Albert and Pogo and the British Ambassador to Israel

Veracity

Well there we are then ! The wonderful Sir Tom lauded as a friend of Israel by the Israelis. NOW we know who is feeding Mr Cameron , the good old Camel Corps again

EDDIE

Surely the Cameron speech in Turkey represents a shift in British foreign policy. The existence of “Londonistan” and the activities allowed to take place here in the U.K.is now followed by a more “Neutral” position with regards to Turkey and some other countries in that region

david elder

Mel, surely you realise that this is how we can so easily fix all the world's problems. We just identify victims and empower them by treating them like zombies and ciphers who can't even screw up without outside assistance from us.

Mark Allinson

What we are witnessing today is a world-wide plague of Western egocentricity - a wave of psychopathology based upon a desire for moral supremacy, wherein the conscious ego-self maintains its sense of purity and innocence through projection and denial of repressed impulses. Or to put it in simpler terms:

What’s Left?

I envy the moral perfection
Of the folks on the cultural left;
Surrounded by such a collection
Of saints I feel lost and bereft.

There isn’t an issue to mention
They haven’t a remedy for,
And they’re positive all global tension
Is due to our actions before.

For the West is the world’s only evil
And nothing’s as wicked as we,
And they’re certain that every upheaval
Is the fault of white bastards like me.

But when you examine it closer
You might be surprised what you find,
For the issues that make them verboser
Are the ones buried deep in their mind:

All the violent rant against warfare,
All resentful remembrance of race,
All repeated insistence they do care
As they purple and spit in your face

You can see is the angry denial
Of thoughts they can only admit
By projecting and putting on trial
The stench of their own disowned shit.

William Boyd

Ambassador Phillips comments in his interview with David Horovitz are quoted more fully by the The Jerusalem Post at http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/Article.aspx?id=183074.

Nowhere there does Phillips say that the blockade was breeding radicalism. He does say "it was creating, in psychological terms, another generation of people that are not going to feel that friendly about Israel" but that (bear with me a while) is not saying quite the same thing. The only remark he makes about radicalism quoted there concerns our own (UK) problems with the internet beaming messages in from tribal homelands.

You've just blogged a ripost to the The Sunday Telegraph's claim that Shimon Peres described us Brits as anti-semite. You're right to point out in fact he didn't and in quite a sophisticated analysis you make some remarks which I think are also right and insightful. But Victoria Woods for example, in this forum dissenting, replies that no matter where or how he says it, Peres plainly does think we (Brits) are anti-semites, and I have to say that the same suspicion does arise also in my mind and that is what Peres actually wanted to get across. Nevertheless the fact of the matter is that Peres is too much of an old hand and a diplomat actually to say it and that does provide an opportunity for commentators such as yourself to soothe ruffled feathers.

The same can be allowed for Tom Phillips, a respected outgoing amabassador, but rather you choose to characterise him as an idiot. The same dazzlingly incisive formidable critical hermeneutics that you are capable of bringing to bear on a discourse is simply not bestowed on Phillips' by you with the same bountiful grace and favour as you do Peres'.

Now I do call that 'no-win' journalism.

I can add that I'm not at all sure that Tom Phillips in fact would want to suggest Gazan youth is being radicalised. That does imply being moved to supporting Hamas and I'm not sure that is so. If I was a boy (girl) growing up in Gaza today I'm pretty sure I'd be feeling equally poorly disposed to Hamas and to Israel. The overriding problem with the blockade as I see it, without necessarily suggesting this is Tom Phillips' view, is that it strengthens Hamas' position as overlords as argued in The Economist 3rd June 2010 @ http://www.economist.com/node/16274281.

I'll look at that GLORIA blog at my leisure and may like to add.

WB

Mark Allinson @ 12::22 a.m.

Did see your ballad and thought it a clever reflection of Maelanie's poster. Enjoyed :-)

Frodo Baggins

Melanie US involvement in the Islamist revolution in Turkey goes much deeper than you say. A number of senior ex-State Department people have lobbied hard for it for years. Both the US and EU have endorsed the supposed probe and massive arrests of first civilians and then serving officers involved in a preposterous conspiracy theory. It's a revolutionary purge by any other name. First Obama and Brussels endorse it, then some US officers complain they can no longer trust Turkey. Oh and the foreign correspondents endorse all this. One of the most idiotic disasters in history.But one wonders if even America is penetrated.

Barry Meislin

Mr. Phillips is trying to have it both ways; but the onus is, as always, mostly on Israel, which is not, at the end of the day, doing enough to help its enemies succeed in destroying it.

So either this gentle and moral man, this experienced diplomat and expert in the region, hasn't a clue; or he's being dishonest in the extreme.

Or both.

Nor is this, alas, surprising. Alas....

Derek Pasquill

There is always Ponto the dog from Charles Dickens:

--Ponto--no go; stock still--called him--Ponto, Ponto--wouldn't move--dog transfixed--staring at a board ---

Staring at the Commandments of the Church of the Camel Corps no doubt. The writing is on the wall.

