In the last few weeks, we've seen the "justice" that the Palestinians mete out to anyone they consider a collaborator with Israel. Compared with the way the PA handled the suspects that it bothered to round up in the name of controlling terrorist operations in PA areas, the difference is stark. Summary execution versus coddling and release (or "escape").
I can't help but think that when Israel was pressured into Oslo by the US, both countries were hoping Arafat would deal with terrorist operations in the fashion we've seen collaborators handled. We knew Arafat was going to be another tinpot dictator, and we were hoping he'd use the methods of one for our ends.
Shared control of Jerusalem Palestinian neighborhoods in Jerusalem would be part of the Palestinian State. Palestine’s capitol would be in Jerusalem.
97% of the West Bank to the Palestinians This would be one contiguous land mass, not four separate parcels as the Palestinians have been saying.
Right of Return of Palestinian refugees to the new Palestinian homeland. Palestinian refugees, wherever they might be, would be allowed to leave refugee camps and return to the new Palestinian homeland. You’ve heard Palestinian apologists say that the agreement contained no “right of return.” Not true. It was there. They could return to the new Palestinian homeland. They could NOT leave refugee camps and move into Israel.
An international presence in the Jordan Valley. These folks have been at war for generations. There is nothing unreasonable about an international peacekeeping force in place until the situation stabilizes.
A Professor at Ohio University has for years mounted an inoperable antique rifle on his office wall. The administration has demanded that he remove it under a policy that no one had ever heard of until the demand was made.
Professor Washburn's response has provoked some interesting reactions from the administration.
Fortunately, Mr. Washburn is a tenured professor who can afford to fight back. He also has a sense of humor. "The purpose of this note is to formally request that the cannons that are fired when Ohio University scores at football games not only never be fired again as long as the present Workplace Violence Policy is in effect, but that they be removed from campus," he wrote in a note to Mr. Burns and OU President Robert Glidden. "I go to the games, and I feel threatened by them."
If Mr. Washburn has a sense of humor, administrators at Ohio University apparently do not. Gary North, vice president of administration, fired back at Mr. Washburn, first belittling his "illogical" complaint about the "noisemaker" — actually, a functioning replica of an 1841 Howitzer cannon — and then dismissing it. And while Mr. North concedes that the policy "clearly needs revision for greater clarity," that is a curious admission considering what the school did next. Ohio University filed a formal "Unacceptable Behavioral Incident Report Form" against its own professor. While that will allow them to revisit their prohibition on antique guns, they will also investigate the "underlying behavioral issues" of Mr. Washburn. The last point is particularly amusing because, as Mr. Washburn points out, in displaying his gun he "didn't behave in any fashion." The gun just sat there. The subsequent investigation of Mr. Washburn's behavior becomes a bit less humorous, though, if the administrators are referring to Mr. Washburn's protest. Either way, they've threatened to make the report a part of his permanent record.
Jean Chretien thinks it is a great idea to have the African states grade each other on which of them deserve to be allocated foreign aid. I'm hardly suprised, given that the Federal ethics commissioner in Canada is appointed by the PM, reports to the PM even when investigating the PM, and has no publicly disclosed guidelines to follow.
"They will have to classify themselves. They have [to have] peer reviews."
Conscience, when it is functioning well--automatically and without the intervention of reason, so that we do the right thing without thinking--is not simply rational. It is a force, a blunt instrument before which the conscientious person is guilty until proven innocent. As the preventive agency in the mind, conscience blocks first, thinks later. Men like Arafat and Richard (Richard III of Shakespeare) know this. That is why both men constantly charge others with crimes--to paralyze them. Both know it doesn't matter whether the charges are false. Richard brazenly accuses Anne of inspiring the murder of her husband, as Arafat accuses the West of causing terrorism. (Emphasis added)
Given that the student was a Republican, I don't think that we'll be hearing any faux outrage from Michael Moore anytime soon. Apparently the US universities really are going batshit down there. Via Campus Nonsense
Why are these people not being charged with uttering death threats? They have explictly declared their intent to kill people. Further, any other person threatening to kill themselves may be taken under psychiatric care in many cases. Why not these people? If a husband publicly threatens to kill his wife, would he be charged for uttering death threats? Is there an unspoken cultural exemption that is being extended here?
