Jennifer Hanin . com

We have heard it before and chances are we will hear it again. The play on words when it comes to Iran’s nuclear inten­tions couldn’t get any more absurd than if your favorite comic book vil­lain leaped from the pages and spoke it. Just yes­ter­day, the head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Agency announced the coun­try is inten­si­fy­ing its explo­ration and dis­cov­ery. Really? I think what he really meant is that the coun­try is ratch­et­ing up their effort to com­mit mass exter­mi­na­tion and det­o­na­tion. I mean after all, it’s not as if Iran­ian Pres­i­dent Mah­moud Ahmadine­jad recently unveiled a life sav­ing med­ical device. Oh no, he unveiled his solu­tion to pro­mote “peace and friendship” – a weapon that he so poet­i­cally named the “Ambas­sador of Death.” I sup­pose the next release will be the “Sul­tan of Doom” or the “King of Casualty.”

It just doesn’t get any more absurd than that. I blogged here that Ahmadine­jad is a mod­ern day com­par­i­son to the fic­tional Dr. Evil from the Austin Pow­ers comedic film tril­ogy and yet the truth is – you just can’t make up this stuff. Yes, Oscar Wilde was right on for empha­siz­ing how: life imi­tates art far more than art imi­tates life. What leader of any pro­gres­sive coun­try would be dumb enough to name their weapon of mass destruc­tion the “Ambas­sador of Death.” It just doesn’t bode well with civ­i­lized soci­ety. Unless of course, you’re a seven-year-old delin­quent or you suck at brand­ing because you’re one of Batman’s fic­tional vil­lains like the Joker, the Rid­dler or Mr. Freeze.

Then while Ahmadine­jad (aka Armaged­don) shared his vision of “peace and friend­ship” to the West­ern media last week­end he for­got how he also told the Mid­dle East­ern media that any attack on Iran would have world­wide con­se­quences. Next, came the annouce­ment of his mass assault boats. Well, so much for “peace and friend­ship.” This kind of dou­ble rhetoric is com­mon among ter­ror­ist fac­tions that aim to deceive the West, through actions or dona­tions or both. Is Ahmadine­jad clue­less when it comes to online ser­vices like Google Trans­late? Any­one can trans­late any­thing these days and don’t think that just because you’re speak­ing Farsi, that the world isn’t trans­lat­ing. We are, and we have been for some time.

Today, Iran’s Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Guard Corps (aka as a ter­ror­ist entity by the US) lev­eled a threat that doesn’t sit well either. The Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Guard claimed it would destroy Israel no mat­ter who attacked Iran. Again, I’m still not feel­ing the love. 

This leaves me with just one last thing to say to Ahmadine­jad; every hero gets his vil­lain. Like Batman’s failed vil­lains, the world will not end thanks to you nor will Israel end up in the sea. Your legacy; how­ever, is des­tined to mir­ror Batman’s other arch­en­emy, the Pen­guin: freaky and disturbed.

Oh wait, you already are.

Grow­ing up, being a lib­eral meant you were an intel­lec­tual who stood for noble causes like progress, peace and human rights. I’m proud to say my dad was one – he knew the wrongs that needed to be resolved but also knew when some­one put lip­stick on a pig. Yet today, those that claim to be lib­eral are often walk­ing con­tra­dic­tions. How can you claim to be for progress, peace and human rights yet side with ter­ror­ist Hamas or the Pales­tin­ian Authority?

Most aca­d­e­mics know that the Hamas Char­ter calls for the destruc­tion of Israel and it’s no secret that the PA is wag­ing an inter­na­tional cam­paign call­ing for coun­tries to boy­cott, divest and sanc­tion (BDS) the Jew­ish State. Unfor­tu­nately, the cam­paign is gain­ing solid ground. How could it not? Num­bers mat­ter when you con­sider there are 1.57 bil­lion Mus­lims world­wide com­pared to 13.2 mil­lion Jews. This is why if you’re seri­ous about progress, peace and human rights, you will read on, rethink your posi­tion and con­sider the lives of the 7.3 mil­lion Israelis (1.5 mil­lion of which are Arab) that hang in the bal­ance every time you or some­one you know pub­licly dele­git­imizes the Jew­ish State.

It’s hard to grasp why main­stream media and many lib­er­als choose to ignore the human rights atroc­i­ties that occur in Arab states. Just today, a judge in “eye-for-an-eye” Saudi Ara­bia (aka the coun­try who likes to chop off hands of thieves) con­sid­ered whether to sever the spinal cord of an attacker with a cleaver. Hmm. Not much human rights here.

