Former Israeli ambassador to Holy See: "people play the ostrich in the West" (regarding rising fundamentalism)

In an interview with the Catholic Herald, Israeli's former ambassador to the Holy See warns of an encroaching Islamic fundamentalism (January 9, 2009):

"In the last 12 to 15 years 85 per cent of worldwide terroristic attacks happened in moderate Muslim countries where extremist Muslims killed their own brothers in order to prevent any dialogue with the West. They want to overcome and rule those countries, but this is only phase number one.

"We cannot avoid the fact that many want to find the world living under the reign of Islam. Such is the goal of Osama Bin Laden and the Wahhabis, and Ahmadinejad of Iran and their proxies Hezbollah and Hamas.

"We're looking at a huge monster threatening the world's peace, not only for Israel. We're too small for them to deal with, the major threat is to Europe and the West. Because of a lack of interest and information people play the ostrich in the West and do not see the threat as something tangible and imminent.

The Israeli-Hamas Conflict - A Roundup

• 12-29-08: Hamas executes wounded Gazans charged with "collaborating with Israel":

  On Monday, Dr. Ashour was not the only official in charge. Armed Hamas militants in civilian clothes roamed the halls. Asked their function, they said it was to provide security. But there was internal bloodletting under way.

  In the fourth-floor orthopedic section, a woman in her late 20s asked a militant to let her see Saleh Hajoj, her 32-year-old husband. She was turned away and left the hospital. Fifteen minutes later, Mr. Hajoj was carried out by young men pretending to transfer him to another ward. As he lay on the stretcher, he was shot in the left side of the head.

  Mr. Hajoj, like five others killed at the hospital this way in 24 hours, was accused of collaboration with Israel. He had been in the central prison awaiting trial by Hamas judges; when Israel destroyed the prison on Sunday he and the others were transferred to the hospital. But their trials were short-circuited.

• 12-30-08: "A Fatah Friend Writes: I'm Supporting the Israeli Air Force" - Jeffrey Goldberg @ The Atlantic conveys the news by way of a Palestinian friend that Fatah has been assisting the Israelis by providing information on Hamas targets. (His friend is the subject of a book, Prisoners: A Story of Friendship and Terror -- the memoir of an American-bred Zionist and his 15-year friendship with a Palestinian insurgent).

• 01-01-09: The New York Times recently reported on Israel's targeting of tunnels used by Hamas to smuggle weapons, explosives and arms-making materials and the efforts the IDF is making to discriminate such tunnels from those used by Gazan civilians for economic purposes:

  Both Ahmeds are businessmen; they, too, have tunnels, through which they ship consumer goods like cigarettes and snacks, like the popular Egyptian potato chips called Chipsy and Crunchy, as well as larger products like generators, televisions and washing machines.

  “It’s the No. 1 economy here,” Hillal Ahmed said. “Dollars, pounds, shekels, it all comes from the tunnels.” He laughed and opened his wallet. “We work for dollars,” he said, showing four neatly folded $100 bills. ...

  Hamas, the residents said, controls other tunnels, conduits for guns, cement, explosives and fertilizers for explosives.

  Muhammad al-Zarb said that the Israelis somehow seemed to know which tunnels were commercial and which were run by Hamas, and that they seemed to be selective in their bombing. “If someone has a tunnel for Chipsy [snacks], it seems O.K.,” he said. “When a Hamas guy has a tunnel for weapons, they bomb it.”

• 01-02-09: The Conflict's Root Cause (Powerline). Only one side of the present conflict is raising its youth from birth to hate -- to desire nothing less but mass murder.

• 01-02-09: "Your mother is a whore! ... NUKE ISRAEL ... Go back to the ovens. You need a big oven. That is what you need ..." -- Pro-Hamas supporters enjoying their freedom of speech in the land of the free, in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Powerline.

• 01-05-09: Gaza priest's message at Mass for peace: 'We cry and nobody hears us', by Judith Sudilovsky. Catholic News Service:

  In a center pew of St. Catherine's [adjacent to the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, West Bank], Victor Zoughbi knelt in prayer.

  He told Catholic News Service after Mass he was praying "not just for the people in Gaza but also for those in Tel Aviv. Every (Israeli) soldier going into Gaza now has a mother who is sitting glued to the television with her heart in her throat. He who truly has God in his heart loves everybody."

  Zoughbi said he did not understand the purpose of Hamas' rockets, given their inaccuracy, and he emphasized the fact that there is only one Palestinian government headed by Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas. In June 2007, Hamas split with Abbas' Fatah movement and took control of the Gaza Strip. Abbas' government still controls the West Bank.

  "What are we fighting over -- for a piece of land? Take the land. In the end the land will swallow us all," he said, noting that, given the situation, he was not able to speak so freely with many of his friends and acquaintances lest his loyalty be called into question.

• 01-05-09: US couple in Israel using tub to protect kids against Hamas missiles, by Judith Sudilovsky. Catholic News Service:

  JERUSALEM (CNS) -- Americans Robin and Matthew Umberger, both 32, have been putting their three children to sleep each night in the bathtub of their home in Beersheba, Israel, to protect them against incoming Palestinian missiles.

  As the Israeli military operation in the Gaza Strip expanded, the militant Islamic group Hamas' resolve to hit Israeli targets continued and expanded, and for the first time Beersheba, Israel's fourth-largest city, became a target for incoming rockets, mortars and missiles.

