'Mad Vlad' Putin is no conservative hero

Many conservatives are applauding Russian President Vladimir Putin for his decision to intervene in the Syrian civil war. Even though the US-led coalition has been bombing ISIS for more than a year, many feel that Putin has taken a leadership role in the war in comparison to President Obama’s lackluster resolve.

A good example of the conservative applause for Putin comes from Robin McFee of Family Security Matters who applauded Putin for his “moral clarity” in pointing out the failures of the Obama Administration in the Middle East. Going even further, Walid Shoebat, a former terrorist who converted to Christianity, called Putin’s intervention in Syria “a holy war,” saying “it is the latest crusade of our time.”

“Putin is the St. Constantine of our time,” writes Shoebat, referring to the Roman emperor who stopped the persecution of Christians and legalized Christianity. “For like that priestly king of old,” he continues, “he has unsheathed the holy sword of the Church to strike down the enemies of God for the cause of humanity.”

Even Franklin Graham, son of evangelist Billy Graham and founder of Samaritan’s Purse, said, “What Russia is doing may save the lives of Christians in the Middle East.” Franklin continued, “You understand that the Syrian government for their good and for their bad over the history of this country, they have protected Christians, they have protected minorities from the Islamists.”

Graham’s view is likely close to the truth. Putin and Russia are not intervening to save Syrian Christians. They are intervening to save the Assad regime. The possibility that some Christians might be saved in the process is purely incidental to Putin’s primary goal.

On American Thinker, Fay Voshell writes that the “former KGB agent is now a devout Christian whose faith informs policy” and that “Putin's religious values are rooted in Russian Orthodoxy and personal religious experiences, including his wife's car accident in 1993 and a life-threatening house fire in 1996.”

Nevertheless, Putin’s actions in the two decades since his supposed conversion more closely resemble a Machiavellian strongman than a principled Christian. In 1999, when, as prime minister of Russia, Putin sent troops into Chechnya, it was to stop “the collapse of the Soviet Union,” not to protect Christians in the mostly Muslim republic. As World Affairs notes, Putin blamed Chechen terrorists for a series of bombings in Russia, but when an unexploded bomb was found, Russian agents were revealed to be the perpetrators of the false flag attack.

Putin’s concern for the innocent was not evident in his reaction to the hostage taking at Beslan School No. 1 in North Ossetia in southern Russia in 2004. Security forces responding to the terrorist attack used flame throwers and grenade launchers when they assaulted the school according to the Moscow Times. The attack resulted in the deaths of more than 330 of the 1,200 hostages. Most of the dead were children.

Putin invaded two other countries as well. The 2008 invasion of Georgia and the 2014 invasion of Ukraine bear many similarities. In both cases, Russia used the pretext of protecting ethnic Russians to seize outlying provinces from independent nations. In both cases, Russia seems unwilling to stop with its early gains. The Guardian describes a Russian border fence around South Ossetia that grabbed additional Georgian territory overnight. Likewise, the war in Ukraine is still raging and the country is bracing for a possible full-scale invasion.

After Russian-backed rebels in Ukraine shot down an unarmed Malaysian airliner in 2014, killing 298 people, Putin was quick to blame Ukraine and has continued to use the incident for propaganda against Ukraine. In the United Nations, he has blocked attempts to create a tribunal to investigate the incident.

Putin can be accurately described as a dictator, having been the de facto ruler of Russia since 1999 when he succeeded Boris Yeltsin as president. He served two terms as president until 2008 when Russia’s term limit forced him to step aside. Undaunted, he was appointed prime minister by Dmitri Medvedev and promptly had the constitution changed. When Medvedev’s term ended, Putin was elected to a third term in 2012.

Putin’s alleged Christian convictions did not stop him from ordering the deaths and imprisonment of countless political opponents and journalists. The list of Putin’s Russian victims is long and spans 20 years, not including his time as a KGB officer. The most infamous murder was Alexander Litvinenko, a former KGB officer turned dissident. In a plot worthy of James Bond, Litvinenko was poisoned with radioactive polonium in London in 2006.

