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	<title>FrontPage Magazine &#187; europeans</title>
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		<title>A UN Timetable for Israel’s Destruction</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/joseph-klein/a-un-timetable-for-israels-destruction-1/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=a-un-timetable-for-israels-destruction-1</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 16 Dec 2014 05:53:55 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Joseph Klein]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[europeans]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Kerry]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Netanyahu]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[palestinian state]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[United Nations]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=247556</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[And Obama's betrayal. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/rtr4hxon.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-247524" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/rtr4hxon-410x350.jpg" alt="rtr4hxon" width="302" height="258" /></a>The Obama administration is shamelessly outsourcing the United States&#8217; historic leadership in facilitating negotiations between the Palestinians and Israel of a workable, secure two-state solution to the United Nations and European governments. In putting its trust in these two centers of anti-Israel sentiment, the Obama administration refuses to say categorically that it would veto a UN Security Council resolution setting some sort of deadline for the creation of a Palestinian state and Israeli withdrawal to the pre-June 1967 lines.</p>
<p>In the words of an unnamed senior U.S. State Department official quoted by Reuters, &#8220;These things are all very much in flux, it&#8217;s not as if we&#8217;re being asked to take a position on any particular Security Council resolution right now. It would be premature for us to discuss documents that are of uncertain status right now.&#8221;</p>
<p>Any Security Council resolution the Obama administration would agree to, which imposes pressure only on Israel to make more unilateral concessions for an illusionary “peace,” will serve to legitimize a United Nations timetable for Israel’s surrender to forces that wish to destroy it. The Gaza debacle following Israel’s decision to unilaterally withdraw from Gaza in 2005 and give the Palestinians a chance to build a prototype Palestinian state illustrates the danger Israel would face from being pressured into more withdrawals at this time.</p>
<p>The Palestinian Authority leadership is pressing for action on just such a Security Council resolution as early as this Wednesday, according to a Palestine Liberation Organization official and Palestinian U.N. Ambassador Riyad Mansour. The Palestinian resolution, to be sponsored by Jordan (a non-permanent member of the Security Council), would reportedly set a two year deadline for complete Israeli withdrawal from all “occupied” territories, although Jordan’s UN ambassador told reporters it was news to her that any action to vote on the resolution would be taken as soon as the Palestinians are demanding. There is some speculation amongst UN insiders that a vote on a Palestinian resolution could be put off until early in the new year. The Security Council makeup will then be even more inclined towards the Palestinian position, because Malaysia will be replacing South Korea as a non-permanent member of the Security Council.</p>
<p>The Palestinians are finding a very receptive audience in Europe for their use of the United Nations to sidestep direct negotiations with Israel. As the tide of anti-Semitism is rising to the surface and spreading once again throughout Europe, a number of European countries&#8217; parliaments have adopted non-binding resolutions calling upon their respective governments to recognize a Palestinian state. Sweden went further with official recognition of a state of Palestine. France, a permanent member of the UN Security Council, is taking the lead in crafting a European version of a Palestinian state resolution. The idea reportedly would be to set out an expectation for a final peace agreement to achieve a two-state solution within two years. During the two year interval, the United Nations might accord full UN membership rights to an officially recognized Palestinian state. The text is still a subject of consultations in European capitals, according to the United Kingdom&#8217;s UN Ambassador Lyall Grant.</p>
<p>The Obama administration, which would like nothing better than to see its nemesis Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu defeated in the upcoming March 2015 Israeli elections, is calibrating a position that appears intended to send a pointed message to the Israeli electorate. This message is not to count on the administration standing steadfastly with Israel on sensitive security concerns if Prime Minister Netanyahu is re-elected. The Obama administration is willing to consider a &#8220;compromise&#8221; Security Council resolution to pressure Israel into resuming negotiations against a backdrop of a framework withdrawal timetable, so that the administration can say it did all it can to avoid an immediate two year deadline and thereby not have to use its veto power to “protect” Israel.</p>
