High life

1 October 2011

Taki lives the HIgh Life

Over the years, I’ve often written about Israel and not always in a flattering light. After President Rabin was assassinated — his wife once told me that she preferred Arafat to Netanyahu any day — I lost all hope that reason, wisdom and humanity might prevail in the Holy Land. I keep returning to a subject that does not exactly endear me to my Jewish friends partly because the mistreatment of the Palestinians offends my sense of justice. People often warn me to lay off. ‘Don’t get involved, it’s the last thing you need,’ they say. I have a pat answer. ‘A Palestinian mother who loses a husband or a child to a bullet cries as bitterly as a Jewish one.’ And a small reminder: the Palestinians never put a Jew in a camp, the Germans did, so why take it out on the former?

Yet after each column I’ve written about Israel, the feedback is mostly: ‘You’re an anti-Semite, and we expect nothing less of you.’ Well, get your pens ready, pals, here we go again. It is mind-blowing to me that, taking account of their history, the Israelis have allowed themselves to become the systematic oppressors of another people. Well before 1948, Jewish armed gangs had begun to chase Arabs out of places they had lived in since time immemorial. Because of the Holocaust, people turned a blind eye. We all know the rest.

Under Jordanian leadership the Palestinians permanently lost their lands after the wars of 1948, 1956 and 1967, and only Egypt managed to get the Sinai back after a so-so performance in the war of Yom Kippur in 1973. No Arab leader lifted a finger to help the dispossessed; keeping them in squalid camps served a political purpose, and to hell with them. I spent time in those camps back in the Sixties, camps that are still bursting at the seams today. My mentor was Glubb Pasha’s son, a young Englishman who pointed out the terrible inequities Israel was imposing on a people who had always lived in peace with Jews before the big boys got involved.

Which brings me to the present. The argument that security concerns justify Israel’s expanding illegal settlements was and remains a bad joke — a euphemism for ethnic cleansing, no ifs or buts about it. Just as the Jewish state declared ‘never again’, upon its creation, so are decent, freedom-loving people the world over saying ‘enough is enough’. And that includes close to half the Israeli population not content to be oppressors. The problem is that Israel is no longer the secular state it once was. If the Israeli religious parties had their way, Israel would by now be an ethnocracy with theocratic leanings.

Then there is Avigdor Lieberman, Israel’s foreign minister and leader of an extreme nationalist party, a former Soviet thug and nightclub bouncer, who believes the West’s hegemony has come to an end, and that the future lies with autocratic governments like Russia and China. His constituents are primarily Russian and hardline, although secular. Netanyahu, who more and more resembles a Chicago political ward boss shifting alliances and counting votes in order to remain in power, is caught in between. This is no way to run a country that owes its very existence to Uncle Sam and the generous donations of the international Jewish community.

And speaking of Uncle Sam, Israel can do no wrong, even when it slays an unarmed American citizen in international waters as it did last year. Criticism of heavy-handedness or brutality by Israel is a no-no in Obamaland, witness the 38 standing ovations given to Netanyahu in Congress after he told the President of the United States to shove it. The American–Israeli Public Affairs Committee (Aipac) can be extremely dangerous for any American politician’s health, and everyone knows it. Forty million evangelical Christian voters are another reason no one in America will read the riot act to a so-called great ally who is regularly caught spying on Uncle Sam.

Now the Palestinian Authority has applied for full membership of the United Nations as a sovereign state. Although this has long been promised by the international community, the reaction by the Anglo–Saxon powers has been muted at best. ‘Well, yes, of course, but, ah, not right now’ type of thing. The Palestinians have heard it all before. And yet let’s look at the record: according to the World Bank and the IMF, the Palestinian Authority has been remarkably successful in building Palestinian public institutions. The prime minister, Salam Fayyad, has pursued Palestinian goals non-violently and diplomatically, yet the Israeli response has been one of sticking its head in the sand and announcing that everything you have is mine, and everything I have is mine also. As a Palestinian friend of mine told me this week, ‘Everyone, starting with the Egyptians, Tunisians and the Libyans, are entitled to be free except for us.’

