Netanyahu, don’t sell your soul to the Devil!

It is not often that I find myself criticising Israel’s policies.  Not that I agree with everything her governments (left, right or centre) did and do; it’s just that, given the amount of outrageously unfair, obsessively singular and often hate-laden ‘criticism’ directed at the Jewish state, I find Israel more deserving of my support and muzzle my occasional disapproval.  One may admit to failings in one’s own family; but the time to focus on such flaws is not when that family is harassed by hostile strangers with dark intentions.

Yet, even having said all that, the current – off-the-record, but widely-publicised – ‘rapprochement’ between the Jewish state and ‘certain Sunni Arab powers’ makes me uneasy to the point where I feel a need to trigger some debate around it within the Israeli society.

I know that many of my readers will, at this point, raise a quizzical eyebrow: how can a – however unofficial – warm-up in Israel’s relations with the Arab world be anything but a positive development?  Indeed, most people see it as both an achievement and a source of hope.  In his recent address to the ‘United’ National General Assembly, Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu implied precisely that:

“… I have to tell you this: for the first time in my lifetime, many other states in the region recognize that Israel is not their enemy.  They recognize that Israel is their ally.  Our common enemies are Iran and ISIS.  Our common goals are security, prosperity and peace.  I believe that in the years ahead we will work together to achieve these goals, work together openly.”

Israel’s eagerness to finally embrace (and be embraced by) her neighbours, even after such a long and bitter conflict, brings credit to its people and its leaders.  Yet both people and leaders need to temper their enthusiasm a notch.

Let us first remember who these neighbours really are; we are not talking, unfortunately, about a reconciliation with the Arab nation; nor, regretfully, about a newly-reached understanding with its democratic representatives.  We are talking about ‘rapprochement’ with a bunch of dictatorial regimes that only represent themselves.  Prominent among them are the world’s last remaining absolute monarchies.  The unofficial leaders of that disreputable pack are the ‘royal’ family of Saudi Arabia – a country rivaling ‘Islamic’ Iran both in medieval practices and in its export of religious intolerance and terrorism.  Why, just the other day, I was reading – avidly – about the beginning of a revolt by Saudi women, who are finally trying to shed their Untermensch status.  The Saudi regime beheads people in the public square, applies amputations and beatings as ‘legal’ punishments, treats foreign workers like slaves – all while plundering and squandering away immense natural resources belonging to their people.  Is this really the kind of ‘ally’ that Israel wants?

Dira Square in the Saudi capital Riyadh. Known locally as "Chop-chop square",
it is the location of public beheadings. 151 people have been executed in 2015
and more than 100 in the first half of 2016. 

Yes, I understand that the ‘Islamic’ regime of Iran threatens both Israel (on several fronts) and the Sunni powers; I get that Western ‘leaders’ are increasingly unable to tell the difference between their arses and their elbows; and I realise that out-of-control, berserk Islamism casts its shadow over the entire region – and beyond.  Yes, I can see an argument that Israel should seek alliances with whoever opposes those immediate dangers – even with the Devil himself.  ‘The enemy of my enemy,’ and all that.  Netanyahu is hardly the first leader to choose ‘the lesser evil’.  Didn’t Roosevelt and Churchill ally themselves with Stalin in order to defeat Hitler?

And, of course, Israel would not be the first democratic country to pursue an ‘alliance’ with detestable dictatorial regimes in the Arab world.  After all, when Saudi and Emirati forces bomb targets in Yemen, they do so using weaponry systems purchased largely from the United States and UK.

But all this proves is that much of the West has lost its way and is wallowing in a foul- smelling concoction of moral relativism and hypocritical moralism.  Why should Israel follow them, rather than – as a true ‘light unto the nations’ – set a better example?

Not a woman in sight -- and no protest, either!

I’m not naïve, believe me.  I understand that often (too often!) it is common interests, not common values, that motivate alliances.  I am not necessarily averse to a bit of ‘real politik’; it’s short sighted politicking I have a problem with.

Even if Netanyahu (like so many democratic leaders) is willing to conquer his disgust, silence his conscience, cover his nose and get in bed with the Saudis – it is unclear what exactly would Israel stand to gain from this very distasteful mating.  Assume, for instance, that things come to a head and Israel needs to attack Iran’s nuclear sites – to prevent the mullahs, in extremis, from getting The Bomb.  How will the Saudi and Emirati ‘allies’ help?  Will Israel mount a ‘joint operation’ with the Saudis?  Very unlikely.  Will the Saudi Royal Airforce (equipped with British warplanes) help Israel in her next war with Hizb’ullah or Hamas?  Yeah, right!

While any putative benefits are doubtful, potential downsides loom large.  Let’s say it bluntly: those hideous dictatorial regimes aren’t going to be around forever.  They may hold on for a while, sure; but they are on the wrong side of history.  Using Middle Eastern tactics, Western weaponry and oil revenues, they might be able to alternately bully and bribe their population for a while – even for a decade or two.  But no lumpenproletariat, however bullied, bribed or indoctrinated, has remained acquiescent forever.  The Middle East is filled to the brim with frustration, simmering in the hearts of two hundred million young Arabs: unemployed, hopeless, maltreated and humiliated.  It is only a matter of time until their anger bursts forth, sweeping away the tyrants – whether ‘secular’ despots or Islamist chieftains – who have robbed them of their future and their dignity.  And when that happens, will Israel want to be perceived as an ‘ally’ of those despicable tyrants?  Or will she want to be found in opposition to them – and hence in a better position to immediately join forces with her natural allies, the forces of modernity?

I understand the temptation.  But those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.  Haven’t we been here before?

In the mid-1950s, besieged by relentless Arab enmity, Israel (under the prime-ministership of David Ben-Gurion) allied itself with Britain and France against Egypt.  The Jewish state wanted freedom of navigation and trade through the Suez Canal – but for the two Western powers this was a last gasp of imperial ambitions.  Ultimately, Israel gained nothing – except a tarnished reputation – from that misjudgement.  In hindsight, it was a mistake for the Jewish state (itself freshly liberated from the British ‘Mandate’) to cooperate with the forces of colonialism – even against a common enemy.

In the mid-1970s, the same keen desire to break the circle of Arab enmity and boycott compelled Israeli leaders to maintain close diplomatic and trade relations with Apartheid South Africa.  Both the late Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin have been involved in those relations – one can imagine the two Jewish leaders had to pinch their nostrils tight to shut off the stench of racism while pursuing that kind of ‘real politik’.  True, at the time most of the democratic world was happily doing business with that racist regime: Israel’s trade with South Africa ($200 million in 1986) was dwarfed by that of USA ($3.4 billion), Japan ($2.9 billion), Germany ($2.8 billion) and UK ($2.6 billion); the Arab world was selling it oil worth circa $2 billion annually.  Be it as it may, ultimately Israel gained very little from its relationship with South Africa at the time; but the perception of ‘friendliness’ between the two is still being used to try and delegitimise the Jewish state.

