For Israel, the stakes are rather higher

...Based on an amoral equivalence in such negotiations between aggressor and victim, the peace process has to be kept going at all costs if war is to be avoided. That means ignoring the fact that the aggressor in the dispute may still be violent or threatening. For if that is acknowledged, the "peace process" becomes something unconscionable: an enforced surrender to violence.

Melanie Phillips..
Wall Street Journal..
19 March '14..

The Middle East peace process seems all but doomed. Although U.S. President Barack Obama said he remained "convinced" it could still succeed when he met Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas this week, Secretary of State John Kerry has said trust between the Israelis and the Palestinians has reached a "nadir."

David Cameron visited Jerusalem and Bethlehem last week, his first visit to the Israel-Palestine region after four years as British Prime Minister. His government has kept the Middle East at arm's length. It is Secretary Kerry who has made all the running in this latest peace process, endlessly shuttling between the two sides.

Ostensibly, both the U.S. and the U.K. are urging both sides equally to take "tough political risks," as Mr. Obama put it, for peace. Alas, such exhortations seem to elicit merely disdain from both Jews and Arabs.

A poll by the Israel Democracy Institute and Tel Aviv University revealed last week that 64% of Israelis do not trust Mr. Kerry to treat Israel's security as a "crucial factor" in the framework peace proposal, while some 53% of Israeli Arabs don't trust him either.

Both the U.S. and Britain present themselves as Israel's candid friends. Israel doesn't quite see it like that.

For all his well-received remarks in the Knesset, where he declared his "unbreakable" belief in Israel and "rock solid" commitment to its security, Mr. Cameron's government is widely viewed there with suspicion. Last year, the U.K. played a key role in the EU's provocative decision to label goods made in the disputed territories, and even issued an explicit warning to British companies over the risks of doing business there—initiatives the Israelis regarded as gratuitous acts of aggression.

More important, there is also deep shock within Israel at what it sees as bullying by the U.S. When President Obama met Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu earlier this month, he issued a veiled threat that if Israel did not accept the Kerry framework, the U.S. would no longer defend Israel against its enemies at the U.N. and elsewhere. This followed Mr. Kerry's remark last year that if Israel stymied the peace process, it might soon be facing an international delegitimization campaign "on steroids."

In Israel, there is bewilderment that it alone is being held responsible for the absence of peace. After all, while Mr. Netanyahu has accepted the prospect of a Palestinian state alongside Israel, Mr. Abbas has said repeatedly that the Palestinians will never accept that Israel is a Jewish state.

He also continues to insist on the right of every Palestinian "refugee" to immigrate not just to Palestine but also to Israel, which would destroy it as the Jewish national home.

In addition, despite President Obama's statement this week that Mr. Abbas has "consistently renounced violence," the Palestinian Authority continues to incite hatred against Israel through its educational materials and regime-controlled media, and permits and glorifies acts of terrorism by the al Aqsa brigades and others.

Yet the U.S. and U.K. hold only Israel's feet to the fire. Why? An important part of the answer lies in the inherent nature of the "peace process" itself.

This rests on two premises. The first is the Western fallacy that everyone in the world is governed by reason and material self-interest, whereas in fact some have non-negotiable agendas. The second is the current liberal belief that trans-national instruments such as international law can transcend the grievances of nation states.

War thus becomes a primitive throwback. It must be replaced by conflict resolution, negotiation and the "peace process."

This then becomes a deeply problematic end in itself. Based on an amoral equivalence in such negotiations between aggressor and victim, the peace process has to be kept going at all costs if war is to be avoided.

Phillips - Cameron and Clegg give a free pass to racism

Melanie Phillips..
melaniephillips.com..
16 January '12..

The British Prime Minister David Cameron and his deputy Nick Clegg today met the Palestinian Authority ‘President’ Mahmoud Abbas on his visit to London. Cameron said that ‘time was running out’ for the two-state solution which was why the ‘settlement issue’, or ‘facts on the ground’, was so important. Clegg went further and condemned

‘continued settlement building in the strongest possible terms’

because

‘Once you've placed physical facts on the ground that make it impossible to deliver something that everyone has for years agreed is the ultimate destination [peace via a two-state solution] ... it is an act of deliberate vandalism to the basic premise on which negotiations have taken place for years and years and years. And that is why we have expressed our concerns as a government.’

Clegg should be condemned in the strongest possible terms for his support for racism. For he is supporting the ethnic cleansing of Jews from a future state of Palestine. Why does the expansion of Jewish housing in the suburbs of Jerusalem prevent a state of Palestine from being established? Only because Abbas and his cronies have said over and over again that not one Jew will be allowed to live in their state of Palestine.

