These mugs, showing Obama dressed in Arafat’s signature headgear, are on sale in Gaza.

On May 19, 2011, President Obama made a speech that condemned Israel to extinction by declaring its borders should be more or less the 1948 armistice lines, within which Israel was highly vulnerable. These he called the “1967 lines” – meaning the lines as on June 4, 1967, just before Israel was attacked by Egypt, Jordan and Syria. Israel defended itself, won by hard fighting, and established more defensible “borders”. Its offers of negotiation were refused by the Arab aggressors. For Israel to go back to the 1948 lines could be suicidal.

Obama demanded nothing from the Palestinians: no recognition of Israel’s right to exist; no stopping of rocket attacks, suicide bombing, or their constant and  intense propaganda of hate and genocide.

He sided with the Palestinians. In their eyes, he has inherited the mantle – or rather, the keffiyeh of Arafat, famously shaped as the “State of Palestine” he hoped to see on the map.

The Prime Minister of Israel, Binyamin Netanyahu, is to address a joint session of Congress next week. Congress is sympathetic to Israel. President Obama is not. He is to address the Arab world before the world hears what Netanyahu has to say.

Caroline Glick anticipates what will be said and done:

Obama will praise the populist movements that have risen up against Arab tyrannies and embrace them as the model for the future. As for Israel, the report claimed that the Obama administration is still trying to decide whether the time is right to put the screws on Israel once more. …

The Netanyahu government and Congress are calling for a US aid cutoff to the Palestinian Authority. With Hamas, a foreign terrorist organization, now partnering with Fatah in governing the PA, it is illegal for the US government to continue to have anything to do with the PA. Both the Netanyahu government and senior members of the House and Senate are arguing forcefully that there is no way for Israel to make peace with the Palestinians now, and that the US must abandon its efforts to force the sides to sign an agreement.

The Israeli and congressional arguments are certainly compelling. But the signals emanating from the White House and its allied media indicate that Obama is ready to plough forward in spite of them. With the new international security credibility he earned by overseeing the successful assassination of Osama bin Laden, Obama apparently believes that he can withstand congressional pressure and make the case for demanding that Israel surrender Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria to Hamas and its partners in Fatah.

Obama seems to be still in pursuit of a “two-state solution” negotiated between Israel and — some Palestinian representatives. Up until recently Israel’s negotiating opposite was supposed to be Abu Abbas, powerless head of the Palestinian Authority (PA) which sort of governs the West Bank. Hamas, governing Gaza, was ostensibly not supported by the US or any Western Power because it was designated a terrorist organization. Abu Abbas also represents a terrorist organization – Fatah – but that is politely overlooked. In fact, Hamas’s terrorism is overlooked in practice: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton directs lots of lovely lolly its way – to use for “humanitarian” purposes of course, not terrorism! (Did no one ever tell her that money is fungible?)

Now the PA and Hamas – which have a record of killing each other’s personnel – have cozied up together in a partnership to declare a Palestinian state later this year. Will Obama and his people – such as Hillary Clinton, and Ambassador to the UN Susan Rice – pretend that Hamas is suddenly respectable enough to deal with?

Sarah Honig, a Jerusalem Post writer always worth reading, sees as self-deluding those Israelis who still think a negotiated “two-state solution” to the Palestinian-Israel conflict is possible.

Unflaggingly they peddle tattered, intrinsically disorienting delirium. Incredibly they never seem to tire of pulling the wool over their own and our eyes. They present themselves as possessors of singular insight, as harbingers of a greater truth and as wise beyond our plebeian grasp.

They won’t let go of the grand delusion that underlies their self-professed wisdom and purported truth. Their two-state delusion was certainly sweet – simplistically and seductively so. It claimed that all conflicts can be amicably and fairly settled by just dividing up whatever is contested. It touted idealistic goodwill and seemed compellingly rational. But it was from the start delusionary.

By all empirical yardsticks, that delusion has finally and undeniably crumbled into grimy dust. The illusion of a reasonable accommodation with genocidal foes – which without fail anyhow failed the test of coolheaded analysis – ignobly disintegrated when Ramallah’s Fatah and Gaza’s Hamas banded back together, at least pro forma, for the sake of expediency.

Whatever their motives and whatever the long-range plans of the old-new partners, their joint venture should persuade even the most diehard of our peaceniks that the time has come to finally wise up and lose the illusion.

The prevalent illusion thus far was that we face two dissimilar Palestinian entities – negotiation- espousing Ramallah and Gaza, whose unaltered goal is Israel’s annihilation. Now that the pair has retied the knot, their deception has been exposed. That should mean that the illusion has been shattered irrefutably once and for all.

In reality the only distinction between the two always was tactical. Ramallah excels at propaganda warfare, while Gaza fires rockets. Ramallah is funded by the Quartet, while Gaza is underpinned by Damascus and Tehran. Both wish to obliterate Israel, but Ramallah is more cunning and Gaza more candidly confrontational.

Neither Ramallah nor Gaza was ever a reliable or viable peace partner. Only our indomitable wishful thinking and obsessive illusion kept conjuring up interlocutors on whom we could unload slices of homeland, directly atop the soft underbelly of our densest population centers.

