January 31, 2014

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January 30, 2014

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January 29, 2014

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January 28, 2014

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January 27, 2014

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Liberation of BUCHENWALD and DACHAU Concentration Camp

BY THE TIME the Soviet Army reached Auschwitz on Jan. 27, 1945 -- 60 years ago this week -- my father was no longer there. Ten days earlier, the Nazis had evacuated about 67,000 of the death camp's inmates, dispatching them on brutal forced marches to the west. My father, then 19, was in a group sent into Austria. He ended up at the concentration camp in Ebensee, near Mauthausen. Liberation there didn't come until May 9, with the arrival of US soldiers from the 80th Infantry Division.

My father had entered Auschwitz the previous spring, together with his parents, his two brothers, and two of his three sisters. They, too, were gone by the time the camp was liberated. Unlike my father, they didn't leave on foot. They "left" through the chimney. For the overwhelming majority of the more than 1.1 million Jews who were sent to Auschwitz, there was no other exit.

Jews were not the only victims. Nearly 75,000 Poles, more than 20,000 Gypsies, 15,000 Soviets, and 10,000 members of other nationalities were murdered at Auschwitz as well. The Nazis first used the camp, in fact, as a prison for Polish dissidents, and Birkenau, the huge 1941 addition that became the main Auschwitz killing center, was originally designed to hold Soviet POWs.

But beginning in the spring of 1942, Auschwitz became first and foremost

a slaughterhouse for Jews. From every corner of Europe, Jews were sent there – from France in the west to Ukraine in the east, from as far north as Norway and as far south as Greece. Many, like my father and two of his siblings, were forced into slave labor, in the expectation that the ghastly conditions and starvation rations would kill them soon enough. But most of the Jews entering Auschwitz – like my father's parents and his youngest brother and sister – were murdered as soon as they arrived.

Auschwitz was a vast factory of death, the site of the greatest mass murder in recorded history. Even now, two generations later, it is almost impossible to grasp the scale on which the Nazis committed homicide there. It is suggested by a detail: From 1942 to 1944, the train platform in Birkenau was the busiest railway station in Europe. It held that distinction despite the fact that, unlike every other train station in the world, it saw only arrivals. No passengers ever left.

But Auschwitz was not only a place of murder. It was also a place of theft

Jews were robbed of everything they owned – the luggage they came with, the clothes on their backs, the hair on their heads, even the gold in their teeth. The stolen goods were stored in 35 warehouses, where they were sorted and packed for shipment to Germany. Before fleeing in January 1945, the Nazis burned 29 of the warehouses, but in just the six that remained, the Soviets found 348,820 men's suits, 836,255 dresses, and 43,525 pairs of shoes. There were seven trainloads of bedding, waiting to be shipped. And 7.7 tons of human hair

. And that was merely what remained at the very end.

The very worst thing about Auschwitz was -- what? The staggering death toll? The gas chambers disguised as showers, in which thousands of naked Jews went daily to agonizing deaths? The endless cruelty and torture? The diseases that ravaged those the Nazis didn't kill first?

Was it the inhuman medical experiments carried out by doctors like Josef Mengele, such as the deliberate destruction of healthy organs, or the sadistic abuse of twins and dwarfs? Was it the willing exploitation of Jewish slave labor by German corporations? The tens of thousands of murdered children and babies?

No.

The very worst thing about Auschwitz is that, for all its evil immensity, it was only a fraction of the total. Even if it had never been built, the Holocaust would still have been a crime without parallel in human history. It would still have been something so monstrous that a new word – genocide – would have had to be coined to encompass it. Never before and never since has a government made the murder of an entire people its central aim. And never before or since has a government turned human slaughter into an international industry,complete

with facilities for transportation, selection, murder, incineration. And none of it as a means to an end, but as an end in itself: The reason for wiping out the Jews was so that the Jews would be wiped out.

In the end, 6 million of them were killed. But only one-sixth died at Auschwitz.

(Jeff Jacoby is a columnist for The Boston Globe.)

January 24, 2014

Celine Dion - Because You Loved Me (Official Music Video)

Gregory Hicks: Benghazi and the Smearing of Chris Stevens - WSJ.com

Jan. 22, 2014 7:18 p.m. ET

Last week the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence issued its report on the Sept. 11, 2012, terrorist attacks in Benghazi, Libya. The report concluded that the attack, which resulted in the murder of four Americans, was "preventable." Some have been suggesting that the blame for this tragedy lies at least partly with Ambassador Chris Stevens, who was killed in the attack. This is untrue: The blame lies entirely with Washington.

