UNHRC abuses human rights

By DANNY AYALON
09/27/2010 03:23

JERUSALEM POST

Once again, a report has blamed an event almost solely on Israel while refusing to assign responsibility or even suitably investigate any other party.

Unsurprisingly, a United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) report has once again slammed Israel’s acts of self-defense. The recently released report ostensibly investigating the events that surrounded the interception of the Gaza-bound Mavi Marmara in May is a modern blood-libel, and another nail in the coffin of the council’s credibility. The full report is scheduled to be officially presented to the council on Monday.

While its name would seem to indicate a worthy body, the UNHRC has two sole functions: to defend serial human-rights abusing nations from reproach, and to revile and attack Israel.

The UNHRC, created in 2006, is the successor to the thoroughly discredited United Nations Commission on Human Rights (UNCHR). When the mandate for the new council was debated, certain basic reforms and standards were proposed to ensure the commission’s failures were not repeated. Unfortunately, few of the reforms received substantial support in the UN General Assembly, which refused to adopt them.

Those that were adopted have been abused.

The General Assembly resolution that created the council merely required member states to “take into account” a candidate’s human-rights record when applying to the UNHRC. Not even a nation under sanction from the UN Security Council for human-rights abuses need refrain from seeking election.

During the application process, candidate nations make pledges of adherence to human rights standards by way of justifying their candidacy. These statements have been described as Kafkaesque in their deviance from reality and historical record. One glaring example is that of Saudi Arabia, which claimed a “confirmed commitment to the defense, protection and promotion of human rights.”

The reality of course, is very different.

The US State Department’s annual human rights reports consistently criticize Saudi Arabia for its serious human rights failings, including arbitrary arrest, discrimination against women, restriction of worker rights and lack of religious freedom.

However, Saudi Arabia is hardly alone, as only 20 of the 47 nations on the UNHRC are considered “free” by Freedom House, an independent NGO which monitors human rights and political freedoms. This means the majority of nations currently represented on the UNHRC do not allow basic freedoms for their own people, let alone concern themselves with global human rights.

Another example of this farce was the recent election of Libya to the UNHRC.

Libya received support from 155 of the General Assembly’s 192 member states in a secret ballot, angering a coalition of 37 human rights organizations which described Libya as one of the most repressive societies in the world.

ONE OF the root problems is the influence of the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) within the UNHRC.

The UNHRC heavily weights membership on its council to nations from Africa and Asia – two continents where the OIC has considerable influence. The OIC controls the lion’s share of the world’s energy resources, including oil, gas and uranium.

The OIC and its allies have an automatic majority on the UNHRC, and this is represented in the council’s workload.

Human Rights Watch claims that the OIC has “fought doggedly” and successfully within the UN Human Rights Council to shield states from criticism, except when it comes to criticism of Israel. The OIC’s mantra has been that the council should work cooperatively with abusive governments rather than condemn them.

This has led to the absurd situation in which Israel is condemned 33 times by the UNHRC out of a total of 40 countryspecific condemnations, while the UNHRC expresses only “deep concern” over Sudan and praises its cooperation.

In addition, the UNHRC adopted a unique decision to discuss human rights violations committed by Israel in all of the council’s meetings. It has also been criticized for redirecting attention to the fate of Muslim minorities within non- Muslim countries, but diverting attention from the treatment of ethnic minorities in Muslim-majority countries, such as the oppression of the Kurds in Syria, the Ahwaz in Iran, the Al-Akhdam in Yemen or the Berbers in Algeria.

Furthermore, the OIC has been at the forefront of silencing freedom of expression.

An amendment to the duties of the special rapporteur on freedom of expression, passed by the Human Rights Council on March 28, 2008, has acted against this very freedom. The OIC and its allies have sought to ban anything they deem as criticism of Islam. Some nations were outraged by this amendment, which they claimed “turns the special rapporteur’s mandate on its head.”

Nevertheless, it is on the subject of Israel that the OIC appears to have unique influence. When the UNHRC discussed issues relating to the Second Lebanon War in 2006, four of the council’s independent experts reported the findings of their visit to Lebanon and Israel. State after state from the OIC took the floor to denounce the experts for daring to look beyond Israeli violations to discuss Hizbullah’s as well.

