Nov. 10, 2008
Caroline Glick , THE JERUSALEM POST
Two weeks ago, the Palestinians and their anti-Zionist Israeli and
international partners finally produced a smoking gun. They had a videotape
of evil settlers brutally attacking poor, defenseless Palestinians as they
innocently picked olives with their enlightened supporters in a grove by the
Tel Rumeida neighborhood in Hebron.
The local media went into a feeding frenzy. The footage led the television
news broadcasts. Photos taken from the video were plastered across the front
pages of the newspapers. Radio talk show hosts denounced the criminal
settlers and celebrated the guileless Palestinians and their heroic Israeli
supporters. The Olmert-Livni-Barak government was quick to weigh in,
promising stiff punishment for the Jewish fascists involved and a
curtailment of their supporters' civil rights.
In the weeks that have followed, and with elections looming, Foreign
Minister Tzipi Livni and Defense Minister Ehud Barak have stepped up their
attacks on the evil right-wing extremists. At Saturday night's memorial
ceremony/political rally for slain prime minister Yitzhak Rabin in Tel Aviv,
Barak called right-wing activists "cancers." He claimed that they are a
"threat to democracy." And he pledged, "We will uproot this evil from within
us."
The crowd loved Barak's statement. The few audience members who might have
booed him had already been beaten and arrested by police for disturbing the
peace. A handful of anti-leftist activists from the student group Im Tirtzu
came to Rabin Square carrying signs decrying leftist demonization of the
Right. The police beat them and carted them off before the rally began.
If it were true that settlers are marauding around Judea and Samaria beating
innocent Palestinians, perhaps it would be possible to understand this
assault against the Right. But as it works out, the videotape that was
supposed to be the definitive proof that settlers are violent criminals was
a fabrication. It was simply the latest anti-Israel snuff film brought to us
by our friends at Pallywood Productions. These are the same creative
filmmakers whose previous credits include the fabricated IDF shooting of
Muhammad al-Dura, the Jenin massacre that wasn't, the Kafr Kana massacre
that wasn't and a host of other notable blood libels.
The inconvenient truth that these activists remain liars was exposed at the
remand hearings of the settlers accused of beating the Palestinian olive
harvesters. As the NFC news Web site reported exclusively on Sunday, the
Palestinians showed their film as evidence against the arrested offenders in
two separate hearings before two different judges at the Jerusalem
Magistrate's Court. And at each hearing, after viewing the film the judges
concluded that through heavy editing, the video had inverted reality. Both
stated that it was impossible to know who began the fight - the Palestinians
and their Israeli and foreign supporters who beat the settlers, or the
settlers who walked to the grove on Shabbat carrying nothing but their
prayer shawls and hit them back.
The judges also noted that one of the Palestinians threw a large rock at the
back of one of the settlers after he and his friends had disengaged from the
fight. The judges expressed anger and amazement at the police for failing to
arrest the Palestinian who had clearly attacked the Jewish defendant without
provocation.
IT GOES without saying that the local media have chosen to ignore the
court's exposure of the latest hoax. The truth doesn't fit their
anti-right-wing narrative and so it isn't being covered.
What the local media and politicians such as Barak and Livni who seek to
criminalize the Right for political gain refuse to acknowledge is that their
embrace of these lies not only harms the settlers, it harms the country as a
whole.
Although from the rap they've gotten from the political Left and its
supporters in the media, it seems like right-wing extremists are both
numerous and powerful, the fact of the matter is that the number of
right-wingers who reject the authority of the state or would take the law
into their own hands is tiny. And they are politically isolated both at home
and abroad and have no money.
In stark contrast, the anti-Zionist, Israeli Left is an integral part of a
well-funded international movement actively engaged in waging political
warfare not against the settlers, but against Israel as a whole. The end of
this political war is Israel's destruction. The anti-Zionist Israeli Left
advances this destruction both by directly assisting terror groups and by
indirectly assisting terror groups through activities aimed at
delegitimizing Israel's right to defend itself.
The clear collusion between both Israeli and international anti-Israel
leftist activists with terrorist groups like Hamas is nowhere more evident
than in the terror-supporting International Solidarity Movement's newest
spin-off, the Free Gaza campaign. On Saturday, this group broke the IDF's
sea blockade of the Hamas-controlled Gazan coast for the third time in
recent months by sailing a ship filled with rabidly pro-jihadist and
anti-Israel European politicians from Cyprus to Gaza.
According to a credible source with close ties to the operation, the Free
Gaza campaign works closely with Israeli far-left groups including
Anarchists against the Wall, Gush Shalom, Gisha, Machsom Watch, New Profile
and Women in Black. These organizations are generously funded by the
US-based New Israel Fund, by European governments and by anti-Israel church
groups like the Quakers. The Free Gaza campaign's first ship, which arrived
in Gaza in late August, was led by Israeli anti-Zionist activist and former
lecturer at Ben-Gurion University Jeff Halper.
