Watching the watchmen.

 

“Am I my brother’s keeper?” Retorted Cain after murdering Abel. The biblical creation narrative in Genesis 4:8 doesn’t explain how that first nuclear family (4-1) managed to get house-help at a time when they were the only humans on the planet.

In the King James version (KJV) the word keeper is nuanced to mean guard or watchman "For the keeper of Israel neither slumbers nor sleeps." Psalm 121:4.

That being said, Israel is obsessed with the need to keep an eye on the keepers, guards and assorted watchmen.

The Israel Defence Ministry’s decision to designate six Palestinian NGOs as arms of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) last week, triggered a fierce response with the US, the UN and the EU raising objections and questioning the validity of the move. 

Admittedly, the statement issued by the US State Department was couched in diplomatic language claiming that it had not been told in advance about the terrorist designation and that it would ask Israel to explain its reasoning.

However, on Tuesday, US spokesman Ned Price said: "We believe that respect for human rights, fundamental freedoms, and a strong independent civil society are critically important to democracy," in what was interpreted by some as a rebuke.

UN and EH representatives were far more critical of the designation.

On Monday, European Union Representative to the Palestinians Sven Kühn Von Burgsdorff visited the six Palestinian NGOs Defence Minister Benny Gantz had targeted. On Wednesday, representatives of 25 Israeli nongovernmental groups paid a solidarity visit to the Al-Haq office in Ramallah to voice their opposition to the designation.

 “Are the people employed by Palestinian NGOs human rights workers or agents of terror?” Asked Michael Starr, desk manager at the Jerusalem Post.

 

“Two divergent narratives emerged in the wake of the defence ministry’s decision. In one reality resides Gantz, the defence ministry and pro-Israel NGOs   claiming that long-ignored terrorist activity cynically cloaked in the guise of human rights has finally been unmasked.

The other narrative considers the six NGOs to be human rights organisations and considers the designation to be a draconian attack on Palestinian civil society. 

On one side, you have Professor Gerald M. Steinberg, president and founder of NGO Monitor, who says: “There’s no justification for not considering or ignoring or overlooking the terrorist connections. These are not trivial accusations, Israelis have been killed by the PFLP.

On the other side, there’s Samer Sinijlawi, chairman of the Jerusalem Development Fund and Fatah activist from Jerusalem, who says: ‘It’s just a blind war against all voices that are criticising the occupation and the abuse of the human rights of the Palestinians.’ 

Which reality is true? Is Israel trying to suppress Palestinian civil society, or is it a legitimate grievance against terrorist organisations? After reviewing the importance of the NGOs and their terrorism connections, where one falls seems to be a matter of priorities.

The NGOs have rejected the accusations, but groups like NGO Monitor assert that there is enough open-source documentation to prove that the only thing under attack is terrorism.

The open-source evidence against the Palestinian NGOs that Professor Steinberg presents should suffice, but if it is not presented by professional public relations specialists, it falls on deaf ears. Israel has a long history of PR failures.

Defence ministry spokespersons, diplomats, politicians, especially our prime ministers barely manage to convince the convinced. Call it propaganda, information dissemination or any other name, we need it!!

Let’s consider one of the banned NGOs: Established in 1979 and based in Ramallah, Al-Haq is arguably the most prominent NGO with connections with dozens of international human rights bodies, which describes itself as a human rights NGO that ‘documents violations of the individual and collective rights of Palestinians.’ 

Al-Haq was the first NGO that drew Steinberg’s suspicion of PFLP connections, “and in many ways is the most significant.” he said.

“Al-Haq is headed by Shawan Jabarin, who sat in an Israeli jail for a while, was convicted of being an active member of the PFLP. At Jabarin’s trial the court ruled that he is a human rights worker by day and a terrorist official by night.” Steinberg said.

According to NGO Monitor, in 2018, Visa, Mastercard, and American Express shut down online donations to Al-Haq due to PFLP ties.

Al-Haq asserted in a statement that the “baseless allegations” seek “to delegitimise, oppress, silence” Palestinian NGOs. It argued that the decision is not based on security concerns, but comes due to “the opening of an International Criminal Court investigation.”

