Yesterday, Mahmoud Abbas gave a speech to inaugurate what he called the 18th government of "Palestine." (I have no idea how that is calculated.)
Most of the speech was boilerplate.
Abbas stressed that they will not accept any tax money from Israel as long as Israel deducts the salaries they pay terrorists, which he called a "red line."
Abbas said that that they will never accept a state that doesn't include Jerusalem or the 1967 "borders" that never existed.
Abbas claimed that the 12 year split between Hamas and Fatah is all Hamas' fault, and so forth.
Most importantly, he bragged about his intransigence and refusal to compromise one bit for peace, saying "We will not retract one word in the resolutions of the national councils since 1988 until today." That means that Abbas has refused to change one bit from Yasir Arafat's position throughout his entire leadership.
It also means that the PLO didn't make any meaningful concessions throughout the entire Oslo process.
He has said this numerous times before. Western media ignores not only Abbas' intransigence, but his glee over not being willing to compromise one iota for peace and relying, today, on terrorist Yasir Arafat's red lines.
One thing he said was slightly new:
Women wherever they are must take their rights. We must support them and develop their presence. Women are no less than men. They do not lack anything to be minister and president anywhere in Palestine.
Here is what the cabinet looks like: 20 men, 3 women.
The hypocrisy of his statement is of course not mentioned in Palestinian Arab media.
I am intrigued by the water bottle with the green cap next to Abbas.
A few years ago the government was embarrassed when it was shown they were drinking Israeli water at their meetings, and since then they switched to an Arab brand which can be seen on the table.
But at one point in his speech, someone poured Abbas some water from this other bottle - a bottle with no label on it.
Is he drinking water from an Israeli company that they removed the label from to avoid embarrassment?
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Last week, Airbnb backtracked on its November decision to de-list Jewish-owned homes in Judea and Samaria, causing lots of headlines and a new lawsuit by Palestinian Arabs against them.
How could Airbnb have avoided the controversy? By not caving to the blackmail by Amnesty International to begin with.
(Yes, it is blackmail - claiming that their business model was illegal and that they would be subject to international law sanctions if they don't do what Amnesty demands.)
The original Amnesty report targeted Tripadvisor, Booking.com and Expedia, besides Airbnb. Those other three companies politely told Amnesty that they provide travel information to everyone about everywhere, that they are transparent about where the attractions are and that they don't think they are doing anything illegal, which is a polite way of telling Amnesty that they were wasting their time.
As Booking.com told Amnesty (in the annex to their report):
Everything we do in terms of how we display information on Booking.com is focused on the customer and always in accordance with applicable law. Our geographic labeling of properties gives full transparency to customers about where an accommodation is located and we continuously update and optimise this information. By marking properties concerned as being in 'Israeli settlements' we provide transparency to anybody looking (or not looking) for accommodations in these territories.
In other words, don't try to tell or customer where they can or cannot go.
Only Airbnb caved to the Amnesty campaign - and now only Airbnb is subject to the hate mail and controversy.
Do the right thing to begin with and don't let others meddle with your business model. It seems obvious, and three out of the four companies targeted by Amnesty did exactly that. The fourth is paying a dear price for not following that rule.
Personally, I would like to see TripAdvisor threaten a lawsuit against Amnesty for modifying their logo to defame them:
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According to polling by The Jewish Chronicle, 85 percent of British Jews now think that Corbyn is anti-Semitic. And that was before this week’s bombshell: documents obtained by The Sunday Times showing that Labour failed to investigate hundreds of anti-Semitism complaints, and let hundreds more slide. The documents show not only that Labour’s procedures for investigating anti-Semitic incidents were—despite public assurances to the contrary—dismally subpar, but also that members of Corbyn’s office directly intervened in more than one in 10 investigations, despite having claimed that they were impartial.
A council candidate who said that Jewish members of Parliament were “Zionist infiltrators” was allowed to continue his campaign. Out of 863 alleged incidents detailed in the files, only 29 resulted in a party member being expelled; 145 resulted in a “formal warning”—which is largely meaningless—and 191 cases were resolved as requiring no action. The rest, the Times reports, are unresolved, including 249 that haven’t even been opened.
A Labour spokesperson said that the report “does not reflect the full details … and is not up to date,” a non-denial that did nothing to stem the bleeding. That evening, the Jewish Labour Movement—one of the party’s oldest affiliates, linked to Labour since 1903—passed a vote of no confidence in Corbyn.
A year earlier, in March 2018, the story broke that Corbyn had been a member of three secret Facebook groups in which virulent anti-Semitic memes were sometimes shared. Understandable, perhaps, in radical campaign circles. My enemy’s enemy is my friend, right? We’re protesting an occupation, not forming a government. There’s nothing anti-Semitic about deploring Israel Defense Forces violence in Gaza, but if Palestine is your cause, sometimes you’re going to meet people who really just hate Jews—just like if Israel is your cause, sometimes you’re going to meet people who really just hate Muslims.
In one of the groups, Corbyn wrote supportively to the artist of a mural in London. It wouldn’t have been so bad—just a throwaway comment—except the mural depicted anti-Semitic tropes so blatant you could see them from space, hook noses and all. Corbyn trying to apologize was an agonizing sight. “I sincerely regret that I did not look more closely at the image I was commenting on,” he said. “I am sincerely sorry for the pain which has been caused.” It was as if, in a lifetime of fighting for causes—framing the world as good versus evil—he never really learned how to say sorry.
