Anglicans for Israel

From the Zionist Organization of America:

ZOA: BUSH ADMINISTRATION SHOULD DROP FICTION THAT PALESTINIANS ACCEPT ISRAEL & SEEK PEACEFUL STATE ALONGSIDE ISRAEL

New York — The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) is urging the Bush Administration to drop the fiction that Palestinian Authority (PA) president Mahmoud Abbas and Palestinian Arabs in general have accepted Israel’s existence as Jewish state and seek a peaceful Palestinian state alongside Israel, following Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s comments to the media in Jerusalem on Sunday that, “I think that the desire for peace and support for a two-state solution is far broader in the two communities, among the Palestinian people and among the Israeli people, than just the two leaders [Ehud Olmert and Mahmoud Abbas].

It’s, in fact, something that has shown up in all kinds of polls. It’s shown up in all kinds of discussions with people on both sides that the Palestinian people and the Israeli people would like to have peace” (State Department, March 25, 2007).

Rice made further comments in the same vein about Palestinian Authority (PA) president Mahmoud Abbas today, claiming that “President Abbas truly desires to be a partner for peace. . President Abbas told his people that he could end the occupation by ending violence” (State Department, March 27, 2007).

Yet, only weeks ago, Abbas and his Fatah Party joined the Hamas terrorist government after signing the Mecca Agreement. Those like Condoleezza Rice who have hung on to the mirage of Abbas’ alleged moderation must now confront the naked reality of Abbas joining an openly terrorist regime under an agreement which does not call for peace but for more terrorism; demands the so-called ‘right of return’ of Palestinian refugees and their millions of descendants to Israel and thus Israel’s dissolution; demands the release of jailed Palestinian Arab terrorists; and does not in fact even mention Israel let alone recognize it.

Secretary Rice’s words are completely at odds with the record of Mahmoud Abbas’ words and deeds and innumerable Palestinian opinion polls.

Mahmoud Abbas’ own words:

On recognizing Israel:” It is not required of Hamas, or of Fatah, or of the Popular Front to recognize Israel” (Al-Arabiya [Dubai] and PA TV, October 3, 2006).

Fighting Israel: “We have a legitimate right to direct our guns against Israeli occupation . Our rifles, all our rifles are aimed at The Occupation” (Jerusalem Post, January 11, 2007; Independent Media & Review Analysis, January 12, 2007).

On Jews: “The sons of Israel are corrupting humanity on earth” (World Net Daily, January 11, 2007).

On Israel: “the Zionist enemy” (Associated Press, January 4, 2005; CNN.com, January 7, 2005).

On suicide bombers: “Allah loves the martyr” (Wall Street Journal, January 5, 2005).

On wanted Palestinian terrorists: “heroes fighting for freedom” (Age [Melbourne], January 3, 2005); “Israel calls them murderers, we call them strugglers” (Jerusalem Post, December 25, 2004).

On Palestinian terrorist leaders Yasser Arafat, Hamas’ Ahmad Yasin and Abdel Aziz Rantisi and Palestinian Islamic Jihad’s Fathi Shikaki: “martyrs” (Palestinian Media Center, September 9, 2005)

On Hamas: “We must unite the Hamas and Fatah blood in the struggle against Israel as we did at the beginning of the intifada. We want a political partnership with Hamas” (Jerusalem Post, February 5, 2007).

On Yasser Arafat: “It is our duty to implement the principles of Yasser Arafat” (Haaretz, January 3, 2005); “We will continue in the path of the late president until we fulfill all his dreams” (Agence France-Presse, November 11, 2005); “The Palestinian leadership won’t stray from Arafat’s path” (Yediot Ahronot, November 11, 2006)

On disarming Palestinian terrorists: a “red line” that must not be crossed (Washington Times, January 3, 2005)

On jailed Palestinian terrorists: “our heroes.” (Israel National News, May 26, 2006).

