From The River To The Sea

"We are getting more and more phone calls and conversations of concerned people — if it’s Israelis who invest in Ireland and are concerned about their investment, if it’s Israelis who have relocated to Ireland into different tech companies and either are requesting to be relocated somewhere else or asking to return to Israel."

"I think it sends the wrong message about the location and the centrality of Ireland as a tech hub when there are more and more people who are concerned about moving to Ireland. I don’t think that this is the message that Ireland wants to send to the world … And this is not what we want to see."

"[Many Irish sympathize with Israel] behind the scenes. I think there is a lot of potential in our bilateral relations, if it’s cybersecurity or health care, climate change. I hope to be given that opportunity to continue that."

Israeli Ambassador to Ireland, Dana Erlich

Anti-Israel demonstrators stand outside the Israeli embassy after Ireland has announced it will recognize a Palestinian state, in Dublin, Ireland, May 22, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Molly Darlington

 A March poll by the Palestinian polling group elicited the data that seven in ten Palestinians approved of the October 7 sadistic barbarity that Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine terrorist operatives inflicted on southern Israel's kibbutz residents. Poll results rendered the information that Palestinians in the West Bank outdid their Gaza counterparts with a greater number supporting Hamas as the duly constituted government in both territories.

Israelis, looking back in appalled anger at the carnage wrought by the Palestinian terrorist operation of October 7 are almost equal in numbers in rejecting a renewed Palestinian enclave in  Gaza. It seems that in the West, in European countries in particular, Hamas and the other Palestinian terror groups are not held in any judgement. Israel, on the other hand, is held to a standard not expected of Palestinians. When Palestinians invoking their 'refugee' status as 'victims' everlasting as long as Israel exists, commit to the goal of destroying Israel, their ongoing violence against Israel and its population is considered irrelevant.

 

Israel's responses to deadly raids, however, are viewed through the magnified lens of international demands that restraint be the order of the day, not the wholesale intention of responding militarily to the rocket barrages, and suicide missions -- and above all the October 7 sadistic savagery with its death count, determined to prevent the promise of more October 7s, until Israel is destroyed -- by taking the initiative to destroy first those whose unremitting violence against Israeli existence must be final and complete.

 

Ireland has led the way in persuading Spain and and Norway -- all three countries known to be hostile to Israel -- to formally recognize the 'State of Palestine', rather than await a final agreement between Israel and the Palestinian Authority government on mutual recognition and a corresponding decision on conditions both agree upon, setting standards and boundaries as well as pledges of non-hostile cooperation. Israel has been available for talks in the critical issues involved, the Palestinians have evaded them.

Choosing instead their slow and steady scheduling of the poisoning of Palestinian minds against their Jewish neighbours, inculcating in those minds the need for 'resistance' against the 'occupation'; an occupation necessitated by the urgent call to protect Israelis of all ages against lethal attacks that Palestinians are taught by their governments it is their duty to carry out to martyrdom in the greater interests of opposing Israel's presence and committing to killing Jews.

Sovereignty recognition must pass some elemental standards, not the least of which under international law a state must have fixed borders, a permanent population, uncontested government with control of its security and commitments to amiable foreign relations. In light of the most recent of the ongoing attacks against Israel and its people, to proceed at this unresolved juncture to recognize a Palestinian state that refuses to negotiate with the neighbour it threatens, to agree on boundaries and future relations is beyond premature.

Granting that status for the Palestinians is not only premature, it represents a reprehensible decision to reward savagery committed against a neighbour where 1,200 lives of Israeli citizens were extinguished on one fateful day of carnage dedicated to terrorizing, slaughtering and hostage taking. Neither Palestinians, nor now Israelis favour the two-state 'solution' the West is anxious to hasten to reality, seemingly to solve a brutal, unresolved issue of two peoples rivalling one another in a competition for territory.

