Introduction
Palestinians: harsh realities
[to right]
Labour Friends of Palestine and other friends
Democracies and warfare: harsh realities [to right]
Palestinian civic society: an illustrated indictment
On the streets
of Gaza: animal abuse
Homosexuality in Gaza
Suicide bombing and 'Nazi, genocidal Israelis'
Holocaust denial and a 'war crime'
Palestinian media
Financial support for terrorists
The Goldstone Report and 'Apartheid' Israel
Gaza: starvation and obesity
"Gaza Civic Society Leaders:' 'An Important Statement'
Misunderstanding moderate Muslim society
Banning extremist speakers
The Hamas Charter: timidity and intimidation
Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin D Roosevelt and the IDF
Human Rights Watch
Blockades of Gaza, Cuba, boycotts of Israel, US
Efraim Karsh: 'What occupation?'
Jeff McMahan: a philosopher goes to war
Bombardment: killing and the prevention of killing
Sentimentality and distortion
Freedom and partial freedom
Practical information
The Palestine Solidarity Campaign and its Index
PROFILES: some pro-Palestinian-anti-Israel people
Academics
MU - Manchester
University
BU - Birmingham University
KU - Kingston
LSE - London School of Economics
OU - Oxford RH - Royal Holloway, London
SHU - Sheffield Hallam SU - Sheffield University
Sue Blackwell (BU) and Gilad Atzmon
Prof. Jonathan Rosenhead (LSE): the Ship of Fools
Dr A.Takriti (SU): historian, censor, slogan shouter
Dr John C Smith (KU) on
racism and imperialism
Dr Dick Pitt (SHU), blogger and debater
Others
Assorted grotesques
Deborah Fink
Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi
Tony Greenstein
Greta Berlin on Charlie Hebdo
A confused dreamer
The Quaker Gordon Ferguson: not totally harmless
Antony Loewenstein and accuracy
Vittorio Arrigoni and Kayla Mueller, hostages
See also the page
Ethics: theory and practice
and the page
Cambridge University: excellence,
mediocrity, stupidity
All
the people criticized in the section 'Cambridge protest' have anti-Israel pro-Palestinian views and support
boycotts of Israel. See in particular the section
Dr Priyamvada Gopal's Rules of
Etiquette. Dr Gopal is an academic at Cambridge University. She
obviously thinks of Iran as a country which is far superior to Israel. I state the case against her
view.
See also, since there are significant linkages between Irish nationalist ideology and Palestinian ideology
Irish nationalist ideology
and my very critical page on some non-religious ideologies as well as
Christianity, and in particular the Church of England.
Religion and ideology
Supplementary
material below is in italics
Introduction
The world is and always has been been harsh and dangerous.
There are many anti-Israel campaigners who promote the view
that the contemporary world is harsh and dangerous for one reason above all
others - Israeli policies and
actions. This is a view
which shamelessly distorts and falsifies. Unfortunately for the Israeli cause and the
defenders of Israel, unfortunately for truth, unfortunately for clear
thinking, unfortunately for moral values, Palestinian society has one
undeniable advantage: an instinct for self-publicity, an instinct for
exploiting the feelings of many non-Palestinians who would like to
identify with an exotic society about which they know not nearly enough.
Alan Dershowitz has
written well on the allure of violence and the rewards of violence. This is
from an article of his published in the 'Jerusalem Post'
' ... terrorism has proved to be a successful tactic.
It works. That’s why ISIS engages in it. That’ why Al Qaeda engages in
it. That’s why Boko Haram engages in it. That’s why the Taliban engages in
it. And that’s why Hamas engages in it.
'Compare the visibility and success of groups that employ terrorism as the
main tactic for responding to their grievances, with comparably aggrieved
groups that reject terrorism. [He gives the Tibetans as one example] Hamas
is more popular than ever among Palestinians following their kidnapping and
murder of three Israeli schoolchildren, their brutal slaughter of the Fogel
family, and their deployment of rockets and tunnels against civilians from
civilian areas. The same is true of Hezbollah.
'Now comes ISIS which is quickly becoming the terrorist group of choice for
disaffected radicals, because their brutality is now in the headlines.'
Palestinians aren't to be
equated with Nazis (the fact that so many Palestinians equate Israelis with
Nazis is grossly stupid, based on ignorance of history or the deliberate
ignoring of historical fact and is one reason why Palestinian society is
grossly deficient) and so some words of the German general von Runstedt are
quoted simply for their obvious good sense, for once. After D-day, when
German forces faced superior forces in Normandy, von Rundstedt advised,
'Make peace you fools!' the loose translation of 'Schluss mit dem Krieg,
Idioten!' Good but abrupt and abrasive advice to the Palestinians would have
been 'Make peace you fools!' at an early stage in the recent fighting (and
earlier fighting) when damage to Gaza was much lighter and the loss of
life and the material damage were much less. But harsh realities have no
meaning for all too many Palestinians - and their supporters.
Radical Islamism has been devastating in its damage, including the loss of
human freedoms as well as the loss of so many lives. Nazism and communism
were assaults on freedom too, but have been responsible for far greater loss of
life.
The highest death tolls occurred in Stalinist Russia, Mao Zedong's China and
in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge. Estimates of the total
deaths inflicted by communist regimes range from 85 to 100 million.
Gunnar Heinsohn, the director of the Raphael-Lemkin-Institut für Xenophobie-
und Genozidforschung at the University of Bremen has compiled statistics to
rank conflicts since 1948 by the number of deaths incurred.
These are the first 14 entries in the list, showing the leading causes of
death in conflict.
1. 40,000,000 China, 1949-76
2. 10,000,000 Soviet Bloc: late Stalinism, 1950-53; post-Stalinism, to 1987
3. 4,000,000 Ethiopia, 1962-92
4. 3,800,000 Zaire (Congo-Kinshasa): 1967-68; 1977-78; 1992-95; 1998-present
5. 2,800,000 Korean war, 1950-53
6. 1,900,000 Sudan, 1955-72; 1983-2006
7. 1,870,000 Cambodia: Khmer Rouge 1975-79; civil war 1978-91
8. 1,800,000 Vietnam War, 1954-75
9. 1,800,000 Afghanistan: Soviet and internecine killings, Taliban 1980-2001
10. 1,250,000 West Pakistan massacres in East Pakistan (Bangladesh 1971)
11. 1,100,000 Nigeria, 1966-79 (Biafra); 1993-present
12. 1,100,000 Mozambique, 1964-70 (30,000)
13.1,000,000 Iran-Iraq-War, 1980-88
14. 900,000 Rwanda genocide, 1994
If the list is extended back to the twentieth century, then the 'context'
becomes even clearer but even more difficult to bear.
Estimates for the death toll during the Stalinist era vary very much, but
20 million is a not too-conservative estimate.
Estimates for the death toll
during the Second World War are about 50 million.
At some periods in history, some Christians have been active persecutors, active
torturers, active killers and active
in suppressing human freedoms, although not remotely on this scale. But whereas Nazi, communist and the lesser Christian excesses are largely in
the past, the excesses of radical Islamism are current and pose an immediate
threat.
If
one state (or would-be state) is in conflict with another, the decision as
to which to support is very easy if one of them is immensely
preferable to the other, unless support brings very great risks and very great disadvantages. The
decision is unaffected by the fact that a vastly more civilized state which
goes to war may often wage war ruthlessly, often using some of the methods of the vastly less civilized state.
States which wage war using barbaric methods at all times can't be regarded
as more civilized states, of course. Barbaric methods aren't necessarily
methods which lead to many, many civilian casualties. The accepted
humanitarian legislation for the conduct of war accepts many civilian
casualties, mass civilian casualties, in some circumstances, just as it
permits the use of such horrific weapons as flame-throwers. I don't give here the
reasons why Great Britain whilst the Nazis held power in Germany was a vastly more civilized state than Nazi
Germany, but Nazi Germany's practice of genocide is obviously one of the
reasons, and Nazi Germany's aggression against Czechoslovakia, Poland, the
Netherlands, Belgium and other states.
Present day requirements for a civilized state include the rule of law, a
free press, absence of torture (not counting very occasional abuses), few or
no executions. Not too many states in the distant past would have qualified as
civilized: judicial torture was used in German states during the time of
Bach, as was generally the case in Europe at the time. England at the time of the
'bloody code' executed very, very often.
When a state goes to war for
such contrasting ends as to protect civilized values and for national
survival, then the state of war is liable to lead to understandable changes,
such as a press which is less free, and very drastic changes, such as the
British policy of area bombing during the Second World War - the deliberate
targeting of civilians and their housing. The bombing of Dresden is the
best known example, although the policy was followed much more generally.
The bombing of Dresden and other German towns and cities was not a 'war
crime' which showed that Britain was 'no better' than Nazi Germany. At all
times, policies and actions have to be considered not in abstraction but as
embodied. The accusation of a war crime may abstract the act from the
reasons for the act, the times in which the act was carried out. Subtraction
is allowable, but not cancellation. The policy of area bombing didn't
'cancel out' the British moral superiority, including that of the bomber
crews, heroic men whose qualities have been recognized but who deserve wider
recognition still.
Faced by obvious blunders and defects, my first
recourse is to ask, is there any compensating evidence, are there any
their any obvious successes and virtues? The BBC's coverage of Gaza
has been biased, superficial and shameful, but the BBC's strengths aren't always
missing. On
one evening, there was a ridiculously bad report on a Palestinian
solidarity march for Gaza, against Israel (this was the news programme 'Look
North,' for Yorkshire, so viewers in other parts of the country were spared
this particular simplistic propaganda piece, even if not simplistic
propaganda pieces on their own regional news programmes, and the national
news programmes). It made the false claim that anyone with any compassion
would be bound to endorse the objectives of the march. In fact, the march
had a false agenda, based on flagrant distortion.
Later that evening, there was a programme on the British bombing
campaign and the Lancaster bomber which took account of drastic choices and
hideous moral dilemmas. The
BBC has strengths in military history, which demands strengths in
compassionate realism, and not just the history of the bombing campaign.
Recommended, another film about the bombing campaign,
Bomber Boys
by Colin and Ewan McGregor.
See also some further comments of
mine on
the British bombing campaign during World War 2.
I make every attempt to
be fair-minded. My critical page on feminism
includes a section, 'Friendly fire and hostile fire' where I criticize some
anti-feminist sites. There can be no guarantee whatsoever that supporters of
Israel can never be mistaken. This was the case when some supporters of
Israel were successful in calling for the cancellation of a conference at
Southampton University. Professor Geoffrey Alderman of Buckingham University
writes well about this blunder, as about the far worse blunders and deficiencies of
anti-Israel activists, in an article published in 'The
Jewish Chronicle' (April 8, 2015)
http://www.thejc.com/comment-and-debate/columnists/133640/an-own-goal-southampton
'As a
research-orientated academic I receive many invitations to present
conference papers. Last October one was forwarded to me from the University
of Southampton, inviting expressions of interest in making presentations to
a conference to be held in mid-April 2015 entitled "International Law and
the State of Israel: Legitimacy, Responsibility and Exceptionalism." As it
happened, I already had some material prepared (originally for inclusion in
a submission I had already made to the UN Human Rights Council) that seemed
to me ideally suited. So I contacted the conference organisers and was
pleased that my proposal - to address the conference on the subject of
"Jews, Judaism and the Jewish State: Ethnic Rights and International Wrongs"
- was accepted.
'What I proposed to argue was that under
international law and in principle ethnic Jews have the right of settlement
throughout the area of Mandate Palestine west of the Jordan River (including
what is known as the West Bank), that this right extends to Jews whether or
not they are citizens of the state of Israel, but not to Israeli citizens
who are not ethnically Jewish, and that the state of Israel has a legal
obligation to take any step and all steps necessary to uphold this right.
Now it appears that I may not have the opportunity to make this presentation
because, following feverish lobbying by a miscellany of Jewish interests,
and some threats of physical disruption, the university authorities at
Southampton have unilaterally ordered the conference to be cancelled.'
Links to all Geoffrey Alderman's articles in the 'Jewish Chronicle,' which
comment on Israeli affairs and give a cogent defence of Israel:
http://www.thejc.com/user/posts/5
His Website:
http://www.geoffreyalderman.com/
Palestinian
society: an illustrated indictment
On the streets of Gaza: animal abuse
This video, on mistreatment of animals in Gaza, comes with a warning from
'Animals Australia:.' it's very, very distressing:
https://www.animalsaustralia.org/features/gaza-video-evidence.php
Australian RSPCA makes this comment:
Footage uploaded onto YouTube during the Festival of Sacrifice in October
2013 revealed the horrific treatment of Australian cattle in the Gaza Strip
in Palestine. It is some of the most shocking and distressing footage we
have seen.
The footage documents Australian cattle:
-
Tethered to poles, trees, and trucks on the streets
-
Being beaten and dragged by ropes off trucks without unloading ramps
-
Being dragged, man-handled and chased along streets by crowds of
youths in a frenzy akin to bull running
-
Being stabbed in the eyes
-
Being kicked, pushed, pulled and tripped over with ropes to be
forced onto the ground and under control for slaughter
-
Having their necks hacked, sawn and stabbed at with blunt knives
-
Being strangled by neck ropes while bleeding out
The middle east is reliant on authoritarian rule and Israel is the
exception. The middle east tends to be oblivious to issues of
animal welfare. The only exceptions are isolated individuals in those
countries - and the state of Israel. Israel hasn't taken the attitude that,
faced by enormous threats, it can neglect every other consideration but
survival and protection. It recognizes that civilization requires care for
animals. Israel was one of the first countries in the world to ban the use
of wild animals in circuses, in 1995. (Britain still has no national ban,
although many local authorities do have bans.)
Israel used to be the fourth largest producer of foie gras in the
world. Unlike, of course, France, it banned the
production of foie gras, recognizing that the ethical objections were
unanswerable.
There are many other developments: animal rights/animal welfare
activity in Israel has developed enormously. Israel has even banned
dissection of animals in primary and secondary schools. At Universities,
dissection is optional. Vegans in the Israeli Defence Force are given
vouchers to buy vegan food and aren't required to wear leather boots.
Boots made with synthetic materials are provided. Israel has never had a
whaling industry but it joined the International Whaling Commission so as to
vote against any resumption of whaling. Opposition to the fur trade is
intense in Israel. Legislation is being considered which would be the most
far-reaching in the world, to prohibit the import, production and sale of
all fur products. A survey of Israeli opinion carried out by the polling
company Maagar-Mohot gave these results. In answer to the question, 'Do you
find it moral to kill animals if they are killed only for their fur?' 86% of
Israelis were opposed. On the question, 'Would you support a bill to ban the
trade of fur in Israel?' 79% were in favour of a ban.
Homosexuality in Gaza
(I'm not myself gay. I decided to use 'homosexual' rather than 'gay'
in this section, despite misgivings. The documents I quote from the Pew
Research Center and the United Nations use 'homosexual.')
Richard Elliott, writing in
'The Commentator:'
' ... the Palestinian authority in the Gaza strip still legislates that
homosexuality is illegal and faces severe penalties of up to10 years in
prison. The West Bank is a slightly different matter; homosexuality was made
legal as far back as 1951, and there has been no repealing of this law.
'The difference between the West Bank and the Gaza strip, however, is that
the legalisation of homosexuality in the former was installed by the
Jordanians, not the Palestinians.
'The legal punishments in place for homosexuals in Gaza may strike many
readers as terrible; but the social injustices often outweigh the legal
ones. In Russia, while the injustices enforced by law are technicalities
compared to the far more serious civil intolerance and often physical
cruelty which gay men face, so it follows that the social outweighs the
legal in Palestine.
'Several years in prison, as is the legal recommendation for
homosexuality in Gaza, is nothing compared to what could happen if a gay man
were to fall foul of a gang of radical Islamists ...
'There is nothing new about gay Palestinians fleeing to Israel because of
the hostility they face from their fellow countrymen. Reports dating back to
at least 2003 from the BBC suggest that many
gay Palestinians who undertake the risk of fleeing to Israel feel far safer
and socially accepted there than in their native Palestine.
'Palestinian homosexuals in Israel proper are grateful for the legal
protection they receive from the kind of intolerant violence many men
sharing their orientation are used to in Palestine; a report documented in a
piece for Vice
magazine suggests that there are at least 2,000 homosexual men
originating from the Palestinian territories living in pluralist Tel-Aviv.
Evidence that integration of Palestinian homosexuals works is that the gay
bars in Tel-Aviv are filled with both Arabs and Jews.
'There is at present a large community of Arabs working to institute LGBT
rights in Palestine, working under the name Al-Qaws.
No doubt this is a noble endeavour, but one cannot help but notice the irony
when the article states both that Al-Qaws is based in Jerusalem, and that
the next edition of their monthly ‘Palestinian Queer Party’ is given the
location of “TBD, Israel”.
'None of what I have mentioned is in any way an attempt to justify
Russia’s recent reversion of tolerant standards; but the comparison with
Palestine, the championed moral cause of so many, is worth noting.'
Anyone who has a strong interest in gay issues should devote time to the
Iranian regime and its ruthless attitude. Iran, not Israel, not in the least
Israel, is an enemy of gay rights. Boycotting Israel whilst excusing Iran is
not just ridiculous but monstrous, for anyone who detests persecution of gay
people, and in general, I'd claim. This is from the 'Guardian' (3 September,
2011):
'Three Iranian men have been executed after being found guilty of charges
related to homosexuality, according to a semi-official news agency.
The men, only identified by their initials, were hanged on Sunday in the
south-western city of Ahvaz, the capital of
Iran's Khuzestan province.
"The three convicts were sentenced to death based on the articles 108 and
110 of Iran's Islamic penal code, for acts against the sharia law and bad
deeds," the Isna agency quoted a judiciary official in Khuzestan as saying.
Iran Human Rights, an independent NGO based in Norway, said the men were
charged with "lavat" – sexual intercourse between two men.'
The page
Persecution of Homosexuals (Palestinian Authority area) contains
strong claims, with supporting evidence:
Quotes:
'What seems less well known, however, is the appalling treatment of gays
under Yassir Arafat's Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Gaza.
[Since that time, the situation seems not to have improved out of all
recognition.] At least it was less known until Yossi Klein Halevi wrote
about it in the August 19th New Republic. Palestine makes rural Texas look
like San Francisco.
'According to Halevi, one young man discovered to be gay was forced by
Palestinian Authority police "to stand in sewage water up to his neck, his
head covered by a sack filled with feces, and then he was thrown into a dark
cell infested with insects." During one interrogation Palestinian police
stripped him and forced him to sit on a Coke bottle.
'When he was released he fled to Israel. If he were forced to return to
Gaza, he said, "The police would kill me."
'An American who foolishly moved into the West Bank to live with his
Palestinian lover said they told everyone they were just friends, but one
day they "found a letter under our door from the Islamic court. It listed
the five forms of death prescribed by Islam for homosexuality, including
stoning and burning. We fled to Israel that same day," he said.
'The head of a Tel Aviv gay organization told Halevi, "The persecution of
gays in the Palestinian Authority doesn't just come from the families or the
Islamic groups, but from the P.A. itself."
'Palestinian police have increasingly enforced Islamic religious law, he
said: "It's now impossible to be an open gay in the P.A." He recalled that
one gay man in the Palestinian police went to Israel for a short time. When
he returned to the West Bank, Palestinian Authority police confined him to a
pit without food or water until he died.
'A 17-year-old gay youth recalled that he spent months in a Palestinian
Authority prison "where interrogators cut him with glass and poured toilet
cleaner into his wounds."
'The U.S. State Department, which more and more seems to be living on some
other planet, blandly noted in a 2001 human rights report, "In the
Palestinian territories homosexuals generally are socially marginalized and
occasionally receive physical threats." That's one way to put it.
'In
the last few years, Halevi reports, hundreds of gay Palestinians, mostly
from the West Bank, have fled to Israel, usually to Tel Aviv, Israel's most
cosmopolitan city. Many are desperately poor, he says, "but at least they're
beyond the reach of their families and the P.A.
. . .
' ... Many Palestinian gays say they would still rather live under house
arrest in Israel, where homosexuality is not considered a crime, than at
home.
...
'A 21-year-old university student with
serious professional ambitions, Nawal wouldn't dream of performing in his
hometown, where homosexuality, as in the rest of the Palestinian
territories, is strictly taboo, sometimes violently so. Last year, a group
of gay Palestinians visiting East Jerusalem from the United States were
threatened and one of them badly beaten after they announced plans to join
an Israeli gay pride rally ...'
United Nations statements shouldn't be considered sacrosanct, beyond
criticism. Far too often they are biased, misguided or partial. But this
declaration, from the UN News Centre, is far from misguided, I'm sure.
http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=37026#.VHWVf3lyawU
'Universal decriminalization of
homosexuality a human rights imperative – Ban
'10 December 2010 – Noting that over 70 countries still consider
homosexuality a crime, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today
appealed for its complete and universal decriminalization ...
'In an event on sexual orientation at UN Headquarters in New York,
held in conjunction with Human Rights Day, Mr. Ban deplored
discrimination against homosexuals and the violence of which they are
often victims, for which the perpetrators escape punishment.
' "Together, we seek the repeal of laws that criminalize
homosexuality, that permit discrimination on the basis of sexual
orientation or gender identity, that encourage violence,” he said. “When
individuals are attacked, abused or imprisoned because of their sexual
orientation, we must speak out. We cannot stand by. We cannot be silent.
“This is all the more true in cases of violence. These are not merely
assaults on individuals. They are attacks on all of us. They devastate
families. They pit one group against another, dividing larger society.
And when the perpetrators of violence escape without penalty, they make
a mockery of the universal values we hold dear.” '
Repeal of anti-homosexual laws in Gaza - when is it going to happen? Soon or
never?
Suicide bombing and 'Nazi, genocidal Israelis'
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aq9EkBZ6LmA
A film about Wafa al-Bass, who was treated at an Israeli hospital for severe burns
caused by the explosion of a gas cylinder whilst she was cooking. (The sub-titles are in French but the commentary is in
English.)
The hospital received a thank you letter ('une lettre de remerciements' in
the sub-title below) from her family. The care she received at the hospital,
it said, was 'wonderful and warm.'
The treatment was as different from Nazi, genocidal treatment as can be
imagined. Is this the action of a 'genocidal' state? Or are Palestinians cynically
misusing words?
Before going back to the hospital for further treatment, she put on a
suicide bomber's vest. She stated that she intended to blow herself up,
together with Israelis, at the outpatient clinic of the hospital (the
Soroka Medical Center in Beersheva.) She later said she had
been angry about allegations that guards had ripped out pages from
the Qur'an at an Israeli prison, claims denied by Israel. She said, 'What
angered me and the Palestinian people is the abuse of the Qur'an. Should we
sit in silence with our hands tied?'
She was stopped as she crossed into Israel at the Erez Crossing and tried to explode the bomb. The detonator failed. She was
imprisoned for some years and then released. The mildness of the punishment
is in stark contrast with the portrayal of the Israelis in Palestine
Solidarity circles. (The Nazis would have executed her and hundreds of
others who had nothing to do with the incident.) Before being imprisoned,
she showed remorse but after being relased, she told the schoolchildren
gathered at her home in Northern Gaza to welcome her back, 'I hope you will
walk the same path we took and if Allah so wills, we will see some of you
as martyrs.'
From www.beyondimages.info
'In September 2004 Suhad
Aslan, was sent by the Fatah Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade in the Gaza Strip to
carry out a suicide bombing in Israel, after she required medical treatment
in the Al-Muqaddas hospital in Jerusalem. The plan had been for her to
rendezvous with the bomb planners at the hospital who would instruct her
where to go to carry out the attack. Israeli security personnel
arrested her before the attack could be carried out.'
From
the algemeiner
'A report published ... by Israel’s Coordinator of Government Activities
in the Territories Unit (COGAT) shows that 219,464 Palestinian patients
received medical treatment in Israeli hospitals during 2012 – 21,270 of them
children. These numbers include companions accompanying the patients to
Israel.
'The numbers show a dramatic increase in Palestinians receiving treatment
from Israeli medical professionals. 197,713 Palestinians received medical
treatment in Israel in 2011, and 144,838 in 2008.'
A report not specifically concerned with suicide bombing (despite the title
of the film), from the Israeli media, not the Palestinian media.
The woman from Gaza in this video
has a child being treated in an
Israeli hospital for a heart condition. She hopes that on recovery, he will
become a 'Shahid,' the word translated in reports in English as 'martyr.'
The word 'shahid' is used for Moslems who die during Jihad, in the military
expansion of Islam, and often, for Moslems who die as suicide bombers.
Another 'shahid:'
From Fatah’s Facebook page,
'Abd Al-Rahman Al-Shaloudi, who died as a Martyr (Shahid) on the
noble soil of Jerusalem. Rest in peace, we are loyal to you.”
“And never think of those who have been killed in the
cause of Allah as dead. Rather, they are alive with their Lord,
receiving provision." (Quran, Sura 3:169, translation Sahih
International)
The Palestinian National Liberation Movement (Fatah) - Silwan
branch accompanies to his wedding the heroic Martyr Abd Al-Rahman
Al-Shaloudi,
who carried out the Jerusalem operation, in which settlers in
the occupied city of Jerusalem were run over.'
The driver
killed a three year old girl with his car, and injured eight
people.
From a report in the Jerusalem Post.
'Sources say the daughter of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh was
treated in Tel Aviv.was admitted to an Israeli hospital for emergency
medical treatment this month after she suffered complications from a
routine procedure, two sources familiar with the case said.
...
'Haniyeh, who has 13 children, is the leader of the
Islamist group in Gaza and one of its most senior figures overall,
serving as a deputy to Khaled Meshaal, who lives in exile.
...
'Butt he said that in most cases a request by a
Palestinian doctor to allow a patient across the border for urgent
treatment was sufficient - indicating Haniyeh may not have been
personally involved in his daughter's application.
...
'Israeli media has reported that one of Haniyeh's
granddaughter's was treated in an Israeli hospital last November, while
his mother-in-law sought treatment in a Jerusalem hospital in June.'
The IRA conducted their dogged, doomed, futile struggle using as their main
weapons bombs and bullets. In their planting of bombs, they were
extraordinarily fastidious compared with Hamas in its prime, far more
ethical, even though the reality was shocking. The paramilitaries of the
IRA sometimes blew themselves up by accident as a result of mistakes or
incompetence, but they never blew themselves up deliberately, killing as
many civilians as possible at the same time. Hamas and other Palestinian
groups did, of course. The suicide bombings were carried
out from 1989 until 2008 and killed a total of 804 people.
More on the Troubles in Northern Ireland
and my own experiences.
Holocaust denial and a 'war crime'
Above, scene at Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Below, crematorium
at Dachau concentration camp
Colonel William W Quinn of the US 7th Army said of the concentration
camp at Dachau: 'There our troops found sights, sounds, and stenches
horrible beyond belief, cruelties so enormous as to be incomprehensible to
the normal mind.'
Trooper Fred Smith, who took part in the liberation
of Bergen-Belsen, wrote, '"Because the German civilians in nearby towns were
still in denial, we took them to the camp to see what had happened.'
In its attitude to the Holocaust, Hamas is in denial
and too many Palestinians are in denial. Dachau was liberated by soldiers
from the American Seventh Army and Bergen-Belsen was liberated by British
and Canadian troops. The number of witnesses is very large. Do these
Palestinians doubt their testimony? Who is doing the lying? Not these
soldiers and other witnesses.
The Holocaust is inextricably linked with Nazi
atrocities to non-Jews. Do these Palestinians accept that non-Jews of many
different nationalities died at Bergen-Belsen and Dachau (they included many
Russian prisoners of war at Bergen-Belsen) but that no Jews died there? Do
they accept that 2 000 Romani people died at the extermination camp at
Treblinka but refuse to accept that at least 700 000 Jews were exterminated
there? Do they accept that SS troops hanged almost 100 French non-Jews and
that more than 100 others died at Dachau but that the executions of Jews
throughout occupied Europe, enormous in number, are fictitious?
Palestinian holocaust denial is part of a much larger issue: Palestinian
denial (or denial by many, many Palestinians) of any evidence which is in
conflict with Palestinian ideology. Many, many Palestinians refuse to accept
overwhelming. evidence. Palestinian denial (or the denial of many, many
Palestinians ... ) that the Holocaust ever took place contradicts the
Palestinian belief that the Holocaust did take place but that
the Jews planned it.
Wikipedia has a good page on
the dispute between Hamas and the United Nations Reflief and Works Agency
(UNRWA) which planned to include coverage of the Holocaust in schools it
ran in the Palestinian territories. An extract from the page:
'Protesting what it said were plans to teach
eighth-graders in U.N. schools about the Holocaust, the Hamas-affiliated
Popular Committee of Palestinain refugees sent an open letter to the chief
of UNRWA offices calling the Holocaust "a lie made up by the Zionists" and
demanding it "immediately" erase the part that speaks about the Holocaust
from the Palestinian pupils' curriculum.
...
