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In this mailing:
* Drieu Godefridi: Why Belgium, Norway, Spain and Everyone Should Refrain from Recognizing a 'Palestinian State' Just Now
* Amir Taheri: Ukraine: The Decimation Point


** Why Belgium, Norway, Spain and Everyone Should Refrain from Recognizing a 'Palestinian State' Just Now ([link removed])
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by Drieu Godefridi • December 3, 2023 at 5:00 am
* In the case of a "Palestinian State", there is no territory on which even the Palestinians agree. Indeed, the charter of Hamas -- designated as a terrorist organization by many countries in the West, and which has reigned unchallenged in the Gaza Strip since 2007 when it forcibly expelled the Palestinian Authority, in part by throwing its members off 15-storey buildings -- calls for the "liberation" of "every inch of Palestine" through jihad.
* The Palestinian Authority also lays claim over all of the territory, including all of Israel...
* In addition, the Palestinian Authority is counting on the Palestine Liberation Organization's 1974 "Ten Point Plan" (also known as the "phased plan") for the "comprehensive liberation" of all the land stretching "from the [Jordan] River to the [Mediterranean] Sea" -- a euphemism for the elimination of Israel. The plan calls for the PLO to use whatever territory it is offered as a base of operations to get the rest.
* Belgium's possible recognition of a "Palestinian State" makes no sense in terms of international law. It comes, in reality, less as the result of a desire to help the Palestinians -- whose lives will not be improved by it -- than of a fierce and increasingly undisguised hostility towards the State of Israel, and most likely also Jews.
* Recognizing a Palestinian state with no authority, no realistic territorial demands and no acceptable leadership -- and with a long-term, outspoken desire to militarize and destroy its neighbor Israel -- right after a jihadist pogrom against Jews, will not add to the happiness of any of the parties involved, or, for that matter, anyone else.

Pictured: Hamas terrorists with their child trainee at a rally in Gaza City on May 24, 2021. (Photo by Mahmud Hams/AFP via Getty Images)

There are whispers in the corridors of power that Belgium, like Norway and Spain, is preparing to recognize a "Palestinian State". This move seems questionable, on both legal and political grounds.

The first conditions for recognizing a state are territory and state authority. International law defines a sovereign state as an established territorial unit, within which its laws apply to a permanent population, and which is constituted by institutions through which it exercises authority and effective power.

In the case of a "Palestinian State", there is no territory on which even the Palestinians agree. Indeed, the charter of Hamas -- designated as a terrorist organization by many countries in the West, and which has reigned unchallenged in the Gaza Strip since 2007 when it forcibly expelled the Palestinian Authority, in part by throwing its members off 15-storey buildings -- calls for the "liberation" of "every inch of Palestine" through jihad.

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** Ukraine: The Decimation Point ([link removed])
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by Amir Taheri • December 3, 2023 at 4:00 am
* [B]oth Russia and Ukraine have passed what military theoreticians call the "decimation point" when you see that you have lost at least 10% of your fighting manpower.
* In the West, public opinion saw the war as a means of keeping the Russian giant in chains, while anti-West forces admired Putin for challenging the American big bad wolf.

Pictured: Ukrainian soldiers from a drone-hunting team stand next to an anti-aircraft gun in the outskirts of Kyiv, on November 30, 2023. (Photo by Roman Pilipey/AFP via Getty Images)

Thirsting for a bit of good news in these bad times of war, Ukraine's media headlined what it saw as a victory: The return to Kiev of a haul of artefacts from Crimea that had been on exhibit in European cities before Russia annexed the peninsula in 2014.

The return came after a ten-year legal battle in which Russia claimed that it should receive the artefacts because they were made before the 1950s when the then Soviet ruler Nikita Khrushchev "handed Crimea over to Ukraine." Ukraine counter-argued that the artefacts were loaned to a Dutch museum before Russian President Vladimir Putin's troops annexed Crimea.

Well, in every war even the tiniest bit of good news could help divert attention, even momentarily, from bigger bad news.

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