An op-ed in the New York Times by Vincent Fean, Britain’s consul-general in Jerusalem from 2010 to 2014 exposes some of the glaring moral deficiencies in how the European diplomatic corp views the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Fean encourages European parliaments to recognize “Palestine” as a reward for “the nonviolence policy of the Palestinian Authority’s president, Mahmoud Abbas.” This despite Abbas’s incitement that has contributed to recent terrorism against Israelis.
But why should this concern Fean who treats Palestinian terror as the moral equivalent of Israeli actions?
The status quo is bad and getting worse. Europe condemns Hamas rocket fire into Israel, Israeli strikes against United Nations buildings in Gaza, and recent murders in Jerusalem. All are crimes against humanity.
While Hamas intentionally targets Israeli civilians with rockets, Israel harbors no such malevolent intent towards UN buildings in Gaza. Yet, in Fean’s opinion, both Palestinian terror and Israeli efforts to defend its citizens are “crimes against humanity.”
And yet more moral equivalence:
Life is sacred, irrespective of nationality — that of a three-month-old child in Jerusalem, or a 55-year-old minister in the West Bank.
How can the death of a three-month-old Israeli baby deliberately killed by a Palestinian terrorist who drove his vehicle into a crowd of Israelis at a light rail station be compared to that of a Palestinian with the blood of Israelis on his hands who suffered a heart attack while confronting Israeli soldiers?
Hardly surprising when Fean writes as if Palestinians are merely passive actors with no responsibility for their situation. Instead it is all about Israel as:
the two-state solution is in danger from acts of violence, systematic Israeli settlement construction, the separation barrier, the demolition of Palestinian homes and the seven-year closure of Gaza.
What about Palestinian terror, incitement and the stubborn refusal to countenance any compromises necessary to achieve peace?
Fean continues in the same vein:
At Oslo, the Palestinians were promised statehood by 1999. The murder of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995 prevented that.
While one can certainly speculate as to what may have happened had Rabin not been murdered, Fean has attached far too much significance to that event while erasing Palestinian terrorism and violence that did more than anything else to reverse any gains that Palestinians achieved through the Oslo process.
Fean then questions Israel’s value system and morality while using a selective interpretation of “international law”:
This Israeli government falls short of the values it claims to share with the West, breaking the law in the conduct of its 47-year occupation. It is a crime for an occupying power to transfer its own citizens into territory it occupied by war. That is what the settler enterprise does.
Irrespective of whether or not one agrees with settlements or not, it is entirely disingenuous to suggest that any Israeli citizens who live in Judea and Samaria are there by anything other than there own individual choices and is but one interpretation of the Fourth Geneva Convention that Israel rejects.
Ultimately, Vincent Fean’s op-ed is a disturbing insight into European thinking concerning Israel and the Palestinians. That the New York Times has given a platform to a view that closely fits with its own editorial policy isn’t a surprise.
[sc:graybox ]Please send your considered comments to the letters page of the New York Times – [email protected] – remembering to include your address and phone numbers to ensure a chance of publication.
