Bloodthirsty Liberal

Welcome to Israel!

Israel’s legalizing of three West Bank outposts drew harsh condemnations Tuesday from the U.S. and several other world bodies.

But not this world body. From jowl to love-handle, it jiggles with approval!

A decision by a ministerial committee Monday to give official sanction to the outposts of Bruchin, Sansana, and Rechelim was also slammed by the Palestinian Authority, the United Nations, Jordan, France and Denmark.

The move is considered the first time in about a dozen years that the government officially recognized outposts in the West Bank.

The United States expressed concern about Israel’s intentions by passing the outpost measure. State Department Spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said that they are opposed to building in the settlements, and are seeking a clarification from the government.

“We do not accept the legitimacy of continued settlement activity,” she said.

British Foreign Secretary William Hague condemned the Israeli government’s decision, saying “designating outposts as settlements… sets a dangerous precedent for other outposts, which are illegal under both international and Israeli law.”

The Israeli government “risks sending the message that it is not serious about its stated commitment to the goal of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” Hague added.

The UN Secretary General called the decision a “provocation,” and said all settlement activity runs contrary to Israel’s obligations under the peace Road Map, according to a media statement.

PA President Mahmoud Abbas said the announcement pushes things to a “dead end,” according to the Ma’an news agency. Palestinian official Saeb Erekat added that they will try to secure a UN Security Council condemnation of the decision.

Wanna see these evil, predatory “settlements”? Sure you do:

Bruchin

Sansana

Rechelim

I feel Palestinian Arab manhood shrinking even as I write.

My position hasn’t changed: Israel and the Arabs were supposed to negotiate final borders. If the Arabs choose not to negotiate, somebody has to make a mature decision.

Oh wait, my position has changed! I think Israel should annex all of Judea and Samaria, and be done with the fiction of Palestine. I used to believe in the Easter Bunny, too.

When disaster strikes anywhere in the world—Haiti, the Philippines, Congo, Sri Lanka (Turkey declined)—Israeli aid and personnel are among the first to arrive.

Not so with others:

A report into the deaths of 63 Libyan refugees on a small boat last May said a “catalogue of errors” by coastguards and Nato meant they were never rescued.

The Council of Europe inquiry says two Nato ships close by failed to respond to distress calls, and no country launched a search and rescue mission.

Only nine people survived the 15-day Mediterranean voyage after the boat ran out of fuel and drifted back to Libya.

Nato has said it has no record of any aircraft or ship contacting the boat.

…

The report by Europe’s human rights watchdog says some 1,500 people died at sea trying to reach Europe in 2011.

Many of these were trying to flee from Libya or other conflicts in North Africa.

…

The nine-month inquiry concludes that there were many opportunities to rescue the migrants, who were hoping to reach the Italian island of Lampedusa:

After 18 hours at sea in a crowded boat with little fuel and water, a distress call was sent by satellite phone to an Eritrean priest living in Italy

This was passed to the Italian coastguard which used the satellite call to establish the boat’s position

The information was passed onto other ships in the area

Nato had said the area was a military zone under its control, but failed to launch a rescue operation

Within a few hours the survivors say a military helicopter hovered over them and dropped food and water, and indicated that it would return – it never did

The boat made contact with two fishing vessels which refused to help

On around the tenth day when half of those on board were already dead, a large military boat allegedly came alongside, but despite obvious distress signals it also sailed away.

Sorry, Libyans, but that’s how Europe treated Jewish refugees fleeing the Holocaust. It’s how they roll.

No, not the Jew-hating kind. Such plenipotentiary pogroms are out of favor…these days…for now…among some countries anyway.

No, this Durban Conference is all about saving the world…or not:

EU plans on aviation, “climate aid” and the West’s past CO2 output are set to be divisive at the UN climate summit.

India has tabled a paper arguing that the EU’s plan to include international flights in its emissions trading scheme violates the UN climate convention.

Meanwhile, technical analysis for a group of developing countries says Western nations have a duty to absorb CO2 over the coming decades.

It also says the West is not living up to promises on climate finance.

The summit opens at the end of the month in Durban, South Africa.

Earlier this week, the powerful BASIC group – Brazil, South Africa, India and China – agreed a common position during a meeting in Beijing.

Among other things, their ministerial declaration asserts that “unilateral measures on climate change, such as the inclusion of emissions from international aviation in the EU-ETS (emission trading scheme), would violate the principles and provisions of the convention and jeopardise the effort of international co-operation in addressing climate change”.

From next January, airlines operating flights beginning or ending at EU airports will be included in the carbon pricing scheme.

