Sunday, July 21, 2013

The West Wing





Two years ago I had been watching reruns of the Fifth and Sixth season of the "West Wing", rebroadcast on the Israeli cable "Yes" TV channel. And I had written this Blog entry at that time and I was amazed at some of the things that were written and acted out Leaders of the EU, US President Obama and Secretary of State Kerry should take heed of  of the dialogue which is out of date but some still very rings true today. It is amazing how on the Arab side nothing has changed. The hate is still the same as mentioned in Abba Eban’s famous quote after the Geneva Peace Conference with Arab countries (21 December 1973); “The Arabs never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.”


The story of the fictional Palestinian – Israeli Peace Initiative  begins with episode 21 from the fifth season filmed in 2003(?), written by Peter Noah and directed by Christopher Misiano,; before the Israeli one sided "Disengagement of 2005" from the Gaza Strip and the brutal taken over by Hamas in the Gaza Strip in 2007.

The character Donna - Donatella Moss - is sent on a congressional fact-finding mission with Admiral Fitzwallace and a few congressmen to the Middle East. Just as they enter the Gaza Strip they encounter an IED ‎‎-a road side bomb which kills Admiral Fitzwallace and two Congressmen DeSantos and Korb. The then  Democratic President Bartlet, sounding strong as Republican George Bush or a Ronald Reagan Republican type of US president states:
President Josiah "Jed" Bartlet: What do we know? - Roadside bomb, detonated by cell phone. They knew they were targeting Americans. The black Suburbans are well-known. Up to now, that's been advantageous U.S. officials have long been off-limits to Palestinian terror attacks. What's striking is no claim of responsibility. They usually can't take credit fast enough Hezbollah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad. All announced they had nothing to do with this. They don't wanna wake up to a cruise missile for breakfast.”

Donna is seriously injured in the terrorist car bombing. Three Americans are killed. And as President Bartlet is considering targets for military action, the staff struggle to deal with the tragedy emotionally. The most realistic part of the episode takes place as we are given this 2003 version flashback view of "Life in Gaza" where we learn through Donna about the conflict between the Israelis and "Falestinians" through an "Irish" photojournalist introduces her to a "Falestinian" "Electrician" by the name of “Ashraf” from Gaza.
Episode Dialogue: Voice Over-
“When you get out of the hotel and into the streets what hits you about Gaza isn't the overcrowding and poverty. You've been briefed about that.What strikes you is something else. Idleness. (When I served there in the late ‘70s it was the stench that struck me) The sense of a people waiting, but with no expectation. It's hard to convey.
 Colin (speaking to Ashraf)  I'd like you to meet someone.
Colin: Ashraf Monsour, this is Donna Moss.(Please note the name Monsour is an Egyptian name)
Donna: Hi.
Colin: Miss Moss is with the American government delegation.She'd like to understand Gaza better.
Ashraf: (Replying in bad English) I am not an employee. I'm electrician.
Colin: (Speaking to Donna) Ashraf works in construction in Israel.
Ashraf: I am not an employee.(Ashraf attempts to explain here that he does not live on the dole from the Palestinian Authority) and that he is unemployed because....
Ashraf:  I don't
Colin: The Israelis closed the checkpoints after a suicide bombing. Last week.
Donna: Right.
Ashraf: I can't work to feed my family.
(Asharaf’s friend comments in Arabic “Better you should be one of them pointing at a poster of a “Shahid-Martyr”)
Ashraf: He says I should become one of them.
Donna: What's it say?  
Ashraf: "The glory of eternity for our martyrs.”
Colin: The Palestinian Authority pays 2000 U.S.dollars to the families of ‎‎"martyrs.”Plus 150 a month until the last child leaves home.
Ashraf:I wish to work. These martyrs, These martyrs take food out of my children's mouths.
Colin: When it's open, 19,000 Palestinians a day pass through the Erez checkpoint to work jobs in Israel.”

To recap:  In the dialogue from this scene we learn that the "ordinary Falestinian" in the post Oslo Accords period works not in "Falestine" (Gaza) but in Israel. He tells Donna that he is not a member of the "Falestinian" Authority- run by the Nobel Peace Prize winner Yasser Arafat. That he Ashraf the “ordinary Falestinian”, is a person living on the UNWRA dole from US and foreign aid. That he, the “ordinary Falestinian”, cannot enter Israel to work because a suicide bomber had committed an atrocity and the Checkpoints that would have been open to allow him to work and feed his family were closed due to Arafat's secret prompting of suicide bombing attacks.
That "IF" he were to be a "Martyr" = suicide bomber his family would receive $2,000 (in actuality it was $20,000) dollars from ‎‎"Falestinian" Authority plus his wife and children $150 each a month until age 18.‎(This is still true until today)


Continuing in the episode we see Donna and the photojournalist in their hotel room watching the video of a Palestinian suicide bomber on “Palestinian Authority Television".
Donna: Shes so young
Colin: “Yeah Suicide bombers often leave these videotapes behind.
Donna: What's she saying?
He backs up the tape and translates for Donna.
Colin: Um... "It was always my wish to turn my body into deadly shrapnel to knock on the door of heaven with the skulls of Zionists.God gave me two children who I love so"
Donna: She had children?
Colin: Oh, yeah.One and 3.
Donna: Her husband had no idea she was planning to do it?
Colin: Here. Families of suicide bombers get showered with gifts. It's customary at the funeral to hand out sweets.
Donna: It's unimaginable.
Colin: Well, you don't have to imagine it, do you? It's real.”

Now do you know WHY? we built the security wall. Now back to 2003…..

Donna [Voice Over]
Getting in and out of the Israeli settlement of Kfar Durom requires a military
escort. 500 mortar shells have landed there in the last three years. Duringout pre-dinner break, I met an Israeli settler family. Two days before,a mortar round had exploded in their kitchen.
"CUT TO: EXT. - HOME - GAZA - DAY" Supposedly a scene shot in a an Israeli ‎‎"Settlement" in the Gaza Strip before the "Disengagement" Donna and Colin are talking with an Israeli man and woman.
Israeli Mother: It came through the roof. Israeli Father: One half hour later, my wife would have been giving breakfast to our children. Israeli Mother: Four others have fallen around the house.
Colin: See, when the Palestinians get a hit, what they do is secure the launchers,
and that way they can make sure and repeat the strike.
Donna: You must live in constant fear.
Israeli Mother: Our soldiers will find the mortar.
Israeli Father:  You replace the tile roof with concrete and pray.
Donna: In Israel there's talk of giving up these settlements.
Israeli Mother: God wants us in this place. It is our divine, moral obligation to be here.
Israeli Father: If we give in to the Arabs, they'll take more and more, and eventually we'll all end up in Tel Aviv.
Israeli Mother: And then they'll take that.
Donna: All of this... it doesn't make you want to leave?
Israeli Father:  This is the more safe environment.

And there is a scene where the script writers include this conversation with an Israeli soldier:

"Yossi" an Israeli Soldier: “Once, we're sent to dismantle an illegal settlement. The settlers punch and kick us.A woman bit my arm so hard, she drew blood. My own people.
Colin:  Yossi spent some time guarding the settlement in Kfar Darom.

In 2005 Israel forcibly ejected Israeli residents from their homes in Gaza in the hopes that the world would see that Israel will sacrifice for peace. And what have we received in return? More than 13,000 rockets and mortar rounds fired at innocent civilians in our towns and cities.

In regards to the disengagement. The words from the dialogue of Episode 2 Season Six at Camp David, we have this exchange written in 2004 where the fictional Israeli PM Zahavy, His Israeli Defense Minister Massar, The Palestinian Josh are sitting around a table, talking.
Mukarat, Toby, Will, and
Israeli PM Zahavy: And the removal of our forces from the territories would create a power vacuum. How are we to prevent rocket attacks from Palestinian-controlled areas.
Palestinian Mukarat: It would be our responsibility to gain control over our militants.
Israeli Defense Minister Massar: We've tried that before.
Palestinian Mukarat: You've never given us enough time to assert ourselves before you come rushing back in with your tanks.

In this excerpt from the dialogue we hear the constant lame and feeble excuse of the Palestinians to prevent terrorism which is quoted:
Palestinian Mukarat: They've done everything in their power to undermine moderate leadership. Don't they understand when the blow up leaders of Hamas with bombs, all those Palestinian homes, they only make them stronger? Boys and girls, they no longer want to be doctors, teachers, engineers. Now, they all want to be martyrs.



