A British vote that epitomized ignorance, opportunism and malice

...The implications of passing such a resolution are harrowing, exceeding the worst excesses of perfidious Albion when the anti-Semitic British foreign secretary Ernest Bevin displayed his hostility to the Jews during the last years of the mandate. One cannot justify such behavior on the basis of ignorance. Clearly, the motivations represent a combination of electoral opportunism, leftist political correctness which transforms Israel the victim into the aggressor, cultural relativism which no longer distinguishes between good and evil and promotes moral equivalency; and above all, an indisputable odor of outright anti-Semitism.

Isi Leibler..
Candidly Speaking/JPost..
21 October '14..

The British parliamentary resolution that called for the immediate and unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state, endorsed by an overwhelming majority of 274 to 12, was an unprecedentedly aggressive act. Although not binding, and with the participation of only 44 percent of parliamentarians (primarily opposition Labour MPs under instructions to vote in favor of the motion), it nevertheless provides evidence of the dramatic surge of hostility against Israel that is sweeping through Europe.

It reflects a growing trend among European countries to encourage Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to pursue his intransigent policy, rejecting meaningful negotiations, refusing to make any concessions and proceeding on the supposition that he has international support to bring Israel to its knees. Regrettably, over the past few months, the Obama administration has been widely perceived as giving a wink to the Europeans to pursue policies toward Israel along these lines, which neither American public opinion nor Congress would endorse.

That such a resolution was even contemplated during the regional meltdown of the past few months has created an Alice-in-Wonderland environment – especially as it failed to even pay lip service to the obligations of the Palestinians. Nor did it acknowledge that both Yasser Arafat and current “peace partner” Mahmoud Abbas rejected offers of 95 percent of the territories formerly occupied by the Jordanians.

Abbas continues to incite to violence and hate and his Fatah party still calls for the destruction of the Jewish state. In recent months, the official PA TV revived the medieval blood libel accusing Jews of using the blood of Palestinian children to make matzot for Passover, promoted The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and alleged that Israel was poisoning Palestinian water wells. Abbas continues to glorify mass murderers and insists that there will never be an agreement unless Israel accepts the right of return of the five million descendants of Arab refugees, which would entail the end of Israel as a Jewish state. He also reaffirmed his union with Hamas – the globally designated terrorist organization.

The UK parliamentary resolution effectively endorses a state in which the genocidal Hamas occupies a central role and which, according to polls, would emerge victorious in an election. To make matters worse, Abbas has publicly stated that should that occur, he would hand over control of the state to Hamas.

Bad Week for Israel on UK Campuses

Bethany Mandel..
Commentary/Contentions..
22 February '13..

It hasn’t been a good week for free and open debate about the Jewish state on campuses in the United Kingdom. Two separate incidents, one at the University of Essex and a second at Oxford University, have shown just how low opponents of Israel will stoop in order to delegitimize her and squash the free speech of Israel’s citizens and defenders.

Immediately following the announcement of a speech at Essex by Alon Roth-Snir, deputy ambassador of Israel to the United Kingdom, anti-Israel activists on campus began to organize. Their goal was simple: stifle Roth-Snir’s right to free speech on their campus. Avi Mayer, the director of new media for the Jewish Agency for Israel, created a Storify account of the incident and the university’s response. What Mayer describes speaks volumes about the opposition Israel faces on campus from both faculty and students. Mayer quotes the University of Essex Students’ Union President Nathan Bolton from the Facebook event organizing the protest:

I’ve made my position crystal clear. The Students’ Union has a position, which reflects my own, that the state of Israel is a state which its very existance is a crime. [sic] The land was stolen from the Palestinian people and then those same people were then systematically exiled from their own homes and continue to be exiled to this day.

I’m proud to not give him the attempt to justify his states oppression. I’m sure the hundreds of students were too. Freedom of expression isn’t applicable here.

Mayer points out the predictably hypocritical response of the anti-Israel activist Ali Abunimah, co-founder of Electric Intifada. While Abunimah was outraged at the attempts of BDS opponents in Brooklyn to squash the departmentally sponsored event aimed at what Jonathan rightly described as hate speech, Abunimah described the actions of protestors at crushing free speech as “great.” The opponents of the BDS event in Brooklyn took issue not with the speech taking place on campus, but rather with the school’s continued sponsorship of events about the conflict that were exclusively anti-Israel in nature.