In late 1970s and early 1980s (mainly under Prime Minister Menachem Begin), Israel forged an alliance with Lebanese Christians (in particular Maronite leaders).  The motivation was similar: both parties perceived a common enemy in the Palestinian terrorist organisations acting on and from Lebanese territory.  From a military point of view, the Maronite militias provided Israel with scant assistance during the war that eventually broke out; but they were to perpetrate the famous Sabra and Shatila massacres, which were again exploited to tarnish Israel’s reputation.

In summary, every time Israel has chosen unsavoury ‘allies’ in the name of some misconceived ‘real-politik’, she has ended up gaining little and instead paying a heavy price in damage to her public image.  Promoters of ‘rapprochement’ with Arab despotic regimes – beware!

But there are also positive lessons that can be learned from the past.  In late 1970s, under Prime Minister Begin, Israel offered asylum to 360 Vietnamese ‘boat people’ – refugees fleeing for their lives from the Communist takeover of their country.  Israel granted them citizenship, full rights and government-subsidized apartments.

In 1993, at the height of the Yugoslavian civil war, Israel (then under Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin) offered asylum – and permanent residency – to circa 100 Bosnian Muslims.  They were initially hosted by the kibbutz movement, but Arab Israelis soon became involved in helping them.

Syrian children

Since the beginning of the Syrian civil war, Israel has been helping thousands of Syrian Arabs – with no regard to faith or political opinion – by offering them free medical treatment.  But here is something else that she can do: offer asylum to – say – 500 Syrian children.  And, just so there is no doubt as to Israel’s purely humanitarian intentions, why not entrust them to the care of Israeli families of the same faith as the children – be they Muslim, Christian or Druze?  That – not cuddling up to hateful dictators – is the type of ‘rapprochement’ I would whole-heartedly support.

FIFA, shm-IFA

To those of us lucky enough to live in free countries, the word ‘elections’ is full of positive connotations; it brings to mind democracy and freedom of choice.  But for that majority of the world population straining under totalitarian rule, ‘election’ means worse than an exercise in futility: it adds insult to injury by throwing the mockery of freedom in the face of those who have none.  The recent FIFA ‘elections’ fell precisely in that category.  More than 200 national football associations were represented and could vote in those elections; but, with the exception of a minority – those originating from the Free World – those associations are nothing but branches of totalitarian regimes.  They do not care about sport, about football; they are there to defend the political interests and boost the stature of the ruling regimes.

Little wonder, therefore, that FIFA is corrupt to the bone – so are the regimes themselves.  Little wonder that, despite the recurring, grotesque, enormous scandals, the same President has been re-elected over and over again with the votes of the unfree, heading FIFA’s ruling junta for almost two decades; after all, isn’t this precisely how things are done in dictatorships??

But if you think that FIFA is the most scandalous case – think again.  This is not an exception – it is the norm in ‘international bodies’ in which democracies and dictatorships are ‘represented’ and vote on equal footing.  It is the norm, for instance, in each and every one of United Nations’ many assemblies, councils, commissions and committees.  If you think that it is ridiculous for FIFA to re-elect a President on whose watch corruption has reached gargantuan proportions, then have a look at these ludicrous (nay, tragic!) facts: the current membership of the ‘United’ Nations Human Rights Council (yes, Human Rights!) includes Saudi Arabia, Qatar, China, Russia, Morocco, Algeria, Vietnam, Cuba...  These ‘human rights luminaries’ far outnumber democracies like UK, France and Netherlands and practically drive the agenda of the Council.  In 2014, the ‘Islamic Republic’ of Iran was elected (by fellow tyrannical regimes) to sit on the UN Commission for the Status of Women!  I mean Iran – where women are harassed on the streets by the ‘morality police’ and where the ‘law’ prescribes 70 lashes or 60 days in prison for women ‘revealing in public’ more than their hands and faces!

When at the ‘United’ Nations abhorrent oppressors are in charge of ‘human rights’ and male supremacists hold sway on the status of women, are you still surprised that they set the tone at FIFA??

Blatter has now resigned; there’s at least a chance that FIFA will be cleaned up.  But the much more influential ‘United’ Nations will remain un-purged, mired in deeply entrenched, cynical, disgusting immorality.

And why is this happening?  Needless to say, the fault lies with the dictators, with the tyrants themselves; but they could not do it alone – not without accomplices.  Those accomplices are the ‘leaders’ of democratic nations, who – rudderless in the ocean of moral relativism – keep ‘engaging' with the despots, in effect collaborating with them to the point of handing them control over international institutions.  'Engaging'???  We would never contemplate thieves acting as judges and murderers sitting on a jury; we wouldn’t even countenance crooks on the Board of a commercial company.  Yet we allow them to call the shots not just at FIFA, but – appallingly – at the ‘United’ Nations.  And it is not that we can’t do anything about it, no: we actually hold the power!  In fact, it is the democratic, free world that typically provides the funds that allow those institutions – whether FIFA or the UN – to function.

Between 2011 and 2014, FIFA received revenues of $5.7 billion – more than the annual economic output of the African nation of Togo.  But, trust me, it did not come from Togo!  FIFA says that it got the money by selling television rights (43%), marketing rights (29%) and ‘other revenue’ (28%).  And who pays for television and marketing rights?  I doubt that Togo’s national broadcaster Télévision Togolaise can pay for a minute of Sepp Blatter’s time, let alone a minute of a World Cup match.  No, friends, it is us, the inhabitants of the Free World, who are – indirectly but very, very dearly – paying the lion’s share of FIFA’s money.  It is we who fund the broadcasters that pay for television rights; it is to us that World Cup sponsors sell their goods.

The situation is not much different at the ‘United’ Nations.  In 2014, the ‘United’ Nations voted itself an annual budget of $5.5 billion.  This is the so-called ‘core budget’, as it does not include non-core business such as peace-keeping ($7 billion), as well as a host of other expenses separately funded by member states.

Some Nations are more 'United' than others...

And who coughs up the dosh?  You got it, friends: it’s us!  USA alone supplies 22% of UN’s money.  And by the time one adds Japan, Canada, Australia, South Korea and the top 6 European countries, the Free World’s bill easily exceeds two-thirds of the ‘United’ budget.

And what does all that mean?  Well, I hate to break it to you, folks: it means we’re all in the dock; we’re in cahoots with criminals, we are their enablers.  Whether we like it or not, we did not just provide the money that allowed Sepp Blatter to run his MaFI(F)A; shockingly, we pay for the mockery that is the ‘United’ Nations.

Revolting as you may find it, we share the guilt.  Whenever another Saudi citizen is denied his/her rights, tortured or executed (90 have been ‘legally’ beheaded so far in 2015), a bit of that sweat and blood is on our heads; after all, it is with our money that the Saudi ‘representative’ (some ‘Prince’ or other – no princesses allowed) was enthroned at the ‘United’ Nations Human Rights Council, there to shield his medieval monarchy from well-deserved opprobrium.

Sorry, folks: I know it is not us ordinary Joes; it’s the bloody politicians who choose to cavort with tyrants.  But we elected the politicians; and we allow them to do it.  And as long as we do that, as long as we remain silent while our hard-earned money enables the crimes, we shoulder a portion of their guilt.  Can you feel it, my brothers, my fellow men?  Can you feel the humiliation of the Iranian woman harangued in the middle of the road and told to dress as a black walking coffin – or else?  Can you sense the desperation of the Tibetan monk who immolates himself to protest Chinese oppression?  Can you hear the silent scream of the emaciated immigrant worked to death in Qatar?