When the Palestinian Chairman "Farad" calls to offer his condolences to President Bartlet what “prophetic*” statement does the Presidents Secretary of Defense say in the War Room?
Leo: Condolences?
Toby: Let's see what he has to say about it in Arabic for domestic consumption.
Secretary of Defense Hutchinson: He knows who did it.
Barrow: I'm sure that's what the Israelis will say.
Secretary of Defense Hutchinson: They've lived thirty years with this guy's track record.Harper: The Chairman's control over Gaza is not absolute. *Hamas has a strong power-base there.

And this conversation between "senior" White House Staff: Will Bailey Deputy Communications Director, Claudia Jean "C.J." Cregg Press Secretary, Charlie Young, Personal Aide to the President ,Kate Harper Deputy National Security Advisor, Toby Ziegler Communications Director and Leo McGarry, Chief of Staff.

Will: Israel is not the problem.
C.J.: The settlement, the wall...
Charlie: Israel didn't just blow Americans up.
C.J.: I'm not saying there's equivalence.
Will: Israelis don't talk about driving the Palestinians into the sea.
Harper: Some do.
Will: Oh, come on.
C.J.: Ever heard the phrase "Greater Israel"?
Leo: Not from anyone serious.
Harper: One reason some people say nothing can happen till these guys are gone is the feeling they both may be stuck in old attitudes or assumptions. There‎ was a time when Palestinians and all Arabs wanted to drive Jews into the sea,‎ but some would argue that time's past.
Will: Listen to some Arab broadcasts.
C.J.: Rabble-rousing to distract their street.
Harper: I'm not sure any credible Arab leader truly expects Israel's demise anymore,
not even the Chairman.
Leo: Don't be so sure.
Harper:  Well, there's a view that...
Will: Don't keep saying "Some argue" and "There's a view." Can we restrict it to
your view?
Harper:  Okay. Palestinians are no longer fighting to destroy the Jewish state. They're fighting for a state of their own, a revolutionary struggle against an occupying force, and revolutionaries will outlast and out-die occupiers every time.
Will: I don't know if that's more simplistic or naive.
Toby: It's tribal. It can't be solved. It's Hatfield and McCoy and there is no end.

Here is what is said about the “Peace Process” before Ehud Olmert’s better deal that was also refused in an exchange between Leo McGarry and President Josiah "Jed" Bartlet:

Leo: The peace process? The Israelis handed the Chairman the deal of the century in Taba five years ago - he started smuggling Katyusha rockets into Gaza on fishing boats. There is no long-term. The Israelis are right: there is only one way to bring stability to this region and we should be out there with them digging ditches and putting up barbed wire.
President Bartlet: The fence?
Leo: It's a realistic solution.
President Bartlet: It's a land-grab.
Leo: There's no alternative! - There's no partner for peace.”

Toby Ziegler Communications Director: Last time, Israel offered up Gaza, half of Jerusalem, Temple Mount, and the lead role in the Temple Beth el Purim Play.”

Back in the time of the filming the show in 2003 of the story of the total corruption of the “Palestinian Authority” and Hamas was not well publisized. While visiting the wounded Donna Moss in the Hospital in Germany Josh Lyman is called to meet with a representative of the Palestinians.
Palestinian: Hamas grows stronger every day.
Josh Lyman: Because of frustration with Israel.
Palestinian: Yes, but even more because of what Hamas can offer the Palestinian
people. Food, education, health care.
Josh Lyman: But doesn't the Palestinian Authority...
Palestinian: The Palestinian Authority lines its own pockets. Chairman Farad cannot... will not change, and he's willing to pull the temple down on his head. But there are
other, more reasonable men, who with help could affect change, challenge Hamas.
Josh Lyman: Moderates?
Palestinian: I tell you this in the strictest of confidence. I bring word from Prime Minister Mukarat of Palestine. He is concerned with the ongoing situation,‎ and he feels the time has come for opening a new line of dialogue with Israel and your country; a line of dialogue that does not include Chairman Farad.

And then there is this Liberal Leftist American poke at the Bush presidency in this  exchange between the fictional characters Leo McGarry Chief of Staff and Kate Harper Deputy National Security Advisor: 
Kate Harper: American intervention is responsible for propping up nearly every dictator
in the Middle East.
Leo McGarry: And look where that's gotten us. Sir, it's time to focus on the terrorist
elements who have declared war against us.
Kate Harper: We're at war with the plague of jealousy and hatred and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the index patient. Shouldn't that be our focus?

And for the people of Israel a special message from the “Yordim” Israeli expatriates and Jewish writers of Hollywood:
Leo McGarry:  You know on May 13, the day before Israeli Independence Day, the TV stations screen the name of every soldier who has fallen for the country. A name flashes
on the screen for a second or two, then the next name appears. You go to bed,you get up, the names are still flashing. It takes 24 hours. That's how they observe Memorial Day.
President Bartlet: Yeah, and they keep firing missiles into Gaza, we start encouraging it,
how long until that broadcast last 48 hours? Or 72?

Then there is the exchange between the "Irish" photojournalist and Josh Lyman:

Colin: Looks like your boy's got himself into a bit of trouble.
Josh: My boy?
Colin: Bartlet.
Josh: He's been President Bartlet for six years; he hasn't been a boy for about 50.
Colin: Israelis are never gonna meet with Farad. Why should they? They've got him
surrounded in the West Bank. What does Bartlet think they're going to do,knock on the door of his compound and say, "I'm so sorry about the tanks and stuff, but would you like to pop over to America and have a nice wee chat and sort this out?"?
Josh:  Where are you from?
Colin: Belfast.
Josh: You guys are really the model on how to work things out over there.
Colin: Yeah, we are, actually.
Josh: The Israelis have every right to protect themselves from terrorists.
Colin: They don't occupy a force to oppress...
Josh: They're citizen soldiers trying to keep their sisters from getting blown up
on a bus.
Colin: You Jewish?
Josh: Why? You anti-Semitic?
Colin: Anyone who thinks the Palestinians have a point is anti-Semitic.
Josh: And anyone who thinks the Jews don't after being chased and exiled and persecuted for centuries is either an idiot or a fool, probably both.

And then there is this exchange between President Josiah Bartlett and the Israeli PM Zahavy on the phone:

President Bartlet: It's a show of good faith on Chairman Farad's part; an example of his renewed willingness to address the peace process. Mr. Prime Minister, the territories are undermining your legitimacy as a modern Democracy and sapping your moral authority in the eyes of the world.
Israeli PM Zahavy: Farad is beholden to the very forces that wish to push us back into the Sea. It's not a negotiating point for him. It's a religious and a moral imperative to take back all of Israel for Palestine.
President Bartlet: Sir, you cannot hold yourself out as the Promised Land while occupying the territories and oppressing other peoples.
Israeli PM Zahavy: Our Arab citizens enjoy the most freedoms of any Arabs in the Middle East. Palestinians are oppressed as opposed to... We don't stone women who refuse to wear head scarves in Tel Aviv.

At the fictional negotiations at Camp David :  Palestinian Chairman Farad, Israeli ‎‎ Ambassador to the USA Shira Galit , National Security Advisor Kate Harper, and several other people are sitting at a table and are talking.

Farad: A million Palestinians were being forced from their homes, their...
Galit: Closer to 700,000, and they weren't expelled. They left after being urged to do so by our...
Farad: We were being terrorized by Zionist troops who were threatening to torch every Arab village in the...
Galit:  You accepted the Partition Plan in '47. Not a single Palestinian would become a refugee...
Kate: If I might interrupt...
Farad: The Palestinians were being massacred. Even Israeli historians admit this.
Galit: It was war, only three years after the Holocaust. If we had lost there would have been another wholesale slaughter of Jews.

BASKETBALL COURT - CAMP DAVID - DAY We see that Charlie, Toby, Will, Josh and Bartlet are playing basketball while discussing the negotiations. President Bartlet's wife Abigail "Abbey" and Deputy National Security Advisor Kate Harper are sitting on the sidelines watching.

