In the current round of peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority one of the sticking points will certainly be the Palestinian claim to a Right of Return for Palestinian refugees.
The Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister argued today in the Jerusalem Post that no such Right existed:
The so-called Palestinian ‘right of return’ is legal fiction. United Nations General Assembly Resolution 194, the supposed source for this ‘right’ does not mention this term, is not legally binding and, like all other relevant United Nations resolutions uses the intentionally ambiguous term ‘refugees’ with no appellation.
This is also taken up on the Zionism and Israel Information Center website:
Palestinian advocates claim that the refugees of 1948 have a right guaranteed in international law to return to Israel. In fact, there is no such law. The Fourth Geneva Convention, often cited in this context, does not stipulate a right of return for refugees. UN Resolution 194, also cited as the basis for this “right” is a resolution of the UN General Assembly. Such resolutions are not binding in international law. No nation has the obligation to admit enemy belligerents. Moreover, Resolution 194 does not insist on a Right of Return. It says that “refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do so.”
The refugees were not Israeli citizens. They did not want Israeli citizenship. Beyond the dry provisions of the law, in this case admission of several million refugees would soon create an Arab majority in Israel. The people who advocate “Right of Return” also favor abolishing the Israeli Law of Return that permits Jews to immigrate to Israel freely. Israel would cease to be the national home of the Jews, and the Jewish people would lose the right to self-determination. Clearly “Right of Return” cannot be implemented in any case if it contradicts a different fundamental right that is anchored in international law.
Here we are already beginning to explore the practical absurdity of any such Right.
As indicated above, allowing ‘refugees’ to return, assuming that were practical or even practicable would effectively destroy the Jewish nature of the State of Israel, and Israel would cease to be a guarantor of the safety of Jews worldwide, which was one of the major factors in its establishment. And I am not referring here to the Holocaust; any student of Jewish history can list a very long litany of Jewish persecution for the last 2000 years, and they could also reference the current growing antisemitism in Europe and around the world. The need for a state of the Jewish people is as urgent now as at any time in history.
But let’s assume there is a Right of Return for Palestinian refugees. Let’s assume that they can now return to the homes or villages across Israel where they or there forefathers once lived 62 years ago.
1. How would any individual Palestinian prove his/her claim to his/her ancestor’s residency in any particlualr home or village?
2. What would happen to the current residents of those properties? They may not all be Jews, of course.
3. We are assuming that the ‘refugees’ want to become Israelis? Why would they? Why would they want to become citizens of a country that their leaders, media and education system has tauHas anyone asked? If not, what is the basis for the Palestinian Authority’s insistence that this is a non-negotiable agenda item?
4. How would Israel accommodate several million new citizens?
5. As Israel has never been compensated for the 900,000 Jewish refugees who were forced out of, or fled, Arab lands after 1948, why should Israel now have to foot the bill for several million people who need homes, schools, hospitals, sanitation, water, food?
5. How can Israel be expected to accept within its borders millions of people with an historic grudge against the state who have demonstrated for several decades that they are willing to shoot, bomb, attack and sabotage Israelis and Israeli infrastructure with the ultimate aim of destroying the very state they are now asking to become citizens of?
Is it not patently obvious that the Palestinian so-called Right of Return is nothing but the expression of an on-going desire to destroy Israel and remove the Zionist entity?
As Danny Ayalon puts it in the article cited above:
Before 1948 there were nearly 900,000 Jews in Arab lands while only a few thousand remain. Where is the international outrage, the conferences, the proclamations for redress and compensation? While the Palestinian refugee issue has become a political weapon to beat Israel, the Arab League has ordered its member states not to provide their Palestinian population with citizenship; Israel absorbed all of its refugees, whether fleeing the Holocaust or persecution and expulsion from Arab lands.
Can Mahmoud Abbas really be a genuine believer in a two-state solution when one of the most cherished and immoveable pillars of the Palestinian Authority, Fatah and the PLO is the Right of Return?
