Kushner - From Israel: Touching Bases

Arlene Kushner..
10 July '12..






Later today I am attending a press conference, which I hope to write about. And so here I want to briefly touch a variety of bases -- as there is so much that is transpiring.

~~~~~~~~~~

Could we possibly have expected anything else? State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell offered this statement at a press conference:

"Obviously, we've seen the reports that an Israeli Government appointed panel [the Levy Committee] has recommended legalizing dozens of Israeli settlements in the West Bank, but we do not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlement activity and we oppose any effort to legalize settlement outposts...We’re concerned about it, obviously."

Well, "obviously." The US is going to be pressuring the Israeli government not to accept the report. State Department officials are scheduled to be here.

And so my friends, it's time for making your voices heard, please! In great numbers.

Write to Prime Minister Netanyahu now, before you forget.

Do it respectfully, keep it short, but convey a sense of conviction and strength:

They just can’t bring themselves to say that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel

LOTL..
07 July '12..






Some things never change. This from Rick Richman at Commentary Magazine:

Yesterday, the State Department announced that Secretary of State Clinton was leaving on a trip to “France, Japan, Mongolia, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Egypt and Israel,” with “a stop in Israel on July 16-17.” In yesterday’s State Department press conference, a reporter posed a “logistical” question to Director Patrick Ventrell:

QUESTION: For every single country she’s going to, it lists the cities that she’s visiting, except for Israel. So this is a semi-trick question: Is she going to be visiting the capital of Israel?

MR. VENTRELL: The Secretary will be in Israel and she will meet with Israeli officials.

QUESTION: Where?

MR. VENTRELL: At this point, I don’t know where those meetings are going to be, but obviously as we get closer, the team will have more information.

QUESTION: You don’t know if they’ll be in Jerusalem or if they will be in Tel Aviv?

MR. VENTRELL: We can presume that she will visit multiple sites in Israel on this trip.

They just can’t bring themselves to say that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel, can they?

They can’t answer the question of where the capital is, or where Clinton will visit (although the answer to both questions is obvious), lest someone press them on whether Jerusalem is in Israel. Perhaps while she is there on July 16 or 17, Secretary Clinton will be asked if she still takes the position that even symbolically treating Jerusalem as Israel’s capital would jeopardize the non-existent peace process.

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State Department finally condemns Rahimi, a week too late

Fresnozionism.org..
04 July '12..





Last week I wrote about a high Iranian official’s anti-Jewish remarks and suggested that they consituted a threat and incitement to genocide. Yesterday (July 3), the State Department finally issued a statement in the name of spokeswoman Victoria Nuland:

We strongly condemn Iranian First Vice-President Mohammad Reza Rahimi’s vile anti-Semitic and racist comments on June 26 at the International Day Against Drug Abuse conference in Tehran. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) has confirmed that the conference was not held under UN auspices, nor did officials in attendance have any idea that Rahimi would level such offensive charges. Both UN Secretary-General Ban-Ki Moon and UNODC Executive Director Yury Fedotov registered their dismay and serious concern over Rahimi’s anti-Semitic speech and issued a statement July 3 calling on Iranian officials to refrain from these kinds of anti-Semitic statements.

It is strange that it took more than a week for State to notice, and that the statement was made by Nuland and not Secretary of State Clinton. After all, since June 26, Ms Clinton had time to comment on the Solomon Islands’ and Venezuelan independence days, the national days of the Congo, Rwanda, Somalia and Burundi, and of course Canada day; speak at the dedication of Sumner Welles Street in Riga, Latvia; speak at the Climate Clean Air and Green Embassy event in Helsinki, Finland; and much more. She also gave interviews to NPR and CNN during which she did not mention the affair.

Bryen - The Incredible Shrinking US-Israel Security Cooperation

Shoshana Bryen..
Gatestone Institute..
27 June '12..

In light of increased sensitivity to intelligence leaks, it seemed innocuous – or even admirable – when the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) asked the Senate to remove a few words from the US-Israel Enhanced Security Cooperation Act: the "sense of the Senate" part of the bill included the sentence, "Expand already close intelligence cooperation, including satellite intelligence, with the Government of Israel;" ODNI wanted the words "including satellite intelligence" to go.

