Why is HMG misrepresenting international law against Israel?

GeoffM

Well, Melanie, you do have a jewish Foreign Secretary.

Unfortunately he comes from a Marxist background as do so many in the Labour Party.

gary

It's Israel. It's ok to declare them offside by making exceptions to every legal and moral value.

trumpeldor

@Melanie,

Since it is considered as internal repression,it means that foreign office considers Gaza as part of Israel!
And for once ,for that part,we agree!!

EDDIE

accepting that the legal basis of this ban is in doubt, then what are the real reasons for these actions by the government?

C Powell

If your legal analysis is true, the decision would be judicially reviewable. Will the Israeli government take such action? It would be interesting to see what the legal analysis is. I can't imagine that such a decision would not have been taken without the lawyers taking a close look at it unless, of course, HMG operated on the assumption that Israel would not want to take such action.

Or it maybe that the law is not so clear cut and HMG does have such discretion, in which case the decision is a political one, as you say.

Sheila

As people keep pointing out, this government is relentless in its de facto sponsorship of Islamic terror.

This incident simply shows how far that process is accelerating: innocent people cannot, in the eyes of the British government, defend themselves against Islamic terror.

Penny

This whole situation is really quite bizarre.

Hamas MP Fathi Hamad openly admits that women, children, the elderly and the fit are used as human shields. Hamas MP and clerlic Yunis al-Astal openly states that the goal is to conquer Israel, then Rome then all of Europe and America.

Children are indoctrinated into hatred for Israel and the West via their everyday education, TV programs and the adoration of martyrdom heroes. I watched a video of two Palestinian girls aged about 11/12 who said that martyrdom was 'beautiful' and they would prefer it to peace.

Internal repression is the norm; Hamas tortures, murders and maims anyone it even mildly suspects of consorting with Fatah - much less Israel. A 15yr old was hanged by his uncle simply for waving at an Israeli-driven car as it drove by.

And the UK gives them millions in aid for Hamas to carry on with this abuse??????

MP Fathi Hamad (pre-Gaza)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g0wJXf2nt4Y

MP Yunis al-Astal:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=x_qbKrOF64w

Palestinian 'education':

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=hamas+childrens+education&search_type=&aq=f

Alex Bensky

Much of this would be less murky, Melanie, if you were hip to modern language usage. Lucky for you, you have readers like me to clue you in.

When it comes to Israel "disproportionate" is a synonym for "effective."

And Gary, you have come across a rule of international relations that I explained to the world several years ago on Meryl Yourish's invaluable weblog. She refers to it as "the Exception Clause" but without false modesty I call it the Bensky Corollary to Everything. You can google the site for the full explanation but here's the short version:

There is an implicit proviso in every statement and every policy made by anyone, anywhere, anytime, from individuals all the way up to the UN. That proviso is: "Except for Jews."

I cannot put my hand on the actual document authorizing this but circumstantial evidence shows it's true, just like we knew until recently that although no one had ever seen any planets around other stars, we knew they existed--certain phenomena were fully explained by the theory and inexplicable otherwise.

So no one is moving the goal posts, Gary. And in any event, Eric Hoffer pointed out long ago that the only people in the world who are expected to act like Christians are Jews.

I trust, Melanie, this clears things up for you.

Maurice, MD

The only Israeli in Gaza is Gilad Shalit.

What does the Geneva Convention say about Hamas abducting him, holding him hostage incommunicado, and refusing the Red Cross access to him or information about him?

What does the British Foreign Office say about it? Or its Office of Humanitarian Affairs?

Derek BLADES

Ms Phillips is straining at gnats on this one. OK, she is under contract to churn out a certain number of columns each week with her blind pro-Israel positions, but you don't need to be a legal pundit to see through her reasoning on this one. If Israel is not an occupying power with regard to Gaza then what is the legal basis for the restrictions Israel imposes on shipments to Gaza of the materials needed to rebuild that devastated city. If Israel is not doing it in her role as an occupying power then she is committing an act of war against an independent state.
Ms Phillips is quick to fault the actions of the US administration and HMG. Could she give us the benefit of her advice as to what they should be doing in the Middle East? Please try being constructive for once.
to

blue_&_white_avenger

Derek BLADES seems a bit confused; Israel has every right to refuse shipments for Hamas to pass through its territory.
Providing there were no contractual, legally binding agreements any country can refuse passage through its territory. It obviously makes no sense for friendly countries - as Britain has now done - but when a country is at war - as Hamas has proclaimed, it would be absurd to permit it