Marvellous Melanie on the "Delusional Perspective" through which Israel is viewed in the UK

Daphne Anson
09 January '11

As a commentator on the current stupor afflicting the West, in its denial of the full extent of the jihadist threat and its appeasement of those who would destroy first Israel and then the rest of the free world, Melanie Phillips has few equals.

Interviewed recently on Israeli TV ( http://www.iba.org.il/olam hat tip: Avraham Reiss) she spoke of the delusional attitude in the UK regarding Israel, a situation that she describes as "pathological", with public opinion swayed by an intelligentsia that gets its information largely from outlets such as Ha'aretz and is "impervious to reason, impervious to evidence, impervious to facts". She also speaks of the media's failure to report accurately about the Middle East – and stresses that for this state of affairs Israel shoulders some of the blame, turning itself into a victim, with its hasbara "a joke" and even members of its academia ignorant of the history of their own country and feeding students the lie that Israel was "born in sin". The Islamists have "colonised the battleground of the mind" and as a result truth has been inverted, with Israel transformed from "victim into victimiser". And she warns of the true goal of Israel's Islamist enemies – to have a Middle East free of the Jewish State altogether.



(For more great postings, click here for homepage of Daphne Anson)

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Lawfare in the UK : Who Is Behind It This Time?

Shiraz Maher
Hudson New York
16 September '10

Britain's pernicious libel laws are in the spotlight again: recently the Spectator, a weekly publication focusing on politics, culture and the arts, settled an ongoing dispute with IslamExpo following legal threats. The organizers objected to an article by Stephen Pollard (editor of the Jewish Chronicle) which drew attention to the nature, background and politics of IslamExpo's organizers.

Documents registered with Companies House – a legal requirement for all incorporated companies in England and Wales – reveal that Mohammed Sawalha, Azzam Tamimi, Ismail Patel and Anas al-Tikriti are the registered directors and/or company secretaries.

It is worth, therefore, exploring these individuals in more detail.

Mohammed Sawalha is a Palestinian who fled to London in 1990 after discovering the Israeli authorities wanted to arrest him. An authoritative investigation for the BBC by John Ware – a formidable and robust journalist – made a series of startling revelations about Sawalha; they alleged that Sawalha "master minded much of Hamas political and military strategy" from London; then went on to describe him as a "fugitive Hamas commander."

Sawalha never sued the BBC over those allegations; instead he chose to focus on the substantially smaller resources of the Spectator. Of course, there is little for Sawalha to actually complain about when the Muslim Brotherhood's own website, IslamOnline, describes him as "manager of the political committee of the International Organization of the Brothers [i.e. the Muslim Brotherhood] in Britain."*

Last year Sawalha also signed the "Istanbul declaration" after Israeli military action in Gaza during operation Cast Lead. In itself, it is a damning document. Framed as a "statement" addressed to "all rulers and peoples concerning events in Gaza." it condemns those who have "given up the choice of jihad in the way of Allah as an effective means in defeating the occupation."

(Read full article)

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How the U.K. arrived at the present situation regarding Israel and Middle East issues

Douglas Murray
MERIA Journal
Volume 14, No. 2
June '10
Posted before Shabbat

This article discusses the anti-Israel campaign in the UK and its attempt to delegitimize and "demonize" Israel, pointing to radical Islamist trends in British society and political life as a central factor.

A few days in March 2010 gave a good flavor of the present standing of Israel in the United Kingdom. On March 23, then British Foreign Secretary David Miliband announced to the House of Commons that the government was expelling an Israeli diplomat. The expulsion, thought to be of the London Mossad chief, came after forged British passports were used to kill a Hamas terrorist in Dubai (an incident which Israel denies any involvement in).

The following Monday, March 29, the Jerusalem String Quartet was due to play at the Wigmore Hall, one of London's most prestigious music venues. The concert, to be broadcast live on the BBC, was repeatedly disrupted by anti-Israel protestors accusing the players of being representatives of the Israeli government. The broadcast was cancelled. On this occasion, the anti string-quartet protestors, from a branch of the "Palestine Solidarity Campaign," were Jewish-led.