You see? She’s just an all-loving, rage-filled, anti-Semitic victim of prejudice.
If you set aside the canned baby talk of her speeches and articles, her actions don’t reveal much in the way of understanding and compassion. Or was she “showing up with love” when she claimed that Americans who support Israel are guilty of “allegiance to a foreign country” and that pro-Israel American leaders are somehow being paid off to support the Jewish state, and that—lest we forget—“Israel has hypnotized the world, may Allah awaken the people and help them see the evil doings of Israel?” Are all these examples of what she sees as a “mission as humans to love one another”?
Whenever Omar gets called out for her anti-Semitism or anti-Americanism, she makes a steady retreat back to the faux-compassion and understanding, simultaneously vowing to “learn” from her actions and claiming innocent victimhood. It’s then that her liberal supporters seize on her sunny rhetoric and denounce all the criticism that’s come her way. That’s precisely what’s been happening since she was caught describing 9/11 as a null event.
The con artist will thrive as long her marks are willing to be conned. Which is to say, Ilhan Omar has a bright future in the Democratic Party.
Israel has always been a Rorschach test for the left, Susie Linfield argues in her new book about intellectuals' writings on the first decades of the Jewish home state. And she's right, if not quite in the way she may have intended the metaphor.
Yes, Israel is like a Rorschach test, in the sense that many people over the 70 years of the country's existence have seen in its abstract representation some strange specificity wrought by their own fervid imagination. But Israel is like a Rorschach test in another and more important way. Something disturbing is revealed when the symmetrical inkblots of a Rorschach test provoke descriptions of violence and hatred. And something just as disturbing is revealed when the image of Israel provokes ferocious anger and unrelenting hostility.
Which it does, for a large percentage of the left these days. In her introduction and conclusion, Linfield points out that Israel was created by people who were often socialists, and it enjoyed considerable support among leftists in the West into the 1960s. But somehow, these days, Israel faces a violent antipathy from the left. An important task for historians lies in exploring how that reversal came about.
Linfield, a journalism professor at NYU, is a self-proclaimed leftist worried about the ways in which anti-Zionism has led to a surge of anti-Semitism. And yet, despite her interest in the question of why the left has rejected Israel, she attempts something different in The Lions' Den. In essence, she attacks the premise. Examining the work of prior generations of prominent intellectuals and journalists, The Lions' Den suggests that Israel has always provoked strange notions in intellectuals.
The figures Linfield takes up are a gallery of prominent Jewish left-leaning thinkers from the 1940s on—especially in her chapters on Hannah Arendt, Arthur Koestler, Isaac Deutscher, Maxime Rodinson, I.F. Stone, and Noam Chomsky. She focuses as well on two further figures: Fred Halliday (the only gentile writer she takes up) and Albert Memmi (the Tunisian writer and only non-Westerner in the book). All of them were sometime Zionists, and all of them indulged anti-Zionism. By describing their intellectual journeys—and their intellectual peculiarities—Linfield hopes to illuminate the left's odd
relation to Israel.
Jewish leaders rightly call out the Labour party for failing to deal with the rampant antisemitism in its ranks. Yet they fail to hold the Muslim community similarly to account.
For sure, many Muslims are decent people. Indeed, a group called Muslims Against Antisemitism has taken out full-page newspaper adverts to show their solidarity with Jews. One of its organisers, Fiyaz Mughal, has said that “antisemitism from segments of Muslim communities needs to be challenged and robustly challenged.”
Jews, however, are not doing so. They regularly identify antisemitic threats from two sources, the left and the far right. But on the people from the Islamic world who pose the biggest such threat, they are all but silent.
Worse, some Jews are now even joining the manipulative campaign to camouflage Muslim antisemitism and extremism by claiming the biggest threat to the world is coming from the far right.
Certainly, there’s a growing threat from white supremacists. But this is vastly exceeded by the threat from the Islamic world.
Worse still, people on the left are now smearing all anti-Islamists by lumping them together with white supremacists under the labels of “far right”, “alt-right” and “Islamophobes”.
After the New Zealand mosques massacre a stupendously brave Muslim leader, Yahya Cholil Staquf, wrote: “It is factually incorrect and counter-productive to define Islamophobia as ‘rooted in racism’. In reality, it is the spread of Islamist extremism and terror that primarily contributes to the rise of Islamophobia throughout the non-Muslim world.”
Furthermore, the antisemitism of the left is being fuelled by the antisemitism of the Muslim world — which is in turn emboldened and incentivised by the refusal of the non-Muslim world to condemn it.
These are the vicious and lethal circles to which the silence of the Jewish community is making an unwitting contribution.
The singer Madonna has announced she’ll be singing at next month’s final of the Eurovision song contest in Tel Aviv before an estimated global audience of 180 million viewers. She intends to perform two songs, including a new one from her forthcoming album.
Cue all the too predictable outrage from those who demonize Israel. Jewish Voice for Peace launched a “Tell Madonna to Choose Freedom” campaign, claiming that “there’s no neutrality in situations of injustice,” and calling on the star to “stay home” and “lend your voice for freedom.”
Would that be the same Jewish Voice for Peace which blamed Israel and pro-Israel Jews for US police brutality against African Americans, thus sliding from its habitual vicious falsehoods about Israel into an antisemitic blood libel?
It would.
