Drumming up Anti-Israel Feeling as a Diplomatic Device

[Guest guest]

Drumming up Anti-Israel Feeling as a Diplomatic Device

24 September: The attempt by the British foreign secretary Jack Straw

to curry favor in Tehran by playing on his hosts' violent anti-Jewish

and anti-Israeli emotions will not endear him to Israelis. His turn

of phrase and message show he shares their feelings about the

country, Israel, he proposes to visit Tuesday, September 25: "…one of

the factors which helps breed terrorism is the anger which many

people in the region feel at events over the years in Palestine," he

said.

Palestine? And the venomously implied linkage of the events in that

unmentionable place Israel with the atrocities in New York and

Washington?

The Israeli foreign ministry, instead of telling Jack Straw he was

not welcome in "Palestine", rushed forward to explain that the

foreign secretary's sentiments were not shared by prime minister Blair.

Straw's is not the only tainted innuendo coming out of London. This

line has been taken often by the BBC in recent months. The campaign

to have Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon indicted as a war

criminal for the murder of Palestinians by Lebanese Christians in

Beirut 19 years ago is driven and funded by International Amnesty

head office in London, which blows up the flames each time they die

down.

The anti-Jewish infection has rippled outward to hands more than

willing to exploit the horrors inflicted by terrorists on America.

More than one respectable publication in the United States has picked

up an unfounded report appearing in the Pakistani press alleging that

4000 Israelis worked in the twin towers in New York while only very

few fell victim to the disaster because they were tipped off in

advance. Who tipped them off? Who but the Mossad?

The implication is clear.

These unlovely smears fit neatly into a well-orchestrated effort in

Europe and the Arab world – assisted by certain quarters of the

United States and Israel - to pin the monstrous wave of international

terrorism on the Israel-Palestinian conflict.

This claim provides a handy alibi for their failure to jump aboard

the bloc of nations President George W. Bush is striving to assemble

for his war against terrorism. It is far easier to deflect US demands

of support by pointing the finger at Jerusalem as the coalition's

main stumbling block. Israel (excepting only foreign minister Shimon

Peres) is presented as being gratuitously difficult about wiping

Yasser Arafat's thirty-year record as a terrorist clean, and

accepting him as a respectable leader. Most unreasonably, Israeli

refuses to save him, his organization and the radical Islamic

terrorist organizations operating under the aegis of the Palestinian

Authority from America's anti-terrorist wrath. It is Israel's fault

therefore that Arab governments cannot join the American-led war

coalition. The European governments, fearing for their trade with the

Islamic world, are full of sympathy for their plight.

In Jerusalem, Jack Straw proposes to follow up on the thesis he

outlined in Tehran - that Israel is not the victim of terror, but its

cause, and must therefore kowtow to the Palestinians, who are the

victims not the terrorists – a topsy-turvy case the Europeans have

been pushing anyway by singing along with the Arabs in stigmatizing

Israel at every chance.

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