Iran doesn’t fare any bet­ter. It has con­tin­ued to fol­low such bar­baric prac­tices like ston­ing. Most recently, an Iran­ian court doled out the death penalty via ston­ing to Sakineh Mohammadi-Ashtiani, a 43-year-old mother of two. Luck­ily, this case received world­wide media cov­er­age and is only scratch­ing the sur­face of how the Arab World hasn’t risen much past the Span­ish Inquisition.

I’ve blogged about how Arab League coun­tries deal with gay men and women. Cruel and unusual pun­ish­ment doesn’t even come close to it. Try receiv­ing the largest apartheid sen­tence on earth: the death penalty. In fact, pub­lic hang­ings in Iran are com­mon­place. Just to under­stand how many coun­ties oper­ate this way the Inter­na­tional Les­bian and Gay Asso­ci­a­tion acknowl­edge seven Islamic coun­tries that dole out the death penalty for gay, les­bian and bisex­ual indi­vid­u­als that engage in same-sex actions. Those coun­tries are:

• Iran
• Mau­ri­ta­nia
• Saudi-Arabia
• Sudan
• United Arab Emirates
• Yemen
• Nige­ria (death penalty applies to 12 North­ern provinces with Sharia law)

I’ve also blogged about how the real Mid­dle East apartheid is occur­ring in the Arab states that enforce Sharia Law, honor killings, and green light the prac­tice of child brides and even child exe­cu­tions. By all accounts, Sharia law has reduced rights of women in Islamic coun­tries to that of minors in West­ern coun­tries. What grown woman needs an escort every­where she goes? I’m talk­ing to you: Jor­dan, Syria, Egypt and Iran. And what’s up with the seg­re­gated side­walks for men and women, Saudi Arabia?

How have lib­er­als been able to bypass oppres­sive, total­i­tar­ian regimes that deny their cit­i­zens basic free­doms of polit­i­cal expres­sion, speech, press and due process? Some­how, I’m get­ting an awful image of Sean Penn chew­ing fat with Venezue­lan (aka Israel/ Jew hater) Pres­i­dent Hugo Chavez. Another actor that I’ve lost ALL respect for.

Keep in mind that even the Arab Human Devel­op­ment Report (pub­lished by Arab researchers) from the UN Devel­op­ment Pro­gram found that out of the seven regions of the world,

Arab coun­tries had the low­est free­dom score.

No one seems to bring this up. Besides Arab coun­tries tank­ing in the free­dom depart­ment, they also had the low­est rank­ing for “voice and account­abil­ity,” a rank­ing of var­i­ous aspects of the polit­i­cal process, civil lib­er­ties, polit­i­cal rights and free­dom of the media. Cen­sor­ing the media in Arab coun­tries is a great way to raise future Israel/Jew haters and it goes against what most lib­er­als say they believe in.

Human rights atroc­i­ties are the norm rather than the excep­tion in Arab League coun­tries. In fact, it’s worth not­ing that Iran is still hold­ing the three Amer­i­can hik­ers, Sarah Shourd, Shane Bauer and Joshua Fat­tal that I’ve blogged about in Tehran’s Evin prison. Iran has held them over a year for allegedly cross­ing the bor­der ille­gally while hik­ing (though the cross­ing part is debat­able), and are com­mit­ting a num­ber of human rights vio­la­tions includ­ing denial of  med­ical treat­ment. As of July 30, 2010, Iran has yet to charge them or sched­ule a trial.

Who can for­get Israeli sol­dier, Gilad Shalit? Ter­ror­ist Hamas kid­napped him over four years ago and con­tin­ues to move him secretly while bar­gain­ing for release of some of the most dan­ger­ous Hamas oper­a­tives in Israeli pris­ons. Most recently, Hamas turned down a pris­oner swap that included 1,000 Hamas pris­on­ers for Shalit. Hamas has vio­lated the Geneva Con­ven­tion by refus­ing to allow the Red Cross to see him for med­ical treat­ment. Where is world con­dem­na­tion for groups like Hamas or any other gov­ern­ment (think Iran) that is com­mit­ting human rights vio­la­tions right under our noses?

