Why Donate to FLAME?
By supporting FLAME, you help fund our ads in national media, like U.S.
News and World Report, The New York Times, The Nation,
The National Review, The American Spectator, The Washington
Times National Weekly, and others. You help publish our messages in
Jewish publications, both in the U.S. and in Israel, among them The International
Edition of the Jerusalem Post. Finally, your donation helps us
publish our messages monthly in over fifty small-town newspapers, all
across the United States and Canada.
Facts and Logic About
the Middle East
P.O. Box 590359
San Francisco, CA 94159
(415) 356-7801 |
|
|
February
3, 2009
Arab journalist to Palestinians: It's time to give up jihad against
Israel and get a life—a real life
Dear
Friend of FLAME:
Can we finally say it? The Palestinians and their Arab neighbors have
wasted the last sixty years trying to throw Israel out of the Promised Land,
and they've failed. Not only have they failed to win an inch of land
or gain any political advantage, but the Palestinians have tragically squandered
the chance to build a viable social, cultural, economic and political life.
Instead they've created a society based on hate, destruction and suicide .
. . steeped in abject poverty, dependent on the charity of the world's nations,
Israel chief among them.
This week's article, by former New York Times and Wall Street
Journal reporter Youssef Ibrahim is an open letter from one Arab to
his brethren, in which he advises them to give up their futile fight against
Israel.
Contrast this with the statement by senior Hamas leader Nizar Rayyan just before
he was killed by an Israeli air attack in Gaza, in which he said, "We will
never recognize Israel . . . There is nothing called Israel, neither in reality
nor in the imagination."
While Hamas may not speak for all Palestinians, they unfortunately speak for
most. After all, this fundamentalist Islamic terror organization was elected
by a majority. What's more, the Palestinian An-Najah University conducted
a poll of Palestinian public opinion a few months ago and found that 53.4 percent
persist in their rejection of a two-state solution.
Most Westerners make the mistake of projecting their own views onto the Palestinians,
wanting to believe that this "suffering people" wants peace. In a supreme display
of condescension, many in the West simply ignore what the Palestinians themselves
say they want. Just for the record: When the Palestinians say they're
fighting against the "occupation," they're not referring to
the West Bank, Gaza or Jerusalem's expanding eastern suburbs---the so-called
"settlements"---and they never have. To most Palestinians, the "occupation" refers
to Israel's heartland, the very nation of Israel itself.
No wonder Hamas started attacking Israel as soon as Israel abandoned Gaza.
We can only hope that Youssef Ibrahim's analysis below is correct---that Arabs
are tiring of the hopeless struggle against Israel. The Palestinians
have made many, many mistakes. But if they can be encouraged by fellow
Arabs to call off their jihad against Israel, who wouldn't support giving them
a chance to drag themselves from the wreckage and start to build a decent society?
Best regards,
Jim Sinkinson
Director, FLAME
P.S. |
As the ceasefire in
Gaza seems to be breaking down---again because of Hamas's recalcitrance---it's
critical that Americans understand the facts of Israel's recent
invasion of Gaza, especially if Israel has to go back in. To
this end, FLAME has begun publishing its latest position paper
in national and regional media. I invite you to preview this
forceful defense of Israel's actions---"Israel's
Defensive Response to Gaza: Was Israel Using Disproportionate Force?" It
gives a concise history of the conflict in Gaza, outlines why Israel had to
respond, and devestates the argument that Israel overreacted. In the next month
alone this explanation will reach five million American homes and Congress
members. Please review it yourself and pass it along to others. Most
of all, if you agree that this kind of public relations effort on Israel's
behalf is critical, I urge you to support us. Remember: FLAME's powerful ability
to influence public opinion comes from individuals like you, one by one. I
hope you'll consider giving a donation now, as you're able---with $500, $250,
$100, or even $18. (Remember, your donation to FLAME is tax deductible.) To
donate online, just go to http://www.factsandlogic.org/make_a_donation.html.
