Kelo v. City of New London Revisited -- in Gaza
Here's Ralph Kostant's latest:
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Remember Kelo v. City of New London? That was the Supreme Court decision expanding local government’s power of eminent domain, which commanded the attention of the Hedgehogs and many others just a few weeks ago. One of the biggest fears of critics of the decision is that moneyed real estate development interests may use their influence over local government to employ eminent domain in order to acquire sites for private development projects, at bargain prices.
A scary prelude of the possible abuses that Kelo may permit may be seen right now, in the Gaza disengagement. True, Israel is not subject to the Fifth Amendment of the United States Constitution. However, advocates of the removal of Jews from Gaza often point to the precedent of eminent domain, and say that the destruction of Jewish towns and the relocation of their residents is really no more than a traditional exercise of eminent domain. Government takings “ain’t often easy and ain’t often kind,” as the former Latino residents of Chavez Ravine, removed in the 1950s to make way for Dodger Stadium, would testify.
Well, the precedent may be more apt than its presenters imagined. As Carol Glick reports in The Jerusalem Post:
This week it was reported that longtime Sharon crony South African businessman Cyril Kern is an investor in a project to build a casino in Elei Sinai after the government expels the community's Jewish residents next month. Allegations that Kern illegally funded Sharon's political campaigns form the basis for one of the ongoing criminal investigations being conducted against the premier. [RK Note: this investigation resulted this week in the indictment of Omri Sharon, son of the Prime Minister.]On Tuesday, the Knesset State Control Committee launched an investigation into Brig.-Gen. (res.) Eival Giladi, who serves in the Prime Minister's Office as the coordinator of all governmental activities related to the withdrawal of the IDF and the expulsion of Jewish residents from the Gaza Strip and northern Samaria. Earlier in the month the Makor Rishon newspaper and Israel News Resource Agency revealed that Giladi also serves as the director of the British nonprofit Portland Trust, which is seeking to raise $500 million in investment funds to develop Gush Katif after it is emptied of its Jewish residents in the operation that Giladi oversees.
Could it be that the Gaza disengagement is not the price of peace, or a step toward fulfillment of the Middle East Roadmap, but a land scam by corrupt Israeli and Palestinian power brokers?
Ralph B. Kostant
posted by Lowell Brown at 7:22 AM
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4 Comments:
Some Arab partisans might say the founding of the State of Isreal was an example of the UN using eminent domain without their consent.
Posted by crank
True, but they would be wrong. The 1947 U.N. Resolution that created the State of Israel also called for the creation of a Palestinian State, and did not allow for anyone, Jew or Arab, to be driven from their homes. The Palestinian refugee issue came about because the Arab countries and many Arab residents of Palestine rejected the U.N. resolution, and Arab armies from Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Transjordan and Egypt, together with Palestinian Arab militias, invaded in an attempt to strangle the new-born State of Israel at birth. They lost, and hundreds of thousands of Palestinian Arabs became refugees as a result. That this need not have happened is proven by the fact that thousands of Palestinian Arabs did not flee, became Israeli citizens, and today have more civil rights and a higher standard of living than they would have in any Arab country.
Moreover, during the same time period, some 700,000 Jews from Arab nations (Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Algeria, Morocco, and Libya) became refugees, but they did not stay refugees because the countries to which they fled, principally France and Israel, fully absorbed them. Also at the same time, there was a population exchange involving millions of Moslem and Hindu refugees, between the newly formed nations of India and Pakistan. Those refugees were also fully absorbed by their refuge nations.
Only the Palestinian refugees were denied citizenship in the Arab nations to which they fled, were given permanent refugee status by the U.N., and had a U.N. Agency created specifically and only for Palestinian Arab refugees (UNRWA--the United Nations Relief and Works Agency). The reason--so that the Arab nations could use the Palestinian refugees as pawns in their continuing struggle against Israel's existence.
Now if one becomes a refugee from anyplace else in the world, other than Palestine, one obtains UN assistance from the UN High Commission on Refugees (UNHCR). Since the creation of the UN, UNHCR has permanently settled millions and millions of refugees from various conflicts throughout the world. At any given time, UNHCR is almost always dealing with refugees created by the most recent international conflicts, because refugees from past conflicts have already been settled elsewhere.
In contrast, only UNRWA has maintained permanent refugee camps, in which four or five generations of descendents of the original 1948 Palestinian Arab refugees are compelled to live.
Posted by Ralph Kostant
Not only that but in 1922 the British GAVE more than half of the land to the Palestinian people it is now called Jordan or Trans Jordan. [url]http://www.conceptwizard.com/conen/conflict_2.html[/url] The Palestinian People are beind used by their leaders, and all the enemies if Israel. They want all of Israel dead!
Posted by vickie
http://www.conceptwizard.com/conen/conflict_2.html opps
Posted by vickie
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