Israel's options in the new Middle East

The coming changes in North Africa and the Middle East will cause a huge shift in the balance of power in the region.

Wikileaks have shown the intransigent nature of Israeli negotiations. This will now change. Israel must start negotiating in good faith.

Although Zionism predated World War 2, the Nazi Holocaust motivated Jews to found a state for their people in Israel.

The psychological effect of the horror of the Holocaust must be remembered and understood as a the basic motive for the paranoid and aggressive position of the Israeli Government.

The State of Israel has had an expansionist policy ever since its foundation, displacing Palestinians to an extent that can be characterised as ethnic cleansing, and has also denied human rights to Palestinians. 

In retaliation for displacement and repression, Palestinians have fought back with hijackings, stones, rockets, and suicide bombings.
In retaliation of this, Israel has responded with ever-greater aerial bombings culminating with the disgraceful bombing of Lebanon in 2006 and Operation Cast Lead in 2008-9.

The mutual, retaliatory, violence-based policy is causing immense human suffering to the peoples of both sides, particularly the Palestinians. Militarism is causing polarisation of opinion, and an escalation of violence that could lead to wider conflict in the Middle East and even global conflict, which could even escalate into nuclear war. 

In order to avoid this disastrous outcome, all parties must focus on a peace settlement based on negotiation and compromise, focused around co-operation in the task of creating a sustainable economy in their arid land.

At the heart of the problem is the fact that the increase in population of Israel/Palestine on the part of both communities demands the functional expansion of the carrying capacity of the land, which demands in turn a functional increase in the supply of water to the area in order to increase the productivity of the land.

This must be based on co-operative water management solutions which will be both innovative and intensive.

It will be based on work on water harvesting, waste minimisation and water recycling, and reafforestation from the coast inwards.

While this work is in progress, the role of the international community is to conceive of and facilitate a way for this situation to come about by dialogue with all actors in the Middle East.

The case for peace is overwhelming from a rational point of view. Reason must displace emotions such as fear and resentment as the primary motive for action.

This objective can only be realised through the mutual recognition of the rights of independent statehood and secure borders of both Palestinians and Israelis; an immediate end to the violence and de-escalation of the arms build-up in the region; enforcement of UN resolutions 242 and 338; international assistance so that both the Palestinian and Israeli states can develop co-operative self-reliance in water management, food production and basic services and industries; and long term exploration of the possibility of establishing a confederation with neighbouring states, with free and equal access for each state's citizens.

All Israelis, Palestinians, and their families should have and be able to exercise full human and civil rights throughout Israel and the occupied territories. Israel should be subject to the Geneva Convention concerning the rights of individuals and communities.

All actors must recognise the right of the people of Israel to exist peacefully within secure borders.

Both the Israeli Government and the PLO to unequivocally reject violence as a means of settling their conflict.
Israel should repeal its present "law of return" because it is incompatible with the full exercise of human rights and is implicitly discriminatory, and is open to the accusation of being racist.

Israel should to have direct talks with representatives of the Palestinian people with a view to ensuring genuine religious, political, economic and other human rights for all people within Israel and the occupied territories.

Israel should allow Palestinians and their families to return to their former homes and be offered full Israeli citizenship, or to compensate those unable or unwilling to return to their homes and/or property.

Arab states should agree a mutual non-aggression pact, and a non-aggression pact with Israel. Such pacts must be guaranteed by the international community.

The United States Government should use its special relationship with Israel to halt military and financial support until Israel enters the dialogue called for above.

The Middle East is faced with a decision. Continuation of the old politics of confrontation and conflict can only lead to war. Co-operation in securing the basis of a sustainable economy for all in the area can lead to a just and lasting peace.

The choice is ours.

Israel - non-violence succeeds where violence sucks

Great story here in the NYT about a Palestinian community who succeeded in diverting an Israeli security barrier by non-violent resistance.

There is a film about it - Budrus.

Violence is a self-perpetuating vicious circle. Non-violence is the antidote to violence.
It is a pity that there is no reference in Green  Party Israel/Palestine policy (afaik) to the advantage of non violence, and no clear reference to the eminently green policy of cross community cooperation in water management projects. 

And another thing. We have a problem in that ultra-orthodox religionists believe that the Creator promised the whole Land, from Dan even unto Beer-Sheba, to His Chosen People. Against this kind of certainty, rational negotiations shine as a candle on the surface of the sun.

Depressing. But there is a ray of light. As well as promising the whole land, the Torah also specifies many other items.

For instance Deuteronomy 20:19 forbids the destruction of an enemy's trees, something that the Israeli bulldozers do on a regular basis. There are many other laws that could rebound on Israel's actions, which would be sufficient to inhibit most of what the Israeli Government and its agents, especially the settler movement, is doing.

If learned and right-thinking Israeli jurists would take on this challenge, taking settlers to court for breaking the laws in their own Torah, we might be able to sideline the obsessives, and get some rationality in the situation.

I stress the "might". It's worth a try. Anything is worth a try.

Israel/Palestine; How do we get peace?

