In Black and White

Sometimes statistics don't lie; they lay things bare in black and white.

Dennis Prager writes of the statistics in the Israel-Arab Wars in the article, Explaining the Arab-Israeli conflict through numbers.

www.jewishworldreview.com For the many readers who have requested a brief synopsis of the moral arguments in the Arab-Israeli conflict, I offer the following list of numerical data.

Number of times Jerusalem is mentioned in the Hebrew Bible: over 700
Number of times Jerusalem is mentioned in the Koran: 0
Number of Arab leaders who visited Jerusalem when it was under Arab rule (1948 to 1967): 1
Number of Arab refugees who fled the land that became Israel: approximately 600,000
Number of Jewish refugees who fled Arab countries: approximately 600,000
Number of U.N. agencies that deal only with Palestinian refugees: 1
Number of U.N. agencies that deal with all the other refugees in the world: 1
Number of Jewish states that have existed on the land called Palestine: 3
Number of Arab or Muslim states that have existed on the land called Palestine: 0
Number of terrorist attacks by Israelis or Jews since 1967: 1
Number of terrorist attacks by Arabs or Muslims since 1967: thousands
Percentage of Jews who have praised the Jewish terrorist: approximately .1
Percentage of Palestinians who have praised Islamic terrorists: approximately 90
Number of Jewish countries: 1
Number of Jewish democracies: 1
Number of Arab countries: 19
Number of Arab democracies: 0
Number of Arab women killed annually by fathers and brothers in "honor killings": thousands
Number of Jewish women killed annually by fathers and brothers in "honor killings": 0
Number of Christian or Jewish prayer services allowed in Saudi Arabia: 0
Number of Muslim prayer services allowed in Israel: unlimited
Number of Arabs Israel allows to live in Arab settlements in Israel: 1,250,000
Number of Jews Palestinian Authority allows to live in Jewish settlements in Palestinian Authority: 0
Percentage of U.N. Commission on Human Rights resolutions condemning an Arab country for human rights violations: 0
Percentage of U.N. Commission on Human Rights resolutions condemning Israel for human rights violations: 26
Number of U.N. Security Council resolutions on the Middle East between 1948 and 1991: 175
Number of these resolutions against Israel: 97
Number of these resolutions against an Arab state: 4
Number of Arab countries that have been members of the U.N. Security Council: 16
Number of times Israel has been a member of the U.N. Security Council: 0
Number of U.N. General Assembly resolutions condemning Israel: 322
Number of U.N. General Assembly resolutions condemning an Arab country: 0
Percentage of U.N. votes in which Arab countries voted with the United States in 2002: 16.6
Percentage of U.N. votes in which Israel voted with the United States in 2002: 92.6
Percentage of Middle East Studies professors who defend Zionism and Israel: approximately 1.
Percentage of Middle East Studies professors who believe in diversity on college campuses: 100
Percentage of people who argue that the Jewish state has no right to exist who also believe some other country has no right to exist: 0
Percentage of people who argue that of all the countries in the world, only the Jewish state has no right to exist and yet deny they are anti-Jewish: approximately 100
Number of Muslims in the world: more than 1 billion
Number of Muslim demonstrations against Islamic terror: approximately 2

Who's Defying the World Court?

Who's Defying the World Court? - James S. Tisch (New York Jewish Week)

In 1975, the ICJ issued an advisory opinion on Morocco's claim to the former Spanish colony of Western Sahara, finding the claim to self-determination by the indigenous Saharawi population to be superior. Morocco rejected the opinion and, thirty years later, negotiations continue on the status of Western Sahara. Sanctions were never enacted against Morocco for non-compliance.

Six years after the ICJ opinion, Morocco began to build a thousand-mile security barrier through the middle of Western Sahara to protect against Saharawi attacks. The 10-foot high earthen rampart is fortified with 1 to 2 million landmines that have killed or injured dozens of people.

In May 1973, New Zealand asked the ICJ to order France to end atmospheric nuclear testing in the South Pacific. France responded that it did not consider the court competent to hear the case, did not accept the court's jurisdiction, and would not participate in any proceedings.

In 1974, the ICJ ruled against Iceland's unilateral expansion of its exclusive fishing zone, following a complaint by Britain. Iceland disregarded the decision because fishing represented such a large part of Iceland's economy that it was considered a national security interest.

