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This is cross posted by Diana Muir Appelbaum at Jewish Ideas Daily
What made Greece, long a pro-Arab country with a history of anti-Semitism and a notoriously soft line on terrorism, stop political activists from sailing a flotilla to Gaza? What led Greece to rush fire-fighting helicopters to the Mt. Carmel fire? Why do many observers expect to see more Greek-Israeli cooperation not only in defense and diplomacy, but also in culture, tourism, business, and development of solar and water-saving technology?
Part of the answer is that Greece would like to become less dependent on Arab oil by buying natural gas from Israel, and it is the obvious partner for a pipeline to bring Israeli natural gas to profitable European markets.
But the surprise is how much deeper the friendship could become, as a look at Greece’s history and culture reveals a number of striking parallels with Israel.
Like Israel, modern Greece was created by romantic nationalists able first to imagine, and then to achieve, independence because of the crumbling of the Ottoman Empire. Both countries were populated by victims of vicious and sometimes genocidal ethnic cleansings.
When Greece achieved independence in 1828, it was a tiny statelet with borders that ended just north of Athens. The overwhelming majority of ethnic Greeks lived outside the Greek state, and historic Mt. Olympus and Constantinople, with hundreds of thousands of Greek residents, were outside its borders.
Among the many promises made by the British government during World War I—when the Ottomans fought alongside Germany—were the establishment of a Jewish homeland (the Balfour Declaration), and a promise that the ethnically Greek areas of coastal Anatolia (also then outside the Greek state) would be given to Greece. With the Ottoman Empire crumbling, the 1919 Paris Peace Conference authorized Greece to move into Smyrna. Unwisely, the Greek army pressed past the Greek-populated areas into the interior of Anatolia, where the Turkish army decimated it.
Massacres and ethnic cleansings of Anatolian Greeks had begun in 1914 but accelerated in 1919, and are remembered for their scale, brutality, and genocidal intent. The outcome of the Armenian massacres was even worse, since when the two campaigns began, Greek Christians had an independent state to flee to as the Armenians did not. But in both cases, no one intervened. Instead, the world sent Ernest Hemingway to file moving reports about the ranks of starving Greek refugees trudging toward the border and safety.
Only after the ethnic cleansing of the Armenians and the 1,400,000 Greek Christians of Anatolia was largely complete did the great powers meet in the Swiss city of Lausanne, where they worked out partial compensation for the Greek victims. The remaining Christians in Turkey were obliged to move to Greece, and the 300,000 Muslims in Greece (except for those of Thrace) were required to depart for Turkey, with their homes converted to housing for Greek refugees. A Greek Christian community was allowed to remain in Istanbul in 1923, but it was driven out during the Cyprus crises.
One result was that well over a quarter of the population of the Greek state, which numbered a mere four-and-a-half million people, was suddenly made up of refugees. Only in the Jewish state have refugees comprised a larger proportion of the population.
Even after this enormous ethnic cleansing, large Greek communities remained in the Soviet Union, Egypt, French Syria, Lebanon, and elsewhere. The Greek law of return was designed to provide citizenship for ethnic Greeks who might need it. They have needed it often—in large events, like the Nasser-era policies that forced a substantial Greek community out of Egypt, and small but dramatic ones, like the 1993 Greek Army operation that rescued ethnic Greeks from war-torn Abkhazia.
The challenges of integrating these recurring waves of refugees have been enormous. As in Israel, they arrived stripped of their property to a country with little demand for their skills, speaking mutually unintelligible variants of Greek or entirely foreign languages.
Greece has never been perfect; it has been violent and, despite decades of European Union-funded prosperity, has not figured out how to build an economy. And yet it has offered something valuable to its citizens. Whether they are the descendants of refugees driven from their distant homes or of peasants exploited by arrogant overlords, all Greeks are now members of a national community. As citizens, they have a voice in their own government and the right to national self-determination and self-defense.
If Greeks often seem unreasonably prickly or stiff-necked to EU officials, their Balkan neighbors, or Turkey, it is because the memory of not having had these rights is so vivid. But the lives of nations are not static. The Muslim citizens of eastern Thrace no longer live as peasant farmers. The young move to Thessalonica and Athens where they join a growing community of illegal immigrant workers from poor countries including Egypt, Pakistan, and Albania. Some Muslim Albanians agitate for the right of return that Greece law gives to ethnically Greek Christians. They descend from the large community of ethnic Albanians expelled by Greek partisans late in World War II following their widespread collaboration with Italian and German occupation forces.
