Israel Negotiates With Radicals And Terrorists

6) Israel feels secure enough to engage in diplomacy without its strongest
and only unequivocal ally present? Or is it an expression of
desperation --- i.e. Israel feels it has no choice but to negotiate,
and if the US won't be party, Israel will fall back on whatever
alternatives it can find? 

 Maybe the Muslim countries are themselves useful to negotiate with other Muslim countries, as they enjoy better standing with them than the U.S.

7) "If Israel comes to recognize Hamas as its negotiating partner over Palestine, de facto if not de jure, wouldn't such a development freeze the official Palestinian Authority out of its remaining claims to power?"

Why? Israel can just note that Hamas is the power of Gaza, if not the West Bank, and the reality of the former does not affect the latter.

 

 
'It's terrorism, stupid." Nothing short of blunt talk will do in
light of Sen. Barack Obama's comments this past week on Iran,
Hamas, and Hezbollah. They are the most significant indication to
date of the looming catastrophe for American national security
posed by an Obama presidency.

Here is Obama in his own words, speaking in Pendleton, Oregon on
Sunday night: "Iran, Cuba, Venezuela, these countries are tiny
compared to the Soviet Union. In Iran they spend 1/100th of what
we spend on the military. If Iran ever tried to pose a serious
threat to us, they wouldn't stand a chance."

How does one begin a course for a presidential candidate in
Terrorism 101? Where has Obama been for the past three decades
during which the greatest threats to peace and security have
moved beyond the sphere of state actors operating alone? After
9/11, why doesn't Obama recognize the capacity of relatively
small entities to wreak havoc, at comparatively little cost, on a
nation as large and strong as America?

Despite Obama's claim to be a foreign-policy realist, his fancy
foreign-policy footwork contains as much realpolitik as a dancing
sugar-plum fairy. Obama is keen to explain his hankering for an
early heart-to-heart with Iranian President Ahmadinejad - with
whom he would "be willing to meet separately, without
precondition during the first year of [his] administration" or
his desire to engage in "direct presidential diplomacy with Iran
without preconditions." His strategy so far has been to deny the
undeniable transaction costs of an unconditioned presidential
get-together: the undeserved legitimacy conferred on a would-be
mass murderer, the time lost while a nuclear-weapons program
continues in full swing, and the betrayal of brave local
dissenters.

"Tiny" and not "serious" move us another step closer to the edge.
The unfortunate reality is that Iran not only poses a serious
threat already, but it does stand a chance of carrying out its
dire program. Ahmadinejad, in addition to his professed affinity
for genocide, is funding terrorist proxies in Lebanon and Gaza
who believe they have started the job and are committed to
finishing it. The message Obama sends in denying that Iran has
"tried to pose a serious threat to us" is that a grave threat to
the peace and security of Israel is not a threat to the peace and
security of the United States. Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer,
of "Israel Lobby" fame, would be proud. But even the
anti-nuclear-anything activists in the Democratic party should
begin to worry about a president who thinks the consequences of
an Iranian nuclear strike on Israel can be confined to the
locals.

Official U.S. policy holds Iran to be a state sponsor of
terrorism, along with Cuba, North Korea, Sudan, and Syria. Not
only has Iran tried, and is trying, to pose a serious threat to
us, in some ways it is a greater threat than that posed by the
Soviet Union. The terrorist organizations or non-state actors
whom these rogue states sponsor are not subject to the same
economic and political pressures that could be brought to bear on
the Soviet Union. Madmen and religious fanatics driven by a
belief in the imminent reappearance of the 12th Imam following
worldwide chaos, or visions of virgins in post-suicidal heaven,
or who just hate us more than they love their children, are not
susceptible to the rational calculus of Mikhail Gorbachev.

But according to his recently reported conversation with New York
Times columnist David Brooks, Obama believes the problem with
Hamas and Hezbollah is that the poor things don't "understand
that they're going down a blind alley with violence that weakens
their legitimate claims." We need to hear more about where in the
governing Hamas Charter (with its overt anti-Semitism and
manifest dedication to the destruction of Israel), and
Hezbollah's takeover plans for Lebanon, Obama finds legitimate
claims. And the solution according to Obama? "The U.S. needs a
foreign policy that looks at root causes of problems and
dangers."

