FresnoZionism.org — ציונות פרסנו

News item:

Retired Supreme Court Justice Edmond Levy, who heads a committee tasked with examining the legality of Jewish construction in Judea and Samaria, declared on Tuesday that Israelis have a legal right to settle the region.

“According to international law, Israelis have a legal right to settle all of Judea and Samaria, at the very least the lands that Israel controls under agreements with the Palestinian Authority,” Levy stated. “Therefore, the establishment of Jewish settlements [in Judea and Samaria] is, in itself, not illegal.”

The committee was established by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in efforts to determine and cement the legal status of the outposts in Judea and Samaria, with an emphasis on communities that were not built on privately owned Palestinian land but their status was still in doubt due to legal bureaucracy.

The committee issued its report on Tuesday, which was subsequently handed over to Attorney-General Yehuda Weinstein. In the report, Levy wrote that “upon completing the committee’s tasks, and considering the testimonies heard, the basic conclusion is that from an international law perspective, the laws of ‘occupation’ do not apply to the unique historic and legal circumstances surrounding Israel’s decades-long presence in Judea and Samaria.”

“Likewise,” the report said, “the Fourth Geneva Convention [relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War] on the transfer of populations does not apply, and wasn’t intended to apply to communities such as those established by Israel in Judea and Samaria.”

None of this is actually ‘news’. Legal scholars like Eugene Rostow and others have argued for years that the proper status of Judea and Samaria is as disputed territory, to which Israel has a prima facie claim.

Unfortunately, the official Israeli position has been that it is a ‘belligerent occupation‘. Such an occupation is defined as temporary, arising from a war between nations, one of which occupies the territory of another. It must be ended by a peace treaty between the parties, since acquisition of land by conquest is forbidden by the UN charter.

This position never made a lick of sense. In addition to ignoring the rights accruing to the Jewish people under the Mandate, it could not explain how Israel could be ‘occupying’ something whose last owner was the Ottoman Empire.

Not only did it not make sense, it provided a door through which Israel’s enemies have entered. For one thing, it means that Israel can’t annex any of it without a peace treaty. But with whom could such a treaty be concluded — the Ottomans, who don’t exist; the Jordanians, who illegally invaded it in 1948; or the PLO, which never ruled the area?

If the Israeli conquest of Judea and Samaria in 1967 and its expulsion of the Jordanian Army did represent an ‘occupation’, then that implies that the Jordanian presence was legitimate, and that the heirs of the Jordanians, the ‘Palestinians’ — represented by the PLO, a terrorist gang that should have zero legitimacy — now have some kind of ‘right’ to the area.

This is too incoherent to be even half-convincing. But what happened is that the PLO conflated the idea of rights granted by international law, which it did not have, with political claims — Palestinians are ‘indigenous’, theirs is a struggle for ‘national liberation’ against an ‘oppressor’, it’s ‘Arab land’, etc.

Those who would prefer that there be no Jewish state found these ideas congenial, and soon accepted the idea of a Palestinian ‘right’ to Judea and Samaria. They began to say “settlements are illegal under international law,” and that they are on “Palestinian land,” despite the fact that this is nonsense.

Unfortunately, Israeli governments did not take the correct line from the beginning. By not vehemently opposing Arab claims, insisting that the territory was disputed rather than occupied, and asserting Israel’s own rights under the Mandate, they allowed the PLO — with the willing connivance of anti-Zionist forces throughout the world — to make its point of view part of the conventional wisdom.

So we have statements like this one, from US State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell:

…the U.S. position on settlements is clear. Obviously, we’ve seen the reports that an Israeli Government appointed panel has recommended legalizing dozens of Israeli settlements in the West Bank, but we do not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlement activity and we oppose any effort to legalize settlement outposts.

It may be too late to change worldwide perceptions, but I hope Netanyahu’s government will adopt the report and realign its policy — not just about settlements, but its overall position regarding the ‘peace process’ and the Palestinians in keeping with the findings of the committee.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Judea and Samaria, Levy Committee

News item:

“President Obama extended an invitation to President Mursi to visit the United States when he attends the U.N. General Assembly in September,” Egyptian aide Yasser Ali said after Mursi met U.S. Deputy Secretary of State William Burns in Cairo…

“We have taken careful note and appreciated President Mursi’s public statements about a commitment to international obligations and we certainly attach great importance to Egypt’s continuing role as a force for peace,” Burns said.