Sinijlawi finds it suspicious that “these organisations are leading the procedure in the ICC, where Gantz himself is the main target because he was the IDF chief of staff in 2014.”

Since its formation in 1979 the ICC has aroused considerable controversy. It has

faced a number of complaints from both states and NGOs, including objections about its jurisdiction, accusations of bias, questioning of the fairness of its case-selection and trial procedures, as well as doubts about its effectiveness.

British barrister Karim Khan was elected to replace the court’s lead prosecutor Fatou Bensouda of Gambia. There’s good reason to believe that Karim Khan will be fairer in his case-selection and trial procedures than his predecessor.

                      International Criminal Court Prosecutor Karim Asad Ahmad Khan QC.

 

I doubt if the Israel Defence Ministry’s decision regarding the six Palestinian NGOs was made out of concern for the welfare of Defence Minister Gantz.

The NGO debate is by no means new. I mentioned it in a piece I wrote in 2015. Then and now the NGO activity is literally mind-boggling. Here’s an extract from what I wrote then: “The innumerable ‘Watch NGOs’ in Israel that claim they are indeed the watchmen’s watchers are cause for concern. In many instances they are more of a bane than a boon. Admittedly some definitely do a lot of good, but others are not so well-intentioned keepers' keepers. Now in order to defend ourselves from our enemies, especially the foes with subtle insidious intentions, we need to watch the keepers’ keepers.

While many NGOs perform a variety of services and humanitarian functions, others are politically motivated with well defined agendas.

A group of former Israeli soldiers claiming to expose the IDF’s alleged human rights violations is currently cause for concern. Their latest activities are in fact aiding and abetting the BDS movement.

The ex-servicemen’s group, ‘Breaking the Silence,’ says that without its work, accounts of improper or even illegal behaviour against Palestinians would remain hidden from the Israeli public.

Since its founding in 2004, ‘Breaking the Silence’ has collected the testimonies of more than 1,000 veterans in a bid to expose the IDF’s alleged illegal actions in the West Bank. It has taken those accounts to audiences in Israel and around the world. However, the NGO has an obvious political agenda.   Its uncorroborated testimonies have been lodged by veterans unwilling to reveal their identities   CTV news reported that ‘Breaking the Silence’s’ seemingly authentic narratives come at a time when Israel is confronting a growing boycott movement focused on companies doing business in the West Bank settlements.

Yediot Ahronot columnist Sever Plocker gave low points to the boycotters. ‘The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) Movement against Israel hasn't achieved much so far. Not a single major foreign investment fund operating in Israel has left, and not a single corporation has severed its ties with Israel.’

‘Nonetheless, the risk from the BDS activity is definitely not a trivial thing: Being anti-Israel is now the dominating fashionable trend among students and young professionals in the West. Being progressive means identifying with BDS. The battle against Israel, under different slogans, replaces the other political battles for many young men and women and allows them to fulfill their rebelliousness without paying any personal price.’ Wrote Sever Plocker.

 

Viewing the BDS campaign against Israel, Cary Nelson Professor of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign said.

“BDS actually offers nothing to the Palestinian people, whom it claims to champion. Perhaps that is the single most cruel and deceptive feature of the BDS movement. Its message of hate is a route to war, not peace.” 

 At this juncture I want to add a margin note: I’m not sure if the Ben and Jerry’s episode is a case in point. It seems that the boycotters are rapidly being boycotted. Last month Arizona became the first state to pull the trigger on divesting from Unilever and Ben & Jerry’s in response to its settlement boycott.

Texas has officially added Ben & Jerry’s and its parent company Unilever to a list of companies that boycott Israel, a further step on the path to the state divesting some $100 million from the companies. The decision was made possible due to the Texas boycott law’s broad definition of Israel that includes the “territory’s that it controls” — i.e., the West Bank.

New Jersey has announced that it was on the path to follow suit, while New York, Florida, Illinois, Maryland and Rhode Island have launched formal proceedings.

