Killing the Iran deal could backfire

If Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu succeeds in getting Congress to kill President Obama’s deal with Iran, “it may be a Pyrrhic victory, said Ben-Dror Yemini in Yedioth Ahronoth (a national daily newspaper published in Tel Aviv, Israel). Of course the agreement to limit Iran’s nuclear programs in exchange for lifting of sanctions is terrible. The draft deal is full of loopholes and will lend legitimacy to the Islamic Republic’s repressive and dangerous theocracy. Most Arab countries are against the deal and privately support Netanyahu’s position rather than Obama’s. But America is still our most important ally and an even more open rift with the Obama administration could hurt. “Humiliating the president of the United States could evoke anti-Semitic blast waves” by seeming to give evidence to those who argue that rich Jews manipulate world events.

Even in the U.S., there is “an anti-Zionist coalition radical left and radical right” that would ramp up its anti-Semitic propaganda to frightening heights.” Instead of publicly defeating Obama by lobbying Congress, Netanyahu do far better to persuade the president to “climb down,” perhaps by pointing out that Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khomeini is already backtracking from the deal as framed. Netanyahu needs to remember that while “Obama is wrong, he isn’t an enemy.”

Obama versus Netanyahu

“If there is one lesson American Jews will learn from Israel’s election, it’s this: they’re not us.

Israel is not New York. Or LA. Or Chicago or Boston or Miami or Philadelphia. It is a Jewish “community” unlike any in America.”

Those are the opening words by Rob Eshman in today’s Jewish Journal.

We just don’t appreciate the perceptions of Israelis. They live under the constant threat of war with their neighbors. They live in fear of their lives. No one in the United States lives with those kinds of fears. Many American Zionists will evolve in their view of Israel. The reason is that Americans favor the idea of a two state solution to the Israel-Palestinian problem.

I suspect that the ongoing enmity between President Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu is the result of the prime minister’s refusal to negotiate a two state solution. In other words Netanyahu told Obama his one state position years ago. He only just told the world two days ago.

Netanyahu and his American supporters may still change the course of the Iran nuclear negotiations. Those Americans who favor supporting Israel in all situations no matter what that country does will work their will through Congress. There is no doubt that Israel’s path will be unpleasant over the next two years.

Israelis are a resourceful people. They will find a way to have their way.

David Bancroft

Rabbi Harold Schulweis

Rabbi Harold M. Schulweis Passes Away at 89

Rabbi Harold Schulweis, regarded as the most influential synagogue leader of his generation, died at his home after a long struggle with heart disease. He was 89 years old.

Rabbi Uri Herscher, founding president and CEO of the Skirball Cultural Center, was a freshman at UC Berkeley when he first heard Schulweis speak at a Rosh Hashanah service, and became a friend and admirer for life. On a later occasion, Herscher introduced Schulweis to an audience, saying in part, “Harold Schulweis is a rabbi. This is a little like saying, a Rembrandt is a painting. Or a Stradivarius is a violin…He is a rabbi of rabbis…He has, as much as any rabbi in our time, given Judaism meaning, relevance and renewed purpose.”

Schulweis recognized the power of congregations to shape the lives of a generation of Jews isolated from community and alienated from their traditions by the rhythms of American life and the spiritually corrosive elements of American culture. In 1970, he was invited to the pulpit of Valley Beth Shalom in the burgeoning San Fernando Valley community of Encino. Under his leadership, the synagogue grew to become the largest Conservative congregation in the Western United States, and became a living laboratory of social activism and creative spiritual life introducing innovations that became staples for Jewish congregations across North America.

Responding to the loneliness and isolation of suburban life, Schulweis introduced synagogue-based “Havurot,” in 1971, gathering small groups of families to share religious life and family celebrations. His “Para-Rabbinic” initiative offered a revolutionary model of lay-professional synagogue leadership. Schulweis launched a para-professional Counseling Center within the synagogue, offering psychological and family support to the synagogue members and the wider communities. Each of these innovations has been replicated in congregations nationwide.

Schulweis opened the doors of his synagogue to all. He pioneered initiatives welcoming children and young adults with special needs into the synagogue’s educational and religious programs. He reached out to Jews-by-choice and unchurched Christians seeking a spiritual home. In 1992, Schulweis was among the first rabbis in the Conservative Movement of American Judaism to openly welcome gay and lesbian Jews into the synagogue.

