a radical departure in peacemaking. It was. And it was long overdue.

What had guided policymakers for the previous decade was the idea that a "moderate" Palestinian leader who would fight terror and make peace with Israel needed to be "strengthened" at all costs. Yasser Arafat was their moderate. He was given territory, weapons, money and a warm diplomatic embrace.

Completely ignored was what was happening within Palestinian society. As Arafat was hollowing out civil society, handing control of the economy to corrupt cronies, squirreling away billions of dollars into his private accounts, trampling on the rights of his own people, and using PA-controlled media and schools to indoctrinate a generation into a culture of hatred, the international community's bear hug only tightened. Indeed, Arafat's emerging dictatorship was seen as an asset in the peace process. Here was the "strong" leader, it was argued, who could make a deal. Nothing should be done to weaken him.

Mr. Bush's speech was supposed to change all this. It was supposed to shift the focus to where it should have always been: on helping Palestinians build a decent society that would protect the rights of their own people and promote peace with its neighbors. It was supposed to begin the hard work of helping Palestinians reconstruct their civil society, build a free economy, establish real courts, reform their security services, and revamp their educational system.

President Bush deserves much credit for placing a spotlight on the issues of democracy and human rights and for his firm belief that the advance of freedom is critical for international peace and stability. He made this idea a focus of his second inaugural address and reiterated it last June in Prague at a conference of dissidents from around the world. Last month, President Bush did not flinch from speaking about freedom and human rights in the heart of Arabia.

But the past few years have shown that when it comes to dealing with Israelis and Palestinians, the vital link between freedom and peace is almost entirely ignored. True, the administration is not doing anything against the wishes of the current Israeli and Palestinian leadership. But just as the Oslo peace process of the 1990s was a disaster that Israeli and Palestinian leaders wholeheartedly embraced, the current peacemaking round will prove equally disastrous because it ignores what is most important.

Rather than begin the long and difficult process to transform Palestinian society and ultimately pave the road to peace, the administration has consistently supported quick and foolish solutions: from crafting a "road map" that only paid lip service to reform; to backing a unilateral disengagement that by its nature ignored Palestinian society; to pressing for snap elections that preceded rather than followed reform and thereby brought Hamas to power.

When Arafat passed from the scene, we hoped that the Bush vision would finally be given a chance. But all that has happened is that President Mahmoud Abbas (also known as Abu Mazen) and Prime Minister Salam Fayad have become the new "moderates" who need to be strengthened at all costs. Rather than establish a clear link between support for the PA and reform, and openly embrace the genuine Palestinian reformers who are the democratic world's true allies, Abu Mazen is promised billions despite having done nothing. With the media entirely under his control, incitement continues and no one raises serious objections. He is, we are told, too "weak" to take action.

A few weeks ago, in a meeting with a high ranking official responsible for European foreign policy, one of us (Mr. Sharansky) spoke about the need to support the work of the other (Mr. Eid) in promoting democracy and human rights in the Palestinian territories. After the European leader expressed his deep commitment to peace, democracy and human rights, he asked the all important question: "What is his [Mr. Eid's] relationship to Abu Mazen?" After hearing that it was strained because of constant criticism of Abu Mazen's failure to reform, the official's enthusiasm quickly evaporated. "That will be a problem. We cannot do anything that will undermine Abu Mazen." This new-old attitude reminds one of the absurdity of those who refused to support democratic dissidents behind the Iron Curtain because they were undermining their leaders.

President Bush should spend his final year in office helping Palestinians begin the transformation of their society so that the vision he once spoke of so eloquently will have a chance to come to fruition some day. We have wasted too much time strengthening leaders and reaching for the moon. Let's start strengthening Palestinian society and begin a real peace process once and for all.

Mr. Eid is executive director of the Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group. Mr. Sharansky is chairman of the Adelson Institute for Strategic Studies.

'Miracle Girl' - On Rachel Sharansky's Wedding - by Katie Green

MIRACLE GIRL

There are weddings and weddings in our lives. The weddings of ourselves, our relatives and our friends, and one generation later, the weddings of our children and our friend's children, which of course, are even more poignant than our own. There are the regular, every day, run of the mill weddings, the weddings where we ate too much or the music was too loud or we sat next to somebody's Relative From Hell, and then there are the other weddings - the one or two weddings, which for the rest of our lives, we will never forget.

The wedding of Rachel Sharansky, the eldest of Natan and Avital Sharansky's two daughters, and Micha Danziger, a new immigrant from the United States, was one of those weddings.

The Sharansky wedding at Kibbutz Ramat Rachel last Friday morning was never going to be, never could be, in any sense a normal wedding. During the coffee and cake reception before the ceremony, I observed among the hundreds of people there, two distinct groups: the young people who were simply happy to be participating in the celebration and who had little idea of the historical significance of the event, and the older people who had taken part in the drama of the Refusenik struggle and for whom Rachel's wedding was the grand finale and closing chapter of that astonishing narrative.

My husband I wandered over to an alcove in the reception area to congratulate the bride. Rachel, more than radiant, more than happy, positively sparkled with her enjoyment of the day. Her lovely face, with its expression of intelligence, warmth and humor, looked up smilingly at every guest without a trace of nervousness of self-consciousness. The thought crossed my mind, as I stood at a distance where I could just enjoy looking at her, that this magical person very nearly did not come to be. In the configuration of the universe as we knew it in the early 1980's, the chances of there being a glowing Rachel Sharansky standing here in her wedding dress in 2008, were statistically very small indeed. All of us who participated in the demonstrations of those years, remember perfectly well, that whether Natan was in solitary confinement or on hunger strike or doing both together, there were times when we very nearly lost him.