Mursi (often spelled ‘Morsi’) is the political face of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. His comments about the peace treaty between Egypt and Israel have been ambiguous, but it is unlikely — at least in the near term — that he will stand up and announce that he is calling everything off and returning to a state of war with Israel. That would be counterproductive, since the US might cut off the $1.3 billion dollars in military aid it sends to Egypt each year (one wonders exactly what all those tanks that they buy with it are needed for).

But he could certainly make things hot for Israel by supporting Hamas — the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood — by failing to control terrorist groups operating in the Sinai, etc. It’s even imaginable that he could allow Egyptian ‘volunteers’ to fight alongside Hamas while the peace treaty technically remains in force.

Why might he do this?

The Islamist ideology of the Brotherhood is, like that of its Hamas branch, uncompromisingly opposed to the continued existence of a Jewish state. If you think that this is not a problem, that even Islamist politicians are pragmatists for whom development is more important than ideology, remember that in an Islamist state the temporal authorities are subordinate to the religious leadership (Iran, where the Supreme Leader dictates to the President, is an example).

Let’s look at what the “General Guide” of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, Muhammad Badi, had to say in a recent sermon (spotted by Raymond Ibrahim):

According to last Thursday’s edition of Al Wafd, during his weekly sermon, “Muhammad Badi, the Muslim Brotherhood’s Supreme Guide, confirmed the necessity for every Muslim to strive to save al-Quds [Jerusalem] from the hands of the rapists [Israelis] and to cleanse Palestine from the clutches of the occupation, deeming this an individual duty for all Muslims.”

More specifically, he “called on all Muslims to wage jihad with their money and their selves to free al-Quds”—the same exact language one finds in al-Qaeda’s tracts.

Here is a short video with translation by MEMRI in which Badi explains the need for jihad against the “Zionists:”

But perhaps President Obama is thinking, “well, sure they want to destroy Israel, but that isn’t a reason that the US shouldn’t engage with them.”

Guess what, Mr. President: they have plans for us, too. Thanks to to the perspicacious Raymond Ibrahim, we have this from January 2012:

Dr. Muhammad Badi, supreme leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, said: “The Brotherhood is getting closer to achieving its greatest goal as envisioned by its founder, Imam Hassan al-Banna. This will be accomplished by establishing a righteous and fair ruling system [based on Islamic sharia], with all its institutions and associations, including a government evolving into a rightly guided caliphate and mastership of the world.”

…

The leader of the Brotherhood continued: “The Imam [Banna] delineated transitional goals and detailed methods to achieve this greatest objective, starting by reforming the individual, followed by building the family, the society, the government, and then a rightly guided caliphate and finally mastership of the world.” [emphasis added by Ibrahim].

Raymond Ibrahim is a Coptic Christian and certainly has reason to oppose Badi and his functionary Morsi. But the links to the Arabic text are there, and Google Translate is close enough to verify that this is what they said.

Morsi himself has not always been careful of what he says. On May 30, Ibrahim reported,

According to the popular Egyptian website, El Bashayer, Muhammad Morsi, the Muslim Brotherhood presidential candidate, just declared that he will “achieve the Islamic conquest (fath) of Egypt for the second time, and make all Christians convert to Islam, or else pay the jizya,” the traditional Islamic tax, or financial tribute, required of non-Muslim “dhimmis.” …

When asked what he thought about many Christian Copts coming out to vote for his secular opponent, Ahmed Shafiq, Morsi reportedly said, “They need to know that conquest is coming, and Egypt will be Islamic, and that they must pay jizya or emigrate.” [my emphasis]

Did Mr. Burns of the State Department check out this public statement as well? What message does it send to American non-Muslims — Christians, Jews and all the rest –  that this person will be an honored guest in our country?

Technorati Tags: Muhammad Badi, Muhammad Morsi, Egypt, President Obama

A Herrenknecht tunnel boring machine

I’ll explain the title of this post at the end.

News item:

BERLIN – Germany’s multi-billion euro bilateral trade relationship with Iran continues unabated, even as evidence mounts that the Islamic Republic is determined to build a nuclear weapons capability.

The Jerusalem Post has obtained an uncensored list from late 2011, showing hundreds of German and Iranian enterprises in a flourishing trade relationship.

This is despite Iran’s construction of Fordow, a medium-level uranium enrichment facility buried into the side of a mountain near Qom, and the fact that the German equipment could be used to build more underground nuclear facilities.

Some businesses have asked that their names be removed from the list to avoid damage to their reputations.

One company named is Baden-Württemberg-based engineering giant Herrenknecht AG, which appears to be delivering heavy tunneling equipment to Iran – some of which is promoted as having the capability of “drilling down to depths of 6,000 meters.”

