A Comprehensive Investigation of the Legality of Israeli Settlements Under International Law

Wallace Brand (Salubrius)

It is interesting that the claims of settlement illegality are always framed as illegal under International Law.  How many people worldwide who have accepted this claim have any knowledge whatsoever of International Law?  The technique used is reminiscent of the psychological warfare techniques of the Soviet, now Russian dezinformatsiya or disinformation group of the KGB and its successor.  If the Government of Israel were ever to engage in public diplomacy on this matter, I hope it would take into account some of what I have learned in my research for this paper.

Excerpt:

The Paris Peace Talks and the decision at San Remo  

To understand the San Remo Agreement we must go back in time to WWI when the Turkish Ottoman Empire entered the War on the side of Germany. Germany and Turkey lost that war. They entered into an Armistice Agreement on November 11, 1918. As the holder of territory after being the winner of a defensive war the Principal Allied War Powers — The British Commonwealth, France, the US, Italy and Japan — were entitled under International Law of long standing custom to occupy the Ottoman Empire until a peace treaty was signed that delineated boundaries agreed on by the parties. 

After the Paris Peace talks that were held commencing January 4th, 1919 the Principals determined to establish a world government to maintain peace to be entitled The League of Nations. Its Covenant or charter was Part one of the Treaty of Versailles. The participants to the Paris Peace talks included the Principal War Powers and European claimants primarily interested in territories in Europe. 

Even before the end of the war, in November, 1917 the Lord Balfour Policy had been established as British policy that World Jewry would be the beneficiary of the trust of the political or national rights to Palestine. Both Arabs and Jews interested in territories in the Middle East were also present at the Peace Talks in Paris and submitted their claims there. 

The Arabs claims were made under the auspices of King Ibn Hussayn, however they were presented by Lawrence of Arabia and also through George Antonius. Antonius brought up Arab and French claims conflicting with the Balfour Declaration, notably claims based on the Hussayn--‐McMahon correspondence and the secret Sykes--‐Picot Agreement. Antonius had made a careful study of these and his arguments initially seemed quite convincing that the British had sold the same horse three times. 

The Zionist Organization made the following claim for a two-step process in which the territory would first become a Jewish National Home and then would become a reconstituted Jewish state:

"Palestine shall be placed under such political, administrative and economic conditions as will secure the establishment there of the Jewish National Home and ultimately render possible the creation of an autonomous Commonwealth, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non--‐ Jewish communities in Palestine or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.[emphasis added]

 

Read Part I of the Report 

 Download the Entire Report (59 Pages in PDF format)

Wallace Brand (Salubrius) is a retired lawyer. He worked for several government agencies, among which were the Federal Power Commission and the Antitrust Division of the US Department of Justice. He also had a private practice representing small non profit utilities against large established utilities. As a result of the attacks on 9/11, he has become an activist against terrorism.

Source: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2385304

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

No Time to Spare: Talking about Israel’s Legal Grounds

by Arlene Kushner


If the Israeli building in Judea and Samaria destroys the peace process, then, Lars Faaborg-Andersen, the EU ambassador to Israel, declared just days ago, “Naturally, the blame will be put squarely on Israel’s doorstep.”
 
Naturally: We wouldn’t expect anything else of the EU.  The issue here is not that this is a surprise, but rather that Israel is being forewarned: The government must consider its official stance now, before that blame has been levied:

It is time for Israel to enunciate a policy that directly addresses her rights.

It is two years since Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu appointed a three-person committee, chaired by former High Court Justice Edmond Levy, to examine the situation of the settlements. The Committee’s report – “The Status of Building in Judea and Samaria” – was released on July 8, 2012.

While we have it on good authority that the prime minister was initially enthusiastic about the report, once he began to assess the opposition that was mounting against it, he decided to table it.  In several quarters, this document is viewed as a radical departure from Israeli government policy – a departure that would be highly problematic in the context of the current political situation.

I will argue, however, that – rather than representing a radical departure from Israeli government policy – the report offers a reiteration of what has been normative policy.  The perception that it is radical has been fostered because of the erosion of Israeli positions in the more than 20 years since the onset of Oslo.

Quite simply, the Israeli government has become reluctant to speak out in a forthright fashion in its own behalf.  As a result, not infrequently, government officials have conducted themselves in a fashion that has not been congruent with official policies.

The report has the capacity to pull the government back to where it needs to be. Its conclusions constitute the heart of the matter, and for the moment I would leave all else aside.  The report’s findings, based on historical and legal evidence, are that Israel’s position in Judea and Samaria is sui generis (unique), that Israel is not an occupier, and that the settlements are not illegal.  It further concludes that the Fourth Geneva Convention does not apply to Israel’s situation in Judea and Samaria.

No formal adoption of the report need be called for at this time, fraught as these days are with political pressures.  Rather, the report must serve as a focal point, a tool for invigorating national dialogue on a pressing issue: the matter of Israel’s legal grounds in Judea and Samaria.

This is not a dialogue that can be delayed.  That is the crucial point here.  If Israel does not publicly enunciate her case before the EU draws its inevitable conclusions about Israeli culpability, her position will be far less effective.  For then Israeli claims of rights to the land will appear to be simply a defensive maneuver – a reaction and not a legitimate position.

