With 'friends' like this... former foreign ministry director general supports BDS
In the latest chapter involving former Foreign Ministry Director General Alon Liel, a good friend of Richard Goldstone's, Liel is in South Africa advocating for BDS boycotts... but 'only' of Judea and Samaria (Hat Tip: Asher G). I can understand the desire, by people of conscience, to reassert an agenda of justice, to remind Israelis that Palestinians exist. I can understand small but symbolic acts of protest that hold a mirror up to Israeli society. As such, I cannot condemn the move to prevent goods made in the occupied Palestinian territory from being falsely classified as "Made in Israel". I support the South African government’s insistence on this distinction between Israel and its occupation.Among other things in Liel's past: Alon Liel tried to pretend that Israel bears no responsibility or obligation to Jonathan Pollard. Alon Liel tried to trick the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee into believing that Bashar al-Assad wants peace and it's all our fault that we don't have it. Alon Liel urged then-Education Minister Comrade Yuli Tamir to prevent Israeli students from hiking in the Golan. And now, Alon Liel, BDS supporter. What a shmuck.
Having served as Israel’s ambassador to SA, I feel able to venture a view on the differences between the respective conflicts. A "South African-style" solution for Israel-Palestine is, in my view, an end to the Jewish state — our old-time Jewish dream. The two-state model remains the only way to fulfil the dream of at least the past four Jewish generations. Unlike in SA, where urbanisation brought black people to the cities in such numbers that they eventually became the majority, in Israel there is substantial territorial separation and significant replacement of Palestinian labour by foreign workers, especially from Asia. Whereas in SA, almost every white child was cared for in infancy by a black "nanny", in Israel there is little contact at all. This difference must be reckoned with.
Those interested in advancing Palestinian rights must begin by stopping the Israeli settlement enterprise. Every day, Palestine is being gobbled up by settlement expansion. Vagueness over borders strengthens the opposition to the two-state solution. And this is the strength of the act of marking a product as either "Made in Israel" or "Made in Occupied Palestinian Territory". Although this doesn’t create the reality of independence, it defines the principle in clear terms.
Through your choice as a consumer, the border along the internationally recognised pre-1967 line — the realistic basis for peace — is redrawn. This simple act reminds us that settlements are a violation of international law and a tool in a project of de-facto annexation. By defining the task along this line, we confirm that the goal is Palestinian independence, not an Israeli apartheid state.
The simple act of marking settlement products differently to Israeli products pulls the rug from under the refusal to declare a border. It has provoked Zionist outrage because it says: to here and no further. It causes embarrassment because those who claim to want two states cannot morally justify why products from the future Palestine should be marked as "made in Israel".
I buy Israeli products every day and do my best not to buy Israeli products from the occupied territories. I don’t see why you, living outside Israel, shouldn’t have the same choice.
Labels: Alon Liel
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 1:06 PM
2 Comments:
The Foreign Ministry has been FILLED for DECADES exclusively with Peres' friends, ALL politically compatible with his antisemitic ideas. Few are the political nominations made directly and outside of the bureaucratic channels which they CONTROL.
I personally experienced that starting 18 years ago in Israel: all doors were barred to me once they either found out that I lived beyond their "holy line". Once, after a very successful interview concluded with a "would you prefer to start immediately or next week"? when they found out my address they went on with a..."nihye be-qesher", that is "we'll be in touch", the Israeli way of saying "I'll call you, don't call me".
This guy, is not an exception at all among the civil servants in and around the Foreign Ministry, Jewish Agency included.
I remember the former ambassador who came to give a lecture FULL OF LIES (he needed to promote Peres' idea of giving the Golan to the Syrians) to Ulpan Etzion where I was studying in 1994...thinking that everyone was a young and gullible person, not so familiar with History... He proceeded by telling a very interesting tale, one that said that "we never had any problem with Syria before 1967, and he got green with rage when I raised my hand and said: "I remember VERY CLEARLY the snipers shooting at the dining halls and kindergartens of the Kibbutzim in the Hula Valley, and the .50 caliber machine guns shooting at the market in Tiberias. Where those not Syrian Army regulars, the only people allowed in the Golan Heights?"
He of course looked like a jerk... The much younger students came to me to ask question during the break... No one except the extreme leftists running the Ulpan went to him... Tee same happened when this Jewish Agency extreme leftist institution invited notorious anti religious extreme leftists Steven Israel to lecture on Bible and History... Goebbels would have been proud of him!
So, maybe he's not evil. Maybe he's just so intellectually lazy or stupid that he has nothing intelligent to say about anything. Quite a range of topics to be so wrong on.
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