Love of the Land: Blast from the Past: Power

Blast from the Past: Power

Jon
Divest This!
12 April '10

As we await what comes next at UC Berkeley, I thought I'd dredge out some real old stuff, things I wrote years ago when divestment came-a-calling at Somerville, Massachusetts. It's interesting to note that now that BDS is attempting to use the paddles of life to resurrect itself, how little their arguments (or required rebuttals) have actually changed...

Does anyone ever wonder why the Palestinians, alone among peoples without a state, have their own seat at the UN (an organization that spends almost a quarter of its time fighting on their behalf)?

Why does the Palestinian refugee problem have its own international organization (UNWRA) with annual budget of $350 million, while every other refugee in the world (almost twenty million at last count) are lumped together in the "other" category, supported by the United Nationals High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR)?

Why is Palestinian statehood one of the planet's top foreign policy goals, yet independence of for Kurds, Tibetans and Basques has been permanently removed from the international agenda? Why is Palestinian suffering on the West Bank being debated in universities, cities, towns and churches unendingly as Sudanese bury two million people unlamented?

(Read full article)

Love of the Land: Blast from the Past: Power

Love of the Land: President Obama’s Priorities: Human Rights Be Damned

President Obama’s Priorities: Human Rights Be Damned

Anne Bayefsky
Commentarymagazine.com
26 March '10

On Friday, March 26, 2010, the UN Human Rights Council’s month-long session ended, along with any justification for believing that President Obama is a champion of human rights. The president insisted that America join the UN’s lead human-rights body for the first time very early in his presidency, and the consequences are now painfully clear. The enemies of democracy and freedom are having a field day at the expense of American interests and values.

The Council, which meets in Geneva, is the personal playground of the Organization of the Islamic Conference. They hold the balance of power by controlling the Asian and African regional groups, which together form a majority at the Council. The Council’s agenda is accordingly fixated on issues of priority to the Islamic bloc -- number one, delegitimizing Israel; number two, trumping free speech in the name of Islam; and number three, avoiding any criticism of human-rights violations in their own backyards. None of which has anything to do with protecting human rights.

More troubling than the Council’s growing infamy, however, is the Obama administration’s relationship to it. The America on display in Geneva is an embarrassment, and the only people oblivious to how the U.S. is perceived by those assembled are the American representatives themselves.

Having jumped on the Council bandwagon last year without insisting on any reform-minded preconditions, U.S. diplomats now sit there taking it on the chin and lending predictable and immutable Council routines undeserved legitimacy. This past session, the Council adopted five resolutions condemning Israel and fewer resolutions on the rest of the world combined: one each on the Democratic Republic of the Congo, North Korea, Burma/Myanmar, and Guinea.

The other 187 states on the planet got a free pass from the Council, notwithstanding the pressing reality of Nigeria’s butchered Christians, Saudi Arabia’s gender apartheid, Egypt’s systematic torture, China’s iron fist, Sudan’s genocide, and Russia’s slain human-rights defenders. In fact, over the entire four-year history of the Council, more than half of all resolutions and decisions condemning any state have been directed at Israel alone.

(Read full article)

Love of the Land: President Obama’s Priorities: Human Rights Be Damned

Love of the Land: ECLJ: Goldstone Report's Criticism of Israel Flawed, Biased, Unwarranted

ECLJ: Goldstone Report's Criticism of Israel Flawed, Biased, Unwarranted

American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ)
26 January '10

(Strasbourg, France) - The European Centre for Law and Justice (ECLJ) - the international affiliate of the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ) - today filed a comprehensive response with the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) challenging the objectivity of the UNHRC-sponsored Goldstone Report on Israel's Operation Cast Lead in Gaza last year.

The UNHRC authorized a Fact-Finding Mission with a resolution that called for an investigation of “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...”

The Goldstone Report accuses Israelis of war crimes and encourages states and the International Criminal Court (ICC) to exercise universal jurisdiction to prosecute the Israelis. Last January, the Palestinian Authority filed a “Declaration recognizing the Jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court” - attempting to accede to the ICC despite not meeting the statutory prerequisite of statehood for doing so.

The ECLJ today filed its Written Statement and supporting Memorandum on its analysis of the Goldstone Report with the U.N. Human Rights Council and will file the documents with the U.N. Security Council in the weeks ahead.

The Written Statement is posted here. And the Memorandum is posted here.

(Read full article)

Love of the Land: ECLJ: Goldstone Report's Criticism of Israel Flawed, Biased, Unwarranted

Love of the Land: Fighting the Goldstone Report

Fighting the Goldstone Report

P. David Hornik
Frontpagemag.com
26 January '10

“There are three primary threats facing us today: the nuclear threat, the missile threat and what I call the Goldstone threat.”

So said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a speech last month to the Knesset. In bracketing the “Goldstone threat” with two military threats, at least one of them existential, Netanyahu was not exaggerating. The report of the Goldstone Commission, led by South African jurist Richard Goldstone under the auspices of the notoriously anti-Israeli UN Human Rights Commission, was published in September 2009 and accuses Israel of committing war crimes in its January 2009 military campaign against Hamas in Gaza. The report thereby hands a major propaganda victory to Hamas and vindicates the terrorists’ strategy of using whole populations as human shields.

Among the best rebuttals to the report that have been published are those by Trevor Norwitz, a New York lawyer, who called it “an abominable travesty of justice,” and a much briefer one by Warren Goldstein, chief rabbi of South Africa, who called it “a disgrace to the most basic notions of justice, equality and the rule of law.”

