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? Pt. II
In my previous blog post, I pointed out what I consider to be the rather biased attitude in US State Department regulations regarding American citizens born in Jerusalem (their place of birth is basically a stateless one as Israel will not be included) and in Judea and Samaria ("West Bank," a fictitious term, and not Judea & Samaria, is used). Perusing the Web site of the Consulate-General of the United States in Jerusalem, the one that reports back directly to Washington, not to Tel Aviv, I was struck by two more examples of what seems like bureaucratic discrimination. Imagining Palestinian settlers
In a recent Jerusalem Post op-ed piece Imagine Palestinian settlers in Israel, the idea was suggested to Israelis and others who support a Jewish civilian presence in the areas of Judea and Samaria:
Of course, did it not occur to the writer that many Israelis have actually not only imagined that but, especially over the past decade, truly feel that that is the situation with Israel's Arab minority. Why do you think Avigdor Lieberman's Israel Beiteinu party achieved 15 seats in the Knesset? It is no imagination that forests were burned down, that religious fanatics are copying the Mufti of Mandate times and claiming Jews are trying to destroy Al-Aqsa, that illegal construction is in the thousands of units, that aid and assistance to terrorists have been extended and that Arab MKs openly identify with the goals of the most radical Muslim nationalists and have been particularly foul-mouthed in the Knesset. 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." Getting lost in the Green Line
As a CAMERA alert informed me, one written by Tamar Sternthal, the papal trip of Benedictus XVI to Israel has confused the Los Angeles Times newspaper, which allowed some errors of fact about Israel to appear in its pages. One of them seems to been a stumble over the Green Line, as if it were a tripwire for political geographic correctness. Duke Helfand, an LA Times reporter, erroneously states in one article that the Pope will arrive at:
Ooops. Yad Vashem, for sure, is not in the "West Bank" and I would suggest that neither is the Western Wall. They are located in Jerusalem. And, if one wants to get nitpicky, Yad Vashem is actually in the western section and was under Israeli control prior to 1967, that watershed year when maps got redrawn, Biblical locations became rediscovered and the Green Line became, well, obsolete to a great extent. 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:
Is the US selling Israel damaged goods?
Among other concerns, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is touting the new Palestinian Authority security forces being trained by American army and police personnel. Millions of dollars have been sunk into constructing training camps and providing the PA with the know-how to keep the general peace, the idea being that if it can control the terror threat, Israel could then exit these territories. 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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