ABU DHABI -- Surf the blogs in the Arab world and you find a common theme: the Bush administration has blindly supported Israel's Gaza war and the U.S. media has been shilling for "the aggressors." Ask the average American and it's a good bet that you will hear the opposite view: Arab governments all support Hamas and the Arab media is militant group's mouthpiece.
The truth is somewhat more complex. Neither the Arab world, nor the Arab media, is a monolith. Saudi Arabia and Egypt have sought to prevent Hamas from scoring political gains at the expense of the more secular Palestinian authority led by Fatah, while Qatar is leading a Gulf bloc that equates support for Hamas with support for the Palestinian people. The fault lines have produced a media war in the Arab world. "What journalism we have today!" a leading Saudi columnist declared in print, charging his colleagues with "marketing the idea that any anger at the Israeli bombardment is unjustified and that any support for resistance is incitement for terrorism."
The rift is most evident on the broadcasts of the region's bitter television rivals. During the three week conflict, Al Jazeera, owned by the government of Qatar, focused on vivid images of bloodshed accompanied by commentary thick with moral outrage. Rival Al Arabiya, owned by Saudi interests close to the royal family, chose to avoid the most graphic footage and take a more measured tone. The contrasting approaches reflect both the very different perceptions of the role of Arab journalism in the two newsrooms and the political rift between their respective patrons.
Continued on Page 49
Speak to me, O Muse, of this resourceful man
who strides so boldly upon the golden shrine of Potomac,
Between Ionic plywood columns, to the kleig light altar.
Fair Obamacles, favored of the gods, ascends to Olympus
Amidst lusty tributes and the strumming lyres of Media;
Their mounted skyboxes echo with the singing of his name
While Olbermos and Mattheus in their greasy togas wrassle
For first honor of basking in their hero's reflected glory.
Who is this man, so bronzed in countenance,
So skilled of TelePrompter, clean and articulate
whose ears like a stately urn's protrude?
So now, daughter of Zeus, tell us his story.
And just the Cliff Notes if you don't mind,
We don't have all day.
Said the Muse:
I will tell the story of Obamacles through my scribe Iowahawk.
But this poem is copyrighted, so reproduce at your peril.
Go read it all.
Posted by: Mike ||
01/23/2009 11:42 ||
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The Freedom Party (PVV), read yesterdays press release, is shocked by the Amsterdam Court of Appeals decision to prosecute Geert Wilders for his statements and opinions. Geert Wilders considers this ruling an all-out assault on freedom of speech.
The appalling decision to try Wilders, the Freedom Partys head and the Dutch Parliaments only internationally famous member, for incitement to hatred and discrimination against Islam is indeed an assault on free speech. But no one who has followed events in the Netherlands over the last decade can have been terribly surprised by it. Far from coming out of the blue, this is the predictable next step in a long, shameful process of accommodating Islamand of increasingly aggressive attempts to silence Islams criticson the part of the Dutch establishment.
What a different road the Netherlands might have taken if Pim Fortuyn had lived! Back in the early spring of 2002, the sociologist-turned-politicianwho didnt mince words about the threat to democracy represented by his countrys rapidly expanding sharia enclaveswas riding high in the polls and appeared on the verge of becoming the next prime minister. For his supporters, Fortuyn represented a solitary voice of courage and an embodiment of hope for freedoms preservation in the land of the dikes and windmills. But for the Dutch political class and its allies in the media and academiavariously blinded by multiculturalism, loath to be labeled racists, or terrified of offending MuslimsFortuyn himself was the threat. They painted him as a dangerous racist, a new Mussolini out to tyrannize a defenseless minority. The result: on May 6, 2002, nine days before the election, Fortuyn was gunned down by a far-left activist taken in by the propaganda. The Dutch establishment remained in power. For many Dutchmen, hope died that day.
Fortuyns cause was taken up by journalist, director, and TV raconteur Theo van Gogh, who was at work on a film about Fortuyn when he was slaughtered on a busy Amsterdam street on November 2, 2004. The killer, a young Dutch-born Islamist, had been infuriated by Submission, van Goghs film about Islamic oppression of women. Epitomizing the Dutch elites reaction to the murder was Queen Beatrixs refusal to attend van Goghs funeral. Instead, she paid a friendly visit to a Moroccan community center.
The spotlight then shifted to Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the brilliant Somali-born member of the Dutch parliament and cowriter of the script for Submission, who, rejecting the Islam of her birth, had become an eloquent advocate for freedom, especially for the rights of Muslim women facing no less oppression in the Netherlands than they had back in their homelands. Hirsi Ali was lucky: she wasnt murdered, only hounded out of the parliament, and out of the country, by a political establishment that viewed herlike Fortuyn and van Gogh before heras a disruptive presence.
That was in 2006. In that year, as if to demonstrate the gulf between popular and elite views, a poll showed that 63 percent of Dutchmen considered Islam incompatible with modern European life. Yet Piet Hein Donner, Dutch Minister of Justice, insisted that if two-thirds of all Dutchmen wanted to introduce sharia tomorrow . . . it would be a disgrace to say this is not permitted!
