Category: Politics

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Stone Throwing: When Justice is not Blind

[dropcap]Y[/dropcap]ouths from Yitzhar were sentenced to eight months in prison for stone throwing, while Arab youths go free under similar circumstances.

The District Court in Lod, sentenced six Jewish youths to eight months in prison for throwing stones in Yitzhar two years ago. The six were arrested in a police provocation near the town and have been under house arrest since the incident.

Residents from Judea and Samaria have compared the length of the sentence given to these Jewish youths to the more common cases of Arab youths who throw stones. In most cases, Arab youths are never even indicted for stone throwing and even when they are, they rarely end up serving prison terms in cases where no physical harm was caused.

The Facebook page of the “Shomron Residents Committee,” posted a story by ‘Gadi’ a member of the committee, about the army’s response to Arab stone throwers. The suspects were of similar ages to the Jewish youths who were recently sentenced.

He wrote as follows:

“It was around Purim 2011. We were stationed in a base near Karmei Tzur and we were responsible for the area that included Al-Arub, which is known to be a problematic village.

Every Friday, youths from the local school would hold protests after their school let out and they would throw stones at vehicles on Route 60. It was our job as soldiers to prevent them from doing so.

One time, after a short chase, we caught two youths around 15 years old, who had thrown stones. We brought them to the Etzion station where the commander thanked us for our efforts. I then saw with my own eyes how the commander called the father of one of the youths and spoke to him in Arabic. He explained to him that if his son was caught again, he would be arrested. He then released both youths without questioning them or recording any information about them at all.”

The Shomron Residents Committee also noted the case of Muhammad Yusuf Darwish, an adult Arab who was caught throwing explosive devices at soldiers and who admitted in his interrogation that he had also thrown stones many times. For all of his offenses, he received only five months of prison and a small fine. It is noteworthy that prison sentences below 6 months in Israel can be automatically converted to full-day community service, thus Darwish did not have to serve any prison time at all.

This article was originally published in HaKol HaYehudi.

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From Saudi Chaos to Iranian Stability

Sometimes Internet rumors do in fact exhibit a modicum of truth. The Internet has been filled with conspiracy theories on the sudden rise of ISIS.  Connecting this to Benghazi and the hidden hand of the USA behind it all.

A now declassified Department of Defense document seen here, proves that the government had an awareness that ISIS would directly develop from aiding Jihadist against Assad.  Given that even the Obama administration isn’t naive enough to think these rebels would remain on a tight leash, the question must be asked: why would the administration be dumb enough to repeat the same policy that gave birth to Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaida?

Block Iran

Most conventional thinking revolves around the idea that ISIS or at least its predecessor was funded or allowed to metastasize as a block towards Iran’s advancement across the Middle East to the Mediterranean. It would seem that America’s funding of the various groups that would form ISIS is proof enough. Besides that, America has taken a very lax approach to bombing the group. The fact that Saudi Arabia in concert with the West has supported Jihadists against Assad seems to complete the puzzle.

But what happens if we are actually wrong about this? What happens if the plot is far more thick than we think? What happens if funding ISIS is about a whole new Middle East and the Obama administration has crafted all of this for some much larger purpose?

Chaos Leads to Order…Always

The theory of spontaneous order is an idea whose roots date back over 2,000 years ago.  The theory is based on the idea that reality as we know it strives for order.  This is why in seemingly chaotic situations some sort of order always prevails.  

Obama and Kerry had to know that nothing good would come out of funding Jihadists.  Nothing that is, unless they wanted the chaos that has now been unleashed on the Middle East.  The forces are ripe for a new order and if one compares the speed of the rapprochement between Washington and Tehran it is no coincidence it has occurred over the backdrop of this growing chaos.

By creating the chaos or at least allowing it to mutate into a real enough threat, rapprochement with Iran can be peddled as a necessity. This is exactly why there has been a full court press on showing Iran as a truly amicable partner as we noted here. Strategically speaking the Obama administration has always seen Iran as the only country that could truly bring stability to the Middle East.  Obama himself was never really enamored by the aging Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and as a revolutionary he felt his Shiite friends could be counted on as new strategic asset.

