Donderdag 8 augustus 2019 verklaarde Jaap Hamburger, voorzitter van Een Ander Joods Geluid, dat:
zo goed als het concept van het communisme helaas voorgoed gecompromitteerd is door de praktijk ervan, zo is het concept van het zionisme gecompromitteerd door de praktijk. Met één verschil: communistische staten bestaan niet meer, maar de zionistische staat woekert maar door.
Als journalist die zich bijna drie decennia in deze materie heeft verdiept, lijkt mij dit een onweerlegbare conclusie. De zionistische staat Israel is al vanaf het allereerste begin gebaseerd geweest op wat het Westen ‘terrorisme’ betitelt, massaal geweld tegen ongewapende burgers om een politiek doel te bereiken. Daardoor is het bestaan van de zelf benoemde ‘Joodse staat’ sinds 1948 ‘gecompromitteerd.’ De wereldgemeenschap kan het voortbestaan van een schurkenstaat, die lak heeft aan het internationaal recht, niet accepteren, om de simpele reden dat dan de mensheid voortdurend geconfronteerd wordt met een gewelddadige chaos. Net zoals bijna iedereen het normaal vindt dat een moordenaar in zijn land veroordeeld wordt door een rechter, zo zou het ook normaal moeten zijn dat een moordend regime voor het internationaal gerecht wordt gedaagd. Net als het nationaal recht zorgt eveneens het internationaal recht voor orde, en het beschermen van de Israelische terreur is niets anders dan het creëren van ordeloosheid, waarbij uiteindelijk alles en iedereen eraan gaan. Een cultuur die geen universele normen en waarden erkent, heeft haar bestaansrecht verkwanselt. En dat is ook de strekking van Hamburger's opmerking.
In het antieke Griekenland was de toegang tot de Tempel van Apollo in Delphi getooid met de inscriptie ‘Meden Agan,’ alles met mate, ‘niets in overmaat.’ De mens is geen Godheid, en dient zijn plaats te weten, hoe graag bepaalde joden en christenen menen dat joden tot een 'uitverkoren volk' behoren, en daardoor boven de wet staan. Hoogmoed vernietigt een samenleving, of zoals het in het bijbelboek Matteüs staat: ‘allen, die het zwaard nemen, zullen door het zwaard vergaan.’ Kortom, wat valt er hierna nog te zeggen?
In het antieke Griekenland was de toegang tot de Tempel van Apollo in Delphi getooid met de inscriptie ‘Meden Agan,’ alles met mate, ‘niets in overmaat.’ De mens is geen Godheid, en dient zijn plaats te weten, hoe graag bepaalde joden en christenen menen dat joden tot een 'uitverkoren volk' behoren, en daardoor boven de wet staan. Hoogmoed vernietigt een samenleving, of zoals het in het bijbelboek Matteüs staat: ‘allen, die het zwaard nemen, zullen door het zwaard vergaan.’ Kortom, wat valt er hierna nog te zeggen?
Zijn deze wijsheden onderwerp voor debat? Twijfelt iemand die met grote stelligheid beweert dat ‘het concept van het zionisme gecompromitteerd’ is ‘door de praktijk’ aan zijn eigen woorden? Ik stel die vragen omdat ik een uitnodiging kreeg om vrijdagavond 4 oktober 2019 in De Balie te Amsterdam à raison van 12,50 euro als publiek te fungeren. Tijdens de bijeenkomst, georganiseerd door de Leonhard-Woltjer Stichting en Een Ander Joods Geluid, gaan vier witte politici en één zogeheten ‘allochtoonse’ politica allereerst bakkeleien over de vraag ‘hoe ziet een duurzame en rechtvaardige oplossing er uit?’ Duidelijk is namelijk dat deelnemer Erwin van Veen, senior research fellow aan het conservatieve Instituut Clingendael, en Hessel Knippels, Algemeen Bestuurslid Politiek voor de jongerenafdeling van de VVD, die blind achter Israel staan, een andere opvatting hebben over een ‘rechtvaardige oplossing,’ dan bijvoorbeeld de historicus Peter Malcontent, werkzaam bij de Universiteit Utrecht, en Sadet Karabulut, Tweede Kamerlid en woordvoerder buitenlandse zaken voor de SP. Sjoerd Sjoerdsma, Tweede Kamerlid en woordvoerder buitenlandse zaken voor D66, die eveneens één van de deelnemers is, zal naar alle waarschijnlijk een middenpositie innemen. Welnu, drie politici, één opportunist, en een wetenschapper, gaan onder leiding van een theologe, voor de Palestijnen en de Joden bepalen wat een ‘rechtvaardige’ vrede betekent. Maar waarom wil het bestuur van Een Ander Joods Geluid dit zo graag van juist deze mensen weten? Immers, de voorzitter ervan is — terecht — van oordeel dat
zo goed als het concept van het communisme helaas voorgoed gecompromitteerd is door de praktijk ervan, zo is het concept van het zionisme gecompromitteerd door de praktijk.