On one memorable occasion I remember how shocked my parents were when, twenty-five odd years ago, a group of us disrupted a concert of the Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra at the Royal Festival Hall in London. Half way through the performance, we shed our outside clothes to reveal the striped "prison uniforms" we were wearing underneath, and handcuffed ourselves to the railings of the balcony in the auditorium, yelling our Soviet Jewry slogans and shaking our fists. As the cellos and violins and violas of the Moscow Philharmonic came slithering to halt, we knew, in the dealthly silence that followed, that our Refusenik brothers and sisters would be listening thousands of miles away on the BBC World Service. It was only a few minutes before infuriated police officers arrived on the scene with large metal pincers to cut us free from the railings, but it was enough.

I speak of it now as if it were a childish prank, but it was not an easy thing to do. We were young and idealistic, but we were also nicely brought up middle-class Jewish girls and boys. We had all been taken by our parents on one Sunday evening or another to hear a concert at the Royal Festival Hall. We had learned to sit politely and not fidget and not applaud between movements. For years we had enjoyed Tchaikovsky and Saint-Saens and Schubert in this bastion of British culture, and now we were more or less spitting in its face.

The second before I had to stand up along with my friends, and shout at the top of my voice into the silent abyss of the stalls, my courage failed me and I did not think I could do it. The only thing, the only thing, which enabled me to get to my feet, was the thought of Natan in his solitary confinement cell, the thought of him never seeing Avital again. The reason why so many Jewish youth were participating in these demonstrations all over the world, was that Natan's story was not just a prisoner story, or a persecution story, or even a Jewish story. It was a love story.

And it is this love story I am thinking of as I watch Rachel laugh and talk with all her guests, before her parents accompany her to her Chupah, before she marries Micha under the Jerusalem skies. I am here with her but I am not really here at all; I have risen in one second to my feet at the Royal Festival Hall, and have screamed : "Free Sharansky!" like an animal, at the respectable Russian musicians playing classical music on the stage below.

I have always known, across all of the years, what I was shouting for that night. But today, looking at Rachel's face, at that beloved and wonderful genetic combination of Natan and Avital, today I really know.

At the wedding reception I did manage to exchange a few words with the mother of the groom, Mrs. Danziger. "It's a great day for all of us", I said and she smiled and answered, "I know it is". But I couldn't leave it there. "She's the nation's baby" I explained, trying to hold back my tears.
"She's our miracle girl".

The weather forecast for Thursday, Friday and Shabbat had been discouraging - Rain, rain and more rain. On Thursday it rained all night. But God, one of the guests at the wedding, had decided to momentarily dispense with regular weather patterns for January, and Rachel and Micha took their place under a raised outdoor Chuppah, with a stunning view of the Judean hills behind and below them. The sun shone warmly and benevolently on the hundreds of people, Russians and Israelis and Americans and Brits, members of Knesset and rabbis and journalists and intellectuals, millionaires and philanthropists and activists and chairmen of committees, family and friends and very young babies and old age pensioners, who had gathered, with upturned faces, to watch the wedding ceremony unfold. A soft breeze played across the bride's face and lifted her veil into the air, so that she looked, for a moment, like a floating figure from a Chagall painting.

"Sometimes a place is named for its future", said Rabbi Moti Elon who was the officiating Rabbi. "Kibbutz Ramat Rachel was named for you, Rachel. It was named for you to get married here."

When it was time for the groom to break the glass, Natan took the microphone to say a few words.

"I'd like to say something about why we are breaking this glass" he said, alternating seamlessly between English and Hebrew.

"Thirty-four years ago, in a Moscow apartment, Avital and I stood under a sheet held up by four boys, for our own Chuppah. There were barely enough people to make up a minyan. We had never been to a Jewish wedding before, and we had no understanding of what to do. We mouthed the words that the Rabbi told us to say, without knowing their meaning. But the breaking of the glass, this we understood very well. We had one challenge, and the challenge was very clear to us. We knew that we had to get to Jerusalem. No matter what it would take, no matter how many years, we had to get to Jerusalem and build a home there. And this is what we did."

"So now you are standing under the Chuppah Rachel, a child born in Jerusalem, overlooking Jerusalem, the first sabra in our family, marrying Micha, the first Oleh Hadash from his family. And this begs the question: Why should we break the glass at all? We are here, after all. Jerusalem has been rebuilt, and it is a vibrant city.

But the reason we are breaking the glass is this: the challenge that faces you, Rachel and Micha, is different to the challenge that faced us. You will make a home in Jerusalem, yes, but you must simultaneously have your feet on the ground, building a Jerusalem shel mata, a physical Jerusalem, while always keeping an eye on the Jerusalem shel ma'alah, on what it means, on what it represents. It will be your mission, and the mission of all your generation, to defend Jerusalem, to protect her, to keep her safe. And I think that your challenge may, in the end, be even more difficult than ours".

It will rain later, but not yet. I am standing in the sunshine, listening to Natan, looking at Avital, and glorying in Rachel, who has pushed her veil away from her face, so that she can see better, and hear better, everything that is going on at her wedding. She looks up at her tall, straight, young husband and smiles, and all of us watching her feel, that this is the just kind of person to whom we can entrust the future of Jerusalem.