'The head of Hamas' education committee in Gaza,
Abdul Rahman el-Jamal, said that the Holocaust was a "big lie".
...
'Hamas spiritual leader Yunis al-Astal said
teaching children about the Nazi genocide of Jews would be "marketing a
lie", and characterized the possible introduction of the subject into Gaza
schools as a "war crime".
...
'Jamila al-Shanti, a Hamas legislative official,
said: "Talk about the Holocaust and the execution of the Jews contradicts
and is against our culture, our principles, our traditions, values, heritage
and religion" '.
Palestinian Media Watch gives disturbing insights
into the vicious and warped
Holocaust denial and distortion indulged in by so many Palestinians.
Extracts from a very candid interview with John
Ging, head of UNRWA's operations in Gaza, from
Adi Schwartz's site.
Are people in Gaza aware to the fact that
they are responsible for their situation?
'We teach the children of Gaza the consequences
of suicide bombing and of throwing rockets in Israel. They cannot turn
around and be self indulgent of irresponsible behavior. We also teach them
that on the other side there are good human beings who want nothing more
than a peaceful solution to the conflict but their legitimate concern is
that of security because of their experience. Due to history, people in Gaza
have to prove to their neighbors that they are truly committed to peace”.
'Ging’s relationship with Hamas, the Islamic
movement that controls the Gaza Strip, are far from being good, and he was
even the victim of an unsuccessful assassination attempt in 2007. “We have a
component of the population in Gaza which is very violent, destructive and
extremist”, he says. “There is violence against Israel and also inside Gaza,
for example against UNRWA’s schools. The extremists accuse us of the
feminization of the society, which is the equal opportunity that we are
teaching and of which we are proud. The violence is directed towards anyone
who seeks to promote universal values”.
'What role is Hamas playing in the Gaza Strip?
Is it helping the human development of the population?
“The economy of Gaza has collapsed during the
period of Hamas governance creating unprecedented levels of impoverishment.
The public services are overstretched and overburdened as there is no
investment or development. The impact that Hamas has made on the economic
status of the general population is negligible, as it is the donations of
the international community that sustain the population.'
Israel has executed only one person since the foundation of the modern
state in 1948: Adolf Eichman. I oppose the death penalty for a variety of
reasons - see my page on the death penalty -
but I agree with the Israeli exception here. None of the Palestinians who
survived an attempt at suicide bombing or who killed by other terrorist
action have been executed. A truly barbaric country would not have failed to
enforce the death penalty. Truly barbaric nations have never failed to
execute an a large scale.
The Palestinian authorities
execute freely - and not only in the case of Israeli 'spies,' but for
ordinary offences. Hamas executed 6 people in 2012. In
the same year, Bangladesh, India and Pakistan, far more populous, obviously,
executed only 1 person in each country. Japan, again, far more populous,
executed 7 people.
In many countries, governments are far more liberal than majority opinion.
In abolitionist countries, governments often resist calls to reinstate the
death penalty, for example. Hamas, a terrorist organization, governs a
society where majority opinion is more barbaric than Hamas in matters
relating to the death penalty. Although 84% of Palestinians support stoning
to death for adultery, adulterers are not even executed by hanging. Although
66% of Palestinians support execution for people who leave Islam, apostates
aren't hanged either. The majority of Palestinians would probably support
the death penalty for homosexuals, as in Iran, but the maximum penalty is
ten years, by Iranian standards barely a slap on the wrist.
Palestinians who claim that Israel executes freely -
executes Palestinian citizens - are misusing language. It's essential to
preserve the essential distinction between 'murdering' and killing in
general and executing and killing in general. John Keegan wrote, in 'The
Face of Battle,' 'killing on the scaffold and killing on the battlefield
are, of course, markedly dissimilar activities.' Even in Western
Europe, the Nazis carried out many, many executions, for example at Tulle in
France, where 99 people were hanged, and during the massacre at Oradour-sur-Glane.
None of the failed Palestinian suicide bombers have been executed, no members of
Hamas or other terrorist organizations have been executed. A state which never executes its active opponents
- to regard Israel as Nazi or worse than Nazi is demented. Nazi Germany
publicly hanged at Tulle 99 Frenchmen who were innocent of any crime. This
was an exception in Western Europe, although, many, many individuals were
executed. In Eastern Europe, similar acts were commonplace.
A statement published by the Palestinian Independent Commission for Human
Rights (whose view of the conflict in Gaza is in general very different from
my own) on 22 August 2014:
'The Independent Commission for Human Rights (ICHR) is deeply concerned
by the extra-judicial and summary executions of suspected collaborators
taking place in the Gaza Strip in violation with the law. On 22nd of
August 2014, 18 suspected collaborators including two women were executed by
firing squad in different parts of the Gaza Strip.
'ICHR emphasizes on the importance of committing to the rule of law and
present suspected criminals before the law through fair trials. Once their
criminality is proved, criminals will be sentenced and punished according to
the law. While fully recognizing the dangerous role those accused of
collaborations with the Israeli occupying forces, ICHR strongly
believes that suspected collaborators have the right to a fair trial and
should be punished once proven of their collaboration in accordance with the
law.
'ICHR confirms that rule of law should be respected and implemented in
all circumstances especially in conflict situations and war time. ICHR
therefore calls upon the Palestinian Authority and all political factions in
the Gaza Strip to take immediate measures to stop these summary executions
and extra-judicial killings and their negative implications which violate
the law to allow the legal institutions to take their role in guaranteeing
justice, rule of law and respect to human rights.'
The Commission rightly opposes extra-judicial killings but supports
judicial execution. A large number of jurisdictions have abolished the death
penalty, for all offences or for offences committed in peacetime, and the
Commission would do well to consider the arguments for abolition of the
death penalty in Gaza, for all offences.
On 10 October 2014,a Joint Declaration against the Death Penalty
was released. It was signed by these Foreign Ministers of these
(countries).
Héctor Marcos Timerman (Argentina), Julie Bishop
(Australia), Nassirou Bako Arifari (Benin), Djibrill Yipènè Bassolé (Burkina
Faso), Duly Brutus (Haiti), José Antonio Meade Kuribreña (Mexico),
Luvsanvandan Bold (Mongolia), Børge Brende (Norway), Albert F. del Rosario
(Philippines), Didier Burkhalter (Switzerland), Mevlüt Çavusoglu (Turkey),
Philip Hammond (United Kingdom).
The World Coalition against the death penalty has a good page on the
Declaration,
http://www.worldcoalition.org/foreign-ministers-declaration-world-day-against-death-penalty.html
An extract:
'The international declaration released on the 12th
World Day Against the Death Penalty is an open invitation to all
governments, but also to the public at large, to engage in serious
investigations and frank discussions on the death penalty. It emphasizes the
need for proper information on the risks and shortcomings of the death
penalty, including on the irrational fears and hopes often involved in
retaining it.
The declaration aims to dispel the popular
myths that the death penalty acts as a deterrent to crime, that it brings
victims of crime relief and that a justice system can be free from error. It
is believed that once properly discussed, only one conclusion will be made:
there are no arguments in favour of the death penalty – only myths, risks
and failures (and in some places, very high costs).
The
signatories to the declaration are foreign ministers who come from all
regions of the world and represent populations with different religions, of
varying socio-economic status and culture, demonstrating that abolition is
not related to any particular region, but truly universal.'
Opponents of the death penalty are likely to have opposing opinions about
matters other than the death penalty. Many opponents of the death penalty
will not agree with my views on the Israel-Palestinian conflict, for
example. Many people who agree with me about the Israel-Palestine conflict
will support the death penalty. These are instances of what I refer to as
cross-linkage and cross-contrast.
A third example: Gaza Residents Celebrate Ceasefire (the open-ended
ceasefire agreed on 26 August, 2104.) In the first twenty seconds of this
film,
two children are shown holding powerful automatic weapons.
Palestinian media
The gross crudity and gross excesses of the Palestinian media are
documented on the Website of Palestinian Media Watch, a very comprehensive
and very impressive site: www.palwatch.org
If the Palestinian media which are documented on the site aren't the worst
in the world, then they are surely amongst the worst. Admittedly, the
world's worst or almost the worst is a category with a vast range of
examples.
Youtube gives samples of children's programs and programmes featuring
children which have been broadcast on Palestinian TV. This is one of them:
horrific (and repetitive) questioning of the children of a female suicide
bomber, who killed five Jews.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ay3ztL9wFq8
and this is another: an encouragement to 'beat up Jews and kill the Jews.'
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=57Q8K5TmivM
'Songs of praise.' Not in this instance the BBC's programme of hymns
from parish churches but children singing in praise of suicide bombing on
Hamas TV:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3OYjKZ2Cu8
From a Hamas TV programme for adults: the psychotic claim that
the Jews planned the Holocaust.
Friday sermon on Hamas TV:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PPvc-eTym-Q
The call to 'come and kill' the Jew is frequently quoted in Gaza. This is
what happened after Palestinians carried out an attack on a pizzeria in
Jerusalem in 2001. It killed 15 Jews, including children, and injured 130
others. From the Associated Press report:
“Palestinian university students opened an exhibition that included
a grisly re-enactment” of that mass murder. The students built a replica
of the Sbarro pizzeria, with fake blood, splattered pizza, a plastic hand
dangling from the ceiling, and a fake severed leg wearing jeans and a bloody
black sneaker.
“The exhibit also includes a large rock in front of a mannequin wearing
the black hat, black jacket and black trousers typically worn by ultra-Orthodox
Jews. A recording from inside the rock calls out: ‘O believer, there
is a Jewish man behind me. Come and kill him,’” The exhibition
became a popular attraction in Palestine. Children were taken to see it.
Financial support for Palestinian
terrorists
The subject is discussed in many places. The article 'How British and
American aid subsidises Palestinian terrorism' by Edward Black, published in
'The Guardian' is one:
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/nov/11/british-american-aid-subsidises-palestinian-terrorism
An extract:
'On both sides of the pond, in London and Washington,
policymakers are struggling to weather their budget crises. Therefore, it
may astound American and British taxpayers that the precious dollars and
pounds they deploy in Israel and
the Occupied Territories fungibly funds terrorism.
'The instrument of this funding is US and UK
programs of aid paid to the Palestinian Authority. This
astonishing financial dynamic is known to most Israeli leaders and western
journalists in Israel. But it is still a shock to most in Congress and many
in Britain's Parliament, who are unaware that money going to the Palestinian
Authority is regularly diverted to a program that systematically rewards
convicted prisoners with generous
salaries. These transactions in fact violate American and British laws
that prohibit US funding from benefiting terrorists. More than that, they
could be seen as incentivizing murder and terror against innocent civilians.
'Here's how the system works. When a Palestinian is convicted of an act of
terror against the Israeli government or innocent civilians, such as a
bombing or a murder, that convicted terrorist automatically receives a
generous salary from the Palestinian Authority.
...
'About 6% of the Palestinian budget is diverted to prisoner salaries.
All this money comes from so-called "donor countries" such as the United
States, Great Britain, Norway, and Denmark. Palestinian officials have
reacted with defiance to any foreign governmental effort to end the
salaries.'
A site which deals with the subject very comprehensively.
http://www.notaxesforterror.com/
An extract:
'The PA does not discriminate: terrorists from every group - Hamas, Fatah,
Islamic Jihad - get funding.'
...
'The salaries are usually far higher than the West Bank average wage of
$533/month and sometimes higher than those of any other civil servants
... The worst offenders, those who commit mass murder, get the top wage
of 12,000 shekels ($3,400) per month—up to 10 times more than the
average pay.'
The Goldstone Report
and 'Apartheid' Israel
Judge Goldstone's United
Nations Report of 2009 was severely critical of Israel.
A report that comes from the United
Nations comes with no guarantee of objectivity, impartiality, fairness
and accuracy.
The evidence is that whatever effort Richard Goldstone took to make
the report objective, impartial, fair and accurate, his success was
limited and that the report was flawed. There's general agreement that
he reconsidered, recanted, although some disagreement about the extent.
Richard Goldstone published a significant letter in the New
York Times on the claim that Israel is an 'apartheid state.' (November
1, 2011.) Extracts:
"Israel and the Apartheid Slander," by Richard Goldstone for the New
York Times, November 1:
The Palestinian Authority’s request for full United Nations
membership has put hope for any two-state solution under increasing
pressure. The need for reconciliation between Israelis and
Palestinians has never been greater. So it is important to separate
legitimate criticism of Israel from assaults that aim to isolate,
demonize and delegitimize it.
One particularly pernicious and enduring canard that is surfacing
again is that Israel pursues “apartheid” policies. In Cape Town
starting on Saturday, a London-based nongovernmental organization
called the Russell Tribunal on Palestine will hold a “hearing” on
whether Israel is guilty of the crime of apartheid. It
is not a “tribunal.” The “evidence” is going to be one-sided and the
members of the “jury” are critics whose harsh views of Israel are
well known.
While “apartheid” can have broader meaning, its use is meant to
evoke the situation in pre-1994 South Africa. It is an unfair and
inaccurate slander against Israel, calculated to retard
rather than advance peace negotiations.
...
In assessing the accusation that Israel pursues apartheid policies,
which are by definition primarily about race or ethnicity, it is
important first to distinguish between the situations in Israel,
where Arabs are citizens, and in West Bank areas that remain under
Israeli control in the absence of a peace agreement.
In Israel, there is no apartheid. Nothing there comes close to the
definition of apartheid under the 1998 Rome Statute: “Inhumane
acts ... committed in the context of an institutionalized regime of
systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any
other racial group or groups and committed with the intention of
maintaining that regime.”Israeli Arabs — 20 percent of Israel’s
population — vote, have political parties and representatives in the
Knesset and occupy positions of acclaim, including on its Supreme
Court. Arab patients lie alongside Jewish patients in Israeli
hospitals, receiving identical treatment.
...
The situation in the West Bank is more complex. But here too there
is no intent to maintain “an institutionalized regime of systematic
oppression and domination by one racial group.” ... until there is a
two-state peace, or at least as long as Israel’s
citizens remain under threat of attacks from the West Bank and Gaza, Israel
will see roadblocks and similar measures as necessary for
self-defense, even as Palestinians feel oppressed. As things stand,
attacks from one side are met by counterattacks from the other. And
the deep disputes, claims and counterclaims are only hardened when
the offensive analogy of “apartheid” is invoked.
Those seeking to promote the myth of Israeli apartheid often point
to clashes between heavily armed Israeli soldiers and stone-throwing
Palestinians in the West Bank, or the building of what they call an
“apartheid wall” and disparate treatment on West Bank roads. While
such images may appear to invite a superficial comparison, it
is disingenuous to use them to distort the reality. The security
barrier was built to stop unrelenting terrorist attacks; while it
has inflicted great hardship in places, the Israeli Supreme Court
has ordered the state in many cases to reroute it to minimize
unreasonable hardship. Road restrictions get more intrusive after
violent attacks and are ameliorated when the threat is reduced.
...
Jewish-Arab relations in Israel and the West Bank cannot be
simplified to a narrative of Jewish discrimination. There
is hostility and suspicion on both sides. Israel, unique among
democracies, has been in a state of war with many of its neighbors
who refuse to accept its existence ...
Gaza: starvation and
obesity
Compare and contrast the Siege of Leningrad and the
'Siege' of
Gaza. During the 900 days of the Siege of Leningrad (earlier and now again
called St Petersburg) when the city was encircled by Nazi forces, 800 000
Russians died of starvation, about a third of the population at the
beginning of the siege, reduced to eating wallpaper paste, in some cases,
when rats were unavailable.
According to The Economist's 'Pocket
World in Figures' (2007) Gaza and the West Bank had many people anything but
emaciated, despite the Israeli 'siege.' 42.5% of women were classified
as obese, the third highest in the world, and 23.9% of men, the eighth
highest.
Steffen Jensen, a Danish reporter, wrote about
food for sale in Gaza
in 2010:
'Judging from the media, the
situation in Gaza is desperate, everything is about to collapse, and the
community is on the brink or at the level of a third world country.
'The Palestinian community's immediate downfall has been prophesied numerous
times in the media. People have nothing to eat, we sometimes know. The UN
must from time to time to stop food distribution, either because their
stocks are running low, or because they can not get diesel for their trucks,
and therefore can not carry food in. And so on.
...
'When I
yesterday morning drove through Gaza City, I was immediately surprised that
there are almost as many traffic jams as there always has been. Is there not
a shortage of fuel? Apparently not. Gasoline is not even rationed.
'
... I went over to the Shati refugee camp, also known as Beach Camp. Here is
one of Gaza's many vegetable markets that sell much more than just fruits
and vegetables.
'I will not say whether, in better times has been a
larger product range than there was yesterday. But there was certainly no
shortage of vegetables, fruits or any other ordinary, basic foods. Tomatoes,
cucumbers, corn, watermelons, potatoes - mountains of these items in the
many stalls.
'I must admit I was a little surprised. Because when I
call down here to my Palestinian friends, they tell me about all the
problems and deficiencies, so I expected that the crisis was a little more
clear.
'And the first woman we interviewed in the market confirms
this strange, contradictory, negative mindset:
' "We have
nothing," she said. We need everything! Food, drinks ... everything! "
'It disturbed her not at least that she stood between the mountains of
vegetables, fruit, eggs, poultry and fish, while she spun this doomsday
scenario.
'Yousuf al-Assad Yazgy owns a fruit and vegetable outlet
here in the market. All his fruit is imported from Israel.
' "Not all
fruit and all vegetables come from Israel. Ours does. They come from Israel.
But in the Gaza Strip there is not very much fruit cultivated ... " '
From
Elder of Ziyon
How is a 10% stunting rate [for children in the Palestinian territories]
considered terrible in 2009 and 11.5% considered outstanding in 2011? It
depends on what propaganda goal you have in what you are writing. When you
want to demonize Israel, you cherry pick numbers to make the health
situation look bad; when you want to make the PA look good and ready for a
state you do the exact opposite. That "objective data" mentioned in the NYT
is now seen to have been presented in the most subjective manner possible -
by not comparing it to similar territories worldwide.
And by the way, both those numbers seemed to have been taken from studies
made in 2006. Did things worsen?
Well, the Lancet followed
up in 2010, and reported on a newer 2008 Bir Zeit study:
6% of 1883 children who were assessed were stunted (8% of 930 boys vs 3%
of 950 girls, p=0·01), less than 1% had wasting, 2% were underweight,
11% were anaemic (7% of boys vs 14% of girls), and 15% were overweight
and obese (11% of boys vs 20% of girls; 11% were overweight, and 4% were
obese).
Between 2006 and 2008 - when Israel already had the blockade in Gaza -
children in the territories got a lot fatter, and stunting went down
seemingly dramatically, from 11.5% to only 6%!
Stunting rates
according to a UNICEF report of November 2009:
Qatar 8%
Palestinian Territories- 10%
Algeria - 15
Lebanon - 11
Jordan - 12
Oman - 13
UAE - 17
Saudi Arabia - 20
Libya - 21
Morocco - 23
Kuwait - 24
Iraq - 26
Syria - 28
Egypt - 29
Yemen – 58
'Gaza
Civic Society Leaders: 'An Important Statement'
The 'Important Statement' was signed by a large number of 'Gaza Civil
Society Leaders' at an early stage of the hostilies of 2014. At a stage in the conflict between Israel and Gaza
when casualties were still relatively light, these Leaders declared their
support for Hamas' refusal to accept ceasefires offered, their support for
Hamas' use of indiscriminate weapons, the rockets aimed at Israel, and
Hamas' futile insistence on ceasefires which were unrealistic, certain to be
refused by the Israelis, certain to lead to further casualties in Gaza. A
ceasefire was eventually accepted by Hamas under terms almost identical to
the early ones.
These Leaders of Gaza Civic Society somehow failed to see what was staring
them in the face. They failed to see that refusing a ceasefire would be
followed by unnecessary casualties. If they were taken by surprise, they
should not have been. An object released falling to the ground by the action
of gravity would be no more surprising.
They believed that ceasefires should be rejectde when the ceasefires failed
to meet all the Palestinian demands. Sisyphus in Greek mythology is the man
who repeatedly pushed a heavy boulder to the top of a hill and found that
every time, it rolled back down again: similarly futile behaviour.
The signatories showed monumental political obtuseness. They supported the
continued firing of rockets into Israel - not counting the ones which fell
short and landed in Gaza - if the unrealistic demands were not accepted.
The Important Statement contained this:
'Hamas represented the sentiment of the vast majority of residents
[repeating this phrase to give it the emphasis it warrants: Hamas
represented the sentiment of the vast majority of residents ] when it
rejected the unilateral ceasefire proposed by Egypt and Israel without
consulting anyone in Gaza. We share the broadly held public sentiment that
it is unacceptable to merely return to the status quo – in which Israel
strictly limits travel in and out of the Gaza Strip, controls the supplies
that come in (including a ban on most construction materials), and prohibits
virtually all exports, thus crippling the economy and triggering one of the
highest poverty and unemployment rates in the Arab world.
To do so would mean a return to a living death.'
There was absolutely no prospect that Israel would agree to the
preconditions demanded by the signatories, such as this: 'Unlimited import
and export of supplies and goods, including by land, sea and air.' To
include them was to guarantee failure, was to guarantee that there would be
no ceasefire. Unlimited import means unlimited import of weapons for attacks
on Israel, unlimited import of construction materials for building tunnels
for attacks on Israel. This is the work of political innocents, people with
a faint sense of realities.
Their failure to learn from the conflict between Israel and Gaza of 2008 -
9, when Israel undertook Operation Cast Lead, is astonishing. Then, the
conflict began when Israel attempted to stop the firing of rockets into
Israeli territory and to stop the flow of weapons into Gaza. Operation Cast
Lead proved, if proof were needed, that Israel would stand firm and show
vast military superiority in future conflicts, unless circumstances were to
change dramatically in the interim. There were no dramatic changes which
would make it in the least likely that Israel would accept rocket attacks
and flow of weapons into Gaza in 2014. The signatories should have realized
this at the very beginning of the recent hostilities. This is inability to
learn from experience on a grand scale - or, rather, grandiose scale.
After hostilities ended in 2009, ' ... the European Union, the Organisation
of the Islamic Conference and over 50 nations donated humanitarian aid to
Gaza, including the United States, which donated over $20 million. On
January 7, a UN Relief Works Agency spokesman acknowledged that he was
"aware of instances where deliveries of humanitarian aid into Gaza" were
diverted by the Hamas government, though never from his agency.'
After hostilites ended in 2014, governments and non-governmental agencies
must again donate on a massive scale to a territory which never seems to
learn. A familiar dictum of economics is: 'Scarce resources and infinite
wants.' The desperate needs of the world can never be met, and why the needs
of Gaza should have priority is a mystery. Will Palestinians continue to
fire rockets and continue to invite certain retaliation and continue to
expect foreign aid for reconstuction at frequent intervals? Perhaps the
donors will eventually draw conclusions and become less generous and decide
to give their money to other causes.
The ceasefire which was eventually accepted in 2014 met none of the demands
of the signatories, as could have been predicted.
The signatories should have been exerting as much pressure as they could on
Hamas to accept a ceasefire and to keep to the ceasefire. 'Stop firing
rockets. Stop breaking ceasefires.'
The Important Statement contains this:
'With temporary shelters full and the indiscriminate Israeli shelling, there
is literally no place that is safe in Gaza.'
Since Hamas hasn't provided shelters for all the population, all the more
reason not to fire rockets and invite certain retaliation. Where would
rockets fired in the future be fired from? As in the case of the rockets
already fired, very often from sites near to residential buildings and such
buildings as schools. All the more reason to do everything possible to avoid
Israeli attacks on launching sites. Hamas is a terrorist organization which
has carried out many suicide bombings in Israel, which has built a network
of tunnels to attack Israel, and which declares that its objective is to
destroy Israel. Given the fact that the Hamas personnel who are legitimate
targets of the Israelis are very often to be found in close proximity with
the general population, this is a further reason to avoid Israeli action by
avoiding firing rockets.
If these representatives of Gazan civic society can't realize the
obviousness of this, they are doing nothing for the reputation of Gazan
civic society. As for the claim of 'indiscriminate' Israeli shelling,
then their knowledge of military history, the broad history which is
essential for context, essential to provide comparisons, is dangerously
lacking. Warnings of impending attack were evidently not given in all cases
or most cases but they were given in very many cases, by phone message or by
non-lethal blows to the roof of a building. In the history of warfare, this
is virtually unprecedented. People who fail to concede obvious points and to
make any necessary qualifications are liable to see their credibility lost,
although not in gullible circles, such as the branches of the Palestine
Solidarity Campaign.
In
the Gaza conflict, a main weapen was the IED or improvised explosive device,
familiar from operations in Afghanistan. Familiar too are the fearful
injuries to British soldiers when these devices have exploded.
A report on operations:
'Inside Gaza, Hamas has booby-trapped hundreds of homes and installations
with improvised bombs. One such IED killed three Israeli soldiers on
Wednesday in a building labeled as an UNRWA clinic in the southern Gaza
Strip city of Khan Younis, where IDF soldiers were searching for a tunnel
shaft. IDF’s Gaza Division commander, Brig. Gen. Micky Edelstein, told
journalists that in one Khan Younis street he encountered, 19 of the 28
homes were booby-trapped, ready to explode over IDF soldiers who enter them.
Operations in Khan Younis had been preceded by warnings. In a report in the New
York Times for July 8:
'The call came to the cellphone of his brother’s wife, Salah Kaware said
Tuesday. Mr. Kaware lives in Khan Younis, in southeast Gaza, and the caller
said that everyone in the house must leave within five minutes, because it
was going to be bombed.
'A further warning came as the occupants were leaving, he said in a
telephone interview, when an Israeli drone apparently fired a flare at the
roof of the three-story home. “Our neighbors came in to form a human
shield,” he said, with some even going to the roof to try to prevent a
bombing. Others were in the stairway when the house was bombed not long
afterward.
'Seven people died, Mr. Kaware said, a figure also stated by the Palestinian
Health Ministry in Gaza, which also said that 25 people were wounded. The
Israeli military said that targeted houses belonged to Hamas members
involved in launching rockets or other military activity, and that they had
been used as operations rooms.'
The Important Statement has its quota of distortion and falsification, for
example this: 'As academics, public figures and activists witnessing the
intended genocide of 1.8 million Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip ... '
The familiar misuse of the word 'genocide.' The Nazi genocide was an attempt
to kill every Jew in Nazi-controlled territory. To suppose that Israelis
intend to kill every Palestinian they can is psychotic rubbish. Whereas the
Nazis set up gallows and gas chambers and used firing squads, the Israelis
have never used the death penalty in the history of the modern state, with
one exception, the Nazi Eichmann. (The Palestinian territories don't have
gas chambers but they do make use of the gallows and firing squads.)
Without a constant barrage of simplifications, evasions, distortions and
falsifications and the repetitive, debased language used to express them,
the Palestinian ideology would be lost.
The statement refers to 'basic freedoms that have been denied to the people
for more than seven years.' These 'basic freedoms' apparently include the
freedom to import materials without restriction, including the freedom to
import materials for constructing new tunnels for attacks on Israel and
materials for constructing rockets for attacks on Israel. What of the basic
freedoms which are denied by Hamas and not acknowledged by the
majority of Palestinians, such as the basic freedoms of gay
people and Christians to
live their lives without fear? What of the basic freedom to
express opinion freely, including criticism of Hamas?
The Important Statement mentions poverty and unemployment in Gaza.
Discoverthenetworks.org 'A Guide to the Political Left' has a significant
discussion of these very topics, adapted from 'Who is Really Oppressing the
Palestinians?' by David Meir-Levi.
http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/viewSubCategory.asp?id=824
'How did the Palestinians reach their current tragic state? Are the Israelis
responsible? What part of the blame falls on the other Arab states and the
Palestinians’ own leaders?
These are important questions. The answers are complex, requiring a
historical literacy and a willingness to go beyond the simplistic notion of
the international media that the Mid-east conflict is a matter of
conflicting rights and Israeli “occupation” of Palestinian lands.
'Within a few days of the June 10 cease-fire following Israel's victory in
the Six Day War of 1967, Abba Eban, Israel’s Ambassador to the UN, made his
famous speech offering to negotiate the return of captured territories in
exchange for three Arab concessions: diplomatic recognition of Israel;
negotiations to decide on universally recognized borders and other issues;
and peace as a final outcome. Western countries expressed amazement that the
victor was offering to negotiate with the vanquished and was willing to make
concrete concessions (return of territories) in exchange for symbolic and
diplomatic ones.
'To formulate a response to this unexpected new reality, the Arab states
called a summit meeting in Khartoum (capital of Sudan). The result was the
now infamous three Khartoum NOs: no recognition, no negotiations, no peace.
Thus Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza was caused first by Arab
aggression and then by Arab refusal to negotiate a peace after the Arab
armies had been vanquished.
