Israel, the Golan and the Great British Foreign Office Fantasy - by Douglas Murray

...The Israeli government has given the British government what it wanted. Perhaps now would be a good time for the British government to reciprocate in some way?

Douglas Murray..
Gatestone Institute..
24 July '18..

According to the British Foreign Office, the Golan Heights are 'occupied'. They have been 'occupied' -- according to the logic of the UK Foreign Office -- since 1967, when Israel took the land from the invading forces of Syria. Ever since then, the Israelis have had the benefit of this strategic position and the Syrian regime has not. This fact, half a century on, still strikes the British Foreign Office as regrettable, and a wrong to be righted in due course.

Of course, since the onset of the Syrian civil war in 2011, the official position of the UK government has become ever-harder to justify. For example, if the Israeli government were at some point over the last seven years suddenly to have listened to the wisdom of the Foreign Office in London and handed over the strategic prize of the Golan, to whom should it have handed it? Should Israel be persuaded to hand over the territory to the Assad regime in Damascus? It is true that, throughout the course of the Syrian civil war, the one bit of territory to which the Syrian regime has laid claim and which it has not been able to barrel-bomb and otherwise immiserate the people there has been the Golan Heights. Only in the Golan has anybody in this 'Greater Syria' been able to live free from the constant threat of massacre and ethnic, religious or political cleansing.

Other candidates for the territory naturally presented themselves across the same time-frame. The armies of ISIS came right up to the villages on the Syrian side along the borders of the Golan. There, they were able to bring that form of peace-through-barbarism which the world has come to know well. If ISIS had triumphed in the Syrian conflict rather than suffering repeated set-backs, would the UK Foreign Office have handed them the territory by way of reparational justice, or victor's prize? If not them, then perhaps the armies of Iran or Russia could have been the recipients of this feat of restorative diplomacy? Perhaps anyone who wished to lay claim to the Golan could have had it. So long as it was not the Israelis.

(Continue to Full Post)

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

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England’s royal ‘settlers’ understanding of Jerusalem - by Stephen M. Flatow

It’s easy to see why the Palestinian Authority would have been offended by Prince Charles’ visit to his relatives’ graves in 2016—and why they will be unhappy if Prince William wants to do likewise.

Stephen M. Flatow..
JNS.org..
21 June '18..

The staff of Great Britain’s Prince William has set off a controversy by listing Jerusalem under “Occupied Palestinian Territories” in the itinerary for his upcoming visit to the region. The irony is that two of the prince’s own relatives chose to be buried in that same territory—and surely would have scoffed at the idea that the “Palestinians” are the territory’s rightful owners.

William’s great-grandmother, Princess Alice, and her aunt, the Grand Duchess Elisabeth, are both buried in a small Christian cemetery on the Mount of Olives near the largest Jewish cemetery in the world. The Mount of Olives is in a part of the city that the Palestinian Authority calls “Arab East Jerusalem.”

The P.A. says that area should be the “capital of Palestine.” As such, according to the P.A., Zionists—whether Jews or Christians—have no right to be there. They’re “illegal settlers.”

Here are some facts. The cemetery where the two royals are buried belongs to the Church of Mary Magdalene, a Russian Orthodox Church and convent that was built at the foot of the Mount of Olives in 1886 by Czar Alexander II. It is located directly across the Kidron Valley from the Temple Mount, the holiest site in Judaism.

Princess Alice, who lived in Greece during World War II, hid a Jewish family from the Nazis and was posthumously honored by Yad Vashem as one of the Righteous Among the Nations. Alice, who passed away in 1969, left instructions to be buried at Mary Magdalene cemetery. Her remains were transferred there in 1988.

Prince Charles, the grandson of Princess Alice (and heir to the throne of England) visited the graves of his grandmother, and her aunt, when he attended the funeral of Shimon Peres in 2016. But his visit to the Mount of Olives was undertaken secretly, without the knowledge of the public or news media, apparently for fear of offending the P.A.

It’s easy to see why the P.A. would have been offended by Prince Charles’ visit to his relatives’ graves—and why they will be unhappy if Prince William wants to do likewise.