For the last several months, Israel has been engaged, at least theoretically, in negotiations with the Palestinian Authority. During this time, PA officials – who never compromise on their positions – have persisted in demanding that Israel return to the “1967 border.”  They maintain unendingly that Israel is an “occupier” in Judea and Samaria, and eastern Jerusalem, all referred to as “Palestinian land.”

The international community, perversely intent on appeasing the Palestinian Authority, and motived in no small part by a blatant anti-Israel bias, is more than content to accept the PA claims.  The settlements are “illegal,” we’re told, or “illegitimate,” which comes to the same thing.  Israeli building in Judea and Samaria prevents peace from bursting out.

Yet, rather than addressing the charges head on, the Israeli government responds by speaking about security:  We cannot go back to the pre-1967 temporary armistice line (which is never even clearly identified as such), as it would not afford us with security.  We must retain the Jordan Valley against the threat of jihadist forces approaching from the east.  And so forth.

The Levy Report comes to tell us that this argument is sorely inadequate.  It challenges Israelis to refocus their attention; in the end, it is not the document – which draws on a host of extant sources – that is important, but rather the issue of Israel’s legal grounds.

On November 29, 2012, the UN General Assembly ‒ in response to a petition by the UN representative from “Palestine”‒ passed Resolution 67/19, upgrading “Palestine” to “non-member observer status.”

Reacting to this unilateral action, which contravened Oslo agreements, the Cabinet passed Resolution 5251, prefaced by the following:

The Jewish People has a natural, historical and legal right to its homeland and to its eternal capital, Jerusalem
The State of Israel, as the state of the Jewish People, has a right and claim to areas whose status is in dispute.

Ah, then this is government policy. How unfortunate that this language is not drawn upon as a matter of course in public statements issued by the Israeli government.  How sad that the world at large, not to mention much of the Israeli populace, is unaware of this Israeli policy.

It is imperative that the Israeli government begin to speak in terms of Israel’s legal grounds. There is not a moment to spare.


Arlene Kushner, author, writer, and blogger – www.arlenefromisrael.info – is co-chairing the Campaign to Promote Israel’s Legal Grounds and the Levy Report.

Source: http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/arlene-kushner/no-time-to-spare-talking-about-israels-legal-grounds/

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Israel's Growing Role in Southern Syria

by Ehud Yaari

Concerned about the possible drift of al-Qaeda affiliates to areas adjacent to the Golan Heights border, Israel finds itself obliged to increase its assistance to local rebel militias in southern Syria.

As the fighting in Syria rages, Israel has been moving cautiously and often reluctantly toward assuming a modest role in the civil war, restricted to areas along the Golan Heights frontier line. What began as a purely humanitarian step -- extending emergency medical aid to injured and sick Syrians from neighboring villages -- has by now reportedly expanded into a well-developed mechanism for providing a whole range of items, from medications to food, fuel, clothes, heaters, and more. One should assume that the same understandings which allowed over 600 wounded Syrians to be evacuated for treatment in Israeli hospitals -- including a special military field hospital on the Golan -- are facilitating other forms of assistance as well. A significant operation of this type indicates that a system of communications and frequent contacts have been established with the local rebel militias, since the evacuation of the injured and their return to Syria seem to function flawlessly.

These developments bring to mind the establishment of "The Good Fence" along the Israel-Lebanon border when civil war erupted there in the mid-1970s. Yet unlike in Lebanon, the Israeli forces involved in the current Golan-based assistance effort have been very careful not to operate inside Syrian territory or assume responsibility for the villages in question, most of which are populated by a mixture of Sunnis, Druze, and Circassians, along with various armed factions.

Israel initially opted to remove itself from the bloody quagmire in Syria. It even accepted without protest its exclusion from the latest Geneva II peace conference, despite Israel's major stake in how the conflict is settled and its longstanding bilateral accord with Syria -- the 1974 Separation of Forces Agreement, which is still in effect. Yet Israeli concerns about the war's consequences have been aggravated by the emergence of al-Qaeda affiliates and other radical Islamist militias, which have gained preeminence among rebel units in many parts of central and northern Syria. Israel apparently may feel obliged to take unpublicized measures aimed at preventing or at least slowing the movement of such fighters to territory south of Damascus, particularly those representing the al-Qaeda affiliates Jabhat al-Nusra and the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS).

The area in question stretches from the Golan frontier up to Mount Druze in the east, and between the southern suburbs of Damascus and the city of Deraa, where the Syrian uprising was first ignited in 2011. The local militias formed in this region's villages are recognized as a potentially effective barrier to a takeover by al-Qaeda disciples. Although Jabhat al-Nusra has established a presence in the vicinity of Deraa and close to the meeting point of the Rukkad and Yarmouk Rivers, the overall situation in the south does not follow the pattern witnessed in other parts of Syria, where radicals have asserted themselves at the forefront of the rebellion.