So those that demo­nize a tiny, demo­c­ra­tic coun­try — nick­named the Sil­i­con Val­ley of the Mid­dle East — that has more com­pa­nies on the Nas­daq than any coun­try out­side of the US isn’t really tak­ing into account that these seven mil­lion peo­ple chose progress over war­fare. These same seven mil­lion peo­ple also chose reli­gious free­dom and all other free­doms that accom­pany a demo­c­ra­tic society.

I haven’t seen any lib­er­als pro­mot­ing a BDS cam­paign against China, Cuba, Egypt, Eritrea, Iran, North Korea, Rus­sia, Saudi Ara­bia, Soma­lia, Sudan and Zim­babwe or any other coun­try sighted for hor­ren­dous human rights abuses. Talk about unfair. The world became more out­raged when Israel defended itself against vio­lent attack­ers on the Gaza bound flotilla from Turkey that ended nine lives, then when North Korea killed 46 sol­diers when it launched a mis­sile into a South Korean war­ship months earlier.

Israel is a Jew­ish state that wants peace with its neigh­bors, and yet it’s fac­ing the same type of eco­nomic dis­crim­i­na­tion and inter­na­tional iso­la­tion that its Jew­ish ances­tors faced thanks to Adolf Hitler.

Wanted: Lib­er­als that can tell the dif­fer­ence between the facts and a fic­tional nar­ra­tive con­structed to anni­hi­late 7.3 mil­lion Israelis.

Imag­ine if there were evil forces out to frame you no mat­ter what you did or how you did it. Then con­sider Israel. Just two days ago, IDF sol­diers per­formed rou­tine main­te­nance by clear­ing bushes to improve the line of sight along the Israeli – Lebanese bor­der. Then “suddenly” – a word that par­ents read­ing children’s books are all too famil­iar with when the plot turns to the wicked antag­o­nist – Lebanese sol­diers fired and mur­dered a senior IDF commander.

When the story broke, even “rep­utable” news orga­ni­za­tions like Reuters and BBC helped demo­nize Israel by pub­lish­ing pho­tos that made the world believe that Israel had delib­er­ately breached the secu­rity fence into Lebanese ter­ri­tory. In real­ity, the secu­rity fence and the bor­der demar­ca­tion are not the same in all areas. The attack occurred on Israeli ter­ri­tory. In fact, IDF even cleared this rou­tine work in advance with the UNIFIL (United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon) to pre­vent any poten­tial violence.

Nev­er­the­less, the vio­lence occurred against Israel and like clock­work, the lynch­ing had begun. The world descended upon Israel and again painted it as the aggres­sor. Even the US gave a response best described as “neu­tral.” But this story, like dozens before it, may as well been con­cocted in La La Land. Crit­ics of Israel are fast to point the fin­ger at the Jew­ish State but are speech­less when try­ing to rat­tle off even one inci­dent where Israel fired first. There sim­ply is none. Through­out its 62-year his­tory, Israel has retal­i­ated to unpro­voked attacks yet never once insti­gated an attack.

The bor­der inci­dent was no dif­fer­ent from pre­vi­ous inci­dents that endan­gered Israelis. Like the oth­ers, Israel fired back. Hon­est Report­ing did a good job of ques­tion­ing why UN offi­cials and jour­nal­ists were onsite at the time of the ambush. After all, the UN had full knowl­edge that the main­te­nance was occur­ring. It also explains why sev­eral jour­nal­ists linked to media out­lets con­trolled by ter­ror­ist Hezbol­lah were also onsite. Think about the blood that is now on the hands of those respon­si­ble. UN offi­cials and jour­nal­ists don’t just show up at bor­ders where ten­sion are high unless some­one has asked them to be there. So is it the Lebanese gov­ern­ment or the UN that needs to take full respon­si­bil­ity for the mur­der of the Israeli offi­cer, the jour­nal­ist and three Lebanese soldiers?

The UN has now admit­ted that the attack occurred on Israeli soil but it is also couch­ing the Lebanese attack as a “mis­un­der­stand­ing.” Hmm. Does that mean the Lebanese com­man­der that autho­rized the attack was con­fused about where Lebanon’s ter­ri­tory ends and Israel’s ter­ri­tory begins? Hardly. It’s more likely that the Lebanese com­man­der knew exactly what he was doing and vio­lated UN Res­o­lu­tion 1701 by know­ingly com­mit­ting an act of war.

