Would Either Susan Rice--Or The UN--Have A Job Without Israel?

Soccer Dad
02 August '10

Last week, The Daily Caller commented on Susan Rice's record as the US Ambassador to the UN. Actually, Rice is more noted for her lack of a record at the UN. The Daily Caller notes that

a study released by the uber-serious non-profit group Security Council Report suggests that the past year has been the most inactive Security Council since 1991. Rice missed crucial negotiations on Iran's continued enrichment of uranium, she failed to speak out when Iran was elected to the Commission on the Status of Women and three other UN Committees, she failed to call-out Libya when they were elected to the UN's Human Rights Council, she recently delivered an Iran sanctions resolution with the least support Iran resolutions have ever had and she called her one and only press conference with the UN Secretary General on the issue of texting while driving. For an administration that promised to utilize the UN and improve our reputation around the world, its dinner party circuit strategy isn't making America more secure.

But all is not lost. As it turns out, Susan Rice did find an issue to take a stand on.

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The perfidious UN

Isi Leibler
Candidly Speaking from Jerusalem
09 June '10

The Gaza flotilla imbroglio has provided the UN with the pretext for a new wave of anti-Israeli incitement. The Security Council instantly summoned an emergency meeting, which merely served as an arena to slander Israel and endorse a US-modified resolution demanding an investigation of its actions. The bias of the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) was even more blatant. It immediately condemned Israel, and only subsequently demanded an investigative commission which, like the notorious Goldstone Report, would simply be a kangaroo court.

The idealists who founded the UN and crafted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights would turn in their graves were they aware that the noble institution they created has been hijacked by rogue states.

Today the majority of the 189 UN members consistently turn a blind eye to the abuse of human rights and outright massacres, frequently even among their own citizens.



(Almost perfect timing for Isi's article as today, Thursday, June 10th, the UN Human Rights Council will convene and Iran's human rights reviewed. Let's do our part to make sure that the regime is held accountable for its numerous abuses of the rights of its citizens.Let's do our part to make sure that the regime is held accountable for its numerous abuses of the rights of its citizens. Ask what your country's UN delegates in Geneva are doing for human rights in Iran. Please post and pass on this video to as many people as possible. Y.)

Examples abound: Russia’s response to the Chechnya insurrection in which Grozny was razed to the ground leaving 700,000 corpses; China’s brutal suppression of dissent in Tibet; the genocidal killing of more than a million Christians and animists by the Islamic government in Sudan; the barbaric crimes committed by Saddam Hussein against his own people.

UN international initiatives have also culminated in disaster. During the 1994 Rwandan genocide, the UN recalled its peacekeeping force, facilitating the brutal massacre of more than a million Tutsis. Subsequently, a UN force mandated by the Security Council provided a safe haven for the Hutu killers. This was under the watch of secretary-general Kofi Annan, who was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize.

During the cruel ethnic war in Yugoslavia, a UN battalion in July 1995 handed over 8,000 Muslim civilians to the Serbs, who promptly slaughtered them. In fact, it was only after 250,000 people had been killed that the Americans bypassed the Security Council and intervened to end the conflict.

THE MOST damning UN humbug is the ferocious hatred directed against Israel, the sole UN affiliate whose right to exist remains under threat. Efforts to demonize and delegitimize the Jewish state serve to unite the Islamic world, rogue states and Third World countries. They effectively resurrected the rescinded notorious Soviet UN resolution which bracketed Zionism with racism, harnessing the entire bureaucracy of the UN to portray Israel as the primary source of the evils threatening mankind.

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Obama and Israel: Showdown at the UN?

16 April '10
Anne Bayefsky interview to FOX NEWS.com

QUESTION: Should we believe the administration that they are not pursuing a change in US policy towards Israel voting at the Security Council?

ANNE BAYEFSKY: The issue of the Obama administration’s use of the United Nations as a tool to blackmail the state of Israel is not confined to the Security Council. The Obama administration's affinity with an organization that is systematically focused on the demonization and delegitimization of Israel means that the issue is UN-wide. Whenever Israel is threatened by another UN resolution, or report, or meeting that adopts or discusses a condemnation of anything and everything Israel does, the U.S. is faced with the question as to how to respond. This has always been true, but the situation has been greatly magnified under the Obama administration.