On the so-called ‘right of return’ of Palestinian refugees and their millions of descendants which, if implemented would end Israel as a Jewish state: “The issue of the refugees is non-negotiable” (Jerusalem Post, January 11, 2007).

On the Lebanese terrorist group Hizballah: A source of pride and sets an example for the “Arab resistance” (Jerusalem Post, August 6, 2006).

Saddam Hussein: “Saddam Hussein has entered history as a symbol of Pan-Arab nationalism” (Independent Media Review and Analysis, December 31, 2006).

Abbas’ own deeds:

Holocaust denial: He wrote a PhD thesis and published a book denying the Holocaust.

Terrorist group Fatah: He co-founded with arch-terrorist Yasser Arafat the terrorist group Fatah, whose Constitution to this day calls for the destruction of Israel (Article 12) and the use of terrorism against Israelis as an indispensable part of the struggle to achieve that goal (Article 19).

Funding terrorism: as senior PLO official, he funded the Munich massacre of Israeli Olympic athletes in 1972.

Terror & incitement to violence: He has refused to implement the signed Oslo agreements and the 2003 Roadmap peace plan which requires him to fight, arrest, extradite and jail terrorists and confiscate their weaponry and end the incitement to hatred and murder in the PA-controlled media, mosques, schools and youth camps that feeds it.

Terrorists’ plan for more violence: In May 2006, he endorsed the so-called ‘Prisoners’ Plan’, a document produced by jailed Palestinian terrorists, that endorses continued terrorism against Israel, legitimizes the murder of Jews, does not accept Israel’s existence as a Jewish state, abrogates Palestinian obligations under the signed Oslo agreements and the 2003 Roadmap peace plan, and insists on the ‘right of return.’

Money for suicide bombers’ families: In December 2005, he approved legislation mandating financial benefits to be paid to families of killed Palestinian terrorists.

Palestinian Polls:

February 2007: 75% of Palestinian Arabs do not think that Israel has a right to exist; 70% of Palestinian Arabs support a one-state solution in which Jews would be a minority, not a two-state solution with a Palestinian Arab state living peacefully alongside Israel (Near East Consulting (NEC) poll, February 12-15, 2007).

September 2006: 67% of Palestinian Arabs oppose Hamas recognizing Israel (Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PCPSR) poll, September 14-16, 2006).

September 2006: 57% of Palestinian Arabs support terrorist attacks upon Israeli civilians; 75% support the kidnapping of Israeli soldiers in a bid to obtain the release of jailed Palestinians terrorists; 63% are inspired by the Lebanese Islamist terror group Hizballah and seek to emulate it (Harry S. Truman Research Institute for the Advancement of Peace, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PCPSR) poll, September 2006)

September 2006: 61.3% of Palestinian Arabs support terrorist attacks upon Israeli civilians; 52.5% support rocket attacks upon Israeli population
centers (Center for Opinion Polls and Survey Studies at An-Najah University, September 7-9, 2006).

June 2006: 56% of Palestinians support terrorist attacks upon Israeli civilians (Palestinian Center for Policy & Survey Research (PCPSR) poll,
June 2006).

February 2006: 83.3% of the Palestinian Arabs oppose dropping the legally and morally baseless so-called ‘right of return’ of refugees and their millions of descendants to Israel and reject substitute solutions to the refugee issue (Palestinian Center for Public Opinion (PCPO) poll, February 16-20, 2006).

February 2006: 56.2% support terrorism against Israeli civilians (Jerusalem Media and Communications Center (JMCC) poll, February 8-12, 2006).

December 2005: 51% of Palestinian Arabs oppose the disarming of terrorist groups; 82% support the absorption of members of Hamas, Islamic Jihad into the PA. (Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, December 6-8, 2005).

December 2005: 69% of Palestinians see terrorism as legitimate; 65% support Al-Qaeda actions in the USA and Europe (Fafo poll, December 22, 2005).

October 2005: 60% of Palestinian Arabs oppose the PA disarming the terrorist groups Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Fatah’s Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades (Bir Zeit University poll, October 2005).

