Basic HTML Version
6 HASHALOM February
2017
February 2017
HASHALOM
7
New Zealanders are often told that our country punches above its
weight internationally.
Unfortunately, in the case of UnitedNations Security Council Resolution
2334 regarding the conflict between Israel and Palestinians, Minister
of Foreign Affairs Murray McCully has delivered New Zealand an
uppercut to its face.
New Zealand co-sponsored the “anti-settlement” resolution with
Senegal, Malaysia and Venezuela, hardly bastions of human rights.
With the United States abstaining, the Security Council passed it at its
last sitting of 2016 on Christmas Eve.
You don’t have to be a fan of Jewish settlements in the West Bank to
criticise the resolution.
And there are many people, like me, who support a two-state solution
- the co-existence of a secure Jewish state and a viable Palestinian
state - who are demoralised by this resolution, believing that it makes
that outcome less likely.
The resolution goes well beyond condemning Israel for West Bank
settlements. It deems all settlements beyond the 1949 armistice lines
a “flagrant violation of international law”.
It declares all the land beyond those lines “occupied Palestinian
territory”. That includes East Jerusalem, where Judaism’s holiest site,
the Temple Mount, as well as the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, are
situated.
When Israel’s Arab neighbours mounted a second unsuccessful
attempt to exterminate her in 1967, Israel acquired East Jerusalem and
the West Bank from Jordan. Palestinians have never had a sovereign
state in the West Bank or elsewhere, although they have refused
several opportunities for one.
That is not to say that they should not have such a state. It means,
however, that the Security Council has purported to act as an
international court, creating a legal principle in doing so.
It has pre-determined an issue that should be negotiated between
the two parties. It has taken away any incentive for the Palestinians
to negotiate without pre-conditions and to accept any less than what
they have now been told is theirs.
It has undermined Israel’s policy of trading land for peace, successfully
implemented with Egypt, for, if the West Bank is not Israel’s, what
bargaining chip does she have?
It has ignored that Jews have the best legal claim to the land as the
indigenous people, under the League of Nations mandate and as the
victor of a defensive war. And it requires Israel to return to suicidal
borders, the very ones that led to her being attacked in 1967, with no
guarantee of her security.
The major obstacle to a Palestinian state is not settlements. It never
has been.
It is the refusal of the Palestinian leadership, along with many Arab and
Muslim states, to accept the existence of a tiny Jewish state smaller
than Northland. When Israel unilaterally withdrew from Gaza in 2005
and disbanded settlements, it was thanked with thousands of rockets
from the reigning Islamist group Hamas, whose charter calls for the
destruction of Israel.
The more “moderate” Palestinian Authority which rules the West
Bank refuses to recognise Israel and glorifies terrorism in its schools
and media. Israel cannot risk that the West Bank goes the same way
as Gaza or worse still Syria, on which the council has been an abject
failure.
The security of the Jewish state and the survival of its people is not
something that warrants merely a passing mention in a resolution
under the guise of even-handedness, nor is it something that we can
afford to be reckless about, as history attests.
Palestinians should have their self-determination, but not at the
expense of the Jewish people’s.
As a Jewish New Zealander, I feel betrayed by our Government. Given
our own shameful colonial past, New Zealand’s role in illegalising an
indigenous people in their ancestral homeland has been noted by
several overseas commentators.
However, all New Zealanders, regardless of religion or political
ideology, should ask questions about this resolution.
How did Murray McCully manoeuvre this resolution, opaquely and
urgently, on the last day of New Zealand’s two-year term on the
council, and upon whose advice or insistence?
It is doubtful that the resolution was put to Cabinet, so who
determines our foreign policy? Why the apparent change in policy as
regards Israel?
And when can we expect the prime minister to finally respond to calls
for comment?
We might expect such a lack of transparency and accountability from
our new besties, Senegal, Malaysia and Venezuela, but for proud
puncher New Zealand, it is of grave concern.
ISRAEL
ISRAEL
ANALYSIS/OPINION:
Secretary of State John Kerry, echoing other policymakers in the
Obama administration, blasted Israel last week in a 70-minute
rant about its supposedly self-destructive policies.
Why does the world - including now the United States - single
out liberal and lawful Israel but refrain from chastising truly
illiberal countries?
Mr. Kerry has never sermonized for so long about his plan to
solve the Syrian crisis that has led to some 500,000 deaths or
the vast migrant crisis that has nearly wrecked the European
Union.
