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Jewish World Review May 3, 2002 / 21 Iyar, 5762
Jack Kelly
http://www.NewsAndOpinion.com | U.N. investigators are coiling their ropes and looking wistfully for another tree. The inquiry into the Jenin "massacre" has been called off. U.N. spokesmen say this is because of Israeli objections to the composition of the commission that would have conducted the inquiry, and of its scope. But the real reason is there is no "evidence" to sustain a conviction in even a kangaroo court. "Palestinian Authority allegations that a large-scale massacre of civilians was committed by Israeli troops...appear to be crumbling under the weight of eyewitness accounts from Palestinian fighters who participated in the battle and camp residents who remained in their homes until the final hours of the fighting," the Boston Globe reported April 29. A Palestinian Authority official said only 56 bodies have been found in Jenin, a far cry from the "more than 500" Palestinians have been claiming. Kadoura Mousa Kadourah acknowledged there had been no massacre, a conclusion Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch had arrived at days before. There is plenty of evidence of other war crimes. On April 27, three gunmen disguised as Israeli soldiers entered the settlement of Adora, west of Hebron, and shot to death 5-year-old Danielle Shefi and three other civilians. There is no question the gunmen intended to kill Danielle, because the attack on her was witnessed by her 4-year-old brother, who was wounded. Under international law, it is a war crime to deliberately target unarmed civilians. It is also a violation of the laws of war to attack under false colors. But the United Nations has as little interest in proof of Palestinian guilt as it has in proof of Israeli innocence. The panel assembled by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan was stacked with haters of Israel. One was Cornelio Sommaruga, who likened the Star of David to the swastika. Israel could have expected from him and his colleagues the same fair, dispassionate treatment a black man accused of raping a white woman could expect from a Ku Klux Klan lynch mob. The bias and incompetence of the United Nations and of the European Union have caused me to view NATO and NAFTA with new respect. I considered expansion of NATO an unnecessary affront to Russia, which is no longer an enemy. And since today's Russia is no more likely to invade Western Europe than Yasser Arafat is to keep a promise, I wondered if perhaps the Cold War alliance had outlived its usefulness. But I've become convinced that an expanded NATO is needed as a counterweight to the UN and the EU. There must be at least one international organization that stands for liberty, democracy and human rights. I've been chary of NAFTA, because I don't share the view of most pundits that it is good for the U.S. economy to export American jobs. But an expanded NAFTA may be the best way to keep the EU from becoming an ugly monster. The European Union began with two very good ideas: a free trade area within Europe, and cooperation for the common defense. It went on to a questionable idea, a single currency. But the ultimate vision of the sclerotic socialists who run the EU's vast bureaucracy is to create a European super-state that would oppose American "hyper-power." Britain and Ireland are geographically close to continental Europe, but are much closer to us in values. Liberty, democracy and human rights are recent transplants to the European continent, and have only shallow roots there. What we call "Western" values are really Anglo-American values. NAFTA should be rechristened the North ATLANTIC Free Trade Association, and Britain and Ireland invited to join. Britain and Ireland could join a larger, faster-growing economic union, and could do so without giving up their currency, or large chunks of their sovereignty. Lord Sainsbury, who campaigned hard for British participation in what became the European Union, complained in a recent speech that EU regulations are harming the British economy.
The world requires adult leadership, which only the United States can
provide, since the UN is dominated by vicious children, and the EU by
spoiled children. NATO and NAFTA can be the means through which that
leadership is
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