Jews who are misguidedly leading us away from peace.

Following Mike Pompeo’s declaration that Jews living in Judea & Samaria are not illegal, I read that Rabbi Rick Jacobs, who heads the American Reform Movement, disagrees with the US Secretary of State.

Inadvertently, Rabbi Jacobs is pushing the notion that it is fine for Muslims to live anywhere they like in the West Bank, but it is illegal for Jews to live in Judea & Samaria because this gets in the way of his vision for peace.

This notion is inherently anti-Semitic. It rejects the essence of Judaism and its connection to the land.

Irrespective of how this strange dichotomy between Rabbi Jacobs and the Secretary of State arose, I would like to urge Rabbi Jacobs to find his way back to reality and truth, and to bring his congregation with him, for they have all surely lost their way and wandered mistakenly into dark places where Jews have no place to tread.

A year ago, in an interview with The Times of Israel, Rabbi Jacobs said he intended for Reform Jewry to “double down” on Israel. How did he intend to do that exactly?

Rabbi Jacobs still promotes a two-state solution without being aware that this two-state solution is dead. It died years ago. It was killed by the Palestinians.

The Reform Movement protests the idea that Israel can annex strategically important territory that has always been Israeli and Jewish, like the Jordan Valley or parts of Judea & Samaria.

Years ago, Israelis were ready to give peace with the Palestinians a chance. Not anymore. Then, Israelis were like Rabbi Jacobs, naïve peace-makers, tired of war. Today, Israelis are realists. We experienced the evident truth of what the Palestinians are all about. And it is not peace. It is death. Dead Jews. Death to Israel.

Yet, people like Rabbi Jacobs are still trying to drag this dead two-state camel through burning Palestinian sand toward a distant oasis, an oasis called “peace.” What they fail to realize, through their fevered brow, addled by the heat of a region in constant conflict, that it is not an oasis but a fata morgana, a mirage of their own imagination. An image once shared by Israelis, but never by an obsessively anti-Semitic and rejectionist Palestinian leadership.

Those who do not strengthen Israel but wish to carve up the Jewish State at such a tremulous time, to reduce it to a rump and vulnerable state against an implacable enemy are not supporting Israel.  Rabbi Jacobs cut his connection to Keren Kayemet-The Jewish National Fund for buying land in Judea & Samaria.

I do not see young pro-Israel Reform activists joining with our affirmative Zionist students in facing down the Israel haters on campus.

I would relate to them, and to Rabbi Jacobs, the words of Menachem Begin when threatened by Joe Biden to surrender to Palestinian demands about building settlements, “I am not a Jew with trembling knees. I am a proud Jew with 3,700 years of civilized history. We will stand by our principles. We will defend them. And, when necessary, we will die for them again, with or without your aid.”

Zionism, Rabbi Jacobs, is a noble endeavor. It is moral and just. We do not steal land from anyone. We will not let others steal our land from us.

When Rabbi Jacobs called for strengthening the ties between his Reform Movement and Israel he meant strengthening the influence of the Reform Movement in Israel which is fine if that doesn’t mean weakening the affirmative Zionism that Israel needs more than ever today.

Rabbi Rick Jacobs continues to blame Israeli Jews for the ills of a vengeful Palestinian society.

To Rabbi Jacobs, it is the Jew living in Ariel that is causing Palestinians to go hunting for vulnerable Jews to kill. For him, it is the Jew in Efrat that causes the imams, the Palestinian teachers, the political inciters, to inflame their people into killing Jews and to destroy the “Zionist entity.”

If only the Jew will pack up and leave, says Rabbi Jacobs, we will have peace.  He is wrong.

Which leads me to ask. What Judaism is Rabbi Jacobs selling? Is there anything in his brand of Judaism that feels a connection to the biblical call to honor and defend the land?

How much more shall we give, rabbi?  To 1967 lines, where Hamas terrorists will be looking down on Ben Gurion Airport and Tel Aviv, lying in the lowland below their feet? To seventy yards from the main north-south arterial highway that borders Tulkarm, where Hamas suicide bombers came to blow us up in Netanya at Pesach as we prayed in the Park Hotel, as we bought our groceries in our local shuk, as my wife went to meet a friend in the main shopping mall where a two suicide bombers were waiting?

