Showing posts with label Britain. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Britain. Show all posts

British lawyers urge international criminal court to investigate crimes in Gaza

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(Meanwhile, I suspect the PA is waiting for a clearance from the US/Israel to apply for membership of the ICC! In disgust, Sami)

British lawyers urge international criminal court to investigate crimes in Gaza

By Owen Bowcott, The Guardian
Tuesday, August 5, 2014
Senior British lawyers have written to the international criminal court (ICC) in The Hague, urging it to investigate “crimes” committed in Gaza, including the destruction of homes, hospitals and schools.

The letter was sent by Kirsty Brimelow QC, the chair of the Bar Council’s human rights committee, and was signed by a host of senior British barristers and law professors.

Addressed to the ICC prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, it calls on the court to launch a preliminary inquiry into abuses committed during the conflict.

“The initiation of an investigation would send a clear and unequivocal message to those involved in the commission of these crimes that the accountability and justice called for by the United Nations on the part of victims are not hollow watchwords,” the letter states.

“It would bring about an end to the impunity which has prevailed in the region to date, fuelling ever increasingly brutal cycles of violence. The international community cannot continue to act simply as witness to such bloodshed and extreme civilian suffering.”

The lawyers say that it is within the ICC’s jurisdiction to act because the government of Palestine made a declaration in 2009 accepting the court’s role and the UN has since acknowledged Palestine as a non-member observer state.

The request is “in response to the extreme gravity of the situation in the Gaza Strip, including spiralling civilian deaths and large scale destruction of homes, hospitals and schools”, the letter says.

It refers both to attacks by Israeli forces and the firing of rockets into Israel by Palestinian militants.

“United Nations reports record that an estimated 23,304 air-to-surface missiles, tank shells and naval shells have been fired by Israel at the Gaza Strip since Israel launched its latest military assault on the territory on 7 July 2014,” the letter says. “During the same period, 3,008 rockets have been fired by Palestinian armed groups at Israel, according to Israeli military sources, in addition to over 886 mortars, reported by the United Nations.

“The fatalities include entire families killed in their homes, patients killed in their hospital beds, doctors, paramedics, United Nations humanitarian workers and members of the press … Reports produced by non-governmental organisations following preliminary investigations strongly suggest that crimes within the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court have been and are being committed.”

Among the many other signatories are Baroness Helena Kennedy QC; Sir Geoffrey Bindman QC; Roy Amlot QC, the former chair of the Bar Council of England and Wales; Professor Bill Bowring of Birkbeck College; Edward Fitzgerald QC and Philippa Kaufman QC.
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British MP Says I’d fire rockets at Israel, if I lived in Gaza

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I’d fire rockets at Israel, if I lived in Gaza: British MP

Top Daily Story   …   Press TV,  Tehran


[ Editors Note:  We may have a break here, the boomerang kind. The British Jewish Lobby goons will pounce all over MP David Ward for stepping into the forbidden zone. This includes his own party who has already started, but they will put them solidly on the "Whatever Israel does is fine by me" target range. What we need to do is follow up on this by turning the target range into quicksand.
A two pronged approach is needed. All of the politicians in his own party need to be called and polled and blasted for being part of the Ward lynch mob if they are Lobby supporters. And then the British media has to be pummeled for their not standing up for the little guy, and being in the bag themselves.
The manpower is sitting all around us with the unemployed and under employed with tons of time on their hands. They are victims themselves of all of our elitist gangsters and banksters. We have to stitch them together not just for this event, but for all the others that are in the pipeline. We need a phone call torture machine that each week can be put on a new deserving target.
This eliminates the funding hurdle, no travel logistics involved...a major fightback tool that is in everyone's hands. People need to be challenged. It they feel they have been screwed but won't fight back, why should anyone help them?
By not doing everything that they can do they self eliminate themselves from being deserving to be in line to get any themselves. They are not children, and are not owed that level of blank check protection... Jim W. Dean ]
________________________________

