Muslim News. Some Thoughts

Teletext, for those not living in Britain, is a news service that is wholly text based and provides short summaries of what has happened in the news on any one day.  It is run from BBC TV channels one and two.  My experience over the years has been that any negative Israel related item remains for two days at a minimum while other items of news will generally stay for no longer than one.  What is particularly dishonest about the BBC is that on the few occasions I have complained about inappropriately worded news items my complaint has been dismissed with peremptory disdain and one sentence: “The BBC is not responsible for any content reproduced by Teletext which is an independent news company”.   So the fact that Teletext could not disseminate its propaganda without the electronic presence of the BBC is apparently not considered relevant.

I bring this up because on the 6^th of August 2012 a most curious thing occurred.

Teletext displayed the following stories (in order of appearance).  There were perhaps ten stories featured:

1. Fighting intensifies in Aleppo as fears grow that the Syrian army will launch a Full-scale assault within days.
2. Yemen suicide attacker kills 30 in an attack on a funeral service.
3. In Pakistan several police officers have been suspended after they were accused of parading an unmarried couple, naked, in public.
4. 48 Iranian pilgrims were kidnapped from a bus in the vicinity of a shrine near the Syrian capital Damascus. 
5. Deadly attack off Nigeria. Gunmen stormed an oil barge killing soldiers and kidnapping foreigners.
6. Key Afghan ministers fired after failing to prevent cross-border shelling from Pakistan and security lapses resulting in the assassinations of senior officials.

I recently read that there are some 30 conflicts in the world today, 25 of them involving Islam.  It is what Samuel Huntington (The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of the World Order) refers to as fault conflicts. These are communal conflicts which inevitably deteriorate into violent clashes, ethnic cleansing and war.

In ‘The Islamist’ Ed Husain states that the failure to conquer Europe is seen as “the unfinished business of Vienna in 1683” (where 1683 is the date that the Ottomans were turned back from conquering Europe).  By embracing Muslim refugees but refusing to define what is acceptable within our Western society we may be creating an economically stronger society but we are not creating a better future. 

When Turkey’s foreign minister publicly reminds his Austrian compatriots that they must not integrate into their host Austrian society; that their loyalty and identity remains Muslim and Turkish, it is an issue that we, the infidel fail to deal with at the cost of our identity.  Twenty million Muslims live in Europe and their population is expected to double or treble over the next few decades.  We refuse to discuss any issues that are intrinsic to the health of Western Civilisation where they conflict with the cultural values of our newest subjects. Multiculturalism is the not so new buzzword that invalidates rational debate.  We accept the totalitarianism of other nations, adhere to their fuzzy definition of terrorism and embrace their selective application of Human Rights legislation.  When human rights conflict with Sharia law we look away.

We accept their ongoing brutalisation because they are not our own but by being desensitised to their pain we vicariously brutalise our own societies. And ours is based on an assumption of progress but the relentless march towards darkness is possibly mirrored in our own Western States not because we stone our people to death or beat immodestly dressed women to a bloodied pulp but because in our confusion of identity we no longer focus on relieving the stresses within our own society.  John McCarthy is a British journalist and broadcaster. He was held in captivity by Muslim terrorists (in Lebanon) for 1,943 days.   He described this mind-set as the casual cruelty of his Hezbollah jailers. 

Slavery, execution for witchcraft, homosexuality and adultery; mutilation and murder; cruelty, violence and intimidation are a small part of the acceptable face of the Islamic world that we prefer not to judge.  Our own politically correct spokespersons warn us against the “American eye for an eye” or “the Old Testament way.” After Muammar Gaddafi’s butchered body featured on the front page of every British newspaper we became squeamish after the fact even though we (in the West) had encouraged the Libyan Civil War.  What did we expect?

And that is our problem as well as our failure. We have abandoned universalism for a carefully defined particularism.  Our interests preclude taking responsibility for the failure of others as we would expect them to behave if they were in our place.  In theological terms it is defining grace, and therefore mercy, as specific to the chosen. Secular belief in this entitlement is weirdly sacrosanct.  It enables the Left to choose its demons with enthusiastic abandon. It is the sweetest of ironies that the communications era while facilitating the prostitution of our beliefs has shown us the evidence of our complicity in the cruelty of others.

If we looked at the Teletext headlines a little closer we would notice that an alarming pattern is beginning to emerge.

When Sunni is not killing Shiite and Shiite is not killing Sunni their attention is focused on us. To quote the Koran “The war with the descendants of apes and pigs (i.e. Christians and Jews) is a war of religion and faith." Our failure to demand accountability on our terms has left the stage to the enemies of Western Civilisation.  Their fellow travellers will make any excuse to scapegoat others for their crimes.