Will: The Israelis will return the territories but they want a military presence.
Toby: The Palestinians don't get how it's going to be their house if it comes furnished with Israeli tanks.
Josh: Have you mentioned Germany? We've had troops there for 50 years.
Toby: They asked how many British troops were still stationed in Philadelphia after the American Revolution.
Josh: Plenty. But they were, you know, shackled to the wall.
President Bartlet: What about settlements?
Kate: The Israelis are hinting they'll abandon everything in Gaza but they want 75%
of the West Bank settlements to remainMukarat  (the TV Palestinian fictional President) might go for it if he gets land in exchange.
President Bartlet: Sounds promising.
Kate:  Only Mukarat wants twice as much as Israelis say the settlements sit on.
Abbey: How's he justifying that?
Kate:  Says Israelis took the best land. Wants two-for-one in exchange.
President Bartlet:  Dismantling terror?
Will: Israelis want Farad to renounce terrorism. But in Arabic on Al Jazeera. They want more than a promise to disarm Hamas. They want it before they leave.
President Bartlet: What do the Palestinians say? -
Toby: That Farad's renounced terrorism.
Josh:  Is that why he calls for the blood of a million martyrs in all his speeches?
Will: I thought that was a problem with the interpretation.
President Bartlet:  Right of return?
Kate: Farad wants the right of return to apply to all Palestinians. The Israelis are understandably concerned about 3 million Palestinians moving back in.
Josh:  Gallop did some polling in the West Bank. Found that, while refugees wanted the right to come back, most wouldn't.
Will: That's great. Then they won't be disappointed.

Meanwhile at the fictional Camp David "Peace" negotiations Israeli Ambassador to the USA Shira Galit has a heated exchange with the Palestinian Chairman Farad

Galit: The Palestinians only became refugees when our Arab neighbors refused to accept them. 800,000 Jews were similarly expelled from Arab nations. 600,000 of them were resettled in Israel without compensation from Arab countries.
Kate: Madame Ambassador, you bring up the issue of compensation. Would Israel
be prepared...
Farad: We are not asking for money. We want the right of return.
Galit: We can't allow 3 million refugees the right to freely reenter.
Farad: Of course not! Since the 19th century, Zionist leaders have advocated a
transfer of Arabs out of Palestine.
Galit: We can not accept an unlimited right of immigration.  If the Arab population hadn't been uprooted (?)- no Jewish state could've arisen.
Farad: So it was right for Palestine to be cleansed of its native population to establish a Jewish state? We are prepared to sacrifice, but not to formalize our dispossession."

Fawzi al-Qawuqji 
The following dialogue could have been taken directly from the "Palestine Loss" web site. It is the typical "Nachba" dialogue that only gives the “Falestinian” version of what occurred. There is no mention that none of this would have occurred if the ex Waffen SS members of the Arab Irregulars forces of the  Arab Liberation Army   (Jaysh al-Inqadh al-Arabi) Fawzi al-Qawuqji  had not begun butchering the mainly Orthodox Jewish residents of Safed.It is also interesting that when the script was written it supposedly is the fictional Palestine Chairman Farad who relating “his” life story and it is similar to the true story of the real current Palestinian Chairman Mahmoud Abbas.
under

Kate: "Chairman, I know how difficult it would be for you to appear to be abandoning the principle.
It's not reasonable to ask that Israelis allow an unlimited number of refugees to return.
Farad: I was born in the city of Zefat. Do you know Zefat? It's in the mountains of upper Galilee.I was 8 years old when the British left. There were 52,000 Arabs in Zefat. Only 1300 Jews. Within a month, the Haganah had taken over the city. My eldest sister, Amira, was killed. The body of my brother, Aziz was found hanging from a burned cypress tree. We fled to Syria lived in tents, ate United Nations handouts and surplus American cheese. I still remember the view of the valley from the roof of our house. The smell of the pomegranates. The sound of children playing in our orchard.
The home of my father, of my aunts, my uncles. They are now art galleries and bed-and-breakfasts.
Will I get to go home, Miss Harper?
Kate: No, sir. Probably not."

In the narrative of the conflict of the Middle East we are constantly exposed, as in the scene above, of the terrible consequences of Arab hatred towards the Jews during the foundation of Israel. The imagery of “Deir Yassin” and the massive rout of the seven Arab League armies by the defiant Jews in the “Nachba” (Catastrophe) of 1948 has been poured onto the world media since 1974. The once proud imagery of Israel as the brave David fighting a massive Goliath has been brushed aside by Pro Palestinian and Liberal haters of Isarel and Zion after Arafat’s 1974 UN Speech. 
It is due to this that the writer of the “West Wing” failed to put in a similar narrative from a European Holocaust survivor(s) who after losing his/her family and home fled Europe to Israel, the story of Jewish residents of the Old Quarter of Jerusalem or the Gush Etzion Block or the story of a wealthy Jewish family from Iraq who were stripped of their property and money by the Moslems and kicked out or barely fled with their lives. This lack of showing the full narrative  only shows how messages are played out in Hollywood.

Upon Negotiating Jerusalem - A Classical Hollywood Fictional Account

President Bartlet is on the terrace at Camp David talking with Palestinian Chairman Farad.

President Bartlet: Shared sovereignty of Jerusalem is the only realistic approach.
Palestinian Chairman Farad: No. If anyone led you to believe we could agree...
President Bartlet: Mr. Chairman, do you really want to see your people oppressed for another generation? Shared custody of the city and its holy sites is the only...
Palestinian Chairman Farad: Why do you continue to support Israel? Hatred of America grows because of this, and not just in the Muslim countries.
President Bartlet: I've done more to support the Palestinian cause than anyone who's ever sat in my chair.
Palestinian Chairman Farad: The Haram Sharif, the Dome of the Rock, stands on the site where the prophet Mohammed landed in his divine journey from  Mecca to Jerusalem.
President Bartlet: Mr. Chairman, there isn't a single member of your delegation who doesn't think turning down the offer of a Palestinian homeland in 1947 was lunacy,
a colossal mistake. Please, do not make the same mistake today.

Next scene: President Bartlet is walking along a path with Israeli PM Zahavy: and they are talking about the status of Jerusalem.

President Bartlet: The general principle would be that Arab areas are Palestinian and Jewish areas   are Israeli; Israeli sovereignty over the Western Wall, Palestinian sovereignty over the Haram. There would have to be a firm commitment from both parties not to excavate under the Haram or behind the wall, of course.
Israeli PM Zahavy: You have kept us here for five days, negotiating contriving little things we did not want to do but we have tried, struggled to find a common ground because we value your friendship and that of the United States; but I have taken a solemn oath before God and my people not to give up Jerusalem. I told that on the first day. I told you.
Israeli PM Zahavy begins gesticulating with great fervor to try to get his point across to Bartlet.
Israeli PM Zahavy continues: And yet you continue to talk and to talk; you have not been listening. Mr. President, my right eye will fall out, my right arm will fall off before I ever sign a document giving up Jerusalem.

I wonder just how much of this "script"  will be repeated?

Saturday, November 24, 2012

My Proposal

The Truth and NOTHING but THE TRUTH!!
The tremendous desire for a true peace and an end to the cycle of violence between our ‎‎two peoples has led Israel to make endless concessions to the Palestinians. 
  • We Israeli’s ‎‎have evacuated the Sinai and it’s settlements for Peace with Egypt
  • We also “disengaged” ‎‎from the Gaza Strip, a step which severely traumatized parts of our people, for no ‎‎concessions in return other than that the Palestinian people acknowledge our right to ‎‎exist. 
There have been many who have tried to find a “just and lasting” peace for the Middle East but their efforts have been squashed by those predominantly on the Arab side. 
The PLO or Fatah, the group that represented the Palestinians in the negotiations, that deceitfully accepted the 1993 Oslo Peace accords. Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine openly and violently objected to the accords because their own charters abjectly refuse to recognize the mere presence of Jews let alone Israel's right to exist in "Palestine". They adhere openly to the Iranian policy of the total extermination of the State of Israel. Their ‎‎leaders make endless speeches of hatred as they urge their followers -especially their youth to seek "the path of martyrdom" as they offer substantial monetary incentive to their families in the #pay4slay scheme. In Palestinian society there is a total lack of the teaching of ‎‎tolerance and peace among their youth.

Here in Israel, a strong debate over the Oslo Peace accords took place along long standing viewpoints; the political parties of the "left wing" (Meretz and Labor) supported them, while the "right wing" (Likud) opposed them. 

