As published in The Guardian. From our Prime Minister:

1967: Israel cannot make peace alone
We must pursue a comprehensive solution with energy and vision, writes Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert

Wednesday June 6, 2007
The Guardian

Six days, 40 years ago. Looking back to the weeks preceding the war, it may be difficult for you to imagine just how desperate life seemed for Israelis, ringed by peoples whose armies pointed their weapons towards us, whose leaders daily promised the imminent destruction of our state and whose newspapers carried crude cartoons of Jews being kicked off the face of the earth. As we consecrated mass graves in expectation of the worst, we were once again people facing annihilation. We had no alternative but to defend ourselves, no strategic allies to ensure our survival. We stood alone.

Our victory in those six days in June 1967 – swift, complete and totally unexpected – showed us and the world we were not going to be wiped off the map that easily. Israel fought an unwanted war to defend her very existence, and today there are still leaders who call for Israel to be wiped off the map. But there is a danger that that will be forgotten, overtaken by a re-reading of history. Our survival in 1967 is now, in the eyes of the world and, with worrying consequences in the UK, the original sin of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Our opponents argue against the ongoing “occupation” as if it were the Gordian knot of the conflict. If only we were to leave the territories the conflict would end. And they threaten international isolation if we do not.

If only the conflict were so simple; if only the answer were so simple. Over the last 15 years, successive Israeli governments have initiated talks with the Palestinians in every conceivable permutation in an attempt to reach a settlement. In the 1990s, Israel withdrew from all the Palestinian cities in the West Bank, handing its affairs over to a Palestinian Authority. Nearly two years ago, Israel withdrew its troops and civilians from Gaza, with no preconditions. Last year my Kadima party came to power on an agenda promising further withdrawals. In the face of concessions that have threatened our own domestic consensus, the constant refrain has been the Palestinian refusal to end its violent attacks on our citizens.

Palestinian violence is not a response to the capture of the West Bank and Gaza. Palestinian nationalism’s roots are not so shallow. From the emergence of the Zionist movement over 100 years ago, Arabs have opposed our claim to independence on our historic homeland, often violently. Our conflict is not territorial, it is national.

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Ynet News put together a very interesting special report today on the 40th anniversary.

Here it is.

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**Video courtesy of Hollyyyyy on YouTube**

We think the NYT did an important job of addressing these disturbing and incredibly hypocritical trends among Britain’s unions to single out the Jewish State for censure regarding a decades old conflict fraught with complexity.

As the Times points out, Israeli journalists and academics are some of the state’s harshest critics as are Israel’s vibrant, creative, loving and humane citizens. Being a critic, however, means just that. Engaging and criticizing not slandering and de-legitimizing.

We want to solve this conflict more than anyone else in the world. We want to have a normal life without fear of missiles, rockets, suicide bombs, regional wars, and nuclear annihilation. We want to have peace with our neighbors as we have done with Egypt and Jordan and tried with the Palestinians in 2000, and will continue to try. But how can we feel secure when Iran’s leader continually calls for our destruction, Hamas continually call for our destruction, Hezbollah continues to call for our destruction, and the British Unions turn around and boycott us.

From the New York Times Editorial Board:

June 3, 2007
Editorial
Malicious Boycotts
The University and College Union, a newly formed British union of college teachers, shamefully called last week for a boycott on contacts and exchanges with Israeli academic institutions. That follows on the shameful call in April by the National Union of Journalists in Britain to boycott Israeli goods.

It is hard to imagine two organizations that should be less given to such nonsense. Who would respect the judgment of a scholar who selects or rejects colleagues on political grounds? Who would trust the dispatches of a reporter who has been openly engaged against one side of a conflict? The unions argue that they have an obligation to demonstrate labor-union solidarity with the oppressed, as they did in opposing apartheid. That is absurd.

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This is a very interesting and informative interview with the Wall Street Journal and former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, specifically the the bit about Iran.

