Before our current offering of Article of the Week, we think it important to make you aware of the following 9 minute video of the Melanie Phillips’, as always superb, interview on Israel's TV this weekend, addressing the question of the constant bashing of Israel today.
Please spend 9 minutes to better understand if you do not already, what is really going on in the public diplomacy fight we have chosen to engage in 24/7.
You can choose either of these links
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_4dksiRW-Yg&feature=player_embedded
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_4dksiRW-Yg
Below is this article of the week
Toppled Palestinian ‘Landmark’ Symbolized Hate
Jonathan S. Tobin - 01.10.2011 –
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/blogs/index.php/tobin/386124
It says something about the way much of the world views the rights of Jews to live in Jerusalem that the erection of new homes in parts of that city is considered such a terrible provocation. Thus, the new housing project in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of the city is generally reported as an outrageous provocation, even though the only reason this area is usually described as “predominantly Arab” or, more outrageously, “traditionally Arab” is because from 1949 to 1967, when this location was illegally occupied by Jordan, Jews were prohibited from living there.
As to whether it is wise for Israel to allow Jews to live in all parts of their capital, that is something that Israelis can debate, though redividing Jerusalem and returning those parts handed over to the Palestinian Arabs to a Jew-free condition seems like a curious way to advance the cause of peace and mutual coexistence. But let’s leave aside the question of Jewish rights or even the strategic wisdom of putting more Jews in these neighborhoods. Let us instead examine the Palestinian claim and what it represents.
When the New York Times reported the fact that ground was being broken for the new housing in Sheikh Jarrah in a story published on Sunday, what it did was to focus on the destruction of what it claimed was a Palestinian “landmark.” What landmark, you ask? Was it a medieval structure that in some way represents the longstanding Arab presence in the city or its culture? No. The building that was toppled to make way for some new apartment houses was just a large home that was built in the 1930s as a villa for one of the most notorious figures in 20th-century history: Haj Amin al-Husseini, the mufti of Jerusalem. Husseini may never have spent much time in what eventually was renamed the Shepherd Hotel, but he did make his mark on the region by inspiring bloody pogroms against the Jews then living in the country. After the outbreak of World War II, he joined forces with the Nazis, meeting with Hitler and then spending the war making Arabic propaganda broadcasts for the Axis and successfully recruiting Muslims (mostly Bosnians) to serve in a special SS brigade. He was promised that, in the event of a German victory, he would be made the puppet ruler of what is now Israel, where he would assist the Nazis in the massacre of the several hundred thousand Jews who lived there.
That a home that was in any way connected to Husseini or any other Nazi would be considered a landmark whose demolition inspired statements of sadness from contemporary Palestinian leaders like Saeb Erekat speaks volumes about the nature of Palestinian politics. That the intended home of the man who dreamed of wiping out every last Jew in Jerusalem is coming down to make room for Jewish homes is certainly ironic. One needn’t necessarily agree with the politics of Daniel Luria, a representative of Ateret Cohanim, the group that promotes Jewish building throughout Jerusalem, to appreciate what he termed the “beautiful poetic justice” of this event.
Showing posts with label israelis. Show all posts
Showing posts with label israelis. Show all posts
Monday, January 24, 2011
The challenge of public diplomacy vis-a-vis the delegitimisation of Israel
Address to Ariel Conference on Law and Mass Media, 30 December 2010
http://www.melaniephillips.com/articles-new/?p=789
(Below is a part of the address given at the conference referred to above. If you want to read the complete address, please click on the link above)
We are living through a global campaign of demonisation and delegitimisation of Israel in which the western media are playing a key role.
The British media are the global leaders of this campaign in their frenzied and obsessional attacks on Israel. In the BBC in particular, such virulence attains unparalleled power and influence since it is stamped with the BBC’s global kitemark of objectivity and trustworthiness.
Israel is dwelt upon obsessively, held to standards of behaviour expected of no other country and, with its own victimisation glossed over or ignored altogether, falsely accused of imposing wanton suffering.
Time after time, otherwise cynical, reality-hardened journalists have published or broadcast claims of Israeli ‘atrocities’ which are clearly theatrically staged fabrications or allegations. The false narrative of Arab propaganda is now so deeply embedded in the consciousness of journalists that they cannot see that what they are saying is untrue even when it is utterly egregious and indeed absurd.
This is because Israel’s crime is to defend itself militarily. To much of the media, Israel’s self-defence is regarded as intrinsically illegitimate. It is routinely described as ‘vengeance’ or ‘punishment’. Thus Sir Max Hastings wrote in the Guardian in 2004: ‘Israel does itself relentless harm by venting its spleen for suicide bombings upon the Palestinian people.’
In short, Israel is presented as some kind of cosmic demonic force, standing outside of humanity.
In Britain, the established church, the universities, the Foreign Office, the theatrical and publishing worlds, the voluntary sector, members of Parliament across the political spectrum, as well as the media — have signed up to the demonisation and delegitimisation of Israel.
It’s the home of the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement. It’s where human rights lawyers threaten to arrest Israelis for war crimes as soon as they step off the plane at Heathrow.
Britain has effectively become a kind of global laundry for the lies about Israel and bigotry towards the Jews churning out of the Arab and Muslim world, sanitising them for further consumption throughout English-speaking, American and European society and turning what was hitherto confined to the extreme fringes of both left and right into the mainstream. Where Britain has led, the rest of the west has followed.
What is striking is the extent to which a patently false and in many cases demonstrably absurd account has been absorbed uncritically and assumed to be true.
History is turned on its head; facts and falsehoods, victims and victimisers have their roles inverted; logic is suspended, and an entirely false narrative of the conflict is now widely accepted as unchallengeable fact, from which fundamental error has been spun a global web of potentially catastrophic false conclusions.
The western intelligentsia has itself turned evidence and logic upside down. Moral and cultural relativism – the belief that subjective experience trumps moral authority and any notion of objectivity or truth – has turned right and wrong on their heads.
Because of the dominant belief in victim culture and minority rights, self-designated victim groups — those without power — can never do wrong while majority groups can never do right. And Jews are not considered a minority because – in the hateful discourse of today – Jews are held to be all-powerful as they ‘control’ the media, Wall Street and America.
So the Muslim world cannot be held responsible for blowing people up as they are the third world victims of the west; so any atrocities they commit must be the fault of their victims; and so the US had it coming to it on 9/11. And in similar fashion, Israel can never be the victim of the Arab world; the murder of Israelis by the Arab world must be Israel’s own fault.
This inversion of reality and morality echoes the Islamic narrative. This holds that, because Islam is considered perfect, its adherents can never do wrong. All their aggression is therefore represented as self-defence, while western/Israeli self-defence is said to be aggression. So justice and injustice, oppression and freedom, truth and lies are reversed.
Instead of attacking Arabs and Muslims for such irrationality and falsehoods, it’s the defenders of Israel whom the western intelligentsia accuse of lies and even insanity. Instead of backing Israel against genocidal violence, the British took to the streets, while Hezbollah rockets were raining down on Israel’s northern towns in 2006, with placards declaring ‘We are all Hezbollah now’.
Israel’s perceived ‘oppression’ of the Palestinians, its ‘disproportionate’ attacks on them and its supposed violations of international law are actually the very opposite of the truth. This is behaviour of which it is the victim, not the perpetrator.
Strikingly, it is the intelligentsia, the people of reason, who are the main problem. Bigotry is now correlated with education and class.
The lower down the social and educational scale, the more people are sane and realistic and decent about the Middle East and the threat to the free world from radical Islam. But as soon as you get people who’ve been through higher education, you find that so often they’re the ones who are bigoted and irrational about such matters.
They make truly ridiculous claims about Israel, such as its perpetration of apartheid or ethnic cleansing – claims which, to anyone with even a passing knowledge of the situation, are demonstrably ridiculous.
So how can it be that the most educated are now the most irrational?
The short answer is that among the progressive intelligentsia, evidence and truth have been supplanted by ideology – or the dogma of a particular idea. Ideologies such as moral and cultural relativism, multiculturalism, feminism, environmentalism, anti-capitalism, anti-Americanism, anti-Zionism.
Across a wide range of such issues, it’s no longer possible to have a rational discussion with the progressive intelligentsia, as on each issue there’s only one story for them which brooks no dissent.
This is because, rather than arriving at a conclusion from the evidence, ideology inescapably wrenches the evidence to fit a prior idea. So ideology of any kind is fundamentally anti-reason and truth. And if there’s no truth, there can be no lies either; truth and lies are merely ‘alternative narratives’.
So the way has been opened for mass credulity towards propaganda and fabrication. The custodians of reason have thus turned into destroyers of reason – centred in the crucible of reason, the university.
So is this all hopeless? After all, irrationality cannot be fought with reason.
But no, it is not hopeless. First, many who spout this irrational discourse are not themselves irrational, merely profoundly ignorant. They are ignorant because no-one is telling them what it is they don’t know and are getting so very wrong about Israel, the Middle East or Jewish history.
But for those who are indeed irrational, we have to change our approach. We have to stop trying to argue with bigots. We must instead set out to defeat them.
To do that, we must first realise many of us are fighting on the wrong battleground. We are on the battleground selected by our enemies as the most conducive to victory.
The Arabs successfully redefined the Middle East conflict from a story about Arab aggression towards the Jews to a story about Palestinian suffering at the hands of the Jews.
They reversed victim and victimiser by recasting an existential conflict as a battle between two peoples with rival claims to the land. Inevitably this casts Israel, which is reluctant to go along with the implications of this false analysis, as the villain of the piece.
After all, forcing a country which has endured six decades of existential siege with no end to give any ground to its attackers amounts to forcing a victim to surrender. This is expected by the civilised world of no other country.
Both Israel and diaspora Jews have to stop playing defence and go onto the offence.
We should be demanding of the world why it expects Israel alone to make compromises with people who have tried for nine decades to wipe out the Jewish presence in the land and are still firing rockets at it.
We should be demanding why America, Britain and the EU single Israel out for pressure which they apply to no other victims of genocidal aggression. For in any other such conflict, their cause of the aggressors would be deemed totally forfeit by their behaviour.
We should be asking so-called ‘progressives’ – including Jewish ‘progressives’ — why they support the racist ethnic cleansing of every Jew from a future state of Palestine.
We should be asking ‘progressives’ why they are not marching against Hamas on account of its tyrannical oppression of Palestinians in Gaza.
Why they are not mounting a boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign against Mahmoud Abbas’s Palestinian Authority on account of his Holocaust denial and the PA’s continued incitement of Arab children to Jew-hatred, murder and genocide.
Why they are ignoring Arab and Muslim persecution of women and homosexuals.
And we should be telling the Jews’ own story of refugees and ethnic cleansing – the 800,000 Jews expelled from Arab lands after 1948, and who now make up more than half of Israel’s population. It’s good to see that at last Israel is beginning to bring this to the world’s attention. In Britain virtually no-one knows about it. At a stroke it takes the ground from under the feet of those demanding the ‘right of return’ for Arabs.
We will never convince bigots that facts are as they are, or that the evidence of history tells a different story from the one they believe. We cannot fight prejudice with reason.
But we have a duty to bear witness to the truth. And we have a duty to fight in our defence.
We can best do this by getting off our back foot and putting western fifth columnists on theirs. We should accuse them, not of Jew-hating motives we cannot prove but of absurdities and contradictions and untruths they cannot deny.
We should ridicule them, humiliate them, destroy their reputations; boycott them, not invite them to our houses, show them our disapproval and contempt. Treat them as pariahs. Turn their own weapons against them.
In short, we must get up off our collective knees and fight. Justice, human rights and truth are on our side, not theirs. We must reclaim them as our own.
http://www.melaniephillips.com/articles-new/?p=789
(Below is a part of the address given at the conference referred to above. If you want to read the complete address, please click on the link above)
We are living through a global campaign of demonisation and delegitimisation of Israel in which the western media are playing a key role.
The British media are the global leaders of this campaign in their frenzied and obsessional attacks on Israel. In the BBC in particular, such virulence attains unparalleled power and influence since it is stamped with the BBC’s global kitemark of objectivity and trustworthiness.
Israel is dwelt upon obsessively, held to standards of behaviour expected of no other country and, with its own victimisation glossed over or ignored altogether, falsely accused of imposing wanton suffering.
Time after time, otherwise cynical, reality-hardened journalists have published or broadcast claims of Israeli ‘atrocities’ which are clearly theatrically staged fabrications or allegations. The false narrative of Arab propaganda is now so deeply embedded in the consciousness of journalists that they cannot see that what they are saying is untrue even when it is utterly egregious and indeed absurd.
This is because Israel’s crime is to defend itself militarily. To much of the media, Israel’s self-defence is regarded as intrinsically illegitimate. It is routinely described as ‘vengeance’ or ‘punishment’. Thus Sir Max Hastings wrote in the Guardian in 2004: ‘Israel does itself relentless harm by venting its spleen for suicide bombings upon the Palestinian people.’
In short, Israel is presented as some kind of cosmic demonic force, standing outside of humanity.
In Britain, the established church, the universities, the Foreign Office, the theatrical and publishing worlds, the voluntary sector, members of Parliament across the political spectrum, as well as the media — have signed up to the demonisation and delegitimisation of Israel.
It’s the home of the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement. It’s where human rights lawyers threaten to arrest Israelis for war crimes as soon as they step off the plane at Heathrow.
Britain has effectively become a kind of global laundry for the lies about Israel and bigotry towards the Jews churning out of the Arab and Muslim world, sanitising them for further consumption throughout English-speaking, American and European society and turning what was hitherto confined to the extreme fringes of both left and right into the mainstream. Where Britain has led, the rest of the west has followed.
What is striking is the extent to which a patently false and in many cases demonstrably absurd account has been absorbed uncritically and assumed to be true.
History is turned on its head; facts and falsehoods, victims and victimisers have their roles inverted; logic is suspended, and an entirely false narrative of the conflict is now widely accepted as unchallengeable fact, from which fundamental error has been spun a global web of potentially catastrophic false conclusions.
The western intelligentsia has itself turned evidence and logic upside down. Moral and cultural relativism – the belief that subjective experience trumps moral authority and any notion of objectivity or truth – has turned right and wrong on their heads.
Because of the dominant belief in victim culture and minority rights, self-designated victim groups — those without power — can never do wrong while majority groups can never do right. And Jews are not considered a minority because – in the hateful discourse of today – Jews are held to be all-powerful as they ‘control’ the media, Wall Street and America.
So the Muslim world cannot be held responsible for blowing people up as they are the third world victims of the west; so any atrocities they commit must be the fault of their victims; and so the US had it coming to it on 9/11. And in similar fashion, Israel can never be the victim of the Arab world; the murder of Israelis by the Arab world must be Israel’s own fault.
This inversion of reality and morality echoes the Islamic narrative. This holds that, because Islam is considered perfect, its adherents can never do wrong. All their aggression is therefore represented as self-defence, while western/Israeli self-defence is said to be aggression. So justice and injustice, oppression and freedom, truth and lies are reversed.
Instead of attacking Arabs and Muslims for such irrationality and falsehoods, it’s the defenders of Israel whom the western intelligentsia accuse of lies and even insanity. Instead of backing Israel against genocidal violence, the British took to the streets, while Hezbollah rockets were raining down on Israel’s northern towns in 2006, with placards declaring ‘We are all Hezbollah now’.
Israel’s perceived ‘oppression’ of the Palestinians, its ‘disproportionate’ attacks on them and its supposed violations of international law are actually the very opposite of the truth. This is behaviour of which it is the victim, not the perpetrator.
Strikingly, it is the intelligentsia, the people of reason, who are the main problem. Bigotry is now correlated with education and class.
The lower down the social and educational scale, the more people are sane and realistic and decent about the Middle East and the threat to the free world from radical Islam. But as soon as you get people who’ve been through higher education, you find that so often they’re the ones who are bigoted and irrational about such matters.
They make truly ridiculous claims about Israel, such as its perpetration of apartheid or ethnic cleansing – claims which, to anyone with even a passing knowledge of the situation, are demonstrably ridiculous.
So how can it be that the most educated are now the most irrational?
The short answer is that among the progressive intelligentsia, evidence and truth have been supplanted by ideology – or the dogma of a particular idea. Ideologies such as moral and cultural relativism, multiculturalism, feminism, environmentalism, anti-capitalism, anti-Americanism, anti-Zionism.
Across a wide range of such issues, it’s no longer possible to have a rational discussion with the progressive intelligentsia, as on each issue there’s only one story for them which brooks no dissent.
This is because, rather than arriving at a conclusion from the evidence, ideology inescapably wrenches the evidence to fit a prior idea. So ideology of any kind is fundamentally anti-reason and truth. And if there’s no truth, there can be no lies either; truth and lies are merely ‘alternative narratives’.
So the way has been opened for mass credulity towards propaganda and fabrication. The custodians of reason have thus turned into destroyers of reason – centred in the crucible of reason, the university.
