Former Minister slams Sydney-University Lynch mob

13 March 2015

The following letter from Peter Baldwin, former ALP Minister for Higher Education excoriates 'repulsive' anti-Israel protesters, demands university take disciplinary action

Dear Dr Spence,

On Wednesday 11 March I attended a meeting at Sydney University that was addressed by Colonel Richard Kemp, the former commander of UK forces in Afghanistan. Colonel Kemp was scheduled to speak about the ethical dilemmas that face military forces confronted by non-state adversaries, especially those that deliberately conduct their operations in close proximity to civilian populations with the goal of gaining propaganda advantage from the inevitable casualties. He was in Israel during the Gaza conflict of July-August last year. He stated at the time that he was impressed by the IDF’s measures to minimize Palestinian civilian casualties and that he had difficulty envisaging what more they could do to this end given the reality of military operations.

By way of background, I am a former politician: the Labor MP for the seat of Sydney for fifteen years, and a member of the federal ministry for six years. For three of those years (1990-93) I was the Minister for Higher Education. During that period I visited a great many campuses and was,  more than once, the target of student protest demonstrations.

But I never experienced anything quite as repulsive as what I witnessed last Wednesday, partly captured in this YouTube video.

I learned about the meeting from an email flyer forwarded by the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, though I understand the meeting was sponsored by the Australian Union of Jewish Students. The gathering was attended by a varied audience of students and others, including one other former parliamentary colleague.

When I arrived at the meeting there was a group at the door handing out leaflets supporting the BDS campaign against Israel. After Colonel Kemp had spoken for about twenty minutes there was a kerfuffle and around 15-20 people forced their way in led by a young woman who repeatedly screeched “Richard Kemp supports genocide” into a megaphone that was set to maximum volume. The group chanted continuously and defied the (very restrained) efforts of the security guards to evict them. They clearly intended to disrupt the meeting to the point where it could not continue. It was only after a concerted effort by the security people, with the protestors resisting violently, that the talk could be resumed. This was a truly frightening episode. At one point the lights went out, leading people to wonder what might come next.

In amongst the robotic chanting a few things stood out. The screeching young woman can be clearly heard expressing sympathy for the extremist organisation Hitz ut-Tahrir, whose Australian spokesman gained notoriety last year for refusing (on ABC Lateline) to condemn the tactics of Islamic State (beheadings, crucifixions, incinerations, selling women into slavery). When one of the protestors was accused of fascistic behaviour, he responded “we are not fascists, we’re Marxist-Leninists” – another totalitarian ideology responsible for tens of millions of deaths.

The disruptors tried to suppress the views of Colonel Kemp, who gave a lucid and well-reasoned account of the moral issues in this kind of conflict in the limited time he had available, yet insist on the right of Hitz ut-Tahrir to spout their genocidal ideology, a sample of which was reported in today’s Australian newspaper:

THE top Australian cleric of extremist Islamic group Hizb ut-Tahrir has ramped up his hate speech in a rant referring to Jews as “the most evil creature of Allah” who have “corrupted the world” and will “pay for blood with blood”.

 

In the latest tirade to surface, cleric Ismail al-Wahwah — representing an organisation whose stated aim is to take over the world — said recognising Jews constituted the “epitome of evil” because that would “strengthen the cancerous entity”.

This, apparently, is acceptable speech to these champions of the ‘left’ - a striking confirmation of the old trope about extremes of Left and Right meeting at some point. The group primarily responsible for this outrage, a Trotskyist group calling itself the ‘Socialist Alternative’, has a record of this kind of thing at your university (this incident for example).

It seems you have active at your university a bunch of totalitarians who think they have a  right of veto on the expression of views they disapprove of, and who will try to enforce this veto by violent disruption. The effect this will have on the free exchange of ideas is obvious. Potential speakers will think twice about the prospect of being subjected to this kind of thing. The expression of certain viewpoints will quietly disappear from campuses and students will increasingly inhabit an intellectual monoculture in which only approved opinions are sayable.

