Interfaith Intolerance

Judaism? In Israel??

Nov. 13

While Israeli President Shimon Peres tripped over himself to equate all "three" religions (the three major ones represented in Israel at least), the Palestinian representative, however, sort of forgot to mention Judaism. This all happened at the United Nations where the Saudi King Abdullah's organized this peace initiative, and even invited Israel.

Let's take Peres first (emphasis mine):

"In our region, children bear the names of prophets who are sacred to us all. Why should Moses, Moshe, and Musa, Avraham, Abraham and Ibrahim grow up as adversaries, in animosity? As our prophets asked: 'Have we not all one father? Hath not one God created us? Why do we deal deceitfully every man against his brother, by profaning the covenant of our fathers?' And Abraham added to his nephew Lot: 'Please let there be no strife between me and you, and between my herdsmen and your herdsmen, for we are kinsmen.' That was the first call for peace among brothers in history. ... Religious belief requires that we recognize the eternal message that all men were created in God’s image. Harming a human being is tantamount to harming God himself. ... Inter-faith dialogue will elevate our spirits, bring a breath of fresh air to our peoples today and live on in posterity. Let us renew our faith in one God."

Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad:

"Jerusalem is holy to two religions - Islam and Christianity. Jerusalem is home to the third most holy place to Islam, the place where Muhammad rose to the heavens, and the place where Jesus, the Christian, was resurrected."

He also said Jerusalem was "occupied" in 1967 and that a future Palestinian state capital should be located there. 

So, being this far apart on equality and religion, to the point where Fayyad, a moderate no less, cannot even mention Judaism (despite being in negotiations with a Jewish state), how will the two sides ever come to terms?

Nir-ly there

Poor Nir Barkat. I just got back from a news conference, Barkat's first time on the firing line as mayor, where he displayed his woeful ignorance of Christian issues.

A reporter asked Barkat what he would do as mayor regarding the factional fighting between denominations at the Holy Sepulchre. Barkat proudly answered that he had recently attended a CUFI (Christians United for Israel) meeting and met John Hagee. Impressive. But completely unrelated.

If Nir wants to reach his stated goal of bringing in 10 million (not a typo) tourists a year to Jerusalem, he's going to have to brush up on the Christian issues. Hagee represents evangelical Christian Zionists, Protestants, who support Israel. Way, way different from the warring priests at the Holy Sepulchre. Nir's ignorance of the situation isn't unique in Israel. He merely displayed the typical Israeli knowledge of Christians, simply neither Jewish nor Muslim.

I posed a question about Christian tourism to Barkat this spring when he was the only candidate campaigning. He admitted then that he didn't yet know the difference between "evangelists" and other Christians. Yikes. Evangelists = missionaries and that is a byword in this country. As a matter of fact, the Jerusalem City Council as been increasingly hostile toward that evangelical population lately. One council woman tried to ban Christian participation in the Jerusalem parade. Christian tourists, mind you, comprise nearly 90 percent of the parade.

It is precisely that attitude Barkat will have to combat if he wants to see 10 million tourists in the city. Stamp out the hostility especially to the nation's best friends and especially if you want their money, either as tourists or donors.

Holy city goes secular

In what was a referendum on religious vs. secular this mayoral election, the holy city went secular. According to exit polls, businessman and lifelong Jerusalem resident Nir Barkat took 50 percent of the vote, while Meir Porush, an ultra-Orthodox Jew, received 42 percent.

Of course it wasn't without a hitch. A policeman was injured by a stone. Several haredi protestors apparently harassed voters at a city polling station and tried to stop people from voting. More tomorrow.

Yes he did!

Fueling suspicions of anti-Israel leanings, Prez-elect Barack Hussein Obama reportedly had his people meet with Hamas' people in the Gaza Strip during the campaign. At least that's what Hamas claims. 

Ismail Haniyeh's political advisor said the Islamist group met with Obama aides after an email exchange, but was told to keep the meeting a secret. Well, no longer a secret. Ahmed Yousef, Haniyeh's political advisor, said: "We were in contact with a number of Obama's aides through the Internet, and later met with some of them in Gaza, but they advised us not to come out with any statements, as they may have a negative effect on his election campaign and be used by Republican candidate John McCain (to attack Obama)." Source: the London-based Arabic-language newspaper Al-Hayat

Contact with Obama's advisors is ongoing, Yousef said.  The Obama camp has not yet commented on this report.

Because Hamas is on the US State Department terrorist list, America hasn't negotiated with the organization yet. Yet.

Haniyeh & Olmert: Perfect Peace Partners

Who knew? Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, the ousted prime minister of the Palestinian Authority, and outgoing (not in the extrovert sense) Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert look ready to strike a perfect peace deal.

In separate reports, both Haniyeh and Olmert said they are ready for a Palestinian state on the 1967 borders. Imagine that? Well, sign the paper then. Of course, everyone in the Israeli government is scrambling to distance themselves from Olmert since that would be the most fanatical concession of any Israeli administration.