The report states that retired Gen. Carter Ham, then-commander of the U.S. Africa Command (Africom) headquartered in Stuttgart, Germany, twice offered to "sustain" the special forces security

team in Tripoli and that Chris twice "declined." Since Chris cannot speak, I want to explain the reasons and timing for his responses to Gen. Ham. As the deputy chief of mission, I was kept informed by Chris or was present throughout the process.

On Aug. 1, 2012, the day after I arrived in Tripoli, Chris invited me to a video conference with Africom to discuss changing the mission of the U.S. Special Forces from protecting the U.S. Embassy and its personnel to training Libyan forces. This change in mission would result in the transfer of authority over the unit in Tripoli from Chris to Gen. Ham. In other words, the special forces would report to the Defense Department, not State.

Chris wanted the decision postponed but could not say so directly. Chris had requested on July 9 by cable that Washington provide a minimum of 13 American security

professionals for Libya over and above the diplomatic security complement of eight assigned to Tripoli and Benghazi. On July 11, the Defense Department, apparently in response to Chris's request, offered to extend the special forces mission to protect the U.S. Embassy.

However, on July 13, State Department Undersecretary Patrick Kennedy refused the Defense Department offer and thus Chris's July 9 request. His rationale was that Libyan guards would be hired to take over this responsibility. Because of Mr. Kennedy's refusal, Chris had to use diplomatic language at the video conference, such as expressing "reservations" about the transfer of authority.

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At a memorial service for U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens in San Francisco, Oct. 16, 2012. Reuters

Chris's concern was significant. Transferring authority would immediately strip the special forces team of its diplomatic immunity. Moreover, the U.S. had no status of forces agreement with Libya. He explained to Rear Adm. Charles J. Leidig that if a member of the special forces team used weapons to protect U.S. facilities, personnel or themselves, he would be subject to Libyan law. The law would be administered by judges appointed to the bench by Moammar Gadhafi or, worse, tribal judges.

Chris described an incident in Pakistan in 2011 when an American security

contractor killed Pakistani citizens in self-defense, precipitating a crisis in U.S.-Pakistani relations. He also pointed out that four International Criminal Court staff, who had traveled to Libya in June 2012 to interview Gadhafi's oldest son, Saif al-Islam al-Qadhafi, were illegally detained by tribal authorities under suspicion of spying. This was another risk U.S. military personnel might face.

During that video conference, Chris stressed that the only way to mitigate the risk was to ensure that U.S. military personnel serving in Libya would have diplomatic immunity, which should be done prior to any change of authority.

Chris understood the importance of the special forces team to the security

of our embassy personnel. He believed that by explaining his concerns, the Defense Department would postpone the decision so he could have time to work with the Libyan government and get diplomatic immunity for the special forces.

According to the National Defense Authorization Act, the Defense Department needed Chris's concurrence to change the special forces mission. But soon after the Aug. 1 meeting, and as a complete

surprise to us at the embassy, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta signed the order without Chris's concurrence.

The SenateIntelligence Committee's report accurately notes that on Aug. 6, after the transfer of authority, two special forces team members in a diplomatic vehicle were forced off the road in Tripoli and attacked. Only because of their courage, skills and training did they escape unharmed. But the incident highlighted the risks associated with having military personnel in Libya unprotected by diplomatic immunity or a status of forces agreement. As a result of this incident, Chris was forced to agree with Gen. Ham's withdrawal of most of the special forces team from Tripoli until the Libyan government formally approved their new training mission and granted them diplomatic immunity.

Because Mr. Kennedy had refused to extend the special forces security

mission, State Department protocol required Chris to decline Gen. Ham's two offers to do so, which were made after Aug. 6. I have found the reporting of these so-called offers strange, since my recollection of events is that after the Aug. 6 incident, Gen. Ham wanted to withdraw the entire special forces team from Tripoli until they had Libyan government approval of their new mission and the diplomatic immunity necessary to perform their mission safely. However, Chris convinced Gen. Ham to leave six members of the team in Tripoli.