How can a peace settlement be based on the negation and denial of the rights of one side?
A limited return based on humanitarian grounds such as the reunification of families might be a possibility.
Beyond that, the Right is and always has been an instrument of delegitimisation and an excuse for scuppering peace.
I would not be at all surprised if it were again.
Back to Ayalon:
EVEN THOUGH the number of Jewish refugees [from Arab lands] and their assets are larger than that of the Palestinians, the international community only appears to be aware of the latter’s plight.
There are numerous major international organizations devoted to the Palestinian refugees. There is an annual conference held at the United Nations and a refugee agency was created just for the Palestinian refugees. While all the world’s refugees have one agency, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the Palestinians fall under the auspices of another agency, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA).
UNWRA’s budget for 2010 is almost half of UNHCR’s budget.
Equally impressive is the fact that UNHCR prides itself on having found “durable solutions” for “tens of millions” of refugees since 1951, the year of its establishment. However, UNRWA does not even claim to have found “durable solutions” for anyone.
What is also impressive is the Palestinians’ and their supporters’ success in completely obliterating the story of the fate of Jews from Arab lands whilst perpetuating their own refugees for more than six decades.
What constantly surprises me is why the practical absurdity of the Palestinian Right of Return has rarely, if ever, been examined and no comprehensive survey of Palestinian ‘refugees’ intentions has ever taken place.
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A couple of months ago I decided to start posting on the Jewish Chronicle (JC) Blogs.
I didn’t realise what I was about to discover; what I did discover was something of a revelation.
I don’t just post articles, I participate in the discussions which arise out of the majority of posts.
When I first arrived I landed in the middle of what I call the Blog Wars. Despite this being the JC, the blogs are open to anyone provided that they stick to some obvious rules. The blogs and their comments are moderated and it is not unknown for comments to be removed or even for bloggers or commenters to be banned.
What most surprised me was that I soon found there are two main camps: pro-Israel/Zionist and anti-Israel/Zionist. There are also one or two neutrals.
Almost every blog post can be the catalyst for some right old ding-dongs between these two camps. It’s a sort of Jewish version of the Guardian’s CiF (Comment is Free).
I actually found this very interesting, not only could I see how the ‘other side’ thinks, I could also challenge them, be challenged by them, argue with them, but never, of course, persuade them. This is an excellent training and test ground to hone your own arguments, to make sure of your facts and sharpen your own polemics.
It is also, at least for me, as a bit of an old lefty, an opportunity to question your own views and convictions in the light of the counter arguments. But, I can honestly say, this self-examination has not fundamentally changed my views, but it has reinforced my commitment to balance and to avoid dogmatism.
Both sides in these Blog Wars tend to be unyielding, entrenched and assured of their own righteousness. Little quarter is given. Israel is rarely criticised by the Zios and the anti-Zios will continue to sympathise with Hamas and Hizbollah.
By far the most revealing of the anti-Zios is a certain representative of Jews for Justice for Palestinians (JfjfP). I am not going to name names here; go and read the blogs; it’s unfair to mention any individual here who is unlikely to respond in person and I’m not going to discuss or reproduce the comments that have appeared in the JC. I’ll simply summarise what these discussions ‘below the line’ reveal.
The JfjfP representative is polite and seems to try very hard to be poised and restrained. JfjfP are part of the left wing bloc that organises demonstrations for Palestinians and Palestine and against Israel and Zionism.
This particular JfjfP member claims she is not anti-Israel and recognises Israel’s right to exist (well thanks). She is, however, of the opinion that Israel is a colonialist experiment, that the Occupation is illegal and cruelly prosecuted, that Hamas are understandable freedom fighters, that it is Israel and Israel alone and its policies which are the cause of the conflict; if only Israel would seek peace, negotiate with Hamas and the PA, this peace would magically materialise and 100 years of strife would dissipate into thin air, no-one would attack Jews anymore and her ideal, presumably Marxist, certainly Socialist, state would rise, phoenix-like, from the ashes of Israel.