C.Gee

Derek BLADES:
You ask: "If Israel is not an occupying power with regard to Gaza then what is the legal basis for the restrictions Israel imposes on shipments to Gaza of the materials needed to rebuild that devastated city."
Answer:Self-defense; the right of a sovereign nation to control its own borders. It is precisely because Israel is not occupying the hostile Palestinian Entity that it is obliged to control the borders with it.
You state further:"If Israel is not doing it in her role as an occupying power then she is committing an act of war against an independent state."
By George, you've nearly got it!
Israel is reacting to acts of war (rocket attacks) by a quasi-state, by controlling what goes into it from Israel. Blockades are an act of war, but control of goods passing from your own state into another is not a blockade. The border with Egypt also prevents the border control from Israel from rising to a blockade. BUT even if it were a blockade rising to an act of war, it is one taken within the context of a war. Rocket attacks and kidnapping of soldiers are acts of war. The fact that Gaza is not "officially" a state does not change the nature of its acts; and cannot be used to wriggle out of charges of making war. The Palestinians believe that being occupied makes their attacks on the occupier legal. It does no such thing.
There is no right to resistance in international law. The nearest you will come to an argument for such a right is Richard Falk's cutting one from whole cloth.
Really, if you feel any empathy at all for the Arab victims of death cult indoctrination, please stop giving the perpetrators bogus legal cover.

PW Virginia USA

Bensky...My father, who grew up as a subject of Czar Nicholas II, told me that when an ukasi was released and posted the last line was "except for the Jews" To Blades ...Hamas started the war with the act of firing rockets into Israel, when are you going to get that into your head...And what about the Egyptian border eh?

C.Gee

Derek BLADES:
How would the rules regarding internal repression (see Melanie's article)apply to the Palestinian Entity (either branch)?

Raymond in DC

What we have here is an exercise in British moral arrogance. They're telling Israel "We don't like the way you're behaving, so we're going to punish you." Even pipsqueak countries like Belgium think they have the right to pass moral judgment on Israel by restricting military exports; never mind that they don't export more than a few million worth per year.

Given Israel's own broad-based military industries, it's fair to assume alternatives exist to just about anything the UK (or Belgium) provides. If they can't or won't guarantee that supplies won't be subject to political second guessing, Israel can shop elsewhere or - better yet - procure from local Israeli suppliers.

Paul

Why is HMG misrepresenting international law against Israel?

Look what it does to Britain and the British people in its ideological hatred of them.

Truthtriumphs

Answer:
Because it is more interested in wooing the world's 1.2 billion Muslims, with their vast oil reserves and markets to sell our consumer goods, insurance and financial know-how to, than worrying about 6 million Jewish Israelis, and the justice of their cause.
In this rotten world might ALWAYS takes precedence over right.

Adam B.

Derek Blades, Israel IS at war with Hamas, which is the authority in Gaza.

Why doesn't Gaza get cement through its border with Egypt?

Original Tony

Blades...why does Israel restrict materials going into Gaza to re-build?

Well, maybe steel reinforcing will be cut into fleshettes to be put in bombs, steel tubing will be turned into rockets or projectiles...electric wire will trigger ied's near the border or trigger rocket launches.
Besides, what sane country helps their enemy get strong when theye are in a virtual state of war (by Hamas' choosing)

John Edwards

The author of the article to which Melanie Phillips links argues that Israel never occupied the West Bank or Gaza and that the 1949 Green line has no significance as an internationally recognised border. Of course it ignores any right to self determination by the Palestinian people and is an ultimately self defeating argument if you think about it seriously and support the existence of Israel.

The statement by the Foreign Office about the continued occupation of Gaza is entirely reasonable.

GZ

Israel = the collective Jew is being treated by UK and Europe as the Jew always was. In fact. the world's double standards when it comes to Israel speaks volumes as to why a Jewish national homeland has never been more important. We are not safe anywhere but in Israel as long as this sort of thing can happen at the drop of a hat.

Yehuda

GeoffM: You wrote that Milliband et al in the Labour Party come from a Marxist background: so, as in the 1930's, the Left has allied itself with fascism in the form of Hamas, the "Palestinian Authority", Fatah et al

Penny

Sorry to repeat a previous post but the issue of self-determination is a puzzle.

Why were there no demands for an independant state / having Jerusalem as a capital (etc)when Jordan annexed the land allocated to the Palestinian Arabs between 1949 and 1967? (That is, in the pre-Arafat, pre-1967 war days?)

