David Singer: Trump Must Honour Bush-Congress Deal with Israel

A flag burns in Gaza; For link click here

Here's the latest article by Sydney lawyer and international affairs analyst David Singer.

He writes:

President Trump’s historic visit to Israel on 22 May presents the perfect opportunity for him to deliver on the promises he made to Israel during last year’s presidential election campaign.

Trump’s broad-ranging foreign policy speech on 27 April 2016 highlighted the disgraceful way Israel had been treated by the Obama Administration:

"Israel, our great friend and the one true democracy in the Middle East has been snubbed and criticized by an administration that lacks moral clarity.

President Obama has not been a friend to Israel."

Trump’s claim was certainly justified.

Obama – aided and abetted by his two Secretaries of State Hillary Clinton and John Kerry – had deliberately undermined the written commitments made to Israel’s Prime Minister Ariel Sharon by President Bush on 14 April 2004 and subsequently endorsed overwhelmingly by the Congress by 502 votes to 12 (“Bush/Congress Commitments”).

Trump promised:

“To our friends and allies, I say America is going to be strong again. America is going to be reliable again. It’s going to be a great and reliable ally again. It’s going to be a friend again. We’re going to finally have a coherent foreign policy based upon American interests and the shared interests of our allies.”

The shared interests of Israel and America became inextricably entwined after the Bush/Congress Commitments had:

1. secured Israel’s total disengagement from Gaza and a part of Judea and Samaria (West Bank) in 2005

2. promised President Bush’s stalled 2003 Roadmap proposing the two-state solution a real chance of coming to fruition.

The Bush/Congress Commitments were also crucial to Israel’s agreement to resume negotiations with the Palestinian Authority as publicly declared by Israel’s then Prime Minister Ehud Olmert at the international conference called by President Bush in Annapolis in 2007: 

“In the course of the negotiations, we will use previous agreements as a point of departure. U.N. Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338, the road map, and the letter of President Bush to the prime minister of Israel dated April 14, 2004.”

Obama’s treachery in derogating from the Bush/Congress Commitments was compounded when he refused to veto Security Council Resolution 2334 passed during the dying days of Obama’s Presidency on 23 December 2016.

Trump needs to repeat this part of his 2016 message loudly and clearly in Israel: 

“… your friends need to know that you will stick by the agreements that you have with them. You’ve made that agreement, you have to stand by it and the world will be a better place."

Sticking by the Bush/Congress commitments will sound a clear warning to the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) and the Arab League that PLO leader Mahmoud Abbas will become irrelevant if he continues to:

1. press for a complete withdrawal by Israel from Judea and Samaria (West Bank)

2. refuse to accept Israel as the nation State of the Jewish people

3. maintain a claimed right of return to Israel for millions of refugees and their descendants contradicting the unequivocal terms of the Bush/Congress Commitments.

Trump – as only he can – has put Abbas on notice this could well happen:

“We have to look to new people because many of the old people frankly don’t know what they’re doing, even though they may look awfully good writing in The New York Times or being watched on television.”

Bipartisan Congressional support will welcome Trump honouring the Bush/Congress Commitments  – confirming Trump’s bold vision:

“We need a new rational American foreign policy, informed by the best minds and supported by both parties, and it will be by both parties – Democrats, Republicans, independents, everybody, as well as by our close allies.” 

Integrity always trumps betrayal.

Tack så mycket, Asaf

So that strange conglomeration of Israel-hating lefty female politicians and their stooges in a once envied and enviable land called Sweden have been up to their weird tricks again.  As widely reported, their agency the Swedish Institute, on the hunt for political incorrectness and "hate speech"on Twitter, included Israel's ambassador to Stockholm in their dragnet.

To quote one well-known media outlet:

"In addition to the private Twitter account of Isaac Bachman, the Israeli ambassador, and his embassy’s official account, blocked accounts included that of the award-winning journalist Magda Gad of the liberal Expressen daily, the lawmaker Jimmie Åkesson of the nationalist Sweden Democrats party, and the well-known novelist Jonas Gardell, who is a well-known activist for gay and transsexual rights in Sweden.