-  First published  …   July 23,  2014  -


A British lawmaker says he would fire rockets into Israel if he lived in the besieged Gaza Strip, which has faced a deadly Israeli offensive for over two weeks.
“The big question is – if I lived in Gaza would I fire a rocket? – probably yes,” Liberal Democrat member of parliament David Ward said in a message posted on Twitter on Tuesday.
British MP - David Ward
British MP – David Ward
He added in a follow-up message that the West should “make up its mind – which side is it on?”
The comments drew criticism from the Liberal Democrats, with some on social media calling on party leader Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg to suspend Ward from the party.
“We utterly condemn David Ward’s comments, they are not representative of the Liberal Democrats,” the party also said in a statement, adding that it would take the matter “very seriously and will treat it as a disciplinary issue.”
Last July, Ward was suspended from his party for making anti-Israeli remarks.

“There will be a ceasefire, then there will be a period of calm,” he said in an interview with BBC Radio Leeds about the latest Israeli onslaught on Gaza, adding, “But during that period of calm when hopefully people are not being murdered, there will still be Palestinians who are being shot by the Israeli forces, they will still be beaten up, there will still be child detentions, that to the Israelis is peace.”
Israeli warplanes have been hitting numerous sites in the Gaza Strip, demolishing homes and burying families in the rubble since July 8. Israeli tanks also began a ground offensive against the impoverished Palestinian land on July 17.
More than 630 Palestinians, mostly women and children, have been killed in Tel Aviv’s offensive so far.
Palestinian resistance fighters have also retaliated against the deadly Israeli attacks by firing a barrage of rockets deep into the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories.
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Made in Britain

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By Jafar M Ramini

May 1st. Standing in front of the Foreign Office in the London sunshine I shivered at the memory of the massacre of Ein El Zeytoun 65 years ago.

Ein El Zeytoun, like Deir Yassin, and many other villages and towns in Palestine at the time, was wiped off the face off the earth. The entire population was massacred by Jewish terrorist groups while the British mandatory forces looked the other way. I am reminded of the quote by Edmund Burke: “For evil to flourish,” he wrote, “it only takes a few men to look the other way.”

Engulfed in sadness and the memory of what has been lost and destroyed, I started to reflect on the dishonourable role the British establishment played and is still playing in the catastrophe that continues to unfold in Palestine. What we call Al Nakba.

Many believe that Al Nakba started in 1948. Having seen the award-winning and eye-opening documentary on Al Jazeera ‘Al Nakba’, first aired in 2008 and now being repeated, I beg to differ. If the Nakba signifies the expulsion of Palestinians and seizure of their land by force, then the ‘Nakba’ began long before 1948.

It actually began in 1840, when the then British Foreign Secretary, Lord Palmerston wrote to his ambassador in Constantinople, urging him to solicit the support of the Ottomans, who then ruled over Palestine, to facilitate Jewish immigration into the country. At the time no foreigners were allowed to own land in Palestine and the number of Jews were fewer than 3000.

Fast forward to the formation of the World Zionist Organisation in 1897 when Palestine was first targeted as the preferred choice for the establishment of a Jewish Homeland. Theodor Herzl, the founder of Zionism, approached Sultan Abdul Hamid II of the already ailing Ottoman Empire asking if Palestine might be for sale: This was his response:
"Please advise Dr Hertzl not to make any serious move in this matter. I cannot give up even one small patch of land in Palestine. It is not something that I own as a part of my personal estate. Palestine in fact belongs to the Muslim Nation as a whole.
My people have fought with their blood and sweat to protect this land, let the Jews keep their millions and once the Caliphate is torn apart one day, then they can take Palestine without a price. To have the scalpel cut my body is less painful than to witness Palestine being detached from the Caliphate state and this is not going to happen." Sultan Abdul Hamid II

Having failed in their quest an alternative had to be found. And that, of course, was the British Empire.


Two learned Rabbis were dispatched to Palestine to check the feasibility of the project. Their conclusion was, and I quote:
“The bride is beautiful, but she is married to another man.”

What those two Rabbis realized was that the ‘other man’ represented a well-established and advanced Palestinian society firmly rooted in its soil.

So much for the rallying cry for the Zionists. “A land without people for the people without a land”.