Israel/Palestine looks like Northern Ireland in the Troubles, or South Africa under apartheid. Many pundits shake their heads and intone, "Insoluble". Matthew Parris just wants to stop thinking about it. He wants to wipe I/P off the cognitive map, and in this he is, dare I say it, somewhat like AhmadiNajad, although the latter only wants to wipe the I part of I/P off the map.

It looks insoluble because there are fundamentalist religious bigots on both sides. We have experience of this little problem here in Northern Ireland. Dogmatism and its false absolutes are a powerful force, but war-weariness is in the end and even stronger force. It usually takes a generation to for war to cause people to drop the simple dogmatic absolutes and adopt some realistic compromises. The first intifada was 23 years ago. That means that we should be ready for a resolution soon.

This conflict is a complex system, with multiple lines of causalities, and  multiple positive feedback loops. The question is NOT a simple binary choice of "Which cause is right, the Palestinian cause or the Israeli cause?" The question is, "How can we help reverse the process of escalation of violence?"

Part of this is for the two Governments involved, Israeli and Hamas and their supporters, to understand that their mutual paranoia and mutual violence is counter productive to the interests of their people.

Another important part is to be aware of the many cross-community peace initiatives that exist.

Politicians deal in absolutes. The people deal in realities.

My favourite reality based, cross community initiative is Friends of the Earth Middle East.  I want to see their work supported by the EU, and magnified many times over, into a serious water management system.

If the root cause of the conflict is the inward migration of significant numbers of people, then the answer is to make the land bigger, so that it can support them all.  That sounds impossible, and spatially it is impossible, but functionally it is not. Land is only useful if it is fertile. Water and biological waste recycling are all that is required to make arid land fertile. This can be done with water harvesting, water conservation, and reforestation from the coast inwards. The economic effort of doing this will increase prosperity, and divert energy from hate-related activities.

The vicious cycle of hate can stop. The first step on this journey is for us to stop believing that hate is some kind of a solution, and that hate and paranoia are permanent state of affairs. They are not.

Israel, Gaza, Warsaw Ghetto

Israel, your God has given you so much.
Intelligence, wealth, influence, a sense of identity and destiny.
Why does your God not give you ability to see the likeness of Gaza to the Warsaw Ghetto?

Israel, racism, absolutism, solutions

Adrian, has commented on the post below (Is Israel Racist?). My response is long, so I am putting it here as today's blog.

The original post analysis shows that there is a case to be made that Israel is a state founded on racist ideology, and that the behaviour of the Israeli Government towards the Palestinians is consistent with the inequitable behaviour that is consistent with racism.

I realise this is a controversial area, but please react to what I have written, not to the existing controversy out there.

I am not attacking Israel. I have simply tried to analyse objectively, keeping close to the exact meaning of the words racism, race, and Zionism. If anyone can show that the logic of the situation is not as I have shown it to be, I will be more than happy.

To summmarise again, Jews are (probably) a race, Zionism is a movement to establish and support a state for the Jewish race, and Israelis have been behaving in an unfair way to those not of their race.

The Probably is of interest, because "race" has several different meanings, and it is doubtful that there is a clear scientific basis for the word.

Adrian asks, "If you think Israel is racist because it is a Jewish state, then what of the Islamic states; Pakistan, Iran, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia".

I agree, Islamic states create enormous human rights problems for their citizens. In many ways, Israel is a freer society than, say, Saudi Arabia. There is a difference, in that in Israel, there is conflation with descent ("race") and religion. The Islamic states are characterised by religion only. Although having said that, I would expect that a Caucasian convert to Islam might experience some common or garden discrimination when he goes out and about.

I agree that Iran is a repressive regime. Ahmadinajad's idiotic Holocaust denial and desire for nuclear weapons (not to mention power) was mentioned in the original piece. Adrian gives links to a Human Rights Watch report on Iran.


Adrian: "'Has Israel treated Palestinians unfairly?' I think you need to look at more than this years war to answer that".

We cannnot overlook this year's war.

The link you give to refutations of myths is informative, but on the other hand a pro-Palestinian could give an equally lengthy list of instances of unfair treatment within the State of Israel, and a longer list of complaints relating to the effects of the blockade of Gaza &c &c.

'Arabs in Israel have equal voting rights; in fact, it is one of the few places in the Middle East where Arab women may vote'

This is welcome, and promises well for the future, a good basis to build on.

The problem lies in absolutism. The pro-Palestinian line is that Israel is Zionist, Zionism is racism, therefore Israel must be done away with. The orthodox line is that God has promised the Land to the Jewish people form Dan even unto Beer-sheba. These absolutisms mean only one thing: continuation of the present misery ad infinitum, or all out war.

A more nuanced (new word, thanks Gordon) or relativistic line would be that there are indeed ideological and practical examples of racism in Israel's constitution and behaviour, and these must be amended. The Law of Return would be a good place to start.

This approach is well established in child psychology. You do not tell a child that it is a bad child for doing something; you tell it that the behavior is not helpful, and show the child a better way to respond to events.

We Greens can and must transcend the absolutist, pro-/anti-Israel divide.

