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Tuesday, January 6, 2009

FIVE COMMENTARIES TO MEDIA (12/28/08 - 01/06/09).

CURRENT COMMENTARIES I HAVE MADE [ABOUT THE ARAB-ISRAELI CONFLICT AND THE PRESENT ANTI-HAMAS ACTION IN GAZA] TO VARIOUS MEDIA IN RESPONSE TO NEWS REPORTING, NEWS ANALYSES, AND TALK SHOWS. IT WAS A BUSY, SOBERING WEEK....
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to the charlie rose show in response to Martin Indyk,
David Ignatius, and others (01/05/09):

DAVID AND GOLIATH
01/06/09

Dear Mr. Rose,

If indeed it is your birthday, as commented on earlier, then "Happy Birthday" and many more to come.  Your program is a national treasure and would never be the same without you.

I'd like to support the comments of Shalom Freedman with one observation that Shalom seems to have missed.  Repeatedly, spokesmen for the Israeli government, when pressed for Israel's reason for the current incursion into Gaza, have addressed the need to stem the illegal flow of weaponry into Hamas hands and into Gaza altogether.  The Rockets Glaring Red into Gaza are spoken of as a matter of rhetoric and useful proximal cause, not from a sincere view of internal compassion for Sderot.  The Israeli Government could care less about Sderot and believes that the people of Sderot should shut up and go away or at least accept their status as being in a place inevitably to be a welcome target for an acceptable level of terror.  The current government is of the ilk that, as Haifa, Jerusalem, and Tel Aviv are okay, then the rest of the country should just shut up, accept it's buffer status, remain off the radar.  As for Gaza, Judea-Samaria, Golan, and Sheva Farms -- well, as long as the party can go on in Tel Aviv, who needs these territories?

May I make a request, Mr. Rose?  Can you do something that no one else in our drunken media has done?  Can you have a two-week long series, even if if is only one or two short conversations per larger show of other matters, in which you converse with "Jewish Settlers"?  I know a few personally and I would be happy to be a liason - even to go to Israel and interview them for you - so that a conversation may begin, where there has been none, to show that Jewish Settlers are not the raving, fanatical, right wing lunatics that they are made out to be in the press!

No doubt by now you have been struck by the incongruity of the "truth" as it appears in the bas relief of reality.  The "truth" is the irrational ideology - neh, dogma - that Israeli surrender of land will bring peace, and that if it does not, somehow there must be something else that Israel is either doing or failing to do, that makes Israel's enemies unwilling to cease terrorizing both Israel and the world at large.  The reality is that the more Israel gives away, the more emboldened the Muslim Jihad becomes around the world.  As for Israel itself, the reality can best be described as a Zeno Paradox: If Israel concedes half the land, Israel will be half-way to peace; if Israel then concedes half of the half, then Israel will again be half-way to peace; and so on indefinitely - with the qualification of course that Israel cannot survive on continually diminishing fractions of land.  Even now the world expects Israel to give up territories that for so many reason are indispensable to Israel's existential rights.

A look at Gaza today gives the lie to the ideology of land for peace.  A look yesterday at Lebanon gives the lie to that ideology as well.  The world makes the incessant demand of Israel: "Give this piece of flesh today and we will give you peace until we demand the next piece of flesh tomorrow."  Is it any wonder that the Israeli Government has become so corrupt, valuing nothing more than hotel hedonism in Tel Aviv and gambling in Jericho?  Is the world at large ignorant of the Biblical prohibition to consume living flesh, to drink blood?  Is the world so drunk, it does not know what it is doing?

Violent attacks today against Jews in Holland, France, England, and Spain and violent protests in those countries, Greece, and all around the world should be tolling the bell for the West as to just how emboldened the Muslim Jihad has become.  They know no borders and respect no borders!

John Donne famously wrote, "No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main;  if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less... any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.  "  This view is clearly a Judeo-Christian and not a Muslim Jihadist view.  Those in the West, who may even perceive Israel to be nothing but a "clod" , still fail their own moral and ethical tradition by their condescension towards Israel and by failing to appreciate their own endangerment before today's Muslim Jihad.

