I hate to say I told you so, but, I told you so.
Two years ago I wrote about the appointment of former Yale Law School Dean Harold Koh as senior legal advisor to the State Department.
Why did I warn you? Because Koh is the leading proponent of an unconstitutional reading of what is known as "The Supremacy Clause" of the Constitution*
Simply stated, the Supremacy Clause says that in cases where State and Federal law conflict, Federal Law will govern. It was put there to deal with many of the issues that had arisen in the early days of the Republic, and previously under the Articles of Confederation, largely commerce issues.
However, the Supremacy Clause has also always been read as saying that US Law supersedes International Laws or agreements. In other words, the President cannot sign treaties or agreements that violate the Constitution.
The purpose of Obama reaching out for Harold Koh, and then appointing an entire coterie of Koh's supplicants, from Sotomayor, to Holder, et al, is to begin the process of moving toward George Soros' "Open Society".
What does that mean? A world without borders, essentially.
It is why Obama, for the first time in US history has subjugated US military personnel in a large action, to an international body
It is no small difference that in the past, US Presidents may have sought UN affirmation, but never was it that body that made the US act.
Even more so, we have always led NATO actions, limited as they have been.
And once again, I sit stunned by the failure of even a single member of the Press to recognize, let alone discuss, this.
*Article IV, Paragraph 2 of the Constitution:
"This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof; and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby, anything in the constitution or laws of any state to the contrary notwithstanding."
Sunday, March 27, 2011
Saturday, March 19, 2011
I would like to suggest that there is no such thing as a left or right.... A not so subtle reminder
....You and I are told increasingly that we have to choose between a left or right, but I would like to suggest that there is no such thing as a left or right. There is only an up or down--up to a man's age-old dream, the ultimate in individual freedom consistent with law and order--or down to the ant heap totalitarianism, and regardless of their sincerity, their humanitarian motives, those who would trade our freedom for security have embarked on this downward course.
In this vote-harvesting time, they use terms like the "Great Society," or as we were told a few days ago by the President, we must accept a "greater government activity in the affairs of the people." But they have been a little more explicit in the past and among themselves--and all of the things that I now will quote have appeared in print. These are not Republican accusations. For example, they have voices that say "the cold war will end through acceptance of a not undemocratic socialism." Another voice says that the profit motive has become outmoded, it must be replaced by the incentives of the welfare state; or our traditional system of individual freedom is incapable of solving the complex problems of the 20th century. Senator Fullbright has said at Stanford University that the Constitution is outmoded. He referred to the president as our moral teacher and our leader, and he said he is hobbled in his task by the restrictions in power imposed on him by this antiquated document. He must be freed so that he can do for us what he knows is best. And Senator Clark of Pennsylvania, another articulate spokesman, defines liberalism as "meeting the material needs of the masses through the full power of centralized government." Well, I for one resent it when a representative of the people refers to you and me--the free man and woman of this country--as "the masses." This is a term we haven't applied to ourselves in America. But beyond that, "the full power of centralized government"--this was the very thing the Founding Fathers sought to minimize. They knew that governments don't control things. A government can't control the economy without controlling people. And they know when a government sets out to do that, it must use force and coercion to achieve its purpose. They also knew, those Founding Fathers, that outside of its legitimate functions, government does nothing as well or as economically as the private sector of the economy....
We have so many people who can't see a fat man standing beside a thin one without coming to the conclusion that the fat man got that way by taking advantage of the thin one. So they are going to solve all the problems of human misery through government and government planning. Well, now, if government planning and welfare had the answer and they've had almost 30 years of it, shouldn't we expect government to almost read the score to us once in a while? Shouldn't they be telling us about the decline each year in the number of people needing help? The reduction in the need for public housing?
But the reverse is true. Each year the need grows greater, the program grows greater. We were told four years ago that 17 million people went to bed hungry each night. Well, that was probably true. They were all on a diet. But now we are told that 9.3 million families in this country are poverty-stricken on the basis of earning less than $3,000 a year. Welfare spending is 10 times greater than in the dark depths of the Depression. We are spending $45 billion on welfare. Now do a little arithmetic, and you will find that if we divided the $45 billion up equally among those 9 million poor families, we would be able to give each family $4,600 a year, and this added to their present income should eliminate poverty! Direct aid to the poor, however, is running only about $600 per family. It would seem that someplace there must be some overhead....