But the report’s grim impact continues. On the legal front, the UN General Assembly endorsed it in November (though democratic states either voted against or abstained), and UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is set to refer it to the Security Council. On the terror front, the fact that Hezbollah is now storing weapons in 160 Shiite villages in southern Lebanon shows how effective the human-shield strategy has become, and how hamstrung Israel will be in future antiterrorist warfare, if it fails to overcome the Goldstone libel.

(Read full article)

Love of the Land: Fighting the Goldstone Report

Love of the Land: Holy Land Hoaxes: The Smearing Of Israel

Holy Land Hoaxes: The Smearing Of Israel

PJTV
Pajamas Media

Product of the latest UN investigation prejudiced against Israel, the Goldstone Report is out, hiding the truth about Hamas’s war crimes in Gaza. Richard Landes tells Roger L. Simon why the media won’t come to Israel’s defense. Watch and comment here: http://pjtv.com/v/2978

Related: Goldstone Gaza Report: A Failure of Intelligence
Goldstone's Gaza Report: Part Two: A Miscarriage of Human Rights

Love of the Land: Holy Land Hoaxes: The Smearing Of Israel

Love of the Land: Israel and the illusion of international justice

Israel and the illusion of international justice

Gerald Steinberg/Anne Herzberg
Haaretz
15 January '10
Posted before Shabbat

Speaking at a legal conference on January 4, former Supreme Court president Aharon Barak suggested that Israel would benefit from participation in bodies such as the International Criminal Court in order to fight for "its positions and justice." In endorsing Barak's recommendation, a Haaretz editorial ("Join the Court," January 6) contended that such participation would "place Israel on the side of the enlightened nations." Similarly, the argument goes, Israel erred in refusing to cooperate with the UN Human Rights Council's Goldstone Commission and the International Court of Justice proceedings on the security barrier.

While surely well-intentioned, in practice this line of thinking is pure folly. The dominance of nondemocratic and Islamic nations in international organs, and the increasing politicization of these bodies, virtually guarantees that no justice will be done when it comes to Israel or even NATO countries. In such morally corrupt frameworks, international law and human rights have become political weapons, disconnected from legitimate judicial processes and legal systems in democratic societies.

The ICJ's handling of the 2004 case regarding Israel's security barrier is a telling example. The suit was initiated by the UN General Assembly at the behest of the Arab League and the Organization of the Islamic Conference. European-funded advocacy groups such as B'Tselem, aided by NGO superpowers Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, were central to this effort. Legal scholars sharply criticized the court for accepting a predetermined political mandate from the UN and for its breach of procedural protocols in deliberations on the matter.

The ICJ's resulting advisory opinion negated Israel's right of self-defense and displayed an utter lack of sympathy for terror victims. Its simplistic and troubling legal analysis clearly reflected the influence of the Arab League and politicized NGOs. Hardly an independent judicial inquiry, this distorted proceeding encouraged subversion of the rule of law, rather than its enforcement, by allowing for political manipulation of the judicial process.

(Read full article)

Gerald Steinberg is a professor of political science at Bar-Ilan University and president of NGO Monitor; Anne Herzberg is NGO Monitor's legal advisor
.

Love of the Land: Israel and the illusion of international justice

Love of the Land: Exploting the language of morality and human rights

Exploting the language of morality and human rights

Gerald Steinberg
NGO Monitor
17 December 09

Trends in the Delegitimization of Israel in the International Arena, Global Forum on Antisemitism

Two days ago, a British judge issued a warrant for the arrest of Tzipi Livni, who served as Foreign Minister and is now the Israeli opposition leader, on charges of “war crimes”. Many Israelis responded by stating that “We are all Tzipi Livni” – in our democratic state with a citizens army, we share responsibility for defense. Israeli and British leaders correctly condemned such actions, speaking about the negative impact on the peace process and restating the importance bilateral relations.

These dimensions are significant, the main reason for rejecting such examples of lawfare is moral. This judicial theater exploits the principles, language and institutions, including courts, of international law in promote exactly the opposite -- denying the Jewish people the basic rights of self-defense and sovereign equality. This is grossly immoral.

The new antisemitism – directed at the Jewish collective rather than Jews as individuals –is most virulent precisely where the language of morality is used most frequently and stridently. When university professors and students promote this agenda through “Israeli apartheid week”, and refer to Israel as a “Nazi state” while seeking to dismantle the Jewish nation-state, this is immoral.

When “progressive” journalists and media publish cartoons with Israeli leaders, including Tzipi Livni, and that echo the images of der Sturmer, this is immoral. And when NGOs claiming to promote universal human rights and morality are silent as Gilad Shalit is held for more than three years in Gaza, but they join Libya and Iran in the Durban process and the United Nations Human Rights Council, to lead the campaigns using labels like “war crimes” and apartheid”, this is immoral.

Recently, Robert Bernstein, the founder of Helsinki Watch, now Human Rights Watch – an NGO superpower with a $42 million budget, wrote a very painful oped in the New York Times denouncing his own organization for its contribution in helping turn Israel into a pariah state.