For example, President Obama jumped on board the UN Human Rights Council within months of taking office, knowing full well that the Council is one of the worst - if not the worst - example of Israel-bashing across the UN system (as well as being completely disreputable in terms of its membership and lack of interest in the vast majority of human rights violations around the world). U.S. membership gives increased credibility to this UN body and its production-line of anti-Israel resolutions, sessions, and reports, notwithstanding their poisonous consequences. And every time another anti-Israel move is generated by the Council - which happens almost round the clock - the U.S. must decide how far it will go in standing up to the condemnations. Or from another perspective, as a Council member the administration is handed one more diplomatic sword to dangle over Israel.

At the same time, given that it is the Security Council alone that has the authority to make international law and take action - even military action - to implement that law, the five veto-wielding members have considerable influence. The track record of Obama’s foreign policy for the past year indicates that the administration is prepared to use any leverage at its disposal to boss Israel around, whatever the stakes to Israelis. At bottom, the Obama administration has swallowed the lethal fiction that deems Israel responsible for the Arab-Israeli conflict. This fiction originated with Arab-rejectionists of a Jewish state and has been cultivated at the United Nations over six decades. Such a position is a U.S. first, and it is why many now understand Obama to be the most anti-Israel president in the history of the US-Israel relationship.

Until now, American presidents have stuck by the fundamental principle that Israel is a sovereign state whose democratic government has responsibility for its own national security and the welfare of its citizens and, hence, that peace will only come through direct negotiations between the parties. Direct negotiations are key because the process of negotiation itself scuttles continued Arab and Islamic resistance to Israel’s existence. The UN approach, however, has been to impose a solution on the parties – a solution drafted in Riyadh, Cairo, Damascus and Ramallah. Myriad numbers of UN resolutions demand that Israel agree to indefensible borders, accept the return of millions of Arab refugees and their non-refugee descendents to Israel – a development that would make Jews a minority in their own land, and prevent any Jew from living on land that Arabs claim for themselves; that is, they demand the immediate creation of what is in effect “apartheid Palestine”. Every resolution, report, and session of the Security Council, now and in the future, is intended to implement in one form or another that scheme – an imposed outcome crafted to Israel’s serious disadvantage. Now these efforts will be coupled with the Obama administration’s own embrace of the same UN ideology: imposing on Israel whatever America wants (even on unrelated fronts) regardless of its disadvantage to Israel. From the Obama administration’s perspective, therefore, UN fora will facilitate its new foreign policy agenda. The United States can play good cop to Israel at the UN, with the bad cop consisting of the Arab League, the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), and the Non-Aligned Movement, which the OIC controls.

So no, I believe this administration is hell bent on bending Israel to its will, regardless of the fact that Israel is a democracy on the front lines of a war where the enemy threatens liberty and freedom for all. And the administration is very likely – unless Congress stands up now – to use the United Nations to do its dirty work.

QUESTION: What signal would it send to Israel’s enemies that the US is no longer vetoing anti-Israel resolutions?

ANNE BAYEFSKY: The Obama administration may imagine that the threat of withholding the veto at the Security Council, or the failure to oppose vigorously any one of a constant stream of anti-Israel UN concoctions, will be good for the United States. It will be dead wrong. First, Israel’s enemies are America’s enemies. And second, an effort by the Obama administration to use the UN as a tool to blackmail Israel or undermine Israel’s independence and security is a double-edged sword.

The use of the US veto did not only send a message that the United States was standing by the legitimacy, welfare and security of the Jewish state – whose citizens are surrounded by non-democracies who have no regard for their own peoples’ human rights. The veto also sent a message that the best interests of the United States could not be dictated by the Security Council and the UN.