The EU is not going to back down from the scheme at this late stage; so the Indian paper sets the scene for a new intractable conflict within the already strife-ridden climate negotiations.

“Climate finance”? Sounds like a shake-down to me.

Anyway, didn’t we just link to a story about Japanese scientists saying that the developed world was a net-absorber of carbon after all, and it was the peasants of the world who were spewing the vile stuff into my precious air?

And didn’t we also learn that the temperature has been flat over the last decade—while CO2 concentrations have never been higher?

I would tell these people to just go away, but you can’t get much farther away from me than South Africa, so, sorry Joe, they’re all yours.

So goes Bosnia-Herzegovina:

Palestinian Foreign Minister Riad al-Malki announced Thursday that the Palestinian Authority has managed to obtain the support of eight countries for the upcoming United Nations vote on the Palestinian bid for statehood.

“We’re working on getting the ninth vote,” al-Malki told Palestinian radio Voice of Palestine, adding that their main focus now shifts to Colombia and Bosnia Herzegovina.

According to the Palestinian FM, aside from Russia, China, India, South Africa, Brazil and Lebanon, which have already stated their support for the Palestinians, Nigeria and Gabon are also expected to vote in favor of the bid.

And not to bum out our Israeli readers (heck, they’re not reading today anyway, are they?), but Israel is more alone (?) than ever before:

International pressure was mounting on Israel over its plans permit construction of 1,100 new homes in an east Jerusalem’s Gilo neighborhood.

The Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) issued a statement Thursday criticizing Israel’s decision, saying: “Israel’s decision raises serious suspicions about its sincerity and true intentions. This is a flagrant violation of international law and is not acceptable,” said the MFA.

In the official statement Ankara claimed that “Israel’s continued construction of illegal settlements in Palestinian lands shows once more that the Palestinian demand to be recognized as a state at the United Nations is justified and timely.”

Jerusalem is the capital of the Jewish state, not some Jewish ghetto. Israel is quite capable of deciding its boundaries without help from Turkey, thank you very much, not to mention the US, EU, UN and other entities demonstrably hostile to Israel. Their concern is noted, and disposed of.

When the other day we cited the line “Everyone expects the Jews to be the only real Christians in this world”, reader Yerushalimey remembered having read that somewhere before:

Eric Hoffer was an American social philosopher. He was born in 1902 and died in 1983, after writing nine books and winning the Presidential Medal of Freedom. His first book, The True Believer, published in 1951, was widely recognized as a classic.)

The Jews are a peculiar people: things permitted to other nations are forbidden to the Jews.

Other nations drive out thousands, even millions of people and there is no refugee problem. Russian did it, Poland and Czechoslovakia did it, Turkey threw out a million Greeks, and Algeria a million Frenchman. Indonesia threw out heaven knows how many Chinese-and no one says a word about refugees. But in the case of Israel the displaced Arabs have become eternal refugees.

Everyone insists that Israel must take back every single Arab. Arnold Toynbee calls the displacement of the Arabs an atrocity greater than any committed by the Nazis.

Other nations when victorious on the battlefield dictate peace terms. But when Israel is victorious it must sue for peace. Everyone expects the Jews to be the only real Christians in this world.

Other nations when they are defeated survive and recover but should Israel be defeated it would be destroyed. Had Nasser triumphed last June he would have wiped Israel off the map, and no one would have lifted a finger to save the Jews.

No commitment to the Jews by any government, including our own, is worth the paper it is written on. There is a cry of outrage all over the world when people die in Vietnam or when two Negroes are executed in Rhodesia. But when Hitler slaughtered Jews no one remonstrated with him.

The Swedes, who are ready to break of diplomatic relations with America because of what we do in Vietnam, did not let out a peep when Hitler was slaughtering Jews. They sent Hitler choice iron ore, and ball bearings, and serviced his troop trains to Norway.

The Jews are alone in the world. If Israel survives, it will be solely because of Jewish efforts. And Jewish resources. Yet at this moment Israel is our only reliable and unconditional ally. We can rely more on Israel than Israel can rely on us. And one has only to imagine what would have happened last summer had the Arabs and their Russian backers won the war to realize how vital the survival of Israel is to America and the West in general.

I have a premonition that will not leave me; as it goes with Israel so will it go with all of us. Should Israel perish the holocaust will be upon us.

I bolded the parts that areas true today as they were when he wrote this in 1968.

Nineteen-[bleeping]-sixty-eight!! How’s that foreign policy working out? After 43 years?

Where else do we have the same foreign policy as we did in 1968? Toward Vietnam? Nun-uh. Russia? China? Iran?