Mazal Tov on your wedding Rachel Sharansky. Mazal Tov, miracle girl.

[Katie Green, Aryeh's wife and an independent film producer and director, is head of PR at the Ma'aleh Film School, Jerusalem.]

Sharansky: Mobilize now - save the world

[From The Jerusalem Post, 11 February 2007]

Just over three years ago, at the first-ever global forum on anti-Semitism organized by the State of Israel, the essential task was to define the beast - the new anti-Semitism. Since then, as the fourth such global gathering meets this week, efforts to incorporate the "three-D" distinction between legitimate criticism of Israel and the new anti-Semitism - demonization, double standards and delegitimization - have become part of international documents and discourse.

These and other accomplishments, as important as they are, have been dwarfed by the quantum leap anti-Semitism itself has taken. It has leapfrogged from isolated attacks against Jews to incitement to genocide - the actual elimination of the Jewish state.

This shift has come in the form of a pincer movement. On one side, we have the Iranian regime, which is denying the Holocaust and calling for Israel to be "wiped off the map" while racing to develop the physical means of doing so. On the other side, we have what is, in effect, international silence in response, coupled with growing willingness to discuss Israel's existence as a mistake, an anachronism, or a provocation.

We must recognize the fact that though sympathy for Iran's expressed goal of Israel's destruction is hardly mainstream, the idea of a world without Israel is more acceptable in polite company, the media and academia today than Hitler's expressed goal of a Europe without Jews was in 1939.

Given this situation, it should be clear that we are beyond the stage of definitions. The Jewish world now must mobilize at a level no less than during the struggles to establish the State of Israel and to free Soviet Jewry. It is this latter struggle that presents the most potent model for action today.

Though both sides of the genocidal pincer are in quite advanced stages of development, the Jewish world remains mired in pre-mobilization debates reminiscent of the early stages of the Soviet Jewry struggle in the 1960s. This may be hard to recall in light of the subsequent success, but back then a debate raged among Jews over whether a campaign to free Soviet Jewry was "too parochial," and whether being out front risked making it too much of a "Jewish issue."

BEFORE THESE internal debates were resolved the Soviet Jewry effort could not be regarded as a movement, capable of attracting allies and moving governments. Nor were such debates easily, or ever fully, put to rest.

As late as 1987, when the by then mature and powerful movement organized the largest-ever Soviet Jewry rally on Washington's mall to coincide with Mikhail Gorbachev's visit, some Jewish leaders wondered if the community could be mobilized, and if such a rally would be counterproductive. They warned that only a few thousand souls would brave the winter weather, and that the Jewish community would be considered "warmongers" who were spoiling the recent warming of US-Soviet relations.

In actuality, over 250,000 people came to a rally that was pivotal in opening the floodgates, not just to 10,000 or 20,000 Jews, which seemed like a dream at the time, but to a million Jews who came to Israel over the following decade.

Since it has been a while, a reminder is in order of what full mobilization looks like.

First, as Shlomo Avineri has recently proposed, Iranian officials should get the Soviet treatment. Just as no Soviet official, including sport and cultural delegations, could travel without being accosted by protests and hostile questions, so it should be with anyone representing the Iranian regime. As in the Soviet case, such protests will not themselves change Iranian behavior, but they are critical to creating a climate that will influence the policies of Western governments.

Second, an inventory of the governments and companies that provide Iran with refined oil, huge trade deals, and even military and nuclear assistance should be taken and public pressure be put on them to end their complicity with a regime that is racing to genocide.

Third, the pension funds of US states should be divested from all companies that trade with or invest in Iran. This divestment campaign must be pursued without apologies or hesitation.

Fourth, every country that is party to the Genocide Convention should be called upon to fulfill its obligation under that treaty and seek an indictment of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on the charge of incitement to genocide, which is a "punishable offense" under Article III of that treaty.

Fifth, human rights groups, such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, which are heavily nourished by Jewish values, passion and funding, must stop squeezing both sides of the genocidal pincer. These groups must be challenged, on the one hand, to press for enforcement of the Genocide Treaty, to stand up for human rights in Iran, and to oppose and expose Iranian support for terrorism. On the other, they must stop perverting the sacred cause of human rights into a cudgel in Iran's hands against Israel. This happened just months ago when, during the Lebanon war, such groups all but ignored Hizbullah's terrorism from behind human shields and called Israel's self-defense a "war crime."

JUST AS the two sides of the pincer themselves are connected, so too must be the efforts to combat them. All the above steps concern the Iranian side of the pincer. But combating the other side, the denial of Israel's right to exist, is no less critical - and more difficult, since at times they necessitate confronting, not a rogue regime, but our own cherished institutions. On this front:

First, universities that provide chairs for professors who campaign against Israel's right to exist should be boycotted. In a number of countries, denying the Holocaust is a criminal act. In the current context, denying Israel's right to exist lays the groundwork for a second holocaust even more directly than does denying history. Therefore, the promulgation of such an ideology should be fought even by societies that justifiably revere freedom of speech.

This may seem a hopelessly difficult task, but it is not. After 9/11, one woman, a student, took on Harvard University, which was ready to accept a $10 million "gift" from a Saudi sheikh. Harvard backed down, showing that moral clarity, unapologetically and passionately expressed, can change seemingly unassailable ideas.

