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Sunday, October 13, 2002 11:04 p.m.

Likudnik journo's 'modest proposal'

1. She starts with a quote from Tony Blair's recent Labour Party Conference Speech:

   The radical decision is usually the right one.

   These are not, as she puts it,

   words to live by

   but cheap oratorical misdirection offered as a goodie-bag to the party faithful. I assume there are similar gatherings in Israel where similar falsehoods are uttered.

2. It's true that

   Blair...called on Israel to implement UN resolutions.

   But he was clearly referring to Security Council Resolutions only - and not the yards-thick files of resolutions passed by other UN bodies whose majorities all usually consist of tin-pot countries with vastly over-inflated ideas of their own importance.

   The UN Human Rights Commission is just one such body and did indeed pass a thoroughly reprehensible resolution (E/CN.4/2002/L.16) on 9 April 2002 supporting

   the legitimate right of the Palestinian people to resist the Israeli occupation by all available means.

   And the effect? Precisely zero! Except as a straw-man for over-excited journos and pols, that is.

   It's true there have been a number of UNSCRs this year on the Middle East - 8 by my count. But, so far as I can see, none

   deny Israel its legal right, under Article 51 of the UN Charter, to defend itself against aggression.

   (The most recent, 1435, does demand IDF withdrawal to September 2000 positions. Is that what she means?)

   Later on in the piece, she praises

   The US, particularly under the Bush administration, [for having] refused to sign on to Security Council resolutions that only condemn Israel.

   But, supposedly, the same administration is guilty of the surely far greater sin of letting through resolutions that

   deny Israel its legal right....to defend itself....!

3. The references to Blair's 'perfidy' and 'immorality' are absurd: when has it been stated UK government policy that Israel should not obey UNSCRs?

4. The reference to Blair's wife is peculiarly nauseating: on account of the sleazy, guilt-by-association phrasing; and of the sanctimonious lecture on terrorism directed to the prime minister of Britain from a country which itself only came into existence through a sustained campaign of terrorism against - the British!

5. The choicest morsel of UN paranoia:

   For the past 54 years, the UN has followed a consistent and coherent policy.....to advance anti-Semitism by systematically and illegally discriminating against the Jewish state all the time and everywhere.

   The UN follow a 'consistent policy' for 54 years?! And all the while AIPAC has been sleepwalking while administration after administration waves all this 'anti-Semitism' through, except when sitting on their hands at veto time. Who knew?! (An unofficial list of US UNSC vetoes relating to the Middle East.)

6. The bizarre suggestion that

   the UN has lost even the semblance of legitimacy as a world government

   implies that it is a 'world government'. Which raises a doubt about exactly which planet the woman is talking about.

7. The fact she feels the need to mention that

   The Arabs have unabashedly argued that the destruction of Israel through the enforcement of UN resolutions must come before the liberation of Iraq through the enforcement of UN resolutions.

   raises a similar doubt.

8. She refers to HR 1646 - a piece of clearly unconstitutional pre-election grandstanding (attempting to recognise Jerusalem as Israeli capital) - and castigates Bush for

   breach[ing] the US Constitution!

9. Another lovely line on Blair:

   And what stands behind Tony Blair's cynical call for Israel to implement anti-Semitic UN resolutions?

   Blair supporting antisemitism, eh? Almost as nice a piece of sleaze as Frau Herta Daeubler-Gmelin's crack comparing Bush to Hitler.

10. She identifies the problem as the 'misconception' that

    the American interest in stability in the Middle East is advanced by not questioning the Arab world's rejection of Israel.

    What good would questioning have done? Instead, the US decided on a rather more practical policy - to arm Israel.

11. As a result of this 'misconceived' policy

    Arab rejection of Israel's right to exist has been translated into a situation of continuous warfare in the region for the past 54 years.

    Up to a point, Lord Copper! Which exactly were these wars? I think we need a timeline!

12. Eventually, we get onto her 'big idea': the US should sign

    a mutual defense treaty with Israel

    following which

    it could take down Saddam Hussein's regime tomorrow.....[and] take action against other terrorist regimes and organizations from Iran to Syria to the Hizbullah without need for UN approval and with full Israeli military assistance.

    Armageddon '03! Has she read the US poll numbers? I think even Cheney and Rumsfeld might think her plan a tad ambitious. Especially as they're planning as much for November '04 as for getting rid of Saddam. And reintroducing the draft probably wasn't a plank they'd pencilled in for the platform.

    Plus, of course, Sharon has been proving such a wonderfully cooperative ally.....

    Perhaps if you think there have been

    Fifty-four years of war in the Middle East

    a US-Israeli Blitzkrieg from Beirut to the Afghan border doesn't register as a big deal.

Except I recall that the author's ex-boss is apparently very much in contention for the Likud leadership in a contest preceding next year's elections. Of course, any resemblance between his policies and her article need be no more than coincidental. Time will tell.