I am not going to tell you whether I believe the deal, recently brokered, to exchange one Israeli soldier, Staff Sergeant Gilad Shalit, for 1027 Palestinian prisoners, is right or wrong.
Well, I am, actually; but not from a political point of view, or a practical one, or a religious one.
I am going to give you an answer from an ethical point of view, but not the obvious one about releasing murderers who may kill again.
I have had various conversations over the last few days with friends and members of the community to which I belong; some believe it is right to exchange Shalit and some do not.
The reason for the disagreement always centred around the rights of Shalit and his family against the rights of the families whose relatives had been the victims of hundreds of murderers and terrorists.
At the same time, the rights of those who may be killed in the future by those released also posed a dilemma throughout these discussions.
The truth is there is no right answer when you argue in these terms.
The point isn’t that Israel believes that one Jewish Israeli is ‘worth’ 1027 Palestinians. That is ridiculous.
The point is that Hamas knows that Israel values life, that Israel, Israelis and Jews across the world care that a young man is languishing in captivity without access to his family and friends, without education, without a sex life, without doing all those things that 20-something young men should be doing; and why? Because he was a soldier, not because he committed a crime, except that of being an Israeli.
Hamas has no such concerns or scruples when it comes to Palestinian prisoners. It is not their lives that Hamas cared about but their political value and their ability to hurt Israel even as convicted criminals.
Hamas knows that Israel values life. The perverted, inverted ‘morality’ of Hamas’s Islamist cult is in love with death.
Hamas has abandoned all semblance of what passes for human behaviour.
When you have bled yourself of all compassion, when you feed off your own hatred and have dehumanised an entire people; when you have nothing but contempt for your enemy because it has all those human qualities which you consider to be weaknesses, then it is a matter of little consequence and no conscience to win the obscene auction of a young man.
And that is why I support this exchange. I support it because it confirms in me the belief that I am on the right side. It’s not about good and evil; it’s about flawed humanity, which is, nevertheless, humanity and pure unabstracted malice and distilled evil.
And I could not care less about all the crowing and victory whooping and all the threats to kidnap more Israelis; and I don’t give a damn about the hero welcomes and the streets and squares which will be named after murderers who have deliberately targeted children, teenagers and the elderly.
What I care about is that my humanity remains intact, that Israel has demonstrated clearly that its humanity is intact and Gilad Shalit will be free.
Continue reading about Shalit and what the deal tells us about Israel and Hamas
It looks like the Middle East has found a new Nasser for the 21st century.
Turkey’s president, Recep Erdogan, has announced a series of military and civil measures and sanctions against Israel since the publication of the Palmer Report enquiry into the Mavi Marmara incident over a year ago.
Even before the report Erdogan was making bellicose noises.
It appears that Erdogan is using the incident and Israel’s refusal to apologise as an excuse not only to withdraw from his country’s long and happy friendship with Israel, but to promote himself as a champion of the one cause that unites the Arab and Muslim worlds – the Palestinian grievance with Israel.
Erdogan came to power with a decidedly Islamist agenda. Turkey has been a secular state ever since Kemal Attaturk established the new Turkey in the ruins of the Ottoman Empire after World War I. For decades Turkey was an example of how Islam can be a national religion and identity whilst retaining secularism.
Turkey’s record on human rights has not always been without blemish, but it is a member of NATO and would like to join the EU.
In April 2010 a so-called Freedom Flotilla of pro-Palestinian and anti-Zionist groups announced their intention to beat Israel’s maritime blockade of Gaza and deliver ‘humanitarian aid’.
As it turned out, there was little aid of any use on the boats and it was not only clear but also admitted that the true reason was confrontation with Israel and to promote the anti-Zionist agenda.
What is also clear is that the lead boat, the Mavi Marmara, registered under the flag of the Cormoros, was owned and led by the Turkish Islamist group the IHH.
I will not rehearse events which are now well known and which I have written about here, here, and here and in several other posts.
Despite worldwide outcry and condemnation before the facts were known Israel always maintained that its soldiers fired as a last resort and in self-defence. This was the conclusion of a BBC documentary. This was broadly the conclusion of the Palmer Report whose main conclusions were reported by Honest Reporting here:
1. Israel’s blockade of Gaza is legal.
The fundamental principle of the freedom of navigation on the high seas is subject to only certain limited exceptions under international law. Israel faces a real threat to its security from militant groups in Gaza. The naval blockade was imposed as a legitimate security measure in order to prevent weapons from entering Gaza by sea and its implementation complied with the requirements of international law.
2. The Turkish IHH, which organized the flotilla, was looking for trouble with the IDF.
The majority of the flotilla participants had no violent intentions, but there exist serious questions about the conduct, true nature and objectives of the flotilla organizers, particularly IHH. The actions of the flotilla needlessly carried the potential for escalation.
3. The IDF used excessive force.
Israel’s decision to board the vessels with such substantial force at a great distance from the blockade zone and with no final warning immediately prior to the boarding was excessive and unreasonable . . . .
The loss of life and injuries resulting from the use of force by Israeli forces during the take-over of the Mavi Marmara was unacceptable. Nine passengers were killed and many others seriously wounded by Israeli forces. No satisfactory explanation has been provided to the Panel by Israel for any of the nine deaths.
4. IDF commandos defended themselves from pre-meditated violence.
Israeli Defense Forces personnel faced significant, organized and violent resistance from a group of passengers when they boarded the Mavi Marmara requiring them to use force for their own protection. Three soldiers were captured, mistreated, and placed at risk by those passengers. Several others were wounded.
5. Gaza aid should be delivered by land.
All humanitarian missions wishing to assist the Gaza population should do so through established procedures and the designated land crossings in consultation with the Government of Israel and the Palestinian Authority.
Despite this, Prime Minister Erdogan said that the report is worthless and ‘null and void’.
Erdogan knew what was in the report. He knew that both Israel and Turkey would be criticised and he knew that the criticism would be mainly against Turkey.
Well before the report was published Erdogan was demanding an apology for the killing of 8 Turks. If this apology were not received by the time the report was published he threatened a tsunami of measures against Israel and he is, if nothing else, true to his word.
But Erdogan has form, as it were.
Here he is walking out on Israeli President Peres at the World Economic Forum in Davos in January 2009.
He accuses Israel of hypocrisy. He cites firstly the death of children (it’s always children) on a beach in Gaza supposedly from Israeli fire. Yet the ‘crime scene’ was quickly cleared by Palestinians and the IDF asserted that it did not shell the beach. There was a strong suspicion that this might have been a misdirected militant shell. But Erdogan does not give his supposed friend the benefit of the doubt.
Second he mentions two previous Israeli Prime Ministers saying they were happy when they entered Palestine in tanks. It is not clear which Prime Ministers he refers to or what he means by Palestine, but it was probably the Six Day War. Of course they were happy to force back the Jordanian armies from the West Bank and reunite Jerusalem. The notion of ‘Palestine’ that we have now did not exist in those days. The West Bank was occupied illegally by Jordan. I don’t recall the Palestinians complaining too much about that. Or maybe he is referring to tanks entering Gaza. Whatever he means, he is implying that Israelis are joyful aggressors rather than defenders fighting an existential threat.
He is angry with the crowd applauding Peres who spoke about peace but the willingness to defend against aggressive neighbours. He criticises the audience for applauding, in his interpretation, killing. He goes on to remind Peres of the commandment not to kill.
Hypocrisy appears to be writ large for Mr Erdogan. I’m sure the Kurds,the Armenians and the Cypriots know a thing or two about Turkey and killing. Only Israel is not allowed to defend itself.
This is not a very impressive performance from Erdogan who comes over as aggressive and claims that the chair of the meeting won’t let him speak.
This incident was the first clear indication that Erdogan did not much like his ‘friend’. As a result of this incident Erdogan was lionised across the Arab world and in the Palestinian territories for standing up to Peres.
Nevertheless, Turkey and Israel maintained relations, shared military manoeuvres, enjoyed mutual trade. Thousands of Israelis holidayed in Turkey.
But the die was cast.
Erdogan soon embarked on his project of being number one man in the Muslim world. He began cosying up to tyrants such as Ahmadinejad and Assad and making nice with Hugo Chavez.
His finest moment was a humanitarian award from Muammar Gadaffi.
He also sent envoys to Hamas in Gaza to tell them that Turkey was on their side and to enhance his reputation in the Arab world.