That racist agenda is what Clegg and Cameron are supporting. They too assume that, by definition, wherever Jews are living cannot be subsumed into Palestine. Some 20 per cent of Israel’s population are Israeli Arabs. Why don’t Clegg and Cameron support the idea that there can be Palestinian Jews? Why do they not only agree that a future state of Palestine must be Judenrein but even blame Israel for ‘vandalism’ by failing to go along with that racist idea?

Phillips - Is Cameron about to vote for a unilateral Palestinian state?

Melanie Phillips
dailymail.co.uk
16 September '11


http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2037208/Is-Cameron-vote-unilateral-Palestinian-state.html

The impending UN General Assembly vote on the declaration of a Palestinian state has little to do with the establishment of anything that bears any relation to reality.

Such a state will be a Potemkin polity with no political coherence, fixed shape or legal legitimacy. The unilateral declaration is demonstrably an aggressive stunt and an act of purposeful hostility against Israel. One might indeed say that, if the GA votes in favour of this incendiary gesture, this will effectively be the GA’s declaration of war upon Israel.

There are very real fears that the declaration will be used as the pretext to ignite the Arab world into a fresh campaign of violence against Israel. Already, Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah party has urged mass marches in cities ahead of the UN vote. Few can have any confidence in the pro-forma calls for non-violent protests. Far from being a gesture towards peace, this declaration sounds the drumbeat for war.

Even if no violence occurs, this unilateral initiative rips up previous treaty undertakings made with Israel by the Palestinian Authority and obviates any possibility of a negotiated settlement of the Middle East impasse.

For that reason, the Obama administration has said it will veto the proposal in the Security Council. And so what will Britain do? Until now, its position has been one of studied refusal to say how it will vote. This coyness was briefly shattered last May by a crude threat made by Prime Minister David Cameron that if Israel didn’t engage in a ‘meaningful peace process with the Palestinians’ – an extraordinary thing to say in itself since it is the Palestinian Authority that is refusing point blank to talk to Israel, which has said it is ready to talk without preconditions -- the more likely it was that Britain would endorse the unilateral declaration of a state of Palestine.

Phillips - Cameron's dismissal of Israel

Melanie Phillips
thejc.com
09 September '11



http://www.thejc.com/comment-and-debate/columnists/54423/camerons-dismissal-israel

Government ministers might be concerned to know quite how often I am now accosted by strangers in public places.

These strangers are usually, although not always, Jews. They accost me on the Tube, at the theatre, in the supermarket, in restaurants and in the street. They all say the same thing: keep on saying it about Israel, keep on telling it as it is, don't ever give up.

What is happening to us? they murmur. It's unbelievable, astonishing, terrifying. The bias, the hatred, the lies. Where is it all going to end? And an increasing number say there's no longer any future for us Jews in Britain.

Almost every few days brings fresh examples of the Israel Derangement Syndrome that so disturbs and frightens them. Last week, anti-Israel hooligans disrupted a Promenade concert where the Israel Philharmonic was playing, causing the BBC to abort its live broadcast.

Last month, a St Andrews University student was convicted of racially abusing a Jewish postgraduate student over his support of Israel. And week in, week out, Israelis are blamed for defending themselves against mass murder.

Despite his ignorant rant, Alan Duncan is still in post.

By now, it must be obvious to all but the most supine or hostile to Israel within the UK Jewish community that what is happening is an evil uniquely targeted at the Jewish people.

For the demonisation of Israel is of a nature and type extended to no other country.

Phillips: An open letter to the Rt Hon David Cameron MP

Melanie Phillips
The Spectator
05 May '11


http://www.spectator.co.uk/melaniephillips/6921095/an-open-letter-to-the-rt-hon-david-cameron-mp.thtml

Dear Prime Minister,

I was interested to read that, when you met Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu this week, you said:

‘Britain is a good friend of Israel and our support for Israel and Israel's security is something I have described in the past, and will do so again, as unshakeable.’

I wonder, therefore, if you make a habit of threatening your friends? For you also said that unless Israel ‘engages seriously in a meaningful peace process’ with the Palestinian Authority, the more likely it is that Britain will endorse the ‘State of Palestine’ for which the PA is expected to seek recognition at the UN in September.

This is not the behaviour of a friend so much as the kind of intimidation that is more reminiscent of a Mafia protection racket.