This sent a very clear message that experts filing reports for the UNHRC involving Israel should never look at the conduct of any other party. Justice Richard Goldstone understood this very well, as was reflected in the report he gave the UNHRC. In an interview given to Al Jazeera in 2009, Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, secretary-general of the OIC, explained how his organization not only initiated, but drove the Goldstone process from start to finish.

THE PANEL of experts compiling the report on events surrounding the flotilla has clearly understood its mandate well. Once again, a report has singularly blamed an event almost solely on Israel while refusing to assign responsibility or even suitably investigate any other actor. What makes the report so absurd is the recent release of many first-hand accounts by people on the Mavi Marmara.

These accounts, written by some hostile to Israel in the first place, depict very different scenes to those described in the report.

In his recently released book, Turkish journalist Sefik Dinç, while sympathetic to the militant IHH, writes that the crisis was “calculated” by those on board, and reportedly describes how the IDF soldiers did not open fire until after other soldiers were taken hostage. Dinç describes in his book, with the aid of photographs, how preparations for confronting the Israelis on the Mavi Marmara were “not going to be that passive.”

Our internal investigations indicate that not only did the soldiers only open fire when their lives were threatened, but that the first shots were fired by those on the boat; there are reports that one soldier suffered a knee injury from a non-IDF weapon as soon as he came on board.

This biased, libelous report indicates that the OIC has once again achieved its aim of condemning Israel through its proxies in the UNHRC. One again, it has proven UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and former high commissioner for human rights Mary Robinson’s criticisms that the council acts according to political considerations as opposed to human rights. In fact, the report stands as an affront to the secretary- general’s own panel of inquiry, with which Israel is fully cooperating.

General Assembly President Joseph Deisss warned recently against the marginalization of the UN itself by stating the need for urgent reforms, like reviewing the UNHRC. At stake is the plight of millions of victims of human-rights violations around the world.

It is high time for democracies to reassess their participation in a council that places political calculations over the protection of human rights while providing cover to some of the world’s most brutal regimes.

We must give a voice to the oppressed, justice to the abused and equity for all of humanity. None of this will be achieved by always attacking and condemning Israel while allowing totalitarian nations to hijack the international human-rights agenda.

The writer is the deputy foreign minister.

http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Op-EdContributors/Article.aspx?id=189354

Be an ambassador for Israel

Many of us, whether we’re traveling or living abroad for an extended period of time, get involved in discussions with locals during which they bring up misconceptions and false information regarding Israel, without our having the tools and the correct information for coping with the questions or the barbs of criticism put to us.

At such moments, we’re seized with an urge to make the other person open their mind and especially their heart, and see us—see Israel—differently.

The Israeli Ministry of Public Diplomacy and Diaspora Affairs has created a Web site that contains good advocacy information.

Check it out by clicking here.

Yom Kippur at Sea

NEW YORK TIMES — OP/ED

September 17, 2010

By SAM KESTENBAUM

Deer Isle, Me.

TODAY is Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar. It is the Day of Atonement, a day of meditation, of repentance and redemption. Many Jews will spend it at temple or in a house of study, meditating, reading Torah and chanting contemplative psalms together or quietly to themselves.

Last year, right after graduating from college, I took a job on a commercial lobster boat here in my hometown as a sternman, one half of a two-man crew. A few days before Yom Kippur, I told the captain that I couldn’t work on the holiday.

This is not a typical day for lobstermen to take off, at least not on Deer Isle, and he looked puzzled. I explained, “You see, it’s a High Holy Day.” It was 4:30 in the morning and the sun had yet to rise. We were sipping coffee on the dock as the row of diesel boats beside us sputtered to life.

I wasn’t sure how much he knew about our holiday, or how much I should tell him.

Should I explain that we fast on this day, humbling ourselves before God and preparing for judgment? Should I tell him how fates are sealed in the Book of Life? Or should I instead share some of the biblical stories that we retell on Yom Kippur? Launch into the tale of the binding of Isaac, or talk about Abraham and Sarah? Should I recount Jonah’s trip to the bottom of the sea, and the redemption he finds there in the belly of a whale? Should I commandeer the CB radio on our boat and blow the shofar, the ram’s horn, across the airwaves?

We finished our coffee and made our way to the boat, lunch boxes in hand. I decided it was too early in the morning for shofar blowing. Besides, we had more than 300 traps to haul — a full day’s work.