An ODNI spokesman said it was "simply a matter of clarifying the intelligence aspects of the bill and being sensitive to the level of specificity of the language…nothing nefarious here, just more clear language."

Yeah, right.

This is just the latest example of the Obama Administration making clear that it does not want to be seen as Israel's partner in regional affairs – several of them predicated on Turkish desires. Despite Israel's status as a Major Non-NATO ally, a NATO "partner" country, and a member of NATO's Mediterranean Dialogue, Turkey is increasingly insistent that Israel be isolated and cut out. This surrender to Turkey -- which Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has for years been aggressively making ever more fundamentalist -- coincides nicely with the Administration's increasingly open courtship of Turkey's Islamist-leaning and virulently anti-Israel Prime Minister and what appears to be the desire of the Administration to enhance security relations in the Arab-Muslim world as it dials back visible cooperation with Israel.

This is no small matter. Israel's security is threatened -- above all by the refusal of the Arab States to accept that it is a legitimate, permanent part of the region in which it lives. For the U.S. or Turkey -- formerly a partner in regional security – to distance themselves from Israeli security is to raise hopes among enemies that they will ultimately be able to threaten Israel without fear of a U.S. or NATO-allied response.

Ceren - Obama Rolls Over Again for the Turks

Omri Ceren..
Commentary/Contentions..
21 May '12..

It was only last month when the State Department was acknowledging that Israel is “one of NATO’s partners [and] has participated over the years in many, many, many NATO activities, consultations, exercises, et cetera.” The context was a surreal exchange between the AP’s Matt Lee and State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland regarding how Turkey was vetoing Israel from participating in this week’s Chicago NATO summit. Lee expressed confusion at the bland acquiescence with which the Obama administration was meeting Turkey’s machinations:

QUESTION: Toria, I’m trying to help you out here, because you’re going to get absolutely slammed.
MS. NULAND: I understand. Matt, there is no –
QUESTION: You are. If you can’t come out and say that the United States wants Israel to participate, its main ally in the Middle East and you won’t come out and say that the administration wants them to participate in whatever event is going on in Chicago, that’s – that is going to be seized on.
…
QUESTION: Fair enough. But the Turks wouldn’t be objecting to Israel’s participation if someone hadn’t proposed that Israel participate. And if you have proposed that they participate –
MS. NULAND: Again –
QUESTION: — and you’re not willing to stick up for it, I don’t understand why.

Of course, Israel ended up getting excluded from the summit. The White House and State Department have subsequently scrambled from one excuse to another, lest people settle on the obvious: that the Obama administration is allowing Turkey to drive a wedge between Israel and NATO, thereby damaging NATO’s coordination with allies in the Eastern Mediterranean, undermining America’s ability to project power into the region, eroding the U.S.-Israel alliance, and making the Israelis feel isolated and nervous right as they’re making critical decisions about going it alone on Iran.

Glick - The State Department's Jerusalem syndrome

Caroline Glick..
carolineglick.com..
30 March '12..

I went to the US Consulate this week to take care of certain family business. It was a thoroughly unpleasant experience. I think it is ironic that two days after my extremely unpleasant experience at the consulate, State Department Spokeswoman Victoria Nuland refused to say what the capital of Israel is. It was ironic because anyone who visits the consulate knows that the US's position on Jerusalem is in perfect alignment with that of Israel's worst enemies.

Last time I went to the consulate was in 2007. At that time the building was located in the middle of an Arab neighborhood in eastern Jerusalem. It was unpleasant. In fact it was fairly frightening. Once inside the building I couldn't shake the feeling that the Americans had gone out of their way to make Israeli-American Jews feel uncomfortable and vaguely threatened.

But then, I was able to console myself with the thought that the US has been upfront about its rejection of Israel's right to assert its sovereignty over eastern Jerusalem. By treating Jews as foreigners in their capital city and behaving as though it belongs to the Arabs by among other things hiring only Arabs as local employees, the US officials on site were simply implementing a known US policy. True, I deeply oppose the policy, but no one was asking me, and no one was hiding anything from me.

