Gresham College in London dates from Tudor
times, established through a bequest by wealthy merchant Sir Thomas Gresham,
and is a kind of quasi-university that presents lectures and discussions that
members of the public may attend. It
current professor of law is a prominent international human rights lawyer, Sir
Geoffrey Nice. Back in October Sir
Geoffrey chaired a panel discussion addressing the issue of whether during its
operations against Hamas in Gaza Israel committed “war crimes”. The panel was apparently cherry-picked in
order to achieve a pre-ordained outcome and, as Nice’s own speech showed,
over-relied upon the historical narrative of one of the panellists,
ProfessorAvi Shlaim. If Colonel Richard Kemp had been a member of
the panel, he would certainly have put Nice right about the true and precise
military meaning of a “disproportionate” response.
Little wonder that, during the
question-and-answer session that followed the speeches,
distinguished educator Baroness Deech – daughter of renowned Yiddishist and
biographer of Herzl Josef Fraenkel –
declared that fellow members of the audience should be aware that they “have
been subjected to the most inaccurate and one-sided history that I have heard
in recent years”. And so it was – an
absolute disgrace, in fact, with no mention by Nice during his speech of the
fledgling Jewish State’s immediate invasion by several exterminatory Arab
armies, and with Shlaim inveighing (to applause) that since its birth Israel
has been “too ready” to participate in military conflict! (Arab aggression and
rejectionism, anyone?)
British blogger Richard Millett has provided a neat critique of Nice’s views, quoting some of the most noxious
passages, such as: “Israel as a state was thus imposed on and within Palestine
in 1948 … an as yet unfinished state project because the territorial ambitions
of Israel were not satisfied. Thereafter, claiming to fight for the security of
their people and preservation of their land, Israel fought their Arab
neighbours, expanding Israel’s borders.”
Having watched the relevant video, one
assertion by Sir Geoffrey strikes me as singularly noisome.
During the question-and-answer session he
volunteered how, not so long ago, his eyes were opened to the fact that a “one
state” solution is probably the way to proceed.
After all, he pointed out, “we in Northern Europe” no longer live in
countries composed of a single ethnicity or culture … (you really have to watch the video to
appreciate the casual obnoxiousness of the remarks).
No consideration, of course, of what a
single state would entail, demographically, for the Jews of Israel. No nod to the fact that Israel is a thriving
democracy and already home to minorities who are equal before the law,
including, let’s not forget, people of Vietnamese origin taken in as refugees from
Communism when much of the world shunned them.
No remembrance of the fact that Arab women, still treated as mere
chattels and subject to “honour” killings in much of the Arab and Muslim world,
were enfranchised in 1948 by Israel, the first Middle Eastern nation to give
them the vote. No acknowledgment that it
is effrontery in the extreme to suggest that a sovereign state should be dismantled
in order to be incorporated in the entity that Sir Geoffrey Nice and his
cohorts will find acceptable. No
recognition of the fact that many people would consider such a suggestion
antisemitic since the sovereign state offered up on the altar of abolition is
the world’s only Jewish one.
No admitting of the fact that there is just
one Jewish State on planet Earth and a very significant number of Arab ones,
indeed a large number of states that are constitutionally, to a greater or
lesser degree, self-defined as Islamic states in which, to some extent at
least, disabling legislation against non-Muslims and the operation of sharia law
applies.
There is, of course, Saudi Arabia, that
most extreme of fundamentalist Arab states, in which no Jews may officially set
foot and no churches are allowed, towards which a discrete silence reigns in
view of the West’s reliance on the desert kingdom for oil and, Saudi Arabia’s
export of Wahhabism notwithstanding, its tacit alliance with the West and
Israel: “The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is a sovereign Arab Islamic State with
Islam as its religion. God’s Book and the Sunna of His Prophet … are its Constitution
... Government in Saudi Arabia derives from the Holy Quran and the Prophet’s
traditions ... the State protects Islam, it implements its Sharia...”
And then there’s post-Taliban Afghanistan,
whose Constitution proclaims: “the religion of the State of the Islamic
Republic of Afghanistan is the sacred religion of Islam ... The state shall
devise and implement a unified educational curriculum based on the provisions
of the sacred religion of Islam ... Presidential candidates ... should be ...
Muslim.” Post-Saddam Iraq: “Islam is the
official religion of the state and it is a fundamental source of legislation.
No law that contradicts the established provisions of Islam may be
established.”
And take Mauretania: its Constitution
(1991) declares that country “an indivisible, democratic, and social Islamic
republic … Islam shall be the religion of the people and of the state … the
President of the Republic shall be a Muslim”. Or Pakistan, proclaimed as an
“Islamic Republic” in 1956, which oversaw a radical islamification of its
Constitution in 1985, and the following year foreshadowed the persecution of
Christians with the making of blasphemy against Islam a capital offence, and
where since 1993 basic constitutional rights are based upon the Quran and Sunna.
Or Egypt (“the Egyptian people form part of both the Arab and Islamic community
… Islam is the state religion .... The principles of Islamic law form the main
source of legislation’), Iran, and Malaysia, where conversion to a religion
other than Islam is regarded as apostasy and in Iran liable to capital
punishment.
With the exception of Turkey, officially
still secular as Ataturk intended yet showing increasing signs of
re-islamification under Erdogan, Islam is, I believe I’m correct in saying,
entrenched in the constitutions of the remaining Muslim states.
I think we can all make an educated guess
as to how long Nice’s “one state solution” would last before it, too, adopted a
Constitution that enshrined the supremacy of Islam and the effective dhimmitude
of its minorities.
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Wednesday, December 23, 2015
