“Countries may vary, but civilization is one, and for a nation to progress, it must take part in this one civilization. The decline of the Ottomans began when, proud of their triumphs over the West, they cut their ties with the European nations. This was a mistake which we will not repeat.” –Kemal Ataturk, 1924

Spinning in his grave, indeed. for now his successors not only think they can revive a Turkish-ruled imperium but have made the very mistake of turning their backs on the West that the republic’s founder rightly saw as the downfall of that earlier incarnation of his country. I’d change Ataturk’s wording slightly: the Ottomans turned their backs on the modern world then being developed in the West while still forming alliances with European powers.

Once upon a time there was a country named Turkey whose republic was created by Kemal Ataturk who famously said: “Peace at home; peace abroad.”

He and the Turkish people had seen their Ottoman Empire collapse after failing to modernize, engaging in chauvinistic nationalism (under the Young Turks), and entering an unnecessary war that led to 20 percent of its population dead and the country prostrate.

And so Ataturk and his colleagues saved the country based on two basic principles: at home, joining Western civilization through modernization and secularization; abroad, avoiding foreign ambitions and conflicts. Whatever their faults, they did a remarkable job. Turkey made steady progress far in excess of what happened in Iran or the Arabic-speaking world.

But then came the regime of the Justice and Development Party. Pretending to be moderate and democratic it was actually a radical Islamist party seeking to — if I may coin a phrase — fundamentally transform Turkey. This regime was not moderate but merely patient in achieving its radical goals.

It insisted that under its rule Turkey would be everyone’s friend and no one’s enemy. And President Barack Obama thought this would be a great model for the Middle East. In fact, though, the regime didn’t see everyone as an equal friend. It preferred the company of Iran, Syria, Hamas, and Hizballah.

Soon, as events developed in the region, the veneer of modesty boiled away and the aggressive ambition was revealed. And that ambition was expressed most clearly by the devious Foreign Minister Ahmet Davuto?lu to parliament in late April:

We will manage the wave of change in the Middle East. Just as the ideal we have in our minds about Turkey, we have an ideal of a new Middle East. We will be the leader and the spokesperson of a new peaceful order, no matter what they say.

Wow. Off with the “everyone’s buddy” image and out comes the raving would-be dictator over the Middle East. But the problem is that there are these people called “Arabs” who don’t want to be bossed around by a Turk, even if they both are Sunni Muslims. In addition, those Arabs have their own ambitions. So when they hear stuff like this they become even more angry and suspicious.

“No matter what they say,” intones Davuto?lu, a man who has gone even further in addressing his party’s convention in a closed meeting where he said that somebody ought to run the Middle East so why not him and his colleagues. Since his speech was reported in a U.S. embassy message it was available to the White House. Yet it has been Obama’s naiveté about Turkey that has even further puffed up the arrogance of such people.

Sounding like another man who wanted to become the dictator of the Middle East — Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser, who once said that those who didn’t like him running things could “go drink the Nile,” Davuto?lu says:

I’d like to advise those who are criticizing us: Go to Cairo. Go to Tripoli. Go to the streets of Beirut, Tunisia, Jerusalem, and ask about Turkey’s policy on Syria. They will hug you and express their appreciation for Turkey’s honorable policy.

Yes, this regime has supported the overthrow of its former close ally in Syria in order to install an Islamist regime friendly to Ankara. It has even obtained full support from Obama for creating an anti-American government in Damascus.

After the foreign minister spoke, an opposition leader, Osman Korutürk, explained that he was just back from Cairo for a regional conference of parliamentarians and did not find such a love and worship of Turkey there. On the contrary, they were not thrilled with the idea of Turkey dominating Syria, or anything else in the area for that matter.

The increasingly power-drunk behavior of Turkish leaders may go unnoticed by a worshipful Obama, who touts the “Turkish model,” but the Arabs have been alienated by such attitudes. Having also threatened Israel, Greece, and Cyprus, while partly antagonizing Iran — though the Ankara regime continues to break trade sanctions with Tehran, sabotage totally accepted by the pliant Obama Administration, the Turkish leaders have destroyed their own foreign policy. While this regime began with a realistic chance of being everyone’s friend, it has now made itself everyone’s enemy.

Regarding domestic governance, the power-drunk arrogance is also increasingly contradicting democratic practice. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan once said that democracy was like a trolley. You ride it until you get to your destination and then get off. Presumably that’s at the point where you have consolidated power to the point you can do whatever you want and have turned Turkey into an Islamist state.

Speaking in Adana and threatening retaliation to Kurdish PKK terrorist attacks he abandoned the pose of moderation and pluralism to threaten:

“We have four fundamental principles. And these principles are:

“1. One people
“2. One flag
“3. One religion
“4. One government.

While there are echoes here of traditional Turkish centralization under the old republic established by Ataturk, the third principle shows not only the abandonment of Turkish secularism but its replacement by Islamic rule. Where Erdogan is willing to compromise is that he left off the demand for one language, accepting some use of the Kurdish language.

Thus, Turkey, which had done so well for decades under pragmatists, has now fallen under the sway of megalomaniacal ideologues who believe that they can impose Islam on Turkey and Turkey on the region.

Meanwhile the regime is arresting scores of former high-ranking officers — here and here — destroying the army that used to protect secularism. The time will come when it appoints Islamists or opportunists who act as if they were Islamists to the top commands.

And the U.S. government has finally given some tiny indication of dissatisfaction of Turkey’s hostile policy toward Israel. Obama and the top officials have done nothing while the Islamist regime has behaved as if Israel is its worst enemy in the world and sided with radical terrorist groups that seek Israel’s extinction. Of course, this statement of mild dissatisfaction was dragged out of a junior official by critical members of Congress and was narrowly limited. In other words, for all practical purposes the Obama Administration has done zero after two years of the Turkish regime’s bashing of Israel.

By Elliott Abrams, World Affairs Journal

A broad international coalition agrees that Iran must freeze its nuclear weapons program and may not develop either of the ingredients—sufficient highly enriched uranium and a usable warhead and delivery system—that could result in a bomb for the Islamic Republic. The International Atomic Energy Agency Board of Governors, the UN Security Council, and the governments of almost every influential country—including the United States, Russia, China, Germany, Britain, and France, acting as the P5+1 negotiating group—have not only reached consensus on this demand but acted upon it. Increasingly tough sanctions have been imposed on Iran to force it to stop what is obviously a military program aimed at building a usable nuclear weapon. These diplomatic steps and these tightened sanctions reflect a wide consensus about the dangers that an Iranian nuclear weapon would bring.

But those dangers, ranging from the risk of further proliferation to the likelihood that a nuclear Iran would be an even bolder supporter of terrorism, do not affect all nations equally. In fact, they are a matter of principle but not much of a danger to many countries, while of much greater interest to Iran’s immediate neighbors and to the United States. And then there is Israel. The dangers it faces from an Iranian nuclear weapon are unique and, I will argue, are dangers no nation should be asked to accept.

The only case today in which a UN member country is calling for the destruction of another member is Tehran’s repeated threats to obliterate Israel, and there is no reason to believe the Iranians don’t mean it. Official Iranian comments about Israel are continually genocidal in nature. A good example is an article in the Iranian press in February—circulated by the Revolutionary Guard’s Fars News Agency but originating at the website Alef, which has ties to the supreme leader—that calls for the destruction of the Jews. The author, Alireza Forghani, a chief strategy specialist, is a significant figure in Iran; more important is that key regime websites are promoting his views. A report at the WND news website summarizes the central paragraph of Forghani’s analysis of the necessity for destroying lsrael and its people this way:

Under this pre-emptive defensive doctrine, several Ground Zero points of Israel must be destroyed and its people annihilated. Forghani cites the last census by the Israel Central Bureau of Statistics that shows Israel has a population of 7.5 million citizens of which a majority of 5.7 million are Jewish. Then it breaks down the districts with the highest concentration of Jewish people, indicating that three cities, Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and Haifa, contain over 60 percent of the Jewish population that Iran could target with its Shahab 3 ballistic missiles, killing all its inhabitants.

