Is a war with Iran inevitable? I don’t have the answer to that question. But I do feel a sense of déjà-vu when I scan the headlines. Iran is capable of assembling a bomb within a year, Leon Panetta, the US defence secretary, told CBS News recently. Though not as outlandish, his “warning” carried a chilling reminder of Tony Blair’s claim that Iraq could deploy weapons of mass destruction within 45 minutes.
One especially unsavoury aspect of the debate around Iran is how it is being driven by “public relations” professionals, who try to dress up their bloodlust in respectable clothing. Without exception, these “opinion-formers” are supporters of Israel, a state founded on ethnic cleansing, wedded to apartheid and addicted to war. Followers of Zionism, a racist ideology, are unable to offer objective analysis; yet few in the media bother to question the motives of such people or highlight the egregious double standard of demanding robust action against Iran’s nuclear “ambitions”, while keeping mum about the nuclear warheads that Israel has already amassed.
Moshe Kantor, president of the European Jewish Congress (EJC), issued a comical statement in December last. It referred to “reports” – the source of which went unmentioned – that Iran may be preparing to strike Germany in response to an American attack on Iranian nuclear installations. “Whether or not these reports are valid is beside the point, we know certain facts and they are that Iran sees much of Europe as its enemy,” he added.
Can someone who makes a big hullabaloo about new “reports” and then argues it’s irrelevant if they are accurate be regarded as credible? Of course, he can’t. Yet Kantor enjoys the kind of access to political leaders that most lobbyists can only dream of. His organisation’s website tells of how he has spent years bending the ears of senior figures in all of the European Union’s institutions about the “threat” from Iran.
It should be emphasised that the EJC does not represent all Europe’s Jews, despite how it purports to do so. I have a number of Jewish friends and acquaintances who disagree sharply with its agenda.
Emanuele Ottolenghi is another Zionist hawk who has carved out a niche for himself as an “Iran expert”. Formerly the Brussels director of the American Jewish Committee, he now works for the Foundation for the Defence of Democracies, a neoconservative outfit that includes Richard Perle, a cheerleader for the invasion of Iraq, on its board of advisers.
“Israel might act alone”
In a recent article for Standpoint magazine, Ottolenghi asked: “Is Israel’s air force – the one that bombed the Iraqi nuclear reactor in 1981 and the Syrian one in 2007 – gearing up for the most daring airstrike in aviation history?” He concluded his piece by arguing that the “international community” (translation: the US and its cronies) has until the Spring of 2012 to “stop Iran”. After that, Israel might act alone.
I am tired of reading about how David Cameron risks leaving Britain isolated in Brussels. The truth is that the UK has an unhealthy level of clout in European and international affairs and shows no sign of repenting in any meaningful way for its blood-stained history.
The “experts” who are so adamant that democracy be brought to Iran usually neglect to remind their readers and listeners that it was Britain and the US which destroyed democracy in Iran. In 1953, Mohammed Mossadegh, Iran’s elected prime minister, was overthrown in a coup staged by the West. The reason why he was toppled was simple: Britain felt it owned Iran’s oil and could not tolerate Mossadegh’s decision to nationalise this resource.
Fast forward to December 2011, when George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, was guest of honour at the Conservative Friends of Israel annual lunch at a plush London hotel. Osborne was interviewed onstage by the right-wing pundit Danny Finkelstein, who asked his views on the “threat” from Iran. “Well, first of all I think Israel is right to identify this as one of the greatest threats to peace and human life in the world at the moment,” Osborne replied, before speaking of “this government’s determination to use all the tools at our disposal to stop Iran getting a nuclear weapon.”
Stop macho posturing
Pause for a moment and consider those lines. Osborne thinks Israel is right to identify Iran as one of the greatest threats to world peace. If he believes his own baloney, he should brush up on world affairs. Iran is not occupying the land of another people. By contrast, Israel occupies the West Bank and Gaza, as well as parts of Lebanon and Syria. Iran’s most recent war was with Iraq in the 1980s. Israel attacked Gaza as recently as the past few weeks.
Iran may be less than candid about its nuclear ambitions but it has signed the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Israel has not.
True, Iran’s human rights record is deplorable. It was the world’s second highest user of the death penalty in 2010. But invoking that as a casus belli would be grossly hypocritical, when one considers that the US was at number five on the global executions table.
My (sadly unrealistic) wish for 2012 is that Europe’s leaders stop their macho posturing towards Tehran and that they address a bigger threat to world peace. The name of that threat is Israel.
●First published by New Europe, 9 January 2012.
Showing posts with label Iran. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Iran. Show all posts
Tuesday, January 10, 2012
Wednesday, December 28, 2011
Complaint filed over secret donors to "friends of Israel"
Last week I wrote about how Labor Friends of Israel (LFI) – a lobby group within Britain’s largest opposition party – appears to be breaking a law on political donations. I am happy to report that the UK’s Electoral Commission has now received a formal request to investigate the LFI and similar organizations affiliated to the country’s ruling coalition.
Jenny Tonge, a member of the House of Lords, has alerted the Commission to the lack of transparency over how Zionist support groups are funded.
Tonge’s letter draws attention to apparent omissions in the information that the “friends of Israel” groups within Labor and the senior government party, the Conservatives, have submitted to the Commission. Under legislation dating from 2001, all donations exceeding £7,500 ($11,600) to “member’s associations” within political parties have to be disclosed.
The LFI has reported spending nearly £77,000 on trips to the Middle East for members of Parliament between 2003 and 2009 and is known to have at least two full-time members of staff. The Conservative Friends of Israel (CFI) have reported expenditure of more than £110,000 on travel since 2011, yet have indicated that they only received donations totalling £29,350 in that period.
Tonge wrote, “The Commission surely has an obligation to examine their finances, together with those of Liberal Democrat Friends of Israel, to ensure that they have not failed to declare any donations above the threshold, as it does seem remarkable to have this level of expenditure without significant donations from groups or individuals.”
Pounding the drumbeat of war
The LFI’s reticence over its funding is at odds with its determination to prove that it is shaping policy. Its 15 December newsletter gloated at how the first visit to Israel and the West Bank by Douglas Alexander, since his appointment as shadow foreign secretary in January this year, was hosted by the LFI.
During the visit Alexander met Israel’s chief spindoctor Mark Regev, a man who has perfected the art of looking suave while telling lies. Alexander showed just how amenable he was to Israeli propaganda by going to see a high school in southern Israel -- where, in his words “classrooms doubled up as bomb shelters.”
His itinerary did not include an excursion into the nearby Gaza Strip, where he could have inspected schools destroyed by the highly-equipped Israeli military during Operation Cast Lead three years ago. At least 353 Palestinian children were killed by Israel in that three-week offensive.
The same newsletter illustrates that LFI – like its beloved Regev – has a tenuous relationship with the truth. It brands Iran’s nuclear programme “illegal” and notes that the Labor hierarchy has pledged support for sanctions against the Tehran regime. Readers are not provided with any background details about how it was Israel, not Iran, that introduced nuclear weapons to the Middle East and how it is Israel, not Iran, that has refused to sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
The newsletter proceeds to recommend an article by Alan Johnson from the Britain Israel Research Center (BICOM), who praised the British government’s determination “to end the diplomatic merry-go-round, to see Iran plain and to act, now and decisively, to confront it.”
If the “Friends of Israel” are pounding the drumbeat of war against Iran, then it is vital that they be closely monitored.
