Jerusalem News (27 January, 2015, 7 Shevet, 5775)
Contents:
1. The Myth of Palestinian Centrality by Yoram Ettinger
2. Decades of Suspicions: Did German Companies Aid Syrian Chemical Weapons Program?
by Gunther Latsch, Fidelius Schmid and Klaus Wiegrefe
3. North Korea this past weekend accused Israel of "representing dictatorial forces for aggression that trample down the legitimate right of the Palestinian people."
4. Saudi Arabia's New King Helped Fund Radical Terrorist Groups. Monarch tied to anti-Semitic Muslim clerics, funding of jihad, by Adam Kredo
5. West's anti-Israel propaganda encourages terror by Ben Dror Yemini Â
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1. The Myth of Palestinian Centrality by Yoram Ettinger
http://theettingerreport.com/Palestinian-Issue/The-myth-of-Palestinian-centrality.aspx
Extracts:
In 1977, Egyptian President Sadat embraced Israeli Prime Minister Begin's peace initiative, in spite of stormy Palestinian opposition, and in defiance of President Carter's initial objection to direct negotiation between Jerusalem and Cairo. Carter promoted the concept of an international conference, centering on the Palestinian issue, which he assumed was the chief axis of the Arab-Israeli conflict. He pressured Begin to highlight the Palestinian issue, but received no effective support from Sadat.
Israel-Arab relations, in general, and the Arab-Israeli conflict, in particular, have never revolved around the Palestinian axis, irrespective of Western conventional wisdom and political correctness, which have been shaped by Arab talk rather than Arab walk, by oversimplification and wishful thinking rather than Middle Eastern reality.
The 1948/49 War was launched by Arab countries, against the newly-born Jewish State, at the expense, and not on behalf, of a Palestinian cause, exposing the myth of Palestinian centrality. Thus, Iraq leveraged the war to advance its goal of intra-Arab hegemony and control the oil pipeline from Kirkuk to Haifa; Jordan joined the assault on Israel to expand all the way to the Mediterranean; Egypt was more interested in foiling Jordan's expansionist plans than the annihilation of the Jewish State; and Syria aspired to advance its vision of Greater Syria.
The 1948 War was not a war of, for, or (mostly) by Palestinian Arabs. According to Prof. Efraim Karsh, a leading Middle East expert from London's Kings College, 'the 1948 pan-Arab invasion of Israel was a classic scramble for territory and not a battle for Palestinian national rights. As the first Secretary General of the Arab league, Abdel Rahman Azzam, admitted, 'the goal of Jordan was to swallow up the central hill regions of Palestine. The Egyptians would get the Negev. The Galilee would go to Syria, except that the coastal part as far as Acre would be added to Lebanon.'
Upon the conclusion of the war, Iraq occupied Samaria (the northern West Bank), but transferred the area to Jordan, not to the Palestinian Arabs. Jordan occupied Judea (the southern West Bank) and annexed Judea and Samaria to the East Bank of the Jordan River. Egypt occupied Gaza and did not transfer it to the Palestinian Arabs. Just like Jordan, Egypt prohibited Palestinian national activities and expelled Palestinian activists. In 1959, Egypt and the Arab League dissolved the ineffective provisional Palestinian ('All Palestine') government, which was established by them in 1949.
The 1956 (Sinai) War was also not triggered by the Palestinian issue. It was a derivative of Egyptian-sponsored terrorism (activated by Palestinian Arabs in Gaza), aimed at undermining Israel's sovereignty in the Negev; Egypt's nationalization of the British and French-owned Suez Canal; and Egypt's support for anti-French elements in Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia.
The 1967 Six Day War erupted as a result of Egyptian President Nasser's aggression, aimed at advancing his pan-Arab megalomaniac aspiration, which were unrelated to the Palestinian issue: Egypt's blockade of Israel's southern (oil and commerce) waterway; Egypt's violation of the 1957 Sinai Peninsula demilitarization agreement; the Egypt-Syria-Jordan Military Pact.
The 1969-70 Egypt-Israel war of attrition along the Suez Canal took place irrespective of the Palestinian issue. And, the 1973 War (the most recent Arab-Israel war) was initiated by Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Iraq, independent of the Palestinian issue.
Since 1973, there have been a number of wars between Israel and Palestinian Arabs, none evolved into an Arab-Israeli war. Arabs have been aware of the subversive/terrorist track record of Palestinian Arabs, and therefore have showered them with rhetoric, not resources, and certainly not on the battlefield.
