New Zealand's Mercenary Motives for Its UN Vote against Israel

See UPDATING at bottom of page

In the 20th and 21st centuries, Peace is the refuge of scoundrels. It is the excuse for all sorts of aggressive diplomatic moves and sometimes it is even the excuse for military attacks. In September 1939, after Nazi Germany and the Communist Soviet Union, under Hitler and Stalin respectively had invaded Poland and while the ruins were still burning, both of these aggressor powers issued a joint statement that they were engaged in a "struggle for peace." Likewise, after the racist anti-Jewish vote at the Security Council, the White House spokesman, Ben Rhodes claimed that US abstention --effective support for the racist anti-Israel resolution, which he acknowledged-- was meant to help bring peace. Nothing new under the sun.

No doubt New Zealand would make that same claim, perhaps adding a devotion to justice. But maybe there were other motives for New Zealand's bigoted vote at the UN SC. Indeed, a New Zealand foreign policy expert explained the business advantages that New Zealand would receive on account of this mendacious pro-Arab vote. An item on the site of Radio New Zealand on 25 December 2016 tells us: 

New Zealand's role in promoting a UN Security Council resolution against Israel may have some economic payoff, a foreign policy analyst says.

The expert, one Steve Hoadley, reassures his countrymen that New Zealand will not suffer from any Israeli retaliation on account of the vote:

"New Zealand also trades with the Arab states, is about to sign a free trade agreement with the Gulf Co-operation Council. There's huge profits being made to export lamb and other dairy products, other food products to the Arab states. If there was to be a big trade payoff, the calculations would be in favour of going with the Arab and the Muslim countries."  [emphasis added]

So there is big money to be made by New Zealand in trade with Arab and Muslim countries.
OK. Make your money but don't tell us you are acting in the name of peace and justice. Nevertheless, a commentator, also on Radio New Zealand, praises his country as a "peacemaker":

A few years ago, after the successful Bougainville peace talks, New Zealand imagined a role for itself as an international peace broker. It was a nice idea that turned out to be harder than it sounded, but it marked an increased New Zealand confidence to act independently, for good purpose.This week's action is a further brave step from New Zealand. It has no obvious ulterior motives, but instead seems an attempt to simply do the right thing. [emph. added; Phil Smith, Radio New Zealand, 24 December 2016]

It seems that our two commentators contradict each other. Was the vote made for mercenary benefit or for the sake of  ''peace" and the "right thing"? Maybe they would claim for both reasons and say that there is no contradiction. But New Zealand has been selling sheep, both already butchered and live --for certain Muslim festivals that require a sheep be slaughtered on the spot-- to the Arabs for many many years, and after all a country needs a market. Even a country that is the epitome of a European colony founded far away from Europe in a land which Europeans had never seen let alone lived in until a few hundred years ago (unlike Israel, a land where Jewish roots go back thousands of years) and is now settled in its overwhelming majority by European settlers.

They say that New Zealand is very English, maybe more English than England itself is today. One thing that the New Zealanders brought with them from Europe is hypocrisy. A good European should never be without some egregious and saccharine sweet sanctimonious hypocrisy.
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UPDATING
12-28-2016 New Zealand Herald (13 November 2016) reported that Kerry was in the New Zealand capital in mid-November talking with the prime minister and foreign minister. New Zealand is a strong partisan of the Arabs. For those concerned about such things New Zealand is a European, British colony. As I wrote above, it is "a country that is the epitome of a European colony founded far away from Europe in a land which Europeans had never seen let alone lived in until a few hundred years ago (unlike Israel, a land where Jewish roots go back thousands of years) and is now settled in its overwhelming majority by European settlers." The New Zealanders, who belong to a colony, have no shame criticizing Israel for building settlements. Here is what is important in the article from 13 November 2016:

One of the closed-door discussions between United States Secretary of State John Kerry and the New Zealand Government today was a potential resolution by the United Nations Security Council on a two-state solution for the Israel - Palestinian conflict. After the talks, Foreign Minister Murray McCully even raised the possibility of the US or New Zealand sponsoring a resolution.

So Kerry and the NZ foreign minister discussed sponsoring a pro-Arab resolution. This contradicts US government spokesman Mark Toner who shamefully lied when denying any US collusion in the resolution produced in the Security Council the other day.

A Declaration of War -- The "Palestinian Authority's" UDI [unilateral declaration of independence] Gambit at the UN

UPDATED 10-2-2011 at bottom

Barry Rubin points out that the PA/PLO's gambit of asking the UN --whether the Security Council or General Assembly is secondary-- to approve an Arab state in the Land of Israel without negotiating borders and other issues with Israel could lead to a lot of violence and violates all prior agreements with Israel as well --I would add-- as violating Security Council resolutions 242 & 338 that call for Israel and its Arab neighbors to negotiate the issues between them in order to make peace. I will quote from 242 at the end [338 is just a reconfirmation of 242] so that readers can see that the PLO/PA is violating the Security Council's own resolutions that are supposed to be binding, according to the UN charter.

Bear in mind that if borders are not agreed on with Israel, then the PLO/PA will be declaring a state which will spread over land that rightly belongs to Israel or --in any event-- is claimed by Israel or perhaps their own declaration will be phrased in such a way as to claim all of Israel --all the land from the Jordan to the sea. This is what the PLO did in its 1988 Algiers Declaration --its previous declaration of a state-- by implication. Now, if today's PLO/PA claims any land that Israel also claims and that can be shown to already belong to Israel or is claimed by Israel, then a PLO/PA UDI [unilateral declaration of independence] will essentially be a declaration of war.

Rubin starts by quoting from the cynical and amoral Obama henchman, Rahm Emanuel:

“You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that is an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.” –Rahm Emanuel

By Barry Rubin

One of the amazing things about the amazing incompetence of the Obama Administration is that we’ve become so accustomed to it that we take for granted things that would have made opinion makers during past presidencies clutch the upper left side of their chests and collapse, writhing in agony.

Or to put it another way, if an Obama policy falls in the public arena and the mass media acts deaf will anyone say: “OMG! Can this really be happening?” Well, I will follow Rahm Emanuel’s advice and hope that this serious crisis could be for this administration an “opportunity…to do things you think you could not do before” or to start looking for a new policymaker.

Consider that the United States is on the verge of a foreign policy disaster that could easily have been averted by proper statecraft. The Palestinian Authority (PA, technically speaking, along with its Hamas partner) is about to demand that the United Nations break every Israel-Palestinian agreement over almost twenty years, destroy any possibility of serious future negotiation, reward Palestinian intransigence, and generally make a mess of the Middle East.

The specific issue is recognition of a Palestinian state as existing right now. The result, as I’ve outlined previously, would be catastrophic and don’t let anyone get away with pretending that this isn’t a bad thing or won’t make much difference.

A “normal” U.S. policy would have begun pressing the PA to back down from this strategy almost a year ago, when PA leaders began talking about it. Rather than take quick action—or, indeed, punish, pressure, or even criticize the PA for anything it did—the Obama Administration stood by and made disapproving murmurs from time to time.

We are now facing the consequences of the policy of: let’s be weak so people will like us; leading from behind; not rewarding friends or punishing enemies,; refusing to use U.S. leverage (Turkey votes against sanctions on Iran? Let’s put them in charge of Syria’s future!); and generally letting other countries walk all over the United States. I’d love to list other examples of similar issues here but don’t want to take your time so you can fill in the additional details.

Now, the cloud once the size of a man’s hand has turned into a more serious big brother of Hurricane Irene. If you don’t mind my mixing hurricanes, think of U.S. foreign policy as New Orleans.

A colleague suggests that the administration is now panicked. I think it isn’t panicking but should be. A sign of not understanding the magnitude of the problem is that it is only now starting to do what should have begun around September 2010, not September 2011. If you are a U.S. citizen living in a Muslim-majority country you might think about what you will be doing later this month.

As a result, the United States has no leverage over the PA, a client that depends on Washington for any possibility of actual peace, having a real state, and paying its bills. Equally, it has no leverage over virtually any other country in the world in terms of voting on this issue. America has been transformed from superpower to super-cower, begging the PA to take pity on it and back down from an obviously successful strategy.

I love the way the New York Times’ article puts it:

“The Obama administration has initiated a last-ditch diplomatic campaign to avert a confrontation this month over a plan by Palestinians recognition as a state at the United Nations. It may already be too late, according to senior American officials and foreign diplomats.”

Yes, it might also be too late—just maybe—to stop the American Civil War or prevent the 1929 stock market crash. What the Obama Administration has done is to:

–Propose a new round of PA talks with Israel.

–Made clear that it will veto the PA bid in the Security Council.

