OXFORD STUDENT UNION SINKS EVEN LOWER

DOES OXFORD THINK IT OK TO HONOR A MAN WHO CALLS ANNE FRANK A PORN STAR? (Tom Gross)

In October, I wrote about criticism of the Oxford Union in a dispatch titled “Outrage after Holocaust denier David Irving invited to Oxford Union.”

Oxford University’s world famous Oxford Union debating society went ahead with the invitation to Irving, and British fascist leader Nick Griffin, in November. Shortly before, in the latest of several outrageous pronouncements, Irving had told the British daily The Guardian that the Jews were responsible for “most of the wars of the last 100 years.”

Tomorrow (Tuesday) at the Oxford Union, four academics who all support a boycott of Israel, will debate the motion “This House Believes That The State of Israel has a Right to Exist.”

American revisionist “historian” Norman Finkelstein along with Prof. Ted Honderich will be speaking for the motion while opposing them will be Exeter University academics Ghada Karmi and Ilan Pappe, a former Israeli Jew who has made a career out of slandering the country where he was born and grew up. It is harder to know which of these four is the most vile.

Just last week, Finkelstein reprinted on his website an article from the Israeli paper Ha’aretz about worrying signs of failures in Holocaust education among German youth, and added the mock headline: “To reverse declining German interest in Holocaust, Britney Spears to play Anne Frank in new Holo-porn video.”

Making fun of Holocaust survivors has been a frequent feature of Finkelstein’s work (even though he is himself the son of survivors) and it is not surprising that so many regard him (as was the case with former chess champion Bobby Fischer who died last week) as a highly disturbed Jewish self-hater.

What is surprising – and dangerous – however, is Oxford’s behavior.

Do the university authorities think it is ok to honor (and indeed pay a fee to) a man who thinks it is fun to call child Holocaust victim Anne Frank a porn star?

Do people in turn think it is ok to continue making donations to Oxford University’s fundraising appeals?

The issue is not just why Israel is the only country whose right to exist is being questioned at Oxford. Perhaps of even greater concern is why Oxford has chosen such anti-Israeli figures as Finkelstein and Honderich to argue Israel has a right to exist. All four speakers have in the past supported organizations that have called for the delegitimization of the State of Israel.

DOES BRITAIN HAVE A RIGHT TO EXIST?

Fresh from his tour of Lebanon earlier this month (where he was warmly welcomed by Hizbullah supporters), Finkelstein is this week on a British tour organized and paid for by FOSIS (the Federation of Student Islamic Societies in the UK and Ireland) and supported by the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign. In addition to Oxford, he will be speaking to students at Manchester, Keele, Sussex and Edinburgh Universities, and at the London School of Economics (LSE).

The posters advertising the speaking tour show a map depicting a one state solution for Palestine, with Israel eliminated, and Palestine represented in red with dripping blood. So why has Oxford chosen Finkelstein, of all people, as the speaker students will hear putting the case for a Jewish state not to be wiped out?

What would people in Britain think if foreign universities debated whether Britain had a right to exist?

I also attach below, in the “Full Articles” section, a piece on how the idiocy of the Oxford Union has spread to American universities. It is by Cliff May, a subscriber to this list.

I should add that when I was a student at Oxford University, and a member of the Oxford Union, it never invited quite such evil people to appear before it as it does now.

ARABS MUST ACCEPT ISRAEL AS A JEWISH STATE

Accept Israel as a Jewish State? by Daniel Pipes (JPost)

Surprisingly, something useful has emerged from the combination of the misconceived Annapolis meeting and a weak Israeli prime minister, Ehud ("Peace is achieved through concessions") Olmert. Breaking with his predecessors, Olmert has boldly demanded that his Palestinian bargaining partners accept Israel's permanent existence as a Jewish state, thereby evoking a revealing response.

Unless the Palestinians recognize Israel as "a Jewish state," Olmert announced on November 11, the Annapolis-related talks would not proceed. "I do not intend to compromise in any way over the issue of the Jewish state. This will be a condition for our recognition of a Palestinian state."

He confirmed these points a day later, describing the "recognition of Israel as a state for the Jewish people" as the "launching point for all negotiations. We won't have an argument with anyone in the world over the fact that Israel is a state of the Jewish people." The Palestinian leadership, he noted, must "want to make peace with Israel as a Jewish state."

Raising this topic has the virtue of finally focusing attention on what is the central topic in the Arab-Israeli conflict – Zionism, the Jewish nationalist movement, a topic that typically gets ignored in the hubbub of negotiations. Since nearly the birth of the state, these have focused on the intricacies of such subsidiary issues as borders, troop placements, armaments and arms control, sanctities, natural resources, residential rights, diplomatic representation, and foreign relations.

