ALL THE MORE REASON TO EMBRACE THE LEVY REPORT
Jerusalem rejects ‘biased’ Human Rights Council finding that West Bank Jewish communities are illegal
TIMES OF ISRAEL January 31, 2013, 2:36 pm 4
JTA — A United Nations investigation into the impact of Jewish West Bank settlements on the Palestinian population said that Israel should immediately begin to withdraw all settlers from the territory.
The report issued Thursday by the UN Human Rights Council based in Geneva said that settlement violate the 1949 Geneva Conventions and that failure to withdraw could lead to a finding of war crimes at the International Criminal Court.
The Palestinians have threatened to take Israel to the ICC since the Palestinian Authority was recognized as having non-member state status in the General Assembly in November.
The Human Rights Council’s investigation began last March. Israel did not cooperate with the investigation, including barring investigators from entering the territory, saying that the council is biased against the Jewish state. The council has issued more resolutions regarding Israeli human rights violations than any country.
The report said that Israel “must, in compliance with article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, cease all settlement activities without preconditions. It must immediately initiate a process of withdrawal of all settlers from the OPT,” or Occupied Palestinian Territories.
Investigators interviewed about 50 Palestinians in Jordan in order to prepare the report. The report said that the Palestinians were prevented by the settlements from reaching their farming lands and water resources.
The report estimated that 520,000 settlers live in the West Bank and eastern Jerusalem in some 250 settlements.
This, according to the report, “prevents the establishment of a contiguous and viable Palestinian state and undermines the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination.”
Israel’s Foreign Ministry rejected the report, calling it “counterproductive.” The report “will only hamper efforts to find a sustainable solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict,” the ministry said in a statement.
“The only way to resolve all pending issues between Israel and the Palestinians, including the settlements issue, is through direct negotiations without pre-conditions,” the ministry said. .
“The Human Rights Council has sadly distinguished itself by its systematical, one-sided and biased approach towards Israel. This latest report is yet another unfortunate reminder of such approach,” the ministry concluded.
@ Bernard Ross:
How , “irrelevant”?
You had said essentially that you thought the game needed a reversal of roles, rather than an end to the game per se.
— I disagreed.
My experience, Bernard — esp. with online posting — has been that PACKAGING matters to a significant degree.
It would be nice to be able to believe that worthy ideas will always be able to acquire purchase purely on their merits, irrespective of how they’re expressed, positioned, or otherwise arranged.
— Grown-ups know better.
Speaking for myself, e.g., there are LOTS of posts which, I confess, I’m less than likely to take the time to read (let alone, respond to), simply because they are so arranged on the webpage that the sheer act of reading them requires more time & effort than another one that my eye finds better configured.
Sometimes, I’ll simply have to force myself to read a post which is not easy on the eye — but I’ll read it because I see (or sense) that it contains material that I should review. But I wish it weren’t necessary to go through all that sturm und drang — and I try to do my own posting in a manner which I believe will facilitate another reader’s access to my often-Dickensian sentences.
Anyway, I’ve found that online copy seems to be easier on the eye (my OWN eye, anyway) if the paragraphs are smaller than they would be with hard copy, with ideas presented one at a time, rather than bunched together.
@ Bernard Ross:
Bernard Ross Said:
And how much sense would it have made if he had said “demanding acolytes, same everywhere”? No sense at all, it is not a stereotypical situation.
That’s why he had to say “demanding women, same everywhere”. The story of the inconsiderate male and the complaining female rings some bells to our minds.
dionissis mitropoulos Said:
why a reference to demanding women, no women have been mentioned? Why did you mention gay, perhaps he thinks your name is a female name and that you are a female.
@ Bernard Ross:
I choose Door Number Two.
dionissis mitropoulos Said:
the better the content the less need for distracting packaging. There is performance and there is “Jamon” a la captain Kirk.
@ Bernard
Bernard Ross Said:
Not great minds, and not so much thinking.
It’s more like this: low-threshold receptors (i.e. sensitive, in the proper sense of the term, not the crying one) perceive in ways that overlap to a degree higher than couplings of receptors dissimilar in threshold permit.
@ Bernard
Bernard Ross Said:
I was only referring to this case. I don’t know about your past exchanges.
@ Bernard
Bernard Ross Said:
It was you who said that maybe you need a translator, when i first said that dweller might have talked about the barrel-butt distinction so as to make a point about the impact of the smack.
