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Zionism – Features

Rabbi tells erdogan no peace without hamas

By Khalid Amayreh in occupied Palestine

A prominent  rabbi from a settlement in the West Bank has informed Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan that there can be no  real peace in occupied Palestine or the wider Middle East without the involvement of Hamas, the Islamic Palestinian liberation movement.

The Rabbi, Menahem Fruman, met with Erdogan in Istanbul a few weeks ago. Fruman believes that since Hamas more or less represents Islam, there can be no lasting peace between Jews and Muslims without recognizing the central role of Islam in peace-making in the region and the world at large.

The rabbi  also believes that since Jews lived a good part of their history under Islam in peace, there is no reason why they can’t have the same experience again. Fruman said  he emphasized to Erdogan that all current peace efforts, led by the United States,  were doomed to failure since people who really represent the Palestinian people, namely the Hamas movement, were not involved in the process.

Fruman, who lives at the settlement of Tkeou near Bethlehem, added that any peace deal that ignores the centrality of Islam in the region wouldn’t succeed in the long run. "I think Jews have to make peace with Islam first and foremost. Peace with secular forces in the Arab world would lead to nowhere. Only peace with Islam would be genuine and long-lasting."

The rabbi added that Erdogan agreed with him that without the involvement with Hamas in peace talks, the entire peace process would be dubious and fruitless. Fruman had met with prominent Palestinian leaders such as the late PLO leader Yasser Arafat and Martyr Ahmed Yasin, the late leader of Hamas, who was murdered by Israel more than 6 years ago.

 

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Call on Zuma time for new policy to free Palestine

By Iqbal Jassat – Chairman, Media Review Network

If Karima Brown is correct in her evaluation of President Jacob Zuma’s canny ability to gain ascendancy despite teetering on the brink, would it be an unreasonable expectation to have him propel South Africa to take a more hands-on approach regarding apartheid Israel?

I raise this question in respect of what is generally perceived to be South Africa’s weak and indecisive foreign policy that, barring occasional censure of Israeli conduct, seems to be largely silent.

Brown, a highly respected journalist and commentator, in reviewing Zuma’s troubled past, points out how he bounces back to not only providing leadership to a fractured alliance, but also to effectively marginalize threats from a variety of internal threats. Nevertheless, this otherwise fine analysis lacks a significant dimension: Zuma’s foreign policy!

Given that our advocacy work revolves around issues of 42and a number of themes related to the “war on terror” and the manner whereby rogue states such as Israel exploit these to shield their cowardly oppression from public scrutiny, the Media Review Network has always maintained that South Africa’s foreign policy initiatives to assist Palestine have been inadequate.

Current developments in the region along with the right-wing Netanyahu regime’s to scuttle America’s “peace” endeavours, makes an independent intervention by the Zuma presidency imperative and urgent.

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World looks at Isarael as it looked at apartheid era south Africa

The world is not interested in Israel’s housing and bureaucratic problems, or in the achievements of its students in mathematics. The world is looking at how the only democracy in the Middle East conducts itself in the occupied territories.

By Niva Lanir

(source: Haaretz)

Whether or not Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu uses “a supertanker against the bureaucracy,” as he calls it, to alleviate the housing shortage, a no-fly zone for supertankers already exists. It exists whether his idea crashes in the Knesset debates on housing reforms, or flies high above the railway line that’s supposed to be extended to Irbid in Jordan – in the East, where there are no procedures or bureaucracy.

Here is its description, from an article in these pages earlier this (“Gilad Farm has been sacrificed,” Karni Eldad, March 6 ): “At age 15, they expelled Elisaf Orbach from his home in Gush Katif in the Gaza Strip. He was paid a small amount of compensation and went to Samaria, to build a small, 90-square-meter house to meet his needs until he gets married and has children.” Despite the sad continuation – “With his hands bound, on the way to the police van, Orbach heard a tractor destroying his house, five years after his house in the Gaza Strip had been leveled” – I clicked “Like.”

The concepts and the division of labor did that to me: expulsion and settling. A small house and a comfortable future, and even a twist in the plot: The forces of evil (police, army, Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak ) gang up on Elisaf and his friends and destroy all that good. And the Palestinians? In this story there are no Palestinians. Go see another movie.

Stealing land and illegal construction, evacuating a few buildings and rebuilding them, the state’s report to the High Court of Justice that by the end of the year it would evacuate all outposts built on private Palestinian land – all this is not new. These36repeat themselves like the periodic table. And yet, who would have believed that Netanyahu would get stuck in his second term in the construction business, of all things: freezing construction in the territories, the real-estate bubble, the housing shortage and the sky-rocketing prices. And who would have believed that the housing shortage, of all things, would threaten his coalition?

Read More »World looks at Isarael as it looked at apartheid era south Africa