Yet anytime you and I question the schemes of the do-gooders, we are denounced as being against their humanitarian goals. They say we are always "against" things, never "for" anything. Well, the trouble with our liberal friends is not that they are ignorant, but that they know so much that isn't so. We are for a provision that destitution should not follow unemployment by reason of old age, and to that end we have accepted Social Security as a step toward meeting the problem.
But we are against those entrusted with this program when they practice deception regarding its fiscal shortcomings, when they charge that any criticism of the program means that we want to end payments to those who depend on them for livelihood. They have called it insurance to us in a hundred million pieces of literature. But then they appeared before the Supreme Court and they testified that it was a welfare program. They only use the term "insurance" to sell it to the people. And they said Social Security dues are a tax for the general use of the government, and the government has used that tax. There is no fund, because Robert Byers, the actuarial head, appeared before a congressional committee and admitted that Social Security as of this moment is $298 billion in the hole. But he said there should be no cause for worry because as long as they have the power to tax, they could always take away from the people whatever they needed to bail them out of trouble! And they are doing just that....
I think we are for an international organization, where the nations of the world can seek peace. But I think we are against subordinating American interests to an organization that has become so structurally unsound that today you can muster a two-thirds vote on the floor of the General Assembly among the nations that represent less than 10 percent of the world's population. I think we are against the hypocrisy of assailing our allies because here and there they cling to a colony, while we engage in a conspiracy of silence and never open our mouths about the millions of people enslaved in Soviet colonies in the satellite nation....
No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size. Government programs, once launched, never disappear. Actually, a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we'll ever see on this Earth. Federal employees number 2.5 million, and federal, state, and local, one out of six of the nation's work force is employed by the government. These proliferating bureaus with their thousands of regulations have cost us many of our constitutional safeguards. How many of us realize that today federal agents can invade a man's property without a warrant? They can impose a fine without a formal hearing, let alone a trial by jury, and they can seize and sell his property in auction to enforce the payment of that fine....
As a former Democrat, I can tell you Norman Thomas isn't the only man who has drawn this parallel to socialism with the present administration. Back in 1936, Mr. Democrat himself, Al Smith, the great American, came before the American people and charged that the leadership of his party was taking the part of Jefferson, Jackson, and Cleveland down the road under the banners of Marx, Lenin, and Stalin. And he walked away from his party, and he never returned to the day he died, because to this day, the leadership of that party has been taking that party, that honorable party, down the road in the image of the labor socialist party of England. Now it doesn't require expropriation or confiscation of private property or business to impose socialism on a people. What does it mean whether you hold the deed or the title to your business or property if the government holds the power of life and death over that business or property? Such machinery already exists. The government can find some charge to bring against any concern it chooses to prosecute. Every businessman has his own tale of harassment. Somewhere a perversion has taken place. Our natural, inalienable rights are now considered to be a dispensation of government, and freedom has never been so fragile, so close to slipping from our grasp as it is at this moment. Our Democratic opponents seem unwilling to debate these issues. They want to make you and I believe that this is a contest between two men...that we are to choose just between two personalities....
Those who would trade our freedom for the soup kitchen of the welfare state have told us that they have a utopian solution of peace without victory. They call their policy "accommodation." And they say if we only avoid any direct confrontation with the enemy, he will forget his evil ways and learn to love us. All who oppose them are indicted as warmongers. They say we offer simple answers to complex problems. Well, perhaps there is a simple answer--not an easy answer--but simple.
If you and I have the courage to tell our elected officials that we want our national policy based upon what we know in our hearts is morally right. We cannot buy our security, our freedom from the threat of the bomb by committing an immorality so great as saying to a billion now in slavery behind the Iron Curtain, "Give up your dreams of freedom because to save our own skin, we are willing to make a deal with your slave masters." Alexander Hamilton said, "A nation which can prefer disgrace to danger is prepared for a master, and deserves one." Let's set the record straight. There is no argument over the choice between peace and war, but there is only one guaranteed way you can have peace--and you can have it in the next second--surrender.
