Targeted killings - OK for US but not for Israel
A recent front page of The New York Times featured an article entitled "Drug chieftains tied to Taliban are US targets - Shift in Afghan policy." It stated that:
According to this newly announced policy, 50 alleged civilian drug dealers have now been made subject to targeted killing if they cannot be captured. When Israel used targeted killings to eliminate Sheikh Salah Shehade, Sheikh Ahmed Ismail Yassin and Abdel Aziz al-Rantissi, who were admitted leaders of terrorist groups that were engaging in combat against Israeli civilians, it faced a tsunami of condemnation from the US, the EU, the UK, the French, the Italians, the Russians, the UN and The Vatican. Yet there has been no comparable outcry from the international community, despite the fact that the US's policy is less defensible morally and legally. Demjanjuk will win
Regardless of the outcome of John Demjanjuk's trial in Munich, this mass-murder has emerged as the winner. He will have lived almost 90 years. He has experienced the love of his multigenerational family. He is a hero in his hometown and throughout many parts of the world. He has been called an American Dryfus by Patrick Buchanan and characterized as a victim of Jewish persecution by many neo-Nazi Web sites. When he dies, there will be tears of sadness and pride from his children and grandchildren. In sum, he has achieved what he denied his thousands of victims, namely the ability to have descendants and see them live happy and fulfilling lives. Nor is Demjanjuk alone in having achieved such a victory. The vast majority of hands-on Nazi mass murderers have lived guilt-free, fulfilling and good lives. Survivors of the Holocaust have suffered far more trauma, mental illness and feelings of guilt than have the perpetrators. In this topsy-turvy world of immorality, members of the Germans SS proudly placed their membership in that murderous organization on their resumes, while many victims tried to hide their victimization from family, friends and potential employers. It is argued by some that the conviction of the guilty is necessary to achieve justice. But there can never be justice for the Holocaust. This is not to say that there should be no trial. But do not expect the outcome to produce anything like justice. Will Hamas's new "Culture War" acknowledge its historic ties to Nazism?
Hamas, the terrorist organization that specializes in targeting civilians, has now decided, according to a New York Times headline, to shift "from rockets to culture war" in an effort to garner public support for its cause. Part of its ongoing public relations campaign is to portray the Israelis as the "new Nazis" and the Palestinians as the "new Jews." To bring about this transformation, it must engage in a form of Holocaust denial that erases the historical record of widespread Palestinian complicity with the "old Nazis" in perpetrating the real Holocaust. It has become an important part of the mantra of Hamas supporters that neither the Palestinians people nor its leadership played any role in the Holocaust. Listen to Mohammad Ahmadinejad talking to students at Columbia University: "If [the Holocaust] is a reality, we need to still question whether the Palestinian people should be paying for it or not. After all, it happened in Europe. The Palestinian people had no role to play in it. So why is it that the Palestinian people are paying the price of an event they had nothing to do with? ...The Palestinian people didnt commit any crime. They had no role to play in World War II. They were living with the Jewish communities and the Christian communities in peace at the time." The conclusion that is supposed to follow from this "fact" is that the establishment of Israel in the wake of the Nazi genocide of the Jewish people was unfair to the Palestinians. Central to this claim is that neither the Palestinian people nor their leadership bore any responsibility for the Holocaust, and if any reparations are owed the Jewish people, it is from Germany and not from the Palestinians. The propounders of this historical argument suggest that the West created the Jewish state out of guilt over the Holocaust. It might have been understandable if a portion of Germany (or Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, France, Austria, or other collaborator nations) had been allocated for a Jewish homeland - but why Palestine? Palestine, according to this claim, was as much a "victim" as were the Jews. I hear this argument on university campuses around the United States, and even more so in Europe. The truth is that the Palestinian leadership, supported by the Palestinian masses, played a significant role in Hitler's Holocaust. US support for Israel must remain bipartisan
