On Iran: Netanyahu offers a viable alternative

On Iran: Netanyahu offers a viable alternative

Published in the Connecticut Jewish Ledger

March 18, 2015

In view of the historic speech by Prime Minister Netanyahu to Congress, it is now apparent that the campaign to censor that speech based on alleged “protocol,” for which no legal precedent was cited, as well as the slurs on Israel’s leader, were simply tactics to distract attention from the proposed deal with Iran, with all its dangers, potential and actual.

The deal’s proponents never disclosed the basics of that deal until Netanyahu’s speech compelled them to do so, hoping that the “protocol” claims would obscure the real issues; i.e., the injurious effect of his proposed deal on national and international security and the world balance of power.

Although the Iran deal is not yet finalized, and its details are not yet known, the broad outlines of its proposal are now exposed. As Charles Krauthammer stated in a March 6 editorial, under the “sunset” clause,” “[i]n about 10 years, the deal expires. Sanctions are lifted and Iran is permitted unlimited uranium enrichment with an unlimited number of centrifuges of unlimited sophistication.” The Associated Press stated on Feb. 24: “Once the deal [for at least 10 years] expires, Iran could theoretically ramp up enrichment to whatever level it wanted” (“U.S.-Iran Close in on Nuke Accord,” AP report).

It is disingenuous to claim, as the supporters of this deal have claimed, that there is no alternative. As Jennifer Rubin in the Washington Post has stated, Netanyahu’s speech did contain an alternative: “Hold firm and increase sanctions.” Furthermore, it was the President himself who had originally argued, after opposing sanctions, that it was the sanctions that had forced Iran to the table.

As  Krauthammer also points out, when you ratchet up sanctions as Congress urges, Iran with collapsed oil prices would be extremely vulnerable.

It is almost incredible that Obama has even stated, in a Feb. 28 article in The Wall Street Journal, that Iran can be “a very successful regional power.” In view of the fact that Iran is a world sponsor of terrorism, has sought to control Iraq, Lebanon, Syria and Yemen, has ignored U.S. deadlines to stop nuclear enrichment, and has misled U.N. inspectors, this reflects a world view of the President that is very troubling, to say the least.

As former Mayor Rudy Giuliani stated in a New York Post article of March 8, what the President is doing with Iran right now “is extremely reckless.”

After the Holocaust and World War II, we should have learned the dangers of appeasement. As Churchill stated, “…the middle course adopted from desires for safety and a quiet life may be found to lead directly to the bull’s eye of disaster.”

June S. Neal, Delray Beach, Fla. (formerly of Connecticut)
Lorie Zackin, West Hartford
Daniel R. Schaefer, Hartford

An election quandary: 26 parties and none to support

An election quandary: 26 parties and none to support

By Alan Stein

Published in the Jewish Advocate, March 14, 2015

Alan Stein, a retired college professor, is CAMERA’s 2015 “Letter Writer of the Year.” He splits his time between Massachusetts and Israel.

When I made aliyah in October, I didn't expect to get a chance to vote before my teudat zehut was dry. Then Yair Lapid and Tzipi Livni got on Benjamin Netanyahu's nerves and an election was scheduled for March 17. Oy. Twenty-six parties on the ballot. I have to make a choice.

I won't waste my vote on any of the minor parties with no chance of making the Knesset.

I may like the way Ale Yarok, the Green Party, is running on the platform of legalized pot, but it isn't going to get any seats and so it won't get my vote.

The ultra-religious parties insist on having everyone else support the non-working Haredim. Not with my shekels.

I've always considered myself a liberal, although a Jerusalem Post questionnaire during the last election campaign placed me almost dead center. I don't like the extremes. I won't vote for any party too far left or right.

Okay. Four parties left: Koolanu, Likud, Zionist Camp and Yesh Atid.

In the previous election, I probably would have voted for Yesh Atid (There Is A Future), a then brand new party started by television personality Yair Lapid. I don't like the way politicians keep leaving one party and starting another, but my agreement with much of its platform overcame that basic negative. Yesh Atid performed better than expected in that election, became part of the governing coalition and, even though he admittedly knew nothing about finance, Yair Lapid became Finance Minister, It showed. Then he criticized the government during the recent Gaza war. That offends my American sensibilities. Politics stops at the water's edge. Scratch Yesh Atid. It doesn't have my future vote.

