The prosecution that Israel should conduct – Concluding part

The accused: Professor Michael Lynk

Special Rapporteur for the Human Rights Council

Charge: Fraud to commit incitement

The accused

From court record before the adjournment

Professor, your job title, clear as daylight, maintains that in 1967 Israel took the territories from the Palestinians. You now tell me, no: Israel took the territories from Egypt and Jordan. Which of the two is correct? They cannot both be. Professor…?

The accused consults with his defence team, which requests, and gets, a 14 – day adjournment.

https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/307839

Cross-examination

So, Professor, back to your title, ‘Special Rapporteur for the human rights situation in the Palestinian Territories occupied since 1967.’ Those territories: were they held by Egypt and Jordan or, were they held by the Palestinians? Which is the correct one?  

If the question is what happened, about history, then – Clearly, Egypt and Jordan held the territories. 

I thank you. Though what else could my question mean?

The law. The territories are marked for the Palestinians.

My dear Professor Lynk. Don’t think I’d deprive you of the law. On the contrary. Let me put your mind at rest – a lot of law is coming your way.

My Lord, the title of the accused is bogus. The court heard it from his lips – a bald-face lie. Israel has not occupied Palestinian territories since 1967.

An academic caught lying is normally a personal embarrassment. Reputation could be at stake, or even a career. But my Lord, here is no personal blimp. Here is a lie powerful enough to agitate world climate. Not global warming – a rise in the political thermometer. Whole populations turn on each another all because of the lie that Israel has occupied Palestinian territory since the year 1967.  Half the world gives the tyrants of Gaza the right to resist a criminal occupation. Capitals from North to South, East to West, erupt every time fighting breaks out between the ‘dispossessed’ and the ‘usurpers.’  

The recent mini war was typical. It produced dog whistles for genocide. Calls were made on social media to remedy the problem in the old way. Israel stood accused of crimes it couldn’t have done had it wanted to. The job title of the accused acts like a warcry. It rallies governments, the media, mobs and masses. It acts like a red flag waved at a mad bull. It pits religions against the Jewish faith. Only a week ago an Anglican Archbishop laid into the Jews for “invading Palestinian territory occupied by Israel in 1967 by Jewish settlers.” https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/307890  Professor Lynk’s fake title is the article of faith to which haters of Israel peg their zeal.

From the Bench

Eruptions, warcries and red flags put me on edge. Done with them?  

Nearly my Lord. The fraudulent title kills several birds. Working under a false pretence, can the accused have personal integrity? Can he live with the lie yet be objective and impartial? Can he do an honest job? And, my Lord, to remind the court, Professor Lynk works for no pay. Here is a man on a mission. A lawyer prepared to volunteer his expensive time must be driven by beliefs, by a heart-felt attachment to the cause.   

Bench: dips the head, purses the lips, nods, jots furious notes.  

We have arrived at the law. Professor, you can be happy. The history of the conflict did not favour you. Israel did not occupy Palestinian territories in 1967. Law may be kinder to you. The territories, you said, are marked for the Palestinians. Then we must go in search of the law to make that true.

My Lord, Exhibit A contains the record of a May 2012 case, ‘SP Apfel vs. the Government of SA and the President of the European Union.’ The respondents made the generic claim that Israel is occupying Palestinian territory. Professor Lynk received the record.

SP Apfel vs. the government of SA and the President of the EU

Bench: flips through document. More professors! I hoped to get away from them. Can you not make do with plain down-to-earth jurists?

My jurists are down-to-earth, my Lord. I agree, they are professors, but foremost they are jurists able to blend down- to-earth law with down-to-earth history.

I’m going to hold you to that.

My Lord….

Professor Lynk, you perused the case marked ‘Exhibit A’?

I did.

A game of occupation, you might call it. One day Egypt and Jordan occupy the territories, the next day Israel occupies them. The object of the game is to find ‘The Palestinians.’ Make a computer game of it one day.

But we play no game. The foundation facts are laid out near the top of the Appendix. Egypt never claimed sovereignty over Gaza; Jordan on the other hand claimed sovereignty over Judea and Samaria and the eastern part of Jerusalem. The ‘West Bank’ was named only because it sits on that side of the Jordan River. Any arguments so far?

None.

Now dear Professor, under Jordan the people of the West Bank became…Ha, your ears prick. No I’m sorry. Jordan did not turn them into citizens of Palestine. All got Jordanian nationality. Don’t lose heart though. The year 1967 is 19 years away. We may yet come upon law to give your Palestinians legal life.  

So what happened after Jordan annexed the West Bank? You can’t simply claim a territory and the citizens therein. Your claim must be accepted. Correct? Law Professor?

True.

I’d like you to tell the court, who accepted Jordan’s claim?

I – I don’t believe your case fully clarified that.

So take a stab. No? Well then. The whole neighborhood spat at Jordan’s claim to the West Bank. Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Syria, and Egypt demanded that Jordan be expelled from the Arab League. And the rest of the world? Any takers there? Two only: the UK and Pakistan recognized the sovereignty of Jordan. Is that in the book you co-edited?

I don’t believe it is.

Then we’ve got a problem. Plenty of Jordanians are in sight but where are the Palestinian people? For nineteen long years Jordan ruled the West Bank. From 1948 to 1967 it failed to create a state for your people. As a matter of fact it did do something for the Palestinians – the Arab hoards that fled to Jordan, to escape the 1948 war. Jordan dumped them in refugee camps where even today they live like dogs.

Well, Professor, what do you say to Jordan not lifting a finger to integrate the refugees? Seventy years later your Palestinians are stuck in refugee camps. 

From the Bench. Is there a question for the accused to answer?  

My Lord, I leave it up to him. A man who devotes precious time to abuse of human rights may possibly want to remedy the situation.    

From the Bench.  Professor Lynk, the floor is yours. If you care to, you may speak your mind.

The accused consults with his defence team. My Lord, not at the present juncture, thank you.

A timely adjournment for dinner. Court rise!  

Session 2

Now here’s a puzzle we have to solve, you and I, Professor Lynk. We know that Egypt washed its hands of Gaza and we know that Jordan’s claim to the West Bank failed. It left the territories orphaned. Was there really no one with a legal mandate to love and care for them? It would be unconscionable were that the position.    

Now I want you to look again at the case marked Exhibit A. Would you read out what is written about the mandate Charter of San Remo.  

Okay. “The territories were meant for the Jewish people’s national home by the Mandate Charter of San Remo of 1920.”

A Mandate Charter – as a Professor of law, you would know it as a binding legal instrument. San Remo in your book? Not in your book? A crying shame.  

But thankfully we’ve arrived. Professor, we’re at your famous year 1967 and your wait is over . It’s the year that Israel occupied your Palestinian territories, the year stuck at the end of your long title. We could find supporting law. Why not – 1967 was a year for miracles. Israel sent a lot of armies packing in six days and won Gaza and the West Bank for its trouble. Let’s see if we can’t produce a miracle law for a miracle Palestinian people.

My Lord, if you please. I would like to call on my professor judge at this point. Judge Stephen M Schwebel is equal part academic, justice and historian. He was elected to the ICC in January 1981, afterwards re-elected twice, and served as President of the ICC from 1997 to 2000.

From the Bench. Tolerance, can I remind you, is not an elastic commodity. Mind that you make respectful use of my colleague of old.

My Lord…

Professor Lynk, I want you to go to Judge Schwebel’s ruling in the Annexure . Kindly read it to the court.

The whole or in part?

It is not so long.  Read the whole please.

Where the prior holder of territory had seized that territory unlawfully [Jordan], the state which subsequently takes that territory (Israel) in the lawful exercise of self-defence has, against that prior holder, a better title. As between Israel, acting defensively in 1948 and 1967, on the one hand, and her Arab neighbours, acting aggressively in 1948 and 1967, on the other, Israel has the better title in the territory than do Jordan and Egypt.

Thank you, Professor. Well put, don’t you think? Israel has more right than Jordan to be occupying the West Bank and more right than Egypt to be occupying Gaza – which it no longer does.

Now look further down, to a foundation principle of international law. Kindly read what he, the learned Professor Judge, set down.

This one? “No legal right shall spring from a wrong.”

Yes, that one! It cuts off the desperados. They vow that in 1988 when Jordan formally disengaged from the West Bank and surrendered its claim to sovereignty, Jordan transferred or ceded the territory to the Palestinians to erect their State of Palestine. Of course you get no comfort from it. Your job title says that Israel has occupied Palestinian territory since 1967. That’s twenty one years too early for what Jordan did in 1988.  Never mind. The principle set down by Justice Schwebel renders null and void Jordan’s supposed transfer of sovereignty to the Palestinians.  

From the Bench. Can people really be that desperate for a State of Palestine?

My Lord, they can. Many would like to make the world’s 23^rd Muslim state on the territory that Jordan let go of.

Is that a fact. Well, well. But we digress. Carry on looking for the Palestinian occupied territory that the accused requires.    

Yes, my Lord…

Professor, be patient. It could be that the territory we’re looking for is not far ahead. Possibly your title got the year wrong. We could even stumble upon your occupied territory in 1967. The next place to look for it would be UN Security Council Resolution 242 of 1967. It made proposals for resolving, to quote, the “Arab-Israeli conflict.”

That word, “Arab.” Professor, rather a beater, isn’t it? Nowhere in Resolution 242 do we read of a party to the conflict named the Palestinians. The resolution was adopted to end the state of belligerency then existing between, I quote, the “states concerned.” What states fought the 1967 war? Must be in the book you edited: “The Middle East conflict and international law.” No? Well, I never.

My Lord, UN Security Council Resolution 242 of 1967 referred to these combatants: Israel, Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. Why not the Palestinian people? Simple. They weren’t a combatant in that war. Why were they not? Professor – why were the Palestinians not in Resolution 242? Discrimination? No. It’s an impossibility: a nation that did not exist could not fight the war in 1967.

Bench taps papers together, bustles, removes spectacles, leans back. I am going to give you until after the tea break. Have your summation ready. Court rise!

Concluding statement for the prosecution

My Lord, the West Bank remains a political hotspot and legal tightrope. The accused adheres to the street narrative that Israel occupies Palestinian territory. He cannot mean Gaza. Another power occupies Gaza –the terrorist group Hamas governs the strip and wages rocket wars from it.

The problem is, Israel’s legal claim to the West Bank seems cut and dried. The territory was never under the lawful sovereignty of any nation after the British Mandate ended. That Mandate called for the territories of Gaza and the West Bank to be part of the ‘Jewish National Home.’

Then we have UN Security Council Resolution 242 of 1967. Israel is entitled to secure borders. Israel may retain some of the territory captured from Jordan, or indeed from Egypt. And then we have Judge Stephen M Schwebel again:

“Unlawful aggression by surrounding states against the independent and lawful state of Israel in 1967 cannot and should not be rewarded.”

But the accused, Michael Lynk, a professor of law mark you, does more than fight for the Palestinian Arabs; he fights with them. He seeks to reward the unlawful aggression that Justice Schwebel warned not to reward. The accused wants a state of Palestine to be erected on territories without dipping his legal toe in the water. What Lynk wants and what’s legal, my Lord, are chalk compared to cheese.

