Tortured reasoning

Nick

Only reason I can think of for this malicious double standard is anti-Semitism. Or some people have been seriously indoctrinated.

BJ

A pity Ya'alon wasn't arrested. War crimes need to be taken seriously by the international community, including when committed by Israel.

Fivish

Arabs can kill Arabs or Jews with no critisism whatsoever. But if a Jew should sneeze on an Arab, they would scream: germ warfare!

Merlyn

We really need to highlight Hamas torture of Fatah during Cast lead as well, to make this fair.

GeoffM

Much as it might grate, Melanie, it is necessary to compare the treatment dished out to Israel/Jews and to Britons who wish to retain their racial identity, culture and land.

Put your political differences with Nick Griffin aside and just focus on the rage and insult exhibited when he dared to say that there are indigenous Britons. The panel and audience of QT ridiculed the existence of Britons be they Scots, Welsh, English or Irish. All sorts of excuses were put forward to deny the existence of a British people.

Similarly the existence of a nation like Israel causes the same people to go into a fit.

You have said that you believe in race, religion and land i.e. Zionism.

Many Britons feel the same about their ancestral land.

Both Britons and Jews, uniquely as far as I can tell, are subjected to this denial of legitimacy.

Your opinion, and that of contributors, as to what the root cause of this pathology is would be welcome.

Andre

What on earth are we doing funding Palestinian organizations who not only torture and murder their own people but loudly proclaim that Israel be wound up and cast into the sea? Before sending aid of any description to the middle east we should insist on the recipients recognizing Israel's right to exist.

Manuel

Nick, you are not too far off the mark.
However, I believe there is more than one reason for the unjust, hate filled, blind attitude towards Israel.
Propaganda - Israel is loosing this battle every day. She is playing the "nice guy", doing everything by the book,upholding its enemies "human rights", treating its terrorist prisoners in a humane way even when their aim was the murder of innocents wherever they could be found. The enemy, for that is just what the Arab terror groups are, takes great pleasure in killing its own as well as Israels and will shout it from the rooftops (of Gaza!). It also shouts loud if Israel so much as controls a riot, in fact whatever Israel does it presents a propaganda opportunity for the terrorists. This is the daily message being beamed into the western minds, with no counter to this continuous flow of fabrications.
Israel desperately needs to go to war on propaganda, tell the world about the terror groups & the PLA format of justice, for terror, for school curriculum. Everything else plays into the hands of the anti-Semites who inhabit leftish politics and 'liberal' academia.
Israel also needs to desire to WIN the WAR, in other words it must undergo a policy change from seeking 'Peace' to seeking 'Victory'. Peace in the Arab mindset is only a temporary lull before they get the whole piece, whereas only victory, full & complete, will ensure Israel has peace. Everything else has been tried, to no avail. The Jordanians sorted out their PLO problem in 1972 & the world said nothing. Israel needs to adopt the same ruthlessness shown by the late King Hussein, but of course the world will scream this time. Until recently I was a "peace" believer but I now realise this is a futile dream that is turning into a nightmare.

daniel maris

Can we please have some recognition that Islamic countries have made it clear they do not accept universal human rights. At the Cairo conference the OIC adopted and alternative non-universal, Shariah-friendly human rights charter.

We should be focussed on that appalling denial of their responsibilities as UN members.

Alaric

Wonderful analysis. One can only face the twisted logic of the European left with the sense of humour. Watch Latma TV for more.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22CGlF7l5MI

Unaru

Two wrong do not make a right. Many of the activities reported from the middle east are despicable no matter who perpetrates them. Those who act as advocates and apologists for this behaviour reveal themselves as nothing more than apparatchiks. Jornalist become nothing more than propagandists and only achieve the diminishing of their own credibility. No doubt they will retain one eyed supporters, as evidenced by the fact that even in this relatively civilised country political movements such as the BNP manage to draw supporters.

Jez

"Britain is complicit in the torture of Palestinians – by other Palestinians. So much so that – surreally – Britain is now sending British police and intelligence officers to the West Bank to try to stop a wave of torture by Palestinian security forces"

If i hear anymore of this NuLab government / our establishments bullsh*t antics i honestley think my brain's going to melt.