Isaac Herzog is the new leader of Labor, the major component of the Zionist Camp. Labor has lost every election since Ehud Barak, Camp David and the second intifada and votes in a new leader after each one. Herzog also publicly criticized the government during the Gaza war. That affects my American sensibilities. Herzog also formed an alliance with Hatnuah, the party formed by Tzipi Livni for the prior election after being defeated for the leadership of Kadima, which she had joined after leaving Likud. Together, they're running as the Zionist Camp. While opposition leader, Livni strongly criticized the Israeli government - and praised Mahmoud Abbas! - both in speeches and in op-ed published in American newspapers, while touring the United States. Scratch the Zionist Camp.

I'm opposed to formal term limits, but also think it's unhealthy for the government to be controlled by the same individual or party for too long. Netanyahu's been prime minister in Likud-led coalitions for six years, after previously serving for three years. I think that's long enough. Time for a change.

Koolanu is a brand new party started a few months ago by Moshe Kahlon. Kahlon had been a lifelong Likudnik and served as a minister in the previous government. He's popular for opening up cellular service to competition. I'm happy about that; thanks to Moshe, I've been getting unlimited cellular and data for my iPhone for 37 shekels (under $10) a month! His list also includes some candidates I consider excellent, such as Michael Oren, the former Israeli ambassador to the United States. Unfortunately for its chances getting my vote, nobody from Koolanu showed up when I went to an election forum at AACI (Association of Americans and Canadians in Israel). I was already reluctant to vote for yet another new party just started by an individual bolting from one party. So long Koolanu.

Twenty six parties running for the Knesset and none to support! Time for a song from The Boss, a sequel to Bruce Springsteen's "57 Challens (And Nothin' On)."

A perspective from Israel

A perspective from Israel

JAN GAINES

Published February 26 in the Greenwich Time and Stamford Advocate of Connecticut.

I am a former 30-year resident of Stamford and now live in Netanya, Israel.

Through the years, Trudy Rubin has been right on some issues, but she is wrong and misleading on the Netanyahu speech to the Congress (op-ed, Feb 23, "Bibi, Boehner playing games") and I think your readers deserve another point of view. She quotes Nahum Barnea writing in Ha'aretz, a paper consistently critical of Netanyahu. His is only one voice among many. She accuses "Bibi" of plotting an end run around Obama who she claims has "twisted himself" in providing military and diplomatic support to Israel, when in truth the longstanding relationship between the United States and Israel has survived despite Obama's preference for changing Middle East policy to favor other regimes.

Rubin thinks Netanyahu is making this speech as a last desperate warning over Iran's intentions to dominate the Middle East by developing a bomb. She is right. Netanyahu is scared, and so are all of us who live in this region; not just Israeli's but also other Gulf states such as Saudi Arabia. Perhaps Rubin hasn't been listening to Iran's continued threats to wipe Israel off the map.

But we have and we believe it!
Israelis are voting March 17 in an election that is focusing on domestic issues primarily. Whether Netanyahu makes a speech in the United States or doesn't, she is wrong in thinking that will sway the election on his behalf. It will not. What she doesn't tell you is that every major candidate is just as scared as Netanyahu is, and support his attempts to deter a "bad agreement."

This whole brouhaha is very painful for those of us who are both American and Israeli. I do not believe this was a deliberate plot to insult the president or to favor the Republicans. Mistakes were made but Obama's reaction looks to me like an opportunity to put Netanyahu in his place once and for all. And to influence the Israeli election. What Rubin doesn't tell you is that the White House is using every means available within the law to defeat Netanyahu, from setting up a legal lobbying group called V15 which is funded by an organization called One Voice based in the States which cannot directly fund and lobby because they are a foreign entity to using a public relations person once on Obama's White House team. These are just two examples.

The bottom line is this: Trudy Rubin can fling accusations at Netanyahu all she wants, true or untrue. But she isn't sitting under the gun, and neither are your readers. To really understand what is going on, I would invite anyone reading this to spend a few months with us here in Israel, maybe go through a barrage of missiles, or run for a shelter. One's perspective changes a lot when one is threatened as we are on an almost daily basis.

Jan Gaines is a former Stamford resident who now lives in Netanya, Israel.

