Middle East mistranslation

All big media organisations broke today with news of Israeli minister warning Palestinians of looming Holocaust. It was reported by Times (under inflammatory title "Israel threatens to unleash 'holocaust' in Gaza), Daily Telegraph and other news outlets. What did happen was actually this. Matan Vilnai, Israeli deputy defence minister, used the term 'shoah' speaking of consequences of continuing missile attacks on Israel from Gaza. "The more qassam fire intensifies and the rockets reach a longer range, they will bring upon themselves a bigger shoah because we will use all our might to defend ourselves," he said. This was either mistranslated or misunderstood as a statement of ensuing holocaust for the Palestinians. While the term 'Ha-Shoah' means the Holocaust in modern Hebrew, a shoah has a literal meaning of catastrophe or disaster. The Israeli Government made this point clearly in a statement it issued to mitigate the impact from alleged misunderstanding. It said that Mr Vilnai meant 'disaster' and was not referring to the genocide. However it was too late to stop supporters of Hamas who used Vilnai's words to make their point of the genocide being exercised upon the Palestinians. They compared Israelis with Nazis while deliberately forgetting that it was their stubborn position and interminable war against the Jewish state that led to current sufferings of people in Gaza. From the beginning of the year more than one hundred missiles were fired from Gaza at adjacent Jewish towns like Sderot and Ashkelon. However this has not received much media attention and Hamas statement was reported by major news agencies along with some horrific pictures of Israeli 'atrocities' in Gaza on this week.
Yet this issue deserves putting in wider context. The considerable inclination by Palestinians and their Western supporters to see Israelis as modern Nazis is disturbing. Europe has been a home for the most terrifying genocides in recent history and now many Europeans feel guilty for their countries' involvement in these atrocities. But considering Israelis as Nazis and Israel as an apartheid state makes this guilty less uneasy. This is fostered by Muslim population in Europe that makes its own case for fight with 'racist Zionists'. Unlike the US where Jewish electorate still has a considerable influence over foreign policy, in Europe it is Muslims that stand by their ideas and have a share of votes.
The biggest question is whether we want to be on one side with Islamic terrorists and fundamentalists or with the single democratic state in the Middle East, whether we want to reject our allies and support our bitter enemies? It is whether we want to stand together as the Free World or to bow under barbarism and cruelty (and it refers not only to Islamic but to religious fundamentalism and terrorism altogether). This is the question that needs an urgent answer. And we should hope that self-deprecation wouldn't occupy the minds of our politicians and the answer will be the right one.

Conservative's self-destruction

Yesterday the Conservative party revealed a list of what it sees as 'gimmicks' made by Brown's government. The 4th number on the list pointed at government-backed school trips to Auschwitz. This list provoked an immediate outrage from wide range of commentators, including Ed Balls, Schools Secretary, and various Jewish organisations.
Cameron aides made a mistake. To describe the government plans to raise education level about Holocaust as a 'gimmick' is very damaging to the Conservatives' own agenda especially now while a lot of schoolchildren in this country seem to have not a clue about what happened in WW2. Proper teaching of history will eradicate this problem and I believe that conservatives should support any proposals dealing with this issue even if they stem from Labour think-tanks.
And this gaffe is another sign of shabby policy of opposition. The Conservative party languishes in constant bashing of Labour and criticises all their policy proposals while refraining of doing sensible policy statements of its own. Cameroons criticise Brown's dithering over number of issues (Northern Rock etc.) and it is quite appropriate. But when they pick a sensible government proposal and describe it as a 'gimmick' it makes no good them at all. When they are just sitting and watching Brown's obstacles while hoping that Brown will destroy himself they are not going to win people's support. Conservative party should stop this pernicious practice and make adequate policy proposals (on tax cuts, on renegotiating of the Lisbon treaty etc.) to win over swing voters. Only then they will become the Opposition we want them to be. Only then they will have all the chances to become the Government.