How much more land, rabbi? How much more before you realize you were wrong with your two-state fantasy, a fantasy that leaves us dead?

Did you applaud when Arik Sharon pulled nine thousand Jews out of the Gaza Strip? Are you happy now that Hamas and Islamic Jihad are stockpiling more deadly rockets and missiles?

On which land, rabbi, will you make your final stand?

I have a message of hope for Rabbi Jacobs. There are solutions for peace, but they do not include your failed two-state non-solution. Get over it, Rabbi. Sit your week of Shiva for something that will never be, and join us in creating a better future for Jews and Arabs in the Middle East.

Simply put, peaceniks like Rabbi Jacobs have to realize they have become fixated on a solution that neither camp of the Palestinian political divide have any intention of achieving. How many more warning signs have to be waved in front of their non-seeing eyes before they get real.

The Palestinians have no intention, ever, of living in peace alongside the Jewish State of Israel.

Not the corrupt kleptocracy of the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority in Ramallah. Not Hamas in the Gaza Strip, that is poised to usurp power in the West Bank as soon as Israel takes its hand off the security arrangements. Not Palestinian Islamic Jihad, an Iranian proxy that successfully launched over 400 rockets into Israeli civilian centers recently.

We all want peace, rabbi, but we will not get it by surrendering to the demands of our enemy and incrementally giving them more and more of our G-d-given land.

Think rabbi. Think! Maybe you can join us in planning a better future for Jew and Arab. One that begins by realizing that, to achieve it, we have to knock the props out of a dysfunctional Palestinian leadership. That we first need to dismantle the Palestinian political infrastructure that has become a violent monster, not a peace-partner.

Peace was only achieved to end World War Two by totally destroying Germany and Japan. Total victory was necessary in order to kill the obsessional enemy ideology by both warring regimes. It will only be by total victory that this perpetual stand-off that has caused fifty years of hopelessness and the continuation of the obsessional anti-Semitic ideology of our twin-headed Palestinian political-terror enemy will be defeated. It needs to be totally dismantled and replaced by technocrats, businessmen and leaders who really do want to deliver peace and prosperity.

First the rotten infrastructure that has caused so much grief, injury and death needs to be removed completely. It may take a generation but, without it, a better future cannot take root.

Even the anticipated Trump economic plan will not work without this painful, but essential, first step, rabbi.

Would you give a state in Syria to the surviving ISIS terrorists? I don’t think so. If the Palestinians end up with less than a state, so be it. They lost that right to a fully-fledged state, if ever they had it, following their fifty-year terror campaign. Why would we trust them now?

Maybe they should start thinking of an Arab confederacy. It worked for the United Arab Emirates.

Ideas, rabbi. Fresh ideas. New ideas. Think out of the box, because your old ideas are dead.

Those who forgot the errors of the past, or who are not aware of them, are carrying these errors on their backs today. They are the international diplomatic world, impotent to reform their ideas. Stuck in a fifty-year-old mantra that is not working.

They are the professional radical anti-Semites and Israel haters who are convincing their masters to ignore Palestinian crimes and abuses and solely punish Israel. 

They are well-meaning, but sadly mistaken, people like Rabbi Jacobs, J-Street, Jewish Voices for Palestine, who got lost in the hate-filled woods and who need to find their GPS and return to their Jewish roots.

They may not be aware of it, though many do, but, basically, they are pushing a world without Israel.

They are dooming us to repeat those errors. And, with them, we will never achieve peace.

Barry Shaw is an affirmative and unapologetic Zionist. He is also the International Public Diplomacy Director at the Israel Institute for Strategic Studies. He is also the author of ‘Fighting Hamas, BDS and Anti-Semitism.’

Pompeo’s Declaration May Launch a New Reality in the Middle East.

US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, announced on November 18, that he was reversing a longstanding and offensive State Department legal opinion that Israelis living in Judea & Samaria were there illegally.

A brief historical review of US policy on the legality of what are called “settlements” has, according to Pompeo, “been inconsistent over decades.”

In 1978, the Carter administration decided that the establishment of Jewish civilian homes was inconsistent with international law but, three years later, President Reagan reversed that stance.

Although much of the international diplomatic community, based at the biased United Nations and in the compliant European Union, were advancing the false notion that Jews living in Judea & Samaria were inherently in breach of international law, a close examination of such laws both civil and military make a mockery of this project designed to advance a Palestinian cause and at a cost to Israeli rights and legitimacy.

