November 18, 2005
Activist Judges — In Israel
So now it is official. Imperial judges, who ignore the written law for their own policy preferences, cite international laws to overturn domestic constitutions and use the Geneva Conventions to hamper the war on terror, are a major problem—in Israel. Just as in America, and in the European Union, activist judges in the Holy Land have used the Supreme Court for their own ends. Caroline Glick has an excellent column on this phenomena that afflicts the entire industrialized world, with the possible exception of Japan. (And, oh yes, they Bork judges in Israel too.) Glick makes an intriguing point about judicial activism and the war on terror:
"Last month the court outlawed the IDF’s practice of having Palestinians knock on the doors of wanted terrorists in order to shield Israeli security forces from attack. The court based its ruling on the Geneva Conventions even though the Knesset has never ratified its applicability to Judea, Samaria and Gaza.Also this year, in a series of rulings regarding the route of the security fence, the court has repeatedly second-guessed the Defense Ministry’s judgment of how Israelis can best be defended from terrorist attack. The court based its authority to interfere with the Defense Ministry’s executive authority on the International Court of Justice’s (ICJ) July 2004 advisory opinion on the security fence - yet the ICJ has no legal standing in Israeli law. Indeed, in the case of the advisory opinion on the security fence, (which has no international legal weight anywhere), the Justice Ministry rejected the ICJ’s right to even discuss the matter and refused to send representatives to present arguments at the Hague."
Posted by Richard Miniter at 08:30 AM
October 31, 2005
How do you say ignorant in French?
Simply astonishing. A French foreign minister, visiting Israel, wonders how many Jews were deported from the United Kingdom to Nazi concentration camps. The Israeli author’s tongue-in-cheek defense of the minister makes a good read.
Posted by Richard Miniter at 10:35 AM
August 13, 2005
Why He Left and Why it Matters
When Jerusalem Post columnist Caroline Glick interviewed now former finance minister Binyamin Netanyahu, she thought he was struggling with something. It turned out to be his momentous decision to resign. Her column is the best analysis of that decision and its consequences that I have seen. She doesn't mention it, but I know that she has worked for Netanyahu and knows him relatively well. Her view: Netanyahu is acting out of principle and she may well be right. She is right about one other thing that she barely touches on: The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Times, National Review and the major blogs have all but ignored the Gaza pullout or the national security consequences (for the United States) of creating a terrorist state with its own seaport and a land border with Egypt, which has funded terrorist operations in the past. What if Gaza becomes an al Qaeda haven? What will be the political consequences if the next president has to take military action for the mistakes of the Bush Administration?
Posted by Richard Miniter at 03:41 PM
July 25, 2005
Here We Go Again
Ever since the 1986 divestment campaign against South Africa, reformers have been looking for another troubled democracy that they could influence by choking off private investment. Never mind that divestment is about as effective as economic sanctions—hit either does not work at all or it impoverishes the people at the bottom while giving the rulers a convenient foreign enemy to excuse their misrule. Now it is so-called mainline Prostestant churches that want to get into foreign policy, by pulling their investment from any company that does business with Israel, as my friend Eugene Kontorovich writes in the Wall Street Journal. Not being an Anglican, as I am, Kontorovich misses one vital point: there is a prayer we say every Sunday for the clergy. It is right here in the 1928 Book of Common Prayer. The modern Episcopal Church has rewritten this and other prayers and forgotten the wisdom behind them. So now we have this mess, with dog-collar wearing amateurs inserting themselves into politics rather than carrying on with their more important duties of comforting the sick and the dying, teaching the young, uplifting the poor in spirit, and saving the souls of the lost.
Posted by Richard Miniter at 10:31 PM
Sharon's Gamble
No one in the press (except Caroline Glick in Jerusalem) seems willing to report on the legality and morality of the Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's decision to force 10,000 Israeli citizens out of their homes in Gaza in order to turn their land over to the Palestinians, who case has been pressed by a murderous band of terrorists for the past 40 years. (The Jews in Gaza built on land never occupied by Arabs, but, in most cases, empty desert.) Sharon and Bush are gambling that the pullout will provide security and put pressure on the Palestinians to adopt democratic reforms. Let's hope that they are right. If not, 10,000 families lost their homes and a nation gave into terror for nothing...
Posted by Richard Miniter at 06:21 AM
June 28, 2005
Corruption, Sharon and the retreat from Gaza
I've long been hearing grumbling about Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon from Israelis, while the American Jews seem to think he walks on water. There are persistent rumors that Sharon or members of cabinet have been on the take for casinos based in the lands east of Jerusalem. Now, Caroline Glick of the Jerusalem Post, writes this column. I think it time for Americans to reevaluate Sharon and to put their faith in principles, not politicians. And to support the second only when they embody the first.
Posted by Richard Miniter at 02:58 PM
June 15, 2005
And you thought the Red Cross was neutral...
An acquaintance of mine, Mike Bussio, sent me the following e-mail.
I thought you readers might be interested in seeing it in full. I
haven't investigated it, but it sounds like the kind of bone-headed
thing the International Committee of the Red Cross would do.