(Continue to Full Column)

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

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Prince William (and the British Foreign Office) in Jerusalem - by Elliott Abrams

...The visit by Prince William has been damaged by the Foreign Office, but it is still a step forward after 70 years of refusals to make an official visit at all. One hopes that during the Prince’s visit to Israel, someone—perhaps the Chief Rabbi—will tell him what was the fate of East Jerusalem before Israel conquered it in 1967: no access at all for Jews, no protection for Jewish holy sites, vast destruction of Jewish holy and historical locations. The Prince will visit the Mount of Olives. Perhaps he might be told what occurred during the Jordanian period...

Elliott Abrams..
Pressure Points..13 June '18..
Link: https://www.cfr.org/blog/prince-william-and-foreign-office-jerusalem

I’ve written many times about the British royal family’s remarkable record of refusing to make an official visit to Israel while making scores of visits to Arab capitals. That will change in a matter of days when Prince William visits Jordan, Israel, and the “Occupied Palestinian Territories.”

It has long been assumed that the royals themselves were not refusing to visit, but were (as is constitutionally required in the U.K.) following the advice of Her Majesty’s Government—in this case the Foreign Office. While we do not know what led to the current change of policy that permits a royal visit, it may well be the warming relations between Israel and some of its Arab neighbors. It simply cannot be argued these days that a royal visit to Israel will harm Britain in any way.

More on:

Palestinian Territories Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Israel United Kingdom Palestinian Territories
But leave it to the Foreign Office to try to stir ill will over the visit. Here is what the Jewish Chronicle in London reports:

The Duke of Cambridge will arrive in the evening on June 25, after visiting Jordan.

His first engagement, on the morning of June 26, will see him visit Yad Vashem – Israel's official memorial to the Jewish victims of the Holocaust.

Accompanied by Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis, the prince will receive a short tour of the museum and meet with a survivor of the Holocaust and the Kindertransport.

He will also lay a wreath in Yad Vashem’s Hall of Remembrance.

After that, the prince will meet Mr Netanyahu and Mr Rivlin at their respective residences....planned stops include the Mount of Olives, where the prince’s great grandmother, Princess Alice of Battenberg, is buried.

The itinerary says this will take place as part of the prince’s trip to the “Occupied Palestinian territories.”

It gets worse.

Surprise? The British Royal Boycott of Israel Continues - by Elliott Abrams

One might have hoped that those ostensibly in charge of the FCO, Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson and above him Prime Minister Theresa May, would weigh in and ask the “Royal Visits Committee” to explain its decision. If they do not, it will appear that Her Majesty’s Government is happy to tolerate a policy that increasingly seems to be based on sheer prejudice.

Elliott Abrams..
Pressure Points..
11 May '17..
Link: http://blogs.cfr.org/abrams/2017/05/12/the-british-royal-boycott-of-israel-continues/

I’ve written before, in 2014 and 2016, about the remarkable failure of any British royal to visit Israel except briefly for a funeral. Prince Philip attended Rabin’s funeral and Prince Charles attended that of Shimon Peres, but an official visit–to see and honor the country–appears to be beyond the pale.

This indefensible practice should not, it seems, be blamed on the royal family, but instead on the Foreign Office. The FCO, as it is known, has just done it again.

This year is the 100th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration. Moreover, there will this year be commemorations of the British Commonwealth troops who fell in the Palestine Campaign in 1917.

But it is not to be, the British tabloid The Sun reports:

The Continuing Saga of the British Royals, Arabs, and Israel

...There are really only three logical explanations. The first is that the British royals only like to visit royals, and try to stay away from republics. But Prince Charles has visited Egypt time after time, so there goes that theory...

Elliott Abrams..
Pressure Points..
27 November '14..

The bizarre story of the refusal of British royals to visit Israel, while they are constantly in the Arab world, continues.

I wrote about this phenomenon here, last February, when Prince Charles visited Saudi Arabia. As I noted then, the Queen has never set foot in Israel and Prince Charles set foot there briefly only once, for the Rabin funeral.

By contrast, in just the month of November 2014 we found Prince Andrew and Prince Harry at what the Foreign Office must have considered a diplomatic necessity: the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix. Prince Andrew also visited Saudi Arabia (at the request of the Foreign Office, it was announced).

And Prince Harry also visited Oman. Now with all due respect, Oman is a country of 3.6 million people with a GDP of $80 billion. Israel is a country of 8 million people with a GDP of about $300 billion. No point in laboring the comparison, but one might add that Prince Charles visited Oman in 2013 and the Queen herself visited there in 2010.