Admittedly there is a risk in any course we follow other than this, but every lesson in history tells us that the greater risk lies in appeasement, and this is the specter our well-meaning liberal friends refuse to face--that their policy of accommodation is appeasement, and it gives no choice between peace and war, only between fight and surrender. If we continue to accommodate, continue to back and retreat, eventually we have to face the final demand--the ultimatum. And what then? When Nikita Khrushchev has told his people he knows what our answer will be? He has told them that we are retreating under the pressure of the Cold War, and someday when the time comes to deliver the ultimatum, our surrender will be voluntary because by that time we will have weakened from within spiritually, morally, and economically. He believes this because from our side he has heard voices pleading for "peace at any price" or "better Red than dead," or as one commentator put it, he would rather "live on his knees than die on his feet." And therein lies the road to war, because those voices don't speak for the rest of us. You and I know and do not believe that life is so dear and peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery. If nothing in life is worth dying for, when did this begin--just in the face of this enemy? Or should Moses have told the children of Israel to live in slavery under the pharaohs? Should Christ have refused the cross? Should the patriots at Concord Bridge have thrown down their guns and refused to fire the shot heard 'round the world? The martyrs of history were not fools, and our honored dead who gave their lives to stop the advance of the Nazis didn't die in vain. Where, then, is the road to peace? Well, it's a simple answer after all.
You and I have the courage to say to our enemies, "There is a price we will not pay." There is a point beyond which they must not advance. This is the meaning in the phrase of Barry Goldwater's "peace through strength." Winston Churchill said that "the destiny of man is not measured by material computation. When great forces are on the move in the world, we learn we are spirits--not animals." And he said, "There is something going on in time and space, and beyond time and space, which, whether we like it or not, spells duty."
You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We will preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on Earth, or we will sentence them to take the last step into a thousand years of darkness....
In this vote-harvesting time, they use terms like the "Great Society," or as we were told a few days ago by the President, we must accept a "greater government activity in the affairs of the people." But they have been a little more explicit in the past and among themselves--and all of the things that I now will quote have appeared in print. These are not Republican accusations. For example, they have voices that say "the cold war will end through acceptance of a not undemocratic socialism." Another voice says that the profit motive has become outmoded, it must be replaced by the incentives of the welfare state; or our traditional system of individual freedom is incapable of solving the complex problems of the 20th century. Senator Fullbright has said at Stanford University that the Constitution is outmoded. He referred to the president as our moral teacher and our leader, and he said he is hobbled in his task by the restrictions in power imposed on him by this antiquated document. He must be freed so that he can do for us what he knows is best. And Senator Clark of Pennsylvania, another articulate spokesman, defines liberalism as "meeting the material needs of the masses through the full power of centralized government." Well, I for one resent it when a representative of the people refers to you and me--the free man and woman of this country--as "the masses." This is a term we haven't applied to ourselves in America. But beyond that, "the full power of centralized government"--this was the very thing the Founding Fathers sought to minimize. They knew that governments don't control things. A government can't control the economy without controlling people. And they know when a government sets out to do that, it must use force and coercion to achieve its purpose. They also knew, those Founding Fathers, that outside of its legitimate functions, government does nothing as well or as economically as the private sector of the economy....
We have so many people who can't see a fat man standing beside a thin one without coming to the conclusion that the fat man got that way by taking advantage of the thin one. So they are going to solve all the problems of human misery through government and government planning. Well, now, if government planning and welfare had the answer and they've had almost 30 years of it, shouldn't we expect government to almost read the score to us once in a while? Shouldn't they be telling us about the decline each year in the number of people needing help? The reduction in the need for public housing?
But the reverse is true. Each year the need grows greater, the program grows greater. We were told four years ago that 17 million people went to bed hungry each night. Well, that was probably true. They were all on a diet. But now we are told that 9.3 million families in this country are poverty-stricken on the basis of earning less than $3,000 a year. Welfare spending is 10 times greater than in the dark depths of the Depression. We are spending $45 billion on welfare. Now do a little arithmetic, and you will find that if we divided the $45 billion up equally among those 9 million poor families, we would be able to give each family $4,600 a year, and this added to their present income should eliminate poverty! Direct aid to the poor, however, is running only about $600 per family. It would seem that someplace there must be some overhead....