Gaza’s Hamas thumbs its nose at us and glorifies the IslamoNazism of infamous Second World War-criminal Haj Amin al-Husseini, who from his Berlin residence avidly abetted Hitler’s Final Solution, recruited Muslims to the SS and actively foiled the rescue even of several thousand Jewish children.

Conversely, in his Moscow Friendship University PhD treatise, Fatah figurehead Mahmoud Abbas attempted to dwarf the Holocaust’s proportions drastically, while simultaneously accusing Zionists of colluding in Holocaust perpetration – i.e., it didn’t happen, but Israel is guilty. This history-warping dissertation is compulsory study material in his fiefdom’s schools.

Abbas’s Fatahland is nothing but a more outwardly decorous version of Hamastan. All the rest is desperate illusion. …

Most members of the dysfunctional family of nations indeed advocate the two-state solution, but we alone are delusional. All the others are stimulated by cynical vested interests, which impair our self-preservation prospects. In other words, other states don’t push us into the two-state abyss for our own good. Quite the contrary.

In our post, Now is the time for Israel to define its borders, March 10, 2011, we did not say where we think the borders should be drawn, only that Israel should define them before the Hamas-Fatah terrorists who dictate Palestinian policy try declaring a Palestinian state as they say they will.

We see plainly enough, however, that no negotiated two-state solution is possible, because Palestinian leaders do not and never have wanted it. They rejected every offer of a Palestinian state in the past because it would mean co-existing with Israel, and the present leaders have no intention of establishing a Palestinian state that would co-exist with Israel in the future.

Their solution is one state: Palestine.

The Israeli solution ought to be one state: Israel – from the Golan to the Red, from the Jordan to the Med.

Israel would continue to have Arab Israeli citizens. The Palestinians who do not want to live in Israel should be welcomed into the Palestinian state that already exists, and has existed longer than Israel: Jordan.

Jordan was given illegally to the Arabs (as the Emirate of Transjordan); cut out of mandated territory reserved, by legally binding instruments, for the Jews. But since it exists, it should be recognized as the Palestinian state that it is. The British foisted Hashemite rulers on to its mostly Palestinian Arab population, to “reward” the Hashemites for feebly supporting Britain in the First World War, having been prodded every inch of the short way by that notorious charlatan – and abiding hero to the British Foreign Office –  T.E. Lawrence. There are Palestinian voices calling for the Palestinian majority in Jordan to overthrow the dictatorial monarchy and establish a democratic republic. A Republic of Palestine in Jordan would be home to all Palestinian refugees. It might have normal diplomatic and trade relations with Israel, and even allow some Jews to live in it.

But we must not delude ourselves that the Western powers are likely to support the idea. Their policy is to propitiate the Arab states and Islam, and the Arabs states and Islam want the obliteration of Israel.

On the anniversary of its establishment, Israel has been attacked on four fronts: Gaza, the Golan Heights, Lebanon, and Jerusalem.

To the Arabs, it is “Nakba (catastrophe) Day”, which they regularly mark with violence against Israeli targets. Yet Israel was strangely unprepared for the attacks, or at least for the intensity of them. Did the Israeli government not expect that Arab leaders and rulers, threatened with overthrow, might try to divert the anger of their maltreated masses on to Israel?

DebkaFile reports:

The coalition organizing the exceptionally violent events of the Palestinian Nakba (Catastrophe) Day Sunday, marking the founding of Israeli in 1948, first tested the water in the morning: An Israeli Arab drove his truck at high speed through a Tel Aviv thoroughfare, slamming into more than a dozen vehicles and running over pedestrians. He had killed one civilian and injured 17 over a 2-kilometer stretch of road before he was overpowered and apprehended.

When Israel’s police chiefs declined to designate the attack an act of terror and insisted it could have been a traffic accident, Damascus, Hizballah and Hamas felt they were safe in letting their master plan go forward: There was no risk of a tough Israeli response. And indeed, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu later admitted that local commanders and police chiefs were directed to deal with all fronts “with maximum restraint while defending Israel’s borders and sovereignty.” …

Because of this directive, Israelis were shocked to discover at 13:30 that hundreds of Syrians, Palestinians and a Hizballah group had crossed the border and hoisted Syrian and Palestinian flags in the main square of the Israel Golan village of Majd al Shams. They had already been there for four hours and no one was stopping them crossing the border back and forth during that time. Throughout the day, only a small squad of soldiers had been left to guard this border because nothing untoward had been expected there.

It was only at 17:00 hours that tanks and reinforcements arrived.

The invaders had every reason to march around the village declaring they had recaptured the territory Syria had lost 44 years ago while attacking Israel.

By then, military spokesmen had got their act together. It was fortunate that we undermanned the Syrian border, they said, otherwise the incident would have ended with hundreds of dead. …

The Syrian interlopers were finally driven back across the border – not by Israeli troops – but by local Druze chiefs. Israel still does not know how many left and if any remained.

It is to be regretted that the IDF did not meet its fundamental duty to defend Israel’s Golan border by bringing up large reinforcements to surround Majdal Shams, seal the Syrian border and shoot trespassers. The Syrians should not have been released but held until Damascus forced the Hamas to free the Israeli soldier Gilead Shalit.