In 1984, after the U.S. lost the jurisdictional decision on a Nicaraguan complaint to the ICJ, Washington withdrew from the proceedings.

In 1999, the U.S. Supreme Court disregarded an ICJ order to stay the execution in Arizona of Walter LaGrand, a German citizen.
Israel is adjusting the route of the security fence following the decision of its own highly respected Supreme Court, which balanced Israel's need to prevent suicide bombings with the humanitarian concerns of Palestinian civilians.

Our Graveyards Hold the Reasons for the Fence

Ehud Barak on the ICJ ruling against Israel's fence.

If I was prime minister, I would look any foreigner in the eye and say, 'We have 900 reasons to build the fence between Israel and the West Bank. You can count the reasons in our graveyards, in our people killed by suicide bombers. We are entitled to do this, even if we have to defy the world'.

It's Not From Lack of Trying

The Persuasion Myth - Ralph Peters (New York Post)

It's a foolish error to imagine that, if we only find the right combination of reasoned arguments, we might convince the populations of the Middle East to love us and embrace our national values.

If you want to change the mindset of another culture, your only hope is to "lead by example," to demonstrate the incontestable superiority of your approach until it sinks in.

The Muslim populations of Eurasia don't want our logical explanations for their failures. They want revenge for self-created disasters. They want excuses for the inadequacy of their social, political, and economic regimes. Arab civilization, especially, has backed itself into a historical corner where it deteriorates by the day.
The downtrodden don't want sober analysis. They want someone to blame. And the United States (along with Israel) fits the bill perfectly - facts be damned.

These People Can Be Good Neighbors?

A poll of Palestinians, Israeli Jews, and Israeli Arabs released in Washington on Wednesday was conducted by two polling firms, the Public Opinion Research of Israel and The Palestinian Center for Public Opinion.

http://www.luntz.com/Survey_102103.pdf

59% percent of Palestinians believe that Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad should continue their armed struggle against Israel even if Israel leaves all of the West Bank and Gaza, including East Jerusalem, and a Palestinian state is created.

80% of Palestinians say that, under those circumstances, the Palestinians should not give up the "right of return."


96% of Israeli Jews say the people who piloted the planes on September 11 were terrorists, while 37% of Palestinians share that view.

26% of Palestinians believe Israelis planned the 9-11 attacks.

42% of Palestinians and 61% of Israeli-Arabs stated that they support the people who are attacking Americans in Iraq. Zero percent of Israeli Jews said they did.

Which nation or people is the single greatest threat to world peace?
Israeli Jews: Iran-52%, Palestinians-8%, Iraq-7%.
Israeli Arabs: U.S.-40%, Israel-26%, Palestinians-5%.
Palestinians: Israel-51%, U.S.-36%, Other-1%.
In the war between the U.S. and Saddam Hussein, whom did you support?
Israeli Jews: U.S.-95%, Saddam-0%.
Israeli Arabs: U.S.-19%, Saddam-38%.
Palestinians: U.S.-10%, Saddam-74%.
Hamas is a terrorist group.
Israeli Jews: Agree-98%, Disagree-1%.
Israeli Arabs: Agree-27%, Disagree-59%.
Palestinians: Agree-13%, Disagree-81%.
Favor a future Palestinian state governed by Sha'ria (Muslim) law.
Israeli Jews: Favor-7%, Don't favor-82%.
Israeli Arabs: Favor-57%, Don't favor-37%.
Palestinians: Favor-69%, Don't favor-25%.

42% of Palestinians and 61% of Israeli-Arabs stated that they ‘support’ the people who are
attacking American troops in Iraq right now. Zero percent of Israeli Jews hold that view.

Fully 90% of Jews in Israel strongly agree that Hamas is “a terrorist group,” compared to
only 16% of Israeli-Arabs and 5% of Palestinians.

99% of Israelis consider bombings of Israeli buses and restaurants to be acts of terrorism,
while only 10% of Palestinians would agree.

46% of Palestinians characterize Israelis as the ‘enemy’ and 31% believe that Allah wants
Muslims to fight Jews. Moreover, 59% of Palestinians feel Hamas and Islamic Jihad should
NOT give up their armed struggle against Israel even if Israel were to leave all territories,
including East Jerusalem, and grant statehood to the Palestinians.

