Saturday 20 February 2010

Terrorism and Racism

Geoffrey Wheatcroft writes:

Israel "is not a country about aggression and targeted assassination, it's a country about science, hi-tech and shopping malls". This arresting definition was proposed on Channel 4 News on Thursday evening by Rami Igra, a former Mossad agent, although he rather spoiled the effect by what he said later.

In fact, everyone assumes that Mossad did it. The authorities in Dubai believe the Israeli secret service assassinated Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, the Hamas official, last month. The British Government agrees that it was Mossad, or at least wagged a finger at the Israeli ambassador because British citizens' passports stolen in Israel had been used by the hit squad.

And most Israelis, with varying degrees of approval, agree. Igra contradicted himself by adding that the battle line nowadays wasn't the Maginot Line or Stalingrad (not an argument one had recently heard) but the streets of London and Jerusalem, and that in this great conflict "Western civilisation" was obliged to find new methods – "including targeted assassinations".

Not that this was a revelation. For years Israel has openly proclaimed that it will take revenge on those who kill its citizens. Those responsible for the 1972 Munich massacre were all hunted down and killed, along with the odd bystander. The "targeted killing" of suspected terrorists has long been avowed policy. A few years ago, the then deputy prime minister, Ehud Olmert, said he did not exclude the option of assassinating the elected president of the Palestinian Authority.

All of which highlights a blatant double standard, between the treatment of terrorists of different nationalities and hues. The word "racist" is overused, but in this context it applies all too accurately.

Tomorrow evening we can watch the remarkable spectacle of a television programme about Jesus presented by Gerry Adams, the impenitent former leader of the IRA who was responsible for some of its worst atrocities. This is one more case where television companies as well as politicians weigh with two weights and judge with two measures.

Some years ago, the contrarian Belfast journalist John O'Farrell (not a Protestant unionist) was writing about the career of Martin McGuinness, which had taken him from head of the IRA to minister of education. As O'Farrell said, thanks to the Belfast agreement and settlement, "the children of Northern Ireland will have their futures in the hands of a man who, if he were a Serb, would be indicted at The Hague".

Or try another comparison, the respective fate of two terrorist leaders. One is a white Catholic Irishman, the other a dark-skinned Muslim Palestinian; one is asked to present a programme on Jesus, the other is brutally bumped off – an assassination which, like all such by Mossad, will never be publicly condemned by the US. Suppose that, at the height of the IRA violence, Adams and McGuinness had been the objects of "targeted killing" by MI6. It's interesting to speculate what the American reaction would have been.

The British media are sometimes accused of a bias against Israel. But would Channel 4 ask an unrepentant Islamist terrorist who had killed ordinary Israelis to present a programme on the Prophet Mohamed? Or, for that matter, Ratko Mladic to talk about Orthodox Christianity and the Serbian monastic tradition?

This comparison – the question of why some terrorists are more terrorist than others – has indeed been addressed before, by Tony Blair. It was highly pertinent at the time he was doing everything he could to appease the IRA with one hand while the other was waging a savage "war on terror" in the Middle East.

And he addressed it with his usual glib speciousness concealing a feeble case. "I don't think," he said, "you can compare the political demands of republicanism with the political demands of this terrorist ideology we are facing now." Why not? Why is there any difference in kind between the ideologies, as well as the methods, of Adams and al-Mabhouh?

Compare and contrast, as exam papers say. The IRA and its front organisation Sinn Fein want to undo the partition of Ireland that was effected by the creation of a separate province of Northern Ireland in 1920. To that end the IRA deliberately murdered many people, including ordinary Protestants, and that end, if not the means, "is shared by many of our citizens", Blair says, as well as by millions of Irish Americans.

Hamas wants to undo the partition of Palestine that was effected by the creation of a separate state of Israel in 1948. To that end it has deliberately murdered many people, including ordinary Jews. And that end, if not the means, is shared by hundreds of millions of Arabs and Muslims as well as others in Asia and Africa. Why does their support not equally validate the objective?

When Blair spoke he was still prime minister. He has since gone on to highly paid fresh fields and lucrative pastures new. One of his supposed jobs is as envoy to "to promote an end to the [Israeli-Palestinian] conflict in conformity with the road-map", which was one of the justifications with which he previously sold the Iraq war to his deluded followers.

He has totally failed in that role, as the eminent Israeli historian Avi Shlaim observes, not least because of "his own personal limitations; his inability to grasp that the fundamental issue in this tragic conflict is not Israeli security but Palestinian national rights". Shlaim adds that this is precisely what has endeared Blair to the Israeli establishment, so that at the very time, a year ago when the people of Gaza were mourning their dead, Blair received an award from Tel Aviv university as "laureate for the present time dimension in the field of leadership", accompanied by a modest cheque for $1m.

As Shlaim says, the award was absurd in view of Blair's "silent complicity in Israel's continuing crimes against the Palestinian people" – but it was no less so in view of his indulgence towards Adams and McGuinness.

