Terrific blast by Charles Krauthammer against the hypocrisy, illogicality, prejudice and sheer malice of the ongoing campaign of vilification against Israel. The world now appears to believe that Israel is the poison in the system:

'It is in this kind of atmosphere that Israel offers unilateral withdrawal from Gaza -- uprooting 7,000 Jews, turning over to the Palestinians 21 settlements with their extensive infrastructure intact and creating the first independent Palestinian territory in history -- and is almost universally attacked. Moreover, and much overlooked, Israel will also evacuate four small West Bank settlements, which creates extensive Palestinian territorial contiguity throughout the northern half of the West Bank.

'The Arabs have variously denounced this as Israeli unilateralism, a departure from the ``road map'' and a ruse and a plot. The craven Europeans have duly followed suit. And when Tony Blair defied the mob by expressing support for the plan, he was rewarded with a letter from 52 Arabist ex-diplomats denouncing him. This Nuremberg atmosphere has reached the point where if Israel were to announce today that it intends to live for at least another year, the U.N. Security Council would convene on a resolution denouncing Israeli arrogance and unilateralism, and the U.S. would have to veto it. Only Britain would have the decency to abstain.'

And he also points out a crucial point that is routinely ignored when people bang on about the UN resolutions and have a fit of the vapours over President Bush's support for Israel hanging onto some of the settlements:

'Moreover, the notion that Israel will not be forced to return to the 1967 armistice lines goes back 37 years -- to 1967 itself. The Johnson administration was instrumental in making sure that the governing document for a Middle East settlement -- Security Council Resolution 242 -- called for Israeli withdrawal to ``secure and recognized boundaries,'' not ``previous boundaries." And it called for Israel to withdraw ``from territories occupied'' in the 1967 war -- not ``from the territories occupied,'' as had been demanded by the Arab states, and not from "all territories occupied" as had been demanded by the Soviet Union.'

Israel should give up most of the disputed territories because it is not in its interests to rule another people. But the claim that its presence in those territories is illegal, or that it is morally or legally bound to give up every inch of that land, is false and malevolent, and part of the agenda to delegitimise the state itself.

Posted by melanie at May 3, 2004