Schulweis’ pulpit became a launching pad for his efforts to push contemporary Judaism beyond its narrow ethnic preoccupation. Judaism, he frequently preached, is a global religion, with concerns that embrace the world. “Our greatness as a religion,” he wrote, “is that we Jews conceived of ourselves as God’s allies, partners, and friends. We gave the world conscience. We gave to the world a sacred universalism that remains at the foundation of our relationship with the world.”

In 1966, Schulweis met a young math instructor at Berkeley who shared the story of his family’s rescue from the Nazis by a German Christian family. The family had never been recognized or thanked by the Jewish community. Thousands of rescuers, Schulweis learned, lived in poverty, receiving neither recognition nor aid. In response, he founded the Institute for Righteous Acts, which would become, in 1986, the Jewish Foundation for the Righteous (jfr.org), recognizing, celebrating and supporting thousands of Christians who rescued Jews during the Holocaust. Schulweis was profiled on “60 Minutes” for his unique vision, locating moral heroism in the darkest of historical moments.

With activist Leonard Fein, he founded Mazon (Mazon.org), in 1985 as a Jewish community response to hunger and poverty in America. Mazon ask Jewish families celebrating life moments to dedicate 3% of the cost to the hungry who live among us.

In 2004, Schulweis delivered a sermon on the Jewish high holidays calling for a Jewish response to genocide. He challenged the congregation:

“We took an oath, “Never again!” Was this vow to protect only Jews from the curse of genocide? God forbid that our children and grandchildren ask of us, ‘Where was the synagogue during Rwanda, when genocide took place and eight hundred thousand people were slaughtered in one hundred days?’”

According to Rabbi Ed Feinstein, Schulweis’ successor at Valley Beth Shalom, “Rabbi Schulweis found the presence of God in acts of moral courage, compassion, and human decency. He constantly reminded us that we are the hands of God in this world.”

Among those moved to answer the rabbi’s challenge was attorney Janice Kamenir-Reznik, who assumed the role of founding president of the Jewish World Watch (JewishWorldWatch.org), now a coalition of Jewish organizations dedicated to raising awareness and mobilizing resources in response to the on-going genocide in Darfur, Congo, and around the world. JWW has grown into the largest anti-genocide grassroots organization in the world, with some 30,000 to 40,000 donors. Schulweis’ challenge, and her friendship with the rabbi, “has transformed my life and has changed my philosophy of what it means to be a Jew,” said Kamenir-Reznik. “Nothing I have done in my life has been more meaningful and has had a larger impact.”

Schulweis’ concern for genocide around the world, led him to reach out to the large Armenian population in his San Fernando Valley neighborhood. In 2005, Schulweis officiated with Archbishop Hovnan Derderian of the Armenian Church of North America at the first joint commemoration of the Jewish and Armenian Holocausts. He joined band members of the rock band, System of a Down, all of them children of survivors of the Armenian Holocaust, in an educational program affirming the common responsibilities of Jewish and Armenian youth to remember their collective experiences of genocide, and to act to prevent its reoccurrence.

Schulweis was born in the Bronx, in 1925, the son of a ferociously anti-religious editor of the Yiddish daily “Forverts.” As a child, Schulweis never set foot in a synagogue, but grew up surrounded by Yiddish poets, nationalists, revolutionaries, and artists. At the age of 12, he happened upon a synagogue on Rosh Hashanah. Attracted by the music he heard from the street, he slipped in and was enraptured. He began studying Talmud with his pious, Hasidic grandfather, eventually enrolling at Yeshiva College where he graduated in 1945. An ardent student of philosophy, he became a disciple of Mordecai Kaplan at the Jewish Theological Seminary where he was ordained in 1950. At the same time he studied philosophy under Sidney Hook at New York University, receiving a masters degree in 1950 with the first English language thesis on Martin Buber’s philosophy. He subsequently completed a doctorate in theology at the Pacific School of Religion. Schulweis taught philosophy at City College of New York, and served pulpits in Parkchester, New York, and Oakland, California, before coming to Valley Beth Shalom.

