Britain's new Foreign Secretary reveals a complete lack of understanding of the Middle East problem - Melanie Phillips

 

Perhaps he didn't have time to read the briefing notes, or perhaps there were no briefing notes, or perhaps he is reflecting the lack of knowledge of Sir Keir Himself. Whatever it is, it looks like and smells like antisemitism.

Double Lammy The new British government's attitude to Israel continues to be dismaying MELANIE PHILLIPS JUL 15 ∙ PREVIEW UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy with (top) Palestinian authority Prime Minister, Mohammed Mustafa and (below) Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. What an abject, idiotic and malignant spectacle has been provided by Britain’s new Foreign Secretary, David Lammy, on his visit to Israel and the Palestinian Authority. At the very moment that the IDF is clearly closing in on Hamas and getting them on the run, at the very moment that victory in Gaza against the forces of genocide seem finally be be at least visible on the horizon, at the very moment that the IDF has made stupendous gains in killing key Hamas operatives through gaining priceless intelligence through its operation in Rafah — which the US instructed it not to conduct— Lammy calls for an immediate ceasefire and the return of the hostages.  Since the hostages will only be returned as a result of even more intense pressure, and since that pressure can only be increased if the IDF carry on in Gaza, a ceasefire now would mean Israel turns potential victory into surrender, Hamas is handed survival out of defeat and the hostages are abandoned to a never-ending process of blackmail and manipulation. Briliant, eh. Lammy also declared that Israel must allow aid into Gaza “without restrictions”. Hmmm — including cement with which to rebuild the tunnels, perhaps?  He also required Israel to stop “expanding illegal Israeli settlements and rising settler violence in the West Bank,” where “in what should be a crucial part of a Palestinian state, alongside Gaza and east Jerusalem, we need to see a reformed and empowered Palestinian Authority.” Oh — and “unilateral recognition of Palestinian statehood should take place at a critical point in a two-state peace process, rather than at its conclusion”. The settlements are not illegal; this is the Foreign Office’s customary misrepresentation of international law. There’s rising violence against Israeli residents in the “West Bank” against which most of those residents (other than a few out-of-control youths) are merely defending themselves. And imposing upon Israel a Palestinian state would go against the Oslo agreement, make the “peace process” totally pointless and impose upon Israel a deadly base from which its heartlands could be attacked with impunity.   Otherwise, genius. And then Lammy claimed with a straight face: I want to get back to a balanced position on Israel and Gaza.   Oh dear. Of course, the hapless Lammy was merely representing the position of Britain’s new Labour government under the Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer. Unfortunately, the signature motif of his government’s attitude to Israel is likely now to be altogether abject, idiotic and malignant. In recent days, a jaw-dropping attitude to the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) has been expressed by the UK’s ambassador to the UN, Dame Barbara Woodward. At the very moment that UNRWA has been outed as a Hamas tool, the ambassador delivered a gushing declaration of support for it... ==========================================================

Antisemitism in Europe > Godless, left-wing states practice their antisemitism out loud

 

Norway, Ireland and Spain say they will recognize

a Palestinian state, deepening Israel’s isolation

BY  JOSEPH WILSON, MELANIE LIDMAN AND JOSEPH KRAUSS

Updated 3:27 PM PDT, May 22, 2024

TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — Norway, Ireland and Spain said Wednesday they would recognize a Palestinian state, a historic but largely symbolic move that further deepens Israel’s isolation more than seven months into its grinding war against Hamas in Gaza. Israel denounced the decisions and recalled its ambassadors to the three countries.

Palestinian officials welcomed the announcements as an affirmation of their decades-long quest for statehood in east Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip — territories Israel seized in the 1967 Mideast war and still controls.

While some 140 countries — more than two-thirds of the United Nations — recognize a Palestinian state, Wednesday’s cascade of announcements could build momentum at a time when even close allies of Israel have piled on criticism for its conduct in Gaza.

For more on this story please keep reading at: 

The timing of the move was a surprise

The Terror of the Right > Melanie Phillips

 

The Biden government, like the Trudeau gov't in Canada, leans so far to the left that anyone standing up straight appears to be leaning far to the right. Therefore, those who lean to the right must all be extremists, at least in comparison to the far-left.

The terror of the right

It's so much easier to construct bogeymen than face up to murderous reality

MELANIE PHILLIPS

MAR 1, 2024

Hezbollah fighters in southern Lebanon

There’s a fixed belief in progressive circles that if only Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, were to be removed from office, there would be at least a sporting chance of peace in the Middle East

On Monday night, in an appearance on an NBC show, US President Joe Biden said that Israel must make peace with the Palestinians to survive. He warned that Israel’s “incredibly conservative government,” which includes the ultra-nationalist National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and others, was “going to lose support from around the world. And that is not in Israel’s interest”.

