Swedes and Sea Squills

It seems our preoccupation with seemingly trivial matters, our obsession with side-issues, is an inherent Israeli trait. There is no other way of explaining the exaggerated response to an article printed in the Swedish tabloid Aftonbladet, which so incensed Israelis this week.

The offending article written by freelance reporter Donald Bostrom which appeared in the paper's cultural commentary pages, suggested that IDF soldiers had harvested the organs of Palestinians killed in clashes. The article was entitled "Our Sons' Organs Were Plundered" and was based on one Palestinian family's claim in the 1990s that they suspected the IDF of stealing the organs of their son whose body was returned five days after he was killed in a clash. Their suspicion was based on a cut in his midsection. Another 20 Palestinian families then stepped up with the same charge.

When asked to comment, an IDF spokesman explained that in the 1990s, autopsies were routine for Palestinians killed in clashes in order to ascertain that Israeli troops had acted in accordance with their orders and IDF rules of engagement.

To add credence to his article Bostrom linked the allegations to arrests made in New Jersey. The arrests involved 44 people in a major corruption and international money laundering conspiracy that included several assemblymen, mayors and rabbis. One of its members, Levy-Izhak Rosenbaum, faces charges of conspiring to broker the illegal sale of a human kidney for transplant. Bostrom then hinted by innuendo that Ehud Olmert, who was health minister at the time, was responsible for the theft of Palestinian organs.

Bolstrom made no attempt to investigate and verify the claims before he wrote his article .Just the same, Afftonbladet decided to run the piece.

Eight years ago Bostrom mentioned the claims in a book he wrote on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Then too the claims were uncorroborated.

The book barely aroused a ripple of reaction and was quickly forgotten till Bostrom decided to regurgitate the claims in the Aftonbladet article.

Well he certainly got some extra mileage here in Israel. The matter was a tad short of becoming casus belli (I'm being facetious).

It did however cause quite a diplomatic storm. Referring to the article at the weekly cabinet meeting held on Sunday, Prime Minister Netanyahu called it “outrageous” and compared it to a “blood libel."

According to reliable information leaked out from the meeting by one of his ministers the prime minister said, “We are not asking the government of Sweden for an apology, we are asking it to condemn the article.”

Other Israeli government members and prominent commentators have accused the Swedes of spreading anti-Semitic atrocity tales and are demanding "appropriate responses."

Such reactions have been hard to come by in Stockholm, where most people seem to view the affair as an example of the country's liberal attitude towards freedom of the press. The only person to come forward from Swedish diplomatic circles and condemn the article was Elisabet Borssin, Sweden's ambassador to Israel, who wrote an article condemning the report as "shocking" and "abhorrent". The Swedish foreign ministry and the Swedish foreign minister Carl Bildt distanced themselves from the ambassador's statement and stressed that Sweden is a democracy with freedom of speech, and that Ms. Borssin should not have commented on the article.

Manfred Ertel Der Spiegel correspondent in Stockholm pointed out the similarity between the Aftonbladet article and another Scandinavian imbroglio.

"This diplomatic row between the two countries is reminiscent of the uproar over the caricatures of Muhamed published five years ago in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten. Muslims interpreted these caricatures as being insulting to the Prophet Muhammad and as an affront to Muslims worldwide. Various Arab and Islamic governments officially distanced themselves from Copenhagen. And in their capital cities, tens of thousands took to the streets in violent demonstrations against Denmark, burning Danish flags and attacking the country's embassies."

These mini-crises are short-lived and unless they are stoked by superfluous government statements they usually fade into oblivion within a few days.

In retrospect I wonder if our news media and the government could have handled the matter more sagaciously.

Of course we couldn't have ignored the article altogether. The Hebrew expression "Silence is tantamount to admission", derived from a parallel Aramaic axiom postulated in a Talmudic tractate, predates the English legal equivalent "Admission by Silence.”

Perhaps a firm appeal to the Swedish Union of Journalists protesting the professional ethics of Aftonbladet and the sensation seeking Donald Bostrom might have been more effective than all the verbal overkill employed by our newsmedia and government. However, in a second article he published Donald Bostrom admits he has no proof to substantiate the Palestinian claims, but nevertheless places the onus to prove or refute them on Israel.

The Economist pointed out an interesting theory regarding the verbal overkill, “Netanyahu may have reasons of his own for stirring the pot. Next month will see a critical UN report on human-rights abuses during Israel’s war on Gaza at the turn of the year. Causing a stink about absurd Swedish allegations could usefully tire people of the subject and muddle the details when they come out.”

I doubt if Netanyahu had this in mind. His reaction like the responses of his ministers, the newsmedia people and even usually responsible observers, was very much “knee jerk.”

In the meantime our prime minister is completing a visit to the UK and Germany. In between meeting Prime Minister Brown in London and Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin, Netanyahu met with President Obama's Mideast peace envoy George Mitchell

After four hours of talks envoy Mitchell and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued a joint statement which divulged very little of the content of their meeting . Although the two sides said they had "made good progress" in their talks, they offered no elaboration of what that progress was.

In an attempt to explain the dearth of details The Christian Science Monitor quoted Arthur Hughes, a Middle East Institute scholar and former US diplomat in the region. “It may seem counterintuitive, but the lack of any concrete details from Mitchell and Netanyahu on the progress they made could mean that they're getting close to a deal."

A deal would mean that Obama could announce a resumption of negotiations during the United Nations General Assembly meeting in New York the week of Sept. 21, something some US officials have said privately that the president would like to be able to do.

The gathering of world leaders would allow Obama to make the announcement not just with the support of the Israeli and Palestinian leaders but with an impressive group of Arab leaders tied into the plan.

One issue that some regional experts say could still sink a quick resumption of peace talks is Iran and the threat its nuclear programme poses to Israel.”

The C.S.M claimed that some Mideast experts contend the best way to address Iran's belligerence is to reach a two-state settlement, and thus to leave it out of the peace diplomacy. But others say Iran will have to be addressed to coax any concessions from Israel towards peace.

"Tougher and meaningful sanctions on Iran, especially on the gas and oil industries, could make it easier for Israel to focus on peace talks, so the linkage makes sense," says Henry Sokolski, executive director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center in Washington.

Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad is not enthusiastic about the resumption of peace talks. Reviewing the long and forlorn history of fruitless talks, summits, initiatives and plans has led him to adopt a more pragmatic approach to the Two State Solution. In an interview with the London Times he said, "We have decided to be proactive, to expedite the end of the occupation by working very hard to build positive facts on the ground, consistent with having our state emerge as a fact that cannot be ignored. This is our agenda, and we want to pursue it doggedly."
According to Fayyad, the idea would be to "end the occupation, despite the occupation."

The de facto state would include security forces, public services and a thriving economy and would hopefully serve as the impetus to Israel to move forward on its own commitments.
Fayyad was to unveil his plan for building the institutions and infrastructure of the state of Palestine, which he said could feasibly be ready in the next two years.
Not so much a blueprint as a wish-list, the 65-page plan calls for a new international airport in the Jordan Valley and new rail links to neighbouring states, and proposes a generous tax regime for foreign investors.
The plan is short on detail, but setting out these objectives is a departure from Palestinian policy over the past 15 years, which focused exclusively on negotiations with Israel rather than building institutions.

Summer is drawing to a close. Next week our grandchildren go back to school and soon the Sea Squills (harbingers of approaching winter) by the wall in the garden will flower.

Have a good weekend.

Beni 27^th of August, 2009