Gaza and the Lessons Israel Must Learn

During the last few weeks I have been struggling to write anything about Gaza because I have been overwhelmed by the huge quantity of articles and emails relating to this, the third hot conflict to take place between Israel and HAMAS in six years.  What has transpired since the hot war began on July 8^th should not have surprised anyone because the so called “cold war” has been ongoing since HAMAS seized power in 2007.

The problem I have with the global reaction to the Israeli campaign is that the world remained silent as approximately 15,000 missiles and mortar rounds were fired indiscriminately, at Israel, and all this since Israel pulled out of Gaza in 2005.  Referring to the IS assault on Mosul and the flight of Christians from Iraq the world remained silent according to Patrick Coburn, (no friend of Israel) who, writing in The Independent said “It is the greatest mass flight of Christians in the Middle East since the Armenian massacres and the expulsion of Christians from Turkey during and after the First World War.”  Between 170,000 and 200,000 people have been slaughtered in Syria during the Syrian Civil War but Muslim and anti-war demonstrators have been all but silent throughout. The world has conveniently ignored over 10,000 Black people (mostly Christians) killed in Nigeria – and no-one mentions the hundreds of girls who were kidnapped there anymore. There are more conflicts that we have similarly ignored – either due to Muslim ‘sensitivity’ or for some other inexplicable, likely racist reason.

Another problem, as I referred to in my previous blog, is that there exists a pattern of condemnation and non-debate representing a relentless campaign of condemnation of Israel and an incessant assault on our senses.  This silence on the central role played by Gaza’s Muslim fundamentalists in ethnic cleansing and war crimes is not so mystifying when we understand the thought processes that afflict Gaza’s Western co-conspirators.  This silence should not surprise us even when actions from Gaza into Israel are clearly manufactured to cause as many civilian casualties as possible.  If a maximalist theology such as Islamism, views any casualty as no more than a sacrifice for the glorification of Islam then neither Israeli nor Palestinian lives are of any importance. Islam refers to itself as the religion of peace but its fundamentalist adherents have a frightening enthusiasm for what one article aptly described as “the human sacrifice of Gaza’s people on the altar of radical, Islamic ideology.”

There are five clear points to be made when looking at Operation Protective Edge.  Israel should have understood this and taken all of the following into account well before the current conflict erupted.

1.       The nation that controls the streaming of news to the outside world will win the propaganda war and as a consequence, the peace that follows on from the ceasefire. 

2.       Not everyone has the tools or the energy that is needed to defend themselves against incessant media attacks on Israel. Jews who have traditionally been Israel’s most fervent supporters are increasingly divided because of how Israel is portrayed in the media. It does not help that Jewish Uncle Toms become ever more vociferous in their condemnation of not only Israel but also ‘partisan’ Jewish support in the Diaspora.

3.        Diplomatic attacks on Israel increase with frequency and greater visibility as Palestinian casualties rise.  Politicians scramble to win votes from disgruntled Muslim and pro-Muslim voters.   Diplomatic isolation will encourage those people who call for Israel to be economically isolated.

4.       An asymmetric war is a war between belligerents with one side significantly weaker than the other.  Civilians become both willing and unwilling participants in battle, which in the case of Israel-HAMAS is fought in an urban environment.  Women and children become human shields for Arab fighters who quickly retire from the field of engagement. They deliberately leave the civilians to suffer the greatest proportion of the casualties while HAMAS fighters safely hide in those closeted underground shelters meant only for them.

5.        Active or passive collaboration by UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency) has resulted in UN funded clinics being rigged with explosives to kill, UNRWA staff being active HAMAS operatives and operating from schools, clinics and hospitals. Know your enemy.

I want to put forward my impressions, from afar; my lessons for any future conflicts that Israel must deal with.  The sentences in quotation marks (excepting the Quote from the founder of the Huffington Post) come from an exhibition on propaganda, power and persuasion that took place at the British Library in London, England.

1.            “Using appropriate symbolism can generate deep psychological resonances.” When pictures of devastation and death are prominently displayed people do not care how many terrorists are embedded within Gaza’s civilian population, or that they use human shields as a matter of tactical military design.  Nor will they be interested in the niceties of international war crimes statutes which declare that it is illegal for a combatant to wear civilian clothing when engaged in hostile military activity.

 “Too many reporters have forgotten that the highest calling of journalists is to ferret out the truth, consequences be damned.” Arianna Huffington

2.            The truth is unimportant – only the sound bite counts.  “Decide on your message and stick to it, repeating it in as many different media as you can mobilize.”

3.      Israeli babies and Israeli children, brutally murdered by Palestinians, have been deliberately re-labelled as Gazan victims of the Israeli assault and then, their pictures forwarded, in some instances, hundreds of thousands of times, as proof of Israeli cruelty. The modern media is instantaneous, has no scruples and rarely apologies for its errors.    Even when it is forced to make amends it is by then too late to have any impact.  Initial impressions are what stick while afterthoughts are predictably disregarded.

4.            “Be selective about the truth. Control how and when information is released. Ensure only stories that support your position are reported.”  A picture tells a thousand stories. It is a cliché but nevertheless, in propaganda, it is truth.  HAMAS has willingly sacrificed hundreds of its own people in the current conflict and that is a tactical decision as well.  Every televised act of destruction, every picture of a wounded or dead child acts to create a lasting impression of unforgiving brutality.

There are eight issues:

1.      The bigots and their purveyors of hate will always tell you that we (the Zionists) control the media.  Gosh, wouldn’t it be nice if it was true? But it never has been. I once discussed this same issue with a senior Sikh manager at British Telecom plc (where I worked for many years).  He told me that ‘the Jews’ controlled the global press. I said if that was true, how is it possible that Germany was able to incite Germans against their Jewish compatriots and how was it possible that the Shoah was ‘permitted’ to occur? He looked momentarily sheepish and then recovering, he said “I meant that since the end of WW2….”  You cannot convince a racist that they are at fault, you can only isolate them.