So is this all hopeless? After all, irrationality cannot be fought with reason.
But no, it is not hopeless. First, many who spout this irrational discourse are not themselves irrational, merely profoundly ignorant. They are ignorant because no-one is telling them what it is they don’t know and are getting so very wrong about Israel, the Middle East or Jewish history.
But for those who are indeed irrational, we have to change our approach. We have to stop trying to argue with bigots. We must instead set out to defeat them.
To do that, we must first realise many of us are fighting on the wrong battleground. We are on the battleground selected by our enemies as the most conducive to victory.
The Arabs successfully redefined the Middle East conflict from a story about Arab aggression towards the Jews to a story about Palestinian suffering at the hands of the Jews.
They reversed victim and victimiser by recasting an existential conflict as a battle between two peoples with rival claims to the land. Inevitably this casts Israel, which is reluctant to go along with the implications of this false analysis, as the villain of the piece.
After all, forcing a country which has endured six decades of existential siege with no end to give any ground to its attackers amounts to forcing a victim to surrender. This is expected by the civilised world of no other country.
Both Israel and diaspora Jews have to stop playing defence and go onto the offence.
We should be demanding of the world why it expects Israel alone to make compromises with people who have tried for nine decades to wipe out the Jewish presence in the land and are still firing rockets at it.
We should be demanding why America, Britain and the EU single Israel out for pressure which they apply to no other victims of genocidal aggression. For in any other such conflict, their cause of the aggressors would be deemed totally forfeit by their behaviour.
We should be asking so-called ‘progressives’ – including Jewish ‘progressives’ — why they support the racist ethnic cleansing of every Jew from a future state of Palestine.
We should be asking ‘progressives’ why they are not marching against Hamas on account of its tyrannical oppression of Palestinians in Gaza.
Why they are not mounting a boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign against Mahmoud Abbas’s Palestinian Authority on account of his Holocaust denial and the PA’s continued incitement of Arab children to Jew-hatred, murder and genocide.
Why they are ignoring Arab and Muslim persecution of women and homosexuals.
And we should be telling the Jews’ own story of refugees and ethnic cleansing – the 800,000 Jews expelled from Arab lands after 1948, and who now make up more than half of Israel’s population. It’s good to see that at last Israel is beginning to bring this to the world’s attention. In Britain virtually no-one knows about it. At a stroke it takes the ground from under the feet of those demanding the ‘right of return’ for Arabs.
We will never convince bigots that facts are as they are, or that the evidence of history tells a different story from the one they believe. We cannot fight prejudice with reason.
But we have a duty to bear witness to the truth. And we have a duty to fight in our defence.
We can best do this by getting off our back foot and putting western fifth columnists on theirs. We should accuse them, not of Jew-hating motives we cannot prove but of absurdities and contradictions and untruths they cannot deny.
We should ridicule them, humiliate them, destroy their reputations; boycott them, not invite them to our houses, show them our disapproval and contempt. Treat them as pariahs. Turn their own weapons against them.
In short, we must get up off our collective knees and fight. Justice, human rights and truth are on our side, not theirs. We must reclaim them as our own.
Christmas in Bethlehem: Tourism Police not Soldiers
By Avi Issacharof / Bethlehem December 24, 2010
http://www.haaretz.co.il/hasite/spages/1205761.html
Christmas in Bethlehem. The holiday atmosphere was palpable in every corner this week. The city is decorated to the gills, with Santa mannequins on the streets and lots and lots of tourists. The hotels reported full occupancy and the restaurants vigorously prepared for guests. Some of the finest Middle Eastern singers will be performing tonight and tomorrow in Bethlehem and Sahour, in an attempt to entertain the visitors from all over the world, Israel, and even Gaza.
A group from Russia crowded into the Church of the Nativity to hear an explanation of the differences between the three churches in the compound: Roman Catholic, which is observing the holiday tonight; Greek Orthodox (of which the Russians are also members), which will only be celebrating Christmas on January 7th; and the Armenian Church. Abbot (Father) Spyridon sits in a corner of the Orthodox church. He was born in Bethlehem 60 years ago and has served in the church since 1970. “There’s a good feeling this year,” he says. “More stability and fewer problems. After all, Bethlehem is based on tourism.” Some Palestinian police officers are circling around among the tourists, but according to Abbot Spyridon, their job is not just to protect the visitors. “There are still quite a few problems here,” he explains. He speaks Russian, Greek, English, Arabic and a little Spanish, and has seen a thing or two throughout his life inside and outside the church. During Operation Defensive Shield he was home with his wife and seven children.
-What kind of problems?
“Between the Armenian and Orthodox churches. They each claim ownership. They argue about the status quo. The police protect us and keep the peace. The ones outside the church are the tourism police. The ones inside are supposed to solve the problems that come up here every so often, such as fights. Neither side is allowed to place anything new inside the church, certainly not in the area controlled by the other church. They have a meeting and reach an agreement. If anyone does anything against the agreement, it definitely leads to a fight,” says Spyridon. A few meters away from him one of the Armenian church staff is preparing for the prayer service. “There’s a skirmish here every five days,” he says. “Why? Because of cleaning. We argue about who is going to clean where, and we can’t manage to resolve it.”
-And what about the police?
“They don’t manage to separate them either.”
Nevertheless, besides one-on-one battles inside the church, Bethlehem is largely a Palestinian success story. Law and order are strictly maintained and traffic police are in evidence on every corner. Undercover officers in civilian dress will also be deployed this holiday for the first time, mingling among the crowd and making sure to maintain order. This year a total of 1,450,000 tourists visited the city, comprising a 60% increase over last year (according to Palestinian Ministry of Tourism data). Over the holiday alone some 90,000 guests from abroad will visit the city (and another 38,000 Palestinians from Israel and the territories). Russians are the most highly represented tourists (24%) and are followed by, in descending order: Poles, Italians, Americans, Spaniards and Germans. Six hundred thousand tourists stayed in Bethlehem accommodations this year; again, a 45% increase over 2009.
The Palestinian Tourism minister, Khouloud Daibes, says that the authority was active worldwide this past year to market the tourist sites in Jericho, Bethlehem and other places. “We are currently participating in every major tourism fair everywhere in the world,” she said in a talk with Haaretz. “The number of rooms in the city is expected to rise 50% for next year (from 2,000 rooms to 3,000). The number of tourists to Israel is growing as well, but that doesn’t mean tourists don’t encounter obstacles when entering Bethlehem. Although it has been made somewhat easier, we hope for further measures that will, for example, reduce the waiting time for tourist buses at the border crossings. There’s also room for improvement on the subject of Palestinian tour guides entering Israeli areas – we want free competition.”
On the other side of town, on the outskirts of Beit Jala, preparations are being completed for the March opening of the new industrial area, which is being established under the sponsorship of the French government. Top French companies, such as Renault, France Telecom, Schneider Electric and others, intend to open branches there. Already in the first phase it should provide some 300 jobs in the area, which despite the tourism boom is still suffering from unemployment.
The French Are Coming
Every few weeks a French diplomat visits the site, and it’s highly doubtful that many people in Israel are aware of what she does. President Nicolas Sarkozy dispatched a special envoy to the area, Valerie Hoffenberg, whose job is to handle the economic, cultural, commercial, educational and environmental aspects of the Middle East peace process. But Hoffenberg is far from sounding like yet another European diplomat who immediately charges and attacks Israel’s settlement policy. Her familiarity with the territory is admirable. “Today there are almost no checkpoints inside the West Bank, and we don’t hear the world talking about that,” says Hoffenberg. “A resident of Bethlehem who wanted to get to Ramallah used to have to go through many checkpoints, but they’re no longer there. This is an important message for the international community. True, Israel makes mistakes and has to be criticized for them. But it also has to be praised for positive actions. There aren’t checkpoints and there still aren’t terror attacks. That’s also a message for the Israeli public. I’m not one of those people who think that only economic peace will bring results. However, a change for the better must be effected on the ground, and we already see that change taking place. For instance, the private Palestinian sector is getting stronger – more and more Palestinian companies are being established in the West Bank.”
Hoffenberg says that the industrial area will open in two phases and is expected to stretch over a total of 500 dunams. According to her, 35 companies plan to open branches or representative offices on the site. “It’s going to be a green area that respects the environment,” she told Haaretz. “For us, opening this place is a pilot program. After all, all the other industrial areas planned throughout the West Bank never panned out. We hope that our investment, totaling 10 million Euros, will attract more investors and more companies here.”
“What you Israelis do is much better than what you say. Things have really improved here over the past two years,” remarks Hoffenberg. “There are fewer checkpoints, fewer settlements, and the Palestinian economy is improving. The problem is that not many people in the world know about that. I have to admit that I received the greatest assistance possible. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu himself approved the use of the road in Area C. The donor countries and of course the Palestinian Authority also mobilized to help out.” According to Hoffenberg, she chose Bethlehem because of its proximity to the border with Israel as well as the trademark. “If a product says ‘Made in Bethlehem,’ then anyone in the world will know where it’s from. It will have an impact.”
http://www.haaretz.co.il/hasite/spages/1205761.html
Christmas in Bethlehem. The holiday atmosphere was palpable in every corner this week. The city is decorated to the gills, with Santa mannequins on the streets and lots and lots of tourists. The hotels reported full occupancy and the restaurants vigorously prepared for guests. Some of the finest Middle Eastern singers will be performing tonight and tomorrow in Bethlehem and Sahour, in an attempt to entertain the visitors from all over the world, Israel, and even Gaza.
A group from Russia crowded into the Church of the Nativity to hear an explanation of the differences between the three churches in the compound: Roman Catholic, which is observing the holiday tonight; Greek Orthodox (of which the Russians are also members), which will only be celebrating Christmas on January 7th; and the Armenian Church. Abbot (Father) Spyridon sits in a corner of the Orthodox church. He was born in Bethlehem 60 years ago and has served in the church since 1970. “There’s a good feeling this year,” he says. “More stability and fewer problems. After all, Bethlehem is based on tourism.” Some Palestinian police officers are circling around among the tourists, but according to Abbot Spyridon, their job is not just to protect the visitors. “There are still quite a few problems here,” he explains. He speaks Russian, Greek, English, Arabic and a little Spanish, and has seen a thing or two throughout his life inside and outside the church. During Operation Defensive Shield he was home with his wife and seven children.
-What kind of problems?
“Between the Armenian and Orthodox churches. They each claim ownership. They argue about the status quo. The police protect us and keep the peace. The ones outside the church are the tourism police. The ones inside are supposed to solve the problems that come up here every so often, such as fights. Neither side is allowed to place anything new inside the church, certainly not in the area controlled by the other church. They have a meeting and reach an agreement. If anyone does anything against the agreement, it definitely leads to a fight,” says Spyridon. A few meters away from him one of the Armenian church staff is preparing for the prayer service. “There’s a skirmish here every five days,” he says. “Why? Because of cleaning. We argue about who is going to clean where, and we can’t manage to resolve it.”
-And what about the police?
“They don’t manage to separate them either.”
Nevertheless, besides one-on-one battles inside the church, Bethlehem is largely a Palestinian success story. Law and order are strictly maintained and traffic police are in evidence on every corner. Undercover officers in civilian dress will also be deployed this holiday for the first time, mingling among the crowd and making sure to maintain order. This year a total of 1,450,000 tourists visited the city, comprising a 60% increase over last year (according to Palestinian Ministry of Tourism data). Over the holiday alone some 90,000 guests from abroad will visit the city (and another 38,000 Palestinians from Israel and the territories). Russians are the most highly represented tourists (24%) and are followed by, in descending order: Poles, Italians, Americans, Spaniards and Germans. Six hundred thousand tourists stayed in Bethlehem accommodations this year; again, a 45% increase over 2009.
The Palestinian Tourism minister, Khouloud Daibes, says that the authority was active worldwide this past year to market the tourist sites in Jericho, Bethlehem and other places. “We are currently participating in every major tourism fair everywhere in the world,” she said in a talk with Haaretz. “The number of rooms in the city is expected to rise 50% for next year (from 2,000 rooms to 3,000). The number of tourists to Israel is growing as well, but that doesn’t mean tourists don’t encounter obstacles when entering Bethlehem. Although it has been made somewhat easier, we hope for further measures that will, for example, reduce the waiting time for tourist buses at the border crossings. There’s also room for improvement on the subject of Palestinian tour guides entering Israeli areas – we want free competition.”
On the other side of town, on the outskirts of Beit Jala, preparations are being completed for the March opening of the new industrial area, which is being established under the sponsorship of the French government. Top French companies, such as Renault, France Telecom, Schneider Electric and others, intend to open branches there. Already in the first phase it should provide some 300 jobs in the area, which despite the tourism boom is still suffering from unemployment.
The French Are Coming
Every few weeks a French diplomat visits the site, and it’s highly doubtful that many people in Israel are aware of what she does. President Nicolas Sarkozy dispatched a special envoy to the area, Valerie Hoffenberg, whose job is to handle the economic, cultural, commercial, educational and environmental aspects of the Middle East peace process. But Hoffenberg is far from sounding like yet another European diplomat who immediately charges and attacks Israel’s settlement policy. Her familiarity with the territory is admirable. “Today there are almost no checkpoints inside the West Bank, and we don’t hear the world talking about that,” says Hoffenberg. “A resident of Bethlehem who wanted to get to Ramallah used to have to go through many checkpoints, but they’re no longer there. This is an important message for the international community. True, Israel makes mistakes and has to be criticized for them. But it also has to be praised for positive actions. There aren’t checkpoints and there still aren’t terror attacks. That’s also a message for the Israeli public. I’m not one of those people who think that only economic peace will bring results. However, a change for the better must be effected on the ground, and we already see that change taking place. For instance, the private Palestinian sector is getting stronger – more and more Palestinian companies are being established in the West Bank.”
Hoffenberg says that the industrial area will open in two phases and is expected to stretch over a total of 500 dunams. According to her, 35 companies plan to open branches or representative offices on the site. “It’s going to be a green area that respects the environment,” she told Haaretz. “For us, opening this place is a pilot program. After all, all the other industrial areas planned throughout the West Bank never panned out. We hope that our investment, totaling 10 million Euros, will attract more investors and more companies here.”
“What you Israelis do is much better than what you say. Things have really improved here over the past two years,” remarks Hoffenberg. “There are fewer checkpoints, fewer settlements, and the Palestinian economy is improving. The problem is that not many people in the world know about that. I have to admit that I received the greatest assistance possible. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu himself approved the use of the road in Area C. The donor countries and of course the Palestinian Authority also mobilized to help out.” According to Hoffenberg, she chose Bethlehem because of its proximity to the border with Israel as well as the trademark. “If a product says ‘Made in Bethlehem,’ then anyone in the world will know where it’s from. It will have an impact.”
Friday, September 3, 2010
Kafr Bara school for autistic Arab children opens
By RUTH EGLASH 09/02/2010 05:12
http://www.jpost.com/Israel/Article.aspx?id=186771
The first school for autistic Arab children in the center of the country officially opened its doors Wednesday with a ceremony that included a visit from Welfare and Social Services Minister Isaac Herzog.
The Center for Autism in Kafr Bara, near Petah Tikva, is run with assistance from the Education and Social Welfare ministries, as well as support from the local municipality and Alut, the Israeli Society for Autistic Children, among others. It will provide treatment and educational programs for children aged three through 21.“All children, including those that suffer from this type of disability, should be given the chance to become part of the community,” Kafr Bara Mayor Mahmoud Assi said in an interview Wednesday morning. “If they are not afforded this opportunity they will be alive, but not part of the world around them.”
Assi pointed out that there is a severe lack of awareness about autism in Israel’s Arab community and that a stigma exists surrounding the condition, which is also known as Pervasive Developmental Disorder. It includes impairments in social interaction, imaginative activity, verbal and nonverbal communication skills.“Many parents are not aware of what resources are available to them or that a center such as ours even exists,” he said. “If they do not know that there is a center to help them then these children will basically remain ignored.”Information published by the new center, which started operating informally several months ago, stated that 14 autistic children from the surrounding area attend the school daily. The children just ended a two-week vacation.
While there are more than 60 similar facilities run by the Education Ministry countrywide, only a handful are aimed specifically at the Arab sector, said a spokeswoman for Alut. She pointed out that Alut runs family centers that provide similar treatments and after-school programs for those in various frameworks.
A social worker Mohammad Igbaria, who heads Alut’s outreach to the Arab community, said that along with poor awareness and stigmas surrounding autism, there is also a serious lack of Arab professionals working in this field.“There are very few Arabic speakers available to work [with autistic children] and that means there is a big gap between the Jewish and Arab sectors in helping those with autism,” he continued.
