“Israelis must be aware that the price of their misconduct is paid not only by them but also Jews throughout the world.”

Stuart Littlewood writes:

Not my words, but an observation by former chief of Israeli Military Intelligence, Yehoshafat Harkabi, in his book Israel’s Fateful Hour.

As the world must have noticed, Israel’s latest misconduct even exceeds their unspeakable criminal aggression over the last 7 decades. While we try to comprehend the awfulness of each news bulletin from Gaza let’s recap on what the problem really is, for the benefit of those who haven’t managed to keep up and especially for those who swallow the propaganda lies and disinformation circulated by governments and mainsteam media.

Israel illegally occupies the West Bank and East Jerusalem, including the Old City, and has Gaza in a vice so pitiless as to have caused a long-term humanitarian crisis and irreparable environmental damage. For over 70 years millions of dispossessed Palestinians and their families have languished in refugee camps, and those who were able to remain in their homeland – Christian and Muslim alike – live miserable lives under brutal military occupation while the ever-expanding state of Israel continues to annex and swallow up their lands and destroy their livelihoods.

And when it comes to killing, Israel has been slaughtering Palestinians at the rate of 8 to 1 and children at the rate of 22 to 1, and that’s before this latest onslaught.

So the racist nature of Israel, recently reinforced by the passing of discriminatory Nation State laws, is obvious to all. And any attempt to set up a political party in Israel to campaign for a secular state to represent all of the people equally is banned by law. Israel is plainly not the liberal western-style democracy they would have us believe.

And Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention forbids an occupying power to deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies. The International Criminal Court, set up in 1998, regards such practice as a war crime. But because Israel didn’t sign up to the ICC it feels free to carry on with its illegal squatter programme regardless (it uses the term ‘settlement’ hoping it sounds more palatable).

Genuine settlers come in friendship and with consent. But Israeli settlers are mostly hardline religious squatters who support their own government’s use of violence against the indigenous Palestinians and, in return, are supported and shielded by Israeli occupation troops. Their squats are usually fortified colonies with gun towers, mine-strewn death strips and army back-up. No doubt they appear heroic in Israeli eyes but are offensive to most other people – especially the Palestinians – and breach all international understanding of what constitutes acceptable behaviour. Israel hopes that implanting their squatters in strategic locations will eventually make it easier to annex the whole territory.

Theft of Jerusalem and the entire Holy Land is almost complete

Israel, for reasons that defy decency and common sense, is the most-favoured ally of the world’s most powerful nation, whose taxpayers hand it $3-4 billion a year in military and economic aid. It sees itself as a military super-power, is the third largest manufacturer of arms, has the fourth largest nuclear arsenal, and is probably the strongest economic power in the region thanks in part to US subsidies. And in Palestine it is the Occupying Power.

Israel, which never declared its borders, has been formally recognised by the Palestinians and the Arab League within the internationally recognised ‘Green Line’ border. So it is not “fighting for its existence” as many of its supporters claim.

Nor is it seriously threatened by Hamas whose revised 2017 Charter calls for a sovereign and independent Palestinian state, with Jerusalem as its capital, along internationally-recognised 1967 borders, with the return of the refugees and the displaced to their homes from which they were expelled, though without recognising Israel or ceding any rights.

Hamas emphasises that its quarrel is with the Zionist project not with the Jews because of their religion. It wages a struggle against the Zionists who occupy Palestine.

Of course, if international law – and in particular the Fourth Geneva Convention – were enforced the Occupation would collapse under the weight of its own illegality.

But as things stand Israel has all but succeeded in making its illegal Occupation permanent. There is no sign on the ground that it is willing to hand back enough land and relinquish enough control for a truly viable Palestinian state to emerge. On the contrary, the annexation of “Greater Jerusalem” continues squatter settlements increase. The ‘Apartheid’ Wall still bites deep into Palestinian territory and steals Palestinian resources. Israel clearly intends to retain control of the entire country while shunting the Palestinians into an ever more whittled-down, fragmented, semi-sovereign, non-viable, non-militarised mini-state denied free access to the outside world.

Balfour had inserted into his infamous 1917 ‘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 at that time, Lord Edwin Montagu, who was anti-Zionist and opposed the deal, calling Zionism “a mischievous political creed”. But this crucial safeguard was jettisoned as soon as Britain lost control of events.

The Partition Plan was abused

Not content with the generous territory gifted to them under the 1947 UN Partition Plan the Zionists declared statehood ignoring all boundaries. Their ‘Plan Dalet’ offensive, begun beforehand, had seized much Arab-designated land at gunpoint. Jewish militia – the Irgun, Haganah, Palmach and Lehi – raided towns and villages forcing inhabitants to flee. Numerous atrocities 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 in 1948.

Those crimes stand as an indelible stain on the flag of the United Nations, which hadn’t the backbone to take action then and still hasn’t now.

In a cabinet meeting in June 1948 Israel’s first Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion stated: “They [the Palestinians] lost and fled. Their return must now be prevented….” Ben-Gurion’s words were echoed by Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir who in 1992 declared that the return of the Palestinian refugees “will never happen in any way, shape or form. There is only a Jewish right of return to the land of Israel.”

