Doc's Talk: Why Is Israel Demonized while Real Rights’ Violators and War Criminals Are Sanitized, Even Lionized?

Saturday, August 22, 2009

Why Is Israel Demonized while Real Rights’ Violators and War Criminals Are Sanitized, Even Lionized?

RubinReports

Barry Rubin

A few years ago, two unarmed Israelis, headed to camp to fulfill their army reserve duty, accidentally drove into a Palestinian town. They were seized by a mob and beaten up. The Palestinian police then took them to their station. After a few minutes, they turned them over to the mob which murdered them and tore their bodies apart. Some of the police participated. By chance, a television news crew from Italy’s main channel caught much of this on tape and it was shown on the air. The Palestinian Authority reacted angrily and threatened to pull the television station’s credentials. At which point, the reporter wrote a humiliating letter, which was published, abasing himself and insisting that he was on the Palestinian side.

There is a record of atrocities on the Palestinian side which are documented over many years. These include hundreds of terrorist attacks on civilians and the deliberate murder of civilians. But there are other cases as well. Let me mention a few in passing.

--The attack on the Munich Olympic games and the kidnapping of the Israeli athletes we now know to be an official PLO operation.
--The takeover of one of the holiest of all Christian sites in Bethlehem by Fatah gunmen, bullying the priests and nuns, while turning the church into a military base for shooting at Israelis. Rather than being jailed, these men were allowed to leave the country and now live in Italy on a 2000 Euro a month pension. (And they’re demanding a “pay” increase.)

--The seizure of the cruise ship Achille Lauro as a PLO operation which included the murder of an elderly wheelchair-bound passenger, Leon Klinghoffer. Intercepted radio communications between PLO leader Yasir Arafat and the gunmen showed his direct complicity. Several low-level gunmen were imprisoned in Italy but gradually let go over the years.

--A terror attack on a private home in northern Israel in which the terrorist, a Lebanese national working for the PLO, murdered a child in cold blood. He was released years later in a prisoner exchange and sent back to Lebanon, where he received a hero’s welcome during which Lebanese leaders vied to fete him and the Syrian government presented him with a medal.

--Two young men, who owned the Up Café in my neighborhood, were activists in Peace Now and so they thought they would be safe going to Hebron to buy plants for their restaurant in the company of a Palestinian friend. They went to a place there to have lunch, someone there made a telephone call. As they left the restaurant, they were kidnapped at gunpoint, dragged into two cars, driven to a certain place and both shot dead. Why were they killed at that precise spot? It was chosen for being just over the line where Israeli security control began so the Palestinian Authority could disclaim any responsibility.

I could fill page after page with such historic events. Yet for much of the West, especially in Europe and especially in the media and intelligentsia, these real and proven developments are of no importance and are quickly forgotten.

And the list above is only that of a few atrocities perpetrated against Israelis and Jews. What about those against fellow Arabs and Muslims as well as attacks designed to wipe out Christians in Iraq, Pakistan, Sudan, and Egypt; Yazdis in Iraq; and Bahai in Iran?

Mass murders and ethnic cleansing in southern and more recently in Sudan? Media not interested. Christians being persecuted in scores of incidents? Western intellectuals not outraged. Iranian regime steals election and represses peaceful demonstrators with force? No Westerners demonstrated. Thousands of civilians killed in Sri Lanka? Moral outrage: zero. Kurds shot down by the Saddam Hussein regime in a manner unseen since what the Germans did to Jews on the Eastern Front in World War Two? Yawn, yawn, and again yawn.

Where does this attitude lead for those in the Middle East it is supposedly favoring? When an Iraqi member of parliament tried to get the Arab Inter-Parliamentary Union to pass a resolution condemning the Saddam Hussein regime’s murders, he was ridiculed by the delegations from other countries. One such colleague told him: We are tired of this Iraqi whining. There are mass graves in all Arab countries. So what?

There is no shortage of real war crimes, real racism, real brutality, as opposed to the counterfeited variety.

So why is there such a righteous obsession with phony ones in order to slander and demonize Israel?

--The result of a conscious and organized (though decentralized) Palestinian strategy to create such false charges as a form of asymmetric warfare.

