A Petition Against JCall -- Below

by Fiamma Nirenstein
May 7, 2010

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/1187/with-israel-with-reason-a-response-to-jcall

The attack against Israel by the Jcall document is inspired by a short-sighted view of the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict. The signatories of this appeal do not fully understand the global physical and moral threat to which Israel is currently exposed. It is indeed incredible that intelligent and cultivated people like Alain Finkelkraut and Bernard-Henri Levy - instead of dealing with Iran, which will soon keep the world under the threat of the range of its atomic bomb - play with the idea that Benjamin Netanyahu is the true hindrance to peace, and that the essential obstacle to a resolution of the conflict is the attitude of Israel. The intellectuals who have signed the French document ignore history and do not care about the help that the document will give and -- is already giving -- to the delegitimization intended to threaten the life of Israel.

Pushing Israel to concessions without rewards, simply means to surrender the enemy without any guarantee: the unilateral withdrawal from Gaza has produced disastrous consequences, the land from which the Gush Katif inhabitants were forcibly removed by their own Israeli soldiers several years ago has since become a launching pad for missiles and a safe haven for terrorists; Ehud Barak's concessions in Camp David, designed to give Arafat virtually everything he was asking for, led to the Second Intifada, with its 2,000 people killed by suicide attacks; the evacuation of Southern Lebanon in 2000 only strengthened the Hezbollah, supplied them with 40,000 missiles and led to the 2006 war.

Finkelkraut, Henri Levy and their fellow signatories claim they are concerned about the future and the security of Israel. However they actually ignore the basic element that has prevented success of any peace process: the Arab and Palestinian refusal to recognize the very existence of the State of Israel as a permanent nation-state in the Middle East. This total rejection of Israel's right to exist is reflected day by day in the Palestinian and pan-Arab media.

Although the attack against Netanyahu aims at breaking up his right-wing coalition, it actually never mattered whether an Israeli government was right or left: the Palestinians have refused any proposals of peace.

Israeli land concessions, like the ones the French intellectuals advocate, will never bring peace. Only a cultural revolution in the Arab world can achieve it, but nobody is asking for that, not even Obama, who devotes the strength of the US to pressure only Israel, as is currently the fashion.

Peace will not come because Israel becomes smaller. What will bring us closer to peace is
if Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas stops naming public squares after mass-murderers like Hamas bombmaker Yehiya Ayash; if the Palestinians stop passing out candies when Jewish families are murdered by suicide bombers in restaurants; and when the Arab world accepts Netanyahu's understandable request to recognize the State of Israel as the State of the Jewish people.

This reality is also ignored by the Israeli intellectuals who have signed a document against the Nobel Peace Prize laureate Elie Wiesel, who wrote a letter to support Jerusalem, the spiritual core and historical homeland of the Jewish people.

This sadly politically-correct epidemic is probably designed to give some oxygen to the defeated pacifist movements that are actually able only to defame Israel. But in this approach there is no contribution to any better future for the Middle East: the world must find the courage to face the new Islamist frenzy that springs from Iran, Syria, Hezbollah and Hamas and that points to the destruction of Israel. Iran and its allies are, of course, arming themselves with lethal weapons, like those who signed "The Call for Reason," with vain words. But even words can kill and destroy.

The signatories of the J-Call manifesto show a ignorance of the extended hand policy adopted by Netanyahu: his Bar Ilan speech in June 2009; the ten-months settlements freeze; the lifting of many check points, and the adoption of significant measures to ease the Palestinian economy. Further, one can see that the "Finkelkraut document" has an Obama flavour, a trendy prissy and respectable attitude; intellectuals are often unable to say no. This makes it possible nowadays for an increasing number of Israel's enemies to delegitimize the Jewish State, rejoicing that "even the Jews are with us". If this was the signatories aim, they have indeed achieved it.

PLEASE SIGN THE PETITION ?: "STAND FOR ISRAEL, STAND FOR REASON"

This is the direct link for signing the petition: click here

first signatures:
Fiamma Nirenstein (giornalista e deputato), Giuliano Ferrara (direttore de Il Foglio), Paolo Mieli (presidente Rcs Libri, ex direttore del Corriere della Sera), Angelo Pezzana (giornalista, informazionecorretta.com e Libero), Ugo Volli (semiologo, Università di Torino), Shmuel Trigano (professore, Universités à Paris X-Nanterre), Giorgio Israel (Università La Sapienza), Giulio Meotti (giornalista, Il Foglio), Gianni Vernetti (deputato, ex Sottosegretario agli Esteri), Susanna Nirenstein (giornalista), Peppino Caldarola (giornalista), Alain Elkann (scrittore, consigliere Ministero Beni Culturali), Carlo Panella (giornalista, Il Foglio), Emanuele Ottolenghi (Senior Fellow, Foundation for the Defense of Democracies), Daniele Scalise (giornalista), Giancarlo Loquenzi (Direttore, l'Occidentale), Edoardo Tabasso (professore, Università di Firenze), Leonardo Tirabassi (presidente Circolo dei Liberi Firenze, Fondazione Magna Carta), Angelo Moscati (Presidente Benè Berith Giovani Italia), Giacomo Kahn (Direttore mensile Shalom), Magdi Allam (parlamentare europeo), Luigi Compagna (senatore), David Cassuto (ex vicesindaco di Gerusalemme), Riccardo Pacifici (presidente Comunità Ebraica di Roma), Anita Friedman (Associazione Appuntamento a Gerusalemme), Cecilia Nizza (Consiglliere Comunità Ebraica Italiana, Gerusalemme), Leone Paserman (presidente della fondazione Museo della Shoah di Roma), Massimo Polledri (deputato), Enrico Pianetta (deputato, Presidente Associazione parlamentare di amicizia Italia-Israele), Alessandro Pagano (deputato), Renato Farina (deputato), Marco Zacchera (deputato), gennaro malgieri (deputato), Dore Gold (President, Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, former Ambassador of Israel to the UN), Norman Podhoretz (Writer, Editor-at-Large, Commentary Magazine), Michael Ledeen (Freedom Scholar, Foundation for Defense of Democracies), Barbara Ledeen (senior advisor, The Israel Project), Phyllis Chesler (Emerita Professor of Psychology and Women's Studies, City University of New York), Nina Rosenwald (Editor-in-Chief,www.gatestoneinstitute.org ), Harold Rhode (esperto di Medioriente, ex Pentagono) Caroline Glick (editorialista, Jerusalem Post), Rafael Bardaji (Foreign Policy director, FAES Foundation), Raffaele Sassun (Presidente Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael Italia), Max Singer (a founder and Senior Fellow, Hudson Institute), George and Annabelle Weidenfeld (President, Institute for Strategic Dialogue), Anna Borioni, (associazione Appuntamento a Gerusalemme), Efraim Inbar (Director, Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies), Zvi Mazel (former Ambassador of Israel to Egypt and Sweden), George Jochnowitz (Professor emeritus of Linguistics, College of Staten Island),

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