The Madonna furor is but the latest development in the campaign to boycott the Eurovision final. In Britain, cultural figures such as musicians Peter Gabriel and Roger Waters, actors Julie Christie and Miriam Margolyes, directors Ken Loach and Mike Leigh, and writer Caryl Churchill signed a letter calling on the BBC to push for the final to be moved to another country on the grounds of Israel’s “systematic violation of Palestinian human rights.”
Would that be the same as Caryl Churchill whose 2009 play, Seven Jewish Children, accused the Jews of inflicting upon others through the State of Israel the same kind of extermination that had been meted out to them, rooting this murderous trait in Judaism itself with lines such as this one: “Tell her I don’t care if the world hates us, tell her we’re better haters, tell her we’re chosen people”?
It would.
An open letter from the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel suggested Madonna’s appearance would be used by the Israeli government “to mask its deepening oppression of Palestinians.”
What oppression would that be? The corruption of the Hamas regime in Gaza causing shortages of food and essential supplies?
So the New Statesman decided to interview Sir Roger Scruton. Perhaps there are those who think that Scruton should not have agreed to be interviewed by the New Statesman, the left-wing magazine being unlikely to conduct a fair interview. But Scruton was the magazine’s wine columnist for many years, and under the editorship of Jason Cowley the magazine has been a slightly fairer and less battily leftwards publication than it was of old.
But today the magazine’s deputy editor, George Eaton, took to social media to announce the results of what he is parading as a ‘gotcha’ interview. The interview – which Eaton conducted himself – was, he promised, positively crammed full with ‘a series of outrageous remarks’. Eaton later posted a picture of himself drinking champagne to celebrate the fate of his interviewee, with the caption “The feeling when you get right-wing racist and homophobe Roger Scruton sacked as a Tory government adviser.” Eaton has since deleted the picture. Here it is.
So what are the ‘outrageous remarks’? It appeared that Scruton had said that Islamophobia is ‘a propaganda word invented by the Muslim Brotherhood in order to stop discussion of a major issue’. Which is true. He also said that ‘Anybody who doesn’t think that there’s a Soros empire in Hungary has not observed the facts.’ A fact which is also true. Obviously since the British Labour party became a party of anti-Semites it has become exceptionally important to pretend that anti-Semitism is equally prevalent on the political right in Britain and that to criticise any of the actions of George Soros is in fact simply to indulge in anti-Semitism equivalent to that rolling through the Labour party. A very useful play for the political left, but wholly untrue. Anyway, I say ‘it appears’ that Scruton said this because there seem to be a few journalistic problems here.
Though Eaton says that Scruton said the above I am not confident that this is so. For Eaton – who used to be the Statesman’s political editor – appears to have a somewhat Johann Hari-esque way with quotes. He claims, for instance, that what Scruton said about Soros was somehow a comment ‘on Hungarian Jews’. As though Scruton had attacked all Hungarian Jews, rather than one very influential and political man who happens to be a Hungarian Jew.
Aaron David Miller, a former negotiator during the Oslo process, tweeted this as a comment on the Israel elections:
Bottom line from Israel’s April 9 elections — a deeply divided country torn between a real desire for change and the realities of dysfunctional politics; a cruel region and a Prime Minister eager to play to and upon a nation’s fears rather than its hopes.
In 1993, Israel agreed to accept the PLO as a negotiating partner for peace. The PLO agree to give up terror and negotiate in exchange for no longer being designated as a terrorist organization.
Despite a rise in terror, by the end of 1995 Israel had removed its troops from the main Palestinian population areas in the West Bank, putting roughly 90% of Palestinians under the control of the PA, the PLO's successor organization.
In early 1996 Israel was struck by a wave of suicide bombings on buses, subsequently, Netanyahu was elected to his first term as PM.
After Netanyahu was voted out of office in 1999, his successor Barak met with Arafat in 2000 and offered the PA leader a peace deal. Arafat said no, and two months later started a bloody terror war.
In 2000 Israel withdrew all of its troops from Lebanon. The withdrawal was certified as complete by the UN.
Hezbollah built up its arsenal and terror infrastructure in southern Lebanon leading to a war in 2006 and remaining a significant threat on Israel's northern border.
Israel withdrew its troops and citizens from Gaza in 2005. Subsequently Hamas built up its arsenal and terror infrastructure leading to wars in late 2008, in 2012 and in 2014 and remaining a significant threat on Israel's southern border.
Palestinian leaders (Arafat in 2000 and Abbas in 2008 - at least) refused peace deals that would have ended the conflict.
Abbas refused to negotiate with Israel and pays terrorists, violating the principles accepted by Arafat.
In the first two cases (1996 and 2000) you were part of the team that shaped events. Now you're saying that Netanyahu plays to Israel's fears not hopes.
My God, Israel listened to you (and subsequently like-minded individuals) and paid a huge price for it. How dare you dismiss Israeli fears.
If Netanyahu resonates with the Israeli electorate, it isn't just that he understands it better than you do. It's also that Israelis see that they can't trust you and people like you to stand up for them when they do what you consider to be the right thing and suffer for it.
They see someone like you who demands that Israel makes peace for its own good and legitimacy, but pays little more than lip service to the idea that the Palestinians have any agency to make peace or moral responsibility to do it.
So please think long and hard before you mock the Israeli electorate for having fears.
It sometimes feels like there is an amnesia around what happened between Oslo and today, including the terrorism during the 1990s at the same time as the Oslo process.
The idea of Oslo and "two states" is so embedded in people's minds that they casually assume that Israelis who lived through the dark years that were direct consequences of the sunny predictions of peace are irrational, and those criticizing Israel without having the real fear of going on buses or to supermarkets are superior to the Israelis who know the pros and cons better than anyone.
