Israel, Zionism and the Media
Relations between Israel and Palestine and the peace process
Gilad Shalit, kidnapped four years ago and held since by Hamas without access to the Red Cross, Red Crescent, his family. Held incommunicado in contravention of international law and human rights.
Remember Gilad Shalit and the unbearable suffering of his family.
Remember Gilad Shalit and the unnecessary wasting of his young life.
Remember the taunting of his captors.
Free Gilad Shalit.
Hat tip to oyvagoy.com for this story.
The Palestinian media in the West Bank is constantly feeding its citizens with inctitement, lies and libel against Israel.
We hear stories about how people die at checkpoints as they are held up waiting to go to hospital in Israel, full of devil Israelis waiting to suck their blood.
So this story comes as a refreshing change:
On Thursday, June 3, 2010, 15 year old Muhammed Kalalwe was working in his family’s fields. They live in Jenin, a Palestinian city in the northern West Bank, …. The boy noticed a deadly viper snake and tried killing it with a rock, but the dangerous creature struck out and bit his right palm. Screams and panic ensued and within minutes, the boy’s father, Hafed, grabbed his stricken son and rushed him to the Jenin Hospital. They were ill-prepared to treat the boy, had no anti-serum and decided to send him by ambulance to the Emek Medical Center in Afula. Hafed later related that he was genuinely afraid to be taken to Emek because he was sure that they would be ignored and not even spoken to. His son’s palm and arm were critically swollen and the pain was unbearable.
The humanitarian reality of Emek shocked both the father and son as they were immediately greeted in Arabic, rushed into the ER where Emek’s multi-ethnic staff administered life-saving anti-serum and brought the boy back from the brink of death. Muhammed lay for the next two days in the pediatric intensive care unit and is now resting comfortably in Emek’s pediatric surgical department from where he will be released in the next couple of days.
I asked the father how he felt now about Emek Hospital and the Israelis he has come into contact with. Staring me straight in the eyes he said, “Our people do not know the truth about you and our medicine has a long way to go. My son and I are not the same as we were before this happened and I will share this with my family and friends. May Allah bless all of you.” As he spoke, he gesticulated determinedly in a classic Middle Eastern style and when we shook hands as I wished them both well, the grip was firm and real. I have shaken many such hands and gazed into many Palestinian eyes that had seen here a reality that they never expected to see.
While walking back to my office, I passed one of my best friends – the Head of our Emergency Services, Dr. Azziz Daroushe who is a Muslim from the nearby Israeli village of Iksal. I asked him what he thought about this latest case where we were able to save another life from Jenin. With a twinkle in his eye and a knowing grin he answered, “It’s a good thing there are snakes.” (my emphasis)
If only the Palestinian leadership would genuinely seek peace, what a huge difference Israel’s medical and technological know-how could make to the lives of everyone in the region.
The wikipedia article about Afula has this to say:
Due to Afula’s proximity to the West Bank, it became a target of Arab terrorism in Second Intifada. On 6 April 1994, a car bombing carried out by Hamas in the center of Afula killed five people. Afula also was the target of a suicide attack on a bus on 5 May 2002, in which one person died several people were injured at Afula’s central bus station. On 19 May 2003, the city’s Amakim Mall was bombed, killing three and wounding 70. This attack was carried out by Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the Fatah movement’s Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades.
On 17 July 2006, Hezbollah fired Katyusha rockets at Afula, one of the southernmost rocket attacks on Israel from Lebanon. Six people were treated for shock as a result of the bombing. On 28 July, a rocket landed causing a fire. The Katyusha carried 100 kilograms of explosives.
No wonder Hafed was worried.
And if you think this is unique, well it’s not even the first time Ha’Emek saved a child from Jenin from a snake bite.
Please read about the work Ha’EMek does with its staff of Jews and Arabs http://www.clalit.org.il/haemek/Content/Content.asp?CID=73&u=202
The Israeli Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center has released a list of those killed aboard the Mavi Marmara. Eight out of nine had links to terrorism. Several wrote wills or expressed their wish for martyrdom.
The report notes that no Western or Arab/Muslim human rights activists were killed; they all had Turkish nationality.
Here’s the summary, for details follow the link the link:
The following conclusions arise from analyzing the identity and affiliation of the nine Turkish nationals killed aboard the Mavi Marmara:
- The major role played by the Islamic organization IHH: out of the nine people killed, four were identified as IHH operatives or activists. Four others were members of Turkish Islamic organizations or parties affiliated with the IHH. The remaining victim is an ordinary Turkish volunteer who was caught in the event for unclear reasons.
- Operatives from the Turkish Felicity Party (Saadet Partisi): at least two of the people killed belong to the Felicity Party, an Islamic party established in 2001 with the support of ex-politician Necmettin Erbakan (after his Welfare Party, Refah Partisi, was banned from politics). The party espouses cooperation between Muslim countries, war on Zionism, and confrontation with the West. In April 2010, the party announced it would take part in the flotilla together with the IHH and the Free Gaza movement.