Het organiseren van zo’n avond is een herhaling van zetten. Getuige talloze onafhankelijke onderzoeken weet het grote publiek in Europa al geruime tijd van de zionistische terreurpraktijken tegen de Palestijnse bevolking, en van het feit dat het Joods regime almaar doorgaat met het stelen van Palestijns land, zonder dat de EU en de VS dit door bijvoorbeeld een boycot bestraffen, en dat Israel de grootste bedreiging vormt voor de wereldvrede. Desondanks mogen de Israelische strijdkrachten sinds enige tijd deelnemen aan NAVO-oefeningen in de regio. Zelfs de schijn van enig respect voor het internationaal recht wordt niet meer hoog gehouden. Nederlandse mariniers oefenen in moderne ‘urban warfare’ in de bevriende zionistische schurkenstaat. Er is een parallelle werkelijkheid ontstaan, waarin de westerse deep state doet wat het wil, zonder dat iemand hier iets tegen kan ondernemen. De onderdaan weet dit ook, het is het onderwerp van films over inlichtingendiensten en van politieseries op televisie, zoals de bloedstollende The Capture van de BBC.
De mainstream-media zijn een onmisbaar onderdeel van deze parallelle werkelijkheid. Ik geef een volstrekt willekeurig voorbeeld. Dinsdag 17 september 2019 berichtte De Morgen, volgens Wikipedia ‘een Belgisch Nederlandstalig en links-progressief dagblad,’ het volgende:
Iedereen kijkt naar Trump: slaan de VS terug?
Zal Trump terugslaan na droneaanval op Saudi -Arabië
Oliecrisis: iedereen kijkt naar VS
Komt er een Amerikaanse vergelding voor de droneaanval op de Saudische olie-installaties? Nu de Saudi’s ook in de richting van Iran wijzen, kijkt iedereen weer naar de Amerikaanse president Trump. De prijzen voor olie bereiken door de geopolitieke spanning recordhoogtes.
17 september 2019, 5:08
De Verenigde Staten zijn ‘locked and loaded’ (klaar om af te vuren. svh) schreef Trump op Twitter na de drone-aanval van afgelopen weekend op de Saudische olie-industrie. Maar hoe de VS zouden reageren, ging volgens Trump ook afhangen van Saudi-Arabië. Op basis van de eerste resultaten van hun onderzoek laten de Saudi’s nu weten dat de projectielen waarmee de installaties zijn bestookt uit Iran komen.
Zonder enige context te verschaffen doet dit ‘links-progressieve dagblad’ alsof het meedogenloze Saudische regime een betrouwbare bron is, terwijl bekend is dat het zijn binnenlandse tegenstanders laat martelen en vermoorden, en in Jemen een genocidale oorlog voert die volgens The New York Times ‘has pushed millions to the brink of starvation.’ Dat president Trump een oorlog in de olierijke regio mede laat ‘afhangen van Saudi-Arabië,’ is typerend voor de westerse propaganda, wanneer verzwegen wordt dat het Saudische despotische bewind al jarenlang de grootste afnemer is van Amerikaans oorlogstuig. Het SIPRI, (onafhankelijk internationaal instituut dat wereldwijd onderzoek doet naar geweld, bewapening, wapenbeheersing en ontwapening) berichtte in april 2019 dat:
World military expenditure is estimated to have been $1822 billion in 2018. It was 2.6 per cent higher in real terms than in 2017 and 5.4 per cent higher than in 2009. Global military spending has been gradually rising following a post-2009 low in 2014. It is now 76 per cent higher than the post-cold war low in 1998… Military spending per capita increased from $230 in 2017 to $239 in 2018, as the 1.1 per cent growth in world population was surpassed by the growth in military spending.