2.      People are offended when Jews label another person or group ‘Nazi,’ as if once they were defeated the toxic entity that ruled Germany between 1933 and 1945 was banished forever.  The difference between fascism and Nazism is that the former may express an attitude of contempt for a minority but does not necessarily use violence as a means of controlling society. The latter expresses an exterminationist doctrine. HAMAS is a Nazi organization.  If its target group are all Jews, it does not mean that like the Islamic State (formerly known as ISIS or ISIL), it will not turn on Christians and every other minority within its territory once it has disposed of us.

It may be argued that this war was inevitable given both the blockade of Gaza by Israel and Egypt, and continuous missile attacks from Gaza into Israel that preceded the initial blockade.  Most Israelis do not believe that Israel provoked the conflict but are certain that its military tried to minimize enemy casualties. We are frequently reminded by those people who want us punished that Gaza’s civilian population democratically chose HAMAS to govern them.  Gaza’s civilian population voted into power a Muslim Nazi political party.  Time and again it has expressed a desire to kill every Jew and not just those in Israel.  It is a message we should convey to reporters at every briefing or interview (but we fail to do it).

3.      It must be emphasized that HAMAS rules Gaza with an iron fist. It may not be lobbing missiles and mortar rounds into Israel but if it rules Gaza by right then it is obligated to exercise control over those other groups that have fired rounds into Israeli territory.  Governments cannot ‘have it both ways’.  In November 2012 when Operation Pillar of Defense came to an end HAMAS operatives did not fire any further missiles at Israel.  During 2013 five missiles per month on average, were fired at Israel but between January and June 2014 this increased to 33 missiles hitting Israeli territory each month.  This is, by definition, ethnic cleansing and each indiscriminately fired missile, a war crime.  Israel could never relax while missiles were being sent across its southern borders.  Sovereign authority, which HAMAS claims to exercise in Gaza, means that it is responsible for any weapons fired from its territory.

We seem reluctant to remind people that the estimated 600,000 tons of cement HAMAS  diverted from civilian projects was used instead to build a myriad of underground warrens to protect its ‘fighters’, to store offensive weapons and to launch attacks against Israeli civilian targets.  Those thirty two known tunnels that were extended into Israel were a legitimate casus belli for Israel’s Gaza assault.

4.      Michael Walzer explained the rule of proportionality thus:  “If you are aiming at military targets (rocket launchers, for example) and know that your attack will also cause civilian casualties (collateral damage), you must make sure that the number of dead or injured civilians is "not disproportionate" to the value of the military target. Needless to say, this is a highly subjective calculation and has rarely been much of a limit on military attacks: This target is very valuable, the generals say; almost any number of civilian deaths is justifiable. Nor has proportionality provided much of a guideline for moral judgments: Even a very low number of civilian deaths, the moralists say, are disproportionate and a war crime.”

It is that final sentence that creates the dream situation for HAMAS and the nightmare for Israel.

5.      After the Meir Amit Intelligence and Information Center (ITIC) published a list of hundreds of names of militants killed in the current conflict that same evening Gaza’s ministry of the interior issued a warning to all Palestinians not to divulge information about terrorist operatives killed in Operation Protective Edge.  The New York Times explained the debate thus: “The difference between roughly half the dead being combatants, in the Israeli version, or barely 10 percent, to use the most stark numbers on the other side, is wide enough to change the characterization of the conflict.”

HAMAS talks with one voice. All casualty figures are released via the HAMAS run Ministry of Health.  HAMAS does not draw a distinction between civilians and combatants. It categorizes all victims as civilian.  The Times of London analyzed the available data and showed that the age group of 20 to 29 years was “most likely to be militants”.  9% of Gaza fits this age group but 34% of the killed fitted into this age-group.  Other analyses put the militant deaths as high as 62% (based on fighting age alone).   HAMAS are alleged to have “executed” dozens of civilians for protesting against the war and dozens more accused of being collaborators (often grudge killings).    Then there are the misfires, the most infamous taking place at the Shifa hospital, plus at least two school ‘accidents.’  The following pattern would be amusing if it was not so tragic. The furore over a misfired rocket killing “dozens of civilians” and sparking outrage from presidents, prime-ministers, the secretary general of the UN and human rights commissioners subsides within a day if an Arab misfire is suspected but drags on for many days until the next alleged atrocity if it is the result of an Israeli strike.

6.      Many journalists have now admitted that they were hostages to HAMAS during the time they spent in Gaza.  Journalists not considered to be sympathetic to Israel have nevertheless reported that missiles were fired from densely populated civilian areas and that journalists were deliberately detained during military actions while HAMAS directed fire at Israel.  Most reported their plight only once they had left Gaza.

7.     The UN refuses to shut down what has become the largest (and arguably, the most corrupt) organisation inside the UN with some 30,000 staff (many of them HAMAS operatives).  UNRWA does not work for the benefit of the Palestinian people nor does it work to resolve conflict. It is an essential weapon in the war of attrition waged internationally against Israel by the Muslim – Arab world.

In an article in the New York Times, internal dissent and “open discourse” about the conflict were listed as two of the casualties in Israel resulting from Operation Protective Edge. 

8.      During a time of war or imminent threat we pull together to help and support each other. It is a human survival strategy and not as the New York Times bizarrely referred to it.  But the strategy which ensured that politicians kept their individual as well as collective mouths shut during the offensive failed when it came to Moshe Feiglin.  What anyone thinks of Feiglin is irrelevant. What he said was so controversial that it deflected attention away from the conflict and potentially, he created divisions within Israeli society at a time when the nation needed to be unified.

He should have been sacked from his post of Deputy Speaker of the Knesset and expelled from the Likud.  It should still happen.

In summary, you cannot win a conflict if your focus is on one threat at a time. The civilian campaign is both voluntary and coerced. It includes as its foot soldiers a whole swathe of the international press as well as Muslim and pro-Muslim – “anti-Zionist” activists in the West.  For the next round Israel must take all of this into account. It must begin working on strategies to defeat this enemy now.