This is about the most serious threat since a small mammal (I don’t want to offend anyone by mentioning its precise species) told the Big Bad Wolf not to blow down its house of straw and eat him or he’d bleed all over the Wolf’s clothes.

First, the PA doesn’t want negotiations with Israel. It has been rejecting talks for two years, even refusing them during a requested Israeli freeze of construction on West Bank settlements, even when an east Jerusalem freeze was added to it. The PA also rejected talks within minutes after Obama laid his personal prestige on the line in September 2009 to announce a high-level summit at Camp David.

Let’s face it: these people don’t want serious negotiations. Why? Because they don’t want a peace agreement with Israel; they want a state unfettered by concessions or compromise so they can pursue total victory and Israel’s destruction. (There’s nothing “right-wing” about that conclusion. All the facts point to it and only wishful thinking says differently.)

As for the U.S. vetoing the proposal, what does the PA care about that? It will mainly hurt the United States. There will be a vote in the General Assembly with a margin of support for the PA (cowardly Western democracies which know the idea is terrible will abstain and let the United States take the heat) similar to the size of the majority in the U.S. Congress supporting a declaration endorsing Mother’s Day. Second, there will probably be anti-American riots throughout the Muslim-majority world. Any good done by Obama’s almost three-year-long effort to make Arab and Muslims like him will be cancelled out.

Fortunately, though, Obama doesn’t hold a grudge, at least against foreign enemies who “diss” him and America.

I know that I’ve tried to be entertaining here through the use of sarcasm and humor. But my warning and critique are not exaggerated. This was an avoidable crisis and will be much worse than almost anyone recognizes.

The non-EPA approved icing on the cake is that afterward the Obama Administration will do absolutely nothing to the PA or to affect negatively those who voted for it which will, of course, encourage additional acts of diplomatic hostility and real world disasters of this type. The Obama Administration’s apparent motto is expressed by wearing a large sign that says, “Kick me.” Unfortunately, the object being kicked isn’t the personal property of the chief executive but belongs to the United States of America.
- - - - end of Rubin article [see at Pajamas Media here]- - - - -

UN Security Council resolution 242 [relevant excerpts]:
The Security Council
. . . .
Affirms that the fulfillment of [UN] Charter principles requires the establishment of a just and lasting peace. . .
Termination of all claims or states of belligerency and respect for and acknowledgement of the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of every State in the area and their right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries, free from threats or acts of force. . . .
Requests the Secretary-General to . . . promote agreement and assist efforts to achieve a peaceful and accepted settlement. . . --end--

Obviously, a declaration of a state that has not obtained the agreement of Israel violates the Security Council's principle of agreement and is not likely to be peaceful and accepted, nor is it likely to lead to a just and lasting peace. In addition, secure. . . boundaries refers to defensible borders. Otherwise, indefensible borders can tempt a belligerent power that wants to land from another state to go to war. Not only do the PLO/PA reject secure boundaries for Israel but by refusing to negotiate boundaries with Israel and by implicitly or explicitly claiming all of the land from the Jordan to the sea, the PLO/PA is rejecting peace with Israel. It is important to note that Obama himself, in his notorious May 19, 2011, speech, also rejected secure boundaries for Israel by demanding that Israel agree to go back to the very insecure 1949 armistice lines [he said "1967 lines"]. Let us bear in mind that those insecure lines tempted Jordan, Egypt and Syria to instigate war on Israel in June 1967. Curiously, Jordan is now warning against a PLO/PA UDI which it believes will be negative for Jordan. Jordan has also stated that it would vote against the UDI in the General Assembly.

Furthermore, whereas Rubin addresses the likely real world outcomes and causes of a PLO/PA UDI, we ought to also mention the injustice that it would represent. Here is an immoral, unjust, murderous entity, speaking in the name of a people that no one had heard of 100 years ago, that now demands a state without negotiating with Israel. Indeed the Arab leadership in the Land of Israel [Arab Higher Committee] had denied the very existence of a country called "palestine" in testimony in 1946 before the Anglo-American Commission of Inquiry on Palestine. And in the name of this entity, invented apparently by psychological warfare/cognitive warfare experts after Israel's reestablishment as a state in 1948, a new state might be recognized in the name of a people that did not exist in history. And this injustice is being perpetrated against the Jews, oppressed, exploited, humiliated and reviled for centuries in both Christendom and Islam.
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10-2-2011 Emanuele Ottolenghi discusses the PLO/PA's UDI gambit at the UN [here]. Ottolenghi, Jerry Gordon, & Mike Bates in discussion. Ottolenghi points out the PLO/PA side refuses to negotiate, instead making impossible demands for pre-conditions.

Congressman Ackerman Denounces J Street

UPDATING 1-31-2011 at bottom

Congressman Ackerman (D-NY) has denounced J Street for supporting the Arab/PLO/Palestinian Authority-sponsored resolution that the PLO/Palestinian Authority submitted to the UN insecurity council. This proposed resolution denies the right of Jews to live in Judea-Samaria, parts of the ancient Jewish homeland, recognized as part of the Jewish National Home in international law. Ackerman's criticism of J Street does not go as far as I would like, but it is an acknowledgement that this fake outfit is no friend of Israel. For those who may be unaware, J Street is funded by super rich George Soros, some mysterious millionaires in Hong Kong and an assortment of Arabs and pro-Arab and pro-Iranian lobbyists in Washington. J Street was founded in order to create support for Pres. Obama's anti-Israel position within the Jewish community in the USA. The head of JStreet, Jeremy Ben-Ami said this explicitly.

For more info on J Street, see the Jikileaks website. The link to Jikileaks is near the top of our blogroll. We welcome Congressman Ackerman's position on this matter and hope that he will continue to expose the two-faced nature of J Street.
See his press release below:

News from Congressman Gary Ackerman

5th District – New York
Queens & Long Island

January 25, 2011

Contact: Jordan Goldes, 718-423-2154

ACKERMAN BLASTS J-STREET SUPPORT FOR UN CONDEMNATION OF ISRAEL

U.S. Rep. Gary Ackerman (D-NY), the presumed Ranking Democratic member of the House Subcommittee on the Middle East and South Asia issued the following statement today:

“After learning of J-Street’s current public call for the Obama Administration to not veto a prospective UN Security Council resolution that, under the rubric of concern about settlement activity, would effectively and unjustly place the whole responsibility for the current impasse in the peace process on Israel, and—critically—would give fresh and powerful impetus to the effort to internationally isolate and delegitimize Israel, I’ve come to the conclusion that J-Street is not an organization with which I wish to be associated.

It is not Israel that is refusing to enter final status negotiations. It is not Israel that has refused again and again to make unilateral gestures of good faith (recall the hundreds of West Bank security checkpoints and roadblocks removed, and the 10 month settlement freeze). It is not Israel that is now trying to force the peace process back in to the same dead-end from which the Obama Administration has spent the past month trying to extract itself. But astonishingly, it is Israel that J-Street would put in the stocks in the public square.

The decision to endorse the Palestinian and Arab effort to condemn Israel in the UN Security Council, is not the choice of a concerned friend trying to help. It is rather the befuddled choice of an organization so open-minded about what constitutes support for Israel that its brains have fallen out.

America really does need a smart, credible, politically active organization that is as aggressively pro-peace as it is pro-Israel. Unfortunately, J-Street ain’t it.”

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UPDATING 1-31-2011 Jeremy Ben-Ami, faker in chief at JStreet, apologized to Congressman Ackerman for insulting him after the congressman's criticism last week [here]

The UN Descends Deeper into Barbarism -- Universal Human Rights Go in the Trash

UPDATING 12-12&19&21-2010; 1-28-2011 see at bottom

The UN. . . has now become a permanent locus of the denial of human rights.

L’Onu . . . ormai è diventata sede permanente di negazione dei diritti umani.
Fiamma Nirenstein, Il Giornale, 9 December 2010

The UN never ceases to amaze. When will decent people realize that the UN now works against all the lofty and noble purposes set forth in its charter? The Universal Declaration of Human Rights promulgated by the UN 62 years ago has long been a dead letter. Yet the stinking zombie corpse of the UN's human rights pretensions, the so-called UN "Human Rights Council", struts and preens in its lair in Geneva, undermining human rights in fact throughout the world. It is dominated by the OIC [organization of the Islamic conference] which in turn denies the very principle of human rights, and instead promotes the Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam.

Long ago, Gaglione and Yeselson pointed out that the UN was a "dangerous place" [in their book of that name] where agitation and incitement for war were given free rein. They wrote that the UN had as much to do with peace as a battleship or an atomic bomb. Nothing has changed in the nearly 40 years since they published their book. Let us clearly assert and affirm that the UN and its dominant member states are enemies of peace. Since the "log-rolling" effect of even a large, determined minority in any assembly where votes are counted can be dominant, the UN General Assembly is an enemy of peace. Hence, judging by its opposition to its own stated goals and purposes, peace, human rights, and so on, the UN is not a legitimate body. Only those who are fond of its monumental Orwellian hypocrisy, its turning all its judgments inside out and upside down, could deny that assertion.