The new consulate is much different, and much worse. The State Department opened its new consulate in Jerusalem in October 2010. It is located in the Jewish neighborhood of Arnona. It was built on the plot that Israel allocated for the US Embassy after Congress passed Jerusalem Embassy Act in 1995 requiring the US government to move its embassy to Jerusalem.

It was an unvarnished act of aggression against Israel and Congress that the State Department built the new consulate on the plot that is supposed to be an expression of US recognition of Israel's capital in Jerusalem.

Fresnozionism - Jerusalem … on Mars?

Jerusalem, from Space
(NASA Photo) 

Fresnozionsim.org..
29 March 12..

In the 1947 UN partition resolution, the General Assembly recommended that Jerusalem be made a corpus separatum, a political entity under international control, apart from the proposed Jewish and Arab states. This was reaffirmed at the time of the 1949 armistice agreements, but nobody paid attention to it — Jordan annexed the eastern part of Jerusalem, and Israel of course included the western part, which became its capital.

The US did not vote for the corpus separatum resolution in 1949 , but nevertheless was not happy with the situation. In 1962, the State Department issued a statement which said, in part,

The United States undertook, however, to give due recognition to the formal acts of the General Assembly and the Trusteeship Council relating to Jerusalem and has since maintained its position that the Holy Places in the Jerusalem area are of international interest to a degree which transcends ordinary considerations of sovereignty.

…the status of Jerusalem is a matter of United Nations concern and no member of the United Nations should take any action to prejudice the United Nations interest in this question. Our objective has been to keep the Jerusalem question an open one and to prevent its being settled solely through the processes of attrition and fait accompli to the exclusion of international interest and an eventual final expression thereof presumably through the United Nations.

I have always suspected that the State Department — many of whose employees were the children of missionaries — simply couldn’t handle the idea of the holy places in the hands of Jews and Muslims. Be that as it may, at some point the position changed — probably with the passage of UNSC resolution 242 in 1967 — so that the status of Jerusalem would be decided by negotiations between the parties concerned, and not by the UN.

The parties, in 1967, were Israel and Jordan. With the Oslo agreements, the status of Jerusalem became a “final status issue” to be negotiated by Israel and the Palestinian Authority. This is today’s official State Department line.

Note that in respect to sovereignty, the State Department has never distinguished between the eastern and western parts. Neither are part of Israel. The 1962 statement explains that

Fresnozionism - US State Department “regrets” PRC losses

Fresnozionism.org..
10 March '12..

As you know by now, over 135 rockets were launched at Israel over the weekend. The barrage was in response to the targeted killing of Zuhair Mussah Ahmad Qaisi and two other Popular Resistance Committee (PRC) terrorists. The PRC, which was responsible for the recent attack near the Egyptian border, was about to launch a “large scale” attack into Israel. A total of at least 15 more fighters were killed when Israel attacked rocket launching teams in Gaza. The PRC is one of the most vicious of the terrorist militias (see the link at the end of the post).

There are no reports of Israeli deaths, although about a million Israelis spent the night in shelters. Schools will be closed today (Sunday). The Gaza air strikes were targeted precisely and no Palestinians were killed who were not terrorists.

That did not stop the US State Department from issuing a statement including a remark that they “regret the loss of life.”

Considering what the PRC has done in the past, this is a somewhat strange thing to say!

Link: http://fresnozionism.org/2012/03/us-state-department-regrets-prc-losses/

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand
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Rubin - Iranian Scientists’ Goals Should Be No Secret

Michael Rubin..
Commentary/Contentions..
24 February '12..



The Drudge Report is including a link to an Israel National News story quoting an Iranian press report in which the widow of an Iranian nuclear scientist acknowledged that her husband sought “Israel’s annihilation.” Even before Drudge amplified it into headline news, this was a story that the keen eye of Jonathan Tobin had earlier picked up. But, it’s hardly the first time that Iranian officials intimately involved in their covert nuclear and ballistic missile programs have made this admission. In November 2011, Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Gen. Hassan Tehrani-Moghadam died in a mysterious explosion that flattened the missile facility in which he worked. The Iranian press subsequently published his last will and testament, a document in which he requested the epitaph, “This is the grave of someone who wanted to destroy Israel.”

