Speaking Reality to Power

"[As a permanent member of the UN Security Council Russia's veto power on resolutions brought to the Security Council effectively gives it a] right to kill."

"[Russia's indemnity on the Security Council has allowed it to commit the] most terrible war crimes we have seen since the Second World War; [enabling it to engage in] sowing death [as it behaves like a] colonizer from ancient times."

"It's clear that the world's key institution, that is supposed to force any aggressor into accepting peace, simply cannot effectively operate."

"[The actions of Russian troops were] no different from other terrorists [such as Islamic State.] Here it is done by a member of the United Nations Security Council. [Unless it is transformed], the UN can simply be closed."

"Ladies and gentlemen, are  you ready to close the UN? Do you think the time of international law is gone?"

"If your answer is no, you need to act immediately. The system must be reformed immediately so the veto is not the right to kill."

"We need peace. Ukraine needs peace. Europe needs peace. And the world needs peace." 

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy

 

In speaking remotely to the United Nations Security council, Ukraine's embattled president called for Kremlin leaders to face Nuremberg-type trials. First off, the way should be made clear for Russia to be taken off the Security Council; failing that the UN should take steps to admit its total lack of accountability to its mission to serve the international community by diplomatically guiding nations away from conflict, and in the current context, irenic Russia's display of inhumanity by invading and attempting to crush another nation resonates as a UN failure to act up to its mandate.

 

The Security Council session was called to consider Ukrainian allegations of mass murder of civilians in the town of Bucha by Russian soldiers.

 

President Zelenskyy's passion of cold anger with Russia and disgust with its continued position of responsibility to a core value of settling differences without resort to war, indicating the failure of  the UN to enforce its own dedication to world peace, in addressing the UN's Security Council was fuelled by the gruesome discovery of the Russian military having committed war crimes in the senseless mass murder of innocent civilians in areas of their occupation in Ukraine.

Where in the town of Bucha, a suburb of the Ukraine capital of Kyiv, hundreds of bodies were discovered in a mass grave. Where bodies of the dead were lying in the street. Victims of the Russian military who fired on people desperate to escape the town and the butchering brutality of Russian military control. Where civilian cars carrying families fleeing the violence were hit by artillery and sharpshooters; people on bicycles, on foot. People with their arms tied behind their backs, shot point-blank.

This is a country with a permanent seat on the Security Council alongside Britain, France, The United States and China. Where a divided Security Council sees the first three voting together and China and Russia often voting in opposition where their interests are involved. And that proved to be so when Russia blocked a resolution calling for an immediate end to its invasion of Ukraine.

A burnt and destroyed street in Bucha, Ukraine (Matthew Hatcher / SOPA / LightRocket / Getty)

 

In besieged Mariupol in Ukraine's east, people still attempt to flee on foot or by private car, risking being shot or hit by artillery fire. Moscow has consistently denied requests for temporary cease-fires and safe corridors for people to be able to evacuate the ruins of the city where bombs continue dropping and artillery fire never stops. Efforts to organize mass evacuations by bus to safer areas of Ukraine consistently fail.

Overtures by the International Committee of the Red Cross invariably have failed in negotiations with the Russian military to allow safe passage out of Mariupol of terrified citizens. Buses attempting to arrive in Mariupol to evacuate people are met by Russian blockades. The situation explained by Russia's defence ministry as Ukraine's fault since its forces had "cynically disrupted" evacuation efforts. Just as the Kremlin describes the massacres in Bucha as a ploy by the Ukrainian military to smear Russia's reputation.

Mariupol, Ukraine. Sergei Bobylev / TASS

MOSSAD And The Iranian Nuclear Threat

"The scientists’ motivations were all different."

"Mossad found out what they deeply wanted in their lives and offered it to them."

"There was an inner circle of scientists who knew more about the operation, and an outer circle who helped out but had less information."

"All of them are very safe today."

Unnamed source

 

"Unlike in the previous rounds of talks, Britain is currently holding the strongest line. This is very much appreciated by Israel, as there is a sense that the Americans are so desperate to return to the deal that they would be too soft." 

"However, it is quite clear that Britain and the rest of the international community still sees negotiation as the most effective track to rein in Iranian ambitions."

"Israel is not convinced that this will be enough, and also doubt that more problematic partners, like Russia and China, will be able to hold same line."

"Therefore, the credibility of the threat from Israel needs to be enhanced, reiterated and reimposed, as part of a dual effort to put real pressure on Iranians."