We must stand for a basic principle: If denying the Holocaust can land a professor in jail, denying Israel should not land him tenure.

Second, support for Israel must be demonstrated. Two decades after the massive Soviet Jewry rally of 1987, we need to return to the Mall on Israel's Independence Day in May with two messages: Support Israel and Stop Iran. It is late, but not too late, to overcome those fears of being "too parochial" that the Soviet Jewry movement succeeded in dispelling more than 30 years ago.

The fight to support Israel and stop Iran now is, if anything, less "parochial" than the Soviet Jewry movement was then. Then, the Jewish world took on a global superpower, the Soviet Union, and confronted the reigning American foreign policy paradigm - detente - with a very different one: linkage of trade to human rights.

Then, we successfully argued that the freedom to emigrate was not just a Jewish concern, but a universal one, and we were more right than we knew. The Jackson-Vanik amendment and the Helsinki Accords were critical factors in triggering the internal collapse of the Soviet empire. This collapse not only freed millions of Jews, but all the peoples behind the Iron Curtain, and ended a half-century-old superpower stalemate that threatened the entire planet.

NOW THE WORLD stands at a no less fateful watershed. The world's most dangerous rogue regime is on the verge of obtaining the ultimate weapons of terror. Already, Iran's confidence that it will not be stopped has led to one war, last summer's war in Lebanon started by Hizbullah. Already, Iran is fueling conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon and Gaza - and all this before the regime enjoys its own full, declared nuclear umbrella.

The moment before mobilization is always a lonely one, in which it seems that the obstacles to making a cause universal are insurmountable. Yet, as in the case of the Soviet Jewry movement, we are not alone. We are surrounded by potential allies who may not themselves know they are ready to join us until we create a movement for them to join.

Our leadership will give others the opportunity to act. If the Jewish world does not lead the way, who will? It is as true now as it was then; if we build it, they will come.

A decade after the wave of democracy that came with the fall of the Soviet Union, an Iranian-led wave of terror is rising that will not stop until it is stopped. Ultimately, we overcame our fear of parochialism to stand up for Soviet Jewry, and left the world a much better place for it. Now we must do the same to prevent a second holocaust, and in the process save the world.

The writer is chairman of the Institute for Strategic Studies at the Shalem Center.

This article can also be read at http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1170359835461&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

Copyright 1995-2007 The Jerusalem Post - http://www.jpost.com/

A New Approach to Media Relations

“The J” – Friday February 2, 2007

An Israeli carrot for the foreign press

by aryeh green

There’s a “media war” against Israel, said many speakers at last week’s Herzliya conference in Israel. Terror groups such as Hezbollah and Hamas attack Israelis, using civilians as cover —- and then reap public relations benefits when Israel retaliates and accidentally kills civilians.

“The media” is, of course, not monolithic — there are bloggers and broadcasters, print and radio correspondents, anchors and interviewers, based in or visiting Israel from virtually every country in the world. Do they all hate the Jews? Are they all anti-Israel, willing pawns in Hezbollah and Hamas’ psychological warfare campaign to destroy the Jewish state?

Of course, it is not only the media. According to Robert Satloff of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, on a “popular level,” Americans deeply support Israel, but on the “elite level,” there is a “weakening” of that support.

After visiting dozens of universities over the past three years, former Knesset member Natan Sharansky has quipped that “campuses have become ‘islands of Europe’ in America” with virulent anti-Israel and anti-Semitic rhetoric accepted as the norm among faculty and students.

And as attorney Alan Dershowitz notes. even some U.S. leaders are “giving legitimacy to arguments that undermine Israel. Until now, such arguments have only been heard from extreme right and left,” he declared.

These facts should worry us all. A generation ago, European opinion elites in the media and universities began the process of accepting the “Palestinian narrative” and demonizing Israel and its leaders; today most European leaders, nursed on images of imperialist, racist Israel as the world’s worst human rights violator, view Israel as inherently evil, and thus view the questioning of Israel’s legitimacy as a reasonable part of public discourse.

With Israel’s existence up for debate, calls for its dismantling are not beyond the pale; and sincere demands for the elimination of a U.N. member country can’t be of only passing concern to all civilized nations.

When Israel’s anti-terrorist security barrier, 97 percent of which is a chain-link fence, is termed and photographed as an “apartheid wall” in the media and academia, we should worry. When Israel’s defensive military operations are condemned for accidental deaths of innocents while Hezbollah and Hamas’ targeting of Israeli civilians (and cynical use of their own civilians as “human shields”) are ignored by the media, the United Nations and human rights groups, we should be very worried. And we should truly be worried when Israeli leaders are depicted as Nazi baby-killers while Holocaust-denier Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas (leader of the terrorist organization Fatah with its Al-Aksa Brigade and Tanzin military wings, who last month called on his followers to turn their guns on Israel) is called a “moderate,” as are the dictatorial rulers of the countries supporting the leading publishers and promoters of anti-Semitism in the world, Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

What conclusions are being reached by the media-consuming public and college students who will be the next decades’ leaders? We need only to look at the appeasement policies of Europe towards the Islamo-fascists of Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas, and the prevailing European attitudes toward Jews and Israel and America, to see the results in real-time.

I am not by any means diminishing the very real hardships that Palestinians suffer under both the strictures of Israel’s efforts to protect its citizens and the oppressive authoritarian rule of their own leaders. But there is a difference between picturing Israel as taking difficult decisions while sometimes making mistakes as it balances security needs against Palestinian humanitarian needs, and presenting Israel as injuring and tormenting Palestinians for no reason, stealing “their” land and denying their “human rights.” This is the difference between fact and fiction; between reality and politics; between truth and promoting another agenda.