(Read full article)

Love of the Land: Exploting the language of morality and human rights

Love of the Land: Human Rights Day 2009 - little to celebrate

Human Rights Day 2009 - little to celebrate

Gerald Steinberg
Opinion/JPost
09 December 09

December 10 is known as International Human Rights Day, marking the anniversary of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Genocide Conventions. But in 2009, as in past years, there is little to celebrate - this has been another bad year for human rights. In Darfur, the Congo and elsewhere in Africa, mass killings continue, with only minor and sporadic attention from the media or the United Nations.

In Iran, a rigged election brought thousands of democracy protestors into the streets, where they were beaten and arrested (70 demonstrators, including Neda Agha-Soltan, were reportedly killed), followed by Stalinist show-trials designed to intimidate these advocates. And in Asia, the tyrannical regimes in North Korea and Myanmar terrorize their citizens daily, with no end in sight.

This bleak record highlights the abject failure of the international community to live up to its moral commitments. The United Nations Human Rights Council pursues a cynical agenda that uses the rhetoric of international law as a weapon in the political war targeting Israel.

The Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), China, Russia and other chronic human rights abusers, constitute a majority on the UNHRC and appoint its officials. They have no interest in opening a discussion of Tibet, Chechnya, or the systematic oppression of women or minorities in Saudi Arabia.

Israel is a convenient diversion, which explains the obsessive focus on claims of "war crimes" and "collective punishment," as well as the biased composition and activities of the Goldstone inquiry on the Gaza conflict.

(Full article)

Love of the Land: Human Rights Day 2009 - little to celebrate

Love of the Land: Trevor Norwitz, Open Letter to Judge Goldstone, 19/10/09

Trevor Norwitz, Open Letter to Judge Goldstone, 19/10/09

A devastating letter from a NY lawyer, Trevor Norwitz, laying out the multiple flaws with the Goldstone Report. Required reading.

New York, New York

October 19, 2009

Judge Richard Goldstone

Head of the UN HRC Fact Finding Mission on Gaza

Via email

Dear Richard:

I have finally completed my review of your Report( 1) which, by its very length, defends itself against the risk of being read quickly or widely, to paraphrase that infamous war criminal (by your definition) Winston Churchill. I am profoundly disappointed by the contents of your Report, but I am also troubled by the ad hominem attacks that have been directed towards you. I offer this analysis and critique in the spirit of your article in the Jerusalem Post today2, looking only at the substance of your Report and relying neither on its authors’ motives nor their reputation. I do so in an effort to advance the cause of truth and in the hope that you may yet be willing to take actions to mitigate the terrible injustice and damage that your Report is causing. To that end, I am respectfully including some suggestions for you at the end of this letter (which is longer than the one I sent you on July 14 – attached again for your reference – but which I hope you will take time to read).

In a nutshell, your Report is a deeply flawed document that is not only unbalanced and inflammatory, but reflects a procedurally deficient rush to judgment incapable producing any meaningful findings, least of all charges as grave, politically loaded and emotionally laden as those of “war crimes” and “crimes against humanity”.

I acknowledge at the outset that your Report was difficult to read not only because of its obvious lack of balance, but also because it does raise some hard questions about the precise manner in which Israel reacted to the years of rocket attacks against its towns and people and the threats it faces.(3) I hope that, to the extent it has not already done so, Israel will investigate and explain the incidents you have highlighted which have undoubtedly been part of a chain of events that has resulted in much human suffering. Sadly though, because your Report is so one-sided and unfair, these important questions may receive less attention than they deserve.

As someone who had expected4 a relatively fair and balanced investigation because of your involvement, I am struggling to understand why you would go out of your way and beyond even the “very lopsided unfair resolution” (to use your own words(5)) of the group(6) that authorized your Mission to demonize Israel while legitimizing and even whitewashing Hamas. (For while you may object to that characterization, that is indeed what your Report does, as I describe below.)

I do not intend to focus on factual inaccuracies in your Report (which others better placed that I are already starting to address(7)), but wish to emphasize rather the manner in which your investigation was conducted and its “findings” reported. The imbalance and partiality that [p.2] permeate your Report are evident at many levels. They are manifested in the methodology you adopted to conduct your investigation and reach your conclusions, in the way in which you chose to characterize your Mission and select which incidents you would investigate and which you would ignore, in the fundamental premises which underlie your investigation and conclusions, in the manner in which you have misrepresented the history of the Middle East conflict, and in your use of language both throughout your Report and in your subsequent public statements. Of course this letter can not be comprehensive but can only illustrate a few of the many examples where this one-sidedness shows through your purported factual and legal findings.

(Read full letter)

Love of the Land: Trevor Norwitz, Open Letter to Judge Goldstone, 19/10/09

Love of the Land: Disfigured Terror Victim Confronts Goldstone in U.N. Debate

Disfigured Terror Victim Confronts Goldstone in U.N. Debate

04 November 09

U.N. Human Rights Council witnesses dramatic face-off when head of controversial UN "fact-finding" mission on Gaza unexpectedly confronted by one of his own witnesses. Dr. Mirela Siderer, an Israeli doctor brutally disfigured by a 2008 rocket attack fired from Gaza into her Ashkelon medical clinic, pointedly accused Judge Richard Goldstone of ignoring her July oral testimony in his report, and of failing to disclose material information concerning the mandate and members of the mission. Both declared Israel guilty in advance. Testimony arranged by the Geneva human rights organization UN Watch.






Love of the Land: Disfigured Terror Victim Confronts Goldstone in U.N. Debate

Love of the Land: But Goldstone said none of his critics read the report…: US Rep. Berman replies to Goldstone.

