Stinging historical riposte to the revolting 52 ex-diplomat 'camels' by Andrew Roberts in the Times. He reminds us of how the world has benefited in the past from the unrivalled expertise of the Foreign Office in the Middle East:

'In 1948, the Foreign Office, with the same “long experience of the Middle East” that the co-signatories boasted of, advised the Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin that the Israelis would lose the war of independence and be defeated by the (largely British-trained) Arabs. They estimated that the Arab-Israeli conflict “would be of relatively short duration and would eventually be checked somehow by the UN”. Bevin put the timing at a fortnight, but then, as the High Commissioner in Palestine said, Bevin was “completely surrounded by Arabists”. It is that group whose hands have finally, after half a century, been wrested from Middle East policy. The letter — signed by the former ambassadors to Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Yemen, Jordan, Syria, Bahrain and the UAE — is merely a howl of rage at their present exclusion.'

And he draws attention to the endemic hostility within the Foreign Office to the Jewish people:

'Nonetheless, the FCO’s Central Department was irritated in May 1944 that “unnecessary publicity” was being given to Jewish suffering, and stated: “The Allies resent the suggestion that Jews in particular have been more heroic or long- suffering than the other nations of occupied countries.”

Meanwhile, it is now clear that the real driver of the camels' letter was not so much concern over Iraq as their visceral hostility to Israel. The Guardian reports that it was an 'Arabists' revolt' cooked up from an internet cafe in Libya by Oliver Miles, former ambassador to that country, who imploded over the recent Israel/US rapprochement:

'Mr Miles said yesterday that when he became "steamed up", friends told him he should do something about it. He drafted the basis of the letter and sent it to five ex-colleagues. Three replied, offering support. "I went to Libya for a conference but I knew I could do the coordination from an internet cafe," he said. He sat down among Libyans using the internet to reach family and friends, carry out research or play games. "It was very cheap. One dinar [50p] an hour," he said. There was no broadband and communication was slow. But after 90 minutes - and at a total cost of 75p - the diplomats' letter was well under way.'

As Roberts says, no-one should have listened to such prejudiced and unreliable 'experts' in the past -- and no-one should listen to them now.

Posted by melanie at April 28, 2004