Israel Matzav

The deadliness of overly democratic ways

Writing in Haaretz, Amir Oren reports that last week's decision to open Route 443 to 'Palestinian' traffic wasn't all that it's cracked up to be.

Limitations on Palestinians using Route 443 through the West Bank do not constitute apartheid, in the opinion of Supreme Court President Dorit Beinisch. The elation of opponents of the limitations regarding the High Court of Justice's decision last week doesn't reflect the full text of the court opinion. The court in fact confirmed, not rejected, the security rationale at the basis of the prohibitions imposed nine years ago when terrorism struck.

The Israel Defense Forces is being required to update its policies to conform with the calm on the highway since it stamped out terrorism. The 40 army vehicles a day that currently use the road from nearby Arab villages are not enough. A rate of 80 vehicles, the IDF's updated proposal, is also not enough. A further increase in the number and the installation of checkpoints are expected to satisfy the court. The principle of limiting traffic was not invalidated, only the way it is implemented on the ground.

Oren also notes that Israel is not the only country in the Middle East where the right to travel on roads is based on one's ethnicity: In Saudi Arabia, the highway approaching Mecca is for Muslims only.

Of course, Israel has a far better reason to bar 'Palestinians' from Route 443 than the Saudis have to ban non-Muslims from the roads leading to Mecca, but the Muslim hypocrisy in protesting the 443 ban is undeniable.

Oren also notes what happens when you go to the other extreme of not banning people who should be banned.

On the other hand, the pendulum can swing the other way and endanger lives, through the mad American logic that gave preference to Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab's right to fly to Detroit over the safety of the hundreds of his fellow passengers on Northwest Airlines Flight 253.

That is the dissembling, idiotic approach of Democratic U.S. administrations: Bill Clinton and his attorney general, Janet Reno, and Barack Obama and his attorney general, Eric Holder, who was previously Reno's deputy. With Clinton's blessing, Reno imposed a separation between intelligence collected on terrorism suspects by agencies such as the CIA and the law enforcement of the FBI. The result became apparent on September 11, 2001. Holder, who with Obama's support ordered a criminal investigation against CIA staff accused of harming terror suspects after September 11, is encouraging a mindset that prevented Abdulmutallab from being put on a no-fly list barring his entry into the United States.

Holder, Rice and Obama, as well as Carter and Clinton, who were both governors of southern states before becoming president, have copied a simplistic notion of the civil rights struggle involving American blacks and implemented it in U.S. foreign and defense policy. Racist white mayors and state troopers harassing innocent black pedestrians and motorists? That's exactly what Muslims on Flight 253 and Palestinians on Route 443 must be spared, even if the world blows up.

Indeed. Read the whole thing.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 1:57 PM