Now more than ever we need your support to ensure that Israel gets the support
it needs, while so many bash her. |
|
The War with Israel Is Over—and They Won
By Youssef Ibrahim, Jewish World Review, January 16, 2009 (An original
version of this article appeared in The New York Sun in 2006)
To my Arab brothers:
Now let's finally move forward. With Israel entering its fourth week
of an incursion into the same Gaza Strip it voluntarily evacuated a few years
ago, a sense of reality among Arabs is spreading through commentary by Arab
pundits, letters to the editor, and political talk shows on Arabic-language
TV networks. The new views are stunning both in their maturity and in their
realism. The best way I can think of to convey them is in the form of a letter
to the Palestinian Arabs from their Arab friends:
Dear Palestinian Arab brethren: The war with Israel is over. You have lost.
Surrender and negotiate to secure a future for your children. We, your Arab
brothers, may say until we are blue in the face that we stand by you, but the
wise among you and most of us know that we are moving on, away from the tired
old idea of the Palestinian Arab cause and the "eternal struggle" with
Israel. Dear friends, you and your leaders have wasted three generations trying
to fight for Palestine, but the truth is the Palestine you could have had in
1948 is much bigger than the one you could have had in 1967, which in turn
is much bigger than what you may have to settle for now or in another 10 years.
Struggle means less land and more misery and utter loneliness. At
the moment, brothers, you would be lucky to secure a semblance of a state in
that Gaza Strip into which you have all crowded, and a small part of the West
Bank of the Jordan. It isn't going to get better. Time is running out even
for this much land, so here are some facts, figures, and sound advice, friends.
You hold keys, which you drag out for television interviews, to houses that
do not exist or are inhabited by Israelis who have no intention of leaving
Jaffa, Haifa , Tel Aviv, or West Jerusalem. You shoot old guns at modern Israeli
tanks and American-made fighter jets, doing virtually no harm to Israel while
bringing the wrath of its mighty army down upon you. You fire ridiculously
inept Kassam rockets that cause little destruction and delude yourselves into
thinking this is a war of liberation.
Your government, your social institutions, your schools, and your economy
are all in ruins. Your young people are growing up illiterate, ill, and bent
on rites of death and suicide, while you, in effect, are living on the kindness
of foreigners, including America and the United Nations. Every day your officials
must beg for your daily bread, dependent on relief trucks that carry food and
medicine into the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, while your criminal Muslim
fundamentalist Hamas government continues to fan the flames of a war it can
neither fight nor hope to win.
In other words, brothers, you are down, out, and alone in
a burnt-out landscape that is shrinking by the day. What kind of struggle is
this? Is it worth waging at all? More important, what kind of miserable future
does it portend for your children, the fourth or fifth generation of the Arab
world's have-nots? We, your Arab brothers, have moved on.
Those of us who have oil money are busy accumulating wealth and building
housing, luxury developments, state-of-the-art universities and schools, and
new highways and byways. Those of us who share borders with Israel, such as
Egypt and Jordan, have signed a peace treaty with it and are not going to war
for you any time soon. Those of us who are far away, in places like North Africa
and Iraq, frankly could not care less about what happens to you.
Only Syria continues to feed your fantasies that someday it will join you
in liberating Palestine, even though a huge chunk of its territory, the entire
Golan Heights, was taken by Israel in 1967 and annexed. The Syrians, my friends,
will gladly fight down to the last Palestinian Arab. Before you got stuck with
this Hamas crowd, another cheating, conniving, leader of yours, Yasser Arafat,
sold you a rotten bill of goods - more pain, greater corruption, and millions
stolen by his relatives—while your children played in the sewers of Gaza.
The war is over. Why not let a new future begin?
PRINTER
FRIENDLY VERSION
If you'd like a printer-friendly, text version of this newsletter click
the button below.
DONATE
How many times have you heard someone lament that Israel doesn't have
good public relations? By supporting FLAME, you help one of the world's
most powerful information efforts to spread the truth about Israel and
the Middle East conflict. Please note that because FLAME is a non-profit
501(c)(3) corporation, your donation is tax-deductible.
You
are receiving this email because you have requested news, facts and analysis
about Israel and the Mideast conflict.
|