The final act of betrayal was Obama’s Israeli back-stabbing when he enabled the UN Security Council to pass UN Resolution 2334 in December 2016 which declared that settlement activity constituted a “flagrant violation” of international law and had “no legal validity.”

The thought that Jews, desiring to live in their ancient land of Judea, have no legal right to be there is morally, legally, historically, immoral and abhorrent. It is also deeply and anti-semitically offensive.

Pompeo’s declaration reverses Obama’s final act of Israeli back-stabbing. His position is sure to be challenged.

Pompeo’s statement resulted from a year-long review of international law by the State Department’s legal office and after consultations with various overseas governments to hear their opinions.

Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, greeted the Secretary of State’s announcement by saying, “This policy reflects a historical truth – that the Jewish people are not foreign colonialists in Judea & Samaria. In fact, we are called Jews because we are the people of Judea.”

The State Department’s position will bring truth and clarity, two missing virtues, to the fog of smoke and mirrors that have been allowed to be reflected onto the Israel-Palestinian conflict  by many in the international community who sided with the aggressive, rejectionist, divided Palestinian camp, a camp that has rejected any permanent peace with Israel going back to Yasser Arafat deceptively signing an agreement with Israel on Bill Clinton’s White House lawn in 1993. He returned from his enforced exile in Tunis to reopen a bloody war of terror and annihilation against Jews and the Jewish State in what became known as the first and second Intifadas.

At the White House and from the podium of the United Nations, Arafat promised us “peace of the brave.” Truth is, he delivered us “peace of the grave.”

I know. I became the co-founder of the Netanya Terror Victims Organization when his suicide bombers, car bombers and gunmen brought their terrorist war into my hometown of Netanya, killing dozens, injuring hundreds, of my fellow citizens.

It is time for some historical truth.

Immediately upon the United Nations voting on the establishment on a National Homeland for the Jewish People in Israel, Arab armies launched a war of annihilation against the nascent and defenseless state.

The Jordanian army crossed the River Jordan as part of that war of aggression against the newly-born State of Israel. They captured much of Judea & Samaria and parts of Jerusalem, including the Old City.

During the period 1948 to 1967, they occupied what they called “the West Bank,” meaning the west bank of the River Jordan.

During that period, there were no protests about Jordan “illegally occupying Palestinian land” for the simple reason there were no Palestinian people. There were Arabs, and the Jews had fled, or been killed. There were no protests in the streets or in the United Nations on behalf of “the Palestinian people” because such an entity did not exist.

Then in 1967, Arab nations decided to advance the annihilation of the Jewish state to the next phase by launching yet another war of aggression. Jordan joined in that battle expecting to progress deeper into Israel.  To their shock, they discovered a resolute Jewish army determined to defend themselves with might and resolution. The result was that the Jordanian army was reeled back over the Jordan River, the territories of Judea & Samaria were regained by Israel, and Jerusalem was once again liberated by the Israeli army.

According to the laws of armed conflict, if a nation, fighting a defensive war (Israel) against an aggressive nation (Jordan), captures territory that is essential for its future defense and security, it is permitted to retain such land pending an acceptable, permanent, and guaranteed peace agreement between the two sides.

Notice nowhere in this strategic issue does the name “Palestine” appear.

Palestine only truly began to be promoted by the Arab nations with the realization that they were incapable of defeating Israel through conventional warfare. 

The advent of the next stage of their attempt to make Israel disappear came with the emergence of an Egyptian-born revolutionary called Yasser Arafat who wrapped himself in the mantle of Palestine.

Arafat emerged from the nurturing and indoctrination of a refugee from Nazi Germany, namely Haj Amin al-Husseini, who had served with Adolph Hitler to develop the strategy for the Final Solution to the Jewish Problem in the Middle East.

Al-Husseini had led bloody riots against Jews in Jerusalem, pre-state Palestine, even in Iraq in the deadly anti-Jewish pogroms known as “the Farhud,” before fleeing the British and escaping to Berlin and joined with Hitler. Al-Husseini recruited and trained Muslim troops under the command of their Nazi officers.

The advance of the Russian army into Berlin caused the Arab Jew-hater to flee Germany for Egypt where he was hosted and protected by a close relative of the young Arafat who fell under his influence.