Palestinians, Israeli-Arabs and Jewish Israelis all overwhelmingly believe that democracy is the best form
of government. However, each group defines “democracy” differently. Nearly 8 in 10 Jews in Israel believe that
their political system should be a ‘democratic regime in which all the political ideas are represented.’ When asked
exactly the same question, only 33% of Palestinians agreed. In fact, one in five Palestinians support the
establishment of an Islamic single-party government.

[Last year the Tulkarm Shahids Memorial
Soccer Championship For Children was named
After Abd Al-Al Baset Odeh, who killed 30 Israelis
in a suicide bombing. Is this a good thing or a bad
thing?]
Israeli Jews Israeli Arabs Palestinians
A GOOD THING ------ [15%] [71%]
A BAD THING ------ [70%] [13%]
DON’T KNOW ------ [15%] [17%]


[Last year the Tulkarm Shahids Memorial
Soccer Championship For Children was named
After Abd Al-Al Baset Odeh, who killed 30 Israelis
in a suicide bombing. Is this a good thing or a bad
thing?]
Israeli Jews Israeli Arabs Palestinians
A GOOD THING ------ [15%] [71%]
A BAD THING ------ [70%] [13%]
DON’T KNOW ------ [15%] [17%]

Market Forces and the Energy Industry

The Real Energy Situation

All That Gas!

By VIJAY V. VAITHEESWARAN

Energy is simply too important to be trusted to the marketplace. That is the unquestioned first principle of energy policy today. And to judge by the grotesquely pork-laden energy bill that Congressional leaders are polishing up right now, Republicans and Democrats see perfectly eye-to-eye on this matter.

Just consider the arguments offered by those who say markets and energy don't mix. It seems the oil's running out -- so we must subsidize domestic supply in order to keep our SUVs humming. Oh, it appears we've got a big shortage of natural gas too -- and we'll never meet our green goals without subsidies for clean-burning gas.

Sept. 11, we're told, made it clear that we need a crash government program for energy "independence" to avoid a 1970s-style supply crisis. After all, this month marks the 30th anniversary of the Arab oil embargo, which, everyone remembers, drove our economy to its knees and left us with shortages and long lines at gasoline stations.

What a load of hogwash. Energy is vital, but interstate trucking, banking, telecommunications and air travel -- all industries subject to vigorous market forces -- are critical to the economy, too. Food is even more necessary to life than energy. However, every country in the world save North Korea has vigorous competition among grocery stores, open-air bazaars, street-corner bodegas and the like. Besides, there's absolutely no energy supply crisis in America today.

The oil is not about to run out. In fact, there are more proven reserves today than there were three decades ago. As for drilling in the Alaskan wilderness, there's too little oil there to impact global markets or the price at our pump. Oil independence is unachievable for a country that consumes a quarter of the world's oil but which sits atop barely 3% of the world's reserves. Yet the independence notion is invoked to justify the energy bill's massive subsidies for ethanol, an environmentally unfriendly gasoline additive much favored by corn farmers and the politicians who crave their votes.

There's far more natural gas left in the world than there is oil. Still, Congress wants to throw tax money at a pipeline to bring Alaska's considerable reserves of gas to the lower 48 states. There's no need. Recent price spikes have already spurred plans for various projects to get liquefied natural gas to America. And if prices actually stay high, the industry will build a pipeline from Alaska without subsidy.

Similarly contorted arguments -- remember the big Northeastern blackout caused by the supply problem? -- are being used to justify handouts for research into clean coal, liability insurance for nuclear power and tax credits for wind. Never mind that the lights did not go out as the result of a deficit of electrons. Human error, computer glitches and a failure to invest in the grid -- not any lack of electricity supply -- appear to have been the culprits.

The farce in Washington ignores the main lesson from the Arab oil embargo: Market forces matter, even in as distorted an enterprise as energy. In fact, the entirely predictable workings of the market thwarted the embargo -- oil that the Arabs sent to European countries outside the embargo was merely diverted to America. As for those long lines at gasoline stations during the '70s, the culprit was the anti-market energy policy adopted by America beforehand. Price controls, bureaucratic edicts on oil allocation and laws that tried to distinguish between "old" oil and "new" oil led to those painful shortages, not the embargo.

