Raja Shehadeh: A Moderate or a Moderate Façade?

“Raja Shehadeh is Palestine’s leading writer. He is also a lawyer and the founder of the pioneering Palestinian human rights organisation Al-Haq.” - Mountains to the Sea Book Festival, 2013.

Screen-grab from website of September 2013's
Mountains to Sea book festival (Dublin).

Since the millennium, Raja Shehadeh has become a common fixture at literary and cultural events throughout the West, and makes a frequent appearance in literary reviews etc. His books have earned him a substantial amount of praise and a number of awards, including the 2008 Orwell Prize, for which he again made the shortlist in 2013.

Raja Shehadeh works as a lawyer in Ramallah. He was educated in London, and his often semi-autobiographal works, all written in English, a mere two (as of 2011) translated into Arabic, are principally orientated toward Western audiences, although that is a view Shehadeh denies.

Shehadeh is quite a prolific writer, his books dealing essentially with a common theme: a highly personalised account of displacement in Palestine, often told in the form of a journey. They include themes of tragedy, misfortune, despondency, revelation, and some modest spiritual triumph against a brutish Israeli presence. Family features heavily, the drama of flawed relationships woven within an at times burdensome sense of history but one mitigated by a deep abiding love of the land and its history.

The books use substantive imagery as a central point of narrative. For example, the image of a bird’s song ending, or the tragic motif of Shehadeh’s father, Aziz, looking toward the city lights of Jaffa, which he left behind after moving to Ramallah in 1948, as featured in Strangers in the House (2001).

Raja Shehadeh stated in 2012:

“I saw writing as a way of serving the cause of justice and human rights. Human rights reports reach a limited sector of the population and so have limited impact, but if you write something that touches more people and is mass-distributed, the impact is that much stronger... If you’re affected by what you read, it becomes part of your experience and you take it in or feel it in a much stronger way.”

In the struggle for hearts and minds, feelings trump facts. Imagery and accusations, automatically triggering humane compassion, are incomparably more compelling than dry defensive argumentation.

It has often been observed that judgement is influenced more by emotion than by reason, and, therefore, those who suffer tend to obtain empathy and support. This fact has long been understood by the entertainment industry. For example, a victim wronged, is, from an audience’s perspective, the one who is best placed to seek justice. The individual, or group, destroyed ought to be in some way deserving, if the subject is especially cruel, malign, etc. If there could be a shadowy side to the humanitarian spirit, this characteristic would surely qualify.

Considering the highly politicised themes, a question may be asked of Shehadeh’s work: do the books constitute an authentic effort to tell personal stories which possess substantive political overtones, as is sometimes necessarily the case in certain contexts, or do they constitute a knowing propaganda, or perhaps possess elements of both? The impact of these books would seem to be quite significant politically, judging by his success. The stories relate to a serious conflict, which has been the cause of a substantive degree of suffering through the twentieth century, and will continue to cause much for the foreseeable future.

To question the more personal details of Shehadeh’s account of his life and family, which has been touched by tragedy, without good cause to do so, may constitute the needless crossing of a boundary. Yet it is nonetheless worth analysing the more general political claims of the author, due to the way in which they inevitably inform the broader narrative of his books.

This move should be especially pressing, given Shehadeh’s past political activism in al Haq, and the broad Arab-Palestinian move to utilise literature for propaganda’s sake, for example, the pro-boycott “Palfest” literary festival, of which he is a regular fixture.

Shehadeh’s work with al-Haq

Raja Shehadeh is a member of the English Bar, and the Palestinian Bar Association. The Palestinian Bar Association is apparently an affiliated member of the rather hateful Arab Lawyers Union of which it works closely – a telling feature of the conditions in which Arab-Palestinian lawyers work.

Outside of his literary career, Shehadeh is best known for his association with Al-Haq, which he co-founded in 1979, with another lawyer, one Jonathan Kuttab, who has been at the forefront of Israel’s delegitimisation, particularly in Christian circles.

First known as ‘Law in the Service of Man’, al Haq became a principle group upon which other NGOs and a significant segment of the Western media relied for information. Al-Haq, is described as an organisation affiliated to the Geneva-based International Commission of Jurists, although it is also described as the “Palestinian branch of International Commission of Jurists”. The NGO would soon become a leader in lawfare based international campaigns, motivated by a desire to delegitimise Israel’s right to exist.

Since its inception, Al-Haq has presented distorted data to promote anti-Israel propaganda, often on the basis of pursuing heavily publicised lawsuits, which have little chance of success. Its mandate, to supposedly encourage the rule of law in a non-partisan fashion, suggests it would take an interest in any source of wrongdoing. However, al Haq’s conduct, with regard to addressing the many abuses Arab-Palestinian groups have visited upon their own people, have been extremely limited and only at times made public as a last resort. Self-censorship, with a failure to even catalogue abuses, is normative NGO behaviour for the region.

In 1990, Al Haq claimed that killings, within Arab-Palestinian society, by paramilitary factions, were in fact not human rights violations because these groups were responsible for keeping order. Apparently, the “network of informers” and “agents of the [Israeli] state” were killed spontaneously by an enraged Arab-Palestinian citizenry, which presumably mitigates blame. The hypocritical callousness of this position is reinforced by the fact that it was stated during the First Intifada, when close to a thousand Arab-Palestinians were murdered by their brethren.

Al Haq’s more recent links with terrorism, and its moral legitimisation of terrorism as “resistance”, are stark. Commentary Magazine notes the head of Al Haq, Shawan Jabarin, is prohibited from travelling abroad by Jordan and Israel due to his substantive involvement with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).

Shehadeh helped establish al Haq’s morally problematic template, and he remained a director of the organisation for a lengthy period of time. Shehadeh left al Haq in the 1990’s but his tenure at the organisation is something for which he is still likely proud, with mention of it in seemingly all of his numerous guest profiles in a variety of publications.

Shehadeh’s curious understanding of the conflict

Raja Shehadeh’s views of the Israel-Arab conflict have had a notable impact on certain left-wing Israelis. Gideon Levy, perhaps the most notorious anti-Israel propagandist living in Israel today, stated of his first interview with Shehadeh:

“That meeting was a deep impression on me; I was moved by him, his intellect”

The meeting, when Levy was a young journalist in the early 1980s, marked the development of his interest in the conflict. However, others like Meron Benvenisti, himself well known for intensely criticising the Jewish State’s actions over the years, saw Shehadeh differently. He described Shehedeh's attacks on Israel as marking a “...hatred that does not know any bounds, and that blinds the eyes...”

Indeed, Shehadeh has long made many remarkable assertions, such as claiming Israel is ethnically cleansing the Arab-Palestinian populace. This view contravenes basic facts.

Claims of ethnic cleansing in Jerusalem are fictitious. Jerusalem’s Muslim-Arab/Palestinian population has grown faster than its Jewish equivalent since 1967. The city had 68,000 Arab residents in 1967, which grew more than four-fold to 275,900 in 2009. During the same period, the Jewish populace rose at a much slower rate of 2.5 times.

Likewise, census figures demonstrate that the combined Arab-Palestinian populace of the West Bank and Gaza, was just under 955 thousand (including East Jerusalem) in 1967. The Palestinian Authority took over census collection responsibilities, under the Oslo Accords. The figures collected by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics have been deemed to be highly problematic but even allowing for dramatic over-estimation, for the purposes of political gain, the populace can still be understood as growing at a normatively satisfactory rate, one hardly compatible with ethnic cleansing.

Shehadeh has often charged that Israel conducted a “belligerent war” in 1967, from which it obtained the territories Arab-Palestinians now seek for a state of their own.

One would think that Egypt’s removal of United Nations peacekeeping troops from the Sinai, the blockading of the Straits of Tiran (an international waterway) to Israeli shipping, bellicose threatening language directed at Jewish State, the sending of large forces into the Sinai in breach of UN Resolution 997, and continued Syrian sponsorship of terrorism reaching across Israel’s borders (condemned by UN Secretary General U Thant), was significant enough for Israel to mount a pre-emptive strike?

Of the Security Barrier, which marks a division between the West Bank and Israel, Shehadeh stated:

“Undoubtedly it has an element of a spectacle and has given some Israelis a sense of security, even though it was not the wall that stopped the dreaded suicide bombings. That happened largely because of a change in tactics on the part of Hamas, which launched them.”

