For decades, Israel kept blackmailing the Christian West that killed Jews, and promoted itself as a small democratic country surrounded by hostility, hatred and extremism. However, this image soon faded, with Israel occupying, destroying and murdering women and children. After the war on Lebanon in the summer of 2006 then the war on Gaza in the winter of 2009, Israel's image completely turned into one of an aggressive racist state that succeeded South Africa in enforcing apartheid. In this vein, perhaps the Goldstone report was the last nail in the coffin of Israel's old image. For instance, its drafter, Richard Goldstone, is a Jewish Judge, and since he is a South African, he knows firsthand what racial segregation is, having seen it being enforced in his country. I will go past the Arab hype about the report, and the differences among the Arabs about it as it criticizes Israel, instead of taking advantage of the report. Instead, I will record Israel's bids to respond to the report and to international criticism against Israel which the report spurred. In the news, a group of politicians, Israeli army leaders and staff from the Ministry of Justice are now preparing Israel's response to the report, which they will send to the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon by the end of this month. The Israelis, however, will lie. This is not just an opinion, as I read that the government of the impostor Benjamin Netanyahu has bowed to pressure exerted by the Defence Minister Ehud Barak and the Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi, and agreed not to establish an independent committee to investigate the report and respond to it. Instead, the government opted that the army along with the Ministry of Defence would respond, i.e. the very same party that is being accused of committing war crimes. Nonetheless, this response will be immediately exposed and condemned, as will those who are preparing it be. It will not find any support except in the U.S Congress, which I have deemed time and again and still do today, to be more Israeli that the Knesset itself. Israel is the Emperor without clothes in the famous legend, as it has been completely exposed with the ongoing occupation and its crimes; then the Israeli press still complains because the Palestinians hate Israel. In Yedioth Ahronoth, Yaron London wrote a commentary on the Gaza war, a year after it took place. He claims that Israel achieved its goals in the Gaza war, as rockets and missiles are no longer fired against the settlements that are in the vicinity of the strip, and that their residents have since returned. However, the end result was not what Israel exactly wanted. Rather, Hamas is only refraining from action because it needs time to establish its rule in the Gaza strip and to bolster its military strength. In the meantime, there are no signs of moderation in the radio speakers or the mosque preachers' talk about the Jews, which, like before the war, still call them the descendants of apes and pigs that spread wars and epidemics and heresy and communism in the world. While I condemn any racist talk about any people, including the Jews, I want to ask here, what does the writer – or indeed any Israeli – expect, after the strip has been completely destroyed and 1400 civilians were killed, including more than 420 women and children? It is Israel's doings that causes it condemnation and hatred, and I do not understand how a writer is expecting people to respond to being killed by respecting the killer or “understanding” the killer's circumstances. Near the end of last month, a conference was held at the Israeli Foreign Ministry in which 134 Israeli ambassadors and consuls participated. On the sidelines of the conference, I read that Dan Meridor, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Intelligence, said that the current impasse with the Palestinians cannot continue, and that 80 percent of the Israelis approve of establishing a Palestinian state. By saying this, Meridor is contradicting the statements given by the Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, who does not see any possibility for peace in the next ten years. Moreover, another thing that caught my attention about the conference was when the outgoing Israeli ambassador to Cairo Shalom Cohen protested the anti-Semitic and anti-Israel tone of Egypt's media despite there being a peace treaty between the two countries, and also protested the Israeli government's weak response to the popular Egyptian adversity [to Israel]. I also read that Netanyahu's response to this was rather general and weak. If both the West and the East hate Israel, does the latter's ambassador in Cairo expect the Egyptians to like it, or to forget and forgive? Israel launched many wars against Egypt, destroyed the cities along the canal, killed hundreds of thousands of Egyptians, including children in schools, and murdered the captured Egyptian soldiers, then the Israeli ambassador is surprised that the Egyptians hate Israel. Israel has fallen out of favour all over the world. In other Israeli news, the Ambassador of Sweden and the Ambassador of the EU to Israel Andrew Standley were summoned to the Foreign Ministry to protest Sweden's stances towards the conflict with the Palestinians, and to protest the statistics that show that the European Union criticized Israel at a rate of ten to one criticism of the Palestinians. In the newspaper Makor Rishon-Hatzofe, Haim Hainoff chided the Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt for supporting the Palestinians, and for not knowing the history of the Jews and their attachment to Israel. Of course, there is no history to start with, and the only fair attachment instead should be one from the hanging rope for those who murder women and children. No one likes them. [email protected]
