UK Government’s shameless complicity with the Zionist enterprise

Ever since the announcement of the Balfour Declaration in 1917, successive British governments have stood imperiously by it, regardless of its irrational and discriminatory purpose. They have, at different times, been either complicit in or turned a blind eye towards Zionist human rights abuses, atrocities and violations of international law. In this centenary year of the Balfour Declaration, the present British Government continues to afford impunity for Israel, adopting the Zionist inversion of reality and its terminology. Zionism claims to represent all Jews, yet resorts to irrational abuse towards any who say ‘not in my name’ by calling them ‘self-hating Jews’.

The US-based Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), for example, challenges Zionist propaganda, noting that: “When the State of Israel claims to represent all Jewish people, defenders of Israeli policy redefine anti-Semitism to include criticism of Israel.” Zionist manipulation of terminology actually does nothing to further the combating of anti-Jewish prejudice. JVP also notes that what must be addressed is “how the deployment of false charges of anti-Semitism or redefining anti-Semitism can suppress the global progressive fight for justice.”

The British Government faces many questions over its unconditional alliance with Zionist ideology. In the House of Lords, towards the end of April, Baroness Jenny Tonge asked several, including one regarding what representations had the May Government made to the Government of Israel regarding the flooding with sewage of Umm Al Kheir farmland by Israeli settlers. Lord Hylton asked Her Majesty’s Government “whether they intend to call for prompt and full payment of compensation in cases of death, personal injury, demolition of buildings or confiscation of property which are established to have been caused by the Israeli authorities in the ‘unrecognised villages’ in (1) the Negev, and (2) elsewhere in Israel; and whether they will seek the agreement of the US and the EU to any such call.”

Football

Even in international football Zionism, addicted to discrimination and domination, renders itself incapable of fairness. The Palestine Solidarity Campaign in Britain reports that “there are seven illegal settlement football clubs that participate in the FIFA sanctioned national Israeli football league. Not only are they illegal under international law, they violate FIFA’s own rules – as the Israeli national football team holds matches in Occupied Palestinian territory, against the wishes of the Palestinian federation.”

The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel reminds us that “more than one hundred sports and human rights associations representing millions of people across the globe have called on FIFA to demand that the Israeli Football Association immediately exclude teams based in illegal settlements, and for FIFA to suspend the association if it refuses to comply. As the pressure mounts on FIFA to respect its statutes, the Israeli Government is using its embassies to push for removing the issue of settlement clubs from the Congress’ agenda altogether.”

The Holocaust and the Zionist state

Tony Greenstein reminds British PM Theresa May, who opposed the entry of 3,000 child refugees from France, that “the Holocaust has become part of the identity of the European ruling classes. It is a narrative designed to shore up support for Israel, a military superpower in the Middle East. It has little or nothing to do with anti-racism.”

The Zionist political movement, formed decades before the Holocaust, exploits the tragedy in order to further its objectives yet, as the The Association for Immediate Help for Holocaust Survivors (IHHS) reports, 50,000 Holocaust survivors live in poverty in Israel. Greenstein writes: “Israel makes study of the Holocaust compulsory from the age of three! What happened to the six million is embedded in national consciousness whilst, at the same time, those Holocaust survivors still alive are given the choice between eating or keeping warm.” Immediate Help for Holocaust Survivors gets no funding from any official Israeli office, even though it is the NGO that so many survivors turn to for help. When it comes to justice and real human need, the Zionist regime’s propaganda is far removed from reality.

Petition

The British Government has recently responded to the UK must apologise for the Balfour Declaration & lead peace efforts in Palestine petition. The sterile, formulaic and unfeeling nature of the Government’s reply deserves comment.

The Government response to the petition began with this observation:

“The Balfour Declaration is an historic statement for which HMG does not intend to apologise. We are proud of our role in creating the State of Israel. The task now is to encourage moves towards peace. The Declaration was written in a world of competing imperial powers, in the midst of the First World War and in the twilight of the Ottoman Empire.”

The decline of the Ottoman Empire and war between the imperial powers has no relevance to the justification of the objectives of Zionist ideology. The Palestinian people were given to understand that an allied victory would deliver them self-determination. What possible right did the victorious European powers have to deny that right and to prepare instead for the partitioning of Palestine?

The UK Government’s response continued:

“In that context, establishing a homeland for the Jewish people in the land to which they had such strong historical and religious ties was the right and moral thing to do, particularly against the background of centuries of persecution.”

Who gave the British the moral authority to determine this? The call for the so-called Jewish homeland in Palestine did not come from Mizrahi or Sephardic Jews; it came instead from European ideologues, Zionists, who did not believe that it was necessary or possible to overcome European contempt for Jews. Opposed by many rabbis, this secular movement preferred to exploit European contempt for Arabs to secure Zionist colonisation of Palestine in the name of all Jews. Zionists and European leaders alike were pleased to turn their backs on their obvious duty to both condemn anti-Jewish prejudice and fight for the right of Jewish people to live as equals in the lands of their birth. This dereliction of moral duty was followed by the rise of Nazi ideology, which led to another world war and the bitter tragedy of the Holocaust.

In its response, the otherwise unrepentant UK Government does observe that:

“much has happened since 1917. We recognise that the Declaration should have called for the protection of political rights of the non-Jewish communities in Palestine, particularly their right to self-determination.”

The British Government’s continuing historical prejudice in referring to the Palestinian people merely as “the non-Jewish communities in Palestine” is further proof of its Zionist-oriented outlook. The Balfour Declaration specifically avoided reference to Palestinian political rights because that did not accord with the objectives of Zionist ideology. To say “much has happened since 1917” is an obfuscating understatement. Zionism introduced modern terrorism to Palestine, including the murder of Count Bernadotte, the blowing up of the King David Hotel, the many savage and tragic massacres, such as at Deir Yassin, and the turning of Palestinians into refugees. The Zionist state still refuses to allow their UN-recognised right of return. Add to all of this in more recent years, Israel’s introduction of nuclear weapons to the Middle East and its refusal to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty make it clear that the Balfour Declaration led to nothing but disaster.

