Category Archives: Palestinian Authority

UPDATED: The Triumph of Anarcho-Terrorism

Israel, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Middle East, Nationhood, Palestinian Authority, Technology, Terrorism

On purely utilitarian grounds, it’s difficult to understand the “civilized” world’s almost universal drive to shrink the civilized sphere that is Israel and expand the anarcho-terrorist territory that is the Palestinian Authority. Why in the world would anyone who prizes productivity, industry, and trade push for the eviction of productive, industrious, traders from the “disputed territories,” only to replace them with destructive occupants? Even if you believe this folly serves the cause of justice, you have to admit that ceding territory to the Palestinians is a terrible waste of scarce resources.

In 2008, the US ran a “goods trade deficit with Israel of $7.8 billion.” We still do (link). Why? Because Israelis make and export things, a lot of high-tech things. Other than explosives, animate and inanimate, what have the Palestinians ever made and traded? Why, without Israel, Palestinians would be without electricity. The main market for Palestinian goods (labor) is Israel. Yet the Palestinians keep bombing their economic lifeline.

Since its independence, Israel has demonstrated its capacity for self-governance. Since they began demanding self-determination, Palestinians have proven incapable of the same. Any more territories Israel cedes will soon fall into disrepair, as did Gaza.

The Palestinians can’t feed themselves, although they manage to cannibalize their own and those around them. Still, the so-called civilized world wants to imperil the existence of the those who’ve turned a howling desert into a thriving country, and reward a warring, whining faction of self-styled victims.

Why? It’s a vexing question.

UPDATE (May 24): There is an interesting thread on Facebook. My response will give you an idea of the discussion’s direction:

“Euclid was a Greek mathematician [not an Arab]. I am not sure what Chris means. But so as not to advance something along the lines of the mythistory called Afrocentrism, let me say that “The origins of algebra can be traced to the ancient Babylonians.” And then the Indians, who were subsequently brutalized under some or other caliphate.

As Mises observed, no doubt, the Arabs were great preservers of culture by means of its translation. They were also great copiers too. No doubt there was an Arab civilizational heyday. But innovation was less in that DNA…

UPDATED: The Titan Is Tired

EU, Foreign Policy, Israel, Judaism & Jews, libertarianism, Middle East, Multiculturalism, Nationhood, Neoconservatism, Old Right, Palestinian Authority, Terrorism, The West, UN

The following is from “The Titan Is Tired,” my new WND.COM column:

“… This column has been consistently polite about—but disinterested in—the putative push for freedom across the Middle East.

Dare I say that such a stance, and not slobbering sentimentality, is the proper, libertarian position? I promised, accordingly, that when liberty deprived peoples the world over supported patriots stateside, I’d return the favor.

The same goes for Israel. Israelis want the support of Americans in standing up for their national sovereignty. Fine. But they should respond in kind.

The titan is tired. We Americans have our own tyrants to tackle. We no longer want to defend to the death borders not our own—be they in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, wherever. And we don’t need our friends looking to us to do so.”

The complete column is “The Titan Is Tired,” now on WND.COM.

UPDATE (April 29): On Facebook, our friend Nebojša Mali writers this: “Ilana, the whole article is well-written, but that last paragraph is simply outstanding.”

Me: “Let me read it. Forgot it. Oh, it’s up there in the excerpt. Thanks, Nebojsa; coming from you, that’s nice. I think it captures how I feel personally: tired. Can’t imagine what some poor marine, or any soldier, must feel as the unarmed armchair warriors here and abroad coax him back to hell for the 1000th deployment. What the hell for? So that Ann Coulter can continue to be the prettiest, most profitable (almost) war profiteer around? Here’s something written about that for your site (antiwar.com), it’s called “LETHAL WEAPONS: NEOCON GROUPIES.”

