A vaccine for the panicked

By

Rabbi Yoram Bogacz

Guest contributor for Judaism and science

The vaccine saga continues. Israel has vaccinated about 40% of its youngsters against COVID, and hopes to continue the effort in September, after new supplies arrive. Everyone in the establishment seems to blithely ignore basic ethical questions about vaccinating the young, like, Does the purported benefit outweigh the possible harm? Here is some information for the brave.

In Sweden, nine children (i.e., people under the age of twenty) have so far died of COVID-19. There have been 13 913 COVID fatalities in Sweden.

There are currently 2 414 000 children in Sweden. The death rate from COVID for Swedish children is thus 9 out of 2 414 000 = 0.0000037 (one in 268 000). And this is after 16 months of COVID.

Sweden has the safest roads in the world. In 2020, 15 children in Sweden died in traffic accidents. Thus, the risk of a child in Sweden dying of COVID during the pandemic has been about half the risk of that child dying in a traffic accident.

And in England? British media recently reported that in the twelve months to February 2021, 25 children and teenagers died of COVID in the UK. As expected, most of these children had serious comorbidities. From one article:

They found that 25 children and young people had died because of the coronavirus, equating to an absolute risk of one in 481,000, or approximately two in a million. Children and young people with complex neurodisability were at the highest risk of death.

[Professor Russell] Viner [who contributed to the research] said: “These new studies show that the risks of severe illness or death from Sars-CoV-2 are extremely low in children and young people.

And in Israel? Seven children have died of COVID, most of whom suffered from severe comorbidities.^[3]

Children in Glenhazel are more likely to die from a lightning strike or from drowning in a swimming pool than they are to die from COVID. And yet the purveyors of the mainstream COVID narrative continue to push for a jab in every arm – young and old, healthy and sick, recovered or not – despite a flood of evidence that children and youngsters, who stand to gain nothing from COVID vaccines, are vulnerable to a host of vaccine-related ailments like myocarditis.

Lopsided logic features not only in the area of vaccines. Barely one hundred years ago, parents in Lithuania occasionally sent boys as young as ten to yeshiva by themselves. The journey could take two weeks, and often, due to abject poverty, the only victuals the parents could furnish their children with consisted of a sandwich. The food came with the advice, “When you get to the next village, knock on a door with a mezuzah and ask for some food.”

Such was the mesirus nefesh for Torah then, and our generation is clearly lightyears away from such devotion. God surely does not expect such demonstrations of love of Torah from us. But to refuse to send your child to school because of a virus that is entirely indifferent to their age group or, worse, to campaign for schools to close, is nothing short of disgraceful.

A friend sent me the following email:

Dear R’ Yoram,

I am wondering if any of your views may have changed in light of the high numbers of infections and deaths in our community. A number of middle-aged people have died as a result of Covid in recent weeks and the overall number of funerals in June was over 50% higher than a regular June. Also, children are becoming infected much more commonly than before.

Let me begin by presenting a short list (by no means exhaustive) of my views on the COVID debacle over the past 15 months.

Consulting existing plans

In February 2020, disturbing news emerged from China of a flu-like illness spreading rapidly, followed by harrowing images from Italy. This type of event happens every few years (the SARS outbreak in 2002, the H1N1 epidemic in 2009 etc). Every Western nation has carefully-prepared plans for such outbreaks. In previous articles, I focused on the British plan – the 70-page manual entitled The UK Influenza Pandemic Preparedness Strategy 2011. The report envisages a pandemic so severe that between 210 000 and 315 000 people would die over 15 weeks, with perhaps half the deaths occurring in just three weeks. As I write these words, the official COVID death toll in the UK is about 125 000 after 15 months. These plans considered and rejected lockdowns, masks and border closures. But in a criminally-reckless move, the plans were completely ignored by all the COVID panic mongers, including those in our community.

In view of the emergence of a more infectious variant of COVID, have I changed my mind about the fact that these plans should have been consulted and followed? No.

Avoiding halachic meltdown

One mark of halachic competence is the unwillingness of the posek to bow to societal narratives. Whether it is pressure to ease the plight of agunot or to become more “flexible” about the gender spectrum, real Torah authorities do not play with halacha – it is what it is.

In 2020, the term pikuach nefesh was subjected to unprecedented abuse, as the air grew thick with innumerable mentions of this closely-defined concept. Pikuach nefesh refers, unambiguously, to situations of imminent danger to life, as when someone is drowning, or a building has just collapsed with people trapped inside. It is in such cases that we suspend virtually all other Torah injunctions and try to save lives. But davening with a minyan? Going to the mikveh? Inviting lonely people for a Shabbos meal? If you have to calculate a statistical probability that an action will result in death – an incredibly small number in the case of my examples – it isn’t pikuach nefesh. We don’t consider entering a car a situation of pikuach nefesh, notwithstanding the non-zero probability that the trip will end in death.

What I find amazing is that the same members of the Glenhazel medico-rabbinical complex who shot from the hip with their pikuach nefesh guns are all aware of what Chazal said about Eve and her creative interpretation of God’s instruction. She told the serpent that God forbade her (and Adam) to touch the Tree of Knowledge. This was false; they were only forbidden to eat its fruit. By this seemingly modest act of creativity Eve initiated a series of events so grievous that we all still suffer its consequences.