This call for genocide is acceptable discourse in the Islamic Republic. It follows various statements by Iran’s president calling for Israel to be wiped off the map, and as recently as February 3rd, Iran’s “supreme leader,” Ayatollah Khamenei, again called Israel a “cancerous tumor that should be cut and will be cut.”

It is not necessary to believe that Iran would launch a nuclear attack at Israel the day after acquiring that capability to understand that Israel cannot tolerate a nuclear weapon in the hands of this regime. In addition to the threat of state action, Iran could also provide such a capability to Hamas, Hezbollah, or some other terrorist group with which it has connections as a way of masking its own role in the attack. Iran could also use a newly acquired nuclear capacity to defend stepped-up terrorist activities, both against Israel proper and against Israeli and Jewish individuals and sites around the world. The recent attacks on Israeli Embassy officers in India and Georgia and the bombing of the Israeli Embassy and Jewish community headquarters in Buenos Aires in the 1990s were all conducted when Iran did not have the added protection of a nuclear weapon. Similarly, Hezbollah and Hamas rocket attacks and terrorist bombings and kidnappings have all occurred when their benefactors in Tehran did not yet have the bomb. How much more aggressive would the mullahs be if the threat of retaliation against such attacks were neutralized by nuclear warheads? Israel has paid a great price in blood and treasure to survive in the decades when it had a nuclear monopoly in the region. To confront the same hostility, terror, and aggression when that monopoly is gone could undermine its ability to survive.

No nation, of course, can defend preemptively against an unexpected sneak attack. But if Iran acquires nuclear weapons (which it has already indicated a willingness to use), it will not come as a surprise to Israel or to its main ally, the United States. Instead, Tehran’s acquisition of such weaponry would give the lie to the stated determination of both nations to prevent that outcome. All the speeches about what we would and would not accept would be shown to have been mere talk; all the determination would be shown to have been mere show; and every observer would conclude that we allowed ourselves to be cowed by Iran into an inaction that would continue to have ramifications for years to come even if, by some miracle, Tehran did not soon act on its genocidal threats. We would have watched their program grow year after year, and done nothing—or nothing that worked. So the image of Israel as indestructible, resolute, tough, and ready to act—as it acted against the nuclear programs of Iraq in 1981 and Syria in 2007—would be gone, as would the United States’ own image as the dominant power in the Middle East and one committed to preserving Israel’s existence.

And what will the Middle East be like when Iran possesses that nuclear weapon and its top officials continue to say that Israel must be eliminated? It would be easy for Iran to bring Israeli life to a standstill by launching a missile or a plane whose mission might, just might, be a nuclear attack. The chances that miscalculation or misperception would bring war and catastrophe would be enormous.

All of this helps explain why the so-called “international community,” an entity not known to be friendly to Israel, has nonetheless almost unanimously said Iran must not be permitted to acquire nuclear weapons. The question is therefore whether we mean what we say. There is a great gap between saying an Iranian nuclear weapon is so terrible to contemplate that we will speak against it and sanction Iran’s economy, and saying we will act to prevent it. While some American leaders, mostly Republican candidates for office, have said we should use military force to stop Iran, that is not the official position of the United States. In 1980, the Carter Doctrine announced that “an attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force.” No president has said anything like that regarding Iran’s nukes. The more anodyne “all options are on the table” formula has not scared the ayatollahs and never will.

Given this lack of urgency, Israel would, then, be taking a very great gamble to think that the United States will save it from Iran’s nukes. We might, under this president or the next, or we might not. Iranian nuclear weapons are, after all, an existential threat to Israel, not to the US. It is not America that is regularly threatened with genocide by Tehran, however much its rulers may believe it the Great Satan.

Should Israel then take it upon itself to act? There are three main arguments against such a course. The first is that it is impossible: Israel can’t do the job, and would only set Iran back a few months by an attack that would nonetheless bring significant reprisals. If it is true that the “window” has already closed and Israel cannot much damage the Iranian effort, the argument is over. If it can do substantial damage, there is not much point in arguing over whether setting Iran back three or five or seven years is sufficient to justify the attack. There is no magic number here, any more than there is a magic number revealing how many years this hated regime will rule in Iran before the people rise up against it. A corollary to this argument suggests that an Israeli attack would give the regime a new lease on life by rallying all Iranians, including the presumably growing numbers of dissidents, to the flag. But who knows if this is true, especially given the fact that the attack would be over before Iranians were even aware it had happened; that civilian targets would have been spared; and that the mullahs’ regime is very widely despised? It could equally be argued that an attack would have the same consequences as in the late Soviet period, when military setbacks (Afghanistan, Central America) hastened the demise of the regime by showing its weaknesses and by intensifying internal tensions. The same might be true in Iran if it were shown that its much-vaunted, immensely expensive nuclear program had now gone up in smoke, and that the years of privation and isolation under sanctions had been for naught. In any event, the goal of an attack would not be to decapitate or overthrow the regime, but only to destroy or slow down its nuclear program.

The second argument against Israeli action is that it would set off a giant Mideast war, a spreading conflagration of immeasurable size and consequence. This is not persuasive either. Who would fight for Iran, especially given that its only client and ally in the region, Syria, is currently embroiled in an internal war of its own against its own people? There will be no wider war because Arab governments do not want Iran to acquire nuclear weapons either, and would not react much to an Israeli strike. Demonstrations against Israel, which are predictable, would pass after a few days. Iran’s threats to close the Strait of Hormuz or to attack American bases and allies in the Gulf are not really credible either, and are almost surely a sort of psy-op against Washington. Such actions would draw the United States into a conflict with Iran when the US acted to re-open the Strait, which it could and would do—with world support—and these actions would bring far more damage to Iran’s military (especially naval) capacity than an Israeli attack would accomplish. Why would Iran call down US power on the head of its Islamic revolutionary state? Why would it attack American bases and thereby kill hundreds of Americans, knowing that this would bring devastating retribution from the United States? Similarly, would Iran really attack Arab states across the Gulf, some of which have decent air forces of their own (the UAE and Saudi Arabia) and can expect to rely on American help? If the Iranian leadership would engage in such suicidal actions, it confirms the Israeli position that such an irrational group cannot be permitted to have nuclear weapons in the first place.

Israel must expect Iranian terrorist attacks, and missiles targeting its own nuclear facilities at Dimona. The real danger, and the only one that might trigger a war, is an attack by Hezbollah. If it threw all of its arsenal at Israel, another conflict perhaps larger than the 2006 war would ensue. But is it certain that Hezbollah would sacrifice its future for Iran at this juncture? Recall that its leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, said after the 2006 war, “If I had known on July 11?.?.?.?that the operation would lead to such a war, would I do it? I say no, absolutely not.” And that was said when Iran and the Assad regime in Syria were riding high, and able and willing to rearm the group after the conflict—as they indeed did. With Assad desperately focused on his own survival and Iran’s own prestige and power damaged by an Israeli strike, would Nasrallah push Lebanon into a war its people cannot possibly want and that would do immense and possibly irrecoverable political and military damage to Hezbollah? Israel must anticipate the worst and prepare for it, but that is not to say it will happen.

The third argument against an Israeli strike is that a nuclear-armed Iran could still be “contained.” It is never explained how this would be achieved. Containment is not a diplomatic strategy but at bottom a doctrine enforced by military power: red lines are set and may not be crossed without clear consequences. If Iran gets nuclear weapons, this would mean that all such red lines had been crossed and that US warnings had been proved to be mere words. After Iran has gained status as a nuclear weapons state, how could Washington threaten war to contain it when it was unwilling to act when it did not have nuclear weapons? This cannot be seriously advanced as a realistic proposition to make Iran think twice about the course it has set.

