26.7 C
Belize City
Thursday, March 28, 2024

World Down Syndrome Day

Photo: Students and staff of Stella Maris...

BPD awards 3 officers with Women Police of the Year

Photo: (l-r) Myrna Pena, Carmella Cacho, and...

Suicide on the rise!

Photo: Iveth Quintanilla, Mental Health Coordinator by Charles...

The friend of my enemy is my enemy, but the enemy of my enemy is my friend …

LettersThe friend of my enemy is my enemy, but the enemy of my enemy is my friend …

Dear Editor,

I shall not be drawn into the argument as to whether the Zionist State of Israel is secularist, apartheid and racist, with its capital,Tel Aviv, recognised as the gay capital of the world, as against it being a continuum of the Biblical Israel, despite its government, form, ideology, values and practices are at total variance with the Israel of the Bible.

Neither will I discuss the history of this state’s formation in 1948 by its secularist and atheist founders, beginning with Theodor Herzl, David Ben-Gurion, Golda Meir and Chaim Weizmann. Nor will I examine the Machiavellian role of Britain, which had the Mandate and was unduly influenced by centuries of Restorationist doctrines within Britain, as well as those of the US, and a guilt-ridden Europe which all needed to salve their consciences because of the genocide of a people whose DNAs expose them to be more European and less Jew – hence the compromise, “Jewish”.

As for those who cherry-pick when reading the Bible and by literally interpreting every word they read fail to appreciate the immensely figurative nature of this extremely spiritual book, may God forgive them for, like the Ethiopian eunuch and finance minister in Queen Candace’s court, they know not what they read.

My immediate concern here is that in Belize we have the singular misfortune to have a government that neither understands the central role of intelligence gathering by the enemy, nor the lessons the hapless Ugandans learnt exactly 42 years ago when Israeli commandos stormed Entebbe airport in Kampala to rescue 247 mainly Israeli hostages.

Now, why should Guatemala’s great friend and ally, Israel, suddenly at this pivotal time in our existential struggle with Guatemala, agree to leave the ever boiling Middle-East and its palava with Iran, Lebanon, Syria and the Palestinians, to come all the way to little Belize to improve its internal security? Israel has instantly metamorphosed into an “angel of light” to instruct and train Belize’s policemen? And, in our naivety, and with childlike trust we warmly welcome this Trojan horse intervention.

When the Ugandans in the 1960s had Israeli engineers constructing various projects throughout Uganda and even training their pilots at Entebbe airport, little did they know that years after they had chased the Israelis away, this interaction would come back to haunt them and make them the world’s laughingstock for decades to come.

A disused airport terminal at Entebbe held those 247 mostly Israeli passengers as the hostages of seven Palestinians and their German accomplices who had hijacked the plane they had been travelling in. The Israelis had no credible plan to rescue the hostages from their captors and the Ugandan president, Idi Amin Dada, was not cooperating. Suddenly, one of their top military brass realised that the key to the rescue mission lay in obtaining the blueprint of the interior of that terminal. An insignificant Israeli engineer, named Yitshak “Itche” Gadish, had worked in Uganda with Idi Amin on several engineering projects in the 1960s  – a decade or so before the Entebbe hostage crisis. Although Gadish’s engineering company had lost the tender to redevelop Entebbe airport, Uganda’s Public Works Department had given him a set of its plans, which he fortuitously kept and carried back to Israel. Gadish passed these over to his government in 1976 when it was sorely needed. The Israeli government had also carefully collected pictures, films and sketches from several Israeli instructors who had trained Ugandan pilots at Entebbe. The rest is history! Israel’s daring raid on the Entebbe airport and the release of the hostages has been beautifully embroidered and made into two successful Hollywood movies.

When one is dealing with an enemy, intelligence gathering is vital for success. So, our local police force will be trained in strategies and tactics determined, formulated and overseen by instructors from Israel – Guatemala’s friend. These instructors will learn about our police administrative structure, physical layout and inadequacies, come to know our policemen, their senior officers, as well as the force’s weaknesses, strengths and psychology. They will also be able to assess police funding, in addition to the quality, type and range of police equipment, vehicles and technology.

The Belize Defence Force (BDF) which is our military, is supposed to protect and defend Belize from external aggression. Our police force is designed to protect the domestic population, act as a deterrent against crime and enforce the law. The police are in essence the stewards of our people and as such are required to provide their internal security. However, either the army or the police may replace each other in specific situations; and there are states which not only regard their police as a para-military force, but use them in that way.

Not many Belizeans are aware that the Israeli police are among the most brutal and racist in the world. Their main targets are Ethiopian-Israelis, Arab-Israelis and African immigrants –  who are brown and Black skinned people. Only recently, footage in Israel showed the police arresting peaceful Arab-Israeli demonstrators in Haifa, a major town in Israel, beating and shoving them into waiting police cars and breaking the leg of one; actions which sparked a national debate about Israeli police brutality.

The possibility does exist, though, that one of the goals in Belize is to permanently situate in certain urban neighbourhoods a segment of policemen, highly trained in Israeli police brutal methods and armed with Israeli equipment to totally eliminate the possibility of Belize City’s Southside gang chieftains and their foot soldiers from transforming into a conscious and anti-government source of dissent and thorn in central government’s flesh. With tactics honed in dealing with the colonised Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, Israeli instructors would inspire our internal occupying force to employ similar tactics to additionally subdue a vocal and recalcitrant populace should it next year outrightly reject a manufactured referendum result that is less than credible.

Undoubtedly, the long term outcome of this dangerous and rather foolish collaboration with the Israelis will convict its architects, when Guatemala converts Israeli intelligence gathering to its advantage against Belize, and hits us well below the belt irrespective of any ICJ or none.

Thérèse Belisle Nweke
Lagos,
NIGERIA

Check out our other content

World Down Syndrome Day

Suicide on the rise!

Check out other tags:

International