First of all, you have incomprehensibly decided to pressurise the victim in this conflict to make peace with her aggressor, even though the victim is the one party that constantly tries to make peace while the aggressor does not. It is the PA which has refused to negotiate with Israel, not the other way round, on the spurious grounds that Israeli expansion of Jewish homes beyond the ‘Green Line’ is a bar to negotiations.

I wonder whether you might explain to both Britain and the Jewish people why you do not insist as a non-negotiable precondition that Mr Abbas ‘engages seriously in a meaningful peace process’ by unambiguously renouncing – in both English and Arabic – his repeated assertions that his people will never accept Israel as a Jewish state, the casus belli of the entire conflict?

The Two Faces of Dave – Cameron and political realities

Ray Cook
raymondcook.net
07 March '11

Anglo-Jewry should either be relieved at Prime Minister David Cameron’s recent paean of praise for Jewry and Israel when he addressed the Community Security Trust recently in London, or be confused. I subscribe to the latter opinion.

With me you have a prime minister whose belief in Israel is indestructible. And you have a prime minister who wants to build a strong and productive relationship with Israel….

I will always be a strong defender of the Jewish people. I will always be an advocate for the State of Israel

An advocate of the State of Israel is he?

This is the same Mr Cameron who, as I reported last year, said the following to a receptive Turkish audience:

“Humanitarian goods and people must flow in both directions. Gaza can not and must not be allowed to remain a prison camp,” he said.

By characterising Gaza as a prison camp Cameron was not being an ‘advocate for the State of Israel’; in fact, quite the opposite because he was using the very same language that Israel’s vilifiers and demonisers use.

(Read full "The Two Faces of Dave – Cameron and political realities")

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Finally, some sanity on European funding of Palestinian Arab terror

Arnold/Frimet Roth
This Ongoing War
01 March '11

http://thisongoingwar.blogspot.com/2011/03/1-mar-11-finally-some-sanity-on.html

From a major speech by the prime minister of the United Kingdom yesterday:

While it is not for us to dictate how each country should meet the aspirations of its people, we must not remain silent in our belief that freedom and the rule of law are what best guarantee human progress and economic success. Freedom of expression, a free press, freedom of assembly, the right to demonstrate peacefully: these are basic rights... They are not British or western values – but the values of human beings everywhere.

We need to take this opportunity to look again at our entire relationship with this region – at the billions of Euros of EU funds, at our trade relationship, at our cultural ties. We need to be much clearer and tougher in linking our development assistance to real progress in promoting more open and plural societies. And we need to dispense once and for all with the outdated notion that democracy has no place in the Arab world.

Too often in the past, we have made a false choice between so-called stability on the one hand and reform and openness on the other. As recent events have confirmed, denying people their basic rights does not preserve stability, rather the reverse.

Music to our ears! After decades of covert and overt channeling of torrents of cash into the hands of the terrorist leadership of the Palestinian Arabs - finally a British leader who understands what untold harm has followed from this patronizing and thoroughly irresponsible largesse on the part of Whitehall, of the British parliament and - most of all - of the faceless Brussels bureaucracy of the EU.

More than four years ago, we wrote here [6-Oct-06: Crying Poor: The Terror-Laden Rise and Rise of the Palestinian National Payroll] about the disgraceful deeds of Christopher Patten who presided over an official European Commission program of sending huge sums of money into the Arafat kleptocracy while denying eloquently out of both sides of his mouth that anything, Heaven forfend, might be wrong with any of this.

How pleasant to read today the words of the UK government's head beating his chest in regret. Too late to bring back to life the thousands of innocent Israelis (our fifteen year old daughter among them) murdered by jihadist thugs and terrorist gangs - payrolled by the ocean of European and British money handed off year after year to the PA and Hamas despite all the evidence of their evil.

Wait.

Did we just have an unfortunate misunderstanding? That speech yesterday by David Cameron - was it actually about Libya and not the Palestinian Arabs?

What a pity.

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Cameron doesn’t get it

Melanie Phillips
melaniephillips.com
27 February '11

http://www.melaniephillips.com/articles-new/?p=801

David Cameron’s claim that failure to arrive at a ‘two-state solution’ to the Arab-Israel impasse has caused terrorism and instability and helped excuse authoritarianism is surely a first for a British Prime Minister in its perversity and ignorance.

First, the current unrest convulsing the Arab and Muslim world demonstrates that the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians is actually irrelevant to the protesters’ concerns, which are about the enslavement imposed upon them by their own regimes.

