After the war on the Gaza Strip, Israel entered the “doghouse” and has been unable to get out. The world has come to deal with Israel as it is, a fascist state that kills, destroys and occupies. Israel was continuing to confront the repercussions of the Goldstone report, by the Jewish South African Judge Richard Goldstone, on the crimes committed in Gaza, when a report by an international committee on Israel's attack on the Mavi Marmara peace flotilla was issued; it said clearly that Israel's killing of peace advocates was a crime that was intentionally committed, and in violation of international law. Naturally, the western press, and specifically the American press, is liberal about everything except Israel. They dealt with the Goldstone report within the narrowest scope possible, and ignored the report on the freedom flotilla. However, this press is digging its grave with its own hands. Today there is a new media, electronic newspapers, and blogs that are free of the constraints of traditional journalism. While gathering information to write this column, I found only one positive and fair relevant topic, in the Washington Post, written by Tara Bahrampour and entitled, “Hostility across US jars Muslim college students.” Condemning Israel is nothing new, and there is nothing new in covering up such a condemnation. The General Assembly of the United Nations, and the Security Council, despite the veto by the United States, have issued resolutions against Israel that I can almost say go farther than the condemnations of other countries put together. These resolutions of condemnation have not led to a change in Israel's behavior; instead, it has continued to commit crimes, protected by a US veto and the American media. The United Nations' Human Rights Commission, an overwhelming majority of whose decisions over 60 years have stopped from condemning Israel, was abolished thanks to American pressure and succeeded by the Human Rights Council in 2005. What happened? The Council has issued 40 decisions up to now, of which 30 condemn Israel. They have included the Goldstone report and the report on the flotilla. This Council is a miniature General Assembly and a condemnation by these bodies reflects public opinion in the world of a fascist state that kills women and children at Nazi rates (according to figures from the B'Tselem Human Rights Information Center in the Occupied Territories). The General Assembly has 192 member states, and the Council is made up of 47 countries, divided into regional groups: 13 from Africa, 13 from Asia, eight from Latin America, seven from Eastern Europe and six from Western Europe. The Israeli cabal says that there are non-democratic countries on the Council, which is true. However, the majority are very democratic, or semi-democratic. If democracy is an excuse, then two winners of the Nobel Peace Prize, former Presidents Jimmy Carter and Mary Robinson, have condemned Israeli attacks on human rights in the Occupied Territories. There are also the Scandinavian countries, which are a measure of true democracy around the world. Scandinavian countries were ground-breakers in boycotting the products made by Israeli settlements, to the extent that the settlement of Ariel stopped exporting to Europe. The Swedish retirement fund divested from Israel in March and was followed by other Scandinavian companies. In August, the Norwegian Oil Fund divested from Israeli oil companies working in Africa and announced that the settlements were the reason. Of course, American Christian churches acted before all of these moves, by divesting from Israel. Perhaps I should mention here that Frank Johanssen, the head of the Finnish branch of Amnesty International, described Israel in his blog at the biggest newspaper in his country as a “scum state,” based on what he saw and experienced during his visits there between the 1970s and 1990s. Johansson became famous for attacking George W Bush on Finnish television, when he called him “the biggest executioner in the Western Hemisphere.” All of the above condemnations and stances are from non-Arabs and non-Muslims; they are from the strongholds of western democracy. Canada is a democratic country, and there is no debate over this. However, the support from its right-wing government, headed by Stephen Harper, is blatantly pro-Israeli. As a result, Canada paid the price, as it lost the seat it traditionally occupied on the Security Council, after the majority of member states voted against it twice. It withdrew its candidacy on the third try, and Portugal won instead. Israel is in the dog house. It is not a member in any regional grouping of Human Rights Council members; Israel is the proverbial coal that stains the hands that touch it, as Canada discovered. Once again, the American press, which was complicit with the Bush administration in the war on Iraq, and has covered Israeli crimes before and after this war, is no longer alone in the field. There is the new, free media, whose readers are more plentiful than those of the print media, which is losing money from its daily distribution, according to the figures published. One could write volumes about this topic, as the state of survivors of the Nazis and their descendants has become accused of Nazi practices. To be continued tomorrow. [email protected]