●First published by The Electronic Intifada, 28 December 2011.
Jenny Tonge, a member of the House of Lords, has alerted the Commission to the lack of transparency over how Zionist support groups are funded.
Tonge’s letter draws attention to apparent omissions in the information that the “friends of Israel” groups within Labor and the senior government party, the Conservatives, have submitted to the Commission. Under legislation dating from 2001, all donations exceeding £7,500 ($11,600) to “member’s associations” within political parties have to be disclosed.
The LFI has reported spending nearly £77,000 on trips to the Middle East for members of Parliament between 2003 and 2009 and is known to have at least two full-time members of staff. The Conservative Friends of Israel (CFI) have reported expenditure of more than £110,000 on travel since 2011, yet have indicated that they only received donations totalling £29,350 in that period.
Tonge wrote, “The Commission surely has an obligation to examine their finances, together with those of Liberal Democrat Friends of Israel, to ensure that they have not failed to declare any donations above the threshold, as it does seem remarkable to have this level of expenditure without significant donations from groups or individuals.”
Pounding the drumbeat of war
The LFI’s reticence over its funding is at odds with its determination to prove that it is shaping policy. Its 15 December newsletter gloated at how the first visit to Israel and the West Bank by Douglas Alexander, since his appointment as shadow foreign secretary in January this year, was hosted by the LFI.
During the visit Alexander met Israel’s chief spindoctor Mark Regev, a man who has perfected the art of looking suave while telling lies. Alexander showed just how amenable he was to Israeli propaganda by going to see a high school in southern Israel -- where, in his words “classrooms doubled up as bomb shelters.”
His itinerary did not include an excursion into the nearby Gaza Strip, where he could have inspected schools destroyed by the highly-equipped Israeli military during Operation Cast Lead three years ago. At least 353 Palestinian children were killed by Israel in that three-week offensive.
The same newsletter illustrates that LFI – like its beloved Regev – has a tenuous relationship with the truth. It brands Iran’s nuclear programme “illegal” and notes that the Labor hierarchy has pledged support for sanctions against the Tehran regime. Readers are not provided with any background details about how it was Israel, not Iran, that introduced nuclear weapons to the Middle East and how it is Israel, not Iran, that has refused to sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
The newsletter proceeds to recommend an article by Alan Johnson from the Britain Israel Research Center (BICOM), who praised the British government’s determination “to end the diplomatic merry-go-round, to see Iran plain and to act, now and decisively, to confront it.”
If the “Friends of Israel” are pounding the drumbeat of war against Iran, then it is vital that they be closely monitored.
●First published by The Electronic Intifada, 28 December 2011.
Friday, January 14, 2011
Israel's crimes, Britain's culpability
Jody McIntyre hit the headlines late last year, when police pushed him from his wheelchair at a demonstration here in London against cutbacks to education. Although I have never met Jody, I am an admirer of his campaigning work on a number of issues, including the Israel-Palestine conflict. I was particularly impressed with a point he made in a recent speech, where he observed that the name Arthur James Balfour is far more readily recognised in Palestine than in Balfour’s native Britain.
As foreign secretary in 1917, Balfour wrote a terse letter to the Zionist Federation of Great Britain and Ireland, stating that his government supported the objective of setting up a “Jewish national home” in Palestine. It is true that the Balfour declaration also said that nothing would be done to prejudice the rights of people from other religions living in Palestine. Two years later, however, Balfour negated that caveat when he said: “Zionism, be it right or wrong, good or bad, is rooted in age-old traditions, in present needs, in future hopes, of far greater import than the desires and prejudices of the 700,000 Arabs who now inhabit that ancient land.”
The words of Balfour illustrate how the establishment of the state of Israel can only be viewed as a colonial project based on a toxic notion of racial supremacy. Because Britain gave its blessing to this project three decades before its goals were realised, the ruling elite in this country must share in the blame for everything that has happened subsequently. This includes the ever-tightening embrace between the European Union and Israel.
Some London newspapers regularly convey the impression that Britain has been dragged into the European Union against its will. Yet while the United Kingdom may have a semi-detached relationship with Europe on some economic matters, it plays a central role in shaping the EU’s foreign policies. Five UK representatives have been especially influential over recent years in ensuring that the EU mollycoddles Israel like no other state outside the Union’s borders.
The best-known of the five is Tony Blair. In an abuse of the English language, Blair is routinely described as an international “peace envoy” for the Middle East. Not only did the former prime minister team up with George Bush to launch an illegal war in Iraq, he has consistently accommodated Israel’s war crimes. When Israel subjected the people of Lebanon to a merciless assault in 2006, most EU countries wished to formally call for a ceasefire. The exception was Tony Blair, who blocked the Union from doing so.
In his memoirs, published in the autumn last year, Blair intimates that he did not simply support Israel on that occasion because his puppetmaster in the White House told him to. Instead, he wrote that condemning Israel “would have been more than dishonest; it would have undermined the worldview I had come to hold passionately.” Blair also wrote that he regarded the attack on Lebanon as part of “a wider struggle between the strain of religious extremism in Islam and the rest of us”.
Reading these comments has helped me understand that Tony Blair is in some respects the Arthur Balfour of the twenty-first century. He acts as an apologist for Israel even when it slaughters over 1,000 civilians – as it did in Lebanon in 2006 and Gaza more recently – because he has swallowed the main principles of Zionism. This explains why despite his veneer of impartiality, he has been recruited as a peddler of propaganda for the Israeli state. Following Israel’s murder of nine peace activists on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla in May last year, Blair held extensive talks with Binyamin Netanyahu about how to manage the political fall-out. It was Blair, who travelled around praising Israel’s decision to loosen ever so slightly the noose it had placed around Gaza, well before the details of this piecemeal easing of the blockade were announced.
When the invasion of Iraq was being prepared, Tony Blair’s top adviser on foreign policy was a diplomat called Robert Cooper. As Cooper is now a top-level foreign policy strategist in Brussels, he is the second UK representative I wish to speak about.
Fancying himself as an intellectual, Cooper clearly enjoys putting his thoughts about global affairs down in writing. His 2003 book The Breaking of Nations offers a highly readable and highly frightening insight into the thinking that pervades the British Foreign Office. Cooper contends that a new form of imperialism is necessary for the twenty-first century. His book, for example, lauds the “limited form of voluntary empire” that the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund embody, without expressing any concern about how these two American and European-dominated institutions have subjected whole countries to misery.
Cooper enjoys close relations with several pro-Israel lobbyists in Brussels. He has penned joint pamphlets with Ronald Asmus, a leading figure in the German Marshall Fund of the United States, who has been campaigning for Israel to be admitted to NATO. Cooper has proven amenable to the core arguments of the Israel lobby. He has been advocating behind the scenes that the European Union should take a strident approach towards Iran over that country’s nuclear programme. This chimes with the sabre-rattling towards Iran from both Israel and the United States. And it is brazenly hypocritical. It was not Iran that introduced nuclear weapons to the Middle East. It was Israel. It is not Iran that refused to sign the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. It is Israel. And yet it is Iran that has been subject to sanctions from the European Union over its nuclear programme. Not Israel.
At the beginning of December 2010, Cooper was appointed as a top adviser to the new diplomatic corps – external action service in Brussels parlance. That service is run by Catherine Ashton, the EU’s current foreign policy chief, and the third UK representative on my list.