For example, the 1982 Israel war on PLO terrorism in Lebanon was launched on June 5, but the Arab League did not convene until September, following the PLO expulsion from Beirut. The 1987-1992 and the 2000-2003 waves of Palestinian terrorism were quelled by Israel's defense forces with no Arab intervention, as were Israel's wars on Palestinian terrorism in Gaza (2008, 2012 and 2014).
Unlike Arab policy makers Western policy makers and public opinion molders are preoccupied with the Palestinian issue, misperceiving it as the root cause of Middle East turbulence, the crown jewel of Arab policy making and the crux of the Arab -Israeli conflict.Â
This Western-formulated myth of Palestinian centrality has led to an oversimplification of Middle East complexities, corrupting Western policy, undermining vital Western interests, exacerbating problems rather than advancing solutions, intensifying terrorism, diverting attention away from major obstacles to peace, thus creating another major obstacle to peace.
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2. Decades of Suspicions: Did German Companies Aid Syrian Chemical Weapons Program?
By Gunther Latsch, Fidelius Schmid and Klaus Wiegrefe DER SPIEGELÂ
January 23, 2015 Â 06:13 PM
 http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/german-companies-suspected-of-aiding-syrian-chemical-weapons-program-a-1014722.html
Extracts:
Government documents and information from the Assad regime indicate that German companies may have helped Syria produce chemical weapons over the course of decades. So far, the Merkel administration has shown no willingness to investigate. When it comes to war crimes and crimes against humanity, the German government is unyielding -- particularly when it comes to finding excuses for why it should do nothing when it comes to potential German perpetrators. For more than 16 months, Chancellor Angela Merkel's government has been in possession of a list containing the names of German companies thought to have helped Syrian dictator Bashar Assad and his father Hafis build up Syria's chemical weapons arsenal over the course of several decades. Ultimately, it became one of the largest such arsenals in the world.
 The German government, a coalition between Merkel's conservatives and Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel's center-left Social Democrats (SPD), received the list from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW). The OPCW was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2013 for its "extensive efforts to eliminate chemical weapons." Together with experts from the United Nations, the OPCW organized and carried out the destruction of Syrian chemical weapons last year.
Berlin immediately classified the list and has since kept it under lock and key.
The government says that releasing the names would "significantly impair foreign policy interests and thus the welfare of the Federal Republic of Germany." It also argues that doing so would be akin to releasing "trade secrets" and as such would violate the German constitution. It is an astonishing justification when one considers what Assad's German suppliers enabled the dictator to do.
Over the years, the Syrians produced and stored poison gas weapons with an explosive power of more than 1,500 megatons. Among the weapons was the nerve gas sarin, which disrupts neurotransmitters leading to tortuous cramping and suffocation. More than 1,400 people have been killed by poisonous gas during the ongoing civil war in Syria, though it has not been conclusively proven whether the chemical weapons were deployed by the Syrian army or by opposition militias.
Foreign Ministry files make it clear that Berlin had indications that German companies may have been involved in chemical weapons production long before the OPCW delivered its list. ..
 The most recently published inventory, stemming from 1984, included a document that the government may have accidentally released. It includes the names of companies suspected of supplying the Syrian chemical weapons program... The paper is a memo relating to the Dec. 6, 1984 visit of the then-Israeli Ambassador to Germany Yitzhak Ben-Ari to a deputy section head in the German Foreign Ministry. Ben-Ari presented the Germans with "intelligence service findings" indicating that since the mid-1970s, scientists had been seeking to produce chemical weapons for Syria "disguised as agricultural and medical research." The ambassador said that the chemistry department of the Centre d'Etudes et des Recherches Scientifiques in Damascus, a research center that received funding from UNESCO, led the top secret program. Ben-Ari said that a pilot facility had already been built and that, in 1982, Syria had signed contracts with European companies relating to three production lines. Ben-Ari believed that by 1985, Syria would have the capacity to produce 700 kilograms (1,543 pounds) of sarin -- enough to kill several million people. The Foreign Ministry promised to investigate. But the list of participating German companies that the Assad regime turned over to the OPCW 16 months ago, raises doubts as to whether such an investigation ever took place.
