This is a guest post from Jonathan Sacerdoti
Last summer I marched through central London with a group of friends, all of us waving Israeli flags, cheered on by crowds of people lining the streets. Don’t believe me? Well I did.
Author Archive
This is a guest post from Jonathan Sacerdoti
A few months ago I met with the mayor of Haifa, Yona Yahav, who described some of the very exciting developments that were being made to increase the business, cultural and educational standing of Haifa. So I was impressed to read yesterday that there are plans afoot to develop a Disney theme park in Haifa. A Disney affiliated investment firm has signed on to help develop a 20-acre entertainment complex there. If it reaches fruition, the theme park would be an important development in terms of business and tourism for the area.
Israel has other theme parks already, like the charmingly unusual Mini Israel. Low air fares, though, mean that Israeli travellers can easily visit European megaparks such as Disneyland Paris, and less than ideal relations between Israel and its neighbours might restrict the potential numbers of visitors to a Disney themed park. So even with the country’s enormous tourism trade, numbers may not be high enough to support a local megapark.
Of course if he does eventually arrive in the Middle East, Mickey Mouse might be surprised to learn of his long lost cousin (or rip-off), Farfur, the Islamic supremacist mouse shown on the Palestinian Al Aqsa TV station. Farfur entertained Palestinian children with catchy slogans like “you and I are laying the foundation for a world led by Islamists”, but was eventually killed off at the end of his series in an episode where he was beaten to death by a character said to be an Israeli agent who was intent on buying his land. “Farfur was martyred defending his land,” said the show’s child presenter, Saraa.
This is a guest post from Jonathan Sacerdoti
Bamba, bourekas, fresh mint and halva were among the Israeli items I witnessed shoppers buying in London yesterday. I don’t normally make a habit of snooping through other people’s shopping baskets, you understand, but yesterday was a special day: it was Buy Israeli Goods day (part of the Buy Israeli Goods BIG campaign), when people across the world proudly went out and bought products from the holy land to show their indifference to the suggested boycotts proposed by some fringe groups of extremists. So I went out with Gili Brenner of the UK branch of StandWithUs to see what people were buying, and film them talking about their favourite Israeli produce.
While the weather in London was cold, the shoppers’ enthusiasm was anything but, and on the snowy streets of northwest London we met many people keen to let us know that they are proud to buy Israeli-made or grown items.
You might not have heard of the boycott campaign waged by a very small number of fanatics who hate Israel. But unfortunately the key players in the boycott movement seem to be pretty good at highjacking other organisations to try to further their dubious aims. So despite their small numbers they sometimes make a loud noise. More and more shoppers are therefore being inconvenienced by their peculiar antics, and bullying tactics.
This is a guest post by Jonathan Sacerdoti
The press conference room of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs will be a familiar sight to some. I’d seen it on television and in the newspapers whenever Israeli ministers had hosted their foreign counterparts, and issued joint statements—usually about conflict. It wasn’t a room I associated with good news. Until last week, that is.
On Thursday 15th July, as the Israeli working week drew to a close, I stood on the dais between the two podiums in that room with 35 other delegates from 25 different countries, singing Hatikvah. Each of us holding our own country’s flag, we were proud to reinforce the message delivered to us 11 days before by Deputy Foreign Minister, Danny Ayalon: there is no such thing as dual loyalties when it comes to disapora support of Israel. All 36 of us standing there that day were loyal citizens of our home countries. But at the same time, each of us has our own identity in a modern and pluralistic world. The wellbeing and security of the Jewish people links diaspora Jews together, and the wellbeing and security of the Jewish people is linked with the security and wellbeing of the state of Israel. This is a fact, whether others understand or not.
As Ayalon said “We have one state. And it belongs not only to Israelis, but also to the Jews of the entire world. This is firmly recognised legally even in the UN resolution creating the state. Israel has a right to self identify as a state for the Jewish people. This extends the definition of Jewish beyond the religious. It is cultural and ethnic as well. This does not deny non-Jews the right to live [t]here with full rights. This requires loyalty from minorities, but we understand that, as a people who spent so long as a minority in the states we live in, where we were loyal.”
