In all of the hoo-hah over the inauguration of Barack Obama, and the continued fall-out of Israel’s war crimes and atrocities in Gaza, the media in the UK hardly mentioned the sentencing of the SHAC activists, the people from the Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty web site who were jailed for various terms between four and eleven years.
Heather Nicholson was jailed for eleven years. Gregg and Natasha Avery for nine years apiece. Gavin Medd-Hall for eight years; Daniel Wadham, five years; Gervals Selby and Dan Amos, four years each.
Now, you can well argue that these people were behind a vicious campaign against individual staff members of Huntingdon Life Sciences and its suppliers and sub-contractors. (Though, as a side-bar, some of the defendants claimed that they only pleaded “guilty” because they knew they wouldn’t get a fair trial anyway.) But even so, even if they were guilty of every last jot and syllable of the prosecution’s case, you have to also ask yourself: are these prison sentences just and proportionate?
According to the sentencing guidelines for manslaughter published by the Department of Justice, a review of 50 reported Court of Appeal sentence appeals between January 1990 and July 2004 showed that out of 50 cases, only two received sentences of more than ten years for manslaughter and the commonest sentence band was between three and five years. So how have we arrived at a situation where a handful of animal activists are given harsher sentences for letter-writing, demos, and general harassment than if they had committed manslaughter? Of course, you may feel that it is the manslaughter sentence which is too light, while the “SHAC 7” got what they deserved. That is, however, a different argument, and if you want tougher sentences all round, what are you going to use for prisons, since all the existing ones are fit to bust?
Returning to the disparity in the sentencing, I doubt that the judge sentenced the SHAC 7 to the terms he did as the first step in a nationwide campaign for stiffer sentences. The whole ethos of the trial, right from the start, right from the decision to charge them with conspiracy to blackmail, seems to have been motivated by just one aim: to teach these pesky activists a lesson. The judge even mentioned, in his summing up, balancing the right to protest with HLS’s “right to conduct animal experiments”. The inference we must inevitably draw from that is that it’s OK to protest, as long as you don’t become too effective at it. And there is no doubt that SHAC and its various hangers-on and adherents have been a thorn in the side of HLS.
But anyone hoping that this is the end of the matter is sadly mistaken. By his heavy-handed, disproportionate, that’ll-learn-them sentencing, the judge has handed SHAC an enormous boost. Already events have been held in support of the SHAC 7 and more will undoubtedly follow, as a whole raft of previously moderate people like me are motivated by the sheer injustice of the sentences to take part in the campaign to free them. It is the same process by which previously moderate Muslims become radicalised by seeing attacks on people of their faith in Iraq and in Gaza. Let us hope it does not have the same outcomes.
And the sentencing of the SHAC 7 will fail for another reason. Because, as with so much other state-sponsored repression, it only treats the symptom, not the disease. Why is no-one asking what failures in the democratic process led the SHAC organisation to take direct action in the first place? Many of us voted Labour in 1997 because we thought we were going to get a Royal Commission on Vivisection. Twelve years later, we are still waiting, and in the meantime the government has shown itself willing to act as the backer of last resort not only for HLS but also for the new Animal Experiments Laboratory in Oxford. The only significant Act in favour of animal welfare in twelve years of Labour rule has been the ban on fox-hunting, and even then Blair had to be virtually anaesthetised to get it through Parliament, and it has been policed and enforced half-heartedly ever since.
Is it any wonder, then, that SHAC take the view that it is morally indefensible to sit and wait decades for politicians to take action, and do nothing while animals in laboratories continue to suffer and die? You may not agree with their conclusions or their actions, but you would have to have the intellect of a breeze-block not to see how the situation has come about.
I believe (and therefore it is Bolshy Party Policy) that there are viable alternatives to animal experiments and all that stops their being developed, overall, is the lack of political will, and the fact that money and funding favours the status quo. Who in the scientific community is going to risk their research grant, their nice car, their house in the leafy suburbs of Oxford or Cambridge, by going out on a limb against animal testing?