But then perhaps all this is too elaborate. It might be that the shade of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, and for that matter of any of the Taliban men recently extirpated by CIA drones, could contemplate tomorrow night's repulsive programme and simply ask, like Ali G: "Is it 'cos I is black?"

2 comments:

  1. What It’s Like to Chill Out With Whom the World Considers the Most

    Ruthless Men in the World Ratko Mladic, Radovan Karadzic and Goran

    Hadzic (+) Confessions of a Female War Crimes Investigator


    Retrospectively, it was all so simple, natural and matter of fact being on a

    boat restaurant in Belgrade, sitting with, laughing, drinking a two hundred bottle of

    wine and chatting about war and peace while Ratko Mladic held my hand. Mladic, a

    man considered the world’s most ruthless war criminal since Adolf Hitler, still at large

    and currently having a five million dollar bounty on his head for genocide by the

    international community. Yet there I was with my two best friends at the time, a

    former Serbian diplomat, his wife, and Ratko Mladic just chilling. There was no

    security, nothing you’d ordinarily expect in such circumstances. Referring to himself

    merely as, Sharko; this is the story of it all came about.

    http://sites.google.com/site/jillstarrsite/what-it-s-like-to-chill-out-with-whom-the-rest-of

    -the-world-considers-as-the-most-ruthless-men-in-the-world-ratko-mladic-and-radovan

    -karadzic-confessions-of-a-female-war-crimes-investigator
    (Read My Entire Book Here For Free Now).


    http://picasaweb.google.com/lpcyusa
    (Jill Starr's Entire American Expose Including the Secret Scanned Photo Documentary

    Evidence I Obtained From the CLOSED UN ICC Preparatory Meetings (2001)

    http://lpcyu.instablogs.com/feed
    (Jill Starr On Instablogs)

    http://shops.half.ebay.com/raretofindreads
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    ReplyDelete
  2. Irrefutable Proof ICTY Is Corrupt Court/Irrefutable Proof the Hague Court Cannot Legitimately Prosecute Karadzic Case

    picasaweb.google.com/lpcyusa/
    (The Documentary Secret United Nations ICC Meeting Papers Scanned Images)

    This legal technicality indicates the Hague must dismiss charges against Dr Karadzic and others awaiting trials in the Hague jail; like it or not.

    Unfortunately for the Signatures Of the Rome Statute United Nations member states instituting the ICC & ICTY housed at the Hague, insofar as the, Radovan Karadzic, as with the other Hague cases awaiting trial there, I personally witnessed these United Nations member states openly speaking about trading judicial appointments and verdicts for financial funding when I attended the 2001 ICC Preparatory Meetings at the UN in Manhattan making the iCTY and ICC morally incapable trying Radovan Karazdic and others.

    I witnessed with my own eyes and ears when attending the 2001 Preparatory Meetings to establish an newly emergent International Criminal Court, the exact caliber of criminal corruption running so very deeply at the Hague, that it was a perfectly viable topic of legitimate conversation in those meetings I attended to debate trading verdicts AND judicial appointments, for monetary funding.

    Jilly wrote:*The rep from Spain became distraught and when her country’s proposal was not taken to well by the chair of the meeting , then Spain argued in a particularly loud and noticably strongly vocal manner, “Spain (my country) strongly believes if we contribute most financial support to the Hague’s highest court, that ought to give us and other countries feeding it financially MORE direct power over its decisions.”

    ((((((((((((((((((((((((( ((((((((((((((((((((((((( Instead of censoring the country representative from Spain for even bringing up this unjust, illegal and unfair judicial idea of bribery for international judicial verdicts and judicial appointments, all country representatives present in the meeting that day all treated the Spain proposition as a ”totally legitimate topic” discussed and debated it between each other for some time. I was quite shocked!
    The idea was "let's discuss it." "It's a great topic to discuss."

    Some countries agreed with Spain’s propositions while others did not. The point here is, bribery for judicial verdicts and judicial appointments was treated as a totally legitimate topic instead of an illegitimate toic which it is in the meeting that I attended in 2001 that day to establish the ground work for a newly emergent international criminal court.))))))))))))))))))))))))))))

    In particular., since "Spain" was so overtly unafraid in bringing up this topic of trading financial funding the ICC for influence over its future judicial appointments and verdicts in front of every other UN member state present that day at the UN, "Spain" must have already known by previous experience the topic of bribery was "socially acceptable" for conversation that day. They must have previously spoke about bribing the ICTY and
    ICC before in meetings; this is my take an international sociological honor student. SPAIN's diplomatic gesture of international justice insofar as, Serbia, in all of this is, disgusting morally!

    SPAIN HAS TAUGHT THE WORLD THE TRUE DEFINITION OF AN
    "INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL COURT."

    I represented the state interests' of the Former Yugoslavia, in Darko Trifunovic’s absence in those meetings and I am proud to undertake this effort on Serbia’s behalf.

    ReplyDelete