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- Khaled Abu Toameh: Peace Talks: What Is Behind The Palestinian Message?
- Peter Martino: Europe: Treating Homeschoolers Like Terrorists
Peace Talks: What Is Behind The Palestinian Message?
by Khaled Abu
Toameh
September 10, 2013 at 5:00 am
September 10, 2013 at 5:00 am
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For now,
the Palestinian Authority's strategy is to continue talking while at the same
time blaming Israel for the lack of progress. Its next step would be to seek
international intervention and pressure to force Israel to all its demands,
including a full withdrawal to the pre-1967 lines.
Palestinian officials in Ramallah have lately been competing against each
other over the release of statements regarding the secret peace talks with
Israel.All these statements have one theme in common: holding Israel responsible for the expected failure of the US-sponsored talks.
In briefings to Palestinian journalists, some of the officials have gone as far as threatening to pull out of the talks in protest against continued construction in the settlements.
Such statements and threats have accompanied the talks ever since they resumed several weeks ago.
PLO, Fatah and Palestinian Authority officials have described the talks as "futile," "unproductive," "a waste of time" and "a cover for Israel to pursue its policy of creating new facts on the ground."
U.S. Secretary of
State Kerry, Israeli Justice Minister Livni, and Palestinian Chief Negotiator
Erekat address reporters in Washington, D.C., on July 30, 2013. Palestinians
are disappointed that US envoy Martin Indyk has attended only one out of five
sessions of talks with Israel, and some Palestinian officials have threatened
to pull out of the talks. [State Department photo/ Public Domain]
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Others have also been briefing reporters "on condition of anonymity" -- in violation of understandings reached with the Americans, according to which Israel and the Palestinians would refrain from talking about the peace negotiations.
There are a number of reasons behind the Palestinians' increased talk about the negotiations.
First, the Palestinian statements and threats are aimed at prompting the US Administration to exert pressure on Israel to comply with the Palestinian Authority's demands, including halting all settlement construction and the participation of a US representative in the negotiations.
The Palestinians hope that the presence of a US envoy at the negotiating table with Israel would help put pressure on the Israeli government to soften its position on a number of issues, including the settlements.
The Palestinians are disappointed that US envoy Martin Indyk has attended only one out of five sessions of talks with Israel.
Second, the Palestinian statements and threats to withdraw from the talks are directed toward the Palestinian public, which has not been quite supportive of the Palestinian Authority leadership's decision to resume the talks with Israel. The Palestinian remarks are designed to assure the Palestinian public that their negotiators have no intention to make "unacceptable" concessions to Israel.
Third, the Palestinian officials' comments about Israeli "intransigence" and "arrogance" are aimed at paving the way for holding Israel fully responsible for the failure of the peace talks. The message that the Palestinian officials are trying to send out to their own people and the international community is that the Israeli government, contrary to its public stance, is not interested in peace.
By sounding the alarm bell already, the Palestinians are hoping that when the talks fail they will be able to tell the world, "You see, we told you from the beginning that these Israelis do not want peace."
But these statements and threats have also proven to be counter-productive. The more Palestinian officials and leaders talk about the "futility" and "ineffectiveness" of the peace talks, the bigger the opposition grows to the negotiations with Israel.
Of course there is also the possibility that this type of anti-Israel rhetoric could spark another round of violence between the two sides.
No wonder, then, that Palestinians have been holding weekly demonstrations in the West Bank and Gaza Strip against the same peace talks that are being ridiculed and dismissed by none other than their leaders and negotiators. Why should any Palestinians be in favor of the peace talks when their leaders are declaring, almost on a daily basis, that the negotiations with Israel are just a waste of time?
Ironically, while the Palestinian officials are inciting their people against the peace talks, they are also deploying riot police to break up demonstrations opposed to the negotiations. This happened on a number of occasions over the past few weeks in Ramallah and other Palestinian cities.
Last week, five Palestinians were injured during a violent encounter with policemen outside the Ramallah headquarters of Mahmoud Abbas.
Asked why the Palestinians are not making good their threat to walk out of the "unproductive" talks, a senior Palestinian official explained: "We cannot pull out at this stage because of American and European pressure. We will continue with the talks for six to nine months in order to show the world in the end that Israel is not interested in peace."
For now, the Palestinian Authority's strategy is to continue talking while at the same time blaming Israel for the lack of progress.
Palestinian officials are hoping that by the time the talks fail, the world would have absorbed their message: namely, that the Israelis are not interested in peace. The Palestinian Authority's next step would be to seek international intervention and pressure to force Israel to accept all its demands, including a full withdrawal to the pre-1967 lines.
Related Topics: Israel
| Khaled Abu
Toameh
Europe: Treating Homeschoolers Like Terrorists
by Peter Martino
September 10, 2013 at 4:00 am
September 10, 2013 at 4:00 am
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One of the
largest Jewish schools in Belgium is at risk of losing its state recognition
and subsidies because it is "too conservative." Meanwhile, the
Belgians have opened their own Islamic school, subsidized by the authorities,
who evidently do not see Islamic education as "too conservative."