And now that i offer to translate, you call me an apologist! 😉
Bernard Ross Said:
There was no real woman, Bernard, no acolyte either, it was a dwellerian creation of fiction so that he would respond to my faux complaints in a humorously theatric way.
He was not conveying the message that i am gay, he was playing a role consistent with my initial make-believe threats that i would cease to view him as highly as i do if he does not deliver praise – we both knew that i didn’t mean it, and so i thought did you.
dionissis mitropoulos Said:
Great minds think alike!
dionissis mitropoulos Said:
or maybe an apologist.
dionissis mitropoulos Said:
HAW, HAW HAW! It was my first choice based on past performance.
dionissis mitropoulos Said:
Who was the woman complaining?
Bernard Ross Said:
It was a performance, and all of us do engage in performance considerations when we want to say something we consider important.
Some don’t feel like writing in a way that might be perceived as dramatic, they choose a different mode of performing – because they do not wish to be perceived as pompous, or wimps.
Some who have no problem with such perceptions (and are very competent in writing, like dweller) might go for the proper degree of drama.
Dramatic cat, blunt cat, whatever catches the attention and conveys the message in its (emotional and factual) entirety is ok with me – but, aesthetically, i’m with dweller (acolyte and all).
#32 reply to phoenix in moderation
the phoenix Said:
I think that the approach should be like a legal class action suit representing global jewry which is filed in all the countries, including Israel, and forums which obstruct jewish settlement in policy and through indirect funding of NGO’s. It would be money well spent and would require legal research but there are organizations like shurat har din and the one that marjorie rosenfeld mentioned. All the signatories to san remo, LON plus the UN, EU, Japan, etc. Suits to estop thepractice of obstructing the settlement and mandamus(or whatever legal principles apply) to coerce the govts to fulfill their legal obligations to encourage jewish settlement. If adelson spent on that it would not be wasted like the money spent on romney. I believe strongly that it could transform the situation. It needs money and a strong legal team but also a PR arm that guarantees public attention to each filing in the various countries and venues. What a shock it would be when it is disccovered, after carefully being hidden, that Jews actually have a guaranteed internationally legally binding, unexpired right to “close settlement west of the Jordan river.” Not only a right, but are to be “encouraged”.
@ Bernard
Bernard Ross Said:
His tone is far closer to admonition than to lecture – not even remotely possible that he was delivering it as an insult.
@ Bernard
Bernard Ross Said:
He was making show of being a kind of inconsiderate male who treats both women’s and acolytes’ complaints with a selfish and condescending exasperation.
I think i will take you up on your request for a translator for dweller’s comments: i am at your services – free of charge 😛
dweller Said:
I think you are totally not getting my point.
dweller Said:
the shop that I am interested in is not the worldwide debate, it is the Jewish debate that I belive is the important debate as I believe it is the Jews who are the problem. There is a difference. The legal argument is imporrtant in Jewish debates as we have both agreed in the past. However, unlike the worldwide debate which is tinged with intentional dishonesty, the Jews will be interested in the rights of jews and most would not have a problem with “understanding” the absurdity of stating that those guaranteed the homeland in international law are illegally in the homeland. The world wide debate is a phenomenon similar to anti semitism: the conclusions form the argument; whereas the Jews are willing to hear arguments what are beneficial to Jews.
dweller Said:
My view is that it is a waste of time and when entering the world debate at all: dismiss the GC by quickly showing how it is a ludicrous and disingenuous application, under the international law that the con artists themselves summon, by using the legality of jewish settlement as the argument for inapplicability of the GC. If that argument is accepted nothing else is needed if it is not then the opponent is a disingenuous waste of energy. All the international forums should be dealt with the same way. I do not hear jewish settlement rights as the legal argument against the the illegality of jewish settlement: that is the problem. I am starting to believe that Israeli govts do not want YS and therefore sell out the interests of global jewry to fulfill their own myopic agenda. If they wanted it but could not attain it, they could still declare the truth. The plundering of the beneficiary’s assets in trust for perceived self interest.
