For some, sanctions. For others: ammo

We can all be forgiven for thinking the world's going to hell in a handcart. South Sudan, Syria, Palestine, Ukraine to name just a few places. Thank heavens we live in a nice quiet bit of Northern Europe/North America or Australia. What's wrong with these foreigners that they reach for a gun at the drop of a hat? They're just barbarians. We're civilised.

Of course we're civilised. As long as you miss out Northern Ireland, or make sure you carry out your genocides before international law and media get going. Native Americans? Just enough left to weave some rugs for the tourists. We wouldn't behave like these savages. Or at least, not in public. Yes, there's Guantanamo and Bagram and Diego Garcia and black sites in Poland, Romania, Egypt and various other places, but they're only for terrorists. We're for democracy. At least, when and where it suits us. Sure, Egypt's a military dictatorship and Saudi Arabia is the worst place on earth for Jews, women, atheists, black people, liberals, trades unionists and religious minorities. But they put on a good spread and some of their leaders are very hospitable to our salesmen. Really, Rolls-Royce and BAe haven't a bad word to say about them.

Look at these brutes. Smashing civilian planes out of the sky. We wouldn't do that. Well, OK, we would, using the USS Vincennes which had entered Iranian waters after getting annoyed by Iranian speedboats. But that plane was packed with Iranians, in Iranian airspace. Honestly, they were asking for it. And we said sorry. Well, not exactly sorry, but we did give the 290 victims' $61m between them without admitting legal liability. These things happen.

When questioned in a 2000 BBC documentary, the U.S. government stated in a written answer that they believed the incident may have been caused by a simultaneous psychological condition amongst the 18 bridge crew of the Vincennes called 'scenario fulfillment', which is said to occur when persons are under pressure. In such a situation, the men will carry out a training scenario, believing it to be reality while ignoring sensory information that contradicts the scenario. In the case of this incident, the scenario was an attack by a lone military aircraft.

What did President Bush the First say?

"I will never apologize for the United States — I don't care what the facts are... I'm not an apologize-for-America kind of guy."

In fact it was the Iranians' fault for being at war with Saddam Hussein, he said. And you can't say fairer than that. Which is why Bill Clinton continued to refuse to apologise.

But anyway, apart from that, it's pretty clear that the dividing line between Civilised and Uncivilised is religious and ethnic. Arabs and Muslims are Uncivilised, White People are Civilised. We don't do these things to each other.

Except that we obviously do, and we help out when our Civilised friends want to go about smiting the Uncivilised. After all, we can't leave the Israelis to do all that child-killing unaided. We (rightly) sanction Russia for at least helping shoot down a jet, but we send Israel more ammo. All the stuff a feisty little nation might need to bombard a densely packed city with heavy weaponry.

David Miliband admitted that Israeli equipment used in Gaza in the 2008-9 conflict "almost certainly" contained UK-supplied components. He cited F16 combat aircraft, Apache attack helicopters, Saar-Class corvettes and armoured personnel carriers.

Perhaps it's a tinge of imperial nostalgia. After all, it's almost a century since the British got to bombard a densely-packed city of lightly-armed rebellious natives holding a largely symbolic insurrection next door: Dublin, 1916. (A side-note of pride: my great-uncle Thomas was Commandant of the 1st Dublin Brigade and fought in the GPO that day). I'm really looking forward to the wall-to-wall BBC/Daily Mail coverage of that proud moment in a couple of years time. I mean: these Palestinian children and bakers and mothers and street-cleaners and lawyers are just asking for it. And that's not just me, that's the Wall Street Journal:

So what am I rambling on about really? Well, it comes down to realpolitik: the understanding that any principles evinced by democratically-elected leaders are contingent. Democracy is something with which to taunt your enemies, not press on your friends. Palestinian children just are expendable. The planes your enemies shoot down are evidence of barbarism. The planes you shoot down are regrettable instances of unfavourable conditions. You kidnap: we have secure rendition facilities. We were provoked: you're inherently evil. We must defend ourselves: you're warmongers. We have security concerns: you're terrorists. We have values that must be defended: you're fanatics.

Right now, I've got a 'plague on all your houses' feeling, which is wrong. All these conflicts are more complicated than they seem. Every side is committing offences against humanity that we should be getting outraged over, case by case. But watching the news and social media, hearing the same tired old lies and evasions trotted out by our political leaders, it's hard to do anything other than accept the disempowerment and watch events unfold as though we're at the cinema. When you hear John Kerry tell the news that Israel is conducting 'pinpoint' operations then being caught on camera using the phrase sarcastically, you have to admit that – as Baudrillard pointed out – we're not in a real war at all. There's what happens, which Kerry can only mutter to his aides about, and there's the simulation, which is far more important. Kerry clearly doesn't like Israel killing children and civilians on a personal level, but his job is to deny it's happening for the purpose of maintaining the USA's uncritical support for whatever Israel wants to do. (As an aside, the Fox presenter challenged Kerry for expressing regret for the dead children: criticising Israel is just not on). Social media's no better: one Christian activist polluting my timeline on Twitter is spending his time explaining why exactly it is that God needs lots of Palestinian kids dead in a hurry. I'm no wiser, to be honest. It's just thousands of people posting decontextualised photos or propaganda points in pursuit of what, exactly, I don't know. Still, they're all better than Caitlin Moran's all-purpose outrage:

Well done Caitlin. We can all stop worrying about it now because all those FGM-advocates will be bowled over by a columnist writing WTF on her hand. Staying seated on a bus? Passing a law? Throwing yourself under a racehorse? Boring. Or BORING!!!!! as Caitlin would say. She's written an opinion on her hand and posted it on Twitter. End Of!