With Hirsi Ali abroad, the torch passed to Geert Wilders. At times, it seems that he is the last prominent Dutch figure willing to speak bluntly about the perils of fundamentalist Islam. The same people who demonized Fortuyn have done their best to stifle Wilders. In April 2007, intelligence and security officials called him in and demanded that he tone down his rhetoric on Islam. Last February, the Minister of Justice subjected him to what he described as another hour of intimidation. The announcement that he was making a film about Islam only led his enemies to turn up the heat. Even before Fitna was released early last year, Doekle Terpstra, a leading member of the Dutch establishment, called for mass rallies to protest the movie. Terpstra organized a coalition of political, business, academic, and religious leaders, the sole purpose of which was to try to freeze Wilders out of public debate. Dutch cities are riddled with terrorist cells and crowded with fundamentalist Muslims who cheered 9/11 and idolize Osama bin Laden, but for Terpstra and his political allies, the real problem was the one Member of Parliament who wouldnt shut up. Geert Wilders is evil, pronounced Terpstra, and evil has to be stopped. Fortuyn, van Gogh, and Hirsi Ali had been stopped; now it was Wilderss turn.
But Wilderswho for years now has lived under 24-hour armed guardwould not be gagged. Thus the disgraceful decision to put him on trial. In Dutch Muslim schools and mosques, incendiary rhetoric about the Netherlands, America, Jews, gays, democracy, and sexual equality is routine; a generation of Dutch Muslims are being brought up with toxic attitudes toward the society in which they live. And no one is ever prosecuted for any of this. Instead, a court in the Netherlandsa nation once famous for being an oasis of free speechhas now decided to prosecute a member of the national legislature for speaking his mind. By doing so, it proves exactly what Wilders has argued all along: that fear and sensitivity to a religion of submission are destroying Dutch freedom.
#2
They're done. Complete unconditional surrender. Who's next ? Fwance ? Germany ? Denmark ? Sweden ? I consider Britain nearly gone already. Too far down the slide to stop the hard bounce ahead. It's gonna be a real sad mess. Let's stop all travel visas from this danger zone now. And Canada needs to be on a hot watch list.
#2
Compare wid FOX NEWS AM > GLENN BECK Program -WHAT HAS AMERICA = AMERICANS BECOME IFF WE ELECT "LIARS AND CROOKS" [or worse?] TO REPRESENT AND LEAD US, VEE POLITICAL ETC. CORRUPTION. Can ordinary Americans truly depend on said "liars and crooks", etc. to promote and defend our interests, let alone defend and protect from Amer's dedicated enemies???
BECK quoted [IIRC]POTUS JAMES GARFIELD > [paraph]IFF THE GOVERNMENT IS IGNORANT, RECKLESS, ANDOR CORRUPT IT IS BECAUSE THE PEOPLE = VOTERS HAVE TOLERATED AND ACCEPTED IT.
#2
My guess, only a guess mindyou, if Country Team FBI Legats were involved, COS/COM knew. The Bureau and Justice knew. US State and it's intel section knew. POTUS and his Chief of Staff, White House Legal Council and close advisors knew. May I have your next question please.
President Obama yesterday eliminated the most controversial tools employed by his predecessor against terrorism suspects. With the stroke of his pen, he effectively declared an end to the "war on terror," as President George W. Bush had defined it, signaling to the world that the reach of the U.S. government in battling its enemies will not be limitless. While Obama says he has no plans to diminish counterterrorism operations abroad, the notion that a president can circumvent long-standing U.S. laws simply by declaring war was halted by executive order in the Oval Office.
What nonsense. Everything Bush did was authorized by Congress, and Congress could have stopped him at any time by either passing a new authorization or by stopping the money. It never did.
Key components of the secret structure developed under Bush are being swept away: The military's Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, facility, where the rights of habeas corpus and due process had been denied detainees, will close, ..
Because terrorists do not have the right of habeas corpus.
... and the CIA is now prohibited from maintaining its own overseas prisons. And in a broad swipe at the Bush administration's lawyers, Obama nullified every legal order and opinion on interrogations issued by any lawyer in the executive branch after Sept. 11, 2001.
We'll await your reaction when President Palin does the same to Bambi's lawyers in early 2013 ...
It was a swift and sudden end to an era that was slowly drawing to a close anyway, as public sentiment grew against perceived abuses of government power. The feisty debate over the tactics employed against al-Qaeda began more than six years ago as whispers among confidants with access to the nation's most tightly held secrets. At the time, there was consensus in Congress and among the public that the United States would be attacked again and that government should do what was necessary to thwart the threat.
Since that's the first and most basic charge for government: protect its citizens from attack from abroad ...
The CIA, which had taken the lead on counterterrorism operations worldwide, asked intelligence contacts around the globe to help its teams of covert operatives and clandestine military units identify, kill or capture terrorism suspects. They set up their first interrogation center in a compound walled off by black canvas at Bagram air base in Afghanistan, and more at tiny bases throughout that country, where detainees could be questioned outside military rules and the protocols of the Geneva Conventions, which lay out the standards for treatment of prisoners of war.
The Taliban prisoners we took were treated as prisoners of war and were considered to be covered by the GC. They were, in fact, repatriated to the Karzai government once that government was formed, something that continues to this day. The al-Qaeda boys were furriners in Afghanistan and were judged to be terrorists. They weren't covered by the GC and thus we took care of them.
As the CIA recruited young case officers, polygraphers and medical personnel to work on interrogation teams, the agency's leaders asked its allies in Thailand and Eastern Europe to set up secret prisons where people such as Khalid Sheik Mohammed and Ramzi Binalshibh could be held in isolation and subjected to extreme sleep and sensory deprivation, waterboarding and sexual humiliation. These tactics are not permitted under military rules or the Geneva Conventions.