The latest UN offense, pointed out by Fiamma Nirenstein, is that the UN removed homosexuality from a list of personal traits for which member states should protect persons from extra-judicial, arbitrary and summary executions on a discriminatory basis. Such traits were ethnic, religious and linguistic belonging, homeless children, homosexuals, etc. The resolution called on member states to protect the right to life of all human beings by investigating these wrongful killings, especially those of the groups just mentioned. Now, a recent amendment to the relevant resolution removes homosexuals from the class of persons who should be protected from such killings by member states. Now since Islam mandates killing homosexuals by Islamic law, and such Muslim states as Saudi Arabia legally practice such executions, etc., this amendment comes as an encouragement for more murder. It is a kind of authorization.

I am aware of course that homosexuality is more prevalent in Islamic lands than in most other places. This is in part because of the degraded and segregated state of women in most Islamic lands. Moreover, some forms of homosexual activity are not recognized as such and are indeed practiced by powerful persons in society and govt. But a charge of homosexuality constitutes one of the weapons that repressive govts in those countries can use against their opposition, whether or not a person accused of homosexuality does in fact practice it.

More important is that the UN is now an enemy of humanity and should be recognized as such, as Fiamma Nirenstein does.
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UPDATING 12-12-2009 A Washington Post editorial of 1 April 2009 exposes the hypocrisy of Arab League demands that Israel be held accountable for alleged violations of international law. The Arab League session in Doha, Qatar, in March 2009 featured praise and defense of Sudan's Omar al-Bashir, already indicted by the ICC [international criminal court] for war crimes in Darfur, western Sudan. The UN connection is that UN secretary general Ban Ki Moon was present at the Arab League meeting, together with al-Bashir, and did not object to al-Bashir's presence or have anything to say by way of urging the Arab League to urge al-Bashir to turn himself over to the ICC [at least not in public as far as I know]. So it seems that the UN sec'y general shows public contempt for another international body purporting to represent international law. Ban seems to have indirectly referred to the Sudan situation, pleading that "Relief efforts should not become politicized," which was interpreted as a plea to al-Bashir to allow relief agencies to come back to Darfur. This is hardly the same as frankly demanding compliance with the ICC indictment. But no doubt that the Arab League let Ban know ahead of time that he must not support or even mention the ICC indictment, even by insinuation. By appearing at the League's meeting in such an abject manner, Ban lent support to the League's backing for al-Bashir's war crimes.
12-19-2010 Bat Yeor talks about the OIC which has a strong grip on the UN [ici in French]. She argues that Islam as a religion wants to impose Muslim law, shari`ah, worldwide and a universal caliphate, and that those are the goals of the OIC [in French OCI].
. . .l’islam vise à appliquer la sharîa et à établir le califat, la gouvernance islamique mondiale à la fois politique, religieuse et législative. Tel est le dessein de l’Organisation de la conférence islamique (OCI). . .
12-21-2010 Omar al-Bashir, wanted for war crimes by the ICC [international criminal court], is defended by the OIC, & by Arab League. Al-Bashir, "innocent" protege of the UN sec'y general Ban Ki-Moon, of the Arab League & the OIC, promises more shari`ah in Sudan if the South breaks away [here].
1-28-2011 How UNRWA collaborates with Hamas -- they staff UNRWA [here]

Lebanese "village" where the Attack Took Place Is a Shooting Platform

UPDATING 10-4-2010

Uri Flam, who has escorted and lectured to groups visiting Israel's northern border at Kibbutz Misgav Am points out that the Lebanese "village" of Adeissa across the valley, across the border from Misgav Am is not a populated village but a military stronghold of the Hizbullah. Here is what Uri Flam observed:

"I have taken dozens of groups to look over at the Lebanese border from kibbutz Misgav Am, which has been the the target of many terror attacks, and most recently of rocket attacks from Lebanon. Across the valley is the Lebanese village of Addaiseh. From a lookout at the edge of the kibbutz it is easy to spot the Hezbollah flags, bunkers and personnel, even a big poster featuring the Iranian Ayatollah alongside Ahmedinejad. It is also clear that the village is not really a village at all, but an elaborate system of bunkers and shooting platforms designed to look like houses. There are no villagers, tractors, or agricultural activities. No fires burning, kids going to school or trucks unloading goods at a local store."[here]
. . . . . .

"The soldiers were clearing trees and bushes that were obscuring the technical fence. While the Israelis crossed the fence, they. . . stayed well south of the Lebanese border (Blue line) inside Israel. And prior to the operation, the IDF updated UNIFIL (United Nations) forces and the Lebanese army. This is why the Lebanese knew in advance to invite the media.

"From one of those roof top platforms the Lebanese opened accurate sniper fire on the Israelis, killing 45-year-old Dov Harari, a reservist battalion commander. It was supposed to be his last reserve tour of duty. In the Israeli response three Lebanese soldiers and a reporter were killed.

"As the preparations for the attack took place, the UNIFIL forces stood waving blue UN flags. Pictures show they were literally centimetres away from Lebanese army soldiers carrying RPGs, machine guns and other weapons. They saw and witnessed the attack unfolding within arms length.

"And what did UNFIL do?

"They stood, shouted and waved flags.

A UNIFIL peacekeeper, right, waves as a Lebanese soldier, center, carries an RPG in front of Israeli troops patrolling the border fence in the southern border village of Adaisseh, Lebanon, Tuesday, Aug. 3, 2010. (AP Photo/Lutfallah Daher)

"Addaiseh is a Hezbollah stronghold. Could the press have been invited without Hezbollah's approval? No. The Lebanese battalion involved in this incident is Shiite. Hezbollah is the Shiite arm of the Iranian Shiite regime. Is there a connection?"
- - - - - - -end of Uri Flam's observations- - - - - -

Everyone will reach his own conclusion. Note however that our previous post pointed out that one of the Lebanese killed in the Israeli retaliation was a reporter for a Hizbullah newspaper, al-Akhbar. Also note that one of the Lebanese wounded was a journalist with al-Manar, the Hizbullah TV broadcasting network.

Uri Flam is an Israeli educational tour guide and lecturer on history. His biography is here.

UPDATING 8-8-2010 Melanie Phillips has commented on this situation [here]
--More recent reports from Lebanon assert that only two --not three-- Lebanese soldiers were killed in the skirmish.
8-9-2010 A video on the Hizbullah Potemkin village [here]
Jonathan Tobin [here] & Michael Rosen [here] on what US policy should be toward the Lebanese army, especially stopping US aid to it.
Carlo Panella reports that the violent attack by Lebanon's presidnet, Michel Suleiman on the pro-Hizbullah UNIFIL [UN interim force in Lebanon] as being pro-Israel & on the international tribunal investigating the Hariri murder indicate that Hizbullah now "exercises full political hegemony over Lebanon's armed forces and institutions," that Lebanon is now aligned with the extremist positions of Teheran & Damascus, and that war with Israel may be imminent. He adds that these developments "confirm the total failure of the opening to Syria by the USA, France & the EU. . . " [qui -- in Il Foglio, 9-30-2010]. Panella concludes that the way is now open for more attacks and provocations against Israel from Lebanese territory.

Fighting on Israel's Northern Border, An Apparent Hizbullah Provocation

UPDATING 8-4,5&6-2010

The peace process means peace of mind for antisemites

Snipers working for Hizbullah or for the Lebanese army which is highly infiltrated by Hizbullah and subservient to it, shot at Israeli officers overlooking a rather routine operation of clearing vegetation from the border area. The soldiers doing the brush-clearing work, perhaps also removing a tree, were on the Israeli side of the border. For much of the northern border, the border fence is well within Israeli sovereign territory. The fence was built within Israeli territory precisely to allow such brush-clearing operations without needing to cross the UN-designated blue line border into Lebanon.

The sniper did not shoot at the soldiers doing the work but at Israeli officers overseeing the operation. Hence, the object was to kill "high value" Israeli targets. In fact, an Israeli Lieutenant Colonel was killed, and a captain was wounded. Three Lebanese soldiers or, more likely, Hizbullah gunmen, were killed plus one Lebanese journalist.

The operation had been announced ahead of time to UNIFIL, the UN truce-supervisory force in southern Lebanon, by the Israeli army. In some of the photos, UNIFIL troops are seen close to Israeli troops. Why do I say that Hizbullah was directly involved??

