FULL ARTICLES

UN CONDEMNS ISRAEL FIRST, INVESTIGATES LATER

UN condemns Israel first, investigates later
By Rex Murphy
The National Post (Canada)
June 5, 2010

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2010/06/05/rex-murphy-un-condemns-israel-first-investigates-later

I don’t suppose the world needs to remember Rwanda to note how sluggish in the face of imminent horror the United Nations is and can be. If that is not a sufficient cue, we could bring in other examples of areas of great threat or immiseration or both: Darfur, Tibet, Chechnya, North Korea, Zimbabwe, the Congo or Iran. On these the UN has the patience of a stone but only some of its energy.

But torpid as is its nature, and comatose as are its eternal deliberations, on one subject, and toward one state, the United Nations acquires a strange and uniquely transformative power. Bring Israel under its gaze and the diplomatic sloths at UN headquarters morph into the swiftest of gazelles. From lotus-eaters to adrenalin junkies in the twinkling of an eye. Quite amazing, really.

So naturally when the debacle over the so-called “freedom flotilla” – news media should be wary of letting activists choose the names of things – roared into the headlines, the UN reacted at the diplomatic equivalent of the speed of light. The Security Council issued its “condemnation,” and in a wonderful reversal of cause and effect also called for an investigation into what it had “condemned.” And the cruellest joke on the planet, what the UN with unbounded irony refers to as its Human Rights Council, issued, as unfailingly in every previous international incident involving Israel it has, a condemnation as well.

If the flotilla’s real purpose was to bring aid, then merely by complying with Israel’s request to dock at Ashdod – as five of the ships did, with no blood shed and no international headlines – the supplies on the sixth ship would now be in Gaza. In reality, it was exercise in early 21st century propaganda on the battlefield of world opinion. Its only purpose was to challenge and delegitimize Israel’s blockade of ships travelling to Gaza – a blockade, as too many news reports fail to emphasize, which up until this “incident” was also being maintained by Egypt. That the Egyptian government, until a few days ago, mirrored in its actions Israel’s concerns about what might get shipped into Hamas is the only real obstruction in the otherwise perfectly concentrated anti-Israel narrative.

As to the “peace activists” on that sixth ship, the ones who received the Israeli soldiers boarding the ship with bats, pipes, knives and chains – well, the video footage of the moments preceding the boarding and the boarding itself will make most rational people review their understanding of peace and activism and some of the organizations that fly the flags of these conveniently fungible designations.

Any real investigation of the flotilla will not confine itself to the boarding, but include an equally scrupulous inquiry into the origins of some of its actors, its unstated as well as it stated aims, and the facility and speed with which it revved up the engine of international protest against Israel. It seemed like half the world took to the streets in less than half a day.

This was but one installment in the long and continuous campaign to isolate Israel, and to turn that state in the eyes of international opinion into a pariah, to erode its legitimacy and to break its will. You’ve seen the branding. Apartheid Israel. Israel is the worst thing to happens to Jews since the Holocaust. Racist Israel. Imperialist Israel.

The campaign has been remarkably successful, which is much to Israel’s woe and may be to the world’s woe as well. There are far larger, more egregious causes for the world’s attention than the episode off Gaza last Sunday, greater threats and deeper anxieties. But it is truly worth remarking that when Israel is in the dock, protest rage goes epidemic. To use that vile term so often recently turned upon Israel when it acts in its self-defence, the response is extravagantly “disproportionate.”

I truly do not know why this is so. Israel is a sanctuary state established after one almost successful attempt just two generations ago to rid all the world of Jews. And Israel is now in the shadow of a fundamentalist, ferociously anti-Israel theocracy which is about to equip itself with nuclear weapons. Perhaps, alas, under the threat of a second attempt.

Yet somehow Israel is the rogue, the barbarian nation, the only state on earth that can energize the professionally lethargic diplomats in the great tower of hypocrisy on the East River. Strange and dangerous times.

 

“THE UNRESTRAINED ASSAULT ON ISRAEL IS UNPRECEDENTED. NO OTHER NATION GENERATES SUCH LANGUAGE OR FOCUS”

A Flotilla of Demonisation
By Dvir Abramovich
Sydney Morning Herald (Australia) / The Age (Australia)
June 11, 2010

Oceans of ink have been poured about the flotilla incident. By now, with the copious documentation and viewing of the video clips, the facts about the aims of those on board, their terrorist links and about what really happened on board, are gradually emerging.

