Carlo's Corner: But God gave Israel the land

When you are the Only Democracy in the Middle East^TM you don’t need to worry about petty little things such as human rights. And so ABC Online reported on March 27 that Israel has severed all ties with the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC).

The final outrage that forced Israel to cut ties was a UNHRC vote in favour of investigating whether illegal Israeli settlements in the Palestinian West Bank were, in fact, infringing the rights of Palestinians.

Israel said this showed just how biased the body was. And fair enough, as everyone knows the idea that Palestinians have rights is just an anti-Semitic plot to destroy the state of Israel and drive all Jews into the sea.

But it may seem to the uninformed observer that perhaps there is something here for the UNHRC to look into. After all, it does seem a bit rough to keep building Jewish-only settlements on Palestinian territory, demolish people’s homes, take their land, seize their water supplies, build a giant network of checkpoints and Israeli-citizen only roads to carve up the territory, and then jail and shoot those who protest.

Some might even suggest Israel’s policy of making Palestinians actually pay the cost of demolishing their homes to make way for Jewish people is possibly an act of total and utter bastardry.

But the ABC explained: “Israel cites historical and Biblical links to the West Bank.”

Well, that is perfectly clear then. Sure, Palestinians have lived on their land for centuries, but sometime back there were probably Jewish people on those spots — and anyway, God said the land belongs to Israel.

You really have to wonder just who the hell the UNHRC think they are — questioning God’s word. But if you think that’s bad, what on Earth are we to make of the impertinence of the Palestinians? They have the gall to live there for centuries, in flagrant violation of God’s will. It is fucking blasphemy.

And yet it seems there are just some people who can’t see the inherent justice of Israel’s case.

But it is not just in the occupied Palestinian territories that there are people who refuse to accept God’s verdict. Even within Israel itself, there are those who just refuse to come to terms, even more than 60 years since Israel’s founding, with the fact the land is just not for them.

Such is the case of the Bedouin people who have lived in the Negev region of southern Israel for thousands of years. The Israeli state, no doubt pointing to a lack of Biblical links, refuses to “recognise” many Bedouin villages — and therefore plans to get rid of them.

Electronic Intifada said on March 28 that Israel’s Prime Minister’s Office has approved “a five-year economic development plan for Israeli Bedouin”. This involves the demolition of many “unrecognised Bedouin villages” so they can be replaced with God’s chosen people.

WikiLeaks revealed an advisor to Israeli President Shimon Perez told US officials in 2005 that plans to “develop” the Negev would involve the forced “relocation of some 65,000 Bedouin living in unrecognized villages”. Electronic Intifada said this was roughly the total number of Bedouins living in all “unrecognised villages”.

A March 21 Independent article said this plan was condemned by the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, which used the phrase “apartheid” to describe Israel’s policies.

Really, anti-Israel bias is just rife right through the UN, which constantly says “that’s racist” just because Israel aims to dispossess a race of people on the basis of their race!

Luckily, the Murdoch media are there to stand up for poor, victimised Israel, with only nuclear weapons and US$3 billion of US military aid each year with which to defend itself.

Because, sad as it is to say, doing God’s work sometimes breeds resistance.

And so it came to be that it was up to The Australian to respond to the unarmed demonstrations by Palestinians on Israel’s borders in June last year to protest Israeli land grabs.

The Israeli Defense Force responded to the protests by shooting more than 20 people dead. This prompted a June 7 opinion piece, entitled “Palestinians deadly strategy doomed to fail”, in which The Australian’s Middle Eastern correspondent John Lyons wrote: “It is time for Palestinians to resume a non-violent struggle of negotiations and give up their strategy of confronting Israeli bullets.”

Of all the evil, anti-Semitic terrorist plots the Palestinians have come up with, their deadly strategy of confronting Israeli bullets with their bodies, and getting themselves killed, has got to be the most dastardly yet.

In the face of such provocation, what could the God-fearing Israeli military possibly do but shoot them?

[Read more Carlo's Corner column.Follow Carlo Sands on Twitter @carlosands.]