Ariel Kahane reports in today’s edition of Makor Rishon that the European
Union is preparing to impose a series of heavy sanctions against Israel to
be rolled out after the March elections.
The sanctions would impact not only Israeli business economic activity with
the European Union that involves Israeli manufacturers located beyond the ’67
line (including eastern Jerusalem) but also trade activity in general and
other facets of economic interaction between the EU and Israel. In
addition, the EU would take an aggressive role supporting Palestinian legal
action against Israel as well as other diplomatic activity against the
Jewish State.
It is important to note that, according to Kahane, the election of a left
wing government would not take these plans off the table.
In the event that Herzog becomes prime minister, the EU would give the newly
elected Israeli government a few months to make enough “progress” in its
negotiations with the Palestinians to justify indefinitely postponing the
sanctions.
Put another way: the sanction would not be imposed only as long as the EU
would remain satisfied with the pace that Herzog walks down the gangplank.
"(The EU) Council has decided to appeal the judgment regarding Hamas
remaining on the EU terrorist list," EU spokeswoman Susanne Kiefer said
on Twitter.
But that doesn't mean that this month's events in Paris have made the Europeans any wiser about confronting terrorist threats.
Meanwhile, the European Union is calling for an anti-terror alliance
with Arab countries to boost cooperation and information-sharing in the
wake of deadly attacks and arrests across Europe.
EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said Monday "we need to strengthen our way of cooperating together."
She spoke to reporters ahead of talks with EU
foreign ministers in Brussels, to be attended by Arab League Secretary
General Nabil Al-Araby.
The foreign ministers' meeting will prepare in part for a summit of EU leaders in February focused on terrorism.
Ah yes, Federica Mogherini, the woman whose pleasure in life would be the existence of a 'Palestinian state.'
Danish Ambassador to Israel Jesper Vahr tries to justify Europe's discriminatory treatment of Israel, and Caroline Glick rips him some new cavities.
Let's go to the videotape (Hat Tip: Sunlight).
I'd love to see Caroline in the Knesset, but I understand that she's not going to put up with the corruption it usually takes (fighting or joining) to get there in the current party system.
Housing Minister Uri Ariel has slammed European Foreign Policy chief Catherine Ashton after Her Ugliness chose Holocaust Memorial Day - which commemorates the European slaughter of Jews 70 years ago - to endorse the Hamas-Fatah unity deal.
“On the eve of Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Memorial Day, she spit
in the face of those who fight against terror around the world," he
accused. "European support for the deal will encourage Hamas terror, and
will ensure that Europe loses it moral authority as a party that can
help solve the conflict.
In a statement, Ashton said that even if Hamas was considered to be a
terror group by the EU itself, negotiations between Israel and the
Palestinian Authority must continue. “Negotiations are the best way
forward,” she said. “The extensive efforts deployed in recent months
must not go to waste. The EU calls on all sides to exercise maximum
restraint and to avoid any action which may further undermine peace
efforts and the viability of a two-state solution. The fact that
President Abbas will remain fully in charge of the negotiation process
and have a mandate to negotiate in the name of all Palestinians provides
further assurance that the peace negotiations can and must proceed,"
she added.
An ugly statement by an ugly woman representing some of the most despicable 'world leaders' on the planet. But perhaps Shas MK Eli Yishai summed it up best:
“Europe's positive reaction to this deal is insulting and upsetting, but
expected. Just like 70 years ago, Europe closes its eyes to the dangers
that face Jews. Times have changed, but European hypocrisy hasn't,” he
added.
Outrageous: EU demanding compensation for illegal 'Palestinian' structures in E1
Shavua tov, a good week to everyone once again. This is the first live post of the evening. Mrs. Carl and I and most of our children spent the Sabbath in Beit El, which is in Samaria as a pre-Pesach treat from Mrs. Carl's parents. By my count, this is bli ayin hara the 12th year that they have taken us away for the Sabbath before Pesach (two Sabbaths before in the years when Pesach starts on Saturday night).
If the Europeans want to know why they have ZERO influence in this country, this story might be a place to start looking. The European Union has demanded compensation for the destruction by Israel earlier this week of eighteen tin huts that were housing 'Palestinians' on land that is not zoned for 'Palestinian' building (in a word, squatters). The land in question is in E-1, the strip between Jerusalem and Maaleh Adumim upon which Israel has talked time and time again of building, each time being stopped by the Americans. According to the Europeans, they 'partially funded' those 18 tin huts, and they have demanded compensation from Israel for their destruction.