For example, military commanders have the last word in other parts of the country, but southern militias are often directed by civilian elders. Many of them have come to view Israel as a temporary ally under the present circumstances. Emboldened by their belief that the Israel Defense Forces will indirectly protect their back, these militias have battled troops from the Assad regime's 90th and 61st Brigades, which are based in the area. When regime artillery units fire on rebel formations along the Golan frontier and an occasional stray shell lands on the Israeli side of the border fence, the IDF is indeed quick to retaliate with a single Tammuz missile directed at the position from where the shells were fired. Otherwise, however, the IDF refrains from any intervention, even when clashes occur very close to Israeli positions, sometimes with regime tanks driving within meters of the border.

President Bashar al-Assad's main interest in the south is to ensure the safety of the main highway between Damascus and Deraa and maintain a hold over parts of the latter city. He has also ordered his generals to retain Quneitra, the capital of the district bordering Israel, as well as the stretch of Druze villages to the north along the eastern slopes of Mount Hermon. So far, the regime has managed to achieve these goals and does not seem worried about losing its grip on the rest of the region, which has little strategic significance for the outcome of the current struggle.

The regime is also keen on keeping the southern Druze community out of the fight. Based mainly on Mount Druze east of Deraa, this community could play a major role in shaping realities on the ground in the south. For now, it prefers to sit on the fence until Assad's prospects of survival are clarified. Traditionally, though, Syrian Druze have special ties to the Hashemite court in Jordan and were once considered by Israeli strategist Gen. Yigal Allon as natural future allies of the Jewish state.

For their part, Israel and Jordan share similar interests in southern Syria. King Abdullah II is no less worried about the possible appearance of numerous al-Qaeda militants along his border. Accordingly, Amman is cultivating an array of local militias close to the long frontier with Syria, taking advantage of the fact that many inhabitants of southern Syria and northern Jordan belong to the same tribes. There are also many reports -- repeatedly dismissed by Jordanian authorities -- of a clandestine "operations room" in Amman where Jordanian military and intelligence officers coordinate military assistance to local rebel groups alongside Saudi and Western advisors. If such reports are correct, the Israeli part of the effort should be viewed as complementing but not necessarily coordinated with the Jordanian endeavor.

In all likelihood, the inability of al-Qaeda affiliates to seize the leading role in the south is due not only to alleged Israeli or Jordanian involvement, but also to the jihadists' preoccupation with the war in the north, where ISIS has been battling with the Islamic Front and rival group Jabhat al-Nusra (backed by al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri) in recent weeks in addition to fighting the regime. Yet ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra have dramatically increased their strength -- according to Israeli intelligence estimates, they now total 40,000 men. If they launched a concerted effort to extend their foothold to the south, they would pose a major test to local militias that have yet to be seriously challenged. In that scenario, Israel and Jordan would have to decide whether to sit idly while al-Qaeda becomes entrenched along their borders.

In light of these concerns, preventing the southward expansion of extremist Islamist groups is becoming a larger priority in tackling the overall Syrian problem. If al-Qaeda affiliates take charge of the regions bordering Israel and Jordan, new terrorist threats would arise, potentially exporting Syria's bloodshed to its neighbors. Such a development would give al-Qaeda freedom of action over a vast area stretching from west of Baghdad to southern Syria. Put another way, the organization would have achieved its long-sought objective: a front with Israel.

Ehud Yaari is a Lafer International Fellow with The Washington Institute and a Middle East commentator for Israel's Channel Two television.

Source: http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/view/israels-growing-role-in-southern-syria

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

'Income Inequality?' How Reagan Handled It

by Robert Knight

Now that we've solved the "healthcare crisis" with a government healthcare takeover, another bad idea -- the guaranteed income -- has resurfaced, and Republicans who should know better are flirting with it. 

The guaranteed income, by which the government provides cash subsidies to people below a certain income level, is an unrealized scheme floating on the vapors of the Great Society. It's a recipe for disaster for the very people who have already suffered their share of well-meant disasters -- the poor.

Forty-two years ago, on Feb. 1, then-California Gov. Ronald Reagan explained why to Congress. More on that, but first, some background. 

On Jan. 8, 1964, Lyndon Johnson declared the "War on Poverty." Some 20 trillion tax dollars later, the poor are still with us, and their lot in many ways is far worse. The Great Society and the sexual revolution's war on marriage shattered the black urban family, spawning crime, permanent dependency, addictions, and inner city areas that look like war zones. 

Even in California, America's agricultural and high-tech cornucopia, it took only six years for the War on Poverty to nearly bankrupt the state. 

The unfortunate embrace of destructive welfare policies has been bipartisan. On Aug. 8, 1969, Republican President Richard Nixon unveiled his Family Assistance Plan (FAP), the brainchild of Democrat Daniel Patrick Moynihan, his Assistant for Urban Affairs, who wrote a book, The Politics of a Guaranteed Income. 

In April 1970, the FAP bill easily passed the House Ways and Means Committee, drawing 21 yes votes. The only three nays came from conservative Democrats, back then when there was such a creature. Despite the usual media hoopla of progressive inevitability, Senate conservatives, along with some liberals who wanted the bill to go even further in redistributing income, rallied to kill it. 

But the bill kept coming back, even as the Great Society began wreaking havoc on the social structure in minority neighborhoods.