For two reasons:
1) the "Lebanese soldiers" hit in the Israeli retaliation are heavier, and older-looking than the ordinary Lebanese conscripts. Those in the photo look like they are in their mid-thirties, maybe over forty. The man on the ground is clearly balding [is, that is, if he was not already dead in the photo]. The standing man wearing combat pants and an army T-shirt is obviously heavy.


[photo from Il Giornale 8-3-2010; vedere qui]

This can be explained by the fact that the Hizbullah is a fairly good source of income, a livelihood, for some Lebanese Shiites. And a family man wants a livelihood of course. So Hizbullah paramilitary-cum-terrorist service becomes a career. Lee Smith, author of The Strong Horse, has also pointed out that Hizbullah gunmen are older and noticeably heavier than the Lebanese army draftees. Given the cooperation between the Hizb and the Lebanese army, getting army uniforms for Hizb gunmen would be no problem.

2) The next reason to believe that the ambush was a Hizbullah operation, not merely a Lebanese army action --bearing in mind that the two bodies can and do often collaborate-- is that a pro-Hizbullah journalist was killed in the incident by Israeli retaliation. Corriere della Sera gives not only the name of his paper, al-Akhbar, but identifies it as being close to the positions of the Hizbullah. Corriere also gives the journalist's name, Assaf Abu Rahhal [qui]. The editor of al-Akhbar, Ibrahim al-Amin, is generally considered a Hizbullah mouthpiece by people who have experience in Lebanon.

IL REPORTER - Tra le vittime, c'è anche il giornalista libanese Assaf Abu Rahhal, del quotidiano al Akhbar, vicino alle posizioni del movimento sciita libanese Hezbollah. Il reporter era stato ricoverato nel vicino ospedale di Marjuyun, ma è deceduto in seguito alle ferite riportate dopo - sembra - essere stato colpito da schegge di un proiettile di mortaio. [qui]

Why was the journalist there at that time and place?

It seems that Israeli retaliation came fairly quickly, thus it seems likely that the journalist was killed in an Israeli retaliation not long after the initial attack. Hence, it seems that the journalist was there, was assigned there, sent there, knowing that "action" was coming.


Additional links:

Dead, wounded in massive skirmish on Lebanon border

and here & here & 39-page report on Lebanon/Hizbullah military situation here [by The Israel Project] & Israel Foreign Ministry statement here.

UPDATING 8-4-2010 Lebanese army admits shooting first in yesterday's skirmish

L'armée libanaise reconnait avoir ouvert le feu la première hier à la frontière nord
Un porte-parole de l'armée libanaise a confirmé ce matin l'affirmation israélienne selon laquelle, elle était la première a avoir ouvert le feu sur les soldats de Tsahal. Dans un communiqué transmis hier à l'agence de presse française et repris ce matin par le quotidien libanais ''Anahar'', celui-ci indique que ''l'armée libanaise a bien ouvert le feu en premier sur les soldats israéliens'' soulignant ''son droit absolu d'agir ainsi'' devant, selon le communiqué, ''la violation israélienne de la souveraineté du Liban''.
[source: Guysen News]
Nasrallah accuses Israel of killing Hariri: [here & here & here]. Nasrallah's own Hizbullah has been targeted by many accusations, including leaks from the International Tribunal set up to investigate the Hariri murder in 2005, that Hizbullah executed the murder. At the time, Syria was widely accused of the murder. There is no necessary contradiction here. It is quite likely that Syria used Hizbullah, which is subordinate to Syria anyway, to get rid of Hariri whose desire to act independently most likely annoyed Junior Assad, now ruling in Damascus. Hariri was a billionaire building contractor who presided as Lebanon's prime minister under Syrian sponsorship. In late 2004 or early 2005, he met Junior Assad in Damascus and apparently conveyed some intentions displeasing to Junior.
Reports from The Guardian, Ynet, & Haaretz reporting that the tree was in Israeli territory. And UNIFIL admits it.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/aug/04/lebanon-israel-tree-border-clash

http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/lebanon-we-fired-first-at-idf-unit-near-israel-border-1.305929

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3929835,00.html

Hizbullah accuses Israel of hitting journalists in order to "hide its crimes." This is rather rich. Hizbullah has terrorized the majority of Lebanon's population, including journalists, publishers, and broadcasters. The Hizb's patron Syria has had several Lebanese journalists attacked with the purpose of murder. Gebran Ghassan Tueini [Tweyni], Samir Kassir [Qassir], and May Shedyak were all attacked. Ms Sheadyak was the only one of the three to survive, albeit losing a leg. There may have been more journalist victims in Lebanon, although I can't think of more names. The killing of a Hizbullah journalist in the fighting yesterday --provoked by the Hizb-- is called a Zionist crime "against freedom of expression." Knowing the Hizb's background, that's rich. In psychology that is called projection. That is, the Hizb accuses the other side of its own crimes.

22:36

Hezbollah : Israël a touché des journalistes pour ''cacher ses crimes'' (Guysen.International.News) Le Hezbollah a dénoncé ''l'atteinte aux journalistes'' par Israël ce mardi lors de l'accrochage avec les forces libanaises. ''Cet évènement s'inscrit dans le cadre des crimes sionistes contre la liberté d'expression. L'objectif est de faire taire les voix qui viennent révéler au public les crimes sionistes à l'opinion publique mondiale et la face de l'ennemi criminel et raciste'', a ajouté la milice chiite libanaise.

Yosef Bodansky's rather detailed report [here]
Fiamma Nirenstein's view [qui]
Here is a BBC eulogy to Tueini:
Gebran Ghassan Tuéni Martyr to the Cause of Freedom and Liberty
In the months prior to his assassination, he was pushing publicly and loudly for international scrutiny into mass graves found near the Syrian headquarters in the Bekaa during their occupation. In his last editorial just four days before his death, Tuéni accused Syria of committing 'crimes against Lebanon. [see original]
Comment by Eliyahu: So much for Hizbullah's claim that Israel is the enemy of freedom of the press in Lebanon.
8-6-2010 Hizbullah's "al-Manar television quoted an unnamed Lebanese army source involved in Wednesday night’s meeting between UNIFIL and the Israel and Lebanese armies as saying that the order to open fire in Tuesday’s border skirmish had 'come directly from the [army] command.'"[here]
8-9-2010 J E Dyer on the threat of a reckless Hizbullized (to coin a word) Lebanese army [here]

The Turkish "Humanitarian" Armada -- An Italian View

UPDATING 6-14 & 10-17-2010 at bottom

The peace process means peace of mind for antisemites

Fiamma Nirenstein, the deputy chairperson of the foreign affairs committee of the Italian Chamber of Deputies, discerns a slight improvement in the international view of Israel's action to stop the fake humanitarian Turkish armada from breaking the blockade of Gaza, now ruled by Islamic fanatics and bigots. Her piece is remarkable for her real knowledge of what was going on compared to the fashionable, simplistic Judeophobic accounts elsewhere in the world's "news" media.


The Left Is Now Rethinking: Enough Mud on Israel

Il Giornale 9 June 2‏010

After the accusations poured on Israel, now comes the mea culpa of the international press and observers. Even Bernard-Henri Levy condemns the disinformation. Reuters is accused: blood and knives removed from the photos

* * * * * * *

Israel is a major subject for discussion in today’s world. It is the apple of discord, the preferred pretext for attacking the West, the best weapon for legitimizing the old striped totalitarian Soviet peace flag. It is the worm that gnaws at the soul of Leftist Jews who adore their narcissistic-diasporic legitimization that exempts them from the hardly elegant experience of being a people, indeed, a nation. Above all, it is the issue that enables the antisemites to express themselves under cover and enables the automatic UN majority to be strong. It is also the best of the red capes to wave in front of the Islamist bull, as Ahmadinejad did in Istanbul, when he promised to wipe out Israel, and as Bashar Assad did in Syria and Erdogan, the Turkish prime minister, did, who is building an Islamist career for his country by threatening Israel.

But excess is deforming and the huge amount of mud poured on Israel lately has disgusted even Bernard-Henri Levy, one of the most active critics of Israeli policy (He and others authored the leftist so-called JCall document against the Israeli government and criticized Israel immediately after the flotilla event). Precisely in HaAretz, a pacifist, hypercritical paper, he condemned the disinformation and criminalization deployed against Israel, while retaining his reservations about the “stupidity” of the operation and of the Netanyahu government.

The world is rethinking, and maybe that is also because the slow realization of reality is weakening the pressure, Israel is showing courage on the issue of a [international investigating] commission. Jerusalem has many good reasons for rejecting an international commission that, according to the UN Council for Human Rights (Italy voted No), is supposed to investigate the behavior of the Jewish State during the unfortunate boarding and takeover of the ship Marmara. The French foreign minister Bernard Kouchner considers it a good idea and in order to reinforce the meaning of the commission he requests that Turkey take part in it. That is strange, given the certainly non-neutral role of Turkey in that event and given that Erdogan stokes the fire and threatens, together with Ahmadinejad, to go to the coast of Gaza with his own ships, even personally.

