STEVE APFEL: ANTI-ZIONISM IS AN ANNIHILATIONIST IDEOLOGY—-
Anti-Zionism is an annihilationist ideology. They don’t want an entire people, the people of Israel, to live
http://www.thecommentator.com/article/4872/anti_zionists_want_the_israeli_people_to_die
Contrary to the old wisdom about history — that it repeats itself — more often it moves in patterns. And where history goes, human progress, or regress, cannot be far behind.
Look at the pattern followed by human rights. From the dawn of recorded history to the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and beyond, more rights have been recognized for more people in more conditions; so that today every living human is covered, notionally…Or nearly every human. In its opaque wisdom History ordained for one collective a different lot. Progressive rights were not for the Jews. Briefly consider how the powers of different epochs treated that people.
Effectively the Greeks and Romans decreed, “You have no right to live among us as Jews.”
After them came the Church: “You have no right to live among us.” And finally Hitler, and the Nazi decree: “You have no right to live.”
Today who decrees what for the people of Israel? Brace for it. Anti-Zionism, the axis of two religions and a secular movement, decrees no more rights than Hitler did. Effectively anti-Zionists tell the people of Israel, ‘You have no right to live.’
We may cast a disdainful look at Al Qaeda or Hezbollah, or even the Mullahs of Iran. Forget those anti-Zionists. The fiery placards in Durban or Gaza City might be worth a chuckle: ‘Kill the Zionists’; or ‘If only Hitler had finished the job’.
Forget the hotheads. Think BBC; think the Guardian; think CNN and the UN General Assembly; think the Human Rights Council and Europe’s Parliament; think Amnesty and Oxfam; think of the boycott movement; and yes – think of some homegrown Israeli academics and NGO schemes.
Those are the anti-Zionists to bear in mind. Attend carefully and we’d catch their verdict on the people of Israel, ‘No right to live.’
Googling will turn up nothing of the kind. Few anti-Zionists from liberal countries would utter or intimate the sentence of death. They dare not. It would blow an activist’s credibility and reputation. It would ruin a career of speaking out for the ‘oppressed.’
This makes anti-Zionists temper their tone, keep their demands within bounds, their respect for humanitarian law above board, and their concern for humankind meritoriously firm. The mind of the anti-Zionist is on a final solution, but weighing up practicalities he checks himself.
Compelled to pick words, he picks them soberly. Nothing he says comes close to a sentence of death. But the lies he tells and the opinions he schools are locked on that Hitlerian decree: ‘You have no right to live.’
Where in that case to look? Look not at the meaning of words, but into what those words mean. Consider the demands of boycotters, and what they mean.
They want Israel to dismantle the ‘Wall’ that inhumanely pens people in and cuts families off. They also want every Palestinian in the world to come back ‘home.’ The one demand would remove the capacity of Jews to stop suicidal killers. The other demand would convert the world’s lone Jewish state into yet another Sharia-law state, leaving Jews, like Christians in Pakistan or Egypt, ready to be martyred at will. ‘You have no right to live’ is the unsung ditty of the boycott movement.
Or consider the instant verdicts heaped upon Israel by self-proclaimed or self-appointed guardians of right and wrong. But for that we have to consider law – or something that poses as law.
Now law, most well know, can be diverted from the purpose that drafters had in mind, and made to serve a purpose they had not in mind. Law can also be inverted – misused against the intended purpose. Then instead of carrying society forward, law trips it up.
In that frame consider the devilish plan concocted by anti-Zionists gathered in Durban for the inaugural UN World Conference on Racism, 2001. The scheme acquired the name, Lawfare.
Anne Herzberg, Legal Advisor to NGO Monitor, knows more than most about lawfare.
“NGOs claiming to promote human rights are engaged in lobbying, as well as filing civil lawsuits or initiating criminal complaints against Israeli officials for alleged crimes against humanity.”
Herzberg goes on to explain that outwardly the actions are meant to pursue justice for victims, but really the plan is to misuse law and rely it where armed militancy had failed many times over.
Lawfare seeks to do what ad hoc violence and concerted attacking Arab armies had failed to do. The chosen weapon is meant to end the loathsome Jewish footprint on the Middle East. The means to that end involves making Israel pay for countering terrorist attacks, as well as to dent Israel’s military appetite for new operations
Observe the four elements of this weapon of law:
The agenda: to punish the people of Israel for fighting back against an enemy intent on murder, mayhem and martyrdom.
The design: to hamstring the IDF when next the enemy comes for murder, mayhem and martyrdom.
The trap: To set the bar for lawful military response high enough (far higher than elsewhere on earth) to guarantee that Israel will violate law.
The looked-for outcome: Upon inevitable violations, to blow the whistle, then to haul Israel and its leaders before the UN, the media, and the peoples’ court of opinion for crimes against humanity.
Focus not on the meaning of those elements, but on what they all amount to: ‘The people of Israel have no right to defend or protect themselves.’
“Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.” Article 3 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is really not universal.
It does not encompass Jews living in a remnant of a longed-for and ancient homeland. Only the people of Israel have no right to live. And every meeting of world delegates at the Human Rights Council rubberstamps the decree.
Steve Apfel is director of the School of Management Accounting, Johannesburg. He is the author of the book, ‘Hadrian’s Echo: The whys and wherefores of Israel’s critics’ (2012) and a contributor to, “War by other means.” (Israel Affairs, 2012). His articles and blogs are published in several foreign journals and his new work, ‘Bilaam’s Curse: The enemies of Zion’ will be published by Hamilton Books this year
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