Love of the Land: Israeli report contradicting Goldstone ignored

Israeli report contradicting Goldstone ignored

Just Journalism
15 April '10

On Wednesday 14 April, The Guardian’s lead opinion piece by George Monbiot focused on the issue of the application of international jurisdiction to visiting foreign dignitaries to the UK. In ‘The pope on trial would show what equality before the law means’, the journalist argued that any foreign citizen, regardless of their rank or position, should be arrested if they are alleged to have breached international law. Alongside Pope Benedict XVI, Monbiot argued that leader of Israel’s Kadima party Tzipi Livni, should be tried for war crimes if she ever visits the UK. Criticising Gordon Brown for seeking to change the law to prevent such a speculative arrest, Monbiot stated that Livni should be brought to court because ‘the evidence for the crimes against humanity to which Livni has been linked – laid out in the Goldstone report and elsewhere – is massive, detailed and hard to dispute.’

The Goldstone report is commonly cited in this manner by British journalists in both news and comment articles alleging Israeli war crimes during Operation Cast Lead. However, Israeli rebuttals of such claims are not regularly referenced in such a way – and often receive minimal coverage.

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Love of the Land: Israeli report contradicting Goldstone ignored

Love of the Land: Analysis: The Legacy of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh

Analysis: The Legacy of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh

Jonathan Spyer
GLORIA Center
26 March '10
Posted before Shabbat

Wherever departed Hamas official Mahmoud al-Mabhouh is now, he is presumably (I don't share this presumption. Y.) enjoying the considerable trouble the nature of his exit is causing his Israeli enemies.

The British decision to expel an unnamed Israeli diplomat following the conclusion of an investigation into the alleged use by Israel of cloned British passports in an assassination operation probably does not signal the onset of a general crisis in relations between London and Jerusalem. Still, it is not an everyday act, and the language used by the foreign secretary in announcing the expulsion was notably harsh.

This affair has so far traveled along similar lines to the last major set-to between the UK and Israel over the issue of Israeli intelligence activities overseas. In 1986, a number of forged British passports were discovered in an Israeli diplomatic pouch in West Germany. This incident was followed a year later by the apprehending of a Palestinian employed as a double agent by Israeli intelligence, together with a cache of weapons, in a northern English town. The result was the expulsion from Britain of Arie Regev, an official at the Israeli Embassy. Regev was widely regarded as the chief of the Mossad station in the UK.

Then, as now, the anger of senior British officials was real, not feigned. And the public revelations of the events meant that a response of a public nature was also inevitable. But the substantive response was a managed one. Cooperation between Israeli and British intelligence services suffered for a while. But channels of communication stayed open via Washington. Information of really crucial importance continued to be shared.

(Read full article)

Love of the Land: Analysis: The Legacy of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh

Love of the Land: Allies Be Wary

Allies Be Wary

Jennifer Rubin
Contentions/Commentary
17 March '10

Robert Kagan says Israel shouldn’t take it personally:

Israelis shouldn’t feel that they have been singled out. In Britain, people are talking about the end of the “special relationship” with America and worrying that Obama has no great regard for the British, despite their ongoing sacrifices in Afghanistan. In France, President Nicolas Sarkozy has openly criticized Obama for months (and is finally being rewarded with a private dinner, presumably to mend fences). In Eastern and Central Europe, there has been fear since the administration canceled long-planned missile defense installations in Poland and the Czech Republic that the United States may no longer be a reliable guarantor of security.

And that’s just the beginning of the scorned-ally list. As Kagan notes, the Obami are infatuated with engaging foes — Iran, China, Russia, and a hodge-podge of despotic regimes. He explains:

The president has shown seemingly limitless patience with the Russians as they stall an arms-control deal that could have been done in December. He accepted a year of Iranian insults and refusal to negotiate before hesitantly moving toward sanctions. The administration continues to woo Syria and Burma without much sign of reciprocation in Damascus or Rangoon. Yet Obama angrily orders a near-rupture of relations with Israel for a minor infraction like the recent settlement dispute — and after the Israeli prime minister publicly apologized.