UN acceptance of an Israeli state was conditional

On 15 May 1948, one day after the declaration of statehood, Israel applied for membership of the United Nations, but it was not acted on by the Security Council. Israel’s second application was rejected by the Security Council in December 1948 by 5 to 1, with 5 abstentions. The application was renewed in 1949 after the Israeli elections and the Security Council, strangely, adopted Resolution 69 on 4 March voting 9 to 1 in favour of membership. Britain abstained.

But membership was conditional on Israel accepting and implementing Resolutions 181 (the Partition Plan) and 194 (concerning, among other things, the status of Jerusalem and the return of Palestinian refugees) and honouring the terms of the UN Charter. Israel never intended doing any of these things and to this day repeatedly violates provisions and principles of the Charter.

Article 11 of UN Resolution 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 even 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. Incredibly, it gets the privileges without delivering on the obligations and is even rewarded for breaching those principles and disrespecting the terms of that agreement.

In 2004 the International Court of Justice at The Hague ruled that construction of what’s often called 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”.

And, all along, the Israelis have been de-legitimising the Palestinians by denying them their right to self-determination and freedom of movement.

Who would be a “Friend of Israel”?

Being a Friend of Israel, as many in the UK Parliament are, means embracing the terror on which the state of Israel was built, approving the dispossession of the innocent and the ongoing oppression of the powerless and applauding the discriminatory laws against indigenous non-Jews who inconveniently remain in their homeland.

It means aligning oneself with the horrific 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 never mind Israeli gunboats firing on Palestinian fishermen in their own territorial waters, the strangulation of the West Bank’s economy, the cruel 17-year blockade on Gaza and the bloodbaths inflicted on the tiny enclave’s packed population. Dare we mention Israel’s “mowing the lawn” which refers to their periodic shelling of Gaza to trim the population? And don’t let’s even think about the religious war that humiliates the Holy Land’s Muslims and Christians and prevents them visiting their holy places.

Meanwhile, how safe is the rest of the world under the threat of this rogue state’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.

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

Who are the real Semites?

And, by the way, there’s the small question of semitism. Recent DNA research indicate that most of those living today who claim to be Jews are not descended from the ancient Israelites. The Palestinians, it turns out, have more Israelite blood than the Jews – they are the real Semites. Studies by Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and published by the Oxford University Press in 2012 on behalf of the Society of Molecular Biology and Evolution, found the Khazarian Hypothesis to be scientifically correct, meaning that most Jews are Khazars. They conclude that probably no more than 2% of Jews in Israel are actually Israelites.

The Khazarians converted to Talmudic Judaism in the 8th Century and were never in Old Israel. So even if you believe the myth that God gave the land to the Israelites, he certainly didn’t give it to the Khazarians. Eastern European Jews who flooded into the Holy Land in the 20th century intending to kick the Palestinians out, apparently have no biblical or ancestral connection to the place, and have no business being there.

If the Johns Hopkins study is correct, Palestinians in the main are the true Semites and the whole anti-Semitism argument is upside-down. The anti-Semites are actually the Israeli regime and its Zionist Inquisition and stooges among our politicians, in our Government and embedded in our political parties.

Palestine was due its independence back in 1923

And now, it is claimed, Palestine should have been granted independence back in the 1920s. Law expert Dr Ralph Wilde argues that Britain, as the Mandated power, failed to implement Article 22 of the 1923 League of Nations ‘Mandate Agreement’ for Palestine which required provisional independence to be conferred on Palestine and that this could not be lawfully bypassed.

Article 22 says that certain communities formerly belonging to the Turkish Empire and now placed under the tutelage of an advanced nation (as Palestine was) had reached a stage of development where their existence as independent nations could be provisionally recognized until such time as they were able to stand alone.

Britain’s failure to comply was a violation of international law with ongoing consequences and therefore is a basis for action today. 100 years later Britain still refuses to recognised Palestinian independence although 138 other UN member states do.

And will the world ever forgive us, the UK?

Compounding all the blunders over the last 106 years the UK is now supporting the apartheid state in its criminal, genocidal assault on Gaza’s civilians. Tory MP Crispin Blunt, a former chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, has written to prime minister Rishi Sunak warning that the UK is in “legal peril” for endorsing Israeli government policy on Gaza.

The International Centre of Justice for Palestinians, which Blunt co-chairs, has issued a notice of intention to prosecute UK officials and says there is “clear evidence that Israel has committed war crimes. If you know that a party is going to commit a war crime – and this forcible transfer of people is a precise breach of one of the statutes that governs international law and all states in this area – then you are making yourself complicit. And…. the fact of being complicit makes you equally guilty to the party carrying out the crime.”

To avoid legal action Blunt urges the UK to issue a public statement condemning Israeli breaches of international law and to “ask each government official that has encouraged war crimes in Gaza to rescind their statements in public”. Nice to hear a voice of reason in this cesspit of lies.

It’s amazing how ignorant of international law (and lacking in decency) Rishi Sunak and his good-for-nothing ministers are. One can only hope the British electorate will remove them at the next election.