Ashton kicked off the New Year by choosing Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories for her first working trip abroad for 2011. Ashton used this trip to boast of how the EU is invariably generous to the Palestinian people. She announced an initial aid package of €100 million (£83 million) to the Palestinian Authority, signalling that more will be released to the PA during the course of this year.
It is true that the EU is the largest provider of aid to the Palestinian Authority and is helping to finance the provision of vital services, including healthcare and education. But it is entirely wrong of Ashton to portray such aid as evidence of generosity. International law – in particular the Hague Regulations of 1907 – makes it clear that it is the responsibility of the occupying power to meet the basic needs of the people under occupation.
What Ashton has failed to spell out is that the European Union is relieving Israel of its responsibilities under international law. The EU has a legal and moral duty to send the bills for its aid to Israel, especially when Israel causes damage to EU-financed infrastructure. The Union has had many opportunities to sue Israel when such destruction occurs, such as after the attack on Gaza in 2008 and 2009, when at least €11 million worth of damage was inflicted on EU-funded projects. Yet the EU’s institutions have repeatedly backed away from holding Israel to account.
Ashton deserves a modicum of credit for speaking out last weekend against the demolition of the Shepherd hotel in East Jerusalem. Yet while she has issued several robust statements about the expansion of Israeli settlements in East Jerusalem, it should not be forgotten that she is eager to bring Israel even closer to the EU than it already is. During the autumn of last year, she recommended that Israel should be designated a “strategic partner” for the Union. This would put Israel on a similar ranking to larger economies like the US and China in terms of how it is prioritised by EU officialdom. Last week she described the EU’s relationship with Israel as “strong and solid” and expressed hope that it will become even stronger in the coming months.
I will forgive you if you have not heard of the fourth and fifth UK representatives on my list. They are two police officers: Colin Smith and Paul Kernaghan. As younger men both Smith and Kernaghan were members of the Royal Ulster Constabulary, a police force which many Irish people, myself included, regard as synonymous with harassment of the Catholic community in the North of Ireland. This background alone should be sufficient to render them unsuitable for any policing role in the Middle East.
Yet both men have headed an EU body called the Coordinating Office for Palestinian Police Support (COPPS). Propaganda would have us believe that this police training mission is designed to pave the way towards a Palestinian state. Documents drawn up by the Israeli authorities, however, have revealed the mission is subservient to Israel. One such document – from April last year – boasted of how there had been a rise of 72% in “coordinated actions” between Israeli and Palestinian police between 2008 and 2009.
Just as significantly, the police mission is being used to drive a wedge between the political representatives of the Palestinian people. Human rights monitors have reported that the clashes between Fatah and Hamas have helped turn the occupied Palestinian territories into a “police state”. The EU mission has refused to deal with Hamas in Gaza and has instead confined its operations to the West Bank for the past few years. Police in the West Bank are known to have resorted to torture of Hamas supporters. Despite how the EU is nominally opposed to torture wherever it occurs, its representatives have been mainly silent about torture perpetrated by the very police officers in the West Bank who they are in charge of training.
Political and economic relations between the EU and Israel are covered by an “association agreement” which came into effect in 2000. Article 2 of that agreement stipulates that both sides must respect human rights. Even though that condition is legally-binding, the EU has turned a blind eye to many of the crimes that Israel has committed against the Palestinians over the ensuing decade. After the attacks on Gaza in 2008 and 2009, for example, the EU extended the scope of trade preferences that it offers to agricultural goods from Israel. As a result most Israeli food exports, both fresh and processed, can enter the EU without having to pay customs duties. The EU is already Israel’s largest trading partner and both sides have expressed an interest in increasing the volume of that trade. The European Commission has gone so far as to set up a body known as the EU-Israel business dialogue, where chief executives can brainstorm on how to overcome any obstacles they encounter when trying to make profits.
Britain is the third largest destination for Israeli exports. Peter Mandelson, the former business secretary, voiced hopes during his time in office that the volume of British-Israeli trade will be worth more than £3 billion per annum by 2012. If realised, that would be an increase of £700 million in the volume of trade over a five-year period.
Many of the companies trading between Britain and Israel are directly involved in the occupation of Palestine. Travellers on the London Underground are under surveillance from video equipment manufactured by Verint, a subsidiary of the Israeli firm Comverse Technology. Verint has also won a contract to install a closed circuit TV system in Earl’s Court as part of preparations for next year’s Olympic Games.
BT, meanwhile, has a special partnership with Bezeq, an Israeli company that provides telecommunications to illegal settlements and military checkpoints in the West Bank. Around this time last year, Bezeq was admitted into the BT Alliance programme, under which it enjoys access to BT services on preferential terms.
Worse again, some of the components used by Israel’s most lethal warplanes are manufactured on British soil. Elbit, the maker of the pilotless drones that have killed numerous civilians in Gaza, has invested considerably in this country. Engines for one of Elbit’s drones, the Hermes 450, are made at its factory in Lichfield, north of Birmingham.
Earlier today, I was scheduled to give a separate talk to the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation in King's College London. I decided, however, to withdraw from this event when I learned that this centre is a partnership between four different academic institutions, including the Herzliya Inter-Disciplinary Centre in Israel.
After consulting with the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions National Committee, which represents a wide cross-society of Palestinian society, I learned that the Herzliya centre reserves 10% of its places for veterans of elite combat units in the Israeli army and that it has expressed pride in how its students work for Israeli arms companies. I support the campaign to boycott institutions that enable the occupation of Palestine and for that reason I felt that I had no choice than to boycott the partnership between the Herzliya centre and King's College London.
I was similarly shocked to learn that Shimon Peres, the Israeli president, was given an honorary doctorate by King’s College in November 2008. The authorities who decided to give this award to an inveterate war-monger like Peres should be ashamed of themselves. I salute those students in King's College who have called for this honour to be revoked.
By coincidence, I also stumbled across a remark from Shimon Peres over the past week in a feature about Israeli cinema published in The Sunday Times last summer. “Israel grew like a miracle and fought like a tiger,” Peres said. “She is the only utopia of the twentieth century that became a reality. She was born in drama and she never stops being dramatic.”
Israel is certainly dramatic but it is no utopia. Rather, it is state established as a result of a vicious colonial project. Six decades after its establishment, Israel is continuing to oppress an entire people. Ending that oppression is one of the greatest moral challenges of our age.
·Text of a presentation given to the Islamic Human Rights Commission’s book shop in Wembley, London, 12 January 2011.
As foreign secretary in 1917, Balfour wrote a terse letter to the Zionist Federation of Great Britain and Ireland, stating that his government supported the objective of setting up a “Jewish national home” in Palestine. It is true that the Balfour declaration also said that nothing would be done to prejudice the rights of people from other religions living in Palestine. Two years later, however, Balfour negated that caveat when he said: “Zionism, be it right or wrong, good or bad, is rooted in age-old traditions, in present needs, in future hopes, of far greater import than the desires and prejudices of the 700,000 Arabs who now inhabit that ancient land.”
The words of Balfour illustrate how the establishment of the state of Israel can only be viewed as a colonial project based on a toxic notion of racial supremacy. Because Britain gave its blessing to this project three decades before its goals were realised, the ruling elite in this country must share in the blame for everything that has happened subsequently. This includes the ever-tightening embrace between the European Union and Israel.