And then he gets the relationship between the ‘peace process’ and terrorism the wrong way round. The failure of the two-state solution is not the cause of terrorism and tyranny; it is terrorism and tyranny that have caused the failure of the two-state solution.

A state of Palestine has been repeatedly offered - in 1936, 1947, 2000 and lastly under Ehud Olmert’s Israeli premiership. Every time, the Arabs refused and merely ratcheted up their terrorism, mass murder and war.

One might say it is that very proposal which is the most important reason for the unending nature of this conflict. This is because, instead of condemning and isolating those conducting the terror war against Israel, it rewards and thus incentivises them.

Which Cameron continued to do last week by supporting the Hizbollah-inspired UN resolution which falsely condemned as illegal Israeli building in the disputed territories.

Thus, while lecturing the Arab world on the importance of democracy and the rule of law, the Prime Minister actually hung the one democracy in the region out to dry while lining up behind the terrorist regime pledged to destroy it.

The list of grievances that supposedly fuels Islamist terrorism around the world is long. The Middle East conflict is certainly on that list - but what inspires those murderous instincts is not the absence of a state of Palestine but the continued existence of Israel.

Cameron has shown he fails to understand not just the dynamics of the region but the threat to the free world.

Jewish Chronicle, 24 February 2011

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William Hague – Israel’s Fairweather Friend – and Little Sir Echo from the Camel Corps: “We Will All Suffer if Israel Persists in this Present Course of Trying to Survive by Force of Arms”

Daphne Anson
09 February '11

The actress Joan Collins once cruelly said of William Hague that he looks like a foetus. None of us can help our looks, and we can’t all be pin-ups, let alone perennial pin-ups like Joan herself, so I’m going to be much kinder. I’m going to say that in matters of foreign policy the First in PPE from Oxford looks like a dunce. The flat-voiced Yorkshireman who joined Conservative Friends of Israel when still a schoolboy is, as Foreign Secretary, a “friend” to Israel of a very dodgy sort.

Just like the man he calls his boss, in fact. David Cameron, always keen, it appeared, to keep his part-Jewish ancestry firmly under wraps until, desperate for votes in what looked unexpectedly like a very close-run race, he revealed not quite the full extent of it to the Jewish Chronicle just before last May’s election, in what looked suspiciously like a cynical bid for votes, is neither the most trustworthy of Tory politicians nor one who carries empathy for Israel in his gut. Just look at the way he behaved over the Mavi Marmara affair – proclaiming in Turkey (which he’s determined to see admitted to the EU) that Gaza is an "open air prison" and denouncing Israel’s defensive, well-justified attack on the IHH terrorists aboard the flotilla (http://daphneanson.blogspot.com/2010/07/sick-man-of-europe-david-cameron-talks.html).

And now, with Israel – already imperilled by Iran, sliding ever nearer nuclear capability, by Hezbollah, and by Hamas – looking nervously upon the turmoil in Egypt, understandably deeply fearful that the 1979 Peace Treaty is under threat, Hague has the audacity to insist via “a blunt instruction” that Binyamin Netanyahu – the elected leader of a sovereign nation and an ally – “tone down” the rhetoric, as The Times reports in a big story on its front page today.

(Read full "William Hague – Israel’s Fairweather Friend ...")

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Hiroshima And Gaza

Daled Amos
06 August '10

No, no one is suggesting dropping an atom bomb on Gaza. The comparison comes from a different direction, as we commemorate the 65th anniversary of dropping the atom bomb on Hiroshima.

In Hiroshima, Obama, and Truman, Jonathan Tobin writes that there is nothing wrong with the fact that for the first time, an American representative has appeared in Japan to participate in the mourning of so many lives.

The problem lies in the short memories of the Japanese people:

the Japanese have never taken full responsibility for their own conduct during the war that the Hiroshima bombing helped end. Indeed, to listen to the Japanese, their involvement in the war sounds limited to the incineration of the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as well as the fire bombings of many other urban centers in the country, followed by a humiliating American occupation. The horror of the two nuclear bombs didn’t just wipe out two cities and force Japan’s government to finally bow to the inevitable and surrender. For 65 years it has served as a magic event that has erased from the collective memory of the Japanese people the vicious aggression and countless war crimes committed against not only the Allied powers but also the peoples of Asia who fell under their cruel rule in the 1930s and 1940s. The bombing of Hiroshima was horrible, but it ought not, as it has for all these years, to serve as an excuse for the Japanese people to forget the crimes their government and armed forces committed throughout their empire during the years that preceded the dropping of the first nuclear bomb.