The European powers and the United States saw him, and, presumably, still do see him as the very embodiment of the Turkish nation which has a toe in Europe and the West, and a large land mass in the East.
Erdogan is a useful middleman, a secular Muslim, who could speak on equal terms with Israel and Iran. He was a key player, the perfect go-between.
Israel was not happy with some of the conclusions of the Palmer Report but feels, overall, vindicated by it.
As to the legalities or otherwise of the blockade, that would require a separate post on its own.
Suffice it to say that, lo and behold, as soon as Israel is in any way vindicated in its actions, up pops a new UN statement telling us it’s all wrong after all; the Blockade is illegal. And the perpetrator is none other than Richard Falk, Special Rapporteur on Palestinian Human Rights (there doesn’t appear to be one for Israeli human rights), and also Special Rapporteur for the Palestinian Territories, who also happens to be the author of a recent article which included a crude anti-Semitic cartoon, later withdrawn.
Falk is really likely to be unbiased, I guess, given his dual roles on behalf of Palestinians and a long track record of anti-Israel rhetoric and writing.
But back to Erdogan.
What the Turkish Prime Minister did and continues to do, on a daily basis, having failed to get Israel to apologise, is truly amazing.
Even the Palmer Report did not require an apology of Israel. Should Turkey not also apologise to Israel for more or less sponsoring a terrorist organisation to confront and provoke its supposed friend? Turkish nationals planned and executed a lethal, suicidal attack on IDF soldiers, and he believes Israel should apologise. No-one was harmed on any of the other boats where there was no violent resistance.
If these two nations were supposed friends, surely they can sort out their differences, admit mistakes and work to avoid future incidents which would endanger lives, innocent and otherwise.
But no, Israel’s ally and friend has unleashed a torrent of sanctions against Israel and here is this tragic litany which is unprecedented in the relations between states supposed to be allies:
- Downgrading diplomatic status of Israeli embassy and expelling the ambassador
- Saying that Turkey will now patrol the Eastern Mediterranean to protect shipping from Israeli aggression
- Threatening Israel’s gas drilling agreements with Cyprus
- Pursuing the prosecution of supposedly named Israeli soldiers in the Mavi MArmara incident whose identities were revealed to him by the IHH (how they would know any names apart from the ones of the soldiers they stabbed, battered and shot and dragged below decks, I have no idea)
- Humiliating Israel tourists at Istanbul airport by having them strip searched
- Threatening to escort Gaza ‘aid’ convoys and confront the Israeli navy
- Calling the Palmer report on the Mavi Marmara ‘null and void’ and worthless
- Confronting a tourist cruise ship headed for Greece which is childish and provocative
- Changing its jet fighter software to identify Israeli navy and air force as ‘hostile’
- Claiming the Mavi Marmara incident was a casus belli
- Saying he is prepared for war with Israel
- Says that Israel must ‘pay’ for its ‘terrorism’
- And the latest atrocity – requiring Israeli citizens have visas to enter Turkey
This is the behaviour of megalomaniac more reminiscent of the last century than this. It is the behaviour of a child having a tantrum, not a serious politician.
How can Turkey remain a member of NATO when it is clearly trying to provoke Israel into a reaction it can use as an excuse to ‘punish’ her.?
What would happen if Turkey attacked Israel on some pretext? What would the US do?
What will the Greeks’ and Cypriots’ reaction be to Turkey’s sabre-rattling? What about the Italians?
Turkey has the second largest fleet in NATO after the US. Israel is no match for this navy. In the air Israel may have an advantage but who even wants to contemplate such a ludicrous scenario.
If you ignore bullies sometimes they just go away, but often they will ramp up the aggro to assert themselves. Erdogan is asserting a new Turkish nationalism.
Such a situation was hardly imaginable in the Bush era. But the US and the Europeans have economic problems whilst Turkey is booming. There may be frantic activity behind the scenes; many statements coming out of Ankara are often ‘clarified’.
If Erdogan is playing a game of brinksmanship it is not a very wise course of action given the volatility of the region.
What’s also certain is that some of the countermeasures mooted on the Israeli side, if they are true, such as supporting the PKK, the Kurdish separatist party which is designated a terrorist organisation, would be even more damaging to Israel and morally reprehensible.
There is no way Israel can give any succour to a terrorist organisation. This would be terribly wrong. If this is just Foreign Minister Lieberman’s rantings then he needs to be controlled or sacked.
Israel should avoid provocation, use the opportunity to cement ties with Greece and even Armenia and maybe think about counter-prosecution of the Turkish government for sponsoring the breaking of a legal blockade. Is that not also a casus belli?
It may even be worth the risk for Israel to pre-empt Turkey and go to the International Court and seek a ruling which no-one could then gainsay.
Let’s hope the Turkish people have enough sense to get rid of Erdogan at the next election. They deserve better.
If Erdogan pushes too far he may end up being cut off from Europe like his Ottoman predecessors.
If he’s not careful Turkey may well end up cooking its own goose.
UPDATE: Apparently Israeli jets and ships are being identified as ‘neutral’ not ‘hostile’ and not as I stated above.
Also – an interesting analysis in the Daily beast by Owen Matthews gives a less dramatic view than me.
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Remember the Flotilla that set sail for Gaza one year ago?
Remember the Mavi Marmara?
Remember the worldwide outrage when the IDF killed 9 IHH members on board?
Israel was accused of piracy on the high-seas and murder.
I wrote about it here here and here.
Well, the flotillaniks are at it again.
So what’s it all about? What are the real objectives of the “Peace Flotilla”?
StandWIthUs have put together extensive information.
First there are Ten Quick Facts
This is elaborated here.
The US State Department issued a statement you can see here.
So what’s my blog title about?
Well, one of the US ships has been named ‘The Audacity of Hope’ mocking President Obama’s book of that name. This venture was trailed as a massive new Flotilla and the Israelis would have problems stopping it this time by sheer weight of numbers.
Yet we find to day that the number of participants will be approximately 300. There were 600 on the Mavi Marmara alone.
So the whole purpose of the flotilla is not humanitarian aid; that lie can easily be countered by the fact that both Egypt and Israel have offered ports where cargo can be checked and aid sent through to Gaza. In any case, Gaza does not need this aid.
The purpose of the Flotilla is to embarrass Israel. It is a blatant provocation. The organisers are Hamas supporters. They know that if they can break the blockade then it is invalidated and weapons from Iran can pass freely to Hamas. If there is a confrontation, they hope to further their aim to delegitimise the State of Israel and isolate it internationally.
The flotillaniks say that they carry no weapons, yet a report today that is going the rounds of the Twittersphere is that extremists on the flotilla have chemicals aboard and want to kill IDF soldiers.
Here is what the Jerusalem Post reported:
While the organizers of the Gaza-bound flotilla said in Athens Monday that the passengers are taking to sea “without weapons,” government sources said Israel had information that some of the passengers had hid chemicals, such as sulfur, on theboats to be used against IDF soldiers.
This is what Reuters said:
An Israeli military source said Israel had information that some activists were planning to attack soldiers with acid and lethal chemical agents if they boarded the ships.
Dror Feiler, an Israeli participant in the flotilla, denied the allegation in an interview with Israeli Army Radio and said all of the passengers had signed a pledge of non-violence.
And Ha’aretz:
Senior officials in Jerusalem said Monday that Israel has received information that organizers of the Gaza flotilla may be bringing chemical substances on the ships to use against Israeli soldiers to prevent them from boarding the ships.
The senior officials also said that Israel had been notified that several extremists among the Gaza flotilla participants had recently claimed that they intend on “shedding the blood of IDF soldiers.”
Moreover, despite earlier reports, it seems that activists from the Turkish organization IHH, which was involved in the deadly IDF raid on the Mavi Marmara in last year’s Gaza flotilla, will be joining several of the ships sailing for Gaza as part of the flotilla.Israeli officials claim that two activists participating in the flotilla have connections to Hamas. They named the first one as Amin Abu Rashad, who they claim is one of the head Dutch organizers for the Gaza flotilla and had served in the past as the head of the Hamas’ Charitable Foundation in Holland. The foundation closed down following Dutch authorities’ probe into its involvement in funding terror activities.
The second activist is Mohammed Ahmed Hanon, which Israel claims is a Hamas activist who stands at the head of the ABSPP, which is involved in transferring funds to terrorists.