Kafr Bara’s mayor also highlighted the problem, saying that while the center is receiving support from the government and from Alut, it is still short on many resources, including qualified Arabic-speaking professionals to help the children and their parents. “We need to increase the staff and either widen the government’s involvement or find a charity to increase funding for this project,” he said.“I have no personal experience with autism but I believe that every child, especially those with a disability, should be helped as much as possible and therefore it’s important to encourage these projects,” Assi said.
http://www.jpost.com/Israel/Article.aspx?id=186771
The first school for autistic Arab children in the center of the country officially opened its doors Wednesday with a ceremony that included a visit from Welfare and Social Services Minister Isaac Herzog.
The Center for Autism in Kafr Bara, near Petah Tikva, is run with assistance from the Education and Social Welfare ministries, as well as support from the local municipality and Alut, the Israeli Society for Autistic Children, among others. It will provide treatment and educational programs for children aged three through 21.“All children, including those that suffer from this type of disability, should be given the chance to become part of the community,” Kafr Bara Mayor Mahmoud Assi said in an interview Wednesday morning. “If they are not afforded this opportunity they will be alive, but not part of the world around them.”
Assi pointed out that there is a severe lack of awareness about autism in Israel’s Arab community and that a stigma exists surrounding the condition, which is also known as Pervasive Developmental Disorder. It includes impairments in social interaction, imaginative activity, verbal and nonverbal communication skills.“Many parents are not aware of what resources are available to them or that a center such as ours even exists,” he said. “If they do not know that there is a center to help them then these children will basically remain ignored.”Information published by the new center, which started operating informally several months ago, stated that 14 autistic children from the surrounding area attend the school daily. The children just ended a two-week vacation.
While there are more than 60 similar facilities run by the Education Ministry countrywide, only a handful are aimed specifically at the Arab sector, said a spokeswoman for Alut. She pointed out that Alut runs family centers that provide similar treatments and after-school programs for those in various frameworks.
A social worker Mohammad Igbaria, who heads Alut’s outreach to the Arab community, said that along with poor awareness and stigmas surrounding autism, there is also a serious lack of Arab professionals working in this field.“There are very few Arabic speakers available to work [with autistic children] and that means there is a big gap between the Jewish and Arab sectors in helping those with autism,” he continued.
Kafr Bara’s mayor also highlighted the problem, saying that while the center is receiving support from the government and from Alut, it is still short on many resources, including qualified Arabic-speaking professionals to help the children and their parents. “We need to increase the staff and either widen the government’s involvement or find a charity to increase funding for this project,” he said.“I have no personal experience with autism but I believe that every child, especially those with a disability, should be helped as much as possible and therefore it’s important to encourage these projects,” Assi said.
BIG CHAIRMEN’S LETTER ROSH HASHANAH 2010
Dear BIG Subscribers and Friends,
Firstly, we want to thank all of you who continue to read and circulate the articles that we send out each week, some of you, we know send on to very large numbers of friends and family. This is also a good opportunity to thank Stuart Palmer who has added the task of mailing the BIG articles each week to his already hectic hasbara schedule and to Andrew Balcombe and Ian Solomon who are always on the alert for suitable articles and constantly give us the benefit of their wise advice. Our thanks go too to veteran journalist, Tom Gross who makes a point of suggesting those of his articles that he thinks we might find useful and who always answers any queries by return.
Regrettably, the persistent anti-Israel reporting from all quarters of the globe and the constant attempt to legitimise Israel make work in the field of public diplomacy increasingly difficult but we are constantly encouraged by the positive support we do have, especially from the Christian world. This year, BIG has continued to entertain Christian groups from many countries who have been visiting Jerusalem and we have been greatly moved by their great love for Israel and the Jewish people which manifests itself in prayer, financial support for Israel’s needy and in educating other Christians about Israel. Here we would like to express our thanks to the host families who have welcomed these wonderful people into their homes on behalf of BIG.
We have to remain positive, however bleak the outlook seems, and continue to pursue BIG’s only object, that of promoting the good image of Israel. We believe that truth will out and that eventually the world will understand the reality of the situation in the Middle East. When we lived in the U.K. 25 years ago, Israel was still the flavour of the month and our many non-Jewish friends, work colleagues and neighbours regarded it with admiration and respect. “How is our side doing asked a neighbour during the Yom Kippur War, “Don’t worry, Mrs. Cohen, our side will win,” said a member of the school staff, to Lola. Due to the BBC and so much biased and twisted reporting in the media in general, this attitude has largely changed but we have faith that one day it will return and that organisations such as BIG will become redundant. Your participation in our work is helping to hasten that eagerly awaited day.
We wish you all a healthy and happy New Year and Chag Sameach.
Sincerely,
Norman & Lola Cohen
Joint Chairmen
British Israel Group (BIG)
Firstly, we want to thank all of you who continue to read and circulate the articles that we send out each week, some of you, we know send on to very large numbers of friends and family. This is also a good opportunity to thank Stuart Palmer who has added the task of mailing the BIG articles each week to his already hectic hasbara schedule and to Andrew Balcombe and Ian Solomon who are always on the alert for suitable articles and constantly give us the benefit of their wise advice. Our thanks go too to veteran journalist, Tom Gross who makes a point of suggesting those of his articles that he thinks we might find useful and who always answers any queries by return.
Regrettably, the persistent anti-Israel reporting from all quarters of the globe and the constant attempt to legitimise Israel make work in the field of public diplomacy increasingly difficult but we are constantly encouraged by the positive support we do have, especially from the Christian world. This year, BIG has continued to entertain Christian groups from many countries who have been visiting Jerusalem and we have been greatly moved by their great love for Israel and the Jewish people which manifests itself in prayer, financial support for Israel’s needy and in educating other Christians about Israel. Here we would like to express our thanks to the host families who have welcomed these wonderful people into their homes on behalf of BIG.
We have to remain positive, however bleak the outlook seems, and continue to pursue BIG’s only object, that of promoting the good image of Israel. We believe that truth will out and that eventually the world will understand the reality of the situation in the Middle East. When we lived in the U.K. 25 years ago, Israel was still the flavour of the month and our many non-Jewish friends, work colleagues and neighbours regarded it with admiration and respect. “How is our side doing asked a neighbour during the Yom Kippur War, “Don’t worry, Mrs. Cohen, our side will win,” said a member of the school staff, to Lola. Due to the BBC and so much biased and twisted reporting in the media in general, this attitude has largely changed but we have faith that one day it will return and that organisations such as BIG will become redundant. Your participation in our work is helping to hasten that eagerly awaited day.
We wish you all a healthy and happy New Year and Chag Sameach.
Sincerely,
Norman & Lola Cohen
Joint Chairmen
British Israel Group (BIG)
Monday, August 2, 2010
Albert the Alligator and the British Ambassador
By Barry Rubin
August 1, 2010
http://www.gloria-center.org/gloria/2010/08/albert-alligator-and-british-ambassador
Once upon a time in an intellectual galaxy now seemingly far away, liberals and conservatives shared a common view. There were the forces of democracy and the forces of totalitarianism (or, if you prefer, authoritarianism) that threatened the world, took away freedom, and held back both economic and social development. The goal of Western foreign policy was to help those favoring liberty against the tyrants and would-be tyrants.
Naturally, there were different views about how to do this, for example should some dictatorships be backed against those deemed worse, but the basic template was the same.
Then came a turning point which can be symbolized by a line in Walt Kelly's comic-strip "Pogo." A dialogue balloon destined to shake the world: "We have met the enemy," said either Pogo the possum or Albert the alligator, "and he is us." Kelly later wrote that he originated this line in 1953 in an essay opposing McCarthyism but it really took off in a 1972 cartoon, perfectly timed for the "1960s," the era whose ideas rule us today in much of the West.
The sentence was a parody of Oliver Hazard Perry's message-"We have met the enemy and they are ours"-describing his naval victory during the War of 1812. So what had once been a triumphant shout of American victory was transmuted in a post-Pogo world to symbolize a vitriolic yell of self-induced anti-Americanism.
And so if there are evil forces in the world, they are said either not to be evil at all (mislabeled as so by false Western propaganda) or were only made to behave that way by our (Western, American, democratic, capitalist, etc) sins. In other words, the guilty party is the democratic victim whose bad behavior created the monsters. In this spirit, a supposedly great American intellectual claimed America was the cancer of the world. Formerly, it had been known as the last, best hope of humanity.
How often do we see this worldview evinced nowadays? After September 11, America was said to be the cause of the terrorism that struck it. After the bloody July 7 attacks on British mass transport, a top British intelligence official said the terrorism happened due to Britain's involvement in the Iraq war. President Barack Obama has made this a constant theme, most recently putting the Turkish trend toward Islamism (without admitting it exists) on the shoulders of European states that didn't admit Turkey into the EU.
So nowadays, the most common way of dealing with radicalism, repression, terrorism, and such things in the Third World is to blame it on democratic states so often victimized by such issues.
The latest contribution to this genre comes from British ambassador to Israel Tom Phillips who said Israel's sanctions' regime on the Gaza Strip "was breeding radicalism."
He claimed it had driven "Gaza into a Hamas-controlled tunnel economy, and the Palestinian Gaza private sector has been almost completely destroyed....Young boys on the streets [have had] no role models apart from the Hamas guy in the black shiny uniform on the street corner...creating, in psychological terms, another generation of people that are not going to feel that friendly about Israel."
The message is that the problem is completely due to "us." The other side doesn't actually exist. It has no history, no worldview, no ideology, and no goals. The "other side" is merely a blank screen or mirror, reflecting back what we do.
This is, of course, a racist and imperialist vision. It denies the others any culture or history or mentality of their own. If one is only a victim always, one has no volition, higher intelligence, or ability to affect history.
Can somebody just be a sincere revolutionary Islamist or radical nationalist who wants to seize state power, wipe you out, and implement his own program for achieving utopia?
The truth can be found by examining the sequence of events. For instance, Islamist Iran is not radical because it has been isolated; rather, it has been isolated because of its radical behavior. Same thing with Syria.
In the case of the Gaza Strip, the publicly known facts should be recalled. Let's count the number of times Hamas was treated generously and not driven toward radicalism.
The participation in elections of Hamas in Palestinian elections was clearly illegal, since that group did not accept the Oslo Accords, recognize Israel, or cease using terrorism. Yet despite all of this, the United States actually urged, and Israel accepted, its participation. (1)
When Hamas won the elections, neither the United States nor Israel tried to intervene or reverse the results. Again, they didn't "drive" Hamas into radicalism by denying it that electoral victory. (2) True, the Palestinian Authority tried for a while to hang on, but in the end it signed a power-sharing agreement with Hamas. (3) But then Hamas staged a coup, killed fellow Palestinians, and seized power. Yet even then there was no move by Israel or the United States to unseat the new regime. (4)
After repeated Hamas attacks on Israel and Israeli retaliation a ceasefire was signed. There were restrictions on supplies but they regularly flowed into Gaza. (5) There was, for example, a border industrial area that provided jobs for Gazans from Israeli companies until Hamas attacked it.
Finally, near the end of 2008, Hamas tore up the ceasefire and launched a massive attack on Israel. Israel defended itself. After the resulting war in which Western countries made sure Hamas would not be overthrown (6) the sanctions' regime we've seen until recently was implemented by both Egypt (which feared Hamas's revolutionary Islamism and status as an Iranian client) and Israel.
This is not a picture of Gazans being driven to radicalism, it is a story of how the consequences of a radical policy unfolded, forcing Israel to react.
There's more. Ambassador Phillips, and the many others who speak about events around the world in similar terms, simply fail to comprehend how a dictatorship works. They think that if you engage hardline ideological revolutionaries they will moderate. If you offer to trade with them, a process of materialism will set in so that the once fire-breathing radicals will be transformed into luxury-loving bourgeois.
Suppose Gaza didn't have a "Hamas-controlled tunnel economy" but merely had a Hamas-controlled normal economy, would that be better? And why should one believe that the economy wouldn't be controlled by the dictatorship, because Western governments or companies were doing business there? But that is equally true of Syria, Iran, Saddam Hussein's Iraq, and ideological dictatorships in other parts of the world. Has this turned them toward love and moderation?
Oh, and let's remember that the main purpose of those tunnels was to import weapons for attacking Israel. Hamas will take advantage of any openings to bring in more arms and things that can be used for fighting (cement for military installations; pipes for rockets). It will tax and seize assets to build up its military machine. The more satisfied are people's material needs, the less reason they will have to oppose the Hamas regime.
This Phillips-Pogo view also ignores the political mechanisms of ideological dictatorships. Hamas doesn't wait for young boys to see its cadre as role models. Here's what it does:
--Pays people with money obtainable, including that siphoned off from aid and trade, to recruit them and make them the arms of the regime. The more commerce, the more money Hamas has to spend on indoctrination, organization, and weaponry.
--Arrests and intimidates opponents so they don't provide alternative role models. In the Gaza Strip there aren't that many moderate role models. Wealthy businessmen? Fatah gunmen? Corrupt figures against whom people voted for Hamas. Maybe the dedicated UNRWA teacher offers an alternative role model? OK, but how many of these are also radicals?
--Control all institutions including mosques, media, youth organizations, schools, and so on which all actively and intensively preach the same message. Support Hamas; kill the Jews; be a Jihad fighter. The regime isn't going to let external institutions or countries that oppose its Islamist radicalism have influence in its territory. Hamas would rather sacrifice benefits to its people than give up authority to those it knows want to overthrow the regime.
Phillips' line that it is Israel's policy which is creating "another generation of people that are not going to feel that friendly about Israel" is rather ludicrous in light of this reality. After all, the same thing is happening on the West Bank where there is no sanctions' regime in place, Western aid flows lavishly, and supposed moderates are in control. Whatever Israel does, incitement and indoctrination will continue at the same level from those who hate Israel because it exists.
Here's the truth: revolutionary forces that use terrorism, preach a totalitarian ideology, create dictatorships, and have genocidal goals are responsible for war and conflict in the Middle East.
No matter how intensely Western democracies flagellate themselves, no matter how much they appease and concede, that basic and deadly fact will not change. No, let me correct the end of that sentence: the cost will become more dangerous, bloody, and deadly.
Speaking of alligators, it was another Briton, Winston Churchill, who said that an appeaser is someone who feeds the alligator--ok, nitpickers, I know he said crocodile but they differ only in the roundness of the snout--in hopes that it will eat him last.
Our problem is that contemporary appeasers also hope the alligator will eat us first.
August 1, 2010
http://www.gloria-center.org/gloria/2010/08/albert-alligator-and-british-ambassador
Once upon a time in an intellectual galaxy now seemingly far away, liberals and conservatives shared a common view. There were the forces of democracy and the forces of totalitarianism (or, if you prefer, authoritarianism) that threatened the world, took away freedom, and held back both economic and social development. The goal of Western foreign policy was to help those favoring liberty against the tyrants and would-be tyrants.
Naturally, there were different views about how to do this, for example should some dictatorships be backed against those deemed worse, but the basic template was the same.
Then came a turning point which can be symbolized by a line in Walt Kelly's comic-strip "Pogo." A dialogue balloon destined to shake the world: "We have met the enemy," said either Pogo the possum or Albert the alligator, "and he is us." Kelly later wrote that he originated this line in 1953 in an essay opposing McCarthyism but it really took off in a 1972 cartoon, perfectly timed for the "1960s," the era whose ideas rule us today in much of the West.
The sentence was a parody of Oliver Hazard Perry's message-"We have met the enemy and they are ours"-describing his naval victory during the War of 1812. So what had once been a triumphant shout of American victory was transmuted in a post-Pogo world to symbolize a vitriolic yell of self-induced anti-Americanism.
And so if there are evil forces in the world, they are said either not to be evil at all (mislabeled as so by false Western propaganda) or were only made to behave that way by our (Western, American, democratic, capitalist, etc) sins. In other words, the guilty party is the democratic victim whose bad behavior created the monsters. In this spirit, a supposedly great American intellectual claimed America was the cancer of the world. Formerly, it had been known as the last, best hope of humanity.
How often do we see this worldview evinced nowadays? After September 11, America was said to be the cause of the terrorism that struck it. After the bloody July 7 attacks on British mass transport, a top British intelligence official said the terrorism happened due to Britain's involvement in the Iraq war. President Barack Obama has made this a constant theme, most recently putting the Turkish trend toward Islamism (without admitting it exists) on the shoulders of European states that didn't admit Turkey into the EU.
So nowadays, the most common way of dealing with radicalism, repression, terrorism, and such things in the Third World is to blame it on democratic states so often victimized by such issues.
The latest contribution to this genre comes from British ambassador to Israel Tom Phillips who said Israel's sanctions' regime on the Gaza Strip "was breeding radicalism."
He claimed it had driven "Gaza into a Hamas-controlled tunnel economy, and the Palestinian Gaza private sector has been almost completely destroyed....Young boys on the streets [have had] no role models apart from the Hamas guy in the black shiny uniform on the street corner...creating, in psychological terms, another generation of people that are not going to feel that friendly about Israel."
The message is that the problem is completely due to "us." The other side doesn't actually exist. It has no history, no worldview, no ideology, and no goals. The "other side" is merely a blank screen or mirror, reflecting back what we do.