If we want a truly just society, then justice must not only be done, it must be seen to be done. It would be a just outcome if the sentences of the SHAC 7 were reduced or rescinded on appeal, and it would be even more just if we were finally allowed the Royal Commission which we have so long been denied.
Small footnote: since I originally posted this, Mel Broughton, who was accused of conspiring to firebomb the new animal research labs at Oxford University, was sentenced to 10 years on 13 February at Oxford Crown Court. Convicted mainly on the links between improvised devices which failed to explode, and his DNA profile, Mel Broughton was the founder of the group Speak, which consistently demonstrated against the new labs and which used similar tasctics to those employed by SHAC against Huntingdon. The bomb which did go off caused £14,000 of damage.
If Mel Broughton was guilty, then however sympathetic one may feel to his motives, nevertheless he should be punished, because no one can be bigger than the law. But in return for our respect for the law the legal system and the establishment, as with the cases of the SHAC7, must ensure that sentences passed are proportionate and are not seen as punitive collective punishment, because otherwise a whole new set of activists will be incentivised by the thought that they have nothing to lose.
Thursday, 29 January 2009
Monday, 19 January 2009
We don't discuss individual cases
Israel's war crimes in Gaza are even now slipping into collective memory, overtaken by other news of more pressing urgency (at least in the view of the people who decide what the news agenda should be).
Plus, of course, the BBC has decided that it is now the arbiter of which disasters are worthy of publication and which are not to be aired under any circumstances, which is another collectively unconscious nail in the coffin of publicity.
I won't waste too many words on the BBC. Their decision not to show the Gaza appeal is so determinedly wrongheaded that I can only assume it is a result of their having been nobbled by either Mossad or the IDF, letting them know covertly that if the appeal went ahead, they would treat BBC journalists as combatants in future conflicts in the area.
I do, however, want to talk about the Israelis and their well-tried, practised methods for deflectivng criticism, whenever they have done something that they get picked up on, such as disabling a four year old girl who got caught in the white phosphorous shellfire.
The first thing they do is to say they have no knowledge of the incident, then they say they are investigating, and finally, if they are really pressed, they fall back on "we don't discuss individual cases". You can hear the pattern repeated over and over again, whenever a journalist tries to get beyond the self-justifying propaganda that usually starts such interviews.
Well, I would like to speak about a few individual cases. Just to be going on with. Just so they are not forgotten.
Such as:
Two brothers, aged five and seven, were killed at a school sheltering up to 1,800 local residents in Biet Lahiya, in northern Gaza. The mother of the children lost both her legs in the incident and another 13 people were injured. Christopher Gunness, a United Nations official, called on Israel to investigate the incident, which he said could constitute a "war crime."
The main United Nations compound inside Gaza City was set on fire as fierce fighting erupted when Israeli tanks advanced towards the Tel El Howa district.
UN sources said the blaze was started by Israeli shells containing white phosphorus, the controversial material used to create a smokescreen for advancing troops.
Eye witnesses said the tank advance led to thousands of civilians fleeing on foot, some seeking shelter in the nearby al-Quds hospital.
Under the rules of war, white phosphorus can only be used in open spaces away from large civilian populations.
There have been repeated allegations in Gaza that civilians have suffered disfiguring burn injuries after being hit by white phosphorus.
The UN compound housed the headquarters and logistical centre of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, the group that feeds and supports about a million refugees inside Gaza.
Chris Gunness, spokesman for UNRWA, said three members of staff had been injured.
"Three white phosphorus shells have hit the compound and right now the pallets on which we are meant to deliver aid are on fire," he said.
"What more powerful symbol can there be than pallets used for aid being set alight by the fighting? With white phosphorus you cannot put out the flames with water. You need sand and right now there is too much fighting for our staff to get sand."
