FULL ARTICLES

WHY HIZBULLAH SHOULD BE CONDEMNED

Why Hizbullah should be condemned: When Israel attacked Lebanon in 2006 the world was outraged. What about Hizbullah now?
By Dean Godson
The Times (of London)
May 14, 2008

“Even the Israeli enemy never dared to do to Beirut what Hizbullah has done,” lamented Fouad Siniora, Lebanon’s embattled Prime Minister, over the weekend. Yet British bien-pensant opinion – so vocal in its opposition to Israeli actions in Lebanon in 2006 – is strangely silent about the recent outrages.

Why? After all, Hizbullah is one of the world’s most ruthless clerical fascist organisations – complete with ersatz Nazi salutes and Iranian-style Holocaust denial. When the legitimate, democratic Government of Lebanon dared to challenge it, Hizbullah went on a sectarian rampage, murdering scores of opponents and destroying much of the country’s free media.

Yet there has been not a peep from the concerned humanitarians of the Stop the War Coalition, which boasted of putting 100,000 people on to the streets to protest against Israeli assaults. Nor has much been heard from two of Hizbullah’s most high-profile and indulgent British interlocutors – the ex-MI6 officer Alastair Crooke and Michael Ancram, the former Conservative minister.

Mr Ancram urges that we “dance with wolves” such as Hizbullah to obtain peace. “It is suddenly possible to explore Hizbullah claims to be an essentially Lebanese resistance movement with no current aggressive cross-border intentions towards Israel,” he opines. Indeed so: right now its aggressive intentions are inwardly directed, towards its fellow countrymen.

Hizbullah and its allies – which command only 30 per cent of the Lebanese vote – seeks to make good its democratic deficit at the polls through the use of force. The group boasts a vast arsenal. But Messrs Ancram and Crooke don’t want Hizbullah to be pressured to abandon this swiftly, as required by UN Security Council Resolution 1559.

The other great myth about Hizbullah – peddled by too many of its Western apologists – is that it is an entirely indigenous “resistance” movement: if so, why have pictures gone up of the Iranian leader, Ali Khamenei, and the Syrian President, Bashar Assad, for the first time in Beirut since the Cedar Revolution of 2005? And, given the violent oppression of Sunnis by Hizbullah, why has so little been heard from the Muslim Council of Britain and the British Muslim Initiative, two predominantly Sunni organisations? Don’t Lebanese Sunnis deserve a little solidarity from their brethren?

So why does Hizbullah’s putsch of 2008 not excite stern criticism – as did Israel’s invasion of 2006? It’s simple: many “progressives” hate Israeli and Western policy far more than they love Lebanon.

 

GUILT IS AN UNHEALTHY BASIS FOR A RELATIONSHIP

A ‘Special’ Relationship
By Daniel Schwammenthal
The Wall Street Journal Europe
May 13, 2008

As Israel celebrates its 60th anniversary, there is no denying that the Jewish state has an image problem in Europe. While opinion polls in the U.S. consistently show a majority of Americans sympathetic to Israel, the situation is the reverse on the other side of the Atlantic. It’s particularly bad in Germany. In a BBC survey last month, for example, Germans were among the Europeans with the least favorable views of Israel, second only to Spain. Even the respondents in the United Arab Emirates had a more positive perception of the Jewish state than Germans did.

This may be surprising given that Berlin is considered one of Israel’s more reliable allies in Europe. Successive German governments have justified the “special” relationship with Israel by pointing to the countries’ “special” history. In light of the Holocaust, Germany seems to have no choice but to support the Jewish state. Former Green Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer advocated this policy of “historical responsibility” as effortlessly as Christian-Democratic Chancellor Angela Merkel does.

But guilt is an unhealthy basis for a relationship; it easily turns into resentment. This may help explain why so many Germans – 30% according to last year’s survey by Bertelsmann Foundation – are so eager to compare Israel to fascist Germany. If it were true that Israelis are modern-day Nazis, there would be less reason to feel guilty about the real Nazis.

