When we're defiant, they respect us

Yoram Ettinger writes that saying 'no' - even to the United States - need not be the end of the World for Israel. In fact, Ettinger claims that saying no has worked out quite well.

In 1981, Prime Minister Menachem Begin ordered the bombing of Iraq's nuclear reactor. In 1982, he launched a comprehensive war on the Palestinian Liberation Organization's terrorist headquarters in Lebanon. Both operations were executed irrespective of bullying and pressure from the U.S. and notwithstanding the fragile 1979 Israel-Egypt peace treaty. Begin realized that failing to eradicate these threats would imperil Israel's survival, erode its power of deterrence and thus undermine Israel's deterrence-driven peace with Egypt and its strategic cooperation with the U.S.

Contrary to conventional wisdom, the Israel-Egypt peace treaty did not collapse. Once again, Arab leaders did not rush to rescue the PLO, demonstrating that the Palestinian issue was not a crown jewel of Arab policymaking. Moreover, Egypt – just like all other Arab countries – would not sacrifice its own national interests on the altar of the Palestinian issue.

While the U.S. Administration condemned Israel for the large scale military operations, and imposed a brief military embargo, these operations resulted in the 1981 and 1983 strategic Memoranda of Understanding between the U.S. and Israel, which enhanced joint national security projects, upgrading Israel's long-term strategic posture.

From 1983 to 1992, during his two terms as prime minister, Yitzhak Shamir was severely criticized by U.S. Presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush for crushing Palestinian terrorism during the First Intifada and expanding Jewish communities in Judea, Samaria and East Jerusalem. At the same time, however, U.S.-Israel strategic cooperation was bolstered at an unprecedented level while he was in power. Washington recognized that U.S.-Israel cooperation never revolved around the Arab-Israeli conflict. Mutually-beneficial U.S.-Israel ties were based upon shared values, common threats such as Islamic terrorism, ballistic missiles and rogue regimes, and joint interests such as research and development and job creation in the high-tech market and in the defense industries.

In August 1948, U.S. Ambassador to Israel James McDonald recorded Prime Minister David Ben Gurion's response to the American demand (accompanied by a regional military embargo) to end the "occupation" of Arab land or agree to a land swap, to accept the internationalization of Jerusalem and to allow the return of the Arab refugees: "Speaking with solemn emphasis, [Ben Gurion] added that as much as Israel desired friendship with the U.S. and full cooperation with it and the U.N., there were limits beyond which it could go. Israel cannot yield to anything which, in its judgment, would threaten its independence or its security. The very fact that Israel is a small state makes more necessary the scrupulous defense of its own interests; otherwise it would be lost … Ben Gurion warned President [Harry S.] Truman and the State Department that they would be gravely mistaken if they assumed that the threat or even the use of U.N. sanctions would force Israel to yield on issues considered vital to its independence and security. [He] left no doubt that he was determined to resist, at whatever cost, 'unjust and impossible demands.' On these he could not compromise ["My Mission," 1951, pp. 49-50]."

Ben Gurion's defiance transformed Washington's image of the Jewish state from a strategic liability to a potential strategic asset.

Beck Tells Israelis: ‘Square your Shoulders!’

(Israelnationalnews.com) American Christian Zionist media host Glenn Beck continued his visit to Israel Wednesday with a tour of the Etzion Bloc – a part of Israel that was occupied by Jordan between 1949 and 1967.

 

He was guided by MK Tzipi Hotovely, local authority head Shaul Goldstein and Yesha Council head Danny Dayan. 

 

Beck visited “the lone oak tree,” a symbol of the Etzion Bloc’s history of courage, and also toured one of the stores owned by retailer Rami Levy. The theme that Dayan, Goldstein and Levy tried to convey to Beck was that of peaceful coexistence with the Arabs.

 

Beck, on the other hand, seemed like he was trying to give demoralized Israelis a pep talk. As he toured a Rami Levy supermarket he tried to impart the message to an Israeli shopper: “You're either a good state or a bad state. What are you doing here? Stand up. Square your shoulders. We have a right to exist, we have a right to be here. And we're good...”

What Israel needs to learn from the Bin Laden rubout: Stop apologizing!

Hebrew University Professor Rafi Israeli is spot-on in his assessment of what Israel should learn from the American operation to eliminate Osama Bin Laden: Stop apologizing!

