I read in today’s [Wednesday] newspaper that Israel will be building a sophisticated barrier along the border with Gaza. Sensors, underground walls and who knows what secret systems to detect tunneling and infiltration. The cost is estimated in billions of shekels (a shekel today is about US$ 0.26). We are continuing to develop and deploy a multi-tiered antimissile defense that also will cost billions.
Meanwhile, the US State Department, Germany, the EU and the Arab League all insist that the Golan heights belong to the non-country of Syria. “No state can claim the right to annex another state’s territory just like that,” say the Germans, while they advocate ‘Palestine’ doing exactly that.
In the US, Joe Biden spoke to the anti-Zionist J Street organization and expressed his “overwhelming frustration” with Israel’s government, and called for the Left to return to power in Israel. Such respect for democracy he has.
And of course the inimitable Bernie Sanders continues to call Israel’s responses to attacks from Gaza “disproportionate.”
In the opinion of the West, Israel can defend itself as long as its defensive measures aren’t too effective, like the security barrier in Judea and Samaria, and as long as they are completely passive, like Iron Dome. It is not permissible for Israel to kill any Arabs in the process; even wounded terrorists must be protected and given medical treatment. It doesn’t matter if no other country has a better record of reducing collateral damage in any recent conflict – any civilian casualties are grounds for condemnation.
The West believes that no strategic considerations such as the fact that the Golan, the Jordan Valley and the high ground of Judea and Samaria are essential for Israel’s defense can override the desires of the ‘Palestinians’ for a state, or the ‘rights’ of the Butcher of Damascus, Hezbollah, IS or whoever will rule the remnants of Syria. On the other hand, it does not accept Israel’s rights under international law.
The West agrees that exploding buses are bad. But it blames them on Israel controlling territory that she shouldn’t, security measures inconvenient for the Arabs and disproportionate responses. If we stop doing these things, it suggests that there will be no more terrorism.
This position is either extremely stupid or hypocritical. In the case of Bernie Sanders, I vote for stupid; but the State Department, Germany and the EU (and others that I haven’t mentioned) are hypocrites: they say they believe we have a right to self-defense, while aware that what they want is for Israel to be unable to defend herself.
Are the Arabs our worst enemies? Possibly not. Arguably, the West has done more damage to Israel’s chances for survival by diplomatic pressure for concessions and by financing the PA, Hamas (via UNRWA) and countless anti-Zionist NGOs and UN agencies, than Palestinian terrorists with their suicide belts. Think about that.
Israel’s response has been to play along.
We agree to ‘negotiate’ with the PLO – the terrorist organization that has killed more Israeli Jews since its inception than any other – over serious proposals to give them control over vital strategic locations, our holiest places and half our capital. Luckily for us, they have always demanded too much.
We say that we want a ‘two-state solution’ and hint that we will expel hundreds of thousands of Jews from their homes in return for a paper promise from ‘leaders’ who may not be in power next week, and don’t insist on our rights under international law.
We commit to massive expenditures in passive defense, Iron Domes above and below ground, in order to avoid carrying out the simplest and most effective procedure for self-defense: crushing our enemies.
We fight limited wars – that is, wars that are limited to pushing our enemies back but never destroying them – and then we give them time and, in the case of Hamas, even supply them so they can rebuild their offensive capabilities for the next round.
We punish our young soldiers severely for killing the enemy in time of war, and then expect them to keep coming back for more victory-limited wars.
We do all these things because we want to be a member of the Western ‘enlightened’ club, the same one that is presently being eaten alive by Islam in Europe and threatened by political insanity in North America, instead of the Middle Eastern nation that we are.
Israel’s Jewish population comes from Africa and Asia, the former Soviet Union, Eastern Europe and many other places. A bit fewer than half of us are descended from people who lived in Muslim countries until relatively recently. Why should we expect to be like Norway, Belgium or the US? Israel must define herself as a sovereign, independent Jewish and democratic nation, and explicate those terms in the light of the history and future of the Jewish people, not as dictated by Joe Biden or Bernie Sanders.
And we don’t need to imitate the US – or, God forbid, Europe.
Another excellent article. I sometimes just wish that Israel would cease playing along. I also fantasize that the IDF will hit reset – and pound Gaza into a parking lot. I’m in agreement with you that Bernie Sanders is very stupid and that the US Foggy Bottom, Germany, the EU, the Arab League et al are supremely hypocritical and blindly biased. Willful blindness. In Obama-world, Muslim ideology has nothing to do with terrorism committed by Muslims.