PA's Paymaster

Published in the Jerusalem Post, Thursday, February 26, 2015

Sir, -- With regard to "Jerusalem hits back at claims it is causing collapse of PA" (February 23), I suggest that the government take the tax funds being withheld from the Palestinian Authority and use them to pay some of the PA's legal debts, specifically, those owed to the Israel Electric Corporation and the families of terror victims, to whom the PA now owes $655.5 million.

If it does that, no one could legitimately claim that Israel has been withholding funds from the PA since it would merely be acting as the PA's paymaster.

Alan Stein
Netanya

CCSU, other universities should educate, not indoctrinate, students

CCSU, other universities should educate, not indoctrinate, students

By Jay Bergman

Jay Bergman is professor of history at Central Connecticut State University and serves on the board of directors of the National Association of Scholars.

Published in New Haven Register (New Haven, CT) Friday, February 27, 2015

Former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani's claim that President Obama does not love America, while perhaps inartfully phrased, is defensible. Surely the president's intention, stated publicly when he was running for president, "to fundamentally transform America," suggests a strong aversion to America as it now exists. Moreover, he has condemned the American people for "clinging to their guns and their religion," and, by citing "their antipathy to people who aren't like them," slyly insinuated that they are collectively racist. When asked if he believed in American Exceptionalism, he replied that he believed in it the way Greeks believe in Greek Exceptionalism and the British in British Exceptionalism. His wife, Michelle, famously opined that American was "a downright mean country" and that until her husband ran for president, she had no reason to be proud of it.

Still, President Obama has his defenders, and in a country that is more or less evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans, this is to be expected. Indeed, the whole issue of the president's true feelings about America is one on which reasonable people may disagree.

But that was not the case among the faculty at Central Connecticut State University after Mayor Giuliani delivered his broadside. On the campus email list-serve, one professor vowed that she would refuse to attend any lecture the mayor might give here. Another, recently retired, pronounced him a racist. Yet another, while conceding that the mayor was not a racist, argued that his derogation of the president nevertheless harmed the generic struggle against racism - which seems to imply that President Obama should not be criticized for anything and that anyone who does so is morally deficient.

As it happens, Mayor Giuliani spoke at CCSU two years ago under the auspices of the Vance Foundation, which over the years has brought to campus speakers on both sides of the political spectrum, such as George McGovern and Jimmy Carter on the left and George H. W. Bush and Jeane Kirkpatrick on the right. Could Giuliani's statement about Obama cause the foundation to bring him here again? Judging from the comments above, it seems safe to predict that should it do so, the response from faculty would be volcanic. Some have even suggested that in the future the Vance Foundation should either sponsor speakers the faculty agrees with or should be barred from using the university as the venue for the lectures it pays for.

In November 2013, a committee selected by the Faculty Senate sent the foundation a list of seven nominees to speak at CCSU in 2014. One was Melissa Harris-Perry, who, in a recent interview on MSNBC with Attorney General Eric Holder, asked him to quack like a duck. Another, Alice Walker, has compared Israel to Nazi Germany. The late Maya Angelou, also on the list, praised the barbaric and oppressive regime of the Castro brothers in Cuba. Three of the remaining four were similarly situated on the far left of the political spectrum. The last, Valerie Strauss, opposes school vouchers benefitting students from poor families while sending her children to expensive private schools.

College faculties across America are overwhelmingly liberal, and their political contributions show this vividly. In 2012, 96 percent of donations from Ivy League faculty went to President Obama, the remaining 4 percent to Governor Romney. This imbalance is most apparent in humanities departments, where the temptation to indoctrinate students politically is especially pronounced; when President Bush was in office, students of mine regularly complained about professors denouncing him instead of teaching what they were contractually obligated to teach.

The CCSU administration and faculty loudly proclaim their devotion to "diversity." But their commitment is more rhetorical than real. What they really seek is the opposite: a faculty and student body that are racially and ethnically heterogeneous but that politically think the same things. I hope that the good people of Connecticut, who through their taxes largely subsidize higher education in the state, make clear to their elected representatives that instead of indoctrinating students, our universities should educate them, which means, in part, practicing genuine intellectual diversity.

At CCSU, a good start toward this objective would be allowing the Vance Foundation to sponsor speakers with whom the faculty will occasionally disagree.