Even Putin’s alleged concerns about Islamic radicalism are suspect. Both Syria and Iran have long been client states of Putin’s Russia. Syria’s relationship with Russia goes back to the days of the Soviet Union. Unknown to many, it is Russia that is building Iran’s nuclear program that now threatens, not only Israel, but Europe and the United States as well. Likewise, Russia has supplied Iran with modern fighter aircraft as well as air defense systems that would make an attack on those nuclear facilities difficult and costly. Putin is also a major supporter of President Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran. Business Insider points out that Putin actually took credit for the deal.

Although Putin’s support for Iran predates the Syrian civil war, Russia and Iran have found common cause there as the two main supporters of the Assad regime. Bashar Assad is a Shia Muslim as are the Iranians. The opposition to Assad is primarily Sunni. Russia and Syria have had a nonaggression pact since 1950 and Russia has had military bases in Syria since 1971. Fox News reported in August that the commander of the Iranian Quds Force, designated as a terrorist by the US, secretly traveled to Russia to meet with “senior Russian leaders.”

For hundreds of years, Russian foreign policy has been built around two goals. First is the desire to build a buffer zone to protect their borders from invasion. Second is the quest for a warm water port. Many Russian ports are blocked by ice during winter. Other Russian ports are blocked by narrow straits and potentially hostile neighbors. It is likely that Putin’s venture into Syria, in addition to propping up a friendly regime, is about making sure that Russian naval power is not expelled from the Mediterranean.

Russia’s intervention might also be economic. Russia has been battered by international sanctions and low oil prices. The ruble has lost half of its value and inflation for the year is predicted to be 18 percent according to Investopedia. Russia’s imperial wars may be both a distraction from the economic mess at home and an attempt to stabilize and increase the price of oil.

At his core, Putin is an opportunist who is seeking to restore the Russian empire. He seems to take Rahm Emanuel’s advice to “never let a crisis go to waste” when he can use it to expand Russia’s borders or sphere of influence.

In short, Putin is everything that conservatives fear that Obama is. He is a dictator who changed the constitution to stay in power and doesn’t have qualms about killing people who threaten him. He is known to have used false flags to justify war against Chechnya and Ukraine and works world crises to his advantage. Putin is no hero for conservatives.

Originally published on Conservative Firing Line

Relax. Obamacare doesn’t bring beheadings to US.

A new rumor about Obamacare, formally known as the Affordable Care Act, making its rounds on the internet is that the law will make beheading an official method of execution in the United States. The rumor, apparently started by Lorri Anderson on the Freedom Outpost on Nov. 18, 2013, claims that a medical code for “legal execution” reveals that beheading and decapitation are coming to the United States. The Freedom Outpost is a conservative pseudo-news site that promotes birtherism, nullification as well as other conspiracy stories.

Anderson claims that a medical code, “ICD 9 E 978,” purports to list the legal methods of execution in the United States. The definition of the coding is found on CentralX.com under “International Classification of Diseases” and is as follows:

E978 Legal execution

          All executions performed at the behest of the judiciary or ruling authority
          [whether permanent or temporary] as:
           asphyxiation by gas
           beheading, decapitation (by guillotine)
           capital punishment
           electrocution
           hanging
           poisoning
           shooting
           other specified means
           INJURY UNDETERMINED WHETHER ACCIDENTALLY OR PURPOSELY
          INFLICTED

Anderson notes that the code is part of an international coding system, but doesn’t seem to understand what the codes are for or how they are used. She seems to believe that, because the United States is using the coding system, all parts of the code will apply to patients in the United States.

Writing for About.com, Trisha Torrey explains that “ICD” codes are “International Statistical Classifications of Diseases.” The codes are used to categorize every disease, set of symptoms or cause of death that can be attributed to human beings. The coding system was developed by the World Health Organization, the coordinating authority for health in the United Nations. As electronic medical records are implemented, the codes will be used for diagnosis and treatment of health problems.

