Friday Afternoon Roundup - International Edition - Iraqi Elections and Chavez's Tyranny

The forces of tyranny are strong around the world, as Chavez completed his crackdown on the independent media with the arrest of the President of Globovision Television. Globovision was Venezuela's equivalent of CNN, the country's first 24 hour news network. Chavez had previously shuttered Radio Caracas Televisión, resulting in student protests and a violent crackdown that foreshadowed the actions taken by Chavez's Iranian ally, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Unsurprisingly this hasn't resulted in much in the way of media coverage. Apologists for the Chavez regime typically claim that the stations being targeted were engaging in attempts to overthrow the regime (while naturally ignoring the fact that Chavez had been doing the same thing). This was the same defense used by liberals who defended Stalin's Moscow Trails.

Meanwhile the same Western media which gave extensive coverage to the non-coup in Honduras against Chavez ally Manuel Zelaya, and sympathetic coverage to the struggles of the radio station of Zelaya's political ally, David Romero Ellner, who had a Marxist terrorist past, had molested his own daughter and said that Hitler was justified in carrying out the Holocaust. Despite all this hundreds of stories were filed on David Romero Ellner's heroic struggle against censorship. The arrest of Guillermo Zuloaga will naturally not get this kind of publicity, because he isn't a left wing terrorist.

And of course it gets so much worse in Chavezstan,

Chávez’s crony courts have charged Álvarez Paz with conspiracy, “public instigation of criminality” and “spreading false information”–crimes that could draw sentences of 13 to 27 years. Álvarez Paz was indicted for televised statements on March 8 acknowledging the fact that Venezuela has become a haven for drug trafficking and citing accusations by a Spanish court that the Chávez regime supports Basque and Colombian terrorists.

Álvarez Paz’s real crime is that of being the clear-headed conscience of Venezuela’s opposition. The 67-year-old former governor of the State of Zulia who sought his party’s presidential nomination in 1993, Álvarez Paz has gained notoriety for his weekly columns in which he chronicles his country’s tragic, inexorable march to dictatorship under Chávez.

But the same people who go mad every time Israel puts up a house, have very little interest in actual left wing tyranny. Much like the liberals who weekly denounced British warmongering in the 30's, while Stalin was butchering people wholesale. But the left must have its socialist heroes such as Stalin and Chavez, all the more heroic for the atrocities they commit that shore up their revolutionary credentials.

When left wing activist and sometime actor Sean Penn called for reporters who call Chavez a dictator to be jailed, he got to the root of the left's support for Chavez. Chavez does what they only wish they could do here. What they wish Obama would really do.

This is what they want for America. This is what America would look like if they had their way.

The Judiciary in Venezuela is made up of Chavez loyal followers, named directly by the regime, in open violation of the constitution. Just to give readers an example of the low ethical quality of these magistrates I enclose a video in which the members of the Supreme Tibunal of Justice, dressed in full regalia, when opening sessions sometime ago, stood up and sang: “Uh, ah, Chavez no se va”…. (Chavez is not going) as if they were members of a cheer leader team.

Can you imagine this happening in the U.S. Supreme Court?




In these videoclips an assembly of the judicial power, led by the Chief Justice of the Venezuelan Supreme Court, chants political party slogans. President Chávez refers to Venezuelan federalism and states that any local authority figure that does not follow his lead is engaged in "disloyalty" and "treason." He also states that approaching the judiciary to oppose his decisions is treason against the people and against the revolution.

And further...

One of the main members of the Supreme Tribunal of Justice, Luis Velazquez Alvaray, was accused of thievery by other members of the regime. He had proposed a modification of the Constitution to name Hugo Chávez president for life. Ater being accused of corruption, he counter attacked, calling the Tribunal "a nest of drug traffickers," adding: "they should put a bomb in that place."

More recently, a female judge, Maria Lourdes Affuni, who decided very correctly the freedom of a Chavez poliical prisoner, was immediately sent to jail without being tried. Chavez said: “She should stay in jail for 30 years”. She has been in prison since last year, simply on orders from the dictator.

Remember this the next time a liberal like Sean Penn praises Chavez. He isn't ignorant. He knows exactly what he's doing and what he wants done here.

