Higher Standard or Double Standard? Don’t set a double standard for Israel on norms of war. by Anatoly Sharansky

The pictures of destruction and mourning in Gaza that have filled media around the world for the past several weeks have been very painful and sad to view. One would be hard-pressed to find an Israeli who does not sympathize with the suffering of Gaza’s victims.

Yet there are also few Israelis who feel we are responsible for this suffering. For us, the tragedy of Gaza is inseparable from the tragedy of the entire Middle East. Over the past three years, in countries around our tiny state, more than a quarter of a million people have been killed in the most horrific ways. This wave of terror recognizes no official borders. The only border at which the savagery stops is Israel’s.

Hamas and Hezbollah are doing their best to change this. So what protects us? The United Nations or human rights groups? No. Only the military power of the Israel Defense Forces. In response to our enemies’ relentless campaigns, the army is constantly developing new ways to defend us. One new weapon, Iron Dome, has in the past few weeks protected civilians from almost 3,000 missiles.

But while Israelis have developed missile shields to protect children, Hamas has been using children as shields to protect missiles. This perverse strategy is the brainchild of a society that hails death. For Hamas, using living shields serves the double function of increasing the number of martyrs and galvanizing a free world that values life to pressure Israel to stop fighting.

The sad irony, then, is that while the world can do so little to stop the terror in Syria or Sudan, it can do a lot to press Israel to stop defending itself. We ask ourselves, is this hypocrisy? Is this a betrayal by the free world whose values we are defending? And in response, Israel hears from the international community, “Of course you are judged differently. You insist that you are part of the free world, so we hold you to a higher standard than neighboring countries, where wanton destruction of human life is the norm.”

I strongly agree with this argument.

Israel, like any other free country, should be held to a higher moral standard than its unfree neighbors. As the war against terror becomes increasingly global, it is imperative that all free countries develop and uphold common norms in our military conduct against armies of terror. Israel, with its decades-long experience, can contribute much to this effort.

For example, 12 years ago, during the Second Intifada, I was a member of the Israeli security cabinet when the army first decided to use aviation to target terrorist leaders. In nearly every cabinet meeting, Israel’s attorney general insisted that our targets must be chosen not on the basis of crimes already committed, but solely in light of proof that they were planning new terrorist acts. In other words, no matter how much death and destruction someone had caused, a targeted killing could be justified only by documented intentions to carry out another attack. A serious case had to be prepared for each assassination attempt, and therefore the number of such operations could be counted on one hand. Now that targeted killings are practically the norm – when the United States uses drones for this purpose all over the world – I would hope others are as scrupulous as Israel has been.

Around the same time, we in the cabinet also discussed the importance of using weapons that minimize civilian deaths, even if this meant decreasing an operation’s chance of success. Many operations were modified or canceled because of this. Today, Israel goes even further. Before the IDF bombs an area in Gaza, residents are alerted by radio, e-mail, phone and text message telling them to leave. The Israeli army also uses small warning missiles to let civilians – that a real missile will soon be fired. Do other free countries go to similar lengths?

In 1999, when NATO launched its offensive against the criminal Milosevic regime in Yugoslavia, hundreds of civilians were killed in the bombings. Many more civilians were killed when U.S. warplanes hunted down Saddam Hussein’s family and supporters, and later al-Qaeda terrorists. They were killed in cafes, cinemas and even a wedding procession.

Let me be clear. I believe that it was the free world’s obligation to fight against the Milosevic regime, which carried out ethnic cleansing in the heart of Europe. I believe it is the obligation of the United States and free countries to lead an uncompromising struggle against terrorist organizations such as al-Qaeda and the Islamic State. But the obligation of the IDF to protect Israeli citizens from thousands of missiles and from underground terrorist infiltrations is just as sacred. In view of the developing global war between the free world and terror, it is time that leading military experts from Israel, the United States, Britain and other countries, along with international lawyers and politicians, compare their experiences and agree about the standards according to which the free world can defend itself.

But once these standards are accepted, they should be applied to every free country. Otherwise, stop calling it a higher standard and call it by its real name: a double standard.

This op-ed originally appeared in the Washington Post.

Israel Matzav: Libtards

POSTERS4ISRAEL:

LIBERAL DOUBLE STANDARD REGARDING MOSLEMS

Confucius Says: He Who Lives in Glass House Should Not Throw Stones

Can I Have the Right To Demonstrate Too?