These developments raise the question of what it means to be Greek, a particularly challenging issue because until recently, Greek ethnicity, membership in the Greek Orthodox Church, and the right to Greek nationality have meant more or less the same thing.
Most Greeks continue to regard Greek culture, history, language, and Christianity as inseparable from Greek nationality, even if they personally enter a church only to attend weddings and funerals. The memory of centuries of Ottoman rule during which Greek culture and literature declined, the repair of the roof on a church was technically illegal, and even those Greeks with great wealth and privileges had no rights makes nationhood precious.
This, then, is the deep commonality that prime ministers Papandreou and Netanyahu have discovered and set out to cultivate: the idea that in a large and diverse world, the right to exist of two small, distinctive nation states, one Greek and one Jewish, is eminently worth defending.
Diana Muir Appelbaum is an American author and historian. She is at work on a book tentatively entitled Nationhood: The Foundation of Democracy
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This essay was written by Hadar Sela and published in The Propagandist.
This year marks the fortieth anniversary of the commencement of European Union contributions to the Palestinians. The EU has been UNRWA’s largest donor since 1971 and over the last decade has provided that organisation with almost one billion Euros. Since the establishment of the Palestinian Authority under the Oslo Accords in 1993 it has, in addition, been a major donor to that administration.
The numbers are truly staggering; the EU has pledged to provide 28.4 percent of the total humanitarian aid budget for 2011 – US $60,013,647 – making it the top contributor. That figure does not include donations from individual EU member countries or separate donations to shore up the PA budget. In 2010, EU contributions to the PA budget as set out in the Palestinian Reform and Development Plan amounted to 199.90 million Euros. Funds donated by member states of the EU amounted to an additional 62.70 million Euros.
When combined with the additional donations from the World Bank, the United States, Japan and the notably less significant , the total amounts of money donated (US $3.96 billion in 2009-2010) mean that the Palestinians are still the highest per capita recipients of aid in the world, even 18 years after the establishment of the Palestinian Authority.
As Europe sinks ever deeper into financial turmoil itself, taxpayers in EU countries must be asking themselves if the tax money paid both directly to their own governments and indirectly to the EU could not be better employed in reviving their own economies and supporting unemployed and poverty-stricken residents of the EU. They may also be wondering if their 40 years of investment in UNRWA and 18 years of investment in the Palestinian Authority have actually brought any benefit to the Palestinian people. After all, throwing money at an investment which yields no returns is not financially savvy.
Not only has EU and other investment in UNRWA not solved the problem of Palestinian refugees, it has actually perpetuated it by forcibly keeping second, third and even fourth generations in permanent statelessness.
Read the rest of the essay, here.
Some NGO called the Israel/Palestine Center for Research and Information just sent out a frantic fundraising letter, which reads in part:
Dear Friends of IPCRI
The financial situation for the entire peace community in Israel and Palestine is become increasingly difficult. Traditional supporters such as European governments and Foundations are being frightened away from funding these activities because of the aggressive work of groups like Im Tirtzu which try to intimidate organizations such as the New Israel Fund and its supporters, and from the intellectual terrorism of the NGO Monitor which frightens donors to shy away and even completely cease the funding of Israeli and Palestinian peace and human rights NGOs.
Boy, where to begin?
First, the degree to which “the” NGO Monitor is indeed influencing the EU to reconsider their funding of radical NGOs who, far from promoting peace, routinely go well beyond their “humanitarian” mandate to engage in highly politicized campaigns to delegitimize and isolate the state of Israel is a cause for celebration – as accountability, the last time I checked, was still considered to be a progressive notion.
Also, its interesting how thin-skinned such groups are: large, wealthy, and powerful (EU funded) NGOs who apparently feel “intimidated” by one small watchdog group working to hold them accountable by engaging in such insidious tactics as releasing long, dry, well-researched, and generously footnoted monographs and, even on occasion, a sharply worded press release!
Let there be no doubt, Gerald Steinberg’s academic ‘reign of terror’ is a chilling and ominous development, one which has evidently caused a profound and palpable sense of fear across the land.