First, we need always to distinguish between people and regime. We wish to see both communities flourish with enough water, food, homes, health and security. At the same time we can be as critical as need be for the failures of the Governments, of the Israeli Government, which has made a huge mistake in Operation Cast Lead, and of Hamas, with its absolutist ideology and provocative rocket attacks (though they reduced substantially in the ceasefire), and of the corrupt Fatah regime (have they cleaned up their act yet?).

Greens should seek to be even handed in its criticism of the regimes, and should be constructive in our analysis of the diplomatic efforts that are under way. As things stand, our policy statements lean towards condemnations of Israel.

Most importantly, though, we should open a new front at the level of the community. This is why we should adopt the Water Project, and put it forward as something that the EU should support with significant resources. This will empower the communities, benefiting them directly in economic and physical terms, because a new water regime means more food and more prosperity.

I hope that Adrian will get Reading Green Party to look at and adopt the Water Project. We need to get beyond the pro/anti debate and get behind the pro-peace and prosperity agenda.

Is Israel racist? Yes, but there is a peaceful solution.

Anglophone and European delegates walk out on the Mahmoud Ahmedinajad's speech at the UN's "Durban Review" conference on racism in Geneva.

The question is, "Is Israel a racist state?"

I am going to be very careful here, because this question is enormously charged emotionally and politically, and I have no desire to enter a quagmire of political accusation and counter accusation.
So I am going to go to the dictionaries.

First, what is racism?

Merriam-Webster:
1 a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race
2 racial prejudice or discrimination

Cambridge dictionaries online:
the belief that people's qualities are influenced by their race and that the members of other races are not as good as the members of your own, or the resulting unfair treatment of members of other races:

Cambridge dictionary of American English:
a person who believes that some races are better than others, or who acts unfairly to someone because of their race

So that is pretty clear: racism is a belief in superiority of one race over another, together with the resulting inequitable treatment of another race.

Has Israel treated Palestinians unfairly? All the evidence certainly points in that direction. (The Israelis would say that much of their oppressive behaviour (e.g. Gaza 2009) is because of Palestinian provocation. OK, but the fact is that the kill ratio is more than 10 Palestinians dead for every Israeli dead).

Does the Israeli regime believe that it is racially superior? They would deny it, and a long and confusing debate would follow, because what someone believes is not as clear as what they do.

So inequitable treatment is a more useful indicator than belief. The evidence of ethnic cleansing, bulldozing of homes, appropriation of ground water, destruction of farmland, hindering of farming, blockade of Gaza and the rest, indicates clearly that Israel is acting unfairly. (Though Israel will always quote provocation as the cause, and Palestinians will always quote invasion as the cause of their provocation).

So it is certain that Israel is behaving unfairly, oppressively even, to the Palestinians. Is this racist oppression, or just plain oppression?

To cut through the confusion about belief we can ask the question whether Zionism is racism?

So, what is Zionism?

Interestingly, zionism is not found in the Cambridge Dictionary of American English.

Cambridge Advanced Learner's dictionary:
a political movement which had as its original aim the creation of a country for Jewish people, and which now works to help the development of Israel.

MerriamWebster:
an international movement originally for the establishment of a Jewish national or religious community in Palestine and later for the support of modern Israel.

The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language:
A Jewish movement that arose in the late 19th century in response to growing anti-Semitism and sought to re-establish a Jewish homeland in Palestine. Modern Zionism is concerned with the support and development of the state of Israel.

So Zionism is for establishing and supporting a Jewish state.

Next question: are Jews a race?

Compact Oxford English dictionary:
a member of the people whose traditional religion is Judaism and who trace their origins to the ancient Hebrew people of Israel.

MerriamWebster:
2: a member of a nation existing in Palestine from the sixth century b.c. to the first century a.d.
3: a person belonging to a continuation through descent or conversion of the ancient Jewish people
4: one whose religion is Judaism

Cambridge Advance Learner's Dictionary:
a member of a race of people whose traditional religion is Judaism

Webster's New World College Dictionary:
1. a person descended, or regarded as descended, from the ancient Hebrews of Biblical times
2. a person whose religion is Judaism

And just to be sure, what is a race?

Compact OED:
1 each of the major divisions of humankind, having distinct physical characteristics.
2 racial origin or distinction: rights based on race.
3 a group of people sharing the same culture, language, etc.; an ethnic group.
4 a group of people or things with a common feature.

— USAGE Some people now feel that the word race should be avoided, because of its associations with the now discredited theories of 19th-century anthropologists and physiologists about supposed racial superiority. Terms such as people, community, or ethnic group are less emotionally charged.

Cambridge dictionaries online:
a group, especially of people, with particular similar physical characteristics, who are considered as belonging to the same type, or the fact of belonging to such a group:

So we can conclude that Jews are (probably) a race, Zionism is a movement to establish and support a state for the Jewish race, and Israelis have been behaving in an unfair way to those not of their race.

The central item of policy to support this conclusion is embodied in the Law of Return enacted in the Israeli Parliament in 1950, that gives Jews, those of Jewish ancestry, and their spouses the right to migrate to and settle in Israel and gain citizenship.