- Thugs among those killed: one of the people killed is a former Taekwondo champion; another worked at an Istanbul sports association; still another worked as a security guard at IHH conferences in the city where he lived. It should be noted that one of the Mavi Marmara passengers related during questioning in Israel that he had seen several IHH thugs carrying clubs. Statements taken from Israeli navy commandos show that there were thugs among the operatives who fought them. The presence of those thugs among the hard core of IHH operatives was part of the preparations for the confrontation.
- Statements made by relatives of those killed about their desire to become shaheeds and preparation of wills: relatives of four killed operatives testified that they wanted to die as shaheeds. It was reported that two of the killed operatives had left a letter or a last will before setting sail. “I pray that Allah will give us a happy endings, just like those shaheeds”, says one of the killed operatives on a video tape found aboard the Mavi Marmara.
- No human rights activists among the victims: conspicuously absent are human rights activists from Western countries and from the Arab/Muslim world, some of whom came on board the Mavi Marmara out of a genuine desire to deliver humanitarian assistance to Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. Those activists avoided joining the organized fighting against the IDF, stayed inside the ship, and did not go to the upper deck where the fighting took place. One of the Turkish nationals killed was a high school student. We have no information that he was connected with any Islamic organization.
What’s happening in Spain? Two politicians, Pilar Rahola and former Prime Minister José María Aznar, have now made statements strongly supporting Israel. Maybe after the Madrid bombings they realise that Israel’s existential struggle, with all its flaws, is fundamentally just.
Pilar Rahola should not be supporting Israel. She is a far left politician; a position that normally defaults to vilification of Israel and unquestioning support of the Palestinians.
For Pilar Rahola the struggle of Israel is the struggle of the world. She has not made just one fine statement, but two, in support of Israel. Her website also highlights the middle east and anti-Semitism.
Tablet Magazine reports a translation of a conference speech against that conference’s anti-Israel stance. She points out the singling out of Israel when obnoxious regimes appear to get a free pass:
Why don’t we see demonstrations against Islamic dictatorships in London, Paris, Barcelona?
Or demonstrations against the Burmese dictatorship?
Why aren’t there demonstrations against the enslavement of millions of women who live without any legal protection?
Why aren’t there demonstrations against the use of children as human bombs where there is conflict with Islam?
Why has there been no leadership in support of the victims of Islamic dictatorship in Sudan?
Why is there never any outrage against the acts of terrorism committed against Israel?
Why is there no outcry by the European left against Islamic fanaticism?
Why don’t they defend Israel’s right to exist?
Why confuse support of the Palestinian cause with the defense of Palestinian terrorism?
The last point is of special note. The current Israeli maritime blockade is seen as a punishment of Gazans rather than as a defence against Hamas. The occupation of the West Bank justifies past terrorism and Palestinian incitement is ignored or given lip service.
And finally, the million dollar question: Why is the left in Europe and around the world obsessed with the two most solid democracies, the United States and Israel, and not with the worst dictatorships on the planet?
To this question she has a subtle and compelling answer in another speech ‘Jews with Six Arms’ delivered at the Combating anti-Semitism conference in Spain:
The moral defeat of the left. For decades, the left raised the flag of freedom, wherever there was injustice. It was the depository of the utopic hopes of society. It was the great builder of future. Despite the murderous evil of Stalinism’s sinking the utopias, the left has preserved intact its aura of struggle, and still pretends to point out the good and the evil in the world. Even those who would never vote for leftist options, grant great prestige to leftist intellectuals, and allow them to be the ones who monopolize the concept of solidarity. As they have always done. Thus, those who struggled against Pinochet were freedom-fighters, but Castro’s victims, are expelled from the heroes’ paradise, and converted into undercover fascists.
This historic treason to freedom, is reproduced nowadays, with mathematical precision. For example, the leaders of Hezbollah are considered resistance heroes, while pacifists like Noa, the singer, are insulted in the streets of Barcelona. Today too, as yesterday, that left is hawking totalitarian ideologies, falls in love with dictators and, in its offensive against Israel, ignores the destruction of fundamental rights. It hates rabbis, but falls in love with imams; shouts against the Tsahal, but applauds Hamas’ terrorists; weeps for the Palestinian victims, but scorns the Jewish victims, and when it is touched by Palestinian children, it does it only if it can blame the Israelis. It will never denounce the culture of hatred, or its preparation for murder.
So the far left has lost the international argument. It needs to find a cause to rally round, to find a victim and demonise the ‘oppressor’. And when that ‘oppressor’ is a successful, capitalist, free society then the far left is offended and threatened. When their demon state produces world class science and research they have to boycott it. When that society is open and democratic they only point to its failures and its occupation whilst ignoring the root cause of that occupation, namely Palestinian and Arab rejectionism.
This is no better demonstrated by the concept of ‘freedom’:
And then, to the concept of freedom. In every pro Palestinian European forum I hear the left yelling with fervor: “We want freedom for the people!”