(Also, don’t forget to purchase your “intellectual terrorism” gear, here)
Related articles
- ‘Friends of Sabeel UK’ : promoting BDS and harming interfaith relations. (cifwatch.com)
- BDS Sewer System (You better hold your breath) (cifwatch.com)
- Human Rights Watch Exploits Race To Vilify Israel, Bait Jewish Community (cifwatch.com)
- Authors of Goldstone Report publish apologia in Guardian, complain they’re victims of “attacks” and “extraordinary pressure” (cifwatch.com)
A guest post by Alan Melkman
Just over a year ago it was alleged that a top Hamas commander was murdered in his Dubai hotel room by injection of a drug that caused a heart attack. The Israelis were blamed and roundly condemned for this so-called ‘extra judicial’ killing. Britain in particular was so incensed that when the Dubai government, which has a world-wide reputation for absolute honesty, never having told a ‘porky, ever, evidenced that the alleged murderers might have used fake British passports. So outraged were they that the holier than thou foreign office carpeted the Israeli ambassador and expelled a senior Israeli diplomat.
David Milliband, former British Foreign Secretary said, “The British government has made it repeatedly clear that so-called targeted assassinations of this kind are unlawful, unjustified and counterproductive.” He was not alone.
The French foreign ministry declared that extrajudicial executions contravene international law and are unacceptable.” The Italian Foreign Minister said, “Italy, like the whole of the European Union, has always condemned the practice of targeted assassinations.” The Russians asserted that “Russia has repeatedly stressed the unacceptability of extrajudicial settling of scores and ‘targeted killings.” Javier Solana noted that “the European Union has consistently condemned extrajudicial killings.” The Jordanians said, “Jordan has always denounced this policy of assassination and its position on this has always been clear.” And Kofi Annan has declared that “extrajudicial killings are violations of international law.”
You may have missed it but one, Osama Bin Laden, has just been terminated, or is it assassinated or is it murdered by a gang of US toughies.
Fortunately, they didn’t have forged passports to get into Pakistan, or probably no passports at all, since they didn’t need any. They just entered illegally and then executed the bugger. Not in cold blood you understand, he resisted arrest! But now that ‘extra judicial’ killing has been used against an enemy of Britain, France, Italy and other European nations, the tune has changed. Suddenly targeted killing is not only legal and moral, it is praiseworthy (except, of course, to Hamas, which immediately condemned the US killing of Bin Laden).
Well the truth is that when used properly, targeted killing has always been deserving of approval—even when employed by Israel, a nation against which a double standard always seems to be applied. Indeed, in Israel, the use of targeted killings has been closely regulated by its Supreme Court and permitted only against terrorists who are actively engaged in ongoing acts of terrorism. In the United States, on the other hand, the decisions to use this tactic is made by the President alone, without any form of judicial review.
So let the world stop applying a double standard to Israel and let it start judging the merits and demerits of military tactics such as targeted killing. On balance, targeted killing, when used prudently against proper military targets, can be an effective, lawful and, yes, moral tool in the war against terrorism.
This is cross posted by Simon Plosker of Honest Reporting
In Feb. 22, Irish “journalist” David Cronin attempted a citizen’s arrest of Israel’s Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman at the start of a press conference at the EU in Brussels. Cronin shouted: “Mister Lieberman this is a citizen’s arrest. You are charged with the crime of apartheid” while accusing Israel of being an apartheid state. Video footage of the incident can be viewed below:
According to The Guardian’s report of the incident:
Cronin, a freelance journalist who has written for the Economist, the Inter Press Service news agency and the Guardian’s Comment is Free, was restrained by security guards and escorted from the building, shouting “Free Palestine”.
Can Cronin really be described as a “freelance journalist”? These are not the actions of a credible, honest media professional. Cronin’s actions are an abuse of the access granted to him and others with press credentials.
Perhaps it is unsurprising to see that Cronin contributes to The Guardian, a newspaper that has itself blurred the lines between journalism and activism with its coverage of the Palileaks.
We were also surprised when we saw the story on our Google RSS Reader, which we use to keep track of articles from so many media outlets. Take a closer look at the authors of the article.
Could it be that The Guardian allowed David Cronin to co-author a news item about an incident in which he was the key player? There is no evidence of this on The Guardian’s website. Yet, an RSS feed does not make errors independently from the original source material that it reproduces.
Which leaves us with one question: Innocent slip up that required a swift correction or an intentional cover-up of an unethical piece of reporting?
Update – 25 Feb: David Cronin himself has added the following in the comments section below: “I can confirm that I did NOT co-author the article in The Guardian to which you referred.”
At what point does journalism become activism? In this case, Cronin clearly crossed the line. Indeed, the Arab-Israeli conflict is one prime example of two competing narratives where not only have many journalists accepted one of those narratives but are actively promoting one side over the other.
We hope that The Guardian and other mainstream media outlets will not publish any of David Cronin’s writing on any subject related to Israel. With The Guardian, however, we suspect that Cronin’s outburst will only endear him to the paper’s editorial team.