There’s a school of foreign policy thought predominant in the United States which teaches officials to ignore rhetoric. This would be a mistake, one which should have been corrected after the George H.W. Bush administration and the State Department largely ignored Saddam Hussein’s threats against Kuwait, only to learn that the dictator actually meant what he said.

In government and intelligence circles, there is a persistent problem in which people cleared to read high level intelligence spend disproportionate time leafing through intercepts to the exclusion of the open-source material—newspapers and television transcripts—for which everyone is cleared. Intelligence is 90 percent open source, so to focus on the ten percent to the exclusion of the rest gives a skewed perspective. It is time the State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency realize that when the Iranian regime says something in Persian, it might mean it, even if no one is around to translate it into English and even if it was only said in a national newspaper rather than a hurried cell phone call.

Ignoring rhetoric because they come through unclassified media is intelligence incompetence, but dismissing what the Iranians say becomes policy malpractice of the highest order.

Link: http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2012/02/24/iranian-nuclear-scientists-goals-secret/

Gordon - Wishful Thinking: Hamas’s “New Direction”

Evelyn Gordon..
Commentary/Contentions..
10 January '12..

Yesterday, I wrote about the State Department’s wishful thinking on the Muslim Brotherhood. But the most widespread form of wishful thinking nowadays is undoubtedly the global enthusiasm for Hamas’s “new direction,” as evidenced by, for instance, this Haaretz editorial, enthusiastically reprinted the next day by the New York Times’ global edition, the International Herald Tribune.

Let’s for a moment ignore all the evidence to the contrary and assume Hamas really did agree to abandon terror for unarmed “popular struggle.” What would that mean for Israel? About 500 rockets a year fired at its civilian population. How do I know? Because Hamas, unwilling to risk another Israeli offensive, hasn’t personally fired rockets at Israel since the last offensive ended three years ago. Instead, it has allowed smaller groups to fire 1,571 rockets from Hamas-controlled Gaza while disclaiming responsibility – a tactic it would undoubtedly continue. In short, Hamas’s “new direction” wouldn’t reduce anti-Israel terror from Hamas-controlled territory one whit.

Bryen - The Taliban and the PLO

Shoshana Bryen..
American Thinker..
10 January '12..

The story below is not a history lesson; it is a cautionary tale. What happens when the United States ignores the nature and behavior of an adversary and pretends that a) people wedded to a violent ideology and believing deeply in their ultimate victory will accept less and allow their enemy to "win" as well; and b) legitimizes them and providing concessions will get them to do it? (And as a cautionary tale, Israel having experienced the outcome of  this failed conception, should do its best not to repeat it. Y.)

In 2006, a 1973 State Department memo regarding the murder of two American and one Belgian diplomat in Sudan was declassified. It acknowledged, "The Khartoum operation was planned and carried out with the full knowledge and personal approval of Yasir Arafat, Chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and head of Fatah."

That was generally believed to be the case, but still it was a shock to see that the United States government had known (then) for 33 years that Arafat, murderer of Israelis and Jews, was also the murderer of Cleo Noel, George Curtis Moore, and Guy Eid, Western diplomats in service. The three were machine-gunned to death with the "full knowledge and personal approval" of the man with whom the U.S. government opened relations during the Reagan administration with the "full knowledge and personal approval" of Colin Powell, then-NSC adviser to the president and later secretary of State, the person responsible for American diplomats abroad. (Powell told a small group -- of which I was a member -- that "everyone has something to say, and we should offer them the opportunity to say it.")

The world could have been spared a lot of trouble if the U.S. government had told what it knew in 1973. Arafat might not have become an acceptable interlocutor for the United States. He might not have been someone for whom the U.S. government betrayed people who worked and died in its service. He might not have become a "partner" for an unwilling Israel, pressured by the United States.

Instead, the State Department hid its contemporaneous knowledge of Arafat's crime against American diplomats in hopes of enticing/bribing him to make peace with Israel.