If you do – if, like me, you are sick of seeing your money misused and your goodwill abused, your conscience soiled and your intelligence mocked – then tell your politicians how you feel about it.  Let them know that if they keep robbing us of what we most cherish – our integrity – we’ll deprive them of what they most desire: their power.

The Audacity of Hoax: the real story behind the ‘Iran nuclear deal’

Have you by any chance read the framework agreement recently signed by Iran and six world powers?  No?  Of course you didn't – no  agreement was signed.  True, after missing the original deadline, the negotiators did show up with exhausted-but-triumphant facial expressions, slapping each other on the back like NBA players that just scored a slam dunk.  But there was no slam dunk at all: the negotiations had only produced an agreement… to agree.

Years and a small fortune – nay, make that a laaarge fortune to you and me – have been spent; ministers have neglected their other duties, to pursue all-important nuclear negotiations; and all they have to show for all that is... a verbal agreement???  One that the parties already ‘remember’ in at least three different, conflicting ways?  Now, think hard: when was the last time a grave international dispute was resolved through a verbal agreement?  International treaties are long, carefully worded legal documents, signed with ceremony by leaders and ratified by parliaments.  A verbal agreement?  Seriously???

Folks, we are being taken for a ride; they’re playing us for fools, with ‘fact-sheets’ meant only to hide the ‘agreement’s’ blatant non-existence; its being but a figment of deceitful minds.  In reality, after months and years of negotiations – there is no agreement; nothing beyond a loose, vague, reversible, oral ‘understanding’ on some bare-bones ‘principles’.  That’s a truth politicians thought best to keep from us, ordinary Joes.  What a brazen hoax!  What incredible chutzpah!  How they mock our honesty, our genuine trust!

And it’s not just sordid politicians, these mollusks who make a living (and a good one, too!) from falsehood and deceit; it’s also regimented ‘journalists’, the politicians’ intellectual prostitutes; those swiftly mobilised to prop up the fraud.  Take, for instance, Time Magazine’s Joe Klein: he has already produced at least two 'articles' – two shameless pieces of Soviet-style propaganda – praising the verbal ‘framework’ (which he dubs, of course, ‘the agreement’ or ‘the deal’) as the best thing since sliced bread.  Just in case someone should doubt his ‘expertise’ in Middle Eastern affairs, Klein starts by brandishing his ‘Jewish’ credentials, informing readers that he’s just celebrated Passover Seder with his friend Ramin

"an Iranian leprechaun, if such a thing is possible – born a Muslim but converted to Judaism…"

Needless to say, the personal opinion of this starry-eyed ‘Iranian leprechaun’ (who, we are informed, “does favor regime change, but through peaceful means”) is harnessed to serve Klein’s ‘argument’ – or rather is employed in-lieu of an argument.  After all, as a mercenary pen-wielder, Klein’s ‘conclusions’ are pre-determined by ideological fixations.  So why bother to perform research or interview some genuine authority?  Much easier to pen an article based on casual conversations with friends over chicken soup and matzo balls!

Joe Klein, the 'resident Jew' in charge of propaganda

Despite his a priori enthusiasm for ‘the deal’, Klein does mention in passing a certain Mohammad Reza Naqdi; who, as the negotiators were still backslapping, declared that for the Islamic Republic of Iran “erasing Israel off the map” is “non-negotiable”.  Naqdi is neither a leprechaun nor one of Klein’s bohemian friends; he’s a much more prosaic (but much, much, much more influential) General and senior commander in the powerful Iranian Revolutionary Guard – a vital power base of the ayatollahs’ regime.  But don’t expect Klein to assign any importance at all to Naqdi’s genocidal threat.  In fact, the journo only mentioned Naqdi so he could take another swipe at Benjamin Netanyahu; no doubt, because the latter chose to react to the Iranian general’s spittle – and not by pretending it’s rain.  Of course, Netanyahu isn't necessarily right; the point is, however, that he has the right: his own family is on the line, within striking distance of Revolutionary Guard’s ballistic (and potentially nuclear) missiles.  If it’s Klein who got it wrong, the only personal pain he’s likely to feel is that caused by his own haemorrhoids, gingerly seated in a soft armchair in Midtown Manhattan.

So what’s gonna happen now?  Well, not much: they will continue to negotiate ‘the details’ of an as-yet non-existent agreement.  The new deadline is June 30.  But don’t worry – it will be extended, of course.  After all, the old deadline (March 31, the ‘deadline’ for the ‘framework’ concocted on April 2!) was itself an extension of the extension…  Eventually, some sort of agreement may emerge; or the whole thing might just fizzle out, as the world’s attention turns to some other crisis.  Ukraine, perhaps; or Yemen; or South China Sea…

In truth, it makes no difference if an agreement is signed or not; it’s all the same if you judge it to be a good deal or a bad one; it does not matter whether, like Klein, you’re stupid enough to trust the ayatollahs’ regime to abide by any agreement.  In general, it makes absolutely no difference what you or I think; or what Klein thinks, or what Barack-effing-Obama thinks.  What really matters – the only thing that matters, folks – is what people in the Middle East think.  Not all people, of course, just those few people in power.  And we know what they think: not one of them trusts the ayatollahs; not one of them puts his faith in the likes of Obama, John Kerry and François Hollande.  And why would they?  Aren't these just foolish Westerners, weaklings who want to ‘lead from behind’?  Hasn't their ilk already allowed North Korea to get The Bomb?

Says Prince Turki Al-Faisal, Saudi Arabia’s main foreign policy spokesman:

"I've always said whatever comes out of these talks, we will want the same.  So if Iran has the ability to enrich uranium to whatever level, it's not just Saudi Arabia that's going to ask for that.  The whole world will be an open door to go that route without any inhibition, and that's my main objection to this..."

Obama re-assuring the (now dead and buried)
King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia

The Saudi nuclear programme will of course be entirely peaceful.  Just like Iran (world’s fourth-largest reserves of crude oil) Saudi Arabia (world’s second largest) simply wants to produce a bit of atomic energy.  Which is why in March, just as the negotiators were hammering that Klein-acclaimed Iranian ‘framework’, the Saudis were quietly signing an agreement (a written agreement!) to purchase two South Korean nuclear reactors.  In total, the oil-drenched desert kingdom plans to build no less than 16 nuclear reactors.  All of them utterly peaceful, of course!  Egypt’s military rulers want an equally peaceful nuclear programme; which is why, in February, Egypt’s General-turned-President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi met Russia’s President-turned-Prime Minister-turned-President Vladimir Putin.  The two triumphantly announced an agreement to build a nuclear reactor in Egypt.  Doubtless, a few other Middle Eastern kings, sheikhs and presidents for life will follow the lead, using their oil wealth to buy themselves a bit of nuclear oomph.

