Cape Jewish Chronicle

Narrative of the Israel-Palestinian Conflict, Evenhandedness Gone Mad

It’s a heartening story just made for this season and the Western media: two seriously injured children, one Israeli and one Palestinian, becoming friends together in a hospital, with an innocence that transcends the hatred of their peoples. The New York Times article is written precisely balanced, two families, two causes, absolutely identical. Oh how foolish is this unnecessary conflict! What folly drives humanity!

On one level, who can object to such a story, so fair, balanced, so humane and touching? Nowadays, to treat Israel on an equal footing with the Palestinians is rare enough and thus should be sufficient. Yet something bothers me about this story; everything it leaves out and misleads about.
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After a decade of this column, Israel is less secure than when I started writing it — and it is political inertia and a lack of peace — not Iran, Hamas, or Hizbollah — that are the reasons why

After 10 years of being the Cape Jewish Chronicle columnist, the time has come to write my last ever column. All things must come to an end, and what better time to call it a day than on one’s 10th anniversary

As I started to consider how to approach this column, it began to dawn on me just how long a decade is, and in particular when it comes to the Middle- East and associated matters. What a remarkable, eventful and momentous decade it has been — a period that has seen so many highs and so many lows, which started with talks of peace and that has ended during years of uncertainly and conflict.

It has been the ultimate political rollercoaster.
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Israel-Russia relations put to the test as ‘Arctic Sea’ episode takes an intriguing turn

A mystery regarding a missing cargo ship has become the latest suggestion of a growing covert war going on between Israel and Iran, involving a variety of actors connected with both. What seemed initially as the latest piracy story to hit the news quickly moved into something quite different, and now resembles an elaborate plot from a James Bond movie.

The Maltese-flagged Arctic Sea and its 15 Russian crew mysteriously vanished in July days after leaving Finland, carrying, according to its official manifest, a cargo of timber to Algeria. It was found on August 16 off the coast of West Africa, with the Russian navy announcing that it had captured the hijackers and rescued the crew. Eight men were later charged by the Russians with hijacking and piracy.
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History has shown us, time and again, that revolution often occurs when authoritarian regimes take the obedience of their subjects for granted, do as they desire as they naively ignore growing discontent, only to then discover that they have pushed their populace to breaking point. History may be in the process of repeating itself in Iran.

In scenes all too reminiscent of the popular uprisings that precipitated the collapse of the Soviet Bloc in the late-1980s — and indeed Iran’s own Revolution in 1979 — Iran last month saw a political explosion after Ahmadinejad was inconceivably declared to have won a landslide victory in June’s Presidential election.

Iran’s population — that over the years has got ever younger, more educated, and via modern technology, become all too aware of what is going on in the outside world — had until now been placated by a limited form of ‘pro- Revolutionary’ democracy. Many were discontented, even angry, but at least they felt they had a voice.
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Conflict is over – maybe – but underlying causes remain as strong, and intractable, as ever A tense ceasefire has taken hold in Gaza, bringing to an end — for now anyway — the conflict that has been raging for three weeks. Almost as soon as the ‘lull’ of previous months between Israel and Hamas ended conflict had resumed, turning quickly into the largest military conflict seen in Gaza since the Six Day War.

Israel pounded Hamas and targets relating to the government it runs across the Strip and its troops reentered Gaza, all after Hamas resumed mass rocket firing, hitting Israeli cities it had not been able to reach before the ‘lull’ started — now Ashkelon and Beersheva and not just Sderot being hit, bringing a massive Israeli response that left over 1,300 Palestinians dead.
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Following years of growing concerns over Irans nuclear intentions, the crisis has now moved to a new and more dangerous level. After months of stalemate on the diplomatic front, and as the public statements, pronouncements and mind games have been ratcheted up, we have now seen dramatic statements on the military front by both Israel and Iran.

On July 9 Iran grabbed the headlines by claiming to have test-launched a set of Shahab-3 missiles, which they claim have a range of some 2,000km (1,240 miles) that would put all of Israel in its reach in addition to state-of-the-art shore-to-sea, surface-to-surface and sea-to-air missiles.
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