Iran june 16th 2016 inss

Hassan Rowhani’s Election as President of Iran: Initial Assessments INSS Insight No. 435, June 16, 2013 Kam, Ephraim     The election of Hassan Rowhani as Iran's president is surprising – not only in the very fact of his election, but particularly in the large majority he received, which made a second round of voting unnecessary. Prior to the elections, two candidates were considered to lead the race: Saeed Jalili, who is Iran's national security advisor and head of the Iranian nuclear negotiating team, and is very close to Supreme Leader Khamenei; and Tehran’s popular mayor, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf. In the elections themselves, Rowhani earned 50.7 percent of the total vote, with each of the other candidates receiving less than 17 percent. Rowhani, who was the only cleric among the candidates and who holds a doctorate in law, is not one of the leaders of the reformist camp, which rose following the last presidential election in 2009. However, of all the candidates Rowhani is closest to the reformers, and he is their main hope. Presumably, therefore, he was elected mainly by three groups: the reformists, various minorities that he addressed, and those who saw him as a chance for relief from the sanctions imposed on Iran and a chance for improvement in the Iranian economy. In this election, followers of Supreme Leader Khamenei likely did not attempt to falsify the election results, as they apparently did in 2009, because they feared that it would lead to unrest this time, as it did four years ago. As such, the election of Rowhani appears to reflect both a real desire for change among the Iranian public and the impact of the sanctions and the deteriorating economic situation. The fact that Rowhani was not disqualified as a candidate for the presidency, as many others were – in particular, former president Rafsanjani – may indicate that Khamenei did not feel he would constitute a major challenge as a president. Nonetheless, his term as president could create serious difficulties for the Supreme Leader and his associates, for several reasons. First, Iran has long experienced tensions between the Supreme Leader and the three presidents who served during his tenure: Rafsanjani, Khatami, and Ahmadinejad. These tensions stemmed from the structure of the regime, which is based on a supreme leader appointed in effect for his entire life and a president elected in general elections, and from the friction resulting from the division of powers between them. Second, the election of Rowhani could revive and strengthen the reformist camp, which has kept a low profile since it was suppressed in the demonstrations in the summer of 2009. If this occurs, Rowhani’s election could serve as an important milestone in shaping the regime. Third, the fact that Rowhani earned such broad popular support could give him power vis-à-vis Khamenei and the conservatives. Nevertheless, Khamenei may well have an interest in exploiting Rowhani’s image as a moderate to attempt to have the sanctions lifted and improve Iran’s international standing without paying too heavy a price on the nuclear issue. It is clear to everyone that the main decision maker in Iran is the Supreme Leader. However, the president is the second most important figure, especially in domestic affairs. He appoints the ministers (in Iran, there is no prime minister under the president), and he is responsible for the management and performance of the government and for shaping and implementing economic policy. While his authority in the realm of foreign policy and the nuclear issue in particular is limited – the official who decides this issue is the Supreme Leader – the president does not lack influence in this area because he is the head of the Supreme National Security Council, and he presents Iranian policy to the outside world. The fact that Rowhani has in the past dealt with foreign affairs and the nuclear issue as head of the nuclear negotiating team under President Khatami, while Khamenei has not left Iran since his appointment as Supreme Leader in 1989, could enhance the President's influence. Rowhani will likely lend high priority to the effort to promote a solution to the nuclear issue in order to ease the sanctions on Iran. During the election campaign, he stressed his commitment to a moderate approach and a solution to the problem of sanctions and Iran’s international isolation, although like the other candidates, he vowed to continue the nuclear program. To that end, he is likely to attempt to formulate new proposals in order to reach an agreement with Western governments. He may also initiate direct contact with the US administration on this issue. The question is how much leeway Khamenei will give him; it will likely not be much. Khatami, Iran's president from 1997 to 2005 and considered a moderate, attempted to publicly initiate a dialogue with the American people, but was stopped by Khamenei; and during his term in office, an important breakthrough in uranium enrichment occurred with the construction of the enrichment facility in Natanz. The more likely possibility is that during the coming period, Iran will perhaps be prepared to make tactical concessions on the nuclear issue, but that Khamenei will not permit concessions with strategic significance. Rowhani’s election has been welcomed by the US administration and other Western governments, which expect that his presidency will allow real progress on the nuclear issue and will perhaps even strengthen the reformists and see the start of internal changes in Iran. They also eye his election as a first sign indicating that the sanctions are beginning to affect Iran, and therefore they will likely seek to give another opportunity to the diplomatic option while examining Rowhani’s internal room to maneuver and his ability to advance a settlement. It is also possible that in this framework, there will be elements in the West that propose to lighten the sanctions on Iran in order to provide Rowhani with an achievement and strengthen his power domestically in advance of a settlement. In this spirit, at this stage the US administration will likely take the military option off the table and demand that Israel do so as well, until the chances of achieving a settlement with Iran become clear. From Israel’s point of view, Rowhani’s election involves both opportunities and risks. The former include the possibility of a settlement that would be acceptable to Israel, and the possibility of the start of internal change in Iran. For now, these possibilities are not very likely. For his part, Rowhani will likely shun Amadinejad's rhetoric on the need to wipe Israel off the map and denial of the Holocaust, which many in Iran see as a gratuitous error. If this happens, Israel will lose a public relations asset because Ahmadinejad’s harsh statements helped Israel illustrate the threat of a nuclear Iran. More importantly, the moderate image of the new president could help lessen the international pressure on Iran, and later, perhaps even encourage a deal on the nuclear issue that would not be acceptable to Israel.

INSS - The Institute for National Security Studies 40 Haim Levanon St.  •  Tel Aviv 61398  •  Israel  •  03-640-0400  •  http://www.inss.org.il  • info@inss.org.il

Palestine 29th Nov 2012 -Strong European Support for Palestinian Statehood Move

November 29, 2012

Strong European Support for Palestinian Statehood Move

By REUTERS

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - A Palestinian bid for indirect U.N. recognition of statehood received vows of support from more than a dozen European nations as of Wednesday, and diplomats said this backing may deter Israel from harsh retaliation against the Palestinian Authority for seeking to upgrade its U.N. status.

A Palestinian resolution on Thursday that would change its U.N. observer status from an "entity" to a "non-member state," implicitly recognizing the sovereign state of Palestine, is expected to pass easily in the 193-nation U.N. General Assembly. But Israel, the United States and a handful of other members of are expected to vote against it.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has been leading the campaign to win support for the resolution, and some European governments have offered him their support after an eight-day conflict this month between Israel and Islamists in the Gaza Strip, who are pledged to Israel's destruction and oppose his efforts towards a negotiated peace.

The U.S. State Department said Deputy Secretary of State Bill Burns and U.S. Mideast peace envoy David Hale traveled to New York on Wednesday in a last-ditch effort to get Abbas to reconsider.

"We've been clear, we've been consistent with the Palestinians, that we oppose observer state status in the General Assembly and this resolution," State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said.

She repeated U.S. warnings that the move could hit U.S. economic support for the Palestinians. The Israelis have also warned that they might take deductions out of monthly transfers of duties that Israel collects on the Palestinians' behalf.

The United States and Israel say the only genuine route to statehood is at the negotiating table, through a peace accord hammered out in direct talks with Israel.

Granting Palestinians the title of "non-member observer state" falls short of full U.N. membership - something the Palestinians tried but failed to achieve last year. But it would allow them access to the International Criminal Court and some other international bodies, should they choose to join them. The Vatican numbers among the U.N.'s non-member states.

Hanan Ashrawi, a top Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) official, told a news conference in Ramallah that "the Palestinians can't be blackmailed all the time with money."

"Some rights aren't for sale," Ashrawi said. "If Israel wants to destabilize the whole region, it can. We are talking to the Arab World about their support if Israel responds with financial measures, and the EU has indicated they will not stop their support to us."

ISRAELI RETALIATION MIGHT BE MODERATE

As there is little doubt about how the United States will vote when the Palestinian resolution to upgrade its U.N. status is put to a vote sometime after 3 p.m. EST (2000 GMT) on Thursday, the Palestinian Authority has been concentrating its efforts on lobbying wealthy European states, diplomats say.

With strong support from the developing world that make up the majority of U.N. members, the Palestinian resolution is virtually assured of securing more than the requisite simple majority. But Abbas has been trying to amass as many European yes votes as possible.

"A strong showing in Europe will emphasize to Israel and the United States that the Palestinian Authority is widely seen legitimate," a Western envoy said on condition of anonymity. "It may also give Israel second thoughts about trying to bankrupt the Palestinians for something that is really symbolic."

One senior Western diplomat predicted that at least 120-130 countries would vote for the Palestinian resolution.

As of Wednesday afternoon Austria, Denmark, Norway, Finland, France, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Luxembourg, Malta, Portugal, Spain and Switzerland had all pledged to support the Palestinian resolution. Britain said it was prepared to vote yes, but only if the Palestinians fulfilled certain conditions.

Ashrawi said the positive responses from European states were encouraging and sent a message of hope to all Palestinians.

"This constitutes a historical turning point and opportunity for the world to rectify a grave historical injustice that the Palestinians have undergone since the creation of the state of Israel in 1948," she said.

A strong backing from European nations could make it awkward for Israel to implement harsh retaliatory measures. Diplomats say that Israel seems hesitant to take strong action against Abbas as it would antagonize Western European countries.