Sitting on its hands and refusing to exercise the veto, while the likes of Russia and China and Lebanon (which is currently a member of the Council) revel in a hate-filled denunciation of Israel, will diminish respect for the United States. The refusal to exercise the veto will be read as weakness, as will any attempt by the Obama administration to deflect criticism by claiming “the UN made me do it.” True, the Obama administration is closer to the UN – and to the UN’s fictional narrative of why there is no peace and democracy in the Arab world – than any previous US administration. But if the Obama administration lets the Security Council do its dirty work, Americans will feel cheated. The spectre of non-democratic thugs writing American foreign policy will appeal to very few on these shores. The good cop-bad cop routine will be transparent and the idea that the real friends of the United States are the non-democratic bullies at the UN won’t hold water.

For more United Nations coverage see www.EYEontheUN.org. .

Obama Foreign Policy: One-Third of Its Term Done; Not A Hundreth of the Lesson Learned

Barry Rubin
The Rubin Report
25 March '10

Thinking about the Obama administration’s foreign policy makes me keep coming back to the following joke:

Three men are on a small plane, the pilot, a very important person (various names are used when people tell this joke), and a young hiker. The plane’s motor goes out and it is going to crash. The pilot tells the two passengers: Sorry but we only have one extra parachute.

The celebrity sneers, “I should get it because I’m the smartest person in the world.” He grabs a pack and jumps out of the plane.

“Sorry, son,” says the pilot. “We don’t have any more parachutes.”

“Oh, yes we do,” answers the teenager, “the smartest man in the world just jumped out of the plane with my backpack.”

If I were a cartoonist illustrating the joke in this case, I’d show a smug Obama jumping out of the plane with the backpack labeled, “U.S. national interests.”

This reflection is prompted today by a very predictable story—predicted by me repeatedly—that the administration is now further, and futilely, watering down projected sanctions on Iran in hope of getting Russian and Chinese support. Spring 2010 has arrived and after fifteen months higher sanctions, or indeed any credible U.S. deterrent, on Iran hasn’t. Even now it isn't clear if the Obama administration can get the nine votes needed in the UN Security Council to do anything.

Note that this is probably the last material effort the West will make to stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons. Even if it takes Tehran a couple of years to do so, it's unlikely--given how long and hard it is to get even some symbollic sanctions adopted--that low administration will-power and international support will lead to anything else being done.

(Incidentally, the administration was supposed to be ready for this step, according to its own statements) in September and then December 2009. That it still hasn't worked out a broadly based plan is a sign of its incompetence. And remember this was a presidency which supposedly enjoyed strong international support.)

(Read full article)
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New York Times Says: Time’s Up for Sanctions with Iran. But the Obama Administration isn’t Ready

Barry Rubin
The Rubin Report
10 February '10

The New York Times has a new editorial on Iran, February 9, and it is probably the best one yet. Naturally, it is phrased in ways friendly toward the Obama administration, though a note of impatience appears. Nevertheless, there’s an explosive device contained within it that the writers probably didn’t even notice. Don’t stop reading until you get to it.

In this case, the title tells all: “Time’s Up.” Paragraph 1:

“Over the last four years, the United Nations Security Council has repeatedly demanded that Iran stop producing nuclear fuel. Iran is still churning out enriched uranium and has now told United Nations inspectors that it is raising the level of enrichment — moving slightly closer to bomb-grade quality.”

This is fine as far as it goes, but notice it puts the onus on the UN Security Council. The Obama Administration has only had one of those years but it has not led in taking any real action--last September in his big speech there he didn't ask the Security Council to do anything--so this paragraph could just as easily have been directed at the president. No, that’s not the bomb.

Then, the second paragraph tells us what a great job the president has been doing:

“ President Obama was right to offer to negotiate with Tehran. Washington and its allies were right to look for possible compromises even after Tehran was caught—again—hiding an enrichment plant.”

OK, so he tried and it didn’t work (though this has been clear now for five months). Then the Times gives the conclusion: “Enough is enough. Iran needs to understand that its nuclear ambition comes with a very high cost.”

Here’s the bomb:

“President Obama said on Tuesday that the United States and its allies are `moving along fairly quickly’ on a new sanctions resolution. He also said it would take several weeks to draft a proposal. That is not reassuring. Once a resolution is written, the negotiating process typically drags on for weeks, if not months.”