The Palestinian leadership responded quickly and unequivocally to Olmert's demand:

• The Higher Arab Monitoring Committee in Nazareth unanimously called on the Palestinian Authority not to recognize Israel as a Jewish state.
• Salam Fayad, Palestinian Authority "prime minister": "Israel can define itself as it likes, but the Palestinians will not recognize it as a Jewish state."
• Yasser Abed Rabbo, secretary general of the Palestinian Liberation Organization's executive committee: "This issue is not on the table; it is raised for internal [Israeli] consumption."
• Ahmad Qurei, chief Palestinian negotiator: "This [demand] is absolutely refused."
• Saeb Erekat, head of the PLO Negotiations Department: "The Palestinians will never acknowledge Israel's Jewish identity. … There is no country in the world where religious and national identities are intertwined."

Erekat's generalization is both curious and revealing. Not only do 56 states and the PLO belong to the Organization of the Islamic Conference, but most of them, including the PLO, make the Shari‘a (Islamic law) their main or only source of legislation. Saudi Arabia even requires that every subject be a Muslim.

Further, the religious-national nexus extends well beyond Muslim countries. Argentinean law, Jeff Jacoby of the Boston Globe points out, "mandates government support for the Roman Catholic faith. Queen Elizabeth II is the supreme governor of the Church of England. In the Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan, the constitution proclaims Buddhism the nation's ‘spiritual heritage.' … ‘The prevailing religion in Greece,' declares Section II of the Greek Constitution, ‘is that of the Eastern Orthodox Church of Christ'."

So, why the mock-principled refusal to recognize Israel as a Jewish state? Perhaps because the PLO still intends to eliminate Israel as a Jewish state.

Note my use of the word "eliminate," not destroy. Yes, anti-Zionism has until now mainly taken a military form, from Gamal Abdel Nasser's "throw the Jews into the sea" to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's "Israel must be wiped off the map." But the power of the Israel Defense Forces has prodded anti-Zionism toward a more subtle approach of accepting an Israeli state but dismantling its Jewish character. Anti-Zionists consider several ways to achieve this:

Demography: Palestinians could overwhelm the Jewish population of Israel, a goal signaled by their demand for a "right of return" and by their so-called war of the womb.

Politics: Arabs citizens of Israel increasingly reject the country's Jewish nature and demand that it become a bi-national state.

Terror: The 100 Palestinian attacks a week during the period, September 2000-September 2005 sought to induce economic decline, emigration, and appeasement.

Isolation: All those United Nations resolutions, editorial condemnations, and campus aggressions are meant to wear down the Zionist spirit.

Arab recognition of Israel's Jewish nature must have top diplomatic priority. Until the Palestinians formally accept Zionism, then follow up by ceasing all their various strategies to eliminate Israel, negotiations should be halted and not restarted. Until then, there is nothing to talk about.

IS ISRAELI-ARAB CONFLICT ABOUT ISRAEL'S SIZE OR EXISTENCE?

Is the Israel-Palestine Conflict about the Size of Israel, or About Its Existence? - Bernard Lewis (Wall Street Journal)

• PLO and other Palestinian spokesmen have, from time to time, given formal indications of recognition of Israel in their diplomatic discourse in foreign languages. But that's not the message delivered at home in Arabic, in everything from primary school textbooks to political speeches and religious sermons. Here the terms used in Arabic denote, not the end of hostilities, but an armistice or truce, until such time that the war against Israel can be resumed with better prospects for success. Without genuine acceptance of Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state, as the more than 20 members of the Arab League exist as Arab states, or the much larger number of members of the Organization of the Islamic Conference exist as Islamic states, peace cannot be negotiated.
• A good example of how this problem affects negotiation is the much-discussed refugee question. During the fighting in 1947-1948, about three-fourths of a million Arabs fled or were driven (both are true in different places) from Israel and found refuge in the neighboring Arab countries. In the same period and after, a slightly greater number of Jews fled or were driven from Arab countries, first from the Arab-controlled part of mandatory Palestine (where not a single Jew was permitted to remain), then from the Arab countries where they and their ancestors had lived for centuries, or in some places for millennia. Most Jewish refugees found their way to Israel.
• What happened was thus, in effect, an exchange of populations not unlike that which took place in the Indian subcontinent in the previous year, when British India was split into India and Pakistan. Millions of refugees fled or were driven both ways - Hindus and others from Pakistan to India, Muslims from India to Pakistan. Another example was Eastern Europe at the end of World War II, when the Soviets annexed a large piece of eastern Poland and compensated the Poles with a slice of eastern Germany. This too led to a massive refugee movement - Poles fled or were driven from the Soviet Union into Poland, Germans fled or were driven from Poland into Germany.
• The government of Jordan granted Palestinian Arabs a form of citizenship, but kept them in refugee camps. In the other Arab countries, they were and remained stateless aliens without rights or opportunities, maintained by UN funding. Paradoxically, if a Palestinian fled to Britain or America, he was eligible for naturalization after five years, and his locally-born children were citizens by birth. If he went to Syria, Lebanon or Iraq, he and his descendants remained stateless, now entering the fourth or fifth generation.
• The reason for this has been stated by various Arab spokesmen. It is the need to preserve the Palestinians as a separate entity until the time when they will return and reclaim the whole of Palestine; that is to say, all of the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and Israel. The demand for the "return" of the refugees, in other words, means the destruction of Israel. This is highly unlikely to be approved by any Israeli government.
• Which brings us back to the Annapolis summit. If the issue is not the size of Israel, but its existence, negotiations are foredoomed. And in light of the past record, it is clear that is and will remain the issue, until the Arab leadership either achieves or renounces its purpose - to destroy Israel. Both seem equally unlikely for the time being.

