Lest We Forget: Dieppe, August 19, 1942
Sunday, August 19 marks the 70th anniversary of the tragic World War II Dieppe raid, codenamed Operation Jubilee, which was aimed against the heavily-fortified German-occupied port town on the northeastern French coast.
EU politicians ignore Muslim world’s crimes
Western countries are signatories of the 1948 UN Genocide Convention. This agreement aims to prevent future genocide, which is the greatest crime in the world.
EU "Upgrades" Relations with Israel, Strangling Strings Attached
The European Union has upgraded trade and diplomatic relations with Israel in more than 60 activities and fields, including agriculture, energy and immigration.
2012 Brussels Declaration
The International Conference for Free Speech and Human Rights [was held] on July 9, 2012 at the European Parliament in Brussels, Belgium, sponsored by the International Civil Liberties Alliance.
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LEST WE FORGET: DIEPPE, AUGUST 19, 1942
Frederick Krantz
Sunday, August 19 marks the 70th anniversary of the tragic World War II Dieppe raid, codenamed Operation Jubilee, which was aimed against the heavily-fortified German-occupied port town on the northeastern French coast.
Largely a Canadian operation—5,000 of the 6,000 troops ferried to the chalk-cliffed Dieppe beach were Canadians, of whom 913 were killed, and 1,946 taken prisoner—Dieppe proved an almost complete disaster. The Germans, already aware of an earlier, postponed July invasion date, were alerted to the actual attack by a German convoy in the Channel, which had intercepted the approaching Allied troop-carrier and destroyer-escort flotilla.
The raid was poorly planned and led. British general Montgomery, who had initially supported it, urged, unsuccessfully, that it be cancelled; the leading field officers were inexperienced and, in several key cases, simply incompetent. All 29 tanks brought along, unable to navigate the “dingle”, the pebbly shale of the beach area, were destroyed. The destroyers’ small guns lacked sufficient suppressive firepower; air-cover was ineffective, with many Allied planes shot down.
Andrew Roberts, in his recent The Storm of War, notes “the intelligence was faulty, the planning flawed, and the results little short of catastrophic.”
Many explanations have been adduced for the raid, none entirely satisfying. Some historians argue it was in part a sop to Russian pressure for a “Second Front” (Churchill had been exposed to Stalin’s demands, and rants, on this score in Moscow earlier in August ).
Others think it was a kind of experimental rehearsal for the “real” thing, (Overlord, in Normandy in June, 1944,), with important lessons learned—the need for massive preparatory air and naval firepower, avoidance of landing in a fortified port. Yet others reject this as a poor post hoc rationale for an unmitigated disaster.
Some–noting the clearly insufficient preparation and supporting force—explain Dieppe as a consciously sacrificial operation (for its Allied planners, not for the troops), a dramatic initiative meant to mollify an increasingly critical British and American public and media demanding aggressive Allied military action in Europe.
Recent scholarship has even noted the possible role of the Dieppe raid as a diversionary “feint” enabling commandos to land behind the beach-head in order either to capture secret German radar, or one of the recently-revised German “Enigma” code-machines frustrating secret Allied radio intercepts.
Seven surviving Canadian veterans, several of whom passed WWII as German prisoners of war after Dieppe, attended the recent, solemn seventieth anniversary memorial gathering in the French town. As 95-year-old Donatien Vaillancourt, of Les Fusiliers Mont-Royal, observed, “The Germans were waiting for us for three days. They knew we were coming. They were all in position…” .
Measured against the millions of military, let alone civilian, deaths of World War II, Canada’s losses at Dieppe pale into relative insignificance. Yet the brave men who fell, and those few still with us, played their part in defeating the Nazi-German murderers, and they deserve to be remembered. (Top)
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EU POLITICIANS IGNORE MUSLIM WORLD’S CRIMES
Manfred Gerstenfeld
Ynetnews 17 August 2012
Western countries are signatories of the 1948 UN Genocide Convention. This agreement aims to prevent future genocide, which is the greatest crime in the world. It also includes the commitment to act against incitement to genocide by a state. Such a transgressing nation may then be referred to an international court. However, hardly any European politicians reacted to the recent renewed calls for the annihilation of Israel by Iranian leaders. This goal can only be achieved by the genocide of Israel’s citizens. Conclusion: Many European politicians do not care much about major international laws when they are in Israel’s favor.
Furthermore, the European Union refused once again to declare Hezbollah a terrorist organization. The EU however, does care a bit about human rights. The High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Catherine Ashton, keeps herself disproportionately busy by condemning Israel if it does something against her liking.
