NEWS & COMMENT: Israel rejects international panel to investigate flotilla raid
[On Sunday, Israel rejected a suggestion by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon of "a panel that would be headed by former New Zealand prime minister Geoffrey Palmer and include representatives from Turkey, Israel and the United States," *Haaretz* reported.[1] -- Rather than investigating the Israel's killing of activists, Netanyahu told Ban Ki-moon that he wants to investigate "who organized these extremists, who funded them and supplied them with equipment, and how they ended up on the ship," Barak Ravid said. -- "Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, speaking on CNN, said Ankara would insist on an independent commission and suggested that Israel's rejection of an international inquiry showed it wanted to cover up the facts of the raid. 'We want to know the facts. If Israel rejects this, it means it is also another proof of their guilt.'" -- But Michael Oren, Israel's ambassador to Washington, told "Fox News Sunday" that "Israel is a democratic nation. Israel has the ability and the right to investigate itself, not to be investigated by any international board." --
COMMENT: The notion that Israel is a democratic nation in the Middle East that shares American values is a myth, Shlomo Sand demonstrates in *The Invention of the Jewish People* (Verso, 2009). (http://www.scribd.com/doc/22922200/Sand-The-Invention-of-the-Jewish-People-2009-Synopsis) -- Israel is not a democracy, but, as Shlomo shows in a meticulously researched volume, a liberal ethnocracy based on fictitious claims about "the Jewish people" that derive from a "nationalization of the Bible and its transformation into a reliable history book" that took place between the 1850s and the 1930s. -- This is why Palestinian Arabs are denied rights. -- This is why Israel has erected an apartheid state. --
The concept of nationalism that informed the Zionist project was not the "citizenship nationalism" that characterizes the United States but an "ethnicist nationalism" prevalent in Germany, Poland, Lithuania, Ukraine, and Russia (on account, in Sand's view, to the lack of a long-standing high culture (*The Invention of the Jewish People*, pp. 49-54). -- Israel is founded on an historically untenable "biblical mythistory"; this is why it persecutes Palestinian Arabs. --
Some early Zionist intellectuals, like Nathan Birnbaum (who coined the word 'Zionism'), Max Nordau, the early Martin Buber, Vladimir (Ze'ev) Jabotinsky, and Arthur Ruppin, were explicitly racialist thinkers (Sand, pp. 256-65). -- The U.N. voted to establish a "Jewish state" in 1947; it did not define "Jewish" but did mandate minority rights (Sand, pp. 280-81). -- In 1948, the Proclamation of Independence was ambivalent, proclaiming "complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants" but also "the right of the Jewish people to national rebirth in its own country" (Sand, pp. 281-82). --
While every large group that sees itself as a people has the right to national self-determination, but not to dispossess another group of its land to achieve it, as Israel has done (on that subject, see Ilan Pappe, *The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine* (2006). (http://www.scribd.com/doc/18061105/Pappe-The-Ethnic-Cleansing-of-Palestine-2006-Synopsis) --
Unlike the United States, Israel has no formal constitution, because this was opposed by the rabbinate (and Ben-Gurion). -- "Zionist thinking has always been careful not to call the new Israeli society a people, much less a nation"; instead, "the Zionist identity contains a very distinctive blend of ethnocentric nationalism with traditional religion, where the religion becomes an instrument serving the leaders of the imaginary ethnos" (Sand, pp. 285-86). --
This is not a political project that American taxpayers should be asked to pay for and that American power should defend. --Mark]
Bravo Mark!!
http://www.ufppc.org/us-a-world-news-mainmenu-35/9704/
1.
ISRAEL REJECTS U.N. PROPOSAL FOR JOINT GAZA FLOTILLA PROVE WITH U.S. AND TURKEY
By Barak Ravid
** Prime Minister Netanyahu tells Ban Ki-moon: Investigation of the facts must be carried out responsibly and objectively. **
Haaretz
June 6, 2010
http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/israel-rejects-un-proposal-for-joint-gaza-flotilla-probe-with-u-s-and-turkey-1.294489
Israel rejected on Sunday a proposal by United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon for an international investigation into its deadly raid on a Gaza-bound aid ship and said it had the right to launch its own inquiry.
"We are rejecting an international commission. We are discussing with the Obama administration a way in which our inquiry will take place," Michael Oren, Israel's ambassador to Washington, said on the U.S. TV program "Fox News Sunday."
The U.N. chief had suggested establishing a panel that would be headed by former New Zealand prime minister Geoffrey Palmer and include representatives from Turkey, Israel and the United States, an Israeli official said earlier in Jerusalem.
Netanyahu discussed the proposal for a multinational panel with Ban in a telephone call on Saturday but told cabinet ministers from his right-wing Likud party on Sunday that Israel was exploring other options, political sources said.
"I told [Ban] that the investigation of the facts must be carried out responsibly and objectively," Netanyahu told ministers. "We need to consider the issue carefully and level-headedly, while maintaining Israel's national interests as well as those of the Israel Defense Forces."
The prime minister said he told Ban that some of the passengers aboard the stormed the Mavi Marmara were members of an extremist terror-backing Turkish organization. He stressed that any investigation into the event should determine who organized these extremists, who funded them and supplied them with equipment, and how they ended up on the ship.
Netanyahu also discussed the Israeli blockade on Gaza, saying that discussions surrounding the easing of the blockade had begun before the flotilla ever set sail.
"Our desire is to facilitate the transfer of civilian and humanitarian goods to the civilian population, while preventing the transfer of weapons and warfare materials." He added that "the provocative flotilla will not stop us from discussing this, and we are considering proposals on the topic made by friendly nations."
The prime minister further told the cabinet that he spoke with U.S. Vice President Joe Biden over the weekend as well as the prime ministers of Greece and Bulgaria.
Nine Turks were killed on Monday in the Israeli commando raid on the Mavi Marmara, part of a six-vessel convoy that set out to challenge an Israeli-led blockade.
Israel has said its troops used lethal force in self-defense after they were set upon by pro-Palestinian activists wielding clubs and knives.
Israeli leaders have spoken publicly about setting up an internal investigation with foreign observers into the interception of the Turkish-flagged ship off the coast of Gaza, an enclave run by Hamas Islamists who oppose Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's peace efforts with Israel.
"Israel is a democratic nation. Israel has the ability and the right to investigate itself, not to be investigated by any international board," Oren said.
Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, speaking on CNN, said Ankara would insist on an independent commission and suggested that Israel's rejection of an international inquiry showed it wanted to cover up the facts of the raid.
"We want to know the facts. If Israel rejects this, it means it is also another proof of their guilt. They are not self-confident to face the facts," he said.
Turkey's relations with Israel, once a close ally, have soured badly since the deadly raid.
Israel's navy boarded another ship carrying aid and pro-Palestinian activists to Gaza on Saturday. Its interception of the Irish-owned MV Rachel Corrie ended without violence following diplomatic efforts to avoid bloodshed.
"I want to pay tribute to the crew of the Rachel Corrie for demonstrating in no uncertain terms their peaceful intentions," Irish Foreign Minister Micheal Martin told Irish public radio RTE. "We of course communicated that relentlessly to the Israeli authorities."
An Israeli official said Israel wanted to establish whether the Turkish government had sponsored the Mavi Marmara, where the strength of the resistance to the boarding party appeared to have caught the Israeli military off guard. Israel has said seven of its troops were wounded.
0 Have Your Say!:
Post a Comment