As part of the destruction of its chemical weapons arsenal, Syria was required to name all of its suppliers. Normally in such a situation, German agencies or ministries would establish a committee of historians to explore their own histories and air out any dirty laundry they might find. The Merkel administration, though, has shown zero interest in clearing up this episode of Germany's postwar history. The lack of motivation is hardly surprising. The issue is not only that of unscrupulous German companies. Rather, it also exposes the hypocrisy of a number of German chancellors, particularly that of Helmut Kohl, the father of reunification and long-time head of the Christian Democrats, the party currently led by Angela Merkel. Kohl was the chancellor of West Germany in 1983 when the issue of chemical weapons arose. Three years prior, Iraq had invaded Iran, but was pushed back soon thereafter. The result was that Iraq deployed poison gas almost daily against Iranian troops. By the end of the war in 1988, thousands of Iranians had lost their lives by way of mustard gas or sarin. That same year, Saddam's henchmen deployed gas against Iraqi Kurds. Knowingly or Unknowingly The documents recently released by the Foreign Ministry contain much more information about the construction of chemical weapons production facilities in Iraq than they do about the efforts being undertaken in neighboring Syria. In both cases, the documents suggest that successive German governments protected companies that -- knowingly or unknowingly -- colluded with mass murderers. The practice extended from Kohl to Merkel, from Kohl's Economics Minister Otto Graf Lambsdorff to current SPD Economics Minister Gabriel. Furthermore, those companies named by the Syrian government two years ago as suppliers to its chemical weapons program in documents handed over to the UN/OPCW commission ...
 The retired BND official recalls that German intelligence also had detailed knowledge of the Syrian chemical weapons program at least since 1982. His recollections would seem to be supported by a compilation established by the BND listing goods delivered to Syria and handed to the German government last year in connection with the OPCW list. German companies, for example, provided equipment for the manufacture of methylphosphonyl difluoride, which can be combined with isopropanol for the production of sarin. German intelligence knew about such shipments in 1983. But nothing happened. ....
The government, meanwhile, has justified its refusal to publicize the list of Assad's suppliers by referencing concerns of "grave consequences" that could extend to "existential threats." Furthermore, they say it would be a violation of constitutional guarantees relating to business dealings. The rights of poison gas victims to life are apparently not as important. They are, after all, already dead.
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3. North Korea this past weekend accused Israel of "representing dictatorial forces for aggression that trample down the legitimate right of the Palestinian people."
http://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/North-Korea-accuses-Israel-of-being-dictatorial-force-for-aggression-389088
Extracts:
Pyongyang responded angrily to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's remark to the visiting Japanese premier last week in which the Israeli leader said that both Jerusalem and Tokyo face 'formidable threats from nearby rogue states' Â - Israel from Iran and Japan from North Korea.
Iran, Netanyahu said, 'cannot be allowed to travel the road taken by North Korea,' a path, which he said led to an agreement with Pyongyang in 1994 that 'was widely celebrated as a historic breakthrough for nonproliferation, but in the end, that deal failed to prevent the dangerous proliferation that threatens all of east Asia today.'
Netanyahu reiterated his position that, until a deal is reached that dismantles Iran's military capability, the international sanctions on Iran must be maintained.
'Both Iran and North Korea are governed by ruthless and extreme dictatorships, states that seek to bully and intimidate their neighbors, and in our case, to actually eradicate us from the face of the Earth,' he said. 'Iran and North Korea have aggressive military nuclear programs and they are both developing nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them, ballistic missiles.'
The North Korean regime issued a statement through the Korean Central News Agency taking Netanyahu to task for "provocative remarks hurting the DPRK's dignity and social system."
The statement said that Netanyahu's criticism of Pyongyang amounted to "rubbish," as did suggestions that the North Korean regime was working with Israel's enemies on missile and armament technology.
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4. Saudi Arabia's New King Helped Fund Radical Terrorist Groups
 Monarch tied to anti-Semitic Muslim clerics, funding of jihad
BY:Â Adam KredoÂ
http://freebeacon.com/national-security/saudi-arabias-new-king-helped-fund-radical-terror-groups/
Extracts:
King Salman, Saudi Arabia's newly crowned monarch, has a controversial history of helping to fund radical terror groups and has maintained ties with several anti-Semitic Muslim clerics known for advocating radical positions, according to reports and regional experts.
Salman, previously the country's defense minister and deputy prime minister, was crowned king last week after his half-brother King Abdullah died at the age of 90.
While Abdullah served as a close U.S. ally and was considered a reformer by many, Saudi Arabia has long been criticized by human rights activists for its treatment of women and its enforcement of a strict interpretation of Islamic law.
