Looking Around

Referendum: A bad day for Scotland

Whatever the outcome of next Thursday’s referendum on Scottish  independence I am inclined to agree with the judgement of Kate Mentink in her  interview with Humphrey Carter in Wednesday’s Bulletin  -- “18 September will be a very sad day for Scotland”. If the result is Yes to independence it will have been won by a clever campaign that almost never addressed the very serious disadvantages that will beset an independent Scotland.  If the result is No it will be becasue of the good sense of Scottish people who remained committed to the Union despite being taken for granted by London.
There have been some extraordinary moments in the campaigns, many of them involving Alex Salmond who showed  the political skills that led the Times  to name him as Britain’s most effective politician a couple of years ago but also revealed a worrying way of ignoring hard facts facing him. The other day the Financial Times cleverly identified his “Panglossian” ability to believe that “everything is for the best in this best of possible worlds”. There was an amazing example of this last week  in Edinburgh when Salmond told a meeting of journalists that the Yes campaign had the backing of most world leaders because the appeal that the Foreign Office had made to all of them   to back the No campaign had produced no response -- thus proving  that they supported  him! It’s surprising that he believed the Foreign Office would invite such undiplomatic intrusion in Britain’s national politics but the idea that silence means approval is unbelievably unreal. It’s worrying, though, because if the vote is Yes on Thursday there will be some appallingly difficult problems facing Scotland’s leader that cannot  just be ignored or waved away.

An Israeli Protest

“We veterans of Unit 8200, reserve soldiers both past and present, declare that we refuse to take part in actions against Palestinians and refuse to continue serving as tools in deepening the military control of the occupied territories.”  
Unit 8200 is one of the most secretive and prestigious arms of Israel’s intelligence services. It is sometimes compared to America’s NSA and Britain’s GCHQ. The words just quoted are in an open letter signed by 43 reserve members of Unit 8200 that has just been sent to Israel’s president, prime minister and on down.Essentially, the letter says its signatories will not serve in “operations involving widespread surveillance of innocent Palestinian residents  of the occupied territories”. More specifically the letter refers to “an all-embracing intelligence unit  gathering intelligence on innocent Palestinians that is unrelated to Israel security or defence needs but will be used for political persecution”. I have long thought that Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and parts of East Jerusalem will prove to be its Achilles heel . There are now more than half-a million Israelis living in new settlements in the West Bank and the number is increasing all the time, as the very recent land-grab following the Gaza war  showed.They are all living on illegally occupied land by Geneva rules and more than ninety per cent of United  Nations members have passed resolutions condemning Israel’s presence there.Supporters of Israel often point out that Palestinian Arabs enjoy better democratic privileges than those living in other Middle East countries. Clearly, however, the privilege does not extend to Palestinians on the West  Bank who have seen their land  and dwellings taken from them  for more Jewish settlements.  One of the most telling passages in the  open letter from members of Unit 8200 describes its surveillance activities  as “more like the intelligence services of oppressive regimes than of a democracy.”The open letter also has a number of statements by Unit 8200 veterans  describing particular incidents and activities that they believe were inappropriate. This reminded me rather of the  documentary TV reports  made in the occupied territories by the journalist Gideon Levy who is frequently called “the most hated man in Israel” because of his exposure of the rough  treatment of West Bank Palestinians by Israel army and special services. Mr Levy’s films which are shown on Al Jazeera TV  are very revealing -- as are his articles which appear in Haaretz  newspaper weekly.