When someone dies, an ICD code will also be used to record the cause of death. This is where Anderson’s code for “legal execution” comes in. The code will obviously be used when a person has been executed “at the behest of the judiciary or ruling authority [whether permanent or temporary].” Even though “beheading” and “decapitation (by guillotine)” are not legal methods of execution for the federal government or any of the 50 states, beheading is still legal in Saudi Arabia. Additionally, rebels in Syria and the Taliban in Pakistan (possibly a temporary authority in areas that they control) have been known to use beheading, as did Saddam Hussein in pre-war Iraq. Other Islamic terrorists have also been known to behead their captives. In one notable case, Nick Berg, an American business who was Jewish, was kidnapped and beheaded by Iraqi Muslim terrorists in 2004 and the video of the murder was posted online. And no, there is no evidence that Barack Obama is a Muslim.

Regardless of what international medical codes define as legal methods of execution, the method of legal execution in the United States is established by the legislature. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, 35 states plus the federal government have the death penalty. All states have lethal injection as the primary method of execution. In Georgia, lethal injection is the only legal means of execution. Federal law requires that in federal death penalty cases, the method of execution follows the law of the state in which the conviction took place. No state law permits execution by beheading.

Anderson also attempts to tie in the ICD coding to Agenda 21 by asserting that “WHO is a specialized agency of the United Nations and directly linked to the League of Nations under the guise of collecting data.” In reality, the League of Nations was the predecessor to the United Nations and was disbanded in 1946 after failing in its primary mission of preventing a second world war. The United Nations was founded a year earlier in 1945.

Agenda 21 (read the full text here) is frequent fodder for conspiracy buffs. Agenda 21 is a protocol for achieving “sustainable development” in the 21^st century that was drafted by the United Nations Earth Summit in 1992. The agenda is not a treaty. The Heritage Foundation noted in 2011 that Agenda 21 is “voluntary” and “nonbinding.” The United Nations Association agrees that Agenda 21 is “not legally binding” and “does not take precedence over U.S. law.” Agenda 21 passed the House of Representatives in 1992 (sponsored by Nancy Pelosi) according to the Library of Congress but was never passed by the Senate so it never became U.S. law.

Conspiracy proponents like Townhall.com columnist Rachel Alexander sometimes refer to Executive Orders that supposedly implement Agenda 21 without congressional approval. In reality, President Obama’s Executive Order 13575 which in 2011 established the White House Rural Council specifically says that “nothing in this order shall be construed to… affect… authority granted by law” and that the order “shall be implemented consistent with applicable law….” Obama’s Executive Order 13547 carries similar disclaimers to avoid in pretense of amending current federal law. Similar claims about other presidents are also farfetched. Two orders by Bill Clinton cited by conspiracy buffs (12852 and 12996) establish an advisory council for the president on sustainable development and create wildlife refuges on public use lands. George W. Bush is also blamed for Executive Orders 13423 and 13366, which are equally innocuous and also carry disclaimers that they do not amend existing law.

It takes little research to quickly determine that the Affordable Care Act will not implement beheadings in the United States. It can be determined almost as quickly that however ill-advised that Agenda 21 may be, it does not apply to the United States.

If you find an internet conspiracy theory that would like Examiner to investigate, contact the Atlanta Conservative Examiner at ThorntonDavid@yahoo.com or on the Common Sense Conservative Facebook page. If your conspiracy is selected for an article, you will receive an official Atlanta Conservative Examiner tinfoil hat. Readers might also be interested in Examiner’s guide to “Becoming a discerning internet user,” a helpful article on distinguishing fact from fiction on the internet.

Originally published on Atlanta Conservative Examiner

Obama may use UN to bypass congress on gun control

Political pollster and strategist Dick Morris believes that President Obama may use the United Nations to bypass congress and enact new gun restrictions. In a video message released today, Morris pointed out that Obama’s gun control proposals are unlikely to pass the senate because a number of Democratic senators are opposed to gun control.