Right. After dealing with this issue for a year, as of mid-February the Obama administration has not yet started drafting a proposal for the UN, despite his own September deadline, despite his own December deadline, no one has had time to plan the next step? Why wasn’t a draft resolution set in early January when it was clear that it would be needed? In other words, with luck there won’t be a resolution before the middle of the year.

(Read full article)
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Israel's opening to China

Caroline Glick
carolineglick.com
09 January '10

The growing power of the UN-based international community is one of the gravest emerging threats to Israel's national security.

This threat stems from two sources. First, the UN-led system of global governance is working to redefine international law by on the one hand whitewashing war crimes by states associated with the majority, and on the other hand rendering it illegal for unpopular countries to take action to protect themselves against aggression. Second, and most important, Israel has become the scapegoat of the UN-led international community. The 57-member Islamic bloc has built an automatic majority for its unrelenting and ever-escalating assaults on Israel's right to exist.

The new - and false - interpretation of international law gives every General Assembly resolution the weight of binding Security Council resolutions and international treaties. Among this new "legal" regime's most dangerous features is its bid to overturn state sovereignty by subjecting leading citizens of weak states to politically-motivated criminal prosecutions under the rubric of universal jurisdiction.

With Israel's right to exist - let alone to defend itself - being denied in an avalanche of General Assembly and Human Rights Council resolutions, the acceptance of universal jurisdiction is a short step away from turning every Jewish citizen of Israel into an international outlaw.

THIS ESCALATING threat is already hurting Israel's ability to carry out routine relations with foreign countries. Just last week the IDF was compelled to cancel plans to send a delegation of its officers to England for a joint conference on asymmetric warfare after British authorities were unable to promise that their guests from the IDF wouldn't be arrested over spurious war crimes allegations during their stay.

The Palestinians Tell the World Their Strategy: Why Make Peace with Israel When We Can Get Everything from You Instead?

Barry Rubin
The Rubin Report
10 December 09

If you want to understand what’s really going on in the alleged Israel-Palestinian peace process—beyond the babble that progress is being made, it’s all Israel’s fault, and everyone is working hard on it—here’s what you need to know.

For the present, the Palestinian leadership isn’t interested in pursuing negotiations with Israel because it has a different strategy: get everything it wants from others without making any concessions.

First, the Palestinian Authority (PA) came very close to obtaining a European Union (EU) resolution which made it sound like the Palestinian state with its capital in east Jerusalem is an accomplished fact. The rejection of the Swedish-sponsored proposal by more moderate European states staved this off, along with a U.S. reminder that this kind of issue was supposed to be resolved by a negotiated agreement between the PA and Israel.

Nevertheless, the PA no doubt drew hope—albeit erroneously so--from this experience that with a little more time the EU will back its position completely and give it a state on a silver platter.

The other front is the UN. On December 15, a meeting of the Fatah leadership will discuss and probably endorse a plan to seek UN recognition of their state, with no preconditions.

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Lebanese Hizballah to be on UN Security Council

Barry Rubin
The Rubin Report
07 December 09

On January 1, Lebanon will become a member of the UN Security Council, having been elected last October by the General Assembly for a two-year term. The Lebanese government now includes a majority of ministers who are nominees of either Hizballah or of President Michael Suleiman, a Syrian and thus Iranian client. Hizballah also has a veto over government decisions.

This means that Hizballah will have a say in resolutions condemning Israel, managing peace-keeping operations in Lebanon, dealing with sanctions against Iran, and so on.

It was bad enough that a Libyan official chairs the General Assembly while Sudan, Algeria, and Iran virtually run the Human Rights Commission.

Meanwhile, British Foreign Secretary David Miliband stated in an interview that his government has concluded that "carefully considered contact with Hezbollah's politicians, including its MPs, will best advance our objective of the group rejecting violence to play a constructive role in Lebanese politics."

