Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, December 24, 2009

Traveling open thread

Another nice thing about my trip is that I didn't have to be assaulted with Christmas music for the last two weeks!

I'll be traveling all day, so have at it.

UPDATE: I am putting a couple of posts in the queue as I fly.

Richard Falk shows his hypocrisy again

From YNet:

In Geneva, the UN Special Rapporteur for the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Richard Falk, urged Israel's European and North American allies to press for the immediate end of the blockade "backed up by a credible threat of economic sanctions."

Isn't that "collective punishment" against the entire population of Israel, something that Falk considers unacceptable in the extreme?

(Links to other examples of Falk's lies, hypocrisy, support for terror and purposeful twisting of international law can be seen here.)

Daily Goldstone 12/24

From the University of Pittsburgh Law School website:

The Goldstone Commission Report on the January 2009 Israel-Palestinian conflict in Gaza — which comes before the United Nations today, November 4, 2009 — has been accused of failure on various levels. Many commentators argue that the Report fails the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. Some say it reflects a failure to understand the deeper historical realities of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Still others say it fails the originally conceived purpose of the United Nations Human Rights Council and fails the search for objective truth. Its most glaring failure, though, has gone unnoticed. The Report fails the law.

It does so by striking out in applying the law in three key areas. Strike One: the Report incorrectly claims Israel disproportionately attacked civilians. Strike Two: the Report unjustly accuses Israel of a disproportionate response to Hamas's attacks. Strike Three: the Report treats Israel and Hamas disproportionately by holding them to different standards.

Strike One

Jus in bello is the law governing conduct during war. One of its key principles is proportionality, which requires military personnel to take precautions in targeting the enemy to ensure that the expected civilian losses are not excessive compared to the anticipated military advantage. The commander's perspective at the time of the attack is the central focus. The law assesses whether his actions were reasonable given the information he had access to, taking into account the "fog of war." Proportionality is not measured after the fact by looking at actual civilian casualties or actual military advantages. If it were, no military could ever engage in any operations.

The Report turns proportionality's bedrock premise on its head. It relies substantively on information gathered after the fact and discounts contemporaneous Israeli intentions or actions and the surrounding circumstances. The Report also undermines its own legitimacy by automatically verifying one side's statements and impugning the other's. Israel's real-time information consists of mere "allegations," but retrospective information collected months later in Gaza consists of definitive "statements." Israel admittedly did not cooperate (given the commission's biased conception), but that cannot justify reliance on the wrong information.

Strike Two

Jus ad bellum is the law governing decisions to go to war. Article 2(4) of the U.N. Charter forbids the use of force without Security Council enforcement (Article 2(7)). One exception: Article 51 preserves the right to use force in self-defense. Jus ad bellum mandates that any act in self-defense constitute a proportionate response, meaning a necessary and reasonable means to counter the attack and eliminate future threats.

The Report confuses jus in bello proportionality (as explained above) with this jus ad bellum requirement of a proportionate response. Israel acted legitimately in self-defense to destroy Hamas's tunnels and rocket launchers. Hamas indiscriminately fired thousands of rockets at Israeli civilians for eight years. And yet, the Report does not even mention Article 51. More egregiously, it uses the incorrect assessment that particular Israeli attacks violated jus in bello proportionality to unfairly package Operation Cast Lead as disproportionate overall, a clear misapplication of jus in bello principles in a jus ad bellum framework.

Strike Three

The Report's (unfounded) legal conclusions disproportionately hold Israel and Hamas to different standards. It states unequivocally (but without factual substantiation) that Israeli forces committed grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions, such as willful killing and torture.

Article 85 of Additional Protocol I states that "making the civilian population or individual civilians the object of attack" and launching indiscriminate attacks—the very crimes Hamas committed, according to the Report—are indeed grave breaches. But the Report never considers that Palestinian armed groups committed grave breaches. Accusing Israel of "grave breaches" while failing to similarly identify Hamas' violations exposes the commission's bias to the core.

This uneven treatment pervades the entire report. For example, Hamas and Israel both had obligations to protect civilians in Gaza. The Report's single-minded focus on Israel, however, leads to absurd statements regarding Hamas's breach of those obligations when it used civilian buildings as command centers, munitions storage and rocket launch sites. While quick to condemn Israel flat out for violations, the Report merely suggests that Hamas's actions "would constitute" legal violations.