American officials repeat, like a steady drumbeat, that the reason the Israelis are so resistant to the imposition of a Palestinian state and insistent on mounting an attack against the last bastion of Hamas in Rafah, contrary to American instructions, is that Netanyahu is in hock to “right-wing extremists”.

Some believe that the Biden administration is working to replace Netanyahu with a more pliable alternative, such as war cabinet member Benny Gantz. Isn’t such interference in another sovereign state by seeking to lever out its democratically elected prime minister the kind of thing that the left routinely denounces as US “imperialism”?

It’s apparently fine, however, for the Biden administration to do this to Israel because Netanyahu is, after all, leading a “right-wing extremist” government, which seems to mean he has no basis to be in power at all.

Of course, Biden is trying to appease the virulently anti-Israel wing of the Democratic Party, which is causing him a major election-year headache.

More fundamentally still, his administration won’t permit Israel to derail US strategy for the region. Astonishingly, this involves empowering Iran, and ludicrously asserts that the solution to the Iranian war being waged against Israel and the west by using Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis as proxy terrorist armies is to impose a Palestinian state.

Biden wants Netanyahu gone because the Israeli prime minister is refusing to bend to American pressure and is standing in the way of the administration’s treacherous policy goals.

The “right-wing” meme is a potent weapon because it damns everything at which it is directed. To be “right-wing” in the circles that control western culture is to be utterly beyond the pale. Everything bad is “right-wing,” and everything “right-wing” is bad.

In Britain, even newspapers that are relatively well disposed towards Israel frame the conduct of the war as disproportionately belligerent because, well, Netanyahu runs an “extremist ultra-right” government.

In Israel, the left-wing press pounds out daily the message that absolutely everything Netanyahu is doing in this war is bad because it’s designed to save his skin and keep himself in power.

Since both the “settlers” and the “right-wing” are demonised as evil by so-called progressives, any opposition to a Palestinian state is also demonised as evil.

All this ignores a number of facts. Since the genocidal pogrom of October 7 — and with Hamas threatening to mount such atrocities over and over again until Israel is destroyed — Israelis are united as never before in opposition to a Palestinian state. They are also overwhelmingly committed to continuing with the war until Hamas no longer has the capacity to mount such attacks ever again.

This has absolutely nothing to do with the “settlers,” Ben-Gvir or Netanyahu’s desire to save his own skin. It is due to the fact that the vast majority of Israelis understand that they are fighting for their lives.

People may detest Netanyahu, but they don’t detest his conduct of the war. They may hold him ultimately to blame for the systemic mistakes behind the catastrophic failure to anticipate the October 7 attack. They may think that he should no longer be in office. They may believe that he is unprincipled, devious, hypocritical, narcissistic, power-crazed, corrupt and with a dangerous messiah complex, as he is painted by his enemies.

Yet none of that means that they think the war should be waged in any other way. None of their dismay at Netanyahu as prime minister means they believe that anyone else would or should prosecute this war any differently.

They understand that making peace depends not on Israel, as Biden insists, but on its Palestinian Arab aggressors. They understand that if Biden gets his way and Hamas survives as a military force, there will be more October 7-style atrocities. They understand that the Palestinian state Biden is threatening to impose upon Israel will deliver October 7-style atrocities on steroids.

And so the more Biden applies the thumbscrews to Israel, the more he will actually increase Israeli support for Netanyahu, who will be applauded for standing up to such an unconscionable betrayal and defending Israeli lives.

Some people dismiss the realities of Israeli opinion about the war and the “two-state solution” because all they can see is the apparently demonic figure of Netanyahu. Such people are obsessed with him. Many Israeli journalists see nothing but this hate-figure looming in front of them. He fills the entire visual space between the hater and the political horizon.

But it’s perfectly possible to dislike Netanyahu and want to see him gone from office, and yet support his determination to destroy Hamas or oppose the imposition of a Palestinian state on the grounds that there is no alternative strategy that would protect Israelis against further genocidal attack.

So why are so many unable to distinguish between the man and the measures?

For a start, it’s so much easier to blame a man who can be removed from office rather than face up to a terrifying reality that’s far harder to address, such as the Palestinian Arabs’ implacable and brainwashed hatred of the Jews.

For exactly the same reason, it’s so much easier to believe that a Palestinian state would end that enmity, rather than face up to the actual evidence of a century of murderous Palestinian rejectionism that continues without end.

