According the AP (and other news sources) Secretary Rice is appealing to history in her quest for Mideast peace

“We view the situation as qualitatively different than it has been, the history moves on, people change roles, situations,” McCormack said. “That said, you can take the lessons of history and apply them,” he said. “She is a student of history and has a keen appreciation for how we can apply the lessons of history, what we can learn from those who have gone before us.”

PM Olmert also has history on his mind.

Israel is ready to put “all basic questions, all the substantive problems, all the historical questions” about Palestinian statehood on the table in a U.S.-hosted peace conference later this month in Annapolis, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Sunday. “It is time,” Olmert said in an impassioned speech. “All questions are on the agenda. We won’t run away from any of them.”

No doubt that President Abbas will also go into the Annapolis summit with history on his mind too.

The Balfour Declaration, the Mandate for Palestine, and everything that has been based upon them, are deemed null and void. Claims of historical or religious ties of Jews with Palestine are incompatible with the facts of history and the true conception of what constitutes statehood. Judaism, being a religion, is not an independent nationality. Nor do Jews constitute a single nation with an identity of its own; they are citizens of the states to which they belong.

I don’t suggest that Secretary Rice and PM Olmert forget history. I just hope that they will be as scrupulous in bringing up history that Abbas would rather forget.

With assertions of the rights of Palestinians to reclaim land in Israel expected to arise at an planned Middle East peace conference in Annapolis, Md., a Jewish advocacy group has scheduled a meeting in New York on Monday to call attention to people it terms “forgotten refugees.” The organizing group, Justice for Jews from Arab Countries, says it is referring to the more than 850,000 Jews who left their homes in Arab lands after the declaration of the state of Israel in 1948. “This did not occur by happenstance, as is sometimes said,” said Stanley A. Urman, executive director of the group, a five-year-old New-York-based organization. “In fact, we have found evidence that there was collusion among the Arab nations to persecute and exploit their Jewish populations.”

When the world now looks at Israel’s founding they see a flawed founding. To others Israel’s treatment of the Arabs condemns it to being born in sin. But Israel (then Palestine) was a theater of war. In war people do get displaced. In this case most left on their own. And yet when the world looks at the other side of the equation they don’t ask why Jews were forced to leave their homes. The countries they were living in weren’t fronts in the war. Now there’s documentation that the Arab countries colluded with each in oppressing the Jews in their midsts. And the UN which has fostered the resentment of the Palestinians with their various organizations was looking the other way when the Jewish refugees were forced from their homes.

The group cites United Nations figures showing that 856,000 Jewish residents left Arab countries in 1948. “This was not just a forced exodus, it was a forgotten exodus,” said Irwin Cotler, a former Canadian minister of justice who is scheduled to be the main speaker at Monday’s program to open the campaign on behalf of the Jewish refugees. For that reason, he said, the main goal of the campaign was to raise public awareness rather than to seek compensation. “It’s not about the money, it’s about the other components of redress, recognition, remembrance and acknowledgment of the wrongs committed,” he said. He said that a particular focus of the campaign would be the United Nations, where Palestinian concerns got regular attention and Israel was frequently the object of condemning resolutions. “The U.N. has participated in expunging this experience from the Mideast narrative and from the U.N. narrative,” Mr. Cotler said.

While the Palestinian were allowed to languish by their co-religionists, Israel assumed responsibility for Jews who lost their homes. The resentment against Israel, which is often treated as a basis for the entitlement of the Palestinians to a state, was nurtured for one reason: as an attack on the Jewish state. It was an attempt to shift blame for the wars on Israel, to delegitimize Israel, and, if possible to destroy Israel.

It’s worked quite well, as the American Secretary of State and the Israeli Prime Minister are preparing to grant statehood to the leader of an unreformed terrorist organization. History says that Jerusalem was never important to the Muslims - until Jews controlled it. Will Dr. Rice and PM Olmert bring that up?

By all means don’t run from history, but don’t accept the fractured history of a Holocaust denier.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Using bacteria, an Israeli company has built a detection system to catch contaminants in the water supply.

Tiny phosphorescent bacteria that glow a warning signal when fed polluted water… a protection fence decked out with cameras and alarms to stop would-be water terrorists… or how about the complete package, replete with a battery-operated online monitoring system for the entire city? They’re all being offered by Whitewater, a portfolio of Israeli companies, and were just some of the newer technologies of the rather ‘liquid’ Israeli water technology market that was being showcased last week at the 4th annual three-day WATEC water technology convention in Tel Aviv.

Not all of the technology on display is so new.

Part of a quasi-governmental African delegation from Botswana, Thamane and his colleagues were looking for solutions to make water use more efficient. The WATEC conference was the first stop on their quest and Netafim was a familiar name. “There is no argument,” says Idit Gavrielli, a rep from Netafim, “we invented the drip irrigation system. The company has grown into a half-billion dollars in sales this year, mostly in global exports,” she tells ISRAEL21c. Netafim began about 40 years ago. It developed a system that transfers water through tiny holes on a labyrinth of pipes buried just below the soil surface. This way, water loss by evaporation can be minimized. The invention devised by a small arid nation that had little in water reserves was an instant success. It started a chain reaction in the water business, which today shows no sign of slowing down.

There are those who say that the next Middle East war will be over water not land. Maybe, but it appears that Israeli companies are doing a lot to prevent that from happening.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Yesterday, Jewish Current Issues reviewed the new book by Ambassador John Bolton, “Surrender is not an option.” Among other things, he summarizes last years negotiations over Resolution 1701 ending the Israel-Hezbollah war

He makes it clear it was — to be diplomatic — not a stellar performance by the State Department. Ultimately, he writes, the resolution left a situation in which “it became increasingly clear that there was not going to be another resolution to disarm Hezbollah, that the arms embargo was not being enforced, that Hezbollah was rearming, and that ‘enhanced UNIFIL’ looked and acted much like the existing, ineffective UNIFIL.”