Which don't apply since these jokers weren't prisoners of war.
Over time, a tiny circle of federal employees outside these teams got access to some of the reports of interrogations. Some were pleased by the new aggressiveness. Others were horrified. They began to push back gingerly, as did an even smaller number of congressional officials briefed on the reports.
Eventually their worries reached a handful of reporters trying to confirm rumors of people who seemed to have disappeared: a Pakistani microbiologist spirited away in the dead of night in Indonesia. An Afghan prisoner frozen to death at a base code-named the Salt Pit. A German citizen who did not get back on his bus at a border crossing in Macedonia.
Front companies and fictitious people were used to hide a system of aircraft that carried terrorism suspects to "undisclosed locations" and to third countries under a little-known practice called rendition.
Unlike the federal employees, who could go to jail for disclosing the classified program, the reporters and their news outlets were protected by the Constitution -- but not from government pressure. Then-CIA Director Porter J. Goss and, later, Bush summoned top editors of The Washington Post to press their case against disclosing the existence of the secret prison network.
The published reports in The Post and elsewhere earned the news media sharp recriminations from the administration, the Republican leadership in Congress and the public. Government leak investigations were launched. Bush administration officials argued that such methods and operations were necessary to effectively thwart terrorism, noting to this day that there have been no major attacks since 2001.
If there were dissenters back then, they were largely silent.
But in Europe, the reports set off a firestorm of criticism and government investigations in nearly every capital.
Since the Euros have different sensitivities and seem resigned to accept defeat (this is nothing new). And they really, really didn't like Bush who continued to remind them how inadequate they were.
Washington was pressured to move prisoners out of the secret jails. U.S. government officials scattered throughout the national security and foreign policy agencies scrambled to learn more about operations they knew little about. A growing chorus within the CIA and the State Department began to question how long the secret system of detention and interrogation could survive, and drew up plans for an alternative.
By then, the color-coded terrorist alerts had ended. Police disappeared from roadblocks around the Capitol. Washington the fortress drew millions of visitors again. Some Democratic members of Congress replaced the "war on terror" phraseology with language indicating vigilance and persistence, but not unending combat and military-only options.
On Sept. 6, 2006, Bush announced the transfer of 14 "high-value detainees" from secret prisons to Guantanamo. He suspended the CIA program, but defended its utility and reserved the right to reopen it. The secret was officially out.
Over the next 2 1/2 years, as Democrats gained power in Congress, as the violence in Iraq and the Dhimmicrats and the MSM sapped public support for the president and as the fear of another terrorist attack receded, the debate over secret prisons, renditions and harsh interrogations grew louder. Presidential candidates felt comfortable to include these sensitive subjects in the debate on the efficiency of Bush's war against terrorists, and even on the notion that it was still a war.
During his campaign and again in his inaugural address Tuesday, Obama used a different lexicon to describe operations to defeat terrorists. "As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals," he said. ". . . And for those who seek to advance their aims by inducing terror and slaughtering innocents, we say to you now that our spirit is stronger and cannot be broken; you cannot outlast us, and we will defeat you."
Obviously the moron that wrote this and the clown that wrote the executive order for Bambi have not read the 9/11 commission report which essentially said "Martha, there are about a zillion nutjob muslims out there that want to kill us".
Pathetic.
I am glad I was not fighting in Viet Nam under this mindset. I guess I would have had to read a Viet Cong his Miranda rights because he was not a member of a uniformed army.
Okay now, you get the Geneva Convention if you are a uniformed member of an army. You get the gut wrenching craziness that is American Criminal Jurisprudence if you are a terrorist.....why is it that I hear millions of chinese soldiers taking off their uniforms?
Posted by: James Carville ||
01/23/2009 17:37 Comments ||
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#9
I've said it before, I'll say it again (as others have as well): Since these mooks were not in uniform when captured, they can be summarily executed in the field according to the Geneva Convention.
I truly hope that thousands or millions of Americans will not have to die before we realize that we are still at war.
Posted by: Rambler in Virginia ||
01/23/2009 18:00 Comments ||
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#10
Osama, AQ + Radical Islam aren't going to stop their attempt to destabilize and breakup ASIAN ORDER [Russ, China, India, etc.] > POTUS OBAMA STOPPING OR SLOWING DOWN THE GWOT WILL ONLY BE A POSITIVE BOON TO THEM.
As usual, Caroline Glick gets to the heart of the matter.
It is a fundamental truth that while history always repeats itself, it almost never repeats itself precisely. There is always some measure of newness to events that allows otherwise intelligent people to repeat the mistakes of their forbearers without looking completely ridiculous.
Given this, it is hard to believe that with the advent of the Obama administration, we are seeing history repeat itself with nearly unheard of precision. US President Barack Obama's reported intention of appointing former Senator George Mitchell to serve as his envoy for the so-called Palestinian-Israeli peace process will provide us with a spectacle of an unvarnished repeat of history.
In December 2000, outgoing president Bill Clinton appointed Mitchell to advise him how to reignite the "peace process" after the Palestinians rejected statehood and launched their terror war against Israel in September 2000. Mitchell presented his findings to Clinton's successor, George W. Bush in April 2001.
Mitchell asserted that Israel and the Palestinians were equally to blame for the Palestinian terror war against Israelis. He recommended that Israel end all Jewish building outside the 1949 armistice lines, and stop fighting Palestinian terrorists.