Conducted under the auspices of the Department for Jewish Communities at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Diplomatic Seminar for Young Jewish Leaders is a study program conducted annually by the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The Diplomatic Seminar imparts analytical tools for understanding the political and national security challenges facing Israel, and insight into the society, economy and culture of the Jewish-democratic state. From the northern borders with Syria and Lebanon to the southern site of the Eilat-Eilot Renewable Energy Intiative, we travelled the length and breadth of Israel, meeting mayors and ministers, kibbutzniks and soldiers, professors and medical miracle workers. Each one offered something new to help us understand their country – our people’s country – and the way it rises to the enormous challenges it faces. Be it desert weather conditions or vicious hostile attack from terrorists, Israel’s creative energy provides solutions that have helped the nation not only to survive, but to contribute to the world countless technological, humanitarian and democratic advances.
Maybe it was the flags, maybe it was the room, maybe it was the song. Whatever it was, the experiences we had shared during the days running up to that moment in the press conference room resulted in an heart-warming feeling of international solidarity, and a shared resolve to work together as Jews, and together with non-Jews, on Israel’s behalf, no matter where we live.
This is a guest post from Jonathan Sacerdoti
Eshkol Park is a long drive from Jerusalem. It’s a long drive from Tel Aviv and Haifa. In fact, it’s a relatively remote spot for most of Israel’s population. I’d never heard of it before I went there on Monday, but my trip was worth the two and a half hour drive to a very special musical concert in this national park on the Gaza border. The choice of Eshkol Park was, of course, not arbitrary or coincidental.
On Monday evening, thousands of Israelis made their way there to help draw attention to the plight of Gilad Shalit, who was kidnapped by Hamas from the Israeli side of the Gaza border.
The Israeli Philharmonic Orchestra was joined by Shlomo Artzi, one of Israel’s best known and loved singers, and Gilad’s parents, Noam and Aviva. The concert was incredibly moving, especially when a young female singer took to the stage to sing a specially composed song for Gilad’s mother, entitled A Mother Cries. It’s impossible to comprehend what must have been going through Mrs Shalit’s mind as she sat and listened, but I hope that at least the support of the thousands of friends who had gathered there to call for Gilad’s release must have touched and comforted her as it did each of us.
Looking around her she will have seen young children, families, old people, and everyone in between, all sitting together on the grass, united and resolute in their prayers for Gilad’s speedy release. And each of them meant it with all their heart.
Gilad Shalit has not even received one visit from the International Red Cross during the over four year period he has been illegally imprisoned by Hamas terrorists. Such visits are a basic human right for any war prisoners. And Gilad could have been any one of Israel’s sons. That is one reason why his continued imprisonment hurts so many Israelis and Jews around the world so much.
Israel is an amazing country, and an amazing people. In a state where every child has to serve in the military, and where wars and battles are far from theoretical or occasional, it’s an obvious fact that most citizens would do whatever it takes to achieve peace, so that their sons or daughters don’t have to enter the army and won’t ever run the risk of suffering as Gilad and his family must be suffering now. If only Israel were dealing with others who shared that desperate desire for peace.
As the crowd stood to sing Hatikva, and yellow balloons were released into the blue sky to drift towards Gaza, it was hard to know how we should feel. Gilad will still be imprisoned tonight, and tomorrow, and the day after that. And his parents will continue their extraordinary march across Israel calling for action to secure his release. And Israelis will still hurt, and wear yellow shirts, and tie yellow ribbons to their flags. And Hamas will continue to capitalise on the decency, humanity, and compassion of this amazing people, holding them and their son to ransom, so that whatever Israel does next, one can’t help but worry she will lose.
This is a guest post by Jonathan Sacerdoti.
