LIBERAL/LEFT UK PAPERS STEP UP THEIR ANTI-ISRAEL AGENDA
http://www.robinshepherdonline.com/liberal-left-uk-newspapers-launch-new-apartheid-agenda-against-israeli-nuclear-status/#more-2739
Liberal Left UK newspapers launch new “apartheid†agenda against Israeli nuclear status
When the two leading voices in Britain’s liberal-left newspaper media, the Guardian and the Independent, strike out on the same subject at the same time, you are usually being given a signal that something is afoot. The BBC, in thrall to the thinking and worldview of both papers, will soon follow suit and before you know it a new item has been placed at the top of the mainstream political agenda.
With an editorial on the subject today in the Guardian and an op-ed today by leading commentator Donald Macintyre in the Independent, that item is Israel’s nuclear programme. The quest to disarm Israel has been given a new lease of life by a new book from Sasha Polakow-Suransky entitled “The Unspoken Alliance: Israel’s Secret Relationship With Apartheid South Africaâ€.
The Guardian claimed an exclusive in revealing key details from the book, principally Israel’s alleged willingness to give South Africa nuclear weapons, in a report yesterday which has been comprehensively demolished in a piece on Cif Watch (which readers can see by clicking here) and in a piece by Jonathan Hoffman in the Jewish Chronicle (which readers can see by clicking here).
So what’s this all about? Well talk about killing two birds with one stone: you get to lash out at Israeli “hypocrisy†for having nuclear weapons of its own while simultaneously calling for Iran not to be allowed to acquire them, and you get another opportunity to besmirch the Jewish state’s reputation via a linkage with apartheid South Africa. They died and went to heaven! Except it’s all bunkum. Here’s why:
First, the evidence is thin, as both of the critiques referred to above point out. There is no proof, and leading figures from the South African government at the time doubt its veracity.
Second, so what if Israel had some form of military cooperation with apartheid South Africa anyway? Israel was operating in the context of widespread arms embargos against it and in a security environment where the threats to its existence were clear. This implies nothing in terms of an affinity between the two systems of government. It’s just guilt by association. Britain did not become a communist country because it had an alliance in World War Two with Stalin’s Soviet Union.
Third, the broader issue of Israel’s nuclear weapons programme as a barrier to peace in the Middle East — a core argument pushed by the Guardian — is a red herring. The Guardian refers to Israel’s monopoly on nuclear weapons in the region and its simultaneous demands to stop Iran from going nuclear as “an unexamined contradiction which undermines much Middle Eastern diplomacy and cannot be for ever skirtedâ€.
But there is no contradiction, as long as you step outside the blinkered multiculturalist assumptions which inform the Guardian’s thinking. Israel is a liberal-democracy which threatens no-one. Iran is an Islamist tyranny which openly calls for Israel’s destruction. Different rules apply because Israel and Iran are constructed as states on different principles. A surgeon wielding a knife in the operating theatre is different from a mugger wielding a knife on the street. Both have knives, but one has an infinitely superior claim to be doing so than the other. Again, there is no contradiction.
In sum, this is a non-issue designed to abuse Israel’s reputation with dubious evidence and flawed reasoning. It is also a thinly veiled attempt to divert attention from the real security issue in the Middle East: the looming threat of a nuclear armed Iran. But just watch how this story takes off…
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