It is remarkable to claim that the security barrier merely gives a sense of security, when it played a substantive role in bringing suicide attacks down to almost zero during the Second Intifada, a point which Islamic Jihad leader Ramadan Abdallah Shalah acknowledged.

Shehadeh claims Hamas’ tactics changed, which prompted an end to terrorist assaults. Whilst Arafat did indeed request that Hamas carry out suicide attacks, the majority of attacks against Israel appear to have been carried out by the well-armed security forces of the Palestinian Authority. To attribute a change in policy by Hamas is odd, when they vowed continued violence in Gaza soon after.

A 1984 meeting of international NGOs, run by the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People (CEIRPP), and the Division for Palestinian Rights, at the United Nations base in Geneva, entitled “on the Question of Palestine”, featured a by then typically one-sided diplomatic assault on Israel, with groups like the ‘Arab Lawyers Union’ in attendance. The ALU has produced anti-Semitic material for some of these events. At the meeting, Shehadeh proposed that the international community adopt the strategy proposed by the Soviet Union, and its socialist client states:

“While advancing its new proposals on the Middle East, the Soviet Union pursues the prime aim of peace in the region and, hence, resolution of the Palestinian problem. […] For my part, I would like to assure those present that the Soviet Union has no aggressive intentions whatsoever, either in the Middle East or all over the world. A graphic illustration of this are all the recent Soviet peace initiatives.”

The assurance of the Soviet Union’s good intentions would have come as news to anyone familiar with the USSR’s conduct in Afghanistan, which was causing immense suffering, along with the greatest refugee crisis at the time. After installing a puppet socialist regime, which the Afghan people rebelled against, the Soviets invaded in 1979. Figures are difficult to establish but it is thought one to two million Afghani people died.

Shehadeh would approve of a Soviet peace brokerage, since the USSR towed the Arab line almost completely since 1953/4, and were a principle party leading the 1975 Zionism as racism United Nations General Assembly Resolution 3379, and the attempt to get Israel removed from the UN itself.

In Strangers in the House, Shehadeh makes one of his most remarkably a-historical assertions:

“In the twenty-first century, the case of Palestine remains one of the last surviving examples of a country usurped by a colonial project exploiting religion to deprive Palestinians of their land.”

Religion is of course only one element of the Zionist project, which originated in a secular fashion. Zionism relates principally to a people, rather than a mere religion. Moreover, there has never been an independent nation in this region since the end of the Jewish Bar Kokhba Revolt, in 135 AD Judea.

There are still occupations today that have an overt or underlying religious component, for example, the Pakistani occupation of the Gilgit–Baltistan and Azad Kashmir regions, territories where older religious cultures are oppressed seemingly with some degree of state collusion. More broadly, many territorial disputes do indeed have a strong religious dimension.

Pro-peace or pro-conflict?

Ostensibly, Raja Shehadeh, who himself was a peace negotiator during the Oslo talks, supports a two state solution:

“I have been consistent in my view that the solution lies in the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel. […] There are two possible outcomes to this hundred-year-old struggle: one is that the land would be partitioned into two states: Israel and Palestine. The other is that the present situation would continue and the conflict would continue to fester.”

The above is a fair assessment. Yet Mr. Shehadeh has long been a powerful proponent of boycotting Israel academically and culturally, whilst laying little substantive moral responsibility at the collective feet of the Arab-Palestinian community. Neither will assist the influence of moderation.

In the opening chapter of A Rift in Time: Travels with my Ottoman Uncle (2003), Shehadeh notes his feelings of disappointment in 1996, with the Oslo Accords:

“Those first years of the transitional rule of the Palestinian Authority were strange times. It was the rude awakening at the end of a fascinating and hopeful period for me, during which I had devoted all my energies to bringing about change and a conclusion to the Israeli occupation… Prompted perhaps by disappointment over the false peace heralded by the signing of the Oslo Accords, and despite all the fanfare on the White House lawn, my thoughts had been turning to the past.”

It had only been a year since Yasser Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin initiated the Oslo II process. The initial 1993 phase of the process, Oslo I, was a preparatory stage offering a degree of self-rule. However, Shehadeh also opposed this initial phase since it did not constitute an explicit path to independence:

“I’m not saying that people should not be involved in politics and not try, but everyone should know their limits.”

However, Shehadeh would also oppose subsequent processes that did offer explicit provision for an independent state. Tellingly, Shehadeh reveals that:

“The outbreak of the First Intifada in 1987 gave me hope that things would finally change and I dismissed all thoughts of leaving Palestine.”

The First Intifada was a time of extreme violence, despite the superficial gloss smeared over such a tragic event today. Shehadeh must surely be aware that the original Intifada, to a significant extent, constituted a campaign of terror that Arafat, and various factions, waged against the Arab-Palestinian populace, in which almost a thousand of his own people were killed by paramilitaries for supposedly being traitors, although many were in fact killed due to their political stances as dissenters, moderates as well as in familial blood feuds. To a significant extent, the Intifada was a purge of Arab-Palestinian society. As such, it is quite remarkable to characterise it as somehow being a time of hope, a stance seemingly indicative of extremism.

Shehadeh stated:

“It is likely that my father's murderer was an Israeli collaborator. Israel nurtured and protected the collaborators however depraved they were.”

Whilst Shehadeh presents himself as a moderate who became disillusioned by the two-state peace process, he in fact appears to have been hostile to almost all solutions to the conflict since at least 1984.

At the aforementioned CEIRPP International NGO Meeting in Geneva, Shehadeh asserted:

“[T]he debate on Western Europe's stance on the Palestinian problem and Middle East settlement has been going on for many years. I want also to point to its somewhat moderate character.”

During the 1970’s the European Economic Community developed a distinctive hostility toward Israel. This was made manifest in the Bahrain and Venice Declarations, both of 1980. These declarations legitimised the PLO by recognising them as the representatives the Arab-Palestinian people, at a time when they were still vocally expressing their dedication to Israel’s absolute destruction. There was no criticism with regard to the violence of the PLO, and a focus on Israel returning all the Territories contested. If Shehadeh supported a two-state solution, how could the EEC stance be unduly moderate?

“...the process of forcing on the Arabs the Camp David policy which is capitulatory in its essence and which does not serve to achieve settlement of the Middle East crisis.”

It is peculiar to present the Sadat-Begin Camp David accords as capitulation. To abandon its aggressive policies, Egypt obtained the Sinai and substantial aid, in return for recognising Israel’s right to exist.

With such hostility toward the most important Middle-Eastern peace process in decades, Shehadeh’s intense advocacy of initiatives, to dramatically increase pressure on Israel, had clearly inferred goals:

“…it is imperative for Western Europe to take sides. On whose side is it? Is it on the side of Israel which is trying to impose Camp David on the Arabs with fire and sword? […] It is necessary… to launch a new intensive campaign to ensure that the Western European countries take sides.”

Shehadeh’s early statements cast doubt on the view that he lost faith in two-state solutions during Oslo.

More recently, Shehadeh characterised Israel and its neighbouring Arab dictators, such as Mubarak, as having been involved in a “deadly embrace”, which allowed Israel’s existence to continue unabated for the last three decades.

Shehadeh says he departed from the views of his father, who sought a two-state solution, due to the issue of Jewish settlement:

“…Israel began building settlements in the occupied territories. I grew up feeling we were in a race with time. Every year the chances of peace were being diminished and our land was being usurped before our eyes. Unless something was done the remaining part of Palestine beyond the 1967 borders of Israel would also be lost.”

Claims that Jewish settlements are swallowing up the West Bank (Judea and Samaria) can be disputed. In 2011, Saeb Erekat, the Palestinian Authority’s prime negotiator, asserted that settlements constitute 1.1% of the West Bank. Around the same time, a survey, commissioned by anti-Israel NGO B’Tselem, found that 0.99% of the West Bank features constructed settlements, with applicable roads taking further space.

Nonetheless, if it were true that settlements were taking over the West Bank, would it not behove Shehadeh to have advocated the solutions proposed at Camp David, Taba etc., which offered almost all of the West Bank and Gaza? Seemingly not. In the London Review of Books, Shehadeh characterised Yasser Arafat as “admirable” for not having “betrayed his people” in accepting the offer made at Camp David. Arafat was offered most territorial demands. His response was to initiate the bloody Second Intifada, which one may assume is deemed less of a betrayal than peace.