The Spy Chronicles

It has been a sad aspect of the Universalist creed displayed by Jewish Utopians that in possessing the vision, they too often do not concern themselves with its potential abuse.  Those that preach, often do so conditionally to hide their moral failure.

I believe in a Utopian vision of universal justice; freedom from poverty and disease and the absence of fear for all. I would like to see the cruelty of theocracies and dictatorships as well as the inequalities that encourage discrimination removed from our society.  I would especially like to see theocratic regimes and all despotic nations celebrate these ideals within their own societies.  But if they do not, I do not want their citizens to come to my home and preach their ‘values’ to me or to my friends or even, to my enemies in my country.

My society may indeed be tainted by crime and corruption and by injustice and poverty but we can all work together to improve the lot of our own people without having to fight against the prejudices of those who are committed to something totally at variance with our beliefs.  Those idealists who betray their own nation usually do so because they do not believe their society has merit.  I admire their courage but the act of treason is in the betrayal of the society that has nurtured and protected them.  When they betray their country they actively work to undermine it.  And that is completely different to working to change society from within.  It is working to undermine and therefore to destroy rather than to enhance the conditions under which we all live.

Which is why the cases of Mordechai Vanunu and Jonathan Pollard are so interesting.

Mordechai Vanunu is a former Israeli nuclear technician who was found guilty of treason.  He secretly photographed the Dimona nuclear reactor and then passed on information to the British Sunday Times for publication (having been promised $1m). He was jailed in 1986 and served an 18 year sentence.  His total rejection of any Jewish or Israeli national rights while he championed every other ethnic or religious groups right to self-determination and free expression make his subsequent complaints about the restrictions placed on his free association and liberty rather bizarre and Amnesty Internationals championing of his freedom similarly unconscionable.  Having steered clear of equating treason with freedom of conscience Mordechai Vanunu is the only exception to this rule in the annals of Amnesty International’s 51 year history.

Jonathan Pollard was an American Naval analyst who passed on secrets to Israel. His defence at the time of his capture was that the US had agreements (a 1983 Memorandum of Understanding between the two countries) to share vital security intelligence with Israel. By withholding information deemed to be crucial to Israel’s defence the USA was deliberately breaking that agreement with Israel.  Jonathan Pollard made a plea-bargain agreement with the Reagan administration for leniency on full disclosure of his complicity in passing over secret documents to Israel. That agreement was violated at the personal intervention of Secretary of Defence Caspar Weinberger (allegedly placed in that political post to alleviate Arab concerns of pro-Israel bias). The average sentence served for treason in the US is 4 years.  Pollard was convicted of passing classified information to an ally in 1985. After 27 years he remains incarcerated.  

There is a precedent for America withholding vital intelligence information from its ally Israel in times where Israel’s existence was threatened. During the 6-Day War America was accused of listening in on military communications deemed vital to the successful defeat of the Arab enemy and of passing on that information to that same enemy (Syria and Egypt). The reason put forward was the consensus view within the State Department that a decisive Israeli victory was not in the best interests of the USA.  The State Department was traditionally viewed as balancing the Pro-Israel perception of the Defence Department by being Pro-Muslim and anti-Semitic. It was generally accepted that a more nuanced outcome to the 6-Day War was needed. This is usually translated as meaning that Israel must not only suffer defeat in battle but also a significantly higher number of casualties.  The more deaths the better seemed to be the desirable outcome mandated by the US Department of State.  A direct outcome of this ‘policy’ was that Israel knew of a planned joint surprise attack on the 6^th of October 1973.  The politicians decided that Israel’s ‘friends’ would not countenance a pre-emptive strike against Israel’s enemies as it had done on the 5th of June 1967.  This decision cost Israel well over a thousand Israeli lives including hundreds of Israeli soldiers who were allegedly executed on their capture by Egyptian and Syrian forces.

Pollards’ version of events is therefore not unreasonable and American collusion with Israel’s enemies is similarly not unheard of, but its results have been known to be catastrophic for its ally.  Much of a speculative nature has since been written about this case, some of it no doubt written with mischief in mind.   Perhaps it is best we appreciate that while Israel is a useful ally, it is not in the first tier in terms of the sharing of intelligence nor will it ever be fully trusted and while anti-Semitism will play a not insignificant part in this, the unfortunate reality is that Jewish spies that have betrayed America will not contribute to changing that behaviour.

But perhaps the nastiest aspect of this subject is the subsequent cases of spying reported both in the USA and the UK where those found guilty of treason (that is to say, of passing on information vital to the defence of the nation to our enemies) have had their cases heard, sentence passed and periods of incarceration imposed. All have served considerably less time than Pollard.  The Liberal-Left coalition has remained silent.  Moreover, in both countries they have not uttered a single word of protest at the continued imprisonment of Pollard.  But from the beginning they have protested Vanunu’s.  None of these heroes of Liberal Democratic tradition whether they are clergy, famous actors and actresses, politicians or something else have interfered in the judicial process that denies traitors their public fame. So British traitors, imprisoned in their own land have no web site devoted to their cause nor do their American counterparts. 