Another good friend: former Egyptian strongman Hosni Mubarak

As for the rest of us, one day we will wake up to a Middle East (yes, the Middle East of sectarian beheadings and suicide bombings!) able to wage nuclear jihad.  A prospect that should send some mighty shivers down Western leaders’ spines.  If, that is, they were leaders; or had spines.

Schools of Terror

Breaking news: terrorists kill people!

After playing ‘useful idiots’ to Islamist propaganda emanating from Gaza, Western politicians and mainstream ‘journalists’ were suddenly sent into a frenzy by a gruesome video showing yet another jihadist ‘executing’ an American hostage – who happened to be a journalist himself.  Leaving aside the ‘execution method’ (which is nothing new either, beheading is being practiced on a large scale by the ‘Western-friendly’ Saudi monarchy), what’s the surprise here?  Breaking news, folks: from Munich 1972 to Karachi 2002 to Gaza 2014, that’s what terrorists do: they kidnap and murder people, in order to generate terror.  That’s why they’re called terrorists (by persons equipped with moral compass; confused and confusing media outlets such as the BBC call them ‘militants’ – as if they marched in protests and chanted slogans, rather than slaughtering innocent people).

Terrorist holding hostage Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics.  All 11 hostages were killed.
("Ap munich905 t" by Russell McPhedran - © 1972 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. Licensed under Fair use of copyrighted material in the context of Munich massacre via Wikipedia)

In that particular video, the executioner happened to sport a British accent.  Well, surely it should not come as a surprise to anyone (not after 7/7, the murder of Lee Rigby, etc. etc. etc.) that the ranks of the terrorists include Western jihadis.  Across Europe, hundreds of young Muslims (born and bred in the democratic West) are joining ISIS, Al-Qaeda, Al-Nusra and other terrorist outfits.  MI5 thinks they constitute 10% of the foreign ‘fighters’ in Syria and Iraq.

It's not the poverty

Hamas terrorists 'execute collaborators' in Gaza City (photo: Fox News, free to use & share, even commercially)

But for some ‘journalists’, this does not change the pre-conceived script.  Or rather, the script dictated by their own blind and rigid ideological line – so blind and rigid that it looms completely opaque between their cognisance and the reality in front of their very eyes.  That ideological line, a nauseating mixture of neo-Marxism and crypto-racism (I call it Marxist racism), asserts that misbehaviour is simply generated by socio-economic factors; and – in the mind of these neo-Marxist-racists – if one is not ‘white British’, one is by definition poor and frustrated.

Take, for instance, a certain Anna Holligan, employed – surprise-surprise! – by good ol’ BBC.  Just a few days ago, she wrote about concerns in the Netherlands:

More than 100 Dutch citizens are thought to be fighting for various groups in Syria and Iraq, and hundreds more have been identified as potential jihadists.

These are the facts.  But then comes the analysis.  The ideology-tainted ‘analysis’:

Many young Muslims are struggling to find work and acceptance in the Netherlands, he tells me. The promise of a glorified existence extolled by radical preachers resonates with the vulnerable and disaffected.  While there is little appetite for the bloodthirsty approach espoused by Islamic State militants, the idea of going to defend fellow Muslims appears to be compelling for some young people who lack hope at home but see potential abroad.

Got it??  It’s not their fault, or the fault of radical preachers – it’s because these young Muslims struggle to find work; it’s because they are “vulnerable and disaffected” and “lack hope at home”.

I beg your pardon???  We are talking about people who are born in the Netherlands; who have Dutch as their mother tongue.  Netherlands is a liberal democracy, an economically developed country.  It boasts one of the best, most generous social solidarity networks in the whole effing world!  Unemployment in Netherlands is considerably lower than in Morocco, Turkey or Egypt – the countries most Dutch Muslims originate from; the levels of youth unemployment are among the lowest in Europe.  Netherlands is home to Europe’s second highest proportion of Muslim population – the vast majority of whom (even those who were not born in the country and speak Dutch as a foreign language) – are productive citizens.  So why exactly are these young men struggling to find work?  Why are they “vulnerable”, let alone “disaffected” and hopeless??

Someone should tell Ms. Holligan that obstinate facts refuse to align with her ideological preconception.  That the majority of terrorists are neither poor nor vulnerable; that Osama bin Laden was a Saudi-born multi-millionaire; that Mohamed Atta, one of the main ringleaders in the 9/11 attacks, was a scion of a wealthy Egyptian family.  The four perpetrators of the London 7/7 attacks were neither particularly poor nor particularly ‘vulnerable’; nor were the 21 men implicated in the 2004 Madrid train bombings.

Ms. Holligan could have taken the trouble to at least read a report entitled 'Who are the British jihadists in Syria', published just a few months ago by none other but a BBC colleague, Jenny Cuffe.  Speaking to that reporter, a jihadi 'fighter' calling himself Abu Muhadjar says:

I grew up in fairly nice area. I come from a decent family, close-knit family, well educated. Everyone in my family is a university graduate. I'd consider it a middle class family.

In a paper presented to the World Federation of Scientists Permanent Monitoring Panel on Terrorism, Scott Atran (director of research at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in Paris and Adjunct Professor of Psychology, Anthropology, and Natural Resources at the University of Michigan) summarised:

Studies by Princeton economist Alan Krueger and others find no correlation between a nation’s per capita income and terrorism [...] study after study demonstrates that suicide terrorists and their supporters are not abjectly poor, illiterate, or socially estranged.

But don’t bother Ms. Holligan with such evidence; she is the kind of ‘journalist’ (all too common in the West these days) for whom pre-conceived opinions count far more than facts.

It's not 'the occupation', either

When it comes to Palestinian terrorism, of course, the same ideological preconception finds an additional twist: not only are the perpetrators poor, they are also rendered ‘hopeless’ by ‘the occupation’.  Cherie Blair put it in the starkest – and most blatantly stupid – way:

As long as young people feel they have got no hope but to blow themselves up you are never going to make progress.

This smiling, baby-faced terrorist blew himself up in a Tel Aviv pub. He was not an 'oppressed Palestinian', but a British Muslim, who had never experienced 'the Israeli occupation'.
(photo from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3snFKgi5fsw)

They have no choice, you see!  They simply have to blow themselves up.  Again, don’t bother the ideologues with the cold logic of facts.  Like the fact that many Hamas suicide bombers were not poor at all (nor were they ‘besieged’ in 2001), but came rather from well-to-do Palestinian families; or the fact that, rather than being ‘driven to despair’ by insufferable occupation, some actually arrived from abroad to experience a better life in the West Bank; or the simple fact that other people are ‘occupied’, too – and they don’t blow themselves up in restaurants or on city buses.

It's the education, stupid!

But if terrorism is not an expression of good ol’ Marxist ‘class struggle’, then what is it that drives these people to perpetrate such horrific crimes?

It is tempting to lay the blame on Islam.  After all, what all these terrorists have in common is their faith.  All 19 September 11 perpetrators were Muslims; so were the 4 London terrorists and the men guilty of the Madrid train bombings.  Nearly 200 men and women blew themselves up in order to kill Israelis; but none of them was a Palestinian Christian.