When I arrived in Tripoli on July 31, we had over 30 security

personnel, from the State Department and the U.S. military, assigned to protect the diplomatic mission to Libya. All were under the ambassador's authority. On Sept. 11, we had only nine diplomatic security agents under Chris's authority to protect our diplomatic personnel in Tripoli and Benghazi.

I was interviewed by the Select Committee and its staff, who were professional and thorough. I explained this sequence of events. For some reason, my explanation did not make it into the Senate report.

To sum up: Chris Stevens was not responsible for the reduction in security

personnel. His requests for additional security were denied or ignored. Officials at the State and Defense Departments in Washington made the decisions that resulted in reduced security. Sen. Lindsey Graham stated on the Senate floor last week that Chris "was in Benghazi because that is where he was supposed to be doing what America wanted him to do: Try to hold Libya together." He added, "Quit blaming the dead guy."

Mr. Hicks served as Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli from July 31 to Dec. 7, 2012.

January 21, 2014

Bret Stephens: Krugman and the Ayatollahs - WSJ.com

Stephens: Krugman and the Ayatollahs

Crude obfuscation is the stock in trade of many political actors. Not so the president of Iran.

By CONNECT

Updated Jan. 20, 2014 7:19 p.m. ET

This column is about Iran. But first a word about a bearded bully closer to home.

On Monday, New York Times NYT -0.52% columnist Paul Krugman accused this newspaper of "crude obfuscation" for failing to run a correction for a mistake I made in a recent column on income inequality. "Oh, and for the record," he wrote with his customary charm, "at the time of writing this elementary error had not been corrected on the Journal's website."

In fact, a formal correction was posted on Jan. 5 and I addressed the subject at length onJan. 3.

Columnists make mistakes, and when we do we post timely corrections. Well, some of us do. What's amusing about Mr. Krugman is that he should now commit his own elementary error in the service of a loudmouth accusation. While he's paying attention, maybe he can explain his August 2002 contention that " Alan Greenspan needs to create a housing bubble to replace the Nasdaq bubble," or his January 2010 claim that "Europe is an economic success." Misreading Census Bureau data, as I accidentally did, is a misdemeanor intellectual offense compared with those whoppers.

***

OK, on to the ayatollahs. Earlier this month, the editorial board of the New York Times rebuked 59 U.S. senators for signing on to Iran legislation from New Jersey DemocratRobert Menendez and Illinois Republican Mark Kirk. The bill, claimed the Times, "would ¬impose new sanctions" and "violate the interim [nuclear] agreement" between Iran and the ¬international community.

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Iranian President Hasan Rouhani. Getty Images

Well, that's one way of describing the sanctions. In reality, Menendez-Kirk imposes new sanctions only if Iran violates the current deal, commits acts of terror against American interests, or launches a medium-range ballistic missile. It also threatens Iran with sanctions if it doesn't dismantle its illicit nuclear infrastructure to preclude an atomic breakout capability. This is onerous? As recently as June 2010 the Times's editorial board was complaining that U.N. sanctions calling for the suspension of enrichment were "too long in coming and [did] not go far enough."

Then there is California Democrat Dianne Feinstein. In a Senate speech last week now credited for blunting the momentum of the Menendez-Kirk bill, Ms. Feinstein recalled that Germany and Japan, once fearsome enemies of the U.S., are now friends and allies, while countries such as Sweden pursued nuclear weapons until they decided to abandon the quest. She also praised Iranian President Hasan Rouhani as a new kind of leader who "campaigned in support of repairing Iran's relationship with the West."

But wait: Didn't the U.S. pretty much obliterate Germany and Japan militarily in World War II before they became such good allies and neighborly states? And if Sweden had developed nuclear weapons, would it have made any difference to international peace and security?

As for Mr. Rouhani, here's a quote from his presidential campaign, first noted in the West by my colleague Sohrab Ahmari : "Saying 'Death to America' is easy," Mr. Rouhani said in May at a campaign event in the city of Karaj. "We need to express 'Death to America' with action." Sen. Feinstein also put in a good word for Iran's urbane foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, who just last week laid a wreath at the Beirut grave of Imad Mugniyeh, mastermind of the 1983 bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks, the 1985 hijacking of TWA 847 and the 1994 bombing of a Jewish center in Buenos Aires.

Mr. Zarif's wreath-laying came a couple of days before Ms. Feinstein's speech. Perhaps she imagines that such tributes are part of the complex maneuvers Iranian "moderates" have to play to convince the "hard-liners" that they haven't lost their ideological fervor. The West used to play these mind games with itself in the 1990s, when Yasser Arafat's alleged moderation was a function not of what he said, but of what we chose to hear.