Into the breach stepped Ronald Reagan. The California governor and his aide, Robert B. Carleson, the architect of modern welfare reform, gave a blueprint for turning the tide and for avoiding the welfare state's seductive siren song. Their reforms, beginning in 1970, helped save California from bankruptcy while channeling more aid to the truly needy. 

On Feb. 1, 1972, in his only testimony before Congress, Reagan opposed HR 1, which would have established, among other things, a guaranteed income. 

Before the Senate Finance Committee, Mr. Reagan offered a blunt counter proposition:

"We should measure welfare's success by how many people leave welfare, not by how many more are added."

Mr. Reagan explained how California succeeded in reducing welfare rolls and costs:

"We insured adequate aid to the aged, the blind, the disabled, and children who are deprived of parental support and reduced aid to the non-needy with realistic work incentives so that funds could be redirected to the truly needy. Our program requires employable recipients to accept work if offered, and that if jobs are not available, to work in the community in order to remain eligible. Absent fathers are now legally indebted to the county for benefits paid to their families with a provision for wage attachments and property liens, if necessary...
"But maybe most important is the fact that the California plan retains most of the administration and responsibility for an effective and efficient welfare program at the level closest to those who benefit and those who must pay the bill."

At the heart of the Reagan/Carleson reforms was the idea of human dignity, as Mr. Reagan testified:

"It doesn't seem right to reduce a man's take-home pay with taxes and then send him a government dole which robs him of the feeling of accomplishment and dignity which comes from providing for his family by his own efforts. By the same token, we feel that the able-bodied recipient should be given the maximum opportunity to support his family by doing work in his community which will benefit the community."

The future president also explained what became the key strategy behind the success of the 1996 national welfare reform -- decentralization. States received block grants, while perverse incentives to increase their own welfare rolls were removed. It was the first time that welfare rolls decreased nationally. 

Mr. Reagan told Congress why states needed more autonomy from the federal government:

"It is almost impossible to hold a state accountable for effective administrative practices and policies under the present straight jacket of federal statutes, court interpretations, regulations, and abuses of administrative discretion. Give the states the broadest authority to administer the system with proper goals and objectives and then hold us accountable for our effectiveness in meeting these goals and objectives."

Confronted with Barack Obama's increasingly shrill redistributionist "income inequality" rhetoric, amplified through a servile media, conservatives need to remember Ronald Reagan's example and fight back with common sense and documented successes. 

The Carleson Center Welfare Reform Action Fund has a comprehensive plan for overhauling welfare entitled "Secure the Safety Net."Before Republicans fall for the Democrats' signs inviting them into new pools of policy quicksand, they would do well to give it a read.


Robert Knight is Senior Fellow for the American Civil Rights Union, which helped launch the Carleson Center for Public Policy.

Source: http://www.americanthinker.com/2014/01/income_inequality_how_reagan_handled_it.html

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Wrong About the Muslim World

by Paul Austin Murphy

Islam is nearly always in conflict with democracy, both historically and today. There is one single contemporary phenomenon which exemplifies this perfectly. Bizarrely, it's occurring in the West, not in the Muslim world. 

In the UK, Muslims -- from the BBC's Mo Ansar, Tell MAMA, the MCB, and the Muslim Parliament -- have carried out systematic and sometimes effective campaigns to bring about what amounts to sharia blasphemy law in the country. (Indeed a Liberty GB radio host is due to appear in court in March for the "hate crime" of criticizing Islam and Muslims.) These campaigns have focused on everything from books (Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses), to cartoons (the Danish cartoons), to pages on Facebook and even Twitter posts. 

One fundamental aspect of all democracies is free speech. It's crystal clear, then, that very many Muslims -- even here in the West -- have carried out organized campaigns against the freedom of speech. Now if that's happening in the UK and the West generally, what are the chances that the Muslim world as a whole will embrace the neo-con dream of "democracy for all"?

The term "neoconservative" seems to have been invented in 1973 by a socialist by the name Michael Harrington. In any case, it has certainly become a Leftist soundbite. Leftists use it at the drop of a hat. Or at least they did until they adopted "neo-liberalism" instead a few years ago (i.e., after the fire from the "neo-con war in Iraq" had burned out).

This isn't to say that people haven't classed themselves as neoconservatives. They have. I'm also quite prepared to say that the neo-cons were never a monolithic movement. 

In a certain sense, none of that really matters. It's the ideas that matter, not the people and not the classifications. 

So why use "neo-con" in the title even though certain neo-cons themselves were saying -- as far back as 1996 -- that neoconservatism is dead? I use the term simply because very many people do use the term "neo-con." And one place in which there seems to have been some consensus is on the impact neo-cons had on American foreign policy. So it's that subject alone which I'll deal with in this piece. 

Democracy For All?

Jeane Kirkpatrick expressed the motivation behind the "neo-con project" with this oft-quoted sentence:

"No idea holds greater sway in the mind of educated Americans than the belief that it is possible to democratize governments, anytime and anywhere, under any circumstances."

Authoritarian Regimes

In the early days, certain neo-cons made a distinction between authoritarian and totalitarian regimes. They believed that (some? all?) authoritarian regimes could eventually evolve into democracies but that totalitarian (or Marxist-Leninist) ones couldn't. It turned out that the Communist regimes did turn into democracies (at least in part); but that many of the authoritarian regimes didn't. Why was that?