 

Of course, the need to watch the watchmen and their watchers too has a positive attribute, it creates jobs!

 

Take care.

 

Beni                                                                                                    2^nd of November, 2021.

 

 

 

Saying nothing.

There was a time when friends and family who stayed with us overnight complained about the birds. Our guests were all city dwellers who managed to sleep through traffic noise and other urban clamour, but not birds chirping at dawn. For our part, we are used to the birds, they don’t bother us. However, from time-to-time other flying objects disturb our tranquil locale. I refer to the IAF jet fighters that thunder through our valley en route to somewhere north.

This week they have been more than usually active. In an attempt to account for this sudden surge, I ruled out the possibility of an attack-and-defence air force simulated exercise knowing that Israel hosted the largest-ever air force drill last week.

Israel has held these so-termed "Blue Flag" exercises every two years since 2013 at the Uvda air- force base north of Eilat.

It seems, (according to foreign sources) that the IAF was playing war games in the south and attacking live targets in Syria simultaneously.

The sites targeted are Hezbollah positions, Iranian munitions storage facilities and sometimes armaments convoys en route from Syria to Lebanon. The IDF tries to avoid hitting Syrian army personnel. Nonetheless, when provoked by Syrian anti-aircraft fire aimed at its planes, the pilots don’t hesitate to fire back destroying the Syrian positions.

Earlier this week foreign news outlets reported that IAF planes dropped leaflets, not bombs in an area in Syria bordering on the Golan Heights. The leaflets written in Arabic were intended as a warning against the Syrian Army’s continued cooperation with Hezbollah. The texts explicitly named operatives working for Hezbollah.

Syria’s SANA news agency later confirmed the “strikes” saying that “Zionist occupation forces committed a new aggression in the southern region as part of their repeated aggression against the sanctity and sovereignty of Syrian territories.”

It seems Syria is reprimanding Israel for “littering.” I wonder if Assad will lodge a complaint with the International Court of Justice (ICJ).

Israel has repeatedly warned that it would not tolerate Iran’s attempts to establish a permanent military presence in the Syrian Golan and has admitted to hundreds of strikes against targets belonging to Iran and its proxy - Hezbollah.

The “strike” was carried out a few days after Prime Minister Naftali Bennett met with Russian President Vladimir Putin and was assured that Russia wouldn’t hamper Israel’s freedom of action in Syria. Senior IDF spokespersons have confirmed the good relations with Russian military personnel in Syria.

 A number of international news outlets mentioned Iran in a different context this week.

A piece in The Washington Post told of a major cyberattack in Iran that affected all of the Islamic Republic’s 4,300 gas stations

“No group has claimed responsibility for the attack that began on Tuesday, though it bore similarities to a previous attack perpetrated months earlier that seemed to directly challenge Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.”

Abolhassan Firouzabadi, the secretary of the Supreme Council of Cyberspace, linked Tuesday’s attack to another cyberattack that targeted Iran’s rail system in July.

“There is a possibility that the attack, like a previous one on Iran’s railway system, has been conducted from abroad,” Firouzabadi said, but didn’t specifically accuse Israeli or US hackers of carrying out the attack.

Farsi -language satellite channels abroad published videos apparently shot by drivers in Isfahan showing electronic billboards there taunting: “Khamenei! Where is our gas?”

An Iranian gas (petrol) filling attendant at one of the malfunctioning stations.

 

Cheap gasoline is practically considered a birthright in Iran, home to the world’s fourth-largest crude oil reserves despite decades of economic woes.

Subsidies allow Iranian motorists to buy regular gasoline at affordable prices.

There doesn’t appear to be a connection between the cyberattacks and live-fire attacks on US forces in Syria last week.

Iran carried out a complex and coordinated attack using up to five armed drones to strike at the Tanf garrison, a lonely US outpost in Syria near the Jordanian and Iraqi border.

The assessment by the US is that Iran was behind this attack. It is the latest of numerous drone attacks on American forces in the region this year. Iranian-backed groups in Iraq have used drones to target US forces at other places in Syria.

