Netanyahu will be pleased. Now UK has an upper-class coalition “fagging” for Israel

Netanyahu will be pleased. Now UK has an upper-class coalition “fagging” for Israel

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By Stuart Littlewood

15 May 2010

Stuart Littlewood views the Zionist roots of Britain’s senior coalition party, the Conservatives, especially its leader David Cameron and the foreign secretary, William Hague, both self-confessed Israel stooges. He asks whether Nick Clegg, leader of the junior coalition partner, the Liberal Democrats, will have the guts to neutralize the Conservatives’ Zionism and uphold his party’s position on Gaza and war crimes.

“I am proud not just to be a Conservative, but a Conservative Friend of Israel; and I am proud of the key role CFI plays within our Party.” – David Cameron, UK Prime Minister and Conservative Party leader

Conservative leader David "I'm-a-Zionist" Cameron didn't win the election but has managed to seize power by slipping between the sheets with Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg. This distasteful union should give them enough votes to survive in Parliament for the five years they have set themselves.

The glamour-boy duo, Cameron and Clegg, come from similar privileged backgrounds – top public schools and “Oxbridge”. Cameron is a product of Eton, the infamous Bullingdon Club and Oxford; Clegg arrived via Westminster and Cambridge.

Cameron, of course, is the boss of the coalition. Clegg is merely deputy prime minister, a post usually regarded as a non-job. “Birds of a feather: Cameron hires a new fag,” quipped one blogger.

"The spectacle we are more likely to be treated to is Cameron and his trusty lieutenant William Hague, fagging for the US and Israel."

For those unfamiliar with the peculiar practices of the English public school (public here meaning expensively private for the upper-class), “fagging” is where junior boys do menial tasks and act as a general dogsbody for senior boys such as lazy prefects eager to practice their bullying techniques and hone their cruel streak in preparation for later life.

I suspect Clegg is too rebellious to make a useful fag.  The spectacle we are more likely to be treated to is Cameron and his trusty lieutenant William Hague, fagging for the US and Israel. Within hours of taking office Britain’s new Foreign Secretary Hague was summoned by Washington to receive instruction on polishing Obama’s shoes and ironing Clinton’s slip.

No doubt he’ll soon be in Tel Aviv pressing Netanyahu’s suits, dusting his mantlepiece and filling the coal scuttle.

Cameron’s “new era” politics

In agreeing to support the most pro-Israel party in Britain Clegg said nothing about Middle East policy while Cameron promised a "new era" in British politics.

As everyone knows, Cameron and most of his party voted for the Iraq war. They, in my view, are not fit to govern. They say they "were misled". Ordinary citizens, however, were not misled and found ample information freely available to contradict the lies the warmongers were telling them. The truth is that the Conservatives, like the Labour government at the time, failed to exercise due diligence and go the extra mile to make sure of the facts before taking this country into a war we could ill afford against people who posed no threat. Or, you might suppose, they obeyed orders from a foreign power.

Either way, a few did their duty to Britain, the majority didn't.

What is even more disgusting is the way Cameron's Conservatives constantly preach family values while happy, apparently, for innocent families elsewhere – in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine - to be vapourised, blown to smithereens and terribly maimed in their countless thousands, or terrorized and starved into submission by sanctions and blockades.

"Cameron is ... more concerned about the security and prosperity of Israel's murdering land-grabbers than the plight of their victims, the Christian communities in the Holy Land and their Muslim neighbours."

Now, incredibly, they are considering inflicting the same collective punishment on Iranians for developing a domestic nuclear programme which they are perfectly entitled to.

Furthermore, Cameron has failed to clean up his party, and I don't mean the scandalous expense-fiddling. Thanks in large part to the Channel 4 TV’s “Dispatches” programme we know that the Conservative Party, like Labour, has its palm greased by the Israel lobby.  Cameron is a self-declared Zionist pledged to defend the state of Israel come what may. It seems he's more concerned about the security and prosperity of Israel's murdering land-grabbers than the plight of their victims, the Christian communities in the Holy Land and their Muslim neighbours.

He’s a very confused fag.

An organization called the Conservative Friends of Israel claims it "works to promote its twin aims of supporting Israel and promoting Conservatism. With close to 2,000 activists as members – alongside 80 per cent of Tory MPs – CFI is active at every level of the party." Cameron endorses it enthusiastically: “I am proud not just to be a Conservative, but a Conservative Friend of Israel; and I am proud of the key role CFI plays within our Party.”

Back in 2006 The Jewish Chronicle reported on the backers bankrolling Cameron's bid for power. That report was sent to the Committee on Standards in Public Life as an example of how the pro-Israel lobby infiltrates government and undermines the very principles for which the committee, as the nation’s watchdog, had been established to uphold. The committee ignored it. Corruption runs deeper than you think here.

