Seven Palestinian students were awarded Fulbright scholarships to study in the U.S. Israel, whose border with Gaza is closed due to its state of war with the Hamas Gazan government, refused to allow the students to enter Israel on the way to the U.S. U.S. officials put heavy pressure on Israel to allow the students to travel through Israel, including by leaking the story to the U.S. media in a manner very unflattering to Israel. Israel eventually agreed to accede to U.S. demands, including with regard to three students whom it deemed to be particular security risks. Two of the students were given passage from Gaza to the Jordanian border, and after several delays apparently caused by mistakes by U.S. consular officials, here's what happened next:
At 8 P.M., when the border crossing closes, the Israeli border terminal workers approached the U.S. diplomats and suggested they return to Gaza and try crossing the following day, after having dealt with the passport matter. "I'm not interested, I'm not moving from here until they open the bridge," said one American diplomat and sat down in the road in protest.
After consulting with the Foreign Ministry, the Defense Ministry and the office of the Shin Bet chief, it was decided to leave the bridge open, until the Jordanians finally agreed to the Americans' request at 9 P.M. and allowed the Palestinians to pass. But this was not the end of the two Palestinians' travails.
The high school student remained in Amman for a few days. His friend departed for Washington on Saturday night. However, after a 12-hour flight, when he got to the border control station in Washington, an unpleasant surprise awaited him. The U.S. immigration officials informed him that his visa has been canceled and put him on a plane back to the Jordanian capital. The high school student, who was still waiting in Amman, was notified that his visa had been canceled, too. He already returned to Gaza yesterday, disappointed, while his friend remains frustrated in Jordan.
Israel has asked the State Department in Washington for some clarifications, and local officials are especially upset at the behavior of the American diplomat at the Allenby Bridge. "It's a disgrace," said a senior Foreign Ministry official. "If I had behaved that way at an American border crossing, I'd either be in jail or no longer in the U.S."
A spokesman for the U.S. State Department told The New York Times, which first reported yesterday on the revocation of the visas that the visas were canceled because of new information received by the U.S. authorities. The paper reported that Rice was unhappy about the way these cases were handled and that a thorough review had been ordered to prevent a recurrence.
"This is one of the oddest things we have encountered in recent years," an Israeli official said of a long sequence of events that began with intense American pressure to allow two young Palestinian students to leave Gaza to study in the United States and ended with the U.S. barring their entry and canceling the visas it had granted them.
Sure sounds that way. I'm especially troubled that post 9/11, the State Department was putting intense pressure on Israel to allow into the U.S. the students whom the Israelis (who, let's face it, have a much better record on these things than U.S. authorities) specifically thought had ties to terrorism and were security risks, a belief U.S. authorities apparently eventually came around to, at the last minute.
Wow. Since when did we start appointing 6 year olds as diplomats?
The "new information" will probably turn out either to have been not meaningful or not new.
To my knowledge, Egypt's policy is not to let anyone or anything in or out of Gaza, with no exceptions.
The events were:
Egypt attacked Israel.
Israel kicked Egypt out of Gaza and the Sinai.
We forced Israel to give them back.
Egypt refused to take Gaza.
Israel refused to take Gaza.
Just because Egypt doesn't want it, doesn't mean it isn't theirs.
Seriously, given the paranoia on issuing visas on the part of the US, it wouldn't take very much "new" information and/or innuendo to deny a visa. Let this be a lesson in political infighting, no matter how one views the underlying question (should the student come to the US to study).
Anyway your answer would explain it. Thanks.
I don't know exactly who to blame for this particular failure but I am quite disheartened to see the program fail.
This sounds a little like the theory of detente with the Soviet Union. In any case let the Europeans deal with them. Why should the US admit anyone who is a security risk?
So they can learn from the nonreligious wackos controlling American universities? (I'm being somewhat, but not completely, facetious).
It is emphatically in the long-term interests of Israel to expose the students of Gaza to any outside influence. The fact that we allow short-term interests to override that concern is pure lunacy.
Well, I'm more troubled by the idea that Israel rather than the United States should be deciding who the U.S. lets into the U.S. It may have been a mistake to let these ones in, but that wss a mistake for us to make.