These two examples are cited, because they are emblematic. If one nation wanted a range of responses to delegitimize and demonize another state, it would be hard to imagine a better, or wider, range of activities. Not being allowed to have full diplomatic representation in a city that allows the Iranian government and numerous other hostile regimes to do so is one thing. A situation in which even the performance of a Mozart string quartet by nationals of the same country becomes impossible (the Jerusalem quartet have been barracked like this in Britain before) would appear to demonstrate that the exceptional demonizing of Israel in public life is now not occasional but, rather, all-encompassing.

How did the UK arrive at this state of affairs? The number of reasons is too large to list, let alone describe, in this space. They can, however, be broadly categorized under two headings. First, there are those reasons that can be explained by circumstances. Second, and certainly equally significant, there are those reasons that have their basis not in verifiable evidence but rather in conspiracy theory and anti-reason ranging from paranoia to the misguided expression of what will be described here as "the new virtue."

(Read full article)

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UK: George Galloway Funds-- Surprise! -- Hamas

Shiraz Maher
Hudson New York
29 April '10

George Galloway is always a useful barometer for gauging the climate of sectarian and reactionary politics in Britain. In 2005 he quit his Glasgow constituency to fight for election in the London borough of Bethnal Green and Bow - one of London’s most deprived and divided constituencies.

Galloway’s entire period as a Member of Parliament for Bethnal Green and Bow was typified by unavailability. More important to him than the concerns of his constituents were the agitations of the Middle East and South Asia.

Much of this involved his dedicating considerable amounts of energy to the Viva Palestina campaign about which Galloway is now becoming increasingly embarrassed. After presenting Hamas officials with money in Gaza - a criminal offence in many Western nations - he now insists he did no such thing.

The Globe and Mail reports Galloway as now insisting, “I didn’t give any money to Hamas, I gave it to the ministry of health in Gaza to pay for the salaries of the doctors and nurses who hadn’t been paid. By the way, we’re talking about 20 odd thousand pounds, not millions. It’s a symbolic donation. I gave it to the ministry of health in Gaza and I’m proud to have done so.”

It is a remarkable statement, offering a pirouetted view into the parallel universe Galloway so often seems to occupy. Several Arab television stations broadcast his speech at the time, and it remains widely available on the internet. What Galloway actually said was, “I, now, here, on behalf of myself, my sister Yvonne Ridley, and the two Respect councillors - Muhammad Ishtiaq and Naim Khan - are giving three cars and 25,000 pounds in cash to Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh. Here is the money. This is not charity. This is politics.”

Politics, not charity. There is no mention of paying doctors or nurses in Galloway’s triumphalist speech.

(Read full article)

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Gaza extremists want war on Jews of Yemen

Bataween
Point of No Return
23 April '10
Posted before Shabbat

There's nothing like Jew-hatred to unite terrorist groups. Haaretz reports that a group of Al-Qaeda sympathisers in Gaza has called on their fellow Salafists to wage war on the few beleaguered Jews still living in northern Yemen. (Why? Because they hate Hamas - such is the tortured nature of terrorist politics.) By the way, these are the Jews whom Britain recently said they would take in - or not.

A group of Muslim extremists in the Gaza Strip that is opposed to Hamas has called on Al-Qaida in Yemen to target Jews there in an effort to drive them from their country - part of what the group described as its war against Jews.

According to e-mails sent by a person identifying himself as Ali Hussein, who says he represents A group of Shi'ite guerrillas in northern Yemen opposed to Al-Qaida, a Salafi group based in the Gaza Strip and calling itself the "Abu Amir" group is allegedly calling for attacks on Jewish leaders in northern Yemen. As proof, Hussein sent a scanned hand-written note naming the Jewish targets in Yemen.

(Read full story)

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Analysis: The Legacy of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh

Jonathan Spyer
GLORIA Center
26 March '10
Posted before Shabbat

Wherever departed Hamas official Mahmoud al-Mabhouh is now, he is presumably (I don't share this presumption. Y.) enjoying the considerable trouble the nature of his exit is causing his Israeli enemies.

The British decision to expel an unnamed Israeli diplomat following the conclusion of an investigation into the alleged use by Israel of cloned British passports in an assassination operation probably does not signal the onset of a general crisis in relations between London and Jerusalem. Still, it is not an everyday act, and the language used by the foreign secretary in announcing the expulsion was notably harsh.

