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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.

To read Rice’s Bridge To Peace by David Ignatius one must conclude that to Dr. Rice (and Ignatius by the approving tone of his column) that Israeli security is negotiable. Well it’s worse than that, it’s not a factor.

The bridging process has been evident over the past month as the two sides sought to marry the security guarantees promised in the existing “road map” with the Annapolis document and its “political horizon.” The hang-up was that, under the road map, the Israelis demanded security measures as a condition for further movement. To break the logjam, Rice’s team drafted compromise language that would allow the United States to act as arbiter of whether the road map’s security conditions are being met.

The United States as arbiter? The United States may be Israel’s ally, but their interests, at times, diverge. So since the United States has determined (against all evidence and reason) that a Palestinian state is in its interests, it will play down Palestinian support for terror in order to keep the process “alive.” The near the end we read

To bring a measure of international support, it’s possible that the Annapolis statement of Israeli-Palestinian support for a two-state solution would be incorporated into a new U.N. Security Council resolution. Arabs also hope that the Annapolis declaration will include confidence-building steps, such as a moratorium on Israeli settlements, easing of West Bank checkpoints and release of Palestinian prisoners.

Where are the Palestinian confidence building measures? Say acknowledging Israel’s right to exist or stopping support of terror groups? Those aren’t really confidence building measures, but as long as the Palestinians have benchmarks of performance and no obligations, this part of the peace process will be a sham (as it’s always been).

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Richmond, Virginia—my home since 2002—is smart enough to know where the smart money in science is: Richmond is actively recruiting Israeli science and research firms.

Like college sports scouts eyeing fresh stars from the sidelines, officials from the Virginia BioTechnology Research Park are actively looking to recruit Israeli science and research companies to Richmond.

They want to uncover ones that would be interested and financially able to set up shop in Virginia, which could serve as a hub for entering the enormous U.S. market for health care, drugs and biotech-related products and services.

Research park President Robert T. Skunda and others from the downtown campus made two trips to Israel in October. Even though the country has suffered from decades of violence and conflicts with its neighbors, Israel is considered one of the top research spots in the world.

“Without a doubt the technology that we are seeing over there is truly incredible,” Skunda said. “They have some really innovative stuff, and they have some stuff that is potentially very market ready.”

It is too early to tell whether the park’s recruitment will pay off in the long run, but there are some early signs of success, Skunda said.

Park officials have evaluated roughly 30 companies that could start a relationship with the biotech park, which is affiliated with Virginia Commonwealth University. The firms also could partner with university-related organizations — notably the VCU Medical Center — and companies scattered throughout central Virginia.

This will be great for Richmond, for Virginia, and for the local Jewish community’s mothers. Think of the son- and daughter-in-law material to be imported along with those Israeli science firms!

When it comes to spreading democracy Natan Sharansky has famously called President Bush a “dissident.”

There are two distinct marks of a dissident. First, dissidents are fired by ideas and stay true to them no matter the consequences. Second, they generally believe that betraying those ideas would constitute the greatest of moral failures. Give up, they say to themselves, and evil will triumph. Stand firm, and they can give hope to others and help change the world.Political leaders make the rarest of dissidents. In a democracy, a leader’s lifeline is the electorate’s pulse. Failure to be in tune with public sentiment can cripple any administration and undermine any political agenda. Moreover, democratic leaders, for whom compromise is critical to effective governance, hardly ever see any issue in Manichaean terms. In their world, nearly everything is colored in shades of gray.

That is why President George W. Bush is such an exception. He is a man fired by a deep belief in the universal appeal of freedom, its transformative power, and its critical connection to international peace and stability. Even the fiercest critics of these ideas would surely admit that Mr. Bush has championed them both before and after his re-election, both when he was riding high in the polls and now that his popularity has plummeted, when criticism has come from longstanding opponents and from erstwhile supporters.

But nowadays his ideas are out of fashion

The fortunes of Mr. Sharansky and his ideas about freedom rose and sunk with President Bush’s opinion polls. His “The Case for Democracy” came along, three years ago, when the administration seriously looked to push it in the Muslim world. The president loved the book, and Mr. Sharansky became the in-house philosopher for the Bush Doctrine. “If you want a glimpse of how I think about foreign policy, read Natan Sharansky’s book,” blurbs Mr. Bush on the back cover of the paperback edition.But democracy is a dirty word these days. So Mr. Sharansky is lonely too, bounced out of Israeli politics and out of favor. He, Vaclav Havel and other former Eastern European dissident faces of the freedom agenda are dismissed as Cold War naïfs, pernicious Utopians, or worse–men whose moral Manichaeism has no business in the “complex Middle East.”