It is tempting to blame Islam for corrupting these people’s souls.  But it is also superficial and counter-productive.  Because, quite simply, while the terrorists are Muslims, the vast majority of Muslims are not terrorists.  Islam is a widespread monotheistic religion, as complex and diverse as Christianity or Judaism; and while some strains of Islamic theology may teach violence, many others do not.

Schools of Terror: Gaza children posing with mock guns, against a cardboard model of Jerusalem's Dome of the Rock.  The 'educators' are outside the frame...
(photo: The Israel Project, public domain)

The problem is to be found, of course, in education.  The problem is that it’s precisely those extreme strains of Islam that – either insidiously or through overt political and military power – take charge of education.  They literally ‘groom’ their adepts, brainwashing them first as small children, then as teenagers and young people.

And that is the problem we are not dealing with.  Immersed in a culture of short-termism, neither political leaders nor Western journalists really pay attention to this long-term but critical issue.

Yes, a few ‘home-grown’ terrorists might come back from Iraq and wreck havoc on the streets of London, Paris or Amsterdam; and yes, it may happen tomorrow morning.  Yes, Hamas may once again start firing rockets at Israeli cities, while butchering Palestinians who oppose its rule.  Yes, ISIS and Al-Qaeda may behead and torture more innocent people.  These are all immediate problems.

But the root cause is education.  In London, Birmingham, Paris and Amsterdam.  But even more in Gaza, the West Bank, Northern Iraq and Syria, Saudi Arabia and Iran – because in those places the Islamists have free reign, because they are actually in charge of 'educating' (read: poisoning) young, innocent minds.

My Western reader: you can choose to do nothing about it; you can pretend that it will all go away, or that it isn’t a problem at all.  You can complacently shrug it off and say ‘What do you want me to do?’  But what will you do in a few years’ time, when a new, much larger generation of terrorists spills out of Islamist-run Schools of Terror?  What will you answer when your own children ask you: ‘Why did you not do something about it?  Why did you let this problem snowball – and bequeathed it to me??’

The rat and the mongoose: a modern fable

No, this did not happen ‘a long time ago, in a galaxy far-far away’.  It happened in the Hawaiian archipelago; and it all started towards the end of the 19th century.

Brought as natural rat exterminators, the mongooses soon proved to be just another pest...

At the time, Caribbean plantation owners were tired of their relentless war against field rats – the rodents were eating into their precious sugar cane crops.  Come 1872, a chap called W.B. Espaut had an original idea: why not bring over a few Indian mongooses – those unpretentious mammals known as enthusiastic rat hunters?  Espaut travelled to India, had some mongooses captured and brought them to Jamaica.  Proud of his achievement, the fellow even wrote a journal article, praising the mongoose as the best thing since sliced bread.  The carnivorous mammals had, it seems, multiplied and prospered.  They ate lots of rats, but also, explained Espaut with satisfaction,

"snakes, lizards, crabs, toads and the grubs of many beetles and caterpillars have been destroyed."

This unreserved praise grabbed the attention of Hawaiian sugar cane planters, who also suffered from the rats.  Bringing mongooses to Hawaii as natural pest exterminators seemed such an elegant idea.  True, around 1883 some wise Hawaiian farmer wrote a letter to the ‘Planters Monthly’, urging caution:

"Whether it would be wise to introduce the animal to these Islands may be a question. It would be important to first learn more of the nature of the creature, for they may prove an evil."

But who listens to such prophecies of doom?  Why work hard to hunt or trap the rats, when one could simply let the mongooses do away with them?  ‘The enemy of my enemy is my friend’.  Long live the alliance between man and mongoose!

...while the rats continued to multiply and prosper.

The problem – it soon turned out – was that the mongooses did not just kill rats; they killed birds, ate eggs, insects, useful reptiles, even small deer fawns.  True, the mongooses also hunted and killed lots of rats; but they did not kill them all.  In fact, the rodents continued to multiply – and so did the mongooses.  Worse, both rats and mongooses carry a disease called leptospirosis, which can be lethal to humans.  To cut a long story short, rather than getting rid of one pest, the hapless Hawaiians ended up with two.  To this day, they still have to use poison and traps – only now they fight both rats and mongooses.

Given his childhood spent in Hawaii, one would expect US President Barack Obama to be familiar with that historic blunder.  Which would be useful, because there’s an important lesson to be learned from it.

These days, a gang of religious fanatics has taken control of large swathes of what used to be called Syria and Iraq.  They see themselves as God’s deputies on earth, and are intent on bringing the joys of medieval-style Sunni Islam to everybody – or else.  In short – they’re a pest.  And a dangerous one, too: they have already killed untold thousands of people – mostly Shi’a Muslims and Alawites.

So what’s to be done?  USA, UK or NATO could, of course, intervene militarily.  But getting involved in yet another war in the House of Islam is unpopular with the Western public; and fighting ISIS would mightily displease the Sunni oil sheikhs who pass for ‘allies’ of the West in the Middle East.

Which is why the idea of subcontracting the ISIS problem to Iran got floated.  After all, the Shi’a Islamic Republic is the only thing Sunni fanatics hate even more than liberal democracy.  ‘The enemy of my enemy is my friend’.  Or ‘fight fire with fire’.  Or any of the other similarly shallow clichés politicians use to justify morally repugnant acts.

US Secretary of State John Kerry lost no time before discussing the matter with the mullahs’ regime.  Asked whether military cooperation was in the cards, Kerry answered:

"I wouldn't rule out anything that would be constructive to providing real stability."

Stability??  What about morality?  What about common sense?  Isn’t this the same regime that held American diplomats hostage – in violation of age-old rules of human behaviour?  Isn’t this the same regime guilty of mass murdering innocent people, both in Iran and abroad?

But the idea of fighting the ISIS pest by supporting the equally malignant mullahs is not just nauseatingly immoral – it is also incredibly stupid.  Yes, ‘stupid’ is the only way to characterise those who endlessly repeat the same mistakes, never seeming to learn from them.  Did we not commit precisely this type of mistakes – several times already??  Did the West not back with money, weaponry and 'moral' support (both directly and via Saudi Arabia) the Afghan jihadis against the Soviet pest – only to ‘reap’ Taliban and their Al-Qaida ‘guests’?  Did the West not aid Iraq’s ruthless dictator Saddam Hussein against the Iranian ‘common foe’ and did not that Middle Eastern version of Frankenstein later haunt us, his people and the entire region?  In fact, even the mullahs’ nuclear programme – which the West is now struggling in extremis to contain – was born out of Islamic Iran’s fear of an Iraq backed by the West and armed with weapons of mass destruction.  So what do Messrs. Obama and Kerry suppose it’ll happen this time, if the West is now seen to back a potentially nuclear Iran in its clash with Sunni extremists?  Where do they reckon, for instance, that the Sunni, nuclear Pakistan will stand, vis-à-vis of such conflict??

This is not ‘realpolitik’; it’s just a really, really bad idea.  As ill-conceived as bringing the mongoose to fight rats – but infinitely more damaging.  Like the hapless Hawaiian farmers, we are sure to end up with two pests.  Nuclear-armed ones, to boot!