Time to stop. Even by my standards this is rambling nonsense rather than an argument. It's hot and everybody's gone mad. Including me.

Like a dog returning to its vomit: Uppal once more

After taking an all-expenses paid trip to Israel courtesy of the Conservative Friend of Bombing Children sorry Israel (and I think we can all guess where they got the money), Paul Uppal MP thinks that he got a 'balanced' view of the conflict. After all, he visited the Golan Heights, though without mentioning that it's sovereign Syrian territory occupied by Israel. I rather think that's a minor political scandal: an elected British MP and government minister (Uppal is a PPS to David Willetts) stepping on to an occupied country's land in the protection of the Occupier. It's like a British MP accompanying Mussolini's forces into Abyssinia: it legitimises an occupation. Sadly, I don't know how to get this addressed by anyone but I've written to the FCO as follows:

Sir/Madam
could you direct me to the correct protocol for political visits to Israel and the Occupied Territories? My Member of Parliament visited Israel with the Conservative Friends of Israel and while there visited the Golan Heights as part of a trip organised by the Israeli Government.
Given that the Golan Heights are the sovereign territory of Syria, currently occupied by Israel, is there any FCO guidance about this kind of visit? I'm concerned that the presence of a British parliamentarian on occupied territory - escorted by an occupying force - legitimises that occupation. Should the Member have sought Syrian permission for the visit? Should he have remained on internationally-recognised Israeli territory? Is there any guidance for private citizens, MPs or elected government ministers?
Yours, Vole.  

Anyway, Paul got a terrible column out of it, which I covered here. He also managed to shoehorn his conflict holiday into a Parliamentary question:

I refer to my interest in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I have just spent a week in Israel and I came back and spoke to Israelis and Palestinians alike. Despite prejudices in this House, I can assure hon. Members that everybody to whom I spoke has an absolute thirst for peace, but one of the greatest obstacles to peace is the Israeli dilemma of how to trade off intangibles for tangibles. Israel will happily give up land, but how can it have guaranteed security and peace?

Hmm…

Firstly, there's no mention of the trip in his Declaration of Financial Interests yet. Only a line about his previous jolly with the Conservative Friends of India to Delhi (paid for by the Indian Government). 

Moving on: I still don't know which Palestinians he spoke to. There's no evidence that he visited the Palestinian territories, and it seems unlikely that the Israeli government or the CFOI would have introduced him to their enemies. What's the point? Both sides know where the various parties stand. So I'm afraid I'll have to remain sceptical on this one until Paul furnishes us with details. 

The rest is just hot air. People 'thirsting for peace' don't bomb buses or bombard civilian areas from air and sea. What those in charge on both sides want is victory, not peace. For the rest of the paragraph, Uppal is parroting Israeli propaganda without reflection. Israel doesn't have land to 'give up': Israel is illegally occupying Palestine and some of Syria, according to myriad international laws and UN resolutions. It shouldn't give up this land as part of a deal: it should give up this land and then pursue a peace treaty with Palestine. Israel gets 'guaranteed security and peace' by withdrawing to its internationally agreed 1948 boundaries, compensate the Palestinians thrown out of those borders, reverse the apartheid laws imposed on Israeli Arabs and respect the human and legal rights of Palestine and Palestinians. There are extremists on both sides who've made this a religious war, but improved legal and material conditions will cut off their oxygen. 

Uppal's just a shill. Despite his protestations, he's taken money to expose himself to the Israeli government's propaganda machine and he's not concerned in the slightest with critically evaluating what they're telling him. He doesn't want to believe that not all Palestinians are terrorists, that they have justified grievances, or that Israel has behaved cruelly and unreasonably. Why not? Because it's not in his personal interest to find complications in his party's world view. 

BBCowards

Amidst all the Savile and McAlpine furore, you may have missed this little exchange on Radio 4's Today programme:

The BBC has apologised to the chief rabbi, Jonathan Sacks, after Radio 4's Today presenter Evan Davis asked him a question about the violence in Gaza without telling him he was live on air.
When Sacks finished his Thought for the Day on Friday morning, Davis asked him to comment on the Gaza situation before he left the studio.
Sacks, seemingly unaware that he was live, said "I think it's got to do with Iran, actually", before Davis' co-presenter Sarah Montague whispered: "We, we're live."

This seems to be a reasonable thing to happen. Jonathan Sacks appears on Today regularly and clearly listens to the show. He knows how it works. As the leading Jewish cleric in the country, he frequently gives his view - as perhaps he should - on Israeli affairs.

So what's the problem?

The problem was that Mr Sacks, being unprepared, was honest.

His tone then changed markedly and he called for "a continued prayer for peace, not only in Gaza but for the whole region, no one gains from violence".

Apparently this is infra dig at the moment.

According to a number of BBC sources, Sacks was said to be "angry" about the incident and made his feelings known to Today's production team.

The Chief Rabbi appeared to think that there are things it's OK to think and other things it's OK to say in public. Which is not my idea of spiritual leadership.

What is going on at the BBC? This is the response:

However, according to one senior BBC executive, the incident reflects the chaos at BBC News. "This is another cock up for BBC News – they are a law unto themselves on this one," said the source. "It is a cardinal law that you don't do that to a Thought for the Day presenter – that's a separate thing and you don't ask them questions like that. Lord Sacks is the chief rabbi. You show him some respect. This may also fuel the idea in some people's minds that the BBC is anti-Israel."