The media is the lens through which policy-makers and the public view issues about which they have no first-hand knowledge. So the media must be our first and primary focus if we are to address this crucial imbalance.

It is not enough to merely criticize the world’s media for being “biased” against Israel; proactive steps can be taken to help journalists see the whole picture and report the stories fairly.

Previous approaches to Israel’s “hasbara” (public relations) efforts have been, as the Hebrew word implies, attempts to “explain”, to tell “our side of the story” and to put across certain “messages.” Israel strives for peace; Israel has benefited the Palestinians; Israel is America’s ally in the war against terror.

A second approach has been to criticize the media and academia for a lack of balance. The drawbacks of both these approaches — which are certainly an important element in any defense of Israel — is that they are too shrill for credibility. Journalists and professors, when presented with an “explanation” or a critique of their bias, dismiss the correction as biased or politically-motivated.

But there is an objective reality that can be researched and reported, fairly, by the media and academia. I am convinced that accuracy is Israel’s best ally, and that we must help journalists to achieve their own goals of understanding and reporting the facts and providing insightful analysis.

Though many arrive in Israel with misconceptions and pre-conceived notions, simple observation of the actual state of affairs as they are is the best — and most effective — antidote, not strident and lengthy lectures on this or that “talking point.” The history of the region, the geography, the cultural and political milieu is right in front of them — they just need a credible helping hand to see it.

And they are, on the whole, open and accepting of such a service-oriented, gentle approach. The demand exists. As Simon McGregor-Wood, ABC News Middle East Bureau Chief and chairman of the Foreign Press Association in Israel, stated at the opening of MediaCentral, a new project in Jerusalem, “visiting foreign journalists always need good help. This can be a confusing place to work, where efforts to report the story accurately, are constantly undermined by attempts to influence our reporting.

If MediaCentral can offer journalists balanced and neutral assistance, we will succeed. Journalists are bombarded with unsolicited material, most of it, with an agenda, seeking to pull them one way, or another. We need access to everyone, and every shade of opinion. We need to talk to the newsmakers, and also to the people whose voices are rarely heard,” McGregor-Wood added.

The majority of foreign journalists serving in Israel do not hate Jews or Israelis; but they don’t know a great deal about them or about Israel either. There is — everywhere — a symbiotic relationship between the media and the authorities and society in which they function.

Journalists receiving incredible hospitality and help from the Palestinian Authority and its supporters — there are at least 12 official or semi-official well-funded NGOs serving the media in the disputed territories — are inclined to relate more sympathetically to their hosts. It’s time for Israel to use the carrot, rather than the stick, in our relations with the international media.

Whether discovering the acclaimed new Israeli film “Sweet Mud” — the first-ever Israeli film to be accepted to the Sundance Festival competition and Israel’s entry for the best foreign film Oscar — or witnessing Arab democracy activists interacting with Israelis, whether meeting “average” Israelis informally over a beer or learning about how Israel is the only nation on the planet increasing its forest acreage rather than decimating its natural forests, foreign journalists in Israel are open to a new approach.

 

Aryeh Green, who grew up in San Francisco and studied at U.C. Berkeley, is director of MediaCentral, a Jerusalem center providing support services for journalists based in or visiting Israel and the territories, and is an adviser to Natan Sharansky. He lives and makes wine in Beit Shemesh, Israel.

 

Aryeh Green will be speaking at a number of events in the Bay Area, including at the Conservative Forum of Silicon Valley (Tuesday, Feb. 6 at the American Legion Hall, Santa Clara, at 7 p.m.) and at DeAnza College, the University of Santa Clara and U.C. Santa Cruz on Thursday, Feb. 8. For more information call (415) 336-7831.

 

http://www.jewishsf.com/content/2-0-/module/displaystory/story_id/31533/format/html/displaystory.html

 

 

 

A Lebanese Journalist's Perspective on the Hizballah-Israel Conflict

This may well be the most important article on the Hizballah/Israeli conflict to date. Worth reading through all the way. The writer is not Israeli, nor Jewish, nor pro-Israeli or pro-Jewish. Just Lebanese and honest. And certainly pro-truth and pro-freedom, especially Lebanese freedom via a continuation of the Cedar Revolution. Published in TNR (The New Republic) Online via the Metula News Agency.

The most hypocritical people on earth
Sunday 30 July [ 21:23:00 BST]
By Michael Béhé in Beirut
[Translated from the French by Llewellyn Brown]

The politicians, journalists and intellectuals of Lebanon have, of late, been experiencing the shock of their lives. They knew full well that Hezbollah had created an independent state in our country, a state including all the ministers and parallel institutions, duplicating those of Lebanon . What they did not know – and are discovering with this war, and what has petrified them with surprise and terror – is the extent of this phagocytosis.

In fact, our country had become an extension of Iran , and our so-called political power also served as a political and military cover for the Islamists of Teheran. We suddenly discovered that Teheran had stocked more than 12,000 missiles, of all types and calibers, on our territory and that they had patiently, systematically, organized a suppletive force, with the help of the Syrians, that took over, day after day, all the rooms in the House of Lebanon. Just imagine it : we stock ground-to-ground missiles, Zilzals , on our territory and that the firing of such devices without our knowledge, has the power to spark a regional strategic conflict and, potentially, bring about the annihilation of Lebanon .