According to one Jewish student who I communicated with today the climate at Sydney University is becoming increasingly poisonous and fearful for identifiably Jewish students, especially those who have the temerity to defend Israel.

Do you agree with me, Dr Spence, that these are deeply sinister developments? Do you accept that an institution where such behaviour is tolerated has ceased, in one crucial respect, to deserve to be called a University?

More to the point, will you:

• Unequivocally condemn this behaviour and make clear it will not be tolerated in future
• Take steps to ensure the perpetrators are dealt with under university disciplinary procedures
• Commit to restoring a genuine climate of free debate at Sydney University in which all can participate without fear of intimidation?

I look forward to your response.

Best wishes,

Peter Baldwin

New Israel Fund Australia: just a few questions...

IIW Editorial, 12 March 2015:

In a statement issued yesterday, President of the New Israel Fund (NIF) Australia suggests that "our [the NIF's] support for liberal democracy, freedom of expression, and human and civil rights have made us a target..." which amounts to the absurd implication that critics of the NIF must be enemies of liberal democracy, freedom of expression, and human and civil rights.

He further alleged that the NIF has been subjected to "tarring... baseless attacks... baseless allegations..." and "pressured by people whose aim is to quash discussion...", lamenting that "these baseless attacks have spread to Australia as well, where right-wing blogs and radio shows have posted articles that twist NIF’s record and urged the community to 'ostracise' NIF."

The NIF statement yesterday refers to a personal attack on some of its recent critics in the US, but otherwise does little to refute the hundreds of published examples of the NIF continuing to fund NGOs that are active in international campaigns that contribute to the demonization and delegitimization of Israel.

The New Israel Fund has, since its founding in 1979, provided over US$250 million to more than 850 organizations. The organisation, its leaders and some recipients of its financial support have reportedly 

• accused Israel of war crimes
• attempted to prosecute IDF officers in jurisdictions outside of Israel
• called for and promoted boycotts and sanctions against Israel
• engaged in legal actions against Israel in jurisdictions outside of Israel ("lawfare")
• promoted the exertion of international diplomatic pressure on Israel
• undermined the Zionist notion of Israel as a Jewish state

Well, far from stifling debate, we invite NIF leaders to give us clear answers to some simple questions, and let Australian friends of Israel judge for themselves whether the NIF should be ostracised.

Does the NIF financially support any of these NGOs? Yes, or no?

• Adalah
• Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI)
• Bimkom
• Breaking the Silence
• B'Tselem
• Sheikh Jarrah Solidarity Movement
• Gisha
• Hamoked
• Human Rights Defenders Fund
• I'lam
• Ir Amim
• Molad
• Mossawa
• Negev Coexistence Forum
• Nine Seven Two (+972 Magazine)
• Parents Circle Families Forum (PCFF)
• Physicians for Human Rights- Israel (PHR-I)
• Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PCATI)
• Rabbis for Human Rights
• Social TV(formerly Syncopa Community)
• Yesh Din

Did the NIF, in 2010 to 2013, authorise grants of over US$14 million to the above-mentioned organisations? Yes, or no?

Did some of the above-mentioned NGOs, on 21 July 2014,  send a public letter to Israel's Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein alleging “serious concern of severe violations of international humanitarian law, and specifically the laws of war…at the level of offensive policy and the rules of engagement”? Yes, or no?

Did several of the above-mentioned NGOs collaborate to publish the GazHeb website, which accused the IDF of war crimes during Operation Cast Lead (Gaza, 2008)? Yes, or no?

Did NIF Director and former President Naomi Chazan, just one day after the beginning of Operation Cast Lead in Gaza (December 2008) sign a petition demanding "an immediate cessation of the aggression of the Israeli military forces in Gaza ...The slaughter can only fuel further conflict..."? Yes, or no?