President Obama, like many world leaders, has called an Iranian nuclear weapon “unacceptable.” He is right, and that should remain the US position—not just that it would be a bad outcome, not just that we would be angered by it, but that we refuse to accept it and, as the president also once said, will prevent it. If we are unwilling to act, or to act soon enough, it should be our position that Israeli action is justifiable.

Elliott Abrams served as deputy national security adviser from 2005 to 2009 and is currently a senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.

World opinion should not deter Israel from enhancing Jewish roots and national security, expanding the Jewish presence in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and the Golan Heights, and pre-empting Palestinian and Hezbollah terrorism.

Adverse world opinion and global pressure have always been an integral part of the Jewish people and the Jewish state. The aim of this global campaign has been to eliminate the unique national, religious, cultural and territorial features of the Jewish people, including Jewish sovereignty over the land of Israel.

The bolstering of Jewish sovereignty generates negative world opinion (except in the U.S. and a few other countries), but enhances respect toward a conviction-driven Jewish state. On the other hand, when Jewish sovereignty retreats and Israel submits to world opinion, it just reflects weakness. Israel will never satisfy world opinion, and such action only further fuels global pressure, which erodes respect toward the Jewish state.

World opinion toward the Jewish state was not improved by Israel’s 1957 and 1982 mega-retreats from the Sinai Peninsula (almost three times as large as Israel), the transfer of 100% of Gaza and 45% of Judea and Samaria to the Palestinian Authority, and the 1993 Israeli importation of PLO terrorists to the doorsteps of their intended victims.

However, going against the grain has been a prerequisite for game-changing human endeavors in general, and Jewish initiatives in particular.

Going against the grain has been a Jewish trait since the introduction of Abraham’s monotheism. Moreover, a defiant Jewish people has preserved and advanced the Jewish vision and strategic Jewish goals – while contributing uniquely to humanity – in the face of devastation, decimation, exiles, pogroms, expulsions, public burning, discrimination, forceful conversion and the Holocaust. If they had allowed themselves to be intimidated by world opinion, the Jewish people would have been doomed to oblivion.

Theodore Herzl, the father of modern-day political Zionism, was considered a messianic wishful thinker at the end of the 19th century. He was initially resented by most Jews, ridiculed by demographers and dismissed by world opinion.

Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion’s 1948 decision to declare the independence of the Jewish state was opposed by most of his party members, as well as by the U.S. Secretary of State Gen. George Marshall, who was then the most charismatic U.S. leader; the State Department’s bureaucracy; U.S. Defense Secretary James Forestall; the CIA and The New York Times. Israel’s founding father had to overcome a U.S. military embargo while the British supplied arms to the Arabs. Following the War of Independence, he ignored global bullying, refused to consider a return to the pre-war lines and the internationalization of Jerusalem, declared the Israel-controlled parts of Jerusalem the capital of the Jewish state and did not end the “occupation of the Negev.”

Prime Minister Levi Eshkol pre-empted Egypt and Syria, in 1967, in spite of adverse world opinion and specific warnings from the U.S. administration. Eshkol also defied Washington, and the world, by reuniting Jerusalem and launching construction projects in Jerusalem across the 1949 cease-fire (Green) line.

Prime Minister Golda Meir dared to provoke world opinion, laying the foundations for four major neighborhoods in Jerusalem across the Green Line which today house some 150,000 residents.

Prime Ministers Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir were criticized and condemned by the world for their claim that Judea, Samaria, the Golan Heights and the whole of Jerusalem were indivisble parts of the Jewish state. However, their slackened global popularity was matched by deep respect for their principle-driven policies, which made them worthy allies in the face of mutual threats, triggering a significant enhancement of U.S.-Israel strategic cooperation. Begin’s 1981 destruction of Iraq’s nuclear reactor – which spared the U.S. a nuclear confrontation in 1991 – was carried out despite U.S.-led global condemnation, depicting Israel as a lawless entity.

Contemporary Israeli leaders benefit from dramatically improved circumstances, compared with the meager resources at the disposal of their predecessors, demographically (more than 6 million Jews live in Israel), economically (the best ever economic indicators), technologically (the site of 400 high-tech global giants), industrially (unprecedented trade relations), militarily (expanded cooperation with Western military forces) and scientifically (a leading space power). Moreover, the world is increasingly exposed to the anti-Western explosive Arab and Palestinian street, the deeply and violently fragmented Arab world, the rising threat of Islamic terrorism in the U.S., Latin America, Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia, the intensifying demographic Islamic threat in Europe, and Iran’s nuclearization. Recent polls document bolstered support of Israel in the U.S. (71% favorability according to Gallup, compared with 19% support of the Palestinians).

History and current global reality reaffirm that Israel is facing a unique window of opportunity to enhance its strategic posture. Israeli leaders should not sacrifice such an opportunity upon the altar of world opinion. Leaders who fluctuate policy in order to appease world opinion are leaders exercise followership and not leadership. Such moves jeopardize the survival of their own people.

I have known Sherkoh Abbas for 5 years and have been working with him to gain currency for his vision. I am glad that Spyer whom I also know brought attention to this. Ted Belman

By JONATHAN SPYER, JPOST

Sherkoh Abbas, a veteran Kurdish dissident, calls for dismantling the country into ethnicity based areas. Photo: REUTERS
Sherkoh Abbas, a veteran Syrian Kurdish dissident, called on Israel this week to support the break-up of Syria into a series of federal structures based on the country’s various ethnicities.

Speaking from Washington, Abbas was also critical of US attempts to induce Syrian Kurds to join and work with the main opposition body, the Syrian National Council. Abbas, who heads the Washington- based Kurdistan National Assembly, said that dismantling Syria into ethnic enclaves with a federal administration would serve to “break the link” between Syria and the Iran-led “Shi’a crescent.”

Syrian Kurdish, Druse, Alawite and Sunni Arab federal areas, he suggested, would have no interest in aligning with Iran.

At the same time, a federalized Syria would avoid the possibility of a resurgent, Muslim Brotherhood-controlled Sunni Islamist Syria emerging as a new challenge to Israel and the West.

“We need to break Syria into pieces,” Abbas said.

The Syrian Kurdish dissident argued that a federal Syria, separated into four or five regions on an ethnic basis, would also serve as a natural “buffer” for Israel against both Sunni and Shi’ite Islamist forces.

Kurds are the largest ethnic minority population in Syria. They number more than 10 percent of the population, centered in the northeastern provinces of Hasakeh and Qamishli.

There is also a large, partly Arabized Kurdish population in the cities of Aleppo, Hama and Damascus.

Despite the Assad regime’s determined counter-attack in recent months, Abbas dismissed any possibility that the beleaguered dictator could survive in the long term.

“Whether it is one year, or even two, the regime is finished,” he said.

The KNA leader pointed to the recent bloody terror attacks in Damascus as an indication of President Bashar Assad’s desperation, arguing that these were the work of Sunni jihadis in the pay of of Assad.

“The regime is now unleashing its suicide groups,” he asserted.

His remarks came in response to a meeting at the US State Department last week between American officials and representatives of the Kurdish National Council, a Syrian Kurdish body. Robert Ford, who left his post as US ambassador to Syria earlier this year, and Fred Hof, the administration’s special coordinator on Syria, took part in the meeting. State Department Deputy Spokesman Mark Toner described its purpose as part of “ongoing efforts… to help the Syrian opposition build a more cohesive opposition to Assad.”

Abbas, however, was more blunt in his description of the meeting’s purpose. It was held, he said, so that the US officials could tell the Kurdish representatives, “You should be part of the Syrian National Council.”

So far, only one Syrian Kurdish organization – the Future Movement of Fares Tammo – has elected to join the SNC.

Many Kurds distrust the SNC because of the strong presence of Muslim Brotherhood members in its leadership, and because of its close links to the government of Turkey.

SNC leader Burhan Ghalioun has rejected the existence of any region called “Kurdistan” within Syria. He has called on Syrian Kurds to abandon what he called the “useless illusion” of federalism.