Meanwhile, a real moderate—former Lebanese finance

minister Mohamad Chatah —was blown to bits in a car bombing last month. He had been gathering signatures for an open letter calling for an end to Iranian meddling in Lebanon and Syria. Real Middle Eastern moderates tend not to fare well when the likes of Ms. Feinstein are busy praising fake ones.

On Monday, Secretary of State John Kerry got the U.N. to rescind its invitation to Iran to join talks aimed at resolving Syria's civil war. It's good to know the administration hasn't quite forgotten the role that Tehran plays in feeding the Assad killing machine. But the moment of clarity is unlikely to last while President Obama fantasizes about making an opening to Tehran the way Nixon did with China. For now, there isn't a more dishonest line in Washington than the one that says "all options are on the table" when it comes to stopping Iran's nukes.

At least there's one person willing to tell it like it is. "In #Geneva agreement world powers surrendered to Iranian nation's will," Mr. Rouhani tweeted last week. Just so. No crude obfuscating for him.

Write to bstephens@wsj.com

January 20, 2014

Harper tells Israel: 'Through fire and water, Canada will stand with you' | The Times of Israel

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January 17, 2014

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January 15, 2014

Israel: The World's First Modern Indigenous State - Op-Eds - Israel National News

Israel: The World's First Modern Indigenous State - Op-Eds - Israel National News

Op-Ed: Israel: The World's First Modern Indigenous State
Published: Tuesday, January 14, 2014 11:25 PM
Israel is the world's first modern indigenous state. Those who are arguing for Palestinian “indigenous rights” are usually those who have little grasp of the history, and no understanding of the truth behind indigenous rights.

Ryan Bellerose
The writer, a Zionist, is Metis from the Paddle Prairie Metis settlement in Northern Alberta, Canada. He founded Canadians For Accountability, a native rights advocacy group, and is an organizer and participant in the Idle No More movement in Calgary as well as a founding member of an Israeli advocacy group called Calgary United with Israel.
► More from this writer

I am Métis from the Paddle Prairie Metis settlement in Northern Alberta Canada. I founded Canadians For Accountability, a native rights advocacy group, and I am an organizer and participant in the Idle No More movement in Calgary. I am a founding member of an Israeli advocacy group called Calgary United with Israel. And I am a Zionist.

Indigenous status
To begin, let us acknowledge that there is no rule that a land can have only one indigenous people; it is not a zero sum game in which one group must be considered indigenous so that therefore another is not. However, there is a very clear guideline to being an indigenous people. It is somewhat complex but can be boiled down to the checklist below, as developed by anthropologist José R. Martínez-Cobo (former special rapporteur of the Sub-commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities for the United Nations).

This list was developed because indigenous rights are beginning to be respected across the planet. This recognition is incredibly important, so we as indigenous people cannot allow non-indigenous people to make false claims, which ultimately would harm our own rights.

Israel is the world’s first modern indigenous state: the creation and declaration of the sovereign nation of Israel marks the first time in history that an indigenous people has managed to regain control of its ancestral lands and build a nation state. As such, this is incredibly important for indigenous people both to recognise and to support as a great example for our peoples to emulate.

The actual working definition of “indigenous people,” (not the Wikipedia version, nor Merriam Webster, both more suited to plants and animals) for purposes of this essay is that developed by aforementioned anthropologist José R. Martínez-Cobo. With this as my foundation, I will detail why Jews are indigenous to Israel, and why Palestinians are not.

Martinez-Cobo’s research suggests that indigenous communities, peoples and nations are those which, having a historical continuity with pre-invasion and pre-colonial societies that developed on their territories, consider themselves distinct from other sectors of the societies now prevailing on those territories, or parts of them. They form at present non-dominant sectors of society and are determined to preserve, develop and transmit to future generations their ancestral territories, and their ethnic identity, as the basis of their continued existence as peoples, in accordance with their own cultural patterns, social institutions and legal system.

This historical continuity may consist of the continuation, for an extended period reaching into the present of one or more of the following factors:

Occupation of ancestral lands, or at least of part of them

Common ancestry with the original occupants of these lands

Culture in general, or in specific manifestations (such as religion, living under a tribal system, membership of an indigenous community, dress, means of livelihood, lifestyle, etc.)