We’ve Been Tricked

No two countries have felt more slighted than Obama’s rapprochement than Israel or Saudi Arabia. Not only have the Sunni states been put into a precarious position, but their resources have been used to fight a war that has led to the raison d’etre itself for the USA to basically switch sides.  

For Israel, there is perhaps nothing better than the solitary realization that we have nothing else to rely on than the Almighty himself.

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Dismantling the Right of Return

The Palestinian demand for the “Right of Return” has long been a core belief set to the broader peace narrative in relation to a permanent settlement with Israel.  On the face of it, the demand seems pretty solid, that is of course if one buys into the Palestinian narrative without questioning the very basis of its claims.

Palestinians claim the following:

  • Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country. -Article 13(2), Universal Declaration of Human Rights (10 December 1948).
  • The Geneva Conventions of 1949.
  • The General Assembly, Having considered further the situation in Palestine … Resolves that the refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbors should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return and for loss of or damage to property which, under principles of international law or in equity, should be made good by the Governments or authorities responsible.” -UN General Assembly Resolution 194 (11 December 1948)
  • United Nations General Assembly Resolution 3236 which “reaffirms also the inalienable right of the Palestinians to return to their homes and property from which they have been displaced and uprooted, and calls for their return”.
  • Resolution 242 from the UN affirms the necessity for “achieving a just settlement of the refugee problem.”
  • Supporters of the Palestinian right of return maintain that “the right of return for the 1948 Palestinian refugees still exists according to international law. It exists despite the language of the Oslo agreements, insufficient as they are in this regard, and despite the position of the current Israeli government. Palestinian refugees should be free to seek their right to repatriation, regardless of what the PLO acquiesces to, so long as UN Resolution 194 remains in force”.
  • No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of the right to enter his own country. -Article 12, International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights(23 March 1976).

The main crux  behind using many of the above statements lies with attaching the Palestinian Right of Return to something national.

After all, Israel has the Law of Return, which designates any Jew or a person that has 1/4 Jewish ancestry as eligible to return to his/her ancestral homeland.  The Palestinians argue that if a Jew can return after a hiatus of of 1,700 to 2,00 years then they who were here in between should certainly be aloud back.

Essentially speaking the Palestinian claim and statements from international treaties that seem to support it do so because refugees and their return depend on origins within a recognized national entity.

Between the years 1917 and 1948, as the modern Nation States of the Middle East were being created by world powers, no one believed there to be unique nation called Palestine.  In fact all references to Palestine connected the word to Jews and their inalienable rights to form a Nation State their. Why?  Because simply speaking, the current Palestinians had no Nation in the Levant.  This is not to say they were not there, they were or at least a percentage of them were, but they had no previous national claim to the Land.  Some were considered Syrians and other Egyptians, but none of them used the word Palestinian or connected themselves to a distinct national heritage in defining themselves.

Ryan Bellerose, a native Metas from Canada wrote an excellent piece this week refuting Palestinian claims to being indigenous. National indigenous rights are a key component hen tackling issues connected to refugees and this is why Palestinians who formed their collective narrative as an anti-narrative to Israel and Jewish rights there are some forceful in trying to prove that themselves had some sort of national collective experience that was taken from them.  If not, then their claims to deserving a right of return falls through.

One cannot build a national narrative whose sole foundation is the negation of another people’s narrative. That is not a legitimate narrative nor is it something that deserves the right of return.

It is clear that a right of return should belong to the one cultural group that exerted itself time and time again as the national sovereign in the Land of Israel and that is he people of Israel.  It is true individual rights should be given to all persons that live in the Land of Israel.  That does not make them a historically indigenous people nor does it give them the right to claim a return generations later.

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Iran and USA: Cornering Israel

Shortly before President Obama’s final State of the Union Address, Iranian Revolutionary Guards gunboats seized and detained 2 ships belonging to the United States military and the ten marines on board. Less than 24 hours later the marines were released. The typical chorus and rhapsody of neoconservative pundits seriously believed that this would be the “straw that broke the camel’s back” and Obama would have the guts to stand up to the Persians.

The assumption that the Obama administration works according to the same rule book that past Presidents have is a perception that just doesn’t fit.  The Obama administration won’t risk war with Iran, not because it believes war is bad.  Afterall they toppled Gaddafi. They won’t risk war with Iran, because Obama and team and their shrills in the media believe wholeheartedly that Iran should be seen as a future strategic partner.  After all, Obama didn’t even mention the captive soldiers in his State of the Union Address. Of course for Obama, this is more to do with his world outlook than strategic positioning.