None of this stops the professor praying for a State of Palestine as per the job title:            ‘Special Rapporteur for the human rights situation in the Palestinian Territories occupied since 1967’ Amen. 

Lynk is not the first one. Every Special Rapporteur before him prayed for the same thing.

Why? My Lord because it’s a practical prayer. We heard the resume of the accused during the trial. He worked with UNRWA in the West Bank and Gaza. The acronym stands for, UN Relief and Welfare Agency. On tours of duty the accused would be under the auspices of that body. His reports on ‘The human rights situation’ rely heavily on it. Had he wanted to be independent, objective and impartial, he couldn’t be – not while he depends on UNRWA at the coal face.

I tell no secret, UNWRA supports the Palestinians in more than relief and welfare. It gives military support. It has terrorists from Hamas and the PLO on its payroll. No Special Rapporteur could work with UNWRA unless he and it shared one goal, and one animosity for the Jew among nations. Only last month UNRWA revealed a tunnel beneath one of its schools used by terrorists during the 11-day war. It marked the latest of many scandals. In the 2014 IDF operation, Protective Edge, rockets were discovered inside a school run by UNRWA. In that fashion a booby-trapped UNRWA clinic was detonated, killing three IDF soldiers. Aside from massive explosives hidden in the walls, the clinic stood on top of a network of terror tunnels. The evidence speaks volumes: UNRWA is closely embedded with Hamas.

My Lord, if UNWRA and Hamas are closely embedded, and the accused is closely embedded with UNWRA, then ipso facto the accused is closely embedded with Hamas.

Plea for judgment

Michael Lynk the Special Rapporteur is supposedly impartial and objective; and must have integrity. A dysfunction in one of those attributes would void them all.

My Lord, no dysfunction can be found because the attributes are not there at all. Or if they are, the attributes are in antithetical form. You look for impartiality and find prejudice. You look for objectivity and finds bias. You look for integrity and find deception. Michael Lynks’ commitment to human rights is a hollowed out coconut. Human rights is no more than a ruse. It camouflages the oldest hatred in the book.

SP Apfel vs. the government of SA and the President of the EU

ANNEXURE A

The government of South Africa wished to invoke the Consumer Protection Act. It sought to “require traders not to incorrectly label products that originate from the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) as products of Israel.”

Martin Schulz, ex President of the European Union, warned Israel that Europe will have its way. “There is enormous pressure, also in the European Parliament, to label products because a lot of my colleagues consider the settlements illegal. They think the rule should be that products coming from regions with an illegal status couldn’t have normal access to the European market.”

Problem is, OPT is a figment of the imagination – no territory of that description in binding  international law. Simply, there is no Palestinian territory for Israel to occupy.

Advocate for Israel

Your honour, we intend to show that OPT does not exist. The South African Minister of Trade and Industry intends to label products from a fictional source.

To begin, certain foundation facts are not in dispute. In the 1948 War Egypt grabbed the Gaza Strip, and Jordan took Judea and Samaria — the “West Bank.” Egypt did not claim sovereignty in Gaza, but in 1950 Jordan annexed Judea and Samaria. This annexation was not recognized by international law, and even the Arab nations objected to it.

In 1967, after the Six Day War, these territories, originally meant for the Jewish people’s national home according to the Mandate Charter of San Remo, 1920, returned to Israeli control.

With your permission we call our first witness. Professor Judge Stephen M Schwebel was elected to the ICC in January 1981, and subsequently re-elected twice, serving as president of the court from 1997–2000.

“A state [Israel] acting in lawful exercise of its right of self-defense may seize and occupy foreign territory as long as such seizure and occupation are necessary to its self-defense. Where the prior holder of territory had seized that territory unlawfully [Jordan], the state which subsequently takes that territory in the lawful exercise of self-defense has, against that prior holder, a better title. As between Israel, acting defensively in 1948 and 1967, on the one hand, and her Arab neighbors, acting aggressively, in 1948 and 1967, on the other, Israel has the better title in the territory… including the whole of Jerusalem, than do Jordan and Egypt.”

So, your honor, Israel has more right than Jordan to be occupying the West Bank, and more right than Egypt to be occupying Gaza (it no longer does, of course, occupy Gaza).

Thus far we have met nothing that’s “Palestinian” about the territory.But perhaps that’s ahead of us.”

The European Union with the Government of South Africa claim that Israel is occupying territory that belongs to the Palestinians. We have established that Israel took this territory, not from Palestinians but from Egypt and Jordan. Advocates for BDS, please tell this court when and how the Palestinians emerged with a claim and a right to this territory.

But before we put the cart before the horse, it would be better if you begin by explaining when and how Palestinians emerged as a people. After all there cannot be a claim and a right without a people to claim their right. Please refer to even one international instrument wherein the inhabitants of Mandatory Palestine were referred to as the Palestinian people. No?

How about starting in 1922 with the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine? It gave Britain, the mandatory power, the following obligation:

“The Administration of Palestine, while ensuring that the rights and position of other sections of the population are not prejudiced, shall facilitate Jewish immigration under suitable conditions and shall encourage, in co-operation with the Jewish agency…close settlement by Jews, on the land…”

No Palestinians in there; merely “other sections of the population.” BDS supporters, we are not going to find your Palestinian people in the British Mandate, so let’s move on.

Shall we try November 1947 and UN General Assembly Resolution No. 181. T. This provided for “Independent Arab and Jewish States and the Special International Regime for the City of Jerusalem…”  An Arab state, mind — not a Palestinian state. No sign yet of a Palestinian people. But let’s keep trying.

The year 1967 would be the next time to look. By now Israel has taken Judea and Samaria off Jordan’s hands, and become the occupying power. Hopefully now we shall find the Palestinian people.

The place to look for them would be in UN Security Council Resolution 242 which contained proposals of the UN Security Council for resolving the “Arab-Israeli conflict.”

Note the word “Arab.” Nowhere in the UN resolution do we find a party to the conflict called the Palestinians. The resolution was adopted to end the state of belligerency then existing between the “States concerned:” Israel, Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. No Palestinian people before 1967!

Your honor, at this point we can do no better than call on a Palestinian leader. Zahir Muhsein was head of the PLO Military Department and a member of the PLO Executive Committee:

“The Palestinian people do not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the State of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality, today, there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese….The moment we reclaim our right to …Palestine, we will not wait …to unite Palestine and Jordan.”

No surprise. Under Jordanian control for 19 years, leaders of the future Palestinian people disavowed any claim to the territories. They were happy to be under Jordanian rule. Look it up: Article 24 of the National Covenant of the PLO, May 28, 1964.

But let’s go past 1967 and see if we cannot give the Palestinians a right to have a state, in a territory called OPT. Our BDS opponents shall not be felled by the facts of history, however indisputable, or the opinion of one jurist, however exalted.

We call on Professor Talia Einhorn, from the T.M.C. Asser Institute for international law in The Hague.

There is nothing in international law that requires a Palestinian state between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean, not even the UN Partition Resolution of November 29, 1947…it is merely a recommendation and nothing more…. The fact that the Arab states did not accept the Partition Plan voids the recommendation of any legal basis.

Thank you, Professor Einhorn. So the Palestinians have no claim in law to the occupied territories.

The Oslo Accords.

To take us forward I now call on Alan Baker, who was legal counsel for Israel in the drafting of the Oslo Accords. Perhaps the agreements now in force, the Oslo Accords, may give the Palestinians some kind of right to the occupied territories.

Could you start, Mr. Baker, with the 1947 Partition Plan, so that the court may understand why today the Palestinians have no land to call their own?

“Had the Arabs accepted the Plan of Partition, passed by the UN in 1947, they too would have had a state, and that would have been the end to Jewish rights of settlement in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank). But the Arabs did not accept the Plan. Hence those Jewish rights to settle the “West Bank” did not end. Jewish settlements are not illegal.In 1993 Rabin and Arafat signed the declaration of principles on the White House lawn. This aimed to: “Establish a Palestinian Interim Self-Government Authority, the elected Council for the Palestinian people…for a transitional period not exceeding five years, leading to a permanent settlement.”

“Observe: The Declaration made no mention of a Palestinian state as the goal; nor did it call for a cessation of Jewish settlement activity.

 Then, in 1995, Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA) entered into an interim agreement. Again there was no mention of a Palestinian state as the final goal.  It provided only for an unspecified “outcome:”

 “Neither side shall initiate or take any step that will change the status of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip pending the outcome of …negotiations. Neither party shall be deemed… to have renounced or waived any of its existing rights, claims or positions.”  

Thank you, Mr. Baker. So Israel, when signing the 1995 interim agreement, which is in force to this day, did not renounce any of its rights or claims to the occupied territories.

Summing up

Your honour, as much as the European Union and the government of SA want Gaza and the West Bank to belong to the Palestinians, international law is against it. There simply is no Palestinian territory for Israel to occupy. That piece of real estate is no more real than a wish list.

Prosecution of a Zionist prosecutor

The accused. Professor Michael Lynk

Special Rapporteur: UN Human Rights Council

Charged with: Fraud to commit incitement

Opening statement for the Prosecution

My Lord, the accused is more than a prosecutor. Look at the broad shoulders. They carry a whole criminal justice system. Michael Lynk polices, he prosecutes and he adjudicates. And, my Lord, every time Lynk the policeman apprehends and hauls the one villain to court, he passes a guilty verdict, every time.

Who is this offender, so utterly habituated to crime? It is no walking talking human. Lynk polices, prosecutes and passes the verdict on a country, one tiny enough to fit into the domicile of my Lord’s court. The habitual villain goes by the name Israel, home to the Jewish people. I submit, the case before the court is unique as the unicorn.

The accused is charged with committing fraud with intent to incite from March 2016 when the Human Rights Council selected Lynk for that very purpose. I will read to the court his latest fraud with intent to incite. The accused wrote it during the May 2021 conflict between Gaza and Israel.   

“This most recent violence has a depressingly familiar pattern to it. Israel and Palestinian armed groups in Gaza exchange missiles and rockets following dispossession and the denial of rights in the occupied Palestinian territory, with Israel’s far greater firepower inflicting far higher death tolls and injuries and a much larger scale of property destruction. Israel’s actions to stop the rocket fire from Gaza “constitute indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks against civilians and civilian property. These attacks likely violate the laws of war and constitute a war crime.”

My Lord, the statement is pockmarked with fraud.

1. Prof Lynk’s “Palestinian armed groups” are defined as terrorists by, among others, the US, the EU, Japan, UK, Jordan, Israel and, my Lord, his own government of Canada.
2. “Armed groups and Israel “exchange rockets,” he writes.  My Lord, the US fleet in Pearl Harbour and Japanese Kamikaze exchanged rockets.

(Bench interrupts) You make a wild analogy, do you not? You don’t mean to tell me that the narrative is so ludicrous?

 My Lord, yes I do. The next one is more grotesque. The professor makes a pineapple equal to a banana. He will get the chance to refute my Pearl Harbour analogy. He may enlighten the court. I for one cannot wait to hear his explanation why Gaza’s “armed groups” and the IDF are military forces of equal legitimacy or, to his mind, illegitimacy. (From the Bench: Continue then.) 

