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Unscrambling the mandates omelette guarantees more egg on Obama's face

By David Singer - posted Tuesday, 7 October 2014


President Obama's mission to degrade and destroy Islamic State (ISIL) in Syria and Iraq has been seriously undermined by these poor political judgement calls:

  1. Claiming that ISIL is not "Islamic"
  2. Arguing that ISIL is not a State because no other Government recognises it
  3. Intruding upon Syrian sovereign territory in breach of international law before first procuring the passage of a Chapter VII Security Council Resolution authorising military action
  4. Threatening to use his intervention in Syria as an excuse to also remove Syria's President Assad
  5. Grossly underestimating the ISIL threat

His latest gaffe involves a dispute with Israel's Prime Minister Netanyahu - who told the United Nations this week:

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… everywhere we look, militant Islam is on the march. It's not militants. It's not Islam. It's militant Islam.

Typically, its first victims are other Muslims, but it spares no one. Christians, Jews, Yazidis, Kurds – no creed, no faith, no ethnic group is beyond its sights. And it's rapidly spreading in every part of the world.

Netanyahu further warned:

To protect the peace and security of the world, we must remove this cancer before it's too late. Last week, many of the countries represented here rightly applauded President Obama for leading the effort to confront ISIS. And yet weeks before, some of these same countries, the same countries that now support confronting ISIS, opposed Israel for confronting Hamas. They evidently don't understand that ISIS and Hamas are branches of the same poisonous tree. ISIS and Hamas share a fanatical creed, which they both seek to impose well beyond the territory under their control.

State Department spokesperson - Jen Psaki - chose to take issue with Netanyahu – claiming:

Obviously, we've designated both as terrorist organizations, but ISIL poses a different threat to Western interests and to the United States..

However ISIL and Hamas – and the PLO – all pose identical threats to western interests and the United States – as they attempt to unscramble the three Mandates for Syria / Lebanon, Iraq and Palestine legally sanctioned by the League of Nations more than 90 years ago after the territories comprised in these Mandates were liberated from 400 years of Ottoman Empire rule following Turkey's defeat in World War I.

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The independent Arab and Jewish States that subsequently emerged from these Mandates are now being directly threatened with elimination.

ISIL has already declared an Islamic State in large parts of Syria and Iraq exceeding the area of Great Britain - - expelling or butchering Christian and other religious communities who have lived there for centuries. ISIL has been repelled in Lebanon and also threatens Jordan.

Hamas – pursuant to Article 11 of its 1988 Charter – militarily seeks to reverse the Jewish National Home objectives of the Mandate for Palestine:

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About the Author

David Singer is an Australian Lawyer, a Foundation Member of the International Analyst Network and Convenor of Jordan is Palestine International - an organisation calling for sovereignty of the West Bank and Gaza to be allocated between Israel and Jordan as the two successor States to the Mandate for Palestine. Previous articles written by him can be found at www.jordanispalestine.blogspot.com.

Other articles by this Author

All articles by David Singer

Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

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