Does Monsieur Wettach think we're idiots?
In a letter to The Jerusalem Post on August 11, Pierre Wettach, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) head of delegation to Israel and places east, defends his organization against a critical article by Moshe Dann published on July 24 on how "settlements" became illegal. Wettach's defense consists of three points. First, that "the ICRC did not 'make up the law' which considers the settlements to be illegal." But he obfuscates. What Dann meant, obviously, was that at the time the Red Cross ruled that Israel's actions violated the Fourth Geneva Convention, no formal court or international legal body had delivered any judicial decision on the matter. By adopting the position of "illegality" as regards Jewish communities, the ICRC was indeed making up the law. And where were you born?
The Jerusalem Post informed its readers on Tuesday that the US State Department considers Jewish neighborhoods in east Jerusalem as included in the US demand that Israel halt "settlement" construction, including for natural growth purposes as State Department spokesman Ian Kelly admitted. And that is an appropriate introduction for me to expand on a matter of State Dept. deviousness. As American citizens are aware, their children, if born in Jerusalem, whether west Jerusalem or east, I emphasize, are not recognized by the US State Department as being born in Israel. Their birth certificates and subsequently, their passports, will list the "place of birth" as simply "Jerusalem", a seemingly stateless location. A topsy-turvy world; at least for the Jews
I have spotted two additional linguistic oddities that confound me. As you have read at this blog previously, I prefer "revenant" rather than "settler", or, at the least, "resident". I use "community" and not "settlement". I live in Samaria and not in the "West Bank". Well, it seems that language is fluid and different standards of semantics are being used. For example, Israel is pilloried for supposedly being a "colonialist" power lording over "occupied territories." Green line language
A May 1 New York Times story included this information about Jerusalem:
Now, I am not certain that the numbers above are exact but, for the moment, that is less a concern to me than the language used. No going back to 1967
With the return of George Mitchell to Israel, and his seeking long-term office space (jealous of Tony Blair, I would guess) as well as the purported statement of Rahm Immanuel which can be summed up as "you give us what we want, we give you, maybe, want you need," the media is hopping with commentary of the issue of the Jewish revenant communities in the areas of the Jewish national home (as fixed by international bodies between 1917-1922) not under Israeli political sovereignty. One of them is a Washington-based policy analyst, Yousef Munayyer, affiliated with the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee. In the Philadelphia Inquirer he wrote, "inter alia", about Jewish towns and villages:
Green Line Greenbacks
Following remarks of a Yesha resident in New York, recorded by Philip Weiss, a renewed attempt to attack the tax-exempt status of charitable funds contributed to worthy projects, that is, Jewish projects, beyond the Green Line began. Americans for Peace Now supplied material to David Ignatius, who published an op-ed in the Washington Post. Following that, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee announced it was filing a complaint with the Treasury Department and the Internal Revenue Service requesting they investigate tax-exempt groups raising money for Yesha communities, suggesting that groups were using the income "in direct violation of their addressed purpose." Green Line Fever
The issue of Jewish civilians living across the Green Line is one that stirs passions. Anyone who, like me, seeks to stay up-to-date on the matter, both historically as well as in contemporary media commentary and news reports, cannot be but overwhelmed at times at the downright nastiness of some of the language used. For example, here is Paul Mirengoff of the Claremont Institute in a recent piece: "In my view, the continued expansion of settlements is the most toxic activity that is undermining the negotiations process and [that] actually, in the long term, will assure a deterioration in America's support for Israel." Or, take Tom (Breira) Friedman of The New York Times, who has a hang-up about me and my friends and neighbors: "The West Bank is so chopped up and divided now by roads, checkpoints and fences to separate Israel's crazy settlements from Palestinian villages... " Back on January 25, he published in his column an article which referred to "the fanatical Jewish settlers." True, it is not my wish to censor any one's expressions of disagreement. It's just that it's quite obvious to me that such reactions, from people who should both know their facts better and how to use the language better, seem to indicate a loss of control - or worse, a seeking-out of the most disparaging and derogatory terms. They literally seem to lose it, as if their pens were "foaming at the point." A Red Line to the Green Line
The Jerusalem Post has reported on an upcoming court case that human rights group Yesh Din, which opposes Israel's continued presence in Judea and Samaria, claims that "Israel's practice of transferring 75 percent of the rock and gravel it mines in the West Bank into areas within the Green Line is illegal," and they hope that the High Court of Justice will issue a ruling that "Israel's mining activity constitutes blatant infringement of international humanitarian law and the laws of occupation, and may even constitute pillage and/or war crimes." The attorneys representing Yesh Din, Sfard and Avisar Lev, have written in their petition that continued quarrying was "a practice reminiscent of occupation patterns in ancient times, [when]
the winner was entitled to plunder the occupied territory, enslave its economy and citizens for its own purposes, and transfer their treasures to his own land." Settlement expansion story an act of sabotage?
According to The Jerusalem Post, Army Radio is reporting that:
Now that, in my humble opinion, is doubtful. Not that some people (okay, like myself) don't think this is possible and doable. But 19,000 units across the Green Line, in Yesha [Hebrew acronym for Judea, Samaria and Gaza]? Explaining the media bias
The Green Line. That virtual definition between Jewish nationalism and Zionist messianism, between rational political behavior and extremist social disharmony, between good and bad. Well, that's not really true but a four decades-old campaign has placed upon your eyes, my readers, green-tinted glasses and you believe, perhaps, that there are two realities, one of Israel in its post-1949/pre-1967 boundaries (never internationally recognized you'll recall) and another of Yesha, the Hebrew acronym for Judea, Samaria and, yes, Gaza. |
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