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JTA Special Series: Jewish Extremists-Smoke Screen for Obama
The Jewish Telegraph Agency, JTA, appears to be a veritable shill for the Obama Administration’s ‘settlements’ propaganda regarding Israel. It published and sent as an alert to subscribers a special series on Jewish Extremists. That is most unfortunate, as the series of articles endeavors to portray Religious Nationalists in West Bank settlements as anti-Israel, and anti-Muslim thereby presenting threats to the IDF trying to maintain security there.
There are three articles by JTA staff writer Dina Kraft in this ‘special series’. The focus on these pieces is to show that Religious Nationalists are the equivalent of the cheredi Neturei Karta opposing Israeli government attempts to eject them from Hevron, building more than 100 so-called illegal hill top caravan settlements and engaged in ‘terrorist ‘activities against Palestinians.
My suspicions were aroused when I found this commentary from one of the cheer leaders for the Obama settlements mantra, the Israel Policy Forum (IPF). You may recall the IPF full page ad in the New Duranty Times excoriating Israeli settlement policies as contra the two-state solution, the division of Jerusalem and return of Arab refugees. It supported President Obama and presented five steps:
1. RE-START NEGOTIATIONS. US-mediated talks toward the establishment of a Palestinian
state alongside Israel must be re-launched without delay.
2. STRENGTHEN SECURITY. Weapons smuggling into Gaza and Palestinian terror attacks on Israelis must stop. The number of American-trained Palestinian security forces in the West Bankmust be increased and their role in preventing violence strengthened.
3. IMPROVE THE FACTS ON THE GROUND. West Bank settlement construction and the
demolition of Palestinian houses in East Jerusalem must be stopped. Illegal outposts, superfluous
checkpoints and unnecessary roadblocks in the West Bank must be removed.
4. FOCUS ON GAZA. The Gaza Strip must be reconstructed with a focus on civilian needs andthe local economy.
5. PROMOTE REGIONAL PEACE. The Arab Peace Initiative must be embraced and used as a basis for negotiations for a comprehensive peace between Israel and its neighbors, including Syria.
Over the last year and a half, radical settlers seem to have upped the ante. They have defaced Muslim tombstones, set fire to Palestinian olive groves, assaulted Palestinians, slashed tires of IDF vehicles and thrown acid at Israeli soldiers.
Outside the yeshiva, some younger students speak with resolute voices. They say they stand for a new path, unflinching and messianic.
"Our parents have their heads still in the Galut," said one, a tall, square-framed 20-year-old named Ariel Perelman, referring to a Diaspora mentality. "They agree with us, but they don't have time to make revolutions."
Yediah Shoam, 19, said, "We are in a war for the Land of Israel, and yeah, we'd shoot. I'm both kidding and not kidding. We need to prevent evacuations, and war is war."
When two top Israeli army commanders in the West Bank received threatening letters in early June, the suspects weren't the army's traditional enemies in the territory.
Instead, Israeli Jews angry about the army's recent demolition of several illegal settlement outposts appeared to have sent the letters.
The conundrum for Israel is how to bring the lawlessness of radical settlers under control and end the cat-and-mouse game with settlers who return almost as soon as they're evacuated by force.
Critics of Israel's 42-year presence in the West Bank say the occupation has fostered a Wild West, anything-goes approach to the law, with the result apparent in land grabs and physical assaults on Palestinians by both soldiers and civilians. This, they say, makes a crackdown against Israeli lawbreakers in the territories a challenge.
"When a society gets used to lawlessness being the norm, the abnormal becomes the norm," said Dror Etkes of Yesh Din. "It's very hard to wake up from that and say let's change things now."
Schneider endeavors to portray PM Bibi Netanyahu’s condition for Palestinian negotiations recognition of Israel as a Jewish State as a ‘red herring’ and ‘novel demand’. Rosenberg quotes an adviser during the Oslo Accord process, Ron Pundak, now with the Peres Peace Center:
"It has never been an Israeli demand," said Ron Pundak, a member of Israel's negotiating team in Norway and now director of the Peres Center for Peace in Tel Aviv. "When we negotiated Oslo, the issue of the characteristics of our state was never an issue."