As for the Palestinians, Mitchell said they had to make a "100 percent effort" to prevent the terror that they themselves were carrying out. This basic demand was nothing new. It formed the basis of the Clinton administration's nod-nod-wink-wink treatment of Palestinian terrorism since the Palestinian Authority was established in 1994. And the Money Paragraph:
By insisting that the PLO make a "100 percent effort," to quell the terror it was enabling, the Clinton administration gave the Palestinians built-in immunity from responsibility. Every time that his terrorists struck, Yassir Arafat claimed that their attacks had nothing to do with him. He was making a "100 percent effort" to stop the attacks after all.
After getting Arafat off the hook, the Clinton administration proceeded to blame Israel. If Israel had just given up more land, or forced Jews from their homes, or given the PLO more money, Arafat could have saved the lives of his victims.
Mitchell's plan, although supported by then secretary of state Colin Powell, was never adopted by Bush because at the time, terrorists were massacring Israelis every day. It would have been politically unwise for Bush to accept a plan that asserted moral equivalence between Israel and the PLO when rescue workers were scraping the body parts of Israeli children off the walls of bombed out pizzerias and bar mitzvah parties.
But while his eponymous plan was rejected, its substance, which was based on the Clinton Plan, formed the basis of the Tenet Plan, the Roadmap Plan and the Annapolis Plan. And now, Mitchell is about to return to Israel, at the start of yet another presidential administration to offer us his plan again.
Mitchell of course, is not the only one repeating the past. His boss, Barack Obama is about to repeat the failures his immediate predecessors. Like Clinton and Bush, Obama is making the establishment of a Palestinian state the centerpiece of his foreign policy agenda. The Brass Ring that every president wants to wear around his neck. It is called The Gullible Ring.
Obama made this clear his first hour on the job. On Wednesday at 8 a.m., Obama made his first phone call to a foreign leader. He called PLO chief Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah. During their conversation, Obama pledged his commitment to Palestinian statehood.
Fatah wasted no time responding to Obama's extraordinary gesture. Wednesday afternoon Abbas convened the PLO's Executive Committee in Ramallah and the body announced that future negotiations with Israel will have to be based new preconditions. As far as the PLO is concerned, with Obama firmly in its corner, it can force Israel to its knees. If Israel dances to Obama's tune, yes.
And so, now the PLO is uninterested in the agreements it reached with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni. For Israel to enjoy the privilege of negotiating with the PLO, it must first announce its willingness to expel all the 500,000 or so Israeli Jews who live in Judea, Samaria and the neighborhoods in east, south and north Jerusalem built since 1967 as well as the Old City and then hand the areas over, lock, stock and barrel to the PLO.
This new PLO "plan" itself is nothing new. It is simply a restatement of the Arab "peace plan" which is just a renamed Saudi "peace plan" which was just a renamed Tom Friedman column in the *New York Times*. And the Friedman plan is one that no Israeli leader in his right mind can accept. So by making this their precondition for negotiations, the PLO is doing what it did in 2000. It is rejecting statehood in favor of continued war with Israel.
What is most remarkable about the new administration's embrace of its predecessors' failed policy is how uncontroversial this policy is in Washington. It is hard to come up with another example of a policy that has failed so often and so violently that has enjoyed the support of both American political parties. Indeed, it is hard to think of a successful policy that ever enjoyed such broad support.
Apparently, no one in positions of power in Washington has stopped to consider why it is that in spite of the fervent backing of presidents Clinton and Bush, there is still no Palestinian state.
Since Israel recognized the PLO as the "sole, legitimate representative of the Palestinian people" in 1993, the US and Israel have based their plans for peace on their assumption that the PLO is interested in making peace. And they have based their plans for making peace by establishing a Palestinian state on the assumption that the Palestinians are interested in statehood. Yet over the past 15 years it has become abundantly clear that neither of these assumptions is correct.
In spite of massive political, economic and military support by the US, Israel and Europe, the PLO has never made any significant moves to foster peaceful relations between Israel and the Palestinians. Not only did the PLO-led PA spend the six years between 1994 and 2000 in which it was supposedly making peace with Israel, indoctrinating Palestinian society to hate Jews and seek their destruction through jihadist-inspired terrorism. It also cultivated close relations with Iran and other rogue regimes and terror groups.
Many are quick to claim that these misbehaviors were simply a consequence of Arafat's personal radicalism. Under Abbas, it is argued, the PLO is much more moderate. But this assertion strains credulity. As the Jerusalem Post's Khaled Abu-Toameh reported on Monday, Fatah forces today boast that their terror cells in Gaza took active part in Hamas's missile offensive against Israel. Fatah's Aksa Martyr terror cells claim that during Operation Cast Lead, its terrorists shot 137 rockets and mortars at Israel.
Abbas's supporters in the US and Israel claim that these Fatah members acted as they did because they are living under Hamas rule. They would be far more moderate if they were under Fatah rule. But this too, doesn't ring true.
From 2000 through June 2007 when Hamas ousted Fatah forces from Gaza, most of the weapons smuggling operations in Gaza were carried out by Fatah. Then too, most of the rockets and mortars fired at Israel between those years were fired by Fatah forces. Likewise, most of the suicide bombers deployed from Judea and Samaria were members of Fatah.