Or this, from Oxfam's Gaza Blog:
More from the same source:-
I don't see how anyone, faced with evidence like this, can view Israel's actions as being anything other than a massively disproportionate collective punishment of the Palestinian inhabitants of Gaza for having the temerity to vote democratically for control by Hamas.
This is not to say that Hamas are blameless. They may well have cynically manipulated the situation for publicity purposes. Neither side in the conflict is capable of grasping (or wilfully ignores) the fact that two wrongs don't make a right. The conflict will never be resolved until the Israelis are forced to sit around a table and discuss the two-state solution.
But when it comes to individual cases, right now, where the blame, and the responsibility for paying for it to be put right, should currently be apportioned, is crystal clear.
Plus, of course, the BBC has decided that it is now the arbiter of which disasters are worthy of publication and which are not to be aired under any circumstances, which is another collectively unconscious nail in the coffin of publicity.
I won't waste too many words on the BBC. Their decision not to show the Gaza appeal is so determinedly wrongheaded that I can only assume it is a result of their having been nobbled by either Mossad or the IDF, letting them know covertly that if the appeal went ahead, they would treat BBC journalists as combatants in future conflicts in the area.
I do, however, want to talk about the Israelis and their well-tried, practised methods for deflectivng criticism, whenever they have done something that they get picked up on, such as disabling a four year old girl who got caught in the white phosphorous shellfire.
The first thing they do is to say they have no knowledge of the incident, then they say they are investigating, and finally, if they are really pressed, they fall back on "we don't discuss individual cases". You can hear the pattern repeated over and over again, whenever a journalist tries to get beyond the self-justifying propaganda that usually starts such interviews.
Well, I would like to speak about a few individual cases. Just to be going on with. Just so they are not forgotten.
Such as:
Two brothers, aged five and seven, were killed at a school sheltering up to 1,800 local residents in Biet Lahiya, in northern Gaza. The mother of the children lost both her legs in the incident and another 13 people were injured. Christopher Gunness, a United Nations official, called on Israel to investigate the incident, which he said could constitute a "war crime."
The main United Nations compound inside Gaza City was set on fire as fierce fighting erupted when Israeli tanks advanced towards the Tel El Howa district.
UN sources said the blaze was started by Israeli shells containing white phosphorus, the controversial material used to create a smokescreen for advancing troops.
Eye witnesses said the tank advance led to thousands of civilians fleeing on foot, some seeking shelter in the nearby al-Quds hospital.
Under the rules of war, white phosphorus can only be used in open spaces away from large civilian populations.
There have been repeated allegations in Gaza that civilians have suffered disfiguring burn injuries after being hit by white phosphorus.
The UN compound housed the headquarters and logistical centre of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, the group that feeds and supports about a million refugees inside Gaza.
Chris Gunness, spokesman for UNRWA, said three members of staff had been injured.
"Three white phosphorus shells have hit the compound and right now the pallets on which we are meant to deliver aid are on fire," he said.
"What more powerful symbol can there be than pallets used for aid being set alight by the fighting? With white phosphorus you cannot put out the flames with water. You need sand and right now there is too much fighting for our staff to get sand."
Or this, from Oxfam's Gaza Blog:
I met with Sameh Al Sawaferi who is 58 years old; he is a father for 11 and the biggest chicken and egg farmer in the Gaza Strip. Every day he sold 1,000 chickens and produced 120,000 packs of eggs, each pack containing 30 eggs. He supplied Oxfam with eggs just before the Israeli military offensive started.
The smell and sight as I went to greet him made me retch, 60,000 chickens were laying there, dead.
Israeli tanks had destroyed the entire farm including the chickens, those that were spared probably died later of dehydration and hunger. Sameh was told by the Israeli troops that occupied the area to leave so he could not tend to them.
