Category Archives: Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

Israel’s To Blame? Really?

Israel, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, libertarianism

I’m having a hard time following the logic of the article, “Who Started ‘the Cycle of Violence’ in Palestine?”, in which Israel is blamed for the renewed hostilities between it and the Palestinians of the Gaza strip.

As circuitous as it is curious, the case woven in “Who Started ‘the Cycle of Violence’ in Palestine?” seems to hang on the claim that “Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his cabinet lied to the Israeli and international public by pretending not to know that the [3 kidnapped Israeli] boys were almost certainly [already] dead,” and that “although the Israeli government knew the three boys were almost certainly dead, they initiated what they dubbed ‘Operation Brother’s Keeper.’ Thousands of IDF soldiers combed the West Bank, ostensibly searching for the kidnapped boys.”

OK. Let’s assume that indeed, as author Justin Raimondo asserts, “the Israeli political class exhibits a malevolence unique among nations.” Isn’t that perspective beside the point here? Didn’t the latest conflagration in fact begin with the kidnapping and killing of the three Israeli teenagers? What am I missing?

What Distinguishes Israelis From Their Neighbors

Israel, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Palestinian Authority

Personally, I’ve already heard from Israeli friends and family who’re disgusted at the suspected revenge murder of Palestinian teenager Mohammed Abu Khder, 16—revenge for the murder of three Israeli teens, last month. Now, contrary to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ weak response to the abductions and murders that sparked this last savage act, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu telephoned the father of the east Jerusalem teenager, to say the following:

In a statement, Netanyahu’s office said he had spoken with the teenager’s father, Hussein Abu Khder, to offer his condolences and express his outrage over the “abhorrent” murder a day after the security forces confirmed arresting six Jewish extremists on suspicion of involvement.
“I would like to express my outrage and that of the citizens of Israel over the reprehensible murder of your son,” Netanyahu told him.
“We acted immediately to apprehend the murderers. We will bring them to trial and they will be dealt with to the fullest extent of the law,” he said.
“We denounce all brutal behaviour. The murder of your son is abhorrent and cannot be countenanced by any human being.”
The family, who live in Shuafat in east Jerusalem, contacted police just before dawn on Wednesday to say they believed their son had been kidnapped.
His body was discovered shortly afterwards in a forest in west Jerusalem, with initial post-mortem results indicating he was burned alive.

On the matter of the murder of Abu Khder, I venture that Netanyahu speaks for a majority of the Israeli people.

One State: Is It The Solution Or The Final Solution To The Jewish State?

English, Israel, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Neoconservatism, Palestinian Authority

For at least a decade now, Ambassador Yoram Ettinger has been sending me his newsletter. The Ettinger Report is devoted to debunking the myth of Palestinian demographic superiority. Thus the idea that the fertility rates of Israeli Jews are gaining on and even greater than those of the Palestinians is hardly new.

Cut to the Mark Levin Show. The other day I heard a whiny woman talking Israel with the host. It tuns out the woman was the neoconservative writer Caroline Glick, whom I had never heard before. She was promoting her Levin-endorsed book, The Israeli Solution, in which the fertility and immigration rates on which Ettinger had been reporting for years serve as the basis for Glick’s support for a “One-State Plan for Peace in the Middle East,” namely a one-state solution.

The Jewish fertility rate has increased as the Palestinian rates have collapsed along with those of the Muslim world as a whole. Israeli Jews now have higher fertility rates than the Arabs of Judea and Samaria, (3.04 vs. 2.91 children per woman). Israel’s immigration rate is high and rising. Palestinian emigration rates have skyrocketed over the past decade.

Why does the one-state solution follow from “the demographic good news,” as the writer puts it? (Doesn’t “the good demographic news” make for a better-ordered sentence?)

I read Glick’s FrontPage article hoping to find a decisive argument as to why the author has concluded that, in the absence of the threat of death by demographics–a one-state solution would be in Israel’s best interests.

I found nothing of the sort in Glick’s rather weak (and not terribly well written) article.

Michael Scheuer: Let The Russians Or Chinese Deal With Middle-East

Foreign Aid, Foreign Policy, Israel, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, libertarianism, Middle East, Terrorism

“A pox on all of them,” says former head of the CIA’s Osama bin Laden tracking unit, Michael Scheuer. “…What could be better than to let the Russians or the Chinese deal with the Middle-East mess?” We’ve borne the burden for long enough. “In the past we bet on tyranny. That’s gone. As is our influence.”

AND, “We have managed to turn a democratic election in Egypt into a disaster for the US. We’ve helped put the military back in power and aggravated an enemy that could be very powerful, as have we opened the way to civil war in Egypt. Time to cut aid to the whole lot, Israel too.”

Or, as this writer put it, “Frankly, My Dear Egyptians, I Don’t Give a Damn.”

Especially accurate is what Scheuer had to say about John McCain and Lindsay Graham, the neoconservative senators whose positions are in opposition to the interests of the American people (whether the latter know it or not): “The two might as well be sitting in the Israeli Knesset.”