Not true. They are never concerned with freedom for the people of Syria or Yemen or Iran or Sudan, or other such nations. And they are never preoccupied when Hammas destroys freedom for the Palestinians. They are only concerned with using the concept of Palestinian freedom as a weapon against Israeli freedom.
The demonisation is linguistic as well as conceptual:
When reporting about Israel the majority of journalists forget the reporter’s code of ethics. And so, any Israeli act of self-defense becomes a massacre, and any confrontation, genocide. So many stupid things have been written about Israel, that there aren’t any accusations left to level against her.
Almost a definition of demonisation.
And lurking beneath this hatred and obsessive demonisation is the old European hatred:
Just as it is impossible to completely explain the historical evil of antisemitism, it is also not possible to totally explain the present-day imbecility of anti-Israelism. Both drink from the fountain of intolerance and lie. If, also, we accept that anti-Israelism is the new form of antisemitism, we conclude that contingencies may have changed, but the deepest myths, both of the Medieval Christian antisemitism and of the modern political antisemitism, are still intact. Those myths are part of the chronicle of Israel. For example, the Medieval Jew who killed Christian children to drink their blood, connects directly with the Israeli Jew who kills Palestinian children to steal their land. Always they are innocent children and dark Jews. Similarly, the Jewish bankers who wanted to dominate the world through the European banks, according to the myth of the Protocols, connect directly with the idea that the Wall Street Jews want to dominate the World through the White House. Control of the Press, control of Finances, the Universal Conspiracy, all that which created the historical hatred against the Jews, is found today in hatred of the Israelis. In the subconscious, then, beats the western antisemite DNA…
And this finds a perfect resonance with Islamic Jew-hatred.
I urge you to read her speeches in full. She is certainly a voice in the darkness and a true latterday Pasionaria.
She is not alone. In the Times this week former Spanish Prime Minister, José María Aznar, wrote ‘If Israel goes down, we all go down’.
In this article Aznar puts the case for Israel and succinctly states the truth about Israel now lost in worldwide hysteria and malignity:
In our dealings with Israel, we must blow away the red mists of anger that too often cloud our judgment. A reasonable and balanced approach should encapsulate the following realities: first, the state of Israel was created by a decision of the UN. Its legitimacy, therefore, should not be in question. Israel is a nation with deeply rooted democratic institutions. It is a dynamic and open society that has repeatedly excelled in culture, science and technology.
Second, owing to its roots, history, and values, Israel is a fully fledged Western nation. Indeed, it is a normal Western nation, but one confronted by abnormal circumstances.
Uniquely in the West, it is the only democracy whose very existence has been questioned since its inception. In the first instance, it was attacked by its neighbours using the conventional weapons of war. Then it faced terrorism culminating in wave after wave of suicide attacks. Now, at the behest of radical Islamists and their sympathisers, it faces a campaign of delegitimisation through international law and diplomacy.
He then explains how the Israel/Palestine issue is not just a border dispute or a legal nicety:
The real threats to regional stability, however, are to be found in the rise of a radical Islamism which sees Israel’s destruction as the fulfilment of its religious destiny and, simultaneously in the case of Iran, as an expression of its ambitions for regional hegemony. Both phenomena are threats that affect not only Israel, but also the wider West and the world at large.
… Some even act and talk as if a new understanding with the Muslim world could be achieved if only we were prepared to sacrifice the Jewish state on the altar. This would be folly.
He mourns the decline of the West’s moral backbone which it exchanges for fashionable platitudes:
The West is going through a period of confusion over the shape of the world’s future. To a great extent, this confusion is caused by a kind of masochistic self-doubt over our own identity; by the rule of political correctness; by a multiculturalism that forces us to our knees before others; and by a secularism which, irony of ironies, blinds us even when we are confronted by jihadis promoting the most fanatical incarnation of their faith. To abandon Israel to its fate, at this moment of all moments, would merely serve to illustrate how far we have sunk and how inexorable our decline now appears.
He then sets about describing his fight back against this attack on western values and democratic integrity by announcing a new Friends of Israel initiative. I urge all of you who love freedom and righteousness to sign up. This is not about giving Israel carte blanche. Criticising Israel and its policies is everyone’s right. Willing her destruction, demonising its people and Jews generally is not acceptable. Recognising its achievements and working for a peaceful resolution of the conflict to benefit everyone in the region and making the world a safer place should be our goal. Making Israel the fount from which all evil flows can only be called one thing and we all know what that thing is.
Israel is a fundamental part of the West. The West is what it is thanks to its Judeo-Christian roots. If the Jewish element of those roots is upturned and Israel is lost, then we are lost too. Whether we like it or not, our fate is inextricably intertwined.
VIva Rahola y viva Aznar.
The world now knows that Helen Thomas, doyenne of the White House press corps was interviewed earlier this month (see full video below).
Thomas, of Lebanese extraction, said that the Jews should ‘get the hell out of Palestine’. When asked where they should go, she said they should go back to Germany, Poland, America and elsewhere. She was subsequently sacked from Hearst newspapers for her remarks.