DOES PAKISTAN HAVE THE RIGHT TO EXIST?

A World Without--Pakistan? (BACKSPIN)
Think Israel has no right to exist? In a compelling commentary, Michael Medved takes all the arguments against Israel's right to exist and finds that them more applicable to Pakistan.

This Islamist intransigence raises the obvious question: on what basis does Pakistan constitute an “authentic,” “well-established,” “respect-worthy” nation, but Israel does not?

On every conceivable basis—history, international recognition, authorization by world bodies (The League of Nations supported a Jewish homeland on the site of Israel in 1923, a decade before anyone even proposed the idea of Pakistan), stability, functioning economy, democratic institutions, rule of law, enforceable borders, successful self-defense on multiple occasions, desire of peace with neighbors, support by a majority of its own citizens, respect for religious and ethnic pluralism --- Israel contrasts favorably with “The Islamic Republic of Pakistan.”

Read the whole thing.

WEST IS CUTTING OWN THROAT BY DELEGITIMIZING ISRAEL

The Campaign to Delegitimize Israel - David Horovitz (Jerusalem Post)

• Modern Israel is not some upstart Western invention, supplanting the state of Palestine, but the ancestral homeland of the Jewish nation, the land where our nation long lived and has always sought to live. The world is filled with Muslim nation-states and Christian nation-states. Ours is the only Jewish nation-state. It is the only nation-state that the Jewish nation has ever sought.
• It was revived by the international community too late to save the stateless Jews from the Holocaust. But when belatedly relegitimized, after millions had died because of the international community's failure to protect the stateless Jews of Europe, its reconstitution was predicated on the establishment of a nation-state, too, for the Arab inhabitants of Mandatory Palestine.
• The revived State of Israel, and a first-ever Palestinian state, could and would have coexisted here since 1948 were it not for the fact that those who spoke for the Arab inhabitants eschewed the partition and sought instead to overrun Israel altogether.
  Israel stated its desire for peaceful relations with its neighbors in its 1948 declaration of independence and has restated it, and acted upon it, ever since. When Arab nations sought peace with us, we rushed to embrace them, even at the price of relinquishing territory from which we had been attacked and that we had captured in wars designed to eliminate us.
• Why are Palestinians still living in refugee camps in Gaza when there is no Israeli presence there? Why are Kassam rocket squads firing into sovereign Israel from Jew-free Gaza, and bringing more suffering on their fellow Palestinians as Israel tries to stem the fire?
• Israel's only real reservation about Palestinian independence is that the state of Palestine not be established at the expense of the State of Israel. But that, to date, is the price that the Palestinian leadership has set.
• Israel's war against Islamic extremism is the world's war. If the extremists prevail, the consequences will be cataclysmic for Israel. But they will be cataclysmic, too, far beyond this region.

NO PEACE WITHOUT RECOGNITION

Ya'alon: No Peace Until Arabs Recognize Israel - Etgar Lefkovits
The refusal of the Palestinian leadership to recognize Israel's basic right to exist as an independent Jewish state is the main obstacle to resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, former IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. (res.) Moshe Ya'alon said Monday. "Today, I do not see the possibility of being able to settle the conflict without defeating the regimes and terrorist organizations that still hold the idea of destroying Israel," Ya'alon said at a briefing sponsored by Jerusalem's Shalem Center marking 40 years since the Six-Day War.