The only possible explanation is that there is safety in protesting for those happy to betray Israel. Cowardice appears to be part of the intellectual armour of the righteous hypocrite. When betrayal is conditionally acceptable within the Western family of nations (and Israel is one of these nations) it can only be explained by the corrupt nature of Western thinking.

As history goes, Ilan Pappe (born and raised in Israel) is an anti-Israel propagandist who best summarises as he encapsulates the ethical corruption of the Left. He is on record as stating that “we do historiography (the body of literature that deals with history) because of ideological reason, not because we are truth seekers.” As a Marxist historian he will proudly state that “there is no such thing as truth, only a collection of narratives” (which The Guardians are able to invent as they see fit).

The junior partner in any asymmetric relationship will often suffer abuse. Tolerating that abuse only encourages its continuation and in more extreme cases, its escalation to what is sadly and too often, tragic consequences for the victim. According to the British Guardian newspaper of 29^th July 2012:

“The National Security Agency historically has kept tabs on Israel…. the U.S. started spying on Israel even before the state was created in 1948.  Matthew Aid, author of "The Secret Sentry," about the NSA said the U.S. had a station on Cyprus dedicated to spying on Israel until 1974. Today, teams of Hebrew linguists are stationed at Fort Meade, Md., at the NSA, listening to intercepts of Israeli communications, he said.

CIA policy generally forbids its officers in Tel Aviv from recruiting Israeli government sources, officials said. To do so would require approval from senior CIA leaders, two former senior officials said. During the Bush administration, the approval had to come from the White House”.

That these guidelines are in place and publicly acknowledged, indicates that those signatures have been obtained.  That their activity does not pierce the public domain is either an indicator of successful American infiltration in Israel or the imbalance in the relationship that ensures silence, when they are caught.  That articles highlighting this dysfunctional relationship between ‘friends’ have appeared as Mitt Romney was visiting Israel should be investigated.

Iran and the Sad Israeli Press.

I read with bored curiosity the latest front page news from Ynet (an Israeli Internet news outlet) about Iran and how the leadership, having congratulated those who carried out the terrorist atrocity against the Israeli tourists in Bulgaria are now accusing the ‘Zionist Regime of having plotted and executed the attack’.  What never fails to surprise me is the volume of space we willingly provide for the noxious views of lunatics and racists so that we may sell the news more readily.

Israel's press through the 1970’s and 1980’s retained a reputation for being incisive and was well considered internationally.  Today, its’ Paparazzi have a reputation for being the rudest and most aggressive anywhere and populism (Left and Right are equally guilty of this) seems to be the only common theme to excite those that publish to inform the general public.

When Gilad Shalit was kidnapped by militant (terrorist) forces in Gaza it was not newspaper pressure that eventually led to his release but the justified fear that he would soon die in his underground and windowless prison cell, at which point his value as a pawn would vanish with his last breath.

Every idiotic utterance by Israel’s enemies makes front page news. With respect to the banana republics out there I am sure some of them have more clarity of vision than Israel’s English language press.

A few facts about Iran follow.  Iran is a theocratic nation with a very strong vision of what it thinks Utopia should look like. There are no gays and no infidel in Iran’s heaven. All women (and girls) lie on their backs for their men in this world of peace and justice.  All Jews are killed (so says the appropriate Koranic verse about nature rising up to expose the hidden man, woman or child who once revealed will then of course be murdered).  The Koran is rather strident in its timeless devotion to world conquest, slavery and ridding the planet of non-believers. Iran under its Shiite leadership is brazenly unembarrassed that it enthusiastically embraces this primitive and barbaric theology.  It is happier with its sexual obsessions and male domination than it is with social justice. Equality is not even open to discussion unless it is to reassure Iran’s sycophants in the West who would prefer to not ask the question in the first place.

Iran is a country whose leaders allegedly believe that the 12^th Imam (Muhammad’s twelfth and final successor) also known as the Mahdi, will arise in our time and bring peace to all mankind – but in what is referred to as Twelver Shiism the portents for this messianic eschatology (end of days) is that two thirds of the world’s population will have to die by violence and disease (half by each). The current President Mahmud Ahmadinejad is on record as believing that furthering chaos and human suffering around the globe will expedite the Mahdi’s return.  From an ethical point of view this has to be on the same level as the murderer who ‘sacrifices’ other human beings ‘for Islam’ being entitled to 72 virgins in the afterlife (god help the women).