 

Israelis settled for a state on a small portion of their historical ancestral land mass; Palestinians rejected outright the opportunity offered them through the Partition Plan of the United Nations in 1947. Consistently since then when war after war broke out as surrounding Arab states attempted to dislodge the Jewish State from the Middle East, Israel successfully clung to its territory, militarily defeating its enemies and frustrating Palestinian aspirations to achieve a state from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean sea.

 

Which is to say, without a presence of an Israeli state, leaving the entire area to the Palestinian Arabs. That remains the goal of both Fatah (West Bank Palestinian Authority) and Hamas (Gaza Strip). Fatah and Hamas oppose one another with a hostility born of ideological differences and factional rivalry. Their only area of agreement is the destruction of the State of Israel. That part of the West that is amenable to granting State status to Palestinian aspiration is effectively agreeing that the use of violent sadism was justifiable and awaited reward.

 

Countries that would never tolerate violence against their claims to sovereignty and against their populations, appear to feel that having suffered the intolerable, Israel should merely shrug and count its losses to satisfy the demands of a global community fixated with the entitlements and inalienable rights of a Palestinian population that chooses its method of persuasion, trumping lethal violence over the negotiating table. In the process the pretense for consumption by the West, frequent appeals to victimhood. Appealing for help from the international community to bypass normal international standards to qualify for statehood.

 

Looking ahead to the eventual agreement on statehood for 'Palestine', the issue of who would govern is critical to relations between Israel and the Palestinians. Palestinians make no secret of the fact that the majority reject 88-year-old Mahmoud Abbas, who was elected to his position as President decades ago, with no election keeping him in office for the past 20 years. Their choice of governance has been stated time and again in their admiration for Hamas's agenda. 

 

Ireland, Spain and Norway would never agree to live alongside another state with destructive tendencies and an agenda that included ongoing violence against a neighbour. Yet they deem it acceptable for Israel and they prefer to force the matter by supporting a Palestinian State that is loathe to bargain in good faith with Israel, since to do so would be to forego their ambition to have free reign from "The River to the Sea" in perpetuity.

 

 

Negotiated Settlements Set Aside by Norway, Ireland, Spain

"Today, Ireland, Norway and Spain are announcing that we recognize the state of Palestine. Each of us will now undertake whatever national steps are necessary to give effect to that decision."

"There is never a wrong time to do the right thing".

"It was my government’s preferred position to recognize a two-state solution as part of a peace process to bring that about, but sadly, unfortunately, such a comprehensive peace settlement now seems, in many ways, further away than it has ever been."

"We believe you can’t say you’re in favor of a two-state solution and not recognize the very existence of two states."

Irish Prime Minister Simon Harris

From left, Irish Prime Minister Simon Harris, Spain's President Pedro Sánchez and Norway’s Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre are pictured.  Getty Images/PA/Reuters

 

 

Was ever a sentence uttered that should have been corrected as 'There is never a right time to do a wrong thing'? Israel, in reacting to the tripartite statement in shock and disbelief is entirely correct in chiding these three Western democracies for their gross error in judgement, deciding between them that the 'right thing' to do is to reward terrorist groups in the Middle East for their vicious penchant to declare their intention to destroy a legally and morally constituted state on its own ancestral geography that has been challenged for possession by a group of Arab (of mostly Egyptian origin) colonizers claiming it as their own. Did the three ask themselves why it was that a negotiated settlement was further away than ever?

 

The opportunity for a two-state 'solution' was offered through the UN's partition plan, promptly and gratefully accepted by Israel, furiously rejected by those now calling themselves 'Palestinians' who preferred to wait out the intentions of surrounding Arab/Muslim countries to march on the nascent state of Israel with a view to preventing the establishment of the Jewish state. Succeeding wars failed just as the initial one did, but the Palestinian-Arab determination to wreak havoc on Israel with the ultimate aim to destroy it and murder all its population has never faded.

