Below follows a column I wrote in 2014 at the time of the Hamas intrusion into Israël, which I am repeating now in view of the recent anti-semitic resolution adopted by the UN Security Council which was orchestrated by the outgoing Obama Administration and enhanced by a most disturbing John Kerry speech. Though this latest UN Security Resolution does not deal with the Hamas terrorism, as it should have, it clearly shows how biased the UN has become when it deals with Israël. Instead, the Husain Obama/John Kerry duo slaps Israël on settlements in East Jerusalem which from millennia times was in Jewish hands and only became “Arab” in 1949 when Jordan’s King Husain’s superior army overpowered the small army of the just established state of Israël (1948). Jordan annexed it thereafter. Since then it has remained a contested area, which Israël “occupied” when it took it back in the 1967  six-day war.  The UN Security Council condemned this in the famous Resolution 242 which required Israël to “withdraw from the territories occupied in the recent conflict.”

As a WW II kid who has seen his Jewish playmates in Holland hauled away by the Nazis never to return, this resolution and the US involvement was way over the top, extremely biased and against the American spirit, which was instrumental in assuring the Jews a State of their own in 1948: ISRAEL, in the lands where Jews had lived for thousands of years and long before Islam emerged in the year of 630 a.d.

“Let me tell you that ENCHANTÉ  is for Israel, but has good ties with Arabs too. Let me also tell you that ENCHANTÉ  has Palestinian and Islamic friends and that we sometimes agree to disagree but remain good friends. At a personal level, it works. At the political level, the Israeli-Arab conflict seems insoluble.

Everyone who knows a little bit of the Palestine history knows that it was an area where Jews and Arabs lived together for thousands of years. Zionism had been seeking a Jewish state for itself for a long time and several efforts had been made to achieve that without  success (see the Exodus Ship effort of 1947 below.)

(Notes added upon requests from readers: “Zion” commonly refers to a specific mountain near Jerusalem (Mount Zion), on which stood a Jebusite fortress of the same name that was conquered by David and was named the City of David. After almost two millennia of existence of the Jewish diaspora without a national state, the Zionist movement was founded in the late 19th century by secular Jews, largely as a response by Ashkenazi Jews to rising antisemitism inEurope, exemplified by the Dreyfus Affair in France and the anti-Jewish pogroms in the Russian Empire. The political movement was formally established by the Austro-Hungarian journalist Theodor Herzl in 1897 following the publication of his book Der Judenstaat,  At that time, the movement sought to encourage Jewish migration to the OttomanPalestine. –Source: Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia.)

World War II and the Holocaust (in which Palestine Arabs did not participate but surely did not object to) became the catalyst and led to the Western concept to use the British “Palestina Mandate”, an off-shoot of the Ottoman Empire that was dismantled at the end of World War I, as an area where a Jewish State could be carved out together with an Arab Palestine State.

The Arabs objected, amongst others about “arable” land (pun not intended), but why? After all, the Jews had lived there too. Why not have two States, Jewish and Transjordan?  While the UN agreed to the partition in 1948 (33 for, 13 against, 10 abstentions of a UN Assembly of 56 states. The USSR voted “for” just after the US), war between Jews and Arabs almost started immediately and has never ended. Reconciliation has proved almost impossible despite the vision of Anwar Sadat who went to Israel and concluded peace with Menachem Begin in 1977 and recognized Israel. (Jordan signed a peace agreement with Israël in 1994, see below.)

One could say, that was Sadat’s “Mandela” moment. From that moment on, the Arab World could have settled their differences but it did not happen. Other Arabs did not share Sadat’s vision. Egypt was even kicked out of the Arab League for some ten years! On June 6, 1981, fanatic Islamists killed Sadat – and a host of others – at a victory parade commemorating the time that Egypt won back the Sinai from Israel during the Yum Kippur war (1973 -Yom Kippur is the Day of Atonement, the holiest day of the year in Judaism, which coincided at that time with the Muslim Ramadan). And where are we now in 2014? Another Palestinian-Israeli war, though this war is chiefly originated by a terrorist organization called Hamas that enforced its reign on the Palestinians in the Gaza strip after Israel relinquished it in 2005.

What ENCHANTÉ finds so unbelievably short-sighted is all this anti-Israel bashing in the Western media solely because of Palestinian casualties, however tragic they are. Unless you keep your eyes in your pocket, your ears plugged with clay, and your brain drugged with Kool-Aid, it is clear from all the photographs that it is Hamas that is killing its own people. The picture below was Tweeted by Hamas and intercepted by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF).