But the speed and intensity by which the world recklessly rushed to blame Israel, and only Israel, and the scale and venom of the reaction, has left me speechless. Until now.

I don’t know how to depict a world that clamours to indict Israel while exonerating its enemies, that uses double standards in promoting false and baseless accusations, and that has forgotten history so as to use the language of the Holocaust to portray Israelis as the epitome of evil. I don’t know what to make of a world that is silent when Israelis die in homicidal bombings or rocket attacks, or a Europe that tries to seek forgiveness for its colonial past by defaming Israel time and again and is silent when atrocities are committed against Israelis. I am still shocked by intellectual and cultural figures who ceaselessly denounce Israel, leading the charge for boycott and divestment, and seek Israel’s isolation.

It’s hard to understand why countries, journalists and commentators have turned a blind-eye to the obvious provocative nature of the flotilla, the role Hamas plays in the suffering of Gaza, or to its charter that calls for the destruction of Israel, or to the fact that when Egypt opened its borders with Gaza shortly after the incident, thousands of residents massed at the border, hankering to get out - only to be stopped by Hamas. It’s hard to fathom why TV channels, radio stations and newspapers have sought to paint a one-sided picture that takes no account of Israel’s account and defensive needs.

A clear-eyed examination of the facts would ask: if the Turkish convoy was only interested in delivering humanitarian supplies to Gaza, why did it not accept Israel’s offer to peacefully off load the relief in the Israeli port of Haifa for transport into Gaza? After all, Israel ships into Gaza 15,000 tonnes of food and medical supplies every week.

The IHH, the Turkish group who organised the convoy, has been named in a US Federal court as having an “important role” in the attempt to blow up an LA airport. As organizer Greta Berlin confessed, the flotilla was not about humanitarian aid, but about breaking the blockade. Military experts have pointed to the links IHH has with Hamas and global jihad movements.

But beyond the actual incident, another aspect that is becoming disturbingly evident is the blistering demonisation, and delegitimisation of Israel. And the viciousness of such vilification by the media, and international governments who should know better, is mind-blowing. As philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy wrote: “The flood of hypocrisy, bad faith and, ultimately, disinformation, that seems to have just been waiting for this pretext to flow into the breach and sweep across the media worldwide - as is the case every time the Jewish state slips up and commits an error - is by no means acceptable.”

How many journalists have explained that both Israel and Egypt have imposed a naval blockade of Gaza, and that Israel did so to prevent the re-arming of the Iranian-backed Hamas? How many journalists have noted that no country allows ships to enter its waters without inspection for illicit goods of military weapons and ammunition? Elie Wiesel rightly points out: “We know that the six vessels of the flotilla were chartered by pro-Hamas groups, the initiative coming from the most militant wing of Hamas. How could Israel be sure that they did not carry weapons to kill and destroy?

How many journalists have written about Gaza being used as a base for the launching of thousands of rockets into Israeli towns in a murderous and relentless war of attrition? How many journalists have alerted readers to the brutal Hamas regime in Gaza that is stockpiling weapons for eventual targeting of Israeli cities, violently puts down any political opponents, and is slowly imposing fundamentalist Islamic law?

How many readers know that one of the passengers, rejecting an Israeli request to berth the ship for inspection, replied: “Shut up and go back to Auschwitz” while another blockade runner said: “We’re helping Arabs going against the US. Don’t forget 9/11, guys”.

The virulent call for Jews to return to the extermination camp of Europe provides a glaring and bloodcurdling insight into the mindset of those on board.

And the hypocrisy is something to reflect on. The unrestrained assault on Israel is unprecedented. No other nation generates such language or focus.

Consider that no similar condemnation and media attention has been applied to North Korea’s recent sinking of a South Korean boat and its monstrous regime, or to Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons and oppression of its citizens, or to the genocide in Darfur and Congo, or to Zimbabwe’s dictator, or to the Russian invasion of Georgia, or the human rights abuse in Syria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, or to the Chinese treatment of the Uighurs in Xinjiang and Tibet, or to India’s military occupation of Muslim Kashmir. And the list goes on.

As one commentator observed, these dictators must be sitting back and laughing at the world’s reaction to the flotilla episode given their crimes. Or as Tom Gross notes about the recent killing of an al-Qaeda leader, “plus his wife, three of his daughters, his granddaughter, and other men, women, and children” by an American missile strike: “No one seems to be getting hysterical about this anywhere in the world. Now imagine if Israel had been involved . . .”