Let's get the government out of the game of rewarding politically connected suppliers and picking technology winners, and back to its only legitimate role in energy: being a vigilant policeman on the regulatory beat. If we scrapped the subsidies and fixed the other market distortions that benefit energy incumbents, we might even spur a wave of innovation in new technologies that heralds a clean energy revolution.

Both parties in Congress have let down the nation by coming up with such an energy bill. If President Bush has any faith at all in the power of markets, he must veto this monstrosity the moment it lands on his desk.

Mr. Vaitheeswaran is the environment & energy correspondent for the Economist and author of "Power to the People," just published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Updated October 27, 2003

Why the War on Militant Islam Is WW IV

Daniel Pipes describes why our efforts against militant Islam are WWIV.

Militant Islam distinguishes itself from any other contemporary political movement in the magnitude of its ambitions, seeking not just to influence the adherents of one religion or control one region. Rather, it aspires to unlimited and universal power. Only Islamists have the temerity to challenge the liberal world order in a cosmic battle over the future course of the human experience. This translates into a worldwide battlefield.

Terrorism, in other words, is just one dimension of a war that has many fronts and takes many forms. Violence is an important symptom of the problem, not the problem itself. Other methods might include acts of violence by loners, smuggling, rioting, lawful street demonstrations, raising money, teaching, proselytizing, intimidating, and even running for elected office. These methods complement each other, constituting the sophistication and reach of militant Islam. The battleground includes Muslim-majority countries as well as countries like Argentina where Islam is a minor presence.

Militant Islam's varied and persistent offensive is often missed in the focus on Al-Qaeda and other well-developed networks. A look at the daily rhythm of the war makes this clear. Here are some top-of-the-news stories from a random
two-week period in late 2002; note that Al-Qaeda-style terrorism makes up just a portion of the general assault:

a.. November 20, Saudi Arabia: An Islamist burns down a McDonald's near Riyadh.
b.. November 20, Nigeria: Muslims rampage in the north, shout "God is great," and attack Christians,[5] leading to 215 deaths, after a Nigerian fashion writer named Isioma Daniel comments on a planned beauty pageant in Nigeria that
the Prophet Muhammad "would probably have chosen a wife from among [the contestants]."[6]
c.. November 21, Kuwait: A policeman in a patrol car flags down two American soldiers driving along a desert highway, ostensibly for speeding, then shoots and seriously injures them.
d.. November 21, Lebanon: An Islamist murders an American nurse and missionary, Bonnie Penner, as she opens her clinic for the day.
e.. November 21, Indonesia: Imam Samudra, the self-acknowledged organizer of the Bali attack on October 12 that killed more than 180 people, is seized.
f.. November 21, Israel: A Palestinian Islamist suicide bombs an Israeli bus, killing eleven and injuring dozens.
g.. November 22, France: Police arrest five Islamists, including Redouane Daoud (who escaped from a Dutch detention center in June), and accused them of providing logistical support to Islamists engaged in jihad.
h.. November 24, India: Islamists attack a Hindu temple in Jammu and Kashmir, killing at least twelve people and injuring fifty.
i.. November 24, Pakistan: Security forces arrest three men attempting to enter Pakistan from Afghanistan in a truck carrying hundreds of mortar rounds and antitank rockets hidden under bags of dry fruit.
j.. November 24, Jordan: Islamist rioting in Maan leads to one death and several wounded.
k.. November 25, Nigeria: Mahamoud Shinkafi, the deputy governor of one Nigerian state, announces that "the blood of Isioma Daniel [the fashion writer] can be shed."[7]
l.. November 26, Hong Kong: Three Islamists of South Asian origin appear in court for extradition hearings on charges they sold drugs to raise money to buy missiles for Al-Qaeda.
m.. November 26, Malaysia: Authorities arrest three suspected members of the Indonesian group Jemaah Islamiyah, accusing them of planning suicide missions against Western embassies in Singapore.
n.. November 26, United Arab Emirates: A customs officer fires on a U.S. military helicopter but misses.
o.. November 26, France: Prosecutors place five men of Algerian origin under investigation for "criminal association with a terrorist group" connected to shoe bomber Richard C. Reid.
p.. November 27, United States: Prosecutors accuse Jesse Maali in Orlando, Florida, of having financial ties to Middle Eastern organizations that advocate violence.
q.. November 28, Turkey: Parliament approves a government formed by the Justice and Development Party, a watered-down Islamist party.
r.. November 28, Kenya: Islamist suicide bombers kill three Israelis and ten Kenyans in an attack on an Israeli-owned hotel in Mombasa; also, two missiles just miss a commercial Israeli airliner with 271 on board on takeoff from Mombasa.
s.. November 28, Belgium: Police arrest Dyab Abou Jahjah, head of the Arab European League, an Islamist group, on grounds he incited two days of Muslim rioting in Antwerp.
t.. November 29, Pakistan: A pro-Taliban Islamist wins the elections and takes charge in a key province.
u.. November 30, India: In a surge of violence in Kashmir, Islamists kill ten and wound more than twenty in four separate incidents.
v.. December 2, Holland: Four Islamists believed linked to Al-Qaeda go on trial in Rotterdam, charged with planning attacks on U.S. targets in Europe, including the embassy in Paris.
w.. December 3, Germany: A Berlin court case reveals that an alleged member of the Hamburg cell that led the September 11 attacks had the business card of a Saudi diplomat based in Berlin.
x.. December 3, United Kingdom: British authorities in Manchester arrest Hassan Butt, who had claimed to have recruited some two hundred British Muslims to fight for the Taliban.
y.. December 3, Germany: Aeroubi Beandalis, one of four Algerians accused of plotting to blow up a French Christmas market in 2000, admitted to a court in Frankfurt that he was intending to turn pressure cookers into bombs.

