I watched some of the debate in parliament yesterday on the situation in Israel.
I looked at quite a lot of other media on the issue.
And most of what I saw was closed-mindedness and insular polarity.
The issue was presented as if there were two sides to this issue. Either Israel or the various states opposing it are right, but in that case, the other cannot be. That seems to be the common argument.
I heard too many hints and suggestions that because of what Hamas did last October, which was a war crime, Palestinians must suffer, which is an utterly unjustifiable claim.
Time after time, I heard the claim that Israeli actions are justified by self-defence when no sane person can pretend that the disproportionate response to its own security failure can justify its offensive action in many countries.
And with honourable exceptions, I heard a few suggestions that the human suffering from this war is felt on all sides and that we have a duty to all those who are afflicted in whatever way that might be.
The reality is that the leaderships of Hamas, Hezbollah and Israel have all made hideous mistakes in the pursuit of their goals. All of them have blood on their hands. They should all be held responsible.
So, too, should all those who have enabled this situation by the supply of weapons, knowing what they might be used for, be held to account. That includes successive UK governments.
But it is as apparent that the polarisation of debate on this issue now serves no purpose at all.
There is no right or wrong side here. There are sides with worries, concerns and claims, matched by counter-claims. These all require reconciliation to be resolved, not force. And the use of force by all sides in this dispute only prolongs it and makes it worse.
To be insular - as too many are - can on only defer that reconciliation.
In that case, a wise politician would not act as Starmer is doing. He defends Israel too readily when many of its actions are indefensible.
He calls for ceasefires, knowing that they will not be delivered because the foundations for their success do not exist and are made harder to achieve by his own actions.
And he refuses to acknowledge the suffering of the Palestinians, and now the Lebanese and others, who are the innocent victims of all this, when without that recognition, there can be no outcome to what is happening.
Is it really so hard for a politician to realise that there can be both right and wrong on all sides in a dispute? Can they not look for good wherever it might be found? Can't they see that doing so is what creates the basis for peace?
Apparently not, seems to be the answer. And that is worthy of condemnation, because it means that those who cannot do so can contribute nothing to a successful outcome to the stress that afflicts the whole Middle East now.
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“They plunder, they slaughter, and they steal: … and where they make a wasteland, they call it peace.”
Thus have acted many colonial empires, before and after the romans.
So few people know or understand the actual history of Israeli colonialism, and why America, Germany, UK and other western nations and people continue to support what Israel is doing, incorrectly in my opinion.
I found a few sources that might be helpful:
https://youtu.be/elQGTyqx2x8
Also more videos on the GDF website on Youtube.
Only writers like Robert Fisk and perhaps few others really knew what has been happening.
One question is…how many are beholden to, or intimidated by the Israeli lobby? We know in the United States any politician or journalist who criticises Israel gets professional and personal attacks, which can end their career.
Most of the newspapers will not host any pro-Palestinian point of view and will seize upon any excuse to find fault with protestors.
I have little time for most conspiracy theories but where there is evidence, one needs to look further.
For example what Alan Duncan has to say about his party’s Conservative Friends of Israel.
There is an organisation that tracks the funding of US politicians by AIPAC.
Biden, who calls himself a Zionist, is the largest recipient by far. He’s received over $US11 million during his career.
https://trackaipac.com/
There was a BBC ‘whistleblower’ on twitter yesterday who revealed how BBC presenters are honour-bound to elimiinate forbidden words like genocide , or even ‘potential genocide’ – even when spoken by someone being interviewed.
You couldnt get anything further from a ‘public service broadcaster’ – ensuring the polarisation is maintained.
Thank you, Andrew.
Please see what, last week, Anatol Lieven had to say about the BBC after Emma Barnett’s interviews with the Lebanese and Israeli ambassadors. Barnett’s not rare. BBC staff do not always have to be told. Many are like that.
Barnett is the interviewer of Rayner who asked, `Are you going to nationalise sausages?`.Are these the same sausages whose release was demanded by Starmer?
Thank you, Colonel, once again for your estimable insight. All I can say to what you have said here is, OMG.
Israel’s hasbara, its public diplomacy (propaganda) is simply superb. The latest term the IDF is using to justify bombing civilians and turning Lebanon into rubble is “Hezbollah villages.” It’ll be interesting to see if the media runs with it.
