Category Archives: Israel

UPDATE II: Wasted Words (& ‘Lost Cause’)

Ancient History, Hebrew Testament, Israel, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Jihad, Judaism & Jews, Middle East, Terrorism, UN

Benjamin Netanyahu speaks on a level incomprehensible to his audience. One doesn’t have to agree with everything Israel’s prime minister says to respect his patriotism, the incisive points he drove home, and his command of history and reasoned argument. I’ve often argued that American leaders—Republican, Democrat and other, wannabe effetes—are unpatriotic. At bottom, they dislike the historic people and work against their interests. Not so Netanyahu. The Arabists on CNN are agreed: Both James Rubin (correspondent Christian Amanpour’s beau) and Hussein Ibish claimed Netanyahu lost. They’re probably right. As usual, the text of the address is not yet out there. The UN feed doesn’t enable a rewind. I’ve replaced it with this C-SPAN hyperlink. I hope an embed of Netanyahu’s speech becomes available shortly.

UPDATED I (Sept. 26):

UPDATE II: My father, whom I have just called in South Africa to wish Shanah Tova, said this about Netanyahu’s “lost cause”: If you were to propose a resolution in the UN that the world is flat, you’d get a majority vote.

The Palestinian Authority May Face ‘Death by Recognition’

BAB's A List, Foreign Policy, Israel, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

The PA may well come to regret invoking the Kosovo precedent, says Nebojsa Malic:

THE EFFORTS OF THE Palestine Authority (PA) to declare independence and get UN recognition have been compared to those of the “Republic of Kosovo,” a province of Serbia occupied by NATO in 1999 on behalf of the ethnic Albanian “Kosovo Liberation Army.” The KLA, a terrorist organization dabbling in drug-running, slavery and other unsavory practices on the side, orchestrated NATO’s aerial campaign and subsequent invasion (much like the current “rebels” in Libya), and after almost nine years of ethnically cleansing the province and laying the groundwork, declared it an independent state in 2008. While “Kosovo” is recognized by around 80 governments (most notably the US and major Western European powers), it has yet to claim a seat at the UN, faced with a certain Russian and probable Chinese veto.

Last year, the International Court of Justice (ICJ, not to be confused with faux tribunals such as the ICTY and ICTR) turned in a stunning verdict, refusing to recognize that the KLA government’s declaration directly violated the UN resolution regulating the status of Kosovo and accepted international law. Torturing language and logic, the majority of judges said that the declaration had been made not by the UN-regulated provisional government, but the “direct representatives of the Kosovo people,” and as such not bound by UN resolutions or international law (!). Following this sort of logic, any group, anywhere, could declare statehood – and the only thing that mattered would be whether it has sufficiently powerful patrons to enforce that statehood by force.

Upon recognizing “Kosovo,” its U.S. and EU sponsors insisted it would not establish any sort of precedent, as fervently as they had once insisted that the occupation of the province in no way conflicted with Serbia’s sovereignty over it. And now the PA is about to exploit the very Kosovo precedent. Critics of the American Empire often deride Washington’s belief in American exceptionalism, but it does actually apply in one, albeit unintended, respect: the U.S. may well be the first country in history to destroy the very international order its global dominance was built upon. Flouting the law with impunity is one thing; declaring that behavior to be the law, quite another.

However, there are drawbacks to PA’s invocation of the Kosovo precedent. For one, it would undermine “Kosovo” itself, obliterating a major argument of the separatists’ sponsors and putting the rest of the world on notice regarding their own separatist issues (and many countries have them). With many already uneasy about the professional revolutionaries (a method of unconventional takeover first tested in Serbia) in their midst, now another legacy of the Euro-American Balkans interventions – death by recognition – threatens to go global. While few seem to be aware of these potential problems down the road – there appears to be near-universal support in the UN for a state of Palestine – they will most certainly read their heads sooner or later.

Arabs themselves may be ill-served by the declaration. The PA is not self-sustaining, while the economic activity in the territories in question leans heavily on Israel. However much of a nuisance navigating the security checkpoints may be now, becoming an international border won’t make them any better – quite the contrary. Statehood would also mean taking ownership and responsibility for one’s actions and behavior, including terrorist attacks; until now, everything that happened could be blamed – and usually is – on Israel and the occupation. With statehood, that excuse disappears.