It is worth reminding people that, today, Israel has less terror and the borders are quieter than perhaps at any time in its history. This is not because of the peace process - that only brought death. It is because of a priority placed on security.
Those so willing to bet Israeli lives on their personal attachment to a failed peace process are despicable.
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For some time, reports have circulated that the White House plans to unveil its proposal for a negotiated settlement between Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA) not long after the Israeli elections, meaning that its release might be imminent. Robert Satloff argues that the plan, developed under the direction of the president’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, should never see the light of day:
[The current] situation, in which Israel and the PA have strained political ties but effective security cooperation, has proved surprisingly resilient. Few love the status quo, but it is not so objectionable that either Netanyahu or Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas has walked away from it. It may not have brought a final peace deal, but it has sustained the PA as a reasonably well-functioning governing entity—by regional standards—and protected the West Bank from becoming a platform for rocket and terrorist attacks against Israel. . . .
That surprisingly sustainable house of cards may finally come crumbling down if Abbas rejects the Kushner plan, which he has already given every indication of doing. . . .
[Furthermore, Kushner] likely assumes that key Arab states—led by Saudi Arabia—are poised to bless his plan, giving it vital backing that will compel Abbas not to reject it out of hand. But there are two problems with this assumption. First, the Saudis are unlikely to offer even a tepid endorsement of the peace plan without similar backing from Israel’s Arab peace partners, Egypt and Jordan, . . . both [of which] have shown spine in recent years in resisting Saudi pressure to take steps they view as contrary to their national interests, and endorsing a plan that earns a Palestinian rejection would almost certainly be a bridge too far. . . .
Finally, in addition to triggering a negative spiral in U.S.-Israel, Israel-Palestinian, and U.S.-Saudi ties, moving forward with the Kushner plan would distract from the president’s signature achievement in the Middle East: the unexpectedly effective impact of the so-called maximum-pressure campaign on Iran. . . . The Trump administration should not give Iran and its local Islamist allies a political victory by issuing a Middle East peace plan that is likely to earn swift rejection by the Palestinians and strong criticism even from longtime U.S. allies.
Ending the Palestinian claim to a “right of return” is Israel’s other illusory benefit. Just recall the farcical 1990s non-change of the PLO charter to drop its call for Israel’s destruction to anticipate the hollow theatrics ahead.
Second, despite the Palestinians gaining real and irreversible benefits (money, territory, legitimacy), they with certainty will continue their century-old pattern of rejecting Israel through campaigns of delegitimization and violence, as has been the case since the first Palestinian-Israeli agreement in 1993. That’s because Shimon Peres’ discredited “New Middle East” idea — that enriching and rewarding Palestinians makes them peaceable — underlies the reported Trump plan. Long experience, however, shows that these benefits make them more inclined to eliminate the Jewish state. In brief, the PA will pocket “Palestine” and intensify its anti-Zionism.
Third, should Israelis complain to Trump about that delegitimization and violence, he will likely respond with annoyance: The Palestinian-Israeli conflict is now “off the table” and they should move on. Should they persist, his predictable rage will damage not just Israel but also the anti-Iran campaign and anti-Islamist efforts in general.
In short, the reported plan repeats the great miscalculation of traditional Palestinian-Israeli diplomacy by asking too little of Arabs and too much of Israelis. I predict that it will fail, just as did those of Clinton, George W. Bush, and Obama.
Therefore, Americans concerned about Israel, Iran, and Islamism need to prepare for the imminent unveiling of what could be a problematic plan. Yes, so far, Trump has been “the most pro-Israel president ever,” but as the Bible reminds us, “put not your trust in princes.”
Nine Jewish groups, including five associated with the Reform and Conservative movements, wrote to US President Donald Trump asking him to preserve the two-state solution in the face of a pledge by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to annex West Bank territory.
The letter is unusual, if not unprecedented, in mainstream Jewish groups pleading with a US president to take steps to restrain an Israeli prime minister.
“We believe that it will lead to greater conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, severely undermine, if not entirely eradicate, the successful security coordination between the State of Israel and the Palestinian Authority, and galvanize efforts such as the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement that are intended to isolate and delegitimize Israel,” said the letter released early Friday to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “It will create intense divisions in the United States and make unwavering support for Israel and its security far more difficult to maintain.”
The warning that annexing territory would “create intense divisions” in the United States was significant coming from the leadership of the two largest religious streams in the United States, with a combined membership that would constitute an overwhelming majority of synagogue-going Jewish Americans.
There is no occupation. The PA/PLO and Hamas are not interested in giving their people self-determination. The “two-state solution” is dead as a result of it. You don’t have any say in how Israelis dictate their own sovereignty. These are facts you and your party must face. https://t.co/qybUEcSIvB
Four Jewish Democrats in the US House of Representatives known for their ties to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee warned Israel not to annex West Bank territory, days after Benjamin Netanyahu’s election-eve pledge to do just that.
The statement by Reps. Eliot Engel, D-N.Y., Nita Lowey, D-N.Y., Ted Deutch, D-Fla. and Brad Schneider, D-Ill., did not name the Israeli prime minister, but alluded to his pledge on the eve of elections that he would extend Israeli law to all Jewish settlements in the West Bank, even those in remote areas, that would diminish the prospects of a contiguous Palestinian state. Netanyahu won the elections.
