Monday, February 25, 2019
From Ian:
Amb. Alan Baker: The U.S. Green Party’s Crusade against Israel
Amb. Alan Baker: The U.S. Green Party’s Crusade against Israel
Anyone who peruses the website of the U.S. Green Party or any component of the global Green movement would naturally expect to read about the noble aims of a movement devoted to such values as ecological wisdom and environment protection. Such issues touch upon the very sustainability and integrity of our existence on the planet and should logically override partisan, political issues.Appeals Court reinstates suit against Sheldon Adelson and others over support for Israel
In a world that is plagued by environmental and ecological catastrophes and that faces continuing and ongoing moral and humanitarian crises such as willful bombing and wholesale killing of civilians, mass murders, mass expulsions, denial of basic social, cultural and religious rights and freedoms, assaults on immigrants and others, it is curious that the U.S. Green Party has chosen to concentrate most of its efforts on hounding Israel.
This is even more astounding because Israel is one of the only states that excels in the very values treasured by the Green movement - innovative ways to protect the environment, reduce pollution, purify wastewater, desalinate seawater, reforest, and protect natural resources.
It is all the more curious that the U.S. Green Party, as a matter of policy, considers itself sufficiently credible and authoritative as to advocate dismantling the State of Israel and replacing it with "the creation of one secular, democratic state for Palestinians and Israelis on the land between the Mediterranean Sea and the River Jordan."
On September 12, 2018, the U.S. Green Party wrote to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court on behalf of "the oppressed and besieged people of Palestine peacefully protesting on a weekly basis for their Right of Return," accusing Israel of committing crimes against humanity, including genocide.
The U.S. Green Party ignores the grave Palestinian violations of some of the most basic and important ecological and environmental principles that should surely constitute the backbone of any genuine Green party, including deliberate pollution of the air through the massive burning of tires, the deliberate arson of agricultural produce through the use of explosive kites and balloons, and the deliberate pollution of groundwater resources.
The U.S. Court of Appeals has just reinstated the lawsuit. Reuters reports:French Philosopher: Jews First Victims of Islamic Immigration
In a 3-0 decision on Tuesday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit said a federal district judge wrongly concluded in August 2017 that all of the plaintiffs’ claims raised political questions that could not be decided in American courts….
… in Tuesday’s decision, without ruling on the merits, Circuit Judge Karen LeCraft Henderson said the only political question concerned who had sovereignty over the Israeli-occupied territories.
She said courts could rule on whether the defendants conspired to expel non-Jews or committed war crimes “without touching the sovereignty question, if it concluded that Israeli settlers are committing genocide.”
Henderson said that presented a “purely legal issue” because genocide violated the law of nations, and could support the plaintiffs’ claim under the federal Alien Tort Statute.
Of note, the courts refers to the territories in question as “disputed territory,” rather than the popular “occupied territory.” Israel has a legal claim to the “West Bank” despite the propaganda otherwise:
1 The ownership of the territory, which comprises the WestBank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip, is at the heart of a decades-long dispute between the Israelis and the Palestinians. We refer to it as the “disputed territory.”
The court clearly is wrong on the issue of whether the complaint raises non-justiciable political questions. Everything in the case turns on the issue of whether Israel and Israeli settlers properly control the “disputed territory.” That is a political and foreign policy question.
Hopefully either the D.C. Circuit will hear the case en banc, or the Supreme Court will take the case.
French Jewish philosopher Alain Finkielkraut has claimed that the populist movement in Europe has largely been a reaction to demographic changes, blaming German Chancellor Angela Merkel.Yellow Vest leader: I would participate in an Anti-Zionist protest
Finkielkraut labelled Chancellor Merkel’s infamous “wir schaffen das!” (we can do it!) phrase during the height of the migrant crisis in 2015 as “nonsense”, saying, “You see it yourself: you can not do it. This mix of extreme moralism and economic interests was repugnant,” Die Welt reports.
“The Germans wanted to buy themselves free and finally become a morally impeccable people. But that happens at the expense of the Jews, who are the first victims, as more and more immigrants are let in,” he added.
The philosopher said he would support “responsible, if not extremely restrictive” immigration policies, explaining: “I am convinced that the integration of immigrants is becoming increasingly difficult. If immigration goes on, we will have more reverse phenomena, namely that the French adapt to the culture of Islam or convert more and more.”
Last Saturday Finkielkraut was the victim of anti-semitic abuse hurled at him by a Gilets Jaunes (Yellow Vest) protestor who was later revealed to be an Islamic extremist.
Commenting on the attack, Finkielkraut said: “We are now trying to convince ourselves that this is a reawakening of old nationalist and anti-Semitic combat calls such as ‘France belongs to us’, ‘France for the French’.”
“But the one who called that, the most aggressive of them all, is a Salafist,” he said, adding: “If someone says: France belongs to us, then that means: France is destined to become Islamic soil.”
Jerome Rodriguez, one of the prominent leaders of the yellow vests movement in France, who lost his eye from a rubber bullet fired by the police, told Maariv that his movement was not antisemitic. Nevertheless, he added, "Finkielkraut is someone who goes around letting everyone know what his views were." According to Rodriguez, he did not take part in a demonstration against antisemitism because he was "busy visiting his movement's checkpoints in various parts of the country." However, he added that if he had time, he would prefer to participate in a demonstration organized by an anti-Zionist organization that supports boycotting Israel".