Language (whether used as the only language, as mother-tongue, as the habitual means of communication at home or in the family, or as the main, preferred, habitual, general or normal language)

Residence in certain parts of the country, or in certain regions of the world

Religion that places importance on spiritual ties to the ancestral lands

Blood quantum – that is, the amount of blood you carry of a specific people to identify as that people. The concept was developed by colonialists in order to eventually breed out native peoples.

Let us now look quickly at the Jews. How do they fit this definition?

Their lands were occupied, first by the Romans, then by the Arabs in the seventh century.

They share common ancestry with previous occupants as determined by several genetic studies.

Their culture can be traced directly to the Levant, where it developed into what is now known as “Jewish culture.” While different Jewish communities have slightly different traditions, they all share the same root culture, and it remains unchanged. They have resurrected their traditional language, and while many still speak Yiddish and Ladino, Hebrew has become the primary language again.

They have spiritual ties to the land, which plays a large role in their traditions as a people.

Despite all the arguments about “European” Jews, they in fact meet all the criteria set forth by Martínez-Cobo. Even though Israel is the first modern indigenous state, it still has lands that are occupied by foreigners in Judea and Samaria. Those are ancestral lands and, many feel that they should be returned to the indigenous peoples for self-determination.

Now, for the flip side.
Palestinians have what are called “ rights of longstanding presence;” and although these are legitimate rights, they do not trump indigenous rights. The very nature of “longstanding presence” means that although they lived somewhere a long time, they do not have the right to occupy indigenous peoples and control them.

The argument that Palestinians are indigenous is incorrect for several reasons.

Approximately 50% percent of Palestinian Arabs can track their ancestors back farther than their great-grandparents. Many are descended from Arabs brought to the Levant by the British to build infrastructure after World War I.

The Muslim religion’s holiest places are not in the Levant, but in the city of Mecca, located in the Arabian Peninsula. They have no specifically Palestinian culture that is completely Palestinian dating before the 1960s; in fact, prior to that, the majority identified as “greater Syrians.”

Some Palestinians share common ancestry with indigenous peoples, but they neither follow indigenous traditions nor do they self-identify as those indigenous peoples. They share neither religion nor language with them. Blood quantum alone is insufficient to transmit indigenous status.

The Arabs of the Middle East subsumed several indigenous populations, but no group can become indigenous through subsuming indigenous peoples. Rather, they conquered the entire region and spread their own language, customs, and religion. This is historical fact.

Now you might ask, why is this important? It is important to indigenous people because we cannot allow the argument that conquerors can become indigenous. If we, as other indigenous people, allow that argument to be made, then we are delegitimising our own rights.

If conquerors can become indigenous, then the white Europeans who came to my indigenous lands in North America could now claim to be indigenous. The white Europeans who went to Australia and New Zealand could now claim to be indigenous. If we, even once, allow that argument to be made, indigenous rights are suddenly devalued and meaningless. This is somewhat peculiar, as those who are arguing for Palestinian “indigenous rights” are usually those who have little grasp of the history, and no understanding of the truth behind indigenous rights.

If you should encounter the argument that conquerors may themselves become indigenous to a region by virtue of conquering, direct those who assert the argument to this article, and help them understand not only is the argument wrong – it is dangerous to Indigenous people everywhere.

January 14, 2014

The Benghazi Transcripts: Top Defense officials briefed Obama on ‘attack,’ not video or protest | Fox News

January 10, 2014

carolinglick | Israel and the death of pan-Arabism

Israel and the death of pan-Arabism

Friday, January 10th, 2014

The so-called Arab Spring unleashed forces that have been dormant for a century. Like their counterparts throughout the region, Israel’s Arabic-speaking minorities are changing in profound ways. But our leaders fail to grasp the implications of what is happening.

Consider the Christian community.

Father Gabriel Nadaf, a Greek

Orthodox priest from Nazareth, has become the symbol of this new period. Nadaf is the spiritual leader of an Israeli Christian movement calling for Israeli Christian youth to serve in the IDF. He is responsible for the 300 percent rise in Christian Arab enlistment in the IDF in the past year.

Nadaf does not hide his goal or his motivation. His seeks the full integration of Israel’s 130,000 Christians into Israeli society. He views military service as the key to that integration.