Shehadeh’s stance on the Oslo talks, in which he was involved, is somewhat contradictory. Broadly speaking, he has expressed strong disapproval against them. For example, in 2011, he charged that they were hopelessly fixed from the outset:

“[T]he Oslo Accords have only consolidated this system of occupation rather than broken away from it… I could see that the problem began from the terms of reference of the negotiations themselves, which were very restrictive.”

Yet it would seem the Accords were left intentionally vague, to allow a starting point for negotiations. Much of the challenging substance of a solution, for example the status of Jewish settlements, would be located in the final stage of negotiations.

Two years later, Shehadeh would seem to have a change of heart over Oslo, but only with respect to pushing the issue of the “right of return”, a legally dubious charge based on UN Resolution 194, which would intentionally bring about the demographic nullification of Israel as a principally Jewish State.

As Arafat himself stated, during a closed meeting in Oslo with Arab diplomats in 1996:

“We plan to eliminate the state of Israel and establish a Palestinian state. We will make life unbearable for Jews by psychological warfare and population explosion. Jews will not want to live among Arabs. I have no use for Jews.”

Unfortunately, a tolerant pluralistic approach from Arab-Palestinian Muslims is less likely than ever. For example, a recent Pew poll demonstrates that 89% desire having Sharia law as “the official law of the land.”

Shehadeh wants to go even further according to an interview conducted by one left-wing website:

‘He seemed disinterested in debating the contours of a Palestinian-Israeli peace agreement or the feasibility of the so-called two-state solution […] “We should always be aware of what are dreams and what is reality. So my dream is not only one state, but one huge confederation in the entire eastern Mediterranean,” said Shehadeh, who envisions this to include both Israeli Jews and Arabs across the region.’

Thus, Shehadeh seems to be advocating a form of old fashioned pan-Arabism or even the re-emergence of the Islamic Caliphate! This is a remarkable assertion, considering the appalling way in which Jewish people have been treated throughout the Arab-Islamic world. In contrast to Martin Luther King’s noble vision of racial reconciliation, Shehadeh’s dream would perhaps be best left remaining just as it is.

Shehadeh’s stance on anti-Semitism

Several years ago Jewish Chronicle theatre critic John Nathan described as ‘anti-semitic’ the use of Holocaust imagery in a play about Gaza. The play in question, “Go to Gaza, Drink the Sea”, indicated that Israel is visiting a holocaust upon Gazan people, very much akin to the Jewish Holocaust or Shoah.

Raja Shehadeh disagreed with the claim, and although uninvolved with the Play’s production, he took the step of communicating with Nathan on the matter.

Nathan objected particularly to the set design, which strongly evoked Holocaust imagery. Shehadeh stated: “when I saw the brilliant set of the play, I found it compelling and moving, and inspiring many layers of associations.” He added:

“Many have made the analogy between Gaza and the Warsaw Ghetto… I was of the contrary opinion. Gaza is not a ghetto, I argued. It is a large prison. I found the insistence on resorting to terms usually associated with the Jewish experience of suffering disturbing. It sounded to me as though only by appropriating nomenclature related to the Jewish experience could we validate Palestinian suffering. As though our suffering cannot stand on its own.”

Shehadeh stated that he disliked analogies between the Warsaw Ghetto and Gaza etc., but, notably, not so much because it is offensive to Jews but rather because the Jewish experience should not be used to “validate Palestinian suffering”. The use of stronger language to describe Gaza is perhaps unintentional but, despite his objections to the application of descriptions relating to the Holocaust, he nonetheless appears to be drawing an equivalence of scale, dimension, or significance, between the two events.

Shehadeh went on to effectively imply that criticism of Israel is never anti-Semitic, when it is done in relation to addressing Arab-Palestinian issues. He wrote:

“Describing anyone challenging Israel’s violations of Palestinian human rights, whether through literature or plays, as antisemitic is intellectually dishonest and censorious of legitimate criticism. But it is worse. It is self-defeating. It is often carried out by those who believe they are expressing loyalty to Israel.” [emphasis added]

Such stances clearly whitewash the fact that criticism of Israel is often anti-Semitic in tone. Moreover, it is absurd to suggest that those referring to “anti-Semitism” do so in an effort to be loyal to Israel, presumably to silence legitimate criticism. Anti-Semitism is a manifest reality in criticism of Israel. No nation should be above criticism, including Israel. However, a substantial amount of criticism, directed at Israel, does indeed possess distinctly anti-Semitic overtones.

An insensitivity toward this issue may be a significant factor. Shehadeh strongly advocated for the USSR’s involvement in resolving the Israel-Arab/Palestinian conflict, at a time when the USSR had become an anti-Semitic state, which advocated world Jewish conspiracies and discriminated against Jews in an intense fashion, a fact that garnered headlines internationally during the 1980’s.

A tale of two peoples

Raja Shehadeh suggested in a recent interview that reconciliation is the truest way of finding peace:

“I have come to realize now that the political arrangement of two states is only part of the resolution of the conflict. Unless there is true reconciliation and acceptance by the one of the other the tension will continue to simmer and true peace will be thwarted.”

This is a worthy sentiment, the kind to which the international community should pay some heed. It is a shame however that Mr. Shehadeh does not appear to take his own advice seriously. Shehadeh noted:

“For years Israeli propaganda denied that such a people as the Palestinians existed. This battle has been won.”

It is true some commentators disputed the notion that the ‘Palestinians’ constituted a people in their own right. The Arabs of Palestine were known under Ottoman rule as “South Syrians”, who originally sought unification with a Greater Syria, during the British Mandate era. A desire, amongst Arab-Palestinians, for territorial independence, re-emerged after Israel’s territorial gains in the Six Day War. Israel accepted this demand in the 1970’s.

Shehadah wrote, in his book Strangers in the House:

“Rather than counting on peace as the best guarantee for its security, Israel continues to count exclusively on its military might refusing to recognize its Palestinian foe as a national group entitled, like all national groups, to self determination.”

Menachem Begin recognised the aspirations of Arab-Palestinian people in 1978 when he signed the Begin-Sadat Camp David Accords. The “legitimate rights of the Palestinian people” include the granting of autonomy and self-governance. This declaration occurred despite a lack of any Arab-Palestinian group or faction offering the promise of recognition for Israel.

However, even if there had been no recognition forthcoming from the Israeli State, it would still constitute a deeply one-sided view of the matter. Recently, Abbas has restated his absolute refusal to recognise Israel as a Jewish state. Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon recently commented:

“[There] hasn’t been, since the dawn of Zionism, a leadership that is prepared to recognize our right to exist as a nationstate for the Jewish nation and to recognize an agreement as the end of the conflict and the end to demands.”

Shehadeh is clearly a man who loves to roam. A lot of his work is pre-occupied with this act. Of course, amongst the idyllic scenery is the dreaded Zionist, the ugly mark of “the occupation”, of which the Jewish Settler is the most malign presence clashing with nature itself, an entity seemingly filled with “greed, bitterness and spite”.

To take one account as an example, amongst all of Shehadeh’s walks, where he comes upon Byzantine tombs, Ottoman olive presses, Roman fortifications and the like, there is nothing of note from Jewish history, other than to complain about an exhibit of Herod’s possessions in Jerusalem. The exhibit took artefacts from a site of Herod’s in the West Bank (Judea and Samaria). He fails however to mention that these artefacts are of course culturally Jewish, rather than Arab or “Palestinian”. Where does the Jew fit amongst Shehadeh’s landscape?

Unfortunately little is said of the desire of Arab-Palestinian society to re-write history. In 2011 Hamdan Taha, director of the PA’s Department of Antiquities, said their digs would assist in “rewriting the history of Palestine.” An inability to recognise the rights of an opponent is a root cause of conflict. This component is a sticking point in Arab-Palestinian society, which Shehadeh seems reluctant to address.

For Shehadeh to state, with regard to Israel’s understandable reluctance to accept a ‘right of return’, that:

“...it lies in a profound unwillingness to accept the very existence of the Palestinians as a people… there was once a nation living in the territory where Israel was established.”

