A dear liberal friend and fellow memo reader asked me to consider the other side as he always does. So I am posting this article written by a "peace loving" Palestinian author who is about as prejudiced as one can be but you judge for yourselves.
Also, I recently listened to "peace loving" Hannah Ashwari's response to what Trump did regarding our Embassy and she continues leading her people down the same worn out road that has gotten them nowhere save for decades of misery. (See 1 below.)
This is from a friend and fellow memo reader whose views I embrace. He should have referred to the "peace" process substituting, instead, he word "piece."
It was not written in response to my posting in (1) but thought it fit. (See 1a below)
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I just finished the book: "I Wrote That One Too" by Steve Gorff. He was a Ga. Bull Dog when Lynn was there. He became a song writer for some of the great singers and acclaimed TV shows and movies. Steve is still alive and writing. It is a worthy easy read.
Then I picked up a somewhat heavier book: The most recent biography of Renoir. Not enjoying it because it is mostly a chronology of his life but focuses on all of his paintingsales, who bought them etc. The authoress is an expert on Renoir and proves it through her copious research and letters.
Renoir was a great artist and one of the founding members of the Impressionist's. He was a popular portrait artist in order to make ends meet. He spent the last period of his life suffering from serious arthritis but continued to paint. As with so many of his fellow artists his mistress was his model and he kept secret his daughter from that relationship.
I am about a third of the way through and will finish but do not recommend it unless you are a researchist and devotee of Renoir.
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Though a bit early, I want to wish all my Jewish friends the Happiest of Hanukkahs.
It is actually a prophetic time to celebrate this holiday which commemorates the victory by Yhuda Maccabee and his 6 thousand men, at the small village of Modin, a few miles east of Jerusalem, against overwhelming odds(47,000 Syrians) and the oppressive king Antiochus. Yhuda was able to accomplish this feat by swooping down under the cover of night, ie. guerrilla warfare..
The final and decisive battle occurred at Bet Tzur where the Maccabees defeated an even larger force and reclaimed The Holy Temple.
After regaining The Holy Temple, which had been cleared of idols installed by Antiochus, there was, as the story goes, only oil for one night of celebration but the oil lasted eight days.
I find this prophetic because Trump has acknowledged Jerusalem as Israel's capital and Israelis are having to, again, fight for what is theirs and has been theirs for eons.
Israelis will win again, as did Yhuda, but probably after more unnecessary bloodshed because "peace loving" Palestinians seek Israel's total annihilation. And so it goes!
I also want to wish my Christian friends the Merriest of Christmases as well. Since you know your own story I will not recount it for you but I will remind you it marks the birth of your own religion and its close association with Judaism.
Will the world ever be at peace? I doubt it until after we have destroyed it with our technological capability and inability to live in peace. Perhaps we will be replaced by a new race of humans once the land is no longer toxic and inhabitable.
So on that happy and comforting note enjoy this beautiful/spirited time of the year, be safe and do not drink excessively and drive.
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Dick
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1) Washington’s attempt to impose Mideast peace will backfire
By Daoud Kuttab
Based on recent actions by the United States, all indications suggest a desire by Washington to dictate a peace rather than mediate negotiations between the conflicting parties in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. US President Donald Trump's pro-Israel administration seems to have adopted the view that the best way forward on the Jerusalem issue is to remove it from the negotiations by predetermining who has rights to it.
The Trump administration’s tactic appears to be the implementation of actions advocated by the right-wing Jewish American writer Daniel Pipes. In “A Palestinian Defeat Is Good for All,” a December 2016 article for the Jewish News Service, Pipes calls on the United States to reject all Palestinian claims to Jerusalem. “For Washington to be helpful means supporting Israel taking tough steps,” he wrote. “It means diplomatic support for Israel, such as undoing the ‘Palestine refugee’ farce and rejecting the claim of Jerusalem as the Palestinian capital.”
In less than a month, the United States has undertaken three actions designed seemingly to harm or coerce the Palestinians. The campaign began on Nov. 17 with the Trump administration threatening not to renew the PLO's mission in Washington. This was followed Dec. 5, by a voice vote in the US House of Representatives approving the Taylor Force Act to defund the Palestinian government because of its financial support of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails and their families. Trump capped the campaign on Dec. 6 by recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, in violation of United Nations resolutions, and announcing that he will be moving the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
On Dec. 5, The New York Times reported Trump administration officials as saying that the policy change “could hasten, rather than impede, peace negotiations by removing a source of ambiguity from the American position.” Trump presented this idea in his declaration, stating, “I have determined that it is time to officially recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. I've judged this course of action to be in the best interests of the United States of America and the pursuit of peace between Israel and the Palestinians.”
Of note, Trump, who prides himself as an “America first” president, referred to Americans four times while mentioning Israel and Israelis 21 times. The US president, with this unilateral decision in defiance of the international community, appears to be saying that he is not necessarily seeking a negotiated peace between the Middle Eastern parties, but is deciding that the conflict is over, that Israel won and that the Palestinians must quietly and submissively declare defeat.
