RUTHFULLY YOURS

On Tuesday the Palestinians tried to get the UN Security Council to adopt a draft resolution to shrink Israel down to indefensible borders.

They failed to get the nine votes from the 15-member council that they needed. Even if they had, the U.S. had promised to veto the resolution. But the Palestinians would have succeeded in painting Israel as a country almost friendless, hanging by the thread of U.S. support.

The draft resolution demanded that Israel and the Palestinians wrap up all their disputes and reach an agreement within one year; that a Palestinian state be set up along Israel’s 1967 borders; and that Israel withdraw all forces from the West Bank by the end of 2017.

In other words, this would be a slightly prettified version of what Israel tried in Gaza in 2005: a full unilateral withdrawal. Since then over eleven thousand rockets have been fired [2] at Israel from Gaza, and Israel and Gaza terrorist organizations have fought three wars.

Before World War II appeasement was a good word, reflecting a supposedly wise policy of understanding an enemy’s predicaments. Sober Western democracies would grant tolerable concessions to aggressive dictators in Germany, Italy, and Japan to satiate their appetites for more. With such magnanimity everyone would avoid a nightmare like another Somme or Verdun.

Appeasement is always a seductive diplomacy because in the short term a bloody crisis is at least avoided. Hopes then rise that either tensions will cool as aggressors are pacified — or at least the latter won’t start trouble until the appeasers are long out of office. Appeasement is based on the theory that if you give one or two scraps of leftovers under the table to the dog at your feet, he will wag his tail and leave, grateful for such generosity, rather than to prove be even peskier for more.

Everyone associates appeasement with the Western democracies’ concessions to Adolf Hitler over the occupation of the Rhineland, the Anschluss with Austria, and the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia. Such appeasement — widely praised at the time — was supposed to pacify Nazi Germany to end its chronic bullying, as even Hitler would concede it was foolish repeating the mess of 1918 for possession of slices from a far-away country. It worked for a year, until in late 1939 Hitler invaded Poland to begin World War II.

There are lots more recent examples of alluring appeasement. Secretary of State Dean Acheson once assured a tired postwar America that the Truman administration’s defense obligations did not extend [1] to the Cold War powder keg on the Korean Peninsula. Relieved pundits praised such a realistic concession. Only a nut would want to bring back the B-29s and their former pilots or rev up obsolete Sherman tanks. Then a few months later North Korea invaded the South.

“In the meantime, the real message the president has delivered to the perpetrators of global terror is clear: America no longer has the will or the staying power to pursue victory. Like so much of the leftist agenda, all that matters is the narrative, and in this case Obama has simply declared combat operations in Afghanistan to be over, irrespective of events on the ground. He assures Americans that Afghanistan will never be a haven for terror again, even as Taliban terrorists who killed and wounded American troops will now be given a free pass. And if it all goes horribly wrong, Obama and his fellow travelers will feign surprise and completely avoid responsibility for the bloodbath that ensues.”

On Christmas Day at Marine Corps Base Hawaii, followed by a White House press release on Dec. 28, President Obama announced the end of the war in Afghanistan. “We’ve been in continuous war now for almost thirteen years—over 13 years,” he said, “and next week we will be ending our combat mission in Afghanistan. Obviously, because of the extraordinary service of the men and women in the American armed forces, Afghanistan has a chance to rebuild its own country. We are safer. It’s not going to be a source of terrorist attacks again,” he added.

If that message sounds familiar, it’s because virtually the same message was delivered on Dec. 14, 2011 at Fort Bragg, NC. That’s when Obama announced that “America’s war in Iraq will be over” and that “we’re leaving behind a sovereign, stable and self-reliant” nation. That would be the same Iraq where, swiftly after Obama’s precipitous military withdrawal, Islamic militants embarked on a barbaric campaign of terror, seizing large swaths of Iraqi territory and wiping out much of the security gains achieved through the loss of thousands of American lives in that country.

Three days before Christmas, one unsuspecting holiday shopper was killed and nine others injured when a van ploughed through a crowded market in Nantes, located in western France. The attack came a day after a man, shouting “Allahu Akbar,” rammed his car into crowds in the eastern city of Dijon, injuring thirteen people; this, some twenty-four hours after an assailant stabbed and wounded three police officers in Joue-les-Tours, central France, likewise while yelling “God is the greatest” in Arabic.

A day after the Dijon attack, which the perpetrator dedicated to the children of “Palestine,” France’s Interior Minister, Bernard Cazeneuve, called on the public “to not draw hasty conclusions since…[the driver’s] motives have not been established.” Nevertheless, and despite the fact that “the investigation had barely begun,” Dijon’s public prosecutor, Marie-Christine Tarrare, made clear that the incident was “not a terrorist act at all.”

In Cuba, freedom of expression is still trampled. Tania Bruguera “was [placed] under arrest at the Acosta Police Station in the Diez de Octubre municipality in Havana” because she wished to use social media and demand “freedom of expression for Cuba’s citizens.” But “claiming that her performance [was] not an artistic work but a political provocation, Cuban authorities denied her request to hold a rally at Havana’s revolutionary square on Dec. 30, 2014.”