The Jerusalem Centre for Public Affairs has released some new information that further undermines any remaining credibility that the Goldstone Report might still have. It concerns Col. (ret.) Desmond Travers, one of the four members of the UN Fact Finding Mission that produced the report. As the only former officer who belonged to Justice Richard Goldstone’s team, he was the senior figure responsible for the military analysis that provided the basis for condemning Israel for war crimes.
The Jerusalem Centre’s report casts light on four fundamental problems in Travers’ style of investigation, which reveal him be “an individual who is not qualified to take part in any serious fact-finding mission”. These four categories are summarised as follows (the report is worth reading in full as well):
1) Travers showed a fundamental bias against the Israel Defense Forces, especially in his questioning of Palestinian psychologists. He asked them,
how Israeli soldiers could kill Palestinian children in front of their parents.
Furthermore,
when he was asked about Hamas intimidation that affected the Mission’s inquiries, he replied that that there was “none whatsoever.” Yet the Goldstone Report itself noted in Paragraph 440 that those interviewed in Gaza appeared reluctant to speak about the presence of Palestinian armed groups because of a “fear of reprisals.”
2) He reported false information about Israeli weapons systems, simply to suit his own prejudice:
Travers comes up with a story that the IDF had unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) that could obtain a “thermal signature” on a Gaza house and detect that there were large numbers of people inside. Incredibly, he then suggests that with this information that certain houses were “packed with people,” the Israeli military would then deliberately order a missile strike on these populated homes. The primary technical problem with his theory is that Israel does not have UAVs that can see though houses and pick up a thermal signature.
3) He presents completely inaccurate data:
Travers rejects that Israel began military operations against the Gaza Strip on December 27, 2008 as an act of self-defense in response to Hamas rockets. He bases this idea on a “fact” that he presents that in the month prior to start of the war, there were only “something like two” rockets that fell on Israel. Israeli military sources found that there were in fact 32 rockets fired from Gaza at Israel over three days alone–between December 16 and 18, 2008
4) He demonstrates a lack of professionalism in conducting thorough investigations. For example, despite Israeli photographic evidence of large amounts of weapons having been stored in Mosques (recently corroborated by Colonel Tim Collins, a British veteran of the Iraq War who visited Gaza for BBC Newsnight) Travers simply dismisses such breaches of International Law on the part of Hamas, absurdly claiming that,
Those charges reflect Western perceptions in some quarters that Islam is a violent religion
But he also admits that,
the Mission only checked two mosques.
This is not the first time that the methods of the Goldstone investigation have been shown to be flawed. Many serious problems with the investigation’s process have been well documented already.
The mandate for the fact-finding mission was “to investigate all violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law by the occupying Power, Israel, against the Palestinian people throughout the Occupied Palestinian Territory, particularly in the occupied Gaza Strip, due to the current aggression” (my emphasis). This clearly predetermined that Israel had committed “violations of international human rights law” before the investigation even began.
And Travers is not even the first member of the four person UN fact finding mission to be revealed as unsuitable for the role. Professor Christine Chinkin, one of the other three members, had signed a letter published in the Sunday Times before the conflict in Gaza had even ended, clearly stating that she felt Israel’s actions there amounted to “war crimes”. How could a person who makes such a judgment before the war was even over be a fair and independent member of the mission investigating it?
Parts of the content of the Goldstone report are presented as facts, but are made up from information gleaned from NGOs which have a clear bias against Israel. They remain un-tested and unverified but are now given increased respectability by their presence in the report.
Furthermore, the UNHRC is hardly a balanced and fair body itself. It spends more time focusing on Israel (and passes more resolutions dealing with Israel) than on any other state in the entire world. This is obviously uneven and biased. Whatever one says about Israel and the rights and wrongs of its actions, there are far bigger human rights issues to be dealt with elsewhere. Does this mean Israel should be immune from scrutiny? Of course not, but why would this body concentrate so particularly on one nation instead of so many others committing brutal and huge-scale human rights violations? Perhaps because many of the member states of the UNHRC are among the world’s worst human rights violators. It is ironic that they should be judging Israel, and doing so under the guise of the UN, which lends them a false appearance of ‘impartiality’ and ‘fairness’.