The EU representative for foreign affairs, Catherine Ashton, demanded an opening of the Gaza blockade. Yet, the EU, since 2002, has insisted that no one deal with Hamas until it recognised Israel’s right to exist and renounce violence. Hamas has not done so. The President of Bosnia compared the Gaza blockade to the siege of Sarajevo of the 1990s where about 10,000 people died.

News agency Reuters has just admitted that it cropped images so as to show Israel in a negative light. In the uncut photo, you can see the hand of an unidentified commander holding a knife over an Israeli soldier lying on the deck of the ship. In the Reuters photo, the knife is missing.

And what was Fairfax Media’s journalist Paul McCeough thinking when he described Israeli soldiers as hyenas. Did he not feel that such a description was loaded with inflammatory bias? Could he not think of another turn of phrase? Such language is extravagantly prejudicial and hurtful, drawn from vocabulary and a time we thought had been relegated to the dustbin of history.

Veteran White House correspondent Helen Thomas told Rabbi David Nesenoff that Israeli Jews should “get the hell out of Palestine” and “go home” to ‘‘Germany, Poland” - where 6 million people were murdered. Her on-camera comments embodied in many ways the disproportionate hostility exhibited towards the Jewish state by intelligent and educated people. Whether Thomas really meant that Israel should disappear, or that a mass expulsion of Jews should take place is unknown. But her words echo a worrying trend in which people are openly talking about a world without Israel. And I just don’t mean the Iranian President who wants Israel wiped off the map.

Such incitement only fuels anti-Jewish sentiment.

Over the last week, a Jewish student wearing a yarmulke was assaulted at Sydney University. Unsurprisingly, The Northwest Intelligence Network reports: “A palpable animosity against Israel and the Jews, most recently exacerbated by media bias with regard to the nature of the aid flotillas to Gaza, are generating a new and vicious level of anti-Semitism worldwide.”

Across the Arab world, hateful and anti-Semitic newspaper cartoons have fanned the flames of intolerance. In Al-Watan, Qatar, a hook nosed, black-hatted Jew with tentacles holds a bloody knife and a gun; in Al Iqtisadiyya, Saudi Arabia, a flag with the Swastika is shown over a Star of David, with an image of a skull and crossbones.

[Tom Gross adds: see here for these cartoons, where Dvir Abramovich derives them from.]

The Turkish government has labelled the Israeli raid a massacre, and likened it to 9/11. Its ambassador to the US said last Friday that Hamas is a key and necessary part of the “Final solution” to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Such comments, inadvertent as they may be, would horrify those who know history. Turkey, part of NATO, who wants to become a member of the EU, should do well to avoid its self-righteous outbursts and look back at its past - specifically the Armenian Genocide and the way it has treated the Kurdish Independence movement that by some estimates has so far led to the death of 40,000 lives.

Thankfully, the history books are slowly being corrected. Here is what Tony Blair, Special envoy of the Quartet of Middle East peace mediators, said yesterday about the flotilla incident: “There’s no question that there are rockets fired from Gaza and that there are people in Gaza who want to kill innocent Israelis. When it comes to security, I’m 100 per cent on Israel’s side. Israel has the right to inspect what goes into Gaza.” Kuwaiti journalist Abdallah Al-Hadlaq agrees, writing that the outcome of the Israeli navy’s operation was “in direct proportion to the violence” of the flotilla activists.

He further notes that the flotilla organisers are known to have ties with global and regional terror organisations.

Robert Fulford tries to explain the enmity towards Israel by quoting from The Israel Test, a book by George Gilder. Gilder writes: “Without oil, beset by passionate enemies, Israel has nevertheless achieved astonishing, unprecedented success. It now stands second only to the United States in microchips, telecom, software, biotech, medical devices and renewable energy. Per capita, it’s easily the most innovative country on the planet.” Fulford ends his article with this question: “Gilder’s “Israel test” asks how others respond to this achievement. Do we study, admire and emulate it? Or do we consider it a devilish trick and hope to see it destroyed?

I think we all know the answer.

 

WHAT IS A PEACE ACTIVIST ANYWAY?