Now, Helen Thomas is quite entitled to object to the Israeli presence in the West Bank and to settlements. What she appeared to be guilty of was saying that Jews should leave Palestine (and it is not clear what she meant by ‘Palestine’) and return to two countries which were largely responsible for the deaths of 6 million during the Holocaust.
This is insensitivity to put it mildly. If she were implying that Jews as settlers should leave Palestine/the West Bank, then why did she not say they should settle in Israel rather than ‘get the hell out’. There was a clear implication that she did not believe Jews have the right to settle even in Israel and that they are ALL settlers from Europe, America and elsewhere.
Helen Thomas’s remarks were echoed by a fellow Lebanese, as reported in the Jerusalem Post in an article about the Lebanese all woman flotilla which now, apparently, is not going to sail after all (see here).
In an interview with Hizbullah’s al-Manar television station,
Yasser Kashlak, a Syrian businessman of Palestinian descent who heads the “Free Palestine Organization” and is funding this boat, as well as another that is to carry journalists and parliamentarians, said …. that he was more and more optimistic that one day these same boats would take “Europe’s refuse [the Jews] that came to my homeland back to their homelands.
“Gilad Schalit should go back to Paris and those murderers go back to Poland, and after that we will chase them until the ends of the earth to bring them to justice for their acts of slaughter from Deir Yassin until today.
So the Jewish people are ‘Europe’s refuse’ and should somehow go back, presumably even those who have lived in Israel/Palestine uninterrupted for hundreds of years.
But Mr Kashlak, like Helen Thomas, conveniently failed to mention that in 1948 and subsequently as many as 900,000 Jews from Arab states were expelled or forced to leave due to persecution, and stripped of their property, businesses and money simply for being Jews. Approximately half of all Israelis are of Mizrahi Arab descent.
Many of them, naturally, fled to Israel. So does Mr Kashlak expect these Jews and their descendants to return to Egypt, Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya and Syria? Does he think these countries would accept hundreds of thousand of Jews? If not, where would he like them to go? But he is going to chase them to the ends of the Earth anyway, which seems a bit silly. Why expel them and then chase them, why not just murder them in their homes in Israel.
He wants Gilad Shalit to go back to Paris. I’m sure Gilad Shalit would be happy to go anywhere at the moment, but he can’t as he is being held as a prisoner of war by Hamas without access to the Red Cross in direct transgression of the international laws that Hamas and Hizbullah are so keen to accuse Israel of breaking.
So for those who would deny the Jews their rights to self-determination in their ancestral homeland the choice is clear: exile or extermination. And if you chose the former, we’ll come after you anyway. This should not be surprising when Hizbullah, like Hamas, is dedicated to the destruction of Israel and all Jews.
You can find the Hizbullah ‘charter’ here. But here’s a taste of it:
Therefore our struggle will end only when this entity is obliterated. We recognize no treaty with it, no cease fire, and no peace agreements, whether separate or consolidated.We vigorously condemn all plans for negotiation with Israel, and regard all negotiators as enemies, for the reason that such negotiation is nothing but the recognition of the legitimacy of the Zionist occupation of Palestine. Therefore we oppose and reject the Camp David Agreements, the proposals of King Fahd, the Fez and Reagan plan, Brezhnev’s and the French-Egyptian proposals, and all other programs that include the recognition (even the implied recognition) of the Zionist entity.
Sounds a tad uncompromising to me. Oh well, maybe Hamas can do better:
“Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it.” (The Martyr, Imam Hassan al-Banna, of blessed memory).
“The Islamic Resistance Movement believes that the land of Palestine is an Islamic Waqf consecrated for future Muslim generations until Judgement Day. It, or any part of it, should not be squandered: it, or any part of it, should not be given up. “
“There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors.”
“After Palestine, the Zionists aspire to expand from the Nile to the Euphrates. When they will have digested the region they overtook, they will aspire to further expansion, and so on. Their plan is embodied in the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion”, and their present conduct is the best proof of what we are saying.”
…
“The Day of Judgement will not come about until Muslims fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Muslims, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. Only the Gharkad tree, would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews.” (related by al-Bukhari and Muslim).
Well, that, if anything is even worse. They want to murder all Jews. But that’s genocide! So let’s send humanitarian boats to help them achieve their objectives by breaking the maritime blockade and letting in arms and missiles.
Ambassador Leshno Yaar put Israel’s case and told the true story of the Mavi Marmara at the UN Human Rights Council earlier this week.
He reminded the UNHCR of its obsession with Israel.
He describes the 40 ‘hard core activists’ from the IHH who had planned their attack in advance.
He describes the concern of the captain of the ship who said that the IHH were preparing for violence.
He describes how the IIH goal was to reach Gaza or to die as martyrs.
He describes how the IHH were not interested in humanitarian aid. Three of the ships had no aid watsoever.
He describes how Hamas blocked the aid which Israel wanted to send through.
He describes how there was very little food aid on any ship.