Nadaf is motivated to act by the massive persecution of Christians throughout the Arab world since the onset of the Arab revolutionary wave in December 2010.

As he explained in a recent interview with Channel 1, it is “in light of what we see happening to Christians in Arab countries, how they are slaughtered and persecuted on a daily basis, killed and raped just because they are Christians. Does this happen in the State of Israel? No, it doesn’t.”

Shahdi Halul, a reserve captain in the Paratroopers who works with Nadaf, declared, “Every Christian in the State of Israel should join the army and defend this country so it will exist forever. Because if, God forbid, the government is overthrown here, as it was in other places, we will be the first to suffer.”

These men, and their supporters, are the natural result of the most significant revolutionary development of the so-called Arab Spring: the demise of Arab nationalism.

As Ofir Haivry, vice president of the Herzl Institute, explained in an important article in the Mosaiconline magazine, Arab nationalism was born in pan-Arabism – an invention of European powers during World War I that sought to endow the post-Ottoman Middle East with a new identity.

The core of the new identity was the Arabic

language. The religious, tribal, ethnic and nationalist aspirations of the peoples of the Arabic- speaking region were to be smothered and replaced by a new pan-Arab identity.

For the Christians of the former Ottoman Empire, pan-Arabism was a welcome means of getting out from under the jackboot of the Islamic Laws of Omar, which reduce non-Muslims living under Muslim rule to the status of powerless dhimmis, who survive at the pleasure of their Islamic rulers.

But now pan-Arabism lies in ruins from North Africa to the Arabian Peninsula. The people of the region have gone back to identifying themselves by tribe, religion, ethnicity, and in the case of the Kurds and the Berbers, non-Arab national identity. In this new era, Christians find themselves imperiled, with few if any protectors or allies to be found.

As Haivry notes, Israel’s central strategic challenge has always been contending with pan-Arabism, which was invented at the same time that the nations of the world embraced modern Zionism.

Since its inception, pan-Arab leaders always saw Israel as the scapegoat on which to pin their failure to deliver on pan-Arabism’s promise of global Arab power and influence.

Israel changed its position on pan-Arabism drastically over the years. Once, Israel could see the dangers in pan-Arabism and Arab nationalism.

But since 1993, says Haivri, Israel’s national strategy has been based on appeasing the secular authoritarian pan-Arab leaders by offering land for peace to Syria and the PLO.

Haivry notes that Shimon Peres is the political godfather of Israel’s accommodationist strategy, which is rooted in a mix of perceived powerlessness on the one hand, and utopianism on the other.

The sense of powerlessness owes to the conviction that Israel cannot influence its environment. That the Arabs will never change. Israel’s neighbors will always see themselves primarily as Arabs, and they will always want, more than anything else, Arab states.

At the same time, the accommodationists hold the utopian belief that Israeli appeasement of Palestinian Arab nationalism will break through the wall of pan-Arab rejection, end hatred for the Jewish state, and even lead the Arabs to invite Israel to join the Arab League.

The so-called Arab Spring has put paid

to every one of the accommodationists’ beliefs. From Egypt to Tunisia to Iraq to Syria, Israel’s neighbors are fighting each other as Sunnis, Shi’ites and Salafists, or as members of clans and tribes, without a thought for the alleged primacy of their Arab identity. What Israel’s Palestinian-state-obsessed Left has failed to realize is that many of Israel’s neighbors do not share the pan-Arab scapegoating of the Jewish state. So bribing the now largely irrelevant Arabs nationalists with another Arab state may do little more than create the newest victim of the Arab revolutions.

It is because they see what is happening to their co-religionists in the post-pan-Arab Middle East that more and more Israeli Christians realize they will lead safer, more prosperous and more fulfilling lives as Christian citizens in the Middle East’s only democracy than as pan-Arabs battling the Zionist menace.

But old habits die hard. Most of Israel’s elected Arab leaders owe their positions to their embrace of pan-Arabism. This embrace has brought them the support of the PLO and Europe, and since 1993, of the Israeli Left.

And so, since he first appeared on the scene, Father Nadaf’s life has been constantly threatened. Everyone from Arab members of Knesset to the Communist head of the Greek

Orthodox Council has incited against him, calling him and his followers traitors to the Palestinian Arab nation.