By 1907 the Ottoman Empire was considered to be the ‘sick man of Europe’. The British Empire, however, was at its most powerful. Anticipating the vacuum in Arabia that would need to be filled on the demise of the Ottomans, the British decided that their interests would be well served by creating a new state in Palestine, friendly to Europe, but hostile to its neighbours. The Zionists saw the opportunity for their proposed homeland for the Jews and seized it with both hands.

In the same year Chaim Weizmann, one of the first British Zionists and later to become the first President of Israel, visited Palestine and within three years had bought thousands of dunoms of land, mostly from Arab absentee landlords, in Marj ibn Amer, the most fertile part of Palestine, and my birthplace.

This sale, to The Jewish National Fund, had terrible consequences for the Palestinian farmers. They were forcibly removed off their land and overnight found themselves to be homeless, aimless and with no prospects. To me, this is when the Nakba started.

At the outbreak of World War I in 1914, the British were looking for willing collaborators in Arabia to ensure their victory over the Ottomans and establish a firm presence in Arabia. They found them in Sharif Hussein Bin Ali of Mecca who delegated the task to his son, Prince Faisal ibn Al Hussein.

Prince Faisal offered to facilitate the war effort in return for Arab freedom and independence. He did not stop there. The sweetener was to offer Palestine as a homeland for the Jews. This was reaffirmed after the war, during a conference between Prince Faisal and Chaim Weizmann in Paris and the document became known as the Faisal/Weizmann agreement.

It kick-started a litany of Arab betrayal and capitulation to the west and to Zionism. As if not to be outdone in the betrayal stakes by his rivals, the Hashemites in Hijaz, Sultan Abdul Aziz al Saud wrote to British High Commissioner to Baghdad, Sir Percy Cox; 
"I am the Sultan Abdul Aziz Bin Abdul Rahman Al Saud al-Faisal and I concede and acknowledge a thousand times to Sir Percy Cox, delegate of Great Britain, that I have no objection to giving Palestine to the poor Jews or even to non-Jews, and I will never ever violate their [the UK] orders.”

Isn’t it ironic how the Ottomans, our rulers at the time, would spill blood to protect us, while our brother Arabs were falling over themselves to give Palestine away.

In 1915, a secret memorandum was presented to the British cabinet under the title, ‘The Future of Palestine.’ It was drafted by Sir Herbert Samuel, the first dedicated Zionist to become a minister in the British Government, who, astonishingly, did not advise the setting up of a Jewish homeland at this time, but did advise that Palestine should be annexed to the British Empire after the war, with sympathies towards the establishment of such a home-land.

November 2nd 1917, is the date carved on every Palestinian heart, when the infamous Balfour Declaration, written in the form of a letter was sent to Lord Walter Rothschild. The British Government, in their infinite wisdom, vehemently adhered to their promise to establish a Jewish home in Palestine and totally ignored their promise to protect the rights of the indigenous Palestinian population. At that time, Palestine was 10% Jewish and 90% Muslim and Christian Palestinian Arabs.

In the Al Jazeera documentary, Avi Shlaim, Jewish historian said:

“Britain had no moral or political or legal right to promise the land that belonged to the Arabs to another people. The Balfour Declaration was both immoral and illegal.”

What I find interesting is the stance of the American administration of President Woodrow Wilson.

At the end of the First World War, he sent a delegation to the Middle East to investigate the situation in Palestine. The report was decisive, saying that if America was to adhere to the principles of self determination, then the fact that 9/10th of the population was non Jewish and emphatically against the proposal, then this project should be cancelled.
The report went on to say that if the Zionist programme were to proceed a force of at least 50,000 soldiers would be required even to initiate the programme. “In view of all these considerations, the project to make Palestine a distinctly Jewish commonwealth should be given up.”

I can’t help wondering what happened to the moral fibre of the USA between then and now.

Under the Sykes/Picot agreement Palestine was placed under British Mandate in 1922. Its first High Commissioner, the self same British Zionist, Sir Herbert Samuel, set about implementing all the trappings of a Jewish state under the auspices of what was being called a Jewish homeland.

