Replies to post #101574 on Tornado Alley (PROG)

[sortagreen]

Ahh Steph... It's what God wants.

But Sihon the king of Heshbon would not let us pass by him, for the Lord your God hardened his spirit and made his heart obstinate, that he might give him into your hand, as he is this day. 31 And the Lord said to me, ‘Behold, I have begun to give Sihon and his land over to you. Begin to take possession, that you may occupy his land.’ 32 Then Sihon came out against us, he and all his people, to battle at Jahaz. 33 And the Lord our God gave him over to us, and we defeated him and his sons and all his people. 34 And we captured all his cities at that time and devoted to destruction [2] every city, men, women, and children. We left no survivors. 35 Only the livestock we took as spoil for ourselves, with the plunder of the cities that we captured. 36 From Aroer, which is on the edge of the Valley of the Arnon, and from the city that is in the valley, as far as Gilead, there was not a city too high for us. The Lord our God gave all into our hands.

http://www.gnpcb.org/esv/search/?q=Deuteronomy+2

He loves this stuff!

[StephanieVanbryce]

In Israel, the Noble vs. The Ugly


Rabbi Arik Ascherman, executive director of Rabbis for Human Rights.

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF July 7, 2010

Israel goes out of its way to display its ugliest side to the world by tearing down Palestinian homes or allowing rapacious settlers to steal Palestinian land.

Yet there’s also another Israel as well, one that I mightily admire. This is the democracy that tolerates a far greater range of opinions than America. It’s a citadel of civil society. And, crazily, it’s the place where some of the most courageous and effective voices on behalf of oppressed Palestinians belong to Israeli rabbis — like Arik Ascherman, the executive director of Rabbis for Human Rights.

Rabbi Ascherman — 50, tall, lean and bearded with mournful eyes (if central casting ever needed a Prophet Jeremiah type, he’d be it) — grew up in Erie, Pa. He fell in love with Israel on a brief visit between high school and college and moved here in 1994. At Rabbis for Human Rights, he presides over 20 staff members and hundreds of volunteers who sometimes serve as human shields to protect Palestinians — even if that means getting arrested or beaten.

I watched the ugly side of Israel collide with its more noble version, as Rabbi Ascherman and I visited a rural area in the northern West Bank where Jewish settlers have taken over land that Palestinian farmers say is theirs.

“If we try to enter our land, settlers will be waiting, and we will be beaten,” said Muhammad Moqbel, a 71-year-old Palestinian from the village of Qaryout who pointed to fields that he said had been stolen by settlers. Last year, he said, he was hospitalized with a broken rib after settlers attacked while he was picking his own olives.

Rabbis for Human Rights has helped Palestinians recover some land through lawsuits in Israeli courts. And Rabbi Ascherman and other Jewish activists escort such farmers to protect them. The settlers still attack, but soldiers are more likely to intervene when it is rabbis being clubbed.

As Mr. Moqbel and Rabbi Ascherman were explaining all this to me, a settler vehicle came down to confront us. And then another. The settlers photographed us. We photographed them. I asked them if they would agree to be interviewed. They refused to respond to my questions.

“They’re just trying to intimidate us,” Rabbi Ascherman said.

As was the case in the American civil rights movement, the activists here often become targets. Palestinian youths have stoned Rabbi Ascherman’s car, and he has been arrested and beaten up by security forces and settlers alike. (His car is almost as ancient as Jerusalem, and he has to lift the hood and fiddle with wires to get it started, which impedes fast getaways.)

Yet shared beatings also break down malevolent stereotypes of Jews among Palestinians.

Once, he says, he got a call that a 13-year-old Palestinian kid was being beaten by Israeli soldiers and rushed to the scene. Then he was himself tear-gassed, head-butted and arrested by the soldiers. The boy later recounted wonderingly that a tall Jewish stranger had run to his rescue and, in the process of being arrested, comforted him by saying: “Don’t be afraid.”

This “other Israel” extends far beyond Rabbis for Human Rights. The most cogent critiques of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians invariably come from Israel’s own human rights organizations. The most lucid unraveling of Israel’s founding mythology comes from Israeli historians. The deepest critiques of Israel’s historical claims come from Israeli archeologists (one archeological organization, Emek Shaveh, offers alternative historical tours so that visitors can get a fuller picture). This more noble Israel, refusing to retreat from its values even in times of fear and stress, is a model for the world.

In the Middle East, on all sides, the most religious people are sometimes the most hateful. By challenging religious extremism, Rabbis for Human Rights redeems not only Israeli values, but also Jewish ones.

Rabbis for Human Rights has had strong support from North American Jews, and some American children participate in the classic Zionist gesture — planting a tree for Israel — by sending money so that the rabbis can replant an olive tree for a Palestinian whose grove was uprooted by settlers.

Not everyone finds Rabbi Ascherman inspiring. He gets death threats, and hard-line Israelis see him as a naïve traitor.

He responds that he is struggling to uphold his religious and moral values. But he also argues that building bridges between Jews and Palestinians helps make Israel a safer place for his children. “In the long run, we’re going to live here together,” he says, “or we’re going to die here together.”

