Prime Minister Netanyahu heads for Rome on Monday to meet with US Secretary of State John Kerry to warn him that Israel will ignore any call from the United Nations Security Council to withdraw to the 1949 armistice lines by 2016. On Tuesday, Kerry will meet in London with delegations from the 'Palestinians' and from the Arab League who will urge Kerry (and the United States) not to veto a Security Council resolution that would call on Israel to do just that. This is from the first link.
Netanyahu, who is in the middle of campaigning
for a March election, will also meet Italian Prime Minister Matteo
Renzi along with Kerry.
"I will
tell both of them that Israel stands, to a great extent, as a solitary
island against the waves of Islamic extremism washing over the entire
Middle East," Netanyahu said on Sunday in public remarks to his cabinet.
He said Israel now faced a possible diplomatic offensive "to force upon us" such a withdrawal within two years.
"This
will bring the radical Islamic elements to the suburbs of Tel Aviv and
to the heart of Jerusalem. We will not allow this. We will rebuff this
forcefully and responsibly. Let there be no doubt, this will be
rejected."
Israeli Foreign
Minister Avigdor Lieberman, speaking on Army Radio, said it appeared the
United States "is not eager to use its veto" on the Palestinian
statehood issue but was seeking "maximum coordination" with Netanyahu.
Haaretz's Barak Ravid adds:
Kerry initiated the meeting with the Palestinians in London - as
well as the meeting with Netanyahu in Rome - as part of his attempts to
try to understand how flexible the two sides are, and whether there is a
possibility of reaching a compromise. Kerry spoke by telephone with
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Friday and asked him to send
Faraj and Erekat to meet with him in London; his invitation to Netanyahu
was extended earlier in the week.
The meetings Kerry will be holding over the next few days with
Netanyahu, the Palestinians, the Arab foreign ministers and his European
counterparts are part of the American attempt to prevent a diplomatic
confrontation in the Security Council over the Palestinian issue, or to
at least postpone the confrontation for as long as possible.
"There are a lot of different folks pushing in different directions out
there, and the question is can we all pull in the same direction,"
Kerry told reporters during a visit to Colombia. "That’s what we’re
looking at."
"We're trying to figure out a way to help defuse the tensions and
reduce the potential for more conflict and we’re exploring various
possibilities to that end," Kerry told reporters in Bogota when asked
whether there is a resolution the U.S. could support.
It is still unclear whether Kerry plans to present Israel and the
Palestinians with a new proposal or a compromise. In any case, it will
be very hard for him to achieve such a compromise. The Palestinians are
determined to push their resolution forward in the Security Council,
while Israel, which is now in the midst of an election campaign, has
rejected any such move in the Security Council out of hand.
To deliberately wage war so that your own
people can be telegenically killed is indeed moral and tactical
insanity. But it rests on a very rational premise: Given the Orwellian
state of the world’s treatment of Israel (see: the U.N.’s
grotesque Human Rights Council), fueled by a mix of classic
anti-Semitism, near-total historical ignorance and reflexive sympathy
for the ostensible Third World underdog, these eruptions featuring
Palestinian casualties ultimately undermine support for Israel’s
legitimacy and right to self-defense.
In a world of such Kafkaesque ethical inversions, the depravity of Hamas begins to make sense. This is a world in which the Munich massacre is a movie and the murder of Klinghoffer is an opera — both deeply sympathetic to the killers. This is a world in which the U.N. ignores humanity’s worst war criminals while incessantly condemning Israel,
a state warred upon for 66 years that nonetheless goes to extraordinary
lengths to avoid harming the very innocents its enemies use as shields.
It’s to the Israelis’ credit that amid all this madness they haven’t
lost their moral scruples. Or their nerve. Those outside the region have
the minimum obligation, therefore, to expose the madness and speak the
truth. Rarely has it been so blindingly clear.
It's shameful! John Kerry's Magical Mystical Moral Equivalence tour
I'm sorry but because I am in mourning, I cannot post the song you all would have expected me to post after seeing that title. But the cartoon is courtesy of the Jewish Press.
