unintended consequences piling up

"In the new world we are entering, 

the Palestinians are acting, and Washington is reacting."

~ Rami G. Khouri, The Daily Star 

...The Palestinian quest for U.N. recognition is now being widely debated across the U.S., with the common denominator being total uncertainty about its direction and implications. Even Palestinian officials close to President Mahmoud Abbas are not certain of what happens next, because the three primary dimensions of the move remain unknown: the Palestinian strategy, its impact on the ground, and American-Israeli retributive reactions.

An image. 

Most interesting to watch the American-Israeli retributive reactions. We've got people like John Bolton threatening that the US will defund the UN of the other countries of the world vote for Palestinian statehood, and people like Ileana Ros-Lehtinen pushing the legislation to back him up. Meanwhile the big wonks in foreign policy world bemoan the fact that some of these retributive reactions will be bad for Israel. Yup. That's right. We guess that's what happens when you create a Frankenstein in your fucking laboratory: the monster gets loose and breaks all your glass beakers, for starters.

The law of unintended consequences comes into play, finally. When lower order bits try to control higher order bits, you get unintended consequences. When the lower order bits have lots of enforcer goons out running around doing their own thing and the lower order bits are not all on the same page, you get unintended consequences.

For instance, some of the little enforcer goons in the US congress cut funding to the PA, so Arab countries stepped up to replace the money, making a generous donation this week that allowed full salaries to 130,000 civil servants and making the PA financially viable for another month. 

We don't think Ileana meant for that to happen.


The attention on Israel may result in some other unintended consequences. Lots of goons running around causing mayhem makes some people look bad -- click over for images.

Dozens of tombstones belonging to Muslims and Christians were vandalised at two Arab cemeteries in what was an alleged 'price tag' attack in the the Ajami neighbourhood of Jaffa, Israel.
Graves at the Muslim al-Kazakhana cemetery were defaced with graffiti reading “Death to Arabs” and “Price tag”, written in Hebrew along with other messages. Some of the tombstones had been smashed. Graffiti was also found in a Christian Orthodox cemetery next to al-Kazakhana cemetery
The damage was discovered on the eve of Yom Kippur, or Day of Atonement which is the holiest day of the year for Jews, but it is not clear when exactly they were defaced.
The attack is the second alleged 'price-tag' attack in Israel in the past week. A week earlier a mosque in the Bedouin village of Tuba Zangaria was severely damaged in an alleged arson attack by Jewish extremists. The interior of the mosque suffered extensive damage and dozens of copies of the Quran were burned and damaged by the fire.

Shimon Peres was forced to condemn the behavior as despicable acts that disgraces Israeli society. Something Must Be Done. But is anything ever done about this problem? Is this a new problem? No. Talk is cheap.

Settlers walking around with their ASSAULT RIFLES.

Avraham Dichter, a former chief of Israel's internal security agency, the Shin Bet, told Reuters the time had come to move against militant settlers, whom he described as "miserable people with a terrorist mindset." Settlers' mosque-burning campaign expands into Israel

Israel owns this problem, the problem of the settlers. Netanyahu owns this problem. These settlers are a live grenade in Bibi's hand.

Palestinians walking under trash thrown by settlers.
"Photo: Michael Carpenter. Settlers attempt to force Palestinian residents out of Hebron’s Old City by throwing trash into their homes. To combat this, nets have been installed around the area."

Palestine Monitor 

http://www.dci-palestine.org/content/settler-and-soldier-violence

Israel does nothing to stop the settler violence.

In a video of a recent fight between settlers and a Palestinian farmer and protesters near the settlement of Anatot, carried on Israeli news websites, settlers are heard to chant ''death to Arabs'' and call female protesters ''sluts'', saying: ''All of these women f--- Arabs.''
In this incident - on September 30 - a settler is seen attacking the crowd with a knife, protesters and villagers are punched to the ground, and throughout the ensuing mayhem, the video shows hardly any soldiers in the area to keep the peace.

When the soldiers do come, village leaders say, they either stand by and watch the attacks, or provoke further violence rather than protecting people and property.

...In July 2008, settlers began to use the spring and in February 2009 they started to renovate the area. Palestinians filed complaints with the police about the work, which was undertaken without permit on privately-owned land, and which damaged trees and property, the human rights group B'Tselem said. All the complaints were closed on grounds of ''offender unknown'' or ''lack of evidence''. The matter now rests with the High Court.
''Almost every week we smell tear gas,'' said Bashir Tamimi, head of the village of 550 residents. ''Settler violence is increasing - they are chopping down trees, damaging roads. After [Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud] Abbas went to the UN, it appeared that the Israeli government let the settlers loose, and allowed them to do whatever they wanted.''

...Last month, the army established a military post on a hill overlooking the valley between the Esh-Kodesh outpost and the village.
''In spite of this, it is suspected that settlers managed to vandalise 200 trees unhindered by the soldiers,'' B'Tselem spokeswoman Sarit Michaeli said. ''Regardless of whether the soldiers noticed the settlers and chose to ignore them or whether they weren't present in the area, this is a particularly severe case where the security forces violated their obligation to protect the Palestinian residents and their property.''
According to the UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs, more than 900 trees were uprooted or set alight in the week of September 21-27, and more than half of them were in Qusra.

How do settlers manage to destroy over 450 trees in ONE VILLAGE, in ONE WEEK, without getting caught by authorities, who have a lookout on a hill overlooking several villages, unless of course the authorities have no intention of catching them?

Sheikh Ibrahim Sarsour, an official in charge of the Arab Unity movement in Jaffa, condemned the ongoing Israeli attacks against Islamic holy sites, a continuing problem with little follow-up or investigation by Israeli police. He added that the Israeli police have not yet caught any of the perpetrators of these crimes against the Arab and Muslim population of Jaffa.

He sent word to the Israeli Prime Minister, Binyamin Netanyahu; Israeli President, Shimon Peres; and Israeli Interior Security Minister, Ohronovic, stating that Palestinian Muslims have not yet recovered from the burning of the Al-Nour Mosque in the village of Toba Zanghriyya on October 4th. He claimed that the attack was supported, directly or indirectly, by Israeli officials. Certain Israeli officials have made public statements implicitly endorsing such attacks on the non-Jewish population of Israel.

Even Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, in his recent address to the United Nations, expressed his respect for the Lubavitcher Rebbe, who have stated on multiple occasions that non-Jewish lives are worth less than Jewish lives, and have argued that the killing of a non-Jew by a Jew does not constitute murder.

What do you see? A Palestinian with a gun? WRONG.

"An undercover Israeli policeman runs after making arrests during clashes that erupted between Israeli troops and Palestinian stone-throwers at Qalandiya checkpoint September 21, 2011."

 http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,2094236_2312779,00.html