Westerners seem to forget the reality regarding Israel and its occupation of Palestine….
- like Israel has been ethnically cleansing the Palestinian people for 60 years
- like Israel continues to occupy, rob, humiliate and murder its neighbours
- like Israel is no Western-style democracy but an apartheid-loving ethnocracy
- like Israel has ignored nearly 40 UN resolutions, flouts international law and is oblivious to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
- like eight Palestinians are killed for every Israeli, and the lives of Palestinian children are so cheap they are slaughtered at the rate of 11 to 1
- like Israel lies when it claims to have “withdrawn completely” from Gaza
- like Israel has nuclear weapons numbering hundreds and is the only state in the region not to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Friends of Israel blind to the truth
STUART LITTLEWOOD
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Stuart Littlewood considers the blatant disregard for justice, human rights and basic norms of civilized behaviour shown by Israel’s stooges in the British Parliament, some of whom recently visited Israel and showed far more concern for Israeli terrorists than the Christian and Muslim civilians they terrorize.
This warning by the respected Israeli journalist and peace activist Uri Avnery should be impressed on every friend of Israel in the West. They are so gullible. The Jewish Chronicle last week reported how a group of intrepid Conservative MPs on a “Friends of Israel” junket experienced a “gunfire exchange” in Sderot. One of them said: “We couldn’t see the gunfire, but could hear that it was close by.” The exchange illustrated the “effects on quality of life that people in the south of Israel suffer on a daily basis. It shows that it is not a sustainable position for these areas to be constantly subject to rocket attacks and that Israel has the right to take appropriate actions to defend its citizens.” Urging Britons to visit Israel, he argued: “It’s very important to show their support for the only democracy in the area. I feel we have a duty and obligation to support Israel.” Another commented: “The gunfire was pretty close and it very much brought home how the violence in the area is ongoing and what people go through every day. Until I was there, I didn’t appreciate how serious the problem was and how much normal civilians, including children, are on the front-line.” These brave souls from the British Parliament didn’t trouble to visit the Gaza side and experience the Palestinians’ quality of life under the far more lethal barrage from Israel or partake of starvation rations under the cruel siege. If they hadn’t the good manners to go talk with Hamas they could at least have met the Christian community and listened to their story. Instead they were happy to be brainwashed by Tel Aviv propagandists, who no doubt told them how many home-made rockets had fallen on southern Israel but not, of course, the number of high-tech munitions fired by Israel’s F16s, helicopter gunships, tanks, drones and naval gunboats into the densely-packed population of the Gaza Strip, or the limb-shattering high-velocity rounds used by the Israeli occupation forces. I’ll bet they can quote the Israeli casualties but have no idea of the massive Palestinian death toll. It is very strange indeed how these Friends of Israel – mostly Christians, it seems – show far more concern for Israeli terrorists than the Christian and Muslim civilians they terrorize. Maybe basic facts haven’t quite sunk in…
With a record like this, how does the Israel lobby manage to browbeat supposedly intelligent MPs, MEPs and ministers into supporting the regime’s crimes and the ruthless Zionist expansion? Shielded from the truth“I will be back,” said one of the MPs in the Jewish Chronicle report. Bravo. Friends of Israel visit the Holy Land with Israeli escorts and enjoy Israeli hospitality. Next time let’s hope this particular MP has the good sense to travel independently, do some proper research and learn the ugly truth: that ethnic cleansing and land theft at the point of a gun and with the business end of a bulldozer are the cornerstones of New Israel. More than 200 illegal settlements have been built in the occupied territories and 450,000 Israeli squatters have migrated across the 1967 boundaries. The settlements and their associated infrastructure have carved what’s left of the territory into dozens of impoverished enclaves, polluted, traumatized and having no chance to prosper. These remnants are all the Palestinians are allowed to keep. They won’t have been told that 80 per cent of the West Bank’s precious water is diverted into illegal settlements where Israelis enjoy a 24/7 supply, fill their swimming pools and wash their cars while Palestinians are strictly rationed or go without. And while all this thieving is going on Israel hurries to establish enough “acts on the ground” to make their unlawful occupation irreversible and a viable, independent Palestinian state impossible. Is anyone surprised? They shouldn’t be. The manifesto of the Likud party, which until recently governed Israel and may do so again, is explicit: “The Palestinians can run their lives freely in the framework of self-rule, but not as an independent and sovereign state… Jerusalem is the eternal, united capital of the State of Israel and only of Israel.” The ruling Kadima party, a splinter from Likud, claims a national and historic right to the Land of Israel “in its entirety” and pledges to keep Jerusalem and the settlements. “Jerusalem an international city,” said the UNI doubt if many Friends of Israel know about the Great Betrayal. It is rarely taught in British schools. When Arab leaders were promised independence in return for their help in World War I the corridors of power in London were already infiltrated by Zionists. The Balfour Declaration of 1917 signalled approval for their racist project and Balfour, a Zionist convert, wrote: “In Palestine we do not propose even to go through the form of consulting the wishes of the present inhabitants of the country…” The ultimate betrayal came in 1947. While Britain prepared to quit its blundered mandate in Palestine the United Nations partitioned the territory and handed the Jewish minority 57 per cent. Jerusalem was not part of the deal. It was designated a “corpus separatum”, an international city, the only grain of sense