In that case, Israel should stop insisting that Egypt seal its border with Gaza.
Open the Gaza seaport and you can shutdown the crossing by land.
They were particularly scorching toward the UN during the Indonesian tsunami aftermath.
There, on the ground, with the facts.
I would also let it be known that, if not quietly reassigned soon, that diplomat will become 'persona non grata' in Israel. But that's just me: I don't think foreign diplomats should be setting border-control policy in their host nations.
What if an Israeli had done this in Laredo?
Afterwards, ecstatic with self-regard, you will all dance on the wreckage of the US housing market.
Did war exist before nation states?
At any rate, this is a huge digression. Ultimately, the only question that is relevant is whether this action lead us closer or further from a peaceful resolution. In the instant case, I think it's quite obviously the latter.
Who is "we" in the second sentence? It's surely not the US' call.
You are also being anti-intellectual.
More broadly, though, there's a lack of balance here. This was also terribly unfair to the students. If they were going to be barred, the US should have done it and told them before they got on the plane and flew halfway around the world.
I detect an unstated assumption that these people really were terrorists (something that depends on the veracity and competence of the two governments, which could be trustworthy but could also not be), and that therefore we shouldn't sympathize with them. But we should be able to sympathize with anyone who is shipped all the way around the world before being told their visa was revoked at the last second.
Huh? Every country without sea access relies on such "tender mercies" of its neighbors.
In most cases, said mercy is granted, but border and airspace controls are a choice and negotiated.
Also, Oren, allow me to remind you of Latvia and Estonia during much of the last century, all of Eastern Europe before the fall of the Soviet Union and Tibet as examples of countries that have been locked down by neighbors. Further, technically Luxembourg, for example, depends on its neighbors even though that has never been a problem.
I agree, and I don't condone collective punishment. But the question is who's morally responsible for the harm to innocent civilians from actions intended to stop continuous attacks on Israel? If going after the missiles and those firing them means injuring innocent Gazans, should Israel acquiesce to the missiles?
think that's bad? Just wait until we elect one president...
It seems to me that the examples of the Baltic states under Soviet domination and Tibet under PRC domination don't lend a lot of legitimacy to the argument that it is right to block other people's access to the seas.
Yaakov Toran, Defense Minister, has said on the record that Qassams are "Qassams are more a psychological than physical threat." (Yediot 03.01.06)
If the rockets were as effective as claimed, you'd think housing would be short supply!
Mr. Bernstein: you have a lot of interesting things to say and you have some arguably good points to make. But your recourse to sarcasm is sometimes a bit too quick and frequent. Sometimes it's helpful to hold off going for the jugular. Of course, it's your post, so you can say whatever you want.
But that puts the cart before the horse. Before these students could enter the U.S., they had to pass through Israel -- from Gaza through Israel to Jordan. It is the U.S. that pressured Israel to allow these students through Israel's borders over Israeli objections that these were security threats.
By your logic, Seamus, who should make that decision -- i.e. of who gets to pass through Israeli borders -- Israel or the U.S.?
Geesh, some folks are just jumping up and down and waving at Darwin to notice them.
How do you get that? Proportionality has nothing to do with anything. If someone threatens me with a knife, I'm going to use my gun, and too bad for him because he never should attacked me in the first place. According to your principle of proportionality we never should have used nuclear weapons against Japan. Or perhaps even conducted incendiary raids against Japanese cities. It's the responsibility of a government to protect its citizens and not worry about someone else's "innocents." Let's also realize the "innocents" are an on-going source of feedstock for the conflict.
Anyway, I don't have any idea whether Israel should or should not let these particular students study in the U.S. I do know that the local consular officials in Jersusalem shouldn't be ignoring security threats to Israel and the U.S., shouldn't be behaving like spoiled children, and shouldn't be running their own foreign policy.
Now if Israel's government had any p.r. sense, it would open it's borders once in a while from Gaza, and let any unarmed Gazan who wants to live free of Hamas and passes security clearance to settle in a new town in the Negev, with employment opportunities in Israeli factories and farms. It would be fun to watch thousands of Palestinians fleeing Hamas to live under Israeli "occupation." Israel's government, of course, has little p.r. sense.
think that's bad? Just wait until we elect one president..."