Some London newspapers regularly convey the impression that Britain has been dragged into the European Union against its will. Yet while the United Kingdom may have a semi-detached relationship with Europe on some economic matters, it plays a central role in shaping the EU’s foreign policies. Five UK representatives have been especially influential over recent years in ensuring that the EU mollycoddles Israel like no other state outside the Union’s borders.
The best-known of the five is Tony Blair. In an abuse of the English language, Blair is routinely described as an international “peace envoy” for the Middle East. Not only did the former prime minister team up with George Bush to launch an illegal war in Iraq, he has consistently accommodated Israel’s war crimes. When Israel subjected the people of Lebanon to a merciless assault in 2006, most EU countries wished to formally call for a ceasefire. The exception was Tony Blair, who blocked the Union from doing so.
In his memoirs, published in the autumn last year, Blair intimates that he did not simply support Israel on that occasion because his puppetmaster in the White House told him to. Instead, he wrote that condemning Israel “would have been more than dishonest; it would have undermined the worldview I had come to hold passionately.” Blair also wrote that he regarded the attack on Lebanon as part of “a wider struggle between the strain of religious extremism in Islam and the rest of us”.
Reading these comments has helped me understand that Tony Blair is in some respects the Arthur Balfour of the twenty-first century. He acts as an apologist for Israel even when it slaughters over 1,000 civilians – as it did in Lebanon in 2006 and Gaza more recently – because he has swallowed the main principles of Zionism. This explains why despite his veneer of impartiality, he has been recruited as a peddler of propaganda for the Israeli state. Following Israel’s murder of nine peace activists on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla in May last year, Blair held extensive talks with Binyamin Netanyahu about how to manage the political fall-out. It was Blair, who travelled around praising Israel’s decision to loosen ever so slightly the noose it had placed around Gaza, well before the details of this piecemeal easing of the blockade were announced.
When the invasion of Iraq was being prepared, Tony Blair’s top adviser on foreign policy was a diplomat called Robert Cooper. As Cooper is now a top-level foreign policy strategist in Brussels, he is the second UK representative I wish to speak about.
Fancying himself as an intellectual, Cooper clearly enjoys putting his thoughts about global affairs down in writing. His 2003 book The Breaking of Nations offers a highly readable and highly frightening insight into the thinking that pervades the British Foreign Office. Cooper contends that a new form of imperialism is necessary for the twenty-first century. His book, for example, lauds the “limited form of voluntary empire” that the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund embody, without expressing any concern about how these two American and European-dominated institutions have subjected whole countries to misery.
Cooper enjoys close relations with several pro-Israel lobbyists in Brussels. He has penned joint pamphlets with Ronald Asmus, a leading figure in the German Marshall Fund of the United States, who has been campaigning for Israel to be admitted to NATO. Cooper has proven amenable to the core arguments of the Israel lobby. He has been advocating behind the scenes that the European Union should take a strident approach towards Iran over that country’s nuclear programme. This chimes with the sabre-rattling towards Iran from both Israel and the United States. And it is brazenly hypocritical. It was not Iran that introduced nuclear weapons to the Middle East. It was Israel. It is not Iran that refused to sign the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. It is Israel. And yet it is Iran that has been subject to sanctions from the European Union over its nuclear programme. Not Israel.
At the beginning of December 2010, Cooper was appointed as a top adviser to the new diplomatic corps – external action service in Brussels parlance. That service is run by Catherine Ashton, the EU’s current foreign policy chief, and the third UK representative on my list.
Ashton kicked off the New Year by choosing Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories for her first working trip abroad for 2011. Ashton used this trip to boast of how the EU is invariably generous to the Palestinian people. She announced an initial aid package of €100 million (£83 million) to the Palestinian Authority, signalling that more will be released to the PA during the course of this year.
It is true that the EU is the largest provider of aid to the Palestinian Authority and is helping to finance the provision of vital services, including healthcare and education. But it is entirely wrong of Ashton to portray such aid as evidence of generosity. International law – in particular the Hague Regulations of 1907 – makes it clear that it is the responsibility of the occupying power to meet the basic needs of the people under occupation.
What Ashton has failed to spell out is that the European Union is relieving Israel of its responsibilities under international law. The EU has a legal and moral duty to send the bills for its aid to Israel, especially when Israel causes damage to EU-financed infrastructure. The Union has had many opportunities to sue Israel when such destruction occurs, such as after the attack on Gaza in 2008 and 2009, when at least €11 million worth of damage was inflicted on EU-funded projects. Yet the EU’s institutions have repeatedly backed away from holding Israel to account.
Ashton deserves a modicum of credit for speaking out last weekend against the demolition of the Shepherd hotel in East Jerusalem. Yet while she has issued several robust statements about the expansion of Israeli settlements in East Jerusalem, it should not be forgotten that she is eager to bring Israel even closer to the EU than it already is. During the autumn of last year, she recommended that Israel should be designated a “strategic partner” for the Union. This would put Israel on a similar ranking to larger economies like the US and China in terms of how it is prioritised by EU officialdom. Last week she described the EU’s relationship with Israel as “strong and solid” and expressed hope that it will become even stronger in the coming months.
I will forgive you if you have not heard of the fourth and fifth UK representatives on my list. They are two police officers: Colin Smith and Paul Kernaghan. As younger men both Smith and Kernaghan were members of the Royal Ulster Constabulary, a police force which many Irish people, myself included, regard as synonymous with harassment of the Catholic community in the North of Ireland. This background alone should be sufficient to render them unsuitable for any policing role in the Middle East.
Yet both men have headed an EU body called the Coordinating Office for Palestinian Police Support (COPPS). Propaganda would have us believe that this police training mission is designed to pave the way towards a Palestinian state. Documents drawn up by the Israeli authorities, however, have revealed the mission is subservient to Israel. One such document – from April last year – boasted of how there had been a rise of 72% in “coordinated actions” between Israeli and Palestinian police between 2008 and 2009.
Just as significantly, the police mission is being used to drive a wedge between the political representatives of the Palestinian people. Human rights monitors have reported that the clashes between Fatah and Hamas have helped turn the occupied Palestinian territories into a “police state”. The EU mission has refused to deal with Hamas in Gaza and has instead confined its operations to the West Bank for the past few years. Police in the West Bank are known to have resorted to torture of Hamas supporters. Despite how the EU is nominally opposed to torture wherever it occurs, its representatives have been mainly silent about torture perpetrated by the very police officers in the West Bank who they are in charge of training.
Political and economic relations between the EU and Israel are covered by an “association agreement” which came into effect in 2000. Article 2 of that agreement stipulates that both sides must respect human rights. Even though that condition is legally-binding, the EU has turned a blind eye to many of the crimes that Israel has committed against the Palestinians over the ensuing decade. After the attacks on Gaza in 2008 and 2009, for example, the EU extended the scope of trade preferences that it offers to agricultural goods from Israel. As a result most Israeli food exports, both fresh and processed, can enter the EU without having to pay customs duties. The EU is already Israel’s largest trading partner and both sides have expressed an interest in increasing the volume of that trade. The European Commission has gone so far as to set up a body known as the EU-Israel business dialogue, where chief executives can brainstorm on how to overcome any obstacles they encounter when trying to make profits.
Britain is the third largest destination for Israeli exports. Peter Mandelson, the former business secretary, voiced hopes during his time in office that the volume of British-Israeli trade will be worth more than £3 billion per annum by 2012. If realised, that would be an increase of £700 million in the volume of trade over a five-year period.