Growing up on Deer Isle, I quickly learned that there was something a little different about how my family worshiped. There were many churches on the island — from Catholic to Protestant to Latter-day Saints; from small, one-room church houses to big, established churches with freshly paved driveways. We didn’t pray at any of these. Instead we made a weekly pilgrimage to the nearest synagogue, 60 miles away in Bangor.

One day, earlier in the fishing season, my captain and I were stacking lobster traps in his dooryard. Another fisherman sat nearby and watched us. He was in his mid-80s and spoke with a thick Down East accent, the kind that would be unintelligible to anyone from out of state.

“I see you’ve got a man who works hard. Think you’ll keep him around?” he asked my captain. Then he chuckled and turned to me.

“What did you say your name was again?”

“Sam,” I said. “Sam Kestenbaum.” He raised his eyebrows.

On the island, the name Kestenbaum is often met with this kind of puzzled look, then followed by, “You’re going to have to spell that.” Certain last names fill up pages in the phone book here. The names of old families that have been here for generations, networks of cousins, aunts and uncles — Eaton, Haskell, Hardy, Heanssler and Weed, among others. But you will find only one Kestenbaum family in Hancock County. And you won’t find too many other Jewish lobstermen (perhaps not particularly surprising considering the non-kosher status of the catch).

Despite this, I feel close to my faith when I’m on the water. The work is difficult, but meditative. Fishermen grapple daily with the elements: the wind, the tide, the shifting of the seasons. Jews also keep their eyes on the elements, recognizing the great, sacred powers that are present in the world. And wherever we go, we believe God travels with us.

It is said that when the Jews went into exile, the Shekinah, the divine presence, went into exile, too — hovering over us, around us wherever we were, waiting for us to invite the sacred into our lives. This is one of the great gifts of diaspora: we travel, move, but remain who we are.

Last year, during the week of Yom Kippur, a storm whirled into Penobscot Bay, the first of the fall. The rain was heavy; fierce winds shook the trees and bent their branches. It turned out I wasn’t the only fisherman to spend the holiday onshore. Most stayed in their shops, mending traps, coiling rope or painting buoys.

And me, I drove the hour and a half to the Bangor temple to meditate on teshuvah — on turning and returning to God, on starting fresh. It wasn’t boat work, but it was work — a kind of repair, a checking of the knots and wiring, refueling for another year.

And today I’ll do the same. On this Yom Kippur, I wish my fellow Jews “gmar chatima tova,” may you be written in the Book of Life for good. And to my fellow fishermen: I wish safe waters and good hauls. May the price per pound of lobster rise. May we weather the coming storms.

Sam Kestenbaum works on a lobster boat.

The Palestinians, Alone

The following op-ed appeared in the August 1, 2010 NY Times. It discusses a recent survey by Al Arabiya TV that found 71% of the Arabic respondents have no interest in the Palestinian-Israeli peace talks.

By EFRAIM KARSH

London — It has long been conventional wisdom that the resolution of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is a prerequisite to peace and stability in the Middle East. Since Arabs and Muslims are so passionate about the Palestine problem, this argument runs, the Israeli-Palestinian stalemate feeds regional anger and despair, gives a larger rationale to terrorist groups like Al Qaeda and to the insurgency in Iraq and obstructs the formation of a regional coalition that will help block Iran’s quest for nuclear weapons.

What, then, are we to make of a recent survey for the Al Arabiya television network finding that a staggering 71 percent of the Arabic respondents have no interest in the Palestinian-Israeli peace talks? “This is an alarming indicator,” lamented Saleh Qallab, a columnist for the pan-Arab newspaper Al Sharq al Awsat. “The Arabs, people and regimes alike, have always been as interested in the peace process, its developments and particulars, as they were committed to the Palestinian cause itself.”

But the truth is that Arab policies since the mid-1930s suggest otherwise. While the “Palestine question” has long been central to inter-Arab politics, Arab states have shown far less concern for the well-being of the Palestinians than for their own interests.

For example, it was common knowledge that the May 1948 pan-Arab invasion of the nascent state of Israel was more a scramble for Palestinian territory than a fight for Palestinian national rights. As the first secretary-general of the Arab League, Abdel Rahman Azzam, once admitted to a British reporter, the goal of King Abdullah of Transjordan “was to swallow up the central hill regions of Palestine, with access to the Mediterranean at Gaza. The Egyptians would get the Negev. Galilee would go to Syria, except that the coastal part as far as Acre would be added to the Lebanon.”