No one in this administration has shown as much anger about
the many thousands who have been killed and jailed in the
Castro brothers’ Cuba, much less about the current Stone Age
conditions in Venezuela or the nightmarish government of
President Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines, an ally nation.
President Obama did not champion the cause of the oppressed
during the Green Revolution of 2009 in Iran. Did Mr. Kerry and
Mr. Obama become so outraged after Russia occupied South
Ossetia, Crimea and eastern Ukraine?
Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power was never
so impassioned over the borders of Chinese-occupied Tibet, or
over Turkish-occupied Northern Cyprus.
In terms of harkening back to the Palestinian “refugee” crisis
that started in the late 1940s, no one talks today in similar
fashion about the Jews who survived the Holocaust and walked
home, only to find that their houses in Eastern Europe were
gone or occupied by others. Much less do we recall the 11
million German civilians who were ethnically cleansed from
Eastern Europe in 1945 by the Soviets and their imposed
Communist governments. Certainly, there are not still “refugee”
camps outside Dresden for those persons displaced from East
Prussia 70 years ago.
More recently, few nations at the U.N. faulted the Kuwaiti
government for the expulsion of 200,000 Palestinians after the
liberation of Kuwait by coalition forces in 1991.
Yet on nearly every issue - from “settlements” to human rights
to the status of women - U.N. members who routinely violate
human rights target a liberal Israel.
When Mr. Obama entered office, among his first acts were to
give an interview with the Saudi-owned news outlet Al Arabiya
championing his outreach to the mostly non-democratic Islamic
world and to blast democratic Israel on “settlements.”
Partly, the reason for such inordinate criticism of Israel is
sheer cowardice. If Israel had 100 million people and was
geographically large, the world would not so readily play the
bully.
Instead, the United Nations and Europe would likely leave it
alone — just as they give a pass to human rights offenders
such as Pakistan and Indonesia. If Israel were as big as Iran, and
Iran as small as Israel, then the Obama administration would
have not reached out to Iran, and would have left Israel alone.
Israel’s supposed Western friends sort out Israel’s enemies by
their relative natural resources, geography and population -
and conclude that supporting Israel is a bad deal in cost-benefit
terms.
Partly, the criticism of Israel is explained by oil - an issue that
is changing daily as both the United States and Israel cease to
be oil importers.
Still, about 40 percent of the world’s oil is sold by Persian Gulf
nations. Influential nations in Europe and China continue to
count on oil imports from the Middle East - and make political
adjustments accordingly.
Partly, anti-Israel rhetoric is due to herd politics.
The Palestinians - illiberal and reactionary on cherished Western
issues like gender equality, homosexuality, religious tolerance
and diversity - have grafted their cause to the popular campus
agendas of race/class/gender victimization.
Western nations in general do not worry much about assorted
non-Western crimes such as genocides, mass cleansings or
politically induced famines. Instead, they prefer sermons to
other Westerners as a sort of virtue-signaling, without any
worries over offending politically correct groups.
Partly, the piling on Israel is due to American leverage over
Israel as a recipient of U.S. aid. As a benefactor, the Obama
administration expects that Israel must match U.S. generosity
with obeisance. Yet the U.S. rarely gives similar “how dare you”
lectures to less liberal recipients of American aid, such as the
Palestinians for their lack of free elections.
Partly, the cause of global hostility toward Israel is jealousy. If
Israel were mired in Venezuela-like chaos, few nations would
care. Instead, the image of a proud, successful, Westernized
nation as an atoll in a sea of self-inflicted misery is grating to
many. And the astounding success of Israel bothers so many
failed states that the entire world takes notice.
But partly, the source of anti-Israelism is ancient anti-Semitism.
If Israelis were Egyptians administering Gaza or Jordanians
running the West Bank (as during the 1960s), no one would
care. The world’s problem is that Israelis are Jews. Thus, Israel
earns negative scrutiny that is never extended commensurately
to others.
Mr. Obama and his diplomatic team should have known all this.
Perhaps they do, but they simply do not care.
Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian with the Hoover
Institution at Stanford University.
The Jewish state is a stand-in for Jews in a revival of anti-Semitism
Why the sudden hatred of Israel?
Israel vote was an
affront to all New
Zealanders
By Victor Davis Hanson - Wednesday, January 4, 2017 - Washington Times
By Juliet Moses - NZ Herald