Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

The bumpy road ahead in Israel

Posted: November 28, 2023 by chrisharper in Uncategorized
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By Christopher Harper

After reporting on the Middle East for many years, I realize how difficult it is to find any lasting solutions. Also, predictions about the region are about as accurate and useful as those of the talking heads paraded on national television.

But here are some background and thoughts about the road ahead.

Hamas and Islamic Jihad, which control Gaza, are vicious organizations. The Palestinian Authority, which rules part of the West Bank, is corrupt. The government of Benjamin Netanyahu is inept.

The leadership of all three governments must go.

Hamas came to the forefront in 2006 when it split from the Palestinian Authority, which was formed in the 1990s to rule over parts of the West Bank and Gaza. Many Palestinians voted against the leadership of the PA, which was controlled by the Fatah branch of the Palestine Liberation Organization, because of widespread corruption. Yasser Arafat, the leader of both the PLO and Fatah, had died two years earlier, and no one could manage the Palestinian factions. Since 2006, no elections have happened as the rift between the West Bank and Gaza widened.

How to get rid of Hamas and Islamic Jihad? The Israeli armed forces have pushed through northern Gaza, and most of the Palestinian leadership has fled to southern Gaza on the border with Egypt. As part of the hostage and prisoner exchange, Israel must insist that the Palestinian leaders leave Gaza for other Arab countries. That happened, for example, in 1982 after Israel forced the PLO leaders to leave Lebanon for Tunisia. After that, the people of Gaza must have an internationally supervised election to choose a new government.

How to get rid of the current leadership of the PA? Again, internationally supervised elections may be the answer. Although Arafat had many detractors, he was able to keep the diverse Palestinian groups going in roughly the same direction for more than 30 years. Part of the problem with the PA was that much of the power rested with those Palestinians who lived outside of Israel and returned in the 1990s while those inside Israel’s boundaries held little influence.

Unfortunately, democracy isn’t a mainstay of Palestinian philosophy. But the current leaders have failed to improve the lot of the average Palestinian and should be held accountable.

Then there’s Netanyahu, who has been prime minister three times for 16 years, bringing a hardline attitude toward Palestinians, ignoring most of the agreements made in the Oslo Accords in the 1990s, and increasing tensions within Israel itself. Moreover, his government’s failure to anticipate the Hamas attacks on October 7 should make all Israelis doubt his leadership.

Unfortunately, Israel’s electoral system favors small groups of voters who hold extreme views on both the right and left. Citizens vote for their preferred party and not for any individual candidates. The 120 seats in the Knesset are then assigned proportionally to each party, provided that the party vote count meets the 3.25% electoral threshold. As a result of the low threshold, a typical Knesset has 10 or more factions represented. With so many parties, it is nearly impossible for one party or faction to govern alone, let alone win a majority. In the government before the war, Netanyahu had to woo the conservative religious factions, for example, to create a coalition.

With the ongoing war, the government has the support of nearly all parties. But that support will quickly dissolve when Israeli citizens and politicians look more closely at the once-vaunted intelligence agencies that missed the Hamas strategy. Fortunately, Netanyahu will likely be sent packing.

Neither Hamas nor the Israeli government will be seen as victors in the current war. That’s usually an opportunity for some serious peace negotiations, as happened after the 1973 and 1982 wars, but all sides will need new leaders and fresh ideas to create significant changes.

Some Jewish Hostages that We Were Told Did not Exist Released

Posted: November 25, 2023 by datechguy in Israel, Israel vs Hamas, middle east, Uncategorized
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4th Doctor: You know, the very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common. They don’t alter their views to fit the facts. They alter the facts to fit their views, which can be uncomfortable if you happen to be one of the facts that needs altering.

Doctor Who: The Face of Evil pt 4 1977

Got home from work yesterday and saw this:

I’m happy for the families although my gut still thinks a deal might be dangerous but aside from that I’m confused about one thing.

We’ve had reports that Imams in the US and elsewhere have told their congregations that “claims” that Hamas took Jewish hostages on October 7th were false.

We’ve also been assured by college students and others all over the country that any such claim of Israeli women and children being taken hostage was simply propaganda. In fact many such people stated this as the reason why they were pulling down posters of the kidnapped jews.

If we are to believe these people then this hostage deal must not have taken place and our belief that these people have been returned to Israel must at best be a shared delusion or at worse a grand Zionist conspiracy running so deep that even Egypt and parts of Hamas, for reasons that are unclear, are taking part in it.

It will be interesting to see how those folks reconcile these facts with their previous claims.

Cue Tom Baker

The Pilgrims nearly starved to death because of an ill fated experiment with Communism

Posted: November 23, 2023 by Jon Fournier in Uncategorized
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For the past several decades Progressives have been steadily transforming the United States from a Free Market nation based on individualism into Socialist nation based on collectivism.  These radical leftists completely ignore the bloody and brutal legacy of all collectivist ideologies.  Starvation and misery are the only things that are abundant in a Communist or Socialist economy.