In general, Israel’s experience with investigating commissions, with UN institutions moreover, has been disastrous. An outstanding illustration was the commission directed by Judge Goldstone which used only sources sympathetic to the Palestinians to draw up a devastating report about the Gaza War. In fact, it forbade Israel to defend itself and quoted only activist-witnesses that call armed units and human shields for Hamas “civilians.” Israel, that can judge itself very severely by itself, as demonstrated by the Winograd Commission that was pitiless on the Lebanon War of 2006 and caused the dismissal of many civilians and military men, is planning therefore at the moment two independent investigating commissions, even if Netanyahu is still awaiting American approval for the second: The first, military one, will be guided by General Giora Eiland, a calm personality, admired for being cultured; the second is to be made up of local jurists, expert on international and maritime law and of two international jurists, one an American, as observers. It will not be their duty to interrogate the soldiers, whom Bibi is careful not to let be directly accused. The commission should examine the conditions of the encounter on the ship Marmara, the legality of the naval blockade, the question of “proportion” in the encounter.

In reality, with the passage of the hours, as many international observers, the press, the TV, Bernard-Henri Levy and companions make their mea culpas, the circumstances of the event on the Marmara have become ever clearer. Criticisms have been made by many of the military modality of the attack, but that the “pacifist” ship was transporting armed thugs belonging to an organization that had supplied weapons to Hamas, to the Islamic Jihad and even to al-Qa`ida and that it was sprinkled with persons who wanted to win paradise through becoming shahids, is certain.

What has not been well clarified, however, is the role of Turkey, that launched the fleet although warned of the danger that that entailed; that knew who the men of the IHH were, and that allowed them to embark anyhow in conspicuous numbers from a different port without checking them, that now rides the event in the most blatant way, using Istanbul as a launch platform for bellicose operations. Turkey acts enthusiastically in every domain: It was reprimanded by Angela Merkel by her defining herself as prime minister for the Turks who live in Germany; it raised eyebrows when it sought de facto to save Iran from the sanctions by offering to enrich Iran’s uranium itself; when a radar station within Turkey collapsed unexpectedly while NATO is supposed to have needed information on Georgia, obtained by radar.

Standing out is the fact that Abu Mazen went personally to Erdogan to explain to him that what he is doing gives Hamas an advantage over its worst enemy, Fatah. A fire like the one that Turkey is threatening to kindle to Israel’s detriment can spread even to the detriment of the arsonists.

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It may well be that world public opinion is turning away from the lies of Erdogan and of his Western comrades in the "Free Gaza movement." After all, there has been too much real information that emerged before and after the boarding of the Mavi Marmara about the thuggish character of the IHH operatives on the boat who attacked Israeli commandos who came down one by one from a helicopter, thereby facilitating the endeavor of the Turkish thugs to seize and beat and stab them. That was an Israeli mistake of intelligence evaluation and of command. But the thuggish character of the "peacemongers" was obvious for all to see in many videos and audio recordings and still photos. So even many of the usual anti-Israel hypocrites had to step back and reconsider what went on.

What is disappointing in the article above is that Israel's govt and prime minister seem to be giving in to a hypocritical demand by certain Western govts and the UN, etc., that an "international invesigating commission" be set up to investigate only Israel and not Turkey, an investigation that would supposedly be "transparent" and "impartial" and any other suitable adjective that the reader may care to add . Meanwhile, Erdogan and Ahmadinejad's open incitement to war and threats of war against Israel are not openly or directly condemned by the West, including the USA. Israel should take its case to the so-called International Court of Justice at the Hague where of course, Israel will get no justice because of the inherently political structure of the ICJ and the UN as a whole, but it would be helpful to raise the issue, to make the accusations anyhow, to accuse, in my opinion. The UN "human rights council," which is dominated by tyrannies and, in particular, the Organization of the Islamic Conference [OIC] (its chairman a Turk named Ihsanoglu), should not be allowed to be the party making accusations and demanding investigations. The role of the Islamist Turkish govt of Erdogan in instigating and executing this affair should be exposed to the whole world.
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UPDATING 6-14-2010
Eve Garrard, a writer, points out some of the widespread hypocrisy deployed against Israel, especially on account of the Turkish armada incident [here].
Leon de Winter, Dutch novelist, perceives the international Left's hypocrisy over the Turkish armada [here]
UPDATING 10-17-2010 The important Italian daily, Il Giornale [which Fiamma Nirenstein writes for] of 1 June 2010 judged that "Israel did right to shoot" at violent jihadist thugs on the Mavi Marmara [here]. "With the excuse of pacifism, a fleet of ships wanted to violate the sovereignty of the Jewish state and bring aid to Hamas." The novelist Amos Oz disagreed with the Israeli government decision to stop the "aid convoy." But he adds, "I don't know them, these pacifists. Many of them cannot be defined as such. They are Islamic militants sympathizing with Hamas. They have ties with terrorist organizations. I believe that they were looking for a provocation. This is a fact. Among them, to be sure, were pacifists in good faith. . ." Here's a problem. Can pacifists in "good faith" sympathize with Hamas? Were they so ignorant as not to know what Hamas stands for? That their convoy was making publicity for Hamas? Were they 100%, sincere and consistent pacifists?

Hamas Goes along with Corruption in Noah's Time and Now

Hamas goes along with corruption both in today's world and in the Biblical story of Noah and the Flood, read last sabbath in synagogues around the world. How so?

Hamas is a Hebrew word meaning brutality, thuggery, violence and the like. It appears in Genesis 6:11.
And the Earth became corrupt before God and the earth was full of hamas.

[ ותשחת הארץ לפני האלקים ותמלא הארץ חמס [בראשית ו, יא

Isn't that true today? The earth is corrupt and full of violence, thuggery, brutality. Who can deny it? And an Arab/Muslim terrorist organization, named Hamas, is a major perpetrator of brutality and thuggery against Jews and against its own people. Yet, major governments, Western govts, that pose as defenders of civilization, the United Kingdom & United States and others, not to mention the European Union, court the Hamas. Some want to bring it into "the political process" for the sake of making peace with Israel, supposedly. Yet Hamas's charter distinctly states the aim of destroying Israel, indeed, the charter expresses the aspiration to genocide of Jews. This is done by quoting a medieval Muslim hadith tradition in Article 7. To summarize: At Judgment Day the Muslims will kill Jews. The Jews will hide behind rocks and trees. The rocks and trees will address the Muslims, saying: A Jew is hiding behind me. Come kill him.

Those who cannot recognize that that is a call to genocide are corrupt. I don't say that they are stupid, for even a moron can understand what it means. Yet Tony Blair and his minion in British intelligence, the aptly named Alistair Crooke, have been dealing with Hamas for years, trying to bring them into the "political process" or "peace process." Condoleeza Rice, Prez Bush II's secretary of state, insisted that Hamas had to be allowed to take part in Palestinian Authority elections, for the sake of democracy. Other than the fact that Hamas is not truly democratic --unless democracy merely means majority rule, even if minority rights are not respected-- the Oslo Accords of 1993 banned any party from Palestinian Authority elections that did not accept the Accords and the so-called "peace process." Hamas does not accept those accords and openly declares the aim of destroying Israel and killing the Jews. Nevertheless, Ms Rice demanded Hamas participation in PA elections against the disagreement of both Israel and Abu Mazen's Palestinian Authority. It was all for the sake of democracy. Ms Rice just loves democracy.

Humorists describe Hamas' commitment to democracy as: One man one vote one time. In other words, once they get in power, they will never give it up willingly.

The corruption in Washington is not limited to Rice. All sorts of think-tank half-wits, "policy wonks," are calling for contact with Hamas and its elder sister, the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, which is the main source of Hamas ideology. These calls for an opening to Hamas and the MB are made in the name of "peace" and "democracy." Well, maybe it is all a matter of definition. I have no doubt that James Jones, the US national insecurity advisor is licking his chops at the thought of the bloodthirsty Hamas being elevated higher than it already is. Here the corrupt in Western govts embrace the party of lies and brutality, the Hamas.

Another blatant case of corruption is the United Nations, which was founded as an instrument -- the naive believed-- of attaining world peace. Within the UN, perhaps the most corrupt body is the UN "human rights commission," now renamed "human rights council." The body remains corrupt and a corruptor of the UN's original high ideals in a very Orwellian manner. Christian Rocca put it this way, in an article for Il Foglio April 27, 2005.