The Cato Institute has a video message from Zuloaga here.

Meanwhile the Iraqi election featured a Baathist going up against a Shiite, and we actually have to breathe a sigh of relief that the Baathist won. To be fair Allawi is a longtime opponent of Saddam Hussein, but essentially it's as if the USSR had been liberated only to nearly fall into the hands of Communist China, forcing us to actually be relieved when a more moderate dissident Communist won the election. That's essentially what just happened in Iraq with the Maliki vs Allawi showdown.

For all the positive media spin, Maliki served as the secretary-general of the Islamic Dawa Party, a group with Sadrist ties and rivalries, as well as close ties to Iran. The Dawa Party has murdered Americans and was against the liberation of Iraq. You can of course read through the Taqiya on their official "English" site in which Islamic is painted as the wellspring of freedom and equality, but the reality is that the Islamic Dawa Party stands for the supremacy of Islamic law, and only such freedoms as are compatible with Islam. Which is unsurprising as the Dawa Party was essentially a clerical attempt to combat the rise of Arab Socialism by repackaging some of that same appeal in Islamic language.

In the case of al-Da'wa, al-Sadr laid out four mandatory principles of governance in his 1975 work, Islamic Political System. These were:

1. Absolute sovereignty belongs to God.

2. Islamic injunctions are the basis of legislation. The legislative authority may enact any law not repugnant to Islam.

3. The people, as vice-regents of Allah, are entrusted with legislative and executive powers.

4. The jurist holding religious authority represents Islam. By confirming legislative and executive actions, he gives them legality.

Mind you this was considered fairly progressive by Islamic legal standards, mainly because of 3, in which the people, rather than the Caliph or other rulers were considered the vice-regents of Allah.

But this only seems progressive when taken out of context. This is the kind of thing that Western apologists for Islam routinely seize on as proof that Islam is progressive. Never mind for the moment that this is not actual popular sovereignty, under this arrangement the Koran serves as the Constitution and the Clerics as its Supreme Court.

But this embrace of populism was developed in 1975 at a time when Grand Ayatollah Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr (Yes the terrorist hive Sadr City was named after him) was trying to organize a popular uprising against Baath Party rule. Which meant that he developed a code in which the people (only believing Shiite Muslims of course), not Saddam Hussein, held legislative and executive powers, which would conveniently provide religious justification for an armed popular uprising. Two years later he was sent to jail and later executed by Saddam Hussein for supporting Iran.

The story gets even better because Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr's son in law, who runs Sadr City and the terrorist Mahdi Army, which is backed by Iran, is Muqtada Al Sadr. When the Sadrists oversaw the execution of Saddam Hussein on Maliki's watch, they chanted Muqtada and Long live Mohammed Baqir Sadr. (Just to make the internal politics of this more convoluted however, the Sadr's and the Dawa Party had actually parted ways a while back, and Maliki's people blamed Allawi's people for orchestrating the whole thing.)

The Maliki vs Allawi showdown is yet another episode in the drawn out battle between Arab Socialism and Islamism. The US has tended to back the socialists on the grounds that they seem more moderate and committed to some kind of democratic society. This is generally a fallacy, but the Islamists are also a good deal worse. This however has served as an excuse for too long to back Arab Socialists, even when they're still terrorists. Fatah vs Hamas is a case in point. As was Saddam Hussein vs the Mullahs.

Allawi and Maliki are both representatives of political elements that go back a century in Iraqi life, through families and factions that may have been fighting for even longer than that.

Meanwhile Allawi's actual victory was a very narrow one, which will require him to form a coalition. And Maliki might have done much better if Muqtada Al Sadr's openly terrorist Iraqi National Alliance which included the local version of Hezbollah hadn't stolen a lot of the Shiite vote.

What that means is that the Islamic Dawa Party will have to become even more extreme to sideline the Iraqi National Alliance, or unite with it. Either way the result will be a more Islamist and Iranian dominated future for Iraq. Allawi's victory is likely to prove very fleeting and a breakup of Iraq may yet be inevitable. To survive Allawi has to bring together Kurds and at least some Shiites. Meanwhile Iran will be funding terrorist acts to destabilize the country.