Read full post

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Albion and Israel - In the Same Boat, or Running Aground

Daniel Greenfield
Sultan Knish
01 August '10

The British press is naturally outraged that Shimon Peres dared suggest that the British political establishment was pro-Arab and anti-Israel, and that MP's cowardly courted Muslim votes first. Peres has already been forced to apologize for his understatement. And an understatement it is, coming in the same week when British PM David Cameron visited Turkey, a Muslim country that has over 10,000 political prisoners, and continues to occupy Cyprus-- yet his only mention of human rights was to condemn Israel for defending itself against a Turkish provocation.

So first let's look at what Peres actually said, because everyone in the British press from the Daily Mail to the Telegraph, are paraphrasing what he said, rather quoting or than linking to the original interview.

Peres: Our next big problem is England. There are several million Muslim voters. And for many members of parliament, that’s the difference between getting elected and not getting elected. And in England there has always been something deeply pro-Arab, of course, not among all Englishmen, and anti-Israeli, in the establishment. They abstained in the [pro-Zionist] 1947 U.N. Partition Resolution, despite [issuing the pro-Zionist] Balfour Declaration [in 1917]. They maintained an arms embargo against us [in the 1950s]; they had a defense treaty with Jordan; they always worked against us.

Morris: But England changed after the 1940s and 1950s. They supported us in 1967, there was Harold Brown and Mrs. Thatcher [who were pro-Israeli].

Peres: There is also support for Israel today [on the British right].

There's more to it, but aside from Peres' quip about anti-semitism, this is the significant part. Yet there's absolutely nothing here that can be factually denied. MP's do cater to Muslim voters, even at the expense of Englishmen. If the British political establishment sells out its own people for Muslim favor, is it any surprise that it does the same to Israel?

The same British press that constantly bashes Israel has predictably tried to spin this as the President of Israel attacking England, as opposed to the England's political establishment. What Peres actually said, is that England panders to Muslims because of a large Muslim population, and that it has a history of opposing Israel. Again, both are unarguably true, and Peres' statements are a mild version of the story.

(Read full article)

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Dirty open secrets

Liat Collins
My Word/JPost
01 August '10

War is hell. It didn’t take WikiLeaks to tell us that. Nonetheless, the on-line publication of some 91,000 classified US military records – including previously unreported incidents of Afghan civilians killed by coalition forces, covert operations against Taliban terrorists and cooperation between Pakistan and the Taliban leadership – has put the spotlight on just how desperate warfare can be.

Dead children, slain guests at weddings, blown-up buses. Your heart has to go out to the Afghanis, who, as Robin Shepherd noted in an analysis in The Jerusalem Post last week, were “ordinary people going about their daily business who tragically found themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

All is fair in love and war, goes the saying from long, long before Israelis became familiar with the name Richard Goldstone.


But, of course, not everything goes. No decent person wants to think of soldiers – even accidentally – killing innocent farmers and kids. Just how to avoid such deaths when the Taliban, like their close allies in Gaza and Lebanon, deliberately use the civilian population as a human shield is not clear, however.

As Shepherd pointed out, the recent exposure that the Taliban has been using the same tactics as Hamas, with the same results, might boomerang on the British and other coalition countries who cheered the Goldstone report through the UN. No wonder the UK’s new prime minister, David Cameron, seems to be serious about changing the universal jurisdiction law. He is as likely to find himself in the dock as, say, Israel’s opposition leader and former foreign minister Tzipi Livni.

There is something ironic about a guerrilla war being waged simultaneously from hideouts in caves and in cyberspace. Israelis over the last few years have frequently sighed that wars are now fought as much in the virtual world as on the battlefield. The WikiLeaks exposure reinforces that idea.

While attention was focused primarily on the details of the reports, among the questions which should be asked are: Just who is waging the war via WikiLeaks and why? President Barack Obama said last week that the documents could endanger soldiers serving in Afghanistan. He’s right. But only up to a point. These documents weren’t published to describe the whereabouts of coalition forces or even their mode of operation (not much of a secret to the Taliban in any case). They are not even particularly up-to-date.

(Read full article)

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Cameron: Sychophant Or Ignorant?

Proud Zionist
01 August '10

Last week on his trip to Turkey, British Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron said in his specch:

"The Israeli attack on the Gaza flotilla was completely unacceptable... the situation in Gaza has to change. Humanitarian goods and people must flow in both directions. Gaza cannot and must not be allowed to remain a prison camp."