What does this “constructive role” mean? To say such a thing he has to ignore:

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Lebanon on UN Security Council

David Schenker
MESH
23 November 09

In October, Lebanon was elected to one of ten non-permanent member seats on the United Nations Security Council. Come January 2010, Lebanon will assume Asia’s “Arab League” seat, replacing Libya for a two-year term on the critical international body.

The UNSC seat was the brainchild of Lebanon’s president Michel Suleiman, who used his 2008 UN General Assembly address and his side meetings during the 2009 gathering to press Lebanon’s candidacy. The notion of a seat on the council reportedly appealed to Suleiman, who prides himself on returning Lebanon to the “international political arena.”

Washington quietly opposed Lebanon’s candidacy. Senior administration officials were concerned about potential problems for the bilateral relationship that could arise from Lebanon’s voting decisions. While the pro-West March 14 coalition won the June 2009 elections, it was clear—even prior to the formation of the government in November—that Hezbollah and its local and international allies Syria and Iran would exert preponderant influence within the new government and the state’s foreign policy. Indeed, in the current government as with the previous one, Hezbollah—via its subsidiary Shiite party, Amal—controls the foreign ministry.

It’s not difficult to envision the kind of problems that will ensue. In the coming year, for example, it is all but assured that a resolution to implement “crippling sanctions” against Iran will come before the Security Council. Given Hezbollah’s influence—and the ever present threat of violence—the best Washington could hope for during a UNSC vote would be a Lebanese abstention. More likely, under pressure from Syria and Iran, Lebanon might vote against such a resolution.

Worse still, if history is any indication, Lebanon’s ambassador to the UN, Nawaf Salam—who himself is sympathetic to March 14—could be ordered to abstain or oppose Security Council resolutions in connection to UNSCRs 1701 and 1559, if not the Hariri tribunal, which Hezbollah and its allies do not support.

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The Value of an International Guarantee

Evelyn Gordon
Contentions/Commentary
23 November 09

Yesterday, I noted that a UN Security Council endorsement of “a two-state solution based on the June 4, 1967 borders,” such as Mahmoud Abbas is seeking, would radically alter the existing international position, prejudice the outcome of negotiations, and probably spark an escalating war of unilateral moves and countermoves. But it would also have another deleterious effect: it would provide further proof that international guarantees to Israel are worthless. And because reliable international guarantees will be a necessary part of any Israeli-Palestinian agreement, this would make a deal significantly less likely.

After all, Resolution 242 was the strongest international guarantee anyone could hope for: a binding Security Council resolution that, as explained yesterday, explicitly assured Israel that it would not have to withdraw to the 1967 lines. And all subsequent Israeli governments relied on this assurance: while Labor and Likud governments disagreed over where Israel’s final border should run, each built settlements in those areas they thought Israel would retain under any peace deal.

Thus if the Security Council were to change its mind now and retroactively invalidate the guarantee it gave Israel in 242, it could clearly change its mind on anything — meaning that Israel could not rely on any international guarantee it might receive as part of a final-status deal.

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Unilateral Moves and Countermoves

Evelyn Gordon
Contentions/Commentary
22 November 09

Interviewed by BBC Arabic this weekend, Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas denied reports that he would seek UN Security Council approval for unilaterally declaring a Palestinian state. Rather, he said, “We will turn to the United Nations and the Security Council to strengthen what has been agreed on in the road map and approved by the Security Council, a two-state solution based on the June 4, 1967 borders.”

That may sound innocuous. But in fact, Security Council acquiescence to this proposal would both radically alter the current international position and demolish the already faltering principle that the talks’ outcome should not be prejudiced by unilateral action.

While most of the world already believes the 1967 lines should be the final border, the formal basis for the talks remains Security Council Resolution 242, which says no such thing. This resolution purposefully required an Israeli withdrawal only from “territories” captured in 1967, not “the territories” or “all the territories.” As Lord Caradon, the British UN ambassador who drafted 242, explained, “It would have been wrong to demand that Israel return to its positions of June 4, 1967, because those positions were undesirable and artificial.” America’s then UN ambassador, Arthur Goldberg, similarly said the two omitted words “were not accidental …. the resolution speaks of withdrawal from occupied territories without defining the extent of withdrawal.” This was equally clear to the Soviet Union and Arab states, which is why they unsuccessfully pushed to include those extra words.