Been there and done that. "My pet goat".
Perhaps in a fit of moral exhibitionism some nation will embrace this doctrine as a means of national suicide. If they do, I wish them well; it's their choice. I can't think of any nation that will actually do it, but I can think of a lot of very comfortable and secure folks who will advise it. Fortunately, such people consistently fail to attain positions of leadership.
Yep, Western education does wonders. Just ask Sayyid Qutb.
I agree that it isn't the choice one should reach for first in deciding how to deal with problems created by pirates and brigands, but memories are pretty darned short or defective if you believe that quote. Look at how the allies absolutely leveled Germany and Japan. How about all that "destroying the village to save it" mythology of VietNam? I could go on, but I figured we'd stick with the most obvious recent examples for brevity's sake.
If anything, there's an excess of handwringing anymore while the pirates and brigands dance on the bodies of the innocents we claim to be interested in saving. Rwanda, Darfur, Zimbabwe, and even the long 12 years between Iraq wars depending on one's point of view.
It's a balance that needs to be struck, but judging by past practice, it's clear that you're incorrect about the "usually" part. "Usually", we've been in the practice of no-holds-barred destruction until unconditional surrender is extracted from the opponent. This "surgical" warfare is a very recent development in human history, and not a moment too soon.
That said, the real issue has nothing to do with the Gazans themselves, and entirely to do with the aid given to the various terrorist networks, mainly by Iran. As the nearly complete dissolution of Al Qaeda since the invasion of Afghanistan attests, organized terror networks such as Hezbollah and Hamas cannot exist without outside support. Eliminate the puppet master, and the puppet is no threat. Eliminate Hamas control in Gaza, and I rather suspect you'll find that the vast majority of the remaining Gazans will prefer toeing the line and living peacefully.
I miss your point. You feel he should have been reading Dostoevsky to those kids?
Yes, but if you negligently kill innocent bystanders with your gun in your attempt to subdue the attacker, you can and probably would be prosecuted for manslaughter and would face millions of dollars in liability in wrongful death lawsuits. Maybe even if you live in Texas. "Too bad for him" might not be the most impressive argument to use in front of a jury presented with weeping family members of the innocents killed.
Of course, we grant soldiers in the heat of conflict an enormous amount of deference in their often split-second decisions that endanger civilians. And we should -- otherwise, no one would ever volunteer to be a soldier. And we accept that even a carefully planned and executed military operation will probably kill innocent people. But that deference and acceptance of civilian casualties is not unlimited and depends on the circumstances. That's what proportionality means.
on top of that I might be mistaken about this part whose most intimidating moment came at the hands of white supremacists not liberals
Perhaps you are not aware of the number of professors in American universities, when added together. But the VCers really are not a large percentage.
But are you actually trying to suggest that colleges are NOT "liberal bastions," when it comes to faculties?
The key word there is "negligently." If my attacker chooses to use a third party as a shield, then my killing the shield is not negligent, but legitimate self defense. The Arab terrorists use their own civilians as shields by hiding among them. The Japanese choose to locate war factories in densely populated cities thereby putting their own civilians at risk. That's why they were targeted.
Perhaps there were more than two sides involved. Examining the content of the heavy KGB propaganda push in American institutions revealed in records opened at the collapse of the Soviet Union, and comparing it to present day American intellectual conventional wisdom, it would be fair to say that the KGB won the Cold War, but that the KGB was often at odds with the Soviet Union itself.
It was the "International" part of the "Communist International" that often inspired the best KGB agents, so they set their sights on concepts that endangered it, the key one being American Exceptionalism. It is difficult to argue that these agents lacked success in this endeavor, especially among our intellectual elites, and through them now, the institutions they administer.
Exposure to such institutions are unlikely to disabuse even the brightest student of anti-western values, or the support for terror resulting therefrom.
You mean with the exception of tunnels underneath the Gaza/Egypt border?
But are you actually trying to suggest that colleges are NOT "liberal bastions," when it comes to facultiesPerhaps you are not aware of the number of professors in American universities, when added together. But the VCers really are not a large percentage.
But are you actually trying to suggest that colleges are NOT "liberal bastions," when it comes to faculties?
