Mediterranean boat people

More than 3,000 migrants have died so far this year trying to cross the Mediterranean – the highest total on record. The official figure for 2014 so far is 3,072, though some claim the true number is three times as high.

Across the world, the official figure is 4,077, meaning three in every four of those who perished were trying to get to Europe. Since 2000, 40,000 migrants are said to have perished worldwide – more than half of them trying to get to Europe.

The worst incident of 2014 was the apparently deliberate ramming of a ship earlier this month by people traffickers off Malta, which resulted in 500 people being drowned.

The ship had been carrying Syrians, Palestinians, Egyptians and Sudanese, and survivors said it was rammed after a ‘violent confrontation’ on board.

5 things we have learned from Gaza

1. Western governments do not seem to understand the word ‘terrorism’. Israel has killed more than 1,000 Palestinians – the vast majority of them women, children and other civilians. Hamas has killed 46 Israelis – almost all of them soldiers, and yet for Western governments, it is Hamas who are the ‘terrorists’.

2. The US, and its allies such as the UK, have squandered any influence they had in the region by their relentless, unquestioning support for Israel. Now the Palestinians take no notice of them because they are simply part of the enemy keeping them in servitude, and the Israelis take no notice because they know however badly they behave, the West will do nothing.

3. Understandably, would-be peacemakers are focused on just stopping the fighting. And, heaven knows that would be nice, but if the causes are not addressed – Israel’s blockade of Gaza, its illegal occupation of the West Bank and its constant theft of Palestinian land – then any ceasefire will just be an interval and war will soon be resumed.

4. The Israelis are not interested in any such settlement, particularly with American dollars and weapons pouring in. ‘Mowing the lawn’ (that’s what Israel calls its regular attacks on Gaza) is very popular.  After all, it allows Israel to steal a bit more Palestinian land every day, extending its empire and making the prospect of a Palestinian state a little more impossible every day.

5. However attractive it may appear in the short term, this does not represent a viable long-term strategy for Israel.  It is making the neighbours who surround it hate it more and more, while its cruel oppression of another people is corroding its own sense of right and wrong, and increasingly infecting its politics with racism and extremism. The window of opportunity for Israel to make an equitable, peaceful settlement with the Palestinians may be shorter than it realises. When empires collapse, it often happens surprisingly quickly.

Euripides warned: ‘The strong should not abuse their strength, nor the fortunate think Chance will bless them forever.' Israel needs to take note today. Tomorrow may be too late.

www.haaretz.com shows some people in Israel are thinking about these issues.

Gaza - a new way of seeing

The death toll so far – more than 600 Palestinians killed – most of them women, children and civilian men. 29 Israelis killed, almost all of them soldiers. And yet the UK and US governments keep telling us Hamas are the terrorists.

Whenever Israel’s apologists, like John Kerry or some chap called Hammond, who says he’s now the UK’s Foreign Secretary, are asked to condemn Israel’s slaughter of civilians they always fall back on the mantra that ‘Israel has the right to defend itself.’ But let’s imagine the boot was on the other foot.

Suppose it was the Israelis who had been expelled by terrorists from their country, and then blockaded in a giant prison camp or turned into a subject people whose menfolk could be rounded up and taken away by the occupying Palestinians whenever they felt like it, and who had a little more of their land stolen every day.

Suppose it was the Israelis who had been strung along for decades in a ‘peace process’ which was supposed to free them but never got anywhere. And suppose that every now and then they got fed up, and tried to resist, and that then the Palestinians slaughtered them by the houseful.

Would we hear Kerry and Hammond banging on about the Palestinians’ ‘right to defend themselves’? As one of the more intelligent Israeli newspapers put it: ‘The Palestinians are expelled from their homeland and later attacked in the refugee camps to which they fled, and the Jews boast of being more moral.’

Helicopter crashes + spot the difference

It’s now accepted that there’s no hope of finding any survivors from Wednesday’s helicopter accident in the North Sea. Sixteen people were aboard the Super Puma that crashed into the water 14 miles from Peterhead on its journey back from BP’s Miller oil platform.

The whole North Sea oil industry depends on helicopters to ferry personnel back and forth, and more than a hundred people have died in crashes since production began. Only in February another Super Puma came down in the sea in fog. On that occasion, all 18 people aboard were rescued, but 11 men were killed in 1992 when their Super Puma fell into the sea on a 200 yard journey from a production platform to an accommodation barge.

The world’s worst ever civilian helicopter accident happened in the North Sea in 1986 when a Chinook carrying workers home from the Brent field crashed as it was approaching Sumburgh Airport on Shetland. Its rotor blades collided with each other, and the aircraft came down in the sea and sank, killing 45 of the 47 people aboard.

Spot the difference. When Palestine’s democratically elected Hamas government refused to be bound by agreements that earlier Palestinian administrations had made with Israel, US President George W Bush orchestrated an international conspiracy (in which Labour enthusiastically joined) to starve the Palestinians into submission. Now Israel’s new Foreign Minister has repudiated agreements earlier Israeli governments made with the Palestinians. When do you expect President Obama to start trying to starve the Israelis into submission? Safety warning – don’t hold your breath.