--The dominance in media, publishing, and universities to a large extent) of a post-Marxist ideology which sees Third World (mainly Islamic in practice) revolutionaries as the new proletariat, romantic revolutionaries.

-- Western guilt at past racism and imperialism, which ironically thus empowers historic antisemitism, Judeophobia, and Israelophobia.

--At times, physical intimidation. In Europe this means throwing away professional standards and abandoning large elements of free speech in return for pretending to be heroic in battling the non-existent power of a supposed pro-Israel lobby.

--At the same time psychological intimidation. Any criticism against anyone who is Muslim or Arab can be quickly called “racism” though a religion isn’t a race and almost all Arabs are Caucasian. There is also a Catch-22 here. Since non-Westerners were historically stereotyped as behaving brutally when this actually happens you can’t talk about it because that seems a return to that attitude of superiority which was associated with racism and imperialism.

Result: the West’s senses for understanding the world are simultaneously gagged and blindfolded.

Changing this situation is difficult; defining what’s needed is simple: honesty, not ideological predetermination to ignore evidence that runs contrary to the “Politically Correct.” Serving a “higher” political cause is no excuse. For scholars and journalists, honesty; reason; and a fair, realistic representation of the facts is the highest possible cause.

At any rate, the causes being served are dreadful, anti-freedom ones. And when you reward the villains, you give an incentive for more people to behave that way and encouragement for the malefactors to go even further in their crimes.

Israel may be the canary in the coal mine, but the miners are the people of Western democracies and, equally important, Third World people’s hopes for a better life not at the hands of corrupt tyrants, ruinous ideologies, and bloodthirsty extremist revolutionaries.

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). To read and subscribe to MERIA, GLORIA articles, or to order books. To see or subscribe to his blog.

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The IDF’s Minorities in Numbers and Pictures

In honor of IDF Diversity Week, we present diversity through numbers and pictures. Each year, more and more Muslims, Christians, Druze, Bedouin and immigrants from around the world take on the responsibility of defending Israel.

MUSLIMS:

Muslim Arab Israelis are not required to draft in the IDF, but there are many who volunteer. In 2013, there were over 200 Muslims serving in the IDF and over 300 in the reserves.

Bedouins:

Bedouins are nomadic Muslims who were in Israel when modern borders were set in place and are now considered Israeli citizens. They are not required to draft but a growing number choose to enlist. In 2012, there were over 1,400 Bedouin Muslim soldiers doing regular IDF service and almost 1,500 in the reserves.

Read more:http://www.idfblog.com/2014/02/27/truth-idf-numbers-pictures/#more-34027

Are you aware that in 2013, Middle class taxes go up-significantly?

In January of next year, the federal income tax rate for middle-class taxpayers is scheduled to rise from 25 percent to 28 percent, and the payroll tax is scheduled to rise from 13.3 percent to 15.3 percent… This drives the marginal tax rate based on the aforementioned three taxes to 48.12 percent. Add in state and local property, corporate, excise, and other state and local taxes, and the percentage of each additional dollar that is taxed hovers around 50 percent… When half of each additional dollar earned is taxed away, taxpayers experience a disincentive to start businesses or expand existing ones. This leads to fewer jobs being created.

Why is HAMAS Inside Tampa Schools?

Clare Lopez

Kelly Miliziano, who teaches history classes at Steinbrenner High School in the Tampa, Florida area apparently thinks it’s perfectly OK to invite a senior official of a HAMAS-affiliated organization into her classroom to discuss Islam with her students. According to local media reports, not only has this been going on for years, but in spite of the civil and criminal proceedings that could result from such reckless negligence, the Hillsborough County school superintendent, Mary Ellen Elia, and the chairman of the school board, Candy Olson, also expressed approval for students under their responsibility to be exposed repeatedly to guest speaker, Hassan Shibly, who is the Executive Director for the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) in the Tampa area.
More...