“When we get the death threats and people say we’re traitors and anti-Israel, I think, ‘Who is really doing more for Israel’s physical survival?’ ” he says. “ ‘Those who demolish homes and uproot trees, or those who rebuild homes and replant trees?’ ”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/08/opinion/08kristof.html?hp

•

[fuagf]

DC meeting between Israel and Saudi Arabia marks end of Arab Peace Initiative and two-state solution

Middle East Raed Jarrar and Alli McCracken on May 4, 2016 14


Retired major general in the Saudi armed forces, Anwar Eshki, left, and former Israeli ambassador Dore Gold shake hands at a Council on Foreign Relations event, as Elliott Abrams looks on. (Photo: CFR)

For decades, Saudi Arabia has been an advocate of Palestinian statehood rights and a critic of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. Saudi Arabia’s commitment to Palestine has defined the geopolitical contours of the Middle East for decades. But now that the Iran nuclear deal has been struck and as the war in Syria ravages on, those political lines are being redrawn, bringing together unexpected bedfellows: Saudi Arabia and Israel.

Marketed as a “pathbreaking public dialogue between senior national security leaders from two old adversaries,” May 5, 2016 will feature a high-profile public meeting .. http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/view/a-conversation-on-security-and-peace-in-the-middle-east .. in Washington DC between officials from Saudi Arabia and Israel. Prince Turki bin Faisal, Saudi Arabia’s former intelligence chief and one-time ambassador to Washington, and retired Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) Major General Yaakov Amidror, former national security advisor to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, will be speaking together at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a pro-Israel organization funded by AIPAC donors, staffed by AIPAC employees, and located down the hall from AIPAC headquarters.

Saudi Arabia has never engaged in diplomatic relations with Israel since the Nakba in 1948, and at one point even led efforts to boycott of the state of Israel. And although this is not the first meeting of its kind (Saudi Arabia and Israel had a former official speak at a Council on Foreign Relations panel last year .. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/05/world/middleeast/saudi-arabia-eshki-and-israel-dore-gold-netanyahu-share-allies-iran.html?_r=0 ), it is definitely the highest profile meeting and it is taking place.

While having like-minded human rights abusers such as Saudi Arabia and Israel mingle and meet publicly might come as no surprise to most of us, this event is still bad news: it signals a new era of normalization by the official sponsor of the Arab Peace Initiative.

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[ Insert: 2007 Haaretz - Israel doesn't want peace
It's hard to determine when the breaking point occurred. Was it the absolute dismissal of the Saudi initiative? The refusal to acknowledge the Syrian initiative? Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's annual Passover interviews? The revulsion at the statements made by Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, in Damascus, alleging that Israel was ready to renew peace talks with Syria?
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=81663545
--

The Arab Peace initiative, also known as the “Saudi Initiative”, is a 10-sentence proposal for an end to the Arab–Israeli conflict. It was endorsed by the Arab League in 2002 and re-endorsed at the 2007, and it is supported by all Palestinian factions, including Hamas. The initiative calls for normalizing relations between the Arab world and Israel in exchange for a complete withdrawal by Israel from the occupied territories (including East Jerusalem). Until now, it has been the most viable blueprint for a two-state solution. The deal also addressed the issue of Palestinian refugees and called for a “just settlement” based on UN Resolution 194.

So, at this political moment when Netanyahu is not showing any willingness to withdraw from the Occupied Palestinian Territory and some of his ministers are calling for the official annexation of the West Bank, Saudi Arabia seems to be giving up on its historic commitments. By normalizing relations with Israel without demanding a just solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Saudi Arabia is diminishing its leverage in negotiating a two-state solution.

In a way this meeting marks the official demise of the Arab Peace Initiative, but more importantly, as the last standing mechanism for a regionally negotiated resolution, it is yet another indicator that a two-state solution is officially dead.

http://mondoweiss.net/2016/05/between-initiative-solution/

The comments are excellent .. one example ..

HarryLaw May 4, 2016, 5:28 pm

This rapprochement does not surprise me, when Lieberman was Foreign Minister he bragged about the good relationship Israel had with certain GCC countries.Now that Iran has been brought in from the cold, Saudi Arabia and Israel fear Iran’s growing military and economic power will make it the regions hegemon. They are right, the question is what are they going to do about it, they both share an interest in seeing Syria [the low hanging fruit] in the ‘arc of resistance’, regime changed, to that end Saudi Arabia and Qatar have been bankrolling the Jihadis for years and Turkey with US blessing has facilitated the transfer of arms and fighters into Syria. Israel Ambassador Oran was quoted as preferring the Jihadis in power rather than Assad, it is a documented fact that Israel set up field hospitals to treat injured Islamist fighters. So it makes sense for the Saudis to do a deal with Israel, they would cut off the heads of their own Grandmothers to stay in power, so throwing the Palestinians under the bus would be nothing to them. The Saudis calculated [wrongly] that Syria would be overthrown followed by Hezbollah, leaving Iran isolated. They have failed on all fronts, the Syrian army backed up by all sections of Syrian society together with Hezbollah and the Russian air force are winning against the Jihadis [something the US for all its bluster failed to do for years on the cynical notion of, my enemies enemy is my friend] it is only a matter of time before Syria recaptures all its lost territory, leaving Israel and Saudi Arabia to face a resurgent and more determined ‘arc of resistance’. Hence the rapprochement.
http://mondoweiss.net/2016/05/between-initiative-solution/#comments .. and see the replies to that one .. :)