EU officials demanded financial compensation from Israel to Brussels
in response to the demolition of three of the structures, Belgian news
service EurActiv reported.
“We should ask for compensation from
Israel whenever EU-funded humanitarian aid projects are destroyed,”
EurActiv quoted an anonymous EU diplomat as saying.
“We will raise
this issue with the relevant Israeli authorities,” Maja Kocijancic, a
spokesperson for EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, told
EurActiv.
We ought to give one of two responses. Either we should simply tell them to stick it where the sun don't shine, or we should tell them that we are setting it off against the damages from European-financed 'Palestinian' terror and they still have a long way to go. I favor the first solution - I don't want to acknowledge that they have any kind of claim.
Stephen Hawking‘s decision to boycott an Israeli conference in
protest at the state’s 46-year occupation of Palestine was derided as
hypocritical by some, who pointed out that the celebrated scientist and
author uses Israeli technology in the computer equipment that allows him
to function.
Hawking, 71, has suffered from motor neurone disease for the past 50
years, and relies on a computer-based system to communicate.
According to Shurat HaDin, an Israel law centre which represents victims of terrorism, the equipment has been provided by the hi-tech firm, Intel, since 1997.
“Hawking’s decision to join the boycott of Israel is quite
hypocritical for an individual who prides himself on his whole
intellectual accomplishment. His whole computer-based communications
system runs on a chip designed by Israel’s Intel team. I suggest if he
truly wants to pull out of Israel he should also pull out his Intel Core
i7 from his tablet,” said Nitsana Darshan-Leitner of Shurat HaDin.
The US, UN and EU ought to look in their own backyards
While Israel endures criticism from Ban Ki-Moon, Hussein Obama, the Euroweenies and that little shmuck Rahm Emanuel, here's what's going on in their own backyards.
Chicago's murder rate is up 31 percent over 2011. Gun violence
is up 8 percent. Mayor Rahm Emanuel has been useless at protecting his
citizens since taking office. Yet, he has the audacity to tell Israel
what we should do with their country. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
and his administration have proven that they know what is takes to
protect their citizens. Can the same be said for Rahm?
While Ban Ki Moon says that the settlement constructions are a
fatal blow to peace prospects, he ignores upgrading the Palestinians to a
Nation Status while Abbas hasn't done anything commence peace
negotiations. Heck, he doesn't even control half his country. That’s a
fatal blow.
Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said building in E1 "destroys
the two-state solution.” What? I thought we had two states now?
Palestine will be officially an apartheid state; Abbas is a holocaust denier himself.
And then there’s President Obama. Obama has continuously forced Bibi
into settlement freezes as he hopes to recommence peace negotiations
with Abbas. At tremendous political cost, Bibi halted settlement
construction in 2009, under the ruse that Obama would get Abbas to the
table. While the US voted against the UN motion on Palestine, the US did
not threaten to cut off aid. Abbas never tried this under George W Bush
– yet he has tried it twice and now succeeded.
The events of last week in the United Nations have left Bibi (facing
re-election and with aforementioned pressures) with no choice but to
effectively declare peace negotiations dead in the water.
UN grants non-member state status to non-existent state of 'Palestine'
The United Nations on Thursday granted non-member state status to the non-existent state of 'Palestine.' The vote was 138-9 with 41 abstentions.
"We did not come here seeking to delegitimize a state
established years ago, and that is Israel; rather we came to affirm the
legitimacy of the state that must now achieve its independence, and that
is Palestine," he said.
"We did not come here to add further
complications to the peace process, which Israel’s policies have thrown
into the intensive care unit; rather we came to launch a final serious
attempt to achieve peace," he said. "Our endeavor is not aimed at
terminating what remains of the negotiations process, which has lost its
objective and credibility, but rather aimed at trying to breathe new
life into the negotiations and at setting a solid foundation for it
based on the terms of reference of the relevant international
resolutions in order for the negotiations to succeed."
Abbas said
that the Palestinians will accept no less than "the independence of the
State of Palestine, with east Jerusalem as its capital, on all the
Palestinian territory occupied in 1967, to live in peace and security
alongside the State of Israel, and a solution for the refugee issue on
the basis of resolution 194."
Well, it doesn't sound like there's going to be a 'Palestinian state' anytime soon. That unelected putz isn't going to dictate terms to us.
Abbas said nothing about
immediately resuming negotiations with Israel without preconditions,
though he did pledge to "act responsibly and positively in our next
steps, and we will to work to strengthen cooperation with the countries
and peoples of the world for the sake of a just peace."
