Category Archives: Israel

Middle East Musical Chairs

Foreign Policy, Hillary Clinton, Israel, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Middle East

Gleaned from its sources in the bowels of the Obama administration, DEBKAfile has provided the likely backdrop, and backroom deals, that have led to the tiresome and futile reunion of Bibi Netanyahu and Mahmoud Abbas, second-in-command in the Palestinian Authority, after the Hamas leader du jour.:

“Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is misleading his ministers by presenting the direct talks opening with the Palestinians on Sept. 2 as a diplomatic victory. He has omitted to disclose that the Obama administration has reneged on the secret deals for paving the way to the talks it concluded with Netanyahu’s senior aides Yitzhak Molcho and Uzi Arad.

Part of the deal was for Israel to line up with the Obama administration’s non-reaction to Iran’s activation of its Russian-built nuclear reactor at Bushehr last Saturday, Aug. 21. The United States promised, for its part, to deliver the Palestinians to the negotiating table for face -to-face talks after dropping their pre-conditions (determination of the 1967 lines as the final borders of a Palestinian state and a moratorium on Jewish construction on the West Bank and Jerusalem).

But most of all, the secret deal obliged Obama to refrain from twisting Israel’s arm on behalf of the Palestinians should the dialogue founder – as it is widely expected to do.

Wit this deal in the bag, Netanyahu was able to showcase the Obama administration’s endorsement of his diplomatic strategy and is rejection of Palestinian demands.

However, the deal was shown to have sprung a leak in the formal announcements in Washington of Friday, Aug. 20, debkafile discloses.
Whereas Secretary of State Hillary Clinton kept faith with Israel and turned down a last minute White House demand to insert this phrase in her announcement: ‘The United States could offer bridging proposals if necessary,’ into her announcement, the euphemistic phrase turned up in special presidential envoy George Mitchell’s remarks elaborating on the Clinton statement.'”

MORE.

UPDATED: Wild About Wilders

Freedom of Religion, IMMIGRATION, Islam, Israel, Jihad, Multiculturalism, Neoconservatism, The West

HERE are some astute observations by Larry Auster (along the lines made a while back in “Dhimmis At Ground Zero?”) prompted by decent (and thus rare) journalism practiced by the Australian media with respect to Geert Wilders. He is the Dutch politician (more like statesman), who speaks clearly (as opposed to our incoherent activists) and honestly about Islam, its religionists and their compatibility with life in the West:

“An Australian TV news program has a long (about 20 minutes) segment on Geert Wilders. Despite the host’s open hostility to Wilders, the program–utterly unlike what would happen on U.S. television–gives a fair view of him and his positions. It is the fullest media presentation of Wilders, and of his place in Dutch politics, that I’ve seen. To be watching a mainstream television news show and see Wilders say, in his reasonable yet firm and determined manner, that Islam is a threat to the West and that its ingress into the Netherlands must be stopped, period, is thrilling. Among other things, he is light years beyond the American conservative anti-jihadists, who to this very moment, and despite their support for Wilders, are unable to state that Islam is the problem, that Islam must be stopped, that Islam doesn’t belong in the West. The anti-jihadists–with their attacks on ‘Islamism,’ not Islam, with their ‘I love Muslims, I just don’t want the mosque to be so close to Ground Zero,’ are frightened and uncertain children who stick their toe into the water of the Islam problem and then run back to mommy. Wilders is an adult who has grasped the simple truth about Islam and states it without equivocation.”

“When the West has acquired more adults like Wilders, it will proceed to save itself. And–who knows?–maybe some of the currently still frightened Islamism critics will be among them.”

MORE.

UPDATE: Quote of the Day on LauraIngraham.com:

“In a true peace, Israel will, in our lifetimes, become one more Arab country, with a Jewish minority.”
– Ground Zero mosque Imam Feisel Abdul Rauf, in a 1977 letter to the editor.

The One-State Solution is promoted by many left-liberals, paleo-cons and libertarians; that is true. But not if Geert has anything to do with it.

Bibi’s Paleo Position

IMMIGRATION, Israel, Labor, Nationhood, Paleoconservatism

“We have created a Jewish and democratic nation, and we cannot let it turn into a nation of foreign workers,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said at a conference of the Israel Manufacturers Association in January. … Although the Israeli government issued a record 120,000 foreign work permits in 2009, the country’s political leaders say they want to phase out migrant labor. .. [that it] threatens the nation’s Jewish character” …

The New York Times has awoken to the story about “Netanyahu Wanting To Retain Israel’s National Character,” discussed on BAB in March.

Bibi’s is quite an extraordinary a position; it’s a paleoconservative position.

NYT: “Since the first intifada of the early 1990s, more than a million migrants from the developing world have come to Israel to replace the Palestinians, who were the country’s original source of cheap labor.”

Bibi thinks that unemployed, minimally skilled Israelis and Palestinians (provided they don’t smuggle bombs under their clothes) should do the jobs foreigners want so badly to do in Israel. Just as the same segment of American society should have dibs on those jobs in the US. While no one owns a job, and one cannot tell employers who to hire—people who care about the fabric of the society in which they live will want to see low-skilled locals making a living.