Hebrew became an official language, a separate Jewish education system was set up, Jewish ministries of energy, water and power were established and most crucial of all, the establishment of a Jewish army, with access to British training and equipment. The town of Tel Aviv was given autonomous status. During Samuel’s tenure Jewish immigration to Palestine was growing at a break-neck speed. But it reached its peak in 1933 when more than 175,000 Jews emigrated to Palestine. All of this was happening while the Palestinians were denied any freedom or civil rights.
And this wasn’t a Nakba?

In 1929 the beleaguered Palestinians showed their first act of defiance. They announced a general strike and raised black flags. The British Government’s answer to that legitimate protest was to hang the three leaders of the resistance; Hijazi, Zeir and Jamjoum.

Their graves are still in Acre with the message to Arab leaders:
“Never trust foreigners.”
If only the Arab leaders had listened then. And would listen now.

Nevertheless the atrocities continued. Thousands were arrested and hundreds were murdered. Houses were demolished and life was made impossible for the Palestinians.
Does that sound familiar?
Even Qassim al-Husseini, the 80 year old former Mayor of Jerusalem was beaten so badly by the British soldiers that he died from his wounds.

A senior British police officer, John Faraday was reported by his own subordinates as being unjustifiably brutal and vicious. The British Authorities’ response was to award Faraday the King’s Police Medal, praising his role in Palestine. 

I remember my late mother saying to me, that during that crucial time in Palestine, when the British constantly raided the houses of those they suspected of resistance, if even one spent cartridge was found the head of the household was thrown into jail.

Another general strike in 1936 lasted six months, the longest in history. What ensued was nothing short of calamitous. Their fellow Arabs urged the Palestinian leadership to come back, sit at the negotiating table and give the British the benefit of the doubt. The irony of all of this is that now, over 70 years later, we are still waiting for those good intentions to materialize.

Between 1936 and 1937 the British killed 1000 Palestinians. 37 British were killed and 69 Jews.

As a reward to the Palestinians for being ‘reasonable’ Lord Peel headed a Royal Commission on Palestine and offered a 3-way partition plan. One third to be the Jewish state, two thirds to be an Arab state, merged with Trans-Jordan and the area between Jerusalem to Jaffa remaining a mandated territory.

The Zionists liked the Peel proposal because it fell in with their plans of ethnic cleansing of Palestine. The principle of transfer could lead to a 100% Jewish state. When the Palestinian leadership rejected the plan the British disbanded the high command and exiled its leaders, leaving the Palestinians leaderless to defend themselves. So much for the so-called democratic process.

Some might ask, why did the Palestinians turn down the Peel Plan? All very well in hindsight. Why wouldn’t they when they already owned 94% of the land? Surely justice would prevail. Of course it didn’t.

By pretending to accept the Peel Plan, and appearing to be magnanimous the Zionists accelerated their ethnic cleansing and theft of Palestinian land which continued all through WW II.

After the war, the Zionists did not like the pace by which their expansionist plans were proceeding and considered their benefactors, the British Forces, as being in the way. They turned on them with venom; terrorism, burning and murder, the most infamous of which was the bombing in 1946 of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem. 91 people were killed, 46 injured.

No good deed goes unpunished, as they say. 

In 1947, the UN decided to partition Palestine yet again. As the world reeled in shock over what had happened to the Jews and other minorities during the holocaust, the United Nations, possibly with a mixture of sympathy and guilt, gave over 56% of Palestine to the Zionists and 43% to the Palestinians. The plan was rejected by the Arab side, the Zionists, while pretending to accept it, continued with their campaign of terror against both the British and the Palestinians, while portraying themselves as the victims.

By this time the British Government, exhausted and fraying at the edges decided to cut and run, abandoning their moral and legal duties towards Palestine. They left the unprotected civilian population to the mercy of the Zionist forces.
None was shown.


