The Irish Parliament is in the
process of introducing and anti-Israel bill declaring their intention to block
and boycott gods, products and services from Judea and Samaria, what they call
the West Bank, Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights, parts of the Jewish State of
Israel.
This divisive intervention is
nothing more than a slap in the face of the Jewish State of Israel and a shocking
and untimely initiative that will prevent the violent, divided and rejectionist
Palestinians from coming to the negotiation table.
This unwelcome law will, if
approved, will end up rebounding legally and economically against Ireland, as
warned by Ireland’s foreign minister, Simon Coveney.
It is an intellectually dishonest
piece of legislature.
The bill is anti-Semitic. The
abusive steamrollering of this bill which is intended to penalize individuals
or companies operating in what they consider “occupied territories” stipulate
only goods or services produced by Jewish farmers and Jewish industrialists.
Furthermore, the end result of
this ill-conceived biased legislature will hurt the Palestinians, the very
people they intended to help. As with all anti-normalization, anti-Israel, acts
the first victims are the Palestinian workers, of which there are thousands,
who benefit from Israeli scale jobs, salaries, promotions, and social benefits.
The bill, if effective, will force these people into unemployment. The bill, if effective, will force them into unemployment. Example, SodaStream employed 660 Palestinians and 500 Israelis and had to move its factory from Judea & Samaria to the Negev following a massive boycott campaign by the BDS Movement. Result? BDS forced 660 Palestinians out of well paid jobs into unemployment to be replaced by Israeli Bedouin workers. Is this really what the Irish want to achieve?
Who do the Irish think they are
helping? Hamas in Gaza, or the minority rule of the PLO-led Palestinian
Authority in Ramallah? Are they aware at all of the decades-old conflict between
these two warring parties? And why has Ireland decided to punish Israel and not
the rejectionist side that refuses to live as peaceful neighbors alongside Israel?
The bias and double standards of
the Irish bill are patently obvious. The Irish “boycott occupied territories”
bill doesn’t mention Israel, but it names locations and excludes Turkish
commerce, goods and tourist services in occupied Northern Cyprus, Russian businesses
in occupied Crimea and the Ukraine, Chinese interests in Tibet, or Moroccan
farming in Western Sahara, to name but four of the many global disputed or
“occupied” territories.
The bill, in Israel’s case,
ignores the principles of armed conflict. The drafters of the bill listed the
West Bank and east Jerusalem, but gratuitously also threw in the Golan Heights.
As former Irish minister for
justice and defense, Alan Shatter, wrote in the Jerusalem Post, this misguided
bill completely ignores Israel’s very real security concerns.
It also shows that the authors of
this biased bill know nothing about the laws of armed conflict which permits a
country to maintain territory gained in a defensive war against an aggressor.
This clearly is the case with Israel annexing the Golan Heights.
When Israel was established in
1948, five Arab armies invaded the nascent Jewish State in a declared war of
annihilation. Jordan illegally attacked Israel in this aggressive war and
captured and occupied Judea and Samaria and parts of Jerusalem. It was Jordan
that renamed the territory as the West Bank of Jordan, meaning to the west of
the Jordan River.
Egypt attacked, captured and
occupied the Sinai and the Gaza Strip. Syria, Iraq and other Arab forces
entered the war of annihilation but, somehow, Israel managed to hold off the
combined Arab armies until an international ceasefire was arranged.
This left Jordan occupying the
West Bank (Judea and Samaria) for decades, yet nobody thought to protest their “occupation
of Palestine.”
In 1967, the Arabs tried again to
destroy Israel, but Israel was better prepared. The Jordanians were driven out
of Jerusalem and from Judea and Samaria back across the Jordan River. The
Israelis also drove the Egyptians out of the Sinai and the Gaza Strip and the
Syrians off the Golan Heights.
The Arabs, licking their wounds,
met to begin a war of attrition based on the infamous “three No’s,” – no
recognition, no peace, no negotiations with the Jewish State. This has become the slogan of the Palestinian and
BDS movements, to which the Irish
Parliament has become a biased player.
In 1973, the Egyptians and Syria
mounted a surprise attack against Israel on Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the
Jewish calendar. Israel was caught off guard but managed to mobilize and defeat
the two invading armies. In a bloody tank battle, Israel managed to drive the
Syrian army off the Golan Heights overlooking the Sea of Galilee. Syria has
remained a malevolent and intransigent enemy, and Israel annexed the Golan
Heights in 1981 after suffering further Syrian threats.
The Irish Parliament is now
acting as a proxy for the brutal Assad regime by including the Golan Heights in
their punitive legislation against Israel.
It was once considered immoral to
divide a city politically and ideologically. Think Berlin and its wall. Now,
Ireland wants to divide Jerusalem. Has it not learned anything from Belfast?
Jerusalem is a united city where Jews, Christians and Muslims mingle, as any
tourist can attest. It is also the capital of the State of Israel. But the
Irish legislators want to divide this holy city. They will not sanction and
boycott Arab goods and services. They will punish only its Jewish residents.
This is anti-Semitic political practice.
Jordan illegally annexed Judea
and Samaria (the West Bank) including Jerusalem in 1950. King Hussein, in 1960,
called Jerusalem not Palestine but, “the second capital of the Hashemite
Kingdom of Jordan.” Jordan gave Arab
refugees who had left their homes by order of the Arab High Command, during the
Arab war of annihilation, Jordanian citizenship though they ensured that a
specific United Nations refugee agency kept them in refugee camps. While Jordan
occupied Judea and Samaria they did nothing to allow these Arabs to return to
their homes. Instead, they kept them as political pawns in a cynical diplomatic
battle against Israel or, as they told them, until the Arab armies will come
and liberate Palestine and drive the Jews into the sea. Hence the war cry we still hear today, “From
the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free!” a slogan for a world without
Israel.
The Palestinian movement,
although divided against itself, is, at heart, part of that futile Arab war of
annihilation against the Jewish State, and they look on the pending Irish bill
as simply another shot in their attempts to dislodge Israel.
The malevolent Irish lawmakers
can expect heavy blowback from a number of sources, including the EU which has
decreed that such discriminatory legislation is against EU principles. It will
also be subject to counter sanctions from the US Administration and twenty-seven
American states. All have passed stringent laws banning contact with any entity
practicing BDS against Israel. State and federal laws may lead to divestments
from Irish pension funds, stop trade negotiations with Ireland, and instruct
corporations not to invest or do business with entities that conduct
discriminatory practices.
This then is the essence of what is
likely to occur as a result of this biased, anti-Semitic bill that has cast a
terrible stain of the character and reputation of the Irish Parliament that,
with this bill, will be speaking in the name of the whole of Ireland.
Shame on them!
Barry Shaw is the Senior
Associate for Public Diplomacy at the Israel Institute for Strategic Studies.
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