It remains to be seen whether these reports are well-founded. If they are, then any veneer of peace activism is blown out of the water.
You might also like to see this post from the Elder of Zion about the organisers of this new Love Boat.
There is also a fine article by Ruth Dudley Edwards in the Irish Independent:
Let us be clear. Whether they know it or not, that gaggle of posturing, ignorant Irish clowns who are setting sail towards Gaza on the MV Saoirse are driven by anti-Semitism. Otherwise they would be protesting against — for instance — the Islamist killings and bombings that are forcing tens of thousands of Christians to flee the Middle East, the ethnic cleansing in the Sudan, the ill-treatment of servants and women in Saudi Arabia, the hanging of gays from cranes in Iran, the massacres of protesters in Libya and Syria, the torture of Irish-trained doctors in Bahrain for tending to injured demonstrators and the vicious anti-Jewish propaganda that teaches Arab children to hate.
I also refer you to the Howard Jacobson post I wrote recently.
Meanwhile, we find that in the a UN draft report into last year’s Mavi Marmara incident found that the Israeli maritime blockade was not illegal and they were within their rights to stop the flotilla.
A draft of the report, due to be released within two weeks, was given to Israel and Turkey about six weeks ago. The committee determined that Israel’s naval blockade of Gaza is in keeping with international law, and therefore its actions to stop the flotilla were also legal.
This same report states that Israel’s actions were “disproportionate” – that word again. Yes, it’s really disproportionate to make sure you kill someone who is fanatically committed to killing you or to die. But maybe that merits another post at another time. No doubt we’ll soon be looking at second UN Report and another attempted hatchet job on Israel in the coming days.
For the legal aspects also, read this by the Elder which refers to a Zeit Online article.
There has been some interesting attempts on the Israeli side to use lawfare against the ‘Peace Flotilla’ (great name for those who believe language is just another weapon of war – it’s called propaganda, usually).
First marine insurance companies were warned off insuring the boats because if it could be shown they were breaching international law, then they would in effect be liable to be sued by victims of Hamas terrorism:
A human rights group has warned insurance companies that they could be aiding terrorism if they insure ships that break the blockade of Gaza.
Israeli organisation Shurut Hadin has written to almost all major insurance companies worldwide, including Lloyd’s of London, the biggest in the world.
It warns them that they could be liable for massive damages if the ships they insure break Israel’s blockade around Hamas-controlled Gaza.
Lawyer Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, the founder of the group, explained: “We sent these letters to the largest insurance companies in the world, including Turkish companies, which represent over 99 per cent of the maritime insurance business worldwide. We warned them that, if they insure these ships, they could be sued by victims of Hamas attacks.”
Then a US citizen invoked a 220 year old law to try to try to seize the US boats intending to take part.
Dr. Alan Bauer, who along with his son Jonathan was seriously wounded in Palestinian Authority Arab suicide bombing attack in Jerusalem in 2002, filed the suit in a federal court in Manhattan. He is represented by Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, director of the Israeli-based Shurat HaDin (Israel Law Center) and New York attorney Robert J. Tolchin.
Bauer’s suit seeks to confiscate 14 ships outfitted with funds “unlawfully raised in the United States by anti-Israel groups, including the Free Gaza Movement.” The lawsuit contends that furnishing and outfitting the ships, which are being used for hostilities against a U.S. ally, violates American law.
A Canadian citizen who is a resident of Sderot has taken out a lawsuit against the Flotilla organisers:
Sderot resident and Canadian citizen Cherna Rosenberg has filed a million dollar law suit against two Canadian organizations raising money to sponsor a ship – The Canadian Boat to Gaza – to join the international flotilla to Gaza.
The suit, presented by Toronto barrister and law professor Ed Morgan and New York attorney and former AIPAC executive director Neal Sher to the Ontario Superior Court of Justice on Monday, argues that the groups, Turtle Island Humanitarian Aid and Alternatives International, both based in Montreal, are part of a chain of conduct that “ultimately leads to the rocket attacks that have traumatized the plaintiff and caused her much suffering and loss.”
The Greeks have waded in with their own attempt to derail the flotilla sailing from Athens:
Ynet has learned that six ships that were meant to take part in the Gaza-bound flotilla are being detained by the port authority and the coast guard in Greece. Senior officials in Jerusalem have confirmed the report.
While the organizers of the maritime convoy claim that more than 1,500 activists are set to take part in the initiative, it now appears that not more than seven ships, carrying 200-500 passengers, will participate in the flotilla.
YNETnews.com 27 Jun 2011 also see the Elder again here about Shurat HaDin’s efforts to scuttle the flotilla..
Of course, the Hamas-huggers are whingeing about all these efforts because they are getting a taste of their own medicine. Too bad!
So, the Peace Flotilla, replete, allegedly, with its chemical weapons and who knows what else, sets off for Gaza, not to build a nation, Palestine, but destroy another, Israel.
How sad. How tragic. How much longer will Palestinians allow themselves to be used as the pawns of Green-Red political posturing?
How much longer will they allow themselves to be sacrificed on the altar of anti-Zionist, Jew-hatred and far Left ideological fantasising.
Audacity of Hope? Or the Morality of the Cesspit?
You decide.
UPDATE:
Chas Newkey-Burden (OyVaGoy) has pointed me to his own blog post on this issue.
http://www.oyvagoy.com/2011/06/28/we-want-to-bring-the-soldiers-home-safely/
FURTHER UPDATE:
http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2011/06/brilliant-lawsuit-to-stop-flotilla.html
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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.
Mel McDermott lives in Dublin. He has been a teacher for most of his adult life as well as a student of history with a special interest in the Middle East.
He is a close observer of parallels and contrasts between the conflicts in Northern Ireland and in Israel/Palestine. He is active in hasbara work and in the struggle to combat dishonest media coverage and delegitimisation of Israel in Ireland.A few years ago, around the time of Hamas’ violent takeover of the Gaza Strip, many voices were heard in Ireland, as well as outside it, claiming to draw lessons from the Northern Ireland peace process that were felt to be relevant to the Israel-Hamas conflict. Politicians in the Republic, who include some of the most hostile to Israel among European parliamentarians, were only too happy to dispense advice to the Israelis – along the lines of “We talked to the IRA to end the conflict, so you must talk to Hamas if you want to end yours”, such negotiation being without preconditions. The argument was usually clinched by the glib phrase “To make peace, you talk to your enemies, not your friends”.
It was always suspect advice. Leave aside the fact that the primary motivation of Sinn Fein-IRA is political and that of Hamas is religious (though, of course, the religious dimension of Islam cannot be separated from the political). For the first, the goal, mistaken or not, was the political unification of the island of Ireland outside the United Kingdom regardless of the wishes of the British majority in Northern Ireland. For the second, as the Hamas Charter of 1988 makes clear, the goal is the recovery of land once under Islamic rule: all of historic Palestine including Israel is the waqf (Islamic trust territory) that cannot be allowed to be alienated from Islamic rule ‘until the Day of Resurrection’.
Leave aside also the very different balances of forces in the two conflicts. In the NI case, Sinn Fein-IRA terrorism enjoyed neither majority support among nationalists in Ireland nor the support of any neighbouring state (though it did have safe houses in the Republic and covert help from friends in the US) and was fighting an uphill struggle against the British and Irish security forces, which had essentially fought it to a standstill by the early 1990s. Hamas, on the other hand, has some reason to feel the wind at its back, what with arms supplies and training from Iran, the moral support of the Middle East Arab masses and the international campaign of delegitimisation of Israel.
Aside from wrong starting assumptions, the true weakness of the ‘talk to Hamas without preconditions’ advice was that it rewrote history by misrepresenting what happened between the first IRA ceasefire in 1994 and the Good Friday Agreement of 1998. For Sinn Fein-IRA to enter negotiations, the ceasefire was not enough. To join in talks with the constitutional parties and the two governments, Sinn Fein was required to sign up to the six ‘Mitchell Principles’(named after US Senator George Mitchell, sent as mediator by President Clinton). The chief of these committed all parties to renunciation of violence and to the use of exclusively democratic means to advance their goals. In other words, your enemies had to stop trying to kill you before you agreed to talk to them.