In defence of the law of return, Israelis argue that other countries exercise a right of return for their citizens. That would be citizens, not members of their race.

In conclusion, it does seem that Ahmedinajad, although in many ways (the supposed benefits of nuclear weapons and Holocaust denial) a deluded person, has a strong logical case about Israel's racism. There is an inherent theoretical racist component in Zionism, and, more importantly, Israel has been behaving unfairly to the Palestinians in a way that is consistent with a racist ideology.

What conclusions can we draw from this? There are two main options, the absolutist, and the realist.

Absolutists argue that Israel is a racist state, and is therefore illegitimate, and should go the way of apartheid South Africa. Israel should be crippled by divestment and sanctions until it folds, and is merged into a single state with power sharing with Palestinians.

However, from the Israeli point of view, that is an existential threat, and the Holocaust has sensitised them against existential threats. Israel's absolutists therefore stand opposed to pro-Palestinian absolutists, an immovable object faced with an irresistible force. Restult: either stalemate or all - out war.

Indeed, the act of abolishing Israel could also be construed as racist.

The realist, or Green, view is that the mess posed by these absolutisms can be avoided by addressing the immediate needs of the people in the Land, while politicians do what they do best: argue and call each other names. Insofar as they will achieve anything, they should start on the Law of Return, removing the racist element of the Israeli constitution.

The real problem is that the Land is semi arid.
The population is growing, partly through immigration.
It is a vital necessity to improve the productivity of the Land to meet the needs of the polulation.
To do this we need water.
To improve the water, we need to harvest every drop that falls onto any roof, we need to conserve water, and we need to plant forests.
We also need lots of solar energy.

Europe and the US need to give resources to enable both communities to cooperate in enabling these things to take place. In doing so, we will be diverting energy and attention from resentment to cooperation, from weapons to hoes, from warfare to welfare.

We have European elections on June 4th. Not that there is anything in the papers about it, because euro-elections are seen as desperately unsexy by the media. Controversy over Ahmediajad is more the style. But today's headline controversy gives us an opportunity to show how we can get to peace through addressing ecological realities.

I hope that the Green Party will soon be putting this forward as its contribution to the otherwise intractable problem Israel and Palestine.

Remember you read (of the proposal that the Greens should adopt this line) it here first.

The Water Project: Peace in Israel/Palestine through cooperation on sustainability

Peace in the Middle East through cooperation on water infrastructure projects


The question of how to create a true, just and sustainable peace in Israel and Palestine (I/P) is now firmly at the top of the international agenda. There is a political agenda to be pursued by diplomats, on which Greens have much to say, but there is also a uniquely ecological issue that we can add. This paper proposes that the approach taken by Friends of the Earth Middle East should be adopted and expanded, and placed on the table of peace negotiations.

It is right and necessary for European Greens to take a constructive interest in I/P matters, since everything on the surface of the Earth is interconnected, and the deep division of opinion there is reflected in tension within our own society. Also, if the conflict escalates to a major war, we will be affected, especially if the war progresses to the use of nuclear weapons.

The proposal is that GPEW, the European Green Party and the US Green Party draw together a coalition of green NGOs in I/P with the aim of persuading funding organisations, primarily the EU and the USA, to put significant amounts of money into a cross-community Water Management Project in I/P.

There are two established principles in conflict resolution: first, find common ground that is of benefit to both parties, and second, introduce a displacement activity to divert attention away from conflict to co-operation, from destruction to construction.

The common ground for both communities is, literally, their common ground: they need to win a sustainable living out of an arid land. The population in the Land has increased since 1946, and this means that the productivity of the land must be increased to meet the needs of the people there. Water is needed to increase agricultural productivity, and at present water is in short supply throughout the Middle East. This scarcity is itself a potential cause for conflict, but intelligent action can transform water into a cause of resolution of conflict.

We are aiming for a massive programme of investment and employment in water conservation, water harvesting, and afforestation. This will require significant financial investment, and the EU is one potential source for such, although other agencies could be tapped also. We know that peace in Northern Ireland came about after massive infrastructure investment in that country.

The Water Project programme has three arms: water conservation, water harvesting and afforestation.


Water Conservation

1 Recycling of grey water.
We can be sure this is happening already, but it needs to be universal, and in towns some technology – such as filters – may be needed.

2 Composting toilets should be used instead of water-mediated sewerage systems.
There are many working models for this approach which we can tap into. The Water Project can trial the many technologies on offer, and the most successful models can be rolled out across the whole ME. Composting toilets replace the conventional water- and energy-intensive system with a natural system which actually enhances the fertility and structure of the soil.

3 In places where boreholes are used, attention should be paid to the levels of water, and if these levels are falling, conservation measures in the locality should be intensified.


Water Harvesting

Every roof should be a water collecting point, and every building should have a water holding cistern appropriate to the size of the roof. This will create many thousands of jobs in both communities, work that requires little training. It will require a large amount of guttering and cisterns, probably made of plastic, preferably recycled. Some of this may come from established and new factories in both communities, some may come from the EU.