We knew that Iran , by means of Hezbollah, was building a veritable Maginot line in the south but it was the pictures of Maroun el-Ras and Bint J'bail that revealed to us the magnitude of these constructions. This amplitude made us understand several things at once : that we were no longer masters of our destiny. That we do not possess the most basic means necessary to reverse the course of this state of things and that those who turned our country into an outpost of their islamic doctrine's combat against Israel did not have the slightest intention of willingly giving up their hold over us.

The national salvation discussions that concerned the application of Resolution 1559 and which included most of the Lebanese political movements were simply for show. Iran and Syria had not invested billions of dollars on militarizing Lebanon in order to wage their war, simply to give in to the desire of the Lebanese and the international community for them to pack up their hardware and set it up back home.

And then, the indecision, the cowardice, the division and the irresponsible behavior of our leaders are such that they had no effort to make to show their talent. No need to engage a wrestling match with the other political components of the Land of Cedars . The latter showed themselves – and continue to show themselves – to be inconsistent.

Of course, our army, reshaped over the years by the Syrian occupier so it could no longer fulfill its role as protector of the nation, did not have the capacity to tackle the militamen of the Hezb [ hezb-Allah : the party of Allah. Translator's note]. Our army whom it is more dangerous to call upon – because of the explosive equilibrium that constitutes each of its brigades – than to shut up behind locked doors in its barracks. A force that is still largely loyal to its former foreign masters, to the point of being uncontrollable ; to the point of having collaborated with the Iranians to put OUR coastal radar stations at the disposal of their missiles, that almost sunk an Israeli boat off the shores of Beirut . As for the non-Hezbollah elements in the government, they knew nothing of the existence of land-to-sea missiles on our territory… That caused the totally justified destruction of all OUR radar stations by the Hebrews' army. And even then we are getting off lightly in these goings-on.

It is easy now to whine and gripe, and to play the hypocritical role of victims. We know full well how to get others to pity us and to claim that we are never responsible for the horrors that regularly occur on our soil. Of course, that is nothing but rubbish! The Security Council's Resolution 1559 – that demanded that OUR government deploy OUR army on OUR sovereign territory, along OUR international border with Israel and that it disarm all the militia on OUR land – was voted on 2 September 2004.

We had two years to put implement this resolution and thus guarantee a peaceful future to our children but we did strictly nothing. Our greatest crime – which was not the only one! – was not that we did not succeed but that we did not attempt or undertake anything. And that was the fault of none else than the pathetic Lebanese politicians.

Our government, from the very moment the Syrian occupier left, let ships and truckloads of arms pour into our country. Without even bothering to look at their cargo. They jeopardized all chances for the rebirth of our country by confusing the Cedar Revolution with the liberation of Beirut . In reality, we had just received the chance – a sort of unhoped-for moratorium – that allowed us to take the future into our own hands, nothing more.

To think that we were not even capable of agreeing to “hang” Émile Lahoud – Al-Assad's puppet – on Martyrs' Square and that he is still president of what some insist on calling our republic… There is no need to look any further : we are what we are, that is to say, not much.

All those who assume public and communicational responsibilities in this country are responsible for this catastrophe. Except those of my colleagues, journalists and editors, who are dead, assassinated by the Syrian thugs, because they were clearly less cowardly than those who survived. And Lahoud remained at Baadbé [the president of the Lebanese Republic 's palace. Editor's note]!

And when I speak of a catastrophe, I do not mean the action accomplished by Israel in response to the aggression against its civilians and its army, which was produced from our soil and that we did strictly nothing to avoid, and for which we are consequently responsible. Any avoiding of this responsibility – some people here do not have the minimal notions of international law necessary to understand! – means that Lebanon , as a state, does not exist.

The hypocrisy goes on : even some editorialists of the respectable L'Orient-le-Jour put Hezbollah's savagery and that of the Israelis on a par! Shame! Spinelessness! And who are we in this fable? Poor ad æternum victims of the ambitions of others?

Politicians either support this insane idea or keep silent. Those we would expect to speak, to save our image, remain silent like the others. And I am precisely alluding to general Aoun, who could have made a move by proclaiming the truth. Even his enemy, Walid Jumblatt, the Druse leader, has proved to be less… vague.

Lebanon a victim? What a joke!

Before the Israeli attack, Lebanon no longer existed, it was no more than a hologram. At Beirut innocent citizens like myself were forbidden access to certain areas of their own capital. But our police, our army and our judges were also excluded. That was the case, for example, of Hezbollah's and the Syrians' command zone in the Haret Hreik quarter (in red on the satellite map). A square measuring a kilometer wide, a capital within the capital, permanently guarded by a Horla army [1], possessing its own institutions, its schools, its crèches, its tribunals, its radio, its television and, above all… its government. A “government” that, alone decided, in the place of the figureheads of the Lebanese government – in which Hezbollah also had its ministers! – to attack a neighboring state, with which we had no substantial or grounded quarrel, and to plunge US into a bloody conflict. And if attacking a sovereign nation on its territory, assassinating eight of its soldiers, kidnapping two others and, simultaneously, launching missiles on nine of its towns does not constitute a casus belli , the latter juridical principle will seriously need revising.