The armed Turkish invaders Kerry has developed such sympathy for were
on a ship funded by a terrorist organization with ties to Hamas and
other jihadist groups seeking to challenge Israel’s navy in order to
help Hamas. If they were victims at all, it was of their own violent
ideology. Though we don’t know yet what motivated the Tsarnaev brothers
to perpetrate the monstrous bombing they are believed to have carried
out and the additional ones law enforcement officials believe they were
planning, the biographical picture beginning to emerge paints at least
the elder of the two as “increasingly militant” in his Muslim faith.
But whether the Tsarnaevs were inspired by Islamic radicalism at all
is beside the point in the case of Kerry’s comments. The victims in
Boston were victims of a brutal and murderous attack; the “victims” to
whom Kerry compared them were in the act of carrying out their own
attack. Kerry’s comments also put Israelis trying to contain a terrorist
enclave next door on the same moral plane as those terrorists and their
allies.
Perhaps Kerry misspoke. If not, his worldview is warped, dangerous,
and dishonorable. The same administration officials who nudged Netanyahu
to apologize to Erdogan should pay a visit to Kerry. The secretary of
state owes a round of apologies thanks to his inauspicious start as
America’s chief diplomat.
It might have been acceptable to compare the IHH terrorists to the Tsarnaevs since both groups were militant Islamic terrorists. But what Kerry said was much worse. By comparing the Boston Marathon victims to the IHH terrorists, he essentially compared the Israeli Navy to the Tsarnaevs. He called the Israeli Navy terrorists. That's why people here are furious with him.
And Bostonians should be furious with him for comparing their citizens who were murdered and wounded to a group of terrorists on the high seas. But for some reason, this story doesn't seem to be getting as much play in the US as it is here.
The Middle East 'quartet' met in Washington on Wednesday and issued a statement equating the institutionalized violence and incitement of the 'Palestinian Authority' with imaginary 'settler violence.'
"Noting the significant progress on security achieved by the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, the Quartet calls on the Palestinian Authority to continue to make every effort to improve law and order, to fight violent extremism, and to end incitement," the statement read. "The Quartet also expressed its concern over ongoing settler violence and incitement in the West Bank and calls on Israel to take effective measures, including bringing the perpetrators of such acts to justice."
The statement came at the end of a meeting in Washington attended by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, Quartet envoy Tony Blair and Jordanian Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh.
Any 'significant improvement' in the level of violence by the 'Palestinians' is the result of IDF activity in Judea and Samaria. And any 'settler violence' is being perpetrated by individuals - and not by the Israeli government - and is handled harshly by the IDF.
We Israelis get upset because the mainstream media abroad insist on referring to the 'Palestinians' who are constantly trying to murder us as 'militants' rather than terrorists. There are constantly discussions here about how the media won't use "the T word."
Reader Will sent me this link from Turkey's Today's Zaman to show me that the Turks are even worse. If you click through, you will see that the headline reads "Israel and Islamic Jihad trade fire, 10 dead."
But if you look at the byline, you'll see that this didn't come from Zaman's writers. This coarse piece of moral equivalence - replete with mistakes of fact (how many can you find?) - came from al-Reuters, one of the world's largest news agencies.
Great Video: Who is blurring the lines between good and evil?
With the recent trade of captive IDF soldier Gilad Shalit for 1000 terrorists, international media has jumped at the opportunity to draw similarities and correlations.... Those similarities and correlations are morally bankrupt.
Let's go to the videotape.
By the way, I expect that kind of morally obtuse coverage from al-Jazeera. I would expect slightly better from Sky News. Simply disgraceful.
Richard Landes had a great comment on the terrorists for Gilad deal in London's Daily Telegraph (Hat Tip: Amnon N).
Palestine, on the other hand, represents almost the polar opposite. This is a place in which killing daughters and wives and homosexuals for shaming the family with (even suspected and loosely interpreted) inappropriate sexual behavior is a regular feature of society, where “collaborators” are summarily executed, whereofficial statistics for executions put the PA at a rate of formal, legal execution that cedes only to China, Iran, N Korea, Yemen and Libya.
