I have for long contended that Israel in its current form is a cancer to humanity. Through its overt and covert schemes, it bodes ill for most Arab and Muslim nations. Through skilful manipulation of western media, Tel Aviv deflects criticism of its policies, while seeking to garner western support for military strikes against its perceived enemies.
It was the massive push by the Israelis and their sympathisers in the United States government that led a “naive” Texan (read George W. Bush) to go to war against Iraq — a country that had nothing to do with the September 11, 2001, terror attacks on America, nor was in possession of weapons of mass destruction.
It’s no secret that Israeli moles and a powerful lobby are embedded deep within the bowels of the US government and media. The media was tutored to align itself in a vitriolic attack against Iraq and publishers and columnists clapped vociferously in glee when the first ‘shock and awe’ exercise began.
Today, if you wonder why most media has ignored or down-played the atrocities committed by the Buddhist butchers in Myanmar, it is because Israel is on the side of the Myanmarese government and it is only too happy to see Muslims massacred there.
Ofer Neiman, an Israeli human rights activist, said Israel’s relationship with Myanmar is linked to its ongoing occupation of Palestinian Territory in the West Bank. “This policy is strongly related to Israel’s oppression and dispossession of the Palestinian people. Weapons used against the Palestinians are being sold as ‘field-tested’ to some of the worst regimes on the planet. Successive Israeli governments have been selling arms to the military dictatorship in Burma [Myanmar] for years.”
Israel is adding fuel to the violent Rohingya crisis in Myanmar by selling arms to the Myanmarese government. The report comes as the conflict, which has already seen hundreds dead and hundreds of thousands displaced, is gaining momentum. According to human rights groups and Myanmar officials, the Jewish state has supplied more than 100 tanks, motorboats and other weapons that are currently being used by Myanmar’s military against Rohingya Muslims. Israel’s Haaretz newspaper reported on Wednesday that arms deals between Tel Aviv and Yangon were in full swing despite United Nations and European Union embargoes on the sale of arms to Myanmar.
Meanwhile, Israel’s High Court of Justice is going to consider a petition by activists urging the government to halt all arms exports to Myanmar. The petition was submitted in January, after a delegation of Israeli officials visited Yangon to negotiate arms shipments to Myanmar.
The Israelis have a long history of arming brutal dictatorships. Eitay Mack, an Israeli human rights lawyer and activist who is quite vocal in his demand for increased transparency and public scrutiny of Israeli security exports, has, over the years, documented a detailed list of such Israeli crimes. He noted how the government of former Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin (1974-1977) boisterously welcomed Apartheid South Africa’s Prime Minister John Vorster in April 1976. The visit was part of Israel’s security cooperation with the apartheid regime. The apartheid regime tried to develop chemical weapons that would harm black Africans only, including the fertility of African women.
The director of the heinous plot, Wouter Basson, who was also known as “Dr Death”, had visited Israel in 1979. Basson sent his representatives for additional visits to Israel for consultations with Israeli security officials, with Israeli representatives even taking part in a conference, as part of this grotesque and inhumane plan, which was held in South Africa in 1986.
Between 1973 and 1991, Israeli governments and the Israeli army sold weapons and provided training to Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship in Chile, a regime that committed crimes against humanity, was responsible for the disappearance of thousands, and tortured tens of thousands. The Pinochet regime brought torture to new heights of cruelty, unseen in modern history. On top of that, Israel also engaged in public-relations exercises for Pinochet in Washington.
In the 1970s and 1980s, Israeli governments and the military sold arms and offered training to the juntas in Guatemala, which carried out a genocide of around 200,000 people — most of them indigenous.
Between 1991-1995, Rabin, during his second stint as prime minister, sold arms that were used in both the Rwandan Genocide and the Bosnian War. Footage of concentration camps set up by the Serbs for Bosnian Muslims displayed how the Bosnian Muslims in those camps were starved and tortured, and their bodies were fed to animals. Yet, Israeli arms exports did not stop. At a Knesset hearing on August 5, 1992, the then Israeli foreign minister Shimon Peres confirmed that acts of massacre had indeed been carried out but refused responsibility.
Today, it is the Rohingya in Myanmar who are the victims of Israel-supplied arms and ammunitions, and although many voices are beginning to be raised around the world against the atrocities and the current genocide in that country, the Israeli military apparatus continues to supply the Myanmarese government with arms that are now being used against Rohingya.
Let there be no doubt at all over this: That the Israelis have practised and perfected the Nazi methods of extermination in their support of holocausts around the world. They believe themselves to be above censure. They are an affront to humanity.
Tariq A. Al Maeena is a Saudi socio-political commentator. He lives in Jeddah. You can follow him on Twitter: @talmaeena.