The likes of Madeleine Albright, Powell, and Condoleezza Rice claimed that Fatah's collusion with Hamas and Islamic Jihad and its leading role in terror was a consequence of insufficient Israeli support for Arafat and later Abbas. If Israel had kicked out the Jews of Gaza earlier, or if it had removed its roadblocks and expelled Jews from their homes in Judea and Samaria, or if had prevented all Jewish building beyond the 1949 armistice lines, then Arafat and later Abbas would have been more popular and able to rein in their own terror forces. (Incidentally, those same forces receive their salaries from the PA which itself is funded by the US and Israel).
The problem with this line of thinking is that ignores two essential facts. First, since 2000 Israel has curtailed Jewish building in Judea and Samaria. Second, Israel kicked every last Jew out of Gaza and handed the ruins of their villages and farms over to Fatah in September 2005. It is worth noting that the conditions under which the PA received Gaza in 2005 were far better than the conditions under which Israel gained its sovereignty in 1948. The Palestinians were showered with billions of dollars in international aid. No one wanted to do anything but help them make a go of it.
In 1948, Israel had to secure its sovereignty by fending off five invading armies while under an international arms embargo. It then had to absorb a million refugees from Arab countries and Holocaust survivors from Europe with no financial assistance from anyone other than US Jews. Israel developed into an open democracy. Gaza became one of the largest terror bases in the world.
Months after Israel handed over Gaza - and Northern Samaria - the Palestinians turned their backs on statehood altogether when they elected Hamas an explicitly anti-nationalist, pan-Islamic movement that rejects Palestinians statehood to lead them. Hamas's electoral victory, its subsequent ouster of Fatah forces from Gaza and its recent war with Israel tells us another fundamental truth about the sources of the repeated failure of the US's bid for Palestinian statehood. Quite simply, there is no real Palestinian constituency for it.
Even if we were to ignore all of the PLO's involvement in terrorism and assume like Obama, Bush and Clinton that the PLO is willing to live at peace with Israel in exchange for Gaza, Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem, what Hamas's control of Gaza and its popularity throughout the Palestinian areas shows is that there is no reason to expect that the PLO will remain in control of territory that Israel transfers to its control. So if Israel were to abide by the PLO's latest demand and accept the Friedman/Saudi/Arab/PLO "peace plan," there is no reason to believe that a Jew-free Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem wouldn't then be taken over by Hamas.
Given that there is no chance that Israeli territorial giveaways will lead to a peaceful Palestinian state, the question arises, is there any way to compel American politicians to give up their fantasies of fancy signing ceremonies in the White House Rose Garden that far from bringing peace engender radicalism, instability and death?
As far as Mitchell is concerned the answer is no. In an address at Tel Aviv University last month, Mitchell said that the US and Israel must cling to the delusion that Palestinian statehood will bring about a new utopia, "for the alternative is unacceptable and should be unthinkable." Well, Gaza statehood was a big win for Israel. It brought thousands of rockets fired into Israel, and a big rookery of Jihadis raising hell and living next door.
So much for "change" in US foreign policy.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
01/23/2009 14:34 ||
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#1
Like Clinton and Bush, Obama is making the establishment of a Palestinian state the centerpiece of his foreign policy agenda.
I think that proclaiming a goal of a Palestinian state is the only policy possible. The alternative is eternal Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, and to state that that is the goal of U.S. policy would be stupid.
Having proclaimed the goal, however, still leaves open the process of how to get there. Acknowlement of Israel's rights to existence and self defense are the first precursers. Peace and stable Israeli borders are the second.
#4
Good idea RW. Lets give them the land between Turkey and Iraq. That will make for interesting times!
Posted by: 49 Pan ||
01/23/2009 16:53 Comments ||
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#5
Bibi Netanyahu is looking like an ever stronger contender for Prime Minister. The Israelis have had a taste of what fighting seriously for their survival for the first time in many years, and the polls show they crave more. I look forward to the election next month.
As Israel launched strikes against Hamas strongholds in Gaza over the past week, the country is temporarily putting down a relentless barrage of some 3,000 Qassam rockets and mortars that have been lobbed into southern Israeli towns this past year alone. Israels many global critics immediately denounced what they termed the disproportionate military response against the Palestinians. Many also chimed in again about the humanitarian crisis being caused in Gaza as a result of Israeli blockades, bemoaned the continuing siege and complained how military retaliation against Hamas for its unbridled terror against Israeli civilians would create a massacre, a genocide, and crimes against humanity all in violation of human rights law.
One thing the enemies of the Jewish state have learned in their 60-year jihad against Israel is that Arab armaments alone have been insufficient to complete the task. Equally effective, at least since the 1990s with the creation of an International Criminal Court (ICC), has been the reframing and manipulation of concepts of international rights law to hobble Israels ability to secure its borders and citizenry and to defend itself against unrelenting Palestinian terrorism. Led by non-government organizations (NGOs) with an obsessive mission of hobbling Israel, this new soft assault on the Jewish state has been termed lawfare, what the Council of Foreign Relations defined in 2003 as a strategy of using or misusing law as a substitute for traditional military means to achieve military objectives.
Anne Herzberg, legal adviser to the watchdog group NGO Monitor, has more recently described in an extensive study how lawfare is now being used as a diplomatic weapon almost exclusively against Israel, how it has become a non-military means of warfare to advance the Palestinian cause, and to deter future acts of Israeli self-defense against terror. hile the international criminal court and assumptions of international human rights were implemented as a well-intentioned way to provide protection to victims of despots, autocratic regimes, dictatorships and oppressive or criminal governments, lawfare has devolved into what has become a one-sided, ideologically-driven campaign to delegitimize and weaken Israel, not only in actual courts where litigation can stymie their military operations and leadership, but also, as important, in the court of public opinion a place where Israel frequently suffers defeat.