He describes how a Lebanese national aboard the flotilla interviewed on Iranian mouthpiece, Press TV, was asked if he was tortured. He replied, “sadly not”.
He describes the thousands of dollars and euros that the IHH were carrying for the Hamas regime.
He describes how when being hailed by the Israeli Navy over the radio, one of the activists replied “Shut up and go back to Auschwitz” and “Don’t forget 9/11”
He describes the shaheed death videos left behind by some activists.
He describes how the UNHCR voted with haste to form a ‘fact-finding body’ to cynically determine Israel’s guilt without even ‘the minimum respect of consulting with Israel’. The UNHCR would not even contemplate such a process for any other country.
He describes how half of the resolutions of the UNHCR have been against Israel.
He refers to the hate-speech of June 8th by a Syrian diplomat which was permitted without allowing a response or receiving sanction, or comment, words which would be considered ‘a criminal hate crime outside this hall’.
He describes the ‘obsessive one-sided’ nature of the UNHCR vis-a-vis Israel.
Yes, Leshno gave it to them good but it will make no difference.
If you are interested in what the Syrian delegate said on June 8th this link will tell you. And you will see the response of Hillel Neuer of UN Watch. The blood libels continue. The YouTube video is below if you can bear to watch.
BBC news report June 15th 2020
From our reporter at the Parliamentary Select Committee:
“Are you now or have you ever been a member of a Zionist organisation? Name names or be blacklisted”, demanded Chief Prosecutor Galloway at the recent Zionist sedition hearings.
A succession of prominent Jewish MPs, businessmen and women, rabbis, scientists and journalists were put under the spotlight by Sir George Galloway and his committee of Tony Benn, Ken Livingstone and Baroness Tonge.
Several broke under the unremitting pressure and admitted buying trees for the Jewish National Fund. A sense of outrage permeated the room. Lord Sugar, accused of brain-washing young business hopefuls to spout Zionist propaganda, told the committee in no uncertain terms what he thought of them. His whereabouts are now unknown.
Meanwhile, coalition deputy Prime Minister, Salma Yaqoob, was explaining that there was no room in Britain for any Jewish refugees fleeing from West Hamastan. “We will turn back the boats. These people originally came from Poland and Germany, it’s their problem”, she opined.
Addressing the UN General Assembly, Greater Hamastan President, Khaled Mashaal, said that recent reports of pogroms in Al Quds and Greater Jaffa had been misreported. “Only 5 Zionist aggressors had been hacked to death in self-defence during the Gaza ghetto uprising”, he said, “where did you get 100,000 from? – this is a Zionist lie.”
President Palin said she had no idea where Hamastan was.
Orla Guerin and Jeremy Bowen reporting from Al Quds said that the remaining Jews were being well treated. Visiting a refugee camp near Hebron he reported, “The Hamastan government showed us the wonderful facilities being provided for the Zionist refugees”. Enquiring about the strange acrid smell and some newly built chimneys he was told these were bakeries that Jews liked to work in to make matzo.
However, the Hamas government was unable to provide a certain ingredient for their Passover unleavened bread: “They’ll just have to do without the blood of our children”, said a Hamastan camp supervisor.
Barbara Plett gave a tearful account of the inauguration of the Hamastan parliament. “I never thought I’d see this day,” she said crying into her hanky.
Exiled Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas is reported to be in hiding somewhere in Alaska.
“We have no idea who this guy is”, said President Palin, “but jeez, even an Arab deserves a break.”
The Hamastan contingent, on leaving the UN, made its way to the newly opened Ground Zero mosque for evening prayers. Crowds of delirious New Yorkers lined the street with Hamastan flags.
One lone Zionist from the Israel Liberation Front was beaten to a pulp as he tried to wave the banned Zionist Entity flag.
At the opening of the Obama Presidential Library, former US President Barack Obama, commenting on the situation in the Middle East, said “I see this as a vindication of my policies, peace has come to Palestine after more than 70 years of conflict”.
When a reporter asked him, “What about the Jewish genocide?”, he answered, “Please excuse me, I have to show Secretary General Ahmadinejad a first edition of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion which he has expressed an interest in.”
The two disappeared arm-in-arm into the new building.
How often do we hear that Israel’s maritime blockade and overland embargo of certain materials and foodstuffs is a ‘collective punishment of the people of Gaza?
The argument goes like this: Gazans are not responsible for the actions of Hamas, who govern the Gaza Strip; the rockets and suicide bombings and kidnappings are not the fault of the ordinary citizen. Therefore Israel, in reducing the quantity and variety of foodstuffs and embargoing building materials, is collectively punishing Gazans.
This is a strange argument, especially as Hamas were elected by these same innocent citizens. When South Africa suffered under Apartheid there was no separation of government from people; sanctions were applied internationally to those who had not elected anyone. No-one would argue that the German people should not have been bombed in case they did not vote for or support the Nazi regime.