In other words, socialist ideology colours her opinion of Israel which is demonised in her mind to the extent that it can never be right, can never be lawful, because it is an illegitimate state in the first place. And because of this ideological blindness she, like so many others on the far left, be it George Galloway, Alexei Sayle, Tony Benn, Gerald Kaufman and, indeed, a number of post-Zionist Israelis who take the same stance, she is prepared to overlook the anti-Semitism, the homophobia, the misogyny, the Islamofascist death culture of Hamas and its fellow travellers; for her, their charters are just pieces of paper and they can be persuaded to make peace and forswear their previous acts and deeds and policies and bigotry.
Thus the far left supports representatives of the most dangerous, religio-political movement of our times: fundamentalist Islam. They do this in the name of their own socialist vision of the world and history.
The level of self-delusion, double-think and self-deception involved in this world view is astonishing and frightening. It is anti-democratic, anti-liberal, anti-Enlightenment and it makes a pact with the real devil by demonising an imperfect state – Israel.
I am not saying that we Zionists and pro-Israel supporters never take an ‘Israel can do no wrong’ position. It does happen and it happens more when Israel is under mortal threat. What room is there for any self-criticism when your opponents are relentless in theirs. Yet I can never ever find the ‘other side’ critical of the Palestinians and their supporters. It’s as if they are perfect, blameless, beyond criticism because if they do anything wrong the Zionists forced them to do it. At the same time, I do find a very lively debate in the Israeli press and the Jewish World.
There is a big difference between fair criticism and an agenda of demonisation and delegitimisation.
It is very sad indeed to encounter Jews who see history only through a socialist or Marxist prism, even if it means contributing to the efforts of those who would destroy Israel and kill all Jews and, therefore, the very Jews who now support them.
I wonder why some Jews who claim to uphold true Jewish values through sympathy and justice for Palestinians must also simultaneously join in with the chorus of the demonisers of their own people.
Why do they have to create a soi-disant ‘Jewish’ group?
What is it that is so important for them about Jewish values that they have to group together as not-in-my-namers?
What is Jewish about denying the right to Jewish self-determination?
What is Jewish about sympathy, even tacitly, for those who would commit genocide of the Jews given half a chance.
What is it that is Jewish about demonising fellow-Jews?
I’m currently reading Howard Jacobson’s latest novel, The Finkler Question, I found a very apt and devastating paragraph which amusingly describes Jews who give succour to their would-be destroyers. In the book there is a group not too dissimilar from JfjfP called ASHamed Jews:
To be an ASHamed Jew did not require that you had been knowingly Jewish all your life. Indeed, one among them only found out he was Jewish at all in the course of making a television programme in which he was confronted on camera with who he really was. In the final frame of the film he was disclosed weeping before a memorial in Auschwitz to dead ancestors who until that moment he had never known he’d had. ‘It could explain where I get my comic genius from,’ he told an interviewer for a newspaper, though by then he had renegotiated his new allegiance. Born a Jew on Monday, he had signed up to be an ASHamed Jew by Wednesday and was seen chanting ‘We are all Hezbollah’ outside the Israeli Embassy on the following Sunday.*
*Howard Jacobson, The Finkler Question, Bloomsbury 2010, pp 138-9
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At last!! The Israeli government has seen sense and decided to show that it has nothing to fear from a UN enquiry which appears to be unbiased – for a change.
Israel Prime Minister, Benyamin Netanyahu, released the following today:
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu today (Monday), 2.8.10, informed UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon that Israel would participate in the panel that he is establishing in the wake of the 31.5.10 events regarding the flotilla.
The announcement to the UN Secy.-Gen. was delivered following consultations with the seven-member ministerial forum earlier this morning and in the wake of diplomatic contacts that have been held in recent weeks in order to ensure that this was indeed a panel with a balanced and fair written mandate.
The panel will receive reports on the Israeli investigation by the Independent Public Commission to Examine the Maritime Incident of 31.5.10 chaired by retired Supreme Court Justice Jacob Turkel.