Thus almost all of these cowardly politicians, including numerous shiah leaders and religious personalities themselves, are blessing each bomb that falls from a Jewish F-16 turning the insult to our sovereignty that was Haret Hreik, right in the heart of Beirut, into a lunar landscape. Without the Israelis, how could we have received another chance – that we in no way deserve! – to rebuild our country?

Each Irano-Syrian fort that Jerusalem destroys, each islamic fighter they eliminate, and Lebanon proportionally starts to live again! Once again, the soldiers of Israel are doing our work. Once again, like in 1982, we are watching – cowardly, lying low, despicable, and insulting them to boot – their heroic sacrifice that allows us to keep hoping. To not be swallowed up in the bowels of the earth. Because, of course, by dint of not giving a damn for southern Lebanon, of letting foreigners take hold of the privileges that belong to us, we no longer had the ability to recover our independence and sovereignty. If, at the end of this war, the Lebanese army retakes control over its territory and gets rid of the state within a state – that tried to suffocate the latter –, it will only be thanks to Tsahal [the Israeli Defense Forces. Translator's note], and that, all these faint-hearted politicians, from the crook Fouad Siniora, to Saad Hariri, the son of Lebanon's plunderer, and general Aoun all know perfectly well.

[Beirut by satellite (Google Earth)]

As for the destruction caused by the Israelis… that is another imposture : look at the satellite map! I have situated, as best I could, BUT IN THEIR CORRECT PROPORTIONS, the parts of my capital that have been destroyed by Israel . They are Haret Hreik – in its totality – and the dwellings of Hezbollah's leaders, situated in the large Shi'a suburb of Dayaa (as they spell it) and that I have circled in blue.

In addition to these two zones, Tsahal has exploded a nine-storied building that housed Hezbollah's command, in Beirut 's city center, above and slightly to the left (to the north west ) of Haret Hreik on the map. It was Nasrallah's “perch” inside the city, whereby he asserted his presence and domination over us. A depot of Syrian arms in the port, two army radars that the Shiite officers had put at the Hezb's disposal, and a truck suspected of transporting arms, in the Christian quarter of Ashrafieh.

Moreover the road and airport infrastructures were put out of working order : they served to provide Hezbollah with arms and munitions. Apart from that, Tsahal has neither hit nor deteriorated anything, and all those who speak of the “destruction of Beirut ” are either liars, Iranians, anti-Semites or absent. Even the houses situated one alley's distance from the targets I mentioned have not been hit, they have not even suffered a scratch; on contemplating these results of this work you understand the meaning of the concept “surgical strikes” and you can admire the dexterity of the Jewish pilots.

Beirut , all the rest of Beirut , 95% of Beirut , lives and breathes better than a fortnight ago. All those who have not sided with terrorism know they have strictly nothing to fear from the Israeli planes, on the contrary! One example: last night the restaurant where I went to eat was jammed full and I had to wait until 9:30 pm to get a table. Everyone was smiling, relaxed, but no one filmed them: a strange destruction of Beirut , is it not?

Of course, there are some 500,000 refugees from the south who are experiencing a veritable tragedy and who are not smiling. But Jean [Tsadik. Editor's note], who has his eyes fixed on Kfar Kileh, and from whom I have learned to believe each word he says, assures me that practically all the houses of the aforesaid refugees are intact. So they will be able to come back as soon as Hezbollah is vanquished.

The defeat of the Shi'a fundamentalists of Iranian allegiance is imminent. The figures communicated by Nasrallah's minions and by the Lebanese Red-Cross are deceiving: firstly, of the 400 dead declared by Lebanon , only 150 are real collateral civilian victims of the war, the others were militiamen without uniform serving Iran . The photographic report “ Les Civils des bilans libanais ” made by Stéphane Juffa for our agency constitutes, to this day, the unique tangible evidence of this gigantic morbid manipulation. Which makes this document eminently important.

Moreover, Hassan Nasrallah's organization has not lost 200 combatants, as Tsahal claims. This figure only concerns the combats taking place on the border and even then the Israelis underestimate it, for a reason that escapes me, by about a hundred militiamen eliminated. The real count of Hezbollah's casualties, that includes those dead in Beirut, the Bekaa Valley, Baalbek and their other camps, rocket and missile launchers and arms and munition depots amounts to 1,100 supplementary Hezbollah militiamen who have definitively ceased to terrorize and humiliate my country.

Like the overwhelming majority of Lebanese, I pray that no one puts an end to the Israeli attack before it finishes shattering the terrorists. I pray that the Hebrew soldiers will penetrate all the hidden recesses of southern Lebanon and will hunt out, in our stead, the vermin that has taken root there. Like the overwhelming majority of Lebanese, I have put the champagne ready in the refrigerator to celebrate the Israeli victory.

But contrary to them – and to paraphrase Michel Sardou [a French singer. Translator's note] –, I recognize that they are also fighting for our liberty, another battle “where you were not present”! And in the name of my people, I wish to express my infinite gratitude to the relatives of the Israeli victims – civilian and military – whose loved ones have fallen so that I can live standing upright in my identity. They should know that I weep with them.

As for the pathetic clique that thrives at the head of my country, it is time for them to understand that after this war, after our natural allies have rid us of those who are hindering us from rebuilding a nation, a cease-fire or an armistice will not suffice. To ensure the future of Lebanon , it is time to make peace with those we have no reason to go to war against. In fact, only peace will ensure peace. Someone must tell them because in this country we have not learnt what a truism is.

