A summary:

Even more disturbingly, Haass ignores the fact that Teheran made its greatest leaps forward in its uranium enrichment capabilities while it was engaged in these talks with the West.

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So in making his recommendation to the Obama administration - which has already announced its intention to negotiate with the mullahs - Haass has chosen to ignore Iran's statements, its actions, and known facts about the West's inability to steer it from its course of war by showering it with pay-offs.

Haass and his colleagues in the US, Europe and on the Israeli Left are similarly unwilling to pay attention to Hamas. In an article in the current edition of Foreign Affairs, Haass and his colleague Martin Indyk from the Brookings Institute call on the Obama administration to either ignore Hamas, or, if it abides by a cease-fire with Israel, they suggest that the Obama administration should support a joint Hamas-Fatah government and "authorize low-level contact between US officials and Hamas." The fact that Hamas itself is wholly dedicated to Israel's destruction and Islamic global domination is irrelevant.

Similarly, Haass and Indyk assume that Damascus can be appeased into abandoning its support for Hizbullah and Hamas, and its strategic alliance with Iran. Syrian President Bashar Assad's views of how his interests are best served are unimportant. Both Assad's statements of eternal friendship with Iran and his active involvement in Iran's war effort against the US and its allies in Israel, Iraq and Lebanon are meaningless. The "realists" know what he really wants.

MUSLIMS AREN'T the only ones whose views and actions are dismissed as irrelevant by these foreign policy wise men. The "realists" ignore just about every non-Western actor. Take Iran's principal Asian ally, North Korea, for example.

This week North Korea's official news agency threatened to destroy South Korea in a "sea of fire," and "reduce everything treacherous and anti-reunification to debris and build an independent, reunified country on it," if any country dares to attack its nuclear installations.

North Korea made its threat two weeks after Kim Jung Il's regime disengaged from its fraudulent disarmament talks with the Bush administration. Those talks - the brainchild of foreign policy "realists" Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Assistant Secretary Christopher Hill - were based on the "realist" belief that the US can appease North Korea into giving up its nuclear arsenal. (That would be the same nuclear arsenal that the North Koreans built while engaged in fraudulent disarmament talks with the Clinton administration.)



After Pyongyang agreed in February 2007 to eventually come clean on its plutonium installations (but not its uranium enrichment programs), and to account for its nuclear arsenal (but not for its proliferation activities), Rice convinced President Bush to remove North Korea from the State Department's list of state sponsors of terror and to end its subjection to the US's Trading with the Enemy Act this past October. And then, after securing those massive US concessions, on December 11 Pyongyang renounced its commitments, walked away from the table and now threatens to destroy South Korea if anyone takes any action against it.

North Korea's behavior is of no interest to the "realists," however. As far as they are concerned, the US has no option other than to continue the failed appeasement policy that has enabled North Korea to develop and proliferate nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles. As the Council on Foreign Relations' Gary Samore said, "I think we're sort of condemned to that process, because we don't really have any alternative."

Samore and his colleagues believe there are no other options because all other options involve placing responsibility for contending with North Korea on non-Western powers like China, South Korea and Japan. More radically, they involve holding North Korea accountable for its actions and making it pay a price for its poor behavior.

As the "realists" claim that the US has no option other than their failed appeasement policies, back in the real world, this week military officials from the US's Pacific Command warned that North Korea may supply Iran with intercontinental ballistic missiles. These warnings are credible given that North Korea has been the primary supplier of ballistic missiles and missile technology to Iran and Syria and has played a major role in both countries' nuclear weapons programs.

Defending Channel 4's invitation to Ahmadinejad, Dorothy Byrne, the network's head of news and current affairs, said, "As the leader of one of the most powerful states in the Middle East, President Ahmadinejad's views are enormously influential. As we approach a critical time in international relations, we are offering our viewers an insight into an alternative world view."

When you think about it, broadcasting Ahmadinejad really would have been a public service if Byrne or any of the delusional "realists" calling the shots were remotely interested in listening to what he has to say. But they aren't. So far from a public service for Britain, it was a service for those who, unbeknownst to most Britons, are dedicated to destroying their country.

caroline@carolineglick.com

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?apage=2&cid=1230111707087&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

Soren - hahahah, good cartoon !!!

It is just not so simple as saying one side is more ruthless than the other, Soren.

My wife is pretty disinterested in politics, and she asked me why this was happening, and whose fault it is?

Of course there is no definitive answer to that, just perspectives which change dependent on which point of view you take it from.

I started by saying, the only premise for Israel existing, that the arabs could ever accept, was if they bought up a parcel of land somewhere away from the middle east, and started a new country there.
For many arabs, even that would not satidfy them, and they would continue their traditional enmity against them be they in the middle east, or ecuador.

Conversely, when you look at the map of the region, and see how israel has expanded itself through military aggression, you can understand why palestinians could feel some rightful grievance at the takeover of their land.