Israel's government bodies by which I include the cabinet, the courts, the state prosecutor's office, the police and more, in collusion with the Waqf, prevent me from praying on the Temple Mount.  But I wonder, could I at least benefit from the right to free assembly and protest?  Like these women expressing solidarity with Syria or the Syrian people?

We kill Bin Laden, Israel Targets Hamas: Why Does The World Community Condemn The Jewish State? by Alan Dershowitz

 Imagine if Israeli commandos had crossed the border into Syria or Lebanon and shot the heads of the terrorist groups - Hamas and Hezbollah - that constantly target Israeli civilians. Or say they managed to track down and kill a top Hamas leader in Dubai. How would the world react to such a cross-border targeted assassination?

Wait! We already know. Israel did in fact assassinate several terrorist leaders in the Gaza Strip, and did allegedly conduct another covert operation in the United Arab Emirates. These terrorists had orchestrated the murder of more Israeli civilians, as a percentage of its population, than the number killed by Osama Bin Laden. But when Israel neutralized an ongoing threat against its civilians by targeting terrorist leaders for assassination, the international community - most particularly the European Union and the United Nations - was apoplectic.

Let's sample a few reactions from around the world at the time. The French Foreign Ministry declared "that extrajudicial executions contravene international law and are unacceptable." The Italian foreign minister said, "Italy, like the whole of the European Union, has always condemned the practice of targeted assassinations." The British foreign secretary said, "So-called targeted assassinations of this kind are unlawful, unjustified and counterproductive." The Jordanians said, "Jordan has always denounced this policy of assassination and its position on this has always been clear."

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan declared, quite unequivocally, "that extrajudicial killings are violations of international law." Have you ever heard such unanimity in global opinion?

The fact that none of these convenient critics of Israel has dared challenge the wisdom or legitimacy of the assassination of Bin Laden by the United States lays the double standard bare: Israel is the one country whose right to defend itself is systematically questioned.

What the United States did in Pakistan stretched, but did not break, the loosely defined bounds of international law. Bin Laden, like the terrorist leaders of Hamas, was a combatant under any reasonable definition of that term. Under the rules of warfare, he was an appropriate target of a kill-or-capture operation. As long as he did not try to surrender, he could be shot the way an ordinary soldier can be shot during a combat operation.

Likewise, when Israel singles out terrorist leaders or organizations for military action, they are acting well within the bounds of customary international law. Nations throughout history have engaged in similar acts of proactive self-defense without criticism.

But Israel risks condemnation every time it seeks to defend its civilians. There are resolutions by the United Nations, Goldstone reports and threats to haul its leaders in front of international and domestic courts.

The broad consensus among reasonable people is that the United States acted properly in going after Osama Bin Laden, who had murdered thousands of innocent Americans in cold blood. This action, and its widespread approval, has now become part of customary international law. When Israel engaged in similar actions, the international community condemned them as outside of international law.

When President Obama comes to Ground Zero today, he will be appropriately applauded not only by most Americans but by most reasonable people around the world. His actions made the United States and the world a bit safer from the scourge of international terrorism.

Likewise, when Benjamin Netanyahu comes to Washington, he, too, should be applauded for making the world and his own citizens a bit safer. We must have one standard in judging military actions. Both the United States and Israel have helped to create that standard by seeking to balance the need for aggressive actions against terrorists with compliance to the rule of law.

Dershowitz is a professor at Harvard Law School.

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown: Stop blaming Israel for every grievance in the Middle East Why the double standards? We have an obligation to judge all governments and rulers by the same universal values

First came the Arab spring (followed, in some lands, by the harshest of winters) and now Hamas and Fatah have signed a deal for unity. Naturally, Israel is as panicked as are Arab despots by the shifts and quakes, the shaking ground beneath their boots. Israel depended on an everlasting, adamantine status quo. Nothing will ever be as it has been. Successive Israeli governments and their global cheerleaders and backers across the world are guilty of crimes against the humanity and rights of the Palestinian people, they who were made to pay for the European Holocaust. Hitler's unspeakable annihilation project can't be laid to rest and shouldn't. But excruciating historical experiences do not entitle a nation to grab land, to humiliate, to destroy the livelihoods of others and to expect no censure; in effect to be above international law.