'After the war, Israel began what is sometimes called its “mini-Marshall
plan” for the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, investing hundreds of millions
of dollars to bring them both into the 20th century with regard to
infrastructure, roads, sewerage, electricity, phones, radio and TV
broadcasting, water purification and water supply. World Bank records
indicate that the GDP of the West Bank grew at the average rate of 13% per
year between 1967 and 1994. Tourism skyrocketed, unemployment almost
disappeared as hundreds of thousands of Arabs worked in Israel’s economy
earning far more than their counterparts in other Arab countries ...
'And, perhaps most telling of all, free and unencumbered access to Israel’s
medical infrastructure resulted in a declining infant mortality and a rise
in longevity ...
'All this time, the Arab nations remained formally at war with Israel. In
1979, Egypt alone among the Arab states agreed to sign a peace treaty
with Israel. In response to Egypt’s willingness to sign the peace, Israel
withdrew its forces and settlements in the Sinai.
When the 1993 Oslo Accords allowed Yasser Arafat to set up shop in the West
Bank as the head of the newly created Palestinian Authority, the existing
robust economy created in partnership between Israel and the Arabs ground to
a halt and then went into a steep decline. By 2002, the West Bank’s GDP was
one-tenth of what it had been in 1993.
'Data provided by the UN Human Development program of 2005 indicate that the
economic difficulties experienced by the Palestinian Arabs were largely the
result of policies of the Arafat regime and not from any oppression by the
State of Israel. Looking at what it calls “The Occupied Palestinian
Territories (OPT),” the UN report notes, for instance, that the second
Intifada beginning in September 2000 resulted “in a sharp deterioration in
living standards and life chances.” The poverty rate nearly tripled from
20% in 1999 to 55% in 2003. In one telling example, the report notes that
because of the Intifada, the town of Nablus -- a prosperous commercial hub
prior to September 2000 -- became an economic basket case. Shops were
closed; to survive, workers had to sell their tools, and farmers were forced
to sell their land. It was Arafat’s war, not Israeli rule, that destroyed
Palestinian prosperity and bled its people.
'Israel is the scapegoat for the plight of the Palestinians, but from the
19th century onward, Arab leaders, both local and external, have betrayed
the Palestinian Arabs, forced them into poverty, cheated, intimidated, and
oppressed them, condemned them to serfdom and stolen the land out from under
them. Every opportunity for statehood was squandered by leaders who chose
war and terrorism over peace and cooperation and thus condemned their people
to poverty.'
BBC Watch on life in the Gaza strip:
http://bbcwatch.org/2013/01/01/life-in-the-gaza-strip-according-to-the-bbc/
Even with the corruption, mismanagement and incompetence of the Hamas
administration, to describe life in Gaza as a 'living death' is flagrant
exaggeration. Compare life in Gaza with life in the Warsaw Ghetto (a
placard at a Sheffield Palestine Solidarity Campaign
demonstration made exactly this comparison, an ignorant and contemptible
comparison.
One magazine chosen for publication of the Important Statement, 'The
Revival,' is one of the more enlightened Islamist publications, which is to
say, not nearly enlightened enough. It attacks terrorist actions by Moslems
which take place in this country - good, obviously - but where Israel is
concerned, nothing but the blackest of blacks, nothing but the most absolute
of condemnations, nothing but unflinching and complete criticism will do.
Another outlet chosen for publication was the Freedom Flotilla Foundation's
'Gaza's Ark.'
The Wikipedia entry for operation
Cast Lead can be recommended. It contains multiple criticisms of Hamas
and multiple criticisms of Israel. The comments on Israel's use of white
phosphorus are of great interest:
'After watching footage of Israeli troop deployments on television, a
British soldier who completed numerous combat tours in Iraq and
Afghanistan with the Intelligence Corps defended the Israeli Army's use
of white phosphorus. The soldier noted, "White phosphorus is used
because it provides an instant smokescreen, other munitions can provide
a smokescreen but the effect is not instant. Faced with overwhelming
enemy fire and wounded comrades, every commander would choose to screen
his men instantly, to do otherwise would be negligent."
'Colonel Lane, a military expert testifying in front of the fact-finding
mission in July 2009, told that white phosphorus is used for smoke
generation to hide from the enemy. He stated, "The quality of smoke
produced by white phosphorus is superb; if you want real smoke for real
coverage, white phosphorus will give it to you."
'Professor Newton, expert in laws of armed conflict testifying in front
of the committee, said that in an urban area, where potential perils are
snipers, explosive devices and trip wires, one effective way to mask
forces' movement is by white phosphorus. In certain cases, he added,
such choice of means would be less harmful for civilian population than
other munitions, provided that the use of white phosphorus withstands
the proportionality test. In discussing the principle of proportionality
he said that the legality of using white phosphorus in an urban setting
could only be decided on a case by case basis taking into account "the
precise circumstances of its use, not in general, generically, but based
on that target, at that time". He stressed that the humanitarian
implications were vital in this assessment giving the example that using
white phosphorus on a school yard would have different implications to
its use on another area. He also said that in his view white phosphorus
munition is neither chemical nor incendiary weapon and is not intended
to cause damage. He said its use was not prohibited by the Chemical
Weapons Convention.
'An article by Mark Cantora examining the legal implications of the use
of white phosphorus munitions by the IDF, published in 2010 in the Gonzaga
Journal of International Law, argues that Israel's use of white
phosphorus in Gaza was technically legal under existing international
humanitarian laws and "Therefore, it is imperative for the international
community to convene a White Phosphorus Convention Conference in order
to address these issues and fill this substantial gap in international
humanitarian law."
Misunderstanding
moderate Muslim society
A video which will astonish many people. It will correct some common
misunderstandings of moderate Muslim society, even if many people in
moderate Muslim society disagree strongly with the speaker's
opinions, and even if the title given to the film is pitiful:
'Muslims Admit That ALL Muslims are Sexist, Homophobic Murderers.' I
criticize the over-use and misuse of words such as 'homophobic,' 'sexist'
and 'murderers' but the content owes nothing to whoever posted the film.
The speaker claims to describe the attitude of Moslems he describes as
non-radical and non-extremist to issues as different as separation of men
and women at Islamic events and stoning to death.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jivSU139eLw
The speaker says,
'Everyone in the room. How many of you are normal Muslims, you're not
extremists, you're not radical, just normal Sunni Muslims. Please raise your
hands.'
'How many of you agree that men and women should sit separate? Please
raise your hands.'
'How many of you agree that the punishments described in the Qur'an and
the Sunna, whether it is death, whether it is stoning, for adultery,
whatever it is, it is from Allah and his messenger, that is the best
punishment ever possible for human kind, and that is what we should apply in
the world? Who agrees with that?'
See also a film on
'Free speech' which is about gay people and Islam. The film takes a little
time (about 45s) to reach the criticism and condemnation which are its most
striking elements. The title of the film refers to 'Homophobic Muslim Women'
and again, I object to the use of 'homophobic,' which means 'fearing
homosexuals.' It's clear enough that it isn't fear of homosexuals
which is the dominant emotion.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nOdhlggNtY
From an article published in 'Harry's Place:'
On 20th June this year, Ghoncheh Ghavami had gone along to watch Iran’s
national volleyball team play against the Italian side. In any normal
country, this would have been a joyous event, but in Iran for Ghoncheh
and other women it carried a risk. Women are not allowed to enter sports
stadiums in Iran and watch men play sports like football or volleyball.
'Ghoncheh and some other women, who had seen this as an opportunity to
protest against this discrimination against Iranian women, were
arrested. They were later released on the same day after signing a
pledge not to engage in such actions again. Their personal belongings
however were kept by the security forces for further examination.
'Ten days later, Ghonche went to collect her personal belongings but was
arrested again. Security agents then searched her house and collected
more of her belongings. Ghoncheh was transferred to the notorious Evin
prison and spent 41 days in solitary confinement. Although her
interrogation is reportedly now finished, they have extended her
detention by another 2 months.'
What are the factors which make opposition to this blatant injustice
more likely to be effective? I give no arguments against the people who
would consider it no injustice at all, but fully justified, I simply
express my disgust. It might be easier to give some factors which make
it less likely to be effective. Without allowing for obvious exceptions
and himan inconsistency and unpredictability - people who insist that
women must sit separately from men are less likely to oppose the
imprisonment of someone who went to watch a segregated sporting event.
And people who claim that the Palestinian territories have by far the
most urgent claim on our attention and on our constructive action are
less likely to support action in this case.
There are many, many other instances of injustice where the same convictions
are likely to be a factor
This page draws
attention to many common misunderstandings of Islam. For example, in the
section on Dick Pitt, who is committed to the
Palestine Solidarity Campaign, I quote from one of my emails to him. He
assumes that the attitude of Moslems to the Qur'an must be a selective and
relaxed one, similar, perhaps, to the attitude of non-fundamentalist members
of the Church of England, with a selective and very relaxed attitude
to the truth of the Bible - not so.
I'm astonished to read your observations on the Qur'an. Most
contemporary Christians are non-fundamentalist – they do not believe
that the whole of the Bible is the literal word of God. Christianity has
undergone intellectual reforms which have transformed the outlook of
most believers. You will find, as a matter of strict fact, that liberal
Moslems, as well as radical Islamists, generally believe that the whole
of the Qur'an is the literal word of God, or Allah. Those who believe
otherwise aren’t regarded as Moslems at all.'
Anyone who fails
to understand contradictions and paradoxes fails to understand human
nature. There are convictions which are firmly held and inflexible, but
these firmly held and inflexible convictions may be surprisingly
pragmatic. Palestinians, and 'moderate' British moslems, may believe
that sura 4:34, which advocates wife-beating, is, like all the suras in
the Qur'an, is the literal word of God, without feeling the least need
to implement it - although many, many Moslems do act upon it.
Palestinians and 'moderate' British moslems may believe that people who
leave Islam should be treated very harshly, by execution, perhaps, but
give such low priority to the punishment that it is effectively
forgotten. But there are Moslems who give high priority to the
punishment and who have no hesitation in carrying out.
Banning extremist speakers
See also Comment: banning
extremist speakers on the page 'About this site.'
Haitham Al-Haddad has defended the hitting of
a wife, female genital circumcision, the execution of apostates from
Islam, called for the outlawing of homosexuality and praised Osama bin
Laden. In an article on the man, which concentrated on his hostility to
homosexuality, Habibi concluded, 'No
wonder many people just want Haddad stopped. Liberal it’s not.
Understandable it is. They’ve had enough. (Articles in 'The Guardian'
which make excuses for Islamism or minimize the threats from Islamism
are likely to be followed by huge numbers of comments from people who
have had enough.)
Raheem Kassam, the director of 'Student
Rights,' which campaigns against extremism on campuses, has concluded,
'He is the epitome of illiberal views that should have no place on
university campuses.' 'Student Rights' makes frequent calls for the
banning of extremist speakers. On the site of 'Student Rights,' there's
this, in connection with Adnan Khan, a speaker from Hizb-ut-Tahrir (HT),
due to speak at the School of Oriental and African studies in London.
'HT has been 'No-Platformed' by the
National Union of Students (NUS),
which declared that the group was "responsible for supporting terrorism
and publishing material that incites racial hatred".
Meanwhile, the government has stated there
is “unambiguous evidence to indicate that…Hizb-ut-Tahrir,
target specific universities and colleges...with the objective of radicalising and
recruiting students”.
'Khan has argued apostates that “openly leave
Islam, and choose to remain in the state” should face the death penalty,
as this is “treason and a political attack”.
'He has also claimed that apostasy should be
viewed as “a question of what kind of person would openly and publicly
abandon Islam with full knowledge that they will be killed for it”.
'In the same book Khan also writes
that “equality is not the basis of Islam and never has been in the
history of Islamic jurisprudence. This is a term alien to Islam”.
'He will be joined at the event by SOAS student Mujahid Dattani,
who has compared Israeli actions to those of the Nazis - an
anti-Semitic act in the definition used by the Community Security Trust
(CST).
'That an activist from a ‘No-Platformed’ organisation has
been invited to speak at this event should concern SOAS.
The views of Haitham Al-Haddad and Adnan Khan
are loathsome and stupid and the view that they should be banned is
plausible, but I don't think it's right. Surprisingly, Haitham
Al-Haddad's own Website allows freedom of expression. Contrary
views are published and attempts are made to answer the criticism, even
if the attempts are loathsome and stupid. He has to be given credit for
this. These are two comments which were freely allowed
Mitchell
'The liberal principles cultivated in the
West will not be sent to the moral mass grave of Islamic ‘values.’ We
will not capitulate to unreasonableness, and we pride ourselves on the
enlightenment values of Mill, Voltaire and Shelley. Alan Turing, Steven
Fry, Douglas Murray.. these men are of solid moral fibre and to condemn
how they love is to make a mockery of anything a decent religion would
stand for. Churchill spoke of the retrograde nature of Islamism. Second
class citizenship for homosexuals will not cut it. Your right to your
opinion is there, but if you wish to flex your theocratic muscles,
please do it to the tune of masturbating Ayotollahs and fawning Sheikhs,
for you will not mobilise your totalitarian forces on the shores of
rational, liberal democracy. I urge you to embrace the principles that
built the World Trade Centre rather than the world-view that toppled
it.'
Joe
'It’s people like
you that cause tensions between muslim immigrants and nativesin the
western world. People, including muslims, flock here from all over the
world to benefit from our economic opportunity and freedom-and that is
fine, and understanable. However, it is time for these people to realise
that our prosperity is a direct result of the freedom we have to do,
say, think, drink, smoke and sleep with whoever we like. You can’t have
your cake and eat it too, if you want a state that represses and hates
gays, go live in Iran. If you want to live in a nice house, plenty of
food and no chance of getting your hands chopped off by the police, stay
here but accept the life choices of others.
'Obviously, you are free to express your
opinions just like I am (another one of the freedoms that make the
western world so prosperous), but Islamic-Christian relations would be
so much better if we had a few more Islamic preachers with the
intelligence and maturity to respectfully disagree with other people’s
life choices without calling them criminals.'
It's common for people not nearly as
loathsome and stupid or not quite as loathsome and stupid or not
loathsome and stupid at all to exclude all comments from the comments
sections of their sites which are critical in the slightest.
The Hamas Charter:
timidity and intimidation
The Hamas Charter (also known as the 'Hamas Covenant,' 'The Covenant
of the Islamic Resistance Movement,' 18 August, 1988) should strip away many
illusions about Hamas and help to explain the loathing felt by the majority
of Israelis towards Hamas. I share this loathing myself.
Apologists
for Hams who aren't radical Islamists are likely to find the document not at
all to their liking, for very different reasons. Although there are many,
many people who like their illusions, and find them very comforting, for
this purpose illusions which encourage sentimentality are generally
preferred. Not many people outside the Islamist circle would find the Hamas
Charter in the least comforting. The Charter gives no support for
sentimentality. This is a chilling document, one of those
documents which is too important to be neglected by people with any interest
in the conflict between Gaza and Israel but so off-putting as to be
almost unreadable. Like many manifestations of radical Islamism, it
intimidates, but there has to be a forceful rejection of timidity when
confronted by intimidation.
The full text in English is available at the site of the Avalon
Project of the Yale Law School.
http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/hamas.asp
Extracts:
The Covenant begins:
'In The Name Of The Most Merciful Allah
3
'Ye are the best nation that hath been raised up unto mankind: ye command
that which is just, and ye forbid that which is unjust, and ye believe in
Allah. And if they who have received the scriptures had believed, it had
surely been the better for them: there are believers among them, but the
greater part of them are transgressors. They shall not hurt you, unless with
a slight hurt; and if they fight against you, they shall turn their backs to
you, and they shall not be helped. They are smitten with vileness wheresoever they are found; unless they obtain security by entering into a
treaty with Allah, and a treaty with men; and they draw on themselves
indignation from Allah, and they are afflicted with poverty. This they
suffer, because they disbelieved the signs of Allah, and slew the prophets
unjustly; this, because they were rebellious, and transgressed." (Al-Imran -
verses 109-111).
'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 section 'Definition of the Movement: ideological starting points'
contains thirty-six articles. Article six includes this:
'The Islamic Resistance Movement is a distinguished Palestinian movement,
whose allegiance is to Allah, and whose way of life is Islam. It strives to
raise the banner of Allah over every inch of Palestine ...
From Article Seven:
'The Islamic Resistance Movement is one of the links in the chain of the
struggle against the Zionist invaders. It goes back to 1939, to the
emergence of the martyr Izz al-Din al Kissam and his brethren the fighters,
members of Moslem Brotherhood. It goes on to reach out and become one with
another chain that includes the struggle of the Palestinians and Moslem
Brotherhood in the 1948 war and the Jihad operations of the Moslem
Brotherhood in 1968 and after.
'Moreover, if the links have been distant from each other and if obstacles,
placed by those who are the lackeys of Zionism in the way of the fighters
obstructed the continuation of the struggle, the Islamic Resistance Movement
aspires to the realisation of Allah's promise, no matter how long that
should take. The Prophet, Allah bless him and grant him salvation, has said:
'
"The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews
(killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The
stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind
me, come and kill him. Only the Gharkad tree, (evidently a certain kind
of tree) would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews."
(related by al-Bukhari and Moslem).'
This is Article Eight in its entirety. It endorses jihad:
'Allah
is its target, the Prophet is its model, the Koran its constitution: Jihad
is its path and death for the sake of Allah is the loftiest of its wishes.'
From Article Eleven, which amongst other things makes clear the status
of Sharia law. When Hamas Chief of Staff Muhammad Deif said, 'Today you [sraelis]
are fighting divine soldiers, who love death for Allah like you love life,
and who compete among themselves for Martyrdom like you flee from death' he
was faithfully following the principles of the Covenant.
'The Islamic Resistance Movement believes that the land of Palestine is an
Islamic Waqf consecrated for future Moslem 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. Neither a single Arab country nor all Arab
countries, neither any king or president, nor all the kings and presidents,
neither any organization nor all of them, be they Palestinian or Arab,
possess the right to do that. Palestine is an Islamic Waqf land consecrated
for Moslem generations until Judgement Day. This being so, who could claim
to have the right to represent Moslem generations till Judgement Day?
'This is the law governing the land of Palestine in the Islamic Sharia (law)
and the same goes for any land the Moslems have conquered by force, because
during the times of (Islamic) conquests, the Moslems consecrated these lands
to Moslem generations till the Day of Judgement.'
Anyone who believes that Hamas would like a peaceful resolution to the
problems of the area will be disappointed - not if Hamas follows the
Covenant.
This is Article Thirteen:
'Initiatives, and so-called peaceful solutions and international
conferences, are in contradiction to the principles of the Islamic
Resistance Movement. Abusing any part of Palestine is abuse directed against
part of religion.
Nationalism of the Islamic Resistance Movement is part of
its religion. Its members have been fed on that. For the sake of hoisting
the banner of Allah over their homeland they fight. "Allah will be
prominent, but most people do not know."
'Now and then the call goes out for the convening of an international
conference to look for ways of solving the (Palestinian) question. Some
accept, others reject the idea, for this or other reason, with one
stipulation or more for consent to convening the conference and
participating in it. Knowing the parties constituting the conference, their
past and present attitudes towards Moslem problems, the Islamic Resistance
Movement does not consider these conferences capable of realising the
demands, restoring the rights or doing justice to the oppressed. These
conferences are only ways of setting the infidels in the land of the Moslems
as arbitraters. When did the infidels do justice to the believers?
'
"But the Jews will not be pleased with thee, neither the Christians,
until thou follow their religion; say, The direction of Allah is the
true direction. And verily if thou follow their desires, after the
knowledge which hath been given thee, thou shalt find no patron or
protector against Allah." (The Cow - verse 120).
'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. The Palestinian people know better than to consent to
having their future, rights and fate toyed with. As in said in the
honourable Hadith:of Syria
'
"The people are Allah's lash in His land. He wreaks His
vengeance through them against whomsoever He wishes among His slaves It
is unthinkable that those who are double-faced among them should prosper
over the faithful. They will certainly die out of grief and
desperation."
This is Article Fourteen, which, although it was written in the late
twentieth century reflects patterns of thought from very much earlier
- the seventh century, in fact:
'The question of the liberation of Palestine is bound to three circles: the
Palestinian circle, the Arab circle and the Islamic circle. Each of these
circles has its role in the struggle against Zionism. Each has its duties,
and it is a horrible mistake and a sign of deep ignorance to overlook any of
these circles. Palestine is an Islamic land which has the first of the two
kiblahs (direction to which Moslems turn in praying), the third of the holy
(Islamic) sanctuaries, and the point of departure for Mohamed's midnight
journey to the seven heavens (i.e. Jerusalem).
'
"Praise be unto him who transported his servant by night, from the
sacred temple of Mecca to the farther temple of Jerusalem, the circuit
of which we have blessed, that we might show him some of our signs; for
Allah is he who heareth, and seeth." (The Night-Journey - verse 1).
'Since this is the case, liberation of Palestine is then an individual duty
for very Moslem wherever he may be. On this basis, the problem should be
viewed. This should be realised by every Moslem.
'The day the problem is dealt with on this basis, when the three circles
mobilize their capabilities, the present state of affairs will change and
the day of liberation will come nearer.
'
"Verily ye are stronger than they, by reason of the terror cast into
their breasts from Allah. This, because they are not people of
prudence." (The Emigration - verse 13).'
he opening of Article Fifteen, stressing jihad yet again:
'The day that enemies usurp part of Moslem land, Jihad becomes the
individual duty of every Moslem. In face of the Jews' usurpation of
Palestine, it is compulsory that the banner of Jihad be raised. To do this
requires the diffusion of Islamic consciousness among the masses, both on
the regional, Arab and Islamic levels. It is necessary to instill the spirit
of Jihad in the heart of the nation so that they would confront the enemies
and join the ranks of the fighters.'
Article Seventeen. A section supposedly on the Moslem woman turns out to
contain mainly mad conspiracy theory|:
'The Moslem woman has a role
no less important than that of the moslem man in the battle of liberation.
She is the maker of men. Her role in guiding and educating the new
generations is great. The enemies have realised the importance of her role.
They consider that if they are able to direct and bring her up they way they
wish, far from Islam, they would have won the battle. That is why you find
them giving these attempts constant attention through information campaigns,
films, and the school curriculum, using for that purpose their lackeys who
are infiltrated through Zionist organizations under various names and
shapes, such as Freemasons, Rotary Clubs, espionage groups and others, which
are all nothing more than cells of subversion and saboteurs. These
organizations have ample resources that enable them to play their role in
societies for the purpose of achieving the Zionist targets and to deepen the
concepts that would serve the enemy. These organizations operate in the
absence of Islam and its estrangement among its people. The Islamic peoples
should perform their role in confronting the conspiracies of these
saboteurs. The day Islam is in control of guiding the affairs of life, these
organizations, hostile to humanity and Islam, will be obliterated.'
Conspiracy theory is continued with Article Twenty-Two, which includes
very brief and, of course, deluded theories about the outbreak of the First
and Second World Wars:
'For a long time, the enemies have been planning, skillfully and with
precision, for the achievement of what they have attained. They took into
consideration the causes affecting the current of events. They strived to
amass great and substantive material wealth which they devoted to the
realisation of their dream. With their money, they took control of the world
media, news agencies, the press, publishing houses, broadcasting stations,
and others. With their money they stirred revolutions in various parts of
the world with the purpose of achieving their interests and reaping the
fruit therein. They were behind the French Revolution, the Communist
revolution and most of the revolutions we heard and hear about, here and
there. With their money they formed secret societies, such as Freemasons,
Rotary Clubs, the Lions and others in different parts of the world for the
purpose of sabotaging societies and achieving Zionist interests. With their
money they were able to control imperialistic countries and instigate them
to colonize many countries in order to enable them to exploit their
resources and spread corruption there.
'You may speak as much as you want about regional and world wars. They were
behind World War I, when they were able to destroy the Islamic Caliphate,
making financial gains and controlling resources. They obtained the Balfour
Declaration, formed the League of Nations through which they could rule the
world. They were behind World War II, through which they made huge financial
gains by trading in armaments, and paved the way for the establishment of
their state. It was they who instigated the replacement of the League of
Nations with the United Nations and the Security Council to enable them to
rule the world through them. There is no war going on anywhere, without
having their finger in it.
'
"So often as they shall kindle a fire for war, Allah shall extinguish
it; and they shall set their minds to act corruptly in the earth, but
Allah loveth not the corrupt doers." (The Table - verse 64).
'The imperialistic forces in the Capitalist West and Communist East, support
the enemy with all their might, in money and in men. These forces take turns
in doing that. The day Islam appears, the forces of infidelity would unite
to challenge it, for the infidels are of one nation.
'
"O true believers, contract not an intimate friendship with any besides
yourselves: they will not fail to corrupt you. They wish for that which
may cause you to perish: their hatred hath already appeared from out of
their mouths; but what their breasts conceal is yet more inveterate. We
have already shown you signs of their ill will towards you, if ye
understand." (The Family of Imran - verse 118).
'It is not in vain that the verse is ended with Allah's words "if ye
understand." '
Article Thirty makes clear that free and independent thought is regarded as
an impossibility and that the position of 'writers, intellectuals, media people, orators, educaters [sic] and teachers
is a completely demeaning one:
'Writers, intellectuals, media people, orators, educaters [sic] and
teachers, and all the various sectors in the Arab and Islamic world - all of
them are called upon to perform their role, and to fulfill their duty,
because of the ferocity of the Zionist offensive and the Zionist influence
in many countries exercised through financial and media control, as well as
the consequences that all this lead to in the greater part of the world.
'Jihad is not confined to the carrying of arms and the confrontation of the
enemy. The effective word, the good article, the useful book, support and
solidarity - together with the presence of sincere purpose for the hoisting
of Allah's banner higher and higher - all these are elements of the Jihad
for Allah's sake.
'
"Whosoever mobilises a fighter for the sake of Allah is himself a
fighter. Whosoever supports the relatives of a fighter, he himself is a
fighter." (related by al-Bukhari, Moslem, Abu-Dawood and al-Tarmadhi).
Article Thirty-two has this - but by now, the sentiments are surely
becoming predictable:
'Leaving the circle of struggle with Zionism is high treason, and
cursed be he who does that. "for whoso shall turn his back unto them on that
day, unless he turneth aside to fight, or retreateth to another party of the
faithful, shall draw on himself the indignation of Allah, and his abode
shall be hell; an ill journey shall it be thither." (The Spoils - verse 16).
There is no way out except by concentrating all powers and energies to face
this Nazi, vicious Tatar invasion. The alternative is loss of one's country,
the dispersion of citizens, the spread of vice on earth and the destruction
of religious values. Let every person know that he is responsible before
Allah, for "the doer of the slightest good deed is rewarded in like, and the
does of the slightest evil deed is also rewarded in like."
'
Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin D Roosevelt
and the IDF (Israeli Defence Force)
The Swedish army and the army of the Irish Republic have never had to face
the criticism and the accusations directed so often at the British army and
the United States army and other forces, including the Israeli Defence
Force. Sometimes, the criticisms and accusations have been fully justified,
but in general, any mistakes and shortcomings are those to be expected in
all complex human actions. Goethe: 'Man errs so long as he strives.'
Criticism
is generally healthy - essential - but criticism may overlook vital
distinctions. Criticism may cynically ignore vital distinctions.
Criticism of the Israeli Defence Force is so often blatantly ideological
criticism, with no attempt at fair-mindedness and no attempt to understand
extreme experience.
The American president Theodore
Roosevelt wrote (there's surely no need for anyone to respond to the
unfashionable style with condescension):
'It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong
man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The
credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred
by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes
short again and again, because there is no effort without error and
shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great
enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who
at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the
worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place
shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor
defeat.'
Criticism of the conduct of the British and the (segregated) American armed
forces during the Second World War, which deliberately targeted German
civilians (in the case of the British air force) and Japanese civilians (in
the case of the United States air force) should never ignore the vital
distinction between allied war aims and allied conduct of the war and Nazi
war aims and Nazi conduct of the war. This comment of the American president
Theodore Roosevelt is surely relevant to these matters, and to President
Franklin D Roosevelt's conduct during the war. It can be applied too to the
Israeli conduct of operations in Gaza, including the conduct of the
Israeli Defence Force.
So much for the armchair critics of Israel.
Éamon de Valera, who led Ireland during the Second World War, had no
responsibility for the bombing of Tokyo or the bombing of Dresden. He led a
state which stood aside, which never went into the arena.
My page
Ireland and Northern Ireland:
distortions and illusions includes this quotation:
'...it was difficult to
withhold one's contempt from a country such as Ireland, whose battle this
was and whose chances of freedom and independence in the event of a German
victory were nil. The fact that Ireland was standing aside from the conflict
at this moment posed, from the naval angle, special problems which affected,
sometimes mortally, all sailors engaged in the Atlantic, and earned their
particular loathing.
'Irish neutrality, on
which she placed a generous interpretation, permitted the Germans to maintain
in Dublin an espionage-centre, a window into Britain, which operated throughout
the war and did incalculable harm to the Allied cause. But from the naval
point of view there was an even more deadly factor: this was the loss of the
naval bases in southern and western Ireland, which had been available to the
Royal Navy during the first world war but were now forbidden them. To compute
how many men and how many ships this denial was costing, month after month,
was hardly possible; but the total was substantial and tragic.
