Commend
the Spectator!
We
were astounded to the read the following
article in the right-wing, often pro-Zionist
(previously owned by Conrad Black) magazine
the Spectator.
Gerald
Kauffman, the (Jewish) MP much admired for his
consistent legitimate criticism of Israel has
once more written an excellent, balanced,
thought-provoking comment 'Why not invade
Israel?' He highlights the double standards of
the US, their strategic support of many
oppressive regimes, all the while taking the
moral high ground and condemning other regimes
whose actions are often even more
objectionable.
No
doubt Zionists will complain vociferously
against this article. Please read the article
reproduced in full below and submit your
appreciative comments at:
http://www.spectator.co.uk/articleComment.php3?table=old§ion=current&issue=2003-11-22&id=3761
___________________
Why
not invade Israel?
If
rogue nations are to be brought into line by
the US, shouldn't Israel be punished for
ignoring UN resolutions? Gerald
Kaufman is just asking...
http://www.spectator.co.uk/article.php3?table=old§ion=current&issue=2003-11-22&id=3761
The
unprecedented security measures for President
Bush's visit to Britain this week prove that
the war against terrorism, launched by the
United States two years ago, has certainly not
been won. If further proof were needed, the
atrocious terrorist acts against two
synagogues in Istanbul at the weekend provide
blood-spattered confirmation.
But
if the invasion of Iraq last spring was not
about Saddam Hussein's alleged links to
international terrorism, what was its
rationale and what was its justification? Tony
Blair has proclaimed, with total sincerity I
have no doubt, that one consideration was the
danger of weapons of mass destruction.
From
the outset, Bush was perfectly ready to rest
his case on the need for regime change in
Iraq. Both Bush and Blair have argued that
Iraq is a better country for the removal of
Saddam and his odious regime, and, even taking
into account the continuing death toll in Iraq
(nowhere near the number of deaths in the
Vietnam war, to which certain cynics
unjustifiably compare it), only someone either
extremely naive or deliberately purblind could
deny that the disappearance of that dictator
is an indisputable benefit.
So,
let it be accepted that, despite the death and
destruction deplorably concomitant with the
process, the removal of Saddam was an
indubitably good thing. But, if the removal by
armed force of one disagreeable regime under
one objectionable head of government is a good
thing, why stop there? The world is full of
horrible governments. Would it not be a good
idea to make a clean sweep of them?
Where,
then, do we start? There is a multiplicity of
horrible or incompetent governments in central
and west Africa, for example, in countries
where the toll of dead and tortured far
exceeds even the total gassed, executed and
mangled by Saddam. Their removal, and
replacement by genuine democratic governments
seeking to reconcile rather than repress,
would be an indisputable benefit to humankind.
Even
a relatively innocuous African government,
that of Morocco, has been responsible for
driving into squalid refugee camps in
neighbouring Algeria the Sahrawi desert
people, whose homeland of Western Sahara it
has illegally occupied, and, through rigging
the electorate by shipping in large numbers of
Moroccans, has prevented a genuine referendum
taking place to decide the country's future -
a referendum, moreover, to which the United
Nations is fruitlessly committed.
And,
if we are discussing rigged electorates, what
about that in the illegal republic of Northern
Cyprus, whose impoverished Turkish Cypriot
inhabitants are being prevented from
expressing their true will in a forthcoming
general election because of the importation by
the Ankara government of huge numbers of
Anatolian Turks from the mainland, whose
wishes and preferences are far removed from
those of the Cypriot Turks themselves? While
we are at it, we should take a penetrating
look at Turkey itself. For nearly 30 years its
regime has illegally occupied 37 per cent of
the territory of Cyprus, an occupation which
has resulted in looting, illegal seizure and
sale of precious art objects such as Greek
Orthodox icons, and the creation of refugees
who despair of ever getting their homes back.
The
Turkish treatment - or mistreatment - of the
Kurdish people, whom at the end of the first
world war they prevented from getting their
own homeland, set an example which Saddam was
happy to follow. Inside Turkey, there has been
persistent violation of human rights. For
evidence, get hold of a DVD of Alan Parker's
film Midnight Express.
South
of Turkey, there is Israel. It is true that
the United Nations Security Council
resolutions of which Iraq was in violation for
a dozen years were mandatory and carried
penalties, while those criticising Israel were
not. That does not excuse successive Israeli
governments during the past 36 years for
failing to conform to Security Council and
General Assembly resolutions. They would have
violated even more if the United States,
otherwise so assiduous in stressing the
importance of international order, had not
vetoed them.