Bachman, who has used harsh language in criticizing of Sweden’s policies on Israel, took to Twitter to protest the block, which he noted was not extended to Iran and Saudi Arabia, which have laws discriminating homosexuals and women, and which fund purveyors of anti-Semitic hate speech. Now, that #Israel 's MFA and ambassador are blocked - #Sweden is much safer in reading Iran and others, that were not blocked.@SweInstitute https://t.co/C87XzwTikb  — Isaac Bachman (@isaacbachman) May 16, 2017

The blocks prompted criticism in local media on the Swedish Institute, which was accused of silencing critical debate about Sweden and imposing unnecessary limitations on free speech to preserve a far-reaching definition of political correctness. The Swedish Institute neither published a full list of those blocked nor offer those affected recourse to challenge the decision.

While it apologized for any wrongful block, the Swedish Institute in its statement defended the use of the tool to achieve what it called an improved atmosphere online.

“The Swedish Institute in the past has given its moderators permission to block users but last week it happened on a larger scale” with the intention not only of stopping alleged hate speech but also preventing it, the statement read. “The blocks contributed to increased security on the account and to a significant improvement in dialog,” the statement continued. “But the institute also sees the need to examine the question of freedom of expression and the use of authority” in this context. (See more here)

As the above comments indicate, not all Swedes are affected by the anti-Israel/antisemitic virus so prevalent in their governing circles and on social media. 

And a special thank you to the author of the following tweet:

Meanwhile, in this account of Swedish duplicity concerning a Malmö mosque Judith Bergman asks "When did the Swedish population vote to become a Qatari protectorate?"

"But He is Saying Jews Should Be Killed. How Can This Not Be Bad?" (video)

A look at some on-the-spot reactions to the hate-preaching of Mundhir Abdallah from Lebanon, who we are told has links to Hizb-ut-Tahrir.  While talking about the Arab-Israeli conflict on 31 March at the Al Farouq mosque in Copenhagen he broke into a genocidal antisemitic exhortation. And it's not the first time he has spread the love from that pulpit...

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqImEd3k858

See also here

"A Stain on Our Nation": Kiwi columnist slams anti-Israel obsession

Eight days ago the Sunday Star Times, a Kiwi newspaper owned by the antipodean Fairfax media stable (not known for its fairness to Israel: think The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald, and this despicable incident) published a blood libel of a cartoon by Sharon Murdoch concerning Bibi Netanyahu and New Zealand foreign Minister Gerry Brownlee, who called notorious UN Security Council Resolution 2334, which his country shamefully co-sponsored, as "premature".

As New Zealand's Jewish newspaper Shalom.Kiwi observes:

'Fairfax media outlet, Stuff, published fake news in January 2017, which led to a stream of anti-Semitic comments on social media. Now, the most recent edition of Fairfax’s Sunday Star Times has chosen to print a vile cartoon suggesting new New Zealand Foreign Minister, Gerry Brownlee, is being controlled by a bloodthirsty Israel. It is worthy of being included in the annual Iranian-sponsored Jew-bashing cartoon contest....

Neither funny, nor clever, the cartoon draws on lowest common denominator stereotypes and anti-Semitic tropes. The schoolboy pun (“Minister Brownnose”) expressing Brownlee’s supposed obsequience to Netanyahu, while pathetic, can be overlooked. However, the grotesque suggestion that Netanyahu would order the killing of a statesman whose policies and actions he disagrees with goes beyond reasonable and responsible boundaries of political satire...

 Just like the fanciful anti-Israel polemic written by the editor of the Dominion Post, another Fairfax outlet, Murdoch’s cartoon in the Sunday Star Times has resorted to simplistic interpretations and failed to engage with the issues, preferring instead to lean on classic anti-Semitism.'

Although it seems that Brownlee's encouraging stance regarding Israel may be faltering (see Shalom.Kiwi here) it's heartening to read an op-ed in the Sunday Star Times that champions Israel.  So well done, Damien Grant, for writing, inter alia, in that paper yesterday:

"...The world's obsession with Jews in general and Israel in particular is one of the many disheartening features of modern life.

Imagine... For over 1000 years your ancestors have endured periods of mild-but-tolerable persecution followed by irregular bouts of genocidal rage.

The one thing the last millennium should have taught us is it is never safe to be a Jew....

The United Nations Security Council has dealt with 226 resolutions concerning Israel. More than six percent of the total. The UN is obsessed with Israel....