With the British gone and no credible Palestinian or Arab force to stop them the Zionists went into a frenzy of destruction and killing. The culmination of all this was the most horrendous crime against humanity, the massacre that was the village of Deir Yassin. Menachem Begin, leader of the Haganah gang that perpetrated this horror, later to become a Prime Minister of Israel, saw the massacre of some 200 men, women and children as a propaganda victory. “The Arabs began to flee in terror, even before they clashed with the Jewish forces. The legend was worth half a million battalions to the forces of Israel.”

The Arabs had no option but to act. Ill-equipped and ill trained Arab armies embarked on a disastrous adventure that resulted in total defeat of the Arab forces and the loss of 78% of the land- mass of Palestine. Of the remaining 22%, the West Bank of the River was usurped by Jordan and Gaza by Egypt.

Even then the Nakba was not complete. There were more horrors in store for the Palestinians. They continue today, 65 years on.

As British historian, Arnold Toynbee observed: "The tragedy in Palestine is not just a local one; it is a tragedy for the world, because it is an injustice that is a menace to the world's peace".

At the very least, the British owe us, the Palestinians, a huge debt of honour, which is long over-due.
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Britain and France May Pull Ambassadors From Israel

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Illegal Jewish settlements and the illegal Israeli wall can only hinder peace. Israel continues with both because Israel is not really interested in peace. Instead, Israel is only interested in a Greater Israel of Biblical proportions.

Britain and France, like most of the Gentile world, are upset that Israel is going ahead with building new illegal Jewish settlements in Palestinian East Jerusalem and in the Palestinian West Bank. Senior diplomats say these actions may take place within the next few days.
Many European nations are not happy at all about Israel’s continued aggression against their Palestinian neighbors. In particular they are upset about Israel’s announcement that they will put 3,000 new housing units for Jews in an area known a E1 which will split the Palestinian West Bank in two. This is a strategic move by Israel intended to divide and weaken the Palestinians to the point that nothing will stand in Israel’s way as they build a Greater Israel of Biblical proportions.
Israel sees itself in Biblical terms. This is made evident by the fact that they do not even have a constitution due to their belief that no man-made laws (a constitution) can take precedence over what they believe are God’s laws (the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament).
Rhetoric by Israeli leaders also make clear that they see Israel through the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament. For example, Netanyahu’s statement in which he said, “[Jerusalem] is not a settlement. It is the sovereign capital of the State of Israel. We have been building in Jerusalem for 3,000 years.” This delusional thinking of Netanyahu clearly shows he sees Israel in Biblical terms which includes a Greater Israel.
The Zionist Christian Pat Robertson in his article titled The Land of Israel: A Gift From God describes the proper Bible based boarders of Israel as ““go all the way up north to the Euphrates River which encompasses the better part of modern-day Syria . Solomon’s empire went up to the Euphrates River. And Tyre and Sidon and Megiddo. And they had the Via Maris which went from Damascus all the way down to Cairo. It went as far as the area down in Gaza.” It’s obvious to any thinking person that expanding Israel to these boarders will cause many more wars and much more suffering. And since US politicians pimp out the US military to fight and die for the Jewish state of Israel, it looks like the US military has a very busy schedule ahead of it.
Israel is violating international law by building these new Jewish homes on Palestinian lands as part of its temper-tantrum it’s throwing over the Palestinians getting UN recognition as a “non-member observer state.” Israel and its lackeys in the White House and Congress wanted the Palestinians to continue as they have for the last several decades to have “peace talks” directly with Israel and usually under US supervision all the while Israel was stealing more and more land from the Palestinians. In effect, Israel and its US politicians want the Palestinians to practice insanity, for as Albert Einstein said, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting to get different results.”
Much of Israel’s US support is found in Christians who are also Zionists. They sincerely believe the Old Testament is God’s word. Since the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible puts Israel over all and openly threatens Gentile nations with destruction if they do not serve Israel (Isaiah 60:12), these Christians see blind limitless US support for Israel as a good thing and as part of God’s will. To correct this deadly belief we need a revolution in religion based on our God-given reason and Deism as the American revolutionary and Deist Thomas Paine called for in his landmark book on God, Deism and religion, The Age of Reason, The Complete Edition (for Kindle version click here). Paine was very open and honest in his description of the Jews of the Bible. For example, he wrote, “The Jews made no converts; they butchered all.” And “We know nothing of what the ancient Gentile world (as it is called) was before the time of the Jews, whose practice has been to calumniate and blacken the character of all other nations; and it is from the Jewish accounts that we have learned to call them heathens.”
This quote from Paine’s The Age of Reason, The Complete Edition does a great job of helping us to understand that God had nothing to do with the Bible and never chose the Jews “above all people that are upon the face of the earth” (Deuteronomy 7:6).  Accepting Bible teachings such as these as facts can only bring about bad things as Israel is showing us today.  Paine wrote, “Could we permit ourselves to suppose that the Almighty would distinguish any nation of people by the name of His chosen people, we must suppose that people to have been an example to all the rest of the world of the purest piety and humanity, and not such a nation of ruffians and cut-throats as the ancient Jews were; a people who, corrupted by and copying after such monsters and impostors as Moses and Aaron, Joshua, Samuel and David, had distinguished themselves above all others on the face of the known earth for barbarity and wickedness.
“If we will not stubbornly shut our eyes and steel our hearts, it is impossible not to see, in spite of all that long-established superstition imposes upon the mind, that the flattering appellation of His chosen people is no other than a lie which the priests and leaders of the Jews had invented to cover the baseness of their own characters, and which Christian priests, sometimes as corrupt and often as cruel, have professed to believe.”
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BICOM suppresses critical voices in UK to Israel’s favour