The trade of over a thousand Palestinians for one Israeli highlights the radical differences between the cultures. As Hizbullah’s Nasrullah put it after a prison exchange in 2004: “We have discovered how to hit the Jews where they are the most vulnerable. The Jews love life, so that is what we shall take away from them. We are going to win, because they love life and we love death.”
If a European, concerned about the nature of the aggressive Islam that has begun to crop up in his cities, citing for example Sharia zones, wanted to understand the nature of the Arab-Israeli conflict, he might spend a moment visiting the sites of Palestinian anti-Zionists, where this profoundly perverse culture teems. But of course, that would be politically incorrect. To spend any time pointing out the problems here constitutes the highest level of politically incorrect Islamophobia.
So instead of helping Europeans understand what’s at stake, most of the media and the NGO community have spun this story as one of violations of human rights on “both sides” with a heavy focus on Israeli misdeeds. The prisoners were considered “equal,” and Israeli primarily held accountable by the Geneva Convention for the treatment of enemy combatants when, in reality, the only one protected under these conditions was Shalit, a uniformed soldier kidnapped on his own soil in non-combat situation, and the thousand Palestinian prisoners where convicted in a court, primarily of crimes related to terror attacks on civilians (an, alas, necessary redundancy in these days of sophism).
Thus,The New York Times’s Robert Mackee could speak glibly about the “joy of parents on both sides” at the return of prisoners, and the UN could voice its concern that the prisoners Israel released might be subject to illegal forced transfer. “Returning people to places other than their habitual places of residence is in contradiction to international humanitarian law.” The UN’s concern for the full exercise of free will by convicted mass murderers illustrates the problem. Humanitarian discourse has been turned on its head to protect the ugliest players in this particular game, threatened by ugly forces within their own society, all the while implying that Israel, in its haste to get its own soldier back, trampled their rights and violated humanitarian law. Not surprisingly this led Ban Ki Moon to a moment of moral vertigowhere he denounced the violation of everyone’s rights.
Of course, in order to present the moral equivalence of all the “prisoners” in the swap, one has to play down the heinous nature of the crimes and personalities of the Palestinian prisoners released. BBC correspondent Jon Donnison showed the extent of ignorance among the supposedly professional news media by interviewing a man in prison for organising and abetting several suicide bombings. (Because the attacks only injured but did not kill, he did not receive life sentences.) “You are 31 years old, 10 years in prison, serving a life sentence for being a member of Hamas, I mean, how do you feel today?” BBC viewers could be excused for sympathising with a political prisoner, inhumanly incarcerated for belonging to an opposition party, free at last.
Read the whole thing. By the way, in light of this exchange and others, I believe we have no choice but to institute the death penalty (which Richard discusses at some length) for 'Palestinian' terrorists who murder civilians.
The New York Times 'balances' allegations of torture and mistreatment of Gilad Shalit and the 'Palestinian' terrorists exchanged for him yesterday, once again attempting to reach a moral equivalence.
Each side accused the other of mistreating its prisoners. Sergeant Shalit, who was denied Red Cross visits throughout his imprisonment, was pushed into an uncomfortable interview on Egyptian television before being handed over to Israel, and Israelis watched his measured responses and labored breathing with fury.
Hamas officials said their members had been subject in Israeli prisons to “torture, compulsion and revenge.”
One look at the gaunt, pale Shalit, as compared with the robust-looking terrorists, should put the lie to that claim.
For the record, Israel Television reported on Tuesday night that Shalit is suffering from a Vitamin D deficiency (one of the very few details about his health that was reported) as a result of lack of sunlight for the last five years and four months. The 'Palestinians' obviously got their hour per day to walk around the yard.
The Times' description of Amna Muna was also rather amusing:
The first passenger off the plane was a middle-aged woman wearing a white coat, and 10 men followed her.
'Human Rights Watch' cleans up their moral equivalence
'Human Rights Watch' appears to have misread the mood in the 'international community' over the death of Osama Bin Laden. You can't even find this in the Google Cache yet, but thanks to Anne H, I'm able to bring it to you.