Attendance at Netanyahu’s Mar. 3 speech sends a strong message to Iran

By June Neal

Published in the Connecticut Jewish Ledger

Regarding the Jewish Ledger’s editorial of Feb. 11, “Netanyahu Should Pass On Speech Before Congress”: When Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks to Congress on March 17, one white-haired, 86-year-old man will take a seat in the audience: Elie Wiesel, the 1986 Nobel Peace Prize winner, whose name is a metaphor for the conscience of the world. His presence will cast an aura of righteousness that should shame those members of Congress who chose to boycott the speech because of team loyalty over demonstrating respect for the leader of the only democracy in the Middle East. In an advertisement he is running in two major newspapers, Wiesel will cite “the catastrophic danger of a nuclear Iran” and ask our leaders: “Will you join me in hearing the case for keeping weapons from those who preach death to Israel and America?”

People of good will want to believe that diplomacy can forestall a nuclear-armed Iran. But successful diplomacy requires both parties to be honest brokers. Iran is a criminal theocracy that has never moved from its stated goal of destruction of the United States, which it calls The Great Satan. And it is frightening that the only insurance policy we have against Iran’s surreptitious nuclear development is the International Atomic Energy Agency, an arm of the United Nations, with which Iran has played a shell game for years.

Iran signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty but continued to enrich uranium beyond agreed levels. It has ignored United Nations Security Council resolutions.

As the Ledger’s editorial correctly states, “Every single day Iran’s centrifuges are spinning.” So, why ask Netanyahu to cancel his speech? His call to action is needed now, before this bad pact is signed. And how would it be enforced when the agency charged with its oversight can’t do its job? According to the IAEA’s own November 20, 2014 report, Section H: “The Agency remains concerned about the possible existence in Iran of undisclosed nuclear related activities involving military related organizations, including activities related to the development of a nuclear payload for a missile.” And Section L: “…the Agency is not in a position to provide credible assurance about the absence of undeclared nuclear material and activities in Iran, and therefore to conclude that all nuclear material in Iran is in peaceful activities.”

Just days later, the IAEA Director, General Yukiya Amano, told CNN: “The IAEA has been addressing this issue of Iran nuclear issues for more than 10 years but we still cannot give the assurance that all of the activities in Iran are for peaceful purposes. We have two problems: one is that Iran is not fully cooperating with the Agency to clarify the information that may have military aspects. Another problem is that Iran is not allowing us to implement a more powerful verification tool that is called an ‘Additional Protocol.’ Agreement was not reached.”

I urge all our senators and our representatives to attend Mr. Netanyahu’s speech. In doing so, they will send a strong message to Iran and to all who seek our destruction: this is a matter of conscience, not politics, and the security of the United States of America is paramount. In this we stand together.

June Neal
Delray Beach, Fla.

Israel and U.S. beacons of civilization

Israel and U.S. beacons of civilization

Published as an op-ed in the Connecticut Post.

Andy Piascik's "logic" ("Getting serious about terrorism," Feb. 19) may appeal to those who agree with him that America is the source of all evil in the world. Fortunately, most people have more sense and realize that, for all their faults, both the United States and Israel, its only true friend in the Middle East, are beacons of sanity, civilization, democracy and hope in the world.

With respect to what Piascik incorrectly calls "occupied Palestine," it's interesting to contrast its situation today with its situation between 1948 and 1967.

During that period, Gaza was occupied by Egypt while Judea and Samaria were occupied by Jordan, which had renamed it the "West Bank." There was no movement of goods or people between those territories and Israel, because the Arabs refused to allow any. The exceptions which proved the rule were the terror attacks launched from those territories against Israelis.

Today, Gaza is totally controlled by its own government, run by the terror group Hamas, which has launched thousands upon thousands of rockets at Israeli civilians. Despite this, and despite the continuing Arab boycott, Israel transfers massive amounts of humanitarian goods to the people in Gaza and routinely brings Gazans to Israeli hospitals for medical care.

In Judea and Samaria, the Palestinian Authority has for two decades governed approximately 95 percent of the Arabs in those areas, but has several times turned down offers to establish an independent state in almost all that territory, along with all of Gaza.

