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Lifting the lid on UK’s Israel lobby |
Neil Berry
THE journalist, Peter Oborne, could not believe his ears when, last summer, in the aftermath of Israel’s bloody invasion of Gaza, the leader of the British Conservative Party, David Cameron, praised Israel for striving to “protect innocent lives”. Cameron was addressing the annual dinner of Conservative Friends of Israel, the pro-Israel group in his party. Last week, in a groundbreaking Dispatches documentary for Britain’s Channel 4 television, trailed by an article in the Guardian newspaper, Oborne investigated the covert influence of Britain’s “Israel lobby”.
During the last two decades, the Labour Party, which has ruled Britain since 1997, has been hugely susceptible to Zionist influence. Soon after becoming an MP in 1983, Tony Blair (right) joined Labour Friends of Israel, acutely aware of the career benefits of so doing. His elevation to the leadership of the party and subsequent election as British prime minister in 1997 owed much to the extraordinary fund-raising endeavors on behalf of Blair and “New Labour” by the Jewish pop music tycoon, Lord Michael Levy.
It was Blair’s ambition to free the Labour Party from its traditional dependency on the trade unions. That he was liberating the party from the unions and rendering it beholden instead to donors with pugnaciously pro-Israel agendas did not bother him. For all his professed commitment to justice for the Palestinians, Blair has never uttered a word that could offend Zionist opinion. And yet Britain could soon have a government still more beholden to the Israel lobby than Blair and New Labour. Oborne believes that at least half of the Cameron’s shadow Cabinet are members of Conservative Friends of Israel. That Israel can expect unconditional support from a Cameron government is plain. Witness the refusal of shadow foreign secretary, William Hague, a politician not always loath to criticize Israel, to endorse the UN Goldstone Report alleging that Israel perpetrated war crimes and crime against humanity in Gaza, not to mention his party’s agreement never to apply the term “disproportionate” to Israeli military action.
OBORNE’S case is that clandestine funding of British political parties by Zionists ought to be anathema in a political culture, which upholds transparency and democratic accountability. It is no less repugnant, he maintains, that those parts of the British media, notably the BBC and The Guardian, that seek to present a balanced picture of the Middle East conflict, should be ceaselessly vilified by the Zionist lobby. Not that “hostile” coverage of Israel has curbed Zionist influence in the highest reaches of the British political establishment. Since 1997, Oborne observes, British foreign policy has been conducted as though British interests were identical to those of Israel and the United States. It seems incredible now that in 1981 Britain’s then Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher could have condemned Israel’s bombing of the Iraqi nuclear plant, Osirak, as a “grave breach of international law”.
The most remarkable thing about Oborne’s expose was that it was broadcast at all. Not long ago, for a journalist to speak out against the Israel lobby was tantamount to committing professional suicide. When, in the mid-1970s, the sometime Guardian Middle East correspondent, Michael Adams, coauthored the pioneering book, “Publish It Not”, on the behind-the-scenes lobbying of groups like Labour Friends of Israel, he consigned himself to journalistic oblivion. The same fate is unlikely to await the ebullient Oborne. Though now assured of a special place in Zionist demonology, he has been able to start a necessary debate about the subversion of the democratic process in Britain on behalf of a foreign power. The Guardian’s online “Comment is Free” forum is this week in uproar. The truth is that there is more scope for public candor on the subject of Israel than ever before. The publication in 2005 of the American academics John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt’s book “The Israel Lobby”, about Zionist influence over US policy-making, was an epoch-making event. The radical Israeli historian Shlomo Sand’s new book, “The Invention of the Jewish People”, is of similarly cardinal significance. These works — like Oborne’s documentary (which has been accompanied by a trenchant pamphlet) — testify to a sea change in the climate of Western intellectual, as well as general public opinion, vis-à-vis the boundaries of debate about the Jewish state.
SAND’S book challenges what he regards as the myth of the historic mass expulsion of the Jews from Palestine: The bulk of the Jewish diaspora, he contends, consisted not of genetic heirs of Palestinian Jews but of converts. However, the book is also illuminating in relation to the power of the Israel lobby. Sand writes that Israel’s strength now depends less on demographic increase than precisely on cultivating the loyalty of overseas Jewish organizations and communities. It would be a serious setback for Israel, he remarks, if all the Zionist lobbies were to immigrate into the “Holy Land”. It is much more useful for them to remain close to the centers of Western power.
