Study: "10,000 international forces cannot stop PalArab terror" (UPDATED)

One of the assumptions of a final peace agreement that is bandied about is the idea that an international force would be deployed within the PA-controlled areas in order to protect both sides from aggression by the other.

A new study determines that such an approach would fail to stop Palestinian Arab terrorists from their activities.

From IMRA:

Maariv correspondent Eli Brandstein reported in the 21 April 2011 edition that a war simulation organized by the Saban Center with the participation of former senior American officials found that a large international force of 10,000 deployed in a sovereign Palestinian state could not prevent Palestinian terror attacks against Israeli targets despite receiving advance warning from Israel.

The simulation also found that official Palestinian security forces would not act themselves to prevent the attacks, relying instead on the ineffective international forces.

To make matters worse, the simulation found that the presence of the international force in the Palestinian state served to increase friction and tension between Israel and the United States in a way that impaired security cooperation between Israel and the United States.

Under the simulation, a sovereign Palestinian state would be created after a complete Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank with major settlement blocs annexed by Israel and over 82 settlements evacuated.

The 10,000 man international security force that failed in the simulation was composed of European soldiers along with some soldiers from Morocco and Palestinians under American command.

In the simulation the international force enjoyed complete security authority via a UN mandate with its principle mission being to prevent terror attacks against Israel.

Maariv did not indicate if any Palestinian state promoters have revised their position given the results of the simulation given that these result serve to undermine a key working assumption of those who claim that there are viable durable workable security arrangements that could be implemented in the event of the creation of a sovereign Palestinian state.

So much for what "everyone knows."

Yet, as with all other fatal assumptions that have no proof, real evidence will not sway those who are wedded to the idea of the "peace process."

(h/t Zach N)

UPDATE:

In response to a inquiry by IMRA regarding the simulation reported in
Maariv(see below) , Kenneth M. Pollack, Director of the Saban Center for
Middle East Policy responded late Saturday night as follows:

"The Maariv report is entirely INACCURATE. It is factually incorrect. The
simulation demonstrated nothing of the sort. We tried to explain this to the
reporter, but apparently he was not interested.

We will be putting out an accurate account of the simulation and its
findings in the days ahead. You will find it on the Brookings website when
it is out. "

Nice to know. We'll see. (h/t Challah Hu Akbar)

Honor killing in the West Bank: A slight twist and a light sentence

Firas Press reports that a West Bank man who murdered his daughter for "honor" has been sentenced to eight years in prison.

His sentence was reduced from life imprisonment because he is older and the head of a large family, as well as (if I am interpreting it correctly) his "fury" showed that it was a real honor crime, a crime of passion and not just an ordinary murder.

One twist: Not only did he kill his daughter because of his suspicion that she was involved with a man who was not her husband, but he also thought that she was involved in giving intelligence to Israel!

I'm not sure if that was a factor in the light sentence, though.

Last days of Passover open thread

I will not be able to blog for the last two days of the Passover holiday starting tonight. (This is reason #1765 to move to Israel....)

Anyway, here's an open thread to entertain everyone until Tuesday night....

Have a Chag Sameach and happy holidays for the other weekend holiday celebrants (including, of course, Egyptians!)

"Jews destroyed the Arab character of the Jewish Quarter" (NYT, 1971)

From the New York Times, May 29, 1971:

It sounds ridiculous to claim that the Jewish Quarter had an "Arab character" after only 19 years, but isn't it equally ludicrous to characterize all of Jerusalem outside the Green Line as "Arab East Jerusalem"? Yet that is what is routinely written today.

Jews were a majority in Jerusalem since the 1860s. Since 1900, Jerusalem's Old City and its neighborhoods/villages in  the east, north and south have been under 18 years of Ottoman rule, 30 years of British rule, 19 years of Jordanian Arab rule and 47 years under the rule of the Jewish state. For some reason, the 19 years of illegal Jordanian occupation is considered the status quo, the anomalous 19 years that makes the entire area supposedly "Arab."

But it isn't. Jerusalem has never been an important city to Arabs or Muslims except during times that it was controlled by Jews or Christians. Jews didn't only live in the Jewish Quarter, but they lived throughout the city as well as in supposedly "Arab" neighborhoods like Silwan - a Biblical village later settled by Jews who called it Kfar HaShiloach. 

There were even synagogues and yeshivot in the Muslim quarter 150 years ago. 

As absurd as the headline of this story is, only a few decades later the world now believes the lie.

(h/t/ Ahron, YMedad)

BDS Claims Credit For Keeping Mozart From Appearing In Israel (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory. 

Check out their Facebook page.

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Vienna, May 13 - Leaders of the Boycott, Divest, Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel are boasting that their publicity efforts have succeeded in preventing one of the world's most famous composers and performers of classical music from making an appearance in the Jewish State.
Wolfgang Mozart, an Austrian composer of chamber, orchestral, and operatic works, has never performed in Israel, and appears unlikely ever to do so. While no official statement from Mozart addresses the issue specifically, BDS activists assert that their campaign served as the decisive factor.

"The facts are simple: we have been campaigning among artists for quite some time, and since we began more than a decade ago, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart has not once announced plans to travel to Israel," said prominent BDS activist Mustafa Barghouti. "Clearly, this kind of pressure works, and we intend to maintain our course of action until all artists finally come around."

Other figures in the music world who are active in BDS circles applauded the news. "This is a growing movement whose success is magnified through momentum, so we celebrate this coup," said former Pink Floyd member Roger Waters, a high-profile proponent of the cultural isolation of Israel. "At the same time, we must keep up the pressure for genuine success to happen. Real political change - the elimination of the only Jewish state in he world - is not something that will occur all by itself."

Waters added that all indications seem to point to other musical giants joining the boycott: of Johannes Brahms, Felix Mendelssohn, Franz Schubert, the entire Bach family, Josef Haydn, Claude Debussy, Antonio Vivaldi, Georg Frederic Handel, and many other influential composers, not a single one has announced a planned trip to Israel since the current round of BDS activity began to gain momentum in 2002.

Cultural institutions in Israel have yet to respond formally to the BDS announcement, but experts say they are unlikely to dignify it. "Reacting publicly to this would be playing into the hands of the BDS people, whose main weapon is publicity," explained Mozart biographer Maynard Solomon. "I personally find this all an unconvincing publicity stunt, since what they're really after would be an actual statement by, say, Ludwig Beethoven that he refuses to play in Israel because of the way they treat the Palestinians. And they're never going to get that, not from everything we know about Mozart."

Solomon explained that it would be completely unlike Mozart to involve himself in anything political, considering the composer's experience of dependence on political figures. "Alienating an entire society, especially one disproportionately appreciative of and involved in classical music, is not something I can see Mozart ever doing, and that's only one myriad other good reasons not to believe the BDS crowing," he added.

Activists intend to continue focusing on major figures in classical music. "Our next best bet is probably a major composer already predisposed to our point of view," said Barghouti. "Richard Wagner comes to mind."