Category Archives: History

Update III: East Jerusalem Or One Jerusalem? (Gunning For A Jewish Neighborhood)

Barack Obama, Foreign Policy, Hillary Clinton, History, Israel, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

“In a 45-minute telephone call Friday to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, [Secretary of State Hillary] Clinton upbraided him and demanded that he take more steps to show his nation’s commitment to peace,” writes the LA Times. The confrontation between the shrewd and the shrew was the latest round in a “dispute this week between the Obama administration and Israel,” which “has ballooned into the biggest U.S.-Israeli clash in 20 years, adding to months of strain between Washington and one of its closest allies,” the LA Times again.

Israel’s decision to move ahead with 1,600 new housing units in East Jerusalem, announced during a visit by Vice President Joe Biden, drew criticism from Washington in language rarely directed at even Iran or North Korea. …
Clinton’s criticism, authorized by President Obama, was aimed at trying to obtain concessions from the conservative Israeli government at a moment when Netanyahu may be politically vulnerable, officials said.
The U.S. goal is to win Israeli agreement to back off the housing project and to forgo announcements of additional Jewish construction in East Jerusalem, officials said. The administration also wants Israel to agree to discuss substantive issues in new peace talks that could begin in coming days, U.S. officials said.

Netanyahu responded today:

“With regard to commitments to peace, the government of Israel has proven over the last year that it is commitment to peace, both in words and actions,” said the statement.”
The statement cited as examples Netanyahu’s inaugural foreign policy speech made at Bar Ilan University, the removal of hundreds of roadblocks across the West Bank, and its decision to freeze temporarily construction in West Bank settlements. The latter, said the statement, was even called by Clinton an “unprecedented” move.
Netanyahu’s office added in its statement that the Palestinians were continuing to thwart the political process by demanding preconditions before the resumption of peace talks. “They are orchestrating a de-legitimization campaign against Israel in international institutions.”

East Jerusalem is the issue here. Netanyahu will have to stand strong on the unity of Jerusalem. The rest is a sideshow the Obama administration has chosen to amplify, or so I suspect.

“The Muslim Claim to Jerusalem” is political, not religious or historic, argues Daniel Pipes. It is also a recent project.

Centuries of neglect, as Pipes puts it, “came to an abrupt end after June 1967, when the Old City came under Israeli control. Palestinians again made Jerusalem the centerpiece of their political program. “Mecca, of course, is the eternal city of Islam, the place from which non-Muslims are strictly forbidden. Very roughly speaking, what Jerusalem is to Jews.”

[SNIP]
HISTORY NOTWITHSTANDING, What of Palestinian families who’ve resided in the city for generations? Sure, they will have soaked in the disingenuous, bogus political case for a Palestinian religious or historical claim on the Holy City. This, I would go further than Pipes and argue, is of a piece with the Palestinian historical identity theft project. That aside, the question of generational attachment to place and property is a simple one to solve if intentions are good. People remain on their properties and extend to their Israeli neighbors—residents of the 1,600 new housing units Biden protested included—-the courtesy their brethren receive in Israel proper.

Update I (March 17): Daniel Pipes provides an updated analysis of the Washington-Jerusalem spat:

“A recent poll of American voters shows an astonishing 8-to-1 sympathy for Israel over the Palestinians,” Pipes points out. So, “picking a fight with Israel harms Obama politically – precisely what a president sinking in the polls and attempting to transform one-sixth of the economy does not need”:

“On the surface, that the Obama administration decided one fine day to pick a fight with the government of Israel looks like an unmitigated disaster for the Jewish state. What could be worse than its most important ally provoking the worst crisis (according to the Israeli ambassador to Washington) since 1975?

A closer look, however, suggests that this gratuitous little spat might turn out better for Jerusalem than for the White House.

(1) It concerns not a life-and-death issue, such as the menace of Iran’s nuclear buildup or Israel’s right to defend itself from Hamas predations, but the triviality of the timing of a decision to build new housing units in Israel’s capital city. Wiser heads will insist that White House amateurs end this tempest in a teapot and revert to normal relations.

(2) If Obama et al. hope to bring down Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s government, they can’t count Knesset seats. Peeling away Labor will lead to its replacement by rightist parties.

(3) An Israeli consensus exists to maintain sovereignty over eastern Jerusalem, so provoking a crisis on this issue strengthens Netanyahu.