I'm going for a jog.

Charlie

Melanie,

One must realize that "human rights" is just another weapon in the jingoist's repertoire.
Actually it seems to be an oxymoron given the rights they ascribe to some humans.

Jerry

To those multiculturalists who wish to eviscerate Israel and/or Britain, may their brain cells function as kidney cells, etc. Don't they know that not everything is the same as everything else.

Verity

As I understood it, the US and UK are training up security forces for the PA with the agreement of Israel so they can act as a proxy for Israel in weeding out undesirables and keeping the reservations quiet - it is the same as the US has done fir ages in central and south America where they train up local thugs to do the dirty work and keep the world safe for the US and its friends.

There is also a very long record of Israel using torture against Palestinian Arabs and Lebanese or as I think we are to call it when it is ourselves or our friends doing it "enhanced" interrogation techniques. Israel has long been funded by the US and used equipment supplied by the US for what the ridiculous international laws ridiculously call crimes. There seem to be a lot of double standards here!

david elder

Mel, I think part of the problem is that Israel has a free press and the rest of the region usually doesn't. So every Israeli action is minutely dissected by the world media while blatant thuggery by Hamas and co. is kept under wraps. Shawcross made this self-criticism of his former journalism in Indo-China - it concentrated on the errors real or supposed of the US and South Vietnam because they were open to the media, whereas the realms of Ho Chi Minh and Pol Pot were closed off. The Vietnam issue is complex but the media fouled up as badly as anyone.

just Louise

GeoffM, excellent points regarding the delegitimising of both peoples!
I recall once reading a blurb from some official body of the Race Relations industry which began, with astonishing disingenuousness: "Everyone in Britain today is either an immigrant or the descendent of an immigrant".
The inspiration for that astonishing assertion would appear to be the following statement from a brifing paper by the American Civil Liberties Union regarding the rights of immgrants to the USA:
"Indeed, with the exception of Native Americans, everyone in our nation is either an immigrant, or the descendent of voluntary or involuntary immigrants."
— But spot the difference!

JamesC

The British Government have betrayed the British people and the people of Israel.No other explantion.

Venerable Bede

Unless you have pure Celtic blood with not a hint of Roman you *are* an immigrant to Britain. Let's not forget that the invading English were Germanic, not to mention the further genetic diversity introduced by the Vikings and Normans.

Mongrels, all of us.

Dutch Boy

Bede is right - except, of course, where he seems to think that the Celts are indigenous to Britain!

Verity

It is not just anti-Israel, Ms Phillips. It is yoked to anti-Britain and anti-the West.

Verity - moderators, check the email address

Venerable Bede, sweetie darling, the only thing is, all the sub-divisions you refer to are Caucasians.

Robert B

By your reasoning, Venerable, pushing the dates back far enough, no one would is indiginous anywhere. So, if I and a horde of my ugly-American friends immigrate to Britain, demand you adapt to our, reputedly, boorish customs, and plot to overthrow your government, laws and society in favor of our own, I will expect no objection from you.

Nice country you have there; I think I'll take it.

Jerry

Re Venerable Bede: "Mongrels, all of us."

And each group suffered until you'all learned to get along. Now you cannot tell who was Celt and who Roman. This result came from "love." Sexual attraction does not recognize national bounds and people fell toward each other as long as the bed was soft. Anyone wishing to continue to exist as a separate group should assure themselves that their values include enough openness to prevent war and enough goodness of heart to draw people in.

daniel maris

Yes Venerable Bede - how wise you are! There is absolutely no difference between someone whose great-great-great-great-great-grandparents were born in this country, and a Somali immigrant to this country who has never known democracy, whose genitalia have been mutilated, speaks no English and believes Mohammed is the perfect exemplar for all humanity. Absolutely no difference at all.

maryb

Venerable Bede: According to Sykes, the Romans (Italians) left very little genetic material in the British Isles; their slaves or soldiers may have left slight traces. Later Germanic DNA is probably chiefly Viking - but A-S, Scandinavian and Norman are genetically related; in any case, Celtic DNA still predominates. [Sykes, Bryan. "Blood of the Isles." London: Bantam, 2006; 179-288.]