Israel can draw several lessons here: In order to kill enemy leaders while the world says nothing or lauds the killing, one needs to be a great power. We were condemned when we eliminated Hamas’ Ahmad Yassin and the Iraqi reactor, and we were warned not to assassinate Arafat.

The Americans assassinated bin Laden, tried to kill Hitler, and also hunted and eliminated Saddam Hussein, yet nobody said a word. For every targeted elimination carried out by Israel, we were hit with numerous condemnations and protests, yet the daily US surgical strikes in Yemen, Afghanistan, Pakistan Libya and Iraq are met with silence. Every time we unintentionally harm civilians, the world raises a hue and cry, yet if it happens in Libya, Iraq, Serbia or Kosovo nobody protests.

A second lesson: When we are accused, smeared and slandered, we should dare to complain, openly compare our actions with those of others fighting terror, and initiate debates in the UN general assembly, Security Council, and Human Rights Council, even if we don’t achieve immediately success. If we bombard them with our arguments and present evidence to all, ultimately something will be grasped by global public opinion, where we are used to retreat, apologize and defend ourselves.

The weak and apologizing will always lose its pride and credibility, as opposed to the cheeky nobleman who constantly blames others, just like the mad Arab rulers which the world rushes to appease, until theyrise up against the West as well, and only then the world turns on them: See the case of Gaddafi, Assad and their comrades.

Indeed.

YNET: Bin Laden lessons for Israel: Killing terror leaders apparently a privilege reserved for superpowers like America

When President Obama, a reserved family man, announced his intention to convene a late-night press conference, everyone held their breath. Some people attributed his quick action to his rush to salvage his sinking prestige ahead of the upcoming presidential elections; others spoke of his great sensitivity and incredible humanism in informing relatives of 9/11 victims without delay that the monster had been nabbed and hurled into the sea, in order to prevent a gravesite that would have drawn zealous Islamic pilgrims.

As the United States and its allies celebrated the superb operational and intelligence achievement, which took years to plan and execute, the sense of satisfaction was doubly great as the arch-terrorist who became a martyr (after educating an entire generation to do so before him) swore to undermine the West, fight the Jews (not the Israelis or Zionists) and bring a new Holocaust upon them.

Related:

• Bin Laden: Symbol dies, Jihad lives on
• A victory for Obama
• Will Osama help Obama? 

Indeed, bin Laden and his people were overjoyed by the large number of Jews hurt at the World Trade Center. Had Obama truly been sensitive, he could have at least expressed empathy to the Israeli people, which was marking Holocaust Remembrance Day at the time, in his dramatic announcement.

He didn’t do it because he’s preoccupied with the struggle against global Islamic terror, just like Roosevelt was preoccupied with World War II and did not bother dedicating any effort or attention to assisting the Jews murdered in the camps, even when he could do so. Obama was bothered because we were dealing not with Afghanistan, but rather, with its neighbor Pakistan – the so-called US ally that provides a base and vitality to the Taliban and also a shelter for al-Qaeda.

A wanted man like bin Laden could not have been hiding in Pakistan, in a suburb of the capital Islamabad no less, without the reputed and sly Pakistani intelligence service – which was supposed to be cooperating with America - knowing about it. Hence, the US operation did not involve Pakistani extradition, which America’s weak president couldn’t handle, yet despite his weakness the op required a bold American commando effort that deserves much praise.

Israel should stop apologizing

Israel can draw several lessons here: In order to kill enemy leaders while the world says nothing or lauds the killing, one needs to be a great power. We were condemned when we eliminated Hamas’ Ahmad Yassin and the Iraqi reactor, and we were warned not to assassinate Arafat.

The Americans assassinated bin Laden, tried to kill Hitler, and also hunted and eliminated Saddam Hussein, yet nobody said a word. For every targeted elimination carried out by Israel, we were hit with numerous condemnations and protests, yet the daily US surgical strikes in Yemen, Afghanistan, Pakistan Libya and Iraq are met with silence. Every time we unintentionally harm civilians, the world raises a hue and cry, yet if it happens in Libya, Iraq, Serbia or Kosovo nobody protests.

A second lesson: When we are accused, smeared and slandered, we should dare to complain, openly compare our actions with those of others fighting terror, and initiate debates in the UN general assembly, Security Council, and Human Rights Council, even if we don’t achieve immediately success. If we bombard them with our arguments and present evidence to all, ultimately something will be grasped by global public opinion, where we are used to retreat, apologize and defend ourselves.