(4) Conversely, U.S. histrionics make the Palestinian Authority’s Mahmoud Abbas more reluctant to enter into Washington’s counterproductive negotiations.”

Update II (March 18): Petraeus’ Palestinian Protectorate. According to Debkafile:

“President Obama and secretary of state Hillary Clinton turned down their initial proposals for easing the upset and laid down three pre-conditions for restoring normal relations with Jerusalem:
1. The Netanyahu government must extend the 10-month freeze on West Bank settlement construction to include East Jerusalem;

2. When the moratorium runs out in September, it must be renewed for the duration of peace negotiations with the Palestinians;
3. Israeli must make more concessions to the Palestinian Authority and its chairman Mahmoud Abbas.
The Israeli government was informed that until those conditions were met, its ministers would not be received in Washington by high-level American officials …”

American officials are openly insinuating that, “Israel’s settlement policy is the root-cause of Iran’s drive for a nuclear bomb and of the conflicts endangering American lives in combat in Afghanistan and Iraq. … Vice President Joe Biden … reportedly attacked Netanyahu for the announcement of 1,600 new homes in East Jerusalem by saying: ‘What you are doing here undermines the security of our troops who are fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan.’

It is rumored that, “A much-admired American military figure, CENTCOM chief, Gen. David Petraeus, wants the Palestinian Authority added to CENTCOM’s turf” so that the US can protect the PA from Israel.

Update III (March 19): Gunning For A Jewish Neighborhood. The American Thinker (via Larry Auster):

Ramat Shlomo, is a Jewish neighborhood and has been so for thirty years. It is surrounded by other Jewish neighborhoods, and no Israeli in his right mind would consider surrendering it in any final peace deal with the Palestinians. Giving up Ramat Shlomo would be the equivalent of giving up the world-famous Hebrew University on Mount Scopus, the tony Jerusalem suburb of French Hill, and even the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City. All three are just as integrated into the Jewish identity of Jerusalem as Ramat Shlomo. Only by accepting the Palestinian narrative — that all of Jerusalem belongs to the Palestinians — could anyone possibly envision the suburb as future Palestinian territory.

AND:

There is absolutely no connection between the construction of apartment units in Ramat Shlomo (still two years distant) and the intent of Islamic martyrs to kill American soldiers thousands of miles away. The same number of American servicemen will be targeted and killed in the Middle East no matter what happens in northern Jerusalem.

So from what playbook are Barack Obama and his administration reading in breathing life into a crisis that should never have been? It is, I believe, simply this: Obama sees the world in terms of a rather protean struggle between the weak and the strong, the poor and the rich. The weak in his eyes are almost always innocent purveyors of righteousness while the powerful personify greed and oppression. The same worldview permeates his domestic policies…

Historical Identity Theft

Barack Obama, History, Islam, Israel, Jihad, Palestinian Authority, UN

THE PLIGHT THAT DOESN’T SHUT UP. The Palestinians are throwing rocks again and threatening a religious war, for a change. This time, because Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has had the audacity to place “the second holiest place for the Jewish people, after Temple Mount in Jerusalem,” “on a list of 150 national heritage sites.”

The Cave of the Machpelah, or the Tomb of the Patriarchs, “and the adjoining field were purchased—at full market price—by Abraham some 3700 years ago. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Sarah, Rebecca, and Leah are all later buried in the same Cave of Machpelah. These are considered the patriarchs and matriarchs of the Jewish people. The only one who is missing is Rachel, who was buried near Bethlehem where she died in childbirth.” [Jewish Virtual Library]

CNSNews.com:

Although a predominantly Arab city today, Hebron’s importance to Jews goes back to the foundation of their faith. According to the Old Testament (Genesis 49), Abraham bought a cave known as Machpela at the site to bury his wife, Sarah and was himself also buried there, along with Isaac and Jacob, as well as Isaac’s wife Rebecca, and Jacob’s first wife, Leah.

The Old Testament also records that Hebron was the capital of the kingdom of Israel for seven years before King David moved to Jerusalem (2 Samuel 5). Rabbis consider the Cave of the Patriarchs the second holiest site in Judaism, after the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Hebron as a city is also one of Judaism’s four holy cities, the others being Jerusalem, Tiberias and Tzfat.

Historians say Hebron had a small, almost continuous Jewish presence for thousands of years until 1929, when it ended abruptly after 67 members of the then 800-strong Jewish community were killed during three days of Arab riots.

