FresnoZionism.org — ציונות פרסנו

“Why are you so down on the Obama Administration?”  asks a friend.

Here’s an example of why:

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Advancing Israel-Palestinian peace is the “epicenter” of U.S. foreign policy, the White House national security adviser said.

“If there was one problem I could recommend to the president if he could solve one problem, this would be it,” James Jones said Tuesday in Washington during an address to the first conference of J Street, the dovish pro-Israel lobby. Bringing about an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement would create “ripples” around the world, Jones said. “The reverse is not true. This is the epicenter.”

Oh really? How about solving the problem of Iran? I bet that almost any Arab leader, speaking candidly, would agree that this is more urgent than peace between Israel and the Palestinians. The Iranian regime is

• Exporting its revolution everywhere possible by means of its Hezbollah proxy
• Preventing a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by supporting Hamas, Islamic Jihad, etc.
• Providing arms and support to Syria, which is helping insurgents in Iraq and subverting Lebanon
• Developing nuclear weapons

I agree that Iran would be a hard nut to crack, but guess what — so is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, particularly if nothing is done about Iran. It should be clear that the chain of causality starts in Tehran, not Jerusalem.

Jones is expressing the so-called ‘linkage theory’, the really absurd idea that all the problems of the Mideast would be on the way to solution if the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would only end.  There’s also the corollary to this that the conflict is entirely Israel’s fault, and the way to solve it is to force Israel to give in to all Arab demands. This is more or less the Saudi point of view, and it isn’t surprising to see James L. Jones pushing it.

After he retired from the marine Corps, Gen. Jones served as president and CEO of the Institute for 21st Century Energy — an industry-funded lobby and PR organization; and in 2008 he joined the board of Directors of the Chevron Corporation, which has large operations in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Qatar. He was appointed “security coordinator” for the Bush Administration’s Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts, and in 2008 issued a report which was not released, but which purportedly made “Israel look very bad”. He also proposed that security should be guaranteed by NATO troops after an Israeli pullout from Judea and Samaria.

This is the guy who is one of the top advisors to the President on foreign policy, perhaps the most influential!

Technorati Tags: Israel, Obama Administration, James Jones, linkage theory

Ha’aretz reports:

Human rights lawyers and pro-Palestinian activists in a number of European countries hold lists with names of Israel Defense Forces soldiers allegedly linked to war crimes committed during Operation Cast Lead in the Gaza Strip. Existing legislation enables arrest warrants to be issued against these officers if they enter those countries.

Lawyers in Britain and other European countries have been collecting testimonies of Palestinians and other data from Gaza since January, which they maintain proves that war crimes were committed by the IDF during the offensive. The evidence is linked to IDF officers holding ranks of battalion commander and higher, who were in command during various stages of Cast Lead.

The other nations who have lawyers collecting information on the matter include the Netherlands, Spain, Belgium and Norway, whose laws, as well as Britain’s, allow the issuance of arrest warrants against foreign citizens suspected of war crimes.

All very official, not unlike ‘official’ Nazi legal procedures for confiscating Jewish property, etc.  Naturally only the highest standards of ‘evidence’ will be used:

[British attorney Daniel] Makover said that the Goldstone report on the fighting in the Gaza Strip will bolster the efforts of the activists, and said that some of the instances mentioned in the report were already known to the attorneys. Makover is part of an unofficial network of attorneys operating in various countries in Europe, exchanging and sharing information so that suspected officers may be arrested in those countries.

Imagine my relief to know that the same careful forensic methods and the same standards of fairness that characterize the Goldstone report and NGO ‘investigations’ will now drive an international manhunt to capture the criminals who have violated Rule No. 1:

• Jewish self-defense is strictly forbidden (but Palestinians have the right to ‘resist’).

Other public-spirited individuals will help assure that the ‘perpetrators’ do not escape ‘justice’:

The information is often received from pro-Palestinian activists who follow Jewish or pro-Israel groups that invite IDF officers to deliver lectures. In some instances, this information is relayed to border controls…

A number of human rights groups are busy working to create an international organization that would enable closer surveillance of those they suspect of war crimes and torture, as well as seek warrants for their arrest.

