First Question: When does the democratic right to free
speech cross the red line to become treasonable?
I have been asking myself this
question since B’Tselem, the Israeli “so-called” human rights outfit appeared
before the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) in October 2016 to denounce
Israel’s policies on the “so-called” occupation
of the West Bank and the settlement of parts of it, pursued by the successive Israeli
governments after the war of 1967.
If that was not treacherous
enough, recently, after meeting with the German Foreign Minister in Israel, the
outfit’s Director Hagai El-Ad told Israel’s Channel 2 TV station:
“Our message is the same message
we delivered to the [UNSC], the message
we say to the Israeli public and won’t stop saying- the occupation must end and
you can’t hide it, not from the Israelis and not from the world… That’s the
truth and those are the facts and it’s not clear what the prime minister is so
afraid of.”
The TV statement was followed by the
organization’s English-language press release which in part read: “There must
be a price to pay for continued military control of another people while
thumbing one’s nose at basic moral values and international law.”
According to Hagai El-Ad, the
price to be paid is to have Israel “punished” by the international community
and towards this end, he publicly invited the community to do just that. .
In all of this, the reader is
left to guess, the moral values relevant to the situation at hand are and
precisely what specific provisions of the international law substantiate the
outfit’s allegations.
So, here is an unelected and
indeed, unelectable political outfit
which represents no one, speaks in the name of no one, save the like- minded ultra-leftists frustrated by their utter failure to convince
the Israeli electorate of the wisdom and worth of their thinking, parading on world stage asking the world to
punish Israel, which in effect means
punish over eight million Israeli citizens
based on its own peculiar conception of the pertinent moral values at play and its highly questionable take on the international law applicable to the twin issues.
I submit that both El-Ad and the
organizations have long crossed the red line.
Second Question: Do the actions of El-Ad amount to
treason?
Since B’Tselem is so hot on moral
values and international law, I wonder
precisely which provisions
of international law, imbued with the
right moral values, provide for the
infliction of such punishment on
Israel by the world community; whether
it is the one in the United Nations ; a grouping of states, such as the E.U, or
individual states, having regard to the decision of the League of Nations to
maintain the right the Jews to settle in
the whole of Palestine granted by the Balfour Declaration by incorporating
it into the Mandate over Palestine
granted to Great Britain?
Even after Great Britain
relinquished its Mandate, the League of Nations did not repeal, rescind or
annul its decision to maintain the Jews’ right to settle in Palestine and the
right subsists to this day.
B’Tselem is in effect asking the
members of the world community to treat Israel as lynching mobs treat their
victims.
I am not familiar with the
Israeli law of treason. However, as a Jew, born, raised and schooled in Turkey,
I was taught and I made mine, the Turks’ supreme moral value and duty of
loyalty to one’s country and its people. Calling upon and exhorting on the international community to
punish one’s own country , and, in effect , to punish the Israelis for
exercising their sovereign democratic right to elect the governments that initiated and continue to
carry on the policies of maintaining a military presence in the
West Bank and establishing settlements
in part of the territory is a
fundamental breach of the supreme moral value and duty of loyalty.
Using the plain and ordinary
meaning of terms, I submit that the
actions of Hagai El-Ad amount
to treason because they constitute
a betrayal of the trust to the state undertaken by him or
reposed by the state in him as citizen
of the country.
To put it differently, his
actions constitute high treason because these violate his duty of allegiance to his state.
Third Question: Are B’Tselem demands for immediate
withdrawal of the IDF from the West Bank and the shuttering of the settlements
the existence of which are presumably part of the occupation scheme, reasonable?
To put it differently, are
B’Tselem’s demands for the immediate
end to the “so-called” occupation of the
West Bank, or within a time frame which in practical terms amount to immediate,
through the withdrawal of the military and the
evacuation of the settlements and outposts without Israel first securing a plausible cum viable peace treaty with a long life
expectancy, whose clauses for the benefit for Israel must provide Israel with the right to enforce
them unilaterally in the event of their
fundamental or incremental breaches by the other party, reasonable?
By this point, readers will not
be surprised by my answer to the
question: The demand is totally unreasonable in the light of the facts on the
ground both beyond and within the
original historical boundaries under the British Mandate which include; (a)Jordan’s
precarious situation versus ISIS; (b) P.A.’s
unreasonable refusal to accept the terms of any and every treaty offered to date; (c) it’s decision to
make terrorism a paid and pensionable
profession with perks;(d) the refusal to abandon the hateful aspects of
its school curriculum and textbooks;(e) its inability to control events within the
geographical boundaries of P.A. without
resorting to arbitrary, punitive or oppressive tricks or measures, and last but
not least, (f) its vulnerability to Hamas and to the Islamist militias from
Syria and Iraq.
