Replying to Greek friends who had seen this Democracy Now piece about how unutterably wicked Israel is (natch), I felt at the end of the email, having pressed ‘Send’, that it might be worth a fatwah-earning Slogpost. So being a lazy bastard, here it is:
While this has long been Siegman’s view (he is a clone of our very own Jewish former MP and expenses embezzler Gerald Kaufmann) his impeccable fairness credentials neither make him right, nor do they deliver a solution.
Israel has committed two acts of blatant aggression in the last 66 years: the land grab of the State itself in 1947/48*, and the attempt to colonize land they kept after various equally blatant acts of aggression by Egypt and Syria against it in the 1960s. I totally understand why the Palestinians are pissed off about this, and with united support for their cause they would have had that land to live on years ago. But they don’t have that support: the Saudis loathe them as 3rd division scum, and the Egyptian regime has decided Hamas is more trouble than it’s worth. Also on the one occasion it was given a mini-State to run, the Palestinians didn’t exactly cleave to the concept of democracy and the rule of Law.
Talking about the Slaughter of Innocents is just as bad as the drivel from Israel about another holocaust, and Peace Flotillas for Gaza: it’s all an attempt to out-Herod Herod and garner international sympathy. I’m tired of people telling me that one side is right and the other wrong: they’re both pathological f**king liars.
We need to separate the two issues very clearly here: the desire to wipe the State of Israel from the Earth, and the desire to get the Palestinians a State of their own to which they are, on every measure, fully entitled. The Six Day and Yom Kippur wars were nothing to do with the latter, and Hamas refuses to give up the latter ‘aim’. But the vast majority of Syrian, Iraqi, Iranian, and Saudi politicians/Royals would rather Israel didn’t exist than Palestine did. That’s the conundrum.
As usual in my even-handed and enlightened manner, I choose to blame all of them.
* And another thing: the Begin Gang blew up British HQs and hotels throughout 1947 to get it. Without that firework up Anthony Eden’s anti-semitic arsehole, they still wouldn’t have a State either. The British, the French, Sykes-Picquot and Imperialism…they are the real guilty parties here.
The Slog 