Last week (on Bastille Day), the new Republic of South Soudan became a member state of the United Nations. After being oppressed, massacred and plundered for decades by Khartoum, the people of South Sudan finally obtained the independent state they fought for. Theoretically, the Palestinians should rejoice and ask the UN why they are denied what the South Sudanese were just granted. Instead, Mahmoud Abbas delivered a letter to Sudanese President Omar Hassan Al-Bashir (a man accused of genocide and of crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Court) to express his opposition to South Sudan’s independence.
It’s called self-determination for me, not for thee.
Just as Abbas was about to reap the gold medal for hypocrisy, Catherine Ashton broke a new record. After the Knesset passed a law last week that enables Israeli citizens to bring civil suits against people or organizations instigating anti-Israel boycotts, Ashton expressed public concern for freedom of speech in Israel. Which makes Ashton eligible for the gold medal of hypocrisy too, because in Europe anti-Israel boycott is a criminal offence. In France, for example, you can go to jail for three years and pay a €45,000 fine for trying to impede economic activity out of political, ethnic, or religious prejudice (Articles 225-1 and 225-2 of the “Code pénal”).
The French law is more stringent than the one recently passed by the Knesset. The new Israeli law does not criminalize boycott. It only allows "citizens to bring civil suits against persons and organizations that call for economic, cultural or academic boycotts against Israel, Israeli institutions or regions under Israeli control." So the New Israel’s Fund’s statement that the new law "criminalizes freedom of speech" is false and misleading. The new Israeli law does not criminalize boycott, let alone freedom of speech. French law, by contrast, does criminalize boycott.
US law also prohibits anti-Israel boycott. The Anti-boycott laws under the US Export Administration Act of 1979 (as amended in August 1999) prohibit American companies from furthering or supporting the boycott of Israel. The penalties imposed for each violation can be a fine of up to $50,000 or five times the value of the exports involved (whichever is greater), and imprisonment of up to five years.
It is ironical that the same people in Israel who claim that freedom of speech can suffer no infringement said the very opposite two weeks ago when the police arrested Rabbi Dov Lior. We were told at the time that freedom of speech can and should be curtailed when it borders incitement. True, there is a difference between incitement and boycott (though boycott often turns into incitement). But either freedom of speech suffers no limitation, or it does. And democracies such as the United States and France do limit freedom of speech in order to prevent incitement as well as boycott. So you are allowed to limit freedom of speech in order to prevent discrimination in America and in France, but not in Israel.
It’s called freedom of speech for me, not for thee.
No less ironical is the fact that the very same people in Israel who said after the arrest of Rabbi Lior that the law is sacrosanct are now making a point of publicly defying the law by boycotting Israeli goods produced beyond the “green line” (in France, as explained above, they could be jailed for doing that). Two weeks ago, the law was sacrosanct. Now, it is a moral duty to break it.
It’s called rule of law for thee, not for me.
So who gets the gold medal for hypocrisy? Mahmud Abbas, Catherine Ashton, or Zehava Gal-On? The contest being so tight, here is a compromise. Let’s grant French citizenship to Zehava Gal-On to deter her from discriminating between Israeli products for political reasons. Let’s have Catherine Ashton write an essay on “why civil lawsuits are more dangerous to freedom of speech than criminal prosecutions.” And let’s appoint Mahmoud Abbas as “UN Special Envoy for the Universal Implementation of the two-state solution including, inter alia, in Sudan, Libya, Lebanon, Morocco, Cyprus, Belgium, Canada, and China.”
It’s called making of fool of thee, not of me.
Sunday, July 17, 2011
Wednesday, July 6, 2011
Boat People 2.0
Is it a coincidence that the last flotilla desperately trying to reach Gaza is setting sail from Greece? While the Greek economy is imploding, Gaza’s is booming. Those angry Hellenes trying to break the blockade (and to fix their ships) look more like boat people than like freedom fighters.
Crowds are protesting daily (and violently) in Athens. The Greek government recently passed an austerity plan through parliament to get a bail-out from the EU, but the rescue plan will only temporally keep afloat a bankrupt economy incapable of paying its debts and of reforming itself. Greece is insolvent: its debts amount to 160% of its GDP. The government cannot finance its own budget deficit, and it would run out of money without help from the EU and the IMF.
Gaza, by contrast, has enjoyed a two-digit (16%) GDP growth in 2010. The New York Times recently reported that a new mall and two luxury hotels just opened in Gaza. Imports are unrestricted except, of course, for weapons and ammunition.
So those European citizens of bankrupt countries kept afloat by German and US taxpayers (via the EU and the IMF respectively) seem to have figured out that moving to Gaza is really what the “audacity of hope” was all about. In reality, of course, the “flotillas” have a sinister agenda.
One of the key organizers of the “second flotilla” to Gaza is Muhammad Sawalha, a Hamas activist living in Britain who is among the signatories of the “Istanbul Declaration.” This document states, among other things, that “the Islamic nation” has an obligation to provide weapons to the Palestinians “so that they are able to live and perform the jihad in the way of Allah Almighty.” Other flotilla organizers this year include Walid Abu al-Shewarib, a member of Hamas as well as of the German branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, and Amin Abu Rashid , a Hamas leader from Holland.