Gaza and the Antidote to all that Bad News

My wife’s antidote to constant news bombardment about airplanes blown out of the sky over Ukraine and the conflict with HAMAS is an episode of “Everybody loves Raymond” followed by back to back episodes of “Frazier”.  I appreciate it sounds superficial but in a 24-hour a day news environment the twin news items I referred to at the beginning are pounced on by partisan journalists and international news agencies to fill the airwaves with speculation, misinformation, trite analyses meant for the soporifically inclined mind and propaganda. It could easily continue for weeks until something else replaces it (see how the airwaves were saturated with rumor, conjecture and excited gossip after Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 disappeared).  It isn’t too difficult to turn off the news completely, if that is what you want.  We do not need to be spoon-fed the news, 24/7.  But the issue is that unless you are utterly self-absorbed, constant media bombardment will have an impact, even, if only tangentially, on how you view events.

In Israel during times of increased conflict and war there is community and solidarity. Here in the UK, as in most of the developed world, there is no war and conflicts are viewed as entirely political.  Everything is viewed through a prism that is back lit by money and what can be achieved by spreading vast amounts of it around.  It is of course an obscene and unethical philosophy that feeds this thinking. Perhaps it is the source of the West’s infirmity.  In parts of our world that are labeled “developed” most nations have suffered centuries of needless, often fratricidal, blood soaked conflict.  There is little mood for understanding or acknowledging complexity.

 Jon Snow (principal news reader at Britain’s Channel 4 News) is pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel. Curiously, his bio on Wikipedia fails to mention his connection to MAP (Medical Aid for Palestine).  Nevertheless he expressed the common frustration shared by too many people when a few days ago he attacked the Israeli spokesperson by condemning Israel for failing to “speak to HAMAS”.  When you are informally negotiating with an enemy that has articles of its constitution declaring global annihilation for not just Israel but for all Jews everywhere issues such as talking and trust are not quite so simple.

But this does highlight the simplistic view that most people have of the war and its antecedents, even if Jon Snow is guilty of dissimulation and journalistic cant.

Conflict as an existential struggle is for the fanatic fringe that increasingly dominates street protests and campuses, and for philosophers teaching in our universities whose pathway to fame is linked to creating new, muscular disciplines around identity politics.  But for most of us, any conflict for survival is “so last century”.

Except it isn’t.  The fall of the Soviet Union left many on the far-left adrift and the Palestinian cause reunited them. There exists across most of the globe an intensifying communion of hate led by a Muslim-extreme Left coalition and the danger is that the extreme left will, with unwavering enthusiasm drift towards the center as society’s discomfort with acceptable bigotry ceases to be an oxymoron.  If passion determines commitment then it is the fanatic that is most committed to change and the people who are most vocal and visible in the press, in our universities and through the electronic media in influencing society.

This expanding coalition is the hell we face if our Hasbara (information) policy continues to be a combination of government indifference and ineffective counter propaganda. The "Jewish World" has been in ideological turmoil through religious upheaval and mutual sectarian disdain for so long that it is in danger of rushing blindly into self-imposed oblivion while the threat from political extremism and ever larger Muslim immigration into the West will create the conditions by which Nazism could easily return to the mainstream within another decade. The time to mobilize against multiple threats (and not just to the Western way of life) but also to a flight from most centers of Jewish life outside of Israel into a few concentrated ‘safe-areas’ is long past.

Of course we could always turn off the TV, ditch our cell-phones, stop reading the news and throw out the laptop but ignorance is not bliss, except to the fool.

Gaza and the British Reaction

In the aftermath of continuing operations in Gaza and missile strikes across Israel our reception at a town fair in Richmond, South London was mixed but much of it was hostile.  I did not handle my second activist fair at all well.

One picture on display at our stall was of a Palestinian Poster ‘Boy’ clutching an automatic rifle and surrounded by weapons and slogans – the kind of poster we have become accustomed to Islamist terrorist groups releasing in the calamitous aftermath of successful suicide (homicide) bombings against civilian targets.  The caption read ‘these are the Palestinian civilians.’  Any casualties can be portrayed in the international press as horrific. It is unfortunate when even a single civilian is killed in war but with entire families willingly becoming human shields for HAMAS the press will play this card of ongoing Palestinian victim-hood with immense enthusiasm and unadulterated zeal.  It is time to redefine the 4^th Geneva Convention. Missiles fired from civilian homes are not, to quote French fascist political leader Jean-Marie Le Pen, ‘a minor point of detail.’

That poster led to a formal complaint which was lodged with police; names and addresses were taken down.  We were coerced into covering up the photo. This was our first failure. Perhaps we should have known better. It was an own-goal.

Next, the PSC (Palestine Solidarity Campaign) came and photographed our stall.  This was clearly, an act of intimidation.

One of the English PSC activists questioned a Christian friend of Israel on our stall. Upon learning of his religious identity he told him, without a moment of shame that he, a Christian, was lower that ‘those Jews.’  This Pro-Palestinian and British (‘Jewish’) racist is no different to any member of the extreme right.  I confronted him with my outrage.  I repeated his comments for all to hear.   He walked away.

His racialist demeanor is the Palestinian movement itself.  The horrifying aspect of this English PSC supporter is that he so easily slipped into the well established pattern utilised by all bigots of compartmentalising humanity into ‘friend’ (absolute supporter) and ‘enemy.’  But for the PSC and fellow believers the enemy is without any redemptive qualities that would save them. This is nascent Nazism.  These people are intellectually no different to the demons that lined up their opponents in Iraq and applied machine-gun justice to the settlement of their differences.  Of course our PSC campaigners are not IS (The Islamic State); they are the bureaucrats, the stoic, the ever smiling and calm but resolute supporter whose determination to eradicate their enemy has no boundaries.

