So now we have UN Security Council Resolution 1860 on Gaza, calling for “an immediate, durable and fully respected ceasefire,” in which Israeli forces will pull out, and aid will pour in.
This follows a parade of statements at the UN from worthies including the envoys of Cuba, Venezuela and, of course, Iran — terror-master of both Hamas in Gaza (cause of the current war) and Hezbollah in Lebanon (cause of the 2006 war). Iran was particularly miffed that anyone should gainsay the Israeli-focused genocidal ambitions of Hamas, chosen by a Gaza population which in 2006 “exercised its right to vote, the most basic principle of democracy.” Actually, democracy also requires just rule of law and civilized behavior after the vote. For a sample of “democracy” Hamas style, see this latest column, “Hamas’s Other War,” by my FDD colleague Cliff May, who points out (as the MSM has not) that just last weekend dozens of Palestinians were murdered in cold blood, or shot in the legs, or had their hands broken – not by Israelis, but by Hamas. The victims were members of the rival Palestinian organization, Fatah.
Anyway, Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah are all dedicated to the destruction of Israel, so whatever the UN Security Council might resolve about peace and ceasefires, get ready for more wars. Part of the immediate problem is that Gaza is a giant UN welfare project, operating by grace and favor of the local authorities — a.k.a. the terrorist group, Hamas. This unholy union makes for neither peace nor prosperity. The only significant industries in Gaza are aid and terrorism — arranged in ways that tend to support each other. More on that in my column this week for Forbes.com, on the UN refugee agency for Palestinians, UNRWA, which is headquartered in Gaza: “Gaza Bedfellows UNRWA and Hamas.”
What to do? Well, those who favor democratic states over terrorist enclaves can hope that Israel in its own defense has destroyed enough Hamas munitions, arms-smuggling tunnels and other terrorist infrastructure to buy a serious breather for a while on the Gaza front. That’s hugely important because Israel may soon have to focus its energies on the problems that will arise in the Middle East — and beyond – when Iran, in violation of at least five UN Security Council resolutions, completes its nuclear bomb.
As for the UN’s stated desire for peace — since the UN objects so strongly to Israel’s efforts to disarm Hamas, how about the UN actually pitching in for a change? For that, I have a practical suggestion. There’s nothing to stop Scretary-General Ban Ki-Moon from proposing a Food-for-Rockets aid program for Gaza. Instead of just shoveling free goods into the Hamas-controlled enclave, why not demand that Hamas hand over a rocket, a bomb, a stack of suicide vests, for every aid truck the Israelis wave through those crossings?
At least that would put some of the onus for Palestinian welfare on Hamas. It would neatly help clarify their priorities — guns or butter. And it would be a lot more pleasant both for the Israelis and for the Palestinian children now being used by Hamas as human shields. It might even go some distance to redeem that big blot on the UN known as Oil-for-Food. The idea here is a UN swap program that would help defang tyrannical thugs, instead of subsidizing them. Of course, it would have to wind down as Hamas ran out of munitions to trade for food, fuel, medicine and other humanitarian items. How would the UN be able to tell? Well, one indicator would be an end to the attacks out of Gaza on Israel. It might not lead to lasting peace, but it would probably work a lot better than Resolution 1860. How about it, Mr. Ban? Food-for-Rockets.
A friend sent a must-see video — I’m not sure whether it was plucked off a blog, or straight off the Fox News web site, so thank you to whoever first put this in circulation. But here it is, a news anchor who doesn’t just nod along, or ask softball questions, but who calls out a Palestinian spokeswoman on the facts, as she recites propaganda.
She tries to put down the anchor, telling him, “You have never been to the Gaza Strip. You don’t know what it looks like.” Oh, yes he has… watch it here.
Or is he simply a fool, dutifully reciting excerpts from the UN’s Moral Equivalency Manual and Guide to Validating Tyrants and Terrorists of the Middle East. (Seems like they must have one … Maybe Kofi Annan left his dog-eared copy to Ban?)
Or maybe it all amounts to the same thing. Whatever might be going through the Secretary-General’s head as he pops up to opine about Israel and Gaza, he sounds like he’s either pro-Hamas (which, with Iranian backing, is dedicated to destroying Israel) or living on Pluto.