Kushner - US State Department True to Form on the Mount of Olives

Arlene Kushner
frontpagemag.com
20 December '11

http://frontpagemag.com/2011/12/20/us-state-department-true-to-form-on-the-mount-of-olives/



Is the US State Department capable of getting it right when addressing deprivation of human rights endured by Jewish people? Its conduct with regard to the Mount of Olives cemetery in Jerusalem gives serious pause.

On the slopes of the Mount of Olives (Hebrew: Har Hazeitim), in eastern Jerusalem, lies a 2,500 year-old Jewish cemetery, bearing a legacy of enormous import and sanctity. Among those buried in its 1,500 Jewish graves are prophets, Zionist leaders, rabbis, writers, and an Israeli prime minister.

From 1948, when eastern Jerusalem was captured by Jordan, until its liberation by Israel in 1967, no Jews were permitted at the site; horrendous damage was done to the cemetery during those years. Although restoration has been taking place since 1967, until recently action to protect the site had been insufficient. That is now changing as the Israeli government has become more vigorously involved and the International Committee for the Preservation of Har HaZeitim has been established.

Yet vandalism still regularly occurs at the cemetery. Arabs drop cinderblocks from the top of the Mount down the hillside, in a frequently successful effort to crack headstones. Additionally, mourners and those visiting graves of loved ones are often harassed by Arabs throwing stones and require an armed Israeli security escort. Not infrequently, those mourners and visitors are American citizens.

Ceren - Belgium Embassy’s Transcript of Gutman Speech Doesn’t Match Delivered Remarks

Omri Ceren
Commentary/Contentions
06 December '11

http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2011/12/06/belgium-embassy-transcript-gutman-speech/

There are two overarching criticisms of U.S.Ambassador Howard Gutman’s disgraceful speech last week, a speech the content of which the White House has yet to walk back. They are:

(1) That Gutman rationalized anti-Semitic hatred as a response to specific Israeli policies. On that point see here and here and here.

(2) That Gutman minimized European anti-Semitism. When it came to “traditional” European Jew-hatred he opined that not only had he not personally experienced much of it, but that as far as he could tell it was in decline. When it came to tensions between Muslims and Jews, he went out of his way to avoid unpleasantly placing rhetorical blame on one side or the other. He described the problem as one of “violence between some members of Muslim communities or Arab immigrant groups and Jews,” as if the direction of violence was inscrutable. He drew equivalences between actual attacks on Jewish schoolgirls and hypothetical attacks on Muslim schoolgirls, as if Jewish/Muslim tensions equally exposed each to the specter of religiously-motivated attack. And so on.

Gutman’s defenders have tended to ignore the first and frankly more trenchant “blame the victim” criticism. They’ve instead pretended the ambassador’s critics have only complained about his minimization of anti-Semitism, a convenient albeit unblinkingly dopey ploy. It implicitly concedes, among other things, that Gutman scapegoated the Jewish State, an American ally, for violent bigotry directed at European Jews. That’s kind of a big deal.

But just for the sake of argument, let’s pretend the only reason people are criticizing Gutman is because he failed to highlight and condemn the unique nature and scope of European anti-Semitism. Responding to this accusation, his defenders have taken to obnoxiously instructing “all these Republicans and other right-wingers” to read the “transcript of his speech.” That’s where Gutman’s ruminations over the extent of European anti-Semitism are ostensibly to be found.

Except the transcript is wrong. We don’t know exactly how wrong, but we do know that it’s wrong in a suspiciously precise way. On the one single paragraph where there’s a videotape, Gutman very explicitly skipped over the only sentence describing uniquely anti-Jewish violence and intimidation. Seriously. This is happening. In a public controversy over whether Gutman was sufficiently attentive to the contours of anti-Semitism, with advocates smugly holding up the published transcript, the relevant examples of anti-Semitism weren’t in the speech.

See for yourself.

Parasczuk - US olim want ‘Israel’ on passport of their J'lem-born son

Joanna Parasczuk
JPost
04 August '11

http://www.jpost.com/Features/InThespotlight/Article.aspx?id=232381

Despite law passed in 2002 allowing Jerusalem-born US citizens to list Israel as birthplace, policy hasn’t been implemented.