“Along with many other people from the area, I was asked by the Israeli military to go into one room. Among us were people who had just been injured. We were told to leave immediately or face death. We asked if we could take the injured with us, the answer was no. When we returned, those whom we were forced to leave behind were dead, ” Sameh told me. I said he must report this to Oxfam partner the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, who are documenting allegations of war crimes.
Sameh was only able to go back when the attacks ended, he returned to find 50 years of his hard work destroyed. ” I never imagined I would lose everything. The sight of my farm destroyed was devastating and then I entered my house only to see soldiers’ footprints, they had left their food and defecated around my home,” he said. As he was telling me this I looked up and saw the words, ‘Leave, or you will be killed’, scribbled on the wall.
More from the same source:-
But the worst thing I saw was just outside of Beit Lahia (North East of Gaza Strip) in the area of Atta Abed Rabo. I could not recognise Beit Lahia! Entire neighbourhoods have disappeared. In place of houses and street there is nothing. It’s like looking at fields of ruins. I cannot imagine how long it will take to rebuild. How much money will be needed.
The people of Atta Abed Rabo have suddenly lost everything. This community is composed of original residents of Gaza, who were here before the influx of refugees in 1948. They were the middle class and now even they are badly affected. I met a family who lost their house and the taxi cars that constituted their only source of income. When I met them they were sitting in front in the rubble where their house used to be, preparing tea on a small burner. They are not used to receiving aid, as they were among those donating to charities like Dr. Risek’s. They don’t understand what has happened, they are still in shock.
I don't see how anyone, faced with evidence like this, can view Israel's actions as being anything other than a massively disproportionate collective punishment of the Palestinian inhabitants of Gaza for having the temerity to vote democratically for control by Hamas.
This is not to say that Hamas are blameless. They may well have cynically manipulated the situation for publicity purposes. Neither side in the conflict is capable of grasping (or wilfully ignores) the fact that two wrongs don't make a right. The conflict will never be resolved until the Israelis are forced to sit around a table and discuss the two-state solution.
But when it comes to individual cases, right now, where the blame, and the responsibility for paying for it to be put right, should currently be apportioned, is crystal clear.
Have you looked down the back of the Sofa?
Just how much money do the chuffing banks want? They've already swallowed one huge bailout without it even touching the sides and without bothering to lend any of it back to us. Now, like some latter day fat bloated stripey suited Oliver Twist, they want more!
And what I don't understand is this: the US Government, in the form of that nice Mr Bernanky-poo, has already said they will trouser that particular stoat, if it comes home to roost, so why has a relatively (in terms of the cash pumped in since) small problem suddenly become the financial equivalent of Hurricane Katrina.
I mean, I am not an economist either, and one of the more irritating aspects of this is the further opportunity it affords to RobERT PEST on to practice his strange IN ton ATION on us, but just say for the sake of argument, that the original toxic loans came to -- oooh I dunno --- pick a large figure ----- $100,000,000. So Mr Bernanky says to whatever banks were left, back in the summer, OK, guys, if any of that goes "ping", don't worry, come and see me, I'll see youse guys right, I am the capo di tutti capi in Noo Joysey, ect ect chiz chiz.... So where is the problem? Rot stopped, hole contained.
What do they need all this NEW money for, since they aren't LENDING any of it to any BUSINESSES or anything like THAT
And what I don't understand is this: the US Government, in the form of that nice Mr Bernanky-poo, has already said they will trouser that particular stoat, if it comes home to roost, so why has a relatively (in terms of the cash pumped in since) small problem suddenly become the financial equivalent of Hurricane Katrina.
I mean, I am not an economist either, and one of the more irritating aspects of this is the further opportunity it affords to RobERT PEST on to practice his strange IN ton ATION on us, but just say for the sake of argument, that the original toxic loans came to -- oooh I dunno --- pick a large figure ----- $100,000,000. So Mr Bernanky says to whatever banks were left, back in the summer, OK, guys, if any of that goes "ping", don't worry, come and see me, I'll see youse guys right, I am the capo di tutti capi in Noo Joysey, ect ect chiz chiz.... So where is the problem? Rot stopped, hole contained.
