The Gaza occupation

Almost exactly four years ago, the Israeli and international media were dominated by reports and commentaries about Israel's disengagement from Gaza. A CNN report described the events, stating: "On Monday [September 12, 2005], Israel withdrew its final troops from Gaza, ending 38 years of occupation."

The same report noted that "Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas toured the evacuated Jewish settlement Eli Sinai Monday, calling Israel's withdrawal a 'great moment,'"; Abbas was also quoted as saying that the Palestinians "need to look at the West Bank and end the occupation there." That sounds very much as if Abbas shared the common-sense view that the occupation of Gaza had indeed ended when the last Israeli left Gaza in the early morning hours of September 12, 2005.

Almost exactly three years after Abbas declared his desire to "end the occupation" in the West Bank, he had the chance to do so: On September 13, 2008, Ehud Olmert hosted Abbas in his home in Jerusalem "and presented him with a detailed proposal for a peace agreement."

A map that Olmert had prepared for this meeting outlined a Palestinian state covering an area equal to the pre-1967 territories controlled by Egypt and Jordan. Olmert's proposals included 93.5 percent of the West Bank, with another 5.8 percent added through land swaps that would allow Israel to keep the main settlement blocs - Ma'aleh Adumim, Ariel and Gush Etzion - in exchange for lands in the southern Hebron Hills, the Judean Hills and the Beit She'an Valley. In addition, Olmert offered a "safe passage" corridor from the West Bank to the Gaza Strip.

The question of Jerusalem and the refugee issue were also addressed; reportedly, "Olmert proposed dividing sovereignty between the Jewish and Arab neighborhoods, and leaving the Old City's 'holy basin' and its surroundings without sovereignty, under the management of an international committee with the participation of Israel, Palestine, the United States, Jordan and Saudi Arabia."

With regard to the Palestinian refugees, Olmert reportedly "did not recognize the Palestinians' demand for a right of return," but nevertheless offered to allow a small number of refugees - about 3,000 people over a period of five years - to settle in Israel.

Mahmoud Abbas never bothered to let Olmert know what he thought of these proposals; eventually, he got around to rejecting them in media interviews in spring 2009.

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The anti-Israel professionals at HRW

In recent weeks, there have been a number of disturbing revelations about Human Rights Watch (HRW) and about individual staff members involved in the organization's work on Israel.

Predictably, HRW and the group's many supporters have brushed off all concerns and criticism as politically motivated.

And they didn't change their tactics when it turned out that one senior staff member, HRW "senior military analyst" Marc Garlasco - who has issued quite a few damning statements about Israel - is consumed by fascination with military Nazi memorabilia.

Indeed, it seems we are even supposed to think Garlasco's obsession with Nazi military memorabilia somehow enhances his professional expertise.

One thing is for sure: Being an avid collector of Nazi medals doesn't make anyone a military analyst - so what exactly are Garlasco's professional qualifications?

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Unbiased about the Holocaust?

It sure was formulated rather delicately on the BBC website:

Hamas condemns Holocaust lessons: Gaza's ruling Islamist movement Hamas has resisted suggestions that Palestinian children should be taught about the Holocaust in UN-run schools."

 
The report went on to explain that the head of the education committee in Gaza had declared "that the Holocaust was a 'big lie'" and "that to teach it would be to 'grant a big favour' to Israel."

The BBC also reported that the UN, which runs most schools in Gaza and teaches some 200,000 children there, relies primarily on Egyptian textbooks but "has added its own coursework about human rights." According to the BBC, the UN has now consulted with local groups regarding "whether the Holocaust should be taught."

Well, one might wonder whether the head of the education committee, who describes the Holocaust as a "big lie," is a graduate of Gaza's UN-run schools. One might also wonder how many UN-employed educators in Gaza share his views, and how many of these educators - and how many of their UN employers - realize the irony in the fact that adding "coursework about human rights" was apparently uncontroversial, while "suggestions" that lessons about the Holocaust be added elicited indignant protests.

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The art of antisemitism

The short theater play "Seven Jewish Children," written as a reaction to the Gaza war by the prominent British playwright Caryl Churchill earlier this year, has stirred up a heated debate about antisemitism.   Initially, this debate focused on the question if Churchill's play is antisemitic - a charge that Churchill and her admirers obviously rejected as completely unjustified. But as many critics of the play have pointed out, the question is easy to settle: imagine a comparable play peddling negative stereotypes about "Seven Muslim Children" or "Seven Arab Children," and one thing is for sure: none of the people who praise Churchill's play would want to have anything to do with it.

