We’d only like to add that it’s about time…

And for all you fluent in Farsi here’s a link to the website just launched today.

From YNET:

Foreign Ministry to launch website for readers in Iran

Ministry to launch Persian-language version website for Iranian Internet surfers to counterbalance Iranian regime’s anti-Semitic, anti-Israel propaganda

Itamar Eichner Published: 07.31.06, 18:05 / Israel News

The Foreign Ministry will soon launch a Persian-language version of its website, which will give Iranian Internet surfers direct access to the official position of the State of Israel.

The site’s editor-in-chief will be Menache Amir, an advisor on Iranian affairs who managed Israel Radio broadcasts in Persian for years.

continue reading…

Like

Unlike

With the world once again focused on the process of Arab- Israeli reconciliation and hopefully, one day, peace, we’d like to take a moment to recommend a recently published contextual piece in HAARETZ (see below). Written by David Govrin, director of the Islam department at the diplomatic planning division of Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the article offers a birds eye view of the current round of talks, declarations, and rapprochements within the framework of the entire region in the hopes of giving the expert and novice alike a comprehensive perspective in which to follow along. Perhaps all the ducks are beginning to line-up in what could be an opportunistic row and we may be on the verge of a new Arab-Israeli relationship. Let us hope that this is indeed the case.

From Haaretz:

Between Tehran and Jerusalem

By David Govrin

The visit to Israel last week by the foreign ministers of Egypt and Jordan, coming as official representatives of the Arab League, was a historic event. The visit, which was the first time that such a delegation had met with members of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, was aimed at advancing the Arab peace initiative and creating momentum that would enable the sides to move toward implementation of the vision of two states, Israeli and Palestinian, living side by side in peace.

What began as the Saudi initiative, when it was first published in 2001 and adopted by all of the members of the Arab League, is the first peace proposal in the history of the Israeli-Arab conflict to have been proposed by the Arab League countries. Until recently, it did not seem to be on its way to implementation, in part because Israel did not see in it a proper a basis for negotiations. Now though, it may be on track, after the Arab collective created for the first time, at the Riyadh summit in March, a mechanism for dialogue with Israel in the context of the initiative. The two foreign ministers visited Israel against the background of a new geo-strategic reality, which is characterized by increasing Iranian involvement in the region.

continue reading…

Like

Unlike

We here at Politik feel that it is important to remind our readers of the ideaology of Hamas as it is written and articulated by them. At a time when people are increasingly contemplating the embrace of the most radical and extremist elements of fundamental Islam if only to produce short term positive political results, we should take pause and remind ourselves of these groups true intentions.

As written by Hamas in 1988 and still their standing covenant (we took the time to highlight some of the most glaring examples of hate):

The Covenant of the Islamic Resistance Movement
18 August 1988
In The Name Of The Most Merciful Allah

“Ye are the best nation that hath been raised up unto mankind: ye command that which is just, and ye forbid that which is unjust, and ye believe in Allah. And if they who have received the scriptures had believed, it had surely been the better for them: there are believers among them, but the greater part of them are transgressors. They shall not hurt you, unless with a slight hurt; and if they fight against you, they shall turn their backs to you, and they shall not be helped. They are smitten with vileness wheresoever they are found; unless they obtain security by entering into a treaty with Allah, and a treaty with men; and they draw on themselves indignation from Allah, and they are afflicted with poverty. This they suffer, because they disbelieved the signs of Allah, and slew the prophets unjustly; this, because they were rebellious, and transgressed.” (Al-Imran – verses 109-111).

Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it” (The Martyr, Imam Hassan al-Banna, of blessed memory).

“The Islamic world is on fire. Each of us should pour some water, no matter how little, to extinguish whatever one can without waiting for the others.” (Sheikh Amjad al-Zahawi, of blessed memory).

In The Name Of The Most Merciful Allah

Introduction
Praise be unto Allah, to whom we resort for help, and whose forgiveness, guidance and support we seek; Allah bless the Prophet and grant him salvation, his companions and supporters, and to those who carried out his message and adopted his laws – everlasting prayers and salvation as long as the earth and heaven will last. Hereafter:

O People:
Out of the midst of troubles and the sea of suffering, out of the palpitations of faithful hearts and cleansed arms; out of the sense of duty, and in response to Allah’s command, the call has gone out rallying people together and making them follow the ways of Allah, leading them to have determined will in order to fulfill their role in life, to overcome all obstacles, and surmount the difficulties on the way. Constant preparation has continued and so has the readiness to sacrifice life and all that is precious for the sake of Allah.

Thus it was that the nucleus (of the movement) was formed and started to pave its way through the tempestuous sea of hopes and expectations, of wishes and yearnings, of troubles and obstacles, of pain and challenges, both inside and outside.

When the idea was ripe, the seed grew and the plant struck root in the soil of reality, away from passing emotions, and hateful haste. The Islamic Resistance Movement emerged to carry out its role through striving for the sake of its Creator, its arms intertwined with those of all the fighters for the liberation of Palestine. The spirits of its fighters meet with the spirits of all the fighters who have sacrificed their lives on the soil of Palestine, ever since it was conquered by the companions of the Prophet, Allah bless him and grant him salvation, and until this day.

This Covenant of the Islamic Resistance Movement (HAMAS), clarifies its picture, reveals its identity, outlines its stand, explains its aims, speaks about its hopes, and calls for its support, adoption and joining its ranks. Our struggle against the Jews is very great and very serious. It needs all sincere efforts. It is a step that inevitably should be followed by other steps. The Movement is but one squadron that should be supported by more and more squadrons from this vast Arab and Islamic world, until the enemy is vanquished and Allah’s victory is realised.

continue reading…

Like

Unlike

Wow, this is a long one, but we think essential reading regarding our Foreign Minister, Tzipi Livni.