The statement signaled a warning from the party’s most pro-Israel wing that retreating from the two-state solution would be catastrophic for efforts to maintain close ties between Democrats and Israel. There is an emerging argument among Democrats on whether to become more sharply critical of Israel under Netanyahu.
“As strong, life-long supporters of Israel, a US-Israel relationship rooted in our shared values, and the two-state solution, we are greatly concerned by the possibility of Israel taking unilateral steps to annex the West Bank,” said the statement released early Friday.
Isn't it amazing how blessed social media is with so many experts in International Law?
This is especially true when it comes to Israel.
You can always find people who have never been there, show absolutely no knowledge of the land, its people or its history -- yet are perpetually prepared to offer their expert opinion on the knottiest issues.
On the other hand, you can also find people in the Middle East who believe themselves expert in matters of international law when it comes to countries far away, such as in the US.
Take Daoud Kuttab.
Kuttab, a Palestinian Arab, is a journalist and a former professor of journalism in Princeton.
So he knows a thing or two about journalism -- but not about international law.
During the August 9, 2001 Sbarro massacre, masterminded by Hamas terrorist Ahlam Tamimi and carried out by Izzadin al-Masri, 15 people were murdered, including 8 children and 130 were injured. Another victim remains in a coma. Three of the victims were Americans, including Malki Roth.
Tamimi was caught and her remorseless grin while exulting in retelling the story of her terrorist attack appears all over YouTube.
Tamimi was sentenced to 16 life terms.
And that should have been the end of her story.
However, Gilad Shalit was kidnapped on June 25, 2006, by Hamas terrorists who extorted Israel and refused to release Shalit (even refusing visits from the Red Cross) until Israel agreed to exchange over 1,000 Arab prisoners for Shalit's release on October 18, 2011.
Ahlam Tamimi was one of those prisoners.
Tamimi did not complete her sentence. Nor did she receive a pardon.
Ahlam Tamimi release was a conditional commutation. All those released were freed on the condition that in the future they do not engage in either terrorism or incitement of terrorism. In fact, dozens of the terrorists who were released under the Shalit ransom deal have since been sent back to prison to serve out the remainders of the terms over the past five years due to their violation of those conditions.
For her part, immediately upon her release, Tamimi began violating the terms of her commutation by inciting terrorism by giving interviews where she has rejoiced in her terrorist attack and its results, bragging that she would commit that massacre of children again if she could.
But since she lives in the welcome arms of Jordan, Tamimi is untouchable and out of the reach of justice.
At least until the US Department of Justice unsealed an indictment of Tamimi for her role in murdering US citizens. As per its 1995 extradition with Jordan, the US requested that Tamimi be handed over for trial.
Since then, Jordan -- which has treated Ahlam Tamimi like a celebrity, despite her deliberate murder of children -- has given a number of excuses for not complying with their treaty with the US.
One of those is Double Jeopardy, that because Ahlam Tamimi was tried and convicted in Israel, she cannot be tried by the US and therefore the extradition treaty does not apply.
No one shall be liable to be tried or punished again for an offence for which he has already been finally convicted or acquitted in accordance with the law and penal procedure of each country.
On the actual extent of this principle, we have the explanation of The United Nations Human Rights Committee, which is a UN body of 18 experts established by a human rights treaty -- the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
IX. Ne bis in idem ["Not twice in the same thing"]
Article 14, paragraph 7 of the Covenant [on Civil and Political Rights], providing that no one shall be liable to be tried or punished again for an offence of which they have already been finally convicted or acquitted in accordance with the law and penal procedure of each country, embodies the principle of ne bis in idem. This provision prohibits bringing a person, once convicted or acquitted of a certain offence, either before the same court again or before another tribunal again for the same offence.
...Furthermore, it does not guarantee ne bis in idem with respect to the national jurisdictions of two or more States.116 This understanding should not, however, undermine efforts by States to prevent retrial for the same criminal offence through international conventions. [emphases added]
According to this, it is clear that Double Jeopardy does not apply when:
o the accused is brought to trial before a different national jurisdiction or State, or o the accused is tried for a different offense
In Communications No. 692/1996, A.R.J. v. Australia, para. 6.4:
6.4 The author has claimed a violation of article 14, paragraph 7, because he considers that a retrial in Iran in the event of his deportation to that country would expose him to the risk of double jeopardy. The Committee recalls that article 14, paragraph 7, of the Covenant does not guarantee ne bis in idem with respect to the national jurisdictions of two or more states - this provision only prohibits double jeopardy with regard to an offence adjudicated in a given State See decision on case No. 204/1986 (A.P. v. Italy), declared inadmissible 2 November 1987, paragraphs 7.3 and 8.. Accordingly, this claim is inadmissible ratione materiae under article 3 of the Optional Protocol, as incompatible with the provisions of the Covenant.
In Communications No. 204/1986, A.P. v. Italy, para. 7.3:
7.3. With regard to the admissibility of the communication under article 3 of the Optional Protocol, the Committee has examined the State party's objection that the communication is incompatible with the provisions of the Covenant, since article 14, paragraph 7, of the Covenant, which the author invokes, does not guarantee non bis in idem with regard to the national jurisdictions of two or more States. The Committee observes that this provision prohibits double jeopardy only with regard to an offence adjudicated in a given State.
Clearly, Double Jeopardy is not an absolute and has exceptions when dealing with more than one state. Double Jeopardy then does not apply when the United States wants to try Ahlam Tamimi after she was already tried in Israel
Note that above the Human Rights Committee did say:
This understanding should not, however, undermine efforts by States to prevent retrial for the same criminal offence through international conventions
This does not contradict what has been said so far -- that sentence is talking about a case of "retrial for the same criminal offense." That is not the case here with the US extradition.