Not all criticism of Israel is unwarranted but we forget it is a liberal democracy in a sea of tyranny, terror and hatred.

 The endless preoccupation over the 700,000 Arabs displaced when Israel was created ignores the equal number of Jews who fled Arab nations. No one calls for their right to return and equally overlooked are the 1.5 million Arabs living in relative peace in Israel today, not including the occupied territories....

It was a stain on our nation that we participated in the mass-hysteria over Israel...."

Read all of Damien Grant's piece here

Meanwhile, some of the usual suspects are desperately attempting to coach other usual suspects in countering dastardly Zionist facts.

Yep, it's that desperate old Palestine was an independent nation trope being trotted out again:

Well said, this commenter:

'Palestine is a geographic term that describes a place (not a people) that has belonged to Jews, Greeks, Romans, Mamaluks, Turks, and finally Jews again.

There are Arabs who live there, and Jews who lived there. The Jews never thought of themselves as Palestinians, and until roughly 1964, neither did Arabs.

For proof, look no further than this chart showing the frequency of words or phrases that appear in their massive collection of scanned books: https://books.google.com/ng... 

As it clearly shows, "Palestinian Jew" appeared more frequently than "Palestinian Arab" until roughly 1950 (by which time the term Israeli came into favor.)

And as the chart also clearly shows, the phrase "Palestinian Arab" started a rapid ascent around 1964.

Facts are stubborn things.'

Brats & Braves (videos)

For anyone who has not yet seen them in all their infantile shame, Israel-hating brats at the University of California at Irvine use bully boy tactics to disrupt a meeting and silence a speaker.  The totalitarian Left in action once again.

More here

In Toronto, a chanting kid on a grown-up's back leads the anti-Israel protest.  Pro-Israel demonstrators face the mob, with its obscene and very telling cries of "From the River to the Sea ..."

A brave Englishman's delicious satire on Islamofascism and its totalitarian leftists allies:

"Why is There So Much Politics in Arabic Class?"

I've been browsing the Spring 2017 issue of the Swarthmore College Alumni Bulletin.  It's clear that along with all the other socio-political stances that comprise the often bizarre and contradictory (women's rights, Islamophilia) package deal of ideologies and attitudes of the Left, an anti-Israel default position is integral to that publication.

Regular readers of my blog may remember that not so very long ago I exposed the sympathetic publicity given by the Bulletin to visiting professor and alumnus (class of '06) Sa'ed Atshan, who deplores Israel's very existence.

The current Bulletin assures us that he has again

"completed his annual class trip with his Swarthmore students to Israel and Palestine.  He'll continue to inspire future generations as as assistant professor of peace and conflict studies." 

There's plenty regarding Atshan by Canary Mission here

Under the heading "Global Thinking" the current Bulletin has a feature article by staff writer Elizabeth Slocum about another anti-Israel activist, Missoula, Montana high school Arabic teacher Brendan Work ('10). 

Beneath the title "Speaking the Same Language: His immersion in Arabic became a lesson in empathy" Slocum tells us:

'Brendan Work '10 jokingly tells his students that they are learning "an enemy language."

“They sometimes ask, ‘Why is there so much politics in Arabic class?’” says Work ... “Well, when you’re learning Spanish or French, there just isn’t an international conflict with the U.S. that involves those speakers now.”

This is important context for his students, who must work through so much history and tension tied up in the study of the language through class discussions on the Israel-Palestine conflict, the Iraq War, and Syrian refugees. He seeks to offer them a point of view beyond bias or preconceived notions that he honed as a reporter.  [Emphasis added here and below]

“I knew I wanted to find employment at the intersection of Arabic and journalism,” says Work, who studied the language at the College as a comparative literature major. “I was looking for the big story, so I bought a one-way ticket into the occupied territory,” at a time when Palestine was submitting its statehood bid to the U.N.

Work secured a job at a small press agency in Bethlehem where he improved his language skills ...before heading into the field as a reporter and photographer. As Work detailed the struggles of those in the conflict zone, he realized the Arab narrative was often told from a limited perspective.

For example, while covering a planned protest near the West Bank wall on the day of the statehood bid, a clash escalated and a Palestinian teen was struck by a tear-gas canister. (A Reuters photographer captured an image of Work aiding the boy moments after the violence.) Denied access to the nearest hospital because it was on the other side of the wall, the youth ultimately lost his eye. Later, out of concern, Work met with the teen’s parents...

