Last week, former Eurthymics songstress Annie Lennox wrote about the “pornography of destruction” waged by Israel against the Palestinian civilians of the Gaza Strip. Outraged, she did what any other socially-concerned celebrity would do: call a press conference.
On the verge of tears, Lennox told the media how, a few days after Christmas, she turned on the telly to see that Gaza was in flames (the years of Hamas rocket-fire into southern Israel that precipitated the airstrikes apparently escaped her analysis). “As a Mother, how is this going to be the solution to peace?” she plaintively asked. At her side were the Sandinista-loving Bianca Jagger, the radical Islamist sheik-loving ex-Mayor of London Ken Livingstone, and George Galloway, the Member of Parliament who called on British troops deployed in Iraq to disobey orders and desert. “There has to be a place where people come to the table,” Lennox pleaded.
Of course, Israel has been at the proverbial table for years, trying to hammer out a peace agreement with the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people, the Palestinian Authority. It’s Hamas that wants to turn that table upside down, throwing platters of hummus and falafel all over the room. Here’s what happened before Annie turned on the television: In 2005, Israel unilaterally withdrew from the Gaza Strip, forcibly removing its settlers and uprooting military outposts. Immediately after the withdrawal, Hamas began firing rockets indiscriminately into bordering Israeli territory. In 2007, Hamas violently took control from the ruling Fatah party by murdering its way to power. In June of this year, Israel and Hamas agreed to a cease-fire brokered by the Egyptian government, but Hamas broke that agreement (as it always does) when it re-commenced rocket fire last month. But to truly grasp what Israel is up against, we ought to go back further, to the signing of the Hamas Covenant in 1988, which states that the group’s “struggle against the Jews is very great and very serious,” repeatedly cites Koranic justification for the murder of Jews and declares it “compulsory that the banner of Jihad be raised.”
On Saturday, Lennox spoke at a rally full of open Hamas and Hezbollah supporters who marched on the Israeli embassy throwing rocks and glass bottles at riot police. If Lennox, “as a Mother,” genuinely believes in peace, why does she speak at a rally organized by acknowledged supporters of organizations that inculcate hatred of Jews in Muslim children and teach them the virtue of suicide-terrorism?
Unlike her compadres Jagger, Galloway and Livingstone, who all have notorious histories of Communist fellow-traveling, Lennox is not known for far-left or anti-Israel posturing. Indeed, her political activism has thus far mostly consisted of feel-good stuff like singing at the Live 8 concert and generally raising awareness about global poverty. So one wonders what prompts her currnet, passionate antipathy towards Israel. Maybe it’s something as petty as the 2000 break-up with her Israeli husband, Uri Fruchtmann? I love Lennox’s music too much to want to dwell on her obnoxious polemics, but this newfound activism perfectly encapsulates how for so many critics of Israel — and not just celebrities, either — Middle Eastern history always begins with the latest alleged Israeli transgression.
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.