Daphne Anson:The Foreign Office Camel Corps Sticks by the Goldstone Report

Daphne Anson
05 April '11

http://daphneanson.blogspot.com/2011/04/foreign-office-camel-corps-sticks-by.html






Mud sticks, and so, I guess, does camel dung. Despite Richard Goldstone's virtual mea culpa in a recent Washington Post (see http://daphneanson.blogspot.com/2011/04/goldstone-guilt-of-gullible-man.html) and pledge to help nullify the report in the UN, Her Britannic Majesty's Foreign and Commonwealth Office is sticking to the notion that Israel committed war crimes during Operation Cast Lead.

A Foreign Office spokesman is quoted as telling the Jewish Chronicle (http://www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/47497/foreign-office-still-backing-goldstone-report) that Goldstone's comments in the Washington Post are due to "the process that was set in train by his fact-finding mission" and that since Goldstone hasn't elaborated "on his views on the various other allegations made against Israel in his report," or called for the report's retraction independent investigations of claims against Israel should continue.

Declared the spokesman:

"Allegations of breaches of international humanitarian law made against all parties to the Gaza conflict are not limited to the Goldstone Report, and have arisen from certain other credible organisations. 

We firmly believe that any and all such allegations must be met with credible and independent investigations by the parties to the conflict."

There is a similar, amplified, report in the Jerusalem Post regarding Britain's perfidious stance.

Clearly, whatever slimy David Cameron and turgid William Hague might claim to the contrary, the Cameron-Clegg Coalition are no true friends of Israel.

They evidently have a well-planned agenda.

The Jewish Chronicle (25 February 2011) carried a front page article headed "UK pushes for 'two states by September'", and as Caroline Glick observes in her recent Jerusalem Post piece regarding Goldstone's volte-face, the "denoument" of current trends is likely to be the recognition by the United Nations in September of a Palestinian State comprising the West Bank, Gaza, and all of Jerusalem but the western portion.

Continues Ms Glick, who justifiably calls the Goldstone Report an "eponymous blood libel":

'The fact is that while acceptance of "Palestine" as a UN member state will be a blow, it will mark an escalation not a qualitative departure from the basic challenges we have been facing for years. 

Europe already claims that by maintaining sovereignty over its capital and control over its heartland in Judea and Samaria, Israel is illegally occupying the Palestinians' land. So does the Obama administration. 

As we approach the September deadline, the question we need to consider is what the concrete consequences of Palestinian membership in the UN would be? What new anti-Israel activities will international organizations and states engage in following such a move? And how can we meet those challenges? In general, the acceptance of "Palestine" will present us with new threats from three different actors: the International Criminal Court, the EU and the US. 

If "Palestine" is accepted as a UN member nation, we have been warned, it will join the International Criminal Court and file war crimes complaints against us. While this is probably true, the fact is that even without the prerequisite UN membership, the Palestinians have already filed war crimes complaints against us at the ICC. Although "Palestine" must already be a state for the ICC to entertain the complaints, it has not rejected them. 

But two can play this game. Say "Palestine" joins the ICC. Even if Israel remains outside the treaty, it can use the Palestinians' membership against them. Both Fatah and Hamas have committed innumerable war crimes. Every terrorist murder and attempted murder, every missile, mortar shell and rocket fired is a separate war crime. And every terror victim has the right to file war crimes complaints against "Palestine" with the ICC prosecutor. 

As to the Europeans, the fact is that they have already joined the Arab onslaught on the international diplomatic stage and they have already imposed limited economic sanctions. They have set aside negotiations on upgrading the EU-Israel Economic Association Agreement. Several EU member states have unofficially enacted trade boycotts. Britain, for instance, implemented an unofficial arms embargo several years ago.'

Read all of Caroline Glick's piece here: http://www.carolineglick.com/e/2011/04/richard-goldstone-and-palestin.php

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The British Are Still in Palestine

Shoshana Bryen
Senior Director for Security Policy
JINSA Report #: 1,055
January 25, 2011

In an interesting juxtaposition, right after yesterday's JINSA Report about the importance of temperate and truthful words, al Jazeera and The Guardian (UK) announced that leaked documents prove Abu Mazen and Saeb Erekat made far reaching peace proposals to Israel during the left-wing government of Ehud Olmert including Jewish sovereignty over neighborhoods built after 1967 ("It would be the largest Yerushalayim in history," Erekat is supposed to have said.), a consortium including Israel to control the Al Aqsa Mosque/Temple Mount, Israel would get the Etzion Bloc, the Palestinians would drop the so-called "right of return", there would be land swaps, and more. In the same documents, the sources reported, then-Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni denounced her own government for not agreeing.