But Goldstone said none of his critics read the report…: US Rep. Berman replies to Goldstone.

Augean Stables
Richard Landes
05 November 09

First Goldstone came out with his report. Then a whole lot of people came down on him like a ton of bricks.

Then the UNHRC went ahead and did just what their mandate - the one Judge Goldstone keeps telling everyone was changed - called for:condemned Israel. Then some congressman produced a Non-binding Resolution (#867), calling on a slightly invertebrate administration to dump the report.

Then J-Street operative Morten Halperin wrote a response for Goldstone, which JTA blogger Ron Kampeas (and others) found rather convincing.

Others, of course, like Daled Amos and Israel Matsav, who have read the report and blog at Understanding the Goldstone Report, found it rather weak.

Now one of the principle sponsors, Howard Berman, Chairman of the Subcommittee on the Middle East and South Asia of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs has responded. Apparently, those who read carefully and know the material agree: Goldstone’s responses are weak.

It is curious why Goldstone used a ghost writer, and someone not too familiar with the report, whom, I’m sure he at least briefed verbally. But to hand off to someone else the job of defending (poorly) his report to Congress, rather than write his own response, seems strange. It suggests something I definitely suspect: that Goldstone himself has not read the report carefully.

(Read full article)

Love of the Land: But Goldstone said none of his critics read the report…: US Rep. Berman replies to Goldstone.

Love of the Land: The United Nations Is Outraged Again, Or: Department of Mideast Static

The United Nations Is Outraged Again, Or: Department of Mideast Static

Paul Greenberg
Jewish World Review
27 October 09

It won't do, at least not in polite society, to propose wiping a country off the map. That mantra has been left to Iran's raving leader.

Instead, this year's tactic at the always-busy United Nations is to deny Israel the right to defend itself. Which would lead to its destruction soon enough. And that would be the practical effect of bringing its generals and ministers to trial for their "war crimes" in Gaza. That's where the Israelis, after absorbing years of rocket attacks across their southern border, went in and attacked the source of the attacks. Their border with Hamas-controlled Gaza has been quieter since.

Naturally the United Nations, which is a lot better at condoning aggression than enforcing the peace, is outraged — and doing its best to stir things up again. Its "Human Rights" Council, which has little if anything to do with protecting human rights, especially in Islamic dictatorships, has demanded that Israel be brought before the International Court of Justice for daring to defend itself.

With fine impartiality between aggressors and defenders, an investigation sponsored by the UN produced a report that blamed both Hamas and Israel for their conduct during the late unpleasantness in Gaza, ignoring expert testimony and the conclusions of the Israelis' own extensive investigations.

The UN's Human Rights Council then turned its dubious report into another of its customary anti-Israeli resolutions. The prejudice here was so blatant that even the author of the report said he was saddened by the partisan use to which it was put.

The U.S. delegation and a few scattered European ones objected to this kind of lynch law, but both China and Russia, those great exemplars of human rights, joined the mob. So did the Arab bloc, another bastion of human rights.

The result: A biased jury brought in a biased verdict. What a surprise. Let it be said that at least this arm of the UN has been consistent: According to one count, 80 percent of the condemnations it's ever issued have been aimed at the Jewish state.

In the irony-free precincts of the United Nations, the chairman of the UN's Arab bloc this month is the delegate from Sudan, whose government presided over the genocide in Darfur, which is rapidly being forgotten.

These days even the United States, under our new administration, is adopting a softer, gentler tone toward the genocidal regime in Khartoum. For that matter, Washington is moving to "engage" Teheran and Moscow, too. And the military dictatorship in Burma to boot. Any regime that really violates human rights can hope to get a sympathetic hearing from this new crew at the State Department.

Nothing is likely to come of this latest diplomatic provocation at the United Nations except another delay in the always-stalled peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians. But any chance of those negotiations succeeding has always been only an abstraction. Even if the Israelis negotiated under this threat from the UN, with which Palestinian rump state/militia/gang/Iranian front group would they negotiate with? The one in Gaza or Damascus or Beirut on the West Bank?

The essential aim of the Arab side in this "peace process" that produces regular incidents and sporadic wars has never been to create a Palestinian state next to the Jewish one. Or that objective could have been achieved at almost any time during the past century by accepting one of the many proposals for partition of that overly promised land — going back as far as the Peel Commission of 1937. Or as recently as the Oslo Accords of the 1990s. Or the summit that Yasser Arafat walked out of in the waning days of the Clinton administration in 2000.

Failure has followed failure because this diplomatic charade has never really been about creating still another Arab state in the Middle East but about destroying the Jewish one.

Love of the Land: The United Nations Is Outraged Again, Or: Department of Mideast Static

Love of the Land: The Goldstone Report - Using Terminology in Service of Deception

The Goldstone Report - Using Terminology in Service of Deception

Eli E. Hertz
Hudson New York
27 October 09

Justice Richard Goldstone and the United Nations Human Rights Council, sought to rewrite history by labeling Judea and Samaria (Known as the West Bank) "Occupied Palestinian Territories" [Paragraph 11], calling Israeli Arabs "Palestinian citizens of Israel" [Paragraph 111], referring to Israeli Arab villages as "Palestinian Israeli communities" [Paragraph 110] and calling Arab inhabitants of Gaza "Palestinian People in the Gaza strip" [Paragraph 1859]. Essentially Goldstone is endowing Arabs in Judea, Samaria and Gaza with an aura of bogus peoplehood and statehood, as well as a false history as if title or ownership could be assigned out of thin air.

