One Year On

The United States is still demeaning itself by exercising the veto on UN membership enjoyed by Permanent Members of the Security Council, as if the recognition of otherwise universally acknowledged reality would be comparable to a secession from the American Republic (secessions being the most obvious reason why Russia and China have this veto) or the UDI of one of her territories (colonial UDIs being the most obvious reason why Britain and France had this veto initially, perhaps even still). Officer Cadets now pass out from Sandhurst with Palestine listed as their country. If it’s good enough for the Queen...

But what of Britain’s historic responsibilities within the pre-1967 Israeli borders? “The civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine” were “not to be prejudiced”, according to the Balfour Declaration. The burning of the mosque at Tuba Zangaria, the inhabitants of which are Israeli citizens, certainly looks like the prejudicing of their civil and religious rights to me. As does the demolition of the villages of the Bedouin, the most ancient inhabitants (the aboriginal Christians live further north), in the Negev, by the Israeli Defence Force, acting as an agency of the highly controversial Jewish National Fund. Not only is that demolition an act of State violence, but that burning, undoubtedly, was by supporters of parties within the present governing coalition. Is it conceivable that the arsonists acted without the approval, if not on the direct instruction, of senior figures within one or more governing parties?

The Gaza Strip, the West Bank, and for that matter the East Bank, are all one or more other stories. But when it comes to Israel proper, why did we not do for those “existing non-Jewish communities” what we later did for the East African Asians? Is it still too late to do that, not with a view to flying them over here, but in order to create that possibility while making it clear that, while they remained where they were, then they enjoyed the full undertaking that we gave to them?

An undertaking given when they legally owned most of the land, rather than when their villages appeared on no official map, therefore enjoyed no amenities, and could look forward, either to being demolished by the State as such, or at the very least to having their places of worship and de facto community centres (churches as well as mosques) burnt down by the strongest supporters of the Government, if not by actual agents of the parties of government. We promised them that nothing like that would happen. We owe them. We owe them a very great deal. This would be just that: a very great deal. If the Arab labouring class ever were to be evacuated to Britain or anywhere else, then the Israeli economy would simply collapse, as the South African one did when the black working class just stopped working. Let that possibility exist on a permanent basis.

Interference? Our Secretary of State for Defence, Liam Fox, had to resign because his office had been found to be the centre of a parallel British foreign policy conducted by and on behalf of the Israeli Far Right and its American neoconservative bag-carriers, though at least partly at the expense of the British taxpayer. The position of British Ambassador to Israel has been secured for a man who publicly aspires to citizenship of the country to which he has been posted, and who has apologised for the arrest of Tzipi Livni’s anti-British terrorist parents. The same elements have used Ofcom to take Press TV off our screens, without bothering to ask from where or by whom editorial control was exercised over, for example, Fox News; no secret is made that Russia Today is next on the hit list. Do not talk to us about interference.

For pointing out one of the facts conceded by that of Fox’s resignation, namely the treasonable relationship of 80 per cent of Conservative MPs, including David Cameron, to the State of Israel in general and to its ruling racist Far Right in particular, I was removed from Telegraph Blogs (a lucky escape from what is now literally a schoolgirl site) and branded insane by that website’s Editor, as much proof as one could possibly want that editorial control over the ostensible voice of Tory Britain is in reality exercised by that foreign and largely hostile State in general, and by that fanatically anti-British Far Right in particular. That is without even mentioning the Murdoch media.

Back in the days when New Labour was led by Tony Blair and the Conservative Party by Michael Howard, deeply disillusioned former Cabinet Ministers from both sides implored me not to write, even in jest, that our most unaccomplished 16-year-olds should be conscripted directly into the Israeli Defence Force, on the grounds that “if the wrong person reads that, then it will happen”. They were not joking. I was later informed that, entirely independently, something very near to that scheme had been seriously considered within the Blair inner circle. That was how far beyond satire things had moved in the last days of Tony Blair.

If the Balfour Declaration gave us legal or moral obligations to the Jews in respect of Palestine, then it also gave us legal and moral obligations to the other inhabitants of that Mandated Territory. Those obligations still obtain. And if we are finally to make good Balfour’s promise to defend “the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine”, then are we also finally to make good his promise to defend “the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country”? That status is now and increasingly no less “prejudiced”, and for the same reason.

Meanwhile, Israel needs to move to very extensive devolution to the very local level, Jewish or Arab, religious or secular, Muslim or Christian, and so forth. She needs three parliamentary chambers, each about one third of the size of the present one, with one for the ultra-Orthodox, one for the Arabs, and one for everyone else, the ultra-Orthodox and the Arab being already identified in law because of their arrangements in relation to military service. All legislation would require the approval of all three chambers. Each chamber would elect a Co-President, all three of whom would have to approve all legislation and senior appointments, as well as performing ceremonial duties.

Each chamber would be guaranteed a Minister in each department and at least a quarter of Cabinet posts. Yiddish would be recognised as an official language, the quid pro quo for recognising all the many currently unrecognised villages in the Galilee and the Negev. The alliance necessary to pull this off would take an awful lot of effort. But two peoples facing nothing less than denaturalisation could very well be prepared to make that amount of effort. The other lot should have had more children, or bothered to move there from places like London and New York. But they did not.