After two years, the talks resulted in the Good Friday settlement that still holds. According to its terms, Sinn Fein-IRA agreed to accept the present status of NI as part of the UK as long as there is a pro-union majority there, in return for its being allowed to take part in a power-sharing devolved administration in NI; the Republic voted overwhelmingly by referendum to remove its constitutional claim to NI, and the British promised to abide by the result of any future majority vote in NI to leave the union; residents of NI can opt for British or Irish citizenship.
In short, all sides operated within a familiar Western context in which recognition of politico-military realities, including war-weariness on all sides, generates movement towards negotiation, compromise and, ultimately, some kind of settlement. When have any of those factors been in evidence among the anti-Israel forces in the Middle East?
The Mitchell Principles were, in fact, rather similar to the three conditions which Israel, with the agreement of the Quartet (US, UN, EU and Russia) has set for engaging Hamas in talks. (Whether, since SF-IRA was not asked to recognize explicitly NI’s right to exist, Israel should insist on explicit recognition by Hamas in the event that it renounced violence fully, is an argument – an academic one, surely — for another day.)
But here’s a lesson from the NI peace process that nobody is keen to pass on to Israel’s leaders. It is the fact that, even after you get the settlement, rejectionist elements among the terrorists will continue with violence and do their best to disrupt the agreement. The worst death toll in a single atrocity in 30 years of conflict in NI came in August 1998, four months after the signing of the Good Friday Agreement, when the Real IRA, made up of dissident former IRA members, killed 31 people at Omagh with a car bomb. The same group has recently murdered Catholic/nationalist members of the reformed Police Service of Northern Ireland (set up under Good Friday) and threatened to kill more, the aim being to intimidate their co-religionists from joining, thus bolstering their own claim that the PSNI is a sectarian force.
This pattern should be familiar to all who remember the eruptions of Fatah and Hamas terrorism after the Oslo Accords and the recent proliferation of groups in Gaza willing to continue rocketing southern Israel in defiance of the will of Hamas when that group calls one of its periodic lulls.
This is not a matter simply of terrorists falling out; it is about the persistence of the ideology that motivates them. Recently, in the Republic, a new political party, Eirígí (Gaelic for ‘Arise’), founded in 2006 by former SF-IRA members, has been busy recruiting among young people and has been given a lot of air time to expound its views on the forthcoming visits to Ireland of Queen Elizabeth and President Obama and on the killing of bin Laden. Defining its objective as an all-Ireland ‘Socialist Republic’, it aligns itself with the Real IRA rejection of Good Friday and rehashes the old republican tropes of ‘British imperialist occupation of the six counties’ and the demand for a ‘British withdrawal’.
Eirígí’s political traction so far shouldn’t be over-rated: in the recent NI local elections none of its candidates were elected, though one received over 1,400 votes in a Belfast ward. Yet, with youth and vigour on its side and a talent for agit-prop on the streets, it has obvious potential to attract support from those too young to remember much about the peace process.
It has been an eerie feeling to hear the return of this pre-Good Friday rhetoric as if the Agreement had never happened, and to hear it go unchallenged by naïve talk show presenters as if it were just another contribution to debate. The Agreement that was supposed to have laid the conflict to rest and resolved all outstanding matters between Britain and Ireland now seems to recede into the fog of history and becomes just one of a number of competing ‘narratives’.
Is this the future of an Israel-Palestinian peace deal, assuming one can ever be achieved? A decade after the agreement, and a generation is on the rise that doesn’t remember the long process and painful compromises needed to reach it and is ripe for indoctrination and incitement by hate-filled ideologues from the past – there you have the materials for a new round of conflict. Does the information revolution and its encouragement of ever-shorter attention spans facilitate this? Think of how little kudos Israel gets now from critics for its withdrawal from Gaza less than six years ago – it might never have happened.
I’ve met Israelis who imagine, understandably, that a good ploy to win Irish friends is to emphasise a common anti-British narrative based on the parallel independence struggles of the Irish and Israelis. I try to tell them there is no percentage in that line, since the inheritors of the violent nationalist tradition are also the most virulently anti-Israel. For them, the Palestinians have taken over the MOPE (Most Oppressed People Ever) slot once held by the NI Catholics/nationalists.
The Eirígí phenomenon has some novel features. It was already noticeable that the ranks of Palestine Solidarity campaigners were augmented by members of Sinn Fein, especially from the youth wing, who seemed very well organised for talk show phone-ins, texting programmes etc. With the Good Friday settlement in place, and unable to vent their spleen on the unionist/loyalist opposition or on the security forces with the same venom as previously, these people found an ideal alternative outlet in the Israel/Palestine issue.
Eirígí have taken this further by practically merging agitation on the NI and Israel/Palestinian issues, thus enabling it to boast a membership equally ignorant of Irish and Middle East history. Its street demonstrations have included a mock-trial and guillotine execution of Queen Elizabeth in Dublin city centre – on charges that included the 19th century famine and participation in the 2004 siege of Falluja – and demands for the release of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine terrorist Ahmad Sa’adat and the convicted Hamas terrorist Jamal Abu al-Haija, both on hunger strike in an Israeli jail. Its website helpfully sets this in the context of the 30th anniversary of the deaths of 10 IRA prisoners on hunger strike in NI at the height of the IRA’s war. The IRA’s pioneering use of victimhood as a propaganda weapon in a campaign of violence has found its emulators in the Middle East.
Falsifying history, the website adds ‘We in Ireland understand only too well the seriousness of the situation when you have no option but to use your body as a weapon’. In fact, all the concessions won by SF-IRA in 1998 were already on offer in the Sunningdale Agreement of 1974 reached between the British and Irish governments (the nationalist politician Seamus Mallon famously called the Good Friday Agreement ‘Sunningdale for slow learners’). But at that stage violence seemed a more promising path to its ultimate goal. That remind you of anything in the 63 years of Israel/Palestinian conflict?
Continue reading about Thoughts on Northern Ireland as model for the Israel-Palestinian conflict
Well, I’m back and a lot has happened in the few days since I returned from Israel.
Wedding No.1
Fatah and Hamas have come together in unholy matrimony after years of slaughtering each other and vying politically for dominance of Palestinian society in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
Why? Why now?
Why do two factions suddenly decide to make nice whilst holding a knife behind their back ready to plunge into their new friends’ chest?
For months Fatah have been pursuing Plan B: to have the UN support the unilateral declaration of a Palestinian state on the so-called 1967 ‘borders’. Plan A was to continue or restart peace talks with Israel.
But Plan A stalled because Fatah and the Palestinian Authority are incapable of making peace with Israel. They have carefully cultivated an image of peace-seeking victims who have abjured terrorism and military action and pursue diplomacy.
Even though the PA continues to demonise Israel, to deny Jewish rights to any of the land, to regurgitate anti-Semitic narratives in the media and in the schools, its public and international face is one of the noble victim.
Creating a state on the 1967 ceasefire lines is a risky policy for reasons I have previously discussed; principal risk is that if Palestine equates to the land beyond the Green Line, then surely Israel equates to the land behind the Green Line.
This amounts to a de facto recognition of a permanent and settled view of Israel and makes it difficult, in theory, to pursue the long-term goal of a state from the River to the Sea.
The Palestinians are aware but are determined to continue to tear up all the Oslo Accords and go against all UN Resolutions; to nullify 60 years of history, negotiation, legally binding agreements. Tear it all up and go headlong for a unilateral declaration and bypass Israel. Something only possible because so many countries, member states of the UN, are conniving at this attempt to stamp all over Israel’s right to a negotiated peace.
A big stumbling-block to the UN recognition of a viable Palestinian state is the severed limb that is the Gaza Strip run by the Hamas preventing a unified state on all the land of the PA. Without this unity a UN vote in favour of a state will be more difficult, if not impossible.
So the conversation between Hamas and Fatah must have gone something like this:
Fatah: Will you marry me? It is a marriage of convenience. We need you to pretend we are married but we cannot consummate the marriage because we just don’t love each other and we have a different strategy to fulfil our goal of destroying Israel. But we’ll never be able to fulfil our dearest wish unless we appear to be unified.
Hamas: So you really want to destroy Israel? Why do you recognise their right to exist? We can never accept this.
Fatah: Just think. Our own state, a base from which we can pursue our next step: the Right of Return. Once we have a state and we can flood Israel with Palestinians, their pathetic democracy will mean that eventually we will have political supremacy.
