Ray Cook - As I See It

Israel, Zionism and the Media

Category: The Delegitimisation of Israel (Page 11 of 15)

FA Cup Final to be disrupted by Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions crowd

16/04/2010 / / 0 Comments

With Avram Grant, an Israeli, leading Portsmouth out against Chelsea in the FA Cup final next month, I am sure that the BDS people will be running on to the pitch to stop the match, heckling the team coach as at arrives with the horrible spectacle of an Israeli on board.

He will be accused of representing a state that murders children, of  being a warmonger. Well that’s what happens now to Israelis in the UK going about their business be they musicians, academics, politicians, sportspersons or entertainers. So why should Avram not get the treatment?

Well maybe it’s because he represents the largest religious group in England – football fans.

Avram Grant, son of Holocaust survivors, attended the March of the Living in Auschwitz-Birkenau earlier this week. A sober reminder of the genocide Israel’s enemies want to emulate. And those nice BDS people are keen to help the process along.

Israel Apartheid Week – hoping mud sticks

11/03/2010 / / 0 Comments

Across the world anti-Israel activists are holding Israel Apartheid week.

The claim is that Israel is like Apartheid South Africa, that Israel is a racists state where Arabs = Blacks and Cape Coloureds and Israelis = whites.

The absurdity of this claim is patent. Just walk down any street in any Israeli city. You will see blacks, browns and whites freely mingling. The IDF is multi-ethnic. Arabs sit in promenade shelters along Tel Aviv beachfront.  There are no Jews only signs anywhere. Racism is not enshrined in the laws of the land. Arabs can and do from political parties, practise medecine in Israeli hospitals, become members of the Supreme Court.

This is not to say there is no discrimination. Israel is not a perfect society.

If we move to the West Bank, which is not Israel, of course, we have the Israeli Jewish settlements in land which is disputed and internationally recognised as ‘occupied’. Settlers are at risk of violence from Palestinians. You may not like settlements but they exist. The state has taken extraordinary lengths to protect settler communities: Israeli-only roads, checkpoints, gated communities.

The Israeli settlements do well. The Palestinians not so well. Is this really Apartheid? It may be very ugly but what is the alternative? Open season on Israelis? Whatever you think of the settlements you can’t expect them to leave themselves defenceless. The motivation is security and not racism. And that’s the point.

The security barrier  is often used as a symbol of Apartheid but as the barrier has reduced suicide bombings by 99% it is clear that this is a security success, nothing to do with racism.

The fall out for Palestinians of these security measures can be criticised but it is still not Apartheid.

Indeed the Jerusalem Post has an article by Dore Gold in which he quotes Benjamin Pogrund a former Apartheid activist:

In 2006, Benjamin Pogrund, a former anti-apartheid activist, who now lives in Israel (he also served as a deputy editor of Johannesberg’s Rand Daily Mail) responded to a report in The Guardian comparing Israel and apartheid South Africa. As a journalist, Pogrund had specialized in apartheid, and was even imprisoned by the South African authorities for his reporting. Looking at the situation in Israel, he noted that when he had been hospitalized in Jerusalem for surgery, he looked around and noticed that the patients, nurses, and doctors were both Arabs and Jews.

“What I saw in the Hadassah-Mt. Scopus hospital was inconceivable in the South Africa where I spent most of my life,” he said.

The apartheid system was based on legalizing racism. As former Foreign Ministry legal adviser Robbie Sabel has pointed out, in Israel even incitement to racism is a criminal offense.

Gold continues:

Israel’s accusers also try to focus on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, but here too their arguments are extremely weak. The majority of Israelis do not want to annex the whole West Bank, but rather feel that they are entitled to “defensible borders” in accordance with UN Security Council Resolution 242. This is not a case of establishing a different legal system for a specific racial or ethnic group within the Israeli state, but rather a territorial dispute between the parties over Israel’s future borders. In fact, it is the Palestinian Authority that has legal jurisdiction over the Palestinians in these disputed territories, not Israel.

The Israel delegitimisers are fond of using highly potent words and adjectives to smear Israel: apartheid, nazi, racist, war criminals, organ thieves. As Gold so eloquently states:

WHAT underlies the Israel Apartheid Week campaign is not international law, but rather a highly politicized interpretation of Israel’s history in which the Jewish people are viewed as a colonialist movement that recently came from Europe to usurp lands from the indigenous Palestinian population, rather than the authentic claimants to sovereignty in their historical homeland.

In other words truth and human rights of Israelis go out the window to be replaced by assertion, lies, bad history, incitement and the teaching of hatred. Add to this the attempt within many parts of the Arab world to deny any Jewish historical claim whatever to the land and you arrive at a conspiracy to delegitimise the state by any means even if that involves smear and lies.

What is especially galling is that those who accuse Israel are often mired in racism and bigotry and their own forms of apartheid. By law, in the Palestinian Authority, if you sell land to a Jew you face the death penalty. In Saudi Arabia non-muslims cannot even become full citizens. In Jordan, Jews cannot become citizens.

In Israel, Arabs enjoy in law full citizenship rights and enfranchisement. There are many mixed schools. Jews lie in hospital beds next to Arabs and are treated by doctors and nurses who are themselves Jews and Arabs.

So for Israel Apartheid Week read – Israel delegitimisation Week.

Problem is that the mud sticks and that is what the activists rely on. They are prepared to believe their own lies and then feed them to others as the truth. I recall another group of people doing that to the Jews a while back. Now what were they called…?