"Until 1995, I thought we might have a Palestinian partner to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict based on a two-state solution, but I do not think this way anymore, based on the experience of the last decade," he said. "The way to defeat global terrorism is not by solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but by defeating jihadist regimes and their organizations by all means, including political and economic," he said. (Jerusalem Post)

RECOGNITION OF ISRAEL'S RIGHT TO EXIST SEEMS TO BE THE MINIMUM FOR A DURABLE PEACE.

LA TIMES CHANGES TITLE OF EDITORIAL QUESTIONING ISRAEL'S RIGHT TO EXIST

On Monday, I blogged about AN EDITORIAL IN THE LA TIMES entitled, "Why does The Times recognize Israel's 'right to exist'?"

If you've clicked on the link to the editorial recently, you might have noticed that, in their online edition, the LA Times has changed the title of the editorial to, "In the war of words, The Times is Israel's ally."

You can still view the original HERE.

L.A. TIMES QUESTIONS ISRAEL'S RIGHT TO EXIST

LA Times & Israel's "Right to Exist" (HonestReporting)
So far, the international community has stood firm in demanding that any Palestinian government, be it Hamas or otherwise, recognizes Israel as a precursor to lifting financial sanctions. Questioning Israel's very "right to exist" is a well-employed tool of Israel's detractors to call into question the Jewish state's legitimacy as part of an effort to undermine her.

Thankfully, the mainstream media in the US, unlike in Europe, has generally managed to discern the difference between legitimate criticism of Israeli policies and actual delegitimization of the state itself. In February, HonestReporting highlighted an op-ed in the Christian Science Monitor that questioned Israel's right to exist. Now, the Los Angeles Times follows suit, giving space to Saree Makdisi to ask "Why does The Times recognize Israel's 'right to exist'?"

Our colleagues at CAMERA have catalogued UCLA professor Makdisi's numerous factual errors and opposition to the existence of Israel, while UCLAProfs.com also exposes Makdisi's hatred and inflammatory language.

In this latest LA Times piece, Makdisi muddies the issue of "recognition" in legalistic jargon while failing to acknowledge that the issue goes deeper than this in practical terms, as Hamas not only refuses to recognize Israel but actually advocates its destruction. Like Hamas, Makdisi evidently wishes the Palestinian people to move backwards in diplomatic terms.

Makdisi asks:

which Israel, precisely, are the Palestinians being asked to "recognize?" Israel has stubbornly refused to declare its own borders. So, territorially speaking, "Israel" is an open-ended concept. Are the Palestinians to recognize the Israel that ends at the lines proposed by the 1947 U.N. Partition Plan? Or the one that extends to the 1949 Armistice Line (the de facto border that resulted from the 1948 war)? Or does Israel include the West Bank and East Jerusalem, which it has occupied in violation of international law for 40 years — and which maps in its school textbooks show as part of "Israel"?

Israel's borders don't need to be defined as a precondition for recognition. Israel and the Palestinians recognized each other by signing the Oslo Accords and final borders could be negotiated as part of an overall settlement.

Makdisi claims that "A just peace will require Israelis and Palestinians to reconcile and recognize each other's rights." Israel has consistently demonstrated its wish for peace and a recognition of Palestinian rights going back to Oslo all the way to its withdrawal from Gaza and the election of a Kadima government on the platform of bringing a two-state solution into being. Makdisi, on the other hand, espouses the language of rejectionism.

As the Palestinian leadership becomes ever more desperate to water down the demands of the international community, is this op-ed part of a broader media strategy to call into doubt the need for the Palestinians to recognize Israel? Not only does this excuse the Palestinians from moving forward on the diplomatic track but it also excuses the genocidal ideology of Hamas, which is committed to Israel's destruction.

Send your considered comments to the LA Times - letters@latimes.com.

90% OF PALESTINIAN YOUTH DENY ISRAEL'S RIGHT TO EXIST

SO MUCH FOR WAITING FOR THE NEXT, MORE "MODERATE" GENERATION TO ACHIEVE PEACE.

90 Percent of Palestinian Youth Deny Israel's Right to Exist - Itamar Marcus and Barbara Crook (Palestinian Media Watch)
A new poll released by Near East Consulting, a Palestinian research institute, asked Palestinians, "Does Israel have the right to exist?" Among young people ages 18-25, those who have been most influenced by PA education, between 84% and 93% denied Israel's right to exist. PA teachings denying Israel's right to exist are endemic throughout PA society and media, which would account for the high levels of denial of Israel's legitimacy throughout PA society.