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The Zionists are gunning for Hague already

January 28, 2014 at 3:13 am

He’s two weeks into his new role as Foreign Secretary, but already the Zionists’ guns are out to get William Hague. The editor of the Jewish Chronicle, Stephen Pollard, claims that “Hague is no friend of Israel”; his article, in which he lambasts Mr. Hague for condemning Israel’s “disproportionate” use of force in the invasion of Lebanon in 2006, appears in the same issue of the JC in which the Foreign Secretary says his government “is committed to changing the law on universal jurisdiction”. This would, of course, allow suspected war criminals like Tzipi Livni and other leading Israelis to enter Britain without fear of arrest for war crimes and possibly crimes against humanity. A change in the law was just one of the promises made to the Jewish community in a full-page Conservative Party advert in the JC during the election campaign. This makes you wonder what Pollard would have said if Mr. Hague and his colleagues refused to bow to pressure from Israelis and their Zionist supporters by making English Law more acceptable to an alien state. It also raises some important questions about the influence of Israel on British politics.


It is well known that the Israel Lobby is hugely influential in the USA, able to squeeze billions of US tax dollars out of Washington to support its illegal occupation of Palestine. So influential, in fact, that the US president has been pushed into a humiliating climb down by inviting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the White House in order to “mend fences”, illustrating just how warped the US-Israel relationship is. Aside from the apparently bottomless pit of dollars for Israel (at a time when the US is in recession, remember) the Zionist state also needs US political cover for its flagrant breaches of international law. And yet, after it upset its main patron by yet more illegal activity and Netanyahu received a “cold shoulder” from Obama during his last US visit, do the Israelis amend their errant behaviour? No; in this special relationship it’s the US president who has to make the first move to “mend fences”. Astonishing; the words tail, wagging and dog spring to mind but don’t really do this situation justice.

This is not a recent phenomenon; it has been a staple of the US-Israel relationship for decades. Most infamously, it has led to a forty year cover-up of the Israeli attack on the USS Liberty in June 1967 when, despite being clearly marked, the ship was attacked by Israeli aircraft and gunboats, killing 34 American sailors and wounding 171. Official records show that the Liberty, which was a spy ship operating in international waters, was witness to the massacre of Egyptians in a mosque in El-Arish by Israeli forces. Israel and the US government later said that the attack on the Liberty was a “mistake”, despite the evidence that this would have been impossible. Keep this in mind when we find out what action the Israelis take to try to stop the Freedom Flotilla from reaching Gaza this weekend.

Will the influence of Israel and its lobby affect the British coalition government to such an extraordinary degree? Back to Stephen Pollard: “So let’s have none of this idea that a Conservative government is going, by definition, to be good for Israel.” Of course, we have a coalition government but that doesn’t deter Mr. Pollard: the Prime Minister, David Cameron, he continues, “is an unknown quantity”. What? That full-page advertisement in Mr. Pollard’s own newspaper (does he read it?) on 30 April 2010 was headed, “A Conservative government would protect the Jewish community and Britain’s relationship with Israel”. A Conservative government, the advertisement said, “will not engage with terrorist groups like Hamas and Hizbullah, who pledge Israel’s destruction” [sic] and David Cameron’s supporting quote claims that this is because “Israel strives to protect innocent life…” Try telling that to the 1,400 civilians killed by Israel in Gaza last year, one-third of them innocent children. Or the USS Liberty’s sailors killed by Israel’s “mistake”. How can the editor of the Jewish Chronicle claim that the Prime Minister “is an unknown quantity”? What purpose does such rhetoric serve, if not to demonise William Hague because he had the temerity to maintain a principled stand against Israeli aggression in Lebanon?

That appears to be the strategy of members of the Israel Lobby on both sides of the Atlantic; it has to be all or nothing. There can be no half-way house, supporting Israel on some issues but condemning on others; it has to be Israel right or wrong. That’s the message that Stephen Pollard is trying to drive home to the Foreign Secretary. Let’s hope that William Hague has the moral and political courage to stand up for what is right and against what is wrong. In short, to bring to the Foreign Office the sort of ethical foreign policy that new Labour promised but failed to deliver.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.