Holness In Israel But.…

One of the many criticisms which dogged former Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller during her two stints as PM was her many overseas trips.

Though a non-sup­port­er of Mrs Miller and her par­ty, at the time I stat­ed my belief that her trav­els and meet­ings with for­eign heads of states were a cru­cial part of her job description.
Nevertheless ‚I believed then, as I do now ‚that those over­seas trips must be geared at extract­ing max­i­mum ben­e­fits for the Jamaican peo­ple, as it must to be the pre­sump­tion that for­eign lead­ers are hav­ing those meet­ings to get max­i­mum advan­tage for their nations.
As such I was con­strained in my crit­i­cisms of the for­mer Prime Minister on her for­eign trips. I believed she had the right to pur­sue eco­nom­ic and oth­er oppor­tu­ni­ties for Jamaica.
I also believe that it is the right of the new Prime Minister of Jamaica to do the very same thing as part of his duties as chief exec­u­tive offi­cer of the country.

We should nev­er lose sight of the fact that coun­tries do not have friend­ships , they have interests.
As we applaud moves aimed at secur­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties for our peo­ple we can ill-afford to be star­ry-eyed polit­i­cal­ly, about the fact that for­eign Leaders invite oth­er lead­ers because they believe that form­ing, or strength­en­ing bonds, or even the mere optics of such meet­ings, advances their agendas.

Benjamin Netanyahu a mas­ter of manip­u­la­tion, and the art of the optics ‚was not shy about thank­ing Andrew Holness for not join­ing a UNESCO vote against Israel. (already acknowl­edg­ing that Israel wants to show it has friends which sup­port it’s policies) .
So in this par­tic­u­lar case the inter­est of Israel was already served.
It would be fool­hardy to believe that his Invitation to the Jamaican PM was intend­ed to be any­thing more than an, “in your face” pho­to-op to UNESCO.
In the end Jamaica may stand to lose more than it gains from this visit.

The vote of which Netanyahu spoke, was the UNESCO’s World Heritage com­mit­tee vote, it was con­vened in Istanbul Turkey.
According to Israel the res­o­lu­tion was designed to, (in their words) “erase any Jewish con­nec­tion to Jerusalem”.
The fol­low­ing coun­tries are on the exec­u­tive: Angola, Azerbaijan, Burkina Faso, Croatia, Cuba, Finland, Indonesia, Jamaica, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Republic of Korea, Tunisia, Turkey, United Republic of Tanzania, Vietnam and Zimbabwe.
For years Israel has lob­bied to break the almost mono­lith­ic vote of the African con­ti­nent in it’s sup­port for the Palestinian peo­ple in their strug­gle against Israeli occu­pa­tion and oppression.

This is of course with the excep­tion of Tanzania, which has always vot­ed with oth­er non-African nations in sup­port of the state of Israel. These include Croatia, Finland, Poland, Portugal, the Republic of Korea, or at least abstain, accord­ing to the (Jerusalem Post).
Jamaica’s vote with Israel came as a result of mas­sive lob­by­ing from Israel.
The Question now must be ‚what will Jamaica derive from this vote which will cer­tain­ly raise eye­brows from quar­ters opposed to Israel on principle?

I have no prob­lem with the PM look­ing at out­side mod­els which may be emulated.
As Andrew Holness said , Jamaica has long looked at Israel’s advances in agri­cul­ture, tech­nol­o­gy etc as a mod­el which can be applied to Jamaica.
Nevertheless it is impor­tant to note that the Obama admin­is­tra­tion, for the first time in Israel’s his­to­ry, pulled America’s veto pro­tec­tion which shield­ed the state of Israel from UN con­dem­na­tion for it’s con­tin­ued ille­gal land-grab , and set­tle­ment building.
Every time that Israel takes a bit more of Palestine through it’s ille­gal build­ing of set­tle­ments, it auto­mat­i­cal­ly extends out­ward it’s perime­ter of defense, which it states is nec­es­sary for the defense of Israel.

That is the rea­son the last two American Presidents, George W Bush and Barack Obama, both insist­ed that in order for the peace process to be enhanced Israel must stop the ille­gal build­ing of set­tle­ments on Palestinan lands.
It must also be not­ed that Israel’s poli­cies toward the Palestinian peo­ple and it’s treat­ment toward African Jews (real Hebrew peo­ple) has drawn strong con­dem­na­tion from across the globe, to include for­mer President Jimmy Carter, who con­tends the Israeli state is the clos­est thing to an Apartheid state.
As we speak many Hebrew peo­ple dar­ing to return to Israel are spat upon and abused, many are locked up in a mon­ster prison in the Negev desert.
It’s impor­tant that as we seek to bol­ster and cre­ate new rela­tion­ships we do not align our­selves with inter­ests which are anti­thet­i­cal to our core values.

Democracy is not what any one coun­try say it is, democ­ra­cy is an ever evolv­ing concept.
Even in the United States the World’s sec­ond largest democ­ra­cy we see now, that the cher­ished prin­ci­ple called democ­ra­cy is in dan­ger. When those not even yet in office are show­ing that democ­ra­cy is what they say it is.

Read, com­ment, and share.