<p>Thus, Secretary of State John Kerry is meeting early this week with European foreign ministers, Arab League officials, and Israeli and Palestinian officials to &#8220;hear from and engage with other stakeholders&#8230;and to the best of our ability work toward a common path forward,&#8221; according to a senior State Department official.</p>
<p>Israeli civilians under relentless attack by Palestinian jihadists are the main &#8220;stakeholders&#8221; whom the United States should be worried about. If there is to be a &#8220;common path forward&#8221; to peace, it requires Palestinian negotiating partners who are willing to publicly give up their claim to a right of return of millions of so-called Palestinian refugees to pre-June 1967 Israeli cities and towns, and who recognize Israel&#8217;s right to self-determination as a Jewish state that can co-exist securely side by side with a peaceful Palestinian state. There has been no such partner to engage in genuine negotiations for more than six decades. There remains no such partner today, nor is there likely to be one in the foreseeable future.</p>
<p>Hamas has made clear its intention time again, by word and deed, to destroy the state of Israel and kill as many Jews as possible. Following, for example, are excerpts from an interview with Hamas MP and cleric Yunis Al-Astal, which aired on Al-Aqsa TV on May 11, 2011 (courtesy of MEMRI):</p>
<blockquote><p>The [Jews] are brought in droves to Palestine so that the Palestinians – and the Islamic nation behind them – will have the honor of annihilating the evil of this gang…All the predators, all the birds of prey, all the dangerous reptiles and insects, and all the lethal bacteria are far less dangerous than the Jews…When Palestine is liberated and its people return to it, and the entire region, with the grace of Allah, will have turned into the United States of Islam, the land of Palestine will become the capital of the Islamic Caliphate, and all these countries will turn into states within the Caliphate.</p></blockquote>
<p>Hamas’s barrage of rocket attacks launched from Gaza against Israeli civilians since Hamas took control of Gaza in 2007 attests to its deadly intentions. Just last Sunday, Hamas marked its 27<sup>th</sup> anniversary by parading 2,000 of its armed fighters and truck-mounted rockets. A senior Hamas leader Khalil al-Hayya said: &#8216;This illusion called Israel will be removed.”</p>
<p>Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has thrown in his lot with Hamas in forming a so-called “unity reconciliation” government and has himself incited sectarian violence in and around Jerusalem with incendiary rhetoric.  But even Abbas has expressed frustration with what he called Hamas’s continued “shadow government&#8230; running the territory&#8221; in Gaza on its own.</p>
<p>In the real world, which is alien to the United Nations, the Arab world, European governments and the Obama administration, simply saying something is so doesn&#8217;t make it so. Diplomatic recognition of a Palestinian state does not change the reality on the ground. Nor does a pie-in-the-sky declaration of a “unity” or “reconciliation” Palestinian government that exists only on paper. For example, in delivering his regular briefing to the Security Council on the situation in the Middle East, Robert Serry, the UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, admitted to Security Council members on December 15<sup>th</sup> the lack of a functioning Palestinian reconciliation unity government to replace Hamas’s governance in Gaza. He said that delivery of thousands of tons of construction materials into Gaza is being permitted by Israel under the temporary Gaza Reconstruction Mechanism agreed upon by Israel, the so-called Palestinian Government of National Consensus and the UN, even though the “Government of National Consensus in Gaza has still not taken up its rightful governance and security function” that is a critical part of the arrangement.</p>
<p>The Palestinians’ own internal power struggle between Hamas, which governs Gaza, and the Palestinian Authority, which currently dominates the West Bank, means that there is no real unified state government apparatus. Hamas won’t give up its military control in Gaza and is seeking to expand its influence in the West Bank at the Palestinian Authority’s expense. There can be no real foundation for a workable Palestinian state under international law when there is no single governing authority in a position to effectively exert sovereign control over all of a putative Palestinian state’s territory and people. Nor can there be a real state under international law that does not have the capacity to ensure compliance with any bilateral or international agreements such a state may enter into in the future.</p>
