Silence and condemnation

Greenwich Street, New York, NY 10007.

More specifically, 250 Greenwich Street.

It’s where the World Trade Center used to stand.

The street is going to be renamed.

Its new name: Osama bin Laden Plaza.

You may not have heard about this. No international protests. No public demonstrations about the unsuitability of naming the site after a terrorist and mass-murderer of civilians. No debates in the UN Security Council. No hasty meetings convened between the US and EU to discuss the aggressive tone of this deliberate insult, no inter-governmental agreements on how best to punish the decision-makers behind this tasteless, counterproductive measure. No UN comment on how this unnecessarily subverts attempts to bridge cultural, political and religious divides.

The reason for the silence?

Perhaps it’s because the US prizes consistency. After all, the US signally refused to comment on – let alone condemn – the Palestinian Authority for naming the public square outside Ramallah town hall in honour of terrorist and mass-murderer Dalal Mughrabi, who a number of years ago killed 38 Jewish civilians in Israel, including 13 children. The dedication of the town square was scheduled to coincide with US Vice-President Joe Biden’s visit to the region.

Before we go any further, let me clarify that there are no plans to rename the Twin Towers site. It was merely a ruse to make a point. But that point, however, is still frighteníngly valid. Why the US silence on dedicating a town square to a terrorist and mass-murderer? The US is, after all, bankrolling the Palestinian Authority and even arming and training its fighters. Does the US administration really feel so comfortable with this decision by its protégé?

Not only was it not Joe Biden’s policy to comment on the decision, he did not actually have time to comment on it – he was too busy “condemning” Israel for wanting to build apartments for Jews in a part of Jerusalem that even the Palestinian Arabs recognize will always remain part of Israel, whatever the shape and details of a possible future final-status peace agreement.

Interestingly, neither Joe Biden nor Barack Hussein Obama nor Hillary Clinton has ever spoken out against the unsuitability of China building apartments for ethnic Chinese in Tibet, after first transferring one million Tibetans out of their ancestral home and carting them off to China, with one million ethnic Chinese taking their place in Tibet.

So perhaps it has nothing to do with consistency, after all.

Perhaps it’s simply a question of Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton - as well as Israel's Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu - being held to ransom by a pathetically immature US president.

(With thanks to Yaakov Kirschen, Israel, who regularly publishes exquisite social and political commentary in cartoon form in the Dry Bones Blog: http://drybonesblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/family-relationship.html)


A president who is tough on his nation’s colleagues and allies, but soft on his nation’s enemies. A president who sets greater store by personal prestige than by strategic sensibilities. A president who has keener affiliations with the Muslim world than with the Western world.

Incomprehensively, Obama keeps trying to force Israel to pay the price for Palestinian Arab intransigence. "Intransigence"? Yup. This week the Palestinian Arabs - both the extremist Islamist Hamas and the extremist secular PA - joined forces to launch a violent yet comically named "Day of Rage" (read also here) to protest Israel's rebuilding of the Hurva Synagogue in Jerusalem. This is the synagogue that the Palestinian Arabs destroyed in 1948. Absorb it: the Palestinian Arabs are protesting the rebuilding of a Jewish religious site that they destroyed, and claim that by doing so they are protecting the freedom of their own religious sites. So much for adherents of what is constantly being touted as the "religion of peace". Read here an unguardedly honest view of one Muslim cleric on the implications of his own religion. (Hat tip to blogger Loganswarning).

No comment from Obama, Biden or Clinton on this either. They seem to have an innate inability to comment on any negative steps taken by Muslim regimes or on any expressions of Muslim extremism as stemming from ... well ... Islam.



Of course, perhaps the US administration is simply far too busy cowering in the face of the increasingly strident position being taken by Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, Syria and Turkey.

See a common denominator?


For expert analysis from a broad range of perspectives, read the following:
Naomi Ragen
Barry Rubin
Yossi Klein Halevy
Noah Pollak
David Frum
Michael Fenenbock
Washington Post

Is Barack Hussein Obama the only politician to focus unfairly on the Jewish people and on Israel?
Here's what's going on in Sweden: Read Rosie DiManno in The Star.

From this blog:
Swedish Prime Minister Candidate Sacrifices Swedish Jews' Security for Muslim Votes by guest writer Peter Rubinstein
Turkey's Erdogan and Sweden's Reepalu: Twin Souls

This Palestinian issue is a complex one

The Palestinian Arabs of the West Bank want to create a second Palestinian Arab state alongside the first Palestinian Arab state of Jordan.

Fair enough.

They want to create their second Palestinian Arab state in the millennia-old Jewish provinces of Judea and Samaria.