The Obama Administration and the UN have condemned Israel. Scum all.

Muslims have no historical claim to this site except that they have conducted a kind of theological and historical Jihad—or national identity theft—claiming Jewish and Christian formative biblical figures and sites as their own.

This from my “The Final Solution to the Jewish State” touches on the grand Muslim scheme to appropriate the annals of the Jews as their own:

“This Palestinian theology … strips away Jesus’ Jewishness and turns him into a sui generis Arab-Palestinian Jesus, a twin of the Muslim Jesus. Christianity, thus liberated from its Jewish roots, can be transplanted in Arab-Islamism. This would place Palestine, and not Israel, at the origin of Christianity, making Israelis usurpers of the Islamic-Christian-Palestinian homeland. This theory denies the historical continuity between modern Israel and its biblical ancestor, the locus of nascent Christianity.”

So when proponents of the increasingly popular Palestinian replacement theology … speak of the existence of Israel as a sin, and then smuggle in the concept of the Palestinian Jesus—know that they’re pirating ancient Jewish history by superimposing Palestinian fiction on it.

Know that these archetype Amalekites are engaged in the ultimate identity theft so as to bring about the end of the Jewish state as we know it.”

Update III: Beck Blasts Bush (But Praises Diablo)

Bush, Glenn Beck, History, Islam, Politics, Pseudo-history, Republicans, States' Rights, Terrorism

It’s official. Glenn Beck gets his own category/archive on Barely A Blog. He deserves it. In addition to his other attributes—you can now track my analysis of Beck’s progression as a force for liberty by clicking on the BAB Beck category—he is the only conservative, mainstream TV commentator to treat Bush with the contempt he reserves for Obama.

The tirade against “W” begins 3 minutes or so into the broadcast.

“Debt, spending; this was insane what G. W. Bush was doing. Spending us into oblivion. National security. How about you declare a war and fight to win? How about you secure our borders? … Some people wanted global warming. The rest of us wanted us out of the Middle East; use our own energy. The Republicans had a crack at it, but what did we get? GB, in his last year, lost 3 million jobs. Debt. Spending: How about $4.9 trillion? He increased discretionary spending almost 50 percent. Fiscal year 2004 and fiscal year 2000: Bush almost spent double than President Clinton. And who can forget the $550 billion prescription drug fiasco? He abandoned the free-market system to save it with a $700 billion TARP slush fund. … The border was left wide open. Corruption was rife. Oh, and global warming: the biggest schemes of all times not only supported by Republicans, but by leading Republicans. Lindsey Graham, Tim Pawlenty, John McCain. All pro cap-and-trade.

Update I Feb. 16): In the same program, Glenn conducted a devotional to Diablo—Abraham Lincoln—rejecting some of the most solid historical revisionism.

One of the reasons a volume like The Real Lincoln is so sound is that it does NOT refute historical facts; most historians agree about what transpired during the War of Northern Aggression; it’s the interpretation of these fact.

With Diablo it boils down to deciding matters of natural law: did the states create the union or vice versa (dah Diablo)? Was secession legitimate” Is it right to sic brother on brother so as to coerce the one to remain with the other? Suspend the Bill or Right?

The “Church of Lincoln” says “Yes” to all; we who are with liberty say NO.

A reminder that I’m not adjudicating Lincoln in this post; but Beck’s progress toward the founders’ freedoms. It’s one step forward, two steps back with Beck.

Update II: To follow on RG’s excellent post, this from my “Classical Liberalism And State Schemes”:

“We have a solemn [negative] duty not to violate the rights of foreigners everywhere to life, liberty, and property. But we have no duty to uphold their rights. Why? Because (supposedly) upholding the negative rights of the world’s citizens involves compromising the negative liberties of Americans—their lives, liberties, and livelihoods. The classical liberal government’s duty is to its own citizens, first.”

Update III (Feb. 18): This post went off-topic, because some would rather rehash their convictions despite the answers provided. So, in reply to,”Do you believe those 500 million people form a serious military threat against which we must defend ourselves?”

For one, there are about 1 billion Muslims in the world. In the previous post, I replied to the same question. I’m reproducing the update:

Polls show a respectable percentage of Muslims condone Jihadi pursuits (search for some fresh data; I like those). If equaled by as many Jews and Christians, liberals and libertarians and elements on the American Right always helping to make the “Islamikazes'” case would protest as loud as you lot squealed over placing a bug in Abu Zubaydah’s cage. Hence the issue of fifth-column immigrants.

