UK ambassdor to UN Lyall Grant
going where US fears to tread
Just in time for Hanukkah and Christmas, Israel delivers the kind of public craziness on a world stage that Obama needs if he is going to politicize the settlements in the American discourse. At the United Nations, European members of the Security Council are working to condemn Israel's treatment of the out-of-control settlers; and Israel's Foreign Ministry has responded that this is an "internal affair," per Haaretz. Our "domestic affairs," reports the New York Times.
Max Blumenthal's tweet: Israel tells UN settler terror in West Bank is an "internal affair," meaning WB is Israel's under apartheid rule.
Also, the rage at the idea that Israel could ever be dragged into international courts expresses perfectly what the Goldstone Report exposed: a culture of impunity.
Haaretz:
"The whole debate was conducted in a disgusting manner," a Foreign Ministry official with knowledge of the UNSC proceedings told Haaretz, adding that "Israel was assaulted with every minute detail, mentioning every mosque that was torched and arguing that state authorities weren't doing anything to stop settler attacks against Palestinians."
Foreign Ministry officials said that the EU representatives "hijacked" the session, when, following it, they decided to release a joint statement detailing the contents of the sealed meeting.
In the statement the diplomats criticized the council's failure to take action against escalating violence by Israeli settlers and urged a speedy resumption of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.
Britain's UN Ambassador Mark Lyall Grant, also speaking for EU members France, Germany and Portugal, said "Israel's security and the realization of the Palestinians' right to statehood are not opposing goals."...
"It's a blatant interference in Israel's internal affairs," one ministry official said, adding that that statement is "a veiled threat that if Israel doesn't prosecute the perpetrators the EU will drag it into international courts," he added.
I think the Israelis are genuinely worried that an evaporation of EU/US support will lead to an appearance at the ICC .
From the Times article:
“We felt that the European statement broke all the diplomatic rules,” said Yigal Palmor, the Foreign Ministry spokesman. “You aren’t meant to issue such a harsh statement by surprise, without prior consultation.”
— this really made me laugh out loud.
Thought this was even funnier:
Israeli officials also point to provocative actions by the Palestinians, including a meeting on Tuesday in Turkey between Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, and 11 Palestinians who were recently released from Israeli prisons in a prisoner exchange.
—- OH GAWD!!! Abbas went to Turkey to meet with some guys who just got out of jail. Well, then. Abbas has ruined any chance of peace!
It really would be just “funny” if it weren’t so tragic…..
“Israel was assaulted with every minute detail, mentioning every mosque that was torched”
No clue. Turn it around and look at it the other way. “Germany was assaulted with every minute detail, mentioning every synagogue that was torched.”
Imagine the outrage from the Dersh. Note to Israel: Religious persecution does not look good even if you wrap it up in “Jewish self determination”.
“Israel was assaulted with every minute detail, mentioning every mosque that was torched.”
Oh, poor babies! How could the UN be so CRUEL!!
This sounds like Germany’s objections to outside interferemce in its domestic affairs in 1942. Ethnic cleansing and occupation then and now is a strictly domestic matter.
Add denationalization and dispossession.
Oh dear!
It’s holiday season, so they can’t order their stooges in Washington to issue a resolution condemning Europe et al!
Never mind, there’s plenty of dualists within, with Israel’s interests/demands foremost, to put the fix in on whatever joint projects are being worked on, causing higher costs/reduced benefits to these terrible anti-semite countries.
Internal affair? Domestic affair? How much plainer can they make it that they are no partner for ‘peace’ and have no intention of permitting a state of Palestine to exist?
There is something even more important than this tidbit.
Ehud Barak, the ‘moderate’ according to the Hasbara men in American media, basically reprimanded the ministry.
Why? Because they were wrong?
No, because of the tone and timing. He said that they were right but they did it the wrong way if it was made into a headline.
Source: link to haaretz.com
Again, this goes to show that the ‘settler fringe’ is actually a centrist, concensus position in Israel. When Barak is telling the Lieberman crowd that “you guys are right, but you have to be tactical” you essentially see, for a brief moment, just how extreme the political concensus is.
I believe his exact phrase was ‘it’s not enough to be right – you have to be smart too’.
Shocking.