Interestingly, the DC Circuit Court that indicted Tamimi is the same one that handed down a ruling in 2017 rejecting the application of Double Jeopardy in the case of United States v. Trabelsi -- the case of Nizar Trabelsi, who fought extradition from Belgium back to the US to face charges after he had actually finished his prison term in Belgium. That court is well familiar with the principle of Double Jeopardy -- and when it does not apply.
Also, former federal prosecutor and Washington lawyer Nathan Lewin argues that just as Double Jeopardy does not apply when a fugitive flees, it should not apply in this case where Tamimi was let go because of extortion.
There is no issue of Double Jeopardy here in the extradition of the Hamas terrorist Ahlam Tamimi to the US.
The only thing that is really in jeopardy is justice.
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The New York Times featured a letter from a (Rabbi) Mordecai Schreiber, of Fort Lauderdale, Florida:
As an Israeli and an American, I am appalled by the re-election of an Israeli prime minister who blocks the road to peace with the Arab world, and by the current political culture in the United States, which has turned this country into George Orwell’s “Big Brother” nightmare in which lies are truth and war is peace. I used to be very proud of both countries. I no longer am.
Schreiber was born in Haifa and became a Reform rabbi at Hebrew Union College in 1965. He's written numerous books and articles.
And yet he seems somehow unaware of the amazing things Benjamin Netanyahu has done to bring Israel and the Arab world closer than they have ever been.
Before Netanyahu, the idea of multiple government ministers visiting the UAE or hearing Hatikva play in that country was fantasy.
The idea of a state visit by the Israeli prime minister to Oman was equally unthinkable.
Bahrain's foreign minister openly talks about establishing diplomatic relations with Israel.
Israel and Morocco trade keeps increasing, to $37 million in 2017 alone, while Israeli company Netafim opened up a subsidiary in Morocco.
Either Rabbi Schreiber is unaware of all of this happening under Netanyahu's tenure as prime minister - or his idea of what peace between Israel and the Arab world should look like is twisted.
Too many American Jews are brainwashed by the idea that the only road to peace between Israel and its neighbors is a Palestinian state. In fact, the facts prove the opposite - when Israel gives more and more concessions to Palestinians, the more they demand and inflame the Arab world to be on their side.
Similarly, when Israel acts like a strong, sovereign nation, the Arab world respects it and wants to partner with it. The much derided nationalism that causes such fear in certain quarters is regarded as a positive in the region Israel finds itself in.
It is hardly a coincidence that the worst terror spree in Israeli history happened immediately following Palestinian rejection of a peace plan - a peace plan that was pushed not by Donald Trump but by a popular Democratic, president to be as fair and realistic as possible. Clinton knows the reason the Palestinians don't have a state, and it isn't because of Israel.
People like Schreiber seem to believe that the intifada is proof not of Palestinian rejectionism but of Israel not giving them enough. This is a very sick mentality. And it is one that J-Street and US media continue to push today.
Does the J-Street type crowd really want peace? Their silence over Israel's and Netanyahu's incredible accomplishments with the Arab and Muslim world indicates that they are not the ones who seek peace at all. They are so wedded to the discredited idea that the only path to peace is through a dysfunctional and terror-worshiping Palestinian leadership that they willfully blind to Israel's repeated attempts at achieving peace.
Perhaps Rabbi Schreiber will realize one day that Israel isn't the obstacle to peace - its "peace partner" is.
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In February, Turkey's president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan assured a delegation of Arab Knesset members that Turkey will not “turn its back” on the Palestinian cause or people, adding that Ankara will share "all means available" for ending the occupation and establishing peace.
In March, Turkey's foreign minister said that defending the Palestinian cause is a top priority for Ankara. Hamas has praised Turkey, saying, "Along with a few other countries, Turkey has stood by the Palestinian people, despite the rush by a number of Arab states to normalize their relations with Israel."
Turkey might love "Palestine," but it seems to have a big problem with Palestinians.
And a young man is now dead as a result.
Mohammed Abu Shamla, originally from Gaza, fell from a balcony while trying to escape as police raided the hotel he was staying in with many other Palestinians in Didem last weekend. He died this morning.
According to witnesses, Turkish police raid the hotel practically daily, looking for Palestinians to arrest for being in the country illegally. Usually they look for Syrian refugees of Palestinian descent but they also arrest Gazans or anyone else Palestinian. On Saturday, the police fired tear gas into the hotel rooms, including rooms with women and children. (Tear gas can be fatal when used indoors.)
In Turkey, many Gazans have no option but to stay illegally beyond their tourist visa. They live a life of paranoia, trying to avoid security checkpoints in the streets, at which Arab-looking pedestrians are usually stopped and asked a single fateful question, to which the wrong answer might mean harassment, incarceration or deportation: "Are you Syrian?" Gazans are mostly let off the hook.
A Gazan friend was stopped and checked three times in one day, and the last time he was asked if he was Syrian, he sarcastically answered, "I wish if I had that honor." He was held for an hour in detention for his impertinence.
According to EuroMed Monitor, some 8000 Syrian Palestinians live illegally in Turkey, but many thousands more seem to have gone there from Gaza last year when Egypt opened the Rafah crossing.
