Liberal Democrat Friends of Palestine

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The author is a member of LDFP. Currently, she is working for EAAPI, although she is writing here in a personal capacity. Her photoblog may be found here. For feedback please email info@ldfp.eu.

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Two weeks ago I had a wisdom tooth out here in East Jerusalem. I’d been experiencing a pain unlike any other for a few days, and had finally given into the obvious; a trip to the dentist really was necessary. Sure enough, out came the tooth, and the painkillers and antibiotics were handed over. The care I received from the Greek-Palestinian dentist was second to none; he even brought me stronger painkillers to the house when I informed him that the ‘soft’ ones simply weren’t doing the trick. I’m sure you’ll all be pleased to know that my mouth is now fully recovered; the cutting into my gum a distant memory…

So, positive, rapid, and successful health treatment, with excellent care, and not too big a fee. Is this one issue we don’t need to worry about here in East Jerusalem? Whilst the answer may be sadly predictable, please do still meet Rozan.

Rozan Nasser is almost three years old. She’s playful and lively, and not at all shy with visitors. She lives with her family, who are registered refugees, in the Bedouin village of Khan al Ahmer. She also cannot walk, or talk, or see properly. She doesn’t have the muscle strength to sit up by herself. The family don’t know what her physical or mental disabilities are, because she has never ever been to a hospital. Doctors have referred her to one in East Jerusalem, but her family do not have the money to take her there, or pay for the treatment; their livelihoods have been damaged by Israeli restrictions on their movement and illegal settlement expansion on their land.

Rozan’s family reside outside the separation barrier built by Israel, which the International Court of Justice has stated, in an advisory capacity, violates the right to health, and an adequate standard of living. Their location makes access to healthcare very difficult. As well as being outside of the wall, which severely restricts access to occupied East Jerusalem, the village is in Area C, part of the West Bank which is occupied by Israel, and under Israeli military law. Thus Israel, as an occupying power, has a duty under International Humanitarian Law to provide basic medical care and ‘other essentials for survival of the Occupied population.’ (Article 69 of Additional Protocol 1) but as yet, Rozan receives no medical care from the Israeli state. The family can’t afford the 1000 NIS to buy Palestinian health insurance either, so unless the UN or NGOs can provide free healthcare, Rozan will continue to live without the medical care and treatment she really needs.

This is just one case of many where access to healthcare and treatment is restricted and in some cases prohibited in East Jerusalem. An elderly woman from another Bedouin village has a large and painful tumour, and experiences black outs and severe headaches. She requested an appointment to investigate these symptoms and get a scan in October 2010; her appointment is not until June 22^nd 2011. She has had cancer previously, and has missed previous checkups because the military would not let her pass at checkpoints until the exact time of the appointment.  Again, this violates the right to health, and access to healthcare, and means that Israel fails in its duty as an occupied power to provide services for its occupied population.

I could go on; three, four, five year old children from Gaza who have to come to East Jerusalem for treatment without their parents because Israel refuses to grant them permits to accompany their children,  medical personnel working in East Jerusalem being forced to travel through just one entrance point into Jerusalem (Qalandiya Checkpoint) causing serious delays and disruption to hospital functioning, women in labour not being allowed to leave their villages to get to hospital to give birth…the list continues, just like the occupation.

Where possible EAPPI works with specific families to assist them in accessing healthcare and treatment; we hope to very soon be able to deliver a special purpose wheelchair to a boy with Spina Bifida, who is 14 and currently has to drag himself around on his arms, because no wheelchair has been provided by Israeli health authorities. But of course, despite our work, and the work of UNRWA and NGOs here, a big part of the real cure for all these cases is also an end to the Israeli occupation which restricts and limits access to healthcare and medical treatment for hundreds of thousands Palestinians, both in East Jerusalem, and the West Bank.