Currently, the Democrats control the senate with 55 senators (including two independents) to 45 Republicans. Many of the Democratic senators have been endorsed by the National Rifle Association and hail from red states. In particular, Morris cites Joe Manchin (D-W.V.), Mary Landrieu (D-La.), Mark Pryor (D-Ark.), Kay Hagan (D.-N.C.), Tim Caine (D-Va.), Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), and Bob Casey (D-Pa.). Even Harry Reid (D-Nev.), the senate majority leader, has been endorsed by the NRA in the past although the group stayed neutral in his 2010 election. So far no Republican senators have signed on to Democratic gun control proposals such as a new assault weapons ban.

Under senate rules, a simple majority, 50 votes, is needed to pass legislation. However, if Republican senators filibuster gun control bills, 60 votes will be needed to overcome the filibuster. If, as seems likely, at least five Democratic senators vote against Obama’s proposals, they will not pass. Even if no Democrats oppose the bills, there would not be enough votes to overcome a filibuster without Republican help.

Morris believes that Obama’s strategy will involve the UN Arms Trade Treaty. As Examiner reported last summer, many critics believe that the treaty would allow the United Nations to define what measures the United States would have to take to combat illegal arms trafficking.

As Morris noted then, the U.S. is a signatory to the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties. Under this treaty, once the U.S. signs the Arms Trade Treaty, it would be bound by its terms until it is rejected by the senate. Under the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution, treaties are the “supreme law of the land,” equal in weight to the Constitution itself. President Obama could have Secretary of State Kerry sign the treaty and then refuse to submit it to the senate for ratification. Harry Reid could also simply not bring the treaty up for a vote as he has done on budgets and other legislation. Under this scenario, the U.S. would be bound by a treaty that could effectively repeal the Second Amendment without congress ever having voted on it.

Because of the vague language of the treaty, Senate Democrats might be more likely to vote for ratification of the treaty than to vote for a specific gun control measure. Morris notes that the treaty won’t immediately ban assault rifles or other guns, but it “empowers each country to adopt national means to stop these [illegal] exports from taking place. And that’s the key. It means that over the next three or four years this UN mandate, which is now sort of open ended, will increasingly close in on the Second Amendment.”

Under the Constitution, ratification of a treaty requires the approval of two-thirds of the senators present. If all senators are present that would mean 66 votes would be needed for ratification. Some Republican votes would be needed in order to ratify the treaty. The House of Representatives, which is controlled by Republicans, would not vote on the treaty.

After strong opposition from Second Amendment groups the administration declined to sign the treaty last summer, but Reuters reports that the day after Obama’s reelection victory the UN voted to reopen talks. The new round of negotiations will be held March 18-28, 2013.

Recent polling by Rasmussen shows that Americans are split on the issue of gun control. Fifty-three percent favor background checks for existing gun owners and 57 percent believe that enforcing current gun laws is more important than enacting new laws. Only 41 percent believe that the U.S. needs stricter gun laws. The strongest agreement came from those who believe that there is a constitutional right to own a gun (74 percent) and that background checks should be required for anyone who wants to buy a gun (86 percent).

Originally published on Examiner:

http://www.examiner.com/article/obama-may-use-un-to-bypass-congress-on-gun-control?cid=db_articles

Obama not taking bipartisan tack after election

President Obama won a narrow election victory over Mitt Romney earlier this month, but if voters expected the president to take a more conciliatory tone and seek a middle ground with Republicans, they are likely to be disappointed. In spite of the fact that President Obama is the only president to have been reelected with less support than he won in his first election, he has doubled down on the policies that cost him much of his popularity in his first term.

One of the first actions taken by the Obama Administration after the election was to reopen talks with the committee drafting the United Nations arms trade treaty. According to Reuters, the talks on the treaty will resume on March 18. The treaty was scheduled to be signed last July, but opposition from groups concerned that the treaty would infringe on Second Amendment rights led the Obama Administration to table the treaty until after the election.

An unnamed U.S. official told Reuters, “We will not accept any treaty that infringes on the constitutional rights of our citizens to bear arms.” Nevertheless, many Second Amendment activists believe that the treaty could subject the U.S. arms industry and Second Amendment rights to the control of the U.N. Critics also point out that it could make it difficult for legitimate freedom fighters to defend themselves against tyrannical governments.