Uit de cijfers van het SIPRI blijkt dat na de VS en China het slechts 33 miljoen inwoners tellende Saoedi-Arabië het meest van alle landen aan het militaire apparaat besteedt, meer dan respectievelijk India, Frankrijk, Rusland, het Verenigd Koninkrijk en Duitsland. Bovendien torent het met zijn 8,8 procent van het Bruto Binnenlands Product dat naar bewapening gaat, ver uit boven alle andere landen. Zodoende behoort Saudi-Arabië samen met ‘the United States, China, India and France’ tot de ‘five biggest spenders in 2018’ die tezamen verantwoordelijk zijn voor ’60 per cent of global military spending.’
Daar komt nog het volgende bij. Veel olie voor de wereldmarkt gaat door de Straat van Hormuz:
The waterway separates Iran and Oman, linking the Gulf to the Gulf of Oman and Arabian Sea.
The Strait is 21 miles (33 km) wide at its narrowest point, but the shipping lane is just two miles (three km) wide in either direction.
The U.S. Energy Information Administration estimated that 18.5 million barrels per day (bpd) of seaborne oil passed through the waterway in 2016. That was about 30 percent of crude and other oil liquids traded by sea in 2016.
About 17.2 million bpd of crude and condensates were estimated to have been shipped through the Strait in 2017 and about 17.4 million bpd in the first half of 2018, according to oil analytics firm Vortexa.
With global oil consumption standing at about 100 million bpd, that means almost a fifth passes through the Strait.
Most crude exported from Saudi Arabia, Iran, the UAE, Kuwait and Iraq — all members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries — is shipped through the waterway.
It is also the route used for nearly all the liquefied natural gas (LNG) produced by the world’s biggest LNG exporter, Qatar.
In geval van oorlog zijn de consequenties ervan niet te overzien. Desalniettemin is een oorlog in het Midden Oosten uiterst aantrekkelijk voor de oplagen en de kijk- en luistercijfers van zowel de corporate media als de staatsomroepen. Vandaar ook de tendentieuze berichtgeving van de westerse pers, zoals de bewering van De Morgen dat de ‘situatie echt ernstig [is]. Want dit zet Amerikaanse economische belangen op het spel,’ daarbij verzwijgend dat de VS als olie-exporteur profijt trekt van een stijgende olieprijs, en bovendien ontelbare miljarden aan de verkoop van wapentuig zal verdienen. Boven het artikel staat ‘Zal Trump terugslaan na droneaanval op Saudi-Arabië?’ daarmee aangevend dat in internationale betrekkingen bewijzen niet doorslaggevend zijn, en dat het hier gaat om het recht van de sterkste. Dit onderstreept nog eens hoe vergeefs en naïef de bijeenkomst van Een Ander Joods Geluid is, met haar eerste vraag: ‘hoe ziet een duurzame en rechtvaardige oplossing er uit?’ Die ‘oplossing’ ziet er net als elke andere illusie vanzelfsprekend schitterend uit. Maar nu de werkelijkheid zoals die beschreven wordt in de officiële documenten die de Amerikaanse auteur Thomas Suárez aanvoert in zijn boek State of Terror. How terrorism created modern Israel (2016):
The year 1953 brought the fifth year of displacement, poverty, and suspension of normal civilian life. It is about this time that Israeli terror against those it made refugees finally produced the inevitable, and it would seem intended, result: Palestinian reprisal raids were now a threat. As Glubb (Lieutenant-General Sir John Bagot Glubb, a British soldier, scholar and author. svh) put it, ‘Jewish terrorism made the infiltrator into a gunman': [T]he infiltrators are the dispossessed... The creation of a vast horde — nearly a million — of dispossessed, who four years after the battle are still wholly prevented from returning to their lands and villages now lying fallow or given over to Israeli immigrants, [the separation of villages from their fields], all these are Israel’s doing; and they have created a landless, and a depressed community of almost ungovernable proportions on the fringes of Israel.