הגע בעצמך: The sum total of human suffering – a subject so immense and dark as to elude even the most capacious human minds – began with the distortion of a Torah concept. It makes not a jot of difference that Eve had good intentions.

The medico-rabbinical complex made the same mistake as Eve when its members mangled pikuach nefesh. It makes not a jot of difference that they had good intentions.

The wilful distortion of pikuach nefesh is just one part of the hashkafa meltdown that we have witnessed over the COVID period. Here is a crash course: In situations of pikuach nefesh, we drop everything and do whatever we can to save lives. But such situations are vanishingly rare (how often have you come across a person who had just been shot or someone who was choking on his food?). The rest of the time, the message of Judaism is that we continue living as normally as possible, even during periods of adversity. We do not shut down life, nor even seek to suspend it, even to flatten the curve. We take reasonable precautions and carry on. Even in the worst periods, we continue to bring children into the world (which means that mikvaos must be open); we do everything to ensure that הֶבֶל פִּיהֶן שֶׁל תִּינוֹקוֹת שֶׁל בֵּית רַבָּן is not silenced for a moment; we daven in a minyan.

In view of the emergence of a more infectious variant of COVID, have I changed my mind about the fact that Torah concepts and basic philosophy may not be distorted, regardless of one’s motivations? No.

The individual is the ultimate authority responsible for his/her health

One of the great achievements of Western civilisation is the notion that governments should exercise minimum interference in the lives of individuals. The West fought for centuries, at immense cost in blood and treasure, to entrench this basic idea in our daily lives – government should not tell me what to do. There are exceptions: war; a volcanic eruption. But COVID was never even remotely the kind of acute emergency which would justify the obliteration of human rights and individual autonomy that we have seen. Lord Jonathan Sumption, a former judge of the supreme court of the UK, has articulated with great eloquence the enormous harm done to Western democratic norms through COVID authoritarianism.

If certain individuals wish to suspend their lives for an indefinite period to protect themselves, it is their prerogative. You can live in your basement, wear a mask in the shower and use disinfectant as a condiment. But you have no right to foist such stupidity on me. Humanity has lived through countless pandemics – some as severe as COVID, like the 1968 Hong Kong Flu and the 1957 Asian Flu, as well as some that were an order of magnitude worse, like the 2018 Spanish Flu. We have lived through innumerable iterations of ordinary influenza seasons (which kill between 300 000 and 650 000 individuals around the world every year). Neither the goyishe world nor Torah society has ever imposed anything like the draconian restrictions on basic activities – education, pursuit of livelihood, socialising – as has happened over the past while. No Torah scholar or gentile legal scholar ever thought that completely healthy (asymptomatic, in the lingo) individuals have any culpability if they carry on with everyday activities. The vulnerable have the right to protect themselves, if they so wish (and we should not imprison old people – for their own protection, of course – if they wish to take the risk of living their lives fully), but not at the expense of everyone else.

In view of the emergence of a more infectious variant of COVID, have I changed my mind about the fact that the individual should be the one to choose what level of risk to expose himself to? No.

We could look at a few more examples of core ideas of my approach to the COVID fiasco, but it will be an exercise in diminishing returns. I suspect that at the heart of your question lies one concept that really motivates your question. That concept has driven the mainstream narrative since the beginning of COVID: the more draconian the measures we take against COVID, the more successful we will be, and the fewer people will die. In light of my suspicion, your question could be re-phrased as follows: In view of the emergence of a more infectious variant of COVID, would I concede that more drastic measures should have been taken in the past and should be taken now?

The answer is a resounding NO! I reject the premise on which the question rests. I maintain that the premise – that the more draconian our approach the better will be the outcome – is false. The American Institute for Economic Research has collected more than three dozen studies demonstrating that there is no correlation between the severity of lockdown measures and positive COVID outcomes. And if you prefer to look at real-world data rather than studies – a step I very much encourage – you will reach the same conclusion. The media stopped its coverage of Texas just after Joe Biden pronounced its governor a Neanderthal for daring to open the state completely. The media hasn’t bothered to follow up, because that would have meant conceding that Texas is doing very well indeed. The media stopped its coverage of Georgia after accusing it of conducting an experiment in human sacrifice for dropping lockdown restrictions. It hasn’t bothered to follow up, because that would have meant conceding that Georgia is doing very well indeed. The same could be said for Florida and many other jurisdictions. Bottom line: Measures that have not helped with more benign variants of the coronavirus are not going to help with more infectious variants of same.

Why is it that people persist in believing that if only we give up more and more elements of our lives that we will be better off with respect to COVID? Because there is a certain comfort in making sacrifices in times of crisis. It makes all the losses seem worthwhile. That psychological solace has motivated various errant ideologies for millennia. When the peasant Akhenamet brought an offering to the god of prosperity in Babylon thousands of years ago, he explained to his hungry wife and children that forgoing supper to satiate the god was worthwhile because this would ensure future prosperity. When the following harvest turned out poorly due to drought, he told them that his god was not satisfied and that they had better bring a greater sacrifice this year.

The mainstream media have pushed a similar narrative during the COVID period. If only everyone agreed to shut down life indefinitely; if only everyone agreed to wear two masks and a visor all the time; if only everyone agreed to never venture beyond the living room; if only everyone agreed to never take socialising beyond Zoom – the COVID monster would disappear in a jiffy.