Just as some early neo-cons made a distinction between totalitarian and authoritarian regimes, so distinctions can be made between authoritarian ones. And the one distinction which shall be made here is between the authoritarian regimes of Muslim countries and those of other countries. 

I'd say that the chance of authoritarian regimes in Muslim countries evolving into democracies are even slimmer than the chances of certain totalitarian regimes evolving into democracies. In fact some totalitarian regimes (the communist ones and also, possibly, China in the future) did evolve into democracies; but few Muslim regimes have ever really done so.

There were a handful -- or less -- of Muslim countries which were democratic in the 20th century. For example, Turkey after the First World War and Malaysia today. (Malaysia is a tricky example primarily because Muslims only make up 61% of a population which includes a very productive and large Chinese, usually Buddhist, contingent.) 

You will find that these few Muslim countries were democracies in spite of Islam, certainly not because of it. Indeed these countries became democracies to the extent that they managed to erase Islam from the state and, to varying degrees, from the social sphere as well. The less manifest Islam there was in these countries, the more democratic they became. Similarly, the more they become Islamic (as with Turkey and Syria today), the less they will be democracies. 

The simple reason for all this is that Islam, and therefore Muslim societies, cannot accommodate Western-style democracy (if there is another kind). Islam itself is against democracy; as countless contemporary Muslims have stated and Muslims have argued for around 1,400 years. There are indeed handfuls of Westernized, educated, and middle-class Muslims in the West who say otherwise. However, they have virtually zero influence in the Muslim world and it's not even clear whether all of them really do believe in democracy anyway. (They certainly don't believe in free speech.)

Jeane Kirkpatrick went on to explain why the democratization or liberalization of authoritarian, rather than totalitarian, regimes may work. She said:

"[Authoritarian regimes] do not disturb the habitual rhythms of work and leisure, habitual places of residence, habitual patterns of family and personal relations."

This is all about how the state in these countries doesn't really impinge on areas of everyday life. However, what if "the habitual rhythms of work and leisure" and the "habitual patterns of family and personal relations" themselves are not conducive to democracy or thoughts of freedom and liberty? What if habitual rhythms of work, leisure, family and personal relations are -- at least to some extent -- Islamic in nature? 

In other words, in Islamic societies it's not all the fault of the state. It's not even all the fault of the dictators either because they too are often tapping into various Islamic traits within Muslim countries.

Totalitarian Regimes

Jeane Kirkpatrick also offered us a classical account of totalitarian states. She wrote:

"[National Socialist and International Socialist states] claim jurisdiction over the whole life of the society and make demands for change that so violate internalized values and habits that inhabitants flee by the tens of thousands."

The main argument, from the early neo-cons, as to why totalitarian regimes couldn't evolve into democracies was that totalitarian regimes have total control of their people and authoritarian regimes don't. In fact some of the neo-cons were so convinced of their position on the unchangeable nature of totalitarian regimes that Kirkpatrick (again) and Norman Podhoretz, for example, said that Solidarity in Poland was bound to fail. 

Yet Islam, to use Kirkpatrick's words, also "claim[s] claim jurisdiction over the whole life of the society". In some -- or even many -- Islamic or Muslim states there is virtual total Islamic control over the people -- from the private to the public sphere. 

We can see that the some neo-cons failed to distinguish between totalitarian and authoritarian states and their societies. Or rather they often made such distinctions in the case of communist states; but they didn't do so when it came to Muslim or Islamic ones. In communist cases, the state was totalitarian but the peoples, on the whole, weren't. In Muslim states (which are both authoritarian and totalitarian), we also have peoples who follow what amounts to a totalitarian religion -- Islam. Muslim states have never really needed to fully impose Islam on their peoples to a large degree; though, of course, leaders like General Zia in Pakistan, for example, certainly attempted to do so (from 1979 onwards). 

Not only is Islamic control total in the private sphere, as well as imposed by the state (to varying degrees), Islam is also imposed at the community or village/town level as well. This means that the level of control the state has within Muslim countries is often replicated at the village/town level. Here, instead of state control, we have the Islamic control of local imams, elders, clerics, Islamic scholars, ulemas, Islamist activists, etc. There is also cooperation between these local areas of Islamic control and the state. But there's also conflict. However, the conflict often arises because the state itself is attempting to liberalize sharia law and, in response, local Muslims -- or at least many of them -- oppose such attempts.

The neo-cons also offered an almost Marxist analysis of the Muslim world in which it was claimed that "democracy and responsible governments" could limit the rise of Islamism. The first problem with this idea is the fundamental split that's simply assumed between Islamism and Islam (or between Islamists and most Muslims). The second is the assumption that Muslim peoples, Islamist or non-Islamist, really want Western-style democracy (or even any kind of democracy). 

The quasi-Marxist analysis became even more obvious when some neo-cons argued that the lack of jobs, or "economic opportunities," also led to the rise of Islamism and/or the lack of democracy. This discounts the economic vibrancy of parts of Malaysia, Indonesia, and even Saudi Arabia. In Indonesia and Malaysia Islamism is actually on the rise and Saudi Arabia has combined immense wealth with a severe lack of freedom and democracy. Here again the neo-cons completely discount Islam as an autonomous factor. In fact, as Marxists put it, they saw Islam as a mere "epiphenomenon of the socioeconomic material conditions which were underneath."

