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On Friday night, after prayers, a mob of several thousand Egyptians attacked the Israeli embassy in Cairo.
Previously, the Egyptian authorities had raised a defensive wall around the embassy but that seems to have acted like a red rag to a bull.
A determined mob broke down the wall and entered the compound, torching it and burning the Israeli flag for the second time in a month.
Some reports suggested that this group was Islamist, others that it was Communists trying to destabilise the country.
What is clear is that several thousand turned up to break in to the compound. More than a thousand were injured and 3 actually died, which is insane.
Meanwhile, the Egyptian police stood back and did nothing. As the mob hammered at the walls and door where the remaining few embassy staff members were huddled, the members of staff of the Israeli embassy were in contact with Prime Minister Netanyahu and asked him to convey their final messages to their loved ones. They were clearly in fear of their life.
According to some reports President Obama called the Egyptian government and demanded they honour their obligations under international law.
Some say Obama even threatened the Egyptians with dire consequences if they did not act to save the embassy staff.
Soon after, commandos rescued the remaining Israelis and smuggled them out of the embassy wearing Arab attire.
Avi Mayer (@avimayer) has reported via Twitter from several sources. Here are some snippets:
I don’t get it. When Netanyahu/Barak called, Tantawi was unavailable. When Obama/Panetta called, he picked up. Is he screening our calls?
Walla: Fearing
#Cairo protesters would pretend to be rescuers,#Egypt commandos used “secret sign” and#Israel emb guards opened door.
When I tweeted about the incident earleir this evening a received a couple of brusque rejoinders including this one which I answered vias a retweet:
RT @fat_lam: @RayPCook at least no Israeli was killed, #israel on other hand did kill innocents<<what do you think would have happened to the #Israelis if they had not been saved by #Egyptian army?
This links in to the presumed spark to this incident. Over a week ago now 8 Israelis were killed in separate incidents near Eilat on the border with Egypt when terrorists fired automatic weapons and artillery rounds at a car, a bus and IDF soldiers.
As the IDF pursued the perpetrators and despite every effort not to hit anyone on the Egyptian side, several Egyptian soldiers were killed by Israeli fire. One of the reasons given is that the terrorists were actually dressed in Egyptian uniforms or something similar.
The tweeter above is not concerned with Israeli deaths just the Egyptian ones despite an expression of regret from Israel.
This is the cover story for the Egyptian mob.
The truth is that no excuse is required for a mob raised on an anti-Semitic diet of Jew-hatred.
Egyptian clerics are often very keen to demonise Israel and the Jews.
Mein Kampf and The Protocols of the Elders of Zion appear to be standard reading and are freely available.
Israel is blamed for every calamity in a press which is often hysterically (in both senses) obsessed with Israel hatred: when a tourist was attacked and killed by a shark in Sharm-el-Sheikh, Mossad were blamed;
an Israeli is currently under arrest for spying even though there does not appear to be a case to answer;
during the demonstrations in Tahrir Square foreign journalists were accused of being Israeli spies and the CBS reporter Lara Logan was brutally sexually assaulted and accused of being an Israeli in February.
Even yesterday the appearance of a female journalist was met with accusations that she was Israeli and she had to be rapidly whisked away.
So it appears that the Arab Spring has become an excuse for mob rule and taking the law into ones own hands in certain sections of Egyptian society.
These same people who accuse Israel of breaking international law are only too quick to do the same themselves.
There are some positives:
The Egyptian authorities have arrested and arraigned several of the trouble-makers
A Bahraini government spokesman tweeted:
Not protecting the Israeli embassy in Cairo is a clear violation of the Vienna Convention of 1961 on diplomatic relations
I’m not completely au fait with the relations between Bahrain and Israel, but given the almost uniform hatred of the Arab world against Israel, this is a very decent thing to have said, and it constitutes a reprimand.
But here’s the ‘whatif’ bit. The guards inside the embassy had guns. They even fired some warning shots in the air according to Avi Mayer (@avimayer). They were given permission to open fire on the crowd should their lives be in danger.
Now here’s the thing; imagine that – they asked permission to save their own lives knowing that if it came to this the diplomatic fallout would inevitably go against Israel.
So, what if the commandos were a little late and the mob had battered down a wall and there were the guards, guns drawn, and the mob attacked them, presumably filled with jihadi zeal and the prospect of paradise for dying whilst trying to kill some Jews.
Does this sound familiar? Think Mavi Marmara, a somewhat different arena, yet, nevertheless, armed Israelis with no intention of lethal conflict are faced with a baying mob ready to lynch them.
So what if the Israelis fired, killed nine or ten of their attackers and then the Egyptian cavalry arrived and saved them.
What would the world have said? Would they be condemned for using excessive force as the Palmer report found?
With more Egyptian blood on their hands would Israel have been blamed for its citizens defending what is, in international law, sovereign territory?
What would all the leftists say? What would the Guardian say? I can take a pretty good guess; they would have found a way to condemn the Israelis. They would quote members of the mob saying that they had no intention of hurting anyone.
Some elements in Israel would call for an end to the peace treaty. The UN would have demanded an investigation.
Yet, the situation is not dissimilar to the Mavi Marmara. If a mob is coming at you with clearly lethal intent, what is a proportionate response?
