The Spectator, 22 November 2003
http://www.spectator.co.uk/article.php3?%20%0Atable=old§ion=current&issue=2003-11-22&id=3761

Why not invade Israel?

If rogue nations are to be brought into line by the US, shouldn’t Israel be punished for ignoring UN resolutions? Gerald Kaufman is just asking...

The unprecedented security measures for President Bush’s visit to Britain this week prove that the war against terrorism, launched by the United States two years ago, has certainly not been won. If further proof were needed, the atrocious terrorist acts against two synagogues in Istanbul at the weekend provide blood-spattered confirmation.

But if the invasion of Iraq last spring was not about Saddam Hussein’s alleged links to international terrorism, what was its rationale and what was its justification? Tony Blair has proclaimed, with total sincerity I have no doubt, that one consideration was the danger of weapons of mass destruction.

From the outset, Bush was perfectly ready to rest his case on the need for regime change in Iraq. ...

So, let it be accepted that, despite the death and destruction deplorably concomitant with the process, the removal of Saddam was an indubitably good thing. But, if the removal by armed force of one disagreeable regime under one objectionable head of government is a good thing, why stop there? ...

It is true that the United Nations Security Council resolutions of which Iraq was in violation for a dozen years were mandatory and carried penalties, while those criticising Israel were not. That does not excuse successive Israeli governments during the past 36 years for failing to conform to Security Council and General Assembly resolutions. They would have violated even more if the United States, otherwise so assiduous in stressing the importance of international order, had not vetoed them.

"Israelis have killed mostly innocent civilians, including babies and pregnant women."

Since the present regime in Israel came to office, there has been unprecedented repression of the Palestinians who the Israelis govern. The world is rightly horrified at the cruel and bloody deaths of Israeli civilians, including babies and small children, inflicted by terrorist suicide bombers. Grievous though every one of these deaths most certainly is, it cannot be denied that during the three years of the Second Intifada the Israelis have killed three times as many Palestinians, some of them terrorists (in illegal targeted assassinations) but most of them innocent civilians, including babies and pregnant women.

Now the Israelis are building an illegal security wall, reaching far into Palestinian territory, which is equally illegally annexing that territory, separating farmers from their homes, students from universities, children from schools, and which will violate the sanctity of Bethlehem. Roads into villages are being bulldozed, and the trenches which render them impassable are being filled with sewage. Some Palestinians need written permission to live in their own homes. There are 482 Israeli military checkpoints dividing Palestinian land into 300 small clusters. ...

No wonder that only three weeks ago the Israeli chief of staff, Lieutenant General Moshe Ya’alon, expressed concern about the building of the wall, said the Israeli government’s policies were ‘operating contrary to our strategic interests,’ argued that the restrictions were increasing hatred of Israel and encouraging terrorism, and lamented: ‘There is no hope, no expectations for the Palestinians in the Gaza strip, nor in Bethlehem and Jericho’ (whose agricultural and horticultural economy is being ruined). No wonder that a member of the Israeli government, the infrastructure minister, Yosef Paritzky, has said recently: ‘The failure to differentiate between civilians and terrorists turns all the Palestinians into potential suicide bombers.’ ...

Sharon was the prime mover in the only war that Israel has ever lost, the invasion of Lebanon. The Kahan commission inquiring into the Sabra-Chatilla massacre of Palestinians outside Beirut recommended that, for his connection with those events, Sharon should leave the Israeli Cabinet. It was Sharon who triggered the Second Intifada in 2000 by his provocative visit to the Temple Mount. And is it not members of the Sharon family, including the Prime Minister himself, who have been the object of investigations by the Israeli legal authorities? ...

If the United States is keen to invade countries that disrupt international standards of order, should not Israel, for example, be considered as a candidate? ...

After all, has not the United States, on the basis of dubious legality, invaded nearby countries on the American continent, such as Panama and Grenada? Has it not got a questionable human rights record, with the level of capital punishment, including the execution of mentally retarded prisoners, one of the worst in the democratic world? Is it not keeping a collection of prisoners in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, whose detention appears to have no legal basis whatever? And does it not have a president who was never elected, but appointed by the Supreme Court after electoral finagling in the electorally clinching state which just happens to be governed by that president’s brother? Who, then, should invade the United States? The despised United Nations?