This may be the one great innovation of Obama foreign policy. While displaying more continuity than discontinuity in his policies toward Afghanistan, Iraq and the war against terrorism, and garnering as a result considerable bipartisan support for those policies, Obama appears to be departing from a 60-year-old American grand strategy when it comes to allies.

It is therefore not purely a matter of Middle East policy when Obama kicks Israel in the shins.

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Love of the Land: Allies Be Wary

Love of the Land: Muslim anger rises in Britain: A portrait of extremism from a prominent “moderate”

Muslim anger rises in Britain: A portrait of extremism from a prominent “moderate”

Robin Shepherd
robinshepherdonline.com
08 March '10

"Bravado"

Consider the following remarks from one of Britain’s leading “moderate” Muslim journalists, Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, writing about Israeli actions in Gaza:

“First systematically starved, the [Palestinian] population was denied escape and more than 1,200 were slaughtered like animals in an abattoir… On the letters pages Zionists say the violence – including phosphorus burns on children – are “regrettable” but necessary. A nation that asks the world not to forget what was done to its people by Hitler, has advocates who believe brutal ethnic cleansing is “regrettable”. How many Palestinian Anne Franks did the Israelis murder, maim or turn mad?”

That was in January 2009. Here she is again, writing today in the Independent. This time she takes matters a stage further, emulating the Jew-baiting president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, following the visit to Britain last week of Geert Wilders, the anti-Islamist politician currently on trial for offending Muslims in the Netherlands.


“…the crypto-fascist, Aryan Geert Wilders, is invited into the Lords by [the United Kingdom Independence Party] UKIP and crossbench peers to show his vile anti-Islam film in the name of freedom of expression. Freedom my arse. It is just another entertaining episode of Muslim-baiting. I dare the same peers to now invite David Irving, the Holocaust denier, to share his thoughts freely in the Lords…”

These vile and appalling sentiments echo precisely the attitudes and strategy of Ahmadinejad who after the publication in Denmark in 2005 of a set of political cartoons deemed offensive to Muslims immediately set about organising a conference aimed at questioning the reality of the Holocaust.

Alibhai-Brown, like Ahmadinejad, adopts the following strategy: Offend us Muslims and we’ll show you a thing or two about offending people. First up, we’ll stick it to your friends, the Jews.

Quite why the invitation of Wilders — who has much less a claim on being a “crypto-fascist” than Alibhai-Brown herself — should immediately lead someone to think about calling in a Holocaust denier to even up the score, as it were, is perhaps something that only a “moderate” like Alibhai-Brown could explain.

(Read full article)

Love of the Land: Muslim anger rises in Britain: A portrait of extremism from a prominent “moderate”

Love of the Land: Britain to announce no early remedy for universal jurisdiction procedures used against Israelis

Britain to announce no early remedy for universal jurisdiction procedures used against Israelis

Robin Shepherd
Robin Shepherd Online
04 March '10

According to a report from the Times of London this morning, the British government is “in no hurry” to change the legal procedures under which Israelis have been targeted for “war crimes” using universal jurisdiction laws.

Several Israeli officials including former Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni have in recent months cancelled visits to Britain after pro-Palestinian groups used the universal jurisdiction laws to get courts to issue arrest warrants against them. Universal jurisdiction means that warrants can be issued for alleged transgressions anywhere in the world and not just in the country over which the court would usually have jurisdiction.

According to the Times report, which was drawn from unnamed sources, the government will later today announce a consultation period on the subject, meaning that long delays to any remedy are highly likely:

“Today’s announcement…means that the issue will not be resolved until well after the election, expected in May… The delay is a victory for Jack Straw, the Justice Secretary, who has argued that the legal point at stake is too important to rush.

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Love of the Land: Britain to announce no early remedy for universal jurisdiction procedures used against Israelis

Love of the Land: Britain hardens line in support of Goldstone Report, not one EU member state votes against it at latest UN resolution

Britain hardens line in support of Goldstone Report, not one EU member state votes against it at latest UN resolution

Robin Shepherd
Robin Shepherd Online
27 February '10

In yet another shameful day at the United Nations, Britain has signalled a hardening of its position in support of the Goldstone Report on Gaza. In the General Assembly’s latest vote on Friday, Britain moved from the abstainers camp to join ranks with the likes of Iran, Saudi Arabia, Zimbabwe and Turkmenistan in supporting a resolution to breathe new life into Goldstone for another five months. Not one EU member state joined the United States, Israel, Canada and four others in opposing the move.