Via Fredrik Norman, where I'd post a comment, but the comment system doesn't like me. Actually, this is a common thing. I find that I can't post comments on Vodkapundit or Sgt.Stryker for the same reasons. Annoying. (Help, Help! My dissent is being oppressed!)
Also, check out the other articles Fredrik has posted recently. Excellent stuff.
Powell will meet with Arafat. Not a word about the previous conditions that Arafat had to call for a end to the violence and bombings in arabic. I guess they can continue then. I'm sure the Palestinians will get that message loud and clear.
I've noticed that the media treats Bush sending Powell to the middle east as being more important that Cheney going a few weeks ago. Last I checked, the Vice President is a more senior member of the US administration than the Secretary of State. Did I miss something here, or is it just that the media simply favours Powell more?
While we fight the war against terrorism all out, the way we fought World War II, we seem to be insisting that Israel fight its war against terrorism the way we fought Vietnam -- restricted by political considerations and pulling our punches to appease those who indulge themselves in kibitzing from the sidelines about life and death issues that they have never bothered to study seriously.
Has any call for restraint made to Arafat ever produced such a break in the bombing?
Ah, but remember, violence solves nothing, only negotiations can produce peace. Right.
Here's another Israeli blog: "The Truth About Israel". I say "another" because I'm pretty sure that everyone is already aware of Tal.G in Jerusalem.
Here's Tal's take on the lull.
"I think that people feel safer, but know that this is likely to last only as long as it takes for Fatah, Hamas etc. to regroup. Then the IDF will have to go back in again.
Race, though important, is not all-important. My acquaintance will never be given a lick of credit. “First in one’s family,” indeed — I doubt that this West Virginian asked for a separate ceremony, either. The idea was to integrate, to join the American Dream.
Didn’t that used to be the idea — Martin Luther King and all that? How did it slip away, so fast?
Very simple. It slipped away because it was a bait and switch. The people who provide the movement with it's ideas, the intellectuals, the agitators who control it now, never wanted integration into the American dream. The desire to join the dream (equality, freedom, opportunity, prosperity) was great rhetoric in getting the masses to join the struggle for freedom and racial equality. But it wasn't what the intellectuals want. To them the American dream is an ugly thing that doesn't reward intellectuals "as it should" by their standards. At a certain point, integration into the dream had to be halted, no longer a motive, but simply a tool, a rallying cry. The american dream is capitalist and creates new bourgeoisie. That is undesireable to the intellectuals.
AROUND 1830, a group of French artists and intellectuals looked around and noticed that people who were their spiritual inferiors were running the world. Suddenly a large crowd of merchants, managers, and traders were making lots of money, living in the big houses, and holding the key posts. They had none of the high style of the aristocracy, or even the earthy integrity of the peasants. Instead, they were gross. They were vulgar materialists, shallow conformists, and self-absorbed philistines, who half the time failed even to acknowledge their moral and spiritual inferiority to the artists and intellectuals. What's more, it was their very mediocrity that accounted for their success. Through some screw-up in the great scheme of the universe, their narrow-minded greed had brought them vast wealth, unstoppable power, and growing social prestige.
Naturally, the artists and intellectuals were outraged. Hatred of the bourgeoisie became the official emotion of the French intelligentsia. Stendhal said traders and merchants made him want to "weep and vomit at the same time." Flaubert thought they were "plodding and avaricious." Hatred of the bourgeoisie, he wrote, "is the beginning of all virtue." He signed his letters "Bourgeoisophobus" to show how much he despised "stupid grocers and their ilk."
Of all the great creeds of the 19th century, pretty much the only one still thriving is this one, bourgeoisophobia. Marxism is dead. Freudianism is dead. Social Darwinism is dead, along with all those theories about racial purity that grew up around it. But the emotions and reactions that Flaubert, Stendhal, and all the others articulated in the 1830s are still with us, bigger than ever. In fact, bourgeoisophobia, which has flowered variously and spread to places as diverse as Baghdad, Ramallah, and Beijing, is the major reactionary creed of our age.
Socialism and bourgeoisophobia are the major creeds of the current race warlords in the west. They do not want minorities to integrate into the capitalist economy. Success must only come as a matter of group identity, not individual achievement and success. They want equality, but not through the vulgar tools of capitalism.