Lawfare, Ms. Herzberg contends, empowers NGOs, non-accountable, nondemocratic actors, to litigate in European or American courts, and to circumvent the foreign policy of a States executive branch insofar as it conflicts with the NGOs partisan agenda, and thus attempt to impose policy that could not otherwise be obtained through regular democratic channels. Lawfare enables NGOs to interfere with the military policy of nations with whom they arbitrarily disapprove, and its current use has been focused almost exclusively on Israel, framing the Jewish state as the abuser of human rights and engaging in criminal acts against the perennially victimized Palestinians. The danger, as Ms. Herzberg sees it, is that such litigation, initiated by groups like Human Rights Watch (HRW), Amnesty International, World Vision, Save the Children, Al Haq, and others, is often based on a very narrow and preconceived ideology about who deserves rights and protection and who does not, and this bias in almost universally against Israel. In fact, says Ms. Herzberg, the actions are particularly dangerous because they enable terrorism to continue unchecked, since these legal suits regularly ignore Palestinian responsibility and culpability under international law, and seek judicial declarations that Israels self-defense policies are illegal.
One such self-defense tactic was the construction of Israels security fence, necessitated not, as its many critics claim, for a land grab, but as a response to the murder of some 1,000 of its citizens by Palestinian terrorism during the Second Intifada. But by the summer of 2004, even though the barrier had successfully reduced Israeli deaths by 90 percent, the International Court of Justice found that the apartheid wall gravely infringed on the rights of West Bank Palestinians, and that the barrier, in the words of the Court, "constitutes breaches by Israel of various of its obligations under international humanitarian law." This legal decision, though not binding and merely an advisory opinion by the Court to the UN General Assembly at the request of the Arab states, has been exploited ever since by Israels worldwide critics who still reflexively refer to the security barrier as being illegal and in violation of international law on the basis of this decision. In this instance, says Jeremy Rabkin, professor of government at Cornell, lawfare had an insidious effect and the International Court of Justice unfortunately admonished that the nations of the world are obligated not to pressure Palestinians to abandon terrorism, but to pressure Israel to dismantle its security fence.
With their one-sided ideological approach to mediating legal and diplomatic issues that might better be left to state actors whose actions reflect the will of the populaces they represent, NGOs use of lawfare against Israel also strengthens the efforts of Israels enemies by providing the cover of propaganda and distortion of actual facts on the ground in Gaza and the West Bank, for instance. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, two NGO superpowers, have regularly chimed in with respect to Israels alleged offensives regarding its treatment of Gaza leading up to the present incursions by the IDF against Hamas. Even though Israel fully disengaged from Gaza in 2005, offering the Palestinians free reign to demonstrate their state-building potential and turning over all governmental control, Human Rights Watch continues to assert that Gazas social and economic dysfunction is Israels fault, that the Jewish state still is an occupying force. Israel continued to occupy the Gaza Strip, HRW says, by virtue of its effective control over Gazas borders, airspace, territorial waters, tax collection, and population registry.
The International Court of Justice, parroting many in the world community, refers to Israels actions related to Gaza a "siege" and further suggest, even before the December incursions, that Israel employs indiscriminate and disproportionate use of force against Palestinians. After Israel began clamping down on border crossings to shore up weapons smuggling and as a response to incessant shelling by Hamas into Israeli towns, it was not long before loud cries went out about the humanitarian crisis being caused by Israel, not Gazans themselves, how, according to Amnesty International, Israels blockade has prevented the entry into Gaza of all but the minimum and insufficient quantities of fuel, food and basic necessities.
NGO Monitors executive director, Professor Gerald M. Steinberg, says that his organizations reports expose the NGO bombardment of the worlds courts with bogus claims against Israel. Given that not one court has upheld their complaints, it is clear that NGOs continue to manipulate judicial systems, not out of concern for human rights, but as part of the campaign to demonize Israel. More telling is the fact that the organizations investigations reveal that while Israel is hypocritically and repeatedly singled out for legal actions, NGO Monitor was unable to find a single suit initiated by the self-proclaimed human rights NGOs ... against Hamas, Hezbollah, and Al-Qaeda; against their leaders such as Yassir Arafat, Khaled Mashal, and Hassan Nasrallah; or against their government sponsors such as the Palestinian Authority, Iran, and Syria.
As proof that lawfare against Israel can embolden and even provide moral and legal cover for some of the worlds most egregious human rights offenders, Iran inanely announced this week that it was establishing a special court to try Israeli officials, in absentia, for their war crimes committed in the current Gaza operations. Justified by a 1948 U.N. convention on the prevention of genocide to which Iran is a signatory, Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki asserted that Israel obviously was committing genocide against humanity in Gaza, and that Iran, one of the worlds most deficient nations for the protection of human rights, would now stand in judgment of Israel. The court is in a special branch in Tehran, crowed judiciary spokesman Alireza Jamshidi, and entrusted with the task of dealing with the executors, planners and officials of this (Israeli) regime who have committed crimes.