The Turkish government, like much of the rest of the Muslim world, loves the Palestinian cause - but only as long as no one asks it to do anything for actual Palestinians. It claims to have the greatest sympathy for people in Gaza, but that is only as long as they remain in Gaza.
The Arab and Muslim world only love Palestinians when they can be used as cannon fodder against Israel. But treating them as human beings is not a priority - because Palestinians living happily outside Palestine are useless to advance the "cause."
We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.
Israel almost rewrote the lunar history books on Thursday evening as spacecraft Beresheet (Hebrew for Genesis) failed to land safely on the Moon.
Millions around the world tuned in live to watch the SpaceIL vessel, carrying an Israeli flag and a nano-Bible, descend to the Moon’s Mare Serenitatis (Sea of Serenity), but the State of Israel fell just short of becoming only the fourth member of a prestigious club of nations to complete the formidable task of landing a spacecraft on the lunar surface.
SpaceIL lost contact with the spacecraft only minutes before it was due to complete the historic landing – a feat previously achieved only by the United States, Russia (then the USSR) and China – after an epic seven-week, 6.5 million km. journey since Beresheet, an ambitious project developed by SpaceIL and Israel Aerospace Industries, blasted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida on board a SpaceX rocket on February 22.
For 48 days, Beresheet’s ground crew watched, monitored and executed every maneuver of the spacecraft from a control center at IAI’s Yehud headquarters. Once in position to descend, the landing maneuver – split into two phases of decreasing horizontal velocity and then vertical velocity – commenced but failed to land safely after contact was lost.
“If it at first you don’t succeed, you try and try again – and we’ll try again,” said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the control center.
“We reached the moon, but we wanted to land more safely. The attempt alone is a huge achievement. An Israeli satellite will one day land on the moon.”
Beresheet takes a selfie minutes before touching down on the moon .
XPRIZE to award $1 Million Moonshot Award to SpaceIL team for them to continue their work and pursue Beresheet 2.0. Space is hard!!! @xprize @TeamSpaceIL pic.twitter.com/J4Zo5eaYMT
Time magazine had a cover story on American Jews and Israel - in March, 1975.
Thus a number of questions hover in the air: Is American support for Israel weakening? What happens if U.S. interests and Israeli interests, which have always seemed to coincide in the past, should diverge? Has Jewish influence in the U.S. become an obstacle to U.S. foreign policy?
The issues that seem so pressing today seemed just as pressing 44 years ago, and somehow Israel is still around, its interests still coincide with those of the US, Jews are still supporting it - and people are still talking about how the Jews control US policy.
We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.
I don’t know how many times I’ve seen Judea and Samaria referred to as “occupied Palestinian territories,” and Jewish settlements there called “illegal under international law.” But the territories are not “Palestinian,” they are not “occupied,” Jewish communities there are not illegal, and Israel is not oppressing millions of Palestinians who also live there.
PM Netanyahu’s promise to extend Israeli sovereignty to the settlements – and not, by the way, “to annex the West Bank” as so many headlines have it – has re-ignited debate about these issues. But nothing’s changed. Here are some popular but false statements about Judea/Samaria and the Jewish communities that have been established there:
1. The “West Bank” is “Palestinian land” which Israel is occupying
Judea and Samaria, like the rest of Israel and Jordan, were part of the Ottoman Empire from the 16th Century until the end of WWI. After the war, the League of Nations agreed to set aside this portion of the former Ottoman territory to be held in trust by Britain to become a national home for the Jewish people. Britain gave the eastern portion to Abdullah bin Hussein as a reward for his help and that of his father, Sharif Hussein of Hejaz, in the war; this would ultimately become Jordan. The land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean, including what would become the State of Israel and Judea/Samaria and Gaza became the Mandate for Palestine.
The Arabs living in the Mandate were strongly opposed to Jewish sovereignty, and the British, from a combination of the desire to appease the Arabs to reduce their violence (which expressed itself against both Jews and the British rulers), the desire to keep “Palestine” under their control for strategic purposes, and sheer antisemitism, abandoned their responsibility to the Jewish people and tried to throttle Jewish immigration, while allowing Arabs from surrounding areas to enter.
In November 1947, the UN – which had assumed the obligations of the League of Nations – passed a resolution (UNGA 181) recommending the partition of the Mandate into a Jewish and Arab state. The Palestinian Jews were prepared to accept a truncated state (it would be the second truncation of the land originally set aside for the Jews), but the Palestinian Arabs and the Arab nations wanted all the territory to be under Arab sovereignty, and rejected the resolution.
It is important to note two things: first, the resolution, because it was passed by the General Assembly and not by the Security Council under Chapter VII of the UN Charter, was advisory, not mandatory. And second, because the recommendations were never implemented, they became moot.
The British, exhausted after WWII and tired of the attacks against their occupation forces by both Jews and Arabs, ended the Mandate in May, 1948, and went home. The Jews, who had used the Mandate period to build all the institutions required for a state – an army, an educational system, a labor federation, various state enterprises, and more – declared the State of Israel in the area assigned to them by the partition resolution. The Arabs, who could have done the same, did not do so. They redoubled their violent attacks on Jews. At the same time, the armies of five Arab nations invaded the area, intending to destroy the new state of Israel and take the land for themselves (and not to establish a state for the Palestinian Arabs!)
