Monday, August 19, 2013

Boaz Albert, one other shame on Israel!

To:
Binyamin Netanyahu, Prime Minister
Moshe Ya'alon, Minister of Defense
Yitzhak Aharonovitch, Minister of Internal Security
Gentlemen,
As a Jew, I am deeply disturbed by the way the government of Israel, that claims to be a democracy, treats its citizens, mainly the Jewish ones.
That the laws of Israel are antiquated, unJewish, backward and stupid is one thing. But they also endanger its democracy and human and civil rights of its citizens.
I am demanding an answer to the way the brown-shirts Jewish police treated the grapevines farmer Boaz Albert. Has he gone through due process, as a democracy offers? Has he been charged with something specific and been given a chance to defend himself as in democracy? Or Israel has turned into Iran, and North Korea?
I do not think Israel is a democracy and what is worse, it is fast sinking beyond the lines of democracy. It crosses the red lines of democracy daily.
The world is watching you; I am watching you all the way from the USA.  And there must be answers with regard to how Boaz Albert has been treated.  It is SHOCKING!
I have alarming concerns about Israeli democracy and how she appears to the world. It is essential that Israel's leaders ensure that all processes are sensitive to issues of democracy. If not, Israel's light, as a beacon to the Western world, is fast dimming.
Nurit Greenger
Los Angeles, California

Tuesday, August 13, 2013

Why Kerry’s Mideast Peace Is Doomed

Joseph Puder On August 13, 2013

Secretary of State John Kerry is on a quest to bring “peace” to the intractable Arab-Israeli conflict, and specifically between Arab Palestinians and Israel.  It is rather puzzling however, in the midst of the current Middle East turmoil, especially in Egypt, Iraq and Syria, that this should be Kerry’s obsession. Is it Kerry’s ego that propels him to seek a Nobel Prize for achieving a hitherto impossible peace, one which has eluded all previous US presidents and secretaries of state?  President Bill Clinton’s Oslo Accords are in tatters. Yasser Arafat used the Oslo Accords to gain a foothold in Palestine, as a base to terrorize Israel, a strategy that many Israelis recognized as such. The naïve American policy makers and their leftist Israeli colleagues have consistently failed to understand the Arab-Islamic culture, and how the Arab-Muslim worldview differs from that of westerners, especially their outlook on the meaning of peace. As a result, the upcoming Israeli-Palestinian negotiations promise to be the same as in previous rounds.