Allawi forms a delicate balance as a Shiite who is secular enough and with enough of a Baathist past to reassure Sunnis, but thus far he has done much better at picking up the Sunni vote. While some media outlets are trying to spin it as another Orange Revolution, it's essentially another bump in the road.

The failure to remove the likes of Muqtada Al Sadr from the equation will haunt America for some time to come. But for now an Anti-Iranian leader in Iraq may help check the Iranian takeover of Iraq.

In a quick blog roundup, Robert Spencer at Jihad Watch continues covering the farce of Khaddafi's supposed abandonment of terrorism.

Israpundit has an interview with Italian politician Fimma Nirenstein, courtesy of Pajamas Media.

The Italian politician and author talks about the East Jerusalem flap and makes some startling statements about the similarity of views between the European left and jihadists.

The Italian journalist Fiamma Nirenstein is the author of numerous books on anti-Semitism, Israel, and the Middle East conflict, including (in English) Israel is Us and Terror: the New Anti-Semitism and the War against the West.

In April 2008, she was elected to the Italian Chamber of Deputies as a member of Silvio Berlusconi’s People of Freedom (PDL) party. She is presently the vice-president of the chamber’s Committee on Foreign Affairs. In February, she accompanied Prime Minister Berlusconi on a three-day visit to Israel.

Gateway Pundit has video and photos of the Cuban Freedom Rally in Miami.

Dan Friedman sends along a satirical little piece about the traditional Pesach proclamation "Next Year in Jerusalem" and our New Pharaoh Obama.

Obama: Passover Wrap Up, "Next Year In Jerusalem ," Deemed "Provocative"

By Shana Habbab (AP White House Correspondent)

(AP) — An unidentified Israeli official has confirmed that private discussions between President Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu included an urgent request from the President that the traditional closing refrain “next year in Jerusalem” be deleted during the upcoming Passover holiday, calling the ancient passage provocative and unhelpful for the future of peace talks. Calling it “an easy fix,” Obama strongly urged the Jewish People to replace it with “next year in peace” or “next year in Tel Aviv,” leaving the exact wording to final status talks between Israelis and Palestinians.

Netanyahu is said to have balked at the request, indicating that the refrain dates back well before the UN Partition of 1947 and well before the U.S. Declaration of Independence, for that matter. The Prime Minister reportedly attempted to diffuse the situation by offering to remove it from the conclusion of the lesser-known Yom Kippur service, and suggesting the phrase was defunct anyway since Jews have controlled all of Jerusalem since 1967. However, a visibly irritated President Obama flatly rejected the compromise, adding it was another indication the “stiff-necked” Prime Minister did not appear “serious about peace.”

Shortly after the meeting, both sides issued a terse statement saying that no agreement had been reached on the matter.

From NY to Jerusalem, Daniel Greenfield Covers the Stories Behind the News

Named one of the Jewish Press' Most Worthwhile Blogs, 2006, 2007 , 2008 and 2009

Friday Afternoon Roundup -Principle or Politics?

This has been a week of the vague, with both Democrats and Republicans fumbling for an agenda. The Democratic left is growing tired of Obama's fumbling. Obama is trying to figure out how he can get the ball past the Republicans, but for all his angry rhetoric, he's low on courage. But the Republicans are demonstrating the same self-destructive behavior that gave rise to a Democratic congress in the first place. Shelby's hold, which should have been about the nominees themselves, now risks painting the GOP as the greedy party again, and the Supermajority, which was supposed to be a people's tool, risks turning into a pork tool. And the entire Tanker dispute only plays into Obama and Pelosi's promotion of defense spending cuts, by making national defense look like a drag on the economy.

If this goes on, the Republicans will destroy themselves before 2012, which will let Obama wait out his current setback, and return stronger than ever. And just as the Republicans need to wait Obama out, he may be willing to wait out the Republicans as well. Particularly if Republicans midterm victories in 2010 mean nothing more than a bipartisan spending spree that will disgust the public, turn off independent voters, and make the Democrats look good, because at least their spending comes back with promises about providing jobs and social benefits.
Then there was Palin's attempt to jump on the weakest possible criticism of Rahm Emanuel, not over the relevant corruption issues, but over his use of the word, "Retarded." It was supposed to be the liberals who played speech police, not conservatives. There are liberal blogs where even using the word "Lame" is off limits, because it's "ablist". I don't think we want to go down that road. I certainly don't.