Why, when we know that Reason is not a priority for the Iranian Leadership, do the newspapers bother to publicise their rants?  Why print this stuff? We dignify their obscenity by airing their propaganda.

I propose a tax on every newspaper sold and on every Internet page viewed – the proceeds to go towards the secular education system.  That way perhaps people can be taught to differentiate between what is news and what is front page filler; between what requires public attention and what is pap.

Will the Iranian regime and their acolytes continue to air their foul views and supply weapons to our enemies in order to destroy us? Of course they will. But by advertising their repugnant views we supply legitimacy to them even if only the occasional vulgar bigot listens and believes them.

If we must dignify their comments by reporting on them then please, let us set aside a section for anti-Semites and other dregs of society towards the middle of the news, next to adverts for toilet cleaners, dyspepsia tablets and Ex-Lax.

Conceit, Charity and Common Sense

How much does a political view impinge on the ability of the individual or the group to exercise common sense? How important are ethics? A friend recently pointed out, based on my writings he believes that I possess a persecution complex but he added that this was not necessarily a bad thing.  Does this affect my ability to exercise common sense or to judge current affairs? Of course it does. Is it justified?

Does it matter if the cup is half empty or half full? First, there are two questions we need to ask.  What is the nature of the liquid in the cup? And is there any benefit in filling the cup? We may strive to fill the cup, unless of course it is filled with a toxic liquid, in which case our misguided enthusiasm may not be so eloquent an act of dedication to doing what is right as opposed to what is correct.  The former is based on long term ethical considerations while the latter is based on fashionable moral, and therefore time specific practices.

A recent article in the American journal ‘Foreign Policy’ (“Please Don’t Send Food” page 26, July/August 2012) underlined this point when it questioned our blind enthusiasm for charity.  A joint study from Harvard and Yale Universities suggests that food aid doesn’t work. In fact it can prolong violent conflict.  By examining developing countries between 1972 and 2006 what the researchers revealed was that for every 10% increase in the amount of food aid delivered the likelihood of violent conflict increases by 1.4% - the pursuit of power over-rides any desire for good. Too often, charities and their do-gooders are as guilty of this arrogance as the gunmen that exploit them.

Maimonides (a Jewish philosopher of the 12^th century whose adaptation of Aristotelian thought to Biblical faith had a significant influence both on Christianity and Judaism) categorised giving into 8 levels of benevolence – The eighth (least worthy) level was giving unwillingly while the first (final) level enabled the recipient to achieve independence from further assistance.

Of course it doesn’t mean that we can’t try to make the world a better place but in order to do that, we should first define what kind of a world we want and yes, that does mean defining the values we think are important.  Letting a thousand ideas bloom is fine as long as they do not include ‘values’ such as child marriage, female circumcision, consuming albino livers, hanging homosexuals and stoning rape victims.  Unless we know what is important to us we cannot complain that our rights have been usurped while we are too busy concerning ourselves with other activities.

During the rule of Marshall Tito (Dictator of Yugoslavia from 1945 to 1980) the ethnic rivalry and historical malevolence between the nations making up the federal republic was kept in check by strict suppression of any nationalist sentiment amongst the 8 federal units. Up to 750,000 Serbs along with Jews and Romany victims were murdered by Croatian nationalists during World War 2.  They were occasionally assisted by Bosnian (Muslim) SS units.  Given the history of the post-Tito democratic era, Marshal Tito’s dictatorship was not worse than the consequent history of the region. Unless we are willing to understand and internalise the fears of the protagonists (and we can only do this by learning of the history and the mythology of nations) only then will we learn from history and not repeat its mistakes.

Unless we willingly do this we have learnt nothing from human conflict and are doomed to repeat the past in an endless cycle of despair broken only by brief periods of triumph. Too often we dismiss history and willingly accept the teachings of a myopic education system which spoon feeds us the prejudice of cultural and moral relativism. In our post-Modern fear of conflict we refuse to take a stand based on principles that have shaped Western society. By bowing to the prejudices of others and by accepting their interpretation of our history we become no better than the rapists and murderers that we refuse to condemn.  Politics too often binds us to simplistic solutions that do little to address the complicated issues they usually subvert.

It seems that ethics really do have very little if anything to do with politics of either Left or Right.

The Left, at least in theory, dismisses the individual for the good of the group; ignoring the fact that the group is built on the collective will of the individuals within the group. The Right pays lip service to family values and ignores the collective, while parroting the limited theory that it aims to raise the individual to achievements that further the group. In both cases the individual is rarely seen as a person but as a theoretical unit, a number governed by laws to which they have no input. In practice the Left cannot relate to the individual as having rights outside of the group while the Right has had to invent the idea of ethical conservatism to accommodate those people that actually care for anyone outside of their own circle.

Left and Right care only for what the powerful can extract from the weak; cynically, they see relevance only in the demographics of the increasingly alienated electorate.