The resolution was a follow up to last November’s vote in the General Assembly calling for Israel and the Palestinians to mount credible investigations into allegations contained in the Goldstone Report that both sides, but particularly Israel, had committed war crimes against civilians. Britain abstained in that vote having absented itself entirely at the original vote in the Human Rights Council the previous month. Britain has therefore moved in three stages: absence, abstention, and now support.

Technically all three votes were slightly different in that the first asked participants to endorse the report’s findings, the second called for investigations on the basis of the report and the third provided for an extension of the time period in which those investigations should take place. However, as the United States — which voted against Goldstone on all three occasions — made clear after yesterday’s vote the key principle at issue is whether such a deeply flawed report should be given any legitimacy at all. That, said US Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN, Alejandro D. Wolff, was why the US continued to have no truck with it.

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Love of the Land: Britain hardens line in support of Goldstone Report, not one EU member state votes against it at latest UN resolution

Love of the Land: Israel Derangement Syndrome in the British Press

Israel Derangement Syndrome in the British Press

Noah Pollak
Contentions/Commentary
22 February '10

At this point, the most interesting thing about the Dubai assassination isn’t what happened in that hotel room; it is a hysteria about the story in the British press that is bordering on mob lunacy.

Few new details are emerging, so the press is engaged in an increasingly unconvincing attempt at propelling the story along by self-generated outrage. Here is a perfect example from the UK Times. It begins ominously:

David Miliband will press his Israeli counterpart today to explain what his Government knows about the use of stolen British identities in the Mahmoud al-Mabhouh killing.

Avigdor Lieberman, the Israeli Foreign Minister, will meet separately with his British, French and Irish counterparts in Brussels, in a diplomatic showdown over Mossad’s use of fraudulent European passports.

The Israelis are in big trouble! Well, maybe not. Down at the very bottom we read:

Mr Lieberman’s meetings in Brussels with the British, French and Irish foreign ministers have been long planned.

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Love of the Land: Israel Derangement Syndrome in the British Press

Love of the Land: Analysis: Long-term fallout with UK from Dubai hit unlikely

Analysis: Long-term fallout with UK from Dubai hit unlikely

Jonathan Spyer
International/JPost
18 February '10

The evidence suggesting that British passports were used by members of the team responsible for killing Hamas official Mahmoud al-Mabhouh is causing concern at the possibility of a new diplomatic row between Israel and the UK. Such a row would come at a time of already strained relations between the two countries, because of the failure of the British government to take firm action to end the possibility of the arrest of Israeli officials in Britain on suspicion of ‘war crimes.’

Prime Minister Gordon Brown pledged to carry out a full investigation into the affair. A British Foreign Office Spokesman quoted earlier in the London Daily Telegraph earlier this week said that the authorities “believe the passports used were fraudulent and have begun our own investigation.” If the killers of Mabhouh were indeed Israelis, the unauthorized use of foreign passports will come as no surprise. It has been a much noted aspect in the known operations of Israel’s external intelligence services in recent years.

The two men apprehended following the failed attempt to assassinate Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal in Amman in 1997, for example, were found to be carrying forged Canadian passports. A diplomatic row also erupted between Israel and New Zealand in 2004, after two Israeli citizens were convicted of passport fraud in Auckland. The case resulted in the suspension of top-level contacts between the two countries for a short period of time. Israel is understood to have offered guarantees to the authorities of both countries that their documents would not be used in future operations.

Some reports in the British media have raised additional questions over the future of British-Israeli intelligence sharing in light of the latest incident.

The British and Israeli intelligence services are thought to cooperate closely in a variety of areas of common interest – including on the Iranian nuclear program, and in the fight against Sunni ‘Global Jihad’ organizations. The warnings of major diplomatic fallout are probably overblown.