And since just about everyone does use the word, "Retarded" to mean stupid, Palin found herself having to respond to Limbaugh's use of it, to avoid being called a hypocrite. And this entire mess could have been avoided, if she had kept her focus on making substantive criticisms of the Obama Administration. And it's substantive criticisms that we need.

There's no doubt that Obama and the people surrounding him are amoral jackasses at best. Just as there was no doubt that Bill Clinton was a serial adulterer. But to win you have to connect political wrongdoing to direct damage done to the public. Without that, your criticisms will remain impotent.

Then there's Tom Tancredo at the Tea Party Convention. I like his speeches, as always, but I have to question a man who endorsed Romney, saying that he's happy McCain lost, because he would have been terrible on immigration and budget discipline. I'm sorry, but there really isn't that much difference there. And is Obama any better on immigration and budget discipline?

I suppose I have a certain inborn suspicion of politicians. The art of politics very often seems to require staking out a principled position and then selling it out at the best price. And in the process people who look for principled politicians, all too often find just the politics underneath.

In California, Carly Fiorina and Tom Campbell are competing to prove which of them is the worst candidate. By the time they're done I suspect they'll convince a lot of people that both of them are. Which sadly is also true.

Sure the demon sheep ad is terrible, but consider how many people watch politics ads, vs how many people will see this one. From the "anything for a win" standpoint, the demon sheep is probably a victory, albeit a Pyrrhic one. "I'm sorry Carly, but we had to destroy your candidacy, to save your candidacy."

Meanwhile in Illinois, the Democratic Lt. Governor will be a pawnbroker with a history of violence toward women, and steroid abuse, who spent 2 million dollars getting elected. This of course is more proof that a party can't escape its past, until it actually cleans house.

And so I'd like to come back for a moment to the Kentucky GOP primary for a moment. The two big candidates in the race, Trey Grayson and Rand Paul have each raised a little under 2 million dollars. Together they're competing to see whether a former Democrat or the radical Mises libertarian who wanted to close Gitmo and release its terrorists "back into battle" will be the Republican candidate for the Kentucky Senate.

Mitch McConnell is backing Grayson. Sarah Palin is backing Paul, a move almost as cynical as her campaigning for McCain, or Tancredo's endorsement of Romney. But there's one authentic conservative candidate in the race-- and unsurprisingly, it's the one that no one is talking about. Bill Johnson.

This is Bill Johnson , the Republican Senate candidate that the media and many of the big bloggers won't talk about. This is what he stands for in his own words. And unlike Rand Paul, he hasn't transformed his views to fit in and win a Republican primary.

Fellow concerned citizens, we are at a turning point in the history of our nation. Jobs are moving offshore, the economy is weak, taxes are increasing, and prosperity is fading. Our elected officials offer expanded government, more spending, and industry takeovers as the solution. Socialism is taking hold.

I am not a politician. I am a concerned citizen, military veteran, and businessman who believes it is time for new leadership in Washington. I want to be a voice for concerned citizens across the Bluegrass State who have ‘had enough’ of politicians violating our trust. For that reason, I am running in the 2010 Republican primary for the United States Senate. I stand for limited government, low taxes, strong military, gun ownership, marriage between one man and one woman, and life begins at conception.

Now why don't you hear much about Bill Johnson? There's the key line right there. "I am not a politician". And it's the politicians who make the deals, who say one thing and do another, scratching each other's backs and writing checks to each other, trading off the public's support like it was a game of Monopoly.

And it's why Bill Johnson hasn't raised millions of dollars to run misleading ads like Rand Paul and Trey Grayson (in case you hadn't heard, the guy who talked about building a left-right coalition to roll back the American Empire is now a hawk on terrorism). Instead he's the real thing. Which is why he doesn't have the millions of dollars, the top flight political endorsements or the Obama style posters that have already been created for Rand Paul.

He's actually supported by the local Tea Party organizers, not by organizations who are cashing in on the brand.