UPDATE III: The Fogel Family, RIP (Tiny Tamar Speaks)

Crime, Islam, Israel, Jihad, Judaism & Jews, Law, Palestinian Authority, Propaganda, Terrorism, Uncategorized

Their detractors—and yes, this butchered Jewish family, the youngest of whom was three months old, has detractors—claim that they were settlers, occupiers of Palestinian land. They deserved to be slaughtered by Palestinians as they slept, their gruesome deaths (images below) “celebrated with carnivals by Hamas which handed-out sweets to passers-by.” (HERE)

The “settler” exculpation—used indirectly by Obama to condemn the victims, not the perps—still does not explain away the existential meaning of stabbing “an eleven-year-old in his heart and slitting a four-year-old boy’s throat.” (HERE) Remember: the Arab citizens of Israel proper prefer to live surrounded by a Jewish majority than migrate to the Palestinian Authority. Shouldn’t they be “encouraged” to pack up and relocate to the PA? Evidently not. For one, their civilized, peace-loving Jewish neighbors have accepted them and granted them full citizenship rights: “They vote. They elect leaders to the Knesset. They serve on the Israeli Bench. They publish Arabic-language newspapers. They preach anti-Semitic hate sermons in their mosques. There is almost no limit to the freedom bestowed on Arabs of any faith within Israel.” (HERE) Why are they not considered occupiers of land not theirs?

Watch the scene of the crime. (Read a write-up.) I’ll continue this tack below.

From “THE SATANIC SHEIK AND THE ENABLERS OF EVIL”:

“In The Case for Israel, Alan Dershowitz, Harvard law professor and indefatigable civil libertarian, elucidates the moral components of the vortex of terror and counterterror, action and reaction into which the Palestinians have plunged Israel. He observes that the number of innocent Israelis killed intentionally by Palestinians is considerably higher than the number of innocent Palestinians who have been killed accidentally by the Israel Defense Force.”

“The vast majority of Palestinians killed by Israelis are directly involved in terrorist activity. Those not directly involved were killed accidentally in the course of legitimate military actions against terrorists. ‘Israel’s moral responsibility for these accidental, although often foreseeable, casualties of war,’ he avers, ‘is in no way comparable to the responsibility of Palestinian terrorists who have deliberately targeted every single Israeli civilian victim.'”

“This distinction, one would presume, is a no-brainer: ‘Every reasonable school of philosophy, theology, jurisprudence and common sense distinguishes between deliberately targeting civilians and inadvertently killing civilians while targeting terrorists who hide among them.’ Nevertheless, anti-Zionist bigots, who understand the difference between accidental death and willful murder in ‘other contexts,’ embrace moral relativism when it comes to the Jewish state.”

Professor Dershowitz makes one other particularly chilling observation:

Israel has nothing to gain and everything to lose from inflicting civilian casualties. The opposite is true for the Palestinian terrorists. Palestinian casualties play in their favor, and Israeli casualties play in their favor.”

[SNIP]

I have vehemently opposed Israel’s anti-terrorism reprisals as disproportionate in their use of force. Still, everything said above obtains.

UPDATE I: BECK BREAKS FROM THE PACK.

UPDATE II (March 16): Justice is Not Vengeance. The right thing to do is catch the perpetrators, try them, and kill them. Beck is missing the meaning of the grieving father’s words; refracting them through his Christian beliefs. Said Ruth Fogel’s father, Rabbi Yehuda Ben-Yishai:

“I have worked in education many years, and as an educator, I try to strengthen and teach people faith. I understand that I cannot be satisfied with words and that I also must implement the same principles on which I have educated others. This is a test of my faith, and therefore I agreed to be interviewed.
I believe in the country, in our strength and in the strength of the army, and I ask how did this strength not save our children?
… We will take upon ourselves the difficult task and pave for them the path so that life will be victorious.
Their mother and father will pray for them from the Heavens, their grandfathers and grandmothers will give them a lot of love, and the People of Israel will hug them and encourage them to grow and continue in the path of their parents.viewing them through the prism.”