After a very heated two-day discussion, on the 23rd of September 1993, on the government proclamation in the Knesset on the issue of the accord and the exchange of the letters, a vote of confidence was held in which 61 Knesset members voted for the decision, 50 voted against and 8 abstained. 
As to WHY we Israelis choose peace one merely needs to read the words of Yitzhak Rabin after the acceptance ceremony on the White House lawn:

"We, the soldiers who have returned from battle stained with blood, we who have seen our relatives and friends killed before our eyes, we who have attended their funerals and cannot look into the eyes of their parents, we who have come from a land where parents bury their children, we who have fought against you, the Palestinians We say to you today in a loud and clear voice: Enough of blood and tears. Enough.”

 "We will not rest until we reach a permanent agreement [with the Palestinians] that would secure a safe future for our children and that would provide us with renewed hope to live in a region where people lead a life of co-operation and not, God forbid, where blood is shed." 

I always point out how in my personal conversations with Yitzhak Rabin z"l how he hesitated in negotiating with Yasser Arafat and how he had the inkling of his deceit. Yitzhak had been unwilling to touch the hand soaked with the blood of so many innocents: "Of all hands in the world, it was not the hand that I wanted nor dreamed of touching, ...  

In the five years immediately after the Oslo Agreements. the “Palestinians” murdered a total of 279 Israeli men, women and children in 92 lethal attacks by Palestinian terrorists. 
According to the Palestinian’s their trust in the process was undermined in the Cave of the Patriarchs massacre, in which at least 39 Palestinians were killed by a Baruch Goldstein; the lone Israeli gunman (who was beaten to death once he ran out of ammunition), and by the expansion of Israeli settlements (although the Oslo agreements stipulated no such ban and oddly enough the PA acknowledges that the settlements have actually provided 12,000 temporary jobs to Palestinian construction workers.) 
The Palestinians claimed support for the accord declined because of the construction of the “Apartheid Wall” which was constructed in response to the wave of Palestinian suicide attacks, and blockades -necessitated by the smuggling of weapons and ammunition, which caused a "deterioration of economic conditions".

In the aftermath of this latest round of fighting we have see the intervention of hostile Moslem – Islamic forces from Iran inside Sudan, Egypt and Gaza with Hamas. 
The “Palestinian Authority” has been regulated to those "Palestinians" living in Judea and Samaria – the “West Bank” and the extremists of the Palestinians in Gaza to Hamas.

We of the Labor Party who backed Yitzhak Rabin z’l wanted the 1993 Oslo Peace accords to succeed and work. 
Sadly his work still goes unfinished until today. For the sake of peace initiated by the late Yitzhak Rabin z”l who gave his life in an attempt to bring peace to the Middle East. I do not wish to go back in time to “What was” and “Why we have failed” but I wish to look forward to, “What should be done”. As our party leader and past Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin z”l  stated; “We who have fought against you, the Palestinians - we say to you today in a loud and clear voice: Enough of blood and tears. Enough. ...The time for peace has come.”

The Jewish people wherever they are aspire for peace. For over two thousand years, our people have known discrimination, bigotry, death and destruction with no place to run to. The ancient Jewish people gave the world a vision of eternal peace, of universal disarmament, of abolishing the teaching and the learning of war. —"And they shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more."

Despite the tragedies and disappointments of the past, today we have a home but we lack a true peace. Peace is the beauty of life. It is sunshine. It is the smile of a child, the love of a mother, the joy of a father, the togetherness of a family. It is the advancement of man, the victory of a just cause, the triumph of truth. Peace is all of these and more and we desire peace, peace for us and our children as well peace for our neighbors and their children. Golda Meir z”l once said;
 “I am also grateful that I live in a country whose people have learned how to go on living in a sea of hatred without hating those who want to destroy them and without abandoning their own vision of peace. To have learned this is a great art, the prescription for which is not written down anywhere. It is part of our way of life in Israel.”

I say enough! Just as the late Anwar Sadat stated;

“Let there be no more wars or bloodshed between Arabs and Israelis—let there be no more wars or bloodshed between Arabs and Israelis. Let there be no more suffering or denial of rights. Let there be no more despair or loss of faith. Let no mother lament the loss of her child. Let no young man waste his life on a conflict from which no one benefits. Let us work together until the day comes when they beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. And God does call to the abode of peace.”

One must take into account the stark contrast to todays’ world wide vision of Israel and “Zionism” as a focal point of ‎and virulent anti-Israel and anti-Jewish hatred. For at one time in the aftermath of World War I the renewal of Jewish life in ‎‎“Eretz Yisrael” was not an ‎obstacle to the Arab world. We were not demonized as we are ‎today by the ‎‎“Falestinians” and “Human Rights Groups”. 

During the peace conference ‎following World War I, the Emir Feisal ‎exchanged letters with Justice Felix Frankfurter, ‎professing his support for Zionist aims. ‎On March 3, 1919  Feisal wrote: ‎
"We Arabs, especially the educated among us look with the deepest sympathy on the Zionist movement."
"People less informed and less responsible than our leaders and yours, ignoring the need for co-operation of the Arabs and Zionists have been trying to exploit the local difficulties that must necessarily arise in Palestine in the early stages of our movements.
Some of them have, I am afraid, misrepresented your aims to the Arab peasantry, and our aims to the Jewish peasantry, with the result that interested parties have been able to make capital out of what they call our differences." 
My proposal for a "Just and lasting peace" for the Middle East is based on proposals put forward in a meeting from the 25th of October 1938,  between US President ‎‎Franklin D Roosevelt  and the British Ambassador to the ‎‎‎U.S.
Sir Ronald Lindsay regarding the resettlement and absorption of the stateless and homeless ‎‎Arabs of the Mandated Areas.
Lindsay wrote that the President was “impressed by the fact ‎‎‎that the Arab population had increased by 400,000 since the establishment of the ‎‎[League ‎‎Of Nations] Mandate.” ‎
US President ‎‎Franklin D Roosevelt, contemplated the creation of a program of well-digging ‎across the Jordan. ‎‎Roosevelt firmly believed that, “we ought to be able to find that money ‎for the purpose”. ‎‎FDR believed that once a large quantity of water would be made ‎available for irrigation ‎‎and the cultivable land thus created in Trans-Jordanian territory it; ‎
‎‎“should be set apart ‎for Arabs from Palestine. They should be offered land free, and ‎that ‎ought to be enough ‎to attract them; and failing the attraction, they should be ‎compelled to ‎emigrate to it. ‎Palestine could thus be relieved of 200,000 Arabs”.‎
‎FDR also added that it would:
 “be necessary to prescribe that no Arab should be ‎allowed ‎‎to immigrate into Palestine, as NO JEW was allowed into the Arab lands.” ‎‎
The Assistant Secretary of State Adolf Berle, later recalled that,” The President was full ‎‎‎of Palestine” and that FDR called on Ronald Lindsay to call a conference of Arab ‎‎‎princes. FDR was adamant in having them lay down,‎

‎“say ‎‎$200,000,000 buying a farm ‎for every Arab who wishes to leave Palestine, the ‎money ‎chiefly to be used in digging ‎wells, which is perfectly possible in the Hedjaz.” ‎Here, it is ‎quite clear that Roosevelt ‎intended the Arabs to pay for the transfer of ‎the Arabs of ‎Palestine.‎"

This program that I propose was used in Israel for the absorption of some 900,000 Jewish refugees of Arab Lands. 

FDR believed that once a large quantity of water would be made available for irrigation and the cultivable land thus created in Trans-Jordanian territory it; ‎‎“should be set apart for Arabs from Palestine. They should be offered land free, and that ought to be enough to attract them…”

I propose that all six Arab countries that ‎‎were then represented at the UN and voted against UNR194; Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, ‎‎Saudi Arabia, Syria and Yemen, and were active participants to the conflict in question.Should lead the way in resolving the issue by each absorbing the Palestinians as fellow citizens as stipulated in UNR194 Article 9.