Former Shin Bet director Israel Hasson … commented later Sunday that Israel must make it crystal clear to Damascus, Hizballah and Hamas that they will not be allowed to toss their internal problems into the Israeli court or violate Israeli sovereignty. …

Israel will pay a heavy price for its flaccid response and misplaced “maximum restraint.” Syrian President Bashar Assad can be counted on not to miss the chance of sending over to the Golan the Syrian and Palestinian terrorist teams he has held in reserve for more than a year for the right opportunity. That opportunity is clearly now at hand.

The Majd al-Shams invasion followed by violence by masked Palestinians in Jerusalem and a terrorist attack in Tel Aviv. It was synchronized with mass incursions from Lebanon and the Gaza Strip. This round is not over. It will not be stopped by military restraint.

Are these comparatively small waves, partly caused by Arab unrest washing against Israel’s shores, and will they soon subside?

Or are they the first signs of a political tsunami?

Post Script: According to Ynet News, some of the Palestinians who crossed the Golan border from Syria into Majd al-Shams on the Israeli side, were seeking asylum.

An apparent appetite among Arab peoples, especially the young, for cell phones, iPods, lap-top computers, and all that Facebook and Google could do for them – including organizing a revolution – encouraged the hope in the West (we were tempted by it ourselves) that they wanted to enter the 21st century and leave the 7th century, which gave birth to Islam, behind them forever. This was the way the thinking went: If  they understand the political conditions that produce the technological marvels – democracy, freedom, secularism, tolerance, universal literacy and the emancipation of women – they will strive to make them the conditions of their own countries; form parties that stand for them as principles; vote those parties into power; and so transform their backward polities to match the American model. Perhaps in the very long term that might happen, but it is not happening now. The “revolutions” in the North African Muslim states are likely to bring puritan Islamic parties into power. There will be no democracy, no freedom, no secularism, no tolerance, women will remain subjugated and predominantly illliterate. The 7th century is where the revolutionaries feel comfortable. They are still keenly pursuing the old Islamic mission, “kill the infidel”, kill every Christian, every Jew, with even greater passion and ever swelling clamor.

What then of the marvelous electronic gadgets and their apps that come from America? What of Facebook and Google?

Well, they’re using Facebook to organize massive demonstrations at which they’re renewing their commitment to the old barbaric 7th century aims, first and foremost to kill the infidel, every Christian, every Jew.

Barry Rubin writes:

Repeatedly we were told about the alleged absence of anti-Israel rhetoric and signs in Tahrir square during the revolution. I don’t think it was true then. I certainly don’t think it is true now.

So check out the massive anti-Israel demonstrations in Cairo today. …

Supposedly the rally was to protest sectarian violence within Egypt but it turned into one favoring more sectarian violence next door. The main focus became supporting the Hamas-Fatah coalition agreement and calling for Israel’s extinction…

Remember all of those articles and statements about how the revolution was good for Israel if only those silly Israelis woke up and understand reality as understood in Berkeley and the Upper West Side of Manhattan?

Oh, and guess how the demonstration was largely organized. Ready? On Facebook! Hahaha. Those youthful hip twittering moderate young people!

Also notice how this is all happening before elections install a radical, nationalist, anti-Israel, anti-American president and a parliament dominated by revolutionary Islamist anti-American antisemites.

If the 21st century – aka the United States – would seriously engage 7th century Islam with all the intellectual, economic, and military strength it has, the menace could easily be defeated. But the US will not do it. Not now, anyway, because the present US government, shockingly led by Barack Obama, likes Islam and wants to it to triumph. The pretense is that Islam is a force for good. Muslims that are too obviously indefensible – such as Osama bin Laden – can be sacrificed to American public opinion since they’re “not truly representative of Islam”.

So when Obama is replaced by a leader who is pro-America, will the necessary action be taken?

The alarming reply must be “probably not”.

Post Script: On the theme of 7th century barbarians using 21st century technology, see this article titled Taliban Uses Social Media to Usher In a New Era of Jihad.

Here is Ayn Rand speaking in 1979 on the Arab-Israel conflict.

The British Broadcasting Corporation, the BBC, “the Beeb”, or “Auntie”, has been coasting on its Second World War reputation for telling the truth for some sixty-six subsequent years, during which it has deserved that reputation less and less, and now not at all.

It is supported by a license fee that every household has to pay to watch any television or listen to any radio, even if the owner of the TV or radio set only tunes in to independent broadcasters who support themselves on fees for advertisements. Yet the BBC does not think it is answerable to the public. It hardly ever admits to any fault, however long and loudly it may be accused of it. It is criticized constantly, continually, for persistent bias towards the left and Islam.

Its managers seem without exception to be self-righteous, morally corrupt, smug and shameless. To prove that it is not anti-Israel, the organization commissioned an internal enquiry, with public money of course; but  when the report came in, it refused to publish it, presumably because its findings were not what it wanted them to be.

Now a new scandal has arisen, courtesy of Wikileaks, connecting the Blatantly Biased Corporation to AL-QAEDA. No one should be surprised.