I just read that article as well and thought the same thing. And I would extend that to many of the pundits who have in recent days criticized Israeli policy. The scary thing to me, is the Israeli’s electing a “left wing” government who smiles and makes nice – giving a facelift to apartheid and continued settlement. I gotta think this is what Friedman and others are hoping for.
But I don’t think its in the cards this time. The Israeli’s are now comfortable in their own skin, they have fully accepted being an apartheid state.
The Israeli newspaper Haaretz is finally drawing attention to the alliance between the Netanyahu government and the religious right in the U.S. The U.S. religious right is very involved in the West Bank settler movement. The Israeli government sees no problem in accepting this outside interference from the religious right or intervening in the “internal affairs” of U.S. politics. You can only understand Israeli and American politics if you investigate this major factor in the current situation.
link to haaretz.com
This alliance has been going on for many years. See Netanyahu’s speech to Christians United for Israel in Jerusalem on 3/8/10. In the speech Netanyahu credits Protestant Christian Zionists for “enabling” Jewish Zionism. The relevant passage begins at 5:30:
link to youtube.com
“Culture of impunity.”
Is correct. And we, the US, created and fostered it for them.
Imagine if everyone or all countries could do anything they pleased without fear of any consequences.
We let Israel run wild, they let their settlers run wild.
Now it’s going to take a 800 lb gorilla to sit on them when some limits imposed along the way could have prevented all of this.
Ike was the last POTUS to reign in Israel. JFK tried; he was still trying to stop Israel from getting the bomb, trying to get inspectors into Israel, when he was murdered; about a month later Israel got the bomb. Johnson followed, putting his own shaky presidency above American interests by courting Israel Firsters –USS Liberty incident & its coverup.
“Israel tells UN settler terror in West Bank is an “internal affair,” ”
meaning that it is not subject to international law rules which (purport to) govern belligerent occupation. EU and others are making the preparatory “harumfff” noises that might — but I believe are unlikely to — precede UNSC or UNGA action aimed at enforcing Fourth Geneva Convention, etc.
As to Hitler, raised above, the Holocaust (as confined to Germany itself) WAS a strictly internal affair, as is Israeli H/R deprivations within pre-1967 Israel (unless some or all of that territory is judged to be territory belligerently occupied in 1947-50, a position which has not been put forward very much — or unless international H/R treaties come into play, as they well might.).
As to Hitler’s Holocaust outside Germany (say, in countries invaded by Germany and “occupied”), then one would wish to look at the international law of the time. H/R law has come a long way since 1930-1945, though you’d never guess it from looking at the supine gutlessness of the EU and others w.r.t. Palestine. Israel has not been in the business (as Hitler was) of invading most of Europe. Those invasions were more on politicians’ minds in 1940-45 than H/R issues. Whether Holocaust was “internal” or not mattered little to countries whose people and soldiers were being killed in large numbers by the Wehrmacht.
What Israel does within it’s boarders is internal. What is does in occupied territories and settlements isn’t because legally that isn’t their soverign land.
What a country does within it own boarders is where my split personality comes in—–basically I believe in leaving countries to settle their internal differences.
BUT– in cases like Germany, even if they had confined nazism to Germany, we still should have intervened once they started mass murdering people.
I think we should intervene in Israel’s assaults on Palestine. I think we should intervene in Egypt’s and Syria military killing citizens. We don’t have to go to actual war with a country to intervene, there are other ways most of the time to stop it.
There’s minding your own business and then there’s shirking your duty to humanity…..it’s never an easy call when and how to intervene but when something goes too far you have to try.
What Israel does within it’s boarders is internal. What is does in occupied territories and settlements isn’t because legally that isn’t their soverign land.
There is no obligation to become a State Party to the UN Charter or the other multilateral international treaties containing human rights obligations, but once a State does, the agreements must kept.
Many activists are not aware of the fact that it is Israel, not the PLO, that represents all of its citizens in the United Nations Organization. Israel accepted the terms of a minority protection plan contained in UN General Assembly resolution 181(II) which placed the rights of minorities, religious groups, and women under UN guarantee.
Israel also is a signatory of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, plus the Convention on the Rights of the Child, e.g. The International Bill of Human Rights. link to ohchr.org
So it has agreed to international review and criticism on a periodic and emergency basis in the area of human rights.
It’s interesting that the language coming from Tel-Aviv has now shifted to the It’s-non-of-your-business routine instead of attempting to spin the facts with usual Hasbarah.