Gaza and Helmand expose the appalling double standards of the international community

19/02/2010 / / 0 Comments

During and after Operation Cast Lead the Israel Defence Force (IDF) was vilified for ‘war crimes’ and the notorious Goldstone Report which concluded that Israel had a deliberate policy to kill civilians and destroy property has become a major vehicle for attacks on Israel.

Israel always maintained that in war mistakes are made but it was never its policy to target civilians. The IDF has conducted and continues to conduct its own investigations and has rebutted many of the specific accusations in the report.

As is the nature of attacks on Israel, the mud always sticks and anything ranging from truth to downright lies will pass as truth as long as it carries a negative image of the State of Israel with which its enemies can beat it.

Now there is an ironic echo of how Israel characterised its campaign in December 2008 to January 2009 and how NATO is conducting its ‘surge’, Operation Moshtarak, against the Taliban. There is an uncanny similarity in the language and also the situations that NATO has confronted.

Let’s draw one important distinction between Cast Lead and Moshtarak; Gaza is a heavily populated, built-up, narrow strip of land which is very difficult terrain in which to carry out a military campaign; Helmand is open country with relatively sparsely populated villages and towns.

Both Israel and NATO have stated that they have no argument with civilians. Israel went to extraordinary lengths to warn civilians of impending strikes by leafleting, mobile phone calls and even dropping special munitions on houses which sounded as if they were explosive devices but were only designed to warn those inside to get out.

NATO are fighting an extremist Islamist group who have repeatedly targeted NATO forces with IED’s; Hamas was rocketing Israeli civilians for several years sending over thousands of rockets into southern Israel.

No NATO country is directly threatened by the Taliban; Israel is not only directly threatened but Hamas have stated in their own charter that their goal is to destroy Israel and kill Jews.

Yet look at the different way the world’s press and especially the UN responds and reacts to operation Moshtarak:

the BBC reports :

Taliban militants are increasingly using civilians as “human shields” as they battle against a joint Afghan-Nato offensive, an Afghan general has said.

Gen Mohiudin Ghori said his soldiers had seen Taliban fighters placing women and children on the roofs of buildings and firing from behind them….

It is difficult for the Afghan army and Nato to storm Taliban-held areas because to do so may inflict heavy civilian casualties and there are still a lot of civilians in Marjah.

“Whenever they launch an attack, the Taliban take refuge in civilians’ homes.

Now isn’t that exactly what the IDF claimed Hamas were doing in Gaza and Goldstone found no evidence of this, or more specifically Fact-finding mission member Colonel Travers could find no evidence?

And then this in the same report:

US Marines fighting to take the Taliban haven of Marjah have had to call in air support as they come under heavy fire.

They have faced sustained machine-gun fire from fighters hiding in bunkers and in buildings including homes and mosques.

Now hang on, this is what the Israelis said Hamas were doing but not only did Hamas deny it but Goldstone again found little evidence and our friend Travers could find no evidence of mosques being used despite Israeli videos which conclusively proved the opposite and also an important independent witness Col. Tim Collins.

And then there was the incident where NATO said twelve civilians had been killed by a  missile that had malfunctioned only later to correct this by saying that the intended target was hit but thy didn’t realise civilians were in the building.

Gen Carter confirmed on Tuesday a missile that struck a house outside Marjah on Sunday killing 12 people, including six children, had hit its intended target.

Gen Carter said the rocket had not malfunctioned and the US system responsible for firing it was back in use. Officials say three Taliban, as well as civilians, were in the house but the Nato soldiers did not know the civilians were there.

Initial Nato reports said the missile had landed about 300m (984ft) off its intended target. Gen Carter blamed these “conflicting” reports on “the fog of war”.

Now I urge you to cast your mind back to Operation Cast Lead where Israel was saying  very similar things and the result was a UNHRC investigation, war crimes accusations and a threat that figures in the IDF and government would become international criminals – indeed some have already decided this is the case.

So where are the calls from the UNHCR now? How soon will Judge Goldstone regather is little band of men and women and go straight to the Taliban and ask then if they committed any war crimes (answer will be ‘No’) and give evidence of the many crimes of NATO. Will he then come up with a 500 page report recommending senior NATO commanders and politicians in NATO countries be taken to The Hague on charges of war crimes? Will Brown and Miliband, Obama and Clinton, Sarkozy and the rest be hauled before a tribunal? Will the US, UK and other NATO countries become international pariahs? And look at the difference: they were fighting far from home an enemy they claim is a threat to their national security. Did any UN body ever dispute this? Israel was fighting an enemy on its doorstep that was killing its civilians and targeting them on a daily basis for years and years before it took any action.

Now I know what you are thinking: in Gaza hundreds of civilians were killed; what about white phosphorus, white flags etc. Now just compare the terrains in Gaza and Afghanistan as I have already pointed out.

Israel has admitted mistakes; it may be that its interpretation of international law in respect of some of its actions differs from others; it may be that some of its soldiers acted disgracefully writing graffiti and trashing property. They should be disciplined. Are these war crimes? If so NATO is certainly guilty. And what about the Iraqi who was beaten up by British soldiers and died of his injuries? Is that not a war crime? Where is the UN on that? Where is the UN on Abu Ghraib? Where is the UN on Guantanamo Bay? Will the UN regard the Taliban as a legitimate military in the same way Goldstone and the UN regard Hamas?

What’s the difference?

I’ll tell you in case you didn’t already guess: Israel. Always Israel. They are not considered to be capable of regulating or examining their own conduct like the US or the UK or any European country or any great power such as China or Russia. Where are the resolutions on Chechnya? South Ossetia? Where Tibet?