<p>No matter what kind of “common path” Secretary of State Kerry thinks he can achieve with the Palestinians and their Arab and European supporters on a Security Council timetable resolution, Israel must reject the path of forced withdrawal that could lead to its own destruction. As Prime Minister Netanyahu said during the regular Israeli cabinet meeting on Sunday, a UN Security Council-imposed deadline for Israeli withdrawal to the pre-June 1967 lines would bring &#8220;Islamic extremists to the suburbs of Tel Aviv and to the heart of Jerusalem. We will not allow this. We will rebuff this forcefully and responsibly. Let there be no doubt, this will be rejected.&#8221;</p>
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		<title>Jewish Settlements and Palestinian Terror</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/joseph-puder/jewish-settlements-and-palestinian-terror/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=jewish-settlements-and-palestinian-terror</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 25 Nov 2014 05:00:56 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Joseph Puder]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[europeans]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[jewish settlements]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Jihad]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[palestinian terror]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Peace]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=245891</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A story of European hypocrisy.  ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/iu.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-245896" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/iu-450x336.jpg" alt="iu" width="281" height="210" /></a>The 28 States that make up the European Union (EU) would like to see the Israeli-Palestinian peace process resume. They seek an ultimate solution that will establish a Palestinian State with Jerusalem as its capital alongside the Jewish state. Both the Swedish and British parliaments (also Spain) have already voted to recognize a Palestinian state and others are sure to follow.</p>
<p>The <em>Associated Press</em> (<em>AP</em>) reported on Tuesday, (November 18, 2014) that “An internal European Union document proposes unspecified “<a href="http://news.yahoo.com/eu-proposal-could-punish-israel-settlements-172954951.html">actions</a>” against Israel for its settlement activities in the West Bank and east Jerusalem, reflecting unhappiness with the lack of progress in Mideast peace efforts.”</p>
<p>According to the <em>AP </em>report, “The document calls for unspecified moves against European companies operating in Israeli settlements. It also proposes actions against settlers themselves, including a “<a href="http://www.chron.com/news/world/article/EU-proposal-could-punish-Israel-for-settlements-5898457.php">no contact</a>” policy toward settler organizations, and a refusal &#8220;to engage with settlers,&#8221; including public figures who oppose the establishment of a Palestinian state.</p>
<p>The Europeans, burdened by a radicalized Muslim constituency, which in some of the EU states account for 10% of the population (France, Belgium), are pandering to their Muslim constituents with domestic and foreign policy concessions. One such concession is to push for a Palestinian state and punish Israel. The Muslim minorities have been co-opted by the socialist and leftist parties as a permanent voting bloc.</p>
<p>European colonial powers, including Britain, France, Belgium, Italy, Netherlands, Spain, and others are laden with colonial guilt in a time when alleged “victimhood” is celebrated and pandered to, and “Human Rights” has become the Continent’s new religion, replacing Christianity. In today’s EU world, “Better red than dead” has been replaced by “Better <em>green</em> than dead.”</p>
<p>In order to preserve their “Dolce vita” or good life, the Europeans were willing to submit to Communism if they could keep their month-long paid vacations and generous welfare perks. Today, they are willing to submit to Islam in order to preserve their lives and property. After two world wars, the Europeans are tired and unwilling to fight. They resent America even though the U.S. has protected them from the Soviet Union, and is continuing to protect them from Russian, Iranian, and Islamic jihadist threats. They also resent Israel for resisting the jihadists, and for its chosen particularism as a Jewish state. Anti-Semitism of the pre-war years is in decline on the Continent, but Israel has become the “collective Jew,” a subject of derision and hatred.</p>
<p>European life today has little consideration for the future. Birthrates are negative or below replacement. There aren’t enough young people to replace the retirees in most European states. Immigrants include Middle East and North African Muslims who believe that in time they will be able to impose Shariah law, and convert the Continent to Dar el-Islam, or the domain of Islam. The parties that resist Islamic takeover are labeled racist and are ostracized by the European political elites, media and academia.</p>