The attacks are also part of the rising Iranian drone threat across the region. This means the attack on Tanf is a message not just for the US, but also for Israel, Saudi Arabia and other countries facing Iran’s drones.

 Iran on one side and the US and Israel on the other regularly accuse each other of cyberattacks. Israeli cyber experts on Tuesday told Israel TV channel 12 news

that this week’s cyberattack on Iran appeared to have been carried out by serious hackers: “We’re not talking about kids, but rather professional hackers — which doesn’t rule out them being backed by a state government.”

In 2010 the Stuxnet virus — believed to have been engineered by Israel and the US — infected Iran’s nuclear programme, causing a series of breakdowns in centrifuges used to enrich uranium.

None of the serious observers, commentators and other Iranian affairs pundits have intimated so far that Israel was behind the latest cyberattack.

Even if Israel carried out the attack, why boast about it?

“Saying nothing sometimes says the most.” Emily Dickinson

 

Take care.

 

 

Beni                                                                                        28^th of October, 2021

Who watches the watchmen?

It seems we have always been plagued by bad neighbours  The annals of the ancient world describe how close and distant neighbours habitually  stormed the gates of our cities and exiled our ancestors to foreign parts. Our prophets promised retribution predicting that terrible catastrophes would befall  our not so nice neighbours. Divine justice is fine, but an ounce of prevention helps too. So our forefathers thought it wise to post a few guards at the gates, "For the keeper of Israel neither slumbers nor sleeps." Psalm 121:4 .Apparently nobody thought to check the guards till the Roman poet Juvenal asked, "Who watches the watchmen?"                                                                 

Fast forward to modern times and the innumerable "Watch NGOs" in Israel that claim they are indeed the watchmen’s watchers. In many instances they are more of a bane than a boon. Admittedly some definitely do a lot of good, but others are not so well intentioned keepers' keepers. Now in order to defend ourselves from our enemies, especially the foes with subtle insidious intentions, we need to watch the keepers’ keepers.

While many NGOs perform a variety of services and humanitarian functions, others are politically motivated with well defined agendas.

A group of former Israeli soldiers claiming to expose the IDF’s alleged human rights violations is currently  cause for concern. Their latest activities are in fact aiding and abetting the BDS movement.

The ex-servicemen’s group, “Breaking the Silence,” says that without its work, accounts of improper or even illegal behaviour against Palestinians would remain hidden from the Israeli public.

Since its founding in 2004, Breaking the Silence has collected the testimonies of more than 1,000 veterans in a bid to expose the IDF’s alleged illegal actions in the West Bank. It has taken those accounts to audiences in Israel and around the world. However, the NGO has an obvious political agenda.            Its uncorroborated testimonies have been lodged by veterans unwilling to reveal their identities   CTV news reported that “Breaking the Silence’s” seemingly authentic narratives come at a time when Israel is confronting a growing boycott movement focused on companies doing business in the West Bank settlements. The European Union also has ratcheted up measures against settlement products.

Notwithstanding the movement’s triumphant tone — and Israel’s robust reaction — BDS has not been nearly as successful as its supporters claim, nor its opponents fear. In some instances its actions have adversely affected West Bank Palestinians.

The potential stakes for boycotts became clear recently when Stéphane Richard, Orange telecom chief executive, told a Cairo business group that his company, which has come under pressure from campaigners, would leave Israel if it could. The remarks infuriated the Israeli government and many of the company’s customers in Israel. Stéphane.Richard apologized later, but Prime Minister  Netanyahu wasn’t satisfied and demanded that he come  to Israel to apologise. Richard complied, a veritable “Going to Canossa” in order to make amends for his remarks in Cairo and confirm Orange’s “commitment to Israel”.

Yediot Ahronot columnist Sever Plocker gave a different interpretation of the French cell phone company’s imbroglio,” Orange's alleged boycott appears to be a foolish verbal entanglement of a nervous CEO who is anxiously watching new cellular companies eating away at his brand and affecting his revenues.”

