Is the United Kingdom Israel's Most Dangerous Enemy???

NOTE UPDATING NEAR THE END OF THIS POST

This post's headline must sound absurd, bizarre --even insane-- to many readers. But if we study the history of British governmental and semi-official actions regarding Jews and Zionism since 1920, then this conclusion becomes likely, although not everyone would be convinced. The first thing to do is to detach the grand flowery words of politicians and "statesmen" from their actual policy. In the American context, George W talks of a "war on terror." However, in fact, he has often favored terrorist movements and their enablers, including their financiers, such as the Saudi royal family who have in turn favored many American officials and ex-officials involved in US Middle Eastern policy with jobs and money and other gifts. Just lately, George's secretary of state, Miss Condi, has submitted demands that Israel remove checkposts in Judea-Samaria, an action which would facilitate terrorist attacks on Jewish Israeli civilians. Is Rice unaware that the various Arab mass murderous terrorist groups are in a very aggressive state of mind now, chomping at the bit for more chances to attack Israel?? Which they themselves frankly admit. Only Miss Condi doesn't seem to hear. So much for the gap between fine words and reprehensible deeds on the part of US diplomacy.

The British are past masters at the art of duplicity, hypocrisy, and playing off one side against the other. They have perfected the gambit of "let's-you-and-him-fight." Meanwhile the British sit on the sidelines and claim to judge others' morality. They are also masters of propaganda and its big sister, psychological warfare. The mainstream media in the USA and in much of Western Europe overlook the real situation, preferring paranoid fantasies of total USA support for Israel or even "Jewish Neo-Con" or "Zionist" control of Western policy. The British "leftist" press organs like the Guardian, the Independent, and the BBC may be the worst. In any event, the Italian newspaper Il Riformista, organ of the Italian Movimento per le Ragioni del Socialismo [close to the Italian Radical Party], is more truthful than most of the English-language press in the UK and USA. See right there, a good reason for Americans to learn foreign languages. Otherwise you will not know what is really going on outside the USA.

Il Riformista, in an article from July 2005, gives us a glimpse of anti-Israel policy planning in the British Foreign Office. Bear in mind that when the July 7, 2005, mass murder bombings took place in London, Blair was hosting a G8 [the eight major industrial countries] meeting at Gleneagles in Scotland. These terrorist attacks allowed Blair to present a surprise at the G8 summit with a helpful sense of urgency. Note what the surprise was:

For Months Blair Has Been Pondering a Surprise Dialogue with Hamas and a Marshall Plan
. . . The surprise was entirely in 3 billion dollars over 3 years designated for the Palestinian Authority, that famous Marshall Plan to stabilize the project for "two peoples-two states" . . .
To tell the truth, for several months . . . the Foreign Office had taken to rethinking the previous absolute No on contacts with Hamas and Hizbullah, considered and treated for all practical purposes as terrorist organizations, in full coordination with the American position and at the request of Israel. But the strengthening of Hamas [in Palestinian Authority local elections] . . . and the participation of Hizbullah in the Lebanese elections at the end of May-mid-June [2005] have necessarily driven British diplomacy to review positions, by embracing greater realism. At the end of 2002, Alastair Crooke [quale nome ben trovato!] , the "brains" of the MI6 at the British consulate in East Jerusalem, initiated a systematic series of contacts with the Hamas leaders more favorable to a full political transition, no longer military, of the movement [that is, Hamas' transformation into a political movement]. This activity over the past year finished by provoking a growing resentment among Israeli authorities, who a couple of times went so far as to issue "warnings" to Crooke and to present confidential protests about him to the British embassy in Tel Aviv. Further, on 19 May, the deputy chief of information at the Israeli Foreign Ministry, Gideon Meir, referring to the secret British meetings, saw fit to say that "any contact with Hamas on the part of representatives of foreign governments is considered by the Israeli government as encouragement for striking us with terrorist acts."