And, ‘what if’ the Egyptian commandos got there too late and six Israelis were lynched? General rejoicing across the Arab and Muslim world whilst their governments would disingenuously condemn the deaths and, at the same time, try to ‘explain’ them in the ‘context’ of the ‘incident’ near Eilat.
Israelis would demonstrate outside the Egyptian embassy – maybe. But as now, and as always, Israelis would respect the Egyptian embassy physically.
It should be noted that before the mob attacked the Israeli embassy in Cairo, a man was arrested in Tel Aviv for throwing a stone at the Egyptian embassy. Throwing a stone. One man. So much for the evil, murderous Israelis so often characterised across the world.
If the Israelis had killed anyone we would have a third incident, along with the Flotilla and the terrorist attack on the highway near Eilat where Israelis killed those trying to kill them and were condemned for doing so.
With a poll showing the majority of Egyptians wanting to end the 32 year treaty with Israel, despite the commendable, but somewhat belated actions of the Egyptian government, it is clear that when a new government is elected it is not beyond the bounds of possibility that it will do so on an anti-Israel ticket.
Additionally, 60%, according to another poll, want to restore Sharia Law.
The prospects for a continued peace with Israel look fragile and would only be maintained for strategic reasons rather than a wish for peace.
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Yes, I’m back.
So not much happened whilst I was on my rest then? What did you say?
Ah, ok:
Palmer Report on the Mavi Marmara
Turkey and Israel spat
Terror attack near Eilat
English riots
Gaddafi ouster
England slaughter India at cricket (you can’t get more earth-shattering than that)
And on a personal note, I have been concentrating on Twitter and doubled my followers.
I have had a brief, but somewhat vituperative, exchange with Yvonne Ridley on Twitter.
Oh, and my elder son made Aliya.
So, as I said, not a lot been happening, then.
But before I get hooked on this year’s Strictly Come Dancing and find out what Sir John Major found so attractive in Edwina Currie, I’d better get back to blogging.
So much negative news and worrying developments in Israel (I must get used to NOT putting hashtags in front of keywords after using Twitter for so long) that I thought my first blog posts would be about some inspiring positive stories from Israel.
So stay tuned. Cookie is back and will be reviewing and opining on things Israeli, Zionist and Middle Eastern as I have been doing for the last two and a half years.
UPDATE: How could I forget the interrupted IPO concert at the Royal Albert Hall!
UPDATE 2: And phone hacking and the Murdochs!! Like I said, a quiet 2 months.
Continue reading about Well, not much happened, then, in last two months?
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After 2 and a half years it’s time to to step back and reevaluate.
Taking a leaf out of Chas Newkey-Burden’s book.
Thanks for reading and a special thanks to all those who have been kind enough to support me.
I will be back later in the year.
Am Yisrael Chai
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… what the F… is going on!?
The much vaunted Flotilla 2 failed to get beyond Greek waters. The Mavi Marmara, star of Flotilla 1 was withdrawn under pressure from the Turkish government and the original 1500 became only a few hundred which rapidly dwindled to nothing.
Israel actually succeeded in bringing Greece and Turkey together in preventing a confrontation at sea!
And now the ongoing aerial assault on Ben Gurion International Airport in Tel Aviv, know as ‘Flytilla’ or ‘Airtilla’ has also foundered as France, the Netherlands and others prevent ‘activists’ intent on causing trouble, from flying to Israel.
Meanwhile at Ben Gurion, those who have managed to land find themselves at a remote terminal, well away from the main tourist area, and are either put on the next flight or arrested.
Israel has every right to deny entry to anyone it pleases, for whatever reason it chooses as a sovereign nation. These ‘activists’ are intent on challenging Israel’s sovereignty, not helping Palestinians.
You can find it in their rhetoric; they are flying to ‘Lyd’ airport in ‘Palestine’. Get it? Israel is Palestine. They are not coming to protest blockades, sieges or occupation, they are coming to delegitimise Israel itself.
Those taking part in both fiascos are a bunch of self-righteous hypocrites. They wouldn’t even allow their so-called fig-leaf humanitarian aid to be shipped to Israel and then taken by the Israelis into Gaza.
They came intent on breaking one blockade and then ended up having to contend with two as the Greek port authorities blocked their departure or chased them as they tried to slip away.
There was even the irony of Gazans staging demonstrations against the Greek blockade.
Following the hashtags #flotilla2 and #flotilla or #freedomfllotilla required enormous will power not to put two fingers down one’s throat one minute and the same two fingers at their tweets the next.
All sorts of hilarious conspiracy theories floated like so much flotsam to the surface of the twitosphere: The Israelis bribed the Greeks who needed the money; the Israelis had sabotaged two boats even though the Turks, of all people, denied this; the Greeks had to do what the EU wanted because of their debt crisis; yada, yada.
They convinced themselves that the Greek people were with them and their government had been suborned by those dirty Zionists.
They are a bunch of whining hypocrites. They fly into the only country in the region that tolerates free speech, almost to the point of stupidity, to try to prove that Israel is an apartheid state. Then they act in a way, and with a declared intention, that guarantees they will be expelled or arrested or both so they can whine a bit more about how Israel is a ‘police state’ not a ‘true democracy’, and closes down free speech. You get the idea? They are excrement-stirrers.