 

The October 7 butchery that took place in southern Israel by the terrorist groups Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, aided and abetted by Palestinian civilians exhibiting raw savagery in the sordid, ghoulish sadistic cruelty meted out to innocent civilians has few parallels in modern history. This declaration by Palestinians both in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip who have been polled to render 85% support to Hamas terrorism and their approval of the October 7 bestiality represents the level of civilization that Spain, Norway and Ireland are prepared to recognize and legitimize with statehood.

 

Israel is dismayed, but perhaps not completely surprised by the three countries turning their backs on the only democracy in the Middle East, distinguished from all others because it is Jewish, its origins the very land it now sits upon, along with other areas the world prepared to honour and hand over to an Arab population that has no intention, ever, of living in peace with the original inhabitants of the land. In their preparation to recognize the State of Palestine, no effort has been made by Spain, Norway and Ireland to condemn the Palestinians for their aspirations to destroy Israel.

 

Nor has any overture been made to persuade the Palestinians through their leadership to turn their ambitions toward statehood infrastructure and the merits of civilized behaviour in favour of completely foregoing its lethal hostility against Israel. Needless to say, with no expectations of Palestinians curbing and abandoning their commitment to violence against Israel, the announcements of support in the form of recognition of their ambitions to form a legitimate state with no pre-conditions sits extremely well with the Palestinian leadership -- the Palestinian Authority and Gaza's Hamas rulers.

 

Envoys of the three countries were summoned by Israel in a diplomatic expression of profound disappointment in their judgement and decision-making. The European ambassadors to Israel, Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz said grimly, would be requested to witness video footage of the October 7 attack, to ensure they had intimate first-hand knowledge of what had transpired, through videos produced by the terrorists themselves as they rampaged through Israeli farming kibbutzim, raping and vandalizing, torturing children and women before murdering them.    

 

"[A Palestinian state is] a prerequisite for achieving peace in the Middle East."

"There will be no peace in the Middle East without a two-state solution."

"There can be no two-state solution without a Palestinian state."

Norway’s Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre

 

"This recognition is not against the people of Israel and certainly not against the Jewish people."

"It’s not in favor of Hamas."

"It’s in favor of co-existence."

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez

"[Recognizing a Palestinian state would be a] reward for terror."

"This will be a terror state, which will attempt to perpetrate the onslaught of October 7 time and again, and to that we shall not agree."

"This evil must not be given a state."

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

A man waves the Palestinian flag in front of the Norwegian Parliament building during a demonstration in Oslo, Oct. 28, 2023. (Frederik Ringnes/NTB via AP)

 

 

Destructively Illicit Market

"[The trafficking of rhino and elephant parts] is the highest priority investigation for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. If something isn't done to stop this illegal trade, there's a good possibility our children won't be able to see elephants or rhinos in the wild."
Edward Grace, deputy assistant director of law enforcement, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

Photo by Desmond Kwande/AFP - A Zimbabwe National Parks worker in Harare in a storehouse with elephant tusks and rhino horns
 
But the poaching (gentle word that -- it is almost devoid of negativism, like children reaching for cooling cupcakes, irresistible to their sense of entitlement) of rhinos and elephants is taking place not within the geographical territory of the United States of America, needless to say, but rather within Africa. Rhino horns can fetch between $20,000 to $30,000 a pound. As for elephants, it is estimated that 20,000 of the great beasts were poached across the African continent last year alone.

This is a figure reached by the Secretariat of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora. In 2013, over a thousand rhinos were 'poached', which is to say they were hunted and killed in a well organized manner for the lucrative trade in their horns. That's a threefold increase from 2010, when an estimated 333 rhinos were killed, according to South African National Parks.

It is such a lucrative field that organized crime has moved into the picture, finding the allure of the trade just as irresistible as that four-year-old reaching for the cupcake. An Irish gang known as the Rathkeale Rovers was considered a major player in the global rhino horn trade before the arrest and conviction of some of their members. That's quite a stretch, from Ireland to Africa, but money speaks loudly in its appeal.

Authorities noticed an "astronomical" spike in the price of rhino horns on the black market; up to $30,000 per pound, which alongside the reports of huge numbers of rhinos being killed, spurred them to act. A Canadian antique dealer out of Richmond, British Columbia, was recently indicted by a federal grand jury in New York following an undercover sting in which American wildlife agents were involved.