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Ha'aretz Errs on U.N. Resolution 242

TS
CAMERA/Snapshots
10 November 09

Ha'aretz, considered by some the New York Times of Israel, claimed in its editorial Friday:

. . . Israel must seek peace with Syria in the context of Security Council Resolution 242 of November 1967: full and secure peace in return for complete withdrawal.

The New York Times corrected this falsehood three times back in 2000, making clear that in fact the resolution does not specify how much and from which territory Israel should withdraw. The Sept. 8, 2000 correction, for example, read:

An article on Wednesday about the Middle East peace talks referred incorrectly to United Nations resolutions on the Arab-Israeli conflict. While Security Council Resolution 242, passed after the 1967 Middle East War, calls for Israel's armed forces to withdraw "from territories occupied in the recent conflict," no resolution calls for Israeli withdrawal from all territory, including East Jerusalem, occupied in the war.

Other media outlets which likewise corrected the false claim that U.N. Resolution 242 requires a complete Israeli withdrawal from territories captured in 1967 include the Associated Press, the International Herald Tribune (published in Israel alongside Ha'aretz), the Boston Globe, the Wall Street Journal and Reuters. Will Ha'aretz join them and set the record straight?

When No Means No

Pleading with Iran will get the West nowhere.

Bret Stephens
Wall Street Journal
02 November 09

I once overhead a guy try to make a date over the phone. His end of the conversation went roughly as follows:

"How about Friday?" (Pause.) "Not Friday? Because I'm free most of the weekend." (Pause.) "Not this weekend? What about next Saturday?" (Pause.) "Are you free at all next week?" (Long pause.) "Well, are you ever free?"

Apparently she was not, at least as far as he was concerned.

Now it's the turn of the Obama administration to play the guy who won't take a hint. And it falls to the Islamic Republic of Iran to be the girl who's hard—actually, impossible—to get.

Tehran's most recent abrupt rejection came last week, when it reportedly decided that it was not enough for the U.S. to trash four binding Security Council resolutions demanding that Iran cease enriching uranium. Nor was it enough that France and Russia were prepared, with America's blessing, to convert Iran's existing stockpile of low-enriched uranium (LEU) to a grade of 19.75%, a hair's breadth shy of the 20% needed for a crude nuclear device.

"The key issue is that Iran does not agree to export its lightly enriched uranium," an unnamed senior European official told the New York Times. "That's not a minor detail. That's the whole point of the deal."

Perhaps this is merely some tactical posturing by Iran; as of this writing, its foreign minister hasn't yet categorically ruled a deal out. Then again, it's probably worth rehashing the history of the West's nuclear negotiations with Tehran to see where things are likely to go from here.
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Another Tack: Ban Israel's bomb

Sarah Honig
JPost
08 October 09

How sweet the vision: our world nuke-free and menace-free, enveloped in harmony and goodwill. Lofty sentiments without a doubt - assuming they are sincerely subscribed to and remotely attainable.

That's a whopping assumption, though.

Ban-the-Bomb appeared a praiseworthy cause at its cold-war 1950s inception. No doubt lots of fine folks genuinely trusted they were doing their best for mankind and life on earth. Not many suspected right off that they were played for suckers, that no authentic grassroots anti-nuke outcry was possible behind the Iron Curtain, that the endgame was to weaken western deterrent - and guess who wanted that to happen?

In time, anti-bomb fervor subsided, but not deep within the anti-establishment subculture inhabited, among others, by Barack Obama and assorted diehard radical cronies. In the name of that ideal of old, US President Obama pretentiously chaired the UN Security Council session which re-ignited the vision of nuclear disarmament. Yet again, intentions may have been noble.

Nevertheless the niggling question is whom are sponsors of the renewed Security Council morality-drive out to weaken? Some argue that high-minded pontification is but a thinly veiled campaign against the burgeoning, very potent Iranian nuclear threat.

