…and how the cowards at Westminster still shirk their responsibility

Stuart Littlewood writes:

This is a message for our MPs at Westminster. It’s much the same as the letter I sent my constituency MP yesterday 15 May, the anniversary of the ‘Nakba’ (catastophe) recalling the expulsion in 1948 of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to make way for Israel’s declaration of independence. Many were massacred, the others sent into exile to languish forever in refugee camps.

‘Nakba 73’ reminds us that, while Jews from all over the world and with no ancestral links to the Holy Land are encouraged to flood into Palestine, the indigenous Palestinians (Muslim and Christian) who were dispossessed and ejected are still prevented by the illegal occupier (Israel) from returning to their homes.

For several days the world has watched in horror and disgust the wanton violence meted out by Israel to Palestinians protesting about their never-ending torment and hopelessness. Yet leaders at Westminster haven’t uttered a word. How would they, living peacefully in England’s leafy suburbs, enjoy being targeted by Zionist thugs and removed at gunpoint from their homes and lands, never to return?

The Board of Deputies, which claims to be “the voice of the UK Jewish community”, responds to the outrages committed by the Jewish state by condemning the “unremittent rocket fire against Israeli civilians by Hamas” and saying nothing about Israel’s disproportionate bombardment of Gaza civilians by land, sea and air, or its unlawful racist policies that have terrorised and suffocated Palestinians for more than 70 years. “Israel has the right to defend its citizens and it is the responsibility of Hamas to immediately halt all rocket fire from Gaza,” they say, forgetting that people under illegal military occupation have a perfect right in international law to mount an armed resistance.

Yet most Westminster’s MPs and ministers repeatedly take their lead from BoD propaganda and say “Oh, but Israel has a right to defend herself”. So nothing is done about the Holy Land’s horror show, which has become Britain’s permanent legacy in the Middle East.

Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour, a Zionist convert, in 1917 penned a letter to the most senior Jew in England, Lord Rothschild, pledging the Government’s “best endeavours” to facilitate the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people. Balfour also wrote: “We do not propose even to go through the form of consulting the wishes of the present inhabitants of the country.”

It was a gross betrayal of our Arab allies in WW1. Many in Parliament objected, including Lord Sydenham who remarked: “What we have done, by concessions not to the Jewish people but to a Zionist extreme section, is to start a running sore in the East, and no-one can tell how far that sore will extend.” Those words ought to be stamped indelibly on the rump of every politician in our Parliament.

Balfour inserted into his ‘declaration’ that “nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing and non-Jewish communities….” on the insistence of the only Jew in the British Cabinet, Lord Montague, who opposed the deal. But this safeguard was jettisoned as soon as Britain lost control of events. Montague was anti-Zionist to the point of writing: “I would willingly disfranchise every Zionist. I would be almost tempted to proscribe the Zionist organisation as illegal and against the national interest.”

He went on to say:

I feel that the Government are asked to be the instrument for carrying out the wishes of a Zionist organisation largely run, as my information goes, at any rate in the past, by men of enemy descent or birth… I would say to Lord Rothschild that the Government will be prepared to do everything in their power to obtain for Jews in Palestine complete liberty of settlement and life on an equality with the inhabitants of that country who profess other religious beliefs. I would ask that the Government should go no further.

Not content with the territory allocated to them under the 1947 UN Partition Plan the Zionists declared statehood ignoring all boundaries. Their ‘Plan Dalet’ offensive, begun beforehand, had already seized swathes of Arab-designated land at gunpoint. Jewish militia – the Irgun, Haganah, Palmach and Lehi – raided towns and villages forcing inhabitants to flee. Numerous attrocities were committed including the bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem (headquarters of the British administration) in 1946 murdering 91, and the massacres at Deir Yassin and Lydda (Lod) in 1948.

Those crimes stand as a nasty stain on the flags of the United Nations and especially of Britain, which hadn’t the backbone to take action then and still shirks that responsibility today.

The eventual admission of the new state of Israel to the UN in 1949 was conditional upon honouring the terms of the UN Charter and complying with UN General Assembly Resolutions 181 (the Partition Plan) and 194 (concerning, among other things, the status of Jerusalem and the return of Palestinian refugees). But Israel had no intention of ever fulfilling its obligations and to this day repeatedly violates those provisions and the principles of the Charter.

Article 11 of 194 states that

refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return and for loss of or damage to property which, under principles of international law or equity, should be made good by the Governments or authorities responsible.

This was based on recommendations by the UN Mediator for Palestine, Count Folke Bernadotte, who was afterwards murdered by Jewish para-militaries for upsetting their plans for domination.

Israel also fails to comply with the provisions of the EU-Israel Association Agreement of 1995 which requires adherence to the principles of the UN Charter and “respect for human rights and democratic principle [which] constitute an essential element of this agreement” in return for trading privileges. It gets the privileges without delivering on its pledges. It is continually rewarded – especially by the British government – for breaching those principles and disrespecting the terms of the agreement.

In 2004 the International Court of Justice at The Hague ruled that construction of what’s often referred to as the Apartheid Wall breaches international law and Israel must dismantle it and make reparation. But Israel continues building its hideous barrier with American tax dollars. The ICJ also ruled that

all States are under an obligation not to recognize the illegal situation resulting from the construction of the wall and not to render aid or assistance in maintaining the situation created by such construction.