Such statements demonstrate sufficiently that Shehadeh is only interested in one perspective on the conflict. Even if we are to accept that the Arab-Palestinian populace is a distinctive people, rather than part of a broader culturally Syrian grouping, what of the much older race, which in regional terms is more culturally distinctive, and more closely tied to the history of the region? Apparently, it is now popular amongst anti-Israel campaigners to deny that Jewish people even have any genetic linkage to the region.

A Conclusion

Raja Shehadeh presents a moderate dovish image. For example, reciting Martin Luther King's “I Have A Dream” on the BBC, to mark the 50^th anniversary of the famous speech, and his recent “Is there a language of peace?” lectures, delivered in international venues, such as the British Museum, for some apparent reason.

Dr. Joseph Lowin, author and Hebrew language specialist, suggested a disturbing side to Shehadeh’s narrative. Upon readingThe Third Way (1982):

“I was astonished to find there not a portrait of an idyllic past clashing with an unpleasant present reality but a blatant rehearsal of anti-Jewish canards that go so far as to find even the Hebrew language an oppressor of his people. When it comes to Shehadeh, people of good will can become fools.”

There is a notable trend, as with many other Arab-Palestinian activists, of failing to pay heed to the possibility that Mr. Shehadeh possesses politically extremist positions, and, as such, whether his work may have a corrosive influence on international narratives of the conflict. Mr. Shehadeh is of course entitled to forward any position he so desires, however extreme. Nonetheless, the moral legitimacy of political narratives should be analysed in a balanced discussion of all contentious topics. Unfortunately, when it comes to Arab-Palestinian matters, this almost never occurs in the present political climate.

At the aforementioned CEIRPP International NGO Meeting, at the United Nations in Geneva, Shehadeh stated:

“It is necessary… to launch a new intensive campaign to ensure that the Western European countries take sides.”

For Shehadeh, the Western European community wasn’t nearly pro-Palestinian enough. He advocated a leading role for the anti-Israel USSR. Thus, for Shehadeh, the international brokerage of a peace deal should be hostile to Israel. Moderation, the adoption of a balanced approach, would seem to be wrong.

With regard to Shehadeh’s slanted views on the issue, perhaps his efforts at legalistic campaigning in international forums, and later forays in literature, can be understood as having a similar intent. Rather than an attempt to advance understanding if the Arab-Israeli conflict, his work, despite his protestations to the contrary, can be understood as part of a broader effort for the people of the world to “take sides”.

Published at the New English Review.

Inverting Journalistic Ethics – Near FM’s Justification for Anti-Israel Bias

Article updated (December 2013)

Near FM's logo

Near FM, an Irish radio station based in Dublin, broadcast a show on March the 26th 2013, featuring the trenchant views of a group called ‘Gaza Action Ireland’. No less than four anti-Israel activists offered their views, which the presenter, one Peter Kearney, sympathised with. The radio presenter, and the programme makers, did not provide any alternative perspectives on the Israel-Palestine conflict.

Sadly, an unquestioningly anti-Israel perspective is all too common an occurrence in the Irish media. In this instance, however, it concerned a radio show displaying prejudice rather more unashamedly than usual. The show represented an overt platform for propaganda, and the Israeli Ambassador to Ireland, Mr. Boaz Modai, made a formal complaint to the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland.

The complaint was upheld, of nine complaints that the BAI had considered in its most recent group of broadcasting compliance decisions, it was the only one deemed to constitute an instance of malpractice.

Coverage of the story in the Irish Daily Mail

Such decisions should be treated as an opportunity to review journalistic practice, particularly given Near FM’s role as a broadcaster with a community-orientated remit. However, such reflection may be unlikely in view of their response since they mounted a rather absurd defence against the complaint.

Near FM dismissed the assertion that the radio programme’s presenter, Peter Kearney, was promoting an anti-Israel position himself. Near FM claim he was simply restating the views of ‘Gaza Action Ireland’ without qualification, a view the BAI would reject.

The broadcaster states that the allegations that the presenter promoted a personal anti-Israeli stance are untrue as the statements attributed to him are merely restatements of the opinions of his interviewees.

Therefore, for Near FM, it would seem that the role of journalism isn’t so much to be an endeavour of enquiry and objectivity, but rather that of parroting the selective and subjective stances of interviewees.

Near FM told the BAI that the presenter was covering an event held by Gaza Action Ireland and the pieces were representative of this event.

– in other words Near FM feels the radio programme represented acceptable content, for it was merely covering an event held by ‘Gaza Action Ireland’! Therefore, from this ethical standpoint, it would seem to be completely acceptable to present uncritical coverage of events by other highly-politicised groups, such as the far-right Irish National Party.

Abdul Haseeb, known for possessing Islamist values, presented and produced a regular Near FM radio show for a number of years. Haseeb featured coverage of almost identical events in the past, e.g. an IPSC support-Gaza event.

Near FM tried to get out of the complaint by citing a technicality, whereby broadcasters are entitled to present one perspective on a subject in a given programme, if they cover other perspectives in other programmes. However, the BAI also rejected this point as the other programmes cited, which contained some Israeli perspectives, were not linked as a radio series, and were separated by large time periods. These programmes were characterised as "balanced" by Near FM, i.e. neither contained exclusively pro-Israel views as a perspectival counter-weight to the prejudicial programme of the 26th March.

Near FM rejected the assertions of Mr. Modai, by forwarding a series of excuses that displayed an almost inverted sense of journalistic ethics, offering little prospect of improvement. Near FM receives a degree of funding from the BAI, a governmental body that distributes broadcasting licence fee moneys, for individual projects, under the Sound and Vision Fund.

On November 7th, Near FM broadcast a statement by the BAI at the start of a radio programme called ‘International Politics’. The BAI statement, which Near FM is obliged to broadcast under the terms of their broadcasting licence, was removed from their online podcast of the show within hours. Yet at the time of publication, the offending 26th March radio show remains available on their website. Below is a transcript of the BAI’s statement.

The Compliance Committee of the BAI has considered a complaint about an edition of ‘International Politics’ broadcast on NearFM on the 26th of March 2013. The programme dealt with political issues relating to Israel and Palestine. The complainant, His Excellency Mr. Boaz Modai, the Ambassador of the State of Israel to Ireland, argued that the treatment of this issue lacked fairness, objectivity and impartiality. In particular, he stated that the programme lacked any contributions reflecting the views of the State of Israel, and that the presenter of the programme endorsed what the complainant described as the biased comments of those interviewed on the programme.

Following its review of the broadcast and submissions from the broadcaster and the complainant, the Compliance Committee has upheld the complaint.

The Committee found that the programme included comments that were highly critical of the impact of the State of Israel on Palestinian citizens. While noting that criticisms of the foreign and domestic policies of nation-states can be appropriate, it was the view of the Committee that this programme provided no alternative voices to counter-balance the criticisms of the State of Israel expressed by guests on the programme. The Committee also found that a number of the presenters’ comments, when coupled with the failure to challenge the contributions of his interviewees, would have reasonably left listeners with the impression that he endorsed the perspectives of the interviewees.

Taken together, the programme was considered contrary to the requirement of the Broadcasting Act 2009 for current affairs programmes to be fair, objective and impartial.

Update (December 2013)

Peter Kearney, the presenter of a 26th March Near FM radio show, which was deemed to be prejudicial by the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland (BAI), went to the lengths of publicly ridiculing the broadcasting authority’s ruling on a later Near FM radio segment.

Kearney, argued that if he did express approval of the opinions of his anti-Israel interviewees, he would have been correct in doing so. However, he seemed to contradict this stance, in saying that all he did was allow their opinions to be expressed. This perspective misrepresents the substance of the complaint to the BAI. The complaint related substantively to the presenter’s approval, and endorsement, of the views of highly politicised activists, rather than mere expression of their views. Moreover, there was no attempt to offer any other perspective. Strong anti-Israel sentiment is commonly expressed in the Irish mainstream media, without it often being addressed in complaints to the BAI. Nonetheless, Kearney, on his Facebook page, would go on to claim that the Israeli Embassy was attempting to silence criticism of the Jewish State in the Irish media.

Kearney also seemed to suggest, during his public ridicule of the BAI ruling, that the organisation was somehow representing Israel’s interests, rather than Ireland’s, when he stated that the ‘I’ in ‘BAI’ stood for Ireland, rather than Israel. Whether or not he suggested some sort of conspiracy affecting the outcome of the ruling, it should nonetheless be in the interest of all responsible broadcasters to provide balanced programming, which allows listeners to make up their own minds in an informed fashion. Such an approach necessarily requires a reasonable level of journalistic balance, something which Kearney not only failed to provide to a very minimalistic extent, he actually partook in endorsing the prejudicial radio content.