At the UN, the Torturers Watch over Human Rights

China, Cuba, Sudan, Syria, Saudi Arabia and Libya have three things in common: they are ferocious dictatorships, they reject the concept of human rights, and they are enthusiastic members of the UN Human Rights Commission. In 2003, Libya even presided over its work... The regimes that torture and repress and keep their own subjects in chains are never missing from the Commission. Indeed, they are the ones that seek most tenaciously to get a seat at Geneva.... Even Kofi Annan's wise men have recognized that some countries go into the Commission "not to reinforce human rights but to protect themselves against criticism or to criticize other countries."

Here's Rocca's original:

Cina, Cuba, Sudan, Siria, Arabia Saudita e Libia hanno in comune tre cose: sono feroci dittature, rifiutano il concetto di diritti umani e sono stati membri entusiasti della commissione dell’Onu sui diritti umani. La Libia nel 2003 ha addirittura presieduto i lavori, mentre nel 2002, cioè subito dopo l’11/9, gli Stati Uniti sono stati esclusi dalla commissione per effetto della strana alleanza tra le dittature e quei paesi europei contrari alla politica di Bush. I regimi che torturano e reprimono e tengono in catene i propri sudditi non mancano mai dentro la commissione, anzi sono quelli che cercano più tenacemente di ottenere uno scranno a Ginevra. La metà di quei regimi che il rapporto annuale di Freedom House definisce “the worst of the worst”, “il peggio del peggio”, vuole entrare, ed entra, nella commissione. Il motivo è semplice: dall’interno è più facile evitare le critiche per non aver rispettato i diritti umani. Anche i saggi di Kofi Annan hanno riconosciuto che alcuni paesi entrano nella commissione “non per rafforzare i diritti umani, ma per proteggere se stessi contro le critiche oppure per criticare altri paesi”.

So "human rights" are used to promote political interests of states against other states and, no doubt, against their own peoples. Meanwhile, the UN "human rights council" with its Orwellian name is working to whitewash Hamas through the ill-begotten Goldstone Report. Corrupt?

Then we have the new JStreet gang in Washington that pretends to be pro-Israel and pro-"peace." Like Condi Rice, JStreet looks with favor on Hamas, viewing it as a needed part of the "peace process." By having James Jones, the Obama White House's national insecurity advisor, as the main speaker at its Washington conclave JStreet demonstrates once again that it was created with George Soros' money to support the State Department's long-standing anti-Israel policy. Various reports in the media indicate that JStreet sees encouraging State Dept and White House pressure on Israel to make concessions to Arab mass murderers as a main part of its mission.

The last case of corruption that we will now take up [but not necessarily the least] is the censorship by Yale University of a book published by the Yale Univ Press on the Muhammad Cartoons affair. A book about this affair ought to contain the cartoons too, so that readers know what is being talked about, right? Well, not at Yale or its Yale Univ Press. Martin Kramer suggests that Yale is trying to establish monetary relationships with Saudi Arabia and the oil rich Persian Gulf states. One potential Saudi contributor to Yale is Prince al-Waleed. We wouldn't want to insult our benefactors by publishing the cartoons that they didn't like, would we? So at Yale, academic standards go out the window, while money-grubbing comes in through the front door as Yale awaits its prince charming.

Of course, quite a few other American universities have already taken big bucks from rich Arabs to set up Muslim study centers and Islamic institutes and Middle Eastern studies centers and so forth, while allowing their Islamic benefactors/paymasters to set the terms for conduct and for research limits at these centers. The American university is already corrupt. Yale is not the first.
Nor the last.

And the Earth became corrupt and full of Hamas.

Zbig Brzezinski Wants to Protect the Iranian Bomb Project

Zbig and Jimmy Carter helped Ayatollah Khomeini take over Iran in early 1979, unceremoniously pushing out the Shah, an American ally. By aiding --even sponsoring-- Khomeini's takeover, the Carter administration opened the road for Ahmadinejad, the current Iranian president, who is presiding over a project to develop nuclear bombs in violation of Iran's commitment to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Neither Pres. Obama nor Pres. Bush before him is showing any real determination to stop this very dangerous eventuality from coming to fruition. Zbig Brzezinski must feel that he did not do enough damage when Carter was president. He now urges the Obama administration to protect the Iranian Nuclear Bomb project from Israel, although Israel has grounds under international law and the UN charter to attack Iran and destroy its bomb-making efforts, since Iran under A-jad has already threatened to destroy Israel. Here is Zbig at his best or his worst [about the same]:

The national security adviser for former President Jimmy Carter, Zbigniew Brzezinski, gave an interview to The Daily Beast in which he suggested President Obama should make it clear to Israel that if they attempt to attack Iran's nuclear weapons sites the U.S. Air Force will stop them.

"We are not exactly impotent little babies," Brzezinski said. "They have to fly over our airspace in Iraq. Are we just going to sit there and watch? ... We have to be serious about denying them that right. That means a denial where you aren’t just saying it. If they fly over, you go up and confront them. They have the choice of turning back or not. No one wishes for this but it could be a 'Liberty' in reverse."

The USS Liberty was a U.S. Navy technical research ship that the Israeli Air Force mistakenly attacked during the Six Day War in 1967.

Brzezinski endorsed then-Sen. Obama's presidential campaign in August 2007, which at the time was portrayed in the media as a boost to Obama's foreign policy cred. The Washington Post reported: "Barack Obama, combating the perception that he is too young and inexperienced to handle a dangerous world, got a boost yesterday from a paragon of foreign policy eminence, Zbigniew Brzezinski."

Brzezinski was never an official campaign adviser, but Republicans jumped on the endorsement to push the meme that Obama wouldn't be a friend to Israel, as Brzezinski's views of Israel attracted criticism from some quarters in the American Jewish community.

“Brzezinski is not an adviser to the campaign,” former Ambassador Dennis Ross, then a senior adviser on Middle East affairs to the Obama campaign, said at the time. “There is a lot of disinformation that is being pushed, but he is not an adviser to the campaign. Brzezinski came out and supported Obama early because of the war in Iraq. A year or so ago they talked a couple of times. That’s the extent of it, and Sen. Obama has made it clear that on other Middle Eastern issues, Brzezinski is not who he looks to. They don’t have the same views.”

Brzezinski plays no role in the Obama administration; the White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. [ABCNews 20 Sept 2009]

--end--

Note Zbig's contempt for Iraqi sovereignty. He describes Iraqi airspace as "our airspace," that is, United States airspace. However, allowing Iran to get the Bomb is not healthy for the American people --or for the rest of the world for that matter.
Also note that Zbig's hostility to Israel is palpable in the quotes above. He surely hates Israel more than the current Iranian regime, if he is opposed to them at all in any way.
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Earlier posts on Zbig on Emet m'Tsiyon [here & here]

Sarkozy Tries to Bring Obama back down to Earth

One blogger wrote that Sarkozy "emasculated" Obama at the special Security Council meeting last Thursday in New York, that was supposed to be devoted to avoiding nuclear proliferation. I would not go so far as that blogger, but it seems to me that Sarkozy embarassed the American president, in remarks that Sarkozy apparently made in sincere exasperation after listening to Obama talk about universal nuclear disarmament as his dream when the current problem, the immediate problem, is the obtaining of nuclear bombs by Iran and North Korea.

Sarkozy said:

Mr President Obama, I support the outstretched arm of the Americans.
What have these proposals for dialogue brought to the international community?
Nothing.
More enriched uranium, more centrifuges, and to top it off, last but not least [Sarkozy's words in English], a declaration by the Iranian leaders proposing to erase a member of the United Nations from the map. There is a time when the facts are stubborn and one must take decisions. If we want a world without nuclear weapons on the way, let us not accept violations of the international rules. [additional text translated here][CNN video]

And in the original French:

Monsieur Président Obama, je soutiens la main tendue des Américains.
Qu'ont amené à la communauté internationale ces propositions de dialogue?
Rien. Plus d’uranium enrichi, plus de centrifugeuses, et de surcroît, last but not least [en anglais], une déclaration des dirigeants iraniens proposant de rayer de la carte un membre de l’Organisation des Nations Unies. Il y a un moment où les faits sont têtus et il faut prendre des décisions. Si nous voulons un monde sans armes nucléaires à l’arrivée, n’acceptons pas la violation des règles internationale. [L'article sur ce suject sur L'Express, 25 Septembre 2009, ici]

At least somebody among the world's political leaders, understands reality. While Obama avoided talking about how to deal with Iran, which violates its signature on the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, speaking more generally instead about "a world without nuclear weapons," Sarkozy was quite specific. He mentioned Iran's violation of international law referring implicitly to both its violation of its signature on the Non-Proliferation Treaty and to its threat to destroy Israel, whereas threats against other states are also forbidden by the UN Charter.

