Sunday, August 27, 2023
From Ian:
The EU Usurps Power from Democracies and Bestows It Upon Itself
The EU Usurps Power from Democracies and Bestows It Upon Itself
This is Part 5 of a 10-part series exposing the underreported joint European and Palestinian program to bypass international law and establish a de facto Palestinian state on Israeli land.Jake Wallis Simons: Israelophobia is the one hatred that polite society embraces
While the European Union Parliament is generally considered a great seat of power, in fact, as a member, James Carver did not have the ability to initiate legislation.
He explains that it is actually the purview of the EU Commission to initiate laws, which only then go before Parliament, where they are chewed over by the different political groups until a consensus is reached.
Unlike parliamentarians, who are elected by individual states, the commissioners are appointed. As such, their loyalty lies with the EU over its member states.
An ideologically driven entity that arrogantly revels in the belief that it has the moral right to usurp power from democracies and bestow it upon itself, passing legislation that overrides national laws, the EU has swallowed the Palestinian narrative hook, line and sinker.
And, according to Carver, the Palestinian lobby is more successful than it is given credit for. Noisy and well-organized, its members are vociferous compared to the far calmer and more reflective Israeli advocates.
Attempted legal action against the EU on the basis of its undermining of the Oslo Accords is met with the claim that its funding for the Palestinian Authority merely amounts to “humanitarian aid” and that the EU has full “diplomatic immunity.”
But Carver argues that this defense is invalid because the Vienna Convention stipulates that diplomats may only be granted immunity if they do not interfere in the internal affairs of the state, which the EU is actively doing by seizing land that is universally recognized as being under Israeli jurisdiction. By hiding behind its credentials, the EU is also disregarding the principle of non-intervention, a foundational element of the UN charter.
The Europeans appear to want it both ways, on the one hand paying lip service to the Oslo Accords to criticize Israel, while on the other hand actively helping the PA ignore the terms of Oslo.
The discord between behavior and proclaimed intention renders any commitment to peace groundless. And the irony of the Europeans peddling ad nauseam condemnation of Israel for its expropriation of Palestinian land when they themselves are helping the Palestinians expropriate land is lost on the public at large.
What’s with Israelophobia? From one point of view, the Jewish state shouldn’t matter very much. Accounting for just a quarter of 1 per cent of the Middle East, its area is the size of Wales, with a population the size of London.Kylie Moore-Gilbert: Iran Will Keep Taking Hostages If the Money Keeps Flowing
Despite all the controversies, it is the only liberal democracy in the region. It’s not particularly violent; in its 75-year history, its conflicts with the Arab world have claimed 86,000 lives. The 2003 Iraq invasion killed 600,000 people in three years.
It is not a bad place to live. Its health system is excellent, its economy thriving. It is ranked above Britain and the United States for freedom of expression and, according to the UN, is the fourth happiest country in the world, behind only Finland, Denmark and Iceland.
Yet there is not one Israel but two. As the American novelist Saul Bellow observed, the Israel of facts is “territorially insignificant”. The second, however, is “as broad as all history and perhaps as deep as sleep”. This is where the fever-dream of Israelophobia takes hold.
However secular Western society becomes, it remains steeped in Christianity. The Bible elevated the Jewish land to the Holy Land, the Jewish city to the Holy City and a Jewish prophet to the Son of God; yet the Chosen People were blamed for killing Christ. This fetishisation and demonisation of Jews lies at the very foundation of our civilisation.
In the Middle Ages, Jews were accused of murdering Christian children to drink their blood; last month, a BBC presenter was forced to apologise after remarking that Israel was “happy to kill children”. As the novelist Howard Jacobson put it, Israelophobia is “the old hatred decanted into new bottles”.
Like the anti-Semitism of previous centuries, the bigotry is based on conspiracy theories and falsehoods. Israel is accused of pulling the strings of politicians, finance and the media.
The country is labelled “white supremacist”, despite being at least 60 per cent non-white. It is blamed for “genocide”, even though the Palestinian population has grown five-fold since its birth. There are no concentration camps or execution pits in the Jewish state.
It is accused of “apartheid” when its national football team contains more Arabs than Jews. Although it is the Middle East’s only democracy – the only country in the region to protect the rights of women and minorities – it is routinely compared to the Nazis.
Six billion dollars is an awfully large amount of money. It could cover a hell of a lot of arms shipped to Hezbollah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and Ansarullah. It could cover the salaries of thousands of Basij and IRGC militiamen, with additional bonuses for torturing, raping, and beating protesters. And it could keep the children of regime officials in overseas property and luxury goods for many lifetimes.
Cash-for-hostages deals encourage regimes like Iran’s to view innocent human lives as commodities that can be bought and traded for profit. Over the decades, the Islamic Republic has refined its hostage-taking business model into an extortion racket that is one of its most powerful foreign-policy levers. As long as countries like the United States are willing to acquiesce to its insatiable demands for ever-increasing sums of ransom, we can expect Iran to commodify a seemingly endless supply of hostages.
International cooperation is clearly necessary if Iran’s behaviour is to be curtailed in any systematic way. The Islamic Republic now targets the citizens of a wide array of Western nations; our governments should be on the same page as to how to respond when a citizen is taken, so that the approach of one country does not inadvertently undermine another’s. But even in the absence of such a multilateral accord, the United States can adopt a much stronger response than it has done.
Financial payments, regardless of where the funds come from, provide an incentive for hostage-taking, and as such they are fundamentally at odds with the U.S. government’s responsibility to ensure the security of its citizens. They are also a slap in the face to the brave people of Iran, many of whom are in the streets, risking their life to denounce the regime in the name of freedom, democracy, and gender equality—values that America professes to hold dear. The U.S. government should be no less steadfast in refusing to pay state-backed hostage-takers like the IRGC (a proscribed terrorist organisation) than it is when the Islamic State (also a proscribed terrorist organisation) or another non-state actor captures an American.
The U.S. government needs to understand that Iran’s regime views conciliatory measures, such as declining to enforce sanctions, not as friendly gestures to smooth the path to negotiation, but as signals of weakness. Instead the United States should come up with a firm, punitive response to any further Iranian hostage-taking and announce this policy publicly, leaving the Islamic Republic no doubt as to America’s determination to follow through. Punishing and wide-ranging sanctions should be on the table, as should a crackdown on assets and visas for the family members of top regime officials, many thousands of whom live or study in the West. Such an approach could be modeled on the successful campaign targeting Russia’s oligarchs that followed the invasion of Ukraine. The United States should also press allied countries to follow its lead in listing the IRGC as a terrorist organisation.