Today’s Progressives go to great lengths to hide the fact that the earliest colonies here in what became the United States experimented with Communism.  Those early experiments very nearly ended in total failure.  Disaster was only averted when the colonies switched to a Free Market economy based on individualism.  Plymouth Plantation was one of the colonies.  This is chronicled here in William Bradford: from History of Plymouth Plantation, c. 1650.

This first quote describes their experiment with communist:

The experience that was had in this common course and condition, tried sundry years and that amongst godly and sober men, may well evince the vanity of that conceit of Plato’s and other ancients applauded by some of later times; and that the taking away of property and bringing in community into a commonwealth would make them happy and flourishing; as if they were wiser than God. 

It did not work out at all.

For this community (so far as it was) was found to breed much confusion and discontent and retard much employment that would have been to their benefit and comfort. For the young men, that were most able and fit for labor and service, did repine that they should spend their time and strength to work for other men’s wives and children without any recompense. The strong, or man of parts, had no more in division of victuals and clothes than he that was weak and not able to do a quarter the other could; this was thought injustice. The aged and graver men to be ranked and equalized in labors and victuals, clothes etc., with the meaner and younger sort, thought it some indignity and disrespect unto them. And for men’s wives to be commanded to do service for other men, as dressing their meat, washing their clothes, etc., they deemed it a kind of slavery, neither could many husbands well brook it.

The Pilgrims began their experiment with the most noble of intentions, it failed because human societies always falter when collectivism is attempted.

Upon the point all being to have alike, and all to do alike, they thought themselves in the like condition, and one as good as another; and so, if it did not cut off those relations that God hath set amongst men, yet it did at least much diminish and take off the mutual respects that should be preserved amongst them. And would have been worse if they had been men of another condition. Let none object this is men’s corruption, and nothing to the course itself. I answer, seeing all men have this corruption in them, God in His wisdom saw another course fitter for them.

Disaster was averted and Plymouth Plantation thrived when William Bradford proposed a radical change to a free market economy based on individualism.

All this while no supply was heard of, neither knew they when they might expect any. So they began to think how they might raise as much corn as they could, and obtain a better crop than they had done, that they might not still thus languish in misery. At length, after much debate of things, the Governor (with the advice of the chiefest amongst them) gave way that they should set corn every man for his own particular, and in that regard trust to themselves; in all other thing to go on in the general way as before. And so assigned to every family a parcel of land, according to the proportion of their number, for that end, only for present use (but made no division for inheritance) and ranged all boys and youth under some family. This had very good success, for it made all hands very industrious, so as much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been by any means the Governor or any other could use, and saved him a great deal of trouble, and gave far better content. The women now went willingly into the field, and took their little ones with them to set corn; which before would allege weakness and inability; whom to have compelled would have been thought great tyranny and oppression.

A Mideast Thanksgiving

Posted: November 21, 2023 by chrisharper in Uncategorized
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Thanksgiving Day, 1984

By Christopher Harper

Only some people in the Middle East really understand Thanksgiving Day. More often than not, that might be because there is little to be thankful for.

In 1984, I brought together a group of Lebanese, Syrians, and a bunch of Europeans in the middle of one of the most dangerous parts of the world. Many of us worked in some way for ABC News in Beirut and Damascus.

It was difficult to travel between the two cities as foreigners, so I decided we should meet near Baalbeck, an ancient city about six miles east of Beirut and just about the same distance west of Damascus.

The Romans built an exquisite city there, which had become a training center for terrorists. Ironically, it was about the only place that we could get people from Syria and Lebanon to meet, where most of them could be safe. Americans—actually, I was the only one—weren’t so safe. But I had spent a lot of time in Baalbeck, and I was young and rather foolish back then.

The infamous Commodore Hotel in Beirut found a turkey and some sweet potatoes—no small feat—and added some traditional Arabic dishes. I still remember how the chefs put everything on platters.

The group of about 20 people included:

  • Two British and French videographers who didn’t get along too well.
  • Two Syrian and Lebanese businessmen who didn’t like one another.
  • Two Shia and Druze men who didn’t trust one another.
  • Others who didn’t think much of me.

The sun shone brightly over the Bekaa Valley, a beautiful but troubled part of the world. No one talked about football games or family feuds. We didn’t talk about failed peace negotiations or the deaths of more than 200 U.S. soldiers sent to Lebanon as peacekeepers and killed by Islamic terrorists. We didn’t talk about the bombing of Lebanon by U.S. ships. We spent a wonderful afternoon talking about the present and the future, our families, and our dreams. We talked about everyday and important things in life. We drank a bit too much wine and araq, a potent Middle Eastern liqueur.

We left with a better sense of what we knew about one another and what we did not know about one another. More importantly, we talked about what we had in common as human beings.

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