Here’s the story, told by Un:dhimmi:

The BBC could be part of a ‘propaganda media network’ for al-Qaeda, according to U.S. files published by Wikileaks.

A phone number of someone at the BBC was found in phone books and programmed into the mobile phones of a number of militants seized by the Americans. The number is believed to be based at Bush House, the headquarters of the BBC World Service.

The assessment on one of the detainees at the Guantanamo camp, dated 21 April 2007, said: ‘The London, United Kingdom, phone number 0044 207 *** **** was discovered in numerous seized phone books and phones associated with extremist-linked individuals.

‘The number is associated with the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC).’

The U.S. assessment file said forces had uncovered many ‘extremist links’ to the BBC number – indicating that extremists could have made contacts with employees at the broadcaster who were sympathetic to extremists or had information on ‘ACM’ (anti-Coalition militia) activities. …

The BBC number listed on the file is now dead, but the revelation could further dent the broadcaster’ reputation for impartiality. It has for years faced claims it is biased towards the left. But this is the first time the BBC has been linked to Islamic extremism.

Or the first time there’s been evidence of such a link.

In September 2006, BBC chairman Michael Grade held an ‘impartiality summit’ to assess whether there was a left-wing bias. A leaked account of the meeting showed that executives admitted they would broadcast an interview with Osama Bin Laden, the founder of al-Qaeda. They said they would give him a platform to explain his views, if he approached them.

And how many of those executives are Muslims? We know the BBC is stuffed with them.

So what is the BBC’s excuse for the revelation of the phone number? It’s mighty smooooth:

A spokesman for the BBC said: … “The service [as the BBC calls itself] has interviewed representatives of organisations from all sides involved in the Afghan conflict so it would not be surprising that a number believed to relate to the BBC Pashto service was in circulation.’

Un:dhimmi goes on to comment:

The BBC enjoys a solid, but wholly unjustified international reputation for impartiality. In spite of this (and its own propaganda), the British state broadcaster is caught out by the observant time after time; slanting reports, omitting material facts and downplaying the opinions of those holding views which differ from those of its middle class, liberal, multiculturalist and metropolitan caucus. …

One of the standout areas of BBC bias is its promotion of Islam. At times, it seems as if it is selling the Muslim faith to Britons – seeking constantly to feature examples of benign, integrated and, well – middle class and metropolitan – Muslims as if to say ‘Look – these Muslims are just like you (if ‘you’ are a middle class, affluent professional with multicultural, liberal-to-left views and live in London) – and Islam really is a religion of peace!’.

Meanwhile, parts of the country of the kind not inhabited by the kind of affluent liberals who are so overrepresented at Broadcasting House, are coming to resemble Islamabad – mosque-fringed, self-segregating ghettoes, some of which are home to major organised crime, terrorism and benefit fraud. But you’d never know this from al-Beeb’s output.

The BBC will survive this scandal with its usual snooty disdain of any criticism levelled against it.

Far from being a “service”, it is a destructive propaganda machine. Any decent government – which Britain hasn’t had since the day Margaret Thatcher left the Prime Minister’s office – would now get rid of it.

An Italian journalist, Vittorio Arrigoni, has been murdered in Gaza.

Passionately pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel, he was a member if the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), and had been in Gaza since 2008 when he arrived there on a “Free Gaza” boat mission intended to “break the Israeli blockade”.

ISM supports Hamas, the terrorist organization that rules Gaza; and those terrorist friends of President Obama, Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, are involved with it.

Discover the Networks says about ISM:

Radical, anti-Israel organization that recruits westerners to travel to Israel to obstruct Israeli security operations.

Justifies Palestinian terrorism against Israeli civilians.

Though professing  a commitment to nonviolence, ISM members openly advocate the “liberation” of Palestinians “by any means necessary,” including “legitimate armed struggle”.

But the members of ISM consider themselves to be “humanitarian”.

From the (anti-Israel) BBC:

Vittorio Arrigoni, 36, was seized on Thursday by a radical group that has been in conflict with Hamas and is seeking the release of its leader.

Police said he was found hanged in a Gaza City house after receiving a tip-off. Two people have been arrested. …

“He came from across the world, left his country and family and his entire life and came here to break the siege, and we kill him? Why?” asked one of his [Palestinian] friends. …

Vittorio Arrigoni was a fierce critic of Israel but it is Palestinians that killed him.

Two members of an al-Qaeda inspired Salafist group have been arrested. Salafists practise an ultra-conservative form of Islam and regard Hamas as too moderate. …

The Salafists had threatened to execute Mr Arrigoni by 1400 GMT on Friday unless several prisoners, including their leader [who was] arrested by Hamas police last month in Gaza City. …

It is not clear why Mr Arrigoni was killed before the given deadline, but the Hamas interior ministry said he had died soon after being abducted.

Ministry spokesman Ehab al-Ghussein said he was killed “in an awful way”. …

He described the killing as a “heinous crime which has nothing to do with our values, our religion, our customs and traditions.” …

Huwaida Arraf, a co-founder of the ISM, said he was very well known in the territory and had a “dynamic, humanitarian personality”.

“I even thought that whoever has him is going to see his humanity and just let him go, so when I heard what happened to him I was totally shocked.”