Were there mass condemnations of Jordan - to say nothing of student sit-ins, boycotts and embargos during those 19yrs?

Penny

Raymond D.C

The joke is that even the USA looks to Israel for security systems training - particulary the airborn security that helps prevent hijackers seizing civilian flights - and Britian has imported advanced military security from Israel.

Technology such as the pentium chip MMX, voicemail, AOL messaging, the first Motorola mobile phone, life-saving medical technology used in the detection of breast cancer, medical micro-cameras for other cancer detection, technology used in cases of heart failure - and much more - was developed in Israel. And of course, their agricultural methods are perhaps the best in the world.

Two further inventions mentioned only today may well help the world to become less dependant on oil:

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/132398

I'd lay a pound to a penny that many of those calling for boycotts and embargos - particularly the students - would baulk at the thought of boycotting the 'developed in Israel' technology that they, personally, use every day.

gary

John Edwards -

Palestinians have no more right to self determination than Basques, Kurds, Azerbijanis, or many other groups around the world. Their big mistake is not accepting that they will not have their own state unless Israel is willing to assist them. Their constant attempt at genocidal war against Israel is the single simple reason that they are stateless.

Ami Israel Goldman

Thanks to the British authorities for the embargo; no matter how you call it or how you justify it. That will allow the Israelis to procure the embargoed parts from more reliable sources, be it local or foreign. As Britain becomes more and more arabized (some studies suggest that Britain will join the Arab League in less then 10 years), lowering Israel dependence from unfriedly coutries as soon as possible is a must. Thank you, again, England, for opening Israel's government eyes.

Derek BLADES

PW Virginia USA, July 15th

Rocket fire from Gaza was in response to Israel's stifling border restrictions. These in turn had been introduced in response to the democratic election of Hamas. This in turn was prompted by the humiliation and oppression suffered by the Arabs during years of Israeli occupation. And so it goes on - right back to the real beginning of the whole sorry cycle of violence, which was of course the Zionists’ theft of Arab farms and homes in order to create Israel.

Until it launched Cast Lead, Israel had been quite happy with firing shells into Gaza. The Israel government cynically launched its war on Gaza during the US Presidential inter-regnum thinking it would be a vote-winner for their up-coming elections.

Whether we look at the basic causes of the dispute or the immediate context in which Cast Lead was launched, the answer to your question “Who started it?” has to be ”Israel”. Any other conclusion is simply potty.

Miranda Rose Smith

HMG is misrepresenting International Law against Israel because they want the Jews dead.

raymond.douglas

Another reason for not voting Labour !

George

John Edwards,

The 1949 Green Line has no significance as an internationally recognised border for one simple reason - it never was such a thing. It's an armistice line. The international border is still something to be negotiated.

George

Derek Blades at 4:51 pm July 15th you state: "OK, she is under contract to churn out a certain number of columns each week with her blind pro-Israel positions..." To the best of my knowledge this is a blog that is simply hosted by the Spectator, so I doubt if Melanie Phillips has any kind of contractual obligation as to how many blog postings a week she has to make.
The rest of you comments on this thread are similarly incorrect.

Augustus

It is precisely statements like these that are designed to put Israel under growing pressure, and possibly even politically to
challenge Israel's military superiority. The obligations of countries at war, and their military, were developed for classic warfare between nations;
symmetrical shows of strength beween two national armies that are essentially well-matched and clearly recognizable. But the conflict in Gaza is obviously asymmetrical. Israel's
enemy is a group of terrorists that fights while in hiding and uses the civilian population as shields( think of the man running out of a building with a gun in one hand and a baby in the other. And their are countless other examples). This practice alone is inpermissable under the rules of the Geneva Conventions. If it is not poosible, either from the air or from the ground, to identify exactly where the enemy is located and who is protected as a civilian under international law, how can it ever be possible to limit hostilities to combatants only who are fighting for that enemy? In any event, a law of warfare that, within the framework of acceptable practices, would require the Israelis to exercise restraint on the level of force they use would not be enforceable. In war, brutal as it may sound, anyone can be killed who is considered part of the enemy, even if he bakes bread during the day, and then pulls out his bazooka from behind his oven at night to secretly take part in the fighting. This is not because international law defines this citizen as an enemy, it is because there can be no verification and nobody to make such a decision before an attack.

Carl

We should not supply any weapons to repressive regimes.