A German SWAT team stormed a house in Darmstadt on the morning of August 29.
Had the German police discovered a group of dangerous jihadists? No, they were
storming the house because the family living in the house were homeschooling
their four children. The children, between 7 and 14 years old, were forcibly
removed from their parents, Dirk and Petra Wunderlich, and taken into state
custody at an unknown location.
The Romeike family,
who face persecution in Germany because they homeschool, are seeking
political asylum in the U.S. (Photo credit: Homeschool Legal Defense
Association)
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The Wunderlich children were seized on the order of a court, because their parents, who are Christians, want to raise them according to their own values. The court transferred formal legal custody of the Wunderlich children to the state, despite there being no allegations of abuse or neglect against the parents.
The court order allowed the police the use of force against both parents and children; it stated that the children had "adopted the parent's opinions" regarding homeschooling, and that "no cooperation could be expected" from either the parents or the children.
Last year, the authorities had already taken the children's passports to prevent the family from moving to neighboring countries where homeschooling is legal. The German authorities claim that by homeschooling their children, Dirk and Petra Wunderlich are violating their children's "right to grow up to be capable of living in society, which is only possible if they are exposed to different points of view."
The raid on the Wunderlich home was particularly brutal. As Dirk Wunderlich told the American Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA), "I looked through a window and saw many people, police, and special agents, all armed. They told me they wanted to come in to speak with me. I tried to ask questions, but within seconds, three police officers brought a battering ram and were about to break the door in, so I opened it. The police shoved me into a chair ... At my slightest movement the agents would grab me, as if I were a terrorist."
Wunderlich said that his 14-year-old daughter, Machsejah, had to be forcibly taken out of the home:
When I went outside, our neighbor was crying as she watched. I turned around to see my daughter being escorted, as if she were a criminal, by two big policemen. They were not being nice at all. When my wife tried to give my daughter a kiss and a hug goodbye, one of the special agents roughly elbowed her out of the way and said "It's too late for that." What kind of government acts like this?
The Wunderlich incident is the latest in a series of incidents over homeschooling between parents and the German state. These began after the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1991, when thousands of ethnic Germans emigrated from the former Soviet Union to Germany. Many were Baptists who had been persecuted for their religious beliefs. In Germany, they began homeschooling their children but met with fierce government resistance. Some parents were fined. In 2007, one teenager, who approved of her parents homeschooling, was detained for two months in a psychiatric ward, where she was treated for "school phobia."
In 2008, Uwe and Hannelore Romeike, two German evangelicals, requested political asylum in the US because they faced persecution in Germany for homeschooling their six children. In 2010, Memphis, Tennessee, immigration judge Lawrence Burman granted the family asylum. "[The German law is] utterly repellent to everything we believe as Americans," Burman ruled. "[H]omeschoolers are a particular social group that the German government is trying to suppress. This family has a well-founded fear of persecution." The United States Department of Justice, however, soon appealed the hearing. Last May, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the asylum request. The case has now been taken to the US Supreme Court.
So far, there have been no cases involving German Jewish families that are homeschooling their children. In the wake of the Holocaust, Germany's Jewish population dropped to around 10,000-15,000 in the 1950s. As with the Baptists, the collapse of the Soviet Union over two decades ago has led to a rise in the German Jewish population, which now stands at almost a quarter million.
In neighboring Belgium, where, unlike Germany, homeschooling is legal, the authorities are restricting the freedom of Jewish private schools and homeschoolers. One of the largest Jewish schools in the country, the Jesode Hatora school in Antwerp, is at risk of losing its state recognition and subsidies because it is considered "too conservative." Homeschoolers, additionally, are coming under ever closer scrutiny of authorities who are trying to impose a multicultural secularism, which, as in Germany, leaves parents no say over the values they wish to transfer to their children.
Meanwhile, Belgian Muslims have opened their own Islamic school, subsidized by the authorities. The authorities evidently do not see Islamic education as "too conservative," but rather as an instrument to compensate for the educational disadvantage of immigrant children. In Germany, too, official schools bend over backwards to accommodate Muslims. In 2006, the then-German Interior Minister, Wolfgang Schaeuble (currently Germany's Finance Minister), hosted a conference in favor of introducing classes on Islam at public schools in Germany.
There does not seem to be a huge demand among German Muslims for homeschooling: Muslims are treated with much more respect in schools than conservative Christians and Jews. Homeschooling by jihadists should not, of course, be allowed for the simple reason that parents who raise their children to become terrorists, endanger society. The Baptist and Evangelical homeschoolers, currently being persecuted in Germany, however, are not teaching their children to harm others.
Related Topics: Peter Martino
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