This activity will stimulate worthwhile production and good jobs in line with Keynesian policies as a response to the global recession, and will therefore help to relieve the poverty that is endemic in Gaza.


Afforestation

Forests act as aerial aquifers, conducting water inland from the sea in the evapotranspiration cycle. Wangari Maathai of the Green Belt Movement finds that an area of trees in Kenya of 15 square kilometres will create its own rain cloud.
Please see the Desert Rose Project for an outline proposal for (re)creating coastal forests, using water from solar desalination plants, and gradually working inland. Forests moderate the local (and, eventually, global) climate, and provide many other goods and services that are advantageous to the local community.

There are already projects of this nature taking place in Israel. The aim should be to expand them with new investment.

By putting in place these – and other – measures, there will be plenty of work for all people in both communities, with a resulting increase in general prosperity, and a decrease in available time and energy spent in ruminating on injustices and planning of revenge for same.

There is a wealth of experience in these matters within Friends of the Earth Middle East, who have been working on this for many years. They have in-depth knowledge of these matters

The present proposal is that the Green Party here should adopt this proposal and put it to the European Green Party, to the Green Group in the European Parliament, and to the United States’ Green Party. Working in cooperation with FoEME, the Israel Green Party, the Israel Green Movement (when they can be contacted) and as many of the Palestinian Green NGOs as we can contact, we will press for funding to be made available for a serious and expanding approach to water management which will continue until no more can be done to improve the situation.

In working toward this goal, we will be
· assisting the peace process at street level with constructive and economically worthwhile activity
· alleviating water shortages
· producing more productive agriculture
· providing a model that can be applied throughout the Middle East and in other arid and conflict-ridden regions.


This is a preliminary paper, seeking support from within the GPEW International Community, and from the GPEW leadership.

Background Information on Water in IP.

Amnesty International calls for accountbility in Gaza

AIUK : Gaza: "With two shaky and unilateral ceasefires now in place in Gaza a huge humanitarian relief effort is needed immediately. With evidence of war crimes committed by both sides during the crisis, there must also be a full and independent investigation to bring those responsible to justice."

You can take action on the linked page, writing to HMG, UNSC, and seeking the release of Gilad Shalit.

Holocaust Day

Holocaust Day. Six million Jews, Romanies, and Communists exterminated by Fascism, the ideology of hatred and control, the ideology of the Master Race, the ideology of militarism, institutional paranoia and intolerance.

One of the motivations that enabled people to survive the camps was the thought "The world has got to know about this". For the survivors, the existence and activities of holocaust denialists must be an intolerably bitter challenge.

The only consolation to be drawn from the Holocaust is that humanity should have learned from it. Sadly, 70 years after Hitler's psychosis became dominant in a nation, right wing parties are once more emerging from the swamp, the control motif rules in Whitehall, and everywhere militarism is viewed, not as the problem, but the solution.

The gravest irony is that the Israeli State, peopled by the prime victims of the Holocaust, are now behaving in a way that is horrendously parallel to the actions of the Nazis. Ethnic cleansing, ghettoes, herding children into a building and then firing on it...

Critics of Israel have to understand that the Jewish people have been through a collective trauma. Threats to the right of Israel to exist are perceived as threats of a Second Holocaust, and therefore bring out the Never Again reaction, and absolute counter attack. I believe this explains why an otherwise intelligent nation has acted with such ill-considered violence in Gaza.

From the Holocaust we have to learn that social control and militarism is the problem, not the solution. And from Gaza we have to learn that an eye for an eye will leave the whole world blind.

Mark Thompson and "Impartiality" over the DEC appeal

BBC Director general Mark Thompson (not to be confused with Mark Thomas, as I was until Weggis put me right) as put up a barrage of words when interviewed by John Humphrys on the Today programme. His central case is that the BBC must maintain its impartiality, but this is negated by the fact that he was showing blatant pro-Israeli partiality in banning the DEC appeal.

The comments on one of the websites I have looked at were running roughly 2:1 against the Thomas decision. All the more reason to put in a complaint against the decision.

Go down the page for the story that the BBC dares not publish.

Stop the War is organising a mass return of TV licenses to the BBC for those incensed by the continuing refusal of the BBC to broadcast and emergency appeal for Gaza.The fact that other channels including Channel 4, ITV and Channel 5 are showing the appeal tonight shows how isolated and extreme the BBC is on this issue, although they are crowing today that Rupert Murdoch's Sky has joined them in their non-humanitarian stance.

Avaaz is a good way to let the BBC know what you think. They are making the TV license threat also.

Boycott Israel goods

Sorry! I have deleted the page of logos derived from the boycottisraelnow site. It carried a health warning from me because of intemperate language about zionism on the site, and they do not make clear whether or not they are Single Statists, but then some Green Party members seem to adhere to that interesting but problematical option also.

I supported the economic boycott of Israel in order to bring about a better balance between the Israeli and Palestinian negotiating teams when they finally do start talking, but we have to admit that untargeted economic boycotts are dodgy because they hurt the people. It would be better to go for sanctions targeted on the Israeli (and also Hamas) regimes and supported in the UN, but that would take years to come about.