• In one breath the accused writes of Islamist tyrants who seized the Gaza strip in a violent coup, and of Israel, a member of the comity of nations, a dynamic, free, cultured, multi-party democracy. In Israel you can speak your mind more freely, my Lord, than you can in the professor’s own Canada. In Israel you won’t be ‘cancelled’ for saying that Woke-ism = Racism. You won’t be branded a ‘hater’ for denying that men give birth, or for insisting that humans, like creatures, can have only two genders: male and female. (Incredulous laughter from the Bench)
• Another narrative: “Following dispossession and denial of rights”… The accused refers to the pending Israeli Supreme Court ruling about whether to respect the property rights of Jewish landlords in the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood of Jerusalem. If the Court rules in favour of the Palestinian Arab occupiers, it will be Jews who are denied rights to property.
• “…In the occupied Palestinian territory” My Lord, on this item our whole case will stand or fall.   
• Israel “inflicting far higher death tolls and injuries and …property destruction.” The devil is in the detail, and the accused runs scared of detail. How many fatalities were combatants plus civilians who were shielding them? How many properties destroyed were used for the rocket assaults, the propaganda war and by the attackers for taking refuge?      
• Israel’s “indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks against civilians and civilian property…” These, my Lord, are the personal judgment of the accused.
• “..Violate the laws of war and constitute a war crime.” By a Freudian slip the accused fingers the double war crimes committed by his “armed groups”. It was they who shot rockets from among their civilians upon Israeli civilians.

Cross-examination

Prof Lynk, your title is – A long one isn’t it! Let me read it out:

Special Rapporteur for the human rights situation in the Palestinian Territories occupied  since 1967.

I would like you to tell the court in what capacity you work for the UN Human Rights Council.  

That’s readily done. I don’t work for the Council. I am not employed by it, I don’t get paid for my work. Council members selected me to act as the Special Rapporteur. I submit reports to  Council members and to the UN General Assembly. They debate my reports and pass resolutions thereon.  

Guidance from the Bench

The court cannot rule on an employment contract. In any case Professor Lynk’s terms of employment have no bearing on the case. The fact that the Human Rights Council appointed him is sufficient in and of itself. Prosecution, I must ask you to keep your witness to the straight and narrow.

My Lord I will.

Prof  Lynk, can we move on to why you were appointed by the Human Rights Council. A Special Rapporteur has to satisfy what criteria?

There are certain attributes he must have:   

1. Expertise
2. Experience in law and human rights
3. Independence
4. Impartiality
5. Personal integrity
6. Objectivity

Thank you. Well, I for one shall not argue about your expertise and experience.  Professor in the Faculty of Law, Western University, London, Ontario, since 1999. No question, you are right up there with the accomplished professors who held the office before you, And independent – you do the work not for the love of money but for the love of the work.  

I believe so.

Know Richard Falk? The Special Rapporteur at one time.

Of course. Law professor at Princeton.

Yes, the law professor. Falk fingered Israel for involvement in 9/11. And later posted a cartoon depicting Israel as a rabid mongrel. The dog wore a Judaic head cover decorated with the Star of David. The cartoon, Falk admitted, was ‘strongly anti-Semitic’. Then he apologised for offending dogs.   

(From the Bench) I thought you were examining the witness. What is your question?

My Lord, I am building up to it. My question is coming.

Then mind what you are building up is not a castle. Patience is not a virtue in my book. Keep the building to a cottage.  

My Lord…

Prof Lynk – John Dugard was another Special Rapporteur. Know him?

Indeed. Prof Dugard. Among the many bows to his fiddle he was a part time judge at the International Court of Justice.

Fiddle – good word. Perhaps you know that his title was not quite the one you have?  What is your title again?”

Special Rapporteur for the human rights situation in the Palestinian Territories occupied since 1967.’

‘For the human rights situation.’ Interesting… I don’t suppose you know the title in Dugard’s time?

Don’t think I do.

I happened to be the prosecutor in that case so I can help you out. Prof Dugard had the title, ‘Special Rapporteur on violation of Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.’ Note the words I stressed: on violation. How important would you say they are? Very or not at all? Well Professor? No?

Then you leave me to tell you. Israel was a violator before the Special Rapporteur gathered evidence to that effect. The role of Prof Dugard was to find the evidence that would make Israel guilty. It was the mandate for the job – to pass a guilty verdict! He would have contravened the mandate had he reported that Israel had not committed any crime. I made that point when Dugard stood in the same dock you now stand in.

What’s more, the title underwent window dressing after I exposed the problem. Prof Lynk, you are living proof that the title changed. Your title is the one that’s been window dressed. Do you think your title is better? More legal-wise?

I believe my title avoids bias.

Do you now. That remains to be seen. We are about to pay your title a visit. We must find if it holds water. Or is it leaky like the title Prof Dugard had. But before we do that, I want to throw another name at you. Heard the name Otto Ohlendorf?

A Special Rapporteur before my time?

Not exactly. Herr Otto Ohlendorf was a commander in the Einsatzgruppen. That was the name of Nazi firing squads that roamed the Soviet Union exterminating Jewish populations. Now here’s the thing. Ohlendorf had degrees in law from three universities. He had a doctorate in jurisprudence.

(From the Bench) What is the question you want the accused to answer?

No question, my Lord. I’m done with that line of examination. I’m ready to move on to a new line.  

Then we could all do with respite. The court will adjourn. We reconvene on the morrow.  

Day 2

Professor Michael Lynk in the dock. Charge: Fraud with intent to commit incitement.

Prosecution summing up

A professor of law who worked in refugee camps on the West Bank with the UN Relief and Works Agency ought to satisfy, almost by default, three of the six criteria laid down for a Special Rapporteur. The accused has cleared that bar by a mile. He’s got the expertise, the experience and, being an outsider, is independent of the Human Rights Council.

We have three other criteria to consider. To investigate the ‘human rights situation’ on the ground and to write up reports thereon, the job spec requires that the Special Rapporteur must have:

Impartiality

Personal integrity

Objectivity

My Lord, we may not blindly assume that a professor who forsakes varsity gown and corridors and decamps to ‘Palestine’ packs his scholarly habits. We may not assume that he will, by force of habit, act objectively, impartially and with integrity. Yes, the accused was appointed for those attributes. But so was Professor Falk who smeared dogs and Jews. And so was Prof Dugard, who pre-supposed Israel’s guilt and went to look for the crimes that would fit a guilty verdict.    

(From the Bench)Continue in that succinct way. I discerned a buzz of gratitude from the gallery.       

Thank you, my Lord, I shall try.

Prof, I want to put a proposition to you. Call them the three virtues: impartiality, personal integrity and objectivity. Your function demands them – as indeed that of a presiding judge demands those attributes. Going about unearthing a country’s abuse of human rights must be a demanding occupation. Do you find it so?  

It is demanding. I would say I’m more like a police detective than a judge.

Interesting you say that. But here’s the proposition or rule. Whether policeman, judge or Special Rapporteur, you must have all three virtues or none at all. You have the lot or you have none. Someone who is not impartial can’t have integrity and objectivity. Someone who is not objective can’t be impartial and have integrity. The virtues, I submit, are mutually inclusive. Do you agree with that proposition?

I do. Completely.

Very good. Now on to the litmus test: the job title on your business card, if you have one, ends with, “Palestinian Territories occupied since 1967.” Yes?

Those are the words.

Prof Lynk, you co-edited the book, ‘International Law and the Middle East Conflict’, Routledge, 2011.  

I did.  

Fascinating title. I must get round to reading it. Because I haven’t yet, you will have to help me out. ‘Palestinian territories occupied since 1967’ refers of course to the Six-day War. The war ended with Israel occupying more territory than it had when the war began. Correct?

A whole lot more.

You edited a book on the Middle East conflict, so tell me: Israel took the whole lot of territory from…? What countries did all this territory belong to before the Six-day war?

Well, Israel took Gaza which had been under Egypt, and it took the West Bank which had been under Jordan.

So then, Egypt and Jordan had the territories until Israel took them over. That is what you have told the court.  Correct?

Correct.

Well now, I am puzzled. Your job title, clear as daylight, maintains that in 1967 Israel took the territories from the Palestinians. Now you told me, no – Israel took the territories from Egypt and Jordan. Which of the two is correct? They cannot both be. Professor…?

(From the Bench) The accused must answer or it will be recorded on the trial records as a ‘no answer’.  

The accused consults with his defence team, which requests, and gets, a 7- day adjournment.

Note

This trial record was emailed to Prof Lynk at his Faculty of Law, Western University, London, Ontario. He has 7 days to respond before the trial resumes and judgment follows.

The lie that eternally bugs Israel

Biden rescued the rascals of Ramallah

What to Google for locating a forum of imperious people, fickle and treacherous, inveterate feudists, liars and extortionists? UN / General Assembly/ Diplomats perpetually at daggers drawn

On a certain day in November 2012, the knaves and knives were busy in that august assembly as members deliberated and voted for a mongrel named, ‘Observer with non-member status.’ The vote gave Israel a new neighbor: a Palestinian state-in-waiting. The neighbor was not real, but it was not imaginary either. Call it a Halfling. The international community had made a quasi-state, and Israel had to get used to it living next door.

“A victory for the values of truth,” Sudan’s honorable representative said. In UN language he meant a defeat for truth and victory for a lie of long standing. For Israel it meant skating on thin ice. For international law it meant relegation to a fun league. For dreamers of a Two-State Solution it meant a consolation prize. For nine-tenths of member countries it meant one step closer to cancelling Israel’s right to exist. For America and Europe it meant a new arm-twisting lever to get Israel to do their bidding. For all players it meant a whole new ballgame.

So the world body breathed life into, “The State of Palestine on the Palestinian Territory occupied since 1967”.  And no one blinked.  No one in the great assembly batted an eye, even not the Ambassador for Israel.

Every cause must have a catchphrase, and the anti-Israel cause boasts the Coca-Cola of them all. “Occupied Palestinian Territory” (OPT) is more than a catchphrase: it’s a brand, a powerful and valuable brand. Mahmoud Abbas and his Palestinian Authority grew rich and powerful on the back of OPT. Ex President Donald Trump knocked the brand for a double loop, declaring the territories not occupied, followed by cutting off aid to the PA. President Biden restored the brand to its former glory by declaring the territories occupied, and, because they were, by rescuing the rascals of Ramallah with handouts.  

Nonsense is a powerful accumulator. Repeat nonsense enough times and it: (a) makes perfect sense; (b) disguises a plot as a policy; (c) turns falsehood into fact.

Israel’s defeat had been a long time coming. When it came her ambassador took it on the chin. That’s what a forty-year lie can do – slip into the skin of truth with barely a sigh.

What is it makes OPT pure nonsense? Different things, the main nonsense being there was no Palestinian territory for Israel to occupy.

Israel snapped up the territories fair and square from Egypt and Jordan. I mean, how can you occupy land which belongs to no one? Turn Middle East wars and laws upside down and inside out, the ‘West Bank’ can be neither occupied nor Palestinian land.

