Monday, May 11, 2009
US/UN Hammer Israel on Palestinian State
A week before Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visits Washington for his first face-to-face meeting with U.S. President Barack Obama, the beleaguered Jewish State is coming under relentless pressure to reaffirm its commitment to withdraw to indefensible borders and acquiesce in the creation of a Hamas-ruled Palestinian state in the disputed West Bank lands.
AFP reports:Israel came under pressure Monday to commit to the creation of an independent Palestinian state as the UN Security Council debated how to breathe new life into the dormant Middle East peace process.
The ministerial session wrapped up with the unanimous adoption of a non-binding statement calling for "urgent efforts ... to achieve a comprehensive, just and lasting peace."
It said such peace should be "based on the vision of a region where two democratic states, Israel and Palestine, live side by side in peace within secure and recognized borders."
The debate was chaired by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, whose country presides over the 15-member council this month.
But Israel and the Palestinians did not take part.
"Israel does not believe that the involvement of the Security Council contributes to the political process in the Middle East," its ambassador to the United Nations, Gabriela Shalev, said in a statement.
"This process should be bilateral and left to the parties themselves," she said.
"Furthermore, the timing of this Security Council meeting is inappropriate as the Israeli government is in the midst of conducting a policy review, prior to next week's visit by Prime Minister Netanyahu to the United States," she added, explaining her country's decision not to attend the council debate.
In her address, US Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice reaffirmed Washington's commitment to the creation of "an independent, viable Palestinian state" and noted that President Barack Obama planned to hold crucial talks with regional leaders.
"The United States is fully and unequivocally committed to working for a two-state solution," she told reporters after her speech. "We share a sense of urgency. This is a moment that should not be lost."
And she gave a stamp of approval to the Russian-drafted statement that stressed the "urgency of reaching comprehensive peace in the Middle East" and said "vigorous diplomatic action is needed."
Continue here.
China Confidential analysts say Rice, who was Barack Obama's senior foreign policy adviser during his Presidential campaign, is known within the Obama administration as a severe critic of Israel--arguably, America's most anti-Israel-ever U.N. envoy. Click below to watch an archived video interview of her defense of candidate Obama against criticism that he showed insufficient sensitivity to the Palestinian cause.
Rice was John Kerry’s chief foreign policy adviser when he ran for President. One measure Kerry suggested for dealing with the Middle East was to appoint James Baker and Jimmy Carter as negotiators. Confronted with criticism at the prospect of two of the most ardent foes of Israel assigned to squeeze the Jewish State, Kerry backtracked and blamed his staff for the idea. His "staff" was Susan Rice--now representing America at the U.N. The Democrats' dirty little secret is that for years, now, its left wing has been aligned with Israel's enemies.
That American Jewish voters overwhelmingly voted for Obama over a proven friend of Israel, Senator John McCain, will go down in Jewish history as one of the great betrayals of Jews by Jews. Imprisoned Iranian-American Reporter Freed
Iranian-American journalist Roxana Saberi will leave Iran in the next few days after an appeals court suspended her eight-year prison sentence on a phony espionage charge.
Iran has a long history of using Iranian-Americans in order to pressure Washington. China Confidential analysts say Saberi was jailed and released to set the stage for direct talks with the Obama administration regarding Tehran's nuclear program by making it appear that the administration's engagement policy is capable of moderating official Iranian behavior.
The tactic is familiar to people across the Middle East: create a crisis or an impediment to peaceful relations and then end the crisis or remove the obstacle in order to appear reasonable and show progress. Americans always fall for this.
Analysts add that the reporter's release from Tehran's notorious Evin prison was probably coordinated with Iran's nuclear-armed ally, North Korea, which is holding two American reporters hostage. The partners in nuclear/missile crime have consistently acted like an exhibition wrestling tag team, taking turns at bashing the United States. The hard-soft routine is certain to continue in the coming months as North Korea detonates another nuclear device--its second-ever test of an atomic weapon--and launches more medium- and long-range missiles to ratchet up tensions while Iran plays with words in order to play for the time it needs to develop nuclear arms.
POSTSCRIPT: Saberi is lucky to be let go. On June 23, 2003, Iranian-Canadian photojournalist Zahra Kazemi was arrested for taking photographs in front of the prison, and subsequently died there. The Iranian government claimed that she died from a stroke while being interrogated, but doctors examining Kazemi's body found evidence of rape, torture and a skull fracture.Pope Walks Out of Jerusalem Interfaith Meeting After Muslim Cleric Condemns Israeli 'Crimes'
Haaretz reports from Jerusalem:The head of the Palestinian Sharia court, Sheikh Taysir al-Tamimi, fiercely denounced Israeli policy in the presence of Pope Benedict on Monday and appealed to the pope to help end what he called the "crimes of the Jewish state."
Speaking at an interfaith conference held at the Notre Dame Church in East Jerusalem, al-Tamimi accused Israel of slaughtering women, children and senior citizens.
The speech was delivered in Arabic, without simultaneous translation, but after the pope was informed of the political nature of al-Tamimi's speech, he left the conference.
Continue here.
Click here for the Catholic News Service story about the incident.
Al-Tamimi, hailed by American and European Islamist sympathizers as a "moderate," has long been known for his hate-filled rants and speeches. He once said: "Islam is escalating and cannot be resisted. I pray that Allah may tear apart America just as the Soviet Union was torn apart."
Click below to watch a video of him accusing Israel of exporting AIDS and drug addiction to Palestinian society.North Korea Holding Hostages, Violating International Law as Obama Appeasement Encourages Aggression by America's Enemies
North Korea is increasingly belligerent; its rhetoric, increasingly bellicose; and U.S. hostages are suffering, as the Wall Street Journal reports:Under international criminal law, defendants have the right to access diplomatic officers of their own state. But American journalists Euna Lee and Laura Ling, detained for nearly two months, haven't been allowed contact with Western officials since March 30. A South Korean man known only by his surname, Yu, also has been kept from any contact with officials from his country, according to the South's Unification Ministry.
The North said on April 24 that it would put the two women on trial for "hostile acts," in what would be its first trial of Americans, but it didn't say when. It has given no details to the U.S. or to Sweden, which has diplomatic relations with North Korea and provides services to U.S. citizens in the country.
Click here to continue.
China Confidential was the first media outlet to predict that the two reporters--captured on the Chinese side of the China-North Korea border--would be used as hostages. The Obama administration's answer to aggression is to beg the North to return to six-party nuclear negotiations while bending on possible bilateral talks.
All this is happening ahead of the North's planned new nuclear weapon test. Iranian nuclear experts will assist and benefit from the test; every month brings the monstrous mullahocracy closer to its goal of acquiring atomic arms.
We have said this before, but we feel compelled to say it again: instead of preserving the peace, U.S. appeasement of North Korea and Iran will make wars inevitable--on North Korean and Iranian terms.
There does not seem to be a diplomatic solution to either issue. North Korea intends to take over South Korea, drive the U.S. out of the Korean Peninsula, and dominate Japan. Iran intends to destroy Israel, dominate the Middle East, and drive the U.S. out of the region (for starters--i.e. before launching a nuclear sneak-attack against the U.S. homeland).
International politics is all about power and intentions, at the end of the day, not the motives or personalities of this or that leader. President Obama, a Third World-oriented, community organizer-turned-law teacher-turned-politician, is ill equipped for the challenges he faces. Worse than that, his ideological biases prevent him from standing up to foreign tyrants.
UPDATE: Mitt Romney appears to agree with us. Click here for the story.
Tuesday, 12 May 2009
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