So now “Israel” encompasses the occupied West Bank and Gaza, after all, Israel claims that colonial expansion is an “internal affair”.
Mind you, however, Israel’s endless pronouncements and material involvement in Syria is NOT an internal matter to Syria because Arabs do not deserve the same sovereignty rights as Israelis.
Because the US has that VETO in the security council, Israel also has a free pass – in effect immunity for any action it deems neccessary to take. In practical terms therefore any military action inside or even outside Israeli territory is because of American protection a priori legal. Academic lawyers in their thousands may protest that Israel is in breach of International Laws, but it is of no consequence in the real world when there is no possibility of Israel being convicted for taking such action.
It is meaningless to describe an action as illegal if there is no expection that the perpetrator of that action will be convicted by a competent judicial body, in the real world an action is legal unless a competent judicial body rules that it is illegal.
The ICC (International Criminal Court) on the other hand can hold individual Israeli leaders responsible even the prime minister and individual cabinet ministers – they have no immunity in this court and many charges could be laid at their feet, including directly and/or indirectly transferring citizens from the occupier to occupied territory in breach of the 1949 Geneva Conventions article 49.6.
Israel’s internal affairs are also the US, UN, and Quartet’s affairs. If Israel can’t ‘survive’ without American military aid and the US has veto power and gives Israel a free pass to commit war crimes and other atrocities, their internal affairs are ours.
“Israel was assaulted with every minute detail, mentioning every mosque that was torched and arguing that state authorities weren’t doing anything to stop settler attacks against Palestinians.”
Hey, the spokesperson was 110% correct. After all, lots of swastikas are painted on synagoges daily and we never, ever hear about this in the MSM…
note to Israel internal affairs happen within your legal borders not outside of them
Just in the same way that Bank Ki-Moon had no right to tell the Palestinians that in effect they should not persue any further applications to other specialised agencies in the UN because of the US threat to withdraw funding from them if the Palestinians are admitted, how dare Ban tell the Palestinians whats good for them. On the other hand as far as Israel is concerned because Israel has no title to occupied territory and since Israel is in flagrant breach of International Law and Human rights in that regard it is incumbent on Ban to interfere.
Just in the same way that Bank Ki-Moon had no right to tell the Palestinians that in effect they should not persue any further applications to other specialised agencies in the UN because of the US threat to withdraw funding from them if the Palestinians are admitted, how dare Ban tell the Palestinians whats good for them.
Abbas wrote in the New York Times Op-Ed that he was trying to pave the way for the internationalization of the conflict as a legal matter, not only a political one. The Secretary General simply told Palestine that additional applications for membership in other UN agencies would be counter-productive at the present time.
The UNESCO membership that Palestine has already secured allows them to demand that the ICC Prosecutor take action on their non-member State declaration under the terms of Article 12(3) of the Rome Statute. Many Palestinian activists are so stuck-in-the-rut shreying about the goal of a one state solution, that they completely overlook and even delegitimize the efforts of the government of Palestine to prosecute the individuals responsible for serious violations of international law on their territory. Oddly enough, the same Palestinian activists have been extremely outspoken about Israel’s violations of international law and the urgent need to do something, anything, about the situation in the occupied territories. Apparently it is just too much to ask them to accept the existence of the occupied State of Palestine.
For years Israelis have argued that Palestine isn’t actually a State yet. Now that Palestine has been formally recognized as a State, it’s time for activists to argue that there isn’t actually a single state between the Jordan and the Mediterranean yet. Until the day that there is formal recognition of a single state with equal rights, international law applies to the situation in Palestine, not Israeli (intrastate) law. It’s really just that simple.
Just checked that the magic word “democracy” does not appear in this thread. Israel cannot be both a democracy and claim that the occupied territories are an “internal affair”. Which is it to be?
In my opinion the Five permanent members if the security council the US,UK,China,France and Russia are above the Law, it was created that way after the second world war when Roosevelt and Churchill built into the archictecture of the UN the principle that the US and UK are above the Law for all time Stalin was persuaded and later France and China were added. In theory, for instance the aggressive war against Iraq was in breach of the UN charter and also carried out in disregard to the three other veto wielding powers China,France and Russia so in theory Illegal twice. Unfortunately if the other three put forward a resolution condemning of the other two it would be vetoed by them, now thats what I call impunity.