On Dec. 5, even before this folly was made official, Fatah Central Committee member Mohammad Shtayyeh had asserted to the independent Palestinian news agency Ma'an that Palestinians have not lost the will to say no. He said that the Palestinian leadership, in coordination with Jordan as well as other Arab states, will resist US dictates. “We have the ability to say no to any plan that touches on the status of Jerusalem,” Shtayyeh said.
In summer 2017, when the Israeli government tried to impose metal detectors at entrances to Haram al-Sharif and access to Al-Aqsa Mosque, Palestinians of all walks of life demonstrated outside the mosque for two weeks until Israel rescinded the unilateral decision it issued July 27. Some 300,000 Palestinians who live in East Jerusalem — along with 12 million Palestinians around the world, 370 million Arabs, 1.8 billion Muslims and many other peace-loving people of all creeds and faiths — support the just demands of Palestinians for a shared and agreed-to solution in Jerusalem.
The US shift in policy would make sense if Palestinians were being totally unreasonable and making excessive demands. It would also make sense if the Trump administration's position were supported by others in the international community and had the full support of the American people. This is not the case.
World opinion is overwhelmingly supportive of the Palestinians' moderate position calling for a two-state solution with East Jerusalem as the capital of the Palestinian state. Numerous resolutions by the UN General Assembly and the Security Council, as well as in the International Court of Justice, support the Palestinians’ just and reasonable demands.
Leaders of the Muslim and Arab worlds are not going to allow an issue that has become so ingrained in international law to simply be changed to satisfy the desires of a voting bloc in the United States. Riyadh's current honeymoon with Washington is the result of their joint opposition to Iran, not about Jerusalem and Palestine, on which Arabs and Muslims and others are united in supporting the need to resolve the status of the holy city in negotiations rather than by diktat. Saudi Arabia's King Salman bin Abdul-Aziz Al Saud publicly warned against Trump's move on Dec. 5.
Even in the United States, the majority of people — including most American Arabs and American Jews — support the idea of two states for two people. A poll released by the Arab American Institute on Dec. 5 shows that only 20% of Americans favor moving the US Embassy to Jerusalem.
Not everyone has been celebrating in Israel either. Twenty-five prominent Israelis, including former diplomats, generals and academics, sent a sharply worded letter to US envoy Jason Greenblatt on Dec. 5. They expressed their opposition to unilateral US action on Jerusalem, stating, “The status of Jerusalem, the city that houses the holy sites of the three monotheistic religions, lies at the core of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and must be determined within the context of resolving that conflict.”
Successful peacemaking requires that any deal be strong enough to weather the test of time. To work and survive, a deal has to be fair and just. Any deal imposed against the will of the Palestinians is inherently unjust and will not be accepted by them.
It has repeatedly been proven that the status of Jerusalem is not simply a Palestinian issue, but is also of keen and emotional interest to other Arabs, Muslims and supporters of peace around the world. The idea that forcing a solution down everyone’s throat will resolve the problem is unwise and will not work.
Ferris Professor of journalism at Princeton University and is currently the director-general of Community
Media Network, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to advancing independent media in the Arab region.
1a) Disrupter-in-Chief
By Ron Dolinsky
Barry, “What peace process?”, you ask. *The peace process that was carefully and
painstakingly crafted by the enemies of the Jews. *The peace process that was designed to
eventually lead to the annihilation of our people by the Muslim countries, their supporters,
collaborators, and enabler‘s. *The peace process that was designed to strike fear, uncertainty,
doubt, and suspicion in the hearts of the Israeli Jewish justice warriors to wear down there
resistance and eventually surrender. *The peace process that put a smile on the face of every
anti-Semite on the planet each time the world media condemned Israel for defending itself. *The
peace process that Jerusalem-based international fake journalists followed with an unhealthy
anticipation for each development that gave them the opportunity to repeat the same distortions of
truth over and over again. *The peace process that the anti-Semites in the US State Department
bureaucrats made “permanent” US Middle East policy. *The peace process that was designed to
drive a wedge between Israelis and the American diaspora. *The peace process that Barack
Obama and John Kerry incessantly tried to jam down the throats of the Israeli Prime Minister and
expected their HRC successor to finish the job. * The peace process that required Israel to concede everything and the Palestinians to concede to nothing. *The peace process
that far too many Jewish organizations and institutions openly supported.
THAT bleeping peace process.
And, once again, the deplorables got the disruption that they wanted and that the Disrupter -in
-Chief promised. A miracle on the order of the Chanukah story, that gave the Maccabees a fighting
chance.
There are shock waves reverberating throughout the anti-Semitic world because of the realization
that the money, time, energy, and emotional currency that they invested in their deceitful “peace
process” and their unity has been summarily disrupted. For a while, we will continue to hear
condemnations and the gnashing of teeth and watch the ringing of hands. But, soon they will have
to go back to their “drawing boards”.
These are the days of miracles.
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