Sources:

EAPPI Testimony 2011

Physicians for Human Rights Annual Report 2008 www.phr.org.il

UNRWA Health report www.unrwa.org

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The author is a member of LDFP. Currently, she is working for EAAPI, although she is writing here in a personal capacity. Her photoblog may be found here. For feedback please email info@ldfp.eu.

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How long it takes someone to get to work is often a subject of importance, a topic of discussion. Having lived walking distance to school, work, town and countryside growing up and at university, living in London I always struggled, much to the consternation of friends who had long gotten used to ‘the commute’, to live with the belief that forty five minutes to get from house to work was acceptable, do-able, and what many people did as a bare minimum on a daily basis. This was valuable time I could have spent asleep! But what I saw this morning made me thankful for that rickety old Bakerloo line, and a life where I can come and go as I please, in my own country, and in others.

Part of the Ecumenical Accompanier’s job is to monitor checkpoints in East Jerusalem as despite being part of the same occupied Palestinian Territories(oPt), East Jerusalem is isolated from the rest of the West Bank, and Palestinians wanting to access Jerusalem  all have to pass through checkpoints. They can only do so with Jerusalem ID cards or a permit issued by Israeli authorities. The number of Jerusalem ID card holders is rapidly decreasing as Israel strives to maintain its demographic goal of a 70% Israeli majority population in Jerusalem; 4672 people had residency revoked in 2008 alone, for reasons such as ‘being disloyal to the State of Israel’ (Knesset legislation) even though East Jerusalem is not part of Israel, but part of the oPt, and  future Palestinian state!

At 5.00am this morning I arrived at Qalandiya Checkpoint, the main checkpoint between Jerusalem and Ramallah. The barbed wire was twinkling in the early morning sun, glistening with condensation, and the birds were tweeting loudly, oblivious to the misery of the people below. Qalandiya is a huge military structure, with watch towers, barbed wire, lines and lines of steel barriers, cages separating queuing people, ID booths, turnstiles, metal detectors, X-ray machines, and of course soldiers and private security personnel heavily armed. Imagine seeing this as a child, every single day, just to get to school. Children don’t have ID cards so must bring their birth certificates; if they forget their birth certificates, then they miss school that day.

On arrival today there were already crowds of over two hundred people pushing and shoving to get themselves into the caged queue to go through the turnstile. Older, and simply more despondent men, had already taken the decision to stand aside to wait for the crowd to die down. They were to have a very long wait. We asked two men to call us when they got through the other side; one of the men took two and a half hours simply to cross this checkpoint, the other, 3 hours. His name was Aiman and he told us that he arrived at 4am, that if he wasn’t in work by 7 he would miss the day’s work, and was at risk of being sacked. Without an employment permit he would then not be able to access Jerusalem, and would be at high risk of therefore having his residency of Jerusalem revoked. This checkpoint really can change lives.

Not only that; this system of identity cards, travel permits, and checkpoints, prohibit travel and access to services which are protected in international law and the 4^th Geneva Convention (GCIV), ratified by Israel. Access to medical services (Article 16 GCIV), religious institutions (Art. 27 of GCIV), family members (Art. 26 and 27 of GCIV), and educational institutions (Art. 50 of GCIV) are all negatively affected, yet calls for changes to this system from inside and outside of Israel go ignored.

There are 5 ID booths in the part of Qalandiya we monitor, and every morning thousands of people try to cross. This morning merely one third of the normal numbers were crossing. It’s been extremely slow since the murder of five settlers 50km away in the North of the West Bank. I spoke with the Chief Commander of the Police, in charge of Qalandiya and the whole area, in an attempt to improve the situation. He told me to be happy, ‘Benny was going to fix it’. Nothing changed. He also said, interestingly, without questioning or provocation, that ‘we don’t treat these people like animals.’ I gestured towards the crowds of men squashed up against each other in metal cages.