And Dutch Boy - The British Archipelago has been in existence only since ice melted from that final cold snap the Younger Dryas - and provided enough sea water to separate us from Big-Whatever-It-Is. Deo Gratias and circa 9-8000 years ago.
Celts began arriving in Ireland around 7,500 years ago, where they joined a few mesolithic and possibly late paleolithic hunter-gatherers. I say that makes Celts as indigenous as it gets in these latitudes and longitudes: certainly indigenous in comparison to the Dutch or anybody who has arrived in the last 50 years.

Terry, Eilat - Israel

Melanie, are you trying to confuse people with facts, logic, & rational analysis?
How can people believe the endless avalanche of propaganda & leftist drivel if you keep bringing up facts?

Miranda Rose Smith

Don't the British who want to try Israelis as war criminals, for shooting back when Arabs are shooting at Israel, realize that once the precedent is set that it's a war crime for the ISREALIS to shoot back at Arabs, it will be a war crime for BRITISH to shoot back at the Arabs?

Miranda Rose Smith

Dear BJ: What war crimes did Israel commit? The International Community is totally indifferent to war crimes. Ever hear of Chechniya? The Congo? Sri Lanka?

Miranda Rose Smith

Vererable Bede and Dutch Boy both made good points. We ARE all mongrels, and the Celts were NOT indigenous to Britain. If you go far back enough, nobody is indigenous. The "Native Americans" came from ASIA.

Venerable Bede

Verity is quite right. Our mitochondrial DNA tells us that, ultimately, we're all Africans. Every single last one of us.

However, I was restricting myself to the rather narrow window of the past two millennia for the purposes of this discussion.

The Jewish comic Sarah Silverman summed it up rather neatly. 'It's so cute how Arabs and Jews hate eachother. Both are brown. Both have an odour. It's like mangoes hating yams.'

Verity (NOT the one whose big on melatonin)

Robert B.

"Nice country you have there; I think I'll take it." I remeber I was told a story about some rabbis in the nineteenth century sent out from Europe to have a look at the Holy Land reported back "The bride's beautiful but she's already married to someone else." Zionists took your position instead - but didn't mean it to be taken as irony coz they did want to move in.

I also have a question for Melanie Phillips about the arming and training of PA security forces - how do the money, the weapons and stuff and the people who do the training get into the West Bank if not via Israel with authorisation from the Israeli government?

tiki

Last week I saw excerpts of the speech by Danny Ayalon in the LSE, where he was interrupted by loud screaming people and this "poor misguided" blond English girl naming the names of those "poor innocent children", killed in Gaza.These people are soooo brainwashed that they don't have the courtesy to even listen what a member of Parliament and ex ambassador from another country has to say, even if you don't agree! A "screaming match" doesn't solve the plight of those "poor innocent children" These "educated students" should get some education in politics AND politeness themselves and practise what they preach all the time "FREE SPEECH for ALL. Being a British student doesn't mean following propaganda without checking hystorical facts, for if they did, they would be surprised at the "clean" role their own governement "played and plays" in the world.

Liz SA

Manuel "Israel desperately needs to go to war on propaganda, tell the world about the terror groups & the PLA format of justice, for terror, for school curriculum."
Israel does try to get her message across, but her voice is snuffed out in the hurricane of hate emanating from Islam and the grotesque Stalinists. whoops, I meant Liberals, whose voices hold sway in the UN and the EU.

Charlie

Verity you wrote:

"As I understood it, the US and UK are training up security forces for the PA with the agreement of Israel so they can act as a proxy for Israel in ..."

If one looks back at past practices of training PA security forces when the CIA under Tenet was involved one will discover that all it did was improve the "proxy" against Israel as Arafat's and then Abbas' forces moonlighted for Al Aksa Martyrs, Islamic Jihad and other groups.

Every time that the Palestinians have suffered a "setback" in their relations with the Israelis the West has arrived with bags full of dollars, euros and pounds.
So it actually looks like the West is making the Palestinians the proxy in the Arab's fight with Israel.