The hypocrisy over Palestinian statehood is astounding, outrageous — even for a species known for it, the politicians. Israel’s Prime Minister has used any excuse he can find to avoid negotiations, and Republican leaders in Washington have encouraged his resistance to sitting down and talking peace. Obama could not deliver a promised settlement-freeze once Aipac issued a veiled threat concerning the 2012 election. The Israeli hardliners, mostly American religious zealots and Russians, are engaged in a new system to terrorise local Palestinians, one they call ‘price tag’, in which they attack Palestinian property — and occasionally the Israeli military — in response to army curbs on their illegal building or other anti-Palestinian activities. Settler violence against unarmed Palestinians and ‘price tagging’ are seen as normal by the Avigdor Liebermans of this world, and colonising settlers now rule Israel’s political landscape. The rest of us should be ashamed of ourselves.

Morgan Kane

September 29th, 2011 9:43pm Report this comment

Tell us again how you stood up and cheered when Le Rosey showed the newsreel footage of the Wehrmacht marching triumphantly through the streets of Athens.

Taki

September 30th, 2011 6:55am Report this comment

A very well written piece Taki make s you want to give that scumbag Blair a bunch of fives he's another one who panders too them like he did ghadaffi of course there should be an independent state of Palestine but the yanks are playing the same game here as they played with ho chi Minn look what happened in Vietnam obhama should start studying his history and quickly the Jewish are using the old British tactic of divide and rule geographically it never works

Serguei

October 2nd, 2011 3:03pm Report this comment

A very poor article.
This kind of left-wing rubbish would be OK for Guardian, but is definitely is not worthy of such a magazine as Spectator.
I normally enjoy reading Taki but his anti-Jewish sentiment sometimes get too apparent (not just in particular piece which is more reminiscent of stupid left-wing press then been properly anti-Semitic, but in different previous articles when he described other rich men with obviously Jewish names).
PS to put matters straight - I am not Jewish and I only visited Israel once as a tourist.

S Reid

October 7th, 2011 12:22am Report this comment

An excellent article Taki. You are absolutely correct in every aspect.
I am glad somone well-known in this world has the courage to sit down and write the truth.

Yes I have visited Israel - once. Ramallah, enclosed by high concrete walls and topped with barbwire - the same as Bethelam - was an appalling sight.
I also did not appreciate the anti- Palestinian propaganda I encountered many times. However there were some Israelis who felt the same as I (and you) do and it was an Israeli who got me in to Ramallahand not without difficulty. I am grateful to him.

D Shaw

October 7th, 2011 12:52am Report this comment

"Well before 1948, Jewish armed gangs had begun to chase Arabs out of places they had lived in since time immemorial"

And the Tunisians chased Jews out of the country they had lived in since time immemorial in the 40s and 50s once they had a haven in Israel. The once substantial Tunisian Jewish population is now but a handful and the huge synagogue in Tunis lies empty and unused with armed police and soldiers outside it with anti-parking barriers.

A childish and faux-informed piece written by someone who just doesn't like Jews, but German Nazi ear stormtroopers are A OK.

Allan Marson

October 7th, 2011 6:48pm Report this comment

it would make a pleasant change if defenders of Israel's actions regarding the Palestinian population were able, just once, to address the facts as reported, rather than to malign the critic of those actions, often bandying around accusations of anti-Semitism. It seems as if Israeli actions, including pursuing the settlement programme, the eviction of Palestinian residents of Jerusalem, the intermittent withholding of food and medical , and other forms of collective punishment , that are indeed reminiscent of the actions of the Wehrmacht to which Morgan Kane refers, have no rational defense , so the only tactic available is to shoot the messenger.
As for the Tunisian Jews, I don't think two wrongs have ever made a right.

Geoff Lane

October 8th, 2011 6:39pm Report this comment

Tension between Arabs abd Jews hasn't changed since the 1948 war when I was serving in British Army security. There were well-meaning people on both sides who got caught up in the statehood drama. The UN
made the fateful decision and gthe world has lived with it since. What still is not fully recognised is the thousands of Arabs who continue to live, work and do business inside modern Israel.