This is an extension of the assault on Israel’s borders on the ‘Naksa’ demonstrations in the Golan. Let me repeat: they are coming from foreign countries to demonstrate, demonise and delegitimise the state. Why should they be tolerated? Which country would tolerate this?
Let me see them fly into Lhasa not Gaza and see what happens. Let them try to fly to Grozny. Let’s see how much luck they have in Damascus or Beirut or Alexandria.
The irony is that Ben Gurion in Tel Aviv is one of the few places where they know they are safe to fly to because they know, despite their declarations, that Israel is not a police state, that it will not treat them as harshly as other states. They pretend to be brave but they are really cowards.
There is a tremendous feeling in the pro-Israel community that this time Israel used diplomacy well and played the activists’ game better than they did. No-one has been hurt, let alone killed; no real confrontation and best of all, the flotillards have gone home (well apart from a small boat that evaded the Greeks) as sick as a Captain Flint.
Yes, the futile flytillaniks still arrive at Ben Gurion as dozens continue to be killed in Syria every day.
Here are some others’ views of this week’s events:
Stephen Pollard on CiF in the Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jul/08/gaza-flotilla-israel-diplomacy
even better from Israel’s perspective, the attempt at a second flotilla has prompted the arrival of a new ally: Greece. The Greek coastguard has been vigilant in intercepting three would-be flotilla boats and watching the remaining seven in Greek ports. Last week, IDF helicopters were part of a large military exercise with the Greek army, after which Israeli PM Binyamin Netanyahu thanked Greek PM George Papandreou for all his help.
Some activists have responded with pure antisemitism, arguing that the impoverished Greeks have caved in to Israel’s financial power.
The Greeks’ behaviour has not escaped Erdogan’s notice and has resulted in a form of bidding war between the two leaders to help Israel stop the flotilla. As a senior IDF officer told the Jewish Chronicle this week: “We will make peace with the Palestinians long before the Greeks and Turks resolve their differences.”
Emanuele Ottolenghi in the Commentator http://www.thecommentator.com/index.php/article/292/gaza_flotilla_flops
He speculates about why Flotilla 2 has failed where Flotilla 1 succeeded. He puts Turkey at the centre of the reasons for failure:
With Turkey unwilling to play along and a coming UN report endorsing Israel’s blockade as legal, the Greek government similarly had enough cover to go after the boats and their activists. If the blockade is legal for the UN, blocking the flotilla in Greece is just as legal.
And he also notes elements of anti-Semitic canards in the flotillards pathetic excuses:
Angry flotilla participants have variously blamed the Greek government for preventing their departure – with one activist bordering on the usual anti-Semitic imagery and saying that Greece caved in to Israel due to its economic circumstances.
The idea that helping Israel against the flotilla could bring financial respite to the Greek economy is ludicrous – Israel would have to single handedly control the IMF, the World Bank and the European Investment Bank– and possibly the Bundesbank too – in order to deliver the additional help that Greece may need to avoid default.
That this idea was voiced at all reveals the activists’ conspiratorial mind set.
Yes, folks. The blockade of Gaza is legal. The UN says so. And if the flotillards want to ignore the UN they can’t accuse Israel of doing the same without an enormous dollop of hypocrisy.
Which is exactly their position.
Continue reading about Flotilla Founders, Flytilla Foiled, Fanatics Fail in Foolish Fiasco…
Last week I received the devastating news that Ami Isseroff had passed away.
Two years ago, when I first decided to become involved in blogging and trying to learn more about Zionism, the Middle-East and Israel, I joined an online Zionist group set up by Ami.
I had just written an article in praise of one of his articles in the Jerusalem Post and this led me to find his group and to apply for membership.
His first response was to warn me that he didn’t want any ‘lurkers’ only committed activists. I bristled, sent him an angry response, he apologised, I apologised and it was only later that I began to realise what a great man he was. I was soon to discover the huge corpus of information on his websites Zionism-Israel.com and MidEastWeb.org.
Ami turned out to be a truly inspirational contact. He wrote brilliantly and his depth of knowledge and his many links to politicians and influential people made him a priceless source of wisdom. I didn’t always agree with him but my respect was boundless. He taught me a great deal over the coming months. In many ways he helped me form my own stance on the issues and he showed me that there is rarely anything black and white about the Israel-Palestine conflict.
Ami always, always told it like it was. He disagreed with many of Israel’s policies and bemoaned its inability to make its case properly in the international arena. He was never an apologist for what he knew was wrong, and he was always a champion for what he knew was right: peace and reconciliation.
I never met him. In April this year I spoke to him on the phone when I was in Israel. His first words were: “Where are you?” Not “How are you”. He was an American-born Israeli – not for him the niceties of polite conversation that I, a Brit, am used to. He really did want to know where I was because he wanted to meet me. Finding I was in Jerusalem, he replied that it was the best place to be.
Instead of discussing Israel and politics he gave me advice on how my son could get a job when he came to Israel – and it was good advice.
Ami’s slurred speech was a remnant of the stroke he had suffered months earlier. It never occurred to me that his life was so fragile.
I don’t feel I can do justice to Ami, his intellect, his genius and his humanity. I have to quote his brother’s eulogy, read by one of Ami’s sons at the funeral, and I also want to link to some magnificent tributes from those who knew him much better than I did.
