Cameron should think again about doing favours for a friend like Israel

If you’re doing a favour for a friend, make sure that the friend in question is indeed a friend. That’s the lesson David Cameron should be pondering today, as his government announces plans to criminalise any public bodies which participate in the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel.

As I argued last week, provoking the Labour Party into commenting on national security matters is clearly a strategic win for the Conservatives, having so comprehensively smeared Jeremy Corbyn as a “terrorist sympathiser”. A YouGov poll suggests that Conservative voters also tend to be more sympathetic to the Israeli side of the conflict in the Middle East, while Labour and Liberal Democrat voters are generally more sympathetic to Palestinians. The BDS ban is a play to the Tory core as much as a favour to the Israeli government, which has made no secret of the fact it sees BDS as an existential threat, and whose media teams allowed former ambassador Daniel Taub’s “behind the scenes” lobbying against BDS while stationed in London to be reported in the Israeli media. Although there are party politics involved here, Cameron’s move is still a favour for a friend – Israel.

Two hundred and fifty-five British families lost their loved ones in the Falklands War in 1982. The then Conservative Prime Minister was Margaret Thatcher — a folk hero to Britain’s contemporary conservative movement — and she delivered what neoconservatives consider to be one of her finest achievements; she re-took the Falkland Islands from the Argentinian junta. This was not only a democratic imperative – Falkland Islanders have expressed repeatedly their desire to remain under British and not Argentinian rule — but also an issue of human rights. The junta which had ordered the invasion from Buenos Aires was “disappearing” political dissidents in their tens of thousands, using death squads and torture programmes. Letting British citizens fall under the rule of such a regime would have been unforgivable. The same junta, it was revealed in 2011, was armed by Israel for the duration of the conflict with Britain. Thank you Israel, our good friend.

“Gas masks, radar alert systems, air-to-air missiles and fuel tanks for fighter bombers were sent from Tel Aviv to arm General Galtieri’s forces,” a report at the time read. “The most audacious deal involved supplying 23 French-built fighter aircraft – Mirage IIICs – which were camouflaged with the insignia of Peru. But they arrived after the war was over.”

Why did this happen? Israel was being run, at that time, by Prime Minister Menachim Begin, who had “a deep rooted hatred of the British.” Begin was a proscribed terrorist under the laws of the British Mandate in Palestine on account of his involvement in a network of Zionist terrorists (and remained “wanted” until his death). They were formed into groups known for using violence against civilians, including British security personnel and civilians, and they were intent on making the cost of the British Mandate so high that Britain would leave, leaving the Palestinian field more or less clear for them to swoop in to form their own state. Amongst these terrorists was Begin’s good friend Dov Gruner, who was captured by the British in April 1947 and hanged.

These terrorists were regarded as freedom fighters by some, but they were despised by many Jews, including Albert Einstein, who was amongst a slew of prominent American intellectuals who wrote to the New York Times to denounce their activities. The terrorists were particularly unpopular in Britain as they had plotted to kill Winston Churchill, killed British diplomats and blown up the King David Hotel in Jerusalem. Those who still think fondly of this era of Zionist terrorism often bleat that the bombing of the hotel, which was the headquarters for British imperial officials and staffed mainly by civilians, wasn’t such a bad atrocity. This is despite nearly a hundred people being killed in the attack, making it one of the worst terror attacks in the twentieth century. Apologists for anti-British terrorism argue that advance warning was given, and that because the British didn’t evacuate the building, the casualties were their own fault. The IRA asked for similar “benefit of the doubt” largesse after an attack in Warrington, when a bomb intended to destroy property ended up killing people, despite a telephoned advance warning. The IRA didn’t get much sympathy from Britain, and neither should the founders of Israel.

Arming dictators who abuse human rights decades ago isn’t necessarily a good reason to break off diplomatic relations in 2016. Befriending those who have killed or tried to kill or accidentally killed British soldiers, civilians or prime ministers may pass the acceptability test. France, for example, infamously armed the Argentines too during the Falklands War, and Britain has since let bygones be bygones. The bilateral relationship between London and Paris is very different, though, from that between Britain and Israel, mainly because our friendship with France isn’t built on a condition of ignoring human rights abuses. There aren’t any illegal occupations, settlement expansions or human rights abuses going on in France (though the French treatment of Muslims in its colonies and at home left much to be desired), but Israel was occupying the Palestinian territories in 1967, and it was still occupying them in 1982 as, indeed, it does today. In 2016, with forty-nine years of occupation in its wake, Israel only appears to be doubling down on the human rights abuses that have made its relationship with Britain so controversial.

Would sanctions against the government in Tel Aviv be a step too far? Perhaps not. The situation in the occupied territories is economically and politically damaging to Israelis and Palestinians; poses a threat of retaliation against diaspora Jews and Israeli Jews alike; is racially and religiously divisive; and is clearly unjust, so any pressure to bring it to an end has to be a good thing. Today, anything that can foster justice and stability in the Middle East, without using violence, is worth pursuing, so you’d think that the British government would welcome the actions of the BDS movement. Far from it. That Cameron has just announced plans to criminalise the participation of public bodies in the entirely peaceful BDS movement is not only not strategically sound but also an affront to British civil liberties, and will probably create yet more distrust and dislike of Israel. There is a strong possibility that it will increase the number of anti-Semitic attacks by extremists invigorated by a compelling example of double standards from the prime minister. His move may well be a favour for a “friend”, but when that friend is Israel — erratic, abusive, angry, dangerous, overly defensive and unreliable — David Cameron should think again.

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