'From a narrow legal angle,
Ireland was within her rights: she had opted for neutrality, and the rest
of the story flowed from this decision. She was in fact at liberty to stand
aside from the struggle, whatever harm this did to the Allied cause. But sailors,
watching the ships go down and counting the number of their friends who might
have been alive instead of dead, saw the thing in simpler terms. They saw
Ireland safe under the British umbrella, fed by her convoys, and protected
by her air force, her very neutrality guaranteed by the British armed forces:
they saw no return for this protection save a condoned sabotage of the Allied
war effort: and they were angry - permanently angry. As they sailed past this
smug coastline, past people who did not give a damn how the war went as long
as they could live on in their fairy-tale world, they had time to ponder a
new aspect of indecency. In the list of people you were prepared to like when
the war was over, the man who stood by and watched while you were getting
your throat cut could not figure very high.'
In the competing murals of Belfast, new images and messages have started
to appear: in Nationalist areas, ones which support the Palestinians, in
Loyalist areas, ones which support Israel. Irish nationalists may well
overlook a potential conflict of interest. Many nationalists have taken for
granted the 'fact' that the British are the worst exploiters in the world
and the most brutal of people, but Palestinians make the conflicting claim
that the Israelis are the worst exploiters and the most brutal of people.
Human
Rights Watch
From an article by Robert L. Bernstein
published in the 'New York Times,' not an original contribution, but
a compelling one, and applicable in part to Amnesty International.
'As the founder of Human Rights Watch, its active chairman for 20
years and now founding chairman emeritus, I must do something that I
never anticipated: I must publicly join the group’s critics. Human
Rights Watch had as its original mission to pry open closed societies,
advocate basic freedoms and support dissenters. But recently it has been
issuing reports on the Israeli-Arab conflict that are helping those who
wish to turn Israel into a pariah state.
'At Human Rights Watch, we always recognized that open, democratic
societies have faults and commit abuses. But we saw that they have the
ability to correct them — through vigorous public debate, an adversarial
press and many other mechanisms that encourage reform.
'That is why we sought to draw a sharp line between the democratic
and nondemocratic worlds, in an effort to create clarity in human
rights. We wanted to prevent the Soviet Union and its followers from
playing a moral equivalence game with the West and to encourage
liberalization by drawing attention to dissidents like Andrei Sakharov,
Natan Sharansky and those in the Soviet gulag — and the millions in
China’s laogai, or labor camps.
'When I stepped aside in 1998, Human Rights Watch was active in 70
countries, most of them closed societies. Now the organization, with
increasing frequency, casts aside its important distinction between open
and closed societies.
'Nowhere is this more evident than in its work in the Middle East.
The region is populated by authoritarian regimes with appalling human
rights records. Yet in recent years Human Rights Watch has written far
more condemnations of Israel for violations of international law than of
any other country in the region.
'Israel, with a population of 7.4 million, is home to at least 80
human rights organizations, a vibrant free press, a democratically
elected government, a judiciary that frequently rules against the
government, a politically active academia, multiple political parties
and, judging by the amount of news coverage, probably more journalists
per capita than any other country in the world — many of
whom are there expressly to cover the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
'Meanwhile, the Arab and Iranian regimes rule over some 350 million
people, and most remain brutal, closed and autocratic, permitting little
or no internal dissent. The plight of their citizens who would most
benefit from the kind of attention a large and well-financed
international human rights organization can provide is being ignored as
Human Rights Watch’s Middle East division prepares report after report
on Israel.
'Human Rights Watch has lost critical perspective on a conflict in
which Israel has been repeatedly attacked by Hamas and Hezbollah,
organizations that go after Israeli citizens and use their own people as
human shields. These groups are supported by the government of Iran,
which has openly declared its intention not just to destroy Israel but
to murder Jews everywhere. This incitement to genocide is a violation of
the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of
Genocide.
'Leaders of Human Rights Watch know that Hamas and Hezbollah chose to
wage war from densely populated areas, deliberately transforming
neighborhoods into battlefields. They know that more and better arms are
flowing into both Gaza and Lebanon and are poised to strike again ... '
Blockades of Gaza, Cuba,
boycotts of Israel, US
It's often said that opponents of Israel, who call for boycotts of Israel
and other action, are inconsistent. Israel is being singled out, unfairly,
whilst states with vile records are excused - no boycotts for them. I agree
with this argument. Here's another instance of inconsistency, one I've never
come across anywhere: the arguments for boycotting Israel are arguments for
boycotting the United States. The parallels are fairly exact. I don't, of
course, think that the United States should be boycotted, any more than
Israel.
We all know about the Palestine Solidarity Campaign. Not nearly so many
people know that there's a Cuba Solidarity Campaign which claims to work for
'the Cuban people's right to self-determination and sovereignty.'
There's been a United States blockade of Cuba for a long time: 'February
2012 marks 50 years since the US imposed its vindictive blockade on Cuba - a
vicious policy which has cost the Cuban economy at least $105 billions and
cause the Cuban people immense suffering and hardship.
The blockade
denies access to food, educational and medical equipment.'
'3,478
Cubans have died in terrorist attacks from US backed right-wing exile
groups.
'For the 23rd consecutive year the UN voted to condemn the
illegal US blockade of Cuba.'
There are no parallels with the
settlements in Palestinian territory, but what there is in Cuba is
Guantanamo Bay, a place which many boycotters could well think merits a
boycott even if there were no other objections.
Many of the same
people who call for a boycott of Israel have very firm opinions about US
actions in such countries as Afghanistan. There are different estimates of
civilian deaths in Aghanistan, but according to Jonathan Steele of the
Guardian, up to 20,000 Afghans may have died as a consequence of the first
four months of US airstrikes in Afghanistan. The total is far higher.
The similarities between Gaza and Cuba are similar when it comes to
human rights violations. At this point, boycotters will want to turn their
attention to more congenial things. I mention many Palestinian human rights
violations on this page. The Cuban record is atrocious: human rights
advocates and people not guilty of criminal acts sentenced to long periods
of imprisonment - 20 years or more - forced labour camps where there's
'verbal and physical mistreatment ... work from dawn to dusk ... scare
food.'
Castro described 'faggots' as 'agents of imperialism' and
their treatment was very harsh. More recently, there has been much greater
tolerance - unlike Gaza.
Efraim Karsh: 'What
occupation?'
Efraim Karsh notes that 'Few subjects have been so falsified so
thoroughly as the recent history of the West Bank and Gaza.' His article,
'What occupation?' is a calm correction of fraudulent
claims, gross distortions and malicious lies about Israel's part in the
history of the West Bank and Gaza. Professor Karsh is a leading academic in
the field of Middle East (and Mediterranean) Studies and the author of many
books on the history of Israel and Israel's opponents, including 'Palestine
Betrayed' and 'Fabricating Israeli History.'
A lengthy extract follows. The complete article:
http://www.aish.com/jw/me/48898917.html
'Palestinian intellectuals routinely blur any distinction between
Israel's actions before and after 1967. Writing recently in the Israeli
daily Ha'aretz, the prominent Palestinian cultural figure Jacques Persiqian
told his Jewish readers that today's terrorist attacks were "what you have
brought upon yourselves after 54 years of systematic oppression of another
people" -- a historical accounting that, going back to 1948, calls into
question not Israel's presence in the West Bank and Gaza but its very
legitimacy as a state.
'Hanan Ashrawi, the most articulate exponent of the Palestinian cause,
has been even more forthright in erasing the line between post-1967 and
pre-1967 "occupations." "I come to you today with a heavy heart," she told
the now-infamous World Conference Against Racism in Durban last summer,
"leaving behind a nation in captivity held hostage to an ongoing naqba [catastrophe]."
' "In 1948, we became subject to a grave historical injustice manifested
in a dual victimization: on the one hand, the injustice of dispossession,
dispersion, and exile forcibly enacted on the population ... On the other
hand, those who remained were subjected to the systematic oppression and
brutality of an inhuman occupation that robbed them of all their rights and
liberties."
'This original "occupation" -- that is, again, the creation and existence
of the state of Israel -- was later extended, in Ashrawi's narrative, as a
result of the Six-Day war:
The charges against Israel's various "occupations" represent a damning
indictment of the entire Zionist enterprise. They are also grossly
false.
' "Those of us who came under Israeli occupation in 1967 have languished
in the West Bank, Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip under a unique combination
of military occupation, settler colonization, and systematic oppression.
Rarely has the human mind devised such varied, diverse, and comprehensive
means of wholesale brutalization and persecution."
'Taken together, the charges against Israel's various "occupations"
represent -- and are plainly intended to be -- a damning indictment of the
entire Zionist enterprise. In almost every particular, they are also grossly
false.
'In 1948, no Palestinian state was invaded or destroyed to make way for
the establishment of Israel. From biblical times, when this territory was
the state of the Jews, to its occupation by the British army at the end of
World War I, Palestine had never existed as a distinct political entity but
was rather part of one empire after another, from the Romans, to the Arabs,
to the Ottomans. When the British arrived in 1917, the immediate loyalties
of the area's inhabitants were parochial-to clan, tribe, village, town, or
religious sect-and coexisted with their fealty to the Ottoman sultan-caliph
as the religious and temporal head of the world Muslim community.
'Under a League of Nations mandate explicitly meant to pave the way for
the creation of a Jewish national home, the British established the notion
of an independent Palestine for the first time and delineated its
boundaries. In 1947, confronted with a determined Jewish struggle for
independence, Britain returned the mandate to the League's successor, the
United Nations, which in turn decided on November 29, 1947, to partition
mandatory Palestine into two states: one Jewish, the other Arab.
'The state of Israel was thus created by an internationally recognized
act of national self-determination -- an act, moreover, undertaken by an
ancient people in its own homeland. In accordance with common democratic
practice, the Arab population in the new state's midst was immediately
recognized as a legitimate ethnic and religious minority. As for the
prospective Arab state, its designated territory was slated to include,
among other areas, the two regions under contest today -- namely, Gaza and
the West Bank (with the exception of Jerusalem, which was to be placed under
international control).
'None of the region's Arab regimes viewed the Palestinians as a distinct
nation.
As is well known, the implementation of the UN's partition plan was
aborted by the effort of the Palestinians and of the surrounding Arab states
to destroy the Jewish state at birth. What is less well known is that even
if the Jews had lost the war, their territory would not have been handed
over to the Palestinians. Rather, it would have been divided among the
invading Arab forces, for the simple reason that none of the region's Arab
regimes viewed the Palestinians as a distinct nation. As the eminent
Arab-American historian Philip Hitti described the common Arab view to an
Anglo-American commission of inquiry in 1946, "There is no such thing as
Palestine in history, absolutely not."
'This fact was keenly recognized by the British authorities on the eve of
their departure. As one official observed in mid-December 1947, "it does not
appear that Arab Palestine will be an entity, but rather that the Arab
countries will each claim a portion in return for their assistance [in the
war against Israel], unless [Transjordan's] King Abdallah takes rapid and
firm action as soon as the British withdrawal is completed." A couple of
months later, the British high commissioner for Palestine, General Sir Alan
Cunningham, informed the colonial secretary, Arthur Creech Jones, that "the
most likely arrangement seems to be Eastern Galilee to Syria, Samaria and
Hebron to Abdallah, and the south to Egypt."
'The British proved to be prescient. Neither Egypt nor Jordan ever
allowed Palestinian self-determination in Gaza and the West Bank -- which
were, respectively, the parts of Palestine conquered by them during the
1948-49 war. Indeed, even UN Security Council Resolution 242, which after
the Six-Day war of 1967 established the principle of "land for peace" as the
cornerstone of future Arab-Israeli peace negotiations, did not envisage the
creation of a Palestinian state. To the contrary: since the Palestinians
were still not viewed as a distinct nation, it was assumed that any
territories evacuated by Israel, would be returned to their pre-1967 Arab
occupiers -- Gaza to Egypt, and the West Bank to Jordan. The resolution did
not even mention the Palestinians by name, affirming instead the necessity
"for achieving a just settlement of the refugee problem" -- a clause that
applied not just to the Palestinians but to the hundreds of thousands of
Jews expelled from the Arab states following the 1948 war.
'At this time -- we are speaking of the late 1960's -- Palestinian
nationhood was rejected by the entire international community, including the
Western democracies, the Soviet Union (the foremost supporter of radical
Arabism), and the Arab world itself. "Moderate" Arab rulers like the
Hashemites in Jordan viewed an independent Palestinian state as a mortal
threat to their own kingdom, while the Saudis saw it as a potential source
of extremism and instability. Pan-Arab nationalists were no less adamantly
opposed, having their own purposes in mind for the region. As late as 1974,
Syrian President Hafez alAssad openly referred to Palestine as "not only a
part of the Arab homeland but a basic part of southern Syria"; there is no
reason to think he had changed his mind by the time of his death in 2000.
...
'What, then, of the period after 1967, when these territories passed into
the hands of Israel? Is it the case that Palestinians in the West Bank and
Gaza have been the victims of the most "varied, diverse, and comprehensive
means of wholesale brutalization and persecution" ever devised by the human
mind?
'At the very least, such a characterization would require a rather
drastic downgrading of certain other well-documented 20th-century phenomena,
from the slaughter of Armenians during World War I and onward through a
grisly chronicle of tens upon tens of millions murdered, driven out, crushed
under the heels of despots. By stark contrast, during the three decades of
Israel's control, far fewer Palestinians were killed at Jewish hands than by
King Hussein of Jordan in the single month of September 1970 when, fighting
off an attempt by Yasir Arafat's PLO to destroy his monarchy, he dispatched
(according to the Palestinian scholar Yezid Sayigh) between 3,000 and 5,000
Palestinians, among them anywhere from 1,500 to 3,500 civilians. Similarly,
the number of innocent Palestinians killed by their Kuwaiti hosts in the
winter of 1991, in revenge for the PLO's support for Saddam Hussein's brutal
occupation of Kuwait, far exceeds the number of Palestinian rioters and
terrorists who lost their lives in the first intifada against Israel during
the late 1980's.
This "occupation" did not come about as a consequence of some grand
expansionist design, but rather was incidental to Israel's success
against a pan-Arab attempt to destroy it.
Such crude comparisons aside, to present the Israeli occupation of the
West Bank and Gaza as "systematic oppression" is itself the inverse of the
truth. It should be recalled, first of all, that this "occupation" did not
come about as a consequence of some grand expansionist design, but rather
was incidental to Israel's success against a pan-Arab attempt to destroy it.
Upon the outbreak of Israeli-Egyptian hostilities on June 5, 1967, the
Israeli government secretly pleaded with King Hussein of Jordan, the
de-facto ruler of the West Bank, to forgo any military action; the plea was
rebuffed by the Jordanian monarch, who was loathe to lose the anticipated
spoils of what was to be the Arabs' "final round" with Israel.
'Thus it happened that, at the end of the conflict, Israel unexpectedly
found itself in control of some one million Palestinians, with no definite
idea about their future status and lacking any concrete policy for their
administration. In the wake of the war, the only objective adopted by
then-Minister of Defense Moshe Dayan was to preserve normalcy in the
territories through a mixture of economic inducements and a minimum of
Israeli intervention. The idea was that the local populace would be given
the freedom to administer itself as it wished, and would be able to maintain
regular contact with the Arab world via the Jordan River bridges. In sharp
contrast with, for example, the U.S. occupation of postwar Japan, which saw
a general censorship of all Japanese media and a comprehensive revision of
school curricula, Israel made no attempt to reshape Palestinian culture. It
limited its oversight of the Arabic press in the territories to military and
security matters, and allowed the continued use in local schools of
Jordanian textbooks filled with vile anti-Semitic and anti-Israel
propaganda.
'Israel's restraint in this sphere -- which turned out to be
desperately misguided -- is only part of the story. The larger part, still
untold in all its detail, is of the astounding social and economic progress
made by the Palestinian Arabs under Israeli "oppression." At the inception
of the occupation, conditions in the territories were quite dire. Life
expectancy was low; malnutrition, infectious diseases, and child mortality
were rife; and the level of education was very poor. Prior to the 1967 war,
fewer than 60 percent of all male adults had been employed, with
unemployment among refugees running as high as 83 percent. Within a brief
period after the war, Israeli occupation had led to dramatic improvements in
general well-being, placing the population of the territories ahead of most
of their Arab neighbors.
...
Under Israeli rule, the Palestinians also made vast progress in social
welfare. Perhaps most significantly, mortality rates in the West Bank and
Gaza fell by more than two-thirds between 1970 and 1990, while life
expectancy rose from 48 years in 1967 to 72 in 2000 (compared with an
average of 68 years for all the countries of the Middle East and North
Africa). Israeli medical programs reduced the infant-mortality rate of 60
per 1,000 live births in 1968 to 15 per 1,000 in 2000 (in Iraq the rate is
64, in Egypt 40, in Jordan 23, in Syria 22). And under a systematic program
of inoculation, childhood diseases like polio, whooping cough, tetanus, and
measles were eradicated.
No less remarkable were advances in the Palestinians' standard of living.
By 1986, 92.8 percent of the population in the West Bank and Gaza had
electricity around the clock, as compared to 20.5 percent in 1967; 85
percent had running water in dwellings, as compared to 16 percent in 1967;
83.5 percent had electric or gas ranges for cooking, as compared to 4
percent in 1967; and so on for refrigerators, televisions, and cars.
Finally, and perhaps most strikingly, during the two decades preceding
the intifada of the late 1980's, the number of schoolchildren in the
territories grew by 102 percent, and the number of classes by 99 percent,
though the population itself had grown by only 28 percent. Even more
dramatic was the progress in higher education. At the time of the Israeli
occupation of Gaza and the West Bank, not a single university existed in
these territories. By the early 1990's, there were seven such institutions,
boasting some 16,500 students. Illiteracy rates dropped to 14 percent of
adults over age 15, compared with 69 percent in Morocco, 61 percent in
Egypt, 45 percent in Tunisia, and 44 percent in Syria.'
Jeff McMahan: a
philosopher goes to war
Jeff
McMahan is a philosopher who has written on the ethics of warfare. His
books include 'Killing in War' and his articles include one in 'Prospect
magazine: 'Gaza: Is Israel fighting a just war?'
http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/philosophy/gaza-is-israel-and-hamass-conflict-a-just-war
The article and the book are instructive examples of the
catastrophic failure of so many philosophers when they turn their attention
to the harshness of reality, although the catastrophic failure is due to
low-level misunderstanding, and above all, laziness in approaching factors that are non-philosophical.
The accusation of laziness is a strong one but justified, I think.
Alternatively, he can be accused of culpable ignorance.
Philosophers concerned with the
applied ethics of war are engaged in a composite
study, one with a philosophical component and a non-philosophical component.
(Here, I'm concerned almost entirely on the non-philosophical component
of the article and the book.) The non-philosophical component requires a thorough study of military
history, or at least an adequate background in military history. A
philosopher writing about the conflict between Israel and Gaza needs to have
more than a perfunctory knowledge of the intertwined histories of Israel and
Gaza. A philosopher writing about the First World War should have avoided
the stupidity and simplicity of this claim, 'There was no reason,
in effect, for anyone to go to war.' He overlooks the fact that Belgium
had every reason to defend itself in view of the fact that it lost most
of its territory during the German invasion and overlooks so much else.
In writing about the bombing of Hiroshima, he claims that the greatest
civilian death toll of the war occurred here. Not so. He overlooks the
need for simple fact checking.
This is the book that Thom Brooks,
the editor of the Journal of Moral Philosophy, praises in these terms:
' ... Killing in War represents a tremendous achievement from one of
today's leading moral philosophers. Never before has a book so swiftly
challenged my own views and convinced me that I was in error. I cannot
recommend it highly enough.' (Review in the 'Times Higher Education
Supplement,' 8 October 2009.)
To begin with,
the article concludes with this:
'If Israel were to abandon the aim of controlling territories to which it
has no right, and to respect the right of Palestinians to a fully
self-determining life in the lands allotted to them in the UN settlement of
1948, those who now fire rockets into Israel and conduct raids on Israeli
forces would lose what sway they now have over the Palestinian people.
Ordinary Palestinians want what other people want: to live with dignity,
free from domination and oppression by others, to be secure and
self-determining, and thus to have the opportunity to flourish in their own
way.'
The last phrase, 'flourish in their own way' is a reminder that
this is a philosopher in full flow, even if the extract includes no
distinctively philosophical argument. 'Flourish' is almost certainly an allusion to the virtue
ethics of Aristotle, whose concept of
εὐδαιμονία has such prominence in the Nicomachean
ethics.
Jeff McMahan's assumption that we're all the same, we all want simply to
be left to get on with our lives in peace, is wide of the mark.
'Palestinians want what other people want: to live with dignity, free from
domination and oppression by others, to be secure and self-determining, and
thus to have the opportunity to flourish in their own way.' Many
Palestinians want exactly that, many Palestinians want the exact opposite,
and many Palestinians want simply want to get on with their lives in peace
after first wiping Israel from the map.
The view of human nature presented is a product of the
'word-sphere,' a concept which I employ in various places in this site. 'The word-sphere is the natural home of imaginative writers. This
isn't a pejorative use of the term. 'Word-sphere' in the pejorative sense
refers to evasion, to faulty {substitution}. The word-sphere is often used
to evade reality. Reality is very often difficult, intractable, sometimes
defeating any attempt at {modification}. It's far easier to arrange words so
that words become a substitute for action, so that words deflect attention
from the lack of action. This is the world of ringing declarations and
facile claims. It offers a more congenial home than reality. The word-sphere
is the natural home for ideologists even when action in the world isn't an
issue, avoiding the need to come to terms with uncomfortable facts.'
It would be impossible to explain the human recourse to war and
conflict, time and again, if the quietism of this passage were the reality.
'Ordinary Palestinians want what other people want ...' Many, many ordinary
people have simply wanted to get on with their lives in peace, 'free from
domination and oppression by others' and many, many ordinary people have
wanted to dominate and oppress others. They have shown every sign of
eagerness to acquire easy pickings, an easy life at the expense of others.
Those films of Germans and Austrians cheering as Hitler made one annexation
and conquest after another have had countless parallels. The author's view
of human nature and human history is stunted, impossible to take seriously.
Palestinian support for Hamas is substantial but limited, but the majority
of Palestinians support the extinction of Israel. The 'other people,' the
people of supposedly good will he mentions so casually include the homicidal
maniacs of ISIS (the Islamic State) and their supporters and apologists. The
'other people' include an endless variety of barbarians, suffocating
conformists, hypocrites, mean-spirited
nonentities ... and, of course, so
many other exemplars of human failings, to accompany the exemplars of human
triumphant success, and endlessly varied other characters.
The author
lacks the imaginative capacity to enter into the
worlds of people very different from himself. The world I delineate in
Palestinian society: an indictment is a
very different world from the academic world at Oxford, Cambridge and other
universities where the author has spent so much of his time.
The
notion that anything that the Israelis could do, short of complete surrender
or suicide, would appease 'those
who now fire rockets into Israel and conduct raids on Israeli forces' is
nonsensical. The notion that enlightened action by the Israelis would cause
the rocket-firers to ''lose what sway they now have over the Palestinian
people.' is nonsensical. The author writes,
'If Israel were to
abandon the aim of controlling territories to which it has no right, and to
respect the right of Palestinians to a fully self-determining life in the
lands allotted to them in the UN settlement of 1948, those who now fire
rockets into Israel and conduct raids on Israeli forces would lose what sway
they now have over the Palestinian people.'
Philosophers tend to emphasize reason, which should be sharply contrasted
with 'reasonableness.' Philosophers have used reason to question the
common-sense reasonableness of the commonly accepted world, pointing out the
pitfalls of sense perception. Reasoned arguments, such as arguments which
make use of the phenomenon of optical illusions, cast doubt on the
'reasonable world.' In the ethical world, philosophers like Jeff McMahan
often use reason to exclude the unreasonable. Writing in 'Tablet,' Lee
Smith writes exceptionally well about the pitfalls of reasonableness:
'What's Wrong With Being Reasonable About the Middle East? Nicholas Kristof's totally reasonable, utterly delusional recipe for peace.'
http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/179742/kristof-reasonable-middle-east
' ... there is a way out, according to New
York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof. Luckily for both Israelis and
Palestinians, the prescription for peace is a simple one: We need “to
de-escalate, starting with a cease-fire that includes an end to Hamas rocket
attacks and a withdrawal from Gaza by Israel ...
'Kristof’s formula is a reasonable and balanced one.
The only problem with it is that, in order to be so reasonable and balanced,
it ignores two basic facts that have been reported in every newspaper in
America. A ceasefire has already
been offered by Egypt: Jerusalem accepted the ceasefire, and Hamas
rejected it. Israel then stopped shooting for six hours, while Hamas
continued firing dozens of rockets into Israel while loudly proclaiming that
it had no intention of honoring the truce. So, no ceasefire.
'The second fact that Kristof’s reasonable-sounding
formula ignores is that there already was an internationally supervised
election in Gaza, back in 2006, which was won handily
by Hamas. There is little to indicate that Hamas would do any worse at the
polls this time around—after all, they didn’t run on a good-government
platform but a war with the Zionist Enemy platform, and they’ve delivered on
their campaign promises not once but three times since taking office ...
'So, is Nicholas Kristof really that ignorant of
basic facts reported by his own newspaper as well as the rest of the entire
international press? Of course not. He is not describing reality but is
rather re-touching his self-image as a man of reason and compassion who can
look on the world of mere mortals from Olympian heights and see the
suffering and folly of both sides. “Here we have a conflict between right
and right,” Kristof writes, “that has been hijacked by hard-liners on each
side who feed each other.”
'But of course, the conflict is not about hardliners on
both sides. Rather, it’s between a state led by a risk-averse prime minister
that, whatever its failings, openly wanted peace and quiet, and a U.S. State
Department-designated foreign
terrorist organization that openly announced its desire for war and has
continued firing rockets despite warnings, attacks, cease-fire offers, and
other devices in the military-diplomatic play-book.
...
'The posture of reasonableness requires one to blame
both sides, because both sides are responsible for solving the issue ...'
Jeff McMahan writes, 'If
Israel were to abandon the aim of controlling territories to which it
has no right, and to respect the right of Palestinians to a fully
self-determining life in the lands allotted to them in the UN settlement of
1948 ...' This is an account of the history of the time and place which is
not so much inadequate - although it's clearly inadequate - as fraudulent.
According to the author, Palestinians are very easily pleased. After
giving the land, the problem goes away. The moderates who would accept this
are dominated and overwhelmed by the non-moderates who want far more, whose
demands are almost insatiable - nothing less than the wiping out of Israel.
The Hamas Charter is clear, but there are no signs that Jeff Mcmahan has
looked at this fundamental document.
Another stumbling block is that
he misunderstands and distorts the history of land occupation in the area,
if he has made any effort to investigate it at all. A superb corrective is
provided by Efraim Karsh, the author of What
Occupation?
The author gives some remarkable proposals for enhancing the moral
understanding of soldiers. He writes,
' ... if we wish to prevent the initiation of unjust wars, one of the
most important courses of action we can take is to try, so far as
possible, to eliminate the epistemic excuses available to unjust
combatants - or, in other words, to enable soldiers to have both a
greatly enhanced understanding of the moral character of the war in
which they are commanded to fight, and certain forms of legal support if
their improved moral understanding leads them to engage in conscientious
refusal to fight.
'I have elsewhere proposed that the best way to pursue this goal
would be to establish an impartial international court whose
function would be to interpret and administer a reformed and morally
better informed body of law ... '
There are so many objections to this. These are just a few.
Utopians, and the excessively idealistic, never make good military
thinkers and Jeff McMahan is in the grip of a full-blown utopian
delusion. Breaches of the international laws relating to armed combat
are relatively easy to recognize and interpret. An international court
can decide these matters fairly easily. Not so the justice or injustice
of a war. Here, bias and ideology run rampant, irreconcilable
differences are rarely reconciled and an 'impartial' international court
is an impossibility. A court decision, if acted upon by the forces
of a state in large numbers, causing the state to become the losing side
in a conflict, would be catastrophic for the court.
The war in Vietnam was a war against communism and the greatest death
tolls have occurred in communist regimes. Gunnar Heinsohn, the director of the Raphael-Lemkin-Institut für Xenophobie-
und Genozidforschung at the University of Bremen has compiled statistics to
rank conflicts since 1948 by the number of deaths incurred. Stalinist
Russia, Mao Zedong's China and in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge.
Estimates of the total deaths inflicted by communist regimes range from
85 to 100 million. If this is nothing like a full justification for
going to war against Vietnam, Americans in doubt about the moral
justification for going to war could be persuaded by such facts. It
would not, however, fit in with Jeff McMahan's view.
Any McMahian international court sitting at the time of the cold war
would have been very unlikely to have condoned action against communist
regimes, if communist regimes had their way. This was a time of deep and
irreconcilable differences. This is still a time of deep and
irreconcilable differences, with very little common ground and no
endless supplies of impartiality.