Well, of course he didn't. Why should he when the duplicitous Europeans will vote with him anyway?
Among the few states that voted against the move, were the US, Canada, the Czech Republic, Micronesia, and the Solomon Islands.
The
resolution was presented to the General Assembly by the representative
of Sudan, who called this a victory for the "values of truth."
Staunch
European allies such as Germany and the Netherlands, who opposed
Palestinian admission into UNESCO last year as a state, were among those
who this time only abstained. And other friendly countries, such as
Italy, voted for the move.
The vote took place on the annual "Observance of the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People.
Senior
diplomatic officials voiced deep disappointment at the EU vote. Up
until a few days ago, when France declared that it would support the
move, senior officials held out hope that the EU might abstain as a
bloc, something that would have deprived the Palestinian Authority of a
moral victory.
One senior official said that the recent fighting
in Gaza tipped the European scales, with the Europeans worrying that if
PA Authority President Mahmoud Abbas would not gain some kind of
diplomatic victory, he would loses all stature and authority.
"Had the vote taken place before the Gaza operation, the EU would have voted differently," one official said.
Yeah. All we had to do was to let a few more Jews get murdered and the Euroweenies would vote differently....
The Prime Minister's Office issued a statement after Abbas' speech,
saying that by going to the UN the Palestinians have "violated
agreements with Israel, and Israel will act accordingly." Israel has
made clear in recent days that it would free Israel of its obligations
under the Oslo accord since Jerusalem views the move as a blatant
violation of the underlying principle of those agreements: that all
outstanding issues be resolved through negotiations, not through
unilateral actions.
Israel's immediate reaction is expected to be
the deduction from tax transfers it makes to the PA each moth of some
NIS 800 million the PA owes to the Israel Electric Corporation. Further
steps are expected if the Palestinians use this new status and try to
join other UN bodies or, as a result of their enhanced status, attempt
to haul Israel or Israelis before the International Court of Justice or
the International Criminal Court on war crime charges.
Continental Europe's zig-zag course with sanctioned Iranian officials remains a counterproductive leftover vestige to the EU's nearly 30 year failed policy of dialogue with Tehran's clerical rulers. Take the example of Irans foreign minister, Ali Akbar Salehi, who on December 4 appeared in Bonn to attend the Afghanistan conference. Though Salehi is sanctioned by the EU because of his work on Iran's illicit nuclear weapons program, he met with Germany's Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle [pictured above. CiJ] and schmoozed with the conference attendees. The EU has waived its own visa restrictions against Salehi.
Attention to a second case this week raises again the point of impotent EU diplomatic sanctions. Iranian oil minister Rostam Ghasemi swooped into Vienna on Tuesday to attend the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) meeting on Wednesday. Ghasemi commands Iran's revolutionary guards' Khatam al-Anbia military. The EU, Australia and the United States have sanctioned Ghasemi. His tentacles are immersed in blacklisted revolutionary guard companies. Iran's Revolutionary Guards Corps is defined as a global terrorist organization by the US government. Yet his presence at the Vienna parley makes a mockery of Iran-based sanctions. Diplomatic business as usual is precisely what Tehran seeks. And the EU, sadly, is reciprocating.
The irony is that the Europeans probably have a greater interest than anyone outside of Israel in stopping Iran. Their economies are already teetering on the brink - a sharp rise in the price of oil resulting from a war could tank Europe's economies for a generation. And yet, the Europeans continue to throw a stick in the spokes of the one thing that might have a chance of averting war. They seem to have a death wish, provided of course that they can take as many Jews as possible with them (God forbid).
Hungary keeps Iranian foreign minister from attending chemical weapons conference
Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akhbar Salehi was prevented from attending a conference in Holland on banning chemical weapons(!) thanks to the good sense of the Hungarian government.
A Foreign Ministry official said that Salehi's plane had got clearance from different European countries to pass through their airspace, but, Hungary refused clearance for technical reasons.
He said that Hungary's refusal to give clearance to Salehi's plane was not acceptable and the Foreign Ministry sought explanation from the Hungarian ambassador to Tehran.
Salehi was due to give lecture to the Conference on Banning Chemical Weapons in The Hague, the Netherlands, on Sunday night.
Apparently the expected presence of an official representative of the Iranian government did not bother anyone else at the conference. What a surprise....
When I saw this video advertised I thought it would be about the disruption of the Israel Philharmonic at Royal Prince Albert Hall last Thursday night. It's not. This video was actually posted to YouTube the day before the Philharmonic incident, but it could equally have been posted the day after.