Historical obligations also tend to have a statute of limitations. As the policy-defining event fades into the past, so will the rationale to stand by the Jewish state. Postwar Germans may reasonably reject any special obligations to Israel as a result of crimes committed before they were born.

This brings us to the fundamental problem with Berlin’s Israel policy. It implies that had there been no Holocaust, Israel would have no right to exist or, at least would have no reason to expect Germany’s support. Israel’s detractors take this argument one step further, claiming it was immoral to establish a Jewish state in the Middle East to atone for European crimes.

Churchill debunked the idea that Israel could be justified only as reparation for past atrocities long before the Holocaust: “The Jews are in Palestine by right and not by sufferance,” he said in 1922. Europe and Germany should thus be able to support Israel not just because of past wrongs committed against Jews but because of Jews’ inalienable right to a state in their ancestral homeland.

Israel’s right to exist doesn’t mean Germans must automatically back it. There has to be some special bond between nations to prompt support in difficult times. Such alliances are usually forged around common interests and values. As the Mideast’s most vibrant democracy, it would appear that Israel qualifies for a truly “special relationship.”

But unlike Americans, German officials almost never argue that Israel deserves solidarity as a Western ally. While Americans generally see Israel as a fellow democracy under attack from terrorists, in Germany and much of the rest of Europe, Israel is more often seen as a human-rights violator.

What explains this difference in perceptions? The U.S media are not that much better in presenting a more balanced view of the Middle East conflict than their European counterparts. More likely, Americans are simply less disposed to believe the worst of Israel.

A key factor is Americans’ appreciation of their Judeo-Christian heritage. While this is a common term in the U.S., and not only among religious people, it is a novel concept in Europe. Only recently has it found its way into the vocabulary of a few conservative Germans. Ms. Merkel and a few colleagues from Poland and Italy wanted to add a reference to the Continent’s Judeo-Christian heritage to Europe’s proposed constitution. The idea was rejected as too divisive, not only to seculars but also to other religions.

But the term does not just cover the moral standards shared by Judaism and Christianity. Its meaning goes beyond matters of faith. It describes the fact that next to the Greco-Roman heritage, the Judeo-Christian tradition is the other main pillar of Western civilization. Acknowledging this basic truth helps Americans to view Jews as part of that civilization and the Jewish state as part of the broader Western alliance.

In post-Christian Europe and Germany, this realization is largely missing. Moses’ law, the foundation for Western legal codes and moral values, is hardly acknowledged on the Continent. Jews are more often seen as having contributed to Western civilization – as individual scientists or artists – rather than being an integral part of it thanks to the role they played as a nation. Jews – often viewed as some kind of guest contributors – thus remain strangers in Europe, as does the Jewish state. And one is more inclined to believe bad things about strangers than about people one feels close to.

Given the similar threats Europe and Israel face from Islamic terror and a nuclear Iran, an alliance between them would seem natural. But as long as Europe’s public considers Israel more as part of the problem than as part of the solution, any such alliance will suffer. It’s time for German and European officials to make the real case for Israel – that of solidarity with an embattled ally.

 

THE REBIRTH OF ISRAEL

The Birth of a Nation, 1948
By Ruth Gruber
The New York Times (op-ed page)
May 18, 2008

IT was Friday, May 14, 1948. I was sitting in the press section of the United Nations General Assembly in its temporary quarters at Flushing Meadow in Queens. I felt my heart thumping. We journalists were waiting impatiently to see who would win a tug of war taking place in Washington.

On one side was President Harry S. Truman, who had told his aides that, with the last British troops leaving Palestine that day, he believed the Jews had a right to declare their own nation, and that he would make sure that the United States would be the first country to recognize it.

On the other side was the State Department, which wanted the land placed in a trusteeship under the United Nations. Secretary of State George Marshall was so passionate in his opposition to a Jewish state that he threatened to vote against the president in the November election. For Truman, who had come to office with the death of Franklin Roosevelt three years earlier, this was to be one of his first true tests of power.

As I sat waiting for the announcement of the decision in Washington, my mind wandered back to the spring and summer of the year before, which I had spent reporting for The New York Herald Tribune. I had traveled in Germany and Austria with the 11 members of the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine. There had been many such committees studying the problems of the Holy Land since the Arab riots of the 1920s; this one was distinguished by having no representatives from Britain, which had been universally hostile to the Zionist cause.