The weak and apologizing will always lose its pride and credibility, as opposed to the cheeky nobleman who constantly blames others, just like the mad Arab rulers which the world rushes to appease, until theyrise up against the West as well, and only then the world turns on them: See the case of Gaddafi, Assad and their comrades.

Rafi Israeli is a professor of Islam and the Middle East at Hebrew University, Jerusalem

ZIONISM IS NOT OFFENSIVE – AND FINALLY SHOULD BE By Rabbi Dov Fischer, Esq. Young Israel of Orange County, CA

The great tragedy within contemporary Zionism is that Zionist leadership and articulators operate on a continuum of defensiveness, always reacting to the latest attack on Israel’s legitimacy.  This “reactive defensive Zionism” is the same whether we look at Jewish organizations, Jewish political figures, or even at college Jewish activists.  Zionists always “play defense.”

Defense certainly is an important part of a winning strategy.  The best hockey and soccer teams still need to field a goalie.  Football teams need a defensive squad, and baseball strategy includes defending against a bunt, pulling an infield-in, and over-shifting towards right field when a left-handed hitter comes to bat.  Even so, no team ever wins if it fails to score.  And teams well ahead of their opponents see their leads disappear when they excessively shift into a “prevent defense mode” that concedes offense exclusively to the opposition.

We who follow spectator or competitive sports understand this philosophy so clearly – the primacy of offense – yet abandon this simplest of survival principles when Israel’s survival is on the line.  Thus, we wait for others to call Israel “racist,” and then we respond that she is not.  They speak of an “Apartheid wall” being constructed along Judea and Samaria, and we reply that the wall is not separatist but protective.  They accuse Israel of starving out the citizens of Gaza, and we counter with photographs of shopping malls in Gaza and with statistics of food supplies that pass into Gaza through Israel.

They accuse Israel of human rights violations, and we respond that Israel is humane.  They say that land belongs to “Palestinians,” and we present compromise:  “Let us have a two-state solution.”  They propose boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS), and we produce reasons not to boycott Israel, not to divest from holdings in Israel, not to sanction Israel.

Seventy years ago, Sid Luckman was the most prominent Jew in American football.  A star quarterback for the Chicago Bears, he once brought his immigrant parents to a game to watch him.  With Luckman masterfully at the helm, the Bears won handily.  After the game, he proudly asked his parents what they thought of his performance.  Even though he successfully had scrambled away from defensive front-linemen and had a wonderful passing game that day, his parents responded: “Sidney, you know those men would not try to keep hurting you all day if you would just give them the ball.”

It is time for Zionists to stop giving them the ball.

We need to initiate the discussion, not to react.  We need to be creative in our presentation, not predictably defensive.  We need to capture the imagination by shifting dynamically, as Sid Luckman did on the field, into a T-formation with men in motion.

It is time to start a nationwide campus movement to boycott, divest, and sanction Arab racist regimes like Saudi Arabia.  It is true that they manufacture virtually nothing useful, so we have to find that one thing besides oil, and start a BDS campaign on campuses throughout America.  We need petitions on campuses, calling attention to racism – particularly against Black people – in the Arab world, gender discrimination, religious intolerance.  We need to promote boycotts of travel to any Arab country that mistreats Christians and that burns churches.  We need to promote sanctions against the destruction of churches throughout the Arab world.  We need to go on the offensive and let people know how bad that world’s racism, misogyny, religious hatred, and bigotry extends.

We need to start bringing Ethiopian Jews from Israel to American campuses and to African-American communities to tell them their stories.  Israel is the only country on the face of the earth – in all of recorded human history – that ever expended national resources including risked lives and material resources for the exclusive purpose of bringing Black people from Africa into their country to join the landed classes in freedom.  Others have taken Blacks out of Africa for slavery.  No one but Israel ever brought Black Africans into their country to join them in freedom.

We need to expend extra breaths and use eight syllables to say “Judea and Samaria” even though we prefer the two-syllabic “West Bank.” We have to stop saying “West Bank.”  We have been taught to say “African American” instead of “Negro,” “Native American” instead of “Indian,” “Mizz” instead of “Missus,” “Gay” instead of “Homosexual,” and “Latino” instead of “Hispanic.”  It is time to teach others to say “Judea and Samaria.” As the Left so well demonstrates, language is powerful.  If we fear that the listener will not understand us when we say “Judea and Samaria,” then we must expend extra breaths each time we use the term, just as we do when we give an address to a telephone marketer when we order a product and need to repeat the spelling of our street.