The Sunday Times published an article about Peter Kearney’s subsequent program, which prompted Near FM to apologise for Kearney’s actions. The programme led to his suspension by Near FM, for it presumably constituted an embarrassing reinforcement of the claim that his presentation of the topic was deeply prejudicial, a point which the radio station had denied strongly in their prior response to the BAI.




Also published at Crethi Plethi.

Sadaka and the sowing of prejudice in the Irish education system

Roger Waters (former member of Pink Floyd) with Sadaka Board Members
 launching the Sadaka Education Resource on Palestine-Israel. (Source: Sadaka)

Former Pink-Floyd member, Roger Waters, endorsed and promoted an “education resource” for Irish second-level transition students on the 17th of September, before presenting a much-discussed Amnesty International Ambassador of Conscience award to Malala Yousafzai, later that same day.

Some objected to Waters presenting the honour due to the use of anti-Semitic motifs at his concerts in recent years. However, Amnesty has long been a politically partisan organisation. Amnesty’s bias was aptly illustrated on the night in question: Malala Yousafzai’s much-deserved award was shared with Harry Belafonte! While Belafonte contributed to the 1960’s Civil Rights movement, in more recent years he stirred controversy with demented and very often hateful commentaries.

Surprise may be tempered by foreknowledge of the characters involved, and if Waters’ forceful record on politics is an indicator, his endorsement was likely to be sought by a prejudicial party. Indeed, the modular course deals with the Israel-Palestine conflict, one of Mr. Waters’ pet subjects. Another piece of the jigsaw fell into place when it was revealed that the programme was developed by a group called Sadaka — The Ireland Palestine Alliance.

It is reputedly the first curriculum approved teaching module on the topic, and will be used in both the Republic and North of Ireland. The chairwoman of Sadaka pointed out that Waters’ endorsement of the pack would be “immeasurable in its importance and will be hugely influential with young people around the country”. Its launch was held at the Royal Irish Academy, a rather prestigious venue for furthering academic endeavour.

The educational programme bears all the hallmarks of propaganda, featuring an extremely slanted account of the Israel-Palestine conflict.

Base propaganda

Sadaka is an organisation that closely monitors the activities of the Irish Parliamentary houses, to influence outlooks and policy decisions, for example, with the hosting of anti-Israel delegations that at times indicate the organisation works quite closely with the parliamentary members comprising Oireachtas Friends of Palestine.

Sadaka supports the boycott of all Israel, an absolute ban on all Jewish produce originating in Judea and Samaria (West Bank), Israel’s cessation as a Jewish majority state by advocating for a right of return for the descendents of all Arab refugees, and the immediate withdrawal of Israeli forces from all contested areas. Some of those hostile to the Jewish State erroneously claim that Israel discriminates at an institutional level against Arab non-citizens in the contested territory of Judea and Samaria (or West Bank), when in fact alternative legislature for the Arab-Palestinian populace was enshrined in the Oslo Accords, where the Palestinian Authority obtained jurisdiction over almost all Arab-Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. Yet Sadaka goes even further by claiming that Israel is an apartheid state in its entirety, discriminating against its Palestinian citizens at an institutional level.

Sadaka is an Islamic term for a type of religiously motivated voluntary charity, albeit one with a layered and sometimes less benign meaning. Sadaka comes across as a well-moneyed group, although their patronage webpage has remained empty for a number of years.

Despite the fact that the Irish media is comprehensively pro-Palestinian, it remains a key aim of Sadaka to shout down what it calls ‘Israeli propaganda’:

To challenge and defeat Israeli propaganda through the development of a high profile media presence.

Extract of “How to argue the case”, by Danny Morrison

To illustrate Sadaka’s approach to the Israel-Palestine conflict, it should be noted that the group coaches anti-Israel neophytes with extremely inaccurate information. It unashamedly coaches the naive in sophistic techniques to defeat the arguments of those possessing other political views. For example, a lengthy article by founding Sadaka member David Morrison, entitled “How to argue the case”, states:

All that is necessary is to state basic facts, calmly and precisely, over and over and over again… tirades against Israel and/or its supporters are counterproductive for changing doubters into supporters. Tirades will be dismissed as coming from partisan opponents of Israel. There is a much better chance of convincing sceptics if you state basic facts about Israel’s behaviour, calmly and precisely.

Israeli sources are especially good, because it is difficult to challenge their validity. Failing that, quote highly regarded public figures (eg Jimmy Carter or Mary Robinson or Richard Goldstone) or institutions…

When responding to a protagonist, select the point or points that can be easily refuted and ignore the rest… Stick to making the case against Israel and for Palestinians: don’t be distracted on to any other issue.

Morrison’s “Israeli sources” that are “difficult to challenge” is obviously a reference to Haaretz, a mainstream news outlet that has built up a considerable notoriety in Israel for defaming the Jewish nation. Haaretz has generated a remarkable number of falsehoods over the last decade.

Morrison cites a 2009 interview with Khaled Mashaal, claiming that Hamas would accept Israel’s right to exist. Such fanciful claims have been peddled about for years.

Sadaka does not content itself with bashing Israel. They also advance pro-Iranian stances, claiming Iran acts transparently vis-à-vis its attempt to obtain nuclear weapons, whilst ignoring its genocidal threats:

Unlike Iran’s nuclear facilities, which are open to international inspection, Israel’s are cloaked in secrecy…

Hardly a day passes by without Israel threatening to use force against some state or group in the Middle East. These days, Iran is the main target for its threats but Lebanon and Syria are also mentioned from time to time.

David Morrison has defended Iran in other venues. He admires its record on the treatment of its Jewish citizens, claiming they freely choose to remain in Iran, despite the overt reality that Iranian Jews have little freedom.

Sadaka is associated with many anti-Israel groups, including the EAPPI and indeed Sadaka seems to focus on bolstering Christian support for Arab-Palestinian perspectives.

If Sadaka supports one side, then it spits on the other. For example, two years ago, the group lobbied politicians in Britain and Ireland, with the presentation of a film depicting Christian Zionism as a fanatical and dangerous ideology, with the intent of defaming Christian supporters of Israel as well as reducing the natural solidarity many feel toward the Jewish State. Anti-Semitic replacement theologian Stephen Sizer was involved with the project.

Sadaka has voiced support for Israel Apartheid week, which contributes a divisive message to students the world over. Such a damaging group should not be involved with the education of the young.

Also published at Crethi Plethi.

The Failure of Western Diplomacy in Egypt

An anti-Morsi protest at the White House, Washington,
August 22, 2013. [Source: ThinkProgress]

An idealistic policy undisciplined by political realism is bound to be unstable and ineffective; 

political realism unguided by moral purpose will be self-defeating and futile.

– “Ideals and Self-Interest in America’s Foreign Relations”, Robert E. Osgood (1953).

The ousting of Egypt’s first elected president, Mohammad Morsi, has been quite a test for Western diplomacy, particularly in the European Union and the United States, both of which have invested significantly in the nation’s continued development.

Morsi’s regime had a problematic record on human rights. Thus, spectators might have been forgiven for thinking that an Egyptian regime more secularised, and so less intolerant of religious diversity, would have pleased the West. They could not have been more wrong.

Western responses to the way in which the Egyptian Authorities have dealt with both the Muslim Brotherhood protests, and associated terrorist links, demonstrate a self-defeating ideological blindness, which fails to address the realpolitik environment of the region, and patronises as much as it moralises.

This lack of diplomatic realism has merely reinforced an already pronounced diplomatic weakness.

Double standards at the European Union

The European Union issued a predictably strong response in the aftermath of the suppression of the pro-Morsi Cairo Sit-in protest. Three of the most senior EU officials publically threatened to cut off aid to a nation highly dependent on foreign assistance, whilst indicating a change to a more confrontational diplomacy, both at an EU and national member-state level:

Together with its member states, the EU will urgently review in the coming days its relations with Egypt and adopt measures aimed at pursuing” the goals of promoting an “end to violence, resumption of political dialogue and return to a democratic process.