In fact, the idea of collective punishment originates in the American Civil War and General Sherman’s Special Field Order 120, article V:
To army corps commanders alone is entrusted the power to destroy mills, houses, cotton-gins, etc…, and for them this general principle is laid down: In districts and neighborhoods where the army is unmolested, no destruction of such property should be permitted; but should guerrillas or bushwhackers molest our march, or should the inhabitants burn bridges, obstruct roads, or otherwise manifest local hostility, then army commanders should order and enforce a devastation more or less relentless according to the measure of such hostility.
In more recent times Sherman’s measured proportionality, which would be universally condemned today by every Human Rights organisation and NGO, was given a bad name by the forces of Nazi Germany who would destroy whole villages and massacre all the inhabitants because one German had been assassinated. The most famous incident being that of the Czech town of Lidice which was wiped off the face of the earth after partisans assassinated Heydrich, a leading Nazi.
Indeed, the provisions of the Versailles Treaty after the end of World War I could be viewed as a collective punishment of the German people which was a major cause of World War II, as was the forced ethnic cleansing of Germans from Poland after territory had been ceded after World War II.
In light of the hundreds of trucks and thousands of tonnes of humanitarian aid passing through checkpoints between Israel and Gaza every week, by any standard Israel’s treatment of Gazans, who live in a state of belligerence with Israel, is somewhat generous.
Those who accuse Israel of collective punishment often couple this with a call for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) of the Jewish state. If Israel’s treatment of Gazans is collective punishment and morally wrong, why is the proposed collective punishment of Israelis for the policies of their government not morally reprehensible. After all, the BDS brigade wants to hurt Israel economically, including, of course, its Arab citizens. By their own judgment, are the BDS supporters not proposing the same morally reprehensible action of which they accuse Israel? If collective punishment of Israel is acceptable why carp about the plight of Gaza?
I suspect the answer is that BDS is, for many of its supporters, not simply a tool to pressure Israel into a more humanitarian approach but fundamentally to undermine the State of Israel, to soften it up for the coup de grâce, and ultimately destroy it.
Israel is under attack on many fronts: militarily (Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran by proxy via the both of the former), politically (UN Security Council, UN Human Rights Council, antipathy in Europe, South America and the Muslim world), legally (Goldstone Report, challenges to Occupation, security wall, blockade etc.), academically (academic boycotts, disinvitations etc.) and finally by fanatical Islamism (calling for Israel’s destruction and a new genocide of the Jewish People by Hamas, by historical revisionism denying Jewish connection with the Land, blood libels, brain-washing of children to hate and revile Jews by, inter alia, the Palestinian Authority).
And so this demonization continues, which seems to be the main focus and raison d’être of so many radical Muslims and their fellow travelers of various stripes.
The United States is not innocent in the application of its own BDS with regard Cuba. Where are the calls in the UN for sanctions against the USA for the collective punishment of Cubans? Why is the Security Council not in a constant state of outrage against Russia’s treatment of Chechens or Ossetians, Turkey’s treatment of Kurds, China of Tibetans? What is being done about the starving millions of North Korea? Only Israel can cause the UN Security Council to convene and condemn it within hours every time Israel has the temerity to defend itself.
Israel is not perfect. Gazans are suffering, but this fixation with one conflict which so monopolizes the UN and world politics is symptomatic of a pathology which leads to moral blindness, bullying and demonisation.
And now we have the disgusting spectacle of a unanimous decision by the Unite union in the UK to pursue BDS against Israel.
Even the Palestinian Authority doesn’t go this far as reported by YNetNews:
The Palestinian finance minister stressed Sunday that the boycott on Israeli products pertains only to goods produced in settlements, and that the Palestinian Authority desires to maintain ties with the Israeli market.
“We have excellent ties with the Israeli market and we want to continue this cooperation and even expand it,” Dr. Hasan Abu-Libdeh said at a conference held at the Peres Center for Peace in Tel Aviv.
Do I hear the distant echo of the 1930’s?
To anyone that has half an unbiased brain to think and at least one unclouded eye to see, the evidence supporting Israel’s account is mounting.
Sadly, there is now a long history of Israel’s many accounts of its actions not being accepted.
The unrelenting propaganda as well as Israel’s often lamentable ability to make its case or explain its actions mean that Israel has to change. The government must find a different way to defend Israel and one that shows up its enemies to be what they are. Israel must engage with those who claim to be its friend and let them put there actions where their mouth is.
But first, even before any investigation, internal or otherwise, is cobbled together to appease world opinion, this is my version of what happened garnered from a growing body of evidence:
Whether you like it or not and whether you think it legal or not, Israel has imposed a maritime blockade on the Gaza Strip. The single most important reason for the maritime blockade is fear of arms smuggling from Iran. Israel has repeatedly said that it will not allow Iran to have a port a few tens of kilometres from Tel Aviv. This article about the Francop shows you the size and extent of such arms smuggling. This would be considered an act of war by many countries. Note that the ship was flying the Antiguan flag. This is not an isolated case. Iran supplies Hamas through Somalia and Egypt and Hizbollah, a Hamas clone, in Lebanon via Syria.
