Foreign Office 'unrelentingly pro-Palestinian' says Israel

[Violet_Crumble]

Israel has reacted angrily to a confidential Foreign Office document accusing it of illegally expanding Jewish settlements and routing the West Bank barrier to prevent east Jerusalem from becoming the Palestinian capital.
Officials described the document, drafted for an EU foreign ministers meeting earlier this week, as "anti-Israeli" and said it was further evidence the Foreign Office is "unrelentingly pro-Palestinian". Britain makes more formal protests to Israel over its actions in the occupied territories than any other country.

The document warns Israeli actions are jeopardising peace and risk radicalising Palestinians. It recommends several measures to resist the Israeli tactic, including politically symbolic actions such as moving meetings with Palestinian officials from Ramallah to east Jerusalem.

An Israeli foreign ministry spokesman, Mark Regev, said: "We would see that as problematic. There are agreements with the Palestinians where that isn't supposed to happen. It would not be the actions of those who support Israel."

An Israeli source said: "We are not in the slightest bit surprised that this should have come from the British. On the one hand they always say they understand Israel's problems and want to be an intermediary and on the other they are accusing us and attempting to embarrass us. They cannot be trusted," he said.


http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,2763,1651249,00.html

[Mairead]

1. I've always thought Britain's history wrt the Arabs has been unusually

sharply dichotomous. There's always seemed to be a strong pro-Arab faction made up of those who'd lived in the Semitic Region, and then a strongly anti- faction mostly made up of the sort who will say 'no offence' rather than not actually offend, and who see nothing wrong in calling people 'wogs'.

What's rather hilarious, in its way, is the fact that the strong and deep anti-Jewish current running through the English culture is probably what motivated Balfour to sell out the Arabs to begin with.

[Behind the Aegis]

2. Say it ain't so!

'...is the fact that the strong and deep anti-Jewish current running through the English culture is probably what motivated Balfour to sell out the Arabs to begin with." You think that is still a factor?

[Violet_Crumble]

3. No, it's not a factor nowadays...

Why? Do you think it's a factor? If so, how much of a factor?

[Behind the Aegis]

4. It isn't?

Why not? Do you think it's not a factor? If so, how is it not a factor?

[Violet_Crumble]

5. Why are you copying what I say?

While mimicry is a form of flattery, I'd prefer it if you could have maybe answered the questions I asked, as I was interested in knowing what you thought...

Violet...

[Behind the Aegis]

6. Taking your lead....

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=124&topic_id=105415&mesg_id=105585

[Violet_Crumble]

7. Huh?? There were no questions there...

In this thread I asked some questions. Are you going to answer them and get involved in some sort of discussion, or is this a complete waste of time?

[Violet_Crumble]

14. I'm putting you on ignore...

The reasons for it should be pretty obvious...

Violet...

[Mairead]

9. "You think that is still a factor?" No, as Violet says, not really.

I base that on the literature. Definitely thru the '60s, and into the '70s there were coded references to stereotypes about Ashkenazim to be found in mainstream novels. Then around 1970 or thereabouts, there seemed to occur some sort of sea change and those references rapidly disappeared, to be replaced by pro-Zionist ones that I now find just as disgusting, though in a different way of course.

If you think it is still a factor, tell us why.

[Behind the Aegis]

13. Still a factor.

Anti-Semitism on rise in Britain, MP says

[Mairead]

18. Says who? One MP?

But the concept of the exclusiveness of the Holocaust can lead to despicable perversions. Many among us argue that no moral restraints apply to us, because "after what they did to us" nobody can teach us what is or is not permitted. "After the Shoah" we have the duty to do everything to save Jewish lives, even by ignoble means. We are allowed to use the memory of the Holocaust as an instrument of our foreign policy, since Israel is the "state of the Holocaust survivors". We are allowed to stifle all criticism of our behavior, since it is self-evident that all critics are anti-Semites. We are allowed to blow up every insignificant incident, such as the painting a swastika on a Jewish tombstone, in order to prove that "anti-Semitism is on the rise" in the world and raise the alarm.

I want to argue that now, 60 years after the end of the Holocaust, it is time to grow out of all this.
-- Uri Avnery, "Remember What? Remember How?", 19.3.05

[Behind the Aegis]

19. Says studies.

Do some exploring. They just released a study from the UK. There is a thread around here about it. Let me guess, you don't believe it? :eyes:

[bemildred]

8. So what?

I'm "unrelentingly pro-Palestinian" too.
Is that a crime now?
Is it morally reprehensible to be "pro-Palestinian"?