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Press Tv - The British main stream media, which give Israeli regime’s authorities every podium they need to express their biased attitudes of world issues, are mainly dedicated and partly funded by pro-Israeli lobby groups inside the UK political circles.


BICOM, the Britain Israel Communication and Research Centre, is one of those bodies established by the Labour Friends of Israel, a powerful pro-Israeli lobby group inside the Labour party, which is dedicated to promote support for Israel in the UK. 

BICOM runs the News desk for the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), Sky News, the Financial Times (FT), and newspapers such as the Guardian, the Daily Telegraph, the Mirror and various news organizations, which are official Israeli propaganda outlet inside the UK. 

Last year, an email, sent by Lorna Fitzsimons, the director of BICOM, “dedicated to creating a more supportive environment for Israel in Britain”, was leaked to alternative media and left the body red faced. It said: “Throughout the weekend, Bicom staff were in contact with a whole host of BBC and Sky news desks and journalists, ensuring that the most objectively favourable line was taken, and offering talking heads, relevant to the stories unfolding.” 

The pro-Israeli apparatus usually organizes social media delegation of UK bloggers to the Israeli occupied Palestinian territories and links them with key figures inside the Zionist entity, as well as senior figures in the Palestinian Authority. They are taught how to distort facts on the ground and publish the news in the best interest of Israeli regime. 

BICOM is well-known for taking British politicians and other influential figures on propaganda tours to occupied Palestine to meet Israeli figures. For an instance, BICOM paid for Adam Werritty, the disgraced advisor of former UK defence minister Liam Fox in 2009 to attend an Israeli conference to speak about Iran. 

BICOM, which is also well-known for having anti-Iran sabotage plans high on its agenda, collaborated earlier this year with the state-controlled British Office of Communication (Ofcom) to block the alternative English-language channel Press TV in the UK, and therefore eliminate a critical voice that had managed to attract a big audience inside Britain. 

BICOM, meanwhile, organizes counter demonstrations in the UK to overshadow the protests by supporters of the Palestinian call for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against companies complicit in Israeli apartheid, occupation and militarism. 