Whilst this may just be a severe case of sucking-up to his Islamist hosts, it is deeply disturbing that Cameron would even go to these lengths to delegitimise Israel in the Arab world.

First he portrays Israel as the "attackers" in the flotilla incident, completely ignoring the fact that the activists attacked first, and the soldiers had to fight back in self-defence only once their lives were in danger. Worse, Cameron condemns Israel's actions in the flotilla, whilst not addressing the links between the Turkish PM Erdogan and his government, and the radical Islamic Turkish "charity", the IHH, whose members were the main cause of violence on the Mavi Marmara. Nor did he mention the links between the activists and terrorism. Or question the "moderate"* Erdogan's support for a flotilla of terrorists whose sole aim was to breach Israel's security blockade and lynch Israeli soldiers or die trying. (*Erdogan has also praised the Sudanese President and war-criminal Omar al-Bashir, which the Guardian seems to like).

(Read full post)

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Cameron's Flotilla Folly

Aaron Goldstein
American Spectator
29 July '10
Posted before Shabbat

If there was any doubt as to where Britain's Tory led government stood with regard to Israel it was removed when Prime Minister David Cameron paid a visit to Turkey to hold talks with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and announce his support for Turkey's bid to enter to the European Union. During this same visit, Cameron also described the Gaza Strip as "a prison camp."

It was a rather daft observation on the part of Cameron, especially when one considers the luxurious mall opened earlier this month in Gaza. This isn't to say that life in Gaza is all strawberries and cream. But that Cameron would pillory Israel while holding the Hamas-run government blameless in this state of affairs is very telling indeed.

By simultaneously describing Gaza as a prison camp on and endorsing Turkish entry into the EU while on Turkish soil, Cameron effectively endorsed Turkey's efforts to break Israel's blockade on Gaza through the flotilla campaign. In so doing, Cameron has for all intents and purposes declared that Israel has no right to defend itself. "The Israeli attack on the Gaza flotilla was completely unacceptable," said Cameron.

To borrow an English term, Cameron's statement is absolute bollocks. For Cameron to suggest that Israel wantonly launched an unprovoked attack the Mavi Marmara on May 31, 2010 is an act of defamation. IDF forces instructed the Mavi Marmara to dock in the port of Ashdod where goods would be inspected and any humanitarian supplies would be sent to Gaza through a convoy of trucks. The Mavi Marmara told the IDF to "Go back to Auschwitz."

(Read full article)

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Hypocrisy’s finest hour

Op-ed: Revelations of West’s crimes in Afghanistan highlight anti-Israel hypocrisy


Shaul Rosenfeld
Israel Opinion/Ynet
30 July '10
Posted before Shabbat

In an interview with PBS earlier this year, Richard Goldstone was quite amazed by a question regarding the suspicion that he and others may, heaven forbid, adopt a double standard in respect to Israel, compared to their attitude to other states, such as the US for example.

Such claims were looked into, Goldstone said without batting an eyelid, adding that the US adopted far-reaching steps in order to protect innocent civilians in Iraq. He further noted that as opposed to Israel's war crimes and vengeful policy in Operation Cast Lead, the Americans made sure to protect innocent civilians, while apologizing in cases where they erred, for example in Kosovo, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

Indeed, why the hell should the “bold apartheid objector” (who, as we may recall, happened to enforce racist laws in the past and send dozens of blacks to the gallows) care about some insignificant, trivialities? For example, the fact that during Operation Just Cause in December 1989, US troops in Panama killed 300 to 1,000 civilians; or that in October 1993, a UN force (mostly comprising US units) killed more than 500 Somali civilians, while “carrying out an operation,” of course.”

Elsewhere, 460 to 2,000 civilians were killed during NATO bombings in Kosovo in 1999; in December 2004, in a campaign against Islamist forces in Iraq’s Fallujah, the Americans killed more than 6,000 civilians and obliterated about 10,000 civilian homes. Yet those who determine Israel’s guilt in advance have no use for such humdrum information.

(Read full article)

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How Not to Conduct Diplomacy: A Case Study: UK PM in Turkey

Barry Rubin
The Rubin Report
29 July '10

British Prime Minister David Cameron’s July 27 speech in Turkey will not live on in history. But it should, as an example of the decline of Western diplomacy, of suicide by Political Correctness, as a textbook example of how not to conduct international affairs.

It crossed my mind that the speech was written by the Foreign Office for the express purpose of making Cameron look foolish, but then I realized that he and his top advisors probably have no idea why it was such a disaster.

