Then he assures Abbas the UK supports the Palestinians

By Stuart Littlewood

When UK Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab visited Israel immediately after the 11-day onslaught against Gaza which killed some 250 Palestinians, including 66 children and 39 women, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu told him: “Thank you and Prime Minister Boris Johnson, for the staunch, unwavering support of our right to self-defence during the recent operation. It’s much appreciated.”

Raab responded: “You can always count on us.”

Raab then met Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah and tweeted: “I reiterated UK support for the Palestinian people and expressed condolences for civilians killed in recent hostilities.”

He said the UK remains committed to the two-state solution “as the best way to permanently end the occupation, deliver Palestinian self-determination and preserve Israel’s Jewish and democratic identity”.

For one thing, Israel doesn’t have a democratic identity – it’s an extremely unpleasant ethnocracy.

For another, the so-called two-state solution hasn’t solved anything since 1947 and is long dead. No-one these days promotes it except to buy more time for the Zionist regime to complete its annexation and dispossession programme. That’s clearly what the UK is up to.

And for another, what gives Raab the right to pledge that the odious Netanyahu can always count on us? Who is “us”. You and me? Maybe a handful of twisted stooges among the Westminster establishment? Certainly not the millions of decent citizens of Britain who are sickened by Israel’s greed and murderous intent on stealing another people’s land, Palestine, to which they have no ancestral claim.

Nor do respectable British people have any truck with Israel’s brutal, decades-long military occupation, cruel 14 year blockade of Gaza and daily contempt for international law and the norms of decent behaviour.

It seems only stooges of the Westminster swamp, like Raab and his insufferable boss Johnson, love the Zionist regime and its twisted leaders enough to pledge undying support. But they splash it around to make it sound like all Britons are adoring followers of the racist delinquents who have trashed the Holy Land for over 70 years.

During Raab’s visit The Times of Israel reported that he met Defence Minister Benny Gantz. “Gantz stressed to Raab the importance of tight and effective monitoring of Iran’s nuclear sites and said Israel maintains the right to act in self-defense against any threat, a hint that the Jewish state could act alone in a military strike against Iranian nuclear sites.”

Raab tweeted: “Recognised Israel’s right to self-defence and discussed UK Israel bilateral relationship in my meeting with @gantzbe today.” The joke here is that Israel refuses to submit to inspection of its own nuclear facilities, never mind the imposition of safeguards but endlessly bangs on about inspections and curbs on Iran’s embryonic programme.

And what is Raab doing recognising Israel’s “right” to self-defence? Israel isn’t illegally occupied. On the contrary, Israel is the aggressor illegally occupying Palestine. Has he ever recognised the Palestinians’ right to self-defence and with it the right under international law to put up an armed resistance? Let’s hear it, Raab!

It’s strange to see someone who won the Clive Parry Prize for International Law at Jesus College, Cambridge, and who led a team at The Hague to bring war criminals the justice, getting it so wrong. Jeez, doesn’t he see Netanyahu as a war criminal?

In 1998 Raab was in the West Bank studying the Israel-Palestine conflict and working for a principal Palestinian negotiator, but he seems to have learned little given his actions today. On the other hand he had a Jewish father and spent time during his formative years at a kibbutz.

“They’ll never get a state”

Meanwhile, Netanyahu’s 12-year reign as the apartheid entity’s leader looks like coming to an end now that opposition leader Yair Lapid’s cobbled-together coalition registers an overall one-seat advantage. The plan is to form a new government with Naftali Bennett as prime minister initially.

Bennett is opposed to the creation of a Palestinian state, saying: “I will do everything in my power to make sure they never get a state.”

In 2010 Bennett was appointed director-general of the Yesha Council and led the fight against the settlement freeze in 2010. In November 2016 he said that the election of Donald Trump as president of the United States gave him hope that the two-state solution would no longer be considered viable, claiming “the era of the Palestinian state is over”.

In 2013 Palestinian officials denounced him ,saying:

Bennett’s calling for the murder of Palestinian captives is in blatant disregard of international law and the Third Geneva Convention, which delineates the protections entitled to prisoners by international law upon their capture. It is extremely alarming that a public Israeli official at the ministerial level calls for murder and utters explicitly racist remarks without being held accountable.

Bennett had made the remark at a cabinet discussion when opposing the release of Palestinian prisoners in order to enable the resumption of peace talks. He reportedly said: “If you capture terrorists, you simply have to kill them.” When National Security Adviser Yaakov Amidror told him that was illegal, Bennett replied: “I already killed lots of Arabs in my life, and there is absolutely no problem with that.”     

In Israel you get rid of one racist lunatic and there are plenty more waiting to pop up. No doubt Raab and Johnson will waste no time giving this one a rapturous welcome to London.