This is, of course, a racist and imperialist vision. It denies the others any culture or history or mentality of their own. If one is only a victim always, one has no volition, higher intelligence, or ability to affect history.
Can somebody just be a sincere revolutionary Islamist or radical nationalist who wants to seize state power, wipe you out, and implement his own program for achieving utopia?
The truth can be found by examining the sequence of events. For instance, Islamist Iran is not radical because it has been isolated; rather, it has been isolated because of its radical behavior. Same thing with Syria.
In the case of the Gaza Strip, the publicly known facts should be recalled. Let's count the number of times Hamas was treated generously and not driven toward radicalism.
The participation in elections of Hamas in Palestinian elections was clearly illegal, since that group did not accept the Oslo Accords, recognize Israel, or cease using terrorism. Yet despite all of this, the United States actually urged, and Israel accepted, its participation. (1)
When Hamas won the elections, neither the United States nor Israel tried to intervene or reverse the results. Again, they didn't "drive" Hamas into radicalism by denying it that electoral victory. (2) True, the Palestinian Authority tried for a while to hang on, but in the end it signed a power-sharing agreement with Hamas. (3) But then Hamas staged a coup, killed fellow Palestinians, and seized power. Yet even then there was no move by Israel or the United States to unseat the new regime. (4)
After repeated Hamas attacks on Israel and Israeli retaliation a ceasefire was signed. There were restrictions on supplies but they regularly flowed into Gaza. (5) There was, for example, a border industrial area that provided jobs for Gazans from Israeli companies until Hamas attacked it.
Finally, near the end of 2008, Hamas tore up the ceasefire and launched a massive attack on Israel. Israel defended itself. After the resulting war in which Western countries made sure Hamas would not be overthrown (6) the sanctions' regime we've seen until recently was implemented by both Egypt (which feared Hamas's revolutionary Islamism and status as an Iranian client) and Israel.
This is not a picture of Gazans being driven to radicalism, it is a story of how the consequences of a radical policy unfolded, forcing Israel to react.
There's more. Ambassador Phillips, and the many others who speak about events around the world in similar terms, simply fail to comprehend how a dictatorship works. They think that if you engage hardline ideological revolutionaries they will moderate. If you offer to trade with them, a process of materialism will set in so that the once fire-breathing radicals will be transformed into luxury-loving bourgeois.
Suppose Gaza didn't have a "Hamas-controlled tunnel economy" but merely had a Hamas-controlled normal economy, would that be better? And why should one believe that the economy wouldn't be controlled by the dictatorship, because Western governments or companies were doing business there? But that is equally true of Syria, Iran, Saddam Hussein's Iraq, and ideological dictatorships in other parts of the world. Has this turned them toward love and moderation?
Oh, and let's remember that the main purpose of those tunnels was to import weapons for attacking Israel. Hamas will take advantage of any openings to bring in more arms and things that can be used for fighting (cement for military installations; pipes for rockets). It will tax and seize assets to build up its military machine. The more satisfied are people's material needs, the less reason they will have to oppose the Hamas regime.
This Phillips-Pogo view also ignores the political mechanisms of ideological dictatorships. Hamas doesn't wait for young boys to see its cadre as role models. Here's what it does:
--Pays people with money obtainable, including that siphoned off from aid and trade, to recruit them and make them the arms of the regime. The more commerce, the more money Hamas has to spend on indoctrination, organization, and weaponry.
--Arrests and intimidates opponents so they don't provide alternative role models. In the Gaza Strip there aren't that many moderate role models. Wealthy businessmen? Fatah gunmen? Corrupt figures against whom people voted for Hamas. Maybe the dedicated UNRWA teacher offers an alternative role model? OK, but how many of these are also radicals?
--Control all institutions including mosques, media, youth organizations, schools, and so on which all actively and intensively preach the same message. Support Hamas; kill the Jews; be a Jihad fighter. The regime isn't going to let external institutions or countries that oppose its Islamist radicalism have influence in its territory. Hamas would rather sacrifice benefits to its people than give up authority to those it knows want to overthrow the regime.
Phillips' line that it is Israel's policy which is creating "another generation of people that are not going to feel that friendly about Israel" is rather ludicrous in light of this reality. After all, the same thing is happening on the West Bank where there is no sanctions' regime in place, Western aid flows lavishly, and supposed moderates are in control. Whatever Israel does, incitement and indoctrination will continue at the same level from those who hate Israel because it exists.
Here's the truth: revolutionary forces that use terrorism, preach a totalitarian ideology, create dictatorships, and have genocidal goals are responsible for war and conflict in the Middle East.
No matter how intensely Western democracies flagellate themselves, no matter how much they appease and concede, that basic and deadly fact will not change. No, let me correct the end of that sentence: the cost will become more dangerous, bloody, and deadly.
Speaking of alligators, it was another Briton, Winston Churchill, who said that an appeaser is someone who feeds the alligator--ok, nitpickers, I know he said crocodile but they differ only in the roundness of the snout--in hopes that it will eat him last.
Our problem is that contemporary appeasers also hope the alligator will eat us first.
Gaza: Open Air Prison?
http://dfrankfurter.livejournal.com/122589.html
British Prime Minister, David Cameron, exploited his visit to Turkey to curry favour with his hosts, using Palestinian propaganda hype, saying that Israel’s blockade turned the Gaza strip into a “prison camp”. Every last Israeli left Gaza long before Hamas' bloody take-over. Closing the borders and even war has not stopped the incessant rockets and terrorist attacks on Israeli citizens and border checkpoints. More than 30 terrorist attacks come out of Gaza each month.
Applying international law, Israel inspects the constant flow of goods through its borders into Gaza, in an attempt to exclude war material. Propagandists (and it seems European politicians) conveniently ignore the rules of war and international law, and claim these actions to be a form of occupation. They declare that Israel ruthlessly keeps Gazans in poverty.Visiting international politicians and aid agency representatives are taken to view the deliberately unrepaired damage of the war Hamas provoked.
Poverty stricken areas, including families living in plastic tents since their houses were destroyed in the war, are all on the carefully pre-arranged agenda. Israel is obligingly condemned. And more western tax payer money is pledged to the highest ever per capita aid program.
Although of little interest to the mainstream media, Gazan "poverty" is strongly questioned in the blogosphere. No accumulation of facts seems to be able to stop the constant flow of lies, cynically manipulated into very effective anti-Israel (and often anti-Semitic) propaganda.Even the Palestinian media reports a very different picture. There is an abundance of both basic and luxury goods. It is not clear if it comes via the Egyptian border, underground tunnels, or the thousands of trucks that the Israelis officially allow to stream through their border crossings. But the fact is that there is plenty, and often at very attractive prices.
Ordinary Palestinian citizens say that there is enough to go around - but the Hamas apparatchiks steal it. And what of building materials to house those wretched families? Somehow, they don't seem to rank in the Hamas list of priorities. A brand new shopping mall replete with luxury goods, a luxury hotel fancy restaurant, an olympic size pool and a fancy jail to lock up prisoners accused of crimes such as "passing information to the Palestinian Authority" do make it into the list of latest completed projects, though.Electricity shortages? Also an internal problem. Seems that Hamas collects electricity bills from the end user & then steals the money - expecting the Palestinian Authority and international donors to pay the Israeli suppliers. When the suppliers want their overdue money before providing more goods, who do you guess is blamed?But those wretched Palestinians are suffering.
Then again, life expectancy, infant mortality, and even cell phone penetration statistics show Gaza to be better off than other Muslim countries – and in many cases better than most places on earth!Forgotten is the Economist report of 2004 that the West Bank and Gaza rank amongst the most obese populations in the world. Clicking on the links embedded above will bring you to lots of reports and pictures showing the truth.
But what about the charge that Israel has turned Gaza into a large open-air jail? We all value freedom of movement. We want to be able to leave our country of residence either permanently or temporarily for vacation, to receive better medical care, to advance our education or business. But of course, we all know that no-one can get in or out. Don't we?Israel can be forgiven for being very cautious about allowing enemy aliens through its territory - after all Hamas has officially and openly declared its intent to wipe Israel off the map and sends regular rockets across the border to remind us all.
Nevertheless, many people do cross the border - usually for humanitarian reasons, often to receive medical treatment in Israeli hospitals.But what everyone seems to forget is that Israel is not Gaza's only border. Fellow Arab country Egypt, which has supported the Palestinian cause since it was first invented, is linked to Gaza with a little more than 11 km of border, and an official crossing at Rafah.So why an open air prison? The Palestinian Independent Commission for Human Rights (ICHR) regularly exposes the real problem in its monthly reports. Here it is from this month's bulletin:
Violations of the Right to Travel and Movement Gaza residents are still suffering from the unavailability of passport books since November 2008 until the end of this current month.
According to ICHR information obtained from officials from the Ministry of Interior of the Deposed Government, the MOI in the West Bank does not send passport books for citizens in Gaza Strip which entails depriving them from the right to travel and movement. In addition, it affects most of those in urgent need for traveling abroad for seeking medical care, university education, students and thousands of expatriates whose passports have expired and require renewal.
International travel, even via Egypt, requires a passport.
The PA won't issue Gazans with passports. Gazans can't travel. That's Israel's fault. Clear
British Prime Minister, David Cameron, exploited his visit to Turkey to curry favour with his hosts, using Palestinian propaganda hype, saying that Israel’s blockade turned the Gaza strip into a “prison camp”. Every last Israeli left Gaza long before Hamas' bloody take-over. Closing the borders and even war has not stopped the incessant rockets and terrorist attacks on Israeli citizens and border checkpoints. More than 30 terrorist attacks come out of Gaza each month.
Applying international law, Israel inspects the constant flow of goods through its borders into Gaza, in an attempt to exclude war material. Propagandists (and it seems European politicians) conveniently ignore the rules of war and international law, and claim these actions to be a form of occupation. They declare that Israel ruthlessly keeps Gazans in poverty.Visiting international politicians and aid agency representatives are taken to view the deliberately unrepaired damage of the war Hamas provoked.
Poverty stricken areas, including families living in plastic tents since their houses were destroyed in the war, are all on the carefully pre-arranged agenda. Israel is obligingly condemned. And more western tax payer money is pledged to the highest ever per capita aid program.
Although of little interest to the mainstream media, Gazan "poverty" is strongly questioned in the blogosphere. No accumulation of facts seems to be able to stop the constant flow of lies, cynically manipulated into very effective anti-Israel (and often anti-Semitic) propaganda.Even the Palestinian media reports a very different picture. There is an abundance of both basic and luxury goods. It is not clear if it comes via the Egyptian border, underground tunnels, or the thousands of trucks that the Israelis officially allow to stream through their border crossings. But the fact is that there is plenty, and often at very attractive prices.
Ordinary Palestinian citizens say that there is enough to go around - but the Hamas apparatchiks steal it. And what of building materials to house those wretched families? Somehow, they don't seem to rank in the Hamas list of priorities. A brand new shopping mall replete with luxury goods, a luxury hotel fancy restaurant, an olympic size pool and a fancy jail to lock up prisoners accused of crimes such as "passing information to the Palestinian Authority" do make it into the list of latest completed projects, though.Electricity shortages? Also an internal problem. Seems that Hamas collects electricity bills from the end user & then steals the money - expecting the Palestinian Authority and international donors to pay the Israeli suppliers. When the suppliers want their overdue money before providing more goods, who do you guess is blamed?But those wretched Palestinians are suffering.
Then again, life expectancy, infant mortality, and even cell phone penetration statistics show Gaza to be better off than other Muslim countries – and in many cases better than most places on earth!Forgotten is the Economist report of 2004 that the West Bank and Gaza rank amongst the most obese populations in the world. Clicking on the links embedded above will bring you to lots of reports and pictures showing the truth.
But what about the charge that Israel has turned Gaza into a large open-air jail? We all value freedom of movement. We want to be able to leave our country of residence either permanently or temporarily for vacation, to receive better medical care, to advance our education or business. But of course, we all know that no-one can get in or out. Don't we?Israel can be forgiven for being very cautious about allowing enemy aliens through its territory - after all Hamas has officially and openly declared its intent to wipe Israel off the map and sends regular rockets across the border to remind us all.
Nevertheless, many people do cross the border - usually for humanitarian reasons, often to receive medical treatment in Israeli hospitals.But what everyone seems to forget is that Israel is not Gaza's only border. Fellow Arab country Egypt, which has supported the Palestinian cause since it was first invented, is linked to Gaza with a little more than 11 km of border, and an official crossing at Rafah.So why an open air prison? The Palestinian Independent Commission for Human Rights (ICHR) regularly exposes the real problem in its monthly reports. Here it is from this month's bulletin:
Violations of the Right to Travel and Movement Gaza residents are still suffering from the unavailability of passport books since November 2008 until the end of this current month.
According to ICHR information obtained from officials from the Ministry of Interior of the Deposed Government, the MOI in the West Bank does not send passport books for citizens in Gaza Strip which entails depriving them from the right to travel and movement. In addition, it affects most of those in urgent need for traveling abroad for seeking medical care, university education, students and thousands of expatriates whose passports have expired and require renewal.
International travel, even via Egypt, requires a passport.
The PA won't issue Gazans with passports. Gazans can't travel. That's Israel's fault. Clear
Monday, July 12, 2010
Camels were never this vicious
Melanie Phillips Friday, 9th July 2010
http://www.spectator.co.uk/melaniephillips/6132169/camels-were-never-this-vicious.thtml
No sooner is one given a smart smack on the butt to get it to melt away into the desert landscape than another one comes charging across the sand. The gushing effusions by Britain’s ambassador to Lebanon, Frances Guy, about the spiritual godfather of Hezbollah which, as I wrote below, she posted on the Foreign and Commonwealth Office site, have been excised from that site. But now it turns out that Britain’s ambassador to Jordan James Watt is even worse, as ‘Bialik’ -- a reader on the Harry’s Place blog -- has pointed out.
For on his own FCO blog, Watt makes it clear he doesn’t think Israel has an overwhelming historic claim to its own existence, thinks the Palestinian Arabs were indigenous to the land and that the idea that Israel was the Jews’ national home thousands of years ago is fanciful.
Here he denies Jewish national self-determination:
No one outside Israel is prepared – or very few – to take Zionist arguments at their face value any longer.
Here he denies Jewish and Middle Eastern history:
Completely non-factual assertions - for example that a Jewish people was building Jerusalem 5,000 years ago - only serve to emphasise the absence of real content or reasoning. The strange thing is how long Western audiences tolerated such claims without challenging them: I think because they were hoping that a reasonable settlement with the indigenous Palestinian population would emerge in the course of things (and with some diplomatic heavy lifting).
Here he denies Jewish history and national self-determination and descends into rank bigotry:
The origin of the problem – the arrival of the Zionists in Palestine, with their commitment to avoiding any kind of integration into existing society, and their policy of importing their co-religionists from cultural and social backgrounds alien to Palestine, changed everything.
Here he is peddling the Big Lie by Hamas, Hezbollah and the PLO that misrepresents Israeli defence as aggression and describes all Arabs killed by Israel as civilians -- whereas in fact most are terrorists:
Few observers would disagree with Hirst that Israel has long committed itself to a policy of massive military deterrence, which is now becoming progressively more violent - and, by the account of its own officials, more ready to inflict civilian casualties on a large scale in pursuit of its political goals. Gaza showed that progression: more remote shelling and rocketing by the Israeli forces, with minimum risk to its own soldiers: ten lost their lives, and three Israeli civilians, while 1,330 Gazans (most of them civilians and 410 of them children) lost theirs. Compare that to the 43 Israeli civilians who died under Hizbullah rocket fire in July-August 2006, and 119 Israeli soldiers in the fighting, against over a thousand Lebanese civilians (one third of them children) and an unknown number of Lebanese combatants.
Here he is sympathising with the Turkish terrorists who were killed on the Mavi Marmara when they tried to lynch the Israeli soldiers who boarded the Gaza flotilla, and also claiming that Israel’s reason for restricting the flow of goods into Gaza -- that it is to prevent arms smuggling and weaken the grip of Hamas -- is a lie:
I offer my condolences to the families of the who were killed, in what should have been an entirely avoidable tragedy... the entire world has had enough of the blockade of Gaza - a blockade which Israel should have long ago lifted under the terms of UN Security Resolution 1801, as well as other international law. And the world has had enough of the pretexts Israel uses to continue it.
This is what has been called the FCO's 'camel corps'. But camels were never this vicious. It is an old cliché that diplomats are sent abroad to lie for their country. But one inevitable effect of Watt’s demonisation and delegitimisation of Israel through such distortions and bigotry is to whip up yet more genocidal hatred throughout the Arab and Muslim world.
