By Jonathan Spyer

The apparently imminent eclipse of the Gaddafi regime in Libya has re-ignited hope among some Western commentators concerning the so-called Arab Spring. The entry of Libyan rebels to Tripoli is being depicted in some circles as the removal of a major obstacle to the onward march toward freedom alleged to be taking place this year throughout the Arabic-speaking world.

Some of the more enthusiastic observers are now turning their hopeful gaze toward Syria. They hope that with liberty victorious in Libya, the Assad regime will be the next to fall.

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by Daniel Pipes*

The White House engaged in two furtive gambits last week that painfully exposed the Obama administration’s amateurish, deceitful Middle East-Islamic policies.

The first case concerned the thorny issue of Jerusalem’s legal status in American law. In 1947, the United Nations ruled the holy city to be a corpus separatum (Latin for separated body) and not part of any state. All these years later and despite many changes, U.S. policy holds that Jerusalem is an entity unto itself. It ignores that in 1950 the Government of Israel declared western Jerusalem to be its capital and in 1980 declared the whole of Jerusalem to be the capital. The Executive Branch even ignores U.S. laws from 1995 (requiring a move of the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem) and 2002 (requiring that U.S. documents recognize Americans born in Jerusalem as being born in Israel). Instead, it insists that the city’s disposition be decided through diplomacy.

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by Efraim Karsh and Asaf Romirowsky*

As September approaches, many are waiting with bated breath to learn if Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas will deliver on his threat to unilaterally declare an independent Palestinian state and seek recognition of it through the U.N. But in putting the Palestinian demand for statehood to a vote, Abbas will end up subverting the international organization’s longstanding solution to the Arab Israeli-conflict — U.N. Security Council Resolution 242 — with unpredictable results.

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by Steven J. Rosen*

In a few weeks, an overwhelming majority in the United Nations General Assembly will likely vote for collective recognition of a Palestinian state. But which Palestinian state? Of the three Palestinian states the assembly could recognize, two are real and arguably could meet the requirements for statehood. But it is the third, purely imaginary one that the assembly will endorse, one that neither has a functioning government nor meets the requirements of international law.

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by Arlene Kushner*

On October 22, 2010, the outgoing director of the New York office of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), Andrew Whitley, stunned his listeners at a Washington conference by arguing that “the right of return is unlikely to be exercised to the territory of Israel to any significant or meaningful extent,” and that UNRWA should help resettle the refugees rather than perpetuate their refugee status.[1]

Confronted with a barrage of criticism from the Palestinian Authority and many Arab states, Whitley quickly backed down, claiming, “It is definitely not my belief that the refugees should give up on their basic rights, including the right of return.”

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By Fern Sidman

John Bolton, former United States Ambassador to the United Nations, had some strong words for the world body on Monday evening, July 18th as he delivered a broad-based foreign policy speech during the Chairman’s Club dinner at the sixth annual Christians United For Israel (CUFI) national summit in Washington, DC.

Speaking from the podium of the Washington Convention Center, Ambassador Bolton addressed the upcoming vote, scheduled for September at the United Nations General Assembly in which the Palestinian Authority will call for nation states to cast their vote for the establishment of an independent state.

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by Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi*

The recent declaration of independence by South Sudan from its northern neighbor is certainly a welcome event. After two civil wars (1955-1972 and 1983-2005) that took the lives of more than 2.5 million Christians and animists, secession was the only reasonable option. Of course, there are immediate challenges for South Sudan, as it seems unlikely that 7,000 UN peacekeeping troops can protect a new nation that has vast oil reserves and a population living largely in abject poverty.

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By Gary Gerofsky

I cannot hide the fact that I am pleased with the failures of the flotillas and the BDS (boycotts, divestment and sanctions against Israel) movement in general. These are movements that were borne out of ignorance, propaganda, lies and hate and, more significantly, the people involved want to do harm to others — physically, economically and emotionally. As protest organizers disguise their objectives as legitimate protests against Israel, they come to the aid of terrorists who have slit the throats of their own people just as Hamas did to their brothers in Fatah. Imagine a young man going off on a flotilla expedition telling his father and mother that he is risking his life for the sake of terrorists. What responsibility does western society and media have to expose the pure anarchy that is involved in such a decision and that is rampant and goes unchallenged in universities, unions and in Islamist groups?