Note :
[1] Michael Béhé is alluding to the book Le Horla , by Guy de Maupassant [Editor's note].
http://www.freefreedom.org/library-lebaneon-english.htm
JOIN THE COALITION CONTACT

Free Freedom!

Below is a clarion call, from a grassroots level, to rise up against the plague of terror enveloping the world today. Everyone who really cares for a peaceful world should sign up.

Once again, it seems clear: no peace in the Middle East is possible until all of Israel's neighbors live in free, open, tolerant societies; only democracy can bring real peace and security to Israel and the region. Those who trumpet the call to "Free Palestine" are correct: we need to free Palestine and the Palestinians, not from Israeli control but from the dictatorial and repressive leaders and terrorist regimes which retard their progress and prevent peace from emerging.

Only then will we be able to help - yes, even encourage - a Palestinian state to be born, living alongside Israel in harmony. Ditto a free and open, democratic Lebanon... and Jordan... and Egypt... and even, yes, Syria (see the Reform Party of Syria at http://www.reformsyria.org/).

We must use all our power - not military force - to support the real democracy activists in these societies, including financial assistance to these "dissidents" and linking all our relations, trade, economic aid, even recognition, to the extent of freedom in these societies. See Natan Sharansky's "The Case for Democracy" for more details.

A
-----------------------

Dear Friends,

This is not an advertising campaign or a sales pitch; it is a genuine call for involvement in what may help change the world we live in.

The war in the north of Israel may be on hold, but it's far from over. Fundamental Terrorism is raising its head with statements of victory.

It is here on our border today, it will be in your home-towns tomorrow, and may be in your back yard next week. Just as the world got together in a concerted effort to fight "Avian Plague" and the "Mad Cow Disease" and won, it is up to us to fight the next biggest plague that infests the world – Terrorism.

Blind to race, creed, religion, age, political beliefs or location it hits hard and painful.

If you don't take your freedom for granted ACT NOW:

Let us be responsible citizens of the world, and free the world from Terror - take your future into your own hands, enter and respond.

Ehud Segev, brother of Nimrod Segev, who fell in battle against Hizballah on August 9, 2006

www.freefreedom.org

Quck response about Israel in Lebanon

[Written in reply to a suggestion made by Gershon Baskin, co-director of IPCRI, in a policy paper which can be read here]

Gershon/Hanna et al –

Something’s strange here – Kassams raining down on Israeli cities AFTER Israel left Gaza, and Katyushas in the North with attacks on Israeli patrols on Israeli territory well AFTER Israel returned behind the internationally-sanctioned border with Lebanon, and all you have to suggest is that Israel’s PM Olmert make statements and carry out these actions?

I have a better idea:

Abbas announces (without any meetings with Olmert) the release of Shavit and the 2 soldiers captured in Hizbullah’s attack in the north, the Palestinians and Hizbullah/Lebanese cease all Kassam, Katyusha, Fajar and other rocket attacks and terror attacks/attempts on civilians throughout the region, and Hamas either resigns its government seats or fulfills the demands of the international community to recognize Israel and abide by the Oslo agreements and the RoadMap, including disarming and dismantling all terror groups including Islamic Jihad, Fatah’s Al-Aksa ‘Martyrs’ Brigades and ‘Tanzin’ as well as Hamas’ own groups of course.

Then, and only then, without any ‘connection’ to the foregoing as an “exchange” but rather as the obvious, logical consequence of the Palestinians’ stopping to use terror and violence as a political tool (and as part of Israel’s obligations under Oslo and the RoadMap), Israel not only can begin releasing Palestinian and Lebanese prisoners “without blood on their hands” as per your suggestion, but can begin to stop their incursions into Gaza and Lebanon, various sorts of security checks & roadblocks & checkpoints, targeted killing of terrorist leaders, limitations on Palestinian workers in Israel and even start to dismantle the security barrier – all of which only came about as a result of Fatah & Hamas’ continual terror attacks and attempts since the early 1990’s.

Your suggestion is nothing but a face-saving way for Israel to do EXACTLY what Hamas and Hizbullah want and expect them to do: release prisoners in exchange for the kidnapping of our soldiers/civilians, and suffer hundreds of rocket attacks without a price being paid by the perpetrators or their backers (including Syria and Iran) as we have over the past year.

You of all people, professing impartiality and balance, should have been the first to put the onus of a ceasefire on Hamas and Hizbullah. You of all people know – as opposed to the twisted way this is being presented in the world’s media – that the issues here are far deeper than the kidnapped soldiers or even the Palestinians/Lebanese in prisons, most particularly with regard to Hamas’ and Hizbullah’s (and Iran’s) stated intent to destroy the Jewish State and the incessant unprovoked rocket attacks on Israel’s population centers, a situation no country in the world would or could tolerate as Israel has done over the past few months.

With warmest personal regards and deep disagreement as to your analysis of the sources of this current stage in the conflict and therefore your perscription for resolution –

Aryeh

Sharansky talks democracy with bloggers

I'll admit it's been a while since I've written; too busy with personal issues like moving house and making a living. But this brought me out of my stupor, at least temporarily.

In late June ('06) Natan Sharansky spoke to leading bloggers in a conference call. For those connected to the blogosphere and who have not had the opportunity to hear (rather than read) Sharansky articulate his philosophy of freedom overcoming tyranny it's worth listening, especially to the interaction in the latter half. The audio can be heard here courtesy of Atlas Shrugs.