The picture you see above is part of the cached page of the press release that 'Human Rights Watch' put out to announce the death of Osama Bin Laden early on Monday. The full press release is here. Just in case, I've screen captured the entire page and will post it below. Then, I will quote the entire press release (emphases mine):
US: Osama Bin Laden Killed in Shoot-out Report — Human Rights Watch
(New York, May 2, 2011) – The announcement from President Barack Obama that Osama Bin Laden was killed in a US-led undercover operation in Pakistan brings to an end the search for one of the most notorious terrorism suspects in history, Human Rights Watch said today. In addition to the September 11, 2001 attacks, bin Laden’s al Qaeda is blamed for the 1998 bombings of two US embassies in Tanzania and Kenya that killed 231 people, and the 2000 attack on the USS Cole, as well as other attacks.
“Osama Bin Laden will never again be responsible for mass atrocities such as the September 11 attacks,” said Iain Levine, deputy executive director for program at Human Rights Watch. “His death should also bring an end to a horrific chapter of human rights abuses in the name of counterterrorism.”
Al Qaeda and affiliated groups have killed thousands of civilians in Pakistan and other Muslim countries since September 11, 2011. Since Obama said this operation happened with Pakistani cooperation, there may be retaliation by al Qaeda in Pakistan against its people and government. Human Rights Watch said the United States should help to support the basic rights of the people of Afghanistan and Pakistan, free from the threat of those who perpetrate international crimes.
The US and other countries that have suffered terrorist attacks should mark this moment as a new chapter, Human Rights Watch said – one in which they no longer resort to torture, ill-treatment, and other violations of basic rights in their understandable quest to prevent further strikes. Human Rights Watch:
Somewhere along the line, someone must have told 'Human Rights Watch' that here was no equivalence - moral or otherwise - between those 'victimized' because they were allies of Osama Bin Laden and those who were murdered by his al-Qaeda terror group. And it must have become clear to them that they totally misread the mood in most of the World outside of Hamastan. So the Monday morning press release has been replaced with the following (again, screen capture followed by full text):
The announcement that Osama bin Laden was killed in a US-led undercover operation in Pakistan is a reminder of the devastating human toll that terrorism has brought to every continent of the world, Human Rights Watch said today. In addition to the September 11, 2001 attacks, bin Laden’s al Qaeda organization is blamed for the 1998 bombings of two US embassies in Tanzania and Kenya that killed 231 people, as well as many other terrorist plots.
“At a time when citizens around the world have engaged in peaceful demonstrations in the name of freedom and democracy, bin Laden’s death is a reminder of the thousands of innocents who suffer when terrorist groups seek political change through brutal means,” said Kenneth Roth, executive director at Human Rights Watch.
Note no Iain Levine and no mention of torture by "the US and other countries." Hmmm.
By the way, if you go to the BBC's Bin Laden page and scroll down the timeline along the left to 0744 British time, you will find a blurb about 'Human Rights Watch's reaction that includes Levine's statement. So it was definitely out there - at least until someone woke up and realized it was the wrong statement at the wrong time.
'Human Rights Watch': Looking out for the terrorists. Heh.
British Foreign Secretary William Hague's reaction to Thursday's terror attack in the Gaza envelope is yet another example of moral equivocation.
Commenting on the attack today on a bus in southern Israel, the Foreign Secretary William Hague said:
“I unreservedly condemn today’s attack from Gaza on a bus carrying schoolchildren in southern Israel. The initial reports we have received suggest the bus was deliberately targeted and that a 16 year old boy has been critically injured. This is a despicable and cowardly act that stands in stark contrast to people’s desire for peaceful reform across the region. Violence will never deliver peace. I reiterate that Hamas must halt these strikes immediately, and rein in other militant factions in Gaza.
This attack further highlights Israel’s legitimate security concerns. As I have made clear, Israel has every right to protect its people. But it is also important that in so doing that it also shows restraint and makes every effort to avoid causing civilian casualties. I am very concerned about reports that several people in Gaza were killed and others wounded in retaliatory strikes.”
I'm generally a conservative type of guy, but I'm ready to say "Bring back Labour" if it means that this moron will be gone.