Speaking of hasbara, the American investigative journalist Max Blumenthal has just released his documentary about the propaganda that shaped perceptions of October 7 to justify its genocidal assault on Gaza:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bFEurGy05ps
I watched David Lammy on C4 news last night and felt really depressed, never mind Starmer.
He spoke about Iran just like they were talking about Iraq before 2003. He spent too much time in the U.S. that man. Very disheartening.
Lammy sounds like a robot.
I have met him, had a convivial dinner with him even. He need not be like that. But he is now.
Lammy looks to me as though he went on to have few too many dinners after his one with you Richard.
Is there a relationship between corpulence and connivance?
To me, the only way to stop this is to let those dishing out the violence use up their toys and suspend arms sales rigorously – that means the U.S , UK, Iran all doing the right thing and any other suppliers ceasing their feeding of these killing machines on both sides. instead they find it easier to stop food and medicine going in to innocents.
The more one reflects on this though, the more it is plain to me that there are far too many flags of convenience being flown in this conflict and that this is an even dirtier war than what we saw in Iraq or Afghanistan.
And the West has made an enemy of its future, for sure. But those making those decisions will never be held as accountable as the ordinary man in the street.
You are right – this involevs all sides, Iran included
re Lammy see
https://skwawkbox.org/2024/10/08/video-lammy-repeatedly-refuses-to-say-iran-has-right-to-defend-itself-against-israel/
Yes there are rights and wrongs: vast quantities of wrongs on the part of a heavily armed bully (Israel), coupled to a total failure on the part of the the so-called “civilised west” to enforce the rights of the Palestinians (or indeed the Lebanese – an independent state – regularly invaded and attacked by Israel).
The core problem is jewish settlers in the West bank and an Israeli state that is pursuing an expansionist policy whilst at the same time, from 1948 onwards treating non-jews in Israel as 2nd class citizens. Couple this to the occupation of the west bank (key-word occupation) for nearly 60 years, and a de-facto shoot to kill policy by illegal settlers and the Israeli army on any and all palestinians & finally a failure to recognise that those occupied have a right (note that word) to resist.
The problem Israel faces is that most of the countires surrounding it regard it as an “intractable problem”, & the country has never negotiated in good faith, ever for a settlement that stops people being murdered.
Thus rights & wrongs just gives leverage to the Israeli’s. They are & have been since 1948, in the wrong & kept proving it on a regular & growing basis ever since.
I’m glad you said it rather than I Mike.
Thanks. I don’t like bullies, & I can empathise with the Palestinians. One thing missing from narratives: the founding of Hamas was supported by the Israeli gov – since they saw it as a counter to the PLO (falling into the category of “you could not make it up”). This is never, ever , mentioned.
Quite correct, but the problem is how few people know this history, shoddy and fear to tell the truth journalism is partly to blame.
A man, and father, who closes his mind to the suffering of many thousands of babies and young children who have been exterminated along with the rest of their families, is not the person to lead the UK.
There’s something far wrong with this PM’s moral compass.
Where is the ICC?
The Dahiya doctrine aims to punish and kill civilians, and destroy infrastructure disproportionately as a ‘deterrent’ in what the Israelis euphemistically term asymmetric warfare.
The higher the death toll, and the greater the wasteland, means strategic success to the IDF.
It is not a “defence” strategy, but
intends to obliterate.
Peter Oborne is a journalist I respect and he reports on the deliberate destruction of infrastructure in the West Bank.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8-5M6BCIY8
Dahiya, Dahiya, Dahiya should be said again and again and again.
“Of course Israel has the right to defend itself” is heard repeatedly.
To which the reply is “Dahiya … Dahiya is not defence.”
Supposedly UK policy is in support of a 2 state solution because a 2 state solution is in our security interests. Benjamin Netanyahu is against a 2 state solution. He needed very little invitation from Hamas or Trump to end any possibility of a 2 state solution happening in the next decade. Benjamin Netanyahu is not aligned with our security interests. Yet our government says nothing and hand waves the contradiction away by saying “a state has a right to defend itself”.
It isn’t well known but Netanyahu ensured Hamas got funded (via Qatar) because he wanted to foment discord within Palestinian politics.