Nothing to do with Hamas’s “religion, customs and traditions”?

And a founder of ISM expects Salifists to “see his humanity and just let him go”?

The bitter delight of ironies like those makes the reading of thousands of lines of news and commentary worth while!

News for ISM: the Arab culture is dishonorable and cruel. In the culture of the West, to be honorable, to act honorably, is to do what you know to be right. It is not a matter of what other people expect of you, but of what you expect of yourself: living up to your own principles of decency. It is to do with your probity, not with how you appear to others. You are answerable to your own conscience. Not what you seem to be but what you are, not what you are reputed to do but what you actually do, makes you honorable or dishonorable.

In Arab culture it is what a man seems to be to his fellow Arabs that matters, so the right word for what Arabs call “honor” is “face”. So important is face that if the least breath of unsubstantiated gossip threatens a man with the loss of it, he’ll go to any lengths to recover it. If it touches on the chastity of his wife or daughter or sister, he’ll kill her to recover it. Such an act his fellow Arabs call “restoring his honor”, a man’s face being more important than a woman’s life. Even if she is innocent of any unchaste act or look or thought, if she is being maliciously maligned, or if she is the victim perhaps of violent sexual assault that she resisted by all means, if others say she is defiled his reputation is stained, and he can only cleanse the stain by killing her. Judged by Western standards of morality, such abuse of women is profoundly dishonorable.

As these so-called “honor killings” are carried out in Islamic societies generally, it may be that Islam is the source of the custom. But whatever the origin, this cruelty, this injustice, persists in Arab culture.

We are not speaking of ethnicity. Whatever can be said of a race or a nation, whatever characteristics it is perceived to have, cannot be ascribed to any individual member of it. But a culture is made of religion, custom and tradition. It is what the majority accept, enact, continue, and hand on. And a culture that subjugates women; that beats the Koran into children; that tortures prisoners as a matter of routine; that sends children walking over minefields (as was done in the Iran-Iraq war); that uses children, civilians, hospital patients as human shields, is vicious, uncivilized, and needs to be completely changed.

We do not condone the murder of Vittorio Arrigoni. We are distressed that he was tortured. He was wrong and foolish, he assisted terrorists, and failed to see that the regime he supported was cruel and unjust. Like all his fellow members of ISM, he was blind to the fact that America and Israel, among a minority of countries, genuinely strive for freedom and justice in a dangerous world. He and all those who have lived safely in Western countries and go to places like Gaza to prove their moral superiority, to serve a cause they little understand in societies where quite different ways prevail, seem to expect to be privileged, exempt from the practices they excuse. If they find they are not exempt, that their grand moral gestures are not appreciated, that they are not seen as heroes but as foreign interferers, and are treated in the customary way, they ought to blame themselves. But we don’t think they will.

Is ISM likely to draw the right conclusions from the death of Vittorio Arrigoni, and disband? Probably not. If experience is no cure for foolishness, nothing is.

We present a short real life action-packed “whodunnit” mystery involving several states’ governments, secret services, terrorist organizations, insurrectionists, arms smugglers, ghostly intelligence gatherers, and shadowy assassins who descend and strike and rise again and disappear.

Atbara is a town in north eastern Sudan, where the Blue Nile and the White Nile meet each other. For the last 20 or 30 years it has been the center of Sudan’s biggest arms smuggling network.

One of the regular buyers is al-Qaeda. Leading operatives of the network joined Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan in 1996. (One of them, Ibrahim al Qosi, was captured and is at present enjoying luxurious confinement at Guantanamo Bay.)

Iran was a chief source of the arms, and over time Iranians acquired a foothold in the network. One of their chief customers was the terrorist organization that has engaged the hearts of European governments, the United Nations secretariat and General Assembly, the US State Department, all Islam, and lefties everywhere: Hamas. In time, they too acquired a foothold in the network.

Al-Qaeda, Iran, Hamas, all working together to provide arms for insurrection, terrorism, and war. Quantities found their way into Gaza through the tunnels that run between Egyptian Sinai and the strip.

Recently, Iran withdrew its personnel, or most of them, from direct involvement, but continued using the network to keep up the flow of arms to Hamas and Iran’s own terrorist army, Hizbullah.

A short time ago, through Atbara, the Iranians bought WMD, namely mustard gas and nerve gas, from rebels in the Libyan town of Benghazi, and ordered the consignment to be delivered to Gaza and Lebanon. It was driven in convoys from Libya to Sudan, under Hamas and Hizbullah guard.

The final lap of the transport had then to be organized.

On April 5, two men set out in a Hyundai car from Atbara for Port Sudan. They were driving through the Kalaneeb region and approaching their destination when something hit and blew up their car. The bodies of the men, one found inside the wreck of the Hyundai and one outside, were too burnt to be identified. The incident warranted investigation by the Sudanese intelligence service and the military. The Foreign Minister of Sudan made a public announcement that the car had been hit by a missile from an aerial drone – or maybe fired from a foreign ship on the Red Sea.