In an unprecedented lawsuit that could affect over 50,000 Jerusalem-born Americans, the US Supreme Court has agreed to hear the case of a Jerusalem-born American boy whose parents are demanding consular officials record Israel as his country of birth on official documents.

American olim and Jerusalem residents Ari Z. Zivotofsky and Naomi Siegman Zivotofsky have been fighting for their son Menachem Binyamin’s passport and other documents to show Israel as his birth country even since he was born in Jerusalem’s Shaare Zedek hospital eight years ago.

Currently, in line with US policy, Menachem Binyamin’s passport and Consular Report of Birth Abroad (equivalent of a birth certificate) only show that the boy was born in Jerusalem – but omit the country, his parents say. As Menachem Binyamin’s parents are both Americans, he is automatically a US citizen and entitled to a US passport and other official documents.

US State Department policy is to record the city and country of birth on these documents for US citizens born overseas. However, this rule does not apply for American citizens born in Jerusalem, as the Zivotofskys discovered when they applied to the US Embassy in Tel Aviv for a passport and a Consular Report of Birth for their newborn son back in 2002.

Menachem Binyamin’s mother, Naomi, says she specifically requested that consular officials list her son’s place of birth as Israel. Consular officials refused this request, the Zivotofskys say. Instead, Menachem Binyamin’s passport shows only that he was born in Jerusalem.

“If a US citizen is born in Tel Aviv, his passport will designate his place of birth as Israel. But in the case of Jerusalem, the US Consular Department will not give the country of birth as Israel,” Menachem Binyamin’s father told The Jerusalem Post on Wednesday.

The US State Department’s refusal to allow Jerusalem-born American citizens to list Israel as their country of birth on official documentation stems from the US’s official position of not recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

“Even though our son was born in Shaare Zedek Hospital, which is in West Jerusalem, the US Consular Department does not recognize it as being Israel,” added Ari Zivotofsky. “And on his Consular Report of Birth, it’s even more blatant – the document is supposed to list both the city and the country of birth, and in Menachem Binyamin’s case, the country field has been left completely blank.”

CAMERA - State Department Says Flotilla Participants Could Face Criminal Charges

Steve Stotsky
CAMERA/Snapshots
27 June '11

http://blog.camera.org/archives/2011/06/state_department_says_flotilla.html

The United States government has warned U.S. citizens from participating in the Gaza Flotilla scheduled for this week. State Department Spokesman Victor Nuland said,

We underscore that delivering or attempting or conspiring to deliver material support or other resources to or for the benefit of a designated foreign terrorist organization, such as Hamas, could violate U.S. civil and criminal statutes and could lead to fines and incarceration.

The stern State Department warning against consorting with terrorists contrasts with a news article in the Christian Science Monitor that reads like an advocacy piece for the Flotilla. The "news" report by Dan Murphy states,

This flotilla is attempting to reach Gaza in a dramatically changed regional context from May 2010, before the uprisings collectively known as the Arab Spring. With the chance for real democratic change in Israeli neighbors like Egypt, organizers are hoping to press home their argument that the Palestinian residents of Gaza are as deserving of basic freedoms as any of their neighbors.

Israel does not occupy Gaza, and the lack of basic freedoms among its residents are a result of the policies of Hamas, a U.S. and E.U. defined terrorist organization.
The article goes on to present a one-sided description of last year's flotilla:

But that flotilla was stopped by an Israeli assault that killed nine activists (one with American citizenship) in international waters, sparking international condemnation that led Israeli to ease, though not lift, its blockade of the impoverished Palestinian territory.

The United Nations is reportedly releasing a report that severely criticized Turkey's role in the affair and the U.S. and others have supported Israel's right, in fact, obligation, to enforce the blockade.

The article presents opposition to the flotilla by the U.S., the U.N. and E.U. states as a result of "furious" lobbying by Israel. It also depicts flotilla participants like Ann Wright, Alice Walker and Hedy Epstein as "human rights" activists without disclosing their extremist affiliations and long records of hostility to the Jewish state.