Since 1993, the US bipartisan government throughout administrations of both parties, has refused to acknowledge, much less grapple with, the central truth of the threat we face. (Israel’s threat is exponentially greater – maybe by a power of 100 or 500 or more) It has insisted, against fact and reason, that Islam is a monolithic “religion of peace,” and therefore there can be no causal connection between Islamic doctrine and terrorism committed by Muslims. It has fraudulently maintained that jihadist violence is not jihadist at all — after all, we are to understand jihad (notwithstanding its roots as a belligerent concept, as holy war to establish sharia) to be a noble internal struggle to become a better person, to vanquish corruption, and the like. Europe is even worse. Terrorist attacks must be airbrushed into “violent extremism,” shorn of any ideological component — as if the killing were wanton, not purposeful. The fact that the attacks are so ubiquitously committed by Muslims (who explicitly cite scriptural chapter and verse to justify themselves), is to be ignored — as if all religions and ideologies were equally prone to inspire mass-murder attacks if believed too fervently.
Today, American sovereignty is more challenged than ever before, not from enemies that threaten us militarily but from “friends” who urge us to share or reduce our sovereignty for larger global objectives. I think this scheme may have been hatched at the UN many years ago. How Obama is endangering our National Sovereignty reveals what sovereignty means to Americans, not as an abstraction but as a vibrant component of self government.
Looking at specific threats to U.S. sovereignty, from “global governance” to the White House, and wonder what Americans can do to defend our sovereignty and resist encroachments from the wide array of challenges we face, internationally and in our own domestic politics.
Former Ambassador to the U.N. John R. Bolton looks at specific threats to U.S. sovereignty, from “global governance” to the White House, and recommends what Americans can do to defend their sovereignty and resist encroachments from the wide array of challenges we face, internationally and in our own domestic politics
This is way off topic but there is much more to the links between the 9/11 hijackers and the House of Saud than many are willing to admit. Why does President Obama think it’s okay for 15 Arabs (and four of their friends) to come into our country, hijack our planes, crash them into our buildings, and brutally kill 3,000 innocent people?
Because those 15 Arabs were Saudis, that’s why. And, Saudis are special. Saudis are apparently allowed to get away with murder — or at least the financing of it. Yet, years ago he directly looked the victims’ families in their eyes and promised that he would declassify and release the 28 pages from the 2004 911 Commission Report that Bush had no business ever classifying to begin with. Those 28 pages have NOTHING to do with national security issues as he pontificated.
The current House and Senate bills are intended to make clear that the immunity given to foreign nations under the law should not apply in cases where nations are found culpable for terrorist attacks that kill Americans on United States soil. And demanding that the 28 pages be immediately released. If these bills were to pass both houses of Congress and be signed by the president, it could clear a path for the role of the Saudi government to be examined in the victims’ families Sept. 11 lawsuits. Obama has promised to nix and veto either bill if they end up on his desk. His administration has aggressively lobbied against the bills, saying it would put Americans at legal risk overseas. That is poppycock!
Even though the petro-economy has been collapsing for the past two years the Saudi’s economy is still directly linked to the petrodollar just as the US economy is. The Saudis budget deficit has soared in the past year as a result of collapsing oil prices, (alao Yemen) and they would stand to benefit from monetizing their US reserves. But according to many, it is only a matter of time anyway. However, a dramatic, immediate liquidation would likely spark a market panic. Outside economists are skeptical that the Saudis will follow through, saying that such a sell-off would be difficult to execute and would end up crippling the kingdom’s economy.
The Obama administration, meanwhile, is far less concerned about the market impact of a Saudi liquidation, and far more worried what a real inquiry into the Saudi role of Sept.11 would reveal (and who it would implicate) and as a result is building strawman arguments that the legislation would put Americans at legal risk overseas. In fact, as the NYT reported, “Obama has been lobbying so intently against the bills that some lawmakers and families of Sept. 11 victims are infuriated. In their view, the Obama administration has consistently sided with the kingdom and has thwarted their efforts to learn what they believe to be the truth about the role some Saudi officials played in the terrorist plot.” I am infuriated too!
“It’s stunning to think that our government would back the Saudis over its own citizens,” said Mindy Kleinberg, whose husband died in the World Trade Center on Sept. 11 and who is part of a group of victims’ family members pushing for the legislation.
Stunning indeed, and yet that’s precisely who Obama sides with when attempting to get to the bottom of the 2001 terrorist attacks.
Meanwhile, even as Obama fights tooth and nail to protect the Saudi’s dirty laundry, his administration pretends to side with US citizens: John Kirby, a State Department spokesman, said in a statement that “the administration stands by the victims of terrorism, especially those who suffered and sacrificed so much on 9/11.” It just refuses to reveal those who are truly responsible for their death.
In this excellent 2012 article it connects some of the dots that I imagine are deeply addressed in those 28 pages.
https://pjmedia.com/…/fed-awlaki-story-doesnt-pass…/…
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Caroline Glick wrote a column recently criticizing our generals for the very same kind of reluctance to wholly defeat the enemy that you speak about here. On the other hand the kinds of utterances made by military figures in regard to any future confrontation with Hizbollah indicate that this would not be the case should there be such a confrontation.
There are also utterances indicating that should Hamas initiate another confrontation with us it would be their last.