How much more evidence do we need before the world will finally chuck out this harmful and deeply damaging report? It does nothing to progress the very complex situation in the Middle East, and works against all efforts towards resuming peace negotiations.
Perhaps now that 50% of the team whose job it was to investigate the conflict have been shown to be unsuitably biased for the job, it’s time for a new independent inquiry: one that investigates the violations of good sense, justice, and impartiality carried out by Goldstone and his ‘fact-finding’ missionaries.
This is a guest post from Jonathan Sacerdoti.
David Miliband, the British Government’s Foreign Minister, is Jewish. So some might have expected his Question and Answer session held last night at the London Jewish Cultural Centre to be an easy ride for him. However, Miliband and the Government’s actions, especially relating to Israel’s operations in Gaza last winter, invited plenty of challenging and hostile questions.
Organised by the Jewish News, this question and answer session was a wonderful opportunity for a small group of 150 people from the British Jewish community to challenge a cabinet minister directly. They ran a similar event with Nick Clegg a few months ago but appeared to have learnt from the experience, and this time had a much more even-handed chairman fielding the questions (the Sky News political Editor Adam Boulton). Boulton was not afraid to put Miliband through his paces on contentious topics.
Sure enough, after a peculiar and irrelevant first question on the recession (what relevance did that have to a one-hour Jewish Q&A with the Foreign Secretary?), the debate proper was kicked off by champion activist Jonathan Hoffman, co-vice chairman of the Zionist Federation, who challenged the Foreign Secretary on several fronts: Why had he failed to legislate, as he had promised during his visit to Israel some months ago, to prevent the embarrassing situation where Israeli politicians and army representatives visiting the UK could be arrested here under so-called universal jurisdiction? Why had he called Operation Cast Lead, a defensive operation designed to stop Hamas’ eight-year-long rocket attacks on the southern Israeli civilian population, “disproportionate”? And did he stand by that evaluation now?
Miliband appeared somewhat surprised by these very direct questions, but sure enough declared that he stood by his assessment of Cast Lead as ‘disproportionate’ because of the number of casualties and deaths it caused. Luckily, I got to follow up Jonathan Hoffman’s question with one of my own. I asked him how he could use those figures as a measure of proportionality when Hamas famously deliberately launches rockets from behind civilians, whereas Israel defends its civilians and fights to protect them, rather than using them as a human shield. If civilian areas of Britian were under fire from constant rocket attacks, would he wait eight weeks, eight months, or eight years (as Israel did) before retaliating? What length of time would he feel was ‘proportionate’? His response was that we cannot even compare a terrorist group and its activities with those of a democratic state, and he was surprised I had even mentioned them in the same sentence. (Why?) Thus, no doubt, he felt he had deflected the question. But as later questioners pointed out, all he had really done was illustrate that his line of argument essentially excuses terrorists by granting them immunity from retaliation. He never did quite get round to sharing what he would do in such a situation, and how long he’d hold back before doing it (but I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t be eight years).
When it came to defending Britain’s shameful failure last week to vote on a resolution endorsing the disgraceful Goldstone Report, Miliband had little to say in his defense. He insisted that Britain was in the middle of complex negotiations, which the vote would have interrupted, but as pointed out in the Times, that excuse is no more than the diplomatic equivalent of ‘the dog ate my homework’. Given the chance to vote against endorsing the report, as the USA rightly did, Britain failed to even abstain. And nothing Miliband could say last night would satisfy the questioners in the audience who pushed him for a decent explanation.
