Moral Equivalence?

SEATTLE, July 29 (Reuters) - Police stepped up security at Seattle synagogues and mosques on Saturday, a day after a Muslim man who said he was angry at Israel shot dead one woman and wounded five others at a Jewish center.

"We are also protecting mosques, because there is always the concern of retaliatory crime," Seattle Police Chief Gil Kerlikowske told a news conference late on Friday.

Are they for real?! I wonder if the Seattle Police also protect burglars, murderers and rapists for fear of retaliatory crime? Does he not realise that one group of people in this story are the victims and the other - the agressors?! This is not the time for moral equivalence; cycle of violence and political correctness.

Solidarity

CHIEF RABBI SIR JONATHAN SACKS
SPEECH AT SOLIDARITY RALLY FOR ISRAEL
SUNDAY 23 JULY 2006

We have come together today
To stand in solidarity with our brothers and sisters in Israel
And to say a simple prayer.

Ribbono shel olam [Master of the universe],
Let your people Israel live in peace.
Let there be an end to bloodshed and violence.
Let there be an end to hostility and hate.
Let Gilad Shalit, Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev come home.
Let Israel’s defence forces come home.
What else did Your people ever want,
Except the right to live with security, without fear, in peace?
Almighty G-d, let your people Israel live in peace.

Today we stand in solidarity with Israel,
And rarely have I felt so proud of Anglo-Jewry as I have done these past few days.
Especially of our young people.
Last week 1300 of them, from youth groups right across the religious spectrum,
Went out to Israel.
Every one of them, or their families, might have said: no. Not now. It’s too dangerous.
Yet almost none of them did.
I want to say to every one of those young people: Kol hakavod. You make us proud.

And today I want a message to go forth from us to Israel to say: Israel, you make us proud.
In a mere 58 years, in a country half the size of Lake Michigan, you have done things that are unbelievable.
You have gathered together Jews from more than a hundred different countries speaking more than eighty different languages and out of them made a great nation.
You have taken a land with no natural resources and turned it into one of the great economies of the modern world.
You have created a democracy in a part of the world where no one thought it possible.
You have taken a desolate land and made it blossom and bear fruit.
You have developed medical technologies to save life.

Wherever in the world there has been a natural disaster, you have been among the first to offer humanitarian aid.
Through six decades under almost continuous threat you have given the world poets and philosophers and musicians and novelists whose heart is Jewish and whose love is for all humanity.
You have taken the language of the Bible and made it speak again
You have taken a people from the valley of the shadow of death and made it live again
You have taken hope itself – hatikvah shnot alpayim – and made it breath again.
Israel: you are our people and our pride and we stand with you today.

Why then does a people who have consistently said Yes to life and No to death,
Who have consistently said Yes to peace and No to terror,
Find itself today fighting in Lebanon and Gaza?
The answer is so simple, yet so unbelievable, that we must hear it clearly and unequivocally:
Israel is fighting today in Lebanon because 6 years ago it withdrew from Lebanon.
Israel is fighting today in Gaza because 1 year ago it withdrew from Gaza.
And Israel discovered the terrible truth spoken by the late Mother Theresa
That no good deed goes unpunished.
Every gesture of goodwill undertaken by Israel has been seized on by its enemies as a sign of weakness.
Every Israeli effort towards peace has led without exception to an increase in violence against Israel.
The Oslo Peace Process led directly to the first Palestinian suicide attacks in Israel
Taba: the most generous offer Israel ever made to the Palestinians, led directly to the most concerted set of terrorist attacks against any nation in modern history.
The Gaza Withdrawal, the most painful act Israel has ever had to undertake, led within less than a year to 1000 Kassam rocket attacks on Israeli civilian targets including schoolchildren.
And finally the Lebanon withdrawal, undertaken by Israel six years ago in full compliance with United Nations Security Council Resolution 425. That resolution was immediately broken by Hizbullah, about which the United Nations special envoy to Lebanon warned at the time, in November 2000: “Such breaches of international peace and security in the south threaten to ignite a new spiral of violence with tragic consequences for the civilian population.”
That failure led in 2004 to the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1559 which called categorically for the disarming of militias in Lebanon. Again rejected. This time Kofi Annan himself protested to the Syrians. The effect? The arming of Hizbullah with weapons that threaten the very heart of Israel.
Israel withdrew from Lebanon.
Israel does not want to be in Lebanon.
It does not want to do any of the things it is now doing.
It accepted in good faith the commitment of the United Nations that it would not have to.
It is acting today only because the international community has failed to ensure that its neighbours met their obligations when Israel met hers.
Israel, the Israel we know and love, is a people that pursues peace, yearns for peace, sings about peace, needs peace.
For 58 years it has done everything a nation could do in pursuit of peace, and it has been rewarded instead with violence and terror.
It has done what the world has asked it to do, and the result has been that it has been left vulnerable and alone.