As much public intellectual as pulpit rabbi, Schulweis authored nine books and hundreds of articles in which he offered a unique interpretation of post-Holocaust Jewish theology. Schulweis’ “Theological humanism” is rooted in the Biblical conviction that the human being bears the divine image, and in philosopher Martin Buber’s concept of God revealed in deep human relationships. Schulweis imagined God not above us, but within and between human beings. Prayer and religious observance, Schulweis instructed, are not directed above as a plea for supernatural intervention, but within – as an inspiration to individual and communal reflection, commitment and moral action. Building on the theology developed in his doctoral writing, Schulweis advocated “predicate theology,” identifying those aspects of human activity which are “Godly.” “God,” he frequently argued, “is not believed, but behaved.” Conscience is the living nexus between the divine and the human in everyday life. The cultivation of conscience is the central function of religious life and religious education.

Among Rabbi Schulweis’ greatest legacy is his vast library of publications that will live on and serve for generations to come in his memory. Just a few of note are: Evil and the Morality of God (Jersey City, N.J: Ktav Pub. House, 2010.); For Those Who Can’t Believe, Overcoming the Obstacles to Faith (1995, New York: Harper Perennial; Finding Each Other in Judaism: Meditations on the Rites of Passage from Birth to Immortality (2001, New York: URJ Press); In God’s Mirror, Reflections and Essays (2003, Jersey City, NJ: KTAV); Conscience: The Duty to Obey and the Duty to Disobey. (2010, Woodstock, VT: Jewish Lights); Embracing the Seeker (2010, Halperin, M., (Ed.) Jersey City, NJ: KTAV). The Schulweis Institute online library, www.hmsi.info, offers a collection serving as the living repository for over 750 audio, video and document copies of the Rabbi’s writings, sermons and teachings.

Among his numerous awards and honors are the Israel Prime Minister’s Medal, United Synagogue Social Action Award, and Los Angeles County’s John Allen Buggs Humanitarian Award, as well as honorary doctorate degrees from the Hebrew Union College and the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College.

Schulweis is survived by his wife of 64 years, Malkah, his children Seth Schulweis of West Los Angeles, Ethan (Cindy) Schulweis of Beit Hashita, Israel, and Alyssa (Peter) Reich of West Los Angeles, and eleven grandchildren. Contributions in Rabbi Schulweis’ memory can be sent to Valley Beth Shalom, Jewish World Watch and the Jewish Foundation for the Righteous.

Contributions can be made online via the following web sites:

Valley Beth Shalom: www.vbs.org/donations

Jewish World Watch: www.jewishworldwatch.org

Jewish Foundation for the Righteous: www.jfr.org

IKEA & Peace in the Middle East

The Swedish furniture maker IKEA made the headlines last week, even though it was an innocent bystander to the war of words between the Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman and his female Swedish counterpart. Reacting to Sweden’s recognition of a Palestinian state on the West Bank, Lieberman caustically said that “the Middle East and the Palestinian – Israeli dispute is slightly more complicated than is assembling an IKEA furniture product.”

IKEA is the famous Swedish company that manufactures all types of furniture that the buyers must then assemble themselves using their own talents and time. IKEA has a number of large stores here in Israel and is a very popular product worldwide.

The Swedish Foreign Minister responded to Lieberman’s thrust by stating that she would be happy to send Lieberman an IKEA product but that he has to realize that in order to assemble it, he definitely needs the willing cooperation of a partner and a manual to instruct them in its proper assembly.

As of this writing, there the matter apparently rests. However, if I were Lieberman, which thank God I am not, I would have a wistful but pointed rejoinder to this generous offer of the Foreign Minister of Sweden. I would tell her that I would gladly accept any type of IKEA solution and product here in our section of the world but I would appreciate it if she could also tell me who my willing cooperative partner will be to help me with the assembly, and if she could tell me if she also has a manual of instructions.

Even she admits that one cannot assemble an IKEA product alone and that there must be some reasonable explanation as to how to put the disparate parts together so that the finished product does not collapse. All our previous efforts to assemble such an IKEA-like solution with the Arab world have collapsed shortly after the assembly project was completed and celebrated.

IKEA provides a warranty with its products. All of the do-gooders who have Israel’s true welfare at heart and are always trying to save us Israelis from ourselves with “tough love,” have never provided us with any warranty as to the product they wish us to assemble.

In fact, when push comes to shove, they are rarely heard from afterwards and usually just withdraw into their smug posture of fairytale unreality. It should be obvious to all by now that Abbas and the Palestinian Authority are not willing, cooperative partners in trying to achieve a just and lasting settlement of a century-old dispute.