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Christian Friends of Israel: serve the Lord and bless Israel

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The shame of our brainwashed MPs


Agent Cameron’s now infamous dinner speech to Jewish fund-raisers, in which he pledged the British people’s support for the state of Israel and its criminal regime, drew many complaints.
Among the objectors was Ted Clement-Evans, who wrote to some of Cameron’s lieutenants: “It was shocking to read the PM’s speech at an annual dinner. Shocking that he should assert that support of Israel is in the DNA not only of the Tory party but also of the British people. Please tell him that justice and fair play are in the DNA of Brits. If we only heard the truth from our Media and the BBC of the illegalities and inhumanity of Israel towards the Palestinian people under the yoke of their 40 year occupation.
“But the PM knows of those inhumanities – he listed them to his Israel supporting audience and still he embraced Israel and all it stood for.
“Please tell the PM how wrong he is and how wrong Israel is.”
He also wrote to Cameron himself saying, among other things, that his speech was “so committed to the support of Israel, so shocking in its intensity as to make HMG [Her Majesty's Government] complicit in all of Israel’s crimes against humanity – which the UN perforce logs every week. The seizure of the sailing ship Estelle last week, taking humanitarian goods to the besieged 1.4 million people of Gaza, is but another pinprick. It was you who called Gaza an open prison, you who protest against the continued blockade of this ghetto – but did you say one word to stop this illegal seizure?…
“You have now made it very clear that, just as the US is in thrall to , so are the Tories in the grip of the Zionist movements of the UK, the powerful BICOM and the Henry Jackson Society. We see now, just as the US supports Israel to the detriment of that country’s best interests, so our own Government acts against the UK’s best interests.”
, the Conservative MP for Brigg and Goole, made this impertinent response: “What an ignorant email. I am sorry you don’t understand this matter. Please do not contact me again with such an ignorant comment.”
“It is great that the PM supports the only true democracy in this region, which guarantees equal rights to all its citizen, Jewish or Arab. As opposed to the Palestinian Authority which rewards prisoners and terrorists who seek the murder of innocent Israeli’s with Government funded salaries. A Palestinian Authority that promotes hatred towards Jews on its own TV stations, that allows the indoctrination of its children in schools with hatred and vile images towards the Jewish people and we Christians.
“Then of course there is the hatred and loathing that accompanies the rockets that come over the border aimed at innocent Israeli citizens.
“It is great to know that our PM supports democracy over hatred and racism.”
Percy is a mere 35 years old and a former school teacher. What caused the rude boy to forget his manners? In his very short time in Parliament (just two years) he has visited Israel twice, on the first occasion with the Conservative Friends of Israel. That indoctrination trip no doubt pumped his head full of Israeli propaganda. It worked like a charm because the following article appeared afterwards under his name.
I was indifferent about Israel and the Middle East. However, last year when I visited Israel and the Palestinian territories for the first time, I was left with a very different impression of the place: Israel is a country misunderstood and misrepresented. Looking across the border with Lebanon and peering at Hizbullah strongholds, no more than 100 yards away from where I was standing, underlined the significance of Israel’s strategic frailty in the face of constant threat.
Touring the security barrier I was surprised to hear that the architect of the barrier had appeared before the Israeli Supreme Court on countless occasions to defend his decisions regarding the route of the barrier. On occasion, when his planned route was ruled illegal, the barrier was removed and re-built according to the judgement. I also learnt that as a country with sparse natural resources Israel has had to develop alternative methods of productivity. The country leads the way in hi-tech, green and agri-techniques as well as in scientific development.
My travels around Israel surprised me completely. The people were full of get up and go, eager to live peacefully in the region; the towns and cities were energetic and cosmopolitan; and the deliverance of democracy never failed to impress upon me. So why is there such a discrepancy between what I experienced and public perception back in the UK? When was the last time you heard a good news story emanating from Israel on your TV screens or in the newspapers? And why has Israel become defined simply by its inability to solve the conflict when it is so much more than that?