Which of us does not weep when we see the news day after day?
Does any of us, God forbid, take satisfaction at the devastation of Lebanon?
Is that who we are?
Let me be clear and unambiguous.
We weep not just for Israel
But for the people of Lebanon also.
Lebanon was once a great country,
A centre of civilization
A beacon in the Middle East --
Until Jordan drove the Palestinians out of Jordan into Lebanon
Until Syria used them to terrorise the Lebanese
Until Iran armed and funded and manipulated them;
Until the whole country of Lebanon, every man, woman and child, became a hostage.
And so a great country was destroyed and reduced to ruins.
And today Israel is fighting in Lebanon so that Israel should not become, G-d forbid, another Lebanon,
As any country in the world will become If it lacks the clarity and courage to say No to terror and Yes to peace.

Tragically Jews have learned over the centuries
That when their enemies speaking of killing them, driving them into the sea, wiping them off the face of the earth, they mean what they say.
What Hizbullah and Hamas have said in word and deed is:
We will kill you if you stay
And we will kill you if you leave.
We will kill you if you retaliate
And we will kill you if you don’t retaliate.
What can Israel do but to seek to end the terror
That threatens and is meant to threaten its very existence?
When alone among the 192 nations that make up the United Nations, after 58 years it still finds its very right to exist denied?

Friends, let me tell you what is wrong with terror. It is not just that it murders the innocent: the young, the old, the defenceless, the uninvolved.
It is that it murders innocence itself.
It turns virtue into weakness, decency into vulnerability.
And if we, if Israel, if Europe, if America do not take a stand against terror, if we ignore it as the world ignored it for so long, then it will leave a stain on the human future that no tears, no regrets, will ever remove.

The battle Israel is fighting today is not for itself alone.
It is for the sake of all those who say no to terror
No to the desecration of life
No to killing in the name of God
Whether they live in Bali or Beslan, or Madrid or Mumbai.
And therefore let me end with simple words of prayer:

Ribbono shel olam: Be with your people Israel now.
Hear their cry
Heed their tears
Listen to this, our prayer on their behalf.
Grant peace to all your children, Jew, Christian and Muslim alike.
Help us live together, respecting one another.
Help us cherish life.
Help us to use the powers You gave us, to heal, to mend, to build.
We ask of You, Almighty God, just one thing:
You who make peace in high places,
Help us make peace down here on earth.

Rogue Regime: How to get what you want in 3 easy steps

1. Start developing a military nuclear program
2. Threaten to wipe out Israel of the face of the plane
3. Get a basket of goodies from the EU including, but no limited to:

• an end to economic sanctions,

  nuclear power plants,

  nuclear fuel,

  military aircraft parts, and

  the guarantee of non-aggression from the US and Israel (no matter how many
  Shiabs missiles are pointed at Israel or US military camps in Iraq)

Dangerous Territory

It looks like Peretz is trying to work on the nightmare scenario described in my last post in which he would govern as prime minister despite coming a far second in a democratic election. There are no boundaries for this man - a man who for the sake of self-advancement is considering setting up a coalition with far-right parties, thus stalemating any diplomatic developments for the next few years. I guess that can be expected from a union leader: self-interest first; the good of the nation second.

It has been sugested that these moves are the result of Peretz's ego getting bruised by calls from Kadima memebrs that Peretz would be dangerous as treasurer. Kadima for their part were just stating the obvious.

Israeli Election Analysis: Winners & Losers

The elections in Israel were won by the minor parties and lost by the major parties. Labour, Likud and Kadima all received final results that were below their polling levels. An apathetic electorate, despondant of the security issue, affected the result in two distinct ways:

• Turning up and voting on niche issues (such as pensions, immigration and religion)
• Not turning up to vote: voters for smaller parties are more likely to be passionate enough to turn up to vote, a low turnout will skew the results away from the major parties.