This is cross-posted by Hadar Sela and Eli E. Hertz at the site, Myths and Facts.
There is a saying in the medical world that an x-ray is only as good as the doctor reading it. The interpretation of information differs according to pre-existing factors such as knowledge and experience, with mistakes in diagnosis having the potential to be tragic. It is true even when the given information is accurate and unquestionable, but when its reliability is not assured, precise interpretation and analysis become nearly impossible.
In December 2010, the European Union’s Foreign Affairs Council stated that it would recognize a Palestinian Arab state “when appropriate” on the basis of assessments made by the World Bank, that the Palestinian Authority “is well positioned for the establishment of a State at any point in the near future.”
In order to determine whether this assessment is correct, and therefore potentially justified and actionable, it is important to understand exactly how it came about.
The source of this assessment regarding Palestinian readiness for statehood is the September 2010 World Bank report to the Quartet’s Ad Hoc Liaison Committee which apprises on the subject of the Palestinian Authority’s progress in implementing the Palestinian Reform and Development Plan initiated in 2007. It is also known as the “Fayyad Plan” after the Palestinian caretaker Prime Minister by whom it was authored.
The international community, as represented by Quartet Members, the United Nations, the European Union, the United States and Russia, has been monitoring the progress of the three year Fayyad Plan through the reports of its representative on the ground, the World Bank, which runs a “country team” in the region.
Three basic problems emerged from the study of the regularly issued World Bank reports. The first involves methodology – the information upon which the reports are based is gathered mostly from politically biased NGOs working in the region, some of which are actually funded by countries from Quartet members. These include organizations such as B’Tselem, UN OCHA, Peace Now, HaMoked, Amnesty International, Gisha, Yesh Din and IPCRI. The World Bank uses consulting services from Ben-Or Consulting, a company associated with several of the above organizations and with connections to politically motivated groups both in Israel and abroad.
The second basic problem is that the Palestinian Reform and Development Plan is limited largely to reforms which may be termed financial, economic and administrative. Components of civil society within a functioning state such as the rights and protection of women, children and minorities, labour rights and trade unions, freedom of the press or prevention of torture are not within its scope.
Thirdly, in the approach taken towards Palestinian reform by both the Palestinian Authority and the Quartet, the subject of dealing with the ideological and religious causes of continuous Palestinian terror, is clearly absent.
Under such circumstances, the European Union’s haste in declaring itself ready to recognize a Palestinian state contrasts dramatically with its cautious approach to the accession of Turkey to its own ranks. In that case, a country already deemed sufficiently trustworthy to be a veteran member of NATO has been obliged to engage in a 10 to 15 year process of reform and overhaul of all its systems and institutions – economic, financial, judicial, political, civil and social. The process is overseen by the European Union itself and is both strictly performance-based and will have an iron-clad reversibility clause if Turkey fails to live up to its promises.Only when all criteria have been met will the subject of Turkey joining the European Union actually be brought up for vote by the existing members.
Soon after its foundation, the Quartet initiated the Roadmap which was also intended to be a performance-based process leading to Palestinian statehood and an end to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Unfortunately, even the first clause of the Roadmap has not been fulfilled and yet it now appears that the European Union, relying upon questionable assessments, is ready to abandon its own blueprint for the peace process in favour of a Palestinian Arab state which comes nowhere near the criteria it demands for its own members.
In his CiF article of January 26th, Seumas Milne lamented the passing of ‘authentic’ Palestinian leadership, much in the same spirit as his paper’s editorial of January 23rd which described the current PA as ‘craven’ and ‘weak’. Milne’s primary complaint is that the spirit of an ‘authentic national liberation movement’ has evaporated from the PA and that dependency upon foreign funding – particularly that from the US and the EU – means that “the PA’s leaders are now far more accountable to their funders than to their own people”.
How strange then that the Guardian should choose to completely ignore this news item from the indispensable Palestinian Media Watch which indicates that the PA is still doing exactly what it always did with European and American taxpayers’ money.
Abbas gives terrorist’s family $2000
by Itamar Marcus and Nan Jacques Zilberdik
Earlier this month a Palestinian terrorist attempted to attack an Israeli checkpoint. Carrying two pipe bombs, he ran towards the Israeli soldiers, screaming “Allahu Akbar” – “Allah is Greater” – and was shot and killed before he could detonate the bombs.
