By Barry Rubin

Clearly, the conduct of negotiations by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s government with Syria, the Palestinian Authority, and Hamas, has an Israeli political dimension. Yet it is easy to misunderstand this relationship.

Olmert’s unpopularity and personal involvement with strong corruption allegations give him an incentive to conduct such talks. His basic argument is: I’m engaged in such important efforts to achieve peace as to render unimportant all these other petty issues. Stop distracting me.

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By Jonathan Spyer

Executive Summary: The United Nations Relief Works Agency (UNRWA) was created under the jurisdiction of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), with the unique responsibility of solely aiding the Palestinians. Due to this special status, the UNRWA perpetuates, rather than resolves, the Palestinian refugee issue, and therefore serves as a major obstacle toward resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Like no other UN body, UNRWA’s definition of refugees includes not only the refugees themselves, but also their descendents. Moreover, refugees keep their status even if they have gained citizenship. UNRWA employs teachers affiliated with Hamas and allows the dissemination of Hamas messages in its schools. The Hamas coup in Gaza of July 2007 has resulted in a Hamas takeover of UNRWA facilities there. Therefore, UNRWA’s activities require urgent action. The Agency should be dissolved and its services transferred to more appropriate administering organizations.

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By Barry Rubin

“If you have tears, prepare to shed them now…
Oh, what a fall was there…
Then I, and you, and all of us fell down.”

–William Shakespeare, “Julius Caesar,” Act 3, Scene 1.

May 21, 2008, is a date–like December 7 (1941) and September 11 (2001)–that should now live in infamy. Yet who will notice, mourn, or act the wiser for it?

On that day, the Beirut spring was buried under the reign of Hizballah.

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By Phyllis Chesler

It only takes one person.

If one person fights with all his might to tell the truth, (and today that person is Philippe Karsenty), if he or she risks everything to expose the Big Lie, takes on The Very Naked Emperor, then, one by one, others also start speaking out.

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By Phyllis Chesler

An Historic Moment

Left to Right: Gilles Dreyfus, the author, and Philippe Karsenty at the author’s home.

The same mainstream media that ran front page photos of the Palestinian boy, Mohammed al-Dura, allegedly being murdered in his father’s arms by Israeli soldiers–are, shamefully, not running any stories about the hard-won Karsenty decision in Paris.

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By Phyllis Chesler

I have had it with the so-called “even handed” reportage that buries the truth in a barrage of lies. What, pray tell, am I talking about? While the online edition of the New York Times has actually covered Phillipe Karsenty’s legal victory, you’d never know it is a victory from reading the piece.

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By Phyllis Chesler

Newsflash: Read Karsenty’s own statment at Pajamas Media.

Well, our era’s Dreyfus has just been vindicated. Or, as an Israeli website would have it: “Pigs Fly Over the Eiffel Tower.” See my previous interview with Karsenty HERE.

A few hours ago, a French Appeals Court finally decided that Phillipe Karsenty did not libel Charles Enderlin of France’s Channel 2 in the matter of Mohammed Al-Dura. One wonders whether the world which was so eager to lap up the base, visual propaganda against Israel, will now just as eagerly lap up the truth. Somehow, I doubt it. Even if the world’s mainstream media now covers this legal victory widely, respectfully, and accurately, it may still not be able to reverse the revulsion towards Israel that this staged photo of the twelve year-old Mohammed al-Dura, (allegedly shot to death by Israeli soldiers), managed to provoke–and to keep on provoking as it was repeatedly aired, copied onto tee shirts, coffee mugs, posters, and banners at demonstrations.

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By Barry Rubin

It’s become fashionable to match celebration of Israel’s founding (though part of the media can’t even admit Israelis are celebrating) with Palestinian marking of their 1948 "nakba" catastrophe.

Yet whose fault is it that they didn’t use those six decades constructively? And who killed the independent Palestinian state alongside Israel that was part of the partition plan? Answer: The Arab states and Palestinian leadership themselves.

The mourners were the murderers.