The Free Gaza Movement and the Turkish-based IHH (both ostensibly and evidentially aid organisations) organised a flotilla, loaded it with aid and set out with the expressed intention of ‘breaking the blockade’. The delivery of aid was secondary and here’s why:
There is an impression given that Gazans are starving, but they are not. The UN claims that only between one quarter and one fifth of goods previously entering before the blockade gets through Israel’s and Egypt’s border checkpoints.
It should be noted that Egypt also imposed a ‘blockade’ and has built a 30ft deep steel barrier across its border with Gaza.
Whilst there is no doubt that Gazan’s are suffering economically, it is in the interests of Israel’s enemies to use overblown and inflammatory claims. Sometimes, the truth does get out. May I refer you to this article in the Daily Telegraph: Dispatch: Just how hungry is Gaza?
“There is no starvation in Gaza,” said Khalil Hamada, a senior official at Hamas’s ministry of justice. “No-one has died of hunger.
But it is, however, true that there is hardship. This cannot and should not be denied. What is often lacking is context and moderate language. The moral issues at stake here, and your view of them, depend on your particular bias or understanding of the conflict. You may simply hate Israel and be prepared to do anything to destroy it or to blacken its name internationally. You may support Israel and be blinkered to, or underplay, Palestinian suffering.
Given the difficulties of the Gazan people, aid organisations which support Palestinians and Gazans in particular, and reject Israel’s security concerns, have sought to make political capital by attempting to run the blockade with the express intention of breaking it. At the same time they load up their ships with aid, including food and building materials. Their mission, they believe, is a moral one and they are motivated by their sense of outrage to pursue their goal.
Such activists have a right to protest. They can even try to break the blockade, but they know they will not be allowed to do so. They know, however, that this will be a propaganda victory. They know that the aid will still get through.
But their main motivation, as expressed many times in the recent Freedom Flotilla disaster is to break the blockade. One pebble cannot break a wall but eventually you will chip away enough to get through. It must also be said that these same people would never attempt to run a blockade by Iran or North Korea because they know they would be risking their lives. They know, if they are honest with themselves, that Israel may use force, but it will not be lethal. So why did it become lethal?
It is now becoming clear that at some point the flotilla was infiltrated by activists with links to terror and who had planned confrontation with Israeli forces. They brought on a board an assortment of knives, clubs and slingshots. They may have brought firearms, although there is no conclusive evidence. They were filmed by reporters on the boat chanting there intention to kill the Jews. They gave interviews stating it was Gaza or martyrdom. They did not care that they were about to risk the lives of hundreds of people including women and children (why would you bring children!)
Israel spent 6 hours trying to negotiate that the ships divert to Ashdod for inspection. The flotilla leaders refused. 6 hours! If they had real murderous intent they would have just sunk the ships.
Israeli commandos, include females, successfully boarded 5 of the 6 flotilla boats without encountering any resistance. There may have been some rough handling, but no-one on either side was injured. When Israel commandeered the 7th, delayed boat, the Rachel Corrie, yesterday, there was no resistance and no-one was injured.
But when the Mavi Marmara, the large lead ship, was boarded something went wrong.
Israel botched the Mavi Marmara assault. They used the wrong kind of troops and the wrong tactics. However, it is also clear, if you open your eyes even to what may be unpalatable to your viewpoint, the commandos came on board with a paintball gun and a Glock pistol. As each commando landed on the top deck wielding their paintball gun they were assaulted extremely violently with metal bars and knives. The ‘activists’ even had stun grenades, apparently.
The activists took two pistols from the Israelis and shot them. One was hit in the stomach. Another soldier was thrown over a guard rail and suffered serious head injuries. Three soldiers were taken hostage and moved below decks.
As his comrades lay on the deck injured, an Israeli Staff Sergeant dragged them to the side, stood in front of them to protect them, and took out his semi-automatic pistol. Given the Turkish autopsy evidence, 9 ‘activists’ were then shot and killed by 30 bullets suffering shots to the legs, lower body and lethal shots to the head, including the back and side of the head. Several others were injured.
Those looking for atrocity stories and who don’t understand how lethal force is applied will see this as disproportionate. Just think. You are that Israeli. You have seen your comrades beaten unconscious and shot. There is a mob advancing on you with clubs and knives and maybe guns. Your life is in danger. You try to disable your assailant by shooting him in the leg, it’s dark and you are on a heaving ship. Some leg shots may hit the lower abdomen. He keeps coming. He is about to stab you or shoot you or beat you. You are in fear of your life. You have asked for and been given permission to use your firearm. Your training tells you you have to shoot twice in the head. You keep doing this until they stop coming. You have been joined by a comrade who is doing the same thing. 9 men are dead and your assailants stop coming at you. At last there are enough of you to take charge of the boat.
They have their victory. Israel has committed another ‘atrocity’. The IHH infiltrators, with links to terrorism have won. They have provoked the tiger. Now the lies and distortions that an all too willing world wants to hear can begin.