From 1948 to 1967, when Egypt and Jordan ruled the Palestinians of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, the Arab states failed to put these populations on the road to statehood. They also showed little interest in protecting their human rights or even in improving their quality of life — which is part of the reason why 120,000 West Bank Palestinians moved to the East Bank of the Jordan River and about 300,000 others emigrated abroad. “We couldn’t care less if all the refugees die,” an Egyptian diplomat once remarked. “There are enough Arabs around.”

Not surprisingly, the Arab states have never hesitated to sacrifice Palestinians on a grand scale whenever it suited their needs. In 1970, when his throne came under threat from the Palestine Liberation Organization, the affable and thoroughly Westernized King Hussein of Jordan ordered the deaths of thousands of Palestinians, an event known as “Black September.”

Six years later, Lebanese Christian militias, backed by the Syrian Army, massacred some 3,500 Palestinians, mostly civilians, in the Beirut refugee camp of Tel al-Zaatar. These militias again slaughtered hundreds of Palestinians in 1982 in the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila, this time under Israel’s watchful eye. None of the Arab states came to the Palestinians’ rescue.

Worse, in the mid-’80s, when the P.L.O. — officially designated by the Arab League as the “sole representative of the Palestinian people” — tried to re-establish its military presence in Lebanon, it was unceremoniously expelled by President Hafez al-Assad of Syria.

This history of Arab leaders manipulating the Palestinian cause for their own ends while ignoring the fate of the Palestinians goes on and on. Saddam Hussein, in an effort to ennoble his predatory designs, claimed that he wouldn’t consider ending his August 1990 invasion of Kuwait without “the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of Israel from the occupied Arab territories in Palestine.”

Shortly after the Persian Gulf War, Kuwaitis then set about punishing the P.L.O. for its support of Hussein — cutting off financial sponsorship, expelling hundreds of thousands of Palestinian workers and slaughtering thousands. Their retribution was so severe that Arafat was forced to acknowledge that “what Kuwait did to the Palestinian people is worse than what has been done by Israel to Palestinians in the occupied territories.”

Against this backdrop, it is a positive sign that so many Arabs have apparently grown so apathetic about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. For if the Arab regimes’ self-serving interventionism has denied Palestinians the right to determine their own fate, then the best, indeed only, hope of peace between Arabs and Israelis lies in rejecting the spurious link between this particular issue and other regional and global problems.

The sooner the Palestinians recognize that their cause is theirs alone, the sooner they are likely to make peace with the existence of the State of Israel and to understand the need for a negotiated settlement.

Efraim Karsh, a professor of Middle East and Mediterranean studies at King’s College London, is the author, most recently, of “Palestine Betrayed.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/02/opinion/02karsh.html

'Rhymes With Fagin'

WALL STREET JOURNAL — TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 7, 2010 — BY BRET STEPHENS

Time magazine adds its voice to the chorus of those attempting to delegitimize the Jewish state.

If you're a reader of a certain age, you might understand the headline.

In May 1977, when Menachem Begin was elected Israel's prime minister, Time magazine set out to describe the man, beginning with the correct pronunciation of his last name: "Rhymes with Fagin," the editors explained, invoking the character from Oliver Twist. Modern Israeli leader; archetypal Jewish lowlife: Get it?

The magazine's other characterization of Begin was that he was "dangerous." A year later, he shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Egypt's Anwar Sadat.

Maybe there's something in the magazine's DNA. This week, readers were treated to a cover story by Karl Vick titled, suggestively, "Why Israel Doesn't Care About Peace." That's one way for Time to address the current state of negotiations between the Jewish state and its neighbors, which otherwise barely rate a mention in the article.

Mr. Vick's essay draws on the testimony of a pair of real estate agents, a columnist for a left-leaning newspaper, and a few others to explain that Israelis are too blissed-out by the fruits of their economic prosperity to pay much attention to the subject of peace, much less whatever sad things may transpire among their neighbors in Ramallah and Gaza. "We're not really that into the peace process," says Gadi Baltiansky, a peace activist quoted in the story. "We are really, really into the water sports."

It's hard to say what to make of this, since the article concludes by contradicting its central thesis: "For all the surf breaks, the palms and the coffee, the conflict is never truly done, never far away," Mr. Vick writes.