Many of the companies trading between Britain and Israel are directly involved in the occupation of Palestine. Travellers on the London Underground are under surveillance from video equipment manufactured by Verint, a subsidiary of the Israeli firm Comverse Technology. Verint has also won a contract to install a closed circuit TV system in Earl’s Court as part of preparations for next year’s Olympic Games.
BT, meanwhile, has a special partnership with Bezeq, an Israeli company that provides telecommunications to illegal settlements and military checkpoints in the West Bank. Around this time last year, Bezeq was admitted into the BT Alliance programme, under which it enjoys access to BT services on preferential terms.
Worse again, some of the components used by Israel’s most lethal warplanes are manufactured on British soil. Elbit, the maker of the pilotless drones that have killed numerous civilians in Gaza, has invested considerably in this country. Engines for one of Elbit’s drones, the Hermes 450, are made at its factory in Lichfield, north of Birmingham.
Earlier today, I was scheduled to give a separate talk to the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation in King's College London. I decided, however, to withdraw from this event when I learned that this centre is a partnership between four different academic institutions, including the Herzliya Inter-Disciplinary Centre in Israel.
After consulting with the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions National Committee, which represents a wide cross-society of Palestinian society, I learned that the Herzliya centre reserves 10% of its places for veterans of elite combat units in the Israeli army and that it has expressed pride in how its students work for Israeli arms companies. I support the campaign to boycott institutions that enable the occupation of Palestine and for that reason I felt that I had no choice than to boycott the partnership between the Herzliya centre and King's College London.
I was similarly shocked to learn that Shimon Peres, the Israeli president, was given an honorary doctorate by King’s College in November 2008. The authorities who decided to give this award to an inveterate war-monger like Peres should be ashamed of themselves. I salute those students in King's College who have called for this honour to be revoked.
By coincidence, I also stumbled across a remark from Shimon Peres over the past week in a feature about Israeli cinema published in The Sunday Times last summer. “Israel grew like a miracle and fought like a tiger,” Peres said. “She is the only utopia of the twentieth century that became a reality. She was born in drama and she never stops being dramatic.”
Israel is certainly dramatic but it is no utopia. Rather, it is state established as a result of a vicious colonial project. Six decades after its establishment, Israel is continuing to oppress an entire people. Ending that oppression is one of the greatest moral challenges of our age.
·Text of a presentation given to the Islamic Human Rights Commission’s book shop in Wembley, London, 12 January 2011.
Friday, December 17, 2010
I ain't no Nazi copycat
Sometimes the best comedy is made by people who are not trying to be funny. At least, that’s what I discovered when I was accused of emulating the Nazis.
During a recent tour of Britain and Ireland to promote my book Europe’s Alliance With Israel: Aiding the Occupation, I heard that the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, a Zionist lobby group, had filed a complaint about me with the Dublin government. The centre had asked Brian Cowen, the Taoiseach (Irish prime minister), to publicly condemn me and my hosts, the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign. Daring to criticise Israel at a time when Ireland’s own economy was collapsing was “sadly reminiscent of financial scapegoating” in 1930s Germany, Shimon Samuels, the centre’s director for international relations, alleged.
With equal absurdity, Samuels claimed that the cover of my book carried a “subliminal message” because it depicted a map of Europe beside a Star of David. Although Samuels did not spell out what subliminal message the cover sought to convey, he intimated that the artwork fitted the EU’s own definition of anti-Semitism.
I didn’t design the cover in question but I did authorise it. Had I thought for one second that it was intended to incite hostility towards Jews, I would have exercised my author’s prerogative by rejecting it.
If the Simon Wiesenthal Centre actually bothered to read my book, it would know that I don’t have an anti-Semitic bone in my body. The book is focused on the EU’s complicity in crimes perpetrated by the state of Israel against the Palestinians (who also happen to be Semites) and does not contain a single word directed against Jews as a people. As well as making it clear that I despise all forms of discrimination based on religion, race, gender or sexual orientation, the book stresses my admiration for the significant number of Jews brave enough to tell Israel that it does not act in their name. The Simon Wiesenthal Centre would probably categorise those Jews as “self-hating”; I regard them as humane and heroic.
It would be comforting if all missives by the centre and other pro-Israel zealots could be written off as being of no consequence. Yet the truth is that our politicians and civil servants are usually too puny to stand up to their bullying.
Perhaps the clearest manifestation of the centre’s influence came after the results of a 2003 survey conducted by the EU’s polling unit Eurobarometer became public knowledge. When a sample of 7,500 Europeans were asked which country posed the biggest threat to world peace, a majority – 59% - chose Israel. The Simon Wiesenthal Centre responded by urging that the EU be excluded from the so-called peace process in the Middle East and by claiming it was a “racist flight of fancy” to deem Israel as more bellicose than North Korea or Iran.
Instead of commending their citizens for being perceptive enough to realise that a country with a nuclear arsenal and an addiction to war (Israel) is more destabilising than does not yet possess nuclear weapons (Iran), senior EU representatives allowed themselves be persuaded that being a critic of Israel automatically made one a Jew-hater.
Over the following two years, the EU’s Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia (EUMC) in Vienna – subsequently renamed the Fundamental Rights Agency – drew up the aforementioned definition of anti-Semitism. This was in no way a scientific exercise; rather than trying to examine the surrounding issues impartially, the EUMC allowed the definition to be dictated by lobby groups that consistently defend Israel no matter what cruelty it metes out to the Palestinians. An EUMC paper indicated plainly that the work was guided by the American Jewish Committee and the European Jewish Congress. The definition that they successfully advocated was worded in such a way that anyone who called out the true nature of Israel’s crimes could be smeared with accusations of anti-Semitism. Describing the establishment of Israel as a “racist endeavour” or drawing parallels between the Israeli state and the Nazis were among the examples given for what should be considered as anti-Semitism. (That Israel was founded on racism – and remains so – is simply a statement of fact; this was confirmed once again lately when 50 of Israel’s leading rabbis, many of them state-employed, instructed Jews not to rent property to Arabs).
The Fundamental Rights Agency continues to view partisan lobbyists as sober analysts. In its latest report on anti-Semitism in Europe – published in April - the agency copies and pastes the findings of such organisations as the Information and Documentation Centre Israel (CIDI) in the Netherlands and the Anti-Defamation League in New York. The “study” also suggests that Europe’s far-left and many Muslims have tested positive for the “new anti-Semitism” since the Palestinian uprising, or intifada, began in 2000. The absence of supporting evidence for that suggestion displays how much the agency’s views continue to be shaped by a pro-Israel lobby that seeks to muzzle condemnations of Israel’s crimes against humanity by accusing activists of hating Jews in a “new” way. When I asked a spokeswoman for the agency why it lent so much credence to the statements of one-sided lobbyists, she said that her colleagues “don’t voice any political position”.
One of the many troubling aspects of this state of affairs is that Israel’s most ardent supporters appear to have no interest in tackling genuine anti-Semitism. Research undertaken by the Community Security Trust found that 2009 was the worst year for anti-Semitic incidents in Britain since it began keeping records in 1984. It is no coincidence that 2009 kicked off with Israel’s murderous attacks on Gaza. This offers no excuse to anyone who vented their frustration with those crimes by vilifying innocent Jews but it does offer an explanation.
Anti-Semitism is not studied as rigorously and carefully as it ought to be. However, the data available to us leads to an inescapable conclusion: the state of Israel must shoulder a large degree of blame for any ill-feeling that Jews have to endure. The problem is surely compounded by how Israel’s supporters are refusing to address it honestly and thereby making it worse.