But since this was obliquely left for the vast and varied UN membership to interpret according to entrenched self-serving predispositions, then anything goes. And it will. You can bet your bottom shekel that the resultant anti-nuclear ardor will be nothing like what it may seem or like what certain manipulators would like to make others believe that it seems.

PARDON THE jaded perception. Less starry-eyed, admittedly more world-weary observers saw it all before. Déjà vu. Most aspirations ceremoniously ballyhooed in august international forums sound commendable and honorable. Yet inescapably these virtuous standards will be applied to one country exclusively - little Israel.

The Human Rights Council, until recently infamous as the Human Rights Commission, concentrates all its energies on painting Israel as the planet's great repressive ogre. It was the HRC which commissioned the recent farcical Goldstone Report at the benign behest of such liberal paradigms as Syria, Somalia, Pakistan, Malaysia and Bangladesh.

The UN after all once equated Zionism with racism. That was when it was headed by former Nazi Kurt Waldheim. It routinely singled Israel out for an exemplary set of unique restrictions. Israel alone is prohibited from responding to overt terrorist aggression. Decades before operations Defensive Shield and Cast Lead, all retaliatory raids of the Fifties and Sixties were identically condemned.

Unlike any country, Israel is obliged to fight - if at all - according to incongruent asymmetrical pacifist rules. Israel may not resort to weaponry allowed or overlooked in the case of other states. All hell breaks loose if "collateral damage" is incurred in any Israeli action, although Israel faces enemies given to hiding behind their women's skirts and tots' t-shirts. Schools, hospitals and the like are used as rocket launching pads against Israeli civilians. But Israeli civilians are expected to take it on the chin and not disturb the world's peace with interminable Jewish whines.

Israel's security fence, erected to hamper suicide-bombers, is raucously vilified in the name of freedom of movement. Yet this laudable principle isn't requisite for other UN members. Numerous governments fortify their borders via barriers of all sorts to obstruct the influx of economic migrants and foreign gatecrashers. It's quite acceptable for the US, to say nothing of Spain whose need to bar entry into Spanish Sahara goes unchallenged. Nobody minds that European Spain still has territory in Africa, which it still refuses to cede.

Spain, mind you, is hardly alone. Plenty of UN members, from the US, UK, Russia, Turkey and China - to name just one handful - occupy the territory of others without incurring extraordinary wrath or even a negligible demerit. Plenty establish settlements on usurped lands - the above handful comes to mind again, but not only it. Worldwide, untold millions of noncombatants were evicted, indeed entire ethnic populations. None of the dispossessors are expected to accept dislodged enemies or even innocuous refugees back. No way will Poles, Czechs and other Europeans take back expelled Germans (and rightly so). What's done is done.

Except in Israel's case. Israel is unique. Israel must abet its own extinction via inundation by millions of hostile Arabs, whose own belligerent forebears caused their displacement to begin with. Israel is the one testing ground for all disingenuous ethical experiments bombastically launched by the international community.

China may occupy Tibet with no ill-consequence. China has no justification for subjugating Tibet. It's land-lust and nothing but. Israel of course is weighed on different scales. Merely nine miles wide - enclosed by temporary armistice lines rather than recognized borders - Israel was forced into war in 1967 in order to avoid annihilation. It regained territory which was partly Jewish-owned and Jewish-inhabited just 19 years earlier and all of which constitutes its homeland.

THIS IS no faraway conquest motivated by greed and coercive realpolitik. If Israel cedes lowly hills overlooking its densest population center, one airport and exposed highways, it's a goner. Yet this is precisely what the international community, including professed friends, stridently clamors for.

China crowded out native Tibetans with Chinese settlers immeasurably outnumbering Israel's entire population, but their removal isn't a precondition for much of anything. Chinese settlement construction isn't even called that, as wasn't the Russian counterpart in the Baltics. We won't even get into the thorny subjects of the US or Britain (still in the Falklands, just a hop and a skip from Whitehall). Different strokes for different settlers.
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Related: How Israel Was Disarmed
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