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Reactions to UN Palestine vote

Reactions to the UN vote to establish another terrorist state in Israel’s border

Here are Israel's only allies in the insidious UN: Canada, Czech Republic, Palau, Nauru, Micronesia, Marshall island, Panama, US, Israel

Prime Minister of Israel’s office

By going to the @UN , the #Palestinians have violated the agreements with Israel and #Israel will act accordingly. PMO: The way to #peace between #Jerusalem and Ramallah is in direct negotiations, without preconditions, and not in one-sided @UNdecisions. PM has made it clear that there will be no establishment of#Palestinian state without settlement that ensures security of Israel's citizens

PM will not allow base for Iranian #terrorism to be established in Judea-Samaria, in addition to those already established in Gaza & Lebanon. PM Netanyahu: The world watched a defamatory & venomous speech that was full of mendacious propaganda against the IDF & Israel's citizens.

UK rep says Britian could not vote in favor becuase Abbas did not pledge to return immedatiely to talks or not go to ICC #Jpost

US ambassador Rice calls resolution "unfortunate and counterproductive" that places "further obstacles in the path of peace." #Jpost

 Rice: Passing a resolution does not create a state were none exists. The resolution does not establish Palestine as a state.

Rice: Today's "grand pronouncements" will soon fade and the Palestinans will wake up and find little in their lives will have changed.#Jpost

In response to Abu Mazen's speech, PM's Office issues following statement: 'Someone who wants peace does not talk in such a manner.'

Michele Bachman

Today's vote in the United Nations is tragic for Israel's security and rewards terrorist-designated Hamas for rockets fired on Israel.

an S. Tobin | @tobincommentary11.29.2012 - 2:35 PM

With the Palestinian Authority all but certain to have its status at the United Nations upgraded this evening to nonmember observer state, some who call themselves friends of Israel as well as some prominent Israelis are applauding the initiative. In particular,former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has said he does not oppose the move by his former negotiating partner, PA head Mahmoud Abbas. Olmert says the vote will promote a two-state solution and help Palestinian moderates in their quest to make peace with Israel. But Olmert, whose attempt to give Abbas pretty much everything he had asked for in 2008 resulted in the Palestinian fleeing the U.S.-sponsored talks without even responding to the offer of a state, seems more interested in vainly seeking to undermine his successor Benjamin Netanyahu than drawing conclusions from his own experience.

The show at the UN is about a number of things, but advancing the chances for peace between Israel and the Palestinians isn’t one of them.

The decision of most European countries to line up behind the PA seems to be based on the same reasoning put forward by Olmert. They think that after Hamas’s attention-getting terrorist missile offensive against Israel it is necessary for those who would prefer the PA to lead the Palestinians rather than the Islamists to give Abbas a shot in the arm. The win today in New York will give him that, but the vote shouldn’t be mistaken for anything that will advance peace. In fact, the whole point of the exercise is to help Abbas avoid being cornered into a negotiation like the one he abandoned with Olmert.

Understanding this requires observers to stop their myopic obsession with Israel and to focus on the real obstacle to a two-state solution: the inability of the PA to ever sign an accord that will accept the legitimacy of a Jewish state alongside a Palestinian state no matter where its borders are drawn.

Netanyahu’s critics consistently decry his lack of a long-term strategy for dealing with the Palestinians and achieving peace. In a sense they’re right, since the prime minister and most Israelis don’t believe peace is possible in the immediate or perhaps even the foreseeable future because of the PA’s refusal to negotiate or to contemplate the sort of compromises needed for an agreement.

But the PA can justly be accused of the same thing. Abbas has no long-term strategy, since he won’t or can’t make peace with even an Israeli leader like Olmert who was willing to make drastic concessions, and doesn’t want to return to fighting the Israelis as his predecessor Yasir Arafat did during the second intifada and as Hamas continues to do.

All Abbas can do is to hang on in the West Bank. His strategy is to avoid elections that he might lose to the increasingly popular Hamas while also evading peace talks with the Israelis while also seeking to maintain a security relationship with the Jewish state that keeps his corrupt and discredited regime in place.

The show at the UN is perfect for Abbas since it does nothing to hinder those objects, especially since the Israelis have wisely decided not to retaliate for his stunt.

The problem for the PA will come next year as a re-elected President Obama will likely attempt to revive a peace process that Abbas has spent the last four years dodging. By then, the UN vote will be just one more propaganda move that will heighten Israel’s diplomatic isolation but achieve nothing tangible for Palestinians. Meanwhile, Hamas continues to rule a real independent Palestinian state in all but name that makes Abbas’s Ramallah outfit look like Israeli puppets.

Those expecting today’s vote will do anything to advance the moribund talks are dreaming, and not just because the upgrade will make mischief for Israel in international forums. Peace talks are the last thing Abbas wants.

