Netanyahu's Win Is Good for Palestine

This letter was written by Arthur Toporovsky in response to an op-ed "Netanyahu's Win Is Good for Palestine" by Yousef Munayyer.

It is worth noting that while Mr. Munayyer repeatedly describes Israel as having "apartheid policies" and being an "apartheid regime" he does not describe in what way that label is fitting to the situation. Instead, he speaks of it as if it is the truth, and allows his blank-check accusation to do its damage without having to substantiate his claim.  In the same manner he writes of how Israel is "monopolizing West Bank land and natural resources" without explaining what resources he is referring to.  Are there mineral resources that lie under the Israeli settlements and in no other place in the West Bank? Do Israeli settlements encompass the only oil or gas wells in the area, thereby depriving the Palestinian Arabs of those resources?  Surely he cannot mean water, which has been subject of a successful cooperative project between Jordan, the Palestinian Arabs and Israel.  Again, the accusation is left unfounded, and it need only be made in order to do its work.

Instead of land for peace, Mr. Munayyer claims that the Arabs are now seeking rights for peace, but he does not acknowledge the full truth of the matter.  Arabs, he says, are demanding the right to live on their land with  free movement, due process, equal treatment under the law, voting rights and freedom from discrimination.  In reality, Arabs live throughout the West Bank, Gaza and Israel area.  It is the Jews who are prevented from freely living on the land and who are only permitted to live in those areas that were not conquered by Arab forces in 1949.  Freedom of movement in and out of Israel and near the Israeli settlements is and has to be dependent on the Arab rejection of violence against Israelis.  It was the increasing Arab hostility from the West Bank that led to the building of the Israeli security barrier, and it is the failure of the Arab leadership to renounce violence that maintains it.  Notably, while the Arabs demand the right to go into Israel on a regular basis, they do not wish to reciprocate by allowing Israelis into Gaza and the West Bank in the same manner.

Most disingenuous is his claim that Arabs are denied voting rights, especially as he makes this claim after noting that Arabs had indeed voted in Israeli elections.  This claim, promoted by BDS, is based on the conception of the West Bank, Gaza and Israel as being one state under Israeli governance, which therefore requires all peoples within that state to vote.  The reality is that it is not one state, the West Bank and Gaza are slated to be recognized as Palestine, and there is already a Palestinian Arab government of that state.  For Israel to dissolve that government and bring the entire region under Israeli governance would be a true violation of the rights of the Palestinian Arabs.  One could make an argument that the Arabs who are living in the Israeli settlements should be allowed to vote in Israeli elections, but one can just as accurately claim that the Jews living in the West Bank should have been allowed to vote in the Arab elections, which they were not.  As the sovereignty of those areas are disputed, it is appropriate that those people living there vote in the elections of the country they wish to be part of when a final definition of borders is achieved.  Similarly, just as Israel cannot impose its government on the West Bank and Gaza, so too it cannot impose its legal system on the citizens of those areas, and Arabs from those areas who are arrested by the IDF cannot be brought into Israel for trial.  This is what is required by international law.  Ideally, the P.A. government should be arresting those people who commit acts of violence, even if only as a demonstration of respect for the human rights of the Israelis who are living in the disputed areas, but that is not what happens.  What is important to note is that the Arabs living within Israel are subject to the same laws as the other citizens of Israel, and have the same right to due process as any person who might be arrested, and also have the right to work within the system as lawyers and judges.  One might want to ask Mr. Munayyer how many Jewish lawyers or judges are in the Palestinian Arab legal system.


No nation is free from discrimination.  P.M. Netanyahu’s call for right-wing supporters to get out the vote to counter the impact of left-wing parties busing in voters was not wrong in principle, but his including the word “Arab” to describe the demographic group that was being bused in made it insensitive and open to charges of discrimination and “fear-mongering”. Clearly he should have never used that word.  Most certainly he owes a public apology for it, though I can understand that it might not be entirely well received.  Nonetheless, what is important to note is that he was not denouncing the Arab right to vote in any way, even if he was calling for people to come out so as to counteract their increased presence in the voting booth.  Nor does that comment change the fact that 17 Arabs were elected, by a mix of Arabs and Jews, to serve in the Knesset.  The Joint List is not only an Arab party, but with 13 seats it is the third largest party in the Knesset, which gives it the potential for significant power, either as a member of the governing coalition or as opposition.  This is not true in any other Arab nation, where Palestinian Arabs are typically not allowed to vote, much less run for office.  For months, P.A. President Mahmoud Abbas has been insisting that Israel has reversed its 47 year commitment to preserve Arab control of the Al Aqsa place, despite assurances from the Israeli government that it has no intention of doing so.  In a series of speeches, Abbas has been referring to Israelis as “cattle” and that the mere presence of Jews has been “defiling” the sanctity of the Muslim holy places, calling all Muslims to protect those places by all means necessary.  Hamas has been telling people to attack Israelis with their knives and cars.  Not only has Fatah not condemned such blatant calls for violence, it has been sending letters of commendation to the families of those who have killed Israelis or died in the attempt.  Where is the condemnation of that fear-mongering and incitement?

Over the course of his tenure as prime minister, Netanyahu has released hundreds of prisoners, including mass murderers, and even froze settlements for 10 months, just to bring the Palestinian Arabs to the negotiation table.  What has been offered in return? The idea of two states, side by side, based on the 1949 Armistice lines, in which Arabs can move freely from one to the other while Jews are denied the right to visit ancient sites such as the thousands year old Mount of Olives cemetery or the Western Wall?   A rejection of every Israeli proposal offered, including some drafted with Pres. Abbas himself?  Attempts to unilaterally have the borders defined by the U.N.?  Why is it impossible for the two states to have both peoples living in both states, with one state under Arab governance and the other under Jewish governance?  Why must East Jerusalem, with the Old City of Jerusalem, be rendered free of Jews instead of being open to both peoples as proposed in  U.N. resolutions?  While Hamas has always rejected Israel’s to exist at all, and much of the Fatah party speaks of the two-state solution as a step towards the goal of one Arab state, why is it that Netanyahu’s comment is seen as the death of the peace process?  Perhaps it does not matter that Netanyahu is once again prime minister, not so long as the Palestinian Arab people continues to dream of a land free of Jewish inhabitants.  Perhaps it is time to begin pressuring the Palestinian Arabs to stop promoting violence against Jews, to let go of the unrealistic claim of 1967 (really 1949) lines as borders, and to fully accept Israel’s right to exist.  Perhaps then we might have peace in the Middle East.  Unfortunately, Mr. Munayyer does not even come close to such considerations.

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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