Expelled from their dugout, anti-Israelites scamper to another, firing their next volley from the landmark Security Council Resolution 242 of 1968. This required Israel to withdraw from some of the territory it snapped up in the 6-Day War. NO, says the Palestinian camp, No, no no. Resolution 242 told Israel to withdraw from all territory.

Some or all—quite how it connects to the narrative of OPT is not explained. It could be a bridge too far for those wanting Palestine to prevail. It cannot – Resolution 242 nowhere refers to Palestinians, which makes good sense.

(a) They were not one of the belligerents in the Six Day War. (b) The drafters of Resolution 242 looked to Israel the victor to give back territory – to the defeated Arab belligerents, not to Palestinians. (c) Not until a year after Resolution 242 do such people appear in the records. (d) No binding UN resolution, before or since, no treaty or agreement, gives the Palestinians a leg to stand on. In short, to speak of OPT is to speak UN lingo and to be caught engaging in wishful thinking.  

So how come professors of law are wishful thinkers?

Prof Dugard was a law unto himself

Take John Dugard, ex professor of law at the universities of Leiden and the Witwatersrand. While teaching, Dugard also worked in the capacity of a policeman-prosecutor for the UN Human Rights Commission. As Rapporteur his job was to investigate, rebuke and report on Israel’s bad conduct in the “Occupied Palestinian Territories.” The land of nod again. OPT in Dugard’s job title was bad enough. His rebukes were full of OPT. An example: “The Wall being built by Israel in the name of security penetrates deep into Palestinian territory.”

I once asked the professor to clarify this for me. Please could he quote law to the effect that Israel occupies Palestinian territory? He emailed me as follows:

“I think it would be helpful if you were to read the Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) of 9 July 2004 and the judgment of the High Court of Israel in the Beit Sourik case of 30 June 2004. They will provide you with answers to most of your questions and give you a better understanding of the legal norms that govern the situation.”

That was the sum total of Dugard’s answer. With all due respect to the lawyer of repute: an “advisory opinion” and one obscure case (I’ll return to them) seem nothing compared to the enormity of deciding the boundaries of Israel. Not to mention a problem of timing. Dugard started work for the UN Human Rights Commission back in 2001. So, before 2004 he did not have the precedent of the Beit Sourik case. It means that Dugard’s job title was fake. It means that, like a doting father, he took land from Israel and gifted the land to people under his protection. The verdict: For three years Professor Dugard acted as a law unto himself.

Before allowing the witness to step down, one more thing: Professor, you wrote of “legal norms.” I consult the Oxford Dictionary, I find that “norm” or “normative” has one of two meanings: “Value judgments as contrasted with stating facts;” Or, “A standard of behavior that is required, desired or designated as normal.” Value judgments, opinions and standards of behavior….Our lawman had no authority to make believe that “Palestinian Territory” was a real bit of real estate.

Anyone who read Dugard’s UN reports would have had no suspicion he was making up law and history on the go, that he was not a law-abiding expert, that he was not using the sober professional judgment of a professor of international law. No doubt Dugard would love Gaza and the West Bank to have “Palestine” stamped over them. Sadly for him, law and history are not the same as ideology.

What to say of an expert who climbs aboard a political bandwagon. Dugard is more than premature.  He is presumptuous. He anticipates a land swap agreement between two parties. He goes over the head of the party in possession – of Israel with 9/10 of the law in its favor. What makes a legal expert, bogus title and all, parade like an avenging angel? “Israel will be held accountable for its violations of humanitarian law and human rights law.”

Better than a law professor, the King of Jordan handled the hoax well. King Hussein grasped why steps had to be taken to give OPT respectable clothes. He told the November 1987 Arab League summit in Amman: “The appearance of a distinct Palestinian national personality comes as an answer to Israel’s claim that Palestine is Jewish.” The monarch was explaining why a new and distinct people had to be concocted. After all, no Arab leader liked the idea of the West Bank and Gaza belonging to Israel.  

A badly shaved Egyptian led PLO

The task of dressing the coveted land in respectable clothes was given to the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), a clique led by a badly shaved Egyptian in keffiyeh and khaki drills named Yasser Arafat. Smartly, it went to work on the PLO covenant. Articles 6 and 24 were the big ones. Erasing words here, inking in new words there, Arafat and his inner circle soon unpacked a new people with straw still clinging to beards…And gave them a holy mission. On July 17, 1968, the Palestinian people sprang from the PLO Charter, claiming the West Bank and Gaza as their ancient birthright and heritage.

How it was all done. The first step erased the old declaration that the West Bank and Gaza were not occupied (by Jordan and Egypt.) Next, a declaration was inserted that the territories were occupied (by Israel). Finally, a declaration was inserted that the Palestinian people are sworn to liberate their occupied homeland.

Still there remained the shameful Article 7 in the Charter. It contained the offending words: “Jews of Palestinian origin are considered Palestinians.” Palestinian Jews were an impossible thing. After deleting them, the PLO wrote in a definition with a grudge. Palestinians were now “those who had resided in Palestine until the beginning of the Zionist invasion.” So at a stroke of the pen Palestinian Jews became invaders.

Immediately the world tuned into the new Palestinians dispossessed, and turned against the new culprit, the Jewish occupiers. Palestinian leaders in perpetuity lost no time decorating, enlarging and tidying up their tale of Jews who’d swept down from Europe to put the indigenous people under their colonial boot. From there it was a quickstep to the accepted wisdom of Occupied Palestinian Territories.

Yet OPT developed into more than a risible lie. It acquired the power to create facts on the ground. For one thing, the international community adopted OPT. For another, a vocal section of the Diaspora, even Israelis, nailed their colors to the mast. Thirdly, an economic bubble developed around OPT. Monthly pay slips of untold thousands of UN staffers came to depend on this real estate. UNWRA alone developed into an employment agency on a grand scale. In the private sector, hundreds of human rights entities and their workers would be the poorer without OPT.

The world over OPT is the article of faith on which anti-Zionists peg their zeal. Their god commands them to hate Zionism and revere Palestinians. Hence the now entrenched policies and demands: label products from the OPT; boycott Israel and divest from OPT companies.

If not for the big hoax the world would be a different if quieter, place. And the Zionist enterprise would not find itself perennially in the dog box.

The anti-Zionist decree

Who decrees what for the Jew among nations?

Whenever Israel goes to war and wins, mobs and the media go berserk. They should have our gratitude. Think of Shakespeare. Pageantry can be a classroom. The latest mini war with bloodthirsty rocketeers taught one more time, the nations can’t stomach the Jews giving better than they get. It grills their gizzards.

An Israel with military might insults the comforting concept of the victim Jew. Envy is a provoker par excellence. Envy of the Jewel of the Middle East and the Jew among nations, provokes the oldest hatred mankind knows.   

Envy explains the hatred of minorities

Amy Chua’s book, ‘World on fire’ is not about anti-Semitism, but is probably better at explaining it than most books on the subject. Two conditions, Chua writes, have to be present for a minority to be hated. (1) The hated group must be conspicuous, otherwise it would not be singled out. (2) It must be successful, otherwise it would not be envied. By winning wars Israel meets the conditions better than any minority on earth.    

So the ‘Why’ is settled. But to understand the anti-Zionist decree every time Israel subdues Hamas and the mobs and media go berserk, the ‘How’ is more to the point. How far does the hatred extend? The answer revolves on progress and its opposite, regress.  

We call it progress when privileges of the few become rights for all. Regress works off that. Way back to the time of Abraham the rights of all, such as they were, never trickled down to his circumcised folk who, instead of rights, got shackled with killer impositions. And that set a pattern for history. In different epochs different powers decreed different limits for the ‘Saturday People.’ With the passage of time the limits contracted. There came a time when the pageant had played out, when there was no limit to contract. That time ended, or seemed to, in 1945.

What path did the regression take?

The Greeks and Romans decreed, you have no right to live among us as Jews.After them came the Church decree, you have no right to live among us.

Bringing the regress to an end, came the decree of the Final Solution: you have no right to live.

In our epoch who decrees what for the Jew among nations?

Anti-Zionism, an axis of three religions (Islam, unorthodox Christianity and unorthodox Judaism) and a secular movement, decrees what on Israel? Wait for it.

The anti-Zionist decree is more encompassing than Hitler’s: As a country you have no right to exist and as a people you have no right to live.

Forget the exterminators

Thoughts instantly fly to the crazies, to Al Qaeda, ISIS, Hamas and the nuclear-bent Mullahs. Until the last Jew behind a rock is dead they will not rest. Forget the exterminators.

Well, how about the placard bearers worth a chuckle? ‘Kill the Zionists’; ‘Hitler should have finished the job’; ‘Palestine from the river to the sea.’ Leave the hotheads.

So – it’s the crackpots: BDS, Antifa, BLM, the KKK and neo Nazis. The crackpots are scary. But no.

Undeclared hater – the enemy within

Think of the undeclared haters – the enemy within. Think CNN, New York Times, Brussels law makers, the UN General Assembly and Human Rights Council. Think Amnesty Int. and Human Rights Watch. Think, seriously, of Jewish groups, J-Street or Breaking the Silence. Think comedian Trevor Noah or the President of S. Africa. Then listen out for the decree clinging to their condemnations. You, Israel, have no right to exist, and you the Jews have no right to live.

Google all you like; nothing remotely like that turns up. Of course it won’t. Undeclared haters are too fond of their fabulous careers, limelight and luxury living to speak their minds. Credibility and reputations would implode left right and centre. Imagine a CNN newscaster coming out of the closet with, ‘no right to live.’

Anti-Zionists in suits, therefore, temper their tones and modulate their words as they tread a thin red line. On the respectable side of the line they voice concern for Palestinian lives. And they quote ‘experts’ on Israel’s possible war crimes. But accumulate the lies told and the opinions disguised as news, and you cross the line into Final Solution territory: no right to live and exist.

Flow of Jew blood not enough

A comedian being funny makes a better case in point than a newscaster being droll. Trevor Noah on The Daily Show bemoaned the lopsided casualties and capabilities between Hamas and the IDF.  “If you are in a fight where the other person cannot beat you, how hard should you retaliate when they try to hurt you?”

Scratch the clownish complaint – the veneer is thin. Trevor Noah shares a boat with the exterminators, hotheads and crackpots. The war toll favors ‘Kikes.’ There are too many dead Muslims and not enough of them. That’s what clownish Noah effectively said. And note, when Israel kills one Palestinian, the needle of resentment can move as much as if it had killed one hundred.   

What’s it about, making Israel wage war safely so that no Palestinian gets hurt and no property gets damaged? Alice in Wonderland would be intrigued. ‘Curiouser and curiouser,’ she’d say. A truly Mad Hatter notion.

Israel not allowed to defend itself

Years ago a great columnist of the Washington Post elucidated it. He was the late Charles Krauthammer, and he wrote about an infamous debacle. A flotilla set sail with hot heads and journalists on board, to bust the blockade of Gaza.