Anti Semite Ron Paul blames Israel

Paul blames Israel, American Middle East policy on the conflict
Paul places the blame in his oped for continued conflict between Israel and the Hamas regime in Gaza in both American Middle Eastern policy and Israel's "imposed inhuman conditions in Gaza" and its "destructive policies." The often-heard complaint that Israel should not have to tolerate hundreds of missiles being fired against it does not impress Paul. "

It was clear from his newsletters that he denied writing that he is an anti semite. This proves it. In humane conditions? They govern themselves. they have one of highest standards of living in Arab world. Onby checkpoints Israel imposes is to stop missiles. Paul is a liar and anti semite

Congressman Ron Paul and the Jews

www.pjvoice.com/v32/32104paul.aspxShare

The New Republic reports that GOP Presidential Candidate Ron Paul published anewsletter containing racist and anti-Semitic rhetoric including a claim that the ...

Canal from Med to Dead Sea?

Haredi Rabbis want broader authority

The Latest In Gray Hair SolutionseSalon

Kate Middleton Is Pregnant According to Blabbermouth …The Stir

Quick Lesson on DiabetesHealthiNation

 by Taboola

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Haredim urge expanding rabbinical courts authority

By JEREMY SHARON

11/28/2012 01:53

At annual rabbinical conference, senior haredi figures call for the expansion of the rabbinical courts’ authority in Israel.

PHOTO: ARIEL JEROZOLIMSKI

Senior haredi figures called for the expansion of the rabbinical courts’ authority in Israel, at an annual rabbinical conference on Tuesday organized by the World Center of Torah Law.

Hundreds of rabbis and rabbinical judges gathered in Jerusalem for the event, including Justice Minister Yaakov Neeman, senior haredi MK Moshe Gafni (UTJ) and both chief rabbis Shlomo Amar and Yona Metzger.

Gafni delivered the opening speech of the conference Monday night, and drew attention to the failure of haredi political parties to pass a law giving rabbinical courts authority to deal with cases pertaining to monetary and property law.

Rabbinical courts in Israel are currently only authorized to deal with issues of marriage and divorce and certain other matters relating to personal status. At present, only civil courts can rule on issues of monetary and property law.

During his speech, Gafni, who is chairman of the Knesset Finance Committee, said that the government had prevented haredi parties from advancing legislation on the issue, despite commitments made to them in the coalition agreement.

“We need to understand that we are in a cultural war [with those] who don’t want the rabbinical courts to have any standing,” Gafni said. “During the last Knesset term we succeeded in preventing any anti-religious legislation being passed, and not a day goes past on which they don’t try and pass such laws.

Lists of Jews

Anger as Hungary far-right leader demands lists of Jews

By Marton Dunai | Reuters – 1 hr 54 mins ago

• 
  

BUDAPEST (Reuters) - A Hungarian far-right politician urged the government to draw up lists of Jews who pose a "national security risk", stirring outrage among Jewish leaders who saw echoes of fascist policies that led to the Holocaust.

Marton Gyongyosi, a leader of Hungary's third-strongest political party Jobbik, said the list was necessary 

Obama, Morsi, Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas

Obama and the Morsi Dictatorship

Jonathan S. Tobin | @tobincommentary11.25.2012 - 1:30 PM

Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi has had quite a week. He helped broker a cease-fire between his Hamas ally and Israel to the acclaim of the international community as well as the United States and his new friend President Obama. He followed that triumph up by issuing new decrees that effectively give him dictatorial powers over Egypt. In less than year in office, Morsi has amassed as much power as Hosni Mubarak had in his time in office as the country’s strongman and he has done it while getting closer to the United States rather than having his Islamist regime being condemned or isolated by Washington.

The full implications of Morsi’s ascendency are not yet apparent. But we can draw a few rather obvious conclusions from these events. The first is this makes the region a much more dangerous place and peace even more unlikely. the second is that the much ballyhooed Arab Spring turned out to be an Islamist triumph, not an opening for democracy. And third, and perhaps most disconcerting for Americans, it looks like the Obama administration has shown itself again to be a band of hopeless amateurs when it comes to the Middle East. While President Obama shouldn’t be blamed for toppling Mubarak, this episode is more proof of the gap between his foreign policy instincts and a rational defense of American interests.

The first point to be made about the cheering for Morsi’s role in brokering the cease-fire is misplaced. It cannot be emphasized too much that the reason why Hamas felt so confident about picking a fight with Israel that it could not possibly win militarily is the fact that Egypt and fellow regional power Turkey were treating it as an ally rather than as terrorist regime that needed to be isolated and controlled. While Morsi has sought to exercise some influence over Gaza by keeping the border crossings to Sinai closed (more as a result of concern over the violence spilling over into Egyptian territory than a desire to restrain terrorism), the support for the legitimacy of the illegal Hamas regime on the part of the Muslim Brotherhood government has been a game changer.