Would this impartial court have ruled that British men should not
enlist? A court decision on these lines would have been treated with
contempt. After all, there seemed ample justification for thinking of
this as a just war for the British.
Liddle Hart's 'History of the First World War' (which I quote because
written by someone who fought in the war and wrote the book not so long
after the war ended, is one of the very many historians who have
stressed the injustice done to neutral Belgium by the Germans:
' ... the British Cabinet was still wavering. A majority of its
members were so anxious for peace and uncertain of the public attitude
that they had failed to give a clear warning which might have
strengthened Bethmann-Hollweg in his feeble efforts to withstand his own
war party. Now it was too late and the military machine was in control
...
'Germany came to the rescue. Her long-prepared ultimatum to Belgium,
demanding a free passage for her troops as required by her still
longer-prepared war plan, was delivered on the evening of August 2nd.
The Belgian government sturdily refused to allow its neutrality to be
violated. On the morning of August 4th, the German troops began their
invasion. The threat, even before the act was known, was decisive in
hardening British opinion to the point of intervention, even though that
intervention was already inevitable, as the German Staff had correctly
calculated.'
Gary Sheffield in 'Forgotten Victory:'
The Germans overran all but a sliver of Belgium in 1914. Belgium was
a small state but an economically important one. Faced by the resistance
of Belgian workers and industrialists to working for the invader, the
Germans effectively de-industrialised Belgium by destroying plant or
shipping it back to Germany. Belgium was also viewed as a valuable
source of labour. As many as 120,000 Belgians were deported to Germany
in 1916 - 17. The Germans used starvation as a weapon to force the
Belgians to work. William Alexander Percy, an American volunteer with
Herbert Hoover's Commission for Relief in Belgium, remembered seeing
batches of Belgian workers returning from forced labour in Germany.
'They were creatures imagined by El Greco - skeletons, with blue flesh
clinging to their bones, too weak to stand alone, too ill to be hungry
any longer. This was only a miniature venture into slavery, a
preliminary to the epic conquest and enslavement of whole peoples in
1940, but it seemed hideous and unprecedented to us in 1917.'
The armed forces of utterly ruthless states are the most likely by
far to be ordered to fight in an obviously unjust war, and refusal to
fight is likely to mean a very high likelihood of execution. The armed
forces of liberal, democratic states may be conscripts or professionals.
Conscripts who consider the cause to be unjust and refuse to fight are
likely to be recognized as conscientious objectors. Professionals who
consider the cause to be unjust and refuse to fight will lose their job
and are likely to face imprisonment.
To expect ordinary military personnel to have a detailed and informed
knowledge of the factors which make military action desirable or
undesirable is asking the impossible. A government may have access to
secret information which make military action desirable or essential. To
divulge the information could well put at risk the informants.
Even if , as in the majority of cases, recourse to war will not
be based on top secret information, the circumstances are likely to be
highly complex. Again and again, the moral case for going to war is
accompanied by urgent practical reasons for not going to war, which may
well be very abstruse and uncertain - the effects on various alliances,
for instance. The moral case for opposing ISIS in Syria is as strong as
the moral case for opposing ISIS in Iraq, but, of course, action in
Syria has to take account of President Assad's rule in the country. In
Iraq, the moral case for fighting against ISIS has to recognize the
immense war weariness of the countries which fought for so long in Iraq,
as well as Afghanistan.
The armed forces who are asked to be moral arbiters, to
decide whether they should embark on a new conflict, may have been
through the gruelling process of conflict recently, in no fit state to
give much thought to the moral implications of a new conflict. Jeff
McMahan only considers decisions to be made before a conflict, not the
decisions which arise as a result of changes in the conflict. To ask
troops who had fought their way up Italy in a conflict which was bloody
and demanding to give thought to the morality of bombing Monte Cassino
would be to ask the impossible.
Miners who were engaged in back-breaking work before the First World
War, hewing coal with pick-axes in indesribably harsh conditions, at a
time when mining accidents were common - does Jeff McMahan expect them
to calmly give thought to 'epistemic excuses' for unjust war and how to
avoid them?
Jeff McMahan seems to show not the least awareness of all the forces
which make for distortion - the distortions of the media, not always
good at analysis of current events, the tide of popular opinion, the
shameless lying to be found in the social media.
If 100 000 soldiers see no moral difficulties in fighting in the next
war but 5 000 soldiers see real difficulties, he would support the loss
of these 5 000 soldiers. An army, navy or air force can't possibly be
run on this basis. (And it may take a generation or two, or more, before
a clearer view is obtained of the issues surrounding a conflict. At the
time of the conflict, a clear view is much more difficult. Or there may
be conflicting opinions about the morality of a conflict for an
indefinite period.)
Jeff McMahan has proposed a reform which is no reform at all and
which has absolutely no chance of being implemented. Any armed forces
which did implement it would never gain by it.
The severe limitations of Jeff McMahan as a thinker on war are
revealed in more astounding passages in 'Killing in War.' Very near the
beginning of the book is this. He presents outworn, conventional opinions in
apparent unawareness that these opinions have been challenged by revisionist
historians.
''World War I is the paradigm of an
utterly pointless war. There was, in effect, no reason for anyone to go to
war. This war was a consequence of fatuous assertions of misjudgments about
anticipatory mobilization, alliance commitments, and so on ... '
One of these revisionist historians is Professor Gary Sheffield, the
author of 'Forgotten Victory: The First World War: Myths and realities.'
'The First World War was a tragic conflict, but it was neither futile
nor meaningless.'
' ... the work of many diplomatic and political historians points
firmly away from the popular view that the war was a ghastly accident and
instead underlines that the war was fought over substantive issues.' 'In the
aftermath of the Second World War, democratic West Germany was readmitted to
the family of Western States. West German historians were understandably
anxious to stress the discontinuities of German history, to arguethat Hitler
and the Nazis had been a uniquely evil phenomenon. It is easy to understand
the fury that exploded in the 1960's when the Hamburg historian Fritz
Fischer published books arguing that Germany deliberately planned and
executed a war of aggression in 1914. Perhaps worse, Fischer drew attention
to the similarities between the German war aims under the Kaiser and those
of the Third Reich. Fischer's writings caused more than a spat between
historians; they were oyf national consequence. By implying continuities
between some aspects of the policy of Wilhelmine and Nazi Germany, he caused
Germans to question the comfortable notion that Nazism had been an
aberration. Forty years later, Fischer's thesis is still at the centre of
the debate of the origins of the First World War ... '
Jeff McMahan's claim that nobody had any reason to fight is
obviously nonsensical. Whether Fritz Fischer's thesis is accepted or
not, it's historical fact that early in the war, Germany occupied almost
all the territory of Belgium and a large part of France. The Belgians
and French had every reason to fight to regain their territory.
As for the claim that Austria-Hungary's fight in the war was
particularly futile, it would be difficult to deny the claims of Italy,
which was the most opportunistic of the combatant nations and whose
battles on the Isonzo under the leadership (for want of a better word)
of General Cadorna were genuinely futile, unlike, for instance, the
often quoted example of the forces taking part in the Battle of the
Somme. (William Philpott's 'Bloody Victory: The Sacrifice on the Somme'
is an excellent corrective to the received view obviously shared by Jeff
McMahan. William Philpott argues that the Battle was a necessary stage
in an intensive war of attrition, a stage in which the British army
learned so much.
Another supposedly 'killer argument' from Jeff McMahan:
'It is revealing about our attitudes in general that
we sometimes do take combatants who have committed war crimes to be fully
excused, or even justified… Perhaps the most notorious case of this sort is
that of General Paul Tibbets, who was the commander and pilot of the Enola
Gay,the plane … from which the atomic bomb was dropped on the
Japanese city of Hiroshima in August of 1945… This single act by Tibbets,
with contributions by the other members of his small crew, had as an
immediate physical effect the killing of more people, the vast majority of
whom were civilians, than any other single act ever done … all plausible
moral theories, including even the most radical forms of consequentialism,
prohibit the killing of that many innocent
people in virtually all practically possible circumstances. Tibbets's act is
therefore the most egregious war crime, and the most destructive single
terrorist act, ever committed, even though it was committed in the course of
a just war. Yet he was congratulated for it by President Truman… (pp.
128–29)
To many people, this will seem very impressive. Who could argue
against such a civilian death toll?
To begin with, the extract shows that his knowledge of military
history isn't adequate to the task. Nobody who writes about the bombing of
Hiroshima should be unaware that the bombing never involved 'the killing of
more people, the vast majority of whom were civilians, than any other single
act ever done.'
As I write in the section Democracies
and warfare: harsh realities, the bombing of Tokyo on the night
of 9 - 10 March 1945 caused more deaths than the bombing of Hiroshima.
The author fully indulges in the current tendency to use words
irresponsibly, with no regard at all for essential distinctions - but
concern for these essential distinctions, any care at all for the health of
language, has been all but abandoned. If I point out that since 1948,
Israel has carried out only one execution, of the Nazi Adolf Eichmann, and
that this is in sharp contrast with such states as Nazi Germany and
Stalinist Russia, which carried out executions on a massive scale, then
someone may claim that the Israelis have 'executed' thousands of Palestinian
people. To use the term 'execution' for the people killed during operations
of war is misuse of the word 'execution.' The word 'murder,' like the word
'execution' has a judicial context or background and should never be used
freely. 'Genocide' is an attempt to kill all the members of a group and it
should be obvious that Israel has never come remotely near to genocidal
action in the Palestinian territories.
Jeff McMahan uses the word 'terrorist' for an operation ordered by
the head of state and is misusing the word.
His misunderstanding of consequentialism is worrying in the case of a
professional philosopher. Consequentialism has to work in the case of
very large numbers as well as in the case of small numbers. Whether a tiny
number of civilian deaths is at issue or a massive number, the
consequentialist has to look at the imperative to minimize the number of
deaths. The war in Europe had ended. Every day that the war in the Pacific
went involved many, many deaths, military and civilian. The imperative was
to bring the war to an end in this theatre as quickly as possible, but the
alternatives involved horrendous difficulties. Even now, with the benefit of
hindsight, no agreement exists concerning the wisest choice in the
circumstances. At the time, after the most gruelling and costly military
operations, in the midst of the most gruelling and costly military
operations, the choice was more difficult by far.
Without wishing in the least to minimize the arguments against the
use of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, these are some arguments
in its favour. At least I avoid Jeff McMahan's completely spurious claim to
certainty and to superior insight. The furious debate at the time and later
leaves not a trace in his complacent and simple-minded account.
The Wikipedia account 'Debate over the atomic bombings of Hiroshima
and Nagasaki' can be wholeheartedly recommended. If I quote only from the
section concerned with support for the case for bombing, I recommend
wholeheartedly not just reading more of this section but the study of as
much as possible of the section which puts the case for 'Opposition.'
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debate_over_the_atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki
'Te U.S. anticipated losing many soldiers in
Downfall, although the number of expected
fatalities and wounded is subject to some debate. U.S.
President Trumanstated in 1953 he had been advised U.S.
casualties could range from 250,000 to one million men.[10][11] Assistant
Secretary of the Navy Ralph
Bard, a member of theInterim
Committee on atomic matters, stated that while meeting
with Truman in the summer of 1945 they discussed the bomb's use in the
context of massive military and civilian casualties from invasion, with Bard
raising the possibility of a million Allied soldiers were being killed. As
Bard opposed using the bomb without warning Japan first he cannot be accused
of exaggerating casualty expectations to justify the bomb's use, and his
account is evidence that Truman was aware of, and government officials
discussed, the possibility of one million deaths or casualties.
...
'In addition, a large number of Japanese military
and civilian casualties were expected as a result of such actions.
Contemporary estimates of Japanese deaths from an invasion of the Home
Islands ranged from several hundreds of thousands to as high as ten million.
General MacArthur's staff provided an estimated range of American deaths
depending on the duration of the invasion, and also estimated a 22:1 ratio
of Japanese to American deaths. From this, a low figure of somewhat more
than 200,000 Japanese deaths can be calculated for a short invasion of two
weeks, and almost 3 million Japanese deaths if the fighting lasted four
months.[17] A
widely cited estimate of 5 to 10 million Japanese deaths came from a study
by William
Shockley and Quincy
Wright; the upper figure was used by Assistant Secretary
of WarJohn
J. McCloy who characterized it as conservative.
...
'The great loss
of lives during the battle
of Iwo Jima and other
Pacific islands gave US leaders a clear picture of the
casualties that would happen with a main land invasion. Of the 22,060
Japanese soldiers entrenched on Iwo Jima, 21,844 died either from fighting
or by ritual suicide. Only 216 were captured during the battle.
...
'Supporters of the bombing argue waiting for the Japanese to
surrender would also have cost lives. "For China alone, depending upon what
number one chooses for overall Chinese casualties, in each of the
ninety-seven months between July 1937 and August 1945, somewhere between
100,000 and 200,000 persons perished, the vast majority of them
noncombatants. For the other Asian states alone, the average probably ranged
in the tens of thousands per month, but the actual numbers were almost
certainly greater in 1945, notably due to the mass death in a famine in
Vietnam. Historian Robert P. Newman concluded that each month that the war
continued in 1945 would have produced the deaths of 'upwards of 250,000
people, mostly Asian but some Westerners.'"
'The end of the war liberated millions of laborers working in harsh
conditions under a forced mobilization. In the Dutch
East Indies, there was a "forced mobilization of some 4
million—although some estimates are as high as 10 million—romusha (manual
laborers)...About 270,000 romusha were sent to the Outer Islands and
Japanese-held territories in Southeast Asia, where they joined other Asians
in performing wartime construction projects. At the end of the war, only
52,000 were repatriated to Java."
...
'Supporters of the bombings have emphasized the strategic
significance of the targets. Hiroshima was used as headquarters of the Fifth
Division and the 2nd General Army, which commanded the defense of southern
Japan with 40,000 military personnel stationed in the city. Hiroshima was a
communication center, an assembly area for troops, a storage point and had
several military factories as well. Nagasaki
was of great wartime importance because of its wide-ranging industrial
activity, including the production of ordnance, ships, military equipment,
and other war materials.
'On 30 June 2007, Japan's defense minister Fumio
Kyuma said the dropping of atomic bombs
on Japan by the United States during World War II was an inevitable way to
end the war. Kyuma said: "I now have come to accept in my mind that in order
to end the war, it could not be helped (shikata
ga nai) that an atomic
bomb was dropped on Nagasaki and that
countless numbers of people suffered great tragedy." Kyuma, who is from
Nagasaki, said the bombing caused great suffering in the city, but he does
not resent the U.S. because it prevented the Soviet Union from entering the
war with Japan. Kyuma's comments were similar
to those made by Emperor
Hirohito when, in his first ever press
conference given in Tokyo in 1975, he was asked what he thought of the
bombing of Hiroshima, and answered: "It's very regrettable that nuclear
bombs were dropped and I feel sorry for the citizens of Hiroshima but it
couldn't be helped (shikata ga nai) because that happened in wartime."
Nagasaki mayor Tomihisa
Taue protested against Kyuma, and Prime
Minister Shinzo
Abe apologized over Kyuma's remark to
Hiroshima A-bomb survivors.In the wake of the outrage provoked by his
statements, Kyuma had to resign on 3 July.' His resignation was surely unnecessary. This was a legitimate point of
view.'
Aerial
bombardment: killing and the prevention of killing
I begin with information about Musheir El-Farra of Sheffield but go on to
criticize the 'leaders of Gaza civil society' (he was one of them) who
signed an 'important statement' which did nothing to halt killing in Gaza.
The poet Richard Eberhart:
'You would think the fury of aerial bombardment
Would arouse God to relent ... '
Or furious criticism arouse the Israelis to relent?
On 5 August 2014, the Daily Mail' published a piece on the aerial bombardment of Khan Younis
in Gaza. These are some extracts:
'The misery of Palestinians in Gaza has been brought home to the UK
after a Yorkshire man lost 11 members of his family to a single Israeli air
strike.
'Musheir El-Farrah, a civil engineer from Sheffield, learned on
Friday morning that his cousin's home in Khan Younis, southern Gaza, was hit
by a warplane overnight.
'Five children, aged from four to 15, are among the dead. Five of Mr
El-Farrah's relatives - including his cousin Mahmoud El-Farra - are fighting
for their lives in intensive care.'
'The El-Farrahs were killed in a flurry of Israeli air strikes just
over an hour before a ceasefire was due to temporarily halt the relentless
bombardment of the Gaza Strip.'
'Israel's global standing has taken a nose dive after nearly 2,000
Palestinians, mostly civilians, have been killed in the 27 days that its
forces have waged war on the besieged territory.'
Musheir el-Farra is the chair of Sheffield Palestine Solidarity
Campaign. Is this not conclusive evidence that Musheir El-Farra is right to
oppose Israel and that the Palestine Solidarity Campaign is right to oppose
Israel?
I sympathize with his loss. I recognize fully the hideousness of aerial
bombardment: men, women and children killed, crushed beneath rubble, or
horribly injured, crushed beneath rubble. But I give reasons for opposing
Musheir El-Farra's view of the Israel-Palestinian conflict and the Palestine
Solidarity Campaign's view of the conflict.
Harrowing experience is no
guarantee that response to the experience, interpretation of the experience
will do anything to make these terrible events less likely in the future.
Politicians and other people who want to end a humanitarian catastrophe and
to make similar humanitarian catastrophes less likely in the future have to
be guided not just by intense emotion.
I sent an email to the Sheffield Solidarity Campaign (13.09.2014) to inform
him that I'd added to the site a section which concerned him. I also wrote, 'If there are any comments and criticisms then I would be glad
to receive them. (Alternatively, you could consider publishing them
on your Website.) They may help to make the section, and the page as
a whole, as accurate and fair as possible.' I haven't received any
comments and criticisms and none have been published on the
Campaign's Website.
Musheir El-Farra's relatives were killed 'just over an hour before
a ceasefire was due to temporarily halt the relentless bombardment of the
Gaza Strip.' But Musheir El-Farra had already opposed ceasefires, except on
terms which would make a ceasefire impossible.
Musheir El-Farra's relatives were killed or injured on 1 August, 2014.
Just over a week before, on 23 July, an 'Important Statement' was
published in various places, signed by a large number of 'Gaza Civil
Society Leaders,' including Musheir El-Farra and his sister Mona El-Farra.
To summarize, at a stage in the conflict between Israel and Gaza when casualties were
still relatively light, these leaders of Gaza civil society declared their support for Hamas'
policies in the conflict, which included the use of indiscriminate weapons, the rockets aimed at Israel, and Hamas'
futile insistence on ceasefires which were unrealistic, certain to be
refused by the Israelis, certain to lead to further casualties in Gaza. A
ceasefire was eventually accepted by Hamas under terms almost identical to
the early ones.
These leaders somehow failed to see what was
staring them in the face. They failed to see that refusing a ceasefire would
be followed by unnecessary casualties. If they were taken by surprise, they
should not have been. An object released falling to the ground by the action
of gravity would be no more surprising.
The signatories showed monumental
political obtuseness. Their support for the continued firing of rockets into
Israel - not counting the ones which fell short and landed in
Gaza - if the unrealistic demands were not accepted amounted to an ethical
failure.
The signatories are at one with Hamas in rejecting the ceasefire
offered. If an early ceasefire had been accepted, then the relatives of Musheir El-Farra would not have been killed, with so many others. The statement
makes this claim:
'Hamas represented the sentiment of the vast majority of residents
when it
rejected the unilateral ceasefire proposed by Egypt and Israel without
consulting anyone in Gaza. We share the broadly held public sentiment that
it is unacceptable to merely return to the status quo – in which Israel
strictly limits travel in and out of the Gaza Strip, controls the supplies
that come in (including a ban on most construction materials), and prohibits
virtually all exports, thus crippling the economy and triggering one of the
highest poverty and unemployment rates in the Arab world.
'To do so would mean a return to a living death.'
There was absolutely no prospect that Israel would agree to the
preconditions demanded by the signatories, such as this: 'Unlimited import
and export of supplies and goods, including by land, sea and air.' To
include them was to guarantee failure, was to guarantee that there would be
no ceasefire. Unlimited import means unlimited import of weapons for attacks
on Israel, unlimited import of construction materials for building tunnels
for attacks on Israel. This is the work of political innocents, people with
a faint sense of realities.
Their failure to learn from the conflict between Israel and Gaza of 2008
- 9, when Israel undertook Operation Cast Lead, is astonishing. Then, the
conflict began when Israel attempted to stop the firing of rockets into
Israeli territory and to stop the flow of weapons into Gaza. Operation Cast
Lead proved, if proof were needed, that Israel would stand firm and show
vast military superiority in future conflicts, unless circumstances were to
change dramatically in the interim. There were no dramatic changes which
would make it in the least likely that Israel would accept rocket attacks
and flow of weapons into Gaza in 2014. The signatories should have realized
this at the very beginning of the recent hostilities. This is inability to
learn from experience on a grand scale - or grandiose scale.
After hostilities ended in 2009, ' ... the European Union, the
Organisation of the Islamic Conference and over 50 nations donated
humanitarian aid to Gaza, including the United States, which donated over
$20 million. On January 7, a UN Relief Works Agency spokesman acknowledged
that he was "aware of instances where deliveries of humanitarian aid into
Gaza" were diverted by the Hamas government, though never from his agency.'
After hostilites ended in 2014, governments and non-governmental agencies
must again donate on a massive scale to a territory which never seems to
learn. A familiar dictum of economics is: 'Scarce resources and infinite
wants.' The desperate needs of the world can never be met, and why the needs
of Gaza should have priority is a mystery. Will Palestinians continue to
fire rockets and continue to invite certain retaliation and continue to
expect foreign aid for reconstuction at frequent intervals? Perhaps the
donors will eventually draw conclusions and become less generous and decide
to give their money to other causes.
The ceasefire which was eventually accepted in 2014 met none of the
demands of the signatories, as could have been predicted.
Musheir El-Farra and the other signatories should have been exerting as
much pressure as they could on Hamas to accept a ceasefire and to keep to
the ceasefire. As I put it publicly at one of Sheffield Solidarity
Campaign's events, 'Stop firing rockets. Stop breaking ceasefires.'
The Important Statement contains this:
'With temporary shelters full and the indiscriminate Israeli shelling,
there is literally no place that is safe in Gaza.'
Since Hamas hasn't provided shelters for all the population, all the more
reason not to fire rockets and invite certain retaliation. Where would
rockets fired in the future be fired from? As in the case of the rockets
already fired, very often from sites near to residential buildings and such
buildings as schools. All the more reason to do everything possible to avoid
Israeli attacks on launching sites. Hamas is a terrorist organization which
has carried out many suicide bombings in Israel, which has built a network
of tunnels to attack Israel, and which declares that its objective is to
destroy Israel. Given the fact that the Hamas personnel who are legitimate
targets of the Israelis are very often to be found in close proximity with
the general population, this is a further reason to avoid Israeli action by
avoiding firing rockets.
If Musheir El-Farra and the others can't realize the obviousness of these
considerations and their extreme importance, then these representatives of
Gazan civic society are doing nothing for the reputation of Gazan civic
society. As for the claim of 'indiscriminate' Israeli shelling, then
their knowledge of military history, the broad history which is essential
for context, essential to provide comparisons, is dangerously lacking.
Warnings of impending attack were evidently not given in all cases or most
cases but they were given in very many cases, by phone message or by
non-lethal blows to the roof of a building. In the history of warfare, this
is very, very uncommon. People who fail to concede obvious points and to
make any necessary qualifications are liable to see their credibility lost,
although not in gullible circles, such as the branches of the Palestine
Solidarity Campaign.
The reports of the deaths of the relatives of Musheir and Mona el-Farra
omit - and this is completely understandable - the military situation in the
town. In the Gaza conflict, a main Palestinian weapon is the IEF or improvised explosive
device, familiar from operations in Afghanistan. Familiar too are the
fearful injuries to British soldiers when these devices have exploded.
Khan Younis has been a major centre for operations by the IDF against
Hamas operatives, who have planted innumerable IED devices in the
area.
A report on operations:
'Inside Gaza, Hamas has booby-trapped hundreds of homes and installations
with improvised bombs. One such IED killed three Israeli soldiers on
Wednesday [30 August, a few days before the relatives of Musheir and Mona
el-Farra were killed] in a building labeled as an UNRWA clinic in the
southern Gaza Strip city of Khan Younis, where IDF soldiers were searching
for a tunnel shaft. IDF’s Gaza Division commander, Brig. Gen. Micky
Edelstein, told journalists that in one Khan Younis street he encountered,
19 of the 28 homes were booby-trapped, ready to explode over IDF soldiers
who enter them.
The claim is made that there was no warning before the operation which
killed the relatives of Musheir and Mona el-Farra, but operations in Khan
Younis have been preceded by warnings. In a report in the
New York Times
for July 8:
'The call came to the cellphone of his brother’s wife, Salah Kaware said
Tuesday. Mr. Kaware lives in Khan Younis, in southeast Gaza, and the caller
said that everyone in the house must leave within five minutes, because it
was going to be bombed.
'A
further warning came as the occupants were leaving, he said in a telephone
interview, when an Israeli drone apparently fired a flare at the roof of the
three-story home. “Our neighbors came in to form a human shield,” he said,
with some even going to the roof to try to prevent a bombing. Others were in
the stairway when the house was bombed not long afterward.
'Seven people died, Mr. Kaware said, a figure also stated by the Palestinian
Health Ministry in Gaza, which also said that 25 people were wounded. The
Israeli military said that targeted houses belonged to Hamas members
involved in launching rockets or other military activity, and that they had
been used as operations rooms.'
The Important Statement has its quota of distortion and falsification,
for example this: 'As academics, public figures and activists witnessing the
intended genocide of 1.8 million Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip ... '
The familiar misuse of the word 'genocide.' The Nazi genocide was an attempt
to kill every Jew in Nazi-controlled territory. To suppose that Israelis
intend to kill every Palestinian they can is psychotic rubbish. Whereas the
Nazis set up gallows and gas chambers and used firing squads, the Israelis
have never used the death penalty in the history of the modern state, with
one exception, the Nazi Eichmann. (The Palestinian territories make use of the gallows and firing squads.)
Without a constant barrage of simplifications, evasions, distortions and
falsifications and the repetitive, debased language used to express them,
the Palestinian ideology would be lost.
The statement refers to 'basic freedoms that have been denied to the
people for more than seven years.' These 'basic freedoms' apparently include
the freedom to import materials without restriction, including the freedom
to import materials for constructing new tunnels for attacks on Israel and
materials for constructing rockets for attacks on Israel. What of the basic
freedoms which are denied by Hamas and not acknowledged by the
majority of Palestinians, such as the basic freedoms of
gay people and
Christians
to live their lives without fear? What of the basic freedom to
express opinion freely, including criticism of Hamas?
The Important Statement mentions poverty and unemployment in Gaza.
Discoverthenetworks.org 'A Guide to the Political Left' has a significant
discussion of these very topics, adapted from 'Who is Really Oppressing the
Palestinians?' by David Meir-Levi.
http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/viewSubCategory.asp?id=824
'How did the Palestinians reach their current tragic state? Are the
Israelis responsible? What part of the blame falls on the other Arab states
and the Palestinians’ own leaders?
These are important questions. The
answers are complex, requiring a historical literacy and a willingness to go
beyond the simplistic notion of the international media that the Mid-east
conflict is a matter of conflicting rights and Israeli “occupation” of
Palestinian lands.
'Within a few days of the June 10 cease-fire
following Israel's victory in the Six Day War of 1967, Abba Eban, Israel’s
Ambassador to the UN, made his famous speech offering to negotiate the
return of captured territories in exchange for three Arab concessions:
diplomatic recognition of Israel; negotiations to decide on universally
recognized borders and other issues; and peace as a final outcome. Western
countries expressed amazement that the victor was offering to negotiate with
the vanquished and was willing to make concrete concessions (return of
territories) in exchange for symbolic and diplomatic ones.
'To
formulate a response to this unexpected new reality, the Arab states called
a summit meeting in Khartoum (capital of Sudan). The result was the now
infamous three Khartoum NOs: no recognition, no negotiations, no peace.
Thus Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza was caused first by Arab
aggression and then by Arab refusal to negotiate a peace after the Arab
armies had been vanquished.
'After the war, Israel began what is
sometimes called its “mini-Marshall plan” for the West Bank and the Gaza
Strip, investing hundreds of millions of dollars to bring them both into the
20th century with regard to infrastructure, roads, sewerage, electricity,
phones, radio and TV broadcasting, water purification and water supply.
World Bank records indicate that the GDP of the West Bank grew at the
average rate of 13% per year between 1967 and 1994. Tourism skyrocketed,
unemployment almost disappeared as hundreds of thousands of Arabs worked
in Israel’s economy earning far more than their counterparts in other Arab
countries ...