From such hateful and violent beginnings, the Palestinian cause was born. It continues to today. The desire remains the same. The eventual eradication of Israel as the national homeland of the Jewish people.

Despite this animus against Israel, Israel has genuinely attempted to make peace with its neighbors and others further afield in the wider Middle East.

Israel made bold peace agreements with Egypt and Jordan which have held, even though their populations have not been conditioned to accept the presence of Israel in their midst.

It has made agreements and major concessions to the Palestinians that have not been reciprocated in any meaningful and permanent way, not by the PLO-led Palestinian Authority, and certainly not by Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood chapter of Palestinian society.

Neither side of the Palestinian political divide have conditioned their people to accept and agree to the notion of living in peace, prosperity, and in cooperation with the Jewish State. This, to them, remains an anathema unable to be swallowed.

This is the core, the real obstacle to peace and progress.

Until this basic truth is recognized and accepted by a delusional diplomatic world no progress to peace can be achieved.

It will take decades before a rational and pragmatic Palestinian leadership will emerge, if ever. Until that time, alternatives to a failed two-state notion can be put on hold. The impending Trump Middle East Economic Future plan may concentrate Palestinian minds on building a prosperous society, rather than continuing to incite violence and launch rockets in a vain hope of reducing Israel’s territory and will to survive. 

Both Israelis and Palestinians can get on with their lives wherever they are, and let’s see what emerges in the years ahead.

Israelis have no stomach to govern Ramallah, Nablus. Tulkarm. The Gaza Strip.

For Palestinians, the expectation they can march through Israel must die. They have lost the right to demand a state instead of Israel. They will have to adjust to something less than that, different to that. It may be a confederation with other nations. Size will not be important. There are small and very wealthy nations in Europe. Think Monaco. Think Lichtenstein. Think Luxembourg.  There are tiny, wealthy, nations in the Middle East. Think Kuwait. Think Dubai Think Abu Dhabi. Think United Arab Emirates.

Think this, and forget about two-states. That died a long time ago. The Palestinians killed it.

Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo’s, recent declaration may have launched a process that will take us to a new reality in the Middle East.

Barry Shaw is the International Public Diplomacy Director at the Israel Institute for Strategic Studies.  He is the author of ‘Fighting Hamas, BDS, and Anti-Semitism,’ and ‘1917 From Palestine to the Land of Israel.’

Watch the Impeachment shoe of Marie Yovanovitch fall.

Watch the Impeachment shoe of Marie Yovanovitch fall.

Some facts to bear in mind.

Following the failure of the two witnesses on Day One of the Schiff Impeachment Star Chamber to land a blow on the US President, the “star” performer on Day Two promises to be the Obama-appointed US Ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch.

Yovanovitch was an enabler of the DNC’s attempts in Kiev to access Ukrainian officials to dig up dirt on candidate Trump prior to the 2016 election. They ended up with zero dirt of Trump but moved to target anyone in Trump’s inner campaign circle.

Yovanovitch also protected George Soros’s meddling in the Ukraine via his faux “anti-corruption” NGO, Anti-Corruption Action Center.  A Soros representative told John Solomon that the anticorruption group was a Trojan Horse in advance of Soros’s intention to invest a billion dollars in the Ukraine.

George Kent, the bow-tied witness on Day One of the Hearing, actually signed a letter to Yuriy Stolyarchuk, the Ukrainian Deputy Prosecutor General, dated April 4, 2016, in which he spoke about the financial assistance for joint US projects with the Prosecutor General’s office more than hinted for them to lay off their investigation into Soros’s NGO.

“The investigation into the actions of the Anti-Corruption Action Center, based on the assistance they have received from us, is similarly misplaced.”  Get the hint?

As John Solomon of The Hill exposed. Yovanovitch gave a speech on March 5, 2019, in which she called for Ukraine’s special anticorruption prosecutor to be removed, and the Ukrainian media went wild that a US official was interfering in their internal affairs. Under Secretary of State, David Hale, got peppered with questions whether her actions and statements violated international code of behavior under the Geneva Convention.

Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, was alerted to Yovanovitch’s anti-Trump statements by a senior Congress member. It was echoed by Republican lawmaker.

