Readers may have noticed that the UK’s Methodist Church last week launched a boycott of Israel. I have an op-ed on the matter in today’s Jerusalem Post. Click here to read it.
The eminent Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz frequently provides a useful analogy about Israel’s predicament in the tribunals of international law. It is analogous, he argues, to the position that black people faced in the American south of the 1930s. The legal system would work fine in judging a case between a white man and another white man. A black man facing another black man may get a lesser degree of justice due to the insouciance of the system, but a reasonable degree of fairness could still be expected. Put a white man against a black man, however, and the black man never stood a chance due to the weight of the prejudices against him.
Dershowitz’s analogy is powerful and striking. But a decision taken in a British court this week suggests that analogies with America in the 1930s are no longer necessary. Bigotry against the Jewish state is now so entrenched in contemporary British society that juries have begun to acquit criminals merely if they can show that they acted against Israeli interests. No other defence is necessary.
The irrepressible Melanie Phillips highlights today yet another searing indictment of the Islamist extremists who run Gaza, and their UN apologists who with mindblowing intransigence refuse to recognise the real root cause of what is going on there. It transpires that Hamas has yet again torched a UN run children’s summer camp to prevent the heinous crime against Islam of little boys and girls playing together and having fun.
To all sane and reasoned individuals — ie. not the British foreign office, not the Obama administration and most certainly not the United Nations — this would come as yet another piece of evidence of the vile, extremist nature of the people who run Gaza and remain intent on holding it in a state of backwardness and religious-ideological conformism.
So here is John Ging, head of the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) in Gaza, on the BBC:
“”This is another example of the growing levels of extremism in Gaza and further evidence, if that were needed, of the urgency to change the circumstances on the ground.” In other words, it’s Israel’s fault.
Silvio Berlusconi, prime minister of Italy, is an unconventional politician and he is difficult to predict. But even Berlusconi is surely too well versed in the customs of international diplomacy to make predictions about Israel attacking Iran without very good grounds for doing so. On the sidelines of the G8* summit in Canada on Saturday he said the following:
“Iran is not guaranteeing a peaceful production of nuclear power [so] the members of the G-8 are worried and believe absolutely that Israel will probably react pre-emptively.” (My italics)
Unless Berlusconi is being completely irresponsible, this sounds like a warning that something may be imminent. It is also worth noting that Berlusconi’s remarks came the day before CIA director Leon Panetta said Iran probably has enough uranium to build two nuclear weapons within the next two years.
Sweden’s English language newspaper, The Local, is reporting that Swedish dockers launched a blockade of Israeli ships and cargo at ports across the country on Wednesday. The blockade, which will last until June 29, was initiated by The Swedish Dock Workers Union in protest at the Israeli raid on the Mavi Marmara in the Mediterranean during which nine people died after Israeli commandos were attacked by Islamists seeking “martyrdom”.
The blockade is clearly anti-Semitic according to European Union guidelines (the EUMC definition) which state that it is racist to hold Israel to different standards from other democracies. Since the dockers union has not launched blockades of countries involved in the war in Afghanistan, for example, where thousands of civilians have died, it is clear that Israel is indeed being held to different standards.