Ban has by now established himself as a knee-jerk subscriber to the UN formulation of “disproportionate force” — the term which is never applied by the UN to Hamas (or Hezbollah) terrorists launching rockets indiscriminately into Israel, or kidnapping Israeli solders, or gunning down and blowing up Israeli civilians. But “disproportionate force” is habitually howled out by the UN when Israel — having negotiated and conceded and warned — finally strikes back, targeting terrorists in its own defense. In practice, this means that terrorists attacking Israel get a ritual and meaningless tut-tut from the UN, usually while UN aid trucks keep rolling in to keep them resupplied. But when Israel attacks terrorists, that warrants emergency Security Council meetings and special press briefings at the highest levels, and repeated, lengthy statements aimed at generating genuine, massive pressure for Israelis to lay down their arms and let the terrorists carry on. Thus Kofi Annan’s histrionics when Israel struck back after Hezbollah, unprovoked, attacked Israel out of Lebanon in 2006.
And so, since Israel launched Operation Cast Lead on December 27th, to stop the attacks out of Gaza, Ban has been preaching full-throated Moral Equivalence from the UN pulpit, demanding an “immediate ceasefire,” calling on “all parties” to “fully uphold humanitarian law,” and insisting that all border crossings into Gaza should be flung open “to ensure the continuous provision of humanitarian supplies.” He got worked up enough about it to make a rare appearance in person at the UN noon press briefing this past Monday.
In Gaza, Israel attacks one tentacle of a totalitarian enemy nested in Iran that seeks the end of democratic life as we know it. And in the free world the erstwhile leaders, instead of thanking the Israelis as allies fighting on our side, recoil in dismay, fret about whether the 60 or 90 or 100 aid trucks a day rolling into Gaza are enough, and counsel an immediate round of more peace-processing for our time.
For that, there will be hell to pay. Israel’s circumstances today are ours tomorrow. More in my column this week for Forbes.com, More Peace-Processing Won’t Cut It.
“History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce,” wrote Karl Marx — who’s making a big comeback these days, with his nutcase notions rebranded as the Value Theory of Bailouts.
In that spirit, we now have history repeating itself, first as parody, then as subsidy. A few weeks ago, the marvelous P.J. O’Rourke wrote an article suggesting that as long as everyone’s getting state money, print newspapers could use a bailout. That was a spoof. Now comes a proposal to actually do it.
I’m thinking that if they’re going to bail out even the press, then at the very least they (”they” is actually us, but never mind) ought to also have bailouts available for people who want to knock off and celebrate New Year’s eve. And in that spirit, let’s counter Marx with one of William Blake’s Proverbs of Hell: “The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.” I sure hope so. Very best wishes for a Happy New Year!
If there’s anything “disproportionate” about violence in the Middle East these days, it’s the extent to which Iran’s regime stirs up big trouble and not only gets away with it, but casts itself as an aggrieved party. We saw it when Iranian-backed Hezbollah launched a war out of Lebanon against Israel in 2006 — and Iran blamed the conflict on Israel. We’ve seen it in recent years with Iranian-backed terrorism in Iraq — where Iran blamed America.
We’re seeing it again right now, in the fighting between Israel and Gaza. Iran abets the Hamas terrorists who rule Gaza, and who have been firing rockets by the thousands into Israel. Now that Israel is defending itself by fighting back against Hamas, Iran’s Fars News Agency reports that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad wants Israeli leaders hauled before the International Criminal Court. According to the Fars article, “leading Iranian lawyers” are to be enlisted in this effort, and “a special message” is to be sent to heads of “other countries” (presumably other countries inclined to cater to Iran’s mullocracy, such as Venezuela — currently one of the 18 members of the International Criminal Court bureau “elected” by the ICC’s assembly of member states).
Where did Ahmadinejad get the idea that such a stunt, proposed by his rogue, terrorist-sponsoring regime, might pay off?
Maybe he got it from the UN (progenitor of the ICC), where Iran is in violation of five Security Council resolutions meant to stop its nuclear bomb program, but is nonetheless allowed to sit on the governing boards of a slew of major UN agencies including the WFP, the FAO, UNEP, UNICEF and the flagship UN Development Program (more on this in my Forbes.com column earlier this month on “Iran’s Power at the United Nations“). Maybe Ahmadinejad was encouraged in his notions by the dingbat utterances of Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, who on matters such as Gaza and Israel is promoting a global order in which terrorist enclaves deserve more rights than their democratic prey. Such are the realms of genuine “disproportion.”