Hezbollah Leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah couldn't have said it
better himself. Oh, wait: He has said it himself. Remember
Iranian proxy Nasrallah in Beirut on September 30, 2006, just
after he sent 4,000 rockets into Israel: "This experience of the
resistance, which must be transferred to the world, relies on
faith, conviction, trust, and the moral and spiritual willingness
to give sacrifices. Also, it depends on the thinking, planning,
organizing, training and armament, and as is said: dealing with
the root causes." Surely, Obama ought to know that invoking the
language of "root causes" to illuminate the behavior of Hamas and
Hezbollah plays into the nefarious strategy of these terrorist
organizations and their sympathizers.

How about the tiny factor? On the one hand, we could all hum
tip-toeing through the tulips along with Obama and Tiny Tim. On
the other hand, we might cast our minds back to "tiny" anthrax
envelopes or think about "tiny" suitcase bombs or "tiny"
nanotechnology innovations in chemical and biological weapons. I
also wonder how all those developing countries, allegedly ready
to embrace us once again with a President Obama, will enjoy the
big boy's view of their tiny status.

Coming from a man who aspires to bear the single greatest
responsibility for the peace and security of the free world, the
resemblance to "peace for our time" is the least of Obama's
problems. The real problem is a book with a name like "Terrorism
for Dummies" would have to become bedside reading at the White
House.

• One of the primary objectives of the Palestinian Authority (PA) after its establishment in 1994 was to delegitimize Israel. These efforts were evident throughout Palestinian society and involved various channels including television, schoolbooks, and culture. The delegitimization of Israel incorporated various hate messages, especially the denial of Israel's right to exist.
• The academic community was likewise recruited to this undertaking. Professors, religious academics, teachers, and schoolbook authors are all participating in this hate promotion. Certain academics are chosen by the PA to indoctrinate the people using such public venues as PA TV and, particularly, educational broadcasting.
• In 1998, PA historians held a conference in which they devised a policy of historical revisionism. The developing PA educational system would not aim to teach historical truth but rather to convey a political history aimed at denying Israel's right to exist in the Land of Israel. Palestinian academics, recognizing the futility of attempting to erase the documented history of the Jews, instead adopted a different solution of literally stealing the identity of the Jews by identifying ancient Hebrews as both Arabs and Muslims and denying their connection to today's Jews of the state of Israel. Another component of the negation of Jewish history is the denial of modern Jewish experience-including the horrors of the Holocaust.
• Many PA academics have gone beyond the theoretical "struggle." They teach that the killing of Jews by Muslims is a precondition of world redemption. Because Jews are inherently evil and an existential danger, their annihilation is justified self-defense, a service to humanity, and an enactment of God's will.

Palestinian Authority Policy
One of the primary objectives of the Palestinian Authority (PA) after its establishment in 1994 was to delegitimize Israel. These efforts were evident throughout Palestinian society and involved various channels including television, schoolbooks, and culture. The delegitimization of Israel incorporated various hate messages, especially the denial of Israel's right to exist.[1] It also employed myriad libels, including the assertion that Israel intentionally kills Palestinians through shootings[2] and even burning in ovens.[3]

The PA also chose to ideologically confront Israel by using its media to promote hatred of Jews in general. The Authority initiated a virulent anti-Semitism designed to delegitimize Jews, Judaism, and Jewish traditions. As a result, anti-Semitism is now endemic to PA society. The academic community was likewise recruited to this undertaking. Professors, religious academics, teachers, and schoolbook authors are all participating in this hate promotion.
Academic anti-Semitism in the PA has numerous components, including the total revision of ancient Middle Eastern history to erase all records of Jewish presence in the Land of Israel. This reinforces the PA's policy of trying to legitimize its denial of Israel's right to exist by presenting it in academic trappings.
Thus, Palestinian academics portray Jews as inherently different from others, possessing innately evil traits. Educators and academics follow the lead of the PA politicians and distort and malign Jewish tradition as inherently evil. They link it directly to the "treacherous behavior" of which they accuse Jews today. Forgeries and fiction masquerading as history are likewise used to "prove" the libel that Judaism is inherently racist and evil. These purported Jewish attributes and traditions are presented not as behavior that can be improved but as the unchangeable nature of Jews.

This chapter does not consider all of PA academia. It focuses, however, on those academics chosen by the PA to indoctrinate the people using such public venues as PA TV and, particularly, educational broadcasting.