Yet few infiltrators were armed even as late as the Suez Crisis, and fewer still crossed the Armistice with the intent to cause harm. Typical infiltrators, according to British ambassador to Jordan Geoffrey Furlonge, were hungry refugee children risking their lives to steal. Consistent with expansionist goals, Israel appeared to exacerbate the desperation as the opportunity offered. In Qalqilya (West Bank) there were several impoverished families near the Armistice Line who depended on a single cistern which, according to the MAC (Mixed Armistice Commision van de VN. svh), lay well within a twenty-yard uncertainty of the Armistice Line. Once the Line was set more clearly, the cistern ended up three yards into the Israeli side. Israel did not use the cistern, but for the families Israel had displaced, its water meant survival, and so the MAC asked that they be allowed to access it. Israel refused. Any Arab who tried to make the extra few steps to the water, its representative assured the MAC, would be shot dead. Israeli raids into the West Bank continued. Two IDF (Israel Defense Forces. svh) paratrooper companies were sent to Idna (Hebron area) and Falama on the night of 22 January with orders blow up houses and kill their inhabitants, but were intercepted by National Guardsmen, though a repeat attack against Falama six days later was more successful. On 25 February an IDF patrol murdered five shepherds, the youngest age 13, mutilated their bodies and stole their flock of 177 sheep.
April 22nd brought what became known as the ‘Jerusalem incident,’ in which both the Jordanians and the Israelis accused the other of initiating a bloody sunset encounter along the Armistice Line. Officially, the UN judged it impossible to determine who fired first; however according to the British General Consul in Jerusalem, the United Nations staff, and both the US and British consuls in Amman, the evidence pointed wholly to Israel. For one, Israeli soldiers knew about the violence in advance. The ‘lady friend’ (as the British Consul described her) of an Israeli soldier stationed at an advanced post happened to be employed at a French convent on the border, and the day before the incident, 21 April, he warned her not to go to the convent’s garden the next day because ‘there were going to be manoeuvres.’ The woman alerted the Mother Superior. Another factor cited is that the Israeli fire was from the first moment coordinated over a wide area. As explained by the senior investigating officer, ‘judging by his own military experience,’ he could not understand ‘how such widespread and simultaneous firing by the Israelis took place unless there had been a pre-set time or signal.’ According to Ambassador Furlonge, it was because of General Riley (uiterst partijdige Amerikaanse generaal, commandant van de United Nations Truce Supervision Organization. svh) — the same General Riley who saved Israel in the ‘barrel incident’ the previous summer — that the UN was unable to reach a verdict, as he ‘seems to have resorted to the suppression of evidence’ in withholding from the UN such information unfavorable to Israel. Riley then refused to investigate an alleged Israeli attack on Beit Sira on 17 May, the refusal, according to Glubb, at Israel’s request.
On 20 May, small parties of Israelis penetrated into the West Bank and attacked five villages in the Tulkarm area. According to the British in Amman and Nablus, they ‘laid mines at doors and windows of a house and then lobbed hand-grenades through the windows and directed machine-gun fire at the doors.’ The next night, Israelis blew up a house in Jaba, near Jerusalem, killing a woman and child; but Israel refused to allow the MAC to investigate, dismissing the attack as an internal matter for Jordan. De Ridder (Colonel Bennett L. de Ridder van het Belgische Leger. svh) then proposed modifying MAC procedure ‘to permit UN observers to investigate incidents, although the one party may not agree that incident is a breach of armistice agreement’; Jordan agreed, Israel refused. Finally, Israel alleged a Palestinian attack that it dated at about the same time as its attacks on Tulkarm and Jaba, thus ‘balancing’ the situation, and then refused the MAC’s procedure for investigating its own accusation. Among the continuing attacks, four Palestinian villages were targeted on four successive nights, May 20-23, and Palestinians already reduced to hiding in caves were killed on the 24th.