It has been suggested by Julie Taub, M.Ed., LL.B. Immigration Lawyer, Ottawa, Canada that when she receives a letter from the Red Cross soliciting funds, she sends a note back in their postpaid envelope stating that, since Israel's Magen David Adom (Israel's "Red Cross") is not recognized by the International Red Cross organization, she will withhold any contributions and will advise everyone she knows to do the same; until this wrong is corrected.If you agree please send this to everyone in your address book. It may
help get Magen David Adom on the funded list of that organization and
they sorely need the help.
If you wish to directly express your displeasure with this situation, sign the Simon Wiesenthal Center's petition addressed to the President of the Swiss Confederation.
Posted by Richard Miniter at 07:06 PM
June 07, 2005
O Jerusalem
Are hundreds of Arab Jerusalem residents secretly training in Palestinian areas to wreak havoc in the world's most contested capital? Yes, according to this report by Caroline Glick. Read the whole thing.
Posted by Richard Miniter at 10:09 AM
June 04, 2005
Irony in Israel
My friend Dore Gold, Israel's former United Nations ambassador and author of books on Saudia Arabia and the United Nations, has angered terrorists, Islamists, and the PLO. So when I heard he came to grief on the streets of Jerusalem this past week, I feared the worst. But God has a sense of humor. Gold was not hurt by a car bomb, but a large dog that knocked him down as he was walking his own dog. He is on the mend and we should be grateful that he is still with us. If you haven't read him, here's your invitation. You won't be disappointed.
Posted by Richard Miniter at 02:50 PM
May 15, 2005
I bet they know
In an article in Pakistan's Daily Times, several military officials admit that the political risks of arresting bin Laden in Pakistan are huge. The press and other observers too easily forget that radical Islamic parties claim up to 40 percent of the vote in local Pakistani elections and that bin Laden is indeed a popular figure there.
There is also a hint that the feared Inter-Services Institute, Pakistan's CIA, knows where bin Laden is. Unlike the Israelis, it does seem quite likely that Pakistani intelligence knows where he is or could find out if they really wanted to know. It was the ISI that helped create the Taliban, al Qaeda's strongest ally, and it was the ISI that asked U.S. forces to stop shelling Kunduz, Afghanistan, where some 2000 al Qaeda and Taliban fighters here holed up in the Fall of 2001, so that it could bring in two fixed-wing aircraft to fly out its intelligence officers. Must have been quite a few embedded with the enemy... Add to that that nearly every high-level al Qaeda target captured was seized in Pakistan as well as more than 700 al Qaeda footsoldiers, more than any other single nation on Earth (including Iraq and Afghanistan).
Posted by Richard Miniter at 08:14 AM
Where is bin Laden?
This article, in The Jerusalem Post, suggests that some Israeli officials believe they know where the archterrorist is hiding. I don't believe it, but it is, as the British Foreign Office used to say, "interesting if true."
Posted by Richard Miniter at 06:54 AM
May 10, 2005
Not a politician
Well, the moral voice in the Israeli cabinet, Natan Sharansky, has resigned. This is not a minor development, although you have to step aside from the left-liberal consensus on the Middle East to see why. And, given President Bush's comments in Europe yesterday—blasting the Roosevelt-Churchill-Stalin pact favoring stability over liberty in Eastern Europe—makes one wonder if Bush sees the contradiction if his own views are applied to the Holy Land.
Here a link to a short take in The Jerusalem Post Magazine, but since it available only to subscribers, I will quote some important points below.
"When he entered politics, the centrist stand his Yisrael B'Aliya party took enabled Sharansky to hold the balance of power that allowed Binyamin Netanyahu, Ehud Barak and Sharon to form coalitions. At its peak, Sharansky's party had seven mandates and 175,000 voters."
"Before Yisrael B'Aliya's collapse in the 2003 election, Sharansky was portrayed as shifting rightward, but the truth is that his views have never changed. When he talks about what he would be willing to give the Palestinians, he sounds as Left as can be. He just conditions concessions on Palestinian democratization, a value that cannot be placed on the standard Israeli political map."
When I return to Israel, I plan to ask Sharansky if he think that his friend President Bush has abandoned support for Palestinian democracy, by not conditioning the Gaza withdrawal on democratic change. In fact, I have a more radical idea in mind: Gaza should be a democracy independent of the West Bank and of the PLO.
The Jerusalesm Post also noted the limited minds in the Israeli press.
"Even his departure from the cabinet this week was mischaracterized in the Israeli press as no different from the resignation of Effi Eitam. Sharansky did his best in interviews to explain that he was not protesting withdrawing from the Gaza Strip, but rather Israel's leaving unilaterally without insisting on Palestinian democratization as a prerequisite. ..."
"Even the English edition of the Hebrew Haaretz newspaper decided that the departure of a man unknown outside of Israel, IBA chief Yosef Barel, was more front-page-worthy than that of Sharansky. This despite Sharansky making Time magazine's list of the world's most influential thinkers and his new status as US President George W. Bush's guru since the president read Sharansky's book, The Case for Israel."
The Jerusalem Post quotes Sharansky, capturing a taste of what is probably bitterness. "It's unfortunate that the values I fought for don't interest people in Israel as they do in the United States," Sharansky said. "Both the Left and the Right in Israel have conceded the value of democracy. The president of the United States understands it, and it's a pity that Israeli politicians don't."
Posted by Richard Miniter at 03:19 PM