HOWARD EPSTEIN – LETTER FROM ISRAEL – The crime of incitement
The crime of incitement, the encouragement of another person to commit a crime, derives from the common law, which itself arises from the beginnings of modern English history with the Norman invasion of 1066. It was brought up to date in England and Wales by the 2007 Serious Crime Act, with the statutory offence of encouraging or assisting crime. This is not a uniquely British concept of wrong-doing: since 1966 it has had international recognition. By Article 20 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), any advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence is to be prohibited by law.
Well, you must be thinking, why – or, more relevantly, where – would it not be a crime to encourage others to commit a crime? Answer: in the would-be state of Palestine.
The Palestinians’ leaders are a people apart from the international community. They not only incite crime; they positively reward it by paying stipends to the families of Palestinians killed or imprisoned by Israel for carrying out terrorist attacks. Now, it should be explained that Israel rumbled them years ago and deducts from the tax revenues it collects on behalf of the Palestinians on their imports and exports amounts equivalent to the proceeds of crime that the PA pays to the families of terrorists.
Yet, the Palestinians show no sign of abandoning their wholly immoral practice, for on Tuesday of this week there was to be a meeting in Norway of donor countries in which PA Prime Minister, Mohammad Shtayyeh, was to ask the donors to his supplicant entity to pressurise Israel to stop making those deductions. We shall see whether the signatories to Article 20 of the ICCPR, act consistently – or cravenly – towards their Palestinian dependants.
Of course, the donor system is hard-wired into Palestinian life. Without it there just would not be such a form of life at all. But it has been faltering. In 2008, the global community contributed an all-time high figure of $1.2 billion to the PA. This year, according to the World Bank, donor funds are expected to aggregate only $184 million. Not only are the donor countries less well-heeled after almost two years of the pandemic, but also the Gulf nations, the backbone of the Abraham Accords, are losing interest in Palestine and the Palestinians, for, increasingly, they appear to be out of step with progress.
It is plain that poverty is a hallmark of Palestinism, but they are not the only Israeli neighbours where poverty, penury and destitution is the curse of society. The ultimate example of the failed state is Syria, an emaciated, depleted and largely destroyed remnant of its former self. Another is Lebanon, which has suffered for years under the yoke of Hezbollah, Iran’s proxy army. Wherever Iran goes, a failed state will not be far behind, as is the case in Yemen and Syria today.
Iran is not only a dead hand upon other nations. It is failing at home too, with insufficient water to maintain rural and agricultural life. Before long, we are likely to see a repeat of the phenomenon that led to the Syrian Civil War: rural communities leaving the land that can no longer support them and decamping to the cities, which perforce too are unable to support them.
Readers of The Times (of London) last week, will have detected a similar story evolving in Turkey, and more dramatically, with rural families treading in dread lest they fall into massive sink-holes forming spontaneously, swallowing up whole fields, homes and part villages.
All this is the result of poor water management, although the Californians and the Australians have not covered themselves in glory either in this context. Their lands are parched and they appear not to have stumbled on the answer yet.
Only one nation shines. Israel’s thirst for water (touted by its detractors for years as the greatest threat to world peace) has been solved by Israeli pragmatism. A multi-pronged programme has brought Israel to the point where it may never need to rain again, yet it will not be short of water.
Today, Israel is the world leader in water technology. Israel’s sewage is directed to a vast plant north of Beersheba where it is recycled for the farms and fields of the country, whilst its sweet water comes from the Mediterranean Sea via its desalination plants.
The reversing of desertification has been ongoing here since independence in 1948, as has afforestation. Indeed, in most, if not all, the measures discussed at Cop 26 in Glasgow, Israel is a world leader, which explains its 130 strong delegation there. They did not go to debate or lobby but to market Israeli technology for the climate-change aficionados.
Israel is a dynamic and successful light unto the nations in practicality, problem-solving and life-enhancing methodologies from which the whole world may benefit – if only, like the Gulf Arabs, they will learn to embrace (and not vilify) Israel. The Abraham Accords are open to all, as Saudi Arabia might demonstrate in the months ahead. Now wouldn’t that be a coup for progress over nihilism? And what would the Palestinian leadership and their donors make of that?
© November 2021 – Howard Epstein