Did You Know... Ignoring the Call to Islam will Bring Jihad

‘Conquest through Da’wa [proselytizing] that is what we hope for. We will conquer Europe, we will conquer America! Not through sword but through Da’wa.’
-- Yousef al-Qaradawi , Muslim Brotherhood spiritual leader The Arabic word ‘Da’wa’ means the “call to Islam.” But do not think that Da’wa is the same thing as an invitation to an optional holiday event. The classical Islamic doctrine of jihad mandates that enemies must be given the opportunity to convert to Islam or pay the jizya tax before it is permissible to attack them.
Clare M. Lopez

Who is being discriminated-facts tell the truth

Religious bias

Hate crimes motivated by religious bias accounted for 1,409 offenses reported by law enforcement. A breakdown of the bias motivation of religious-bias offenses showed:

65.4 percent were anti-Jewish.
13.2 percent were anti-Islamic.
9.5 percent were anti-other religion, i.e., those not specified.
4.3 percent were anti-Catholic.
3.8 percent were anti-multiple religions, group.
3.3 percent were anti-Protestant.
0.5 percent were anti-Atheism/Agnosticism/etc.

http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/hate-crime/2010/narratives/hate-crime-2010-incidents-and-offenses.

On March 31, 1977, the Dutch newspaper Trouw published an interview

with PLO executive committee member Zahir Muhsein. Here's what he said:

"The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct "Palestinian people" to oppose Zionism.

For tactical reasons, Jordan, which is a sovereign state with defined borders, cannot raise claims to Haifa and Jaffa, while as a Palestinian, I can undoubtedly demand Haifa, Jaffa, Beer-Sheva and Jerusalem. However, the moment we reclaim our right to all of Palestine, we will not wait even a minute to unite Palestine and Jordan."

In March 1977, Zahir Muhsein, a PLO executive, said:

"The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct Palestinian people to oppose Zionism."

"For tactical reasons, Jordan, which is a sovereign state with defined borders, cannot raise claims to Haifa and Jaffa, while as a Palestinian, I can undoubtedly demand Haifa, Jaffa, Beer-Sheva and Jerusalem. However, the moment we reclaim our right to all of Palestine, we will not wait even a minute to unite Palestine and Jordan."

The Arab Apartheid

Ben-Dror Yemini
In 1948, the Arab countries refused to accept the UN partition proposal and they launched a war of annihilation against the State of Israel which had barely been established. All precedents in this matter showed that the party that starts the war - and with a declaration of annihilation, yet - pays a price for it. Between 550,000 and 710,000 Arabs fled because of the war and a larger number of 850,000 Jews were expelled or fled from Arab countries (the "Jewish nakba").
Population exchanges and expulsions were the norm at that time, occurring in dozens of other conflict points and affecting about 52 million people. In all the population exchange precedents that occurred during or at the end of an armed conflict, there was no return of refugees to the previous region, which had turned into a new national state.
Only the Arab states acted completely differently from the rest of the world. Instead of assimilating the refugees, they crushed them despite the fact that they were their coreligionists and members of the Arab nation - instituting a regime of apartheid. So the "nakba" was not caused by the actual dispossession, which had also been experienced by tens of millions of others. The "nakba" is the story of the apartheid, oppression, abuse and denial of rights suffered by the Arab refugees at the hands of the Arab countries. (Maariv)

International Law and Military Operations in Practice - Col. Richard Kemp

"Islamist fighting groups study the international laws of armed conflict carefully and they understand it well. They know that a British or Israeli commander and his men are bound by international law and the rules of engagement that flow from it. They then do their utmost to exploit what they view as one of their enemy's main weaknesses. Their very modus operandi is built on the correct assumption that Western armies will normally abide by the rules, while these insurgents employ a deliberate policy of operating consistently outside international law. "

Lost Historical Moments

What Rabin’s last Knesset speech really said:repudiation of a Palestinian state

Rabin ruled out a fully sovereign Palestinian state :

“We view the permanent solution in the framework of State of Israel which will include most of the area of the Land of Israel as it was under the rule of the British Mandate, and alongside it a Palestinian entity which will be a home to most of the Palestinian residents living in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. We would like this to be an entity which is less than a state, and which will independently run the lives of the Palestinians under its authority.”

Rabin ruled out a total withdrawal from Judea and Samaria and thus a return to the pre-June 1967 borders :

“The borders of the State of Israel, during the permanent solution, will be beyond the lines which existed before the Six Day War. We will not return to the 4 June 1967 lines.”

Rabin ruled out withdrawing form the Jordan Valley:

“The security border of the State of Israel will be located in the Jordan Valley, in the broadest meaning of that term.”