Barack Obama is a transformational President. In that regard, bridging the divide with Persia, a country he believes deserves respect because of their ancient roots, fits in with his restructuring of geopolitical partnerships.

Furthermore, it is quite probable the action Iran took was undertaken from the beginning as a means to show that they are actually reasonable. Given Obama’s rapprochement with Iran, he is more than willing to let Iran play the part of a reasonable actor.

Israel In a Corner

Bibi Netanyahu’s entire mantra is that one should not negotiate with irrational actors as was done with North Korea. Bibi has from the beginning tried to prove that Iran and North Korea are very similar.  This has fed into Obama’s strategy of showing the opposite.  By inculcating in the American people that Bibi and Israel are saber rattling and preventing what should otherwise we be a rapprochement, then the bad guys backed by the neocons is really Israel.

Once again the the chess match between Bibi and Obama has entered another back and forth phase.  The challenge for Israel is realizing they are playing  at a chessboard alone as their challenger plays with very different rules and a far more sinister goal.

 

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Obama and the Coming Global Security State

“Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power.”

-1984, George Orwell

What does one do when the person they have elected views the office they hold as merely a means to gain even more power.  They can either dismiss the chorus of complaints as racist, conspiratorial, or downright mad, but the facts won’t change and the fleeing of self responsibility won’t reverse the course.

When Americans elected Barack Hussein Obama in 2008 and again in 2012, they made a choice between the sovereignty of the many  and sovereignty of the State.  For Obama it has never been about the Change he promised as that was a sugar coated pill for the masses.  The revolution Obama has wrought in the USA is the revolution of the State against its citizens. This is the bureaucratic dictatorship the founding fathers warned against.  It is the unseen hand that controls all, but cannot be found out for it is the state itself and not a single person.

Obama though is not satisfied with his revolution in the United States, because Obama has always aspired to more.  For Obama he is the revolution in and of itself.  For if he can so fundamentally transform America, why not be the great unifier of the world itself. Afterall, for Obama the USA has a flaw.  The Amendments the 13 original states agreed to ratify (after some wrangling between them) are too strong a component to the cultural ethos of the USA to disregard and complete the revolution Obama would like to see.

Breaking Israel News reports that Al –Jarida, an Arabic language Kuwaiti magazine, published an article on Friday claiming that US President Barack Obama has set his sights on becoming the next Secretary General of the United Nations when he leaves the Oval Office in one year.

For Obama the revolution will be complete, the global security state, the one that rights the wrongs of the past, equalizes the rich with the impoverished, and heralds peace at the expense of personal freedom will be his creation. Once again he is both the revolution and its goal.

Between the Rule of the Individual and the Rule of the State

The Torah teaches us that each individual is a Divine spark, a map of the universe in miniature.  We are in this world for a specific purpose only we can fulfill. It is true, the Kingdom Israel that is waiting to burst through the darkness will have a King, but the King and the Kingdom are not meant to rule over us.  They are meant as a means to give full freedom to the individual and at the same time provide the inspiration and motivation for each of us to attain our Divine goals.

Statists believe the State is the all powerful and it is the individual’s purpose and goal to pledge loyalty to the State. That allegiance and handing over of personal freedoms is the catalyst for global and societal transformation.

The coming conflagration is not really about Islam versus the West.  Rather, it is about the role of the individual in relation to the State.  Slavery comes in many ways.  Sometimes it is a Pharaoh and his task masters who rule relentlessly over a powerless Israelite people.  Other times it is the quiet rule of law administered, not for the sake of justice, but rather to uphold the power of the few and the system that serves them over the masses who have traded away their freedom for the short term injection of false happiness.

These are the times our sages spoke about.  Those of us who are G-d fearing must not give in to the false promises of politicians or the machinations of soon to be ex-Presidents who believe they are the Change everyone wants and needs. We in Israel and those of our supporters around the world who believe in the individual rights and freedom of thought must yearn and be prepared to defend the freedom of man and his divine mission against the totalitarianism of the State.

This war has no specific location, but rather it is a war over the hearts and minds of humanity itself.