I reject this narrative. Lockdowns achieved nothing as far as curbing the spread of COVID, nor did masking, nor did placing plastic sheets in front of students in class, nor did obsessive disinfection of surfaces and hands, nor did unrelenting censorship of views opposed to the COVID cult. Does any of this change because a new strain of SARS-Cov-2 has emerged? No. If, early in 2020, we had followed a century of accumulated wisdom in epidemiology, spelled out in documents such as The UK Influenza Pandemic Preparedness Strategy 2011, we would have been at least as well off as countries that took harsh measures (as proved by Sweden, Texas, Florida and others), and we definitely would not have precipitated the colossal medical, psychological, social and economic fallout from lockdowns that will blight our lives for a generation to come.

Now let’s look carefully at the situation in the South African Jewish community. The SA Jewish Report of 8^th July 2021 contained, on the front page, an interview with the Chief Executive of the Chevrah Kadisha, in which he states the following:

‘We are dealing with many sad losses at the moment. We’ve just had the 200th Jewish death from Covid-19. in Johannesburg since the beginning of the pandemic.’

How does Mr Tomson know that 200 local Jews have died from COVID? I suppose that he gets the information from death certificates and the like. But as has been obvious right from the outset of the COVID saga, the standards for recording deaths have been egregiously compromised over the COVID period. In the UK, to use but one example, any death within 28 days of a positive PCR test was recorded as a COVID death. People who died from stroke, cancer or traffic accidents were recorded as COVID fatalities merely because snippets of viral RNA were previously found in their blood. Just last week, Santa Clara County in the USA decided to take a fresh look at their COVID accounting. Here is the result:

SAN JOSE (KPIX) — On Friday, Santa Clara County health leaders announced a drop in its COVID-19 death toll by nearly a quarter after it refined its approach in reporting the data.

The county reported that it had reviewed each COVID-19 fatality and was only counting those whose cause of death was from the virus and not those who tested positive for COVID-19 at the time of death but did not necessarily die from the virus.

The new approach meant that the death toll dropped by 22%…

Nearly one-quarter of COVID deaths were not COVID deaths! Back to my question – how does Mr Tomson know that 200 Johannesburg Jews have died from COVID? It is safe to assume that local doctors were caught in the COVID zeitgeist to the same extent as their colleagues around the world and recorded lots of deaths – from flu, pneumonia and other causes – as COVID deaths.

Secondly, has Mr Tomson made any effort to identify which of the COVID deaths are attributable to COVID and which are attributable to adverse reactions to COVID vaccines? Despite strenuous efforts by the COVID faithful to entrench the mantra – COVID vaccines are safe and effective – within the population, there is an explosion of evidence that the vaccines come with severe costs. Here is an introduction to the subject. VAERS is the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System. It is a purely voluntary system run by the FDA and the CDC in which all affected parties – doctors, patients, family members – are encouraged to report adverse reactions to vaccines of all kinds. As you can see from the figure below, until 2020-2021, the number of adverse reactions to a multitude of vaccines was remarkably stable. What happened in 2020-2021?

The total reported post-vaccination deaths now stand at 9 048 (in the USA). In addition, there have been close to 1 000 post-vaccination miscarriages, more than 3 000 heart attacks, close to 20 000 severe allergic reactions, and close to 1 000 cases of heart muscle inflammation in people under 25. A recent analysis by researchers at Queen Mary University in London found that about 85% of deaths reported to VAERS were definitely, likely or possibly caused by COVID vaccines. And it’s worth remembering that everyone agrees that there is substantial under-reporting to VAERS. Now, given that the Chevrah Kadisha has been energetically vaccinating the elderly in its institutions (Sandringham Gardens etc) for the past few months, how does Mr Tomson know how many of the elderly were killed by COVID and how many succumbed to the vaccines?

But let’s assume that the figure of 200 deaths is in the right ballpark. Notice that Mr Tomson says that this is the death toll “since the beginning of the pandemic.” That means that over about 16 months, 200 people have died. And Mr Tomson also concedes what everyone knows – those who have died are overwhelmingly old and sick:

Are these deaths less tragic than the deaths of young and healthy individuals? No. But that misses the point. The correct question to pose is: Does the death of 150-200 mostly elderly and ill individuals over sixteen months constitute an existential threat to our community? A rational person can only say No.

The fact that COVID was never an existential crisis can be grasped immediately from the table below. After sixteen months of panic mongering, the reality is that COVID deaths rarely exceed one person in a thousand, and those deaths are hugely skewed towards the very elderly who suffer from comorbidities:

	COVID deaths	Population	Deaths/1000 population
World	4 055 963	7 674 000 000	0,5
Israel	6 483	9 326 000	0,7
South Africa	64 289	60 074 116	1
UK	128 425	69 251 655	1,2

Early in the COVID saga, proponents of masks pointed to Japan and other oriental countries as models of COVID mitigation. Several countries in the East – Japan, Taiwan, Singapore – seemed to be almost immune to the ravages of COVID. “Look at Japan,” said the exponents of the One True Science. “Their culture of mask-wearing has delivered them from the COVID scourge.” The media, naturally, pumped out countless corroborations of this narrative. I will provide only a few examples of the genre, because these reports are all cookie cutter versions of each other anyway.

