Daphne Anson: Israel and Syria

Eretz Israel is our unforgettable historic homeland...The Jews who will it shall achieve their State...And whatever we attempt there for our own benefit will redound mightily and beneficially to the good of all mankind. (Theodor Herzl, DerJudenstaat, 1896)

We offer peace and amity to all the neighbouring states and their peoples, and invite them to cooperate with the independent Jewish nation for the common good of all. The State of Israel is ready to contribute its full share to the peaceful progress and development of the Middle East. (From Proclamation of the State of Israel, 5 Iyar 5708; 14 May 1948)

With a liberal democratic political system operating under the rule of law, a flourishing market economy producing technological innovation to the benefit of the wider world, and a population as educated and cultured as anywhere in Europe or North America, Israel is a normal Western country with a right to be treated as such in the community of nations.... For the global jihad, Israel may be the first objective. But it will not be the last. (Friends of Israel Initiative)

Showing posts with label Israel and Syria. Show all posts

Sunday, 29 September 2013

Israel Invited To Help Destroy Chemical Weapons In Syria: David Singer reflects

Here is the latest article by Sydney lawyer and international affairs analyst David Singer. It's entitled "Israel Invited to Help Destroy Chemical Weapons in Syria,"

Writes David Singer:

'The passage of Security Council Resolution 2118 (2013) on 27 September calling for the collection and destruction of Syria's chemical weapons is a welcome breakthrough in ending the deadlock that has paralysed the Security Council's ability to act constructively to end the civil war in Syria for the past thirty months.

It also signifies that diplomacy United Nations style is indeed the art of the possible – aimed at finding the lowest common denominators shared by the five permanent members of the Security Council.

Whilst a protocol has been put in place to destroy Syria's chemical weapons, the Resolution also offers something of substance to prevent anti-Assad forces using chemical weapons in Syria and to committing the United Nations to search for and locate any such chemical weapons.

Russia has maintained anti-Assad forces used the sarin gas that resulted in the deaths of 1429 civilians on 21 August – but has been unable to conclusively substantiate that claim.

America has made it clear that it considers Syria responsible for the atrocity – as President Obama again made abundantly clear in his address to the General Assembly on 24 September:

"The evidence is overwhelming that the Assad regime used such weapons on August 21st. U.N. inspectors gave a clear accounting that advanced rockets fired large quantities of sarin gas at civilians. These rockets were fired from a regime-controlled neighborhood and landed in opposition neighborhoods.

It’s an insult to human reason and to the legitimacy of this institution to suggest that anyone other than the regime carried out this attack."

President Obama has certainly not done his own credibility any good by continuing to publicly castigate Syria – asserting it is an insult to human reason and the legitimacy of the United Nations for anyone to think otherwise – but then immediately agreeing to Resolution 2118 three days later without any mention of Syria's culpability.

Yet Russia and America have managed to agree on inserting the following mechanism in Resolution 2118 to try and find out whether the anti-Assad forces were indeed the culprits.

"Decides that Member States shall inform immediately the Security Council of any violation of resolution 1540 (2004), including acquisition by non-State actors of chemical weapons, their means of delivery and related materials in order to take necessary measures therefore; "

The United Nations Security Council unanimously adopted Resolution 1540 (2004) under Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter on 28 April 2004 – which affirmed that the proliferation of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and their means of delivery constituted a threat to international peace and security. The resolution obliged States to refrain from supporting by any means non-State actors from developing, acquiring, manufacturing, possessing, transporting, transferring or using nuclear, chemical or biological weapons and their delivery systems.

The idea that any member state violating Resolution 1540 would now immediately notify the Security Council and incriminate itself is laughable.

However Resolution 2118 contains three further obligations:

(1) In underscoring:

" that no party in Syria should use, develop, produce, acquire, stockpile, retain, or transfer chemical weapons";

(2) In reaffirming:

“that all Member States shall refrain from providing any form of support to non-State actors that attempt to develop, acquire, manufacture, possess, transport, transfer or use nuclear, chemical or biological weapons and their means of delivery, and calls upon all Member States, in particular Member States neighbouring the Syrian Arab Republic, to report any violations of this paragraph to the Security Council immediately";

(3) Demanding that:

“non-State actors not develop, acquire, manufacture, possess, transport, transfer or use nuclear, chemical or biological weapons and their means of delivery, and calls upon all Member States, in particular Member States neighbouring the Syrian Arab Republic, to report any actions inconsistent with this paragraph to the Security Council immediately";

Singling out all member States neighbouring the Syrian Arab Republic to report any such activities by non-State actors in Syria is particularly intriguing.

