THROWING ISRAEL TO THE JACKALS

Here are the 14 nations of the UN Security Council that agreed to censure Israel for building settlements in the West Bank.  I have provided a thumbnail sketch of the first four to provide context for the “moral outrage” they proclaim.

Egypt, sponsor of the motion  – Was Egypt bowing to pressure from the Saudi financiers of Egypt’s shaky economy?  With far fewer civil liberties and political rights than Israel, was el-Sisi thinking that terror attacks on Egypt would stop if only he paid lip service to the Palestinians?  Much as I’d like to, I won’t be returning to Egypt these days.  I’m guessing they just lost billions in revenue from other travelers, as well.

Malaysia –Has among the strictest limitations on freedom of speech, press, assembly, and association.  Is well known for arresting persons without warrants and detaining them indefinitely without trial.  And this paragon of virtue lectures Israel?

Angola – The constitution limits the president to two 5-year terms.  President de Santos has now been there for 36 years.  His daughter, somehow, is the richest woman in Africa.  Persecution of journalists, political activists, and many religious groups is rampant.  Who better to censure Israel than such an upstanding leader?

Ukraine – Still a kleptocracy, fighting for its life, Ukraine has a low rating for protecting  civil liberties.  What were they thinking?  Perhaps that this would form a precedent to get Russia to return Crimea?  Ukraine needs every friend it can find.  Better a dependable pariah like Israel than fair-weather acquaintances that will dance to Moscow’s or Riyadh’s tune.

Other current temporary members: New Zealand, Spain, Uruguay, Japan, and Senegal – normally more responsible members of the world community, and

Permanent members: Russia, China, France, and the U.K. – and of course the US, which fomented the vote by promising to abstain.

There are two groups represented here: the Club of Tyrants and Dictators exemplified by one-man rule on the one hand, and on the other, those who believe Israel, alone among nations, should be forced to give up territory because there are other people in that territory who object to its presence.

Using this standard, Spain should relinquish control of Catalonia, the UK should grant independence to Scotland, France should cede a homeland to the Basques, China should relinquish its stranglehold on Tibet, and Russia – most recently – must return Crimea to Ukraine.  Can anyone spell “hypocrisy?”

A bit of history: the land in question was historically called the Land of Israel, which encompassed the kingdoms of Israel and Judah.  After about the 3^rd century, many Christians also occupied this terrain, followed a few hundred years later by Muslims. 

It wasn’t until after WWI, when Britain was charged with administering this part of the defeated Ottoman Empire’s territory, that the term Palestine was used with quasi-defined borders.  At this time, the international press typically referred to the Jews – not the Arabs -- living in this area as “Palestinians,” recognizing they were the first to live there.

The British found these Palestinians and Zionists (those who believed in leaving parts of the world where Jews were most often persecuted or marginalized and resettling in the “Land of Israel”) most annoying.  Exhausted by other issues in India, in 1947 they abdicated in favor of letting the United Nations deal with the Palestine / Israel issue. 

The U.N. proposed that Palestine should be partitioned into a Jewish state, an Arab state and a U.N.-controlled enclave around Jerusalem.  This plan was adopted on November 29, 1947.  The nation that would become Israel agreed to this 2-state solution.

Of the Arab neighbors, only King Abdullah I of Jordan (then called Transjordan) was in favor of the proposal.  He preferred an amiable Jewish state on his western border to a Palestinian Arab state run by former Nazi collaborator Amin al-Husseini.

 

No other Arab state was willing to agree to the 2-state solution.  They wanted it all.  On May 14, 1948, when Israel declared its nationhood, it was immediately attacked by Egypt, Syria, Iraq and, to avoid its Arab neighbors’ enmity, Transjordan.  These were soon joined by the Syrian-sponsored Arab Liberation Army and volunteers from Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Lebanon.  

After a brutal war in which the Israelis were badly outnumbered, Egypt, defeated in battle, agreed to an armistice and the other aggressor forces evaporated.  Thus were the Israeli borders fixed until 1967 – including Jordanian annexation of the West Bank.

After the 1967 war, Israel closed some of the gaps in its defenses, taking the Golan Heights, the West Bank and the Sinai.  Jerusalem is directly on the border of the West Bank and Tel Aviv, Israel’s commercial center, is just 11 miles away.  When the Arab nations speak of driving Israel into the sea, this is where they would have liked to begin – and likely would if Israel were to cede the entire West Bank.  Such a geographic surrender would be tantamount to, say, allowing Russian missiles in Cuba.

Offering an olive branch, Israel returned the Sinai to Egypt, which cost them dearly in the 1973 war.  Israel later also unilaterally withdrew all settlements from Gaza, which is a picture of what would likely occur if it were to withdraw completely from the West Bank: Hamas immediately began sending rockets and terrorists into Israel, vowing to completely obliterate Israel.  