Where is the inter­na­tional out­cry? How can the UN boil down a pre­med­i­tated attack to a “mis­un­der­stand­ing?” Like the Gaza flotilla, Israel used nec­es­sary force to defend itself from bru­tal aggres­sors. Unlike the witch-hunt the UN has gen­er­ated into the IDF’s involve­ment with the Gaza flotilla, the fam­i­lies of those slain are likely not gain­ing com­fort know­ing the UN has rub­ber stamped the deaths of their loved ones with a “mis­un­der­stand­ing”. It’s high time the world inves­ti­gates the UN for the crimes it has com­mit­ted and the spe­cial ses­sions it holds to inves­ti­gate Israel while turn­ing a blind eye to coun­tries that com­mit geno­cide. Talk about a bunch of hyp­ocrites. But that’s another blog post (or series of them) all together.

Con­sider recent threats to Israel over the last month or so. I tweeted about the rocket recently fired from Gaza on the Israeli city of Ashkelon. Then there were rock­ets fired from Sinai on the Jor­dan­ian and Israeli cities of Aqaba and Eilat. Next, the Lebanese army opens fire. It’s clear that Hezbol­lah has infil­trated the Lebanese army and we know that Hamas is respon­si­ble for the rock­ets launched from Gaza and the Sinai. But I haven’t seen the inter­na­tional out­cry in the media against these aggres­sors. Israel and the inter­na­tional com­mu­nity should be able to see these vio­lent inci­dents and “ter­ror­ist fac­tions” for what they are: attempts to rip the peace process right out of its seams.

Then there is the never-ending parade of flotil­las to con­sider. What a farce! The Turk­ish flotilla comes no sur­prise as Prime Min­is­ter Tayyip Erdo­gan rec­ntly became Iran­ian Pres­i­dent Mah­moud Ahmadinejad’s BFF. And where did the fol­low­ing flotil­las come from? Not the Emer­ald City. Oh no, they came from rogue coun­tries that either serve as launch­ing pads for ter­ror­ists like Lebanon or fund world­wide ter­ror­ism like Iran and Libya. These highly pro­pa­gan­dized inci­dents tar­get­ing the only true democ­racy in the Mid­dle East should serve as a reminder that while Israel seeks har­mony with its neigh­bors they are the same lot sac­ri­fic­ing lives and cre­at­ing media mis­di­rec­tion to derail peace. 

Photo Credit: Israeli mourn­ing mur­dered Senior IDF com­man­der: CNN

Israeli For­eign Min­is­ter Danny Ayalon set the record straight with his recent Wall Street Jour­nal arti­cle on the dou­ble stan­dard the world places on Israel. Ayalon brought up a good ques­tion: where was the world a few years ago when Pales­tin­ian ter­ror­ists mur­dered nearly 500 locals at a refugee camp?

Now I have one. Where were Oliver Stone, Elvis Costello and Meg Ryan – three celebri­ties that recently boy­cotted Israel – when the same PA ter­ror­ists slaugh­tered these 500 inno­cent peo­ple? Where were they when Hamas ter­ror­ists launched over 8,600 rock­ets into Israel tar­get­ing civil­ians over an eight-year period lead­ing up to Oper­a­tion Cast Lead? Where were they when ter­ror­ists recently burned down a sec­ond UN sum­mer camp in Gaza? Or when the strug­gle between the PA and Hamas left Gazans in the dark by turn­ing off their elec­tric­ity? Or when Hamas stole aid ear­marked for Pales­tin­ian refugees? (Google it: it’s become a Hamas hobby).  Chances are they were doing what they do best in the free world: enter­tain­ing the masses.

We have to hold coun­tries and peo­ple account­able if we want to be seri­ous play­ers in the peace process. A small step in this direc­tion occurred last Thurs­day when the Arab League endorsed direct talks between PA Pres­i­dent Mah­moud Abbas and Israeli Prime Min­is­ter Ben­jamin Netanyahu. As expected, this endorse­ment is at best backhanded.

Israel has made a num­ber of con­ces­sions like the 10-month build­ing freeze Netanyahu ordered in East Jerusalem and recently relax­ing the block­ade to allow more sup­plies into Gaza yet the PA has yet to make any. In fact, the PA’s idea of direct talks is get­ting half their cake before nego­ti­a­tions begin then the other half at the nego­ti­a­tion table. This is not nego­ti­a­tion but rather a form of Russ­ian roulette with the gun pointed at what might very well be the Pales­tini­ans last chance for real peace.