We can still attack Israel and allow our military wings to continue the struggle whilst condemning their actions. We will have the political and diplomatic mastery whilst continuing the struggle. If they attack us, the world will condemn.
Hamas: What’s in it for us?
Fatah: we will allow you to continue with operations whilst we hold elections. We must have the semblance of democracy. We both want the same thing. Let the people decide whose method to follow. Let’s marry so we can destroy the Zionists.
Hamas: We agree. But we will win. Our marriage will be annulled as soon as we have attained our goal.
Fatah: So be it. Now let’s put together a joint statement….
So this first marriage is a sham designed to achieve stage one of the destruction of Israel which has always been the goal of both Hamas and Fatah. The terrible truth is that all negotiations have always been in bad faith.
Once there is an internationally recognised state will the Palestinians have a more just cause in the eyes of the world to rise up against the occupier and attack illegal settlers? What will the status of 1/2 million Israelis be?
The result can only be a severe escalation in violence. And the world will blame Israel once again.
Just as the West is crowing about the Arab Spring and all those wonderful freedom-loving democracies of which not one has yet materialised, the UN may be backing the creation of a new, undemocratic, terrorist state.
Go figure. Yeah, you got it in one; it’s OK because Israel is involved.
Wedding No. 2
William Wales and Catherine Middleton, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge.
I didn’t think this had anything to do with Israel until a correspondent in Jerusalem, an ex-pat Brit and a religious Jew, wrote to me that he had just discovered the true meaning of the hymn Jerusalem and would never enjoy it again. And he added that the Royal Family had Nazi roots.
I took great exception to both these assertions. There followed a series of emails trying to convince me that George VI was a Nazi or at least a Nazi lover. Several references to the Mountbattens and other royals and their Nazi sympathies proved, he claimed, that the Royal Family was Nazi, anti-Semitic and anti-Zionist.
I won’t rehearse the discussion, it was my reaction that was important. Why should I spring to the defence of the Royal Family?
It’s all about loyalty and national identity. It tells me I am truly British and I won’t take such defamation even from an Israeli Jew. The possibility that there may be a thread of truth in what he says is difficult to confront because of these loyalties, even though I am not a great royalist.
I don’t believe the current Royal Family is Nazi in any way, that is absurd, but there may some anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism lurking, unspoken. After all, there has never been a State visit to Israel whilst the Gulf states are good friends of the royals despite their appalling human rights records. Or do the royals just do what their government tells them?
The royal couple were reported to be intending honeymooning in Jordan. A strange choice. Maybe a quick trip to Israel whilst they are there would be nice. I think not. We don’t want to be upsetting any of Britain’s Arab interests, do we.
As for Jerusalem, the hymn, music by Hubert Parry, I am aware that it is about William Blake’s vision of England as a New Jerusalem and its Christian message does not offend my Jewish sensibilities in any way. When I watch the Last Night of the Proms I am more than happy to sing along even though I know its about Jesus striding across the hills of England. Who cares? The music is sublime and the words uplifting.
And, more food for thought, the royal wedding had both a hymn called Jerusalem and the glorious ‘I was Glad’, also by Parry, based on Psalm 122, which asks us to pray for the peace of Jerusalem. A Psalm which we are told was written by King David himself.
So Jerusalem was at the very heart of this wedding and Jewish liturgy at the core of the ceremony, its most moving moment as Kate floated down the aisle with her father to the rousing strains of ‘I Was Glad’ – was there a dry eye in the house?
The Funeral
Earlier this week we awoke to the news that Osama bin Laden had been killed by US Navy Seals in Abbottabad, Pakistan. He was then buried at sea.
Celebrations in the West left me cold.
Sorry, I cannot rejoice at the death of any man. This does not mean that I don’t believe that it was right to kill him. I would have preferred that he were brought to justice but that was probably impractical. I can also understand people in New York and Washington feeling that justice has been done.
The significance of sending in an assassination squad to kill a terrorist is this: if it’s OK for the US to kill a terrorist in this way and for the leaders of the Western world to applaud this action, then surely it is OK for Israel to eliminate terrorists?
In the future, Israel can say, ‘what is the difference between our action and that of the US? If you do not condemn them, then why do you condemn us? If it is legal for them, then it is legal for us.’
This state assassination, however justified morally, if it is justifiable morally, poses questions for the future and, indeed, for the present; after all, is not Nato ambiguously attacking Col. Gaddafi in Libya in order to ‘protect civilians’. What is the legality of this, let alone any question of a broad interpretation of UN Resolution 1973.
Such actions by Western nations may have repercussions when trying to prosecute other national actors for similar procedures against what these nations consider proper targets for assassination. The actions of the Sri Lankan army against the Tamil Tigers might be justified along the same lines. You may shout ‘moral equivalence’ and you may be right, but the UN and the international courts might have a different view. Or do powerful countries have rights that weaker countries do not?
Already Human Rights organisations and politicians are condemning.
Former West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt told German TV the operation could have incalculable consequences in the Arab world at a time of unrest there.
“It was quite clearly a violation of international law.”
It was a view echoed by high-profile Australian human rights lawyer Geoffrey Robertson.
“It’s not justice. It’s a perversion of the term. Justice means taking someone to court, finding them guilty upon evidence and sentencing them,” Robertson told Australian Broadcasting Corp television from London.
“This man has been subject to summary execution, and what is now appearing after a good deal of disinformation from the White House is it may well have been a cold-blooded assassination.”
Robertson said bin Laden should have stood trial, just as World War Two Nazis were tried at Nuremburg or former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic was put on trial at the war crimes tribunal in The Hague after his arrest in 2001.
It is interesting to note a link to Wedding No. 1 in that Hamas condemned the killing whilst Fatah, true to their drive to be seen as a national player in tune with the West, applauded it. However, in private, they are probably chewing their knuckles in anger and frustration. Not that they were Al Qaeda supporters, but any victory for the US and, by association, Israel, is a big blow. It is also interesting that the Fatah military wing, the Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade, were reported to condemn the killing.
This apparent difference between Fatah and its military wing demonstrates the ongoing joint diplomatic and military attack against Israel. Fatah can have its pitta bread and eat it; they can condemn the murders committed by Al Aqsa and appear to be statesmanlike and against violence whilst actively continuing to pursue violence under the cover of a faux organisational separation. Not too disimilar to Sinn Fein and the IRA.
Continue reading about Two weddings and a funeral – everything connects to Israel
Photo by Reuters
As I foretold yesterday, Goldstone’s retraction is being dissed by the usual suspects.
The Jpost:
Senior Fatah Central Committee member Nabil Shaath on Sunday said that Judge Richard Goldstone apparently succumbed to pressure because he could not longer bear the terror directed against him, apparently referring to the way Goldstone was ostracized by his native South African and other world Jewish communities.
Fatah has an interesting and surprisingly broad view of the definition of ‘terror’ considering its unending blood libels, antisemitic smears and glorification of terrorist ‘martyrs’ (read murderers).
Surely Goldstone would have made the world aware of the ‘terror’ against him. What a pathetic response by Shaath.
Yasser Abed Rabbo, a PLO Executive, said (same article):
“There was a war crime,” he said, adding that Goldstone has no right to retract a report based on documents that were examined by the parties and subject to specific criteria, not on a personal whim.
In other words, Goldstone’s clear realisation that two years of Israeli investigation and evidence as opposed to complete silence from Hamas amounts to ‘whim’. Who are ‘the parties’ and what are the ‘criteria’ of which he speaks? Goldstone has every right to redress a wrong which he has previously signed up to. Just by stating he has no right doesn’t make it so unless you live in the Looking-Glass world of Palestinian politics.
Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri on Saturday dismissed Judge Richard Goldstone’s “regrets,” saying that “his retreat does not change the fact war crimes had been committed against 1.5 million people in Gaza,” and claimed that the group cooperated fully with the fact finding mission.
So the 1400 has now become 1.5 million. Hamas’ inflated language and posturing is in the face of Goldstone’s prior and continuing claims of war crimes by Hamas against, shall we say, 7 million Israelis. Their lack of a credible response to the original report’s findings are completely ignored in favour of the usual sloganising.
So it seems that the original findings are the ones that the Palestinians and all the other Israel-haters will accept because it is rather inconvenient to accept any retraction. The ‘war crimes’ stand, even though the person who made the claim has now retracted his conclusions.