The Free Gaza campaign is a clear assault on Israel's national security.
Under the banner of "human rights," this new ferry service between Cyprus
and Gaza is meant to compromise the country's ability to combat terror
operations and to provide political support for Hamas. Crew members and
passengers on board these boats meet with Hamas terror commanders in Gaza
and coordinate future missions.
Their newest campaign is to prevent the navy from interdicting fishing
boats. Hamas and other terror groups make wide use of fishing boats to
import weapons and transport terror personnel from abroad into Gaza. By
demonizing the navy for interdicting fishing boats, and in open collusion
with Hamas, the activists provide political cover for weapons transfers and
jihadist maritime traffic into and out of Gaza.
To date, Israel has chosen not to intercept the Free Gaza campaign's boats
out of concern that taking such necessary action will prove a public
relations disaster both at home and abroad. And this concern is reasonable.
But by taking no diplomatic or military steps to prevent this
terror-supporting traffic from continuing and expanding, the government
allows these Israeli and European terror supporters to strengthen Hamas's
war machine and legitimize Hamas's objective of destroying Israel.
Official Israel's failure to act against this breach of its security is
directly related to its support of Israeli anti-Zionist groups when they
direct their guns at the Israeli Right - rather than Israel as a whole. As a
practical matter, it is difficult for the government to show that the Free
Gaza campaign actively supports the war against Israel when it willingly
embraces the bona fides of the Free Gaza campaign's supporters when they
attack settlers, or when the government adopts these organizations' false
assertion that the Right is the greatest threat to the country.
By the same token, it is difficult for the government to discredit films
purporting to demonstrate the human rights plight of Gazans as Pallywood
propaganda flicks when the government accepts these films as accurate when
their culprits are right-wing activists.
BUT WHILE the domestic Left sees a distinction between its right-wing
opponents and the country as a whole, the international community sees no
distinction between the two. Indeed, the international community has used
the cover that official Israel provides anti-Zionist activists for their
settler vilifying activities in order to advance the cause of criminalizing
Israel as a whole.
Case in point is what has become known as the Durban II conference in
Geneva. Durban I, it will be recalled, was the UN's 2001 "anti-racism"
conference in Durban, South Africa. The conference, which took place the
week before the jihadist attacks on the US, was an anti-Semitic hate-fest.
The American and Israeli delegations walked out as Israel and the Jewish
people were castigated as the greatest human rights abusers, genocide
committers, apartheid propagators and general all purpose bad guys in the
entire world.
The Nazi-like propaganda emanating from the conference led to violent
attacks against Jews all over the world. Durban I's resolutions also
provided the policy blueprint for much of political warfare that has been
waged against Israel by so-called human rights groups ever since. These
include the violent demonstrations against the security fence organized by
anti-Zionist Israeli groups, the Free Gaza campaign they support, and the
international boycotts against Israeli exports and academics they advocate.
Today, the UN is busily organizing its follow-up conference that will be
held next year in Geneva. As the watchdog group Eye on the UN reported over
the weekend, the conference's organizing committee just met and approved
most of the resolutions it is set to adopt at Geneva. These resolutions
again castigate Israel as the chief violator of human rights in the world.
Israel is accused of committing genocide, crimes against humanity and being
an apartheid state. It is also condemned as the most serious threat to
international peace and security.
But of course, what starts with Israel doesn't end with Israel. The
conference organizers have used the basic unanimity about Israel's criminal
nature to launch an assault against the foundations of Western civilization.
In addition to the numerous and repetitious attacks against Israel and Jews,
the conference organizers passed multiple resolutions calling for the
abrogation of freedom of expression and the criminalization of political
speech in order to outlaw discussion of Islamic terrorism and block
counterterror efforts in the West.
Among the conference's chief organizers are Iran, Libya, Egypt and Cuba.
Iran is the vice-chairman of the executive committee responsible for
planning Durban II. Much of the language in the proposed resolutions is
taken directly from resolutions passed at a planning session last year in
Teheran.
Israel had no hand in organizing this conference, which, following Canada,
it announced it will boycott. But over the years, it could have taken
actions that might have tempered or weakened the international coalition
arrayed against it.
If the government had outlawed anti-Israel groups like Machsom Watch, New
Profile, Gisha, Gush Shalom, Women in Black and Anarchists against the Wall,
rather than tolerate them on account of their activities against settlers,
it could at least have weakened their efforts. Had they been disbanded, they
would have had less capacity to legitimize and assist Palestinians and
Europeans who engage in political warfare against Israel on the ground.
By refusing to recognize the international consequences of their domestic
battle against their political opponents on the Right, the
Olmert-Livni-Barak government and the local media have strengthened Israel's
enemies in their battle to destroy the country.
caroline@carolineglick.com
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