The president has also taken a hard line with respect to negotiations for a deal to avoid the fiscal cliff. Yahoo News reports that when talks resume this week that the president will ask Republicans for $1.6 trillion dollars in tax increases over ten years. This is double the $800 billion in new taxes that President Obama had sought during the 2011 budget negotiations. The president’s request is also higher than the automatic tax increases scheduled to kick in if the country reaches the fiscal cliff. According to Businessweek, the automatic tax increases are estimated at $536 billion.

The fiscal cliff also includes $100 billion in spending cuts for 2013 according to Businessweek. Many of these cuts would affect the defense budget. The White House did not specify what level of spending cuts President Obama would be willing to accept under a compromise. As the Wall Street Journal recently pointed out, the emergency stimulus spending of 2009 has now become a permanent part of the baseline federal budget.

Annual deficits for the federal government have been in excess of a trillion dollars for each year of President Obama’s administration. Combined spending cuts of $100 billion and tax increases of $500 billion would still not allow the federal government to operate in the black.

Two of President Obama’s potential second-term cabinet picks also seem calculated to provoke Republican opposition. Susan Rice, the apparent frontrunner for Secretary of State, and John Kerry, a potential Secretary of Defense, have already drawn strong opposition.

Susan Rice, currently the ambassador to the United Nations, has been criticized for her role in the administration’s misstatements in the wake of the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi. A statement by Rice that the attack was the result of an anti-Islamic video was featured prominently in the days after the attack. Subsequent information revealed that the president and administration officials knew as the attack was occurring that it was a terrorist attack, not the result of a spontaneous mob.

President Obama reacted to the criticism with outrage, telling the Wall Street Journal, “If Sen. McCain and Sen. Graham and others want to go after somebody, they should go after me. But for them to go after the U.N. ambassador, who had nothing to do with Benghazi and was simply making a presentation based on intelligence that she had received and to besmirch her reputation, is outrageous.”

John Kerry is also a controversial nominee. Kerry was the Democratic presidential candidate in 2004, losing to George W. Bush. Kerry is perhaps most well known for his 1971 testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in which he said that American soldiers in Vietnam “had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, tape wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the country side of South Vietnam….” During the 2004 campaign, a number of veterans came forward to dispute Kerry’s account.

CNS News also notes that Kerry has long supported engagement with Syrian President Bashar Assad. Kerry met with Assad at least six times and shortly before the Syrian uprising began in March 2011 he was still voicing his belief that “Syria will change, as it embraces a legitimate relationship with the United States and the West and economic opportunity that comes with it and the participation that comes with it.”

Democrats control the senate, which is responsible for confirming presidential appointments. Republicans do have enough support to filibuster controversial nominees, however.

President Obama’s second term is still several months away from its official beginning, but the battle lines are already being drawn. It seems that voters who hoped that giving the president a second chance to make good on his promises of bipartisanship will probably be not be satisfied in the near term.

 

Read this article on Examiner:

http://www.examiner.com/article/obama-seeks-confrontations-after-election?cid=db_articles

UN treaty may destroy Second Amendment rights

In the wake of the Aurora, Co. theater massacre there have been calls from the left for a new discussion on gun control. Many believe that the Obama Administration may be about to bypass the discussion, as well as the Second Amendment and Congress, to enact a new era of gun control unilaterally.

According to the Christian Science Monitor, the United Nations will release the final version of its Arms Trade Treaty this today. Many Second Amendment activists are concerned that the treaty will be used as a vehicle to force gun control measures and bans on the American people in spite of strong congressional and public opposition.

According to Yahoo News, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney recently said, “"I think there is an issue about the stalemate in Congress"[on gun laws]. He continued, "And there are things that we can do short of legislation and short of gun laws, as the President said, that can reduce violence in our society and, as he mentioned last night, in our urban centers."