Maybe Hamas considers their own people as canon-fodder, and maybe they believe that when they die, even after multiple Israeli warnings to move out of their missile infested homesteads, schools, hospitals and even mosques (yes, Allah’s houses!), their dead will all be martyrs and go straight to paradise and live happily ever after. But their own people may not want to die. They live in fear under Hamas’s terror regime. So why are these Western nincompoops still choosing Hamas’s side? How can they when it is clear for all to observe that Hamas is using its own people as human shields and victim propaganda? Because they are all like the Nevil Chamberlains of World War II.

And don’t forget it was the Brits that rammed the ship “Exodus” in the Mediterranean in 1947  to prevent Jews from re-entering Palestine and shipped them back to Germany of all places!

In 1947,  international discussions were under way to settle the British mandate “Palestina”. Maps floated on negotiation tables.

Why not sit down and REASON to solve the Israëli – Palestinian problems without that hot-head demeanor and give each other the space to live? There is enough room if security can be assured!

Look at the daily barrage of missiles that Hamas started this time again. Which country in its right mind would allow that to happen to its people? USA? Germany? France? England? Saudi Arabia? Egypt? Wouldn’t they shoot back, too, with all their might?  No, Jews just have to accept annihilation, problem solved. Then all these tunnels the Israeli detected, smuggling Hamas weapons and fighters into Israel to kidnap and kill. Who can pretend that this is morally right? All that because the Jews have no right to be in the Palestine region that is their homeland as much as it is for the Arabs? Yes, Arabs were there also in the past, but “Palestina” was not an Arab State and surely not an Islamic state!

Sinai and Palestine Area at the time of the Jewish Exodus from Egypt thousands of years ago

Arabia map as it is now

Things have happened that should not have happened concerning Arabs being forced to move out of the State of Israel, but the beginning was politically very murky, also because of British ambiguity. Lots of fights with the Brits erupted. But many Jews were forcefully removed from Arab countries, too! And they are not standing in line to return for “resettlement” like Palestinians want to in Israel. Remember the separation of India and Pakistan in 1947? That was a hundred times greater and also very murky. Still, there are Islamic people living peacefully in India (like Arabs in Israel). While India and Pakistan are touchy neighbors, Islamic Pakistan is not trying to drive Hindu India into the Indian Ocean or firing rockets across the border!

Israel accepted the recent Egyptian-brokered ceasefire. Hamas refused, even though other Arab countries and the Arab League agreed. Why? Because Hamas did not get full Israeli submission? Why should Israel give in to terrorists? So Hamas continued firing rockets and continued to expose its poor Palestinian people. It’s only after that that Israel reluctantly began the ground incursion. Deference to the Bully never wins you any favor. Remember the bully in your schoolyard? Unless you beat him/her to pulp or get him/her checked by the management, he/she will only grab more power. It is unfortunate, but that’s how we human beings are.

Take that up another notch to world politics, and you have the perverted UN. Despite the fact that many UN specialized agencies do great work, the Assembly (57 Islamic States out of 198 members = 28.7%) has become a politicized debating club from what it was meant to be at its inception in 1944. Western states generally support Israel, but they are now in the minority on a one-member-one-vote basis. So Israel will always be the boondoggle at the UN: Because of the UN stereotype anti-Israel posture, Israel will always lose. Only in the Security Council can the USA and some Western Nations block nefarious General Assembly votes. How come that missiles were hidden in two UN Schools in Gaza as UN officials admitted? Would you miss somebody coming into your house or backyard carrying a bunch of missiles under his/her arm to hide?  How come the UN people “did not see”?

Then there are those Arabs fuming at Zionism. Why don’t we hear them fuming at their Islamism that tortures, rapes, kills and suppresses people, even their own, and renders women unworthy creatures and even stones them half-buried in dirt?

Jews don’t do that. Israel does not do that. Arabs living in Israel can vote and practice their religion, free. What makes Islamic people believe that Islam is the only right faith? It started 600 years later than Christianity!  What is so nice about a religion that suppresses other religions, steals their believers’ goods and homes where they have lived for years, makes them pay a tax and labels them secondary citizens, or worse, orders them to convert or die? Is that really what the “religion of peace” is about?  Do we still have to deal with such eight-century nonsense in the 21st century? After all, the reactionary Ottoman Empire was defeated in 1918 and good riddance.

Arafat never let an opportunity go by to fail to make peace. Moneywise it was much more lucrative to keep warring. His wife Suha (born and raised a Catholic in Jerusalem!) lived comfortably in an expensive apartment in the Bristol Hotel in the Rue du Faubourg-Saint Honoré in Paris after she left Gaza where she had shared an apartment with Arafat.  The CBS “60 Minutes” program, not exactly a “right-wing” press unit, reported in 2003 that Arafat had US$800 million in the bank and sent his wife US$50,000-100,000 monthly (depending on the sources) from the Palestinian Authority (PA) budget to live in Paris. This was confirmed by other legitimate sources, among others the IMF. Nobody knows what happens with all the aid money given to the PA or Hamas.