In an inverted moral universe where enemies of the Middle Easts only democratic state regularly seek its destruction, the tactic of lawfare with its once-meaningful language of genocide, international human rights, and war crimes is now being used, by state and non-state actors alike, as an alternate, but equally dangerous, weapon in the unrelenting jihad against Israel.
In the Middle East's "only democracy" discrimination is a way of life for a sizeable portion of its population. Israel's Arab sector has faced inequity since the establishment of the Jewish state in 1948 but recently racism has been on the rise, say Arab and Palestinian residents.
Israel's Jewish community increasingly supports the discrimination and even deportation of Arabs, say Palestinian human rights activists in Israel. "Anywhere you go in Israel you will not find Arabs represented or integrated. And this holds for all aspects of life, from basic representation on the street to that of public institutions," Jafar Farah, director of the Haifa-based Mossawa Advocacy Center, told AlArabiya.net.
Israel's more than one million Arab citizens make up 18 percent of the population. While 90 percent of the Arab community lives in the entirely Arab towns and villages of Galilee, Triangle and Negev, some 10 percent live in mixed Arab-Jewish cities like Tel Aviv, Jaffa, and Acre.
Despite having a distinct national, ethnic, religious, cultural and linguistic character, Arab Israelis are treated as second-class citizens.
"Discrimination is regularly apparent in state resource allocations in every field, and Palestinian Arabs continue to be excluded from the centers of power and underrepresented in decision-making public institutions, and in the general public sphere," Yousef Jabareen, law lecturer at Haifa University and director of the Nazareth-based Arab Center for Law and Policy told AlArabiya.net
Posted by: Fred ||
01/23/2009 00:00 ||
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#1
Coming from Al Arabiya (Saudi it is rich. BTW, Bedouins (discriminated in Arab countries) don't face racism, Druze (who aren't even admitted in Saudi Arabia) don't face racism, Christian Arabs (who aren't even admitted in Saudi Arabia) don't face racism and, if Israeli Arabs weren't in bed with terrorists they wouldn't face racism
#2
For those (many) "individuals" who did things like cheer every time Israel was hit by a Scud during GW I would stop doing things like that and start getting upset, it would help my sympathy factor.
#10
"Discrimination is regularly apparent in state resource allocations in every field, and Palestinian Arabs continue to be excluded from the centers of power and underrepresented in decision-making public institutions, and in the general public sphere," Yousef Jabareen, law lecturer at Haifa University and director of the Nazareth-based Arab Center for Law and Policy told AlArabiya.net
So, if this is all true, how come you aren't cleaning toilets or driving a cab, perfesser?
Funny though a bit OT, in an entry copying and pasting a wires blurb about arab parties & MP being barred from israeli election, noted (everything's relative) rightwing blogger Daoudal used the same "only democracy" title... no background, nothing, past the not-so-subtle subtext. And, he does speak for the mainstream french rightwing (what's left of it), since IIRC pépé lepen did a public statement comdemning Israel for all the usual sins of brutality, disproportionality, arrogance,... but, anyway, this just shows again the decay of french intellectual & political life, there is no actual right past random individuals, as an organized or semi-organized movement, just a bitter mixed, fringe of french statist, sovereignty fetichists, unacknowledged socialists, people mired in a "last stand" ideology that only feeds on its doomed end... all united by their rejection of the "Empire", of capitalism, often of Christianity (the fundie fringe Catholics are dhimmis in training who prefer the pure & rugged muslims to the decadent West), of juices, of course, of classical liberalism,... in their collective minds, they've already integrated the notion that they lost, and are now part of the Third world, this is why they more (putin, who's their real hero, chavez, who's a bit behind) or less (ahmadinejad) roots for their strongmen.
#12
Deny Israel's existence and call for war against the Jews and the Arabs wonder why their political party is banned from elections and members eyed warily? Chutzpah must really be an Arab word.
Posted by: ed ||
01/23/2009 12:00 Comments ||
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#13
All Israeli Arabs should be free to move to the Islamic paradise that is Gaza, right?
Posted by: Rambler in Virginia ||
01/23/2009 18:31 Comments ||
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#1
'Tis hard to argue wid many of WHITNEY HUSTON Fan OSAMA's perceived premises and conclusions. Thuis article indics to me that OSAMA himself indir recognizes that this OBAMA POTUS PERIOD [2009-2012/2016] WILL INDEED BE A DECISIVE POINT FOR RADICLA ISLAM'S GLOBAL JIHAD [OWG Islamist-Jihadist State = Calipahte], i.e. WILL "MAKE OR BREAK" EITHER US-CENTRIC OWG-NWO OR THE GLOBAL JIHAD.
As for OSAMA's "breathing" problems [health],
"WHITNEY'S MAN FROM AFGHANISTAN" was always an admirer of DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING's fight agz Segregation in America, espec KING's "I HAVE A DREAM SPEECH".
Also, MALCOLM X.
* KING > "I MAY NOT GET THERE WITH YOU...I HAVE SEEN THE PROMISED LAND" > Again, despite any serious or catastrophic health probs, I still hold that OSAMA's dedication is such that he will try to physically survive ALAP, and will prefer not to expire/die until assured of the JIHAD'S = RADICAL ISLAMISM'S FINAL VICTORY AGZ THE US-WEST.
D *** NG IT, MORIARITY, MICHELLE OBAMA ALWAYS DID LIKE HER "MELLOW YELLOW" [drink + Color = Inauguration dress] - HOW CAN "MR. PIB" WIN THE WAR!
