Saturday, January 2, 2016

Israel's 'Direct Line to Number 10'

It seems that the UK's Labour Friends of Israel has fallen on hard times:

"Under [Labour leader Jeremy] Corbyn, [Rebecca Simon, vice chair of LFI] said, 'Israel has fundamentally been delegitimised.' She added, 'When I started working at LFI, we had a direct line to number 10 and the Foreign Office. Our relationship was strong. Under Jeremy [Corbyn], we are going to have to find new ways of operating.' The fact Israel currently had a 'right wing government' did not help. 'It is very hard when the current government plays into the narrative of those who are blindly against it'."  (Don't abandon the Labour Party over Corbyn, pleads activist, Rosa Doherty, thejc.com, 30/12/15)

We had a direct line to number 10 & the Foreign Office.

How revealing. Reminds me of that line in Bob Carr's equally revealing Diary of a Foreign Minister:

"... it's an appalling position if Australia allows a group of businessmen in Melbourne to veto policy on the Middle East." (p 188)

We are going to have to find new ways of operating.

Just imagine:

Knock on door. Opens door to find two smiling Anglo-Israeli operatives, who say: Mind if we storm in and interrogate you about Israel?

Bring it on, Rebecca! Bring-it-on!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

So it seems that Jeremy Corbyn, in not buying the tainted product, is the right man for the job.

ThIs is an improvement from the lawless, discredited and partisan U.K. Labour Party of the last one hundred years.

We have in history, in 1920, the sad spectacle of the U.K. Parliamentary Labour Party and various toady trade union groups calling the Prime Minister, Mr Lloyd George, for the "reconstituted National Home of the Jewish people". SO MUCH FOR THE MAJORITY ARAB POPULATION!!
So much for the World War One treaty promising Arab independence, the Mc Mahon-Hussein Treaty, which preceded the Sykes-Picot Treaty AND the Balfour Declaration. Shame. This is the crux of the problem and needs to be resolved honestly before there is meaningful progress.

In 1944, "the National Executive of the Labour Party officially adopted the idea [ethnic cleansing] at its annual conference.
'Palestine' it affirmed, 'surely is a case, on HUMAN GROUNDS TO PROMOTE A STABLE SETTLEMENT, for a TRANSFER OF POPULATION. LET THE ARABS BE ENCOURAGED TO MOVE OUT, AS THE JEWS MOVE IN".

THE GUN AND THE OLIVE BRANCH. David Hirst, 2nd edition, Page 131.

Earnest Bevin was an exception: "Bevin tried, in the spirit of the 1939 White Paper, to win acceptance for an independent state of Palestine that was neither jewish nor Arab, but a marriage, in conditions of mutual respect and equality of both. For nearly two years he refused to bow to the diktat of either side. it was an ATTEMPT at impartiality to which the Zionists took furious exception."
Bevin was "soon to be vilified for his pains as the 'anti-Semite' which, judging from his past record, he certainly was not".

The Gun and the Olive Branch, p121.


If only the Australian Labor Party would arrive in the twenty first century, they might almost be worth voting for, if only they could produce a Corbyn or even a Bevin.