The World Court, an organization with neither legitimacy nor accountability, condemned Israel, a democratic country, for building a security fence that is saving lives every day. The Court’s head judge wrote:
. . . “The wall … cannot be justified by military exigencies or by the requirements of national security or public order.
“The construction … constitutes breaches by Israel of its obligations under applicable international humanitarian law. Israel is under an obligation … to dismantle forthwith the structure,” he said.
Where does this head judge, who is so concerned about humanitarian and legal obligations, come from? From China, a country ruled by an unelected clique of mass-murderers that lacks legitimacy and accountability and treats its citizens like ants in an ant farm.
It should long ago have become obvious, to anyone who has a clue, that the principal role of “international organizations” like the World Court is as weapons against the U.S. and Israel and other democracies that assert their right to defend themselves. These are the same organizations to which John Kerry and his political allies on the Left would grant increased resources and legitimacy. Bush, whatever his flaws, at least understands who our enemies are. The Democrats won’t be ready for national leadership again until they wise up in this area, and stop pandering to the idiots for whom it is always 1968.
And when is China’s security wall coming down?
I think China is just jealous that the Israeli wall is actually functional.
A weapon ? Hardly. A public act, a pretense at some concept of legality based on crowd-pleasing slogans, maybe.
What I find interesting is that none of the geniuses who scream bloody murder over the barrier ever bother to ask how and why Israel came up with such a scheme. Granted, they are unable to accept or event assume Israel’s rationality in the first place. After all, these are people who find it ‘simplistic’ to compare the likes of Saddam Hussein to Hitler but have no problem whatsoever calling Bush or Sharon Nazis over dinner.
The simple and unavoidable fact of life here is that no suicide bomb ever originated from Gaza. Because the strip has been fenced since 1994.
In other words, the odd thing about the barrier is not that it is being built. It is that it took years of wanton murder by terrorists to make it happen when the solution already worked very well somewhere else.
I will agree with the critics on one point; building such a barrier, while necessary and justified in the short term, ought to be a means to an end beyond immediate security, not an end in and of itself. And what that end is is not clear. But given the kind of illegitimate, unreliable interlocutors Israel deals with, not revealing one’s hand is probably prudent.
But the international organizations did such a good job in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia. Srebrenica stands as a shining example of how useful the UN is. And we can look at how much good they are doing in Sudan right now, a very inspirational sight.
So when someone invokes the “international community” as a resource against tyranny I can’t decide whether to laugh or puke.
Unbelievable but true, a Chinese Commie as head judge.
This kind of stuff is about the only thing keeping me a Republican, at least nominally. I am seriously considering sitting out this election, but the idea that one of the first things president Kerry might do is sign us up for this kind of garbage re-invigorates me.
my 5 cents on the Wall
Cure the symptoms not the disease.
It seems it is still too early for Israeli to face what they want to be as a nation. That would lead to civil war.
As is often the case in judgements rendered in “international” bodies, there tends to be a lot of stones thrown in glass houses. And it’s hard to argue the wall doesn’t help Israel in terms of Security. But…
“Israel says the barrier is vital to protect its citizens from Palestinian suicide bombers and gunmen. Palestinians call the barrier, which curves around Jewish settlements, a land grab that robs them of territory they want for a state.
The court acknowledged Israel’s duty to protect its citizens but said it must do so within the law and should compensate Palestinians for homes and land lost or damaged by the building of the 100-yard wide strip of walls, ditches and fences.”
If you were to put up a fence between you and your neighbor, you would construct it on your side of the property line. and if you shared a driveway, you would make allowances to maintain access. Of course, if the property line itself is debatable, you might want to settle that first..or construct it on lines not in dispute.
And if the fence blocked sunlight from reaching the neighbor’s garden…ok, I’ll stop now.
Bravo, Jonathan. We follow the international bodies at our own peril. What was assumed to be an organization of peace is in actuality a sordid collection of self-interested countries motivated by their individual world view.
The World Court passing non-binding judgment on a country interested in preventing the bombing of their innocent citizens merely further demonstrates the futility of such organizations.
Rich,
I think property line is a bad analogy. The “green line” is more like barbed wire on a truce line.
Andy,
Sounds like a more important line then. I suppose my analogy is too understated.
Rich,
Good point, the barrier being the part about “settling it first”, then living like neighbors.
I’ve thought the barrier was a good idea from the moment I heard about it. I’m a big supporter. However, I think the issue is that it encloses land not recognized as belonging to Israel. I think an Israeli court ruled the same thing.
My suggestion is to reroute the wall along recognized borders.