I am as pro-Palestinian as the next leftie and try to do my bit; to speak up against repressive Israeli policies and acts, which is never easy, as many of us have had to learn. We go to protests against the collective punishments meted out in Gaza and elsewhere in Palestine and on Arab citizens of Israel; others lobby influential people; the brave ones go on flotillas, and the less brave but committed refuse to buy Hass avocadoes and instead purchase olive oil from the West Bank. All of us need to stop and think, to use this moment of upheaval to scrutinise ourselves and our habituated responses to the Middle East.

For many years now, British and American Zionists have complained that progressives pick on Israel, expect higher standards from that government and most iniquitously, that any criticism of their land is in effect a lightly disguised and now approved expression of anti-Semitism. Using a combination of guilt, suggestion and aggression they have managed to, if not suppress, certainly inhibit fair and free debates on the Zionist nation. Think of it as global super injunction. The unreasonable, absolutist supporters of Israel include some crazies but are mostly highly educated, talented professionals and fierce advocates of free speech.These days they are heeded less and so are getting more strident. But what if some of their complaints are valid and justifiable? Do I dare think that, and then say it? And if I do, is that a betrayal of a righteous cause?

These thoughts have been spooling round and round in my head this last month. As Gaddafi systematically massacres his people and the country descends into civil war, as armies slaughter civilians in Yemen and Bahrain, now Syria, I ask why good people have focused only on Palestine/Israel for more than half a century and not attended to the brutality and oppression endemic in the Islamic states. Is it OK for dictators to do what they wish within their own borders to crush democratic demands? I think not, and strongly. No flotillas for their victims? One fact that is kept tightly sealed and buried is this: More Muslims are killed by their brethren in religious and power struggles than are killed by foreign powers and that, as far as I can ascertain is true even after the war on Iraq. It could be that some of the relentless focus on Israel does indeed rise out of a deep stream of anti-Semitism. It is also a useful displacement activity.

Last week I drove past the Syrian Embassy – where I know and like some individuals – and there were a handful of protesters outside, looking hopeless and pathetic. No massive demos pass outside the grand Saudi or Bahraini sites in London either while boys are being hanged in Bahrain for daring to dissent. Why the double standards? We have an obligation to judge all governments and rulers by the same universal values, to listen to Zionists who complain of unfair treatment and open our minds as we enter a new era in the Middle East.

Reading nuanced analyses by thoughtful Jewish thinkers has been illuminating. Change is in the air. On the website of the Union of Jewish Students you can find, for example, the text of a speech by Mike Davis at the Herzliya conference: "[the unfolding events] show that the world can change with alarming speed and that our basic assumptions can be overturned in the blink of an eye. They and the reactions of the West demonstrate the potency and very real nature of the security challenges faced by Israel at this juncture in history...". Davis goes on to tackle the "line between criticism of Israel and delegitimisation". "Not every criticism of Israel is delegitimisation. Not even every untrue or unfair criticism of Israel is delegitimisation. In fact, the link between 'criticism' and 'delegitimisation' is sometimes overstated, damaging the credibility of our responses ... If the Israeli government had internalised and prioritised the threats to its legitimacy then perhaps it would have understood the need to be seen to be doing everything possible to break the deadlock. We control the land. We hold the people. It is up to us. We need to accept that burden."

We Muslims need to accept our burdens too. Whilst still holding Israel to account, we must stop dumping blame on it for all Middle Eastern grievances. The same happened to South Africa under apartheid. It was necessary for the world to come together and help topple that loathsome, racist regime. What was never right was that the worst African dictators were allowed to get away with more violence and viciousness against their citizens while sounding off about evil South Africa. It's always the same. Humans easily excuse themselves and their own for foul acts they condemn in their enemies.

The mulishness and narrow-sightedness of the most unrelenting Zionists is today almost matched by the mulishness and narrow-sightedness of their unrelenting counterparts, anti-Zionist activists. I am not abandoning my total support for Palestinian nationhood and right of return, and here renew my vow to that cause. But that struggle is only one in the big fight for freedom in the Middle East. It is no longer morally justifiable for activists to target only Israel and either ignore or find excuses for corrupt, murderous Arab despots. That kind of selectivity discredits pro-Palestinian campaigners and dishonours the principles of equality and human rights. It has enabled hideous Arab ruling clans to carry on disgracefully for too long.