So apparently asking the country's most prominent Jewish cleric his opinion of events in Israel is 'a cock-up' rather than a decent bit of impromptu journalism. Sacks has never been afraid to mix politics with religion. He has a view on the Gaza bombardment that doesn't fit the Israeli government's line. So what? It's only an issue if - like Rupert Murdoch - you think every Jew has to be slavishly loyal to current Israeli policy, which I don't. Clearly Sacks thinks that it's dirty linen to be kept indoors. To me, it's news. The BBC's grovelling shows that it doesn't understand what that is any more.

Uppal's back with an (Israeli) bang

Well well well. The Member for The Dark Place Southwest and PPS to the Minister for Universities has resurfaced after a long and troubling silence.

Is Paul Uppal MP in his constituency? No. Is he beavering away in the Department of Education? Er, no? Is he, perhaps, working hard to bring the fruits of his labours to the needy citizens of the city he represents?

No, no and thrice no. He's in Israel, and he's writing articles for a Conservative website. On our time and money.

Who paid for Paul to go to Israel? Well, he's on a jolly with the Conservative Friends of Israel, so my guess is that the Israeli government flew them in for a close-up view of what they do to Johnny Arab when those benighted people get a bit fed up with their land being occupied, farms bulldozed, movement restricted and children murdered. I can't absolutely tell you who pays for it because the CFOI website is very, very coy on the matter. In fact virtually all the links on the site are broken… unless they just don't work for socialists. And Paul's not saying.

But we can assume that this is a propaganda trip organised to ensure that the Israeli government's perspective (just think South African National Party's attitude towards black Africans in, say, 1965) reach the highest levels of government.

So what does Paul have to say?

To say that this week has been eventful would be a serious understatement. Its events culminated yesterday when rocket sirens went off in Jerusalem where I was staying with a Conservative Friends of Israel delegation. It was an experience I will never forget.

I admit it Paul. I pulled some strings to get Hamas to fire off some rockets when I heard you were there. It's worked out nicely for you. You're a veteran now. A big man.

And then there's this:

On Tuesday we visited the Golan Heights. The news at the time was that errant fire from the Syrian civil war had landed in Israel; the first time since the 1973 Yom Kippur War.

You'd be forgiven for think that the Golan Heights is some tourist spot threatened by those dastardly Palestinians, and not part of Syria illegally occupied by Israel since 1967. They're not giving it back: a third of Israel's water comes from the Golan.

The escalation began earlier this month following the detonation of a tunnel on the Israeli side of the border which targeted Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) soldiers. An anti-tank missile also destroyed an IDF jeep travelling on the Israeli side of the border fence, injuring four soldiers.

That'll be the illegal border fence which marks the extent of Israel's illegal occupation. And I reckon the 'escalation' started in 1948 when Palestinians were thrown off their ancestral land without negotiation or compensation, to salve the consciences of the Western Powers which had done little to nothing to save Jews from the Holocaust.

In response to the extended missile barrages on its sovereign territory, Israel launched ‘Operation Pillar of Defence’ as part of a series of attacks on Hamas terrorist installations. Wednesday saw the completion of the targeted killing of Hamas military chief Ahmed Jabari 

Ah yes. Because the Israelis are stern respecters of 'sovereign territory'. Naval and air bombardment of the most densely packed urban space in the world is a standard 'defensive' strategy. These 'extended missile barrages' have (sadly) killed three Israelis and mostly landed in desert. It's not exactly the Blitz. 'Terrorist installations' have so far included houses, schools, hospitals, transport infrastructure and traffic lights. Targeted killing = assassination (and it's not very targeted: lots of children related to Hamas officials have been killed too) and Jabari was, it's said, about to sign a ceasefire agreement with the Israeli military. But there's an election coming up.

we toured Israel’s security barrier

Ah yes. The illegal 'security' barrier which confiscates large swathes of Palestinian land under international law, and (coincidentally?) separates them from the scarcest commodity of all in the area: water.

Terrorist groups like Hamas do immense physical and psychological damage and conversely, Israel, with its large and technologically advanced army has been unable to put a stop to the continued assault.

No they don't. Their weaponry is largely useless, as any news report will tell you. The assault is not 'continued': it occurs every few years when the hotheads can't think of anything else to do in response to being despised prisoners. As to 'terrorist': that's the epithet applied to any armed group which doesn't have the resources of the United States' newest gear. What military tactics would be acceptable to Paul? As far as I can see, launching obsolete and largely harmless missiles is just a weak version of Israel bombing Palestine from air, land and sea.

Israel’s military responses in Gaza have been targeted and precise. Hundreds of military installations have been destroyed and civilian casualties have been astoundingly low, considering Hamas is known to hide its terrorist infrastructure deep within civilian areas. 

Oh yeah? Not according to the international press and the BBC. It's as though Paul's taking dictation from the Israeli Ministry for Propaganda. The language is exactly the same being used in press releases and interviews.  Those children killed must have been dwarf militants disguised as children. What does Paul mean by 'terrorist infrastructure' in 'civilian areas'? Gaza is an open air concentration camp filled with the numerous descendents of Palestinians herded out of their ancestral lands in 1948. There are only civilian areas. How many civilian deaths count as 'low' for Paul? How many dead children?

Already, three Israelis have been killed by a missile strike, including one pregnant woman. With hundreds of rockets being fired upon Israel each day, it cannot be long before Hamas’s kill count rises.

I don't like 'whataboutery', but we should just remember some facts. 'Hundreds' of rockets are not being fired upon Israel 'each day'. They haven't got that many. 3 Israelis have died, and that's wrong. How many Palestinians? 5 women and 4 children in one house on Saturday, bombed by the Air Force. 90 Palestinians dead, half of them civilians. So if anyone's 'kill count' is rising, it's the Israelis.

Israelis are stoic about the circumstances under which they live, but only at a painful stretch of the imagination can Brits understand what this is like. The last time we faced such a threat was over half a century ago. 