Local Kentucky activists and bloggers like Genuine GOP Mom and Conservative KY Gal have done a great job of covering this race, and they're a much better resource on this election, than the "big bloggers" who are plugged into the national political game. Genuine GOP Mom has proven in detail which is the genuine pro-life candidate in this race.

But the problem can be summed up in Bill Johnson's own press release

"The Bill Johnson for U.S. Senate Campaign continues to run a low cost and fiscally responsible campaign. Rand Paul, a doctor, and Trey Grayson, a lawyer, are engaged in a battle about who can raise and spend the most money in a primary campaign. This conflict is typical Capitol Hill politics where tax and spend is the norm. How much money is enough?... 2010 is an important election. Voters have never been more challenged to examine carefully each candidate and their positions on issues independent of the size of their wallets. Any other course is just letting money determine the outcome. This lesson was learned in the 2008 presidential campaigns."

And if Grayson or Paul win, it will be the money determining the campaign. And instead of a reformist candidate, we'll be choosing whether a former Democrat or the next inheritor of the Paul political name gets to play the same old games in the Senate.

Bill Johnson is accepting donations for his fight to elect a Reagan conservative to the Senate in Kentucky, not a former Democrat or a candidate whose views on the War on Terror are virtually indistinguishable from Obama's.

Continuing the roundup, Debbie Schlussel has the larger story on the real role that Al Queda's female bomber and her circle of friends played in the United States.

The real insight: Siddiqui’s conviction for shooting at U.S. soldiers after they caught her in Afghanistan (with chemicals, a dirty bomb recipe, plans to blow up U.S. gas stations and major New York sites) is really not the story here. The story is Aafia Siddiqui’s part in the early stages of Al-Qaeda around the world, as it was formed by a close circle of friends, who were mostly Muslim students in Boston here on visas in the late 1980s and early to mid-’90s. One of those students, one of those friends, was Aafia Siddiqui, who would later become Al-Qaeda’s designated master terrorist in the U.S., until she was caught in Afghanistan. It’s the story of how America dropped the ball on the inchoate Al-Qaeda world leadership concentrated amongst a few Muslim visa holders concentrated in a major American city. And it’s the story of how America let those people leave the country and did nothing to stop them, even the one they caught after 9/11 and willingly gave up to the Syrians.

The whole thing is worth reading, because it shows just how unprepared we are to deal with the Muslim Jihad in our midst.

At Israel Matzav meanwhile, a copy of the letter that John Kerry provided to Code Pink and the Gaza Freedom March.

Code Pink co-founders Jodie Evans and Medea Benjamin used Kerry’s letter at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo, Egypt to pressure the Egyptian government to allow 1300 leftists passage into Gaza from Egypt. The leftists gathered in Cairo from around the world to mark the one-year anniversary of Israel’s defense against Hamas’ rocket and mortar attacks.

Essentially Kerry once again provided direct political aid to America and Israel's terrorist enemies. Gaza is held by the Muslim Brotherhood spawned Hamas. Anyone still remember his line about "masada?"

Carl also suggests that some of the Hamas 54 congressmen I wrote about are stepping away from their CAIR backed "open Gaza" letter. But I don't see them backing away, so much as covering their asses with some spin, particularly in New Jersey, where they might have some 'splaining to do come election day.

For now only Yvette Clark has actually said the letter was a mistake, her Jewish constituents however are not buying it, by pointing to her record.

They say that when a politician says “Yes” they mean maybe, when they say “Maybe” they mean no, and if they say no, then they aren’t a politician. Walking this narrow line is sometimes a necessity for a politician trying to appeal to as broad an audience as possible, but from the viewpoint of the electorate, it is of utmost importance to cut away the political façade and make estimated calculations on where exactly they stand.

On January 3rd 2007 following a sweeping electoral victory that gave her a whopping 93% of the vote, Yvette Clarke assumed office as Congresswoman for New York’s 11th congressional district, which includes Brownsville,Crown Heights, East Flatbush, Flatbush, Kensington, Midwood, Prospect Heights

It is becoming increasingly clear for all to see that she is not a friend of Israel by any means. For some, the tell tale signs became clear early on, when she signed a bill that called for an immediate ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah during the second Lebanon war, effectively calling for pressure on Israel that would limit its efforts to fight for comprehensive security on its northern border.