In response to Post inquiries, an unidentified representative of the company wrote via email on Friday that it has “comprehensively ensured that Herrenknecht excavation engineering and services solely reach projects which clearly pursue civil applications [metro tunnel construction, sewage pipes and water supply lines].”

Oh, of course they have! And what exactly will they do when the Iranians use their machinery for something else? File a complaint?

Kind of stupid, when you realize that Baden-Württemberg is about 1850 miles from Iranian territory, which is, or soon will be, within range of Iranian missiles.

So what about the title of this post? There is a German expression, “Mein Name ist Hase, ich weiß von nichts,” which literally means “My name is Hare [or Rabbit] and I don’t know anything,” that is,  “don’t ask me, I don’t know.” (The expression dates back to the 19th century, and it relates to someone named Von Hase, not a rabbit). Anyway, it’s said that Germans captured at the end of WWII often used this expression when questioned about extermination camps or other Nazi atrocities.

But today’s ‘rabbits’ are not fooling anyone. I think that Herrenknecht and others know exactly why Iran wants this equipment, and they are therefore guilty of helping Iran achieve nuclear weapons.

Technorati Tags: Germany, Iran, Herrenknecht AG

The divine Suha (2nd from l) at the Dubai Film Festival in 2011

As you may know, Suha Arafat, the widow of the Original Terrorist, went to al-Jazeera with a few pieces of Arafat’s clothing and claimed that she had kept them in a ‘secure room’ since his death in 2004.  After a ‘nine-month investigation’, al-Jazeera breathlessly reported that

…tests reveal that Arafat’s final personal belongings – his clothes, his toothbrush, even his iconic kaffiyeh – contained abnormal levels of polonium, a rare, highly radioactive element. Those personal effects, which were analyzed at the Institut de Radiophysique in Lausanne, Switzerland, were variously stained with Arafat’s blood, sweat, saliva and urine. The tests carried out on those samples suggested that there was a high level of polonium inside his body when he died.

“I can confirm to you that we measured an unexplained, elevated amount of unsupported polonium-210 in the belongings of Mr. Arafat that contained stains of biological fluids,” said Dr. Francois Bochud, the director of the institute.

The findings have led Suha Arafat, his widow, to ask the Palestinian Authority to exhume her late husband’s body from its grave in Ramallah. If tests show that Arafat’s bones contain high levels of polonium, it would be more conclusive proof that he was poisoned, doctors say.

Well. A sensation! The diabolical Zionists poisoned him after all!

The only problem is that Suha apparently majored in French haute couture, not physics. And the staff of al-Jazeera like a good story more than a reasonable one.

The half-life of Polonium-210 is 138 days. This means that after 8 years, only about 4.3 x 10-7 — 0.00000043 — of the original amount of Polonium would be left. So even if Arafat’s iconic underwear had been loaded with the stuff after his death, it would be undetectable, or at least at much lower levels than the Swiss laboratory found.

As Johnny Cochran would have pointed out, there is a problem with the chain of custody of the evidence.

What is more interesting is the half-life of the money that Suha extracted from the Palestinian Authority (PA), which of course is supported by the US and the European Union.

When Arafat died in November 2004, hundreds of millions, perhaps billions, of dollars in his secret accounts went missing. Suha refused to release Arafat’s body for a week, until the PA agreed to pay her an adequate pension (estimates range from $12,000 to $100,000 monthly).

It’s doubtful that she needed it. Earlier that year, French prosecutors investigated $11.4 million of mysterious payments into her accounts:

The inquiry, disclosed by a satirical French weekly, Le Canard Enchaîné, and confirmed by unidentified judicial officials to The Associated Press, was opened in October after the Bank of France notified the Paris prosecutor’s office that Mrs. Arafat’s accounts at two banks in France had received relatively regular transfers of nearly $1.27 million each from Switzerland between July 2002 and September 2003. The newspaper also reported that about $2.5 million of the money had been diverted to an account of an interior decorating firm, Alberto Pinto.

The PA today is undergoing what it calls its “worst financial crisis” in three years, being unable to pay its employees. Most of these employees are part of its ‘security’ forces, who from time to time murder Israelis. Many of them are in Hamas-controlled Gaza, where they are either doing nothing or working for Hamas. Some are in Israeli prisons, having been convicted of crimes including multiple murder (they get paid anyway). And then there are the pensions paid to the widows of ‘martyrs’, suicide and otherwise.

Maybe Suha will make a donation?