But if no defense is permissible (to Israel) what’s left? Ah, but that’s the point. It’s the point understood by the blockade-busting flotilla of useful idiots and terror sympathizers, by the Turkish front organization that funded it, by the automatic anti-Israel Third World chorus at the United Nations, and by the supine Europeans who’ve had quite enough of the Jewish problem.  What’s left? Nothing! The whole point of the relentless international campaign is to deprive Israel of any legitimate form of self-defence. The world is tired of the troublesome Jews, 6 million — that number again — hard by the Mediterranean, refusing every invitation to national suicide. For which they are relentlessly demonized, ghettoized and constrained from defending themselves, even as the more committed anti-Zionists – Iranians in particular — openly prepare a more final solution.

Note the 4-pronged assault.

The agenda: to punish Israel for retaliating against an enemy intent on murder, mayhem and martyrdom.

The design: to hamstring Israel with phony laws of war when the enemy comes for murder, mayhem and martyrdom.

The trap: to set the bar for retaliation absurdly high, thus making Israel commit ‘war crimes.’

The looked-for result: to blow the whistle and haul Israel and its leaders before the UN, the media and kangaroo courts for ‘crimes against humanity.’

Forget the meaning of each prong, consider what they all mean. Israel has no right to defend itself. Israel has no right to exist. The Jew has no right to live.

Jean-Paul Sartre, the Holocaust era writer and philosopher, dissected the psychosis. Anti-Semitism, he wrote, is not a bad opinion of Jews but a personality. The anti-Semite suppresses murderous instincts.

 “Those thunderous diatribes hurled at the Yids are really capital executions.. He is a murderer who represses and censures the tendency to murder without being able to hold it back, therefore he kills in effigy.” 

Listen out for the killer instinct in Trevor Noah’s joke, or a CNN report on Gaza. Not enough Jew-blood has flowed.

Rockets fail time over time, to obliterate the Jew among nations. Where the ‘militants’ come short, the militant media and mobs pile into the fray. They set about making Israel pay for neuting the rocket assault. Their assault on truth is wider reaching and longer lasting then the capability of the rockets. Images of bombed out buildings and burials  of Gaza’s war crime victims –  Hamas victims – pressure the White House and UN Security Council to cuff Israel’s retaliation and make it declare a premature cease fire, leaving the exterminators partly intact.   

 “Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.”

Article 3 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, stops short of being universal. The Jews of Israel are left uncovered. Only they have no right to life and security of person. Every time the General Assembly or the Human Rights Council meet they rubberstamp the decree

Earth Day – the crisis is for real?

We are not fooled by, ‘fire!’ when the crier sits, arms folded. Nor are we fooled by, ‘help – drowning!’ when the crier rejects a life jacket because the gaudy pink colour is off putting. We are fooled by, ‘Earth is doomed – climate crisis!’ when the criers give a thumbs-down to online, 100% emission-free nuclear power.

The human condition, by common consent, is self-absorbed and headstrong. By means fair or foul people, especially those involved in politics, will have their way. During the year of Covid and campaigning the means justified the end when politicians and medics made medicine their handmaiden to defeat Trump. https://www.theepochtimes.com/how-the-hydroxychloroquine-scandal-wrecked-america-and-the-world-along-with-it_3679350.html?utm_campaign 

In climate politics the stakes are even bigger – big enough to take a hammer to nuclear plants so they don’t get in the way of a new green world. “Safe and productive nuclear plants are being closed across the rich world,” writes the Economist, itself a climate crier of note. “Closures and the retirement of older sites mean that advanced economies could lose two-thirds of their nuclear capacity by 2040 according to the IEA.” /2021/03/06/nuclear-power-must-be-well-regulated-not-ditched  

So there you are, Mother Earth is dying. Help! – though not with nuclear power. Climate alarmists reject the life jacket and, to make it unusable again, gash the rubber with a blade to leave everyone no choice but embrace green power. And we’d believe the day of Mother Earth’s demise if their climate models predicted it. Green revolutionaries want to save the world with a passion that makes them ready to kill for it.  

The climate narrative is all bizarre like that? Yes, Richard Lindzen, Professor Emeritus of Atmospheric Sciences, MIT, affirms. Just like that, completely bizarre. And he brings an allegory of his own.

Your physician tells you that your examination will consist of taking your temperature and nothing else. You blink. The physician then says that if your temperature is 37.3C rather than between 36.1C and 37.2C he will have to put you on life support. Now you know the man is a nutcase. That very situation in climate science, says Professor Lindzen, is considered to be ‘settled science.’ https://clintel.org/the-imaginary-climate-crisis-how-can-we-change-the-message-a-talk-by-richard-lindzen/

The absurdity does not stop there. Your physician can’t even do the basic before he puts you on life support. He can’t take your temperature properly. Many people, says Professor Lindzen, believe that some particular instrument takes the earth’s temperature. The record in fact is obtained another way entirely. “The concept of an average surface temperature is meaningless. One cannot very well average the Dead Sea with Mt. Everest.” He details the laborious method used to calculate earth’s temperature. “It may not be a good measure of climate at all,” he concludes. Think what that means. For all we know there may be no patient to be cured.

But say that carbon emission IS choking Mother Earth to death. Say you’re right to be worried sick for her. Would green power restore the grand old lady’s looks? What can wind and solar power do for Mother Earth?

On the contrary: take wind turbines. They require 360 times more land to generate the same amount of power as a nuclear plant. Or take natural gas, the land requirements of which are as low as nuclear power. It will need a lot of wind turbines to supply the energy we use, a lot of them on a lot of land. It would disfigure up to one third of Mother Earth. https://www.realclearenergy.org/authors/james_taylor/.

And that’s without transportation. Private and public transport are said to emit more carbon dioxide than burning fossil fuel for power. To convert all modes of transport to electric would disfigure another third of Mother Earth. Add up the turbines for powering up factories, building and homes, and say goodbye to 66% of her natural beauty. To meet the targets for America by the year 2050, onshore wind and solar farms could span 600,000 sq kms, an expanse greater than Minnesota, Wisconsin and Illinois combined. And still it would not produce enough power. https://www.economist.com/briefing/2021/02/20/joe-bidens-climate-friendly-energy-revolution?

Global warming giving you nightmares?

Wind turbines will make the nightmare worse. Turbines could make the earth warmer. Repeat. Wind power could make global warming worse. Harvard University study

Dream of pristine landscapes?

Wind turbines and solar panels would make them ugly as sin. The mining of rare earth minerals used in the components of equipment is the most environmentally destructive activity on the planet. Only a select number of bad countries allow such mining. China is one of them. China dominates the supply of rare earth minerals. 

Dislike the idea of China as THE superpower? Your country will be dependent on it for materials to build and maintain the infrastructure of green power.

Adore natural life?

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service estimates wind turbines already kill between 140,000 and 500,000 birds every year, including many protected and endangered species. They kill even more bats than birds. To raise wind power from 7% share of electricity to 35%, multiply the bird and bat slaughter by five.  

The idea of zero carbon emission makes you glow?

Then get used to far fewer open spaces and forests and mountains and the diversity of creatures inhabiting them. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/solar-power-expansion-could-pose-ecological-risks/.  https://www.realclearenergy.org/articles/2020/08/26/joe_bidens_climate_plan_would_be_a_disaster_for_the_environment_575374.html

Trust politicians to do what’s best for you? Using your money?

Not one cent of the trillions of dollars invested in green energy will come out of politicians  pockets. And they won’t lose their jobs or their life saving. Joe Biden has promised to spend $500 billion each year on abating climate change. The economic impact, Danish environment economist Bjorn Lonborg calculates, would reach $5 trillion, which is more than the entire federal budget.

Trust politicians? How come they haven’t told you some vital statistics?

That’s not me asking. It’s Professor Steven Koonin, among the most respected energy scientists in America who worked for President Obama as the undersecretary for science at the Department of Energy. Vital statistics are kept in the closet? You bet.

• Both research and government reports clearly state that heat waves in the US are now no more common than they were in 1900
• The warmest temperatures in the US have not risen in fifty years.
• According to research and climate reports published by the US government and the UN:
• Humans have had no detectable impact on hurricanes over the past century. 
• Greenland’s ice sheet is not shrinking any more rapidly today than it was 80 years ago. 
• The global area burned by wildfires has declined 25 percent since 2003, and 2020 was one of the best years on record. Updated April 24, 2021 | 10:23am

Why haven’t people heard these vital stats?

Again it’s not me asking. Professor Koonin explains why. “Public discussions of climate and energy have become increasingly distant from the science. Phrases like ‘climate emergency,’ ‘climate crisis’ and ‘climate disaster’ are now bandied about to support sweeping policy proposals to ‘fight climate change’ with government interventions and subsidies. Not surprisingly the Biden administration has made climate and energy a major priority, confirmed by John Kerry’s appointment as climate envoy and the  proposed spending of $2 trillion dollars to fight the “existential threat to humanity.”  

That name tells a story of its own. With John Kerry comes a history.

Kerry was President Obama’s Secretary of State when he began to act as business agent for the rogue Iranian regime. “Kerry went to Europe to promote investment in Iran. A former White House advisor was astounded. “It isn’t enough” wrote Elliot Abrams, “to remove sanctions that prevent banks from lending to Iran. Kerry has become a cheerleader, urging banks to make loans irrespective of risk.” https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/304944.

This very week the New York Times ran a scoop story about agent Kerry. According to a leaked audio, Iran’s Foreign Minister Javad Zarif said that Kerry informed him Israel had attacked Iranian assets in Syria at least 200 times. Zarif added, it had surprised him that Kerry would reveal such sensitive information to him. “People are talking about treason — and I don’t throw that word around a lot,” said Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska).

Now Kerry as Biden’s “climate envoy” has put his neck out, declaring that the climate summit in Scotland is “the world’s last best chance to avert climate catastrophe.” Take Kerry on trust?  Look (at the top) where he queues up. The last of many before him.

Trust climate models? How trustworthy were Covid models?

• A headline back in 1989 screamed: “Rising seas to obliterate nations by 2000.” It quotes the Director of the New York office of the UN Environment Program. Entire nations, he warned, could be wiped off the face of the earth by rising sea levels if “global warming is not reversed by the year 2000. Governments have a 10-year window before the greenhouse effect goes beyond human control.”
• The Independent on 20^th March 2000 headlined: “Snowfalls are a thing of the past.” “Britain’s winter ends tomorrow with striking evidence of further environmental change. Snow is starting to disappear from our lives. According to Dr David Viner a climate academic, winter snowfall will be a rare and exciting event.”
• In 1998 Dr Jim Hansen appeared before Congress to predict the greenhouse effect. “In 20 years the Westside Highway which runs alongside the Hudson River will be under water,” he stated. “You’ll have signs in restaurants saying, Water by request only.”

Global warming is a killer?

Not according to the record. Global warming has saved life, not taken it. A study by 22 scientists found that cold is the killer. Cold weather killed 17 times more people than hot weather. As for deaths caused by natural disasters, they fell 80 percent while the temperature rose: since 1920 it has gone up by 1.25C. NASA data. During the same period world population quadrupled, from below 2 billion to over 7.5 billion. 

Wonder how or why the ‘climate crisis got everyone scared stiff?

For the same reason that Covid got everyone scared stiff of dying. For the same reason that Hitler got everyone scared stiff of a Jewish threat. To what end?