One key element of European multiculturalism is to look away as much as possible from criminality in the Muslim world, even if it is major. There are many manifestations of this. A journalist from a foreign broadcasting organization in Israel told me: "I have seen foreign correspondents with tears in their eyes when they saw Palestinian olive trees destroyed by Israelis. The same people made a major effort to explain away terrorist murders of Israeli civilians by Palestinian terrorists."
In the morally degraded European political environment, the rare politician who addresses Muslim states’ transgressions of the Genocide Convention merits mention. A Dutch Parliamentarian, Wim Kortenoeven, who has recently left the Freedom Party of Geert Wilders, put forward some frank questions to the Dutch Minister of Foreign Affairs.
He wrote, "Do you share the opinion that the calls by President Ahmadinejad and other Iranian functionaries concerning the annihilation of Israel and thus genocide against its inhabitants, are a transgression of Article 3 of the Convention of Prevention and Punishment of Genocide? If not, why not?"
Kortenoeven also asked whether the minister took these calls for genocide seriously and added: "If not, why not?" He furthermore wanted to know how the Dutch government reacted to the latest Iranian call for genocide and what concrete actions the minister intended to undertake. He also inquired whether the minister was willing to request from states whose ambassadors had heard the speech of Iranian Prime Minister Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to publicly disassociate themselves from this call. He asked the minister if he was not willing to do so, to explain why.
Kortenoeven furthermore inquired whether the size of the Iranian Embassy in The Hague was proportional to actual relations between Iran and the Netherlands? If not, would the minster be willing to expel these non-essential functionaries? His questions were accompanied by detailed background material.
The Israeli government could have acted forcefully in the Iranian matter in two directions. It could have tried to get more questions asked in Western parliaments regarding the points raised by Kortenoeven. Additionally, it could have exposed the huge failure of the European Union and its member states to address many of the major crimes in Muslim countries.
Such Israeli action is all the more important as Europe finds itself at a critical junction. Its most visible element is the crisis concerning the Euro. Every few days additional problems emerge whereupon new stopgap measures are announced. The European leadership is clueless about these problems’ magnitude and how to solve them.
This is leading to an even greater distrust by many Europeans in the democracy-deficient European Union and in their own politicians. People’s fear about their future grows. In the short term, many worry about keeping their jobs. In the long term, they fear for the nature of the society they will live in.
This psychological climate has both risks and opportunities for Israel. The crisis in societal institutions has always been dangerous for Jews and is now so for Israel also. One threat comes from the entrance of populist parties into national parliaments. Some are neo-fascist, or even neo-Nazi, such as the Hungarian Jobbik and the Greek Golden Dawn.
Others have anti-Semites in their ranks, such as the German Pirate Party which is likely to enter Parliament in the next election. Others attack Jewish ritual customs, such as ritual slaughter or circumcision. On the other hand, at a time when there is increasing disaffection with Europe, one can also mobilize Israel’s friends to show how many European bodies mistreat Israel. This requires thought and a clear agenda. Otherwise, one is dependent upon individual initiatives by a few ardent supporters, such as Kortenoeven.
The Israeli government has taken economic measures to anticipate and diminish fallout from the world’s growing economic crisis. There is however, far more to be considered than plain economics.(Top)
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EU "UPGRADES" RELATIONS WITH ISRAEL,
STRANGLING STRINGS ATTACHED
Soeren Kern
Gatestone Institute, August 3, 2012
The European Union has upgraded trade and diplomatic relations with Israel in more than 60 activities and fields, including agriculture, energy and immigration.
The upgrade, which comes amid a barrage of unending criticism of Israel's policies, in fact appears aimed at increasing Israel's economic dependence on the European Union, with the objective of enhancing the bloc's leverage over the State of Israel. Authored by EU delegations to the Palestinian Authority, the document includes severe recommendations meant to strengthen Palestinian control over East Jerusalem and coerce Israel to change its policy in the West Bank. The document is unprecedented in that it deals with internal Israeli issues.
But the wide-ranging boost to bilateral relations, which was announced at the annual EU-Israel Association Council meeting in Brussels on July 24, is unlikely to end the deep-seated hostility European officialdom harbors towards the Jewish state.
As a whole, the package stops short of the full upgrade in relations that were frozen after Israel's invasion of the Gaza Strip in January 2009, but is highly significant nonetheless. Among other measures, the European Union will remove obstacles impeding Israel's access to European government-controlled markets and enhance Israel's co-operation with nine key EU agencies, including the European Police Office (Europol), the EU's Judicial Cooperation Unit (Eurojust) and the European Space Agency (ESA).