The UN acts like a bully; pushing around small countries, especially Israel is fine but the big boys are exempt.

The UN is no longer fit for purpose because it is run supposedly along democratic lines but is numerically dominated by countries which are not. This same bunch of tyrants and dictators have a natural antipathy to Israel, not least that most of them are Muslim states. This means that whenever Israel tries to defend itself it will always be vilified and demonized. America can kill hundreds of thousands of Muslims. Sunnis can kill tens of thousands of Shia and vice versa. They can attack the others’ holy shrines and you just hear the odd ‘tut tut’. All Hamas have to do is show a dead baby and the entire world is calling for Israel’s destruction.

Isn’t that called anti-Semitism? Used to be. Doesn’t get Israel off the hook for real crimes or human rights violations but if there is never any differentiation or fairness with regard Israel’s actions then any genuine criticism which every country should be subject to, will be dismissed as vilification. If genuine criminals like Mugabe or Bashir are not pursued with the same vigour as legitimate Israeli politicians, if George W Bush and Tony Blair aren’t guilty but Tzipi Livni is then where is the justice? Think  extraordinary rendition. Think torture. So why is Israel always the bogeyman?

Israel exposes UN Human Rights Council’s bias

15/02/2010 / / 1 Comment

Ambassador Leshno-Yaar (Archive UN Photo/Jean-Marc Ferre)Today, Israeli Ambassador to the UN, Mr Leshno-Yaar, explained to the UNHRC who the real criminals were and how it is failing in its duty towards countries where the built-in bias against Israel and for Islamic countries is a total disgrace and discredits the UNHRC and by association, the UN itself.

One can only imagine the glee with which the statement was delivered. You can find it here.

But it is so good I cannot resist reprinting the whole thing.

Statement by H.E. Aharon Leshno Yaar
Permanent Representative of Israel
Statement on the 7th Session
Universal Periodic Review on the Islamic Republic of Iran
Human Rights Council

Mr. President,

Iran’s wide-scale and escalating attacks on its own citizens is the type of matter that this body was designed to address.  As documented most recently by UN General Assembly Resolution 64/176, of 18 December 2009, Iranians are prevented from realizing their most basic human rights and freedoms.  Women, minorities – Arabs, Azeris, Baha’ais, Christians, Sunni Muslims, Jews and their defenders — are all discriminated against.  There is no freedom of expression, freedom of assembly, freedom of religion. This is not a matter of regional politics or looking for another opportunity to remind all of us of the dangers that Iran’s leaders seek to bring upon its neighbors. Instead, today’s meeting in Geneva is about the threats that Iran’s rulers make, day after day, upon their own people.

The work of this Council on the human rights situations in Iran needs to go far beyond today’s periodic review.

The State of Israel recommends to the Islamic Republic of Iran:

1. End incitement to hatred, including statements that show contempt for General Assembly Resolution 60/7 (2005) and 61/255 (2007), on Holocaust remembrance and Holocaust denial, respectively;

2. Cease all actions as a third state proxy and refrain from financing, organizing, training, supplying, and equipping non-state actors committing acts in violation of international law;

3. Commute all death sentences, in particular all executions of political prisoners, and abolish, in practice, public executions by hanging and stoning;

4. Comply with its obligations under article 37 of the CRC and article 6 of the ICCPR and prohibit executions of persons who at the time of their offence were under the age of 18;

5. Eradicate in national legislation, and in practice, torture or other cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment;

6. Repeal or amend all discriminatory provisions against women and girls in national legislation; and,

7. Eliminate, in law and in practice, all forms of discrimination against persons belonging to religious, ethnic, linguistic or other minorities, and also LGBT.

Thank you.

In other words: you are a bunch of cowardly, double-standard peddling, biased, self-righteous bigots, unworthy of the exalted name you give yourself. The UNHRC is really the UNCDI: the United Nations Council for the Destruction of Israel.

Goldstone Travers-ty

12/02/2010 / / 1 Comment

The Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs has recently released information which casts serious doubt on the bona fides of one of the members of the Fact Finding Mission led by Judge Goldstone and which led to the production of the Report which accused Israel of directly targeting civilians and deliberately destroying civil infrastructures contrary to the rules of war.

The member in question is Colonel (ret.) Desmond Travers. As the JCPA tells us:

Travers joined the Irish Defense Forces in 1961 and retired after forty years. As the only former officer who belonged to Justice Richard Goldstone’s team, he was the senior figure responsible for the military analysis that provided the basis for condemning Israel for war crimes.

The JCPA report slams Travers’s methodology and accuses him of bias.

During the Mission’s collection of testimonies from Palestinian psychologists in the Gaza Strip, Travers asked them straight out to explain how Israeli soldiers could kill Palestinian children in front of their parents. In an interview with Middle East Monitor, on February 2, 2010, he asserted that in the past Israeli soldiers had “taken out and deliberately shot” Irish peacekeeping forces in Southern Lebanon. Both of these statements by Travers are completely false. It should be stressed that one of the most vicious and unsubstantiated conclusions in the Goldstone Report is the suggestion that Israel deliberately killed Palestinian civilians.

This is rather like the ‘when did you start beating your wife’ question which bases the question on an assumption that assumes the guilt of the defendant.

When he was asked about Hamas intimidation that affected the Mission’s inquiries, he replied that that there was “none whatsoever.” Yet the Goldstone Report itself noted in Paragraph 440 that those interviewed in Gaza appeared reluctant to speak about the presence of Palestinian armed groups because of a “fear of reprisals.” He rejects the notion that Hamas shielded its forces in the civilian population and does not accept the idea that Israel faced asymmetric warfare.

