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Israel financed and supported Hamas Islamists in Gaza and the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe recognised Hamas as a “Partner for Democracy”: The Hamas manifesto calls for the whole of Israel, Gaza and the West Bank to be turned into an Islamist State.
The European Centre for Law and Justice, an international, Non-Governmental human rights organisation reports that The Palestinian Legislative Council (which has the right to send a delegation to the Council of Europe and speak at the Assembly, take part in committee meetings, make proposals concerning the agenda, sign motions for resolutions and recommendations and written declarations, and participate in the work of the political groups) represents the Palestinian territories and is chaired by Abdel Aziz Doweik, a member of Hamas. Of its 132 members, 74 are Hamas members. They were elected in 2006, and the “Palestinian Authority” has not held legislative elections since.
In other words, a parliament in which Hamas has a majority has the status to officially influence the Council of Europe.
While Europe is guilty of extraordinary naivety or downright political collaboration, leading Israelis admit their own role in the creation of the Hamas threat. Former Israeli Prime Minister, Yitzhak Rabin has said:
“Supporting and creating Hamas was Israel’s fatal mistake.”
Former Gaza Commandant Brigadier General Yitzhak Segev, in a New York Times interview said that:
“The government gave me money to spend on supporting the Islamists in Gaza to prevent the growing influence of Fatah and the Communists”.
Rabbi Avner Cohen, who was in charge of religious affairs in Gaza for 20 years said:
“Hamas, to my great regret, is a creation of Israel.”
In the 1980s, he prepared an entire report for the Israeli government, concluding with a warning about the threat of a terrorist Islamist cell and, as a consequence, a strong recommendation to immediately stop playing divide and conquer in Gaza. One of his quotes on the subject:
“Stop supporting this monster before you face the dire consequences.”
Even PM Netanyahu himself recommended support for Hamas:
Given this admitted history of collaboration with Hamas it was surely totally unacceptable for Israel’s President Herzog to say:
“It is an entire nation out there that is responsible. It is not true this rhetoric about civilians not being aware, not involved. It’s absolutely not true. They could have risen up. They could have fought against that evil regime which took over Gaza in a coup d’etat.”
The Western Counter-hate
The evil of the Hamas massacres involving the torture, burning and killing of men women and children can neither be denied nor forgiven but in pursuit of the perpetrators Israel threatens to sow the seeds of even more hatred and revenge as Palestinian civilians (50% of the Gaza population are children) become at best horrendous “collateral damage.” Some 2,500 have died even before the Israeli ground offensive has started – twice as many as the number of Israelis who died in the Hamas attacks.
The long term failure to solve the Israel/Palestine crisis (whose origins lie in the Zionist movements in Russia, Germany and Britain in the late 19th century, British promises to both Jews and Arabs during the first world war and the creation of the State of Israel by the UN in 1948) led to the rise of extreme Islamism and this permanent murderous conflict.
It has descended into an orgy of hatred, genocidal killings and international crisis, not helped by the intemperate rhetoric of western politicians.
Herzog’s “its is an entire nation that is responsible” is reflected in words of the leader of the British Labour Party, Sir Keir Starmer:
“Israel has the right to deprive Gaza of electricity and water.”
Both of them court thereby a war crime and guilt of illegal “collective punishment”, put even more clearly by Defense Minister Yoav Gallant who said:
“No power, no food, no gas.” “We are fighting human animals, and we act accordingly.”
and
“We have abolished all the rules of war. Our soldiers will not be held responsible for anything. There will be no military courts”
And of course the permanent extremist neocon and warmonger US Senator Lindsey Graham continues to spout his bigotry so long as the peoples of other nations do the dying:
“We are in a religious war. I am with Israel. Do whatever the hell you have to do to defend yourself. Level the place.”
It has become a religious war of the fiercest kind thanks to the actions, inactions and historical ignorance of Americans like Lindsey Graham, fresh from his “successful” geopolitical strategy in Ukraine!
Just as in Ukraine Kiev’s troops murdered surrendering Russian troops so we have come from the killing of pop festival-goers to the murder of Palestinians by Israeli soldiers as this video shows (sorry link not available):
The present situation in the Middle east was created by 4,000 years of history and by the European powers and the League of Nations during and after the first world war and by the UN in 1948. Those external actors who draw maps and create conflict must live with the permanent duty to solve the crises their forefathers created.
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