Here is National Review on 31^st March 2020, at the very beginning of the saga:

The visible success Japan, South Korea, Singapore, and other East Asian countries have had in keeping the virus under control should prompt many in the West to revisit their mask-skeptical stance. The new mantra should take into account that masks and hand washing, taken together, have been shown to reduce the transmission of disease.

On 8^th May 2020, Vanity Fair ran with this headline:

If 80% of Americans Wore Masks, COVID-19 Infections Would Plummet, New Study Says.

And why should we believe this? Because

There’s compelling evidence that Japan, Hong Kong, and other East Asian locales are doing it right and we should really, truly mask up—fast.^[6]

A host of articles extolled the virtue of Japan’s Cult of the Mask. Here are some choice headlines.

8^th June 2020, AME Science: Face masks helped Japan avoid a coronavirus disaster.^[7]

12^th June 2020, New York Times: Is the secret to Japan’s virus success right in front of its face?^[8]

30^th June 2020, The Philadelphia Enquirer: Japan crushed COVID-19 by masking while Trump mocks masks.^[9]

14^th October 2020, DeseretNews: To beat COVID-19, be more like Japan.^[10]

And who can forget that in our very own Glenhazel community, a certain medical specialist took it upon himself to circulate a grotesque cartoon vilifying those who had the temerity to analyse the mask evidence carefully and doubt THE EXPERTS? He managed to convince many acolytes that Japan was the New Jerusalem.

But despite the copious propaganda, the sad reality is that viruses do what viruses do, and SARS-CoV-2 is no exception. Let’s feast on some real-world data, shall we?

Since the National Review article at the beginning of the pandemic, cases in Japan have increased by 7 708%. And this is a country with mask compliance rates of 96-98%!

As a result of the gigantic surge in cases, the Olympic Games have been teetering on the edge of cancellation. On 8^th July 2021, Reuters reported on the latest diktat – Tokyo has banned all spectators from Olympic events.^[11]

The load of hogwash promoted around the world (and in our community by well-meaning but hapless doctors) has finally crashed with a massive plop. Maybe a few perceptive souls will have noticed that despite the masks and lockdowns, nations that “defeated” the virus found themselves having to defeat it all over again, and countries that had an easy first wave were devastated by second and third waves. Here are just a few pertinent lessons:

Lesson 1: Masks have never worked

I won’t repeat here the basic lessons that I provided in earlier articles on how to distinguish science from ideology dressed up as science. The bottom line is that mass mask-wearing is utterly useless in preventing the spread of respiratory viruses. And not just useless – it’s dangerous. On 30^th June 2021, the American Medical Association published a report on the Carbon Dioxide (CO₂) concentrations that children who wear masks are exposed to.

CO₂ usually makes up 400 parts per million (ppm) in air. Anything above 2000 ppm is considered unacceptable by the German Federal Environmental Office. The American Medical Association report measured averages of 13-14 thousand ppm of CO₂ in the inhaled air of children wearing masks – over six times higher than the safety threshold. The study further pointed out that these levels occurred after only three minutes of wearing a mask. Children forced to wear masks at school find themselves wearing masks for hours, five days a week.

Let’s put aside the fact that this should have been obvious fifteen seconds after the beginning of the COVID pandemic rather than after fifteen months. After all, how far do you think your car will go if the front grille is swaddled with a blanket? And let’s put aside the fact that the paper, instead of saying “that children should not be forced to wear face masks” should have screamed “Do Not allow children to wear masks!” Having noted these caveats, can we focus on the fact that masks are both useless and dangerous? How long will it take parents in Glenhazel to stop following THE SCIENCE and actually follow the science?

Lesson 2: Those who promoted the Japan fantasy will never recant

As someone who has researched and written about science and society for twenty-five years, I assure you that those who promoted the Japan fantasy will not recant. The media outlets that pushed the Japan drivel have moved on. To the extent that there’s discussion about COVID now, it is about vaccines. Useless and harmful interventions such as obsessive disinfection of surfaces and body parts have been assimilated into the lexicon of hygienic practices practised by polite people everywhere, and they’re here to stay, a situation lamented by Chazal as שַׁבֶּשְׁתָּא כֵּיוָן דְּעָל עָל. Human beings employ an infinite array of rationalisations to justify their failures, and masks are no exception.

Lesson 3: Expertise (or otherwise) of doctors

One of the most common mistakes made during the COVID period by laymen and rabbis alike is the misapplication of Chazal’s standards to our situation. Our community imagines that statements of Chazal about medical expertise can be translated directly to our situation. This is a mistake. Modern medicine is immensely fragmented and specialised, and a typical doctor knows next-to-gornisht about areas outside his immediate training and experience. Your average anaesthesiologist knows about putting people to sleep, period. He has no experience – and until 2020, no interest – in the effects of mass mask-wearing on global epidemics. You may as well ask a truck driver about his opinion of carbon offsets for the transport industry because he happens to drive a lot more than you do. When doctors profess to know about issues like mask-wearing, apply the epigram at the top of this article: Where is the evidence? Do you have it from first-hand experience or from YouTube? Can you address counterarguments cogently?