No legal binding authority has empowered Goldstone or any UN organ, including the International Court of Justice (ICJ) or the Human Rights Council to decide that the territories of the West Bank, known as Judea and Samaria, and Gaza could be transformed into "Occupied Palestinian Territories" or "Palestine." Goldstone's use of these dishonest, loaded terms empowers terrorism and the Palestinians with the right to use all measures to expel Israel.

Palestine is a Geographical Area, Not a Nationality

Arabs, the UN and its organs, and lately the International Court of Justice (ICJ) as well, have repeatedly claimed that the Palestinians are a native people - so much so that almost everyone takes it for granted. The problem is that a stateless Palestinian People is a fabrication. The word Palestine is not even Arabic.

Palestine was never an independent state belonging to any people, nor did a Palestinian People distinct from other Arabs appear during 1,300 years of Muslim hegemony in Palestine under Arab and Ottoman rule. During that rule, local Arabs were actually considered part of, and subject to, the authority of Greater Syria (Suriyya al-Kubra).

Historically, before the Arabs fabricated the concept of Palestinian peoplehood as an exclusively Arab phenomenon, no such group existed. This is substantiated in countless official British Mandate-vintage documents that speak of the Jews and the Arabs of Palestine - not Jews and Palestinians.

In fact, before local Jews began calling themselves Israelis in 1948 (when the name "Israel" was chosen for the newly-established Jewish State), the term "Palestine" applied almost exclusively to Jews and the institutions founded by new Jewish immigrants in the first half of the 20th century, before the state's independence.

Some examples include:

· The Jerusalem Post, founded in 1932, was called The Palestine Post until 1948.

· Bank Leumi L'Israel, incorporated in 1902, was called the "Anglo-Palestine Company" until 1948.

· The Jewish Agency - an arm of the Zionist movement engaged in Jewish settlement since 1929 - was initially called the Jewish Agency for Palestine.

· Today's Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, founded in 1936 by German Jewish refugees who fled Nazi Germany, was originally called the "Palestine Symphony Orchestra," composed of some 70 Palestinian Jews.

· The United Jewish Appeal (UJA) was established in 1939 as a merger of the United Palestine Appeal and the fundraising arm of the Joint Distribution Committee.

There Has Never Been a Sovereign Arab State in Palestine

The artificiality of a Palestinian identity is reflected in the attitudes and actions of neighboring Arabs who never established a Palestinian state or advocated one prior to the Six-Day War in 1967.

Only twice in Jerusalem's history has it served as a national capital. The first time was as the capital of the two Jewish Commonwealths during the First and Second Temple periods, as described in the Bible, reinforced by archaeological evidence and numerous ancient documents. The second time is in modern times as the capital of the State of Israel. It has never served as an Arab capital for the simple reason that there has never been a Palestinian Arab state.

The rhetoric by Arab leaders on behalf of the Palestinians rings hollow. Arabs never established a Palestinian state when the UN in 1947 recommended to partition Palestine, and to establish "an Arab and a Jewish state" (not a Palestinian state, it should be noted). Nor did the Arabs recognize or establish a Palestinian state during the two decades prior to the Six-Day War when the West Bank was under Jordanian control and the Gaza Strip was under Egyptian control; nor did the Palestinian Arabs clamor for autonomy or independence during those years under Jordanian and Egyptian rule.

So much for facts and accuracy.

Love of the Land: The Goldstone Report - Using Terminology in Service of Deception

Love of the Land: Waging Diplomatic War

Waging Diplomatic War

Caroline Glcik
carolineglick.com
23 October 09

If, to paraphrase Carl von Clausewitz, diplomacy is war by other means, then just as armies are called upon to concentrate their efforts and resources where they can do the most good for their cause, so governments must utilize their diplomatic resources - whether plentiful or scarce - to advance their most important national interests.

The Palestinians and the Iranians have formidable diplomatic resources at their disposal. Both the Palestinians and Iran can expect to receive the support of automatic majorities at the UN for everything they do. And today most international diplomacy is conducted under the aegis of the UN or its affiliated bodies. Understanding their strength, the Palestinians and the Iranians use the UN and its affiliated organs to advance their most important goals. In the Palestinians' case, UN-based diplomacy is used to delegitimize Israel. In the Iranian case, UN-based diplomacy is used to facilitate the mullocracy's acquisition of nuclear weapons. Over the past week, both the Palestinians and the Iranians enjoyed strategic victories in their diplomatic campaigns.

Last Friday, the UN Human Rights Council passed a resolution condemning Israel in every possible way for asserting its sovereignty over its capital city and for defending its citizens against wanton, massive, unprovoked and illegal terror from the skies emanating from Hamas-controlled Gaza. The resolution represented a massive achievement for the Palestinians. It referred Israel to the Security Council with the recommendation that Israel's leaders be tried as war criminals before international tribunals. That is, the UNHRC's resolution effectively delegitimized Israel's right to exist by denying that it has a right to defend its territory and its people from illegal aggression carried out by an illegal terrorist organization.