·First published by The Samosa (www.thesamosa.co.uk), 17 December 2011
During a recent tour of Britain and Ireland to promote my book Europe’s Alliance With Israel: Aiding the Occupation, I heard that the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, a Zionist lobby group, had filed a complaint about me with the Dublin government. The centre had asked Brian Cowen, the Taoiseach (Irish prime minister), to publicly condemn me and my hosts, the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign. Daring to criticise Israel at a time when Ireland’s own economy was collapsing was “sadly reminiscent of financial scapegoating” in 1930s Germany, Shimon Samuels, the centre’s director for international relations, alleged.
With equal absurdity, Samuels claimed that the cover of my book carried a “subliminal message” because it depicted a map of Europe beside a Star of David. Although Samuels did not spell out what subliminal message the cover sought to convey, he intimated that the artwork fitted the EU’s own definition of anti-Semitism.
I didn’t design the cover in question but I did authorise it. Had I thought for one second that it was intended to incite hostility towards Jews, I would have exercised my author’s prerogative by rejecting it.
If the Simon Wiesenthal Centre actually bothered to read my book, it would know that I don’t have an anti-Semitic bone in my body. The book is focused on the EU’s complicity in crimes perpetrated by the state of Israel against the Palestinians (who also happen to be Semites) and does not contain a single word directed against Jews as a people. As well as making it clear that I despise all forms of discrimination based on religion, race, gender or sexual orientation, the book stresses my admiration for the significant number of Jews brave enough to tell Israel that it does not act in their name. The Simon Wiesenthal Centre would probably categorise those Jews as “self-hating”; I regard them as humane and heroic.
It would be comforting if all missives by the centre and other pro-Israel zealots could be written off as being of no consequence. Yet the truth is that our politicians and civil servants are usually too puny to stand up to their bullying.
Perhaps the clearest manifestation of the centre’s influence came after the results of a 2003 survey conducted by the EU’s polling unit Eurobarometer became public knowledge. When a sample of 7,500 Europeans were asked which country posed the biggest threat to world peace, a majority – 59% - chose Israel. The Simon Wiesenthal Centre responded by urging that the EU be excluded from the so-called peace process in the Middle East and by claiming it was a “racist flight of fancy” to deem Israel as more bellicose than North Korea or Iran.
Instead of commending their citizens for being perceptive enough to realise that a country with a nuclear arsenal and an addiction to war (Israel) is more destabilising than does not yet possess nuclear weapons (Iran), senior EU representatives allowed themselves be persuaded that being a critic of Israel automatically made one a Jew-hater.
Over the following two years, the EU’s Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia (EUMC) in Vienna – subsequently renamed the Fundamental Rights Agency – drew up the aforementioned definition of anti-Semitism. This was in no way a scientific exercise; rather than trying to examine the surrounding issues impartially, the EUMC allowed the definition to be dictated by lobby groups that consistently defend Israel no matter what cruelty it metes out to the Palestinians. An EUMC paper indicated plainly that the work was guided by the American Jewish Committee and the European Jewish Congress. The definition that they successfully advocated was worded in such a way that anyone who called out the true nature of Israel’s crimes could be smeared with accusations of anti-Semitism. Describing the establishment of Israel as a “racist endeavour” or drawing parallels between the Israeli state and the Nazis were among the examples given for what should be considered as anti-Semitism. (That Israel was founded on racism – and remains so – is simply a statement of fact; this was confirmed once again lately when 50 of Israel’s leading rabbis, many of them state-employed, instructed Jews not to rent property to Arabs).
The Fundamental Rights Agency continues to view partisan lobbyists as sober analysts. In its latest report on anti-Semitism in Europe – published in April - the agency copies and pastes the findings of such organisations as the Information and Documentation Centre Israel (CIDI) in the Netherlands and the Anti-Defamation League in New York. The “study” also suggests that Europe’s far-left and many Muslims have tested positive for the “new anti-Semitism” since the Palestinian uprising, or intifada, began in 2000. The absence of supporting evidence for that suggestion displays how much the agency’s views continue to be shaped by a pro-Israel lobby that seeks to muzzle condemnations of Israel’s crimes against humanity by accusing activists of hating Jews in a “new” way. When I asked a spokeswoman for the agency why it lent so much credence to the statements of one-sided lobbyists, she said that her colleagues “don’t voice any political position”.
One of the many troubling aspects of this state of affairs is that Israel’s most ardent supporters appear to have no interest in tackling genuine anti-Semitism. Research undertaken by the Community Security Trust found that 2009 was the worst year for anti-Semitic incidents in Britain since it began keeping records in 1984. It is no coincidence that 2009 kicked off with Israel’s murderous attacks on Gaza. This offers no excuse to anyone who vented their frustration with those crimes by vilifying innocent Jews but it does offer an explanation.
Anti-Semitism is not studied as rigorously and carefully as it ought to be. However, the data available to us leads to an inescapable conclusion: the state of Israel must shoulder a large degree of blame for any ill-feeling that Jews have to endure. The problem is surely compounded by how Israel’s supporters are refusing to address it honestly and thereby making it worse.
·First published by The Samosa (www.thesamosa.co.uk), 17 December 2011
Monday, September 20, 2010
Pentagon pulls Europe's strings
One little known fact about Brussels is that it a sliver of the city has a US address. American staff working in NATO headquarters can send letters to mom and pop or take deliveries from on-line retailers like Amazon, paying the same postage and shipping fees as they would within their home country. Under the “Air Post Office” zip code applying to this mail, the Belgian capital is considered part of New York City.
This may seem trivial but it is symptomatic of how the Pentagon regards most of Europe as its puppet. Worse again, senior officials working for our governments promote the subservience as desirable. “What is the point of the Belgian army today?” Robert Cooper, one of the EU’s top politico-military strategists and a former adviser to Tony Blair, has written. “It is not to defend Belgium, since no one is going to attack it. Rather, it is to demonstrate a sufficient commitment to the ‘West’ that friends and allies, above all the USA, will be there if ever Belgium should need help.”
During their summit last week, the EU’s presidents and prime ministers tasked foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton with drawing up a blueprint for developing closer ties between the Union and NATO. No doubt, Ashton will do her best to present the military alliance as a benevolent one, intent on preventing nascent conflicts from escalating. Gamblers could not expect high odds on terms such as “we wish to exploit the synergies between the two organisations” appearing in her blueprint.
Yet no amount of turgid phrasing can mask how NATO and the EU have already become deeply enmeshed. Officially, six of the EU’s 27 countries are not full members of NATO: Austria, Finland, Sweden, Ireland, Malta and Cyprus. Stealthily, however, the entire Union is being drawn into the US-dominated alliance. Sweden and Finland both have troops serving under NATO in Afghanistan, eroding their pretence to be neutral. Cyprus is the only EU country to have so far remained outside NATO’s misnamed Partnership for Peace.
In the past, the “Partnership” has often proven to be a waiting room for NATO accession. There is one exception to this general trend: Russia. Despite joining the Partnership in 1994, Russia has seen its relations with NATO deteriorate over the past decade. A military doctrine approved by Dmitry Medvedev, the Russian president, in February identified NATO’s continuous expansion into eastern Europe as one of the “main external threats of war”.
Rather than trying to assuage the Kremlin, NATO is still provocatively stretching its tentacles into Russia’s immediate neighbourhood. Ukraine failed to have its bid to join the alliance accepted at the 2008 NATO summit, but has more recently been promised a compensation prize. Within the next five or six years, Ukraine is scheduled to be the first country outside the alliance admitted to its “response force”. This carries the real risk that Kiev will sign up for participation in a conflict that Moscow opposes.
Russia has every right to be concerned, too, by the content of the “strategic concept” that will be rubber-stamped when NATO leaders assemble in Lisbon in November. This policy document will be based on the findings of a recent report indicating that competition for oil and other energy sources will be an issue of critical importance for the alliance in the decades ahead.
Drafted under the guidance of former Shell chief executive Jeroen van der Veer, the report eerily echoes a warning contained in a Russian intelligence assessment from 2007. According to that assessment, a confrontation between Russia and other nations determined to exploit the Arctic’s resources is a distinct possibility. Russia has sounded a bellicose note itself lately; for the first time in 20 years, it has resumed air patrols in a region containing 30% of the world’s undiscovered natural gas and 13% of undiscovered oil, if estimates by American geologists are accurate. Canada, one of several NATO members asserting a claim over the Arctic, has further ratcheted up the tension with Russia by conducting a series of “sovereignty exercises” in the Arctic.
It is no secret, of course, that the US has a seemingly insatiable lust for fossil fuels. Barack Obama may be trying to convince us that America is winding down its military operations in Iraq but major corporations have no intention of quitting the country’s oil-fields. The colonial conquest of Afghanistan, meanwhile, cannot be separated from a plan that the US has had since at least the 1990s to transport natural gas from Turkmenistan via Afghanistan. In 2007, Richard Boucher, then the US assistant secretary of state, acknowledged that Washington hoped to source energy from a pipeline linking south and central Asia.
As if the spiralling costs of these wars were not high enough, the US – egged on by Israel – is preparing to attack Iran, home to about 10% of the world’s oil and gas reserves. A recent article by Michel Chossudovsky, economics professor with the University of Ottawa, contends that US wishes not only to control Iran’s energy supplies but also to challenge the influence of Russia and China in the Middle East. The reasons he cites appear far more credible than the official narrative from Washington about wishing to stop Iran from developing a nuclear bomb.
By parroting American propaganda, its allies in NATO and the EU are trying to hoodwink the public into accepting another disastrous war.
•First published by New Europe (www.neurope.eu), 19-25 September 2010
This may seem trivial but it is symptomatic of how the Pentagon regards most of Europe as its puppet. Worse again, senior officials working for our governments promote the subservience as desirable. “What is the point of the Belgian army today?” Robert Cooper, one of the EU’s top politico-military strategists and a former adviser to Tony Blair, has written. “It is not to defend Belgium, since no one is going to attack it. Rather, it is to demonstrate a sufficient commitment to the ‘West’ that friends and allies, above all the USA, will be there if ever Belgium should need help.”
During their summit last week, the EU’s presidents and prime ministers tasked foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton with drawing up a blueprint for developing closer ties between the Union and NATO. No doubt, Ashton will do her best to present the military alliance as a benevolent one, intent on preventing nascent conflicts from escalating. Gamblers could not expect high odds on terms such as “we wish to exploit the synergies between the two organisations” appearing in her blueprint.
Yet no amount of turgid phrasing can mask how NATO and the EU have already become deeply enmeshed. Officially, six of the EU’s 27 countries are not full members of NATO: Austria, Finland, Sweden, Ireland, Malta and Cyprus. Stealthily, however, the entire Union is being drawn into the US-dominated alliance. Sweden and Finland both have troops serving under NATO in Afghanistan, eroding their pretence to be neutral. Cyprus is the only EU country to have so far remained outside NATO’s misnamed Partnership for Peace.
In the past, the “Partnership” has often proven to be a waiting room for NATO accession. There is one exception to this general trend: Russia. Despite joining the Partnership in 1994, Russia has seen its relations with NATO deteriorate over the past decade. A military doctrine approved by Dmitry Medvedev, the Russian president, in February identified NATO’s continuous expansion into eastern Europe as one of the “main external threats of war”.
Rather than trying to assuage the Kremlin, NATO is still provocatively stretching its tentacles into Russia’s immediate neighbourhood. Ukraine failed to have its bid to join the alliance accepted at the 2008 NATO summit, but has more recently been promised a compensation prize. Within the next five or six years, Ukraine is scheduled to be the first country outside the alliance admitted to its “response force”. This carries the real risk that Kiev will sign up for participation in a conflict that Moscow opposes.
Russia has every right to be concerned, too, by the content of the “strategic concept” that will be rubber-stamped when NATO leaders assemble in Lisbon in November. This policy document will be based on the findings of a recent report indicating that competition for oil and other energy sources will be an issue of critical importance for the alliance in the decades ahead.
Drafted under the guidance of former Shell chief executive Jeroen van der Veer, the report eerily echoes a warning contained in a Russian intelligence assessment from 2007. According to that assessment, a confrontation between Russia and other nations determined to exploit the Arctic’s resources is a distinct possibility. Russia has sounded a bellicose note itself lately; for the first time in 20 years, it has resumed air patrols in a region containing 30% of the world’s undiscovered natural gas and 13% of undiscovered oil, if estimates by American geologists are accurate. Canada, one of several NATO members asserting a claim over the Arctic, has further ratcheted up the tension with Russia by conducting a series of “sovereignty exercises” in the Arctic.
It is no secret, of course, that the US has a seemingly insatiable lust for fossil fuels. Barack Obama may be trying to convince us that America is winding down its military operations in Iraq but major corporations have no intention of quitting the country’s oil-fields. The colonial conquest of Afghanistan, meanwhile, cannot be separated from a plan that the US has had since at least the 1990s to transport natural gas from Turkmenistan via Afghanistan. In 2007, Richard Boucher, then the US assistant secretary of state, acknowledged that Washington hoped to source energy from a pipeline linking south and central Asia.
As if the spiralling costs of these wars were not high enough, the US – egged on by Israel – is preparing to attack Iran, home to about 10% of the world’s oil and gas reserves. A recent article by Michel Chossudovsky, economics professor with the University of Ottawa, contends that US wishes not only to control Iran’s energy supplies but also to challenge the influence of Russia and China in the Middle East. The reasons he cites appear far more credible than the official narrative from Washington about wishing to stop Iran from developing a nuclear bomb.
By parroting American propaganda, its allies in NATO and the EU are trying to hoodwink the public into accepting another disastrous war.
•First published by New Europe (www.neurope.eu), 19-25 September 2010
Thursday, June 10, 2010
NATO 'singing Israeli tunes'
Strategists with the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) are eager to maintain the strong bonds they have developed with Israel in recent times, even though its forces last week attacked a ship flagged in Turkey, a steadfast member of the alliance.
Ever since its inception in 1949, NATO has legally been dedicated to the principle of mutual defence. According to this principle, an attack on any one country in the alliance is considered an attack on all of its member states.
Analysts readily concur that Israel posed a fundamental challenge to NATO by storming the Mavi Marmara, a Turkish vessel participating in the Gaza Freedom Flotilla, killing nine peace activists. But while Turkey’s government responded swiftly to the assault by convening an emergency meeting in NATO’s Brussels headquarters, Realpolitik has prevented Ankara from demanding a robust response from its allies.