Effectively, it is a war, which Israel has won, but not to the point where the other side accepts defeat.

This latest advance is likely to see the Gaza strip become wholely israeli controlled, with the palestinians pushed back into the small areas bordering the west bank area.

How far they will go, how ruthless will they be?
If they bite the bullet, and go hard now, will it make the palestinians finally accept israels might, is all it needs to secure it's right to exist, not the good will of the arab, and muslim neighbours?
Of course, no-one expects that will never happen.

Quote:


The majority of jews that moved to Palestine, moved their under British rule as legal immigrants. Britain had the authority and the right to let them do so, as the ruler of the British Mandate of Palestine.

The reason Britain wanted out, and the UN divided the nation into Jews and Arab states was because the Arabs returned to their Islamic roots of slaughtering Jews. So from the moment the immigrants touched down into the BMP, the Arabs were killing them. The Jews fought back, eventually, and it was on for young and old.

It would be like me deciding to go out to Lakemba and kill Arabs in Sydney. Because its MY LAND, not ARAB LAND! Do I have that right? When Arabs were so intolerant of their Jewish immigrants, we have to be tolerant of them as immigrants? Something of a double standard. And we are not killing anybody.

And then because the fighting got so bad, the UN divided the area into the Arab and Jewish states. There was no Arab state beforehand, it was under British rule. But that was not good enough for the Arabs. No sir. They wanted to slaughter all of the Jews and take the whole BMP instead of dividing it along the lines decided by the UN. So they started an Aloha Snackbar jihadi war, guns in the air, we are the tough guys...and

LOST.

10 Arabic nations lost to a pissant group of European Jewish immigrants. Lost in a war the Arabs started. And even though they lost, and started wars again in 1967, and 1973, and have been involved in terror all this time - Israel still negotiates.

And Im supposed to feel sorry for them? That they decided to exterminate a particular brand of immigrant, that lawfully moved to a land not under their control - and they lost those numerous wars of extermination - boo frigging hoo.

Calanen wrote on Dec 31^st, 2008 at 2:32pm:



Just so.

Israel accepted the 1948 borders. Whatever territory it occupied subsequently was in reposnse to attacks by the Arabs. Were the Arabs led by reason and not religious fanaticism, they would have made peace and benefited from the proximity of a democratic, talented country in the midst, eager to have peace. But that would be unislamic, literally.

Mozzoak, ask your wife - how many rocket attacks would she put up with in your neighbourhood before demanding that the government hit back and hit back hard? How many bus bombings and pizza parlour bombings would it take her not  to let your children take a bus ride to the pizza shop?

So boo frigging hoo is the mot just, I'm afraid.

Quote:


What should happen, but will and can never happen is go back to Resolution 181, and get Hamas and Al Fatah to swear on the Koran that:

- there will be no jihad, EVER against the Jews;

- there will be no more terror of any kind;

- irreovcably accept Israel's right to exist,

- they get the West Bank and Gaza as their own state. Jerusalem becomes a free city under UN control.

That's the only way to settle it. But if Hamas and Al Fatah keep focussing on destroying Israel, and firing rockets, then it will just continue. Israel's not going anywhere, they need to accept that.

mozzaok,

Did you tell your wife anything about the situation before 1946? That it was 100% Muslim land? That almost every single Jew who livves there has come from another country? And most of them were not fleeing the holocaust as the popular myth goes, but most left quite good homes/lives in the USA, UK, Russia etc. to come for some ethnic 'adventure' in someone elses land.

Did you ask your wife if she'd gladly get up and give her home to some foreign people who all of a sudden decided they wanted it claiming their ancestors lived there over 2000 years ago?? Would she accept being herded into a refugee camp and be content with insufficient water supply (after the foreign invaders drained about 90% of it for themselves), economic blockades that prevent basic food and medicine supplies from reaching you, and bombs being routinely dropped on your apartments buildings and snipers regularly killing civilians all over the place.

This kind of stuff has been happening constantly to the Palestinians for the past 60 odd years, and these claims of "Pallywood" are just despicable, and resemble those neo-Nazis who claim the holocaust was fabricated and the photos were all faked. I've never heard of a single Westerner who visited the Palestinians territories, witnessing the situation for themselves, and didn't find the conditions there absolutely appalling, and the actions of the Zionists to be completely unjust and aggressive. Some Westerners have actually been murdered by the Zionists as well, such as the young American lady who was bulldozed to death by the IDF. If you search on Youtube, you'll also find videos of settlers attacking Western tourists, merely because they came to inspect the conditions of the Palestinians.

Add to this the confessions of former IDF soldiers who've publically admitted they regularly target Palestinian civilians from sniper positions hundreds of metres away, trash their shops, take over and vandalise their houses to watch sporting events, and commit all sorts of injustices and inhumanities, yet the nay-sayers continue denying the facts, even after the aggressors themselves admit their own guilt.