The Two State Solution: History’s Negation
By Victor Sharpe, CFP
I remember an article some few years ago in the Wall Street Journal titled, The Ugly Premise of Settlement Opponents, in which James Woolsey, former director of Central Intelligence under President Clinton, pointed out that the charter of the Fatah party – which is that of the Palestinian Authority’s putative president, Mahmoud Abbas – foresees a “Palestine free of Jews.” He referred to the Fatah demand that:
- Israel must give up all of Jerusalem before it would begin negotiations on a two-state solution.
Mr. Woolsey also referred to President Obama’s embrace of the Palestinian Arab’s judenrein policy in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) as well as in the eastern half of Jerusalem. The judenrein policy employed by the German Nazis was designed to ethnically cleanse areas of Jews throughout Europe, which the Wehrmacht had invaded and occupied. The chilling words, “Juden raus,” Jews out! barked in German by Hitler’s brutish soldiers, attended all such terrifying aktions.
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Calling Palestine’s ICC Bluff
I have long taken the position that Israel shouldn’t be looking for a commitment from Abbas not to go to the ICC for the reasons set out in this article. Ted Belman
On November 29th 2012, Palestine was voted by the United Nations General Assembly to be a non-member observer state. Although seen to be a largely symbolic vote, this decision provoked huge hopes, fears and discussions because the “media” thought that Palestine could now take Israel to the International Criminal Court and prosecute them. This gained so much traction that the international community and Abu Mazen started to use the threat of the ICC as their main hope to force Israel to make new concessions. However, upon further inspection into how the ICC operates, it becomes clear that Israel has little to worry about.
In 2002, the International Criminal Court was created with the hope of fighting crimes against humanity. The court only has jurisdiction over the states that are parties to its statute (countries that volunteered to be in it), which at this point in time, is 122 countries. For the most part, countries that are unlikely to be involved in conflict have joined the court, while those likely to be involved in conflict have not.
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Israel helps the US more than you know.
‘US-Israel relations are a classic example of a two-way street’
ISRAEL HAYOM
Former senior diplomat and U.S.-Israel relations expert Yoram Ettinger explains how the U.S. benefits from its close relationship with Israel •
Yoram Ettinger, former congressional affairs minister to Israel’s Embassy in Washington and former Israeli consul-general to the southwestern U.S.
Do not offer inducements to negotiate
By Ted Belman
Sec’y Kerry is here trying to induce both parties to restart negotiations. He is trying to get Israel to provide incentive to Abbas to return.
Israel, so far, has not offered any, nor should she.
If getting a state of their own through negotiations is not reason enough for them to return then there is no hope for a peace agreement.
If the Palestinians want a state they should negotiate and pay the price needed to get one.
But they are unwilling to pay anything to get one. They wanted it given on a platter.
Thatcher and Israel
Thatcher, Britain’s first female prime minister, was also the first British prime minister to visit Israel. She had a record number of Jews in her cabinet and was a strong advocate for the release of Soviet Jewry. She often championed the Jewish people as well as their state – even as she harshly criticized some of its policies.
“She was a staunch friend of Israel and the Jewish people,” said Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu who knew her personally. “She inspired a generation of political leaders.
Thatcher, a grocer’s daughter who became both a lawyer and a chemist before running for parliament as a member of the Conservative party, was first elected in 1959 as the representative of the Finchley district in north London, which had a heavy Jewish population.
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Margaret Thatcher, The Grocer’s Daughter
Margaret Thatcher not only broke a glass ceiling; she broke a class ceiling.
Today we say goodbye to a towering figure of the 20th century. With the passing of Margaret Thatcher, we’ve sadly lost the last living member of that great triumvirate that included Ronald Reagan and John Paul II — those giants who defeated the evil empire of Soviet Communism and allowed the liberation of its captive nations. We’ve also lost one of the great champions of economic freedom and democratic ideals.
Many will focus on the fact that Margaret Thatcher’s career was a collection of “firsts” for women — she was the first and youngest female Conservative-party member to stand for election, the first woman to hold the title Leader of the Opposition, and the first woman prime minister of the United Kingdom.
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Dershowitz: I Challenge Carter to Human Rights Debate at Cardozo
- I will come, at my own expense, to debate Jimmy Carter on Carter’s own human rights record. If Cardozo will have me, I will come and provide the students, the administration and anyone else that is interested, with a first rate debate about the meaning of human rights and they can decide whether what Jimmy Carter has done, constitutes human rights or human wrongs.
Alan Dershowitz, Felix Frankfurter professor of law at Harvard Law School, has challenged former president Jimmy Carter to a debate on his human rights record.
Dershowitz spoke by telephone to a reporter with The Jewish Press, on Monday, April 8, in response to the news that the Cardozo School of Law’s Journal of Conflict Resolution will be honoring Carter with the “International Advocate for Peace” Award this Wednesday, April 10, as reported that morning.
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Don’t intervene in Syria
By Andrew C McCarthy, NRO
Those clamoring for American intervention in Syria — I should say, even more American intervention in Syria — have a lock on two influential drivers of conservative opinion, Fox News and the Wall Street Journal’s editorial pages. They are also bedfellows on this issue with our Muslim Brotherhood–enthralled president, even if Mr. Obama’s skittishness about going all in has them a bit testy.
All of this puts the media wind at their backs. Repeated often enough and reported uncritically enough, the interventionists’ shallow story has thus become the narrative. And so we have: The Vacuum.
The Vacuum theme goes like this: The Middle East may be in flux, but our threat environment remains frozen in time — a Nineties warp in which Iran, singularly, is the root of all evil. In Syria now, we have a golden opportunity to hand the mullahs a crushing defeat. All we need to do is commit to toppling their client, Bashar al-Assad. Media spin thus suggests that Assad’s minority Alawite regime is responsible for each of the 70,000 killings and half a million displacements that Syrians have endured since the civil war began — as if the Sunni majority, led by the local Brotherhood affiliate with al-Qaeda as the point of its spear, were not carrying out reciprocal mass murders and an anti-Christian pogrom.
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Ted Belman
Jerusalem, Israel
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