Could pariah status spell the end for Zionism?
Definition: Pariah – a social outcast (Chambers Dictionary)
One eminent Israeli who apparently thinks the answer could be yes is Ilan Baruch, a veteran diplomat who resigned ahead of his retirement because, he said, he could no longer represent his government’s “wrong” policy. He also ridiculed Zionism’s assertion that global anti-Israeli sentiments generated by occupation are a manifestation of anti-Semitism.
While serving as a tank platoon commander on the Suez Canal front, Baruch lost and eye and, Dayan-like, he wears a black eye-patch. His 30 years of service with Israel’s foreign ministry included postings to Singapore, Copenhagen and London and he served as ambassador to the Philippines and South Africa. In September 1993 he travelled with Prime Minister Rabin to Washington for the ceremony on the White House lawn which ended with the historic handshake after the signing of an interim agreement. (Prior to that trip, Baruch would have known that the Zionist lobby in America was totally opposed to Rabin going there to do business with Arafat. That was why Rabin didn’t want to go and had to be persuaded by President Clinton at his smooth talking best on the telephone. While in Washington on that occasion, Baruch would have learned what the lobby’s post handshake strategy was going to be – to rebrand Arafat as a “terrorist”).
On his return to Israel, Baruch set up and headed the foreign ministry’s desk dealing with economic relations with the Arab world. His own main focus was on relations with the Palestinians and the international donor community.
According to the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth, Baruch’s resignation was a diplomatic “earthquake” at the foreign ministry.
In a personal letter he sent to all foreign ministry employees explaining his decision to quit, Baruch wrote: “Identifying the objection expressed by global public opinion to the occupation policy as anti-Semitic is simplistic, provincial and artificial. Experience shows that this global trend won’t change until we normalize our relations with the Palestinians.”
And he gave this warning: “Should this trend continue, Israel will turn into a pariah state and face growing de-legitimization.”
Baruch has to be saluted for his stand and the courage it required but he’s not yet up to speed with events. So far as most peoples of the world are concerned, or so it seems, Israel is already a pariah state. And the fact that all the members of the UN Security Council minus only the U.S. voted for the resolution condemning continued, illegal Israeli settlement activities on the occupied West Bank is surely an indication that governments might be catching up with their peoples.
As Aluf Benn noted in an article for Ha-aretz, the message Netanyahu ought to have got from what happened in the Security Council is that “Israel has no more friends in the international community.” Benn qualified that by adding: “It was only the flick of Obama’s finger that prevented a huge diplomatic defeat for the prime minister, and the White House went out of its way to make it clear that it does in fact support the condemnation and was voting against it only for domestic political considerations.” (For which read Obama’s fear of a confrontation with the Zionist lobby and its stooges in Congress).
In the countdown to Obama’s veto, I wrote that good sources were telling me that behind closed doors most if not all European governments were fed up with Israel and were ready, if only America would give the lead, to resort to sanctions in an effort to oblige Israel to comply with international law and end its 1967 occupation in accordance with Security Council Resolution 242. An indication that even Germany really is fed up with Israel’s intransigence has been provided by Uri Avnery. In his latest post, he tells of a telephone conversation between Netanyahu and German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Netanyahu called “to rebuke her for Germany’s vote in favour of the Security Council resolution condemning the settlements.” Avnery went on:
“I don’t know if our prime minister mentioned the Holocaust, but he certainly expressed his annoyance about Germany daring to vote against the ‘Jewish State’. He was shocked by the response. Instead of a contrite Frau Merkel apologizing abjectly, his ear was filled by a schoolmistress scolding him in no uncertain terms. She told him that he had broken all his promises and that not one of the world’s leaders believes a single word of his any more. She demanded that he make peace with the Palestinians.”
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