Reading the Report in an uncritical vacuum suggests that Israel abrogated its obligations under the laws of war. In reality, the main failure lies in the Report itself. The Report fails the law. Why does this matter? Because in maintaining a delicate balance between destruction of enemy capabilities and protection of innocent civilians, the law reinforces our basic dignity and humanity in the face of the horrors of war. We cannot afford to abandon it.

Laurie R. Blank is the Acting Director of Emory Law's International Humanitarian Law Clinic. Gregory S. Gordon is an assistant professor at the University of North Dakota School of Law and Director of the UND Center for Human Rights and Genocide Studies.

Work accident!

Another brave Hamas freedom fighter has missed his chance at getting his virgins because he blew himself up without managing to kill any Jews.

He was killed while on a "jihad mission" in the Sabra neighborhood of Gaza City.

The fact that Hamas is doing "jihad missions" in crowded residential neighborhoods does not seem to be much of an issue.

A day with the IDF

Today, I attended the IDF Northern Command Familiarization Day, a brand new initiative by the IDF to reach out to bloggers.

The two main events were IDF briefings at strategic mountaintops, one overlooking the entire Syrian border and the other one practically surrounded by Lebanon.

Although the information given was not "inside information," it was a good first step. It was interesting to see in person border villages that are very possibly Hezbollah strongholds: lots of typical looking houses, but very few people, no children and lots of trucks going in and out.

We learned about the village of Rajar, which is split in half along the border. The IDF does not want to put up a fence so a strange situation is set up where the residents of Rajar can sort of travel between Lebanon and Israel, the southern residents have residency rights (and jobs) in Israel, and where the border goes literally through some houses. Most interesting was the information that Hezbollah intimidates all the residents of the villages in the area, much like the mafia, and watches what they say to the media.

The bloggers on the trip were a great bunch of people. They included the bloggers for Israel Matzav, The Augean Stables, Honest Reporting, CAMERA (Israel), Jewlicious and Contentions (Commentary.) Many of them know a lot of people and had a very long and candid discussion about the various famous reporters and others whom they know personally. I, on the other hand, don't know anyone, so I pretty much just listened.

Altogether, it was a fun day, and it only makes me want to visit more often!

Abbas for new intifada in Arabic, against it in English

Mahmoud Abbas had an interview in yesterday's Wall Street Journal where he said, among other things:

I will not allow a new intifada. As long as I'm in office, I will not allow anybody to start a new intifada. Never never.

Yet just last month, in Arabic, the Fatah Central Committee that he leads called for a third intifada, and there were reports that Abbas himself called for a third intifada (without arms but with stones.) The original link to Palestine Today is gone but I found reference to it from a pro-Palestinian Arab op-ed here, where the author admits that stone-throwing is a typical feature of the Nil'in and Bilin protests that Abbas is supporting. This is a far cry from "Never never."

Abbas has learned well from Arafat to say things differently in Arabic and English.

Carter's grandson running for office; benefits from "apology"

As we mentioned yesterday, Jimmy Carter made a non-apology to Jews in the form of "sorry if some of you overly sensitive Jews were upset with my completely correct venomous anti-Israel and borderline anti-semitic actions over the past couple of decades."

It turns out that this fake apology, for some reason warmly welcomed by Abraham Foxman, didn't come completely out of nowhere. Carter's grandson is running for office and he is going to need to get some Jewish votes.

Jimmy Carter is asking the Jewish community for forgiveness -- and insists it’s not simply because his grandson has decided to launch a political career with a run for the Georgia state Senate.
Jason Carter, 34, an Atlanta-area lawyer, is considering a run to fill a seat covering suburban DeKalb County should the incumbent, David Adelman, win confirmation as President Obama's designated ambassador to Singapore.

The seat, which is university heavy -- Emory, among others, is situated there -- also has a substantial Jewish community.

The senior Carter outraged Jewish leaders with his book “Palestine: Peace not Apartheid,” and they strongly criticized the former U.S. president for what appeared to be his likening of Israel's settlement practices to apartheid and seeming to place the brunt of the blame for a lack of peace on Israel.

On the subsequent book tour, Carter further enraged many Jews by intimating that the pro-Israel lobby inhibited an evenhanded U.S. policy.

Such bad blood could potentially translate into problems for Carter’s grandson as he considers launching a political career.