I propose a permanent solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict/ problem based on the ‎‎Marshal Plan used in post WWII Europe and the creation of a Confederation between the ‎‎Palestinian controlled areas of the “West Bank” and Jordan as it was during the Period of ‎‎‎1948 -1967. Though painful this plan is to the Arab side it is the right and only humanitarian solution to end the conflict. The reactionary Arab’s constant refusal to accept the State of Israel as a Jewish state an entity in the Middle East is a forgone conclusion and for the long suffering of the Palestinian refugees there should be a resolution as predetermined in UNR194 Article 9 to absorb them as Israel did for the Jews that were made refugees in post WWII Europe and from the Arab countries of the Middle East.

The plan encompasses a three step solution.
Step One

Those Palestinian refugees within the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Gaza ‎‎Strip should be offered a comprehensive resettlement and financial package in return for ‎‎a long term peace based on a total cessation of conflict and a forgoing of their “right of ‎‎return”.

Step Two‎-THE major points to be carried out

As to the Palestinians that have lived in squalid stateless refugee camps throughout the ‎‎region, in those states that have confined them there, should be allowed three choices:
  • ‎‎Either to stay and be absorbed into their adoptive countries as full citizens.
  • to receive plots of land, with homes in Northern Jordan
  • or they should ‎‎be allowed free passage to “return” to the lands of the Palestinian Authority. 
If they do so ‎‎chose this option they should be included in the comprehensive resettlement and financial ‎‎package.
  • Those adoptive countries which welcome the refugees as full citizens should be enticed ‎‎to do so with incentives and financial compensation. 
  • Those Arab countries that refuse ‎‎should be severe penalized and should face punitive actions.
As to the Jewish residents on the West Bank, whose areas will not be swapped /exchanged in the negotiations, they should be offered the choice to become ‎‎‎“law-abiding” citizens of the Palestinian State or withdrawal. The same will be said for ‎‎Arab citizens of Israel who wish to leave Israeli territory.

Mutual assistance in the re-education of the population from that of war, religious ‎‎intolerance and terror must not be "just" encouraged but made part of the peace agreement. Should one of the countries in the region fail ‎‎to comply with the re-education and to co-existence in peace than that body should face ‎‎world wide condemnation, boycott and cessation of all assistance.

Additionally any state which threatens the existence of another state or should propose ‎‎genocide should be met with the fullest enforcement of the entire UN body under ‎‎Article 2 of the UN Charter with a total economic embargo and if ‎‎necessitated by a full scale military operation of all parties concerned for world peace.

Additionally a proposal should be made to the Egyptians to forgive her national debt in ‎‎return for a ceding of parts of northern Sinai to the Palestinian Authority or for the ‎‎resettlement of stateless Palestinians wishing for land to live on there.‎ (Abbas has recently rejected an Egypt offer of a 1600 square kilometer extension to Gaza to resolve once and for all the "Arab of the Mandate Areas" -"Falestinians" refugee issue but has instead resolved to keep on trying to destroy Israel.
"Falestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has rejected an Egyptian proposal to resettle Palestinian refugees in a large tract of land in the Sinai Peninsula to be annexed to the Gaza Strip.
Speaking to a gathering of his Fatah party in Ramallah Sunday, August 31st,2014, Abbas said that an unnamed senior Egyptian official recently approached him and suggested settling Palestinians in an area 1,600 square kilometers (618 square miles) large adjacent to Gaza, reviving an idea originally part of the All-Palestine Government (Arabic: حكومة عموم فلسطين Hukumat 'umum Filastin) in Gaza which was established by the Arab League on 22 September 1948 during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. Abbas' position is clear: The "refugees" only exist in order to ultimately destroy Israel. They must remain stateless and miserable or else they are useless to him. Actually helping the "refugees" is his lowest priority; cynically using thereby them for political ends is his highest priority.)

The same could be said for the resettlement of Palestinians in the sparsely inhabited ‎‎eastern regions of Jordan. In order to make this decision feasible than those Arab ‎‎countries willing to participate should adopt Israel’s Development Town settlement plan ‎‎used in it’s resettlement of the displaced Jews in the 1950’s. This plan based on collective ‎‎farming villages inhabited by those Palestinians who have farming skills, will be given ‎‎assistance to build homes as well as basic essentials to begin their farms.

Needless to say that those who accept the resettlement plan will be given title or “Tabo”- to the land and full citizenship. Those ‎‎Palestinian refugees with small business skills and occupations who wish to resettle in the ‎‎‎“Development Towns” of these areas will be given apartments and financial aid to begin ‎‎small businesses as well as long term loans.


Step Three


The Dead Sea -Med Canal Project which was first proposed by William Allen in 1855 in an overview called 'The Dead Sea – A new route to India'. Allen as well as Theodor Herzl in his 1902 novel Altneuland should be a cornerstone of this vast resettlement plan.

Efforts should be undertaken to get donor nations of the peace process to fund, through the World Bank, the capital investment for the establishment of a Dead Sea -Med Canal Project. The potential benefits of this project to provide all the parties in the region with economic, political and other respects are extremely significant. Not only will it replenish and revitalize the Dead Sea it will become the "live sea", potentially with millions of visiting tourists. It will generate substantial power and usable water and promote cooperation among the parties, thereby spurring the transformation of a barren and forbidding environment into the Jordan Valley of Peaceful coexistence. 

The Dead Sea -Med Canal Project is a proposed project to dig a canal starting at the Israeli town of Ashdod from the Mediterranean Sea to the Dead Sea, to take advantage of the more than 400-metre difference in water level between the two seas. Water from the Mediterranean Sea will be led through a tunnel and to a “green” hydroelectric power project which than can produce hundreds if not thousands of megawatts of clean and renewable electric energy. The value of such electric energy will be maximized by power generation during peak demand times. The excess electric power could be sold into the existing electrical grids to pay the cost of the Project.

There is a proposal, that in the construction of the Dead Sea -Med Canal Project, that an artificial storage reservoir for the flow from the tunnel, will be stored in this reservoir to be called “Shalom (Salaam/Peace) Lake”. The area for this Lake /reservoir will be located in a natural basin on the south branch of Wadi Qumran. Utilizing soil from the tunnel boring an earthquake resistant dam can be constructed. This proposed reservoir/lake will potentially have a surface area of about 3 square kilometers and maximum depth at the dam of some 80 meters. When the water is released daily during hours of “peak demand”, the surface elevation will decline about three meters thus creating a tidal effect for the shoreline and possibly encourage normal Mediterranean marine ecology.

It is needless to say that the creation of such a beautiful marine lake merely twenty kilometers from Jerusalem, will serve as an impetuous for tourism and residential development. Surely the name, the Lake of Peace, is suitable for this setting and for the benefits it will bring the entire region.

The water brought in through the project will help to restore the Dead Sea to the desired level, and thereby reverse the erosion and subsistence that is presently destroying the area. Additionally the continued operation of the hydroelectric power plant will enable the development of additional desalination capacity to supply the water needs to help ease the chronic water shortages in the entire region.

The newly built desalination plants established by the new canal/tunnel system of the Dead Sea -Med Canal Project can provide water for potash mining operations and for aquaculture and agriculture. Desalinated water designated for irrigation of crops can be run through ponds for the production of fresh water fish and prawns. Med Sea water from the surface layer of the Dead Sea can be used for production of Sea Bass and Bream, and high value seaweed.

In addition to tall this we can use the daily tunnel flow to create a reservoir in the upper seabed formed when the Dead Sea was the same level as the Med Sea. This area is deep clay, and very suitable for a reservoir site. A desalination plant and towns for the resettlement of Palestinian refugees can be located near this lake.

Desalinated water, from a desalination plant placed on the north shore of the Dead Sea can be used for the restoration of the Jordan River and provide a source for irrigation of nearby farmlands. This would enable a huge increase in agriculture and industry in the valley, and will lead to many new needed jobs for the resettled Palestinian refugees and Jordanian citizens during construction as well as many permanent jobs, while abundantly available desalinated water will stimulate new investment in self-sustaining agriculture, fish farming, manufacturing and real estate development.

The Dead Sea ("Dead") continues to shrink at a very rapid rate. The diminishing water level has created large sink holes and disruption of underground water tables, among other problems, with a harmful effect on tourism and everyday life. With the construction of The Dead Sea -Med Canal Project, we can than replenish the Dead Sea water levels and thereby revitalize tourism and provide employment opportunities and secondary small businesses in the area. The unique Dead Sea environment, including the ability for people to float effortlessly, will be preserved in designated areas; returning the Dead to its desirable water level will reinvigorate hotels and other tourist facilities which are now far from the water’s edge.