Suppose you are the British prime minister going to Turkey, or to just about any country, what should you say? The theme should be: We can cooperate and do mutually beneficial things. Here’s what I can do for you, here’s what I’d like you to do for me. And here’s what you must not do in order to reap the benefits of my friendship and favor.

Obviously, you need to dress that up in appropriate language. But everything should be conditional. The message to be delivered is that it is in your interest to respect my interests.

Cameron did the precise and exact opposite. His message was: The UK needs Turkey. Turkey is wonderful. Its behavior has been perfect. We are desperate or your help.

What is the effect? A man goes into a bazaar, points to a carpet and says: That is the most beautiful carpet I have ever seen. I must have it no matter what the price! How much is it?

In addition, Cameron committed some other howling mistakes, several of which will amaze you. So please stick with me as I explain and document this. You won’t be disappointed. And remember this is not just a matter of one speech, it is a fitting symbol for the entire contemporary Western diplomatic approach to the Middle East and much more to the world as well. By the way, it is doomed to fail miserably.

Before we begin, remember that this is no longer the old Turkish Republic. Cameron is lavishing praise on an Islamist-oriented regime which has aligned itself with Iran and revolutionary Islamist groups. And all of Cameron’s pandering, as if he were a Western barbarian in the court of the all-powerful Ottoman sultan, is driving a knife into the heart of a Turkish opposition which is genuinely friendly toward the West and horrified by the current regime’s subversion of Turkish democracy.

(Read full article)

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Cameron's Despicable Toadying to Turkey

Daniel Friedman
Sultan Knish
28 July '10

It is sadly unsurprising that Prime Minister Cameron's highly publicized trip to Turkey went with no mention of that country's continued denial of the Armenian Genocide, and its suppression of Kurdish and Armenian minorities. Indeed when Turkish leader Erdogan discussed his threats of ethnically cleansing Armenians in the UK, Gordon Brown made no more comment on the matter than if Erdogan had been discussing his favorite television programs.

It is in keeping with that conspiracy of silence, that Cameron made no mention of the thousands of political prisoners in Turkish jails, there often for merely expressing an opinion at odds with the state, for singing a folk song, or delivering an official speech in Kurdish. Naturally Cameron did not think to raise the issue of Leyla Zana, the first Kurdish woman elected to the Turkish parliament and a winner of the Sakharov Prize, who is still in jail today. Cameron could have at least raised the subject of Aysel Tuğluk, a member of the Turkish Human Rights Association, who was illegally stripped of her parliamentary immunity and sent to jail for handing out leaflets in the Kurdish language, and is now due to be sent to jail yet again.

But rather than standing up for human rights, Cameron instead pandered to the radical Islamists who were his hosts, by feeding their appetite for hate directed at Israel. And it did not begin or end with Israel.

Instead Cameron sold out the rest of Europe, declaring that he was "angry" at how long the negotiations to bring Turkey into the EU were taking, and declaring himself the "strongest possible advocate for EU membership". He slammed France and implicitly Germany, for refusing to rush forward to support bringing Turkey into the EU. Cameron sided with Turkey, over France and Germany, betraying allies for enemies. And worse was yet to come.

Not only did Cameron ignore Turkey's ongoing occupation of Cyprus, but he signed a strategic agreement with Turkey that calls for ending the "isolation" of the Turkish Cypriots by upholding their "right to representation" in the European Parliament, and promoting political and cultural contacts with the Turkish Cypriots. What that means is that Cameron committed himself to supporting Dervis Eroglu from the radical National Unity Party, which calls for Turkish annexation of occupied Cyprus. The strategic agreement signed by Cameron, moves the UK closer to recognizing the Turkish occupation of Cyprus, which currently only Turkey itself recognizes.

Again Cameron makes no criticism whatsoever of Turkey's illegal occupation of Cyprus. He does not mention the fact that he signed an agreement promoting the flow of goods from occupied Cyprus to the UK, while Turkey refuses to accept goods from Greek Cyprus. Of course not. No more than his predecessor was willing to.

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Gaza: Open Air Prison?

David Frankfurter
livejournal.com
28 July '10

British Prime Minister, David Cameron, exploited his visit to Turkey to curry favour with his hosts, using Palestinian propaganda hype, saying that Israel’s blockade turned the Gaza strip into a “prison camp”.

Every last Israeli left Gaza long before Hamas' bloody take-over. Closing the borders and even war has not stopped the incessant rockets and terrorist attacks on Israeli citizens and border checkpoints. More than 30 terrorist attacks come out of Gaza each month.

