How does one have "settlements" in a city older than London or Washington D.C.? - by Sultan Knish

...They say that there are three religions in Jerusalem, but there are actually four. The fourth religion is the true Religion of Peace, the one that insists that there will be peace when the Jews have been expelled from Judea and Samaria, driven out of their homes in Jerusalem, and made into wanderers and beggars once again. Oddly enough, this religion's name isn't even Islam-- it's diplomacy.

Daniel Greenfield..
Sultan Knish..
23 May '17..

When Jordan's Arab Legion seized half of Jerusalem, ethnically cleansed its Jewish population and annexed the city-- the only entity to recognize the annexation was the United Kingdom which had provided the officers and the training that made the conquest possible. Officers like Colonel Bill Newman, Major Geoffrey Lockett and Major Bob Slade, under Glubb Pasha, better known as General John Bagot Glubb, whose son later converted to Islam, invaded Jerusalem and used the Muslim forces under their command to make the partition and ethnic cleansing of Jerusalem possible.

The Jews living in the free half of Jerusalem continued to be killed by Jordanian Muslim snipers. The victims of those years of Muslim occupation included Yaffa Binyamin, a 14-year-old girl sitting on the balcony of her own house and a Christian carpenter working on the Notre Dame Convent.

Under Muslim occupation, while Muslim snipers were cold-bloodedly murdering their children, the Jewish residents living under fire couldn't so much as put in an outhouse without being reported to the UN for illegal construction. In one case a UN observer organization held four meetings to discuss an outhouse for local residents before condemning Israel for illegal construction.

It did not however condemn Jordan when one of its soldiers opened fire on a train wounding a Jewish teenage girl.

Not very much has changed.

(Continue to Full Post)

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There are lessons from the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah conflict - by Michael Rubin

...Are there lessons from the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah conflict? Yes. First, the United Nations does not bring peace but only delays war. Its promises are empty. UN observers and peacekeepers are often less interested in keeping peace than in feeding at the international trough and sending remittances back home. To place trust in the United Nations or the attention span of European diplomats and even the State Department is foolish. Diplomacy empowers terrorists, it does not defeat them. Nor does it do any favors for peace.

Michael Rubin..
Commentary Magazine..
12 August '16..
Link: https://www.commentarymagazine.com/foreign-policy/middle-east/lessons-of-lebanon-hezbollah-10-years-on/

This Sunday marks the ten-year anniversary of the end of the 34-day Israel-Hezbollah War in Lebanon. The war began when Hezbollah crossed into Israeli territory from southern Lebanon, killed three soldiers, injured two others, and kidnapped two more. While Lebanon professed its innocence, it had made a conscience choice to allow Hezbollah to assert its primacy along its southern border following Israeli’s UN-certified withdrawal in May 2000. Israel’s war aims were to eradicate Hezbollah missile stockpiles and Hezbollah positions in southern Lebanon. While the Israeli military succeeded in knocking out many Hezbollah stockpiles, the Iranian-backed Shi’ite militia managed to launch hundreds of missiles and rockets, striking as far south as Haifa and killing several dozen Israelis.

A chorus of international officials called for Israel to cease its attacks at once. French President Jacques Chirac condemned Israel’s actions as “completely disproportionate,” and Russian President Vladimir Putin called Israel’s “use of full-scale force” unacceptable. Even U.S. officials chimed in. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice warned, “It is extremely important that Israel exercse restraint in its acts of self-defense.” Hillary Clinton, then a New York senator, doubled down on the call for an immediate ceasefire and demanded the United States and Israel resolve the situation diplomatically. “We’ve had five and a half years of a failed experiment in tough talk absent diplomacy and engagement,” she said. “I think it’s time to go back to what works, and what has historically worked and what can work again.”

By diplomacy, European officials, Clinton, and eventually the Bush administration meant the problem should be punted back to the United Nations. There was some irony in this, especially since Hezbollah had armed and launched its attack under the watch of UNIFIL, the UN monitoring agency in southern Lebanon. Still, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan promised a bigger, better (and more expensive) UN monitoring force to keep the peace if only hostilities would stop. “It is urgent that the international community acts to make a difference on the ground,” he said, “The force will be larger, the way I see it, much larger than the 2000-man force we have there.” British Prime Minister also endorsed an international force. “The only way we are going to have a cessation of violence is if we have an international force deployed into that area,” he explained.