Early Kurdish recruits to the council withdrew from it after failing to secure a commitment to change the name of a post-Assad Syria from the current Syrian Arab Republic to the plain “Syrian Republic.” The SNC has also made no commitment to Kurdish autonomy in a post-Assad Syria.

Radwan Ziadeh, a prominent Washington- based member of the SNC, said that the issue of the Syrian Kurds could only be settled after the fall of the Syrian regime, in the context of democracy.

Perhaps because of these positions, the Syrian Kurdish attitude toward the uprising has remained cautious. The Kurds have many deep grievances against the Assad regime: It deprived many of them of citizenship, it transferred Arab settlers into northern Syria to break Kurdish contiguity of population, and it suppressed Kurdish language and culture.

But the Syrian opposition as currently constituted seems to many Kurds to be insufficiently interested in remedying this situation. The Kurds are also divided among themselves. The KNC is dominated by the Kurdish Democratic Party in Syria, which has close links to the Kurdish Regional Government of Massoud Barzani in northern Iraq. The PKK-linked PYD, meanwhile, is, according to Abbas and others, now working in cooperation with the Assad regime.

PYD-linked sources argue that the current Syrian uprising is simply a battle between the regime and an alliance of the Turkish government and the Muslim Brotherhood. As such, they suggest, Syrian Kurds’ main interest is in protecting their own areas.

The bottom line, as Qubad Talabani, representative of the Kurdistan Regional Government to the US, put it in a recent speech, is that the “Syrian opposition is not talking about Kurdish issues, is not talking about the need to protect Kurdish rights or to have the Kurdish identity as part of any new Syria.” For as long as this remains the case, calls for federalism, for separation, and for breaking Syria “into pieces” are likely to grow stronger.

Israeli advocacy group Shurat HaDin (Israel Law Center) won a $323 million judgment in a U.S. court against Iran and Syria for supporting terrorists who killed an American teenager and ten others in a 2006 bombing, The Associated Press reported on Tuesday.

The group’s attorney, Nitzana Darshan-Leitner, told AP that Shurat HaDin had won courtroom victories against Iran but never before against Syria.

The center was representing the family of 16-year-old Daniel Wultz of Florida, who was one of 11 people killed when an Islamic Jihad suicide bomber set off his explosives at a Tel Aviv restaurant six years ago. Daniel’s father was severely injured in the attack.

Darshan-Leitner told AP that Iran supports the Islamic Jihad movement financially while Syria had granted the group a haven to train in its territory.

U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth said in the Monday ruling, according to AP, “When a state chooses to uses terror as a policy tool – as Iran and Syria continue to do – that state forfeits its sovereign immunity and deserves unadorned condemnation. Barbaric acts like the April 17, 2006 suicide bombing have no place in civilized society and present a moral depravity that knows no bounds.”

An American lawyer representing Syria argued the case should be dismissed on the grounds of “sovereign immunity” but the court dismissed it, the report said.

Darshan-Leitner said there is a good chance that the victim’s family will get compensation through frozen Syrian assets held by the U.S.

“For the first time an American court is holding the government of Syria accountable for its decades-long support of terrorism,” she told AP.

Darshan-Leitner has won hundreds of millions of dollars for terror victims in lawsuits against Muslim terror groups.

In July 2011 the EU issued a report focussing on “Area C” and made clear that EU policy was to change the governing rules regarding it, which rules are clearly set out in the Oslo Accords.

On Monday the EU issued a report in which it slams Israel over settlements according to YNET.

The officials said France, Britain and Germany shepherded the conclusions through the EU, and it reflected the EU’s new Middle East envoy Andreas Reinicke’s focus on maintaining the viability of a two-state solution in face of what the Europeans are increasingly concerned may be a closing window of opportunity.

“The viability of a two-state solution must be maintained,” the statement read, “The EU expresses deep concern about developments on the ground which threaten to make a two state solution impossible.”
[..]

Reflecting an emphasis the EU has placed on Area C since career German diplomat Reinicke took over his post in January, the statement said this area is critical to the viability of a future Palestinian state, and called upon Israel to approve Palestinian master plans there, “halt forced transfer of population” and simplify administrative procedures.

Area C represents 62 percent of the West Bank and is under full Israeli control.

“The EU will continue to provide financial assistance for Palestinian development in Area C and expects such investment to be protected for future use,” the statement read. “The EU will engage with the government of Israel to work out improved mechanisms for the implementation of the donor funded projects for the benefit of the Palestinian population in Area C.”

NGO Monitor published EU documents repeat false NGO claims

In advance of this report, UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs says Israel destroyed various infrastructures built with European funds across West Bank, Gaza Strip

YNET covered this report under the headline NGOs: EU’s PA aid projects razed by Israel

Israel demolished dozens of Palestinian homes, water cisterns and farm buildings built with European funds in 2011, and over 100 such structures are at risk, aid groups said in a report on Monday.[..]

The DWG said that affected structures were financed by France, the Netherlands, Britain, Poland, Ireland and the European Commission.

OCHA said that a total of 620 structures in the West Bank were torn down in 2011, of which 62 were European-funded.

Of those affected, 600 were in the Area C, where Israel has full civilian and security control.

All these structures were erected without the required construction permits.

On May 4/12, INN reported Israel’s Civil Administration Helping PA Take Over Area C

In recent months, the PA has been working to take over the open space in Area C in order to break the Jewish continuity between the communities in the area, particularly in the settlement blocs.

The takeover is being achieved using an organized plan through the establishment of economic and infrastructure projects in the area. In some cases, the PA received approval for the projects from the Civil Administration by order of Defense Minister Ehud Barak. The applications were filed on behalf of the PA by EU member states, a fact which made it easier for them to be approved by Israel, which is wary of conflicts with the international community.

Mind you, the Oslo Accords provided “Area C” means areas of the West Bank outside Areas A and B, which, except for the issues that will be negotiated in the permanent status negotiations, will be gradually transferred to Palestinian jurisdiction in accordance with this Agreement. This is rarely referred to.

But the Roadmap provides,

“A settlement, negotiated between the parties, will result in the emergence of an independent, democratic, and viable Palestinian state living side by side in peace and security with Israel and its other neighbours.

By accepting the Roadmap, Israel in effect accepted a two-state solution. So when Netanyahu gave a speech accepting it it was not really a break through. It didn’t matter that Likud was against it, the GOI had already accepted it.

Neverthe less the Roadmap is just a blueprint and as such is not binding whereas the Oslo Accords are binding.

These Accords provided:

Neither side shall initiate or take any step that will change the status of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip pending the outcome of the permanent status negotiations.

But what is meant by “status”? I should think it means legal status such as what would flow from annexation. But it could mean changing the authority over each area or changing the boundaries of any of the areas.

The EU likes to say that our settlement policy does just that in addition to charging that the settlements are illegal according to International law. The only law thy rely on is the Fourth Geneva Convention which simply says an Occupying State cannot indirectly transfer populations. Not only is it a stretch to say the FGC applies but it is an even bigger stretch to say that it prohibits Jews from settling in the land.

Arguing for greater rights for the Palestinians in Area C is one thing but supporting Palestinian moves in Area C is an entirely different matter. The EU is clearly “taking steps that will change the status of the West Bank” and as such is in violation of the Oslo Accords.

”

Source: “Battleground: Fact & Fantasy in Palestine” by Samuel Katz,

In a British television interview on December 12, 1971, Mr. Richard Crossman, one of Britain’s famous left-wing intellectuals, a member of the Labour government between 1964 and 1970 and subsequently editor of the prestigious Socialist weekly The New Statesman, bluntly accused the former Labour Prime Minister Clement Attlee and Foreign Minister Ernest Bevin, who presided over the destinies of Britain after World War II, of having “tried to destroy the Jews of Palestine.” Mr. Crossman recalled that he was intended by Mr. Bevin in 1945 to be one of the instruments of his policy. He thus discovered first hand what that policy was.