Arguing that there is no such thing as a pure nation state, Sand maintains that the notion of Jews as a unique people with a special destiny is a self-serving fantasy. Israel’s problem is that at a time when Western democracies have embraced multiethnic national identities, defining themselves in inclusive terms as states of all their citizens, it insists on being a racially exclusive polity. In other words, the Israel lobby is trying to proclaim the Jewish state’s democratic credentials to Western publics for whom Israel’s constitutional essence has become a bizarre anachronism, a relic of outmoded attitudes. Sand fears that Israel’s regressiveness, its failure fully to enfranchise even the many Arabs who live in Israel itself, is inviting the kind of cataclysmic ethnic conflict that has raged in former Yugoslavia. “The Invention of the Jewish People” has just been published in English. This brilliant polemic is an eye-opening piece of historical deconstruction and a major contribution to the debate about the Palestine-Israel conflict.
Arab News
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US, China: Equals at last, for better or for worse |
Willy Lam
WHILE no breakthroughs came out of the Barack Obama-Hu Jintao summit meeting, the U.S. president’s maiden trip to China will go down in history as a pivotal event in the relations between the two most powerful countries of the 21st century.
For the first time, the leaders of the United States and China talked as equals. And the rough parity between an apparently declining superpower and a fast-rising quasi-superpower has major global implications for issues including regional security, nuclear proliferation, trade, climate change and human rights.
The problem is that while its new-found power has emboldened Beijing to assume a much higher profile in world affairs, the Chinese Communist Party leadership has a radically different interpretation from the United States of what China’s international role or responsibility should be.
First, the plus side. Mutual recognition by Washington and Beijing of their status as peers could dispel misunderstandings and facilitate efforts, in the words of the Obama-Hu joint statement, to “deepen bilateral strategic trust” and “take concrete actions to steadily build a partnership.”
The Communist leadership has welcomed Obama’s reassurance that Washington will not seek to “contain” China. This, and the decision to boost exchanges of high-level military personnel, should minimise those nerve-wracking cat-and-mouse games that naval vessels and jet fighters from both sides have been playing in the South China Sea.
Moreover, the two leaders’ determination to enhance “positive, cooperative and comprehensive” ties has rendered it possible for Taiwan to recede into the background. For the first time since the 1972 Nixon visit, senior Chinese cadres said little about the “breakaway island” during the visit of an American president. President Hu did not even repeat the mantra that Washington should stop selling arms to Taiwan.
These positive aspects aside, the summit has reinforced the fact that China will use its clout to advance its agenda — not America’s. It is clearer than ever that for Beijing, strategic and business ties with its major allies come first.
Unfortunately for the Obama administration, this means that when it comes to cooperating to halt nuclear proliferation, the US and its allies should not assume that Beijing will ever play hardball with either Pyongyang or Teheran.
A key reason why Obama has adopted a conciliatory stance toward Beijing — for example, snubbing the Dalai Lama last month — is that Washington hopes China will use its vast influence with North Korea and Iran to prod the two pariah states toward denuclearisation.
This effort will fall short. Hu’s comments during the summit did not go beyond vague pledges to cooperate on proliferation. And Chinese state companies and military interests continue to expand their already extensive resource-oriented businesses in both countries.
Regarding trade and climate change, a newly confident Beijing displayed its determination to assume greater international responsibilities as long as this does not impinge on China’s domestic agenda of safeguarding economic growth at a rate of at least 8 per cent.
And when it came to the economy explicitly, Hu refused to yield to American pressure to appreciate the renminbi, which has been pegged to the US dollar for more than a year.
It is emblematic of the new power relations between the US and China that while Obama had told the U.S. public last week that he would press Hu on the currency issue, the U.S. president chose not to publicise his disappointment upon being rebuffed by his host.
The lack of concrete achievements of the Obama visit — particularly Beijing’s enunciation of its somewhat China-centric approach to meeting global obligations — will perhaps convince the White House to drop illusions about what the China will do for the US and the West, even after apparent concessions made by Washington.
Those who are most disappointed by the new global reality are probably Chinese human-rights activists, Tibetans and the Uighur ethnic minority in Xinjiang. Despite Obama’s soft approach to the human rights and Tibetan issues, Hu flatly refused to go along with Obama’s assertions that all countries should uphold the “universal rights” of every man and woman. It is now beyond doubt that Beijing’s conception of its global responsibilities does not include enfranchising, let alone empowering, opposition groupings or ethnic minorities within China. Dozens of dissidents and NGO activists were detained or harassed by Chinese state-security agents in the run-up to the Obama visit.
After the American dignitaries are gone, these “enemies of the state” may become even more discouraged now that the Leader of the Free World has tacitly acknowledged that he can’t do much to tweak a dragon that has not only awakened but is spitting fire. Khaleej Times
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Keeping swamp as treasures |
Tang Yuankai
FOR many years, 66-year-old Beijing resident Liang Yu wanted to visit the city's famous Yeyahu Lake in Yanqing County. Recently his wish came true.
