Wednesday, May 13, 2009
Can Tiny Israel Afford to Surrender More Land?
Considering its size, can Israel afford to surrender more land to placate its implacable enemies?
In its pre-1967 borders, before it won the defensive Six-Day War, Israel, one of the tiniest nations on earth, was about 8,000 square miles, just barely bigger than New Jersey, America's fifth-smallest state.
Put differently, Israel is one-nineteenth the size of California, two-and-half times the size of Rhode Island, and only slightly larger than the Canary Islands.
Israel is surrounded by 22 hostile Arab/Islamic dictatorships with 640 times her size, 60 times her population--and all the oil.
Israel would fit inside nearly every American state. In fact, Israel would fit inside the United States 768 times--and into Florida seven times.
Israel is only 260 miles at its longest, has a 112-mile coastline, 60 miles at its widest, and is between three and nine miles at its narrowest. A really high-powered rifle could launch a projectile right across the country. This is particularly frightening when one considers that 65% of Israel's population is within this nine-mile wide section (the Tel Aviv area).
In 1967, as indicated above, Israel fought a desperate war of self-defense, and, against all odds, won. As a result, the Jewish State not only survived, it also came into possession of additional lands, including territory that is of vital importance to its security.
The so-called West Bank lands of Judea and Samaria--comprising roughly half the size of San Bernardino County in California--are disputed territories whose status can only be determined through negotiations. The people of Israel have ancient ties to Judea and Samaria, as well as a continuous centuries-old presence there. These areas were the cradle of Jewish civilization. Israel has rights in Judea and Samaria--rights that the Palestinians and their Islamist sponsors and Western sympathizers deliberately disregard.
Jews have lived in Judea-Samaria continuously for 4,000 years since Biblical times and throughout the centuries since then. Jewish sovereignty there spanned 1,000 years, and those areas were the cradle of Jewish civilization. Many of the most ancient and holy Jewish sites, including the Cave of the Patriarchs (the burial site of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob), are located in these areas. Areas such as Hebron, where Jews lived until they were massacred in 1929, were inhabited by Jews throughout 400 years of Ottoman rule and before. Additional Jewish communities flourished under the British Mandatory administration that replaced the Ottoman Empire in 1918.
The Palestinians often contend that the Jews are foreign colonizers in territory to which they had no previous connection. Indeed, much of the Arab/Muslim world considers all of Israel--and not just the disputed territories--as a foreign entity in the region. Such claims disregard the continuous ties of the Jewish people with their age-old homeland and the deep bond of the people of Israel to its land, both in biblical and later periods.
These claims also serve to perpetuate the myth that a Palestinian state existed in the area prior to the establishment of the State of Israel. In fact, no independent Arab or Palestinian state ever existed in the area known as Palestine.
The Jewish presence in the so-called West Bank ended only with the 1948 War of Independence. Conquering these territories in a war of aggression aimed at destroying the nascent State of Israel, the Jordanians totally eliminated the Jewish presence in the West Bank, forbidding Jews to live there and declaring the sale of land to Jews in those areas a capital offense.
Jordanian rule came about as the result of their illegal invasion of 1948, in open contempt and rejection of United Nations General Assembly Resolution 181, which would have partitioned the British Mandate territory into a Jewish State and an Arab State. For this reason, Jordanian seizure of the territories--and Egypt's seizure of the Gaza Strip--were never recognized by the international community.
The status of the disputed West Bank lands can only be decided by agreement between the parties. During the 1990s, Israel and the Palestinians agreed that the final status of the West Bank is not yet resolved and should be decided in peaceful negotiations.
But the conflict between Israel and the Arabs is not about borders and not about the Palestinians. The conflict is not about the size of Israel. It is about Israel's very existence. Israel, of whatever size and within whatever boundaries, is unacceptable to Islamist Iran and its proxies, Hamas and Hezbollah, and ally, Syria.