On the “refugee question,” similarly, we have to go beyond playing defense.  If there are refugees, then there were 8000,000 Jewish refugees who lost everything when the Arab world drove them out but held their property in the 1940s.  Today they number in the many millions.  So, if the 400,000 or 500,000 Arabs who left Israel during that period, mostly voluntarily, now number in the millions of “refugees,” it is time to demand justice for our more-millions of refugees.  Demand hearings in Washington on restoration of property and reparations for Jewish refugees.  Then, with the issue explained and the public educated, demand freezes on Arab governmental assets in America for transfer to American families among the Edot HaMizrach to compensate and restore refugee property – just as we have been doing for Holocaust victims who today are recovering damages for stolen Nazi-era property, for unpaid wages during their enslavement, and for insurance benefits they were owed after having paid their premiums in Europe during the years of the Holocaust.

And demand a complete end to all American funding for the UNRWA, the United Nations agency that promotes anti-Jewish hatred throughout Gaza and in Judea and Samaria by acceding to the myth of “Palestinian refugees in Palestine.”  We are so accustomed to playing defense that we never even ask:  “How in the world can people who were not alive in the 1940s be called ‘refugees’ from somewhere they never fled?  And even if they were ‘refugees,’ how can they still be deemed as ‘refugees’ now that they are living in their supposed homeland?”  When people “return home,” the idea is that they no longer are “refugees.”  At that point, the UNRWA needed to close down in Gaza, in Jenin, and elsewhere – and America needs to stop funding it.  In today’s economic environment, there will be many in Washington who will be delighted to see this  aspect of an offensive approach to Zionism once they are educated to this incredible anomaly. 

We need to go on the offensive and start pointing at the logos of the Arab groups:  the Hamas, the P.L.O., Fatah.  Each and every of their logo designs bears depictions of their aspired-to homeland.  None of those logos depicts Gaza or Judea and Samaria.  Rather, they all depict pre-1967 Israel.  Similarly, we need to start pointedly asking: What do the Arabs even mean by “Palestine”?  When they founded the Palestine Libration Organization in 1964, to liberate Palestine, what area were they liberating?  Not Gaza, then in Egyptian hands.  Not Judea and Samaria, then under Jordanian occupation.  We need to point to the logo – a picture is worth a thousand words – and to 1964, and we need to start advertising those pictures and explaining what 1964 means.

A movie will be coming out on April 15, 2011 that will introduce many people to a simple libertarian question: “Who is John Galt?”  Wait and see.  It is time to ask – on T-shirts, at soirees, even at the beginning of every speech at every Young Israel dinner: “What did they want to liberate in 1964?”

In the last half century, perhaps the only issue on which an Israeli Government has stood firm in the Great Debate was last year when the Netanyahu Government finally refused to blink any longer on one issue: refusing abjectly to continue any further construction freeze in Jerusalem for a second round.  For once – literally, once – Israel finally said: “We will not freeze construction in Jerusalem not even after Hell, Michigan freezes over.”  And, remarkably, the American Administration backed down. 

That is what happens when your cause is just, and you do not give them the ball.  For those who hate us and find Zionism offensive, maybe it is time that we Zionists finally went on the offensive.

Wake Up Israel Advocates: Goldstone Reversed the Momentum!

I was troubled by Michael W's comment in my earlier post, The Goldstone Wedgie Campaign, so I just did a quick tour of all the pro-Israel blogs I value, and some that I don't. I'm astonished to say that not a single blogger, many of whom I deeply respect, has understood the full significance of Goldstone's retraction of portions of the report which bears his name; in the final analysis, exonerating Israel of "war crimes" and "crimes against humanity" in its conduct of Operation Cast Lead, even as he reaffirmed Hamas' continuing culpability for these crimes under international law.

If I may speak to the pro-Israel blogosphere directly for a moment, and paraphrasing comments I made on many of your blogs - guys and gals, you're caught up in the minutia of parsing Goldstone's words, trying to redress this or that minor point or fact. This is all worthwhile but irrelevant; Forget history - it's for historians! Goldstone's retraction is not a gift in the legal sense - because the legal case he's now adopted was made long ago, and was ignored - but a political one. The Washington Post editorial is no less than a tremendous and unexpected development, an earthquake with considerable ramifications, but only if we - yes, we - dare to make a difference.