Since
the present regime in Israel came to office,
there has been unprecedented repression of the
Palestinians who the Israelis govern. The
world is rightly horrified at the cruel and
bloody deaths of Israeli civilians, including
babies and small children, inflicted by
terrorist suicide bombers. Grievous though
every one of these deaths most certainly is,
it cannot be denied that during the three
years of the Second Intifada the Israelis have
killed three times as many Palestinians, some
of them terrorists (in illegal targeted
assassinations) but most of them innocent
civilians, including babies and pregnant
women.
Now
the Israelis are building an illegal security
wall, reaching far into Palestinian territory,
which is equally illegally annexing that
territory, separating farmers from their
homes, students from universities, children
from schools, and which will violate the
sanctity of Bethlehem. Roads into villages are
being bulldozed, and the trenches which render
them impassable are being filled with sewage.
Some Palestinians need written permission to
live in their own homes. There are 482 Israeli
military checkpoints dividing Palestinian land
into 300 small clusters.
It
is not even as if these nasty measures are
effective. Last month 20 people, including a
whole family from grandmother to baby
grandchild, were among those murdered by a
suicide bomber at a café in Haifa. Last
month, after visiting the Palestinian town of
Qalqilya, which is being enclosed within a
noose-like wall by the Israelis, I was driven
back to Jerusalem via the Palestinian town of
Tulkarm. Next day a bomber attacked an Israeli
administrative post outside Tulkarm.
No
wonder that only three weeks ago the Israeli
chief of staff, Lieutenant General Moshe
Ya'alon, expressed concern about the building
of the wall, said the Israeli government's
policies were 'operating contrary to our
strategic interests,' argued that the
restrictions were increasing hatred of Israel
and encouraging terrorism, and lamented:
'There is no hope, no expectations for the
Palestinians in the Gaza strip, nor in
Bethlehem and Jericho' (whose agricultural and
horticultural economy is being ruined). No
wonder that a member of the Israeli
government, the infrastructure minister, Yosef
Paritzky, has said recently: 'The failure to
differentiate between civilians and terrorists
turns all the Palestinians into potential
suicide bombers.'
Hey,
wait a minute! Surely Israel does not qualify
as a suitable case for invasion. Surely Israel
is a democracy. Surely Israel's Prime Minister
Ariel Sharon was democratically elected, and
even re-elected. Such undeniable facts do not
detract from the record.
Sharon
was the prime mover in the only war that
Israel has ever lost, the invasion of Lebanon.
The Kahan commission inquiring into the
Sabra-Chatilla massacre of Palestinians
outside Beirut recommended that, for his
connection with those events, Sharon should
leave the Israeli Cabinet. It was Sharon who
triggered the Second Intifada in 2000 by his
provocative visit to the Temple Mount. And is
it not members of the Sharon family, including
the Prime Minister himself, who have been the
object of investigations by the Israeli legal
authorities?
And
would it not be poetic justice to invade the
invaders? After all, the Israelis, who
illegally invaded Lebanon until they found the
going too tough and got out; the Turks, who
illegally invaded Cyprus and even aspire to be
a member of the European Union when in illegal
possession of part of a country which is due
to become a member of the European Union less
than six months from now; the Moroccans, who
continue to thwart the will of the United
Nations with every moment their troops and
immigrants remain in the Western Sahara -
surely they could not have the effrontery to
object to invasion, which they have practised
without qualm, simply because they would be at
the receiving end.
If
the United States is keen to invade countries
that disrupt international standards of order,
should not Israel, for example, be considered
as a candidate? But, quite apart from the hard
fact that even the rich and powerful US does
not possess enough dollars and manpower to
invade and occupy the countries I have
mentioned (plus other rogue states, too many
to list), is the US suited to maintaining
international law?
After
all, has not the United States, on the basis
of dubious legality, invaded nearby countries
on the American continent, such as Panama and
Grenada? Has it not got a questionable human
rights record, with the level of capital
punishment, including the execution of
mentally retarded prisoners, one of the worst
in the democratic world? Is it not keeping a
collection of prisoners in Guantanamo Bay,
Cuba, whose detention appears to have no legal
basis whatever? And does it not have a
president who was never elected, but appointed
by the Supreme Court after electoral finagling
in the electorally clinching state which just
happens to be governed by that president's
brother? Who, then, should invade the United
States? The despised United Nations?
Maybe
this invading business is not such a good
idea. Maybe, even though Saddam was abominable
and his regime nauseating, the invasion of
Iraq may turn out not to have been such a good
precedent after all.