Did NIF-funded Physicians for Human Rights-Israel (PHR-I), on 21 January 2015, publish “Gaza, 2014: Findings of an independent medical fact-finding mission,” alleging Israeli violations of human rights and international legal norms during the 2014 Gaza War, stating that PHR-I “Believes that the prima facie evidence collected and presented in this Report should be used for the purposes of legal determination of violations of international human rights and humanitarian law, whether through local or international justice mechanism” [my own emphasis added]? Yes, or no?

Did NIF-funded B’Tselem, on 28 January 2015, publish “Black Flag: The legal and moral implication of the policy of attacking residential buildings in the Gaza Strip, summer 2014,” alleging that there was a “black flag of illegality flying over” Israeli military tactics during the 2014 Gaza War? Yes, or no?

Did NIF-funded B’Tselem, during the 2014 Gaza war, demonize Israel with a series of publications that repeated false or distorted factual and legal allegations? Yes, or no?

Did  NIF-funded Adalah submit a report to the UN Commission of Inquiry claiming that “Israel’s investigations into its 2014 Operation Protective Edge fall far short of the international standards of independence, impartiality, effectiveness, promptness and transparency”? Yes, or no?

Did NIF-funded Yesh Din, in an October 2014 submission to the UN Human Rights Committee,  allege that the “Israeli military investigation system is marred by structural failures that render it incapable of conducting serious investigations into offenses committed by soldiers against Palestinians” Yes or no?

Has NIF-funded +972 Magazine, ever featured writers that accuse Israel of “apartheid,” “ethnic cleansing,” “racism,” “land confiscation,” “discrimination,” “displacement,” “fail[ing] to prosecute violence against Palestinians,” or“perpetrating another Nakba,” or deriding “American Jewish hypocrisy.”? Yes, or no?

Did NIF-funded +972, on May 14, 2012,  publish a cartoon, “The hater in the sky,” depicting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu raping President Barack Obama and eating his limbs? Yes, or no?

Did the discredited Goldstone report, which focused on alleged Israeli “war crimes” in the 2009 Gaza war, reference the following NIF-funded NGOs? Yes, or no?

• B’Tselem more than 56 times; 
• Adalah, 38 times; and 
• Breaking the Silence, 27 times.

Did NIF-funded Adalah, in 2007, draft a “Democratic Constitution” that called for replacing the Jewish foundation of Israel with a “democratic, bilingual, and multicultural” framework? Yes, or no?

Did former NIF Associate Director in Israel Hedva Radovanitz, in 2010, tell the US Embassy Policy Officer in Tel Aviv that "she believed that in 100 years Israel would be majority Arab and that the disappearance of a Jewish state would not be the tragedy that Israelis fear since it would become more democratic"? [my emphasis added] Yes, or no?

Riot at Sydney University

From J-Wire, March 11, 2015 by Glen Falkenstein*:

Read on for article

Protesters have  disrupted a lecture, fighting with security guards, at the University of Sydney.

Protestors Photo: David Sokol/J-Wire

The lecture was being given by retired British military officer Colonel Richard Kemp, a world-renowned expert on armed conflict, the Middle East and a prolific media commentator,

Colonel Kemp had been invited by the University to speak on “Ethical Dilemmas of Military Tactics” and “Dealing with non-state armed groups,” in light of Australia’s military engagement with non-state actors, including ISIS.

Kemp began his talk with a brief explanation of his career and a joke about England’s cricket loss to Bangladesh on Monday. He went on to discuss non-state militant groups in Ireland and Afghanistan and the obligations of soldiers when engaging with civilians and civilian groups. Before he could go into any detail or discuss any other issues, he was interrupted by over a dozen students bursting into the lecture hall screaming “Richard Kemp, you can’t hide, you support genocide.”

A demonstrator with a megaphone drowned out any attempts by the moderator to get the lecture back on track. Protestors wrestled with security guards who had asked them to leave and were then forced to remove them. Protestors stood on chairs, began to push students and shout loudly at those who objected to their behaviour.