The government of Sudan asked the sort-of-interim-government of Egypt  to send counter-terrorist and missile experts to help the investigation. After forensic examination they declared that a remnant of paper identified one of the dead men as Iranian. And the blackened remains of the other gave them, or some among them, the impression that he was a Palestinian. They were sure, anyway, that they were not Sudanese.

But they didn’t agree with the Foreign Minister that the car had been hit from the air or the sea. They concluded that a person or persons unknown had blown it up from somewhere near by on the ground; they must have been foreigners; and they must have arrived and departed by helicopter. Having done the deed, they took off again to a waiting ship that had brought them to the coast.

Who were the dead men? What was their business? And who had assassinated them?

The report from which we have the information ends with this:

The method of attack and clean getaway pointed to a sophisticated military organization capable of unconventional operations across great distances spanning thousands of kilometers. It would have required competent military intelligence support in places as far apart as Atbara, Kalaneeb, Port Sudan and the Red Sea.

Who could it have been? CIA? Unlikely. MI6? Extremely unlikely. Who else is there who could have done it? And why?

It remains a baffling mystery, probably never to be solved.

A surprising interview. Hasan Afzal, a Briton of Palestinian origin, objects to the vicious world-wide movement to delegitimize the State of Israel.

Hasan tells The Atheist Conservative this about himself:

At present I’m on a leave of absence from the University of Birmingham where I’m studying Political Economy.

I come from a secular Muslim family. Religion was often a private experience with the family only ever becoming overtly religious during Ramadan and the two Eid festivals. Other than that, there were no boundaries on what we could talk about so I had complete academic freedom to talk/think/debate with whatever I liked.

The Israel/Palestine issue was never talked about at home, not out of censorship but it never really came up. When I was at University, I was forced to think about it. I guess I’ve been rather influenced by democratic peace theorists and liberal interventionists (aka Neocons – cough!). Sadly, university degrees are too easy to commit one’s mind too, so I spent most of my time reading around the subject. I read Strauss, Hobbes, Locke.

I began to ask: How could this little democracy, Israel, be all the evils that the hate-preachers say it is? I did my own research, and I found out it wasn’t. I got involved in anti-Islamism and discovered the Israel delegitimisation network.  Since then I have had an almost instinctive sympathy for Israel and sadness for the short-sighted leadership of Palestinians. It’s equally a pragmatic support as well as a little ideological. When I see how skewed the debate has become about Israel/Palestine, it is the Israelis I feel are the victims of a sophisticated delegitimisation network.

In the course of his researches, he met Sam Westrop, our British editor. Together they founded the organization British Muslims for Israel, which is beginning to attract media attention.

Sam and I set up British Muslims for Israel. When something happens in the Middle East – the Jerusalem bomb was a perfect example – we come out and make our point clear and provocative. The hope is that Muslims who are hesitant or unsure of their support for Israel will one day put one and one together and see who their real enemies are.

Undhimmi features the video and comments:

It is not before time that a voice of reason from the Muslim community was heard – particularly in Britain – which is fast gaining a reputation as an anti-Semite’s paradise. The cacophany of uninformed and biased, agenda-driven noise (for that it what it is), emanating from the British media and the Islamo-Left coalition – who are dedicated to dehumanising Israelis and falsely presenting the ‘Palestinians’ as perpetual victims – goes virtually unchallenged here [in the US], Britain and the West [in general].

And Melanie Phillips writes in her column at the Spectator:

A warm welcome to a new and very brave kid on the block – British Muslims for Israel. As I have often said, where someone stands on Israel is for me the litmus test of whether they are a decent and rational human being or pose a threat not merely to Jewish interests but to civilised values. Unfortunately, even among those many Muslims who are opposed to the jihad and support western democracy, animosity towards Israel often runs horrifyingly deep. Any Muslim who speaks up in defence of Israel runs significant personal risks. So those behind British Muslims for Israel, which has emerged from the Institute for Middle Eastern Democracy*, merit a huge amount of praise and support. They also offer a ray of hope for the future. They show that there are Muslims who pass that key civilisational litmus test with flying colours.

Listen here to their spokesman Hasan Afzal, explaining that the group was set up to counter the dangerous notion which is gaining ground that Israel should cease to exist at all; that Muslims get a better deal if they live in Israel rather than Saudi Arabia; and even that he would happily volunteer to be involved [in Israeli public relations] in the face of the ‘sophisticated internet campaign to delegitimise Israel’.

We applaud Hasan’s efforts and will continue to cheer him on.

*Sam was also one of the founders of The Institute for Middle East Democracy.

At the request of our valued reader and  frequent commenter Frank, we have written this article on foreign aid and what would happen if it were stopped. He was prompted to think about it when he watched a news video reporting that in this time of recession and severe unemployment, hundred of millions of US taxpayer dollars are being sent abroad for the refurbishment of mosques in Islamic countries, many of which are known to incite terrorist attacks on US targets.

(Note: Requests are welcome, though we can’t promise always to grant them.)

*

“Foreign aid is the transfer of money from poor people in rich countries to rich people in poor countries.”

There’s disagreement on who first said that, but it doesn’t matter. The question is: is it true?

The first part is not entirely untrue: among the tax–payers whose money goes to foreign aid are many who are poor, or at least not rich, by their own country’s standards.