It is hard to describe these structures in words* and how it makes someone feel just to watch young men stand silently and hopelessly in lines, as another day of lost income slowly dawns, or to watch a mother with a sleeping baby wrapped in a blanket on her shoulder approach a soldier and ask for permission to take her baby to hospital. If she doesn’t have the right paperwork, however ill that infant is, they won’t be going to hospital that day. The Commander’s final words to me today were ‘be hopeful.’ I asked Palestinians in the queue what they thought- they told me that nothing would ever change; the world will ignore what is happening to them; that they have no hope left.

And so I left Qalandiya this morning feeling pretty hopeless myself. I crossed lines of waiting traffic, horns beeping as people tried to get their vehicles through the checkpoint queues to Jerusalem, and boarded a bus to take me through the checkpoint back home. As I climbed on board the driver smiled a wide and toothy grin; ‘Al-Quds?’ I checked. ‘Yes’ he said, ‘and Welcome, welcome, to Jerusalem.’ If he can welcome us to this place where life is made so hard, and smile so warmly and so openly, then maybe hope is, momentarily, restored. Maybe he believes things may one day change; in the meantime EAPPI will continue to monitor and report to the UN, the Red Cross, politicians and the media, what these checkpoints are doing to people, and will support continued efforts to put pressure on Israel to end this occupation, so Palestinians can get to work, worship, family members, school, and hospital, as the rest of us already can; with dignity, and with freedom.

For more information on West Bank Movement and Access please see the UNOCHA report from June 2010, available here. UNOCHA receive checkpoint statistics from EAPPI.

*see www.holylandshots.wordpress.com

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The author is a member of LDFP. Currently, she is working for EAAPI, although she is writing here in a personal capacity. Her photoblog may be found here. For feedback please email info@ldfp.eu.

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East vs. West

The Golden Dome of the Dome of the Rock glinted in the late afternoon sunset as our rickety old minibus swerved its way into the Old City of Jerusalem, for many the spiritual capital of the world, home and holy to Christians, Muslims, and Jews alike. The sun was setting, lighting up the creamy Jerusalem stone, and casting shadows on streetsellers’ faces. The narrow roads thronged with buyers and sellers, and smells of cardamom, coffee, and coriander wafted our way. What a place to spend three months, I thought.

If only this superficial and enticing description of the city of Al-Quds (Jerusalem in Arabic), portrayed what lies beneath. Tragically, the tourist sites and lively streets, the bright stalls, and mouth-watering smells, do not tell the real story; Jerusalem is a divided and turbulent place.

In 1967, Israel occupied the East of the city, part of the West Bank of Palestine then in Jordanian hands- and declared Jerusalem’s reunification. 44 years later, the occupation continues and shows little sign of ending. East Jerusalem is accepted by many to be the capital of any future Palestinian state, but Israel’s continued transfer of Jewish settlers (illegal under international law, article 49 of the 4^th Geneva Convention; occupying powers shall not transfer its own population into the territory it occupies) into the area is fast eroding this once assumed idea.

Meanwhile, as threats of house demolition and eviction by the Jerusalem Municipality to make way for illegal settlements, and settler violence plague Palestinians in the East, metaphorically millions of miles away in bright, affluent and shiny West Jerusalem, cafes line the pavements and the streets are clean and green. Living and socio-economic conditions differ vastly between the two areas. As an occupying force Israel has a duty under International Law to provide necessary services essential for survival (including health care, education, access to religious services, shelter, food, economic growth); so states the 4^th Geneva Convention, ratified by Israel. But the reality suggests these laws are being entirely ignored:

East vs. West- some telling facts and figures:

EAST: an average of 1000 home demolitions a year  —- WEST: 0 home demolitions (UN figures)

EAST: 1000 school classrooms’ shortage —- WEST: no shortage of classrooms (ACRI* figures)

EAST: ½ the population do not have running water in their home —- WEST: all homes have running water (ICAHD**figures)

EAST: Palestinian residents make up 35% of Jerusalem population, and receive just 10% of the municipal budget —- WEST: Israeli residents make up 65% of the population and receive 90% of the municipal budget (Ir-Amin figures)

