Another Attack on Israel: the NPT review as global farce

There is nothing that unites the world quite like its revulsion of the Jewish state.  Look no further than the near unanimous uproar over the recent "flotilla" incident for evidence.

Within hours of the event, France, Turkey, Spain, Syria, Morocco, Italy, Russia, Pakistan, Sweden, the EU, the European Parliament, the UN, and others lined up to condemn Israel.  The US pressured Israel to accept international involvement in its investigation of the incident, weaken its blockade, and offered an additional $400 million in aid for the Palestinians (surely there is a more worthy cause than supporting a people who name streets after suicide bombers).  Some 222 organizations endorsed the "freedom flotilla," including Jewish, Christian, Muslim, and secular organizations from around the world.

Should Israel lift a finger to defend itself, in other words, or, God forbid, house its citizens, and the world has a tantrum.

Meanwhile, the enemies of Israel who actively seek its destruction, Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, and others, enjoy the spectacle of an Israel-obsessed world doing its bidding for them, isolating and marginalizing the Jewish state, as they lay the groundwork for the next war.

For other more significant scandals, however, the world has little to say.

For example: Muslim fanatics in Iran pursue nuclear weapons and steal elections; North Korea blows up a South Korean ship and shares nuclear technology with other rogue states; China dispossesses Tibetans of their land and culture; Russia invades and occupies Georgia and slaughters Chechens; Sudan commits genocide in Darfur; millions die in civil war in the Congo; Hamas fires thousands of rockets into Israel. 

None of them matter; the world only has eyes for Israel.

A so-called "flotilla" of Gaza-bound Hamas (terror) supporters attempted to break Israel's blockade on the night of May 31.  Turkey, a nation that formerly enjoyed excellent relations with Israel, but has now, under Islamist Recip Erdogan, thrown its lot in with Syria and Iran, sponsored it.

Turkey, also, has its own terrorist problem - with the "PKK", or the "Kurdistan Workers' Party," a group that seeks to create a separate nation for Turkey's Kurdish minority.  Tens of thousands of Kurds have died at the hands of Turkey's security forces over the last 25 years.  Turkey does not recognize the right of the Kurds to an independent homeland, nor does it hesitate to use military force against the PKK.  But Turkey is not Israel and so the world does not care.

Israeli naval commandos boarded one of the ships, the Mavi Marmara, with some 600 Turkish activists from an organization known as the "Humanitarian Relief Fund," or IHH, a violent, Jihadist group with ties to Al-Qaeda and Hamas.  Five other boats were taken peacefully to the Israeli port city of Ashdod, where its cargo was unloaded, inspected, and allowed to pass into Gaza.

But on the Mavi Marmara, the Israeli commandos who rappelled down from their helicopter armed with paint ball guns (incredible irony) were attacked viciously with bats, pipes, and knives.  In the ensuing melee, nine activists were killed.

The reason for the flotilla, of course, was not aid but provocation - to create a propaganda nightmare for Israel, which, quite frankly, takes almost no skill, given existing prejudices.

More broadly, though, this should be understood as an overarching strategy to delegitimize Israel.  Its purpose is to alienate the Jewish state, to damage it in the court of world opinion and economically where possible, and make it impossible for Israel to defend itself.

Israel has allowed 1 million tons of humanitarian aid into Gaza in the last 18 months or more than one ton for every man, woman, and child living there.  It maintains a blockade (as Egypt does) to prevent Hamas, a terrorist group, from obtaining contraband with which to harm Israel.  Only an individual, group, or nation that promotes Israel's demise would question Israel's right to defend itself through this entirely lawful blockade.

From the Hamas flotilla incident, we move to a far more insidious episode in the anti-Israel procession.  On May 28, at the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency's (IAEA) Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT) review conference, 189 out of 189 nations that are signatories of the NPT passed a resolution singling out Israel, and condemning it for its nuclear program.  Israel, it should be noted, is not a signatory to the treaty; the resolution neglects to mention Iran or North Korea, both of whom are signatories.

Here, for the first time, the US did not use its veto power to derail the drive to denuclearize Israel.  Efforts to attenuate it or express regrets by US officials over Israel poor treatment could not conceal the reality that the US teamed up with the other 188 signatories of the NPT to target Israel while ignoring the fact that North Korea already has nuclear weapons and Iran actively seeks them; this is the NPT regime as farce, a global theater of the absurd, another world stage for institutional anti-Semitism.

With the abandonment of Israel by the US under Obama, it is now truly the world against Israel.  A shrinking number of American Jews and an increasing number (thank God) of conservative Christians are all that an ever more isolated Israel has left.