Yet anytime you and I question the schemes of the do-gooders, we are denounced as being against their humanitarian goals. They say we are always "against" things, never "for" anything. Well, the trouble with our liberal friends is not that they are ignorant, but that they know so much that isn't so. We are for a provision that destitution should not follow unemployment by reason of old age, and to that end we have accepted Social Security as a step toward meeting the problem.
But we are against those entrusted with this program when they practice deception regarding its fiscal shortcomings, when they charge that any criticism of the program means that we want to end payments to those who depend on them for livelihood. They have called it insurance to us in a hundred million pieces of literature. But then they appeared before the Supreme Court and they testified that it was a welfare program. They only use the term "insurance" to sell it to the people. And they said Social Security dues are a tax for the general use of the government, and the government has used that tax. There is no fund, because Robert Byers, the actuarial head, appeared before a congressional committee and admitted that Social Security as of this moment is $298 billion in the hole. But he said there should be no cause for worry because as long as they have the power to tax, they could always take away from the people whatever they needed to bail them out of trouble! And they are doing just that....
I think we are for an international organization, where the nations of the world can seek peace. But I think we are against subordinating American interests to an organization that has become so structurally unsound that today you can muster a two-thirds vote on the floor of the General Assembly among the nations that represent less than 10 percent of the world's population. I think we are against the hypocrisy of assailing our allies because here and there they cling to a colony, while we engage in a conspiracy of silence and never open our mouths about the millions of people enslaved in Soviet colonies in the satellite nation....
No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size. Government programs, once launched, never disappear. Actually, a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we'll ever see on this Earth. Federal employees number 2.5 million, and federal, state, and local, one out of six of the nation's work force is employed by the government. These proliferating bureaus with their thousands of regulations have cost us many of our constitutional safeguards. How many of us realize that today federal agents can invade a man's property without a warrant? They can impose a fine without a formal hearing, let alone a trial by jury, and they can seize and sell his property in auction to enforce the payment of that fine....
As a former Democrat, I can tell you Norman Thomas isn't the only man who has drawn this parallel to socialism with the present administration. Back in 1936, Mr. Democrat himself, Al Smith, the great American, came before the American people and charged that the leadership of his party was taking the part of Jefferson, Jackson, and Cleveland down the road under the banners of Marx, Lenin, and Stalin. And he walked away from his party, and he never returned to the day he died, because to this day, the leadership of that party has been taking that party, that honorable party, down the road in the image of the labor socialist party of England. Now it doesn't require expropriation or confiscation of private property or business to impose socialism on a people. What does it mean whether you hold the deed or the title to your business or property if the government holds the power of life and death over that business or property? Such machinery already exists. The government can find some charge to bring against any concern it chooses to prosecute. Every businessman has his own tale of harassment. Somewhere a perversion has taken place. Our natural, inalienable rights are now considered to be a dispensation of government, and freedom has never been so fragile, so close to slipping from our grasp as it is at this moment. Our Democratic opponents seem unwilling to debate these issues. They want to make you and I believe that this is a contest between two men...that we are to choose just between two personalities....
Those who would trade our freedom for the soup kitchen of the welfare state have told us that they have a utopian solution of peace without victory. They call their policy "accommodation." And they say if we only avoid any direct confrontation with the enemy, he will forget his evil ways and learn to love us. All who oppose them are indicted as warmongers. They say we offer simple answers to complex problems. Well, perhaps there is a simple answer--not an easy answer--but simple.
If you and I have the courage to tell our elected officials that we want our national policy based upon what we know in our hearts is morally right. We cannot buy our security, our freedom from the threat of the bomb by committing an immorality so great as saying to a billion now in slavery behind the Iron Curtain, "Give up your dreams of freedom because to save our own skin, we are willing to make a deal with your slave masters." Alexander Hamilton said, "A nation which can prefer disgrace to danger is prepared for a master, and deserves one." Let's set the record straight. There is no argument over the choice between peace and war, but there is only one guaranteed way you can have peace--and you can have it in the next second--surrender.