The European Union stated that its 6.7 billion dollar aid package to Egypt was under review, just a few days after Morsi’s ouster. This rapid change in policy occurred after approximately 42 Egyptians died in clashes on July 8th. While the EU foreign policy mantra has been one of respecting human rights, democracy, etc., the sincerity of their commitment to such values can nonetheless be questioned.

The interim Egyptian government had publicly set out a timetable of reform for their Islamist constitution and the holding of democratic elections, one day before the EU expressed a change in its diplomatic policy toward Egypt.

The diplomatic fall-out worsened a week after the violent clashes of the 14th. EU foreign ministers decided to reduce military ties with Egypt in a special meeting on the crisis, and suspend export licensing for military equipment to Egypt. Provisions for security assistance would be up for review, with EU officials threatening further action if the situation in Egypt does not improve.

The ministers lambasted the crackdown on protesters but also criticized the violent acts by pro-Morsi elements, perhaps in an effort to appear balanced. However, blame was principally ascribed to the authorities. They demanded the freeing of prisoners and an end to the state of emergency. Such a stance indicates they did not seriously consider the challenges that the interim Egyptian government faces.

The EU agreed to pump 6.7 billion dollars into Egypt, in order to prop up its stagnant economy four months after Morsi’s election, at a time when problems had begun to emerge with his rule. A week later the intensive protests leading to his ousting began.

Furthermore, the EU’s annual 1.4 billion dollar aid package had become something of a moral hazard. A report noted that EU bureaucrats had systematically failed for years to ensure how the funds were managed.

Therefore, the timing of the EU’s diplomatic shift, and the very contrasting sanguinity it adopted over the intolerance of the Morsi regime, suggest EU policy tinged by pro-Muslim Brotherhood sentiment.

Notably Catherine Ashton was the first foreign official permitted to see Morsi after his ousting and detention.

A poster of ex-president Mohammed Morsi,, Cairo,  July 5, 2013.

Divergent voices within the United States

The United States Administration avoided branding Morsi’s removal from office as a coup d’etat, a controversial move that has been subject to much criticism.

Senate Foreign Relation Committee leader, Senator Bob Corker (Republican Party), sounded a cautious note

Egypt is a very strategic country in the Middle East and what we need to be is an instrument of calmness.

The Administration sought out a bi-partisan cross-party consensus, due in part to its problematic record on Middle Eastern issues, including the Benghazi controversy, which has refused to go away. Two senior Republican Party Senators, John McCain and Lindsay Graham, travelled to Egypt a month into the crisis, at Obama’s request. However, the portents for the impending visit did not augur well. Before the trip Graham told reporters:

We want to deliver a unified message that killing the opposition is becoming more and more like a coup.

Rather than strengthening diplomatic links, and perhaps developing an action-plan to resolve the crisis, McCain and Graham pre-emptively decided upon a strategy prior to their meetings with the interim Egyptian regime. The visit angered the Egyptian Administration, a development that such experienced politicians should have envisaged. McCain later added that the US had no credibility left in the Middle East, thereby bringing bi-partisanship to a possible close.

Latterly, the US sharply condemned Egypt’s provisional government for its relatively uncompromising policy on protests. President Obama stated after the break-up of the Cairo camp:

The United States strongly condemns the steps that have been taken by Egypt’s interim government and security forces. We deplore violence against civilians. We support universal rights essential to human dignity, including the right to peaceful protest. We oppose the pursuit of martial law, which denies those rights to citizens under the principle that security trumps individual freedom or that might makes right. And today the United States extends its condolences to the families or those who were killed and those who were wounded.

President Obama also ordered the cancellation of joint US-Egyptian bi-annual military exercises, a symbolic act considering the context of relations between the two nations, which were strained to an atypical extent.

Incoherence, and an evolving foreign policy

Whilst Obama’s response was thematically in keeping with that of the EU, it still marked a significant deterioration in Egypt’s links with the West due to the close relationship the Arab State has with the US. By sharply criticising the protest crackdown, Obama may sound like he has adopted a position of moral rectitude to his Western audience. Yet an important question could be asked: what is he trying to achieve with these criticisms? Is he trying to please an electorate influenced by the pro-Morsi coverage in the mainstream media? Alternatively, is Obama attempting to get Egypt to tow-the-line politically?

To an extent, the Egyptians had already fallen out with representatives of the United States some days earlier. The Egyptian government’s increasingly strident response to foreign calls for restraint had already become apparent. Thus it seems probable that the strength of Obama’s criticism would only serve to alienate, and thereby make less likely the hearing of any appeals for greater moderation.

It has been suggested that there is significant pressure on the US Administration from “The Beltway” (an assortment of political voices, lobby groups and media influences) to cut off aid, supposedly to gain greater leverage in Egypt. Yet it may be that elements hostile to any moderating American influence in the Middle East are pushing this message.

However, there are some senior moderating voices in the US administration. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, who is against pulling aid, asserts that the U.S. has “important and complicated interests” in Egypt. At the beginning of August, Secretary of State John Kerry suggested that the Egyptian military was “restoring democracy”, although he quickly backtracked.

Boxing oneself into a corner

Over time however, the US diplomatic position appears to be hardening. There are reports that the US has unofficially put a delay on its funding to the Egyptian government for economic programs. The US Administration also condemned the detention of Mohammed Badie, the Muslim Brotherhood’s “Supreme Guide”, on terrorist charges. A White House spokesman stated:

It’s certainly not the standard that the Egyptian people expect of their government in terms of upholding basic human rights.

Unfortunately, Western governments appear to ignore the involvement of the Muslim Brotherhood in inciting violence through the guise of legitimate protest, such as calling for a “Day of Rage” immediately after the high death toll of August 14th.

Neither have they alluded to the consequences of the Muslim Brotherhood’s use of sectarianism to further their cause. The staggering levels of violence against Christians ought to cause greater concern, should the organisation hold the reigns of power again. Yet western diplomats have said little of substance other than to continue demanding reconcilation talks, without seriously addressing the challenges involved.

This issue may of course be influenced by coverage of the crisis. The mainstream media has given tacit support to Morsi, his supporters, and the notion an outright coup d’etat occurred. Sections of the media have also ignored the Muslim Brotherhood’s associations with terrorism.

The behaviour of the provisional Egyptian government indicates that those ruling the nation are very sensitive to the issue of their legitimacy, and whilst it seems the Obama administration would be a bit more comfortable with the Muslim Brotherhood out of the ring, as indicated by Kerry’s inopportune utterance, the United States has merely succeeded in alienating both sides. Worse, it has alienated the present leadership of the nation, who in ideological terms would be their natural allies, far more so than the Muslim Brotherhood, who clearly would not.

Foreign policy: balancing idealism with pragmatism

The US sends 1.5 billion dollars in aid to Egypt each year, along with additional grants. Whilst not an inconsiderable sum, it is largely spent on advanced US military wares, thereby funnelled back into the American economy. After the Sadat-Begin peace accords, Egypt became a focal point of stability in the Middle East, a stability that served America’s interests as well as those of Israel and Arabian states.

Some commentators describe US aid to Egypt as a “bribe” to keep peace with Israel. However, the challenges oil-dependent Western nations faced with the pan-Arab and USSR-Arab axis some decades ago caused ripples of greater import to the West. This was an Arab world that Egypt led. Therefore, it would be self-defeating for the US administration to effectively abdicate upon relations with this nation, especially after endowing it with a particularly strong army over some three decades.

With the United Arab Emerites and Saudi Arabia so keen to assist Egypt economically, any attempt at incentivised diplomacy based on the threat of withdrawing aid only serves to antagonise the Egyptian authorities. The cost Saudi Arabia is willing to pay to keep the much-feared Muslim Brotherhood out of governance, must surely signify the great importance of Egypt’s position.

Withdrawing aid may also be harmful to the prospects of the Egyptian people in the long term. Egypt is currently a dependent on foreign aid. 40% of Egyptians are believed to live on less than two dollars a day, with around half of those living on less than one dollar every day. Critical wheat stocks are also reported to be running out. Egypt’s employment rate is no more than 32.5%, a rather shocking statistic for a nation so central to the region.

There is no question that Egypt is important to the US/EU. However, their diplomatic strategies are rapidly contributing to the loss of any sway they once had on the State. Regardless of the legitimacy of the crackdown, the West’s ability to soften Egyptian reaction to these protests has been a total failure.