RE: “Israel says it’s ‘disgusting’ for world to take stand on ‘domestic
affair’ ” ~ Weiss
MY COMMENT: Disgusting? That seems rather banal/mundane. Israel should have Frank Luntz try “yucky” in one of his focus groups. And perhaps, “icky”.
Or even: “I see London! I see France! I see somebody’s underpants!”
Israel’s use of the argument about meddling in internal affairs was not only creepy; it was inanely stupid diplomacy. That is the argument that every totalitarian state uses to fend off international criticism; it didn’t seem to occur Israel’s UN reps that it was openly inviting comparisons to Zimbabwe or Syria or Libya under Qadaffi.
That said, the actual comparison with those states is in fact not valid. It is certainly true that Israel’s government must do more to stop settler violence and the humiliation of the Palestinian people. But it’s also true that the Shin Bet and military intelligence have entire units dedicated to stopping Jewish terrorists and the “hilltop youth.” And now, with the latest mosque burnings and even attacks on the IDF, the government is clearly grappling with lunatics who are almost universally despised by the Israeli public. So when seafoid and pabelmont invoke Hitler and the Nazis, as if the price tag marauders were actively encouraged by the Israeli government, that is going much much too far. Furthermoe, I suspect other commentators here agree with me but are loathe to criticise such over-the-top rhetoric.
That is patently false. (1) Military intelligence does not have any unit dedicated to what you call “stopping Jewish terrorists”. (2) What the Shabak does have is informants here and there within the settler movement, a few ears to keep tabs on things. To puff it up and claim that there are “entire units dedicated…..” is a fabrication.
You’re clearly new here, unless of course you’ve posted in the past under a different name. So, let me give you a piece of advice; don’t try to pass off horse manure as fact. I hope we understand each other.
As for your whining about the Nazi comparison, you should know that your spin is just too ripe for many who are quite familiar with the relationship between the Israeli government and the colonists. You’re not fooling anyone.
“Furthermoe, I suspect other commentators here agree with me but are loathe to criticise such over-the-top rhetoric.”
Speaking for myself, I don’t agree with you. Seafoid and Pablemont are being too kind to Israel in invoking Hitler and Nazis in their comparison; Israel is much worse. I didn’t see much difference in the desired results between the extermination camps and the phosphorus used over Gaza.
Do >>the Shin Bet and military intelligence have entire units dedicated to stopping Jewish terrorists and the “hilltop youth.”<<?
If so, those are the least effective units of the respective organizations. Which does not mean that they do not exist. There was an article in Ha'aretz about criminal investigative unit of Israeli police in charge of West Bank, the least effective of all such units in Israel. Monumentally inept.
Avi, I stand corrected about military intelligence. Here is a piece from Haaretz, Sept. 11th:
“Shin Bet says it has accumulated information on the involvement of Yitzhar’s yeshiva students in illegal, subversive and violent activities against Arabs and the security forces.
“The Shin Bet security service is urging the Education Ministry to immediately halt funding to the Od Yosef Hai Yeshiva in the settlement of Yitzhar, near Nablus, saying it has received intelligence information that senior rabbis in the yeshiva are encouraging their students to attack Arabs.
“The army’s GOC Central Command, Maj. Gen. Avi Mizrahi, recently issued restraining orders that forbid several students affiliated with the yeshiva to enter the West Bank. This decision was based on what security sources termed well-founded suspicions that these students had been involved in attacks on Arabs, including “price tag” attacks on Arab property (so called because they seek to deter the army from razing houses in the settlements ) and the torching of mosques in nearby Palestinian villages.”
My post asserted that clearly Israel wasn’t doing enough. And there has obviously been complicity between people and institutions within the Israeli government and the settlers for decades, as Eldar and his co-author documented in Lords of the Land. But there are gradations of evil .All I was saying it that the Israeli government’s approach to this particular phenomenon –the existence of violent, right wing fanatics who do not recognize the authority of that government– is not equivalent to the Nazis’ promotion of, say, the Hitler Youth or storm troopers.
Anyone else see a Night of Long Knives in Israel’s future? You know, anyone who’s young and not violently extremist in Israel really, really needs to get out before they’re offered the choice to “just follow orders” or end up in the same concentration camps as Palestinians.
I see a grim future for Jewish women in Israel. I see massive educational problems ahead. I see an intensification of violence. Very hard to see Moshiach landing.