Is there anyone so naive to believe that nations and terrorists who have sworn to kill every Israeli will change just because Israel gives even greater competitive military advantage to them?

In 2000, there was yet another Camp David accord, granting the Arab Palestinians another olive branch: almost all of Gaza and the West Bank.  Which the Palestinian leadership rejected.

The issue of Jewish settlements is not the real obstacle to peace.  If it were, then why is Gaza, with no Jewish settlements, a hotbed of hatred and terrorism?  Even the Egyptians carefully monitor their border with Gaza.  The simple truth is that, for 69 years, Israel’s Arab neighbors, with the exception of Jordan, have refused to accept Israel’s right to exist and done everything they could to destroy it.  

If the U.N. really cared about the peace process, the starting point of any discussion would be that there is no discussion until these neighboring states recant their oath to destroy Israel.

Parenthetically -- if Israel is to be censured by the U.N. for the crime of keeping some of the lands it acquired via warfare, we need to fortify a hell of a lot of glass houses.  In addition to the already mentioned hypocrisies of the 14 U.N. members voting to censure, we in the US might be wary of setting such a precedent as forcing Israel to give up territory gained via warfare, offensive or defensive.

Such a precedent might create quite a stir in the nearly 500 tribal nations that were displaced in our westward march.  Should the US give those lands back?  Of course not.  The dissolution of the USA would do far more harm than good.

Well then, should there be a U.N. resolution that the U.S. cede nearly all of present-day California, Utah, Nevada, Arizona and New Mexico back to Mexico (which took the land from Spain, which took it from the Aztecs and other indigenous people?)  It would be ridiculous and serve no purpose to do so.  Every nation has acquired or lost territory in some distant past time.

Yet Israel alone, which has the oldest claim on these lands, is singled out as a cause célèbre by dictators in the the Middle East and elsewhere.  Why?  Most likely to deflect popular anger from being directed where it should be – at their own regimes. 

These autocrats and oligarchs have had ample opportunity, beginning 69 years ago, to create a homeland for displaced persons who share their ethnicity and their religion.   Only Jordan has invited them as citizens.

Israel is smaller than Djibouti, smaller than Macedonia, smaller than the Solomon Islands.  The Sinai Peninsula, which Israel returned to Egypt as part of the Camp David accords, is bigger all by itself than Israel!  Yemen is 25 times as big; Egypt is 50 times as big; Saudi Arabia more than 100 times the size of Israel.  Israel is 1/700^th of the land mass of the Arab League nations.  Surely if they were truly concerned about the plight of the Gaza and West Bank Arabs, they could find it in their hearts and their terrain to follow Jordan’s lead and recognize Israel’s right to exist, yes?

Apparently not.  It’s much easier to continue buying gold-plated Mercedes limos, living a life remote from that of their citizens, and pointing the finger at Israel or the USA for causing all their woes.  The difference this time?  The current administration has chosen to aid and abet such behavior, distancing our nation from the only true democracy in the Middle East as we spout rhetoric about democracy versus autocracies.  

My own, my country’s shame.   

(c) 2016 JL Shaefer

THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE & THE CONSTITUTION

 In 1787, at the conclusion of the Constitutional Convention, a large crowd of anxious citizens waited outside.  Some delegates to the convention, like Alexander Hamilton, had advocated a strong central government along the lines of the British monarchy with its House of Lords and House of Commons.  So there was a concern that the rights of the States might be trampled by exchanging one British-style government for another.

One woman shouted out to Benjamin Franklin as he exited, “Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?”

Franklin replied: “A republic, if you can keep it.” 

A “republic” was seen by the Founding Fathers as the highest form of government in which the rights of the common man are defended and each citizen, each region, is well-represented by fellow citizens whom they elected to public office.  

The fact that the word “democracy” doesn’t appear in the Constitution does not disparage our democratic principles. 

In fact, the first two political parties in this country called themselves the Federalists, who wanted more decision-making power in the hands of the national government, and the Republicans, many of whose members referred to themselves as Democratic-Republicans.

The distinction the Founders made was best summed up by James Madison, writing in The Federalist Papers: “In a democracy, the people meet and exercise the government in person; in a republic, they assemble and administer it by their representatives and agents.”

He went on to say, “It is essential to such a government that it be derived from the great body of the society.”

A direct democracy might – might – work in a town hall meeting of 100 or 200 people from the same small town.  Although, if you have ever seen the carnage and carryings-on in such meetings, where everyone insists on getting time to speak their mind, you might also look to find some better way to govern even so small an enterprise.  Multiply that group size by a thousand or a million and you can see why the Founders decided to use the term “republic” – a representative democratic republic -- for our form of government.