Thanks to Israel, many of the Arabs living there have well-paying jobs either in Israel and in businesses within Jewish communities in the disputed territories.

In both Gaza and Judea and Samaria, the Arabs are taking advantage of many colleges, universities and hospitals which didn't exist in 1967 but were built during the period Israel administered the territory.

One important aspect which hasn't changed is the existence of "refugee camps."

I use quotes because very few of their residents are refugees; rather, the overwhelming majority are descendants - children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren - of refugees.

They have been forced to remain in these camps simply to be used as pawns, as human weapons in the genocidal campaign against the world's only Jewish state. When Israel administered the territory, it made an attempt to improve the lives of the people living in those camps; it tried to move them from the camps to real homes in real cities and towns but pulled back from those plans in the face of irrational but massive criticism.

One of the first steps we need to take if we are really serious about fighting terrorism is to insist the United Nations disband UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, which has done so much to expand the "refugee" population, and start closing those "refugee camps," which would more accurately be called "terrorist training camps."

It's almost beyond comprehension that the Palestinian Authority has governed so much of the disputed territories for two decades yet has not allowed a single one of those camps under its jurisdiction to be closed.

Beyond comprehension, but telling: the agenda of the Palestinian Authority, whether first under the leadership of Yasser Arafat - the godfather of modern terrorism - or as currently under the leadership of the so-called "moderate" Mahmoud Abbas, has never been about improving the welfare of the Palestinian Arabs or about establishing a Palestinian state; rather, it is about disestablishing of the one functioning democracy in the Middle East, Israel.

Alan Stein
Netanya, Israel
The writer is founder of the Massachusetts chapter of Promoting Responsibility in Middle East Reporting (PRIMER) and president emeritus of the Connecticut chapter.

Our Representatives in Congress Must Listen to Israel's Prime Minister's Message

Iran's drive to obtain nuclear weapons is the most dangerous problem facing the world today. Its importance far transcends partisan politics.

We beseech you to remind our Senators and Congresspersons of that fact.

Keeping nuclear weapons out of the hands of the extremists in charge of the Islamic Republic of Iran is far more important than who wins Israel's elections in a few weeks and even more important than who wins America's next election. It is the most important responsibility of our leaders, both in the Executive Branch and Congress.

The prime minister of Israel has been invited to address a joint session of Congress March 3. He will be interrupting his election campaign to speak; this issue is that important.

Our representatives in Congress must listen to his message.

Iran's nuclear weapons program is not only an existential threat to the world's only Jewish state, but is a dangerous threat to our own safety. The ICBMs being developed by Iran aren't needed to deliver a bomb to Jerusalem or Tel Aviv; they are being developed so that Iran will be able to threaten New York, Washington and Boston.

Please join us and do your part as patriotic Americans, supporters of our ancestral but threatened homeland and citizens of the world by reminding our leaders of their responsibility, that we expect them to uphold their responsibility, to be present when the Israeli prime minister addresses Congress, to listen carefully and to do everything in their power to keep nuclear weapons out of the hands of Ayatollah Khamenei and the terror groups he finances, trains and arms.

Ten Points Regarding the Fundamental Breach by the Palestinians of the Oslo Accords

Ten Points Regarding the Fundamental Breach by the Palestinians of the Oslo Accords 

Amb. Alan Baker 

Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs  January 5, 2015 

Courtesy of IMRA - Independent Media Review and Analysis 

1. The peace negotiation process as set out in the Oslo Accords was intended to lead to peace between Israel and the Palestinian People and mutual recognition of each other’s "mutual legitimate and political rights" (Preamble, Oslo I and Oslo II).

2. In this context Israel was prepared to compromise on the historic and legal rights of the Jewish People in the area, through agreement for peaceful relations. To this end the parties agreed in the Oslo Accords not to initiate or take any steps that will change the status of the territories pending the outcome of the permanent status negotiations (Oslo II, Article 31(7)).

3. Yasser Arafat, in his September 9, 1993, letter to Yitzhak Rabin, declared that "all outstanding issues relating to permanent status will be resolved through negotiations."

4. This overall series of commitments and obligations constitutes a contractual framework of obligations between Israel and the Palestinians, signed as witnesses and guarantors by the King of Jordan, the Presidents of the U.S. and Egypt, the Foreign Ministers of the Russian Federation and Norway, the EU and endorsed by the UN.

