DELEGITIMISATION OF ISRAEL. THE TIDE IS TURNING by Barry Shaw.

DELEGITIMISATION OF ISRAEL. THE TIDE IS TURNING, by Barry Shaw.

At the deep dark heart of the Palestinian statehood bid at the United Nations was a desire to continue their demonization and delegitimisation of Israel. Mahmoud Abbas’s speech at the podium of the General Assembly on September 23, 2011 was forty minutes of hateful rhetoric against Israel that paved the way for the diplomatic intifada of delegitimisation campaigns using the various United Nations institutions. These are intended to be utilized less to advance their statehood than to sideline and eliminate the Jewish state of Israel by accusing it of all the world’s worst crimes.

The Palestinians fully expect that their way will be paved by the automatic majority and support they enjoy from the non democratic regimes, theocracies, tyrannical regimes, that control the infected body known as the UN.  As Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, rightly pointed out minutes after Abbas‘s poison had won rapturous applause, the United Nations is an ailing body in which Hizbollah-controlled Lebanon chairs the Security Council. This is an Islamic terror regime heading the UN organization governing world security. As Bibi said, you couldn’t make this up!

On the way to achieving this goal there are a number of stations of the Cross. One of those is the Russell Tribunal, commonly known as the “International People’s Court” that will gather in Cape Town at the end of November for a lynch mob trial of Israel. In the eyes of the participants Israel has been found guilty of the crime of Apartheid. All they have to do now is have a show trial, make accusations, call a biased jury to being in the verdict, and have Israel taken out and executed for Apartheid crimes against the Palestinians.

What they will studiously not do is to put the acid test of Apartheid against Palestinians and apply it to the Arab regimes that surround Israel. One only has to look at Syria, Jordan, Egypt, and Lebanon to see real Apartheid perpetrated against Palestinians. In these countries Palestinians are segregated in camps from the indigenous population. The home regime fails to maintain them. Instead, they leave it up to international organizations to provide sustenance to Palestinian Arabs. They are deprived of citizenship, of civil rights, of proper education, of work opportunities. They cannot vote or attain high office. They have no voice.

So why won’t Archbishop Tutu, Winnie Mandela, Ronnie Kasrils, and others involved with the Russell Tribunal, address this obvious crime if they truly care about Palestinian rights, and the Apartheid being applied against them?  

They fail to do so because, for them, it’s a game of colours. If it’s white against brown or black it is a crime. If it’s black or brown against whites, it’s justified. And if it’s brown against brown, or even brown against black, it’s ignored. In this case, Israel is considered as white and the Palestinians as brown. This colour game clouds their political judgment. It is a perverted political philosophy which declares that brown and black people cannot be oppressors because they are black or brown and are, therefore, the weak and oppressed so can never be condemned as oppressors. 

This is despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary. It is far more convenient to portray tiny nation states like Israel as the brutal oppressor and the Palestinians as the weak and oppressed. It plays well on the ears of the liberal middle class in the West who overlook decades of Arab incited wars against the nascent Jewish state, decades of horrific Islamic terror, thousands of rocket attacks on Israel from Hizbollah and Hamas in support of the elimination of Israel. It’s all, you see, Israel’s fault for not surrendering their rights to the poor Palestinians. Oh, I forgot, Israel doesn’t have any rights!

This is the background train of thought that has led to “Zionism is Racism!”. This is the agenda that forged the Durban Conference into a “Hate Israel” campaign of constant demonization and delegitimisation of Israel. Every tool was to be applied against Israel as they set out to do to Israel in the 21^st Century what they said they did to South Africa in the 20^th Century, namely to eliminate it by declaring it illegitimate in the eyes of the international community.
Durban died on the streets of New York in September. The latest reworking of the racist fraud against Israel in the form of Durban 3 was boycotted by all sensible democratic nations, leaving the UN sponsored event echoing with the empty speeches of irrelevant and discredited regimes and organisations.

International boycott campaign have been launched. Israel is the sole country to be targeted. Israel has been unaffected by boycotts. In fact, the Israeli economy has burgeoned while the economies of countries on whose soil boycott campaigns have hatched have been damaged.

Hugely expensive exercises such as Gaza flotillas were put together to highlight false claims of nonexistent humanitarian crises in Gaza that would have prominent politicians like David Cameron declare that Gaza is “a prison camp” as they were opening their Olympic-sized swimming pool, a new Water Park, and a new super Shopping Mall in Gaza City.


