Category Archives: Israel

Britain, Government, History, Israel, Society

Holocaust Commemoration: The horrors that still echo

75TH COMMEMORATION

SEVENTY-FIVE years on, the sheer evil and depravity against mankind defies comprehension.

Generations may have passed, but we still share the appalling horror felt by Red Army troops as they walked into Auschwitz.

Dispassionate history books describe the site as a “concentration camp”. It would be more accurately portrayed as hell on earth: a grotesque symbol of the horrifying consequences of man’s atrocious barbarism to his fellow man.

In total, more than six million people – overwhelmingly Jews – were exterminated in Nazi gas chambers and crematorium ovens. Victims, by accident of birth, of Hitler’s depraved ideology of Aryan supremacy.

As the last frail survivors pass into history, it is imperative the world never forgets the Holocaust. Never forget how, even in our professedly civilised modern world, far removed from the slaughter of those death camps, disagreement can mutate terrifyingly quickly into hostility and dehumanisation.

That was the premise of Prince Charles’s powerful warning in a speech at a solemn event in Israel marking 75 years since Auschwitz was liberated in January 1945.

Standing alongside world leaders, the heir to the throne said: “Hatred and intolerance still lurk in the human heart, still tell lies, adopt new disguises and still seek new victims.”

Seventy-five years on, he asked, is our strife-torn society in danger of losing sight of the lessons from the atrocity? “All too often,” he said, “words are used as badges of shame to mark others as enemies.”

Prince Charles’ wise remarks as a chastisement to those who, even today, cultivate the wickedness of anti-Semitism and other disgraceful bigotry.

Listen to Jewish Labour ex-minister Dame Margaret Hodge. In the Commons she has lamented how hard-Left cranks in her party hurl execrable Jew-baiting bile.

Dozens of her family were murdered by the Nazis. Yet, on social media, she’s regularly taunted with photographs of the Auschwitz dead, swastikas and SS guards. Are these depraved morons, hiding behind their keyboards, proud of their nauseating provocations?

The internet drowns with Holocaust denial and repulsive anti-Israel propaganda. It is beyond belief the tech giants allow this foul content – a residue of the Nazi atrocities.

 

MEANWHILE, if the BBC had set out with deliberate cause to offend the Jewish community, they could hardly have achieved it more effectively. One of its senior correspondents has sparked fury by linking the Holocaust to the Palestinian crisis on prime-time TV.

This is why it is so important that influential public dignitaries such as Prince Charles counter such detestable and hate-driven disinformation.

His visit to Yad Vashem, site of the World Holocaust Remembrance Centre, was also deeply personal – his grandmother is honoured there for taking immense risks to shelter and save Jewish lives in Nazi-occupied Greece.

Tomorrow, his wife Camilla will represent Britain at a World Holocaust Day ceremony at Auschwitz. Prince William and the Duchess of Cambridge will join sombre commemorations here.

All this helps ensure the evil exposed 75 years ago never slips from our memories. A Royal Family serving dutifully as the nation’s moral lodestar.

Standard
History, Israel, Middle East, Palestine, United States

Palestine: Another body blow for peace

GAZA BORDER

Gaza

THE shocking images of slaughter at the Gaza border earlier this week are a public relations disaster for Israel. At this very moment in time when the Jewish state is marking the 70th anniversary of its foundation, its government finds itself the target of global anger and outrage.

An occasion which may perhaps been one for national pride is now badly tarnished by media coverage of its soldiers shooting teenagers and civilian protestors.

History, of course, has always offered fuel for such controversy in this combustible region. It is filled with the legacies of territorial disputes and religious clashes. Israel’s “birthday” was always likely to provoke some sort of turmoil.

For the creation of the state of Israel is a source of profound grievance to many Palestinians, who believe that their people were driven off their own land and displaced into Lebanon, the West Bank and the Gaza strip.

In this narrative of despair, they feel they were robbed of their livelihoods and their nationhood through the event known as the “Nakba” or the “Catastrophe” whose anniversary fell on May 15, 2018.

Tensions were always bound to be high at this period, particularly as Palestinian demonstrators – some of them crudely armed – gathered on the border with Israel to demand the right of return to the home of their forebears.

But what has really ignited the powder keg was the decision by the White House to move the US embassy from Tel Aviv to the divided city of Jerusalem, which the state of Israel regards as its capital.

It is a step that has inflamed discord with the Palestinians, who lay claim to the eastern part of the city and whose Muslim faith has several sacred sites within its walls, as of course do Jews.

It was the fear of inflaming tensions that prevented a succession of US presidents, including Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, from implementing a pledge to shift the American embassy to Jerusalem.

But Donald Trump, never a man to follow political precedent, has ignored such doubts.

He adopted his stance partly because he has always been a big admirer of Israel and is deeply suspicious of Muslim fundamentalism in the region, as he demonstrated in his decision to pull out of the Iran nuclear deal – a policy that was eagerly welcomed by the Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu.