I raised these questions when I returned to Israel again last week with colleagues from the UK and Australia for a dialogue with Israeli and Palestinian politicians, journalists, academics and commentators. This serious problem is not being effectively addressed and Israel’s future is being undermined by its inability to promote itself both accurately and attractively. As an MP, I witness this difference between perception and reality, on a regular basis in the House of Commons. From Backbenchers through to Government Ministers and Shadow Ministers, colleagues suffer from a serial case of apathy where Israel is concerned. Seemingly no positive impression of the place has been determined in people’s minds.
Israel has consistently perceived military might as the number one way to protect and defend the state. Although an important factor, this cannot be the only focus. The country’s re-branding is now an issue of serious strategic importance. Israel must accept that engaging their critics, isolating and correcting their propaganda and successfully rebalancing the debate must be a priority in order to protect their future. All of us who see Israel as more than a conflict zone ought to play our part in this important task.
My challenge to anybody who feels strongly on Israel is to get on a plane and go and see the place for yourself. Visit Tel Aviv where you will see a modern liberal western society where most people are just getting on with their lives in peace. Chat to Israelis or to their politicians and you will be reminded that this is the only true democracy in the Middle East where political debate is passionate, diverse and vibrant. More vibrant than our own democracy perhaps. That is the true Israel, the real Israel.
I hope you get the full toxic flavour.  UK claims the copyright, so maybe didn’t actually write it; just carelessly put his name to it. Either way he does himself no favours.
Sponsored by:
The piece reveals that he apparently knows nothing about the  and why it bites deep into Palestinian territory. He knows nothing about how Israel’s “true democracy” discriminates savagely against its non-Jewish citizens and how the millions of Palestinian Arabs living under Israeli rule in the West Bank and East Jerusalem enjoy nothing remotely like democracy, only brutal oppression, dispossession and, all enforced by Israel’s thuggish military and crooked laws.
Has he forgotten that Hamas won the Palestinian national elections six and a half years ago and had their democratic rule immediately snuffed out by British-US sanctions and the Israeli blockade? Now holed up in Gaza Hamas continues to govern as best it can under impossible conditions. What stopped Rude Boy going to see for himself, like he preaches?
It seems he doesn’t know that Israel isn’t interested in solving “the problem” because that simply wouldn’t suit the Zionist purpose. “The problem” is perpetual because politicians across the Western world don’t understand the situation but are happy to carry on supporting the Israeli regime and subsidising the cost with our tax-money.
He thinks Israel’s propaganda needs “correcting” when actually it works only too well. The lies play much better than the truth. Fortunately more and more people are able to see through to the evil beyond, and this is Israel’s undoing. It’s all beginning to unravel. The Israelis have tried re-branding, they’ve boosted the hasbara, they feverishly “educate” politicians, journalists and student on propaganda tours. But they can’t hide the awful truth forever. They can’t create a bright new image from the old rotten product. Even their own people are now speaking out, such as Miko Peled.
Next time Rude Boy flies into Ben Gurion airport (formerly Lydda airport) he might remember that he’s landing on stolen Palestinian soil. He should also spare a thought for the massacre and other atrocities committed in Lydda by Zionist forces in 1948.
And before he next visits Sderot to hear more tales about rockets, he should google ‘Najd’, the ethnically cleansed Palestinian village on which Sderot stands.
CFI UK is not, as some might think, the Conservative Friends of Israel. It’s the, an organisation set up to “serve the Lord and bless Israel as true friends”. They believe that “God’s time to ‘favour Zion’ has begun”. Can we take it that Rude Boy is a member of CFI as well as Conservative Friends of Israel? At any rate he says he’s a Christian. So why hasn’t he spoken out against the torment and abuse the Israelis heap upon his brothers and sisters in the Palestinian Christian communities, and upon their Muslim brothers and sisters?
When peace activist Elizabeth Morley wrote to foreign secretary  and other ministers and MPs saying: “Please ask your friends in Israel to stop this collective punishment of the people of Gaza,” Rude Boy replied: “Please ask your chums to stop supporting terrorism, suicide bombings and the targeting of innocent civilians. Might want to have a word about the hatred taught in some Palestinian education institutions…”
Elizabeth Morley: “How would you like to be accused of supporting Israel bombing innocent civilians? or shooting at fishermen whose only crime is to try and catch enough fish to support their families? or demolishing Palestinian families’ homes? or beating and torturing children? All these things are documented by the UN…”
Rude Boy: “Sorry, there is no debate. Your one-sided bias is clearly blurring your ability to see this issue fairly.”
He is perfect for the Foreign Office (Middle East desk) in the next government reshuffle.
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