Revising Ancient History In 1998, PA historians held a conference in which they devised a policy of historical revisionism. Dr. Yussuf Alzamili, head of the History Department at the Khan Yunis Government Educational College, presented the approach of the developing PA educational system. The goal would not be to teach historical truth but rather to convey a political history aimed at denying Israel's right to exist in the Land of Israel. Thus, at the conference, "Alzamili called on all universities and colleges to be active in the writing of the history of Palestine and not to enable the defiled and the enemies to distort it...or to enable legitimacy for the existence of Jews on this land."[4]
Historians eager to follow this lead were regularly featured on PA TV's educational programs. They fabricated an entire Palestinian Arab history, packaged it with academic credibility, and erased Jewish history from the land.
The challenge to PA academics was considerable, since much of the Jewish historical record has continuous independent and archeological documentation. Even Islam recognized the Hebrew narrative to a great degree. Hence the Palestinian academics, recognizing the futility of attempting to erase the documented history of the Jews, instead adopted a different solution of literally stealing the identity of the Jews by identifying ancient Hebrews as both Arabs and Muslims and denying their connection to today's Jews of the state of Israel.
One leading historian, Jirar al-Qidwa, chosen by Arafat as an adviser and today chairman of the PA Public Library, has been featured regularly and prominently on educational TV and was a major promoter of this "replacement" ideology. Although historical records confirm that the first presence of Arabs in the Land of Israel was after the Muslim conquest in the seventh century C.E., Al-Qidwa unabashedly and emphatically turned the Hebrews of the Bible into Arabs: "Regarding the Israelites [of the Bible], they were Arab tribes and among the purest.... And believe me, in Allah's name, that my blood has more of the Israelites' blood and the blood of the ancient Hebrews than does the blood of Netanyahu and Sharon."[5]
Prof. Issam Sissalem, chairman of the History Department at the Islamic University of Gaza and host of PA TV educational programs for many years, has also been a driving force of this historical revision:
[Biblical Hebrews] were primitive shepherd tribes. They had no history. Titus slaughtered them, and this land was cleansed of those fools...the ancient Hebrews were destroyed, utterly decimated. Actually, they were foreigners in this land. They were primitive Bedouin from the Arabian desert. This land is ours. Jerusalem and every one of her stones are ours. They [the Jews] are liars. Their allegations are lies and are worthy of scorn and ridicule.[6]
Turning the ancient Hebrews into Arabs was not enough for the PA, and the religion of Islam was attached to all biblical characters with similar fervor. Therefore, even though Islam was first introduced by Mohammed in the seventh century, long after ancient Judaism, the academics denied the existence and legitimacy of ancient Judaism by turning it into Islam. As Al-Qidwa stated: 
Judaism is not a religion in the full sense of the word, and is not a nation at all.... Where does this religion come from? The source of Judaism is the Mosaic Law...which is the continuation of Islam of our master Abraham.... Several researchers...have found in the Bible [Torah], when translated correctly, texts that prove that it is the continuation of Islam.[7]
Denying the central place of Jewish worship was likewise critical to this replacement ideology, as was the denial of the Jewish presence in Jerusalem. Sissalem, in his weekly program with children in the TV studio, explained that the tradition of the Temple in Jerusalem was based on "Jewish lies":
Girl asks Sissalem: "Tell us about the Night Journey and Ascent to Heaven and the Al-Buraq Wall that the Jews falsely claim as the Wailing Wall and hold ceremonies there."
Sissalem: "That's the place where Mohammed went to Heaven, and it is part of the Al-Aqsa Mosque. The Zionist enemy falsely claims that this wall is part of the so-called 'Temple.' This is a deceitful lie."
Girl 2: "We hear many claims by the Jews that Solomon's Temple is located in Jerusalem under the Al-Aqsa Mosque. Is this true?"
Sissalem: "This is the biggest lie in history by those liars."[8]
This revisionism, initiated in 1998, continues unabated until today. During Ramadan broadcasting in October 2006, Dr. Hassan Khader, founder of the Al-Quds Encyclopedia and regular TV host, repeated the claim that the Jews have no ancient historical connection to the Western Wall of the Temple:
The first connection of the Jews to this site began in the sixteenth century.... The Jewish connection to this site is a recent connection, not ancient...like the roots of the Islamic connection.... Who would have believed that the Israelis would arrive 1,400 years [after the beginning of Islam], conquer Jerusalem, and make this wall into their special place of worship, where they worship and pray?[9]