But this is a major concession for Haniyeh as well. According to Haaretz correspondent Amira Hass, Haniyeh said the "Hamas government had previously made it clear that it was willing to accept a Palestinian state that followed the 1967 borders and to offer Israel a long-term hudna, or truce, if Israel recognized the Palestinians' national rights."

Of course this falls short of recognizing Israel as a state, but it is still scaled back from "pushing Israel into the sea."

Olmert, for his part, used the auspicious occasion of a memorial day for assassinated Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin to make this astonishing statement: "If we are determined to preserve the Jewish and democratic character of the State of Israel, we must inevitably relinquish, with great pain, parts of our homeland, of which we dreamt and for which we yearned and prayed for generations, and we must relinquish Arab neighborhoods in Jerusalem, and return to that territory which comprised the State of Israel until 1967. ... We must return to our familiar places, in the Galilee and the Negev, build them and realize the tremendous potential embodied in the unbounded energies of our people; we must reignite the flame of ingenuity and creation, and nurture a new kind of Zionism – realistic, sober, responsible and bold."

Kadima leader and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, running for prime minister in February's elections, said she is "not committed to the outgoing prime minister's comments."

Surely all this talk only helps Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu who has positioned himself as the right-wing alternative and the only other viable candidate at this point.

In some countries, its a good time for a mortgage

Interest rates here took another dramatic dive thanks to Bank of Israel Gov. Stanley Fischer. Fischer unexpectedly lowered the rates to 3 percent, the lowest level ever.

Yisrael Hayom wrote in an editorial that Fischer is "a rare breed that does not exist in our country of jacks-of-all-trades – someone of proven talent who actually works and operates in the field in which he is an expert. Amazing." That compared to what the paper called "insane people," who are demanding Fischer's resignation.

It will be interesting to see how Israel weathers the economic crisis compared to other countries, including Fischer's native USA. Fischer was the college adviser to Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke.

Fischer slashed rates before the opening of he Prime Minister's Conference for Export and International Cooperation, earning a line up of praise at the conference.

"Israel has one economic leader, and his name is Stanley Fischer. The Governor of the Bank of Israel understood long before everyone else here where we were headed, and he knew how to prepare the Israeli economy. Regrettably, we haven’t yet seen action on the fiscal policy side," said Manufacturers Association of Israel president Shraga Brosh, in a swipe at Finance Minister Ronnie Bar-On.

Waiting for the Inevitable up North

Hizbollah rearming and regrouping for another war

MALKIA - The far northern regions of Israel, in the crook of Lebanon’s southern border, have been the subject of much speculation in the two years since the Second Lebanon War and the weeks since a prisoner swap with the Islamic terrorist group Hizbollah as to whether there will be a renewal of violence. For everyone except local residents.

“You live in Jerusalem?” several residents of Kibbutz Malkia asked with a touch of fearful respect. “Watch out for bulldozers,” they invariably warned referring to recent terror attacks in the capital.

Jerusalem is still viewed with more steady uneasiness than other regions of Israel, despite the month-long pounding of 4,000 Hizbollah rockets in the North in the summer of 2006. However, the winds of war are shifting up North again. Despite being pushed back from the border and weakened militarily during the war, Hizbollah is rearming and has amassed 40,000 rockets according to Israeli military intelligence—more than triple the number it had before the war.

Hizbollah’s rearmament is largely due to UNIFIL’s failure to carry out its mandate of patrolling the Lebanese-Syrian border to prevent weapons smuggling. UNIFIL, the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, was strengthened to 13,000 peacekeeping troops under UN cease-fire Resolution 1701 which ended the 34-day war.

“Resolution 1701 was supposed to limit [the] actions of Hizbollah, and prevent it from rearming,” said Israel’s former UN Ambassador Danny Gillerman. “It did not achieve that…The resolution also imposed an embargo on arms shipments to militias in Lebanon—namely Hizbollah—which was a huge achievement, but that wasn’t implemented either.”

Farmers who work the land have a good intuition for events in the region. “It’s quiet, but under the quietness, you hear and feel things and see movement,” Eitan Oren, a farmer at the kibbutz and a tour guide, said. “They are building underground tunnels and are rearming.”

With typical Israeli bravado, Oren stayed in the kibbutz during the war and even continued to harvest peaches and apricots while rockets whistled overhead. He wouldn’t leave in the event of another conflict. “It is a necessity to stay and not give up,” he said. “With every light that turns off, we are losing the game here.”

New Boarders at the Border

Northern Israel is geologically different from the rest of the country. Deep green pines and firs line the hilltops. Windy roads, vineyards, grazing cows, neat rows of crops and army bases dot the landscape. Forests blanket the Upper Galilee, in comparison to the stark Golan Heights that run parallel to the fertile Hula Valley below. But across the border, the southern Lebanon hills are barren and brown.

From Adir Mountain, 2,952 feet (900 meters) high, Colonel (reserves) Kobi Marom pointed out Lebanese towns that were household names during the Second Lebanon War: Bint Jabeil, Maroun A Rass; and the spot on the border road where the abduction that sparked the conflict took place on July 12, 2006. The road dips behind a mountain and the blind spot enabled Hizbollah guerrillas to ambush a convoy and kidnap two Israeli soldiers.