Professor Jake Lynch, the director of the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies (CPACS) and an ardent opponent of Israel, shouted in the faces of students, including at a senior officer of the Jewish student union. He then proceeded to stand on chairs and film attendees. Lynch screamed that attempts to remove the protestors was a violent attack on freedom of speech by security guards. When another academic suggested that he ask a question, Lynch responded that was not what this is about, only later opting to ask a question when invited by the Colonel.

One student commented that Kemp “hadn’t even mentioned Israel or Palestine” in the time he had to talk. Another student mentioned that she did not have strong views on either side of this issue, was studying international relations and had come expecting a talk, not an ambush.

After about 20 minutes of shouting, the protestors were finally removed from the hall, having objected loudly to their treatment by the security guards and some others present. Kemp, resuming as if nothing had happened, continued to speak on engagement with non-civilian groups in armed conflict. Concluding his talk, Kemp briefly addressed what he termed a “commercial break.”

Disruption Photo: David Sokol

“This protest was about my perspective on the IDF… I was in Israel during the 2014 summer conflict and I do believe that the IDF in their attack on Hamas in Gaza… were doing everything they could to protect civilians… People have told me I am wrong, but no one has told me what more steps Israel could take to minimize civilian casualties.”

Students, academics and other interested people had come from all over to hear an expert speak on a topical and important subject. Sydney University academic Professor Suzanne Rutland was present at the event and I spoke to her shortly following its conclusion:

“I feel that the demonstration really showed clearly that the anti-Israel group speaks in slogans without any sort of understanding of the intricacies of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians and without any sort of acknowledgement that when they stand there chanting, “free Palestine,” what they mean is the dismantling of the Zionist entity which means genocide against Israel’s Jewish population.”

...“Accusing Israel of committing genocide has no academic basis whatsoever; they even said the Colonel (Kemp) was responsible for genocide. I strongly support legitimate criticism and when we teach about Israel we try to present a critical, balanced voice which is part of academic learning.”

“What I think the demonstration represented was the struggle faced by myself and others on campus who are opposed to Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions. While we try to follow the rules of polite debate, the BDS supporters will often not allow an alternative voice and this is what happened during the lecture.”

“Given the anti-Israel bias on campus we were grateful Dr Gil Merom agreed to chair the function and advertise it to his students.”

Peter Wertheim, the Executive Director of the ECAJ, which facilitated the lecture, was scathing about the disruption to the event, telling JWire:

“The attempt by about 15 students and academics to shout down and censor a public lecture at the University of Sydney by Col Richard Kemp, an internationally renowned, much-decorated expert on military and security affairs, is an utter disgrace.  Their attempts to bully campus security personnel who restored order was also shameful.  These  are the same people who have on numerous occasions invoked the principle of academic freedom to justify their engagement in political advocacy on campus.  Their hypocrisy is now obvious.  For them, academic freedom does not apply to views they disagree with.   They are cowards who are afraid of the truth.  Fortunately, the lecture was resumed after a 15 minute disruption and Richard Kemp’s presentation was so compelling that even academics who had participated in the earlier protest asked him questions and were given comprehensive answers.  The ECAJ is proud to have facilitated the lecture.”

Follow this link to hear an outstanding interview of Richard Kemp on ABC Radio National, prior to the lecture.

*Glen Falkenstein is a Policy Analyst/Staff Writer at the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC)

"Super blood moon" this Sukkot

From CMJ, 6 Feb 2015, by Martin Weatherston:

THE WRITING IS ON THE WALL:

Did you know that the next Feast of Sukkot (Tabernacles) will be ushered in by a ‘blood moon’ (total lunar eclipse) on September 27^th? Not just any blood moon but a super blood moon. This occurs when the moon is at perigee – closer to the earth than at any other time of the year. Given that it will be centred over Israel, it will appear 14% larger than a regular full moon there. There has never been a super blood moon on the Sukkot following a shemitah (Sabbath) year before.