Today’s Wall Street Journal has a longer review written by Brendan Simms, focusing more on Iran and efforts to keep nuclear weapons out of the hands of Ahmadinejad and company. It appears that diplomacy is just effective in that case as it was with Resolution 1701

Much more worrying is Mr. Bolton’s account of European policy on Tehran’s nuclear program. The policy started as a well-meant attempt to avoid military confrontation by persuading the Iranians to abandon their plans peacefully. At almost every stage along the way, however, the French, British and German negotiators were hoodwinked by the Iranians, who later gloated over the deceptions they had been allowed to get away with. Far from holding all this against Iran, the Europeans — or “Euroids,” as Mr. Bolton calls them — tended to vent their frustration on Mr. Bolton and America’s supposed intransigence. Thus the British representative to the Security Council is quoted as being “so tired of having to go out in front of those damned cameras and explain why we gave up on this or conceded on that.” Far and away the most feeble performance is put in by the envoy from Berlin, who reflexively gives the Iranians the benefit of the doubt, crediting their claims of peaceful intentions. The Germans of all people should care about nuclear weapons in the hands of a maniac such as President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has called for the destruction of Israel. Their diplomats at the U.N. should not be making excuses for an Iranian nuclear program that is plainly intended for military purposes.

It does not appear that Mr. Bolton was a very diplomatic diplomat. Unfortunately he is no longer toiling at the UN trying to bring some sanity to the asylum. Simms describes Bolton’s view of the UN like this

Mr. Bolton often finds himself in a fantasy-fueled Munchkinland in which all the problems of the Middle East are blamed on Israel and the Iranian quest for a nuclear bomb is either denied or ignored — or justified as a legitimate response to U.S. and Zionist hegemony.

If you doubt that, read the late Jeane Kirkpatrick’s How the PLO was legitimized and you’ll see why (among things) the term “international law” is little more than a bad joke.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Time Magazine wonders if Israel is going to pre-emptively attack Hizbollah.

Is Israel laying the ground for preemptive air strikes against targets belonging to the militant Shi’ite group Hizballah in Lebanon?

Tensions have been building along the Lebanon-Israel border in recent days. The Israeli army was engaged last week in large-scale military exercises in northern Israel, close to the border with Lebanon, putting into practice the lessons learned from last year’s 34-day war against Hizballah. The exercises took place at the same time as Israeli jets conducted a growing number of mock air raids and overflights in Lebanese airspace. Israeli aircraft fly in Lebanese airspace on a near daily basis, but last week Lebanese army anti-aircraft units fired at the jets for the first time since the end of the war.

Hizballah, too, is reported to have carried out over the weekend its largest ever military maneuvers in south Lebanon. According to a report Monday in Lebanon’s Al-Akhbar newspaper, Hizballah’s three-day exercise was a response to the Israeli army’s own maneuvers and was intended, according to quoted Hizballah sources, to “deter the enemy from undertaking any further Lebanese adventures.”

I don’t think so. I think there are several reasons that Israel is conducting maneuvers there. First, they moved them from the Golan Heights to ratchet down the tensions with Syria. Second, they’re training for the IDF so that the next Hezbollah war goes a hell of a lot better than the last one. And third: If the U.S. bombs Iranian nuclear sites, Hezbollah will send rockets into Israel. Israeli forces need to protect their people.

In other words, Time’s analyst, in my opinion, is full of crap. Yet another sensationalist headline instead of an in-depth analysis of the facts and the situation.

Actually, it’s a mini-episode summary. With no real spoilers.

[SOMETIME NEXT YEAR]
MAMA PETRELLI: Peter, you have to remember! You have to!
PETER: Okay. [remembers everything] Mom? Holy cow! Your special ability is guilt!
AUDIENCE: Oh, like that’s a superpower? You live in New York and you’re unfamiliar with mothers making their kids feel guilty? You’re Italian and you don’t know about guilt? Yeesh.
NATHAN: I’m not! You have no idea how much that woman has ruined my life.
AUDIENCE: Oh, shut up and shave. Stop whining, you big baby.

[SOMETIME THIS YEAR]
OLD MAN PARKMAN: Muahaha, I have the power to bring dead actors back to life so that the fans won’t be too upset that we killed off D.L.
NIKKI: Ew. Send him back to the grave. He doesn’t love me anymore.
AUDIENCE: Didn’t we see this last year with Candice? Recycling plots already?

MOHINDER: Bob, I have a confession to make. Even though only two weeks ago I believed you were part of an evil organization that is bent on ruling the world by subjugating mutants and their powers, I’m going to confess to you that I’m working with Noah Bennett to take down your company and probably kill you all.
BOB: What’s up, Doc? You’re either with us, or you’re with Adam.
MOHINDER: Who? What? Gee, could you get any more symbolic? Adam, Eve, blahblahblah. Who am I supposed to be? God?
BOB: Nah, that was your dad. By the way, take this gun so you can shoot Bennett in the eye for us, would you?
AUDIENCE: Oh, yeah, like he’s really going to die. Please. But if you can kill off that whiny boyfriend of Claire’s, we’d be grateful.
WHINY BOYFRIEND: Hey! What’s wrong with me? I’m cheerful, smart, I can fly, and I get to make out with Hayden Paniettiere.
AUDIENCE: What are you, like 30, and you’re playing a high school kid? Please. Major “Ew” factor going on here.

More later, maybe.