Then on Wednesday, Mohamed ElBaradei, the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency's virulently anti-Israel chairman, announced a deal has been reached between Iran and the US, Russia and France regarding Iran's nuclear program. The deal - which the parties initialized in Geneva after just three days of talks - legitimizes Iran's nuclear weapons program and effectively transforms the US, the EU and Russia into facilitators rather than opponents of that program.
(Full Article)

Love of the Land: Waging Diplomatic War

Love of the Land: The Price of Engagement

The Price of Engagement

Jennifer Rubin
Contentions/Commentary
19 October 09

John Bolton observes that the UN Human Rights Council, in its latest spasm of Israel-bashing, has further damaged the so-called Middle East peace process. (It isn’t like things were going swimmingly, but leave it to the UN to make things worse.) He writes:

In the month since the report’s release, it has roiled the Middle East peace process. An Israeli spokesman said “it will make it impossible for us to take any risks for the sake of peace,” perhaps foreshadowing Israeli withdrawal from negotiations while the report remains under active U.N. consideration.

The HRC resolution endorsing the report’s recommendations repeatedly lacerated Israel, leading Mr. Goldstone himself to cringe, saying he was “saddened” the resolution contained “not a single phrase condemning Hamas as we have done in the report.” A U.S. State Department spokesman conceded that the adopted text “went beyond even the scope of the Goldstone Report itself.”

But this is what one expects of the HRC – and why the Bush administration thought it best not to give credence to the body. But, as Bolton observes, it is not simply out of solidarity with the Jewish state that it would be a good idea to bug out. It is rather in our own self-interest to do so:

The Goldstone Report has important implications for America. In the U.N., Israel frequently serves as a surrogate target in lieu of the U.S., particularly concerning the use of military force pre-emptively or in self-defense. Accordingly, U.N. decisions on ostensibly Israel-specific issues can lay a predicate for subsequent action against, or efforts to constrain, the U.S. Mr. Goldstone’s recommendation to convoke the International Criminal Court is like putting a loaded pistol to Israel’s head—or, in the future, to America’s.

Bolton’s observation highlights a key problem with Obama’s push to put that “daylight” between the U.S. and Israel. As we aim to ingratiate ourselves with Israel’s foes, we also do great damage to our own interests, which, despite the Obamis’ moral and geopolitical obtuseness, are closely aligned with Israel’s. The Goldstone report strikes at the heart of democratic societies’ ability to wage wars of self-defense against terrorists who would use woman and children as shields (and thereby maximize the body count of both for propaganda value). Wouldn’t this be a bad precedent to set for America, which is, after all, engaged in wars against those who employ the very same tactics? You’d think our rhetoric would be more robust in condemning the Goldstone report, and our toleration much less for the HRC’s anti-terror-fighting gambit.

Nevertheless, we can surmise that an administration that sees benefit in putting daylight between America and another democracy beset by Islamic terrorists isn’t likely to put daylight between America and the HRC. In fact, the rush to “engage” Israel’s foes as well as our own, to smother them with words of affection and apologies at all costs, makes itimpossible to disengage, even when their behavior is reprehensible, as is the case with the HRC.

By making “engagement” a central principle of American foreign policy, we hand the foes of democracy, human rights, and the West tremendous influence and immunity from retribution. They can engage in whenever outlandish behavior they see fit to without fear of detrimental consequences. After all, we’ve already told them we’re going to engage with them no matter what. Doesn’t seem like very smart diplomacy, does it?

Love of the Land: The Price of Engagement

Love of the Land: Israel, the U.S. and the Goldstone Report

Israel, the U.S. and the Goldstone Report

Joining the U.N. Human Rights Council was a mistake Obama should correct.

John Bolton

Wall Street journal

18 October 09

The U.N.'s Human Rights Council (HRC) voted overwhelmingly on Friday to endorse the recommendations of the lopsidedly anti-Israel Goldstone Report. The report, named for former South African judge Richard Goldstone, who chaired the underlying investigation, concluded that Israel's 2008-2009 military campaign against the terrorist group Hamas was actually aimed against Gaza's residents as a whole. Thus it was an illegitimate exercise of "collective punishment," an extraordinarily amorphous legal concept.

The report alleges numerous specific human rights violations by both Israel and Hamas. But by attempting to criminalize Israel's strategy of crippling Hamas, the report in effect declared the entire antiterrorism campaign to be a war crime. Mr. Goldstone recommended that Israel and the Palestinians should each conduct their own investigations, failing which the Security Council should refer the entire matter to the International Criminal Court for possible prosecution.

In the month since the report's release, it has roiled the Middle East peace process. An Israeli spokesman said "it will make it impossible for us to take any risks for the sake of peace," perhaps foreshadowing Israeli withdrawal from negotiations while the report remains under active U.N. consideration.

The HRC resolution endorsing the report's recommendations repeatedly lacerated Israel, leading Mr. Goldstone himself to cringe, saying he was "saddened" the resolution contained "not a single phrase condemning Hamas as we have done in the report." A U.S. State Department spokesman conceded that the adopted text "went beyond even the scope of the Goldstone Report itself."

The U.N. General Assembly created the HRC on March 15, 2006, to replace the discredited Human Rights Commission, which had spent much of its final years concentrating on Israel and the U.S. rather than the world's real human rights violators. The Bush administration voted against establishing this body and declined to join it, believing, correctly, that it would not be an improvement over its predecessor. President Barack Obama changed course, and the U.S. won election to the HRC in May. Mr. Obama argued that engagement would be more effective than shunning the HRC and attempting to delegitimize it.