Eulogy for Ami Isseroff Wednesday June 29, 2011
When Ami was born with a congenital heart problem, the doctors said he would not survive, but his mother, Batia, refused to listen and through her perseverance he was able, after several operations, to lead an almost normal life.
She always felt that he was destined for greatness. Today, she would be very proud of him. He fulfilled her fondest dreams in that he married a sweet and caring girl and had three exceptional children, Asaf, Amit and Michal.
He will always be remembered in their hearts as a loving, if irascible husband and father. But the rest of us, will remember him for his wit, intellect and unique outlook on life.
He and I shared many adventures and their retelling always brought us much pleasure.
Early on, we in his immediate family recognized his superior mental abilities as he excelled in his studies throughout high school and college. His memory was phenomenal. He played the piano and guitar as a teenager and his love of music continued throughout his life.
With Ami’s talent for writing and oral disputation, the family thought he would choose to study law. Instead, his Zionist inclinations led him to join a kibbutz in Eretz Ysrael. There, for a time, he was happy to perform socialistically heroic tasks such as driving tractors, moving irrigation pipes, feeding pigs and cleaning out their pens. Difficult as these jobs were, it was the lack of an intellectually stimulating environment that caused him to leave the kibbutz.
He couldn’t believe that at the end of the workday kibbutzniks preferred to watch television rather than have a rousing discussion on some aspect of world affairs, politics or the class struggle. Hence, he embarked on a program of graduate study in Psychology at the Universities of Jerusalem and Haifa.
It was at the University in Jerusalem that Ami met the love of his life, Ruth. Through his long and exhausting, years as a graduate student that included many disputes with his faculty advisors as well as exasperating turf wars between them, it was Ruth”s love and support that kept him from giving up and returning to the States. When the warring parties and their various factions finally agreed to award him a Doctorate in Experimental Psychology we thought that he would be offered secure employment. However, the weak economy and an excess of trained Psychologists made it difficult for Ami to find and keep a University job, despite post-doctoral training at Yale and Worcester Universities.
Fortunately, in the course of his graduate studies he had developed a number of computer skills, including the ability to write complex programs that were at the cutting edge of the technology. These skills made it possible for him to earn a living and to pursue a new vocation as a respected observer and opinion maker in the World’s media and on the internet. It was here that he found his true calling as an outspoken advocate for peace and good will between Palestinians and Israelis.
I know that Ami believed that if ever these two peoples should arrive at a state of mutual trust and respect his major life-effort would not be in vain.
With sadness and love to you all, Hadar Isseroff
I think this is so powerful and moving: http://simplyjews.blogspot.com/2011/06/ami-isseroff-rip-heart-of-real-zionist.html from someone who knew him.
I also recommend this: http://fresnozionism.org/2011/07/ami-isseroff
We often hear people say ‘He/she will be sadly missed’; in Ami’s case this is painfully true. I still feel like a guiding spirit has been taken from me.
The best we can all do to honour his memory is to carry on with renewed vigour from the inspiration we have, and will continue to receive from one who truly is irreplaceable.
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How fortunate we are to have someone as eloquent and analytically rigorous as the writer Howard Jacobson to debunk anti-Israel hypocrites.
In another of his brilliant tours de force he takes his fellow write Alice Walker to task about her participation in the second Gaza Flotilla. Jacobson lays bear the hypocrisy of Walker and all those who sail with her.
Human beings are seldom more dangerous than when they are sentimentally overcome by the goodness of their own intentions. That Alice Walker believes it is right to join the Freedom Flotilla II to Gaza I do not have the slightest doubt. But beyond associating her decision with Gandhi, Martin Luther King and very nearly, when she talks about the preciousness of children, Jesus Christ, she fails to give a single convincing reason for it…
The boat on which Alice Walker will be traveling is called The Audacity of Hope. Forgive me for seeing a measure of self- importance in that reference…
Hamas, we are often told, is the elected government of Gaza, a government that fairly represents the wishes of its people. In which case we must assume that Hamas’s implacable hostility towards Israel fairly represents the implacable hostility felt by the people of Gaza. Are Alice Walker’s letters of love and ‘solidarity’ solid with the people of Gaza in that hostility?..
Alice Walker might be feeling good about herself, but by giving the Palestinians the same old false comfort we’ve been doling out for more than half a century, and by allowing the Israelis to dismiss it as yet another act of misguided and uncomprehending adventurism — further evidence that its fears go unheeded – her political gesture only worsens the situation. The parties to this conflict need to be brought together not divided: but those who speak disingenuously of love will engender only further hatred.
You can read it all here.
Continue reading about Howard Jacobson torpedoes Flotilla II and Alice Walker
There has been an unexpected reaction to my previous article on the Channel 4 programme shown last week: Sri Lanka, the Killing Fields.
This blog post is about to become the most viewed I have written in two years of writing this blog.
I found this a little bizarre because my blog is about Israel.
The main purpose of my Sri Lanka blog was to highlight what I perceive as the double standards of the UN and the international community.
So I am bemused as to why my post has had so many hits in such a short space of time.
