Bomb what in Yemen? Even Afghanistan was developed by comparison. But we shall have at least 20 years in which to make this point. That was how long it took to lose in Afghanistan, and to do so in exactly the way that we had always predicted. These things always end exactly as we had predicted. It should give us no pleasure.
The Houthis are now "rebels" against whom or what, exactly? They won the civil war, or at any rate the war against the foreign-backed former regime. And which of our ships have they sunk? But they will now.
They never used to do this, they would no doubt rather be making money from controlling access to the Suez Canal, and they have fought a long war against IS and al-Qaeda, a war that is arguably still going on. There is no solution to this apart from a solution to Gaza, and thus to the Palestinian question as a whole. This would not be happening without that, and it is impossible to resolve apart from it.
What are we going to bomb in Yemen? And who is going to be asking that or anything else? Certainly not the people who have been briefed this evening at the Cabinet Office, which was until recently non-executive directed by Paula Vennells, nor will a Speaker who had been so briefed permit much, if any, such questioning.
But when I tell you that there is going to be a hung Parliament, then you can take that to the bank. I spent the 2005 Parliament saying that it was psephologically impossible for the Heir to Blair's Conservative Party to win an overall majority. I predicted a hung Parliament on the day that the 2017 General Election was called, and I stuck to that, entirely alone, all the way up to the publication of the exit poll eight long weeks later. And on the day that Rishi Sunak became Prime Minister, I predicted that a General Election between him and Keir Starmer would result in a hung Parliament.
To strengthen families and communities by securing economic equality and international peace through the democratic political control of the means to those ends, including national and parliamentary sovereignty, we need to hold the balance of power. Owing nothing to either main party, we must be open to the better offer. There does, however, need to be a better offer. Not a lesser evil, which in any case the Labour Party is not.
The poor Palestinians have on their side South Africa, the corrupt government that supports Vladimir Putin, having previously supported the Soviet Union (whose feared KGB trained its last leader on Russian soil). With friends like those...
ReplyDelete...they're going to win.
DeleteThe Palestinians? Yes, of course they are. Against a military superpower.
ReplyDeleteThis is a court case, and Israel has not even bothered to argue it. It has spent all day talking about other things.
DeleteOh, that. Well, the UN is a club of dictators and these court cases take years and are unenforceable. All just gesture politics. The thing about Israel is it exists because of the way the rest of the world treated Jews so it’s never really cared about world opinion.
ReplyDeleteIt does not understand that most of the rest of the world had nothing to do with that, just as most places had no representation on any "world" body between the Wars, or indeed just after the War.
DeleteWell, Europe had rather a lot to do with it, (including Britain which shamefully betrayed the Jews after promising them a homeland there and even prevented thousands emigrating to the mandate before they were sent to the gas chamber) and the Palestinian Arab leader during World War Two recruited for the SS.
ReplyDeleteSo you can understand Israel’s scepticism of world opinion.
You have just made my point. Complete with one of the infallible marks of half-educated pub bore opinion on this subject.
DeleteEverything I wrote above was correct. Name a single fact that is even disputable.
ReplyDeleteAmong the infallible marks of illiterate teenage leftism is the belief there was once a state called Palestine, or that a “Palestinian” Arab nationalist movement was anything more than a post-Zionist invention that only attained importance once Egypt and Transjordan had failed in their efforts to occupy the territory.
And there it is.
DeleteBless.
Israel hasn’t forgotten. Husseini, the highest Muslim authority in British-ruled Palestine, became the Arab community’s undisputed leader by physically eliminating all internal opposition. He was virulently anti-Zionist, anti-Semitic and anti-British — and the key driving force behind anti-Jewish violence throughout the 1920-1930s and a major anti-British uprising in 1936-1939. Pursued by British authorities, Husseini escaped Palestine and reached Berlin in November 1941, and spent the war years working for the Nazis’ propaganda arm and recruiting Muslim volunteers to fight for Germany.”
ReplyDeleteNo one cares, duckie. No one cares.
Delete