What do they need all this NEW money for, since they aren't LENDING any of it to any BUSINESSES or anything like THAT
Troublesome Justice
The office of coroner is an ancient one, going back to Elizabethan times. Unfortunately for this government, some coroners take their duties to inquire into the truth seriously. This would include Her Majesty's Coroner for the County of Oxford, which by virtue of the location of Brize Norton airbase, is where inquests on British personnel killed on active service in Iraq and Afghanistan are held.
There have been a numberof high profile examples of the Coroner saying things that the government does not like, things that point out the woeful inadequacy of British army equipment, or, in the case of Lance Corporal of Horse Matty Hull, the woeful inadequacy of our so called "allies" in theatre to tell friend from foe.
So it comes as no surprise, therefore, that Jack Straw is now pushing out proposals to hold inquests where the out come "might affect matters of national security" to be held in camera. No jury, no press, no coroner. What's the betting that these inquests that affect matters of national security turn out to be JUST those types of inquest that ask awkward questions about British army equipment or friendly fire incidents. Mark my words. National security covers a multitude of sins.
"Of course the people don't want war. But after all, it's the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it's always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it's a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger."
Herman Goering at the Nuremberg trials
There have been a numberof high profile examples of the Coroner saying things that the government does not like, things that point out the woeful inadequacy of British army equipment, or, in the case of Lance Corporal of Horse Matty Hull, the woeful inadequacy of our so called "allies" in theatre to tell friend from foe.
So it comes as no surprise, therefore, that Jack Straw is now pushing out proposals to hold inquests where the out come "might affect matters of national security" to be held in camera. No jury, no press, no coroner. What's the betting that these inquests that affect matters of national security turn out to be JUST those types of inquest that ask awkward questions about British army equipment or friendly fire incidents. Mark my words. National security covers a multitude of sins.
"Of course the people don't want war. But after all, it's the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it's always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it's a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger."
Herman Goering at the Nuremberg trials
Wednesday, 7 January 2009
The Orphans' Picnic
When I was little, we used to have a joke in our family about "Mummy, can I shoot you so that I can go to the orphans' picnic?"
It seems that the Israeli Defence Force has a similar disconnected approach to morality. Just let me get this right. They are going to stop bombing people in Gaza for three hours a day so that they can distribute aid and medical supplies, then three hours later they are going to start bombing again?
What fucking planet are these people on?
Also I would like to know what the rules of engagement are for the IDF when it comes to shooting at schools. It's a fairly devastating question, because either way, if they have been given the coordinates of the school and told NOT to fire at it, then they are in breach of their own rules of engagement, and if their rules of engagement allow them to shoot at schools, then presumably that implies the deliberate disregard of civilians and - is that not against the Geneva convention?
Back briefly to the issue of proportionality.
What is Israel hoping to achieve? Unless they occupy every square foot of Gaza, which they just don't have the military wherewithal to do, there will always be some neglected back lot somewhere where the jihadists will appear as if by magic, set up their rockets, and then shoot and scoot. There's also the issue of the relative totals of casualty figures. I know that war is not a game of cricket, and that in a sense, the five Israeli dead are just as 100% dead as each of the supposed 500 Palestinians is.
But these rocket attacks that are being advanced as the primary casus belli in this case. According to figures published by its own central bureau of statistics, road accident deaths in Israel 2000-2006 averaged at 7.1 people per 100,000. Given a population of 7.73 million, I make that 523 people. Just over 87 per year. According to stats published by The Israel Project, in the period June 2004 to December 2008, 17 Israeli citizens were killed by Qassam Rockets and Mortars fired into Israel by Hamas from Gaza.