Mailman

Derek Blades,

If, as you say, the rocket attacks are in direct response to Israels stiffling border blockage...tell me, why arent rockets being fired in to Egypt in response to their stiffling border blockage (you DO realise the Gaza has a border with Egypt dont you...or do you get your geographical knowledge from the BBC?)??

Mailman

Adam B.

Quite right Carl.

Israel is a victim of oppressive Arab regimes, the sooner they are disarmed, the closer we will be to peace.

elke

GZ,

Jews are being treated even worse than they had been in the past, before the advent of totalitarian regimes. According to Hannah Arendt, one thing is the dislike of the Jew till the 19th century; another thing is the totalitarian obsession against the Jew raised from 19th century on. Things are definetely much worse now, which makes us fear for the near future. Good sense in humanity is something very ephemeral. That's why the State of Israel has been questioned lately even by the free world.

ahad ha'amoratsim

CG, what makes you think HMG recognizes Israel's right of self defense? Please see Alex Bensky's excellent description of the Bensky Corollary

Anne K

The biggest hypocrisy of all is that while Britain condemns Israel for its "disproportional" self-defensive response to the rockets from Gaza, Britain sends thousands of troops to Afghanistan on ... what? A war of self-defense? How would they classify their own war in Afghanistan? How come they are funding such an aggressive disproportionate war?

Yuval

I would suggest looking at this from a different angle: Israel would do well to immediately cancel ALL weapons contracts it has with British arms manufacturers and re-issue those tenders to anyone EXCEPT British exporters. The simple financial truth is that Israel can easily replace British (or even EU) suppliers with American, Chinese, Indian or Brazilian competitors. Apart from the genuine prestige that comes from selling weapons systems to the IDF, I wonder how HM Government would respond to several hundred extra unemployed British workers as a result of these cancellations.

Liz S

Thank you again Melanie, for being the voice in the wilderness in your defense of Israel and its right to defend its people. I'm writing from South Africa, but I'd feel a lot happier about the general reaction in England to HMG's utter hypocrisy to all things Israeli, if I didn't suspect that most of the people commenting on this poll were Jewish. It seems that Israel has just become another stick with which to beat world Jewry, and the British Establishment is just behaving true to form.

dave

“Operation Cast Lead was a military operation designed to stop rocket attacks from Gaza upon Israel. It was not repression …”

Melanie, if the Israeli were serious about knocking down Qassems and Katyuskas defensively, they could have deployed one of the several anti-missile systems that exist or are in an advanced development. e.g.

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2008/12/israels-anti-qa/

USA forces use these in Iraq.

Cast Lead was militarily unnecessary, but politically desirable for several reasons. The impending Knesset elections, and the need for IDF brass to atone for a perceived botch job in S. Lebanon in 2006, come to mind.

The brutal alternative that Kadima chose-- inflicting casualties by the thousands, leaving a path of widespread destruction that will take years to rebuild, and rendering a significant portion of Gazans refugees--is more consistent with Israeli political objectives.

Sam Armstrong

Anne K - exactly.

C. Gee

dave:

Is the launching of rockets into Israel militarily necessary? Is it politically desirable?
Are suicide bombers a brutal choice by Palestinians? Which defense system would you recommend for them?

Jerry

Re Derek Blades: What HMG should be doing with regard to Israel is nothing at all. Should HMG not have entered into a contract for the sale of arms with Israel is no longer the question, since that is what happened. Provisions of the contract not withstanding, making a judgment about the actions Israel takes is, in its nature, a prejudicial act, since there was no equivalent action against Hamas.

Let us muddy the waters a bit further. Hizb'Allah's bombarding of Israeli civilian centers in the North of Israel in 2006: Was that an action taken by a state, a quasi-state, or a terrorist group? How, precisely, does Hizb'Allah differ from Hamas? How does the nature of the Israeli-Arab conflict change when it becomes known that Iran has sent its fighters to both Gaza and Southern Lebanon?

Much more interesting, how does the nature of the conflict change when it becomes accepted fact that the United States, Britain and France sent to the government of Lebanon intelligence gathering programs and equipment that uncovered Israeli assets who have been tortured as a result of the West's actions?

The World-governing body passed a resolution calling for the disarming of Hizb'Allah, with particular emphasis on the area south of the Litani River. A massive cache of weapons blows up today. Best explanation: a depot of arms placed before the 2006 Israeli-Lebanese War. UN forces are taken by surprise, as is the Lebanese Army. Only mildly perfidious?