There is however a far more
fundamental reason which ignores one of the important lessons of Israel’s history
alone compounded by the preceding reasons and makes the demand perfidious.
That lesson is the way the
evacuation of the few settlements
in Gaza involving about nine thousand
settlers, worked out domestically, despite
the fact that the Prime Minister who ordered and supervised the evacuation was
Ariel Sharon, a war hero who also did his fair share in settling the West Bank.
Well, it is one thing to
re-settle 9000 people behind the Armistice line and something else to
uproot 700,000 plus settlers a high proportion of whom a) currently serve or served
in the IDF; b)fought in the
intifadas, big and small wars and periodic skirmishes and attained higher ranks
; c) are intimately knowledgeable of the inner workings of the IDF and its
personnel.
And politically speaking, save
for a highly charismatic and powerful
war hero or political leader who can (a) capture the hearts and souls of the
Israelis both within and without the IDF and
the Armistice line; (b) demand and secure their unconditional support of and commitment to his policy, plan and action to shutter the
settlements, no political party which wants to be elected to govern the country would ever run on a platform prejudicial to
the interests of the settlers, let alone one that promises the shuttering of
their settlements.
In the premises, I very much
doubt that absent the kind of peace
treaty I mentioned above, which will also realistically take care of the
settlements and settlors to their satisfaction, a prospect which I consider to be in the realm of fiction and fantasy,
B’Tselem’s demand or solution, is an apocalyptic one.
It is so, because I submit that absent the scenario described in the
immediately preceding paragraph, evidence of government’s intention to disband the settlements is
liable to trigger an armed resistance by the settlers; destabilise
the population behind the Armistice line, splinter the IDF all
potentially leading to civil war.
As George Orwell would put it
“Some ideas are so stupid that only intellectuals
(and I might add, self-righteous
political moralist outfits like B’Tselem) believe them.”
That is not to suggest, by any
means, that the issue of the fate of
settlements ought to be ignored or forgotten. It simply means that it ought to
be addressed in the light of the facts on the ground, and more specifically in
the context of the treaty negotiations.
In the meantime, short of being able to prosecute them
successfully for High Treason, I am
afraid we have no choice but to put up
with the foolish and absurd utterances
and the follies of outfits like B’Tselem
and like-minded outfits.
Fourth Question: Are the directing minds of B’Tselem
guilty of an offence under the criminal law of Israel?
The April 28,2017 issue of the
Jewish Press in the U.S. contains an
article by David Israel titled Revealed: Land Broker Handed to PA by B’Tselem,
Ta’ayush Agents Died of Torture.
Israel’s article is about a
Palestinian agent of B’Tselem named Nasser Nawaja who collaborated
with an agent of Ta’ayush ,an anti-Zionist
organization, named Ezra Nawi to cause the apprehension and torture of a
Palestinian land broker named Mohammed
Khaled a.k.a Abu Khalil for brokering the sale
of lands owned by Palestinians to Jews in Judea and Samaria in the years
2009-2010, by informing the Yatta Branch
of the PA Preventive Security (PAPS).
.If these facts are formally
confirmed through some kind of judicial
process in Israel or by other lawful methods in Israel, this means that B’Tselem’s
directing minds in Israel through the
organisation’s agent caused the death of a person - innocent under Israeli
law, as a result of his torture by PAPS; both torture followed by death or execution
being the well-established, highly
predictable ordinary course of events in such cases.
In the present case, Khaled died
of a stroke following his interrogation by PAPS.
This in turn raises two questions;
First, whether the directing
minds of an organisation, who through their agent conspire to cause the arrest of a person such as Mr. Khaled to the
Palestinian authorities, with the full knowledge that the person will be tortured and killed, may be charged with and tried in Israel for a)
conspiracy to cause aggravated assault or death; b) being an accessory to torture and death, or c) for aiding and
abetting the commission of aggravated
assault causing death or death by execution?
Second, whether or not, by
engaging in such an activity, B’Tselem is not in fact and in law acting as the
agent of a foreign entity which is in a state of a violent political conflict with Israel?
I just wish to see Israel to be
done with B’Tselem and like mind organizations that are, if nothing else,
“useful infidels” or is it “idiots”?
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