But Israel's reaction might not be so measured if the Palestinians seek ICC action against Israel on charges of war crimes, crimes against humanity or other crimes the court would have jurisdiction over.

It also seems wary of weakening the Western-backed Abbas, especially after the political boost rival Hamas received from recent solidarity visits to Gaza by top officials from Egypt, Qatar and Tunisia.

Hamas militants, who control Gaza and have had icy relations with the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, unexpectedly offered Abbas their support earlier this week.

STALLED PEACE TALKS

No European nations announced they would vote against the non-member state move, though several U.N. diplomats said privately that the Czech Republic and Netherlands might be among those that cast no votes. Neither has announced an official position.

Germany said it could not support the Palestinian move though it was not clear if it would abstain, like Estonia and Lithuania, or vote against it.

Europe's undecided countries included European Union members Belgium, Bulgaria, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Sweden. Several EU members said they were hoping the 27-nation EU would reach a common position on the Palestinian move, though U.N. diplomats said that EU unity was an impossibility.

Peace talks have been stalled for two years, mainly over the issue of Israeli settlements in the West Bank, which have expanded despite being deemed illegal by most of the world.

In their draft resolution, the Palestinians have pledged to relaunch the peace process immediately following the U.N. vote.

Britain said it would be willing to support the Palestinian move on Thursday if two conditions were met.

"The first is that the Palestinian Authority should indicate a clear commitment to return immediately to negotiations without preconditions," Foreign Seretary William Hague told parliament.

"The second assurance relates to membership of other specialized U.N. agencies and action in the International Criminal Court," he added.

Rights groups said that stance contradicted Britain's stated commitment to accountability for serious crimes.

Israel and the United States have mooted withholding aid and tax revenue that the Palestinian government in the West Bank needs to survive. Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman has also viewed options that include bringing down Abbas.

Syria 1st Dec 2012 Tom Friedman nytimes

December 1, 2012
Letter From Syria
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

Darkush, Syria

THE scene is almost biblical. You step down through tall reeds, cross the
Orontes River from Turkey in a small rowboat and are received by a local
contingent of the Free Syrian Army, outside the Syrian town of Darkush. One of
them shows you the picture on his cellphone of a Syrian girl who was just taken
across the river to Turkey with what turned out to be fatal wounds from a Syrian
Army helicopter attack on her village. The helicopters, the rebel soldiers say,
dropped barrels with nails and explosives on her house. Meanwhile, over here in
the mud are three fresh graves with bodies that just floated down the river.
Some days it's just an arm or leg that washes up. Although this is "liberated"
territory, in the background you can hear the low drumbeat of shells slamming
into some town over the hills. I ask the rebel local commander, Muatasim Bila
Abul Fida, how he thinks all of this will play out. His answer strikes me as
very honest. "Without the help of Iran and Hezbollah, he would be gone by now,"
he says of the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad. But even after he goes, there
will be a great sorting out. "It will take five or six years," he adds, because
the Islamist parties "want Shariah, and we want democracy."

In my visit along the Turkey-Syria border, I am struck at how so many different
people want so many different things for Syria. It is unnerving. A Christian
businessman from Aleppo tells me that if a real election were held in Syria
today, the besieged President Assad would still win "with 75 percent of the
vote," because most Syrians crave the order that he provided and are exhausted
by war. But a few hours earlier at an impressively run Syrian refugee camp set
up by Turkey outside the Turkish border town of Antakya, I interviewed young
Syrian Sunni Muslim men who had fled from the Assad family's largely Alawite
stronghold of Latakiya, just down the coast. They spoke about the deep
unfairness of the Syrian system and how Alawites were getting an unfair share of
the pie. "When we first protested to demand reforms, the regime did not do
anything," said Yahya Afacesa, "and then we started to shout and demand freedom,
and the regime attacked us. So there was no way to fight the regime peacefully."

He and his colleagues insisted, though, that the problem in Syria was the Assad
family, not the Alawite sect, a Shiite offshoot from which the Assads hail and
which dominates the regime. These are secular young men, and they still took
pride in Syria's multisectarian identity and harmony, which, it should be
remembered, has deep historical roots in this region. Indeed, before visiting
them, I met with the Chamber of Commerce of Antakya. The chamber's president
proudly displays outside his office a poster of more than 20 different churches,
mosques and even a synagogue still operating in his town, which is just a few
miles from the Syrian border. I repeat: There are cultural roots for pluralism
in this region that a new Syrian government could still fall back on — but
there's also the opposite.

A case in point: In Antakya I met two Turkish logistics experts. They spoke
about the "Arab foreign legion" of Islamist fighters from as far away as
Chechnya and Libya who have come through their town and crossed the Orontes to
join the battle in Syria. They scoffed at the idea that Syria will emerge as a
democracy from a war in which its main arms suppliers are the Islamic-oriented
monarchies of Saudi Arabia and Qatar. The main Saudi and Qatari desire is that
Syria shift from being an Iranian-Shiite-dominated country to a Sunni-dominated
one. Democracy per se is not their priority.

One of the two Turkish experts has another business in Qatar. To get permission
to work and operate in Qatar, he explained, he needs a local Qatari to sponsor
his work permit. "If you have a work permit and you want to leave the country,
you need your sponsor to give you written permission," he noted. "If your
sponsor dies, his son inherits that right." His Qatari sponsor's son is very
young. Yet, "if he says I cannot leave, I cannot leave. I do business [in Qatar]
but I have no rights at all. ... We joke that we are `modern slaves' there. And
this country is trying to bring democracy to Syria?"

These stories illuminate for me the enormous number of crosscurrents and mixed
motives driving this revolution. Without a strong, galvanizing Syrian leader
with a compelling unifying vision, backed by the international community,
getting rid of Assad will not bring order to Syria. And disorder in Syria will
not have the same consequences as disorder in other countries in the region.

Syria is the keystone of the Middle East. If and how it cracks apart could
recast this entire region. The borders of Syria have been fixed ever since the
British and French colonial powers carved up the Arab provinces of the Ottoman
Empire after World War I. If Assad is toppled and you have state collapse here,
Syria's civil war could go regional and challenge all the old borders — as the
Shiites of Lebanon seek to link up more with the Alawite/Shiites of Syria, the
Kurds in Syria, Iraq, Iran and Turkey try to link up with each other and create
an independent Kurdistan, and the Sunnis of Iraq, Jordan and Syria draw closer
to oppose the Shiites of Lebanon, Syria, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain.

We could be entering a new age of Middle East border-drawing — the
do-it-yourself version — where the borders of the Middle East get redrawn, not
by colonial outsiders from the top down but by the Middle Easterners themselves,
from the bottom up.

Egypt 2012 05 23 Historical Elections

יום היסטורי במצרים: 52 מיליון אזרחים יבחרו נשיא

ג'קי חוגי 08:33 , 23/05/2012 המהפכה העממית במצרים מגיעה הבוקר לשיא חדש" 52 מיליון מצרים ישתתפו בסיבוב הראשון בבחירות הדמוקרטיות לנשיאות. 13 מועמדים מתמודדים על התפקיד. על-פי ההערכות אף אחד מהם לא יצליח להשיג את הרוב הדרוש - 50% מהקולות - והמצרים ילכו גם לסיבוב הצבעה שני מצרים הולכת היום (ד') ומחר לבחור נשיא, ובפעם הראשונה בתולדותיה, איש לא יודע מי יהיה המנצח. 13 מתמודדים רצים בבחירות האלה, מהם שניים מובילים בעקביות בסקרים - מזכ"ל הליגה הערבית ושר החוץ לשעבר עמר מוסא, והרופא עבדל מונעם אבול פותוח, בכיר האחים המוסלמים לשעבר. נכון לעכשיו, כל האפשרויות פתוחות, וקיים סיכוי גבוהה שיידרש סיבוב שני. הנשיא הבא יצטרך להתמודד עם שלל בעיות שמאיימות למוטט את מצרים, פשוטו כמשמעו: כלכלה שסובלת מבריחת הון ומתקשה להשתקם, מצב ביטחוני מעורער בערים ובמחוזות רחוקים, פוליטיקה עצבנית שמתעצבת מחדש, אבל מעל לכל - 80 מיליון איש שמצפים ממנו לנס. הנשיא הבא לא יהיה חזק כמו מובארק. הסמכויות שלו יוגדרו בחוקה שעדיין לא נוסחה, והוא ייאלץ לעבוד ביחד עם הפרלמנט, שם צפוי רוב לאחים המוסלמים. ישראל בקושי ממקדת תשומת לב במערכת הבחירות הזו, אבל מעניין לשמוע את זקן השבט מוחמד חסניין הייכל. עורך העיתון "אל-אהראם" לשעבר, יועצו של הנשיא גמאל עבדל נאצר, מופיע בטלוויזיה ומזהיר מפני הידרדרות בסיני. "במקרה של מחלוקת קשה עם ישראל", הוא אומר, "תמצא יום אחד כוחות ישראלים בסואץ". סיני, הוא אומר, היא בת ערובה בידי ישראל. הקלפיות ייסגרו מחר ב-21:00 לפי שעון ישראל, וספירת הקולות צפויה להסתיים ביום ראשון לכל המאוחר.

הדפסה

New York 2001 9 11 - Mona Eltahawy Reuters

9/11 anniversary casts shadow for Muslims:author

Thu Sep 8, 2011 6:30am GMT

By Pauline Askin

This is surreal. A Reuters interview with me. I used to be a Reuters correspondent.Mona.