Mr Trump also has close personal ties to Israel, for his daughter Ivanka is married to Jared Kushner, whose family has donated money to Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

For the Palestinians, all of this is highly provocative, making a mockery of US talk about the need for a peaceful solution to the long-standing conflict. This mood of anger is also sedulously cultivated by Hamas, the ruthless terrorist organisation which runs Gaza and relies on the culture of victimhood to maintain its iron grip on power.

That is why it has always been more interested in fomenting bitterness and hatred towards Israel than in improving living standards in the Gaza strip. And why the fact that so many martyrs have died – or been sacrificed – suits its cause.

Endlessly exploiting the climate of indignation, Hamas continually preaches the apocalyptic gospel of the armed struggle and martyrdom.

The interests of Hamas are served by turning a youthful, seething, radicalised population’s anger towards Israel.

That is the opposite of what Israel wants on its border with Gaza. Many British people, viewing the heart-rending reports of bloodshed, will understandably feel that the Israeli authorities grossly over-reacted to the demonstrations.

However, there are two crucial considerations to bear in mind about the Israeli response. First, one of the central themes of the radical Palestinian movement is to reclaim former homelands that are now Israeli territory. It is a drive called “The Great March of Return”.

 

YET, by its very nature, this would threaten the very existence of the state of Israel. The security forces must therefore feel that, however savage the consequences, they cannot allow thousands of protesters in a human wave to cross the border and squat in Israel.

Second, although most of the demonstrators were unarmed, some definitely were. Hamas’s cynical eagerness to exploit the discontent means that there were bound to have been hardened insurgents in the crowd, carrying knives, guns, petrol bombs or even rocket launchers.

The entire experience of Israeli history over the last 70 years is filled with attacks from its enemies. Almost every flashpoint becomes another challenge to the state’s right to exist. That is why the Israeli forces must be so vigilant.

It could be that the hard-line tactics actually work in deterring further border demonstrations. But the tough response could have the opposite effect, emboldening Hamas and fuelling radical fury as well as sympathy for the Palestinians from abroad.

Certainly, there is little doubt that the region will descend into further strife. In the face of the casualties caused by Israeli guns, the more moderate Palestinians, headed by Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and a traditional Arab secular nationalist, have been pushed to make radical protests too, to keep pace with popular anger.

Hamas will continue to say that figures such as Abbas have achieved nothing with their impulse to compromise, with the result that force now must be used.

Similarly, the rapprochement between Israel and Arab states such as Saudi Arabia and Jordan – inspired by their shared fear of a dominant Shia Iran – could now break down.

The three nations formed a close alliance in opposition to president Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria.

But what is certain is that it will now be far more difficult for any predominately Muslim state to work with Israel. For those who may have hoped that Palestinian people-power protests would help bring harmony, this is another bitter disappointment in a region scarred by decades of lost opportunities for peace.

. Reference and appendage:

Six Day War

Standard
Iran, Israel, Middle East, Russia, Syria, United States

On the brink of a cataclysmic Middle East war?

MIDDLE EAST

Israel Iran

The Middle East is on the brink of a major conflagration. The situation is complex but Russia’s Vladimir Putin could play a significant role in calming tensions. Israeli airstrikes on Iranian targets in Syria has raised the stakes, precipitated some say by Donald Trump’s decision to reverse the 2015 nuclear agreement.

FOR much of 2018 so far, the world has been fixated by fears of nuclear Armageddon erupting in North Korea.

But over the last few days, alarming developments in the Middle East remind us of the even greater likelihood of conventional warfare on a cataclysmic scale in the region.

Now that its heavyweights – Israel and Iran – have traded blows for the very first time, we ignore that threat at our peril.

After 20 Iranian rockets were fired from Syria at military positions held by the Jewish state on the Golan Heights, Israel immediately responded by launching dozens of missiles at Iranian forces in Syria.

They hit a radar station, air defences and an ammunition dump – killing at least 23 people, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights which is based in the UK.

Iran’s rockets – fired by the Quds Force, a wing of the Revolutionary Guards – either fell short of their targets or were knocked out by Israel’s ‘Iron Dome’ defence system. Whilst not all out war, these events certainly take us to the brink.

In the Middle East, two major conflicts have been simmering side by side for years – the Arabs versus the Israelis, and the Shi’ite Muslims against the Sunni Muslims.

Last week’s events seem about to drag them into convergence and into a gigantic and highly unstable flash point.

Iran, which is not an Arab nation, is the chief Shi’ite power. Since the revolution of 1979 which overthrew the pro-Western, modernising Shah and imposed the harsh religious rule of the Ayatollahs, it has been spreading radicalism. The regime detests the West, with America its biggest adversary followed by Britain.

Iraq is dominated by Shi’ites, as indeed is Lebanon after Hezbollah, the paramilitary party aligned to Iran and which loathes Israel, won this month’s general election.

The Ayatollahs in Iran back the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad. Surrounded by hostile pro-Western nations, Iran needs all the allies it can find to help protect its regional interests. Support for Syria also allows it to station forces far to the West of its own borders – closer to the Mediterranean, in fact, than it has been since the days of the Persian empire 1,400 years ago.