Now, like I said, I freely accept that every one of those 17 innocent people is 100% dead and probably leaves grieving families. None of them deserved to die, probably, but the thing is, one of the things governments should do is look at the bigger picture. If Israel is concerned about the threat of the deaths of its citizens, on the face of it, they should be bombing their own ministry of transport this morning.
Which is what leads me to conclude that Israel knows as well as I do that there is no military solution to prevent the rocketing from Gaza, and no justification for the massively disproportionate response apart from to make certain members of the Israeli cabinet look good at election time. Plus, they are handing a massive propaganda victory to Hamas and their cohorts.
To the outside world, it looks like "collective punishment" rather than a military campaign. And every shot they fire, every Palestinian they kill, is creating another vendetta, another family who will be exploited by the loopy fundamentalist twisters of Islam, another kid who will end up wearing a suicide bomber's vest.
I do know, also, that there are decent, humane people in Israel who want the peaceful, two-state solution that seems to me to offer the only glimmer of hope in the whole sorry mess, and I do acknowledge that their voices get drowned out in the brash pronouncements of the likes of the IDF.
I don't deny Israel's right to exist, you can't wind time back to 1948, you have to start from where you are now. Which implies a two-state solution.
It seems that the Israeli Defence Force has a similar disconnected approach to morality. Just let me get this right. They are going to stop bombing people in Gaza for three hours a day so that they can distribute aid and medical supplies, then three hours later they are going to start bombing again?
What fucking planet are these people on?
Also I would like to know what the rules of engagement are for the IDF when it comes to shooting at schools. It's a fairly devastating question, because either way, if they have been given the coordinates of the school and told NOT to fire at it, then they are in breach of their own rules of engagement, and if their rules of engagement allow them to shoot at schools, then presumably that implies the deliberate disregard of civilians and - is that not against the Geneva convention?
Back briefly to the issue of proportionality.
What is Israel hoping to achieve? Unless they occupy every square foot of Gaza, which they just don't have the military wherewithal to do, there will always be some neglected back lot somewhere where the jihadists will appear as if by magic, set up their rockets, and then shoot and scoot. There's also the issue of the relative totals of casualty figures. I know that war is not a game of cricket, and that in a sense, the five Israeli dead are just as 100% dead as each of the supposed 500 Palestinians is.
But these rocket attacks that are being advanced as the primary casus belli in this case. According to figures published by its own central bureau of statistics, road accident deaths in Israel 2000-2006 averaged at 7.1 people per 100,000. Given a population of 7.73 million, I make that 523 people. Just over 87 per year. According to stats published by The Israel Project, in the period June 2004 to December 2008, 17 Israeli citizens were killed by Qassam Rockets and Mortars fired into Israel by Hamas from Gaza.
Now, like I said, I freely accept that every one of those 17 innocent people is 100% dead and probably leaves grieving families. None of them deserved to die, probably, but the thing is, one of the things governments should do is look at the bigger picture. If Israel is concerned about the threat of the deaths of its citizens, on the face of it, they should be bombing their own ministry of transport this morning.
Which is what leads me to conclude that Israel knows as well as I do that there is no military solution to prevent the rocketing from Gaza, and no justification for the massively disproportionate response apart from to make certain members of the Israeli cabinet look good at election time. Plus, they are handing a massive propaganda victory to Hamas and their cohorts.
To the outside world, it looks like "collective punishment" rather than a military campaign. And every shot they fire, every Palestinian they kill, is creating another vendetta, another family who will be exploited by the loopy fundamentalist twisters of Islam, another kid who will end up wearing a suicide bomber's vest.
I do know, also, that there are decent, humane people in Israel who want the peaceful, two-state solution that seems to me to offer the only glimmer of hope in the whole sorry mess, and I do acknowledge that their voices get drowned out in the brash pronouncements of the likes of the IDF.
I don't deny Israel's right to exist, you can't wind time back to 1948, you have to start from where you are now. Which implies a two-state solution.
