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Saturday, January 24, 2004

This week - next week

Jenny Tonge MP

If I had been born and brought up in East Belfast or West Belfast I could understand how someone might want to join the paramilitary groups there. I would hope that, like the majority of people who do live there, I would have had the strength of character to resist the temptation.

Trying to understand a person’s motivation is a necessary part of finding out what troubles them. Saying you would be tempted to join them is a step too far.

I doubt that Jenny Tonge MP would get on a bus and blow herself up just as I doubt she would shoot a Palestinian child in order to understand why an Israeli soldier might do that.

Outsiders do need to try and understand but supporting this form of violence is and must be unacceptable. That is why I think she was wrong.

Tony's difficult week

The next week in the House of Commons will be a real cliffhanger. So two predictions with my fingers firmly crossed!

1. The Government will win the tuition fees vote but it will be close and that means it will be damaging.

2. The Hutton Report will not conclude that Tony Blair lied. It will show that the Government should have made a clear decision early on to identify Dr. Kelly as the source. He should have been called in and offered support while also being told that he needed to be absolutely clear in telling the Minister who he had spoken to and what had been said.

In a democracy you cannot conceal this type of information nor should you try. Once they had come to a muddled conclusion that they couldn’t name him but neither could they deny that they knew the source the outcome was bound to be messy and unfair.

I’m not taking large bets on these two predictions but plenty of grovelling if I’m wildly wrong!

Equipment in the Gulf

Before the Iraq conflict I did a tour of British military bases in the area. I often asked about the quality and quantity of equipment. Mostly it was well regarded but some troops did complain that our desert boots were not as good as US ones. I was then told that British body armour was superior to the US type and that sales and exchanges were happening.

I do not for one moment suggest that the 200,000 sets of body armour that were not available when they should have been were caused by trading of this type. Neither do I suggest that the soldier who died for lack of it was a victim of this activity.

I mention it because having served in the forces myself I do have some idea of what happens in the confusion of operations although I was fortunate enough not to have been involved in conflict. I also remember the quite intense competition that went on about equipment and international comparisons when serving with troops from other countries.

It is a different world out there!

I don't know about the quality of army boots today, though I hope they are better than the DMS boots they used to have. The impression I get is the MoD spends large amounts of money on big-budget items (see for example http://www.cabalamat.org/weblog/art_203.html ), and foolishly tries to save on more mundane items - spoiling the ship for a ha'peth of tar.

Oh that the Hutton Enquiry produces clear lessons. My fear is that this will be a report that makes no one look good and from which all sides draw different conclusions. Perhaps I'm wrong - we'll see.

On top up fees I agree, the government will win but not well. Some doubters will switch at the last minute for fear of damaging their futures and the government. Others will stand their ground and it will be bloody. I'm in favour because I cannot see another way of introducing the sort of structural funding changes that are electorally acceptable and cannot be easily reversed.

On Jenny Tonge, I liked the way you compared this with Northern Ireland. I think you are spot on! We all might sympathise but most of us would try and find others ways of changing things rather than killing others (and ourselves). I think what she said was along these lines too. I don't think she should have been fired.

Jenny Tonge's comments have infuriated and angered me on a number of levels.

The main problem is the extent to which she focuses purely on aspects such as poverty and the "humiliation" inflicted on the Palestinian population by Israeli occupation while ignoring other (in many ways more important) factors which don't tie in with her world view. I am not claiming that the left has a monopoly on this - they don't. However, the debate on terrorism in Britain is currently remarkably immature and much (not all) of the talk of "root causes" is little more than cant.

The origins of terrorism (if one can generalise - there are a number of different types) are complex and have been subject to extensive research by terrorism and security experts. In his latest book Walter Laqueur, one of the grand old men of terrorism analysis (and, incidentally, an opponent of Israeli occupation policy), talks about how trying to get people, even people involved in the policy-making process, to actually look at the careful research that has been undertaken in this area is like banging your head against a brick wall. Dr Tonge's comments simply serve to justify his comments. Most terrorism experts are of the view that the poverty-related "root causes" theory of terrorism is utterly derelict and not much more than idologically-charged received wisdom.

In the Palestinian case the research suggests that in SOME cases poverty does play a greater or lesser role in terms of motivation - the key example would be the case of Palestinian mothers who are told that their children will receive a generous annuity if the mother is prepared to blow herself up. Israeli occupation also obviously plays a role in creating an environment in which some Palestinians become receptive to terrorism. However, there are a string of other aspects which Dr Tonge neglects to mention. The most prominent of these factors is the extensive and deliberate campaign of incitement to violence that is conducted by the Palestinian Authority through the Palestinian education system. A recent survey of Palestinian educational materials revealed that Palestinian children are being subjected to systematic anti-semitic brainwashing, coupling grotesque anti-semitism with the message that to die as a martyr fighting the Israelis is the best way to die and active incitement to terrorism.

One of the most common images on our televisions is that of the Palestinian child throwing stones at Israeli tanks. It is a common perception that this is a spontaneous reaction to Israeli occupation. Not so. Children are instructed in schools, frequently through educational videos, to throw stones at Israelis. The cynicism of the Palestinian Authority, who hope that the Israelis will shoot a kid so that they can have a propaganda coup, is breathtaking. This has all been carefully documented, along with adverts and films inciting violence shown on PA controlled TV and aimed at children (and was covered in detail in the highly regarded academic journal "Terrorism and Political Violence"), but has received astonishingly little coverage outside of specialist circles.

What is most sickening is the fact that EU taxpayer money funds it all. The agreement by which the PA receives EU aid hinges (among other things) on the PA ceasing to indulge in incitement. The recent studies show in black and white that they indulge in breathtaking and systematic violation of this agreement. They do this because we let them - they do a lot of things because the international community is prepared to make excuses for them or give them a free pass on the basis of their victim status. It is a scandal that the powers that be at the EU (and presumably the British government) knows what is going on and does absolutely nothing about it. When there was talk of an investigation into how EU aid money was being spent in the Palestinian territories, Chris Patten's reaction was reported to be "I need that like I need a hole in the head". At the time of writing nothing has been done and the situation persists. There is no excuse for it.

If Jenny Tonge want's some credibility she could combine her concern about poverty and humiliation with equal concern about this sort of thing. She does not, however, because as with most legislators she apparently has no stomach for it. Much easier to mouth platitudes and search for mitigating circumstances.

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