Charlie

"The Jewish comic Sarah Silverman summed it up rather neatly. 'It's so cute how Arabs and Jews hate eachother. Both are brown. Both have an odour. It's like mangoes hating yams.'"

Lousy analogy
One grows in the ground and the other in trees.
Maybe she should have stuck to apples and oranges or maybe potatoes and yams?

Verity

The musings of the Venerable Bede have made me think. The history I was taught at school was really just stories and myths - one was how the Angles and saxons came to Britain and slaughtered the natives and took their land and all that. Turns out most of the natives weren't slaughtered at all but stayed on minding the farm. Same after the Norman Conquest and all that - the Anglo-Saxons stayed on. I was wondering what reason there is to think the same didn't happen in the Holy Land in the 7th century. There weren't great hordes of Arab peasants needing land. The Arabs weren't interested in vast schemes of colonisation so much as taxes and religion. Why is it thought the local population didn't stay put minding the farm and converting to Islam? I'm told Ben Gurion subscribed to this version of history. The idea of who's indigenous and who's not gets ever more confusing.

KateA

This is neither surprising nor new Melanie.

Derek Pasquill spent his life in the Foreign Office. "Today, the FCO views him as the most devastating whistle blower in its recent history. Between August 2005 and January 2006, he leaked 40 bundles of documents to Martin Bright."

What he realised was, that the "FCO was not, and is not, standing up to the totalitarian ideas of the Islamist extreme Right... On the contrary, the establishment has appeased political Islamism abroad and interfered in the domestic affairs of its own country [England] by mounting a covert operation to aid and abet it at home." (Nick Cohen)

Those interested in the sell-out of Britain to Islam should read Cohen's article 'The High Price of Patriotism'.
http://www.standpointmag.co.uk/node/2310/full

Simon

Melanie,

What exactly is your view on the torture issue (aside from criticising potentially hypocritical human rights campaigners). Which of the following do you agree with:

a) It's wrong for Palestinians to torture but not for Americans, Brits or Israelis to do the same

b) It's wrong for everyone to torture; all should be held accountable

c) It's alright for everyone to torture; nothing should be done whether its Palestinians, Americans, Brits or Israelis doing the torturing.

tiki

to simon... of course EVERYBODY should be against torture,tell this to Arab/Muslim governements
and terror groups. Usually they not only "torture" their Muslim brother but "kill" the opponent in horrible ways. It's called "shortening the proces". In the last 60 years MORE than 13 MILLION MUSLIMS were killed by other MUSLIMS. Check some facts before giving an naive opinion.

Paul

Its a disgrace to harass envoys from friendly countries like this as there are far worse examples walking free in the UK. For instance theres Tony Bliar of the Liebour party who is the main perpetrator in the death of 179 British soldiers in Iraq following a war based on a lie. Can you believe this scumbag is the Middle East peace envoy!! You couldnt make it up!! We really are such hypocrites.

Nothing changes

Simon, Melanie Phillips is on the record as saying: "Torture is a terrible thing, and it is right that Britain should not be involved in its practice."

http://www.melaniephillips.com/articles-new/?p=578

Could it be clearer than that?

Verity (not etc.)

tiki, In the last hundred years how many Europeans have Europeans killed, and what conclusions do you draw?

Verity (etc.)

tiki, Over the last five hundred years how many non-Europeans have Europeans killed, and what conclusions do you draw?

Irwin Ruff

I am not questioning the prevalence of torture among Arabs - the Israelis have seen enough of that. But it is also accepted practice for Arabs to charge torture whenever they have only been held for questioning. If an Arab charges torture, there may have been torture, but it is just as likely (or more likely?) that there has not been any totture at all.

moll

Wise people KNOW that the arabs living in Judea, Samaria and Gaza are tribal, non-state actors on the M/E geo-political scene. They are Ishmaelites or Edomites or a combination of both. They are rejected as citizens by all other arab countries -- their arab brothers. Which one of these tribal non-state actors can deliver on any promises he make?

What sovereign State would rely on any promises the non-state actor terrorists make? Would the State citizens be safe if a promise was made by a non-state actor who does not have the power/authority of a full fledged sovereign state empowering him to fulfill the promise?