This brings up another entity who con­stantly mis­di­ag­noses this preva­lent dis­ease that we know as ter­ror­ism yet chooses to treat the symp­toms instead. The United Nations Human Rights Com­mit­tee today called for Israel to end its block­ade against Gaza. Hello! Gaza has had a block­ade by Israel and Egypt since 2007 for a rea­son. Both coun­tries have had pro­tec­tion bar­ri­ers from Gaza for years. In fact,  Egypt started build­ing a mas­sive iron wall just last year to shut down smug­gling tun­nels. The UN and oth­ers seem to have a short mem­ory when it comes to Gaza. The block­ade is there for rea­son: to pre­serve Israeli lives.

Need more? Pales­tini­ans began launch­ing mis­siles and rock­ets into Israel in 2001. The block­ade occurred as a nec­es­sary step to limit Pales­tin­ian rocket attacks on Israeli cities from the Gaza Strip and to pre­vent Hamas from obtain­ing more weapons. It’s inter­est­ing that any “human rights com­mit­tee” would call for treat­ing the symp­toms (remov­ing the block­ade) that is pro­tect­ing 7 mil­lion Israelis before cur­ing the region’s dis­ease (ter­ror­ism). We all know that an unsta­ble Mid­dle East is a pre­scrip­tion for an unsta­ble world. This is even clearer today with Iran’s ter­ror prox­ies, Hezbol­lah and Hamas gain­ing ground, and the num­ber of sanc­tions the inter­na­tional com­mu­nity has placed on Iran in response to its secre­tive nuclear weapons program.

In fact, the PA’s auto­matic refusals for peace over the last few decades along with the Hamas Char­ter demon­strates that these groups are more inter­ested in Israel’s destruc­tion than they are in estab­lish­ing real peace where their peo­ple pros­per. After all, real peace will likely put these ter­ror groups out of business.

Netanyahu, on the other hand, has extended an olive branch all year to Abbas. Like many Jews, a two-state solu­tion wasn’t my ini­tial choice. But faced with a worse choice, a one state solu­tion, where you have a Pales­tin­ian birth rate that will eas­ily exceed the Jew­ish birthrate, it’s the bet­ter of the two.

But focus­ing on Judea and Samaria is a smoke­screen. This con­flict has never been about land. There are 22 Arab coun­tries sur­round­ing Israel that are 640 times its size. If this con­flict was about land, Arabs should be con­tent. But they’re not. If this con­flict was over land, then why are so many coun­tries like Jor­dan, Saudi Ara­bia, and even the UN-run Pales­tin­ian camps teach­ing chil­dren hatred for Jews and Israel? If this con­flict was about land, why do so many Arab pub­li­ca­tions fea­ture car­toon car­i­ca­tures depict­ing the evil, greedy Jew?

Prob­a­bly one of the most strik­ing tes­ta­ments that Abbas isn’t putting his peo­ple first (besides refus­ing direct talks) is that he is demand­ing that Pales­tin­ian refugees have the “right of return.” When he talks about this, he means sev­eral gen­er­a­tions of fam­i­lies return­ing to Israel. Well, let’s think about that. This means sev­eral gen­er­a­tions of peo­ple that the PA/ Hamas have indoc­tri­nated to hate Jews and Israel return­ing to the land of their “enemy.” I don’t see a peace­ful out­come in peo­ple return­ing to a coun­try they have learned to hate. It’s illog­i­cal not to men­tion a secu­rity risk, espe­cially since the premise of cre­at­ing a Pales­tin­ian State in the first place rests on pro­vid­ing a home­land for a bur­geon­ing refugee pop­u­la­tion of nearly 5 mil­lion. Send­ing them to a state they hate, while Abbas vows that he would never let an Israeli step foot into a future Pales­tin­ian State, is noth­ing short of absurd.

Just yes­ter­day Hamas fired a rocket into the South­ern Israeli town of Ashkelon. The IDF fired back with an airstrike hit­ting serveral Hamas tar­gets. When will the blood­shed end? Will US Pres­i­dent Barack Obama put more pres­sure on Abbas? Most expect him too. But don’t depend on play­ers that focus on symp­toms to bring real peace to the Mid­dle East. And don’t expect Hol­ly­wood has-beens to pave a path to peace either. Instead, rely on those that cure the plagues of the world by putting their peo­ple first. Abbas: lis­ten up.

Photo credit: Israeli FM Danny Ayalon: Haaretz