In my previous article, I noted that those who took the lab-leak hypothesis (that SARS-CoV-2 escaped from a laboratory in Wuhan) seriously were ridiculed, with “honorifics” such as conspiracy theorist levelled at them. A rapid turnabout occurred in May 2021, as the hypothesis came to be regarded as mainstream. This week, the editor-in-chief of the British Medical Journal penned an article entitled Covid 19: We need a full open independent investigation into its origins.^[13] The article begins as follows:

When news first broke that a contagious and deadly new virus had emerged in Wuhan, many were struck by the coincidence of the city being the home of one of the world’s top virus research laboratories. But any suggestion that the virus originated in a laboratory was quickly labelled a conspiracy theory, dismissed by mainstream media, and even banned from Facebook.

The editor-in-chief continues

But… suppression of the lab leak theory was not based on any clear evaluation of the science… Instead, the lab leak theory sank under the weight of a concerted campaign by heavily conflicted scientists, leading to a “year of biased, failed reporting” by science journalists and journals…. We don’t know which theory is right, but a lab leak is plausible and worthy of serious inquiry.

Remember this: heavily conflicted scientists; biased, failed reporting. This assessment is just as true for masks, lockdowns, Ivermectin, PCR tests, COVID vaccines and a host of other COVID-related issues as it is for the debate around the origins of COVID.

The miraculous foreskin

What’s to envy if the foreskin is a dispensable part?

A bris milah

Man is born uncircumcised, and lives none the worse for it. The prepuce or, to give it the crude name, foreskin, may not be the handiest or handsomest part of the body; but disabling? I’ve yet to meet the man with normal functions and appetites who cannot perform them because the tip of his member is encased by skin.

So of what help or hindrance is it for the organ’s good working order? That is the big question. Can the peewee sheath help a man urinate or propagate better? Is it health-giving? Can living without the head cocoon lead to untimely death? It would seem not. The circumcised are quite hale and wholesome without the masthead. Who’d give a serpent’s tooth for that man’s grasp of reality who can’t see that if the prepuce had some practical use he’d know about it.

If the spare part does not make life easy or difficult, why encumber man with it? Why the unhelpful, unsightly cover?  It’s a problem that spawns too many ‘whys’ without any ‘because.’

The covered mushroom head must signify more than meets the eye, with ramifications above and beyond the bestial and natural functions of man. The ways of the Creator are as opaque as they are wondrous. They mesmerize the intellect while keeping it guessing. The scientific make the anatomy disclose its secrets, while believers go behind the veil that physiognomy obscures. Religion is the diagnostic of a troubled mind. Body and soul, soul and body – how mysterious they are!

Yet scripture (Tanach, the Jews call it) littered with honeyed clues is seductive. The man Adam – who by the by grew a prepuce late in life after he partook of forbidden fruit – was born circumcised. He was punished with a prepuce. God had modeled and fashioned Eve’s companion to perfection, without appendage. After the woman abused the Tree of Life, and got her mate into a fix, skin grew over his organ. It sundered a perfect harmony between the Maker and the made. The slick model was a false start. The covered item marked mankind’s new beginning.

The wrinkled arrowhead looked like a work in progress – and man felt it was. Turn the idea any way you will it can’t be escaped: since Adam was born perfect all born after him must be second-raters.

Punished with expulsion and a foreskin

But what’s to envy if the orlah (to give the Hebrew name) is a dispensable apparatus? So menfolk don’t have the clean model which works no better than the one they get by on. What’s so terrible?  

In fact the piece of skin, that purposeless part, can set man adrift from benefits compared to which the birthright is like a tinpot bargain…Which it was to Esau who swapped his birthright for a bowl of lentil soup, cooked by a shrewd twin.

 Go on – laugh. A bit of skin! Surely not. Yes, but attend to Abraham telling his major-domo Eliezer to take an oath. On what? Not on a sacred screed he kept at home. Not with eyes tight shut, on the holy name. Not on (heaven forbid) a carved idol which Abraham’s quaint father Terach sold. None of the above was good enough. None had more sanctity than a trimmed down organ. “Put your hand there,” said Abraham. “Swear that you, Eliezer, will do what you’re told.”And that is what he, without protest, did: grabbed the master’s member by its naked top. 

If it seems bizarre, remember this is Abraham who converted people from grotesque forms of worship. And who paid heavily to do that. At age ninety-nine mind you, Abraham cut his flesh away to leave behind an idol-istic upbringing.

Didn’t the Almighty like it! Snip it off, Abraham. ‘Uncircumcised you are imperfect. Perform bris-mila and you will go to a higher holiness elevated above nature.” And then a threat – Abraham must have balked at the challenge. “Refuse to do it,” warned God, “and I shall return my world to nothingness.’

There – did I exaggerate what’s lost by keeping the tip under cover? The whole universe collapses to nothing. What a bit of skin can do! Also what it cannot do as long as it remains: win battles.

Take the army under Joshua facing the walls of Jericho. Bivouacked on Foreskin Hill they were not happy campers. Down the lines was heard a gnashing of teeth and a groaning of distress. There’d been, on orders from Above, a circumcision en masse. Discarded foreskins, thousands upon unsightly thousands, making a hillock. But the Commander in Chief comforted the maimed military before battle. “I have rolled away the disgrace of Egypt upon you,” said the Lord.