"In terms of geopolitics, that is the message that these operations are sending to the international community."

Richard Pater, Executive Director, Britain Israel Communications and Research Centre (Bicom)

Blown up: Iran's Natanz nuclear plant, seen in 2007  (Photo by Majid Saeedi/Getty Images)

The Israeli secret service knows that you can have all the technological advantages in the world to enable the process of acquiring knowledge of the machinations of other countries relating to their military plans, to unlock the  secret blueprints they keep to themselves irrespective of the facade presented to the outside world, but there are no assets for recovery of inside realities quite like the effectiveness and efficiency of a core of insider recruits whose data delivery leaves no room for guesswork.

 

Humint -- human intelligence -- is the ultimate in revealing the plans of a country derived from its own inner circles of those in the know.

Insider assistance in carrying through plans of sabotage to set back the agenda of government agencies is another invaluable tool, made all that more approachable and successful with the willing aid of inside intelligence and cooperation. When the actions of insiders in working against the interests of the state are revealed, they pay a stiff penalty; their commitment to undermining the resources of their own country owes much to their dissatisfaction with the direction that country is heading in. Conscience and sympathy are great aids in deception.

It is a secret to no one that the Islamic Republic of Iran has been working toward attaining nuclear weapons. It is just that aspiration, linked to Tehran's Ayatollahs' support of Islamist terrorism fomenting disorder and violent atrocities on behalf of the Republic's determination to surmount resistance to its plans of Shi'ite conquest and Persian control in a Sunni-majority region of Arab states that drew the attention of the West to its malign purpose. The UN's IAEA's efforts at monitoring the Revolutionary Iranian Guard Corps' uranium enrichment program stems from the threat they pose to the region and the wider world.

 

But the one regional state that is indelibly in the crosshairs of the Republic's lethal weaponry of mass destruction is undeniably Israel. The message delivered time and again, publicly and with venomous intent is the promise to obliterate Israel's presence from the Middle East. When fundamentalist extremists are convinced that they have been selected by an all-powerful heavenly entity to furnish the means by which a perceived enemy can be extinguished, rational arguments based on human rights have no impact.

 

The Jewish state knows full well from historical events that it can rely on no other forces than its own for protection from extermination. Its secret services know how to convince others, vulnerable to uncertainty over the morals involved in human rights violations that they have an obligation and a part to play in overcoming the unconscionable plans of dictators. And because Iran is just such a theistic dictatorship, its people are restive and among them those in elite situations of command who are prepared to intervene.

 

The Mossad spy agency is renowned for its cultivated professionalism in intelligence gathering. And it relies upon the secretive collaboration of the dissatisfied to find purpose in aiding and abetting the downfall of their own governments who have failed abysmally the most basic tests of human decency.

A number of Iranian scientists working in the Republic's structures devoted to nuclear development acceded to requests for cooperation. They were, however, duped into believing that it was a collaboration on their part with Iranian dissident groups, not with an arm of a foreign government they would be working with.

 

In the process however, they were tasked with smuggling explosives into the secure and highly protected underground vaults of Iran's nuclear emplacements. In April, a blast destroyed the Natanz plant's independent internal power system meant to energize centrifuges enriching uranium in the protected underground reinforced concrete bunker. That blast represented the second time in a year the base was attacked, by what other countries' security officials identify as an Israeli project. 

It was not, after all, exiled Iranian dissidents with whom these collaborative insiders worked, but with Israel. In some instances the explosives were dropped into the facility by drones while allied components were smuggled through security in catering trucks, reported The Jewish Chronicle, which broke the story. Another July 2020 explosion was the work of explosives hidden in building materials that formed part of the building construction a year earlier.

A motorcycle-size quadcopter drone carried out a bombing raid on the Iran Centrifuge Technology Company in Karaj in June, north of Tehran. When the news was revealed to the public eye, Israel, with its policy of never claiming ownership of such events, made no comment. Attacks on the Natanz plant, according to Iran's acknowledgement, had the effect of setting its nuclear program back months. An ongoing search for the Iranians suspected of involvement in the operation, now fugitives, was foiled, since they are said to have been spirited to safety by Mossad agents.

Tehran, while spuriously claiming it has no interests in obtaining nuclear weapons, has been steadily increasing levels to which it enriches uranium far beyond the limit set by the Nuclear Agreement it signed in 2015, levels that outside nuclear scientists agree has only one application, and that would be a military application. "From a technical standpoint, the enemy's plan was rather beautiful", said head of the Iranian parliamentary energy committee, Fereydoon Abbasi Davani rashly.