I had a lot of stick about the link to the BoycottIsraelNow site, and have now removed it because a group of Greens have agreed to work on supporting a big water project in the Land.

Here is an introduction to the Water Project.

Breaking News: BBC’s Scottish HQ Occupied

BBC’s Scottish HQ Occupied in protest at BBC DEC decision
"Around 5pm this evening between 30 and 50 demonstrators occupied the BBC Scotland headquarters at Pacific Quay in Glasgow in a protest over the failure of the BBC to broadcast the DEC appeal for Gaza.

Scottish Television (based just next door) have refused to cover the story citing a policy not to cover demonstrations at rival media institutions."

[More information added 26th Jan, with photos]
STW's Andrew Burgin tells me that the occupation was ended peacefully around 11pm, with no arrests. This may be because Strathclyde police have had enough of the time and expense of arresting peaceful demonstrators. They are a decent police force, and the Met should go and take lessons from them.

Andrew tells me that more occupations may take place today.

The heat on the BBC is increasing. See below for links to complain against the BBC and also to donate to the DEC.

We need to know who made the decision. It looks as if it was made by Mark Thompson, Director General of the BBC, in consultation within and outside of the BBC. Who were they? What was their expertise or involvement? Were they lobbyists?

We must remember that the BBC belongs to us, the licence payers, and not to Government - although in this case, it looks as if Government is on the side of the humanitarians.

If Mark Thomas does not resign, we can bring pressure on him by pooling pledges to withhold our TV license fee payments. This is a troublesome path to go down, because it could destroy the BBC, and leave us with just commercial TV. But the Beeb would probably cave in before it comes to an actual fee boycott if we get enough pledges.

Anyway, fair play to the occupiers!

PS According to Sky News, who are covering the occupation, the BBC has said it has received “approximately” 1,000 telephone complaints and a further 10,000 by email. Good start, but it needs more, much more.

CNN is carrying the story of the occupation, but still the BBC is censoring what we are allowed to know.

PPS There is a claim that they are "Palestinian" demonstrators. From the photos most of them look like Galswegians. Still, we are all Palestinians now. As indeed, we are all Israelis, because we are all people. Our anger at the Gaza outrage should be focussed on the stupidity of the militaristic mindset, not against the people on both sides who are both suffering, though the Palestinians are clearly receiving more than a proportionate share of the suffering.

BBC Gaza DEC appeal scandal

Protest over BBC Gaza appeal veto:
"The BBC says it cannot show the appeal [for the Palestinians] by the Disasters Emergency Committee because it does not want to compromise its commitment to impartiality" intones a BBC spin-droid.

But health minister Ben Bradshaw, a former BBC journalist, said it was 'an inexplicable decision' and that the reasons given were 'completely feeble'."
So even NuLabour can see that this decision was not good. Damn right. The reason given for exclusion was that it might show bias; but the exclusion itself is evidence of totally unacceptable bias.


There is going to be a demonstration outside the BBC, broadcasting House, Portland Place at 1.30 pm today, and the BBC itself is advertising the demo. (Bring dolls, wrapped in white shrouds). This, and the fact that the Today Programme broadcast an interview with Tony Benn, suggests that a civil war over this decision is being waged within the BBC.

If you canot get to the protest, then you can act by making a complaint to the BBC,
phone: 03700 100 222 (I couldn't get through earlier, hopefully due to a mass of calls)
text: 03700 100 212
online http://www.bbc.co.uk/complaints/complaints_stage1.shtml

In my complaint, I asked exactly who was responsible for the decision. They should be disciplined, preferably sacked.

If the great British public can swamp the BBC with complaints about the Woss-Brand SachsGate affair, which caused stress to one gentleman, then surely we can send them a signal that we will not tolerate their decision to deprive thousands of highly stressed Palestinians of desperately needed aid.

PS do not forget to donate to the DEC.

Gaza Ceasefire in doubt

Not very hopeful about the durability of the ceasefire. I bet Hamas continues to fire its rockets, giving Olmert an excuse to continue his pogrom in Gaza.

"You see? We declared a ceasefire, and the rockets continue. We regret the ongoing massacre of the innocents, but it is all Hamas' fault".

'Which side is really to blame?' is a dumb question. Philosophically, it is a category error. Militarism - the belief that violence is a solution to political and economic problems - is to blame.

The solution is not to apportion blame, but to have a permanent ceasefire, stop the blockade, and demilitarise the area by taking the toys away from the boys. To stop the rockets, Gaza and the border crossings has to be patrolled by dogs trained to sniff out explosives, and the supply of arms to Israel from the USA and EU must also stop. In place of militarism, we need massive investment into water management throughout the Land.

Qassam Rocket fuel

Evidence that no Hamas rockets were fired during the ceasefire.

The Qassam rockets are home made from sodium chlorate (weedkiller) and sugar. I remember making the same kind of rockets when I was a kid, although they did not have TNT warheads, were not aimed at neighbours and in fact did not take off from the launching pad.