Fair enough.

In the civilized world, people who want something that isn’t theirs enter into a process of negotiation. There are prices to be agreed, contracts to be signed, guarantees to be provided and money to be paid.

Except when it comes to the Palestinian Arabs. They have indeed been living in Judea and Samaria for a number of generations. They immigrated there from all over the Arab world in the wake of the Jews’ success in rebuilding the Jewish nation. The Jews revitalized the region, elevating it from a malaria-ridden hell-hole as part of the Ottoman Empire to a flourishing modern centre of agriculture, industry, trade and commerce.

None of this alters the fact that, following their mass immigration to Mandate Palestine looking for jobs created by the Jews, the Palestinian Arabs are here today, and they are here to stay.

It is their right to stay.

What remains is to negotiate the terms, the price to be paid by the Palestinian Arabs who want to take over ownership of the Jewish provinces of Judea and Samaria, with appropriate border adjustments as necessary.

What is not negotiable is that the Palestinian Arabs really DO have to pay a price. Acquisition without payment is called theft. That payment is exactly what the Palestinian Arabs are trying to avoid. And they are very insistent.

They insist on their right to commit terrorism against Jews.

They insist on their right to indoctrinate children and adults in anti-Semitism, including in the state media and via their mosques.

They insist on their “right to return” to Israel as part of a wider regional settlement that will give them something they never had – a second country of their own, Palestine.

Read it again: the Palestinian Arabs want a country of their own, and insist that the key to their independence is some God-given (and UN-sanctioned) right to settle in another sovereign country, namely Israel. The equivalent would be for Albanians to claim the right of independence by demanding the right – sanctioned by the UN – to settle in Canada.

It is an absurdity that would never be entertained.

Here, however, the demands are being made by Palestinian Arabs, so what would be regarded as sublime comedy in any other context is treated with the utmost seriousness by people with impressive titles and even more impressive salaries – paid for by the UN. That’s that portion of your income that is taken from you every single month and sent to the UN in pursuit of reasoned, logical, well thought-out policies like this.

What else are the Palestinian Arabs demanding? For on-the-spot insight into what the Palestinian Arab national movement brings with it wherever it goes, look at the following short film clip from MEMRI. It shows just how much disregard the Palestinian national movement has for the countries in which it operates. Israelis may be on the front line of Palestinian Arab terrorism every single day, but you’ve got to feel really sorry for the many Arab communities the world over that have been and still are stigmatized and bullied in their own homes by a Palestinian national movement that respects nobody and nothing, least of all the basic rules of logic and respect. Read the transcript of the entire clip here.

The sentiments expressed by the Lebanese in their own homes are echoed throughout the Arab world. Despite official government lip service to “the Palestinian cause”, nobody in the Arab world wants anything to do with the Palestinian Arabs. Not because they are not sympathetic to the plight their leaders brought upon them, but because they have shown time and again an absolute unwillingness to do anything to extricate themselves through positive contribution. There have been countless opportunities for peace – turned down every single time by a Palestinian Arab leadership greedy for ever more. Not least a Palestine built on the ruins of Israel. All or nothing.

It’s all enshrined in that demand for a “return” to Israel – as part of the Palestinian yearning for an independent Palestine. The utter absurdity, the sheer lack of logic, the total absence of historical perspective, is staggering.

So is the Palestinian issue such a complex one after all?

Not in the least.

Tackle the intransigence at source: stop the Iranian interference and prevent the UN from infecting the issue, and the problem will resolve itself over an amicable cup of tea by midmorning tomorrow. The finer details may take until afternoon coffee to finalize.

With everyone doing what needs to be done. Because everyone knows exactly what has to be done.

Maybe when the Palestinian national movement finally ratifies the purchase agreement for the Jewish provinces of Judea and Samaria, pays the purchase price and builds its own country, then the Lebanese will finally gain the freedom of their own country.

The Palestinian exodus from Arab lands is eagerly awaited throughout the Arab world.

Because the Arab world is truly desperate for its independence from 60-odd years of Palestinian occupation.

Here are some interesting articles on how Palestinian yearning for their own homeland often seems to involve not just the murder of Jews in Israel but also the murder of Christians in the West Bank and Lebanon, and the murder of Muslims in Syria, Jordan, Libya and Egypt. Among many other places.

Read here an account of how the Palestinians tried to take over Jordan.
 
For a chilling list of the victims of Palestinian terrorism waged on Lebanese soil, read here.
 
To find out how much the former Syrian dictator Hafez al-Assad mistrusted the Palestinians, read this.
 
Read here how the Palestinians and their collaborators still do battle with Egypt.
 