Lots of people (including a gay couple) condemned the asymmetric unfairness of the conflict.   I was somewhat unhinged by this because there can be no ethical justification for this paradigm. If I asked how many Israeli or Jewish deaths would satisfy our interlocutor’s sense of balance they would reply by re-emphasizing the inequality of the battle with even greater vehemence.  I hoped that at least some of those questioners were expressing frustration at their inability to understand the roots of the continuing crisis in Gaza and also understood that any answer to the question (besides ‘zero’) would be unethical.  But I doubt it.  F16 fighter jets, drones and the 'Iron Dome' defense network deployed against ‘primitive’ Palestinian missiles create an asymmetry that the Judeophobic supporter of Palestine cannot or will not ever accept. The hundreds of millions of dollars that Israel has spent on bomb shelters and reinforced rooms in people’s homes will never be recognized by the anti-Zionist chauvinist.  HAMAS has no intention of investing money in protective structures or sirens for its citizens.  The higher the number of civilian deaths the greater is the global sympathy they garner for their cause.  Don’t forget also the millions that go directly into the pockets of the HAMAS Echelon.

Foolishly, I tried to explain that tens of millions of dollars of aid money had been diverted by Gaza’s religious (Islamist) regime for the purpose of constructing tunnels into Israel. Those tunnels are built with the purpose of kidnapping and committing mass murder against civilians. 

Attempting to illustrate that it is the choices we make that define us, was wholly futile.

And the Settlements.  Explaining that according to HAMAS and the majority of Palestinians, all of Israel is a settlement was similarly without benefit. The retort, even to those who professed ‘sympathy’ for Israel was that the settlements (to the uncommitted onlooker this is any construction in Judea, Samaria and East Jerusalem) are nothing less than an abomination.

Two journalists (they said they were, and we failed to ask for their credentials) photographed some of our leaflets.  They ignored any questions from us and spoke at us with imperious and contemptuous disdain.  Why they simply did not take leaflets was beyond our simple understanding but they were there to make a point.  Again, this was intended to intimidate us.

One shameless fool said all Israelis are conquerors. He also said that the Palestinians (whose identity is defined as wholly Judenfrei) ‘owned’ Palestine and had owned Palestine for 5,000 years.  This was even too much for my normally unflappable friend. He was enraged. The final Roman conquest of the Israelites at the turn of the Christian era, some 1,900 years ago, did not wholly destroy the Jewish presence.   It was the Roman Emperor Hadrian who renamed the Land of Israel, Syria Palaestina (in 131 CE) as one of the measures undertaken to erase the cultural identity of the Jews.  The Arabs conquered the Land of Israel in 638 CE and it was their actions that ultimately decimated both land and people.

A Palestinian narrative that removes any Jewish claims to history is an essential pillar of the Palestinian faith.  Part of this strategy involves repositioning the Jewish Jesus as a Palestinian.  Any true person of faith should be enraged by the sacrilegious nature of this act. The Palestinian narrative is based on hatred, the worship of death and an involuntary identity constructed around ‘eternal’ (until victory) victim-hood that robs us, and them, of free will.  The voluminous amount of bile that oozes daily from Palestinian society is both a theological abomination and a secular aberration that defines an ethically corrupt people.

Through the Internet anyone with eyes and ears can marvel at the unforced conformity that characterizes this apparently irreparable flaw in Palestinian attitudes.  It is not however untypical of a people who truly believe themselves to be existentially superior to their enemy.  It guides their every interaction with both Israelis and Jews.

A Palestinian Jesus can only ever be a Jesus, not of love or of peace but a Jesus of brutality, hate and conquest.  What does it say therefore of the current Presbyterian Church (in the USA especially) and other reactionary followers, such as those members of the PSC that they so wholly embrace this devilish and Orwellian restatement of both Jewish and Christian history.

It was that first encounter with the PSC (which positioned pro-Israel Christians in a place ‘lower’ than ‘those Jews’) that ruined my day! But the blows were also cumulative.  To come that close to evil is an unnatural experience for most of us. Or perhaps when the individual chooses to wallow in ignorance it locates them on a plane below that of evil. But does it make them less guilty? In the PSC version of religious faith, mercy is only for the believer. One of those vile propagandists speaks against us at churches throughout the South of England.

It is that evil which we must confront if we are to be saved from an escalation of a magnitude similar to events that have arisen over the last few days in Toronto, Paris and Antwerp.  In Toronto the police stood by while a man was beaten up by Pro-Palestinian demonstrators, the same righteous souls who threatened an old and frail woman.  In Paris hundreds of demonstrators rioted outside Synagogues, trapping Jewish worshippers inside their buildings.  In Antwerp dozens of men shouted slogans about slaughtering Jews while three local (socialist, labour and green) politicians blissfully looked on.

In World War II, the Nazis set fire to synagogues with the local Jewish population trapped inside. In Africa, Muslims have done the same to Christian communities.

Immigration officers, governments run by elected officials who are more concerned with the powerful Muslim vote than with making a moral choice, and the police: They are all inactive.  This is where populist democracy fails.

This is Nazism – it does not matter whether it is inspired by the Right, by the Left, by the Liberal Democrats in Britain, or the Greens; by the Islamic faithful or by frustrated Arabs.

The propaganda war is violent; its intent from the Palestinian camp is terminal.

Wake up.

Censorship and Avoidance, Antisemitism and the Left

BDS stands for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions.  To quote its founder Omar Barghouti (2013): “We oppose a Jewish state in any part of Palestine…no Palestinian will ever accept a Jewish state in Palestine.” He does not usually speak so bluntly but we hear what we want to hear and not all BDS supporters are quite so forthcoming in their desire to be labelled as antisemites.

HAMAS by its firing of missiles against Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and Haifa reminds us, this is not a conflict over territory but about an Arab desire to supplant any ethnic or religious minority that does not bow down to their particular version of Islamic domination.   We should give thanks to whichever deity we owe our allegiance that accuracy is not yet a selling point for those Arab missiles.   That they are fired at Jerusalem means the Muslim fundamentalists governing the Gaza Strip do not care who they kill. Jew, Christian, Muslim or person of other faith – the important goal for them is to cause death and fear.  And those missiles could as easily strike a Jewish holy site, a Christian holy site or a Muslim holy site; a school, a hospital or a playground filled with children.   Again, the target is of no consequence, much of the Western Press can be relied upon to blame Israel for any bloody successes.

