Israeli Ambassador to India's Interview With the Indian Express By Ghulam Muhammed

Israeli Ambassador to India's Interview With the Indian Express

By Ghulam Muhammed

Al-Jazeerah, December 27, 2006

Israelis leaders are well-known for their double-speak. So it would be surprising that Israeli Ambassador to India, in his discussion with the staff of The Indian Express, should be consciously or unconsciously indulge in double speak in one sitting.

While at one point he stresses that 'Israel does not look at the peace process, as a favour that it is granting to others '--- David Danieli feel no qualms in issuing the audacious dictates that --- 'we are willing to grant a large territory to Palestinian state'. The key word is 'grant'. Israel is an occupier of Palestinian land and it is bound by international laws to return the territory to Palestine. It cannot keep a single inch of that occupied territory. How can the Israeli Ambassador reconcile the two statements of grants? A property that Israel is legally bound to return to the people of Palestinians --- is now held out as a grant of large territory to Palestinian state. In fact, Israel has usurped large part of Palestinian territory from 1948 to date. It held only 6% of the British mandate territory of Palestine. It has through wars and occupation has increased its hold to more than half of the erstwhile Palestine. And now the Ambassador Danieli hoodwinks the silent listeners of Indian Express staff, into believing that Israel is ready and willing to 'grant' large territory to Palestinian state!

It is surprising that at a foreign soil, the Israeli Ambassador has so audaciously termed Hamas and Hizbollah as terrorist organizations, while a large percentage of Indians, including Muslims and Left liberals hold that Israel itself is a terrorist state. How can Indian Express print the Israeli propaganda, without countering the facts?

The height of irony is the Israeli Ambassador's lament that both Hamas and Hizbollah are 'armed to the teeth'. Compared to Israel, one can easily make out, who is more armed to the teeth --- Hamas and Hizbollah or Israel. Both these organizations have been victim of Israel's use of US-supplied highly sophisticated fighter planes that could fire pin-point guided missiles over long distances --- for which both the opposing groups have no defense whatsoever.

Israeli Ambassador wants to take credit for Gaza pullout. In fact, Israel has made a virtual prison of Gaza - a country size gulag, which is surrounded by Israeli forces. All exit and entry is controlled by Israelis. All economic and life support for the wretched population imprisoned by Israelis in that hell-hole, have no means to support other than a miserable standard of living. Israel's stranglehold on Gaza is worst than South Africa's apartheid era Bantustan. Israel has moved out of Gaza for its own safety from resistance successes and now trying to claim generosity. The Ambassador should know that you cannot fool all the people all the time. This time, you did fool Indian Express people to print your propaganda. But that has not convinced the people that Israel has changed for the better.

The democracy in India that Israeli Ambassador is praising as world's largest democracy cannot be compared by any standard of democracy that Israel itself stands for. Israel has ethnically cleansed a major part of its Palestinian citizens from Israel, with a single terrorist act of devastation of Deir Yassin, carried out by a confirmed terrorist that Israelis later chose as their Prime Minister, Menachem Begin. Millions of Palestinian refugees from Israel proper are rotting in neighboring countries, waiting for return to their homes and farms that has been confiscated by Israelis, and are barely surviving on UN rations for over half a century. How can a supposedly democratic country, a member of the United Nation, first forcibly manage a violence based ethnic cleansing, robbing the ordinary civilians of their home and farms as well as their citizenship and claim to be democratic by restricting its citizenship to a religious based community of immigrant Jews. Israeli Ambassador has no face to compare its democracy with that of India. Even the worst discriminated Muslims do have their vote while victims of Israelis terror can hardly aspire for a vote in their own nation's democracy. India is a secular democracy with multi-cultural, multi-religious pluralist mix of ethnicities forming its population base. and it has sustain its democratic credentials despite strong Hindutva opposition who would like India to go Israel's way, dreaming to create a religious state. Israel is no patch on India, as far as its democracy is concerned.

Israel and its protégé, the US President Bush do make big claims about democracy, but when Palestinian people exercise their democratic right and elect Hamas in a historic elections, both the world standard-bearers of democracy, relentlessly work their devious ways for undermining a democratically elected government. So much for their democratic credentials! Hamas has every right to treat Israel as a usurper non-state, just as Israelis treat Hamas as terrorist organisation, banning all dealings with it. In fact, Israel wants to impose its own lackeys in Palestine, by means fair and foul. The beauty is that they go about posing as epitome of correctness in political dealings. People are starving in Occupies Territories and Israel is withholding their own funds as a blackmail to undermine their democratic choice of government.

The editors of Indian Express have been less than proper in publishing an interview in their newspaper, without mention of any counterpoint that they may or could have raised with the Ambassador refuting his pious proclamations. What they have published is an Israeli propaganda. Possibly unpaid.

Ghulam Muhammed, Mumbai <Ghulam_muhammed2@yahoo.co.in>

Earth, a planet hungry for peace

Apartheid Wall


The Israeli Land-Grab Apartheid Wall built inside the Palestinian territories, here separating Abu Dis from occupied East Jerusalem. (IPC, 7/4/04).

The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers in the West Bank, like a Python. (Alquds,10/25/03).

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