Bristol Hotel in the Rue du Faubourg-Saint Honoré in Paris

Where did all this money come from? Hamas is not any better than the PLO. Do you believe Hamas is suffering from hunger, disease, and poverty? Their suppressed Gaza Palestinians do, but not the Hamas “government”.

Deira Hotel and Lobby in Gaza

Gaza Hotel Lobby and local market

Apartments for “martyrs” and Gaza beach

Happy life at Gaza Beach and Gaza Shopping

More Gaza shopping and local markets.

Hamas home in Gaza and Hamas Leader

Iran, Qatar, and others are faithful financiers. Even the US gives indirectly taxpayer money to Hamas now that they are joined with Fatah.  Do you really think that any of this aid money goes directly to the poor Palestinians?  From the “happy” pictures of Gaza, where Palestinians seem to like their life, one wonders, why for heaven’s sake would Hamas want to expose that happy life to war with its intransigent attitude toward Israel? But no, war has a higher motive: Israel must be destroyed, even if this policy destroys the Palestinians. So, instead of using the aid for further economic development, it will be applied to new missile launchers and tunnels, as was done in the past.

Why this moral equivalence from the USA? What’s left of its moral values? Where is the White House’s moral clarity? How was it possible that the FAA banned flights to Ben Gurion Airport, giving Hamas a win? Such a dramatic move could never have been made without State Department and White House involvement.  Did the US want to pressurize Israel into a cease fire while Kerry was “negotiating” in Egypt? (Remember Kerry’s off the record scolding of Israel’s ground offensive as “a hell of a pin-pointing operation” and “we have to go there tonight, we’re wasting our time here?” Implying he was going to give the Israelis a lesson? This mindset ties in nicely with that FAA ban!) Former Mayor Bloomberg courageously took an El Al flight to Ben Gurion to show solidarity.

Bloomberg flies El Al to Ben Gurion Airport after FAA ban. Kerry follows him quickly. Airport suddenly safe again? The ban was quickly lifted after Kerry was forced to visit Israel.

A “one Palestinian State” is, for the time being, illusory. A well-known Israeli “dissident”, Mike Peled, describes in his intriguing book A General’s Son” how his father promoted that idea. He writes this as having grown up from an “insider” to a “dissident”. In this regard, he is not much different from US “dissidents”. The problem with “dissidents” in democratic societies is that their free speech does not necessarily mean they are right. They surely offer food for thought that sometimes galvanizes into a protest march, but I am afraid that Mike Peled’s solution is not achievable at this time, if ever.”

But that’s  in essence what Kerry suggests: “If the choice is one state, Israel can either be Jewish or democratic. It cannot be both.” He did not mention that many Arabs live peacefully in Israël and with complete religious freedom, nor that Israel, while predominantly Jewish, is a secular state. But “One State” would mean political suicide for Israelis.  So why even mention it, John  Kerry!

There is new talk about a “three-state” solution: Egypt takes the Gaza strip back, and the West Bank joins Jordan. But it is doubtful their Governments want to rule the unruly Palestinians. Hamas is likely to join ISIS, and the Jordanians want to protect their Jordanian ethnicity and culture. In fact, King Hussain the older “released” the West Bank to the Palestinians in 1988 (after it became occupied by Israel). It  “restructured” the Jordanian borders, and its parliamentarian representations, to include only East Bank territory (The East and West Bank are split by the Jordan River and the Dead Sea).

There are a large group of Palestinians living in Jordan, who entered as refugees after the 1949 Arab-Israëli war and the 1967 six-day conflict. Many of them have Jordanian passports, but Jordan wants to preserve its identity of a modern visionary monarchy with a high national IQ and a competent administration and many Jordanians consider the Palestinian influx a threat.

More than two million Palestinian refugees live in Jordan in five refugee camps. In that respect, Jordan has much in common with Israël. It concluded a peace agreement with Israël in 1994 after the Oslo Accords signed with the PLO in Washington D.C. in 1993.

Nobody reports on “Arabs” not wanting “Palestinians.” Only when Israël defends itself and has to fight them and then it’s “Israël’s fault.” The Arabs prefer that the Palestinian problem remains an “Israëli problem” that they can ferment at the UN, keeping themselves out of the shooting range.  The Arab hypocrisy – and ipso facto the Obama/Kerry hypocrisy – is there for everyone to see who keeps his eyes open. A Trump Administration should change this.

What we expect from the US is a visionary approach in which the peaceful existence of Israel remains the prime focus. And not subversive schemes to undermine it as deployed by the B. Husain O/J.Kerry team right at the end of their deplorable administration.