5. By petitioning the UN, the International Criminal Court and international organizations to recognize them and accept them as a full member state, and by their unification with the Hamas terror organization, the Palestinians have knowingly and deliberately bypassed their contractual obligations pursuant to the Oslo Accords in an attempt to prejudge the main negotiating issues outside the negotiation.

6. This, together with their attempts to delegitimize Israel among the international community and their attempted actions against Israel’s leaders, has served to frustrate any possibility of realization of the Oslo Accords, and as such the Palestinians are in material breach of their contractual obligations.

7. By the same token those countries supporting them are in breach of their obligations and guarantees as witnesses.

8. By all legal standards, according to the accepted and universally recognized laws of contracts and international agreements, a fundamental breach enables the injured party to declare the agreement void and is freed from any further obligations pursuant to the agreement or contract.

9. Therefore the fundamental breach of the Oslo Accords by the Palestinians is indicative of their conscious decision to undermine them and prevent any possibility of their implementation. As such they have rendered the Accords void.

10. In such a situation of fundamental breach and according to all accepted rules of contracts and agreements, Israel has the legitimate right to declare that the Oslo Accords are no longer valid and to act unilaterally in order to protect its essential legal and security interests.
=============
Amb. Alan Baker, Director of the Institute for Contemporary Affairs at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, participated in the negotiation and drafting of the Oslo Accords with the Palestinians, as well as agreements and peace treaties with Egypt, Jordan, and Lebanon. He served as legal adviser and deputy director-general of Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and as Israel's ambassador to Canada.
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IN THE BEGINNING -- THERE WAS THE BOYCOTT

By: Prof. Ervin Birnbaum

It is surprising and stunning to observe that some supposedly highly informed people refer to the State of Israel as an "apartheid" State.

Apartheid is defined in the Webster New Universal Unabridged Dictionary as "the policy of strict racist segregation and discrimination".  When one considers that Dr. Salman Zarka, a Druse physician, born in the village of Peki'in in Northern

Galillee, became this month the Director-General of Safed's Medical Center, after having served for years as the highest commander of the Israel Defence Forces' Center for Medical Services, one wonders how in the world he managed to

avoid the punishing apartheid supposedly imposed by Israel on its minorities.

When I consider Dr. J. Daka, my wonderful dentist, welcoming his numerous Jewish patients with a wide smile in his clinic

in the city of Netanya, although he is an Arab from a neighboring Arab village, I wonder how in the world he manages to

avoid the punishing apartheid inflicted by Israel on its Arabs.

When you travel from Netanya to Afuleh in the direction of Mount Tabor, where the prophetess Deborah fought a victorious

battle against Yavin the King of Hazor 3,300 years ago, and you pass near millitant Arab-Muslim strongholds such as the city

of Umm-El-Fahem, you can't help but stare mouth agape at the beautiful villas inhabited by the Arabs in the heart of Israel.

Now if that is apartheid, believe you me, friend, it pays to live under apartheid.

All one needs to do is to check reliable statistics from impartial sources to receive revealing statistics about which State

treats its religious, ethnic, racial and other minorities as human beings. The only State in the Middle East where the Christian minority of any racial, color or economic background increased in recent decades is Israel.

Consider the following figures, easily checked out: In 1948 there were in Syria 27,000 Jews; today there are 100. In Lebanon

there were 10,000 Jews in the 1950's; today there are less then 100. In Iraq there were 125,000 Jews in 1948; today there

are zero. In Yemen the number of Jews dropped from 45,000 in 1948, to approximately 200. And so on, down the roster of

Arab lands. Yet the Jews who were driven out of Arab lands form no refugee camps because their sisters and brothers in

Israel were ready to welcome them and help them. Yet, there are numerous Arab refugee camps, poor people whom their

brothers were not ready to embrace and kept them in consistent squalor. Would it be out of line to consider that this was done and continues to be done for a political purpose, though it lacks a sense of humanness?