Yesterday Palestinian Authority Chairman Abbas granted “the relatives of the Shahid” $2000:
“The governor of the Jenin district, Kadura Musa, has awarded a presidential grant to the family of the Shahid (Martyr), Khaldoun Najib Samoudy, during a visit that took place yesterday in the village of Al-Yamoun. The governor noted that the grant is financial aid in the amount of $2000 that the President [Mahmoud Abbas] is awarding to the relatives of the Shahid, who was recently killed as a Martyr at the Hamra checkpoint by the Israeli occupation forces.”
[Al-Hayat Al-Jadida (Fatah) Jan. 25, 2011]
Over 60% of the PA’s GNP now comes from foreign donations – mostly from the US, the EU, the World Bank and the UN. The percentage of foreign donations as part of the annual PA budget has steadily risen in recent years. In other words, the PA is becoming more –rather than less – dependent upon aid as time goes by. In 2000 foreign aid comprised 10.5% of the annual income, in 2005 – 22.4% and in 2007 – 35.9%. Some of this money finds its way to Gaza in the form of transfers from the PA – including funds to pay the salaries of Fatah employees who are paid to stay at home. The Hamas regime of course has its own donor network and an up to date insight into the entire economy of Gaza can be found here.
The ‘tradition’ of siphoning off funds from foreign donations in order to finance terror was initiated by Seumas Milne’s hero Yasser Arafat. With the creation of the PA – whose financial affairs were overseen by the international community from the very beginning – a special ‘Presidential budget’ was established. A rather laconic description given in a 2003 International Monetary Fund report on the PA’s finances stated that:
“Presidential budgets (or for heads of State) are sensitive issues in all Middle East countries and most developing countries. In most cases, information is quite opaque if at all available.”
The report went on to state (chapter V, p. 107) that:
“In the case of the PA, actual expenditures of the President’s office are published on a monthly basis, broken down by wages, operating expenses and transfer. The 2003 budget appropriated US$74 million to the President’s office (8 percent of the total budget), of which US$34 million is dedicated to “transfers.” The President assumes the prerogative of providing aid to various organizations and individuals…
…However other claimants and organizations are part of politically favored networks who should not be getting such grants under any criterion.”
Despite the subsequent (mainly post-Arafat) reforms within the PA, the tradition of ‘Presidential transfers’ continues, albeit on a smaller scale as can be seen in the PMW report above.
I personally have considerable difficulty with the knowledge that EU and US taxpayers’ money has been used to finance terror attacks upon Israeli citizens and reward the families of ‘martyrs’ and I think that it is high time that the World Bank, which supervises the Palestinian Reform and Development Plan, was called to give both past and present accountability on this subject, along with the donor countries themselves.
Seumas Milne, however, will most likely be delighted to learn that the spirit of the ‘authentic national liberation movement’ he finds so inspiring lives on.
This essay was written by Hadar Sela for The Propagandist and was originally titled, “Et Tu Europe?”. Sela is also the author of Anti-Zionist and Anti-Semitic Discourse on the Guardian’s Comment is Free website, published last year by the MERIA Journal.
A recent document drawn up by the EU Heads of Mission in Jerusalem and Ramallah raises some worrying issues, not least the proposal for organised boycotts. Readers will doubtless notice the report’s reliance upon information gleaned from politically motivated NGOs such as UN OCHA and ACRI, which set the tone for the cavalier repetition of numerous untruths such as;
“Successive Israeli governments have pursued a policy of transferringJewish population into the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt) in violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention and international humanitarian law.” (my emphasis)
It is also blatantly apparent that despite the fact that the status of Jerusalem is supposed to be the subject of long-awaited negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, the EU Heads of mission seem intent upon creating their own ‘facts on the ground’, together with a flawed narrative which seeks to over-ride any negotiation process.
However, the report’s ‘action plan’ is possibly its most disturbing aspect in that it includes outright initiatives for boycott of Israeli businesses and institutions as well as specific calls for intervention in the affairs of the host state.
East Jerusalem as the future Palestinian capital
1. In conformity with the objectives of the StrategicMulti-sector Development Plan for East Jerusalem, promote a coordinated approach and a coherentPalestinian strategy towards East Jerusalem.
2. Promote the establishment of a PLO focal point/representative in East Jerusalem.
3. National Europe Day events held in East Jerusalem (when suitable at Palestinian institutions)
4. EU missions with offices or residences in East Jerusalem to regularly host Palestinian officials with senior EU visitors.
5) Avoid having Israeli security and/or protocolaccompanying high rankingofficials from Member Stateswhen visiting the Old City/EastJerusalem.
6. Prevent/discouragefinancial transactions from EU MS actors supporting settlement activity in East Jerusalem, by adopting appropriate EU legislation.