The MAC judged that there was no evidence to link two murders in Beit Jibrin on 8 August to the West Bank, but ‘reprisals nevertheless followed swiftly.’ On the night of 11-12 August, UN investigators reported that ‘Israel military forces using demolition mines, bangalore torpedoes, 2-inch mortars, machine-guns and small arms’ attacked Wadi Fukin, Surif, and Idna. ‘Bullet-riddled bodies near the doorways and multiple bullet hits on the doors of the demolished houses indicated that the inhabitants had been forced to remain inside until their homes were blown up over them.’ US Colonel T.M. Hinkle reported that the Israeli Air Force’s strafing of Gaza resumed in July (1953), and it was this summer that Israel’s elite terror militia, Unit 101, began its raids. On 28 August, the young Ariel Sharon (then Scheinerman) led Unit 101 in an attack against the Bureij refugee camp in Gaza in an alleged search for ‘infiltrators,’ but what the MAC described as ‘an appalling case of deliberate mass murder.’ Using automatic weapons, hand grenades, and incendiary bombs, forty-three men, women, children whom Israel had ethnically cleansed five years earlier were killed, and 22 seriously injured. One member of Unit 101 refused to take part in the Bureij massacre due to its barbarity, and when some soldiers questioned Sharon’s indiscriminate slaughter of women, he dismissed the victims as Arab ‘whores.’ He had a reputation for such dehumanization — Hareetz reporter Uzi Benziman recorded Sharon responding with laughter as he watched a junior officer torment an old Palestinian man and then murder him at close range, and being amused by inventive ploys to murder civilians, such as trapping a peaceful Bedouin boy as he shepherded his flock. Israel’s ‘balancing’ smokescreen to the Gaza refugee camp massacre came three days later, when Tel Aviv radio reported terrible news: ‘Arabs’ had attacked UNRWA warehouses in Gaza. The story served its purpose, but it was a fabrication — that it was ‘entirely without foundation’ came directly from the acting director of UNRWA, Leslie Carver.
The pattern continued. The MAC dismissed Israeli claims that the Israeli village of Ahiezer, near Lydda, was attacked by infiltrators on 7 September (1953), but nonetheless four Israeli patrols crossed into the West Bank in ‘retaliation,’ attacking a shepherd, stealing his flock, and abducting a woman who was collecting firewood. The fate of the twenty-five year old woman kidnapped by the IDF remains unknown. When the MAC demanded that she be freed, Israel replied that she had suddenly died. To demands that her body be returned to her family, Israel replied that she had already been buried.
Israel’s ongoing activity in the south, though less visible, would ultimately prove more decisive. A CIA report dated 20 September summarized: In the past two weeks, Israeli troops have made almost daily armed incursions into the neutral zone and attacked Arab bedouin settlements. Moreover, the insistence of UN observers observers that the Israelis leave the zone has apparently been ignored... [it is] apparently a deliberate move on the part of the Ben-Gurion government to gain control of the El Auja [demilitarized] zone.
October of 1953 began relatively quietly. The MAC condemned Israeli ambushes on the 10th and rejected an Israeli claim of an attack on the 11th for lack of evidence. However, when on the 13th a grenade was thrown into a house in the Israeli town of Yehud, killing a woman and two of her children, the Jordanians themselves acknowledged that West Bank infiltrators might be responsible. Glubb immediately flew to Jerusalem and met with Hutchison. They arranged for the Israelis and their tracking dogs to follow the tracks wherever they may lead. The bloodhounds, however, lost the scent in Rantis, due east of Yehud.
In ‘retaliation’ for the unsolved crime, the following evening, 14 October, Sharon’s Unit 101 invaded the West Bank village of Qibya and murdered sixty-nine Palestinians, half of them women and children, and blew up at least forty-five houses. Once again, the victims had been forced to remain in their homes while they were bombed. The roads to Budrus and Shuqba were mined, and both villages were shelled. UN observers who reached the scene about midnight reported that about 10 p.m. Israeli forces, estimated conservatively at 3 companies or 400 men, moved on the village of Qibya... Forces used demolition bombs, Bangalore torpedoes, hand grenades, automatic weapons and incendiary bombs. Persons attempting to escape were machine-gunned.