Admittedly there is a risk in any course we follow other than this, but every lesson in history tells us that the greater risk lies in appeasement, and this is the specter our well-meaning liberal friends refuse to face--that their policy of accommodation is appeasement, and it gives no choice between peace and war, only between fight and surrender. If we continue to accommodate, continue to back and retreat, eventually we have to face the final demand--the ultimatum. And what then? When Nikita Khrushchev has told his people he knows what our answer will be? He has told them that we are retreating under the pressure of the Cold War, and someday when the time comes to deliver the ultimatum, our surrender will be voluntary because by that time we will have weakened from within spiritually, morally, and economically. He believes this because from our side he has heard voices pleading for "peace at any price" or "better Red than dead," or as one commentator put it, he would rather "live on his knees than die on his feet." And therein lies the road to war, because those voices don't speak for the rest of us. You and I know and do not believe that life is so dear and peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery. If nothing in life is worth dying for, when did this begin--just in the face of this enemy? Or should Moses have told the children of Israel to live in slavery under the pharaohs? Should Christ have refused the cross? Should the patriots at Concord Bridge have thrown down their guns and refused to fire the shot heard 'round the world? The martyrs of history were not fools, and our honored dead who gave their lives to stop the advance of the Nazis didn't die in vain. Where, then, is the road to peace? Well, it's a simple answer after all.
You and I have the courage to say to our enemies, "There is a price we will not pay." There is a point beyond which they must not advance. This is the meaning in the phrase of Barry Goldwater's "peace through strength." Winston Churchill said that "the destiny of man is not measured by material computation. When great forces are on the move in the world, we learn we are spirits--not animals." And he said, "There is something going on in time and space, and beyond time and space, which, whether we like it or not, spells duty."
You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We will preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on Earth, or we will sentence them to take the last step into a thousand years of darkness....
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
Massacre in Itamar - warning, graphic photos inside.
This past Shabbat, the 12 year old daughter of the Fogel Family living in Itamar, Israel, a town approximately 15 miles west of the Jordan River and 30 miles from the Meditterranean, in what has become known as the northern west bank, arrived home from a youth group meeting.
She was unable to open the door to her house, and summoned a neighbor for help.
What she found can not be described in any other way than horrific.
Her parents, 11 year old, 4 year old, and 3 MONTH OLD siblings were found murdered, stabbed to death in their beds, their throats slashed.
To let the public understand the brutality of the crimes, and what they face every day, the family released some of the official investigative pictures of the murders.
Here in the US, a person who committed this crime would be known as a "family annhilator", a particularly heinous type of serial killer.
In Palestinian society, this type of person has a street, soccer stadium or School named after them, as Dalal Mughrabi, the worst murderer in Israeli history (a female Palestinian terrorist) had.
Worse, these "namings" are applauded and supported by ALL of the Palestinian leadership, including Abbas and Fayyad. Abbas said recently that of course they would name things after Mughrabi, she is a hero.
She was unable to open the door to her house, and summoned a neighbor for help.
What she found can not be described in any other way than horrific.
Her parents, 11 year old, 4 year old, and 3 MONTH OLD siblings were found murdered, stabbed to death in their beds, their throats slashed.
To let the public understand the brutality of the crimes, and what they face every day, the family released some of the official investigative pictures of the murders.
Here in the US, a person who committed this crime would be known as a "family annhilator", a particularly heinous type of serial killer.
In Palestinian society, this type of person has a street, soccer stadium or School named after them, as Dalal Mughrabi, the worst murderer in Israeli history (a female Palestinian terrorist) had.
Worse, these "namings" are applauded and supported by ALL of the Palestinian leadership, including Abbas and Fayyad. Abbas said recently that of course they would name things after Mughrabi, she is a hero.
Monday, March 14, 2011
A Challenge to the 'Peace' Camp
By David Suissa
It is fashionable when talking about the "peace process" to focus on hope — to try to nurture the moderate elements among our "peace partners" and constantly inject good faith and good will to keep the process moving "forward."
Because I crave peace by nature, I've always had some sympathy for this approach, which is why I have many friends on the left and why I occasionally take a break from my hard-nosed realism to indulge in more dreamlike and wishful prose.
This is not one of those times.