EAST: a shortage of 70km worth of sewage lines, limited to no refuse collection, and no new roads built since 1967 —- WEST: no shortages, regular refuse collections and road renewal (ACRI figures)

So, why is the East of this city treated this way? The facts on the ground arouse suspicions that the occupying force’s neglect of its occupied population in East Jerusalem is designed to encourage Palestinians to leave the city, thus maintaining the demographic goal of a city with a solid Jewish majority and ensuring the complete annexation of East Jerusalem. Whether one believes this or not, as long as East Jerusalem remains under Israeli control and the municipality of Jerusalem, its residents must be provided with the services they are lawfully entitled to.

Without political pressure however, there seems little chance of this happening. The mayor of Jerusalem, Nir Barkut, has current plans to turn the Palestinian area of Al Bustan in East Jerusalem, which is home to 1000 men, women and children, into a tourist amusement park based on King David aimed at Israelis and foreign tourists. 90 homes will need to be demolished for this plan to be realised. Can Israeli policies such as these really go hand in hand with a real and true desire for peace? And is a King David theme park, built on occupied land, really worth more to Jerusalem, Palestinians, and Israelis , than the future of this precious city, and prospects for equality and peace?

*Association for Civil Rights in Israel

**Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions

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The author is a member of LDFP. Currently, she is working for EAAPI, although she is writing here in a personal capacity. Her photoblog may be found here. For feedback please email info@ldfp.eu.

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Anyone wanting to be cheered up this week should go out and buy a copy of the National Geographic Travellers’  Magazine.

The Palestinian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities is advertising holidays in Palestine.

This profane offence, like Oliver Twist asking for more, has of course drawn the full fury of the Zionist Beadle and complaints are pouring into the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA)

How dare they give the impression that Palestine is a country? And worse, that Jerusalem is part of Palestine?

More than a sin, it is a crime. (‘’ That boy will be hung’’ said the gentleman in the white waistcoat’ ) To describe Palestine as lying between the Mediterranean and the Jordan river without mentioning Israel ‘’echoes’’ racism, storms London blogger Richard Millet.

Meanwhile, with the begging bowl still empty, since persuading tourists into a land which for all its heartbreaking beauty (the grey olive, the hills of Jenin, the white-stoned Martyrs’ Cemetery……) is still dominated by Walls, Caterpillar bulldozers and unfriendly soldiers with guns, Oliver Twist goes further: Palestine (which doesn’t really exist) is a land rich in history with a tradition of hospitality.

History?  Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Hebron, Jericho, Nablus…..  the litany of ancient cities claimed by the Palestinian tour is giving the Beadle indigestion.

And hospitality……………. indeed. The hospitality of those who have nothing or very little but will give all to the guest: the welcome, the extraordinary kindness……..Even the Zionist Beadle has not dared to assail the ASA on this one.

So where you might ask do people go if they want to have holidays in the Holy Land?  An advertisement on page 11 in the Catholic weekly The Tablet for 8 January tells you: try logging on to  www.WalkWhereJesusWalked.com. You sign up to the Israeli Tourist Board and go to the holy land of Israel,  that’s all the places like Bethlehem, the Mount of Olives, the Garden of Gethsemane, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and the City of David. (This last, presumably, doubles as spiritual and educational experience, given the current ethnic cleansing in East Jerusalem.)

But aren’t these sites part of the Palestinian West Bank?  Why is there no single mention of Palestine?

A few brave souls mostly from the Amos Trust and Jews for Justice for Palestinians have been asking this question for years. But The Tablet and the Anglican Church Times, where the advert also appears, are fearful of the mighty Beadle’s anger and collude in leaving Palestine unnamed.

Palestine? Tourism? Economy?  Impiety! Ingratitude!

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The propaganda war is alive and well following the death of Jawaher Abu Rahmah,on New Year’s Day in the West Bank village of Bil’in, after the Israeli Defence Force ( IDF ) had used tear gas against protesters.