The Jewish People’s Rights to the Land of Israel, by Salomon Benzimra, available in a Kindle edition at Amazon for only $9.95, lists almost all of the experts who have written on the legality of the Jewish settlements. (And you can download a Kindle for your computer for free at Amazon if you don’t have a Kindle.) Here are a few more (including our own dear Ted):
http://www.think-israel.org/shifftan.belligerentoccupation.html (Yoram Shifftan)
http://articles.latimes.com/2009/dec/11/opinion/la-oe-rozenman11-2009dec11 (Eric Rozenman)
http://docstalk.blogspot.ca/2012/06/outposts-committee-report-judea-and.html (article on the Outposts Committee report on the Legal Status of Judea and Samaria)
http://www.2nd-thoughts.org/id248.html (Stephen M Schwebel)
http://frontpagemag.com/2012/davidhornik/affirming-the-jewish-state%e2%80%99s-territorial-rights/ (David Hornik)
http://www.think-israel.org/belman.occupationsettlements.html (Ted Belman)
http://www.slantright.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1318 (David Solway)
dweller Said:
OK, you are entitled to your opinion, however irrelevant to the point under discussion. Is there a reason for the layout of your writing, are you making a dramatic flourish to convey importance, is it a performance?
Bernard Ross Said:
So,basically you are saying in round about terms, it was added as a lecture, an admonition or a backhanded insult?
dionissis mitropoulos Said:
I think it is called “performance art” and I believe that Eisners performance would qualify as such and be of greater value becuase it is spontaneous performance art rather than contrived.
BTW, I could be wrong but I think he is referring to you:
dweller Said:
dweller Said:
I think the quotes you bring are very pertinent. It has occurred to me that the UN participants are obligated to fulfill the mandates until fulfilled; that any party in power or occupation is obligated to fulfill the mandate; that Israel as a sovereign nation can be considered separately from Global Jewry and its rights; that Israel as the occupying power should legally be performing the only mandatory duty which is to “encourage close Jewish settlement west of the river”; that Israel could legally fulfill those duties while still being able to decide it does not wish to extend its sovereignty and enfranchise west bank arabs west of green line; therefore, in place of the UK it can do the same which is to administer the property for the beneficiary, global jewry, until the area attains a majority jewish population at which time the beneficiary can opt for a separate national entity or to be part of Israel. There is nothing that mandates that the beneficiary must form one jewish state: it can form 2. My point is that it appears that Israel does not annex because it does not want to transfer arabs or allow them citizenship but it can still administrate the mandate and fulfill the one jewish interest in the west bank: the right of close jewish settlement. Under this model Israel can maintain the status quo legally without annexing if it does not wish to annex; however it has no right to dispose of the land that belongs legally to Global Jewry. The land does not belong to the state of Israel by its own admission for if it did it would annex it. If Israel withdraws from the west bank another trustee legally should be appointed to facilitate Jewish settlement according to law. Why should Jews not expect the world to keep their agreements?
@ dionissis mitropoulos:
What, it’s not enough that I’m blushing right through the wire to the internet connection?
— Demanding women, the same everywhere.
@ Honey Bee:
Yes, I suppose so.
(But then, so was Mr Bumble.)
@ dionissis mitropoulos:
Understood.
This was why I noted [above] that Rostow had cited the 1970 Namibia Case for illustrative purposes.
I doubt that even Rostow was presuming to offer it by way of suggesting something of precedential — or OTHERWISE binding — import.
dweller Said:
!!!!!!!!!!
Metaphor, the mom of illustration.
@ Bernard Ross:
I think you’re letting your imagination take you away from the point here, Bernard.
The “shop” in question is the existing worldwide debate — esp. the worldwide Jewish debate — regarding the legality of the Jewish revenant presence in the heartland provinces.
The shop is open for business.
The discussion is ongoing.
You can join it, or you can hang back — insisting on waiting only for the proper points & authorities to be asserted.
I say, if you join it — by noncommitally offering the minimal sops to the wrongheaded, bullshit arguments (this as entree to the discussion) — you may be able to then steer it into more sensible directions, depending on your own strengths & the as-yet-unplumbed depths of tolerance of the existing players.
dweller Said:
I have discovered that appeals to the ICJ are not that rewarding.
It is a merely an advisory body, not a real court, it cannot bind anyone, unless the parties agree to bind themselves to its verdict – and Israel has not lost her senses to ever resort to the ICJ which is clearly biased (although i cannot remember the exact anti-Israel advisory opinions that i read about, i remember that one had something to do with the purported illegality of the fence, and it was decided against Israel).