in the whole clumsy exercise. Someone ought to tell our Israel-admiring MPs that Israeli statehood was achieved through a long campaign of terror, which included the murder of many Britons. Jewish gangs committed terrible massacres at Deir Yassin and elsewhere, after which 750,000 Palestinian Arabs fled in fear as Israel’s forces rampaged through the Holy Land obliterating hundreds of Arab villages and towns. The betrayal continues to this day thanks to the international community’s cowardly failure to enforce UN resolutions 194 and 242 and bring justice to the situation. As a result, Palestinians now comprise the largest refugee population in the world and have endured the longest, most brutal occupation of modern times. The greatest betrayal of all is that Jerusalem, so central to Muslim and Christian belief, remains under illegal Zionist control and is far from being the “international city” everyone was promised. What possible excuse can there be for not prizing it from Israel’s grasp? Rewarding criminal behaviourThe Israeli regime relies heavily on the EU for its exports and enjoys preferential treatment under the EU-Israel Association Agreement of 1995. But the terms require adherence to the principles of the United Nations Charter, and Article 2 says that “respect for human rights and democratic principle constitute an essential element of this agreement”. Israel has never complied but continues to reap the benefits, and there have been many calls to suspend the agreement. In 2002 the European Parliament itself, with a large majority, requested the European Commission and the Council of Europe to suspend the agreement, without success. A few days ago Israel succeeded in having its EU relationship upgraded and the benefits enhanced. How could such a thing be wangled – against the democratic mood – without stooges, hirelings and “friends” deeply embedded at the heart of Europe? Will Sydenham’s ’sore’ never heal?Ninety years ago many people warned against appeasing the Zionists. Lord Sydenham, responded to the Balfour Declaration by saying:
Israel’s willing stooges do nothing to heal that sore. They only inflame it.
*Stuart Littlewood is author of the book Radio Free Palestine, which tells the plight of the Palestinians under occupation. For further information please visit www.radiofreepalestine.co.uk. Via |
Annie Besant said,
July 19, 2008 at 3:23 pm
Who were these MPs? Tell us their names.
John Taylor said,
July 19, 2008 at 9:20 pm
As human beings how can we support the atrocities committed by Israel on the Palestinians. Jews own the mainstream media and atrocities against Palestinians are simply not reported. We are not told of illegal use of cluster bombs by Israeli forces against civilians in Lebanon.
I simply find it repulsive that the US gov’t is so blindly obedient to Israel. The Israeli govt is caught time and time again spying on the US and it’s corporations monitor every communication in the US. With friends like Israel who needs enemies.
AIPAC and other Israeli lobby groups will soon get the US government and citizens into the mother of all wars. The US will pay the price for this unholy alliance while Israel waits on the sidelines. If only America could wake up and see what is happening.
Gracchus said,
July 20, 2008 at 2:51 am
I heartily agree with the previous poster. As one of the few Americans who seem to be aware of the egregious, shameful American pandering to Israel, and Israel’s stranglehold on America’s press, politics, military, and even its economy, I too have long wondered when Americans will “wake up.” The late openings to Iran offered by the Bush administration seem to have given the world at least a temporary reprieve from our hurtling toward the abyss of war with Iran, but I wonder what is next? Is our overture toward Iran designed to launch a bid to appropriate the country for a still larger conflict with Russia and China? Might we, as some have charged Zbigniew Brzezinski, chief foreign policy adviser to Barak Obama with advocating, even go so far as to provide Iran with nuclear weapons technology so that we may use Iran to threaten Russia? Brzezinski is well-known for his animosity toward Russia, and his opposition to a U.S. occupation of the Middle East, in favor of the strategic encirclement of Russia as a prelude to a Russo-American war. His views appear to be influencing U.S. policy toward Africa, where China is hoping to secure a reliable source of oil, and Pakistan, which has also opened a liaison with China, and which would provide China with oil-shipping logistical help . He wants to exclude China from these areas so as to force it to attempt to acquire Siberian oil, and thus divide Russia and China, who have attempted to unite against American-British pressure in the Middle East. If that is his gambit, it may well backfire. Far from dividing Russia and China, it might unite them even more against us, and persuade them that their survival depends on defeating the United States in war.
Gracchus said,
July 20, 2008 at 4:22 am
I neglected to relate my foregoing post to the subject at hand, namely Israel’s role in these machinations. Though Israel undeniably regards its own nuclear hegemony in the Middle East as paramount, it is even more anxious to establish “Eretz Yisroel,” (Greater Israel) among the present Arab lands in the region. Zionist extremists in the Israeli government apparently want to depopulate the entire region of its Arab inhabitants through its own and its surrogate America’s use of aggressive war and depleted uranium (DU) weapons, which are now contaminating and poisoning Afghanistan and Iraq for the next 4.5 BILLION YEARS! It appears that they believe only Zionist Jews are fit to live in the Middle East, and they are not above exterminating both Islam and the Arabs to make it happen.
Israel is using the decades-old, three-way competition between the U.S., China and Russia over control of the oil and gas of the region to control the United States, forcing it to use its own blood and treasure to accomplish Israeli policy goals, maintain Israel’s nuclear hegemony, and extend Zionist rule over the whole of the Middle East, It is supremely ironic and tragic that these efforts will ultimately cause, and are already causing, an international backlash not only against Zionists, but against all Jews. In their zeal to prevent another Holocaust, they may actually be creating the conditions for it!