To a degree, but not to a degree relational to how much bitching and moaning goes on about it.
A country, even a small one, that bombards its neighbor, even ineffectually, has begun a war.
The notion that an attacked nation cannot respond with overwhelming force is foolishness. That is how wars are conducted. One method of conducting a war is siege warfare.
The siege is one of the most ancient forms of warfare. The army conducting the siege must make its demands known to the besieged, but once it begins its siege, it can cut off all food water and trade, attack the walls and defensive works, and bombard the besieged place.
There have been legendary and horrible sieges, like Leningrad in WWII which lasted 900 days and resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians from starvation and bombardment.
Of course Israel does not have to conduct the siege of Gaza like the Germans conducted the siege of Leningrad. However, just because the Germans did it does not mean the tactic is wrong or illegitimate.
However, the Israeli tactics have been so far themselves ineffectual. If I were running the operation I would cut off all food, fuel, water, and communication to Gaza. I would also encourage any citizen who wished to surrender to do so and receive safe passage to the west bank or any other land that would have them.
Further the notion that the civilians of Gaza should suffer no inconvenience because they are governed by a gang of thugs simply has no precedent in history. Few besieged cities have ever been governed in a manner that meats modern standards of republican legitimacy. It has made no difference.
War is hell. Hamas has started a war and its subjects will live in hell until Israel puts out the fire by main force.
Israel has every right to do that and those who say otherwise are uttering cant.
Sure, but what has that got to do with Gaza, which, by all accounts, not a country?
I was raised on the idea that Israel doesn't wantonly target civilians even when its enemies do. Despite some well-known exceptions I believe that's still true and I hope it remains so. That said, your proportionality argument has two serious flaws:
Your numbers and the word "proportionality" imply some sort of moral reciprocity, but that's not the case. Every civilian Palestinian casualty avoided is intentional, since Israel could wipe out the whole population if it wanted to. The 1/200 effectiveness of the Qassams doesn't reflect the slightest benevolence by the Palestinians, only their incompetence (or the poor quality of their weapons). If they had their way, every rocket would kill Israeli civilians. By your measure, someone can devote themselves to killing you, and if they're bad enough at it you'll be foreclosed from doing anything to stop them. And eventually, if only by dumb luck, they'll succeed.
Also, the Palestinian attackers enmesh themselves in the civilian population just to increase the risk of casualties from efforts to root them out. By your lights, that means the more cynically callous they are to the deaths of their own people, the less justified Israel is to fight them. If their incompetence makes a red herring of the proportionality question, this creates incentives that are absolutely perverse.
Never saw the movie 'Exodus' I see.
In any case, I think it's a fallacy to assume that theres a finite amount of responsibility to be divided, as though attributing moral guilt to one party necessarily means the other has less. It seems to me that Israel has some substantial degree of moral responsibility for the deaths of civilians innocent of any wrongdoing meriting death resulting from (purportedly) unavoidable "collateral damage" from its attacks. But that doesn't mean Hamas isn't fully responsible for those deaths as well.
Good point. Call them a body politic then. Though historically even city-states and tribes could be called "countries" and Native Americans often still refer to tribes as nations. So you made a good point, though based on semantics, but you failed to address or negate the argument. All you did was point out that a commonality of terms should be agreed upon, or that more concise language used to avoid semantic distractions from what was said(written).
Beyond that, proportionality is a diplomatic concept, not a martial concept. It is also a losing concept in warfare though it can sometimes be a successful concept in diplomatic relations. Tit for tat, the more common lay term for proportionality, teaches that limited warfare begets limited retaliation and, as modern history has shown, prolongs conflicts or causes them to escalate. This is the middle ground between all out warfare which modern history has shown effectively ends the conflict and not responding which causes the aggressor to escalate.
Kalroy
It is just that Israel is more humane than we were 60 years ago, and standards have changed back to the pre-Guernica norm. But really the situation is no different.
If they were security threats it does seem a bit odd that the Israelis would let then cross into Israel at all.