Yeyahu, which means wild duck lake, is Beijing's first wetland park and only wetland reserve for birds. Its protected wetlands have grown to 10,000 hectares, accounting for more than 5 percent of the county's total area.
A wetland is a natural reservoir and considered to act like one of the Earth's kidneys. It is considered one of the three major ecological systems along with forests and oceans.
Wetlands have many special ecological functions and play an important role in preserving the environmental balance. When water flows through wetlands, substances being carried in it slowly separate out from the flow and are deposited in silt. Wetland plants take up those substances and some even absorb toxic particles.
"Wetland plants can absorb abundant amounts of nitrogen and phosphorus from polluted waters. The removal rates of total nitrogen and phosphorus can reach 70 percent and 90 percent, respectively," said Xian Ping, Director of the Department of Environmental Engineering at Guangxi University's School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering.
Beijing's Wetlands
According to a report released by Yanqing County, the immense surface area of wetlands can effectively prevent sand and dust from entering Beijing from the northwest, and the enormous amount of aquatic plants is capable of absorbing carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas. Yanqing's wetlands work to purify Beijing's atmosphere.
But with more media coverage of the health of wetlands over recent years, more people have been raising concerns about losing these valuable resources.
"People, including government officials, do not understand the importance of wetland preservation. They believe the most important thing is to prevent and control droughts, floods and sandstorms, but wetland preservation can be considered in the future," said Hou Baokun, former Director of the Wildlife Protection Office of the Beijing Forestry Bureau.
"Actually, the solution to such problems lies in the wetlands. Experts say that 80 percent of sand is generated locally; a moist surface environment like in a wetland can hold such sands. In the 1990s, sandstorms became more frequent while the severe loss of wetlands happened at the same time," Hou said.
The Beijing Forestry Prospect and Design Institute organized an investigation to the area's wetlands in 2007. After 18 months of investigation, experts developed a clear understanding of the wetlands' area, distribution and wildlife species that call it home. They developed a detailed distribution chart and set up a database, creating a foundation with which authorities could develop preservation plans for the city's wetlands.
"Beijing currently has 51,400 hectares of wetlands, which account for 3.13 percent of the total area of the city," said Liang, who lives near the Summer Palace and always cares for Beijing's wetlands.
Beijing will build six or seven more wetland parks by the end of this year and the total number will reach 14 within two years, authorities said.
Beijing authorities recently published an evaluation guide for wetland parks. "The wetland area should be more than 30 percent of the total area of the park, which must be no less than 8 hectares," said Yin Junjie, Director of the Wildlife Protection Office of the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Landscape and Forestry.
He said wetlands are mainly conservation areas and restrict the number of people who can enter. "The guide aims to combine wetlands and city functional parks, letting citizens enjoy both and relieving Beijing's urban heat island effect, which means the urban area of Beijing is warmer than its surrounding rural areas," Yin said.
The Convention on Wetlands is an international treaty for the conservation and sustainable utilization of wetlands. It was developed and adopted by participating nations at a meeting in Ramsar, Iran on February 2, 1971, and came into effect on December 21, 1975. China ratified the Convention in 1992. Since then, the Chinese Government has invested more in protecting and restoring wetland resources. In September 1994, the State Forestry Administration and 16 other ministries and administrations began working out the China National Wetlands Conservation Action Plan, which was put into effect in November 2000. In June 2004, the General Office of the State Council issued the Circular of Further Strengthening Wetland Protection Management, putting wetland protection into the national agenda.
Today, China has more than 38 million hectares of wetlands. By the end of 2008, China had built 80 wetland parks, more than 550 wetland nature reserves and 36 internationally important wetlands, thus putting 17.9 million hectares of natural wetlands under protection.
Legislative intentions
Authorities recently began seeking opinions on a draft of the Regulations on Wetlands Protection, which will be sent to the Legislative Affairs Office of the State Council for approval.
The Wetland Conservation and Management Center's Bao Daming said that a lag or lack of laws added difficulties to establishing effective management systems.
"The protection of wetlands must be cooperative between different departments," said Bao. If cooperation cannot be formed between concerned departments, the full protection of wetlands will not be achieved, even if legislative resources are developed separately by the agencies, he said.
In recent years, some local authorities have achieved progress in wetland protection legislation. Eight provinces and autonomous regions, including Heilongjiang, Liaoning, Inner Mongolia, Hunan, Guangdong, Shaanxi, Gansu and Ningxia, have now approved protective legislation and most of the others are taking up the same work.
The eight provinces and autonomous regions cover 30 percent of China's total area. Due to the difference in wetland types and different problems facing each, each of the set of laws and regulations is also differ significantly.
(The Daily Mail-Beijing Review Articles Exchange Item)
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