Rabin ruled out uprooting settlement blocs, like the Gush Katif bloc in Gaza (which was subsequently uprooted by former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon):

“The establishment of blocs of settlements in Judea and Samaria, like the one in Gush Katif.

AND

Rabin ruled out removing any settlement before coming to a full peace agreement with the Palestinians:

“I want to remind you: we committed ourselves, that is, we came to an agreement, and committed ourselves before the Knesset, not to uproot a single settlement in the framework of the interim agreement, and not to hinder building for natural growth.”

Rabin insisted on Israel retaining full security control of the borders with Egypt and Jordan, contrary to Israel’s relinquishment of the Philadelphia Corridor on the border with Egypt:

“The responsibility for external security along the borders with Egypt and Jordan, as well as control over the airspace above all of the territories and Gaza Strip maritime zone, remains in our hands.”

Correcting Oslo Myths-Part 2

3) Kuttab laments that the post-1993 Oslo process resulted in a Palestinian Authority "whose ministers and legislators are not guaranteed passage between Gaza and the West Bank ...."

Before free passage or other perquisites, PA leaders were obligated, among other things, to eliminate the terrorist infrastructure in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, end anti-Israeli, antisemitic incitement in schools, mosques, and communications media, and resolve all outstanding issues through peaceful negotiations. They met none of these commitments, sometimes bolstering terrorism and greatly increasing incitement.

4) Kuttab complains that under Oslo the PA got "lightly armed police ---- but no real sovereignty over the land or contiguity between our communities in Gaza and the West Bank."

Oslo agreements repeatedly were revised, regardless of Palestinian non-compliance, until the authorized number of police grew from 8,000 to 40,000. Though they were to be the only armed forces in the territories, Israeli estimates early in the second intifada put the number of gunmen - police, "security services," terrorists, and armed gangs - at 85,000. Their armament reportedly included not only heavy machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades, but also anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles.

Sovereignty was to be negotiated in the envisioned 1998 "final status" talks - after a five-year period of confidence-building. Palestinian leadership chronically undermined the process. Palestinian terrorism made the 1993 - 1998 Oslo period more deadly for Israelis than the 15 years preceding it.

The United States doesn't have contiguity between the lower 48 states and Alaska and Hawaii; territorial contiguity between the West Bank and Gaza Strip - that is, through the 20 miles of Israeli territory between them - was never promised and would destroy Israeli contiguity.

5) "Palestinians have been made to endure hundreds of checkpoints in the West Bank, an eight-foot wall deep in our territories, and tight Israeli control over borders."

The security barrier is not "deep in Palestinian territories," but rather encompasses less than 8 percent of Judea and Samaria, and is mostly a fence, rarely a wall; the land in question is not "our [Palestinian] territories" but disputed territory to which, according to the authors of U.N. Security Council Resolution 242, Jews as well as Arabs have claims; and there are no international borders, only the 1949 armistice lines with Jordan. Under 242, borders remain to be negotiated. As for checkpoints - like the security barrier and "tight Israeli control" - Palestinian Arabs precipitated these measures themselves. No terrorism and there would be no fence or tight Israeli control and few checkpoints - like before the first intifada.

Correcting Some Oslo Myths

1) In Oslo "Israeli, Palestinian and other world leaders promised that ... Palestinian sovereignty would be solidified."

No, they didn't. The 1993 Declaration of Principles and subsequent Oslo agreements outlined a process by which final status negotiations about the West Bank and Gaza Strip would be reached. The process required an end to anti-Israel terrorism and incitement and a commitment to peaceful negotiations. The PA, Fatah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and other terrorist groups, sabotaged the process from the start.

2) "The reality is that, in defiance of U.N. Security Council Resolution 242, which states that it is inadmissible to occupy land by force, Palestinian territories are still under foreign military occupation."
Wrong again. Resolution 242 (1967) does note "the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war." It also affirms the right of every state in the area "to live in peace with secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force." There were no "Palestinian territories." Jordan occupied the West Bank, Egypt controlled Gaza. Israel did not have "secure and recognized boundaries," so retention of some of those territories was possible under 242. Israel is not a "foreign" military occupier in the West Bank but, pending final negotiations, the lawful military administrator as a result of a successful war of self-defense.

Doc's Talk