I don’t see how they can maintain this stance if the UNHRC now throws out the report. But as the UNHRC is loaded with countries who are somewhat antipathetic towards Israel, there could be an interesting few months ahead.
The PCHR is also at it, as reported by walla.co.il (translation)
Raji Sourani, chairman of the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, said this morning (Sunday) the regret expressed by Judge Richard Goldstone on the report written about the recent war in Gaza is, “an expression of personal opinion and will not affect the dialog”.
He claims that Goldstone was in the past two years “faced a psychological war waged by Jewish and Israeli organizations to press him to change his position.” He added that Goldstone should not retract his report because it “would ruin his reputation”.
So it’s those pesky Zionists again. No-one, it appears, is big enough to accept Goldstone’s retraction if they hate Israel.
Pretty predictable really.
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You can’t keep Israel out of any conflict in the Middle East.
Yesterday on The Big Questions on BBC 1 and this evening on Newsnight on BBC 2, Nicky Campbell and Jeremy Paxman, the two BBC frontmen for these programmes asked more or less the question, and I paraphrase:
‘why are the western nations so keen to protect Libyan citizens from a monster like Gaddafi when they sat on their hands when Israel was bombing Gaza?’
On the Big Questions, Campbell clearly asked it to draw out a distinction without endorsing the moral equivalence, nevertheless, the fact the question was asked at all is significant in that not everyone would see it that way, and would be nodding sagely that Livni was somehow like Gaddafi.
On Newsnight, Paxaman had Bernard-Henri Lévy, a renowned French journalist and philosopher, born in Algeria and a Jew. He had been to Benghazi and as a result had called President Sarkozy to encourage him to endorse and support the no-fly zone and stop a massacre.
In the studio was Abd al-Bari Atwan, a rabidly anti-Zionist Palestinian journalist and editor of Al-Quds Al-Arabi in London who has said “If the Iranian missiles strike Israel, by Allah, I will go to Trafalgar Square and dance with delight.”
So we know where Atwan is coming from.
Henri-Lévy argued that hundreds of thousands of people were at risk. His mission was humanitarian. Atwan’s mission, as ever, was political.
However, it was Paxman, who, before asking Atwan for a response, posed the same question Campbell had done, albeit, with more conviction on the moral equivalence front.
Atwan needed no encouragement. He accused the UN and the West of being selective – well I agree as I wrote yesterday. But rather than laying into Bahrain or Yemen, instead, having had the proverbial red-rag waved by Paxman, he had his horns well and truly sharpened and gored Israel.
He compared Israel’s bombing and ‘massacre’ of 1400 Palestinians in Gaza and Israel’s bombing of Lebanon with Gaddafi. Why did the West not intervene then, he asked.
I’ll not go into the charming way Henri-Lévy stepped aside as Atwan’s horns approached his crotch and how he administered the coup-de-grâce with a well-placed rapier thrust.
The important thing is that Israel’s retaliation against two murderous opponents bent on Israel’s destruction are seen as aggression and deliberately targetting civilians.
Instead, the fact that Hizbollah and Hamas had been firing rockets and abducting Israeli soldiers and were being armed by Atwan’s beloved Iran and that both Hamas and Hizbollah were implacably committed to the destruction of Israel and the killing of Jews, was turned into an aggression equivalent to a tyrant targetting his own people in an attempt to hold on to power.
Surely the real equivalence here is that the UN should have seen Israel as the force for democracy fighting a maniacal fascist enemy and the UN should have been protecting and should now be protecting Israel from assault by Hamas and Hizbollah.
BBC presenters do not view Israel as a beleaguered democracy fighting for its existence against murderous tyrannical regimes which surround it. Instead it is Israel who is at least worthy to be considered seriously as part of the tyrant versus freedom-fighter paradigm.
It takes the Jewish North African Henri-Lévy to put the case for the defence and support of Muslim Arabs whilst all Atwan can do is attack Israel and say the West should tell the Arabs to defend their own people.
In some part, I agree with Atwan: the Arab League should be sorting this out, not the former colonial nations.
So if I agree with Atwan, maybe there’s something wrong with my analysis!
Continue reading about The BBC suggests Gaddafi behaving like Israel
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You may recall the Mavi Marmara incident last year when Israeli soldiers and navy intercepted a flotilla of ships on what they called a ‘humanitarian’ mission to break the maritime blockade of Gaza.
There was an almighty row with Turkey and the UN and almost universal condemnation because Israel exercised its right to search ships intent on breaking its maritime blockade, redirect them to an Israeli port, inspect them and then ship the aid themsleves.
Nine jihadi ‘activists’ were killed when the Israelis boarded the lead vessel, a Turkish ship, the Mavi Marmara. The activists had laid a well organised ambush and were killed when they attacked the Israelis with lethal force.
The accusations were many, but one was that because Israel had intercepted in international waters they were ‘pirates’ and had no legal right to do so. This is just plain false; any country has a right to intercept ships where there is a genuine belief it may be smugglings arms to its enemy or breaking a legally declared blockade.
The legal niceties were of no concern to those who rushed to judge the Israelis who later admitted operational mistakes.
Those who criticised and pilloried Israel already judged that Israel had no rights to intercept the Mavi Marmara – period.
The fact that the Mavi Marmara was ostensibly a lead ship carrying humanitarian aid proved to be convincing evidence that Israel is a rogue state that attacks innocent humanitarians.
I have already dealt with the incident at length last year. However, I’ll repeat one interesting point that went all but unnoticed internationally and it was this: on board were dozens of battery-powered wheelchairs. Innocent enough? But no, Hamas were disappointed that these were the wrong type of wheelchair with the wrong type of battery. Why? Because the right type of battery could be used to lay explosive devices.
The above proved to me that even innocent items of aid can be a cover for nefarious ends.
Today, the IDF intercepted the Victoria, a Liberian-flagged container ship which had set sail from Latakia in Syria, sailed to Turkey and was then bound for Alexandria in Egypt.
Someone, or good intelligence, had tipped off the Israelis and they boarded without incident 200 miles off the coast of Israel, much further from Israeli waters than the Mavi Marmara.
On board they discovered a huge cache of arms from Iran. Who would have guessed, eh?
You can see the photos on Flickr here http://www.flickr.com/photos/idfonline/sets/72157626272235856
The ultimate destination of these arms was Gaza and Hamas.
This is not the first time Israel has intercepted illegal arms destined for a terrorist group.
So I ask you: where is all the outrage this time that Israel has boarded a vessel in International waters? If it was piracy with the Mavi Marmara, then it’s piracy with the Victoria, no?
But here’s the difference: the Mavi Marmara had huge publicity behind it, was bent on directly challenging the Israeli blockade of Gaza, and had people on board intent on confronting and killing Israelis.
The captain of Victoria did not object and stopped to allow inspection. Result: no violence, no inuries, no death and tonnes of illegal arms.
Iran is in clear breach of international law, but no-one will censor her in the UN.
Why is there such silence and indifference to the Israeli boarding? Answer: the culprits were caught in flagrante delicto there were no representatives aboard from numerous anti-Israel or anti-Zionist groups, no cameras, no TV, no opportunity to demonise Israel and no propaganda victory to be won.
A couple of weeks ago Iranian war ships penetrated the Mediterranean for the first time since the Islamic revolution. They passed through the Suez canal and ended up… yes, you guessed it, in Syria.
It does not take much more than simple arithmetic to come to the conclusion that one or both of these ships were bringing the very arms which were aboard the Victoria.
This time, Israeli intelligence was spot on, and maybe they had some help from the Turks, who knows, because the Israeli government were at pains to make it known that Turkey was not involved in any way.
This whole incident exposes why Israel has the right to intercept shipping, as our own Prime Minister prophetically (or was he tipped off) declared last week. Maybe he was aware that it was coming and so prepared the way to be able to say that the UK was, this time, in support of the action in a ‘humanitarian’ free zone.
It also shows very clearly that Israel had the exactly identical right to intercept the Mavi Marmara rather than to trust virulently hostile passengers and jihadis intent on confrontation.
Such is worldwide hypocrisy and cant when it comes to Israel’s right to defend itself.
See ore here: http://dover.idf.il/IDF/English/News/today/2011/03/1501.htm
Continue reading about Israel intercepts ship in international waters – no accusations of piracy
Children’s author Michael Morpurgo published a book called ‘The Kites are Flying’ two years ago, apparently an uplifting story of how children across the divide between Israel and the Palestinians find friendship in the common pursuit of kite-flying across the Separation Barrier.