<p>A European state such as Sweden has conveniently ignored the fact that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas forged an unexpected unity pact with the rival Islamist group Hamas, which is considered by the EU a terrorist organization, and has vowed to destroy the Jewish state. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu suspended the talks on April 24, after Fatah-Hamas signed a unity government pact.</p>
<p>It is apparent that the issue of “Jewish settlements,” is a subterfuge for the Europeans, particularly when considering the areas bordering the Green Line, most of which is designated as Area C under the Oslo Accords, that will be annexed to Israel in any future peace settlement. Moreover, Israel’s unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, which subsequently became “judenrein,” didn’t bring peace; instead, it brought terror and death to Israelis. Hamas jihadists took over Gaza in 2007, and they have no intention of negotiating with Israel, much less recognizing the Jewish State or making peace with Israel.</p>
<p>The peace that the Europeans seek is unlikely to bring security to Israelis. The Europeans want to satisfy their Muslim constituents by supporting a Palestinian state. Many of the Europeans and especially Sweden ignored the basic tenet that a lasting peace settlement must be a result of a negotiated settlement and not unilateral action. Additionally, Palestine doesn’t meet the criteria for recognition as a state, by being unable to exercise effective government control over a defined territory and population.</p>
<p>The Palestinian Authority (PA) was supposed to curtail anti-Israel and anti-Jewish incitement under the provisions of the Oslo Accords. Instead of preparing its people for peace with Israel and the Jewish people, the PA increased its anti-Israel and anti-Jewish incitement. In fact, the PA has poisoned an entire generation of young Palestinians with anti-Semitic hate befitting the Nazi “<em>Der Sturmer</em>”. The PA media, school curriculum, and official mosque sermons have employed religious overtones similar to Hamas’ in describing the conflict with the Jews. Koranic and Hadith verses are used to portray Jews as “pigs and monkeys” rejected by Allah for their evil. Caricatures showing Jews as vermin that must be destroyed are being taught to five-year old children. They are instructed that Israel itself is “occupied Palestinian territory,” and the official PA maps erase Israel’s existence.</p>
<p>This is ultimately the most critical reason why peace between the Palestinians and Israelis remains elusive. Leaders might sign peace accords, but unless the PA teaches its people to accept their hitherto enemy, peace can never be real. The value of peace has never been advocated to the Palestinian people by their leaders. Even if Israel stopped all settlement activities, it won’t mitigate Palestinian violent hatred, or bring acceptance of Israel’s legitimacy by the Palestinian-Arab people</p>
<p>A few samples from the Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) illustrate the point. The official Palestinian daily, <em>Al-Hayat Al-Jadida</em> (August 20, 2014) published an Op Ed piece by Izz Al-Din As’ad that read: “Establishing a Jewish state means the Jewish territory controlled by the Jewish State will be land for Jews only. In the Palestinian case, this is a complex issue, because the state is colonialist, settler and Orientalist state, which <a href="http://palwatch.org/main.aspx?fi=1031">fabricated a historical narrative</a> in order to colonize Palestine. It will act forcefully to destroy Arab society in Palestine, which was colonized in 1948. This may amount to the expulsion of the Palestinians living in Jerusalem, in order to cleanse the Jewish state of the ‘gentiles’…”</p>
<p>On October 22, 2014 <em>Al-Hayat Al-Jadida</em> by Dr. Mahmoud Al-Habbash, the Supreme Shariah Judge, and Mahmoud Abbas’ advisor on Religious and Islamic Affairs stated, “Selling or handing over lands and real estate in Jerusalem and all of Palestine to the Israeli occupation or settlers constitutes treason and a violation of Islamic law…” Al-Habbash emphasized that “according to Islamic Shariah law, the <a href="http://palwatch.org/main.aspx?fi=433">entire land</a> of Palestine is wakf (an inalienable religious endowment in Islamic law) land, and that it is prohibited to sell, bestow ownership or facilitate the occupation of even a millimeter of it.”</p>
<p>Sheikh Taleb Al-Silwadi, in his weekly column/sermon in <em>Al-Hayat Al-Jadida</em> (December 21, 2012) wrote: “We have our Palestinian nation, engaged in Ribat, (religious war defending Islamic land) challenging the tyranny and oppression of the Zionists, those descendants of <a href="http://palwatch.org/main.aspx?fi=786">monkeys and pigs</a>…”</p>