The Bible sets shemitah years to occur every seven years as an economic reset year; debt is eliminated and slaves go free. To give the land a chance to rest. The current shemitah started in October 2014 and goes until 13 September 2015. The last 2 shemitah years – 2001 and 2008 - have seen highly significant financial crises. 

The Jewish Talmud (book of interpretation) says: 

“When the moon is in eclipse, it is a bad omen for Israel. If its face is as red as blood, (it is a sign that) the sword is coming to the world.” 

In other words, it is a portent of judgement or war in their view.

In Genesis 1:14, we read that God created the sun, moon and the stars not only to give us day and night but also as prophetic signs. During the period from April 2014 to September 2015, there will have been a ‘tetrad’ (four) of these blood moons, each one of them falling on the full moon festivals of Passover or Tabernacles.  As stated, however, only the last one will be visible from the Land of Israel. (Heavenly signs are not considered by the prophets to be significant unless they are).

The above photograph gives you some idea of what will be seen (weather permitting) from Jerusalem on the evening of September 27^th. As you can see, it is going to be an amazing spectacle. More than this, however, if the prophets (both Jewish and Christian) are right in their understanding of the times, then has the time come for you to throw caution to the winds, seize the day and make the trip which has been on your bucket list all these years. 

Can you afford to put it off any longer?

For more details of this window of opportunity, visit www.cmj.org.au

From JPost, 20 Feb 2015:

The intellectual terrorism of ...BDS

Never has the divide between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism been so slender. Two more attacks, in Copenhagen and then London, have eradicated what was left of the distance between these two racist phenomena.

On the one hand,  there was another inciteful attack from the BDS (boycott, divestment and sanctions) brigade...And on the other hand,  there was another double attack by anti-Western and anti-Semitic terrorism, executed by Omar Abdel-Hamid el-Hussein in Denmark.


BDS is about the silencing of Israelis through boycott. El-Hussein targeted a conference on freedom of speech to silence people through gunfire.

The BDS movement ...is not seeking a fair settlement of a two-state solution; it is not seeking peace, nor does it seek to end the occupation. It seeks the destruction of Israel, its elimination. Just like that.

The two leaders of the movement, Omar Barghouti and Ali Abunimah, clarify this in the clearest and most vocal way possible.  ...If the BDS claims are correct, if Israel really has committed the unique historical crime of ethnic cleansing, if Israel is indeed committing genocide, if Israel is based on systematic apartheid, if Israel is indeed a Nazi state, and if the Jews really do control the world, one can understand and even justify terrorism against Israel and the Jews.

The thing is that el-Hussein and the supporters of BDS are products of the same inciteful propaganda and lies. It did not start this week. One inciteful propagandist, Ran HaCohen, described Israel as a state that fulfilled Hitler's vision. Another propagandist, Yitzhak Laor, claimed in a prestigious British journal that Israel does not need gas chambers because it destroys the Palestinians by increasing infant mortality.

These are not criticisms, they are blood libels. This is the way of the BDS movement, spreading lies incessantly, from expressions of horror over what happened in 1948 to what is happening these days in Israel.

For the benefit of those who do not know the truth, here are the facts: In 1948, it was the Arabs who declared a war of extermination against the Jews. It was the Jews in Arab countries who suffered from pogroms. It was these Jews who were dispossessed of their property, who were expelled and became refugees. It was the Europeans in those years, with Churchill at their head, who declared repeatedly that the way to resolve conflicts was through the expulsion of populations to create nation-states. The nation state of the Jewish people also arose because the international community had adopted the principle of self-determination. The Arab world persisted in its refusal to recognize Israel. In the 1960s, the rhetoric of all the leaders of the Arab world was stepped up into the near annihilation of Israel.