We need to stop playing defense all the time, crying about our sad lot and all the anti-semites who are out to get us - and they are, but so what! - hoping that the few intellectually honest souls out there in the continents we long ago lost to Arab propaganda will echo back. How is it that really quite vile and hateful anti-Israel blogs, like Richard Silverstein, Electronic Intifada and Mondoweiss, are able to set and advance the anti-Israel agenda with each post, to put forward a consistent vision that ties into a "big-tent" political platform? Meanwhile, for all our best intentions, most pro-Israel blogs function as news aggregators for Jewish and Israel happenings, doing nothing but informing an audience which already largely agrees with our message? Why is it that we cannot break out into the field of policy and generate grassroots enthusiasm for a particular "big tent" pro-Israel political platform which has a real impact in the real world? Is there nothing that enough of us can all agree on?

You all follow the news and know the situation no less than I. David Horovitz made the PA's near term agenda crystal clear in his recent JPost editorial, whose essential points were carbon copied by Ethan Bronner into the recent NY Times piece. The Palestinians are aiming to force the internationalization of the conflict, to embarrass and neutralize the United States by compelling it into using its veto in the Security Council, and then leveraging that veto into a General Assembly resolution authorizing the establishment of a Palestinian state on maximalist Palestinian territorial and political demands, skirting the need for negotiating any core issues with Israel. Once Israel is found in violation of occupying the territory of a UN member state, it will be exposed to a dual campaign of international pressure and sanctions (to force it out of Palestinian territory), and Palestinian incitement, provocations and violence (to force it back in), closing the Gordian knot, and pitting the Jewish state against the international community.

Don't underestimate the force of momentum in driving events. Over the past several months, the PA has been quietly and methodically pushing through a referral of Israel to the International Criminal Court, based on the UN's adoption of the Goldstone Commission's findings. Literally days after this story with Goldstone broke, there was to be a renewed diplomatic and media push by pro-Palestinian supporters to get the subject of Israeli war crimes, and the need to punish those crimes, back in the news and on the international agenda (Mondoweiss even wrote a book in a timely support of the cause).

Referring Israel to the ICC over the Goldstone Report has been a main plank in the delegitimization and isolation campaign that the Palestinians were counting on for buttressing their General Assembly statehood resolution in September. Goldstone's retraction knocks that lever out of their hands - not entirely, but sufficiently so - which is why they're scrambling to make known, all of a sudden, that Goldstone's "personal opinions" no longer matter. Whether we concede that point to them on a silver platter by moaning that "the damage is done" is our choice. The Goldstone Commission's conclusions were never strictly legal or judicial, they were political, and Goldstone's personal withdrawal of support for those conclusions ends their political life. 

If in the past, we could count on Arab incompetence to foil their best laid plans for Israel's demise, today this is no longer the case. I, for one, am trusting the Palestinians at their word, and at their remarkable success at quietly generating diplomatic breakthroughs in the recent past, under Israel's nose. Their diplomats and strategists are competent, they have political direction from European elitists and Washington insiders, and a clear platform for moving forward. In addition, we also have to consider unanticipated forced and unforced Israeli errors between now and September, like that 20 ship flotilla coming in late May.

Planning for the worst is not a terrible habit to get into. If the Palestinian strategy can be broken in September, that will pull us through the 2012 presidential elections in the US, after which the Palestinians may be facing a very different occupant in the White House, or an American President disenchanted with Palestinian unilateralism, and will be forced to either moderate their positions and begin to negotiate in good faith, or stall with ever decreasing international political support. In short, the last six months in Israel advocacy were a vacation. The next six are going to be some of the most crucial in years.

With all this dire business in mind, I propose we not discard Goldstone's unintended gift, but treat it for what it is - an opportunity to regain diplomatic momentum at a crucial time for Israel and her supporters. We don't need to leverage Goldstone's retraction to redress the past - that's for historians - we need it to make an impact in the present and future. Rolling back the EU's year old (?) adoption of the Goldstone Report, which the European Jewish Congress is now attempting, is a great effort which deserves praise and encouragement, not only because it was a historic injustice for the EU to adopt the document, but for the inertia it can build to immunize EU states to Palestinian hyperbolics and increase diplomatic cooperation with an Israel which all now know never lost its moral compass, even if its European partners did.