Joshua’s army had to get circumcised before taking Jericho

Disgrace! To go around with that piece of skin – a disgrace!  In the sight of God no less.

And yet Abraham was loath. Three close friends had to be consulted first. ‘What’s that!  Question almighty wisdom? Keep the King of Kings waiting?

What he did could hardly be more irreverent. Many would call such behavior downright rude. What happened to Abraham’s old obedience and devotion? God tells him to get circumcised, and He’s told to wait. It was the ninth and, by the looks of it, the least of Abraham’s trials, all of which he had plunged into without a thought.

What was problematic about this trial – a snip and a cut – that he had to ask friends before he’d do the deed. Here’s a superman who had burnt the mighty Nimrod’s idols in front of the royal throne; who argued with a king who thought nothing of putting a quarter of a million baby boys to death in case they grew up to be Abraham; who allowed Nimrod’s bodyguards to throw him into the furnace of Ur Kasdim; who left home at a word from God and travelled into the great unknown; who endured a famine and trusted his wife, next to whom every woman was ugly, with  Pharaoh.

Whatever God told him to do Abraham did, eight times. I doubt whether another human would arm himself with mudpies and muster eighteen puny disciples to rout the armies of four great kings. Abraham, one would think, had proved himself. But now – a fuss when told to remove a little surplus skin? Delay the deed until he mulls over it with friends. How can it be?

Abraham fussed before obeying God

It can, if the orlah, as proclamed, is the holy divide. The uncircumcised have a fatal handicap. They are spiritual pigmies next to the circumcised elite. More, Abraham had only to do as told and he’d rectify Adam’s false start. What are days of pain when you can put Creator and creations back in touch? No, it wasn’t like Abraham.

But he had an excuse which the Lord looked upon kindly. More than aspiring to be close to God, Abraham feared to lose the common touch. After the short back and sides he’d really be on the other side, an Ivri more than just in name.

He laid these anxieties at heaven’s door. “Lord, when I was uncircumcised travelers came to me, but after I do it they’ll stop coming.”

The plea did not fall on deaf ears. After consulting with his prepus-encumbered camp, he took up a steely blade and, the hand of God steadying his own ninety-nine year hand, cut and trimmed until the orlah fell. The brit mila was sealed.

From then on the patriarch and his camp were marked men.

South Africa, the go-to case for milking a pandemic

The President who oversaw the milking

‘From the beginning ‘ it was the ANC collective that turned up its nose against the people, closed ranks to protect the corrupt, and send a strong message that its political leaders have a right to bribery and corruption because it is above the people. Even above the law. The ANC government spawned a forest of corruption whose fruits only party members, families and inner circle could enjoy. It bred a culture of impunity. Party members brought up on the smell of an oil rage learnt to feel the texture of money. They wanted lots of it for themselves, and by any means whatsoever.’

Advocate Ismail Mohamed.   

Human frailties, Covid taught, are meat and drink for elects with evil designs. When disease runs riot liberty becomes a burden and safety an abiding obsession. Authorities jump to relieve scared people of the first in return for promises of the second. Protocols to micro-manage daily routines are decreed to keep the frightened out of harm’s way. A willingness to barter freedom in return for safety is in the human genome.

If not the discoverer of such frailty, Alexander Hamilton a Founding Father of America, saw what could be done with it. “Safety from external danger,” he said, “is the most powerful director of conduct”, and the desire for it will compel people “to destroy their civil and political rights.”

Incubated despots guaranteeing, ‘We know best’ exploit a peril to manipulate the price at which freedom and safety are bartered. To be saved from Covid the fear-riddled beg to give up their liberty for being safe from what in reality is a virus not so deadly as they are made to believe. If lawmakers inculcate the idea of Covid as a threat equal to a blood bath or a mega warhead, so much the better for them. A war footing is to control freaks what teats are to a suckling pig.

People softened up will suspend belief. They’ll forget the elects’ right to bribery and corruption.  They’ll do whatever co-opted experts prescribe. Told to shut themselves up at home and desist from earning a living they’ll obey. Watching constitutional rights to congregate for weddings, burials and worship cancelled, they’ll salute. For safety sake people are ready to jump through a burning hoop.    

The elect co-opt experts to be front-runners. Take virologist Professor Barry Schoub, co-opted to an ANC advisory body for vaccines. His type enable crooked politicians to punt the soporific, ‘We follow the best public health advice from expert advisors’.

At the word ‘expert’ the media start by self-deception and end by deceiving everyone. To be told that a Covid council is ‘following the science’ is to rest assured that policies and courses of action are the best hope against Covid. The word Science is capable of powerful tricks. It can shift power from the elect to unelected haughty technocrats who know best. Knowing best they are given emergency powers. To paraphrase the Nobel economist Milton Friedman, ‘No government program is more permanent than an emergency program.’

Where does all of it leave resistor and critic?  It leaves them open to ridicule. One is declared to be ‘anti-science’, the other to be lacking the knowledge and perspective available to experts.

Virologist Professor Schoub is your archetype technocrat, haughty and dismissive.