This affair has so far traveled along similar lines to the last major set-to between the UK and Israel over the issue of Israeli intelligence activities overseas. In 1986, a number of forged British passports were discovered in an Israeli diplomatic pouch in West Germany. This incident was followed a year later by the apprehending of a Palestinian employed as a double agent by Israeli intelligence, together with a cache of weapons, in a northern English town. The result was the expulsion from Britain of Arie Regev, an official at the Israeli Embassy. Regev was widely regarded as the chief of the Mossad station in the UK.

Then, as now, the anger of senior British officials was real, not feigned. And the public revelations of the events meant that a response of a public nature was also inevitable. But the substantive response was a managed one. Cooperation between Israeli and British intelligence services suffered for a while. But channels of communication stayed open via Washington. Information of really crucial importance continued to be shared.

(Read full article)
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Not the White Response

The Guardian Associate Editor's weak excuses and justifications for outrageous comments against Israel.



Honest Reporting
Media Critiques
25 March '10

Frosty US-Israeli relations and a very public and direct rebuke by Britain for alleged cloning of UK passports by Israel's Mossad have created a storm of negative headlines in recent days.

Some (but not all) British media took particular glee in reporting the expulsion of a diplomat from Israel's embassy in London. The Guardian even liveblogged the event as it unfolded while an editorial referred to Israel as "an arrogant nation that has overreached itself", thus smearing more than just Israel's government but also its entire population.

Some took advantage of Israel being hauled over the coals to justify their own failings. In December 2009, The Guardian's Associate Editor Michael White made the following comment during a discussion on BBC Radio London's Breakfast Show concerning the physical vulnerability of political leaders:

In Israel they murder each other a great deal. The Israeli Defense Forces murder people because they don't like their political style and what they've got to say and it only means that people more extreme come in and take their place.

The BBC responded by arguing that White's comments were his own while The Guardian declined to comment at all, judging that White had made these remarks on the BBC and not in his newspaper. From White himself we heard nothing. Until now.

(Read full article)
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British judges being dangled like marionettes by Hamas: Group admits it was accomplice to UK court warrant against Tzipi Livni

Robin Shepherd
Robin Shepherd Online
21 December 09

If I have said it once, I have said it a hundred times on this website: there is a price to be paid for indulging anti-Zionist bigotry and it is a price which may be paid by some of the most treasured institutions of one’s own society.

British newspapers are reporting today that the anti-Semitic, Holocaust-denying terror group Hamas (no they don’t describe Hamas that way on the BBC, but it happens to be accurate) played a key role in building the case which led to an arrest warrant being issued against former Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni by a court in London 10 days ago.

The Times, in a report whose substance was repeated by the Daily Telegraph, quoted Hamas operative Diya al-Din Madhoun, who runs the terror group’s coordinating committee on such matters, as saying:

“We have provided a group of independent lawyers in Britain with documents, information and evidence concerning war crimes committed by Israeli political and military leaders, including Ms Livni.”

Read the rest of this entry »
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Israel's settlements are legal

Geoffrey Alderman
The Jewish Chronicle
17 December 09

What role, if any, does the present UK government see for itself as a peacemaker in the Middle East? Does it see itself as an honest broker, or has it already taken sides? Some developments over the past fortnight — which build on the lesson we must learn from the UK government’s refusal to condemn or even criticise the Goldstone report — do I think enable us to answer these important questions.

At the beginning of the month, feverish diplomatic to-ing and fro-ing in Brussels centred on a Swedish attempt to have EU member states endorse a resolution demanding the creation of a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital. This proposal was defeated –- thanks to some impressive manoeuvring by Israel’s Foreign Minister, Avigdor Lieberman. Instead, on December 8, EU Foreign Ministers announced their agreement that Jerusalem must become a “shared” capital.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas was clearly annoyed that the Swedish draft had been killed off. But the British government was among the backers of the Swedish proposal and, within 48 hours of its defeat, presented Mr Abbas with a consolation prize. On December 10, the department for the environment, food and rural affairs (DEFRA) published new guidance to shops and supermarkets on the labelling of produce sold in the UK that originated from Judea and Samaria. Hitherto, such goods have been labelled as “Produce of the West Bank.” Henceforth, warned DEFRA, they should be branded either as “Palestinian Produce” or “Israeli Settlement Produce.”