Fabricated hysteria penetrates bone and muscle. We are led to regard Covid as an existential threat to health, and of climate as an existential threat to earth. Aryans were led to regard the Jews as an existential threat to them. Hysteria creates fear. Fear makes people believe what they’re told. Believing what they’re told makes people do as they’re told. The more scared people feel the more nonsense you can make them swallow. That a certain temperature will end life on earth is the nonsense that we’ve been led to swallow.

The Climate-panicked don’t take dissent well. The Victorian free-thinker, Oscar Wilde could have had our cancel culture in mind. For sure his Tweets would have been taken down. If you cannot prove a man wrong, Wilde said, don’t worry. You can always call him names.

BDS – all of it from the bible

King Balak and his failed curser

Plots and characters in the Old Testament are a foretaste of what the descendants of Israel, who was Jacob, will encounter. So we’re told. Is the bible so prescient? Go to the Book of Numbers, to the portion, Balak relating a preposterous clash between a king, a curser for hire and a talking donkey. The clash was borrowed by the boycott movement for its business model: since war after war failed to bring down Israel, try cursing it. 

The intrigue begins with the King of Moab at wits end how to stop Hebrew escapees in their tracks. Unlikely material for a military juggernaut, they had notched improbable victories over real armies. Military might, so King Balak understood, had nothing to do with it. The real weapon was communication. During battle Moses their leader communicated with the Israelite God.  

And it sets the king thinking. If words their God likes to hear empower such rabble, what about words that anger him. Curses in fact. So he contracts with a man of words, a curser like no other, related to the Jacob that was. Balaam was born for the job. A grandson of the swindler Laban, Jacob’s father-in-law, he learnt the art of the grudge on the knee of a granddad out-swindled by Jacob.

Up to now Balaam has made a good living from cursing work. The Near East was rife with professional spoilers who relied on the spell for a weapon of choice. The results were understandably erratic. Balaam stood out – you could rely on his work because he relied on God to bring misfortune or death on the target. He had the special gift of fathoming the moods of the Almighty. He knew the efficacious time to bring a man’s misdeeds before God; it was when the Heavenly Court convened. Around midday all mankind’s misdemeanors come before the heavenly court. No one is without sin but, make God attend to one and He’ll pass judgment that day. Let us remember that some, even now, do believe in lore not written down in the Books of Moses.        

So Balak pays a king’s ransom for Balaam to bad mouth not a person but a whole troublesome people, God’s favorite. The end game is not to wipe the Israelites off the face of the desert but to keep them from going onto the Promised Land.

“Let us drive them out,” the king says to the elders of Moab and Midian who fear the power  the Israelites will have in their own sovereign state.  Homeless and stateless they are not a problem. For all the elders care the Israelites can keep their difficult laws anywhere they like – anywhere but the land of Israel. It would make them a spiritual force to be reckoned with. Pagan nations at peace with their deities and quaint perversions fear that a sovereign Israel would fundamentally impact the world. Moses and his multitude have to be cursed into spiritual oblivion.

Listen, say plot-makers in the mists of a far-ahead time. Israelis are living and thriving in the Promised Land, and delegates meet on the side of a game-changing conference at the Indian Ocean city of Durban. The year is 2001 and plots are afoot. The modus operandi is borrowed from the Book of Numbers. Not that the boycotters have Balaam in mind – probably they don’t know the bible. Did Hitler know that Pharaoh solved his Jewish problem with slave labor? Are the anti-Semitic rulers of dry South Africa aware that the Philistines were also  prepared to do without water rather than depend on Isaac’s wells?

The boycotters take a leaf out of Balaam’s book. The way he acted is effectively their manual. They call the strategy ‘Lawfare’. Israel accused of breaking international law will make it an outcast among the nations, a lone prey for waiting wolves. From Durban the non-military assault, a war of cursing, was launched.

Weaponise bad PR. Condemn and demonize Israel in forums and the media, on campuses and cable networks. Haul it before kangaroo courts. Bring human rights protectors with a fake halo brand on board. Turn the Jews into a pariah people. Infuse and unite the world with a loathing for Zionists. It was going to be a war that Israel can’t win.

The vision intoxicated, and many entities and people bristling with pent-up scores to settle are cock-a-hoop. What could be simpler than picking the worst crimes in the book of statutes and laying them at Israel’s door. Apartheid – who wouldn’t hate a country that practiced it. Ethnic cleansing, war crimes and occupation followed close behind. The prospect made plotters drool. Add some imaginative marketing, draw on deep pockets to grease the wheels, and in no time you had a full-blown campaign.

Before Israel knew it the court of public opinion was onto its case. From there it was all downhill. Set an impossible bar to clear Israel was coerced into fighting terrorism with kid gloves. A plus for the boycotters is that it cost Jewish lives. ‘Be not over righteous, nor too clever,’ Ecclesiastes 7:16 warned the nation. Shimon b. Lakish added: ‘Whoever shows mercy to the cruel will ultimately be cruel to those deserving of mercy.’ The victims of terrorism were victims of morality, of the army of Israel’s kindness to the cruel.

Zionist brutality. Zionist oppression. Zionist occupation. Zionist Nazi. The curses made Israelis, young and old, duck and dive like criminals. The cursers have been trained to avoid the ‘Jew’ word; it would be unpardonably self-destructive. Curse the Zionists all you like but don’t call them Jews. Protect our prime asset, the human rights halo. Keep it shining. Brandish the halo while you curse Israel into a corner.

A whole club of cursers is led by the Big Five: Amnesty, Oxfam, Human Rights Watch, Christian Aid, the UN Human Rights Council. Nominally those entities are humanitarian, not-for-profit and apolitical. In reality they are none of those things. There are hundreds of second-tier bad-mouthers of Israel, a bewildering number of them in tiny Israel. B’Tselem, ‘Committee Against House Demolitions’, Jewish Voices for Peace,’ Breaking the Silence – all compete fiercely to bad mouth their own country. With cursing comes money; ultimately the human rights business, whether BDS or BLM, is about money. A load of cash awaits anyone with a bad word to say about Israel. Moneybags George Soros coughs up hundreds of millions; the European Union is the cursers’ wallet. Trade is brisk, the money big and the players earnest. Activists live on Israeli crimes, the geese that lay golden eggs.

War by unarmed means was born in Durban. On its heels tumbled the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions movement. Awake to the smallest fault, inventive, tall tale bearers, racists who presume to know better than Palestinians what’s good for them, and greedy: boycotters are models of Balaam the curser.

Will his newfangled fans meet the fate of the wily wizard? In keeping with the bible the boycotters’ vision fell painfully short. Getting nowhere as the devil’s advocate, BDS hopes were dashed by Israel’s burgeoning growth and success. The idea of stalling the mini juggernaut was no more than a tantalizer, a pipe dream.  

When the Almighty told Balaam to hold his tongue he disobeyed. Dreaming of celebrity-hood, he ransacked the whole bag of tricks. But the Almighty had other plans for Balaam. Stymied he rode from pillar to post. He would be immortal, but for a different accomplishment. At the finishing post the wrong words tripped off the tongue, his mouth organ of militant curses, gadget of fortune and misfortune, master of talking donkey. Born to curse, Balaam uttered the most sublime blessings in human annals.

He would have departed this life with the hurt rioting and rotting in his head. How beautiful are your tents, oh Jacob, your dwelling places, oh Israel. For the tribute recited in prayer houses to this day thank a curser for hire. Odder yet thank a lifetime hater of Israel.

The nuclear genie – nourished by Obama, bottled by Trump, let out by Biden

What gives?

caliphate fanatics

The genie was well and truly bottled until something impish entered the Oval Room and popped the cork. Bomb-crazed Mullahs poured out, cackling over their new lease of life and freakish luck. A President of America had set them loose.

Why would Biden do such a thing? The move can be of no probable benefit – to America or the free world or the Biden family. Nor could it possibly improve the lives of long-suffering Iranians. If Biden was not being public-spirited or, like his mentor Barak Obama, ambitious for himself, why rescue men soaked in barrels of blood without some double-entry bookkeeping: ‘I did you a favour, now do XYZ for me.’

Of all murky lunacies, redoing a failed pact is the most devious, the most comic, the most perilous. It plays the final joke on fools. Try it again. A Democrat President has revived the nuclear accord because a Republican President dumped it. Biden in spiting Trump red flags his own idiocy.      

They will be chuckling in Tehran. The caliphate fanatics are more hell bent on making a nuclear warhead than they were before Jolting Joe set them free. All Biden achieves is to give the mullahs back their power to bargain and cheat. The day his presidency began, Tehran’s asphyxiation ended. The warmongers had been twitching on the end of a rope of Trump’s devising. By severing it Biden raised the nuclear accord from cold ash and invited the Phoenix to rise. Cheaters on both sides now talk about renewing a deal that never was. In Vienna as it was in Lausanne, Washington is the beggar and Tehran the teaser and tantalizer. 

What gives?

There were prodigies and portents back in 2015 when the deal was struck. A pet project at any cost is a common failing – and so is to bend over backwards to get the thing signed off. The Obama-Kerry team coaxed and coddled the mullahs. In Lausanne it baited the hook not with palatable Swiss cheese but by taking a world-wide web of terror and proxy wars off the negotiation table. To leave a legacy Obama supped with a devil not well disguised.

The devilish diplomacy had nothing to do with Don Corleone’s ‘Keep your friends close but your enemies even closer.’ Biden emulating his mentor is not keeping Middle East allies close. He’s leaving them untrusting. When nihilists called America the Big Satan Obama faded. When they threatened a mushroom cloud over Tel Aviv he listened. Add in a  signature aversion to the military option, and recalling the ephemeral red line Obama drew with Assad, he let the deal breakers understand that anything goes. ‘Read my lips. Provoke as you like. As the military’s Commander in Chief I won’t make you pay.’

A cauldron of support and opposition; Tehran’s consummate cunning, emboldened by stooges and opportunists come to beg for a deal – any deal. The mullahs see how deeply the President and the six powers are invested in the project. As badly as they need a deal, a President consumed by vanity wants will cut one no matter what. Factor in a Europe with no stomach and a Russia and China with no scruples, and you have thugs holding out for a certain payoff. Left to stew the western powers would accede to their every demand. Sanctions: lift them. Controls to make sure Tehran complies: They’re fake. Tehran has no need to behave differently as regards: (a) developing nuclear capability and (b) global terrorism. Its red lines, unlike those of Presidents Obama and Biden, are real.

All the ducking and diving serves what or whom? Pure vainglory?  A President wants to leave office with a legacy and a pocket full of Peace Prize? Not only. Biden’s mentor set out to turn the old order on its head. Iran, hitherto America’s number one foe, was going to be, in the world’s number one hotspot, America’s number one ally. A detente in other words was brewing between the world’s powerhouse and the world’s sour pickle jar.

Or did both supporters and sceptics get it wrong. The move to bring war-mongering mullahs in from the cold seems neither brash nor bold. Prophetic is the better word; not prophecy in the petty sense of foretelling the future, but stoking the sort of upheavals narrated in the bible. The making of Iran into a regional power – Obama’s motive according to (a) Michael Doran of the Hudson Institute and (b) Obama himself, according to what he told The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg – seemed to harbinger the ‘end of times.’