The purpose of this revisionism, as expressed by Alzamili in 1998, was not academic accuracy but was inherently political-namely, to deny the "legitimacy for the existence of Jews on this land."[10]
Following this lead, many academics did not leave the political conclusions to the TV viewers but stated them explicitly. For example, after repeating his denials of any Jewish connection to the land, Sissalem announced the political implications: "They [Jews-Israelis] are like a parasitic worm that eats a snail and lives in its shell. We will not let anyone live in our shell!"[11] Denying the Holocaust; Demanding a New One Another component of the negation of Jewish history is the denial of modern Jewish experience-including the horrors of the Holocaust. As Sissalem stated on a PA TV educational program:
Lies surfaced about Jews being murdered here and there and the Holocaust. And of course these are all lies and unfounded claims. There was no Dachau, no Auschwitz! [They] were cleansing sites.... They began to publicize in their propaganda media that they were persecuted, murdered, and exterminated.... Committees acted here and there to establish this entity [Israel], this foreign entity, implanted as a cancer in our country.... They always portrayed themselves as victims, and they made a Center for Heroism and Holocaust. Whose heroism? What Holocaust? It is our nation that is heroic, the holocaust was against our people.... We were the victims. We will not stay victims forever![12]
PA anti-Semitism, however, goes beyond denying Israel's right to exist.
PA academics have also systematically built a case denying Jews the right to exist. As their expert witness, these religious academics bring Allah[13] Himself, who is said to have sent a message through the Prophet Mohammed that killing Jews is a necessary step to achieve world redemption through resurrection.
Dr. Muhammad Mustafa Najem, a lecturer in Koranic interpretation at Gaza's Al-Azhar University, taught in a televised PA sermon that Allah described the Jews as "characterized by conceit, pride, arrogance, savagery, disloyalty, and treachery ... [and] deceit and cunning."[14] Just a month later the same academic again appeared on the PA's official station, saying: "The Jews are Jews, and we are forbidden to forget their character traits even for a moment, even for a blink of an eye."[15]
Dr. Khader Abas, a lecturer in psychology at Gaza's Al-Aqsa University, taught the origins of Jewish evil from a different perspective: "From the moment the [Jewish] child is born, he nurses hatred against others, nurses seclusion, nurses superiority...."[16]
As part of this delineation of Jewish evil, the PA presents fictitious libels as authentic Jewish documents. Prominent among these is The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which the PA routinely treats as the Jewish plan for world domination.
Dr. Riad al-Astal, a lecturer in history at Al-Azhar University in Gaza, brought up the Protocols when discussing the rise of political Zionism in Europe. "What is known as the Zionist Renaissance," he asserted, "grew and the seeds of what is called The Protocols of the Elders of Zion appeared at the end of the eighteenth century [sic]. They are the protocols that were presented in Basel [at the First Zionist Congress]."[17]
A new Palestinian schoolbook, written by senior Palestinian academics, likewise taught children to view the Protocols as authentic: "There is a group of confidential resolutions adopted by the [First Zionist] Congress and known by the name 'The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,' the goal of which was world domination."[18] After worldwide condemnation it was removed from the new edition of the book.
Academic discussions on educational TV routinely refer to the Protocols as authentic. Sheikh Attiyeh Sahar, chairman of the Department of Islamic Research at Al-Azhar University in Gaza, stated:
It must be known that this nation, the Jews, are willing to alter their religion in order to attain their demands.... in order to attain their goals, they are willing to turn away from their God and His Singularity, which was introduced to the world by their prophets. We also know that they changed the Bible and replaced it, because it does not serve their purposes, and they drafted the Talmud, as it is known, and came up, finally, with the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.[19]
Dr. Attallah Abu al-Farah, calling in to a talk show hosted by Sissalem, queried: "Can there be coexistence on Palestinian land between ourselves and the Jews, in light of their mentality that stems from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, Dr. Issam?" Sissalem responded to A-Farah, who presented the Protocols as authentic, by calling him "My beloved friend...who is a learned expert..."[20]