I have a feeling it was more like the case last year when the Israelis turned Darfurian refugees back into the desert because Israel is "at war" with Sudan and therefore no Sudanese refugees can be permitted to enter Israel. (They eventually backed down on that one due to internal pressure by Jewish liberals)
If the students were not security threats and were indeed just trying to escape Gaza to live and study in America (I think we would both agree it is a violent, savage hellhole for all gentiles living there), it does seem a bit strange that Israel, of all countries, and in light of the Jewish refugee experience from 1932 to 1948 would prevent Gazan gentile departure. I just returned from the Jewish museum in Shanghai, which made a big deal about The Nations, who would not give Jews free transit out of Germany.
I would ask the Israelis the same thing I would ask the Nazis: If you are so anxious to get rid of them and "redeem the land" for your own race, why do you prevent them from leaving and journeying to a foreign land?
You are right. It is puzzling.
Behold a six year old diplomat, sitting in the street.
Are you suggesting that the Gazans will face genocide if they are not allowed to escape from their Gazan overlords?
What noone will talk about is that the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and the triggering event of 9/11 could all have been avoided if immigration laws had been strictly followed and Consular interviews required of the 15 Saudi hijackers before admission to the U.S. The U.S. had nothing, and still has nothing to gain by large-scale issuance of student visas to Saudis and those from other terror-sponsoring countries.
Oh, and just to forestall the obvious, if the situation ever rises to the level of existential threat (which Qassams most certainly are not), all notions of proportionality are off.
Absolutely not. In all instances, Israel is morally justified in obliterating them, but, since I hold my country to a slightly higher standard than a pack of violent thugs, she ought to demure.
As I said earlier, moral responsibility is not dispositive -- one does not encourage the police to endanger the lives of hostages even though they are morally justified in bringing criminals to justice.
We weren't speaking of admitting these people to Israel; we were speaking of allowing them to pass through Israel to get to the United States. The only reason they were passing through Israel is that Israel has effectively provided no other way for them to go from Gaza to the United States. If Israel is going to control all entry and exit into Gaza (I misspoke earlier when I said that Israel insists that the border with Egypt be sealed; it merely insists on--and regularly exercises--the ability to close it at will), then it has an obligation not to abuse that power so as to effectively usurp control over entry into third countries. (Another question, which I won't even go into right now, is the morality of treating the entire Gaza Strip like a big jail--or, if you prefer, like an Indian reservation, back in the days when the Indians were prohibited from leaving them.)
Yes, Israel can ask Egypt can close its borders to Gaza, but the decision to do so is still Egypt's.
Yeah, my thought on the US diplomat's tantrum was anti-Israeli views in the US State Department, that is a dog bites man story.
The Mid East Division of the US Foreign Service is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Saudis.
The problem is that many Muslims who come to the US for an education don't see a nation of freedom and opportunity but a society of degradation and sin. It is just this view that powered the creation of Al Queda and fuels the hatred many Muslims have for anything "American".
The idea that 9/11 could have been prevented with stricter immigration policy is, as you say, rarely heard. I imagine no more than 80 million Americans share the view, and of course they are effectively silenced by the liberal elite, perhaps in collaberation with the KGB.
But let's give this idea a fighting chance.
Your idea that stricter immigration controls would diminish the chance of terrorists entering the country has obvious merit. The problem is that you assume away the costs of security--not just financial, but political. Requiring consular interviews with all Saudi citizens wishing to travel to the US takes an enormous amount of time, and effectively prevents or discourages any number of legitimate travelers from making the trip. That includes tourists and businessmen in addition to well-known terrorists like Fullbright scholars. Even those who make it through the process are left feeling that the US views them as potential terrorists and criminals. Imagine taking a business trip to London and requiring a months-long visa process, consular interviews, and fingerprinting at the border. Wouldn't you want to do business with China instead?
And that's the rub. The friendly US policy towards Saudi Arabia has gained us enormous benefits in terms of friendly oil policy, national security collaboration (remember Iran?), and foreign investment. You think we gain nothing from having Saudis educated in the US? Go over there and have a chat with any member of the upper class. Chances are he was educated in the US, happily vacations here, and drinks wine at dinner with his several dozen American friends. His sons, strangely, do not view Daddy's friend Mr. Smith as a godless infidel. That may not be true of the next generation, who will not have parents who were educated in the US.