HAMAS has incited against Israel since it was founded in 1987 as an offshoot of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood.  Since its failed revolution in Egypt the Muslim Brotherhood is banned although many in the West embrace this racist, fascist Islamic movement whose principle target is the Jewish state.  It is openly, theologically antisemitic. See this link: http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/hamas.asp.  Article Seven is the abomination that should have us all screaming from the rooftops and yet, presidents and prime-ministers afford this organization with its overt call for genocide a place at the table of civilized nations.

I wrote the following two paragraphs a little over a year ago (03 June 2013) and unsurprisingly things have only worsened as radicals across the Muslim world gain in murderous confidence.   HAMAS is an organization that wages war on women; murders gays and anyone contemplating leaving the faith.  The bigotry of HAMAS is only exceeded by the purity of its primitive vision.  They hate that which is not them and dream of a return to a time that existed almost fourteen hundred years earlier.  They represent the antithesis of modern civilization. They are the barbarians at the walls of Rome but armed with 21st Century weaponry.

http://thebilateralist.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/nazism-and-antisemitic-left.html

HAMAS embodies ruthless rejection of the Age of Enlightenment that began some 350 years ago; the fantasists rejection of the modern era because we who are not them refuse to show obsequious fealty to their world view.  The horrifying reality is that these agents of a reactionary and puritanical society are enthusiastically supported by extremists of Left wing political ideology.   To appreciate how debased liberal political thought has become we need only to quote Judith Butler (American political philosopher and ‘ethicist’).  She instructs us: “Understanding HAMAS, Hezbollah as social movements that are progressive, that are on the Left, that are part of a global Left, is extremely important.” 

The issue over whether Israel should negotiate with people whose world-view is the antithesis of our own is only a difficult one if we try to muddy the waters.  HAMAS does not want peace with Israel, it wants our annihilation.  HAMAS is a Nazi political movement.  The Palestinian Authority is technically secular but this does not make it a preferred partner for peace.  If Israel has made some egregious errors in negotiating with the regime of Mahmoud Abbas it is because no vision of what a genuine peace would resemble exists on either side. But one thing is for certain, the credible threat of HAMAS must be eliminated before negotiations can proceed. Deterrence has to be sufficiently robust to ensure success because the alternative, failure, is viewed with such dread as to render its value, moot.  Being civilized when confronted by the Beast does not work.  Those for whom ‘the Jew’ or ‘the Zionist’ is forever damned cannot be negotiated with - they can only be controlled, poorly. Because of our history there is one thing the Jewish people must internalise, we can never appease fascism.  “An appeaser is one who feeds the crocodile hoping it will eat him last.” Winston Churchill was talking about the Nazis, but with nary a difference between them he very well could have been referring to today’s Islamists and their Jihadist militias.

I began this article by referring to BDS – many nations are flirting with adopting the principle of once more boycotting Jews. They can do this because they have no need to respond to the idea of Jewish self-determination or political sovereignty.  Intellectual subservience to a Left wing fascist narrative has subverted honest debate, call it ‘reverse McCarthyism.’ It has enabled an obscene coalition of secular and religious bigots to dominate any discussion and they have done this by simply controlling the debate and excluding, with violence if necessary, any Jewish-Zionist input to that debate. Noam Chomsky states in his book, The Common Good: “The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum.”  He is of course correct, but that tactic has been most successfully employed in the universities, in the press and in the pulpit in order to discourage debate about the threat against our way of life and against a Zionist enlightenment in the Mediterranean Basin.

The nation is a soul, a spiritual principle. Two things... constitute this soul or spiritual principle. One is the possession in common of a rich legacy of memories; the other is present-day consent, the desire to live together, the will to perpetuate the value of the heritage that one has received. (Ernest Renan, What is a Nation?)

Two peoples inhabit the geographical area called Israel – the first are Jews and the second, Arab conquerors that persecuted them and denied them any rights save the right to be humiliated and subjected to constant persecution. Israel exists because of those bigots.   To end the conflict our persecution by Arabs and their Turkish over-rulers must be our constant refrain and every negotiation must begin with a regurgitation of our tale of persecution until the Palestinians and their supporters are as familiar with our version of events as they have made the world fluent in theirs.  It will not shame them because ridicule, even hatred, fuels their theology. What it will do is to remove the twin façades of altruism and victimhood that justifies the concerns of so many antisemites and Jewish Uncle Toms. 

The Murder of Innocents and Evil Fruit

On June 12 three Israeli teenagers hitch-hiking in Judea and Samaria were kidnapped by terrorists. One of the lads placed an emergency call through to the police. It was probably the last thing any of them did before they were murdered.  The bodies of Eyal Yifrach, Gilad Sha’ar and Naftali Fraenkel were found in a shallow grave covered by rocks 18 days later.

It could be that their killers meant to murder them immediately or they may have been potential kidnap victims, intended for an Operation Gilad Shalit mark II.  Right now I feel sorry both for Gilad Shalit and for the parents of those people who have died and will die because of this senseless, inhuman betrayal.

One thing is for sure however and that is that Israel will be taken onto a new path as a result of this latest crime against the youth of the State.  The police have been discredited and even though the result would not have differed if they had immediately taken action their job will now be made much more difficult to carry out and the danger to them in investigating future alleged disappearances greater than ever.

Nor has the Western Press disappointed. Adjectives such us retribution, retaliation and revenge are what are usually applied to Israeli actions. The world has become too accustomed to Jewish subservience in the face of persecution and we are too few in number to be more than marginally, politically relevant. We have turned the other cheek for most of the last couple of millennia and are now demonized because the Jew dares to fight back.  Of course a measured, ‘proportionate’ response is what is now needed. But ‘proportionality’ is always the adjective of failure used by Israel’s critics to describe any armed reaction to disproportionate Arab or Muslim actions.  And here is the problem.