In shrugging off its responsibilities, the UK Government unctuously looks to what it calls a “lasting peace”, claiming that it can only be achieved through direct negotiations between the defenceless Palestinians and their mightily-armed oppressor. The disingenuous reference to so-called land swaps is an attempt to legitimise illegal Israeli settlements and land theft. There is a world of difference between such language and the ideological intentions it attempts to obscure, and that is well known. In October 1995, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin addressed the Knesset concerning the ratification of the Oslo II Accord in which he envisaged a ‘Palestinian entity’ that would actually be ‘less than a state’, the whole of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and what he called ‘Judea and Samaria’ filled with Israeli, Jewish-only, settlements. Israel intends that any so-called Palestinian state would be treated with no less contempt than is the blockaded Gaza Strip. It would be allowed no means of defence or sovereignty over air space or borders. As Gaza has experienced since Israel’s ‘departure’, there would be no hope of meaningful security.

The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court defines the crime of apartheid as:

“inhumane acts…committed in the context of an institutionalised regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial group or groups and committed with the intention of maintaining that regime.”

As an example, Israel’s relentless control of the supply of water, such a precious and basic resource, aims at undermining Palestinian Resistance and the will to survive. The consequences include long-term environmental degradation as well as danger to public health, both immediate and long-term. Israel’s targeting of Palestinian water infrastructure is aimed at preventing economic growth and driving Palestinians off their land. Its water-marketing strategy is replacing traditional patterns of community water management in order to control, and eventually banish, any Palestinian presence.

History has shown that those who have power over others, and use it for gain or profit, never relinquish that advantage until forced to do so. The ‘Two-State Solution’ and the so-called negotiations process are nothing but a cover for Israel to consolidate and expand its control over the whole of Palestine.

By making Palestinians depend on Israel for their own water, the Zionist regime has drawn attention to the actual geographical and economic unity of the land, and the people it subjugates. Tearing them apart has brought shame upon the perpetrators and ruin upon their victims. It is for the British Government itself to “show bold leadership” by finally admitting Balfour’s irrational inhumanity. Repudiating Zionism would free the world to embrace, in its place, the hard-won provisions of the Fourth Geneva Convention. Justice requires an end to colonisation and discrimination, with shared resources and equal rights, regardless of religion or ethnicity, in a single state for all.

Just last month

Meanwhile, the Palestinian people continue to suffer the terrible daily toll that Israel takes upon their life, limb, liberty and property. Here are just a few examples from the month of April:

• Drive-by shooting: Settler terrorist wounds six-year-old child in the stomach.
• Occupation settler drives over and hospitalises two children
• Israeli Army forces two families to destroy their homes
• 67 acts of agricultural/economic sabotage
• Israeli Army plunders Palestinian factories and destroys one of them
• Israeli Army population-control military exercises force 16 families from their homes
• All on just one April day! – Zionist mob destroys 100 Palestinian olive trees – Settler colonists set fire to Palestinian villager’s motor vehicle – Israeli Army destroys shops in West Bank village
• Israeli Army forces Palestinian man to destroy his own home
• Israeli soldiers terrorise two children aged 12 and 13
• Israeli Army Gaza incursion – live fire – crops bulldozed for over four hours
• Israeli Army orders destruction of family home in UN refugee camp
• Israeli Army orders destruction of two Palestinian homes, to please settler demands
• Israeli Army destroys Palestinian olive and almond trees, as well as grapevines, claiming the land belongs to Israel
• 45 minors, including children, abducted (aged 11 to 17)
• Youngster (17) dies from critical wounds inflicted in March by Israeli Army
• Israeli colonists pump raw sewage onto Palestinian farmland crops
• Boy (14) wounded during Israeli Army attacks on West Bank schools
• Israeli Army orders destruction of West Bank village wells and greenhouses.

This is nowhere near the end of the list for April, of course, and the Occupation has been going on for almost 50 years! But who cares? We care, humanity cares – but our politicians and mainstream news media must be judged by their words and actions. More important, they must be judged by the degree of their silence and inaction. And now to New Zealand:

Brownlee’s offer of surrender to Israel betrays UNSC Resolution 2334

According to the Jerusalem Post of 3 May 2017, the New Zealand Foreign Affairs Minister, Gerry Brownlee, has written a letter to Mr Netanyahu with congratulations on the Zionist state’s National Day, expressing a desire for the “Israeli-New Zealand relationship to get back on track.” Brownlee failed to ask Netanyahu to explain his threat to interpret New Zealand’s sponsorship of UNSC 2334 as a “declaration of war” and the hostile postponement of travel rights for New Zealand’s ambassador to Israel.

Instead of reminding Netanyahu of Israel’s duty under international law to stop illegal settlement development in the Palestinian West Bank, Brownlee obsequiously begged to restore the relationship as if it were New Zealand that was somehow at fault. Our new Foreign Affairs Minister then went on to spinelessly express a desire for “the Israeli-New Zealand relationship to get back on track and to do that by recognising that we’ve got synergies and innovation and agriculture and various other things like that.”

Respect for human rights and the provisions of the Fourth Geneva Convention are the most essential elements in international relations. Granting Israel eternal impunity from its violations of these principles can only condemn the Zionist state’s victims to endless misery and injustice. Brownlee must be reminded that his duty is to promote respect and compliance with UNSC Resolution 2334.