Last week, we saw Ahmadinejad popping up on British TV with an “alternative Christmas message” to the Queen’s. Now we have Ahmadinejad as the ambulance-chasing international legal eagle for the terrorists of Hamas. When do we see the Iranian regime held to account for its leading role in the murderous realities behind the stage sets?
Having served another round as a target range for Hamas, Israel finally attacks the rocket-firing terrorists in Gaza. Does the democratic world say “Thank You” to Israel for taking on the overlords of this nest of terror and repression? Not a chance.
Instead, here comes the usual Western group wallow in Palestinian terrorist propaganda.
We all know the script: Palestinian terrorists attack Israel, again and again and again — as in, Hamas firing some 3,000 mortars and rockets from Gaza into Israel over the past year, some 200 of these since the expiration last week of a six-month “ceasefire.” Finally, Israel strikes back, targeting the terrorists.
And the cogs of the middle-eastern cuckoo clock grind into action. Arab states issue denunciations of Israel. Diplomats lament the imperiling of the “peace process.” The despot-heavy UN takes time out from its day-to-day trashing of Israel to issue calls for “all parties” to end the violence. The U.S. officially backs Israel, but simultaneously undercuts Israel by issuing calls to rush humanitarian aid to the Palestinians, and then joins the gang of appeaseniks pressuring Israel into another “ceasefire” –which gives the terrorists a chance to regroup and attack again. From the media, out roll the articles and broadcasts lambasting Israel for use of “disproportionate force”; out come the photos and the fauxtography; and the further vilification of Israel proceeds under headlines such as this gem from the Washington Post: “Israeli Airstrikes on Gaza Strip Imperil Obama’s Peace Chances.”
What a heap of hooey. What’s actually imperiling Obama’s “peace chances” in this sorry landscape is the presence of a terrorist haven operating in broad daylight right next door to Israel, in the form of the Hamas-run Gaza strip. And the continuing exaltation of terrorism by the Palestinian Authority on the West Bank. And another terrorist haven in the form of Hezbollah-infested Lebanon to the north. And yet more terrorist havens right nearby in the form of Syria and Iran, which harbor and help both Hamas and Hezbollah. And terrorist funders such as – according to the U.S. State Department – “private benefactors in Saudi Arabia and other Arab states” (”benefactors” being a strange choice of word, though unfortunately a good indicator of the State Department mindset).
In this configuration, it’s not the Gaza Strip that is the “besieged enclave” (as press reports like to describe it). It’s Israel — a democratic state beset by terrorists, terrorist havens, terrorist supporters and terrorist funders.
These terrorist havens threaten not only Israel, but Europe and America. They threaten any state in which democratic freedoms are inimical to the kind of political thuggery that for decades has beggared and poisoned the Palestinians themselves (who just last year took time out from killing Israelis to make headlines for a while by mudering each other in a manner too public for even the press to ignore).
Israel is not the cause of this terrorism; but it does sit on the frontlines. As Sept. 11 should have made clear, in today’s globalized world these things don’t stay local. And as year after year of “peace process” should have taught the world by now, there are some killers — and the leaders of Hamas richly fit the bill — who are not going to be “talked” into peace. They pocket any gains from the “process,” and attack again.
One might well wonder: If Hamas or its terrorist brethren were to set up enclaves next to Paris, Vienna, Berlin, London, New York and Washington, and fire 3,000 rockets and mortars at such democratic neighbors — what, exactly, would the inhabitants of Paris, Vienna, Berlin, London, New York and Washington judge to be the appropriate response?