But in an interview with JTA, Carter insisted that ethnic electoral considerations were not reason enough to reach out to the Jewish community, although he did not outright deny that it was a factor.

"Jason has a district, the number of Jewish voters in it is only 2 percent," he said, chuckling.

I wonder if Carter knows the Jewish proportion of every district in Georgia?
(h/t Samson)

Moonbats over Gaza

The Daily News Egypt reports:

The Gaza Freedom March will move forward with plans to march into Gaza on Dec. 31 despite having its request rejected by Egypt’s foreign ministry Monday.
“Our efforts and plans will not be altered at this point,” Ann Wright of the Gaza Freedom March Steering Committee said in a statement.
“We have set out to break the siege of Gaza and to march in Gaza on Dec. 31 against the international blockade. We are continuing the journey,” she added.
Cairo on Monday rejected a request by international activists to organize a march to the Gaza Strip via Egypt to mark one year since an Israeli attack on the enclave.
“Some international organizations have requested permission for a solidarity march — the Gaza Freedom March — into the Gaza Strip,” the Egyptian foreign ministry said in a statement.
“Egypt finds it difficult to cooperate with this march considering the sensitive situation in the Gaza Strip,” which faces a stringent Israeli blockade, the statement said. [The statement apparently didn't say anything about an Israeli blockade - EoZ.]
It warned that “any attempts to violate the law or public order by any group whether local or foreign on Egyptian soil will be dealt with in conformity with the law.”
According to Wright, Egypt’s foreign ministry said that the Rafah border will be closed well into January, citing escalating tensions.

So who is behind this march? It is Code Pink, and their description of the march clearly shows their bias against Israel:

Our purpose in this March is lifting the siege on Gaza. We demand that Israel end the blockade. We also call upon Egypt to open Gaza’s Rafah border. Palestinians must have freedom to travel for study, work, and much-needed medical treatment and to receive visitors from abroad.

So they are marching from Egypt towards Rafah where Egypt has closed the border to Gaza to protest - Israel. Parenthetically, while they demand Israel ends the blockade, Egypt is only requested to open the border...which also happens to be the other way into Gaza, and which is being explicitly closed to the protesters.

When two countries both decide to guard their borders with Hamastan, why does only one get singled out?

That's a toughie.

News briefs

Jimmy Carter "apologized" to American Jews for saying things that may have stigmatized Israel. He even used the words "Al Het" that are used by Jews on Yom Kippur. Of course, he didn't apologize for any of his positions, so this is one of those situations of a non-apology in the form of "sorry if you were offended by my brilliance."

British director Ken Loach withdrew a film of his from an Australian film festival because it was partially funded by those dreaded "Zionists." Iran therefore scooped him up and is proudly screening his latest comedy at the Fajr film festival.

Hamas strongly condemned the wall that Egypt is building on the Gaza border. I guess smuggling weapons is a human right.

A small religious group in Gaza found that its assembly room or building was blown up by unidentified gunmen.

What I've been doing

I've been too busy to blog, too busy to reply to emails (and even to read them all,) too busy to read many of the comments and, most of the time, too busy to sleep.

But one of the benefits of this trip to Israel is the opportunity to meet some fellow bloggers. In a sense, this has been my "coming out" party as until a few weeks ago I was almost completely anonymous to the vast majority of bloggers. Since then, off the top of my head I have met and spoken with Richard Landes of The Augean Stables, Carl from Israel Matzav, Noah Pollak from Commentary, Aussie Dave from Israellycool, Yisrael and Batya Medad from My Right Word and Shiloh Musings, Emet m'Tsiyon's blogger, Barry Rubin of the Gloria Center, and Yosef Hartuv of the Love of the Land blog.

Yosef Hartuv lives in Hebron and I visited him there today. While there, he introduced me to some of the leaders of Hebron/Chevron including David Wilder and Miriam Levinger, very outspoken wife of one of the founders of the revived Chevron Jewish community. (Her opinions are a bit more extreme than mine, and arguing with her is useless.) Yosef's effusive compliments about me to the people he introduced me to were embarrassing.

My taxi driver Avinoam also happens to know many other well-known Israeli right-wingers, often considered extremists by many. It was almost surreal as, while I was discussing the blog with him, he asked me "Do you want to interview Geulah Cohen? Here, I'll call her up for you!" (She is recovering from spinal surgery and couldn't be interviewed but was very gracious on the phone.) I also managed to have a brief conversation with Nadia Matar, leader of the Women in Green group, from Avinoam's cell phone. Both women are very polite, very strong and much hated by many.

