Category Archives: foreign policy

The MH17 Shootdown

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That this was done by the Ukrainian “separatists” (in quotes because, as some commentators are beginning to recognize, these…people…aren’t interested in separation from Ukraine so much as they are interested in uniting with Russia) with Russian SAM systems and personnel assistance is by now quite clear.

Yet, as The Wall Street Journal put it over the weekend,

The greatest foreign-policy failing of this Presidency is that he refuses to see that the world has bad actors. He can explain the consequences of aggression as he did on Friday, but he refuses to admit or explain that certain countries are responsible for those consequences and must be opposed.

Ronald Reagan didn’t flinch this way, and neither does Mr Obama’s own UN Ambassador.

Barack Obama, though, is no Ronald Reagan.

Moral Equivalence Pollution, Second Installment

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The Obama administration accused Israel on Thursday of failing to do all it can to prevent civilian casualties in Gaza during cross-border attacks.

Of the Gaza beach attacks that killed four cousins on Wednesday, [Jen] Psaki called the attack “horrifying.”

“The tragic event makes clear that Israel must take every possible step to meet its standards for protecting civilians from being killed,” Psaki said. “We will continue to underscore that point to Israel.”

Asked whether the US believes Israel has not done enough to prevent civilian casualties, Psaki said: “We believe that certainly there’s more that can be done.”

Never mind that Israelis, openly and publicly, are warning the civilians in the area that an attack is imminent and encouraging them to leave. Never mind that this also gives the terrorists warning and allows those who were in the target zone also to leave and so to survive to attack Israel again, a few hours later.

Never mind that Palestinian civilians wouldn’t be in danger if the Palestinian Authority terrorists didn’t use them for shields, didn’t hide their weaponry in civilian buildings—homes and mosques, for instance—or didn’t fire their rockets from within those civilian buildings. Never mind that Palestinian civilians wouldn’t be in danger if the PA didn’t insist on attacking Israel.

Not to be outdone, the UN is adding to this moral equivalency sewage.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon also urged Israel on Thursday “to do far more to stop civilian casualties,” calling the killing of four boys on a beach in Gaza City “appalling.”

On the other hand, maybe the UN really isn’t engaging in moral equivalence. They’ve been utterly silent about the PA’s rocket firings against the Israeli nuclear power plant in Dimona, even though the UN itself defines attacks on nuclear facilities as nuclear terrorism. This bit of naked terrorism is fine, apparently.

Flagrant UN Treachery

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Some 20 rockets were found Wednesday in a school in Gaza operated by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, the organization confirmed Thursday.

Israel is being generous in its characterization of the situation. Yigal Palmor, of the Israeli Foreign Ministry said this:

Yet again, Gaza terrorists abuse UN facilities to carry out their violent activities. Hamas and other terror groups are determined to put civilians in harm’s way and will respect nothing in their violent frenzy. We expect the UN and the international community to condemn and to act strongly against this brazen violation of international humanitarian law, which endangers children and UN humanitarian activities.

Of course.

But larger questions remain unanswered: how could those missiles have been placed without UN complicity? How could those missiles have been placed without UN knowledge? It was the UN’s facility, after all.

And the UNRWA is the same agency that, during the last Israeli entry into the Gaza in response to then-Hamas terrorist rocket attacks, falsely claimed Israel had murdered Palestinian children in a hospital.

Redlines and Deadlines

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The currently about to expire “temporary” easing of sanctions on Iran over their nuclear weapons program is about to be extended. Recall that the sanctions were to be reapplied, were these negotiations unsuccessful by the next week. President Barack Obama “promised” this when this latest round of talks began last winter.

Alternatively, this Obama and his administration are so desperate for an agreement—any agreement—concerning the Iranian nuclear weapons program by the deadline that

[B]oth US Secretary of State John Kerry and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif have signaled through their carefully worded statements that they are now moving toward agreement….

That agreement includes something along the lines of Zarif’s latest centrifuge proposal (centrifuges are necessary for purifying uranium to weapons grade) at 9,400 centrifuges. This is a far cry from the Obama administration’s original position that Iran must dismantle its nuclear weapons program altogether, which would necessarily include taking down all of its centrifuges.

It would appear that an Obama deadline means about as much as an Obama redline. And it’s about the same color.

One Face of Terrorism

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Just as soon as Israel accepted an Egyptian-brokered ceasefire Hamas fired 47 rockets killing one Israeli citizen.  Anyone who has followed the conflict could have predicted this with certainty; the point of a ceasefire—for a terrorist organization—is to break it for exactly the same reason it purposely attacks women and children.

Dr Anna Geifman expanded on this:

[C]hildren are the last consecrated absolute. …militant nihilism strives to ruin first and foremost what their contemporaries hold sacred.

And

Random, en masse brutality against civilians—emblematic for the 20th-century terror—culminated in a spectacular act of apocalyptic destruction on 9/11.

And today, the Palestinian Authority’s avowed goal is the spectacular act of apocalyptic destruction of Israel.

This is what Israel is facing today from the Palestinian Authority’s terrorism. This is part of what makes the UN’s call for equal parts of “restraint,” as though the PA’s terrorism were of a piece with Israel’s self defense efforts, so reprehensible. This is part of what makes the moral equivalence that the Democrats in the White House, in the State Department, and in the Senate espouse with their insistence on even-handed treatment of Israelis and PA terrorists so despicable.

h/t Belmont Club