So? When do we take the first step?


Saturday, November 17, 2012

No Lies


Ah yes the idiots of stupidity those brainless nitwits that call themselves "Human Rights" activists are once again spreading the lies of hatred and untruth in protests.

The ex-Patriot "Falestinians" - you can tell them by their UGLY faces distorted by fierce hatred - are yelling and SCREAMing at the top of their lings lies and untruths. It never fails to amaze me that these same meek minded individuals are missing when it comes to protesting REAL issues!!
A prime example of the mindless inability to read facts and truths by "Human Rights" activists is embodied in the stupidity of Sylvia Hale, a former parliament member on behalf of Australia's Greens who protested in Sydney when she blithely stated. "The Israelis are adopting a policy of slaughtering the people in Gaza,"


TRUTH- The “Brave” "Falestinian" terrorist organization Hamas -deliberately targets innocent women and children and invalided old women in their beds who can't run away. Earlier, a Grad rocket fired toward a community in the Be'er Tuvia Regional Council landed in the yard of Miriam Sarusi, 62, who lives in the house with her bedridden mother Rina said, 
"We heard the siren, but there is no secure room in the house and mother cannot be moved, so I just sat by her bed, said a prayer and told her not to be afraid."
Over the past twelve years the "Falestinians" have fired more than 12,000 rockets and mortar rounds blindly at SOLELY CIVILIAN targets, innocent women and children INSIDE Israel. The "Falestinians"and their Pro Falestinian followers cannot understand WHY so few Zionists/Jews die! 

Our secret is WE care for our people and their lives. Israel builds bomb shelters and uses them, and Israel cancels school and non-essential work in the name of protecting our citizens. The IDF -the Israeli Military does not hide in densely populated areas.


The Israel's military DEFENSE forces on the other hand have carried out more than 800 precise attacks against terror infrastructures, rendering ONLY! 25 dead, most of them are Hamas (Falestinian) launchers of TERRORISTS rockets.

Here is a picture of just how much the "Falestinians" care for their children!

Tuesday, July 3, 2012

Complicity


“The things I saw beggar description…The visual evidence and the verbal testimony of starvation, cruelty and bestiality were so overpowering…I made the visit deliberately, in order to be in a position to give first hand evidence of these things if ever, in the future, there develops a tendency to charge these allegations to propaganda.” President Dwight D. Eisenhower, on Holocaust denial

In my previous Blog entry I quoted Jan Karski  who stated, “It was easy for the Nazis to kill Jews, because ...the Jews were abandoned by all governments, church hierarchies and societies..."
In my previous blog entry I also mention that President Bill Clinton from his keynote address at the opening of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, in Washington, D.C., on April 22, 1993. In his address President Clinton became the first American president to ever explicitly acknowledge that the construction of the museum would, “redeem in some small measure the deaths of millions whom our nations did not, or would not, or could not save.

President Clinton's acknowledgment reflects only partially the depth of the western worlds guilt and lethargic response in the “complicity” of the Nazi actions to exterminate the Jewish people. The President’s acknowledgment, that the Holocaust dealt with a genocide that lasted for several years on an unimaginable scale with hundreds of thousands of culprits and their helpers in large areas of Europe under the eyes of a huge number of spectators, was emphasized in his statement that there are, 
“those of us here today representing the nations of the West,”(who) …” must live forever with this knowledge--even as our fragmentary awareness of crimes grew into indisputable facts, far too little was done.”
The most important statement in this view of “complicity” that the President made was, “Before the war even started, doors to liberty were shut”. These words by President Clinton’reveal a more sinister and deeper meaning in the use of the word “Complicity” in "Who will take them?" when one realizes where this statement was originally mentioned.

SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich refers to the world's “tactic complicity” in his overview of the persecution of the Jews by the Nazi regime to date at the opening of the Wannsee Conference on January 20, 1942SS-Obergruppenführer ReinhardHeydrich emphasizied; “that the main aim of the 'Jewish policy', he said, was, firstly, forced migration.
The men who sat at the table were among the elite of the "Third Reich". These were not your typical vision of anti-Semites for more than half of those present held doctorates from German universities. They were well informed about the policy toward Jews. Each understood that the cooperation of his agency was vital if such an ambitious, unprecedented and comprehensive policy was to succeed.

Among the agencies represented were the Department of Justice, the Foreign Ministry, the Gestapo, the SS, the Race and Resettlement Office, and the office in charge of distributing Jewish property. Also at the meeting was a representative of the General Government, the Polish occupation administration, whose territory included more than 2 million Jews. The head of Heydrich’s office for Jewish affairs, Adolf Eichmann, prepared the conference notes. We learn of this from the one remaining copy, out of 30 top-secret copies of the meeting's minutes, that Adolf Eichmann had prepared and was found in 1948 and confirmed as authentic by Adolf Eichmann at his trial in Jerusalem.
The real "burning" question is since ALL communiques sent to Hitler were monitored by the "Enigma" team at Bletchley Park was the copy of the meetings sent to Hitler intercepted by them and known to Churchill and Roosevelt?

In an HBO/BBC TV feature film co-production, "Conspiracy", General Heydrich (played by Kenneth Branagh) leads the meeting. He explains that Germany is facing the one drawback of world conquest: it continually increases its Jewish population as it annexes more and more neighboring lands.
 "Germany acquired 2.5 million Jews when we conquered Poland, and we will get 5 million more when we take Russia," he says. "Emigration of the Jews is not a solution, because: "Who will take them? Even in the US, as Jews are whispering in Roosevelt's ear, they turn them away." Then, with studied rhetoric, he announces: "From Lapland to Libya, from Vladivostok to Belfast, no Jews. Not one." This statement elicits an approving table-thumping by those present at the conference. 

A plaintive Yiddish ballad written in the 1930s by the Polish Yiddish actor Igor S. Korntayer, describes in stark terms the dilemma faced by German Jews desperate to escape from their homeland after Hitler came to power.

Vu Ahin Zol Ikh Geyn?
Tell me where shall I go,
Who can answer my plea?
Tell me where shall I go,
Every door is locked to me?
Though the world’s large enough,
There’s no room for me I know,
What I see is not for me,
Each road is closed, I am not free—
Tell me where shall I go.

America’s and the western worlds lethargic response "Who will take them?” to the Nazi measures that became embodied in the Holocaust is important to note in light of the discussion of  President Franklin Delanor Roosevelt’s proposal to the British to allow free Jewish immigration to the Palestinian Mandated Territory.

Just “How” complicit were the members of the US Department of State and the British Foreign Ministry-Whitehall - in thwarting Roosevelt plan and there by allowing the Nazis to exterminate the Jews of Europe? 

In 1933 just as President Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected and began his administration Adolf Hitler and his Nazi party also came to power in Germany. When Hitler’s Nazi party took control they began a systematic campaign of persecution aimed at its Jewish population. Under the'Jewish policy' of the  Nuremberg Laws (German: Nürnberger Gesetze) of 1935. Jews were excluded from German public life, deprived of their citizenship and forbidden to marry “authentic” Germans. The Nazis had succeeded in expelling much of the Jewish minority in Germany and in exiling those Jews still living in the country to an existence on the fringe of society. At the same time, the Nazis began to incrementally terrorize the Jews with the use of violence, which culminated in the nationwide pogrom known as Kristallnacht (“Crystal Night”) that took place in Germany and annexed Austria in November 1938.

The National Socialists had re-adjusted and manipulated the public opinion of Germany into the 'Third Reich' with it's dominance of racism: There was hardly any area in which the 'Jewish question' did not now play a major role in everyday life. With the official institution of 'dejudification' as a central part of German society  'racial legislation' and the 'Aryanisation' process had far-reaching effects upon the economy and in foreign policy, even before the war. The 'Third Reich' had succeeded in raising a 'Jewish question'. By means of compulsory emigration and expulsion, but also by repeated 'acts of revenge' and threats against the German Jews The Jews of Germany were held 'responsible' for the behavior of 'international Judaism' -"Communism" The extremity of the Nazi regimes persecution of the Jews in German controlled areas was made into an international problem that increasingly preoccupied the community of nations.