We act as if history is not a teacher by whom we should all be guided.  We have lost the propaganda war. The world is bored already by nearly 200,000 deaths in Syria over three years of civil war.  But the violence that plagues Iraq and elsewhere throughout a world populated by Muslim extremists is not unusual nor is it new.

That conquering zeal has often been gory because intermittently there have arisen Muslim theological psychopaths, and they demanded renewal.  Their reinterpretation of Islam was inevitably characterized by a “return” to strict observance of the Koran and the Hadith (the alleged sayings of the Prophet) which then encouraged the sick mind, for whom there exists no concept of proportionality.  They therefore have never had a need to show restraint in their commission of one atrocity after another.  Until that is, they were stopped.  No one is stopping them now.  The world does not care what happens in Syria nor does it care about Sudan, Somalia, Egypt or Nigeria; but it never forgets to lecture us on how to behave or to demand that we tread carefully for their sake (and not ours).  And I can understand this too.

The Western world defines a refugee as anyone who can make it to our Western shores without a passport, or it may as well define them as such because few asylum seekers are returned to their home country.   And it is profitable.  Western demographics are in crisis.  Citizens of the developed world no longer reproduce at a rate that covers their level of mortality so we need cheap imported labor to maintain the efficient running of the state.  The upward mobility of immigrants means that the demographic crisis is ongoing and exacerbated by a clash of civilizations within nations.  And immigrants become voters who must be feared for their voting power.  So if Israel is blamed for unrest within the Western World’s mushrooming Muslim population it follows that the State of Israel will also be instructed on how it should behave when confronted with treason and insurrection inside of its own borders.

The differing reactions both in Israel and elsewhere were also, to be expected.  Israel is a tiny country and any tragedy affects everyone. The entire country may not have been in a state of shock, concern, mourning and despair but collectively, most of us were in such a state. A time of crisis is the time that normal nations experience national unity and such was the feeling of solidarity that wrapped its comforting arms around Israel. There were calls to topple the Palestinian authority. Especially when Palestinian men, women and children were photographed handing out sweets to celebrate the kidnapping. And lots of selfies were taken showing a three fingered version of the Quenelle. Palestinian editorial cartoons were wholly supportive of the kidnapping.  It took four days for the European Union to condemn the kidnapping and reports surfaced of a conspiracy by the boys themselves to hide and provoke trouble.    Prominent British antisemites, some of them mainstream politicians and clergymen, pronounced the kidnapping to be a Zionist conspiracy.

In Israel, a fringe of mindless and hateful people did respond with calls to violence but most Jewish Israelis would be not simply appalled by such behaviour but also, openly disgusted.   Israel must cut out this plague of incitement from our side. The State is what defines us and the rule of law is what sanctifies us or damns us all.  Anything else is the road to compartmentalization (tribalism) and civil war.

Following the discovery of another kidnapping-murder, this time of Arab youth Muhammad Abu Khdeir, the bereaved family of Eyal Fraenkel issued a statement: "There is no difference between blood and blood. Murder is murder, whatever the nationality and age.  There is no justification, no forgiveness and no atonement for any kind of murder."

The contrast between us and the Arab World could not be greater.

In the extended version of the call the Israeli teens made to the police, gunshots are heard followed by the murderers joyful boasting and singing in celebration at their success at “bagging three”.  While the international press prominently displayed the denials of guilt expressed by HAMAS they conveniently ignored any mention that HAMAS has, since the release of Gilad Shalit on 18th October 2011, constantly incited its supporters to carry out further abductions.  HAMAS cheered the kidnapping.  The depravity displayed in this celebration of bestiality, celebrating the ‘others’ pain, was a reminder to all in Israel that its war is an existential one against the forces of darkness. The Koran explicitly cheers the killing of Jews and the doctrine of abrogation is used by its apologists in the West to explain the inexcusable.  If we choose to complain, the good Muslim may take any passage in the Koran and point to one that contradicts it.  And the Islamic Fundamentalist can do nothing wrong.  Palestinian society is morally bankrupt.  There are few Arabs with the courage to stand up to the theological psychopath or secular exploiter of this religion of conquest and hate. The recent example of Palestinian Professor Mohammed Dajani (Al Quds University) who faced abuse, intimidation and death threats after he took 27 students to Auschwitz (and was forced to resign because of it) underlines the distance separating us from the bigoted Islamic nation.

Senior Palestinian Authority official Abbas Zaki on March 14, 2014 said:  “Allah is gathering the Jews (to Israel) so we can kill them.”  Incitement is always rewarded.

The mother of one of the two HAMAS operatives Israel has named as suspects in the murder of the Israeli boys stated that “my boys are all righteous, pious and pure.  The goal of my children is the triumph of Islam.”  She further stated that if as adults any of her seven children wanted to die for Islam she would be proud and overjoyed.  Here is another part of the problem.  If your definition of “righteous, pious and pure” is to murder babies, children or even adults then by definition the religion that preaches this theology of death is not a religion of peace but a religion of violence and immorality.

Former Israeli Ambassador to the United States Michael B. Oren said: "One of the sources of Israel’s moral strength has been our refusal to resemble our enemies in their obsession with revenge and blood. I categorically condemn all acts of violence and racism which dishonor the memory of our three precious boys”.

 “Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits.” (Matthew 7:15-16)

It seems to me that between the quotes of Palestinian mothers, HAMAS officials and senior members of the Palestinian authority, the extract above from the Christian Bible is all we need to know about the Arab world and its addiction to a religion that cleaves to principles defined by exclusion, apartheid and death.

Its acolytes in the developed world have much to shame them.

President Obama and Language Neutrality

I suppose it was inevitable that the election of President Obama to the highest office in the US would remain framed by his color.  As a candidate, Barack Obama said that Americans must “reckon with race and with America’s original sin, slavery”. Except that America’s original sin was not slavery but its mistreatment of its indigenous native-Americans. If invisibility is a crime then Barack Obama contributed to that crime through his omission and through his historical inaccuracy.   The truth would not have made him less of a national leader even if it meant that he had to frame the debate around justice rather than race.