‘Army sources’ claim that Abu Rahmah was suffering from leukaemia: that she was nowhere near the demonstration and so could not have been affected. Villagers from Bil’in claim she was standing on the hill close to the protesters, that the tear gas used was particularly potent, and that when Abu Rahmah inhaled it, she felt unwell, vomited and then collapsed. The Director of Ramallah Health Centre where she died, is quoted as saying she suffered lung failure from tear gas inhalation which led to a heart attack. She did not have cancer. She had a minor ear infection.

‘Abu Rahmah is already a symbol’ writes a Haaretz blogger. Indeed: and her death is a good reason to reflect on the long-running show which is Bil’in.

For those who have never heard of the place (a majority of politicians and those who work on the Middle East desk of the Foreign Office) Bil’in is an outstanding example of Palestinian non-violent resistance. Every Friday, for the last six years, villagers, accompanied by Israeli left-wing activists and ever- increasing numbers of international Parliamentarians and journalists have marched to the route of the electronic fence which has removed over two thousand dunums of Bil’in’s land, and which in March 2007 was the subject of a High Court ruling that it was illegal and should be re-routed, an order the IDF have yet to carry out.

Extraordinary creativity has made these demonstrations famous: one Friday, activists used mirrors, on which ‘Stop the Wall’ had been written backwards in gel pen. Using the sun, activists were able to reflect the slogans on to the bodies of the Israeli soldiers.

Perhaps nothing is more threatening to the government of Israel (and to its supporters, the UK parliamentary Friends of Israel ) than Palestinians acting in the tradition of Ghandi. Activists have been fiercely punished for this imitation. A report written in 2009 by the Stop the Wall campaign estimates that within the coalition of Bil’in and four other villages, more than 16 people have been killed, some by live ammunition, while engaging in non-violent protest against the Wall. One of these was Abu Rahmah’s brother, Bassem when soldiers fired a tear gas canister at his chest. In Bil’in alone some 1,300 protesters have been wounded and 85 residents have been arrested.

But protesting civilians have their uses. There is little doubt that Bil’in is a good laboratory for experiments with ‘non lethal’ ammunition. So far villagers have collected over 17 different types of gas canister. Pepper bullets have been shot from machine gun belts. Activists have reported a ‘sponge’ bullet which places needles beneath the skin. Rubber bullets are a favourite, sometimes shot into the head at close range.

These have disabled several young Israelis, among them Jonathan Pollak, who in the early years of the campaign was temporarily paralysed by a brain haemorrhage caused by rubber bullets. He continues to demonstrate. Undoubtedly these front- line Israeli activists have saved Palestinian lives. The village is one of the great successes of co-operative, international effort.

Those who love the mantra ‘Palestinians have no leader,’ should consider Mohammed Khatib, chief architect of Bil’in’s campaign. Sickened by the killing on both sides during the second intifada, he has dedicated himself to non-violent resistance.

From the moment when in early 2005 Bil’in villagers chained themselves to their olive trees before advancing Israeli bulldozers, and press lined up to take the shots, he understood the value of the media. Cameras, international solidarity, and the law have been his only weapons. But Israeli military law makes no distinction between peaceful and violent protest. The IDF has recently tried him in a military court on grounds of ‘incitement.’ The charge failed.

Jawaher Abu Rahmah is claimed now as a martyr for Bil’in. While Israel denies this reality, it is good to remember Khatib’s verdict on the profession of non-violent resistance to the Occupation:

‘‘Demonstrating is not an easy thing: you give up your time, your work. You must be ready to be beaten and injured.’’ And on a bad day, killed.

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“Nick Clegg: we got it wrong on Israel” , screamed the Jewish Chronicle headline, following the Deputy Prime Minister’s speech to the Lib Dem Friends of Israel on 11 November.

But what precisely is Mr Clegg apologising for?

He believes that we have been wrong to speak up for Palestinian justice and not cry ‘equally loudly’ for Israeli justice: that is ‘the right of Israel to defend itself against the threats it continually faces’.