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Related:Scandal over Mossad use of UK passports curiously fails to materialise with Britons awe struck at Israeli daring

Love of the Land: Analysis: Long-term fallout with UK from Dubai hit unlikely

Love of the Land: Kalashnikov children groom young killers

Kalashnikov children groom young killers

Jonathan Kalmus
Jewish Chronicle
04 February '10

Children are being encouraged by Jihadi terror supporters to say that they will kill Jews, while handling guns, according to Greater Manchester Police.

The revelation came this week as the North West’s Counter Terrorism Unit released a video of children playing with a Kalashnikov. The video was seized from an undisclosed address in Manchester during a raid on terror suspects. Police say the footage and other downloaded material are being used to “groom” children in the North West with terrorist propaganda from an early age

Parts of the video show a child aged around three pointing a semi-automatic handgun, while a girl aged five or six walks into view holding a Kalashnikov. The cameraman is heard repeatedly telling the children “you will kill the Jews” while he also translates the girl’s Arabic exclamation: “I want to kill the infidels.

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The "Reaction"!:

Assistant Chief Constable Dave Thompson: “shocking,” but took pains to stress the “very, very, small proportion” of the Muslim community who espouse these beliefs.

The CST’s Mark Gardner said: “We are keenly aware of how extensive the problem of Jihadi terrorism is in the Greater Manchester area. However, I don’t think the community should overreact by accusing an entire community alongside whom we live, of being some sort of mass terrorist threat. There are problems but we shouldn’t blow them out of proportion.”

Cheetham Hill Councillor Afzal Khan, co-chair of the Manchester Muslim-Jewish Forum. “The vast majority of the Muslim community are horrified at seeing such footage.” he said.

Love of the Land: Kalashnikov children groom young killers

Love of the Land: Hezbollah is not the IRA

Hezbollah is not the IRA

Tony Badran
Now Lebanon
02 February '10

Islamist groups have invited a whole set of analogies purportedly aimed at better explaining them and how best to deal with them. One such analogy that has gained currency in recent years is the oft-encountered comparison between Islamist groups and the Irish Republican Army.

The point of the comparison is to show that as the IRA was purportedly co-opted through dialogue, the same method can be applied to other armed organizations as well. Hence, the argument runs, only such a peaceful process, and not military coercion, will lead to any given group’s decision to abandon violence, and ultimately to disarm and integrate into democratic politics. Of course, forsaking violence is not a prerequisite for dialogue, and engagement is further facilitated by a nifty conceit distinguishing a group’s “military wing” from its ostensibly more moderate or pragmatic “political wing.” Indeed, the British are currently pursuing this policy with Hezbollah – and going nowhere.

The argument has just been trotted out again in a rather fantastical and factually handicapped piece by Steven Simon and Jonathan Stevenson on the Foreign Affairs website.

(Read full report)

Love of the Land: Hezbollah is not the IRA

Love of the Land: Iran's Jews 'did not face persecution': Thatcher

Iran's Jews 'did not face persecution': Thatcher

Bataween
Point of No Return
31 January '10

Margaret Thatcher, elected British Prime Minister in 1979, the year of the Islamic revolution in Iran, has a reputation as one of the most pro-Jewish of politicians; Jimmy Carter has acquired a reputation as one of the least pro-Israel of US presidents. Newly-released documents show the roles are reversed: the 'Iron Lady' rebuffed Carter's appeals to her to protect the Jews of Iran, denying that they were being persecuted. Yet over the next decade, more than two dozen Jews were executed, several jailed for spying, and four-fifths of the community have since fled the country. (With thanks: Frank)

In May of 1979, according to the files, which go online on Saturday on the Thatcher Foundation Web site, Carter appealed Thatcher for "urgent private representations" to Iranian authorities to assure the safety of Iranian Jews.

Thatcher refused, saying the British Embassy did not believe Jews faced organized persecution, and that intervention "could indeed make their position less secure."

The papers also showed that the former British premier had also refused a more demonstrative response to the Iranian hostage crisis in 1979, saying it would do more harm than good.

