http://www.spectator.co.uk/article.php3?table=oldÂion=current&issue=2003-11-22&id=3761
Why not invade Israel?
If rogue nations are to be brought into line by the US, shouldn't Israel
be punished for ignoring UN resolutions? Gerald Kaufman is just
asking...
The Spectator, Nov. 15, 2003
The unprecedented security measures for President Bush's visit to
Britain this week prove that the war against terrorism, launched by the
United States two years ago, has certainly not been won. If further
proof were needed, the atrocious terrorist acts against two synagogues
in Istanbul at the weekend provide blood-spattered confirmation.
But if the invasion of Iraq last spring was not about Saddam Hussein's
alleged links to international terrorism, what was its rationale and
what was its justification? Tony Blair has proclaimed, with total
sincerity I have no doubt, that one consideration was the danger of
weapons of mass destruction.
From the outset, Bush was perfectly ready to rest his case on the need
for regime change in Iraq. Both Bush and Blair have argued that Iraq is
a better country for the removal of Saddam and his odious regime, and,
even taking into account the continuing death toll in Iraq (nowhere near
the number of deaths in the Vietnam war, to which certain cynics
unjustifiably compare it), only someone either extremely naive or
deliberately purblind could deny that the disappearance of that dictator
is an indisputable benefit.
So, let it be accepted that, despite the death and destruction
deplorably concomitant with the process, the removal of Saddam was an
indubitably good thing. But, if the removal by armed force of one
disagreeable regime under one objectionable head of government is a good
thing, why stop there? The world is full of horrible governments. Would
it not be a good idea to make a clean sweep of them? Where, then, do we
start? There is a multiplicity of horrible or incompetent governments in
central and west Africa, for example, in countries where the toll of
dead and tortured far exceeds even the total gassed, executed and
mangled by Saddam. Their removal, and replacement by genuine democratic
governments seeking to reconcile rather than repress, would be an
indisputable benefit to humankind.
Even a relatively innocuous African government, that of Morocco, has
been responsible for driving into squalid refugee camps in neighbouring
Algeria the Sahrawi desert people, whose homeland of Western Sahara it
has illegally occupied, and, through rigging the electorate by shipping
in large numbers of Moroccans, has prevented a genuine referendum taking
place to decide the country's future à a referendum, moreover, to which
the United Nations is fruitlessly committed.
And, if we are discussing rigged electorates, what about that in the
illegal republic of Northern Cyprus, whose impoverished Turkish Cypriot
inhabitants are being prevented from expressing their true will in a
forthcoming general election because of the importation by the Ankara
government of huge numbers of Anatolian Turks from the mainland, whose
wishes and preferences are far removed from those of the Cypriot Turks
themselves? While we are at it, we should take a penetrating look at
Turkey itself. For nearly 30 years its regime has illegally occupied 37
per cent of the territory of Cyprus, an occupation which has resulted in
looting, illegal seizure and sale of precious art objects such as Greek
Orthodox icons, and the creation of refugees who despair of ever getting
their homes back.
The Turkish treatment à or mistreatment à of the Kurdish people, whom at
the end of the first world war they prevented from getting their own
homeland, set an example which Saddam was happy to follow. Inside
Turkey, there has been persistent violation of human rights. For
evidence, get hold of a DVD of Alan Parker's film Midnight Express.
South of Turkey, there is Israel. It is true that the United Nations
Security Council resolutions of which Iraq was in violation for a dozen
years were mandatory and carried penalties, while those criticising
Israel were not. That does not excuse successive Israeli governments
during the past 36 years for failing to conform to Security Council and
General Assembly resolutions. They would have violated even more if the
United States, otherwise so assiduous in stressing the importance of
international order, had not vetoed them.
Since the present regime in Israel came to office, there has been
unprecedented repression of the Palestinians who the Israelis govern.
The world is rightly horrified at the cruel and bloody deaths of Israeli
civilians, including babies and small children, inflicted by terrorist
suicide bombers. Grievous though every one of these deaths most
certainly is, it cannot be denied that during the three years of the
Second Intifada the Israelis have killed three times as many
Palestinians, some of them terrorists (in illegal targeted
assassinations) but most of them innocent civilians, including babies
and pregnant women.
Now the Israelis are building an illegal security wall, reaching far
into Palestinian territory, which is equally illegally annexing that
territory, separating farmers from their homes, students from
universities, children from schools, and which will violate the sanctity
of Bethlehem. Roads into villages are being bulldozed, and the trenches
which render them impassable are being filled with sewage. Some
Palestinians need written permission to live in their own homes. There
are 482 Israeli military checkpoints dividing Palestinian land into 300
small clusters.
It is not even as if these nasty measures are effective. Last month 20
people, including a whole family from grandmother to baby grandchild,
were among those murdered by a suicide bomber at a cafÅ in Haifa. Last
month, after visiting the Palestinian town of Qalqilya, which is being
enclosed within a noose-like wall by the Israelis, I was driven back to
Jerusalem via the Palestinian town of Tulkarm. Next day a bomber
attacked an Israeli administrative post outside Tulkarm.
No wonder that only three weeks ago the Israeli chief of staff,
Lieutenant General Moshe Ya'alon, expressed concern about the building
of the wall, said the Israeli government's policies were 'operating
contrary to our strategic interests,' argued that the restrictions were
increasing hatred of Israel and encouraging terrorism, and lamented:
'There is no hope, no expectations for the Palestinians in the Gaza
strip, nor in Bethlehem and Jericho' (whose agricultural and
horticultural economy is being ruined). No wonder that a member of the
Israeli government, the infrastructure minister, Yosef Paritzky, has
said recently: 'The failure to differentiate between civilians and
terrorists turns all the Palestinians into potential suicide bombers.'
Hey, wait a minute! Surely Israel does not qualify as a suitable case
for invasion. Surely Israel is a democracy. Surely Israel's Prime
Minister Ariel Sharon was democratically elected, and even re-elected.
Such undeniable facts do not detract from the record.
Sharon was the prime mover in the only war that Israel has ever lost,
the invasion of Lebanon. The Kahan commission inquiring into the
Sabra-Chatilla massacre of Palestinians outside Beirut recommended that,
for his connection with those events, Sharon should leave the Israeli
Cabinet. It was Sharon who triggered the Second Intifada in 2000 by his
provocative visit to the Temple Mount. And is it not members of the
Sharon family, including the Prime Minister himself, who have been the
object of investigations by the Israeli legal authorities?
And would it not be poetic justice to invade the invaders? After all,
the Israelis, who illegally invaded Lebanon until they found the going
too tough and got out; the Turks, who illegally invaded Cyprus and even
aspire to be a member of the European Union when in illegal possession
of part of a country which is due to become a member of the European
Union less than six months from now; the Moroccans, who continue to
thwart the will of the United Nations with every moment their troops and
immigrants remain in the Western Sahara à surely they could not have the
effrontery to object to invasion, which they have practised without
qualm, simply because they would be at the receiving end.
If the United States is keen to invade countries that disrupt
international standards of order, should not Israel, for example, be
considered as a candidate? But, quite apart from the hard fact that even
the rich and powerful US does not possess enough dollars and manpower to
invade and occupy the countries I have mentioned (plus other rogue
states, too many to list), is the US suited to maintaining international
law?
After all, has not the United States, on the basis of dubious legality,
invaded nearby countries on the American continent, such as Panama and
Grenada? Has it not got a questionable human rights record, with the
level of capital punishment, including the execution of mentally
retarded prisoners, one of the worst in the democratic world? Is it not
keeping a collection of prisoners in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, whose
detention appears to have no legal basis whatever? And does it not have
a president who was never elected, but appointed by the Supreme Court
after electoral finagling in the electorally clinching state which just
happens to be governed by that president's brother? Who, then, should
invade the United States? The despised United Nations?
Maybe this invading business is not such a good idea. Maybe, even though
Saddam was abominable and his regime nauseating, the invasion of Iraq
may turn out not to have been such a good precedent after all.