  "The worst part is you never know when or where one will fall so we stay inside the house all day," Matthew Umberger, who is originally from Thayer, Kan., told Catholic News Service in a telephone interview. "The kids were afraid of the sirens at first but they have gotten used to it. It has been stressful for the kids. We are all tired."

  Robin Umberger said she told her children, ages 1-8, that some "bad people" wanted to hurt others but that God was taking care of their family.

  "I emphasized that when they are frightened they should pray for the kids who are in Gaza who are in danger and whose situation is worse than ours. It is very sad," said Robin Umberger, originally from Oklahoma.

  [...]

  Having experienced fear for his family for a few days, he said he can now begin to comprehend the experiences of Israelis in border communities like Sderot.

  "Your perspective changes a little when the missiles start landing in your backyard," he said.

• 01-06-09: How the U.N. Perpetuates the 'Refugee' Problem, by Natan Sharansky:

  Of course, it is easy to blame Hamas. It is they, after all, who deliberately put their weapons caches in mosques, their rocket launchers in schoolyards, and their command centers in hospitals -- all with the explicit goal of maximizing the tragedy of an Israeli response.

  Yet Hamas is not the only Palestinian group at fault. In 2005, shortly after the Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, I met with the chief of staff to the chairman of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas. My question to him: Now that we have uprooted thousands of Jews and empowered Gazans to be masters of their own fate, can we hope that within a year's time there will be fewer refugees in the camps? "Absolutely not," he said. "The refugees will be relocated only in the context of the final status [agreement]. How can we move them if we do not know where they will live? Maybe they will live in Israel."

  In withdrawing from Gaza, Israel made painful concessions for peace by forcibly removing Jews from their homes. And yet even the Palestinian Authority, the most moderate among Palestinian political groups, would not consider easing their own people's plight in the wake of Israel's compromise. This is because the suffering of the refugees is essential to their broader political struggle.

• The Israeli Embassy in London has established a blog, Aid2Gaza "which aims to give as much information as possible on all the international aid being sent into Gaza."

• 01-06-09: The Jerusalem Post reports that Hamas has set up an independent hospital in the Gaza Strip to treat its own wounded - and, according to Israeli estimates, is pilfering a significant portion of the medicine allowed into the Strip. Nonetheless, the Israeli Defense Ministry said it would continue faciliating the transfer of food and medical supplies to the people of Gaza.

• 01-07-09: This past Friday, the Hamas television show Pioneers of Tomorrow (a child-indoctrination version of "Sesame Street") depicted the bunny Assoud dying in a Gaza hospital after an Israeli attack.

  
  Assaud the Jew-eating Bunny was introduced to Gazan children in February 2008:

  The Pioneers of Tomorrow children’s series produced by Palestinian group Hamas and made famous by a Mickey Mouse-looking character declaring jihad on Israel and the US, introduced Assud the Bunny.

  Assud - who said in his first episode that he would “get rid of the Jews, Allah willing, and… will eat them up” - replaced his brother, Nahoul the Bee, according to the translation from the Middle East Media Research Institute.

  [...]In an interview with the program’s host, a young girl purportedly named Saraa Barhoum, Assud talked about becoming martyrdom.

  "We are all martyrdom-seekers, are we not, Saraa?” Assud said on the show.

  Saraa said: “Of course we are. We are all ready to sacrifice ourselves for the sake of our homeland. We will sacrifice our souls and everything we own for the homeland."

  Assoud will join Farfour, Hamas' copycat version of Mickey Mouse, in Paradise. (Farfour was "martyred" by an Israeli on May 11, 2007).

  Yes, I wish I was joking.

Proportionality and Discrimination in Israel's war against Hamas

There is an aspect to the debate over "proportionality" that seems to reduce it to a mathematical tit-for-tat -- as if the governing consideration was maintaining an equal body count among both parties. A good example is this post from Vox Nova:

I’m not sure I really care about anyone’s definition of proportion if it involves over 270 dead in 7 days to “protect” from 7 dead in two years from rocket attacks in a population over 5 million. As I would likewise condemn the daily shootings in Milwaukee, I will also go out on a limb and say bombing Milwaukee would be a gross injustice, be it by the State of Wisconsin or any other entity empowered to promote justice and the general welfare.

To which DarwinCatholic responds:

I guess the question would be: Does incompetance in achieving one’s aim (I think one can hardly imagine that it’s Hamas’s intent not to actually kill many people when firing thousands or rockets into Israel) make one less deserving of retaliation for an attack? It would tend to strike me that the fact that the faction which controls the government of Gaza is constantly launching rockets into Israel would make taking them down justifiable (though one can certainly question Israel’s chosen means) regardless of whether they generally achieved their goal of killing Israelis.

David Keyes' strikes a similar note in Commentary's blog "Contentions":

Israel is like a battered woman who speaks glowingly of the days when she is beaten lightly. Any sensible nation would recognize that the number killed from such attacks is utterly irrelevant. What matters is the number of people the terrorists intended to kill and the number of citizens living in fear. Six people were killed in the 1993 World Trade Center attack. But 60,000 would have been killed has the terrorists not been so dim-witted and miscalculated the proper size of the bomb. The question arises: Should the US have responded to six deaths or 60,000 deaths? The answer is patently clear. Stupidity, incompetence and the inability to shoot accurately does not absolve terrorists of responsibility for their intentions. Israel, in other words, should respond to every rocket as if it landed directly on a restaurant or school.