Those forces, as we are now seeing, are within an easy striking distance of Israel. But that’s only half the story. Tensions are also at breaking point between Shi’ite Iran and Saudi Arabia, the leading Sunni country. The two nations have been fighting a proxy war in Yemen, with the Iranian-backed forces enjoying most of the success.

However, it is Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states which control a majority of the region’s colossal oil resources. Now, many hardliners in Tehran are saying that, with Iran’s superior military power, it could seize those oilfields if they wanted.

And the ultra-hardliners in Tehran, who are even more numerous, welcome that plan because it would inevitably bring America and its allies (including Britain) into a war they know we wouldn’t have the stomach to fight. With such immense conventional forces arrayed on both sides, Iranian military planners believe the result would, in all probability, be a stalemate. While Iran would be prepared to take hundreds of thousands of casualties, they are betting that the Western allies would not.

That, bizarrely, would be seen in the Middle East as a win for Iran. If America cannot overcome its enemy, its enemy is victorious. No matter how much Europe would want to stay out of another Gulf war, it’s naïve to imagine for one moment that it could do so. For one thing, the Americans would expect the support of Britain and NATO. For another, we are heavily dependent on the Middle East’s oil.

And Britain is already deeply involved, for economic reasons as far as Saudi is concerned, and for moral reasons when it comes to its long-term ally, Israel.

Small wonder, then, that Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson argued so vehemently against President Donald Trump’s decision last week to tear up the 2015 agreement which reduced economic sanctions on Iran in return for a freeze on nuclear development.

The idea of provoking more conflict and giving Tehran an excuse to restart its experiments with enriched uranium, seems wilfully reckless.

 

TRUMP, though, has a rationale for his action. He argues that his aggressive tactics over North Korea has forced dictator Kim Jong-un to the negotiating table, and kickstarted a process which might even bring about the reunification of the two Koreas.

Absurd as it may seem, suggestions that he is a candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize should not be dismissed lightly.

When President Obama began talks with Iran to persuade them to abandon their nuclear programme, much was made of an ‘Axis of Evil’ – a loose alliance of Iran, North Korea and other rogue states, intent on global mayhem.

But what Trump has proved in his face-off with ‘Little Rocket Man’ Kim is that Obama’s evil axis is an illusion. North Korea isn’t interested in Iran. Dictators don’t do solidarity.

Trump hopes that by reimposing sanctions, he will force the Ayatollahs back to the table – and this time they will agree not only to cancel their nuclear weapons programme but also to cut back their conventional military forces and to withdraw from Syria.

That’s the goal, but the difficulties with the plan are twofold. Firstly, with America ending the trade deal, in economic terms Iran has nothing left to lose.

In theory, it can still deal with Europe (which continues to support the 2015 deal): In practice, it can’t buy any items that rely on US digital technology, such as the Airbus plane it dearly desires, and it can’t borrow from international banks that have dealings with America (which means all international banks).

Secondly, Iran is not a one-man dictatorship. Power is shared between religious, political and military leaders, all of whom are competing to prove they are more hardline than the next, all of them convinced America isn’t prepared for a ground war fought to the last man.

It’s true that the US does not want to commit ground troops. Israel, too, is anxious to avoid fighting with tanks and assault rifles against an enemy with long experience of guerrilla warfare.

That’s why the Israeli response to Iran’s failed missile attack was so swift and emphatic. ‘If it rains on us, it will storm on them,’ warned Israel’s defence minister Avigdor Lieberman. Iran is promising to respond, though this does not necessarily mean an all-out missile attack. Reprisals could take the form of terrorist attacks, whether in the Middle East or further afield.

Whatever happens, we are closer to open war between Iran and Israel, with the Saudis and US potentially being drawn in from the start, than we have ever been.

Is there are chink of hope? Curiously, there is, and it comes from an improbable source. Russia, which has been so belligerent over Ukraine and Syria, does not want to see Iran dominate the Middle East where it now has significant interests.

So, President Vladimir Putin may hold the balance of power here. It’s worth remembering that the monstrous Russian dictator Josef Stalin was the West’s vital ally in World War II. Significantly, the Israeli PM was in Moscow to mark the Russian victory over the Nazis last Wednesday.

Strange as it may seem, because he can talk to all sides, Putin could be the leader who can avert a Third World War.

Overview of events: how Iran and Israel traded blows for the first time

1.      20 rockets were fired from Syria at Israeli positions in the Golan Heights on May 10, 2018.

. Four rockets were intercepted by the Israeli Iron Dome aerial defence system, while 16 others fell short of their targets;

. No injuries or damage have been reported.

2.      Israeli fighter jets responded by striking 70 military targets belonging to Iran inside Syria, including:

. A logistics HQ belonging to the Quds (insignia right), the Iranian special forces; 

. A military compound in Kiswah, south of Damascus;

. A military compound north of Damascus; 

. Quds Force munition storage warehouses at Damascus International airport; 

. Intelligence systems and posts associated with the Quds Force;

. Observation and military posts and munitions in the Golan demilitarised zone;

. Syrian military air defence systems;

. 23 people were killed in the strikes, including five Syrian soldiers and 19 other allied fighters.

Appendage: 

Iran's presence in Syria

Mapping of Iran’s presence in Syria.

Standard