On Wednesday, I will have a rare treat of attending a high-level IDF briefing for bloggers. That should be a blast. (And it is totally coincidental to my being here; I didn't know about it until after I already arrived.)

Add in the usual touristy stuff and other things, and I am simply zonked.

Dhimmi Carter blames America, again

In Jimmy Carter's latest article in the Guardian, he writes:

US objections have impeded Egyptian efforts to resolve differences between Hamas and Fatah that could lead to 2010 elections. With this stalemate, PLO leaders have decided that President Mahmoud Abbas will continue in power until elections can be held – a decision condemned by many Palestinians.

Abbas blames Iran for the breakdown in the negotiations - but Carter blames the US.

Just whose side is he on?

Egyptian astrologer predicts Israel's demise

Palestinian Press Agency reports that Dr. Syed Mohammad Ali has come out with his predictions for the coming year, based on his expertise in stargazing.

He says that Israel will be destroyed within ten years. He also predicts natural disasters will help the Taliban defeat American forces in Afghanistan and Pakistan. And Egypt will discover oil.

I am not sure exactly in which field he received his Ph.D., but he is enough of a recognized expert to have his views published in major Arabic media, so he must be really good.

"Palestinians spend $500m on settlement goods"

From Ma'an:

Palestinians spend about a half billion US dollars every year buying products made in Israeli settlements, Palestinian Minister of Economy Hassan Abu Libdeh on Sunday.

Abu Libdeh, speaking during a meeting at the Chamber of Commerce in Nablus in the northern West Bank, was explaining the Palestinian Authority’s (PA) decision to crack down on the sale of settlement products.

He told investors, business figures, and local officials that his ministry decided that 2010 would be the last year settlement products would be allowed the Palestinian market.

But, despite some reservations, the PA will continue to abide by the Paris Protocol, the 1994 agreement that dictates that there are no economic barriers between it and Israel.

This number seems very high. According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, in 2007 the PA imported some $2.3 billion of goods from Israel altogether. It seems unlikely that over 20% of their goods imported from Israel originate in the territories.

It would also mean that every man, woman and child "settler" is generating over $1000 a year of product for export to the PA.

Even if the numbers are exaggerated, it shows that the Arabs are economically connected to their Jewish neighbors, and if the PA would try to replace hundreds of millions of dollars worth of imports with domestic goods or imports from Arab countries in a single year, they are setting themselves up for spectacular failure. People will not tolerate inferior goods, and such a ban will simply increase the black market, hurting the PA economy more than it helps it.

This doesn't even account for the impact that would occur if the Jewish communities in the territories would reciprocate on this boycott and stop buying all Arab goods and services.

It just proves that the disconnect between the Palestinian Arab leaders and their people is as large as it ever was. On an individual level, I am discovering, there is a lot more interaction - and respect - between Arabs and Jews in the territories than people realize (although not nearly as much as before the intifada.)

Miss Palestine pageant canceled, Israel blamed

As we have mentioned before, there has been some controversy in the Palestinian Arab territories about the planned Miss Palestine competition, which was scheduled to be held on December 26th. Many religious Muslims were

It appears that the pressure has worked, and the competition has been "postponed."

And even though the date for the competition has been known for at least two weeks, the reason being given is that it is being postponed out of respect for the first anniversary of Operation Cast Lead.

Yet another casualty of Israeli aggression.

Nighttime Kotel Photo Lesson

I visited the Old City tonight, with both a video camera (Canon Vixia HG20) and a point-and-shoot camera (Nikon Coolpix S210.) The Nikon has a much higher resolution, and I have taken many good pictures with it, but I had a feeling that for night shots the still mode on the video camera would give me higher quality shots, because it has a much larger lens and can gather more light.

So I took a picture of the Kotel from the same angle, using the default settings on both cameras.

Nikon Coolpix:

Canon Vixia:

Besides learning that I need to clean the lenses, the differences in quality are huge, and apparent even without enlarging the images to their full sizes. The small point-and-shoot just cannot handle low-light situations well. (Click on them to see that the Canon does well even at full resolution, while the Nikon is badly fuzzy at its higher resolution.)

For night-time photography, check out your camcorder - you might be pleasantly surprised.

Here's the Kotel from another angle on the Canon: