Brit Elite Rag -- The Financial Times -- Assaults Israel Again

UPDATING 3-4-2010 at bottom

Anti-Zionism is the anti-imperialism of fools

Martin Peretz, editor of the New Republic, has done another expert job of highlighting the Israelophobia [Judeophobia] of the British elite daily, the Financial Times. Recall that the FT is not a "leftist" paper. It is solidly pro-capitalist. Hence, Israelophobia or anti-Zionism, the up to date form of Judeophobia, is not limited to "leftists" or socialists. It is a mental disease cutting across class lines and supposed ideological divisions. Emet m'Tsiyon has featured the FT's anti-Zionism before [here]. Martin Peretz' latest response to FT agitprop is here. Some excerpts follow:

Hardly a day goes by that the Financial Times doesn’t do a hit job on Israel. The otherwise sober pink sheet has such an obsession with the Jewish state that I’ve come to wonder what its views were on the rescue of Jewish children into England during the Nazi onslaught on them and on their parents.
. . . . .
The paper simply refuses to name Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. But it’s much worse than that. The Financial Times writes about the “government in Tel Aviv.’ This is not just weird. It is a lie. The FT wants to rewrite the history of the Middle East. If it can’t tell the truth about a simple geographical fact, on what, pray tell, can it be trusted?

Let's put that claim that Israel's capital is Tel Aviv in historical context. It was a regular feature of Soviet and Communist anti-Israel agitprop before the fall of the Soviet Union. Now, this pretense is employed by the --shall we say it again?-- capitalist Financial Times.

Right now the FT is screeching at Israel for the assassination of top Hamas murderer and operative, Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, in Dubai, which quite plausibly may have been carried out by Israel's Mossad spy agency. Maybe the FT regrets that there is one less top Hamas operative running around the Middle East, working to perpetrate mass murder against Jews. Anyhow, in order to properly chastise Israel for --presumably-- killing him, the FT minimizes his importance. It describes him as a mere "Hamas gun-runner." Well, if he was not so important, then why is the FT so upset? Mass murder goes in the Middle East almost every day. In Iraq, dozens of non-combatant civilians are slaughtered regularly. Those murders do not evoke as much gall and spleen from the FT --if any-- as does the assassination of one leader of Hamas whom that Iranian-sponsored mass murder organization officially mourned. Peretz comments:

. . . the FT has dismissed his [al-Mabhouh's] importance by calling him “a Hamas gun-runner in Dubai.” This is so far from the truth that it is actually laughable. He was a murderer, a certified murderer, and is an official of the far-flung Hamas movement, which specializes in the murder of Israelis. He is more than a gun-runner. But even gun- running for Hamas, recipient of military hardware from Iran and Syria, cannot be seen with indifference by Jerusalem.
http://www.tnr.com/print/blog/the-spine/another-hit-job-the-financial-times

Just to clarify the situation. Dubai is officially in a state of war with Israel as part of the United Arab Emirates. The UAE has been in a state of war with Israel since it became a state. The Hamas is not only in a state of war with Israel but openly proclaims the desirability of murdering all Jews. It does this in Article 7 of its charter. The Hamas TV in Gaza constantly brainwashes its population, starting with small children, with reasons for slaughtering Jews and for continuing war against the Jews until Israel and the Jews are destroyed. There is no possibility that any Hamas official could be extradited from Dubai to be put on trial in Israel or from elsewhere in the UAE or from Syria where Hamas has its headquarters or from any Arab state, be it the most "moderate" Arab state of all. Obviously, in a state of war the rules applying in relations between countries at peace do not apply.

The United Kingdom can rightly be seen as the most dangerous center in the world for anti-Israel agitprop. There must be a reason why British NGOs lead in smearing Israel for alleged "human rights" violations, why the movement to boycott Israeli universities is centered in Britain, why Muslim fanatics are allowed to preach murder of Jews [and all non-Muslims] in British mosques and to demonstrate publicly calling to "behead those who insult Islam", without being charged with sedition. Moreover, we may ask why terrorists who placed bombs on the Paris subway, the Metro, in the mid-1990s were taking directions from leaders based in -- London. It was French investigators who dubbed the British capital -- Londonistan. Why?

If there really is such a thing as an Israeli-Arab "peace process," then an expression of regret by the British government for the British government's role in the Holocaust from 1939 to 1945 would be helpful. Surely, the UK government should not be allowed to take part in any supposed "peace process" without an admission of guilt for the British government's past pro-Holocaust policies and without an expression of deep regret.

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UPDATING 3-4-2010 Martin Peretz updates the story of FT's mourning over the death of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh. He links to an excellent article by British historian Andrew Roberts that puts the whole subject into a truthful, historical and contemporary perspective [here]. Apparently, even in Britain, a land so much of which is benighted, voices of outrage over the mad attacks on Israel in the FT were such as to lead the FT to publish Roberts' rebuttal of the anti-Israel fanatics.