So sniffer dogs could not detect the rocket fuel, but they could still detect the TNT in the warhead.
What the international community has to do is to list Sodium Chlorate as a chemical whose transactions need to be logged, and find the person who is buying tons of the stuff but has no crops to use the sodium chlorate on.

Olmert - change your psychologist!

Mr Ehud Olmert
Prime Minister
Tel Aviv
Israel


Dear Mr Olmert,

I write to inform you that your psychological expert advisers have given you bad advice.

Newsnight has just done a piece on Gaza, reporting the opinion of community leaders and psephologists that Israel's action is radicalising Muslim opinion and boosting the risk of terrorism.

I have not seen any Israeli Government report on the psychological analysis of the effects of Cast Lead, but it is save to assume that you simply hope to crush the spirits of the Palestinian people to the point that they reject Hamas.

It is easy to crush human bodies: to break the human spirit takes more persistence, but it can be done, to some individuals. They withdraw, become inactive, self-neglecting, preoccupied with a re-run in their heads of videos of carnage. To that extent, you can crush a spirit.

What your strategists, so politically sophisticated but so psychologically naive, have left out of the picture is the effect on others, maybe more removed from the Ground Zero events: the young men (and women) who have heard friends, cousins, siblings, parents or children being blown to shreds, or groaning in death agonies; or young men who have heard of such things, young Londoners perhaps who have relatives in Gaza whose phones have done dead.

Mr Olmert, the spirit of these young men is not crushed by your attacks. It is inflamed. Your bombs and shells, bursting in filthy black flowers over Gaza, at the same time also plant a filthy black flower of hatred in people everywhere: not just in Palestinian hearts, but also Arab, also Muslims and also in people all over God's earth The echoes of hatred roll on and on, becoming weaker over time, but only too ready to explode out again. There is a reflexivity in the human psyche that your advisers have overlooked. The one that is killed will always kill again.

For God's sake, Ehud, stop! Enough. This is enough violence. It is not proportionate.

You've made your point. The Qassam attacks are intolerable. They must stop. But so also must the blockade, and the Wall, and the ethnic cleansing.

We know full well that the situation in the Middle East is complex to the point of seeming to be insoluble; but within this complexity, there is one very simple truth, which, if held in the mind, can lead us all at last to beside the still waters:

Violence is the problem, not the solution.

The antidote to hatred is not violence but wisdom - the ability to see from the mountain top, not the cave.

I suggest you call your psychological advisers out of their cave, and replace them with some advisers who are versed in social systems.

Thank you for reading this far.


Dr Richard Lawson MB BS MRCPsych
Somerset
UK

You can send letters to him online.

Boycott Israeli goods

The UNSC (with the shameful exception of the USA) calls for a ceasefire. Both the Israeli Government and the Hamas leaders reject the call. The people of Gaza and of Israel both desperately need a ceasefire. Gaza needs it for obvious immediate physical reasons, and Israel needs it for more long term security reasons, because of the massive stores of anti-Israeli hate that each Palestinian civilian casualty creates.

By rejecting the ceasefire calls, the leaders on both sides demonstrate that they are not acting on behalf of their people, but on behalf of the mutual paranoia scenario that is playing out in their heads. Government has a responsibility to protect their people; therefore neither the Israeli Government not Hamas are governments with true legitimacy.

Another irony: the war proves the illegitimacy of the government, but war also increases the support of people for their government.

As well as demonstrating, we can boycott Israeli goods. (No point in boycotting Hamas goods: they only produce hate-sermons, and who buys them?) There is a page at boycottisraelnow with a list of brands. There is a lot of them, and some are unlikely to be in use by readers of this blog (who wears Armani, or Calvin Klein underpants for god's sake?) but I see Nestle' are there, and surely we can all remember to avoid Nestle, because they push their toxic powder in place of breast milk in developing countries.

PS Raphael has objected to the boycott link above. It does contain ugly, intemperate anti-zionist language. Which is a pity. I use the link to get access to the list of Israel linked companies, and do not endorse any other sentiments on the site. The site does have useful background research. And it has material from Rabbi David Weiss, and anti-zionist.

I will leave the link, with a health warning, until Olmert sits down to negotiate with Hamas, or until the greens here start getting serious about supporting a water project in the Land, whichever comes first...

Israel/Palestine: militarism is the problem not the solution

Hamas is a fundamentalist hyper-Islamic cult, with absolutist beliefs based on an extreme literal interpretation of the Hadith. Its charter calls for a final solution to Israel, and among other things, perpetuates the old myth of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. The Government of Israel contains similar religious ideologues whose beliefs are based on absolutist interpretations of ancient scriptures.

Caught between these two groups of fundamentalists, whose ideologies can only lead to murder, are millions of ordinary human beings who wish for nothing but to live in peace and win a sustainable living from a land that is desperately short of water. This is the reality that we as greens should be addressing. It is an achievable goal, and in realising it, the Middle East could create a model of development that could be a standard for the rest of the world to follow.