This short but well researched documentary reveals his strategy.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=2PeYDphtHYo
There are conflicts with two or three ‘wrong’ sides e.g. Russia, Ukraine, USA where peace negotiations were deliberately sabotaged (Ukraine by USA via Johnson, Netanyahu refused the hostage swap linked to Israeli forces leaving Gaza right at the beginning). None of that mitigates Israeli actions since. I’ve followed this since 1973 and, initially sympathetic to Israel I’ve swung quite to the other side. Once you start to research Zionism (founded 1897) you realise what a pernicious racist endeavour it is – please do look for Israeli Jews opposed to all this, such as Gideon Levy (Haaretz). The Israeli rulers corrupt other countries because they alone are the chosen people, and any opposition is smeared (as in the organisation I support, JVL) or murdered.
As Levi writes in his new book “ The Killing of Gaza: Reports on a Catastrophe”:
“The way of terror is the only way open to the Palestinians to fight for their future. The way of terror is the only way for them to remind Israel, the Arab states and the world, of their existence. They have no other way. Israel has taught them this. If they don’t use violence, everyone will forget about them, and then a little later, only through terrorism will they be remembered. Only through terrorism will they possibly attain something. One thing is certain, if they put down their weapons, they are doomed.”
Johnson sabotaged the talks? How? Do you think Ukraine wanted to do a deal? They were desperate to avoid the surrender. If Johnson said anything, it was to convey that NATO would back them.
About the same time Bucha was liberated and they saw the bodies of murdered civilians.
Do you fondly imagine they would have fought so hard for two and half years if surrender would have been so painless.
I spoke to an ex-student last week who spent five years in Belarus and has Russian family. He confirmed from his contacts what Fiona Hill ( who our Colonel Smithers dismissed as ‘a NATO shill ) and others told us.
1 That a large part of the 60 Km column from Kyiv was made up of Rosgvardiya troops (internal security troops) They would have been used to ‘de-Nazify’ Ukraine ( i. e. anyone who thought Ukraine should be ruled by Ukraine )
2 They carried little food and ammunition and were not trained in military tactics. The regular troops were also badly equipped but they were both carrying dress uniforms in their backpacks as Putin assumed, like much of the west the invasion would be over in a week.
People in Belarus can be imprisoned for displaying the Belarussian flag white over red over white.
There is also an archived Novesti web page published the day after the invasion and taken down a few days later which says ‘Now Ukraine has returned to its proper place”.
https://uz.sputniknews.ru/20220226/nastuplenie-rossii-i-novogo-mira-22994815.html
Beware of websites who claim to tell you ‘the truth”.
This morning I heard Boris Johnson say to an interviewer “I just wanted to win the argument”, I think he was speaking of Brexit.
The Palestine/Israel issues are presented to us by journalists and politicians who are striving to win an argument, I would guess that 90% of our media and politicians support the Israeli position. As Israel continues to carry out plausible genocide in Gaza and unleashes frightening detonative power on Lebanon the media voices become more and more absurd as they attempt to justify mass slaughter.
This is the determination of foreign policy by sophistry.
Are these media voices aware of the role they are playing, have they no sense of history or morality. Is there just one mainstream UK journalist or media outlet putting forward the Palestinian case?
I can only assume we are being manipulated and patronised by those pursuing a specific agenda, only one history is deemed to be important.
Of course there are rights and wrongs on both sides but to determine a peaceful way forward both sides must be fairly presented.
David Pratt, a journalist of considerable experience in reporting from conflict zones, writes for The National and frequently quotes from some of the more independently minded Israeli newspapers. Some of his articles here:
https://www.thenational.scot/author/profile/80336.David_Pratt/
Thanks
This conflict is constantly presented as beginning in October last year. It is presented as a war between Israel and Hamas. The word war implies a degree of equality in military power. There is no such equality. Hamas (Palestinians) possess no warplanes, no tanks, no sophisticated weapons. The weapons they have are rudimentary compared with the IDF. The Palestinians have lived under occupation for 76 years. Young men and women have suffered gross violations during that time. Under international law they have a perfect right to resist by any means ,including violence. They are doing just that and who can blame them. Churchill in his famous speech in 1940 in which he anticipated Britain falling under occupation by Nazi Germany spoke of British resistance. “we shall fight them on the beaches,
we shall fight them on the landing grounds, and in the fields and in the streets” He was describing the British doing exactly what Hamas are doing today.
