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Tag: Israel

Labour party antisemitism Britain Israel 

Dual loyalty taunt? Israel slandered? So what’s new?

Melanie, , ,

Within hours of the Labour party giving its members wriggle room to defame Israel without any pushback, posters appeared on central London bus-shelters slandering Israel as a “a racist endeavour”. The virus of left-wing antisemitism is out of control. Why is anyone surprised? None of this is new. Jeremy Corbyn may have made the poison more toxic but he didn’t release it. He is rather its most malevolent symptom. I first experienced this in 1982. Colleagues implied that my real country wasn’t Britain but Israel. At the time, I’d never…

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racist Israel 

Demonising Israel and the hijack of language

Melanie, , ,

If there’s one refrain which gets me chewing the carpet, it’s the plaintive question, “Why is Israel unable to get its message across?” The naivety behind this question is itself a large part of the answer. It’s not just the fact that – as has now become all too obvious – the demonization and delegitimization of Israel is inextricably linked to the ineradicable poison of antisemitism. More pertinently, Israel has been up against a black propaganda exercise which has inverted truth and lies with devastating effect. Its only equivalent in…

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Britain Israel USA 

Israel gets the nation-state right while the west fumbles with identity

Melanie, , ,

Two utterly fundamental and seismic issues are threatening to tear apart Britain, Europe and America. They are mass immigration and national identity. The majority of Jews in Britain and America are warmly disposed towards the former and terrified of the latter. They have got it precisely the wrong way round. Diaspora Jews have a Pavlovian response to immigration. This is entirely understandable: the vast majority, myself included, are the descendants of immigrants and refugees. Jews are also commanded in the Torah not to wrong or oppress a stranger “for you…

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interview My books 

The legacy of Polish Holocaust denial

Melanie, , ,

The legacy of Polish Holocaust denial The controversy over Poland’s role during the Holocaust has exploded yet again. Remarkably, a joint statement issued by the Polish and Israeli governments intended to draw a line under the row has been denounced by Yad Vashem. Embarrassingly for Israel, it claims that the statement hailed by Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu as “safeguarding the historic truth about the Holocaust” includes “grave errors and deceptions” and contains “highly problematic wording that contradicts existing and accepted historical knowledge in this field”. By coincidence my novel, The…

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antisemitism Global conflict Israel 

The hurdles in front of the Trump peace plan

Melanie, , ,

President Trump’s peace plan for Israel and the Palestinian Arabs, his attempt at the “deal of the century,” will apparently soon be revealed to the world. His envoys, Jared Kushner and Jason Greenblatt, have been making the rounds in the region to get Arab allies on board. Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyhau has paid a visit to the King of Jordan. No one yet knows the terms of this deal. Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas has refused even to talk to the United States about it and has presumptively rejected…

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reframing Britain Israel 

Does the British government now recognise a country called Palestine?

Melanie, , ,

Oh dear. Prince William appears to be under the impression that there’s a country called Palestine. On his “apolitical” visit to Jordan, Israel and the Palestinian Authority, he reportedly told the PA President Mahmoud Abbas today: “I’m very glad our two countries work so closely together and have had success stories with education and relief work in the past…” Of course, there is no country called Palestine. Abbas’s strategy of war against Israel is to assert that there is, not just in contradiction of the truth but in flagrant repudiation…

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HRH Britain Israel 

HRH, the FCO and the big lie about Israel

Melanie, , ,

One of the most startling aspects of the demonisation of Israel is the use of international law as a key weapon. Israel represents law and justice against those who deny them. Yet it is falsely painted as fundamentally illegitimate and guilty of repeated illegality and breaches of international norms. Defenders of Israel, including its own government, seldom push back publicly against this. False assertions by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office about Israel’s illegal settlements or the “Occupied Palestinian Territories” are met with silence. Not surprisingly, this failure to engage has…

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Britain Israel 

Prince William comes to Israel under a Foreign Office cloud

Melanie, , ,

Next week the second in line to the British throne, Prince William, will make the first ever official visit to the State of Israel by a member of the Royal Family. The royals are merely the servants of the British government. Until now, the notoriously anti-Israel Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) has refused to permit an official visit to Israel by a member of the Royal Family out of concern for Arab anger. Whether it has now softened its stance or been overruled by Prime Minister Theresa May is unclear.…

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HRH Britain Israel 

Prince William: an FCO hostage in a minefield

Melanie, , ,

It was always a racing certainty that next week’s visit to the Middle East by Prince William, featuring the first official visit to Israel by a member of Britain’s Royal Family, would prove to be a diplomatic minefield. It now turns out, however, that rather than playing the role of minesweeper-in-chief Britain’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office has left one of its own landmines defiantly in place – and is guiding Prince William straight for it. Prince William is to visit Jordan, Israel and the area controlled by the Palestinian Authority.…

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reframing Israel 

Reframing the Middle East narrative: my ten-point guide

Melanie, , ,

Reframing the Middle East narrative: my ten-point guide I wrote a couple of weeks ago that those trying to defend Israel in the court of public opinion needed a strategic rethink. Defending Israel against the calumnies being thrown at it is to concede defeat from the start by engaging upon ground defined by its enemies. Instead, Israel’s defenders need to go onto the front foot. They need to do to its enemies what is done to Israel: to paint them as extreme, unconscionable and a mortal threat to life and…

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