<p>It is high time for the Europeans to end their hypocrisy and address the real obstacles to peace negotiations and a peaceful coexistence between Israel and the Palestinians. Providing almost half of its budget, Brussels has a great deal of leverage over the PA. Instead of focusing on extra buildings erected in Jerusalem or Judea and Samaria (West Bank), the EU ought to address PA incitement that ends in terror against the innocents, and kills the prospects of peace.</p>
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		<title>The Failure of the E.U.</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/bruce-thornton/the-failure-of-the-e-u/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-failure-of-the-e-u</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 11 Aug 2014 04:47:03 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Bruce Thornton]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[eu]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[europeans]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[failure]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Identity]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=238292</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Little to emulate, much to avoid.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden">
<div class="field-items">
<div class="field-item even">
<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/euro.gif"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-238338" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/euro.gif" alt="euro" width="265" height="180" /></a><strong>Reprinted from <a href="http://www.hoover.org/">Hoover.org</a>.</strong></p>
<p>The European Union has long excited American progressives, who want the United States to model itself after the European body. As each year passes, it has become difficult to understand this admiration. These days the E.U. acts more and more like a bloated bureaucracy staffed with elites armed with intrusive regulatory power and insulated from citizen accountability. The success of Euroskeptic parties in this spring’s European Parliament elections casts doubt on the whole E.U. project.</p>
<p>The electoral victories of nationalist and populist parties in Britain, France, Austria, Denmark, and the Netherlands reveal the chronic dissatisfaction with the E.U., which has grown worse in light of the sluggish economic growth, high unemployment, painful austerity measures, and morally hazardous bailouts that have beset the continent. More troubling for many are the E.U.’s intrusions into national sovereignty, like its increased oversight over national budgets, the Fiscal Compact Treaty that subjects nations to fiscal discipline, and moves to create a banking union with a common supervisor and mechanism for dissolving failed banks. Given these discontents, public trust in E.U. institutions has reached all-time lows.</p>
<p>To add insult to injury, the E.U. Parliament recently named Jean-Claude Junker as European Commissioner. Junker has long been a champion of increased centralization. Selecting the commissioner has traditionally been a privilege reserved for the Council of Ministers, the 28 heads of government that guard the sovereignty and interests of the member states. As the <em>Financial Times</em> reported, this “crude institutional power grab by the parliament,” ignoring as it did the strong anti-E.U. protest vote in many member nations, “is an affront to democratic accountability.”</p>
<p>Those who champion reforming the E.U. are well intentioned, but their reforms could never go far enough. The problem with the E.U. is that it was, at its founding, grounded in false assumptions about human nature and the role of the nation in creating a people’s identity. These assumptions have for 200 years been accepted as facts, when actually they are questionable ideas challenged by history.</p>
<p>The E.U. is just the latest example of the powerful Enlightenment idea that human nature and civilization, through the expansion of scientific knowledge, are progressing away from the cruelty, oppression, and collective violence created by irrational superstition, religion, and ethnic or nationalist loyalties. Once liberated from this destructive ignorance, people can create political and social orders that will promote peace, social justice, political freedom, and prosperity. Most important will be what Immanuel Kant, in his influential 1795 essay “Perpetual Peace,” called a “federation of free states” that would form a “pacific alliance . . . different from a treaty of peace, . . . inasmuch as it would forever terminate all wars.” Kant predicated the possibility of such global peace on “the uniformity of the progress of the human mind.” A universal human nature progressively becoming more rational and possessing more knowledge about itself and the world can craft a global order that would lessen if not eliminate the evils that had afflicted the human race for all of its previous history.</p>