Prime Minister Netanyahu said today, after speaking with the UN Secy.-Gen., that, “Israel has nothing to hide. The opposite is true. It is in the national interest of the State of Israel to ensure that the factual truth of the overall flotilla events comes to light throughout the world and this is exactly the principle that we are advancing.”
Having initially refused to co-operate, Israel set up its own internal enquiry which concentrated on exposing a group of Turkish activists with links to the IHH who led a flotilla intent on breaking the Israeli maritime blockade of Gaza.
This ‘humanitarian’ organisation has been shown to have links with terrorist groups, even Al Qaeda. 8 of 9 activists killed had links with dubious IHH activities and most had left evidence that they were determined to reach Gaza or become martyrs. Such an attitude itself reveals a hatred for Israel that is so great that they were prepared to die, and kill, for it.
Despite much documentary evidence taken by the Israelis and by many people on board the Mavi Marmara, the lead ship of the flotilla, there has not yet been a clear and detailed account of how and under what circumstances the 9 men were killed. All we know from the Israeli account and video evidence is that the commandos who landed on the Mavi Marmara were met with lethal force and a mob of about 50 men attacked a much smaller number of commandos whose main ‘weapon’ was a paint gun.
The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs has a web page dedicated to the events of 21 May 2010 here.
The terms of the Israeli commission are detailed here.
The main objectives were as follows:
1) Consideration of the security circumstances for imposing a naval blockade on the Gaza Strip and the conformity of the naval blockade with the rules of international law;
2) Conformity of the actions taken by Israel to enforce the naval blockade on 31 May 2010 to the principles of international law;
3) Consideration of the actions taken by those who organized – and participated in – the flotilla, and their identities.
The Commission will also consider the question of whether the inquiry and investigation mechanisms vis-à-vis complaints and claims regarding violations of the laws of armed conflict, as followed by Israel in general and as implemented with regard to the event in question, conform with the State of Israel’s obligations under the rules of international law.
Yes, it’s about time that Israel fought more pugnaciously to restore its reputation in the UN and find a platform to expose the hypocrisy of its enemies and critics.
Israel has already admitted operational errors. That doesn’t excuse those who would commit murder because they oppose an ideology. The would-be murderers were those killed who were intent on killing Jews/Zionists/Israelis – it was all the same to them.
Let’s see what the UN comes up with this time.
Update: Anne Bayevsky clearly does not agree with me and her opinion is too valuable to be ignored, so, for balance, here is a link. http://opinion.foxnews.mobi/quickPage.html?page=23976&external=394248.proteus.fma&pageNum=-1
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I’d like to bring your attention to an article recently published by Denis MacEoin on his blog entitled ‘Lies, lies, and lies about lies.
As Denis MacEoin is not a Jew and as he is a lecturer in Islamic studies and editor of the Middle East Quarterly and as he has written and studied and, indeed, earned a PhD on Islamic and Middle East subjects, I think that the neutral observer should give considerable respect to his views on a related subject: anti-Semitism.
In his article MacEoin does not mince his words:
I’m going to start this by talking about anti-Semitism. You’re probably all aware that anti-Israel activists, when told they are anti-Semites, hotly deny the charge, saying they are just opposed to Israel and its policies. I don’t believe them, any of them.
Strong stuff. Even though the staunchest Zionist is prepared to give the benefit of the doubt, when it comes to the ‘A’ word, to those who criticise Israel or the policies of its government, anti-Israel ‘activism’ is MacEoin’s subtle point here.
MacEoin continues by describing how, after the Holocaust, anti-Semitism became unfashionable and how, initially, the Left was pro-Jewish and pro-Israeli.
Then it all changed. Why? His theory is that the Left requires a a cause, someone to ‘pity’ as he defines it. As the Jews in the shape of Israel were no longer ‘pitiable’. Suddenly some atavistic European Jew-hatred rematerialised in anti-Israel or anti-Zionist polemic. MacEoin seems to say that there is a psychological aberration in the thinking of these Europeans which makes them dislike strong, even arrogant, unrepentant, assertive Jews/Israelis.