#1
The London gold fix sets the price in a physical market. Economics101 - you get the best price when a market is open and toward the end of the day as sellers try to clear stock. This is why the price of gold declines from AM to PM.
#6
PAKISTANI DEFENSE FORUM > RUSSIA IS FACING A MASSIVE ECONOMIC CRASH.
* WORLD MILITARY FORUM > TO SEIZE US CONTROL OVER CENTRAL ASIA, OBAMA CAME TO POWER AND MADE A DEAL WITH CHINA!?
* the EU = EUROZONE + near-term challenge to the US Dollar by the EURO, long-term challenge by the Chin YUAN currencies.
* US Seek to DIVIDE RUSSIA, CHINA, INDIA, + possibly even the SCO.
* CLOSE OR DENY CHINA'S WEST ROUTE(S).
* TO EXPLOIT, MANIPULATE, SPREAD AND LIMIT, SEEMINGLY ISLAMIST-SPECIFIC "TROUBLES" TO THE SINO-RUSSIAN BORDERS + ASIAN REGIONS [Use Radical Islamis threats to achieve US-centric Asian agendums].
* SPREAD BUSH-STYLE, "COLOR REVOLUTIONS" [Pro-Democracy with local characteristics].
Also on WMF > THE BRITSH DESCRIBE THE KOREAN WAR: MAO ZEDONG MADE DISASTROUS STRATEGIC MISTAKES BEFORE AND DURING THE KOREAN STRUGGLE RESULTING IN CHINA'S PEOPLE'S VOLUNTEER FORCES SUFFERING 14.0MILYUHN CASUALTIES/LOSSES???
Jan. 23 (Bloomberg) -- Stocks will retreat around the world because of shrinking demand from China as growth in the third- biggest economy slows, said Nouriel Roubini, the New York University professor who predicted last year's financial crisis.
Global equities will fall 20 percent from current levels as China, which contributed 19.5 percent to total growth in 2007, contends with its slowest expansion in seven years, he said. Wall Street strategists predict the Standard & Poor's 500 Index will rise 29 percent this year from the closing level yesterday.
#1
China is in the same boat as the US was in the 1930s. Most of its GDP is in exports and manufacturing. With the rest of the world cutting back on imports, there is no way China can continue growing economically. Added on to this is all the 18-21 year old males coming into the job market that have grown up in the boom times and do not know a recession/depression.
Bad times ahead for China.
#3
China is in the same boat as the US was in the 1930s. Most of its GDP is in exports and manufacturing
Don't know about that, DarthVader.
The US during the depression was hit with a triple whammy, a stock market collapse, a banking collapse and an agriculture collapse (La Nina)
At the time 40% of the US workforse was in agriculture and was forced (painfully) into manufacturing.
The Chinese still have a much higher agricultural force, which will act as a shock absorber for the economy.
And of course all the banks are nationalized, been since Mao's time. The toxic level of debt which has infected the world from the US is less than 3% so they are less exposed.
The rumor is that they are going to undertake a massive infrastructure investment, the largest the world has ever seen.
#4
The rumor is that they are going to undertake a massive infrastructure investment, the largest the world has ever seen.
A-la new deal communist style? Still ain't gonna work. Especially with a new generation of men that expect everything their parents had and more, don't have women to date and can't get a job.
Agriculture doesn't have large profits. A net 10-20% profit loss compare from farming vs. manufacturing is a huge money difference.
I have also seen some China experts predicting their banks are running some 60% bad debt with only the government saving the banks by funding them with the trade surplus money. What happens when that money goes away?
Will China collapse, most likely not. Will they have unrest and riots? Oh yeah. I expect the Chinese to try to solve these problems through military expansion. Siberia would be a nice addition to China.
#5
CHINESE MIL FORUM > OBAMA SETTING THE STAGE FOR A TRADE WAR WITH CHINA [Yuan = anti-US currency manipulation]!? + CHINA TALKS, US DEBT MARKETS LISTEN!? + WHY CHINA'S STATE-CONTROLLED CAPITALISM WORKS!.
* ION OBAMA, SAME > NEW POTUS MAY BEGIN START-III CUTS AHEAD OF THE RUSSIANS [Russ don't like either START-1 or START-2, desire a new START-3]???
* ION CHINA, WND > "PARTIAL WAR" LOOMING BETWEEN CHINA AND INDIA [India's Arunachal Pradesh = India-occupied China's Southern Tibet]???
#6
Agriculture doesn't have large profits. A net 10-20% profit loss compare from farming vs. manufacturing is a huge money difference.
Agriculture is less of a business and more like social security. Any migrant worker can return to their communal farm and grab an allotment. Doesn't pay much, but at least they don't starve and the government isn't out of pocket. Compare that with the horrendous escalating welfare bill in the US, expected to grow exponentially under Bambi. After all he did promised to pay gas and rent bills, didn't he?
I have also seen some China experts predicting their banks are running some 60% bad debt with only the government saving the banks by funding them with the trade surplus money. What happens when that money goes away?
It used to be 30~40% about 10 years ago, now down to a manageable 7%
Oh yeah. I expect the Chinese to try to solve these problems through military expansion. Siberia would be a nice addition to China.
You could be right there. I see Russia is imploding, which means Putin is gone. Without the strong man, don't know who will hold them together. So quiet likely China will move in, if not militarily at least establish hegemony over the area.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
By Bruce Bawer
