Israel and NATO …

On 4.05.16 I found in my email an Israeli announcement that NATO intends to formally recognize an official representative of Israel in the NATO headquarter in Brussels – reportedly this was made possible because Turkey had withdrawn its up-to-then veto against this step.

On 1.05. Fredrik Sonck had in a column in Hbl pointed to parallels between the Hitler regime’s dealing with the Jews in the 1930ies and Israel’s doings in the occupied Palestinian areas. According to a mail on 4.05., in April 2016 567 Palestinians had been arrested by the Israeli occupation forces, 123 of them children; 133 arrests of these were cases of ”administrative detention” (i.e. arrests without charges or trial; the imprisonment can by repetition of the administrative order be prolonged indefinitely) – all of which brings the number of prisoners in administrative detention to over 750, the number of Palestinians imprisoned since October 2015 to 5334 (more than 400 children among them). On 5.05. there was a message that Yair Golan, a senior commander of the Israeli army, had during his Holocaust Memorial Day address expressed his dislike of certain parallels between the development in Germany in the 1930ies and the present development in Israel. And also I feel like expressing a certain dislike of parallels between Hitler’s ”Herrenmenschen”-ideology and the Israeli doings in the occupied Palestinian territories.

I do wonder a little bit for what reason NATO (these defenders of Freedom, Democracy & – of course – Free Enterprise) is just now, in a situation when Israel has not taken ANY step towards a solution of the Palestine problem and is anyway showing the above-mentioned Herrenmenschen tendencies, is cementing Israel’s influence on NATO (this with the help of just now less-than-democratic Turkey). Could it be that the USA want to do still one favour to those over 40 mio American voters who hope that Israel will grab all of Palestine (because this might bring the second coming of Christ one step closer), or could it rather be that NATO wants to secure Israel’s help in the war against Islamic terrorism? For the second assumption would speak Israel’s reputation of being ”usually well-informed” about anything going on in the Middle East. And certainly they have good preconditions for this reputation: already at school the Israelis learn Hebrew, which is a Semitic language and presumably a good help for understanding the also-Semitic Arabic language; and their contacts with Arabs are anyway frequent; moreover they have large numbers of Palestinians in prison, whom – or whose relatives – they can pressure for information and cooperation. Under these conditions the Mossad was able to produce truly remarkable results: e.g. it was sending a team to Manhattan which was at 9/11 there waiting with their cameras at the ready (they drew some attention to themselves by openly celebrating the event) – I did not check that now, but there was at least in the past (and perhaps still) the possibility to google this under ”Dancing Israelis” …

Altogether I am less than happy with this integration of Israel into NATO – it feels morally ”smelly” and is anyway increasing the cooperation with organizations (like the Mossad) who are pursuing their very own purposes. Thus, I should very much prefer some progress about the Palestine problem, e.g. that the USA should now pressure Israel to agree to a two-state solution (including a land connection between Gaza and the West Bank – if need be by tunnel for part of the way). The USA would in fact have possibilities to put VERY much pressure on Israel (e.g. by threatening to withhold its huge military aid), but OF COURSE the USA do not do so, the NATO follows the lead of the USA, and many of our politicians are very eager to join this disgusting business. Might it be possible for Europe to become a bit more independent from the USA? Well, it would be a question of political will …