Each example sited above assists interested parties in developing working definitions of both prejudice and discrimination. Of course, one needs to be interested in such an exercise.

Trumpeldor

@Dave,
We must destroy all the rocket launchers and their production sites. Otherwise their technology will continue to improve, and more and more of Israel will be vulnerable to attack by the Arab terrorists on our borders.
I will add that people launching missiles have to pay the price which is ...their lives !
If they choose to hide behind their kids ,our posture must remain the same whatever the leftists will tell us !

big gay al

"The government says it took this action because Israeli gunships were used to fire on Gaza during Cast Lead. But as others have observed, it has offered no evidence that anyone was hit or killed by these ships. "

So your argument is what? That we should sell them arms as they're too incompetent to hit what they aim at anyway?

The government has, for once, made a principled decision on Israel, and the sooner Israel realises it has to abide by the same rules as everyone else the better

Roberto Espinosa

Hi there Melanie,

Perhaps you missed the real story this week on Cast Lead as war crime and intentional atrocity.

On Wednesday came a confessional statement, issued jointly by several dozen IDF soldiers who participated in the massacres, revealing that they were encouraged to treat the Gaza campaign as an extermination effort ("like killing ants") as one soldier put it.

Here's their website.

http://breakingthesilence.org.il/oferet/news_item_e.asp?id=1&page=1

ciao

Trumpelor, the proud kafir

@Melanie,

Leftists have never swallowed the facts that Jews defend themselves,even against rains of missiles they had been receiving for 8 years.
Like Obama,they cry over holocaust and shout over IDF soldiers or our towns of Judea
My choice is made : I prefer our blue star on our flag or over our warplanes than the infamous yellow star...
Shabbat Shalom,

Sandraa Birchmount

The British Foreign office says 'We do not grant export licenses where there is a clear risk that arms will be used for external aggression or internal repression.'
Does this include the $22million worth of sales in arms to Sri Lanka in assisting a mass carnage on tamil minority?

Augustus

Roberto, yes Israel is a country where you can openly admit that you may have done cruel things. If I were you, I would pray that the Palestinians, the Iranians, and other Arabic and Muslim states may one day enjoy such freedoms as Israel enjoys.

Drakken

Well I would ask a couple a great Generals what they would do, let's see there is Sherman, Air Marshal Harris,and Curtis Lemay. Those of you on the left who are condeming Israels actions would never tolerate the same in your own hometowns. so the hypocrisy is quite telling.

Penny

Operation Cast Lead lasted 22 days and yes, the IDF are certainly a force to be reckoned with - a fact that certainly wasn't unknown to Hamas.

However, you really have to use your own common sense and logic when listening to emotive claims of 'massacre' and 'extermination'- do you seriously think that an army with the capability of the IDF, fighting for 22 days, could not have wrought more death and destruction if 'extermination' and 'massacre' was really the aim?

Consider the 11 days of fighting between Jordan and the Palestinians in 'Black September'. Half the time of Cast Lead, and yet twice the number of deaths - and that's a conservative estimate. Arafat put the death toll at 20,000 Palestinians.

There is absolutely no doubt that Hamas' tactics were designed to maximise the death toll - at least allow for a fair proportion of those killed or injured in Cast Lead to have died as a direct result of their own leaders, and not the IDF.

Gordon Ross

This is the latest in a series of items from Melanie that clearly underline the intensity of the British war (yes, it is a war !)against Israel and, through Israel, the Jewish people. Shame on those craven members of our community here who aid in the promotion of that war in their anxiety to prove what good little Britons they are !

Mark

Interesting..."It was never sovereign territory; before 1967 it was illegally occupied by Egypt." Before that it was part of the Jewish National Home as delineated in the Mandate for Palestine. The borders of the Mandate were and are still the legal borders of the Jewish National Home. The borders include all of Jeruslaem
(there never was an East Jerusalem until Jordan occupied it), and it includes Judea and Samaria (the land the Jordanians renamed the West Bank during the Jordanian occupation between 1948-1967). Those who do not want to recognize authentic international law will claim the 1947 UN Partition Plan (resolution 181) is the legal definition of the borders. However; since when does the General Assembly decide international law or borders. It was a plan that needed bilateral agreement to be binding. The Arabs rejected it, so the legal title stays in the hands of the original owner—the Jewish National Home, which today is called the State of Israel. In the next few months there will be word of legal actions to have these borders reaffirmed.