The British Government says it is committed to a two-state solution. Why is its Ambassador to Jordan suggesting that the state that already exists is illegitimate? Is this the British Government’s position? If not, why is it allowing its Ambassador to Jordan to represent such an obnoxious view? Are Watt's comments also -- as the FCO said about Frances Guy's blog post -- merely a 'personal view'? If so, why are they on the FCO website -- where Guy's remained until they attracted the embarrassing attention of the blogosphere? Will Foreign Secretary William Hague repudiate these distortions and the venomous hostility Watt displays towards Britain’s ally? Or are we to conclude that these are beliefs that he himself shares?
http://www.spectator.co.uk/melaniephillips/6132169/camels-were-never-this-vicious.thtml
No sooner is one given a smart smack on the butt to get it to melt away into the desert landscape than another one comes charging across the sand. The gushing effusions by Britain’s ambassador to Lebanon, Frances Guy, about the spiritual godfather of Hezbollah which, as I wrote below, she posted on the Foreign and Commonwealth Office site, have been excised from that site. But now it turns out that Britain’s ambassador to Jordan James Watt is even worse, as ‘Bialik’ -- a reader on the Harry’s Place blog -- has pointed out.
For on his own FCO blog, Watt makes it clear he doesn’t think Israel has an overwhelming historic claim to its own existence, thinks the Palestinian Arabs were indigenous to the land and that the idea that Israel was the Jews’ national home thousands of years ago is fanciful.
Here he denies Jewish national self-determination:
No one outside Israel is prepared – or very few – to take Zionist arguments at their face value any longer.
Here he denies Jewish and Middle Eastern history:
Completely non-factual assertions - for example that a Jewish people was building Jerusalem 5,000 years ago - only serve to emphasise the absence of real content or reasoning. The strange thing is how long Western audiences tolerated such claims without challenging them: I think because they were hoping that a reasonable settlement with the indigenous Palestinian population would emerge in the course of things (and with some diplomatic heavy lifting).
Here he denies Jewish history and national self-determination and descends into rank bigotry:
The origin of the problem – the arrival of the Zionists in Palestine, with their commitment to avoiding any kind of integration into existing society, and their policy of importing their co-religionists from cultural and social backgrounds alien to Palestine, changed everything.
Here he is peddling the Big Lie by Hamas, Hezbollah and the PLO that misrepresents Israeli defence as aggression and describes all Arabs killed by Israel as civilians -- whereas in fact most are terrorists:
Few observers would disagree with Hirst that Israel has long committed itself to a policy of massive military deterrence, which is now becoming progressively more violent - and, by the account of its own officials, more ready to inflict civilian casualties on a large scale in pursuit of its political goals. Gaza showed that progression: more remote shelling and rocketing by the Israeli forces, with minimum risk to its own soldiers: ten lost their lives, and three Israeli civilians, while 1,330 Gazans (most of them civilians and 410 of them children) lost theirs. Compare that to the 43 Israeli civilians who died under Hizbullah rocket fire in July-August 2006, and 119 Israeli soldiers in the fighting, against over a thousand Lebanese civilians (one third of them children) and an unknown number of Lebanese combatants.
Here he is sympathising with the Turkish terrorists who were killed on the Mavi Marmara when they tried to lynch the Israeli soldiers who boarded the Gaza flotilla, and also claiming that Israel’s reason for restricting the flow of goods into Gaza -- that it is to prevent arms smuggling and weaken the grip of Hamas -- is a lie:
I offer my condolences to the families of the who were killed, in what should have been an entirely avoidable tragedy... the entire world has had enough of the blockade of Gaza - a blockade which Israel should have long ago lifted under the terms of UN Security Resolution 1801, as well as other international law. And the world has had enough of the pretexts Israel uses to continue it.
This is what has been called the FCO's 'camel corps'. But camels were never this vicious. It is an old cliché that diplomats are sent abroad to lie for their country. But one inevitable effect of Watt’s demonisation and delegitimisation of Israel through such distortions and bigotry is to whip up yet more genocidal hatred throughout the Arab and Muslim world.
The British Government says it is committed to a two-state solution. Why is its Ambassador to Jordan suggesting that the state that already exists is illegitimate? Is this the British Government’s position? If not, why is it allowing its Ambassador to Jordan to represent such an obnoxious view? Are Watt's comments also -- as the FCO said about Frances Guy's blog post -- merely a 'personal view'? If so, why are they on the FCO website -- where Guy's remained until they attracted the embarrassing attention of the blogosphere? Will Foreign Secretary William Hague repudiate these distortions and the venomous hostility Watt displays towards Britain’s ally? Or are we to conclude that these are beliefs that he himself shares?
Monday, July 5, 2010
Britain Decriminalizes Vigilantism against Israel
Compilation of reports http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3914014,00.html
and blogs http://myrightword.blogspot.com/2010/07/hell-on-earth-english-courtroom.html
Britain decriminalizes vigilantism against Israel In a mind-blowing verdict, a British jury acquitted people who admitted that they purposefully caused damage to an arms factory - because, they said, the arms were being used by Israel:
Five activists who caused ֲ£180,000 damage to an arms factory were acquitted after they argued they were seeking to prevent Israeli war crimes.
The five were jubilant after a jury found them not guilty of conspiring to cause criminal damage to the factory on the outskirts of Brighton.
The five admitted they had broken in and sabotaged the factory, but argued they were legally justified in doing so.
They believed that EDO MBM, the firm that owns the factory, was breaking export regulations by manufacturing and selling to the Israelis military equipment which would be used in the occupied territories. They wanted to slow down the manufacture of these components, and impede what they believed were war crimes being committed by Israel against the Palestinians.
They are the latest group of peace and climate-change activists to successfully use the "lawful excuse" defence “omitting an offence to prevent a more serious crime “ as a tactic in their campaigns.
They had decided to act last January after three weeks of Israeli military maneuvers against Gaza in which many Palestinians were killed.
In his summing up, Judge George Bathurst-Norman suggested to the jury that "you may well think that hell on earth would not be an understatement of what the Gazans suffered in that time".
The judge highlighted the testimony by Caroline Lucas, the Green MP for Brighton Pavilion, that "all democratic paths had been exhausted" before the activists embarked on their action. Meaning that the judge pretty much told the jury to acquit them. Unbelievable.
Hove crown court heard the activists had broken into the factory in the night. They had video-taped interviews beforehand outlining their intention to cause damage and, in the words of prosecutor Stephen Shay, "smash-up" the factory.
The full article can be read at http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3914014,00.html
As one blogger writes “actually, I think Judge Bathurst-Norman's courtroom is a bit of hell on earth.
The witnesses lied in his courtroom and he bolstered their mendacity. Oddly enough, he has been quoted as warning:
- “that Britain risks falling into anarchy or becoming a police state if confidence in the judiciary is lost. He said that political decisions...had tied judges' hands and led to "silly" sentences”.
- the trouble is, if you go on for political reasons undermining the public's faith in the judiciary, sooner or later you are heading for anarchy and... in due course for the equivalent of a police state."
The blogger then asks “I wonder, is the judge a "Palestinian"?
Yes:- Judge George Bathurst-Norman, who has previously had a record as quite a law’n’order judge, gave a summing up so favourable that some supporters were worried that the jury might react to what they perceived as an attempt to bounce them into a not guilty verdict. We need not have worried! Perhaps the fact that His Honour was born in the Arab town of Jaffa opposite Tel Aviv might have something to do with it! Judge George Bathurst-Norman was brought out of retirement to hear the case
and blogs http://myrightword.blogspot.com/2010/07/hell-on-earth-english-courtroom.html
Britain decriminalizes vigilantism against Israel In a mind-blowing verdict, a British jury acquitted people who admitted that they purposefully caused damage to an arms factory - because, they said, the arms were being used by Israel:
Five activists who caused ֲ£180,000 damage to an arms factory were acquitted after they argued they were seeking to prevent Israeli war crimes.
The five were jubilant after a jury found them not guilty of conspiring to cause criminal damage to the factory on the outskirts of Brighton.
The five admitted they had broken in and sabotaged the factory, but argued they were legally justified in doing so.
They believed that EDO MBM, the firm that owns the factory, was breaking export regulations by manufacturing and selling to the Israelis military equipment which would be used in the occupied territories. They wanted to slow down the manufacture of these components, and impede what they believed were war crimes being committed by Israel against the Palestinians.
They are the latest group of peace and climate-change activists to successfully use the "lawful excuse" defence “omitting an offence to prevent a more serious crime “ as a tactic in their campaigns.
They had decided to act last January after three weeks of Israeli military maneuvers against Gaza in which many Palestinians were killed.
In his summing up, Judge George Bathurst-Norman suggested to the jury that "you may well think that hell on earth would not be an understatement of what the Gazans suffered in that time".
The judge highlighted the testimony by Caroline Lucas, the Green MP for Brighton Pavilion, that "all democratic paths had been exhausted" before the activists embarked on their action. Meaning that the judge pretty much told the jury to acquit them. Unbelievable.
Hove crown court heard the activists had broken into the factory in the night. They had video-taped interviews beforehand outlining their intention to cause damage and, in the words of prosecutor Stephen Shay, "smash-up" the factory.
The full article can be read at http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3914014,00.html
As one blogger writes “actually, I think Judge Bathurst-Norman's courtroom is a bit of hell on earth.
The witnesses lied in his courtroom and he bolstered their mendacity. Oddly enough, he has been quoted as warning:
- “that Britain risks falling into anarchy or becoming a police state if confidence in the judiciary is lost. He said that political decisions...had tied judges' hands and led to "silly" sentences”.
- the trouble is, if you go on for political reasons undermining the public's faith in the judiciary, sooner or later you are heading for anarchy and... in due course for the equivalent of a police state."
The blogger then asks “I wonder, is the judge a "Palestinian"?
Yes:- Judge George Bathurst-Norman, who has previously had a record as quite a law’n’order judge, gave a summing up so favourable that some supporters were worried that the jury might react to what they perceived as an attempt to bounce them into a not guilty verdict. We need not have worried! Perhaps the fact that His Honour was born in the Arab town of Jaffa opposite Tel Aviv might have something to do with it! Judge George Bathurst-Norman was brought out of retirement to hear the case
Sunday, June 27, 2010
The Privileged Slander: Why the Media Laps Up The Anti-Israel Lying Campaign
By Barry Rubin,Sunday,June27,2010
http://rubinreports.blogspot.com/2010/06/privileged-slander-why-media-laps-up.html
Israel is subject daily to scores of false claims and slanders that receive a remarkable amount of credibility in Western media, academic, and intellectual circles even when no proof is offered.Palestinian groups (including the Gaza and Palestinian Authority regimes), associated local and allied foreign non-government organizations, Western radical and anti-Israel groups, and politically committed journalists are eager to act as propaganda agents making up false stories or transmitting them without serious thought or checking.Others have simply defined the Palestinians as the “victims” and “underdogs” while Israel is the “villain” and “oppressor.”
Yet truth remains truth; academic and journalist standards are supposed to apply.While regular journalists may ask for an official Israeli reaction to such stories the undermanned government agencies are deluged by hundreds of these stories, and committed to checking out seriously each one. Thus, the Israeli government cannot keep up with the flow of lies.
So the key question is to understand the deliberateness of this anti-Israel propaganda and evaluating the credibility of the sources.An important aspect of this is to understand that Israel is a decent, democratic country with a free media that is energetic about exploring any alleged wrongdoing and a fair court system that does the same.
To demonize Israel into a monstrous, murderous state—which is often done—makes people believe any negative story.Some of these are big false stories—the alleged killing of Muhammad al-Dura and the supposed Jenin massacre—others are tiny. Some—like the claim Israel was murdering Palestinians to steal their organs-- get into the main Western newspapers while others only make it into smaller and non-English ones.
Taken together, this campaign of falsification is creating a big wave not only of anti-Israel sentiment but of antisemitism on a Medieval scale, simply the modern equivalent of claims that the Jews poisoned wells, spread Bubonic Plague, or murdered children to use their blood for Passover matzohs.Come to think of it even those claims are still in circulation. Indeed, on June 8, the Syrian representative at the UN Human Rights Council (oh, the irony!) claimed in a speech that Israeli children are taught to extol blood-drinking.
No Western delegate attacked the statement.Here are three actual examples of well-educated Westerners believing such modern legends reported to me recently by colleagues:--A former classmate, one told me, claimed that the Palestinians are living in death camps, being starved, etc. Asked to provide facts and provided with evidence to the contrary, he could provide no real examples. Finally, he remarked, `The truth is always somewhere in the middle.’”
--Hundreds of American college professors signed a petition claiming that Israel was supposedly about to throw hundreds of thousands of Palestinians out of the West Bank though there was zero evidence of any such intention and, of course, nothing ever happened.
--A British writer of some fame claimed, on the basis of an alleged single conversation with a questionable source, that Israel was preparing gas chambers for the mass murder of Palestinians. When asked if she was really claiming this would happen, she stated that it wasn’t going to happen but only because people like her had sounded the alarm to prevent it.
And what of the accusations of genocide contained in an article by sensationalist Israeli reporter Uzi Mahnaimi (even though his stories almost always prove to be wrong the Sunday Times never learns) and the respected Marie Colvin's November 1998 in The Sunday Times reporting Israel was attempting to build an "ethno-bomb" containing a biological agent that could specifically target genetic traits present amongst Arab populations?
Or the Guardian's more recent distortion of documentation to claim that Israel was selling nuclear weapons to South Africa?There is no limit. When stories are proven wrong, the damage remains, apologies are non-existent or muted, and no lesson is learned because the same process is soon repeated. (In the Guardian, it is repeated not only on a daily basis but sometimes several times a day!) But perhaps readers could learn to disregard what they have repeatedly seen has been untrue?
Here is one example plucked from today’s mail. The Palestinian Authority Health Ministry claim Israel has seized seven oxygen machines intended for the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and paid for by the Norwegian government. It said that a protest was being made to Norway. The story was picked up by several European newspapers. No evidence or specifics—what Israeli agency held them up? What dates? What hospitals were these for?--was provided.Note, as in so many of these stories, the Israeli goal is said to be murder pure and simple.
The message conveyed is: What kind of people would behave this way? The Israelis (or Jews in general) not only don't deserve to have a state, they don't even deserve to live. Wiping them off the planet would be doing the world a favor. Hmm, where have we heard this before?Asked to look into the oxygen machine story, an Israeli official did so and pointed out that there are no controls over such imports into the West Bank so there would be no basis for holding up anything going there. As for Gaza, those directly involved in the process of sending in aid note that no applications to import such machines has been filed, there is no record of any such machines arriving, and thus nothing had been held up.In short, the story is completely false, presuming that the Palestinian Authority health ministry won't provide documents and specifics.
But that isn't going to happen as it will just be on to the next false story, hoping for a bigger media response.Having seen so many such stories disproved over the years—as Israel’s credibility, while not perfect, has compared favorably with that of any Western democratic state—one might think a lesson would be learned. But as the great American journalist Eric Severeid remarked many years ago, nothing can protect someone when the media sets out deliberately to misunderstand and report falsely about them.In addition, they should only repeat, report, or believe stories based on credible identified sources citing specific names, dates, and details.
In addition, stories or claims should be internally logical and make sense given known facts. The idea that Israel enjoys killing or injuring Palestinians for fun does not meet that test.Honorable journalists and scholars should take note and approach these false stories more skeptically.
They should also reexamine their stereotypes and remember that their political views should be kept as much as possible out of their professional work.Not so long ago, the above points would have been taken for granted as the most basic and obvious principles. They need to be relearned.
http://rubinreports.blogspot.com/2010/06/privileged-slander-why-media-laps-up.html
Israel is subject daily to scores of false claims and slanders that receive a remarkable amount of credibility in Western media, academic, and intellectual circles even when no proof is offered.Palestinian groups (including the Gaza and Palestinian Authority regimes), associated local and allied foreign non-government organizations, Western radical and anti-Israel groups, and politically committed journalists are eager to act as propaganda agents making up false stories or transmitting them without serious thought or checking.Others have simply defined the Palestinians as the “victims” and “underdogs” while Israel is the “villain” and “oppressor.”
Yet truth remains truth; academic and journalist standards are supposed to apply.While regular journalists may ask for an official Israeli reaction to such stories the undermanned government agencies are deluged by hundreds of these stories, and committed to checking out seriously each one. Thus, the Israeli government cannot keep up with the flow of lies.
So the key question is to understand the deliberateness of this anti-Israel propaganda and evaluating the credibility of the sources.An important aspect of this is to understand that Israel is a decent, democratic country with a free media that is energetic about exploring any alleged wrongdoing and a fair court system that does the same.
To demonize Israel into a monstrous, murderous state—which is often done—makes people believe any negative story.Some of these are big false stories—the alleged killing of Muhammad al-Dura and the supposed Jenin massacre—others are tiny. Some—like the claim Israel was murdering Palestinians to steal their organs-- get into the main Western newspapers while others only make it into smaller and non-English ones.