Claims that the Israelis opened the firing from deck or even from the helicopters do not make sense. Why fire live rounds them come down a rope with a pop-gun? If the activists were unarmed surely live rounds would have cowered them? Maybe they fired stun grenades or even tear gas, who knows. We do not even know where the dead fell and whether all casualties were on deck.
The non-Turkish flotilla leaders have not acknowledged this infiltration. They either refuse to accept the evidence either because there is some form of cognitive dissonance going on, or they are deliberately ignoring it because it doesn’t play to their political preconceptions. They have already demonised Israel and nothing Israel does in national self-defence or individual self-defence will make them tell it otherwise.
Israel must recognise that it has lost the battle for world opinion long ago. A combination of its poorly thought out strategies and its opponents successful manipulation of public opinion has turned the only redoubt of democracy in the Middle East to a pariah state with a lower standing than genocidal Iran. Israel was once surrounded by neighbouring enemies who wanted to destroy it. Now most of the world is either its enemy or wants it to give in to those who would destroy it.
Israel must now stop trying to fight battles as if it were still the 1970’s. In this century of mass communication and instant sound bites, so-called human rights and NGO’s, Israel has to be more humble and a lot cleverer; it has to be less defensive diplomatically and fight back not with weapons but with diplomacy and legal instruments. It must make the same use of international courts and UN bodies as its enemies. It has to show the world more forcefully what it is up against.
What Israel must not do is lift the maritime blockade. It should get together with its ‘friends’ and the UN and ask a simple question: how do we stop Iran arming our enemy and rebuilding its capability whilst, at the same time enabling Gazans to rebuild their broken homes and lives? How will you help us? How long will Gilad Shalit rot in some hole in Gaza (if that’s where he still is?) What pressure will the UN bring on Hamas to allow the Red Cross or the Red Crescent visit him? Where are the pro-Israel NGO’s fighting to tell Israel’s story?
Israel has to agree to some form of international enquiry not because it should but because it is diplomatically the right thing to do. This should be the start of a new strategy for Israel and its fight back in the propaganda war that could destroy it. If it stops acting as the victor and starts acting a bit more like the victim the tide could turn.
Here are links to material which support the article above.
Jerusalem Post 06/06/2010 Mercenaries aboard Gaza ship
Jerusalem Post 06/06/2010 At least 5 Mavi Marmura passengers have terror links
Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs 06/06/2010 Hamas refuses to allow flotilla aid into Gaza Strip
San Remo Manual on International Law Applicable to Armed Conflicts at Sea, 12 June 1994
For some videos see my post https://www.raymondcook.net/blog/index.php/2010/06/03/col-kemp-israel-and-double-standards/
All news and videos about the flotilla see http://www.jta.org/bigstory
The Jerusalem Post reports that Col. (ret) Richard Kemp, who is a former head of UK forces in Afghanistan (and who first came to the notice of the Israeli public when he stood up for Operation Cast Lead at the UN in the wake of the Goldstone enquiry), is in Israel.
Kemp has this to say about the world’s reaction to the interception of the terrorist sponsored ‘Freedom Flotilla’:
“I believe Israel should do it rapidly and comprehensively and should be completely up front if it has made mistakes – mistakes should be admitted by Israel, but I don’t think it should be subjected to an independent inquiry any more than other Western countries are.
Look at what appears to have been a very serious military error made by the German army in Northern Afghanistan last year when something like 50-150 civilians were killed in an air strike..”
Quite right, and that is just one of many, many incidents in Afghanistan and around the world, far more serious than the flotilla incident, which are completely ignored by the UN.
While Kemp was critical of Israel’s handling of the flotilla raid, in particular its intelligence-gathering prior to the operation, he said the blame for the death toll lay with the “activists” who attacked the soldiers.
This is clear for any reasonable person to see from the evidence of the videos. All that the supporters of the flotilla can say is that they had a right to defend themselves. Do you remember the last time anyone was killed in a paintball contest? The paintball gun was the Israeli’s primary ‘weapon’ . When the world is bleating about disproportionality of Israel’s activities at every possible occasion, is it not disproportionate to prepare a lethal attack with knives and metal clubs and then take pistols and shoot at someone with a paintball gun? That is bloody murder in my book.
Kemp rightly points out that this raid was bungled. We still do not know why nine people died or whether there deaths were caused by their zealotry to become shahids (martyrs) as is witnessed in this video:
It could be bravado, of course but other pronouncements and the weapons found on board point to a Gaza or die attitude. When someone is prepared to die in order to kill you what would you do with a pistol in your hand. With hundreds of people on board against a handful of commandos, whatever you think of the legality of their actions, they did not come with deadly intent, unlike their assailants.
Here’s some of what was found on the ‘peace convoy’:
As Kemp says, there must be an investigation, but no-one will accept the conclusions if they absolve the Israeli Navy, of course, only kangaroo-court UN enquiries whose members have decided guilt in advance (Goldstone) are allowed.
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