For some reason, a lot of people don’t like this. But they still don’t like to be called anti-Semites, because anti-Semitism is a form of racism, and they aren’t racists. They think they aren’t racists because anti-racism is the keystone of modern right-on politics. But they are racists, so they have a problem. They have a lot of circles to square, and to do that they have employed a range of lies that cast a spell on the media and most of the general public. It goes something like this. The Jews are no longer suffering, but someone must be suffering in order to deserve our pity, and the obvious candidates for victimhood are the Palestinians, because those nice Arabs I met at our conference tell me they are. This must mean that the Jews are… A hard think here, I suppose, then the obvious answer. The Jews, sorry, the Israelis are Nazis. Not ‘like the Nazis’. They are Nazis.
In other words, so aghast are these people at their own racism and historical guilt that they have to cleanse their Socialist souls by imprinting their own self-hate on the objects of this guilt. The only way they can justify this strange irrational hatred is by moral inversion and by transferring the historical crimes against Jews to crimes against Palestinians by Jews.
if there’s to be some sort of equivalence, there has to be a Holocaust. What? you say. What? But it’s obvious, they reply. There has been a Holocaust of the Palestinians. If this makes you feel nauseated, I don’t blame you. You ask, when, how many, where? They sneer and talk about Jenin (51 dead) and say it’s worse than gas chambers. And to make this worse, a lot of them deny the real Holocaust, aided and abetted by a UN member state, Iran.
So Israel is always referred to in terms of the darkest possible aspects of human behaviour: Holocaust, massacre, apartheid, racism, Nazism.
They hate Israel with a viciousness that can only originate in dark psychological problems with Jews. I don’t know why that is, and I don’t know how to solve it, but it’s the most dangerous single thing in the world today. I mean it.
MacEoin does not really explore why so many on the Left are so enamoured with people and regimes that should be inimical to their core beliefs. Why does George Galloway, for example, so love Hamas which represses women, kills gays and indoctrinates young minds to hate and martyrdom? Why did he appear to idolise Saddam who gassed his own people amongst his many other crimes. Why does Chavez love Ahmadinejad. Why does the IRA feel fellowship with Hamas and Hizbullah?
MacEoin has the answer – anti-Semitism. But that is almost too simple. The Leftists see a successful, highly technological, democratic, free society in Israel, yet a society that is basically capitalist and supported by the great bogeyman of the Left – the United States. Is it, perhaps, envy. Envy that their politics does not work, that they have based their political life on a system that does not produce wealth, freedom, humanity. And to make things worse, it’s those damned Jews who are showing them the error of their thinking.
But let me add a rider, as I always do. Israel is not perfect. There are many things to criticise about Israel as there are in other western democracies. Israel’s perceived injustices in the West Bank, its wars in Lebanon and Gaza can all be subjected to scrutiny and criticism.
But the debate, when it comes to Israel, whether from the Left or from Muslims and Islamists is always so hysterical, so hate-ridden, so genocidal, so shrill, so irrational and so vile that it does not leave any room for valid criticism. No other country in the world is treated in the press or at the UN like Israel. And if you think that is because Israel is the nastiest country in the world, then go there and take a look. Go to the West Bank. Go to Gaza. Then go to Sudan and Saudi Arabia, Syria and Iran; go to Tibet and North Korea. Then tell me Israel deserves this level of vilification and demonisation.
You may then come to the conclusion that, essentially, MacEoin is right.
With people like Denis MacEoin around there is still hope, at least, that hordes of irrational Jew-haters and enemies of civilisation can yet be defeated.
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The Jerusalem Post had a story yesterday about how a Palestinian village is being surrounded by Israel’s West Bank security wall which is squeezing the village towards an almost certain death.
Surely this is wrong.
The barrier threatens to outright smother Walajeh: The community of about 2,000 on the southwest edge of Jerusalem is to be completely encircled by a fence cutting it off from most of its open land, according to a Defense Ministry map.