Not everyone suffers from blindness but...

...Not everyone suffers from blindness. The editor of Asharq Al-Awsat, Eyad Abu Shakra, published a piercing article following the wave of terror on Black Friday two weeks ago. For a change, there wasn't a shred of self-deception in the article. Not poverty, not distress, not the occupation and not Israel. He points his accusatory finger at "real Islam" texts. That is the source of the murderous jihad, he wrote bravely. And in order to stop this disease, we must not cover up the problem. How fortunate it is that he didn't listen to Carter, or Army Radio.

Ben-Dror Yemini..
Israel Opinion/Ynet..
11 July '15..

Unlike the leaders of other Arab countries, Egypt's president has no delusions with regards to Islam. Several months ago, al-Sisi chose to make a dramatic speech about Islam in the most important religious institute: Al-Azhar University.

He firmly asserted that there is a problem with the direction Islam is being carried in, and called for a revolution from within. Here is a leader who doesn't suffer from blindness. But even the Egyptian president still has a problem in one area. Al-Sisi met with a delegation from the American-Jewish Committee. According to reports in the Egyptian press, he told them that "resolving the Palestinian problem will eliminate one of the main reasons for joining terror organizations."

That same day jihadists murdered, among others, 44 people in Nigeria and 14 others in Kenya. In the first 19 days of Ramadan, 1,899 people were murdered by jihadists, an average of close to a 100 per day. None of them had anything to do with the Palestinian problem.

The problem is that this thesis, on the connection between the Palestinian problem and Jihad, is quite common among "progressive" circles. Jimmy Carter, for example, claimed shortly after the murder in Charlie Hebdo that "one of the origins for it is the Palestinian problem." It used to be "look at the Jews for blame," now it's "look at Israel for blame."

This nonsense is also plaguing us. As I write these lines, there is a conversation on Army Radio about the arrest of Bedouin teachers caught spreading ISIS dogma. Most of the conversation revolved around the distress the Bedouin suffer under Israeli rule, which leads them, the poor things, to support jihad. When this is what is being broadcast on Army Radio, how can we judge Carter?

The West's Great Betrayal by Mordechai Kedar

...The Geneva agreement tore the mask from the face of hypocrisy that characterizes the political behavior of many politicians in the West today. From their point of view the eighty million Iranians can continue to live lives of misery, oppression and degradation under an illegitimate, cruel and bloodthirsty regime that spreads terror and death all over the world and is directly or indirectly responsible for the murder of many thousands in Syria, in Iraq, in Yemen, in Israel and in many other countries.

Dr. Mordechai Kedar..
29 November '13..

Since the signing of the Geneva agreement between Iran and the group of six countries at the end of last week, media outlets the world over have been discussing the agreement and the easing of sanctions, what Iran will give in return and the ability - which exists or does not exist - to oversee whether the Iranians, who have lied and cheated the world for many years, will faithfully carry out what they agreed to and signed on. There were those who wondered about the absence of the demand for Iran to dismantle the plutonium reactor in Arak, whose purpose is only military, and there were those who calculated the time that would be required for the Iranians to renew the activity toward producing a bomb. The media outlets of the world dealt quite a bit with Israel's concern, the rage of the Saudis' and people in the Gulf Emirates, and everyone wonders what Israel will do, who is not part of the agreement.

The common element among most of those who have been discussing the matter is that everyone sees only two sides, Iran and the West, and ponders which of these two sides has gained more from the agreement. Most of the commentators ignore the third party, large but silent, in pain but obedient, who experienced a major defeat as a result of the agreement. This party is the majority of eighty million Iranians. It is no secret that the great majority of Iranian citizens hate the regime of the Ayatollahs with all their hearts, and from time to time express this hatred with demonstrations and street disturbances, such as those that swept the streets of Iran after the "elections" for presidency in June of 2009 and which brought about the deaths of hundreds of demonstrators who were champions of liberty and hungry for freedom.

They, the restless young men and women, secular up to their ears, aspiring to freedom but living under oppression, educated but unemployed, suffering from the terrible corruption that the regime of the ayatollahs is immersed in, hoped that the economic sanctions on the dark regime would suffocate it and bring it to its end. This was not a wild hope: in the past it was learned that at the height of the wave of protest demonstrations about the stealing of the elections in which Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was "reelected" in 2009, the rulers of Iran had two jets prepared in order to leave the country and escape from the raging masses.