Only a craven idiot could come to the conclusion there was no Hamas intimidation or that civilians were not used as human shields or that the warfare was not asymmetric. A craven idiot or someone so biased that his place in the mission not acceptable.

The report continues:

Travers comes up with a story that the IDF had unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV’s) that could obtain a “thermal signature” on a Gaza house and detect that there were large numbers of people inside. Incredibly, he then suggests that with this information that certain houses were “packed with people,” the Israeli military would then deliberately order a missile strike on these populated homes. The primary technical problem with his theory is that Israel does not have UAV’s that can see though houses and pick up a thermal signature. More importantly, Israel used UAV’s to monitor that Palestinian civilians left houses that had received multiple warnings, precisely because Israel sought to minimize civilian casualties, a fact that Travers could not fathom, because of his own clear biases.

The case against Travers appears to be growing. The entire JCPA report is well worth a read. It highlights inaccuracies in data and lack of professional conduct.

The clincher :

In an interview with Harpers, published on October 29, 2009, Travers makes a sweeping generalization: “We found no evidence that mosques were used to store munitions.” He then dismissed those who suggested that was the case by saying: “Those charges reflect Western perceptions in some quarters that Islam is a violent religion.” How many mosques did Travers investigate? He admits that the Mission only checked two mosques.

Of course, Israel produced photographic proof that large amounts of weapons were stored in mosques, like the Zaytun Mosque. In a subsequent interview, Travers rejected the Israeli proof: “I do not believe the photographs.”  He described the photographs as “spurious.” Travers appears to be bothered by proof that contradicts the conclusions he reaches on the basis of a very limited investigation. In early 2010, Colonel Tim Collins, a British veteran of the Iraq War, visited Gaza for BBC Newsnight (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/newsnight/ 8470100 .stm, 20 January 2010) and inspected the ruins of a mosque that Israel had destroyed because it had been a weapons depot. He found that there was evidence of secondary explosions cause by explosives stored in the mosque cellar. Travers clearly did not make the effort that Collins made.

And now the punchline:

Travers most recent interview also had a disturbing additional element. When addressing the role of British officers in defending Israel’s claims, Travers suddenly adds: “Britain’s foreign policy interests in the Middle East seem to be influenced strongly by Jewish lobbyists.

So the UN chose someone who believes the Jewish lobby conspiracy theory and that a cabal of Jews is directing UK foreign policy in the same way that Channel 4 came to a similar conclusion with no evidence whatsoever.

The UN Human Rights Commission chose their four mission members very well because the UNHRC is front-loaded with countries that seek to demonise and delegitimise Israel and then to cover their tracks by choosing ostensibly impeccable mission members to do a hatchet job on Israel. When the names were first put forward Israel could see that the mission would be biased and its conclusions were foregone. But now the document is out there to add to the litany of lies, half-truths, prejudice and propaganda that passes for justified criticism of Israel.

Israeli politicians denied freedom of speech

12/02/2010 / / 1 Comment

Two recent incidents, one at Oxford University and one at the University of California, Irvine demonstrate a trend amongst pro-Palestinian/anti-Israel activists to silence the voice of Israel on University campuses.

In the UK a recent case sought to issue an arrest warrant for war crimes against Tzipi Livni, Foreign Minister of Israel during Operation Cast Lead, in expectation of her visiting the UK. The visit never materialised and the Israeli government issued a strong condemnation of the law which allows such warrants to be issued. The UK government then gave Israel assurances that the law would be changed (which it hasn’t) and that it would ensure Israeli politicians could come to the UK without fear of arrest.

Whilst a lot of Human Rights people  and Muslim organisations became agitated that the UK government was interfering in the judiciary to provide cover for ‘war criminals’, it was revealed that Hamas was behind the warrants

Hamas admitted to masterminding the campaign to pursue war crimes cases against Israeli politicians and military officials in Britain and other European countries.

The group, considered to be a terrorist organization by the United Kingdom and the European Union, says it has been working with lawyers to get the Israelis charged with war crimes in connection with Israel’s Operation Cast Lead.

This fact doesn’t seem to bother the anti-Israel, pro-Human Rights interests. It’s rather like Hitler trying to get Churchill prosecuted at Nuremburg for bombing Dresden.

But this is just one way of trying to silence Israeli politicians.

Meanwhile back at the Uni’s.

At the University of California, Irvine, Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren was prevented from completing his address about progress in the Middle East. Having been invited by the Jewish Federation of Orange County the event was open to all students. A number of students, many clearly Muslim, stood up one after another to interrupt in a co-ordinated and very effective, and it should be said, peaceable demonstration. Each was escorted out of the building but Oren eventually gave up the losing battle.  Oren was accused, inter alia, of being a killer. The students were not available to comment on Hamas’s or Fatah’s track record.

Now this does bring up an interesting problem for democracies and Free Speech; lets say this was David Irving or Robert Mugabe. Would I object to attempts to stop him speaking? Ahmadinejad was heckled in New York, for example. Just because we don’t agree with a heckler or an orchestrated demonstration doesn’t mean that the demonstrators have no right to do so.  What are the limits for such demonstrations? When Ahmadinejad has been heckled in the West he has never been stopped; the protesters made their point and were arrested or made to leave.