The Israelis are the occupying power. They have no rights ,only obligations. Lost of evidence has been presented showing the truth of this.
The accusations levelled at the Palestinians – rape, beheading babies, incinerating people and dancing around with body parts have all been debunked. Hundreds of those killed turned out to be Palestinians.
Exploding electronic devices reaches depths of depravity rarely ever plumbed. It is final proof of the desire to create a Greater Israel. The USA is complicit.
We are asked by the West to support nations committing the most terrible crimes ,including genocide and apartheid. They must be stopped and punished.
The Palestinians bear NO responsibility for the situation . They are doing what people under the monstrous occupation have the right and the duty to fight back as others have done in the past. The ANC under Mandela, the Maquis in France,
the Mau Mau in Kenya. The should be supported to the hilt.
I agree with your alst commwent – but clearly not to the events of 7/10 or hostage taking
But that said, Palestinians have rights that the world ignores
The butcher, the baker and the candlestick maker are the ones, on both sides, that bear all the suffering while immoral, emotionally delinquent, self-serving individuals we call leaders, who have all the levers available to them, do diddly-squat.
The majority of us are so ground down by a system that has us struggling, with anxiety, just to try and live some sort of decent life that we do not have the reserves to rise-up against these injustices.
But we should.
The reason politicians refuse to accept there is suffering on all sides, is, as ever, down to who pays the piper. It’s long been documented that senior political figures in the West have been successfully lobbied by Israel. They now receive, um, ‘sponsorship’ from Israel. In the USA such lobbying has gone on since 1946.
Which takes us back to another issue. Acts of terror are inexcusable. Period. However, they are often the act of the desperate, of voices that the powerful refuse to listen to. What’s interesting in the Palestine/Israel conflict, is that Israel’s terrorism (against the UK) is presented as ‘acceptable in the face of being ignored (see above)’ wheras Hamas etc’s is not.
Then of course we have the reason why events like October 7th happen in the first place. The forceable removal of Palestinians from what is now Israel, and the subsequent brutalising of them to this day by Israel. What happened on October 7th was wrong, although it now appears much of the very worst aspects were ‘exaggerated in the heat of the moment’ as one key witness now admits, as young people ‘were’ cut down, and other vile acts ‘were’ committed.
However, as an excellent article by a Jewish writer pointed out, such attacks are inevitable. What’s perhaps even more horrific, is that Netanyahu knows this, and welcomes it. His own people become sacrificial victims in his nauseating bid to stave off prosecution, and his own role in devastating Israels once justifiably proud public sector.
That such an evil man can be held up as a hero by large numbers of his own people, and by the cynical racist, west, without demur, is a stain on us all.
As the same Jewish gentleman also said, Netanyahus actions, and the subsequent deaths of Israelis, Palestinians, Lebanese and eventually Iranians, and the failure to stop him, stop the violence, and the gradual spread of hate on all sides has desensitized us to violence, and reduced our empathy, on either side of the divide, to depressingly low levels.
Sadly, you can only suspect this, along with the demonisation of refugees, the disabled, the poor those on benefits and so it wearingly goes on, is quite deliberate.
History, as they say, is doomed to repeat itself.
The former PM of Israel was on C4 newsx last night suggesting that Netanyahu wants ever-growing conflict.
This is the age of the unprincipled go-getter, whether in local, national or inter-national politics, promoting chaos enabling the unprincipled to profit.
It is as if a new open season on freedom has been declared by Capital.
I would take issue with your ‘acts of terror’ assertion. Resistance to an occupying force is legitimate in international law. Whilst I imagine all of us would condemn the acts of Oct 7 that doesn’t alter the fact that it was, albeit misguided, resistance.
It is difficult for any of us to identify with how it must feel to be subjected to the atrocities that the Palestinians have endured across generations but I imagine many of us would react with similar abject rage.
‘ Ten Myths about Israel’ by Ilan Pappe, an Israeli writer whose parents were German Jews that fled the Holocaust, is a sobering read.
Thank you.
I would add Oxford’s Avi Schlaim, too.
Neil, I think yours is a very fair evaluation.