With the "peace process" a shambles, someone wants to show the Palestinians as moderates, taking "risks for peace" against a nasty, intransigent Israel. Who? Pundits quickly associated the documents with WikiLeaks, but The Guardian itself tells a story in which the British government is strongly implicated.

The leaked material came from a unit called the, "Palestinian negotiation support unit (NSU), which has been the main technical and legal backup for the Palestinian side in the negotiations. The British government has heavily funded the unit. Other documents originate from inside the PA's extensive U.S.- and British-sponsored security apparatus. The Israelis, Americans and others kept their own records, which may differ in their accounts of the same meetings." The NSU, The Guardian notes, "is formally part of the Palestine Liberation Organization" and employs Palestinians. "The role of the NSU in the negotiations has caused tensions among West Bank-based Palestinian leaders and officials, and widespread resentment about the salaries paid to its most senior managers, notably... Andrew Kuhn [not a Palestinian, Ed.], who stepped down from running the unit last year."

So the British government (read British intelligence) paid for and organized support of the Palestinians in negotiations and The Guardian announces up front that American and Israeli records of the same meetings may be different. Who knew the British were so heavily involved? Why were they and why would their records be different if everyone was in the same room speaking the same language - English - according to The Guardian. Either concessions were offered or they weren't.

We're betting they weren't.

The most obvious outcome of the leaks has been to enhance the already bloody rivalry among Palestinian groups. Fatah called the documents lies, but Hamas called Abu Mazen and Fatah traitors for giving away Palestinian assets. There were riots in Ramallah yesterday and the "Palestinian street" appears very angry.

They should be angry if Fatah was saying privately to Jews precisely the opposite of what it tells its own people every day in every way in Arabic. Abu Mazen has staked out his positions, publicly and adamantly, as Yasser Arafat's three immutable goals:

- An independent Palestinian State without agreeing to legitimate borders for Israel.

The current push to have other countries recognize "Palestine" within the so-called "1967 Borders" enables the Palestinian Authority (PA) to say, "Yes, you agree that the '67 Borders are where we start our country, but we didn't agree that anything to the West of those borders is a sovereign state of Israel." Interestingly, the one concession The Guardian and al Jazeera don't claim Abu Mazen and Erekat made was one to "end the conflict" and/or accept the legitimacy of Jewish sovereignty in the region. There was no mention of "secure and recognized boundaries" for Israel.

- The capital of Palestine in Jerusalem.

At a minimum, this refers to the part of Jerusalem illegally occupied by Jordan from 1949-1967, but the Palestinians formally and publicly deny Jewish roots in Jerusalem, specifically roots in the Temple Mount area. Erekat would probably choke on the word "Yerushalayim," but more important, the idea that part of Al Quds east of the Mandelbaum Gate could be sovereign Jewish territory would indeed be a betrayal of Arafat and the Palestinian mandate.

- The right of Palestinians who left the area in 1948-1949 and their descendants to move to places west of the 1949 Armistice Line from which they claim to have come.

In no way has the PA prepared its people for compromise and it is hard to find serious evidence that they were planning to compromise on any of the fundamental principles.

There was a heavy British hand in this - Empire dies hard - between the financial and staff support of the NSU and the leak to a British paper. The British Foreign Office has always been implacably hostile to Israel and may have been determined finally to finish establishing the Palestinian Arab state that didn't emerge at the end of the mess they made of the Mandate for Palestine. The effort was a failure and the price is being paid largely by the Palestinians - nothing new for the British in the Middle East, but you'd think they'd give it up already.

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Drivers of Dhimmitude, Lovers of Londonistan: Britain’s Foreign Office Camel Corps and the Betrayal of Israel

Daphne Anson
15 January '11

In 2006 British journalist Martin Bright authored When Progressives Treat with Reactionaries: The British State’s flirtation with radical Islam (published by the think tank Policy Search), available online as a PDF file. Bright dedicated the pamphlet to “a Foreign Office whistleblower whose courageous actions have allowed me to expose Whitehall’s love affair with Islamism.”

