RUTHFULLY YOURS

Palestinian political analysts said that the Hamas victory is an indication of what would happen if general elections were held these days in the West Bank.

The 3,481 students who voted in favor of the Hamas-affiliated list want to see the destruction of Israel.

Both Hamas and the PFLP are strongly opposed to any peace process with Israel. They continue to call for terror attacks against Israelis. The results of the election mean that most of the students at Bir Zeit University in the West Bank, not Gaza, support groups that have chosen terrorism over peace.

The Hamas victory at Bir Zeit University also shows that it does not matter how much money you pour on Fatah’s campus supporter; a majority of students would still prefer to vote for terror groups that do not believe in Israel’s right to exist.

The main charge against Fatah is that it has failed to reform and pave the way for the emergence of new and younger leaders.

“Fatah needs an internal shake-up before it faces more defeats.” –Sufyan Abu Zayda, a senior Fatah official from the Gaza Strip.

Hamas leaders also called for holding long overdue presidential and parliamentary elections in the Palestinian territories. They said they had no doubt that their movement would easily defeat Fatah.

Under such circumstances, it is not a good idea to promote the idea of free and democratic elections in the Palestinian territories. Worse, the talk about a renewed peace process and a two-state solution has become a tasteless joke.

The threat from terrorism is worse than at any time since 9/11, even as the West has limited its capacity for self-defense. One example of the latter is the way the Obama Administration has abandoned former CIA agent Sabrina De Sousa.

Ms. De Sousa was one of 26 U.S. officials convicted by Italy in 2009 for their role in the rendition of a radical Egyptian cleric. A Portuguese-American dual national who currently resides in Portugal, she received a seven-year sentence from an Italian court (later reduced to four years). Last week Portugal’s highest court cleared the way for her extradition to Italy under a European arrest warrant.

CIA agents working with their Italian counterparts in 2003 captured the cleric, known as Abu Omar, who was suspected of recruiting fighters for Islamists in Iraq, among other things, and transferred him from Milan to Egypt, where he says he was tortured. Egyptian authorities eventually released Abu Omar without charge, though Italy later convicted him in absentia on terror charges.

Among the anti-antiterror left, his case became emblematic of the evils of rendition. Italian prosecutors in 2004 launched an investigation and Italian courts eventually convicted, in absentia, the CIA agents, including Ms. De Sousa, and a U.S. Air Force colonel for their alleged participation in the affair. All of the convicted Americans had left Italy by the time the court case was under way.

Ms. De Sousa was acting in her official capacity and following U.S. policy during the 2003 rendition. Yet the U.S. government never asserted diplomatic immunity in her case, although it asserted a similar immunity on behalf of at least one other American involved in the affair.

When Ms. De Sousa sued the CIA, State and the Justice Department for failing to invoke immunity on her behalf, Justice argued that immunity is asserted for the benefit of the government, not of an individual employee. That’s a sound principle and is exactly why the government should act to protect Ms. De Sousa. Failing to do so sends a terrible signal to other U.S. operatives in the field. CONTINUE AT SITE

Alas, he stands firmly on weak knees…he should scuttle all negotiations….rsk
TEL AVIV—Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday poured cold water on a French initiative to restart peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians, saying the two sides should be speaking directly rather than through a third party.

“Israel adheres to its position that the best way to resolve the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians is direct, bilateral negotiations,” said a statement from Mr. Netanyahu’s office. “Any other diplomatic initiative distances the Palestinians from direct negotiations.”

French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault last week said he would invite ministers from the U.S., Europe, Middle East and Asia to Paris on May 30 to discuss a framework for a new round of peace talks, aiming to host an international conference later this year that would include Israeli and Palestinian leaders.

France first suggested the international conference in January, the Israeli leader expressed similar concerns at that time too.

A spokesman for Israel’s foreign ministry said the prime minister’s statement didn’t completely rule out Israeli officials attending a conference as no invitations to the two sides had been sent out yet.

After welcoming the French initiative last week, Palestinian negotiators slammed Israel’s pessimism over the plan.

“The Israeli government’s call for bilateral negotiations is not a call for the achievement of the two-state solution, but an attempt at legitimizing its settlement enterprise and the imposition of an apartheid regime,” said Saeb Erekat, the secretary-general of the Palestine Liberation Organization, which represents Palestinian political factions in peace negotiations. “We call upon the French Government and the rest of the international community to take immediate steps in order to give peace a chance.”

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has sought support from the international community in recent years at forums such as the United Nations and International Criminal Court in a bid to create a Palestinian state. CONTINUE AT SITE

While in London last week, President Obama waded into the upcoming British referendum about whether the United Kingdom should stay in the European Union.

Controversy followed his lecture about the future of the Anglo-American relationship should Britain depart the EU. Obama also implied that without an EU, the United States might again be dragged into European squabbling, as it had been in the prior world wars.

Americans might take this occasion to reflect on Britain’s role in World War II.

Before the war, the League of Nations had done nothing to deter the future Axis powers from invading or annexing Albania, Austria, China, Czechoslovakia, and Ethiopia.

Britain’s alliance with France might have deterred Nazi Germany had Winston Churchill, not Neville Chamberlain, been prime minister in 1939. Or an isolationist United States might have helped had it been willing to conclude a defense pact with the Western European democracies.