The Goldstone Report thus provides a stark test of Mr. Obama's analysis. Predictably, the administration blamed the report's underlying mandate and its stridently anti-Israel tilt on America's earlier absence from the HRC when the investigation was authorized and launched. Yet the new administration's diplomacy had no discernible impact on the HRC's disgraceful resolution.

Twenty-five of the Security Council's 47 members voted for the resolution (including Russia and China), six voted against (Hungary, Italy, Netherlands, Slovakia, Ukraine and the U.S.), and 11 abstained (Japan, South Korea and several European governments among them).

Five didn't vote at all, including Great Britain and France. Press reports indicated that London saw its inaction as a "favor" to Israel, a position simultaneously inexplicable and gutless. It is hard to know just how much real politicking the Obama administration did before this vote, but the loss of key allies is telling.

The Goldstone Report has important implications for America. In the U.N., Israel frequently serves as a surrogate target in lieu of the U.S., particularly concerning the use of military force pre-emptively or in self-defense. Accordingly, U.N. decisions on ostensibly Israel-specific issues can lay a predicate for subsequent action against, or efforts to constrain, the U.S. Mr. Goldstone's recommendation to convoke the International Criminal Court is like putting a loaded pistol to Israel's head—or, in the future, to America's.

Mr. Obama has now met the new HRC, same as the old HRC, thus producing a "teachable moment," a phrase he often uses. Quasi-religious faith in "engagement" and the U.N. has run into empirical reality. When the administration picks itself up off the ground, it should become more cognizant of that organization's moral and political limitations.

Although it will be hard for Mr. Obama to swallow, the logical response to Friday's debacle is to withdraw from and defund the HRC. Otherwise the Goldstone Report will merely be the beginning, next time perhaps with Washington as its unmistakable target.

Mr. Bolton, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, is the author of "Surrender Is Not an Option: Defending America at the United Nations and Abroad" (Simon & Schuster, 2007).

Love of the Land: Israel, the U.S. and the Goldstone Report

Love of the Land: Even Perfidy is Now Gutless in Albion

Even Perfidy is Now Gutless in Albion

Melanie Phillips
The Spectator
19 October 09

It appears that these days Albion doesn’t even have the courage to admit to its perfidiousness.

The UN Human Rights Council last week voted overwhelmingly to condemn Israel for war crimes on the back of the Goldstone report. This was hardly a surprise, given that Goldstone – whatever his protestations since – was given a brief by the Israel-bashing UNHRC specifically premised on the advance condemnation of Israel for committing the war crimes the evidence of which his ‘fact-finding mission’ was ostensibly supposed to discover.

As has been detailed in previous posts, his report was a travesty of justice, recycling as fact the unverified propaganda of Hamas and its patsies in the NGO world, ignoring the most heinous crimes of Hamas while giving a spurious air of even-handedness by condemning it just a little, and most disgustingly of all accusing Israel of deliberately trying to harm the civilian population of Gaza during Operation Cast Lead.

Having thus obtained its objective, the demonisation of Israel in Gaza, the UNHRC duly voted to endorse the Goldstone report and send it on to the UN Security Council.

Now look at what the former British commander in Afghanistan, Colonel Richard Kemp, told the UNHRC about Israel’s actions in Cast Lead:

Mr. President, based on my knowledge and experience, I can say this: During Operation Cast Lead, the Israeli Defense Forces did more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a combat zone than any other army in the history of warfare. Israel did so while facing an enemy that deliberately positioned its military capability behind the human shield of the civilian population.

Hamas, like Hizbullah, are expert at driving the media agenda. Both will always have people ready to give interviews condemning Israeli forces for war crimes. They are adept at staging and distorting incidents. The IDF faces a challenge that we British do not have to face to the same extent. It is the automatic, Pavlovian presumption by many in the international media, and international human rights groups, that the IDF are in the wrong, that they are abusing human rights.

The truth is that the IDF took extraordinary measures to give Gaza civilians notice of targeted areas, dropping over 2 million leaflets, and making over 100,000 phone calls. Many missions that could have taken out Hamas military capability were aborted to prevent civilian casualties. During the conflict, the IDF allowed huge amounts of humanitarian aid into Gaza. To deliver aid virtually into your enemy's hands is, to the military tactician, normally quite unthinkable. But the IDF took on those risks.

Despite all of this, of course innocent civilians were killed. War is chaos and full of mistakes. There have been mistakes by the British, American and other forces in Afghanistan and in Iraq, many of which can be put down to human error. But mistakes are not war crimes.

More than anything, the civilian casualties were a consequence of Hamas's way of fighting. Hamas deliberately tried to sacrifice their own civilians.

Mr. President, Israel had no choice apart from defending its people, to stop Hamas from attacking them with rockets. And I say this again: The IDF did more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a combat zone than any other army in the history of warfare. Thank you, Mr. President.

Now look at how Col Kemp’s own British government behaved in the UNHRC vote on Goldstone. It had not wanted to support Israel, but to abstain. The reason it wouldn’t support it was that it said it took Goldstone’s allegations of war crimes seriously. But it also apparently thought the UN resolution was unfairly biased against Israel. Indeed, even Goldstone himself thought so, complaining that it

‘...includes only allegations against Israel. There is not a single phrase condemning Hamas, as we have done in the report’.

After all the trouble he had gone to in order to massage his hideously loaded brief, the UNHRC went and stuck to its terms! Tsk!