There’s also another reason, a clue to which was provided by certain reactions to the October 7 pogrom both in Israel and abroad.

Among many “progressives,” the atrocities produced a profound sense of disorientation. This was because the Palestinians — people whose cause they had promoted as the acme of conscience and enlightenment — turned out to be barbaric savages.

Even worse, people the progressives had opposed and stigmatised as the “far-right” because they had regarded the Palestinians as murderous foes turned out to have been correct all along.

Worse yet again, some people on their own side actually turned on them for supporting Israel against Hamas. This was a terrible and destabilising shock. That’s because the left is governed by a herd mentality. Their views have to conform to the opinion of similarly “enlightened” people. Anyone who isn’t part of the progressive herd is “right-wing” and wrong about everything.

Moreover, since progressives believe that they embody virtue itself, right-wingers aren’t just wrong but evil. Yet the October 7 massacre revealed that the people supported by the progressives were evil.

This put progressives in a terrible bind. They couldn’t accept anything that revealed their own narrative to be so morally bankrupt.

So they exaggerated the plight of Gaza civilians in the war, for which they blamed Israel not Hamas. In response to the tsunami of antisemitism consuming the west as a result of the Palestinian cause they themselves promoted, they focused instead on the evils of “Islamophobia”. And they redoubled the attack on Netanyahu as their scapegoat.

As a result, both the Biden administration and others who demonise “the right” are supporting the insupportable. If they have their way, more Israelis will be murdered, raped, beheaded and taken hostage; there will be more Islamist intimidation, subversion and violence in Britain and America; and the west will find itself in a terrible war for its survival not against “right-wing” bogeymen, but against truly sinister enemies whom western folly has so catastrophically empowered.

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Antisemitism > How dumb are college students about Israel and Palestine?

 

Discovering the Ignorance Level Among College Students

Regarding Israel and the Palestinians

FEB 6, 2024 4:00 PM BY HUGH FITZGERALD

Protesters against Israel today are mainly the young, the college students who have turned our campuses into such unpleasant and even dangerous places for their Jewish classmates. Are they morally superior to the rest of us? What explains their reaction to events in Gaza? For the non-Muslim and non-Arab students who are inveigled into joining these protests, it is ignorance more than malice – though there is plenty of that, too, which reveals itself when anti-Israel sentiments reveal themselves to be naked antisemitism — that explains those young people who are chanting their anti-Israel slogans on American campuses today.

I wanted to find out for myself what level of ignorance students have about Israel and the Palestinians. So I asked a relative of mine who attends a nearby university to see if he could engage in conversation some of those who had taken part in a pro-Palestinian protest recently held on the campus, and to report to me on his findings. He talked to five students, one on one. His findings were depressing, but not surprising. Asked about how long Jews had lived in the area of present-day Israel, one said they arrived in the area after World War II, three said “thousands of years ago, but for many hundreds of years the Palestinians have been living in ‘Palestine.’” No one knew what the League of Nations was. Only one of them had ever heard of the Mandate for Palestine, and seemed to think it recognized the “right of the Palestinian people to live in ‘Palestine.’” No one knew when Jordan was established, or why, and of course they had no idea that Jordan was created on land that originally was supposed to be part of the territory to be included in the Mandate for Palestine. They all thought that Israel had started the 1948 war and “caused the nakba” by kicking out the Palestinians and occupying the whole of Palestine, “from the river to the sea.”

There was disbelief when they were informed that five Arab armies had attacked Israel first, on May 15, 1948. None of them knew that 750,000 Jews had been expelled from Arab countries in the years following the 1948 war. Four of the five recognized the name Gamal Abdel Nasser, but two weren’t sure what country he was from. No one knew that Israel had taken possession of the West Bank in the Six-Day War; some thought Israel had “seized” it in 1948. None knew that the West Bank had been assigned to the Mandate for Palestine, and had been intended by the League of Nations to form part of a future Jewish state, but Jordan had taken possession of it in the 1948 war. They all knew that the Sinai was part of Egypt, but did not know that Israel had returned it to Egypt after the signing of the Camp David Treaty (which was also unknown to them). None of them had heard of UN Security Council Resolution 242. Asked to estimate the size of Israel, they guessed it was about the size of Maine (Maine is 3.6 times the size of Israel). None of them knew that there are already 22 Arab states – they guessed there were “about ten” — with a total land area of five million square miles. When asked to guess the size of those Arab states compared to Israel, their estimates ranged from 20 to 50 times. In fact, the Arab states are 632 times the size of Israel.