From the NYT:

July 8, 2007
Her Jewish State
By ROGER COHEN
Soon after our first meeting in her Spartan office in Jerusalem, Tzipi Livni, the Israeli foreign minister, called me. Something was on her mind. A lawyer by training, she does not like to leave loose ends. I had asked her if the four years she spent in Mossad, the intelligence service, made her a disciplined person. Livni had seemed taken aback by the question, which interrupted the cascade of her pronouncements on Israel and its Palestinian nemesis. After a long hesitation, she said: “I don’t like this phrase, a disciplined person. I don’t know. I don’t know.”

Now, an hour later, she wanted to set the record straight. “I was thinking about this idea of me as a disciplined person,” she began. I perched myself on a stone wall near the King David Hotel and listened through a blustery desert wind. “There are other parts of me that are different. I prefer jeans to a suit, sneakers to high heels, markets to malls. You’ve just returned from Paris: I prefer the Quartier Latin to the Champs Elysées. In general, I don’t like formality at all. It is just part of what I do. You know, when I was young, I went to the Sinai and worked as a waitress.”

continue reading…

Like

Unlike

From the Washington Post:

A Shadow on the Human Rights Movement

By Jackson Diehl
Monday, June 25, 2007; A19

Where does the global human rights movement stand in the seventh year of the 21st century? If the first year of the United Nations Human Rights Council is any indication, it’s grown sick and cynical — partly because of the fecklessness and flexible morality of some of the very governments and groups that claim to be most committed to democratic values.

At a session in Geneva last week, the council — established a year ago in an attempt to reform the U.N. Human Rights Commission — listened to reports by special envoys appointed by its predecessor condemning the governments of Cuba and Belarus. It then abolished the jobs of both “rapporteurs” in a post-midnight maneuver orchestrated by its chairman, who announced a “consensus” in spite of loud objections by the ambassador from Canada that there was no such accord.

While ending the scrutiny of those dictatorships, the council chose to establish one permanent and special agenda item: the “human rights situation in Palestine and other occupied Arab territories.” In other words, Israel (or “Palestine,” in the council’s terminology), alone among the nations of the world, will be subjected to continual and open-ended examination. That’s in keeping with the record of the council’s first year: Eleven resolutions were directed at the Jewish state. None criticized any other government.

continue reading…

Like

Unlike

This article, as recently published in the Wall Street Journal, addresses a central point to the current state of affairs amongst the various Palestinian factions, clans and tribes: if a people truly want a state they must build it from the ground-up through hard work and compromise. As Mr. Stephens states in the article, “…the experience of an unoccupied Gaza Strip has shown is the Palestinians’ unfitness for political sovereignty.” President Abbas is now receiving hundreds of millions of dollars to hopefully begin to build the semblance of a state. Let us all keep our fingers crossed.

From the WSJ:

Who Killed Palestine?
By: Bret Stephens
June 26, 2007; Page A14

Bill Clinton did it. Yasser Arafat did it. So did George W. Bush, Yitzhak Rabin, Hosni Mubarak, Ariel Sharon, Al-Jazeera and the BBC. The list of culprits in the whodunit called “Who Killed Palestine?” is neither short nor mutually exclusive. But since future historians are bound to ask the question, let’s get a head start by suggesting some answers.

And make no mistake: No matter how much diplomatic, military and financial oxygen is pumped into Mahmoud Abbas’s Palestinian Authority, it’s oxygen flowing to a corpse. Palestine has always been a notional place, a field of dreams belonging only to those who know how to keep it. Israelis have held on to their state because they were able to develop the political, military and economic institutions that a state requires to survive, beginning with its monopoly on the use of legitimate force. In its nearly 14 years as an autonomous entity, the PA has succeeded in none of that, despite being on the receiving end of unprecedented international good will and largesse.

Hamas’s seizure of the Gaza Strip this month — and the consequent division of the PA into two hostile, geographically distinct camps — is only the latest in a chain of events set in motion when Israel agreed, in September 1993, to accept Arafat and the PLO as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people. An early indicator of what lay ahead took place on July 1, 1994, when Arafat made his triumphal entry into Gaza while carrying, in the trunk of his Mercedes, four of the Palestinian cause’s most violent partisans. Among them were the organizers of the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre and the 1974 Ma’alot school massacre. If ever there was an apt metaphor for what Arafat’s rule would bring, this was it.

continue reading…

Like

Unlike

As Published in the New York Times
June 19, 2007
Op-Ed Contributor
Brothers to the Bitter End By FOUAD AJAMI

SO the masked men of Fatah have the run of the West Bank while the masked men of Hamas have their dominion in Gaza. Some see this as a tolerable situation, maybe even an improvement, envisioning a secularist Fatah-run state living peacefully alongside Israel and a small, radical Gaza hemmed in by Israeli troops. It’s always tempting to look for salvation in disaster, but in this case it’s sheer fantasy.

The Palestinian ruin was a long time in coming. No other national movement has had the indulgence granted the Palestinians over the last half-century, and the results can be seen in the bravado and the senseless violence, in the inability of a people to come to terms with their condition and their needs.

The life of a Palestinian is one of squalor and misery, yet his leaders play the international game as though they were powers. An accommodation with Israel is imperative — if only out of economic self-interest and political necessity — but the Palestinians, in a democratic experiment some 18 months ago, tipped power to a Hamas movement whose very charter is pledged to the destruction of the Jewish state and the imposition of Islamist rule.

continue reading…

Like

Unlike