So the Brits decided to abstain. But then, as theTimes reported – horror of horrors:

But that position began to unravel yesterday morning when it became apparent that other European members on the council, including Italy and the Netherlands, were planning to vote against. That would have left Britain and France looking exposed and out of step with the rest of Europe.

British officials said that Mr Brown and President Sarkozy of France decided to back Mr Netanyahu if he would move on three concessions that they believed could help to rescue the peace process: a freeze on all settlement activity, an independent Israeli investigation and an immediate lifting of the blockade on Gaza.

Those last-minute efforts, however, were thwarted by Egypt, a co-sponsor of the resolution, which refused two French appeals for a two-hour delay, forcing a vote before any concessions could be wrung from Israel. Britain and France therefore failed either to cast a vote or abstain.

The Goldstone blood libel is part of the UNHRC’s strategy of delegitimising Israel to soften up the world for its eventual destruction. In the teeth of the opinion of one of Britain's most senior military experts in asymmetric warfare that Israel had done

more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a combat zone than any other army in the history of warfare

the British government, whose own record in Afghanistan most certainly does not reach Israel's standards for protecting civilians, not only refused to support Israel against this demonisation of its defence of its own citizens but didn’t even have the bottle to register that it was abstaining in that disgusting vote. It simply ran away.

This shocking episode demonstrates with crystal clarity that in the great civilisational war now in progress, Britain is on the wrong side – as it has been in the Middle East, in fact, for the past nine decades.

Love of the Land: Even Perfidy is Now Gutless in Albion

Love of the Land: Post Colonialist Dogma Doesn’t Fit

Post Colonialist Dogma Doesn’t Fit

Fresnozionism.org
17 October 09

The following illustrates an argument I hear a lot:

The Palestinian Authority would not oppose the prosecution of Hamas militants on war crimes charges at the International Criminal Court, Israel Radio on Saturday quoted the PA’s ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva as saying.

Ibrahim Khraishi reportedly made the comments after the UN Human Rights Council’s voted in favor of his motion to endorse a report accusing both Israel and Hamas of committing war crimes during the December-January hostilities in Gaza.

Speaking in an interview with Israel Radio, Khraishi said he had no problem in saying that legal proceedings against Israel over alleged human rights abuses should also be instigated against Palestinians. But he was quoted as adding that occupiers must not be confused with the occupied.

It’s not surprising that the PA would like to see Hamas suffer! But what I’m interested in is the phrase I boldfaced at the end.

It represents a ‘postcolonialist’ ideology, traceable to Frantz Fanonand Edward Said, that enshrines a double standard for behavior as applied, for example, to Israel and the Palestinians.

Postcolonial theory asserts that there are ’settler countries’ and ‘non-settler countries’, and of course you can imagine who are supposed to be the good guys. A great deal of effort is expended by the Arabs and their supporters to place Israel in the first group, with the Zionists in the position of colonizers of the ‘indigenous’ Palestinian Arabs. Honest historical analysis shows that in fact this is not accurate, but it’s important for them to say this in order to take advantage of the special dispensations granted to the ‘colonized’.

Here’s an example of the reasoning, as expressed in an article by Nir Rosen, an American-born journalist:

Normative rules are determined by power relations. Those with power determine what is legal and illegal. They besiege the weak in legal prohibitions to prevent the weak from resisting. For the weak to resist is illegal by definition. Concepts like terrorism are invented and used normatively as if a neutral court had produced them, instead of the oppressors…

Attacking civilians is the last, most desperate and basic method of resistance when confronting overwhelming odds and imminent eradication. The Palestinians do not attack Israeli civilians with the expectation that they will destroy Israel. The land of Palestine is being stolen day after day; the Palestinian people is being eradicated day after day. As a result, they respond in whatever way they can to apply pressure on Israel…

Haaretz reported that a Palestinian woman blinded an Israeli soldier in one eye when she threw acid in his face. “The terrorist was arrested by security forces,” the paper said. An occupied citizen attacks an occupying soldier, and she is the terrorist?

The argument depends on the “overwhelming odds”, the disparity in power between the ‘colonizer and colonized’. Edward Said, the high priest of applying postcolonial theory to Israel and the Palestinians,never tired of mentioning that Israel was a “nuclear power”, as if this had some relevance to its responses to Arab terrorism!

Once it is established that one party is a ‘colonizer’ and the other ‘colonized’, the game is over. For the postcolonialist, nothing that the colonizer does to defend himself is permissible, and anything that the colonized does in the name of resistance is justified.

This is insisted upon despite the actual power relationship between the sides, which — because of the actions and constraints of outside powers and the force-multiplying effect of asymmetric warfare — may be much closer to equal than the postcolonialist wants us to think.

The postcolonialist point of view is endemic to the academic world — google ‘postcolonialism’ and you will be overwhelmed by the huge mass of professorial careers that have been built on it — but it has little applicability to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, despite Said’s struggle to make it appear so.

Like most grand theories — those of Marx or Freud, for example — postcolonialism gets its explanatory power when an apparently chaotic situation can be shown to be a special case of some general principles. Most such theories are inspired by a particular paradigm case; for Fanon it was the French in Martinique. Said, who was comparatively an intellectual lightweight, saw the huge power of the postcolonial metaphor to promote his own — Palestinian — cause.

(Full Article)

Love of the Land: Post Colonialist Dogma Doesn’t Fit