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Saeb Erekat's secret

There was little enthusiasm when the Annapolis talks were launched in late 2007. Their goal - to produce at least the outline of an agreement between Israelis and Palestinians by the time president Bush left office - was widely regarded as completely unrealistic, and quite a few commentators dismissed the initiative as just more "peace processing." But when Israel's new foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman recently declared quite undiplomatically that the Annapolis process was over and done with, commentators united in a chorus of indignation - apparently, they didn't like to hear that Lieberman thought they were right all along.

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War crimes propaganda

Human Rights Watch has conducted a thorough investigation of civilian deaths … On the basis of this investigation, Human Rights Watch has found that there were ninety separate incidents involving civilian deaths ... Some 500 ... civilians are known to have died in these incidents. ... nine incidents were a result of attacks on non-military targets that Human Rights Watch believes were illegitimate. ... Thirty-three incidents occurred as a result of attacks on targets in densely populated urban areas ... the use of cluster bombs was a decisive factor in civilian deaths in at least three incidents. ... In its investigation Human Rights Watch has found no evidence of war crimes."  (Source: http://www.hrw.org/legacy/reports/2000/nato/Natbm200.htm#P37_987)

When some 500 civilians die, when non-military targets are attacked and cluster bombs are used and yet, the conclusion is that there is "no evidence of war crimes", you can be sure of one thing: Israel wasn't involved. Indeed, the quote here is from a report on NATO's bombing campaign in Yugoslavia ten years ago.

It is important to remember that the NATO campaign back then was officially justified as a humanitarian intervention designed to protect the Kosovo Albanians from Serbian aggression. Yet, in the course of NATO's campaign, civilian infrastructure was deliberately targeted and destroyed; cluster bombs were used, causing the death of an estimated 90-150 civilians; and, according to the report cited above, "inventory shortages and cost considerations" led to the replacement of precision-guided weapons with "dumb" bombs.

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UNRWA in the spotlight

It's not just because of the recent fighting in Gaza that UNRWA has recently been the subject of several articles: the UN agency that was founded to support the Palestinian refugees created during the Arab-Israeli conflict in 1948 will mark the 60th anniversary of its establishment at the end of this year. It is arguably a very special anniversary of a very special agency: at a time when millions of destitute refugees all over the world struggled to cope with their fate, UNRWA was set up in December 1949 to just care for one group of refugees - and six decades later, UNRWA is the biggest UN agency with a staff of over 29.000, most of them (99 percent) Palestinians, and it is still devoted to supporting millions of Palestinians that remain classified as "refugees", even though they may live in the same place where they, and indeed their parents, were born, and even though they may have citizenship where they live.

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The elections and Israel's image

In his recent "Editor's Notes", David Horovitz offers a grim assessment of the challenges facing Israel as the country prepares for elections this week. Horovitz focuses in particular on the "relentless process of delegitimization" that Israel has been exposed to for quite some time now and he suggests that this process will likely intensify if the Likud wins the elections, because Israel's critics would interpret this as a sign that Israel has "turned its back on peacemaking."

However, Horovitz also makes clear that what Israel does or doesn't do matters very little to those who are eager to delegitimize the Jewish state. Indeed, recent events have shown once more that there is a chorus of indignation whenever Israel moves to defend its citizens - such unfathomable chutzpah will naturally result in comments like: "Israel's international reputation slumped to its lowest point for two decades yesterday, amid condemnation in Britain and Europe of the Israeli army's behaviour ... There were calls for a United Nations-led inquiry into allegations that the Israeli army carried out a massacre and that its soldiers were guilty of war crimes." This may sound like a very recent condemnation of the fighting in Gaza, but it's actually from April 2002: that's how the Guardian - and indeed many other news media around the world - reported about the Jenin "massacre" that never happened.

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Iran's Islamic revolution at 30

"Crowds chanted 'Death to America! Death to Israel!' at the ceremony at Khomeini's mausoleum in southern Teheran ... attended by supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, government ministers and military commanders." It's scary, scarily pathetic, that this is apparently considered a dignified way to begin the ten-day celebration marking the 30th anniversary of Iran's "Islamic revolution" this weekend.

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Pragmatism, Hamas-style

While the New York Times has Libya's Muammar Qaddafi laying out the case for "Isratine",  the Guardian has taken to offering various Hamas leaders and spokesmen a platform to try themselves as op-ed writers. Apparently, the editors are confident that a majority of the paper's readers won't mind to have this ostensible legitimacy bestowed on the leaders of a group that has been busy in recent weeks with killing, torturing and maiming their political opponents - indeed, the author of one of the recent offerings, Mousa Abu Marzook, confirmed just shortly before his piece was published that Hamas had executed "collaborators", whose crime was according to Marzook that they were Fatah members who "had taken to the streets to blow kisses at IAF planes and handed out candies as they attacked Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip."

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