Painting Jews as Evil

Inherent to the purported Jewish program of domination is the planning and execution of massive crimes that endanger all humanity. Senior Palestinian academics regularly portray Jews as a threat to stable society and as responsible for all civil strife, financial crises, conflicts, and wars. They present Zionism, the movement to reestablish the Jewish national home in Israel, as a European colonialist plot to rid Europe of Jews and thus attempt to solve their own "Jewish problem." The aforementioned Dr. Riad al-Astal asserted: "Britain's first aim [in promoting Zionism] was to be rid of the Jews, who were known to provoke disputes and disturbances and financial crises in Germany, France, and other European states."[21]
The PA augments the picture of the evil nature of Jews by defining Jewish traditions and sources as evil. Judaism is said to be a racist, murder-promoting religion. In an educational broadcast, Al-Qidwa taught: "The commandments of their Hebrew Bible or their Talmud say that we are goyim-that is, non-Jews. [They] view all non-Jews as barbarians or as their servants, devoid of any human rights, and [one] may destroy them and kill them."[22]
Completing this picture, worldwide outbreaks of anti-Semitism are described as the nations of the world acting legitimately to protect themselves from the threat posed by the Jews-or to take revenge. Psychologist Khader Abas expounded on this point on PA TV:
The Israelis brought it on themselves, I emphasize, brought on themselves in every society they lived, disasters and massacres. First, they concentrated money in their hands, denying it to others. Second, they spied against the nations where they lived. And the third important and basic aspect: they were condescending.... Thus the people of the societies they were in took revenge against them, or tried to punish them.[23]
The Pact of Omar, which in 637 CE prohibited Jews from living in Jerusalem, was defended on PA TV by Al Quds Encyclopedia founder Hassan Khader: "If we presented this before a judge [today] he would renew this condition.... The solution is that no Jew should live there.... The prosperity of that city [Jerusalem] and of this land necessitates that no Jew should ever live there."[24]
The call to fight Jews solely because of their ethnicity is widespread. Dr. Ismail Radwan, professor at the Islamic University in Gaza, justifies the ongoing battle: "It is no coincidence that the Noble Koran mentions the story of Mohammed's heavenly ascent while talking of the Israelites-as though Allah was preparing the Islamic nation that Jews will be in this land and as if He was addressing the Muslims: 'O Muslims, prepare yourselves for the struggle with world Jewry.'"[25]
Many academics have gone beyond the theoretical "struggle." According to Dr. Ahmad Abu Halabiyah, rector of advanced studies at the Islamic University, on PA TV, the Jews are a threat and for that reason Allah demands they be killed:
The Jews are the Jews.... They do not have any moderates or any advocates of peace. They are all liars. They must be butchered and must be killed.... The Jews are like a spring-as long as you step on it with your foot it doesn't move. But if you lift your foot from the spring, it hurts you and punishes you....
It is forbidden to have mercy in your hearts for the Jews in any place and in any land. Make war on them any place that you find yourself. Any place that you meet them, kill them.[26]
PA academics teach that the killing of Jews by Muslims is a precondition of world redemption. The PA promotes this belief by repeatedly propounding in its print and television media the following Hadith, a tradition attributed to Mohammed: "The Hour [Resurrection] will not take place until the Muslims fight the Jews, and kill them. And the Jews will hide behind the rock and tree, and the rock and tree will say: 'O Muslim, O servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him!'"[27]
On 10 January 2005, Dr. Khader cited this Hadith mandating the killing of all Jews everywhere. This came just two weeks after he devoted an entire TV lecture to analyzing this Hadith and concluded that its demand for committing genocide was specifically directed at the Palestinians: "Allah meant our land and our people and meant our trees and our stones."[28]
Muhammad Abd al-Hadi La'afi, responsible for religious instruction in the Office of the PA Wakf,[29] likewise wrote of the impending extermination of the Jews: "The battle with the Jews will surely come.... The Prophet spoke about it in more than one Hadith, and the Resurrection will not come without the victory of the believers over the descendants of the monkeys and pigs and with their annihilation."[30] 