Tony Blair had asked Jack Straw before the election for a general review of the British position on the Israelo-Palestinian difficulty, in the light of the upcoming Palestinian elections. And the file was presented to the British premier just a few days before the G8. The first suggestion was precisely the extraordinary allocation adopted yesterday in favor of the PNA [= palestinian national authority], in order to give the British position and the European umbrella a rather larger power than that apparent until now over an issue, the Israelo-Palestinian, [on which the Americans have had the greatest influence]. . . up till now.

After the terrorist attacks in London, Blair, with the support of Berlusconi, had an easy time of convincing the G8 leaders in a few minutes --especially a reluctant George Bush-- that the best response to Islamic terrorism was to add a special chapter totally dedicated to supporting the Palestinian cause to the commitments to Africa and the environment. Moscow was favorable and Bush could not say No, and here [is] the true surprise of a G8 [summit meeting] born and praised as an example of internationalism [for quite other purposes] . . . The Israelis could do nothing officially but energetically request that the aid be vigorously tied to the condition that all the various Palestinian expressions abandon every form of armed struggle and terrorist attacks. But in Jerusalem, the chapter added by surprise was not very pleasant, to tell the truth. But it was also, and indeed specifically for this reason, that Hamas issued a harsh condemnation of the London terrorist attacks. [Il Riformista, 9 July 2005, article signed OFG]

No doubt, it was well worth the 3 billion dollars, to obtain in exchange a condemnation by mass murdering terrorists of acts of terrorist mass murder committed by others. But did all of Britain's pandering to Hamas change the nature of the beast? We won't insult the reader's intelligence by answering the question. But let's consider other implications of the information in this article.

As early as late 2002, Alastair Crooke of the British East Jerusalem consulate had been meeting with Hamas leaders. This was two years before Arafat died and more than three years before Hamas won --or supposedly won-- elections to the palestinian authority legislative council. We know from other sources that Crooke was encouraging talks in Cairo between Hamas and Fatah and Egyptian authorities. All that time, Crooke and his superiors in London were not troubled by the explicit genocidal threats against Jews and Israel in the Hamas charter. From late 2002 till today, the Hamas has not changed its principles, its genocidal goals or its mass murderous methods. The Hamas has stated its position rather frankly over and over. Either the British foreign affairs specialists have a hard time understanding what those goals, principles, and purposes are --as if they had no experts who understood Arabic-- or the British policy planners in the Foreign Office don't really care. Going by the British record of policy towards Jews since the 1939 "White Paper on Palestine," one concludes that the British don't care or perhaps even support the Hamas' hatred of Jews for their own reasons.

It is also noteworthy that the British Foreign Office had great influence over other great powers at the July 2005 G8 summit meeting. Tony Blair even obtained American acquiescence to his supposed emergency allocation for the palestinian authority. At the same time, reasonable people understand that showering money on mass murderous terrorists does not lead them to be peaceful but to intensify their attacks --which have already elicited incentives in the form of the allocations.

UPDATING:
Melanie Phillips reported in her blog entry of 2 May 2007, that:

Last February, Tony Blair suggested that the British government might be prepared to do business with ‘the more sensible elements of Hamas’ in order to restore negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. This was about as rational as suggesting in 1942, say, that one might do business with the more sensible elements of the SS.
. . .
I am told that shortly after making this remark about talking to the ‘more sensible elements of Hamas’, Blair was rudely disabused of such fantasies, not by Israel or America but by two somewhat unexpected sources. The first was Mahmoud Abbas, the front end of the Palestinian pantomime horse. The second was King Abdullah of Jordan. Both told Blair with great force that there were no sensible elements of Hamas, and talking to anyone inside that murderous organisation would be a total disaster because it would merely strengthen it.

Note that Tony Blair's position was more dangerous than that of two Arab leaders --at least in this regard.

Can our conclusion about the UK as an enemy of Israel be justified?

SECOND UPDATING: See this Melanie Phillips column too.

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Coming: More on James Baker, peace follies, propaganda, Jews in Jerusalem and Hebron, etc.