Robert Fisk: Israel has crept into the EU without anyone noticing
Middle East
*The Independent, Saturday, 31 July 2010*
The death of five Israeli servicemen in a helicopter crash in Romania this
week raised scarcely a headline.
There was a Nato-Israeli exercise in progress. Well, that's OK then. Now
imagine the death of five Hamas fighters in a helicopter crash in Romania
this week. We'd still be investigating this extraordinary phenomenon. Now
mark you, I'm not comparing Israel and Hamas. Israel is the country that
justifiably slaughtered more than 1,300 Palestinians in Gaza 19 months ago –
more than 300 of them children – while the vicious, blood-sucking and
terrorist Hamas killed 13 Israelis (three of them soldiers who actually shot
each other by mistake).
But there is one parallel. Judge Richard Goldstone, the eminent Jewish South
African judge, decided in his 575-page UN inquiry into the Gaza bloodbath
that both sides had committed war crimes – he was, of course, quite rightly
called "evil" by all kinds of justifiably outraged supporters of Israel in
the US, his excellent report rejected by seven EU governments – and so a
question presents itself. What is Nato doing when it plays war games with an
army accused of war crimes?
Or, more to the point, what on earth is the EU doing when it cosies up to
the Israelis? In a remarkable, detailed – if slightly over-infuriated – book
to be published in November, the indefatigable David Cronin is going to
present a microscopic analysis of "our" relations with Israel. I have just
finished reading the manuscript. It leaves me breathless. As he says in his
preface, "Israel has developed such strong political and economic ties to
the EU over the past decade that it has become a member state of the union
in all but name." Indeed, it was Javier Solana, the grubby top dog of the
EU's foreign policy (formerly Nato secretary general), who actually said
last year that "Israel, allow me to say, is a member of the European Union
without being a member of the institution".
Pardon me? Did we know this? Did we vote for this? Who allowed this to
happen? Does David Cameron – now so forcefully marketing Turkish entry to
the EU – agree with this? Probably yes, since he goes on calling himself a
"friend of Israel" after that country produced an excellent set of forged
British passports for its murderers in Dubai. As Cronin says, "the EU's
cowardice towards Israel is in stark contrast to the robust position it has
taken when major atrocities have occurred in other conflicts". After the
Russia-Georgia war in 2008, for example, the EU tasked an independent
mission to find out if international law had been flouted, and demanded an
international inquiry into human rights abuses after Sri Lanka's war against
the Tamil Tigers. Cronin does not duck Europe's responsibility for the
Jewish Holocaust and agrees that there will always be a "moral duty" on our
governments to ensure it never happens again – though I did notice that
Cameron forgot to mention the 1915 Armenian Holocaust when he was sucking up
to the Turks this week.
But that's not quite the point. In 1999, Britain's arms sales to Israel – a
country occupying the West Bank (and Gaza, too) and building illegal
colonies for Jews and Jews only on Arab land – were worth £11.5m; within two
years, this had almost doubled to £22.5m. This included small arms,
grenade-making kits and equipment for fighter jets and tanks. There were a
few refusals after Israel used modified Centurion tanks against the
Palestinians in 2002, but in 2006, the year in which Israel slaughtered
another 1,300 Lebanese, almost all of them civilians, in another crusade
against Hizbollah's "world terror", Britain granted over 200 weapons
licences.
Some British equipment, of course, heads for Israel via the US. In 2002,
Britain gave "head-up displays" manufactured by BAE Systems for Lockheed
Martin which promptly installed them in F-16 fighter-bombers destined for
Israel. The EU did not object. In the same year, it should be added, the
British admitted to training 13 members of the Israeli military. US planes
transporting weapons to Israel at the time of the 2006 Lebanon war were
refuelled at British airports (and, alas, it appears at Irish airports too).
In the first three months of 2008, we gave licenses for another £20m of
weapons for Israel – just in time for Israel's onslaught on Gaza. Apache
helicopters used against Palestinians, says Cronin, contain parts made by
SPS Aerostructures in Nottinghamshire, Smiths Industries in Cheltenham, Page
Aerospace in Middlesex and Meggit Avionics in Hampshire.
Need I go on? Israel, by the way, has been praised for its "logistics" help
to Nato in Afghanistan – where we are annually killing even more Afghans
than the Israelis usually kill Palestinians – which is not surprising since
Israel military boss Gabi Ashkenazi has visited Nato headquarters in
Brussels to argue for closer ties with Nato. And Cronin convincingly argues
an extraordinary – almost obscenely beautiful – financial arrangement in
"Palestine". The EU funds millions of pounds' worth of projects in Gaza.
These are regularly destroyed by Israel's American-made weaponry. So it goes
like this. European taxpayers fork out for the projects. US taxpayers fork
out for the weapons which Israel uses to destroy them. Then EU taxpayers
fork out for the whole lot to be rebuilt. And then US taxpayers... Well,
you've got the point. Israel, by the way, already has an "individual
co-operation programme" with Nato, locking Israel into Nato's computer
networks.
All in all, it's good to have such a stout ally as Israel on our side, even
if its army is a rabble and some of its men war criminals. Come to that, why
don't we ask Hizbollah to join Nato as well – just imagine how its guerrilla
tactics would benefit our chaps in Helmand. And since Israel's Apache
helicopters often kill Lebanese civilians – a whole ambulance of women and
children in 1996, for example, blown to pieces by a Boeing Hellfire AGM 114C
air-to-ground missile – let's hope the Lebanese can still send a friendly
greeting to the people of Nottinghamshire, Middlesex, Hampshire and, of
course, Cheltenham.
[....This should be nothing new to us because Israel anyway was EU's baby which arise from their collective guilt of The Holoucast. Just make the 'stupid, Arab bastards collect the tab in posterity. Serve them right anyway for having people like Salahuddin Al Ayyubi in their midst ....Desraeli perhaps could have thought this way. '. History, and the 8 o'clock news, anyway, is written and transcripted by the victors.
My point is we do not need people like Cronin or Fisk to tell us what is going on there. We just take a short walk into history.....AND YET WE ARE STILL OK WHEN OUR BOYS AND GIRLS, irrespective of their 'niat' or ignorance ,go around walking this 'earth' in their favourite EU club football jerseys revealing the CROSS. We are OK even when NATO soldiers and American drones bomb and napalm those poor Afghans and Pakis peasants in their homes for the simple reason that these ignorant folks want to practice their brand of Islam rather than some unheard of system called 'demoncracy' when some village idiots also has the same weightage as the 'Khans' and the provincial ulama'.
To the modern secular 'crusaders' from NATO and US of A, anyone wearing turbans or spotting a goatee are reasonable targets. Their children are potential fundamentalists and terrorist. So no one should lose any sleep over them. Collateral damage such as this is just a necessary evil...Or was it Hilary Clinton the other day who uttered," thousands of Afghans life lost are worthwhile, if one day an Afghan woman can lift up her skirt in public to show her thigh without running the risk of the demonic Sharia'...perhaps this is just words playing in my head.
Perhaps Afghanistan is better served when the Americans and the rest of the 'crusaders' finally can come to term with the fact that, when come to faith, one cannot really beat Islam! I am saying Islam here categorically, not Muslims. Of the latter,we seem to still be a total mess! One has to learn how to live with Islam ...perhaps more peacefully than ever before.]
And we are OK...We are still OK....]
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