I have come to the conclusion that the reason is that Israel and Palestine so monopolise the news media and the blogosphere, that it is seen as THE conflict, the most important one to resolve and a major cause of the ongoing ‘war’ between Islam and the West.
Sri Lanka, on the other hand, and the Tamils in particular, have relatively few bloggers and virtually no attention from the media.
So when someone writes about Sri Lanka, it has a much larger impact than a similar article about Israel where my voice struggles to be heard in a plethora of shrill voices on both sides.
In my article I committed the sin of comparing the actions of the Sri Lankan army, on two occasions, to the actions of the Nazis. This is always a risky thing to do. Let me clarify; I compared the No Fly Zones to the gas chambers because both used simulation to dupe victims into believing they were safe when, in fact, the opposite was true. In retrospect, this was not appropriate.
I then compared Ban Ki Moon’s visit to a Tamil internment camp as being similar to the Red Cross visiting Theresienstadt and reporting all was well. This comparison is, perhaps, a little more felicitous.
The overwhelming majority of visitors have been supportive of my article.
One of the first commentators took me to task about accusing the Sri Lankan government of genocide when most Tamils live in the south and in comparative wealth and comfort.
Here is a legal definition of genocide found in the 1948 United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (CPPCG).
Article 2 defines genocide as, inter alia:
“…. any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life, calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; ….”
In my judgement, these conditions were met based on the evidence I have seen. Others more qualified will make theirs.
In the Sunday Times this week A A Gill was disparaging of the Channel 4 programme. He pointed out that no Channel 4 reporters witnessed the events and almost all the footage came from unconfirmed sources.
In these days of citizen journalism, in areas of the world where news reporters are not allowed, the evidence from private citizens and combatants is vital in telling the world what happened even if, as in this case, these video clips are horrific trophy recordings apparently taken by soldiers who appear to be enjoying the rape and slaughter.
This evidence of the dehumanisation of one group by another and how that can lead to war crimes and, yes, genocide, are all too familar to the Jewish people. Those who document the dehumanisation of Jews by Hamas, Islamic clerics and Palestinian Authority TV and literature, have no doubt that, given the opportunity, Jews would be subject to the same deranged slaughter as the Tamils and probably far worse.
At least in Sri Lanka Tamils still live and many prosper; they still have positions of authority in Sri Lankan society. No-one is suggesting that they must all be killed because they are an evil virus hated by G-d and humanity. Only the Jews have that dubious honour.
There are several initiatives by NGO’s and even politicians to ensure that any war crimes in Sri Lanka are punished.
However, I doubt that the UN Human Rights Council will have a permanent agenda item for Sri Lanka as it has for Israel.
I wish the people of Sri Lanka well and I hope that justice and reconciliation will resolve the conflict and allow all communities and faiths to live together with mutual respect and toleration.
Last night Channel 4 screened what must be one of the most disturbing programme ever shown on British television.
It was shown after 11pm to minimise the chances that children would watch it.
The programme has been posted on the Channel 4oD website here.
This was a programme about the 2009 assault on the Tamil Tigers by the Sri Lankan army.
The programme included stomach-turning graphic mobile phone footage of summary executions, hundreds of dead bodies, including those of women who had been raped and then shot.
It showed hospitals and hospital field units being bombed and shelled.
You felt the fear, the desperation, the horror, the hopelessness.
We saw the UN leaving a town to its fate because the government said it could no longer guarantee the safety of its personnel and we saw the people of that town pleading with the UN not to go.
We saw UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon’s cursory and rapid visit to what can only be described as a concentration camp, rather like the Red Cross visiting Teresienstadt and reporting all is well.
We saw how the Sri Lankan government created protected zones whose only equivalent that I can think of are the gas chambers of the Nazis who duped their victims into believing they were safe and then killed them.
Corralled into an ever-shrinking space, civilians were bombed and shelled. Thousands died. Desperate doctors performed amputations on children without anaesthetic. Disease, starvation, infection decimated the population.
And it wasn’t just the Sri Lankan army who were guilty. The Tamil Tigers are by no means innocent. They prevented their own people from escaping so they could use them as human shields, killing many who dared to run for their life.
The programme left no doubt that both sides were guilty of serious war crimes, but the Sri Lankan government, in its attempt to end the decades long conflict with the Tamils, embarked on a policy of genocide. Any Tamil was guilty by association. There was no mercy. The army was out of control and rampant.
The Sri Lankan government employed deceit to cover up its crimes; it did not allow journalists to enter the war zone, it tried to convince the world that a ‘No-Fly Zone’ had been created to protect civilians when its purpose was clearly the opposite. It sought to maximise casualties hiding behind the excuse that the Tigers were using these zones to fire at the army.
It deliberately targetted hospitals to such a blatant degree that the Tamils pleaded with the Red Cross not to pass the army the co-ordinates of their field hospitals because evidence was clear that when they did so, a few hours later, they were shelled.
As I watched, my stomach turning at every scene, some so difficult to watch I actually had to avert my eyes, I was struck by both the similarities and the differences between this conflict and the Israeli’s assault on Gaza between December 2008 and January 2009, Operation Cast Lead.
First, the similarities: both the Sri Lankan government and the Israelis were responding to a concerted campaign by a terrorist organisation whose stated aims was to ‘reclaim’ a homeland. Both terrorist groups had used suicide bombing, intimidation and ruthless subjugation of its own people.
