Ray Cook - As I See It

Israel, Zionism and the Media

Tag: Gaza (Page 9 of 13)

Hamas closes smuggling tunnels – no-one notices

15/04/2010 / / 0 Comments

Hamas effectively closed the smuggling tunnels from Egypt. No-one is sure why yet. Happened yesterday. ‘Stop using them or else’ was the order. Egypt has half completed the steel barrier which is already causing disruption to supplies. It’s very strange that the UN have not publicly rebuked Egypt for cutting off this lifeline. Maybe they are only interested in the legal crossings not the illegal ones. Maybe they just like to single out Israel. The blockade, so called, has caused the tunnel smuggling, so the story goes, and without it Gazans would starve. So that means Hamas has decided to starve Gaza and is actually working with Egypt and Israel to starve Gazans, because as we ‘know’, according to John Ging head of UNWRA in Gaza, it’s a ‘siege’, a mediaeval one, in fact.

So where is Ging? Where is the UN Secretary General? Where is Mahmoud Abbas? Why are they not crying out for the lifeline tunnels to be reopened? Simple. Because they all know that enough food gets in without them. They all know that no-one is starving in Gaza, but it makes a nice story to bash Israel with.

Like I’ve said before, it’s no picnic in Gaza, but no-one is starving either. Food and fuel gets through and all from Israel, not Egypt.

Rumour has it that the tunnels were closed because of a possible kidnapping in the Sinai of an Israeli tourist who would then be taken into Gaza through a tunnel.

So Hamas do not want a kidnapped Israeli, or I should say, another kidnapped Israeli. Why not?

And no-one has really worked out the affect of Egypt blocking these tunnels either.

One good thing to note: the BBC News website now finally admits that the ‘blockade’ is administered by Israel AND Egypt. But no-one cares about this. As the psalmist said: they have eyes but cannot see. Or don’t want to.

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.

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?

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.

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.

BBC Israel headlines – inconsistency or bias?

26/12/2009 / / 1 Comment

I’m beginning to wonder whether the BBC is biased or just plain incompetent with its headlines about Israel.

The latest Six Palestinians killed in West Bank, Gaza attacks suggests what, do you think?

Israeli troops have killed six Palestinians – three in the Gaza Strip and three in the West Bank.

The Israeli military said three Palestinians suspected of trying to infiltrate from Gaza were killed in an air strike near the Erez crossing…..

Separately, Israeli forces said they had killed three men – who were suspected of killing a Jewish settler – in the West Bank city of Nablus

So the Palestinians were either attempting to enter Israel on a mission to attack Israelis

Palestinian sources in Nablus say two of those killed were militants from the al-Aqsa Martyrs

or they were being arrested in response to a murder. Yet the headline suggests thee deaths were somehow indiscriminate and the ‘attacks’ assigned to Israel not the Palestinians who perpetrated or were intent on perpetrating an attack.

Look at the difference in reporting the attack on a US plane approaching Detroit on a flight from the Netherlands:

US plane attack suspect quizzed after ‘terror attempt’

Ah, that word ‘terror’ – disallowed when reporting attacks on Israel but acceptable elsewhere. No militants, insurgents or freedom fighters here, but an Al Qaeda ‘act of terrorism’. No doubt this would have been perfectly acceptable to report as ‘a militant operation’ had it been on a plane approaching Ben Gurion. But the BBC recognise Al Qaeda as terrorists because they have attacked Britain but AlAqsa and Hamas are always ‘militants’.

Go figure.

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.

Israel builds the future Palestinian State

09/12/2009 / / 0 Comments

No doubt you have heard in the news and media many negative things about Israel and its relations with the Palestinians.

You have heard about Gaza and Operation Cast Lead; you have heard about Gaza being a new Warsaw Ghetto; you heard about blockades and “humanitarian disasters”‘ that require aid convoys to travel overland from Europe across North Africa and then enter Palestine via Israel; you have heard of apartheid operating on the West Bank; you have heard illegal settlements and the “ethnic cleansing” of East Jerusalem; you heard about boycotts and UN resolutions; you have heard of the Goldstone Report.

Now hear this.

The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs has just released its periodic update on “The economic situation in the Palestinian Authority and Israeli relief measures”.

The headline of this document states that a double-digit growth rate might be reached by the end of 2009 in the Palestinian Authority area of the West Bank. And it appears that this rate, in a world economic crisis, has been achieved because of unprecedented assistance from Israel.

Here are some highlights:

PA Prime Minister Salam Fayyad told the Washington Post that 2009 (October) had seen a growth rate of 8% “If not even more”.

Now here’s a surprise for you. Israel collected tax on behalf of he PA to the tune of NIS 330 million in November compared to NIS 293 million in October.

Now here’s another surprise for you blocade-niks: Israel transfer NIS 50 million every month to Gaza to pay the salaries of PA employees and as much as $13.5 to UNWRA employees who are not only Palestinian but many of whom have a close association (to put it coyly) with Hamas. (I’m worried. This does not sound like a genocidal policy to me. What’s going on?)

