Catherine Ashton is high representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and vice president of the European Commission.
At considerable public expense (she and her extensive retinue are funded by European taxpayers), she recently traveled to the Gaza Strip on what she termed was a mission “to see whether European assistance money has an effect on the ground”. Her conclusion? “It does.”
Returning from the Islamist-controlled Gaza Strip – the Hamas terrorist organisation seized control of the territory in an illegal and particularly brutal coup – she jotted down her impressions in an article in the New York Times entitled “Lessons from a Gaza Trip”.
It has to be said straight off: if this is how Catherine Ashton learns lessons, it’s a wonder she ever graduated from junior school.
She went to the Gaza Strip and learned nothing. Least of all the fundamental concept of “cause and effect”. She recorded that upon leaving the modern and vibrant Jewish nation of Israel and entering Gaza you emerge “like a time-traveler transported backwards, on a dirt track. This is where the industrial center of Gaza used to be. Now, people with donkeys and carts carry stones from the rubble”. She failed to learn, let alone explain, that the reason why the industrial center of Gaza (which used to give employment to hundreds of Gaza residents) is a pile of rubble is because the Hamas rulers consistently bombarded it in order to force its closure – and then employ gullible useful idiots like Ashton to claim that there are no jobs for Gazans because of Israel.
Among the more remarkable claims this paragon of Euro-intelligence and foreign policy blundering makes is that European financial assistance has a positive effect on the ground. She is right, in a way. Because whatever financial assistance is provided on the ground frees up corresponding funding below ground for the tunnels that are used for the purchase, import, engineering and firing of missiles at Israeli civilians – most recently with one fatality last week. It is a remarkably simple lesson in elementary mathematics and logic that Lady Catherine Ashton appears not to have learned.
To find out more about how continued EU and other foreign meddling funding extends the conflict, read the following report by NGO Monitor.
Even more remarkably, Ashton traveled to the Gaza Strip and failed to undertake the most basic and most effective steps to assure Israel that she is truly non-partisan. All she had to do was state that her planned visit would go ahead subject to the immediate and unconditional release of Gilad Schalit, the only Jew alive in an otherwise Jew-free, ethnically cleansed Gaza Strip. Schalit was kidnapped from Israel while in his teens and has been illegally held by Gaza’s Hamas rulers ever since, almost four years now. In contravention of a whole raft of international agreements, not least the Geneva Conventions, he has not been granted visitation rights by his parents, legal representation (not that he is accused of anything other than being a Jew), he has been denied visits by the Red Cross (although to be fair the Red Cross have never demanded to visit him) and as Hamas proudly boasts the young man has not seen daylight for his entire 4-year captivity.
All Ashton had to do to convince Israel of her impartiality was to demand Schalit’s release as a precondition for her high-profile visit and the continued pumping in of massive foreign aid.
But such a step was unthinkable to Lady Catherine Ashton and her EU backers.
All she could do was to feed continued Arab and Islamist intransigence with statements such as “A way must be found to resolve the status of Jerusalem as the future capital of both Israel and Palestine.” Really? Why is this so important, yet the release of Gilad Schalit is not? And why is this so important but there is no urgent need to find a way to resolve the status of Hebron as a city that is as important to many Israelis as Jerusalem itself is? Hebron used to be the political capital of the Jewish nation and to this day is of vital significance as a religious centre. Neither Jerusalem nor Hebron has ever been of the slightest importance to any Arab or Muslim community, except insofar as they are important to the Jews which automatically means they are claimed by the entire Arab and Muslim world with the subservient assistance of dhimmi (servile) European and US administrations. Visit the ME Forum and read this article to find out what dhimmitude has in store for the West.
“Lessons from a Gaza Trip”? The EU’s foreign-policy and security head really needs lessons in how to do her homework. She has learned nothing.
Useful links:
Read about how foreign NGOs exploit public funding – that’s taxpayers’ hard-earned dollars – to undermine Israel, a UN member state. They do so with European government acquiescence: NGO Lawfare
Read about how foreign NGOs played a vital part in the concerted propaganda war against Israel following Hizbollah’s attack on the Jewish state in 2006: NGO campaigns in the 2006 Hizbollah war on Israel
CAMERA comments on Catherine Ashton’s Gaza visit: EUobserver’s Misobservation on Palestinian Civilian Casualties
CAMERA exposes media duplicity and public funding of anti-Israel NGO activity
CAMERA on the lessons that the media – and the EU’s Catherine Ashton – fail to learn: official Palestinian Authority anti-Semitism. Meantime, the PA and other Palestinian organisations continue to receive EU and other foreign funding.
CAMERA on continued Church bias against the Jewish state, in parallel with continued funding of Islamist intransigence
Read the Tundra Tabloids for an analysis of what dhimmitude brings to Western society.
Read more from this blog about Gilad Schalit and his incarceration. Gilad Schalit was kidnapped from Israel while he was still a teenager and his captors are currently engaged in the illegal and primitive practice of human trafficking, auctioning his life in exchange for various rewards.
In Sweden silence is golden
Ban Ki-moon’s strange silence
Out with the old, in with the new – maybe
The drip effect
The European Parliament has taken a stance on behalf of Gilad Schalit
ECR group calls for release of Gilad Schalit:
Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs calls on European governments to work for Gilad Schalit’s freedom:
For an insightful analysis of the war that continued foreign meddling is going to bring to the Middle East, read the following article by Daniel Pipes