An Open Letter to the British Methodist Church

Leaders and believers of the Methodist Church,

I am an Israeli Jew.  I do not represent the Government of the State of Israel and hold no official capacity.  I am just ‘the street’.  Yet, you’ll find that my opinions are similar to those held by an overwhelming majority of Israeli Jews; having lived, studied and worked in the United Kingdom, I know that they are also similar to those of an overwhelming majority of British Jews.

I have decided to write to you because I believe in justice and in the force of good.  I am essentially an optimist who still thinks that one can speak to people’s conscience, even that of people who are hostile.

I have read the ‘briefing document for the Methodist people on the arguments for and against the Boycott Divestment Sanctions Movement’.  I understand that the authors (or perhaps some of them) have made an effort to produce a balanced document.  Yet this ‘briefing’ is anything but balanced; it’s profoundly unjust.  In fact, it reminds me of one of those bitter Jewish anecdotes I’ve heard from Israelis who – they or their parents – had experienced Stalin’s persecutions.

Stalin was a man who believed in ‘justice’.  That meant that those who strayed away from the prescribed ‘just path’ (and they often ‘happened’ to be Jews) were tortured or threatened into ’confessing’ their ‘crimes’ before being awarded a show trial, hearing the pre-determined verdict and being shot.  As the anecdote went, at some point a judge – keen to quickly extract a confession – told the defendant: “Look, Lev Davidovich, we already know that you are guilty.  This court just needs to decide – of what!”.

Like the judge in the anecdote, the ‘briefing document’ starts from the assumption that Israelis are guilty – the only question it wishes to address is ‘the arguments for and against’ a particular ‘cruel and unusual’ punishment.

And what exactly are we so ‘obviously’ guilty of??  Of remembering and longing through centuries for our lost homeland?  Of returning to it, with League of Nations agreement, to build, in part of that ancestral homeland, a country we and our children could call ‘our own’?  Of claiming what every other nation is granted as a matter of course – the right to national self-determination?  Of agreeing to partition that homeland upon realising that another people also claimed rights in it?  Of successfully defending ourselves against those who, having rejected any accommodation, attacked us with openly genocidal intentions?  Of being victorious in battle, yet continuing to extend our hand in the search of peace, offering an independent state to those who attacked us in ways unprecedented in the modern history of mankind?  Sure, we have also made mistakes; we haven’t always lived up to the ideal; we are not angels.  Are you – who wish to boycott us??  Who of you is entitled to throw the first stone?

You accuse us of ‘occupation’.  Yes, we occupy the West Bank.  Although it is part of our ancestral homeland, although we may have historical rights to it, most of us do so reluctantly, only because we have been attacked from that territory and – as the Gaza and Lebanon experience unequivocally shows – would be attacked again, if we just left without an iron-clad agreement.

Yes, we are ‘occupiers’; how about you?  Is Israeli occupation of the West Bank less or more justified, compared to the British occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan?  Isn’t there, somewhere in the Methodist theology, a teaching about ‘the log in your own eye’?  Have you at some point written a ‘briefing document’ on the pros and cons of boycotts against the United Kingdom?

Your ‘briefing’ explains that

for a Palestinian in the West Bank every aspect of everyday life is over-shadowed by the experience of military occupation.

But if you look at every statistic (life expectancy, average income, levels of education, infant mortality, etc.), you’ll find that an Arab from Hebron is more fortunate than an Afghan from Helmand and a Palestinian from Bethlehem will not swap his lot with an Iraqi from Basra.  Yes, we interfere – however reluctantly – with the lives of Palestinian Arabs; we do it not because we enjoy it, but only to protect our own children.  What’s your excuse?

Your ‘briefing’ appears to deny that the Jewish State is being singled out, that anti-Jewish prejudice is involved, that this obsessive, single-minded targeting amounts to persecution.  Well, rather than arguing about subjective perceptions, let us perform a tiny experiment and gain objective data: for instance, let’s search for the term “Israel” on the Methodist Church website.  I just performed such a search and found no less than 375 items, all of them fiercely critical of my country.

Now let us do a similar search for ‘North Korea’; this is a dictatorship that denies people even the most basic human rights.  A recent UN report states that

In the political prison camps of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, the inmate population has been gradually eliminated through deliberate starvation, forced labour, executions, torture, rape and the denial of reproductive rights enforced through punishment, forced abortion and infanticide. The commission estimates that hundreds of thousands of political prisoners have perished in these camps over the past five decades.

The Methodist Church website mentions North Korea in 23 items.  Many of those items are neutral and not critical of the country and its leadership.

Saudi Arabia is one of the world’s last absolute monarchies.  While Saudi men and women are deprived of political rights, the female half of the population is subjected to what can only be described as gender apartheid.  In the words of Arab-Swiss scholar Elham Manea, Professor of Political Science at the University of Zurich

Women in the Kingdom, a 2008 Human Rights Watch report maintains, are systematically treated as perpetual minors through a system instituted by the state that infringes on their basic human rights.

In other words, every adult Saudi woman, regardless of her economic or social status, must obtain permission from her male guardian to work, travel, study, seek medical treatment or marry. She is also deprived of making the most trivial decisions on behalf of her children. This system is supported by the imposition of complete sex segregation, which prevents women from participating meaningfully in public life.

Sex segregation is strictly monitored by the government's Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice (the religious police) in all workplaces with the exception of hospitals. Unlawful mixing between sexes leads to the arrest of the violators and criminal charges. The brutality of the members of this commission and the unequal punishments men and women receive when committing the same 'crime of mixing' was best described by the Saudi writer Samar Al Muqren in her novel "Ni'saa al Munkar - Women of the Abominable," published in 2008, which she wrote based on her work as a journalist. [...]

More gravely, it is nearly impossible for victims of domestic violence to independently seek protection or obtain legal redress because the police often insist that women and girls obtain their guardian's authorization to file a criminal complaint, even when this complaint is against the guardian!

Moreover, even when women manage to file a domestic violence case, often the measures taken against the perpetrators are flimsy and shameful. For example, in May, Jeddah's Summary Court convicted a man for physically abusing his wife to the point of hospitalization, but sentenced him to learning by heart five parts of the Quran and 100 sayings of the Prophet Muhammad.

Finally, Saudi Arabia applies a personal law system based on the Hanbali School of Islamic Jurisprudence, the most strict and literal among the Sunni schools of jurisprudence. The result is that a male guardian has the unilateral authority to marry off his female ward without her consultation and to dissolve a marriage he deems unfit.

Despite its awful track record of human rights violations and its recent military intervention in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia continues to be one of the main buyers of British-made military equipment.  Prime Minister Cameron has recently met with leaders of the Saudi regime, in a declared effort to increase sales of weaponry.

The Methodist Church website mentions Saudi Arabia  a total of 3 times.  All are casual, with no reference to Saudi women’s plight and no criticism.  (Incidentally, let me mention that it’s entirely conceivable that the activists who accuse Israel of ‘apartheid’ travelled to the Methodist Conference in cars fueled with Saudi petrol, produced by Saudi companies that do not employ women!)