It’s an extraordinarily political thing to do to write about an ongoing conflict and present it to children who probably understand little of the origins of that conflict.
Putting that thought aside, a few days ago, Morpurgo appeared on BBC2′s Newsnight where he presented a short documentary film he had made in Israel and Gaza and discovered the the real world either side of the divide.
The film and visit were sponsored by the NGO Save the Children.
The documentary showed Morpurgo to be a humane man, desperate for children in this conflict to give us hope that they can live in peace in the future. It was optimistic and idealistic with a smattering of realism. There were also one or two problems with it which I want to discuss.
The documentary was followed by a discussion chaired by Jeremy Paxman with Morpurgo and Louise Ellman (MP Lab Liverpool Riverside) who is a passionate advocate of Israel in Parliament.
I shall come to that discussion too. But first the short documentary, which is still on BBC iPlayer as I write (it does not appear to be on YouTube yet).
Morpurgo begins by telling us about the book he wrote even though he had never been to Israel or the Palestinian Territories. Strange, I thought, that he could write about a subject of which he had had no personal experience and then sell it to kids. But everyone thinks they understand the conflict because they see it on the news channels and read about it in the papers.
We discover he ‘was sent’ by Save the Children to Israel and Gaza as an ambassador for that organisation.
His expressed aim was to try to find out whether children on both sides see a chance for peace or ‘whether my book was sentimental nonsense’.
We see Morpurgo asking questions at a school in Neve Shalom. This school is the first in Israel that is bilingual and ‘bi-national’ as he puts it.
I am already having problems. ‘Bi-national’? Does he not realise that all these children are Israelis? Let’s accept his shorthand for ‘bi-ethnic’ or ‘bi-cultural’ but surely the point is that it is decidedly not ‘bi-national’.
The kids are bright, eager, they speak English. They are typically Israeli. They are happy and smiling, well-balanced kids as far as we can see. Only those who know Israel would be able to spot who is a Jew and who is an Arab.
He now asks them what they feel about the other community. But this is rather ignorant. These are not Israelis and Palestinians from either side of the Barrier. They are not Israelis and Gazans learning together. They all live in the same country, have the same rights, are free to go where they wish, worship where they will, say what they think, write what they believe.
I sense a false analogy creeping up. Morpurgo’s voice and delivery is full of gravitas, empathy, almost like a Church of England vicar.
He asks a Jewish kid if it is easy to play with ‘Arabic’ kids. The boy says ‘yes, but it takes time’. The boy tells us that the word ‘Arab’ is used as a ‘curse’ – he means it’s a defamatory name to call a friend, like ‘Jew’ is to an Arab, no doubt. Clearly this kid has not been primed by the hasbara police.
Another boy, an Arab (I think!) tells us that on the news we only see the bad things not the good. No-one has asked the Arab children what they think of the Jews. Maybe they don’t speak English as well as the Jews.
Morpurgo and the kids make kites, like in his story. He believes that the more schools like this, the more chance of reconciliation. But again he does not understand. Yes, there are tensions within Israel; yes, the Arabs are discriminated against and their opportunities are fewer. The point he misses is that this school is no different to, say, a school in the USA where black kids are integrated with white.
It’s about making a single society, it’s about achieving the true objectives of Zionism and the ideals of the founders of the State; equality not just in law but in fact. Arabs need to feel more part of the state and less as suspicious aliens in their own country. They need equal opportunity and they need freedom from prejudice and suspicion.
What Morpurgo misses is that the school he thinks this one in Neve Shalom is, would, in reality, be a school where Palestinians from the Territories go to school with Jews from Israel. That’s where the reconciliation is needed far more than in Israel. That’s the true test of children becoming the future peacemakers.
Instead, children in the Territories are taught not reconciliation and understanding but hate and murder, genocide and martyrdom. Why did we not see this in the film? Why did Save the Children not take Morpurgo to a typical school in the West Bank? Why did they not show him he kids TV programmes which deny the existence of Israel and promote the killing of Jews? It’s these children who need saving more than Israeli Arabs, surely.
The kids happily fly their kites with whoops of joy. Children playing together. At the age of 12, we are told, they move on to secondary school and separation.
We are now taken to Sderot, the town in Israel which has been under constant bombardment from Gaza since Israel withdrew from Gaza completely in 2005. It was Sderot which was one of the main reasons for Israel’s attack on Gaza in Operation Cast Lead in 2008-9. Sderot is just a few kilometres from the border.
Now a rarity. Morpurgo explains to us with newsreel footage, that Sderot is under constant threat of attack.
Soon we are are taken to Operation Cast Lead and told that despite this, the attacks continue. Sderot and its problems are soon left behid, This was the ‘balance’ part of the program. Now for the ‘horrors’ of Gaza.
Morpurgo mistakenly tells us that the Gaza strip is surrounded by a great wall. This is not true. Most of it is a fence.
He tells us about the blockade to prevent weapons entering. ‘To me, it looks like a siege’, he says blithely. I wonder how many sieges he has seen.
At this point, of course, Morpurgo does not realise that what he sees and where he goes is strictly controlled by the Hamas propaganda machine and he is falling for it straightway.
Clearly, there is a huge difference between what he sees in Gaza and what he just saw in Israel. He is shown the worst of Gaza but the hotels and pools, the shops full of food and white goods are nowhere to be seen.
Morpurgo is not an investigative journalist, he is a writer. He should also read more. Does he realise, for example, that this ‘siege’ is supported by hundreds of trucks bringing food and other necessities from Israel every day? Does he realise that Israel provides electricity and fuel, treats hundred in its own hospitals free of charge?
I always place a caveat when describing Gaza. Life there is no picnic. They are are in a cage caused by geography and history. Gaza is an enclave cut off from the rest of the Palestinian Territories. It is easy to characterise this as a siege or a ‘prison camp’.
Morpurgo tells us that levels of poverty and malnutrition are appalling. The doctors at the hospital he visits report on these levels of malnutrition. It is a hospital to specifically treat this problem.
Why is this? Does he know that Hamas take foreign aid given freely and sell it in their own shops?
Does he not wonder why Hamas seem to be able to get hold of weapons but are unable to provide food for their people?
If so, he doesn’t tell us.
He does not tell us that if Hamas were not in a state of belligerence with Israel their economy would be as good as that of the West Bank where there is no malnutrition and where attacks on Israel have considerably reduced.
Why does he not question the fact that the shops are full of food, so why do children go hungry?
We are now taken to the Tamar school in Gaza City which looks like any other city in the Middle East. The kids here are not like the Arabs of Neve Shalom. They are ‘angry’, they have seen their family members dead in the street. We do not know, however, what these family members were up to at the time.
No doubt they are traumatised. No doubt they are brain-washed with hatred. Morpurgo is not focused on this. He wants to discover seeds of reconciliation in their hearts. As in Neve Shalom, the Gazan children (who do not look emaciated at all, quite normal and healthy) are making kites.
He asks the children what they think of Israeli children. A young girl says that the blockade is made by the Israelis. They want their children to have rights, but not Palestinian children.
Morpurgo asks if they could talk to Israeli children were they to be there at that moment. The reply is that one day that child might be a government minister and lift the blockade.
So we see that the children of Gaza believe the blockade is some sort of punishment for them and is not prompted by anything perpetrated by Hamas. So why no blockade on the West Bank? The word ‘blockade’ should rightly refer to the maritime blockade. There is no land blockade, but there is an embargo of certain items such as building materials which could be used for terrorists purposes.
The embargo and blockade are not pretty, but can you name any historical situation where a country supplied anything to another country or political entity which threatened it daily and whose purpose was the total destruction of that country?
A young boy says that there are people who want to take what they have by force and they must try as hard as they can to get back their land by blood. Nice. This is the point, of course. Israel left Gaza completely. The boy means Israel when we speaks about getting back his land. This is what he is taught, he knows no other reality.
The same boy tells horrendous stories of how his family members were killed by Israelis during the conflict.
Despite this, Morpurgo says ‘I sense a willingness not to condemn Israeli children’. I do not know where he got this sense from, it is not evident in the film. In any case, children grow up and become martyrs or fighters. The boy in the film may be 12 years old. He may already have been on ‘operations’. Who knows.
