Love of the Land: Lying in Gaza

Lying in Gaza

Ben Cohen
Z-Word Blog
09 March '10

A group of friends in London alerted me to this grubby little piece by a British Labour Party Member of Parliament, Bob Marshall-Andrews, concerning his recent visit to Gaza. Upon reading it, I was struck by various thoughts, not least the degree to which Marshall-Andrews words will be welcomed by the Hamas cheerleaders who compose the Palestinian solidarity movement, in marked contrast to the fierce condemnation with which this blog, and others like it, will greet his compendium of antisemitism-laced falsehoods. Why bother to refute such lies, one might ask, when those of us who defend Israel are at irreconcilable odds with those who demonize her, when any charge of antisemitism we make is bound to be dismissed as another tired attempt to muzzle debate? The most satisfactory answer I can come up with is that some things - and Marshall-Andrews article is one of them - are so odious that they cannot pass without rebuke.

To work, then. Here’s how Marshall-Andrews sets the scene:

“Bags of cement are slit open by grinning ringletted guards. Having destroyed they maintain the destruction.”

The “ringlets” he refers to are known, in Hebrew, as pe’ot, the sidelocks worn by ultraorthodox Jews. Now, I’ve spent a great deal of time in Israel and I can tell you that most Israeli soldiers don’t wear pe’ot. So what visual image is Marshall-Andrews trying to conjure up here? One of a people that rejoices in radical evil, their grinning faces framed by those unmistakeably Jewish ringlets.

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Love of the Land: Lying in Gaza

Love of the Land: Fact-Checking Finkelstein’s New Book

Fact-Checking Finkelstein’s New Book

Judeosphere
04 March '10

Unemployed professor and Holocaust humorist Norman Finkelstein is publishing a new book this month, This Time We Went Too Far: Truth and Consequences of the Gaza Invasion.

An excerpt has been published in Counterpunch—which is very generous of Finkelstein, since it gives us an early opportunity to scrutinize his “scholarship.”

Finkelstein claims:

Public outrage at the Gaza invasion did not come out of the blue but rather marked the nadir of a curve plotting a steady decline in support for Israel.
One poll registering the fallout from the Gaza attack in the United States found that American voters calling themselves supporters of Israel plummeted from 69 percent before the attack to 49 percent in June 2009, while voters believing that the U.S. should support Israel dropped from 69 per cent to 44 per cent. Consumed by hate, emboldened by self-righteousness, and confident that it could control or intimidate public opinion, Israel carried on in Gaza as if it could get away with mass murder in broad daylight.

The poll Finkelstein is referring to was conducted by the Israel Project. However, he neglected to mention a few relevant facts:

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Love of the Land: Fact-Checking Finkelstein’s New Book

Love of the Land: Fighting the Goldstone Process at the UN

Fighting the Goldstone Process at the UN

P. David Hornik
Pajamasmedia.com
02 February '10

A UN General Assembly vote in November gave Israel (and the Palestinians) three months to investigate “serious violations of international law committed during the conflict in Gaza that broke out in late December 2008.” Israel has now submitted to the UN a 46-page update on its investigations of possible wrongdoings in the war.

The update refutes some of the specific charges of the Goldstone Report, which accuses Israel in particular of war crimes in Gaza, and was the impetus behind the General Assembly vote in the first place. But the document is mainly concerned with establishing that Israel is a responsible democracy whose military is capable of credibly investigating itself, and does so in ways similar to the American, British, Canadian, and Australian militaries.

There is much irony in this, considering the nature of the General Assembly’s vote. Registering 114 in favor, 18 against, and 44 abstentions, in addition to giving Israel and the Palestinians their three-month assignment, it endorsed the Goldstone Report and “requested Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to send [it] to the Security Council.”

It’s not only that Israel had already been investigating the war (as the 46-page update details) since two days after it ended, while the Palestinian side had not (and still has not) even begun to do so. It’s also that the 114 ayes were not a parade of accomplished democracies that one would count on to uphold international law or investigate violations of it themselves. Of the 114, the only two full-fledged Western democracies are Portugal and Switzerland. The 114 also include the likes of Cuba, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Zimbabwe.

As for the 18 nays — who opposed requiring Israel (and the Palestinians) to submit a report to the General Assembly, or endorsing the Goldstone Report — most are democracies such as Australia, Canada, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and the United States. Among the 44 abstainers are democracies like Belgium, Denmark, France, Japan, New Zealand, Sweden, and the UK.

In other words, the reason Israel had to submit a document to the UN maintaining that it is a democracy that does not intentionally kill civilians, takes alleged infractions seriously, and investigates them authentically is because dictatorships that make up the bulk of the General Assembly demanded that it do so.

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Love of the Land: Fighting the Goldstone Process at the UN