The Libya Precedent

Monday, April 11, 2011
Jack Kinsella - Omega Letter Editor

“We are facing a diplomatic-political tsunami that the majority of the public is unaware of and that will peak in September.” - Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak

The Palestinian Authority is planning to cash in on the wave of unrest and uncertainty sweeping the Middle East, working behind the scenes to build support for a UN resolution welcoming the State of Palestine as a member whose territory includes all of the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem.

That includes land that Israel has controlled for forty years, including some Israel had intended to keep in any two-state solution scenario. Especially Jerusalem.

In the event that such a resolution was to pass, Israel would automatically be an occupying force on land belonging to a fellow UN member.

Ehud Barak called the situation “very dangerous” and said that “paralysis, rhetoric and inaction” will only serve to deepen Israel’s international isolation.

Unfortunately for Israel, paralysis, rhetoric and inaction when it comes to America's allies are the Obama administration’s strong suits.

When strong, decisive leadership was demanded during Iran’s failed revolution in 2009, Obama was on the golf course. For six long days, Iran teetered, waiting for some word from the United States.

When Obama finally broke his silence to condemn the Iranian government's reaction to the demonstrations, his criticism was tempered by his reference to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as "President" Ahmadinejad and to Ayatollah Ali Khameni as "Supreme Leader."

The demonstrators heard what they needed to hear. Obama recognized Ahamadinejad's presidency as legitimate while acknowledging Khameni as Iran's 'Supreme Leader'.

Since the catalyst for the revolt was Khameni's legitimization of Ahmadinejad's election, Obama's 'condemnation' cut the legs out from under the revolution. Obama justified his inaction by saying he “didn’t want to meddle” in Iran’s internal affairs.

When Hosni Mubarak’s reign was imperiled, Obama lost no time meddling in Egypt’s internal affairs, calling for his ouster with no regard for how it might impact Israel.

He lost even less time intervening militarily in Libya, devoid of either legal justification or Congressional support.

But the so-called “Arab Spring” isn’t the catalyst for backing the Israelis into a corner. It is the justification.

One wonders why Obama the great peacemaker would lead the US headlong into an unplanned, ill-conceived and ultimately useless military excursion against, of all people, his pastor’s old friend Muammar Ghadaffi?

Especially without the advice and consent of the Congress? And without any clear threat to any US interests?And without any endgame strategy -- or even and endgame?

I am starting to suspect that the only purpose for the attack on Libya is to establish a precedent.

“And in that day will I make Jerusalem a burdensome stone for all people: all that burden themselves with it shall be cut in pieces, though all the people of the earth be gathered together against it.”(Zechariah 12:3)

Obama had plenty of time to go to the Congress for authorization. He probably would have gotten it, too. But he didn’t, even though bypassing Congress violated the Constitution and could even justify articles of impeachment.

But Obama didn’t even try. Instead, he worked the Arab League as if it was the US Senate and the UN Security Council as if it was the Congress.

Armed only with international authorizations, he proceeded to commit US forces to combat in what the War Powers Act defines as an illegal war.

One can want Ghadaffi removed, Ghadaffi can deserve to be removed, and it might be extremely satisfying for him to be removed, but none of those reasons make the war legal. And Obama knows it, which is why nobody in the administration will call it a war.

Again, we have this problem of discerning whether Obama is a brilliant strategist playing six moves ahead of everyone else – or if he is the most incompetent buffoon ever trusted with the keys to the nuclear football.

In September, 2009 the Palestinian Prime Minister announced his government would seek statehood within two years. Last September, President Obama said that he expected to have a framework for an independent Palestinian state within one year.

And this September, the Palestinian Authority says it is prepared to take his membership before the UN General Assembly. Thanks to the Islamic and Arab majorities at the UN, it is expected to pass the General Assembly easily.

Membership is determined by the General Assembly and not by the Security Council. In the GA there are no vetoes. In the GA, Washington’s voice is no louder than that of Micronesia’s.

What would a unilateral declaration of statehood mean to Israel? It would mean that Israel would then be in daily violation of the rights of a legal UN member state with all the legal and diplomatic consequences thereunto appertaining.

Using the intervention in Libya as our guide, it means that the UN and Arab League would be perfectly justified in ordering no-fly and no-go zones in Israel to defend Palestinian ‘patriots’ seeking to repatriate their own land.

Using that same template, President Obama could order the United States forces to intervene militarily against Israel, without either the consultation or approval of the Congress. If Obama wants to duck questions, he can always order the assault and then go on vacation for a couple of weeks.

In Ha’aretz last week, Ari Shavit compared the risks posed to Israel in 2011 to the biggest military setback Israel ever faced, the 1973 war. The Yom Kippur War was the closest Israel had ever come to being annihilated by the Arab enemy.

He wrote that “2011 is going to be a diplomatic 1973,” because a Palestinian state will be recognized internationally.

“Every military base in the West Bank will be contravening the sovereignty of an independent U.N. member state.” He added, “A diplomatic siege from without and a civil uprising from within will grip Israel in a stranglehold.”

Mikhail Jubran, writing for the Palestinian Chronicle, called 2011 “The Year of Living Dangerously.”

Did you notice that it’s only April?

Story source
here



If this planned resolution should pass, and I believe it will pass, plus, any establishment of no-fly zones would open the door for UN warplanes and UN "boots on the ground" against Israel - using military force to insure compliance with the new Palestinian state. If that should happen, then, in my opinion we would see a fire ignited in the Middle East and elsewhere as never before seen.

Don

Teheran Vows to Blow up the Heart of Israel if Attacked

10.09.2009

IRAN would "blow up the heart" of Israel if it was attacked by the Jewish state or the US, a Revolutionary Guards official was quoted today as saying.