7. Compile non-binding guidelines for EU tour operators to prevent support for settlement business in East Jerusalem – e.g. hotels, bus operators, archaeological sites controlled by pro-settler organisations etc.
8. Ensure that the EU-Israel Association Agreement is not used to allow the export to the EU of products manufactured in settlements in East Jerusalem.
9. Raise public awareness about settlement products, for instance by providing guidance on origin labelling for settlement products to major EU retailers.
10. Inform EU citizens of financial risks involved in purchasing property in occupied East Jerusalem.
Strengthen the role of the European Union
1. Enhance local coordination between Quartet actors for input into policy making and decisions.
2. Ensure EU presence when there is a risk of demolitions or evictions of Palestinian families.
3. Ensure EU presence at Israeli courts cases on house demolitions or evictions of Palestinian families.
4. Ensure EU intervention when Palestinians are arrested or intimidated by Israeli authorities for peaceful cultural, social or political activities in East Jerusalem.
5. Operationalise the EU policy on bringing high level visitors to sensitive sites (e.g. separation barrier etc). - on logistics for high level visitors (e.g choice of hotel, change of transport East/West) - on contacts with the Jerusalem Mayor and on refraining from meeting Israeli officials in their East Jerusalem offices (e.g. in the Israeli Ministry of Justice etc) - on information sharing on violent settlers in East Jerusalem to assess whether to grant entry into the EU.
Read the rest of the essay, here.
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Earlier this week the Guardian reported on the sentencing of a British student to 32 months of imprisonment after he was found guilty of throwing an empty fire extinguisher during a protest in London against the proposed rise in university tuition fees.
Several interesting points arise from this report; not least the objective and fact-based style in which it is written and the complete non-acceptance on the part of the British police and judicial system of violence as a legitimate form of protest. The presiding judge was reported as stating that:
“It is deeply regrettable, indeed a shocking thing, for a court to have to sentence a young man such as you to a substantial term of custody, but the courts have a duty to provide the community with such protection from violence as they can, and this means sending out a very clear message to anyone minded to behave in this way that an offence of this seriousness will not be tolerated.”
“The right of peaceful protest is a precious one. Those who abuse it and use the occasion to indulge in serious violence must expect a lengthy sentence of immediate custody.”
“If ever a case calls for a deterrent sentence, this is it. I wish to stress, however, that this is not a case of making an example of you alone. Anyone who behaves in this way and comes before the courts must expect a long sentence of custody.”
The Metropolitan Police’s head of public order was quoted as saying that:
“We all recognise and respect the fundamental right to peaceful protest. That is why we go to such lengths to engage with demonstration organisers before and during these events.”
“What we, the police, and those who live and work in London cannot and will not tolerate is violence against members of the public or police officers, or damage to property.”
We can only speculate as to what would have been the reaction of this British court had the student actually injured anyone or had he been involved not in a one-off incident, but in regular and repeated acts of similar violence over a number of years, but it seems reasonable to assume that either scenario would not have been taken lightly.
This was published by Hadar Sela at The Propagandist
About four years ago I happened to be sitting in a threadbare pub in a northern English mill town on a dank winter evening when two middle-aged, middle class couples sat down at the next table. One of the women was evidently a teacher at the local high school and she was describing to her friends a wedding which she had recently attended. The bride was one of her pupils – a young woman whom she repeatedly described as “my little Palestinian girl”.
Enthusiastic and detailed descriptions of exotic dress, food and ceremony were eventually interrupted by the other woman in the party who somewhat hesitantly expressed discomfort with the fact that such a young girl had taken part in what was, according to the raconteuse, an arranged marriage. Flicking the ends of her fuchsia pink and silver tasselled ethnic-style scarf impatiently, the teacher silenced her friend with the standard debate-killing, politically-correct slogan of last resort employed so often by those afflicted by normative relativism: “But that’s part of their culture!”
Earlier this month twenty-six Europeans of note, including Javier Solana, Mary Robinson, Helmut Schmidt and other former heads of state and dignitaries, sent a letter to European Union capitals and institutions demanding, amongst other things, that EU Foreign Ministers state as doctrine that the EU “Will not recognize any changes to the June 1967 boundaries, and clarify that a Palestinian state should be in sovereign control over territory equivalent to 100 percent of the territory occupied in 1967, including its capital in East Jerusalem.” The letter also specifies a time limit:
“It also asks ministers to set an ultimatum of April 2011 for Israel to fall into line or see the Union seek an end to the existing US-led peace talks in favour of a UN solution.”