December 2004: 66% of Palestinian Arabs oppose the PA disarming the terrorist groups Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Fatah’s Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades (Bir Zeit University poll, December 2004).

April 2003: 75.6% of Palestinian Arabs support terrorism against Israeli civilians (Jerusalem Media and Communications Center (JMCC) poll, April 2003).

ZOA National President Morton A. Klein said, “We continue to be perplexed that Bush Administration officials like Secretary Rice persist in making flat-earth statements about Mahmoud Abbas and Palestinian Arabs in general and their alleged desire for peace with Israel in a state alongside her.

It is especially worrying that Secretary Rice believes that Palestinian polls bear out her completely false evaluations - Palestinian polls have consistently shown extremism and support for violence to be widely supported by Palestinian Arabs.

The evidence we have provided (of which there is much more) shows that these claims are simply not credible or accurate.

By stating the opposite of what the facts warrant, Secretary Rice is misleading the American public and pursuing a policy which lacks any factual basis and which will lead to another terrorist state while appeasing terrorists and terrorism. It is vital to realize that policies built on illusions will tragically fail and the sooner U.S. policy is revised the better.

“It is crystal clear from these polls and a great deal of other data that Palestinian Arab society clearly opposes acceptance of Israel as a Jewish state and consistently supports terrorism against Israeli civilians in an attempt to undermine Israel’s survival as a Jewish state.

When consistent majorities of Palestinian Arabs are shown to support terrorism and non-acceptance of Israel, it is clear that there can at present be no peace process with such a society and its like-minded leadership.

Under these circumstances, there should be no discussion of a Palestinian state. Rather than giving unmerited praise to Palestinian Arabs for moderation, the Bush Administration should fearlessly state the truth and make it clear that there will be no concessions, no negotiations and no American funds until the PA fights, arrests, extradites and jails terrorists and confiscates their weaponry and ends the incitement to hatred and murder in the PA-controlled media, mosques, schools and youth camps that feeds it.

All of these promises were made by the Palestinian Arabs in the Oslo I, Oslo II, Hebron and Wye Agreements as well as the Roadmap, yet not a single one has been fulfilled.”

As long as Europe allows the Arabs to fantasize about “the right of return” there can be no end to this conflict.

by Alexander Zvielli, Jerusalem Post

Why was Raymond Johansen, the Norwegian deputy foreign minister, in such a hurry to be the first European representative to meet Ismail Haniyeh, the prime minister of the new Palestinian unity government in Gaza?

What was the hurry? He certainly read Haniyeh’s March 17 speech in which the Hamas chief outlined the Fatah/Hamas government program. Haniyeh said: “The government affirms that resistance is a legitimate right of the Palestinian people.” And he knows what Haniyeh means by “resistance” - suicide bombings of cafes and buses, drive-by shootings, rocket launchings.

He knows the new government demands the “right of return” to pre-1967 Israel for millions of Palestinian Arab refugees and their descendents. He knows that means that killing Israel demographically.

Johansen knows that the Fatah/Hamas government does not renounce violence; that it will not honor previous agreements signed by the PLO, and that it will never recognize the right of a sovereign Jewish state to exist anywhere in the Middle East.

So, I asked myself, again, just what was Johansen’s rush?

Read the full article »

From the Jerusalem Post:

Hamas denied Monday that the release of kidnapped IDF soldier Cpl. Gilad Schalit was imminent, saying only that it was currently “not on the agenda,” Israel Radio reported.

“The Palestinian people have other, more pressing issues to deal with,” Hamas spokesman Razi Hamed said. He added that there was no connection to be made between the establishment of a unity government and the release of Schalit.

Hamas’s comments follwed remarks by Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni on Monday in which she said that Israel had a better reason to believe Abbas’s promises of Schalit’s release now that Abbas and Hamas were working together.