The second part is almost entirely true. Foreign aid is paid by the donor states to the governments of the recipient states, and very little of it goes any further. The dictators, the kleptocrats, the oligarchs, the once-elected-always-in “democratic” panjandrums, the tribal chiefs who rule weaker tribes by tradition or conquest, pocket the lion’s share of the incoming largesse, distribute some of it to their kinsfolk, chums, influential supporters and selected rivals, and only then, if there’s anything left – which would likely be by oversight for which someone gets fired or shot – it’s flung from the balcony of power, in a little glittering shower, down upon the ravenous masses who scrabble for it in the dust.

Our own sort of government is not like that. Ours is accountable to us, at least in theory. The present government of the US has acted on a different understanding, but even the worst members of the Obama administration cannot – as far as we know – be accused of the venality of, say, African dictators, or even the routine corruption that characterizes the unelected leaders of the European Union.

Now what may be virtuous in an individual can be a fault in government, and vice versa. You, sir/madam, may not kill, but governments must in war. You may not demand money with menaces, but governments must when they tax you. You may not hold someone against their will, but governments must imprison convicts. You may give away your money, but a government is a trustee of others’ money and should spend it only for the benefit of those who earned it. Generosity is a virtue in a person, a vice in a government.

Those who want a government to be a wellspring of cash to pay for all their personal needs, vote for socialism. A socialist government is extortionist, the idea being that those who earn money should be forced to hand it over for the benefit of everybody else. A central agency – which can only be government as it’s the only institution with the legal power of compulsion – must gather it in and deal it out again “fairly”.  Some toil, and all hold their hands out. The system is not just, though it’s devotees call it “social justice”.

Socialists think of an economy as a pie, of which everyone should get an equal slice. They assume there is a fixed amount of wealth in the land, established once and for all long ago by divine grant, so if some are richer than others they must have become so by theft. A few are rich – they imagine – because the many are poor: the many are poor because a few are rich. They cannot grasp, or will not learn, that wealth is created, and where it is created some become rich and many become richer. (A fine example is the “second industrial revolution” that began to the world’s wonder and glory in Silicon Valley about half a century ago. Apple orchards gave way to Apple computers – to sum it up – and where there had been hundreds of poor field workers there are now millions of prosperous industrial workers, and the persons who were free to invest their own money, time, innovative ability as they chose, not only became rich themselves, but have also benefited hundreds of millions of people all over the world. That’s what capitalism and the free market – so dreaded and hated by socialists – can do.)

Foreign aid is a socialist idea. It is redistribution of the “world’s wealth”. That pie idea again, writ very large. Equal slices. A fixed amount that needs to be distributed “fairly”.  (Ideally, to the true believers, by a world government.) Those who advocate it get a warm glowing feeling inside. Puffed up with moral pride, they simply know they are virtuous. They hold compassion to be the highest value, and bestow their compassion, by means of other people’s money, liberally on the wretched of the earth.

But have they actually done any good?

They claim to have “helped” poor countries by bringing plenty where there was  scarcity. The more realistic among them, not entirely persuaded by the pie theory of wealth, see the free grants of cash from the First World as seed money with which  to grow profitable projects that will make many an economic desert bloom.

Has the looked-for transformation ever come about? Has US aid – for instance – ever actually promoted economic success anywhere?

Well, yes. Once. Maybe. European economic recovery after the devastation of World War Two was probably boosted by the aid it received through the Marshall Plan. About $13 billion was distributed in varying amounts to the west European states, including Italy and  Germany  (and even neutral Sweden but not Spain), Britain getting the most. It’s  impossible to know whether Europe would have recovered as well, less well, or better without it. It was given, it was used (much of it to buy goods from the United States), and Europe did recover and prosper, so you could say that the aid wasn’t wasted.

But can as much be said for other hand-outs to foreign lands? If you hunt about you may light upon a successful outcome from a grant being well used here and there on our big round globe. But in general the answer is no. Aid has not proved a successful means to help poor peoples to thrive. And that isn’t all of the bad news. The rest of the story is worse. For the most part aid is squandered.  Worse still, it has often had the effect of making poor countries poorer – a point to which we shall return. And arguably worst of all, it sometimes goes to strengthen the aid-giver’s active enemies. (See our post, Aiding our enemies , March 14, 2011.)

The  redistribution enthusiasts explain, in the patient tones of saints, that the waste of what is given and the hatred directed at the giver are the direct results of the rich countries not giving enough (see for example here, here, and here). They complain that no developed country in the Western world budgets even as much as the .7% of its GDP that they promised once upon a time at some international forum, some field of the cloth of gold. The richest country in the world, the USA, allots barely .2%, and the saints who want to be generous with Americans’ money feel that the US government should hang its head in shame for being so miserly.

But if the money is squandered, what justification is there for giving any at all? If it doesn’t improve living standards, does it at least secure a strategic advantage, a port or an air base? Ensure an ally where one might be needed? Engage a supportive voice in the United Nations? Yes, sometimes, for a while, if nothing comes along to put a strain on the agreement.