In the past, when President Obama has encountered a congressional stalemate, his response has often been to act unilaterally and without regard to the Constitution or existing law. When Congress did not pass net neutrality rules, President Obama’s FCC did it anyway. Likewise, President Obama’s EPA unilaterally enacted carbon regulations when Congress failed to pass cap-and-trade. Earlier this year, President Obama used recess appointments to fill several positions even though Congress was still in session. In June, the president announced unilateral changes to U.S. immigration policy after Congress failed to pass the DREAM Act. Ironically, in a White House video from 2011, President Obama can be heard saying of the DREAM Act, “I just have to continue to say this notion that somehow I can just change the laws unilaterally is just not true,” yet that is exactly what he did a year later. Earlier this month, President Obama waived welfare’s work requirement, a clear violation of the law that essentially repeals the successful Clinton-era welfare reform.

Now there is widespread fear that the president is going to use the same tactic on America’s gun owners with the UN Arms Control Treaty. According to the Constitution, treaties require approval by a two-thirds majority, 66 votes, in the U.S. Senate. US News reports that 12 Democratic senators have joined 45 Republicans in opposing the treaty. In email responses, both of Georgia’s senators, Johnny Isakson and Saxby Chambliss, responded that they are opposed to the treaty. This means that an attempt to approve the treaty would fall far short of the required votes. So why are gun owners worried?

Political strategist Dick Morris points out that the United States is bound by the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties. According to Morris, under the Vienna Convention the United States is bound by a treaty signed by its representative until the treaty is approved or disapproved by the senate. Under the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution, treaties are the “supreme law of the land.”

In Morris’ view, the Arms Trade Treaty would take the force of law in the United States as soon as it is signed by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. If Obama simply failed to submit the treaty to Congress for approval, it would remain in force because the senate would not be able to disapprove it. If a Republican president submitted the treaty to the senate, Majority Leader Harry Reid would simply refuse to bring it to a vote. The treaty would remain in force until a Republican president presented it to a Republican senate which then voted it down.

Morris writes that the treaty will be administered by an international support unit (ISU). The ISU determines which nations are in compliance with the treaty and can direct those that are not to use “all necessary measures… to prevent the diversion of exported arms to the illicit market or to unintended end users. ” This could mean that the UN could force the US to halt support to freedom fighters like those that toppled Moammar Gadhafi in Libya or even to established nations like Taiwan, which is not recognized by China. Morris believes that it would also lead to gun registration, restrictions on ownership and bans of guns.

Former UN Ambassador John Bolton agrees with Morris. “The real danger,” he writes, “lies in vague, ambiguous stipulations gun-control advocates could later cite as requiring further domestic restraints. In other words, they hope to use restrictions on international gun sales to control gun sales at home.”

A draft of the treaty that circulated last week “would require all countries to establish national regulations to control the transfer of conventional arms and to regulate arms brokers” and “prohibit states that ratify the treaty from transferring conventional weapons that violate arms embargoes or facilitate acts of genocide, crimes against humanity or war crimes” according to US News. “Crimes against humanity” and “war crimes” are very vague and subjective terms. Such charges have even been alleged against members of the U.S. military.

President Obama has not commented publicly on the arms treaty, but Hillary Clinton released a statement in 2009 endorsing the treaty as it was in the negotiations stage. “The United States,” she wrote, “is committed to actively pursuing a strong and robust treaty that contains the highest possible, legally binding standards for the international transfer of conventional weapons.”

The upcoming election is makes the situation even more complex. Support for gun control has seen a long-term decline according to Gallup. Even in the wake of the Colorado killings, only 41 percent of Americans support stricter gun laws according to Rasmussen. Overwhelming support for the Second Amendment means that even few Democrats admit to supporting more gun control. This is especially true of Democrats in swing districts.

The lack of support for gun control means that it is unlikely that President Obama wants to be seen as advancing gun control measures just before a close election. It is much more likely that President Obama would sign the Arms Trade Treaty as a lame duck or re-elected president. The battle over gun control and ratification of the treaty would then move to the senate where the results of the election could determine the future of the right of Americans to keep and bear arms.

