by Hana Levi Julian
The Obama administration has announced the United States will join the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations, another openly anti-Israel organization.
The group was created in 2006 to find ways to bridge the growing divide between Muslim and Western societies – a goal wholeheartedly embraced by President Barack Obama, who has redirected American foreign policy in pursuit of the same goal.
The White House announcement stated that the move is intended to realize Obama's “vision of active U.S. engagement with other nations and international organizations,” a goal sometimes pursued, noted National Review Online columnist Brett D. Schaefer last Thursday, “even when there is little or no chance that doing so will advance U.S. interests.”
The U.S. decision is also meant to support the Alliance goal of “improved understanding and cooperative relations among nations and peoples,” the statement said.
However, the Alliance has been anything but cooperative when it comes to improving understanding of issues relating to the security of Israel's and United States' civilians.
The group claimed in its first report in 2006 that global tensions were driven primarily by the conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. The same report referred to “a perception among Muslim societies of unjust aggression stemming from the West” in a discussion relating to the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States by the international Al Qaeda terrorist group.
US Feared it Would be Anti-Israel – in 2006
At the time, the U.S. boycotted the group, expressing concerns that it would become a forum for bashing both Israel and the United States, in a manner similar to that of the U.N. Human Rights Council.
However, Obama administration officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said those concerns have since been addressed.
Since Obama took office a year ago, he has worked hard to reach out to the Islamic community of nations in a series of gestures that make it clear he is bending over backwards to strengthen ties with the Muslim world.
Since his speech from Cairo last June, Obama has reached out to Iran and Syria, restoring full diplomatic relations with Damascus and returning an ambassador to the Syrian capital. The U.S. has also joined the anti-Israel U.N. Human Rights Commission. Both these moves are reversals of prior Bush administration decisions.
I thought this was a very interesting article as related to Israel and Prophecy. I have stated for many years that I believed that Israel would discover oil and gas for sustaining their energy needs. Well, they have already discovered gas and are on the verge of discovering oil in the near future..
A top US energy industry expert believes Israel is going to soon experience an “oil and gas rush” by major Western energy development companies.
Speaking to the Israeli financial newspaper Globes, Fred Zeidman said the recent discovery of a massive natural gas field off Israel’s Mediterranean coast had drawn the attention of every major Western energy company.
Israeli companies Delek and Isramco have already tapped the natural gas field, together with British energy giant Noble Energy. Zeidman noted that quite often, “as soon as Noble goes to a place, many other companies follow in its wake.”
That could mean an enormous economic boom for Israel and its transformation overnight into a major international energy exporter.
The natural gas field in the Levant Basin (the western Mediterranean) is estimated to hold 122 trillion cubic feet of recoverable natural gas, making it the largest natural gas resource ever found. The area is also believed to contain at least 1.7 billion barrels of recoverable oil.
]]>by Yehudah Lev Kay Does PA Really Want a State?
An editorial in the latest issue of the prestigious Atlantic Monthly posits that the Palestinian Authority may never have a state because it does not want one. Writer Robert Kaplan claims that statelessness has more appeal to the PA than statehood.
Kaplan’s ideas are based on a recent study by John Hopkins professor Jakub Grygiel in which he claims that in the modern era, technologies have given minority groups more power to communicate and commit violent acts without the need for a formal state. He claims that the lack of a state, rather than being a detriment, enables the group to maintain its extremist views while avoiding the complicated task of governing.
Grygiel cites as a case in point the Hizbullah terrorist group. “Though probably capable of taking over the weak central government of Lebanon, Hizbullah has preferred to maintain its sub-state role, thereby limiting its responsibility and hence its vulnerability to attacks,” he writes. “Having a state would most likely weaken the ability of Hizbullah to attack Israel, whose military forces could find easy targets.”
“Statelessness provides impunity from the retaliatory actions of a powerful state,” Grygiel points out, in one of the main thrusts of his study.
Hamas, once it gained independence from Israel, faced exactly the problem Hizbullah chooses to avoid, according to Kaplan. “It was the very quasi-statehood achieved by Hamas in…Gaza…that made it easier for Israel to bomb it,” he explains.
The implications for the Palestinian Authority are just as clear. “Statehood would mean openly compromising with Israel,” he writes. “Better the glory of victimhood … As a stateless people, Palestinians can lob rockets into Israel, but not be wholly blamed in the eyes of the international community. Statehood would, perforce, put an end to such license.”
As proof that the Palestinian Authority prefers to remain stateless, Kaplan points out that although former Prime Minister Ehud Barak made vast concessions to late PA Chairman Yasir Arafat at Camp David in 2000, the PA leader chose not to compromise. As Kaplan explains, Arafat “may have seen that as a more morally and emotionally satisfying conclusion to a life of statelessness than that of making the unenchanting concessions association with achieving statehood.”
Can you see that the important world news is centered upon Israel and the Middle East? There will never be a true peace between the Arab states and Israel because the problem dates back thousands of years and lies in the realm of the unseen…the spiritual realm. The world will bring about the new world order and usher in a false peace agreement with Israel and the Arabs…But as with everything else in human politics it is a mere mirage…a lie. I remain a staunch anti new world order man.
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