‘Public trust and confidence are fragile. Undermining, demeaning and blaming authority and the programme can itself lead to the heartbreak the Chief Rabbi alluded to graphically. His (article) helps no-one.’

https://www.businesslive.co.za/bd/opinion/letters/2021-07-01-letter-undermining-the-vaccine-programme-helps-no-one/

The professor was reacting to Chief Rabbi Warren Goldstein’s attack on the crooks who co-opted Schoub, the elect who run the country for loot.

‘A third wave of Covid infections was perhaps inevitable,’ wrote Rabbi Goldstein. “What wasn’t inevitable was the heartbreaking amount of serious illness and death it has wrought. This public health crisis could have been averted had President Cyril Ramaphosa and his government handled the vaccine rollout effectively. The vaccine rollout started late and has barely progressed. The government has offered countless excuses. None of them holds up. It claims the country is a victim of “vaccine apartheid” — that rich countries are hogging vaccines to the detriment of poor ones.’ https://www.businesslive.co.za/bd/opinion/2021-06-29-warren-goldstein-our-leaders-prove-immune-to-vaccination-efforts/

What would make a scientist or a community or business leader lend respectability to the criminals who co-opted them? The answer is, their lack of savvy. Find an expert or business or community leader of worldly wisdom and you found an exception. The expert knows a lot about a little, the business leader knows how to combine resources and allocate capital. It makes them as equipped to grasp the elects’ suicidal policies as your plumber or postman.

The Ministerial Advisory Committee on Vaccines is packed with experts like Professor Schoub co-opted by a minister of government whose party gave him the right to bribe and corrupt his way to wealth.  

The elect have a right to bribe and corrupt their way to mega wealth

“To me,” said Andrew Cuomo, the Governor of New York State, “I say the cost of a human life is priceless. Period.” Cuomo went on to kill elderly Covid patients by the thousands. He front ran President Ramaphosa who said, “We may be tired of this persistent enemy. The threat to health and lives is evident as people become ill and some die. We must do what we can to limit the toll.” He went on to allow cohorts to raid the Covid kitty bare, effectively condemning thousands of Covid victims to death.

Nor have the experts been terribly expert. They believe in a calculus to strike a balance between saving lives and saving livelihoods. That’s not the trade-off at all. Heavy-handed protocols, the evidence now reveals, did not save lives. On the other hand lockdowns and closed borders demonstrably wrecked them both – lives and livelihoods.  Shut downs hardly did more than engineer mass unemployment and bankruptcy.  

The experts’ models failed another test. They failed to factor in unquantifiable costs of protocols. What price is paid by preventing family visits to the elderly in care homes or to dying loved ones in hospital? What did school closure cost a generation of school-goers? Were lockdowns worth it? Even the pro-lockdown journal, Economist, conceeds that the net benefit was “a toss-up.”

South Africa is like the rest of Africa, only more so. The government makes people stay home but, unlike honest governments, has no money to pay them to stay home. Inoculation would have mitigated the impact of a third wave. But only some 1% of Africans have been fully vaccinated, most of them north of the Sahara. Of the nearly 3bn doses administered globally, less than 2% are in Africa.

South Africa’s elect couldn’t get hospitals up to speed, couldn’t train up more healthcare workers or roll out vaccination. But they did ban alcohol sales. They did import Cuban doctors at a cost of hundreds of millions, to a country where one in two adults are jobless. The elect did follow the science – that is, follow the select scientists they brought in to assert, ‘We know what’s best for you.’

The Case against Occupied Palestinian Territory

International Court of Justice

The Presidents of the European Union and South Africa made the common claim: Israel occupies Palestinian territory. They sought to stop the ‘wrongful’ labelling, ‘Product of Israel’ and substitute it with, ‘Made in a settlement in the ‘Occupied Palestinian Territories’.

Martin Schulz, ex President of the EU, 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.

Advocate for Israel

My Lord, the court will hear evidence that the real estate given the name, ‘Occupied Palestinian Territory’ (OPT) is not real. There are two hard reasons for that: (1) War records turn up nothing to support the name. (2) Law and statutes turn up nothing to support it.

Evidence will be led that OPT reflects a political policy or aspiration. There really is no Palestinian territory to be occupied.

Evidence will be led that the move to debar Israeli products made in the ‘OPT’ has everything to do with lobby groups and politics but nothing to do with informing and protecting the customer. To the contrary, the label would trick unwary customers. It would also cast suspicion on any product labelled thus, and be used as a backdoor trade boycott of Israel.         
To begin, certain facts of history are too real to dispute. In the 1948 War Egypt took the Gaza Strip, and Jordan took Judea and Samaria, the so-named “West Bank.” Egypt did not claim sovereignty in Gaza, but in 1950 Jordan annexed Judea and Samaria. The annexation was not recognized by the international community, other than Pakistan and the UK> Even the Arab countries objected to what Jordan did.  They threatened to kick it out of the Arab League. After the Six Day War in June 1967 the territories, earmarked for the national home of the Jewish people by the (binding) Mandate Charter of San Remo of 1920, came under Israeli control. So much for the foundation facts.

With My Lord’s permission I call my first witness. Professor Judge Stephen M Schwebel was elected to the ICC in January 1981. He was subsequently re-elected twice, serving as president of the court from 1997–2000.

The first witness for Israel

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-defence. 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-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… including the whole of Jerusalem, than do Jordan and Egypt.”