Ultimately it was a frustrating event, in that way these sorts of things often are. Politicians are expert at not answering the questions you ask them. If you are critical, they know just how to talk around the subject for long enough to distract the audience, and move on to the next question. But Miliband’s answers, if taken in combination, showed a clear lack of logic. Without the opportunity to follow any one line of argument for a longer time, it’s impossible to know how he makes them join up in his own head.
Frustrating as they may be, these events are important. The Jewish News has done the community a great service in setting them up, and I hope they go from strength to strength (the next one is with Boris Johnson). The important thing is that the politicians who take the time to answer questions from the Jewish community should discover that we are willing to ask very tough questions, and expect decent answers. Because even if we don’t get those answers on the night, they might think harder in future about how their actions, regarding Israel in particular, might resonate with British Jews.
Britain is still a pretty good place to be Jewish, but that should never be taken for granted. With the rise in antisemitism becoming ever more palpable, it’s imperative that British Jews speak out as often and as loudly as possible against wrong decisions and declarations about Israel at government level. We must work towards establishing a strong Jewish, pro-Israel lobby. Eventually, that might have some effect on policy decisions, and that can only be a good thing.
This is a guest post from Jonathan Sacerdoti.
Can you remember your 23rd birthday? How did you celebrate? What presents did you receive? Last Friday was Gilad Shalit’s 23rd birthday, though I’m not even sure he knew it. Gilad has been held captive by Hamas in unknown conditions since he was kidnapped over three years ago from Israeli territory. He is assumed to be alive, but there has been little public evidence either way.
I’m not normally in the habit of standing on street corners trying to talk to passers-by, but on Friday I joined others in London who wanted to mark Gilad’s birthday and raise awareness of his plight. We handed out flyers explaining his situation, and offered birthday cake to the busy Londoners rushing up and down the streets near Moorgate tube station during their lunch breaks. However, I’m sure it didn’t change anything for Gilad, wherever he is.
There’s a reason we feel helpless when we think about Gilad Shalit. It’s because we are. There’s nothing you or I can do that could make a difference; if only there were. It was almost pathetic watching the efforts people around the world made to ‘do something’ on Friday. A special #GiladShalit hashtag made it into Twitter’s trending topics, and thousands of concerned people sent emails, signed petitions and said prayers calling for Gilad’s release. But those who control his life now don’t care at all about any of these things. They don’t care about international law, or the Geneva convention, or human rights, or basic human decency. Nothing you or I say or do will make them behave differently. They’ve made that clear.
So why were we there, handing out cake? Maybe it was to let people know who Gilad is – many Londoners we met had never even heard of him. Maybe it was to mark his birthday publicly, knowing that he could not. Maybe it was in the hope that increased awareness would raise the pressure on our government and others to intervene however they can. Maybe we hoped to show those around us just what sort of enemies Israel has to deal with in any potential negotiations, ‘peace talks’, or even wars. Or maybe it just helped us feel we were doing something in the face of the unimaginable horrors that must be Gilad’s everyday life.
Prisoners of war are entitled to visits from the International Red Cross, to ensure their health and human rights are being protected, and they must be allowed regular and unconditional contact with their families. Yet Gilad has been granted neither (the three letters and one voice recording released very early on during his imprisonment cannot be counted as regular).
After a couple of hours spreading the word on the streets of London, four of us went on to meet Michael A Meyer, OBE, the Head of International Law at the British Red Cross. I told him that we wanted the Red Cross to try harder to visit Gilad. While he assured us that we were “pushing at an open door”, he and we knew that his good intentions and ours made no difference at all to Gilad. I asked him why the International Committee of the Red Cross [ICRC] wasn’t trying harder, and why they continue to provide humanitarian aid to the very people who deny Gilad his human rights. But despite the “direct and indirect contact” Mr Meyer said the ICRC has with Hamas, it seems that everything they have tried has been as fruitless as our birthday cake and flyer distribution had been earlier that day.