They all believed that Israel was guilty of “ethnic cleansing.” When asked to give an example of that “ethnic cleansing,” they all said that Israel had kicked out 800,000 Arabs during the “Nakba.” When they were told that 160,000 Arabs remained in Israel after the 1948 war, and that now there were two million Arabs living in Israel, they had nothing to say. When asked to estimate the population of Israel, they guessed it was about 25 million. When asked to estimate the population of the 22 Arab states, their average guess was 150 million. The real number is 475 million. When asked to explain what would happen to the Jews of Israel if a Palestinian state were to be established from the river to the sea, three said they should be allowed to stay if the Palestinians agree to it, and two said the Jews should be sent back “to the countries they came from.”

After such ignorance, what forgiveness?

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Astonishing Admittance from Former Iranian Cultural Attache > All weapons against Israel come from Iran

 

All the rockets fired against Israel anywhere are made 

in Iran or the product of Iranian training - Iranian official

FEB 3, 2024 5:00 PM BY ROBERT SPENCER

This is essentially an open admission of the obvious fact that the Islamic Republic of Iran is waging a proxy war against Israel by means of Hamas and the Houthis.

Not to mention Hezbollah and Palestine Islamic Jihad, and probably other groups we haven't heard of yet.

Former Iranian Cultural Attaché To Lebanon Mohammad Mehdi Shariatmadar: "Every Bullet, Rocket, UAV Fired Against Israel From Any Place Was Either Made In Iran Or Is The Product Of Iranian Training"

MEMRI, January 26, 2024:

Former Iranian cultural attaché to Lebanon Mohammad Mehdi Shariatmadar said on a January 26, 2024 show on Asharq News TV (Saudi Arabia) that all the bullets, rockets, and UAVs fired against Israel from anywhere, such as south Lebanon or Palestine, were “either made in Iran or the product of Iranian training.” He said that no one else gave a single bullet to the “Palestinian resistance movements.”

Mohammad Mehdi Shariatmadar: “All the bullets, all the rockets, and all the UAVs that are fired or launched against the Israeli entity anywhere – where in south Lebanon – in Palestine, or anywhere – are either made in Iran or the product of Iranian training. All the weapons. You cannot see anyone [else] in the world who gave a single bullet to the Palestinian resistance movements against the Israeli entity.

“From where would the [Qods] Force come to confront the Zionist entity? Will Jordan allow this? Will Syria allow the Iranian fighters to pass through so they can fight in the occupied lands? What is the difference between fighters who have a different nationality, and who are supported by Iran in the confrontation, and sending [actual Iranian] fighters? Obviously, Iran did do this. Iran sent forces in the past to South Lebanon and to Syria. Today, if Iraq, Jordan, Egypt, Syria, or Lebanon allow for a direct Iranian military presence…I believe that as part of Iran’s plan, and in line with its strategic patience – which has not been properly understood so far – there will be a confrontation. In any case, the confrontation is ongoing. It is not limited to the borders of the Goland Heights, Jordan, Palestine, or Syria, and so on.”

Perhaps, it is time to ask Iranians if this is in keeping with their character? If this is just the mania of the government, or if all the people agree?  

This astonishing admittance should result in complete isolation for Iran, with blanket sanctions smothering their ability to produce a single bullet.

This is Islamic madness in full bloom! Let's starve the plant and not continue to water it.

UN - Is it time to abolish this Antisemitic organization? Special Rapporteur one stupid woman, IMHO; Palestinian UNRWA schools are committing crimes against humanity

 

UN official: ‘The Jewish state’ has no right to self-defense

against Hamas

NOV 10, 2023 8:00 AM BY CHRISTINE DOUGLASS-WILLIAMS

The twisted reasoning of Francesca Albanese, who serves as special rapporteur for the Palestinian territories in the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, is that Israel as a sovereign nation has no right to defend itself against Hamas.

Albanese, who has a long history of anti-Israel bias, brings the already antisemitic UN to a new low. In her thinking and in that of others who support Hamas, Israel must simply put down its weapons and allow its citizens to be savaged and its nation-state to be destroyed. No other nation on earth would be expected to do this. The darkest antisemitism continues to manifest itself globally. Despite the thinking of many, an Islamic jihad is being waged against Jews and Israel.

UN Official Says Israel Has No Right to Self-Defense

by Charles Hilu, Washington Free Beacon, November 7, 2023:

A U.N. official argued Saturday that Israel does not have a right to self-defense against Hamas under international law.

Francesca Albanese, who serves as the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights’s special rapporteur for the Palestinian territories, argued on X Saturday that “self-defense” has a narrow meaning under Article 51 of the U.N. charter. That definition, she said, does not give the Jewish state the right to self-defense against Hamas because the threat stems from an armed group within “occupied territory” and not “another state.” Thus, “under Int’l Law Israel’s actions in Gaza cannot qualify as self-defense,” Albanese said.