If we ignore the occasional ‘mistake,’ President Obama has barely mentioned race during either of his terms as President.  There are those activists who decry this course of inaction as a wasted opportunity to help to ‘rebalance the scales’.  But others say that it is sufficient that he is before the  public eye every single day and it is his presence as President and Commander in Chief of the Armed forces that encourages people across America to ‘be comfortable  with’ a different aspect of American society and therefore his presence alone, encourages acceptance.

On those few occasions when President Obama did mention race (such as in the case of the death of Trayvon Martin) it caused a national controversy that brought raw feelings of prejudice back into the foreground and reanimated a racially uncomfortable America.  As a president whose skin color is not white he has had to be better, purer, and more holy than his white colleagues. In fact, in some respects it is just like being a Jew! Although in America, Jews have been able to revel in the occasional notoriety of their coreligionists.  African Americans have not yet arrived at that particularly dubious point of self-acceptance in their battle for integration.  I am not going to get into any arguments about his mixed race background because like Jews under any fascist regime playing a percentage game and defining the Blackness or Jewishness of a person only plays into the racists hands.

The US President may indeed be incompetent; his foreign policy failures are legendary.  I cannot recall another President whose record of failures was as long and as ignoble.  His domestic challenges seem to have been no less and yet not significantly greater than Presidents that preceded him but instead he has suffered one failure after another and while his opponents have been in disarray throughout his one and a half terms of office he has failed to exploit the Republican Party’s chaos.    His presidency has seen cuts to Social Security and Healthcare reform that divided the nation; as a Democrat he has failed to reduce unemployment or poverty.  By many of his one time supporters Obama is viewed as a neo-con who has inflated government secrecy while assaulting one of the golden calves of the American self-image, civil liberties. By those on the opposite aisle he is viewed as a socialist threat to American values. Their constant attack on one of his few policy successes, the establishment universal health care, has made it impossible to dispassionately address the real budget and entitlement challenges that America has.

But this is not the problem that I am addressing here.  President Obama is the first Black (African American) President of the United States of America. His race may have molded his character but it did not shape his ability to form judgments nor did it create his intellect. As President, Obama should be  judged solely on his actions; on his successes (and forensically) on his failures. There is a strong suspicion that the constant attacks on his policies errors by certain members of the media are being driven by an agenda that is, at least in part, inspired by his color. But the mainstream media, across both print and electronic outlets have taken on board that any criticism of the Obama presidency which mentions his color is rightly considered both irrelevant and an act of racism

For the most part the European press and media also do not talk of individuals in terms of their national or ethnic background unless it is deemed pertinent to the article.  When they refer to the Polish President or the Traveler (Gypsy or Tinker) community it is always in context.  This policy mirrors the mainstream media experience with the Obama administration discussed above. But there appears to be a clear exception. The European press does seem to have a love – hate relationship with “its Jews” and hence, its addiction to referencing “its Jews” with never a requirement for context.

Since it annihilated two thirds of its Jewish population in World War 2 Europe loves its past Jewish landscape and its gorgeous panoply of (dead) Jews.  But in the present, it rarely manages to have a good thing to say for live Jews and does little to nothing to protect them from assault while rarely failing to blame them for their own deaths. After all, if we only listened to our betters and did as we were told then everything would be perhaps, ‘alright’.

To be twice as good and to receive half of the credit for what you achieve is also very Jewish. Obama, as the first Black American President cannot take comfort in his parallel injustice.

In Britain, the excuse from the Left wing Guardian newspaper is that Jews cannot be trusted to act judiciously or morally when confronted by anything relating to the State of Israel unless they display openly their anti-Zionist credentials.  (I am sure that the New York Times is broadly similar). Therefore Jews must not be permitted to enjoy any responsibilities that may have an impact on the relationship with Israel.  It should not need emphasizing that I have never read or heard this argument with reference to any other ethnic or religious group because it would be racist to expound on this doctrine of bigotry under any circumstances.  But it does explain why the President has trodden so carefully on the issue of race-relations.  As a man of non-white complexion living in the White House he faces the same prejudice.

The Left and its Muslim allies have frequently used this racist fallacy when discussing the Rights of Jews. It is now consistently used against Jews and any Pro-Israel supporters in the struggle against BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions).  An African American  president may enjoy immunity from such prejudiced reporting but fear of igniting a negative reaction appears to have prevented him from attracting attention to any issues of race that continue to blight the nation.

Unfortunately we are indebted to our televisions (and today, other electronic communications devices) for much of the sub-conscious programming we receive.  It is responsible for a great deal of what we now think.  We should not be grateful.  Perhaps it is because I am sensitive to this subtle incitement to prejudice that I also recognize the wrong we commit when we label the first African American President by his color.  It isn’t political pride, it is subtle indoctrination.  Labeling creates associations and too often, an emotional response.

The cliché that we should judge people on their results and not on their skin color is only possible if we commit ourselves to language that is neutral.  Neutrality of language means a duller society.    Comedians, Jew and African American alike, exploit their own group foibles in their acts but they also reinforce the greater society’s prejudices. ‘In’ jokes inevitably demean someone or some group. So we are as guilty as the bigots for reinforcing negative stereotypes precisely because we do not take them seriously.

A degree of nihilism has entered into language and as a result we have lost that self-control that encouraged us to consider our actions first.  Think about rappers, their treatment of violence and demeaning of women.   Language informs us, it molds our attitudes and imprints our thoughts about how we relate to others.

Neutrality of language may make society duller but it also constrains society and the hurtful instinct that fear and weakness inspires. We need to recognize this fact. Perhaps then we will truly judge others by their achievements rather than by their physical characteristics.  Only then will we as a society reject the bigot.

Israel & the Diplomatic Struggle

Propaganda, Palestine & the Information  War (Part II)

On the 18^th of May I wrote about the PSC (Palestine Solidarity Campaign) and some of the tactics it employs to spread propaganda against Jews and Israelis.  I demonstrated three of the tactics practiced by our enemies:  incitement, denial, emotive concealment of intent.  The fourth and final cog in the machinery of disenfranchisement and delegitimization is diplomacy.