Thursday, 1 January 2009
A small note on the principle of proportionality
I despair of the situation in Gaza.
The more I see of Tzipi (Zippy) Livni, the more I wish she had stayed on "Rainbow". And the more I see of Mark Regev, the more I wonder how he sleeps at night.
The problem with Israel and Gaza is that both sides are past masters of "whataboutery". "Whataboutery" is a concept invented (I think) by the blogger Slugger O'Toole. Basically, what happens is that one side says "What about these bombs you are dropping on us" and the other side says "Yeah, well what about all these rockets" and the first side says "Yeah, well what about all these settlers" and the other side says "Yeah, well what about all these suicide attacks" and so it goes, leapfrogging over each other til you get back to Biblical times and the Hittites smiting the Shemites.
Neither Hamas nor Israel is capable of understanding that two wrongs do not make a right. It would be easy to say that they are both equally to blame for the current situation in Gaza, except for one thing. Disproportionality.
To understand what I am getting at, consider the example of Northern Ireland. For twenty five years, until John Major of all people finally saw sense and opened up a dialogue that led eventually to a fragile peace, we here in England suffered in an undeclared war with the IRA. Now there were, undoubtedly, English atrocities during that time, or at least, if not atrocities, let's say dirty tricks, collusion, turning a blind eye, the occasional shoot to kill instead of due process of law, that sort of thing.
But never once, while the IRA was blowing up our pubs, our railway stations and our town centres, did we retaliate by sending in the RAF to strafe Belfast indiscriminately, and then when the world howled in protest, say "well, it's their own fault, there are terrorists all mixed up with civilians and I'm damned if we can tell them apart".
Yet this is exactly what Israel is getting away with in Gaza. True, Hamas probably do exploit the situation, because they know that every time the Israelis cock up and hit a school instead of a rocket launcher, it's another notch on the propaganda ratchet. In that respect, Hamas are guilty of using the people who elected (yes, elected, remember) them into government, as pawns in a cynical propaganda campaign. But Israel's response is so disproportionate as to be breathtaking in its arrogance. The other night on the news, Tzipi Livni was saying that Hamas hide their rockets in amongst civilians because "they don't care if they use their own people as human shields" - she omitted the crucial four words "and neither do we".
Israel justifies its actions because of a supposed threat to its existence, from a few zealots with clapped out rockets made from old gas pipes and shit like that, in a state where Israel has created, in effect the world's biggest concentration camp, and can turn off the taps of aid, food and trade, whenever it likes. A state whose inhabitants ride about on donkeys while Israel has tanks and (probably) nuclear weapons.
No, Israel is doing this just because it can. They will never achieve a "military" solution, because even if they destroy Hamas they will have created a whole new generation of potential jihad martyrs in doing so, and if Hamas goes, something even worse will take its place. Israel knows this, they are not stupid. It's all to do with posturing and seeming "strong", after the drubbing they got in Lebanon the other year.
So, if a single rocket falls on Israeli soil, then revenge is visited tenfold on the Palestinians, or even an hundredfold. Is this ever going to break the cycle of whataboutery? What do you think.
And of course, if you dare to criticise them, they play their trump card. Any criticism of Israel is presented as being anti semitic, and before you know where you are, you are a holocaust denier! The irony that they are now doing to the Palestinians what the Nazis did to six million European Jews in 1941-45 is completely lost on them.
And we are going to pick up the bill, apparently. When the IDF eventually deign to let the aid in, it will be the British taxpayer, yes the same British taxpayers who are losing their jobs in droves and shouldering the burden of rescuing the failed and profligate banks, who will be paying seven million pounds to fund this.
Bollocks! Israel is a rich country and the least, the very least, that we should demand is that they should pay to clear up their own mess. So I look forward to hearing that Broon has frozen all Israeli assets in the UK and deducted seven million pounds from them.
RIP Rachel Correy, by the way. I know her name gets up the noses of Zionists, so it will do them no harm to know she is remembered.