Read the full article »

From the Simon Wiesenthal Centre:

Belgium Press Shops Respond Immediately to Wiesenthal Centre Protest: Protocols of Zion Novel Removed from Shelves

Paris, 1 March 2007

Alex Williams, Executive Director of Relay - Belgium Press Shops S.A., responded within 24 hours to the Wiesenthal Centre’s protest against the distribution, through its chain, of an antisemitic novel entitled “The Protocols of Zion”.

This Tsarist forgery that inspired the Nazi Holocaust is banned in most European Union member-states. The novelized version alleges Jewish responsibility for 9/11 and the London and Madrid bombings.

Williams advised the Centre by email that “instructions have been given to remove this book from the shelves and I have asked the distributor to recall the title.”

The Centre’s Director for International Relations, Dr Shimon Samuels, commended this immediate action, stating that “your removal of ‘Les Protocoles de Sion’ from the sales outlets of Relay - Belgium sets an example for your industry. It sends a message of social responsibility to your clientele and, especially, to young people.”

Samuels added, “I will henceforth look to your Press Shops network as a model for the creation of “hate-free zones” in Europe.”

by Joy Wolfe

How many times have you heard critics of Israel claim that the Jews drove out the Palestinians in 1948 when a UN vote created neighbouring states of Israel and Palestine.

As we know the Palestinians rejected the partition and five Arab armies attacked the fledgling Jewish state, and to this day have continued to have varied stages of war, both hot and cold.

Israel has not know one day of real peace in her 59 year history, and currently is not only fighting a war against terror, but also a war of words against the media and against the many enemies of Israel who distort the truth and disseminate lies.

Among those lies are the allegations that the Palestinians were driven out or attacked and that that was the start of their long history as refugees, with a current ludicrous claim that there are now around 5 -6 million Palestinian refugees, all seeking the right of Return.

Setting aside the fact that our enemies prefer not to admit that around 900,000 Jews were forced to flee Arab countries at the time of the declaration of independence of Israel, and certainly would never facilitate their Right of Return, what better way could their be to refute the allegations about the Palestinians being driven out than to listen to the words of Palestinian spokespeople and media outlets.

The quotes below very strongly testify to the Jewish claim that the Palestinians were not driven out, but left at the unequivocal, albeit mistaken advice of their own leaders. There are eye and ear witness reports of the lengths Israel went to to try to persuade the Arabs to stay. Indeed many did and they and their descendants make up Israel’s Arab population to this day.

Don’t take my word for it - read the following quotes and you will see the Palestinian version:

QUOTE: “The Arab states which had encouraged the Palestinian Arabs to leave their homes temporarily in order to be out of the way of the Arab invasion armies, have failed to keep their promise to help these refugees.”
The Jordanian daily newspaper Falistin, Feb 19, 1949.

QUOTE: “For the flight and fall of the other villages it is our leaders who are responsible because of their dissemination of rumours exaggerating Jewish crimes and describing them as atrocities in order to inflame the Arabs…”
The Jordanian daily newspaper, Al Urdun, April 9, 1953.

QUOTE: “The 15th May, 1948 arrived… on that day the Mufti of Jerusalem appealed to the Arabs of Palestine to leave the country, because the Arab countries were about to enter and fight in the stead.”
The Egyptian daily Akhbar El Yom, Oct 12, 1963.

QUOTE: “The fact that there are these refugees is the direct consequence of the act of the Arab states in opposing partition and the Jewish state. The Arab states agree upon this policy unanimously and they must share in the solution of the problem.” ? Emile Ghoury, secretary of the Palestinian Arab Higher Committee, in an interview with the Beirut Telegraph Sept. 6, 1948.

“Who brought the Palestinians to Lebanon as refugees, suffering now from the malign attitude of newspapers and communal leaders, who have neither honor nor conscience? Who brought them over in dire straits and penniless, after they lost their honor? The Arab states, and Lebanon amongst them, did it.” ? The Beirut Muslim weekly Kul-Shay, Aug. 19, 1951.