(And with so much going on, perhaps we need to ask, what is 
"The current situation in Gaza"? Take a look. Are you surprised? Y.)

Uploaded by noterrorhere on Jun 27, 2011

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Where Is the Knesset?

Elliott Abrams
The Weekly Standard
21 May '11

http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/where-knesset_567623.html?nopager=1

In what country is the Knesset? That sounds like a rhetorical question, akin to the one Groucho Marx would ask losers on his TV show so they would get a consolation prize: “who’s buried in Grant’s tomb?”

Yet it seems that this question has stumped the State Department. It does not know or will not say what country the Knesset is in, nor—one must assume—does it know what country the prime minister’s office, the Israel Museum, or especially the Western Wall are in. The proof is in a remarkable press release from State about the travels of Deputy Secretary James Steinberg. The May 18 release, in toto, is as follows:

Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg visits Israel, Jerusalem and the West Bank May 18-19, 2011. In Israel, Deputy Secretary Steinberg met with Israeli academic and student leaders. In the West Bank, he met with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and other Palestinian officials. Among other issues, he discussed moving forward on Middle East peace as well as the recent fundamental changes in the region and the United States’ response to them. On May 19, he will participate in the U.S.-Israel Strategic Dialogue. The Strategic Dialogue allows senior U.S. and Israeli leaders to discuss, on a regular basis and in depth, the many issues that affect our mutual security and partnership.

I suppose the poor benighted Israelis believed they were hosting Steinberg in their country when he visited government offices. But he knew better. What makes this especially egregious is that Israeli government offices—where Mr. Steinberg would have had his official meetings—are actually in west Jerusalem, the portion Israel controlled even before 1967. Yet the Clinton State Department is apparently unwilling to call even that portion of the city "Israel."

The Constitution, Passports, and Sovereignty

Rick Richman
Commentary/Contentions
10 May '11

Let me add a footnote to the coverage by Seth Lipsky (see here and here) and others of the Zivotofsky case, in which the Supreme Court will decide whether the Executive Branch must comply with a 2002 statute directing the Secretary of State to put “Jerusalem, Israel” on the passports of citizens born there who request the country be added. The State Department’s long-standing policy puts only “Jerusalem” on such passports.

The Obama administration, like the Bush administration before it, refused to comply with the law on grounds it infringes on the President’s exclusive authority under the Constitution to recognize foreign governments. The administration argues the law would require the President to change the U.S. policy of neutrality on the issue of sovereignty over Jerusalem.

The lower court noted that one of Zivotofsky’s arguments was that passport designations have a “negligible impact on American foreign policy.” The administration responded by pointing to the international reaction to the law in 2002:  

According to the State Department, “Palestinians from across the political spectrum strongly condemned the Jerusalem provisions of the [Act], interpreting those provisions as a reversal of longstanding U.S. policy that Jerusalem’s status should be determined by Israel and the Palestinians in final status talks.”  

In September, the Palestinians are planning to ask the UN to award them sovereignty over the historic part of Jerusalem. Given the longstanding U.S. policy that Jerusalem’s status should be determined by Israel and the Palestinians in final status talks, the administration will presumably oppose the Palestinian effort at least as resolutely as it has opposed Menachem Zivotofsky’s desire to put “Jerusalem, Israel” on his passport.

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State Department Legitimizes Terror

Eli E. Hertz
mythsandfacts.org
23 March '11



http://www.mythsandfacts.org/article_view.asp?articleID=198

To whom did the Obama administration grant permission to fly the Palestinian Liberation Organization [PLO] flag in Washington D.C.?

The answer: Palestinian Arabs - A society whose overwhelming majority nurtures a blind hatred of Israel, and has created a cultural milieu of vengeance, violence and death. This organization, which has been directly responsible for the murders of American civilian and security personnel, now has its recognition and flag waving in our capitol.

Here is just a subset of articles from the PLO Charter that the American administration has no shame to honor:

* Article 7: [Individual] must be prepared for the armed struggle and ready to sacrifice his wealth and his life in order to win back his homeland and bring about its liberation.