In Irvine, according to Press TV, an Iranian-funded TV network, ‘at least eleven students have been arrested’ as a result of this protest for disturbing a public event. The students could also be disciplined and suspended or worse. Is it right that students should lose their University places and opportunity for education because of their political beliefs? Surely it’s for the law to decide if there was a misdemeanour. However objectionable I or other supporters of Israel feel their actions were, they were not violent, there were no anti-Semitic slogans.

The issue is: does everyone have a right to free speech and what are the limits of protest? Each country will have an answer to these questions. Iran has an answer and we know what that is. The irony is that these protestors prevented free speech from someone of a country where free speech is alive and kicking, but the countries these same protestors would, presumably, support, have no such freedoms. If you do not even want to hear what your opponent has to say and you want to stifle debate then it surely means that you have little confidence in your own arguments.

Debate is at the very heart of the Oxford Union.  This week Deputy Foreign Minister of Israel, Danny Ayalon, was invited to speak. What then took place went beyond protest.  As Ayalon began to speak various members of the audience began to shout at him. The whole sad story is related by his press office:

On Monday night, Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon was invited by the Oxford Union to speak at an event at the university. During the speech one student shouted extreme abuse at the Deputy Foreign Minister including Itbach Al-Yahud (Slaughter the Jews). The event was caught on camera and subsequently shown on Israeli television Channel Ten. The Deputy Foreign Minister is looking into the possibility of pressing charges against the student for what is tantamount to a call for genocide.

“This demonstrates our new policy on hatred and racism and we will have zero tolerance for anti-Semitism, something that should have happened a long time ago,” said Deputy Foreign Minister Ayalon.

Another protestor carrying a Palestinian flag started walking towards Ayalon before security intervened and he was ejected from the hall. Another student shouted at the Deputy Foreign Minister that “we will do to you what we did to Milosevic”. Other students shouted, both inside and outside the hall, “Palestine will be free, from the River to the Sea”, which by its meaning, calls for the destruction of the State of Israel. After the event several students attempted to physically assault the Deputy Foreign Minister but were prevented from doing so by security.

Speaking to the students, Ayalon was able to relate Israel’s point of view on many issues that many felt had rarely been heard in such a setting. Ayalon received applause at the end after taking extremely hostile and abusive questions and patiently dissecting and answering them one by one. After the event, several students approached the Deputy Foreign Minister and thanked him for giving a narrative that they felt they had never heard before.

Ayalon corrected many students’ assertions on history, international law and United Nations resolutions and told them that: “If I manage to convince you to go and learn the truth from the history books then this will have been a successful event.” During his speech, Ayalon called for historic reconciliation between all of the peoples in the Middle East.

It is interesting that some students would thank Ayalon for explaining a point of view they had not heard before. That says a lot about the way the Israeli point of view is being stifled and misrepresented in the UK media and the disgraceful demonstrators are part of that attempt to suppress Israel’s point of view and spit hatred.

How different from Irvine. In the UK any Israeli politician has to be subject to blatant anti-Semitism and calls for genocide of the Israelis (Jews only, of course) from those accusing them of the very crimes they wish to perpetrate themselves.

And now these accusations of war crimes are fuelled by the egregious Goldstone Report which is a badly flawed and thoroughly scurrilous document which over time will be dissected, rebutted and discredited. But as it is out there and carries what passes for the authority of the UN itself, it can now be used by the Israel delegitimisers to throw rocks at Israeli politicians and provide cover for the suppression of free speech and calls for genocide.

Ban Ki-moon and the credibility gap

05/02/2010 / / 1 Comment

The irredeemably flawed Goldstone Report, which was produced at the behest of UN Human Rights Council, came to the conclusion that both Israel and Hamas probably committed war crimes during Israel’s Operation Cast Lead in the Gaza Strip between December 2008 and January 2009.

Both Israel and Hamas were charged with responding to the allegations in the report and conducting their own investigations into it to be presented to the UN Security Council.

The very idea of asking an organisation such has Hamas (which not only brutally represses its own people and murders its political opponents, but is also intent on the genocide of the Jewish people and the destruction of Israel as is written into its own charter and its many public broadcasts), to present a response to the UN is as mind-boggling as it would be for the UN to ask the Taliban to present a report on its actions in Afghanistan.

Whereas Hamas boasts of its war crimes and comes up with a ludicrous response to the UN, Israel, at least, has spent thousands of hours, conducted hundreds of interviews, brought dozens of indictments against its own soldiers and is still in the process of producing a 1000 page response to the Goldstone report.

This is what Hamas has to say, as reported by Ha’aretz, and so condemns itself from its own mouth:

The Hamas report will be submitted to the UN later this week, said the official, Mohammed al-Ghoul. Its argument is that rockets fired from Gaza were meant to hit military targets, but because they are unguided, they hit civilians by mistake. (My emphasis)

Anyone with even a minimal smattering of law and logic can see not only the contradictions in this last statement but must also see that this lie is so patent and so crass that were Mr al-Ghoul (and what an appropriate name that is!) a wooden puppet his nose would stretch from Gaza City to al Quds!

IT IS A WAR CRIME TO FIRE MUNITIONS WHICH CANNOT BE GUIDED TOWARDS AREAS OF POPULATION. PERIOD.

And if they are unguided, how can they possibly be meant to hit military targets!? This is the organisation and these are the people who are being legitimised by the UN just by treating them on an equal footing with a member of the UN. This is moral equivalence of the most pernicious and degrading kind. But Ban says, according to the Jerusalem Post,

he was uncertain whether Israel or the Palestinians had met UN demands to undertake “credible” investigations into allegations that they deliberately targeted civilians during last year’s Gaza offensive….