Again, since Israel left Gaza in 2005, giving Palestinians an opportunity to administer their own affairs, more than 6300 rockets and mortars have been fired by Gaza into Israel -- more than 3,000 in the past year alone. It is true that the body count inflicted by Hamas is minimal -- due to a combination of Israeli's speedy reaction to warnings of impending attacks; the poor accuracy and short range of some of its rockets (such as the home-made Qassam, lacking any guidance system); and the sheer good fortune (as when a rocket hit a synagogue in Sderot shortly after services ended).

Obviously, the low Israeli body count at present is certainly not for lack of trying on Hamas' part. On December 31st, Hamas fired 60 long-range Chinese rockets at Israel ("Danger Room" Wired.com 12/31/08):

These weren't short-range, home-made Qassam rockets that make up the bulk of Hamas' arsenal. Nor were they the longer-flying 122 mm Grad rockets, designed by the Soviets and made in Iran. Some of today's rockets flew an alarming 22 miles, hitting an empty school house in Beersheva, the unofficial capital of the Negev Desert region. And they were made in China.

The Israel military says that these Chinese rockets not only fly twice as far as the Grads, and four times further than the Qassams. They can "potentially cause much greater damage," too -- with "metal pallets that can spread out across a radius of up to 100 meters from the point of impact," according to YnetNews.

The presence of these rockets changes the equation significantly, placing in grave danger all communities within 24 miles of the Gaza strip.

In The Proportionality Trap" (Commentary 12/28/2008), J.G. Thayer examines some problems in deciding the "proportionate use of force" against a terrorist organization:

The notion that one should only respond to an attack with roughly the same force used by the aggressor is based on some fatally flawed presumptions.

The first is that the aggressor can be expected to respond in a rational manner. In this case, the presumption is that Hamas is actually interested in a peaceful solution and mutually beneficial situation. That is provably false. One need only look at Hamas’s charter and the group’s words and deeds to see that it is unabashedly dedicated to the absolute destruction of Israel.

The second fallacy is more subtle. The point of a “proportional” response is that it is intended to end the current hostilities and return to the status quo. And in this case, it implies that the status quo prior to the provocations was acceptable.

Hamas speaks of a “truce,” but their definition of a “truce” is one that no one else would recognize as valid. It consisted of a steady, constant bombardment of Israel by rocket and mortar shells. When they declared the truce to be at an end, they escalated the attacks, which in turn prompted Israel’s air strikes. Had Israel restrained itself to a “proportional” attack, then it would have been saying that the prior status quo — the rocket and mortar attacks reduced to one or two a day — was acceptable.

Thus far, those criticizing Israel have yet to offer a reasonable and practical suggestion as to how it can defend itself against Hamas' terror attacks.

In "Gaza and the Law of Armed Conflict", Michael Totten examines the behavior of Israel and Hamas in light of "The Laws of Armed Conflict" between civilized nations; namely, the idea of proportionality:

Proportionality, in short and according to the law, “prohibits the use of any kind or degree of force that exceeds that needed to accomplish the military objective.”

In other words, if a surgical strike is all that is needed to take out a Grad rocket launcher, carpet bombing the entire city or even the neighborhood isn’t allowed.

Hamas is still firing rockets; therefore, the IDF is not using more force than necessary to disrupt the firing of rockets. Israel, arguably, is using less force than necessary. And the IDF, unlike Hamas, does what it can to minimize injury to civilians. Militants often operate against Israel from civilian areas,” the Associated Press reported last week. “Late Saturday, thousands of Gazans received Arabic-language cell-phone messages from the Israeli military, urging them to leave homes where militants might have stashed weapons.” Israeli commanders are even warning individual Hamas leaders that their homes are on the target list so they can vacate the premises in advance.

and discrimination in the selection of targets:

Distinction, according to the Law of Armed Conflict, “means discriminating between lawful combatant targets and noncombatant targets such as civilians, civilian property, POWs, and wounded personnel who are out of combat. The central idea of distinction is to only engage valid military targets. An indiscriminate attack is one that strikes military objectives and civilians or civilian objects without distinction. Distinction requires defenders to separate military objects from civilian objects to the maximum extent feasible. Therefore, it would be inappropriate to locate a hospital or POW camp next to an ammunition factory.”

Hamas violates this doctrine in two ways at once. Its fighters launch Qassam, Katyusha, and Grad rockets into Israeli civilian areas, and they fire those rockets from inside Palestinian civilian areas. Both are prohibited by the Law of Armed Conflict.

The law does not, however, prohibit Israel from striking legitimate military targets in civilian areas. “Although civilians may not be made the object of a direct attack, the LOAC recognizes that a military target need not be spared because its destruction may cause collateral damage that results in the unintended death or injury to civilians or damage to their property.”

Curiously, the majority of the commentary on the war has focused not so much on Hamas' ongoing terrorist attacks on Israeli towns (with the intent of killing and injuring civilians and promoting terror -- and with the stated intent of obliterating the Jewish state) as the measures Israel is taking in self-defense.

Probably the most substantial treatment of this issue that I've seen to date is the recent paper, International Law and Fighting in Gaza, by Justus Reid Weiner and Avi Bell (Jerusalem Center for Global Affairs).

Additional News & Commentary

• Moral Clarity in Gaza, by Charles Krauthammer. Washington Post January 2, 2009. "At war today in Gaza, one combatant is committed to causing the most civilian pain and suffering on both sides. The other combatant is committed to saving as many lives as possible -- also on both sides."
• Hard Truths About the Conflict, by Robert J. Leiber. Washington Post January 1, 2008:

  ... what we are witnessing is not a "cycle" of violence. The IDF airstrikes are a reaction to the unrelenting rocket and mortar attacks against the Jewish state. Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005 in the hope that the Palestinians would use the opportunity to prepare for an eventual agreement and a two-state solution in which they would live side by side in peace with Israel. Since then, there have been more than 3,500 such attacks aimed at areas of southern Israel, including over 200 launches since Dec. 19, after Hamas chose not to extend a six-month truce. The expanding range of these missiles now covers an area populated by as many as 700,000 Israelis.