Now, after the agreement that was signed in Geneva, the sanctions are eased and the regime is beginning to breathe more easily. The Iranian Rial - which had lost about half of its value in recent years - rose last week by two percent. The economic optimism causes new blood to flow in the clogged veins of the regime, and all of the freedom seekers in Iran feel that the historic opportunity to rid themselves of the dark fanatics who rule their lives and deaths has been squandered. The sanctions, which were a non-violent weapon, could have subdued one of the most violent regimes in the world, if the Western countries had only maintained them.

The West, Reality and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict

..Unfortunately, the West has still not come to terms with reality when it comes to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Despite decades of failed diplomatic efforts, Western leaders are still obsessed with finding a lasting solution, thus appearing oblivious to the daunting challenges such a goal faces in the increasingly ebullient regional environment.

Emanuele Ottolenghi..
Standpoint..
July/August '13..

Western policy responses to the growing Middle Eastern turmoil in the last two years have ranged from delusion to paralysis. After prematurely welcoming democracy, Western powers have by and large disengaged. This is not without merits — the region's momentous historical changes are largely beyond the reach of Western influence.

Unfortunately, the West has still not come to terms with reality when it comes to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Despite decades of failed diplomatic efforts, Western leaders are still obsessed with finding a lasting solution, thus appearing oblivious to the daunting challenges such a goal faces in the increasingly ebullient regional environment.

Whether peace is attainable remains to be seen. In any case, it requires discarding the following six mistaken assumptions that have driven successive diplomatic efforts to complete failure.

(1) The contours of the solution are known — all we must do is try harder.

Wrong. Twenty years of diplomacy have failed to achieve peace between the two sides. That must mean that the gap is still too wide for a successful bridging compromise. It is all too easy to play the blame game in this context, ascribing failure to "extremists on both sides" — one of the most frequently uttered asinine phrases in Middle East commentaries. In fact, neither side is prepared to settle for what a bridging proposal would look like. In 2000 and 2008, two Israeli prime ministers signed up to a comprehensive solution to the conflict that entailed expansive concessions on Israel's part. A third proposal — the Geneva Initiative — pushed those terms even farther, with the support of Israel's dovish opposition at the time. None was enough for the Palestinian leadership. In a laboratory environment, the repetition of a failed experiment would demand a change of the ingredients and the conditions. In the Palestinian-Israeli dispute, Western diplomats have forgotten their science.

(Continue)

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When Everything's Been Said About Iran - "Italian Food"

Shoshana Bryen..
American Thinker..
03 July '12..

It was at dinner in the garden of a well-known analyst of Iran. He'd spent years writing prolifically and astutely about the regime, its progress on nuclear technology, dissidents, U.S. policy, Israeli policy, and the machinations of the P5+1. "What's the latest on your blog?" we asked.

"Italian food," he replied. "There's nothing left to say about Iran."

That doesn't mean nothing is happening -- only that, like in Bill Murray's Groundhog Day, the things that are happening are largely repeat events, and what there is to say about them has largely been said (1). Or perhaps it is recognition that writers and analysts, no matter how correct they are, do not have influence in the right quarters right now.

How many times over how many years have we heard that the unraveling of dictatorial regimes in the Middle East a) favor well-organized movements which are mainly Islamist, b) are not good for the United States, and c) are not good for Israel? Which writer will write the piece that makes the Muslim Brotherhood say, "Oh, right! It's better to have a country in which women are equal, dissenting voices important, and Christians and Jews good citizens who make our national mosaic better"? Who will write the one that makes President Obama say, "I've been wrong about the Brotherhood -- their election is not about democracy, it is about power"? Or "What I remember about Islam from my childhood was a child's view; now I am a grown-up and need to readjust"?

Give that writer a prize.

Two Cheers For Wikileaks!

Barry Rubin
The Rubin Report
29 November '10

The Wikileaks could be a beneficial revelation, a turning point, changing Western perceptions of the Middle East.

After all, only the leak of U.S. secret documents is forcing--finally!--the mass media to recognize that its entire model of the Middle East has been wrong. For years, we have been told that the region revolves around the Arab-Israeli conflict.