If it did then Donald Trump calling it “the worst deal ever negotiated,” was mistaken. Tell-tale moves hinted at Obama’s earth-shattering empowerment of Iran. How he busted a gut to get a deal spoke of some other-world vision. How he bribed Iran and drummed up business for it; how he blocked Congress from imposing non-nuclear sanctions; how he turned a blind eye to Iran’s cheating – cheating that White House staff not only acknowledged but praised the Mullahs for not trying to hide their cheating. So, Lee Smith wrote, Washington “is not just protecting the nuclear agreement, but rationalizing Iran violating it.”

From the White House the tried and tested remedy to help bitter medicine go down: mobilize supporters and demean resistors, notably the pesky Israel lobby AIPAC. Iran empowered by hard currency notched up its sabre-rattling. Cyber attacks on America were followed by taking seamen hostage and ransoming them off to President Obama for $1.7 billion in European untraceable notes.

Then the mullahs hung ‘Open for business’ on the door and twiddled their thumbs. On their behalf Secretary of State, John Kerry went to Europe to promote investment in Iran. A former White House advisor was astounded. “It isn’t enough” wrote Elliot Abrams, “to remove sanctions that prevent banks from lending to Iran. Kerry has become a cheerleader, urging banks to make loans irrespective of risk.”  

Obama tagged detente with the devil as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. He spoke tongue in cheek. It was a once-in-a-lifetime threat. Whatever happens under Biden the genie is out and about. Former nuclear negotiators with the Soviets, Shultz and Kissinger, warned Obama – you have put Iran on steroids.

A mischief-maker stalks the corridors of power, leaving a footprint of unintended consequences, of freak realignments. The Saudis embraced Israel to see off the common threat of Iran. Obama permitted Russia to sell its missile system to Iran, so making it difficult for Israel to bomb the nuclear sites. Middle East distrust of America the brave left a vacuum for the Abraham Accords to fill. Biden has refinanced UNWRA and the PA – two hard Jew-hating entities. The world has seen normality perhaps for the last time.

The sorcerer’s apprentice
What happens when Joe Biden meddles

So here’s a timely class for Joe Biden. The spectacle of natural allies falling out of bed and habitual enemies climbing into bed, springs to mind the tale of the sorcerer’s apprentice. Left in the workshop to his own devices, he enchants a broom and a pail to do the chores for him. In no time the place is in chaos. The apprentice is clueless how to stop the magic. He breaks  the broom in half, hoping that will do the trick. Indeed the pieces turn into more brooms while the pail slops water at twice the rate. The old sorcerer returns and beholds the unholy mess. “Leave powerful spirits,” he says, “to a master wizard.”

Leave pact making to wise and trustworthy diplomats. And don’t get into bed with Islamists. Those would be the lessons for Biden to take from the nuclear accord he raised up from the grave.

And there is Jewish folklore from which to learn. A dead malcontent may return to possess the living. The troubled soul is known as a dybbuk, and it runs amok making mischief. The fiend was used for plots, to aggravate family wrangles to the point of madness. Yet for all its wicked antics the dybbuk only wished to settle a score. It upturned some lives in the Jewish ghetto, but not the balance of world power. And no dybbuk, before Obama, toyed with a President of America.

Christopher Marlow could give another class. Like his creature Mephistopheles (and Hitler after it) Iran will never strike a bad deal – a deal bad for Iran. The pact that Biden is jumping through hoops to revive is a pact with the devil. And it’s a wager infinitely more reckless than Dr Faustus made with his devil. The medic gambled his own soul. Biden, bartering with Iran behind closed doors, gambles with the lives of hundreds of millions.

The devil never deals itself a bad card. It signs pacts with blood, and that’s another thing to bear in mind. The devil also likes to break his word before giving the signatures time to dry, and that’s something else to bear in mind. Pacts with crazies and the paper they’re written on are equivalent in value.

Let no one accuse Tehran of non disclosure. It has revealed its hand – twice now. In the thrall of a dybbuk Obama was blind and deaf to omens. Let Biden not repeat him. Feted honour beckons like a pot of gold. The fate of Marlow’s Dr Faustus was eternal damnation. Yet the gambling medic was not the President of America. Faustus sealed his own fate, not the fate of mankind, which is what a pact with Iran could seal.

To commemorate Jewish martyrs you don’t have to like Jews

A lit candle for the Jewish day of commemoration

People dislike Jews up to a point. Beyond that point Jews not only are tolerated they are  venerated. Of course we’re talking of dead Jews. The mere name, ‘Israel’ can make anti-Semites want to vomit, but to memorialize the dead and the martyred they will go the extra mile.

Among egregious examples two stand out. Linda Sarsour, a brazen hater: (“Israel is built on the idea that Jews are supreme to everyone else”; “nothing is creepier than Zionism”; fundraising for a Palestinian murderer convicted for planting a bomb in a Tel-Aviv store), and yet has a deep respect for dead Jews. The scarf clad woman made headlines, for helping repair a Jewish cemetery. Next to her Jewish President of choice, Bernie Sanders, Sarsour will observe her minute of quiet for Jews butchered on a factory scale.

Another stand out is South African Nava Pillay an ex UN High Commissioner. Throughout her term Pillay kept the bad eye on Israelis and her good eye on their killers. Israelis could do no right and Muslims no wrong: infamously for the wife-beating rife in Palestinian society, Pillay blamed Israel. None of this stopped her conducting a seminar on Holocaust victims, of eulogising a boy from Prague named Petr Ginz who died in the gas chambers. She held up his photograph. At the end of her presentation Pillay called for a minute of silence.

Of course commemorating the Shoah is a virtue signaller for countless celebs. But for greater interest we must go to the psychosis of commemoration. Jean-Paul Sartre wrote of a wartime friend who had no problem with the Nazi death camps, yet on his mantelpiece stood a photo of a Jewish friend shot by the Gestapo. No one better than Sartre has picked out the sadistic fascination for dead Jews.

Anti-Semites combine hatred for the living Jew with reverence for the dead – unless they were killed by Palestinians. Linda Sarsour respects Jewish graves in a St Louis cemetery but says ‘hard cheese’ to Israeli victims of terror. It could be a natural law that when Jews offend the correct notion of where Israelis may and may not live, they forego the right to life. We’ve heard or read the catchphrase, ‘cycle of violence’. In the media, on CNN or Time Magazine or the New York Times or Guardian or the BBC the ‘violent cycle’ means that Jews got their just deserts.

‘Death to Jews’ is a war cry common to jihadists and to educated Wokes. The one shouts aloud while the other internalizes the cry. The idea of Jewish death excites and satisfies your professor, news caster or politician as much as your ISIS decapitator. Not enough Jewish death maddens them both.

Take the documentary maker John Pilger and the writer Robert Fisk. Both openly begrudge Israel being more than a match for the warlords of Gaza, Ramallah and Beirut. With bitterness they harp on a death toll skewed in favor of the Jews, and complain about the imbalance. A higher number of Israelis, they believe, ought to have died in the fighting. This is nothing we didn’t know. Again the Holocaust generation philosopher, Jean-Paul Sartre, made it clear: anti-Semitism is not a bad opinion of Jews but a warped personality.

Problem is, Jews can also have it, that ghoulish fixation with dead Jews. In the main we find Jews with that sick mind active in Woke movements: BLM, LGBTQ, open border wackose, BDS cultists and academia. Even rabbis can be knee deep denying Jews the right to live. One such rabbi conducted the Passover seder for the White House – a Sharon Brous from LA whom Joe Biden picked to do the business.

The same Rabbi Brous once said that she felt comfortable about her alignment with anti-Zionists. About her alignment with apologists for wife beaters and genital mutilators, Brous said nothing. The rabbi will pick out Jews but Muslims, never.  

To value truth is to accept that there will be times when truth is not very likeable. In truth Jews may have entirely proper feelings about the Shoah yet be willing to exploit it for gain. As much as we find Israel-hating Norman Finklestein distasteful, he correctly in his books calls out the Holocaust industry. On the evidence there’s no denying the big money to be made on the back of Holocaust memory and study.   

Look at the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, a monolith which had the great survivor’s blessing but not his involvement. The SWC is a full global enterprise. The Forward ranked its head, Rabbi Marvin Hier as Jewry’s highest paid ‘non-profit’ leader. Back in 2017 Rabbi Hier was taking home $818,000, not to speak of family members getting $600,000 out of making sure the world would not forget the Holocaust.

Exuberant HQ of the SWC

There’s no getting away from ubiquitous Holocaust museums and centers being a honey trap. For all one knows they do some good, but Holocaust experts and the like make glamorous careers from genocide. There is something wrong when tens of thousands of the survivors are institutionalized and have to limp along on handouts.    

The fictional run up to Pharaoh’s intended genocide of the Israelites

They are living a benign dream in Goshen, Egypt. Jacob’s seed have yet to encounter Balaam – the name would mean nothing to them. It will be hundreds of years before it does, and then it will be contiguous with trouble. Balaam will be more than known. When a stored up grievance gushes out he will entice the tribes into calf worship and internecine killing. He will make God want to wipe the whole lot out. There will also come a time when the Israelites parody the clown God made a donkey make of him. In a roundabout way Balaam will have the last laugh. The nation he set out to curse and got paid a king’s ransom to curse, recites to this day the divine blessing he gave it

Is there nothing, people ask, that Balaam can’t be or can’t do. Yet to look at him…That crooked back and missing eye and weak knees that bend under the strain of a corpulent belly: surely Balaam, son of Be-or the beast, son of Laban the  swindler must be hard put to swat a fly.

A knack for dire mischief making has brought him together with a priest from Midian and a magnate from Canaan and the King of Egypt. They have to make the fate of a multitude, grouped into thirteen prolific tribes, fit their crime. Egypt had offered the circumcised Hebrews a helping hand. They took half the body and corrupted the soul. Jacob’s brood have turned Goshen into a Hebrew enclave. The king assembled a brains trust to approve the remedy that came to him in a dream.

He kept three wise men waiting half the morning in a stifling anteroom ill served by an unapologetic under-butler. To make the ordeal tortuous, each one had scant respect for the reputation of the other two. By the time the great doors opened and the chamberlain signalled them into the interview chamber, their brows beetled with hostility.

How copper coloured and puerile Pharaoh is, like a figurine on dry parchment; how liquid his flat grey eye. There is a crowd of attendants behind the royal chair; at a signal from the king they retire to different corners – adult goats protecting a kid. Slow finger motions beckon them to three chairs around the slippered feet. They feel at pains not to disturb the quiet when taking their seats. The king inclines his head and the Chamberlain melts backwards out the door.

Pharaoh inspects his fingernails. ‘Long travels, ‘he says. You weren’t expected so early.’ He waits for some gratifying reaction. The brains trust nod, taking it for granted that he knew how long they had been waiting.’ Well, he says, ‘the conditions were favourable – I’m glad.’

Camels. Dry wells. Sand storm. Desperate bandits. They’d set out half a week ago – not that they complain – at the king’s summons.

The chairs are marble, with the Pharaoh image inlaid in gold. He’s the new Pharaoh, the one who forgot Egypt’s two hundred year old debt to Joseph. He has forgotten but not forgiven the son of Jacob for bringing the whole family up from Canaan to settle Egypt. To him it feels the whole country is occupied, but he means Goshen, the part that a Pharaoh of old promised Abraham to compensate for kidnapping Sarah; a fertile country watered by the Nile for a stolen wife.