My worry is that citing rulings of the ICJ binds us to accept the anti-Israel rulings too. And we don’t want that.
dweller, thanks for the analysis. I cannot think clearly right now, but i will keep it as reference anyway. It was in my first visit to your cosmopolitan elites’ site that i became exposed to the anti-Israel legal arguments and became motivated to start researching the issue. They kept on bringing up the ICJ rulings a lot.
I suggest we stay away from the ICJ in our argumentation – better to discredit it by exposing it for what it really is, i.e. a politicized anti-Israel advisory body. So, who cares even if once in the past it made a ruling that favors Israel. We reject everything the ICJ has to say.
Makes sense?
@ Bernard Ross:
I think the game sucks duck eggs
and that it will ALWAYS suck duck eggs
— regardless of how it’s played
— regardless of why it’s played
— regardless of who plays it
— regardless of what role ANYBODY plays in it.
@ Bernard Ross:
Dictionaries have limited utility in this area. They need to sell books, so they cater to the common culture. (And the culture’s become increasingly full of itself since — oh, maybe, what, 1959 or so?)
But even at that, contemporary lexicographers (of American-accented English anyway) have no handle on the locus of the culture’s growing edge OR its more stable center — and in recent decades this has meant they pick up on language fads, only to embarrass themselves when their next edition is obliged to acknowledge that what was recently “in” is not only now stale (or even dead), but may have actually changed altogether even in those quarters from whence it originally emerged.
The expression to get-off began life, as I noted (and has continued), to be a general reference to psychical satisfaction. For a brief period — late 1960’s & early 1970’s, the so-called “sexual revolution” (better labeled, the sexual debacle) — the proponents of that thoroughgoing insanity latched onto the term “to get-off” to celebrate their self-congratulatory rediscovery of the wheel.
The expression, however, was here before they were, and it remains here in the wake of the wreckage & heartbreak they left behind.
That’s not quite what I said. One cannot be said to ‘recall’ what wasn’t present or in play.
What I was saying was that because I retained a bright, clear memory of the making & posting of the comment, had it been accompanied by a sexual milieu or sexual musings, that sort of thing would’ve been part of the memory; it wasn’t.
As I’ve said on several previous occasions, I think it’s a serious mistake to indulge such personal gratifications — emotional candies — irrespective of the justice or lack of same in the action itself.
Bernard Ross Said:
dear mr ross,
this might be a crazy idea, and totally off the wall, but then again, fwiw, quite a few good things initially started as a ‘crazy idea’ that either evolved, or led to something else alltogether, that might be even better than the original idea…
ok so with that as an introduction, to follow up on that part of your comment…
100 million is not exactly chopped liver, nonetheless, i daresay, for someone that is one of the richest men in the world…ANOTHER 100 million (and perhaps MORE?) would not make a huge dent in his pocket.
do you (or anybody else on this forum) think that we could try to brainstorm how to GET to have adelson join the cause that you are so eloquently advocating in most of your posts (and by so doing open his wallet wider, WIDER, W.I.D.E.R. )
i.e. give birth to a jewish organization that is WELL VERSED with jewish history and ESPECIALLY the era after ww1 till 1967 (and of course till now)
there are many logistics to consider but first, do you think there is any merit ?
all the arguments that are flying back and forth here on this forum, will be flying into the face of stunned internationals (a verbal eisner moment, if you will…) who will just ask each other “was that a JEW that spoke to us that way?”
Bernard Ross Said:
That was a very eloquent expression of a malicious exasperation, tinged with a sarcastic contempt for the post-modern art establishment.
It was GREAT !!!
@ dionissis mitropoulos:
Rostow discusses this in the first of the two New Republic articles I cited above.
Along with the entire, post-Great War, Woodrow Wilson-inspired, mandate system, creation of the Mandate for Palestine had been commanded (hence, “mandate”): by Article 22 of the League Covenant,” which held each of the Mandates “a sacred trust of civilization.” Pursuant to that declaration, it will bear observing, as did Rostow — by citing, for illustrative purposes, the 1970 Namibia Case before the World Court in The Hague — that a trust (sacred or otherwise) does not automatically end merely
Moreover, the rights recognized in the Mandate for Palestine “can be ended only by the establishment and recognition of a new state or the incorporation of the territories into an old one” [viz., an existing one — dw]” Ibid.