Here, she ignores that fact that that armed group was elected by the people of Gaza. She also ignores the fact that Israelis evacuated Gaza in 2005 and it has not been 'occupied' since. 

“Under Art 51, use of force in #SelfDefense is permissible solely to repel an armed attack by another State,” Albanese said. “Threats from armed groups from within occ. territory give state the RIGHT TO PROTECT ITSELF, but not to wage war against the state from which the armed group emanates.”

Albanese has also said that Israel’s actions in Gaza are “criminal.”

Did she notice that Hamas' actions against Israel were far more criminal? 

 “The attacks are clearly indiscriminate, disproportionate and violate the principle of precaution,” she said in an interview with the Guardian published Tuesday. “One cannot bomb hospitals hosting hundreds of patients and sheltering thousands of refugees. Sorry, we need to look for another solution, and not to bomb hospitals. Absolutely not. This is criminal.”

Apparently, she believes Hamas' lies that the IDF bombed Gazan hospitals when most intelligence services around the world determined that it was a Gazan rocket that hit the parking lot of the hospital in Gaza City. 

The day after Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack that killed more than 1,400 Israelis, mostly civilians, Albanese said she was “horrified by the narrative” that focused outrage on Hamas for the attack. She also condemned Israel’s “militarized settler colonial occupation” and violence against “defenseless Palestinians.”

So, how many thousands of rockets did those defenceless Palestinians launch into Israel? Israel has no settlers in Gaza. She should have been horrified by the narrative of the crimes against humanity that Hamas committed against Jewish civilians. What a stupid woman!

A spokesman for Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights said Albanese’s comments are not representative of the U.N.’s position.

“The Special Rapporteur is independent and makes her own assessment,” the spokesman told the Washington Free Beacon. “Israel has legitimate security interests, in respect of which all measures taken must comply with international law, we therefore focus on conduct of hostilities and compliance with International Human Rights Law and International Humanitarian Law.”….

 

UN agency staff celebrated Oct. 7 Hamas massacre

of Israeli civilians

NOV 11, 2023 3:30 PM BY ROBERT SPENCER

UNRWA’s support for jihad terrorists has been abundantly documented, but no seems to mind.

UN Agency Staff Celebrated Oct. 7 Massacre, Part of ‘Terror Strategy’

at Root of Hamas Attack, Watchdog Says

by Debbie Weiss, Algemeiner, November 6, 2023:

Teachers at Palestinian schools run by the UN agency responsible for Palestinian refugees celebrated Hamas’ Oct. 7 massacre against Israel and are part of a “national strategy to commit acts of terror,” the head of a watchdog group told The Algemeiner following the release of the group’s new bombshell report on the matter.

At least 14 teachers at schools run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) publicly celebrated the Hamas atrocities on their social media accounts, with one calling the morning of Oct. 7 an “unforgettable glorious morning,” a report released on Monday by the Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education (IMPACT-se) found.

The report also identified at least 100 Hamas terrorists who are graduates of UNRWA’s educating system. It highlighted Amer Yaser Nazmi Sada, whose diploma was found in the vehicle of one of the terrorists who participated in the Oct. 7 slaughter of Israeli families. The diploma, granted to Sada in 2018 upon his graduation, was signed by the chief of UNRWA’s vocational program in Gaza, Farid Ajmi’an Abu Adhira.

One UNRWA employee in Gaza, Mahmoud Abu Adhm, uploaded several posts supporting the massacre by Hamas, the report showed. In one, posted three days after the attack, Abu Adhm urged the Palestinian terrorist group to kill Israeli hostages, citing Islamic texts: “Do not walk past a captive who has not been given amnesty without striking off his neck so as to terrorize the enemy.”

IMPACT-se CEO Marcus Sheff told The Algemeiner: “When you teach young people to cut the neck of the enemy, do not be surprised when you see acts like that.”

“When you teach young people that Jews should be exterminated, do not be surprised when that is what they attempt to do,” he added.

In another instance, the official Facebook page of an UNRWA elementary school in the West Bank city of Nablus posted a video of a school rally held on Oct. 26 featuring a young boy, accompanied by what seems to be an UNRWA administrator, calling for victory for Hamas’ “jihad warriors” in Gaza and evoking the defeat of the Jews at Khaybar at the hands of Muhammad’s forces in 628 CE….

How desperate Muslims are to have to reach back 1400 years for something to celebrate.

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