The result is that we elect Senators, Representatives and Presidents to represent the interests of our state’s workers, resources, needs and contributions on our behalf.

Which brings us to the Electoral College.

The Electoral College is also charged with representing their individual states with one slight change – since they are there to represent the results of their state’s votes for President, the electors are selected by the winning party of that state.  That is, whichever party fielded the candidate who won the popular vote in their state selects the electors who are charged with voting in accord with the will of the people in their state.  When we vote for the President and Vice-President, we the people are effectively voting for the electors, as well.

(There are two exceptions to this: Nebraska and Maine split their votes by Congressional district.)

Every time there is a disparity between the results of the state-by-state popular elections and the counting or recounting of the popular vote nationally, there are those who advocate for majority rule.  But that is exactly what the Founding Fathers wanted to avoid!

Since California is the most populous state, it already carries the most Electoral College Votes.  Were we to look only at total national voting, states with large urban populations would skew the results and less-populous regions find themselves at the mercy of majority dictate.

That’s not the way the laws of our nation were conceived and written. 

Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution does not specifically prevent an Elector from voting his or her conscience.  It simply states “Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct…” their electors.  All within the bounds of the law.

The framers of the Constitution did not discuss what might happen if there were a “faithless elector” who takes it upon himself to ignore the will of the people in the state he represents. Such a thing would make a mockery of the whole idea of representative democracy. 

States can and have stripped electors who fail to honor that pledge of loyalty.  They have fined them and I believe at least once jailed them.  The people of the each state have spoken.  The elector is there to honor the will of the people they represent.

In 1952, the Supreme Court even interpreted the intent of the Constitution as it regards faithless electors, with the decision that electors only act “by authority of the state” they represent.  The Court further stated that such electors constituted a “fraudulent invasion.”  Electors are agents of the will of the people, not independent actors.

None of this will likely dissuade grumbling from whichever party or parties lose to the express will of the greatest number of states if their candidate received a single popular vote more than the actual winning candidate. 

Representative democracy – republicanism – ensures that no simple majority gets to dictate “my way or the highway.”  Farming was once the primary occupation in America; that didn’t mean farmers could place a demagogue in power concerned only with farmers’ welfare.  

Wyoming may have fewer people than California, but does that mean its interests should be ignored at the national level?  Of course not.  Especially since we are all intertwined.  Farmers, miners, software engineers, bureaucrats; we all derive something from somewhere else in this great country.

So – could it happen that an elector ignores his oath and votes contrary to the way his state’s citizens voted?  It could.  Many of the electors are politicians or political appointees and many career politicians fail to see the complexity of the American voter. 

They live insular lives and either really are members of an elite that seldom gets out into the world the rest of us inhabit -- or are simply legends in their own mind.  They have become detached and inattentive to the voters who elected them.  They think a pipefitter or carpenter can’t have an intelligent discussion on foreign policy.  In this they are not only wrong, but pathetically prejudiced and uninformed.

Finally -- for those tweeting #NotMyPresident, there is nothing we can say that will sway their unwillingness to accept the results of the current election.  There are two consolations I might offer them:

1.) If you fervently believe the Constitution needs to be changed, change it.  There are 27 amendments to the Constitution.  If you want to make this a majority rules nation rather than a democratic republic you have only to get ¾ of the states to agree.

2.) Whoever wins a presidential election, it’s only from Jan 20th of their first year of service until the 10^th month of their 3^rd year (when they become a lame duck) until you have a chance to replace them.  That’s called democracy within a republic.  Start now instead of whining about yesterday and you may change the outcome.  Even if a President turns out to be as rotten as James Buchanan, take hope – he may be replaced by an Abraham Lincoln, as Buchanan was.  That’s the glory and the resiliency of our republican system.

Tomorrow, the Electoral College will meet and they will once again, as they have for 216 years, affirm the will of all the people, rural and urban, young and old, black, white or polka-dot, recent immigrants with citizenship and Mayflower descendants – Americans one and all. 

United we stand.

(c) 2016 JL Shaefer

REMEMBERING: 2 DAYS THAT WILL -- OR SHOULD -- LIVE IN INFAMY FOREVER...

DECEMBER 7, 1941. SEPTEMBER 11, 2001.

Today marks the 75th anniversary of Pearl Harbor. 

Interestingly enough, it might never have happened.  Japan’s first plan was to subdue China and use its natural resources and labor to continue the war.  Once they had done this, their plan was to attack the Soviet Union from the east as Hitler’s Germany advanced from the west.  Since Japan had easily humiliated Russia in the 1905 Russo-Japanese war and were now even stronger, Russia seemed an easy target, one also rich in resources.