Actually, Paul, it's not so hard to understand. If you just pop over to Northern Ireland, you'll find 750,000 Irish people who lived under armed occupation by a colonial power which planted settlers on their land, then used the full force of the British Army to ensure that their descendants enjoyed total military, civil and cultural domination, resulting in a vicious resistance movement and at times, civil war.  But then, you'd be supporting the Orange, wouldn't you? And anyway, what of the 'stoic' Palestinians: herded into the prison camp for over 50 years. More and more land taken from them. Economically isolated. Starved of food, water, construction material and all the necessities of a civilised life. Bombarded from all sides. I reckon that's pretty stoic.

For Palestinians, the status quo ante is unacceptable. The emergence of a viable and sovereign state of Palestine that exists peacefully beside the Jewish state of Israel must be the goal. My time spent speaking to Israelis and Palestinians this week has illustrated to me just how difficult this will be to achieve.

This is just so many words. What is 'viable'? What about the Palestinian right to the territories illegally occupied? How do we arrive at a 'Jewish state' of Israel without expelling the Israeli Arabs who live there? How do democracy and an ethnically-pure state co-exist?

How many Palestinians has Paul spoken to? Who are they? I'm sad to say that I no longer take anything Paul says at face value. He has a track record of fibbing for convenience. If he can prove it, I'll take this back happily.

Israel’s land for peace policy has been historically successful.

At the risk of becoming boring: it's not 'land for peace' if you're grudgingly handing over tiny parcels of land that doesn't belong to you while using the full military and political weight supplied by America and the West to keep all the rest.

My contributions to this debate will now be based on real experiences with Israelis and Palestinians. Visiting the region has enabled me to broaden my comprehension and understand one of the most complicated and protracted conflicts the world has ever seen. The Conservative Friends of Israel are to be credited with such an excellent, informative and balanced visit.

Again: which Palestinians?
One trip, as part of an openly partisan group has 'broadened' his comprehension?
'Balanced'? Really? Funded by the Israeli government or its allies? Surely even Paul isn't this deluded. He's just happy to be a puppet.

What's most depressing about this article is Paul's failure to consider the history of Israel/Palestine. He's simply repeated the talking points handed out by the Israeli government and refused to contemplate the actual complexities of the situation. He's a shill, nothing more.

In the interests of disclosure, I should state my position here. I don't begrudge Paul's decision to take sides on this conflict. I've done the same thing. But I do begrudge his deliberate, cynical and dishonest refusal to do anything more than propagate Israeli government propaganda.

I have Jewish antecedents, though I am not Jewish. I am a socialist. I reject the narratives put forward on both sides which root statehood in ethnicity and religious identity. The fundamentalists on both sides would get on very well: they hate democracy, women and dissidence. They're racists and bigots. I can empathise with the Allies' decisions at the end of WW2. Guilty about allowing European Jews to be massacred in their millions, they decided that the survivors should be shipped to Palestine (from which their ancestors had departed over the course of 2000 years) rather than make Europe face what it had done by refounding the historic Jewish populations across that continent. The Palestinians - who had lived in relative peace with the small Jewish population of the area for centuries - were of no account. Killed and displaced without mercy, herded into camps and narrow strips of unproductive land, they naturally fought back. Many of them failed to comprehend the difference between Judaism and Zionism, and vicious anti-semitism (previously the preserve of Christians: Jews were protected for centuries by Muslim cultures such as the Ottoman Empire) arose.

I condemn the assault on Israeli citizens in the legally-determined territory of Israel. But don't let Uppal and his propagandists fool you. The Palestinians are friendless prisoners barely existing in a cramped, unproductive strip of land. Their tactics are often barbaric and useless. But they are not solely motivated by religious or ethnic hatred: these things are the poisonous result of an injustice which has never and will never be addressed by Israel or the international community. They're the collateral damage of colonialism and European determination to shuffle a problem off onto somewhere else.

What would I do? I'd found a single state in the area in which religious and ethnic identity is irrelevant. The Palestinians thrown off their lands in the various wars would be housed and compensated, perhaps not in the same places. Hamas and Co need to abandon the poisonous anti-semitism they've adopted too. They could learn to respect each other under a political system which treated everyone equally.

As to Paul Uppal: this piece exposes him yet again as a dishonest and third-rate thinker. Yet another reason to vote him out in 2015.

Meanwhile, I'm writing to ask him some questions. I'll let you know when/if there's a response.

How to solve one of the world's most intractable political problems in one short blog post

Obviously, it's impossible. But this week sees the possible request from the Palestinian people for recognition as a full state at the United Nations. 


Normally I steer clear of this one, not because there's too much heat and not enough light in these debates, but because nothing anyone says is ever likely to bring about a solution. However, I do strongly feel that the Palestinian people have been treated appallingly by Israel, Europe, Britain and the US. 


A quick recap: the Jews were a collection of tribes and eventually two states roughly where Israel is now. In the course of their long and eventful history, they discovered monotheism, which united most of the tribes. They were repeatedly invaded, exiled and returned. Then the Romans turned up and suppressed the Jews with a degree of success. A final rebellion particularly annoyed the Romans to the point at which they demolished the Temple and crushed the Jews. However, there were plenty of Jews in other parts of the Empire, not all of whom recognised the spiritual and political authority of those in Palestine. 


When the Jews were expelled from Jerusalem by the Romans, their non-Jewish cousins stuck around - many became Muslim a few hundred years later. This, of course, put them in line for repeated smitings by the Christians, who couldn't abide Jerusalem being a Muslim city (with some Jews and Christians, who seemed to have lived largely unmolested). All this despite the fact that the Christians are so fractious that a Muslim family has held the key to the Holy Sepulchre (built above the supposed site of Jesus' tomb) for 1,300 years because the various Christian sects trust them more than they trust each other.


But let's sprint forwards to the 19th-century. The Jews have been persecuted pretty relentlessly wherever they live: murdered and expelled from Britain (where they were made to  wear the Ten Commandments on their clothes in 1217) repeatedly, subject to murderous rampages all over Eastern Europe. A movement called Zionism appeared: the idea was that as God had promised them Israel, they should return there. Obviously this was music to the ears of Europe's anti-Semites, who saw it as a neat solution for getting rid of people they'd never accepted as a separate religious group, but understood as racially distinct (which the Jews also believed) and inferior. There was a Jewish movement which promoted integration, but it was soon drowned out, though some of the British, who occupied Palestine in the 20th-century, did wonder what would happen when the existing population was asked to accept an influx of immigrants claiming Divine Ownership of the land they'd lived in for thousands of years. But I guess that's what happens when God pokes his nose into demography. 


Anyway, the holocaust ended the debate. Europe certainly owed the Jews and the Zionists became the loudest voice representing them, so the seeds were sown for more generations of misery and conflict. The Palestinians (who 'don't exist', according to the American Christian right) split between secular political opposition and inflamed, bigoted hatred leading to antisemitism and a failure to distinguish between antisemitism and antizionism (much as Israel's political leaders and media cheerleaders scream antisemitism when anyone questions their military or political decisions) and the wars which attempted to strangle Israel at birth. 


So that's where we've left it. The Israelis have illegally occupied more and more of the Palestinians' land, grabbed the essential water supplies and have no intention of leaving. Sponsored, armed and funded by the US, there's no incentive on their behalf to agree a mutually respectable settlement. Most countries, concerned with not appearing antisemitic while keeping oil-rich Saudi Arabia sweet, have decided that turning the Palestinian territories into the world's largest concentration camp, is a small price to pay.


Which brings us to this week: the Palestinian bid to be recognised as a state. Are our political leaders going to discuss the case on its merits? 

Washington is keen to avoid carrying out a threat to veto a Palestinian request for full membership of the UN, a move likely to further damage America's already battered reputation in the Middle East, particularly following its strong backing for moves towards self-determination in the region this year. 

Israeli ministers have threatened retaliatory measures should the Palestinian bid succeed. They include tearing up the Oslo accords, under which the Palestinian Authority was given control of parts of the West Bank and Gaza, annexing the West Bank settlements and withholding tax revenues that Israel collects on behalf of the PA. The US Congress is also threatening to cut off financial aid to the Palestinians.

Strong-arm tactics as usual. Never mind the legitimate aspirations of a people imprisoned, prey to the propaganda of extremists… starve them into submission once more and put off normalising relations between Israel and its neighbours, Jews and Muslims for another generation. I guess what saddens me most, as someone with a little Jewish blood, is that Israel's treatment of the Palestinians echoes Christian nations' treatment of Jews: isolation, vilification, violence, suspicion, hatred and extermination. They say abused children are more likely to abuse others in turn - can it be the same for nations?

Encourage your MP to ask the UK government to vote for Palestinian recognition. Let's afford them the respect due to them as a people, and try once more for a settlement based on mutual respect and equal rights rather than the demands of realpolitik and political donations. It's time to stop treating the Palestinians as supplicants at a rich man's table, expecting them to be grateful for the crumbs we toss them. Treating them like this simply breeds hatred and resentment, and drives them into the arms of the fundamentalists who - like their Jewish equivalents - can never be persuaded of the need for agreement and peace, and who will always frame the argument as a zero-sum fight to the death. Rejecting the religious and racist discourses can only help: time to bring back the politics and ignore the sacred texts.

The middle-east's only democracy?

One of the claims Israel makes for itself is that it's the area's only functioning democracy. It's a dubious claim: military leaders habitually become politicians, large numbers of indigenous Palestinians can't vote, unlimited immigration (Jews only) makes sure that Zionist parties are always assured of the numbers, and parties fracture and merge like a kaleidoscope. But still - they have elections and the results are observed.

It turns out now, that the Israeli government and commentariat are far less keen on democracy than on their continued unchallenged and illegal annexation of Palestine. The government has ordered its ministers to keep silent about Egypt for fear of enraging the Egyptian people even further. Into the void steps the newspaper columnist. They don't like democracy, not one bit, because they know that Egyptians - for good or ill - don't like Israel. They'd much rather the Americans Imperium upheld the dictatorship:

One comment by Aviad Pohoryles in the daily Maariv was entitled "A Bullet in the Back from Uncle Sam". It accused Obama and his secretary of state Hillary Clinton of pursuing a naive, smug, and insular diplomacy heedless of the risks.

Who is advising them, he asked, "to fuel the mob raging in the streets of Egypt and to demand the head of the person who five minutes ago was the bold ally of the president ... an almost lone voice of sanity in a Middle East?"

"The politically correct diplomacy of American presidents throughout the generations ... is painfully naive."

I doubt the average inhabitant of an Egyptian torture chamber would describe Mubarak as the voice of sanity. 

Writing in Haaretz, Ari Shavit said Obama had betrayed "a moderate Egyptian president who remained loyal to the United States, promoted stability and encouraged moderation".

To win popular Arab opinion, Obama was risking America's status as a superpower and reliable ally.

"Throughout Asia, Africa and South America, leaders are now looking at what is going on between Washington and Cairo. Everyone grasps the message: "America's word is worthless ... America has lost it." 

Astonishing. Why on earth should the head of an independent state be 'loyal' to another state? Shouldn't, in fact, a government intend to win 'popular opinion'? 

Don't worry, I'm only being deliberately naive. In the real world, the US must continue as the Empire, never question Israel and never allow the desires of mere citizens interfere with realpolitik. Democracy is just something to drop on your enemies, not your puppets. 

Meanwhile, meet the new Vice-President of Egypt. What a nice man:

Suleiman took a personal interest in anyone suspected of links with Al Qaeda. As Habib had visited Afghanistan shortly before 9/11, he was under suspicion. Habib was repeatedly zapped with high-voltage electricity, immersed in water up to his nostrils, beaten, his fingers were broken and he was hung from metal hooks.

That treatment wasn't enough for Suleiman, so:

To loosen Habib's tongue, Suleiman ordered a guard to murder a gruesomely shackled Turkistan prisoner in front of Habib – and he did, with a vicious karate kick.

That'll show them

My miserable, selfish and untrustworthy Member of Parliament isn't the only victim of my fast typing.

I contacted the Department for Foreign Affairs (the Irish equivalent of the Foreign Office) last year to ask what they were doing about the Israelis forging Irish passports to use in assassinations.

Turns out, not a lot. They've told the Israelis that they're very naughty boys, and asked one diplomat to leave. Not even expelled.

Given the strong circumstantial evidence identified by the British investigation into the use of its passports in the same incident, which implicated the Israeli security services, the strong likelihood is that the counterfeit Irish passports concerned were manufactured or acquired by an agency of the State of Israel.

As the misuse of Irish passports by a State with which Ireland enjoys friendly, if sometimes, frank bilateral relations, is clearly unacceptable, a firm response was required. To this end, the Government decided that, by way of protest at its unacceptable action, that Israel be requested to withdraw a designated member of staff of its Embassy in Dublin. This demand has been acceded to by the Israeli government.    

Bet Mossad are quaking in their boots. They won't cross the Irish again. Oh no.

The minister also says that the biometric passports are perfectly secure. Oh yeah, and really?

Even stopped clocks tell the time correctly twice a day

You may have noticed that I think David Cameron is Tory Scum No. 1. I yield to no-one in my distaste for this overfed, arrogant, pompous child of privilege.

Yet he said two things today which I applaud.

"Humanitarian goods and people must flow in both directions. Gaza cannot and must not be allowed to remain a prison camp."

and

When I think about what Turkey has done to defend Europe as a Nato ally ... I believe it's just wrong to say Turkey can guard the camp but not be allowed to sit inside the tent."

Turkey's continued exclusion from the EU is a disgrace. There are huge challenges before that state should be allowed into the union - in particular, its army's repeated habit of deposing governments it doesn't like and the Kurds' repression - but Germany, France and other nations use these issues as a fig-leaf for simple anti-Islamism. This predates the recent troubles, and stems from the assumption that now-secular Europe is founded on broadly Christian principles. I don't know if this was once true, but it certainly shouldn't be now.

Turkey's hugely important strategically - bordering most of the countries the West has invaded over the past century or so, friendly with Iran and (increasingly less so) Israel - and ever more significant economically. Time to widen the borders.

This is just plain weird

This is a true story of Israeli soldiers on patrol in Occupied Hebron. They dance, then go back to aiming weapons at anyone in the area.

The eagle flies at midnight

I'm quite enjoying this Russian spy scandal. One of the set-pieces whenever these stories come around is the confected outrage expressed by the 'victims', in this case the US. It implies that such behaviour is beyond the moral pale, whereas every country does it, all the time. The US has spies in Russia, as does the UK, and Russia spies on both countries. They're all at it because they see each other as political and commercial rivals.

In the last decade, we have had two major expulsions of our spies in Moscow, who were caught on film red-handed trying to do exactly what the FBI caught the Murphys at. In one case, the British resident spymaster used a mentally unstable junior Russian diplomat, Platon Obukhov, to spy on his father, a former Soviet deputy foreign minister and one of the main negotiators of the intermediate nuclear forces treaty removing medium-range missiles from Europe.

The real hypocrisy is the self-righteousness expressed when they catch others at it.

Two aspects interest me. Firstly, these 'spies' seemed to do little more than gather gossip and publicly available information. So why are they being treated more harshly than the Israeli spies (and here, and here) in the US (and let's not forget Israel's repeated forgery of allied countries' passports, the kidnapping of Mordechai Vanunu from Italy and the sinking of the Rainbow Warrior). Rosen and Weismann were let off because the 'secrets' they disclosed (on US-Iran attitudes) weren't hugely secret - I assume these Russians will get off on the same grounds, and be expelled for immigration/passport offences.

The other thing that caught my eye was this delightful statement by a neighbour of one of these super-spies:

They couldn't have been spies," said Jessie Gugig. "Look what she did with the hydrangeas."

Free the Negev One

Mordechai Vanunu is an Israeli engineer who worked on Israel's illegal nuclear weapons programme. His conscience moved him to reveal the existence of the nuclear arsenal to the world, and he served 18 years, 11 in solitary confinement, after being lured from Britain to Italy and then kidnapped by the Israeli Secret Service, possibly acting on information received from the British intelligence service and disgraced mega-thief Robert Maxwell, who owned the Daily Mirror at the time.

After his release, the country which bills itself as the Middle East's only democracy restricted his freedom of movement, banned him from leaving the country and barred him from any contact with foreigners. Vanunu has now been returned to prison for this latter 'offence'. One of these foreigners was… his girlfriend.

He is now an Amnesty International prisoner of conscience. Please write to your Israeli Embassy requesting his release. Don't give them too many personal details or you'll find an assassin using your passport.

Update: What were the Israelis going to do with their nuclear weapon? (Apart from threaten their neighbours, of course). Why, sell it to Apartheid South Africa. What a charming bunch of people. 