When I saw the horrifying pictures of the Jewish family members in Itamar who were stabbed to death in their own home— Udi and Ruth Fogel (36 and 35 years old), and their children Yoav (11 years old), Elad (4) and their 3-month-old daughter, Hadas— I thought of recent reports on the glorification of terrorism in Palestinian society.
It was impossible not to connect the dots.
In the reports, from Palestinian Media Watch, I learned that the terrorist responsible for the most lethal attack against Israel, Dalal Mughrabi, is now immortalized in two elementary schools, a kindergarten, a computer center, summer camps, football tournaments, a community center, a sports team, a public square, a street, an election course, an adult education course, a university club, a dance troupe, a military unit, a dormitory in a youth center, a TV quiz team and a graduation ceremony.
I also learned that today, a Palestinian child can walk to school along a street named after the terrorist Abu Jihad, who planned a bus hijacking that killed 37, spend the day in a school named after Ahmad Yassin, the man who founded Hamas, play soccer in the afternoon in a tournament honoring terrorist Abd Al-Basset Odeh, who killed 31, and end his day at a youth center named after Abu Iyad, who was responsible for killing 11 Israeli Olympic athletes in Munich.
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These are the heroes of Palestinian society— not Abraham Lincolns and Albert Einsteins and Martin Luther Kings but murderers who crave the spilling of Jewish blood.
Before you rush to defend our "new and improved" Palestinian "peace partners," note that it was Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas who funded a computer center named after Dalal Mughrabi in 2009, and who supported the naming of the square in her honor in 2010.
"Of course, we want to name a square after her," he said to Al-Hayat Al-Jadida on Jan.17, 2010.
And who sponsored a sporting event named after one of the most prominent terrorist of all, Abu Jihad, in May 2010? None other than PA Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, the man who is building the "new" Palestine.
Just last year, Mahmoud Al-Aloui, a member of the Fatah Central Committee, said in an interview in Al-Hayat Al Jadida: "It is our right and our duty to take pride in all of the Shahids (martyrs), and it is our duty to convey this message in the most direct manner to the generations to come."
He wasn't kidding. Only a month ago, PA President Abbas awarded $2000 to the family of a terrorist who attacked two Israeli soldiers in December.
And the very day before the Itamar murders, PA presidential advisor Sabri Saidam delivered a speech reported in Al Ayyam, in which he emphasized that "the weapons must be turned towards the main enemy [Israel] and internal differences of opinion must be set aside."
This glorification of Jew-hatred and murder in the name of martyrdom— which marinates all strata of Palestinian society— is happening under the watchful eyes of our Palestinian "peace partners," who have convinced most of the world, and many Israel supporters, that the real obstacle to peace is not Palestinian incitement to murder but Jewish building of apartments in East Jerusalem.
Even if you're a passionate peacenik, you have to admit that this is a bad joke. What does Jewish construction have to do with a Jew-hatred that has been burned into Arab hearts since before the first settlement or even Israel ever existed?
What else but Jew-hatred can explain the consistent refusal by Palestinian leaders to recognize a Jewish state and prepare their people for the inevitable compromises that peace with Jews will require?
As Sari Nusseibeh once said, "How can we Palestinians expect Israel to think we want co-existence when our position on the refugee issue has been tantamount to a call for Israel's destruction?"
So, here's my message to my friends in the peace camp. You've done an amazing job of telling the world that a peace agreement with the Palestinians is really, really important, and that Israel is primarily responsible for the absence of this agreement.
In fact, you've done such an amazing job of blaming Israel that my friend Gary Rosenblatt, editor of the Jewish Week, wrote last week that Israel has become a "source of embarrassment" for many American Jews. Imagine that.
Well, now you have a chance to make amends and bring some balance to your message.
In honor of the children who were stabbed to death in Itamar, you can release this statement to the world: "It is really, really important, for the sake of peace, that Palestinian leaders eliminate the glorification of terrorism and Jew-hatred that permeates their society, and begin immediately to teach the benefits and compromises of peaceful co-existence with a Jewish state."
Who's brave enough in the peace camp to sign their name to that statement?
It is fashionable when talking about the "peace process" to focus on hope — to try to nurture the moderate elements among our "peace partners" and constantly inject good faith and good will to keep the process moving "forward."