In both the Israeli and the Sri Lankan offensives there were accusations of deliberate targetting of civilians, attacks on civilian infrastructure and protected buildings.
The more rabid opponents of Israel accused them of massacre or genocide. The Goldstone Report found evidence of possible war crimes, breaches of the Geneva Convention, failure to protect civilians, the use of human shields, illegal use of weaponry.
The accusations against Israel have been largely refuted and subjected to a long and thorough investigation by the IDF into hundreds of complaints by Palestinians and soldiers as well as reported incidents in the media. Richard Goldstone recently announced that if he had known then what he knows now the report would have been different, but he still stood by the report nevertheless.
Those who read this blog will know that I believe most of the accusations against Israel to be baseless. Notwithstanding, Israel had a case to answer and answered it in a very comprehensive and detailed way rebutting almost all the accusations and specific incidents. These conclusions are, of course, rejected out of hand by those who do not believe Israel as capable of self-investigation as any other Western democracy.
I do not believe that Israel had a deliberate policy of targetting civilians, in fact, the opposite was true. There were incidents which were negligent or ill-judged and tragic. These do not add up to war crimes or genocide.
There are no accusations of rape against the IDF, even by Hamas and no woman ever came forward with any such suggestion.
There were no accusations of summary executions of bound prisoners and no such evidence exists.
There were incidents where civilian infrastructure was hit: schools, mosques, even hospitals. In the case of schools the IDF has demonstrated that these were often used by Hamas to fire from in full knowledge that the IDF could not return fire or if it did, risked injuring children.
There was no systematic attack on schools. As for mosques, it was clear that these harboured weapons and ammunition. The IDF returned fire from some Hamas operatives using hospitals as cover to fire upon them. This is permitted in warfare.
There was no corralling of civilians and then shelling of those civilians. In one incident the IDF told a family to move to a house which was subsequently shelled and many family members killed. There is no evidence that this was anything but a tragic mistake.
The figures bear this out. Between 1300 and 1400 known people killed of which, even by Hamas’ reckoning 700 were combatants. The IDF figures show far fewer non-combatant casualties.
Let’s consider the worldwide condemnation of Israel for attacking Gaza from where thousands of rockets had been fired over a considerable period of time. And this after Israel had evacuated Gaza completely. Soon after, Hamas took control and began suicide attacks and bombings and a barrage of indiscriminate rockets fired at towns in Southern Israel.
Israel was accused of disproportionality even though very few people actually know what that means in international law.
Muslims marched all over the world calling Israelis baby-killers, genocides and aggressors and called for the destruction of the State of Israel.
Investigations which led to the Goldstone Report were begun with great haste.
Israel was vilified by the world media.
Now look at the Sri Lankan campaign against the Tamils.
At least 40,000 civilians were killed and relatively few combatants. The actual figure may be much, much higher. It could be more than 100,000.
There was torture, rape, clearly deliberate targetting of hospitals and civilians.
What happened in the UN? There was a very low-key call for an investigation which the Sri Lankan government rejected.
The whole thing was buried and soon forgotten.
There was no worldwide condemnation.
Sri Lankans were still safe to walk the streets of Europe and play Test Match cricket.
There were no flotillas, no high-profile demonstrations in the world’s capitals (there were some by the desperate relatives of Tamils abroad).
In short no-one really gave a damn. Not the UN, not the EU, not Sri Lanka’s neighbours.
I have had issues with Channel 4 programmes about Israel but I have to congratulate them on bringing this horrific genocide to public attention.
Yes, genocide, targetting an ethnic group and deliberately killing, raping and starving that group with the resulting deaths of tens of thousands of people is genocide. Killing up to 700 innocents in Gaza is not.
If the Israelis committed crimes they pale into insignificance compared to the horrors of Sri Lanka plain for all to see.
Sri Lanka, Sudan, Congo, Rwanda, Cambodia – all killing fields where hundreds of thousands died or are still dying.
Yet, UN Watch reports the inestimable Hillel Neuer’s address to the unintentionally ironically named UN Human Rights Council:
Mr. President,
History will record that the highest human rights body of the United Nations met today for no objective reason. Nothing in recent events, nothing in logic, nothing in human rights justifies today’s debate.
Our meeting is automatic—the consequence of a decision adopted four years ago, shortly after this council was created, to keep a permanent agenda item on one country only: Israel.
History will record that at a time when citizens across the Middle East were being attacked by their own government—by rifles, tanks, and helicopters—the UN focused its scarce time and attention on a country in that region where this is not happening; the only country in the region which, despite its flaws, respects the right to peaceful assembly, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and freedom of religion; the only country in the region with free elections, an independent judiciary, and the equal treatment of women; the only country where gays are not persecuted, arrested or stoned to death, but, on the contrary, march in their own annual parade, as they did in Tel Aviv three days ago.
Mr. President, that is why the logic of this agenda item represents the opposite of human rights, and why it embodies the pathologies that so discredited this council’s predecessor.
Indeed, this item is so unjust, so biased, so selective, so politicized, and so contradictory to this council’s own principles of equality and universality, that it was condemned by the Secretary-General himself, Mr. Ban Ki-moon, on 20 June 2007, the day after its adoption.