Why such a dramatic loss in perspective after so few generations since the lessons of the Jihad-supported Holocaust?  It is as if the battle of David and Goliath were being observed in an arena through dual distorted lenses, one magnifying the image of David enormously and the other shrinking the image of Goliath to such a degree that David is misperceived to be Goliath and vice versa!

"David" - if he is even still alive - is alone and miserable, a tortured human being, cut off from world and sun in a prison compound in Gaza.  His name is Gilad Shalit.  If there is mercy due Hamas, then all Hamas need do is free Gilad Shalit and place him safe and sound into the arms of his beloved mother and father in Israel.  "David's" name is also Sderot.  If there is mercy due Hamas, then all Hamas need do is to accept the right of Israel to exist, to respect the border with Israel, and to cease terrorizing the townspeople of Sderot, whom they bombard daily with Qassam rockets.

May there be miracles of peace in this New Year and again, Happy Birthday Mr. Rose!

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to the Washington Post in disagreement with John Bolton,
whose article suggests a three-state solution in which
Jordan occupies Judea-Samaria and East Jerusalem and
Egypt occupies Gaza:

THE THREE-STATE OPTION IS NOT A VIABLE OPTION

With great respect to John Bolton, whom I admire greatly, to ratify Jordan's invasion of Judea-Samaria in 1947 and to also ratify Egypt's simultaneous invasion of Gaza is not a step forward, not for the Arab Palestinian, not for the Jewish Palestinian, and not for peace in the region.  A rational democratic solution demands a one-state solution in which Israel annexes the Golan, the Sheva Farms, and Judea-Samaria.  Corollary to Israel's consolidation of it's rightful State is the expulsion of the anti-democratic Fifth Column of Muslim extremists, who have no respect for democracy, as democracy means the equality of all persons and not the subjugation of other peopoles of other faiths, such as Jews, Christians, Bahai, etc. -- all of whom live freely and equally in Israel -- who are regarded as pigs, dogs, and monkeys by the world of Islam, at best entitled to second class status as a Dhimmi.  It is suicide for any democratic host country to permit occupancy by Muslims, except as an humantiarian gesture and with humanitarian conditions and humanitarian expectations.  Would this were not so; but, the imperial history of Muslim Jihad - Holy War at the point of sword - should awaken and exercise all of us to the real risk represented by extreme Islam in our time.  Israel as a nation is most directly threatened, even as regards it's existential survival.  When we remember that in 1947 virtually all Jews in Muslim countries were assaulted, robbed, raped, murdered and expelled to the tune of at least one-million in number - insult and injury on the heels of The Hoocaust - and when we remember the alliances of such as the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, the Fedayeen, Iraq, Syria with HItler, then one is tested to have a conscience even with respect to humanitarian concerns, except that given the existential luxury, one hopes to set an humanitarian example for those, who show no humanitarian concerns themselves.  There is a world of difference between those, who show humanitarian concern for others out of a sense of moral obligation, and those, who might do so "because it pleases them" [one hopes the reference to one particular tribal sheikh from 'Lawerence of Arabia' is not lost].  The world should get over it's dishonest sanctimoniousness, making false analogy between the suffering of Jews and the suffering of Muslims.  All suffering does have a common human element; yet, the suffering of one, who denies the other's humanity and right to exist such as the majority of Arab Palestinians deny the right of Israel to exist, demands a different consideration.  If anything, Israel is the proverbial "canary in the coal mine" of Muslim Jihad.  The world can do right only if it ceases it's efforts to force unrealistic solutions into the dark, deep historical sandpits of Arabia.  The world is so oblivious to time and history that it would barely notice the disappearance of Israel into the silicon seas of Arabia; but, then in a world in which the Jew is regarded as an anachronism, what else is to be expected?  There is one difference today, however; the "canary" has armor and weaponry and is willing to fight in a world that has lost the sense of what freedom truly is as well as the willingness to fight for it.  It is no polyanna gift to the Arab Palestinian, by the way, to offer him subjugation to Egypt or Jordan any more than to Israel and in fact less so, as the Jordanians and Egyptians have killed Arab Palestinians into the tens of thousands in order to maintain order in their own regimes, while the world ignored this "genocide", as it largely ignores similar Arab against Arab violence today, giving tacit approval to a cruel double standard of horrors.