The biggest loser:

1. Netanyahu's Likud: With 11 seats, the party which had until 100 days ago been at the centre of Israeli politics commanding a third of Israel's 120-member Knesset is now a minor party (finishing in fifth position).
2. Olmert's Kadima: With 28 seats, the party is finishing well behind the 45 seats that were within reach only months ago. In the final weeks of the campaign, Olmert gambled by publicly announcing plans to withdraw from the West Bank. With the recent rise to power of Hamas, these statements were not well received by the electorate. The statements do have 2 positive effects:

a) Olmert positioned himself as a leader in his own right

b) Olmert has given his government a mandate to deal with the final borders of the State of Israel

3. Pertz’s Labour party failed to gain any momentum on social issues as it has expected. It had three parties vying into its hitherto exclusive ‘social territory’: Shas won over the disaffected Sefardi minority; Israel Beitanu - the Russian migrants and the Pensioners party were the stars of the night winning over a large share of the retiree vote. That said, Peretz did prevent a slump in the labour vote that was expected to go to Kadima and as such can count the night as a moderate success.

The biggest winner:

1. There is no doubt that the biggest winner was Rafi Eitan and his Pensioners party who received 7 seats and were expected to get 1 seat at most. As a social leaning party, they would be natural partners of a centre-left coalition
2. Shas is the other big winner of the night, with 13 seats, they have captured the populist vote of the Likud and have surpassed that party in size. As the third largest party in Israeli politics and considering that the centre-left block could not reach 61 seats – Shas is looking at warming up some cabinet seats.
3. Liberman’s Israel Beitanu was the other scavenger on the Likud vote, having captured the fiscally conservative vote from Likud and again surpassing that party in size. The Jerusalem Post noted that for the first time, Israel now has a party espousing both fiscal and political conservatism.

All in all, the results are disappointing as they give the next prime minister a weak mandate and large multi-partnered government that will pull policy in different directions. Ehud Olmert has the tough task of forming a coalition from a much smaller base than he had anticipated. This means many Kadima minister-designates loosing their cabinet seats to members of opposing parties, leading to potential rumblings within Kadima.

I had anticipated a coalition of Labour, Kadima and Meretz. It now looks like Meretz would have to vacate its position to its archrival Shas, and the Pensioners party will come out oblivion into government, leading to a coalition of 68 seats.

One should note the following nightmare scenario: Amir Peretz may have a chance to block Ehud Olmert by getting the Pensioners party and Shas on his team first. This could lead to a Peretz is in a position to demand to act as prime minister on a rotary basis (as Shamir and Peres have done in 1988), or worse, be given the opportunity by the president to form a coalition in his own right.

Multiculturalism

I have heard it said that Israel is the most multicultural state on earth (I believe measured by the number of people who speak a first tongue other than the main language). To support this claim, I present the gingle for the Kadima party in... Amharic.

kadimaisrael.co.il

For those who don't know, Amharic is the official language of Ethiopia and the language spoken by the nearly 100,000 Ethiopian migrants of Jewish origin who live in Israel. For a closer look at Israel's demographics, visit this site.

It looks like this election is going to have the lowest turnout in the country's history. It seems apathy is the big winner of the day.

No more "Acting" Prime Minister

Ehud Olmert, Sharon's loyal sidekick will be rewarded today with an election victory. His next task is to form a coalition - which is likely to include Labor on the left (who are likely to demand the coveted treasury portfolio) and Meretz (who are likely to seek soft portfolios like education, environment, etc). All parties joining the coalition will agree to the notion of Israel forgoing most of the west bank and drawing its own borders - unilaterally if need be - within four years.

At the time of writing the election is still taking place and there seems to be a very low turnout, which is bad news for Kadima. I would therefore expect Kadima to get a result in the mid 30's rather than anything in the 40's and to expect a very narrow coalition with Labour and Meretz. Depending on the final results, there may be a need to invite additional parties to ensure a more stable coalition.

Ehud Olmert is getting one of the toughest jobs on this planet. Let's hope to G-d he is up for the job.

Must see TV - Al Jazeera

This is really a "must see tv" segment by Arab-American Psychologist Wafa Sultan on Al Jazeera television (Qatar) - 21 February 2006.

Memri TV

Please post your comments below once you have seen the segment.