Taken together, this campaign of falsification is creating a big wave not only of anti-Israel sentiment but of antisemitism on a Medieval scale, simply the modern equivalent of claims that the Jews poisoned wells, spread Bubonic Plague, or murdered children to use their blood for Passover matzohs.Come to think of it even those claims are still in circulation. Indeed, on June 8, the Syrian representative at the UN Human Rights Council (oh, the irony!) claimed in a speech that Israeli children are taught to extol blood-drinking.
No Western delegate attacked the statement.Here are three actual examples of well-educated Westerners believing such modern legends reported to me recently by colleagues:--A former classmate, one told me, claimed that the Palestinians are living in death camps, being starved, etc. Asked to provide facts and provided with evidence to the contrary, he could provide no real examples. Finally, he remarked, `The truth is always somewhere in the middle.’”
--Hundreds of American college professors signed a petition claiming that Israel was supposedly about to throw hundreds of thousands of Palestinians out of the West Bank though there was zero evidence of any such intention and, of course, nothing ever happened.
--A British writer of some fame claimed, on the basis of an alleged single conversation with a questionable source, that Israel was preparing gas chambers for the mass murder of Palestinians. When asked if she was really claiming this would happen, she stated that it wasn’t going to happen but only because people like her had sounded the alarm to prevent it.
And what of the accusations of genocide contained in an article by sensationalist Israeli reporter Uzi Mahnaimi (even though his stories almost always prove to be wrong the Sunday Times never learns) and the respected Marie Colvin's November 1998 in The Sunday Times reporting Israel was attempting to build an "ethno-bomb" containing a biological agent that could specifically target genetic traits present amongst Arab populations?
Or the Guardian's more recent distortion of documentation to claim that Israel was selling nuclear weapons to South Africa?There is no limit. When stories are proven wrong, the damage remains, apologies are non-existent or muted, and no lesson is learned because the same process is soon repeated. (In the Guardian, it is repeated not only on a daily basis but sometimes several times a day!) But perhaps readers could learn to disregard what they have repeatedly seen has been untrue?
Here is one example plucked from today’s mail. The Palestinian Authority Health Ministry claim Israel has seized seven oxygen machines intended for the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and paid for by the Norwegian government. It said that a protest was being made to Norway. The story was picked up by several European newspapers. No evidence or specifics—what Israeli agency held them up? What dates? What hospitals were these for?--was provided.Note, as in so many of these stories, the Israeli goal is said to be murder pure and simple.
The message conveyed is: What kind of people would behave this way? The Israelis (or Jews in general) not only don't deserve to have a state, they don't even deserve to live. Wiping them off the planet would be doing the world a favor. Hmm, where have we heard this before?Asked to look into the oxygen machine story, an Israeli official did so and pointed out that there are no controls over such imports into the West Bank so there would be no basis for holding up anything going there. As for Gaza, those directly involved in the process of sending in aid note that no applications to import such machines has been filed, there is no record of any such machines arriving, and thus nothing had been held up.In short, the story is completely false, presuming that the Palestinian Authority health ministry won't provide documents and specifics.
But that isn't going to happen as it will just be on to the next false story, hoping for a bigger media response.Having seen so many such stories disproved over the years—as Israel’s credibility, while not perfect, has compared favorably with that of any Western democratic state—one might think a lesson would be learned. But as the great American journalist Eric Severeid remarked many years ago, nothing can protect someone when the media sets out deliberately to misunderstand and report falsely about them.In addition, they should only repeat, report, or believe stories based on credible identified sources citing specific names, dates, and details.
In addition, stories or claims should be internally logical and make sense given known facts. The idea that Israel enjoys killing or injuring Palestinians for fun does not meet that test.Honorable journalists and scholars should take note and approach these false stories more skeptically.
They should also reexamine their stereotypes and remember that their political views should be kept as much as possible out of their professional work.Not so long ago, the above points would have been taken for granted as the most basic and obvious principles. They need to be relearned.
Sunday, June 20, 2010
Hamas Hoodwink Media with Free Gaza Flotilla
'Humanitarian' Stunt Reinforces Tyrannical Regime at Expense of
Palestinian People'
The "Free Gaza" flotilla of nine passenger and cargo ships heading towards
the Gaza coast "only serves to reinforce the tyrannical rule of Hamas at the
expense of ordinary Palestinian people," says Rev. Malcolm Hedding of
the International Christian Embassy, Jerusalem
The highly-profile sea convoy is expected to reach the waters off Gaza on
Saturday where the Israeli navy is preparing to use force to board the
vessels and steer them to the nearby port of Ashdod for unloading.
More than 1,000 pro-Palestinian activists and journalists from 40 countries
are aboard the vessels trying to draw attention to the Israeli blockade of
the narrow Hamas-run coastal strip that was set in place in the wake of the
jihadist militia's violent takeover of Gaza in the summer of 2007. The cargo
includes concrete for Hamas bunkers in order to strengthen their
stranglehold over the lives of ordinary Palestinians.
"Taking 10,000 tons of supplies to Gaza by sea is more about demonizing
Israel than helping the Palestinian people," says Rev. Hedding, Executive
Director of the ICEJ in Jerusalem. "Israel has been transferring more than
15,000 real tons of aid to the Gaza Strip every week for since the blockade
began. That's more than a million tons since January 2009 – one for every
man woman and child in Gaza.
"Let's be honest, the real aim of this stunt is to blame Israel for a
crisis in Gaza that has been caused by Hamas. Few journalists have enough
integrity to admit that Gaza's markets are full, and the governing elite
enjoy immense wealth and prestige.
"There is no shortage of food in the Gaza Strip. There is a shortage of
justice.
"What's more the aid convoy is actually smuggling in building supplies that
will directly help Hamas wage war against Israel. *Not only does the State
of Israel have the right to intercept this convoy, it has a moral and legal
duty to do so under international law.* If the Palestinians want to break
the blockade – they need to lay down their weapons and seek peace."
*THE REAL FACTS OF HUMANITARIAN AID*
Humanitarian Aid Despite Hamas Attacks
Well over a million tons of humanitarian supplies entered Gaza
from Israel over the last 18 months equaling nearly a ton of aid for every
man, woman and child in Gaza.
Food and supplies are shipped from Israel to Gaza six days a week.
These items were channeled through aid organizations or via Gaza’s private
sector.
Large quantities of essential food items like baby formula, wheat,
meat, dairy products and other perishables are transferred daily and weekly
to Gaza.
Fertilizers that cannot be used to make explosives are shipped
into the Strip regularly, as are potato seeds, eggs for reproduction, bees,
and equipment for the flower industry.
In 2009 alone, more than 738,000 tons of food and supplies entered
Gaza. Pictures in local newspapers show local markets aplenty with fruit,
vegetables, cheese, spices, bread and meat to feed 1.4 million Gazans.
In the first quarter of 2010 (January-March), 94,500 tons of
supplies were transferred in 3,676 trucks to the Strip: 48,000 tons of food
products; 40,000 tons of wheat; 2,760 tons of rice; 1,987 tons of clothes
and footwear; 553 tons of milk powder and baby food.
In a typical week the IDF coordinates the transfer of hundreds of
trucks containing about 15,000 tons of supplies. During the week of May 18,
2010 there were more than 100 truckloads of animal food, 65 trucks of fruit
and vegetables; 22 truckloads of sugar, some 27 truckloads of meat, poultry
and fish; and 40 trucks of dairy products.
At holiday times, Israel increases transfers. During the Muslim
holy days of Ramadhan and Eid al-Adha, Israel shipped some 11,000 heads of
cattle into the Strip.
*2. Maintaining Medical Aid for All in Need*
*The Medical Corridor:*
No Palestinian is denied medical care in Israel. However, if the
Hamas regime does not grant permits for medical care, the Israeli government
can do nothing to help the patient. Israel will facilitate all cases of
medical treatments from Gaza, unless the patient is a known perpetrator of
terror.
Israel maintains a corridor for the transfer of medical patients out of
Gaza, and about 200 medical staff members go through the crossings every
month.
Israel helps coordinate the transfer of Jordanian doctors into
Gaza.
In 2009 alone, 10,544 patients and their companions left the Gaza
Strip for medical treatment in Israel. Moreover, there were 382 emergency
evacuations from Gaza for medical purposes.
The Hadassah Medical Organization in Jerusalem donates $3 million in aid annually to treat Palestinians in Israel.
Following fears of a swine flu outbreak, three Israeli hospitals
were assigned to treat cases in the Gaza Strip and 44,500 immunizations were
transferred to the Strip.
Since 2005, Palestinians exploited medical care arrangements more
than 20 times to carry out terror attacks.
*Medical Equipment:*
In 2009, app. 4,883 tons of medical equipment and medicine were brought
in.
In the first quarter of 2010, Israel shipped 152 trucks of medical
supplies and equipment into Gaza.
A new CAT scan machine was recently shipped to Gaza.
In 2009, Israel coordinated the transfer of medical supplies for
the disabled including wheelchairs, crutches and first aid kits. Other
equipment shipped to Gaza include heart-monitors, baby feeding tubes, dental
equipment, medical books, ambulance emergency equipment, artificial limbs
and infant sleeping bags.
In a typical week (in May 2010), some 37 truckloads of hygiene products
were shipped to Gaza through the land crossings.
Palestinian People'
The "Free Gaza" flotilla of nine passenger and cargo ships heading towards
the Gaza coast "only serves to reinforce the tyrannical rule of Hamas at the
expense of ordinary Palestinian people," says Rev. Malcolm Hedding of
the International Christian Embassy, Jerusalem
The highly-profile sea convoy is expected to reach the waters off Gaza on
Saturday where the Israeli navy is preparing to use force to board the
vessels and steer them to the nearby port of Ashdod for unloading.
More than 1,000 pro-Palestinian activists and journalists from 40 countries
are aboard the vessels trying to draw attention to the Israeli blockade of
the narrow Hamas-run coastal strip that was set in place in the wake of the
jihadist militia's violent takeover of Gaza in the summer of 2007. The cargo
includes concrete for Hamas bunkers in order to strengthen their
stranglehold over the lives of ordinary Palestinians.
"Taking 10,000 tons of supplies to Gaza by sea is more about demonizing
Israel than helping the Palestinian people," says Rev. Hedding, Executive
Director of the ICEJ in Jerusalem. "Israel has been transferring more than
15,000 real tons of aid to the Gaza Strip every week for since the blockade
began. That's more than a million tons since January 2009 – one for every
man woman and child in Gaza.
"Let's be honest, the real aim of this stunt is to blame Israel for a
crisis in Gaza that has been caused by Hamas. Few journalists have enough
integrity to admit that Gaza's markets are full, and the governing elite
enjoy immense wealth and prestige.
"There is no shortage of food in the Gaza Strip. There is a shortage of
justice.
"What's more the aid convoy is actually smuggling in building supplies that
will directly help Hamas wage war against Israel. *Not only does the State
of Israel have the right to intercept this convoy, it has a moral and legal
duty to do so under international law.* If the Palestinians want to break
the blockade – they need to lay down their weapons and seek peace."
*THE REAL FACTS OF HUMANITARIAN AID*
Humanitarian Aid Despite Hamas Attacks
Well over a million tons of humanitarian supplies entered Gaza
from Israel over the last 18 months equaling nearly a ton of aid for every
man, woman and child in Gaza.
Food and supplies are shipped from Israel to Gaza six days a week.
These items were channeled through aid organizations or via Gaza’s private
sector.
Large quantities of essential food items like baby formula, wheat,
meat, dairy products and other perishables are transferred daily and weekly
to Gaza.
Fertilizers that cannot be used to make explosives are shipped
into the Strip regularly, as are potato seeds, eggs for reproduction, bees,
and equipment for the flower industry.
In 2009 alone, more than 738,000 tons of food and supplies entered
Gaza. Pictures in local newspapers show local markets aplenty with fruit,
vegetables, cheese, spices, bread and meat to feed 1.4 million Gazans.
In the first quarter of 2010 (January-March), 94,500 tons of
supplies were transferred in 3,676 trucks to the Strip: 48,000 tons of food
products; 40,000 tons of wheat; 2,760 tons of rice; 1,987 tons of clothes
and footwear; 553 tons of milk powder and baby food.
In a typical week the IDF coordinates the transfer of hundreds of
trucks containing about 15,000 tons of supplies. During the week of May 18,
2010 there were more than 100 truckloads of animal food, 65 trucks of fruit
and vegetables; 22 truckloads of sugar, some 27 truckloads of meat, poultry
and fish; and 40 trucks of dairy products.
At holiday times, Israel increases transfers. During the Muslim
holy days of Ramadhan and Eid al-Adha, Israel shipped some 11,000 heads of
cattle into the Strip.
*2. Maintaining Medical Aid for All in Need*
*The Medical Corridor:*
No Palestinian is denied medical care in Israel. However, if the
Hamas regime does not grant permits for medical care, the Israeli government
can do nothing to help the patient. Israel will facilitate all cases of
medical treatments from Gaza, unless the patient is a known perpetrator of
terror.
Israel maintains a corridor for the transfer of medical patients out of
Gaza, and about 200 medical staff members go through the crossings every
month.
Israel helps coordinate the transfer of Jordanian doctors into
Gaza.
In 2009 alone, 10,544 patients and their companions left the Gaza
Strip for medical treatment in Israel. Moreover, there were 382 emergency
evacuations from Gaza for medical purposes.
The Hadassah Medical Organization in Jerusalem donates $3 million in aid annually to treat Palestinians in Israel.
Following fears of a swine flu outbreak, three Israeli hospitals
were assigned to treat cases in the Gaza Strip and 44,500 immunizations were
transferred to the Strip.
Since 2005, Palestinians exploited medical care arrangements more
than 20 times to carry out terror attacks.
*Medical Equipment:*
In 2009, app. 4,883 tons of medical equipment and medicine were brought
in.
In the first quarter of 2010, Israel shipped 152 trucks of medical
supplies and equipment into Gaza.
A new CAT scan machine was recently shipped to Gaza.
In 2009, Israel coordinated the transfer of medical supplies for
the disabled including wheelchairs, crutches and first aid kits. Other
equipment shipped to Gaza include heart-monitors, baby feeding tubes, dental
equipment, medical books, ambulance emergency equipment, artificial limbs
and infant sleeping bags.
In a typical week (in May 2010), some 37 truckloads of hygiene products
were shipped to Gaza through the land crossings.
Saturday, June 19, 2010
"Support Israel: if it goes down, we all go down"
José MarÃa Aznar The Times June 17 2010
Anger over Gaza is a distraction. We cannot forget that Israel is the West’s best ally in a turbulent region
For far too long now it has been unfashionable in Europe to speak up for Israel. In the wake of the recent incident on board a ship full of anti-Israeli activists in the Mediterranean, it is hard to think of a more unpopular cause to champion.
In an ideal world, the assault by Israeli commandos on the Mavi Marmara would not have ended up with nine dead and a score wounded. In an ideal world, the soldiers would have been peacefully welcomed on to the ship. In an ideal world, no state, let alone a recent ally of Israel such as Turkey, would have sponsored and organised a flotilla whose sole purpose was to create an impossible situation for Israel: making it choose between giving up its security policy and the naval blockade, or risking the wrath of the world.
In our dealings with Israel, we must blow away the red mists of anger that too often cloud our judgment. A reasonable and balanced approach should encapsulate the following realities: first, the state of Israel was created by a decision of the UN. Its legitimacy, therefore, should not be in question. Israel is a nation with deeply rooted democratic institutions. It is a dynamic and open society that has repeatedly excelled in culture, science and technology.
Second, owing to its roots, history, and values, Israel is a fully fledged Western nation. Indeed, it is a normal Western nation, but one confronted by abnormal circumstances.
Uniquely in the West, it is the only democracy whose very existence has been questioned since its inception. In the first instance, it was attacked by its neighbours using the conventional weapons of war. Then it faced terrorism culminating in wave after wave of suicide attacks. Now, at the behest of radical Islamists and their sympathisers, it faces a campaign of delegitimisation through international law and diplomacy.
Sixty-two years after its creation, Israel is still fighting for its very survival.
Punished with missiles raining from north and south, threatened with destruction by an Iran aiming to acquire nuclear weapons and pressed upon by friend and foe, Israel, it seems, is never to have a moment’s peace.
For years, the focus of Western attention has understandably been on the peace process between Israelis and Palestinians. But if Israel is in danger today and the whole region is slipping towards a worryingly problematic future, it is not due to the lack of understanding between the parties on how to solve this conflict. The parameters of any prospective peace agreement are clear, however difficult it may seem for the two sides to make the final push for a settlement.
The real threats to regional stability, however, are to be found in the rise of a radical Islamism which sees Israel’s destruction as the fulfillment of its religious destiny and, simultaneously in the case of Iran, as an expression of its ambitions for regional hegemony. Both phenomena are threats that affect not only Israel, but also the wider West and the world at large.
The core of the problem lies in the ambiguous and often erroneous manner in which too many Western countries are now reacting to this situation. It is easy to blame Israel for all the evils in the Middle East. Some even act and talk as if a new understanding with the Muslim world could be achieved if only we were prepared to sacrifice the Jewish state on the altar. This would be folly.