…
the loop runs tightly around Walajeh’s builtup area, penning it within less than a square mile and isolating it from almost all its farmlands. Of 36 Palestinian villages that are or will be caught in the seam zone, none are as closely encircled as Walajeh, said Ray Dolphin, a UN barrier expert in Jerusalem.
Sadly, the security barrier is necessary to protect Israelis, but surely more can be done for the Palestinians affected by it.
Ahmed Barghouti, 63, who lives close to the fence’s path, says he lost 88 olive trees last month and now fears for a nearby family burial plot. The village’s lawyer, Ghiath Nasser, says he won a temporary order to stop work on that section until the High Court of Justice decides what should be done with the graves of Barghouti’s parents and grandmother.
The house of a neighbor, Omar Hajajla, lies just outside Walajeh’s barrier loop.
Hajajla said Israeli officials last week informed him his home would be surrounded by its own electric fence.
“This is like putting my entire family in jail,” the father of three young boys said. “My children need to cross four gates to go school. We don’t know how it will work out, but I’m sure it will be hell for my entire family.”
Some will argue that if the Palestinians had chosen peace the barrier and the many issues emanating from its construction would have been unnecessary.
It’s stories such as this which undermine Israel’s international standing and fuel the ‘apartheid’ slur and provide oxygen to those who want to destroy chances of peace.
These are difficult issues, and although I understand the reasons for the barrier, the emiseration of the lives of these particular villagers is not something Israel or its suppporters, myself included, can be proud of.
Maybe someone could enlighten me and persuade me that this is necessary and there is no alternative.
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Interesting article on Arutz Sheva website a few days ago.
Israeli medicine is second to none. We saw their magnificent response to the Haiti earthquake.
In her article Maayana Miskin tells us that in the Ichilov hospital in Tel Aviv in the heart of the Zionist entity, 100 patients a month from Gaza are treated.
Yes, you read that correctly, 100 per month. One hospital.
But that’s not all. It also treats foreign Arabs from countries that don’t even recognise Israel.
But that’s not all. The relatives of these Arabs are provided with free food (presumably Halal) and a place to stay.
But that’s not all. It’s just one of several hospitals that do this.
And as a Druze Knesset minister, Ayoub Kara, points out, Hamas gives nothing in return for this. Well he’s wrong about that. They send hundreds of missile towards amongst other things, hospitals in Sderot and Ashkelon.
And Gilad Shalit still remains a prisoner for four years with no Red cross/Crescent visits.
This is Israel’s version of Humanitarian Aid. It doesn’t arrive with metal bars and knives, just the odd scalpel.
What sort of mentality is this that so demonises the Jews yet accepts their medical care?
Yes, Israel is not perfect, but who else treats its enemies like this in the Middle East?
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I was tipped off today about a new web site www.palestinianzionistorganisation.com. I thought it had to be a hoax, but no, it’s for real.
This website, was founded by Elias Issa, a Palestinian Arab whose support of Israel is far greater than a lot of Israelis, so it seems.
His politics are way to the right. But what he says and what he believes is more powerful because it comes from him rather than Jewish Zionists.
However, beware, he doesn’t believe in the creation of a Palestinian state and he wants to build the Third Temple! Like now! (which is actually against Jewish Law and Israeli law)
Here’s what his About Us page says:
[He confirms] the statement of the World Zionist Organization which was defined by the First Zionist Congress in Basel, the Palestinian Zionist Organization agrees, confirms and declares that “The aim of Zionism is to create for the Jewish people a home in Eretz Israel secured by public law”. The PZO is an organization which supports the Nation of Israel and the Jewish people.
A lot of the material on the site could easily have been written by mainstream Israel supporters.
If his views were not so extreme, this might me an important site and an important voice. The problem is that he can be dismissed as a crank, a self-hating Arab Palestinian.