It also renews my faith in my fellow man to know that they are not depending on the authorities to bring these miscreants to justice. No, a network of ‘pro-Palestinian activists’ and ‘human rights groups’ will make sure the none of them slip away!

It would be unbelievable, if it were not true, that language, organizations and laws that originally came into being as a result of the horrific persecutions of Jews by the Nazis are being used today to aid the Palestinian Arabs — who were allied with the Nazis during the war — as they take part in the 100-year old war against Jews living in eretz yisrael.

The cynical twisting of truth that facilitates this is really a triumph of modern media manipulation in the supposedly ‘advanced’ countries of Europe. Göbbels himself would have to admire it.

There are other ironies. In the Warsaw Ghetto 66 years ago, Jews who tried to defend themselves were hunted down. Then, as now, the ‘authorities’ had the enthusiastic help of ‘activists’, Ukrainians, Latvians and some Poles (although in fairness, the Polish underground aided the Jews).

Imagine the empowerment of today’s ‘activists’, who in addition to demanding boycotts of Israeli products and professors can now actually help lock up a real live IDF officer!

Sometimes human behavior is so perverse, so ignorant, stupid and evil that the usual rhetorical tools, like irony, can’t begin to describe it. For years after, historians, novelists and poets struggle to explain the apparent pandemic insanity of a time or collection of events, like the Crusades or the Nazi era.

Today, when half the world is obsessed with the desire to stamp out a tiny nation with a tiny population, a nation with no significant natural resources except Jewish brains, is truly one of those times.

Technorati Tags: IDF, Israel, war crimes, Europe

I can’t think of a single good reason that Israel should set up a commission to investigate the IDF’s actions in Gaza on the basis of the Goldstone report, or even, as PM Netanyahu seems to have suggested at one point, to create a ‘team’ (this is supposed to be less than a ‘commission’) to ‘reevalute’ the IDF’s examination of its own behavior.

On the other hand, there are many good reasons not to do so.

1) The main one, as I’ve argued before, is that to deny wild accusations is to suggest that, while false, they are not so wild. It is to suggest that they could be true. Otherwise, why investigate them?

The most damning accusation in the Goldstone report, of course, is that Israel intentionally hurt and killed noncombatants and destroyed civilian infrastructure in order to ‘collectively punish’ Palestinians. That this was not collateral damage, but deliberate damage. That this was part of Israel’s strategy.

The Goldstone report claims to prove this, but actually presents no evidence. Further, it can be shown that it cannot be true. Why, then should this libel be given even the weight of a hypothesis?

2) An investigation of Goldstone’s claims would imply that the report’s method — which was apparently to accept Palestinian ‘witness’ testimony as prima facie true, or to repeat claims made by organizations such as HRW or even Hamas-related groups who did the same — was capable of reaching unbiased conclusions. It would imply that the mandate of the commission and its makeup could produce a fair result. None of these is the case, and that can be shown without an investigation.

3) An investigation by anyone except the IDF itself, which is already investigating numerous incidents that occurred during the war, implies a lack of confidence in the IDF. But the government, which was aware of the precautions army commanders took to minimize civilian casualties, has no reason except for the clearly biased Goldstone report to second-guess the IDF. To do so would not only be unfair, but would have a chilling effect on officers’ initiative in future campaigns.

4) No Israeli investigation will be taken seriously by any UN body. Remember the International Court of Justice decision that the Security Barrier was ‘illegal under international law’, a decision which did not mention terrorism even once? An investigation will not protect Israel from hostile acts of the UN.  Since unfriendly European governments will likely take their cues from UN resolutions, it won’t protect Israelis against local ‘war crimes’ prosecutions either. So why incur the damage described in 1-3 above?

Here is another idea: Investigate the investigators, and the defective process by which the report came about.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Goldstone Commission