Melanie Phillips has written a critique of me because I remain a Democrat and continue to support President Barack Obama, despite his recent statements regarding expansion of Israeli settlements and other matters relating to the Middle East conflict. Other conservative supporters of Israel have joined her in attacking me as well. See e.g., Jonathan Tobin. This is how she put it: But just like the majority of American Jews, getting on for 80 per cent of whom voted for Obama, he is a Democrat supporter who is incapable of acknowledging the truth about this President. For most American Jews, the horror of even entertaining the hypothetical possibility that they might ever in a million years have to vote for a Republican is so great they simply cannot see what is staring them in the face -- that this Democratic President is lethal for both Israel and the free world." She accuses me of being "blind" and says "he doesn't get it." The UN kangaroo "investigation" of Israeli "war crimes"
Just as Spain's national Court decided to shelve a phony war crime investigation of a 2002 Israeli air strike in Gaza, a group of lawyers and military experts assigned by the United Nations Human Rights Council continued its phony investigation of "the grave violations of human rights in the occupied Palestinian Territory, particularly due to the recent Israeli military attacks against the occupied Gaza Strip." The UN Human Rights Council is a
scandal. It's a successor to the defunct UN Human Rights
Commission. Both organizations have a long history of singling out
Israel for condemnation and of ignoring real human rights abusers by
the world's worst offenders, several of which dominate the Human Rights
Council and it predecessor. Taking a stand against IranIrwin Cotler, the former minister of justice and attorney general of Canada, member of Canadian parliament and co-author of this piece, is introducing legislation in Canadian parliament today called the "Iran Accountability Act." While it expressly holds Iran to account - for its genocidal threats, nuclear ambitions and domestic repressions - it can also function to hold any signatory to the Genocide Convention to account. All signatories to the 1948 Genocide Convention (including the United States) have a responsibility to prevent genocide - and to punish incitement to genocide- that they have largely ignored in the case of the worlds greatest threat. The IAA, while a Canadian initiative, is a template model as to how to fulfill these responsibilities and take a stand against Iranian criminal actions. Obama's got it exactly backwards
Although President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu got along quite well at their White House meeting last week, each has made demands that the other seems unwilling or unable to meet. Peace seems no closer, even after the warm encounter. The 800 pound gorilla at the Oval Office meeting was Iran's nuclear program. That became self-evidently clear when, within days of the meeting, Iran deliberately fired a solid fuel rocket and challenged the United States and Israel to do something about it. Ahmadinejad linked the rocket-launching to Iran's nuclear program, as if to allay any doubts that Iran intends to place nuclear payloads on these hard-to-detect rockets. No linkage between Iran and Palestinians
Rahm Emanuel is a good man and a good friend of Israel, but in a highly publicized recent statement he linked American efforts to stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons to Israeli efforts toward establishing a Palestinian state. This is a dangerous linkage. I have long favored the two-state solution, as do most Israelis and American supporters of Israel. I have also long opposed civilian settlements deep into the West Bank. I hope that Israel does make efforts, as it has in the past, to establish a Palestinian state as part of an overall peace between the Jewish state and its Arab and Muslim neighbors. The Vatican's continuing Jewish problemAs Pope Benedict makes his historic visit to Israel, several Cardinals, Bishops and priests continue to perpetuate the Church's long history of anti-Semitism. Photographs recently surfaced of Father Angelo Idi wearing a swastika. He belongs to the same group of Fascists that include Bishop Richard Williamson - who persists in denying the Holocaust. But the Church's Jewish problem is not limited to marginal priests or ex-communicated Bishops. At least two of the Church's most influential Cardinals, including one who was in the running for Pope Benedict's job and who remains a leading candidate to replace him, are overt anti-Semites and proud of it. Confronting evil at Durban II
Last week I came face to face with evil, as I stood just a few feet away from Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. We were both staying in the same hotel in Geneva. He was there to be the opening speaker at Durban II, a review and reprise of Durban I, the United Nations sponsored conference on racism that had turned into a racist hate fest against the Jewish people and the Jewish state. I was there - along with Elie Wiesel, Irwin Cotler and others who have devoted their lives to combating bigotry - to try to prevent a recurrence of Durban I. |
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