To call Israel an Apartheid state is at best a gross distortion, a lack of understanding of the meaning of the term. However,

in many cases it is simply an outright, blasphemous lie. It is exploited for political ends, taking advantage of well-meaning

individuals of all ages and all professions from university students to high-level academics who believe what they see in

print, or what they are being told by people who are capable without blushing to look straight into their listeners' eyes and

utter the famous BIG LIE. Precisely because of its absurd enormity, it would seem preposterous to be uttered were it a lie --

and yet, that is exactly what it is -- a lie. It is a useful tactics, exploiting the psychological weakness of good people who can't

even begin to fathom the enormity of such distortion. This tactics was used in the past, it is used today, and no doubt will be

used in the future, by all dictators, zealots, insanely ambitious people whether it be a Stalin, Hitler, Ahmedinejad, Arafat or

others who cannot attain their goals by truthful and honest means.

Among those who are forced to resort to highly devious means to attain their ends in destroying the State of Israel is the so-

called "Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions" group. One of the examples of how they operate was produced at the University

of Harvard, as recorded in the daily paper of the University campus, "The Harvard Crimson" in an article entitled "HUDS

(Harvard University Dining Services) Suspends Puchases from Israeli Soda Company". It relates that "some members of the College Palestine Solidarity Committee and the Harvard Islamic Society" cited "discomfort with...the potential" of Sodastream

machines produced in Israel "to offend those affected by the Israel-Palestine conflict".  Since this discomfort "could be offensive to Palestinian students", Rachel J. Sandalow-Ash, a member of the Harvard College Progressive Jewish Alliance, agreed that these machines not be used on the university campus. Miss Sandalow-Ash claims that her stand is neither anti-Israel nor anti-Semite. It is purely a stand against the occupation.

Surely, it would have been proper for Miss Sandalow-Ash to ask herself several questions before reaching her decision. 

Is Sodastrem really in occupied territory? Sodastream is relocating its facility to undisputed, non-controversial land in Israel's Negev. It could be considered "occupied" land only if you agree with the extreme Palestinian stand that all of Israel, including Tel Aviv and Haifa, are to be viewed as occupied land -- in other words, that Israel has no right to exist. This is indeed, one of the basic principles of the Boycott group. It goes hand in hand with the group's demand for the return of all the refugees to Israel. Is this what Miss Sandalow-Ash desires?

The representative of the Jewish Alliance could have further taken into account not only the discomfort of the Palestinian

students, but also the feelings of the Jewish students, who could wonder why one should introduce a soda-machine into

the Israel-Palestine conflict? How far should one go in playing games with those so-called "microaggressions"? The head

of Hammas, Halled Masshal, recently sent his daughter for treatment to an Israeli hospital. Since this could have been a

matter affecting life, I could see his refusing Israeli medication. However he evidently didn't. But to wipe the faces of thousands of Jewish students in the dirt by offending them and causing them potential discomfort in refusing a product just because it is manufactured in Israel, that seems to be allright for Miss Sandalow-Ash. Yet, God forbid, don't call her anti-Israel nor an anti-Semite. After all, she is Jewish, representing a Progressive Jewish Alliance. How could she be less sensitive to Jewish feelings and needs than to her Palestinian cousins?

One can feel overwhelming pity for good individuals who do not see how they become instruments of evil, not realizing that a Palestine Solidarity Committee and an Islamic Society are utilizing them for their own satanic ends of destroying Israel through boycott. Would it perhaps be helpful to Rachel J. Sandalow-Ash and to hundreds of dedicated Jewish students throughout the campuses of American Universities, and to thousands of well-meaning Jews throughout the United States, to point out that when Hitler became Chancellor of Germany on January 30, 1933, precisely two months later, on April 1 he came out with his first manifest anti-Jewish act which consisted of an ECONOMIC BOYCOTT. Throughout Germany gigantic posters appeared on billboards informing the German public of a general boycott on Jewish businesses. The posters read:

Till Saturday morning,10 o'clock

The jews are given to reflect

Then the fight begins! 

GERMAN VOLK, DEFEND YOURSELVES

DO NOT BUY FROM JEWS!

The day, April 1, 1933, marked the beginning of the stage of psychological isolation of the Jews in Germany.

Let us be aware. History has a tendency to repeat itself.

Ervin Birnbaum is Professor of Political Science at City University of New York, Haifa University and Moscow University of Humanities. He published numerous books including "The Islamic State of Pakistan", "Politics of Compromise" and "In the Shadow of the Struggle", and most recently "Turning Obstacles into Stepping Stones". hadnerv1@012.net.il