  Conclusion
The Palestinian Authority's academic anti-Semitism has built an extensive case against Jewish existence, which starts with denying the authenticity and legitimacy of both the Jewish nation and religion. Through libels, lies, and stereotyping, this endeavor in anti-Semitism portrays Jews as a genuine threat to humanity. Because Jews are inherently evil and an existential danger, their annihilation is justified self-defense, a service to humanity, and an enactment of God's will.
Although the PA is not reticent about its anti-Semitic ideology and plans, the world remains mostly apathetic except for an occasional criticism of what is called "incitement." Indeed, the world finds this ideology so repugnant that many simply choose to deny the existence of PA anti-Semitism and repackage it as anti-Zionism, an ideology they find more palatable and even legitimate.
This indifference is directly reminiscent of the world's response to Hitler's open calls for genocide against the Jews. As Justice Robert H. Jackson, chief U.S. counsel to the Nuremberg Trials, wrote: "We must not forget that when the Nazi plans were boldly proclaimed, they were so extravagant that the world refused to take them seriously."[31]   *     *     *
Notes
*This essay appeared in:  Manfred Gerstenfeld (ed) Academics Against Israel and the Jews (Jerusalem, JCPA, 2007)
**The authors thank Palestinian Media Watch researchers Zachy Ben Hamo, Amiram Degani, Gidi Dorevitch, Dina Lisniansky, Dror Malelis, Ron Pichekhadze, and Hadass Ben-Ari.
[1] Arabic Language, Analysis, Literature and Criticism, Grade 12, 104, Mohammad Dahlan- Palestinian Television, 23 August 2006.
[2] Video clips, Palestinian Authority Television, January 2000-2006.
[3] Palestinian Authority Television, 25 March 2004.
[4] Al-Ayaam, 4 December 1998.
[5] J. al-Qidwa, PA TV, 5 June 1997.
[6] I. Sissalem, PA TV, 8 October 2001.
[7] J. al-Qidwa, PA TV, 3 November 1998.
[8] PA TV, 8 October 2001.
[9] Hassan Khader, PA TV, 13 October 2006.
[10] Al-Ayaam, 4 December 1998.
[11] I. Sissalem, Jerusalem through the Generations, PA TV, 17 April 2001, 21 November 2004, 21 December 2004.
[12] I. Sissalem, PA TV, 29 November 2000.
[13] In Arabic, "Allah" is the equivalent of the English "God." When an Arabic writer or speaker refers to the god worshiped by Muslims, it has been rendered here as Allah. When the reference is to the god worshiped by Jews, it has been rendered as God.
[14] M. Najem, Friday Sermon, PA TV, 1 November 2002.
[15] Ibid., 6 December 2002.
[16] K. Abas, Media and Issue, PA TV, 14 April 2002.
[17] R. al-Astal, People's Journey, PA TV, 28 December 2003. An official PA magazine reviewed a "scholarly" article about the Protocols: "The sixty-fifth issue of The Shahids was recently published by the Political Guidance...there is a chapter about a research paper titled 'The Jewish Danger: The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.'" Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, 1 December 2003.
[18] History of the Modern and Contemporary World, Grade 10, 2004, 60-61.
[19] PA TV, 10 September 2000.
[20] PA TV, 14 May 1999.
[21] Al-Astal, People's Journey, 28 December 2003.
[22] J. al-Kidwa, Open Day Broadcast, PA TV, 2 March 2001.
[23] Abas, Media and Issue, 14 April 2002. As far back as 1998, the PA was teaching that Jews are responsible for anti-Semitism:
Corruption is in the nature of the Jews all over the world, to the point where only rarely do you find corruption that Jews are not behind.... If we take a look at history, we discover to what degree the Jews were exposed to loss and expulsion all over the world as a result of their ugly deeds and their wickedness. This is after their actions were discovered and their responsibility for the destruction of the land and its people caused the [local] people to start a war of annihilation against them. (Al-Hayat al-Jadida, 11 July 1998)
[24] Hassan Khader, Meeting with Jerusalem, PA TV, 14 December 2004.
[25] I. Radwan, Friday Sermon, PA TV, 11 February 2002.
[26] A. A. Halabiyah, Friday Sermon, PA TV, 13 October 2000.  
[27] Sahih Muslim, vol. 4, 2238-39; Sahih Bukhari, vol. 3, 1070, no. 276, 1316, no. 3398; Sahih Ibn Hibban, vol. 15, 217, no. 6806, and others.
[28] Hassan Khader, Meeting with Jerusalem, 27 December 2004.
[29] The Wakf, literally "Islamic endowment," is headed by the PA religious establishment.
[30] M. A. al-Hadi La'afi, Al-Hayat al-Jadida, 18 May 2001.
[31] R. H. Jackson, Report of Robert H. Jackson, United States Representative to the International Conference on Military Trials, London, 1945 (New York: AMS Press, 1971).