His accusation, with its implication of a violent British passion against the Jews of Mandated Palestine, must have startled many well-meaning people who innocently believed that the conflict over Palestine was a straightforward clash “between Jews and Arabs.” If they knew of Britain’s role in the Mandate period it was as merely an honest broker caught in the middle. In fact, Mr. Crossman added authoritative support to those who have long known and insisted that Britain was an active participant in the dispute, and was indeed the prime driving force in the resistance to Jewish restoration in Palestine.

In the immediate context of this tells of the motives and the vital part of successive British governments and their agents in the creation and perpetuation of the conflict between Jews and Arabs.

Britain Refused to transfer any functions to Jewish authorities, even after terminating the Mandate.

The key to this question is reflected in the behaviour of the British in 1947. When, in that year, the Arabs rejected the partition of Palestine and refused to set up the projected Arab state, the British administration, then still governing Palestine under the Mandate, refused to carry out the recommendations of the United Nations to implement the partition plan. The British government made it plain that it would do all in its power to prevent the birth of the Jewish state. Britain announced that she would not — and indeed, she did not — carry out the orderly transfer of any functions to the Jewish authorities in the interim before the end of the Mandate on May 15, 1948. Everything was left in a state of disorder. This was Britain’s first contribution to the burden of the nascent state.

When, immediately after the United Nations Assembly decision, the Palestinian Arabs launched their preliminary onslaught on the Jewish community, the British Army gave them considerable cover and aid. It obstructed Jewish defence on the ground; it blocked the movement of Jewish reinforcements and supplies to outlying settlements; it opened the land frontiers for the entry of Arab soldiers from the neighbouring Arab states; it. maintained a blockade in the Mediterranean and sealed the coast and ports through which alone the outnumbered Jews could expect reinforcements; it handed over arms dumps to the Arabs. When Jaffa was on the point of falling to a Jewish counterattack, it sent in forces from Malta to bomb and shell the Jewish force. Meanwhile, it continued to supply the Arab states preparing to invade across the borders with all the arms they asked for and made no secret of it.

The British government was privy to the Arab plans for invasion;1 and on every diplomatic front, and especially in the United Nations and in the United States, it pursued a vigorous campaign of pressure and obstruction to hinder and prevent help to the embattled Zionists and to achieve the abandonment of the plan to set up a Jewish state. When the state was declared nevertheless, the British government exerted every effort to bring about its defeat by the invading Arab armies. It was not by chance that one of the last operations in the war between Israel and the Arab states in January 1949 was the shooting down on the Sinai front of five British RAF planes that had flown across the battlelines into Israeli-held territory. This was the culmination of a policy developed and pursued by the British throughout their administration of the Mandate — surely not the least of the great betrayals of the weak by the strong in the twentieth century.

The policy of Foreign Minister Ernest Bevin, who was severely criticised, was no more than the logical, if extreme, evolution of the policies of Anthony Eden, who inspired the creation of the Arab League in 1945; of Malcolm MacDonald, the Colonial Secretary who presided over the declaration of death to Zionism in the White Paper of 1939, and of their predecessors who shaped the “Arab Revolt” of 1936, who made possible the “disturbances” of 1929, and who were responsible for the pogrom in Jerusalem in 1920.

Seeds of Arab hostility to Israel & British Policy

It is impossible and, indeed, pointless and misleading to explain, analyse, or trace the development of Arab hostility to Zionism and the origins of Arab claims in Palestine without examining the policy of the British rulers of the country between 1919 and 1948.

One of the great objects of British diplomacy as the conflict in Palestine deepened during the Mandate period was to create the image of Britain as an honest arbiter striving only for the best for all concerned and for justice. In fact, Britain was an active participant in the confrontation. She was indeed more than a party. The Arab “case” in Palestine was a British conception. It took shape and was given direction by the British Military administration after the First World War. The release in recent years of even a part of the confidential official documents of the time has strengthened the long-held suspicion that the Arab attack on Zionism would never have began had it not been for British inspiration, tutelage, and guidance.

In the end, it is true, British sympathy, assistance, and co-operation came to be auxiliary to Arab attitudes and actions. Those attitudes, however, had their beginnings and their original motive power as a function of British imperial ambitions and policy. The two intertwined progressively throughout thirty years, until their open co-operation after 1939. At the last, in 1947- 1949, they consummated an imperfectly concealed alliance for the forcible prevention of the establishment of the Jewish state.

The Sudden Appearance in 1919 of a militant Arab “movement.”

That is the background of the sudden appearance in 1919 of a militant Arab “movement.” In the circumstances of the time, the British military administration should have invited and ensured the co-operation of the local population, Moslem and Christian, in implementing London’s policy. What was required was dissemination of clear and concise information on the vast areas of Arabia and Mesopotamia that had been liberated by the British and their Allies and were to become Arab or predominantly Arab states; on the contribution made by the Jews to the liberation of Palestine, their ancient and unrelinquished homeland; and on the undertaking made to them in the Balfour Declaration and the safeguards in that declaration for the civil and religious rights of the non-Jewish communities in Palestine. It might have been made clear that the Sherif Hussein had called on the Moslems to welcome the Jews to Palestine; information should have been spread about the cordial meetings between Faisal and Dr. Chaim Weizmann and the agreement they had signed; and last but not least, the determination of the British government to carry out its Zionist policy should have been confirmed. Such a declaration would without a doubt have created the right climate for launching that policy. “The military Administration ruled the country which waited on its very nod,” wrote a contemporary observer. “It would consequently have required the maximum of moral courage, enmity or external support, deliberately to go in the teeth of the policy of the Administration — above all in the Levant where the whole population is so singularly sensitive to every nuance of tyranny and of intrigue.”2

The Balfour Declaration in Palestine is to be treated “as extremely confidential and is on no account for any publication”

The popularisation of the Jewish National Home policy was, however, farthest from the minds of the military administration. For more than two years, it neither published nor allowed the publication of the Balfour Declaration in Palestine. This act of omission was backed by a specific prohibition from headquarters in Cairo. The Declaration, wrote the Chief Political Officer to the Chief Administrator in Jerusalem. on October 9, 1919, “is to be treated as extremely confidential and is on no account for any publication.”3

The group in power in Jerusalem made no secret of its hostility to Zionism. The whole of its administration, even down to its social occasions, was permeated with an anti-Jewish atmosphere that reminded some Jewish observers of the Tsarist regime in Russia. Indeed, Zeev Jabotinsky, then serving as a lieutenant in the Jewish Legion, which he had founded, and himself a native of Russia, wrote: “Not in Russia nor in Poland had had there been seen such an intense and widespread atmosphere of hatred as prevailed in the British Army in Palestine in 1919 and 1920.”4

The measures to prevent Jewish reconstruction slowly tightened

In Palestine, the measures to confine and restrict Jewish reconstruction slowly tightened. The British government was not free to make drastic changes since Britain had no sovereignty in Palestine. She was there constitutionally to fulfil the Mandate and was answerable to the League of Nations for her actions. As long as the League had prestige in the world, it served as a restraining influence on the deepening tendency in London to turn the purpose of the Mandate from the “reconstitution of the Jewish National Home” to the creation of an Arab-dominated dependency of Great Britain. Informed public opinion could not be disregarded, nor that part of the British establishment that fought back, though ever less effectively, against the Arabist erosion of its obligation to the Jewish people.

But while the Colonial Office and the administration in Palestine reduced the essentials of the Mandate, the League of Nations grew progressively less effective; its influence waned gradually in the 1920s, speedily after its show of impotence over the Japanese seizure of Manchuria in 1931. In sum, Zionism was fought on every possible front: economically, in the social services, in the police and public service. The administration was so filled with officials hostile to the purpose of the Mandate that the exceptions became famous. The progress of Jewish restoration was retarded as much as possible.

