Gerald Steinberg: Hope Is Nice, but After Coronavirus, Demonization of Israel Is Unlikely to Change
Israeli President Reuven Rivlin recently tried to provide some optimism amid the gloom and doom of the corona epidemic. Noting the cooperation between Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA), he tweeted: “I just spoke to PA leader Mahmoud Abbas. Our ability to work together in times of crisis is also a testament to our ability to work together in the future for the good of us all.”Melanie Phillips: How the virus exposes magical thinking and short-term greed
This peaceful scenario is worthy of the Jewish prophets, particularly Isaiah and Micah.
Unfortunately, the reality now, as it was then, is quite different. In contrast to Rivlin’s optimism, the Palestinians and their allies are currently moving at full speed to continue their campaign of demonization against Israel.
Most notably, Palestinians, in coordination with an army of NGOs, are pressing the effort in the International Criminal Court(ICC) to take the false “war crime” accusations to the next stage — a pseudo-investigation of Israel.
Over the past week, a number of these groups have submitted briefs (many of which go beyond the absurd in stretching historical truth) to prop up ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensouda’s weak attempt to justify this travesty. The NGO list includes Al Haq, Al Mezan and the Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR), which work very closely with the PA in this campaign and are funded by European governments.
Among their Israeli allies, the Israeli left-wing group B’Tselem wrote a report accompanied by a media campaign (also enabled by European funders). As usual, B’Tselem blamed Israel exclusively for the conflict, erasing the long history of Palestinian rejectionism and terror, and even accused Israel of exploiting the Holocaust in rejecting the ICC prosecutor’s arguments.
Breaking the Silence, Gisha, and other NGOs continued to blame Israel for not doing enough to stop the spread of the coronavirus among Palestinians, repeating their one-line agenda — “occupation, occupation, occupation” — even in Gaza, where the “occupation” ended almost 15 years ago.
This culture of denial is the product of a century of demoralization in which the west lost belief in itself and decided that it stood for nothing worth fighting for. Instead, the world had to be changed.Col Kemp: We should establish a Coronavirus citizens’ volunteer force
Unable to accept the impossibility of their utopian ideals, progressives are particularly prone to magical thinking. They believe they can banish prejudice and bigotry from the human heart, end war and usher in the brotherhood of man.
They pretend the world is not how it actually is but how they want it to be. They pretend to themselves that, because they are idealists, they are immune from bad thoughts or deeds; and they pretend that anyone who contradicts them is not just wrong but evil.
Often, though, there aren’t clear choices between unalloyed good and bad. The available options may present a choice between terrible and worse.
Israel, caught between assorted rocks and hard places, has to make these tough choices between evils all the time. And yet even super-realist Israel got sucked into the China illusion.
Last month, Israel’s cyber directorate issued a directive requiring Israeli companies to bar all Chinese-made systems and components in communications and security systems used in sensitive infrastructure.
An earlier directive, issued after the Trump administration blew a collective fuse over Israel’s acceptance of Chinese technology, was voluntary.
Israel’s reluctance to comply with the United States over this isn’t surprising. Chinese investment in Israel has reached an estimated $11.7 billion over the years. But now, like other countries, Israel is in lockdown and its economy hugely damaged as a result of Chinese negligence and malevolence.
The virus crisis is a wake-up call to all who chose to substitute short-term self-interest for realism about the Chinese Communist party, and now find themselves reaping the whirlwind.
An accelerating sense of crisis now engulfs our society. As the impact of Coronavirus deepens and the death toll mounts, the scale of the emergency is unprecedented in peacetime. Yet there is a silver lining to this black cloud. It can be found in the growing ethos of selfless compassion across the country, with millions of citizens feeling a new concern for their neighbours and the vulnerable.
During the Second World War, our nation became renowned for its unity and self-sacrifice, an outlook known as the ‘Blitz spirit’. Today we can see a reawakening of that same community spirit, reflected particularly in local neighbourhood schemes, where people volunteer to check on the elderly, organise essential home deliveries and support imperilled businesses.
That mood of compassion should now be harnessed more systematically for the good of the nation. Yesterday Lord Stevens, the former head of the Metropolitan Police, called for the urgent mobilisation of retired coppers in order to relieve the huge current burdens on the police, the NHS and other emergency services. Pointing out that there are at least 100,000 former officers, Lord Stevens rightly said that their experience and enthusiasm is a ‘golden resource’ that ‘we cannot afford to waste’.
While I welcome his admirable suggestion, I would go even further. I believe that, in response to the crisis, we now need a national citizens volunteer force to help maintain the civic infrastructure which is under unique strain. This new organisation would capitalise on the yearning of so-many people to do their bit, as well as giving the public a defiant sense of purpose in these dark times. There is a vast range of tasks that could be carried out by these volunteers, like performing basic duties in the NHS, cleaning and sanitising public buildings, transporting goods, and providing cooked meals and groceries to the housebound. Former teachers could organise childcare for key public workers.