Yet the US/EU pushes on blindly. It would appear that the West has inadvertently begun a process of turning a vital prospective ally into a potential foe of considerable significance. Even without a strong hand to play, diplomacy would go much further for both the West and the people of Egypt, if it was used to engage the Egyptian authorities sensitively and judiciously. However, leading Western bodies have contented themselves with playing the role of self-righteous ideologue, heckling at the sidelines.




Also published at Crethi Plethi.

The United Nations and the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People

Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People,
 a meeting on the 30/7/13 - photo JC McIlwaine

Recently a United Nations entity, the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People (CEIRPP), awarded official UN accreditation to an NGO called the Perdana Global Peace Foundation. The NGO is led by its founder, Mahathir Mohamad, a former Malaysian prime-minister known for his overtly anti-Semitic views. CEIRPP Chairman Abdu Salam Diallo wished to “thank him and congratulate him for everything he has done in his political career and for the Palestinian people”.

In 2003 Mahathir Mohamad became rather infamous for his anti-Semitic views, after he attacked Israel and the Jewish People in an Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) speech, which was criticised internationally. He stated:

…today the Jews rule the world by proxy. They get others to fight and die for them… They invented socialism, communism, human rights and democracy, so that persecuting them would appear to be wrong, so that they can enjoy equal rights with others.

His OIC speech is one of numerous examples through the years. At an al Quds pro-Palestinian rally in 2010 Mohamad effectively justified the Holocaust:

Jews had always been a problem in European countries. They had been confined in ghettos and periodically massacred… Even after their massacre by the Nazis in Germany, they survived to be a source of even greater problems to the world.

Dr. Mahathir Mohamad, wearing a keffiyeh scarf in support of the Palestinian cause.

Media slippage

Unfortunately the media rarely challenge the CEIRPP’s activities. Slanted coverage of the Mohamad story by the Times of Israel gives credence to the CEIRPP’s claim that they seek a lasting two-state solution:

The Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People, whose objective is “two states, Israel and Palestine, living side by side within secure and recognized borders,”…

The assertion is presented as fact, which is only countered by the quoted opinions of others, without the citation of opposing factual claims. However, it is quite evident that the CEIRPP seeks the nullification of Israel’s Jewish status by proposed demographic methods. To quote an annex of United Nations General Assembly Resolution 35/169:

69. The second phase deals with the return to their homes of the Palestinians displaced between 1948 and 1967. The Committee recommends that:

(a) While the first phase is being implemented, the United Nations in co-operation with the States directly involved, and the Palestine Liberation Organization as the interim representative of the Palestinian entity, should proceed to make the necessary arrangements to enable Palestinians displaced between 1948 and 1967 to exercise their right to return to their homes and property…

Thus, if there is any truth to the CEIRPP’s assertions, the only two-state solution they advocate would be two Palestine’s, where one is Israel in name only, its populace subsumed by Muslim-Arab migration. Such a stance has long been advocated by Arab-Palestinian leaders, and many groups hostile to Israel.

The CEIRPP has for many years organised conferences devoted to Israeli occupation “from 1948 onward” — 1948 being the very point of Israel’s creation. Clearly they do not recognise Israel’s right to exist in any meaningful sense.

An instrument of the UN’s belligerence against Israel

The United Nation’s decades-long animosity toward Israel has become the stuff of legend. Indeed, Kofi Annan admitted in 2006:

On one side, supporters of Israel feel that it is harshly judged by standards that are not applied to its enemies, and too often this is true, particularly in some UN bodies.

Unfortunately such admissions have done nothing to alter the UN’s prejudicial policy toward Israel, a cruel irony given the fact that the UN’s creation was given some impetus as a consequence of the Holocaust.

There are numerous examples of direct and indirect UN agency involvement in Israel’s demonisation, e.g. in 2012 Palestinian Media Watch discovered that a UN funded Arab-Palestinian community centre was putting on a puppet show in Jerusalem that suggested children shouldn’t smoke cigarettes. Instead they should clutch machine guns to kill Jews.

The UN’s Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People (CEIRPP) is a principle source of anti-Israel NGO funding, although for the most part the organisation has not issued details of its funding network publicly.

An ADL report in 2009 noted that substantial annual funds allocated to the CEIRPP by the UN have enabled it to become “a primary vehicle for Israeli demonization” and represents “the only committee in the UN devoted to a specific people.”

The CEIRPP is a central element of the UN’s policy toward Israel. Its unique status, dedicated to a specific people is redolent of the UNHRC’s permanent anti-Israel agenda at its meetings, treatment that is not afforded to other states. UNRWA is the only UN refugee agency dedicated to a specific people, the Palestinians. In contrast to UNHCR, the general UN refugee agency, UNRWA has been shown to systematically radicalise those in its care, perpetuating their refugee status instead of resolving it through integration and resettlement.

There are eleven primary committees that serve the United Nations General Assembly. The CEIRPP is one of these eleven, oddly placed among other committees performing very generalised roles within the UN or dealing with generalised subject areas, such as outer space and atomic energy. There is a separate category of seven explicitly specific “ad-hoc” committees, of which the UNRWA is one. Again it is the only entity of this group dedicated to a specific people. Finally there are four “special” and three “advisory” committees, where again only one is dedicated to a specific people, the Special Committee to Investigate Israeli Practices Affecting the Human Rights of the Palestinian People and Other Arabs of the Occupied Territories (SCIIHRP)!

Of the other working groups assisting the UN General Assembly, only one is specific to a distinct group of people, the Working Group on the Finance of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East.

Another UN entity, the Division for Palestinian Rights (DPR), has a quasi-symbiotic role in assisting the CEIRPP with its many international conferences and reports. In 2005 Anne Patterson, Deputy US Representative to the UN, stated:

The U.S. seeks the abolition of the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian and of the Division of Palestinian Rights because both are inimical to the aim of ensuring that UN monies are directed to our highest priorities and in achieving a just and lasting solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict… The United States strongly opposes the use of scarce UN resources to support the biased and one-sided political activities carried out by the Committee.

Defamation under the dovish guise of peace

The Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People has been a core international component of Israel’s demonisation since 1975. Fittingly, it was created when the United Nations Arab and Islamic blocs managed passage of General Assembly Resolution 3379, an infamous text that declared Zionism to be “a form of racism and racial discrimination.”

UN Resolution 3379 was repealed in 1991 but the CEIRPP succeeded in reintroducing the same meme that self-determination of the Jewish People equals racism, at the equally infamous United Nations 2001 Durban “anti-racism” Conference. Durban I is seen by many as a crucial catalytic event that has greatly advanced Israel’s demonisation.

The CEIRPP would continue to spread this message with a succession of major conferences through the first decade of the New Millennium. One of their conferences in Paris became the international platform for launching the BDS Movement which aims to destroy Israel.

The CEIRPP’s concerns about racism can be viewed with genuine scepticism, not only because the organisation is a driving force at anti-Semitic events. Its commitment to prejudice against Arabs, of which the Palestinians are comprised, can also be questioned because Mahathir Mohamad’s statements about Arab stupidity were of little concern to them.

The Committee’s successes are notable. In 2007, the CEIRPP hosted a conference at the European Parliament in Brussels. The event was called “International Conference of Civil Society in Support of Israeli-Palestinian Peace.” The title is yet another example of Orwellian propaganda since speakers uniformly demonised the Jewish State.

A number of European Parliamentary members aptly described the CEIRPP’s corrosive influence:

Despite the neutrally sounding title of its conference, CEIRPP has a proven record of anti-Israel bias, spreading propaganda that presents only the Palestinian narrative, including the delegitimization of Israel — a UN member state. The CEIRPP casts a shadow on the UN role in the Middle East conflict and is first and foremost harmful to the UN.

Similarly, in 2011 the CEIRPP was an important tool in galvanising support for a unilateral bid for Palestinian statehood at the UN, a move which went against the spirit of a negotiated peace as enshrined in the Oslo Accords.

In 2012 the Simon Wiesenthal Centre sought to bring the CEIRPP’s activities to the attention of Ban Ki-moon, the United Nation’s Secretary General, in the aftermath of a CEIRPP sponsored UNESCO meeting in Paris. The Centre requested an investigation into the Committee’s activities, deeming them to be in violation of the principles of the UN Charter, and a threat to world peace.