Some bad news. The PA still has a $200 million budget deficit and it would be more were it not for $200 million from the Saudis. Come on Arab world! The Israelis are doing more than you are to help the Palestinians. Where’s Dubai when you need them? Oh yes, forgot, sorry.

“The Israeli government decided to establish a ministerial committee headed by the prime minister to examine and promote economic measures that will lead to further economic growth in the West Bank. A regional cooperation minister will be appointed, whose ministry will be in charge of coordinating and advancing the above matters.”

So more evidence of an Israeli policy to improve the condition of Palestinians, and it goes pretty much unreported in the West where only negativity is news.

There is a Joint Economic Committee to boot. This is sounding very much like what one would like to see were there two states with very close ties and mutual interests.

Almost 50,000 Palestinians were given work permits in Israel and West Bank ‘settlements’. In fact there are are huge number of Palestinians working in Israel and  in Israeli businesses in the West Bank. The report states that 14% of the workforce is employed by Israel in the West Bank. Are you listening boycott-niks?

Unemployment in the West Bank is still unacceptably high although it has dropped from 19% in 2009 to 16.4% in the second quarter of 2009. In Gaza it dropped from 45.5% to 36% which is a startling statistic. If things are so much better in the Hamas-free West Bank why not Gaza? Nothing to do with Hamas, by any chance?

The Palestinians themselves have said there was a six-fold increase in foreign investment in the West Bank because of the improving security situation compared to last year. Six-fold!!

A new city – Rawabi – is planned and Ramallah “has become an unprecedentedly bustling and flourishing West Bank city of cafes and restaurants“.

Power plants, sewage works, road networks, industrial zones all progress apace funded by the French and the EU with technical assistance from the Israelis.

Commerce between Israel and Palestine have risen steeply both ways.

In the first half of 2007 about 81,000 trucks passed from Israel to the West Bank. In the second half of 2008 this had reached 189,000 – more than doubled in two years.

A new Cell phone company. Gasoline consumption up 29% and a 93% increase in tourism to Bethlehem! and a 42% increase in hotel stays.

Once again I am worried. This does not sound like apartheid South Africa to me. Someone has been telling fibs.

There has been a huge reduction in checkpoints and roadblocks due to improved security. These reductions have led to much greater freedom of movement within the West Bank and for Israeli Arabs who want to visit the West Bank. These roadblocks have always been seen as an instrument of Israeli oppression and not a security measure. Surely if Israel is so willing to remove these obstacles (and there is a long way to go, not least of all the security barrier), does not this tell you something about Israel that you may not have been aware of?

And now for Gaza.

Before, during and after Operation Cast Lead, Israel facilitated the entrance of humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip. Israel ensured the orderly operation of the electricity, communications and water infrastructures, including bringing in equipment and repair teams to repair water and sewer facilities during the operation, and to repair turbines and parts of the Gaza power station after the operation. This included a two-month stay by a Siemens team, which conducted repairs and maintenance work at the power station.

The report makes clear that essential supplies are getting through but there is still an issue with building materials, but even that is being negotiated with the UN.

Marc Otte, European Union emissary to the Middle East, stated the following to the working group for Middle East affairs in the European Parliament, on November 24:

  • There has been an economic improvement in the West Bank, primarily due to removal of the checkpoints.
  • 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.

The security fence has proven its effectiveness in the fight against terrorism.

So there you have it. The more peaceable, the better off you are likely to be economically. This does not sound like the Israel I read about in the press.

I’m worried.

War Crimes and Double Standards

24/11/2009 / / 0 Comments

The Independent today showed a picture taken in 2004 of an alleged breach of the Geneva Conventions in Iraq.

The incident is to be investigated at a public inquiry to be announced tomorrow by Defence Secretary Bob Ainsworth, which will also examine evidence of one of the worst atrocities ever carried out by the British Army.

It is claimed that hours after the picture … was taken, the four men were transferred to a UK-run detention camp where they were badly beaten and where 20 other civilians were murdered by British soldiers.

It is clearly correct for the British Government to address these allegations and take appropriate action against the perpetrators if found guilty.

But wait a minute. Soldiers abusing Muslims? International Law broken? Soldiers murdering civilians? Now where have we heard this recently? Oh yes, of course. Gaza! The Goldstone Report.

So where are (or indeed were) the demonstrations on the British streets about these specific alleged atrocities? Where are the special meetings of the UNHRC (United Nations Human Rights Council)? Where are the demonizations of the UK in the world’s press? Where the outrage in the Muslim world? Where the Channel 4 report?

Where?

Have you seen any of these in the past 5 years? General outrage about the invasion, yes, but no international pillorying of the UK per se, no condemnation of the entire British Army. Only ‘concerns’ about specific incidents.

So why when it comes to Israel are things so different? Why are Israeli internal investigations whitewashes, but British ones acceptable?

There couldn’t be bias going on by any chance? Nah! Surely not.

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