Israel Watch: Emotional Warfare - Prisoner Release - Jim Fletcher - http://www.raptureready.com/featured/duck/dd122.html
A friend was driving me through the French Hill neighborhood of Jerusalem, when all of a sudden he swerved away from our intended destination-another friend's house down a tree-lined street.
Usually calm and cheery, he allowed a quick look of concern to come over his face like a shadow.
"Sappers," was all he said.
I looked and sure enough, a bomb squad had blocked the entrance to the street. Someone had left a black bag on the corner, and Israeli police were taking no chances.
These were the days of the Second Intifada.
Despite the efforts of various "peace activists," diplomats, media captains, and politicians, most of the rest of us can see that in our world terrorists live to inflict pain and death on others. In particular, the Middle East is a cradle for killers, bombers, rapists, kidnappers, and propagandists who claim to do it all in the service of a god who demands it.
In Israel, serious emotional pain has been unleashed since the Palestinian Authority began demanding the release of terrorists from Israeli prisons. In the beginning, the decision was made to release only those who "don't have blood on their hands." We all knew where that would end up.
Today, terrorists with blood on their hands are released as part of "peace overtures" that the international community demands Israel make to the very people who want to send more homicide bombers into Jewish neighborhoods and population centers.
In particular, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been criticized for agreeing to these grotesque demands. The effect has been a blow to the moral of Israelis, much like the outcome of the pullout from Gaza, when images of IDF soldiers crying while they pulled Jews from their homes were sent around the world.
For decades, the Palestinian leadership has been schooled in the dark arts of propaganda and psychological warfare. This is just the latest attempt: welcoming home busloads of killers, each of whom is given a hero's return by cheering crowds.
Such scenes reinforce in the minds of Palestinians the fantasy that they can one day destroy Israel.
Now, it appears there is at least the attempt to stop such barbarism. According to an article in the Jerusalem Post:
"Legislation allowing courts to sentence murderers to life without parole in 'special cases' was approved by the Ministerial Committee for Legislation Sunday.
"Economy Minister Naftali Bennett said 'the State of Israel is opening a new page in the war against terror and its moral commitment to bereaved families.
"'Years of blackmail and wholesale release will stop when this bill becomes law,' Bennett added. 'The Bayit Yehudi will work in the upcoming [Knesset] session to pass the law without delay.'
"Seven ministers, from Likud Beytenu and Bayit Yehudi, voted in favor and three Yesh Atid and Hatnua ministers opposed."
There's every possibility this effort will go the way of the plans to build a U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem, but it's important that the Israelis show the world they will not participate in their own destruction. This is the painful lesson of the Holocaust.
In our emotionally disturbed world, Jonathan Pollard is allowed to rot in an American prison, used as a bargaining chip every few years by American political leadership that never intends to let him go.
Yet various presidents and secretaries of state demand that Israel-in the name of "peace"-parole the most vicious murderers of Jews.
We will not escape judgment for these moral failures. All the while, Palestinian leadership (including Hamas and Islamic Jihad) laughs at us.
Let us pray that the Israelis do indeed pass this legislation, to keep barbarians away from more innocents.
This is a long war.
After peace talks collapse, will Israel be forced to take unilateral steps? - By Sean Savage - http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0514/israel_unilateral.php3#.U3Y0Q-lOV9B
With the recent collapse of the U.S.-brokered peace negotiations, the Palestinian leadership has embarked on a broad plan of unilateral action to gain recognition of a Palestinian state and to isolate Israel internationally. Couple those developments with the Palestinian Fatah movement's unity pact with the terrorist group Hamas, and Israel is facing a complex new reality. Without peace talks, what options does Israel have left? Will Israel be forced to take its own unilateral steps?
"If [an] agreement is unachievable, then moving independently to shape the borders of Israel is the better course," Amos Yadlin, a retired Israeli Air Force general and former head of the Israel Defense Forces Military Intelligence Directorate, told JNS.org. "While it is not the [ideal] alternative, it is better than the status quo or a bad agreement [with the Palestinians].
Yadlin, who now serves as director of the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), is among a growing number of respected Israeli leaders putting forth proposals for unilateral steps.
Yadlin argues that Israel has more than the two options usually discussed-a peace agreement and the status quo. According to Yadlin, Israel's four strategic options are as follows: a peace agreement along the parameters established by former U.S. President Bill Clinton at Camp David in 2000, an "unacceptable" peace agreement on Palestinian terms, a status quo in which the Palestinians can dictate their own terms, or a status quo in which the Israelis dictate their own terms.