Plocker too gave low points to the boycotters. “The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) Movement against Israel hasn't achieved much so far. Not a single foreign investment fund operating in Israel has left, and not a single corporation has severed its ties with Israel.”…..” Nonetheless, the risk from the BDS activity is definitely not a trivial thing: Being anti-Israel is now the dominating fashionable trend among students and the young intelligence in the West. Being progressive means identifying with BDS. The battle against Israel, under different slogans, replaces the other political battles for many young men and women and allows them to fulfill their rebelliousness without paying any personal price.

The significant support for BDS in the faculties for humanities and social sciences is particularly concerning, as it shapes the consciousness of the future intellectual-leading elite. “

According to Sever Plocker the wrong people are leading the P.R campaign against the BDS movement.”The Israeli right-wing representatives use a language and terms which the Western academic left doesn’t understand and doesn’t accept. Their appearance in front of foreign university audiences, and especially in front of BDS spokespeople, is detrimental to Israel and causes more people to support the anti-Israel movement. “

Plocker and other political analysts believe that the Israeli political left has a better chance of tackling the BDS movement. It is critical of the West Bank occupation and consistently advocates a two-state solution. Furthermore it can expose the BDS movement’s real objectives which go far beyond boycotting Israel’s settlements in the West Bank. 

NGO Monitor, which tracks the funding of Israeli rights groups like Breaking the Silence is itself an NGO and not entirely without sin. Its stated aim is to generate and distribute critical analysis and reports on the output of the international NGO community for the benefit of government policy makers, journalists, philanthropic organisations  and the general public. It has been a legally and financially independent organisation since 2007 when it  formally registered as  a non-profit oranisation.  Various critics of NGO Monitor claim it is clearly aligned with the Israeli right-wing.

Breaking the Silence and other rights groups face a formidable threat from legislation planned to limit their foreign funding by requiring senior government officials to approve the donations.

The United Nations is the biggest watchdog of all. In its investigations and reports regarding our region it has frequently shown anti-Israel bias.

Israel’s ambassadors to the United Nations have spent a lot of time and energy refuting official U.N. human rights councils/committees accusations levelled against the IDF. This week   Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, Ron Prosor, complained   to Secretary General Ban Ki-moon accusing the secretary general’s special representative for children and armed conflict, Leila Zerrougui, of bias against Israel. It didn’t help mainly because Ban Ki-moon himself criticised Israel later in the week showing similar bias.

In the past U.N. fact-finding missions have presented very one-sided reports.

Their prejudicial findings have caused Israeli governments to forgo cooperating with them. The infamous Goldstone Report of 2011 following the 2008-2009 Gaza war is case in point. Later the investigating committee’s chairman Richard Goldstein withdrew a charge made in the report that it was Israel's policy to intentionally target civilians

Leila Zerrougui’s report contrasts sharply with the findings of a High Level International Military Group, made up of 11 former chiefs of staff, generals, senior officers, political leaders and officials from the United States, Germany, the United Kingdom, Holland, Spain, Italy, Australia and Colombia. The opening statement issued after the group’s visit to Israel said “We were well aware of the allegations made by some governments, the United Nations, human rights groups and the media, that Israel acted outside the laws of armed conflict in Gaza. Some have suggested that the IDF lacked restraint or even deliberately targeted innocent civilians.” ..”Our findings lead us to the opposite conclusion. We examined the circumstances that led to the tragic conflict last summer and are in no doubt that this was not a war that Israel wanted

The war that Israel was eventually compelled to fight against Hamas and other Gaza extremists was a legitimate war, necessary to defend its citizens and its territory against sustained attack from beyond its borders. The Israel Defence Force employed a series of precautionary measures to reduce civilian casualties. Each of our own armies is of course committed to protecting civilian life during combat. But none of us is aware of any army that takes such extensive measures as did the IDF last summer to protect the lives of the civilian population in such circumstances.”

Of course there is a positive aspect of the need to watch the watchmen and their watchers too etc., It creates jobs!

Have a good weekend.

Beni                                                                19^th of June, 2015.