[SNIP]

The above is profound, simple and beautiful, but it is hardly a statement of loony Christian forgiveness. To forgive evil in Jewish thinking is evil. Rabbi Yehuda Ben-Yishai simply expresses his love for his surviving grandchildren and his determination to help them. There is nothing as unhealthy here as forgiveness. That’s a Christian hobby horse. There can be no justice without proportional punishment. Jews get that.

UPDATE III (March 20): TINY TAMAR SPEAKS. This gifted little orphan articulates ideas and has a depth of understanding absent among her peers in the West/US. For those who understand Hebrew:

UPDATE II: Hamasnik Joins hands With B. Hussein (No Faith In Islam)

Barack Obama, Islam, Palestinian Authority, Private Property, Terrorism, The West

“With the president’s intervention,” writes Pat Buchanan, “the issue [of the mega-mosque at Ground Zero] has metastasized into a major clash in America’s religious and culture war. It has gone global, as Hamas has now weighed in on the side of building the mosque near Ground Zero.” Dah.

“We have to build everywhere,” said Mahmoud al-Zahar, a co-founder of Hamas and the organization’s chief on the Gaza Strip.
“In every area we have, [as] Muslim[s], we have to pray, and this mosque is the only site of prayer,” he said on “Aaron Klein Investigative Radio” on WABC. “We have to build the mosque, as you are allowed to build the church and Israelis are building their holy places.”

B. Hussein is seconded by Hamas. The mega-mosque affairs has gone from farce to burlesque. What next in the theater of the absurd?

UPDATE I: SHALOM SHARIA. Writes Diana West:

“Since 2006, Rauf [“of the ground zero mosque”] has coordinated a series of international meetings with Shariah experts ranging from Muslim Brotherhood associates to Iran’s Mohammad Javad Larijani, ‘who,’ as Brim reports, ‘has justified torture of Iranian dissidents as legal punishments under Shariah law.'”

“That’s not all Larijani, who heads Iran’s Human Rights Council (for real), has justified. He has also justified Shariah-sanctioned stoning. As Anne Bayefsky recently reported, Rauf’s picture with Larijani (and former U.S. Ambassador to the Organization of the Islamic Conference Sada Cumber) disappeared from the Cordoba Initiative Web site, too.”

“So much to hide – but the Shariah is out of the bag.

What would expanding Shariah mean here? More halal-butchered livestock leading, as in Europe, to halal-only menus?

More midnight football practice during Ramadan? More sex-segregated swimming pools?

More incitement to jihad in ‘radical’ mosques? More ‘apostates’ living in fear? More self-censorship, I mean ‘respect,’ when it comes to discussing Islam?

An excellent benchmark of Shariah’s remarkable and, think of it, post-9/11 progress is that none of the above manifestations of Islamic law – all designed to synchronize society with Islamic practice – are shocking to us.” …

UPDATE II (Aug. 23): No Faith In Islam. Another community, this time in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, does not wish to see a mosque rise up in its midst.

“The Murfreesboro mosque is hundreds of miles from New York City and the national furor about whether an Islamic community center should be built near Ground Zero. But the intense feelings driving that debate have surfaced in communities from California to Florida,” writes WaPo correspondent, Ann Gowen.

“So many things about Islam are disconcerting,” [another resident] said. “As they get bigger, there will be concerns about the ideology, what they preach and what they believe.”

And it is as I said in “Dhimmis At Ground Zero?” “It’s in the faith of Islam and its adherents that Americans have no faith.”

If Christians raised a cathedral at Liberty St. and Church St., most Americans would not mind. If the Hari Krishna set up a place of worship in the vicinity, and bobbed up and down the exact complex in Lower Manhattan, Americans would smile benignly. Ditto if a Jewish tabernacle were to be erected around the corner; this reaction would not have occurred.

I’ve had it with the incoherent, emotional, asinine refrains I keep hearing from Ground-Zero activists: “I love Muslims; it’s just this one mosque I hate.” Come out with what you mean, already.