The central and most effective, weapon in the British armoury was the control of immigration

The central and most effective, weapon in the British armoury was the control of immigration, and this was used with ever increasing severity. In justification, economics were invoked; a principle called “economic absorptive capacity” was the guiding criterion. With the help of “experts” who asserted that there simply was little or no cultivable land left for development, the government’s control of Jewish immigration-administered by a system of quotas — became ever more restrictive. (At that time, there were less than a million people in western Palestine; today there are four million, with still undefined possibilities of growth.) Through the country’s back door, in quiet defiance of its Mandate, it also allowed an incessant inflow of Arabs. These came mainly from Syria and Transjordan, attracted by the progress and prosperity the Jews were bringing to Palestine. In a constant atmosphere of Jewish crisis and tragedy, in the twenty-six years of the Mandate period, the British allowed the entry of approximately 400,000 Jews into their national home and hounded and punished and, in the end, drove back or deported Jews who were trying to steal in. In that same period, crossing the Jordan with ease, probably 200,000 Arabs came in to swell the “existing non-Jewish population.”5

Yet, though the effort was sustained for a whole generation, from the early 1920s to 1948, neither the British rulers nor Haj Amin el Husseini with the machine he had built for propaganda and indoctrination, ever succeeded in converting the Arab population of Palestine into a nationally conscious entity, moved and animated by a hunger for “liberation,” proclaiming and asserting itself as a people with a positive aim. The fundamental reason is that it was — and is still — no such thing. A nation cannot be “created” in a generation or even in two, certainly not when essential ingredients are lacking. It was difficult to distinguish an Arab people altogether, not only in Palestine. A sense of fraternal solidarity did exist in the Arab family, in its economics, in its sense of honour. It existed in the clan that might grow out of the individual family. It might exist in the village. Beyond these loyalties, there was only a religious sense, a sense of community in Islam. Even that, with the considerable sectarian fragmentation, never proved itself in modem times as an effective force. There was little sense of belonging to “Arabdom.” To the degree that such a feeling ultimately did take root, it was expressed by an affinity to the large Arab people as a whole. Such an affinity could at least refer back to the ancient glory of a vast Arab Empire. This very frame of reference emphasised the absence of a “Palestinian” consciousness — which had in fact never existed and which could not be conjured up. Whenever, therefore, a reaction was to be provoked in the more militant, or more unruly, section of the Arab population, it was the vaguer generality of Islam or of pan-Arabism that was invoked.

Thus, the disturbances in 1929 were organised on a religious pretext-the alleged designs of the Zionists on the Moslem Holy Places and an Arab assertion of Moslem ownership of the Western Wall (of the Jewish Temple), which abuts the Temple Mount where the Moslems built their mosques. These disturbances, marked by the resolute permissiveness of the British authority, were characterised by outbursts of sheer slaughter. The massacre of the scholarly Jewish community of Hebron remained unreported elsewhere because of the defence provided by the newly effective Jewish Haganah organisation.

The “Arab Revolt” of 1936-1939, developed by British and Arab co-operation into an expression of pan-Arab policy, was far more ambitious. It was intended-and indeed came to be-the herald of Britain’s final abrogation of her pact with the Jewish people. For between 1929 and 1936, a drastic and dire change had occurred in the world.

If the Jews could proclaim a state, the Arab population might well make peace with it, and the British presence would come to an end

The Nazis had come to power in Germany. The campaign of the German state against the Jewish people in Germany and throughout the world, the wave of anti-Semitism engulfing the Jews of Eastern Europe and poisoning the wells of the West, had created an unprecedented pressure on the gates of their national home. During the three years after 1933, when the official anti-Jewish terror in Germany began, some 150,000 Jews had entered Palestine by taking advantage of remaining loopholes in the immigration regulations. The plight of the Jews remaining in Germany and of the persecuted, increasingly desperate, five million Jews in Eastern Europe was arousing considerable international attention. Opening the gates of Palestine, though the obvious solution, would have meant the defeat of the Arabists’ purpose. A few more years of large-scale Jewish immigration would have placed the Jews in a majority. If the Jews could proclaim a state, the Arab population — for the most part probably prepared to resign itself to a Jewish regime if it did not interfere with its way of life — might well make peace with it, and the British presence would come to an end. The pressure of Jewish need and world sympathy could be countered only by a more powerful, irresistible force which would prove that it was impossible to achieve the Mandates original purpose, that Arab resistance was too strong, too determined. The Arab “Revolt” was the result.

It was not a revolt at all but a campaign of violence directed against the Jews. Haj Amin’s resources, after fifteen years of organisation, were adequate to give it a countrywide — though still primitive and improvisational-character. In 1920, the pogroms had been inspired and connived at by the military administration in an effort to nip its home government’s Zionist policy in the bud. In 1936, the Arab campaign of violence was a move calculated to further the British home government’s intention of finally burying Zionism. The policy laid down in 1939 in the White Paper was the preordained purpose for which the 1936 outbreak was needed.

The permissive attitude of the Palestine government to the campaign of violence was evident from the outset. The outbreak was signalled months in advance. Inciting speeches by Arab political and religious notables and inflammatory articles in the Arab newspapers were the order of the day. It was common talk among both Jews and Arabs that the Arab villages (as in 1920) were “infested with agitators” who were inciting the population to violence against the Jews and that once again the people were being assured that a’dowlah ma’ana. This process was not disturbed by a single overt act, nor by any public statement, nor any warning of preventive or punitive action by the government.6

When, in the face of this astonishing forbearance, warnings were addressed to the High Commissioner and to the Colonial Office in London of the signs of the imminence of Arab violence, the reply was that the situation was under control. Similar reassuring statements were made after the first day’s toll of seventeen Jews killed by Arab mobs in the public streets of Jaffa under the nose of the British authority (Katz, pp. 4-5).

British Troops prevented from controlling Arab violence

Had the campaign been in fact a spontaneous Arab outbreak, and had the government been determined to maintain law and order, the outbreak would have lasted no more than a few days and would have made little impact. A completely typical illustration of the administration’s solution to the problem of pretending to be putting down the “rebellion” is provided by the description by a British soldier on the spot, given in the London journal New Statesman and Nation, September 20, 193 6:

At night, when we are guarding the line against the Arabs who come to blow it up, we often see them at work but are forbidden to fire at them. We may only fire into the air, and they, upon hearing the report, make their escape. But do you think we can give chase? Why, we must go on our hands and knees and find every spent cartridge-case which must be handed in or woe betide us.

In a similar spirit, the general strike proclaimed by the Arab Higher Committee (the self-appointed leadership of the Arab community, headed by Haj Amin el Husseini) and imposed on the Arab masses as the central weapon and symbol of the campaign was not resisted by the administration. It refused to declare the strike illegal, in flagrant contrast to its swift crushing of an earlier strike in non-violent protest-by the Jews against Jabotinsky’s arrest after the pogrom of 1920.

When, subsequently, the “rebels,” mistaking British permissiveness for Arab strength, went beyond attacks on Jewish villages and on Jewish life and property and attacked British personnel, effective measures were and the “rebels” were firmly suppressed.

The revolt, widely publicised, served its purpose. British government proclaimed in its famous White Paper of 1939 its abandonment of the Zionist policy. After the introduction of 75,000 more Jews into Palestine during the ensuing five years, the gates would be closed. The way would thus be open for that ultimate semi-dependent Arab state that would complete the British pan-Arab dream in the Middle East.

The British White Paper was was rejected as inconsistent with the Mandate by the League of Nations, but the League of Nations was dying

This document was rejected as inconsistent with the Mandate by the supervising body of the League of Nations, the Permanent Mandates Commission. But the League of Nations was dying, and Britain treated it with appropriate contempt. Four months later, the Second World War broke out; and the British government executed the White Paper policy as if Palestine had been a British possession and the White Paper an act of Parliament. Unnumbered Jews thus were trapped in Nazi-occupied Europe when, but for the rigid and unrelenting application of the provisions of the White Paper, they could have escaped to Palestine even during the war.