Yet a policy that has failed to achieve anything close to its announced goal (peace, anyone?) is sacrosanct, must not be altered, let alone denounced.

This piece deserves a big fat amen, and it gets one:

AMEN

Smug F**ks would make a great punk band name. As an international tribunal, however, it sucks:

The “Quartet” of the United Nations, European Union, United States and Russia should be disbanded because of its bias against Israel, says the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA).

The ZOA said the last straw was the Quartet’s statement last week that criticized Israel for approving new homes in United Jerusalem and Samaria (Shomron) while omitting any reference to constant Palestinian Authority violations of previous agreements.

“In view of the Quartet’s long-standing bias against Israel, as evidenced in its 2003 Roadmap peace plan, which virtually discarded the Oslo requirement of Palestinian compliance and which aims to create a Palestinian state led by an unreformed, extremist, terror-supporting PA, the ZOA has called for its disbanding,” the ZOA stated.

It pointed out that it is not alone in its view.

Former Deputy National Security Advisor, Elliott Abrams, also called for breaking up the Quartet. He said, “The last time the Middle East Quartet met, on July 11, it was unable even to issue a statement about the key issue before it – the Palestinian effort to get the UN General Assembly and Security Council to declare Palestine a state and admit it to membership. Nor has the Quartet been able to issue a statement about the attacks the Assad regime has been carrying out this week against Palestinian refugee camps in Syria, which have led thousands of Palestinians to flee their homes.

“But it did on August 16 get itself organized to address what it apparently saw as a graver issue and a greater threat to peace, Israel’s announcement of plans to construct additional housing units in Jerusalem and Ariel,” a large city in central Samaria.

Abrams added, “Nowadays the Quartet seems able to reach agreement on only one thing: criticism of Israel.”

Who doesn’t criticize Israel these days? I wouldn’t lose any sleep over the Quartet (btw, I count five); their music is mere noise.

Brett Stephens can.

Snapshots from President Obama’s efforts to improve America’s standing in the world, 923 days into his administration:

A is for the Arab world, and our standing in it: This year, Zogby International found that 5% of Egyptians had a favorable view of the U.S. In 2008, when George W. Bush was president, it was 9%.

B is for the federal budget deficit, which is estimated to come in at around 11% of GDP in 2011, up from about 3% in 2008.

C is for China’s military budget. For 2012, Beijing plans to increase spending on defense by 12.7%. The Obama administration, by contrast, proposed Pentagon cuts in April averaging out to $40 billion per year over the next decade, and Congress may soon cut a lot more.

D is for—what else—the federal debt, which grew to $14.3 trillion this month from $10.7 trillion at the end of 2008. D is also for the dollar, which has lost almost half its value against gold since Aug. 2008.

E is for energy. The average retail price of a gallon of gas hovered near the $1.80 mark when Mr. Obama was inaugurated. It has since more than doubled. E is also for ethanol, the non-wonder fuel the U.S. continues to subsidize to the tune of $5 billion a year.

F is for free trade. Bill Clinton signed Nafta in 1994, which facilitates $1.6 trillion in the trade of goods and services between the U.S., Mexico and Canada. George W. Bush midwifed more than a dozen FTAs, from Australia to Singapore to Morocco to Bahrain. Number of FTA’s signed by the current president: zero.

G is for Guantanamo, which remains open, and for Gadhafi, who remains in power, and for Greece, which offers a vision of America’s future if we don’t reform our entitlement state.

H is for Hillary Clinton, who—I can’t believe I’m writing this—would have made a better president than Mr. Obama.

I is for Israel, a Middle Eastern country the president claims to support even as he routinely disses its prime minister, seeks to shrink its borders and—why not?—divide its capital.

That is but a taste. Get thee to the link to read it all. And if you’re too lazy, I’ll give you the most depressing one of all:

Z is for zero, which is the likelihood that one of the current GOP hopefuls will defeat Mr. Obama in 2012.

- Aggie

Hama is a Syrian town in which at least 20,000 citizens were murdered by the Syrian government when Assad’s father was the dictator. Today they are under attack again.

Before we start, is it random to wonder what’s going on in Libya? And if we are part of a bombing campaign to remove Khaddafi, why are we silent about Assad?

At least 45 civilians were killed in a tank assault on the city of Hama on Sunday to crush pro-democracy protests, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said, quoting hospital officials in the city.

Scores of people were wounded and blood for transfusions was in short supply, a doctor who did not want to be identified said by telephone from the city, which has a population of around 700,000.