Days later, European Union Foreign Ministers expressed their “readiness, when appropriate, to recognize a Palestinian state”; a move which was swiftly followed by a request from leaders of the Palestinian National Authority for a number of individual countries within the EU, as well as the EU envoy to the peace process, to join Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, the Arab world and some African nations in recognizing a unilateral declaration of Palestinian statehood without a peace agreement.
The Jerusalem Post recently reported that twenty-six former EU leaders issued a letter (to current EU leaders) calling for boycotts and sanctions against Israel. The letter was signed by EU’s former top diplomat, Javier Solana, former Irish President Mary Robinson, and former German ex-chancellor Helmut Schmidt, among others.
In light of this letter, we’re cross-posting the following, by Naftali Balanson (Managing Editor of NGO Monitor), which makes a moral case against BDS. While Balanson’s piece naturally focuses on the NGO angle, his argument is relevant in the broader context as well, and serves as a strong rebuttal to arguments made by commentators at the Guardian (such as Ali Abunimah, Ben White, and others), who shamefully abuse the rhetoric of human rights to advance highly discriminatory policies against the Jewish state.
This is cross posted from NGO Monitor, and originally appeared in the online journal, Zeek:
New Israel Fund (NIF) Director of Communications Naomi Paiss “Don’t Divest; Invest” makes an important statement by rejecting the global boycotts, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement and its accompanying “apartheid” rhetoric. Paiss reaffirms the notion that BDS is totally incongruous with Jewish values, and demonstrates that progressives within the community cannot tolerate its “inflammatory and counter-productive” agenda. Her piece is a sharp blow to the very legitimacy of BDS campaigns, particularly those conducted by Jewish groups (see “Peace Process or Land Grab?” by Rebecca Vilkomerson).
However, although her argument is compelling, Paiss significantly understates the case against BDS. Yes, attempts to isolate Israel “penalize the innocent along with the guilty, push moderates towards right-wing nationalism, and spur rejection of progressive and humanist values.” But, more importantly, BDS is the antithesis of universal human rights values, rooted in immoral double standards that single out and condemn Israel as a pariah state. The BDS movement also rejects the very existence of Israel as a Jewish entity. Inasmuch as BDS activists seek to eliminate Jewish self-determination, the movement (as a movement, not necessarily every individual linked to it) is anti-Semitic.
The core goals of the BDS agenda expose the true nature of the movement. One of them is the “rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes,” falsely portrayed as a “precept of international law.” There is no such legal obligation, nor is the right of return a peaceful goal. Rather, it is an attempt to reverse partition, refight 1948 – at least demographically – and overturn the right to Jewish sovereignty.
It is, therefore, no surprise that proponents of BDS resort to racist and anti-Semitic rhetoric. A particularly offensive and common theme – exemplified by the hate speech of PACBI’s Omar Barghouti, Electronic Intifada’s Ali Abunimah, and others – is identifying Israel with Nazi Germany and the IDF with Nazi soldiers. The Palestinian Christian non-governmental organization (NGO) known as Sabeel claims that “Jesus is on the cross again with thousands of crucified Palestinians around him,” persecuted by an “Israeli government crucifixion system.” These pronouncements revive classic anti-Semitic theological themes.
The Israeli NGO Gisha - whose stated objective is to ”protect the freedom of movement of Palestinians, especially Gaza residents” and uses “legal assistance and public advocacy to protect the rights of Palestinian residents” – recently released a video game called Safe Passage.
Gisha – whose donors include New Israel Fund, the EU, Norway, the Netherlands, Ireland, Germany, Oxfam GB, and (George Soros’s) Open Society Institute – is among the NGOs who characterize Israel using apartheid rhetoric. Gisha also, per NGO Monitor:
“promotes the false claim that Gaza remains ‘occupied’ under international law, and that Israel has a legal obligation to grant unfettered ‘freedom of movement’ to Gaza residents. Gisha’s claims were quoted in the Goldstone report in order to accuse Israel of enacting policies ‘in the pursuance by Israel of political goals at the expense of the civilian population, in blatant violation of international humanitarian law.’ “
Further:
“Gisha’s highly publicized 2008 campaign condemning Israel for barring Palestinian students’ travel from Gaza to Israel and to the United States under the Fulbright program erased Israel’s legitimated security concerns. Indeed, most of these “students” were refused entry by the American government on security grounds.”
Gisha describes the game as an effort to “inform about the legal and military measures that Israel uses to implement its policy of separation between the Gaza strip and the West Bank.” Their hope is that the game will encourage you to support Gisha in their efforts “to allow for freedom of movement between Gaza and the West Bank…for 4 million Palestinians.”