President Barack Obama is scheduled to travel to the Saudi capital of Riyadh on Tuesday to pay respects to Abdullah and meet with Salman, who also has been seen as a moderate friend of the United States.
However, throughout his public career in government, Salman has embraced radical Muslim clerics and has been tied to the funding of radical groups in Afghanistan, as well as an organization found to be plotting attacks against America, according to various reports and information provided by David Weinberg, a senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.
In 2001, an international raid of the Saudi High Commission for Aid to Bosnia, which Salman founded in 1993, unearthed evidence of terrorist plots against America, according to separate exposes written by Dore Gold, an Israeli diplomat, and Robert Baer, a former CIA officer.
Salman is further accused by Baer of having 'personally approved all important appointments and spending' at the International Islamic Relief Organization (IIRO), a controversial Saudi charity that was hit with sanctions following the attacks of September 11, 2001, for purportedly providing material support to al Qaeda.
Salman also has been reported to be responsible for sending millions of dollars to the radical mujahedeen that waged jihad in Afghanistan in the 1980s, according to Bruce Riedel, a former CIA officer who is now director of the Brookings Intelligence Project.
'In the early years of the war, before the U.S. and the Kingdom ramped up their secret financial support for the anti-Soviet insurgency, this private Saudi funding was critical to the war effort,' according to Riedel. 'At its peak, Salman was providing $25 million a month to the mujahedeen. He was also active in raising money for the Bosnian Muslims in the war with Serbia.'
Salman also has embraced radical Saudi clerics known for their hateful rhetoric against Israel and Jews.
Salman has worked closely with Saleh al-Moghamsy, who tweeted in August 2014 that  'Allah only gathered Jews in the land of Palestine to destroy them.'
Al-Moghamsy also stated in a 2014 television interview that 'the hatred of Jews toward Muslims is an eternal hatred.' He also claimed in 2012 that Osama bin Laden had died with more 'sanctity and honor' than any infidel, or non-Muslim.
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5. West's anti-Israel propaganda encourages terror by Ben Dror Yemini
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4614186,00.html
Extracts:
Published: 01.13.15, 00:33 / Israel Opinion
The West's progressive circles have been waging an incitement campaign against Israel and Zionism for several years now. Many of the West's media outlets define what Israel is doing to the Palestinians in general, and in Gaza in particular, as genocide, crimes against humanity and an intentional murder of children and civilians.
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Blatant statements against Zionism, Jews and Israel, which usually include blatant and intimidating lies, are considered part of the circle of enlightenment and progress. They are given a platform in newspapers which are considered to be serious.
In the Independent newspaper, Israel was labeled as "a community of child killers." According to the Newsweek website, Jews endanger world peace.
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The average Muslim viewer asks himself, rightfully, how are Western countries letting this crime go on. Why aren't there much more sanctions against Israel? Why is the United States bombing the Islamic State rather than Israel? Why are economic ties between Israel and Western countries only growing stronger?
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Considering the lies being presented in many of the leading media outlets about these unstoppable crimes, these questions are correct.
 'The propaganda of lies against Israel is turning not only Israel, but the entire West, into an accomplice in the crimes against Muslims'
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The Muslim viewer is angry about the hypocrisy, and rightfully so. Try to explain to him that these are lies. Try to explain to him that the Muslims' problem is not Israel but global jihad and all its branches, from Boko Haram to the Taliban, from Hamas to al-Qaeda. Try to explain to him that in any place with global jihad, the result is destruction and killing and wreckage. Try to explain to him that the Islamic jihad murdered more than 30,000 people in 2014, mostly Muslims. Try to explain to him that radical Islam violates human rights, crushes women and minorities, and is an oppressing regime which results in hundreds of thousands of dead people and millions of refugees.
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All these explanations don't help. Because when it comes to the global media, one receives the opposite impression. About 2,000 people murdered in Nigeria last week by one of the global jihad branches get a marginal reference compared to a young Palestinian who threw stones and was killed by Israeli soldiers.
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If this is what happens in leading news outlets, from CNN and the BBC to Le Monde and the New York Times, Â in the Arab news outlets, led by al-Jazeera, the situation is much worse. Israel is presented as the biggest monster on earth. And the decadent West, which pretends to be advanced and enlightened, cooperates with the monster.
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In some cases, this misrepresentation encourages and justifies the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign, whose unconcealed goal is to deny Israel's right to exist. In other cases, it leads to real action.