Israeli Ambassador to Washington designee, Michael Oren endeavors to set the record straight:
"If there is no recognition that the Jewish people exist, that the Jewish people emerged from this land, then you have no end of conflict," said Michael B. Oren, Netanyahu's incoming ambassador to Washington. "During Oslo, the thinking was: We don't need recognition. We are strong. We are the winners. Give them a chance. Give them an opportunity to acclimate to peace. This was wrong."
"The Israelis recognize that the Palestinians have suffered, and we are going to try to relieve that to the extent we can within our security needs," he said. "We ask that we are recognized as a people that are not alien."
The Schneider WAPO article, the JTA Jewish Extremists article and the IPF blog appear to be exquisite timing aimed at undermining the core Zionist ethos for the Jewish State of Israel. That is in the belief of both Dan Diker of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs and Jon Schanzer of the Washington-based Jewish Policy Center, an “absurdity.” Witness their comments in a recent 1330AMWEBY radio forum on the ‘settlements’ issue:
Schanzer noted that Israel captured the West Bank and Gaza in 1967 to safeguard its citizens from attack. Settlements in disputed territories were temporary in nature. He illustrated this by noting Israeli abandonment of settlements in the Sinai as a result of the peace treaty with Egypt and the unilateral withdrawal from the Gush Katif settlements in Gaza. He contends that the focus on settlements by the Obama administration as a major issue in the Middle East disregards the Iran nuclear threat and the looming prospect of a possible nuclear war. Netanyahu addressed those concerns in his Bar-Ilan speech. Schanzer noted a clear rift in the US Israel relationship appeared in the wake of the speeches by President Obama and PM Netanyahu.
Diker contended that Obama refuses to understand what the late Israeli PM Rabin in the Oslo process was uniquely concerned about, the various dimensions of complete security and defensible borders for the Jewish state. In the words of the late Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban, Israel should not return to the pre-1967 War so-called “Auschwitz borders,” and that Israel needed defensible borders. The West Bank, encompassing Samaria and Judea, is less than 9 to 12 miles wide. 92 to 94 % of the West Bank is virtually unpopulated public lands and Palestinian towns and settlements account for less than 3 to 4% of the disputed area.
Diker believes that Obama has zero tolerance on settlements and wants all of them dismantled. The reality, as Diker noted , is that most of the municipalities with an estimated Israeli population of over 350,000 ‘hug’ the so-called green line. Obama’s conditions for restricting so-called natural growth of these municipalities are an absurdity.
This is not the first time that the JTA has been the equivalent of a useful idiot for the extreme left among American Jews, whether J Street or the IPF, nor do I expect it will be the last.
I wrote the JTA editor, Uriel Heilman, who sent this series on Jewish Extremists around to subscribers:
This JTA series on alleged Jewish Extremists only feeds Obama's Mantra on settlements, which is disingenuous. I'm surprised, but not really that the JTA would assist in supporting the Administration's position and contributing to misdirecting attention of American Jews from the real issues supporting Israel- the canary in the mines of Jihadism on display in Tehran. More attention should be given to how the remaining Iranian Jews under threat from the Shia Mullahs, bent on their annihilation, can be evacuated from Iran, now dangerously in pieces.
Helen Freedman, a stalwart in Americans for a Strong Israel commented:
You're right. It's a smokescreen to attack the idealistic Jews and let the bad guys slip by.
Fred Leder, a Connecticut Jewish Activist commented:
This stuff is dangerous and extremely counterproductive. We need American Jews to choose Israel over Obama and this nonsense gives them reason to stick with the big O.
American Jews might ask why they contribute to the JTA with this biased inflammatory reporting. This JTA series on Jewish Extremists is part of a patent disinformation campaign being orchestrated by leftist Jewish Washington lobbyists out to sabotage a Jewish Israel. Diker, Leder and Freedman are right. This is an “absurdity” and a dangerous 'smokescreen'.
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