The constant incitement, propaganda, spewed hatred and dire threats that emanate daily from the leaders and spokespersons of the Palestinian Authority hardly make them our partners in any sort of endeavor, let alone in arriving at a peaceful settlement, which will require concessions and compromise on all sides.

We have tried numerous times to assemble this IKEA-like solution by ourselves. Israel has withdrawn from territory, dismantled settlements, exiled thousands of its own citizens, released hundreds of murderers from prison (so that they can murder again) all in a vain attempt to arrive at a permanent settlement of our conflict with the Palestinians and the Arab world generally.

All of our efforts to assemble this solution have failed dismally and all previous agreements and unilateral concessions forced on Israel are tainted by the blood of thousands of victims of these failed policies and false assembly instructions. There is no unilateral way to assemble an IKEA product.

It would seem equally obvious that when IKEA issues a manual of instructions for assembly of its products and subsequently those products continually collapse, that IKEA would rethink its assembly process and provide a newer and much more accurate manual for its customers.

What is true for IKEA should also be true for the governments and diplomats of the world, especially Sweden. If the old manual is proven to be inaccurate and of little value, then perhaps our “tough love” friends should rethink the issues and come up with new and better suggestions and insights as to how this dispute can, if ever, be settled. And if they are unable to do so, then perhaps silence and patience should be the order of the day on their part.

Thomas Friedman, a columnist for the New York Times hardly known to be pro-Israel, recently wrote that he understands why it is perfectly logical and legitimate for Israel to maintain the current status quo in its dealings with the Palestinian Authority and the surrounding Arab world. He naturally bemoans the fact that this is the situation and wants Israel to come up with new creative thinking to break the logjam.

He apparently has no new creative thinking to bring to the table, since all of the previous solutions have proven to be broken shards. I wish IKEA all the success in the world and I hope that the Foreign Minister of Sweden would indeed provide us with a willing cooperative partner and an accurate manual of instructions that would ease the situation in which we find ourselves.

This article originally appeared in the Jerusalem Post.

Irony

At the 2014 Oscars, they celebrated the 75th anniversary of the release of the “Wizard of Oz” by having Pink sing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”, with highlights from the film in the background. But what few people realized, while listening to that incredible performer singing that unforgettable song, is that the music is deeply embedded in the Jewish experience.

It is no accident, for example, that the greatest Christmas songs of all time were written by Jews. For example, “Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer” was written by Johnny Marks and “White Christmas” was penned by a Jewish liturgical singer’s (cantor) son, Irving Berlin.

But perhaps the most poignant song emerging out of the mass exodus from Europe was “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”. The lyrics were written by Yip Harburg. He was the youngest of four children born to Russian Jewish immigrants. His real name was Isidore Hochberg and he grew up in a Yiddish speaking, Orthodox Jewish home in New York. The music was written by Harold Arlen, a cantor’s son. His real name was Hyman Arluck and his parents were from Lithuania.

Together, Hochberg and Arluck wrote “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”, which was voted the 20th century’s number one song by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA).

In writing it, the two men reached deep into their immigrant Jewish consciousness – framed by the pogroms of the past and the Holocaust about to happen – and wrote an unforgettable melody set to near prophetic words.

Read the lyrics in their Jewish context and suddenly the words are no longer about wizards and Oz, but about Jewish survival:

Somewhere over the rainbow

Way up high,

There’s a land that I heard of

Once in a lullaby.

Somewhere over the rainbow

Skies are blue,

And the dreams that you dare to dream

Really do come true.

Someday I’ll wish upon a star

And wake up where the clouds are far behind me.

Where troubles melt like lemon drops

Away above the chimney tops

That’s where you’ll find me.

Somewhere over the rainbow

Bluebirds fly.

Birds fly over the rainbow.

Why then, oh why can’t I?

If happy little bluebirds fly

Beyond the rainbow

Why, oh why can’t I?

The Jews of Europe could not fly. They could not escape beyond the rainbow. Harburg was almost prescient when he talked about wanting to fly like a bluebird away from the “chimney tops”. In the post-Auschwitz era, chimney tops have taken on a whole different meaning than the one they had at the beginning of 1939.