There are eleven UN member states – known as the London Eleven – providing military and financial aid to the Syrian Free Army. Six of these States are Syria's neighbours – Turkey, Egypt, Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and UIA Emirates.

Are any of them aware that the Syrian Free Army has acquired chemical weapons? If so – they are unlikely to disclose their information and consequently be forced to withhold further aid - besides explaining why they continued supporting the Syrian Free Army knowing they held chemical weapons.

However, one of Syria's most immediate neighbours – Israel – is not a member of the London Eleven and is vitally interested in the Security Council taking steps to collect and destroy such weapons.

Resolution 2118 requires Israel to disclose to the Security Council any information it holds on chemical weapons acquired by any anti-Assad forces in Syria. Israel is widely assumed to have extensive knowledge of the existence of such chemical weapons in Syria.

Israel can deny it has any information – but risks being in breach of Resolution 2118 if information in its possession is subsequently revealed.

Russia has cleverly forced the Security Council to determine the truth of Russia's claim – whilst any evidence supplied by Russia and Israel will be critical in collecting and destroying those chemical weapons.

The impotence of the Security Council in ending non-State actors using chemical weapons in Syria has been brilliantly circumvented by this latest Resolution.

Such is the way convenient marriages are made in the Security Council.'

Tuesday, 3 September 2013

Barrett's Blood Libel: How Low A Churchman?

As is well known, between 1348 and 1350, perhaps half of Europe's population perished in the terrible pandemic known as the Black Death, which entered Britain through the Dorsetshire port of Weymouth in 1349, proceeding to spread through the country with all the deadly and demographic effects that it wrought on the Continent.

It's also well-known that, searching for an explanation for the then inexplicable Black Death, fourteenth-century minds selected scapegoats, and that the group primarily blamed for the Black Death were the Jews, who were assumed to have poisoned the wells.

In the insanity that ensued, innumerable Jewish communities were destroyed, and tens of thousands of Jews suffered horrible deaths. (There is a good summary of events here)

Skip to our own supposedly enlightened time, many centuries and several other devastating scapegoatings of Jews later, including the worst tragedy in Jewish history, and we find this loathsome article appearing on the website of Iran's Press TV.

Reminiscent of a Jew-baiter through the ages, including those benighted medieval folk who blamed the Jews of Europe for the Black Death, its author blames the Jews of Israel for the recent chemical attack on Syrians:

".... The chemical weapons attack in Damascus was obviously a Zionist ploy to drag the US deeper into the Syrian conflict. The Israelis, the world's grand masters at the game of false-flag terrorism, had the means, motive, and opportunity....

But now, a growing number of people around the world are rejecting the official story of 9/11. The inevitable exposure of the truth about 9/11 is a slow-motion earthquake that will bring down the US and Zionist empires.

So the Zionists are taking another massive gamble. They are hoping that leading the world to the brink of World War III - and possibly over the brink - will save their doomed “Greater Israel” project. A huge war would give the Zionists an excuse to expel non-Jews from historic Palestine, complete the ethnic cleansing that has been ongoing since 1948, and defuse the “demographic bomb.” And since the Zionists and their American stooges are losing relative strength each year, the hard-liners want to fight the big war now, while they think they still have an advantage.

The Syrian chemical false-flag appears to be Israel's biggest escalation of the “clash of civilizations” since 9/11. This time, the world must expose the truth rapidly, or risk the destruction of not just millions, but even tens or hundreds of millions of lives."

The author of the above blood libel in modern dress is an American "Arabist-Islamologist" called Dr Kevin Barrett, author of Truth Jihad: My Epic Struggle Against the 9/11 Big Lie (2007) and Questioning the War on Terror: A Primer for Obama Voters (2009) who (hat tip: reader Ian) received a derisory share of the vote when he ran for Congress in 2008 and has claimed that the Boston Bombing was an Israeli plot.

What is surely very shocking is that (hat tip: Jonathan Hoffman: "Linked to by Stephen Sizer on FB. Of course.") the (avowedly non-antisemitic) Rev Dr Stephen Sizer was apparently low enough to link, on Facebook, to Barrett's disgustingly antisemitic article.

It would be pleasing to think that the Israel-obsessed Rev Sizer has realised that in promoting the ramblings of a man like Barrett he has truly scraped the bottom of the barrel and will remove/has removed the link.
[Update: Rev Sizer has now withdrawn the link h/t Anon; see Comments below]

As for all Christian clerical foes of Israel, they should take a look at this video, and reflect.