For Hutchison, it was ‘difficult to describe the wanton destruction that had taken place.’ An Arab woman [was] perched high on a pile of rubble. Here and there between the rocks you could see a tiny hand or foot protruding... the lifeless bodies of her six children. The bullet riddled body of the husband lay face down in the dusty road behind her.
Sharon was obeying orders: Central Command had instructed him ‘to attack and temporarily to occupy the village, carry out destruction and maximum killing, in order to drive out the inhabitants of the village from their homes.’ Sharett’s (Moshe Sharett. tweede premier van Israel. svh) diary records the official order for Unit 101 to attack Qibya, as well as Ben-Gurion’s approval of the operation. But Qibya became Israel’s new public relations scandal, and so in a special broadcast, Ben-Gurion emphatically denied ‘the false and fantastic tale’ that Israeli soldiers committed the massacre. ‘We have examined the facts in detail,’ and can categorically state that ‘not a single unit, not even the smallest, was absent from its barracks.’ Most extraordinarily, Ben-Gurion, addressing his nation and the world, framed Holocaust survivors for the slaughter.
Voor alle duidelijkheid: op 31 maart 1955 schreef minister-president Moshe Sharett in zijn dagboek over zijn eigen socialistische Arbeiderspartij:
Wij rechtvaardigen het systeem van vergelding op grond van pragmatische overwegingen… We hebben de mentale en morele remmen op dit instinct vernietigd en hebben het mogelijk gemaakt om wraak als morele waarde aan te moedigen. Deze opvatting wordt gedeeld door grote delen van de bevolking in het algemeen en massa’s jongeren in het bijzonder, maar zij is geconcretiseerd en heeft de waarde van een heilig principe bereikt in Sharon’s bataljon, dat het vergeldingsinstrument van de staat is geworden.
Naar aanleiding van de continuïteit van Joods-Israëlische oorlogsmisdaden verklaarde de gezaghebbende Orthodox-Joodse hoogleraar Yeshayahu Leibowitz na de militaire aanval van de zionistische staat op Libanon in 1982:
Dit is de noodzakelijke en natuurlijke voortzetting van onze politieke lijn. Wanneer we over een ander volk moeten heersen dan is het onmogelijk te voorkomen dat nazimethoden worden gebruikt. De massamoord werd door óns begaan. Wat in Libanon is gebeurd, het aanrichten van een gruwelijk bloedbad in de vluchtelingenkampen, is een nieuwe fase in het zelfmoordproces van de staat Israël.
En op zijn beurt waarschuwde de Joods-Israelisch auteur Amos Oz:
Na Libanon kunnen we het monster niet langer meer negeren, zelfs als het sluimert… Na Libanon moeten we niet net doen alsof het monster alleen in generaal Sharons verblijf huist… of alleen in de Joodse nederzettingen op de West Bank. Het houdt zich half slapend praktisch overal op, zelfs in onze… gemeenschappelijke mythen… We hebben het niet in Libanon achtergelaten… Het is hier, onder ons, deel van ons, als een schaduw.
Opnieuw een fragment uit het uitgebreid gedocumenteerde boek State of Terror. How terrorism created modern Israel:
The MAC acting chairman described Qibya as a ‘sheer cold blooded massacre.’ The US, already alarmed by Israel’s continued obstruction of UN personnel and refusal to suspend its illegal diversion of the upper Jordan, described Israel’s behavior as ‘shocking’ and ‘was so disturbed about a whole series of Israeli incidents along the Arab frontiers’ that President Eisenhower held up $26 million allocated to Israel for the first six months of 1954, and ‘urgently’ considered Security Council action in consideration of ‘the inefficiency of past representations to the Israeli government.’ This was short-lived: According to Benny Morris, Israel then ‘promptly and successfully mobilized the pro-Israel lobby in Washington,’ which caused US officials to grow concerned about its 'effect on General Eisenhower’s and the Administration’s political future.’ New York Mayor-elect Robert F. Wagner joined Zionist groups in smearing as anti-Semites anyone who called for an investigation into Qibya. Ben-Gurion claimed persecution: ‘If it is difficult to be a Jew,’ he said in response to condemnation of the massacre, ‘then it is even more difficult to be a Jewish state.’ Ben-Gurion then linked this ‘difficulty’ to 'something that happened two thousand years ago in this very country,’ which the NY Times assumed to be a reference to the birth of Christ.