Unchartered waters

I have been off the blog scene for a few months and in that time much has happened in the Middle East. First, Ariel Sharon suffered a major stroke and has been in a coma ever since. He is now fighting for his life after a sever malfunction in his digestive system. Ariel Sharon –Israel’s grandfather figure, the general, and the popular Prime Minister – was forced by G-d to bow out of politics.

Meanwhile, the unassuming Ehud Olmert picked up the reigns and has managed to bring stability to his party and country – he prevented the predicted exodus from Kadima (post Sharon) while sending the right messages at home and abroad ensuring that the Israeli stock market remained stable and that Israeli-US relations remain cordial.

Polls show that Israeli voters seem still believe that the disengagement model is the way forward and are undeterred by the fact that its architect is lying in a hospital bed.

Ehud Olmert is by no means in an enviable position. He has been thrown into the seat of power, unelected, in the midst of an election campaign – having to contend with the real threat of a Nuclear Iran and the newly elected Hamas leadership. Having gotten to the point where there is no road, Ehud will have to do what Bush did on September 11 2001 – rise up as a leader and charter his own course.

The Big Bang

Well, the stage looks for Peres to join Sharon either as a member of the Kadima party or as an external supporter of the party. The elder statesman leaving the Labour party will no doubt cost them a few seats.

While Peres has yet to anounce his plans, as he is currently in Barcelona, his co-confidant Dalia Itzick joined the Kadima party today - an apparant jesture to Peres, as she would have been left to be eaten a live by the pack of wolves that now control the Labour party.

This is a truly interesting development. Now, the two antithesis visions, that of unified Israel on the right and that of a friendly peace on the left, and their respective visionaries - Sharon and Peres have chosen a pragmatic middle way... Kadima (onwards)!

The elections to watch

It looks like Israel will be having elections around March 21 or March 28 of this year. This will be extremely interesting elections to follow where anything can happen.

The direct impetus to the election has been the election of a fanatic left wing union leader as the head of Israel's Labor party. Amir Peretz (Israel’s Mark Latham) has always put self-interest first, and believes that early elections will give him a chance to ride on the wave of euphoria that has gripped some Israeli circles. This man has cost the Israeli economy hundreds of millions of dollars (through frequent infrastructure strikes) and intends to run on a socialist platform, aiming to attract North African voters from Likud and Shas. (Incidentally, Shas will retaliate by attempting to capitalise heavily on the popularity of its former leader Aryeh Deri – who served three years for a bribery conviction).

Amir Peretz will fail in this mission. Ariel Sharon, however, may not.

He is by far the most popular Israeli prime minister in a decade, if not longer - and he now can count on his personal popularity to break his ties with the party he created and its oppressive central committee (where is archrival Netanyahu pulls the strings). While his last such attempt at breaking from the likud with the establishment of ShlomZion (lit. peace in Zion) failed, Sharon stands a far better chance now. Each of the 10-14 sitting parliamentarians (MKs) who cross the floor to run with Sharon bring with the 1.15 Mil in election funding according to Israeli election funding rules - that's good news for a party with no infrastructure and little air time.

Aside from taking a third a third of sitting Likud MKs, Sharon's party has attracted two talented Labour MKs - Dalia Itzik and Haim Ramon. Unfortunately, the most talented politican in the house, Shimon Peres, seems to be staying at home for now (Hopefully, he will cross the floor after the elections).

What’s left of the Likud will be a party full of leaders with no followers. Of the long list of leadership challengers, Netanyahu is the man to beat. The defence minister Mofaz is the challenger to watch (as a non-parliamentarian over the past couple of years, he has has attended the Bar Mitzva ceremony’s of the sons of every swinging central committee member. Will the bad food and music pay off?! Probably not. Will Mofaz then accept Sharon’s offer and cross over to the new party?! Maybe.

Whatever happens, these elections are extremely important and hopefully will come up with a viable alternative to the right and left. My two cents: this alternative party will play its function in the next term of Knesset, then amalgamate and disappear back into the Likud : Labor paradigm. The binary adversarial model is just too damn sexy.

Alexander and I

 

Well, it seems the UN have finally managed to do a half decent task - its report into the assasination of former Lebanese PM Rafik Hariri. I cannot recall th last time I have given the UN a compliment but Detlev Mehlis, the UNIIIC commissioner and author of the report deserves credit for his frank report.

The full text of the report can be found here.