Israel did not want to occupy. It had to defend herself, once again, from the threat of annihilation. The Palestinians under Israeli rule - including those in Judea and Samaria, and previously Gaza, and those who are Israeli citizens - enjoy stability and many more rights than in any other country in the Middle East. Their life expectancy has risen to an amazing level, and is now the highest in the Arab world. Infant mortality among the population fell, and is now the lowest in the Arab world. From precisely zero universities in 1967, the Palestinians are now in first place for higher education in the Arab world.

Yes, they have a right to a state alongside Israel and not in place of Israel. But it was the Palestinians who over the last decades rejected again and again any proposal that would lead to this state. They insisted on the "right of return", which appears as one of the three central requirements of the BDS movement.


It's interesting that more than 52 million people became refugees, including more than 20 million in Europe, in these same post-WWII years. Not one of them was granted the "right of return" - the European Court of Human Rights rejected the very idea. But the BDS... continue to make every effort to prevent any chance of peace, and to immortalize Palestinian rejectionism.

I could go on. There are more lies all the time, such as the new fairytale propaganda video from BDS, which aims to prove claims of apartheid by stating that Israeli Jewish students receive an annual budget of $ 1,110, compared to just $ 191 for non-Jewish students. Where the hell did they get this lie? If this is true, Mr. Waters, I hereby agree to join the boycott against Israel. But this is yet another lie, just like all your propaganda is based on lies and more lies. Once these were lies against Jews. ...these lies are against Jews and against Israel.

El-Hussein in Denmark exposed these lies. He was convinced that Israel was committing genocide. He was convinced that Israel is an apartheid state. After all, the lie of "Israel's 50 apartheid laws" is repeated often. And he was not content with just signing a petition.

If Israel and the Jews are so evil, if they are a Nazi monster - as the BDS movement, Roger Waters and Hamas say over and over and over again - then he was definitely justified in taking action, not only against Jews, but against infidels in West everywhere.

It's not just the BDS ...There are too many media outlets and intellectuals in the West who revisit the lies again and again. This is not criticism, this is incitement. This is intellectual terrorism.

One can compare the Nazi era and the modern day; the anti-Zionists are particularly fond of this comparison. But it should be placed in the correct context: the anti-Semitic indoctrination of those days, which was based on more and more lies, and the transformation of Jews into monsters, is no different from the brainwashing of today, which is based on more and more lies, and the transformation of Israel into a monster.

Of course one can criticize Israel. In Israel itself, there is a lively debate. Most Israelis support painful compromise, and oppose the continuation of the settlement enterprise. In Israel itself, anti-Israel and anti-Zionist ideas are expressed - because Israel is a democracy.

Israel is far from perfect. There are also exceptions. Wars also harm innocent people, which is always very unfortunate. One must add at this point, that according to a study by the American Public Health Association (APHA), 85-90% of victims of conflict since World War II have been civilians. This also applies to conflicts of recent decades involving NATO armies, the US and Britain. Even if the findings of the APHA are exaggerated, and even if all the allegations against Israel are right - and they are not right - the IDF causes far less harm than any other army in the world.

These are the facts. But ...Omar Abdel-Hamid el-Hussein, the BDS movement and Hamas nurture the idea that Israel and/or the Jews are monsters that stalk the earth. The brainwashing was a success. Hundreds of artists in the UK this week joined calls for a boycott of Israel. It's not just that the lies won, but the purpose of the BDS movement is also to silence anyone who wants to refute those lies. This means, for example, a boycott of Israeli academics.

This is the meaning of the attacks against the Charlie Hebdo magazine in Paris and against the freedom of expression conference in Copenhagen. Intellectual terrorism and murderous terrorism have a shared goal. Both el-Hussein, BDS ...are a real threat to freedom of thought and the free world. They cultivate hatred; they cultivate silencing people; they give legitimacy to violence.

Brainwashing, lies and incitement against Jews have already won once. In the world of ...BDS, Hamas and el-Hussein, it could happen again.