Michael Sean Winters on "The War in Gaza"

... The Israeli action has not moved the Arab governments in the region to defend Hamas. Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia have nearly as great an interest in Israel’s defeating the terrorists as Israel does. They know that there is no negotiating with these fanatics even while they overlook their own complicity in stoking the anti-Israeli fires over the years.

Of course, there remains one very simple way to break the cycle of violence in the Mideast: The Palestinians must unequivocally accept Israel’s right to exist and abandon their hopes for turning back the clock to 1966. As long as the Palestinians insist on half of Jerusalem, they will never have complete control of Nablus. And until their universities stop being recruiting grounds for terrorists, those of us who live in countries that insisted on the unconditional surrender of Nazi Germany should be careful about condemning Israel.

We all want to break the circle of violence. But, Pope Benedict XVI, perhaps more than most, knows the nasty consequences of mixing fanatic ideology with politics for he witnessed those consequences as a young man. Hamas and its allies bring eschatology where Hitler brought the Occult mixed with Wagnerian Germanic mythology, but the effects are the same: a regime that is a curse for its own people and its neighbors. Peace can only come when Hamas is defeated.

The War in Gaza America 12/30/08

Thoughts on the Israel's War with Hamas

On December 27th, 2008, Israel launched a series of air strikes on Hamas training camps, headquarters, weapons storehouses, underground missile silos and command-and-control centers in Gaza -- the start of an open-ended offensive to stem the increasing barrage of rocket-attacks that have plagued Southern Israel in the past months.

Israeli ambassador to the UN Gabriela Shaleb defended the operation:

"Israel is taking the necessary military action in order to protect its citizens from ongoing terrorist attacks originating from the Gaza Strip and carried out by Hamas and other terrorist organizations," Shalev said, adding that Hamas "holds the sole responsibility for the latest events."

Israel, she continued, "has exhausted all means and efforts to reach and maintain quiet and to respect the state of calm… Israel's response is aimed solely against the terrorists and their infrastructures in the Gaza Strip. It is not intended against the civilian population. Israel is committed to prevent a humanitarian crisis."

Shalev asserted that "No country would allow continuous rocketing of its civilian population without taking the necessary actions to stop it."

Commenting on the three-day air assault by Israel on Hamas, Deal Hudson states "Bombing Gaza Won't Make Israel Safer". It's a good post and, if anything, certainly jeopardizes Hudson's standing as a member of the cabal of "Catholic neocons" beholden to Israel and the Republican Party (see Robert Sungenis and other tirades from the fringe-right). That said, I wish to register some thoughts in reaction, both to Hudson and our fellow critics at Vox Nova:

5 Dead at Chabad House in Mumbai

Five hostages have been found murdered at the Chabad House in Mumbai, including Rabbi Gavriel Noach Holtzberg, and his wife, Rivka -- as PowerLine blog reports, coverage by the Western media leaves something to be desired:

From the start British and American coverage concentrated on the hotels with stress of the targeting of British and Americans. The Jewish target was ignored until day two and day three. The two luxury hotels were selected by the terrorists because they are occupied by tourists. People who escaped from the hotels claimed that the terrorists asked for British and Americans. However, they were selected because they were foreigners.

Nariman House was selected by the terrorists because the Chabad building was a specific Jewish target that also included Israelis. Let me make this clear. Chabad House was the only target chosen by the terrorists in Mumbai because of its specific character - Jewish and Israeli. Hostages in Chabad House were killed because they were Jewish and Israeli.

Yet this terror venue was largely ignored by most of the Western media until the final day. We, in Israel, were able to follow events there because of the involvement of the Israeli Foreign Ministry and the Israeli media. Information from these and other sources was essential for me to relay reports to many people in Britain and the States who were unaware that Jews or Israelis were deliberate terror targets in Mumbai. When revealed, the final story of Chabad House will be tragic yet not properly covered by the world's media.

• Brooklyn Couple Killed in Attacks New York Times November 28, 2008:

  In a news conference broadcast Friday on Israeli radio, Tzipi Livni, Israel’s foreign minister said: “We know that the targets there that were sought out by the terrorists were Jewish and Israeli targets as well as targets that are perceived as Western targets — American and British.”

  She added: “We need to understand that there’s a world here, our world, that has been attacked. And it doesn’t matter if it’s happened in India or somewhere else. We have here radical Islamic elements who do not accept either our existence or the values of the Western world. And only when incidents of this sort occur is it suddenly understood from conversations with leaders from around the entire world that we are actually party to the same battle.”

• Slain Rabbi's only concern was helping Jews away from home Reuters. November 28, 2008:

  "After he got married he was looking to make an impact in the world, in the Jewish world, and in his case reach out to people who are really, really far away both literally and spiritually from their roots," said Rabbi Berel Wolvovsky of Maryland, a childhood friend of Gavriel Holtzberg.

  "His fears were not fears of terrorism. His fears were of maybe not being able to help as many people as he'd like."

Our prayers go out to the family of Rabbi Hertzberg and his wife, and all the victims -- let the world recognize that we all face a common enemy in this 'long war".

Pope Benedict XVI to visit Israel in 2009?