Palestine - a scandal ignored

The western media is devoting lots of space to the shenanigans over who is going to be Israel’s next Prime Minister, but suppresses news of how Israel continues to oppress the Palestinians in the territories it illegally occupies. People like the BBC present Benjamin Netanyahu as the right-wing Israeli candidate, with Tzipi Livni as the “centrist”! (Yes, that is the same Tzipi Livni who just a few short weeks ago massacred 1,300 Palestinians.)

What you can be sure of is that the outcome in Tel Aviv will make no difference to life for the millions of Palestinians living under an occupation that has now gone for 10 times as long as the Nazi occupation of France during World War Two. If you listen to those who support and bankroll the Israelis – Barrack Obama, Britain’s Labour government, the European Union – you will hear the refrain that if the Palestinians would just bow down to the Israelis, like Fatah has done in the West Bank, rather than resisting them, like Hamas is doing in Gaza, everything would be o.k.

Events on the ground constantly give the lie to that, but fortunately for our leaders, our media largely ignores them. Last week, Israeli troops invaded a West Bank village called Jayyous. They did the kind of things they did in the parts of Gaza they managed to penetrate – vandalising homes and schools, beating up local people, looting. They also kidnapped up to 90 people, to join more than 11,000 Palestinians they have already interned. These kidnappings go on the whole time. Last week the Israelis also abducted people from Jenin, Nablus, Ramallah and two other West Bank towns.

The reason for the assault on Jayyous appears to have been that local people had dared to mount peaceful protests against Israel’s Berlin-style wall which has robbed the village of thousands of olive and fruit trees in addition to a crucial part of its water supply. The Israelis are reportedly planning to use some of the land they have stolen to expand one of their settlements.

Gaza - the EU has the solution! + explosive anniversary

So the EU’s humanitarian aid chief (!) has visited Gaza, seen the murder and destruction described in yesterday’s blog, and got to the bottom of the problem – it’s all the fault of Hamas! The EU, which gives Israel all manner of privileges, dismisses the Palestinians’ democratically elected government as “terrorist”. Now politicians like Mr Michel (a former Belgian Foreign Minister, no less) tend to avoid any definition of “terrorist” so they can use it to describe anyone they don’t like, but surely what it means is someone who kills, injures or terrorises civilians in order to achieve a political objective.

So here’s a little competition (Mr Michel may enter if he wishes). Using the facts from the Gaza massacre – summarised in my blog of yesterday – who better fits the definition “terrorist”. Is it (a) Hamas or (b) Israel ? For people like Mr Michel and Labour in Britain, it is all so very simple. If only the Palestinians would just knuckle down under the occupation, blockade, theft of land, killings, kidnappings or whatever else Israel cares to inflict on them, there’d be no problem. Let me let you into a little secret, Mr Michel and co. It is not going to happen. The Palestinians will continue to resist until they are free. Giving them their liberty is the only route to peace.

On this day.....seven years ago, a huge explosion at a military barracks in Lagos, Nigeria flattened whole streets nearby and sent shells, grenades and bullets flying through the air. People thought it was a military coup, or a terrorist attack and an estimated 20,000 fled their homes. Many were trampled to death in the streets, others drowned in a canal, and perhaps 2,000 were killed altogether. See A Disastrous History of the World for more details.

Gaza - return to oblivion

So the massacre in Gaza is over and the world can forget about the Palestinians until the next one begins. After a brief flurry of sympathy and understanding for the people inhabiting the world’s biggest open prison, normal service is rapidly being resumed. The BBC and Sky are refusing to broadcast an appeal to help those Palestinians made destitute, homeless, disabled, hungry and thirsty by the Israelis. Israel’s Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has made it clear that no Israeli war criminals will be prosecuted whatever the circumstances. But what do you expect from a man who killed hundreds of Palestinian children to improve his election prospects ?

Because of Israeli censorship, it’s impossible to be certain about how many Palestinians were killed, and the figure is likely to rise as more and more bodies are pulled from the rubble. However, it seems that at least 1300 Palestinians have been killed, nearly a third of them children. It is almost certain that the majority of the people Israel killed were civilians and not members of the Palestinian resistance.

The Israelis have injured at least 5,000 more and destroyed tens of thousands of buildings – houses, universities, factories, schools, mosques, orchards etc. 50,000 Gazans have been made homeless, and 400,000 have no water. Thirteen Israelis have been killed, including ten soldiers. Literally 99% of the casualties have been inflicted by the Israelis, so what is Labour’s analysis of the problem? We have to stop Hamas getting weapons! Not a dicky bird from Labour, or the rest of the “free world” on stopping the flow of arms to Israel.

Indeed, Gordon Brown has even offered to prostitute the Royal Navy to the service of the Israelis as a jailer for the Palestinians.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/18/israel-gaza-ceasefire-fragile

If you want to defy the BBC and Sky and donate to the Gaza appeal, this is the link.
https://www.donate.bt.com/bt_form_gaza.html

But there is little point in just rebuilding Gaza again so the Israelis can destroy it again. Reconstruction this time needs to be allied to political and military action to ensure Israel can never again massacre Gazans and destroy their homes.