But China was proving a far more difficult enemy to subdue and Japan still needed petroleum, rubber and other resources to press their war.  Admiral Yamamoto, who had been a student at Harvard from 1919-1921 and traveled extensively around the United States, was ordered in 1940 to devise an attack on the United States, in order to ensure Japan unencumbered access to the resource-rich South Pacific, Australia and Southeast Asia.

Yamamoto understood that the US would enter the war on the side of our British allies if Japan were to take the British Empire resources it desperately needed.  So he devised a plan to take the fight out of the big dog and, hopefully, the big dog out of the fight, as convincingly as possible.

So on this date, December 7^th, 1941, the enemy that had been planning their surprise attack for more than a year killed some 2,300 men who stood on the decks and in the bellies of 80 ships of the line -- virtually our entire Pacific Fleet.

The day after, Admiral Yamamoto was alleged to have said, "I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and filled him with a terrible resolve." (Actually, no record exists that he ever uttered these words. They are possibly the after-the-fact words of a Hollywood screenwriter since the first time anyone heard them was in 1970, when the actor portraying Yamamoto says them in the movie Tora! Tora! Tora!)

But what is documented is what he said to his Prime Minister, Prince Kanoe: "I can run wild for six months … after that, I have no expectation of success."

Which was chillingly prescient given that six months TO THE DAY later, the Battle of Midway ended with the sinking of four Japanese carriers (leaving them with just two.)  At Midway, 200 of the most experienced Japanese combat pilots met their deaths. (This was more deaths in a single day than they had trained in the entire year prior to Pearl Harbor.)  Their defeat meant the end of Japan's ability to project power across the Pacific all the way to Seattle, San Francisco, or Los Angeles. 

After Pearl Harbor, the citizens of the United States pulled together as never before. Recruiting stations were swamped with young patriots determined to defend our nation. Women rushed to fill jobs vacated by their men at war and Rosie the Riveters began to build the ships and tanks and airplanes we needed to defeat fascism in Europe and in the Pacific.

We honor these men and women with the sobriquet of “The Greatest Generation” and give our generous thanks for their many sacrifices in facing an existential threat to our being, especially on this day.

60 years after the attack on Pearl Harbor, on September 11, 2001, an equally determined and deluded enemy murdered nearly 3000 civilian men, women and children. Did Americans rush to the recruiting stations? Some did.  Most did not.  Yet this was also an attack on Americans, this time in the American homeland, by a vicious enemy intent upon destroying our way of life.  Murdering 3000 was just a prelude for them. 

Did the country pull together to defeat this equally powerful and hateful foe?  Some agreed that a military response was appropriate, some wanted to find and try these murderers in civilian court as if this was merely a typical crime, albeit on a larger scale.  Most placed We Support Our Troops yellow ribbons on their cars, but expected young Americans already serving in the military to deal with this issue. 

15 years later, more than three times as long as our nation’s involvement in World War II, we are still “dealing with it.”  We have tracked down and retaliated against thousands of those who financed, planned, and cheered the cowardly, vicious attack by a fanatical bunch of Islamist thugs. 

But along the way we created Rules of Engagement which have limited our efforts to bring this war closer to a conclusion.  Our leadership called the most vicious of these thugs “the junior varsity team,” implying there was no need to spend time or treasure on them.  We created Red Lines that no one dare cross – until they stepped across them with impunity.

In World War II, we knew who our allies were and we knew who the enemy was and we treated our friends with respect and accommodation, our enemies with peace through superior firepower and the moral integrity that comes from fighting for a cause greater than ourselves. 

Today, however, our “diplomacy” is derided by our remaining allies as ludicrous appeasement and as proof that we are a paper tiger by the club of autocrats that would destroy us in a moment if only they could.

Even though crippled  by equivocating yo-yo leadership and by the inevitable weariness that accompanies goals left unfinished, our young Americans in the military have responded with honor, with strength, with compassion, and, where needed, with a vengeance. 

But many Americans still do not understand or are unwilling to accept that this enemy is every bit as fascist, fanatical and committed to our destruction as were the Japanese and their allies in World War II.  They stand at our doorstep today and would slit our collective throats if we let our guard down for even a moment.

This is an important day of remembrance.  I'd like to say thank you to the boys and girls of 1941, 1942, 1943, 1944, and 1945.  I’d also like to say thank you to the boys and girls of 2001-2016.  With better leadership and clearer direction and focus, they will make us all proud.  Pearl Harbor was attacked 75 years ago today.  

No one will care 75 years from now who was on the cover of People Magazine, the rap star of the moment, or someone who is today famous for being famous.  But they will care, and remember, whether Americans in 2016 were able to muster the moral courage that Americans did in 1941. I hope and pray we do not disappoint these future generations.

(c) JL Shaefer, 2016