Monday, 13 May 2013

John Bolton On Israeli Airstrikes On Syria (video)

Here's America's former ambassador to the UN, who's now senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute:

(I'm still modem-less, thanks to a dodgy phone outlet at the new place, but hope to be back to normal soon!)

Monday, 6 June 2011

Mark Regev Regarding Yesterday's Syrian Border Incident (video)

He was absolutely top-class yesterday on the BBC, pointing out what was not reported - that Molotov cocktails were being hurled at Israeli troops, and that Israel and Syria are still officially in a state of war - and here he is on Al-Jazeera:

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'For as long as these antisemites wrap themselves up in the Palestinian flag, too many people are willing to turn a blind eye. Only against Jews is this type of racism openly tolerated. It is flourishing in schools, colleges, universities, unions and in city councils. In fact, so rampant is the disease now, in some settings you can be ostracised if you do not partake in the frenzy yourself. Bashing Jews has becomes a trendy position for the ignorant social justice warrior. "Palestinianism" is a viral "ponzi scheme" and as it spreads, it carries antisemitism in the undergrowth.' David Collier (2017)

'This new rise in antisemitism, which I had thought long dead, was not shaven-headed white imbeciles from the far right. It was Muslims, a large chunk of it.... Suddenly I grasped that the British far left didn’t want people to know about antisemitism because it pointed the finger at people they really, really liked. From that moment on, it all fell into place.... Time and again the same tropes emerged, the same sort of stuff that Streicher and Goebbels would have commended – and uttered.... And from that a whole bunch of other stuff emerged: the old blood libel business (a favourite of the repulsive Jenny Tonge).... Nice, avuncular, Jeremy Corbyn, with his peace badges, happily laying a wreath at the graveside of Palestinian terrorists who murdered innocent Jewish athletes, oh, and much much more.... It is the same antisemitism, exactly the same: the obsession with Israel to the exclusion of everything else, the conspiracy theory paranoias, the derangement.... Here’s the test – if you cannot see the flagrant racism in the BDS movement, and if you are obsessed with the perfidy of the Middle East’s only democracy to the exclusion of all else, you are an antisemite. That means a good proportion of the Labour Party, including the leader, and almost all of Momentum: no brown shirts, no marching bands, but the same old filth, dressed in the clothes of a polytechnic geography lecturer.'
Rod Liddle (2018)

'Before the June 1967 Six Day War, there were no such things as "settlements". Palestinians were trying to destroy and displace Israel anyhow. The core problem is not, and never was, "settlements," but the right of Israel (or any non-Muslim nation) to exist inside any borders in that part of the world.
If you take a stand that is based on a lie, then that stand cannot succeed. If you try to oppose antisemitism but pretend it is the same thing as "Islamophobia," then the structure on which you have made your stand will totter and all your aspirations will fail. If you try to make a stand based on the idea that settlement construction rather than the intransigence of the Palestinians to the existence of a Jewish state is what is holding up a peace deal, then facts will keep on intruding.' Douglas Murray (31 December 2016)
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/9685/britain-little-lies

'Islamophobia does NOT come from the same wellspring of hatred as antisemitism. Antisemitism is a true prejudice because the hatred and demonisation it promotes derive entirely from lies and a repudiation of rationality itself.
Islamophobia is a false allegation of prejudice which is deployed to silence rational criticism based on actual facts about attitudes and practices within the Islamic world.
[L]ethally compromised even-handedness is to misunderstand, and thus minimise, antisemitic attitudes and behaviour while shutting down legitimate and necessary discussion of the threat from the Islamic world – even to demonise as “Islamophobic” anyone who draws attention to the extent and consequences of Muslim antisemitism.' Melanie Phillips (14 December 2016)

Jews have re-assumed the role of the canary in the mine and are the first to be targeted, but the world would face the same threat if Jews did not exist. Israel has been at the front lines confronting Islamic extremism but has received scant support... For Jews, the writing has been on the wall for a long time. The virulence of the antisemitic hatred closing in on Jews in Europe (and elsewhere) is horrifying...
Europe is today facing a crisis as serious as the confrontation with Nazism. If Western leaders continue behaving like Chamberlain and fail to stand up to this global threat, it could usher in a new Dark Age in which the Judeo-Christian culture is subsumed by primitive barbarism. The writing is on the wall Isi Leibler (12 January 2015)

Expose The Lies!