Notably absent from the package is the Agreement on Conformity, Assessment and Acceptance of Industrial Products (ACAA), a trade agreement that seeks to eliminate technical barriers to trade in industrial products, with the objective of increasing European access to Israeli markets, and vice-versa.…
In any event, the official EU statement announcing the upgrade in bilateral relations is also replete with condescending criticism of Israel, which the EU accuses of perpetrating a wide range of human rights abuses in the "occupied Palestinian territory (oPt)" and within Israel itself.
Among other items, the statement refers to Israel's obligation to protect the rights of the Arab-Palestinian minority, stressing the "importance to address it as a core problem in its own right." The document also condemns the "excessive recourse by Israel to administrative detention."
The EU urges Israel "to refrain from actions which may…curtail the freedom of association and freedom of speech (of civil society)" and it calls on Israel to prosecute "settler extremists" for their "continuous violence and deliberate provocations against Palestinian civilians."
The statement "stresses Israel's obligations regarding the living conditions of the Palestinian population" and condemns "developments on the ground which threaten to make a two-state solution impossible, such as, inter alia, the marked acceleration of settlement construction, ongoing evictions of Palestinians and the demolition of their housing and infrastructure in the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt), including East Jerusalem, the worsening living conditions of the Palestinian population and serious limitations for the Palestinian Authority to promote the economic development of Palestinian communities, in particular in Area C."…
The statement comes amid a wave of official EU criticism of Israel that is often one-sided, disproportionate and bordering on obsessive. In July, for example, the European Parliament passed a highly biased resolution accusing Israel of literally dozens of offenses against the Palestinian population, Palestinian institutions and even Arab Bedouins.…The resolution even accuses Israel of "creating an institutional and leadership vacuum in the local Palestinian population."
In June, EU "Foreign Minister" Catherine Ashton, who has a well-earned reputation for making statements that seek to isolate and delegitimize the Jewish state, criticized Israeli policies that "are illegal under international law and threaten to make a two-state solution impossible." Since assuming her post in December 2009, Ashton has never criticized Palestinian obstructionism and their setting impossible preconditions for entering genuine peace talks with Israel. (In March, Ashton [in]famously equated the killing of three children at a Jewish school in France with "what is happening in Gaza.")
In May, the EU's 27 foreign ministers unanimously condemned "the ongoing evictions and house demolitions in East Jerusalem, changes to the residency status of Palestinians…the prevention of peaceful Palestinian cultural, economic, social or political activities…the worsening living conditions of the Palestinian population…of jeopardizing the major achievements of the Palestinian Authority in state-building…the continuous settler violence and deliberate provocations against Palestinian civilians…" But nowhere does the document call on the Palestinian Authority to recognize the legitimacy of Israel as a Jewish state, a move that arguably more than any other would advance Palestinian aspirations for statehood.
In January 2012, the EU published a document called "The EU Heads of Mission Report on East Jerusalem" which makes an urgent plea for the EU to adopt a more "active and visible" implementation of its policy towards Israel and the peace process. Authored by EU delegations to the Palestinian Authority, the document includes severe recommendations meant to strengthen Palestinian control over East Jerusalem and coerce Israel to change its policy in the West Bank.…
The report includes a radical proposal for "appropriate EU legislation to prevent/discourage financial transactions in support of settlement activity." Under the proposal, the European Commission would use legislation to force European companies to stop doing business with companies involved in settlement construction and commercial activities. Recommendations include the preparation of a "blacklist" of settlers considered violent in order to consider later the option of banning them from entering the European Union.…
In December 2011, the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz obtained a classified working paper produced by European embassies in Israel, which recommended that the European Union…The document is unprecedented in that it deals with internal Israeli issues. According to European diplomats and senior Foreign Ministry officials quoted by Ha’aretz, the document was written and sent to EU headquarters in Brussels behind the back of the Israeli government.…
While the EU continues to exert pressure on Israel, Jerusalem has been unable to extract meaningful concessions from Brussels. For example, the EU has once again rejected an Israeli request that the bloc designate the Lebanon-based Hezbollah as a terrorist group.
Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman recently launched a new diplomatic push to convince the EU to outlaw Hezbollah following the murders of five Israelis and a Bulgarian bus driver on July 18. Israel blames Hezbollah for the suicide bombing at Bulgaria's Burgas airport.
Cypriot Foreign Minister Erato Kozakou-Marcoullis, whose country currently heads the EU presidency, said there is "no consensus among the EU member states for putting Hezbollah on the terrorist list of the organization," and claimed that there is "no tangible evidence of Hezbollah engaging in acts of terrorism."