(Read full article)
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Love of the Land: Iran's Jews 'did not face persecution': Thatcher

Love of the Land: Blair, Israel, and the Global Struggle

Blair, Israel, and the Global Struggle

Evelyn Gordon
Contentions/Commentary
10 January '10

In a weekend interview with former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Haaretz asked why British public opinion is “the most anti-Israel” in Europe. “Look, there’s criticism everywhere,” Blair responded. “But that’s partly because people don’t understand how difficult this situation is when you come under attack, your civilians come under attack, and you’re a democratic government and you’re expected to respond.”

Even by itself, that’s a remarkable statement: the problem, according to Blair, is not Israel’s actions; it’s that other Western countries, not facing the same daily assaults, refuse to recognize that if they did, they might respond similarly.

Even more remarkable, however, is the next sentence: “I mean, we face this [situation] continually. We face it now, actually, in places like Afghanistan.”

In short, Westerners should understand Israel because they’re in the same boat: their own armies are causing civilian casualties “in places like Afghanistan” for the exact same reasons.

So why do many Westerners either refuse to see the parallels or regard their own armies’ behavior with similar incomprehension and outrage? In Blair’s view, the heart of the problem is that too many Westerners fail to understand that they face a determined enemy waging a long-term global struggle, not a series of discrete, unrelated local conflicts.

“People sometimes say to me, no, it’s not really Iraq, it’s Afghanistan,” he said. “Someone else will say, no it’s Pakistan, and someone else will say it’s Iraq, and someone else will say it’s Yemen. But actually it’s all of these because in different ways, they represent different challenges that are unified by one single movement with a single ideology. And this is going to be resolved, in my view, over a long period of time. But what is important is that wherever it is fighting us, we’re prepared to fight back … unfortunately, we can’t say: ‘Look, let’s concentrate it here, but not here, and here, and here,’ because that’s not the way this thing’s working. …

(Read full post)

Love of the Land: Blair, Israel, and the Global Struggle

Love of the Land: Israel's opening to China

Israel's opening to China

Caroline Glick
carolineglick.com
09 January '10

The growing power of the UN-based international community is one of the gravest emerging threats to Israel's national security.

This threat stems from two sources. First, the UN-led system of global governance is working to redefine international law by on the one hand whitewashing war crimes by states associated with the majority, and on the other hand rendering it illegal for unpopular countries to take action to protect themselves against aggression. Second, and most important, Israel has become the scapegoat of the UN-led international community. The 57-member Islamic bloc has built an automatic majority for its unrelenting and ever-escalating assaults on Israel's right to exist.

The new - and false - interpretation of international law gives every General Assembly resolution the weight of binding Security Council resolutions and international treaties. Among this new "legal" regime's most dangerous features is its bid to overturn state sovereignty by subjecting leading citizens of weak states to politically-motivated criminal prosecutions under the rubric of universal jurisdiction.

With Israel's right to exist - let alone to defend itself - being denied in an avalanche of General Assembly and Human Rights Council resolutions, the acceptance of universal jurisdiction is a short step away from turning every Jewish citizen of Israel into an international outlaw.

THIS ESCALATING threat is already hurting Israel's ability to carry out routine relations with foreign countries. Just last week the IDF was compelled to cancel plans to send a delegation of its officers to England for a joint conference on asymmetric warfare after British authorities were unable to promise that their guests from the IDF wouldn't be arrested over spurious war crimes allegations during their stay.

Love of the Land: Israel's opening to China

Love of the Land: A Lesson for London

A Lesson for London

Evelyn Gordon
Contentions/Commentary
05 January '10

Meeting with Israeli officials in Jerusalem this morning, British Attorney General Baroness Scotland reiterated her government’s pledge to amend the “universal jurisdiction” law under which British courts have repeatedly issued arrest warrants against Israeli officers and politicians. That pledge, first made by Prime Minister Gordon Brown last month, outraged the Muslim Council of Britain, which accused the government of being “partisan” and “compliant to [Israeli] demands.”