SYDNEY, Sept 8 (Reuters) - The approaching tenth anniversary of the September 11 attacks is casting a long shadow for U.S. Muslims, many of whom are dreading the approaching anniversary because they fear a resurgence of prejudice and hate, said author Mona Eltahawy.
Egyptian-born but U.S.-based, Eltahawy said the attacks on New York and Washington were a shocking and negative introduction to Islam for many in the United States, compounding the difficulties for Muslims already struggling with their identities in the diverse, secular nation.
Despite the fact that African American Muslims had been in the nation since slavery days, public awareness of Muslims in general had remained low.
"A lot of Americans were totally unaware of what a Muslim is until 9/11. The first introduction to Islam was a very negative one," Eltahawy said from Melbourne, where she attended the Melbourne Writer's Festival.
"Now that we're coming up to the tenth anniversary of 9/11, it's a time to say we're here and we're not going anywhere, we're Americans and Muslims too. It's been a difficult ten years and a lot of us are dreading this tenth anniversary because it brings out a lot of hate and prejudice."
Eltahawy, a former news agency journalist turned essayist and columnist, left the security of an office job for the hazards of freelance work just around the time of 9/11.
While she didn't personally experience any hostility, which she attributed largely to the fact that she doesn't wear a head scarf or "look Muslim," the heated atmosphere -- and all the years since -- have made her question what that phrase actually means.
One of her biggest struggles is to break the stereotype that conservative equals authentic.
"I identify as a liberal progressive secular Muslim. One of the messages I try to convey is I'm just as authentic as a conservative Muslim," she said.
"When you think Muslim women, you think women in a head scarf or a women like me. There isn't just one way to think of what a Muslim women is, there's a diversity of appearances and a diversity of voices," she said.
But the last ten years, from 9/11 to the Arab Spring this year that saw the overthrow of long-term Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak, have been exciting and professionally satisfying.
Among some of the biggest and most interesting changes have been the emergence of social media such as Facebook and Twitter, both of which were highlighted during the upheavals in Egypt and elsewhere across the Mideast this year.
Terming them "a great connector," she said such services had played a key role in spreading information, to the extent that she now finds Twitter her number one news source.
"Social media has given us a front row seat to revolutions in various parts of the region but they did not create those revolutions," she said.
Putting too much weight on the role of social media risks devaluing the participation of millions of people, she added.
"These are most definitely not social media revolutions. To say they were social revolutions removes agency and courage from all those people who went out on the streets and faced, whether it was the Mubarak regime security thugs ... or what we saw happening in Libya." (Editing by Elaine Lies)
© Thomson Reuters 2011. All rights reserved. Users may download and print extracts of content from this website for their own personal and non-commercial use only. Republication or redistribution of Thomson Reuters content, including by framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Thomson Reuters. Thomson Reuters and its logo are registered trademarks or trademarks of the Thomson Reuters group of companies around the world.

Gaza Tel Aviv-Yafo 2011-2009 Lawrence Wright New Yorker

The Human Scale  
2011-04-04
The Cameri Theatre of Tel Aviv hosts The New York Public Theatre with the one-man play:

The Human Scale 
Written and performed by Lawrence Wright
Director: Oskar Eustis
Lighting: Deb Sullivan; Video design: Aaron Harrow; Sound: Matt Hubbs; Scenic consultant: David Korins

In the spring of 2009 Pulitzer prizewinning journalist Lawrence Wright of The New Yorker approached the magazine's editor, David Remnick, and asked if he could write an article about the likelihood of peace between Israel and the Palestinians. Most editors would have jumped at the chance of publishing an article by such a well known and admired writer, and on this particular subject - but The New Yorker wasn't crazy about the idea. "I wanted to write about the prospects of a two-state solution," Wright said in an interview, "but David didn't seem too excited. He said, ‘Why don't you write about Gaza?'"
So began Wright's trip to the region in the summer of 2009. The result was a 12,000-word story published in The New Yorker in November, at the height of the controversy over the Goldstone report, which concluded that both Israel and Hamas committed war crimes in the course of Operation Cast Lead.

That article, entitled "Captives: What really happened during the Israeli attacks," has been transformed into a one-man play, written and performed by Wright, in a co-production with The Public Theater and 3-Legged Dog.
The Human Scale, directed by The Public Theatre's artistic director Oskar Eustis, gained critical acclaim in the United States. In it Wright presents his worldview on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in recent years, and explains how the parties reached the present impasse which he argues began with the abduction of IDF soldier Gilad Shalit.
Like the article, the play sheds new light on both parties. "There's a dehumanization of the other side that makes it impossible to see things from another perspective," Wright said. "My goal was to try to enlarge the vision of both sides."
"In this efficient and engrossing 90-minute seminar on history both current and ancient, Mr. Wright trains his understandably wary attention [...] on the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians With a scholarly but sympathetic manner and a soothing voice that has just a hint of a Texas twang in it, Mr. Wright sheds a sharp light on this sorrowful subject, drawing on his own visit to Gaza."
The New York Times
The play will be performed with English with Hebrew sur-titles
Duration: 90 minutes with no intermission.
18-21 May - Cameri 4

Nazareth 13 May 2011 The double siege facing Palestinians in Israel

The double siege facing Palestinians in Israel

Abir Kopty, Friday 13 May 2011 AhramOnline

It is time for the Arab youth to break down all walls, including walls separating ’48 Arabs from the rest of the Arab world

I am from Nazareth. I’m Palestinian, one of the 1.3 million Palestinians known to many as “’48 Arabs”. I belong to the forgotten part of the Palestinian nation, who fought for decades to keep our “identity” (haweyyi) and our baqaa —call it our “right to remain”.

We did not immigrate or choose to live in Israel. It was Israel that emigrated to us. We remained on our lands and are still fighting against our transfer from our homeland.

And so we had Israeli citizenship imposed on us.

We hold the Israeli passport, which we did not choose as well. In fact, we had no other choice. It was either we give up and leave to join our brothers and sisters in refugee camps who were forced to leave during the Nakba, or we stay and stick to our lands and identity as the remaining part of the Arab Palestinian people.

We wrote back in the early 1980s in what we call the “document of the banned assembly” (referring to its ban by Israeli authorities): “We did not deny and we can’t deny, even if we are faced with death, our deep-rooted origin: we are alive, consciousand active part ofthe Palestinian Arab people.” This is who we are.

My generation, the third generation of the Nakba, maintained to hold this torch, we insist on our Palestinian identity, resist Israeli policies and refuse to be second-class citizens in Israel.

Yet since the establishment of the Israeli state we have been segregated by Israel in order to cut our relationship with our Arab world, and more importantly alienated by the Arab world, perceived as spies and traitors. For decades we did not have direct means to communicate with the Arab world. We were in a double-siege and our story did not come through for a long time. For decades we have not been allowed to visit Arab countries; today we have access to few of them. Even for those countries we are allowed to enter, we are automatic suspects due to the Israeli passport we hold. It is as if we are blamed for the Jewish militias who occupied Palestine, displaced our families and destroyed our villages, and built their country on our lands.

Today, we look with admiration at our Arab peers in Arab countries who are demanding freedom and dignity; we pay respect to thousands of freedom martyrs. We follow minute by minute the Arab revolutions, share videos and information and praise their courage. A group of young local singers dedicated a special song they wrote and filmed to the Tunisian revolution; it was circulated widely through social media. When Mubarak stepped down, we took to the streets to celebrate as if it was our own revolution. We demonstrate regularly in Nazareth and other places to support and show solidarity with Libyans, Syrians, Bahrainis and Yemenis. We communicate with friends from the Arab world through new media —we share the same values.

These revolutions have given us the hope we were about to lose. We have been also struggling for decades for our freedom, to end the Israeli occupation of Palestine, to end Israeli racism and discrimination. You probably do not know that we are the makers of the “Land Day” which Palestinians and many Arabs worldwide commemorate. You probably do not know that the song “Unadikom” that you all know by heart was written by our poet and political leader, the late Tawfik Zayyad, who is from Nazareth. You probably did not know that poets like Samih Kasem and Mahmoud Darwish are from “’48 Palestine”.

During the Egyptian revolution I happened to be in Cairo. I was privileged to witness Egyptian people writing history. I felt thrilled to be part of this. And I would also say, like many Egyptians underlined, this revolution has changed my life. At the same time, I understood how much my story was unknown to many Egyptians, and how much my passport was a burden. Since then, I applied for visa to visit Cairo again; it was rejected twice, without any explanation.

I believe it is about time to break the siege that Arab regimes and their media imposed on us. We call on our peers, the generation of Arab youth, to help us break down the walls that have been separating us. We are not traitors and not spies, “we are alive,consciousand active part ofthe Palestinian Arab people”. We are proud Arabs, exactly like you, and thanks to you!

The writer is a Palestinian political activist, media consultant and analyst.

http://english.ahram.org.eg/News/11995.aspx

Lod 29 March 2011 Some 1,500 Israeli Arabs take part in Land Day protest in Lod - Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News

Some 1,500 Israeli Arabs take part in Land Day protest in Lod - Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News

Some 1,500 Israeli Arabs take part in Land Day protest in Lod

Demonstrators protest against government demolitions of illegal houses in Lod, other 'racist' government policies, burn pictures of Lieberman and carry signs reading 'Enough with the Ethnic Cleansing.'