The whistleblower, Derek Pasquill, subsequently lost his job. "My client has been victimised," his lawyer said, "He believed that the public had a right to know about what he believed to be a dangerous government policy."


Dangerous indeed. For, thanks to Pasquill, Bright was able to expose the Foreign Office’s links with the Muslim Brotherhood via the Muslim Council of Britain and dependence on radical Islamist advisers, together with the fact that “the Government’s strategy towards the British Muslim community has been driven in recent years by the Foreign Office rather than any domestic department of state”.

This continuing process began when Jack Straw was Foreign Secretary – in 2001 he established a unit that became known as Engaging With the Muslim World.

That unit's head (2004-6), until her present appointment as ambassador to Lebanon, was Britain's former ambassador to Yemen (2001-4), Frances Guy – who would become so notoriously enamoured of Sheikh Fadlallah, the Hezbollah Holocaust-denier who masterminded terrorist attacks and the kidnappings of several British hostages as well as issuing a fatwa supporting suicide bombings in Israel, and blogged a fulsome tribute to him!

(Read full "Drivers of Dhimmitude, Lovers of Londonistan: Britain’s Foreign Office Camel Corps and the Betrayal of Israel")

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Through a Lens Dhimmily: Britain’s Middle East Ambassadors of Distortion

Daphne Anson
11 January '11

Forget the realities of living in the Islamic Middle East in a state of dhimmitude. Forget the jizya tax. Forget the imposed humiliations and the mandatory occupations. Forget the caprices of Muslim rulers and “protectors” towards the Jews and Christians in their midst. Forget the periodic outbreaks of cruelty. Forget enslavement. Forget the kidnapping of girls, the marriages by capture, and the incarceration in harems. Forget the enforced conversions to Islam. Forget the expulsions. Forget the mass exodus of Jewish and Christian refugees.

James Watt, Britain’s Ambassador to Jordan, and Frances Guy, Britain’s Ambassador to Lebanon, seem anxious to convince us of an alternative “reality” of their own.

These two “gone native” envoys share an unfortunate track record of blunders in their blogs, which appear on the official website of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO).

Last year, Mr Watt (pictured), whom I believe it is fair to describe as an Arabist, displayed in several of his blogposts an outrageous denial of the facts of Jewish history and a concomitant lack of empathy with Zionism, the national liberation movement of the Jewish People, and with the Jewish State.

On one post he mentioned that he was looking forward to reading Shlomo Sands’ The Invention of the Jewish People – a blueprint for delegitimisation if ever there was one. But he doesn’t seem to have needed any help from that book in accruing an anti-Israel attitude, comprising denying the right of the Jewish People to self-determination and of Israel to proper self-defence, for he’d already made such statements as these:

(Read full "Through a Lens Dhimmily: Britain’s Middle East Ambassadors of Distortion")

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UK embassy staff in Jerusalem charged with gun-running for Hamas, cat out of the bag for Britain’s MidEast diplomacy

Robin Shepherd
robinshepherdonline.com
04 January '11

Friendly with dictatorships however vile, accommodating of an anti-Semitism that knows no parallel since Germany in the 1930s, and willfully contemptuous of Britain’s long term interests in the war against terrorism, UK foreign policy in the Middle East had surely reached rock bottom long, long ago. Not so. When it comes to the British Foreign Office and its relations with Israel, there are always new depths to be plumbed.

And so it is that we wake up today to the news that two staff at the British consulate in Jerusalem have been arrested by the Israeli authorities for gun-running for Palestinian (Hamas) terrorists planning to cause carnage by bombing a packed football stadium.

The Foreign Office is being quoted as saying that security procedures will be reviewed and that the Israeli authorities do not believe the incident has anything to do with the staffers’ jobs at the embassy. But how can British embassy security procedures be anything other than severely compromised when the Foreign Office itself adopts such a conciliatory line towards Palestinian terror groups?