A map of north Iran showing the location of Mossad’s first assaults on Natanz and quadcopter attack on Karaj (Photo: GETTY IMAGES, ASINGUARDS, YOUTUBE. Illustration: Sheree Fadil)

 

The Rush to Join a Dysfunctional, Corrupt World Organization

"We will phone member states to ensure they got out to vote, a lot like a usual election. We'll want to make sure that the voters that we've identified as supporting Canada go out and express their vote."

"Haiti had a peacekeeping mission from 2004 to 2020 and it was focused on security and on human rights, but very little focus on development."

"In Sub-Saharan Africa, you have 70 percent of the population that is below 30 years old. Half of that population is without an occupation even before the pandemic. This is a big security issue."

"If that multilateral world doesn't exist, then you're in a situation where only the strongest will prevail. And we know where it leads, because we're only a middle power."

"When you're around that table, you are more influential, if you're more influential, you've more relevant and if you're more relevant, that will represent opportunities for Canada."

Marc-Andre Blanchard, Canada's permanent representative at the United Nations

The United Nations Security Council meets to discuss the situation in Venezuela in the Manhattan borough of New York City, U.S., in January 2019. Canada is vying with Ireland and Norway for two open seats at the council, which will be allocated in a vote on June 17. (Carlo Allegri/Reuters)

Next Wednesday UN ambassadors will begin voting at the General Assembly in groups, to avoid crowding, in respect of the need for social distancing in the time of COVID-19. They will be voting to bring into the two-year temporary revolving Security Council one candidate from the competing countries in this vote; Ireland, Norway or Canada to sit on the 15-member council that complements the permanent Security Council, comprised of the United States, Russia, France, Great Britain and China.

"We know that engaging around the world is important both for Canadians' health and well-being, but also for the good of our economy."

"Even as some of our allies, including the United States, seem to withdraw from the world, Canada is engaging."

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau

"Them [sic] looking at the UN Security Council seat without looking at Canada's foreign policy, and understanding where we are in the world, and what our relationship with our allies and our adversaries alike should be, means that they didn't know what they were going after."

"Justin Trudeau has made some really damaging actions to our relationship and eroded our reputation on the world stage. We don't know what they're willing to trade away to get the seat."

Leona Alleslev, Opposition Conservative Member of Parliament

This would be Justin Trudeau's crowning achievement, his legacy project, his on begging, borrowing or buying votes to bring Canada to a seat on the UN Security Council. This is not a project supported by most Canadians, to whom the very project itself is simply a yawn, acknowledging yet another vanity project by a politician who revels in attention-getting and absurd declarations such as Canada, under his guardianship has 'returned'. What it has returned to is the usual Liberal brand of hoodwinking the electorate, with a special Trudeau touch of cynical sanctimony.

But this project to attain a two-year seat is dear to this man's idea of elevating himself in the esteem of the movers and shakers in the world body, to attain a level of influence and the aura of power that Justin Trudeau feels should be accorded him. He has himself personally taken the time and trouble to speak with as many world leaders in the past weeks as he could possibly tuck into a schedule that includes having his government tackle critical issues such as the handling of the COVID-19 pandemic's effect on Canada, both in medical terms and economic.

There are ongoing protests headed by Black Lives Matter resulting from the murder of George Floyd in the United States, and the allied issues of the desecration of national monuments, history's heroes now revealed by Indigenous and Black groups to be racists. The icons of Canadian history, according to the protest groups, preyed on native populations, were bigots and racists and their statuary must come down, public institutions such as schools, libraries, municipal buildings, street names, must be dismantled, their memories erased.

Canada's ongoing problems with the United States in trade issues, with Saudi Arabia, in arousing the Kingdom's ire over perceived interference in its human rights record, its problems with China whose human rights record is rarely raised, but when an issue such as a request through an American court of justice for the extradition under an agreement between Canada and the U.S. saw China's tech giant Huawei's CFO arrested on a U.S.warrant, spurring China to kidnap two Canadians doing business in China.

None of these issues, apparently, occupy too much time and energy for the prime minister, that he is unable to muster gaps of opportunistic time to engage in cajoling, jollying, and pleading and bribing sometimes unsavoury governments to cast a vote for Canada's bid in the U.S. Both Ireland and Norway, the other two candidates for the vacant seat, have somewhat greater sway in the corridors of the UN. Both give a higher percentage of their GDP to global equity support, and are more involved in UN peacekeeping.