There is a war of lies and deceit on the internet generating unbelievable hate by denigrating and delegitimising the legal rights conferred on the Jewish people by the League of Nations in 1922 and the United Nations in 1945. The idea that there are two narratives on the Arab-Jewish conflict is rubbish. There is only one – the factual truth that details the return of the Jewish people to reconstitute the Jewish National Home in its ancient biblical, ancestral and historic homeland after 3500 years of dispersion with the unanimous endorsement of the nation states then comprising the League of Nations.... Generals can’t fight a war without soldiers. Jews around the world need to join the fight or vacate the internet to the Jew-haters and their lies that repeated often enough eventually become accepted as truth. David Singer (2016)

The "Apartheid" Slur

The division of Judea and Samaria (West Bank) into three separate areas “A”, “B” and “C” was agreed on by Israel and the PLO pursuant to the Oslo Accords.
95% of the West Bank Arabs live in Areas A and B and their daily lives are under the total administration and control of the PLO since the Palestinian Authority was disbanded by Abbas in January 2013. The PLO has total security control in A and shares security control in B with Israel. Israel has total administrative and security control in C.
Israel is entitled to and will continue to take responsibility for the security of Jews living in the West Bank.
Jews were given the legal right to settle in the West Bank under article 6 of the Mandate for Palestine and article 80 of the UN Charter. They did so for decades until they were driven out in 1947 and not able to return there until 1967.
There are Arab roads only in the West Bank that Jews are not allowed to use. Jews are also forbidden from entering Area “A”. Selling land to Jews is forbidden by the PLO under pain of death. The PLO runs the daily lives of 95% of the West Bank Arabs and Hamas runs the daily lives of 100% of the Gazan Arabs. They have been under occupation – and subjugation – by these two evil groups for the last ten years and given no say in their future or any opportunity to elect others to lead them following the disastrous political decisions of their leaders over the past ten years. Hamas and the PLO do not accept the continued existence of a Jewish State and call for its disappearance.
The narratives did not begin in 1948 – they began in about 1917. How do you make peace with an enemy that has been obsessed with not recognising any Jewish national rights in former Palestine for the last 100 years? David Singer (2016)

The Jews of the Holy Land ... are surrounded by hostile states 650 times their territory and sixty times their population. Yet their last, best hope of ending two millennia of international persecution - the State of Israel - has somehow survived. When, during the Second World War, the island of Malta came through three terrible years of bombardment and destruction, it was rightly awarded the George Cross for bravery. Today, Israel should be awarded a similar decoration for defending democracy, tolerance and Western values against a murderous onslaught that has lasted twenty times as long. Andrew Roberts (historian)

Israel is understandably obsessed with security, but its greatest security lies ultimately not in the Israeli Defence Forces, but in political warfare.... Most of the world is not deeply interested in what happens in Israel, and probably does not want to be deluged with legalistic defences of particular actions. What it wants is a clear, calm, repeated case. It is a case – aimed more at public opinion than at foreign ministries – about freedom, democracy, a Western way of life and the need for the whole of the free world to fight terrorism. Sometimes you hear Israelis say: “It doesn’t matter what we say. The whole world is against us.” You can see why they say it, for they are indeed unfairly treated. But when they say it, they are uttering a self-fulfilling prophecy. If they won’t say what needs saying, no one else will say it for them. Charles Moore (2010)

Once again the armies of the Arab nations are coordinating their military efforts to destroy Israel - whatever they say about wishing merely to regain the lost territories.... [I]f the present Arab offensive had been launched at the pre-1967 frontiers, then the Israelis would indeed have been fighting to avoid annihilation. It seems now that the Israelis were right to maintain the ceasefire lines gained in 1967, and that to do so is the only guarantee of their continued safety.
Alan Sillitoe (The Times, 11 October 1973)

Iran and ISIS are competing for the crown of militant Islam... In this deadly game of thrones, there’s no place for America or for Israel, no place for Christians, Jews or Muslims who don’t share the Islamist medieval creed, no rights for women, no freedom for anyone... [T]he greatest danger facing our world is the marriage of militant Islam with nuclear weapons. To defeat ISIS and let Iran get nuclear weapons would be to win the battle, but lose the war. We can’t let that happen...[T]he days when the Jewish people remained passive in the face of genocidal enemies, those days are over. We are no longer scattered among the nations, powerless to defend ourselves. We restored our sovereignty in our ancient home. And the soldiers who defend our home have boundless courage. For the first time in 100 generations, we, the Jewish people, can defend ourselves....Even if Israel has to stand alone, Israel will stand. But ... I know that America stands with Israel... You stand with Israel, because you know that the story of Israel is not only the story of the Jewish people but of the human spirit that refuses again and again to succumb to history’s horrors. Bibi Netanyahu (12 Adar 5775; 3 March 2015)