Dealing With Iran
Israel’s former–and future?–prime minister talks about the threats to peace.

BY JAMES TARANTO
Saturday, May 26, 2007 12:01 a.m. EDT

NEW YORK–Benjamin Netanyahu runs a few minutes late for our Monday afternoon meeting. When he arrives in his midtown Manhattan hotel suite, he explains that he has just received word from home of the latest Palestinian war crime. “Hamas fired 15 rockets into Israel today. One of them hit a car, killed a woman,” says Mr. Netanyahu, the former Israeli prime minister and now leader of the opposition. The victim, 32-year-old Shirel Friedman, was on her way to see her mother.

For the 57-year-old Mr. Netanyahu, there is a sort of grim vindication in such attacks. He quit the government of then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in August 2005, objecting to Mr. Sharon’s plan for unilateral withdrawal from Gaza. “I had a very big argument with him on this,” Mr. Netanyahu recalls. “He thought that we would have the right of free action–that we would garner international support for any reaction. I thought that is a very thin sheet of ice–the international community can turn against you as quickly as it turns for you–but the overwhelming fact is that the Muslim militants and Iran will find a new base, a few miles from Tel Aviv, with the ability to cover the south of the country and the center of the country with rockets.”

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Although our critics like to think that the problems besetting the Middle East are simple– it’s simply Israel’s fault– even a slightly more thorough examination of the situation reveals the complexity of the region. Case in point, Zvi Barel dissects the recent crisis in Lebanon for Haaretz:

Meshal learns that life is no picnic

By Zvi Barel

Khaled Meshal didn’t expect that his most significant cooperation with Fatah would have to occur in Lebanon and not in Gaza. Nor did he believe that from his secure location in Damascus, where he resides under Assad’s patronage, he would have to argue with the Lebanese prime minister. But on Tuesday he realized that Lebanon was his key diplomatic front and that he’d better send his representative in Lebanon, Osama Hamdan, to sit like a scolded child next to the Fatah representative in Lebanon, Abbas Zaki, and the representatives of the other Palestinian factions, in order to take a drubbing from Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora.

And not just like a scolded child, but like one even Hezbollah was furious at, because the Palestinian leadership in Lebanon was unable to calm the situation. It thereby made Syria and Hezbollah appear responsible for the deterioration in the country – all this just when Hezbollah was seeking to exert its control over the course of events and look good in the eyes of the Lebanese public, ahead of the possible establishment of an international court to judge those responsible for the assassination of former prime minister Rafik Hariri.

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As per our post yesterday about the role of the media when covering asymmetric conflicts between democracies and terror organizations we’d like to highlight some recent research and reporting on these issues, namely, the recent report, The Israeli-Hezbollah War of 2006: The Media As A Weapon in Asymmetrical Conflict by Marvin Kalb, Senior Fellow, Shorenstein Center, and Carol Saivetz, at Harvard University. Here’s the abstract:

“Based on content analysis of global media and interviews with many diplomats and journalists, this paper describes the trajectory of the media from objective observer to fiery advocate, becoming in fact a weapon of modern warfare. The paper also shows how an open society, Israel, is victimized by its own openness and how a closed sect, Hezbollah, can retain almost total control of the daily message of journalism and propaganda.” Full Report here.

This is not only an Israeli/Arab conflict issue. As the US led global War on Terror has illustrated over the last 6 years, many democratic countries are confronted by these same issues. Terror groups are able to set the media agenda by perpetrating spectacular acts of terrorism which play well for TV, as well as post their gruesome exploits on the internet for all to see, and the media unwittingly provides them a global platform. Meanwhile, these same groups restrict all access to their inner dysfunctions and coercive ideological controls, as illustrated in Kalb’s report.

