Israel as Czechoslovakia

Melanie Philips – Spectator
http://www.spectator.co.uk/melaniephillips/5861291/israel-as-czechoslovakia.thtml
Tuesday, 23rd March 2010

So it’s now not just a crisis between the Obama administration and Israel. By a remarkable coincidence, the UK government has now upped the ante too against its sole ‘friend’ and ‘ally’ in the Middle East. First the Obamites deliberately and gratuitously escalated the non-event of Israeli building permits just across the ‘green line’ in Jerusalem – in a Jewish area which is hemmed in between other Jewish areas – into a full-scale dressing down of Israel, provoking the worst crisis between America and Israel for three decades. Then today, Israel’s ambassador to the UK was summoned into the Foreign Office and told that, to mark Britain’s deep displeasure at the alleged theft by Mossad of the passport identities of a number of British/Israeli citizens in order to kill the Hamas terrorist Mahmoud al Mabhouh in Dubai last January, an Israeli diplomat – said to be a Mossad operative – was to be expelled from Britain.

The word ‘disproportionate’ comes to mind.

There is still much about the killing of Mabhouh which remains mysterious and indeed inexplicable – such as the enormous number of some 27 agents apparently involved in the operation. And Israel has neither confirmed nor denied that the Mossad was involved, although Britain says there are ‘compelling reasons’ to believe that it was involved in the misuse of the British passports.
‘Compelling reasons’, eh? Nor proof, note. But who needs proof when, in the eyes of the British government, Israel is guilty a priori? You might think that the killing of such a vile enemy of humanity would be a cause of some grim satisfaction in the desperate struggle under way to defend life, liberty and justice against those who would destroy them. But no – as Douglas Murray points out -- Britain punishes those who are in the front line of such a defence, while allowing a free pass, not to mention public platforms and even government jobs, to those who work for the destruction of Britain, Israel and the free world.

As I understand it, stealing passport identities is a common tactic of a number of intelligence agencies – maybe even, it is said, the British MI6. That is, if they were actually stolen in the manner to which Miliband has cryptically alluded – which, to this observer at least, is far from proven. For sure, the passport-holders in question had nothing at all to do with the killing of Mabhouh. But if their passport identities were cloned, that in itself proves nothing at all beyond that bald fact.

Certainly, if they were indeed stolen and the lives of these British Israeli citizens put recklessly at risk, this would be invidious one would hardly expect the British government not to protest. But to throw out a diplomat is one of the most serious signs of diplomatic disapproval a country can take. To do so against a supposed ally suggests a very serious breach in that relationship, way beyond the likely displeasure caused by such an occurrence. To do so, furthermore, after a series of consistently hostile acts against Israel by the British government – taking the side of Hamas over Israel’s self-defence in Cast Lead, enforcing an embargo on spare parts for Israeli warships, inciting a boycott of Israeli goods from the disputed territories, refusing to vote against the grotesque Goldstone report -- suggests a consistent strategy of throwing Israel under the bus.
And to do so while the crisis between Israel and America is still in progress suggests that Hillary Clinton has been murmuring into the ear of her girlish crush David Miliband, as Gordon Brown marches dutifully in lockstep with Obama in the common cause of delegitimising Israel in order to throw it to the genocidal Islamic wolves.

As Michel Gurfinkiel writes:

Problems arise time and again among good friends or among allies. In spite of their special relationship, the U.S. and the UK have quite often quarreled. But friends and allies usually make sure to calm the issues down. In fact, this is what validates their bond. On the other hand, when a friend or an ally allows the disagreement to grow into a crisis or fuels the fire, that means that it is not a true friend or ally any longer. Remember Jacques Chirac, the president of France from 1995 to 2007, who, on a state visit to Israel in 1995, turned a minor misunderstanding with his Israeli security escort in the Old City into an argument between the two countries. Chirac elicited completely unnecessary apologies from then-Prime Minister Netanyahu. Such behavior merely signaled what was to come: Chirac’s alignment with Yasser Arafat and similar figures in the Middle East.

The former Israel Prime Minister Ariel Sharon once protested – to general diplomatic outrage – that Israel would not play the role of Czechoslovakia in the thirties. It looks horribly if the repetition of that catastrophic history is precisely what the US and UK governments have in mind.

The signals from the UK and US administrations could not be clearer. As Iran races to obtain its genocide bomb, Obama and Miliband are preparing to abandon its putative victim – and, in turn, their own countries -- while grovelling to the enemies of civilisation. The systematic delegitimisation of Israel has done its infernal work all too well in softening up the public –in Britain, at least – for the final annihilation of those who only want to be allowed to live in peace in their historic homeland. As the lynching of Israel proceeds, who in the American and British political establishments will have the integrity and courage to stand up and say, ‘Not in my name’?