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In this mailing:
by Douglas Murray
• January 16, 2017 at 5:00 am
- When just about
every other magazine in the free world fails to uphold the values of
free speech and the right to caricature and offend, who could expect
a group of cartoonists and writers who have already paid such a high
price to keep holding the line of such freedoms single-handed?
- Most of the
people who said they cared about the right to say what they wanted
when they wanted, were willing to walk the walk -- to walk through
Paris with a pencil in the air. Or they were willing to talk the
talk, proclaiming "Je Suis Charlie." But almost no one
really meant it.
- If President
Hollande and Chancellor Merkel had really believed in standing up
for freedom of expression, then instead of walking arm-in-arm
through Paris together with such an inappropriate figure as
Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, they would have held up covers of Charlie
Hebdo and said: "This is what a free society looks like and
this is what we back: everyone, political leaders, gods, prophets,
the lot can be satirised, and if you do not like it then you should
hop off to whatever unenlightened hell-hole you dream of."
- The entire
world press has internalised what happened at Charlie Hebdo
and instead of standing united, has decided never to risk something
like that ever happening to them again.
- For the last
two years, we have learned for certain that any such tolerance is a
one-way street. This new submission to Islamist terrorism is
possibly why, in 2016, when an athlete with no involvement in
politics, religion or satire was caught doing something that might
have been seen as less than fully respectful of Islam, there was no
one around to defend him.
A Paris rally on January 11, 2015, after the Charlie
Hebdo attack, featuring "Je Suis Charlie" signs. (Image
source: Olivier Ortelpa/Wikimedia Commons)
The 7th
of this month marked two years to the day since two gunmen walked into
the offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris and
murdered twelve people. This period also therefore marks the second
anniversary of the period of about an hour during which much of the free
world proclaimed itself to be "Charlie" and attempted, by
walking through the street, standing for moments of silence or
re-tweeting the hashtag "Je Suis Charlie" to show the whole
world that freedom cannot be suppressed and that the pen is mightier than
the Kalashnikov.
by Malcolm Lowe
• January 16, 2017 at 4:00 am
- "Illegality
in international law" applies neither to the Israeli
settlements that existed prior to Oslo II nor to any continued
subsequent Israeli building that was confined to the official
boundaries of those settlements (including Jerusalem in its
entirety) on the day when Oslo II was signed, on September 28, 1995.
- In negotiations
over the final status, on the other hand, the Palestinians are not
excluded from demanding a total Israeli withdrawal to the ceasefire
lines of 1949, but Israel is likewise not excluded from demanding
the retention not merely of the settlements but also of any other
part of the Mandatory Palestine of 1947.
- Almost all of
Israel's settlement activity has not been illegal. Israel's Supreme
Court has been vigilant in forbidding any violations.
- In practice, no
final status can be achieved unless both Parties abandon their
claims to the whole former territory of the British Mandate, accept
each other's minimal existential needs, and acknowledge the
long-established current realities.
The outpost settlement of Amona. (Image source: Yair Aronshtam/Wikimedia
Commons)
In a familiar fable ascribed to Aesop, a shepherd boy finds fun in
making all the villagers run out in alarm by crying "Wolf!"
After this happens several times, the villagers ignore him, so when a
wolf really appears, it can devour the sheep undisturbed.
A similar result was the consequence of the international attitude
to the settlements that Israeli governments created in the so-called
"West Bank" after the Six Day War of 1967. Foreign ministries
around the world would always brand any Israeli plan to add a few more
houses to some settlement "a violation of international law,"
but Israel quietly ignored such statements and their authors did nothing
more about them.
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