The former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, placed Trudeau's eagerness not to be too morally or ethically particular about where his votes come from in context, when Nikki Haley in outrage over an executive order from Justin Trudeau to Canada's UN representative to have it on record that Canada supported an anti-Israel motion at the United Nations last year, that he prepared himself to dance with the devil to achieve his end.

Israel, after all, swings one vote, whereas the Organization of Islamic Cooperation can be counted on for at the very least the votes of 53 countries, not to discount the influence the OIC has with the Non-Aligned group of countries within the UN which curries favour with the Arab League and the OIC. But no cost to Canada's moral dignity is too dear to pay for Junior Trudeau's vanity project to sit with the Big Boys of Global authority. For he believes that the world needs more Trudeau, which he deliberately conflates with Canada.

Ms. Alleslev points out the embarrassment on the world stage that Canada suffered with Trudeau's visits to India, or how petty and childish his behaviour was seen during the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade talks as he stalled negotiations and insisted on his version of worker equality, female entitlements and LGBTQ-2 and union issues be considered. According to Canada's Blanchard, Canada's focus is on economic security issues, to rectify the UN's focus on short-term security needs, ignoring long-term economic needs that play into violence and chaos.

Haiti, he points out, still sees ten percent of its population malnourished, with 40 percent dependent on humanitarian assistance. Canada, on the other hand, the sterling representation of a wealthy nation where equality of opportunity is paramount, guaranteeing everyone the chance to live a full and happy and healthy life, has hundreds of food banks to give aid and assistance to the homeless, to the unemployed, to welfare recipients and people living under the poverty line.

This is the first prime minister who has managed to suspend democracy in Canada. He has effectively dismissed the House of Commons. Parliament no longer sits for the purpose for which it was designed, allowing this government and this prime minister to simply proceed with initiatives they feel will benefit them, over the needs of Canadians. He has stilled his critics from the House of Commons by disallowing them the opportunity to question his government's decision-making while he ransacks the nation's economy.

This is tyranny, not democracy. And he would, in fact, fit right in with many of the other members of the Security Council, both temporary and permanent. 

Senegal's President Macky Sall, left, walks alongside Prime Minister Justin Trudeau after arriving at the presidential palace in Dakar, Senegal, Wednesday, Feb. 12, 2020. Trudeau received Senegal's support for a seat on the UN Security Council. (Cheikh A.T/The Associated Press)

The Utility and Futility of North Korean Sanctions

"[China and Russia understand their combined effort] works better than individual action."
“Both oppose North Korea to become a full-fledged nuclear state, and both think parallel action from the U.S. is needed to affect any change in the situation.”
Wang Xinsheng, history professor, Peking University

"The stiffer sanctions won’t change anything in the near-term."
"The new embargoes are incrementally tougher, but diplomacy meant they had to be compromised to an extent that they are very unlikely to change minds in Pyongyang."
Stuart Culverhouse, head, macro and fixed income research, investment bank Exotix Capital.

"If South Korea, Japan, or both could have the U.S. deploy tactical nuclear weapons, that’ll put pressure on Kim to come to dialogue."
"When competition to have better weapons escalates, it’s always the poorer one who gives up."
Lee Ho-ryung, chief, North Korean studies, Korea Institute for Defense Analyses

"[The U.S. should look to engage diplomatically to find a level of security that North Korea and its neighbors will be happy with]."
"We did it against powers that have thousands of nuclear weapons. We certainly should be able to do this against a power that has less than two dozen."
George Lopez, (former member) UN Security Council panel of experts for sanctions on North Korea

"The Korean Peninsula nuclear issue is related to regional peace and stability."
"Breaking the deadlock requires all relevant parties to show their sincerity."
Lu Kang, spokesman, Chinese foreign ministry 

Kim Jong Un    Photographer: KCNA/ AFP via Getty Images

In early September China undertook a ban of imports of coal from North Korea, along with iron and lead ore and seafood. That undertaking must have come as a bit of a shock to North Korea which has had good reason to believe that its sponsor China, would never accede to American demands that China act in concert with other nations to bring the North's nuclear and missile programs to closure. If so, that creeping realization of insecurity appears to have done nothing whatever to curb Kim Jong Un's ambitions.