As with previous attacks, the victims were retroactively vilified: Israeli media announced that Qibya was ‘a nest of marauders.’ This, too, was a lie: the village had not once figured into the MAC files, or in any incident, since the Armistice was signed four and a half years earlier. When investigations by the American Consulate and US Embassy contradicted Ben-Gurion, the Israeli Foreign Minister blamed the United States for a lack of friendship. The US, he charged, was encouraging ‘Arab appetites.’
The Qibya terror attack ‘greatly advanced his [Sharon’s] professional career,’ Sharett wrote in his diary. The public relations debacle caused by the massacre lingered, however, and so diversionary ‘balancing’ incidents were needed. There would be two: one eleven days later, and one the following March. On the morning of 25 October, an Israeli freight train was hit by a bomb, derailing the locomotive and eleven cars (all empty). Immediately, Israel lodged a ‘sharp protest against this new Jordanian aggression,’ and wanted Britain to ‘reprove (afkeuren. svh) Jordan for this latest act of violence [as it was] swift to react to the Kibya (Qibya. svh) incident.’ The Israeli press stressed how fortunate it was that the ‘infiltrators’ happened not to hit a crowded passenger train. The train bombing, however, was almost surely a false flag operation. There was no evidence to link it to the West Bank, and in the words of Ambassador Furlonge, ‘we all here remain firmly of the opinion that the whole thing was a frame-up on the part of the Israelis, who staged it themselves.’
Like Deir Yassin in 1948, Qibya appeared to have been calculated to destroy any hope among the survivors that they could ever regain normalcy as long as they were on land wanted by Israel. In Qibya’s wake, Israel heightened the psychological terror by continuing military ‘exercises’ with live ammunition right at the Armistice Line, stray bullets hitting Palestinian villages such as Budrus, all to the accompaniment of the IAF’s (Israeli Air Force. svh) menacing airspace violations. None of this was in response to any Jordanian action. The British ambassador to Israel, Francis Evans, suspected that Israel was now encouraging Jewish settlers to attack Palestinians and then say they had no control over them — this foreshadowing settler attacks in the West Bank and East Jerusalem today.
It is unclear whether surveillance ‘hiking’ teams, like those of the Mandate period, continued on a small scale. In late 1953, three Israeli men and two women were caught by Jordanian police, then killed when they attempted to escape. They carried maps, compasses, and army type water bottles, but no identification papers. Israel claimed they were tourists en route to Petra yet, curiously, did not raise this incident with the MAC, nor explain why Israeli tourists would have thought they could enter Jordan when the reverse would have meant an IDF execution on the spot.
Mount Scopus, which Israel now armed by airdropping cargo by parachute, flared to the fore again on 1 November (1953), when a time bomb destroyed part of the eight-inch diameter pipe that was Arab Jerusalem’s only water pipeline. UN observers followed the tracks of the attack to Mount Scopus, where Israel blocked them from any investigation. The British on the scene suspected that the sabotage was intended to provoke Palestinians to attack Mt. Scopus.
More raids filled the night of 21-22 December. A party of about four Israelis ‘blasted open door of house selected apparently at random and murdered women inside with automatic fire [and then] murdered two unarmed Arabs running to the scene’ to help. Two more homes were sprayed with bullets, but the occupants had escaped. Near Tarqumiya, a Bedouin village was attacked with Sten guns, submachine guns, and a grenade. The ‘balancing’ allegation came on the 28th: Israel announced that an Arab had murdered an Israeli ‘engaged in marking the demarcation line.’ A meeting was immediately arranged for 17:00 hrs at the scene of the alleged murder. The UN representative and the Jordanian delegate were present and waited two hours for the Israeli representative, who failed to come. The meeting was set again for the next day, but the UN and Jordanian representatives again waited in vain for the Israeli representative. At a MAC meeting on the 30th, the Israeli representative, asked why he twice failed to show up at the meeting arranged to examine his own allegation, replied that he was both times ‘unavoidably late.’