Read the rest of this article on Examiner.com:

 

http://www.examiner.com/article/un-treaty-may-threaten-american-gun-rights

Palestinian statehood move in UN may spark Mid East Again

Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority, has indicated that he will petition the United Nations to recognize Palestine as a national state as early as this Friday. When the UN takes up the question of Palestinian statehood over the next few weeks, it may well spark another explosive confrontation in the Middle East.

At first glance, bestowing statehood on the Palestinians makes about as much sense as deeming that Georgia and the other southern states are still part of the Confederate States of America and are merely occupied by the United States. Many observers may be confused as to how a group of people without land could be considered a nation. The fact that the Palestinian Authority does not possess a defined territory, one of four requirements for national recognition under the 1933 Montevideo Convention, is part of the legal case against Palestinian statehood in a recent Wall Street Journal column.

There was once a Palestinian state. When the UN voted in 1948 to create the modern state of Israel, it also created an Arab state (see map here). On the first day of Israel’s existence, it was attacked by the combined armies of Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Transjordan, Saudi Arabia, and Lebanon. When the war ended in 1949, Israel’s size had increased with its battlefield successes (see map here). Israel occupied some of the land that had been set aside for an Arab state. Other parts of the Arab state were occupied by Arab nations. Transjordan occupied the West Bank and Egypt occupied Gaza. The West Bank and Gaza were among the lands later captured by Israel in the Six Day War of 1968.

Mahmoud Abbas has said that Palestinians have been living under Israeli occupation for 63 years, which means that Abbas considers the beginning of the occupation to be the 1948 war. This would seem to indicate that Abbas wants the Arab state to include not only the West Bank, but approximately half of Israel as well.

Abbas’ position is in keeping with the Arab pattern of refusing all peace proposals that does not end Israel’s existence. In 2001, Yasir Arafat turned down an Israeli proposal to give the Palestinians 91 percent of the West Bank. Even when Israel unilaterally withdraws from occupied territory, as it did from Gaza in 2005, there is no peace. Gaza residents promptly voted to place the terrorist group Hamas in charge. Gaza has since been used a base to launch rockets into Israel, leading to another war in Gaza in 2008. An earlier withdrawal from southern Lebanon in 2000 allowed Hezbollah to fill the void. Israel fought another war in Lebanon in 2006 after Hezbollah kidnapped two Israeli soldiers.

CNN reports that 120 of the 193 members of the UN General Assembly favor Palestinian statehood. A General Assembly vote would be nonbinding, however. The binding vote would take place on the 15-member Security Council. To his credit, President Obama has promised a US veto of the matter if it comes before the Security Council.

If Palestine is declared to be an Arab state, it would give the Palestinians access to international bodies such as the International Criminal Court and the Human Rights Council. This would give the Arabs more avenues to attack Israel diplomatically as well as giving their military attacks against Israel more legitimacy. There is also an outside chance that they might one day persuade other countries to put together a coalition backed by a UN resolution that would attempt to oust Israel from the occupied territories militarily, although this would almost certainly face a US veto as well.

In the end, UN consideration of a Palestinian state would be likely to inflame passions on both sides and make peace even more difficult to achieve. Tensions have already been rising between Israel and Turkey and Egypt in past months. Merely introducing the question of Palestinian statehood would further exacerbate the problem. A US veto would likely cause further anti-Americanism in the region as well.

According to the Jewish Virtual Library, Israel is Georgia’s 23^rd largest trading partner. In 2010, Georgia’s exports to Israel totaled more than $164 million. Trade between Israel and Georgia is increasing. Israeli trade with Georgia in 2010 increased by more than 42 percent from 2009.

It is unlikely that any peace attempts in the Middle East will meet with success until the Palestinians renounce violence. The Israelis have demonstrated their willingness to trade land for peace several times, but their unilateral withdrawals have been interpreted as weakness by the Arabs. Peace will require a willingness by the Muslims to coexist with the Jews. At this point, they are not.

Read this article on Examiner.com:

http://www.examiner.com/conservative-in-atlanta/un-plan-for-arab-state-may-spark-middle-east-again