Also published at Crethi Plethi.

Justifying Islamic terrorism and the murder of Lee Rigby: Asghar Bukhari and MPAC UK

Asghar Bukhari, MPAC UK

Asghar Bukhari, leader and a founding member of the Muslim Public Affairs Committee UK (MPAC UK) featured quite widely in the mainstream media in the aftermath of the shocking attack on Lee Rigby, a twenty-five year old soldier, in Woolwich (London, England) on May the 22nd 2013.

Despite awareness that both Bakhari and MPAC UK possess extremist views, they nonetheless tend to be presented by the media as moderate mainstream representatives of British Islamic society.

Bukhari/MPAC hit out at British Muslim organisations

Asghar Bukhari was interviewed by the BBC on the day of the Woolwich attack. He was first asked for his response to the news of the brutal murder:

Well it’s a depressing cycle of violence, and its not going to end anytime soon. I can see some Muslim organisations have condemned the killing, and rightly so but the problem with this is that Muslim organisations have been condemning it for years, and what have they actually done…

Initially Bukhari sounds like a critic of Muslim organisations for failing to teach young people about the harmful impact of violence, perhaps, one would assume, with reference to teaching a deeper respect for the wider society in which they live. Sadly that turned out not to be the case:

Muslim organisations have failed to teach young people that there is another route for the grievance, the anger, the frustration that they feel about this government’s policies in the Muslim world… They will never teach their young people that there is a democratic way to bring a change to the foreign policy they are so aggrieved about, justifiably so.

Therefore, first and foremost Bukhari was taking issue with the way in which mainstream Muslim organisations were not attempting to focus the Muslim youth on trying to change government policy! His focus was not on addressing the disharmony between Muslims and others within British society but rather to seek a better way for Muslims to obtain their goals, a way that will hurt their interests less.

Indeed, other members of MPAC UK actually made statements criticising those Muslim organisations that condemned the slaying of Lee Rigby! For example, one Facebook statement by senior MPAC member Maryam Yaqub:

By apologising in such a stupid way these pathetic Muslims are reinforcing the enemy’s narrative, which is telling the world that these murderers did what they did because their religion makes them inherently violent and evil… Muslims are the most oppressed people on earth, we have been denied our freedom, we have been denied our equality, we have been denied any justice…

Another MPAC member posted a FB message, justifying the killing of Lee Rigby as well as explaining that the condemnations by mainstream Muslim organisations, which he characterised as apologies, were to assist Islamic preaching and conversions:

All day yesterday I hear Muslims apologising and condemning this act as if it was the most abhorrent act ever committed on British soil, and “we are sorry because yes it is our fault that a man reacted to tyrannical oppression”… They are only cowards worried about their own reputation and image. “Oh no brother this is really bad for ‘the dawah’, we must publicly condemn these acts, Islam means peace.”

Singing from the same hymn-sheet

Perhaps the most notable aspect of Asghar Bukhari’s BBC interview was the way in which he echoed the demands of Lee Rigby’s killers and other extremists:

The government can condemn it [the murder] all they want, and they can say Britain’s got to stand strong, and all the rhetoric in the world but until the government admit there is a direct link between this radicalisation happening and their foreign policy, how are we ever going to end this? There’s two culprits here.

Laying substantive blame at Britain’s door echoes almost exactly the views of Anjem Choudary, the notorious 9/11-praising Islamic cleric, who is likely to have played a part in radicalising the killers. He said:

We must concentrate on why this incident took place. That is the presence of British forces in Muslim countries and the atrocities they’ve committed…

Like Bukhari, Choudary expressed some lesser disapproval of the violence of Lee Rigby’s killing:

What he did was unusual and it’s not the kind of view that I propagate and I do not condone the use of violence…

Michael Adebolajo and other Islamists clashing with police
at the Old Bailey, 2006 (Daily Telegraph)

Bukhari’s views also resemble the remarks made by Michael Adebolajo, one of the terrorists who spoke to a video camera moments after he severed the unarmed soldier’s head. Adebolajo asserted that there would be more violence until there was a change in British foreign policy, a view Bukhari had also pushed:

You think politicians are going to die? No it’s going to be the average guy, like you, and your children. So get rid of them. Tell them to bring our troops back so you can all live in peace.

Adebolajo also stated at another point at the scene:

I apologise that women and children had to witness this today but in our land our women have to see the same. You people will never be safe. Remove your governments, they don’t care about you.

Thus even the killer himself expressed some form of regret at the violence of the act minutes afterward.

Parsing a justification of terrorism

During the BBC News interview, did Asghar Bukhari provide an “explanation” for the killing or a justification? Explanations and justifications are easy to confuse because they can sound very similar.

The context of Bukhari’s points demonstrate he tried to pass off the justification of the terrorist atrocity as merely an explanation, by placing equal or greater blame on the conduct of the British government for the murder. This was unmistakable when he stated “There’s two culprits here.”

Notably, rather than condemning the slaying outright, he chose to place the barbaric attack within a context of “a depressing cycle of violence”, which he would of course deem the British to have begun.

Maryam Yaqub, another senior MPAC member, justified the killing of Lee Rigby more overtly despite including the adjective “horrific”, which would of course be self-evidently true of any beheading:

This incident today was horrific, but it was not because Islam teaches barbarism, it happened because it was an extreme reaction to an extreme situation. These people did what they did because they wanted to get a message across, a message that tells the world that they are sick of being oppressed, colonised, demonised, killed and murdered, simply for being Muslim.

Moreover, Bukhari’s mild criticism of the killing should be understood in a context of his past statements. He has praised terrorism, against Israel in particular:

The concept of Jihad is a beautiful thing, and logical to those with a sincere heart. It tells the human being to stand up and fight against those who bring evil and oppression on this earth, and by standing up — roll back that oppression until the people are free from it.

MPAC UK's Twitter icon, invoking Islamic rebellion and Arab terrorism

Selective condemnation

Are the claims by Bukhari, the killers and other extremists true to any meaningful extent? Are British troops in Afghanistan slaughtering civilian men, women and children en masse? No they are not.

The Taliban and other Islamist insurgent groups are responsible for the vast majority of civilian deaths in Afghanistan, as they were in the Iraqi war. For example, in 2011 the United Nations issued a report affirming that 75 percent of civilian deaths were due to insurgents. NATO and Afghan government forces were responsible for 16 percent of civilian deaths. Much of that 16 percent would be due to unintentional death as a result of bombing and drone raids, whilst the Taliban and other insurgents intentionally targeted civilian locales.

Colonel Richard Kemp, a retired former Commander of the British forces in Afghanistan, stated of his time fighting these Islamic insurgents:

The Taliban in southern Afghanistan are masters at shielding themselves behind the civilian population and then melting in among them for protection… The use of women to shield gunmen as they engage NATO forces is now so normal it is deemed barely worthy of comment. Schools and houses are routinely booby-trapped. Snipers shelter in houses deliberately filled with women and children.

It is quite simply a falsehood to blame the death of civilians, particularly women and children as noted by the killers of Lee Rigby, on NATO troops in Afghanistan. It should be noted that Bukhari, and his ideological partners, rarely if ever criticise the Taliban or other Islamic insurgents, despite the intentional butchery of a vastly larger number of their fellow Muslims. Those attempting to explain Islamic terrorism, reserve their ire for Western non-Muslims who kill far fewer, and typically in error.

If there is truth to the claim that foreign policy issues are the reason behind Muslim violence, then one has to wonder what are the motivations for the six days of rioting by the immigrant Muslim population in Sweden. Sweden only has 500 men in Afghanistan with the International Security Assistance Force, attempting to train the Afghani security forces.

"Political Jihad"

Whilst MPAC UK presents itself as Muslim civil rights group, it has gained notoriety for its extremist views. It openly advocates a “political Jihad” against enemies of Islam and the West which apparently harms the Muslim world. In fact they claim any Muslim who’s not politically motivated in this way is a traitor to Islam!

Thus, MPAC UK’s criticism of other Muslim organisations, for not politicising the Muslim youth sufficiently, should be understood as an advocacy for what they term “political jihad”. Likewise, their attempts to minimise and subtly justify the slaughter of Lee Rigby is indeed a form of “political jihad”.

Also published at Crethi Plethi.