In the end, Israel 'only' helped with nuclear technology for SA to build its own nukes (which it later renounced when the ANC took power) in return for uranium for its own weapons of mass destruction. Here's Gary Younge's view:

 Israel was South Africa's principal and most dependable arms dealer. As we learn elsewhere in the Guardian today, it even offered to sell the South African regime nuclear weapons.

"Throughout the 70s and 80s Israel had a deep, intimate and lucrative relationship with South Africa," explains Sasha Polakow-Suransky, author of The Unspoken Alliance: Israel's Secret Relationship With Apartheid South Africa. "Israel's arms supplies helped to prolong the apartheid regime's rule and to survive international sanctions."

Of course, there's no point complaining. Yes, the US has a law against funding countries with illegal WMDs, but realpolitik always, always, trumps morality and the law. Israel can do whatever it wants, to whomsoever it wants - witness the extremely muted UK, Irish and French response to the discovery that Israel used the passports of citizens for assassinations. Imagine the reaction if Iran did that…

How politics REALLY works

This obviously won't be a surprise to anyone over the age of 12, but still…

A former Bosnian President was arrested by British police and held at Heathrow yesterday, on foot of an arrest warrant for war crimes - originating from Serbia, which is pretty cheeky considering what actually happened in the Bosnian war (Serbs besieged Sarajevo, levelled it, murdered thousands of Bosnians in concentration camps such as Srebrenica). It's a petty attempt to harass a brave resistance leader.

Meanwhile, there are arrest warrants out for Israeli military and political leaders for their roles in the Gaza massacres of last year (and previous events), based on the independent United Nations report by Richard Goldstone (himself Jewish), which identified war crimes committed by both sides. Several of these figures have been to Britain. Are they arrested? No. In one case, somebody in the British government or security services tipped off Major General Doron Almog so that he remained on the plane and evaded arrest. The Israeli former Foreign Minister, Tzipi Livni, cancelled a trip to Britain when it 'emerged' that an arrest warrant awaited her - another tip-off. Following that embarrassment, British government ministers publicly started talking about changing the law to prevent suspects being arrested if they're important friends of the British government.

So this is how it works: Britain passes strong-looking laws about war crimes, corruption (especially see the BAe case) and the like, but then selectively applies them. Poor Eyup Ganic is thrown to the wolves because he's unimportant, while Israelis with a strong case to answer are quietly helped. It's called realpolitik.

007? Is that you?

A couple of weeks ago, a Hamas activist, Mahmoud al-Mabhouh was murdered in Dubai. Ah, I thought, the Israelis are up to their old tricks again - stringing out peace talks while assassinating their opposition. It was just one of those events which won't hit the front pages, because at least in the West, Israel can do what it likes. See also: Israel's nuclear bomb.

The story was on the news again last night - the assassins were all travelling under UK, Irish, French and (ironically) German passports. Either the governments of these countries tacitly allow this to happen, or passports aren't as secure as our leaders lead us to believe.

The story's got a real 70s ring about it - assassinations, fake identities, dark deeds in backward places. It isn't the behaviour of a modern and civilised country: it's the behaviour of a 1970s South American dictatorship, or the British state in Northern Ireland. It also displays Israel's total contempt for Arab nations: sending in hit squads and assuming that no investigation will follow.

Israel is closely allied with the UK, and is a puppet state of the US. We mustn't fall into the trap of imposing certain values on some states, while permitting our friends to behave as they like. Write to your foreign affairs ministers and demand an investigation.

Ya'alon ya way, son

Moshe Ya'alon, Israeli deputy prime minister, won't be having a slap-up feed in London after he was warned that a British judge may well issue an arrest warrant on war crimes charges if he got off the plane.

Both sides have committed war crimes over the past few years - but the Palestinians are already prisoners, whereas the Israelis are given carte blanche to kill hundreds and build as many nuclear weapons as they want.

Well done the British - it's an improvement on the last time, when the police tipped off a senior Israeli (is this legal?), leading to him staying on the plane until it went home. Let's treat all criminals equally - starting with Blair…

Godwin's law proved again

The US healthcare debate is becoming stunningly offensive. Thrill! As a woman shouts 'Heil Hitler' at an Israeli who points out that his former country has a good national health service, tells him that Obama hates Jews and Israel, and yells 'Boo Hoo' when he mentions the Holocaust. Thanks to Jadedj for the original post - he also has a clip of her claiming to live by 'biblical values'.

President Strangelove, I presume?

Just back from a swim (good job I have flexible work hours). Despite possessing the hydrodynamic qualities of a brick with an eating disorder, I managed my 40 lengths of backstroke in 27 minutes, so I'm feeling triumphant. And sick.

I see that everybody's jumping up and down about Ahmedinejad's re-election (if such it is). Plenty of people are screaming that Iranians shouldn't vote for a man hellbent on nuclear weapons. Er… isn't that what the UK has done every four years since 1950? That the US electorate has done since 1945? Etc. etc. I happen to be a CND member - and all the NPT-compliant states have signed a treaty committing them to abolishing nuclear weapons. Just as I do absolutely nothing to help, so do the big states. Worse than that, we allow India, Pakistan (mmm, stable relations), Israel and several other states to have them without any commitment to abolishing them.

What steps have we taken to abolish them in our own countries? Well, Obama's actually talking about reductions, but that's about it. The UK is about to spend £20-30 billion we don't actually have, on replacing Trident. Apparently, the ability to kill hundreds of millions of people in a few minutes isn't quite enough. We need more, bigger, missile to deal with… er… those pesky guerillas in Afghanistan. No, that isn't right. There's a definite threat from, well, someone, which can only be dealt with by turning entire cities to molten glass, whole civilisations to rubble, sterilising huge chunks of the earth's surface. It's just that I can't think of one right now.