With the members, I visited the camps for displaced persons in Germany and Austria and listened, dumbfounded, as the refugees described the horrors of the war. In particular, I remember visiting the Rothschild Hospital camp in Vienna. Some 100 refugees had just arrived from Romania, many of them children covered with sores and dirt. There was no place to put them but the street; they lay, exhausted, on the paving stones.

A young man approached us, his eyes bloodshot. “In Romania, they killed 30,000 Jews in two hours,” he said, his voice sounding as if it came straight from his guts. “They took Jews to the slaughterhouse and hung them alive the way they hang cows, and they put knives to their throats and split them. Underneath them, they put a sign: Kosher Beef.”

In camp after camp, the committee members asked, “Why do you want to go to Palestine? It’s such a poor country. The Arabs and Jews are always fighting. They don’t have enough food, they don’t have enough water. What is it about Palestine?”

A 16-year-old orphan – actually, we never used the word “orphan” because the term couldn’t convey the horrors these children had been through – gave the most poignant answer. “Everybody has a home,” he said. “The Americans. The British. The French. The Russians. Only we don’t have a home. Don’t ask us. Ask the world.”

A woman tugged the sleeve of my jacket. “You are the only woman with all these men,” she implored. “You will understand me. I saw my husband burned. I don’t want to burn. I want to go home – to Eretz Israel.” The Land of Israel.

“That’s why we’re here,” I told her. “To help solve the problem. But if, Heaven forbid, we fail to find a solution, where would you like to go?”

Her reply: “Back to the crematory.”

It was this committee’s report that led directly to the General Assembly vote of Nov. 29, 1947, to partition Palestine into separate Jewish and Arab entities. The Jews accepted this proposal, but the Arabs stormed out and threatened war.

***

My mind was drawn immediately back to the present of May 1948 as I noticed an American representative to the United Nations, Philip Jessup, hurrying toward the podium. I knew, after talking to his aides, that in his hand he had a speech supporting trusteeship, not statehood, for Israel. The State Department was about to betray the president.

Jessup was halfway up the stairs when an Associated Press reporter handed him a dispatch. Jessup read it, grew white-faced, descended the stairs and then disappeared. The reporter next to me said, “He’s gone to the bathroom.”

I shook my head. “He’s gone home.”

Then we were handed the A.P. report. In Tel Aviv, David Ben-Gurion had just read the world’s latest proclamation of independence. Eleven minutes later, Harry Truman had recognized Ben-Gurion’s government as the “de facto authority” of the new state.

Israel was born.

 

A MASTERS DEGREE IN ISRAELI STUDIES IS PROVING POPULAR AMONG STUDENTS AT A PALESTINIAN UNIVERSITY

Learn about your enemy: A masters degree in Israeli studies is proving popular among students at a Palestinian university
By Nathan Jeffay
The Guardian (Weekly education supplement)
May 6, 2008

“It had nothing, and in a very short period has built this very strong economy. We should be amazed by this,” says Azizha Noful. She is talking about Israel, which celebrates its 60th anniversary on Thursday.

You will hear many comments like this on Thursday at the many Israel 60 gatherings taking place across the world. After all, this is a classic observation of Israel’s supporters, and one that always dominates discussions at Independence Day events.

What is surprising, though, is that Noful is a Palestinian whose husband is a prisoner in Israel, and she wants an end to the country’s existence. So why is she praising Israel’s achievements?

The answer is that she one of a growing number of Palestinians who want to study Israel. Noful is a student on the fast-growing Israel studies course at the Palestinian Al-Quds University. Between the university’s West Bank and Gaza campuses, the two-year masters degree has more than 100 students – reflecting a year-on-year growth of about 10% since 2005.

At Al-Quds, scholarship and the Palestinian struggle are closely related. For example, one of the law courses involves running human rights clinics in the hope students will “play a role in the struggle for change” in “occupied Palestine”.