It may be that this grim consequence of British policy is the reason why the British government later wilfully destroyed so ‘many of the documents that could have provided direct evidence of the Palestine government’s behaviour. After thirty years, the British state archives were, in accordance with custom, opened to the research of writers and historians. The entire correspondence between the Palestine administration and its chiefs at the Colonial Office in London relating to the records of the meetings of the Executive Council (in effect the Cabinet) of the Palestine government had been “destroyed under statute.” Another obviously important file so destroyed was that relating to the Haganah organisation, which, if it had not been hamstrung by the government, was itself capable of putting a swift end to the Arab attacks. Yet another file destroyed was on “Propaganda Among the Arabs” — the incitement against the Jews-which the Palestine government had often been charged with inspiring, sponsoring, or at least facilitating.7

The British Government later destroyed records of it’s Palestine Government

The sanctity of the minutes of the British Cabinet in London has, however, saved one item of direct documentary evidence on the British government’s relationship to the “revolt” and to the “rebels.” The disturbances were not even mentioned when the Cabinet met soon after they broke out. Nor was the outbreak discussed at the next meeting or the one after that. Indeed, five meetings went by before the Cabinet discussed any aspect of the situation in Palestine. At the meeting of May 11, 1936-three weeks and a day after the Outbreak — the Secretary of State for the Colonies presented the Cabinet with a memorandum, not indeed proposing or even announcing measures for putting an end to the violence, but reporting that the High Commissioner recommended that the most helpful means now open to His Majesty’s Government of preventing the present disorders from spreading and increasing in violence would be for an immediate announcement of a Royal Commission with wide terms of reference, with power to make recommendations for lessening animosities and for establishing a feeling of lasting security in Palestine. [Cab. 23/84]

The Secretary of State “did not,” the minutes continue, “ask for a decision on the Terms of Reference to, or composition of the proposed Royal Commission which would require careful consideration, but merely for permission to tell the High Commissioner that His Majesty’s Government was favourable to the proposal so that he could sound the Arabs and report further” (italics added).

Nevertheless, in spite of this collusion, the development of the “revolt” was made possible and given shape and thrust only by the introduction of help by Arabs from outside Palestine. One of the outstanding features of the “revolt” was the failure of the Arabs of Palestine themselves to act appropriately.

British Collusion and the Arab apathy to the Mufti’s Incitement

The Palestinian Arabs were comfortably aware of the existence around them, in addition to their original homeland in Arabia, of six more Arabic-speaking countries, five of them predominantly Moslem, all part of the same sprawling territory which many centuries ago had been won and lost by the invaders from Arabia. Those Arabs who had dealings with the Jews got on well with them, and even if they did not like the idea of Jews, rather than Turks or British, ruling the country, they could not conjure up enough hostility to fight them. In 1929, the Mufti had incited them by distributing postcards which showed the El Aksa Mosque flying the Zionist the flag — an effective essay in photomontage. In 1936, the bulk of Palestinian Arabs still remained cold to the urgings of Haj Amin. A minority carried out the street knifings, the sniping at Jewish transport, the throwing of bombs in cinemas and marketplaces. The general strike was maintained only by the constant threat of force by the Mufti’s organisation; and the threat was made more persuasive by the refusal of the administration to declare the strike illegal.

The effort of the Palestine Arabs was not enough to impress the world. After the first phase of sniping, of attacks by street mobs, of individual bomb throwing, of shooting at transport on the main roads, there came a relaxation even of this effort. “Rebels” were consequently imported. A Syrian, Fawzi Kaukji, led a mixed band of Syrian and Iraqi mercenaries in the extended campaign directed mainly against the Jewish villages.8 The Palestine Arab population on the whole refused to co-operate with these liberators, often even denying them shelter. The outcome was a campaign of murder against the Palestinian Arabs. When Arab villages appealed to the British administration for arms to defend themselves against Kaukji’s invading bands, they were refused. In the end, more Arabs than Jews were killed by the rebels.9

The intervention by Arabs from the neighbouring countries was a reflection of the Cairo school’s dream. To its members, Palestine was only part of the larger scheme; it was needed only to complete the homogeneity of a large Arab “world” under British tutelage. That dream was not abandoned. Indeed, the British government worked energetically to create a form of unity, or at least a framework of co-operation, among the Arab states. In an Arab world riven with disagreements and jealousies, the Palestine issue was the ideal instrument to bring about such co-operation. To appear, without much effort, as the champions of their brothers in Palestine and at the same time to nourish the hope that the Fertile Crescent might become homogeneously Arab — this was a prospect that appealed to the Arab states.

As early as 1936, the real or nominal heads of the Arab states or states in embryo were called in by the administration and generously agreed to “secure” from the Mufti and his Arab Higher Committee a temporary cessation of the revolt so as to enable an investigation of grievances. When the Mufti in turn graciously consented, the government permitted the main body of Fawzi Kaukji’s terrorists to go back across the Jordan, where they could rest and reorganise. Thereafter, it became a self-understood facet of British policy that the Arab states had acquired a right to intervene in the affairs of Palestine. As though they were parties to the “dispute,” with a claim and interests in the country-and in flagrant flaunting of the origin, the concept, the letter and the spirit of Britain’s own defined Mandate — the Arab rulers were invited in 1939 to a so-called Round Table Conference. The predetermined failure of this conference (where the Arab representatives refused to meet the Jews face to face) was enshrined in the White Paper that followed immediately.

The British Creation of the Arab League to serve as the mouthpiece of a British sponsored Pan-Arab dream

Looking ahead, through the storms of the war that followed to the final consummation of the White Paper, the British government took active steps to create A formal instrument of pan-Arabism. Thus, the Arab League was born. After Anthony Eden first mentioned It publicly in 1941, the then British Foreign Secretary presided over the necessary diplomatic exchanges and negotiations that brought about the formal establishment of the League in 1945. The pan-Arab dream had meanwhile also assumed that large economic importance which had been part of its inspiration. The oil-fields of Iraq proved to be but a small portion of a vast potential in Iraq itself and, even more, in Saudi Arabia and the British dependent sheikhdoms on the Persian Gulf. British commercial interests played a large part in their exploitation.

Thus, after thirty years, an Arab entity consisting of seven countries — Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, and Transjordan — formally independent, semi-dependent, or on the way to formal independence and providing substantial dividends to an impoverished British economy, promised to realise the dream, conceived in 1915, of an Arab confederation that would “look to Britain as its patron and protector.” Western Palestine was still lacking to complete the picture, but its inclusion seemed imminent. It remained only to give the finishing stroke to Zionism. That should not be difficult after the battering the Jewish people had suffered from the Nazis.

A Jewish Homeland with a Jewish Majority was an obstacle

From the very outset of the new Pan-Arab-British imperial phase, however that prospect was scarred by one intrusion: Zionism striving for the Jewish restoration of Palestine. The member states of the Arab League, which was formed in 1945 to supply the beginnings of co-ordinated modern Arabic power, were led by the British to be believe that the Prospect of a Jewish state in Palestine had been finally erased by the White Paper of 1939. Accordingly, they announced their acceptance of the White Paper-which also recognised the rights of the Jews to minority existence. They were accorded an immediate earnest of British loyalty to the compact: That same year the British, efficiently and unceremoniously, finally forced the French out of Syria. The Arabs looked forward to the equally effective end to snuffing out of the Jewish restoration in Palestine.
The refusal of the Jews to submit to the British dictate, their underground struggle which, to the Arabs’ surprise and dismay, resulted in the relinquishment of British Power in Palestine, consequently ruled out the transfer of sovereignty (which the British did not legally possess) to the Arabs. Encouraged, and armed, by the British, the Arabs rejected even the partition compromise of 1947, rejecting Zionist pleas for co-operation. If they were to eliminate the Zionists and to prevent the rebirth of the Jewish state they had now themselves to go to war, under strikingly’ favourable circumstances.