He said he hoped the assembly’s resolution will, in fact, result in probes “that are independent, credible and in conformity with international standards.”

But, he added that “no determination can be made on the implementation of the resolution by the parties concerned.

Eh? He may be uncertain about Israel but he must surely be god-damned bloody positive that Hamas targeted civilians because, apart from the overwhelming evidence AND their ongoing operations (e.g. barrel bombs along Israel’s coastline this week), THEY ADMITTED IT AND BOAST ABOUT IT. What the hell does he mean ‘he’s uncertain’? He’ll be wanting an investigation into Copernican heliocentricity soon.

The Ha’aretz article quotes al Ghoul as saying:

Palestinian armed groups have repeatedly confirmed that they abide by international humanitarian law, through broadcasting in different media that they intended to hit military targets and to avoid targeting civilians,” the Hamas report stated, citing casualties from “incorrect (or imprecise) fire.

What planet, indeed, what specie are these people from? The only media broadcasts I know about are vicious, Jew-hating, genocidal, blood-libelling filth.

This is what Israel has done according to the Jerusalem Post:

Israel released a 46-page paper last Friday documenting the steps it had taken to investigate IDF actions during Operation Cast Lead, stressing that its military judicial system was independent and came under civilian review, and dismissing four of the 36 allegations of war crimes found in the Goldstone Report.

The document also revealed that disciplinary action had been taken against two top officers – a brigadier-general and a colonel – for permitting artillery fire near a UN compound in a neighborhood in Gaza City…

The IDF, meanwhile, is continuing preparation of an in-depth, point-by-point rebuttal of the Goldstone report, which is expected to number over 1,000 pages and be ready within a number of weeks.

A subtly different response to Hamas.

It is true that Israel neither co-operated with the Fact Finding Mission led by Goldstone nor does it appear to be intending to have an independent judicial enquiry. Ban appears to be saying that such an enquiry may not be necessary because he has not dismissed the Israeli army enquiry as being an inadequate response; all he says is that response is incomplete, which is self-evident since they have not yet delivered the 1000 page document. Hamas’s report is incomplete because it is a risible heap of bovine excrement and the Palestinian Authority which decided it should have a report to (it can’t let its rival Hamas have all the glory) only began at the end of January!

It’s not the credibility of Israel that’s is being highlighted here but the credibility of the UN itself and its ridiculous playing out of the farce of a ‘credible’ report from Hamas and giving them the respectability of playing out that farce as if they were a responsible national entity and not a bunch of murderous genocides intent on spreading their obnoxious, pathological hatred of Jews.

Ban ki-moon? Ban ki-rupt more likely.

Gaza – some truths

12/01/2010 / / 1 Comment

I have had a few comments lately to some posts about Gaza and the ‘blockade’ and I would like to thank those who have taken time to comment.

I find that most comments I receive are ‘agin’ what I have to say which is fine with me. It’s abuse and offensive language which is hard to take but I usually leave even those comments and edit out the swear words! Recent commentators often make fair points which require an answer.

I find it entirely understandable that those reading what I have recently written about Gaza  will want to point out to me the very regrettable situation that thousands of Gazans find themselves in as a result of Operation Cast Lead; many are homeless; many are traumatized by the loss of family members; life is not easy for them and they feel embattled, angry and isolated.

I do not enjoy these facts. I fervently wish it were otherwise. I wish Cast Lead had never happened even though I believe it was necessary. I regret the deaths and destruction. I do not blame relief and charitable organisations for wanting to help.

However, when many commentators use language to describe Israel which is deliberately designed to compare that country’s actions with the most egregious excesses of Nazi Germany then I have wonder why Israel is attacked with this deliberate linguistic weaponry by the media, by supporters of Hamas, by the Palestinians generally. These locutions then become common currency with which to abuse Israel, and by association, the Jewish people. I say ‘and by association the Jewish people’ because if you call Israelis Nazis or say they are behaving like Nazis then you are abusing me, not just Israelis.

Why can’t people criticise Israel without resorting to Nazi comparisons? This is particularly painful when it is Hamas and the Palestinian Authority who use the most obscene means to indoctrinate their people to hate Jews (not just Israeli Jews) by means of ‘education’, literature, television and hate speech. If anyone is behaving like Nazis, including the goal to annilhilate the Jewish people, then it is Hamas and Hezbollah and their supporters.

But back to Gaza. Israel is blamed for the ‘blockade’, usually without reference to the fact that the Rafah crossing is on a border between Egypt and Gaza and Egypt is also restricting what passes into Gaza. The ‘blockade’ is not just an Israeli one. If  Egypt wanted to open its border and allow in the materials that Israel is blocking, Israel would not be able to do much about it. Indeed, the tunnels under the border with Egypt have allowed anything to pass through: weapons, livestock, cars, machinery etc.

Now it is Egypt who are building a deep metal barrier to prevent this smuggling. Not Israel, but Egypt. Why? Why should a fellow Muslim country whose population is generally anti-Israel, pro Palestinian, seek to cut off this route and reinforce the ‘blockade’? The reason is that Hamas are smuggling. This is something that no country can support. But also, Hamas represent a direct threat to the stability of Egypt as they represent militant Islamism in its extreme form. Furthermore, Egypt has been working with Israel for mutual security reasons, to choke off the supply of weaponry and the means to build it (albeit, probably unsuccessfully).

So if Egypt supports Israel’s limiting materials to Gaza, then why are they not being pilloried in the same way as Israel? Why are they not being compared to Nazis? Why are the aid agencies not criticising them?