Only six weeks ago, she was one of a small congress minority that voted against Res. 867 that “called on the President and the Secretary of State to oppose unequivocally any endorsement or further consideration of the Report of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict.” This fact-finding report that she did not oppose is more commonly known as the Goldstone Report, recently described by Alan Dershowitz as a “defamation written by an evil, evil man.“
But this week she continued her assault on Israel’s efforts to secure its citizens, when she signed a letter to the President, organized by Muslim Congressman Keith Ellison, who has been called out for his connections with CAIR a Muslim representative body that may have had affiliations with terror groups.

At the Grendel Report, a look at the latest status of the EPA's Cap and Trade Mafia

Soccer Dad argues that the Goldstone Report is the product of 40 years of perversion of international law.

Then there's Target's Pally globe, the inevitable result of outsourcing production to a Communist anti-Israel country. (Via Jack Kemp)

And Ted Belman has some thoughts on whether Sarah Palin should champion plug in hybrid car

by: SULTAN KNISH.COM
From NY to Jerusalem, Daniel Greenfield Covers the Stories Behind the News

Who Needs a Palestinian State?

From NY to Jerusalem, Daniel Greenfield
Sultan Knish.com
Monday, May 18, 2009

Everyone, and by "everyone" I mean the denizens of Washington D.C.'s and Brussel's government buildings, agrees that we need a Palestinian state. Chiming in with their "Yes" votes are the dictators of a dozen Arab states who agree that the only thing that will fix the region is adding another Arab dictatorship to the place, and subtracting the region's one democracy.But who actually needs a Palestinian state? Or rather a second Palestinian state. The first Palestinian state, commonly called Jordan, was carved out of the Palestine Mandate and equipped with a refugee Saudi royal family. Today Jordan exists mainly under the protection of the US and Israel, and its population of Palestinian Arabs is a seething mass of Muslim extremists currently enjoying a 30 percent unemployment rate, where the majority of the population supports Osama Bin Laden, at a higher percentage rate than even Pakistan.

But Jordan is practically heaven on earth compared to the Second Palestinian State that the Obama Administration is to determined to inflict on Israel.

Currently ruled by mutually hostile armed gangs loyal to either the Fatah or Hamas terrorist groups, Palestine 2.0 has already been a failed state for over a decade. Every attempt at foreign investment has failed. The ruins of industrial zones, greenhouses and even a casino, dot the landscape. Palestinian Arab Christians from overseas who returned to build up the economy fled quickly in the face of relentless shakedowns, kidnappings and militia gangs masquerading as law enforcement.

The vast majority of Palestinian Arabs work for two employers. The UNRWA and the Palestinian Authority... which in turn is funded by foreign donors. Work for the Palestinian Authority usually means belonging to a militia gang which is loyal to a particular figure in the PA leadership, who in turn passes that loyalty on to the current "government". With little to do, the gangs spend their free time dealing drugs, carrying out terrorist attacks and collecting protection money from their town's remaining stores.

For 17 years, Israel, America and just about every interested party has tried to build a Palestinian state. They provided weapons and training to build a modern Palestinian police force. They sent advisers and fortunes in economic aid, thousands per Palestinian Arab. They created industrial zones and transferred greenhouses. Billions in funds from the EU, America and various do-gooders were swallowed up to fund the lavish lifestyles of Arafat and his henchmen.

To those who argue that a Palestinian State will build regional stability, the rational person must ask, how in the world has any of this contributed to regional stability?

Year after year, the proposed Palestinian State has become a worse place. Given autonomy, its own military, political, legal and economic system-- "Palestine" has made the region more unstable than ever. Terrorism has increased. Violence has increased. General instability has increased. Proposing that more of this will stabilize the region is akin to a man setting fire to one piece of furniture after another in his living room, and claiming that when the entire room is on fire, it will be a safe place to live.So I ask again, who needs a Palestinian state? If the Palestinian Arabs really wanted a state (a second state) in Gaza, the West Bank and Eastern Jerusalem, they could have had it before 1967, when those territories were in Arab hands. Instead the PLO back then called for no Palestinian state and the destruction of Israel. As Clinton discovered to his chagrin at the end of his term, Arafat did not actually want a state and was not interested in accepting an Israeli offer that gave him 99 percent of what he wanted. Is it really any surprise that Hamas today follows the same exact party line?