He has thus bought into two central and specious mantras of Israeli propaganda: the first, that this is an equal conflict. The second: that Israeli attacks on Gaza and the West Bank are motivated by Israel’s security needs.

There is nothing equal about this conflict. Not grievances, not armaments, not  crimes, not casualties. Israel is in clear breach of international law and specifically UN Resolution 242 in continuing her 43-year long (and ongoing) occupation of Palestinian land. Israel is not the victim here. In the recent ‘Operation Cast Lead’, Israel’s attack upon Gaza in 2008/2009, Palestinian casualties numbered 1,397 (345 of whom were minors) and Israeli casualties 13, four of whom were the victims of friendly fire, according to the Israel Human Rights organisation B’Tselem. ‘Disproportionate force’, the stated strategy of the Israeli Defence Force, articulated by Major General Eisenkot, during the 2006 assault on south Lebanon, is illegal in itself.

Nor did Mr Clegg explain how targeted missile strikes on the only bread producing factory in Gaza, and the  bulldozing of 100,000 chickens underground in order to destroy a rich source of protein for a starving population,  (Report of the UN Fact Finding Mission to the Gaza Conflict, paragraphs 939-958) makes Israeli citizens safer.

The Deputy PM repeated also, word for depressing word, the intention of our coalition partners to amend the Geneva Convention legislation on Universal Jurisdiction (UJ) in order to give safe conduct to Israeli ministers visiting this country:

‘Politically motivated arrest warrants … accusations based on poorly justified grounds’

No: arrest warrants are motivated by those for whom international law is the only basis for Middle East peace, and who are sickened by the deliberate assault on a civilian population. The shelling of hospitals, schools and ambulances, the  refusal of medical treatment, which allowed 4-year old Ahmad  al-Samouni to bleed to death while the ambulance and its paramedic staff were strip searched, found clean, then ordered back to Gaza city without him,  puts Israel into a place where ordinary morality has long departed.

It is political motivation which makes these crimes ‘OK’.

And ‘poorly justified grounds’? Judge Richard Goldstone and his team conducted 188 individual interviews, and reviewed more than 300 reports, submissions and other documentation amounting to more than 10,000 pages, over 30 videos and 1,200 photos. Interviews were conducted in Jordan and Geneva and by telephone as well as in Gaza.  Mr Clegg probably knows this as well as anyone else.

He must also know that of the 17 Lib Dem ministers in the coalition government, 16 signed Jeremy Corbyn’s EDM during the last Parliament to keep the law on UJ unaltered.

For the vast majority of party members, international law and human rights are fundamental to Liberal Democrat belief, ‘woven into our DNA’ as Ros Scott a former President of the party expressed it, and not to be given away at the first whiff of power.

Mr Clegg is making new friends: but he will lose old ones. Among them will be the Jewish lobby from Jews for Justice for Palestinians (JfJfP) and other Jewish organisations, who refuse to be silenced when they criticize Israeli aggression and call for justice in the Occupied Territories.  He will lose a mass of voters for whom the Lib Dem party was their conscience: the only party not to be bullied into turning a blind eye to human rights violations because the perpetrators happen to be allies.

And he will lose respect, inside and outside the party, that he will probably never recover.

(Creative Commons image by Iain Forbes)

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During the recent Liberal Democrat conference in Liverpool some of us attended a fringe event hosted by Ethnic Minorities Liberal Democrats. The event was particularly interesting for us as one of the speakers was Ünal Çeviköz, Turkish Ambassador to the UK and another was Baroness Sarah Ludford Liberal Democrat MEP for London, and, coincidentally, a proud member of the Liberal Democrat Friends of Israel.