A Vatican spokesman has confirmed that the Vatican and Israel are considering a papal trip to the Holy Land in 2009 (Zenit News Service):

Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, director of the Vatican press office, responded today to a report from an Israeli newspaper that Benedict XVI could visit the Holy Land next year.

The spokesman's brief statement was: "I can confirm that contacts exist at a diplomatic level between the Holy See and Israel to study the possibility of a trip by the Pope to the Holy Land next year."

Why "Yahweh" Isn't Used in Catholic Liturgy

Why "Yahweh" Isn't Used in Catholic Liturgy - prohibition has its roots in Jewish tradition. Zenit News interviews Father Michel Remaud, director of the Albert Decourtray Institute, a Christian institute of Jewish studies and Hebrew literature.

Rabbi becomes first Jew to address a Synod of Catholic Bishops

Shear-Yashuv Cohen, the Grand Rabbi of Haifa, on Monday became the first Jew to address a synod of Catholic bishops at the at the Second General Congregation of the Bishops’ synod on the Bible Catholic News Agency reports:

Calling the fact of his presence “very meaningful,” “a signal of hope,” and “a message of love,” he discussed support for Israel before addressing the praise of God, prayer, and Jewish habits of sermon writing.

Rabbi Cohen, the co-president of a commission for dialogue between the Vatican and Israel, added: “There is a long, hard and painful history of the relationship between our people, our faith and the Catholic Church leadership and followers, a history of blood and tears,” Agence France Presse reports.

The rabbi then alluded to the anti-Israel remarks of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad before the U.N. General Assembly last month, saying Israelis felt “deep shock at the terrible and vicious words of the president of a certain state in the Middle East in his speech.”

Speaking to the synod, Rabbi Cohen added: “We hope to get your help as religious leaders ... to protect, defend and save Israel ... from the hands of its enemies.”

• Here is the original English-language text delivered Monday by Shear Yashuv Cohen, chief rabbi of Haifa, to the world Synod of Bishops on "The Word of God in the Life and Mission of the Church," under way in the Vatican through Oct. 26.

Pope Benedict XVI: to be anti-Semitic is to be anti-Christian

By her very nature the Catholic Church feels obliged to respect the Covenant made by the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Indeed, the Church herself is situated within the eternal Covenant of the Almighty, whose plans are immutable, and she respects the children of the Promise, the children of the Covenant, as her beloved brothers and sisters in the faith. She compellingly repeats, through my voice, the words of the great Pope Pius XI, my beloved predecessor: Spiritually, we are Semites (Allocution to the Belgian Pilgrims, 16 September 1938). The Church therefore is opposed to every form of anti-Semitism, which can never be theologically justified. The theologian Henri de Lubac, in a time of darkness, as Pius XII (Summi Pontificatus, 10 October 1939) described it, added that to be anti-Semitic also signifies being anti-Christian (cf. Un nuovo fronte religioso in: Israele e la Fede Cristiana [1942]). Once again I feel the duty to pay heartfelt recognition to those who have died unjustly and to those that have dedicated themselves to assure that the names of these victims may always be remembered. God does not forget!

-- Meeting with representatives of the Jewish community Apostolic Journey to France (September 12, 2008)

"1948, Israel and the Palestinians"

1948, Israel and the Palestinians, by Efraim Karsh, head of Mediterranean Studies at King's College, University of London. Web-exclusive from Commentary Magazine.

According to which, the declassification of millions of documents from the period of the British Mandate (1920-1948) and Israel’s early days refutes the claim of premeditated dispossession and the consequent creation of the longstanding Palestinian “refugee problem” by Israel.

Truce? No truce? -- Boy, that was quick.

• Previous cease-fires with Palestinians paint a bleak picture by Abe Selig. Jerusalem Post June 18, 2008:

  Aiming to end months of bitter clashes between the IDF and Hamas terrorists in Gaza, a fragile truce has been formally recognized between both Israel and the Hamas-led government there, in which rocket attacks on Israel will stop and Israel will ease its blockade of the Gaza Strip.

  But a look at previous tahadiyehs (the Arabic term meaning "period of calm" that Hamas uses for its informal cease-fires) casts doubt on the possibility of a cessation of violence and the likelihood of this latest truce holding at all.

• According to Senior Defense Ministry Official Amos Gilad, one of the conditions of the truce was a cessation to weapons smuggling by Hamas (Ynet News June 19, 2008):

  Gilad described the conditions according to which the terror organizations were to be judged during the ceasefire. "We need a total ceasefire – all included. If tomorrow morning one single rocket is fired, it will be a violation of the agreement. There is no room for interpretation, and no mediating body is needed. We will not accept the firing of even one Qassam.

  "Egypt, on its side, is committed to preventing the smuggling activity from Gaza. It's simple; Egypt has a border with Gaza, through which weapons and terrorists are smuggled. Smuggling is a serious violation of the terms. Any such infraction will lead to a change in Israel's stance from the way in which it was presented to the Egyptians," he said.

  they've already broken it.

• Rockets hit Israel, breaking Hamas truce International Herald Tribune June 25, 2008:

  JERUSALEM: Three Qassam rockets fired from Gaza on Tuesday struck the Israeli border town of Sderot and its environs, causing no serious injuries but constituting the first serious breach of a five-day-old truce between Israel and Hamas, the Islamic group that controls Gaza.

