As Jacques Chirac garners plaudits (including a Nobel Peace Prize nomination) for his supposed moral stature as highminded champion of human life against a bestial George Bush slavering for war against Iraq, it is well to remember that Chirac is Europe's single supporter of the vicious Mugabe regime in Zimbabwe. Although the Mugabe regime is the subject of European sanctions (and the EU voted to extend them in mid-February), over the protests of England, Holland, Sweden and even Germany, Chirac's chief ally-in-mischief-making, Chirac insisted on those sanctions being "suspended" so Mugabe could come to a three day Franco-Africa summit. European sanctions were imposed in response to last year's election fiasco, in which the opposition won and Mugabe declared victory. But Mugabe's evil extends far beyond ballot-tampering. The man has literally destroyed his country.
Only a few years back, Zimbabwe had a thriving agricultural sector that not only fed its 14 million population but had a generous export surplus. Today half of Zimbabwe's 11 million population (3 million have fled) faces starvation. Mugabe simply decided to expropriate without compensation the white-owned farms that fed Zimbabwe; he set loose so-called "war veterans" (supposedly veterans of Zimbabwe's over twenty-year old war for independence, although in fact many of those raiding the farms had not even been born then) who murdered and pillaged. The farmers -- and their black African workers -- were driven away but the new squatters grew nothing. (For a wonderful first hand account read Cathy Buckle, African Tears, available through www.exclusivebooks.com) Although on a lesser scale, businesses have also been seized. Intimidation is the order of the day as members of the opposing political party are tortured and murdered.
At this very moment, the leader of the opposition is being tried on trumped up charges of planning to murder Mugabe, with the lead witness being -- incredible to report -- Ari Ben-Menashe, the notorious chronic liar who was a major source for yellow journalist Seymour Hersh's decade old anti-Israel book, The Samson Option. (Ben- Menashe has variously claimed he planted a homing device in the Osirak reactor, planned and led the Entebbe raid, turned down an appointment as head of the Mossad and was with then vice-presidential candidate George Bush in Paris in 1980 to arrange a deal to hold the American embassy hostages until after the presidential elections. In fact, as David Bar Illan pointed out in the Jerusalem Post of March 6, 1992, Ben Menashe was a lowly translator in the Mossad who was deemed "delusional" and was refused security clearance.)
The only positive element in this story is that the British Conservative Party's "shadow foreign secretary" Michael Ancram formed an unlikely alliance with human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell to demand that French authorities arrest Mugabe in Paris under France's anti-torture legislation. Appeals to the courts. A protest march. Predictably, as it turned out, Tatchell was arrested, not Mugabe. Nonetheless the publicity was horribly -- delightfully -- embarassing for the human rights strutting Chirac.
There are genuine problems with the hareidim in Israeli society; the most important are the economic dependency of so many in this community upon government welfare programs and the failure of their young men to serve in the military. But while reforms are clearly in order (much of the mess is the result of the rules Ben-Gurion established whereby hareidi young men avoided military service as long as they remained full-time students, with the result they remained full-time students for life), it is incredible that with the state in acute jeopardy from enemies who would kill all the Jews, a party would base itself on attacking Jews (and equally reprehensible that so many citizens should vote for it).
Moreover, Lapid painted with a broad brush so that little distinction was made between hareidim and other religious Jews. Yet a good case can be made that religious Jews today form the backbone of the country: in the army they have replaced the "kibbutznik" as the most motivated soldiers and the best officers and unlike so many secular Israelis, mired in defeatism, they continue to believe in, and are willing to sacrifice for, a Jewish state.
Not the least benefit of the refusal of what the Jerusalem Post's Carolyn Glick rightly dubs the "delusional" Labor Party to join Sharon's coalition is that any coalition government that includes Shinui will also have
Outpost - 2 - March 2003