Just because a few nutballs came to the US and were horrified doesn't mean we don't gain anything from allowing countless other saudis into this country. Yes, there is no guarantee that Saudis who come here will like what they see. But I would venture that a lot of them do (or did, before things got a lot nastier for them here). And when people like what they see here, they go back and create a more positive image of the US in their home countries. That makes Saudi Arabia a less friendly atmosphere for terrorists, discourages terrorist funding, and creates social pressure against violent fanatacism.
Now, all this doesn't mean that we should lower security. Of course more security means more (immediate) safety. But it has costs. It has economic costs, and it has costs in terms of foreign perception of the US. And foreign perception of the US has a lot to do with how many potential terrorists there are in the first place.
immigrate here. What makes Saudis so special that they should not have to go through the same procedure? Oh, since they are potential terrorists, have lots of oil and support Wahhabism, we have to kiss up to them?
For those who don't know the story, it was the playing of the Johnny Mercer and Margaret Whiting version of the not partiularly raunchy song "Baby, It's Cold Outside" in Greeley, Colorado that launched al Quaeda...
Either the news coverage we get here is grossly distorted against Israel, or that does seem to be what you're saying as a practical matter. Because from what I read in the papers, Israeli attacks inside Gaza are very few compared to the missiles coming the other way, discreetly targeted, yet have a civilian casualty rate much higher than one in twenty. And if you accept the accounts of Gazans, the civilian casualty rate is virtually 100%. (To be clear, we're talking about the percentage of attacks that injure civilians, not the percentage of injured who are civilians.)
So are there actually appropriately cautious yet effective Israeli attacks that just don't get reported here? Do we only hear about the ones you think shouldn't happen? (Those aren't facetious questions.) Otherwise, I don't see how you are in fact allowing for preventative or retaliatory measures if the likelihood of civilian casualties has to be less than one in twenty.
I share the sentiment up to a point. I don't want Israel to behave thuggishly or to obliterate anyone except those who are trying to obliterate Israel. That said, I'd set the bar below existential threats for what demands a response that needn't be proportional. So we may disagree there. Regardless, are there effective measures Israel can take to stop rocket attacks without excessively risking civilian injuries? If so, are they taking them? If they're not, why not? And if there are no such measures, do you think Israel should absorb the attacks indefinitely without responding? Again, that's not a facetious question.
The Visa Express program idiotically approved by the State Department allowed many Saudis to get visas from Saudi Travel Agents, without an interview as late as 2002.
I disagree with the Libertarian viewpoint that borders are an inconvenience, and believe it should be equally difficult for students and immigrants from hostile nations to enter the U.S. If we cannot recognize that Saudi Arabia is a hostile country that practices religious and gender apartheid, and denies the basic humanity of Jews and Christians, then we have lost our moral compass.
One more thought about proportionality. If someone is pointing a revolver at me and he pulls the trigger five times and it misfires each time, wouldn't I be nuts not to kill him before he pulls the trigger on the sixth chamber? You'll say that falls under the exception for existential threats, but for the one in two hundred who stands to die in Sderot, isn't the threat existential? Anyway, my point is that proportionality ought to be measured by intent, not effectiveness. If you limit your response only because your enemy's weapons aren't good enough to kill you, aren't you just inviting him to correct the defect? Which you'll know he has when you're dead.
Ok, I'm assuming that your statement here is really two statements: 1. We shouldn't have to kiss up to the Saudis just because they have oil. 2. In fact, we should anti-kiss up to them, because they are potential terrorists and support Wahhabism. Let's take these in turn.
1. "Having lots of oil."
"Hav[ing] lots of oil" isn't a bad thing. And given our energy needs, it might, yes, mean that we have to "kiss up to" the Saudis, just a little. Generally, if you want people to treat you favorably, you need to treat them favorably in return. We want more from the Saudis than we do from a lot of countries. We don't HAVE to be nice to them, but if we're not there are certain potential consequences. I think what you're arguing is that the added security we get from consular interviews (or refusing visas entirely) is worth the expense of, inter alia, oil prices. What you've been saying, however, is that there are no costs at all. Incidentally, what I am saying is that higher security might actually increase the terrorist threat, in addition to costing us oil, money and goodwill.