But if Britain keeps its word, the pro-Palestinian activists who keep seeking, and getting, those warrants will have only themselves to blame. After all, British courts have issued such warrants for years without the British government batting an eye, despite vociferous Israeli protests, and could probably have continued doing so had activists only picked their targets a little more carefully. The British couldn’t care less if Israeli army officers canceled planned visits for fear of being arrested, as yet another group did last week. Ditto for right-of-center politicians such as Minister Moshe Ya’alon, who aborted a planned trip in November: Britain would rather not hear from Israelis who think peace with the Palestinians is currently impossible.

But the activists overreached last month by securing a warrant against former foreign minister and current opposition leader Tzipi Livni. Livni is the Great White Hope of peace-processors worldwide, the Israeli deemed most likely to sign a deal with the Palestinians.

Love of the Land: A Lesson for London

Love of the Land: Time for Prime Minister Brown to take decisive steps as Israeli Deputy FM says relationship with UK “insufferable”

Time for Prime Minister Brown to take decisive steps as Israeli Deputy FM says relationship with UK “insufferable”

Robin Shepherd
robinshepherdonline.com
05 January '10

Israel’s Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon is reported by the Jerusalem Post today as describing the current situation between Britain and Israel as “insufferable”, adding that “normal relations between the two countries” would be difficult to sustain under current circumstances.

Ayalon was referring to the increasingly common practice by Palestinian extremists and their many supporters in the UK of abusing the British legal system to threaten visiting Israeli dignitaries with arrest for alleged war crimes. Former Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, it will be recalled, had to cancel a trip to London in December after a court authorised a warrant for her arrest over Operation Cast Lead in Gaza. It has now emerged that a group of IDF officers had to cancel a trip last week for the same reason.

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Love of the Land: Time for Prime Minister Brown to take decisive steps as Israeli Deputy FM says relationship with UK “insufferable”

Love of the Land: Boycott Israel and British Lives Will Be Lost

Boycott Israel and British Lives Will Be Lost

Why does the UK want to distance itself from the country best positioned to help protect British troops from IEDs?

Carol Gould
PajamasMedia.com
28 December 09

Britain has become the world center for boycotts of Israeli goods and of academic exchange. It is rare to pass a day without an email from a supporter of the Jewish state bringing to my attention yet another boycott campaign. Whether it is grassroots campaigns to label oranges and avocados in supermarkets or universities stopping academic cross-fertilization of brainpower, the many forces at work in Britain seem never to run out of momentum.

It is therefore all the more lamentable that British soldiers are suffering losses every month in Afghanistan, yet the country does not promote good relations with Israel, the world expert on defusing IEDs (improvised explosive devices). On December 13 British Prime Minister Gordon Brown visited troops in Kandahar, the first British head of state to visit servicemen in a war zone since Winston Churchill in the Second World War. Brown told the media during his visit that soldiers “were discovering improvised explosive devices every two hours.”

On television in the months leading up to the prime ministerial visit to the war zone, bereaved British mothers, sisters, and widows lamented the shortage of bomb disposal experts and the apparent lack of appropriate equipment and protective gear available to their sons, brothers, and husbands. On BBC television’s Question Time on Thursday, December 10, recorded in Wootton Bassett, a town hit particularly hard by recent war losses, anguished women asked panelist Sir Richard Dannatt, former head of the armed forces, for better care of the fighting men.

In the meantime Israeli bomb disposal experts are available for consultation, but if the word “Israel” so much as appears in any public discourse, those same studio audiences erupt in rage at the “apartheid” state that engages in “ethnic cleansing,” and they refuse to see the connection between Israel’s sixty-year defensive battle against terror and the war their menfolk are facing in Taliban-land.

Researching this article I came upon a compelling screed, “Countering Improvised Explosive Devices” by Colonel David Eshel of the IDF, or Israeli Defense Forces. What is intriguing is that the piece was published in the Royal Tank RegimentJournal, Volume 771, way back in March 2005.