'And, perhaps most telling of all, free and
unencumbered access to Israel’s medical infrastructure resulted in a
declining infant mortality and a rise in longevity ...
'All this
time, the Arab nations remained formally at war with Israel. In
1979, Egypt alone among the Arab states agreed to sign a peace treaty
with Israel. In response to Egypt’s willingness to sign the peace, Israel
withdrew its forces and settlements in the Sinai.
When the 1993 Oslo
Accords allowed Yasser Arafat to set up shop in the West Bank as the head of
the newly created Palestinian Authority, the existing robust economy created
in partnership between Israel and the Arabs ground to a halt and then went
into a steep decline. By 2002, the West Bank’s GDP was one-tenth of what it
had been in 1993.
'Data provided by the UN Human Development program
of 2005 indicate that the economic difficulties experienced by the
Palestinian Arabs were largely the result of policies of the Arafat regime
and not from any oppression by the State of Israel. Looking at what it calls
“The Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT),” the UN report notes, for
instance, that the second Intifada beginning in September 2000 resulted “in
a sharp deterioration in living standards and life chances.” The poverty
rate nearly tripled from 20% in 1999 to 55% in 2003. In one telling example,
the report notes that because of the Intifada, the town of Nablus -- a
prosperous commercial hub prior to September 2000 -- became an economic
basket case. Shops were closed; to survive, workers had to sell their tools,
and farmers were forced to sell their land. It was Arafat’s war, not Israeli
rule, that destroyed Palestinian prosperity and bled its people.
'Israel is the scapegoat for the plight of the Palestinians, but from the
19th century onward, Arab leaders, both local and external, have betrayed
the Palestinian Arabs, forced them into poverty, cheated, intimidated, and
oppressed them, condemned them to serfdom and stolen the land out from under
them. Every opportunity for statehood was squandered by leaders who chose
war and terrorism over peace and cooperation and thus condemned their people
to poverty.'
BBC Watch on life in the Gaza strip:
http://bbcwatch.org/2013/01/01/life-in-the-gaza-strip-according-to-the-bbc/
Even with the corruption, mismanagement and incompetence of the Hamas
administration, to describe life in Gaza as a 'living death' is flagrant
exaggeration. Compare life in Gaza with life in the Warsaw Ghetto (a
placard at a Sheffield Palestine Solidarity Campaign demonstration made
exactly this comparison, an ignorant and contemptible comparison.
One magazine chosen for publication of the Important Statement,
'The Revival,' is one of the more enlightened Islamist publications, but not nearly enlightened enough. It attacks terrorist actions by
Moslems which take place in this country - good, obviously - but where
Israel is concerned, nothing but the blackest of blacks, nothing but the
most absolute of condemnations, nothing but unflinching and complete
criticism will do. Another outlet chosen for publication was the Freedom Flotilla
Foundation's 'Gaza's Ark.'
Musheir el-Farra is the
author of 'Gaza: when the sky rained white fire.' The book is about the effects
of Operation Cast Lead. The 'white fire' of the title is a reference to
phosphorus munitions.
The 2008 - 2009 Israeli operations in Gaza, operation 'Cast Lead,' were
intended to stop rocket attacks on Israel and to prevent the flow of
weapons into Gaza. From the Wikipedia entry on operation 'Cast Lead:'
'After watching footage of Israeli troop deployments on television, a
British soldier who completed numerous combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan
with the Intelligence Corps defended the Israeli Army's use of white
phosphorus. The soldier noted, "White phosphorus is used because it provides
an instant smokescreen, other munitions can provide a smokescreen but the
effect is not instant. Faced with overwhelming enemy fire and wounded
comrades, every commander would choose to screen his men instantly, to do
otherwise would be negligent."
'Colonel Lane, a military expert testifying in front of the fact-finding
mission in July 2009, told that white phosphorus is used for smoke
generation to hide from the enemy. He stated, "The quality of smoke produced
by white phosphorus is superb; if you want real smoke for real coverage,
white phosphorus will give it to you."
'Professor Newton, expert in laws of armed conflict testifying in front of
the committee, said that in an urban area, where potential perils are
snipers, explosive devices and trip wires, one effective way to mask forces'
movement is by white phosphorus. In certain cases, he added, such choice of
means would be less harmful for civilian population than other munitions,
provided that the use of white phosphorus withstands the proportionality
test. In discussing the principle of proportionality he said that the
legality of using white phosphorus in an urban setting could only be decided
on a case by case basis taking into account "the precise circumstances of
its use, not in general, generically, but based on that target, at that
time". He stressed that the humanitarian implications were vital in this
assessment giving the example that using white phosphorus on a school yard
would have different implications to its use on another area. He also said
that in his view white phosphorus munition is neither chemical nor
incendiary weapon and is not intended to cause damage. He said its use was
not prohibited by the Chemical Weapons Convention.
'An article by Mark Cantora examining the legal implications of the use of
white phosphorus munitions by the IDF, published in 2010 in the Gonzaga
Journal of International Law, argues that Israel's use of white
phosphorus in Gaza was technically legal under existing international
humanitarian laws and "Therefore, it is imperative for the international
community to convene a White Phosphorus Convention Conference in order to
address these issues and fill this substantial gap in international
humanitarian law."
For the influence of radical Islamist views in Palestinian society:bombing
Runa Khan, a mother of six, was sentenced in December 2014 to more than five years
imprisonment in this country for promoting terrorism. There are many, many
Palestinian mothers (and fathers) who promote terrorism and extremist views. Runa Khan's views pervade Palestinian society.
Runa Khan openly supported suicide bombings, amputation as a punishment and
stoning to death. Palestinian majority opinion supports suicide bombings,
amputation as a punishment and stoning to death. Palestinian society isn't
shocked, on the whole, to find that a mother wants her children to become
suicide bombers. Wafa al-Bass, who was treated at an Israeli hospital for
severe burns after a household accident, hasn't been condemned in the
Palestinian media for putting on a suicide vest and attempting to bomb the
hospital where she was treated.
From the BBC news Website article on Runa
Khan.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-30439913
She
had 'posted a picture of a suicide vest' on Facebook. '... police had found
photos of Khan's children holding guns and swords.' She had 'posted a
message on an extremist website, saying she wished her son would one day
become a jihadi.' 'Prosecutor Paul Jarvis said Khan held "extreme Islamist
views."
Judge Peter Birts QC described her as an "avowed fundamentalist Islamist
holding radical and extreme beliefs".
He said: "You hold to an ideology which espouses jihad as an essential
part of the Islamist obligation.
"I sentence you not for your beliefs, abhorrent though they are to all
civilised people, but for your actions in disseminating terrorist material
with the clear intention of radicalising others."
Referring to her online activities, he said: "Your purpose was to
encourage and promote your particular brand of violent fundamentalism. This
brand of violent fundamentalism is commonplace in Palestinian society.
"You were deeply committed to radicalising others, including very young
children, into violent jihadist extremism.
The judge added: "You appear to have no insight into the effect of
radicalising your children, having selfishly placed your own ideology and
beliefs above their welfare in your priorities." Runa Khan gave her own
children toy guns. On the streets of Gaza, children are given real guns.
Sentimentality
and distortion
How could whoever posted the image above imagine that 'saving Gaza'
would save humanity at the same time? (or perhaps a little later.)
'Saving Gaza' is difficult enough, whatever the interpretation of 'saving,'
but 'saving humanity' is impossible. Anyone who would like to help to 'save
Gaza' would be well advised to do so by offering constructive criticism,
since 'saving Gaza' is much the same as saving Gaza from its own mistaken
acts and policies, the dangerous delusions which fester in Gaza. Whenever healthy
self-criticism is lacking, the best course of action is to offer healthy
criticism, in the hope that the capacity for self-criticism will take root.
All the same, Gaza is hard and unpromising ground.
Did the person who posted the image believe that a Gaza without Israeli
actions would
be a guarantee of peace and stability? Did this person imagine that all
terrorist organizations, ISIS included, would leave the infant state in
blissful contentment and have no interest in easy pickings? What was the identity of this person? What
sort of person? I found it was someone called Yasir Mukhtar, an Indonesian
Moslem whose blog isn't entirely in the same rarified realm. It even makes
concrete claims, all false, including these. The
last two are laughable, the first is despicable:
'There is a heavy indoctrination in Israel, from an early age in
schools, which uses the holocaust to create paranoia and fear against ‘the
enemy.’
'All media in Israel has to go through the IDF [Israeli
Defence Force] censorship.
'All police departments in the US are
trained by the Israeli military and are taught the same brutal tactics used
against Palestinians.'
This mixture of mawkish-ethereal
claptrap when the subject is Gaza and shameless distortion and falsification
when the subject is Israel is a familiar one.
The Website of
Sheffield Palestine Solidarity Campaign has a photo which shows a large
banner, and on it is inscribed this sentimental sentiment, the prose
equivalent of doggerel (but perhaps the members of SPSC think of it as not
prose but poetry):
F
reedom and partial
freedom
Time for users of slogans such as 'Freedom for Gaza!' to give some
thought to some potential difficulties and to some overwhelmingly
likely difficulties.
Have you given nearly enough thought to the place of disillusionment,
disappointment, crushing disappointment in human experience? Have you given
nearly enough thought to the fragility of freedom and the limitations of
freedom? Nobody is completely free. The experience is captured in this
quotation, from Yeats' 'Parnell' ('New Poems'):
Parnell came down the road, he said to a cheering man:
'Ireland shall
get her freedom and you still break stone.'
I quote these lines in the section The
present: the residue of the Troubles of the page 'Ireland and
Northern Ireland: distortions and illusions.'
Back-breaking work continues after the attainment of freedom.
The freedom here is 'freedom from British rule,' but, as I point out in
the section The Second World War of the
same page, the freedom of the Irish Free State during the Second
World War would have been lost if it had not been for the protection of
Britain:
'According to the
mythology of Irish nationalists, nobody has suffered like the Irish,
nobody has exploited others like the English. [Compare the mythology of the
Palestinians: nobody has suffered like the Palestinians, nobody has exploited
others like Israel.] But in a conflict which was more devastating
than any other in history, which inflicted suffering on a greater scale than
any other, the English, and the other countries of the United Kingdom,
including Northern Ireland, a constituent part of the United Kingdom, carried
on the war against Hitler alone, for a time, with exiled groups from many
countries and volunteers from many countries, including volunteers from the
Irish Republic, who served in large numbers. Irish nationalism and the Irish
Free State stood aside and did nothing. The IRA actively sought help from the
Germans. During The Second World War, the Irish Free State was neutral. After
the death of Hitler, condolences were offered from only two sources, Portugal
and the government of The Irish Republic. 'The Cruel
Sea' is a popular novel by Nicholas Monsarrat.' The factual claims here are
confirmed by Brian Girvin in his scholarly 'The Emergency: Neutral Ireland
1939 - 1945).
'...it was difficult to
withhold one's contempt from a country such as Ireland, whose battle this was
and whose chances of freedom and independence in the event of a German victory
were nil.'
If it had not been for British sacrifices, the Irish
of the Irish Free State would have lost their freedoms and had to submit
to the domination of incomparably worse rulers than the British: the
Nazis.
Pro-Palestinian activists are lacking in political
imagination if they can't envisage invasion and rule by forces vastly
less enlightened than the Israelis. If they were ever to succeed in
their objectives (overwhelmingly unlikely) they would have the
responsibility of organizing an effective defence. They would no doubt
be able to give excuses for not doing so and give excuses for
incompetence, but they would most likely pay the price and go under.
Even if the worst possibilities are never realized,
pro-Palestinian activists need to be reminded - but they should be
capable of realizing this without any reminder - that freedom includes
the freedom to commit blunders, the freedom to make a catastrophic
mistake, or a whole series of catastrophic mistakes, for that matter.
The Palestine
Solidarity Campaign and its Index
The 'Index Librorum Prohibitorum' ('List of Prohibited Books)
of 1599, replaced by the 'Tridentine Index,' abolished only in
1966, was a list of publications regarded as heretical by the
Roman Catholic Church. It was intended to protect the
faith and morals of the faithful.
There are indications that a PalSoliCamp Index may be
emerging. The PalSoliCamp Index of prohibited fruit, vegetables
and other foodstuffs, cosmetics, flags and other non-edible
products, books, articles, advertisements, films, videos, sound
recordings, Websites, emails, tweets, statistical analyses,
philosophically possible worlds, maps, timetables, cartoons,
jokes, doodles, graffiti, wishes, hopes, aspirations and thoughts - but not limited to these - is designed
to protect the faith and morals of the faithful
members and supporters of PalSoliCamp as well as the whole
population of this country and eventually every other country by
preventing the reading, writing, watching, speaking, singing,
listening to and thinking of material regarded as heretical.
An example of the kind of prohibited material which the Index
would rigorously ban, in this instance statistical analysis
(from the Website of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign):
'October 1, 2014
'An open letter signed by 7,000 people was today sent to the
BBC calling for the removal of the broadcaster's Head of
Statistics from all reporting on Palestine and Israel.
'The demand followed an article published on the BBC website,
in which the Head of Statistics, Anthony Reuben, misused
Palestinian casualty figures in an attempt to back up Israel's
claims that it had not targeted civilians during its July/August
assault on Gaza.'
The
Links section of this page includes an
entry for 'Stand for Peace,' which has a page on
the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign:
http://standforpeace.org.uk/palestine-solidarity-campaign-2/
Below, extracts from the page. There are many members of PalSoliCamp who don't in the least hold the
deranged views of so many of the individuals whose views and actions are
described in these extracts, who don't in the least endorse the views of Gilad Atzmon, for example. They may not endorse the policies and acts of
vile people, vile organizations and vile countries, they may simply want
to see a free Palestinian state living in peace, but there are many,
many reasons why their idyllic vision is overwhelmingly unlikely to be
realized. Most of the optimistic hopes of the Arab Spring have been
frustrated. There's absolutely no reason to think that a 'liberated'
Palestine would not be in the least danger of falling into the clutches
of the Islamic State or another ultra-extremist group, or the least
danger of civil war. It's absolute folly - madness - to ignore or
antagonize or not accept gratefully the support of Israel, the one
democracy in the Middle East. To ignore every strategic consideration,
every consideration of national interest by
treating Israel and Hamas as equally worthy of support or - more likely
- preferring Hamas to Israel, is deranged - not nearly as deranged as
the views of Gilad Atzmon, but deranged enough.
From the Stand for Peace Website ('Stand for Peace' isn't the best
of names, I think). The material may perhaps give undue prominence to
the most fanatical element in PalSoliCamp. I think
it likely that the different branches vary markedly in the balance
between 'fanatics' and 'moderates:' but the moderates, in my experience,
give analyses and propose 'solutions' which are not based on good
arguments or good evidence.
The PSC employs a liberal and democratic narrative to advocate its
message, and portrays itself as an organisation committed to supporting
human rights. We believe the reality to be very different.
merely propagating the views of guest speakers;
PSC members have repeatedly espoused virulently racist views – rhetoric
almost identical to that encouraged by far-right organizations.
... The
PSC’s bigotry is ... accused of homophobia. In 2006, Outrage, an
organization that campaigns for gay rights around the world, attended a
PSC event at which they raised concerns about the systematic
brutalization and murder of gay people in Gaza and the Disputed
Territories. They were subsequently attacked ..
The failure of the PSC leadership to condemn the activities of its core
members, while at the same time providing national platform for fascist
ideologues such as Salah, is indicative of, at best, toleration of such
ideas; and at worst, endorsement.
Well-meaning organizations that collaborate with the PSC on the basis of
a presumed mutual belief in human rights, democracy and peace, should be
informed of the PSC’s true nature ...
The PSC engages in a great deal of
political lobbying, and regularly appeals to both British and EU
politicians. It manages a group of MPs who coordinate their activities
and raise relevant issues in Parliament – working to bring those
putatively responsible for “war crimes” to justice, lobbying government
to ban the import of settlement goods, and demanding an end to Britain’s
arms trade with Israel. The PSC also calls upon the EU to suspend its
Association Agreements with Israel.
The website of Waltham Forest PSC recommends, and links to, the notorious Deir Yassin
Remembered website, an organisation heavily criticised for its
promotion of Holocaust denial
Merton has claimed that the brutal murders in Norway by Anders Breivik
were part of a conspiracy by the Israeli government.
Gill Kaffash is the former Secretary
]of
the Camden branch of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign. Here are her
comments to Iranian news agency IRNA about the Holocaust:
“There is no doubt that a great number of Jews along with other victims
of the Nazi army were killed by Hitler. However, historical phenomena
need to be further examined to uncover the truth. Therefore banning
opposition to the theses termed as `invariable reality` is irrational.”
Paul Eisen has noted that while he was supporting Holocaust denial within
the PSC, Kaffash provided 'solidarity',
as noted in his essay, ‘My Life as a Holocaust Denier’.
Sammi Ibrahem was chair of the West Midlands PSC, and runs an anti-Jewish
website called Shoah.org.uk. Ibrahem is not a Holocaust denier; rather,
and far more shockingly, he supports the Nazi attempt to eradicate the
Jewish people. Ibrahem has voiced his admiration for the Nazi regime and
poured scorn on Jewish holocaust victims. Here,he laments the trials of Nazi war criminals at Nuremberg:
“I bow my head in reverence to those who were judicially murdered at
Nuremberg. They were the world’s martyrs, not villains. Not one of them
would have been condemned to death in a fair trial – not one! They
sacrificed an entire nation, and in the end themselves, to save Western
civilization. They were defeated by thugs in robes and gangsters in
uniform – and by the conspiracies hatched by shysters from the ghettos
of Eastern Europe.”
The Liverpool PSC website includes a page titled "The Power of Zionists"
The first item under this headline is this cartoon, showing a Jewish man
with a hooked nose and a Star of David flag, ordering an American
soldier to fight a war.
In 2011, a protest outside the Israeli
embassy, partly organised by the PSC, had the crowds waving Hezbollah
and Hamas flags – groups that have both declared their wish to eradicate
the Jewish people from the face of the earth.
The crowds chanted ‘Khybar, Khybar al-Yahud’. Al-Yahud is Arabic for ‘the
Jews’, and Khybar is in reference to the ancient slaughter of the Jewish
tribe in Medina. In other words: Slaughter the Jews.
The PSC has
openly and repeatedly made clear its support for Hamas. In October 2010,
PSC representatives met with Mahmoud Al-Zahar, a Hamas leader in Gaza,
who has made deeply homophobic and anti-Semitic comments.
In January 2009, he called for the killing of Jewish children “all over
the world” and in an interview published by Reuters on 28 October 2010,
he attacked the West for supporting Israel, saying “you do not live like
human beings. You do not [even] live like animals. You accept
homosexuality”. On 29 July 2011 Zahar said “we are not going to accept
Israel as the owner of one square centimetre because it is a fabricated
state.”
The list of examples could go on and
on. To make our point, let’s take a look at just one PSC branch, based
in York, whose senior members include staff from the University of York.
In 2009, Andrew Collingwood, a PSC activist, published photos of a
protest in which he was involved, including one of a placard that
featured a witch with accentuated Jewish features, which posited that
anti-Semitism is a made-up concept.
In 2004 a vigil was held at Clifford’s Tower to commemorate the terrible
massacre of Jews in 1190. This was gatecrashed by PSC activists, who saw fit to exploit the massacre of more than
110 Jews with their own political agitprop.
Endorsement of the far-right and overt anti-semitism now appears
commonplace within the PSC. Reading PSC member Anthony Gratrex recently wrote:
'Infamous lunatic Gilad Atzmon is also a favourite of many PSC members. Atzmon
claims that Fagin and Shylock accurately
represent Jewish identity, the credit crunch was caused by the Jews, the
Holocaust is a religion, and Hitler may be proved right about the
Jews.'
Tony Gosling, darling of the Bristol PSC, told the Muslim News he
was “personally disgusted” by books that teach about homosexual
relationships: “No way should kids be indoctrinated in this way. Anyone
who says so is branded as homophobic which they are not; it’s the gay
mafia in full swing.'
In early 2011, a Facebook page appeared calling for renewed violence in
the Palestinian territories. The page contained the text: “Judgment Day
will be brought upon us only once the Muslims have killed all of the
Jews.” The page had more than 340,000 fans. The first two intifadas
claimed thousands of Palestinian and Israeli lives, many of whom were
murdered by terrorist attacks. The PSC joined the cacophony of extremist
voices jcalling for a renewal
of such ‘resistance’.
Following a great deal of support
from pro-violence movements for a Third Intifada, the Palestine
Solidarity Campaign helped organise a rally in favour ...
The PSC’s own website notes that it “works closely with trade unions and currently
has seventeen unions affiliated – representing more than 80% of trade
union members of the TUC – while a growing number of trade union
branches and regions are affiliating to the campaign.” PSC chair Hugh
Lanning is also the deputy chair of the Public Commercial Services
Union.
Britain’s Trade Union Congress (TUC) ended its annual conference
with a call on its affiliates to review any bilateral relations they
might have with Israeli organisations.
According to an amendment proposed by the PCS civil service union,
“Congress calls on all unions on the basis of this policy to review
their bi-lateral relations with all Israeli organisations, including
Histadrut.”
TULIP, a pro-peace organisation dedicated to bringing Israeli and
Palestinian trade unions together noted with disappointment:
'Israel is being singled out, and the Histadrut is being isolated,
because that is what the Iranian regime wants – and it using not only
its proxies in Hamas and Hizbollah to do so, but its arm in the British
trade union movement – the Palestine Solidarity Campaign.
'The PSC has successfully pushed British unions to uncritically embrace
the view of the rabidly anti-union dictators in Tehran regarding Israel
and its trade unions.”
Martial Kurtz, National Organiser for the PSC, has said, “It will be for
the Palestinians to decide which way this is going. A one-state
solution, as a bi-national democratic state, will indeed mean the end of
an Israeli Jewish state, as it exists.”
The PSC website states that it is “in opposition to…[the] Zionist
nature of the Israeli state”. There is a consummate hypocrisy in
supporting the self-determination for one people while denying it for
another. This is yet further suggestion that the PSC is not committed to
peace.
The Israelis have accepted that the 950,000 Jews forced from their homes
in Arab states from the 1940s onwards do not require any form of
compensation, as few would wish to return. However, the return of
Palestinian refugees who fled after the Arab states invaded Israel in
1948 is a key issue, and a driving force behind the emotional
justification of pro-Palestinian activism.
'It is understood by
genuine advocates for peace on both the Palestinian and Israeli sides
that a compromise will have to be found over the issue of refugees. The
PSC, however, advocates for the Palestinians to have an absolute “right
of return” to their homes, or their ancestors’ homes, abandoned on
Israel’s creation in 1948. It is this sort of absolutism – this
unwillingness to negotiate – that is overtly detrimental to the
prospects of peace.
'Once idealism sets in this strongly, truth itself is the usually the
first to suffer. The outpourings, radicalism and obsessiveness of the
PSC are an all clear example of this. For example, the PSC condemns
Israel for “aggression against neighbouring states” but consistently
fails to mention in its literature and events that Israel was attacked
in 1948 (Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria), 1967 (Egypt, Jordan
and Syria) and 1973 (Egypt and Syria).
PROFILES: some pro-Palestinian-anti-Israel people. Introduction
This section gives profiles of pro-Palestinian-anti-Israel people,
with a growing number of profiles of propagandist academics - who, like the
others, may well well have distinctive strengths, of course, apart from
their propagandist weaknesses. There are two sub-sections, 'Acadaemics' and
'Others.'
Some of the profiles of academics give information about
denial of free expression with a direct connection with the
Israel-Palestinian conflict, others are concerned with denial of free
expression with no direct connection with the Israel-Palestinian conflict. In all
these cases, the academic has pro-Palestinian-anti-Israel views.
In the section Conjugates of my page
'Ethics: theory and practice' I explain the need to take account of
co-factors (such as denial of free expression in a matter which has no
direct connection with the Israel-Palestinian conflict) which accompany the
principal factor (a view of the Israel-Palestinian conflict).
The section
'Profiles' of my page About this site:
'I regard the
many, many
profiles of the site as having multiple functions. They reflect an interest in people.
There's general recognition that novelists have to have an interest in
people. Otherwise, characterisation in their novels will be defective. I
think that polemicists and protestors - or opponents of protestors - should
have an interest in people, not just in issues, reasoning, causes,
opposition to causes they view as harmful. Very, very often,opponents are
viewed in grotesquely simplified ways. Opponents of feminists who use the
term 'feminazis' are making a bad mistake, for example. The profiles
are also intended to go beyond the giving of information and commentary, to
support activism, in ways which I don't spell out here.
'My criticism isn't relentless. I completed a profile of an individual who
had written an ant-Israeli piece which I considered vile but I found
that he'd had to abandon his career as a result of serious health problems.
I knew immediately that I couldn't publish the profile.'
PROFILES:
Some pro-Palestinian-anti-Israel people. Academics
Sue Blackwell (and Gilad Atzmon, saxophonist)
Gilad Atzmon isn't an academic. He's a well known saxophonist. Robert Wyatt,
writing in 'The Guardian,' has described him as 'the best musician living in
the world today,' which is grotesque, but quoted on the home page of Giland
Atzmon's Website. He's a notorious figure even in some hard-line
anti-Israeli circles, with many outbursts to his discredit, such as: 'I'm
not going to say whether it is right or not to burn down a synagogue, I can
see that it is a rational act.' And, 'the Jewish tribal mindset – left,
centre and right – sets Jews aside of humanity.'
But in an interview with Mary Rizzo, who, like Gilad Atzmon tempers
fanaticism with civilized values, he says this:
'I truly believe in freedom of speech and oppose any form of Maccarthyism or
intellectual censorship of any sort. Thus, interfering with academic freedom
isn’t exactly something I can blindly advocate. Unlike some of my best
enlightened friends, I am against any form of gatekeeping or book burning.
But it goes further, I actually want to hear what Israelis and Zionists have
to say. I want to read their books.'
The contrast with Sue Blackwell, who has taken a leading part in promoting
the academic boycott of Israel, is stark. Sue Blackwell's Credo for Freedom
isn't a resounding, uncompromising, heaven-storming, Beethovenian one but
something more cautious. It goes something like this: 'I truly believe in
limited freedom of speech and support some forms of Maccarthyism or
intellectual censorship. Thus, interfering with academic freedom is
something I can blindly advocate. Unlike some of my best enlightened
friends, I'm not against some forms of gatekeeping or book-burning
[figuratively, not literally, of course] ...'
Sue Blackwell is one of the people who have set themselves up as arbiters.
Why such discredited people as this should feel competent to control in any
way at all the musical life of this country, to control in any way at all
its academic life, is difficult to credit.
I wrote to her - she didn't respond:
'Do please, if you can spare the time, let me have reasons why you think
Israel is so much more vile than Iran, mentioning - more than mentioning,
discussing honestly, in sufficient detail, with regard for their seriousness
and their human cost - such matters as the execution of the 16
year old girl for unchastity in Iran - and other horrific cruelties in Iran,
your reasons for supporting (or opposing) suicide bombings and rocket
attacks on Israel. But you'd need to examine a far wider world of cruelty
and injustice before you could feel in the least confident that out of all
the perpetrators of cruelty and injustice in the world, Israel is the worst,
the most worthy of being boycotted. I hope your knowledge of the history of
war and conflict is up to the demands of the task. I hope your appreciation
of the imperfections of the world in general is up to the task. Such matters
as the history of blockades, reprisals and war crimes - quite distinct from
what happens in an idealized world - are surely relevant, as are such
abstract issues as the use of evidence, interpretation and inference. And
abstract-sounding but very concrete matters such as unintended consequences
... '
Her Website, feeble in thought, feeble in emotion, feeble in language (www.sue.be/)
contains a feeble denunciation of Birmingham University for declining to
host the Website any longer. The idea that her Website might not be in the
least suitable for academic hosting seems never to have occurred to her. A
university shouldn't be expected to host the Website of someone who posts
entries such as 'What I did on my holidays.' Details of her wedding to
Willem Meijs likewise. Most of the material is 'stuff / Nobody minds or
notices.' (Philip Larkin, 'Livings.') Her writing on Palestine isn't stuff
that 'nobody minds' but it hasn't the least trace of the precious academic
virtues of careful reasoning, scrupulous use of evidence, and the rest. She
writes of the University 'censoring' her. This is complete hypocrisy. She's
in the business of censoring musical performances. Birmingham University
wasn't Sue Blackwell's only, her last remaining chance, of conveying her
thoughts to the long-suffering public. Obviously, the number of possible Web
hosts was, if not astronomically large, far more than a few hundred
possibilities.
This is also the Sue who threatened to sue 'Engage,' which puts forward
arguments in defence of Israel. (Raymond foaming-at-the-mouth Deane
threatened to sue an Irish journalist who wrote about him. Gilad Atzmon
threatened to take legal action against Sue Blackwell.) Academics and others
sometimes use the courts legitimately to protect their reputations, but the
vast majority of academics never feel the need.