QUOTE: “The Palestinian People does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means of continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct ‘Palestinian people’ to oppose Zionism.”
Zahir Musehin (Palestine Liberation Organisation executive committee member. March 31, 1977 in the Dutch newspaper ‘Trouw’)

In addition to all that the international community conveniently forgets that the Palestinians have been thrown out of many Arab countries, yet it is only Israel they want to saddle with a refugee problem.

The situation of the Palestinians in Lebanon deteriorated steadily in the wake of the expulsion of PLO terrorists following the 1982 Israeli invasion. By some accounts, of the 375,218 Palestinians registered as refugees with UNRWA in Lebanon, only some 200,000 remain, over half of them living in refugee camps; others have fled from the inhospitable conditions that successive Lebanese governments have sustained over the last two decades. A constant complaint of the Palestinians left in Lebanon is that there are restrictions on their right to work, and without work permits they are denied many benefits, including medical insurance. As for where they are allowed to work, they cannot be doctors, pharmacists, engineers, lawyers or journalists. Sounds like the word apartheid would aptly describe the position of Palestinians in Lebanon!!

Initially the response of host Arab states to the incoming Palestinian refugees from Lebanon was to offer them refuge on the assumption that it would be temporary. When it became obvious that the problem would be protracted, the policies of Arab states toward the refugees changed, and the initial sympathy was coupled with an insistence on Israel’s ultimate responsibility for them. As a result most Arab governments strongly opposed resettlement and naturalization of the refugees. Instead, they adopted policies and procedures aimed at preserving the Palestinian identity of the individuals and their status as refugees.

Among countries that have either expelled Palestinians or made them very unwelcome are Syria, Egypt, Kuwait, Jordan and Libya. They are the only refugee group not to be granted citizenship in Saudi Arabia. Kuwait expelled tens of thousands in the wake of the 1991 Gulf War when the Palestinian leadership backed Saddam Hussein and his oppressive policies. Egypt denies access to many Palestinians. Libya failed to renew residence permits for 30,000 Palestinians in 1995 and began deporting them when they were annoyed by Arafat’s feeble attempts to reach a peace treaty with Israel.

In addition to that the Arab countries including the very rich oil states have consistently failed to make any meaningful contribution to the welfare of the Palestinians, preferring to leave that responsibility to to the international community, the USA, the European Union, and even Israel. Where are the pressure groups such as UNWRA, Human Rights Watch, B’tselem, Jews for Justice for the Palestinians and the Palestine Solidarity Campaign when it comes to fighting for the rights of the Palestinians in Arab countries. I leave you to draw your own conclusions about the hidden agenda behind the protests being confined only to Israel!

When people talk about the plight of the Palestinian refugees you should respond with some simple questions; Why are there still refugees in camps - Why have they been kept as political pawns – Why did the UN pass a resolution banning Israel from improving housing conditions for the refugees in Gaza - and finally and most importantly, Where is all the money that the international community including the UK and the USA have donated to improve the living conditions and infrastructure in the Palestinian authority area. If it had been used as intended instead of stashed away in private bank accounts or used to pay terrorists and fund weapons, then the Palestinians would have a better standard of living and much of the unrest need not have festered.

Jewish-Arab researchers evaluate the economic dividends of peace
by Nicky Blackburn, Britain Israel Communications and Research Centre

A new report which shows that Palestinian-Israeli economic cooperation could lead to a huge growth in prosperity, a leap in exports, and a wave of lucrative tourism to the area is now being distributed to Israeli, Palestinian and international policy makers.

The research, which was carried out by Jewish and Palestinian economists at the Peres Centre for Peace and the Palestine Trade Centre (PalTrade), showed that more than 5.4 billion pounds in exports and 465,000 jobs for Palestinians, and 8.85 billion pounds in exports and 375,000 jobs for Israelis in agriculture, textile, construction and tourism could emerge within five to 10 years, once political stability is achieved between the warring sides.

Full report »