The more I see of Tzipi (Zippy) Livni, the more I wish she had stayed on "Rainbow". And the more I see of Mark Regev, the more I wonder how he sleeps at night.
The problem with Israel and Gaza is that both sides are past masters of "whataboutery". "Whataboutery" is a concept invented (I think) by the blogger Slugger O'Toole. Basically, what happens is that one side says "What about these bombs you are dropping on us" and the other side says "Yeah, well what about all these rockets" and the first side says "Yeah, well what about all these settlers" and the other side says "Yeah, well what about all these suicide attacks" and so it goes, leapfrogging over each other til you get back to Biblical times and the Hittites smiting the Shemites.
Neither Hamas nor Israel is capable of understanding that two wrongs do not make a right. It would be easy to say that they are both equally to blame for the current situation in Gaza, except for one thing. Disproportionality.
To understand what I am getting at, consider the example of Northern Ireland. For twenty five years, until John Major of all people finally saw sense and opened up a dialogue that led eventually to a fragile peace, we here in England suffered in an undeclared war with the IRA. Now there were, undoubtedly, English atrocities during that time, or at least, if not atrocities, let's say dirty tricks, collusion, turning a blind eye, the occasional shoot to kill instead of due process of law, that sort of thing.
But never once, while the IRA was blowing up our pubs, our railway stations and our town centres, did we retaliate by sending in the RAF to strafe Belfast indiscriminately, and then when the world howled in protest, say "well, it's their own fault, there are terrorists all mixed up with civilians and I'm damned if we can tell them apart".
Yet this is exactly what Israel is getting away with in Gaza. True, Hamas probably do exploit the situation, because they know that every time the Israelis cock up and hit a school instead of a rocket launcher, it's another notch on the propaganda ratchet. In that respect, Hamas are guilty of using the people who elected (yes, elected, remember) them into government, as pawns in a cynical propaganda campaign. But Israel's response is so disproportionate as to be breathtaking in its arrogance. The other night on the news, Tzipi Livni was saying that Hamas hide their rockets in amongst civilians because "they don't care if they use their own people as human shields" - she omitted the crucial four words "and neither do we".
Israel justifies its actions because of a supposed threat to its existence, from a few zealots with clapped out rockets made from old gas pipes and shit like that, in a state where Israel has created, in effect the world's biggest concentration camp, and can turn off the taps of aid, food and trade, whenever it likes. A state whose inhabitants ride about on donkeys while Israel has tanks and (probably) nuclear weapons.
No, Israel is doing this just because it can. They will never achieve a "military" solution, because even if they destroy Hamas they will have created a whole new generation of potential jihad martyrs in doing so, and if Hamas goes, something even worse will take its place. Israel knows this, they are not stupid. It's all to do with posturing and seeming "strong", after the drubbing they got in Lebanon the other year.
So, if a single rocket falls on Israeli soil, then revenge is visited tenfold on the Palestinians, or even an hundredfold. Is this ever going to break the cycle of whataboutery? What do you think.
And of course, if you dare to criticise them, they play their trump card. Any criticism of Israel is presented as being anti semitic, and before you know where you are, you are a holocaust denier! The irony that they are now doing to the Palestinians what the Nazis did to six million European Jews in 1941-45 is completely lost on them.
And we are going to pick up the bill, apparently. When the IDF eventually deign to let the aid in, it will be the British taxpayer, yes the same British taxpayers who are losing their jobs in droves and shouldering the burden of rescuing the failed and profligate banks, who will be paying seven million pounds to fund this.
Bollocks! Israel is a rich country and the least, the very least, that we should demand is that they should pay to clear up their own mess. So I look forward to hearing that Broon has frozen all Israeli assets in the UK and deducted seven million pounds from them.
RIP Rachel Correy, by the way. I know her name gets up the noses of Zionists, so it will do them no harm to know she is remembered.
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