In mid-March, 2016, the new Ukraine Chief Prosecutor, Yuri Lutsenko, told John Solomon, that in his first meeting with Ambassador Yovanovitch, she gave him the names of several Ukrainians she did not want investigated and prosecuted!  This was a very strange request for a foreign ambassador to ask of a host country.

John Solomon received confirmation from a Ukrainian official who confirmed that, “at least some of the names are those that US Embassy Kiev raised with the General Prosecutor because we were concerned about retribution and unfair treatment of Ukrainians viewed as favorable to the United States.”

In other words, the State Department was confirming that its own embassy under Yovanovitch had engaged in pressure on Ukrainian prosecutors to drop certain cases and investigations, as the new prosecutor was admitting.

This ties in with the letter signed by George Kent, the Democrats prime witness, that demanded the Ukrainian prosecutor drop the case against Soros’s NGO.

The bow-tied Kent had also demanded that the Ukrainian prosecutor drop investigations into Sergey Leschenko, a Ukrainian parliamentarian, and Artem Sytnyk, a senior law-enforcement official, who had assisted the Democratic National Committee during the 2016 US elections by divulging information about a former Trump campaign figure, Paul Manafort.

When pressed by the New York Times, Ukrainian prosecutor Lutsenko stood by his statement that Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch did provide him with names of individuals and groups she did not want investigating.

One final point. The writer has been told that Marie Yovanovitch denied a US entry visa to prosecutor Lutsenko to visit with the US Department of Justice to provide them with documents and information on this issue. I am still waiting for verification and confirmation on this point. I hope it will be brought up during her Impeachment cross examination by Republican lawmakers.

Barry Shaw,

Israel Institute for Strategic Studies.

Ahead of the Trump peace plan, some hard truths.

To any dispassionate observer of the Middle East, it is crystal clear that a so-called “Two-State Solution” between a once-complaint, democratic, Israel and the violent, rejectionist, two-headed Palestinian hydra is impossible.
Those who say there is no other sensible solution to this intractable problem between Arab and Jew have not been paying attention, or have rejected, numerous sensible alternatives that have been offered by various Israeli sources.
Soon we will witness the long-awaited proposals from the Trump Administration which will be seen as extensions to the “Two-State” failure.
Although most Israelis quietly hope that progress can be made, there is a singular lack of expectation.
This has nothing to do with Israeli rejection. On the contrary, history shows us that Israel proposes while Palestinians dismiss peace offers.
As a result, there is today a clear-eyed Israeli awareness that Palestinians are decades away from being pragmatic peacemakers, if at all. Fault lies with the absolute failure of the international community to address the problem of the Arab rejectionism of Israel on any piece of land, and the communities’ total failure to take any steps that would reform the duplicitous Palestinian leadership into genuine and practical peace partners.
This should have been done as a condition of their massive funding to the corrupt and wasteful administrations both in Ramallah and in Gaza.
No more pressure on Israel to make dangerous concessions to an adversary overtly or covertly determined to do away with Israel, piece by piece if necessary.
We went that route in the past. We will not be fooled a second time.
Accepting a Palestine means going to bed with Mahmoud Abbas and waking up in the morning with Hamas.
No thanks.
Arab nations could have persuaded the divided heads of a broken Palestinian political system to accept the presence of, and to work with, Israel for the betterment of their own people, but they didn’t.
Why didn’t they?
They failed to address the need to convince their own people that Israel will always be a part of the Middle East and accept that reality.  In truth, they couldn’t.
The fact is, they are afraid of their own people. And their own people hate Jews.
This is perpetuated by the incitement of their religious leaders and political hotheads that rant against Jews, particularly those Jews living in their midst – the Israelis.
This has made Arab rulers impotent, unwilling to go against the will of their people whose very core is filled with a basic anti-Semitic hatred of Jews.
This is the brutal honest truth of the Middle East. It has been that way for over a hundred years, and nothing has been done to put out this fire.
This, and this alone, is why peace is not possible between Israel and the Palestinians.

Barry Shaw, International Public Diplomacy Director, Israel Institute for Strategic Studies.
See my book ‘Fighting Hamas. BDS and Anti-Semitism.’

https://www.amazon.com/Fighting-Hamas-BDS-Anti-Semitism-violence/dp/1508595534/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=fighting+hamas%2Cbds+and+anti-semitism&qid=1573383561&sr=8-1