By Gili Cohen and Haaretz Service Tags: Israel news

Some 1,500 Israeli Arabs protested in Lod on Tuesday against government policies which affect Israel's Arab sector, launching the events of Land Day, to be marked on Wednesday.

The protesters were demonstrating against the government demolition of the houses of the Abu Eid family, which left some 50 family members, 30 of them children, without a home.

The protesters raised Palestinian flags, carried signs reading "Enough with the Ethnic Cleansing" and burned pictures of Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman.

Israeli Arab Knesset members and Jewish residents of mixed cities also participated in the protest.

Ibrahim Abu Saluk, a member of the Popular Committee in Lod, condemned the burning of Lieberman's photo saying, "This is not the point of the protest, and whoever did that did it on his own accord. We want to show that the policy of demolitions is not the solution."

Abu Saluk emphasized that the main reason for the protest was to demonstrate against the demolition of houses in Lod.

"This problem requires an urgent solution," Abu Saluk said. "The authorities report 1,600 illegal houses throughout the city of Lod, and if they carry out the demolitions the same way they did with the Abu Eid family, a serious humanitarian problem will emerge. There is a problem here and the authorities are ignoring it. People are living here as though they were in a refugee camp."

On Land Day, which is marked on March 30, Israel's Arab citizens protest the expropriation of their lands by the government.

The first Land Day protests were held on March 30, 1976, to protest government expropriation of Galilee land for "security and settlement purposes." Those protests deteriorated into violent clashes with security forces, leaving six Israeli Arab protesters dead.

More on this topic

• Police brace for possible Israeli Arab unrest on Land Day

World 2011 Cyber Word AE2011

Inside Outside.
I want to describe and share my experience Wednesday  March 9th  2011 and itś Implications.
For the first time I was at Cinema City Mall Rishon Lezion which is very New Mall.
IBM invited us to an hours presentation of IBM Software Group with a lot of talk about Cloud Technology.
After that we saw "True Grit" the Cohen Brothers film on a very Large Screen and all the sound Effects.
When I arrived at the "City" it was rain and stormy weather. Inside we were  cut off from the Outside News and Weather. Fully Air Conditioning and Heating. It was very Middle Class and I would say Upper Middle Class With big parking lots. You did not have too spend any Money but there are many attractions.
Now True Grit is very much Cowboyś and Indians period. But Texas is Texas and USA Federalism is basically the same for over 200 years. Texas is still very different to Massachusetts New York Chicago and California.
But I think the Cohen's (Coen's) are hinting on Present Law and Order, Lawlessness Power Violence and Politics Today. Karl Marx thought a revolution would happen in GB or Germany and he did not live to see it in Russia. All that Collapsed in 1989. Now we are going through the "Arab 1989" as some call it but the end results are not clear following the 2009 Crunch. And the Implications on the rest of the World, India, Pakistan and China too.
Inside I mean also those humans kept in Prison for Long Periods and In General living in "Bubbles".
Uncle Sam

Information technology in transition: The end of Wintel | The Economist

Information technology in transition: The end of Wintel | The Economist

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Information technology in transition

The end of Wintel

As Microsoft and Intel move apart, computing becomes multipolar

Jul 29th 2010

THEY were the Macbeths of information technology (IT): a wicked couple who seized power and abused it in bloody and avaricious ways. Or so critics of Microsoft and Intel used to say, citing the two firms’ supposed love of monopoly profits and dead rivals. But in recent years, the story has changed. Bill Gates, Microsoft’s founder, has retired to give away his billions. The “Wintel” couple (short for “Windows”, Microsoft’s flagship operating system, and “Intel”) are increasingly seen as yesterday’s tyrants. Rumours persist that a coup is brewing to oust Steve Ballmer, Microsoft’s current boss.

Yet there is life in the old technopolists. They still control the two most important standards in computing: Windows, the operating system for most personal computers, and “Intel Architecture”, the set of rules governing how software interacts with the processor it runs on. More than 80% of PCs still run on the “Wintel” standard. Demand for Windows and PC chips, which flagged during the global recession, has recovered. So have both firms’ results: to many people’s surprise, Microsoft announced a thumping quarterly profit of $4.5 billion in July; Intel earned an impressive $2.9 billion.

So now is a good time to take stock of IT’s most hated power couple. As The Economist went to press, Intel was on track to reach a settlement with America’s Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which would in effect end the antitrust woes that have plagued both firms. And Microsoft has recently strengthened its ties with ARM, Intel’s new archrival. This suggests that the Wintel marriage is crumbling.

Critics have often questioned both firms’ technological prowess. Yet Windows 7, the latest version of Microsoft’s operating system, is excellent, and customers have snapped it up. As for Intel, its manufacturing machine is peerless. Some of its transistors are so tiny that 2m would fit on the “.” at the end of this sentence.

Both firms have often co-operated, despite occasional crockery-throwing. Microsoft has been pushier: in the mid-1990s, for instance, Mr Gates leaned heavily on Andy Grove, Intel’s boss, to stop the development of software that trod on Windows’ turf. Intel backed down.

2010 Tel Aviv-Yafo - Chicago 1999

8th August 2010 Tel Aviv reminded me of Chicago 1999.
In Chicago when I went to most McDonalds and asked for a meal without French Fries- Chips they did not understand me as most of the workers where from Mexico.
In Tel-Aviv August 2010 escaping the Sticky Weather I found the same.
The Boss's are Israeli and all the Regular Workers are from all over the
World and do not speak Hebrew, sometimes English.
This is happening very fast.
Clothes are Cheap when Food is expensive. And Rent of Course.

2010 Egypt: A special report on Egypt: The best man always wins | The Economist

A special report on Egypt: The best man always wins | The Economist

ONE of the endearing things about Egypt is that although nearly everyone fiddles, breaks or ignores the rules, everyone gamely pretends to respect them. Elections, for instance, are an elaborate charade. Rarely does turnout exceed 20%, and this from a list of registered voters that, in 2005, covered only 40% of the eligible pool, by official count. Few people register because the legal period for doing so is short and comes many months before elections. Besides, registration involves a visit to a police station, which many Egyptians prefer to avoid. Foreign election observers are banned. The parties allowed to run for the People’s Assembly, Egypt’s parliament, are selected by a committee controlled by the ever-ruling National Democratic Party (NDP), which is headed by Mr Mubarak. Independents can stand, which is how the Muslim Brothers, banned as an organisation, field their candidates. But they risk arrest on some pretext, and harassment even without one.
The rest of this article on Linl Above

2010 Yafo Haredim

Order the arrest of demonstrators who had broken in Jaffa
16/05/2010 13:16:33

At about 11:00 Louis Pasteur Street in Jaffa, which was held picket disturbed archaeological work carried out there on suspicion that instead of tombs, open space and asked police protesters to leave but these were not according to police, 17 protesters were detained for questioning transferred open space.

Revision:

Later reporting vigil at Louis Pasteur Street in Jaffa, just arrived two buses filled with protesters who violated the order, large police forces instead.

Revision:

During the demonstration held today Louis Pasteur Street in Jaffa against the archaeological work carried out in a suspicion that there are graves, some forty suspects arrested were detained for riots, attacks on police officers conducting an illegal demonstration. Further investigation in the open.

Revision:

During a demonstration at St Louis Pasteur Jaffa delayed Arrested 50 suspects for questioning, of which 23 suspects were released and 27 were jailed for questioning.

2010 Tel Aviv-Yafo. Tzipi Livni. Livni to Haaretz: Likud and Kadima must join forces for peace

Livni to Haaretz: Likud and Kadima must join forces for peace
Opposition leader: Parties must combine forces to reach peace agreement with Palestinians, bring about a social shift.
By Aluf Benn Published 01:14 07.05.10
Story Highlights

* Opposition leader blasts PM for 'paying off' ultra-Orthodox
* Says Netanyahu avoiding making decisions on peace process

Opposition leader MK Tzipi Livni (Kadima ) on Thursday called to combine the forces of "the two large Zionist parties in Israel" - Kadima and Likud - to reach a peace agreement with the Palestinians and bring about a social shift.

"The prime minister is the one preventing the change," Livni said in an interview with Haaretz. "The parties he called 'our natural partners' before the elections are his means of preventing the change. There is no connection between what they represent and the Zionist vision. Neither the one [Theodor] Herzl outlined nor [Ze'ev] Jabotinsky, whose civic doctrine they have cast aside."

Livni blasted Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for "paying off" the ultra-Orthodox so that he could avoid making a decision on the peace process. She said Netanyahu is also evading a decision on social issues.

After the elections last year Livni met Netanyahu, who told her "the right-wing bloc won," she said. "I told him, there's another option, combining the two large parties' forces to advance peace [with the Palestinians] and internal agendas."

"Israel 2010 is a country in which women ride in the back of the bus, dry bones take precedence over saving lives, conversion is a mission impossible, the Zionist vision has blurred and defining the Jewish state has been given to a monopoly of ultra-Orthodox politicians that are taking advantage of the system and politicians. Society is divided into cloistered groups, each studying in its language - Hebrew, Arabic, Yiddish - the curriculum it sees fit," she said.

The public's attention has focused on the ultra-Orthodox community and core curriculum in recent days, Livni said, "and rightly so. We must act now, before the situation turns into mutual hatred that will bring no solution. Change is possible and the keys to change are in the hands of the Zionist parties representing the majority in Israel."

