Not fashionable to speak up

I have these faint recollections of a small parade with placards by some well-known personalities when the Libyan revolt against Gaddafi kicked off. The protest involved some local MPs and a very well known hate blogger who could easily blend in a talk show on Fox news. 

Yesterday a small group of people gathered in Valletta, to highlight the plight of dying children and women in Gaza. When innocent people die by the way, it does not seem to instil the same emotion, so the media simply do not mention them.

They were mainly left-wing groupings, a pity that other run-of-the-mill groups, including mainstream political parties and the Church, were not in support mode. Michael Briguglio, the former AD chairman who said he was resigning from local politics, was there, as were some other old faces from the irrelevant  and pathetic Communist party.

The reason for ‘normal’ folk not to come out in favour of Palestine, I guess, is that rubbishing Israel is not the fashionable thing for those people who love to don Ralph Lauren tops and drive black BMWs. 

It seems that hitting out at Israel is retro and equates to being anti-Semitic.

Of course it is completely not on. 

If the Nazis or the Germans who were Nazis exterminated six million Jews, Russians, gypsies, homosexuals and other types and nationalities, there is no reason to believe that the sons and daughters of those Jewish victims can unleash the same cruel and shameful treatment to innocent Palestinian Arabs.

There is of course an argument you keep on hearing whenever you talk to an Israeli Jew, that the right to retaliate in whatever manner is sacrosanct. Perhaps. But the kind of indiscriminate retaliation that is taking place now is particularly sinister since it focuses on centres which are well known to the Israelis for serving as refuge for children and women under UN protection.

Of course there is not so much we can do here in Malta. The real people who can do something are the US, who have some control over the Israeli government.

The US of course does not quite believe that their support for Israel is very similar to Putin’s support for the separatists in the Ukraine. So allow me to sympathise with Putin when he turns round to the US and accuses them of hypocrisy.

Most Maltese are so immersed in their own life and continue to believe that Malta is a continent and that everything around us is unconnected.  We have always been incredibly selfish and self-centred.

On my part, I will do my little bit. I know it is irrelevant and immaterial but at least I can say I tried:

• Turn off the telly every time Barack Obama appears – like most of his predecessors he remains a big let down and completely subservient to the Jewish lobby in the US.
• Tell my few Arab friends what a hopeless group of nations they are, and that their senseless internecine wars allows Israel to do what the f*** they like.
• Ignore any US official invitation and rubbish the idea of the US as a beacon of freedom.
• Support the Palestinian cause.
• And most importantly, urge our political leaders, especially Prime Minister Joseph Muscat to stand up and act.

Last Monday on the TVM current affairs programme Reporter, Foreign Minister George Vella revealed that Francis Zammit Dimech, the last foreign minister of the Gonzi administration had signed a note verbale committing Malta’s support for Israel’s bid for a seat on the UN’s Security Council.

Zammit Dimech said in a subsequent telephone interview that his February 2013 note verbale took into consideration the state of play between Israel and Palestine at the time. We are of course supposed to believe him. Bollocks!

When asked, Zammit Dimech could not remember who negotiated on behalf of the Maltese government (how bloody convenient). I have some ideas who could have negotiated the agreement. 

In late 2012, as Tonio Borg was replacing John Dalli in Brussels and Zammit Dimech taking the foreign affairs portfolio, 103 Palestinians were killed by the Israeli government. In the West Bank, Israeli settlers injured 151 Palestinians. Israel imposed severe restrictions on the Palestinians’ right to freedom of movement, and continued unlawfully to build settlements in occupied territory.

In conjunction with Egypt it impeded the rebuilding of Gaza’s devastated economy by blocking all exports from Gaza. Israel also barred Gaza residents from travelling to the West Bank.

The World Bank reported then that “the severity of poverty has increased” among impoverished Gazans. More than 70 percent of Gaza’s population received humanitarian assistance.

And for all that Zammit Dimech in his astute wisdom found nothing bizarre or wrong about this note verbale. And this when fellow EU nations Belgium and Germany were asking Malta to support them in their bid for the Security Council seat.

Zammit Dimech is not a liar. He is far worse, he is treating us like morons with no brains.

The downside to this story, is that the Labour government under Muscat would have embraced this note verbale without thinking twice had it not been for MaltaToday which revealed the fact that Minister Helena Dalli had unwittingly let the cat out of the bag.

So you see, one little article did change the way our government deals with Israel, which feels that just because a lunatic and cruel autocrat called Adolf Hitler waged genocide against European Jewry, they have a God given right to kill and maim Arabs – Arabs who have lived in this part of the world for endless generations but now have to understand that they no longer have a right to their land. Arabs who never participated in the genocide that was so efficiently implemented over 70 years ago by Europeans who thought best.

Israel’s policies exist today, because the Western world chooses to look the other way. 

When Nazism was defeated, the allied forces did not invade because of the concentration camps or the way the Nazis treated the Jews. They overran the concentration camps because they happened to be on the way to some strategic town, and had started a war only because they were threatened and attacked by Nazi Germany.

I am afraid Israel will not stop with its genocide, unless the Arab nations get their act together and join forces, or the Israelis eliminate the small political religious parties run by extremists in the Knesset who hold the Israeli government by its metaphorical balls. And more importantly, when an American President can show that beyond the rhetoric he can do something to stop Israel.

Until then all we can do is hope for the best. And if there is a God, to pray to him to intervene.