The failure of capitalism based democracy and democratic socialism is that both are based on the economics of the amphitheatre. Just as ancient Rome kept its population in check with ever increasingly expensive spectacles of gladiatorial tournaments involving condemned prisoners, slaves and ever more exotic animals so today we keep the people entertained with cheap loans by which they can keep themselves entertained, an improvement of sorts on ancient Rome. But the result for the nation state is the same.  We have bankrupted our future because the politics of power is about the present and not the future.  Our collective failure to make painful decisions that share the load fairly across all of society is why we traditionally fall prey to demagogues and dictators. It is why War is the populist solution too often applied when governments fail to equitably rebalance society.

As a society we take pride in the advances we have made in science and technology but we remain discouraged from independent thought, our ability to analyse the multi-directional information inputs we receive are still restricted by most of the former prejudices and pressures our ancestors experienced.

So to answer the original questions I asked, common sense is not a natural state and Ethics generally falls prey to political expediency. The sycophancy of global cultural simplification guarantees that if we are all brothers and sisters then the embarrassing differences that define us must be tolerated even though they directly contradict our most cherished values.

Britain and the Church of England Synod

Recent events at the Church of England (CofE) Synod have exposed the true nature of the relationship between those that manage the Church and the Jewish Community.  It highlights irreconcilable differences between the CofE Synod and the Jewish community and I do think that if our community has any self-respect it should now sever all ties.  Those people that still believe in interfaith dialogue have to ask honestly what benefit remains in retaining a relationship that is so asymmetrical. For those people who are offended by the following article I apologise but I also feel that although this may seem outrageous it is also long overdue in airing what is clearly a serious failure in the relationship between the Jewish community and British governing society.

Britain became Great Britain because it championed economic exploitation and was one of the earliest nations to embrace slavery.  Slavery was after all, a logical extension of serfdom.  The UK purchased its slaves through a prolific trade with the predominantly Arab, overwhelmingly Muslim world.  Britain was the last Western nation to reject Jewish emancipation and only reluctantly gave in to near equality for its Jewish population in the late 1800’s.  The British Royal Family has remained the principle guardians of this exclusion from society to this day.  It is ironic that Germany was far more liberal in the rights it gave to its Jews than Britain.  We need not question what fate would have befallen the Jews of Britain if Hitler’s armies had conquered Britannia. My two great-aunts worked in military industries during World War 2.  They always carried arsenic pills, just in case.  UK plc, the nation that permitted the unrestricted immigration of Arabs to Palestine (those same Arabs we now label as “Palestinian” even though they may not have been born there) rejected at the same time, even a restricted right of entry for any Jews to Palestine, though it was clear that by doing so they condemned those Jews to certain death.

And today British newspapers and Britain’s principal Protestant organizations question Israel’s legitimacy and its people’s right to self-defence. They foster racial apartheid between Israelis born in the same land, an artificial separation that they then use to condemn the majority of those same inhabitants.

In the absence of any balance in the British press the reason for this narrative blindness has to be questioned.  Acquiescence to Islamic propaganda is never going to be difficult for British society because it is apparently already receptive to bigotry and historical revisionism. If that is correct it is hardly surprising that any story will be accepted without reference to the facts.  Conversely, it is true that any narrative that does not agree with the Palestinian or Arab or Muslim version of events will be as easily dismissed. This process is central to the marginalisation of Zionism and the delegitimization of Israel. Where there is no fear of consequences there is no honour.

Literary apartheid is created in the British press and is being spread across the globe. Arabs are excised from any positive debate about Israeli society.  They are excluded from what we define as “Israeli”, or “ethnically Arab Israeli” and are re-created as “Palestinian” even when they are born and raised in Israel.  This artificial but deliberate separation of the races is driven by Arab racial bigotry and is wholly embraced by the British press.  In international legal and historic terms it is wrong. It is historically inaccurate, without precedent; an act of ethical and moral sophism. It is re-writing the history books because the truth is inconvenient. It is time to question the relationship between the civilised west and anti-Semitic Britain, the nation that never forgave us for surviving the Shoah (Holocaust).  Britain appears to be more concerned with encouraging injustice and religious equality than it is with fostering peace on earth.

Material deprivation is the most common result of marginalisation but it can also be cultural and social deprivation.    In its extreme, as in Nazi Germany, exclusion was used as a weapon to relegate to the edges of the society all those groups deemed undesirable and was therefore a step that ran concurrent with other measures employed, to separate out the persecuted under-classes.

Judaism has fallen into the trap of perceiving that there is something morally redeeming in victimhood. There is not.  It empowers torturers and celebrates the victory of the ethically blind.  There is no virtue in what Bertrand Russell mocked as “the fallacy of the superior virtue of the oppressed” because it justifies everything and denies the so called “oppressed” nothing.