The change must consist of three co-dependent elements - education, military or national service and work, she said.

"The core curriculum is necessary from two aspects - creating a common basis reflecting Israel's values as a democratic Jewish state. Judaism and civic studies [must be taught] in every school. The second is providing every student with tools to join the labor force in the future and make a decent living. This is the only interpretation of equality - equal opportunity to students and a fairer distribution of the burden among the population. This, with joint values and vision, are critical to our existence as a society. Pluralism is not a substitute but complementary."

Livni said the state must cut off funding immediately for schools that don't teach core curriculum.

"Change is possible, but it will not be done with the agreement of the ultra-Orthodox parties. They have no reason [to agree], as long as Likud is the ruling party. Likud has bound its political destiny and all Israelis' fate to the ultra-Orthodox politicians' whims," she said.

"Kadima in my leadership refused to mortgage its world view. True, Kadima governments paid in the past. In my leadership it won't do so any more," Livni said.

Had Likud not dealt with the ultra-Orthodox, the two large Zionist parties could change the collision course Israel is on, both on the domestic and international fronts, she said. We could turn to a democratic Jewish-Zionist track, which protects individual rights in a democracy and creates a national common basis for the Jewish state, she said.

"The two parties could change the system of government to reduce the extortion power of the small parties, condition education funding on teaching the core curriculum and encourage anyone who can to join the labor force. They could also reach a peace agreement with the Palestinians based on two states. This is the only way to preserve the Jewish democratic identity," she said.

The peace goals and social goals are not contradictory, she said.

"In the past people used to say it was a matter of priorities, that it was worth paying and giving up [certain goals] to do the really important things, like a peace agreement. But this government is paying so that it won't have to reach an agreement. We can't wait and mend society only after we win all the battles. Otherwise it will be too late," she said.
by: Aluf Benn Haaretz

2010 Cairo 1999 Mona- Omar Sherif, French Law

From liberals and feminists, unsettling silence on rending the Muslim veil

By Mona Eltahawy washington post
Saturday, July 17, 2010; A13


The French parliament's vote this week to ban full-length veils in public was the right move by the wrong group.
Some have tried to present the ban as a matter of Islam vs. the West. It is not. First, Islam is not monolithic. It, like other major religions, has strains and sects. Many Muslim women -- despite their distaste for the European political right wing -- support the ban precisely because it is a strike against the Muslim right wing.
Some have likened this issue to Switzerland's move last year to ban the construction of minarets. On the one hand, it is preposterous to compare women's faces -- their identity -- to a stone pillar. Minarets are used to issue a call to prayer; they are a symbol of Islam. The niqab, the full-length veil that has openings only for the eyes, is a symbol only for the Muslim right.
But underlying both bans is a dangerous silence: liberal refusal to robustly discuss what it means to be European, what it means to be Muslim, and racism and immigration. Liberals decrying the infringement of women's rights should acknowledge that the absence of debate on these critical issues allowed the political right and the Muslim right to seize the situation.
Europe's ascendant political right is unapologetically xenophobic. It caricatures the religion that I practice and uses those distortions to fan Islamophobia. But ultra-conservative strains of Islam, such as Salafism and Wahhabism, also caricature our religion and use that Islamophobia to silence opposition. Salafi ideology, which is unapologetically misogynistic, has left its imprimatur on Islam globally by convincing too many Muslims that it is the purest and highest form of our faith.
The strains of Islam that promote face veils do not believe in the concept of a woman's right to choose and describe women as needing to be hidden to prove their "worth." Salafism and Wahhabism preach that women will burn in hell if they are not covered from head to toe -- whether they live in Saudi Arabia or France. There is no choice in such conditioning. That is not a message Muslims learn in our holy book, the Koran, nor is the face veil prescribed by the majority of Muslim scholars.
The French ban has been condemned as anti-liberal and anti-feminist. Where were those howls when niqabs began appearing in European countries, where for years women fought for rights? A bizarre political correctness tied the tongues of those who would normally rally to defend women's rights.
There are several ideological conflicts here: Within Islam, liberal and feminist Muslims refuse to believe that full-length veils are mandatory. In Saudi Arabia, where the prevalence of face veils is great, blogger Eman Al Nafjan wrote a post on Saudiwoman supporting the French ban: "I have heard Saudi women, who are conditioned to believe that covering is an unquestionable issue, sigh as they watch uncovered women on TV and say, 'They get this world, and we get the afterlife.' These are the women 'choosing' to cover, brainwashed into living to die."
But the problem is not just "over there." Feminist groups run by Muslim women in various Western countries fight misogynistic practices justified in the name of culture and religion. Cultural relativists, they say, don't want to "offend" anyone by protesting the disappearance of women behind the veil -- or worse.
For example, French women of North African and Muslim descent launched Ni Putes Ni Soumises (Neither Whores Nor Submissives) in response to violence against women in housing projects and forced marriages of immigrant women in France. That group supports the ban and has denounced the racism faced in France by immigrant women and men.
Cultural integration has failed, or not taken place, in many European countries, but women shouldn't pay the price for it.
Europe's liberals must ask themselves why they have been silent. It is clear that Europe's political right -- other countries have similar bans in the works -- does not care about Muslim women or their rights.
But Muslims must ask themselves the same question: Why the silence as some of our women fade into black, either as a form of identity politics or out of acquiescence to Salafism?
The pioneering Egyptian feminist Hoda Shaarawi famously removed her veil in 1923, declaring it a thing of the past. Almost a century later, we are foundering. The best way to support Muslim women would be to oppose both the racist political right wing and the niqabs and burqas of the Muslim right wing. Women should not be sacrificed to either.
Let's move away from abstract discussions and focus on the realities of women. The French were right to ban the veil in public. Those of us who really care about women's rights should talk about the dangers in equating piety with the disappearance of women.
Mona Eltahawy is an Egyptian-born writer and lecturer on Arab and Muslim issues.
Mona Eltahawy: Tea With Omar Sharif
The Jerusalem Report March 29, 2010

When I read that Egypt’s Journalist Union had punished two senior Egyptian editors – one a member of the country’s ruling party and the other an expert on Jewish affairs for violating its ban on contacts with Israel, I wondered if Omar Sharif ever thinks of me.

My nemesis wasn’t the once-heartthrob Egyptian actor but a State Security officer in Cairo whose nom de guerre was Omar Sharif and who, for six months in 1999, tormented me for moving to Jerusalem as a correspondent for Reuters. There is no law that bans Egyptians from visiting Israel but everyone knows that once you do, State Security will invite you over for “a cup of tea” – i.e., an interrogation.

I got Omar Sharif’s note inviting me for tea during a quick visit to Cairo the year I lived in Israel. “Miss Mona, an officer left this for you,” the doorman’s wife Umm Mokhtar said. An ebullient woman not easily intimidated, she was unusually subdued as she handed me the note, which I shoved absentmindedly into a jacket pocket. I was on my way to the airport, late as usual.

I did not think of him again until my next trip to Cairo a few months later, when my brother’s very anxious father-in-law took me aside. Once he mentioned the name Omar Sharif, I knew the surreal had kicked down the door into my life.

When I didn’t call Omar, he had gone to my apartment building and dragged Umm Mokhtar’s husband to the nearest police station for questioning as to my whereabouts. After the poor man convinced Omar that all he knew was that I was abroad somewhere, Omar went back to my apartment building where he spoke to the man from whom my parents had bought the apartment and who acted as de facto landlord.

He told Omar that all he knew about me was that I was a journalist and he offered the telephone number of my brother’s father-in-law who was looking after any matters regarding the apartment because my entire family lived abroad.

I told our relative I’d go in and see Omar. By the time we had our cup of tea, I’d resigned from Reuters and was back living in Cairo. Tall and bulky, Omar Sharif wore a shiny purple suit. He had a mustache and every sentence ended in an exclamation, usually not in my favor.

“Mona Eltahawy! Finally! You’re a real character,” Omar shouted. “Who on earth goes to Israel? I have to meet your father. If my daughter ever told me she wanted to go to Israel I’d break her neck!”

Stepping into his office, I walked into a thick wall of cologne; one of those Calvin Klein unisex scents fashionable about 10 years earlier. I didn’t know whether to feel flattered or worried.

“You see this file,” he said. “This is all you. Look – orders to have you followed, orders to tap your telephone. You’re a lot of trouble, you know.”

What had I been saying on the phone lately?

He left for a few moments to go and say his noon prayers. I sat alone in the room watching an Arabic language news channel that had the volume muted. I didn’t know if I was in trouble or not.

“So do you pray?” he asked when he came back.

“I do.”

“No way! You don’t look like the praying kind.”

“Who said religion had a look?” I ventured. Wrong, wrong, wrong. I was falling right into every trap he set for me.

“Well of course there’s a look to being religious,” he said. “Our religion is very specific about what’s wrong and what’s right. Take the traveling you like so much. A woman shouldn’t travel alone.”

I let that bait go. I was learning.

“Are you married? How old are you?” He continued.

“I’m 31. I joke I’m married to my job.”

“You can never get married. Who’s going to want to marry you with the life you lead, every day in a different city? You’ll end up with a man like my brother, a womanizer, who’ll cheat on you,” he said.

And so on and so forth till he got up, shook my hand and told me to call him if I ever needed help.

I tried to forget Omar.

