Ray Cook - As I See It

Israel, Zionism and the Media

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When friends fall out – Israel, UK and the Dubai killing

24/03/2010 / / 2 Comments

You know the story by now? Hamas terrorist arms dealer found dead in a Dubai hotel room. A few days later Dubai declares that more than 20 people with forged UK and other national passports (using names of passport holders living in Israel) were a hit squad and that Mossad, the Israeli secret service, is behind it – or so everyone assumes.

UK government summons the Israeli ambassador. Two months later UK Foreign Secretary David Miliband announces that the top Mossad man in London has been asked to leave. He gives a severe dressing down to Israel and issues  a warning to UK citizens travelling to Israel that they should look after their passports and be wary of identity theft.

Israel supporters in the press here and many Israeli newspapers have stated that this is an overreaction, that the UK government is now openly hostile to Israel and this is some sort of conspiracy with the United States to destabilise the Netanyahu government. They tell us how hypocritical the UK is, some Israeli members of the Knesset have even referred to UK politicians as dogs who are pandering to an anti-semitic agenda.

I too am a strong supporter of Israel but I don’t go along with this paranoia. I also happen to be a British Jew but I am determined that when Israel is wrong I should say so; to do otherwise is dishonest.

No-one has owned up to the killing of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh. So why did Miliband say he has ‘compelling’ intelligence that it was Mossad? Do these who are so keen to shout foul really think that a British Foreign Secretary would make such a statement if he had not be shown evidence by MI6? Israel may even have ‘fessed up’.

Let’s look at the real issue the UK has with Israel here: several UK nationals have been recklessly put at risk by the action of Mossad (let’s assume this is now fact). These are individuals who have put their trust in the State of Israel. Some are Jews who have settled or wish to settle there, some are not, apparently.  And their recompense for this trust is to risk becoming international criminals.  They were not asked if they want to contribute to the assassination of a Hamas arms dealer, they were abused by the state and Israel was found out.

Now I know what you are going to say: countries do it all the time and the UK is hypocritical. No matter. If you are found out you pay the consequences. I do not see that the UK could do otherwise. It cannot be seen as an honest broker in the Middle East if it gives Israel a free pass.

Many commentators say that this is a blow to the War on Terror, and why should anyone cry over the elimination of a terrorist murderer? Not the point. It’s the method, the abuse of British sovereignty by forging its passports and getting caught doing so that is the issue. Let’s just turn it around. If the British had forged Israeli passports in their war on the IRA and used them to assassinate an IRA arms dealer and had been found out, would Israel not be equally aggrieved? Would the UK not have considerable criticism heaped on them from Israel?

If supporters of Israel see this as part of some plot, some evidence that the UK is about to abandon Israel and stand shoulder to shoulder with the US as they throw Israel to the wolves, they are wrong.

What we are seeing is a new approach to the Middle East, an approach in which see the resolution of the problem only being possible if the US and its allies can demonstrate that Israel does not get a free pass.

This is the wrong approach because the real problem is that for 60 years and more the Palestinians have not accepted the right of Israel and the Jewish people to self-determination in their ancestral homeland. That’s the real problem and everything stems from that fact.

It is that which hardens Israeli policies, it is that which leads to conflict.

Gaza, the blockade and Egypt. Did I miss something?

22/03/2010 / / 0 Comments

Er.. Did I miss something with all the hoo-ha from the UN and Quartet urging Israel to open all the Gaza crossings, to ease its restrictions and allow EVERYTHING in? This will end the smuggling culture, says Ban Ki Moon, Secretary General of the UN. This will allow economic recovery and undercut extremism.

Apart from the naivety of this belief, why didn’t he go to Cairo and ask them to open up the Rafah crossing? Israel has no control of that crossing. Why does the Quartet not ask Cairo to ease restrictions? If you remember, Egypt is actually building a metal barrier across the entire border with Gaza. No-one is condemning this. No-one mentions it.

Just thought I’d mention that.

Ging, Ging. Gone Native

19/03/2010 / / 0 Comments

As EU foreign policy chief, Baroness Ashton, arrived in Gaza to view the situation and make some pointless noise to demonstrate she was doing something,  the head of UNRWA, John Ging was making outrageous claims about Israel’s so-called ‘blockade’.

UNWRA is the UN Relief Agency which for 60 years has been dedicated ONLY to Palestinian refugees and the the 3 or 4 generations of their descendants since 1948. As such, it is totally separate from the UN’s main refugee organisation and is the only UN body set up to deal with a single issue.