In our case, the media is able to scrutinize Israel because we value and uphold freedom of the press. They deconstruct our every failing and debate because they can, and at the same time treat our autocratic neighbors and terror utilizing enemies with a different standard because they must. This is not an accusation, to be fair the media tries to get the story right, but it is foolish to believe that the media can remain objective when covering asymmetric conflicts and conflicts between open and closed societies. The media either provides an invaluable platform for terror groups without any of the uncomfortable scrutiny, as they work under the threat of violence or even worse for journalists, denial of access, or they create a perception of the open society as being weak and confused because it speaks with multiple voices and cannot hide its warts.

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This says it all.

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The recent conflicts unfolding in Southern Israel/Gaza and in Northern Lebanon/Nahr el-Bared camp are eerily similar in that in both cases you have terror groups cynically hiding behind civilians while provoking a fight with another power. As long as extremists are allowed to sow their violent ideologies and practices, whether it is launching missiles into Israel or spreading unrest in Lebanon, these conflicts will continue without resolution.

To create the conditions for peace these extremists must be confronted one way or another.
Here is some background on the conflicts raging in Lebanon and Southern Israel/Gaza.

From YNET:
Lebanese troops tighten siege of camp

Soldiers pound Palestinian refugee camp with artillery day after worst eruption of violence since end of1975-90 civil war

Lebanese troops tightened a siege of a Palestinian refugee camp Monday where a shadowy group suspected of ties to al-Qaeda was holed up, pounding it with artillery a day after the worst eruption of violence since the end of the 1975-90 civil war.

The death toll from Sunday’s violence climbed to near 50, but it was not known how many civilians have been killed inside the Nahr el-Bared camp on the outskirts of the northern port city of Tripoli, the scene of the heaviest fighting. No new deaths on Monday have been reported.

Lebanese officials said one of the men killed Sunday was a suspect in a failed German train bombing — another indication the camp had become a refuge for Fatah Islam militants planning attacks outside of Lebanon. In the past, others affiliated with the group in the camp have said they were aiming to send trained fighters into Iraq and the group’s leader has been linked to al-Qaeda in Iraq.

The rest is here.

From HAARETZ:
Hamas, Fatah officials: Internal fighting in Gaza is far from over

By Avi Issacharoff

Members of both Hamas and Fatah said Monday that internal infighting was far from over, just one day after Egyptian mediators announced a new cease-fire aimed at ending nine days of fighting that has left roughly 50 people dead.

The fighting between Fatah and Hamas has abated in recent days, as Israel has responded to a heavy Qassam rocket fire with a bombing campaign against Hamas targets, but tensions remain high.

“The Israeli attacks will only postpone the internal fighting but will not end it,” said senior Fatah official Ziad Abu Ein. “As long as there are many guns out on the streets it is very easy to renew Palestinian-Palestinian fighting.”

The rest is here.

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Our Foreign Minister, Tzipi Livni, issued a statement yesterday imploring the international community to take action and condemn the constant barrage of missiles Israel has suffered under the past 7 years.

Here is here release:

“We expect the international community to demand of the Palestinian Authority and the Palestinians to stop this violence against innocent civilians in Israel.

Israeli civilians are now under ongoing attacks by terrorist organizations which are part of the Palestinian government headed by Hamas, which is itself a terrorist organization. Israel views the Palestinian government as responsible for the situation.

The situation in the last two days is unbearable. It is important to understand that the Israeli government has shown restraint in the last two months, but the last two days, in which Israeli civilians are being attacked on a daily basis with missiles from the Gaza strip – a place that Israel left in order to give the Palestinians the possibility to create a normal life and not to attack Israel – this is a situation that should be changed.

The Israeli government will take all the necessary steps in order to give security to Israeli citizens, and we expect the international community to demand of the Palestinian Authority and the Palestinians to stop this violence against innocent civilians in Israel.

The army has received instructions to act in accordance with some of the proposals that were submitted to us. The fact that terrorist organizations that actually make up part of the government in the Palestinian Authority, headed by Hamas, are involved in this shooting is a situation that, from Israel’s standpoint, is intolerable.

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