From 1933 -1941 the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration was largely inactive in response to these events. The Roosevelt administration’s effort to accommodate Jewish refugees from Germany and from Austria grew steadily in face of the escalation of their persecution in the years leading to World War II. Modest efforts were made and just as the war broke out and more and more of Europe’s Jews were caught in the Nazi grip, the U.S. State Department began cutting back at the bequest of the British who were fearful of the backlash from Arabs.

The Nazi policies were carried over into the period after the outbreak of World War II in Europe in 1939, with the aim of driving the Jews out of Germany and the territories taken over by the Wehrmacht. In the meantime, Jews were being concentrated in ghettos and concentration camps. A change in Nazi policy toward the Jews occurred only after the German invasion into the Soviet Union with “Operation Barbarossa” in June of 1941. Following quickly on the heels of the Wehrmacht were killing squads known as Einsatzgruppen (“emergency squads”) which systematically rounded up and murdered Jews in the newly occupied Soviet territories.

By November 1941 the Nazis had reversed their previous policy of promoting mass Jewish emigration, forbidding all Jews to leave German or German-occupied territory. Since the beginnings of Hitler’s invasion of Russia in Operation Barbarossa it was becoming known in the upper reaches of the Nazi leadership and government offices that Hitler intended all the Jews of Europe to be deported to the eastern territories and, by some means, to be executed toward the beginning of 1942.
For that purpose in mind the first experiment with hydrogen cyanide in the form of Zyklon B. was carried out at Auschwitz in a shed turned into a gas the chamber on September 3, 1941. This method was instituted for the mass-murdered of the Jews and the bodies then incinerated in crematoria. Able-bodied Jews were enslaved as forced laborers, only to share the same destiny somewhat later.

At the Wannssee Conference, of January 20, 1942, a calculated, industrialized campaign for the total annihilation or “the final solution of the Jewish problem” was instituted. Though the final protocol of the Wannsee Conference never explicitly mentioned extermination it was "understood" that “evacuation to the east” - a euphemism for concentration camps and that the “final solution”,was to be the systematic murder of Europe’s Jews.
At the core of the “evacuation to the east”  was the creation of extermination camps in occupied Poland, where Jews were to be sent by train from all Nazi-occupied territories.


Roosevelt’s Plan For Palestine


With the rise of Nazi Germany  during the years 1933 -1938 the Nazi regime free immigration of the Jews of Europe was of the utmost issue for Jewish circles. The critical period of 1938-1941 was the period of the beginnings of war in Europe. It was also the period of British appeasement to the Arabs of the severe restrictions of Jewish immigration in the White Paper of 1939.

President Roosevelt's interest in transferring Arabs from Palestine began in ‎‎October 1938 after a meeting with Justice Louis Brandeis‎‎Brandeis reported on this meeting to Felix Frankfurter who in turn passed on the report to ‎‎Stephen Wise and to presidential adviser and script-writer Ben Cohen. Brandeis pointed out in his report of this meeting how Roosevelt appreciated the significance of Palestine‎‎“the need of keeping it whole and of making it Jewish". He was tremendously interested - and wholly surprised - on learning of the great increase in Arab population since the First World War; and on learning of the plenitude of land for Arabs in Arab countries, about which he made specific inquiries.”

The Historian Zaha Bustami commented that it was, “…difficult to tell who brought up ‎‎this subject during the meeting, but the information on Arab demography was provided ‎‎by Frankfurter.” Who had met with FDR a few days earlier a meeting to discuss the ‎‎Palestine situation; however there are no records of what Roosevelt said at this meeting. 

On 25th of October 1938, Roosevelt had a meeting with the British Ambassador to the ‎‎U.S. Sir Ronald Lindsay. Lindsay wrote that the President was “impressed by the fact ‎‎that the Arab population had increased by 400,000 since the establishment of the [League ‎‎Of Nations] Mandate.” 

FDR also contemplated the creation of a program of well-digging across the JordanRoosevelt firmly believed that, “we ought to be able to find that money for the purpose”. FDR believed that once a large quantity of water would be made available for irrigation and the cultivable land thus created in Trans-Jordanian territory it;
‎‎“should be set apart for Arabs from Palestine. They should be offered land free, and that ought to be enough to attract them; and failing the attraction, they should be compelled to emigrate to it. Palestine could thus be relieved of 200,000 Arabs”.
FDR also added that it would “be necessary to prescribe that no Arab should be allowed to immigrate into Palestine, and no Jew into the Arab lands.” ‎‎

The Assistant Secretary of State Adolf Berle, later recalled that,” The President was full ‎‎of Palestine” and that FDR called on Ronald Lindsay to call a conference of Arab ‎‎princes. FDR was adamant in having them lay down; “say ‎‎$200,000,000 buying a farm for every Arab who wishes to leave Palestine, the money chiefly to be used in digging wells, which is perfectly possible in the Hedjaz.” Here, it is quite clear that Roosevelt intended the Arabs to "foot the bill" for the transfer of the Arabs of Palestine.
British Ambassador Lindsay therefore asked Lancelot Oliphant of the British Foreign ‎‎Office to have someone prepare a “short answer to this scheme” to have in readiness, ‎‎although he stressed that he would not take the initiative in sending a reply to the ‎‎President. Lindsay’s request was first dealt with by Lacy Baggalay of the Foreign Office. He first quoted experts, who held that the possibilities of finding water in quantity by boring in Transjordan were, “quite restricted”. He then continued, “But even assuming that water could be found in large quantities, it is now out of the question that any Arabs should be ‎‎'compelled' to emigrate to the lands thus brought into cultivation."

"Whatever else may remain uncertain about the problem of Palestine, the impossibility of compulsion on this scale is now beyond dispute."

There are those who blame the genesis of Roosevelt's idea of a forcible or voluntary eviction of Palestinian Arabs to Trans-Jordan or other neighboring lands on Roosevelt’s contacts with Zionist circles in the summer of 1938 perhaps in discussions with Brandeis and Frankfurter.

So "Who" actually had given Roosevelt the idea that irrigation of the Transjordan desert would create a ‎‎suitable location for the Arab transferees? The indications are that it came from the State ‎‎Department where at that period Edward Norman was in contact with government ‎‎officials to advance his own transfer plans. Although Norman was at the time in contact ‎‎with the State Department, his plans were in fact to irrigate Iraq by means of the dams it ‎‎had recently constructed.‎‎ ‎

Roosevelt summoned Lindsay for a further meeting, presumably during the first half of ‎‎November. At this meeting, the President said that he thought that “the British should call ‎‎in some of the Arab leaders from Palestine and some of the leaders from the adjoining ‎‎Arab countries.”

"The British should explain to them that they, the Arabs, had within their ‎‎control large territories ample to sustain their people.” He also pointed out that Jewish ‎‎immigration to Palestine and Transjordan would not harm the Arabs since there was ‎‎plenty of room for everyone. Roosevelt then went on to propose transfer of Arabs, “Some ‎‎of the Arabs on poor land in Palestine could be given much better land in adjoining Arab ‎‎countries."

British Ambassador ‎‎Lindsay answered Roosevelt by saying that there was opposition in both the Arab and ‎‎Moslem world but the President “belittled this opposition and thought it due largely to British indecision and conflicting policy.”

Roosevelt had also thought of ideas of how to finance this transfer. He thought that “if a plan was devised for a settlement of 100,000 families costing $3,000 a family or ‎‎$300 million the funds might be raised” by the American Government, the British and French Governments, and private subscriptions - largely Jewish; each of these bodies would contribute $100 million.‎‎

Towards the end of December the British Charge d'Affaires in Washington met with ‎‎Sumner Welles and handed him a memorandum on transfer received from the British ‎‎Government, adding that Roosevelt would probably be interested in it.‎‎ ‎After pointing out that the latest available evidence did not bear out the belief that any ‎‎considerable quantity of water could be obtained in Transjordan at shallow levels by ‎‎boring wells, the memorandum continued,
“Suggestions have also been made that if the free offer of cultivable land in Transjordan did not suffice to attract the Arabs from Palestine; they might be compelled to emigrate from it, with the object of vacating land in Palestine for settlement by Jews.”

Until the Wannssee conference of January 1942 there was still hope in Jewish / Zionistic circles that the Nazis would allow mass Jewish immigration. With the inevitable invasion of Poland by the Nazis in September 1939 the doors of Europe began to close and the fate of European Jewry was sealed.

