Minister says Israel falsely portrayed in BBC’s ‘blood libel’
MICHAEL Oren is a minister in the Israeli Prime Minister’s office.
It would be difficult to describe him as anything but a straighttalking and assertive advocate for Israel’s rights.
He began his presentation to us in the Knesset (the Israeli Parliament) by complaining about the BBC’s coverage of a major incident that had occurred overnight. Israeli soldiers on an undercover surveillance mission in the Gaza Strip had been identified by Hamas fighters. A gun battle ensued in which both the Israeli and Hamas commanders were killed, as well as a number of other Hamas fighters. The Israeli soldiers were rescued by a backup team, but the incident led to hundreds of rockets being fired across the border from Gaza into nearby Israeli towns. We were to get caught up in this in a small way the following day.
Mr Oren said: “About an hour ago I got off the phone to the BBC, which is always an interesting experience... It was typical BBC – I was asked whether Israel was trying to provoke the Palestinians, whether we were trying to break the ceasefire down. And then it got into issues of the protest, and whether Hamas is a peaceful organisation or not. I’m accustomed to this – it’s not something I take overwhelmingly seriously. I think that approaches like that lose the BBC – which is a very credible, honourable and historical station here – a lot of credibility here. Nobody in our political system outside of the very radical fringe will believe that demonstrators along the Gaza [border] are peaceful demonstrators who just want a better world for themselves, and that our soldiers do not have a primary sovereign duty to protect our border from people who are trying to break through that border and commit massacres on the other side. The intimation by the BBC... that our soldiers are firing indiscriminately is perceived in this country as nothing less than a blood libel. I can’t stress that enough. It puts the BBC, and those countries that vote for those resolutions [at the UN Security Council] in an adversarial position vis a vis Israel. I would take it a step further: I think it’s downright anti-Semitic.”
Mr Oren said no democratically elected government could afford to ignore rockets raining down on its citizens: “If 39 rockets landed in downtown London or in Wrexham or any other town in the UK, the British government’s going to react in a very forceful way.
“Nobody wants a war here. We’ve now fought three wars with Hamas. We send young boys mostly, and women, off to battle. Many don’t come home.
“At the same time we’re fighting an enemy who hides literally behind human shields. We’re going to be in a position where Palestinian civilians are going to be killed, and we’ll be accused of war crimes. So there’s not too much to be said for getting into a war with Gaza at this point.”
Emmanuel Nahshon, an official spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, reacted with anger when asked about a Human Rights Watch report which said Israel could be guilty of war crimes for shooting unarmed demonstrators across the border in Gaza.
He said: “I would say that this is rubbish and nonsense, typical of Human Rights Watch, which is the kind of organisation whose purpose is to attack Israel. They have lost their objectivity a long time ago, and are instrumentalised by the Palestinians. They serve the purpose of violence by echoing those kind of messages.
“Israel does not commit any war crimes. Our military was on the Israeli side of the frontier, protecting the state of Israel against people whose deliberate purpose was to penetrate into Israel’s territory and commit acts of violence. Out of the 60 and something Palestinians that were killed by Israeli forces protecting the state and the population of Israel, more than 50 were Hamas members – terrorists whose avowed purpose in life is to do harm against Israel and Israelis. They came to the frontier with weapons, they tried to tear the frontier and enter Israel.”
Mr Nahshon said any army in the circumstances would have taken the same action in its defence.
The Israeli line is not accepted by Human Rights Watch, which said: “Human Rights Watch interviewed nine people who witnessed Israeli forces shooting protesters in Gaza on May 14, the day with the highest toll of deaths and injuries so far, when more than 60 people were killed, and another who saw a journalist shot and killed on April 6. Seven of these interviewees not only witnessed people being shot, but were also themselves shot. Their accounts, along with photographs and videos, show a pattern of Israeli forces shooting people who posed no imminent threat to life with live ammunition.”