(Read full "UK embassy staff in Jerusalem charged with gun-running for Hamas, cat out of the bag for Britain’s MidEast diplomacy")

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Britain’s “extremist mainstream”: MidEast ambassadors reveal their true colours

Robin Shepherd
robinshepherdonline.com
12 July '10

Sometimes it takes a while before the sheer horror of what is going on in one’s own country truly sinks in. How many times have I written here about another “new low” in British attitudes to Israel, the Jews, and Islamist terrorism? How much room, therefore, can there still be for anything sufficiently dreadful to have any shock value? But the revelations last week about the British Foreign Office and two of its ambassadors in the Middle East were so mind bogglingly appalling that I felt it sensible to spend the weekend pondering on what this all meant. Others have written well (indeed brilliantly, see Melanie Phillips here) on the matter already. But, for what it is worth, here is what I have come up with after a couple of days thinking things over.

First the facts of the matter. Last week, Frances Guy, Britain’s ambassador to Lebanon wrote an entry on her official Foreign Office blog mourning the death of Sheikh Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, the spiritual godfather of the Jew-hating, Hezbollah terror group. She described Fadlallah — the man who blessed (literally) the suicide bombers who killed more than 300 Americans in the 1983 Beirut bomb attack — as “a true man of religion; leaving an impact on everyone he meets, no matter what their faith.” And, she went on to say: “The world needs more men like him willing to reach out across faiths, acknowledging the reality of the modern world and daring to confront old constraints”.

(Read full post)

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Proof that (our) new British Government is grovelling to Islamists

What was Winston Churchill’s definition of an appeaser again? “One who feeds the crocodile hoping it will eat him last.”


Douglas Murray
Telegraph.co.uk
03 June '10
H/T Robin Shepherd

I have just been forwarded an email from the UK government which suggests that the new administration does not merely feel blackmailed by Islamists but is also actively trying to placate them.

The Research Information and Communications Unit (RICU) is jointly funded and run by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the Home Office and the department of Communities and Local Government. Founded in 2007, it officially forms part of the Office for Security and Counter Terrorism. It is the main conduit for Government in dealing with the disparate mass that it thinks of as “the Muslim community”.

Late yesterday the RICU sent out this message to its email list:

Dear all,
Both the Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary made statements in the House of Commons today regarding the Israeli Navy’s interception of the Aid Flotilla to Gaza, and the subsequent deaths of a number of passengers. The attached factsheet provides details of these statements and further background and facts surrounding this incident.
We encourage you to share this unrestricted document with your contacts.
As ever we would appreciate your feedback on the format, content and timing of this document as well as suggestions on issues you would like it to cover. Please email …. with comments or if you would like to subscribe.
Kind regards,
Head, News Coordination Team
RICU

And what is it that it wishes its Muslim recipients to “share” with all their “contacts”? The attachment in question quotes at length the lamentable statements on the Gaza flotilla incident from David Cameron and William Hague. In case any aggravated Islamist isn’t yet getting this, RICU is at pains to reiterate in its “KEY POINTS”:

(Read full story)

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Andrew Roberts’ History Lesson

Rick Richman
Contentions/Commentary
04 January 09

Andrew Roberts, Britain’s distinguished historian, has an important front-page article in the Jewish Press, entitled “Israel’s Fair-Weather British Friends” – a survey of the history of British diplomatic betrayals and genteel anti-Semitism that should be read in its entirety.

Here’s a remarkable fact about the Queen’s travels, which are controlled by the British Foreign Office:

Though the queen has made over 250 official overseas visits to 129 different countries during her reign, neither she nor any other member of the British royal family has ever been to Israel on an official visit. …

But the Foreign Office has somehow managed to find the time over the years to send the queen on state visits to Libya, Iran, Sudan, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Jordan and Turkey. So it can’t have been that she wasn’t in the area.

Perhaps Her Majesty hasn’t been on the throne long enough, at 57 years, for the Foreign Office to get around to allowing her to visit one of the only democracies in the Middle East.

Barack Obama has been in office for 56 fewer years than the Queen, but he did a remarkable amount of traveling last year – including three trips to Scandinavia alone (to make a pitch, receive a prize, and negotiate a non-binding agreement) — without visiting Israel. He went to Egypt to give a speech and to Saudi Arabia to make a bow, and to Turkey on another trip, so it couldn’t have been that he wasn’t in the area.

(Read full article)

Related: An Inconvenient Truth
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Israel’s false friend

Melanie Phillips
The Jewish Chronicle
22 December 09

Five years ago, anti-Israel campaigners tried to arrest the then Israeli Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz for ‘war crimes’ while he was on a visit to London.