The report does not name the five main suspects. Their names are:
1) Mahr Assad - Brother of Syrian President Bashar Assad
2) Assaf Shoukath - Brother in law of Syrian President Bashar Assad & second in command
3) Hassan Halil - Former head os Syria's intelligence agency
4) Bahjeth Suliman - Senior officer in Syria's intelligence agency
5) Jamil A-Sayed - Head of Lebanon's internal security agency

Necessary Evil?

Disengaging

My 2 Cents on Disengagement

We are standing on the eve of the disengagement process in Israel or the Hitnatkut (lit. detachment \ disconnection \ severance), and while my mind is at ease with this process, my heart is aching for the many who will lose their homes and the many hundreds of thousands of others who will see this move as regressing a two thousand year old dream.

THE LOGIC OF DISENGAGEMENT

I have long supported this move by Sharon and see this proactive step as a necessary evil for Israel to gain control over a peace process that has spiralled beyond its control and has become typified by a series of reactive measures. But above all, the disengagement delays the effects of Israel’s biggest threat – “the wombs of Palestinian mothers” (as described by the Palestinian leadership). The threat posed by the disparity in population growth between the Israelis and Palestinians is a ticking time bomb. It is clear to say that Israel does not have time on its side and without disengagement and consequent steps separating Israel from the bulk of the West Bank (Judea and Samaria), there will be more Arabs than Jews living between Jordan and the sea – by which time the Palestinian request will no longer be for a two state solution, but rather a one state solution in which they control government.

That said, I share the pain of those who will be affected by this process and of those who have yet to internalise the severity of the threat that disengagement is defusing. I suppose the process is akin to a person who must amputate a gangrenous leg. The process itself is necessary for the survival of the body as a whole, but try and sell that theory to the leg that is about to be amputated.

INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY

The international community will no doubt be on the wrong side of justice once more:

The will not understand that Israel has risked deeply dividing its nation for the sake of disengagement, a cause the Palestinian leadership has cited for not fighting against their brothers in Hamas; they will not understand the inherent unfairness in the fact that the forcible removal of every Jew from the land to be transferred to the Palestinians is seen as a necessaty, while an equivelant forcible removal of Arabs from land controlled by Israel is unthinkable; and as always, they will not understand the extent of the Jewish connection to this land.

They will minimise the sacrifice Israel has made (more concrete than any step taken by the Palestinian side); they will dispute her control over the Palestinian-Egyptian border and Gaza’s ports (air and sea - necessary for arms control); and they will prevent Israel from annexing those parts of the West Bank that will clearly remain Israel under any future agreement (such as Gush Etzion and Maaleh Adumim).

But nevertheless, this is a process that Israel must go through for its own sake, not for the sake of the international community.

THE DAY AFTER

The disengagement and Netanyahu’s resignation from government last week have some implication on the future of Israeli politics.

• The timing of his resignation suggests that Netanyahu wanted the process of disengagement to be completed under Sharon’s tenure. Netanyahu could have quit some months back and provided strong political leadership for the anti-disengagement movement, but rather he voted for the move, sat in the government throughout its planning phase and merely stepped aside prior to implementation to position himself politically for his next battle – control of the Likud party.
  
• At this stage, Sharon’s future as the leader of the Likud party is shaky and unless a new centrist party emerges in Israel, Sharon now has little chance of being on a ticket in next year’s election.
  
• Sharon will be judged by his last major political move – the disengagement. A process that ends in perceived failure (such as Hamas flags waving on former settlements); on in an unclear result (the most likely result) is likely to reduce Sharon’s popularity. I see no real way of the process being a resounding success. There is only that much spin you can put on an amputation.
  
• With Sharon and Peres out of the running for the next year’s election (barring the emergence of a new centrist party), it will be the battle for the next generation’s leadership (a la Netanyahu vs. Barak’s 1999 election. Certainly, Barak has been doing all he can to have his rematch). The question is can Israel’s next generation offer the public the same security and vision that Israel’s founding generation had?
  
• It seems that Sharon like Barak before him have bet their political future on a single strategic move. Barak lost his bet. Let’s hope Sharon does not lose his.

Israeli Soldiers and anti-disengagement protesters join up on both sides of the fence outside Kfar Maimon to make up the required quorum for afternoon prayers.

Iraq Body Count

Recent media reports quoting the newly sanctioned "bureau of statistics" Iraqi Body Count (IBC) reiterated its claims that 25,881 civilians have been killed in Iraq since April 2003.