2. Higher security for the Saudis because they are "potential terrorists" and "support Wahhabism."
a. Everyone is a potential terrorist. What you're saying, I suppose, is that Saudis are more likely to be terrorists than other people, in the same sense that african americans are more likely to be violent criminals than white people are. I won't ask whether you support racial profiling as well, as that's largely irrelevant, but recognize that it's the same argument. It's true, statistically, and it may be useful for certain purposes, but it's morally uncomfortable and has real world negative consequences (resentment, loss of worldwide respect for our ideals and politics, etc.).
2. I'm assuming that you're saying "supporting Wahhabism" is a bad thing. Actually, I'm assuming you're refering to a subcategory of Neo-sullafism that was imported into Saudi Arabia in the form of exiles from repressive regimes in Pakistan and Egypt, and is the form of Islam that has been giving us trouble. "Wahhabism" is generally the good kind of Islam for us, because it permits violent struggle only under State auspices. States, even enemy states, are succeptible to deterrence and negotiation. It's third party terrorists that are the nightmare.
I won't try to convince you that "Wahhabism" is not inherently an evil faith, any more than Christianity is an evil faith despite the various evil things that some Christians have believed or done. I'm assuming you'll just respond that the vast majority of "Wahhabis" (definition: unclear) believe in repressing women, blowing up the infidel, etc. (wrong, I think, but whatever). But if you want to make religion a factor in your view of immigration and border security, you may want to refine your views more precisely. And, again, you should recognize that using religion as a factor in such decisions has substantial costs.
Rice could step in and reauthorize the visas directly supporting her chain of command - but the problem is that ICE is part of Homeland Security and is not in Rice's chain of command.
So ICE blocks the entry (the left hand) that State has permitted (the right hand). What is needed is some kind of place lower than Rice where the two departments can speak and deal with these kinds of cases if we want Fulbright fellows to have a good image of the United States. Unfortunately, I do not see the place where this can happen. Maybe some kind of joint State Visa - ICE level filter space to address this kind of thing.
The passive nature of her response shows that these guys do not have a snowballs chance in hell of getting in the US.
These Israelis are not the only foreigners baffled at the way the US left hand and right hand in government work together (or not).
"New information" sounds like bureaucratic CYA language. The guy/woman at the border had no heads up to allow the kid in and so did what he/she thought was standard operating procedure for these kinds of persons and kicked them out.
Best,
Ben
Best,
Ben
Suppose you have a hundred people standing in front of you, and you know one of them has tried to kill you, but you don't know which one. Are you justified in killing the one hundred, just to protect yourself from the one?
I'm not sure I understood your innuendo about race, though, as neither Israelis nor Jews constitute a race.
Of course not. You wouldn't be justified even firing a gun if you don't know who tried to kill you. But if nobody shows any interest in identifying the culprit, I'd certainly want to question a lot of them. And if evidence builds that the population at large identifies with the attackers and routinely allows themselves to be used as shields for their attacks, I wouldn't feel constrained to be as scrupulous in my efforts to root out the attackers as I'd be if someone disappeared into a crowd of actual innocent strangers.
I don't reject the concept of proportionality, though as I said above, I think it makes more sense when measured by intentions than by effectiveness. But I also think that when terrorists cover their tracks with the tacit and sometimes active collusion of local populations, proportionality shouldn't be allowed to stymie all efforts to suppress the violence.
Why? If 10:1 is the proper proportion in delivering retaliation, why should it rise because the threat is existential? What is the reaoning here?
You wear your foreign policy views on your sleeve here; do you really not expect anyone to notice or comment? Since you put yourself in the kitchen, you might consider it appropriate to develop a little less sensitivity to heat.
[Editor: There is a history with "Stunned", as my comment makes clear. And Stunned's reference to the housing market was relevant how, beyond pure obnoxiousness?]
Do you really consider your closing assumption, that the American security apparatus had made a considered decision that these two students presented a security risk, to be merited? Our security apparatus has kept out dangerous visitors like Yusuf Islam (Cat Stevens), has growing but error-riddled and never-corrected no-fly lists, hassles all kinds of travelling grannies and children (along with the rest of us), and apparently has milions of us on watch lists, all without any meaningful Congressional oversight or civilian accountability.