The Jews are a peculiar people: things permitted to other nations are forbidden to the Jews. Other nations drive out thousands, even millions, of people, and there is no refugee problem.... [N]o one says a word about refugees. But in the case of Israel displaced Arabs have become eternal refugees.... Other nations - when they are defeated - survive and recover, but should Israel be defeated it would be destroyed.... [A]s it goes with Israel, so it will go with all of us. Should Israel perish the holocaust will be upon us. Eric Hoffer (1968)

Most of the present Arab countries were given their freedom after the 1914-18 War, or after the 1939-45 War.... Yet to listen to Arab spokesmen one might think that they had been cheated ... because they have not also got Israel. Israel is only .2 per cent of the land where Arab States have been established. Surely no fair-minded man can begrudge the Jews their own promised land when it is remembered that for every 2 acres that went to make up Israel, 1,000 acres became Arab.... Why is there an Arab refugee problem? The oil-rich countries have the money. There is no shortage of land, and the Israelis have the technical knowledge to show how it could be developed and made fertile. Bring those things together and the problem could be solved. 3rd Earl of Balfour (1968)

January 7, 2015 has already its place in the history of infamy, but also will be the date when the defenders of freedom and democracy will rise and pay tribute to those who died for their freedom and ours. Therefore, we must not forget on which side we are and who are our allies in the defense of the West and its values. Whether we admit it or not, the West is at war with an enemy who will not stop to destroy us...
The State of Israel boasts a commandment that, in one of the darkest hours in the fight for liberty Winston Churchill taught: "Never give up". Israel has proven to be a key ally in the fight against Islamism and also an example of how a liberal democracy can resist the jihadist stake and thrive as a Western nation ... Not only France but also all the West should look to Israel to defeat Islamism...
friendsofisraelinitiative.org

[I]t’s impossible to believe that an active antisemite wouldn’t – if only opportunistically – seek out somewhere to nestle in the manifold pleats of Israel-bashing, whether in generally diffuse anti-Zionism, or in more specific Boycott and Divestment Campaigns, Israeli Apartheid Weeks, End the Occupation movements and the like....[T]ell me that not a single Jew-hater finds the activity congenial, that criticising Israel can “never” be an expression of Jew-hating, not even when it takes the form of accusing Israeli soldiers of harvesting organs... Howard Jacobson (The Independent, 27 May 2013)

For Western countries to side with those who question Israel's legitimacy, for them to play games in international bodies with Israel's vital security issues, for them to appease those who oppose Western values, rather than robustly to stand up in defence of those values, is not only a grave moral mistake, but a strategic error of the first magnitude. Israel is a fundamental part of the West. The West is what it is thanks to its Judeo-Christian roots. If the Jewish element of those roots is lost and Israel is lost, then we are lost too. Jose Maria Aznar

Israel is, for us, a normal and a special country. A normal country, because it is just like any other democracy. A special country, because the Jewish culture, which eventually became the Judeo-Christian culture of the dignity of man, is the conceptual foundation of liberalism and democracy. This is why attacking Israel is tantamount to attacking Europe and the West. This is also why disputing Israel's legitimacy and its right to existence means questioning democracy. And this is why we are Friends of Israel. By defending Israel, we are defending ourselves. Marcello Pera

Israel ... is beset today by a unique combination of threats. It must defend its people from attack while defending its very right to exist. No other nation in the world faces this dual challenge. To deny Israel's right to confront some of the world's most vicious terrorist groups in order to ensure the safety of its citizens is to corrode international norms from within ... The assault on Israel is one part of a more general assault on the West, on democracy, and on the moral and cultural heritage that grew from the fruitful interaction of Jerusalem, Athens, and Rome ... Should these efforts succeed, similar efforts will certainly be turned against other western democracies. George Weigel

Apart from America itself, Israel still stands as the world's brightest model of national self-liberation based on ideals of individual responsibility and human freedom. Israel's ability to withstand Arab attempts to destroy it in one of the longest and most lop-sided wars ever fought serves as an indelible testimony to the strength of democratic culture.... We know from the past that the West paid dearly for ignoring Hitler's war against the Jews. One can only hope it will not pay as dearly for having ignored or underestimated for so long the Arab war against Israel and the Jews. Ruth Wisse

I am duty-bound to defend freedom, culture, peaceful coexistence, the civic education of children, and all the principles that the Tablets of the Law have rendered universal. Principles which Islamic fundamentalism systematically destroys. This means that, since I am a Gentile, a journalist and a leftist, I have a triple moral commitment to Israel. Because, if Israel were to be vanquished, modernity, culture and freedom would also be crushed. Even though the world has failed to wake up to this fact, Israel's struggle is the world's struggle. Pilar Rahola

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