Here are some basic calculations:

• IBC have claimed in the past that the 1,200 civilians who died in Afghanistan were in fact 3,800 civilians.
• Considering a standard IBC exaggeration error of 216% (based on the Afghanistan statistic), the Iraqi death count should be scaled back to 8,173.
• Since the liberation of Iraq, mass graves containing 400,000 people killed by Saddam Hussein have been discovered. This figure, which represents a fraction of the dead and does not account for nearly a million casualties of the Iraq-Iran war, averages nearly 17,000 people per annum over 24 years of a brutal regime.
• This figure equates to 37,500 saved lives since April 2005.
• Based on the above, there is a net figure of 29,327 Iraqi men and women who are walking around freely in Iraq who would be rotting in graves had Bush yielded to left wing activists that form the backbone (or lack thereof) of IBC and its sister organisations.

That’s 29,327 reasons why the liberation of Iraq was necessary and legitimate!

When factoring in what the future held under Saddam and what the future holds under the emerging democratic state, this figure expands exponentially.

An Open Letter to the Mayor of London

London mayor defends the use of Palestinian suicide bombers

By Haaretz Service and News Agencies

Less than two weeks since the London terror attacks, the city's Mayor Ken Livingstone has sparked controversy by defending the use of suicide bombers in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and charging that Israel had indiscriminately slaughtered Palestinians in acts that "border on crimes against humanity."

"Given that the Palestinians don't have jet planes, don't have tanks, they only have their bodies to use as weapons," Livingstone told Sky News in an interview.

"In an unfair balance, that's what people use," said Livingstone, who has often been strongly critical of Israel in the past.

On July 7, more than 50 people died in four London bombings believed to have been carried out by suicide terrorists.

At the time, Livingstone was uncompromising in his condemnation of the terror acts.

Livingstone said that Israel has "done horrendous things which border on crimes against humanity the way they have indiscriminately slaughtered men, women and children in the West Bank and Gaza for decades."

Livingstone also said that he does not distinguish between members of Likud and Hamas, branding them "two sides of the same coin."

"I think it is the Israelis who are leading the stubborn line," said Livingstone. "The Likud and Hamas members are two sides of the same coin. They need each other in order to attract support."

"Each side emphasizes the extremism of the other in order to attract sympathy," Livingstone said.

Livingstone agreed to the interview in the wake of the media frenzy surrounding the possible visit of controversial Muslim cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi, who has voiced support for Palestinian suicide bombers and has been banned from entering the United States.

Livingstone denied that Qaradawi will visit London,.

"I believe it is forbidden to take human life," Livingstone said. "I will welcome and meet with senior members of the Israeli government if they come here because they serve their country's government even though I believe they have done terrible things bordering on crimes against humanity."

____________________________

Ken Livingstone
Mayor of London
Greater London Authority
City Hall
The Queen's Walk
London SE1 2AA

To the Right Honourable Mayor of London, Mr Ken Livingstone:

I can imagine that your comments (as reported in Sky News, July 20, 2005) equating the Hamas and the Likud and justifying Palestinian terrorism against innocent Israeli civilians have provoked considerable response. Accordingly, this letter may end up in the trash bin, but my hope is that either you, or one of your close aides, will nonetheless take the time to read it.

It is tragic that precisely at this momentous juncture in history, when leaders in the Muslim community in the UK and worldwide are at long last issuing unequivocal and unconditional fatwas against the murder of innocents, that a man in your position has once again found reason to condone the slaughter of my people.

From your equation of the Hamas with the Likud, one can only deduce that you are either ignorant of the historical facts and political realities of the conflict in the Middle East or impassioned by the blind hatred that has inspired so many totalitarian leaders throughout the ages to rationalise the extermination of Jews.

In the sincere hope that the moral flaw revealed through your statements is in the first category, may I remind you of the following:

• The so-called "occupation" of the West Bank and Gaza began in 1967 following a defensive war that saw Egypt blocking the Gulf of Aqaba and 500,000 troops from five Arab armies poised on Israel's borders with the publicly declared aim of its destruction.
  