As for history repeating itself… there is nothing in the present crisis that had a 7th October start date.
Jews in Hebron were attacked in 1929 by Arabs, and there was an Arab uprising that killed hundreds of Jews in the early 1930s.
However, Zionist militias emerged as early as 1920 with the first really powerful Zionist militia/terror gang – Haganah – mistitled “The Defence”, whose initial more passive defence of the small communities of Palestinian Jews soon hardened into leading insurgency against the British and Palestinians. .
Haganah, along with the hardline terrorists of the Stern Gang and Irgun, many of whose leaders ended up in government post 1948, repeatedly attacked Jerusalem Palestinians and bombed Haifa Palestinians in a series of terror attacks in 1938-9.
Then post WW2, the Palestinian village of Deir Yassin was attacked by both Irgun and the Stern Gang, as an objective for “strategic control”, in a particularly vicious strike.
As an act of aggression by Zionist terror gangs Deir Yassin still has particular resonance in the folk memories of Palestinians as it pretty much triggered the Nakba.
(https://www.britannica.com/place/Deir-Yassin).
Then there were repeated Zionist terror gang atrocities at …
Eilabun
Balad al-Shaykh
Tantura
that further fed into the Nakba and eventually drove out 750,000 Palestinians..
The Nakba, now 75 years ago, holds both the continuing and clearly justified fear of the Palestinians, and seems to be the driving strategy of the IDF and militaristic mind set of Netanyahu.
Both Hamas and Hizbollah emerged as resistance movements in the early 1980s as a response to Israeli military actions. Hamas was even partly funded by Netanyahu as an opposing force in attempts to destabilise the Palestinian Authority leadership.
A far right Zionist mindset now absolutely dominates the current Israeli government with its reliance on the fringe parties, and Netnayahu’s own moves further to the right, though he has consistently objected to the 2 state solution for almost 30 years.
How to find a negotiated way forward ?
I believe that the resistance movements would also cease IF there were genuine acceptance of the possibility of a two state solution, with some evidence of goodwill from both sides, especially Iran withdrawing its involvement in its proxies,
and ZIonists equivantly acknowledgeing the right to life and peaceful existence for Palestinians.
We are in perpetual war mode, so peaceful existence for neither Israelis nor Palestinians.
The current militarism now goes back a hundred years,
Only a promise of recognition of the safety of both populations, with both a total cessation of Zionist colonisation and occupation, and equivalent acceptance of Israel by Arab neighbouring states can work.
I think the biggest initial problem is the lack of an honest broker, as the USA cannot take this on, and neither can the UN, though that ought to be their role, because of the incredible stigmatisation, even hatred of the UN from the Zionist movement.
So who can possibly take on the intermediary role ?
Right now, I can see no hope, and no-one who can take on that peacemaker responsibility at all, and a regional war of unknown duration, followed by periodic resistance with crushing reaction by the IDF.
That, depressingly, sounds very true. The extremists in both the current Israeli government and the Iranian government and it’s proxies have no desire for, or interest in a peaceful solution.
So as a documentary last week on BBC2 showed, Palestinian children are growing up with an implacable hatred of Israel and Jewish children, or at least the daughter of a settler in the West Bank whose father was killed by a Palestinian 6 six years ago, grow up calling the Arabs ‘sub human monkeys’, (shades of Nazi depictions of Jews) and state that this +the West Bank) is their land and that she would avenge her father.
Who decides what is an “act of terror”?
Who decides who is “a terrorist”?
When an American drone kills “a terrorist” in Afghanistan (and possibly an entire family) in a “targeted assassination” is that an act of terrorism? Every day Obama (these assassinations peaked in his administration) was offered a list of suspects to eliminate.
When an IDF quadcopter hovers outside Palestine homes (or what’s left of them) and plays the sound of a baby crying in anguish to draw people outside and then shoot them, is that an act of terror?
The language we use is political. Look at the headlines. Hamas or Hezbollah invades or attacks, while the IDF does a “ground operation.” The examples are endless.
And so is the silence. The IDF’s use of white phosphorus bombs which cause hideous injuries and intense fire is a war crime. It’s not mentioned, nor that the US is making and supplying them.