PECULIAR SETTING

The university fears confiscation of part of its campus for road building by Israel, and in 2002, Israeli forces closed an administration building, confiscating files, academic documents and computers. Student politics tends to be radical, and the university union goes through periods of Hamas control.

Professor Mohammed Dajani, director of Al-Quds’s Area Studies Institute, which runs the Israel studies course, admits his university is a peculiar setting for this subject. He point out that Palestinian identity has largely been synonymous with “a general Arab policy to shut Israel out of Arab memory” and ignore its existence as far as possible.

However, he says, this has been changing since the start of the occupation in 1967. “Before the 1967 war, Palestinians, like the rest of the Arab world, knew nothing about Israel and Judaism. Then in June 1967, Israeli occupation brought a dramatic shift and Palestinians were shocked to find out how much Israelis knew about the Arab world and how little they knew about them. Though Arab interest in Israel grew tremendously, only a few Arab institutions and publishers reflected objectivity in dealing with the topic.” The few courses and books that did deal with Israel were polemics that viewed Israel as an aggressor.

The Al-Quds course set out to remedy this. Every student takes an in-depth course in Zionist thought and history, and Hebrew language is compulsory, as is studying the Israeli political system, the economy and social structure. Electives and dissertations involve detailed study of niche issues in Israeli society, including women’s issues, ethnicity, divisions between Jews of eastern and western origins, the judicial system, the Israel Defence Forces and the status of Palestinian Arabs.

Given that it is covering new ground for the Arab world, the course faces a lack of Arabic-language texts and so uses Israeli scholarship in Hebrew or in English translation. Perhaps surprisingly, students haven’t objected to the use of Israeli texts, says Dajani.

Teaching Zionism presents one of the course’s biggest challenges, says Professor Mohammad Massalha, who is charged with this task. “We are dealing with people who, on a daily basis, face the result of Zionism. It is very difficult to teach about Zionism academically. But my job is to make as much of an artificial separation between the personal level and the academic level as possible.”

Massalha begins by studying the theory of ideologies as a general subject, and then moves on to considering how Zionism fits and breaks the mould of other ideologies. “This way, we have a model for trying to understand Zionism with some objectivity.” As for why students want to reach this kind of objectivity about Zionism and Israel, motivations vary. More than half are officials in the Palestinian Authority. They range from relatively junior officials to the top-ranking Jibril Rajoub and they all believe that increased knowledge will help their work.

For some, like Noful, it is about acquiring knowledge as power. She says: “Every Palestinian has to know about them [Israelis] - it is important to know about our enemy. As my mother says, if you want to face your enemy, know his language.”

LEARNING PROCESS

She also believes that Palestinians will eventually set up their own state and will do so more effectively if they learn from Israel’s successes. “Israelis are great developers and we can learn from everything they are doing,” she says.

However, she insists that this learning process must take place from a safe distance and shuns dialogue. “We have to know about Israel but not forget they are our enemy. I can’t be on good relations with my enemy.”

Others, like 32-year-old Ramallah resident Sameh Khader, assistant to the secretary of the PLO executive committee, take the opposite view, and hope that their studies will facilitate coexistence and help bring peace. “For me it’s not about knowing the enemy. I want to live peacefully with our neighbours and believe that to do that we need to understand them,” says Khader.

Israeli academic Mordechai Kedar, an Arabic-speaking political scientist at the Israeli Bar Ilan University, says that the success of the course shows a thirst for knowledge about Israel across the Arab world. He is in demand as an Israeli guest on al-Jazeera and other Arabic TV stations and as a writer on Arabic websites. He recently received an offer of a two-year visiting professorship in the Gulf to teach about Israel and Judaism.

“When I publish articles on Arabic websites, I get at least two or three queries every day, from people wanting to know how Israelis think and what life is really like in Israel,” he says.

“While some are trying to convert me to Islam, many don’t like Israel, Israelis or Jews but want to know more. I spend an hour or two every day exchanging mails with these people.

“With satellite TV and the web the Arab world is much more open today than it was, and while this has not brought a desire to accept Israel, it has brought a desire to better understand it.”