• Following the conquest of these armies, Israel did what Egypt and Jordan-- the former "occupiers" of the West Bank and Gaza from 1949 -1967 who deliberately left the Palestinian refugees in squalor-- had never done; it built roads, hospitals. schools and housing. Having lived in Israel during that time period and having visited the territories, I can assure you there were no roadblocks, checkpoints or IDF raids. The Palestinians enjoyed the benefits of tourism and an unprecedented economic prosperity that continued until the outbreak of the Intifada. (It is for these economic reasons that 70% of Jerusalem Arabs are today opposed to giving up their Israeli citizenship to live under the corrupt rule of the PA).
  
• Hamas and Islamic Jihad are fundamentalist organizations that reject the concept of a two-state solution and the existence on a Jewish state. Its leaders, like the late Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, have publicly endorsed the murder of innocent Jews, in Israel and worldwide, as legitimate tools of resistance to the "occupation". (Take note that there are 26 states officially described as "Islamic" and that the tiny sliver of the Jewish State of Israel occupies but a fraction of a percent of these vast Arab lands stretching from Morocco to Iraq.) On the contrary the Likud is a nationalist political party that, in the past, has given up territories conquered in 1967 to make peace with Egypt and Jordan, and, on numerous occasions under different governments has-- unlike the Islamic terror groups you implicitly support-- accepted the notion of a two-state coexistence.
  
• Your spurious claim that a people without an army has no recourse but to target innocent civilians is outrageous and, as mentioned previously, reinforces a repugnant ideology that responsible Muslim leaders are only now attempting to repair. It may be somewhat understandable, though in my mind still unacceptable, to stage attacks on IDF troops stationed in what is perceived by the Palestinians as their land (technically, according to international law, it is not their land; as there never was a Palestinian state, it is legally speaking disputed rather than occupied territory.) How can any decent human being, however, justify the killing of innocent people in restaurants, busses, discotheques, synagogues and wedding halls? Furthermore, leaders like Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela, who also lacked military forces at their disposal, managed to achieve independence through altogether non-violent means. If the Palestinians had had such leaders, an independent Palestinian state and peaceful co-existence would long ago have become realities rather than wistful dreams.
  
• Intelligence from all sources, Palestinian included, reveal that the Intifada ignited by the late Yasser Arafat begun in the year 2000 was not, as many mistakenly believe, in reaction to Ariel Sharon's visit to the Temple Mount (Jewish people visit the Temple Mount all the time); but rather to Ehud Barak's offer to grant the Palestinians their very wish of an independent state on 99% of the territories with Jerusalem as its capital! Unable to co-exist with Israel, because of the same rejectionist philosophy that the Palestinian Authority, despite its public declarations, shares with its Islamofascist brethren, the response to a proposed two-state solution was the predictable bloodshed against hundreds of innocent Israeli men, women and children.
  
• Finally, the alleged "Jenin massacre", where the IDF at great risk to its safety fought dozens of jihadists in hand-to-hand combat in the casbah, was exposed by both UN and Palestinian sources to have been a fabricated media myth. Your declarations notwithstanding, I challenge you to find even a single instance where Palestinian civilians have been deliberately targeted by the IDF or one policy statement by the Israeli government that would endorse such killings. On the contrary, soldiers are periodically brought to trial in Israel when perceived individual violations do occur. In contrast, the murder of innocent Jews is the policy of the jihadist groups; those who commit such crimes, rather than being brought to trial, are exonerated and publicly lauded as "martyrs" with the great reward of 72 virgins in paradise.
  

Given these indisputable facts, your seeming ignorance of them precludes you from making any political commentary on the situation. In fact, in the opinion of many, an ignorance of these truths would debar you from political office entirely, particularly in a metropolitan city like London that has large Jewish and Moslem populations.

If, however, you are aware of these facts, your declaration equating the Likud with Hamas and the justification of Palestinian terror against Israeli civilians is nothing more than racial incitement. If that is the case, rather than occupying the mayoral seat of London, your place should be behind bars, where any criminal who foments the killing of innocent people belongs.

I hope that you, or some of your more responsible associates, will take the time to read this letter, and that you will reflect on the grievous error you have made. Your insidious statements demand nothing less than an immediate retraction and apology-- not only to the government of Israel but to all peace-loving peoples worldwide who eschew the ugly, murderous ideology of terrorism.

Sincerely,

MYB
PO Box 222
Bangalow NSW 2479
AUSTRALIA

The Ultimate Torture

Detainees Told FBI of Koran Desecration
Los Angeles Times

Well, there you have it: Gitmo detainees read Newsweeek - and if that 's not torture, what is?!