Since then, a steady stream of senior Israeli officials have either narrowly escaped similar arrest in Britain through diplomatic immunity, or have had to cancel planned visits because such an arrest was all too likely.

In all that time, the government has sat on its hands. Only now that Tzipi Livni has had to cancel her trip to London following an attempt to arrest her over her part in Operation Cast Lead has the British government said it will change the law, probably by making the Attorney-General the gatekeeper for any such arrest attempts.

Why is it only now that the balloon has gone up? One reason is that this is the first time the Israeli government has responded with unbridled fury at Britain. But also, for British diplomats, Livni is ‘one of us’. That is because, since she is one of the most appeasement-minded politicians Israel has ever produced, it is considered an affront to try to arrest her, of all people, for her part in warfare.

‘Livni supports a two-state solution. This attempt to secure her arrest has really set alarm bells ringing,’ a horrified senior Foreign Office source reportedly told the Guardian. The unpleasant implication is that the Foreign Office cares far less about attempts to arrest Israeli politicians with more hawkish views.

This telling remark shows how the Foreign Office circles the wagons when one of its ideological soul-mates is under attack — and is wholly unable to see how the amoral and unprincipled view of the world it believes it shares with Livni may actually be contributing to the problem.

(Read full post)
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A right royal boycott: Britain’s Royal Family is banned from official visits to Israel

Robin Shepherd
robinshepherdonline.com
12 December 09

In a jaw-dropping speech to the Anglo-Israel Association earlier this week, Andrew Roberts, one of Britain’s most prominent historians, made reference to one particular British boycott of Israel that is mentioned far too rarely: The Foreign Office has a ban in place on the Royal Family making official visits.

The speech came at a dinner (which I attended) on Tuesday evening in a swanky London hotel. It is an annual affair which is designed to bring together senior figures in the British establishment with supporters of Israel. Many in attendance were literally open-mouthed as Roberts tore in to the record of the UK Foreign Office over Israel. Melanie Phillips has a transcript of the full speech, the link to which is at the end of this article.

But it was his hilarious elucidation of the royal boycott that really caught everyone’s attention. Here is what Roberts said:

“One area of policy over which the FO [Foreign Office] has traditionally held great sway is in the question of Royal Visits. It is therefore no coincidence that although HMQ [Her Majesty the Queen] has made over 250 official overseas visits to 129 different countries during her reign, neither she nor one single member of the British royal family has ever been to Israel on an official visit. Even though Prince Philip’s mother, Princess Alice of Greece, who was recognized as “Righteous Among the Nations” for sheltering a Jewish family in her Athens home during the Holocaust, was buried on the Mount of Olives, the Duke of Edinburgh was not allowed by the FO [Foreign Office] to visit her grave until 1994, and then only on a private visit.”

And, he continued:

Read the rest of this entry »Related: UK foreign policy establishment’s hostility to Israel threatening MidEast peace process, and undermining Britain’s own national interests

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UK foreign policy establishment’s hostility to Israel threatening MidEast peace process, and undermining Britain’s own national interests

Robin Shepherd
RobinShepherdonline.com
11 December 09

What on earth is going on in Great Britain? Earlier this week, the Foreign Office emerged as the strongest supporter in Europe of an almost unbelievably reckless proposal from Sweden — which holds the EU’s rotating presidency — for a European Union resolution on the Middle East which would have recognised, in advance of any negotiations, East Jerusalem as the capital of a Palestinian state. Worse still, it called for the EU to recognise a Palestinian state should the Palestinians declare one unilaterally.

Any such moves would have so incensed the Israelis that the EU would, in all likelihood, have been excluded from any future role in peace talks. It even risked undermining the peace process by encouraging the Palestinians to believe that the EU would rubber stamp a declaration of statehood regardless of their approach to negotiations. Why bother holding serious talks with Israel if a member of the MidEast quartet has already said you’ll get what you want in advance? Mind blowing.

Fortunately, the resolution was watered down somewhat. But we have reached a pretty pass when the British Foreign Office has become so overcome with anti-Israeli hysteria that it is prepared to take measures which threaten the very peace agreement that the government has always said it supported. Make no mistake about it, the UK foreign policy establishment is thus working against the UK’s own national interests.

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Related: The Inconvenient Truth

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