It seems Westminster wasn’t paying attention and in any case couldn’t care less about the rule of law when it comes to Israel-Palestine.

No peace without justice, so when will justice be done?

As things now stand Israel has all but succeeded in fulfilling Zionist ambitions and making its illegal Occupation permanent by establishing irreversible ‘facts on the ground’. The international community has allowed this to happen and there’s no chance of the regime willingly handing back enough land and relinquishing enough control for a truly viable Palestinian state. Netanyahu and others have stated as much. So annexation of ‘Greater Jerusalem’ continues unabated as does squatter settlement. The ‘Apartheid’ Wall still bites deep into Palestinian territory separating the Palestinians from their precious farmlands and other resources. Israel clearly intends to keep control of the entire country while shunting the Palestinians into an ever more whittled-down, fragmented, impoverished, semi-sovereign, non-viable, non-militarised mini-state denied free access to the outside world. So talk of peace is futile. It is simply a ploy by Israel’s ‘friends’ to buy the apartheid regime more time to complete its evil plan.

It’s worth remembering that the UN Partition Plan of 1947 intended Jerusalem to be a ‘corpus separatum’ under international administration, for the obvious reason that the Holy City cannot belong to any single religious persuasion. None has exclusive claim. So the quaint idea that Jerusalem’s final status could be “determined by negotiation” is plain silly. Likewise that Israel’s annexation of Jerusalem should be allowed to continue. In the meantime, in case anyone’s in doubt, East Jerusalem (which includes the Old City) is internationally recognised as Palestinian territory.

There can be no peace without justice, and the world waits for justice to be done. But our politicians still woffle about a two-state solution and negotiations between the parties when one party has a gun to the other’s head… and when international law has already settled these matters and waits to be enforced.

Israel and its supporters are fond of accusing anyone criticising Israel’s ‘squatter’ programme as ‘delegitimizing Israel’, in other words denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination and their right to exist. That’s rich when the Israelis have been de-legitimising the Palestinians by blocking their right to self-determination, flatly refusing them freedom of movement, and robbing them of their lands and resources. UN resolution 2334, which condemned Israel’s continuing squats on Palestinian land as illegal and an obstacle to peace, has done nothing to disturb the cosy relationship between Her Majesty’s Government and the thieving Israelis.

On the contrary, the Government and the BoD are always telling us that Israel is our friend and ally, and our values are their values. That is sick. Israel has no friends outside the Westminster and Washington bubble. No decent person, knowing the truth, would ally themselves to such a racist and cruel regime. HMG’s alliance with Israel isn’t approved by the British people and only serves to give us a bad name throughout the Middle East.

And if the Johns Hopkins DNA study, published by Oxford University Press in 2012, is correct perhaps no more than 2% of Jews now in Israel have any biblical or ancestral links to the Israel of biblical times. It seems the Palestinians are the true Semites, and the anti-Semites are the Israeli regime itself and its army of inquisitors and stooges. So the whole anti-Semitism argument falls down.

Key question: what possesses British parliamentarians to support a deeply unpleasant foreign military power like Israel and to call themselves “a passionate Zionist” – as Mr Johnson does – when Standards in Public Life make clear that they should not allow themselves to come under such inappropriate influence? And in debates they seldom if ever declare (as they should do) their links to the Zionist conspiracy. Johnson also wrote in Ynet News that he’s “a passionate defender of Israel” and “a life-long friend, admirer and supporter of Israel… . Our commitment to Israel’s security will be unshakable while I am Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.” How dare he commit the British people to such a degenerate policy? This when Israel was announcing it was about to help itself to even more Palestinian territory. It’s hard to think of a more despicable remark for a leader of our great nation.

He should reflect that being a Friend of Israel means embracing the terror on which the state of Israel was built, approving the dispossession of the innocent and the oppression of the powerless and applauding the discriminatory laws against non-Jews who resisted being ejected and inconveniently remain in their homeland.

It means aligning oneself with the vile mindset that abducts civilians — including children — and imprisons and tortures them without trial, imposes hundreds of military checkpoints, severely restricts the movement of people and goods, and interferes with Palestinian life at every level.

And it means the thumbs-up to Israeli gunboats shooting up Palestinian fishermen in their own territorial waters, the strangulation of the West Bank’s economy, the cruel 15-year blockade on Gaza and the bloodbaths inflicted on the tiny enclave’s packed population. And even the religious war that humiliates the Holy Land’s Muslims and Christians and prevents them visiting their holy places.

If, after all that, anyone is still Israel’s special friend, where is their self-respect?

Meanwhile, how safe is anyone under the threat of Israel’s 200 (or is it 400?) nukes? Israel is the only state in the region not to have signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. It hasn’t signed the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention either. It has signed but not ratified the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty, similarly the Chemical Weapons Convention. It is a rogue state.

The worsening situation is nearing the point where world opinion will not stand for this any longer and civil society action will take over while the international diplomatic community continues its shameful paralysis. BDS is moving in where the cowardly UN has left a moral vacuum and will become much more robustly, so get used to it.

So what, if anything, are you going to do to resolve the Holy Land crisis which your predecessors created and your own administration helps to perpetuate?

For truth, justice and peace,