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Indeed it isn't: Nearly every Israeli has a child, sibling, boyfriend or parent in the army. Nearly every Israeli has been to the funeral of a fallen soldier, or a friend killed in a terrorist attack. Most Israeli homes and businesses come equipped with safe rooms or bomb shelters; every Israeli owns a gas mask. The whole country exists under the encroaching shadows of Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, and the prospect of a nuclear Iran. How many Americans, to say nothing of Europeans, can say the same about their own lives?

Yet when it comes to scoring cheap shots against the Jewish state, Time is not the sort of magazine to allow the obvious to disturb a prejudiced hypothesis. Can the magazine point to equally pointed cover stories about internal Palestinian affairs and what, perchance, they mean for the peace process? I checked: It last did so in April 2002 with a largely sympathetic portrait of Yasser Arafat "All Boxed In" by an invading Israeli army.

That's a pity, journalistically speaking, because the stew of Palestinian politics tells us something important about the wider drift of the Arab world, not least the ways in which Iran has seized the mantle of anti-Western radicalism to make ideological inroads among Sunnis. But raising that line of inquiry probably asks too much of a magazine whose circulation is in steep decline, and whose journalism is now the subject of parodies in The Onion. (Recent headline: "TIME Announces New Version of Magazine Aimed at Adults.")

Journalism aside, there's also a moral dimension here, especially for a magazine that recently devoted its cover to the question of whether Americans are "Islamophobic." That dimension is known as the delegitimization of Israel—the idea that the country ought not to exist. Insisting that Israel be wiped off the map, as Iran's leaders do with such numbing frequency, is one method of delegitimization. Suggesting that Israelis don't care about peace—not all of them, of course; there's always a remnant of politically anguished Israelis to be found, quoted and celebrated for the purposes of native standing and moral cover—is another.

Which of these methods does more lasting harm, the malignly blunt or the well-meaningly insidious? Probably the latter: It shapes a climate of supposedly respectable opinion that doesn't hesitate to tar one nation the way it never would any other. Or did I somehow miss the Time covers devoted to why Russians don't care about democracy, or Kenyans about corruption?

This has consequences.

Last week, a man named Karel de Gucht told a radio station in Belgium that the current round of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations were certain to founder upon the stubbornness of Jews. "There is indeed a belief—it's difficult to describe it otherwise—among most Jews that they are right," he explained. "So it's not easy to have, even with moderate Jews, a rational discussion about what is happening in the Middle East."

Mr. de Gucht sounds like a neo-Nazi; in fact, he is the trade commissioner of the European Union. How does a paladin like him come to say something like that? Because it's really not that far from the sorts of things that already are being written; that are, as they say, "in the air." Like the cover of a magazine that will someday cause a future editor of Time (assuming there is one) to hang her head in shame.

Write to bstephens@wsj.com

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703946504575469502667359126.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

No Palestinian concessions at upcoming peace talks

From Israel Today:

Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas clarified for his people on Monday that he intends to make not even one concession or compromise in direct peace negotiations with Israel, and that for a final status peace to be achieved, Israel will have to fully meet all Arab demands and abandon its own conditions.

First and foremost, Abbas told Palestinian newspapers that if the Jewish building freeze in Judea and Samaria (the so-called "West Bank") is not extended indefinitely, the negotiations will come to an immediate halt. But Abbas also said he would walk out of the talks if he is pressured at all to alter the Palestinians' more hardline positions.

"If they demand concessions on the rights of the refugees or the 1967 borders, I will quit. I can’t allow myself to make even one concession," Abbas told the Palestinian newspaperAl-Ayyam.

Abbas was referring to the Palestinian demand that Israel solve the purported "Palestinian refugee" issue by opening its border to millions of new Arab citizens. Abbas has long championed that demand, despite the fact that it would mean the demographic destruction of the Jewish state. Even Israel's most liberal politicians reject the so-called "right of return."

The Palestinian leader's position on the issue was two-faced, as he then turned around and insisted that an independent Palestinian state created by the current peace process must not have a single Jew living in it. "We clarified that [the Palestinian Authority] would not agree to continued Israeli presence, military or civil, within a future Palestinian state," Abbas said.

