SHOULD THE WORLD WATCH WHILE ISRAEL THREATENS WORLD PEACE? BY KAZI ANWARUL MASUD(FOR PUBLICATION ON SUNDAY THE 23^RD JULY 2006).

By Kazi Anwarul Masud( former Secretary and ambassador)

Israeli aggression against Lebanon and wanton destruction wrought in Palestine not only treats with disdain the Just War concept of Professor  Michael Walzer but also stretches to its limit the Bush doctrine of preemption putting heavy on the tolerance threshold of the international community. In the recently held G-8 Summit at St. Petersberg in Russia Jacqes Chirac had frankly described as an Israeli mission to destroy the Lebanese economy by destroying its infrastructures. At the Summit President Bush Appeared to be lone voice of discord in support of Israel while the rest, in varying degrees, were critical of the Israeli aggression. While one would not support Hezbollah’s kidnapping of the two Israeli soldiers and its terrorist activities, Israel’s indiscriminate destruction and murder of civilians can not be condoned by the world community.

A few years  the Europeans had expressed their belief that Israel posed the greatest danger to world peace with the US  bracketed along with North Korea and Iran as the second biggest threat. The third, fourth and fifth places went to  Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. At that time  the Israeli government  urged the European Union “to stop the rampant brainwashing against and demonizing of Israel before Europe deteriorates once again to dark sections of its past”. Emotional blackmail has always been the hallmark of the Zionist propaganda machinery. One could understand  the sensitivity of the Israelis  because of  Adolph Hitler’s  belief  that “by warding off the Jews I am fighting for the Lord’s work” or that of the  Romans who considered them as Secta Nefaria (inferior sect) and of Martin Luther’s description of the  Jews and the Papists as “ungodly wretches” and Pope Innocent III’s writing in 1200 A.D. that “the Jews like Cain are doomed to wander the earth as fugitives and vagabonds, and their faces are covered with shame”. But the present day aggression can in no way be considered as an atonement for the injustices meted out to the Jews in the past by the Christian Church and Adolf Hitler..

The Euro-barometer poll describing Israel as the biggest threat to global peace  had nothing to do with anti-Semitism which the Zionists are ever willing to hurl upon any one slightly critical of Israel.  And today the world has become amnesiac of the fact  that the Balfour Declaration favoring “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people” was predicated on the assurance that “nothing will be done which shall prejudice the civil and religious rights of the existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine”. The Israeli aggrandizement is because of its firm belief of total US support to its militaristic activities. American academics and administration officials have always been convinced  of the essentiality of the  US military role   to the maintenance of  global stability. But US policy of total support to Israel and its penchant to interpret any criticism of Israel as anti-Semitism continue to frustrate the  European and  the Muslim world. Studies revealed that the  Muslim Diaspora in Britain, for example,  after the nine-eleven of  becoming “symbolic victims of global mythology, caught in a spiral of alienation and ambivalent identification that no local protestations of innocence could counter”.

To the ordinary Westerner nine-eleven created moral panic about Islam, multi-culturalism and toleration of difference precipitating “loyalty debate” which was difficult to end unless one was convicted of sedition or terrorism.  Academics have   concluded that Muslim Diaspora in the west are doomed to constantly negotiate the parameters of minority citizenship by subscribing to the Islamic juridical position that since western democracies allow freedom of worship, Muslims can owe complete allegiance to the State, defined as “Land of Treaty”. Only a small minority may feel discomfort because of their belief that permanent settlement in the “Land of the Unbelief” is forbidden in Islam. Israel appears to have taken full advantage of this distorted Western image of Muslims as terrorists and continues to display its asymmetric military might vis-a-vis the Muslim world in the face of an impotent international community.

 War on terrorism, repeatedly endorsed by the entire Muslim world, should not be translated as war on Islam unfortunately remains to be accepted by the Western world due to terrorism perpetrated by a section of so-called Muslims as most recently  committed at Mumbai.

The failure of the Muslims to excite in the West support for their cause has fuelled state terrorism by Israel against unarmed Arabs. With ferocious intensity Israeli armed machinery is brutalizing the people forcibly occupied by them. The brutality perpetrated under the pretext of providing security to its own people had reached genocidal proportion long time ago. The ongoing Israeli aggression is only the latest display of its muscularity characterized by the  UN Secretary General  as a “bankrupt” policy which can breed only hate and desire for revenge by the wronged.  In the case of unceasing Israeli brutality inflicted upon the  Lebanese and the   Palestinians every day, notwithstanding many censures by the UNGA and UNSC, it is surprising that the world community is yet to see the direct relevance of the principle laid down by the Nuremberg Tribunal that when international rules that protect basic humanitarian values are in conflict with state laws, then every individual must transgress state laws in favor of humanitarian values. Since people no longer live in discrete national communities but in Professor David  Held’s terminology in “overlapping communities of fate” the state of Israel and its supporters must be held accountable for their actions. If sovereignty can become divisible, limitable, non-exclusive and of reduced significance in cases like Kosovo, Rwanda, Panama, Chile and others ; why should it not be so in the case of Israel?