One of the PSC supporters reminded me of a book I had read: “Architects of annihilation: Auschwitz and the Logic of Destruction” (Gotz Aly and Susanne Heim). The authors detailed how the bureaucrats and their diplomatic minions were key enablers to the successful planning and implementation of Nazi strategy.  An empire that was to be built on the bloodied cadavers of tens of millions of Untermenschen (sub-humans) needed its Diplomatic Corps to carry out its policies of disinformation, dissimulation and theft. 

A woman on the Palestinian stall, tall, thin and well spoken, explained to me how she supervised PhD students at a major UK university.  She told me that before her latest career role most of her professional life had been spent in the Arab world as a British diplomat.  This former diplomat, now supervising the education of doctoral students, did not accept that her previous career choices might cause her to discriminate in her views on Israel, Jews, or on Judaism. 

Having been partly educated through Arab universities many British students have found careers in the British Foreign Office (and not coincidentally) in journalism, with its national and international stage.  Some years ago it was reported in the media that no Arab university would carry academic books written by Jews. It was admitted that those same Arab universities were reluctant to stock books authored by any one with a “Jewish sounding name.”  This situation is destined to remain unchanged if only because finance usually trumps morality and Western governments have been happy to encourage an Arab antisemitic narrative either for profit or to satisfy their own historically prejudiced cultural traditions.

And endemic cultural antipathy towards minorities within the Muslim world can only encourage a blinkered educational experience which, for the Western student of Islam or the Arab world, is a choice readily embraced, under whatever guise is offered.  I cannot see what benefits a society when it sends its children to be educated in a racist and fascist environment?   Unless that is, the intent is for a continued policy of prejudice that is held for some debased national purpose.

Perhaps the single thread that defines the history of diplomacy is the effort nations have made (and continue to make) in order to maintain power and acquire wealth.  Machiavelli viewed diplomacy as having no significance in the realm of civil society.  In the pursuit of power, practical considerations rather than ‘higher’ ideological national purpose or misguided ethics were the means by which nations would enrich themselves. 

The issue that supporters of Israel must confront is that the United States of America, France and Britain still fund institutions of higher learning in various Arab countries – which all adhere to the apartheid policies of the Arab regimes they serve.  Diplomats from the US Department of State, from the British Foreign Office and from the Quai d’Orsai study in the Arab World in order to be eligible for progression within their careers.

The reason behind this policy was partly explained in a book by John Loftus and Mark Aarons “The Secret War against the Jews.”   The book refers mainly to the post WW2 period when Jewish survivors of the Shoah were scattered across the Globe. Wherever the survivors went, Nazis, senior members of the SS and the Secret Police slipped in with them, often with the active assistance of Western intelligence agencies – CIA, MI6 and the French DGSE.

“During World War 2 the covert British wiretap program in the United States against Nazi sympathizers was extended to surveil American supporters of a Jewish State in Palestine.” (Loftus and Aarons) After the war this program was massively expanded to allow illegal British wiretaps of American Jews. A reciprocal arrangement probably exists to this day, in Britain.

“All the great nations have treated the Jews as expendable assets, obstacles to the secure supply of Arab oil.” ibid

Equally unconscionable was the fact that illegal electronic surveillance, the “you-spy-on-mine, I’ll spy-on-yours deal” was extended to other Western countries.

In the wake of what Jews experienced as historical reality Edward Snowden’s treason has exposed revelations of unprecedented global spying which for Jews in the Western World seems to be no more than a ‘normal’ act of betrayal against them.   It truly is a terrible indictment of our Western system of government that Jews continue everywhere to this day, to be society’s “canaries in the mine.”

Commercial interests in the Muslim world over-ride security considerations by exploiting domestic and foreign wiretaps to appease the Arab-Muslim alliance against Israel and “the Jews” but now also against everyone else in the Western world.
 

How frightening is this policy, can be understood by the following short post-911 anecdote: the White House and FBI facilitated the hurried departure of 140 Saudis (including two-dozen relatives of Osama bin Laden) from the United States to Saudi Arabia.  “In the days immediately following Sept. 11, 2001, while the airways were still closed to all other flights, Americans couldn't fly into the country but relatives of bin Laden were able to fly out.  President Bush personally facilitated the escape from America of many high ranking Saudi officials in a private jet.” (Boston Globe, 30 Sept. 2003)

Justice must be seen to be done or it becomes a sham that rots society from the inside.

In another quote from Loftus and Aarons they write that the diplomats “job is to make history and then bury it.” Only a fool considers that that war against the Jews and against Israel can be contained, that only the canary will succumb to this poison, injected over generations into the body politic by antisemitic Western governmental institutions.  Or, that its impact will be restricted to Israel and its supporters.

As long as we in the West continue to appease the Islamic world – whether for access to energy or geopolitical influence, bigots such as Baroness Tonge have no reason to exercise equanimity or be proportionate in their response to an Israeli presence in the Muslim world.  Instead, Israel will continue to be marginalised.

A pro-Muslim or pro-Arab anti-Zionist and antisemitic narrative may be ceaselessly debated in the backrooms of our government institutions and the classrooms of our universities but it can be explained without wasting energy on lies and half-truths.

Realpolitik declares Israel to be geographically insignificant.  It is no more than 1/800^th the size of the Arab world.  Israel’s population of 8 million citizens compares unfavourably to some 400 million “Arabs” (including persecuted minorities).  Even when we discount the factor of prejudice in nations, countries act on economic interest and not on ethics.  If justification is required, building a biased consensus based on lies just makes the task easier.

“Politics is a dirty game, international diplomacy is a cesspit, national interest is paramount, and double standards are the norm. Nevertheless justice is the demand of all those seeking to claim fairness on their side”.  Alan Melkman

How to claim fairness on our side? That is Israel’s (and our) greatest challenge.