And so we ask: In its recent 5-year review, despite everything happening in the Middle East, why did the Council decide to perpetuate this item, an act that will be finalized this week by the General Assembly?
Mr. President,
History will record that when citizens were being persecuted or massacred by their own governments—in Syria, Iran, Yemen, Libya, Bahrain and elsewhere—the UN chose to turn a blind eye to the victims, and instead endorsed the cynicism, hypocrisy and scapegoating of the perpetrators.
Thank you, Mr. President.
So now we can add the massacres in Syria on which the UN remains all but silent. Not forgetting the many thousands of Palestinians killed, harassed, made stateless and left to rot by Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and other states.
Genocide of Palestinians? Even the Ma’an news agency reports an 8 fold increase in Palestinians since 1948 with more than 5 million in Israel, and the Palestinian territories.
So don’t tell me about Palestinian genocide, just tell me about the intended Jewish genocide announced, documented and planned by Hamas, Hizbollah, Ahmadinejad and several Muslim clerics in the region.
And while you are at it, please explain why the entire world is fixated on perceived Israeli crimes and so sanguine about millions massacred elsewhere.
I see no mention of the C4 documentary in any of my Twitter connections, not one. Did anyone mention it in parliament? Where was Gerald Kaufman that staunch defender of human rights? Where is George Galloway? Tony Benn? Where Cameron or Millipede and where Clegg? Anyone heard William Hague call it unacceptable or Cameron mention prison camps? Does Jenny Tonge understand why a Sri Lankan soldier can hold a rifle against the head of a Tamil and blow his brains out?
Why has no-one called for the destruction of the the Sinhalese majority Sri Lankan state and the creation of a ‘free’ Tamil one.
Where are our religious leaders? Where are the Methodists or the leaders of West Dunbartonshire Council? Who’s banning products from Sri Lanka? How many Sri Lankan politicians and soldiers have been threatened with arrest if they set foot in the UK?
Sorry, I forgot, Israel is by far the most evil state in the world and must be singled out for special opprobrium even if that means less time and attention spent on real criminals.
You see, the poor Tamils have no well-organised international groups keeping their grievance in the forefront of world attention.
They do not have the benefit of a red-green alliance.
Continue reading about Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields – what genocide actually looks like
Today saw the commemoration of what Palestinians call the Nakba, the catastrophe, which happens to be the anniversary of the Declaration of the State of Israel in 1948.
In scenes unprecedented in history thousands of people in Lebanon, Syria, Gaza, East Jerusalem and even Jordan have tried to cross the border into Israel apparently to demonstrate their so-called ‘Right of Return’. In Tel Aviv an Arab drove two kilometres trying to hit everything in sight and screaming ‘Death to the Jews’ (note ‘Jews’, not ‘Israelis’) killing one man and injuring several others.
Several people were apparently killed by IDF gunfire and at the border with Gaza tank rounds were used.
In Ankara, Turkey and even in Athens, Greece, where you’d think they would have other things to demonstrate about, protests have taken place and Israeli embassies targeted.
I did not intend to write about this particular event, as important as it is. However, it underlines the fact of continued Palestinian rejectionism. As Jonathan Tobin has pointed out :
Nakba Day should illustrate that it is not the eviction of the Jews from parts of the West Bank that has inspired Palestinian Arab nationalism but the notion that Jewish sovereignty anywhere in the country is unacceptable.
Estimates of the number of Palestinians who would claim a Right of Return (or compensation) vary, but it is somewhere between 4 and 7 million and, of course, growing.
The notion that somehow Israel could absorb 7 million people, let alone return them to their putative homes and property is absurd. That doesn’t matter. They are not interested in returning to No. 10 Habibi Street or 17a Jaffa Road.
No, their goal is the same as it has always been: destroy the State of Israel, kick out 5 million Jews and create a Palestinian State from ‘The River to the Sea’. A single, Islamist, authoritarian entity to replace Israel.
The ‘Return’ of a large number of Palestinians would result in Israel no longer being a state where the Jews remain a majority in charge of their own destiny. The goal of a single Islamic state, yet another in the region, would be achieved and the ‘Zionist Project’ would be history.
The sad fact is that so many on the Left in Europe believe that a one state solution will solve the problem and immediately result in the end of the Arab’s grudge against Israel and the West.
They are deluded.
The justification for the idea of a Nakba and a Right of Return comes from two false narratives.
The first is that Jews ‘stole the land’ from something called Palestine, a mythical Muslim state in cis-Jordanic Mandate Palestine. The Jews attacked the Arabs, driving them out and stealing their land forcing them to be refugees in surrouding countries and in Gaza and the West Bank.
This is a gross distortion of history. The Arab League rejected a two-state solution in 1947 and when the Jewish State was declared armies from surrounding nations attacked the nascent state.
Although many Arabs were driven out, many more left from fear or because they were encouraged to leave whilst the armies of the Arab League mopped up the Jews and drove them into the sea.
Unfortunately for these refugees the Arab league never delivered. Much of the land that had been offered as part of an Arab, Palestinian State was now in the hands of the Israelis.
Then something extraordinary happened; the UN created an Agency to deal only with refugees from the conflict of 1948. This is UNRWA or the United Nations Relief and Works Agency.
