UNMIA

by Daniel Pipes
Jerusalem Post
November 29, 2007

Surprisingly, something useful has emerged from the combination of the misconceived Annapolis meeting and a weak Israeli prime minister, Ehud (”Peace is achieved through concessions”) Olmert. Breaking with his predecessors, Olmert has boldly demanded that his Palestinian bargaining partners accept Israel’s permanent existence as a Jewish state, thereby evoking a revealing response.

Unless the Palestinians recognize Israel as “a Jewish state,” Olmert announced on November 11, the Annapolis-related talks would not proceed. “I do not intend to compromise in any way over the issue of the Jewish state. This will be a condition for our recognition of a Palestinian state.”

He confirmed these points a day later, describing the “recognition of Israel as a state for the Jewish people” as the “launching point for all negotiations. We won’t have an argument with anyone in the world over the fact that Israel is a state of the Jewish people.” The Palestinian leadership, he noted, must “want to make peace with Israel as a Jewish state.”

Raising this topic has the virtue of finally focusing attention on what is the central topic in the Arab-Israeli conflict – Zionism, …

On Tuesday, November 20, three UNMIA people went to the Peace and Justice Center to join Justice First’s discussion of Jimmy Carter’s book “Palestine: Peace or Apartheid”. The crowd was small because of the Thanksgiving holiday, and there were four members of Justice First and an anti-Israel Jewish student from Arizona. Still, it was a hot discussion, as you might well imagine, and probably hotter because it was a small group. Justice First made an audio recording of the discussion, and you can probably contact them for a copy, if you are interested.

The Justice First co-leaders, Vicki Johnson and Mike, opened with a video presentation that Vicki had made for the discussion, and a handout featuring the main points and maps of Carter’s book, and a listing of the major factual errors in his book.

Rather than going into the debate and arguments of the evening, which were the sort that you would expect, this discussion brought up other issues that might be worth mentioning here…

The obvious question is, why go debate these things? Why go to discussions where the only attendees are devotees on one side or the other, and neither will change the other’s mind?

We constantly present factual …

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The need to connect to Israel is greater than ever. According to a recent Andrea and Charles Bronfman Philanthropies study, the second trip to Israel creates a lasting connection to Israel. The …

During the long discussion about the outrageous “Three Jerusalem Women” presentation sponsored in part by MEPJA (Middle East Peace and Justice Alliance), and in part by the UNM Humanities department, we not only published the articles and video on the UNMIA website, but the UNM Daily Lobo printed comments about the event.

The first article it published was a protest by Dotan Kennedy, and Israeli student who was present at the event. Then the rabid anti-Israel Lobo regular, Brian Fejer posted his standard anti-Israel statement, something stupid about the “Zionist Regime”. Kennedy made a brief answer to that. In the meantime UNMIA members posted two publishable comments, neither of which was posted on the Daily Lobo. Next it published four glowing accounts of the events, mainly by MEPJA members, and rejected two more comments critical of the event.

The “independent” Daily Lobo’s effort was evidently to make the Israeli student look like a lone and unreasonable dissenter in a flood of loving and approving comments about the publicly sponsored anti-Israel propaganda. At least two other people wrote to voice their protest of this event, but their comments didn’t appear in the Lobo. All but perhaps one of the people who found …