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By Gary Gerofsky

David Bedein has made a convincing and informative plea to pressure governments and the public to remove or replace the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) when its mandate is up for renewal on June 30. He describes UNRWA’s operations in Palestinian territories, their policy of keeping Palestinians in concentration camps when viable alternatives are available in rapidly expanding towns and villages; villages that are growing much more rapidly, in fact, than Jewish settlements. He describes the curriculum of the Palestinian Authority (PA) that inculcates hate for Jews and instills unrealistic expectations and feelings in Arab youth of entitlement to all of Israel. He suggests that the logical alternative would be United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). The logical alternative is a takeover of the education system in Palestinian-held territories and to evict all non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and UN representatives and to restore sanity to the region and sanity to aid organizations. Empathy and understanding for the Jewish narrative must be the pre-requisite for any NGO working in Israel or working with the Palestinian refugees.

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By Gary Gerofsky

September is quickly approaching and the Palestinians are looking forward to being rewarded with state recognition for years of terrorism that has kept them in the news for half a century. In this light, I thought it might be interesting to think of the world in a new way. Instead of legitimate states with representative forms of government, the new paradigm might possibly be a horrifying breakdown of lawful and orderly nations into smaller, lawless territories. The UN will head the initiative to create and recognize these anarchic regions. Instead of being resolved, disputes will be promoted by the UN, now a world agency mandated to play one against another in order to create a sustainable balance of terror. Any group that can assemble the men and arms to produce the necessary violence will find themselves eventually heading up new territories or countries.

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by Steven Shamrak

In a recent major speech at the State Department, President Obama, addressing the “democratic” revolution in the Middle East and North Africa — predictably Israel became the main point of attention again. Obama, like many of his predecessors (Carter, both Bushs, and Clinton) has made another attempt to resurrect the peace process between Israel and so-called Palestinians.

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by Steven J. Rosen*

Having sidelined Barack Obama’s peace initiative by refusing to return to the negotiations table without apriori Israeli concessions, the Palestinian leadership seeks to secure an international declaration of statehood at the next U.N. General Assembly session in September 2011. This “date certain” strategy, whereby its entitlement to a state will be fulfilled by the world powers, has long been preferred by the Palestinian leadership to any arduous, bilateral negotiation with Israel, which would require painful concessions. The Palestinians enjoy wide support in many European capitals, and they know that the Obama administration is close to their positions on many of the core issues. So forcing the statehood demand into a multilateral forum can entice governments into satisfying the Palestinian aspirations by a fixed date.

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by Phyllis Chesler

Hina Jilani is a Pakistani women’s rights activist, an advocate of the Supreme Court of Pakistan, a  former U.N. Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Human Rights Defenders, and a co-author of the Goldstone Report.

Dear Hina Jilani:

Greetings! I am familiar with and an admirer of your work as a Pakistani feminist and human rights lawyer, one who has gone on record opposing both honor killing and rape and the inadequate legislation against such crimes in Pakistan.

In 1999, you handled one very high profile honor killing case, that of a Pakistani woman, Samia Imran (aka Samia Sarwar), whose physician mother and politically powerful father arranged that she be shot to death in your office because she dared to seek a divorce from a dangerously violent Pakistani husband. I wrote about this case in 2004-2005 and have written about it again any number of times since then.

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by Phyllis Chesler

I have finally lived long enough to see some dreams come true.

A Russian billionaire, Alexander Mashkevich, has just announced that he will fund a pro-Israel, pro-truth television news channel, a “Jewish Al-Jazeera.” God bless him! I have been calling for something like this for seven years. I hope that Mr. Mashkevich and his advisors understand that this new channel must be far better than Al-Jazeera, not only in terms of truth-telling but in other ways as well. Al-Jazeera broadcasts only in Arabic and English, and is only now preparing to broadcast in Turkish and Urdu. The “Jewish Al-Jazeera” must appear in many more languages simultaneously: Arabic, Turkish, Persian, Kurdish, Urdu, Punjabi, Sindhi, Bengali, Pashto, the Indonesian and Malaysian languages, as well as in all the European, East European, and former Soviet languages.

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by Steven Shamrak

After many years of advocating for Zionism and the rights of the Jewish people to live on their ancestral land, nobody can say that I am a Qaddafi sympathizer. During decades of his reign in Libya he has proven himself as an egomaniac dictator who has skilfully combined, as all Arab rulers do, brutality with tribal autonomy in order to stay in power. He used terror and Islamic terrorism, as most of the Muslim despots are guilty of this “cultural behaviour” and have been sponsoring Islamic terrorism openly or in stealth, in order to raise his status among Muslim leaders!

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