This report just states obvious things that anybody paying attention to Israel-Palestine issue knows are going on. OK, maybe it makes some obvious inferences about motives, but duh?

If the report had some lies in it, or some real defects of expostion, I expect we would see those attacked. Since all we have is this giant red-herring about being "pro-Palestinian", it seems safe to assume the report is substantially correct.

[newyorican]

12. I was wondering the same...

not a dispute to the facts...just a lot of whining.

[Violet_Crumble]

15. I don't get why the report was confidential...

It's not like there's anything contentious there at all from what I can see....

Violet...

[bemildred]

16. Perhaps some sort of untoward reaction was anticipated ...

Maybe like what is reported here.

[Coastie for Truth]

10. BP and Shell and Sir Mark Sykes.

No surprise.

1.

2.

[Coastie for Truth]

11. White Paper of 1939 - Sir Neville's "wink and nod" to Hitler

Was the "MacDonald White Paper", i.e., the a wink and nod to Hitler that the West "sorta, kinda" acquiesced in the Holocaust.

See, e.g., http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_St._Louis|SS Saint Louis>, just four months after the MacDonald White Paper, and the beginning of WW2 with Hitler's attack on Poland in September 1939.

Sir Neville's failed policy of appeasement. "Peace In Our Time" - NOT. Paid for on the backs of the Jews and the Poles.

[barb162]

17. "...there is no report on the drawing board..."

EU ACCUSES ISRAEL ON JERUSALEM", DENIAL BY FINI
(AGI) - Rome, Nov. 25 - A memorandum from the British rotating president of the EU accuses Israel of instituting a "premeditated policy" with the aim of "annexing East Jerusalem ". According to the "Guardian", last Monday London's Foreign minister Jack Straw presented his colleagues with a classified document drawn up by the British consulate with the contribution of other European representatives, in which he denounces in particular the expansion of the Jewish colony Ma'ale Adumim. An expansion which "threatens to complete the surrounding of the city with settlements that cut West Bank in two" and which "reduce the possibility of reaching an agreement on the final status of Jerusalem acceptable to any Palestinian. " Israeli activities in Jerusalem ", adds the 11-page report, "violate the obligations taken on according to the Roadmap international rights". According to the English daily, Straw asked the EU ministers to oppose this line, even by recognizing Palestinian political activities in East Jerusalem. But as for "pressure on Italy, which, according to the sources quoted by the "Guardian", Israel considers "its most trustworthy ally in Europe", the Council decided to "postpone the matter to next month". This reconstruction has, however, not been confirmed by Foreign Minister Gianfranco Fini, who denied any intervention. "There has never been any report by the EU that accuses Israel", he said, after having received his German colleague Frank-Walter Steinmeier. "The EU needs to monitor what is happening in the Middle East very carefully, starting from the assumption that the Roadmap is the only possible way to reach that goal of two States and two peoples , which is the objective indicated by the international community". "There is nothing extraordinary, and especially not reports put in embargo or censored by ministers of the Union", he assured. A denial has also come from the envoy of the EU in the Middle East. He said to New York Times that "there is no report on the drawing board", but only the request from EU ministers for more information about the social and economic situation of East Jerusalem, and that ministers have received analogous information o Iran and Kosovo. The representative of EU foreign policy Javier Solana instead spoke of a draft that has not yet become as report. From Israel, the spokesperson for the Foreign Minister, Mark Regev, remarked that "Jerusalem must remain the united capital of Israel" but that there is the intention to make this one of the subjects of the final negotiations. However, he added that "it would be a shame if this positive moment" in relations with Europe "were to stop" and we were to see "a regression to the factitious positions of the past". East Jerusalem is one of the most complicated matters of the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations: occupied since 1967 and annexed by Israel, the Jewish State considers it an indivisible part of its capital, while Palestinians would like to make it the capital of their future State.

http://www.agi.it/english/news.pl?doc=200511251731-1210-RT1-CRO-0-NF51&page=0&id=agionline-eng.arab

[Englander]

20. Ha! Fini's a popular fellow, isn't he?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=124x105531#105542