En zo gaat het jaar in jaar uit door, er komt geen eind aan de Joods-Israelisch terrorisme. Een voorbeeld uit 1954:
It is the deliberate intention of the Israelis,’ concluded British Lt.-Col R. J. Gammon in reporting one of the continuing IDF mortar attacks on the West Bank, 'to provoke the Arab Legion into crossing the frontier in retaliation,’ and ‘in this they may well succeed.’ US intelligence as well continued its bleak assessment of Israeli intentions.
When on the 2nd of July, 1954, bombs exploded inside the post office in Alexandria, the Egyptian government’s ability to control terrorism was thrown into doubt. Whether the attacks were by the Muslim Brotherhood, as some claimed, or the Communists, as others alleged, Egypt was obviously not stable, and the British, who were considering withdrawing their military from the region, now had second thoughts. Matters worsened twelve days later as bombs exploded inside U.S. cultural centres in both Alexandria and Cairo. The events bolstered Defense Minister Lavon’s case when at a news conference on the 19th he warned that Israel must act aggressively to defend itself from its neighbors — and, significantly, that Israel’s borders (Armistice Line) ‘should not be regarded as unchangeable.’
On the 23rd, the Egyptian bombers targeted cinemas in Cairo and Alexandria, and a railroad yard in Alexandria. But then the nascent wave of terror abruptly ended: As one of the bombers neared the next target, the British-owned Rio Cinema in Alexandria, his device exploded prematurely. Soon, thirteen men and one women were in custody, charged with espionage and terrorism against Egyptian, American, and British civilian targets, including a cinema, library, and an American educational centre. Egypt was now certainly foremost in Lavon’s thoughts, because the suspects were neither Communists nor Islamic radicals, but Jews and Israelis. The bombings — by Israel’s Unit 131, created in 1948 to conduct sabotage and ‘black propaganda’ — were what the CIA called a ‘sabotage operation against US and UK installations,’ a bungled false-flag operation that soon became known by Lavon’s name.
Egypt’s arrests ignited charges of anti-Semitism. The Political Director of the World Jewish Congress warned the British government that he feared large-scale anti-Jewish campaigns in Egypt, and others warned of a wave of pogroms. Rabbi Nahum, chief rabbi of the Jewish communities in Egypt, responded with the following statement: I consider it my duty to declare that there is no racial terror against our communities in Egypt. On the contrary, and especially under the present regime [Nasser], the Egyptian authorities have repeatedly shown their sympathy for Egyptian Jews.
Much the same was reported by T. W. Garvey from the British Embassy in Cairo. ‘Anti-Semitism as known in Europe had no real parallel’ in Egypt, and ‘successive Egyptian governments and this one in particular, made a special point of religious toleration.’ Nonetheless the Israeli government pressured Britain to intervene to free the suspects and to ‘mobilize the support of world opinion’ against the Egyptians. A guilty verdict, Israel warned, could ‘provoke extremely violent reactions in Israel.’ The typical view of the Western public was likely that expressed by the Manchester Guardian: the accusations against the defendants were too outrageous to be plausible. ‘What conceivable benefit could Israel have gained,’ it asked, from bombing American and British facilities?
The answer, however, soon became clear. In the blunt words of the CIA, Israel staged ‘Arab’ bombings ‘to embitter relations between Egypt and the West.’ Domestically, Israel used its strict news censorship to keep its denials credible, and did not admit the Affair to its own citizens until 2005, when it honored the operatives at a Jerusalem ceremony and bestowed certificates of appreciation upon three who were still alive. Israel’s archives relating to the operation remain secret.
Dit voert ons terug naar de vraag van Een Ander Joods Geluid: ‘hoe ziet een duurzame en rechtvaardige oplossing er uit?’ Zou het bestuur van deze goedwillende mensen niet beseffen dat dit allang niet meer de vraag is, dat in de realpolitiek duurzaamheid en rechtvaardigheid überhaupt nooit hebben bestaan? En dat het zionisme niets ander is dan een criminele beweging, aangezien ‘zo goed als het concept van het communisme helaas voorgoed gecompromitteerd is door de praktijk ervan, zo is het concept van het zionisme gecompromitteerd door de praktijk.’ Later meer.
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