It’s no spoof. In Britain, where the Queen every year delivers a televised Christmas message, the UK’s Channel 4 is planning to air an “Alternative Christmas Message“– from Iran’s Chief Executive Terrorist-Sponsoring Totalitarian Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
If Britons wish to spend part of their Christmas tuning in to Ahmadinejad’s oily talk of a “joyful, shining and wonderful age,” so be it — though one might have hoped they’d learned their lesson about this sort of thing back in the late 1930s. But broadcasting this kind of performance inflicts its worst damage in places like Iran itself, where the problem is not Ahmadinejad’s message to people of Britain, but Britain’s message to the people of Iran: For those in Iran who aspire to freedom, it can hardly be encouraging that in Britain a free people would so demean themselves as to give this preening thug his own special slot on the air — let alone as an alternative, in any capacity whatsoever, to their Queen. This is not an issue of free speech, but of fools at Channel 4 indulging in a stunt that ought to earn them not higher ratings, but a one-way ticket to Iran.
On a brighter note, some things are right with the world this Christmas Eve. The AP reports that in keeping with American tradition, NORAD is watching over Santa Claus. Merry Christmas!
We’ve just heard Rod Blagojevich quoting Rudyard Kipling’s famous poem, “If.” With apologies to Kipling, here’s a version revised for the current circumstances:
If …. Kipling Only Knew
If you can keep your job while all about you
Are fielding bribes and blaming it on you,
If you can duck the Feds while all men doubt you,
And bleep-ing show the charges are untrue,
If you can fight and not be tired by fighting,
Or, being wiretapped, profess surprise,
Or argue that there will be no indicting
Because it’s all a bleep-ing pack of lies.
If you can scheme - but never scheme in writing,
If you can talk - but not from your home phone,
If you can face the press and keep reciting
That truth is on your side, though you’re alone;
If you can bear to hear the bleeps you’ve spoken
Quoted on Fox TV and “Meet the Press”
Or watch that Senate seat become a token
Of all the things they’d like you to confess
If you can just accuse them all of spinning
And quote a bit of Kipling on the way
And comb your hair and somehow keep on grinning
And tell them no one ever paid to play;
If you can force them to accept your own rights
To publicly refuse this bitter cup,
And fight them till you’ve drained yourself of sound bites,
Except the Will to say to them: “Shut up!”
If you once walked with Rezko and Obama
Or spoke with Jesse Junior and with Rahm
If you can overcome this legal drama,
If you can show that no one greased your palm
If you can take that Senate seat and fill it
With someone who will swear you’re not a knave
Yours is the Land of Lincoln, and yet still it
Will have Kipling rolling over in his grave.
When you’re done reading the Blagojevich complaint, with its attendant insights into Illinois politics, spare a thought for New York — where Caroline Kennedy wants a sit-down with Governor David Paterson, with the aim of claiming Hillary Clinton’s soon-to-be-vacant Senate seat.
Is there anything wrong with that picture?
Well, let’s imagine for a moment that it’s not New York State we’re talking about, but some province – call it the State of Banana — in some nameless republic rife with dynastic politics.
Here’s a sample of the politics:
Eight years ago, a Senate seat from the Banana State was won by the wife of a sitting president of the republic. That wife had never before resided in Banana State, but she bought a house there, campaigned with the aura and entourage accorded to a presidential spouse, and with one leap, winning her first elected office ever, she became a senator.
Riding a national political machine to re-election for a second term, that former first lady swiftly turned her Senate seat into a springboard for her own campaign for the presidency. She lost, but took a job in the new administration, leaving the governor of Banana State to appoint a replacement senator.
That governor was himself a replacement, due to the resignation of the elected governor, a crusading moralist caught in a prostitution scandal. As the replacement governor prepared to name a replacement senator, a former president’s daughter declared her interest in the Senate seat — which one of her uncles had won some 44 years earlier, and was using as a springboard for his own presidential run, after serving as attorney-general in his brother’s presidential administration. This former first daughter had recently worked on the campaign of the President-elect — an experience that awakened in her an appetite for politics – but she had reached the age of 51 with no direct experience of her own in public office. Nonetheless, another of her uncles, also a senator, was ready to endorse her for this leap to the Senate. So was the mayor of Big Plum (the biggest city in Banana State), who on his own turf had just succeeded in scrapping a two-term limit so he could run for a third term — which he justified as a way of offering people a broader choice (namely, himself).
That’s how it works in Banana Republics. Whatever Caroline Kennedy’s native abilities, celebrity mantle and political connections, if she thinks this is a good way for things to work in New York State, that alone is reason to worry about her qualifications for the job.