Like Yasmin Alibhai-Brown on The Independent on Facebook for updates

The Crime of Building a House

In Niger, two Frenchmen were murdered by their Islamic kidnappers. Saudi Arabia sentenced a 23 year old girl who was gang raped to a year in prison and 100 lashes. Iran arrested two dozen Christians for the crime of being well… Christians.

Which of these awful things did Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the EU’s Red Baroness Ashton forcefully condemn?

The answer is none of them.
Instead they forcefully and vigorously condemned the demolition of a hotel built by a Muslim Nazi collaborator and now owned by an American-Jewish businessman who bought it in order to build an apartment complex on the spot. An apartment complex for a mere 20 families that is somehow worse than all the aforementioned murders and atrocities. So much worse that they demanded the personal intervention of the highest diplomatic officials of the United States and the European Union.

The last Nazi collaborator hotel in Jerusalem

The Shepherd Hotel in Jerusalemis not the Plaza Hotel. It is a dilapidated neighborhood eyesore that has been abandoned since the 1980’s. No one lives in the Shepherd Hotel, a grim ugly fortress surrounded by barbed wire, that remains behind as a legacy of the Mufti of Jerusalem, who championed Hitler and helped recruit Muslims to serve in the SS. But with its demolition, people might actually begin to live on that spot. Children might actually play on ground that had been previously fenced off by barbed wire. And the worst thing of it all is that those people and their children will be Jews.

Mohammad Amin al-Husayni, the Mufti of Jerusalem

Mohammad Amin al-Husayni, the Mufti of Jerusalem, might have been displeased to look up from the netherworld and behold the demolition of his hotel, but to see the representatives of the United States and the EU taking up his work and treating the demolition of his hotel as the gravest issue of the day would surely have cheered him up. If he had ever been worried that his work would die with a bullet in Berlin or when his Holy War Army, even with the support of seven Arab countries and half the British officer corps failed to drive the Jews into the sea during the War of Independence, the statements of Hillary Clinton and the EUSSR’s Red Baroness Ashton testify once again that the evil that men and muftis do lives on after them.
In her statement, Hillary Clinton said the United States is “very concerned” about the demolition of a Nazi collaborator’s abandoned hotel. In a world where North Korea and Iran are racing ahead to build nuclear weapons, Russia and China are racing to outstrip the United States in weapons development and the economy is on the brink—that is what the Obama Administration is “very concerned” about. That 20 Jewish families will be able to have homes in the capital of their own city.
Hillary Clinton chose to attack Israel from Abu Dhabi, capital of the UAE, a totalitarian regime whose own construction boom was built on slave labor imported from India. Where there are no political freedoms and where non-Muslim foreigners have few rights, if any. Where a video showed the brother of the ruler of Abu Dhabi torturing a man in ways too horrifying to describe, with the approval of the police and the judicial system over a debt. Where 42 percent of the prisoners are there for being indebted. The UAE is essentially a slave state, built on the backs of mostly non-Muslim migrant workers with no human or legal rights.
While in Abu Dhabi, Hillary Clinton might have called on its rulers to open up the system to democratic elections. She might have raised the issue of Western women who are raped in Dubai and then sentenced to jail for being raped. Or the case of Roxanne Hillier, who was sentenced to jail for just being in the same room as her male boss. It certainly would have been appropriate for Hillary Clinton to have challenged the UAE on its abusive treatment of female visitors and tourists. But none of that happened.

How dare the Jews bulldoze this man’s hotel?

Instead Hillary Clinton used the platform of a barbaric skyscraper studded dictatorship to denounce the only democracy in the region. In a speech more inspired by Monty Python, than any concern for human rights, she described the demolition of a long abandoned hotel as a “disturbing development” and warned that “this move contradicts the logic of a reasonable and necessary agreement between the parties on the status of Jerusalem”. Yet oddly enough, Arab construction does not contradict such an agreement, only Jewish construction does.

This is not about Israel vs Palestine

This is not about Israel vs Palestine. The population of Jerusalem, both Jew and Arab, are Israeli citizens. If the Shepherd Hotel were being demolished to build homes for Arab citizens of Israel, does anyone seriously believe that Hillary or the Red Baroness would be getting so worked up over it? It’s not the passport that makes the difference, but the race and the religion. And if so, it’s not Israeli roads that are Apartheid, but the policies of Obama and the EU which strive to carve out a new “Pale of Settlement” where Jews may and may not live.
The Red Baroness, who has been too busy ordering bulletproof limousines and dispatching dozens of EU diplomats to such trouble spots as Barbados for vital martini drinking assignments, to actually attend European Commission meetings—found time to blast Israel instead. Baroness Ashton has missed two thirds of the EC meetings, but she has found time to show her commitment to human rights by lobbying on behalf of the People’s Republic of China. She may have ignored the persecution of Christian Copts in Muslim Egypt—but when the Jews demolish an abandoned hotel, then by all of the EU’s stars, the Red Baroness is on the ball.