I quote Jim Denham, who is on the radical left. Some extracts from his
insider's view of Sue Blackwell (www.http://shirazsocialist.wordpress.com):
'I notice that one of the organisers and spokespersons for the disruption of
the IPO’s Proms performance was Sue Blackwell. I know Sue of old and, in
fact, usually get on with her reasonably well. But in my view, her obsessive
(I understand, Christian in origin) hatred of Israel and Zionism (ie Jewish
nationalism) has led her on many occasions to slide over from legitimate (if
misguided) hostility to Israel into antisemitism (by which I mean
“political”, or “left” antisemitism, not personal hatred of Jews per se).
'In the miasma, something nasty stirs
.
'In the poisonous miasma
that envelopes the overlap between proper concern and anger over the plight
of the Palestinians, and hysterical rage against all things Israeli, a new
cry has gone out: “I feel another boycott coming on” says Sue Blackwell, one
of the leading spokespersons of the (defeated) campaign to get the AUT to
boycott Israeli academics for being Israeli.The target of Ms Blackwell’s
boycotting zeal this time is the LabourStart website and email list, devoted
to organising international trade union solidarity. Why Ms Blackwell, a
trade union activist, wants to boycott LabourStart is an interesting
question, and the answer tells you a lot about the sort of politics that she
and her “anti-Zionist” co-thinkers represent. Blackwell’s “I feel another
boycott coming on” has now been taken up by Mr Tony Greenstein ... a
professional Israel-hater, supporter of the Iraqi fascist “insurgency” and –
apparently – a member of Brighton’s Unison branch. Mr Greenstein denounces
LabourStart for being, in reality a “Zionist front”. But then for Mr
Greenstein, more or less everyone who fails to call for the destruction of
Israel (and supports the only rational and just solution, two states) is a
“Zionist”. And as Zionism equals “racism” and –indeed- apartheid, then, ipso
facto,if you fail to call for the destruction of Israel you are an
apartheid-supporting racist who should be boycotted.
'That
LabourStart should become a target is of interest mainly because of what it
tells us about the politics of the people behind this crazy campaign. It
won’t succeed – any more than the AUT boycott campaign did, once it was
exposed to the scrutiny of that union’s membership and a democratic vote of
the rank and file. But it is worth noting that the campaign against
LabourStart has gained a new momentum in the aftermath of the defeat of the
AUT boycott campaign, as the embittered boycotters thrash about, blaming
“well-funded” international conspiracies and biased media coverage for the
fact that the membership of the AUT rejected them and overturned their
boycott.
[After discussion of an 'Open Letter' and the 'Background' document which
accompanies it]:
'This is made even more explicit in the final section of the “Background”
document, which is devoted to promoting the notion that Israel is an
“apartheid society”. This description of Israel is a favourite of those who
seek the delegitimisation and destruction of Israel. The “new apartheid”
accusation has been widely debated and is rejected as an inaccurate,
simplistic and politically misleading description by many people who are far
from uncritical supporters of Israel (including Susie Jacobs on the “Engage”
website, Benjamin Pogrud, the South African anti-apartheid campaigner in a
recent seminar paper, and the self-styled “Muslim refusenik” Irshad Manji in
her book “The Trouble With Islam” – to name just three. Oh yes: I forgot the
late Edward Said: “Israel is not South Africa”).
' ... Sue’s reaction to the defeat of the “boycott” position within the AUT:
instead of acknowledging that she and her supporters had simply LOST, like
many of us have lost within unions, over the years, Sue fell back upon
bizarre allegations of “a massive and well funded campaign against us and
incredible pressure put upon members in the run up to this debate”. I’ll ask
you straight, Sue: WHO, exactly, ran and financed this “massive campaign”
against you? Tell me, please. As far as I am aware, it was the rank and file
AUT members Camila Basi, Jon Pike and David Hirsh, who ran the campaign to
overturn the AUT’s “boycott” policy. None of them are particularly rich.
None of them were financed from “outside”. So what, exactly are you –Sue-
trying to suggest? And you continue to protest that your campaign is not
antisemitic?
'They are rich Jews? Paid agents of Israel? If that is not what you are
suggesting, then please explain what you mean by “a massive and well funded
campaign against us”? You really do have to explain your bizarre outbursts
since losing the vote. And also, why you felt able to defy your union’s
national position and your own local association, and vote in favour of the
boycott position at Birmingham Trades Council on 2nd June 2005, after the
AUT special conference had overturned the “boycott” position: who did you
think you were representing? An imaginary AUT membership who agree with you
about the destruction of Israel but don’t need to be consulted because their
“anti Zionist” views can be taken as read? Even though they voted against
you at a Birmingham AUT Association meeting? Have you any understanding of
rank and file trade union democracy, Sue?
...
'Greenstein and Blackwell’s ignorance concerning the basics of elementary
working class politics might be dismissed as silly but harmless
ultra-leftism if it had not lead them to attempt to destroy an invaluable
organ of trade union solidarity: LabourStart. The fact that their campaign
seems to be based upon the fact that its founder, Eric Lee opposed the AUT
boycott of Israeli academics, and once ran his website from Israel, makes
this nasty little campaign all the more distasteful and scabby.'
The indispensable Engage site,
which has a moderate left perspective ingeneral, contains so much of value
on boycotts directed against Israel and other issues (to give just one
example, Howard Jacobson's fine piece on the Gaza flotilla) has pages which
give an insight into this not overwhelmingly impressive figure.
It's to their credit that Sue Blackwell and Tony Greenstein, amongst others,
have resisted the Nazi apologists and holocaust deniers to be found in
pro-Palestinian circles, but Mary Rizzo (http://peacepalestine.blogspot.com)
claims that Sue Blackwell has made mistakes in 'naming and shaming.' This
has led to some instructive skirmishes, some instructive infighting, amongst
the pro-Palestinian anti-Israeli comrades/enemies.
Mary Rizzo writes, 'let’s focus ... on the smear campaign run by a known
activist for Palestine, someone who actually believes that Zionism is
responsible for the troubles in the Middle East. Some in the UK might be
familiar with Sue Blackwell. She is a university professor who was one of
the promoters of the failed PSC motion about Zionism, the DYR and
anti-Semitism. She also managed to somehow not be able to pull off the
Academic Boycott she was organising for a Union of British university
Teachers ... What is rather interesting, however, is her personal crusade to
lead the Palestinian Solidarity movement and to dictate who is acceptable
and who is not, and she of course, is the one in the know. Just like the
Zionists, it’s about what she feels and thinks, not what is objectively
true.
'Let’s look at the facts: two years ago, upon consulting her “Jewish
comrades”, as she puts it, Sue Blackwell added a page to her “famous” (like,
where??) Palestinian Web Page. She called it Nazi Alert. Listed are some
notorious right-wingers but also “people who should know better who give
support to nazis, racists and holocaust deniers by circulating their
material”. It makes things sound very sinister indeed, especially because
connected in her mind to Nazi scum, we see the names and profiles of many
Palestine solidarity activists who have nothing whatsoever to do with
rightwing activity or have any Nazi affiliation in any way, shape or form.
So ludicrous were her claims and so undocumented as to whom she put up
there, before shifting some of the contents to another area, she even
included my name on it. Besides having translated thousands of pages for the
site commemorating Italians deported into Nazi camps, I’m known in Italy for
having been involved in actions to nail Michael Seifert, the Nazi war
criminal of the Bolzen Concentration Camp (see pages, 10, 11, 12, 13), so
this placement on a page of "people who give support to Nazis, racists and
holocaust deniers" is outrageous, as well as defamatory and false ...
...
'Back to the “famous” Nazi Alert list. Gilad Atzmon was on it, and still is
on the “Removed links” page with this text:
“Gilad is Jewish (and plays great jazz) but there have been some disturbing
reports about things he has allegedly said recently which appear to condone
violence against civilians. Not sure whether he said them or not, but anyway
I found his "Protocols of the Elders Of London" highly offensive, not least
because it slagged off some of my closest Jewish comrades while cosying up
to the highly dubious Israel Shamir. So long, Gilad, thanks for the music.”
“disturbing reports” – by whom?
“things he has allegedly said” – did he or didn’t he?
“appear to condone” – do they or don’t they?
“not sure whether he said them or not” – oh, but she sticks the idea in
people’s heads of rumours as truth…. This is not a very firm basis to smear
someone at levels that it creates something of a monster and anathema of
them, but that did not stop Sue.
'Just like Sue, no one likes their friends being slagged off, but slagging
off people seems to be the speciality of Sue and her own friends. Yet, if it
is done, there should be a legitimate REASON for it and proof that there is
something concrete behind the slagging. Crimes or instigation to crime,
words and deeds that demonstrate the suppression of the rights of others,
that sort of thing. Neither she nor her comrades could ever come up with a
reason for it beyond affiliations that they have pumped to mean what they
want them to mean, actions that they have blown out of proportion and
wilfilly manipulated and distorted, and worst of all, intent. Wherever in
the world does Sue Blackwell get the idea that Gilad Atzmon condones
violence against civilians? Isn’t a claim that is this inflammatory and
defamatory be one that should be substantiated? She has thrown the
accusation around and hasn’t bothered to substantiate it in any way. Sue
says it, that has to be enough.
Well, at a certain point, Gilad said to himself “Enough is enough,” and
decided to have a London legal office look into the charges. Faced with
having to actually substantiate her claims or face litigation, Sue Blackwell
has now removed the text from the (nameless?) Poison Icon, created a
separate page for Gilad, still full of insinuations, but inserted this text
(errors in original) into the bottom of the page full of the people who are
damaged goods (if they aren’t out and out Nazis, natürlich).
A note on Gilad Atzmon
My comments about Mr. Atzmon have been removed
from this page at the request of his lawyers. I would like to make it clear
that I have never called Mr. Atzmon a a nazi, a neo-nazi or a fascist. To
the extent that readers of my website may have been misled into an
impression that I regard Mr Atzmon as a Nazi sympathiser, I apologise to
him.
And on the “former” Nazi Alert page writes:
“Please note: I have never suggested that Atzmon is a nazi. He just calls
himself a "proud self-hating Jew" and has very poor taste in friends and
politics, in my personal opinion.” [I agree fully].
'Well, if having poor taste in friends and political views that are in poor
taste in her “personal opinion” is a hanging crime, get out the rope for Ms
Blackwell herself.
'But, seriously, a question does remain and it should be an example and a
reflection on how all of these smear campaigns start, grow, develop and
ultimately end: if Gilad Atzmon is not and was not ever a Nazi or Nazi
sympathiser, why did Sue Blackwell brand him as one or both for more than
two years, lumping many others with him, and all of them with right-wingers?
... Now she is taking the advice of solicitors. Does someone slur just as
long as they can get away with it, without any criterion besides “what
people say” and stop doing it when threatened with litigation? Is this any
way to operate in the task of campaigning for Palestinians?? Is this
rendering service to their cause?'
Sue Blackwell and others have tried to combat anti-semitism and holocaust
denial in the pro-Palestinian movement but it's entrenched. The site 'Holy
Hoax: the Heretical Holocaust Museum' has this: 'We refuse to believe in
dogmas' and mentions 'three core dogmas - a plan to kill most, if not all
European Jews, 6 Million Jewish victims, and the use of chemical slaughter
houses - is treated like medieval heresy ...' There are many pro-Palestinian
anti-Israel activists who would agree, and many who, to their credit, would
oppose this wholeheartedly.
But these opponents have
overlooked or ignored the anti-semitism and holocaust denial to be found
amongst Palestinians. Just a few examples, from the site Palestinian
Media Watch which gives very disturbing insights into the
Palestinian media: (Palestinian Media Watch is an Israeli organization, an
excellent one, but a search for information and comment from other sources
is recommended, of course.)
'Holocaust desecration, denial, and abuse, are all components of Palestinian
Authority ideology. A PA TV children’s broadcast taught that Israel burned
Palestinians in ovens, and at an exhibit in Gaza children put dolls in a
model oven adorned with a Star of David and a swastika. A senior Palestinian
academic taught adults on PA TV: “There was no Dachau, no Auschwitz; these
were disinfecting sites.” A Hamas TV documentary explained that it was
Jewish leaders who planned the Holocaust, in order to eliminate Jews who
were "disabled and handicapped”.
A crossword puzzle clue in the official PA daily identified “Yad Vashem”
(Israel’s Holocaust memorial) as a “Center for the Holocaust and Lies.” The
same PA daily has published many articles denying the Holocaust, including
one that termed the Holocaust a “hen laying golden eggs.”
'Source: Palestinian TV (Fatah), Nov. 29, 2000
Dr. Issam Sissalem,
history lecturer, Islamic University Gaza, Palestinian expert on Jews and
Judaism, appearing on PA TV educational program "Pages From Our History":
"Lies surfaced about Jews being murdered here and there, and the Holocaust.
And of course these are all lies and unfounded claims. There was no Dachau,
no Auschwitz! [They] were cleansing sites... '
'Mahmoud Abbas's thesis: Zionists were Nazi allies
Source:
The Other Side: the Secret Relationship Between Nazism and Zionism, by
Mahmoud Abbas, Feb. 15, 1984
PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas’s thesis, "The
Other Side: The Secret Relations between Nazism and the Leadership of the
Zionist Movement" (Translation by Wiesenthal Center):
"A partnership was
established between Hitler's Nazis and the leadership of the Zionist
movement... [the Zionists] gave permission to every racist in the world, led
by Hitler and the Nazis, to treat Jews as they wish, so long as it
guarantees immigration to Palestine."
The 'Holy Hoax' Website has this as well:
'We consider Israel to be the most racist and evil country on this planet.'
Do Tony Greenstein, Sue Blackwell and the others disagree with this
loathsome claim as well? If they disagree, why are they singling out Israel
for boycotts? why do they give only Israel this pariah status? These are
dangerously deluded people, surely, if not nearly as dangerously deluded as
the contributors to 'Holy Hoax.'
Professor
Rosenhead: the Ship of Fools
'Narrenshiff,' 'Ship of Fools,' depicted in a German woodcut of
1549. The Ship of Fools carried 'crazed and crazy' people and 'foreign
lunatics' (Michel Foucault, 'Madness and Civilization') although no foreign
lunatic so crazed and crazy as Greta Berlin.
Professor Rosenhead sailed on a 'Free Gaza'
ship in 2008, together
with another academic from the Management department at LSE, the Research
Fellow Mike Cushman. So far as I'm aware, neither has commented on the views
of
Greta Berlin of the Free Gaza movement. Greta
Berlin has claimed that Jews played a leading part in promoting the
Holocaust and that Jews (specifically MOSSAD) carried out the recent
murders in Paris, at the offices of Charlie Hebdo and the Jewish
supermarket. Professor Rosenhead is
recorded as criticizing the views of another demented and deranged
individual, Gilad Atzmon.
Dr A.
Takriti, historian, censor, slogan-shouter
See also
Dr Jason Scott-Warren (CU) and Out! Out!
Out!' with video link, 'Cambridge University students
hijack talk by David Willetts, Minister for Higher Education 22/11/11.'
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMQaIJoTr2M
Film of Shimon Peres speaking at the Sheldonian Theatre, Oxford
University. At 4:00 Abdel Razzaq Takriti begins to shout slogans and is
removed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MbT2Z4dh-KA
This noisy and chaotic episode, described below, dates from his time at Wadham
College, Oxford, when he was a doctoral student.
Dr Abdel Takriti is now a lecturer in International History at the University of Sheffield.
Although elimination of all bias in the teaching of history is obviously
impossible, the avoidance of gross ideological bias and outright
propaganda in the teaching of history isn't an impossible objective. If
Wikipedia can make strenuous efforts to be fair-minded, no less should
be expected of a department of history in a British university. He
currently teaches a module 'Palestine and the Origins of the
Arab-Israeli Conflict. Whether his teaching of the topic is partisan, or
propagandist I've no way of knowing. I'm receptive to any evidence.
One principle he
was certainly attacking, a principle under relentless attack now, not
least in so many universities, and a principle which it's essential to
defend, is the enlightenment principle of freedom of speech, expressed
memorably in the credo
'I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your
right to say it.' (often attributed to Voltaire, but in
fact the words of Evelyn
Beatrice Hall, in her book 'The Friends of Voltaire' of 1906. She
summarized Voltaire's attitude towards
Helvétius, not the words of Voltaire.)
A report on Mr Takriti, soon to be Dr Takriti, in action. I find it very
disturbing. It was published
by the pro-Palestinian site 'Electronic Intifada' (20 November, 2008.)
'Text messages came from student protestors who had managed to get inside
the lecture hall. They let the their fellow demonstrators outside know
that their chanting could be heard inside over the voice of Israeli
President Shimon Peres. There was clapping and stamping of feet and placards
banged on the railings to make as much noise as possible, along with the
constant “Free, free Palestine” which did not stop for a moment of the
hour-long lecture.
Silent women in black, shouting students, small babies in prams, university
lecturers and a local elected official were just some of the crowd gathered
to voice their protest against an Oxford college’s decision to honor Peres
on Tuesday, 18 November as he gave the inaugural lecture in a series to be
named after him. Some handed out leaflets and many were carrying signs, one
of which read “Globalization of Apartheid,” a pun on the title of the
lecture, “Globalization of Peace.”
'After the Master of Balliol College, Dr. Andrew Graham, refused to cancel
the series the Oxford University Student Palestine Society in
conjunction with the city’s branch of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign
(PSC) called for the people of Oxford to protest outside the hall as
students interrupted the lecture inside.
'Halfway through the lecture, Abdel Razzaq Takriti, a Palestinian graduate
student at Oxford’s Wadham College, Oxford was ejected from the hall.
“Shimon Peres was making a particularly offensive remark claiming that ‘you
[Palestinians] could have had a state if it wasn’t for your own mistakes’
and that Israelis fought for their state,” he told this writer, who was also
participating in the protest. He then stated “We don’t need your permission
to exist” and got support from other students for it. Takriti explained: “So
I stood up and walked towards [Peres], saying, ‘how dare you say this at a
time when you are besieging 1.5 million people in Gaza? 1.5 million people
are starving to death! Shimon Peres, you’re a war criminal. You are
responsible for the massacre of hundreds of people in Qana [southern
Lebanon]. You’re responsible for an apartheid state. Shame on you.’ so I was
dragged out.” '
Some comments, with background information. First of all, Shimon Peres was a
'dove' not a 'hawk,' or at least became a dove early in his career - but
Israeli 'hawks,' like the 'doves,' deserve to be listened to without any
attempts to shout the speaker down if they come to speak at a British
university.
Some extracts from
'Israel: A History,' by Martin Gilbert
on Shimon Peres. The estimate of other historians may be different,
possibly very different, but Abdel Takriti's description is a travesty.
Perhaps he would like to give a much fuller, carefully considered
estimate of Shimon Peres, with evidence. If he still regards him as a
war criminal, what does he think about the use of rockets by Hamas
against Israeli civilians: a war crime or not?
Martin Gilbert writes,
'Turning to Shimon Peres, Leah Rabin urged him 'to lead
the people of Israel to peace', and to do so 'in the spirit of Kitzhak
[Rabin]' who had spoken in these terms:
'I want this government
to exhaust every opening, every possibility, to promote and achieve a
comprehensive peace. Even with Syria, it will be possible to make
peace.'
'Shimon Peres continued with the peace process. The Oslo
Accords had been his creation: he now had the full authority as Prime
Minister to pursue their timetable.'
' ... on February 25 [1996]
a suicide bomber, entering a bus in Jerusalem, killed twenty-five
people, most of them Israeli soldiers. A Muslim Arab, Wael Kawasmeh, who
was waiting for a bus, was also killed. That same day a suicide bomber
in Ashkelon blew himself up at a bus stop. One Israeli was killed,
twenty-year old Hofit Ayash, who had recently chosen a wedding gown for
her marriage in four months' time.
'Arafat's adviser, Ahmed Tibi,
condemned the bus bombs. 'The circle of violence must be broken and
stopped,' he said. 'There is no place for revenge attacks.' But on March
13, thirteen more Israelis were killed by a suicide bomber in the heart
of Jerusalem on the same bus route, No. 18, as the previous bomb. One of
those killed, nineteen-year-old Chaim Amedi, had unintentionally missed
the bus that had been destroyed in the last attack. Another of those
killed, thirty-eight-year-old George Yonan, was a Christian Arab who had
been deaf from birth.
'On the following day a suicide bomber
struck in Tel Aviv, in a crowded shopping street in the centre of the
city, killing eighteen. These were enormous explosions that ripped the
buses apart, mutilating many of the dead beyond recognition. The mood
inside Israel was of near despair. It seemed impossible that the peace
process could go on while such terrorist killings, on a far larger scale
than before, went on.
'Immediately after the March 3 bus bomb,
Peres had warned Arafat that the future of the peace process 'hangs in
the balance' unless the Palestinian Authority took immediate action
against Hamas. Israel could not be the only party to the agreements to
keep its commitments. 'It cannot be unilateral.' ...
'The
continuation of the Oslo Accords was under great strain. The Government
of Israel, first under Rabin and then under Peres, repeatedly declared
that it would not allow terror to derail the peace process, and
negotiations with the Palestinians continued on the many issues relating
to Palestinian autonomy and Israeli withdrawal ...
'Peres, the
architect of Oslo, was himself under enormous public pressure to react
to the killings. But he declined to suspend the timetable of the Oslo
Accords. Instead, in agreement with the Palestinians, he postponed the
redeployment on Hebron, and called an election. In doing so, and thus
inviting the Israeli public to express its opinion through the ballot
box, he hoped to win and endorsement for continuing the peace
negotiations. These included negotiations with Syria, to which Peres,
like Rabin before him, was prepared to return most, and even all, of the
Golan Heights in return for a full peace between the two countries.'
...
'The election was held on May 29 ... Labour emerged with
the largest number of seats in the Knesset: 34 seats as against Likud's
32. But in the separate vote for Prime Minister the former leader of the
opposition, Benjamin Netanyahu, won, by the narrowest of margins ...
...
'Following his defeat in the 1996 election, Shimon Peres
[described as a 'war criminal' by the demonstrators in Oxford who tried
to stop him speaking, including the would-be censor Abdel Takriti] had
refused to give up his vision. 'We shall continue to dream together,' he
wrote, 'of a Middle East of light and hope.' In pursuit of that dream,
he continued to advance the cause of economic cross-border activities,
and to 'tutor' his successor, Benjamin Netanyahu, in what could be
achieved for the region through mutually acceptable agreements with all
its neighbours.'
In a speech in the Knesset on October 7, Shimon
Peres said,
'I want to say what real peace is in my experience.
True peace is the way of agony. I remember what my comrades and I have
gone through over the past year, seeing that man, the great military
leader and the courageous statesman Yitzhak Rabin murdered before my
eyes.' [He was assassinated by a Jew, not a Palestinian.]
...
'And afterwards I saw - I, a man who pursues peace - the terrorist
attack in Jerusalem. I know what it is to leave one's office and be told
that a bus has exploded. You also showed it on television. Thank you. I
went there and I saw the blood and the flesh and the murder and the
killing, and I saw the people screaming at me: 'You are guilty'.'
Dr John C
Smith on racism and imperialism
Accusations of racism are flung around so freely now, and it’s sometimes
assumed that anyone accused of racism – wrongly accused – has no
alternative but to creep into a hole and admit that the accuser has a
vastly higher moral sense. It won’t work. There are legitimate uses for
the word, but 'racist,' like 'sexist' and 'elitist' is often used as a
simplification-word. Accusations of racism have become reflex responses
for many people. They by-pass the brain. Nothing is easier than shouting out 'racist!' and
the word has come to be used as an all-purpose condemnation, the use of
which confers instant superiority, supposedly. If the word is used, then
the user should be prepared to give evidence and to give some sort of
meaning to the word. In practice, the word is used again and again as an
all-purpose derogatory word, signifying not much more than intense
disapproval - and self-approval for the user.
'Racist' is one of
the commonest words in the debased lexicon of the Palestinian
Solidarity Campaign, along with genocide, apartheid, oppression.
'Racist' means 'not agreeing with the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign or
defending Israel or criticizing Palestinians.'
Musheir el-Farra
uses the PSC definition of racism without shame.
John C. Smith is one of the many, many supporters of the
Palestinian cause whose opposition to Israel goes with opposition to
Britain and the United States, not including, of course, elements of
Israeli, British and American society which share his views. There are
many, many Islamists who will be completely opposed to John C. Smith and
the elements of Israeli, British and American society who share his
views, if they are 'kuffars' (non-Muslim.)
From an interview
with Efraim Karsh, the author of Islamic Imperialism: A History.'
'FP: If the Left hates imperialism so much, where is it moral
indignation regarding Islamic imperialism?
'Karsh: There is a pervasive guilt complex among left-wing intellectuals
and politicians, which dates back to the early twentieth century and
stems from the belief that the West “has been the arch aggressor of
modern times,” to use the words of Arnold Toynbee, one of the more
influential early exponents of this dogma. This has resulted in a highly
politicized scholarship (especially under the pretentious title of
“post-colonial studies”) which berates “Western imperialism” as the
source of all evil and absolves the local actors of
any blame or responsibility for their own problems. But this
self-righteous approach is academically unsound and morally
reprehensible. It is academically unsound because the facts tell an
altogether different story of Islamic and Middle Eastern history, one
that has consistently been suppressed because of its incongruity with
the politically-correct dogmas ... '
The fact that I've written on
the horrors of American slavery
and worked on death penalty cases
involving black defendants (disproportionately represented on American
death rows) will do me no good. Racism is first and foremost a
Palestinian issue. Palestinians are the victims and Israelis and
defenders of Israel are the racists.
The PSC definition of
compassion is equally restricted. We all know what 'political
correctness' is. 'Compassion correctness' is the view that compassion is
ideologically determined. In the PSC interpretation, the suffering of
Palestinians takes priority over any other form of suffering. It's
legitimate for people to feel compassion for Christians persecuted in
Nigeria or Moslems persecuted in Syria, but if a person feels more
compassion for these Christians or these Moslems, then this is not real
compassion. People who have compassion for Palestinian suffering but
defend Israel are completely lacking in compassion and feeling. People
who have compassion for Palestinian suffering but no compassion for
other suffering - animal suffering, suffering in the Congo, Tibet,
Kurdistan, anywhere but Palestine - are people of compassion and genuine
feeling. My own record is a very poor one and I'm a person without any
compassionate feeling, according to this definition, because I've spent
so much time on animal causes, such as factory farming, and human rights,
but not specifically Palestinian rights.
Niall Ferguson's
'Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World' should have been subtitled
'How Britain Helped to Make the Modern World' but the actual title
doesn't exaggerate wildly. The book is a corrective to John C Smith's
fastidious determination to deny any benefits at all to British rule.
In his conclusion, Niall Ferguson and in other places, Nill
Ferguson defends the record of the British empire. John C. Smith would
no doubt consider that his careful and balanced discussion is the work
of an imperialist and that this makes him a racist as well.
'Without the spread of British rule around the world, it is hard to
believe that the structures of liberal capitalism would have been so
successfully established in so many different economies around the
world. Those empires that adopted alternative models - the Russian and
the Chinese - imposed incalculable misery on their subject peoples.
Without the influence of British imperial rule, it is hard to believe
that the institutions of parliamentary democracy would have been adopted
by the majority of states in the world, [but not, of course, the
overwhelming majority of states] as they are today. India, the world's
largest democracy, owes more than it is fashionable to acknowledge to
British rule. Its elite schools, [cries of rage at the mention of
'elite'] its universities, its civil service, its army, its press and
its parliamentary system all still have discernibly British models.
Finally, there is the English language itself, perhaps the most
important single export of the last 300 years. Today 350 million people
speak English as their first language and around 450 million have it as
a second language. That is roughly one in every seven people on the
planet.
'Of course no one would claim that the record of the
British Empire was unblemished. On the contrary, I have tried to show
how often it failed to live up to its own ideal of individual liberty,
particularly in the early era of enslavement, transportation and the
'ethnic cleansing' of indigenous peoples. Yet the nineteenth-century
Empire undeniably pioneered free trade, free capital movements and, with
the abolition of slavery, free labour. It invested immense sums in
developing a global network of modern communications. It spread and
enforced the rule of law over vast areas. Though it fought many small
wars, the Empire maintained a global peace unmatched before or since. In
the twentieth century too it more than justified it own existence, for
the alternatives to British rule represented by the German and Japanese
empires were clearly far worse. And without its Empire, it is
inconceivable that Britain could have withstood them.'
My discussion of material factors in Irish and Northern Irish
history on the page Ireland and Northern
Ireland: distortions and illusions is relevant here. See
the sections Late 19th century
stagnation and poverty and
The Great Famine.
The section on ''The Great Famine' includes this:
'Christian
Wolmar's 'Blood, Iron and Gold: how the railways transformed the
world,' after pointing out one way in which diet was improved by the coming
of the railways: 'There were countless other examples of the railways improving
not only people's diets but their very ability to obtain food ...