This range of activities implies that an effective defense cannot be limited to disrupting networks of violence. The forces must include anti-Islamist Muslims as well as non-Muslims, intellectuals as well as special forces, teachers as well as police officers, filmmakers as well as forensic accountants.

The 10 states with the worst deficits per capita

Source: Sean Gupta, AEI

Budget Busters The 10 states with the worst deficits per capita State Deficit per capita 2000 vote California $985 D Connecticut $679 D New Jersey $664 D New York $626 D Oregon $615 D Massachusetts $568 D Minnesota $542 D Wisconsin $436 D Maine $400 D Delaware $372 D Source: Sean Gupta, AEI

Opinionated

Lou Dobbs on other countries' opinions of the US.

A recent opinion survey in the Middle East showed that Arab attitudes towards the United States are at an all time low, and of course we know what the French and Germans think of us.

So how concerned should we be? In my opinion, not very. Unjustified negative opinions of the United States are far from a new phenomenon.

"Such is the destiny of a great power," says Fouad Ajami, professor of Middle Eastern Studies at Johns Hopkins University. "We sit astride the world, we protect the world, and the world takes this protection and bemoans the protector."

Ajami says we should consider the possibility that some of the recent polls may have been conducted by people who find it politically advantageous that America is more unpopular now, in the post-Iraq-war era.

Interesting Statistic

Via Aish

Los Angeles, with a population of 3.6 million, averages about 750 murders annually, or 21 per 100,000. By contrast, during the height of Palestinian violence (2002-03), Israel's population of 5 million experienced 930 murders (810 from terror), or 7 in 100,000.

QOTD: Ronald Reagan

If you serve a child a rotten hamburger in America, federal, state and local agencies will investigate you, summon you, close you down, whatever. But if you provide a child with a rotten education, nothing happens, except that you're liable to be given more money to do it with.

Rules of War Enable Terror

Rules of War Enable Terror - Alan M. Dershowitz (Baltimore Sun)
Summary by DAILY ALERT of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations.

The Geneva Conventions are so outdated and are written so broadly that they have become a sword used by terrorists to kill civilians, rather than a shield to protect civilians from terrorists.

Terrorists who do not care about the laws of warfare target innocent noncombatants. Indeed, their goal is to maximize the number of deaths and injuries among vulnerable civilians. The terrorist leaders - who do not wear military uniforms - deliberately hide among noncombatants. They have also used ambulances, women pretending to be sick or pregnant, and even children as carriers of lethal explosives.

By employing these tactics, terrorists put the democracies to difficult choices: Either allow those who plan and coordinate terrorist attacks to escape justice and continue their victimization of civilians, or attack them in their enclaves, thereby risking death or injury to the civilians they are using as human shields.