It is bad news all round that Hague is the new foreign secretary. He is, in his own words, "a longstanding friend of Israel and someone who joined Conservative Friends of Israel at the age of 15". He once said: “The unbroken thread of Conservative Party support for Israel that has run for nearly a century from the Balfour Declaration to the present day will continue."

Hague’s appearance bears a startling resemblance to a neo-con skinhead, so he must fit into the Washington scene nicely. He said in an interview during the election campaign that the most urgent issue facing him, should he find himself in the Foreign Office, would be the Iranian nuclear programme. "We have consistently been the party arguing for tough sanctions and a strong European approach over the last few years, and are very frustrated that this hasn't emerged strongly enough." He wants Britain to give Iranians a good kicking by adopting the same sanctions regime against Iranian financial institutions as the United States and seeking European agreement on blocking investment in Iran's vast oil and gas fields.

So why isn’t he just as eager to put the boot in against Israel on account of its massive nuclear weapons stockpile, which is a grave threat the region and even Europe, and the regime’s refusal to sign the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (which Iran has signed)?

He’s a very confused skinhead.

Another thing. All states which are party to the Geneva Conventions are obliged to seek out and either prosecute or extradite those suspected of having committed grave breaches of the conventions and bring them, regardless of nationality, to court.  
 
"Grave breaches" means willful killing, torture or inhuman treatment, causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health, and other serious violations of the laws of war – the sort of atrocities that are committed wholesale by Israel in the Gaza Strip and West Bank.

But in order to protect the unsavoury foreign prefects they fag for, the Conservatives, like Labour, are planning to abandon our solemn obligations under international law. Their shadow attorney-general said, before the election, that the Conservatives “will change the law if this government [i.e. Labour] doesn't... There is support for this from David Cameron and William Hague downwards."

In short, Cameron and Hague hope to create a safe haven here in the UK for all psychopaths and bloodthirsty guttersnipes wanted for war crimes, especially Israel's top brass.

On the all-important foreign affairs front Nick Clegg, therefore, will have an almost impossible task trying to keep the Cameron-Hague wing of the coalition in check and focused on Britain’s best interests.

Is there a silver lining?

I’m sorry to be the bringer of such gloomy news. However, there may yet be a glimmer of hope beneath this unremitting black cloud.

"... without the Liberal Democrats, Cameron's Conservatives are doomed. So it will be interesting to see how far Clegg's lads can go in neutralizing the Zionist Tendency that stains our politics."

The Liberal Democrats' stated policy on Gaza is

• to prosecute and compel the appearance of witnesses to investigate war crimes arising out of Israel’s attack on Gaza, whether by Israel, Hamas or any other party;

• the existing EU-Israel Association Agreement should be suspended since Israel has continued its illegal blockade of Gaza;

• the update for Israel’s Association Agreement with the EU should also continue to be suspended;

• the EU should review whether Israel is in enduring breach of Article 2 of the Association Agreement; and

• there should be an arms embargo on Israel by Britain and the EU.

What's more, Nick Clegg wrote a punchy article "Lift the Gaza blockade" last December in The Guardian. In it he said:

What has the British government and the international community done to lift the blockade? Next to nothing. Tough-sounding declarations are issued at regular intervals but little real pressure is applied. It is a scandal that the international community has sat on its hands in the face of this unfolding crisis…

The EU has huge economic influence over Israel, and it believes the blockade must be lifted. At the same time as exercising leverage over Hamas, it should make clear that the web of preferential agreements which now exists between the EU and Israel – from Israeli access to EU research and development funds to recently improved access for Israeli agricultural products – will be brought into question if there is no rapid progress…

Gordon Brown and the international community must urgently declare that enough is enough. The blockade must end.

The question is, does Clegg have enough leverage to shame his new work colleagues, Cameron and Hague, into taking the action Brown neglected to?

Of course, that would infuriate the nasty prefects. But without the Liberal Democrats, Cameron's Conservatives are doomed. So it will be interesting to see how far Clegg's lads can go in neutralizing the Zionist Tendency that stains our politics.

I assume Clegg has taken note of Israel’s threats to attack the Free Gaza flotilla, which soon sails to deliver humanitarian aid and break the evil blockade. Is it too much to ask that he insists Cameron orders the Royal Navy to provide an escort in order to guarantee the freedom of the seas and protect British and other nationals who are doing what he, Clegg, has been urging, what the world wants to see and what the contemptible international community should have done long ago?

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Stuart Littlewood is author of the book Radio Free Palestine, which tells the plight of the Palestinians under occupation. For further information please visit www.radiofreepalestine.co.uk.

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