There is in Britain, an unhealthy and inexplicable obsession with Israel (and in this case Jews are synonymous with Israel unless they deliberately ‘join the other side’) but more about that later.  A separate set of standards for any debate that refers to Jews is automatically assumed.  The UK being wretched in its historical ambivalence to Jewish self-rule to this day remains the Jewish people’s greatest enemy and not because it openly threatens the State of Israel with destruction as Iran does but because it has never stopped working to undermine Israel, the people or Israel, the State.   It begins in the classroom.  At its purest, Shakespeare’s ‘Merchant of Venice’ is anti-Semitic and its continued popularity offers only to reinforce prejudice in British society. It represents the acceptable face of British literary bigotry, no matter how it is taught.  One would search far to find a Christian or Muslim character equivalent to Fagin in Charles Dickens’ ‘Oliver Twist’ or the theme enunciated throughout Caryl Churchill’s ‘Seven Jewish Children.’

According to Jonah Goldberg in his book “Liberal Fascism” the means by which ‘undesirables’ are targeted is (if we take the logical approach) that if it is good, it cannot be bad; while if it is bad, it cannot be good.  The irreducible logic of modern day British (especially Lib-Left) fascism is that the chosen are flawless and therefore to argue for objective or principled reason falls on deaf ears.  In this way it is no different to fundamentalist Islam or the Church that gave us the Inquisition.

From what I can only call a disempowering derogation of personal responsibility towards all of humankind there are many within society that declare themselves, let us call it “racially guilty” in that they are “personally responsible” for the bigotry and racism of previous generations and with this “cowards clause” they remove themselves from any discussion of responsibility for atrocities committed in the name of black and or Muslim empowerment.

In a similar vein the recent decision by the CofE Synod to formally endorse the Ecumenical Accompaniment Program in Palestine and Israel (EAPPI) should be the final nail in the coffin of Anglo-Jewish / CofE co-operation at any level, until its latest anti-Semitic decision is reversed and full apology made in both word and deed.

But the failure of the Jewish community is that its Board of Deputies and activist committees continue to be subservient in their demeanour and more liable to displays of obsequious self-denial and acquiescence to the bigotry of those whose fearless criticism and foreign policy concerns appears to start and stop with Jews and Israel.

Unlike in the USA, in Britain there is no true separation of Church and State. In Britain the Anglican Church is state supported and many of its bishops sit, by ancient right, in the British upper house of parliament.  The head of the worldwide Anglican church Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams is a left-wing intellectual.  Sadly, in the UK that is likely to mean that he may empathise with Jewish suffering but not suffer Jewish self-assertion unless it is on terms dictated by the state (and hence the Church).  In Britain one is expected to join the long queue of house Jews who bash Israel before every meal, in their public and private pronouncement; who repetitively demonstrate (to their betters) their patriotism and their politically correct credentials. Jewish Israel-bashers are popular because the Jewish Uncle Tom supports a gentile anti-Semitic narrative and by doing so, he or she makes that narrative kosher.

But more important than this, the objective of keeping ‘us’ in our place is undermined when we respond. In the latest Jew-bashing debate in the godly Anglican synod what truly offended the bishops and their lay supporters were Jewish pro-Israel lobbying efforts. An anti-Semitic narrative is consistent with the synods view on Jewish minority status and therefore in their eyes at least, it is wholly appropriate. The stronger pro-Palestinian lobby offended no one because it represents the acceptable face of the Synods efforts at delegitimization.

And no doubt the Board of Deputies of British Jews will do nothing.

Israel and the Economics of Superpower Politics

Global Economic dislocation has created opportunities to realign superpower interests. After the fall of the Soviet Empire the world was briefly held together by US unipolarity.  That has now been replaced by an emerging multipolarity that includes Russia, China and the United States of America. Traditional or transient alliances will fall away.  All nations should be wary of promises of protection.  The future is neither guaranteed nor at all clear. Those nations that depend for their economic well-being on the largess of their patrons should be looking further afield and weaning their economies off their addiction to easy money.

US Aid to Egypt, the most populous Arab country, between 1948 and 2012 totalled $72bn while during the slightly later period of 1949 till 2012 aid to Israel totalled $109bn.  US government loan guarantees have eased Israel’s access to global capital markets but it has also meant that Israel’s second largest budget item is its repayment of these loans.

Russia has a substantial investment in Syria. It is a significant and prestigious strategic asset which it cannot consider the possibility of losing. The Syrian port of Tartus is Russia’s only Mediterranean naval base for its Black Sea Fleet. American fear of Russian influence in Turkey means that it will forgive almost any Turkish geopolitical transgression in order to slow down the burgeoning Russian-Turkish economic relationship. China will trade with anyone who supplies it with oil and has extensive dealings with Iran through its China National Petroleum Company.