The continued existence of a thriving, democratic Jewish State in a sea of barbarism is also unacceptable to American and European anti-Semites. But that is another story.Tuesday, May 12, 2009
Counting on Clean Coal Technology, China's Biggest Coal Company Plans to Boost Yearly Output from 250 Million to 450 Million Tons in Next Five Years
China Confidential has learned that China's largest coal company,Shendong Coal, plans to increase its annual coal production from 250 million tons to 450 million tons over the next five years.
The dramatic, unprecedented expansion is certain to horrify global warming advocacy groups; but Shendong Coal, the third largest coal company in the world, is counting on clean coal technologies to cover the controversy.
China has become the global leader in cleaner coal-fired plants.
Clean coal is a term that describes new processes for the production of electricity and fuels from coal. Clean coal technologies are being developed to reduce air emissions, waste products and other pollutants compared to older coal-based systems, and increase the amount of energy gained from each ton of coal used, and reduce carbon dioxide emissions through carbon capture and storage.Understanding the Dangers of Dialogue
Dialogue is a sacred concept in liberal eyes--like diplomacy for its own sake.
Peter John Cannon explains the dangers of dialogue with Hamas and Hezbollah:There have been increasing indications of willingness on the part of Western politicians to engage with violent Islamist movements as a way of seeking resolution to conflicts.
Numerous European parliamentarians have visited the leadership of Hamas, and figures close to the US administration have suggested that engagement with Hamas is necessary to achieve a peace settlement in the Middle East. Negotiating with the Taleban in Afghanistan has also been suggested as a way of achieving peace and stability.
The British government has recently made a significant shift in policy and provided a potential precedent for such engagement, by deciding to establish contacts with Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Such engagement carries significant risks, including the strengthening of the position of Islamists within their countries and across their regions. It risks achieving one of the Islamists’ aims by elevating their position. Islamist ideology and intransigence also means that such engagement may be doomed to failure.
Continue here.On Obama, Israel, and American Jews
These are challenging times for American Jewry. Its support is vital to resist those deluding themselves that problems with the Islamic world can be overcome by sacrificing Israel and transforming us into a new Czechoslovakia. American Jewish leaders failed to speak up in defense of their brethren during the dark days of World War II because they were intimidated by a popular American president. We have every reason to believe that the vast majority of strong and confident American Jews of our time will not be intimidated or remain silent if the Jewish state is endangered.
Click here to read the entire essay.Egyptian Women Fight Back Against Grope Attacks
Primoz Manfreda reports:Few foreign female travellers to Egypt have not complained about lewd comments and sexual advances aimed at them in the packed tourist bazaars of Cairo. Western movies have certainly done their part in producing an appealing image of a Western woman. In recent years, however, the Egyptian capital, a sprawling urban jungle of 17 million people, has been coming to terms with a worrying phenomenon of Egyptian women being sexually harassed on the street.
Incidents of groping on the overcrowded public transport are certainly not new and have been underreported for years. Women are generally reluctant to go open about such cases because they more often than not have to face unsympathetic police officers, are often blamed by bystanders for having “provoked” the assailant with “immodest” dress and behaviour, and do not want to embarrass their families. Clearly, this is not something unique to Muslim societies. However, there is a new dimension to the problem.
Since then, street harassment has become a subject of public debate and women began to come forward. Personal stories have been published in the media and awareness campaigns have been launched to battle public indifference toward the problem. Last year, in a landmark case, a man was sentenced to three years of hard labour for having repeatedly groped a 27-year old woman on the street – with passersby merely watching the whole incident.
There is a new trend in town. Local gyms have sprung in Cairo working class neighbourhoods where women are taught martial arts so they can fend off an attacker. The BBC has reported of girls as young as 14 attending the classes while their parents are watching and supporting them. A further sign of changing attitudes but will that do?
Continue here.
Wednesday, 13 May 2009
Isi Leibler writes in Israpundit:
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