“Their thinking was, ‘Resistance is our reality. In America, I thought, protests happened out of a sense – rather than a reality – of injustice.”

Work brought this empathy back to his Montana hometown, where an Arabic teaching position opened shortly after his return. In the classroom, he encourages students to see past stereotypes and to instead learn the cultures and customs of Arabic speakers...

Compassion, he teaches, is key...

“They [his students] enjoy the responsibility of being their family FAQ,” he says. “When their dad sees something about Iraq on the television, they love being in the room so they can say, ‘Here’s what I learned in Arabic today.’” 

What Slocum neglects to tell the Bulletin's readers is that Brendan Work is a hardened anti-Israel activist who has, for example, contributed Israel-demonising articles to the Electronic Intifada

Transparency on the Bulletin's part is needed.
 
And so is an attempt at balance regarding Israel in its feature columns.

David Singer: United Nations Web of Deceit snares International Court of Justice

Here's another of Sydney lawyer and international affairs analyst David Singer's important exposures of the United Nations' duplicity and its dangerous, deleterious effects.

Writes David Singer

The United Nations publication The Origins and Evolution of the Palestine Problem 1917-1988 (“Study”) has falsely misrepresented that the Mandate for Palestine was a class A Mandate – deceiving the International Court of Justice and many other reputable sources.

The Study has been published by the Division for Palestinian Rights of the United Nations Secretariat for, and under the guidance of, the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People.

The Study falsely asserts without substantiation: 

“All the mandates over Arab countries, including Palestine, were treated as class 'A' Mandates, applicable to territories whose independence had been provisionally recognized in the Covenant of the League of Nations”.

The Study then erroneously concludes:

“Only in the case of Palestine did the Mandate, with its inherent contradictions, lead not to the independence provisionally recognized in the Covenant, but towards conflict that was to continue six decades later.”

However the 1937 Peel Commission Report comprehensively debunks the Study’s concocted claims

“The Mandate [for Palestine] is of a different type from the Mandate for Syria and the Lebanon and the draft Mandate for Iraq. These latter, which were called for convenience “A” Mandates, accorded with the fourth paragraph of Article 22. Thus the Syrian Mandate provided that the government should be based on an organic law which should take into account the rights, interests and wishes of all the inhabitants, and that measures should be enacted ‘to facilitate the progressive development of Syria and the Lebanon as independent States.’ The corresponding sentences of the draft Mandate for Iraq were the same. In compliance with them National Legislatures were established in due course on an elective basis. Article 1 of the Palestine Mandate, on the other hand, vests ‘full powers of legislation and of administration,’ within the limits of the Mandate, in the Mandatory.”

The Study for reasons unknown completely ignores this detailed Peel Commission rebuttal.

The Study’s unchallenged statements  – seemingly authentic bearing United Nations imprimatur – appear on many websites including:

1. The Rights Forum – which claims to strive for a rights-based policy of the Netherlands and the European Union with regard to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. On 10 December 2009, the International Day of Human Rights, The Rights Forum was launched by its Chairman former Dutch Prime Minister Andreas van Agt – assisted by an Advisory Council of former Ministers and Professors in International Law. 

2. The Global Education Project – which states it adheres to rigorous standards and strives for an impartial and comprehensive presentation of the most relevant information necessary for both accurate and adequate education.

3. ProCon.org – which asserts it is America’s leading source for non-partisan information and civic education - serving more than 25 million people each year including teachers and students in more than 9000 schools in all 50 states and 90 foreign countries. It claims that 34 US state governments,17 US state Departments of Education, 23 foreign governments and 22 US federal agencies have cited ProCon.org materials.

A large number of anti-Israel sites and books have also embraced these Study’s false claims.
However the biggest fish snared in the Study’s web of deceit is the United Nations own primary judicial branch – the International Court of Justice – which in paragraph 70 of its Advisory Opinion of July 9, 2004 stated: 

“Palestine was part of the Ottoman Empire. At the end of the First World War, a class ‘A’ Mandate for Palestine was entrusted to Great Britain by the League of Nations, pursuant to paragraph 4 of Article 22 of the Covenant. ...” 

The Study’s fabricated narrative has certainly reaped – and continues to reap – huge dishonest dividends.