Why do the peace activists ignore the violence of Hamas?
By Lindy McDowell
Belfast Telegraph (UK)
June 9, 2010

www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/opinion/columnists/lindy-mcdowell/why-do-the-peace-activists-ignore-the-violence-of-hamas-14834634.html

What is a peace activist anyway? Is there such a thing as a peace passive-ist? And how does a peace activist differ from a plain old pacifist?

Even before the “freedom flotilla” set sail for Gaza, another armada of small loaded, descriptive terms was being launched upon the world.

The “freedom flotilla” we were assured, was carrying “humanitarian aid”. Those on board were “peace activists”. “International peace activists” to boot.

God, how could you be against anything in that lot.

Israel raising (legitimate) concerns about its right to secure its own borders didn’t count in this freedom-fest. If Israel intercepted the aid boats, Israel was always going to look monstrous.

Israel knew that.

But Israel unfortunately didn’t actually have a choice.

Gaza, where the boats were headed, is under the control of the terrorist grouping Hamas which has been responsible for pounding Israeli towns (and Israeli civilians) with increasingly sophisticated missiles for years.

It was to protect Israeli families from Hamas suicide bombers that Israel began erecting its security fence in 2002.

In 2005 Israel (in the interests of peace) moved out of Gaza.

The thanks it got were even more rockets (often supplied by Iran) raining down on its civilian population courtesy of Hamas which charmingly declares itself dedicated to wiping the Israeli people off the face of the earth.

Israel, understandably, has insisted on monitoring what materials go into Gaza and, thus, what (potentially lethal) materials Hamas could have access to.

All of us in the West live in countries which maintain a similar right to ensure the safety of their own civilian populations. Most countries have reasons why they would not be confident to leave this role up to the international community. Israel has at least six million extra reasons.

And interestingly Israel is not the only country involved in the “blockade of Gaza”. Egypt which also has a land border with Gaza (and similar concerns about Hamas) only lifted its blockade after the Mavi Marmara killings.

But it was Israel which was entirely the target of the “freedom flotilla”. Not Egypt. Not even the long-suffering people of Gaza. This wasn’t about getting aid in. It was about getting a propaganda message out.

Tellingly Israeli commanders themselves appeared to have assumed that the “peace activists” onboard the Mavi Mamara would act peaceably.

According to news reports, we now know, however, that the first soldier to rappel on board was battered unconscious. Three Israeli soldiers were disarmed and taken hostage. When found, reports say, one commando was chained up with a gun held to his head. Pictures of the soldiers show them bloodied and beaten. One was shot.

Exactly what happened may not become clear until a full inquiry is held. But there are obviously two sides to this story.

Not that we’ve been getting much of a whiff of that in the Western media. The language, never mind the actions, of the “activists” goes unchallenged.

Gaza is “the biggest open air prison in the world”. (Um, where does that leave North Korea?)

And Israel is entirely responsible for the living conditions endured by the people in Gaza. This despite a recent Amnesty International report on the Hamas repression of the people which cited a campaign of “abductions, deliberate and unlawful killings, torture and death threats.”

The “peace activists” must have missed that one?

 

HAMAS IS TO BLAME FOR GAZA TRAGEDY

Hamas is to blame for Gaza tragedy
By Eamon Delaney
The Sunday Independent (Ireland)
June 6, 2010

www.independent.ie/opinion/analysis/hamas-is-to-blame-for-gaza-tragedy-2209686.html

THE storming last week of the aid convoy to Gaza by Israeli commandos was not only a tragedy for the victims, it was a disaster for Israel and for its many friends in the West, although in the past few years it has been difficult to defend Israel. The storming of these boats, in international waters, shows a flagrant disregard for human safety, but also for international concerns, as does Israel’s misuse of Irish passports for hit jobs in Dubai, and its ongoing building projects on Palestinian land around east Jerusalem, totally undermining any meaningful peace process.

This attack confirms that Israel is locked into a ‘security only’ policy and will blindly strike out at those whom it perceives are against it. In doing so, the Israeli government is condemning another generation of Israelis to live under siege, and to be the citizens of a state that is for many an international pariah. As someone who has taken a supportive attitude to Israel over the years, especially when it comes to the hypocrisy of those who would criticise Israel for responding to attacks on its people and territory, this is not a comfortable thing to write.

But for some time now, making the case for Israel has been hard. In 2006, there was the bloody invasion of Gaza, but at least this was part of an actual conflict and an incursion deliberately provoked by the deadly Hamas, an organisation which has been nothing short of disastrous for the Palestinian people.