More kite-flying and more wishful thinking from Morpurgo. I don’t blame him for his optimism, but he needs to be a student of the conflict to understand the realities and the death cult and antisemitism aimed at children daily. He does not report on this form of child abuse, of course, because Hamas would never allow him to see it.
Morpurgo is clearly moved by his experiences in Gaza. ‘Leaving Gaza, I feel like a deserter, turning my back on all the suffering and despair’.
He is now subjected to a Pallywood moment and falls for it. I may be being cynical here but the Palestinians are past masters at staging atrocities when foreign film crews happen to be passing through.
We are told and see film of young boys collecting rubble near the border which they can sell in Gaza. Morpurgo does not question why young boys of about 12-14 should be near a a known danger at the border.
Then Morpurgo tells us that whilst he is waiting to cross he hears gunshots. A young boy has been shot and has been put on a cart pulled by a donkey to get him to hospital.
How convenient. I do not want to sound insensitive but I really don’t buy this. We see the cart coming straight at the camera with ‘ a young kid lying bleeding in the back of it’. Morpurgo says he has never seen anyone shot before. I think he still hasn’t.
The Israelis use remote controlled guns to shoot at anyone who comes near the fence. Even Morpurgo says it’s difficult for him to ‘confirm this has happened here’. But he said he saw a bleeding boy? Who does he think may have shot the kid? Or is he suggesting that he was not shot at all. If so, why does he not say so.
Morpurgo is upset that a commander has to give an order for these remote guns to be fired, but he still does not question why these young boys are allowed near the fence by the Hamas police or their parents. He does not know that this is sanctioned because it gives cover to those who would lay explosives to kill Israelis. If the Israelis fire they might kill a young kid being used as a human shield. Another martyr and another black mark against Israel.
But Morpurgo just sees them as kids scavenging to make a living. He even says they do it near the border to ‘cock a snook’ at the Israelis. He does not appear to be confused by the fact that no-one has run away from the scene of the ‘shooting’ and life carries on. He does not realise he has been the latest victim of Pallywood.
Morpurgo’s conclusion comes more from his own sense of hope and his love of children. He believes the seeds of hope are there on both sides. He sees this as a morally equal battle. He does not appear to take sides – at least not yet. He accuses no-one, at least not yet.
He believes that peace will come as it did in Europe, South Africa and Ireland.
I don’t like analogies. None of these are analogous to each other or the Israeli-Arab conflict. Let’s hope he is right, but not in my lifetime, I fear.
Back to Paxman in the studio who tells us with that voice of his that expresses cynicism that the IDF told the BBC that remote guns are used to stop terrorist attacks near the fence. Last month young boys tried to place a cart full of explosives at the border. His expression seems to say ‘you would say that wouldn’t you’.
The studio discussion is most interesting mainly for the ineffective performance of Louise Ellman – she really must up her game. She comes over as an apologist who has few answers and expresses those she has as if they were platitudes that no-one will believe.
Morpurgo strongly believes that despite the situation, if Gazan children came to Israel and Israeli children to Gaza a dialogue could start and sow seeds of reconciliation for the future.
Of course, many, many friendships existed and still do between Israelis and Gazans. They do business, they call each other. Many Gazans worked for Israelis and bonds were formed. We don’t hear this.
Ellman tries hard to tell Paxman that Hamas is at the heart of the problem using the children as human shields and gives them explosives or forces them to carry them.
Paxman asks her to comment on the ‘siege’. Like an idiot she uses his word and therefore implies she believes that it is a ‘siege’ when answering his question! She says the siege is about preventing weapons getting into Gaza to be used to blow up Israeli children. She does not distinguish the blockade from the embargo, and so her argument is not convincing.
Paxman, to his credit, says to Morpurgo that he been ‘had’, but only because he didn’t go to Sderot to see what was happening there. Morpurgo insists he does know about it.
But now Morpurgo moves into Guardian anti-Zionist narrative by saying ‘You cannot wage war on children’ and telling us more than 300 children died during Cast Lead. But all wars are fought against children in that they get in the way. And in Gaza, Hamas puts them in harm’s way and some of these children were actually combatants.
Paxman pulls him up on this, again to his credit, and says Israelis are not going in to kill children and Morpurgo says ‘but it happens’. Of course it does. That’s what happens in a war. Should Israel allow its children to be targeted in their schools and do nothing in case Gazan children are killed in their attempt to stop it? Is he serious? It’s Hamas who are targeting children; their own by abusing them to become militarised at a young age and the Israeli children because Hamas send their rockets at times when they know children are going to school or coming home. So who is it that is targeting children? Ellman says nothing.
Morpurgo speaks of a cycle of hatred caused by Israeli actions. There is no cycle of hatred because Israelis do not hate Gazans, they hate Hamas. They are the haters, not the Israelis.
Morpurgo quotes a figure of 26 children shot by Israelis, targeted, he says again, in 2010. But again, what is a child? 16 is not a child in Gaza terms. 14 is not. Why are these ‘children’ at the fence? What are they doing? It is Hamas who use them cynically. If they succeed, Israeli soldiers are killed or maimed, if they fail, Israel is killing children.
How many children died in Iraq in 2010 as a result of terrorism, or in Pakistan? No-one seems to care about these children, only Gazan children who are very often on some military operation.
The discussion comes to an end with Paxman dismissing claims that it’s all one side’s fault or another and that Morpurgo’s idea is a good one but how can you do it with a wall in the way. Ellman tells us that that the wall / barrier is there because Hamas kids go into Israel with suicide belts. Not very convincing.
That’s not why there is a barrier. Morpurgo then smiles and says he hasn’t seen kids with suicide belts and there is a lot of talk about this and implies it’s all rubbish. Ellman here has really lost the plot by banging on about kids with suicide belts. The vast majority are adults and her argument is not helped by a failure to explain the purpose of the barrier.
She redresses the balance by telling us about Gazan children treated in Israeli hospitals, but it’s all delivered in monotone. Israel needs a better advocate than this. Sorry Louise, you are just not forthright enough. If I can say I would have done better, then you know it was not a great performance.
Paxman says that we saw some very malnourished children ‘as a consequence of the Israeli “siege”‘. How does he know that this is the reason for their malnourishment? Gaza actually has an obesity problem, apparently. They are 8th most obese (England 11th) for men and 3rd, yes 3rd for women.
Ellman again fails to make use of statistics and blames Hamas, therefore accepting Paxman’s premise even though we do not know the malnutrition rate, its causes, and how widespread it is. It’s all surmise and speculation, no hard facts. In other words, Hamas’s propaganda machine wins again. How many starving kids did Morpurgo see outside the hospital?
Morpurgo ends by telling us that Neve Shalom is a beacon of hope where both groups can rub along; Paxman clarifies that these kids are Israelis, but Morpurgo persists in his incorrect claim that these are Israeli kids and Arab kids – he is wrong; they are Israeli Jews and Israeli Arabs. He does not appear to understand the difference. When it comes to this conflict, ignorance is not bliss but a dangerous misreading and misinterpretation which viewers who don’t know any better take as the truth.
Ellman not once pulls him up on this. It was a poor performance by her.
Morpurgo’s final word: ‘we are all friends of Israel here, but it does them no good to target children’. Ah, that old blood libel. Morpurgo should know better.
Michael Morpurgo is a very well-meaning man and I truly believe he is neutral and wants peace, although there was a hint of one-stateism in his report and discussion. However, he needs to get his facts right and the Israeli case needs to be better represented on these occasions. Ellman does her best, but I was not impressed.
Update 22.02.2011
In the Dimbleby Lecture which Michael gave on the day after this programme he repeated the story of the boy that was shot near the border fence. Even though he said he could not be sure what happened, he stresses that it does happen regularly.
I concede that it may well be true that the boy, or teenager, was shot and maybe operating in an exclusion zone is meant to provoke such actions. However, can you say in one breath that such young men have been guilty of planting explosive devices intended to kill Israelis on the other side of the fence, and in the next breath condemn the Israelis for trying to prevent it.
As I asked above, why do the Palestinians allow youngsters to operate in such a dangerous zone? In the BBC film we could clearly see Palestinian police watching but not intervening.
Morpurgo has failed to identify the fact that Hamas are completely comfortable with sending children on ‘operations’ and do not have his qualms or share his morality.
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