(To give you a taste of the game, Safe Passage, it actually suggests that WAITING AT A BORDER CROSSING is a human rights violation. As a colleague noted, it seems that such a universal principle would require that US, Canada, and Mexico customs officials be immediately arrested and sent to the Hague. )
Regardless, let’s play the game that – from what I hear – all the kids are talking about!
Like most modern interactive video games, they allow you to choose your own character. I chose one of Gaza’s many friendly ice cream manufacturers.
Hawkeye
Omar2
WellofSense
Medusa
The Alchemist
Louise
Tosca
Maimon
Telling the Truth
Israelinurse
Adam Levick
Margie in Tel Aviv
Guest/Cross Post
Hadar Sela
The EU investigates Israeli domestic issues: The politics of soft colonialism
December 18, 2011 in Comments which are off-topic, ad hominem, racist, vulgar or include threats of violence will be deleted | Tags: anti-Zionism, Delegitimization, European Union | by Guest/Cross Post | 25 comments
A guest post by AKUS
A recent article in Ha’aretz reveals that some members of the European Union have been working on a secret document dealing with a “core issue” in the Arab-Israeli conflict.
The article is headlined: Secret EU paper aims to tackle Israel’s treatment of Arab minority
According to Ha’aretz:
Forget the Europeans’ problems with their Roma population, their Muslim minority, the abject failure of multiculturalism, the rise of anti-Semitism and, last, but not least, the possible collapse of the whole European Union and the dissolution of a common currency (or vice versa).
In fact, forget the way Israel’s neighbors are treating their ‘minorities’, from Turkey’s cultural genocide against the Kurds, to the continuing murder and oppression of Copts in Egypt, to the total segregation of Palestinians in Lebanon, to the wholesale massacres happening in Syria as you read. Focus on how Israel “treats its Arab population” – a phrase expressing owner ship of a population redolent of a past colonial era that ignores the full rights enjoyed by all Israeli citizens, of any ethnicity or religion.
Apparently initiated by Britain (who else? Do we detect the Foreign Office camel corps poking its long nose into this tent?), the document is said to have originally proposed unstated punitive measures against Israel.
There remain a few sane voices from countries that have not yet decided to inhabit a parallel universe where the world’s greatest problems revolve around Israel:
The really extraordinary example of proposed meddling in Israel’s internal affairs, as reported, was this:
One might be excused for being a little cynical about the motivations behind this declaration of concern for Israel’s long-term stability from this group. Alternatively, one wonders how a document drafted by, shall we say, the US and Israel, expressing concern for the way Europe treats its minorities and the effect on its long-term stability, would be received in Brussels, Paris or Berlin. Or London.
The document most shockingly but not altogether unsurprisingly reveals the European’s reverse thinking and ignorance about the status and effects of the “peace process”.
Neo-Palestinian Israeli Arab politicians like Zouabi who sits in the Knesset (how is that for discrimination and ill-treatment of a minority?!) and a few local leaders like Sheikh Raed Salah have made it their daily business to inflame relations between Arab and Jewish citizens of Israel by insisting that the loyalties of Arab Israelis should lie with a future Palestinian state, rather than the State of Israel.
By ignoring the Palestinian refusal to return to negotiations and the inflammatory activities of neo-Palestinian Arab politicians in Israel the document’s authors blame Israel rather than the Palestinians and their incitement of the Israeli Arab population for deteriorating relations between Jews and Arabs in Israel:
Don’t the Europeans have it backwards? Shouldn’t the Palestinians be concerned about the impact of the peace process on Israeli Arabs and their ability to be at ease with their Israeli identity?
The reality is, as any rational person can observe, that the Palestinian leaders are quite pleased with the discord they are sowing between communities in Israel. They labor under a false assumption that this somehow advances their cause. Of course, the truth is quite the opposite. The greater the friction between Arab and Jewish citizens of Israel, the more cautious Israel will be about any concessions at all to the Arabs on the West Bank. If the two communities in Israel can coexist peacefully there will more willingness to try the experiment of coexistence with a neighboring Palestinian state.
Thus there is a way the Europeans can help if their concern is genuine.
They should suggest to the Palestinian leadership, if they can actually identify the true leaders given the battles between the PA and Hamas, that they reduce tensions between Israeli Arabs and Jews by restarting negotiations and asking their Israeli supporters to tone down the anti-Israeli rhetoric. The stronger and more cohesive Israeli society feels itself to be, and more the Jews and Arabs inside Israel can trust each other, the greater the likelihood of an agreement being reached.
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