Newsletter #222     Friday, February 18, 2005

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• Oslo III: Ariel Peres, Shimon Sharon and the end of Zionism
  By Moshe Dann - Israelinsider.com - February 17, 2005   Twelve years ago the 'Oslo Process' was inaugurated based on secret agreements and understandings. Its PR rationale was "Land for Peace," relying on Arafat as a "partner." It was all a lie. Today, after thousands of dead and tens of thousands crippled, that same process (led by some of the same people) continues under the PR slogan "disengagement."

• Peace madness syndrome strikes Israel again
  By Ariel Natan Pasko - Israelinsider.com - February 15, 2005   The "peace at any price" bug has returned to Israel. This cyclical moral-decadence disease has reinvaded the Israeli body politic. Once infected, messianic hallucinations of "peace" begin to confound the victim's moral compass, leading to confusion, lack of moral clarity, and a suicidal death wish for the "Peace of the Grave."

• Legitimizing Abbas
  By Caroline Glick - Jerusalem Post - February 15, 2005  If Abbas is supposed to be convincing the Palestinians that they have to reject terrorism, it seems odd for him to be insisting that Israel conduct a mass release of convicted terrorists, let alone murderers. Abbas justifies this demand by claiming that these men and women are Palestinian heroes and that his people won't accept their remaining in prison. Yet his acceptance of the notion that these war criminals are heroes of the Palestinian people makes it hard to imagine that he has anything but admiration for the crimes they committed – namely acts of terrorism against Israelis. Far from opposing terrorism and being poised to purge the scourge from Palestinian society, in his first act as the legitimate, democratically elected, anti-terror, reform leader, Abbas is sticking out his neck to support terrorism.

• Contiguous Propaganda
  By David Frankfurter - Israelinsider.com - February 14, 2005  For some time, the Palestinian propaganda machine has spoken of a "contiguous Palestinian state". This subtle change forces a situation that destroys any hope of peace and paves the way to blame Israel for being absolutely unable to agree to what, on face value, sounds like a reasonable demand. People are supposed not to notice that physically lining the West Bank and Gaza destroys a 'viable and contiguous' Israel.

• Time Out for Terror?
  By Ehud Ya'ari - Jerusalem report - February 2005  Will Hamas use the cease-fire to become another Hizballah?

• 'Biblical' disengagement plan gaining support
  By Jerusalem Newswire Editorial Staff - www.jnewswire.com - February 14, 2005

  Prime Minister Ariel Sharon Monday reiterated before the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee his determination to prevent at all costs a national referendum on his plan to forcibly expel the Jewish residents of the Gaza Strip.

  A top Israeli law expert slammed the final version of Sharon’s plan set to be vote on by the Knesset plenum next week for trampling on “human and civil rights.”

  In response to Sharon’s continued refusal to seek a public mandate for his plan, a group of bible-believing Israeli Jews has launched a private national referendum that actually presents voters with an alternative to the prime minister’s disengagement blueprint.

  Dubbed “The Jewish Alternative Disengagement Plan”, it calls for the transfer of hostile Arab populations and the immediate annexation of the ancient Jewish lands of Judea, Samaria and Gaza.

  Recent public opinion polls, largely ignored by the mainstream press, indicate the initiative has widespread support among Israeli Jews.

  Trampling human rights

  The wording of Sharon’s Expulsion and Compensation Bill “grossly tramples on human and civil rights,” Yariv Levine, Vice President of the Israeli Bar Association, told Arutz 7 Monday.

  Levine noted that had the law been proposed in any context other than the expulsion of Jewish settlers, the legal establishment would not have kept silence.

  Levine said he wrote to Attorney-General Menachem Mazuz to protest the “double standard” he applies when he rules the Jewish National Fund may not exclude Arabs from land sales, “but in relation to the rights of … the residents of Gush Katif and northern Samaria, suddenly there are no property rights, no human rights, no civil rights, no nothing.”

  “What’s happening to [the settlers in Gaza and northern Samaria] can serve as a precedent to be applied to other groups tomorrow,” Levine warned, less than a day after the bill passed the Knesset Law Committee, paving the way for its approval by the plenum.

  Levine urged the public to challenge the law at every opportunity.

  A ‘biblical’ alternative

  A group going by the name Mishalot Israel is doing more than challenge Sharon’s law; it is proposing an alternative.

  Yekutiel Ben Ya’akov, director of Mishalot Israel, said his group’s Alternative Jewish Disengagement Plan would see Israel annex Judea, Samaria and Gaza, and expel hostile sectors of the Arab population.

  Ben Ya’akov stressed in an interview with MSN that the plan does not advocate “throwing out every Arab because they are Arab, but rather to remove most of the Arabs who will likely refuse to swear allegiance to Israel.”

  Ours is a “biblical plan,” says Ben Ya’akov. “…An alternative that would distance the Arab threat further away, and not conflict with Torah and democratic values.”

  Ultimately, the public is looking to separate itself from the terrorist threat the Palestinian Arabs pose, and that is why Sharon’s disengagement plan seems to enjoy such widespread support, Ben Ya’akov explains.

  However, “people will be shocked to learn just how many reject Sharon's plan when given a viable alternative.”

  Referendum, with or without Sharon

  Mishalot Israel has already distributed some 6,500 referendum ballots among the residents of Sderot, the Negev town so often targeted by Gaza-based terrorists.

  The

  group is working to raise the funds necessary to print off ballots for the rest of the nation. “Our goal is to get a bigger voter turnout at our referendum than there is in national Israeli elections," said Ben Ya’akov.

  In the meantime, Jews worldwide are invited to vote either for Sharon’s “disengagement” plan or Mishalot Israel’s alternative plan at the group’s website: www.mishal.org.

  Though Sharon has vociferously refused to seek a mandate from the people for his plan, “we have to hope that the government will be sensitive to public opinion” after the results of the referendum are published, said Ben Ya’akov.

  Suppressed poll results

  And Ben Ya’akov is confident the referendum results will be overwhelmingly in favor of The Jewish Alternative Disengagement Plan.

  “We have already commissioned several national surveys from credible polling institutions and according to some of them, there is a majority for the Jewish alternative plan.”

  Some of those poll results were never officially released to the media, however.

  Mishalot Israel commissioned Israeli polling company Mutagim to conduct the survey on January 12. But after the results showed 38 percent of the public preferred the group’s alternative plan, while only 37 percent favored Sharon’s plan, Mutagim refused to release the numbers.

  Mutagim claims the results were inconclusive because it was only able to poll 397 people.

  An independent polling company told WorldNetDaily 397 people polled should be more than adequate to provide accurate results.

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