Fisk’s savage indictment of Israel’s de facto EU and NATO membership

Israel has crept into the EU without anyone noticing
Robert Fisk, Independent, Saturday, 31 July 2010

The death of five Israeli servicemen in a helicopter crash in Romania this week raised scarcely a headline. There was a Nato-Israeli exercise in progress. Well, that's OK then. Now imagine the death of five Hamas fighters in a helicopter crash in Romania this week. We'd still be investigating this extraordinary phenomenon. Now mark you, I'm not comparing Israel and Hamas. Israel is the country that justifiably slaughtered more than 1,300 Palestinians in Gaza 19 months ago – more than 300 of them children – while the vicious, blood-sucking and terrorist Hamas killed 13 Israelis ...


What is Nato doing when it plays war games with an army accused of war crimes?

"Israel has developed such strong political and economic ties to the EU over the past decade that it has become a member state of the union in all but name." Indeed, it was Javier Solana, the grubby top dog of the EU's foreign policy (formerly Nato secretary general), who actually said last year that "Israel, allow me to say, is a member of the European Union without being a member of the institution".

White phosphorous burning the flesh of Gaza civilians: the delivery systems need British spare partsDoes David Cameron – now so forcefully marketing Turkish entry to the EU – agree with this? Probably yes, since he goes on calling himself a "friend of Israel" after that country produced an excellent set of forged British passports for its murderers in Dubai. As Cronin says, "the EU's cowardice towards Israel is in stark contrast to the robust position it has taken when major atrocities have occurred in other conflicts". After the Russia-Georgia war in 2008, for example, the EU tasked an independent mission to find out if international law had been flouted, and demanded an international inquiry into human rights abuses after Sri Lanka's war against the Tamil Tigers.

...In 1999, Britain's arms sales to Israel – a country occupying the West Bank (and Gaza, too) and building illegal colonies for Jews and Jews only on Arab land – were worth £11.5m; within two years, this had almost doubled to £22.5m. This included small arms, grenade-making kits and equipment for fighter jets and tanks...in 2006, the year in which Israel slaughtered another 1,300 Lebanese, almost all of them civilians, in another crusade against Hizbollah's "world terror", Britain granted over 200 weapons licences.

  • Britain gave "head-up displays" manufactured by BAE Systems for Lockheed Martin which promptly installed them in F-16 fighter-bombers destined for Israel.
  • British admitted to training members of the Israeli military.
  • US planes transporting weapons to Israel at the time of the 2006 Lebanon war were refuelled at British airports
  • first three months of 2008, [UK] gave licenses for another £20m of weapons for Israel – just in time for Israel's onslaught on Gaza.
  • Apache helicopters used against Palestinians contain parts made by SPS Aerostructures in Nottinghamshire, Smiths Industries in Cheltenham, Page Aerospace in Middlesex and Meggit Avionics in Hampshire.
  • Israel has been praised for its "logistics" help to Nato in Afghanistan...
  • Israel already has an "individual co-operation programme" with Nato, locking Israel into Nato's computer networks.

Full article in Independent 31 July 2010