How Western "Friends of Palestine" harms the Palestinian Arabs

From Commentary, 18 Feb 2015, by Evlyn C Gordon:

... the West’s obsession with Israel’s treatment of the "Palestinians" helps perpetuate global misery by diverting attention from people in far greater distress (think Syrians or South Sudanese). 
...[and also]  also perpetuates suffering among the one group it’s ostensibly supposed to help–the "Palestinians". 

Three Jerusalem Post reports over the last week show why.


One warned that a leading Palestinian hospital is at risk of closure because of a $30 million debt. A major reason for this debt is that for years, the Palestinian Authority has failed to pay Mokassed Hospital for many of the patients it treats. This isn’t because the PA lacked money; it has ample funds to pay generous salaries to thousands of terrorists sitting in Israeli jails. Rather, it’s a matter of priorities: On the PA’s scale of values, paying terrorists for killing Israelis is evidently more important than paying doctors for healing Palestinians.

Almost 40 percent of the PA’s budget consists of foreign aid, with the vast majority coming from Western countries. The West is therefore uniquely placed to pressure the PA to alter its spending priorities. But it has never tried to do any such thing, because it only cares about what Israel does or doesn’t do.

Thus one factor that has recently exacerbated Mokassed’s problems has elicited worldwide condemnations: Israel’s withholding of tax revenues from the PA over the last two months in response to the latter’s egregious violations of the Oslo Accords, including joining the International Criminal Court. Yet even if Israel handed over that money tomorrow, there’s no reason to think the PA would suddenly start using it to pay Mokassed when it never did so in all the years before Israel halted the transfers.

In short, pressuring Israel won’t actually solve the problem; only pressuring the PA would do that. But since the West doesn’t care what the PA does, Palestinian patients will continue to suffer.

In the second report, Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon criticized the PA for failing to take control of Gaza’s border crossings as it promised to do after last summer’s war. This failure, he noted, has greatly delayed Gaza’s reconstruction, since the reconstruction mechanism devised by the UN and Western donors mandated PA control of the crossings in an effort to minimize diversions of dual-use materials to Hamas’s war machine.

But because Israel has never sealed its border with Hamas-controlled Gaza completely–it has sent in 62,000 tons of construction supplies since August despite the PA’s absence from the crossings–the real hardship has occurred along the Egyptian border. The Rafah border crossing is Gaza’s main gateway to the world, but it has been closed almost hermetically for months, because Cairo considers Hamas a terrorist organization and refuses to reopen Rafah as long as Hamas controls it.

A particularly horrific consequence ensued in November, when an 11-year-old Palestinian died because the Rafah closure prevented her from entering Egypt for needed medical treatment. So why didn’t she go to Israel instead? Because Hamas refuses to talk to Israel directly, so requests for medical entry permits from Gaza are sent through the PA. But according to Razan al-Halkawi’s relatives, the PA refused to forward her request because it was embroiled in one of its periodic spats with Hamas.

In short, the PA refused to do what was needed to enable al-Halkawi to get treatment in either Egypt or Israel. And so she died.

As the PA’s major donor, the West could be pressing the Palestinians to live up to their post-war commitments. But it won’t, because if Israel can’t be blamed, it doesn’t care.

Report number three: Thousands of Palestinians who bought homes in the new Palestinian city of Rawabi can’t move in because the city isn’t connected to the water system. Why? Because all West Bank water projects need approval by the Israeli-Palestinian Joint Water Committee, which the PA has refused to convene for the last five years. Evidently, it would rather deprive its own people of better housing than agree to meet with Israeli officials.

Here, too, the West could use its financial leverage to press the PA to convene the panel and let Rawabi open. But it hasn’t, because if Israel can’t be blamed, it’s not interested.

In short, in numerous cases where the West could use its leverage over the PA to better the lot of ordinary Palestinian [Arab]s, it has refused to do so, because it only cares about Israel’s actions. And thus the biggest victims of the West’s Israel obsession have ended up being not Israelis, but the Palestinian [Arab]s themselves.