Because I crave peace by nature, I've always had some sympathy for this approach, which is why I have many friends on the left and why I occasionally take a break from my hard-nosed realism to indulge in more dreamlike and wishful prose.
This is not one of those times.
When I saw the horrifying pictures of the Jewish family members in Itamar who were stabbed to death in their own home— Udi and Ruth Fogel (36 and 35 years old), and their children Yoav (11 years old), Elad (4) and their 3-month-old daughter, Hadas— I thought of recent reports on the glorification of terrorism in Palestinian society.
It was impossible not to connect the dots.
In the reports, from Palestinian Media Watch, I learned that the terrorist responsible for the most lethal attack against Israel, Dalal Mughrabi, is now immortalized in two elementary schools, a kindergarten, a computer center, summer camps, football tournaments, a community center, a sports team, a public square, a street, an election course, an adult education course, a university club, a dance troupe, a military unit, a dormitory in a youth center, a TV quiz team and a graduation ceremony.
I also learned that today, a Palestinian child can walk to school along a street named after the terrorist Abu Jihad, who planned a bus hijacking that killed 37, spend the day in a school named after Ahmad Yassin, the man who founded Hamas, play soccer in the afternoon in a tournament honoring terrorist Abd Al-Basset Odeh, who killed 31, and end his day at a youth center named after Abu Iyad, who was responsible for killing 11 Israeli Olympic athletes in Munich.
FREE SUBSCRIPTION TO INFLUENTIAL NEWSLETTER
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". HUNDREDS of columnists and cartoonists regularly appear. Sign up for the daily update. It's free. Just click here.
These are the heroes of Palestinian society— not Abraham Lincolns and Albert Einsteins and Martin Luther Kings but murderers who crave the spilling of Jewish blood.
Before you rush to defend our "new and improved" Palestinian "peace partners," note that it was Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas who funded a computer center named after Dalal Mughrabi in 2009, and who supported the naming of the square in her honor in 2010.
"Of course, we want to name a square after her," he said to Al-Hayat Al-Jadida on Jan.17, 2010.
And who sponsored a sporting event named after one of the most prominent terrorist of all, Abu Jihad, in May 2010? None other than PA Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, the man who is building the "new" Palestine.
Just last year, Mahmoud Al-Aloui, a member of the Fatah Central Committee, said in an interview in Al-Hayat Al Jadida: "It is our right and our duty to take pride in all of the Shahids (martyrs), and it is our duty to convey this message in the most direct manner to the generations to come."
He wasn't kidding. Only a month ago, PA President Abbas awarded $2000 to the family of a terrorist who attacked two Israeli soldiers in December.
And the very day before the Itamar murders, PA presidential advisor Sabri Saidam delivered a speech reported in Al Ayyam, in which he emphasized that "the weapons must be turned towards the main enemy [Israel] and internal differences of opinion must be set aside."
This glorification of Jew-hatred and murder in the name of martyrdom— which marinates all strata of Palestinian society— is happening under the watchful eyes of our Palestinian "peace partners," who have convinced most of the world, and many Israel supporters, that the real obstacle to peace is not Palestinian incitement to murder but Jewish building of apartments in East Jerusalem.
Even if you're a passionate peacenik, you have to admit that this is a bad joke. What does Jewish construction have to do with a Jew-hatred that has been burned into Arab hearts since before the first settlement or even Israel ever existed?
What else but Jew-hatred can explain the consistent refusal by Palestinian leaders to recognize a Jewish state and prepare their people for the inevitable compromises that peace with Jews will require?
As Sari Nusseibeh once said, "How can we Palestinians expect Israel to think we want co-existence when our position on the refugee issue has been tantamount to a call for Israel's destruction?"
So, here's my message to my friends in the peace camp. You've done an amazing job of telling the world that a peace agreement with the Palestinians is really, really important, and that Israel is primarily responsible for the absence of this agreement.
In fact, you've done such an amazing job of blaming Israel that my friend Gary Rosenblatt, editor of the Jewish Week, wrote last week that Israel has become a "source of embarrassment" for many American Jews. Imagine that.
Well, now you have a chance to make amends and bring some balance to your message.