A few months later as I visited my brother’s in-laws with my parents and sister – in town for a while – the telephone rang. It was Omar Sharif. He knew my father was in town. They spoke for a few moments. The next day, my father and mother said they wanted to talk to me.

“What did he mean when he said you were living a life that was not suitable for Egypt?” my father asked. After kicking down the door, the surreal was dancing on the rooftop of my life.

A distant relative, who had recently retired from State Security, was called. Omar Sharif’s paternalism had set the men in motion to save Mona.

“Mona, the guy’s already married,” the relative said after investigating. “I thought he wanted to marry you or something.”

“I know – he showed me his wife’s picture,” I replied.

He gave me the number of Omar’s supervising officer so that I could call him if Omar ever bothered me again.

About a year later, I pressed play on the flashing telephone answering machine.

“Peace be upon you Miss Mona. I’m just calling to see how you are. Give me a call when you hear this message. This is, of course, your ‘brother,’ Omar Sharif.”

1979 Jerusalem Cairo Peace, My De Chevau

1979 March Peace with Egypt after Saadat came Saturday evening 19th November 1977. My father Died before Purim 1978 and Peace Now was created in Jerusalem.
I had a Citroen 2CV which I will write about later.

Mona what do you think TF Nostalgia.
I heard an Arab Editor say that the Modern Arab World wants Peace with Israel. In contrast to most of the Media.
It is a fact that Carter was worried of Islamic Revolution in Egypt 1979 and that is why Saadat Carter and Begin made Peace with Egypt.

Here is an Article By Tom Friedman 1977-1979:

February 14, 2010

Op-Ed Columnist

1977 vs. 1979

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

Visiting Yemen and watching the small band of young reformers there struggle against the forces of separatism, Islamism, autocracy and terrorism, reminded me that the key forces shaping this region today were really set in motion between 1977 and 1979 — and nothing much has changed since. Indeed, one could say Middle East politics today is a struggle between 1977 and 1979 — and 1979 is still winning.

How so? Following the defeat of Egypt and other Arab armies by Israel in the 1967 war, Nasserism, a k a Arab nationalism, the abiding ideology of the day, was demolished. In its wake came two broad alternatives: The first, manifested by President Anwar Sadat of Egypt in his 1977 trip to Israel, was a bid to cast the Arab world’s future with the West, economic liberalization, modernization and acceptance of Israel. The weakness of “Sadatism,” though, was that it was an elite ideology with no cultural roots. The Egyptian state made peace with Israel, but Arab societies never followed.

The second Arab-Muslim response emerged in 1979. To start, there was the takeover that year of the Grand Mosque in Mecca by Islamist extremists who challenged the religious credentials of the Saudi ruling family. The Saudi rulers responded by forging a new bargain with their Islamists: Let us stay in power and we will give you a free hand in setting social norms, relations between the sexes and religious education inside Saudi Arabia — and abundant resources to spread Sunni Wahabi fundamentalism abroad.

The Saudi lurch backward coincided with Iran’s revolution in 1979, which brought Ayatollah Khomeini to power. That revolution set up a competition between Shiite Iran and Sunni Saudi Arabia for who was the real leader of the Muslim world, and it triggered a surge in oil prices that gave both fundamentalist regimes the resources to export their brands of puritanical Islam, through mosques and schools, farther than ever.

“Islam lost its brakes in 1979,” said Mamoun Fandy, a Middle East expert at the International Institute of Strategic Studies in London. And there was no moderate countertrend.

Finally, also in 1979, the Soviets invaded Afghanistan. Arab and Muslim mujahedeen fighters flocked to the cause — financed by Saudi Arabia at America’s behest — and in the process shifted Pakistan and Afghanistan in much more Islamist directions. Once these hard-core Muslim fighters, led by the likes of Osama bin Laden, defeated the Soviets, they turned their guns on America and its Arab allies.

In a smart essay in The Wall Street Journal, titled “The Radical Legacy of 1979,” the retired U.S. diplomat Edward Djerejian, who led the political section of the U.S. Embassy in Moscow in 1979, noted: “Last year we celebrated the great historic achievements marked by the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the subsequent unification of Germany. But we should also remember that events in the broader Middle East of 30 years ago have left, in sharp contrast, a bitter and dangerous legacy.”

In short, the Middle East we are dealing with today is the product of long-term trends dating back to 1979. And have no illusions, we propelled those trends. America looked the other way when Saudi Arabia Wahabi-fied itself. Ronald Reagan glorified the Afghan mujahedeen and the Europeans hailed the Khomeini revolution in Iran as a “liberation” event.

I believe the only way the forces of 1979 can be rolled back would be with another equally big bang — a new popular movement that is truly reformist, democratizing, open to the world, yet anchored in Muslim culture, not disconnected. Our best hopes are the fragile democratizing trends in Iraq, the tentative green revolution in Iran, plus the young reformers now coming of age in every Arab country. But it will not be easy.

The young reformers today “do not have a compelling story to tell,” remarked Lahcen Haddad, a political scientist at Rabat University in Morocco. “And they face a meta-narrative” — first developed by Nasser and later adopted by the Islamists — “that mobilizes millions and millions. That narrative says: ‘The Arabs and Muslims are victims of an imperialist-Zionist conspiracy aided by reactionary regimes in the Arab world. It has as its goal keeping the Arabs and Muslims backward in order to exploit their oil riches and prevent them from becoming as strong as they used to be in the Middle Ages — because that is dangerous for Israel and Western interests.’ ”

Today that meta-narrative is embraced across the Arab-Muslim political spectrum, from the secular left to the Islamic right. Deconstructing that story, and rebuilding a post-1979 alternative story based on responsibility, modernization, Islamic reformation and cross-cultural dialogue, is this generation’s challenge. I think it can happen, but it will require the success of the democratizing self-government movements in Iran and Iraq. That would spawn a whole new story.

I know it’s a long shot, but I’ll continue to hope for it. I’ve been chewing a lot of qat lately, and it makes me dreamy.

2010 Feb 5th Haaretz Poll:One year on, most Israelis disapprove of Netanyahu

_{Last update - 11:45 05/02/2010 haaretz}

One year on, most Israelis disapprove of Netanyahu

_{By Yossi Verter}

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is losing altitude, according to the Haaretz-Dialog poll published here. The results show that, for the first time in a year, a majority of the public is dissatisfied with his performance and questions his suitability as prime minister.

This is purely personal, not party-related. Likud under his leadership is actually stronger: If elections were held today, the party would get 35 Knesset seats, eight more than its current total and 23 more than it received in 2006. Netanyahu took a broken, shattered party that had been split and decapitated by the predecessor of his predecessor - i.e., Ariel Sharon - and brought it back to life. No one can take that away from him.

Every few months, this poll, conducted under the supervision of Prof. Camil Fuchs from the Department of Statistics at Tel Aviv University, checks the prime minister's political health. Since his election, Netanyahu had been in pretty good shape. There were always more people who were happy with him than those who were not, generally with an 8-10 point spread in his favor. In the new survey, though, that situation has changed. When it comes to suitability for the premiership, Netanyahu still ranks ahead of his rival, Kadima leader Tzipi Livni. But the gap is narrowing: Not in her favor, but to his detriment.

Two reasons for this leap to mind. One is the "Sara effect." In the past three weeks, Netanyahu has been buffeted by negative, embarrassing reports about his domineering wife and about him personally, as well as about how he is dealing with her and about developments in his bureau.

But the main reason for the drop in his popularity is his decision to freeze construction in the settlements - something no right-wing prime minister before him ever dared to do. The dry facts tell the whole story: Netanyahu is losing support among right-wing voters (though not in the Likud). At the same time, he is gaining popularity among the center and the left. The voters on the right side of the political spectrum are disappointed with him. They still backed him after he declared his support for the two-state solution, but once he took a concrete step they started to turn a cold shoulder.

The alternatives

After almost a year in the opposition, Tzipi Livni remains the only significant political alternative to Netanyahu among the three large- or medium-size parties - even though Kadima almost slipped through her fingers; even though she is in the midst of a struggle against the party's No. 2, Shaul Mofaz; and even though Kadima's impact as an opposition power is negligible.

Fully 89 percent of Kadima voters prefer Livni over Mofaz. This finding shows how cut off he is from Kadima's voters (or, in this case, from the party's registered members, who determine its leadership). If Mofaz stays in Kadima, runs and defeats Livni, he will transform the party into something completely different from what it is today - he will make it a pale copy of Likud.

But in the poll, Kadima loses three seats to Labor, which has nine sweet seats, as opposed to six in the last Haaretz-Dialog poll, in November (and 13 in the last election). The reason: internal wrangling in Kadima. But the new data also indicate that half of Kadima's voters - 14 Knesset seats - would consider voting for a new party led by journalist and television presenter Yair Lapid.

Lapid also would draw many people from Labor and Meretz: In total, based on this survey, nearly a quarter of the country's voters would likely consider giving Lapid their vote. At the moment, he is in a dream spot for a wannabe politician. He is the presenter of the most watched current-events television program on Friday night; he writes a column in the country's most widely read weekend newspaper magazine; he is perceived as a victim because of the proposed "Lapid bill," a move by his opponents to block him from running in the next elections; he is gaining points from the well-publicized troubles of Kadima and from the built-in wretchedness of Labor; and he has just published a book about his late father, which became an instant best-seller. All he has to do now is rescue two babies from a burning house and nothing will be able to keep him from being elected prime minister.