Back in 2005, “a leaked Whitehall dossier revealed that affluent, middle-class, British-born Muslims were signing up to Al-Qaida in droves. Translated into official speak by Timesonline, only ‘3,000 British-born or British-based people have passed through Osama Bin Laden’s training camps.’

And if that doesn’t allay unwarranted fears, ‘Intelligence indicates that the number of British Muslims actively engaged in terrorist activity, whether at home or abroad or supporting such activity, is extremely small and estimated at less than 1%.'”

In other words, 16,000 homicidal sleepers are loose in England!

These figures, of course, probably replicable in the US, are statistically significant—stupendously so—given the barbarism they portend. It is over this sort of astoundingly consequential number that our liberal-minded readers are jumping for joy.

Such is the liberal mindset.

Updated: Missionaries Cleared (Despite Anderson Cooper's Asininity)

Christianity, Colonialism, Criminal Injustice, Free Will Vs. Determinism, History, Ilana Mercer, Journalism, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Media, Multiculturalism, Psychology & Pop-Psychology, The West

The extracts are from “Anderson Cooper’s Asininity,” the latest WND.COM column:

“The tough tenor toward the missionaries from Central Valley Baptist Church in Meridian, Idaho, was set by CNN alpha female Anderson Cooper. The activist anchor and his houseboys in Haiti had been exceedingly hard on the hapless group, whose aim it was to, first, whisk the children to the Dominican Republic and, next, help ‘each child find healing, hope, joy and new life in Christ,” as well as “opportunities for adoption into a loving Christian family.’ …

Thankfully—and contrary to CNN’s self-styled newsman-cum-humanitarian—one Haitian justice was not as eager to see ‘The Americans’ go down for their goodness.

As Reuters reported, the (eminently reasonable) investigating Haitian judge looked for criminal intent in his investigation. He found none. So the Haitian justice concluded that the incarcerated missionaries acted with no malice aforethought.

Mens rea : now that’s a difficult concept for Cooper to comprehend. …

Whatever were [the missionaries’] plans for the children, these were far and away better than what’s in store for them if they remain at home.

Mind you, [now that they’re staying in Haiti], the kids can hope to be caught on camera—Anderson Cooper’s—as they chase him and his crew begging for tasty morsels, while Cooper flexes his muscles, furrows his forehead, and shows just how much he feels their pain.” …

The complete column is “Anderson Cooper’s Asininity,” now on WND.COM.

And do read my libertarian manifesto, Broad Sides: One Woman’s Clash With A Corrupt Society.

Before purchasing the Second Edition, which features bonus material, ask yourself this: how many column volumes would withstand the test of time with respect to truth and predictability as Broad Sides has? “Chuckie” Krauthammer’s?

Get your copy (or copies) now!

Update (Feb. 13): Robert has verified my contention in the latest column—now on my site and better titled “Anderson Cooper’s Mission Against The Missionaries”—when he asserts: “I have never met a parent that didn’t want their children to have a better future than they did.”

Americans are insular and insulated. They truly think, contra Russell Kirk’s warning, “that all men are brothers, and that all men are equal.”

In some cultures, parents drown their newborn girls before breakfast. And no, this is not reducible to the state’s policies alone. “For the sins of man, hard leftists blame society, and hard-core libertarians saddle the state. The State made me do it’ is how such social determinism can be summed-up.”

To believe that these individuals are acting out of hopelessness or despair alone, rather than acting on their values, is to fall into the Cooper, Robinson, McCain mistake.

No, some people don’t blink before giving ownership of their girls to slave masters and mistresses. Sorry to shatter the Pollyanna perception held in the west that we are all the same under the skin.

I was just reading about an orphanage in Kerala, India, founded by … good whites, for children with cerebral palsy, down syndrome and autism, “who would normally have been killed at birth or rented out to beggars.” I guess, Robert would say that the parent who did the latter wanted more for his kid than the one who chose to off his offspring.

Americans are unable to get into their mushy skulls that indeed these discarded kids I spoke of in the last column, are not “orphanage” in the way we define an orphan. Thei parents have discarded them.

Like the Coopers, Robinsons and McCains of this world, westerners can’t conceive of a reality so removed from their internal world.