Technorati Tags: Suha Arafat, Polonium, Palestinian Authority

I may have written the following before, but it bears repeating:

The United Nations is a Frankenstein monster, an evil and vicious creature that has become precisely the opposite of what its creators intended. Rather than a vehicle to prevent war and ameliorate human suffering, to spread freedom and human rights, it has become a tool of the forces that want to propel the world back into pre-modern darkness.

From a statement released today by Hillel Neuer’s UN Watch group:

GENEVA, July 5 – The U.N.’s top human rights body defied the U.S. today by adopting a Cuban-led “right to peace” resolution that endorses resistance against “foreign occupation,” for the first time granting U.N. Human Rights Council legitimization of the terminology used by Middle East extremists to justify terrorist attacks against Americans and Israelis.

Initiated by Cuba, the resolution’s co-sponsors included Syria, Iran, North Korea, Sudan, Belarus, China, Palestine, Sri Lanka, Venezuela, Bolivia and Nicaragua.

Everyone should read the advisory committee’s repetitious, Orwellian draft of the resolution, in order to fully savor the absurdities that the occupy our UN. There is a lot of discussion of gender-sensitivity, climate change, the environment, foreign debts, disarmament, military outsourcing, etc. But there is also some language that is clearly aimed at Israel and the West.

The post-colonial paradigm is embedded  throughout, with many references to the special rights of indigenous peoples.

Article 11.      Rights of victims and vulnerable groups

1.       Every victim of a human rights violation has the right, in accordance with international human rights law, to the restoration of the violated rights; to obtain the investigation of facts, as well as identification and punishment of those responsible; to obtain effective and full redress, including the right to rehabilitation and compensation; to measures of symbolic redress or reparation; and to guarantees that the violation will not be repeated.

2.       Everyone subjected to aggression, genocide, foreign occupation, racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and other related forms of intolerance or apartheid, colonialism and neo-colonialism deserve special attention as victims of violations of the right to peace.

3.       States shall ensure that the specific effects of the different forms of violence on the enjoyment of the rights of persons belonging to groups in situations of vulnerability, such as indigenous peoples, are taken fully into account. They have the obligation to ensure that remedial measures are taken, including the recognition of the right of persons belonging to groups in situations of vulnerability to participate in the adoption of such measures.

And of course there is the assertion of a right to resist occupation:

Article 7. Resistance and opposition to oppression

1.       All peoples and individuals have the right to resist and oppose oppressive colonial, foreign occupation or dictatorial domination (domestic oppression).

2.       Everyone has the right to oppose aggression, genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity, violations of other universally recognized human rights, and any propaganda in favour of war or incitement to violence and violations of the right to peace, as defined in the present declaration.

Note that while any form of ‘censorship’ is forbidden and freedom of thought and expression is guaranteed, there is also a right to ‘oppose’ what is defined as ‘propaganda’ in favor of war or violence.

Naturally, there is also a guarantee of refugee status, not only for those who who have fled their homeland, but for those who are outside the country of [their] nationality. In other words, someone with ‘Palestinian’ nationality can be a refugee even if he or she has never been in ‘Palestine.’

And need I add that there is a ‘right of return’ for refugees?

Article 12.      Refugees and migrants

1.       All individuals have the right to seek and to enjoy refugee status without discrimination, if there is a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of one’s nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail oneself of the protection of that country; or who, not having a nationality and being outside the country of his former habitual residence as a result of such events, is unable or, owing to such fear, unwilling to return to it.

2.       Refugee status should include, inter alia, the right to voluntary return to one’s country or place of origin or residence in dignity and with all due guarantees, once the causes of persecution have been removed and, in case of armed conflict, it has ended.

And who gets to decide what is war propaganda, who is indigenous, who is a refugee, what is apartheid, neo-colonialism, racism, etc.?

Why, the UN and its Human Rights Commission of course:

                Article 13.              Obligations and implementation

1.       The preservation, promotion and implementation of the right to peace constitute a fundamental obligation of all States and of the United Nations as the most universal body harmonizing the concerted efforts of the nations to realize the purposes and principles proclaimed in the Charter of the United Nations.

…

5.       States should strengthen the effectiveness of the United Nations in its dual functions of preventing violations and protecting human rights and human dignity, including the right to peace. In particular, it is for the General Assembly, the Security Council, the Human Rights Council and other competent bodiesto take effective measures to protect human rights from violations that may constitute a danger or threat to international peace and security.6.       The Human Rights Council is invited to set up a body to continue discussion on and monitoring of the right to peace and to report to relevant United Nations bodies.

Today’s resolution, to continue the process of ‘promoting’ this declaration, was passed. Only one member of the council cast a ‘no’ vote: the US.

Technorati Tags: UN, UNHRC