Hamas’ strategy to end the maritime arms embargo imposed by Israel on Gaza is simple: create a clash with the IDF, portray Hamas as the victim and Israel as a bully, and gather international support for the “liberation” of Gaza. This strategy partially worked last year (French daily Libération called Israel a “pirate state”). As the delightful “We Con the World” satire put it: “We’ll make them all believe that the Hamas is Momma Theresa… We’ll make them all believe the IDF is Jack the Ripper.”
That Hamas-Europe is organizing a flotilla to help Hamas-Gaza makes sense. They are, after all, co-workers and brothers-in-arms. It is the support of self-proclaimed progressive Jews and Western liberals for those medieval anti-Semites and misogynists that seems unexplainable. But there is an explanation.
Among the flotilla crusaders are people like Adam Shapiro and Dror Feiler. The former is a Brooklyn Jew who says he doesn’t regard himself as Jewish, who married an Arab girl, and who visited Arafat in his compound in March 2002 at the height of the PA’s terror war against Israel. The latter was raised on a Communist Kibbutz, moved to Sweden, and renounced his Israeli citizenship. If people like Shapiro and Feiler care so much about freedom and human rights, how come they don’t organize flotillas to Syria and Libya where people are being butchered by their tyrants? The answer is that Shapiro and Feiler have an obsession with Israel because Israel acts as a mirror of what they want to bury: their Jewish identity.
As for European and American leftists, Israel is a painful reminder of their failed attempt four decades ago to rid Western society of its Judeo-Christian basis. “Palestine” has become the mythical promised land of Western nihilism. Unlike the real boat people, those freedom fighters wannabes from Europe and America are not fleeing massacres and starvation. But they too hope that wandering on the sea in front of cameras will salvage them from misery.
Crowds are protesting daily (and violently) in Athens. The Greek government recently passed an austerity plan through parliament to get a bail-out from the EU, but the rescue plan will only temporally keep afloat a bankrupt economy incapable of paying its debts and of reforming itself. Greece is insolvent: its debts amount to 160% of its GDP. The government cannot finance its own budget deficit, and it would run out of money without help from the EU and the IMF.
Gaza, by contrast, has enjoyed a two-digit (16%) GDP growth in 2010. The New York Times recently reported that a new mall and two luxury hotels just opened in Gaza. Imports are unrestricted except, of course, for weapons and ammunition.
So those European citizens of bankrupt countries kept afloat by German and US taxpayers (via the EU and the IMF respectively) seem to have figured out that moving to Gaza is really what the “audacity of hope” was all about. In reality, of course, the “flotillas” have a sinister agenda.
One of the key organizers of the “second flotilla” to Gaza is Muhammad Sawalha, a Hamas activist living in Britain who is among the signatories of the “Istanbul Declaration.” This document states, among other things, that “the Islamic nation” has an obligation to provide weapons to the Palestinians “so that they are able to live and perform the jihad in the way of Allah Almighty.” Other flotilla organizers this year include Walid Abu al-Shewarib, a member of Hamas as well as of the German branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, and Amin Abu Rashid , a Hamas leader from Holland.
Hamas’ strategy to end the maritime arms embargo imposed by Israel on Gaza is simple: create a clash with the IDF, portray Hamas as the victim and Israel as a bully, and gather international support for the “liberation” of Gaza. This strategy partially worked last year (French daily Libération called Israel a “pirate state”). As the delightful “We Con the World” satire put it: “We’ll make them all believe that the Hamas is Momma Theresa… We’ll make them all believe the IDF is Jack the Ripper.”
That Hamas-Europe is organizing a flotilla to help Hamas-Gaza makes sense. They are, after all, co-workers and brothers-in-arms. It is the support of self-proclaimed progressive Jews and Western liberals for those medieval anti-Semites and misogynists that seems unexplainable. But there is an explanation.
Among the flotilla crusaders are people like Adam Shapiro and Dror Feiler. The former is a Brooklyn Jew who says he doesn’t regard himself as Jewish, who married an Arab girl, and who visited Arafat in his compound in March 2002 at the height of the PA’s terror war against Israel. The latter was raised on a Communist Kibbutz, moved to Sweden, and renounced his Israeli citizenship. If people like Shapiro and Feiler care so much about freedom and human rights, how come they don’t organize flotillas to Syria and Libya where people are being butchered by their tyrants? The answer is that Shapiro and Feiler have an obsession with Israel because Israel acts as a mirror of what they want to bury: their Jewish identity.
As for European and American leftists, Israel is a painful reminder of their failed attempt four decades ago to rid Western society of its Judeo-Christian basis. “Palestine” has become the mythical promised land of Western nihilism. Unlike the real boat people, those freedom fighters wannabes from Europe and America are not fleeing massacres and starvation. But they too hope that wandering on the sea in front of cameras will salvage them from misery.
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