@ Bernard
Bernard Ross Said:
Yes, but dweller used the expression “get off” for me too under circumstances that he did not mean to offend me. So he can’t have meant the sexual connotations.
Bernard Ross Said:
I find your enjoyment a very natural psychological reaction (given what Israel is going through because of the West) and i have implicitly stated it when i said that i consider the anger justified.
dweller Said:
An org which does not require adherence to its charter has low standards of admission; which perhaps explain the low standards of behavior. Thanks for the analysis and links re settlement rights, good work. I am curious as to how the internationals sidestep their obligations and commitments to Jewish settlement west of the river. Perhaps they are able to do this because Israel does it and Israel would be the only legal party to be able to do it first; thus enabling the others to rely on Israel’s sidestep and ignore the issue and the rights. It appears to me an individual Jew or organization could challenge Israel and the internationals on this sidestep. Adelson would have better spent his 100 million supporting that cause.
@ Bernard Ross:
Amen to that ! (Wholeheartedly)
dionissis mitropoulos Said:
I know you are seeking to “bring it on” for a change in pace and light entertainment. read my reply regarding the common american meaning of “getting off”. but I admit that I enjoyed Eisners retort and hope to see many more such “comments”. Eisner’s comment was a live work of art both immediate and pregnant with meaning. It should be put in one of those avant garde museums.
dweller Said:
They are the shopkeeper’s of their minds, their mouths and the land of Israel.
dweller Said:
A good point,you may be right,….on the other hand they appear to have accepted law when they state that if they annex YS they MUST give citizenship to the Arabs. Perhaps they expect that law will only be applied against Jews. An expectation acquired under millenia of duress.
dweller Said:
thank you for this clarification. I withdraw my queries regarding your anal compulsions or retentions, using the immortal words of Gilda Radner:
dweller Said:
I believe I stated an end to playing the game as usual. I think it might be charitable and educational if the roles were reversed for a while as they say “experience is the best teacher”. perhaps if the Europeans walked in the role of the Jews for a few centuries they would gain a true understanding rather than a simple intellectual understanding. Perhaps the Muslims will help them to understand that role as time moves forward.
dweller Said:
from Macmillan online dictionary:
dweller Said:
Since you vividly recall that sex was the furthest thing from your mind. Having lived in the tropics and the south for more than 40 years I would probably have to admit that sex was on my mind more often than when living in the north. Perhaps as suggested, it was an overreaction, but then I wonder:dweller Said:
Why did you feel the need to add that suspicion?
@ Bernard
Bernard Ross Said:
I have thought about it, you have been mentioning it from time to time, and have come to the same conclusion: the biggest problem of Israel is that the public is not united in a common strategy.
This is natural for every other country (and desirable) but in the case of Israel, with Arab and Iranian threats all around, it is dangerous.
@ Marjorie Stamm Rosenfeld:I think that if there was a leadership with popular support that wished to reverse the trend it could be done. The rights of Jews and the obligations of the internationals have not terminated as a result of non use. furthermore,Israel was extorted to give up rights under duress with the jews having just escaped the holocaust and later continuing to be subjected to swindling by the very parties who endorsed jewish rights. Agreements made under duress is non binding and unenforceable. I don’t expect any of this to see the light of day in a (non-kangaroo)court but would like to see Israel quote these laws as a basis for unilateral action to fulfill jewish rights and restore justice to Jews.
@ Honey Bee
Honey Bee Said:
I could guess that you had a degree in humanities (your…interventions are always very apt) but i didn’t know it was in English – nor that it bestowed such baseness in your motive for marriage :P.
Having said all this, i still feel embarrassed for missing the quote.
@ Honey Bee:
“Alas poor CA , no woman knew him well” Shakespere
@ dionissis mitropoulos:
No it is Charles Dickens, I was an Enlish Lit major,which is why I had to marry, to eat.
@ the phoenix:
the phoenix Said:
Good. And, you know, if we get arrested for the amputation, we may always blame it on Honey Bee. It was her who ordered us to do it – we’ll have to spend some time in jail though.
What concerns me the most is that, after Curious American is released from the hospital, he will come back to Israpundit and will be speaking with a newborn passion about “how depraved
the Jewsmankind is”.dionissis mitropoulos Said:
YOU! asked for it…you got it… 🙂