Biden administration rejects annexation comparisons between Russia and Israel

T. Belman. This is typical of JTA and TOI. This article is wrong on everything. Ukraine did pose a threat to Russia. It also had killed over 10,000 Russians in eastern Ukraine since 2014.  Israel is not an occupier of anyone’s land. Russia did not annex Ukrainian territory . It annexed former Ukraine territory, which territory had seceded according to law. It considered the recent biased report of the UN Commission of Inquiry worthy of being referenced.

White House ‘categorically rejects’ likening Israeli presence in West Bank to Russia’s ‘brutal war of aggression,’ saying Ukraine posed no threat

By RON KAMPEAS, TOI      Today, 6:55 am   

State Department spokesman Ned Price speaks during a news conference at the State Department, March 10, 2022, in Washington. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta, Pool)

JTA — The Biden administration on Thursday rejected comparisons between Russia’s annexation of parts of Ukraine and Israel’s military control of the West Bank.

“We categorically reject the blanket comparison between [Israel’s occupation and] the actions of the Kremlin – Russia in this case – that has launched and waged a brutal war of aggression against another sovereign state, a sovereign state that posed and poses no threat whatsoever to the Kremlin, a military campaign… whose toll can be measured in thousands upon thousands of lives lost,” Ned Price, the State Department spokesman, said.

Price was reacting to a reporter’s question about a statement by Navi Pillay, the chairwoman of a United Nations Commission of Inquiry into Israel’s activities in the West Bank.

The commission report concluded that Israel’s 55-year-old rule of the West Bank had become so entrenched it was now de facto annexation. Prime Minister Yair Lapid called the report “biased, false, inciting and blatantly unbalanced.”

Pillay, in the statement attached to the release of the report, said that the UN General Assembly’s recent condemnation of Russia for annexing four areas of Ukraine would be rendered meaningless if the United Nations did not adopt her commission’s report.

“Recent statements by the Secretary-General and numerous member States have clearly indicated that any attempt at unilateral annexation of a State’s territory by another State is a violation of international law and is null and void; 143 member States including Israel last week voted in favor of a General Assembly resolution reaffirming this,” she said. “Unless universally applied, including to the situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, this core principle of the United Nations Charter will become meaningless.”

In the press briefing, Price enumerated the differences the Biden administration saw between the Israel and Russia situations, among them that Russia faced no threat from Ukraine prior to launching its war against the country, and that the West Bank is not Palestinian sovereign territory.

He said that Israel should not be immune from criticism and that the Biden administration remains committed to a two-state outcome to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But he added that the United Nations frequently unfairly singles out Israel for criticism.

“No country is or should be immune from criticism. That, of course, includes Israel,” he said. “Some of the criticism that we’ve heard – and we’ve, of course, offered our own over the course of recent months – is justified. Much of it is not.”

October 22, 2022 | 5 Comments »

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  1. Hi, Ted

    “Regime change…”

    Yes, that’s what the elections are for…

    BTW, China just had its “regime change”:

    Leadership shuffle

    Hu’s abrupt exit came just before the 2,300 delegates at the congress voted unanimously to endorse Xi’s “core” leadership position.

    Search results for “Hu Jintao” on the Twitter-like Weibo platform appeared to be heavily censored with the most recent result dated Friday and posts limited to those of official accounts.

    Meanwhile, Li, China’s number two official, was among four of the seven members of the nation’s all-powerful Politburo Standing Committee who will not be reappointed in a leadership shuffle on Sunday.

    Li and three others were missing from the ruling Communist Party’s new 205-member Central Committee that was approved at the closing session. The congress set the leadership and agenda for the next five years.

    Only Central Committee members can serve on the Standing Committee.

    Xi is all but assured of being formally announced on Sunday as the party’s general secretary for another five years, also allowing him to become president for a third straight time.

    Since taking over from Hu 10 years ago, Xi has become China’s most authoritarian leader since Mao Zedong.

    Xi has crushed opposition to his rule inside the party with many of his rivals jailed on corruption charges, and he has shown no tolerance for any form of public dissent.

    https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/10/22/former-china-president-hu-removed-from-communist-party-congress (again, very good reporting by Al Jazeera)

  2. Hi, Ted.

    I notice your comment,

    “This article is wrong on everything”.

    On the other hand, you did post the thread,

    Russia, Iran’s Mullahs Deepen Ties to Crush Ukraine: Why Is Biden Administration Silent?

    If I might put these two together, “Russia is right about this and Ukraine is wrong about that”, Biden is “I d’nnow”, America is “Say, what?”, etc. But in the end, after the dust from the latest dust-up has gone somewhere else,

    1. Russia is allied with Israel’s proximate worst enemies (Iran and Syria), and

    2. The Israeli government, along with Jewish antisemite poster boys like Adam Schiff, Jerry Nadler, Merrick Garland, Chuck Schumer, Yuval Harari, George Soros and Devil D. Dragon, are on the same side as Biden’s handlers and the Great Reset / New World Order, and

    3. Israel and the Jews will ultimately, no matter which side they choose to appease and whom they try to justify, will ultimately be blamed for everything — quite possibly along with Donald J. Trump and everything “MAGA”.

    Such is life. Biden needed a distraction before the mid-terms, and was hoping a Russian invasion of the Ukraine would provide it. Putin gladly cooperated, and went so far out on a limb that it’s starting to break under him. Rising like cream to the surface will be George Soros, Claus Schwab and the greatest military alliance the world has ever seen, namely, NATO-Five Eyes-Japan-AUKUS-etc., aka the Christian Bible’s “beast that arose out of the sea” (Remember that one, Honeybee?).

    Israel goes to the polls in just over a week, and the US goes in just over two. That’s where our focus needs to be. Ukraine is essentially newsporn.

    Oh, yes — as an afterthought, as it’s been treated by the MSM, Chairman Xi is being crowned “Emperor for Life” and has doubled down both on making life miserable for the Chinese people and on starting his own war against Taiwan (Hear ye, hear ye! Buy your tickets now, to choose sides!).

    He will lose, and the beast will once again rise like cream.

  3. Russia’s annexations of some Russian populated area based on self-determination of people. Just like Kosovo (no elections), or Northern Cyprus by the Turks. By Totally, different different principals part of the Golan Heights annexation by Israel. The UN and other Western organizations, states are not hiding their hypocrisy, recognizing, some of these border changes and not recognizing others.