It just so happens that most of UNWRA’s workers in Gaza are Palestinians and it has been shown, by various reports, and by its own admission, that some, if not many, of these workers are members of Hamas or other terrorist groups.

During Operation Cast Lead John Ging became world famous for his interviews including a notorious one where he claimed that the Israelis had killed dozens of people in a school when he later had to admit that it was about 7 (who were ‘militants’) outside the school.

As a member of the UN, Ging should be politically neutral. If he chooses to criticise Israel he should be careful about his facts and not do the propaganda job of militants and murderers and Israel bashers.

This is what he had to say yesterday, as reported by the BBC:

We have to have action. A thousand days and a thousand nights of a medieval siege is far too much. It’s a shame – it’s a disgrace

What! A medieval siege? Does this man know what a medieval siege was? A medieval siege stopped ANYTHING getting in to a city with the aim of starving its population. ‘Blockade’ is a term used which is itself a lie, but ‘siege’ is beyond acceptable. Where is the furore about this man’s clear alignment with the narrative of terrorists. Ging appears to have gone native.

On Tuesday day this is what was reported by the IDF (Israel Defense Forces) on their website:

13,144 tons of humanitarian aid crossed into the Gaza Strip last week

In addition to that, 1,215,602 liters of diesel fuel and 883 tons of cooking gas entered the Gaza Strip; 470 medical patients and accompanying individual were transferred to Israel and the Judea and Samaria region to receive medical treatment

Over the last week, a total of 550 truckloads, consisting of 13,144 tons of humanitarian aid, were transferred into the Gaza Strip from Israel via the various border crossings. 1,215,602 liters of diesel fuel and 883 tons of cooking gas also crossed into Gaza. Likewise, nine truckloads of carnations were exported from the Gaza Strip to Europe.

In addition to that, 470 medical patients and accompanying individuals from the Gaza Strip crossed into Israel and the Judea and Samaria region for medical treatment, and 93 Gazans entered Israel for other various reasons. 216 staff members of international organizations crossed into the Gaza Strip, and 279 crossed from the Gaza Strip into Israel.

Essential humanitarian food products, wheat and flour, meat, chicken, fish, legumes and other agricultural produce as well as animal feed, hygiene products and medical supplies were among the goods that crossed into Gaza this past week.

Now, you may not like Israel’s policy of preventing those who want to destroy it from having the means to do so, but ‘medieval siege’ is deliberately emotive language and Ging should be sacked. In fact UNWRA should long ago have been disbanded as it is now just a propaganda weapon for Hamas. In fact, Gaza receives more aid than Haiti. See The Gaza Siege myth article in ynetnews which shows the totally unbalanced approach the UN and, thus, the gullible or disingenuous world treats Israel and its relationship with its would-be murderers.

Living in Gaza is not great, but no-one is starving, hundreds of Gazans receive medical treatment in Israel and Israel co-operates with UN agencies to rebuild Gaza without Hamas or Islamic Jihad getting hold of materials with which to rebuild their terror infrastructure.

Why did Ging not condemn the rocket attack yesterday which killed a Thai worker? Why did the BBC use Ging’s locution and call it ‘the Israeli siege’? Why is everyone so purblind to the fact that Egypt has a border with Gaza and Egypt is completing a metal barrier along its entire length to shut down the smuggling tunnels which are supposed to be a ‘lifeline’ to the ‘besieged’ of Gaza when they are a death line administered from Tehran.

The only thing medieval about Gaza is the religious fanaticism of Hamas et alia and their medieval blood lust which openly declares its desire to exterminate Jews, not Israelis but Jews wherever they can be found. Why does Ging not condemn that as medieval?

Ging has become a tool of Hamas and therefore the UN is a tool of Hamas.

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…?

Biden and Bibi love-in scuppered by Israeli incompetence

11/03/2010 / / 0 Comments

Oh dear, oh dear. Oy va avoy!

Here is that nice vice-President Joe Biden arriving in Israel to try to get the annual peace talk talks about peace talk talks going again and what happens? His best pals embarrass him and themselves because Israeli politics seems incapable, sometimes, of understanding what ‘joined-up’ means.