However, any voice that comes from outside the Jewish world and in particular from the Palestinian world that seeks to expose the lies and deceit of his own people deserves to be listened to, even though it is a bit over the top. Were he an Israeli, he’d be in the ultra-Orthodox or the far right camp.
But he’s not a Jew and he’s not an Israeli. He’s a Palestinian who lives in the USA.
Continue reading about Arab Palestinian Zionist – now you didn’t expect that
Two old friends met up in Caracas this week: Hugo Chavez, President of Venezuela and President Assad of Syria.
The two of them enjoyed some light-hearted chummy banter as Chavez described the United States and Israel as enemies of his country
“the Yankee empire, the genocidal state of Israel”
“Someday the genocidal state of Israel will be put in its place, in the proper place and hopefully a real democratic state will be born,”
Does he mean a democratic state from ‘the river to the sea’ replacing Israel and consisting of a Hamas/Palestinian Authority Islamist government where Jews and women cannot vote and gays will be hanged?
Is it that kind of democracy he is speaking about?
Or is it the democracy in a state like Assad’s Syria where Assad is President for life and no opposition is allowed?
Neither a Palestinian state replacing Israel or Syria would even approach Venezuela’s democracy. Unless Chavez has plans to become a South American Mugabe and roll back democracy.
Assad even ‘jokingly’ suggested that Syria and Venezuela could form an ‘axis of evil’.
Ho, ho, my sides are splitting. At least Assad displays a little more self-knowledge than Chavez.
But this is so typical of the Far Left shmoozing the authoritarian/Islamist Right, as long as it’s an anti-Israel, anti-USA authoritarian Right.
Chavez believes that Syria and the Palestinians could create a state that is more democratic than Israel. Delusion, thy name is (Far left) Socialism.
Chavez calls Israel genocidal whilst proposing its destruction. Remember Chavez’s other chum, Ahmadinejad?
Let’s all blow a very long vuvuzela at Venezuela!
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A new Facebook page has been created called The IDF – Not Only Shooting.
Its aim is to show that there are aspects to the IDF that you may not know about.
It’s mainly in Hebrew but the photos speak for themselves.
As the majority of Israelis will serve in the Israeli armed forces, it’s hardly surprising that its members represent a vast range of people, beliefs, attitudes and cultures.
The IDF’s recent humanitarian project in Haiti after the earthquake shows the resources and also the ethos of the IDF.
But the Palestinians have a different view it seems. Palestinian Media Watch reports on the demonisation of soldiers – and Jews. In a Palestinian Authority TV program for children whose fathers have been imprisoned by Israel, there is the following exchange:
PA TV host Manal Seif interviews the young sister of prisoner Qussai Husam Radwan, who was sentenced to 13 months in prison:Host: “Do they bother you, the Israeli army, the soldiers there [when visiting at the prison]?”
Girl: “Yes.”
Host: “They’re wild animals, right? Aren’t they wild animals?”[PA TV (Fatah), June 21, 2010]
PA TV host Manal Seif interviews the four-year old son of prisoner Shadi Shbeita, who was sentenced to 15 years in prison:Host: “Ibrahim, you know – you’re cute and sweet. You have a nice shirt and nice pants. You’re cool. Where’s Daddy? Where’s Daddy? Daddy Shadi – where is he? Where is Daddy Shadi?”
Boy: “In prison.”
Host: “Who put him in prison? Who is it that put him in prison?”
Boy: “The Jews.”
Host: “The Jews are our enemies, right?”
[Boy nods in agreement.]
As the reporter points out, it is ‘the Jews’ who are the enemies, not ‘Israelis’ not even Jewish soldiers, but ‘Jews’.
This Facebook group shows the IDF in a different light.
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Gilad Shalit, kidnapped four years ago and held since by Hamas without access to the Red Cross, Red Crescent, his family. Held incommunicado in contravention of international law and human rights.
Remember Gilad Shalit and the unbearable suffering of his family.
Remember Gilad Shalit and the unnecessary wasting of his young life.
Remember the taunting of his captors.
Free Gilad Shalit.
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