There’s no settled border between Israel and that part of the old Palestine Mandate that Jordan illegally occupied between 1948 and 1967. There’s only an armistice line, and it’s not optimally placed for security purposes. I don’t know about the Israeli courts, but if you’re going to build a security barrier it’s not unreasonable to situate it where it will be most effective, which it appears the architects of the wall did. They can always remove or relocate the wall in the context of a settlement with the Palestinians, which so far the Palestinians have not shown much sincere interest in. To me it seems fundamentally misguided to argue about the placement of the wall before the underlying problem of Palestinian hostility is resolved.
I don’t understand the relevance of the chief judge being Chinese. Let’s face it, the ruling would have been the same if he had been French, German, American, whatever. There are impartial judges even in China, and i’m sure there is at least one Jewish Israeli judge who would have ruled against the wall.
The tragedy is not that the World Court pays lip service to the obvious point that there are good people in any country. But you just don’t get appointed to the World Court if you’re not the kind of judge who would rule against Israel. And that’s the tragedy.
Matya no baka
MatyaNoBaka, the credibility of a judge is rather relevant to his decisions, and the credibility of a judge coming from a country that flaunts the rule of law and human rights with abandon is, how shall we say….somewhat abstract.
But very logical, in a post-modern sense…
It’s the credibility both of the judge and the appointing organization. I think that in this case the credibility of the appointing organization is so bad that the judge’s country of origin is pretty irrelevant. If you, Lex and DSpears were the appointing authority, i would be willing to bet that you could find a credible judge in China.
The World Court will give us many more jokes of the day because that is how it is constituted.
Matya no baka
My whole problem with the World Court is that since its findings are not binding, then its only function is to be a kibitzer. There is not, to my knowledge, a completed legal code for them to enforce, just a bunch of treaties that may or may not be accepted by the countries they are judging. There is not, to my knowledge, an acknowledged standard for them to use for their judgements. There is not, to my knowledge, any method to appeal the findings. There is not, to my knowledge, any method of enforcing the findings. Therefore, what the h*ll use is the damned thing!! Get rid of it already!!
Where were they when the genocide went on in Rwanda or the Congo or now in the Sudan? When they might actually do some good they are not there. When they have a chance to jump on Israel they are right there upfront and loaded for bear. They are totally useless.
“If the goal were security, Israel would have built the fence a few km inside its borders. It could then be a mile high, patrolled on both sides by the IDF, mined with nuclear weapons, utterly impenetrable. Perfect security.
The problem would be that it would not take valuable Palestinian land and resources (including control of water), drive out the population, and lay the basis for still further expansion as Palestinians flee from the dungeons that are left, like the town of Qalqilya. So to interpret as a land grab seems appropriate.
Doubtless a side benefit is to increase a narrow form of “security,” while probably in the long run seriously increasing insecurity not only because of the regional impact but because sooner or later it is likely to inspire terrorist acts against Israelis abroad in revenge. But terror and security are not driving concerns, any more than they have a high priority in the planning of “the boss-man called `partner’,” as more astute Israeli commentators describe Washington.
Sharon’s strategic thinking seems straightforward enough. There are excellent descriptions in recent books by Tanya Reinhart and Baruch Kimmerling. It is also not radically different from that of Rabin and Peres. The goal is to take over the valuable parts of the West Bank (Gaza is mostly a burden), and to leave the population that remains under local administration, to rot and decline.
The basic principle was explained to the Cabinet of the Labor Government 30 years ago by Moshe Dayan, perhaps the most sympathetic to the Palestinians among the Israeli leadership: we should tell the Palestinians in the territories that “You shall continue to live like dogs, and whoever wishes, may leave, and we shall see where this process will lead.”
The occupation should be “permanent,” he believed, in one or another form, and to the objection that Israel must consider its moral stand, he responded that “Ben-Gurion said that whoever approaches the Zionist problem from a moral aspect is not a Zionist.”
There have been differences as to how these principles should apply, but a fair consensus among leading political echelons that if they can be applied, that’s fine. Sharon’s basic conceptions were outlined years ago, and he is pursuing them systematically, relying on the material and diplomatic support of the boss-man.
Across the spectrum, the “ideal” solution might well be something like Ben-Gurion’s expansive vision that goes far beyond anything currently considered even within the realm of dreams.”
On my planet, Earth, the real alternative to a security barrier isn’t a no-barriers, why-can’t-we-all-just-get-along peaceful coexistence.
It’s something analogous to this.
The Israeli policy is far more humane than what would be done otherwise.
(Background reading here and here.)