To attain that goal, it is first necessary to understand that we are dealing here with an irrational system of self-sustaining hatred and violence based on militarism. We have to come to the understanding that militarism is the problem, not the solution. The Israeli Defence Force is currently demonstrating the complete unacceptability of militarism.

Both sides blame the other for the violence. Israel absolves its soldiers of all blame for civilian deaths, blaming the rocket attacks for Israel's action. Hamas justifies its rocket attacks for the oppression, ethnic cleansing and collective punishment that Israel is carrying out on its people. "If your land had been occupied, would you not fight?" asks Hamas. "If you had someone firing rockets at you, would you not fight?" asks the Israel Government. This is nothing but a self-sustaining cycle of destruction.

The Israeli response is clearly disproportionate, and is rightly attracting worldwide condemnation, with the exception of the Bush administration. The Qassam rocket attacks are tragedies for the families affected, but are a strategic pinpricks. In response to these pinpricks, the Israeli government has responded with a knife attack.

It is utterly pointless for us or anyone to try to come to a conclusion about which side is right and which side is wrong. What is wrong is the belief that military violence is any kind of a solution. We are dealing with an irrational, dysfunctional system of self perpetuating, mutual hatred and violence that at the moment is in danger of leading to a war that could quite possibly go nuclear.

The alternative to ever-escalating violence is a ceasefire (which seems imminent), the lifting of Israel's blockade on Gaza, and systems put in place to stop imports of arms into the region. America's support for the Israeli military machine must stop, and imports of arms into Gaza for Hamas must likewise be stopped. This is an opportunity for us to put forward the policy we passed at our last Conference, using dogs to identify transfers and caches of ammunition. This is a practical and tested solution which is in routine use: it just needs an effort to train the dogs, and an agreement on who runs and protects the sniffer dog patrols.

Once the instruments of violence are out of the way, the next step is for a massive economic effort to transform water use in the whole region, focusing on water conservation, rainwater harvesting, and afforestation, beginning at the coast. Afforestation will modify the local climate, and bring rainwater inland. The money for this should come from the EU and other players, and as far as possible, people from both communities should be enabled to cooperate in these projects.

Peace Demonstrations in Israel by Israelis

Gush Shalom - Israeli Peace Bloc

Brilliant article here. 10,000 demonstrators in Tel-Aviv. No mention of this on the BBC.

Pithy, powerful summary of the case for peace, accusing that the Israeli action is a vote-gathering game.

Israel/Palestine: what politicians needs, and what the people need

Given the current deep polarisation between the governments of Israel and Palestine, and the supporters of both parties, it might be useful to consider the difference between a people and their Government. They are not the same thing, even in an (ideal) perfect democracy.

Democracy aims to make Government to some degree responsive to the wishes of the people, but there are many layers of influence that separate the aggregate wishes of the people and the policies of their government. Israel is a democracy, albeit with a system that always seems to make the theocratic tendencies part of Government; and Hamas was successful in a democratic election; but these two Governments are not co-extensive with their people.

Opinion in the West is polarised between pro-Palestinian factions and pro-Israeli factions, more or less along predictable left-right lines; America supports Israel, therefore the Left has an inclination to dislike them (over and above Israel's unacceptable actions in ethnic cleansing and warmongering); the Left therefore finds itself on the side of Hamas, but Hamas is an Islamic theocratic movement, which would among other things, be into stoning "adulterers" and executing people who belong to the LGBT section.

I was criticised for giving a cautious welcome the Islamic Courts Union in Somalia for exactly this reason. The ICU brought peace to Mogadishu through imposition of Sharia Law. Secular democrats in Somalia who were critical of Sharia nevertheless preferred a pax Islamica to the terror of warlord anarchy. America disagreed, however, and gave the nod to warlords to go in and fight the ICU, thereby probably deferring the return of peace and democracy to Somalia.

Political alignments are therefore mightily complicated, and there is no simple solution to be had by simply making judgments on the basis of "our enemies' enemy is our friend". We have to think things out from the reality on the ground, from the viewpoint of the people themselves.

What do all the people in the Middle East need most of all?
They need peace and security. This means less warfare and less armaments, not more warfare and armaments.
They need adequate water supplies. This means a huge programme of water conservation, solar desalination and water harvesting.
They need access to land where they can grow their food. This means a massive programme of sustainable agriculture development, on the back of the new water infrastructure, and a huge programme of afforestation, beginning at the coastal areas.

These are the real needs. Instead of working at these needs, the Israeli and Palestinian governments are engaged in a mutual, stupid vicious circle of violence and destruction based on ancent religious ideology and a political argument about who has a right to live where.

This is not to minimise the importance of discussing and resolving these political problems, but in the end, what is more important, who has the title deeds to a piece of land, or whether that land is under sustainable cultivation?

Looked at from the point of view of governmental politics, the argument is infinitely complex, but looked at from the ecological point of view, there is a simple truth: basically, humans are designed to eat food, not bullets. Food needs labour, land, sun and water. IsraelPalestine has plenty of the first three, but is going to need some assistance to provide enough water - but it can be done - if politicians empower the people to become constructive, instead of indulging in their love of military technology.