Paul Austin Murphy

Source: http://www.americanthinker.com/2014/02/wrong_about_the_muslim_world.html

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

The British Government's Responsibility for Northern Nigeria

by Alan Craig

"The British colonial masters took our land and handed it over to Muslim rulers... They gave us [non-Muslim groups] an inferior social and political role in the colonial hierarchical system in northern Nigeria, and that is exactly where we are right now." — Dr. Yusufu Taraki

It is a truth not universally acknowledged in Western politically-correct circles that Christianity has become the most persecuted religion in the world and that most of the oppression comes from the hands of Islam and in Muslim-majority areas.

Nowhere is this more true than in northern Nigeria where, in 2012, 70% of all Christians murdered worldwide were slain. Not only death but discrimination, too, is rife across the country's twelve northern Sharia states in which Christians and other minorities live with second-class dhimmi status, and with inferior rights to jobs, justice and worship.

Much of this inequity is Britain's responsibility, according to the keynote speaker at a recent human rights conference, a program of Gatestone Institute and organized by the Nigerian aid and advocacy charity Stefanos Foundation. 150 delegates from many minority groups met in Jos, a city on the fault-line between the mainly Christian south and the majority Muslim north, where, in September 2001, over a thousand people were reported killed in ethno-religious clashes. These clashes were followed by further major riots and fatalities in 2008 and 2010, and suicide-bomb attacks on Jos churches in February and March 2012.

Abubakar Shekau, leader of the Nigerian Islamist terrorist group Boko Haram, appears in a video communiqué claiming responsibility for an October 24, 2013 attack that killed 35 people.

The speaker was Dr. Yusufu Taraki, a mild-mannered academic who, given the keynote platform, talked with passion on the issues in which he has specialized. With a PhD in Social Ethics from Boston University, Massachusetts, and currently Professor of Theology and Social Ethics at Jos ECWA Theological Seminary (JETS), he was given a warm reception as he delivered his speech about the place of ethnic minority groups in northern Nigeria.

Nigeria was a British colony until 1960, during which time, he argued, "The British colonial masters took our land and handed it over to Muslim rulers... They gave us [non-Muslim groups] an inferior social and political role in the colonial hierarchical system in northern Nigeria, and that is exactly where we are right now."

When first published in his book The British Colonial Legacy In Northern Nigeria, this thesis earned Professor Turaki a British government ban from entering the UK.

Truth hurts even hardened British authorities, but Professor Turaki was bold enough in his speech to spread around the honors: "The worst kind of slavery in Africa was conducted by Arabs and Muslims," he said touching on another specialist subject. "The majority of African slaves went to the Middle East and Arab countries... not to the Caribbean, the US and Latin America." He advised the audience, for further information, to look into his book, Tainted Legacy: Islam, Colonialism and Slavery in Northern Nigeria.

Later, privately, he pointed out that, once British troops had conquered the northern Muslim forces of the Sokoto Caliphate and Kanem-Bornu Sultanate in 1902-1903 with the laudable objective of terminating their slave trade, the colonial administration and the defeated Fulani Muslim elite found they had much in common. They both had top-down authoritarian views of governance and an ordered elitist view of the world; they saw the many different non-Muslim groups across the north as pagan, uncivilized and inferior. "Read the memoir But Always As Friends by Sir Bryan Sharwood Smith, the last British governor of Northern Nigeria, to understand the British colonial outlook," Dr. Turaki said.

A corresponding Nigerian autobiography, My Life by Sir Ahmadu Bello, the Sardauna (traditional leader) of Sokoto and first Premier of the Northern Region after independence, also tellingly shows the Sardauna playing English cricket and Eton Fives. The English and Muslim Nigerian upper classes became close.

Working with the Fulani and Hausa Muslim elite, the colonialists instituted a system of "indirect rule" which was cheap and effective. A limited number of British administrators were placed at the top of the power structure; the educated Muslim elite were next; other Muslim groups were below them; and everyone else was at the bottom. Frequently the British would foist, say, a Fulani Muslim chief on a non-Muslim village or district, thereby disempowering the locals and creating an alienated hostile underclass.

Ironically, during colonial rule many of the pagan tribes converted to Christianity, which caused tension between British colonial authorities and British missionaries on the ground. The indigenous new Christians, actively supported by the missionaries, enjoyed "redemption lift" and began to assert a moral vitality, ethnic identity and spiritual independence that sometimes challenged the cozy Anglo-Islamic status quo.

But Nigerian Independence in 1960 saw the British depart, leaving behind unamended the unjust governing structure and unfettered Muslim hegemony across the north, which Professor Turaki describes as "internal colonialism." This was the seedbed of the crisis we see today.

The interventions in Libya and -- until thwarted by parliament -- Syria have amply demonstrated British Prime Minister David Cameron's liberal interventionism and his desire to reassert British power on the international stage. And, when it comes to issues such as gay rights, he has Commonwealth and former colonial countries specifically in his sights. To the fury of African leaders who want to protect their traditional values and cultures, he insists they must dance to his liberal gay agenda or risk losing overseas aid.