A spokesman for UK Foreign Secretary David Miliband wasted no time in explaining that “this is emphatically not about calling for a boycott of Israel. We believe that would do nothing to advance the peace process. We oppose any such boycott of Israel. We believe consumers should be able to choose for themselves what produce they buy.” But, he added ominously: “we have been very clear, both in public and in private, that settlements are illegal and an obstacle to peace.” And in an announcement (hilariously labelled “technical advice”) quite separate from its new guidance on labelling, DEFRA’s head, Hilary Benn, warned that UK food outlets would be committing a criminal offence if they labelled produce that originated in Judea and Samaria as “produce of Israel”.

(Read full article)
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Guardian assistant editor says on BBC that Israel murders political dissidents whose “style” it doesn’t like

Robin Shepherd
robinshepherdonline
16 December 09

When the Guardian’s assistant editor slithers his way on to the BBC, there’s a good bet that something noxious is soon going to be coming across the airwaves. But, in its brazen and flagrant dishonesty, Monday’s contribution to BBC Radio London’s Breakfast Show by Michael White is something to behold.

In a discussion on security for political leaders pegging off the assault on Silvio Berlusconi the other day, White talked meanderingly about previous attacks on political leaders and, understandably for a British discussion show, brought in the case of Northern Ireland where Unionists and Nationalists in the main desisted from assassinating each others leaders. And then, like a flash of lightening out of a clear blue sky, this:

“In Israel they murder each other a great deal. The Israeli Defense Forces murder people because they don’t like their political style and what they’ve got to say and it only means that people more extreme come in and take their place.”

Read the rest of this entry »
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J Street Dreams, Israeli Reality

P. David Hornik
FrontPageMag.com
03 November 09

“To say that you have to love Israel or be pro-Israel to be part of J Street is a terrible mistake.”

Thus Judith Baker of the fringe-left Brit Tzedek v’Shalom (its English moniker is Jewish Alliance for Justice and Peace), recently incorporated into J Street, told a reporter at the J Street conference on Tuesday. Indeed, “peace or Israel” seems to be the question. It’s also reported that “J Street’s university arm has dropped the ‘pro-Israel’ part of the left-wing US lobby’s ‘pro-Israel, pro-peace’ slogan to avoid alienating students.”

As a student involved with J Street explains, “We don’t want to isolate people because they don’t feel quite so comfortable with ‘pro-Israel,’ so we say ‘pro-peace,’ but behind that is ‘pro-Israel.’”

Or as J Street’s ever-smooth-talking director Jeremy Ben-Ami further expounds, “If the way to engage the young part of our community is to give them space to work through their relationship with Israel, then we’re going to do that. We’re not going to shut them out, because the only way to keep them in the community is to give them the space to work that out.”

It’s just what we need here in Israel, and it warms our hearts: distant psychobabble by “progressives” at a Washington conference. Israel, too, has its peacenik Left—but it’s become electorally diminutive and it also doesn’t engage in “space to work out your feelings”-type talk; in Israel even the peaceniks are a little too reality-scarred for that.

And speaking of corruptions of language, even J Street’s rapidly proliferating critics have been letting it get away with the “pro-peace” label, which means—what? That AIPAC and the other mainstream American Jewish organizations, or the right-leaning Israeli electorate, are anti-peace? Clearly many of the J Streeters think exactly that—apostles of peace in a desert of militants—or they wouldn’t have such trouble putting “pro-Israel” and “pro-peace” together.

Though one might be tempted to think, or hope, that it’s all an unimportant sideshow, the Obama administration’s decision to send National Security Adviser James Jones—no less—to address the peacenik convocation suggests otherwise. Michael Goldfarb reports that when “Jones offered several strong statements of support for Israel,” the J Street crowd responded with no more than “polite applause…. It’s possible that most of the participants…just didn’t know they were supposed to get up and cheer at the pro-Israel lines…but more likely they just weren’t moved to do so.”

Goldfarb notes, however, that Jones took positions on two issues—the Goldstone Report and Iranian sanctions—that are far to the right of J Street’s stances. This could mean, Goldfarb speculates, that “the administration wanted to distance itself from J Street on some of the major issues”—one can only hope so.

Whatever the actual importance of this conference, Israeli eyes were more likely to be cast toward another part of the world. On the same day, Tuesday, that the peace-fest was in full swing, Israel’s deputy foreign minister Danny Ayalon found himself in peril during a state visit to the UK when what are described as “pro-Palestinian activists” tried to get him arrested under the UK’s universal-jurisdiction law.