The meeting begins obliquely, as formal meetings can do. Balaam is an object of Pharaoh’s curiosity. He can’t keep his eyes off him. Balaam chuckles as he jabs a finger in his fiery eye socket. ‘Your majesty, the Philistine who gouged it out did me a favour.’ The king shrinks back. ‘Don’t feel sorry – it’s been a help rather than a handicap.’    

Job leans forward to take a closer look. Now he’s got everyone looking at him. “I tell no lie,’ he says. ‘For my trade the left eye is all I need.’

Job gives the eye a close look and shakes his head. ‘What do you mean all you need?’

‘My lord, the right eye is for seeing the good side of character, and that has the effect of weakening a curse. The left eye discerns the bad in people, and the effect of that gives strength to a curse. Not one curse has flopped since the eye came out.’

Jethro sternly says, ‘No more clients for blessing, I’ll be bound.’ 

‘They, my lord, were never a big part of my practice.’

Jethro is disgusted. ‘Well,’ he says, ‘I understand why you are so pleased. It takes more work to do good than to do evil. Your supplier is who – Ashmedai, king of the demons?’

The two don’t get on. The problem is their commonality, both outcasts from the family tree of Abraham. Jethro – Reguel the Priest they call him in Midian – is from the spawn of Abraham’s concubine, Katura; Balaam, a Moab, is from the incestuous spawn of Abraham’s nephew, Lot.

But their host is getting fidgety. ‘Look now my lords,’ says the king when he’s got their attention, his voice playing up and down the scale. ‘You know the situation. It has got out of control. You know the Israelite. Give him a hand and he takes your arm.

‘And that’s the best that can happen,’ Balaam says.

The king likes it. ‘My lord, you learnt well on the knees of your grandfather.’

‘Twenty years, your majesty. Twenty years Laban employed and set up Jacob – who then decamped even with an idol collection. I wasn’t born yet.’

‘If only you had been, my lord. Jacob would have gone through life cursed instead of blessed.’

‘The crux, your majesty, of your population problem.’  

Pharaoh smiles. He has a pert mouth and red lips, like a girl’s. ‘It will test your powers to the utmost.’

‘That bad, your majesty?’ Job says.

It is worse, and Pharaoh lays it out. The tone of the pubescent king modulates between high, broken and thin. Goshen, he says, is blocked with Israelites and their animals. It’s a plague of epic proportions. Egypt is a heartbeat away from an insurrection. In the best case. The worst case would be the Israelites aiding and abetting neighbouring kingdoms. The new census presents a frightening picture: three million not counting the young. That birth rate can’t be allowed to go unchecked. The wives drop litters every time. Hebrew speaking loiterers jam entire thoroughfares – a miraculous life force.

 Job the business genius says, ‘Harness it. Your majesty put that force to work. You got a precious labour resource. Projects and more projects. Make Egypt a showcase; and keep the breeders too hard at work to want to procreate.’ 

The double-hit scheme was so good it took a while to get over the shock. In the quiet Jethro’s self-protest was audible.     

‘Of course,” Balaam says, master Job is not advocating forced labour. Nothing like slavery. It would be a test of fealty to Pharaoh, of gratitude to the host country. No one hurt and all benefit.’      

Job adds, ‘You’d start the breeders on a trial project. Get the feel and reaction. One baby step at a time.’

Jethro sits bent, studying the floor at his feet and cracking his hairy knuckles. Job puts a hand on his shoulder.

‘Come outside you two,’ Jethro hisses

‘Your majesty,’ says Job, ‘could we break. My lord Jethro suffers giddiness. A turn in the gardens …’

‘I thought it would come to this,’ Jethro says as they follow the river walk.  

‘Nevertheless you came,’ Balaam says bitingly.   

‘Not to nod at everything you and the boy king want.’   

Job says, ‘Do we really want to cross Pharaoh? His mind is made up. Kings must have their  way. You might as well try turning a donkey cart in a tight alley. What good will it do, backing down? We’ll be thrown in prison. Going with the plan might allow us to modify the gaudy bits’.

Balaam who never liked modifying anything, displays a set of grey square teeth. ‘Let’s be clear. What made you, my lord Jethro, obey the king’s summons? Was it popularity you wanted, or to be useful? Pull out now and you forfeit both.’ 

A flash of anger. ‘What made me? I hoped to stop an enslavement. God  made a promise to Abraham. His progeny would become like the stars in the universe. Not the king and not you, dear Balaam, can void a promise God makes.’  

Consider the compacts that hold him together: the compact between Balaam and kings; between them both and armies; between Balaam and God, who counts up the dirty vices and works of spite that make Balaam a by-word for dark powers. Imagine him debating a fatherly priest who believes in God the just and the merciful. Never mind that. Balaam and the landowner Job whose god is buying low and selling high inhabit different planets. `

The palace gardens are alive with heat-maddened beetles and hunting horns echoing through   brakes and thickets. High Priest Jethro, whether knocked by the sun or conflicted into paralysis, has sagged into a bundle of clothes. The contest of wills has proved too demanding.  Jethro falters and trips over his walking stick. Job grabs an elbow. Steadies him. They sit him down on a low wall. A drain of ditchwater runs behind it. In the near distance the Nile simmers like hot water.  

‘Easy now,’ says Job, bending to the lionized face. ‘Balaam – some foot rest for our man. But he levers the stick like a maypole to get back on his legs. After a minute they’re heading back to the palace. The tread of the priest is heavy. The hair on his neck is bristling like a mastiff being led to a bear.

‘Come now,’ Balaam says cheerily, ‘that’s not how to face down the king.’

‘I assure you, no way do I intend to face him down,’ says Jethro, hitching up his robe.

“What – you intend to sit on the fence?’ Balaam says. ‘I doubt it will be too comfortable.’

‘More comfortable than where you’re going, endorsing slavery.’

‘Not to hell,’ Balaam says. ‘I trust not. What do you think, master Job? Are we headed for hell?’

‘Balaam, I haven’t your power to access the Almighty’s mind,’ says Job, speaking truer than he could ever dream. Balaam takes Job’s rudeness to launch out at Jethro.

‘So,’ Balaam says, ‘You object to the labour project because you can’t live with your conscience?’

‘Yes.’

‘No problem with that?’

‘No.’

 ‘The Israelite problem?

‘What do you want to say?’   

‘Will you let me finish if I start?’

“I’ll try.”

‘Well, Balaam says, ‘your compatriots had a lot to do with how the Israelites came to Egypt. Joseph the hated brother was sharing a pit with vipers and scorpions. Along comes a caravan of Midianites – your people. They buy Joseph from the brothers and haul him from the pit. They sell him onto Ishmaelites who go to Egypt and sell him there. Joseph became Pharaoh’s appointed Viceroy. After saving the country from famine he uplifts the whole family from Canaan and settles them nice and comfortable in Goshen. The seventy were the breeding stock. What is the number now, the king told us? Three million. Adults, my lord, Jethro – not counting the baby boomers. That’s all I wanted to say.’ Balaam’s face, a mask of malice, has brought Jethro to a dead stop.

‘It’s a hard thing Balaam,’ Job says, ‘to make lord Jethro account for compatriots of a long dead generation.’ 

‘You always did have a bone to pick, Balaam, but you never hallucinated,’ Jethro says, ‘I can make you account for the Israelite problem, if you want to play this game. Your own kith and kin enabled Joseph more than I did. Your grandfather Laban married a daughter to Jacob who fathered Joseph with her, and who got Pharaoh to allow the Israelites to relocate. Outcomes you see can be managed. Outcomes can even be massaged. All that comes to pass, passes by God’s design, and our bitter foibles make use of the outcome. The King of Kings writes the story, we pick out the pieces that suit us. I am astonished at you Balaam, though not disappointed.’

When crossed Balaam can widen to fill an opponent’s vision. Different dimensions are available to his body. ‘My point, Lord Jethro, he says, ‘was not to pick bits from history that suit me.’

‘Well, what is it?’  

‘Don’t mess with God.’

Jethro laughs. ‘You talk about the Creator as if he’s a neighbour you go to for sharing a flagon of homemade wine.’    

 Balaam bends his close at him. ‘Let’s be clear. God, for better or worse, made a covenant with Abraham. Remember the bris bein habetarim, the covenant of parts. So one of the parts decreed a bitter exile for Israel. Abraham accepted the terms meekly – why he didn’t bargain for lives like he did when God was about to destroy Sodom, I never understood. But there it is. The chosen people are going to be enslaved in Egypt. God makes Pharaoh the instrument for that. So don’t tamper. My grandfather tampered. He made deal after deal with Jacob. The flocks of his greasy son-in-law grew and grew and grew.’    

‘Oh, but that’s different,’ Jethro says. ‘Laban cheated. My motive is moral. I seek to prevent a cruel bondage. Make God angry? I can’t see it. God made beatific promises to Abraham, He blessed Jacob to father tribes – only for them to be turned into slave termites? God will punish me for wanting humane treatment for man made in His image? You believe that? I’d spit on anyone who did.’

‘That might well be,’ says Job the man of business. ‘But thwarting what the king’s set on doing we are thwarting – as Balaam said – we thwart what God needs to happen. Who are we anyway, to define cruelty? Maybe the Almighty has a different notion of it. Second guessing God is to play God.’

‘Yes,’ says Balaam. ‘But anyway God, remember, decreed a reward for the slaves. They’re going to inherit the land of Canaan. Picking out one event in the whole story invites faulty thought.’  

‘True,’ Jethro says. ‘But when God promised Abraham that his seed would inherit land, He had Canaan in mind. Canaan, Balaam, not Egypt. Egypt is the exile. The Israelite Patriarchs and Matriarchs lie in Machpela on the plains of Mamre. Burial always cements inheritance. There’s no famine now in Canaan. Let the Israelites go up from Goshen to settle it. If you believe the revelation, why wait for the suffering and death ordained by it? And Job – you’ve got land enough to hold three million, with more to spare. ‘Make Pharaoh an offer.’

‘It’s too late for that,’ Job says. ‘The Israelites have become too useful to let go, and too dangerous to let free. Bondage would solve both of Pharaoh’s problems. The die, my friends, has been cast. Now’s the time to skip for those who can’t live with hard facts. There’s nothing to stop them making a run for it.’

He and Balaam re-enter the palace without Jethro. He disappeared before we knew it, your majesty. Have him found and arrested.   

They partake of drinks arrayed on a vast table. The butler, an Ishmaelite with the eyes of a cow, invites them to review a bewildering array of drinks, concoctions of everything from dandelion wine to a jug into which the neck of a horse has been stuck .The drinks are of every shade from mauve to taupe.  Of a subtle potency, they are served in every sort of container, from ceramic tumblers to gold and silver goblets. 

Job lapses into a mindless acquiescence. Dusk had come on low-lying Luxor. A cacophony of croaking fills the head. From the dark river bullfrogs seem to croak the words: Covenant.  Decree. Exile. Bondage. Suffering, suffering, suffering.