The Gaza flotilla of 2011 was sidelined and trapped in Pireaus due to the coordinated efforts of European Governments, social media activists, and NGOs, who acted against the nonsense of a non-existent humanitarian crisis in Gaza that had been the failed slogan of an expensive and unsuccessful exercise in fraud. In fact, the social media aspect succeeded in convincing public opinion that the flotilla activists were radicals who exploited naïve and misinformed people to spout empty epithets in favour of Hamas-controlled Gaza, and against a country who were suffering rocket attacks against its civilians.

Israeli, or pro-Israeli, speakers are prevented from speaking on many campuses, or in debating halls, in Britain, Canada, and the United States, while radical anti-Israeli activists and extremists imams, who justify suicide bombers, are treated like rock stars. This is part of the activism that denies a voice to the Israeli side.

Recently, an Orange County jury found ten Muslim students guilty of conspiring to disrupt, and then disrupting a speech, given by Michael Oren, Israel’s Ambassador to the United States, at the University of California in Irvine in 2010.  These students face up to a year in prison for infringing free speech laws in America. This should act as a precedent for other cases of abuse of free speech on behalf of Israel. We can expect other legal claims to be made against disrupters of Israeli speakers, not only in America, but also in Britain and in Canada.

In the Irvine case, the statement made by Shakeed Syed, director of the Islamic Shura Council of Southern California, who said that “the heart of America died today” as he heard of the result of the trial, says a lot about the divide between Islamic organizations in America and basic American values.

In certain Western countries, usually in English speaking nations, local councils and unions impose boycotts against Israeli goods. These boycotts are introduced by one sided resolutions which are adopted without the executive or members considering inviting an Israeli representation to present their side of the debate. In places like West Dunbarton in Scotland, or Marrickville in Australia, the council members passed boycott proposals with no thought of considering if Israel had anything to say that would challenge the truth behind the anti-Israel proposals. 

This is a troubling phenomenon that introduces a malevolent Frank Kafka world of minor officials imposing their narrow and faulted worldview onto their constituents in the name of a greater good. The danger to Western democratic values by such moves is deepened by West Dunbarton’s refusal to allow books published in Israel, books that explain Israel’s position, to be allowed into their public libraries. By this act, a small cadre of councilmen decided what their citizens can, and cannot, read. They strengthen their anti democratic regime by censoring and preventing the ability of their electorate from reading any tract that may contradict the legitimacy of their political decisions.

The economic harm against Israel of a boycott by an impoverished local council is meaningless. There is, however, significant damage caused to the heritage of Western democracies by far left radicals hijacking local and regional councils and imposing resolutions in a manner that chips away at the foundations of unbiased fairness and free speech that should be cornerstones of the higher values practiced by countries such as Britain and Australia.

In Australia, a concerted boycott campaign against a Max Brenner chocolate store was seriously challenged by the high profile involvement of senior members of the Australian Parliament, who associated themselves with the store by publicly dining out in the store as a statement against the principle of boycotts.Public opinion has turned against the boycotters in Australia.

While it is true that the United Nations' various forums will witness increasing and official delegimitisation motions against Israel by the Palestinian Authority, including claims made to the International Criminal Court at The Hague, all is not lost.
The counter offensive has begun, and notable victories have been achieved.

The iniquitous universal jurisdiction that allowed radicals to apply to a local magistrate for the summary arrest of Israeli politicians and security people has been reversed in Britain. Now people like Tzipi Livni, leader of the Opposition in Israel, can travel to London without fear of summary arrest as she steps of a plane at Heathrow Airport.

Increasingly, pro-Israeli NGOs are prosecuting lawfare against the radical anti-Israel lobby that are using suspect methods to get their tainted message across. They are questioning the lies and dubious actions of the activists in law, and in court.

A major academic conference is in the works in Israel. Several top level panels of international lawyers, experts in their own fields, will assemble to discuss many of the legal aspects of countering delegitimisation of Israel. Working papers will include law, guidelines, and legal instructions will be distributed at the conclusion of this important event. The results will be seen with actions, cautions, and prosecutions for any one or any body testing the limits of accepted legal standards when attacking Israel.

The delegitimisation campaign is a battlefield on which Israel is being forced to fight as aggressively as any military campaign. In this battle the soldiers are increasingly lawyers.  Victories highlight the criminal intent of the words and actions of the anti-Israel extremists. It is a necessary campaign of delegitimising the delegitimisers that will be won, not by ignoring the narrative of Israel’s enemies, but by confronting them in law.