Latin patriarch Fouad Twal: "it’s time to put an end to the Wall"

According to Vatican Radio, the newly appointed Latin Patriarch Fouad Twal cited "freedom of movement for priests and religious between these regions is a primary pastoral concern":

“We receive a lot of help and we are grateful but at the same time we say we need more. What we need is peace. We don’t only [want] to be a begging Church, we don’t want to be beggars with a licence. I don’t like this. We need a political horizon, it’s time to put an end to the Wall, the Checkpoints, it’s time for a Palestinian State, it’s time for an end to our problems with visa’s. The majority of our priests, nuns, schools, families are in Jordan. We need a link to Jordan we need to be able to move with freedom and liberty for our pastoral work. I am not speaking about politics, let’s leave politics to the politicians, I am a bishop, we want to move for our pastoral work and we are handicapped”.

"Time to put an end to the Wall"? -- Granted that freedom for clergy and religious is a legitimate concern in the administration of their pastoral duties, it is unfortunate that the Archbishop gives little thought to the welfare of those for whom "The Wall" and the "Checkpoints" were established:

Before the construction of the fence, and in many places where it has not yet been completed, a terrorist need only walk across an invisible line to cross from the West Bank into Israel. No barriers of any kind exist, so it is easy to see how a barrier, no matter how imperfect, won't at least make the terrorists' job more difficult. Approximately 75 percent ofthe suicide bombers who attacked targets inside Israel came from across the border where the first phase of the fence was built.

During the 34 months from the beginning of the violence in September 2000 until the construction of the first continuous segment of the security fence at the end of July 2003, Samaria-based terrorists carried out 73 attacks in which 293 Israelis were killed and 1950 wounded. In the 11 months between the erection of the first segment at the beginning of August 2003 and the end of June 2004, only three attacks were successful, and all three occurred in the first half of 2003.

Since construction of the fence began, the number of attacks has declined by more than 90%. The number of Israelis murdered and wounded has decreased by more than 70% and 85%, respectively, after erection of the fence.

Even the Palestinian terrorists have admitted the fence is a deterrent. On November 11, 2006, Islamic Jihad leader Abdallah Ramadan Shalah said on Al-Manar TV the terrorist organizations had every intention of continuing suicide bombing attacks, but that their timing and the possibility of implementing them from the West Bank depended on other factors. “For example,” he said, “there is the separation fence, which is an obstacle to the resistance, and if it were not there the situation would be entirely different.”

Source: Israel’s Security Fence by Mitchell Bard.

In 2008, Palestinian Islamic Jihad leader Ramadan Abdallah Shalah was interviewed in Damascus by the Qatari newspaper Al-Sharq, and likewise admitted to the effectiveness of the security fence in impeding terrorist attacks:

He said that the second intifada was currently characterized by rocket fire, which had replaced the previous stage of suicide bombing attacks. That, he said, was because the enemy [i.e., Israel ] had found ways and means to protect itself from such attacks: “… For example, they built a separation fence in the West Bank . We do not deny that it limits the ability of the resistance [i.e., the terrorist organizations] to arrive deep within [Israeli territory] to carry out suicide bombing attacks , but the resistance has not surrendered or become helpless, and is looking for other ways to cope with the requirements of every stage [of the intifada]…” (Al-Sharq, March 23, 2008 ).

Honestly, I expect the Wall will come down when Israel's enemies decide to abandon their suicide attacks.

Archbishop Fouad Twal appointed new Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem

Archbishop Fouad Twal is the new Latin patriarch of Jerusalem AsiaNews.it June 21, 2008:

Vatican City (AsiaNews) - As of today, Archbishop Fouad Twal is the new Latin patriarch of Jerusalem. Benedict XVI has accepted the resignation presented by His Beatitude Michel Sabbah, whose coadjutor Archbishop Twal has been since 2005.

The new patriarch was born in Madaba, in Jordan, on October 23, 1940. In October of 1959, he entered the major seminary of Beit-Jala, and was ordained a priest on June 29, 1966. In September of 1972, he began studies in canon law at the Pontifical Lateran University, and in October of 1974 he entered the ecclesiastical Pontifical Academy. In 1975, he received his degree in canon law.

From 1977 to 1992, he served as a diplomat at the apostolic nunciature of Honduras, the council for public affairs at the Vatican secretariat of state, the apostolic nunciature in Germany, and the apostolic nunciature in Peru.

On May 30, 1992, he was appointed bishop of Tunis, and was ordained on July 22 of the same year. On May 31, 1995, he was made archbishop. He has also been president of the Regional Episcopal Conference of North Africa (CERNA). On September 8, 2005, Benedict XVI appointed him coadjutor for the Patriarchate of Jerusalem of the Latins.

Related

• Msgr. Fouad Twal: “I want to sow the joy of living” - Msgr. Fouad Twal was interviewed by Marie-Armelle Beaulieu (Custody of the Holy Land).

Holocaust Survivors meet with Benedict XVI, convey thanks to the Church for saving their lives

Survivors of the Holocaust met with Pope Benedict XVI to convey their gratitude to the Church for saving their lives. Four members of the Pave the Way Foundation met with the Pope this past week -- Zenit News Service reports (June 18, 2008):

Gary Krupp, president of that foundation, told ZENIT: "The Jewish survivors were all very grateful for the opportunity to greet the Pope in German and Italian and to thank him for the intervention of the Roman Catholic Church for saving their lives during World War II."

One of the survivors, Ursala Selig, was saved by Monsignor Beniamino Schivo, in those years rector of a seminary in Città di Castello, Italia, and now 97 years old. The monsignor saved Selig along with her mother and father, by shuttling them around to keep them safe, Krupp recounted.