Read here how Kuwait expelled most of its Palestinian population after the Palestinians sided with Saddam Hussein in his attack on and occupation of Kuwait.
 
Libya’s Gaddafi expelled thousands of Palestinians, whom he regarded as a seditious force in his country.
 
Read here about how Italy expelled a Palestinian Arab after he murdered an elderly wheelchair-bound man just because he was Jewish. The brave Palestinian freedom-fighter threw the man – strapped in his wheelchair – off a cruise liner into the sea, where he drowned.
 

There IS justice in this world.

Well, at least there is in the UK.

In Britain, Baroness Jenny Tonge, a Liberal Democrat lawmaker, hopped on the Swedish blood-libel bandwagon set in motion by Donald Boström (read also here, here, here, here and here).

Of course, they were far from alone. Al Jazeera, Iran, Syria, Egypt and countless others in the Arab and Islamic worlds all subscribed to the Boström/Tonge conspiracy theory whereby any allegation, however vile and unsubstantiated, may be leveled at the Jewish state of Israel with the demand that Israel should then spend its time and resources proving the allegations wrong. It is a deliberate strategy designed to slowly bleed the Jewish state to death through litigation, slander and diverted resources while inexorably stripping the nation of its legitimacy in the public consciousness.

From the viewpoint of morality it is the absolute opposite of that most fundamental tenet of western democracy – the presumption of innocence. It is a belief system that is applied universally in enlightened Western societies – except when it comes to the Jewish state.

Liberal Democrat party leader Nick Clegg has now sacked Jenny Tonge for her outrageous and unsubstantiated allegations that the Israel Defense Forces went to Haiti not to provide desperately needed aid in the aftermath of the catastrophe that tore the country apart, but merely to harvest human organs. Tonge's allegations were all the more bizarre bearing in mind her position in the Liberal Democrats as party health spokesman – a position designed to add weight to the slander.

Before she was removed from office, Baroness Tonge never saw fit in her official capacity as spokesperson on health issues to comment on the numerous documented cases of organ harvesting involving Palestinian Arabs. Of course, these cases of organ harvesting took place in the Muslim and Arab state of Jordan, rendering them automatically of no interest to her agenda. She also never either managed to issue a statement on the documented illegal traffic in human organs in the Muslim and Arab state of Egypt.

Commenting on what some might call the racist nature of Tonge's selectivity, party leader Nick Clegg said that Tonge’s remarks were “wrong, distasteful and provocative”. Baroness Tonge is hopefully now at her local Job Centre looking for work that does not involve verbal skills.

Hats off to Nick Clegg.

Justice of a totally different sort was dispensed this past week by Palestinian President-unelect Mahmoud Abbas.

According to the Palestinian constitution, his time at the helm passed its sell-by date some time ago but Abbas still keeps a firm grasp of the reins. Determined to put on a good show for the West, which via unfathomable – and often largely non-transparent – EU and UN funding bankrolls a Palestinian society not required to work, study, construct permanent housing, produce goods, stop systematic racist indoctrination or in any way contribute to the betterment of that society, Abbas recently appointed former Fatah intelligence official Mr Fahmi Shabaneh to investigate and stamp out corruption in official Palestinian society (i.e.Fatah).

Mr Shabaneh, who used to head the anti-corruption unit of the Palestinian GIS (General Intelligence Service), was however coerced into quitting his job after he uncovered several cases of financial, administrative and sexual corruption among PA President Mahmoud Abbas’s closest allies.

Thanks to his diligence in doing the job President Abbas asked him to do, Mr Shabaneh has now been accused of “collaboration with Israel” and a warrant has been issued for his arrest. The accusations against Shabaneh come from none other than PA President Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah party, and the warrant for Shabaneh’s arrest for uncovering the corruption has been issued by the same Fatah – which runs the PA government led by Mahmoud Abbas.

Out with the old, in with the ... well, same-old-same-old, really.

Transparency and justice usually go hand in hand.

In the UK as in any other civilized society that’s the way it works.

On the other hand we have the Palestinian Authority. Paid for by us.


For additional references on the disproved organ harvesting slander:
National Post
Seattle Times
Bellingham Herald
Israel National News
Huffington Post
Pro Kerala
Florida Chamber of Commerce
Solomonia
Astute Blogger
New English Review
Free Republic
Ynet
United Jerusalem

 
For additional references on the case of disgraced Liberal Democrat Jenny Tonge:
Telegraph
Telegraph
Ynet
Congoo
Solomonia
Discarded Lies
Gazette Live
Ealing Gazette
Mirror
Daily Mail
Daily Express
Liverpool Echo
Newsbag
Israel Matzav
World BB News
India Times