Although similar attempts have been made during visits to the UK by Israeli military figures—up to and including, last month, Defense Minister Ehud Barak—this marks the first such attempt against a non-military Israeli official. The “activists” may, however, have seen a flier identifying Ayalon as “a former captain in the Israeli army.” By such criteria, a very large number of Israelis would be liable.

Palestinians and those allied with them have indeed, particularly since last winter’s Gaza war, been mounting a massive effort to get Israeli officials indicted and tried, whether in the International Criminal Court at The Hague or in Britain and other European countries that have universal-jurisdiction laws.

Closer to home, when recently the Obama administration got Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas to refrain from seeking an anti-Israeli resolution at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, the outrage among West Bank and Gaza Palestinians was so great that Abbas reversed his decision—and still finds himself, at present, a figure so despised and ostracized that his political career is hanging by a thread.

In other words, among the reasons the peace ideology, unlike with the J Streeters, has dwindled among Israelis is that our ostensible peace partners, the Palestinians, would rather see our leaders jailed than sitting across a negotiating table.

But such nuances don’t register among the busy progressives across the pond. Between them and Israel lies an “unplumb’d, salt, estranging sea” that is much more than physical. The J Streeters would be the last people who would try to bridge it, or even understand that it exists.

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Discussion on the Guardian: Should we take the legal or statutory route to get a fair hearing for Israel in the UK?

Robin Shepherd

Think Tank Blog

05 October 09

Let me say from the outset, that as a former journalist I am instinctively opposed to the use of legal or statutory remedies to sort out disputes in the public domain. Bad arguments, even hateful and defamatory arguments are best met with better arguments not with recourse to the courts. But what happens if your right to reply is refused? What happens if you are cut off in a broadcast and your character or motives are impugned? What happens if you are left with the choice of taking it on the chin and getting no redress or taking action?

I do not know the answer. But since publishing A State Beyond the Pale: Europe’s Problem with Israel a couple of weeks ago, I have personal reasons for wanting one. Of course, this is not simply a problem for me. Many others have suffered abuse and misrepresentation for calling for a more reasoned approach to Israel.

It is in the interests of the wider issue, therefore, that I offer an account of the way I was treated in today’s Guardian and then by its editorial team which refused my request for a proper response to a wholly distorted rendition of one of my arguments. This was compounded by implied defamation in the comments section.

I would be grateful for thoughts in my own comment section below as to what readers think, both about the case in point and the broader question of what to do about it. (There is another pertinent issue which would add to the discussion involving LBC Radio but it is now in the hands of the UK’s broadcast standards commission, Ofcom. I cannot, therefore, comment at this stage.)

Since it is impossible to be objective about a case involving oneself, I offer the following version of events from Cif Watch, an important new website which monitors anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic articles and remarks on the Guardian’s Comment is Free (Cif) website.

The link to the Cif Watch piece is below. Please click through to read it and familiarise yourself with the site and then comment both there and here as you please. All views are welcome.

http://cifwatch.com/

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Lockerbie, the Anger

As American anger grows at the release of the Lockerbie Bomber (for "compassionate" reasons) the real story is starting to break. According to the London Sunday Times:

Secret Letters Reveal Labour’s Libyan Deal

"DURING the past year a small ship bristling with computers and seismic equipment has been crisscrossing the Gulf of Sidra, in the Mediterranean off the Libyan coast. Its mission: to help to find BP’s next offshore oilfields.

The company’s search for oil off Libya and in a 20,000-mile area in the west of the country potentially offers as much as £15 billion in new revenue. But less than two years ago it was feared that the deal could founder — and the reason was wrangling over Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, the jailed Lockerbie bomber.

BP was finally given the go-ahead six weeks after a volte-face by the British government to include Megrahi in a prisoner transfer agreement with Libya under which prisoners could serve out sentences in their home countries. Jack Straw, the justice secretary, revealed this decision in a letter to his Scottish counterpart. He cited “wider negotiations” and the “overwhelming interests of the United Kingdom”.

Sources in the UK and Tripoli said last week that those wider interests included BP’s hoped-for share of Libya’s untapped oil and gas reserves. The decision to include Megrahi in the prisoner transfer arrangement was seen by Libyan officials as paving the way for his release — and BP’s much-coveted deal was finally ratified." -more

So tell me. Are you surprised?