Pink’s mom is Judith Kugel. She’s Jewish of Lithuanian background. As Pink was belting the Harburg/Arlen song from the stage at the Academy Awards, I wasn’t thinking about the movie. I was thinking about Europe’s lost Jews and the immigrants to America.

I was then struck by the irony that for two thousand years the land that the Jews heard of “once in a lullaby” was not America, but Israel. The remarkable thing would be that less than ten years after “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” was first published, the exile was over and the State of Israel was reborn. Perhaps the “dreams that you dare to dream really do come true”.

This article was sent to me. Author is unknown.

David Bancroft

HELP ME PLEASE – I AM CONFUSED!

When it comes to Israel, the world seems to be upside down.

I always said that the true Palestinians are the Jews, always remembering in my youth that the Jerusalem Post was originally called the Palestine Post and we would always refer to Palestine when collecting funds for the Jews living in Palestine to defend themselves against the Arabs. נושא:הועבר: HELP ME PLEASE – I AM CONFUSED!

ISRAELI LEADERS:

BENJAMIN NETANYAHU,

Born 21 October 1949 in Tel Aviv, Israel (formerly Mandate of Palestine)

EHUD BARAK, Born 12 February 1942 in Mishmar HaSharon , British Mandate of Palestine

ARIEL SHARON, Born 26 February 1928 in Kfar Malal , British Mandate of Palestine

EHUD OLMERT, Born 30 September 1945 in Binyamina-Giv ‘ at Ada , British Mandate of Palestine

ITZHAK RABIN, Born 1 March 1922 in Jerusalem , British Mandate of Palestine

ITZHAK NAVON, Israeli President in 1977-1982. Born 9 April 1921 in Jerusalem, British Mandate of Palestine.

EZER WEIZMAN, Israeli President in 1993-2000. Born 15 June 1924 in Tel Aviv, British Mandate of Palestine

ARAB “PALESTINIAN” LEADERS :

YASSER ARAFAT, Born 24 August 1929 in Cairo, Egypt

SAEB EREKAT, Born April 28, 1955, in Jordan. He has Jordanian citizenship.

FAISAL ABDEL QADER AL-HUSSEINI, Born in1948 in Bagdad, Iraq.

SARI NUSSEIBEH, Born in 1949 in Damascus, Syria

MAHMOUD AL-ZAHAR, Born in 1945, in Cairo, Egypt.

So, if I understand this correctly, the Israeli leaders, who were born in Palestine, are called/considered “Settlers” or more accurately, “Occupiers.” While Palestinian Arab leaders who were born in Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Iraq and Tunisia are called “Native Palestinians”?

THAT makes perfect sense.

DAVID BANCROFT

Another Holocaust

Ron Rosenbaum wrote this piece in Slate.com. His point is the consequence of victory by Hamas. My question is who would come to the aid of Jews being slaughtered in Israel?

Israel’s most vehement critics like to accuse it of Nazi-like “genocide” in Gaza, said Ron Rosenbaum. Now, there’s a legitimate debate about whether Israel could have caused fewer civilian deaths in defending itself against Hamas’s rocket attacks and tunnel building. But genocide has a specific meaning, which is the deliberate, total annihilation of a people. “Where do we find actual genocide in Gaza”? In Hamas’s “Covenant”-its statement of its sacred mission. “Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it,” the Covenant states, adding, “The Day of Judgment will not come about until Muslims fight the Jews (killing the Jews).” When Hamas fired thousands of rockets into Israeli towns and cities, its leaders meant to kill as many Jews as possible and failed only because of the Iron Dome defense system. If these terrorists were to acquire more-sophisticated missiles or tactical nuclear weapons, they’d happily kill millions of Jews in a Second Holocaust. All critics of Israel are not anti-Semitic. But those who ignore Hamas’s genocidal intent and then hurl the word “genocide” at its intended victims “give themselves away.”

DAVID BANCROFT

TO WHOM DOES THE LAND OF ISRAEL BELONG??

An Israeli Sense of Humor at United Nations set the record straight.

An ingenious example of speech and politics occurred recently in the United Nations Assembly and made the world community smile.

A representative from Israel began:
‘Before beginning my talk I want to tell you something about Moses:
When he struck the rock and it brought forth water, he thought,
“What a good opportunity to have a bath!”