Eshel recounts the events after cessation of initial hostilities in Iraq in 2003, when insurgent attacks began to dominate the landscape, but coalition leaders seemed uninterested in briefings on IEDs. He asserts: “It seems therefore strange, and possibly inexcusable, that the coalition forces failed to take notice of the vast combat experience that could have become willingly available from its Israeli allies, in order to at least try and reduce the heavy loss of life sustained mainly by U.S. forces from IED and suicide attacks.”

Eshel’s article makes it clear that the range and lethality of IEDs are staggering: In the early days of the Iraqi insurgency, attackers pulled out the firing pins of hand grenades and kept them from detonating by holding down the “spoon” and covering it with ducting tape. By dropping it into a canister filled with gasoline, the tape would dissolve in a few hours and cause a terrific explosion. Terrorists would place an obstruction on the road, causing vehicles to stop and investigate; the results were catastrophic.

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Love of the Land: Boycott Israel and British Lives Will Be Lost

Love of the Land: Israel’s false friend

Israel’s false friend

Melanie Phillips
The Jewish Chronicle
22 December 09

Five years ago, anti-Israel campaigners tried to arrest the then Israeli Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz for ‘war crimes’ while he was on a visit to London.

Since then, a steady stream of senior Israeli officials have either narrowly escaped similar arrest in Britain through diplomatic immunity, or have had to cancel planned visits because such an arrest was all too likely.

In all that time, the government has sat on its hands. Only now that Tzipi Livni has had to cancel her trip to London following an attempt to arrest her over her part in Operation Cast Lead has the British government said it will change the law, probably by making the Attorney-General the gatekeeper for any such arrest attempts.

Why is it only now that the balloon has gone up? One reason is that this is the first time the Israeli government has responded with unbridled fury at Britain. But also, for British diplomats, Livni is ‘one of us’. That is because, since she is one of the most appeasement-minded politicians Israel has ever produced, it is considered an affront to try to arrest her, of all people, for her part in warfare.

‘Livni supports a two-state solution. This attempt to secure her arrest has really set alarm bells ringing,’ a horrified senior Foreign Office source reportedly told the Guardian. The unpleasant implication is that the Foreign Office cares far less about attempts to arrest Israeli politicians with more hawkish views.

This telling remark shows how the Foreign Office circles the wagons when one of its ideological soul-mates is under attack — and is wholly unable to see how the amoral and unprincipled view of the world it believes it shares with Livni may actually be contributing to the problem.

(Read full post)

Love of the Land: Israel’s false friend

Love of the Land: Until the very last Jew

Until the very last Jew

Moshe Feiglin
Manhigut
03 Tevet 5770
20 December 09

"It is important to understand," I said to television interviewer Dan Margalit, "I am just the canary in the coal mine. More politicians will be receiving this letter." That television interview took place close to two years ago. I was reminded of it last week when Tzippy Livni had a close brush with arrest in England. I had the dubious distinction of being the first Israeli politician since Menachem Begin to be classified as a persona non grata by her majesty's government. The only other Israelis to receive this classification have been IDF officers whose war against Arab terror has turned them into war criminals in British eyes.

I had the privilege to be inducted into this exclusive club because of an article that I had written years ago. The article included a sentence that read "The Arab is not the son of the desert, but rather, its father." Interestingly, this sentence was penned by none other than the first British Commissioner of Sinai, Sir Claude Jarvis, in 1938 in his book, The Desert Yesterday and Today. In other words, my entry to Britain was forbidden because I quoted an important British official. No matter. What is clear is that the British, who allow terror chiefs to enter England and lecture as they please, have bowed before the Islamic offensive that has conquered their land - and they do not like people who remind them to whom they have surrendered.

As Divine Providence would have it, Israel's Foreign Minister at the time that I was barred from England was Tzippy Livni. Livni was no longer a member of the Likud and had completely abandoned the ideology of her patriotic parents, but it would still have been reasonable to expect that an official letter such as the one I, an Israeli citizen, received from the British government would draw some sort of response from the Foreign Ministry.

There is no dearth of professors and politicians in England who attack Israel as a matter of course. Livni could have announced to her majesty's government that if it would continue to interfere with the freedom of expression of Israel's citizens, Israel would also bar a long list of publicists and professors from entering its own gates. At the time I didn't ask Livni to fight my cause. But if she had done her job, she wouldn't have to fight her own cause today. Now Livni finds herself – perish the thought – in the same boat as Moshe Feiglin.