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by Asaf Romirowsky*

A few days ago an Israeli air strike killed a member of a Palestinian missile team that had been firing rockets from Gaza. Now the United Nations has come out with an unusual statement of bewilderment and utter shock as the truth has come out. The dead man, Awad al-Qiq, was a U.N. employee and headmaster of a top prep school in Gaza. He was also the chief rocket-maker for Islamic Jihad.

Mr. Al-Qiq — not surprisingly, a science teacher — worked for one of the schools run by the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). Now that he is out of the rocket business, the employment of such a “respectable” individual by the sole U.N. agency devoted to Palestinian refugees deserves an explanation.

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By Wolfgang G. Schwanitz

Amin al-Husaini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, remains a controversial figure. The Palestinian leader, who was born in 1895 and died in 1974, first sparked controversy during his lifetime. As an officer in the Ottoman army during the First World War, he implemented the German idea of organizing jihad and terror behind enemy lines. (See my discussion here.) Later, he led the resistance against the British mandate authority in Palestine during uprisings in 1929 and in 1936. He fiercely opposed Jewish settlement.

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By Phyllis Chesler

Dear Readers:

It occurs to me that I ought to have a running commentary on the anti-Israel bias in the contemporary New York Times. It is my home town newspaper and I do read it everyday. Sharing rather than silently swallowing my frustration will be an excellent tonic, and good for my blood pressure.

In today’s edition (May 15th), here is how the Gray Lady summarizes what happened in Israel yesterday.

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By Barry Rubin, Asaf Romirowsky, and Jonathan Spyer

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

On the surface, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) seems a humanitarian group helping Palestinian refugees. In reality, it actually helps destroy the chance of Arab-Israeli peace, promotes terrorism, and holds Palestainians back from rebuilding their lives.

Unique in history, UNRWA’s job is to keep Palestinian refugees in suspended animation–and at low living standards–until they achieve the goal set for them by the PLO and Hamas: Israel’s extinction. In the meantime, their suffering and anger is maintained as a weapon to encourage them toward violence and intransigence.

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By Phyllis Chesler

For fifteen years, (1993-2008), Charlie Bernhaut of Americans for a Safe Israel has been sending Open Letters to the staff at the New York Times. Charlie loves Jewish cantorial music and Jewish jokes. He is an amiable, sociable man. So, what has driven him to launch such a lonely, one-man crusade?

I doubt he can stop himself. Perhaps the Biblical bush burned for him too, perhaps, like Moses, he could not refuse the mission–which consists of documenting and protesting the newspaper’s contemporary “use of photographs to prejudice their readers against Israel.” He was at this long before CAMERA, MEMRI, or HonestReporting saw the same burning bush. The Times has never acknowledged Bernhaut’s letters–nor have the Jewish media and organizations who also received copies.

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by Jonathan Spyer

The recent events in Beirut pose a simple, fundamental question: Who rules in Lebanon?

The answer proposed by Hizbullah last week is that the government of Fuad Saniora and Saad Hariri is to be permitted to hold the formal reins of administration - on condition that they well understand the inherent limits of their position. Most important, any attempt to interfere with the Iranian-created and Iranian- and Syrian-sponsored military infrastructure in the country will result in a swift, disproportionate and bloody response.

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By Phyllis Chesler (Written with the help of Fern Sidman)

As a child, my mother took me to the Radio City Music Hall to see the dazzling, long-limbed Rockettes dance. For decades, the Music Hall symbolized glitzy entertainment, New York style. Radio City was also where I went when I was interviewed on NBC and when I dined at the Big Band-era Rainbow Room, a 65th floor precursor to and survivor of the World Trade Center’s Windows on the World. The Rainbow Room also has windows that look out onto the immediate world.

On Wednesday evening, May 7th, Jews around the world celebrated the miraculous 60th anniversary of the birth of Israel as a modern state. In New York City, an historic extravaganza took place at Radio City Music Hall. An attempt to Palestinianize this Art Deco palace also took place. It failed, it did not interrupt the considerable joy within but still, the Haters are everywhere, there is no event they do not picket.

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