"She spoke of her and her mother dressing like nuns and staying in a convent," Krupp said. "Her father was protected on a little farm eight hours away. She still speaks to Monsignor Schivo twice a week. He was supposed to come but is too frail."

Krupp also presented Benedict XVI with the symposium on the papacy of Pius XII the foundation is preparing for September.

The symposium, he said, aims to reveal "the true hidden story of the dark days of the Holocaust."

New York Times on Christians for a Fair Witness on the Middle East

Lawyer-Turned-Nun Rises to Israel’s Defense - New York Times profiles the founder of Christians for a Fair Witness:

Sister Ruth Lautt works from a single room on the 19th floor of the God Box. Such is the nickname for the Interchurch Center, the office building on Riverside Drive in Manhattan that is the closest thing to a Vatican for America’s mainline Protestant denominations. Indeed, Sister Ruth’s fellow tenants include agencies of the United Methodist Church, the United Church of Christ and the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).

Wearing the tapered suits left over from an earlier career in law and the crucifix of her more recent life as a Roman Catholic nun, Sister Ruth cuts an inconspicuous figure at the elevator bank. And on many of the issues that animate the mainline churches — ecumenical outreach, social justice — she makes a perfectly companionable neighbor. On the subject of Israel, however, she qualifies as something more like the enemy within.

Through the organization she founded three years ago, Christians for Fair Witness on the Middle East, Sister Ruth has frequently and sharply clashed with the very denominations housed under the God Box’s roof. When they have proposed divestment from Israel or more generally condemned its actions against Palestinians, she has fought against those positions, vociferously speaking out for Israel’s right to self-defense and security.

In the rancorous and relentless debate on the Middle East conflict, Sister Ruth stands as a sui generis player. She has little contact with Jewish advocacy groups, none with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee lobby. She disassociates herself from Christian Zionists of the theological and political right. Even while defending Israel’s defensive measures, including the separation barrier, she openly criticizes its occupation of the West Bank and laments Palestinian suffering.

[...]

Little in Sister Ruth’s professional background anticipated her current cause. Before she joined the Dominican order in 1996, she had earned a law degree from New York University and worked at Skadden, Arps. Even after becoming a sister, she continued to litigate cases for a smaller firm on Long Island, close to the Dominican residence where she lived.

Sister Ruth did, however, earn a master’s degree in Jewish-Christian Studies from Seton Hall University in New Jersey, and participated in several ecumenical groups on Long Island.

While she said that she received a divine call to advocate for Israel, that call coincided with a rising tide of protests against Israel for sending its army back into the West Bank’s major cities after a rash of suicide bombings in early 2002. The criticism of Israel from liberal churches grew even greater with construction of the separation barrier, which for portions of its route crosses into Palestinian territory.

Sister Ruth made her first trip to Israel in 2003. (Since then she has returned five times, generally visiting the West Bank as well.) In December 2005, she incorporated Fair Witness and sent out its first news release.

Although the group has a board with Roman Catholic and Protestant members, the operation is essentially all Sister Ruth, all the time. She raises the money for its $120,000 annual budget. She assembled its database on the Israel-Palestine conflict and the positions of mainline Protestant groups. She leads Protestant delegations on study tours to the region — African-American clergy members will be going in August, Lutherans in November — and gives her historical analysis of Zionism and Israel to Christian audiences.

In a typical speech last November at Boston College, she commended the liberal churches for “a wholesome, Gospel-centered concern for Palestinian suffering, which is real,” and endorsed a two-state solution. But she also made the case for Israeli self-defense, even in the form of the separation barrier.

“I need to question how people feel they have the right in the name of peace and justice, to tell other people not to try to preserve their own lives,” she said at one point. “You’re not obligated to lay down and die.”

Catholics in Israel: an Interview with David Mark Neuhaus, SJ

Zenit News Service interviews Jesuit Father David Mark Neuhaus, secretary-general of the Hebrew-speaking Catholic Vicariate in Israel, known also as the the Association of St. James -- on the history, mission and challenges facing the Hebrew-speaking Catholic community in Israel:

Q: You say on your Web site that being a Hebrew-speaking Catholic community within a predominantly Jewish society is a new experience in the history of the Church. What led to the establishment of the Association of St. James?

Father Neuhaus: The Association of St. James that became the Hebrew-speaking Catholic Vicariate was officially established as a part of the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem in 1955. This was shortly after the establishment of the state of Israel. It was founded in order to serve the myriads of Catholics who had immigrated to Israel, often within mixed Jewish-Catholic families, and they came predominantly from Europe.

It was also founded as a Catholic presence within Jewish society to nurture a new type of relationship between Catholics and Jews. The new reality of a Jewish state with Hebrew as the official language rendered important the existence of a Catholic milieu in which Hebrew was used and spoken.

Among the founders of the Association were Jews who had become Catholics -- mostly in Europe -- and Catholics -- mostly from Europe -- who had a vocation to live in solidarity with the Jewish people in the state of Israel. Our founding fathers and mothers had a vision of a Hebrew-speaking Catholic community at home within the Jewish people in Israel and living its life of faith in profound dialogue and solidarity with the Jewish people.

Q: What new perspective does a Hebrew-speaking Catholic in the Holy Land have to offer?

Father Neuhaus: A Hebrew-speaking Catholic lives within the only Jewish society that constitutes a majority, where the rhythm of day-to-day life is established by Jewish religion, history and culture. For us, the universal Catholic reflection on the Jewish identity of Jesus and the Jewish roots of our faith is not just one element in our renewal after the Second Vatican Council. It is also part of our daily existence.