What ensured a war were the appeasement of Nazi Germany by Britain and France, the isolation of the United States from global responsibilities, and the collaboration of the Soviet Union with Adolf Hitler. All three developments combined to convince Hitler that he could bully or invade his neighbors without consequences.

America entered the war on Britain’s side in late 1941, after more than two years of war that saw Hitler consolidate a continental empire larger than the present European Union. The United States declared war on Nazi Germany and fascist Italy on December 11, 1941 — but only after the two Axis powers declared war on us first. Had Hitler and Italy’s Benito Mussolini not declared war after Japan’s December 7, 1941 surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, America may well have concentrated on defeating Imperial Japan and stayed neutral in the European theater.

Great Britain was the only major power to fight for the entire duration of World War II, from its beginning after the invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939 until the surrender of the Japanese in Tokyo Bay on September 2, 1945.

In late June of 1940, after the fall of Western Europe, Britain was the only major power in the world still resisting Nazi Germany. Otherwise, all of Europe was either occupied by Hitler, neutral, or supposedly neutral but surreptitiously aiding the Third Reich with shipments of supplies.

It’s been a terrific week for integration Britain. First the National Union of Students (NUS) elected what the BBC joyously headlinedas its ‘First black Muslim woman president.’ Wahey! Another victory for diverse Britain. But amid the preliminary bunting some people still remembered that Malia Bouattia is principally known for two things: a reportedly extreme opposition to some things Jewish, and an equal opposition to measures which protect the country which gave her and her family sanctuary when they fled from Algeria. Ms Bouattia denies being an anti-Semite and insists she is, instead, simply anti-Zionist.

Of course expecting people to receive asylum in our country and then feel even slightly grateful for the fact must seem so patriarchal and twentieth century. The new deal seems to be that people flee some terrorist-destroyed hell-hole, arrive in the UK and then campaign against efforts to protect ourselves from terrorism. And people wonder why people’s hearts might be hardening towards not just migrants but to genuine refugees?

Ms Bouattia made her name in student politics with a ‘Why is my curriculum white?’ campaign. And it seems nobody ever gave her the simplest answer, which is, ‘I dunno. Maybe for the same reason that if you went to Algeria you might find it somewhat ‘black’.’ Of course it would probably be considered not just rude but racist for someone who found themselves in the unlikely situation of fleeing the UK to go and live in Algeria to start a campaign called ‘Why is my curriculum black?’ But maybe that’s because of the Crusades, or the British Empire or some other tired excuse of the new demagogues.

Anyhow, we have our ‘first black Muslim woman president’ of the NUS and now a grateful nation only has to make its way through the first non-binary President of the NUS, the first non-binary President of Muslim background of the NUS and so on. At any rate, perhaps somewhere around the end of the next century the NUS could get round to electing a vaguely conservative student? Or perhaps that’s the realm of science-fiction.

In any case, yesterday brought another great success story. Naz Shah got a fair amount of sympathy at the last election, primarily because of her story of a forced marriage to a cousin in Pakistan, but also for being insulted on the campaign trail by George Galloway. Now it turns out that the new Member of Parliament for Bradford West is a bit like the old one. Except this one seems even more virulent.

I noticed earlier this year from her appearance on an edition of the BBC’s The Big Questions that although she had suffered some of the harsher corners of Pakistani culture, Ms Shah was no moderate. And then yesterday morning the wholly unsurprising news emerged that she has spent recent years railing against the Jews and the State of Israel on social media. Specifically she seems to approve of a plan toremove all the Jews of the Middle East from Israel. If there is any irony to a Bradford Muslim telling the Jews of the Middle East to ‘go back to where they came from’ then it is clearly lost on Ms Shah.

Of course this is the same Ms Shah who sits on a Parliamentary Group investigating anti-Semitism. She has already issued the pro-forma statement stressing that in the wake of this unfortunate outing of her views she will be ‘seeking to expand my existing engagement and dialogue with Jewish community organisations, and will be stepping up my efforts to combat all forms of racism, including anti-Semitism’. Yes – that’s it! All that’s needed is for Shah to ‘fight’ racism just that little bit harder. Hitherto she just hadn’t been doing it quite enough. All she needs to do now is promise to crush ‘all extremists’ a little bit more and the sunlit uplands will be reached for all of us.

But she hails from a culture and a religion where anti-Semitism is rife. Why would you expect her not to hold some of the rancid views of that culture as well as some of the nicer bits? In any case, her attitudes have now proved so extreme that she has had to resign as John McDonnell’s PPS. Imagine how extreme you have to be to be too extreme for John McDonnell.

I say all this is a success for integration Britain, because every week brings up cases like this and nobody seems remotely willing to reflect on them. While people in senior jobs in public life turn out to be open and essentially unapologetic racists, we pretend that all that’s needed for our country’s future to be secure is to tweak the racism awareness lessons a bit more or make one more big push to ‘smash’ the fascists.

The mistake is far more basic. For decades, successive governments in Britain pretended that if you brought millions of people from other cultures into this country and gave them enough time plus all the provisions of the British state then before long they would be down the pub and failing to attend church like everyone else. For some time now it should have been clear that a great many people who come into our country have no such desire. They – and very often their children – have another set of ideas, a different attitude towards the purpose of life and an alternative view of what constitutes respected ‘authority’.