Anne Bayefsky reproduces her recent essay from National Review, without attribution. Itamar Marcus reproduces his own chapter from an alarmist collection published by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, a think tank representing right-wing Zionist rejectionism. 

Bad enough that these comments address the original post tangentially if at all, but isn't there a Jewcy policy disfavoring cut-and-paste jobs like this in the comments section?

Note to Bayefsky and Marcus; try using links instead.   

I am going to start posting sections from my dissertation in the comments sections. Actually Ismail that will bother you even more...the one ideology you may dislike more than Zionism...Vegetarianism. But have no fear, of the wacky 19th century variety (not to be confused with the wacky 20th century variety).

One thing I would like to add is that, of course, our own government hasn't followed it's own purported stance on negotiations in its dealings with Libya, or in its own negotiations with Iran about goings on in Iraq. The speeches of "non-negotiation" are of course bluster (Israel itself claims it won't negotiate while under fire, and we know that to not be true in its negotiations with groups like Hezbollah in the past).  There is a question to be asked about what the goals precisely are in negotiating with such groups (in some instances it is specific, on the ground type of details...prisoner exchanges, etc...), however no matter how much bluster any given government puts forth in public it seems that there is always some level of negotiation going on in the back channels.

Nice to hear from you again, Adam. I will assume that you've been dutifully working on your dissertation and that's what kept us deprived of your comments.

To be honest, I've always thought of vegetarianism as an historically recent phenomenon, at least in the West. I'm surprised to learn that intentional vegetarians existed at all in the 19th century, which I guess shows how intellectually provincial I can be.

I'd actually be interested to learn something about this-whether the reasons then were primarily health related, ethical, religious or....?, and how this compares to contemporary vegetarianism.

You'll be a good academic, sparking curiosity about something your listener never before considered. 

Good to hear from you as well, though your assumption is partially correct...I'm right now (somewhat) dutifully reading and studying for my major field exams.

So, in short, the answer to your questions are yes, yes, yes and...yes. Health related to be sure (was part of larger anti-masterbation and "cooling down of the body") crusades, ethics in the sense of "liberation" from a violent lifestyle (that they linked to abolitionism) and religious in that it touched on ideas of Xtian perfectionism and was originally formulated by a Presbyterian minister and had heavy links to the Church of Christ (is there a church not of Christ?) in Philly. Somewhere right after the Civil War it shifts though from being an entirely internally based philosophy of improving oneself to becoming more animal-focused and anti-vivisection based by about 1870 (based out of that bastion of leftism, Oberlin College). I guess I am partially trying to account for that shift.

Thanks for the precis, Adam. This sort of thing fascinates me. For one thing (and not to be too simplistic), the shift from self-improvement to concern for the other (animals, in this case) as the intellectual basis of vegetarianism at the end of the 19th century is the reverse of the shift from outside to inside at the mid-to-late 20th (the narcissistic turn). 

Humans-as soon as you think you've figured them out, they throw you a curve.

Good luck with your exams. 

"This experience of the resistance, which must be transferred to the world, relies on
faith, conviction, trust, and the moral and spiritual willingness to give sacrifices. Also, it depends on the thinking, planning, organizing, training and armament, and as is said: dealing with the root causes."

How could any rational person miss the inherent evil in these sentences?  I take no firm position in an argument with weapons that dates back pretty much as long as humans have inhabited the east end of the Mediterranean, but doesn't the villainy of these words kind of depend on who you are and who's saying them?  Couldn't these sentiments be coming from any group that feel itself oppressed by some outside master?  'Good' and 'Bad' matters a lot to the participants (pick any trbal or cultural group fighting about grudges that may go back hundreds, if not thousands, of years), but that distinction gets a little fuzzy as you get farther away.  Besides, I keep seeing John Cleese saying "Besides all that, what have the Romans ever done for us!", which kind of makes it harder to get worked up about things.  Fighting is all too often necessary (if only in defense), but too many of us seem to relish the thought of warfare, as long as it isn't us doing the messy, uncomfortable bits.  Me, I'd rather see what talking can get us first; it's risky, but who says war isn't?