It's time for the pro-Israel blogging community to do more than inform; to collaborate as never before, to create a "big tent" platform, where our individual interests and concerns overlap, and which we can advance together. To this end, I have a proposal. Is it not a consensus position that Hamas is a terrorist organization which nearly daily commits "war crimes" and "crimes against humanity" against a UN member state and its civilian population? Would it not serve the cause of justice, then, that the one aspect of Goldstone's report which he did not condemn, an aspect of the report also accepted by the international community, the indictment of Hamas for obvious violations of war crimes and crimes against humanity SHOULD go forward at the UN, and be passed on to the ICC for criminal prosecution of the entire Hamas military and political leadership and bureaucracy? What is the EU or UN going to do, discredit itself by rejecting a portion of the Goldstone Report dealing with Hamas which it already accepted and adopted?

And if you say that the Arabs will ignore and oppose this, all the better. Let THEM play defense and design stalling tactics to avoid the long arm of international law. Let THEM denounce and disown the very international institutions which they now manipulate at will. Let THEM deal with the consequences of isolation and delegitimization. Let's focus on an issue and take it forward on a political level with practical consequences. Let's think strategically.

What would it do to Hamas to face international legal opprobrium, charges of war crimes, international warrants? The organization will do what the Palestinian Authority is hoping to force Israel to do - shut itself off from the outside world. How can the PA push through a resolution which establishes a Palestinian state when half the country it wishes to rule is under the control of a government indicted for war crimes? Are you starting to get the picture?

Can one blogger do it? No. What would it hurt for all of us to band together for a week and try, and push, and coral our readership, and get the attention of respectable media and friendly NGOs to take our policy platform to another level? Fine, you're all a bunch of ninny pessimists. But what would it hurt? Goldstone has given us an opening; it is our choice to use it or lose it. I welcome your comments.

“Why are you apologizing all the time?” William A. Jacobson, Associate Clinical Professor, Cornell Law School

With that single sentence made to her Israeli hosts, Sarah Palin demonstrated a greater understanding of the problems confronting Israel than the collective wisdom of all the J.D.'s, Ph.D's, and Masters of International Affairs in the Obama administration combined.

The question was profound, as simple as it were, because it addressed the narrative of perpetual Palestinian victimization and grievance.

First, it goes to the heart of Israel's right to exist.  The recent trend, including among American Jews, is to acquiesce in the leftist-academic and Islamist view of Israel as a mistake and an anomaly, something which deserves to exist -- if at all -- merely by reason of historical accident.  Palin refuses to succumb to such a narrative, recognizing that the connection of the Jewish people to Jerusalem and Israel goes back over 3000 years.  For millennia Jews have prayed "next year in Jerusalem," something no other people had done until the 1967 war led to the creation of a Palestinian national identity.  The State of Israel as a Jewish nation owes no apology for its creation or continued existence.

Second, Palin recognizes that the reason there is no peace in the Middle East is not that Israel is unwilling to give up more land, but that Israel is not willing to give up completely.  Regardless of peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan, Israel never has been accepted by the populations of either of those countries or elsewhere in the Middle East.  In Egypt recently over a million people in Tahrir Square chanted"To Jerusalem We go, for us to be the Martyrs of the Millions." In Tunisia, thousands chanted "death to the Jews" even though there are few Jews left in Tunisia.  When Lara Logan was brutally attacked the crowd chanted "Jew, Jew," and called her an Israeli agent. There will be no peace, regardless of how much land Israel gives up or how many times Israel apologizes, until there is a change in the hearts of Israel's neighbors.

Third, the specific issue to which Palin was reacting was the inability of Jews to pray on the Temple Mount out of fear of Muslim riots and violence.  Indeed, it was Ariel Sharon's entry onto the Temple Mount in 2000 which was the excuse used by Yassir Arafat to ignite the Second Intifada, which lasted roughly 5 years and killed thousands.  Respect is demanded for Muslim holy sites, but that respect is not reciprocated.  Muslim worshippers on the Temple Mount repeatedly have thrown large stones down onto Jewish worshippers at the Wailing Wall, yet Jews do not riot and kill Muslims in response.  Showing respect for Muslim holy sites is the right thing to do, but refusing to insist upon reciprocal respect simply encourages more demands and more violence.

Of course, the beauty of Palin's question was that it applies just as well to Obama, who has launched apology tour after apology tour, who dwells on our imperfections, who refuses to lead, and who seems embarrassed by us.

“Why are you apologizing all the time?”

That is the question Israelis need to ask, and so do we.

[The "first" paragraph was corrected to reflect the 3000+ year old Jewish connection to Jerusalem.]