The war that followed ended with a cease-fire in 1949. The Arab nations would not agree to make a permanent peace or recognize the Jewish state, but they signed cease-fire agreements that demarcated the positions of their troops. These agreementsexplicitly stipulated that the cease-fire lines were not national borders. The areas of Judea/Samaria and Gaza were occupied by Jordan and Egypt respectively, and in 1950 Jordan formally annexed the territory it had occupied and named it the “West Bank.” This is the first time that name was used to refer to what had previously been called “Judea and Samaria.”
The Arab invasion clearly violated the UN Charter, being a “use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence” of the State of Israel, and therefore the annexation of Judea and Samaria was also illegal. Only Britain (and possibly Pakistan) recognized it. During the war and afterwards, Jordan regularly committed war crimes, violating the Geneva Conventions by ethnically cleansing the Jewish population from the territories they occupied, destroying Jewish synagogues and cemeteries, and not allowing access to Jewish and Christian holy sites during the entire 19-year occupation.
In 1967 the Arabs again planned to destroy Israel, and some Arab leaders even made genocidal statements. Although it is true that Israel fired the first shots, it is generally accepted that this was a case of legitimate military preemption of an imminent attack, and that Israel’s actions were justified self-defense. The war ended with Israel in possession of Judea and Samaria, as well as Gaza.
The argument is made that the UN charter forbids acquisition of territory by force. That is not correct. It says that
All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations. (Art. 2, Sec. 4)
But it also says that
Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security. … (Art. 51)
If Israel’s actions in 1967 were legal, what is the status of Judea and Samaria? Many people say that it is a “belligerent occupation.” If so, it would still be entirely legal, just as the allied occupation of Germany after WWII was legal. But if it is an occupation, whose territory is being occupied? Not Jordan’s, whose possession of it was illegal from the start!
The last entity in legitimate possession of Judea/Samaria was the British Mandate, which no longer exists. But the only national entity that could reasonably have been considered the inheritor of the Mandate’s boundaries is the State of Israel. Given also that the Mandate was intended for the purpose of establishing a national home for the Jewish people, and considering the well-documented claim of the Jewish people to be the aboriginal inhabitants of the land, it is reasonable to see the events of 1967 as the liberation of territory that was illegally occupied, and its return to the legitimate owner, Israel.
In 1988, King Hussein of Jordan relinquished his claim to Judea and Samaria, in favor of the PLO. But since Jordan had no legitimate rights to the territory to begin with, the gesture was meaningless.
It is true that the Palestinian Arabs wish to possess Judea and Samaria (not to mention Haifa and Tel Aviv), and there are numerous members of the UN that agree with them for religious, cultural, economic, and yes – antisemitic – reasons. But wishing will not make the 1949 armistice lines a border, and wishing will not make Palestinian Arabs the legitimate heirs of the British Mandate, nor – despite their creative approach to history – the aboriginal inhabitants of the Land of Israel.
2. Settlements are illegal under international law
This is a favorite of many news media and European governments, who feel a compulsion to add “which are illegal under international law” after any mention of Israeli settlements. But even if you accept (as I do not) that Israel’s possession of Judea and Samaria constitutes belligerent occupation, the usual argument that settlements constitute a violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention provision against population transfer into an occupied territory is very weak. This protocol was established after WWII with the intent of criminalizing actions such as Germany’s deportation of its Jewish residents to occupied Poland, and not to prohibit voluntary settlement on public lands (a more complete treatment of this subject is here). It should be noted that there have been additions made (e.g., the 1977 “Additional Protocol I”) to the Geneva convention specifically aimed at Israeli policy, but Israel and other nations, including the US, have not ratified them.
3. Israel is oppressing millions of Palestinians in Judea and Samaria
When Israel and the PLO signed the Oslo Accords in 1993-5, they agreed to divide Judea and Samaria into Areas A, B and C. Area A was under Palestinian security control and civil control, Area B (much smaller) under Palestinian civil control and Israeli security control, and Area C under full Israeli control. Area C contains all Jewish settlements. More than 95% of the Palestinian population lives in areas A and B, where they are governed by the Palestinian Authority (PA). While it is true that Israel’s security forces reserve the right to enter area A to arrest wanted terrorists, Palestinians have civil and political rights granted by the Palestinian Authority to vote and hold political office. There are Palestinian courts and Palestinian police, Palestinian ministries of health, finance, labor, etc. It’s hardly fair to blame Israel for the fact that the PA is corrupt and dictatorial, and hasn’t held an election for years.
Conclusion
PM Netanyahu’s decision to extend Israeli law to the settlements in Area C would not have any effect whatever on Palestinians living under the control of the Palestinian authority, and it does not change the status of the territories in which they are located. Israel will never abandon Judea and Samaria entirely, although it is possible that some part of them could become an autonomous Palestinian entity. But – for security, if for no other reason – Israel could never agree to a sovereign Arab state west of the Jordan, nor could it agree to the kind of massive withdrawal and dismantling of settlements that was envisioned in the Obama period. So the idea that “Netanyahu has killed the two-state solution” is silly. The two-state solution was never alive because of simple geostrategic facts.
Isn’t it nice that international law doesn't disagree?
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This blog may be a labor of love for me, but it takes a lot of effort, time and money. For over 19 years and 40,000 articles I have been providing accurate, original news that would have remained unnoticed. I've written hundreds of scoops and sometimes my reporting ends up making a real difference. I appreciate any donations you can give to keep this blog going.
Priceless! Antisemites Eating Their Own: Part One
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[image: Priceless! Antisemites Eating Their Own: Part One]
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Closing Jews Down Under Website
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Sunday, April 14, 2019
Elder of Ziyon
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