We will probably never know why these two students had their visas revoked. Libertarians should find that troubling, but from you all we hear is satisfaction that somehow Israel was vindicated. We can see where your priorities lie.
It's curious that the question assumes that the only relevant fact about the crowd is that they didn't pull the trigger during this attack.
For example, the difference between pointing him out and hiding him seems relevant. How about if that crowd produced an attacker every day for the past several weeks? How about if they paid, supported, and armed the attacker?
Saudi Arabia explicitly prohibits all non-Moslem religious activity in its borders, even among "guest workers", with continual surveillance to enforce the ban. Saudi translations of Moslem scripture differ from other translations - they include extra specific admonitions of hostility to non-Moslems.
Wahhabi missionaries with Saudi funding are active in many Moslem countries, and in many one of these countries Moslem violence against non-Moslems or has erupted: Thailand and Indonesia, for instance. Michael Totten recently visited Macedonia: the Moslem population there is being hijacked by Saudi-funded Wahhabists, while traditional Sufists are literally afraid to speak out. (The government is complicit, because the Wahhabis have paid off the Orthodox Church, supporting it in confrontation with Greece and Serbia.)
What has happened to Islam in the last 35 years is the equivalent of having someone will $20 billion to an extremist Catholic religious order; suddenly one small group in the community has all the disposable cash - except the imbalance is even bigger.
Division by zero is undefined.
Amazing that both parties can simultaneously be in control like that!
I saw some press accounts, but don't really recall the unflattering part. The phrase "world's largest jail" did not appear in the stories I read.
There's a story here, but it's certainly not about one U.S. diplomat deciding to sit on the pavement.
I will grant Yankev's assertion that the US has more influence on Israel than vice versa, but this is largely a function of geopolitical realities and not some sinister plot. While both parties stand to lose from a (highly unlikely) souring of relations, it's pretty clear who would lose more.
So what should Israel do in response to endless missile attacks? Your snarky responses don't include that bit of info.
I may be too thick to have picked up on the snark (I don't see it), but I do have to agree that you haven't answered my questions.
That was a gem!
Though you forgot to mention that we Americans also control the Jesuits, are parasites who suck dry urban communities, and murder Jewish children to make our blood-pasteries. I think this was all revealed in the 'Protocols of the Elders of Utah.'
David Irving has established all this through his careful research.
Calls for a novelist to be killed.
Is kept out of US of A for security reasons.
I am quite OK with that decision.
The fact that I had to listen to "Morning has Broken" at a seemingly endless string of "guitar Masses" during the nadir of 1970s "liturgical reform" just sweetens the deal for me. Take that, hippy!
His songs always struck me as having a sort of Neil Diamond 2.0 quality, which is reason enough to keep him out of the country. (Yes I know Neil Diamond is Jewish, but Jews, Muslims... all those foreigners sound the same to me.)
Lucky Catholic. Mainstream Protestants were only getting warmed up. Evidently, its guitars all the way down...
Yeah. Electric. With keyboards and percussion.
Proportionality in response rewards the side most comfortable with getting its own people killed. And, if you don't make the other side suffer so much as to actually stop, it keeps on and on until either the total is higher than any expected, or it really blows up. No gain in being proportional.
And some Israelis seem to think their country is entirely too comfortable with letting them be killed.
Orthodox/Protestant/Catholic Cat Stevens turned into a Muslim. Did anyone see that one coming?
Yes, I saw it coming. And I would have let you know that along with other major "secrets" I am privy to, if only you had an email address listed here.
Me neither, at least not if that "diplomatic confrontation" was as you suggest all about their quitting time and initial unwillingness to be minimally accommodating. Was there something else going on in that encounter, and if so, what?
Out of curiosity, does any know how long it takes to travel from Gaza and/or the embassy in Tel Aviv to the Jordanian crossing point? (Allenby Bridge?) Was it all about the Israeli side, or was there a problem on the Jordanian side too letting them cross "after hours"?
And how did a "high school" student happen to be involved in any of this? Aren't Fullbrights only for graduate studies?