UNWRA’s own website tells us:
UNRWA’s services are available to all those living in its area of operations who meet this definition, who are registered with the Agency and who need assistance. The descendants of the original Palestine refugees are also eligible for registration. When the Agency started working in 1950, it was responding to the needs of about 750,000 Palestine refugees. Today, 4.8 million Palestine refugees are eligible for UNRWA services. (my emphasis)
Thus, uniquely, amongst all the millions of refugees in the world. descendants of Palestinian refugees are also given refugees status with no end date applicable. So in another 60 years there could be 100 million refugees and they would all claim that they have a right to live in Israel and claim back their putative property.
And these refugees were created as a result of an aggressive act by their own people (the Arab nation under the auspices of the Arab League as there was no idea of a separate Palestinian State in 1948).
Let us remember that Israel accepted the partition plan (UN General Assembly Resolution 181) that would have given them a small fraction of what they were promised (by the League of Nations under International Law in 1922), but the Arabs rejected it on behalf of the Palestinian Arabs, and then attacked Israel.
The second false narrative is that there is a Right of Return for these refugees based on UN resolution 194 Article 11:
Resolves that the refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return and for loss of or damage to property which, under principles of international law or in equity, should be made good by the Governments or authorities responsible; Instructs the Conciliation Commission to facilitate the repatriation, resettlement and economic and social rehabilitation of the refugees and the payment of compensation, and to maintain close relations with the Director of the United Nations Relief for Palestine Refugees and, through him, with the appropriate organs and agencies of the United Nations;
As the Zionism-Israel website tells us:
UN General Assembly Resolution 194 called for return of refugees who were willing to live in peace with their neighbors. Jewish refugees, including refugees from Palestinian Arab areas and hundreds of thousands of others expelled from Arab lands, were absorbed into Israel and did not claim refugee status. Arab refugees were placed in camps.
Please point out to me a specific ‘Right of Return’ in Article 11, and where does it mention descendants in perpetuity are entitled to refugee status. In the Zionism-Israel article cited above the Right of Return was specifically excluded despite recommendations by Count Folk Bernadotte, the UN mediator murdered by Jewish extremists.
The cited article also points out that there was no specific mention of Arab refugees. It referred to all refugees included Jews who fled from the area now known as the West Bank which came under Jordanian control until 1967 and included East Jerusalem which was ethnically cleansed of Jews by the Jordanians.
And, most importantly, even if there were a Right of Return specifically for Arab refugees mentioned in Resolution 194 Article 11, General Assembly resolutions are not binding in international law. Israel has no obligation whatsoever to provide such a right.
For a full discussion of the putative Palestinian Right of Return I recommend you read the cited article.
But here is the point of the title of this article. There was a Jewish ‘nakba’ which no-one ever hears about very often if at all.
Estimates of Palestinian refugees vary from 450,000 to 750,000.
800-900,000 Jews were expelled from several Arab states and stripped of their property and assets in 1948, and immediately in the aftermath of the creation of Israel, for no other reason than they were Jews.
Many of these fled to Israel where they were absorbed.
Today, the inestimable Michelle Huberman of Harif organised an event in London “The Jewish Nakba, Remembering Jewish refugees from Arab Countries”. This organisation is dedicated to having the issue of Jewish refugees and their narrative recognised and acknowledged.
Communities right across the Arab world from Algeria to Iraq were wiped out; some of these communities could trace their roots back more than 2000 years.
I recommend that you read Sir Martin Gilbert’s fine history: “In Ishmaels’ House” which deals with the Jewish nakba in its final chapters.
This is why I believe those who suffered the enormity of these events deserve compensation; they attacked no-one, they may or may not have been Zionists, they were generally content to continue their tight-rope existence in Arab lands where many were successful, wealthy, educated, property owning and asset rich.
How did they deserve to be deprived of citizenship, stripped of their assets and their property? What crime did they commit? The crime of being a Jew. That eternal crime which has been punished for centuries.
And they want to punish us still.
That punishment is their version of justice. The perceived grievance of the original 750,000 bloated to 4.5 million or more. Yet the 800,000 or so Jews and their descendants are only now being recognised as the other half to this cruel equation. Indeed, the Israeli government has quite rightly stated that no final peace can be made with the Palestinians without compensation for the Arab Jews.
The compensation and the recognition of this injustice against Mizrachi and Arab Jews is long overdue; and it is a much stronger claim than the Palestinians, many of whom had only moved relatively recently from surrounding countries and fled, or were victims of Israeli action as a result of their own people’s aggression.
Yet, in this Looking Glass world we now live in, the Jews and their grievances are valued at nought whilst the Palestinians must be rewarded and compensating for 60 years of self-victimhood and an aggressive war of extermination.
OK, despite the title, no doubt, at some time in the distant future, hopefully, when there is a final settlement that does not involve the destruction of Israel, Palestinians will be rewarded for their extraordinary patience and, as George Galloway might say, their ‘indefatigability’. I do not wish to suggest that they have not suffered or that Israel is blameless, but unless and until they recognise their own guilt and allow Jews to live in their homeland on a sliver of land called Israel, they do not deserve any compensation at all.
Continue reading about Jewish ‘Nakba’ – why Jews deserve compensation and the Palestinians do not
