POSTED RESPONSES TO A COLUMN BY HEIDI BLAKE IN THE TELEGRAPH
What a blind piece of writing.
The only "rogue" state in the Middle East is Israel.
Israel has about 150 nuclear warheads, several delivery systems, and a working factory for fissionable material which no one is even allowed to visit.
The same Israel which keeps thousands in jail illegally, attacks every neighbor that it has, relentlessly keeps taking the land of others in an elaborate system of slow-motion ethnic-cleansing, and practices a brutal apartheid.
Now, there is indeed a genuine threat to world peace.
Instead of dealing head-on with a genuine threat to the world, Israel's illicit nuclear weapons, this article stirs up nonsense about boogeymen, a truly irresponsible game.
What the article actually does is serve Israel's narrow interests, removing the focus from the world's outstanding nuclear rogue state, Israel, a state which has supported no international laws or treaties or regulations in building its terror weapons, has stolen, bribed and killed to get its weapons.
It is moreover a country which has wheeled-and-dealed in nuclear weapons technology with another rogue state in the past, South Africa.
Israel's shadow falls on everything for a thousand miles around, and it has a withering effect on the whole region.
Israel has a direct effect on the nature of government in the region. It does not want democracies to emerge, because it is comfortable with autocrats like Mubarak who do not challenge its interests.
It never once tries to respect its neighbors, never once honestly seeks peace, and blubbers on and on about Islamists and terror and its being the region’s only democracy.
What kind of democracy is it that behaves this way? It’s a rather good thing there are no other democracies of this kind.
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From another reader:
"Israel, an island of liberal democracy on the forefront of a wild Muslim-Arab world"
Sorry, that is arrogant, unthinking, and uninformed.
Israel is by no measure a “liberal democracy.”
There is no Bill or Charter of Rights, nor can there ever be one in a state based on ethic/religious identity.
And minorities of many descriptions are treated unfairly and badly in Israel.
And you cannot have a Jewish democracy anymore than you can have an Islamic democracy or a Hindu democracy. Once you place limits on who has access in a democracy, you no longer are speaking of genuine democracy.
I just love that comic-book stuff about a "wild Muslim-Arab world," a 21st century version of “the yellow peril.”
You could not cite a more stunning example of pure prejudice.
Unfortunately, it represents the attitude Israel works very hard to foster in the world, always hoping to so prejudice everyone’s thinking that Israel can do just as it pleases.
Well, we’ve seen - especially in the last decade - what Israel does when it does as it pleases. Cluster bombs on civilians, four hundred children killed, piracy on the high seas, a cruel blockade to starve people out, a continued brutal occupation, refusal to talk to anyone but a pathetic figure like Abbas who doesn’t even properly hold office, passing the most prejudiced and unfair laws, assassinating anyone who disagrees, refusing even to talk to a cleanly-elected government, torture, seizing the property of others, and practices which people of unqualified credentials to speak have called apartheid – Jimmy Carter, Bishop Tutu, and Nelson Mendella.
And we all know what Lord Acton said about power and absolute power.
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From another reader:
‘"Israel has about 150 nuclear warheads..."
‘Really?
‘If you have accurate data, information and not speculation, why don't you share it with the rest of humanity...??’
Glad to share, but sorry you are not yourself better informed.
Jimmy Carter gave us that number a year or so ago.
Need I remind you that Carter was President of the United States, is a nuclear engineer, and was a commander of an American ballistic-missile submarine?
He is well connected with international leaders and intelligence sources, and many say he has the highest I.Q. of any president in the last century.
He doesn't say things he doesn't know.
Of course, actual pictures of some of Israel's facilities and even a mold for fissionable material were published in the Sunday Times a few decades ago.
The man responsible for those pictures - an Israeli nuclear technician - was drugged and kidnapped by Israeli agents and spent many years in prison. He still lives under strict limits and threats.