NATO sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, say there are no discussions foreseen about whether it should review the basis of the cooperation arrangements made between it and Israel over the past few years.
In 2008, Israel’s then foreign minister Tzipi Livni secured an upgrade in the country’s relations with NATO. As part of an “individual cooperation programme”, Israel was given a higher level of access to the computer networks run by the alliance, as well as a greater role in sharing intelligence. It was formally accepted, too, that Israel should take part in some of NATO’s military missions.
Before last week’s attacks, NATO planners had been examining how Israel can be more involved in Operation Active Endeavour, under which ships in the Mediterranean are monitored to detect if they are carrying illegal weapons. One NATO source said that a “lot has been invested” in the past decade in building up closer links with Israel. Among the manifestations of such links were a 2007 exercise, in which six warships – hailing from Germany, Greece, Spain, Turkey and Italy – docked in the Red Sea port of Eilat for joint drills with the Israeli military.
Although top-level Turkish politicians have intimated that the damage caused to their bilateral ties with Israel by the flotilla massacre could be irreparable, a Turkish diplomat said “there is a chance” that Israel’s ties with NATO will remain sturdy.
“NATO finds Israel useful,” said Jeff Halper from the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, a human rights organisation. “Israel has a tremendous role in patrolling the whole Mediterranean and in gathering intelligence.”
Anders Fogh Rasmussen, NATO’s secretary-general, said Jun. 7 that he would be opposed to any reduction of contact between the alliance and Israel. According to Rasmussen, dialogue with Israel is necessary to help ensure peace in the Middle East. “We owe it to the Palestinian people and we owe it to all the people in the Middle East to facilitate the peace process,” he said.
He did not mention that Israel has become an important supplier of the high-tech weaponry – principally pilotless drones – use by the alliance in the war it is fighting in Afghanistan.
Rasmussen also spoke of his ambitions to develop a new missile defence system that, he claimed, would bring greater protection to the 900 million people living in the countries that comprise the alliance. His statement followed the publication of a strategic document by NATO last month, which indicated that Iran’s nuclear programme could present NATO with a major security threat within the coming 10 years. Also last month, a senior NATO official Alan Berry confirmed that the alliance had been examining how missile interceptors already developed in Israel could be incorporated into a NATO defence system.
In yet another development during May, the U.S. House of Representatives approved the allocation of 205 million dollars in finance for Israel’s Iron Dome project. Designed by the Israeli firm Rafael Advanced Defence Systems, the project is said to intercept short-range rockets.
John Jennings, a researcher on how Israel’s occupation of Palestine breaches international law, said there is a “parallel mentality” behind the deepening relationship with Israel and NATO, on one hand, and Israel and the European Union on the other. These moves are “going to be to the detriment of the Palestinians,” he added.
Despite identifying Iran’s uranium enrichment efforts as a threat, NATO has been silent about Israel’s own nuclear programme, with which it is widely believed to have developed up to 300 nuclear bombs. The programme has been developed in secret but a new book by the journalist Sasha Polakow-Suransky – “The Unspoken Alliance: Israel’s Secret Relationship with South Africa” – gives details of documents which appear to prove the existence of Israel’s nuclear weapons.
Jennings argued that NATO is “singing Israeli tunes” by issuing stern warnings against Iran. “Israel chose who the next enemy is,” he said. “Then the U.S. cottoned on to this, then the EU. Everything about this policy against Iran originally came from Israel. This obsession with Israel has gone too far.”
First published by Inter Press Service (www.ipsnews.net)
Ever since its inception in 1949, NATO has legally been dedicated to the principle of mutual defence. According to this principle, an attack on any one country in the alliance is considered an attack on all of its member states.
Analysts readily concur that Israel posed a fundamental challenge to NATO by storming the Mavi Marmara, a Turkish vessel participating in the Gaza Freedom Flotilla, killing nine peace activists. But while Turkey’s government responded swiftly to the assault by convening an emergency meeting in NATO’s Brussels headquarters, Realpolitik has prevented Ankara from demanding a robust response from its allies.
NATO sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, say there are no discussions foreseen about whether it should review the basis of the cooperation arrangements made between it and Israel over the past few years.
In 2008, Israel’s then foreign minister Tzipi Livni secured an upgrade in the country’s relations with NATO. As part of an “individual cooperation programme”, Israel was given a higher level of access to the computer networks run by the alliance, as well as a greater role in sharing intelligence. It was formally accepted, too, that Israel should take part in some of NATO’s military missions.
Before last week’s attacks, NATO planners had been examining how Israel can be more involved in Operation Active Endeavour, under which ships in the Mediterranean are monitored to detect if they are carrying illegal weapons. One NATO source said that a “lot has been invested” in the past decade in building up closer links with Israel. Among the manifestations of such links were a 2007 exercise, in which six warships – hailing from Germany, Greece, Spain, Turkey and Italy – docked in the Red Sea port of Eilat for joint drills with the Israeli military.
Although top-level Turkish politicians have intimated that the damage caused to their bilateral ties with Israel by the flotilla massacre could be irreparable, a Turkish diplomat said “there is a chance” that Israel’s ties with NATO will remain sturdy.
“NATO finds Israel useful,” said Jeff Halper from the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, a human rights organisation. “Israel has a tremendous role in patrolling the whole Mediterranean and in gathering intelligence.”
Anders Fogh Rasmussen, NATO’s secretary-general, said Jun. 7 that he would be opposed to any reduction of contact between the alliance and Israel. According to Rasmussen, dialogue with Israel is necessary to help ensure peace in the Middle East. “We owe it to the Palestinian people and we owe it to all the people in the Middle East to facilitate the peace process,” he said.
He did not mention that Israel has become an important supplier of the high-tech weaponry – principally pilotless drones – use by the alliance in the war it is fighting in Afghanistan.
Rasmussen also spoke of his ambitions to develop a new missile defence system that, he claimed, would bring greater protection to the 900 million people living in the countries that comprise the alliance. His statement followed the publication of a strategic document by NATO last month, which indicated that Iran’s nuclear programme could present NATO with a major security threat within the coming 10 years. Also last month, a senior NATO official Alan Berry confirmed that the alliance had been examining how missile interceptors already developed in Israel could be incorporated into a NATO defence system.
In yet another development during May, the U.S. House of Representatives approved the allocation of 205 million dollars in finance for Israel’s Iron Dome project. Designed by the Israeli firm Rafael Advanced Defence Systems, the project is said to intercept short-range rockets.
John Jennings, a researcher on how Israel’s occupation of Palestine breaches international law, said there is a “parallel mentality” behind the deepening relationship with Israel and NATO, on one hand, and Israel and the European Union on the other. These moves are “going to be to the detriment of the Palestinians,” he added.
Despite identifying Iran’s uranium enrichment efforts as a threat, NATO has been silent about Israel’s own nuclear programme, with which it is widely believed to have developed up to 300 nuclear bombs. The programme has been developed in secret but a new book by the journalist Sasha Polakow-Suransky – “The Unspoken Alliance: Israel’s Secret Relationship with South Africa” – gives details of documents which appear to prove the existence of Israel’s nuclear weapons.
Jennings argued that NATO is “singing Israeli tunes” by issuing stern warnings against Iran. “Israel chose who the next enemy is,” he said. “Then the U.S. cottoned on to this, then the EU. Everything about this policy against Iran originally came from Israel. This obsession with Israel has gone too far.”
First published by Inter Press Service (www.ipsnews.net)
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