The British Government “Complicity” can be found in Whitehall’s fear of the repercussions in BritainIndia and the Moslem world if they should back Roosevelt's plan of Arab "resettlement". They saw the threat to the sources of raw materials and oil for the Empire in agreeing to Roosevelt’s proposals. Their Empire would be in jeopardy due to their promises made to the Jews. 

Lancelot Oliphant of the British Foreign ‎‎Office brought, in his words, the “fallacy” which Roosevelt was using to try and solve the Palestine problem in a reply sent to Lindsay saying that the British government would not even contemplate such an idea. That  His Majesty's Government would be accused of such a thing. That it would be “thoroughly unjust” to compel the "long-established community" the Arabs to transfer from Palestine “to make room for immigrants ‎‎[Jews] of a totally different race who have had no connection with [Palestine] for at least 2,000 years.”

The British Government also felt that the problem of ‎‎“redistribution of the Arab and Jewish communities in Palestine and across the Jordan”, was not one of finance but rather of politics.On two occasions, Roosevelt raised his plan with British representatives but he was ‎‎‎“firmly told that no amount of financial inducement would move the Palestinian Arabs.” Roosevelt however, was unconvinced by this British reply.
Chaim Weizmann had his first meeting with Roosevelt in February 1940. At this meeting, Roosevelt put forward the idea of bribing the Arabs, asking Weizmann “What about the Arabs? Can't that be settled with a little baksheesh?” Weizmann replied that “it wasn't as simple as all that. Of course the Jewish people would compensate the Arabs in a reasonable way for anything they got, but there were other factors appertaining to a settlement.”

In December 1942 two and a half years later, Roosevelt told Treasury Secretary, 
Henry ‎‎Morgenthau, “I actually would put a barbed wire around Palestine, and I would begin to ‎‎move the Arabs out of Palestine.... I would provide land for the Arabs in some other part ‎‎of the Middle East.... Each time we move out an Arab we would bring in another Jewish ‎‎family.... But I don't want to bring in more than they can economically support.... It ‎‎would be an independent nation just like any other nation.... Naturally, if there are 90 per ‎‎cent Jews, the Jews would dominate the government.... There are lots of places to which ‎‎you could move the Arabs. All you have to do is drill a well because there is a large ‎‎underground water supply, and we can move the Arabs to places where they can really ‎‎live.” 
In October 1943, the question of “barbed-wire” around Palestine came up again in a ‎‎conversation between Roosevelt and Judge Samuel Rosenman, Justice of the New York ‎‎Supreme Court and speechwriter and counselor to RooseveltRoosevelt had spoken of ‎‎the “possibility of settling the Palestine question by letting the Jews in to the limit that the ‎‎country will support them - "with a barbed-wire fence around the Holy Land.” Rosenman ‎‎thought that this would work but only “if the fence was a two-way one to keep the Jews in and the ‎‎Arabs out.”

What should be mentioned here is that Roosevelt already knew full well of the extent Nazi program of mass genocide. He had been informed by Churchill in the Casablanca Conference January 14 to 24, 1943, of the entire text of the Protocols of the Wannssee conference gleaned from the transmission of the file through the Abwehr G312 “Enigma” program at Bletchley ParkRoosevelt had also read the Polish Foreign Minister Count Edward Raczynski's note which had been addressed to the Governments of the United Nations on 10 December 1942 entitled, "The mass extermination of Jews in German occupied Poland", which provided the Allies with the earliest and most accurate accounts of the Holocaust.
In addition to being informed by documents and Intelligence reports during the course of 1943 an officer in the Związek Walki Zbrojnej (abbreviation: ZWZ or Union of Armed Struggle) of the Polish underground, Jan Karski, traveled to Washington as an emissary of the Polish Resistance to meet with PresidentFranklin Roosevelt and report directly to the President on the European conflict and specifically conditions in his own country, Poland.

In 1942 Karski was selected by Cyryl Ratajski, the Polish Government's Delegate at Home, to perform a secret mission to gather information about Nazi atrocities in occupied Poland. In order to gather evidence, Karski met Bund activist Leon Feiner and was twice smuggled by Jewish underground leaders into the Warsaw Ghetto for the purpose of showing him first hand what was happening to the Polish Jews. Karski had visited Bełżec death camp disguised as a Ukrainian camp guard and had gained first hand eyewitness to the extermination of the Jews of Europe. Karski reported to the Polish, British and U.S. governments in 1942 on the situation in Poland and especially on the the extermination of the Jews. He had done so by smuggling out a microfilm with further textual information in German as proof from the Underground Movement on the extermination of European Jews in occupied Poland.

Karski met with Polish politicians in exile including the Polish Prime Minister Władysław Sikorski , as well as members of political parties such as the PPS, SN, SP, SL, Jewish Bund and Poalei Zion. He also spoke to Anthony Eden, the British foreign secretary who reported the meeting directly to British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, in a detailed statement on what Karski had seen in Warsaw and Bełżec. Karski then traveled to the United States to report to President Franklin D.Roosevelt.

Roosevelt requested that Karski meet with Justice Frankfurter and Rabbi Stephen Wise, as it would be of vital concern for them to be apprised of the horrors befalling their fellow Jews in Poland. Frankfurter and Wise listened to Karski’s detailed eyewitness accounts from Belzec concentration camp of the program of extermination of the Jewish people carried out by the Nazis.

When Roosevelt, Frankfurter and Wise were told by Karski’s of the,“the unprecedented' extent of the genocide”, Felix Frankfurter stated that he was unable to "conceive the inconceivable" of the full extent of the methodical extermination of the Jewish people.

In April 1944 two prisoners, Rudolf Vrba and Alfred Wetzler, managed to escape from Auschwitz and the Polish Underground once more provided information that they gave to the Allies – together with intelligence gained from two other prisoners who escaped shortly afterwards. This information formed the basis on the workings of Auschwitz
that became known as the “Auschwitz Protocols”. This was the first absolute and conclusive proof the Allies received that mass murder was taking place at Auschwitz.

Limited information about the camp had reached the West before this date, but the Auschwitz Protocols removed any reasonable doubt about the scale and nature of the crime, and the Western media were quick to report the news. On 18 June the BBC broadcast a radio story about Auschwitz, and on 20 June the New York Times carried a report which explicitly mentioned the ‘gas chambers’ at Auschwitz/Birkenau.

At the beginning of November 1944, Roosevelt was elected President for an ‎‎unprecedented fourth term. A few days later, Roosevelt discussed the Palestine situation ‎‎with the Under-Secretary of State, Edward Stettinius. Roosevelt had developed his ideas for the transfer of the Arabs from Palestine as time progressed as he heard from State Department officials and Military Intelligence reports of the events happening in Eastern Europe against the Jews. Some believe that Roosevelt's views had become more extreme in his criticism of British policy in Palestine, which was ruled by Whitehall’s  pro-Arab Middle Eastern stance as Arab "complicity" with the Nazi regime became more apparent.

After telling Roosevelt of their ‎‎difficulties regarding Palestine, Under-Secretary of State, Edward Stettinius wrote in his diary, “He thinks Palestine ‎‎should be for the Jews and no Arabs should be in it”. Roosevelt felt confident ‎‎that he would be able to “iron out” the whole Arab-Jewish issue. Originally recommending the transfer of two hundred thousand Arabs, Roosevelt eventually ‎‎stated unequivocally that “Palestine should be for the Jews and no Arabs should be in it.” and that as stated in the Balfour Declaration and the Mandate that, "The Mandated area of Palestine should be exclusive Jewish territory.”‎‎ ‎

Almost all the statements that are quoted on this subject were not written by Roosevelt himself, but by the various people he worked and met with. There are no recordings nor written notes either. This however, is characteristic of Franklin D. Roosevelt since he was a man who always had one eye cocked on historians who would someday assess his role in history. He tried to cover his historical tracks, using unrecorded telephone conversations and unrecorded private interviews but we do have the recorded comments from those present with Roosevelt and their diary entries.  

Franklin D. Roosevelt died on the afternoon of April 12 at the Little White House at Warm Springs, Georgia and with his death so did his Plan for a Jewish Palestine with out the Arab "Problem". Once again the infamous historic statement “What If” resounds through history…