EDDIE

Perhaps we might ask whether the Foreign Office is institutionally anti semitic

Augustus

"As I leave Israel, you can say that all the analytical elements are there for a two-state solution". Says Ambassador Tom Phillips. That, and Jerusalem, the right of return, and settlements, are all
diplomatically trumped out in nice diplomatic fashion by Phillips. But it is clear that true Palestinian plans regarding the right of return of generations of 'refugees' families would establish a majority at some point in Israel
which would therefore mean the end of a Jewish state. And no doubt the first law that would be passed would be the law of return which allows Jews all over the world to immigrate to Israel and be granted citizenship automatically. And the Jews already there would only be allowed to stay as equal citizens under a PLO marxist secular state, but no further Zionist immigration would be allowed. But under a Hamas type fundamentalist republic, the Jews would only be allowed to live in that republic as dhimmi status second-class citizens, and would of course for ever constitute a minority. As for the other issues, the UN proposed a two-state solution in 1947 already, but the Arabs rejected it insisting on a one-state 'solution'. There hasn't been much progress on that 'big issue' since. And it wouldn't be surprising if the suicide bombers kept on coming even if there was a Palestinian state alongside Israel. No doubt Phillips wants justice and peace for all, but there comes a time when progress on any issue is so slow and/or erratic
that the formula for an acceptable outcome fades away completely. The outcome then is usually only war and misery.

DaveP

Mark Allinson

Great stuff. I have linked it elsewhere.

I came across this. It encapsulates the nihilism of multicultural tolerance of everything, which Leftists and the BBC love. Written long before Multiculturalsim was even thought off.
“In the world it is called Tolerance, but in hell it is called Despair, the sin that believes in nothing, cares for nothing, seeks to know nothing, interferes with nothing, enjoys nothing, hates nothing, finds purpose in nothing, lives for nothing, and remains alive because there is nothing for which it will die.”

Dorothy L. Sayers

http://thinkexist.com/quotes/dorothy_l._sayers/

JOHN ROOSEVELT

Augustus, as always, writes with articulacy and incisiveness.

I would just add this: Mr Phillips is just being true to form - a "diplomat".His "diplomacy" is of no greater worth than that and is designed to serve what he construes to be his remit from his superiors in the FO. Nothing more nor less. To infer any ethics from what he says is, in my view redundant, at best.

Even the odious Chomsky and Finkelstein seem to have accepted a two state solution based on 242, and just slur a little when it comes to the question of refugees and the Right Of Return. They, of course, to varying degrees, use "international law" as the purported basis for their drive for "ethical" relations between peoples and states. Chomsky conflates this with his Marxist agenda, normally by slurring, also ( or let's just say that both he and Finkelstein seem to have adopted the same affectation of vocal delivery - monotonal, sopranoesque, like some demented serial killer attempting to read a love sonnet - which they seem to think passes for an underscoring of what they are convinced is their unrivaled eruditon and helps convince them that they are squaring political and ethical hole after hole).

The bottom line is this: all these guys believe the Palestinians can do no wrong and the Jews can do no right. There is rarely, if ever, any energy spent on the culture of unadulterated bigotry, racism, fascism in moslem states and societies in general, when discussing how peoples i.e the Jews, have behaved and ought to behave. Their pontificating about Israel is never couched in any other way but one which implies the Jews are anything but the monopolisers of venality and viciousness in the region, now and throughout history.

This means that their current prescriptions for political settlement are nothing but grudging. Same applies to the Palestinians. In the context of the myriad declarations from Arab states and moslem organisations re the total commitment to the eradication of the Jews in Palestine, not to mention their freuent acts of violence in the name of bringing that eventuality to pass, it is clear to me that only might can manage their ilk as it always has done.

Phillips just reminds us of the perfidy which characterises international relations and Israel just reminds us of how a state has to behave if one is to survive in that cauldron of man's inhumanity to man.

Cameron just reminds us that however insignificant state power may become, their is no substitute for the place of amorality in the relations between states. The Cameron Grovel will no doubt soon been set to music so future generations can dance to it as he and his piers seem to be doing with such sleight of foot.

Derek BLADES

John ROOSEVELT is living in a world of his own concoction when he writes "The bottom line is this: all these guys believe the Palestinians can do no wrong and the Jews can do no right."

I think he had Chomsky and Finklestein in mind but "these guys" probably includes anyone who takes an intelligent interest in the Middle East and who sees that the Palestinians have been, and continue to be, rather hard done by the Israelis over the past sixty years.

None of my friends who share my views on the conflict would ever dream of suggesting that the Palestinians are blameless or that their leaders have often been outright crooks or that they have treated their own people with great cruelty on many occasions.

But what I, and "these guys" would insist on is that Palestinians are people exactly like ourselves. They are certainly not in any way superior to their Israeli neighbours but neither are they any worse. Just ordinary people trying to live decent lives in circumstances made especially, and deliberately, difficult by the Israeli occupiers.

JOHN ROOSEVELT

Derek Blades: the soporific zzzzz of the sanctimonious...

Who needs those barbiturates, after all??