On his way into the political arena, Lapid has to keep in mind the experience of one person: Amnon Lipkin-Shahak, the former chief of staff. Before he ran in the late 1990s, at the height of his popularity, the polls gave a party headed by him 20-plus seats. But the moment he actually entered politics there wasn't a mistake that he didn't make. Lipkin-Shahak ended up as No. 2 in the Center Party, whose six seats faded away in the twinkling of an eye. Lapid would do well to give him a call before he takes a commercial break and doesn't come back.

The successors

Shimon Peres had Yitzhak Rabin (and vice versa) as his right-hand man. Afterward he had Ehud Barak. Ariel Sharon had Benjamin Netanyahu. Each of those prime ministers had a "natural" successor, someone who was considered - by the political arena, his party and the media - as the one and only possibility. Netanyahu has no one, no No. 2.

The Haaretz pollsters asked about potential successors in Likud and Labor after the era of Netanyahu and Barak; the question was put to voters in general and not to the registered members who will choose the party's leaders. In Likud there are three potential heirs: Vice Prime Minister Moshe Ya'alon, Vice Prime Minister Silvan Shalom and Education Minister Gideon Sa'ar. The three are almost neck and neck, both among the general public and among Likud voters.

Sa'ar, a young minister serving his first cabinet term, has leaped forward and is now positioned alongside Shalom and Ya'alon, with Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz faltering, well behind. In the face of Ya'alon's magnificent military record (he was chief of staff) and of the senior government posts Shalom held (foreign affairs, treasury), Sa'ar's success as education minister is highly significant.

Among Labor and Meretz voters, only one successor to Barak looms at this stage: Social Affairs Minister Isaac Herzog. He is well ahead of MK Shelly Yachimovich and Minority Affairs Minister Avishay Braverman. Yachimovich, a fairly new MK, is doing pretty well - on the assumption that she and her colleagues will still have a party to lead.

The Labor Party shows a 50-percent increase - from six seats in the last poll to nine in this one. But the whole center-left camp has 48 seats, unchanged from the poll three months ago, whereas the right-wing bloc has 72 seats - also unchanged. In the current Knesset, the center-left bloc has 55 seats, as compared to 65 for the right. In short, a year after the elections, the right-wing bloc still remains dominant.

A lobby revived

On Tuesday afternoon, in the old lecture hall of the Knesset, the Land of Israel lobby was reborn. It was first established 22 years ago by Likud MK Michael Eitan. A right-wing parliamentary body, its main effort was devoted to tightening the settlers' hold on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Now, with Gaza gone, MK Zeev Elkin (Likud) and MK Aryeh Eldad (National Union) decided to recreate the lobby. Elkin is the chairman of the Likud faction and the coalition, both of which are headed by a prime minister who declared his support for the two-state solution and ordered a construction freeze in the settlements. In the near future, Elkin will have to muster support for that policy among the coalition members, while heading a body that preaches against it.

The new lobby's basic principles include "strengthening Israel's hold throughout the Land of Israel and particularly in Judea-Samaria," "preventing any harm from befalling the settlement project in Judea-Samaria," "promoting legislation that will bolster settlement in those regions," and "refashioning the policy of the defense establishment for the benefit of promoting settlement in these regions." And so on.

In addition to a large number of MKs, the founding meeting was attended by all the leaders of the settlement movement, Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin (Likud) and two Likud ministers: Communications Minister Moshe Kahlon and Minister without Portfolio Benny Begin, who is also a member of the "forum of seven," the supreme body in the government. Both ministers expressed support for the lobby's principles, which are totally at variance with those espoused by Netanyahu. Begin even told the meeting: "In the months ahead, in the years ahead, we shall have to work together, and work together we shall."

Work for what? Against whom? Against what?

The other Likud ministers were no-shows, but sent touching messages of support. "Strengthening our hold throughout the Land of Israel and in the Golan Heights is a basic, existential and security need whose roots lie deep in history," one minister wrote.

"Even though I am not there with you, my heart is definitely with you. May you only increase and grow stronger," another poeticized. "We are there and we will remain there thanks to our forefathers," said another. "We must encourage settlement activity in all parts of the land," a fourth minister asserted. And so on.

In fact, the only two ministers who did not send messages were Netanyahu and Dan Meridor. One who did was Eitan, who founded the lobby in 1988. He wrote Elkin that he believes the lobby's goals are more compatible with those of the extremist National Union than with Likud and the coalition, that the lobby is misguided and that its views are in "thunderous contradiction" to Netanyahu's policy. "I suggest that you look for a different path," Eitan wrote.

MK Eldad didn't know in advance what Eitan had written. At the start of the meeting he solemnly informed those present that he would soon read the letter sent by the founder of the original lobby, Michael Eitan. Everyone applauded warmly. The letter was not read out. Who wants to be a party pooper?

After the meeting, the settler leaders made their way to the MKs' cafeteria. At the entrance, one of them ran into Ze'ev Boim, a former Herut and Likud man, but of late in Kadima. "Ze'evik, join us, be part of the lobby," the settler urged Boim.

"And what will we do there?" Boim asked.

"We will save the Land of Israel," the settler replied, and laughed loudly and long.

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2009 Ramat Gan Netanyahu's Bar Ilan speach

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Speech at the Begin-Sadat Center at Bar-Ilan University June 2009

(S.C. Is this the Zig or the Zag...)
Honored guests, citizens of Israel.

Peace has always been our people’s most ardent desire. Our prophets gave the world the vision of peace, we greet one another with wishes of peace, and our prayers conclude with the word peace.

We are gathered this evening in an institution named for two pioneers of peace, Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat, and we share in their vision.

Two and half months ago, I took the oath of office as the Prime Minister of Israel. I pledged to establish a national unity government – and I did. I believed and I still believe that unity was essential for us now more than ever as we face three immense challenges – the Iranian threat, the economic crisis, and the advancement of peace.

The Iranian threat looms large before us, as was further demonstrated yesterday. The greatest danger confronting Israel, the Middle East, the entire world and human race, is the nexus between radical Islam and nuclear weapons. I discussed this issue with President Obama during my recent visit to Washington, and I will raise it again in my meetings next week with European leaders. For years, I have been working tirelessly to forge an international alliance to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.

Confronting a global economic crisis, the government acted swiftly to stabilize Israel’s economy. We passed a two year budget in the government – and the Knesset will soon approve it.

And the third challenge, so exceedingly important, is the advancement of peace. I also spoke about this with President Obama, and I fully support the idea of a regional peace that he is leading.

I share the President’s desire to bring about a new era of reconciliation in our region. To this end, I met with President Mubarak in Egypt, and King Abdullah in Jordan, to elicit the support of these leaders in expanding the circle of peace in our region.

I turn to all Arab leaders tonight and I say: “Let us meet. Let us speak of peace and let us make peace. I am ready to meet with you at any time. I am willing to go to Damascus, to Riyadh, to Beirut, to any place- including Jerusalem.
I call on the Arab countries to cooperate with the Palestinians and with us to advance an economic peace. An economic peace is not a substitute for a political peace, but an important element to achieving it. Together, we can undertake projects to overcome the scarcities of our region, like water desalination or to maximize its advantages, like developing solar energy, or laying gas and petroleum lines, and transportation links between Asia, Africa and Europe.

The economic success of the Gulf States has impressed us all and it has impressed me. I call on the talented entrepreneurs of the Arab world to come and invest here and to assist the Palestinians – and us – in spurring the economy.

Together, we can develop industrial areas that will generate thousands of jobs and create tourist sites that will attract millions of visitors eager to walk in the footsteps of history – in Nazareth and in Bethlehem, around the walls of Jericho and the walls of Jerusalem, on the banks of the Sea of Galilee and the baptismal site of the Jordan.
There is an enormous potential for archeological tourism, if we can only learn to cooperate and to develop it.

I turn to you, our Palestinian neighbors, led by the Palestinian Authority, and I say: Let’s begin
negotiations immediately without preconditions.
Israel is obligated by its international commitments and expects all parties to keep their commitments.

We want to live with you in peace, as good neighbors. We want our children and your children to never again experience war: that parents, brothers and sisters will never again know the agony of losing loved ones in battle; that our children will be able to dream of a better future and realize that dream; and that together we will invest our energies in plowshares and pruning hooks, not swords and spears.

I know the face of war. I have experienced battle. I lost close friends, I lost a brother. I have seen the pain of bereaved families. I do not want war. No one in Israel wants war.

If we join hands and work together for peace, there is no limit to the development and prosperity we can achieve for our two peoples – in the economy, agriculture, trade, tourism and education - most importantly, in providing our youth a better world in which to live, a life full of tranquility, creativity, opportunity and hope.

If the advantages of peace are so evident, we must ask ourselves why peace remains so remote, even as our hand remains outstretched to peace? Why has this conflict continued for more than sixty years?

In order to bring an end to the conflict, we must give an honest and forthright answer to the question: What is the root of the conflict?

In his speech to the first Zionist Conference in Basel, the founder of the Zionist movement, Theodore Herzl, said about the Jewish national home “This idea is so big that we must speak of it only in the simplest terms.” Today, I will speak about the immense challenge of peace in the simplest words possible.

Even as we look toward the horizon, we must be firmly connected to reality, to the truth. And the simple truth is that the root of the conflict was, and remains, the refusal to recognize the right of the Jewish people to a state of their own, in their historic homeland.