In speaking of the 1967 borders, Abbas made it clear that he will not allow Israel to maintain control over a united Jerusalem as part of any peace deal. Up until 1967, the eastern half of Jerusalem was illegally occupied by Jordan. The Palestinians now claim it as their rightful capital.

Abbas reiterated his position in an interview with Jerusalem-based Arabic newspaper Al-Quds when he rejected Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's talk of a historic compromise between the two sides in order to reach a durable peace agreement.

Abbas also addressed Netanyahu's demand that the Palestinians must recognize Israel as "the Jewish state."

"We're not talking about a Jewish state and we won't talk about one," Abbas said. "For us, there is the state of Israel and we won't recognize Israel as a Jewish state."

Analysis by Jack Cohen:

In an interview with the Palestinian newspaperAl-Ayyam, Pres. Abbas stated regarding the current direct negotiations, "I can't allow myself to make even one concession."

Actually, in the current negotiations the positions of the Israeli and PA Governments are quite similar. For example:

1. Israeli representatives emphasize that both sides must be prepared to make significant compromises. The Palestinian side agrees that the Israeli side must be prepared to make significant compromises.

2. The Israeli side insists that there are no preconditions to the talks. The PA side agrees, but insists that the talks cannot proceed without Israel extending the building freeze on the West Bank after its 10 month period ends.

3. The Israeli side is prepared to make concessions, such as removing checkpoints on the West Bank and allowing hundreds of Palestinian businessmen to enter Israel. The Palestinian side agrees with this concession.

4. The Palestinian side insists that the borders of the future Palestinian State must be the pre-1967 ceasefire lines. The Israeli side mistakenly assumed that there was going to be a negotiation on borders.

5. The Palestinian side insists that no Jews can be allowed to live within the West Bank area that will become the Palestinian State, since they ethnically cleansed the area of Jews from 1929 to 1949 (including massacres in Hebron and Etzion).

6. The Israeli side points out that there is a 20% minority of Arabs who are Israeli citizens, but the Palestinian side considers the Israeli denial of the "right of return" of the so-called Palestinian refugees as "racist."

7. The Israeli side proposes mutual recognition between the Palestinian Arab State and the Jewish Israeli State. The Palestinian side agrees that Israel must recognise their sovereign rights, but they cannot reciprocate, since after the Muslim conquest of Palestine in the 8th century the whole of Palestine was ethnically cleansed of Jews, and so they cannot therefore recognise the right of the Jews to a State in Palestine.

Whoever is optimistic about the outcome of the current talks, due to reconvene in Taba in Egypt in two weeks, must face the reality that the Palestinian side is not ready to actually negotiate on anything, except Israeli concessions.

Three Lies by Anti-Israel Propaganda

by Jack Cohen

There are three widely believed lies that form the basis of most anti-Israel propaganda:

1. The West Bank belongs to the Arabs/Palestinians and Israel is the occupying power and should get out. I challenge anyone to produce any legal document that supports this opinion. In fact, the West Bank (Judea and Samaria) is unattributed or disputed territory since the end of the British Mandate in 1948. It was captured by Jordan but has never been under any recognized Arab sovereignty. The direct negotiations that are going on now are precisely to determine the fate of every part of the West Bank.

2. Israel has no right to build settlements on occupied land: This is not true, the land was occupied by Israel after a defensive war in 1967, but Israel's legal claim to the land predates that war and is no less than that of any Arab entity. The West Bank was part of the original British Mandate and there was no legal distinction between the West Bank and the rest of the Mandate that now constitutes Israel. As such, Israel has every right to build there and settle its citizens there. However, the longer the Palestinians wait until they come to terms with Israel the more Jews will be settled there.

3. There are now millions of Palestinian refugees who should be allowed the right of return: At the end of the 1948 war of Israeli Independence there were ca. 750,000 Arab refugees and ca. 900,000 Jewish refugees from Arab countries, most of whom settled in Israel, in other words an exchange of populations. The Arab refugees have remained so-called "refugees" for several generations, while the Jewish refugees have long since been successfully integrated into Israeli society. The Jewish refugees started in camps (ma'abarot) worse than most so-called Palestinian "refugee camps." According to international law a refugee is one who leaves his/her country, so legally after 62 years there are only a handful of actual Arab refugees left. Their descendents (who are not legally refugees) should be settled in the countries where they are living. Under international law the "right of return" is a fiction.

These truths should be borne in mind by the negotiators in Washington and by the critics of Israel.