Moses removed his clothes, put them aside on the rock and entered the water.
When he got out and wanted to dress, his clothes had vanished.
A Palestinian had stolen them!

The Palestinian representative at the UN jumped up furiously and
shouted, “What are you talking about? The Palestinians weren’t there then.”

The Israeli representative smiled and said,
“And now that we have made that clear, I will begin my speech.”

Author of this piece is unknown

DAVID BANCROFT

Charlie Rose talks to Khaled Meshaal

Charlie Rose is a highly respected interviewer who has television programs on Bloomberg, CBS, and PBS in the United States.

Hamas’s exiled leader on the Gaza bloodshed and the effects of Israel’s seven-year blockade of the Palestinian enclave. Carefully read, Khaled Meshaal considers Israel as an occupier nation. The goal of Hamas, as stated in their charter, is the destruction of Israel.

Mr. Rose’s questions are in bold font. Key reply statements are underlined.

This interview was scanned from Bloomberg BusinessWeek and was shown on PBS.

How does the killing stop?
What do you want?
Human beings have to defend themselves. If we are starved, if we are besieged, we have to defend ourselves. When [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu stops every effort to reach peace, the rest of the world ought to expect an explosion in the West Bank and Gaza. What do I believe Hamas needs or wants? Peace. But we want peace without occupation, without settlements, without Judaization without the siege. We want to live on par with every single nation. We need to live in Palestine.

Will you pledge not to eradicate Israel?
Do you want to live in coexistence with Israel?
I do not coexist with occupation and with settlements. Do you think that Palestinians who suffer from occupation and settlements can eradicate Israel? No, this is beguiling, misleading propaganda …. We in Hamas believe in moderation of Islam. We are not fanatics. We do not fight the Jews because they are Jews per se. We fight the occupiers. I’m ready to coexist with the Jews, with the Christians, with the Arabs, with the non-Arabs. I do coexist with other religions …. When we have a Palestinian state, then the Palestinian people can have their say. There are disproportionate standards, but we have the upper hand. Every single occupation ends, and the people are victorious.

Will the people of Gaza continue to support
Hamas despite the terrible consequences?
The Palestinians of Gaza are saying we are suffering because of the crimes of Israel. Even with the carnage and their homes reduced to rubble, they say, “Mr. Khaled Meshaal, we don’t want to emerge from this war without breaking the siege. We were dying slowly. Now we are dying instantly because of the F-16s and all the Israeli and American technology.” The Palestinian people have had enough. They do not make distinctions between slow death and instant death. They say, “Our families are targeted in their homes. However, we want to resist, to insist on lifting the siege.”

Why are you in Qatar and not Gaza?
This is a very reasonable question. You can ask not only Khaled Meshaal, you can ask the 6 million people in the diaspora. Why are they not in the West Bank? Why are they not in Gaza? Because Israel expelled the Palestinians in 1948 and 1967. I’m from the West Bank. Since 1967,I was expelled. I used to live in Jordan, in Kuwait, when I used to be a student. Then I moved to Syria and now Qatar. You have hundreds and thousands of Palestinians in America. They long to go back to Palestine. Although they are American citizens, Palestinians long for their home country. That’s why we insist on the return of the refugees, for me and for others to return. My natural existence is there, but I’m compelled to be here.

Some suggest, to preserve Israel’s
security, the sovereignty of a
Palestinian state must be restricted.
Why does the world understand Israeli security issues and not take heed of Palestinian security issues? In order to have a Palestinian state, why ought that state be demilitarized? Who accepts a state without arms? It will be subject to the aggression of others. I cannot accept any tutelage of any other entity. If you say, “Come, you are Palestinian. We can give you a piece here an a piece there in piecemeal fashion”-no. No.

How do you create trust between
Israelis and Palestinians?
You think the key is trust. We actually are enemies. They are the occupiers. The solution doesn’t start with trust. The international community’s full mission is to say to the Israeli occupation, “Stop. Enough is enough.” They ought to compel Israel to withdraw. How could I trust my enemy? We had a number of negotiations. The negotiations failed.

Do you need the approval
of the military wing of
Hamas to commit to any
agreement?
We are not two heads or two bodies. We are one single movement. When the political leadership commits to something, then the military wing will commit itself, too. If the leaders take a decision, then every single person, whether militant or civilian, they will follow.

DAVID BANCROFT