Before we left the Red Cross offices, we presented Mr Meyer with a cake for him and his colleagues to enjoy, asking him to remind them all that it was for Gilad’s birthday. Perhaps these little reminders will keep Gilad’s plight in their consciousness, encouraging them to do more for him until he is treated fairly, and ultimately released back to his family, his people and his country. We expressed our hope that this will be the last time Gilad is not free to celebrate his birthday at home. “The British Red Cross and the ICRC hope that, too”, said Mayer.
If only all of that hope could help Gilad.
This is a guest post from Jonathan Sacerdoti who attended the War On Want event yesterday evening.
What does Ben White think about the 85 per cent reduction in terrorist attacks in Israel since the security fence was built? Firstly, he thinks that is a loaded question, because it requires him to perfunctorily acknowledge that it’s good that so many innocent people aren’t being killed any more by terror attacks. But his biggest concern is that the fence is ‘illegal’ even if it is saving lives on a scale like no other step taken in the Middle East.
I learnt this on Thursday night from an event run by the charity War on Want, where White was plugging his new anti Israel book (which is brim full of lies and misquotations). He didn’t have much to say about the illegality of people blowing themselves up in crowded bars, though. And presumably, if he wants the fence taken down, he’s made a value judgement that the ‘illegality’ of the fence is worse than the brutal and evil intentional killing of Israeli civilians that it prevents.
At the event, I asked White what other suggestions he might have for reducing so drastically the number of terrorist attacks on innocent civilians in discotheques, pizza restaurants and school buses, seeing as he was so against the fence. But he didn’t have any suggestions. He did seem pretty sure, however, that all efforts Israel has made to protect its people have been totally wrong.
Operation Cast Lead was carried out in January of this year in response to a sustained, several year long barrage of missiles launched from the Gaza strip into southern Israeli towns. But White and War on Want say that was definitely wrong, even though it reduced the frequency of subsequent attacks on Israeli civilians, and attracted praise for the IDF from former British Army Colonel Richard Kemp, who said that “the IDF did more to safeguard the rights of [Palestinian] civilians in a combat zone than any other army in the history of warfare”. Kemp commanded British troops in Afghanistan, and was a senior advisor on Army Issues to the British government.
Even Israel’s unilateral disengagement from Gaza was somehow wrong, according to White, because it was what he calls a “tactical” move. He suggested it was no more than a photo opportunity for the world to see Israel in a more favourable light. He didn’t have much to say about the Palestinian ‘tactic’ of using this enormous effort for peace on Israel’s part as an opportunity to increase rocket attacks on Israeli civilians, rather than to build a solid foundation for a thriving and peaceful state.
When it came to efforts to encourage the strengthening of the Palestinian people through economic means, as championed by Tony Blair and Binyamin Netanyahu, White was certain that this too was wrong: it is no more than an effort to keep Palestinians employed on a low wage, and busy, so that they might forget their real cause (how patronising…)
Ultimately, the problem with White and War on Want’s approach is that it seems to be motivated more by hatred of the Jewish state of Israel than anything else. They quickly and totally reject any effort Israel makes—be it literal disengagement and movement of thousands of Israelis, encouraging economic growth for the Palestinians, the physical protection of a fence, or even military action. Conversely, they never mention Hamas and its declared genocidal aims, the years of terrorist attacks and peace initiatives rejected by the Palestinians, or the lack of a meaningful and powerful Palestinian partner for negotiation.
White is an absurd excuse for a commentator. He has no desire to consider the complex and sensitive political, religious and security facts of the Middle East. He is unashamedly one-sided, sanctimonious, and often inaccurate. One audience member asked him how he hoped anyone would take him seriously when he didn’t once acknowledge any error or wrong-doing on the part of the Palestinians (of which, of course, there are many). White and his groupies in the audience suggested it was because we hear so much from the Israeli perspective already, and so little from that of the Palestinians: “Palestinians don’t control the press” one blurted out from the back of the room. And I think we all knew what she meant by that…