Remember when the western press lost its mind over the Taliban destroying ancient statues and structures? It’s silent on the destruction of Gaza’s historic churches and mosques, not to mention all of Gaza’s universities, and its hospitals and schools, and water supplies.
I suspect you know very well that it is the expressed, open and deliberate policy of Hamas, Hezbollah and their Iranian sponsors to wipe jews off the face of the earth, the genocide of the Palestinians is not and never has been Israeli government policy, and never would be.
One proof of this particular pudding is that if Israel wanted to kill all Palestinians it could do so in an afternoon, and has been able to do so for about thirty years. And yet it hasn’t.
Contrariwise, if Hamas could kill all Jews it would – cheered on by the Guardian and the BBC I suspect.
If Hamas returned the hostages they have spent the last year raping torturing and murdering, along with the evil filth who masterminded and carried out October 7 (if any are still alive), the whole thing would end the same day.
I am posting your comment to demonstrate how absurd your claims, and those of others who try to post here, are.
I have condemned the actions of Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran and their agressions when they happen.
But the overwhelming evicence is that Israel is the regional aggressor in the Middle East. It launches vastly more attacks then anyone else.
And world authorities think Israel is undertaking a genocide of Palestinians, refuting all you say. I obejctuively agree with thsoe authorities. Yoru claimns about Israeli policyare false, in my opinion.
As for your claims about the Guardian and BBC, these can only be described as deranged. You are clearly utterly unable to form objective assessments of situations.
I have condemned the actions of 7 October, but let me make cledar, your claims and fabrications are abhorent. They might also be deeply anti-Semitic.
Well put, RM.
I was checking a David Ben Gurion quote and found this one. The long held Zionist dream of expansion in the region – Greater Israel – may finally be within its grasp.
“We should prepare to go over to the offensive. Our aim is to smash Lebanon, Trans-Jordan, and Syria. The weak point is Lebanon, for the Moslem regime is artificial and easy for us to undermine. We shall establish a Christian state there, and then we will smash the Arab Legion, eliminate Trans-Jordan; Syria will fall to us. We then bomb and move on and take Port Said, Alexandria and Sinai.”
David Ben-Gurion May 1948, to the General Staff. From Ben-Gurion, a Biography, by Michael Ben-Zohar, Delacorte, New York 1978.
https://www.progressiveisrael.org/ben-gurions-notorious-quotes-their-polemical-uses-abuses/
Like many of your readers, I was first aware of the Holocaust when in a cinema, probably about 1953/4. It was horrifying and I do remember asking my father, so was this… why we went to war with Germany? His reply, Well, actually we didn’t know anything about that until all the information came afterwards. So, actually, you weren’t too bothered about what was happening in Germany before,?? So, well actually, you don’t care too much about ‘other people’……
Thankyou for setting Jakob to rights. To just pick up on a few points. While it is endlessly repeated that “Israel has the right to defend itself” while forgetting that an oppressed and occupied population such as the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank also have the internationally
supported right to defend themselves from oppression, actually Israel’s right is not actually supported by international law. Israel is the occupier of Gaza and that position means that it is legally obliged to protect and treat its inhabitants civilly. The fact that it has not done so has led to the current revolt led by Hamas. I was struck yesterday while watching news coverage of the memorial ceremonies in Israel, this one being held on the site of the Nova music festival just on the Israeli side of their enormous wall. While the citizens of Israel expressed their sadness for the deaths and hostage takings of their people, the sound of bombs being dropped on Palestinians just on the other side was clearly visible. A huge moral vacuum seems to have opened up in Israeli society. Aljazeera has recently produced an hours long video entitled “Investigating War Crimes in Gaza” that shows the true horror of what is happening and contains much triumphant video taken from cell phones posted to social media by the IDF soldiers who obviously have no fear of being held to account for their actions. Impunity in action.
We must remember that there are also many Jewish people who are appalled by the actions of their government. Referred to as “self hating Jews” by Netanyahu et al they have been a steadfast component of many of the protests against this horrible war. Jewish Voice for Peace is the organization many belong to.
Richard,
One of the biggest obstacles to discussing events in the Middle East is the collective narrative of silence on the legacy and impact of the British colonial rule in the Middle East. The British establishment were dragged kicking and screaming to acknowledge the impact of slavery, racism, and settler and extractive colonialism in Africa, Asia, Australasia, and North America. But when it comes to the role of Britain (and France) in the Middle East, the focus of attention jumps to 29 November 1947 and the decision – by then membership of the United Nations – to create the state of Israel in 1948.