You should probably know that since President Obama decided that the way to overcome six decades of Palestinian rejectionism was to get tough with Israel, his target for this toughness has been ‘settlements’. Stop! he says, it’s the settlements that are the reason why Palestinians won’t talk or talk about talks. Even though a settlement freeze was not a prerequisite of the many previous attempts to establish a Palestinian state (because, let’s face it, that’s what it’s really about), suddenly, with this brilliant insight, this veritable epiphany, Mr Obama gave the Palestinians, and the world’s press (including some in Israel) an excuse a) to reject and b) beat Israel over the head.

Along comes Bibi and what does he do? A 10 month moratorium on further settlement construction EXCEPT (and this is a big ‘except’) in Jerusalem (East that is as no-one cares about West). This doesn’t stop the Israelis from finding some excuses, legal or otherwise, of doing some further construction in existing ‘settlements’.

This moratorium was clearly designed as a sop to the Americans, a supplication to show good faith. It was of course (and understandably) pooh-poohed by Mahmoud Abbas, Palestinian President.

After much background negotiating the Palestinians at last agreed to ‘indirect’ peace talks. This means they won’t sit with the Israelis but act through an (American) intermediary. Abbas somewhat negatively said that he doubted the talks would achieve anything and should be limited to four months. I won’t discuss at this time the reasons why I don’t think Abbas wants  a deal but at least he is giving the impression that he will talk to someone who will act as a carrier-pigeon to the Israelis who will then indulge in something that is called ‘shuttle diplomacy’ which has been put forward as an Olympic sport for 2016.

So what happens when Joe Biden arrives to meet his old friend Bibi? Here’s a flavour of the shmooze that went on (get the bucket ready now):

Prime Minister Netanyahu: Vice President Biden, Joe, welcome to Israel and welcome to Jerusalem.  We’ve been personal friends for almost three decades.  Can you believe it’s been that long?

Vice President Biden: No, you’re getting older, Bibi.  I don’t know…

It get’s worse, stay with me.

Prime Minister Netanyahu: And you remain younger all the time.  And in all that time you’ve been a real friend to me and a real friend to Israel and to the Jewish people and you’ve come to Israel many times since you first came here on the eve of the Yom Kippur War.  But now you’re coming as the Vice President of the United States of America and this is deeply appreciated and for me deeply moving.
….

A tad patronizing, maybe?

I also appreciate the Administration’s effort to advance peace in the region.  I know that this has been difficult and has required a great deal of patience, but I’m pleased that these efforts are beginning to bear fruit and we have to be persistent and purposeful in making sure that we get to those direct negotiations that will enable us to resolve this conflict.

I look forward to working with President Obama, and with you and your entire Administration to forge an historic peace agreement in which the permanence and legitimacy of the Jewish State of Israel is recognized by our Palestinian neighbors and in which Israel’s security is guaranteed for generations to come.

….

I think we heard this before – Nixon, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush….

Vice President Biden: Thank you very much.  Mr. Prime Minister, it’s a pleasure to be back.  It’s been too long between visits here and it is true that you and I have been friends a long, long time and a matter of fact, when each of us were in the minority, occasionally I’d get a phone call at home and I’d call you as well to get a sense of what’s going on.  Our friendship is real, but what’s even deeper is the relationship between the United States and Israel.

….  The relationship between Israel and the United States has been and will continue to be a centerpiece – a centerpiece of American policy and it’s been that way since Israel’s founding in 1948.

….  Bibi, you heard me say before, progress occurs in the Middle East when everyone knows there’s simply no space between the United States and Israel.  There is no space between the United States and Israel when it comes to Israel’s security

….

Well I’m glad he qualified the ‘no space’ thing because there’s plenty of space from where I’m standing.

President Obama and I strongly believe that the best long-term guarantee for Israel’s security is a comprehensive Middle East peace with the Palestinians, with the Syrians, with Lebanon, and leading eventually to full and normalized relationships with the entire Arab world.  It’s overwhelming in the interest of Israel, but it’s also overwhelming interest to the Arab world and it’s in our interest as well.

This is what my younger son calls ‘stating the bleedin’ obvious’.

And so Mr. Prime Minister, toward that end, I’m very pleased that you and the Palestinian leadership have agreed to launch indirect talks.

This is called ‘bigging up’ in today’s parlance.

We hope that these talks will lead and they must lead eventually to negotiations and direct discussions between the parties.

Well, ‘hope’ is one of Obama’s key words and a word that almost defines Israel.

The goal is obviously to resolve the final status issues to achieve a two-state solution with Israel and a Palestine living side by side in peace and security.