But as I have said before, the ‘blockade’ is to restrict mainly building materials and luxury goods. Israel is working with the UN on specific building projects to restore the Gazan infrastructure where it knows the materials will be put to proper use and not used to build a militarised Gaza Strip. Israel supplies electricity and gas, it allows in hundreds of truckloads of food and medicine every week, it treats thousands of Gazans in Israeli hospitals.

Israel evacuated the Gaza Strip completely by September 2005. It left behind it millions of dollars worth of equipment, greenhouses and other means for food production and to enhance the Gaza economy. Hamas chose to destroy it all; not an Israeli airstrike, but Hamas who put hatred of Israel before the welfare of their people and continue to do so.

When Israel left Gaza there was no blockade. Israel had done what the world wanted them to do: leave Gaza so that the Gazans could determine their own future. They were not asked to love the Israelis but they were given an opportunity to build a society. Instead Hamas and others chose to perceive the Israeli evacuation not as a unilateral move towards peace, but as a weakness. They then began to bombard Southern Israel with thousands of rockets. And what was the world’s response? What do you expect? These people are fighting for their freedom, the Right of Return and so on.

Hamas was outlawed by the EU but the world was content to see them fire their rockets. Little sympathy for Israelis whose lives were disrupted, whose homes could be destroyed, whose children were deliberately targeted at school times. No-one called this a war crime. No-one called this ‘collective punishment’. Why? Because the NGO’s, the UN and the likes of George Galloway had already decided that Israel is illegitimate and, therefore, anything it does is a crime and anything its enemies do, however extreme, is understandable.

No, Israel is not perfect. Yes, aid organisations are entitled to bring pressure on Israel to do more – that is what they are there for, but they are not there to make political mischief and misrepresent the truth.

Let me posit a scenario: 1945 – the Allies have a German army cornered in Northern Germany. The allies stop everything coming in and out. EVERYTHING. The ‘innocent’ Germans who allowed Hitler to take power and supported him since 1933 are starving. You are General Eisenhower. What would your response be to the NGO’s of today who are telling you that you are collectively punishing the Germans, including those who didn’t vote for Hitler, including those who oppose him in the underground movements? So don’t speak to me of ‘collective punishment’ in Gaza or tell me that they didn’t all support Hamas.

If there is a blockade of Gaza it is partial. If Israel is to blame, so is Egypt, but above all, Hamas. Excise Hamas and Gaza would be a very different place. If the West Bank can see unprecedented economic growth, why not Gaza?

Stop the hypocrisy.

Gaza blockade? What blockade?

24/12/2009 / / 6 Comments

The BBC has reported that aid agencies, especially Oxfam, have ‘strongly criticised the international community’ for not bringing pressure on Israel to end Israel’s ‘blockade’ of Gaza.

This notion that there is a ‘blockade’ is typical of the loose, inaccurate and often deliberately misleading use of language which is often evident where Israel is concerned. It is, essentially, a lie; and a lie intended to damage and demonise Israel. It is language which totally ignores the fact of Hamas and its genocidal hatred of Israel. It is language which denies the reality of Hamas’s ongoing war against Israel and the Jewish people; not a war to create a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza, but a war to destroy Israel utterly.

In a war, much of which is fought on the international stage, loose use of language is a tool of that aggression: ‘blockade, ghetto’, ‘genocide’, ‘war crime’ and ‘collective punishment’ are all emotive terms which are associated with evil regimes, especially the Nazis, and have precise meaning. When they are bandied about by ‘aid agencies’ such as Oxfam, that agency reveals itself as biased because it uses the language of hate.

‘Blockade’ : this is how my Concise Oxford Dictionary defines it:

Shutting-up, total or on land or sea side, of a place by hostile forces in order to starve it into surrender or prevent egress and ingress

(my emphasis)

Yet Oxfam knows full well that there is an endless stream of food into Gaza. No-one is starving in Gaza and there is no intention by the Israelis to cause starvation. Ingress and egress are restricted and difficult but shouldn’t they be given the history of suicide attacks emanating from Gaza in the past and the ongoing hostilities?

But the BBC goes along with this use of language: “Israel imposed a tightened blockade after the Islamist Hamas movement seized power two-and-a-half years ago”. No, it’s not a blockade, it is a restriction on certain goods and materials which can be used against Israel.

What Oxfam is saying is that Israel should no longer prevent any goods coming into Gaza for the purpose of building even though these materials have been used in the past not to rebuild but to make weaponry.

Israel is still providing food, medicine, and electricity into Gaza. This does not sound like a ‘blockade’ to me.

The situation in Gaza is not good, but then its government is still in a state of belligerence with Israel. A government its people voted to power. And this leads to the second and even worse use of loose language; Oxfam accuses Israel of ‘collective punishment’, a term associated with the indiscriminate punishment of a civilian population for the actions of its army or combatants.

Let’s look at the legal definition.

The term ‘collective punishment’ derives from the 1949 Geneva Convention.

By collective punishment, the drafters of the Geneva Conventions had in mind the reprisal killings of World Wars I and World War II. In the First World War, Germans executed Belgian villagers in mass retribution for resistance activity. In World War II, Nazis carried out a form of collective punishment to suppress resistance. Entire villages or towns or districts were held responsible for any resistance activity that took place there. The conventions, to counter this, reiterated the principle of individual responsibility. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) Commentary to the conventions states that parties to a conflict often would resort to “intimidatory measures to terrorize the population” in hopes of preventing hostile acts, but such practices “strike at guilty and innocent alike. They are opposed to all principles based on humanity and justice.”

