Monthly Archives: July 2014

Moral Equivalence Pollution

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As the Palestinian Authority’s rocket attacks on Israeli cities proceeds apace, the United States supported a unanimously passed UN Security Council “press statement” calling for an immediate cease fire on Saturday. Because Israel acting, militarily this time, to protect its people from this murderous assault is of a piece with the terrorism that is the assault.

Or so holds this administration. That’s the shame of the US, inflicted by the Obama administration: this pretense of moral equivalency between the terrorism of the Palestinian Authority—an entity that now has as its primary goal the destruction of Israel—in shooting rockets into Israel for the express purpose of killing civilians and children, as well as damaging the Israeli nuclear power facility in Dimona (an act even the UN used to regard as nuclear terror) on the one hand, and the Israeli response of defending itself against such terrorism by shooting back, seeking to destroy the terrorists’ equipment and infrastructure and to kill the terrorists, during which killing civilians and children are avoided at great cost, if imperfectly.

All the Palestinian Authority, this shiny, new unity government, needs to do to stop the “deteriorating situation in the Palestinian territories” is to stop its terrorist rain of rockets on Israel and to expel the terrorists from Palestinian territory. All of them from all of it.

Israel has no obligation to stop its active defense before that is complete.

A Thought on $3.7 Billion

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President Barack Obama thinks it’ll take $3.7 billion to handle the explosive flood of unaccompanied children pouring over our border as a result of his decision not to enforce our existing immigration laws. Obama wants the money to plus up existing border security, illegal alien housing in the border area and elsewhere, dealing with the health problems these children are unavoidably bringing with them, transportation, handling legal matters, and so on.

Assuming the money should be spent (a position I don’t endorse, but stay with me), I have a thought on how the money should be allocated. I’d pass a $3.7 billion appropriation that allocates the money in this way:

  • $3.5 billion as block grants to go directly to Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California, the border states most affected, for use in plussing up existing border security, illegal alien housing in the border area, dealing with the health problems these children are unavoidably bringing with them, and so on. Notice that this money does not through Federal hands; it completely bypasses the Feds and goes directly to the states.
  • $0.2 billion allocated 80:20 between the states (the 80) and the Federal government for the express purpose of handling transportation back to the children’s home country. This is a generous sum of money, and it gives the states the wherewithal to transport the children, if the Feds are too reluctant to do so.

Notice that there’s not a dime for “handling legal matters.” There aren’t any; existing law makes clear that these children are eligible for immediate transport to their country of origin. To those who cry these children are running from gangs and violence: there has been no surge in any of that in the last few months; the gangs and violence have been extant for years. That doesn’t mean we should ignore the children’s plight today; it does mean claimed urgency is wholly a cynical political ploy by the Left.

These children and others like them should, indeed, get the benefit of American help and largesse—as part of a proper reform of our immigration system.

Rockets on Israel

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The Executive Vice President of B’nai B’rith International, Daniel Mariaschin, is on the right track. In an op-ed written for Fox News, he very appropriately decried the European Union’s inability to identify, much less understand, who the enemy is in the current explosion of the confrontation between Israel and the terrorists bent on Israel’s destruction.

However, Mariaschin makes his own critical error:

Who exactly does the EU think is firing rockets at Israel?

One thing is for sure: the Hamas rockets have nothing to do with Israel’s settlement policy.

It’s true that those rockets and Israel’s settlement policy are unrelated. But they’re not Hamas rockets. When the Palestinian Authority merged with Hamas in a “reconciliation” government, those rockets became Palestinian Authority rockets.

Mariaschin, and too many others, still draw a distinction between Hamas and the rest of the PA; however, this belies the new reality. Hamas and the PA are one and the same. Hamas’ mission and goal have become the Palestinian Authority’s mission and goal.

Full stop.

The EU, Immigration, and National Sovereignty

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Germany can’t require the spouses of Turkish immigrants to show a basic knowledge of the German language before granting them visas, the European Union’s top court ruled on Thursday, overturning a condition aimed at preventing forced marriages and at promoting integration.

Foreigners, after all, shouldn’t be expected to assimilate into the culture and country to which they emigrate; they should continue to live apart from their new community, leading in the aggregate to the fractionation of their new “country.”

There are complications in this particular case (there always are when law is involved), but that’s the thrust of this ruling. The court went on:

A new restriction might be permitted if it were justified by an overriding public interest, and didn’t “go beyond what is necessary in order to attain it,” the court said.

However, Germany’s language requirement didn’t meet those conditions, the court said.

Because assimilation and integration into the host society, the host and sovereign nation, isn’t an overriding public interest. But then, the EU doesn’t want its constituent members to be unified and sovereign countries, anyway—fractionation facilitates the current push for political union of the European Union into one nation by weakening government’s ability to resist the push.

It’s Not Me, It’s Them

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Regarding the current children’s crisis on our border with Mexico, and following a private meeting with Texas Governor Rick Perry (R) which President Barack Obama is masquerading as a suitable sub for him personally visiting that border area, President Obama had some comments.

I urged the Governor to talk to the Texas delegation, which is obviously at the heart of the Republican caucus both in the House and has great influence in the caucus in the Senate. …if the Texas delegation is prepared to move, this thing can get done next week.

And

[T]he only question at this point is why wouldn’t the Texas delegation or any of the other Republicans who are concerned about this not want to put this [Obama’s request for nearly $4 billion] on a fast track and get this on my desk…?

And

I suggested to the Governor he has, I suspect, some influence over the Texas delegation….

And

One of the suggestions I had for Governor Perry was that it would be useful for my Republican friends to rediscover the concept of negotiation and compromise.

And so on.

It’s never Obama’s fault. He’s just a helpless pawn of a pernicious House of Representatives and of Evil Republicans.