'An isolationist
interpretation of the Great Famine will focus attention on the callousness
of the English response. A ((survey)) will take account of that but also such
a factor as the incalculable benefits of the railway revolution, which began
in this country. Christian Wolmar quotes Michael Robbins: 'Until about 1870
... Britain was the heart and centre of railway activity throughout the world.'
Writers on the evils of English colonialism have generally failed to acknowledge
these incalculable benefits. Their ((survey)) has been defective.'
Simon Hornblower, the historian and commentator on Thucydides,
writes in 'Greece: The History of the Classical Period,' the section
'Empire: Athens and the Alternatives,'
'That the fifth-century Athenian Empire (despite the protection
which it offered to the more uncomfortably placed Greeks against Persia
and, we should add, pirates) was, or became, an oppressive instrument
should not be disputed. The strongest argument, against desperate
efforts to see it as a benevolent and generally popular institution, is
to be found in an important inscription of the year 377, which sets out
the terms and aims of a second Athenian naval cenfederacy and explicity
repudiates for the future a number of fifth-century practices - tribute,
territorial encroachments, garrisons, governors, and so forth - which
were clearly felt in retrospect to have been abuses.'
Simon Hornblower's evaluation of the Athenian Empire would benefit
from the counterfactual approach used in 'Alternative History:
Alternatives and Counterfactuals.' The strength of Athens, which owed so
much to its Empire, enabled it to play a dominant part in repelling the
Persian invasions. What if ... an Athens without an empire had been unable
to resist the Persian invasions, and the whole of Greece had become part of
the Persian Empire?
Dr Dick Pitt, blogger
and debater
Dick Pitt was until recently a lecturer in Mathematics at Sheffield Hallam
University. A non-mathematician, I have enormous respect for the
abilities of mathematicians such as Dick Pitt, but his non-mathematical
ability is a different matter. Those interested in same of the non-mathematical thought and activities of
Dick Pitt are welcome to read his blog, published on the Website of the
Sheffield PSC:
www [dot] sheffieldpsc [dot] org [dot] uk/
The Website has a short section
'SPSC bloggers listing
Have a look at all the blog posts
here'
but
following the link gives very meagre and disappointing results: a few
pages of one blogger only, Dick Pitt. There's no reason why the Website
shouldn't host many, many pro-Palestinian blogs, but there's seems to be a
shortage of informed, interesting comment in the ranks which should
concern Sheffield Palestine Solidarity Campaign very much.
The blog is mainly dispiriting, without the least freshness, originality, individuality or
depth. Unflinching honesty isn't a strong point. Anyone who doubts
this or denies this is welcome to study it carefully, to read and re-read it
- all of it - to emit little gasps of admiration and delight whilst reading
and re-reading it, and to share with as many people as possible its wealth of insights.
I think that Dick Pitt is a dim blogger with a dismal blog which is hosted by the dire
Website of Sheffield Palestine Solidarity Campaign. 'Dim' refers only to his
capacity to enlighten in his blog, in his role as a fixture of the Palestine
Solidarity Campaign. He's a low-wattage would be enlightener or rather
no-wattage would-be enlightener, with all the power of a dead firefly. He's
not dim academically.
A page which is markedly better: the one on Egypt and the Muslim
brotherhood, despite its many defects. The topic called for a much fuller
treatment. This is the page's final paragraph in its entirety. It doesn't
mark the conclusion to an argument but is simply stranded on the page, an
isolated comment which should certainly have been amplified:
'I have no doubt that the Arab street is much more sympathetic to
the Palestinian cause than the officers of the Egyptian army.'
I mention one very important misconception which he has - one of many. I
emailed him in connection with the contents of an email he'd sent me. I
wrote,
'I'm astonished to read your observations on the Qur'an. Most
contemporary Christians are non-fundamentalist – they do not believe
that the whole of the Bible is the literal word of God. Christianity has
undergone intellectual reforms which have transformed the outlook of
most believers. You will find, as a matter of strict fact, that liberal
Moslems, as well as radical Islamists, generally believe that the whole
of the Qur'an is the literal word of God, or Allah. Those who believe
otherwise aren’t regarded as Moslems at all.'
Bernard
Lewis, a prominent historian of Islam, wrote in 'The Political Language
of Islam:'
' "Fundamentalist" is a Christian term. It
seems to have come into use in the early years of last century, and
denotes certain Protestant churches and organizations, more particularly
those that maintain the literal divine origin and inerrancy of the
Bible. In this they oppose the liberal and modernist theologians, who
tend to a more critical, historical view of Scripture. Among Muslim
theologians there is as yet no such liberal or modernist approach to the
Qur'an, and all Muslims, in their attitude to the text of the Qur'an,
are in principle at least fundamentalists. Where the so-called Muslim
fundamentalists differ from other Muslims and indeed from Christian
fundamentalists is in their scholasticism and their legalism. They base
themselves not only on the Qur'an, but also on the Traditions of the
Prophet, and on the corpus of transmitted theological and legal
learning.'
The Qur'an contains some suras which Dick Pitt might like to receive
pleasant non-literal interpretations but which Muslims have to take
literally. Examples (translation from
http://www.quran.com
)
4:34
Men are in charge of women by [right of] what Allah has given
one over the other and what they spend [for maintenance] from their
wealth. So righteous women are devoutly obedient, guarding in [the
husband's] absence what Allah would have them guard. But those [wives]
from whom you fear arrogance - [first] advise them; [then if they
persist], forsake them in bed; and [finally], strike them. But if they
obey you [once more], seek no means against them. Indeed, Allah is ever
Exalted and Grand.
5:33
Indeed, the penalty for those who wage war against Allah and
His Messenger and strive upon earth [to cause] corruption is none but
that they be killed or crucified or that their hands and feet be cut off
from opposite sides or that they be exiled from the land. That is for
them a disgrace in this world; and for them in the Hereafter is a great
punishment.
He wrote the piece 'Liberals show their true face' for a
page in the Socialist Worker Website. He and his co-writer Angela Shann
are described as 'Socialist Alliance prospective city council candidates.'
To be a candidate is more often than not to be a long way from political
power, or to have not the least hope of political power. But to be a prospective
candidate, a possible candidate? This is very, very tentative. It's
possible that he's no longer committed to the Socialist Worker cause.
This extract from
weeklyworker conveys the futile work of this secular sect. Supporters of
the Palestine Solidarity Campaign include members of many other secular
sects, often with relations of fraternal hatred. However, Socialist Alliance
(English branch) is actually supported by quite a large number of other
political organizations, although none of them with any political power.
They include the Communist Party of Great Britain, the International
Socialist Group, the International Socialist League, Lewisham Independent
Socialists, Red Action, the Revolutionary Democratic Group and the Socialist
Solidarity Network
'Accordingly, comrade Hoveman suggested that the executive
committee produce a composite document based on the 80-20 platform and that
this be then circulated to all Socialist Alliances for amendment.
'Comrade Hoveman did, however, concede a major point floated in
advance by the CPGB in the Weekly Worker.
Each local SA will be allowed to submit both majority and minority
amendments, which a conference arrangements committee would then composite.'
The Socialist Party of Great Britain is an opponent, with many
others. An insight into the pitiful bickerings and hatreds of far-left
politics, again, with an influence and representation in the Palestine
Solidarity Campaign which are far from negligible:
'So who are the Socialist Alliance? They are an eclectic rag bag
of Trotskyists, former Stalinists, various other groupings and assorted
individuals. The main organisations involved include: Socialist Workers
Party, Militant (now calling itself Socialist Party of England and Wales, or
SPEW), Alliance for Workers Liberty, Communist Party of Great Britain,
International Socialist Organisation and Workers Power ...
'In any case, it is interesting to learn how such a disparate
collection of former enemies could have come together in the first place. It
does not seem so long ago that the AWL were accusing the SWP of 'violent
thuggery' against some of their own members (see AWL pamphlet Why
the SWP Beats Up Its Socialist Critics), and surely the former Stalinists of
the CPGB would have balked at the prospect of talking to Trotskyists, let
alone organising with them. But whatever particular ism each of these
leftist sects subscribe to, they all represent the left-wing of capitalism's
political apparatus, and thus are the enemy of the working class.'
I mention Dick Pitt in this contribution to
a Comments section of the site 'Harry's Place,' given next. After that, I
write a little more about Dick Pitt before turning to other matters: the freedom which is treated very finely in the section 'Comments
Policy' of Harry's Place, and the freedom which is treated sentimentally,
inadequately in the outpourings of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign. The
comment I added to the Website began by criticizing a pro-Israeli commenter,
'Tokyo Nambu,' who makes a dim, dismal and dire comment:
'Tokyo Nambu's comment 'If the Labour Party weren't anti-Semitic scum ... '
is a grossly misguided generalization. Its ignorance is extreme. It ignores
the Labour MP's who openly support Israel, many, but not all, members of the
group 'Labour Friends of Israel.' It may have far less members than
'Conservative Friends of Israel' (it's a heartening fact that 80% of
Conservative MP's belong to this group) but these MP's don't in the least
deserve to be included in Tokyo Nambu's lazy-minded dismissal.
' think it's likely that supporters of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign are
far more active in lobbying MP's than British supporters of Israel. I see it
as essential to write to MP's, the ones who denounce Israel and the ones who
support Israel - to write to a wide range of people and organizations - to
express support for the supporters of Israel and to challenge the views of
Israel's opponents.
Some
pro-Palestinian-anti-Israel people:
others
Assorted grotesques
Deborah Fink
Film of Deborah Fink's deranged reaction after
being ejected from the Sadler's Wells Theatre for disruption of a performance, by the young people of the
Israeli Batsheva
Ensemble.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEIg3v6pxeQ
She posted
this comment on an anti-Zionist weblog: 'Israel does not deserve to be called
‘The Jewish state.’ It should be called ‘The Satanic state.'
[
Compare this statement of
Deborah Fink with some statements of the former President of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
He predicted that Muslims would
uproot 'satanic powers' and reaffirmed his prediction that the
Jewish state will soon be wiped off the map, the Agence France-Presse news
agency reported.
'I must announce that the Zionist regime (Israel), with a 60-year
record of genocide, plunder, invasion and betrayal is about to die and
will soon be erased from the geographical scene.'
'Today, the time for the fall of the satanic power of the United
States has come and the countdown to the annihilation of the emperor of
power and wealth has started.'
Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi
is a tireless campaigner against parking fines as well as against the state
of Israel. She once chained herself to some railings as a protest against
a fine. She only has the tirelessness of unending misdirected effort. She's
a tired, stale, predictable person, capable of mechanically using words like
'genocide' but not of making scrupulous distinctions, or carrying out a wide
and compassionate ((survey)): if she, and the others, had much genuine compassion,
it wouldn't be so subject to {restriction}.
The literary critic F R Leavis wrote of the poet Edith Sitwell and her brothers
(in 'New Bearings in English Poetry'): ' ... the Sitwells belong to the history
of publicity rather than poetry.' The disruption of the Proms concert by Naomi
Wimborne-Idrissi and the others belongs to the history of exhibitionism rather
than authentic struggle. It's no more likely to lessen in the slightest the
intractable problems of the Middle East than her parking protest.
Tony Greenstein
The site Harry's Place gives this
interesting discussion of Tony Greenstein. It quotes Oliver Kamm:
'Tony Greenstein, is himself a political crank of the first order. I had a
brush with him in the 1980s when he came to speak to my university Labour
Club on behalf of his Labour Movement Campaign for Palestine. His views on
terrorism ensured that a motion to affiliate to his organisation received
only two votes in favour. A little while later he distinguished himself by
writing in outrage to the far-Left London Labour Briefing complaining that
it had praised Mrs Thatcher’s courage in defying the Brighton bombers
...'
'Tony Greenstein's response included this: 'The attack on Thatcher by the
IRA was obviously legitimate. She was a military target.' Obviously legitimate
to eliminate the Prime Minister of a democracy? You've got a lot to learn!
Tony Greenstein has been described as an 'ignoramus.' This seems exceptionally
generous.
Harry's Place points out that when he visited Syria, the visit was paid for
by the Palestine Liberation Organisation, and that he was involved in previous
disruption of Israeli music-making, the disruption of the Jerusalem Quartet's
concert at the Wigmore Hall.
It goes on to comment, 'But of course, it is not just boycotting Israel that
will satisfy Greenstein. He admitted in a letter to Weekly Worker that his
revolutionary aim is ”Yes, I want the state of Israel to be destroyed.'
On the holocaust, he argued that “without a Zionist movement... it is
hard to believe that anything like 6 million would have been allowed to die.”
He isn't popular in some radical left circles, either (which, for the record,
aren't circles I very often frequent.) This is from 'Lies, Damn Lies and Tony
Greenstein:' by Daniel Randall and Sacha Ismail of the AWL (the Alliance for
Workers' Liberty, www.whatnextjournal.co.uk)
They write of him ''attacking the AWL in characteristic terms, even though
he knew this would harm the coalition of which he himself was part. This sort
of behaviour is illustrative of Tony’s general approach – not
rational, worked-out criticism but frenzied slander. His diatribe in What
Next? [‘The Alliance for Workers’ Liberty – Britain’s
Revolutionary Imperialists’] is no different. It is embarrassing in
its lack of rigour, in the way it substitutes anecdotal slander for political
critique, and in its use of blatant lies, distortions and half-truths.'
Greta
Berlin on Charlie Hebdo
Greta Berlin, described as 'one of the key campaigners for the Free Gaza
Movement,' has made the psychotic claim that Israelis, not Islamist
terrorists, carried out the killings at the offices of Charlie Hebdo in Paris, and that
the Israelis carried out the attack to cause division between France (which
had voted for recognition of a Palestinian state) and the Palestinians:
'MOSSAD
just hit the Paris offices of Charlie Hebdo in a clumsy false flag
designed to damage the accord between Palestine and France ... Here's
hoping the French police will be able to tell a well executed hit by a
well trained Israeli intelligence service and not assume the Moslems
would be likely to attack France when France is their friend ... Israel
did tell France there would be grave consequences if they voted with
Palestine. A four year old could see who is responsible for this
terrible attack.'
Amedy Coulibaly, who killed the hostages at the
kosher grocery shop in Paris, made no allowances for France's support for
the Palestinians. He claimed that he was defending 'oppressed Muslims' in
Palestine, according to a telephone interview with him conducted by a TV
channel.
mondoweiss.net is an anti-Israel-pro-Palestinian site but
it draws the line at approval of Greta Berlin
http://mondoweiss.net/2012/10/if-only-it-was-just-one-tweet-one-activists-experience-in-the-our-land-facebook-group
The information it provides is very disturbing, including another
psychotic claim: that Jews played a leading part in promoting the
Holocaust: according to Greta Berlin, the Holocaust 'was aided, abetted and to a large degree - created
by them [the Zionists].'
There's an urgent need for people and organizations who have endorsed
Greta Berlin to state publicly that they don't endorse her any longer.
A photograph of Musheir El-Farra, the Chair of a branch of the Palestine
Solidarity Campaign and one of the 'leaders of Gaza civil
society' who signed the 'important statement' encouraging Hamas not to
observe a cease-fire (except under impossible conditions) shows him with
Greta Berlin:
http://www.sheffieldpsc.org.uk/content/greta-berlin
On the page, she is described as 'one of the key campaigners for
the Free Gaza Movement.
Greta Berlin's stepdaughter (quoted on the site
www.danielpipes.org):
'On numerous occasions I heard Greta launch the insults "the god damned
Israelis and those f****** Jews" at the dinner table in front of my
father (a Jew) and the few Israeli friends and relatives who ventured to
visit. Additionally, any rational debate attempted by anyone with an
opposing view to Greta's, was immediately terminated with the responses:
"Shut up" or "You don't know what the hell you're talking about." '
For more on the 'Important statement' of 'leaders of Gaza civil society'
see, on this page Bombardment: killing and the prevention of killing
The Russian analyst Alexei Martyonov offers an alternative view. He has claimed (on the mainstream news
channel 'LifeNews') that US intelligence was responsible for the Charlie
Hebdo killings, for various reasons, one of them being to exert pressure on
the French President to maintain economic sanctions against Russia, and to
prevent European countries from becoming allies of Russia and maintain their
dependence on the US.
A confused dreamer
After making a public stand in defence of Israel at a large
demonstration organized by Sheffield Palestine Solidarity Campaign in
the city centre, I talked to some of the folk gathered there and heard
one or two pieces of folk-lore.
I had a constructive talk with one individual, to begin with. I
mentioned the Yazidis stranded on Mount Sinjar, in acute danger from
ruthless ISIS militants, and mentioned with approval that there would be
bombing to relieve the danger ... he agreed with me ... but his mood
abruptly changed when I mentioned that it would be the Americans doing
the bombing. No! Not at all!
Useless to mention that to a Yazidi in imminent danger of death,
bombing of ISIS militants nearby by Americans would be an absolute,
unqualified good, that no other air force was nearby and able to do the
bombing, that there was absolutely no prospect that the bombing could be
carried out by an air force which the man approved of, such as the Cuban
air force. This was a shocking insight into the mind of someone living,
politically and militarily, at least, in a dream world.
If ISIS continues to make territorial gains, it's not impropbable
that ISIS (or another ultra-militant force) will be able to threaten the
Palestinian territories. The territories are militarily very weak and
will inevitably fall, unless aided by outside forces. In their extreme
need, the Palestinian territories may be very, very glad to accept the
help of the Americans, and the Israelis, who would oppose with all their
might territories on their borders controlled by ISIS.
People can suit themselves. They can accept realities or refuse to
accept realities. In the past, Palestinians have chosen to refuse to
accept realities again and again. But in this scenario, they might even
choose to accept the reality of American or Israeli help.
There are many, many people in the Palestine Solidarity Campaign who
resemble this dreamer. They are the people who detest Israel but who
also detest America, and detest Britain too, but with no strong feelings
about, say, the Iranian regime, unless they are strong feelings of
approval.
On my page Ethics: theory and
practice I discuss the concept of outweighing which illuminates moral dilemmas in ethics, other
ethical issues and many non-ethical issues. I use the symbol
> for outweighing.
In the Second World War, an alliance with Stalinist Russia could have
been rejected by Britain. The Stalinist regim was, after all, one which
had terrorized, packed off to labour camps and killed huge numbers of
Russians and other nationalities, such as the Ukrainians who were
starved to death. But to reject Russian help would lead to certain
defeat by Germany and the invasion and occupation of Britain, with
forced labour, executions and other harsh penalties. This was a
clear-cut case of outweighing. The moral objections to Stalinist Russia
were outweighed by the overwhelming importance of national
self-preservation and the avoidance of defeat and occupation.
Symbolically:
[national self-preservation] >
[moral objections to Stalinist Russia]
On the same page, I explain my concept of
conjugates, which amongst other
things accompany - are linked with - the single issues of single issue
campaigners. These campaigners often support and oppose very strongly a
range of other issues. What we get is not a single issue in isolation
but a packet of issues. So, vegans oppose
cruelty to farm animals and have adopted a diet which cuts out all
animal products (with the possible exception of honey) but their
conjugates are many: vegans are almost always pacifists, for example, or
at least tend to have no interest at all in such matters as defence.
The conjugates of pro-Palestinian-anti-Israel activists very often
include pacifism and a complete lack of interest in defence too,
hostility to British and American policies and hostility to capitalism,
often accompanied by a belief in small-scale economic organization which
could never meet the demands of an unavoidably complex world.
Not many things seem to disturb their dream world (except for the
nightmarish Zionist threat and the British and American threat) but
their complacency is probably being undermined little by little by
realities. If ISIS ever did try to invade the Palestinian territories.
there might well be extreme disillusionment, similar to the
disillusionment which took hold of so many communists after the Russian
invasion of Hungary in 1956. Caroline Hoefferle, 'British Student
Activism in the Long Sixties:'
' ... thousands left the Communist Party that year and the British
Left was fractured into dozens of tiny Marxist sects, competing for
membership and struggling to create a new vision of socialism.'
The dozens of tiny far left sects are still in evidence, and the
Palestine Solidarity Campaign includes many joint members, people who
members of the Solidarity Campaign and members of one or another far
left sect.
The Quaker
Gordon Ferguson: not totally harmless
Perhaps it would be an exaggeration to describe the
Quaker Gordon Ferguson
as deranged - or perhaps not. His naivety, his complete, uncritical
acceptance of the Palestinian narrative is overwhelmingly stupid.
He writes,
in connection with 'World Week for Peace in Palestine and Israel: 21 - 27
Sept.
'This year’s theme is
prisoners. Resources and activities prepared for the week will
focus on the plight of Palestinians imprisoned by Israeli
occupation forces ...
Everyone is invited to:
1write an open letter to
the Palestinian people, offering your prayers and support for
prisoners and their families. Rather than offering a template,
you are asked to write a short message (around 200 words) from
your own heart, expressing your solidarity with those in prison.
Feel free to write the messages and/or prayers in your own
language! If you can, please email your short message by 15
September to Yusef Daher, executive director of the Jerusalem
Inter-Church Centre, atyusefdaher@yahoo.com.
Yusef will collect all messages, and then prepare them for
circulation among the Palestinian people.'
' ... prepare them for
circulation among the Palestinian people' is a grandiose way of
putting it. 'The Palestinian People' has become a very
prestigious phrase for far too many people. As a matter of
strict fact, the Palestinian people is made up in varying
proportions of armed and unarmed psychopaths, very good and not
so good people, people well above average in insight,
average and well below average in insight, and many other groups and sub-groups, although not so many
Quakers. Those imprisoned by the Israelis are
disproportionately once armed psychopaths, including failed
suicide bombers.
Asking people to write 'in
your own language' is the advice of a clueless person, one who
doesn't think things through. I can't think of any initiative
less likely to end the danger of hostilities in Gaza or the
Middle East as a whole than the prayers and messages of these
Quakers in Urdu or Somali or Bengali as well as English as a
gift to Arabic speaking Palestinians.
A Palestinian's view
of Gordon Ferguson may be very different from what he imagines.
This brings me to an issue which is not widely discussed. The
majority of Palestinians - the vast majority of Palestinians,
surely - believe that hell awaits the Quaker Gordon Ferguson,
and for that matter all the people who call for boycotts of
Israel and 'freedom' for Palestine, if these people happen not
to be Moslem. This view of the future prospects for Quakers may
not have occurred to many Quakers because Quakerism lacks a
doctrine of eternal damnation.
The dire
reality of rocket attack from Gaza is obviously far from the
thoughts of this far from harmless individual. Anyone who, like
Gordon Ferguson, believes in the power of prayer could try
praying for Gordon Ferguson.
Antony
Loewenstein and accuracy
From the Daily Telegraph Tim Blair blog,
LEARN FROM THE MASTER
'Antony Loewenstein, a
“long-term Middle East watcher and participant” who is writing a
book on Israel and Palestine, reveals the vast extent of his
specialist knowledge:
' Yet more evidence of Israel speaking the language of
‘peace’ but acting entirely differently came from a senior
ally of Sharon, Justice Minister Tzipi Livni. He told a
legal conference in early December that, despite years of
Israeli denials, Sharon himself imagines the 425-mile
separation barrier as the future border between Israel and a
potential Palestinian State.'
As Tim Blair points out, Tzipi Livni is a woman.
Antony Loewenstein is an Australian. I'm a Yorkshireman.
Australians and Yorkshire folk are supposedly no-nonsense,
blunt-talking types who have no patience with obvious
garbage. The Scots too. In my experience, pro-Palestinian
anti-Israeli Australians, Scots and Yorkshire folk don't
conform in the least to this stereotype. They're receptive
to outlandish ideas and regurgitate outlandish ideas. To me, the claim that it's Israel,
not Isis or Iran, which is by far the biggest threat to peace in
the Middle East is an outlandish, a freakish idea. The claim that Palestinian
society, in contrast to Israeli society, is a model society for
humane, progressive people, likewise.
Vittorio Arrigoni and Kayla
Mueller, hostages
Vittorio Arrigoni, a pro-Palestinian activist, was abducted in Gaza and strangled, badly beaten, soon after abduction.
Two Palestinians were sentenced to life imprisonment for his murder (the
death sentence is often imposed for murder in Gaza) but the sentence was
reduced to only fifteen years on appeal.
From
www.frontpagemag.com/
'Arrigoni was sent to Gaza to assist the Islamist terrorists
by the pro-terror International Solidarity Movement or ISM, the same group
that once sent Rachel Corrie into Gaza to collaborate with terrorists and
obstruct Israeli anti-terror operations ...
'So just why did the Islamists murder Arrigoni? The answer is
simple: These fanatics believe that everyone who is not a Muslim, and
especially not a Muslim of their own particular fundamentalist genre, is an
infidel, an enemy, someone deserving death. It does not matter in the
least that the infidel in question has come to Gaza to assist the
terrorists. In the case of Arrigoni, it did not even matter that he
had tattoos on his body endorsing their terrorism. The “bewilderment”
being expressed by the ISM and its amen chorus, along with Arrigoni’s
Stalinist Italian groupies, is simply further indicative of how little these
people know about the Middle East.'
Islamists' murder of a 'peace
activist,' someone completely committed to the Palestinian cause and
completely opposed to Israel, was met with revulsion and incomprehension.
The revulsion is not just understandable but thoroughly deserved. The
incomprehension shows how little many people know about radical Islamism.
The same response was made in the case of a victim vastly more deserving of
respect, Alan Henning, the aid worker to Syria beheaded by Isis. When his
aid convoy was held up by ISIS, all the Moslem members of the convoy were
released. Alan Henning was made captive. To his captors, all non-Moslems are
contemptible, worthy of death - and this includes all the non-Moslem people
who work tirelessly for the Palestinian cause, such as Vittorio Arrigoni.
The word used by Islamists for non-believers is 'kuffar.'
Kayla Mueller was the 'aid worker' who may have have been
killed in a Jordanian air strike but was more likely killed
by the ISIS group which held her captive after she was
abducted in Syria. Her
courage can be admired - the courage needed to enter Syria,
at least - but not her
ideological idealism. She gave
uncritical support to Palestinian rioters, had a liking for
the rhetoric of rioting but, like Vittorio Arrigoni, was no more than a 'kuffar,'
one of the despised unbelievers, to the repulsive people
holding her captive. This is a sample of her writing. She
views minarets as agents of liberation and resistance:
'Oppression greets us from all angles. Oppression wails
from the soldiers radio and floats through tear gas clouds
in the air. Oppression explodes with every sound bomb and
sinks deeper into the heart of the mother who has lost her
son. But resistance is nestled in the cracks in the wall,
resistance flows from the minaret 5 times a day and
resistance sits quietly in jail knowing its time will come
again.'
She has no conception of realities. Included in the
resistance which 'sits quietly in jail' are the terrorists
who have slaughtered Jews and are given payment by the
Palestinian authority for doing that.
Tom Gross writes about some of the victims of Palestinian
terrorism. The category of Palestinian terrorism went
unacknowledged by Kayla Mueller. It was missing from her
world view. He mentions the 'Rachels.'
'Rachel Thaler, aged 16, was blown up at a pizzeria
in an Israeli shopping mall. She died after an 11-day
struggle for life following a suicide bomb attack on a crowd
of teenagers ... Rachel Levy (aged 17, blown up
in a grocery store), Rachel Levi (19, shot while waiting for
the bus), Rachel Gavish (killed with her husband, son and
father while at home celebrating a Passover meal), Rachel
Charhi (blown up while sitting in a Tel Aviv cafe, leaving
three young children), Rachel Shabo (murdered with her three
sons aged 5, 13 and 16 while at home), Rachel Ben Abu (16,
blown up outside the entrance of a Netanya shopping mall)
and Rachel Kol, 53, who worked at a Jerusalem hospital and
was killed with her husband in a Palestinian terrorist
attack in July a few days after the London bombs.'
Edwin Black, writing
in 'The Guardian:'
'On both sides of the pond, in London and Washington,
policymakers are struggling to weather their budget crises.
Therefore, it may astound American and British taxpayers
that the precious dollars and pounds they deploy in Israel
and the Occupied Territories funds terrorism.
'The instrument of this funding is US and UK
programs of aid paid to the Palestinian Authority.
This astonishing financial dynamic is known to most Israeli
leaders and western journalists in Israel. But it is still a
shock to most in Congress and many in Britain's Parliament,
who are unaware that money going to the Palestinian
Authority is regularly diverted to a program that
systematically rewards convicted prisoners with generous
salaries. These transactions in fact violate
American and British laws that prohibit US funding from
benefiting terrorists. More than that, they could be seen as
incentivizing murder and terror against innocent civilians.
'Here's how the system works. When a Palestinian is
convicted of an act of terror against the Israeli government
or innocent civilians, such as a bombing or a murder, that
convicted terrorist automatically receives a generous salary
from the Palestinian Authority. The salary is specified by
the Palestinian "law of the prisoner" and administered by
the PA's Ministry of Prisoner Affairs. A Palestinian
watchdog group, the Prisoners Club, ensures the PA's
compliance with the law and pushes for payments as a
prioritized expenditure. This means that even during
frequent budget shortfalls and financial crisis, the PA pays
the prisoners' salaries first and foremost – before
other fiscal obligations.'
'