Israel is our first line of defense in a turbulent region that is constantly at risk of descending into chaos; a region vital to our energy security owing to our overdependence on Middle Eastern oil; a region that forms the front line in the fight against extremism. If Israel goes down, we all go down.
Anger over Gaza is a distraction. We cannot forget that Israel is the West’s best ally in a turbulent region
For far too long now it has been unfashionable in Europe to speak up for Israel. In the wake of the recent incident on board a ship full of anti-Israeli activists in the Mediterranean, it is hard to think of a more unpopular cause to champion.
In an ideal world, the assault by Israeli commandos on the Mavi Marmara would not have ended up with nine dead and a score wounded. In an ideal world, the soldiers would have been peacefully welcomed on to the ship. In an ideal world, no state, let alone a recent ally of Israel such as Turkey, would have sponsored and organised a flotilla whose sole purpose was to create an impossible situation for Israel: making it choose between giving up its security policy and the naval blockade, or risking the wrath of the world.
In our dealings with Israel, we must blow away the red mists of anger that too often cloud our judgment. A reasonable and balanced approach should encapsulate the following realities: first, the state of Israel was created by a decision of the UN. Its legitimacy, therefore, should not be in question. Israel is a nation with deeply rooted democratic institutions. It is a dynamic and open society that has repeatedly excelled in culture, science and technology.
Second, owing to its roots, history, and values, Israel is a fully fledged Western nation. Indeed, it is a normal Western nation, but one confronted by abnormal circumstances.
Uniquely in the West, it is the only democracy whose very existence has been questioned since its inception. In the first instance, it was attacked by its neighbours using the conventional weapons of war. Then it faced terrorism culminating in wave after wave of suicide attacks. Now, at the behest of radical Islamists and their sympathisers, it faces a campaign of delegitimisation through international law and diplomacy.
Sixty-two years after its creation, Israel is still fighting for its very survival.
Punished with missiles raining from north and south, threatened with destruction by an Iran aiming to acquire nuclear weapons and pressed upon by friend and foe, Israel, it seems, is never to have a moment’s peace.
For years, the focus of Western attention has understandably been on the peace process between Israelis and Palestinians. But if Israel is in danger today and the whole region is slipping towards a worryingly problematic future, it is not due to the lack of understanding between the parties on how to solve this conflict. The parameters of any prospective peace agreement are clear, however difficult it may seem for the two sides to make the final push for a settlement.
The real threats to regional stability, however, are to be found in the rise of a radical Islamism which sees Israel’s destruction as the fulfillment of its religious destiny and, simultaneously in the case of Iran, as an expression of its ambitions for regional hegemony. Both phenomena are threats that affect not only Israel, but also the wider West and the world at large.
The core of the problem lies in the ambiguous and often erroneous manner in which too many Western countries are now reacting to this situation. It is easy to blame Israel for all the evils in the Middle East. Some even act and talk as if a new understanding with the Muslim world could be achieved if only we were prepared to sacrifice the Jewish state on the altar. This would be folly.
Israel is our first line of defense in a turbulent region that is constantly at risk of descending into chaos; a region vital to our energy security owing to our overdependence on Middle Eastern oil; a region that forms the front line in the fight against extremism. If Israel goes down, we all go down.
Sunday, June 13, 2010
Why I Defend Israel
Bernard-Henri Lévy June 7, 2010
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bernardhenri-levy/israel-gaza-an-end-to-the_b_602850.html
Of course, my position hasn't changed.
As I said the day it happened, in a fierce debate with one of Netanyahu's ministers in Tel Aviv, I continue to find the manner in which the assault against the Mavi Marmara and its flotilla was effected off the Gaza coast as "stupid."
Had I had the least remaining doubt, the inspection of the seventh boat, carried out without a trace of violence this Saturday morning, would have convinced me there were other ways to operate to have kept the tactical and media trap set for Israel by the provocateurs of Free Gaza from snapping shut, in a spilling of blood.
That said and repeated, the flood of hypocrisy, bad faith, and, ultimately, DISINFORMATION that seems to have just waited for this pretext to flow into the breach and sweep across the media of the world, as is the case every time the Jewish State slips up and commits an error, is by no means acceptable.
The catch-phrase trotted out ad nauseum, of the blockade imposed "by Israel," when the most elementary honesty requires one to make it clear that it has been undertaken by Israel and by Egypt, conjointly, on both borders of the two countries that share frontiers with Gaza, and this with the thinly-disguised blessing of all the moderate Arab regimes, can only be described as DISINFORMATION. The latter, of course, are only too happy to see someone else contain the influence of this armed extension, this advanced base and, perhaps one day, this aircraft-carrier of Iran in the region.
The very idea of a "total and merciless" blockade (Laurent Joffrin's editorial in the June 5th edition of the French daily, Liberation) "Taking hostage, the humanity [of Gaza] in danger" (former Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin in Le Monde, of the same date) constitutes DISINFORMATION. We mustn't tire of reminding others the blockade concerns only arms and the material necessary to manufacture them. It does not prevent the daily arrival, via Israel, of between a hundred and a hundred and twenty trucks laden with foodstuffs, medical supplies, and humanitarian goods of every kind; humanity is not "in danger" in Gaza, and it is a lie to state that people are "dying of hunger" in the streets of Gaza City.
It is debatable whether a military blockade is the right option to weaken and, one day, bring down the fascislamist government of Ismaïl Haniyeh or not. But the fact that Israelis who cover the checkpoints between the territories night and day are the first to make the elementary but essential distinction between the regime (that they seek to isolate) and the population (that they are careful not to confuse with the regime, even less to penalize them since, once again, aid has never stopped passing into Gaza) is indisputable.
DISINFORMATION: The utter silence, throughout the world, about Hamas' incredible attitude now that the flotilla has carried out its symbolic duty, which was to catch the Jewish State out and relaunch, as never before, the process of demonization.
In other words, now that the Israelis have carried out their inspection and mean to take the cargo of aid to those for whom it is supposedly intended, Hamas' attitude in blocking that aid at Kerem Shalom checkpoint, allowing it to slowly rot, is met with silence. To hell with any merchandise that has passed through the hands of Jewish customs! Chuck out the "toys" that brought tears to the eyes of good European souls but became impure because they spent too many long hours in the Israeli port of Ashdod! Gaza's children having been nothing more than a human shield for the Islamist gang who took power by force three years ago, or cannon fodder or media vignettes.
Their games or their wishes are the last thing anyone worries about there, but who says so? Who shows the slightest indignation? Liberation recently ran an awful headline, "Israel, Pirate State," which if words still mean anything, can only contribute to the delegitimization of the Hebrew State. Who will dare to explain that, if there is a hostage taker, one who coldly and unscrupulously takes advantage of people's suffering and, in particular, that of the children -- in sum, a pirate -- in Gaza, it is not Israel, but Hamas?
DISINFORMATION once again, laughable but, given the strategic context, catastrophic DISINFORMATION: The speech at Konyan, in central Turkey, of a Prime Minister who has anyone who dares to evoke the genocide of the Armenians in public thrown in prison, but who has the nerve, there, before thousands of fired-up demonstrators yelling antisemitic slogans, to denounce Israeli "State terrorism."
Still more DISINFORMATION: The lament of the useful idiots who, before Israel, fell into the clutches of these strange "humanitarians" who are, in the case of the Turkish IHH, Jihad enthusiasts, anti-Israeli and anti-Jewish apocalyptical fanatics, men and women some of whom, just days before the attack, expressed their wish to "die as martyrs." (the Guardian, June 3rd, Al Aqsa TV, May 30th). How can a writer of the calibre of Sweden's Henning Mankell allow himself to be taken advantage of this way? When he tells us he is thinking of forbidding the translation of his books into Hebrew, how can he really forget the sacrosanct distinction between a stupid or wrong-headed government and the masses of those who do not identify with it and whom he associates, nonetheless, in the same insane plan for a boycott? How can a chain of cinemas ("Utopia") in France decide to cancel the release of a film, A Cinq heures de Paris, in the same way, simply because its author, Leonid Prudovsky, is an Israeli citizen?
DISINFORMERS, finally, the batallions of Tartuffes who regret that Israel declines the demands for an international inquiry when the truth is, once again, so much simpler and more logical: What Israel refuses is an inquiry requested by a Council of Human Rights of the United Nations, where those great democrats, the Cubans, Pakistanis, and other Iranians reign. What Israel does not want is a procedure of the kind that resulted in the famous Goldstone report
commissioned, after the war in Gaza, by the same sympathetic Commission whose five judges, four of whom had never made a secret of their militant anti-Zionism, wrapped up 575 pages of interviews of Palestinian fighters and civilians conducted (an absolute and unprecedented heresy in this kind of work) under the watchful eye of Hamas political commissioners in a matter of mere days.
What Israel could not stand for is the masquerade of international justice such a botched inquiry -- whose conclusions would be known in advance and would only serve to haul, as usual and perfectly unilaterally, the sole and unique democracy of the region into the defendants' dock -- would be.
One last word. For a man like me, someone who takes pride in having helped invent, with others, the principle of this kind of symbolic action (the boat for Vietnam; the march for the survival of Cambodia in 1979; various and sundry anti-totalitarian boycotts and, more recently, the deliberate violation of the Sudan border to break the blockade that hid the perpetration of the massacres of Darfur), in other words, for a militant of humanitarian interference and the media fuss that goes with it, this pathetic saga has something of a caricature, a gloomy grimace of destiny. But, all the more reason not to give in. All the more reason to refuse this confusion of genres, this inversion of signs and values. All the more reason to resist this hijacking of meaning that places the very spirit of a policy conceived to counter the intent of barbarians at their service. Destitution of the anti-totalitarian dialectic and its mimetic reversals.
Confusion of an era when we combat democracies as though they were dictatorships or fascist States. This maelstrom of hatred and madness is about Israel. But it also concerns, as we should be well aware, some of the most precious things established in the movement of ideas in the last thirty years, especially on the left, and these are thus imperiled. A word to the wise is sufficient.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bernardhenri-levy/israel-gaza-an-end-to-the_b_602850.html
Of course, my position hasn't changed.
As I said the day it happened, in a fierce debate with one of Netanyahu's ministers in Tel Aviv, I continue to find the manner in which the assault against the Mavi Marmara and its flotilla was effected off the Gaza coast as "stupid."
Had I had the least remaining doubt, the inspection of the seventh boat, carried out without a trace of violence this Saturday morning, would have convinced me there were other ways to operate to have kept the tactical and media trap set for Israel by the provocateurs of Free Gaza from snapping shut, in a spilling of blood.
That said and repeated, the flood of hypocrisy, bad faith, and, ultimately, DISINFORMATION that seems to have just waited for this pretext to flow into the breach and sweep across the media of the world, as is the case every time the Jewish State slips up and commits an error, is by no means acceptable.
The catch-phrase trotted out ad nauseum, of the blockade imposed "by Israel," when the most elementary honesty requires one to make it clear that it has been undertaken by Israel and by Egypt, conjointly, on both borders of the two countries that share frontiers with Gaza, and this with the thinly-disguised blessing of all the moderate Arab regimes, can only be described as DISINFORMATION. The latter, of course, are only too happy to see someone else contain the influence of this armed extension, this advanced base and, perhaps one day, this aircraft-carrier of Iran in the region.
The very idea of a "total and merciless" blockade (Laurent Joffrin's editorial in the June 5th edition of the French daily, Liberation) "Taking hostage, the humanity [of Gaza] in danger" (former Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin in Le Monde, of the same date) constitutes DISINFORMATION. We mustn't tire of reminding others the blockade concerns only arms and the material necessary to manufacture them. It does not prevent the daily arrival, via Israel, of between a hundred and a hundred and twenty trucks laden with foodstuffs, medical supplies, and humanitarian goods of every kind; humanity is not "in danger" in Gaza, and it is a lie to state that people are "dying of hunger" in the streets of Gaza City.
It is debatable whether a military blockade is the right option to weaken and, one day, bring down the fascislamist government of Ismaïl Haniyeh or not. But the fact that Israelis who cover the checkpoints between the territories night and day are the first to make the elementary but essential distinction between the regime (that they seek to isolate) and the population (that they are careful not to confuse with the regime, even less to penalize them since, once again, aid has never stopped passing into Gaza) is indisputable.
DISINFORMATION: The utter silence, throughout the world, about Hamas' incredible attitude now that the flotilla has carried out its symbolic duty, which was to catch the Jewish State out and relaunch, as never before, the process of demonization.
In other words, now that the Israelis have carried out their inspection and mean to take the cargo of aid to those for whom it is supposedly intended, Hamas' attitude in blocking that aid at Kerem Shalom checkpoint, allowing it to slowly rot, is met with silence. To hell with any merchandise that has passed through the hands of Jewish customs! Chuck out the "toys" that brought tears to the eyes of good European souls but became impure because they spent too many long hours in the Israeli port of Ashdod! Gaza's children having been nothing more than a human shield for the Islamist gang who took power by force three years ago, or cannon fodder or media vignettes.
Their games or their wishes are the last thing anyone worries about there, but who says so? Who shows the slightest indignation? Liberation recently ran an awful headline, "Israel, Pirate State," which if words still mean anything, can only contribute to the delegitimization of the Hebrew State. Who will dare to explain that, if there is a hostage taker, one who coldly and unscrupulously takes advantage of people's suffering and, in particular, that of the children -- in sum, a pirate -- in Gaza, it is not Israel, but Hamas?
DISINFORMATION once again, laughable but, given the strategic context, catastrophic DISINFORMATION: The speech at Konyan, in central Turkey, of a Prime Minister who has anyone who dares to evoke the genocide of the Armenians in public thrown in prison, but who has the nerve, there, before thousands of fired-up demonstrators yelling antisemitic slogans, to denounce Israeli "State terrorism."
Still more DISINFORMATION: The lament of the useful idiots who, before Israel, fell into the clutches of these strange "humanitarians" who are, in the case of the Turkish IHH, Jihad enthusiasts, anti-Israeli and anti-Jewish apocalyptical fanatics, men and women some of whom, just days before the attack, expressed their wish to "die as martyrs." (the Guardian, June 3rd, Al Aqsa TV, May 30th). How can a writer of the calibre of Sweden's Henning Mankell allow himself to be taken advantage of this way? When he tells us he is thinking of forbidding the translation of his books into Hebrew, how can he really forget the sacrosanct distinction between a stupid or wrong-headed government and the masses of those who do not identify with it and whom he associates, nonetheless, in the same insane plan for a boycott? How can a chain of cinemas ("Utopia") in France decide to cancel the release of a film, A Cinq heures de Paris, in the same way, simply because its author, Leonid Prudovsky, is an Israeli citizen?
DISINFORMERS, finally, the batallions of Tartuffes who regret that Israel declines the demands for an international inquiry when the truth is, once again, so much simpler and more logical: What Israel refuses is an inquiry requested by a Council of Human Rights of the United Nations, where those great democrats, the Cubans, Pakistanis, and other Iranians reign. What Israel does not want is a procedure of the kind that resulted in the famous Goldstone report
commissioned, after the war in Gaza, by the same sympathetic Commission whose five judges, four of whom had never made a secret of their militant anti-Zionism, wrapped up 575 pages of interviews of Palestinian fighters and civilians conducted (an absolute and unprecedented heresy in this kind of work) under the watchful eye of Hamas political commissioners in a matter of mere days.
What Israel could not stand for is the masquerade of international justice such a botched inquiry -- whose conclusions would be known in advance and would only serve to haul, as usual and perfectly unilaterally, the sole and unique democracy of the region into the defendants' dock -- would be.
One last word. For a man like me, someone who takes pride in having helped invent, with others, the principle of this kind of symbolic action (the boat for Vietnam; the march for the survival of Cambodia in 1979; various and sundry anti-totalitarian boycotts and, more recently, the deliberate violation of the Sudan border to break the blockade that hid the perpetration of the massacres of Darfur), in other words, for a militant of humanitarian interference and the media fuss that goes with it, this pathetic saga has something of a caricature, a gloomy grimace of destiny. But, all the more reason not to give in. All the more reason to refuse this confusion of genres, this inversion of signs and values. All the more reason to resist this hijacking of meaning that places the very spirit of a policy conceived to counter the intent of barbarians at their service. Destitution of the anti-totalitarian dialectic and its mimetic reversals.
Confusion of an era when we combat democracies as though they were dictatorships or fascist States. This maelstrom of hatred and madness is about Israel. But it also concerns, as we should be well aware, some of the most precious things established in the movement of ideas in the last thirty years, especially on the left, and these are thus imperiled. A word to the wise is sufficient.