More recently, China has placed North Korean businesses on notice that they can no longer count on doing business in China. A move meant to cut foreign revenue for the North, in recognition of United Nations' sanctions over missile and nuclear programs that have shaken the world in the ongoing bold actions of flaunting their growing technical improvements before an incredulous international audience.

As North Korea's major trading partner, Beijing has been prevailed upon to act in concert with its UN Security Council partners in opposing the ongoing trajectory of Kim's ambitions. Now that the current Chinese administration has been frustrated at its inability to curb Kim from his determination to succeed which the previous Chinese administration had urged upon the North, encouraging it and providing funding and technical support, it is a Frankenstein prepared to turn upon its maker.

Now that North Korea's business ventures with Chinese partners become a lost opportunity reflecting the September 11 approval of the UN Security Council's latest sanctions, financial support for the North, and its badly-needed  foreign revenue are threatening to place it in an even deeper grip of poverty where the communist dictatorship of the North has diverted support for imported foods and medicines to nuclear brinkmanship.

The Chinese leadership may feel aggravated by Kim's aggressive determination and his petulant penchant for ignoring Beijing's cautionary urgings at this point, but they remain focused on diplomacy, courting the United States in the renewal of diplomatic exchanges with the North, for fear military action would bring an abrupt halt to the Kim regime and with it the breakdown of North Korea. A collapse whose plight will fall directly toward Beijing to rescue; worse the fear of unification and no daylight between China's security and American influence.

Complaining that China bears the brunt of the pain relayed by the cost of enforcing sanctions, hurting Chinese businesses in that vast nation's northeast, no one it appears, dare remind China that in this as in other things, it is merely its chickens coming home to roost in having incited the Kim regime to deplore and threaten the U.S. and its regional interests. Beijing has nursed Pyongyang's paranoia against the U.S. to raging proportions, where it is now difficult to rein in.

 Its past crude investment in grooming North Korea to remain a constant thorn in the American side of security and restraint in the proliferation of nuclear weaponry, threatening the Korean peninsula and American interests, now has it cutting refined petroleum products to the North, but not crude oil representing the major percentage of Chinese energy supplies to  the North; managing cleverly to half-penalties for whole insubordination.

The United Nations' Pernicious Landscape

"Caught in a dreamscape, President Obama and his secretary of state are still gazing. Devoted both to left-wing politics, where a pro-Palestinian disposition has become almost de rigueur, and Washington's peace-process obsession, they have retreated from the Middle Eastern chaos to the safe zone of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. They may well believe they are doing the Jewish state an enormous favor by saving its liberal democracy from, as Obama's former coordinator on the Middle East, Philip Gordon, recently put it in the New York Times, everything from "European boycotts to prosecutions by the International Criminal Court to the loss of support from American Jews uncomfortable with the prospect of perpetual Israeli rule over millions of disenfranchised Arabs." Obama, Kerry, and Gordon, who blessed the American withdrawal from Iraq and watched hell descend on Syria, talk about Israel and the Arab world as if the Arab state system, dominated by secular dictators, wasn't cracking up, leaving hundreds of thousands dead, millions displaced, great urban centers in ruin or decay, and Sunni and Shiite Islamists as the primary force reimagining the Middle East."                                              Reuel Marc Gerecht, Protecting Palestine
 

"We support a peaceful resolution of the disputes between Israel and the Palestinians. We support a two-state solution just as the government of Israel does. [Any deal] can only be negotiated between the parties."

"It is not assisted by one-sided resolutions made at the councils of the United Nations or anywhere else and that is why Australia has not, and does not, support one-sided resolutions."

Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull

"The settlements are far from the only problem in this conflict. In particular, the people of Israel deserve to live free from the threat of terrorism, with which they have had to cope for too long." 

"We do not believe that it is appropriate to attack the composition of the democratically elected government of an ally. We do not … believe that the way to negotiate peace is by focusing on only one issue, in this case the construction of settlements, when clearly the conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians is so deeply complex."

"[We] believes that negotiations will only succeed when they are conducted between the two parties supported by the international community."

British Prime Minister Theresa May spokesperson

British PM Theresa May (AP/Alastair Grant)  

British Leader Slams Kerry’s Unbalanced Approach to Israeli ‘Settlements’

The infamous United Nations Resolution 2334, brokered in secret by the Obama administration, supported unanimously by the UN Security Council's permanent members as well as by its revolving roster of elected temporary members, despite the abstention by the United States, plainly exhibited ill will toward the State of Israel. Using the issue of 'illegal settlements' as the excuse for this display of spiteful ire, Israel suffered the ignominy of being singled out yet again, to be informed by the world body's representatives that though itself a legal entity, its settlement policy flies in the face of international expectations.

