The UN hypocrites' council
An investigation initiated by the UN Human Rights Council to examine allegations about war crimes committed during the recent war in Gaza will begin this week, as widely reported. In order to fully appreciate the implications of this endeavor, some other recent news reports should be taken into account. Consider this report from the London Times:
The "facts-don't-matter" campOver the past year, Antony Lerman has published quite a few articles defending anti-Zionist views against the charge that they often serve as a cover-up for antisemitism. If his articles include any biographical information, Lerman is usually presented as (former) director of the Institute for Jewish Policy Research in London; he has also been described as a "leading Jewish thinker." Of course, anyone who writes "as a Jew" and single-mindedly focuses on whatever is wrong with Israel and Zionism can count on having an appreciative audience that can't get enough of this message - particularly if it comes with regular complaints about how unfair it is to suspect people of anti-Semitism simply because they feel that the world would be a better place if Israel didn't exist. UNRWA in the spotlightIt'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. 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. 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. "We are Hamas"
Perhaps you remember the demonstrations during the Lebanon War in the summer of 2006, when protesters proudly carried placards announcing "We are all Hizbullah". Over at Z Word, you can admire the updated version: "We are Hamas" - a slogan that, as Ben Cohen rightly observes, was "entirely predictable". What Hamas - and therefore the people who identify so enthusiastically with the Islamist group - really stand for has been gruesomely illustrated in the past few days. Last week, an Israeli air strike targeted and killed Nizar Rayyan (sometimes also spelled Ghayan). He was a Hamas military commander who was regarded as one of the most popular and influential Hamas leaders in Gaza; in addition, he served as a "spiritual" leader for Hamas's armed wing and taught at the Islamic University in Gaza City, where his students reportedly revered him as a prominent Muslim scholar. The cycle of stupidity
It was just a few days ago that Hamas mocked Israel for its failure to respond to the barrage of rockets that rained down on communities near the border with Gaza. A leaflet distributed by the armed wing of Hamas, Izzadin Kassam, boasted that Israel was "hopeless and desperate" in the face of the relentless attacks: "The enemy is in a state of confusion and doesn't know what to do ... Their fragile cabinet has met in a desperate attempt to stop the rockets while thousands of settlers have found refuge in shelters which, by God's will, will become their permanent homes." That was the openly stated goal of Hamas: to force all Israelis in the expanding range of the rockets in Hamas's arsenal to live in permanent fear for their lives. Gaza Ghetto gibberishThe activists at Goldsmiths college, University of London, are mistaken if they believe they are breaking any new ground by planning an event entitled "From the Warsaw Ghetto to the Gaza Ghetto". The idea of calling Gaza a "ghetto" - supposedly in order to rally political support for the Palestinians - is anything but new: There is a 1984 movie entitled "Gaza Ghetto", and there are all sorts of writings floating in cyberspace that put the comparison to the desired political use. But it is worthwhile asking what exactly the desired political purpose is, because reading through the screeds that compare Gaza to a ghetto, it's hard to avoid the conclusion that this comparison is popular primarily among those who feel that the best way to support the Palestinian cause is to de-legitimize Israel. The inevitable reaction
"What, exactly, is a decent person supposed to think?" That was Bradley Burston's question in an emotional piece published on the website of Ha'aretz shortly after an Arab resident from the southeast Jerusalem neighborhood of Sur Baher killed three and injured dozens in a bulldozer rampage on Jaffa Road last Wednesday. A day later, a Jerusalem Post editorial critically reviewed what the international media were suggesting their readers should think about this terrible attack. Among the reports and commentaries highlighted in the editorial was a piece that had been published just a few hours after the attack on the Guardian's website under the title "The inevitable overreaction." Once you start to read this piece, you quickly realize that, just a few hours after the carnage, the verdict was already clear: any Israeli reaction to the attack would be an "overreaction", because if Israelis found themselves "targeted by terrorist killers", there was an obvious reason: "Occupation breeds terror" - and if this was not a good enough explanation for terrorist attacks, there was still another one on offer: "the relentless oppressive tactics employed by successive Israeli governments since the very foundation of the state." As the first comment posted in response to this article aptly noted: "Before the dead are cold and buried their murder is 'explained' away. How sad." Rewriting history for the "nakba""I wish Israel the very best on its 60th . . . And to be fair to the Palestinians, I wish them a very happy Nakba day." This sarcastic comment (#1356747) by a reader of the Guardian's "Comment is Free" site was clearly meant to mock the all-out media effort to provide an "even-handed" coverage of Israel's 60th anniversary celebrations by adopting the "nakba" narrative that postulates that the establishment of Israel was inevitably a "catastrophe" for the Palestinians. |
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