Lieberman has also failed to persuade Catherine Ashton, the EU foreign policy chief, to "intervene" on Israel's behalf in a controversy regarding Tunisia's desire to include a clause in its new constitution making normalized relations with Israel a criminal offense.
As these examples and many others indicate, Israel should be under no illusion that the recent "upgrading" of bilateral relations with the European Union will end European hostility toward the Jewish state. Quite to the contrary; Israel should be expecting an increase in European meddling in its internal affairs.(Top)
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2012 BRUSSELS DECLARATION
International Civil Liberties Alliance
Liberties Alliance, July 9, 2012
[The International Conference for Free Speech and Human Rights [was held] on July 9, 2012 at the European Parliament in Brussels, Belgium, sponsored by the International Civil Liberties Alliance. Representatives of 18 countries, the majority being from Europe but with the participation of Coptic Christians from Egypt as well as former Muslims, met to discuss the ongoing Islamization of Europe and the Western world and how to preserve our basic civil liberties….Among the highlights of the conference was the presentation and signing of the 2012 Brussels Declaration, a foundational document to defend freedom of speech and civil liberties: —Ed].
“To Preserve Free Speech, Civil Liberties, Human Rights and Democracy, against all efforts to injure and usurp those universal principles, we call upon leaders in all nations to support this 2012 Brussels Declaration to Safeguard Individual Liberties and Human Rights:
Reasserting that Human rights and liberties are universal, individual, equal, inalienable, and self-evident irrespective of philosophical, cultural or religious considerations, as a matter of long-held principle;
Considering that any honest defender of Democracy has the right and the duty to uphold and defend free speech, civil liberties and human rights;
Affirming the irrefutable fact that sharia law as articulated and applied is incompatible with and destructive to free speech, civil liberties and human rights and as such is incompatible with the fundamental principles of democracy (as stated in the 13 Feb 2003 judgment of the ECHR);
Acknowledging that the declaration known as “Cairo Declaration of Human Right in Islam” also commonly referred to as the “Cairo Declaration” curtails all human rights under sharia law and sharia normative behavior restrictions (CDHRI Articles 22, 23, 24) on the pretense that “All human beings form one family whose members are united by their subordination to Allah” (CDHRI Article 1);
Observing that the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), being the creator of Cairo Declaration and its current main proponent has, by its continuous and single-minded activity, proven to be the principal international politico-religious organization working to restrict free speech, civil liberties and human rights and to enforce sharia in the world;
Asserting that any official endorsement or promotion of the Cairo Declaration or any cooperation with OIC that leads, by the test of consequences, to more enforcement of sharia anywhere in the world identifies its perpetrator as an active opponent of Democracy, freedom of speech, civil liberties and human rights;
Noting that such an identification renders illegitimate any attempt by the perpetrator to discuss or negotiate matters involving freedom of speech, civil liberties and human rights in any local, national or international forums;
The signatories solemnly require of their governments and civil society:
To commence a process, to be known as the Brussels Process, to implement the content of this declaration through education and policy initiatives at all levels of government and sectors of civil society, in order to safeguard the future liberties and rights of our nations and our children, so that all members of the human family may prosper as free individuals.
To decline any invitation to participate in any local, national or international forum to discuss civil liberties, free speech or human rights, if the organizers – individual persons or organizations – are known proponents of the Cairo Declaration or societal sharia enforcement…
To protest against any kind of participation in a local, national or international meeting dedicated to civil liberties, free speech or human rights’ discussions or negotiations by any known proponents of the Cairo Declaration or societal sharia enforcements…
To initiate a thorough inquiry before any bilateral or multilateral cooperation about civil liberties, free speech or human rights related matters, in order to clearly identify any participants who are proponents for the Cairo Declaration or sharia law, or who have cooperated or collaborated with the OIC or its associated organizations.
To reject and forbid any public funding for promotion of the Cairo Declaration or of any sharia societal implementation and enforcement…
To stop any cooperation with all known proponents of the Cairo Declaration at a national or international level, when that cooperation has as its aim or result, a restriction of civil liberties, free speech or human rights in a democratic country, until those proponents repudiate the Cairo Declaration.
To extend cooperation and support in all forums to former proponents of the Cairo Declaration who repudiate the suppression by the OIC and sharia law of civil liberties, free speech and human rights, and who assert that human rights and liberties are universal, individual, equal, inalienable, and self-evident irrespective of philosophical, cultural or religious considerations.
To engage with civil society and official organizations that work to safeguard individual liberties from suppression by shariah law,…[and] to encourage dialogue, education and understanding on individual liberties and human rights, as these terms have been commonly used historically in Western nations as understood before the Cairo Declaration.(Top)
