January 30, 2013

By Ted Belman

Why Palestine Should Take Israel to Court in The Hague published by the NYT, is predicated on this statement: “The I.C.C. could prosecute major international crimes committed on Palestinian soil anytime after the court’s founding on July 1, 2002.” But that statement is totally erroneous for the following reasons:

There is no “Palestinian soil”,

According to E Kontorovich:
- The ICC prosecutes people not countries; thus no immunity.
- the ICC can only act when the home state refuses to investigate; that is not the case for any Israeli acts in Gaza, etc.
- “ICC has never prosecuted a case referred by a country against nationals of a non-member state. Such an action would terrify US officials and permanently sour American relations with the Court, as it would expose U.S. military and civilian officials to liability for U.S. armed action anywhere in the world, and particulalry for the controversial drone strikes program of Pres. Obama.
- The ICC has never even played with taking a case that does not involve killing and personal violence; a settlements suit would be far outside the kind of things they’ve dealt with
- The relevant actions would have to be on the territory of Palestine, which is a problem since they do not have defined territory, and most of what the oped talks about precedes their nominal statehood, so would be out of bounds.
- The ICC would also have jurisdiction over all Palestinian war crimes
(Read more…)

By David P. Goldman       

JINSA Fellow

Synopsis: While it is relatively easy to find the right rhetoric for disengagement from Egypt, the fact of the matter is that the Obama administration has put all of its eggs in Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi’s basket. If the authority of the Morsi government were to fail, American planners would have to consider urgent alternatives to prevent the Egyptian crisis from destabilizing the whole region.

It is an axiom of the bi-partisan foreign policy consensus that failure in Egypt is not an option. America has invested nearly $60 billion in aid to Egypt since Egypt and Israel signed a peace treaty in 1977, and the Egyptian-American relationship has remained a pillar of U.S. foreign policy for nearly half a century. As Sen. John McCain said in a Jan. 17 statement on behalf of a Congressional delegation in Cairo,
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Laura:  While Europe has all these phony ceremonies commemorating Holocaust Rememberance Day, they are busy financing the next potential holocaust against the Jews, even with their numerous economic problems. One has to conclude that antisemitism is in Europe’s cultural DNA.

An article published by the independent and European funded Palestinian Ma’an News Agency (MNA) confirms that classic Antisemitic ideologies continue to exist among Palestinians. The article written by Sawsan Najib Abd Al-Halim appears on Ma’an’s website, and describes Jews as: “the root of conflict in the world,” cursed by Allah, and “outcasts in every corner of the earth.”

Palestinian Media Watch has documented that demonization of Jews and Israelis has been an integral part of PA ideology for years. Continue reading

Foreign media claim IAF fighter jets conducted three separate aerial incursions into Lebanon’s airspace overnight. US website says target was weapons convoy; IDF remains mum

“Israeli forces have attacked a target on the Syrian-Lebanese border overnight,” foreign and Arab media sources alleged Wednesday, saying that 12 IAF jets breached Lebanon’s airspace on Tuesday.

The US-based Al-Monitor website quoted Lebanese sources as saying the target was a weapons convoy traveling near Syria’s border with Lebanon. The report has not been corroborated by any Israeli source and the IDF refused to comment on the matter.

Earlier, Beirut’s news agency alleged that the Israeli fighter jets conducted three separate aerial incursions into Lebanon‘s airspace overnight.

According to the report, the jets flew over the En Nakura area for several hours, leaving Lebanese airspace at around 2 am. The report, citing military sources, said that the first incursion took place at around 4:30 pm, when two jets flew over the village ofRamish, leaving at 9:05 pm.

As the duo was leaving – according to the Lebanese report – two other IAF jets entered Beirut’s airspace, towards En Nakura, leaving at 2 am.

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This puts the lie to Bibi’s support for an undivided Jerusalem. It is totally inconsistent with such a claim. It also puts the lie to everything Bibi is saying regarding building elsewhere in Jerusalem and in particular in E-1. Perhaps Bibi has obtained permission to build in areas that everyone agrees Israel will keep in exchange for Bibi agreeing not to build where Obama diagrees. Ted Belman

By Annie Lubin, INN

Rumors, leaks and hearsay have been replaced by an official document by a senior official admitting that political considerations have and will prevent Jewish construction in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Shimon HaTzaddik.

Plans for additional housing for Jews in the majority-Arab neighborhood (known in Arabic as Sheikh Jarrah) have become stalled, and a letter written by Yaniv Benita, Assistant to Interior Minister Eli Yishai, inadvertently explains why.
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[I am sick and tired of Netanyahu not holding the line.]

By Herb Keinon, JPOST

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu decided on Tuesday evening to transfer to the Palestinian Authority some NIS 400 million Israel collected last month in tax revenue for the PA, but withheld in response to the Palestinian statehood upgrade move at the UN in November.

A source in Netanyahu’s bureau said the decision was for a one-time transfer and was due to the economic hardships facing the PA.

Netanyahu met on Monday in Jerusalem with Quartet envoy Tony Blair, where this issue was raised. The US has also raised the issue with Jerusalem.

Government sources rejected speculation that the move was a confidence-building measure toward the PA taken in the wake of the recent Israeli election to try and create a more positive atmosphere.
(Read more…)

By Arlene Kushner

You may have heard: “Something” has happened at Fordow, Iran’s nuclear enrichment facility, some 300 feet beneath a mountain, near the holy Shi’ite city of Qom. 

by Bill Levinson
Originally in the American Thinker

Michael Bloomberg, Andrew Cuomo, and their cohorts followed Rahm Emanuel’s advice to “never let a good crisis go to waste” when they used the Sandy Hook shooting to renew their assault on the Bill of Rights. Former Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell added, in effect, that one should never let a dead child go to waste if one can exploit him or her for political gain. (Read more…)

By Andrew C McCarthy, NRO

When Mohamed Morsi dehumanizes Jews as “the descendants of apes and pigs,” there’s an elephant in the room. We find it here:

Those who incurred the curse of Allah and His wrath, those of whom some He transformed into apes and swine, those who worshipped evil — these are many times worse in rank, and far more astray from the even Path!

You see, Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood mahoff–turned–president did not conjure up the apes-and-pigs riff on his own. When Morsi fulminates that Muslims “must not forget to nurse our children and grandchildren on hatred towards those Zionists and Jews, and all those who support them,” he is taking his cues straight from the Koran. Or rather, from the Holy Koran, as “progressive” American politicians take pains to call it in the off hours from their campaign to drive every last vestige of Judeo-Christian culture from the public square.
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