On Twitter on Thursday, I read that Abu Mazen had condemned Wednesday's terror attack in Jerusalem. I promptly asked what he had said in Arabic, and was assured by none other than George Hale (the publisher of the 'Palestinian' Maan news service) that Abu Mazen had condemned the attack in Arabic - and only in Arabic.
I'm sure you'll all be shocked - just shocked - to learn that condemnation is empty. Very empty (Hat Tip: Stephen D).
Shortly after the explosion of the bomb packed with steel balls, nails and screws that killed Briton Mary Jane Gardner and wounded 50 people – including two critically – Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad publicly condemned what he specifically called a “terror attack.”
Unfortunately, but not uncharacteristically, the prime minister detracted from that condemnation by adding that the act was “despicable,” particularly in light of the huge damage such attacks have inflicted on the Palestinians in the past. The implication from Fayyad, the ex-IMF economist touted by both local and international media as a “moderate reformer,” was that were it not for the potential negative ramifications for Palestinians resulting from the attack, beginning with possible restrictions on Palestinian movement, the attack would not have been quite so despicable.
...
Fayyad’s condemnation was accompanied by another from PA President Mahmoud Abbas. Unfortunately, but not uncharacteristically, in the same breath the president also denounced the killing of nine Palestinians in the Gaza Strip on Tuesday. The foul attempt at moral equivalency was clear: The intentional targeting of Israeli civilians was comparable with an IDF operation to stop the launching of Grads, Kassams and mortars at civilians, but which had the unintentional and tragic result of causing civilian deaths [By the way, Barak Obama did the same thing. CiJ].
Fayyad’s and Abbas’s reactions were, of course, somewhat more palatable than Hamas’s declaration that Wednesday’s attack in Jerusalem was a “natural response to Israeli crimes against Palestinians,” a presumed reference to the IDF's ongoing attempts to stop the barrage of various lethal ballistics launched by Hamas and other Gaza-based Islamist groups at civilians in the south. Somewhat more palatable. But not much more than that.
...
Only if the PA, or some other more enlightened Palestinian leadership, utterly rejects terrorism, introduces true democratic reforms to Palestinian society, stops incitement against Israel and internalizes the right of the Jewish people to political autonomy and peace alongside a Palestinian state, will there be peace.
Until then, the hateful extremism which produced Wednesday’s bombing, and which continues to produce the ballistic assault emanating from Gaza, will preclude hope of a better future.
Well, maybe. Or maybe Israel ought to be looking for an alternative solution.
House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va) issued the following statement on Wednesday's terror attack in Jerusalem:
“Today’s bombing in Jerusalem is another chilling reminder of the obstacles Israel faces in its quest to live in peace with its neighbors. Israel is a true friend to the United States and a vital strategic ally in an unstable region. In the face of unremitting terror, Israel can count on the continued support of the United States as exercises its right to defend its people.
“Within the past two weeks, Palestinian terrorists in Gaza have launched dozens of unprovoked rocket attacks at innocent Israelis, while in the West Bank a terrorist brutally murdered a family as they slept in their home. These attacks must not be downplayed as mere episodes in a game of tit-for-tat between Israelis and Palestinians. There is absolutely no justification for deliberate and deadly attacks on innocent civilians.
“This kind of violence does not emerge in a vacuum; it is incubated through education and nurtured by popular culture. The sooner the world comes to grips with this reality, the sooner that there will be peace in the region. That’s why we must use the recent attacks to address the root cause of this violence: anti-Israel incitement in Palestinian mosques, schools and media – and the blanket refusal on the part of the Palestinians to accept Israel’s right to exist that it has created.
“The Administration has called on Israel to make sweeping concessions that I believe will endanger its security, but it doesn’t seem to demand similar from the Palestinians. That’s why I support bipartisan efforts in the House and Senate that call on the White House to put an end to anti-Israel incitement in the Palestinian territories. No matter how much we desire Mideast peace, it will remain a pipe dream so long as Palestinian culture makes martyrs of terrorists who target innocents.”
And President Obama's statement - by noting the accidental killings of 'Palestinians' in Gaza on Tuesday - implied precisely the type of tit-for-tat games that Cantor says (and I agree) we must avoid. There is no moral equivalence.
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