<p>In the nineteenth century, transnational treaties, conventions, and institutions were created to realize the dream “of establishing and securing international peace by placing it upon a foundation of international understanding, international appreciation, and international cooperation,” as Nicholas Murray Butler, president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, wrote in 1932. The Geneva Conventions, the Hague Conventions, and the establishment of an international Court of Arbitration had all reflected this ideal. The Preamble to the First Hague Convention in 1899 sounded the Kantian note in it goal to ensure the “maintenance of the general peace” and the “friendly settlement of international disputes,” based on the “solidarity which unites the member of the society of civilized nations” and their shared desire for “extending the empire of law, and of strengthening the appreciation of international justice.”</p>
<p>The assumption behind such internationalism was that the national and ethnic differences underlying people’s collective identities were not as important as the new universal, transnational identity created by the expansion of scientific knowledge, globalized trade, and globe-shrinking technologies such as the steamship, railroad, telegraph, and telephone. More important, this belief in a unified human identity assumed that all people everywhere desired the same things as Westerners––political freedom, human rights like equality, and prosperity. The other aims that peoples historically have more often pursued––obedience to their gods, exclusionary ethnic or tribal loyalty, land and resources violently appropriated from others, unequal social hierarchies and roles, revenge for injuries or dishonor inflicted by others––were deemed remnants of our barbaric past soon to be left behind by the progress of the human mind and the improvement in peoples’ material and political circumstances.</p>
<p>The unprecedented carnage of World War I, in which the peoples of highly civilized Europe killed each other with nationalist and ethnic fervor, did not lessen enthusiasm for such idealistic internationalism. In the two decades between the wars, the League of Nations, which called for collective security, disarmament, and the resolution of conflict through arbitration; the 1926 Locarno Treaty, in which “France and England Ban War Forever,” as the <em>New York Times </em>headline put it; and the 1928 Kellogg-Briand Pact, which condemned “recourse to war” and enjoined all settlement of disputes to be sought only by “pacific means,” all included the future Axis aggressors among the signatories and participants. Nor did the even greater horrors of World War II disabuse the West of its idealism, most obviously manifested in the creation of the United Nations, which has done little to save the some 41 million victims of invasion, genocide, civil war, political murder, and ethnic cleansing since World War II.</p>
<p>This record of failure would not have surprised political theorists from Thucydides to the American framers. In that tradition, human nature is permanently flawed by what James Madison called “passions and interests” that necessarily conflict with those of other people or nations, and often lead to violence between them. For example, John Adams in his <em>Defense of the Constitutions of the United States</em> in 1787 wrote, “Though we allow benevolence and generous affections to exist in the human breast, yet every moral theorist will admit the selfish passions in the generality of men to be the strongest. There are few who love the public better than themselves, though all may have some affection for the public . . . Self-interest, private avidity, ambition, and avarice, will exist in every state of society, and under every form of government.” Nor did these realists believe that better education or prosperity could permanently rein in these flaws of human nature, for dangerous world of “imperious necessities,” as Thucydides called the tragic contingencies of human existence, would always create stresses that prove “a rough master that brings most men’s characters to a level with their fortunes.” The gruesome carnage Europeans inflicted on each other in the twentieth century proved Thucydides correct.</p>
<p>Equally suspect is the assumption that national identity should be weakened and marginalized because it is irrationally exclusionary and parochial, and as such incites zero-sum conflicts between peoples. Particularly after World War II, the evils wrought by fascism and Nazism supposedly proved that nationalism is inherently bellicose and thus hinders the spread of universal human rights, tolerance, and the rational adjudication of disputes, all of which would eventually result in global peace and prosperity. This tarring of nationalism with the brush of fascism and Nazism was one of the mechanisms for selling the transnational European Union and the weakening of national sovereignty it required.</p>