Does it matter if the aid money does no good for the recipient and possibly endangers the giver? Conservative governments seem to have answered this question cynically, along such lines as: “Even if a few millions bestowed on this or that Havenotistan is spent on a gold bed for the tyrant’s wife, or a fleet of Mercedes that cannot be moved from the airport where they were landed because no one knew to put oil in them before trying to drive them away (both actual examples), the amounts are too small to fuss about … chump change … and there may be some sort of  dividend coming out of it one sunny day.”

What if consumer goods are sent rather than money? Food, say? Doesn’t that reach the people who need it? Not often. It gets diverted –  to  cartels, army top brass, transport operators, profiteers in influential positions, who will sell what they don’t keep for themselves at inflated prices when famine gets severe enough. For instance, in Somalia, after such slavering packs of wolves have chewed off  their share  –  al-Qaeda linked terrorists among them in that benighted land –  only half the food sent as aid is “distributed to the needy population”. (See our  post,, Out of Africa always something familiar, March 11, 2010.)

But, it might be objected, not all recipients are unpredictable despotisms. The biggest beneficiary of US foreign aid is Israel – $3 billion per annum. Any complaint about that?

Yes. From Israel – because of the strings attached. Israel has to use some of the money to buy American military aircraft and weapons – not the ones it wants, but the sort Israelis say they can make better themselves. Some also say they don’t really need the aid at all, which amounts to under 1% of Israel’s total GDP, but are not allowed to refuse it because tens of thousands of American jobs depend on the Israeli munitions market. If this is true, Israel is not a beneficiary but a victim of aid!

From America’s point of view, however, that’s surely one lump of aid worth giving. Or is it? The economist Peter Bauer, who was Prime Minister Thatcher’s special adviser on foreign aid, pointed out that such an arrangement as that is analogous to your local store owner giving you cash on condition that you spend some of it buying his merchandise.

But let’s return to our assertion that aid often has the effect of making poor countries poorer. Here’s a quotation from an article by Matthew Rees in the Wall Street Journal [first quoted in our post, How to spread poverty, April 4, 2009]:

Dambisa Moyo, a native of Zambia and a former World Bank consultant, believes that it is time to stop proceeding as if foreign aid does the good that it is supposed to do. …  Aid, she writes, is “no longer part of the potential solution, it’s part of the problem – in fact, aid is the problem.” … Ms. Moyo spells out how attempts to help Africa actually hurt it. The aid money pouring into Africa, she says, underwrites brutal and corrupt regimes; it stifles investment; and it leads to higher rates of poverty – all of which, in turn, creates a demand for yet more aid. Africa, Ms. Moyo notes, seems hopelessly trapped in this spiral, and she wants to see it break free. Over the past 30 years, she says, the most aid-dependent countries in Africa have experienced economic contraction averaging 0.2% a year.

In the light of that dismal fact, foreign aid is plainly a bad idea and it should be stopped.

What would happen if it were?

It’s more than likely that the redistribution saints would wax very wrathful indeed. It would soon become plain that their motive was never so much – or at all? – the betterment of life for the hungry masses in poor countries. They, or many of them, have a higher goal in mind: global redistribution of what they call “resources” – meaning the wealth created in and by the capitalist First World.

Matthew Rees explains in his Wall Street Journal article:

The report blends the socialist and Islamic economic perspectives as an alternative to our present capitalistic system.  It has four basic themes.  Western-style free market capitalism is the villain. Redistributive justice is mandatory. New global governance authorities are required. Global taxes are also needed.

The only institution that the UN experts believe has broad enough political legitimacy to serve as the global decision making forum and eliminate the abuses of free market capitalism is, unsurprisingly, the body that gave them the platform to air their views on a global stage in the first place – the United Nations.

Since the United States is usually asked by the UN to put up at least 20% of whatever money it is raising, that would mean U.S. taxpayers would be expected to fork over $200 billion extra over the next two years.

Would we at least be able to impose some reasonable conditions on the massive grants and loans for development and other support (or “conditionalities” as the Commission of Experts calls them)?  The UN experts say absolutely not!

After all, it would be politically incorrect to expect each recipient of our taxpayers’ money to actually have to demonstrate that the money won’t end up in a corrupt dictator’s Swiss bank account because, according to the UN experts’ circular reasoning, such “conditionalities” would “disadvantage developing countries relative to the developed, and undermine incentives for developing countries to seek support funding…

Our sovereignty as a self-governing people to regulate our own economy must give way to global government for the sake of “the broad interest of the international community”.

The bid failed. But the saints never give up. They had another go by claiming that the planet could only be saved from man-made global warming by world government, which would oversee the redistribution of the developed world’s “resources”.

That would be the killing of the goose that lays the golden eggs. There would soon be no more “resources” to redistribute. No one would be rich (except themselves), but there’d be that equality of misery everywhere on earth which, to the socialist conscience, is the non plus ultra of moral good.

We must not let it happen. Our verdict is that if foreign aid were stopped, everyone would benefit, the nations that give and the nations that receive. So what we need now – to save not only ourselves who are thriving on capitalism, but the rest of the world too – are tightfisted governments. America must elect a miser-government, the stingiest ever, refusing so much as a crumb in aid to another country. Then the wretched of the earth can imitate our ways, and prosper.

Jillian Becker   March 21, 2011