At first the 'law and order' appeal of the Three-State Solution does have an appeal.  However, on deeper reflection, it satisfies none of the four major conditions in order for real peace to emerge: humanitarian, political, strategic, and security concerns.  Again, my deep respect to John Bolton;  how I wish I could work with him to bring about a one-state solution according to the democratic terms I described above!

A.B.E. 01/05/09

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to Neal Conan and NPR "Talk of the Nation" [note - the content of the broadcast
can be inferred from my letter; the broadcast itself can be heard via the internet
at the NPR website (broadcast article entitled "The U.S. Government's Influence
Over Israel"]:

THERE IS AN UNFORTUNATE, COMMON, AND UNIQUITOUS (ubiquitous + iniquity = uniquitous) VIEW IN THE MEDIA AND TRANSITIVELY TO MUCH OF THE POPULATION THAT (1) ISRAEL DOES NOT NEGOTIATE FOR PEACE AND PREFERS MILITARY MIGHT, (2) IF ONLY JEWISH SETTLERS DID NOT OCCUPY LAND IN THE WEST BANK, THERE WOULD BE PEACE, AND (3) ISRAELI MILITARY ACTION REPRESENTS DISPROPORTIONATE RESPONSE TO ACTS OF TERROR.

Therefore, there is a continued mass delusion, always blaming Israel, that Israel does not negotiate honestly for peace, that Israel is acting as an imperial power in the Middle East, that Israel as a nation is nothing more than a common bully, and that peace would occur in a joyful moment, if only Israel would remove settlements from the West Bank and would stop bullying the Palestinian Arabs.

Honestly, it is difficult to listen to such ignorant hogwash and think that this presentation is anything other than an exercise in Israel-bashing and in the promotion of Muslim Brotherhood propaganda.

It is as if the Arab-Israeli Conflict, which has yet to come to a conclusion, is being viewed in the world arena in the following way: imagine that David and Goliath are in battle and that one is looking at David through a magnifying lens and and Goliath thru a microfying lens.  The result is the misidentification of the scope of the conflict.

If Israel were to annex the West Bank and the Golan and the Sheva Farms and even Gaza, it would not be a "Greater Israel".  It would be a restoration of Israel as an historic State to it's historic boundaries.

World obsession with ignoring the larger Arab-Israeli conflict and misperceiving the conflict to be a much smaller and theoretically easier matter to deal with, e.g. a 'Palestinian' - Israeli Conflict, can only perpetuate the suffering of the Jewish Palestinians (Jewish Israelis) and all of the non-Jewish Palestinians be they of Muslim Jihadists or the PLO or the Druse, Bahai, Christians, all of whom comprise the Palestinians of the region.

If there is a prize given for biased, dishonest, blatantly anti-democratic programming, this episode of Talk of the Nation stands head and shoulders above all other such biased programming and deserves such a prize.

01/06/09
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to AOL "Yedda" responsa blog re: current Gaza incursion:

IT IS STRIKING TO SEE THE SAFETY IN WHICH THE ARABS PROTEST THE ALLEGED "HOLOCAUST" AGAINST THEM.  Despite an official Israeli limitation on the freedom of news media in Gaza during the current action, there is no shortage of images and reporting.  AOL itself has posted hundreds of images.  Amazingly, while the Israel Defense Forces are skillfully focused on military targets and limiting civilian casualties, the Arabs are out on the streets freely protesting what they call "Israeli Occupation of Palestine" and demanding the World to "Stop the Holocaust in Gaza".  These Palestinian Arabs, who were wedded to Adolf Hitler during WW2, deny The Holocaust and yet speak of an imaginary holocaust against Palestinian Arabs, all the while referring to Palestine as if it were an historical State occupied by a foreign power [Israel], when in fact "Palestine" is the name given to Israel by Ancient Rome during the Roman Occupation, and then again by Britain during the British Occupation (1917 - 1947).  Photo upon photo taken in the past 24 hours portrays Palestinian Arabs engaged in burning the Israeli Flag - metaphor for their own twin goals to destroy and occupy Israel.  "Free Palestine"?  "Palestine" is already free, finally free, after thousands of years of exile and holocaust, free enough to go by it's own name "Israel".  "Occupation?"  Subsequent to 15 centuries of "Jihad" (Holy War) marked by a credo of "convert or die" fully one fifth of the entire world (population and land) is now Muslim.  If there has been a holocaust, it has certainly not been perpetrated by Israel, nor against Arabia.  It has been perpetrated by Arabia against the rest of the world....
12/28/08

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feedback to CBS-TV:

RE: TERMINOLOGY AND CONTENT REGARDING ISRAEL'S CURRENT ACTION IN GAZA AGAINST HAMAS

In general your reporting on the current military engagement is commendable, following events as they occur and clearly stating the Israeli point of view and the Hamas point of view.

Respectfully, I would like to draw attention to questionable phrases I heard between 3-5am this morning (12/31/08) as introductory to the Mark Phillips report and as content in same.

LEAD IN:  The "lead in" to the Mark Phillips story (as read by your anchor, I believe) referred to the Israeli "attack on Gaza".

Respectfully, Israel is engaged in an attack in Gaza against Hamas; Israel is not engaged in an attack on Gaza.  THIS IS NOT A TRIVIAL DISTINCTION.  ONE EXPECTS GREATER EDITORIAL CARE FROM C.B.S.

STORY CONTENT:  An incorrect and inappropriate editorial reference was made by Mark Phillips in his story, when he characterized Israel's last presence in Gaza as a "fruitless occupation" that "lasted 38 years".  HERE AGAIN ONE EXPECTS GREATER EDITORIAL JUDGEMENT FROM C.B.S.

Respectfully, here again the facts do not match the editorial content of the story, and one doubts that CBS intended that there be any editorial content in the reporting of the facts as they happen.

In 1967 Israel won back in war Gaza land that Jewish Pioneers had legally purchased in 1930 outside of Gaza CIty after the horror of riots in Gaza City in 1929 that led to the expulsion of an historic Jewish Community in Gaza City. By 1946 Jews were living on part of this purchased land in Gaza (Gush Katif)  only to see the land occupied and stolen by Egypt in 1947, when Israel's Independence War took place.  In the period from 1967 to 2005 Israel's RECLAMATION OF STOLEN TERRITORY (not at all an illegal occupation) MEANT A VERY FRUITFUL LIFE FOR 38 YEARS FOR ISRAELI'S LIVING IN THE VARIOUS SETTLEMENTS OF GUSH KATIF.  Jewish history in Gaza goes all the way back to the biblical times of King David.

If there is anything fruitless with respect to Israel and Gaza, it is that IN 2005 ISRAEL STUPIDLY  DISREGARDED AND TOSSED  AWAY ALL THE VALUE OF IT'S FRUITFUL RECLAMATION OF GUSH KATIF AND THE SECURITY BENEFITS OF ISRAELI MARTIAL LAW IN GAZA. One can argue  technicalities of "occupation" or "reclamation" once final status issues resolve in a sustainable peace agreement.  BUT NO ONE MAY ARGUE THAT FOR 38 YEARS THE JEWISH LIFE IN GUSH KATIF ANYTHING BUT FRUITFUL - LITERALLY.  NOR MAY ANY PERSON ARGUE THAT GIVING GAZA TO HAMAS HAS BEEN ANYTHING BUT FRUITLESS AS REGARDS ARAB-ISRAELI PEACE.

Thank you,

AARON BENEZRA
12/31/08

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