And that was to some extent true up through the end of the 1980s. But now the Middle East revolves around the battle between Islamists and nationalists, and especially between the Iran-led bloc (Iran, Syria, Hizballah, Hamas, Iraqi insurgents, the government that rules Turkey) and most of the other countries.

Here's how the New York Times put it in an article:

"The cables reveal how Iran’s ascent has unified Israel and many longtime Arab adversaries — notably the Saudis — in a common cause. Publicly, these Arab states held their tongues, for fear of a domestic uproar and the retributions of a powerful neighbor. Privately, they clamored for strong action — by someone else.

"If they seemed obsessed with Iran, though, they also seemed deeply conflicted about how to deal with it — with diplomacy, covert action or force. In one typical cable, a senior Omani military officer is described as unable to decide what is worse: `A strike against Iran’s nuclear capability and the resulting turmoil it would cause in the Gulf, or inaction and having to live with a nuclear-capable Iran.'”

(Read full article)


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What Real Diplomacy Looks Like

J. E. Dyer
Contentions/Commentary
08 September '10

Americans seldom think of Israel in the conventional terms of “alliance,” but Israelis must, perforce, think of America that way. In the most fundamental sense, alliances are formed for security benefits. We don’t have allies because we need them; we have allies because they need us. This works both ways. The benefit is inherently mutual in any alliance that two or more parties take the trouble to form.

When allies begin shopping for defense-cooperation agreements elsewhere, moreover, it always means something. Our pursuit of abstract multilateralism over the last two decades has blinded us to that reality. American diplomacy has tended to behave as if all bilateral developments were benign — a mere natural outgrowth of upbeat nations getting in touch with each other. But in the case of Israel in 2010, the meaning is specific and conventional.

Israel signed a framework agreement for defense cooperation with Russia on September 6 — the first ever between these two nations — and has been at work this year resurrecting its defense-cooperation agreement with China. The rapprochement with China is informative because Israel agreed in 2005, at the behest of the Bush administration, to back off from its military-related projects with Beijing. The U.S. concern at the time was technology proliferation, which is what the news and opinion media tend to focus on, particularly in America. (The new agreement with Russia is being discussed, in its turn, as a means for Russia to obtain cutting-edge UAVs from Israeli manufacturers.)

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How Not to Conduct Diplomacy: A Case Study: UK PM in Turkey

Barry Rubin
The Rubin Report
29 July '10

British Prime Minister David Cameron’s July 27 speech in Turkey will not live on in history. But it should, as an example of the decline of Western diplomacy, of suicide by Political Correctness, as a textbook example of how not to conduct international affairs.

It crossed my mind that the speech was written by the Foreign Office for the express purpose of making Cameron look foolish, but then I realized that he and his top advisors probably have no idea why it was such a disaster.

Suppose you are the British prime minister going to Turkey, or to just about any country, what should you say? The theme should be: We can cooperate and do mutually beneficial things. Here’s what I can do for you, here’s what I’d like you to do for me. And here’s what you must not do in order to reap the benefits of my friendship and favor.

Obviously, you need to dress that up in appropriate language. But everything should be conditional. The message to be delivered is that it is in your interest to respect my interests.

Cameron did the precise and exact opposite. His message was: The UK needs Turkey. Turkey is wonderful. Its behavior has been perfect. We are desperate or your help.

What is the effect? A man goes into a bazaar, points to a carpet and says: That is the most beautiful carpet I have ever seen. I must have it no matter what the price! How much is it?

In addition, Cameron committed some other howling mistakes, several of which will amaze you. So please stick with me as I explain and document this. You won’t be disappointed. And remember this is not just a matter of one speech, it is a fitting symbol for the entire contemporary Western diplomatic approach to the Middle East and much more to the world as well. By the way, it is doomed to fail miserably.

Before we begin, remember that this is no longer the old Turkish Republic. Cameron is lavishing praise on an Islamist-oriented regime which has aligned itself with Iran and revolutionary Islamist groups. And all of Cameron’s pandering, as if he were a Western barbarian in the court of the all-powerful Ottoman sultan, is driving a knife into the heart of a Turkish opposition which is genuinely friendly toward the West and horrified by the current regime’s subversion of Turkish democracy.

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