And really why would they want a Palestinian state? If a state was actually created, the UNRWA would have to close up shop. A Palestinian state could no longer rely on foreign donors to fund the hundred thousand or so armed gangsters who form its "government" and its only real form of employment. And the same Muslim states who pass along "charity" to help fund the "martyr operations" that are behind much of the local terrorism would turn elsewhere.

Instead for 17 years the same tired opera has been playing in the region's one theater. First the world's statesmen and diplomats descend on Israel, crying that the only hope for the region's stability is a Palestinian state. Next the Israeli diplomats arrive with a generous territorial offer, counterbalanced by a second clause that asks that there be no more terrorism. That second clause is immediately ignored by everyone in the room.

Next the Palestinian Authority diplomats arrive demanding twice as much land, no more border security preventing terrorists from entering Israel, half of Israel's capital, contiguous borders that would cut Israel in half, the ethnic cleansing of all Jews from territories claimed by them... and finally the return of the "refugees", which is code for unlimited immigration from their proposed Palestinian State into Israel.
The Israelis make a counteroffer. The statesmen and diplomats accuse Israel of rejecting peace. The Palestinian Arabs begin carrying out terrorist attacks again (assuming they even bothered to stop during the negotiations). Israel bombs the terrorists. The statesmen and diplomats accuse Israel of perpetuating the cycle of violence, and urge everyone to go back to the negotiating table. By the time that happens a year later, the Palestinian Arabs have doubled their demands, and the whole "Cycle of Peacemaking" repeats itself all over again.

The "not so secret" secret here is that the Palestinian Arabs do not want a state or peace. 17 years of running the Palestinian Authority into the ground have shown how utterly incapable Fatah and Hamas are of running anything, besides armed gangs, mosques and occasional social services to their loyalist families... all funded from abroad.

The Palestinian ruling powers derive their authority from two forces

1. The Muslim desire to destroy Israel as an infidel state whose existence contradicts Islam. This keeps the money and arms flowing in to the different factions, as well as provides popular support by Arabs. Which is why no Palestinian leader will recognize and accept the existence of Israel. It is why Arafat negotiated out of one side of his mouth and ordered terrorist attacks out of the other. It is why after his death. his Fatah movement has lost credibility and popular support to Hamas due to its increasing inability to kill Israelis.

2. Western and Israel diplomats who keep trying to create a Palestinian state out of the bizarre notion that such a state would bring the terrorism to an end. Like all Dhimmi behaviors in regard to Islam, they ignore the fact that the short term goal of terrorism is terrorism. The long term goal of terrorism is to conquer and hold the territory of the terrorized. There is no room for the middle ground of compromise in that equation. It's either absolute power, or nothing at all.
Terrorism is practiced by armed gangs and movements who derive their power and support from being terrorists. Proposing that they stop being terrorists is a lot like walking into GM and suggesting that instead of making cars, they should make donuts and hand them out for free, so everyone will be happy.

Palestinian nationalism has always been a crock, a transparently phony justification for terrorism that has always come before nationalism. Palestine was never a country or a state. It was the name given by the Roman occupation forces to a region they were administering, a region far larger than modern day Israel. There was never an Arab Palestinian king or ruler until Arafat. There was never a separate country called Palestine. The Post WW1 Palestine Mandate in the 20th century was used to create two states, an Arab state, Jordan, and a smaller state, Israel.

Now the drive is on to create Palestine 2.0, despite the obvious fact that the Palestinian Arabs have done everything possible to prevent it from coming into being. Nearly two decades of terrorism have turned the endless rounds of peace negotiations into a joke. Half the Palestinian Authority is now ruled by the Iranian backed Hamas terrorist group, which insists it will never recognize or accept permanent peace with Israel. A state of affairs that never would have come into being, had Israel not completely withdrawn from Gaza in the first place.

So once again, who wants or needs a Palestinian state?

Israel did not come into being out of pity for the millions of Jews killed in the Holocaust. Nor did it come into being thanks to US aid or support. Both of those however are common myths.