Yadlin argues that while the Clinton parameters-which include the Palestinians agreeing to end the conflict and give up both the "right of return" of Palestinian refugees and dividing Jerusalem-are Israel's "best option," it is "highly unlikely" that such an agreement will ever be realized.
Click photo to download. Caption: An Israeli soldier comforts a Jewish resident while evacuating the Israeli community of Morag during the August 2005 unilateral Israeli disengagement from Gaza. Unilateralism has been a taboo subject in Israel since the perceived failure of the Gaza disengagement due to the rise of the terrorist group Hamas there, but a growing number of respected Israeli leaders are proposing unilateral moves in the wake of the recent Palestinian unity pact between Fatah and Hamas. Credit: Israel Defense Forces.
Instead, Yadlin believes that Israel should promote an "Israeli option" that preserves Israel's objectives to remain a "Jewish, democratic, secure, and just state." He said this move allows Israel to "independently shape its own borders" with a strategy towards "advancing a two-state solution."
In this scenario, Yadlin said Israel would "withdraw from heavily populated Palestinian areas to the security barrier, keeping the Jordan Valley for security reasons.
"[This would leave] 70 to 80 percent of the West Bank to the Palestinians and allow Israel to keep 70 to 80 percent of the major settlement blocs," Yadlin told JNS.org. Unilateralism, however, has been a taboo subject in Israel for many years since former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip in 2005, which many Israelis-especially on the right-look back upon as a failure due to the rise of Hamas there. Sharon suffered a stroke before he could implement plans for unilateral moves in the West Bank.
As such, Israel is likely to be cautious in considering any unilateral plans, especially given that the status quo still favors Israel.
"I don't see the Israelis necessarily making any unilateral moves at this moment. The collapse of the peace talks wouldn't prompt any immediate action from the Israelis, because there is no immediate threat," Jonathan Schanzer, a Middle East expert and vice president for research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told JNS.org.
Nevertheless, with the ongoing unity talks between Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah Party and the terrorist group Hamas, along with recent unilateral actions by the PA through the United Nations and other international avenues, Israel may soon realize it does not have a viable partner for peace-possibly spurring a unilateral move.
"Those are the things that I think could prompt a response from Israel," Schanzer said.
Other prominent Israelis have come out with their own unilateral plans of action.
Historian and former Israeli ambassador to the U.S. Michael Oren said in an interview in February-while peace talks were still ongoing-that Israel needs to have a "Plan B" like the Palestinians do.
"The two-state solution is the preferred solution. And if we can reach a negotiated agreement with the Palestinians that is permanent, legitimate and assures Israel's security, that is of course of the preferable choice," Oren told the Times of Israel.
"However, the Palestinians have intimated that if they can't reach a negotiated solution with us they then have a Plan B, and their Plan B is a binational state. And I think it's important that we also have a Plan B," he said.
Meanwhile, Israeli Economy Minister and Jewish Home party leader Naftali Bennett recently wrote a letter to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that urged him to annex a number of the major Israeli communities in the West Bank, including Gush Etzion, Maale Adumim, Ofra, Beit El, and several more-which are home to a total of about 440,000 Israelis.
"These areas enjoy a broad national consensus and have security, historical, and moral significance for the State of Israel," Bennett wrote.
If Netanyahu does decide to pursue a unilateral course of action, one of his toughest sells might be with the international community, which has rejected previous Israeli unilateral moves such as the annexation of eastern Jerusalem or the Golan Heights.
In order to address this, Yadlin believes that Israel should offer the Palestinians a "fair and generous agreement" before taking any unilateral steps.
"The international community has to be convinced, as they were with [former Prime Minister Ehud] Barak in 2000 or [former Prime Minister Ehud] Olmert in 2008, that Israel really offers the Palestinians a fair deal," Yadlin told JNS.org.
After nine months of negotiations that produced little results, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has said that the U.S. will likely take a "pause" in its peace efforts.
Without peace talks holding back the Palestinians, it is clear that Abbas is seeking to shape his own legacy and future-one that may include reuniting the Palestinian people, which split under his watch during Hamas's bloody 2007 takeover of Gaza.
"You can make a very valid argument that all of these moves are designed to spook the U.S. and Israel and force them back to the table to yield more concessions. I would say that the trajectory is far from clear," Schanzer said.
Yadlin believes that Israel must be proactive and not allow the Palestinians, or anyone else, to dictate their terms to the Jewish state.
"[Unilateral action] is a move done out of a position of strength and the ability to shape your own destiny according to parameters that I believe are better for the state of Israel," he said.
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