Whenever a civilian is accidentally killed or an ambulance is held up at a checkpoint, the terrorist leaders, and those who support them, have exploited the post-World War II laws of warfare to condemn the democracies for violating the letter of the law. This only encourages more terrorism, since the terrorists receive a double benefit from their actions. First they benefit from killing "enemy" civilians. Second, they benefit from the condemnation heaped on their enemies. Human rights are thus being used to promote human wrongs.

Democracies must be legally empowered to attack terrorists who hide among civilians, so long as proportional force is employed. Civilians who are killed while being used as human shields by terrorists must be deemed the victims of the terrorists who have chosen to hide among them.

QOTD

QOTD: Harry Truman

The fundamental basis of this nation's laws was given to Moses on the Mount. The fundamental basis of our Bill of Rights comes from the teachings we get from Exodus and St. Matthew, from Isaiah and St. Paul.

If we don't have a proper fundamental moral background, we will finally end up with a totalitarian government which does not believe in rights for anybody except the State.

But We've GOT to Do SOMETHING!?

Dr. Aaron Lerner on why Sharon wants to withdraw from Gaza.

A key theme driving support for retreat among Israelis is a view that there is a need to "do something" about the "situation." But the key element of "the situation" is not specifically the Arab-Israeli conflict but instead the economic situation. The greater the proportion of the population that is drawn into the ongoing economic recovery, the lower the pressure to "do something." Thus, the longer the window available for both the education of the public on the one hand, and an improvement in the economy, on the other, the greater the possibility of bringing over the majority of the Israeli public to also oppose retreat.

The 100 Years War

David Rudge writes in JPost on an experts analysis of the war on terror.

Global terrorism is on the rise and is likely to continue unabated for the next 100 years, according to Prof. Yonah Alexander, one of the world's leading analysts on the subject.

Alexander, director of the Inter-Universities Center for Terrorism Studies, also believes it is only a matter of time before groups like al-Qaida use non-coventional weapons as part of attempts to promulgate their ideology and undermine western society.

Take it to the Terrorists, Ceasefire, Then Negotiate

David Trimble, the Ulster Unionist Party head from Northern Ireland on negotiations with terrorists and what really led to peace.

Trimble goes on to lay down a couple of fundamental principles that led to the Good Friday Agreement and a sea-change in the situation in Northern Ireland.

"When people press me for parallels between our situations, they say, 'you decided to talk with terrorists, you involved terrorists in the process.'

"My response is that we didn't involve the political representatives of the IRA until there was an effective cease-fire. And even afterwards, we wouldn't have talked to Sinn Fein until it declared its adherence to a set of principles that renounced the threat of violence as a means of achieving political ends, and until they agreed to respect the outcome of talks and not use violence or the threat of violence to try to change the outcome of the talks."

Another fundamental factor behind the negotiations, Trimble says, was that in the early 1990s, the IRA was losing the war. The negotiations would not have started, Trimble says, had not the security services been so successful, and had the IRA not been "staring failure in the face."

"The process would not have gone forward if they were not facing defeat; this is what induced them to abandon revolution for reform."

Expulsion Of Gaza's Jews Is Illegal

Expulsion Of Gaza's Jews Is Illegal

The main subject of today's Likud referendum - the expulsion of Jews from their homes - is completely illegal, and in violation of Israeli and international law according to the Dean of the Shaarei Mishpat Law College, Professor Emeritus Eliav Schochetman.

Professor Schochetman said in a lecture on Friday that any Israeli government decision to expel people from their homes, even in the context of a diplomatic move, would represent a wanton violation of basic human rights and civil liberties protected under Israeli and international human rights law.

The lecture, reported on by journalist David Bedein, focused on the legality of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's plan to expel Israelis from their homes in Gush Katif.

Prof. Schochetman noted that the 1921 San Remo legislation of the League of Nations, reaffirmed by the United Nations in 1945, affirmed the right of Jews to purchase land anywhere west of the Jordan River including the Gaza coast region. The professor further added that the legal briefs of Dr. Eugene Rostow, the author of UN Resolution #242, confirm that no peace arrangement based on law curtails the right of Jews to settle anywhere in the borders controlled by the state of Israel.