When Syrians perform at Edinburgh, England, no one protests about Assad's murder of Syrians and Palestinian refugees, or the persecution of non-Muslims in Syria. But when the famous Jerusalem Quartet performs at Edinburgh, and the audience just wants to listen to some nice Mozart, they are disrupted by a few protestors shouting "Jerusalem is occupied" (guess they don't know history, even if you don't recognize the annexation of East Jerusalem, everyone agrees West Jerusalem is part of Israel), or "Apartheid" (which is a shame to South African Apartheid, since you can't compare the two, and reflects a double standard when not applied to Arab countries, where this is real Apartheid, and not Israel).
That leads us to question - how much do these "human rights activists" care about Arab rights over an orchestra's performance? Or do they care more about demonizing and delegimizing the very existence of a Jewish state and its right to self-defense?
Did the protestors even know that two of the members of the Jerusalem Quartet are also regular performers with Daniel Barenboim's West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, which brings Arab and Israeli musicians together?
Emanuele Ottolenghi wonders why the European foreign policy chief, Baroness Catherine Ashton, has held her tongue since a pronouncement in Ramallah two weeks ago.
Baroness Catherine Ashton, the European Union's high representative for foreign affairs, is not afraid to speak out. In August alone, she issued no fewer than 36 statements and speeches on a wide range of foreign policy issues; in July it was 56.
Since July, Ashton has seen fit to weigh in on the Arab Spring, speaking on Bahrain, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, North Africa, Syria and Yemen. She has addressed EU relations with Kazakhstan, tensions in South Kordofan, elections in Thailand, the shooting of protesters by Malawian police, and human-rights abuses in Belarus. She has decried the arrest of female journalists in Iran, and voiced regret over the execution, in Texas, of Humberto Leal Garcia, a Mexican citizen convicted of raping and murdering a teenage girl. Ashton welcomed the release of seven Estonian cyclists abducted in Lebanon. She celebrated the arrest of Serbian war criminal Goran Hadzic. She condemned the execution, in Delaware, of Robert Jackson, a man convicted of ax-murdering a woman during a botched burglary in her home. She even issued a festive statement on the occasion of the International Day of the World's Indigenous People.
But on August 22, the Palestinian Authority postponed local elections indefinitely, and Ashton had nothing to say.
Gee, I wonder why. /sarc
No, it's not because she wasn't there. Ashton was in Ramallah this week and kept her silence. You see, Ashton is a hypocrite.
Middle East peace remains Europe's top priority, and it is a European axiom that Israeli settlements stand in the way of that vision. Ashton thus expressed "profound disappointment" at the Israeli government's announcement last month that it would permit the building of 900 new housing units in East Jerusalem. In the following weeks, she expressed deep regret over the same state of affairs, noting that "This is the third time since the beginning of August that the Israeli government has approved settlement expansion in the West Bank, including in East Jerusalem."
...
Baroness Ashton began her journey as EU high representative when she spoke at the headquarters of the Arab League in Cairo, on March 15, 2010 - barely nine months before the Arab Spring began. Addressing an audience of autocrats, Ashton never spoke of democracy in the Arab world. She only mentioned the word "freedom" once - with regard to Palestinian freedom from Israeli occupation, not human freedom from repression, a topic that, no doubt, would have resonated with ordinary Arabs, but might have infuriated her hosts.
Eighteen months and several Arab revolutions later, Europe's top diplomat is waxing lyrical about democracy in the Arab world, as if she, or Europe, had always championed it. Yet, the basic tenets of her first flawed speech, designed to ingratiate Europe to Arab dictators, did not change. Israel building a few hundred more houses in the West Bank is a threat to peace, which solicits disappointment, concern and regret. But this is not the case when, in the midst of the Arab Spring, the PA makes once more a mockery of democracy. Ashton might have expressed disappointment, concern or regret at this development.
...
Instead, the consolidation of another corrupt and autocratic Arab regime in the West Bank does not even merit a gentle nudge.
The world may be against us, but the world is a bunch of hypocrites. Ashton is typical.
I am an Orthodox Jew - some would even call me 'ultra-Orthodox.' Born in Boston, I was a corporate and securities attorney in New York City for seven years before making aliya to Israel in 1991 (I don't look it but I really am that old :-). I have been happily married to the same woman for thirty-five years, and we have eight children (bli ayin hara) ranging in age from 13 to 33 years and nine grandchildren. Four of our children are married! Before I started blogging I was a heavy contributor on a number of email lists and ran an email list called the Matzav from 2000-2004. You can contact me at: IsraelMatzav at gmail dot com