The term “settlement” no longer means a new town in an unsettled region

“I strongly condemn this morning’s demolition of the Shepherd Hotel and the planned construction of a new illegal settlement,” said Baroness Ashton. The “settlement” is somewhat confusingly a housing project being built in place of an existing hotel in one of the oldest cities of the world. But somehow the term “settlement” no longer means a new town in an unsettled region, it now simply means a place where Jews live. Or propose to live. As Nazi Germany termed some art as “Jewish art” and the Soviet Union euphemistically labeled some science as “cosmopolitan science”, the word “settlement” has become untethered from its literal meaning and instead become synonymous with a Jewish dwelling place.
While Baroness Ashton sent out her spokesman to condemn the attack on Christian Copts in Egypt and the assassination of Salman Taseer in Punjab, she personally declared her outrage over a hotel in which no one was killed, aside perhaps from a stray lizard or two sunning themselves on the nearby rocks. It’s rather clear where her priorities lie and it isn’t with the victims of Muslim terror, rather with its perpetrators. For that same reason, Hillary Clinton can’t be bothered to offer sympathy to the Western women raped in Dubai and raped again by its Muslim legal system, but lashes out over something as petty as the demolition of an abandoned hotel.

The EU’s Red Baroness

It was perfectly fitting for Hillary Clinton to deliver her condemnation of Israel from Abu Dhabi, one of the region’s centers of corruption, where oil money buys human slavery, and rape victims are sent to jail by the law of a Muslim tyranny. And the West keeps silent, rather than offend the fat greasy hands of the royals who control the pipeline. It was similarly fitting that the Red Baroness neglected representing her country, in order to come prancing down to Israel, berate the locals for not dismantling itself quickly enough to suit the rulers of those same oil rich countries, who pull the strings on those like Baroness Ashton, that the Soviet Union grew tired of playing with.
Hillary Clinton and the Red Baroness accuse Israel of obstructing peace negotiations by demolishing theShepherd Hotel. But was there any serious prospect for negotiations before that? While the Mufti’s hotel still stood, then Israel was charged with obstructing peace by allowing Jewish families to build homes in Judea and Samaria. And during the 9 month construction freeze in which they were not allowed to do it—then Israel was charged with obstructing peace through its blockade of Gaza’s terrorists. And before Israel withdrew from Gaza, it was charged with obstructing peace by not withdrawing from Gaza. And before Israel liberated Gaza in 1967, it was still charged with obstructing peace by refusing to do one thing or another that the Arab Muslim regimes wanted from it. Israel is always under attack and always at fault. If not for one thing, then for another. And while women are gang raped and whipped by our friendly allies in the Gulf, Israel is charged with the terrible crime of building a house.

When Palestinian Doublespeak Flies Under the Media Radar

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is often quoted by Western media outlets as wanting peace with Israel. He's painted in a favourable light by foreign journalists who describe him as a "moderate" and a "pragmatist," but Abbas' own words relayed recently to his domestic Palestinian constituents don't measure up to the peaceful image he presents worldwide.

View our latest viral video to find out about the real story that often goes unreported and how Palestinian doublespeak flies under the media radar.

'The Aim Is to Make Israel a Pariah' RUPERT MURDOCH

Last night, Rupert Murdoch gave an extraordinary speech at an Anti-Defamation League dinner in which he revealed, yet again, that he is a true and selfless friend of the Jewish people and of Israel. Here is the text:

P.A.: We Will Never Recognize Israel as a Jewish State

Here it is, in black and white.
Israel has offered a compromise. It will impose a further building freeze in the West Bank if the Palestinian government acknowledges in return the Jewish character of the State of Israel.

New issue of magazine offers jihadists terror tips

(CNN) -- The second edition of an online al Qaeda magazine has surfaced with frank essays, creatively designed imagery and ominous terror tips such as using a pickup truck as a weapon and shooting up a crowded restaurant in Washington.