Of more lasting damage has been the apparent lack of any serious intent on the part of Israel in entering into the search for peace in the West Bank and in the creation of a Palestinian state. Here, its partners are not Hamas but the moderate Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah. However, Israeli premier Benjamin Netanyahu has refused to stop the building of illegal settlements, especially around Jerusalem. This made a mockery of any meaningful negotiations. It also made a mockery of US president Barack Obama’s promises on the matter. No wonder his peace envoy George Mitchell is in such despair. Having worked his magic in Northern Ireland, Mitchell knows that for any such settlement to work, there has to be a basic foundation of trust and compromise. Amazingly, however, there is now actually some hope of a settlement there with, according to Fatah, the broad parameters in place and new talks about to begin between the two sides. So there may yet be a rare positive side-effect from the flotilla fiasco.

However, for Gaza itself, which is run by Hamas, Fatah’s bitter rivals, the situation looks utterly bleak. Context is everything, after all, and it is worth noting how we have come to this pass. For years, Gaza was administered by Israel but in 2003, finding it too difficult to handle, it uprooted the few Jewish settlements there and withdrew. However, instead of it becoming a pliable Palestinian territory, Gaza fell into the hands of the Hamas organisation who immediately declared their total non-recognition of Israel and used the territory as a base from which to launch attacks. In response, Israel put Gaza under a blockade, which has had severe consequences for the population. Not that Hamas seems to care. This is an organisation which picked a war with Israel that it knew it had no hope of winning. Instead, it launched hundreds of rockets from deep inside residential areas, knowing the Israeli reaction, and over-reaction, would result in civilian deaths. This is how Hamas fights its wars.

And yet none of this deters Hamas. In a Guardian interview, published on the very day of the flotilla-storming, Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal almost jauntily looked forward to the next round of “fighting with Israel”. “It won’t be a picnic,” he said and reiterated his organisation’s complete unwillingness to recognise the original Israeli state, despite pleading from Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

Meanwhile, Hamas continues to be funded by the Syrians and Iranians, anxious to stoke bloodshed, but suitably far away enough not to suffer the consequences. With proxies like Hamas and Hezbollah in Lebanon, Iran’s president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad needn’t feel too disappointed that he hasn’t yet got nuclear weapons so that he can fulfil his repeatedly stated ambition of “wiping Israel off the map”. (And still Western critics say Israel should get over its hang-up with the ‘holocaust’!)

The reality is that Hamas should be blamed for bringing ruin and destruction to the people of Gaza. Inside the coastal territory, Hamas now enforces an authoritarian regime, and has imposed a repressive Islamic culture, which has, thankfully, whittled away its popular vote of 2006. Not that the residents will have a chance to express this, given that Hamas has cancelled elections and forcibly and bloodily evicted its rivals in the Fatah movement.

These are awkward questions for the flotilla volunteers. Granted they were on a humanitarian mission, but it was also a political gesture of solidarity with the besieged territory. And yet despite the blockade, Hamas has managed to get plenty of arms into Gaza, mainly through desert tunnels, and has been able to launch hundreds of rocket attacks into Israel.

Meanwhile, the US and most European states also regard Hamas as a terrorist organisation and treat it as such. Of course, many observers now feel that Israel should simply recognise Hamas as the administrator of Gaza and deal with it accordingly, however unpalatable this might be. After all, the Israelis said they would never deal with Yasser Arafat and the PLO but they ended up doing a peace deal with them. In that case, the PLO eventually recognised Israel and the argument is that Hamas would grudgingly do the same if given a durable peace settlement and the lifting of the blockade. This would be quite similar to Northern Ireland where Sinn Fein still holds out its aim of a united Ireland while recognising the ‘de facto’ rule or ongoing administration of Northern Ireland by the British.

If there is no such agreement, it is hard to see where this will end up. Israel cannot destroy Hamas and the more it attacks it and enforces the blockade of Gaza, the more it will reinforce Hamas. Hamas, however, cannot destroy Israel or wish it away. Any hope of that evaporated long ago, with the continued defeat of the neighbouring, and much larger, Arab countries when they went to war against Israel over the decades. Egypt and Jordan now have peace agreements with Israel, and Syria is close to one. (Although rogue state Iran is trying to develop the bomb.)

But in the meantime, the question for Israel is how does it deal with a hostile neighbour who doesn’t even recognise its right to exist. Now there’s one for the ever-patient George Mitchell to ponder.