In most cases, economics will always trump morality. So where does this leave Israel, surrounded by nations that have rarely recognised the rights of their ethnic and religious minorities?

Nahum Barnea wrote about Egypt that even ordinary Egyptians saw themselves as having “…the confidence that a direct line connects the magnificent culture of the Pharaohs to modern-day Egypt, and the confidence that Egypt is the sole leader of the Arab world; the military, political and cultural superpower.”  Israel’s situation could not be further from this. Widespread secularism has failed to find a cultural narrative that both left and right can share which facilitates a vision of who they, as Israelis, are. The political system is largely to blame for this failure of identity because it disenfranchises the majority in favour of peripheral and radical interests.  It is one of the main reasons for Islamic / Arab confidence that Israel’s days are numbered. The Islamic view is far simpler – suffused throughout with Islamism and Colonialism; it cherishes an historic memory of ancient empires reflecting past glories down through the millennia, even when the history has to be re-written to accommodate the self-delusion of eternal superiority.

If Israeli politics is ever to regain the middle ground it must first discard the visionless economic free-for-all that has so alienated most Israelis, forcing both rich and poor alike into extreme positions that no reasonable Israeli could accept.   But as the numbers of alienated citizens grow the critical mass of extremists will likewise expand ensuring deadlock and violent confrontation.  The current controversy over universal conscription is evidence of the widening gap between those who identify with the nation and those that not only do not identify but are also unwilling to contribute as equal partners in the national enterprise.

What is the danger for Israel today? While Israel must reduce its areas of strategic threat they are increasing. Instead of the two fronts of Gaza and Lebanon we now also have Turkey, anxious to flex its muscles in a war with anyone, so that it may demonstrate its strength as an Islamic superpower.  And Jordan which has refused to even meet with Prime Minister Netanyahu but blames Israel for the deadlock with the Palestinians (while it retains its own expansionist dreams).  Egypt in modern times has always viewed itself as leading the Arab world and has made lots of threatening noises about annulling the Peace treaty with Israel. Bereft of President Mubarak, Egypt no longer has the fig leaf of a secular (military backed) one party president to pretend that it is serious about peace with Israel. And Iran, contemptuously chauvinistic of its Persian Imperial past and Shiite present, it manipulates Shiite dissatisfaction in order to export its own brand of extremism with missionary zeal across the Arab world. Syria fears Turkey and Lebanon fears Syria which also sees Israel as part of its historic imperial patrimony.  A destabilised region creates few if any opportunities for peaceful co-existence.

The real question for Israel is whether the limits to which she can respond to any significant provocation from any direction in the future is restricted by a radicalised Islamist Egypt? And for this Israel must be prepared.

Making Peace – Israel’s way or the US way?

The US refers to those nations with whom they have a strategic interest in accommodating, as ‘our friends,’ and with that designation those friends receive military and financial aid.  It does not help to change fundamental attitudes to war and peace and it only works for as long as it is in the interest of the recipient nation to let it work.  Like George Orwell’s Ministry of Truth, propaganda and historical revisionism are tools used by nations to mould the national mood, dictate behaviours and manipulate the past to create the future.

The basic requirements for making Peace with Israel were never fulfilled either by Anwar Sadat or his successor Hosni Mubarak. The fundamental requirement for peaceful co-existence, the humanisation of the enemy, was never permitted to take root in Egyptian soil.

We may never know how or even if Anwar El-Sadat would have nurtured the Israeli-Egyptian peace had he lived but we do know that he was conflicted by virtue of his faith. According to Salim Mansur “Sadat, the Quran, and Jews in the Holy Land” (Centre for Security Policy Jan. 22, 2007) Sadat’s journey to Jerusalem was a spiritual acceptance of the Jews right to their homeland and it was a repudiation of the Philo-Nazi ideology of the Brotherhood.  He was however unable to reconcile his journey with his Koranic learning which ridiculed Jewish faith and delegitimized its followers humanity.

Israel’s problem is that Egypt, being the most populous and powerful of the Arab nations never intended to fully honour its commitments under the peace accord it signed in Washington in 1979, either to Israel or to the United States. It prevented its citizens from visiting Israel. It encouraged its racist press to incite against Israelis as Jews, and by focusing popular discontent against Israel as a religious obligation, denied Israelis the same right to self-determination that it demanded and continues to demand for the Palestinians. In effect it dismissed the Peace Treaty it signed with Israel as no more than a piece of paper.  It blocked cultural exchanges and ensured minimal interaction between Israelis and Egyptians as undesirable.