You hear that, Mr Presidents. Israel has more right than Jordan to be occupying the West Bank and more right than Egypt to be occupying Gaza. Or had more right: today not one Jew blights the landscape of Gaza.

No “Palestinian” territory to this point. But don’t lose hope. It could be ahead of us, though the signs are not good. For nineteen long years Jordan ruled the West Bank. Between 1948 and 1967 it had the opportunity to create Palestine on the West Bank. It did not. A crying shame, because then you could aver, with some credibility, that Israel occupies Palestinian territory. What a crying shame that Jordan made West Bank dwellers citizens of Jordan.

So Mr Presidents, here you are, been asked to explain when and how the territories became Palestinian and occupied by Israel.

But wait. That would be putting the cart before the horse. You’d best tell the court at what point the Palestinians emerged as a people. After all, there must be a people known as the Palestinians to claim their Palestinian territory. I want you to refer to a single international instrument that refers to 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, only “other sections of the population.” Let’s move on. Shall we try November 1947 and UN General Assembly Resolution No. 181. It provided for “Independent Arab and Jewish States and the Special International Regime for the City of Jerusalem…”  

Note: an Arab not a Palestinian state. But try and try again.

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 can 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!

My Lord, at this point I 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:

Second witness for Israel

“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.”

Of course they won’t wait. Under Jordanian control for 19 years, Arab leaders in the territories disavowed any claim to them. 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 the occupied territory.  You shall not, Mr Presidents, 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.

Third witness for Israel

“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. Still no sign of Palestinian territories.

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

Fourth witness for Israel

Mr. Baker, could you start with the 1947 Partition Plan. Explain to the court why 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 when Israel signed the 1995 interim agreement, in force to this day, it did not renounce any of its rights or claims to the occupied territories.

Summing up

My Lord, as much as the Presidents of the European Union and South Africa want Gaza and the West Bank to belong to the Palestinians, they cannot. There simply is no Palestinian territory for Israel to occupy. Territories by that name are no more than a political objective, an aspiration, a denial of events and law.

Lockdowns – who’s got the savvy and legitimacy?

1. Revolutionary hothead

Marching for Malema

OR

2. CEO of a hospital group

‘We are led by fools.’ Julius Malema slams lockdowns

“The purpose of the lockdown is to allow the state to prepare health facilities, including procuring vaccine so that you open the country, you can vaccinate people, and also have more health facilities available,” he said. “We agreed to that from the beginning – we said, ‘let’s close the country’. We called for harsher lockdowns, we supported level 5, and we supported the president throughout. What happened in return? The president slept on his job – he didn’t do anything that is supposed to be done during lockdown.”

Malema said that the EFF will not allow lockdowns to continue being implemented and used as the solution to the pandemic, and called on the public to take to the streets and demand that vaccines are rolled out. 

Evidence? Everywhere in your face

• Economic destruction
• Mass unemployment
• Chaotic state hospitals.   
• Covid patients queuing for hospital beds and treatment
• The Health Minister spearheading the Covid response is involved in corruption.  
• Imtiaz Sooliman, the founder of Gift of the Givers, enumerates the hospital shambles
• Staff shortages were not fixed during past and present Covid waves.
• There is water disruption at some hospitals
• The huge general hospital (Charlotte Maxeke) in Johannesburg fire-damaged and closed, yet has ready capacity for hundreds of Covid patients
• Dedicated Covid facilities, built at huge cost at the huge Chris Hani Baragwanath hospital, remain unused.
• A hospital in Kempton Park has been closed for two decades, and been vandalised. It could have been upgraded for treatment of Covid patients. 

The revolutionary hothead has savvy and legitimacy. Malema is the leader of a political party with mass support. Correct – the President slept on the job

Lockdown Level 5: Netcare CEO calls for tough restrictions

Gauteng should be placed into Lockdown Level 5 and schools should close immediately to halt the surge in Covid-19 infections in the province Netcare CEO Richard Friedland advised. A hard lockdown, be it government regulated or citizen driven, was needed to halt the “massive unprecedented surge” of new infections.

Evidence?

• The suspension of civil liberty and economic life can translate into halting infection?
• The CEO can demonstrate a correlation between lockdown levels and Covid stats?
• The CEO has done a simulation for the costs and trade-offs of his level 5 lockdown?  
• The CEO will tour parks and pavements to feed the homeless unable to beg during his  lockdown?
• When did the purpose of lockdown change from giving the health sector breathing space to halting infections?  
• The CEO will support police enforcement of his lockdown in informal settlements?
• The CEO has a constituency or a public authority that gives him the right to propose a level 5 lockdown?
• With township and rural schools closed, will the CEO arrange for learners to get their one proper daily meal?
• The CEO is prepared to kick millions of people lucky to have a job out of their job?
• THE CEO relies on ANC government sources for his Covid data? He trusts their data?  So kleptomaniacs turn honest when they have to assemble Covid data?
• The government Chair of Parliament’s Committee on Health (Dr S Dhlomo) warned of Covid’s psychosocial impact. Covid is a miracle virus that even impacts mental health? Nothing to do with the lockdown his government imposed? He can be trusted to give truthful data?
• The CEO wanting to shut everything down: will he keep his full salary while depriving others of their livelihood.

The CEO of a hospital group has no savvy or legitimacy  

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.

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.