Israel is fortunate to have a better class of foreign laborers; these poor Chinese workers—some treated atrociously—do not march demanding political rights and calling their employers racists; they sue for the wages they’ve earned.

UPDATE III: Then There Were Three (Sane Paleos)

Classical Liberalism, Foreign Policy, Islam, Israel, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Justice, Middle East, Paleoconservatism

Serbian historian Srdja Trifkovic is one of the finest writers on Islam. Because he tells the truth about Islam, he also tells the truth about Israel. The latter follows from the former. Sane Serbs, Nebojsa Malic is another, have clashed with Islam’s emissaries and view Israel has having been “serbed.” The rest of the paleos are in contradiction: They acknowledge Islam’s aims but refuse to see its workings in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I highlighted their inconsistencies in “Paleos Must Defend the West…And That Means Israel Too.” Trifkovic’s “Israel, the West, and the Rest” continues a tradition of three:

“… our primary interests in the Middle East … are not to defend human rights, or to promote democracy, or to build a Palestinian state, or to treat Israel as an existential American ally … Secondary and peripheral [interests] must remain subordinate to the primary interests when policy outcomes come into conflict. Should we promote ‘democracy’ even if its beneficiaries are Osama and Ahmadinejad? Should we seek ‘justice’ for the Palestinians — however defined — at the cost of risking the disappearance of the state of Israel? No, heck no!

Even if an evenhanded and generous agreement were to be offered to the Arabs — including the establishment of a viable Palestinian state, an equitable sharing of natural resources, and a generous compensation package that would resolve the refugee problem — it would be unworkable in the long term — the notion of Israel’s legitimacy is simply unacceptable to traditional Islam…”

UPDATE I (June 16) : To Derek: “Israel” does not have to mimic paleos to deserve a defense against those intent on extinguishing it. However, it so happens that Israelis have “Sued NATO For 1999 Air Strikes On Serbia.” Read my post about this valiant, well-directed, self-interested effort.

We know that Israel was streaks ahead, as far as paleo political philosophy goes, in terms of its relationship not only with Serbia but with the old South Africa. Read about the latter comity.

Put it this way: Israel did not attempt to destroy these nations; the USA did.

Where does that leave paleo incongruity?!

UPDATE II (June 17): The idea, hinted at in the Comments Section, that this column privileges Israel over the US for “tribal” reasons is insulting—at least to those familiar with my positions. As I wrote to Myron the other day, when he asked that I apply the Israel test to an American issue: “I’m an American commentator, first.” I’m also the quintessential individualist. I’ve never belonged or worked for any group/tribe/church.

Why does this writer fight for the Afrikaner, Gringo Malo? Tribal affiliation? What bunk. If I knew what was good for me, I would indeed conform to Malo’s insulting caricature—the book deals would role in. I’d be rewarded for becoming what in Russel Kirk’s estimation the American mind craves: the banal and the mundane.

If anything, paleos work against their “tribe” when they agitate for the Palestinians. An Israeli did not assassinate an American senator; a Palestinian did. Muslim terrorists extolling the Palestinian cause killed 3000 Americans on 9/11. Yet it is Israelis that paleos warn us against.

And don’t dare mention the vast sums of money that go to that nest of vipers known as the Palestinian Authority. We only speak of the Jewish ponces who take from the US.

Equating my mere recognition of the justness of Israel’s existence and its struggle and what it has accomplished with tribal affiliation—this is plain pathetic, all the more so considering I have not ever recommended a foreign policy that does anything other than stay out of Israel’s affairs.

UPDATE IV: THEN THERE WERE FOUR. Thanks, Daniel, for alerting us to Derb’s brilliant piece, “Taking Israel’s Side”:

“Each of us has a mental map of the world colored by partiality, some of it reasonable, some merely emotional. If we are patriotic, we will feel more warmly towards a nation that trades fairly with us, cooperates to some degree in international projects we undertake, and shares some commonality of history, culture, or values with us. Contrariwise, of course, if you believe, as a liberal once told me he actually did believe, that your country is the most evil that ever existed, you will feel affinity with foreign nations whose leaders share that view. …

It remains the case that any fair-minded person must be an Israel sympathizer. A hundred years ago there were Jews and Arabs living in that part of the Ottoman Empire. After the Ottoman collapse both peoples had a right to set up their own ethnostates. It has been the furiously intransigent Arab denial of this fact, not anything Israelis have done, that has been the root cause of all subsequent troubles. It is also indisputably the case, as has often been said, that if Hamas, Hezbollah, and the rest were to lay down their arms, there would be peace in Palestine, while if Israel were to lay down her arms, the Israelis would be slaughtered.It is also indisputably the case, as has often been said, that if Hamas, Hezbollah, and the rest were to lay down their arms, there would be peace in Palestine, while if Israel were to lay down her arms, the Israelis would be slaughtered.”

[SNIP]

The last very good point was one I made in LIAR, LIAR, ABAYA ON FIRE (2002), quoting Lorne Gunter:

“Cycle of violence” suggests a sequence of events that has no beginning or end. Do the media ever pause to pose the no-brainer the Edmonton Journal’s Lorne Gunter poses? “If Palestinians stopped their attacks today, tomorrow there would be no Israeli attacks. But if Israel stopped unilaterally, would you trust the Palestinians to follow?”