In honor of the children who were stabbed to death in Itamar, you can release this statement to the world: "It is really, really important, for the sake of peace, that Palestinian leaders eliminate the glorification of terrorism and Jew-hatred that permeates their society, and begin immediately to teach the benefits and compromises of peaceful co-existence with a Jewish state."
Who's brave enough in the peace camp to sign their name to that statement?
Friday, March 11, 2011
Can you talk when the conversation itself is illegitimate?
I've written often over the years about the Orwellian nature of conversations about the Middle East. That the very subjects being discussed are so backward and irrelevant to the bigger issues of tyrannical regimes that the very ideas, and those in support of them must be living in some alternate reality.
Now, the same thing is going on here in the US. We have been sucked into a debate in Wisconsin about the validity of Governor Walkers attempt to limit public service union's collective bargaining rights (not eliminate them, and not all unions as the left media would have us believe).
And yet, every day, the bigger story of an entire class of state senators simply leaving, refusing to engage even in debate is being ignored.
Where is the line? I don't want to name that school after FDR. I'm leaving!! I don't want to name the street Oak, it should be Elm!!! I'm leaving!!
I don't want Monday's as a state holiday for the Cheese Festival I want Tuesday!! I'm leaving!!!
It's called a slippery slope. And we've slipped so much we don't even notice the collective hole in the backseat of our collective pants from the friction on the way down.
This is obfuscation, point changing and political sleight of hand of the worst order.
Now, the same thing is going on here in the US. We have been sucked into a debate in Wisconsin about the validity of Governor Walkers attempt to limit public service union's collective bargaining rights (not eliminate them, and not all unions as the left media would have us believe).
And yet, every day, the bigger story of an entire class of state senators simply leaving, refusing to engage even in debate is being ignored.
Where is the line? I don't want to name that school after FDR. I'm leaving!! I don't want to name the street Oak, it should be Elm!!! I'm leaving!!
I don't want Monday's as a state holiday for the Cheese Festival I want Tuesday!! I'm leaving!!!
It's called a slippery slope. And we've slipped so much we don't even notice the collective hole in the backseat of our collective pants from the friction on the way down.
This is obfuscation, point changing and political sleight of hand of the worst order.
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
Our conversion to a dictatorship is now complete.
If you have read my blog over the last few years, you will have read my entreaties concerning the single thread that runs through the bizarre decisions of our current president. I have argued that it is never a question of left vs right, but rather that in true Progressive (or as I call them Regressive) fashion, he has concentrated more power in the office of the President than all of the chief executives who came before him combined.
One of the things that he did that most concerned me was his changing the definition of who could be detained without warrant under the guise of national security.
He took the Bush "enemy combatants" a clearly defined category well within the Geneva Conventions, and changed it to "Anyone the President deems in support of Terrorism".
Well, this weekend, the final straw was put into this potion of lost liberty.
In signing the executive order keeping Guantanamo Prison open and restarting Military Tribunals there, he did something that even I never thought any President would try and get away with.
No nation in history, even those with "show" trials, has ever declared that the President can keep imprisoned EVEN SOMEONE FOUND NOT GUILTY.
In other words, Barack Obama has now signed orders saying that he can arrest and imprison anyone he wants, REGARDLESS of what the courts say.
Call him Comrade, say Heil before his name, Your imperial highness, glorious leader, or any other appellation taken by the deviant dictators of our times, but he is well within that group.
One of the things that he did that most concerned me was his changing the definition of who could be detained without warrant under the guise of national security.
He took the Bush "enemy combatants" a clearly defined category well within the Geneva Conventions, and changed it to "Anyone the President deems in support of Terrorism".
Well, this weekend, the final straw was put into this potion of lost liberty.
In signing the executive order keeping Guantanamo Prison open and restarting Military Tribunals there, he did something that even I never thought any President would try and get away with.
No nation in history, even those with "show" trials, has ever declared that the President can keep imprisoned EVEN SOMEONE FOUND NOT GUILTY.
In other words, Barack Obama has now signed orders saying that he can arrest and imprison anyone he wants, REGARDLESS of what the courts say.
Call him Comrade, say Heil before his name, Your imperial highness, glorious leader, or any other appellation taken by the deviant dictators of our times, but he is well within that group.
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