(Read full article)

Love of the Land: Until the very last Jew

Love of the Land: Seventy Years Ago, Palestinian Arabs Threw Away Chance to Prevent Israel's Creation; Following the Same Policies Today

Seventy Years Ago, Palestinian Arabs Threw Away Chance to Prevent Israel's Creation; Following the Same Policies Today

Barry Rubin
The Rubin Report
22 December 09

The greatest opportunity ever to prevent Israel’s creation and instead make the entire land a Palestinian Arab state took place in 1939, specifically on May 17, 1939, seventy years ago.

What is truly remarkable is that the debate at that time and on that specific day was almost precisely identical to the situation on the day you’re reading this article. If you can understand these events, it is possible to comprehend why the conflict has ended this long with no end in sight.

Let’s set the scene. The British knew that another war was on the horizon with Germany and Italy ready to disrupt their control of the Mediterranean and Middle East. Fearful of Arab revolts in alliance with their fascist enemies, London was ready to give lots of concessions to them.

On the Palestine issue, the British government was so desperate that it offered an amazing deal. A single Palestine state (the British had conceded to Arab opposition over the word "federal") would be established in ten years with an Arab majority. Land sales to Jews would be prohibited in most of the country and Jewish immigration would be strictly limited. If the Arabs had agreed, Israel would never have been established. As it was, the British implemented the immigration restrictions any way, dooming hundreds of thousands of Jews in Europe to horrible deaths.

But the Arabs in Palestine rejected the proposed political deal to put them in charge of the government with a timetable for turning the country over to them. They walked out of negotiations with Britain, ostensibly over the ten-year waiting period. Most importantly, they believed that their goals could be achieved more quickly and completely through a combination of an Arab uprising and an Axis military victory in the coming war.

(Read full article)

Love of the Land: Seventy Years Ago, Palestinian Arabs Threw Away Chance to Prevent Israel's Creation; Following the Same Policies Today

Love of the Land: Israel's settlements are legal

Israel's settlements are legal

Geoffrey Alderman
The Jewish Chronicle
17 December 09

What role, if any, does the present UK government see for itself as a peacemaker in the Middle East? Does it see itself as an honest broker, or has it already taken sides? Some developments over the past fortnight — which build on the lesson we must learn from the UK government’s refusal to condemn or even criticise the Goldstone report — do I think enable us to answer these important questions.

At the beginning of the month, feverish diplomatic to-ing and fro-ing in Brussels centred on a Swedish attempt to have EU member states endorse a resolution demanding the creation of a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital. This proposal was defeated –- thanks to some impressive manoeuvring by Israel’s Foreign Minister, Avigdor Lieberman. Instead, on December 8, EU Foreign Ministers announced their agreement that Jerusalem must become a “shared” capital.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas was clearly annoyed that the Swedish draft had been killed off. But the British government was among the backers of the Swedish proposal and, within 48 hours of its defeat, presented Mr Abbas with a consolation prize. On December 10, the department for the environment, food and rural affairs (DEFRA) published new guidance to shops and supermarkets on the labelling of produce sold in the UK that originated from Judea and Samaria. Hitherto, such goods have been labelled as “Produce of the West Bank.” Henceforth, warned DEFRA, they should be branded either as “Palestinian Produce” or “Israeli Settlement Produce.”

A spokesman for UK Foreign Secretary David Miliband wasted no time in explaining that “this is emphatically not about calling for a boycott of Israel. We believe that would do nothing to advance the peace process. We oppose any such boycott of Israel. We believe consumers should be able to choose for themselves what produce they buy.” But, he added ominously: “we have been very clear, both in public and in private, that settlements are illegal and an obstacle to peace.” And in an announcement (hilariously labelled “technical advice”) quite separate from its new guidance on labelling, DEFRA’s head, Hilary Benn, warned that UK food outlets would be committing a criminal offence if they labelled produce that originated in Judea and Samaria as “produce of Israel”.

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