The Trade
June 30, 2008 
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by Jack Kinsella
I saw the movie, ‘Old Yeller’ as a kid — and it made me cry when Tommy Kirk’s character shot Old Yeller at the end.
I think I’ll buy it and watch it again. Maybe THIS time, it will have a happy ending. If not, I’ll go buy another copy from a different story and try watching that one. Maybe he won’t shoot the dog.
If not, there are other stores . . . I know it sounds silly, but if I do it often enough, and talk about how often I do it, I may be offered a job as a UN diplomat.
It sounds like a fun job. Lots of travel, a big expense account, and I understand that the more meaningless your efforts are, the further you can advance up the ladder.
Who knows? If my work is irrelevant enough, I might even get elected Secretary-General where I can help the down-trodden and victimized of this world by rewarding the victimizers and blaming the victims and be the recipient of global accolades for my far-reaching irrelevance.
If not, there’s always Disneyland. I hear they have a whole section called Fantasy Land that is evidently dedicated to training UN Secretary-General wannabes.
Or maybe I can enroll in the Mahmoud Ahmadinejad School of Genocidal Cultural Sensitivity. Or the Yasser Arafat Memorial School For Jewish Advancement.
I just want to make the world a better place, and the most expedient method is evidently by helping the Jews make the transition from this Jerusalem to the Big Jerusalem In the Sky.
At the very least, I might get a job offer from Hezbollah or Hamas. Or a nice ‘thank you’ card from the Big Kahuna himself, Osama bin Laden.
I just want to help. I’m here to serve. Call me.
In 1948, the combined forces of the Arab world converged on Israel following her declaration of statehood, vowing to annihilate the infant state while still in its crib.
The UN remained silent, fully expecting the Arab war machine to overrun the unarmed and unorganized Jewish state and put an end to the Jewish Question without having to endure another Adolf Hitler or another world war in order to accomplish it, while keeping a clear conscience in the meantime.
After all, the Germans were Europeans and Europe was much too cultured to countenance another Holocaust on its soil. On the other hand, the attacking forces in this case were all Arab Muslims. And killing Jews is what Arab Muslims do.
Nobody can blame them for that, anymore than one can blame a cat for killing mice. So the UN accepted Israel’s declaration, granted it admission to the UN, and sat back to enjoy the fireworks.
To the UN’s surprise, the ragtag Israeli Defense Forces beat back the combined armies of Transjordan, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria and Saudi Arabia and acquired an extra 2000 square miles of territory beyond that granted by the 1947 Partition Plan.
This forced the United Nations to impose a cease-fire on Israel, before the Israelis took over the whole durned Islamic Middle East.
In 1956, a new war between Israel and Egypt’s Gamal Abdul Nasser broke out after the armies of Jordan, Egypt and Syria were consolidated under Egyptian leadership in a second effort to eradicate the Jewish State.
Israel’s Operation Kadesh, commanded by Moshe Dayan, lasted less than a week; its forces reached the eastern bank of the Suez Canal in about 100 hours, seizing the Gaza Strip and nearly all the Sinai Peninsula.
Panicked, the UN General Assembly imposed a cease fire against Israel, forcing the Jewish State to give back all the territory it had gained during the second war of annihilation against the Jews in the space of eight years.
The hard-headed Israelis refused to surrender to the UN at first. It took several more resolutions and pressure from the United States before Israel withdrew in 1957 to its original, indefensible borders to wait for the next invasion. Even then, the Jews wouldn’t withdraw without security guarantees, so the UN established a United Nations Emergency Force (UNEF) to stand between Israel and the Arab world.
It took ten years before the Arab world sufficiently recovered to mount a third attempt to annihilate the Jews.
In June, 1967, when the Arab forces were fully prepared and Cairo has massed sufficient troops along Israel’s border, UNEF pulled out and let Jordan, Syria and Egypt have another go at them.
Six days later, Israel had destroyed the Arab Legion’s air force, kicked Syria off the Golan Heights, took back all of Jerusalem, threw Jordan out of the West Bank and took the Gaza Strip away from Egypt.
Israel’s annexation of Sinai, Gaza, Arab East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and Golan Heights, shortened its land frontiers with Egypt and Jordan, removed the most heavily populated Jewish areas from direct Arab artillery range, and temporarily increased its strategic advantages.
Aghast, the United Nations imposed another ceasefire on Israel [Resolution 242] before the Islamic world’s war-making abilities were completely destroyed.
In 1973, Egypt tried again, supported by Syria and financed by Saudi Arabia. The sneak attack was scheduled for October 6, as Israeli forces were at home with their families celebrating Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement.
The UN’s major powers, including the US, Russians, French and the UK all knew of the attack several days in advance, but, in the spirit of fair play, let Israel discover it when Egyptian and Syrian tanks began rolling over Israel’s border cities.
When it became clear that, instead of being finally destroyed, the Israelis had started to win [again] the UN forced another ceasefire and stationed another UN force between Israel and the Arabs to oversee Israeli compliance. [Resolution 338]
The Arab governments finally realized that they couldn’t defeat Israel by conventional means, so they went underground, offering material support and training to Islamic terror groups, including Yasser Arafat’s al Fatah and later, to Hezbollah.
In the thirty years since, the UN has passed more resolutions ‘condemning’ Israel, ‘deploring’ Israel, ’strongly condemning’ Israel, imposing conditions on Israel and subsequently ‘deeply regretting’ Israel for ignoring them than it has against the rest of the world combined.
Twenty-six percent of all UN resolutions passed by the General Assembly since 1948 expressly condemn Israel. Of the 175 resolutions passed between 1948 and 1991, 97 — or more than half –were aimed at Israel. Just four were against an Arab state.
Israel holds an honored position as the only nation singled out as part of the UN Human Rights Commission’s permanent investigative agenda.
Two years ago, Hamas infiltrated Israeli territory, killing several Israeli soldiers and kidnapping one young Israeli corporal to hold hostage, demanding the release of 1200 Palestinian terrorists held in Israeli jails as ransom. Cpl Gilad Shalit’s fate is still unknown.
The following week, Hezbollah invaded from the north, killed eight Israeli soldiers and kidnapped two more, announcing its intention to ransom its hostages for terrorist prisoners held by Israel. This, despite Hezbollah’s agreement to release the hostages as part of the cease-fire deal brokered by the UN under resolution 1701.
It took two years, but Israel just announced a prisoner swap in which it will trade Samir Kuntar, perpetrator of one of the most grisly terror attacks in Israel’s history, and four other Hezbollah terrorists, in exchange for Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev. Samir and the rest are alive and well. Goldwasser and Regev are ‘probably’ dead, according to the Israeli Prime Minister.
The United Nations approved a document entitled “International Convention Against the Taking of Hostages” in December, 1979. Article 1 of this document defines the crime:
Any person who seizes or detains and threatens to kill, to injure or to continue to detain another person (hereinafter referred to as the “hostage”) in order to compel a third party, namely, a State, an international intergovernmental organization, a natural or juridical person, or a group of persons, to do or abstain from doing any act as an explicit or implicit condition for the release of the hostage commits the offence of taking of hostages (”hostage-taking”) within the meaning of this Convention.
Since the UN has not invoked [or even alluded to] its own conventions on hostage taking, one can only conclude that, under UN rules, 1) an Israeli hostage is not a ‘person’ and, 2) Israel is not a ’state’.
I could go on, but its too depressing. So I just put Old Yeller back in my DVD player. I could use a happy ending.
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