There are strict export laws in effect forbidding the importation of ivory and horn, including objects made from them. The underground trafficking of such objects made from endangered species represents a multibillion-dollar industry. Xiao Ju Guan, the B.C. antiques dealer, had travelled to New York from Vancouver in May, paying $45,000 for two black rhinoceros horns.

His trouble began when he bought those horns from undercover wildlife agents posing as traffickers. Mr. Guan took his horns to a shipping store for the purpose of sending them forward to a Point Roberts, Washington address, located just south of the Canadian border. On the shipping label, Mr. Guan identified the contents of the box as "handicrafts" with a value of $200.

Arresting authorities hold that in the last two years, Mr. Guan and his partners were responsible for smuggling dozens of wildlife items made of rhino horns, elephant ivory and coral, their value estimated at over half a million dollars. He is only one of nineteen people who have thus far been arrested since the Fish and Wildlife Service and U.S. Department of Justice began their crackdown three years earlier.

Experts point to the growing purchasing power of Asia's middle class being responsible for the expanding underground trade, with its concomitant conscienceless predation on vulnerable African wildlife. Rhino horns are particularly valued in China and Vietnam.

"To Procure An Abortion": Forbidden

"When the consultant came on the ward rounds on Monday morning, Savita asked if they could not save the baby, could they induce to end the pregnancy?  The consultant said: 'As long as there is a fetal heartbeat, we can't do anything.'
"...The consultant said it was the law, that this is a Catholic country.  Savita said: 'I am neither Irish nor Catholic', but they said there was nothing they could do."
Praveen Halappanavar, Dublin, Ireland

Just as well that Savita Halappanaver, 17 weeks pregnant, saw her parents for the last time - as they had departed back to India after visiting with their daughter and son-in-law - the day before their daughter was admitted to hospital.  They saw her again soon afterward, when their son-in-law brought their daughter back to India for burial for a Hindu funeral and cremation.

In Galway, where the young couple had settled, and where he had taken a job as an engineer at the medical devices manufacturer Boston Scientific, the city's annual Diwali festival was cancelled by the Indian community living there.  For Praveen Halappanavar was the motivating force behind the festival, one of the main organizers.  If they had been in Boston or back in India she would still be alive.

Ireland's constitution forbids abortion, even though a 1992 Supreme Court ruling found it should be legalized for situations when the mother's life would be at risk from a continued pregnancy.  Irish hospitals and their doctors remain reluctant to terminate pregnancies, making exceptions only in the most life-threatening circumstances.

Irish women who seek abortions must leave for England where abortion on demand has been legal since 1967.  Any woman too ill, too frail, too poor, or in too much pain to travel is out of luck.  According to Praveen Halappanavar, Savita's husband, doctors at University Hospital Galway in western Ireland were able to determine within hours of her admission for severe pain that she was miscarrying.

Over the following three days doctors at the hospital steadfastly refused both their requests for a medically induced abortion in view of and despite Savita's obvious pain and fading health condition.  They insisted on waiting for the foetus to die on its own.  As long as they could detect a heart beat they would take no action to relieve the desperate mother of her pain, frustration and fear.

"Savita was really in agony.  She was very upset, but she accepted she was losing the baby", her husband explained in an interview with The Irish Times.  His wife vomited repeatedly, he said, but doctors refused to terminate the foetus since its heart was still beating.  It died the following day, its remains surgically removed.

And within hours of that final relief, Savita was placed under sedation in intense care, with blood poisoning.  And that was the last time her husband ever spoke again with his wife.  Her heart, her kidneys and her liver had halted their function.  Early the following morning she was pronounced dead.

Ireland's illegality of abortion law dates to 1861, when it was part of the United Kingdom.  It is no longer valid in Britain, but Ireland clings to the law.  Breach it, and it becomes a crime punishable by life imprisonment.