The State of Israel was in place well before the Holocaust, in the form of an embryonic country of farmers who drained the swamps, businessmen who set up shops, journalists who printed newspapers, and soldiers who trained to protect and defend their homeland. When the UN recognized Israel, it simply accepted the fait accompli that Israel existed and was capable of taking care of itself, which it proved by fighting the armies of the surrounding Arab nations to a standstill. It did it without US military aid, which only came into the picture much later with the Kennedy administration. It did it, because the people of Israel genuinely wanted their own state and worked to make it happen.

By 1942, 17 years after the Palestine Mandate, the Jews of Israel had built a thriving country, from power generators to vast stretches of farmland, from a revived language to the Technion, created in 1924, which is considered one of the world's leading electrical engineering and computer science schools in the world.

17 years after Oslo, the Palestinian Arabs have built nothing but death and destruction. Worse yet they've taken everything that was given to them and turned it into either a weapon or a bribe. By every standard, they have failed to show their ability to build or run a functioning state. Not even the most liberally minded thinker can point to anything in the Palestinian Authority leadership that suggests that they're capable of running a functional state. Which is why that same species will naturally duck the question and begin blaming Israel instead.And that highlights the real issue. The only reason for creating Palestine 2.0 is the destruction of Israel. It will not bring regional stability. It will not even bring local stability. It cannot even function unless its entire workforce is funded from abroad. It cannot even stop engaging in terrorism.

Palestine 2.0 is a Frankenstein's monster, with body parts from Shiite, Sunni and Marxist terrorists. It only knows how to do one thing and one thing alone, kill. It is not a natural creature, because no Palestinian state ever existed throughout history. It is an artificial state whose existence has only one purpose. The destruction of Israel.

And that answers our question at last. Who needs a Palestinian state? Someone who is either ignorant, foolish or needs to destroy Israel.

The Two State Solution is not a formula for any kind of stability or end to the violence. It's meant to take the violence to a whole new level. It is a formula for the destruction of Israel. 17 years of peacemaking by Israelis has produced 17 years of terrorism by the Palestinian Arabs. Everything sowed on the Palestinian Authority, from money to guns, from autonomy to infrastructure, have come up as dragon's teeth.

Palestine is not a state. It was never a state. It will never be a state. It is currently ruled by two factions who have both disowned a negotiated Palestinian state in favor of the destruction of Israel. It is not a country, it is a weapon.

Palestine is a gun aimed at the head of Israel with one goal, its destruction. Palestine is a gun aimed at the head of every Jew in the world, legitimizing the worst and ugliest kinds of bigotry. Palestine is an imaginary place given form as a vicious myth brainwashing generation after generation of Jordanian and Egyptian Arabs to call themselves Palestinians and kill and die in the name of perpetuating a second Holocaust, all for the glory of Allah, Mohammed, Marx, not to mention Saddam Hussein, Ahmadinejad, the House of Saud, and every cause and ruler with an interest in toppling Israel into the dust.

Palestine is death. It exists only as a form of living death by a population taught to see themselves as willing martyrs to the bomb belt from birth. It breathes death, it celebrates death, it teaches death and preaches death. It is the final ugly end of the hatred and cruelty bottled up in the Arab and Islamic dictatorships of the region. It is the true face of Islam and its shining reflection in the mirror of the Western press and diplomats is the true measure of their Dhimmism.
The Cult of Death in Palestine and the war against Israel is only a preview for the West of things to come. Palestine is not a place, it is hate and homicide boiled down into myth. Palestine is not only in Israel. It is in Paris and London. It is in Madrid and Detroit. It is in Sydney and Moscow. It is everywhere that the toxic brew of Muslim fanaticism and Arab nationalism flows. Its flag is the flag of death. Its constitution is a death warrant for every free nation. Its legislature is a smug coven of obese terrorist chieftains sending their followers off to death with the promise of virgin demons fornicating with them in Paradise.

Palestine 2.0 is a monster with only one purpose, to create Holocaust 2.0. That is who needs a Palestinian state. That is why the far left and the far right are both so hellbent on bringing one into being. Accepting the Two State Solution means accepting death. Rejecting it means embracing life.