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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by Daniel Pipes*

Two religiously-identified new states emerged from the shards of the British empire in the aftermath of World War II. Israel, of course, was one; the other was Pakistan.

They make an interesting, if infrequently-compared pair. Pakistan’s experience with widespread poverty, near-constant internal turmoil, and external tensions, culminating in its current status as near-rogue state, suggests the perils that Israel avoided, with its stable, liberal political culture, dynamic economy, cutting-edge high-tech sector, lively culture, and impressive social cohesion.

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By Bill West*

Lately, we hear much from supporters of detained ex-University of South Florida computer engineering professor Sami Al-Arian, who pleaded guilty to (was convicted of) the Federal felony violation of providing assistance and support to members of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) terrorist organization. Al-Arian was sentenced to 57 months prison time for his crime. He was also ordered to be deported from the United States at the completion of his criminal incarceration.

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by Ilan Pappé
Oneworld Publications, 2006. 256 pp. $27.50

Book review by Seth J. Frantzman*

Flunking History

Among many Israeli academics and Western revisionists, it has become fashionable to examine Israel’s war of independence from an Arab perspective in which Jews were the aggressors and Arabs the victims.[1] This trend began in 1989 with works by Ben-Gurion University professor Benny Morris[2] and Oxford University professor Avi Shlaim,[3] and developed further with the writings of the late Hebrew University anthropologist Baruch Kimmerling,[4] Neve Gordon[5] at Ben-Gurion University, and Meron Benvenisti,[6] a political scientist who served as deputy mayor of Jerusalem between 1971 and 1978.

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by Steven Shamrak

There are many lands around the world that have been occupied not so long ago by other countries. Many of them are still subjugated to the rule of an occupying power. They were conquered during offensive or defensive wars, throughout the process of establishment of statehood or as a part of colonial and imperial policy. The following is a far from complete list of the currently occupied lands:

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By Andrew L. Jaffee

In an excellent editorial published today, the Washington Post’s op-ed staff joined Barack Obama in harshly criticizing former President Jimmy Carter for meeting with Hamas terrorists, and for advocating that “someone” engage in diplomacy with a group sworn to the destruction of Israel:

… [Hamas foreign minister] Mr. Zahar lauds Mr. Carter for the “welcome tonic” of saying that no peace process can succeed “unless we are sitting at the negotiating table and without any preconditions.” Yet Mr. Zahar has his own preconditions: Before any peace process can “take even its first tiny step,” he says, Israel must withdraw to the 1967 borders and evacuate Jerusalem while preparing for the “return of millions of refugees.” In fact, as Mr. Zahar makes clear, Hamas is not at all interested in a negotiated peace with the Jewish state, whose existence it refuses to accept: “Our fight to redress the material crimes of 1948 is scarcely begun,” he concludes. …

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By Andrew L. Jaffee

I have not been an Obama supporter — quite the contrary — but I applaud his statements today:

Sen. Barack Obama on Wednesday criticized former President Carter for meeting with leaders of the Islamic terrorist group Hamas as he tried to reassure Jewish voters that his candidacy isn’t a threat to them or U.S. support for Israel.

Obama told the group he had a “fundamental disagreement” with Carter, who was rebuffed by Israeli leaders during a peace mission to the Middle East this week.

“We must not negotiate with a terrorist group intent on Israel’s destruction,” Obama said. “We should only sit down with Hamas if they renounce terrorism, recognize Israel’s right to exist, and abide by past agreements.” …

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By Andrew L. Jaffee

Jimmy Carter once again has demonstrated his strident anti-Israel bias, stating this weekend that, “I think someone should be meeting with Hamas to see what we can do to encourage them to be cooperative and to find out what their attitude is.” This is Hamas’ attitude, as collected from its own TV broadcasts by PMW:

My message to the loathed Jews is that there is no god but Allah, we will chase you everywhere! We are a [Palestinian] nation that drinks blood, and we know that there is no blood better than the blood of Jews. We will not leave you alone until we have quenched our thirst with your blood, and our children’s thirst with your blood. We will not leave until you leave the Muslim countries.

Is Carter naive enough to think that a terrorist group like Hamas will change its stripes to spots and become a genuine peace partner for Israel? Or is his bias against Israel so strong that he is willing to overlook the fact that Hamas’ “founding charter commits the group to the destruction of Israel, the replacement of the PA [Palestinian Authority] with an Islamist state on the West Bank and Gaza, and to raising ‘the banner of Allah over every inch of Palestine’ [including Israel]?”

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