* Article 9: Armed struggle is the only way to liberate Palestine. This it is the overall strategy, not merely a tactical phase. The Palestinian Arab people assert their absolute determination and firm resolution to continue their armed struggle and to work for an armed popular revolution for the liberation of their country and their return to it. They also assert their right to normal life in Palestine and to exercise their right to self-determination and sovereignty over it.

* Article 10: Commando action constitutes the nucleus of the Palestinian popular liberation war.

* Article 19: The partition of Palestine in 1947 and the establishment of the state of Israel are entirely illegal, regardless of the passage of time, because they were contrary to the will of the Palestinian people and to their natural right in their homeland, and inconsistent with the principles embodied in the Charter of the United Nations, particularly the right to self-determination.

* Article 20: The Balfour Declaration, the Mandate for Palestine, and everything that has been based upon them, are deemed null and void. Claims of historical or religious ties of Jews with Palestine are incompatible with the facts of history and the true conception of what constitutes statehood. Judaism, being a religion, is not an independent nationality. Nor do Jews constitute a single nation with an identity of its own; they are citizens of the states to which they belong.

And if their charter was not convincing enough, the United States Congress, on numerous occasions, has reaffirmed the PLO's status as a terrorist organization. Although past presidents have attempted to circumvent this law, its conclusions are concise and unequivocal:

"Therefore, the Congress determines that the PLO and its affiliates are a terrorist organization and a threat to the interests of the United States, its allies, and to international law and should not benefit from operating in the United States."

The violent and disturbing history of the PLO is one that has dreadfully affected the lives of countless Israelis, Americans, and many others. The PLO is so transparent in its criminal and malicious ways, whether it be via their charter, public statements, or incitement, that one must question what the State Department was thinking when it upgraded the status of their mission from representative office to general delegation.

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Jerusalem's US Consulate goes native

Yisrael Medad
Green-Lined/JPost
15 February '11

http://blogs.jpost.com/content/jerusalems-us-consulate-goes-native

The United States Consulate in Jerusalem continues its “separate-and-not-equal” policy. In a previous post last June, I highlighted its promotion of the concept of a “Palestinian heritage” to the possible detriment of Jewish archaeological sites and historical cultural locations. In another post, I also pointed out what I call “State Department diplomatic creationism”. This is exhibited in that the first-choice bureaucratic preference location for American citizens who fill out birth registration forms for their children born outside of Jerusalem and within Judea and Samaria, the place-names, by the way, used in the 1947 UN Partition recommendation to geographically delineate the proposed borders (and see this matter, as well), is
something called “The West Bank”. You'll recall that "Jerusalem" is never linked to Israel by the Consulate. It exists somewhere, all by its own.

Alerted, belatedly, by a Facebook announcement, I found out that the Muslim singing group, NativeDeen, has been brought over to perform in Jerusalem, Jordan and…”Palestine.”

To be clear, the details for the Jerusalem gig read:

NATIVE DEEN IN PALESTINE
When: Monday, February 14th 2011 @ 8:00pm
Where: Al Hakawati Theatre in East Jerusalem
Contact: bookings@nativedeen.com

NativeDeen describes itself as an inspiring story of:

Three Muslim youth possessing unique talents and a passion to spread the uplifting message of Islam…Native Deen has become a fusion of Hip-hop and R&B flavors...in order to highlight issues confronting Muslims living in America. These three young African-American men who were raised as Muslims...Drawing their own inspiration from the message of Islam, Native Deen's music calls listeners to keep the faith, to live better lives, and to NOT succumb to the pressures and temptations of modern society…

This visit, arranged by the Consulate which, I can confidently presume is participating financially in this 'entertainment and cultural event', is taking place, I emphasize, in "Palestine". Is that a country? A real country?

Great News! The Palestinians Have Improved Relations With--The US

Daled Amos
20 January '11

Don't take my word for it.

State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley himself explained the US had given permission to the PLO mission to fly the 'Palestinian' flag--despite no change in status:

given the improvement in the relations between the United States and Palestinians.

Of course it's nice to know that the Palestinians have improved relations with somebody, but what in the world does that mean?

(Read full "Great News! The Palestinians Have Improved Relations With--The US")


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