Palestinian moves to join ICC have nothing to do with justice

From The Australian, 11 Feb 2015, by Einat Wilf:

RECENT Palestinian moves to join the International Criminal Court are one more step in the decades-long campaign to vilify Israel and brand it in world opinion as “evil incarnate”.

It is a direct continuation of the “placard strategy” of anti-Israel activism, whereby Israel and Zionism are equated — whether in demonstration placards, speeches or writings — with a series of words: colonialism, apartheid, ethnic cleansing and genocide. These words are not chosen because they somehow reflect ­reality but because they are universally considered evil.

The effect of the continuous repeating of Zionism/Israel = Evil is to create an intellectual environment in which physically ridding the world of Israel would be considered desirable, even noble.

The purpose of the Palestinian moves in the ICC is to achieve official international sanction for branding Israel with the term “war criminal”, thereby adding an internationally sanctioned legitimacy to the placards used to vilify Israel and Zionism.

The purpose is not to seek justice by bringing certain Israeli officials to trial before the ICC but achieving an officially sanctioned international consensus that Israel, as a whole, is a war criminal country. As such, the resulting implication is that its entire existence is illegitimate.

This is a process that renowned human rights activist and former Canadian ­justice minister Irwin Cotler has named “laundering”: the campaign to delegitimise Israel and Zionism is “laundered” through the international human rights ­institutions. Given that this is the deep purpose of the Palestinian ­efforts to join the ICC and ­prosecute Israel through it, any effective response must address this deeper issue, rather than the issue on the surface: the ostensible legal battle.

Israel has invested substantial diplomatic capital in trying to prevent the Palestinians first joining the ICC and now in trying to prevent the ICC from accepting their status as a full-fledged state.

The most common interpretation of the Israeli efforts to prevent the Palestinians acceding to the ICC is that Israel is afraid of being “found out”. Most people assume that if Israel had nothing to hide it would not be so concerned; ergo, it has something to hide from the ICC. The ICC tries war crimes, meaning therefore that Israel must indeed be a “war criminal country” if it is so concerned about it. The Palestinians are achieving the goals of their ICC campaign — to vilify Israel in international opinion — before they have even been accepted to the ICC.

But Israel’s concerns about Palestinian accession to the ICC are not about being “found out” but rather about the failure of the UN and international treaty system of human rights to give Israel a fair trial. This is one of the greatest failures of the UN and treaty-based system of human rights.

There is no justice for Israel in the UN. There is definitely no justice for Israel in the Orwellian-named Human Rights Council. And there will be no justice for Israel in the ICC.

Israel is concerned about Palestinian accession to the ICC because it knows that no matter what it has done, what it does and what it will do, it will be found guilty.

The UN system and the international judicial system are structurally incapable of fairly judging Israel because they are numbers-based systems: one country, no matter how vile, one vote.

Israel has one vote. The Arab League countries have 21, the Muslim countries have 56. They have voted, and will always vote, against Israel. With such a high share of the votes they get still more countries to support them.

The outcome of this simple maths is that in all the UN bodies where the US cannot exercise its veto power, Israel remains alone, unprotected, and is regularly ganged up on by the countries that have the preponderant numbers.

Half of all condemnations issued by the UN Human Rights Council have been against Israel, equal to the rest of the world combined. Moreover, the condemnations against Israel are always absolute, whereas condemnation against other countries is usually softened with caveats and commendations for their supposed efforts to do better.

The same is true of the UN General Assembly — half of its ­decisions historically have been directed against Israel. The ICC, which has failed to establish itself as an impartial and credible body, is likely to do no better if it were ­allowed to attempt to judge and punish Israel.

The tragic irony is that much of the UN and its treaty-based system of human rights was created to counter the darkness of the Holocaust, then grossly misinterpreted and abused against the world’s only Jewish state, ­Israel.

Einat Wilf is a senior fellow with the Jewish People Policy Institute and an adjunct fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.