Hosni Mubarak famously stated that “….We [Egypt] have outwitted them, and what have we given them in return? A piece of paper! We managed to hamper their steps in every direction. We have established sophisticated machinery to control and limit to the minimum contacts with the Jews.” (Ephraim Dowek, Israeli-Egyptian Relations 1980-2000.  London: Cass, 2001.  pp. 120-21).

It became the accepted wisdom that with the signing of the Peace Agreement with Egypt there would be no cooperation with Israel other than in matters concerning security. As such, the Peace with Egypt was destined to eventually fail because it was predicated on the Arab assumption that Israel would itself eventually fall.

The failure of Arab and overall Muslim imagination is inherent in the hypothesis that Islam is the perfection of human development and that therefore its enemies must eventually succumb to its superiority.  This innate prejudice is hardly surprising. A nation in maintaining peace with an adversary does so for its own benefit not because of some spurious altruistic intent.  The Islamic neighbourhood is neither ready nor able to provide either guarantees or a willingness to pursue peaceful intentions with Israel or for that matter, with any one else, unless that is, the alternative is a collapse of its own enterprise.  As I have referred to in other blogs (see “Mira Awad boycotted by Arabs” 6^th June 2012), the third stage in this war against Israel is “the international campaign to delegitimize the state as it seeks the dehumanisation of the Jewish citizens of that state”.  This propaganda war is a logical consequence of assuming ‘the fall’.

Some years after the signing of the peace treaty with Israel, Egyptian Arab farmers sued the State of Israel before the Egyptian Supreme Court to regain the property they claim Saladin gave their forefathers 900 years ago.  That property is the Wailing Wall, the Jewish peoples’ holiest religious site. Those farmers won their case.

Egyptians generally do not make any distinction between Jewish people and Israelis. Israelis are seen as the enemy, so likewise are Jews. Thus wrote Michael Slackman in an article for the New York Times on September 7, 2009. The problem is that peaceful co-existence between neighbours is dependent not just on the foreign policy pursued by neighbours but on the attitudes and behaviours of its society. Egypt is misogynistic (as emphasised in the May/June 2012 Foreign Policy Magazine “The Sex Issue”), ethnically racist against its non-Arab inhabitants and religiously bigoted; a problem given that Islam is the invader and its 10 million Coptic Christians, the persecuted native minority.

The greatest impediment to peace and not just with Egypt but with the entire Muslim world is our reluctance to fight as Jews for our rights in our homeland against a Muslim hegemonic and racist theology that precludes minority rights.  Israel’s enemies are legion. Until they also fear as Israel fears, they will be unstoppable.  Only with acceptance by the Islamic world (and not just the Islamic world) of the equality of all peoples: Kurds, Assyrians (Chaldeans), Turkmen and Copts, Christians, Jews, polytheists and pagans, will peace be possible in the Near-East.

Former Army Chief of Staff, Lt.-Gen. Moshe Ya'alon, said that Egypt facilitated arms smuggling into the Gaza Strip allowing the Palestinians to continue smuggling arms from Sinai into Gaza despite Israeli protests.  It is no longer wise to pretend that Egypt will honour its commitment to sealing its international border with Israel.  And honouring ones neighbours sovereignty is a basic requirement for peaceful co-existence.

Israel’s Western border (Southern Command) will have to be renewed. This is going to cost billions of dollars in hardware and new bases as well as a significant increase in the size of the standing army.  The State of Israel can no longer afford the coalition wrangling over mass deferments and exemptions from conscription that have plagued the national debate over the last few decades.

Israel is located in a region where the inalienable right to secure borders and to living ones life with an absence of fear is deemed conditional and transitory.   In March 2012, 33 years after the signing of the second framework agreement, ending a state of war that had existed between Israel and Egypt for almost as long (31 years), Egypt’s parliament issued a report that referred to Israel as “The Zionist Entity.” So let me make a controversial statement. The trappings of democracy do not guarantee peace.

Security is an attitude to human rights which has little to do with democracy.  Those people in the West that support the Palestinians (Arabs)  usually insist on their ‘inalienable rights’ but omit the three inextricably linked concepts that must attach to those rights in order for all people to live in peace and harmony.  Those words are ‘mutuality,’ ‘respect’ and ‘truth’.  We all have an inalienable right to live life without fear of persecution, violence, discrimination or dehumanisation.

The June 17, 2012 decision to rewrite the constitution effectively makes the President of Egypt a disempowered figurehead. A military coup – with the stroke of a pen has for now, shunted aside the Muslim Brotherhood and slowed its political ascendancy.  Extremism can only increase with the inevitable slide towards economic failure.  Israel will remain as always, a whipping boy to be used as the means of focusing and diverting popular discontent.  Unless that is, it is no longer advantageous for Israel to be that whipping boy and for that to happen, incitement must be rendered unpalatable to all who think it acceptable.