Why Time Doesn't Care About Israel

HonestReporting.com reveals yet another distorted picture of Israel in the media.

Time cover story claims decadent Israelis no longer care about peace.

As Israel launches a new round of peace talks with the Palestinians, media outlets are bending over backwards to find a new angle on the peace process. One of the most shocking comes from Time magazine, whose cover story "Why Israel Doesn't Care About Peace" suggests that Israelis no longer see peace as a priority because the economy is strong and the country has largely been free of terror inside the green line.

(An excerpt from the story can be read online here. The whole story appears in the print edition and on the magazine's iPad application.)

Polls repeatedly show that Israelis strongly support a two-state solution to the conflict. But it may, indeed, be true that Israelis have grown skeptical of any breakthroughs with the Palestinian leadership now divided between Fatah in the West Bank and Hamas in control of Gaza. Israelis have seen that new peace talks are usually accompanied by new terror attacks.

The Time article, written by Karl Vick, however, glosses over any legitimate reasons why Israelis may have lost interest in the details of the peace process, instead presenting Israelis as callous, insensitive, and decadently more concerned with beaches, water sports, and Tel Aviv's cafe culture than with matters of real substance.

Vick writes:

In the week that three Presidents, a King and their own Prime Minister gather at the White House to begin a fresh round of talks on peace between Israel and the Palestinians, the truth is, Israelis are no longer preoccupied with the matter. They're otherwise engaged; they're making money; they're enjoying the rays of late summer. A watching world may still define their country by the blood feud with the Arabs whose families used to live on this land and whether that conflict can be negotiated away, but Israelis say they have moved on.

The reference to the "blood feud with the Arabs whose families used to live on this land" is particularly telling. Vick appears to subtly reject Israel's historic claims to the land and to imply that Israelis are at fault in the conflict, since the land really belongs to the Arabs.

The print edition's accompanying photos reinforce Vick's contention that Israelis are preoccupied with leisure. The images feature Israelis lying on the beach, chatting at a cafe, or sitting on park benches. The implication is obvious: Israelis don't care about peace because they are doing fine without it.

Thus, Time distorts Israeli resilience in the face of a decade of rocket attacks and terrorism into an image of decadence.

Perhaps the real reason Israelis have become apathetic to the peace process (not peace itself, as the cover suggests), is because of the way the world quickly forgets Israel's numerous peace moves - Ehud Barak's offer of a state at Camp David, Ariel Sharon's withdrawal from Gaza, Binyamin Netanyahu's settlement freeze. Yet the media blames Israel for years of stalemate.

While there have been no parallel moves from the Palestinians to advance the peace process, only ever-increasing demands on Israel, Vick gives the impression that the Palestinians have been doing everything they can to make peace possible.

In the West Bank, the territory administered by Mahmoud Abbas, President of the Palestinian National Authority, technocratic Prime Minister Salam Fayyad is taking a serious stab at governance, starting by professionalizing security forces. Even before the shooting deaths of four Jewish settlers by Hamas operatives on Aug. 31, the worst such incident since March 2008, Fayyad's security forces had arrested more than 300 Hamas supporters in dread of an attack like that.

"Jewish settlers" - not Talya and Yitzchak Imes, Kochava Even-Haim, and Avishai Shendler, not civilians, not even "Israelis" -- were killed by people Time labels as "Hamas operatives" while Fayyad sat "in dread" of such activity.

If Fayyad's dread is what demonstrates Palestinian concern for peace after one year of rejecting Israeli offers for peace talks, what does Time have to say about Palestinian leaders beyond Fayyad?

A few days before leaving for Washington, chief Palestinian negotiator looked into a camera. "Shalom to you in Israel," he said. "I know we have disappointed you." In a bold, not to say desperate, bid to rouse ordinary Israelis, seven senior Palestinian officials addressed themselves to Israel directly in online videos. Each clip concludes with the words "I am your partner. Are you mine?"

While some may see Erekat's comments and the Palestinian videos as political propaganda that gives no insight into the minds of the Palestinian people, for Vick it serves as a counterpoint to Israel's apparent apathy. Of course, he has to bend over backwards to make the point.

As a result, we have another cover story on newsstands worldwide accusing Israel of not caring about peace. What we really learn, however, is that Time magazine doesn't care about Israel.

Please send your considered comments to letters@time.com