The situation of women is only slightly better in the Islamic Republic of Iran.  There, the authorities execute more people than in any other country except (the much more populous) China.  Among the many ‘crimes’ that warrant the death penalty in Iran are ‘adultery’, ‘witchcraft’ and ‘war against God’.  Just as in the case of Saudi Arabia, the Iranian regime has enshrined Muslim supremacism in the country’s laws.  Other religions are subjected to limitations and persecution and ‘apostasy’ (i.e. converting from Islam to another faith) is punishable by death.

The Methodist Church website mentions Iran 16 times.

I could go on and on…  If anti-Jewish prejudice is not involved, then it must be that the Jewish State is the world’s most heinous human rights offender – 15 times worse than North Korea, 100 times worse than Saudi Arabia...

The ‘briefing document’ acknowledges that

It is argued that trade sanctions against Israel (which currently do not have much international support) would be unjust as this would be inconsistent with the approach taken to occupation in other contexts including China’s occupation of Tibet, Morocco’s occupation of Western Sahara and Turkey’s occupation of northern Cyprus.

but then proceeds to claim that

Such comparisons are fraught with difficulty and therefore questions of consistency will always be contested.

They are indeed “fraught with difficulty” – for those intent on singling out the Jewish state.  The Methodist Church has asked its adherents to boycott Israel essentially because it occupies the West Bank and is building ‘settlements’ in that territory.  The Church has never even considered boycotts against China, Morocco and Turkey, although each of these countries occupies foreign territory and builds settlements with much less justification.

Israel has occupied the West Bank, a territory to which it can lay historical claims, which was not an independent state but part of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.  The control of that territory passed to Israel as the result of a defensive war.  Here is how BBC’s Jeremy Bowen (certainly no friend of Israel!) describes the start of Jordanian-Israeli hostilities in his book ‘Six Days’:

The Jordanians opened fire along the confrontation line.  Its [sic!] artillery fired into Jerusalem, mainly, though not always and not accurately, at military positions.  The UN observer force, that had maintained the armistice for a generation, tried unsuccessfully to arrange several ceasefires.  Bullets narrowly missed Britain’s senior diplomat in Jerusalem, the consul-general Hugh Pullar, and crashed into his offices.  [...] Pullar had just returned from a meeting with a senior Jordanian official.  He had asked him if the Arabs’ basic intention was to eliminate Israel.  In a ‘distinctly chilly’ way, the official said it was.

In contrast, on 6 October 1950, the Chinese army invaded Tibet – an independent state that had never-ever threatened China.  The Tibetan government complained to the United Nations, but – acting in accordance with their own political interests – India and UK prevented the issue from being debated.

After just six years of Chinese occupation, Tibetans revolted; between 1956 and 1962, a veritable war took place between Tibetan guerrilla fighters and the Chinese Army.  It is estimated that circa 87,000 Tibetans were killed during this rebellion.  It is more difficult to assess how many Tibetans died because of Mao’s 'Great Leap Forward' policies; according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, estimates vary between 200,000 and 1,000,000.  Circa 6,000 monasteries were destroyed during the Chinese 'Cultural Revolution'.

The Chinese authorities practice a policy of transfer of Chinese settlers into Tibet.  According to the Tibetan government in exile, there are at least 7.5 million Chinese settlers in Tibet; their numbers continue to grow due to policies which grant economic advantages to the settlers, while denying them to Tibetans:

The continued population transfer of Chinese to Tibet in recent years has seen the Tibetans become a minority in their own land. Today the six million Tibetans are vastly outnumbered by Chinese immigrants, who are given preferential treatment in education, jobs and private enterprises. Tibetans, on the other hand, are treated as second-class citizens in their own country.

In the words of the Dalai Lama:

The new Chinese settlers have created an alternate society: a Chinese apartheid which, denying Tibetans equal social and economic status in our own land, threatens to finally overwhelm and absorb us.

All this did not prevent UK Prime Minister David Cameron from conducting recently an official visit to China, heading what was officially called "the largest British trade mission ever to go to China".  Mr. Cameron did not take this opportunity to visit Occupied Tibet. UK Prime Minister’s approach to dealing with China is nothing if not enthusiastic:

Some in Europe and elsewhere see the world changing and want to shut China off behind a bamboo curtain of trade barriers. Britain wants to tear those barriers down.

No country in Europe is more open to Chinese investment than the United Kingdom.

I will champion an EU-China trade deal with as much determination as I am championing an EU-US trade deal.

In 1975, Morocco invaded Western Sahara, despite an International Court of Justice verdict rejecting territorial claims by both Morocco and Mauritania, and recognising the Saharawis' right to self-determination.  According to Al-Jazeera:

Hundreds of thousands of Moroccan settlers were encouraged to enter Western Sahara with state-subsidised property and employment, under the army's protection.  [...] The country is now the last United Nations-designated ‘non-self-governing territory’ in Africa, and is home to between 100,000 and 140,000 Moroccan military personnel (despite a total population of just 500,000).  [...] The fighting drove much of the indigenous population of Western Sahara into refugee camps in Tindouf in southern Algeria, but some remain as a minority within the territory, west of the 2,600-kilometre separation wall that Morocco built during the war with the Polisario.

In 1974, the Turkish army occupied 40% of the territory of Cyprus, an independent state which never threatened – let alone attack – Turkey.  The Greek/Christian inhabitants of occupied Northern Cyprus were ethnically cleansed; the number of Greek Cypriot refugees that have never been allowed to return to their homes is estimated at between 140,000 and 200,000. They were replaced by Turkish settlers.  (Incidentally, let me mention that the whole process occurred under the proverbial noses of British soldiers, as the UK has two military bases on the island).

In its judgement of Cyprus v. Turkey, the European Court of Human Rights found Turkey guilty of violating 14 articles of the European Convention of Human Rights.

According to a report published in 2003 by the EU Committee on Migration, Refugees and Demography:

It is a well-established fact that the demographic structure of the island has been continuously modified since the de facto partition of the island in 1974 as a result of the deliberate policies of the Turkish Cypriot administration and Turkey. Despite the lack of consensus on the exact figures, all parties concerned admit that Turkish nationals have been systematically arriving in the northern part of the island. According to reliable estimates, their number currently amounts to 115 000 [In 2003, when the entire population of Cyprus was circa 1 million.  The number of Turkish settlers already exceeds 200,000]. […]  The Assembly is convinced that the presence of the settlers constitutes a process of hidden colonisation and an additional and important obstacle to a peaceful negotiated solution of the Cyprus problem.

The Turkish-populated Northern Cyprus is separated by the rest of the country by a 180 kilometres-long barrier, built by the Turkish army.  Those allowed to cross it can do so through one of 7 checkpoints.

In their desire to justify the singling out of the Jewish State, the ‘briefing paper’ authors make the following extremely strange remark:

It should be noted that none of these situations offer direct comparisons to the situation in Israel/Palestine. For example, while the occupation of Northern Cyprus is made possible with the military intervention of Turkey, the people of Northern Cyprus do have a functioning system of self-governance within a clearly defined geographical area.