Bruguera has been labeled a “CIA agent” and “a mercenary” by Cuban pro-government bloggers. The planned gathering was a hopeful endeavor as a result of the announcement from the Obama administration that Cuba and the United States “would reinstate diplomatic ties that were severed half a century ago.”

Dubbed “Yo Tambien Exijo” (I Also Demand), it is a campaign that uses social media to invite Cubans to have a say in the future of their island. Each participant would have one minute to express his or her views on the future of the island of more than 11 million people.

In the spirit of sermons and soda water, Mark Durie provides a clarifying essay that opens the historical horizons on last month’s deadly Martin Place jihad siege in Australia by comparing it to a strikingly similar jihad attack against picnickers in Australia on New Year’s Day, 1915 (via Ruthfully). In discussing these and other cases of “individual jihad” (including reference to the Dutch colonial experience in Aceh) where Muslim killers answer the Islamic call to jihad, Durie demonstrates that the go-to, feel-good explanations about “lone wolves” and “crazies” have no more relevance than fairy tales to explaining the chronic threat of Islam in the West.

Some excerpts below.

“From Broken Hill to Martin Place: Individual Jihad Comes to Australia, 1915 to 2015”

by Mark Durie

One hundred years ago today, a lethal jihad attack was staged against New Year’s Day picnickers in Broken Hill, Australia. This attack and the recent Martin Place siege, events separated by almost exactly a century, show striking similarities. …

Radical Islam has had its best year since 2001, and 2015 should be the year the U.S. leads a global counterattack. But you sure can’t detect any progress from events in Nigeria, where the jihadists of Boko Haram are extending their violent reach while cooperation between the U.S. and Nigeria disintegrates.

On the weekend the militant group seized Baga in northeastern Nigeria, the last town in the area that was still under government control. Baga hosted the Multi-National Joint Task Force, which is composed of troops from Nigeria, Chad and Niger who are supposed to fight crime in the Lake Chad region. The task force inevitably confronted Boko Haram, and its rout shows that the jihadists are confident and strong enough to take on even an organized military force.

Who and where are the 53 Cuban political prisoners that President Obama promised would be freed by Havana as part of a deal to liberate three convicted Cuban spies serving lengthy sentences in the U.S.?

I asked the State Department this last week. State referred me to the White House. White House officials declined to provide the list of names citing “concern that publicizing it would make it more difficult to ensure that Cuba follows through, and continues with further steps in the future.”

Bottom line: The U.S. government cannot confirm that they have been released and is not certain they’re going to be released, even though the three Cuban spies have already been returned.

A government official told me that keeping the names of the 53 quiet will give Cuba the opportunity to release them as a sovereign measure, rather than at the behest of the U.S., and that this could allow for additional releases.

In other words, the Castros are sensitive boys who throw despotic tantrums when their absolute power is questioned. Asking them to keep their word is apparently a trigger.

Top Iowa Democrats Slow to Rally Around Hillary ClintonMany Say They Would Prefer a More Liberal Candidate or At Least a Robust Debate

Iowa Democratic leaders say they are troubled by the prospect that Hillary Clinton could win the state’s 2016 presidential caucuses without a serious challenge, a view primarily rooted in a desire for a more liberal candidate or at least a robust debate about the party’s policies and direction.

Interviews with more than half of Democratic chiefs in Iowa’s 99 counties show a state party leadership so far reluctant to coalesce behind Mrs. Clinton. County Democratic officials also voiced qualms about Mrs. Clinton’s ability to win a general election and her fundraising ties to Wall Street firms and corporations, which remain a target of liberal ire.

Israel faces a twin peril, far more menacing to its survival as the nation-state of the Jewish people than the Iranian nuclear program or a Palestinian state.

The minute we leave South Lebanon we will have to erase the word Hezbollah from our vocabulary, because the whole idea of the State of Israel versus Hezbollah was sheer folly from the outset. It will most certainly no longer be relevant when Israel returns to its internationally recognized northern border.
– Amos Oz, “Try a Little Tenderness” (Interview), Haaretz, March 17, 2000

The ultimate test of this agreement will be a test of blood. If it becomes clear that [the Palestinians] cannot overcome terror, this will be a temporary accord and… we will have no choice but to abrogate it. And if there is no choice, the IDF will return to the places it is about to leave in the upcoming months.
– Yossi Beilin, Ma’ariv, November 26, 1993

The nightmare stories of the Likud are well known. After all, they promised Katyusha rockets from Gaza as well. For a year, Gaza has been largely under the rule of the Palestinian Authority. There has not been a single Katyusha rocket. Nor will there be any Katyushas.
– Yitzhak Rabin, radio interview, July 24, 1995

I realize that what follows may raise a few eyebrows – some in disbelief, some in disapproval. I have no doubt it will ruffle feathers – on both sides of the political divide – but if the unpalatable truth is to be dealt with, it must be addressed squarely and honestly.

For unless the problem raised in this column is adequately addressed before the election, it will, like the ones before it, be meaningless, with roughly the same policy being adopted, no matter which party wins, and no matter what they promise their electorate. Indeed, the only difference is likely to be in the degrees of enthusiasm or reluctance with which they adopt it.