Why shouldn't Iran have nuclear weapons? They're caught up in an insane race with Israel. The intellectual justification's very simple. It's all about having a huge, barely metaphorical penis. When Labour MPs and others objected to Britain pursuing a nuclear weapon in the 1940s, Aneurin Bevan, the British Foreign Secretary, clearly saw the ability to kill millions of people as a replacement for the British Empire, a justification for Britain remaining a powerful state rather than becoming a calm, civilised Scandinavian-style democracy: without nukes, he said, 'you will send a Foreign Secretary, whoever he may be, naked into the conference chamber'.

So there you have it. Without a nuclear weapon, Iran is another weird country holding the oil we all depend on. With it, they can negotiate on a slightly more equal footing. I know this is the politics of the madhouse, but we're all inmates…

Bald men fighting over a comb

That was fun. At a UN conference on racism, the racist president of Iran made a speech calling Israel racist - which seems fine to me, given Israel's treatment of the Palestinians within Gaza, the Occupied Territories and within its own borders. Then the racist countries of Germany (Holocaust, Turks), Britain (Empire, slavery, 'institutionally racist' police, mass ethnic minority unemployment), the United States (slavery, segregation, Jim Crow, 80% of black men with criminal records) walked out.

This is a matter of representation - does being vocally upset about particularly poisonous racism make up for structural, ongoing, silent racism? Are we meant to think that speeches are more important than the discrimination which ensures that our black boys leave school less qualified, less likely to find employment and more likely to go to prison with conviction for which white people don't? (It's the same for women, by the way: they are disproportionately imprisoned for crimes such as non-payment of TV licences and fines, for which men tend to receive non-custodial sentences). Naomi Klein makes the point in No Logo that worrying about representation of race has diverted the left from the clear real racial problems - the Ahmedinejad case demonstrates the effect of this kind of tokenism.

Brave satirical warriors

Like most people, I'm overjoyed to see the back of GWB (roll on the experience of being disappointed by someone meant to be on our side - like 1997 all over again), but I'm getting bored with spiteful digs at little Bush by institutions who've only just discovered their spines. I can understand the Guardian publishing its special insert on the Bush years because most of its writers were antiwar, but Radio 4's satirical condensed history of the presidency is a) not very funny and b) not especially brave, being broadcast on Radio Middle Class less than 48 hours before he leaves (I wonder how it fits into the BBC's 'balance' doctrine). It's an even more cowardly version of Israel's Bush going-away party, the one with all the fireworks and Palestinians sleeping it off in the streets. 

An argument isn't bold unless there's a possibility of disagreement. That's why American (and British) political speeches are so vacuous. 'I believe Insert Country Here is the greatest nation on earth' Wow. Radical stance. 

The death of journalism

'Joe the Plumber', the spectacularly uninformed McCain supporter and tax-delinquent who turned out not to be called Joe nor to be a qualified plumber, has become… a reporter. More specifically, Pajamas Media, an outfit set up by the usual range of skill-free, dyspeptic American who in earlier times would be parading round in pointy masks, voting for Senator Bilbo or shouting 'Ham and Eggs' but now have the keyboard skills to shout down all reasoned opinion, have sent him to Israel to add the world's stock of dispassionate and disinterested knowledge.

In a stunning debut, 'Joe' has berated the Israeli media for … er … not being patriotic enough. Joe, you're not Israeli. Israelis aren't American. You can't read Hebrew (unless that's what you picked up instead of plumbing certificates). You're not a journalist, or even an informed citizen. You're simply a symptom of mid-America's decision that they'd rather listen to an uninformed bozo they agree with than an informed one from a different class who might (though given the state of the American media, might not) actually know a little about the subject. Cognitive dissonance anybody?

More to the point: even the 'liberal' papers like Ha'aretz are supporting this war, stopping only to point out that shelling schools packed with refugee children isn't necessarily a top tactic in winning the peace. Never mind though. Tabloid journalism operates on the basis of never letting the facts get in the way of a good story. Web journalism of the kind practised by Pajamas Media tends to ignore the story (current score: 900+ dead Palestinians to 13 Israelis) altogether and grind out political points. That's my job: I'm not a journalist and 3 people read this. There is a place for citizen journalism, but drowning out professional investigation and howling down anyone you disagree with isn't what it should be for. 

Senator Bilbo might be a useful touchstone for the Blagojevich scandal: while a state senator in Mississippi he took a bribe to change sides in a vote on whom to send to the US Senate. Despite being impeached and described as 'unfit to serve' by his fellow senators, this was only the start of his career. While Lt. Governor he hid in a barn to evade a sub-poena, and removed the references to his unfitness from the record. He also opposed sending the National Guard to prevent a lynching on the basis that black people didn't merit protection, and won the state for Smith by claiming that Herbert Hoover had once danced with a black man. There's a great Pete Seeger song, 'Listen Mr. Bilbo' that skewers him good.

This just in: Israel bans Arab parties from contesting the election. So much for the claim that it's a democratic oasis in the desert.

The Clintstones

So it's true. Hillary went to see Obama in Chicago to discuss a job - perhaps as Secretary of State. It might be a good move - foreign politicians like HRC a lot more than the average American (some don't like her for wanting a civilised national health service, some don't like her for not managing to found a civilised national health service). Additionally, spending four years trying to bring peace between Israel and Palestine will put her off aspiring to higher office for ever. John Kerry and Bill Richardson want the job too. Kerry speaks French, which in any other country would be seen as a positive attribute…