But Mr Cameron might do well to replace colonial arrogance with Christian humility; and he could, and should, acknowledge some British responsibility for the Nigerian crisis.

The Gatestone-Stefanos conference gave unique voice to minorities who, after half a century, continue to be marginalized across the north. Among other projects to rectify residual colonial injustice, the UK's Department for International Development (DfID) and the British High Commission in Nigeria should consider giving strong moral and financial support to this exceptional grassroots initiative.


Alan Craig

Source: http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/4146/uk-northern-nigeria

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Atrocity

by David Horowitz




There is a human tragedy smoldering in America’s inner cities. Twelve million poor children, mainly black and Hispanic, are trapped in failing government schools that are teaching them nothing. As a result, they will never get a chance at a middle-class life. Virtually every school board and every administration in inner city districts is controlled by Democrats, and has been for over fifty years. Everything that is wrong with inner city schools that policy can fix, Democrats are responsible for.

How bad is the inner-city school crisis? Almost half of black students in public schools, and almost half of Hispanic students drop out before graduation and fail to earn a diploma.[1] The dropout rates are especially high in urban areas with large minority populations, including such academic disaster zones as Washington, DC (57%), Trenton (59%), Camden (61.4%), Baltimore (65.4%), Cleveland (65.9%), and Detroit (75.1%).[2] As a result of high dropout rates, black and Hispanic students in these urban centers are denied the American dream and condemned to spend their lives in grinding poverty instead.

A significant percentage of black and Hispanic students who do manage to graduate are unable to read their own diplomas.[3] Overall, black high-school graduates are four academic years behind their white counterparts in achievement levels.[4] As political science professor Lydia G. Segal summed up the sad state of affairs in her book Battling Corruption in America’s Public Schools: “It is in cities such as New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Detroit, and Philadelphia where the largest numbers of children cannot read, write, and compute at acceptable levels and where racial gaps between whites and blacks and Latinos are widest. It is in large cities that minority boys in particular, trapped in poor schools, have the greatest chance of flunking out and getting sucked into the downward spiral of crime and prison.”[5]

The school boards and school districts that control the public schools in America’s largest inner cities – schools, which year-in, year-out, fail to educate poor minority children – are run by big-government Democrats and progressives, and have been for generations.[6]The public schools are government monopolies run as jobs programs for adults and slush funds for the teacher unions and the Democratic Party. Through these organizations, progressives have fought tooth and nail to prevent bad teachers from being fired and good teachers from being rewarded. They have spent millions on electoral campaigns to deny inner city parents access to voucher programs that would provide scholarships for their children to attend schools that would educate them. These same progressives, fully aware of the bankruptcy of public education, send their own children to expensive private schools, where they will get the education the public schools would deny them. When Vice President Al Gore, a supporter of teacher unions and opponent of school vouchers, was asked why he opposed school vouchers for black children while sending his own son to a private school, he said: “If I was the parent of a child who went to an inner-city school that was failing, I might be for vouchers, too.”[7]

This is a social atrocity that has to be stopped.  ”Atrocity” is the first web ad created by an organization I have created called Go For the Heart.  I chose Atrocity to be our first project because what’s happening to poor mainly black and Hispanic children in our public schools is an atrocity, and it is one around which there is a great media silence. That is because the atrocity is being committed by the Democratic Party and its union supporters. “Atrocity” is an attempt to break that silence.

Notes:

[1] “Leaving Boys Behind: Public High School Graduation Rates,” Jay P. Greene and Marcus A. Winters,Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, April 2006, No. 48, http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/cr_48.htm

[2] “‘Crisis’ Graduation Gap Found Between Cities, Suburbs” Greg Toppo, USA Today, August 1, 2008, http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2008-04-01-cities-suburbs-graduation_N.htm;
“School Budgets: The Worst Education Money Can Buy,” Blaire Briody, The Fiscal Times, June 6, 2011, http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Articles/2011/06/06/School-Budgets-The-Worst-Education-Money-Can-Buy.aspx#page1

[3] “Only 13 Percent of 2011 Black Graduates Proficient in Reading,” Danielle Wright, BET, August 23, 2011, http://www.bet.com/news/national/2011/08/23/report-only-13-percent-of-2011-black-graduates-proficient-in-reading.html.html

[4] “Good Public Schools … for the Rich,” Clint Bolick, Hoover Institution, October 30, 2004, No. 4, http://www.hoover.org/publications/hoover-digest/article/7057

[5] Lydia G. Segal, Battling Corruption in America’s Public Schools, Northeastern, 2003, p. xix

[6] “Liberalism’s Greatest Failure?,” Jonah Goldberg, National Review Online, September 28, 2010, http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/247989/liberalisms-greatest-failure-jonah-goldberg

[7] “The Hollow Man,” Linda A. DiVall, Los Angeles Times, August 13, 2000, http://articles.latimes.com/2000/aug/13/opinion/op-3539

David Horowitz

Source: http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/david-horowitz/atrocity/

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

IDF Allows first Peek into Secret Golan Heights Field Hospital

by Yifa Yaakov

Facility has treated 700 Syrians, from children to old men, breaking down stereotypes about ‘the Zionists’ as clashes continue across the fence

Israeli soldiers escort a wounded Syrian patient into a secret military field hospital in the Golan Heights. (photo credit: screen capture, Channel 2)

The Israeli military allowed cameras into a secret field hospital on the Syrian border for the first time.