It is not clear why “none of these situations offer direct comparisons to the situation in Israel/Palestine”, except for the fact that – unlike the case of Israel in the West Bank – all of these situations (involving occupation and settlements) are completely devoid of any reasonable justification.

As for the attempt to give Turkey a free pass by claiming that “the people of Northern Cyprus do have a functioning system of self-governance within a clearly defined geographical area”, this crosses the boundaries of the absurd.  Indeed, after ethnically cleansing every single Greek/Christian Cypriot from Occupied Northern Cyprus and replacing them with Turkish settlers brought from Anatolia, Turkey has declared the occupied 40% of Cyprus ‘independent’ (as the ‘Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus’) – a declaration which has been recognised by one country: Turkey (a ‘recognition’ condemned by several UN resolutions). So, to emulate Turkey’s “functioning system” (which the ‘briefing document’ appears to imply is more acceptable than the Jewish State’s behaviour), Israel would have to forcibly evict the West Bank’s Palestinian Arab population, which would allow her to declare an ‘independent’ state, perhaps under the name of the ‘Jewish Republic of Western West Bank’!

None of this makes sense; none of these pretexts and excuses justifies singling out the Jewish State for the ‘cruel and unusual’ punishments of boycott and sanctions, while all the other cases have never even been debated.  Of course, neither the singling out, nor the specific punishment can be seen as evidence of anti-Jewish prejudice, can they?  Jews and boycotts?  Surely it must be a coincidence!  Surely the hundreds of years of European anti-Jewish rhetoric (much of it propagated by Christian Churches) must have evaporated one sunny day, leaving no trace!

The ‘briefing document’ claims that the BDS movement stems from the “Palestinian civil society” and that it “comprises 170 Palestinian organisations.”

This is mind-bogglingly naive.  The Palestinian Authority is not a democratic government.  No “civil society” may function without its approval.  Indeed, those “170 Palestinian organisations” are nothing more than departments, branches and associations set up and controlled by the PLO.  This allows the Palestinian Authority to officially reject BDS (to officially support it would constitute a violation of agreements signed by the PA), while sustaining it in practice.  In fact, BDS is nothing but a re-branding of the Arab Boycott, which has been in place for many decades.  (Incidentally, let me suggest that if under the oh-so-awful Israeli occupation the “Palestinian civil society”  has managed to set up 170 organisations acting in unison against the Jewish State, then it surely must follow that Palestinians are the best organised people in the world, while Israelis are the most incompetent occupiers!)

Your ‘briefing document’ notes that

the BDS Movement intentionally does not specify whether its stated aims would be best met by one or two states;

and yet the ‘briefing’ seems to deny that the purpose of the ‘movement’ is to dismantle the Jewish State and replace it with an Arab/Muslim one.  I wish I could believe that this is just the result of naivety; but it seems more like ostrich strategy.  The term “intentionally” means that behind the action there is a hidden intention (hidden, as it is certainly not declared); what do the authors of the ‘briefing document’ believe that hidden intention to be??

The BDS ‘movement’ calls for the “Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties”.  According to none other than the PLO, the ‘refugees’ (defined as people of Arab ethnicity, born in Arab countries – sometimes for 4-5 generations and from marriages with local Arab women – whose ancestors in the male line had lived in the Mandate of Palestine for at least two years) number 7 million.  Together with the Arab Israelis, they would constitute a clear Arab majority.  How exactly do the authors of the ‘briefing’ propose that transforming Israel into an Arab-majority state does not equate dismantling the Jewish State and denying Jews their right to self-determination??

There is, of course, plenty of evidence, the intention is not very well hidden; it’s just that the authors of the ‘briefing’ choose not to see it.  Or indeed, hear it ‘straight from the horse’s mouth’.  Here are some quotes from the most prominent BDS leaders:

Omar Barghouti founder of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI): “The current phase has all the emblematic properties of what may be considered the final chapter of the Zionist project. We are witnessing the rapid demise of Zionism, and nothing can be done to save it, for Zionism is intent on killing itself. I, for one, support euthanasia.”  [Hmmm, Jews and euthanasia?  When have we heard that before?]

As’ad Abu-Khalil, leader of academic BDS in the United States: “Justice and freedom for the Palestinians are incompatible with the existence of the State of Israel.”

Ahmed Moor, United States BDS leader: “OK, fine. So BDS does mean the end of the Jewish state….I view the BDS movement as a long-term project with radically transformative potential….In other words, BDS is not another step on the way to the final showdown; BDS is The Final Showdown.”  [Hmmm, ‘Final Showdown’?  it used to be called the ‘Final Solution’...]

In fact, this is not about ‘one state’ versus ‘two states’.  Were they interested in the truth, the authors of the ‘briefing’ might have viewed a recently released Hamas propaganda video.  The video, produced by the organisation whose Constitution calls for the killing of all Jews (the same organisation elected with a majority of votes by the Palestinian population of West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem) explains that Israeli Jews can choose between death and ‘being returned to their countries of origin’ – the video ends with the image of yarmulke-wearing Jews being shepherded onto ships by armed and masked Hamas ‘fighters’.

An additional interesting paragraph in the ‘briefing’ argues that

While the situations of apartheid South Africa and that of Israel and the occupied territories differ markedly, it is clear that boycotts, divestments and sanctions helped to shift the understanding and perception of the white South African population. The global cultural and sporting boycott in South Africa was a particularly effective tool in persuading the white South African public that apartheid had to be brought to an end.

Now that is logic!  Like saying

"While the two diseases are markedly different (one was severe cancer, the other at most a curable indigestion), let’s treat them both with chemotherapy; after all, we think it helped with the cancer…"

Whenever I hear Israel accused of apartheid, I am overcome by deep sadness.  Not because I take this malevolent accusation seriously, but because I am reminded of the passing away of my father...  After undergoing heroic (but alas unsuccessful) surgery performed by the supremely skilled team of Prof. Ahmed Eid, a Jerusalemite Arab and Head of the Surgery Department at Hadassah Medical Center, my dad spent his last days in the hospital’s Intensive Care Unit, two yards away from a West Bank Palestinian patient.  Both Jew and Arab received the dedicated care of the Unit’s doctors and nurses, themselves a mixture of Jews and Arabs.  Some apartheid!

But let me end this long missive…

Some of you may, I think, be just naives duped by unscrupulous ‘activists’ and in search of a ‘cause’.  To you I say: ‘Wake up!  Your good intentions are being exploited to do evil.’  But to those who hide their subliminal prejudice under the mantle of ‘justice’, to those who single out the Jewish State (and only the Jewish State, because… well, because… we’ll think up a reason), to you I say: ‘You shall not prevail’.  Maybe you can hurt us; but you won’t deter us.  Boycott us!  We’ve been boycotted before; in fact, we’ve been in much worse predicaments throughout our history – and survived.  Divest from us!  We have regained a portion of our ancestral homeland – it’s all we need; we re-settled in it, our children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren were born in it; we re-built it, investing it with our sweat, blood, tears and hopes.  There is nothing you can do to make us turn it into another Syria.  Sanction us!  If mismanaged, impoverished, ridiculous North Korea withstands your sanctions, so shall we.  I promise you.