The American people probably did not realize what problems they were going to get into by electing President Obama. With all his delays and postponed deadlines and evasion of the issue, one might think that he wants Iran to get nuclear bombs!! Zbig Brzezinski would be proud of his protégé.
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Previous posts on the Iranian Bomb project at Emet m'Tsiyon:
Arab states too oppose an Iranian Bomb [here] & US delegate to the IAEA (Int'l Atomic Energy Agency) talks a good game warning of Iranian deception in working towards a bomb, but the Bush Administration does little concrete against the Iranian Bomb project [here]
Sarkozy govt in France more evenhanded, less pro-Arab than before [here]

Barack Hussein Obama: Slick, Subtle, Sinister and Deceitful -- And Racist against Jews

UPDATING 9-28-2009. Diagram of Obama's insinuations at bottom. 11-2-2009

Anti-Zionism is the anti-imperialism of fools

Many lies resembling truth, Hesiod

Barack Hussein Obama's UN General Assembly speech was racist in denying Jewish rights to settle in Judea-Samaria and Gaza [settlements are not "legitimate"]. It also subtly justified Hamas rocket attacks on Israel. How so?

We must remember that the greatest price of this conflict is not paid by us. It's not paid by politicians. It's paid by the Israeli girl in Sderot who closes her eyes in fear that a rocket will take her life in the middle of the night. It's paid for by the Palestinian boy in Gaza who has no clean water and no country to call his own. These are all God's children. And after all the politics and all the posturing, this is about the right of every human being to live with dignity and security. That is a lesson embedded in the three great faiths that call one small slice of Earth the Holy Land.

Here Obama insinuates that Israel is to blame for the "boy in Gaza who has no clean water and no country to call his own." This is done by juxtaposition with the Sderot girl under rocket attack, obviously a deliberate act of Arab terrorists in Gaza, and the carry over from that situation to the "boy in Gaza who has no clean water. . ." Israel regularly supplies water to Gaza despite the de facto state of war with that territory. Hamas, which has governed Gaza since January 2006 is responsible for the lack of clean water of Gaza, if the claim is true at all. Huge sums of international aid from rich Arab states, from the EU, the USA, and Japan, as well as various EU states separately, have been available to Hamas and the Palestinian Authority [PLO/Fatah] before it for building infrastructure, for an improved society and for a state. But Hamas and the PA have generally avoided building water and sewage facilities, homes, hospitals, etc., for their people. It is more politically useful to keep them visibly poor so that they have something to blame Israel for. Meanwhile, the foreign funds go to the insiders whose hands are close to the plate, as well as for buying weapons, explosives, etc. Indeed Hamas and the Palestinian Authority both don't much care for building infrastructure. Both would rather use the money to fight jihad. Certainly, good, clean drinking water for that Gaza boy is far down on the list of priorities.

Obama also lies in the claim about the boy in Gaza having "no country to call his own." After all, Gaza is governed by Arabs, by his fellow Palestinian Arabs.


Candidate Barack Obama in Sderot receiving a T-shirt saying "I love Sderot" from then Sderot mayor Eli Moyal [summer 2008]. Note the horizontal stacks of remnants of rockets shot at Sderot from Gaza. This collection is kept at the Sderot police station.

Now, if Israel is to blame for a Gaza child lacking clean water, then maybe Hamas is right to shoot rockets at the civilian population of the oppressor state. Hence, Obama was justifying Hamas shooting rockets by insinuation, by comparing deliberate acts of Hamas and other Gaza terrorist groups [shooting rockets] with the supposed lack of "clean water" which is Hamas and PA's fault, if it is true at all, not Israel's fault.

This is a very slick attack by Obama on Israel. The part of his UN GA speech dealing with Israel was a rather clever propaganda/psychological warfare assault on Israel. To wit, Israel has things and denies them to the poor folk of Gaza. Israel causes their deprivation.

Barack Hussein Obama is also signaling an overture to Hamas by these basically soft comments, in which seeming criticism of Hamas for rocket shooting is vitiated by blaming Israel for deprivation in Gaza.

Of Obama's denial of "legitimacy" to Jewish rights to live across the 1949 armistice line in Judea-Samaria is a racist position. Is he a friend of Israel?
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UPDATING 9-28-2009
Obama draws false parallels in his UN GA speech
He clearly insinuates Israeli moral equivalency with Hamas, making Israel at fault for Hamas' rockets, blaming Israel for infrastructure and political problems in Gaza.
Let's look at this in diagram form:
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A Child Victim on Each Side //\\ What Does Each Suffer & Who Causes It?

1)
the Israeli girl in Sderot } She fears "that a rocket will take her life" --
the Israeli girl in Sderot } - - a rocket shot by Hamas or other Gaza terrorists,
the Israeli girl in Sderot } - - but Obama doesn't say who shoots the rockets.
2)
the Palestinian boy in Gaza} He "has no clean water and no country" --
the Palestinian boy in Gaza} Obama doesn't say who denies the
the Palestinian boy in Gaza} boy "clean water" and a "country." but he insinuates that it is Israel because if her suffering is caused by the other side [Hamas/other Gaza terrorists], then his suffering too is caused by the other side [that is, Israel].

So Israel is guilty by insinuation of denying "clean water" and a "country" to the Gaza boy. This is bad enough, but these alleged denials by Israel could also be considered justified reasons for war [casus belli] and therefore Israel may be or is guilty that Hamas and other Gaza terrorists shoot rockets at its civilian population.

As said above, in fact Israel supplies drinking water to Gaza. If there are shortages in drinking water in Gaza, then Hamas is responsible as explained above. Further, does the Gaza boy really lack a country? After all, Gaza is self-governing and generously supplied with funds by outside donors. Perhaps the boy doesn't have the country that he wants. Maybe. Then we could ask about the Jews' lack of a country, their country, for more than a thousand years, partly because of Arab rule in the Land of Israel. Maybe the Hamas' program for genocide of the Jews [as per Article 7 of the Hamas charter] is good reason for Israel not to let Hamas expand its sphere of territorial control.

Obama is using the gestalt effect here. This effect depends on insinuation and following a logical pattern even to where it is not explicit.
Besides the obnoxious moral equivalency here, Obama is justifying Hamas attacks on Israel and uttering lies.
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Also see Meryl Yourish on the UN speech [here]
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UPDATING 11-2-2009 Obama's remarks on the boy in Gaza quoted above seem, on further thought, to touch on old, traditional Judeophobic themes. I wonder what his speechwriter intended. These themes are:
1- Jews harming an innocent boy, as in the typical ritual murder charge [Hugh of Lincoln, Simon of Trent, the Beilis case], &
2-- Jews poisoning wells, since Israel denies "clean water" to "the Palestinian boy in Gaza." He is not making the innuendo that Israel denies water to the boy in Gaza, but that the water, if supplied, is not "clean," that it is --somehow-- unhealthy, maybe poisonous.

Camera confirms that Israel sends water to Gaza:
". . . despite the virtural declaration of war against Israel by the Hamas rulers of Gaza, Israel still sends to Gaza another 4 MCM of Israeli water annually. "

What Prime Minister Netanyahu Ought to Tell the UN General Assembly

PM Netanyahu ought to tell the world through the UN Assembly several things that he failed to mention in previous speeches.

1- The Jews have been historically oppressed, persecuted, exploited monetarily and humiliated over the centuries in both the West and the Arab-ruled lands.

2- Arabs collaborated in the Holocaust, most notably the chief Palestinian Arab leader, Haj Amin el-Husseini [al-Husayni].

3- The continuing dehumanization and demonization of Jews in most Arabs lands, in the broadcast and print media, in the schools, mosques, public discourse, are an obstacle to peace.

4- Likewise, the continuing dehumanization, etc. of Jews in some European lands [including EU states] is an obstacle to peace.

5- Poverty and lack of good drinking water and other failures of infrastructure in Gaza and the other Palestinian Authority zones are the fault of the PLO, PA, and Hamas which have not used the billions of dollars and euros received from international donors for constructive purposes
like water and sewage plants, housing, homes, hospitals, and the like. They prefer to use the money for funding terrorism and enriching the in crowd, the top leaders and their associates who are closest to the plate, to the pie pan.

6- Jewish rights to live in Judea-Samaria are grounded in historical reality of Jewish history, as well as being recognized by the League of Nations in 1922.

The Moral Incompetence of the UN, of its "human rights council," and of the UNHRC's Goldstone Commission

UPDATINGS 9-16 & 9-21-2009 & 10-21-2009 & 11-27-2009 links added at bottom

The Goldstone Commission report is now delivered. But vital issues concerning its background remain. Before having time to deal with analysis of the report, which is now going on, here are considerations about the moral competence of the UN itself in general, of the UN "human rights council" in particular, and of some members of the commission. This statement was prepared earlier and is still valid of course.