Indeed, the tendency is to overlook ideas emanating from Theodor Herzel – see Link A. This results in failure to critically examine how these ideas materialised though events in the build-up to WW1, the text of the Balfour Declaration (which was drafted and signed before Britain had a mandate over Palestine), imperial colonial order and the collapse of the British Empire at the end of WWII, the Cold War and the search for strategic spheres of influence, the rise of post-WWII US-led neoliberal order, and the emergence of a multi-nodal world order after the global financial crises.
Link A: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Theodor-Herzl
It is worth remembering that one of the chief architects of the State of Israel was Chiam Weizmann – see Link B – who went onto become the first President of Israel. Weizmann absorbed Herzel’s ideas and became an ardent Zionist. He also had a major hand in crafting the text that finally appeared as ‘The Balfour Declaration’ in 1917. However, he exaggerated support for Zionism among Jews and had to battle against the views of Jews who were integrated into UK, European and Russian societies, and who were not interested in the creation of Jewish State. Indeed, according to Weizmann, there were about 17 million Jews in the world prior to WWII. Of these, 10-11 million lived in comparatively tolerable conditions, and were not at risk of physical extermination. These were Jews who lived in the US, the British Empire and the USSR. But his concern was for the fate of 6-7 million Jews who lived in central or southeastern Europe – in Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, the Western Balkans and especially Poland. However, Weizmann was not interested in the British Uganda scheme, Russias Crimea scheme, the Texas scheme etc. – see Link C.
Link B: https://embassies.gov.il/MFA/AboutIsrael/state/Pages/Chaim%20Weizmann.aspx
Link C: https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-uganda-proposal-1903
Getting to grips with this history needs to be foregrounded in the economic struggles against neoliberal and settler colonial policies and institutions, as well as their logics of elimination that has aided the de-fragmentation of Palestinian life, land, and political economy. What becomes clear – through this approach is that Israel was created under a particular type of imperial economic world order where the Arabs of Palestine – from the wording in the final text of the Balfour Declaration in 1917 to the Oslo Accords of 1993 – are regarded as little more than a reserve pool of labour for the Israeli economy. A risk that Lord Curzon first drew attention to in 1917. Unfortunately, his views were ignored.
It is noteworthy that the Balfour Declaration does not actually refer to the Arabs who had lived in Palestine for over 2000 years at all. Instead, the text refers to “non-Jewish communities” who formed 90 per cent of the population; the text also states that their “civil and religious rights” would be protected. In other words, Arabs had no political or economic rights. The Oslo accords, on the other hand, was merely an interim agreement on first steps towards a settlement. But then the Israel-Jordan agreement of 1994 – which focused on key issues salient to Palestine – e.g., refugees and displaced people, borders, water security, economic relations, etc. was undertaken without the Palestinians. The absence of personhood for the Palestinians in these documents – almost 76 years apart – is reflected in the political economy of Greater Israel and the way it had controlled Gaza and occupies the West Bank – see Link D
Link D: https://alaatartir.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/pages-from-political-economy-of-palestine-published-may-2021-2.pdf
Unless and until this history is situated with the prevailing political economy, it is most unlikely that British (and US politicians who are subjected to the influence of powerful lobby groups) will engage with this injustice: an injustice that is now being re-articulated across Global South and symbolised by the ICJ case South Africa has brought against Isreal and which many other countries are now signing-up to.
My sense is that the battles taking place across the Middle East today are not a rerun of the past. Instead, they ones of hope for a future linked to the emergence of a multi-nodal world. This hope is a rooted in the real world economics of the BRICS plus grouping which account for a larger share of global GDP (in PPP terms), a larger share of global trade, and a larger share of global population than the G7 and/or the EU – see Link D.
Link D:
https://www.banque-france.fr/en/publications-and-statistics/publications/expansion-brics-what-are-potential-consequences-global-economy
UK and EU politicians – who are battling secular stagnation – need to be alert to this realism and respond by lending their weight to a just settlement for the Arabs of Palestine.
Thanks for this analysis