"Even if one American or Zionist missile hits our country, before the dust settles, Iranian missiles will blow up the heart of Israel," the IRNA news agency quoted Mojtaba Zolnour as saying.

Zolnour is a deputy representative of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in the elite Guards force.

Iranian officials have previously said Tehran would retaliate in event of an Israeli or US attack.

Earlier this year, a senior commander said Iranian missiles could reach Israeli nuclear sites. Israel is believed to be the only nuclear-armed Middle East state.

Israel has not ruled out military action if diplomacy fails to end a dispute over Iran's nuclear ambitions, echoing U.S. policy, although Washington is engaged in a drive to resolve the issue through direct talks with Iran.

The West suspects the Islamic state is covertly seeking to develop nuclear weapons, which Iran denies.

"The Zionist regime and the United States cannot risk attacking Iran," Zolnour said in the holy Shi'ite city of Qom, citing Iranian military and technological advances, IRNA reported.

The Australian, 20 Aug 2009 At talks in Geneva on Oct. 1, Iran agreed with six world powers - the US, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany - to give U.N. experts access to a newly-disclosed uranium enrichment plant south of Tehran.

From: News.Com.Au

Baruch atem b'Shem, Yeshua

UN School a Weapons Dump and Rocket Site

January 06, 2009
The UN Gaza school was a weapons dump (updated)
Ethel C. Fenig
Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs sets us straight about that UN school "blown up" by Israelis killing "innocent civilians."

The UN and the mainstream media are wailing and accusing Israel of war crimes (yes, again) after the IDF returned fire at a UN school from which Palestinians were firing mortars.


The explosives and booby traps installed in the school by Hamas then blew up, killing dozens of people.


Yes, that's what happens. If Hamas killers fire from a hospital, a mosque, a school which they proudly taunted the Israelis were booby trapped and filled with explosives, they have no right to complain when Israelis return fire and the building explodes.


Where were the UN personnel as Hamas operatives brought in the explosives, installed the booby traps? They were probably helping them. As did the International Red Cross.


Human Wrongs Watch and the oh so sensitive Europeans who are now wailing that civilians are being harmed in Gaza just didn't notice--or more accurately, didn't care--when Israeli civilians, deliberately targeted by Hamas and its rockets, were killed and injured.

And that's not rocket science.

Update:

A previous headmaster of the Gaza UN school of weapons dumping and terrorism was, according to this May 5, 2008 Reuters exclusive,

By day, Awad al-Qiq was a respected science teacher and headmaster at a United Nations school in the Gaza Strip. By night, Palestinian militants say, he built rockets for Islamic Jihad.


When an Israeli air strike killed this Hamas respected educator last May it

embarrassed a U.N. agency which has long had to rebuff Israeli accusations that it has aided and abetted guerrillas fighting the Jewish state.

In interviews with Reuters, students and colleagues, as well as U.N. officials, denied any knowledge of Qiq's work with explosives. And his family denied he had any militant links at all, despite a profusion of Islamic Jihad posters at his home.

But militant leaders allied to the enclave's ruling Hamas group hailed him as a martyr who led Islamic Jihad's "engineering unit" -- its bomb makers. They fired a salvo of improvised rockets into Israel in response to his death.

So Hamas is responsible for killing its own civilians. But will Israel critics, the UN, Human Wrongs Watch and all the so called humanitarians dare blame Hamas and not Israel? Of course not; they'll still twist and turn and ignore facts to blame Israel.

And while the UN, Hamas and the usual gang of well you know who, huff and puff indignantly , Israel released the following regarding the sad situation at the UN school. Oh sure, those huff and puff hot air "neutral" observers will object that it is self serving but it is a more factual and straightforward account than from other not so disinterested observers.

Today, a reported 30 Palestinians were killed in a heartrending tragedy at a school in Jebaliya. Initial investigations indicate that Hamas terrorists fired mortar bombs from the area of the school towards Israeli forces, who returned fire towards the source of the shooting. The Israeli fire landed outside the school, yet a series of explosions followed, indicating the probable presence of munitions and explosions in the building. Intelligence indicates that among those killed were Immad Abu Iskar and Hassan Abu Iskar, two known Hamas mortar crewmen. (italics added)


So was this UN Gaza school still being used as a cover for a weapons dump as Hamas continues to hide behind "innocent civilians" using them as shields? And, in the horrible realm of the possible, did the two dead mortar crewmen deliberately set off the explosives in a grisly glorious act of Islamic jihad martyrdom?
Given Hamas' avowed promises fulfilled by equally deadly action these are legitimate assumptions that must be explored by all.

The Real 'Right of Return'

By Arlene Kushner
FrontPageMagazine.com | Wednesday, September 17, 2008

It is perverse, if not altogether surreal, that the international community persists in treating with seriousness the negotiations between the Palestinian Authority and Israel that deal in some considerable measure with the “key issue” of return of refugees.
Perhaps we can attribute this to a political correctness that makes it impossible for many to challenge a concept that the Palestinians are advancing with great passion. But if there is ever going to be peace in the Middle East, self-deluding perceptions based on political correctness must be abandoned.

It’s time to get real: The “right of return” does not exist.

UNRWA, the UN agency responsible for those Palestinians considered to be “refugees,” premises the existence of the “right” rather tenuously on the lead sentence in UN General Assembly Resolution 194, paragraph 11: “the refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbors should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date…”
But a closer look at this sentence and its broader context exposes the fatal weaknesses inherent in advancing it as the legal basis for “return”:
read the rest of the article: Right of Return