Palestinian late-comers to the region have been given the stamp of approval withheld from Israel. And despite Israel's presence in Judea from its ancient heritage predating Islam and the Arab presence in Judea by thousands of years, for good measure, the resolution, while insisting that Israel be prepared to surrender its heritage land won back from Arab usurpers who attacked it repeatedly in efforts to destroy the Jewish State, upholding the Palestinian insistence that it has priority rights in the geography. This, despite repeated dismissals of offers to partition the land in question.

Moreover, the Security Council saw fit to delegitimize history and Judaism, along with the nation's sacred sites to the Palestinians' claims of authentic and prior claims on those very sites. The Islamic Waqf, the religious authority appointed by Jordan, and tolerated by Israel, acts as though the Temple Mount and the Western Wall are interloper sites of artificial presence, and there never existed upon the former, two iterations of the Temple of Solomon, the latter being the sole remnant of that ancient place of Judaic worship in east Jerusalem.

The disingenuous statements by Britain, following the vote which they supported is clearly difficult to take seriously. Wishing to appear principled, Great Britain has lost the capacity to claim that status for themselves on this unfortunate occasion. High-minded after the fact, but inconvenient during the vote. Australia's declaration, on the other hand, can be appreciated coming from a country that took no part in the vote and in all likelihood would have voted against it, unlike its neighbour, New Zealand, which is on the temporary, revolving UN Security Council membership.

The Waqf, and Palestinians, along with the extended Arab/Muslim unity, refuse to acknowledge Judaism's two most sacred historical sites of ancient heritage, claiming no such site ever existed, and that Jewish presence there defiles the third most sacred site in Islam, where the Prophet Mohammad was said to have ascended to Paradise on a flying horse. To avoid violence and rioting, Israeli authorities have agreed with Muslim demands that Jews not be permitted to pray on the Temple Mount. Jews and tourists appearing there are vocally derided and sometimes stoned by Palestinian thugs.

The Temple Mount, representing the Second Temple of Solomon when the first was destroyed in 587 BCE, rebuilt when Herod was King of Judea in 39 BCE, was not incidentally dismissed by UNESCO of having any historical connection to Jewish history. These resolutions by UN bodies bring shame to them, but do not deter them from their course of infamy, led by the influential and malevolently benighted Organization of Islamic Cooperation in the United Nations and their minion nations among the Non-Aligned group.

What, however, explains members of the permanent Security Council, Britain, France and Germany, supporting these pernicious moves to delegitimize Israel in the world body? Plain and simple anti-Semitism? Intellectual, philosophical and historical laziness? It is demanded of Israel that it make peace with Palestinians whose violent attacks against the Jewish State have become viciously congenital, abetted by the Palestinian Authority's continual grooming of that violence in the name of "resisting the occupation".

French CRS anti-riot police officers patrol as the Israeli flag is projected onto the facade of the Hotel de Ville in Paris on the night of January 10, 2017, in tribute to the victims of an attack in Jerusalem on January 8.     (AFP PHOTO / CHRISTOPHE ARCHAMBAULT)

It is an 'occupation' of survival-necessity, a military presence deployed for the simple assurance that the peace can only be kept between Palestinians and Israelis, if the opportunity to attack on the part of the Palestinians is kept to a minimum. No Western-oriented, democratic nation has to suffer the consequences of an unprotected Israel, and nor do any suffer the implacability of a neighbour intent on continuing the violence. Where is the principled ideology of Britain, France and Germany when they sanctimoniously condemn Israel, when such action encourages the Palestinians to ever greater heights of violence against Israel?

Where, in the sanctified chambers of the United Nations they lend themselves to condemnation of Israel, yet have the unmitigated gall, having placed that tiny nation in ever greater danger by a UN-entitled Palestinian Authority urging incitement on a population whose needs they have repeatedly failed, in the process promoting violence against Israel, and when the latest of the lethal attacks take place, they piously flash the Israeli flag on their seats of government?

The Brandenburg Gate was lit up with the Israeli flag following a terrorist attack, Jan. 8, in Israel that killed four. (Odd Anderson/AFP/Getty)