More than ever before, Hamas now has the whip hand over the Fatah-controlled Palestinian Authority. That makes the already nearly non-existent chances of peace between Palestinians and Israelis even smaller. Though it can be argued that the ability of Hamas to preserve its rule over Gaza following the last bout of fighting with Israel in January 2009 already made it clear that it was a force to be reckoned with, the backing of Egypt and Turkey and the tacit approval of the United States in the cease-fire means there can be no doubt that Hamas truly is the face of Palestinian nationalism these days as well as the owners of an independent Palestinian state in all but name. With Cairo and Ankara backing them up and Iranian missiles in their arsenal, Hamas’s strength makes the standard liberal talking point about it being necessary for Israel to make more concessions to Fatah even more absurd than ever.

If the blockade of Gaza is now to be weakened even further to allow “construction materials” as well as the food and medicine that has never ceased flowing into the area from Israel, then it must be acknowledged that Hamas is more powerful than ever and well placed to make mischief in the region whenever it likes. Rather than applauding Morsi’s role in the cease-fire, Americans should be asking why the administration has acquiesced to having one of their nation’s primary aid recipients being an ally of Hamas. They should also be wondering about what exactly it is that passed between Obama and Morsi during their phone conversations and what promises, if any, were made by the United States about future pressure on Israel.

Morsi’s consolidation of dictatorial power also should not have taken Washington by surprise, as it seems to have done. For several months, the State Department has been acting as if it bought the argument that the Muslim Brotherhood government was basically moderate in nature and more interested in economic development than pursuing ideological goals. But Morsi’s actions, in which he has sidelined every competing power base that might have acted as a check on his ambitions, makes it apparent that his real purpose is to make his movement’s control of the country permanent. Any hope that democracy was coming to Egypt or the rest of the Arab and Muslim world was misplaced. And any idea that the United States can bribe Morsi or any other Islamist into playing ball is sheer folly.

That leads us to the final point about the administration’s utter lack of skill in dealing with the realities of the Middle East.

Even if we were to concede that the president’s motives were pure and that he wanted nothing more than to bring peace to the region and democracy to Arab nations that have never known it, virtually everything that the administration has done has made the achievement of these goals even less likely than before.

The president isn’t personally responsible for the collapse of an unsustainable Mubarak dictatorship. But he did nothing to aid the cause of the few Egyptian liberals who actually want democracy. Worse than that, he undercut the efforts of the Egyptian military to act as a brake on the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood. Instead of seeking to use the billions that Egypt gets from the U.S. as a lever with which he could restrain Cairo from backing Hamas and the Brotherhood from seizing more power, Washington has embraced Morsi. That emboldened Hamas and led to the recent fighting. Though the president said all the right things about backing Israel’s right to self-defense, his diplomatic maneuvering not only helped set the stage for more violence but made it more difficult for Israel to exercise that right.

A president who says he wants peace and democracy in the Middle East is now acting as if the Islamists that run Turkey and Egypt are his new best friends while continuing to treat the head of the only democracy in the region as a nuisance. In doing so, President Obama has helped make the world a lot more dangerous than it might otherwise have been.

Topics: Barack Obama, Gaza, H

Posted: 26 Nov 2012 08:51 AM PST
(Paul Mirengoff)
Yesterday, I argued that one of President Obama’s objectives in brokering a deal that enhances Hamas’ status was to enhance Hamas’ status. I noted that leftists in America and Europe have, for some time, viewed Hamas as the authentic representataive of Palestinians and, accordingly, have attempted to portray the terrorist outfit as “moderate.” Obama’s tilt towards Hamas, it seems to me, is a manifestation of this view.
With that tilt, the liberal foreign policy establishment can now be expected overtly to echo the mainstreaming of Hamas line. Indeed, the Washington Post article I linked to yesterday — “Hamas tactics garner support” –can be seen as part of this process.
Today, Jackson Diehl, the Post’s Deputy Editorial Page Editor, adds his influential voice to the mainstreaming chorus. Hamas, he declares, not only has “the support of region’s richest and most powerful governments,” but it is “preferable to the most obvious Gazan alternative, which is jihadist movements even more closely tied to Iran.”
It seems absurd to distinguish between Hamas and “jidhadists movements even more closely tied to Iran.” (One imagines that somewhere there is a terrorist operation more fanatical than al Qaeda.) But that’s the exercise necessary to depict Hamas as an entity moderate enough for Israel to work with.



MORSI
President Obama. White House spokesman Jay Carney said today that Obama has not spoken to Morsi about the Muslim Brotherhood man’s power grab. Nor would Carney even say that Obama condemns it.