On Friday evening, Channel 2 News aired footage of the fenced Golan Heights facility, which has treated over 700 Syrian patients since it was established less than a year ago. 

The hospital, staffed by soldiers in uniform, includes an emergency room, an intensive care unit, an operating theater, a mobile laboratory, a pharmacy and an x-ray facility. It treats Syrian patients who cross the border regardless of creed – or of where their loyalties lie.

The once-sporadic treatment of Syrian nationals in Israel has, by now, become routine, the report made clear: the wounded cross the border, and IDF medical teams deployed in the Golan Heights give them preliminary treatment. Those who are well enough are sent back across the border, and those who require further treatment are evacuated to the military hospital, a field commander at the facility told Channel 2. In this way, the hospital treats about a hundred Syrians per month.

Maj. Itay Zoarets, a senior surgeon, described the situation as “surreal.”

He said that while soldiers and commanders in the IDF’s medical corps underwent rigorous training to learn how to treat battle wounds, the Israeli military hadn’t encountered such injuries since the last big wars.

Israeli soldiers treat a wounded Syrian man at a secret military field hospital in the Golan Heights. (photo credit: screen capture, Channel 2)

The wounded Syrians, he said, suffer from grave stomach and head injuries, as well as amputations and a range of other injuries. Extreme cases are transferred to Israeli civilian hospitals in the north and center of the country.

The patients also cross the border armed with gross misconceptions about Israel and its people.

“They say that before the previous week, before they came, they thought we were the Great Satan, the enemies, and looked for the tails between our legs,” Zoarets said.

He added that the field hospital was shrouded in secrecy when it was first established – even within the IDF itself.

“We didn’t know where we were going at first,” he said. “They just set up a medical team without outlining the mission … The army called, so we came.”

A nurse at the hospital, Capt. Shirin Parizadeh, said that while the Syrian patients were “suspicious” towards the Israeli medical team, “that’s something we get over together.”

Military nurse Shireen Parizadeh prepares to treat a Syrian patient. (photo credit: screen capture, Channel 2)

Firas, a rebel fighter who was being treated at the hospital at the time of filming, blasted Syrian President Bashar Assad’s government for neglecting and oppressing the people of Syria.

“Every day there are aerial bombings of cities. Each city is bombed three or four times by fighter planes,” Firas, who defected from Assad’s army to join the rebels fighting to topple him, said.

“Bashar [Assad] didn’t take care of us. Here, in Israel, we are being taken care of. Bashar doesn’t care about us, whereas Israel does. Bashar fires shells at us, he doesn’t care about us at all.”

Another patient, Latif, said, “They taught us about the Zionist enemy, the Zionist oppressor. But when we saw the Zionists, [we realized] they were nothing like what we’d been told. They’re human beings just like us, human, and even more than that.”

Ahmed, who was also being treated at the hospital at the time of filming, said that in the aftermath of the uprising against Assad, “we came to understand who is an enemy and who is a friend.”

He said that as the fighting raged on, many Syrians began to doubt what they’d been taught about the countries across the border from their own.

A military hospital set up by the IDF in the Golan Heights in order to treat wounded Syrians. (photo credit: screen capture, Channel 2)

“The regime convinced us everyone around us is our enemy,” he said.

Col. Tarif Bader said that while the decision to administer humanitarian aid to populations outside of Israel was always a dilemma, in this case, it was “the right choice” – one he was proud to be a part of.

He added that most patients suffered from “serious battle wounds.” Among them were men as old as 83, as well as young children, who another staff member described as strong and communicative. ”They don’t look frightened,” he said.

The staff described the many moments that made working at the field hospital a surreal experience. Once, when a mortar shell fell near the hospital, they said, soldiers and Syrians alike were running towards what little shelter the small base had to offer.

“It’s an incredible situation,” Zoarets said of his experiences, before being called away to tend to a new arrival.

Israeli soldiers disembark from a helicopter en route to a secret military hospital on the border with Syria. (photo credit: screen capture, Channel 2)

Political analyst Ehud Ya’ari said this hospital is just the tip of the iceberg, hinting at the many connections Israel has forged across the border and the efforts it has made to prevent clashes in which al-Qaeda-linked forces are involved — clashes that have been taking place just over the border from the field hospital — from spilling over into Israel.

The Syrian uprising began with largely peaceful calls for reform in March 2011 and escalated into armed conflict in response to a military crackdown. It has since transformed into a regional proxy war with Iran and Saudi Arabia supporting opposing sides, and has claimed the lives of over 130,000 people so far.

Foreign fighters and Islamic extremists have infiltrated the opposition rebels, triggering infighting that has undermined the rebellion against Assad and exacerbated the humanitarian crisis brought on by the conflict.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Yifa Yaakov

Source: http://www.timesofisrael.com/idf-allows-first-peek-into-secret-field-hospital-on-syrian-border/

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.