I admit to using a Wikipedia article for this description.

If the UNWRA or other international bodies could guarantee that certain materials entering the Gaza strip would not fall into the hands of Hamas to be used as weapons against Israel, then Israel would relax the sanctions. In fact, this is already taking place, for example, this article in Ha’aretz on 29th July 2009 which informs us that for the first time since Operation Cast Lead:

Israel plans to transfer several hundred tons of cement and other construction materials, including metal pipes, into the Gaza Strip to facilitate reconstruction…

The transfer of materials is part of the implementation of a United Nations plan devised by UN envoy to the Middle East, Robert Serry, who has submitted to Israel a list of 10 UN-sponsored construction projects in Gaza.

Amos Gilad, the coordinator of Israeli activity in the Gaza Strip, authorized the UN construction plan several weeks ago. The cement will be transferred for use solely in the approved projects and will not be handed over to Hamas, the rulers of the Gaza Strip.

Among the construction projects are the reconstruction of Gaza’s largest flour mill and the refurbishing of a sewage treatment plant.

So ‘collective punishment’? ‘Collective inconvenience’, perhaps. How would you go about limiting the damage a neighbour could inflict on you? Hamas is embedded within the fabric of Gaza. how can you limit Hamas without there being  a price to pay for the population; a population which supported and voted in Hamas. How much sympathy did the world have for the German people in the 1940’s because they voted in and supported the policies of the Nazis? If I recall Britain and the United States flattened Dresden deliberately to kill and intimidate – a war crime by 1949.

It is perfectly acceptable for Oxfam  and anyone else to criticise Israel for specifics where it could do more without risking its own population, but to colour the argument with blanket terms that only demonise and not to mention the actual truth on the ground is biased. If you set out with an agenda then you will easily find hardship in Gaza – they just fought a war.  And what about Egypt which is currently building a deep, metal barrier at Rafah. The aid agencies have nothing to say about the restrictions the Egyptians place on Gaza even though they control one third of the border.

The BBC are as inaccurate as ever. In the cited article there is a map of the crossing points into Gaza and below it three links with the text:

That word ‘blockade’ and very negative connotations in these headlines. But of the three articles two are from November 2008, over a year ago, and the third from June 2009.

But let me just report what the EU’s Middle East envoy said in the European parliament on November 24th 2009:

  • There is no shortage of equipment or cement for construction in Gaza, and Hamas is controlling the resources.
  • Hamas dismissed employees of the systems and appointed its own people, and that is the reason that there is no construction in Gaza.
  • The prevailing economy in Gaza is not an official economy but rather an economy of tunnels; there are no shortages in Gaza, but there is a problem of unemployment, primarily for civilians who are not close to Hamas and have no buying power.

(my emphasis)

This from the EU!

We don’t hear this from Oxfam! who just fall for the political propaganda handed to them by Hamas. They see but they do not investigate. They draw conclusion based on their own prejudices.

Gaza like the Warsaw Ghetto?

08/12/2009 / / 3 Comments

So many times we hear ‘anti-Zionists’ comparing Gaza to the Warsaw Ghetto.

This comparison is not based on any historical accuracy or any understanding of the true horrors of the Warsaw ghetto or even conditions in Gaza, it is designed to defame Israel. If repeated often enough, it will be believed.

Let’s assume that you, dear reader, have a full knowledge of the history and purpose of the Warsaw Ghetto and the denouement leading to its liquidation and total destruction.

Now look at this press release from the Israeli Minister of Defense concerning an outbreak of Swine flu in the Gaza strip.

Israel has already transferred 10,000 doses of vaccine and continues to monitor the situation

In light of recent cases of swine flue in the Gaza Strip, the Coordinator for Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) and the Gaza District Coordination and Liaison Office (DCL) are working with the Palestinian Civil Committee in Gaza (associated with the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority) to prevent further cases.

During the course of day, the passage of a sick person was facilitated and, upon examination, the individual’s illness was found to be swine flu.  Similarly, four other ill persons who also showed signs of swine flu also crossed.

The Gaza DCL is in continuous contact with health officials from the Palestinian Civil Committee in Gaza and as such is able to create up-to-date situation assessments regarding swine flue.  Meetings are held with high frequency and in accordance with reports from Gaza.

As of now, approximately 10,000 doses of vaccine against swine flu have been transferred to the Gaza Strip via Israel, which remains ready to receive further requests.

Since the beginning of 2009, approximately 8,000 Gazan patients and their loved ones have entered Israel for medical reasons.

Gaza DCL Commander Col. Moshe Levi said: “The Gaza DCL is making great efforts on all levels and through all channels to assist the non-combatant Palestinian population from the Gaza Strip, with an emphasis on the field of health.  This is part of our overall humanitarian effort vis-à-vis the Gaza Strip.”

I hope you noticed the similarity between Israel and Nazi Germany here?

“8000 Gazan(s).. AND their loved ones have entered Israel for medical reasons.” (my emphasis). How many sick Jews were allowed to leave the Warsaw Ghetto to travel to Polish or German hospitals? Answer. Zero.

How many vaccines against typhus and other diseases rampant in the ghetto were sent in by the Germans? Zero.

Gaza may not be the French Riviera but it’s certainly no Warsaw Ghetto either and to say so is a lie.

Unlike the Jews in Warsaw who were rounded up, ghettoised and had evil visited upon them, Gazans, who voted for Hamas and supported their continuous bombardment of Southern Israel might consider why Cast Lead was visited upon THEM. They might also consider which of the protagonists is acting like Nazis.

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