For a number of reasons, diplomatic relations between Israel and Turkey have been at a low ebb this year, and yet Baroness Ludford chose the occasion of the fringe event to focus on the issue of an anti-Israeli leaflet distributed, so she informed us, by Turkish Representatives at the European Parliament. This leaflet, in the words of Baroness Ludford:

… talks about Israel having lost its legitimacy with a photo which includes a placard ‘Judaism rejects the Zionist state’. I hope both Israel and Turkey come round to reason.

Having not seen the leaflet for ourselves, we cannot comment upon it with any kind of authority, but was it really the biggest issue amongst the fallout from the attack on the Freedom Flotilla in international waters? As the party of liberalism and international law did we not have anything more appropriate or sophisticated to offer on the European political stage than this?

As Liberal Democrats should we seriously be drawing parallels between the killing of nine people by the State of Israel in international waters with an admittedly ill-advised but nevertheless, still less than lethal leaflet? Whilst Turkey distributing their leaflet was clearly in bad taste, no one has yet suggested that it broke international law.

One wonders what, if anything, Baroness Ludford had to say about “We Con The World“: a tasteless video produced by Caroline Glick days after the attack on the flotilla and set to the tune of “We Are The World”, posted to YouTube and distributed to journalists courtesy of the Israeli government press office. The video, helped along by the Israeli State PR department, achieved millions of views within days and is orders of magnitude more likely to have reached the eyes and ears of the people who Baroness Ludford represents than a leaflet distributed exclusively to MEPs in Brussels.

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The Israeli Ministry of Public Diplomacy and Diaspora Affairs has produced a website intended to help Israeli citizens be ambassadors for Israel. It is a website that appears to present British, French and Spanish citizens as having medieval opinions on the state of Israel, as well as attacking the religion of Islam.

The website – tagline ‘Together, we can change the picture’ - has 3 video clips which appear to present the public opinion of Israel in other countries. But in presenting how they think non-Israelis perceive Israel, has the Ministry of Public Diplomacy and Diaspora Affairs actually revealed the opinion that Israel has of others?

The British apparently think that Israelis still use camels to “travel from place to place in the desert where they live” and that the camel is “the means of transport for water, merchandise and ammunition” and is even “used by the Israeli cavalry”. The French perceive Israel as constantly being at war, whilst the Spanish think that “in Israel, most homes have no electricity or gas” and the Israeli’s “still use ancient cooking methods” and Israeli food is “primitive but delicious”.

Each video asks Israeli viewers if they are “tired of how we [Israel/Israel's] are being presented to the world” and asks them to “accurately present Israel’s position abroad”.  At best, the videos are cheap, transparent jingoistic propaganda, at worst they present the general external opinion of Israel as being completely ignorant of the nuances of both the country and the Palestine/Israel conflict.

But that is not the worst of it. We can almost write those videos off as being a joke – though the rest of the website is dead-pan serious. What is more offensive is the apparent connection of the religion of Islam to terrorism.

Muslim terror is active throughout the world with no connection to the Arab-Israeli conflict, the Palestinian refugee issue, Israel-US relations or the existence of the State of Israel and its policies. Terror has been rampant ever since the middle of the 20th century in various places across the globe, and the Palestinian problem is not what caused its spread. The West, as far as Islamic terror is concerned, constitutes an obstacle to fulfilling Muslim aspirations for expansion. Western values (freedom of religion, freedom of speech, a free press, a free market, free education, democracy, etc.) are a moral threat to the existence of dictatorial Muslim regimes.

Presented with the unsophisticated black and white view of Islam that appears to be apparent in the paragraph above, one could be forgiven if one was confused by this paragraph into thinking that Israeli opinion of Islam and Muslims in general was equated with “Muslim terror” and “Muslim aspirations for expansion”.

This Israeli website is a carefully considered exercise. A  globally available website intended to inculcate official Israeli positions and policies.

What would not criticising the limited wisdom of Israel in apparently denigrating the intelligence and sophisticated world view of some of its leading allies – as well as not clearly pointing out that the nature of Islam in general is not at its root terroristic or expansionistic – reveal about those who profess to be friends of Israel?

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