Therefore, regardless of what happens in the Likud referendum, Prof. Shochetman stated that no expulsion of landowners in Gush Katif or Samaria could take place without a decision of Israel's Knesset. Such a decision, furthermore, would have to conform with international human rights law and Israel civil liberties statutes. However, a unilateral decision to expel Jews - and only Jews - from Gaza, the professor said, would violate the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which states that it is illegal for sovereign governments to expel their own citizens from their homes, their private properties or from their farms.

Prof. Shochetman delivered the lecture at the Beit Agron International Press Center in Jerusalem; it was sponsored by the Center for Near East Policy in Wellesley, Massachusetts.

Reality and Illusion in Gaza

Nadav Shragai on reality and illusion.

The disengagement from Gush Katif will be perceived by the Palestinians as an Israeli escape, and will refill the sails of terror with wind. More densely populated areas in the south of the country will be exposed to long-range Palestinian weapons - not only the Gush Katif and western Negev, but also the area encompassing Sderot to Ashkelon. When that happens, will we reconquer Gaza?

Another terror region will open up in northern Samaria, and Israel will find it very difficult to preserve its intelligence and operational capabilities in the territories that are evacuated. Those who doubt this should take a look at recent history, the history of "Oslo," which still smashes us in the face nearly every day. The terror state that already exists in the Palestinian Authority areas will only upgrade its capabilities. And if that's not enough, then according to the disengagement plan, Israel once again agrees that in coordination with it, "the Palestinian security forces will be granted guidance, aid and training for fighting terror." If that's not an illusion, then what is?

But the mother of all these illusions is the cornerstone on which Sharon is basing his public relations strategy against the disengagement opponents. Evacuating Gush Katif, he says, will save the large settlement blocs in Judea and Samaria. In other words, we're cutting off a branch or two to save the entire tree from dying.

The truth is the precise opposite. It won't take long, maybe weeks or perhaps months, after the evacuation (or perhaps the destruction) of one of the most successful settlement areas in the country, until the pressure on Israel to evacuate more "blocs" increases. That evacuation, as far as the Palestinians, the U.S., and certainly some leftist elements like Peace Now are concerned will grant legitimacy to the demand to evacuate more settlement blocs in Judea and Samaria. For those who have forgotten, Gush Katif is also a settlement bloc.

An International Double Standard

A comparison of how the EU and UN deal with Cyprus and with Israel.

When the Turkish army invaded in 1974, approximately 200 thousand Greek refugees fled south to the Greek section of the island while approximately 50 thousand Turkish refugees fled northward. During the last three decades, there have been many incidents along the border fence when Greek refugees tried to return to their homes in the Turkish section. During negotiations for reunification, the Greeks demanded that all of the refugees and their descendents return to the Turkish section. Obviously, the Turks were opposed. When preparing their plan, the United Nations and European Union did not accept the Greeks? demand to allow the refugees to return!

Withdrawal From the Gaza Strip Is Rewarding Terror

Natan Sharansky provides his analysis of the Gaza surrender.

despite the horrible pain it would cause, I would have considered voting in favor of the Prime Minister's plan had I believed that it would solve the problems of terror, our international isolation, and the heavy burden of running the lives of others.

If only I believed that the disengagement could solve all these problems, as the Prime Minister promises, I would be willing, despite the heartache, to face the horrible reality of evacuating settlements. However, I am certain that the disengagement plan will not accomplish any of these things. It will not bring security or even calm but only more war, bloodshed, and suffering. There is no greater reward for terrorism than success, no greater encouragement than victory.

We are giving the terrorist organizations a chance to operate openly in the Gaza Strip and to import weapons freely and are fulfilling their greatest dream -- destroying Jewish settlements and turning the area judenrein, Jew-free. Will they have any reason to despair of fighting against us? Won't it give them even more motivation to continue the murderous terror attacks?

assume that even the Prime Minister does not really think that the disengagement will end terror or even decrease it. He does believe that after we leave the Gaza Strip, we would be able to close the border. The Palestinians will be able to work in Egypt and we, at long last, will be able to wash our hands of what happens there. In short, we'll send Gaza to hell.

He also thinks that as long as the terror continues, we will not be asked to make any further concessions and that the world, seeing the dramatic steps we have taken, will ask nothing more and give us their full support. Doesn't that sound familiar? That is what we thought after the Oslo Accords. That was what we thought during the Camp David era, when Barak offered the Palestinians everything they desired. But it didn't happened.