He also threatens the Israeli Left. For its view of Israel’s strategic powerlessness and consequent need to appease its neighbors to remain relevant, the pan-Arab forces in the Arab world must be perceived as still dominant, even invincible. And so, the Israeli Left refuses to consider the larger strategic implications of the regional upheaval from which Nadaf’s initiative emerged.

Even worse, the official policy of the Netanyahu government appears based on this irrelevant Leftist view of the region. This is the implication of Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman’s defeatist speech at the Foreign Ministry’s annual conference of ambassadors on Sunday.

Liberman’s speech has been rightly viewed as the supposedly right-wing politician’s formal break with his ideological camp and his embrace of the Left. In his remarks Liberman let it be known, that like the Left, he now bases his positions on a complete

denial or avoidance of reality. For this, he was congratulated for his “maturity” by Peres who was sitting on the stage with him.

In his speech, Liberman acknowledged that the Obama administration’s peace plan for Israel and the Palestinians is horrible for Israel. But, he said, it is better than the European Union’s peace plan.

Never considering the possibility of saying no to both, Liberman said he thinks we should accept the bad American deal. His only condition is that he insists that the PLO accept towns in the Galilee and their 300,000 Israeli Arab residents.

Liberman’s surrender of the Galilee is a key component to his population swap plan. Under his plan, Israel would retain control over the fraction of Judea and Samaria in which large numbers of Israeli Jews live, in exchange for the area of the Galilee that is home to 300,000 Israeli Arabs. This plan has reportedly been presented to US Secretary of State John Kerry as an official Israeli position.

In other words, the Netanyahu government has failed to recognize the implications of the death of pan-Arabism. In maintaining their slavish devotion to the two-state formula, and viewing the Arabs in the Galilee, Judea, Samaria, Jerusalem and surrounding states as an impenetrable bloc, they are placing Israel’s future in the hands of actors who have already disappeared or will soon disappear. Instead of building alliances with non-Jewish citizens of Israel, such as Druse and Christians, who are more than happy to defend Israel against Islamists and other regional fanatics, the Netanyahu government insists on placing the state’s future in the hands of pan-Arabs whose grip on power is slipping and who would never willingly coexist with Israel anyway.

Nadaf and his followers respond to the allegation – uttered by MKs like Haneen Zoabi and Basel Ghattas, among others – that they are traitors to the Palestinian Arab nation, with contempt.

“When someone tells me, ‘We’re all Arabs,’ I tell him, ‘No, we’re not all Arabs. You’re an Arab. I’m not,’” Halul told Channel 1.

Samer Jozin, whose daughter Jennifer opted for IDF service instead of medical school, agrees.

“Telling me I’m a Palestinian is a curse. I’m, thank God, an Israeli Christian and proud of it. And I thank God I was born in the Land of Israel,” he said.

The message couldn’t be clearer. We are basing our national strategy on a world that no longer exists.

Today our longtime allies the Kurds have carved out virtually independent states for themselves in Iraq and Syria.

Christians throughout the region are on the run. The Druse of Syria and Lebanon are exposed, without protection, and looking for help.

As for the Muslims, as Haivry notes, they are fragmented along sectarian and political lines, and at war with one another in battlefields throughout the region. While so engaged, they have little time to devote to blaming Israel for their failures.

This state of affairs has implications for Israel’s Arab Muslim minority. None of the regional warring Muslim camps are natural homes for Israel’s Muslim community. A community that has lived in an open, free society for 65 years does not naturally turn to Salafism. Israel is a much easier fit for most Israeli Muslims.

At a minimum, no one is better off if Israel forces them to cast their lot with any of the warring factions in Syria or Lebanon, or the increasingly irrelevant forces in the Palestinian Authority. There may very well be hundreds of Muslim versions of Father Nadaf just waiting for a signal from our government that we want them to lead their community into our society.

The post-pan-Arab Middle East exposes the truth that has been obscured for a century. The Jews and their Jewish state are a natural component of our diverse neighborhood, just like the Kurds, the Christians, the Druse, the various Muslim sects, and the Arabs. The demise of pan-Arabism is our great opportunity, at home and regionally, to build the alliances we need to survive and prosper. But so long as our leaders insist on clinging to the now irrelevant dream of appeasing the defunct pan-Arabists, we will lose these opportunities and convince our allies that we are treacherous, disloyal and temporary.

Caroline Glick’s new book

, The Israeli Solution: A One State Plan for Peace in the Middle East, is due out on March 4.