Sheikh Shaheed @Large Double standards abound when it comes to dealing with the state of Israel. Indeed, it boggles the mind to see what she gets away with most of the time.
The reaction of the Israeli foreign minister to the alleged state involvement in the recent assassination of a Hamas leader in Dubai – using false British and Irish passports – is just the latest in a long line of incidents.
How would Ireland respond, I wonder, if the British secret service stole the identities of Irish citizens and used them in the assassination of, say, an Argentinean general? Or if the CIA did the same in a plot to eliminate a left-wing politician in Venezuela?
It’s likely there would be a significant political uproar at the least, with the ambassadors of the miscreant country carpeted and diplomatic feathers ruffled all over the place, not to mention severe pressure on the Minister for Foreign Affairs to take decisive action.
And yet just a few weeks ago the secret service of Israel, Mossad, allegedly stole the details of Irish passport holders and used them as a cover to murder a senior figure in Hamas, the ruling party among the Palestinians. But the response of the Irish State has been relatively muted.
We are talking here about a human being murdered in an extrajudicial execution. Mahmoud al-Mabhuh may have been a criminal, he may have been a killer, but we do not know that for sure because he never faced a court of law.
Moreover, the assassination further destabilised the precarious political situation in the region, sowing greater mistrust and generating more anti-Israeli hysteria.
By her alleged hand in the Dubai killing, Israel has again showed complete contempt for international law and due process – and that’s not even to mention the theft of passports from other states and their use in committing a criminal act.
It is also puzzling to imagine any positive outcome from Israel’s alleged actions. She may have killed an avowed enemy, but al-Mabhuh will be replaced, while Israel risks incurring real, lasting damage to her relationships with the European Union and beyond.
Having being almost completely eliminated by the Nazis, the culmination of decades of pogroms, the Jewish people of Israel look to the lessons of their history as a goad, a survival imperative that dictates their current action. The birth pangs of the Israeli state were particularly painful, and the scar continues to bleed and scab over.
But understanding past collective trauma does not require acceptance of the behaviour such trauma elicits. It must be remembered that the birth of Israel involved significant collateral damage to the Palestinian people, with consequences that spawned Hamas and its fellow travellers.
The position that Israel finds itself in is of course intolerable. She is surrounded by very real enemies, and faces both real and imagined threats on a daily basis. It’s a psychic minefield of directed hate and often misdirected rocket fire.
But Israel is very far from blameless in this scenario. As of today she continues to build settlements in the West Bank, thus undermining the possibility of future agreements with its Arab neighbours. Its UN-documented war crimes in Gaza – mimicking the war crimes of Hamas and Hezbollah – make its claims to be a civilised state incredibly difficult to accept. And amid all this lunacy we have the President of Iran calling for the complete eradication of Israel from the map.
It’s an intolerable situation. But state-sponsored assassination is not an appropriate response by any means. Hamas and Israel have both murdered civilians; this is disgusting, immoral, and deeply shameful. But acting in a reciprocal manner is equally unacceptable – and doing so in a foreign land is even worse.
Dr Shaheed Satardien is imam of the West Dublin Islamic Society, president of the Muslim Council of Ireland, chairman of the European Muslim Council for Justice, Peace and Equality, co-ordinator of the Interfaith Roundtable and the 2006 Visionary of Peace Award winner
sheikhshaheed@gmail.com