“Tanks are attacking from four directions. They are firing their heavy machineguns randomly and overrunning makeshift road blocks erected by the inhabitants,” the doctor said, the sound of machine gun fire crackling in the background.

Hama was the scene of a massacre in 1982 when Assad’s father, the late president Hafez al-Assad, sent his troops to crush an Islamist-led uprising, razing whole neighborhoods and killing up to 30,000 people in the bloodiest episode of Syria’s modern history.

We don’t hear much about any of this, do we? I wonder why not?

- Aggie

My latest bumper sticker idea:

Anyhow, on to more serious, if related, stuff:

Four leading GOP lawmakers have pledged to support Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria.

The lawmakers are US Representatives Pete Sessions (TX), Michael Grimm (NY), Nan Hayworth (NY), Col. Allen West (FL).

…

The move marks clear opposition to the policies of US President Barak Obama, who has been trying to force a unilateral Israeli withdrawal from Judea and Samaria in order to create a Palestinian Authority state.

New polls show that Obama is out of tune with both American and Israeli Jews in his high-handed position towards Israel.

…

[A] new survey by pollster John Mclaughlin found that 81% of American Jews oppose Israel being forced to retreat to the 1967 pre-1967 lines, a move which Obama has publicly advocated.

Last week the US House of Representatives voted 407-6 to pass a non-binding resolution backing the suspension of funds to the PA should it pursue its bid for a unilateral declaration of statehood by the United Nations in September.

This move was proceeded by a sister resolution in the US Senate, which passed unanimously.

Look who else came a-calling:

A delegation of past world leaders and senior government advisors led by ex-Spanish Prime Minister Jose Aznar, ex-US UN Ambassador John Bolton, and Nobel Prize Laureate Lord David Trimble of North Ireland met with President Shimon Peres in his office Thursday morning.

They held a planning meeting, and updated Peres on their pro-Israel activities, primarily on their efforts to prevent a unilateral declaration of a PA state in the UN.

At the beginning of the meeting, Aznar said to Peres, “We have come to declare our support of Israel in the face of the recent attempts to de-legitimize it. Israel is not alone, and as the only democracy in the Middle East, must have international support.

Aznar added that the delegation is in favor of direct negotiations with the PA. “Isolation of Israel will not help the peace process. We intend to appear before many international forums, such as the Durban Convention and other UN events. We will meet with European leaders and make a point of Israel’s rightful position, and of the importance of the promotion of the peace process through negotiation”, he said.

It may feel like it to a lot of us a lot of the time, but Israel is not alone.

Proving that end times are near.

Fayyad backs Fischer for IMF chief

Israel’s central bank chief has a new and unexpected supporter in his bid to head the International Monetary Fund: the Palestinian prime minister.

Salam Fayyad says Stanley Fischer would make a “great managing director” for the world financial body and is a “superb human being.”

The Palestinian Authority does not participate in the selection process, but Fayyad said if he had a vote, he would cast it for Fischer.

“He is supremely qualified for the job. Indeed, it’s difficult to see how one can be more qualified,” Fayyad said.

Fayyad, a US-trained economist and former senior IMF official, told the Associated Press on Sunday that he has known Fischer for two decades, since the two worked together at the IMF.

…

Despite his qualifications, Fischer’s bid may be a long shot. The post has traditionally gone to a European, and French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde has emerged as the front runner

…

Hamas doesn’t like Fayyad.

As Hamas and Fatah meet in Cairo Tuesday to discuss the formation of a new unity government, tensions regarding who may lead the new leading body continue to rise.

In a tit-for-tat move, a senior Hamas official told pan-Arab newspaper Al-Hayat that Hamas would nominate Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh to lead the new unity government if Fatah insisted on keeping Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad as their sole nominee.

RELATED:
Fatah nominates Fayyad as PM; Hamas rejects him
Palestinians believe Fayyad is the man for the job

According to the official, Hamas could not accept Fayyad as the head of the new government because “he is in agreement with American and Israeli political positions despite the fact that it was agreed that the [Hamas-Fatah reconciliation government] would be based on a Palestinian platform without a political agenda.”

Hamas rejected Fayyad’s nomination only hours after its announcement last Sunday, with Hamas official Salah Bardawil saying “[We] will not agree to grant Salam Fayyad the confidence to run the national unity government.”

And now I am going to entertain you with one of my favorite quotes from Vincent van Gogh, from his letters to his brother, Theo:

And one is almost inclined to say: confound it, the painters are almost like family, namely, a fatal combination of persons with contrary interests, each of whom is opposed to the rest, and two or more of the same opinion only when it is a question of combining together to obstruct another member.

- Aggie