Quotulatiousness

September 18, 2011

“One would have to go back to 1973 to find a more perilous time for the Jewish state”

Filed under: Middle East, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 11:58

David Harsanyi on the increasing UN pressure on Israel:

Sure, the United Nations has historically vacillated between deep irrelevance and monumental ineffectiveness. But with all its prevaricating and impotence on genuine threats to human rights across the world, next week it will be actively precipitating violence and endorsing ethnic cleansing.

It is understood that one of the preconditions for the existence of a Palestinian state is the judenrein West Bank. It will be purified of Jews, regardless of their political inclinations, Zionist or not, because effectively speaking no Jew will be able to live in the West Bank or East Jerusalem safely. Palestine Liberation Organization’s ambassador to the United States, Maen Rashid Areikat, has admitted as much.

[. . .]

Another onetime ally the increasingly Islamic Turkey has similarly turned on Israel, kicking out the Israeli ambassador, and ending military ties and trade pacts. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan vowed to send warships as escorts to “aid ships” in the next activist-filled flotilla trying to reach the Palestinians. A United Nations failure will only provoke more hostility and put the two nations in a potentially catastrophic position.

Supporters of Israel often speak in perfunctory tones about the existential threat Israel faces. But one would have to go back to 1973 to find a more perilous time for the Jewish state. With this vote, the United Nations is simply giving in to its seemingly pathological need to undermine Israel — no matter the circumstance, no matter the consequence.

There can be no other reason for a vote that is simultaneously so dangerous and so utterly useless.

Then again, that’s the perfect way to describe the United Nations.

September 14, 2011

Palestinians seek “separation” from Jews

Filed under: History, Middle East, Religion — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 12:08

The PLO has a rather draconian solution to the Israel issue:

The Palestine Liberation Organization’s ambassador to the United States said Tuesday that any future Palestinian state it seeks with help from the United Nations and the United States should be free of Jews.

“After the experience of the last 44 years of military occupation and all the conflict and friction, I think it would be in the best interest of the two people to be separated,” Maen Areikat, the PLO ambassador, said during a meeting with reporters sponsored by The Christian Science Monitor. He was responding to a question about the rights of minorities in a Palestine of the future.

Such a state would be the first to officially prohibit Jews or any other faith since Nazi Germany, which sought a country that was judenrein, or cleansed of Jews, said Elliott Abrams, a former U.S. National Security Council official.

Israel has 1.3 million Muslims who are Israeli citizens. Jews have lived in “Judea and Samaria,” the biblical name for the West Bank, for thousands of years. Areikat said the PLO seeks a secular state, but that Palestinians need separation to work on their own national identity.

May 22, 2011

Obama clarifies his last Middle East speech

Filed under: Middle East, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 11:46

Drew M. points out that President Obama is merely doing what every other President since Jimmy Carter has done:

There was a lot of confusion on Thursday about whether Obama’s reference to “67 borders with mutually agreed upon swaps” was news or not. A lot of pro-Israel folks on Twitter (but granted not all) didn’t seem to think it was a big deal at the time. I think two things played into the reaction.

One, the left, led by the New York Times, played this is up as a big change and that an American President was finally standing up to Israel.

Second, the language choices Obama made and the fact that no one doubts in his heart of hearts Obama would throw Israel under the bus if he could. The fact is, Presidents don’t always have full freedom of action. It’s like there are checks and balances or something (thank God).

Now, he’s walked back or clarified his stance (depending on your point of view). The anti-Israeli left will say “the Jews got to him”. Many on the right will say, “Bibi got him”.

I think the fact is, reality got him.

Obama is simply doing what many other Presidents (Carter, Bush, Clinton and even G.W. Bush gave it a shot) have done…try and build a legacy by solving the Israel-Palestinian conflict. He’ll fail just like the rest simply because the Palestinians don’t want to solve it by any means other than the destruction of Israel. Until that changes, this will always be a Siren’s Song that winds up with everyone crashing on the rocks.

That last little nugget is the real reason I always feel depressed when yet another attempt to “resolve” the Middle East crisis gets underway: without Palestinians accepting the right of Israel to exist, there will be no actual progress regardless of the number meetings, declarations, conferences, and so on. One side has the bedrock value that the other side must die — as long as that value remains, no peaceful settlement is possible.

July 7, 2010

Recycled propaganda still doing its job

Filed under: Media, Middle East, Religion — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 08:05

Strategy Page points out that even recycled propaganda can be effective:

Palestinian media, both Fatah and Hamas controlled, have undertaken a media campaign to arouse popular anger against Israeli plans to destroy the al Aqsa mosque. The problem here is that there are no Israeli plans to destroy al Aqsa. This complex is built on the site of two Jewish temples. The last one was destroyed by the Romans nearly two thousand years ago. Israel has always provided security for al Aqsa, but the Palestinians find it convenient to keep alive unfounded fears that Israel will, at any moment, destroy al Aqsa and rebuild their temple. This is what some religious extremists (Jewish and Christian) want, and one reason for the tight Israeli security around al Aqsa (which is otherwise controlled by Moslem religious authorities.) This fear mongering is a big deal among the Palestinians, but generally ignored, or simply unknown, outside Israel.

The numerous al Aqsa scare stories in the Palestinian media (replete with cartoons straight out of similar 1930s Nazi propaganda) are rarely recognized as a reason why Israel and the Palestinians cannot negotiate a peace deal. Arab and Western nations are again trying to organize peace talks between Palestinians and Israelis, with the goal of achieving a peace deal, and an independent Palestinian state. The “al Aqsa threatened by the Jews” propaganda campaign is one reason why these peace talks tend to go nowhere. The Palestinian strategy, which they make no secret of, is to keep harassing Israel until, as many Palestinians believe, the Jews will flee the Middle East and Israel will disappear. On Palestinian maps, it already has.

September 25, 2009

Consistency on the Middle East

Filed under: Politics, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 09:50

David Harsanyi looks at the consistency (actually, the lack thereof) in President Obama’s proposals for negotiation on the Palestinian-Israeli peace process:

The United States does not negotiate with terrorists — but we insist Israel do without preconditions.

We will not get entangled in the distasteful internal politics of Iran — but we define Israel’s borders.

We will remove missile defense systems in Eastern Europe so we do not needlessly provoke our good friends in Russia — but we have no compunction nudging Israel to hand over territory with nothing in return.

This week, President Barack Obama spoke to the United Nations’ General Assembly and insisted that Israel and the Palestinians negotiate “without preconditions.” (Well, excluding the effective precondition that Israeli settlements are “illegitimate,” according to the administration — so no pre-conditions means feel free to rocket Israel while you talk.)

Israelis must be wondering just what possible benefit this set of negotiations can possibly offer them: they’re the ones who stand to lose if they fall in line with Obama’s preconditions, and the Palestinians have no reason to compromise. It’s funny that the only functioning democracy in the middle east is now being portrayed as the villain by the US government, while the pocket dictatorships surrounding Israel get a free pass.

There is an ethical question that the president might want to answer, as well. Why would the United States support an arrangement that scrubs the West Bank of all its Jews? Why is it so unconscionable to imagine that Jews could live among Muslims in the same way millions of Arabs live within Israel proper? Not many international agreements feature ethnic cleansing clauses.

Isn’t this, after all, about peace?

Of course, we all know the answer to this question: Jews would be slaughtered, bombed from their homes, rocketed from their schools. This indisputable fact reveals the fundamental reality of these negotiations.

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