Something which Bibi is not convincingly signed up to, the two-state solution, that is. Palestinians believe in a one-state solution – Palestine. To think otherwise is dangerous but Israel and the US and the world like to pretend that Abbas and co. are not like Hamas; they want a two-state solution. Yes, but only as a first step to a one-state solution.

An historic peace is going to require both parties to make some historically bold commitments.

This means Israel will have to make all the concessions and the Palestinians will reject them as not going far enough. This will be after months of tough negotiations with everyone getting very excited about a ‘peace deal’ only to end in rejection and probably more violence and Israel blamed for not agreeing to destroy itself. Been there before I believe.

You have done it before and I’m confident for real peace you would do it again.

See what I mean?

Over the last year, Mr. Prime Minister, you have taken significant steps, including the moratorium that has limited new settlement construction activity and you have significantly increased freedom of movement across the West Bank.

O-oh, he mentioned settlements – this was before the Israelis kicked him up the backside and then thumbed their nose at him.

You still got that bucket ready? Well here goes.

Prime Minister Netanyahu: I will say that agreements are dependent on the arrangements not on paper, but on the ground.  Here’s a piece of paper that reflects an arrangement on the ground.  We have planted a circle of trees in Jerusalem in memory of your mother; Catherine Eugenia Finnegan Biden because you have said many times that she was a source of immeasurable strength which I recognize in you, Joe.  We planted a tree to serve as a tribute, a circle of trees next to the leaders of the nations.  We have a forest of the leaders of the nations and right next to it are the trees that we have planted in memory of your mother as a tribute to her immeasurable strength and I want to offer it to you on your visit to Israel.

Vice President Biden: Well, thank you very much.  If you don’t mind my saying Mr. Prime Minister, my love for your country was watered by this Irish lady who was proudest of me when I was working with and for the security of Israel, so it’s a great honor.  Thank you very much.

(full text here)

And immediately after this the Jerusalem authorities announced the approval of 1600 new homes in East Jerusalem. This led to an unprecedented condemnation from Biden

The substance and timing of the announcement, particularly with the launching of proximity talks, is precisely the kind of step that undermines the trust we need right now and runs counter to the constructive discussions that I’ve had here in Israel.

– he could hardly do otherwise – and the Palestinians latching on to the opportunity to threaten withdrawal from the indirect talks – maybe they’ll agree to indirect talks about indirect talks? After all, it was they who wouldn’t speak directly.

After all that schmaltz, to have it pushed in your face is unpalatable even for a philo-Israeli like Biden.

The actual truth about the approvals for more building is that a) Israel has never seen East Jerusalem as a settlement and there is no moratorium in place there b) This was a stage in a long process of approval quite separate from State politics c) Even approved, building may not start for years.

However, the timing was unforgivable and even though Bibi told Biden that he did not know, there is something rotten in this State when a municipality can cause such a diplomatic embarrassment at such an important time. Furthermore, it serves to confirm all the prejudices of those determined to undermine Israel and gives further fuel to its enemies.

When will they ever learn.

Dubai whodunnit

19/02/2010 / / 0 Comments

Whilst the UK is about to find out who killed Archie Mitchell in EastEnders, the rest of the world already seems to know who killed Hamas arms dealer Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai: Mossad, the Israeli secret service.

Israel will not confirm or deny that it forged the passports of UK-born Israeli dual passport holders to get a hit team into Dubai.

For most of the world it’s a done deal, even in Israel Mossad are already guilty and Hamas have vowed to avenge.

Maybe Israel did do it, but a BBC article is refreshingly even-handed about who may have done it.

The BBC note that al-Mabhouh arrived in Dubai alone without his usual bodyguard who were due in the next day because they couldn’t tickets on the same plane. Hmm. That’s sounds a little fishy.

And what about two Palestinians who were arrested in Jordan and another in Syria? This seems to point to Fatah, not Mossad and how convenient it would then be to have used Israelis with non-Israeli names to point a finger at Israel. It all seems a bit too clumsy for Mossad. Do Mossad need 12 or 17 people to eliminate one Hamas member? Why did they need to go in mob-handed?

And then al-Mabhouh’s trip was made at such short notice how could such a plot be assembled so quickly?

Maybe Hamas bumped him off to get a t Israel.

There’s even a suggestion that MI6 knew about it and were forewarned by Israel. So all this bluster may be a smokescreen.

Intriguing.

But it is the immediate assumption of Israeli guilt that is so telling.

Let’s see what happens. Maybe we’ll never know.

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.

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