<p>But this assault on national identity was not just historically dubious, but blind to the role the nation-state played in creating the collective identity and solidarity that made liberal democracy possible. For as French political philosopher Pierre Manent has emphasized, “The sovereign state and representative government are the two great artifices that have allowed us to accommodate huge masses of human beings within an order of civilization and liberty.” Shared language, history, mores, folkways, cultures, values, political virtues, and landscapes give people­­––bound as they are to a particular, concrete place and time in which they pass their daily lives––the foundations of their shared existence that transcend their individual differences. To quote Manent again, “If our nation <em>suddenly</em> disappeared and its bonds were dispersed, each of us immediately would become a stranger, a monster, to himself.” Without those complex “ties that bind,” a people cease being a coherent political community, and become instead a congeries of fragmented, discrete groups with irreconcilable interests and aims.</p>
<p>The tiny elite of cosmopolitan, globetrotting writers, journalists, professors, businessmen, and Eurocrats may live in a postmodern, post-national world, but the mass of ordinary Europeans do not. This stubborn nationalist sentiment becomes vocal at times of crisis, such as during the financial meltdown in 2009, when hardworking, thrifty Germans protested bailing out indolent wastrel Greeks, and the Greeks in turn evoked the brutal German occupation of their country during World War II as justification for demanding that Germany rescue their broken government.</p>
<p>Moreover, Europeans still have to live with neighbors who are passionate about their nationalism, none more so than Russia. The EU “postmodern” foreign policy based on “supranational constraints on unilateral policies and the progressive development of community norms,” as Oxford’s Kalypso Nicolaides puts it, has so far been impotent in the face of Vladimir Putin’s irredentist ambitions in Ukraine and elsewhere. Russia’s annexation of Crimea and continuing violence and subversion in eastern Ukraine have dismissed the economic sanctions and diplomatic warnings that are no match for the Russians’ wounded national pride.</p>
<p>The growing strength of frankly nationalist, Euroskeptic political parties, evident in their success in the recent European Parliament elections, testifies to the continuing hold national identity has on millions of Europeans. Given the conflicting “passions and interests” of human nature, this disparaged and disregarded nationalism is unlikely to remain content with sporadic protest-votes or flag-waving during soccer championships. How it will manifest itself in the future––through peaceful political change, or through violent reaction––is still an open question. But there is no question that the E.U. has little for the U.S. to emulate, and much to avoid.</p>
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		<title>Buried Alive In Turkey—and Under the Burqa</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/phyllis-chesler/buried-alive-in-turkey%e2%80%94and-under-the-burqa/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=buried-alive-in-turkey%25e2%2580%2594and-under-the-burqa</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 09 Feb 2010 05:01:24 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Phyllis Chesler]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[In Turkey, a father and grandfather bury Medine Memi, a sixteen-year-old girl, alive.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/buried.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-49180" title="buried" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/buried-300x212.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="212" /></a></p>
<p><strong>Visit <a href="http://pajamasmedia.com/">Pajamas</a></strong></p>
<p>In Turkey—a country which was nearly accepted as a member by the European Union—a father and grandfather recently <a href="http://www.montrealgazette.com/Girl+buried+alive+honour+killing+Turkey+Report/2521342/story.html">buried Medine Memi, a sixteen-year-old girl, alive</a>—and all because she was seen talking to boys. Medine was repeatedly beaten. The police did not help her. When the men buried her she was “alive and fully conscious.”</p>
<p>This savage, heartless, primitive act is the ultimate, logical consequence of burying women alive—shrouding them–while they still roam the earth. One becomes claustrophobic under the burqa, until one gets used to being seen as a ghost, invisible, non-human, dead.</p>
<p>All this past week, I received news of this atrocity in Turkey. I refrained from writing about it. What can one say? There is nothing to say. There is everything to do. No one is doing anything.</p>
<p>But, all over Europe, they are fighting about the Islamic Veil. Should burqas (full body shrouds) and niqab (face masks) be banned? Should hijab remain banned in school in France? <a href="http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2010/0206/1224263887684.html">The Council of Imams in Ireland has just had a press conference</a>. It said that “a ban on the niqab – a veil worn by Muslim women that covers everything except the eyes – violates personal freedoms guaranteed by democratic systems. It added that such bans also constitute an obstacle to multiculturalism, integration and human rights.”</p>
<p>Well—that ought to shame the Europeans.</p>