Claiming a Palestinian state in the territories of West Bank and Gaza would also go against the charters of both Fatah (current PA leadership) and Hamas. Both deny Israel’s right to exist and claim the entire territory of the old Palestine Mandate as their own. Settling for territories annexed by Egypt and Jordan in 1948, and occupied by Israel in 1967, is not just a matter of quantity, but of principle: it is an indirect recognition of Israel’s legitimacy. Last, but not least, the existence of a Palestinian state would shift the dynamic of the Arab-Israeli conflict from the current field of 4th-generation warfare (where weakness is strength) that has benefited the Arabs to a more conventional model, where Israel has proven its superiority repeatedly (as the Egyptians who remember 1967 and even 1973 can attest).

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Nebojsa Malic has been the Balkans columnist for Antiwar.com since 2000, and blogs at grayfalcon.blogspot.com. This editorial is exclusive to Barely A Blog.

New Yorkers Are Onto The Leech-In-Chief

Barack Obama, Democrats, Economy, Elections, Israel, Judaism & Jews, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim

Liberals are denying that New York City’s 9th Congressional District is “a bellwether district.” Their perpetual propaganda cannot repeal reality. Uncontroversially (for a change), I contend, in my new WND.COM column, that “New Yorkers are onto the Leech-in-Chief”:

“Running against Barack Obama’s reckless fiscal policies (the building blocks for which were laid by Bush), a Republican, Catholic businessman has just beaten a Democratic, Jewish, pro-Israel, career politician in New York City’s 9th Congressional District, by 54 to 46 percent.

Bob Turner’s historic win over David Weprin, a first for Republicans since 1923, is reminiscent of Scott Brown’s victory over Martha Coakley in Massachusetts. Given the ethnic composition of the district—almost 40 percent Jewish—the media, however, is spinning the win as a referendum on Obama’s policies on Israel, not the economy.

Had the Democrat not outspent the Republican and outgunned him with the assistance of former president Bill Clinton and Gov. Andrew Cuomo; and had the Jewish voters under scrutiny not been primarily Orthodox, working class, and in opposition to gay marriage—CNN’s Errol Louis might have alluded to Jewish money and influence. Instead, the commentator confined himself to describing the votes cast for a fiscally and socially more conservative representative as ‘tribally’ motivated.”…

Read the rest of “New Yorkers are onto the Leech-in-Chief,” on WND.COM.

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UPDATED: Scheuer: Big Bad Israel Vs. Poor Little Empire (The ‘Sir’ Thing)

America, Anti-Semitism, Education, Foreign Policy, Israel, Political Economy, Technology

Michael Scheuer is so predicable in his attempts to be unpredictable. I knew right away what Scheuer would say when Judge Napolitano, of Freedom Watch, brought up the matter of US spying on Israel. The Jewish State is no ally; it deserves what it gets, said Scheuer.

Oh the contradictions! The likes of Scheuer see the US as a bad actor everywhere around the world. Except when it comes to the Jewish State. When it concerns Israel, big bad America suddenly becomes poor little Empire.

Inconsistency in thinking is never a nice thing to behold.

Scheuer also claimed that Israel has been stealing America’s intellectual property, an assertion for which he offered no evidence.

Who do you think invented Microsoft’s “Kinect,” which is in the Guinness Book of Records as the “Fastest-Selling Consumer Electronics Device” ever? Scheuer would like to claim the invention for the US, but it belongs to an Israeli outfit called PrimeSense.

Jealously is as ugly as inconsistency. My sources in the high-tech industry confirm that Israel has been on the cutting edge for quite sometime. Significant is the trend. And it is unmistakable: “Emerging markets,” as Israel is, are becoming freer, whereas America is becoming less free. The devil is in that detail.

Moreover, there is the issue of education. Take Germany. It is socialistic like Israel, but has a splendid education system, which remains unburdened by political correctness. The Germans run the same sort of schools I attended growing up in Israel, where, because no pedagogue believes all kids are created equal, students are streamed into different tracks. Israel, I suspect, is unencumbered by the kind of education system that graduates retarded kids as America does.

UPDATE: THE “SIR” THING. Kerry, it’s uncanny. I was thinking the same. Scheuer’s habit of saying “Sir” constantly is his way of appearing like a straight arrow. You know; like man with military discipline. “Take what I say to the bank, Sir.” It’s so phony.