Can the world expect a reasonable, factual judgment about human rights violations during January’s Gaza War, “Cast Lead,” to emerge from the upcoming report of the Goldstone Commission? Indeed, we can expect the opposite.

First of all, we may say in general that the UN is a body made up of states, each of which has its own interests –which may in themselves be right or wrong, just or unjust. Yet, secondly, the Goldstone Commission was appointed by the UN’s Human Rights Council, one of the more disreputable, more Orwellian, of UN bodies.

Thirdly, the mandate that this “Human Rights Council” gave to Goldstone refers only to crimes supposedly committed by Israel, not to crimes committed by Hamas against Israeli civilians and its own people through the use of “human shields” explicitly forbidden by the international laws of war. This makes the Goldstone Commission rather obviously one-sided. The Commission did come to Israel to take testimony but would not go to Sderot to hear witnesses there. Yet Sderot had been a target of rockets shot from Gaza for eight years at the time of the war. Hence, Goldstone’s Commission could not see with their own eyes the results of Hamas rocket bombardments there nor learn from victims there of how they and their children had suffered from Hamas rockets.

Fourthly, a member of Goldstone’s Commission is one Christine Chinkin who has already very blatantly expressed her hostility to Israel.

How can a balanced, reasonable, factually based report come out of this background?

Now, we can elaborate on points made above. The UN is a collection of states, each taking part in UN debates, votes, and other activities with a view toward protecting or advancing its own interests, be they reasonable or unreasonable, just or unjust, or perhaps just in the view of that state’s government and/or its people. In this group of states, the 20-odd Arab League states have special power, since they tend to vote as a bloc on many issues, especially in regard to Israel. The Arabs are reinforced by more than thirty non-Arab Muslim states that sit with the Arabs in the OIC, the Organization of the Islamic Conference. The OIC with its nearly sixty members is in an especially favorable position in the UN because of what Americans call “logrolling.” That is, in a voting assembly, a large bloc of votes or delegates can get its way without being a majority. That is because other delegates want the support of the bloc for their own interests. Hence, a state that is neither Arab nor Muslim will be tempted to support the Arab League or OIC position in UN voting in order to obtain support for its own positions, needs, interests, etc. One glimpse of the OIC’s character came at a meeting in Malaysia several years ago. This OIC conclave was the venue for an ugly, bigoted attack on Jews by Mahathir Muhammad, then prime minister of Malaysia. He charged that Jews controlled the world and its economy, although a half-dozen states belonging to the OIC, such as Kuwait, Bahrain, Dubai, Qatar, Abu Dhabi are among the states with the highest per capita income in the world, exceeding many Western countries.

Now, Malaysia brings us to another problem of the UN “Human Rights” Council. The legislation in Malaysia makes almost half the population there suffer from inferior rights and unjust restrictions. I am not referring to the women, although their status is legally inferior. I am referring to the non-Muslims in Malaysia, most of them of Chinese and Indian descent. They are not Europeans. They suffer from the “Bhumiputra system.” This is a whole system of limited freedoms, inferior rights, and legal restrictions imposed on non-Muslims. It is a system inspired by traditional Muslim law. Yet the Malaysian denial of human rights on religious and ethnic grounds is not the subject of regular debate and condemnation at the UN “Human Rights” Council. Indeed, in 2006, Malaysia was selected for a three-year term as a member of the Council!! [see link: http://forum-asia.org/hrc/?p=180#more-180 ]

In the same vein, Libya, an oil rich Arab despotism, was elected to be chairman of the predecessor body of the UN Human Rights Council, the UN Human Rights Commission, in January 2003. At that time, Libya was holding as prisoners five Bulgarian nurses working in Libya plus one Palestinian Arab physician on the spurious charges of deliberately infecting Libyan children with AIDS. The nurses were sentenced to death by firing squad [link: http://www.aegis.com/news/re/2004/RE040511.html ] Here we are not talking about a mere member of the HR Commission but about the chairman. In any case, the chief difference between the previous UN HR Commission and the present UN HR Council is the name council instead of commission. The UN Human Rights Commission was the UN body that organized the monstruous 2001 anti-Jewish hate fest in Durban where mobs full of hate for Jews roamed the grounds of the so-called "anti-racism" conference. Mary Robinson was the UN High Commissioner for "Human Rights" at that time. She prepared the Durban conference in cooperation with the regime of the bigoted ayatollahs in Teheran, Iran.

The Human Rights Council [formerly HR Commission] was and is Orwellian because it is a body made up –even led in Libya’s case— by states that regularly abuse human rights yet hide behind the motto, the cover of human rights. That is, a lofty principle hides a reality that violates the lofty principle. As far as many Muslim state members are concerned, they do not recognize or acknowledge human rights even in principle, since they adhere to traditional Muslim law, the Shari`ah, that grants rights solely to Muslims whereas non-Muslims are dependent on the whims of the Muslims. Moreover, the Muslim states affirmed their opposition to the principle of human rights, which must be universal by definition [that is, applied to all humans], by their support of the Cairo Declaration of Human Rights in Islam [1990] that was meant as a rejection of the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights [1948]. Having states that reject the very concept of human rights being dominant --or even only influential-- in a world council ostensibly devoted to human rights is one of the many Orwellian absurdities that mark the UN but are seldom noted by diplomats, politicians, and the communications media.

The mandate of Goldstone’s Commission is found here. On January 12, 2009, United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHCR) adopted Resolution S-9/1. The Council:

14. Decides to dispatch an urgent, independent international fact-finding mission, to be appointed by the President of the Council, to investigate all violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law by the occupying Power, Israel, against the Palestinian people throughout the Occupied Palestinian Territory, particularly in the occupied Gaza Strip, due to the current aggression, and calls upon Israel not to obstruct the process of investigation and to fully cooperate with the mission

Note that
1) Israel is called "the occupying power" in Gaza, although Israeli troops had not been stationed in Gaza since 2005; this is willful misinterpretation of "occupation."
2) the "Palestinian people" is a victim, not the people of Israel. This is a form of racism.
3) Israel's defensive war is stigmatized as "the current aggression."

This is the Goldstone Commission's mandate. It does not recognize the possibility that Hamas may have committed war crimes before and during the January war in Gaza.

Lastly, we have the bias of members of the Commission. Christine Chinkin, one member in good standing, has openly and blatantly expressed her hatred for Israel. She said in a public statement with others of her ilk:

"Israel’s bombardment of Gaza is not self-defence – it’s a war crime."

As the blogger Ami Isseroff has commented, "She has already decided the matter, it would seem that from her point of view there is no need to have any investigation. In a fair judicial procedure, a judge like Chinkin would have to recuse herself, but the nature of this "judicial procedure" should already be evident."

Goldstone himself, a former judge in South Africa who cooperated with apartheid [see letter of Louis Garb, Jerusalem Post, 3 September 2009], has been a board member of the dishonest and discredited “Human Rights Watch,” another body with an Orwellian character

We cannot expect any reasonable, fair, honest judgment to emerge from the forthcoming Goldstone Commission report.

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Goldstone has now --15 September 2009-- delivered his report to that paragon of righteousness, the UN. He and his commission performed as badly as expected.

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UPDATING 9-16-2009

Pres Shimon Peres on Goldstone report [here]

Lorenzo Cremonesi's report in Corriere della Sera about Hamas use of human shields during the Gaza war [in English here][in italiano qui], January 21, 2009.
Title in Italian:
"'Cosi i ragazzini di Hamas ci hanno utilizzato come bersagli' Abitanti di Gaza accusano i militanti islamici: 'Ci impedivano di lasciare le case e da li sparavano'"
"'Thus the Hamas boys used us as targets'. Inhabitants of Gaza accuse the Islamic militants: 'They prevented us from leaving the houses and shot from them.'"

Alan Dershowitz [here]

Ari Shavit in HaArets on double standard for killing civilians [here].

Israel's foreign minister on Goldstone report [here]

Augean Stables here & here.

Jackson Diehl of the WaPo: "As for the Goldstone report, the heat it briefly produced last week will quickly dissipate; the panel was discredited from the outset because of its appointment by the grotesquely politicized U.N. Human Rights Council." [see here]

10-21-2009 Claudia Rosett in Forbes [here]
See the all important website on the "Goldstone Report", Understanding the Goldstone Report [here]

Gregg Rickman on UN "Human Rights" Council [here; hat tip SPME]
Edwin Bennatan on goldstone, UNHRC, HRW, and related matters [here]
UPDATING 11-27-2009 Hugh Fitzgerald on UN corruption generally, & pro-Arab, Judeophobic corruption in particular [here]