Dialogue with Jews here is not with a marginal minority but with the dominant majority. As part of our attempts to inculturate, we are challenged to integrate into our Catholic identity, into our liturgy and into our thinking, this daily encounter with Judaism and the Jewish people.

All of this takes place within the very land that is at the center of the biblical narrative, the land in which biblical Israel, her prophets and Our Lord Jesus walked, taught and lived. ...

Read more

Related

• Hebrew-Speaking Catholic Vicariate in Israel
• Dialogue in Jerusalem, by David M. Neuhaus. Addressing the question: How does the Jerusalem context influence dialogue between Jews and Catholics?

Why Do Palestinian Terrorist Groups Agree to Cease-Fires?

In the News

• Hamas: We'll accept truce for removing siege, by Kaled Abu Toameh. Jerusalem Post June 3, 2008.
• Israel and Egypt to resume talks on Gaza cease-fire Ha'aretz, Israel - May 24, 2008

Myth and Fact

“Palestinian terrorist groups agreed to a cease-fire to advance the peace process.”

FACT

In an effort to stop the nearly daily onslaught of rockets from Gaza, Israeli officials have discussed the possibility of a cease-fire with the Hamas terrorists bombarding the Israeli civilian population. Egypt and others have also tried to mediate a cessation of terror that would allow Israel to end its counterterror measures. Rather than agree to a simple cease-fire, however, Hamas, has engaged in verbal gymnastics to suggest it will adopt a policy that will, at best, offer a temporary respite while the organization continues to build up its arsenal to pursue its long-term goal of destroying Israel.

The latest example of this Hamas tactic is the proposal in May 2008 to accept a “tahdiyah,” or period of calm. Earlier, in June 2003, Islamic Jihad and Hamas agreed to a hudna in response to demands from then Palestinian Authority prime minister Mahmoud Abbas to stop their attacks on Israel so he could fulfill his obligations under the Middle East road map. The agreement was interpreted in the Western media as the declaration of a cease-fire, which was hailed as a step forward in the peace process. Violence continued after the supposed cease-fire, however, and Israeli intelligence found evidence the Palestinians exploited the situation to reorganize their forces. They recruited suicide bombers, increased the rate of production of Qassam rockets, and sought to extend their range. Over the last five years since the declaration of the hudna, attacks on Israel increased and Hamas succeeded in smuggling in more weapons with longer ranges.

While any cessation of violence against Israeli civilians is to be welcomed, it is important to understand the cease-fire the radical Islamic groups are contemplating in the Muslim context.

The media and some political leaders portray a hudna as a truce or a cease-fire designed to bring peace. Though the term hudna does refer to a temporary cession of hostilities, it has historically been used as a tactic aimed at allowing the party declaring the hudna to regroup while tricking an enemy into lowering its guard. When the hudna expires, the party that declared it is stronger and the enemy weaker. The term comes from the story of the Muslim conquest of Mecca. Instead of a rapid victory, Muhammad made a ten-year treaty with the Kuraysh tribe. In 628 AD, after only two years of the ten-year treaty, Muhammad and his forces concluded that the Kuraysh were too weak to resist. The Muslims broke the treaty and took over all of Mecca without opposition.212

A modern-day hudna is not a form of compromise, rather it is a tactical tool to gain a military advantage. Hamas has used it no fewer than 10 times in 10 years.

READ MORE

Source: Myths & Facts Online -- A Guide to the Arab-Israeli Conflict by Mitchell G. Bard.

See also Mitchell Bard's blog: http://blogs.britannica.com/blog/main/author/mbard.

Christians for a Fair Witness on the Middle East

Christians for Fair Witness on the Middle East was founded by Sr. Ruth Lautt, O.P., Esq., who serves as its National Director. She is a professed member of the Sisters of the Order of St. Dominic, Congregation of the Holy Cross, Amityville, New York.

Sr. Ruth received a law degree from NYU School of Law and was previously associated with the law firms of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom and Parcher & Hayes in New York. Prior to founding Fair Witness she was a litigation partner in the Law Firm of Vollmer & Tanck, P.C. in Jericho, New York.

Sr. Ruth has also served on the Ecumenical Commission of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn , Catholic-Jewish Dialogue, and the Executive Committee of the National Christian Leadership Conference for Israel. She was previously the Co-Convener of the Five-Towns/Rockaway Interfaith Clergy Council. Sr. Ruth is currently finishing her Masters Degree in Biblical Studies in the Jewish Christian Studies Department at Seton Hall University in New Jersey.

Further Reading: The Church’s Witness on Issues in the Arab/Israeli Conflict, based on a speech given by Sr. Ruth Lautt, O.P., Esq. at Boston College, November 14, 2007.

Vatican, Israel report progress in talks

The plenary meeting of the Bilateral Holy See-Israel Commission to implement the Fundamental Agreement signed 15 years ago ended today in the Vatican after making “real progress", reports AsiaNews.it:

Reports indicate that all participants came out of the meeting with “cautious satisfaction”.

Although it is not known what was discussed, from the start the Church has called on Israeli authorities to recognise its historic tax exemptions as well as return Church properties lost over the years.

The Commission decided that its next meeting will take place in December. The recent round of negotiations comes after five years of deadlock. They began with a meeting on 21 May 2007, followed by another on 13 December 2007, and then today’s session.

With the next plenary meeting scheduled for December in Jerusalem, the Commission now seems set to meet on a regular basis, twice a year.

Background Reading: Israel-Vatican Relations & The Fundamental Agreement February 12, 2007.