In response to my post yesterday reporting the Jerusalem Post/Reuters article outlining how the Israel Project and J Street have been encouraging Congress to maintain aid to the Palestinian Authority even after they abandon the pretense of wanting peace with Israel by asking the UN to recognize a Palestinian state outside the framework of a negotiated settlement, Jennifer Laszlo Mizrahi, the Israel Project’s director sent the following text to me and to the Post and asked me to publish it on my blog.
Note, I have deleted only the sections that are not related to the issue at hand — i.e whether or not the Israel Project is advocating continuing US aid to the PA despite their actions at the UN:
“Carolyn [sic] Glick slammed us in a completely false attack on our work on her own blog.
First, we are NOT a lobby group. That is not our function as we are an educational organization. Second, while we have met with dozens of US officials and leaders in the last two weeks alone, PA funding over UDI was NOT on the list that we brought to the table. When asked about this issue we remind leaders and diplomats that the PA was told that if they moved ahead at the UNGA with a counterproductive proposal, that they could American lose funding. Actions have consequences. Israel and America can’t be more Catholic than the Pope.
True, we don’t yet know what the final PA actions will be at the UN and after. We all need to see what they ultimately do and gauge reactions base on that. We hope that the Palestinians will go to real talks to secure lasting peace and stop their counterproductive end run around Israel. Still, security cooperation should continue no matter what. No one wins if men in the West Bank trained to use weapons are unemployed and go looking for support from Iran and others. While there is still a ways to go, America and Israel have been real partners with PM Fayyad in making the West Bank a safer place.” (My emphasis, CBG)
Okay, let me analyze Lazslo Mizrahi’s argument.
The issue of lobbying is a side matter. Truth is the IRS allows 501c3s to devote a portion of their time to lobbying so it isn’t particularly relevant but if she wants to say they are educating members of Congress, that’s fine. And it’s true.
Now to the issue at hand.
First Laszlo-Mizrahi argues that the US should pay the salaries of these Palestinian military forces because if the soldiers are out of work then they will become terrorists.
Well, now there’s a recommendation for a US aid program. The US has been arming and training men who are just as happy to be terrorists and if the US stops paying them off and training and arming them, they will kill innocent people in the service of Iran. Needless to say, this is an obscene argument. If they are terrorists then they should be arrested or killed. Not trained and armed.
Second, I will just remind The Israel Project and all the other pro-Israel American Jews quoted in the Post/Reuters article of what I reported last August:
As Israel Radio’s Arab Affairs commentator Yoni Ben-Menachem reported last month, the IDF is deeply concerned about the US-trained Palestinian force. Ben-Menachem recalled that since 1996, Palestinians security forces have repeatedly taken leading roles in organizing and carrying out terrorist attacks against Israel.
Hundreds of Israelis have been murdered and maimed in these attacks.
The Palestinian force being trained by the US Army represents a disturbing, qualitative upgrade in Palestinian military capabilities. OC Central Command Maj.-Gen. Avi Mizrahi warned IDF ground forces about the new US-Palestinian threat in May.
As Mizrahi put it in a speech at Tze’elim training base cited by Ben-Menachem, “This is a well trained force, better equipped than its predecessors and trained by the US. The significance of this is that at the start of a new battle [with the Palestinians] the price that we will pay will be higher. A force like this one can shut down a built-up area with four snipers. This is deadly. These aren’t the fighters we faced in Jenin [in 2002]. This is an infantry force that will be fighting us and we need to take this into account. They have offensive capabilities and we aren’t expecting them to give up.”
The IDF assesses that the US-trained force will be capable of overrunning small IDF outposts and isolated Israeli communities.
As to Salam Fayyad, the man with which American diplomats and Jewish leaders alike are wholly and completely enamored, let’s just remember who this man is.
He is the man who pays Hamas salaries using donor funds every year.
He is leading the world movement to wage an economic boycott of Israeli products.
In his first stint as “Prime Minister” it was Hamas that insisted on appointing him.
He has made it a felony for Palestinians to work in Jewish communities.
The fact of the matter is that since the Bush years, the US, the Israeli Left, the US Jewish leadership and intellectually lazy and incompetent IDF commanders have lionized Fayyad as the great savior. All of them have turned a blind eye to the fact that he is in fact a terror supporting and financing enemy of Israel who uses his considerable skills to keep the flow of US and European aid dollars going and uses them to fund both hatred of Israel and the Palestinian war machine.
The notion of collaboration between Israel and the security forces is a sad joke. In every important mission the IDF knows better than to inform Fayyad’s US-trained and funded army about what they are doing. The reason terror hasn’t returned in force to Judea and Samaria is due completely to the IDF’s continued control over the areas.
As you can see below, all the information anyone needs to understand who Fayyad is and what his US-trained and funded army is about is out there and readily available. The fact that groups like the Israel Project apparently don’t know about this raises the troubling prospect that they may simply not want to know the truth.
See for instance:
Finally, I think it is worth mentioning that aside from the Zionist Organization of America, to the best of my knowledge, no major US Jewish group has publicly supported House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairwoman Cong. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen’s United Nationals Transparency, Accountability, and Reform Act, (HR 2829). And by the way, no Democratic member of Congress has agreed to co-sponsor it.)
As I wrote here, Cong. Ros-Lehtinen’s bill, which calls for ending US aid to the PA and to UN agencies that upgrade the PA’s status following their UN statehood bid next week, is a crucial piece of legislation. It is critical for US national security — by compelling the administration to apply reason and consider the US interest in funding both the UN and the PA. And it is important as well for Israel.
By the way, I address the US’s abandonment of reason in its policy making towards the Palestinians and the UN in my column today which I will be posting in a few hours.
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