Global News: January 2020 Archives
Israel is the legal occupant of the West Bank, says the Court of Appeal of Versailles, France
"In 1990, Israel bid for the construction of the Jerusalem light rail. The tender was won by French companies Veolia and Alstom. The light rail was completed in 2011, and it cross Jerusalem all the way to the east side and the « occupied territories » (more about this term later).
"Following this, the PLO filed a complaint with the High Court (Tribunal de Grande Instance) of Versailles France, against Alstom and Veolia, because according to PLO, « the construction of the tram is illegal since the UN, the EU, many NGOs and governments consider that « Israel illegally occupy Palestinian territories ».
The quest for the International Legislation to establish the rights of each party.
"In order to rule whether the light rail construction was legal or not, the court had to seek the texts of international law, to examine international treaties, in order to establish the respective rights of the Palestinians and the Israelis.
"And to my knowledge, this is the first time that a non-Israeli court has been led to rule on the status of the West Bank.
"It is the first time since the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 that an independent, non-Israeli court has been called upon to examine the legal status of West bank territories under international law, beyond the political claims of the parties.
"Keep in mind though, that the Court's findings have no effect in international law. What they do, and it's of the utmost importance, is to clarify the legal reality.
"The Versailles Court of Appeal conclusions are as resounding as the silence in which they were received in the media: Israel has real rights in the territories, its decision to build a light rail in the West Bank or anything else in the area is legal, and the judges have rejected all the arguments presented by the Palestinians."
FLEISHER: The Myth Of Arab Buy-In | The Daily Wire
"Kedar has crafted an alternative vision to the 'two-state solution' that is called the 'emirates plan.' He presented it to a well-known sheikh in Judea and Samaria (i.e., the 'West Bank'). The sheikh listened attentively to Kedar and in the end, announced: 'I like it. It is good for us. Now you will have to force it upon me.' ...
"Israel is a small Jewish enclave within the massive, and predominantly Arab, Middle East. It is therefore important to understand the regional mindset. While in the West, seeking consent and acquiescence is a sign of respect, equality, and moral uprightness, in the Middle East that same attitude may be insensitive. Trying to elicit public Arab buy-in can inadvertently put Arabs in the uncomfortable position of having to openly repudiate their religion and their nationalism -- even if they like the plan."
How the Church lost its flock over Brexit - UnHerd
Anglican pastor Giles Fraser writes about "a gathering of 60 or so church leaders of various denominations... at Lambeth Palace to discuss the way forward for the churches after Brexit."
"The most interesting thing that I took away from the day, listening especially to German Christians, was how the EU became, for them, a sort of project of atonement for the consequences of German nationalism - that the shame of Nazism led them to reject any starry-eyed or romantic conception of the nation and to replace it by what Professor Heinrich Bedford-Strohm from the University of Bamberg called a 'nationalism of rules'.
"In other words, that a particular people might be united not by the dangerous emotionalism of flag waving but by a decidedly unemotional common bureaucracy that could be rolled out to embrace different nations, united under a set of administrative rules and procedures. One German academic there spoke of the need for the UK to be 'integrated into the European cultural synthesis'. I shuddered and thought of the Borg in Star Trek, a hive mind where all cultural distinctiveness will be assimilated. Forget subsidiarity. 'Resistance is futile,' say the Borg.
"As Brits, our reaction to the Second World War was inevitably entirely different from that of the Germans. We didn't experience the humiliation of our nationalism, but quite the opposite: its overwhelming endorsement. For it was precisely through the sort of communal solidarity and fellow feeling that nationalism provides that we summoned the strength to stand against Nazism and help defeat it.
"The massive outpouring of feeling and relief at the end of the war, the 'never surrender' attitude, the solidarity forged by the Blitz, those familiar images of thousands of demobilised soldiers waving the union flag in Piccadilly, all that and more is why it is inevitable that the Germans and the British are going to have entirely different approaches to the moral valence of the nation state....
"...the whole point of a family, a church and a nation is that they accept people uncritically - and not on the basis of how clever they are, how mobile, how rich or how solution focused. This is indeed the love that asks no question. You belong to the group and are valued by it simply because you are a member of it. The family, the church and the nation are spaces where all are welcomed and esteemed irrespective of class, talent or ethnicity. This is the moral case for the nation state."