Thursday, June 3, 2010
'Peace convoy'? This was an Islamist terror ambush
http://www.spectator.co.uk/melaniephillips/6044639/peace-convoy-this-was-an-islamist-terror-ambush.thtml
Melanie Phillips
31May2010
As the international community rushes to condemn Israel for the violence on board one of the ships in the Gaza flotilla, which left a reported 10 people dead and dozens injured, it is now obvious that the real purpose of this ‘armada of hate’ was not merely the further delegitimisation of Israel but something far worse.
Gaza’s markets are full of produce, thousands of tons of supplies are travelling into Gaza every week through the Israeli-controlled border crossings, and there is no starvation or humanitarian crisis. It was always obvious that the flotilla was not the humanitarian exercise it was said to be. Here is footage of the IDF offering to dock the Marmara -- the main flotilla ship -- at Ashdod and transfer its supplies and being told ‘Negative, negative, our destination is Gaza’.
And now we can see that the real purpose of this invasion -- backed by the Turkish Humanitarian Relief Foundation (IHH), a radical Islamic organization outlawed by Israel in 2008 for allegedly serving as a major component in Hamas’s global fund-raising machine -- was to incite a violent uprising in the Middle East and across the Islamic world. As I write, reports are coming in of Arab rioting in Jerusalem.
The notion – uncritically swallowed by the lazy, ignorant and bigoted BBC and other western media – that the flotilla organisers are ‘peace activists’ is simply ludicrous. This research by the Danish Institute for International Studies details the part played by the IHH in Islamist terror in Afghanistan, Bosnia and Chechnya. According to the French magistrate Jean-Louis Bruguiere testifying at the Seattle trial of would-be al Qaeda Millenium bomber Ahmed Ressamin, the IHH had played ‘[a]n important role’ in the al Qaeda Millenium bomb plot targeting Los Angeles airport. It was also involved in weapons trafficking, and played in addition a key role in galvanizing anti-Western sentiment among Turkish Muslims in the lead-up to the 2003 war in Iraq. ‘Peace activists’ these people most certainly are not.
And this flotilla was but the latest jihadi attack, deploying the Islamists’ signature strategy of violence and media manipulation. Here from MEMRI (via Just Journalism) is a clip showing the hysteria against Israel being whipped up on board before the ships set sail, with the chanting of intifada songs about ‘Khaybar’ – the iconic slaughter of Jews by Muslims in the 7th century which is used as a rallying cry to kill the Jews today -- and threats of ‘martyrdom’. This was not merely a propaganda stunt, but a terrorist attack.
This is what the Jerusalem Post reported earlier today about what happened last night:
According to the IDF, the international activists ‘prepared a lynch’ for the soldiers who boarded the ships at about 2 a.m. Monday morning after calling on them to stop, or follow them to the Ashdod Port several hours earlier.
... Upon boarding the ships, the soldiers encountered fierce resistance from the passengers who were armed with knives, bats and metal pipes. The soldiers used non-lethal measures to disperse the crowd. The activists, according to an IDF report, succeeded in stealing two handguns from soldiers and opened fire, leading to an escalation in violence.
Also in the Jerusalem Post, David Horowitz wrote:
Benayahu said soldiers, who had been dispatched to block the flotilla because of fears that it was carrying weaponry and other highly dangerous cargo into the Hamas-controlled Strip, were attacked with knives and bars and sharpened metal implements.
Benayahu said two pistols that had been fired were subsequently found aboard the one ship, the Marmara, on which the violence erupted. And, most dramatically, he said that one IDF soldier had his weapon snatched away by one of the ‘peace activists’ on board, that this weapon was then turned against the IDF soldiers, who came under fire, and that they had no choice but to shoot back in self-defense.
... What seems urgent now is to make publicly available footage that shows exactly what did unfold. In early afternoon, video footage screened on Israel’s Channel 2 appeared to show one of those aboard the Marmara stabbing an IDF soldier. Any such footage should have been made available hours earlier. Critically, if footage showing a soldier’s weapon being snatched and turned on the IDF troops exists, it should be broadcast, and the sooner the better.
Some of this footage is now available on the web but much of it is hard to follow: as ever, the Israelis have been far too slow in making the most telling images and information available in comprehensible form (including in English rather than in Hebrew, for heaven’s sake!). This clip appears to show masked and armed flotilla activists beating Israeli soldiers (although here is the BBC report accompanying that footage, in which the voiceover appears to be claiming, perversely, that the people in masks were Israeli soldiers. That said, the report on Radio Four’s World at One was fair and balanced).
This clip shows an Israeli soldier being stabbed. This IDF clip and this one show attacks on the commandoes including throwing one off the deck, attacking others with a metal pole and a firebomb and an attempted kidnap of another.
It is also becoming clearer as the day wears on that, far from storming the boats in order to attack those on board, the Israelis were hopelessly ill-prepared for the violence they encountered. Israel’s Channel 10 and IDF radio have reported that the Israeli naval commandos were equipped with paint ball rifles to ensure minimum casualties among the flotilla terrorists, with their hand guns to be used only as a last resort. The terrorists tried connecting the steel cables from the overhead helicopters to the boat's antenna, in order to cause the helicopters to crash. Only when the terrorists beat the soldiers with iron rods, stabbed them with knives and tried to lynch them did the soldiers respond. The Israeli commandoes were pushed down stairs, thrown overboard, and shot at.
Here is a report by an Israel army radio reporter on board:
‘The activists had many things ready for an attack on the soldiers,’ Lev-Rom said, ‘including, for instance, a box of 20-30 slingshots with metal balls; these can kill. There were also all sorts of knives and many similar things. These are what they call “cold” weapons, as opposed to live fire. It was quite clear that a lynch had been prepared.’
Lev-Rom said, however, that it appears the army, ‘even though it prepared for many different scenarios, was not ready for this one. The army seems not to have known what type of people were there and what type of weapons they had. It was hard for Israel to conceive that the ship, sponsored by the country of Turkey, would have such weapons. Israel was prepared to deal with anarchists, and instead had to deal with terrorists – that’s the feeling here.’
Here** is an even more vivid account showing how unprepared the Israeli soldiers were:
Navy commandoes slid down to the vessel one by one, yet then the unexpected occurred: The passengers that awaited them on the deck pulled out bats, clubs, and slingshots with glass marbles, assaulting each soldier as he disembarked. The fighters were nabbed one by one and were beaten up badly, yet they attempted to fight back.
However, to their misfortune, they were only equipped with paintball rifles used to disperse minor protests, such as the ones held in Bilin. The paintballs obviously made no impression on the activists, who kept on beating the troops up and even attempted to wrest away their weapons.
One soldier who came to the aid of a comrade was captured by the rioters and sustained severe blows. The commandoes were equipped with handguns but were told they should only use them in the face of life-threatening situations. When they came down from the chopper, they kept on shouting to each other ‘don’t shoot, don’t shoot,’ even though they sustained numerous blows.
The Navy commandoes were prepared to mostly encounter political activists seeking to hold a protest, rather than trained street fighters. The soldiers were told they were to verbally convince activists who offer resistance to give up, and only then use paintballs. They were permitted to use their handguns only under extreme circumstances.
The planned rush towards the vessel’s bridge became impossible, even when a second chopper was brought in with another crew of soldiers. ‘Throw stun grenades,’ shouted Flotilla 13’s commander who monitored the operation. The Navy chief was not too far, on board a speedboat belonging to Flotilla 13, along with forces who attempted to climb into the back of the ship.
The forces hurled stun grenades, yet the rioters on the top deck, whose number swelled up to 30 by that time, kept on beating up about 30 commandoes who kept gliding their way one by one from the helicopter. At one point, the attackers nabbed one commando, wrested away his handgun, and threw him down from the top deck to the lower deck, 30 feet below. The soldier sustained a serious head wound and lost his consciousness.
Only after this injury did Flotilla 13 troops ask for permission to use live fire. The commander approved it: You can go ahead and fire. The soldiers pulled out their handguns and started shooting at the rioters’ legs, a move that ultimately neutralized them. Meanwhile, the rioters started to fire back at the commandoes.
It is becoming ever more clear that Islamist terror attacks like this are fiendishly staged theatrical events in which the western media – and beyond them, western governments -- play an absolutely essential role in the drama. If those media and governments refused to swallow the lies and instead called operations like this and the players behind it for what they actually are, such terrorist operations would not happen. The Islamist strategy of war against Israel is carefully calibrated to deploy the most effective weapon in its armoury in the cause of jihadi violence – the western media. Right on cue, western governments accordingly deliver their own script in condemning the victims of terror for defending themselves. And so, courtesy of the west’s fifth columnists, yet another nail is driven into the west’s own coffin.
Let’s see whether this time the western elites show any signs of waking from their lethal trance.
Melanie Phillips
31May2010
As the international community rushes to condemn Israel for the violence on board one of the ships in the Gaza flotilla, which left a reported 10 people dead and dozens injured, it is now obvious that the real purpose of this ‘armada of hate’ was not merely the further delegitimisation of Israel but something far worse.
Gaza’s markets are full of produce, thousands of tons of supplies are travelling into Gaza every week through the Israeli-controlled border crossings, and there is no starvation or humanitarian crisis. It was always obvious that the flotilla was not the humanitarian exercise it was said to be. Here is footage of the IDF offering to dock the Marmara -- the main flotilla ship -- at Ashdod and transfer its supplies and being told ‘Negative, negative, our destination is Gaza’.
And now we can see that the real purpose of this invasion -- backed by the Turkish Humanitarian Relief Foundation (IHH), a radical Islamic organization outlawed by Israel in 2008 for allegedly serving as a major component in Hamas’s global fund-raising machine -- was to incite a violent uprising in the Middle East and across the Islamic world. As I write, reports are coming in of Arab rioting in Jerusalem.
The notion – uncritically swallowed by the lazy, ignorant and bigoted BBC and other western media – that the flotilla organisers are ‘peace activists’ is simply ludicrous. This research by the Danish Institute for International Studies details the part played by the IHH in Islamist terror in Afghanistan, Bosnia and Chechnya. According to the French magistrate Jean-Louis Bruguiere testifying at the Seattle trial of would-be al Qaeda Millenium bomber Ahmed Ressamin, the IHH had played ‘[a]n important role’ in the al Qaeda Millenium bomb plot targeting Los Angeles airport. It was also involved in weapons trafficking, and played in addition a key role in galvanizing anti-Western sentiment among Turkish Muslims in the lead-up to the 2003 war in Iraq. ‘Peace activists’ these people most certainly are not.
And this flotilla was but the latest jihadi attack, deploying the Islamists’ signature strategy of violence and media manipulation. Here from MEMRI (via Just Journalism) is a clip showing the hysteria against Israel being whipped up on board before the ships set sail, with the chanting of intifada songs about ‘Khaybar’ – the iconic slaughter of Jews by Muslims in the 7th century which is used as a rallying cry to kill the Jews today -- and threats of ‘martyrdom’. This was not merely a propaganda stunt, but a terrorist attack.
This is what the Jerusalem Post reported earlier today about what happened last night:
According to the IDF, the international activists ‘prepared a lynch’ for the soldiers who boarded the ships at about 2 a.m. Monday morning after calling on them to stop, or follow them to the Ashdod Port several hours earlier.
... Upon boarding the ships, the soldiers encountered fierce resistance from the passengers who were armed with knives, bats and metal pipes. The soldiers used non-lethal measures to disperse the crowd. The activists, according to an IDF report, succeeded in stealing two handguns from soldiers and opened fire, leading to an escalation in violence.
Also in the Jerusalem Post, David Horowitz wrote:
Benayahu said soldiers, who had been dispatched to block the flotilla because of fears that it was carrying weaponry and other highly dangerous cargo into the Hamas-controlled Strip, were attacked with knives and bars and sharpened metal implements.
Benayahu said two pistols that had been fired were subsequently found aboard the one ship, the Marmara, on which the violence erupted. And, most dramatically, he said that one IDF soldier had his weapon snatched away by one of the ‘peace activists’ on board, that this weapon was then turned against the IDF soldiers, who came under fire, and that they had no choice but to shoot back in self-defense.
... What seems urgent now is to make publicly available footage that shows exactly what did unfold. In early afternoon, video footage screened on Israel’s Channel 2 appeared to show one of those aboard the Marmara stabbing an IDF soldier. Any such footage should have been made available hours earlier. Critically, if footage showing a soldier’s weapon being snatched and turned on the IDF troops exists, it should be broadcast, and the sooner the better.
Some of this footage is now available on the web but much of it is hard to follow: as ever, the Israelis have been far too slow in making the most telling images and information available in comprehensible form (including in English rather than in Hebrew, for heaven’s sake!). This clip appears to show masked and armed flotilla activists beating Israeli soldiers (although here is the BBC report accompanying that footage, in which the voiceover appears to be claiming, perversely, that the people in masks were Israeli soldiers. That said, the report on Radio Four’s World at One was fair and balanced).
This clip shows an Israeli soldier being stabbed. This IDF clip and this one show attacks on the commandoes including throwing one off the deck, attacking others with a metal pole and a firebomb and an attempted kidnap of another.
It is also becoming clearer as the day wears on that, far from storming the boats in order to attack those on board, the Israelis were hopelessly ill-prepared for the violence they encountered. Israel’s Channel 10 and IDF radio have reported that the Israeli naval commandos were equipped with paint ball rifles to ensure minimum casualties among the flotilla terrorists, with their hand guns to be used only as a last resort. The terrorists tried connecting the steel cables from the overhead helicopters to the boat's antenna, in order to cause the helicopters to crash. Only when the terrorists beat the soldiers with iron rods, stabbed them with knives and tried to lynch them did the soldiers respond. The Israeli commandoes were pushed down stairs, thrown overboard, and shot at.
Here is a report by an Israel army radio reporter on board:
‘The activists had many things ready for an attack on the soldiers,’ Lev-Rom said, ‘including, for instance, a box of 20-30 slingshots with metal balls; these can kill. There were also all sorts of knives and many similar things. These are what they call “cold” weapons, as opposed to live fire. It was quite clear that a lynch had been prepared.’
Lev-Rom said, however, that it appears the army, ‘even though it prepared for many different scenarios, was not ready for this one. The army seems not to have known what type of people were there and what type of weapons they had. It was hard for Israel to conceive that the ship, sponsored by the country of Turkey, would have such weapons. Israel was prepared to deal with anarchists, and instead had to deal with terrorists – that’s the feeling here.’
Here** is an even more vivid account showing how unprepared the Israeli soldiers were:
Navy commandoes slid down to the vessel one by one, yet then the unexpected occurred: The passengers that awaited them on the deck pulled out bats, clubs, and slingshots with glass marbles, assaulting each soldier as he disembarked. The fighters were nabbed one by one and were beaten up badly, yet they attempted to fight back.
However, to their misfortune, they were only equipped with paintball rifles used to disperse minor protests, such as the ones held in Bilin. The paintballs obviously made no impression on the activists, who kept on beating the troops up and even attempted to wrest away their weapons.
One soldier who came to the aid of a comrade was captured by the rioters and sustained severe blows. The commandoes were equipped with handguns but were told they should only use them in the face of life-threatening situations. When they came down from the chopper, they kept on shouting to each other ‘don’t shoot, don’t shoot,’ even though they sustained numerous blows.
The Navy commandoes were prepared to mostly encounter political activists seeking to hold a protest, rather than trained street fighters. The soldiers were told they were to verbally convince activists who offer resistance to give up, and only then use paintballs. They were permitted to use their handguns only under extreme circumstances.
The planned rush towards the vessel’s bridge became impossible, even when a second chopper was brought in with another crew of soldiers. ‘Throw stun grenades,’ shouted Flotilla 13’s commander who monitored the operation. The Navy chief was not too far, on board a speedboat belonging to Flotilla 13, along with forces who attempted to climb into the back of the ship.
The forces hurled stun grenades, yet the rioters on the top deck, whose number swelled up to 30 by that time, kept on beating up about 30 commandoes who kept gliding their way one by one from the helicopter. At one point, the attackers nabbed one commando, wrested away his handgun, and threw him down from the top deck to the lower deck, 30 feet below. The soldier sustained a serious head wound and lost his consciousness.
Only after this injury did Flotilla 13 troops ask for permission to use live fire. The commander approved it: You can go ahead and fire. The soldiers pulled out their handguns and started shooting at the rioters’ legs, a move that ultimately neutralized them. Meanwhile, the rioters started to fire back at the commandoes.
It is becoming ever more clear that Islamist terror attacks like this are fiendishly staged theatrical events in which the western media – and beyond them, western governments -- play an absolutely essential role in the drama. If those media and governments refused to swallow the lies and instead called operations like this and the players behind it for what they actually are, such terrorist operations would not happen. The Islamist strategy of war against Israel is carefully calibrated to deploy the most effective weapon in its armoury in the cause of jihadi violence – the western media. Right on cue, western governments accordingly deliver their own script in condemning the victims of terror for defending themselves. And so, courtesy of the west’s fifth columnists, yet another nail is driven into the west’s own coffin.
Let’s see whether this time the western elites show any signs of waking from their lethal trance.
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