“The quiet is unstable. Hizbollah has rebuilt its capabilities and is a real threat,” Marom said, sweeping his hand over the landscape and the Lebanese towns across the valley. “They don’t sit on the frontline, but a couple of kilometers [1.2 miles] behind now.”

He says UNIFIL is not strong enough to oppose Hizbollah forcibly and that “it is just a question of time before Hizbollah tries to attack Israeli targets along the Israeli border. The response to this must be a big-time response. If they kidnap one soldier Israel must attack 100 Hizbollah targets.”

A State within a State

South Lebanon is effectively a Hizbollah state. While the group may be far less visible in the South than it was before the war, it is also much stronger. It has not only rearmed but also strengthened its political position in Beirut. In July, Lebanon formed a new government in which Hizbollah and its allies hold 11 seats and effective veto power. Hizbollah is now the main opposition force.

“This achievement represents success for Hizbollah’s campaign of civil disobedience over the last 18 months,” says Jonathan Spyer, a senior research fellow at the Global Research in International Affairs Center in Herzliyah. “Veto power will enable Hizbollah to protect the independent military infrastructure that it has developed with Iranian and Syrian help—for use against Israel at some future date.”

Indeed, Hizbollah has already been given the right to bear, and use, arms against Israel. The Beirut government approved “the right of Lebanon, its people, its army and the resistance [i.e., Hizbollah] to liberate its land in the Shebaa Farms, Kfarshuba Hill and Ghajar,” all located on the Israeli side of the border with Lebanon.

Israel’s Northernmost Town

Metulla, Israel’s northernmost town, stood in the shadow of a converted Hizbollah base during the Second Lebanon War. The town absorbed 153 rockets, 43 landing on homes and more than 100 in the surrounding orchards. Fortunately for Metulla residents, they were, ironically, too close to the border and most rockets sailed over the town toward targets further south, such as nearby Kiryat Shmona which became a ghost town.

From the Dodo Lookout above, Metulla unfolds in a burst of houses and greenery next to a valley. Swaths of crops and orchards fan out to the south, while to the north, residents can look eye to eye at their Lebanese neighbors. A road on the Lebanese side of the border, separated by a chain-link fence, features a flagpole flying the Lebanese, Hizbollah and Palestinian flags.

The town was founded in 1896 by Baron Rothschild who purchased the land, enabling Jewish immigrants from Russia and other areas to settle there. When Britain and France carved up boundaries, Metulla’s houses remained inside Palestine, while 400 dunams (100 acres) of its farmland were transferred to Lebanon. Metulla farmers were permitted to cross over and work their lands until 1952 when they were cut off for good. Now they see their untouched land across the ambiguous border.

In 1976, Israel opened the Good Fence, a border crossing between Metulla and Lebanon, allowing southern Lebanon residents enter the country to work, see a doctor, attend school and transport goods. The fence closed after Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000, an economic blow to residents on both sides of the border. Lebanese who labored in the orchards lost their jobs, and the Israeli farmers who employed them have now turned to Thai workers who only get five-year visas.

Metulla’s proximity to the border has also cost the tourism industry. Israel’s only permanent ice skating rink is located in the town in a state of the art facility called the Canada Center. But with fewer tourists venturing up to the border town, losses are inevitable.

But tempered by decades of conflict, Metulla residents are tough. During the rocket barrages of 2006, 60 percent of the town’s 1,500 residents stayed home.

“The people that live in Metulla will never be afraid,” the town’s mayor Jacob Katz told us, while conceding later: “I don’t think you can ever feel secure.”

The Shebaa Farms and Ghajar

Tucked into the controversy are two plots of land, the Shebaa Farms, a 12-square-mile (31 sq. km.) mountainside running along Lebanon’s southeast border, and Ghajar, a formerly Syrian village at the foot of the Shebaa Farms that has been under Israeli control since the Six Day War in 1967.

Cease-fire Resolution 1701 called for the UN secretary-general to draw a border demarcation for the Shebaa Farms, which was recognized by the UN in 1974 as part of the Syrian Golan Heights “occupied” by Israel. Hizbollah claims Shebaa is actually Lebanese—not Syrian—territory, giving it an excuse to continue fighting against the Israeli “occupier.” Israel insists that any negotiations over the Shebaa Farms must take place with Syria, not Lebanon.

“Up until 1967 it was Syrian territory, there is no question about it,” Colonel Marom said. “After the [Israeli] withdrawal [from Lebanon] in 2000 there have been many incidents here. In my point of view it is just a question of time before [Hizbollah] attacks again. Shebaa Farms are a good option for them.”

Marom believes Israel should keep the territory for its strategic vantage point, even if it isn’t as vital as the Golan Heights.

“There is no reason to give it up. It has become part of Israel,” he said. “It does not cost anything to keep it up. There is no Israeli civilian presence in the area.”

“It is a great observation point to protect this valley,” he said, as he pointed out nearby Shiite villages in Lebanon, likely Hizbollah strongholds. Then Marom identified Druze, Christian and Sunni villages in sight, also controlled, he said, by Hizbollah: “They control all the educational, social and economic services. Even for the Christians.”