America is back to its realist ways in the region, propping up Egyptian and Saudi gerontocrats. The day I visit Mr. Sharansky, Condi Rice is here to prod all sides to another Middle East peace conference, with no mention of political opening as part of the bargain.

Still Sharansky tries to be upbeat.

Mr. Sharansky says Washington didn’t give the freedom agenda a chance. When the administration briefly pressed Arab dictatorships, if only with tougher rhetoric, “there were results,” he says, citing Egypt’s release of dissident Saad Ibrahim and Lebanon’s Cedar Revolution against the Syrians.But the Saudis, Egyptians and others rightly figured the storm would pass. Hosni Mubarak bowed to pressure to hold presidential elections, then rigged them and for good measure imprisoned his opponent, Ayman Nour. “It’s such a clear return to the old days when from the top you have to try to decide with the leaders who don’t represent anything and ignore all your principles,” says Mr. Sharansky.

“I’m very careful not to be too critical of Bush simply because I believe that the very fact that we can disagree on a democratic agenda”–say over the wisdom of holding early elections–“is because there is such an agenda,” says Mr. Sharansky.

The funny thing is that idea of spreading democracy is often attributed to “neoconservatives” and with the failure of elections (so far) in the Middle East that failure has been attributed to the neoconservatives.

But as Daniel Pipes points out some of the neoconservatives to whom this failure is attributed, in fact, diverged from the Bush administration on several key areas such as

Democratization: When the president first announced the goal of increasing political participation in the Middle East, I applauded, even as I warned against the overly-abrupt replacement of tyranny with democracy, urging that the process be done slowly and cautiously. Noting that the actual implementation empowered Islamists, I assigned it a failing grade.

In fact those promoting elections as a shortcut to democracy tended not to be the neoconservatives but the realists and they failed to learn the lessons from Arafat’s election in 1996.

A real look at the question of Arafat’s legitimacy, therefore, has to involve a more serious examination of the origins of his rule in the wake of the 1993 Oslo accords–and particularly the crucial two-year period in which he established the Palestinian Authority and paved the way for himself and his loyalists to win a landslide victory at the polls. Such an accounting reveals a disturbing picture, of a PLO leadership that–after having been brought in from Tunis amid widespread jubilation–used every means at its disposal to ensure that the Palestinian voter would have only one viable option as to which political party would represent him, and only one real candidate to vote for as president. Under these conditions, Arafat’s landslide victory was not an expression of democratic will, but rather a testament to the success of the measures he employed.The story of how this came to pass is the subject of this essay. In it, I will document–in large part using original source material not previously published in the West–the rise of a regime characterized by a massive police force whose specialty was intimidation of political opponents; an executive branch in which Arafat alone made all major decisions and in which the civil service was reduced to a corrupt patronage machine; the institutionalized absence of the rule of law, and a judiciary that lacked any independence; and the intimidation of the media and human rights organizations, to the point that it became virtually impossible to transmit any message other than one personally approved by Arafat.

Others who have blogged about the Sharansky interview include Neo-neocon (at length), Daled Amos (briefly) and Yid with Lid.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Haveil Havalim #139 is up at the award winning (OK award nominated) Mother in Israel.

Read about
Australia invades Be’er Sheva!
Where does fair use end and stealing begin (on buses and with CD’s)?
Egypt refuses Jewish help!
90 years since the Balfour Declaration!

And lots, lots more.

Israel Matzav does a great and thorough job discussing the history and importance of the Balfour Declaration from November 2, 1917.

The Palestine Post had this to say at the 25th anniversary, during the depths of the Holocaust:

Notice how even then, as Jews argued that the immediate establishment of a state would save countless lives from the Nazis, they still bent over backwards to point out that Jewish immigration to Palestine helped the Arab community and did not displace a single person. Notice also that even then it was assumed that the Palestine spoken of in 1917 included Transjordan. (See also my posting on Eastern Palestine.)

In 1947, on the eve of the UN Partition vote, the Arabs decided to strike on this anniversary, As usual, the strike ended up helping the Jews more than it hurt them:

But while the real Palestinian Arab people took advantage of a nice day off by visiting Jewish shops, their self-declared thought-leaders looked at things a little more violently, figuratively bashing Balfour’s head with Arab hammers:

The Jewish claim on Palestine does not depend on the Balfour Declaration, of course, but it was an important moment in modern Zionist history that illuminates much about the conflict.

cross-posted on Elder of Ziyon