<p><strong>To continue reading this article, <a href="http://pajamasmedia.com/phyllischesler/2010/02/06/buried-alive-in-turkey%E2%80%94and-under-the-burqa/">click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Daniel Pipes: Why I Stand with Geert Wilders &#8211; National Review Online</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/jlaksin/daniel-pipes-why-i-stand-with-geert-wilders-national-review-online/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=daniel-pipes-why-i-stand-with-geert-wilders-national-review-online</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 20 Jan 2010 07:44:24 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Jacob Laksin]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[Who is the most important European alive today? I nominate the Dutch politician Geert Wilders. I do so because he is best placed to deal with the Islamic challenge facing the continent. He has the potential to emerge as a world-historical figure. That Islamic challenge consists of two components: on the one hand, an indigenous [&#8230;]]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Who is the most important European alive today? I nominate the Dutch politician Geert Wilders. I do so because he is best placed to deal with the Islamic challenge facing the continent. He has the potential to emerge as a world-historical figure.</p>
<p>That Islamic challenge consists of two components: on the one hand, an indigenous population’s withering Christian faith, inadequate birthrate, and cultural diffidence, and on the other an influx of devout, prolific, and culturally assertive Muslim immigrants. This fast-moving situation raises profound questions about Europe: Will it retain its historic civilization or become a majority-Muslim continent living under Islamic law (the Shari’a)?</p>
<p>Wilders, 46, founder and head of the Party for Freedom (PVV), is the unrivaled leader of those Europeans who wish to retain their historic identity. That’s because he and the PVV differ from most of Europe’s other nationalist, anti-immigrant parties.</p>
<p>via <a href="http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NjI0MTYxNjQxNThjMDQ0ZWU5ZTJiNDk4YzY4MWIxYTA=">Why I Stand with Geert Wilders by Daniel Pipes on National Review Online</a>.</p>
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		<title>Matthias Küntzel: The West goes wobbly on Iran, The Weekly Standard</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2009/jlaksin/matthias-kuntzel-the-west-goes-wobbly-on-iran-the-weekly-standard/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=matthias-kuntzel-the-west-goes-wobbly-on-iran-the-weekly-standard</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 03 Dec 2009 16:04:41 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Jacob Laksin]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=40239</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[On November 18, Iran&#8217;s foreign minister Manouchehr Mottaki rejected a proposal that his country should export some 70 percent of its low-enriched uranium for further processing abroad. On November 20, the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council plus Germany met in Brussels and urged Iran to reconsider. &#8220;I continue to hold out the [&#8230;]]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>On November 18, Iran&#8217;s foreign minister Manouchehr Mottaki rejected a proposal that his country should export some 70 percent of its low-enriched uranium for further processing abroad. On November 20, the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council plus Germany met in Brussels and urged Iran to reconsider. &#8220;I continue to hold out the prospect that they may decide to walk through this door,&#8221; explained Barack Obama, though he noted at the same time, &#8220;Over the next several weeks, we will be developing a package of potential steps .  .  . that would indicate our seriousness to Iran.&#8221; Russia&#8217;s foreign ministry, as usual, contradicted him: &#8220;There is currently no discussion on working out additional sanctions against Iran.&#8221;</p>
<p>So was this merely the latest manifestation of the same fruitless maneuvering that has gone on every year since the struggle over Iran&#8217;s nuclear weapons began in 2003? Not at all. It was not the ploys of the Iranians that provoked astonishment at the most recent negotiations in Geneva and Vienna, but rather the attitude of the United States.</p>
<p>Whereas in the past Washington sought to increase pressure on Iran, and Europe stepped on the brakes, today it is Obama who is stepping on the brakes while France and Great Britain push for sanctions. Whereas George W. Bush denounced the Islamism of the Iranian regime, his successor attempts to ingratiate himself by offering compliments and apologies. Whereas before it was the Europeans who packaged their failures as successful &#8220;dialogue,&#8221; now it is Washington that does so.</p>
<p>via <a href="http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/017/275yteer.asp">Obama&#8217;s Search for Peace in Our Time</a>.</p>
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