Applying international law, Israel inspects the constant flow of goods through its borders into Gaza, in an attempt to exclude war material. Propagandists (and it seems European politicians) conveniently ignore the rules of war and international law, and claim these actions to be a form of occupation. They declare that Israel ruthlessly keeps Gazans in poverty.

Visiting international politicians and aid agency representatives are taken to view the deliberately unrepaired damage of the war Hamas provoked. Poverty stricken areas, including families living in plastic tents since their houses were destroyed in the war, are all on the carefully pre-arranged agenda. Israel is obligingly condemned. And more western tax payer money is pledged to the highest ever per capita aid program.

Although of little interest to the mainstream media, Gazan "poverty" is strongly questioned in the blogosphere. No accumulation of facts seems to be able to stop the constant flow of lies, cynically manipulated into very effective anti-Israel (and often anti-Semitic) propaganda.

Even the Palestinian media reports a very different picture. There is an abundance of both basic and luxury goods. It is not clear if it comes via the Egyptian border, underground tunnels, or the thousands of trucks that the Israelis officially allow to stream through their border crossings. But the fact is that there is plenty, and often at very attractive prices.

Ordinary Palestinian citizens say that there is enough to go around - but the Hamas apparatchiks steal it.

And what of building materials to house those wretched families? Somehow, they don't seem to rank in the Hamas list of priorities. A brand new shopping mall replete with luxury goods, a luxury hotel, a fancy restaurant, an olympic size pool and a fancy jail to lock up prisoners accused of crimes such as "passing information to the Palestinian Authority" all make it into the list of latest completed projects, though.

Electricity shortages? Also an internal problem. Seems that Hamas collects electricity bills from the end user & then steals the money - expecting the Palestinian Authority and international donors to pay the Israeli suppliers. When the suppliers want their overdue money before providing more goods, who do you guess is blamed?

But those wretched Palestinians are suffering. Then again, life expectancy, infant mortality, and even cell phone penetration statistics show Gaza to be better off than other Muslim countries – and in many cases better than most places on earth!

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Those who have visited Gaza know it is far from a prison

Stephanie Gutmannn
telegraph.co.uk
28 July '10

Sure, I wouldn’t want to live in the Gaza Strip. At a minimum, I wouldn’t like to have thuggish guys in chequered burnooses telling me what parts of my body I can display, when I can laugh, and whether I can leave home with a man who’s not my husband. But using the term “prison camp” while in the presence of the Turkish leader Tayyip Erodogan (who many consider an Islamist) was craven sucking up on the part of David Cameron yesterday. And after his relatively ballsy press conference last week with President Obama I’m disappointed in him.

How many prison camps have swanky restaurants? (Check out the website for The Roots here.) How many have malls offering brands like Lacoste and Adidas? How many are filled with outdoor cafes? True, women are no longer allowed to enjoy water pipes in those cafes along with the men, as part of Hamas’s ongoing clampdown on women, but still.

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Weep for Britain: 1940 this is not

Melanie Phillips
The Spectator
27 July '10

When David Cameron became Britain’s Prime Minister, I warned that he would turn out to be even worse than Labour on the related issues of Israel and the global threat from Islamism to Britain and the west. This was because Cameron had no knowledge of or interest in foreign affairs, and so was always likely merely to reflect the most politically expedient views he encountered – which, given the current poisonous attitude within the British establishment and intelligentsia, were likely to push him into appeasing Britain’s mortal enemies in the Islamic world and dumping on Israel, Britain’s strategic ally in that great struggle.

But even I did not foresee just how cynical Cameron would turn out to be -- and how dangerous therefore to the British national interest. Today’s truly shocking and quite astoundingly stupid speech in Turkey has now laid bare the fathomless shallowness and frightening ignorance and idiocy of Britain’s new Prime Minister.

Declaring himself a fervent supporter of Turkey’s bid to join the EU, Cameron declared that those who opposed this bid fell into one of three categories: protectionists; those who believed wrongly in a ‘clash of civilisations’ between east and west, whereas in fact

Turkey can be a great unifier, because instead of choosing between East and West, Turkey has chosen both;

or

those who wilfully misunderstand Islam

because they

... see no difference between real Islam and the distorted version peddled by the extremists.

Astonishingly, Cameron thus totally ignored the fact that Turkey’s Prime Minister, Recep Erdogan, is no secular Ataturk but an Islamic extremist; and as a result Turkey is changing from a secular state and strategic ally of the west into an Islamist tyranny and a new strategic enemy of the west.

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