Then, precisely at the beginning of the new and so promisingly brilliant era in Arab nationalism, at the very rebirth of the empire, the Arab states suffered one of the greatest shocks, in all Arab history.

In May 1948, they launched the war against the embryonic Jewish state with considerable reason for confidence. The total Jewish population numbered no more than 650,000. Israel’s armed force had for the most part had no more than partisan training. She had no air force at all.10 She had just passed through years of strain and tension and a bitter struggle with the British. When the invasion by the Arab states opened, she had been under guerrilla attack for six months by Palestinian Arabs and by advance units from the armies of Syria, Iraq, and Jordan, aided in a hundred ways by the still ubiquitous British. (The British civilian administration evacuated by May 14, 1948. The British Army began to organise its evacuation well after that date, completing the process on August 1.) While the British had opened the land frontiers so that men and arms could pour in from the neighbouring Arab countries,11 they had refused to open a port for the Jews as recommended by the United Nations; and they maintained their blockade in the Mediterranean to prevent any reinforcements from reaching Israel. The United States bad announced an embargo and enforced it strictly, so that the Jews were deprived of that source as well.

In addition to these advantages, the Arabs were given massive material support by the British government, which openly provided arms and ammunition for the war (and turned aside criticism at the United Nations that Britain was aiding aggressive invasion by the claim that the State of Israel did not legally exist and could not therefore be invaded). The Arabs further enjoyed expert British leadership; the Transjordanian Arab Legion was officered by British soldiers.

British co-operated in planning at least some phases of the war against the Jewish State

Unknown to the world at the time, the British co-operated in planning at least some phases of the war. On January 15, 1948-the day a new treaty with Iraq was signed at Portsmouth-the British Foreign Minister, Ernest Bevin, reached an agreement with the Iraqi leaders, Prime Minister Saleh Jabr, Foreign Minister Fadil el Jamali, and the elder statesman, then President of the Senate, Nuri el Said. By this agreement, the British undertook to speed up the supply of weapons and ammunition ordered from the British government and to supply automatic weapons sufficient for “50,000 policemen.” The purpose was to arm the Palestinian Arab fighters to enable them to participate in the liberation of Palestine.12 A third point in the agreement was that Iraqi forces would enter every area evacuated by British troops in the whole of Palestine, so that a Jewish state would not be formed.13 So much for Iraq. Six weeks later Bevin, at an interview with the Prime Minister of Transjordan attended by General Glubb (the Commander of the Arab Legion), approved the plan of Transjordan to do her share in frustrating the partition plan by invading and occupying the area allotted in the United Nations resolution to the establishment of an Arab state-14 Superiority in numbers, overwhelming superiority in arms and ammunition, the eager and substantial help of a major world power, a strategy based on a converging movement on three fronts against a Jewish force largely untrained, poorly armed and defending a small but densely populated coastal strip-these were surely enough to assure victory and even the slaughter that Arab leaders openly promised.
1. See Elie Kedourie, The Chatham House Version and Other Middle Eastern Studies (London, 1970), pp. 231-233.

2. Horace B. Samuel, Unholy Memories of the Holy Land (London, 1930), p. 51.

3. Pal. Govt. File Pol/2108, in Israel State Archives. Quoted in Kedourie, Chatham House Version, p. 57.

4. The Story of the Jewish Legion (New York, 1945), p. 171. Jabotinsky’s book contains (pp. 168-77) a description of the policy and motives of the military administration in 1919 and 1920. More detail still is in Richard Meinertzhagen, Middle East Diary 1917-1956 (London, 1959); Horace B. Samuel, Unholy Memories of the Holy Land. See also Chaim Weizmann, Trial and Error (London, 1949).

5. See the report of the Royal Commission on Palestine (HM. Stationery Office, 1937). Also Y. Shimoni, Arviyei Eretz Yisrael (Tel Aviv, 1947); the UNRWA Review, inf. Paper No. 6 (September, 1952) on Megal Arab immigration during the Second World War.

6. A description of the developing situation three months before the outbreak began is contained in Samuel Katz, Days of Fire (London, 1968), pp. 3-4.

7. Files CO 793/27/75269; CO 793/27/75402; and CO 793/27/75528/25.

8. Colonial Office files of correspondence on the “Participation an Arabs” in the Disturbances (CO 793/27/75528/48), and “Activities of Fawzi Kauldi” (CO 793/27/75528/82) have been “Destroyed Under Statute.”

9. A critical detailed analysis, legal and administrative, of the British measures during the first phase of the 1936 revolt is given in Horace B. Samuel, Revolt by Leave (London, 1937). For a comprehensive picture and summing up, see Chaim Weizmann, Trial and Error (London, 1949), and Katz, Days of Fire (London, 1968).

10. Four fighter Planes were later scraped together and they brought about a turning point in the war by halting the Egyptian advance at Ashdod.

11. The British themselves announced (in the House of Commons) at the end of February that 5,000 Arabs from the neighbouring countries had entered Palestine in the preceding three months.

12. This was a wildly optimistic estimate. The Iraqis later discovered that the total number of Palestinian Arabs taking part in the fighting was 4,000.

13. See Kedouri, The Chatham House Version, pp. 212-233, quoting Iraqi historian Abd-al-Razzaq al Hosani. The scheme, according to Jamali, was dropped when the Portsmouth Treaty was revoked.

14. J. B. Glubb, A Soldier with the Arabs (London, 1957), pp. 63-66.

This page was produced by Joseph E. Katz
Middle Eastern Political and Religious History Analyst
Brooklyn, New York
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Source: “Battleground: Fact & Fantasy in Palestine” by Samuel Katz,
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Before analyzing the Iraqi insurgent sniper’s other attributes, keep in mind that he’s a terrorist first, who’s capable of any kind of act to further his cause without regard to law or ethics or what a Westerner would consider morality. An inseparable seam connects him to his comrades who bomb public places and kill helpless hostages with little remorse. Every day he violates the Laws of Land Warfare by wearing civilian clothes, assassinating civilians, continuing to shoot incapacitated soldiers and marines, escaping sniping incidents in ambulances, purposely firing behind a human shield of women and children, and operating from mosques.

The article says in fact that a militant Islamic sniper set up shop in a minaret–normally a protected place under the laws of war, just like a church or a synagogue–until return fire from a tank sent him to his one-on-one meeting with Allah and his seventy-two virgins. It includes a picture with the caption, “Unconcerned about the civilians that surround him, a Palestinian masked sniper fires at Israeli troops, much as some Iraqi snipers have done.” This reinforces the statement that musloid terrorists “purposely fire from behind a human shield of women and children” like the cowards they are. A publication for Iraqi snipers meanwhile advises,

Killing doctors and chaplains is suggested as a means of psychological warfare.

Militant Islam is as militant Islam does, and killing doctors and chaplains is apparently what militant Islam does. The militant Muslim is however incapable of scientific creativity, while Euro-American and Judeo-Christian technology has equipped our soldiers with body armor that can actually stop rifle bullets and save soldiers’ lives.

The latest issue of The American Rifleman included an article written by and about the snipers of our Armed Forces. Two stories were particularly telling about the nature of our militant “Islamic” enemies:

…an enemy sniper had just shot an American soldier. In a fourth-floor hospital window some 12 blocks away, his spotter detected the sniper…

[A figure in a burqa] left the shadows for the empty road and began digging where a previous IED had been concealed, obviously to plant a fresh one. While Gilliland spotted, his teammate ended her effort with one shot. With the coming of daylight Gilliland dreaded checking the woman’s body and the civilian outrage it might incite. Imagine his relief, then, when he found that the burqa-clad “woman” sported a full-length beard.

Israel is therefore not the only place where musloid terrorists abuse the Red Cross or Red Crescent, and disguise themselves as noncombatants to murder opposing soldiers (and often civilians).