In 1947, when the United Nations proposed the partition plan of a Jewish state and an Arab state, the entire Arab world rejected the resolution. The Jewish community, by contrast, welcomed it by dancing and rejoicing.

The Arabs rejected any Jewish state, in any borders.

Those who think that the continued enmity toward Israel is a product of our presence in Judea, Samaria and Gaza, is confusing cause and consequence.

The attacks against us began in the 1920s, escalated into a comprehensive attack in 1948 with the declaration of Israel’s independence, continued with the fedayeen attacks in the 1950s, and climaxed in 1967, on the eve of the six-day war, in an attempt to tighten a noose around the neck of the State of Israel.

All this occurred during the fifty years before a single Israeli soldier ever set foot in Judea and Samaria .

Fortunately, Egypt and Jordan left this circle of enmity. The signing of peace treaties have brought about an end to their claims against Israel, an end to the conflict. But to our regret, this is not the case with the Palestinians. The closer we get to an agreement with them, the further they retreat and raise demands that are inconsistent with a true desire to end the conflict.

Many good people have told us that withdrawal from territories is the key to peace with the Palestinians. Well, we withdrew. But the fact is that every withdrawal was met with massive waves of terror, by suicide bombers and thousands of missiles.

We tried to withdraw with an agreement and without an agreement. We tried a partial withdrawal and a full withdrawal. In 2000 and again last year, Israel proposed an almost total withdrawal in exchange for an end to the conflict, and twice our offers were rejected.

We evacuated every last inch of the Gaza strip, we uprooted tens of settlements and evicted thousands of Israelis from their homes, and in response, we received a hail of missiles on our cities, towns and children.

The claim that territorial withdrawals will bring peace with the Palestinians, or at least advance peace, has up till now not stood the test of reality.

In addition to this, Hamas in the south, like Hezbollah in the north, repeatedly proclaims their commitment to “liberate” the Israeli cities of Ashkelon, Beersheba, Acre and Haifa.
Territorial withdrawals have not lessened the hatred, and to our regret, Palestinian moderates are not yet ready to say the simple words: Israel is the nation-state of the Jewish people, and it will stay that way.

Achieving peace will require courage and candor from both sides, and not only from the Israeli side.
The Palestinian leadership must arise and say: “Enough of this conflict. We recognize the right of the Jewish people to a state of their own in this land, and we are prepared to live beside you in true peace.”
I am yearning for that moment, for when Palestinian leaders say those words to our people and to their people, then a path will be opened to resolving all the problems between our peoples, no matter how complex they may be.


Therefore, a fundamental prerequisite for ending the conflict is a public, binding and unequivocal Palestinian recognition of Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people.

To vest this declaration with practical meaning, there must also be a clear understanding that the Palestinian refugee problem will be resolved outside Israel’s borders. For it is clear that any demand for resettling Palestinian refugees within Israel undermines Israel’s continued existence as the state of the Jewish people.

The Palestinian refugee problem must be solved, and it can be solved, as we ourselves proved in a similar situation. Tiny Israel successfully absorbed tens of thousands of Jewish refugees who left their homes and belongings in Arab countries.

Therefore, justice and logic demand that the Palestinian refugee problem be solved outside Israel’s borders. On this point, there is a broad national consensus. I believe that with goodwill and international investment, this humanitarian problem can be permanently resolved.

So far I have spoken about the need for Palestinians to recognize our rights. In am moment, I will speak openly about our need to recognize their rights.

But let me first say that the connection between the Jewish people and the Land of Israel has lasted for more than 3500 years. Judea and Samaria, the places where Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, David and Solomon, and Isaiah and Jeremiah lived, are not alien to us. This is the land of our forefathers.

The right of the Jewish people to a state in the land of Israel does not derive from the catastrophes that have plagued our people. True, for 2000 years the Jewish people suffered expulsions, pogroms, blood libels, and massacres which culminated in a Holocaust - a suffering which has no parallel in human history.

There are those who say that if the Holocaust had not occurred, the state of Israel would never have been established. But I say that if the state of Israel would have been established earlier, the Holocaust would not have occured.
This tragic history of powerlessness explains why the Jewish people need a sovereign power of self-defense.
But our right to build our sovereign state here, in the land of Israel, arises from one simple fact: this is the homeland of the Jewish people, this is where our identity was forged.

As Israel’s first Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion proclaimed in Israel’s Declaration of Independence: “The Jewish people arose in the land of Israel and it was here that its spiritual, religious and political character was shaped. Here they attained their sovereignty, and here they bequeathed to the world their national and cultural treasures, and the most eternal of books.”

But we must also tell the truth in its entirety: within this homeland lives a large Palestinian community. We do not want to rule over them, we do not want to govern their lives, we do not want to impose either our flag or our culture on them.

In my vision of peace, in this small land of ours, two peoples live freely, side-by-side, in amity and mutual respect. Each will have its own flag, its own national anthem, its own government. Neither will threaten the security or survival of the other.

These two realities – our connection to the land of Israel, and the Palestinian population living within it – have created deep divisions in Israeli society. But the truth is that we have much more that unites us than divides us.
I have come tonight to give expression to that unity, and to the principles of peace and security on which there is broad agreement within Israeli society. These are the principles that guide our policy.

This policy must take into account the international situation that has recently developed. We must recognize this reality and at the same time stand firmly on those principles essential for Israel.
I have already stressed the first principle – recognition. Palestinians must clearly and unambiguously recognize Israel as the state of the Jewish people. The second principle is: demilitarization. The territory under Palestinian control must be demilitarized with ironclad security provisions for Israel.
Without these two conditions, there is a real danger that an armed Palestinian state would emerge that would become another terrorist base against the Jewish state, such as the one in Gaza.
We don’t want Kassam rockets on Petach Tikva, Grad rockets on Tel Aviv, or missiles on Ben-Gurion airport. We want peace.

In order to achieve peace, we must ensure that Palestinians will not be able to import missiles into their territory, to field an army, to close their airspace to us, or to make pacts with the likes of Hezbollah and Iran. On this point as well, there is wide consensus within Israel.

It is impossible to expect us to agree in advance to the principle of a Palestinian state without assurances that this state will be demilitarized.

On a matter so critical to the existence of Israel, we must first have our security needs addressed.


Therefore, today we ask our friends in the international community, led by the United States, for what is critical to the security of Israel: Clear commitments that in a future peace agreement, the territory controlled by the Palestinians will be demilitarized: namely, without an army, without control of its airspace, and with effective security measures to prevent weapons smuggling into the territory – real monitoring, and not what occurs in Gaza today. And obviously, the Palestinians will not be able to forge military pacts.

Without this, sooner or later, these territories will become another Hamastan. And that we cannot accept.

I told President Obama when I was in Washington that if we could agree on the substance, then the terminology would not pose a problem.

And here is the substance that I now state clearly:

If we receive this guarantee regarding demilitirization and Israel’s security needs, and if the Palestinians recognize Israel as the State of the Jewish people, then we will be ready in a future peace agreement to reach a solution where a demilitarized Palestinian state exists alongside the Jewish state.

Regarding the remaining important issues that will be discussed as part of the final settlement, my positions are known: Israel needs defensible borders, and Jerusalem must remain the united capital of Israel with continued religious freedom for all faiths.

The territorial question will be discussed as part of the final peace agreement. In the meantime, we have no intention of building new settlements or of expropriating additional land for existing settlements.

But there is a need to enable the residents to live normal lives, to allow mothers and fathers to raise their children like families elsewhere. The settlers are neither the enemies of the people nor the enemies of peace. Rather, they are an integral part of our people, a principled, pioneering and Zionist public.

Unity among us is essential and will help us achieve reconciliation with our neighbors. That reconciliation must already begin by altering existing realities. I believe that a strong Palestinian economy will strengthen peace.

If the Palestinians turn toward peace – in fighting terror, in strengthening governance and the rule of law, in educating their children for peace and in stopping incitement against Israel - we will do our part in making every effort to facilitate freedom of movement and access, and to enable them to develop their economy. All of this will help us advance a peace treaty between us.

Above all else, the Palestinians must decide between the path of peace and the path of Hamas. The Palestinian Authority will have to establish the rule of law in Gaza and overcome Hamas. Israel will not sit at the negotiating table with terrorists who seek their destruction.

Hamas will not even allow the Red Cross to visit our kidnapped soldier Gilad Shalit, who has spent three years in captivity, cut off from his parents, his family and his people. We are committed to bringing him home, healthy and safe.

With a Palestinian leadership committed to peace, with the active participation of the Arab world, and the support of the United States and the international community, there is no reason why we cannot achieve a breakthrough to peace.

Our people have already proven that we can do the impossible. Over the past 61 years, while constantly defending our existence, we have performed wonders.

Our microchips are powering the world’s computers. Our medicines are treating diseases once considered incurable. Our drip irrigation is bringing arid lands back to life across the globe. And Israeli scientists are expanding the boundaries of human knowledge.

If only our neighbors would respond to our call – peace too will be in our reach.

I call on the leaders of the Arab world and on the Palestinian leadership, let us continue together on the path of Menahem Begin and Anwar Sadat, Yitzhak Rabin and King Hussein. Let us realize the vision of the prophet Isaiah, who in Jerusalem 2700 years ago said: “nations shall not lift up sword against nation, and they shall learn war no more.”

With God’s help, we will know no more war. We will know peace.