Propaganda Lies that Protect Israel’s Genocidal Maniacs | VT Foreign Policy January 24, 2024 VT Condemns the ETHNIC CLEANSING OF PALESTINIANS by USA/Israel $ 280 BILLION US TAXPAYER DOLLARS INVESTED since 1948 in US/Israeli Ethnic Cleansing and Occupation Operation; $ 150B direct "aid" and $ 130B in "Offense" contracts Source: Embassy of Israel, Washington, D.C. and US Department of State. Let’s straighten out some of the nonsense that’s spread by Israel’s network of stooges to make the apartheid regime’s crimes against humanity seem justified. Chief amongst them is the insistence that Israel has a right of self-defence against Hamas in Gaza. This is designed to bolster the Israeli narrative and give the regime diplomatic ‘cover’ to commit any crime it wishes in Gaza. But UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese warns that “Israel cannot claim self-defence against a threat that emanates from the territory it occupies”. Common sense should tell us that, nevertheless the lie is repeated ad nauseam by Israel’s sympathisers among our MPs and ministers at Westminster. Ask any of them exactly where in international law Israel is given such a fantastic right and you won’t get a proper answer. You might wonder why people at the heart of our democratic system are telling lies in order to promote the interests of a thoroughly nasty foreign power. There’s an elaborate ‘grooming’ programme whereby serving MPs and parliamentary candidates, on the recommendation of their political party’s Friends of Israel group, are taken on propaganda trips to Israel as guests of the Israeli government and come back suitably brainwashed. Never mind that this is a breach of their Code of Conduct and the Seven Principles of Public Life (Nolan Principles) which state that “holders of public office must avoid placing themselves under any obligation to people or organisations that might try inappropriately to influence them in their work”. Doesn’t such grooming amount to corruption? What we never hear from them is the Palestinians’ cast-iron right of self-defence against Israel. It doesn’t suit their purpose to tell us that UN Resolution 37/43 gives Palestinians an unquestionable right to resist Israeli aggression in their struggle for “liberation from colonial domination, apartheid and foreign occupation by all available means including armed struggle”. 37/43 also condemns “the constant and deliberate violations of the fundamental rights of the Palestinian people, as well as the expansionist activities of Israel in the Middle East, which constitute an obstacle to the achievement of self-determination and independence by the Palestinian people and a threat to peace and stability in the region”. So when Netanyahu rejects the idea of a Palestinian state and says all territory west of the Jordan River must be under Israeli security control, he collides head-on with international law. Furthermore, UN Resolution 3246 calls for all States to recognize the right to self-determination and independence for all peoples subjected to colonial and foreign domination and to assist them in their struggle. 3246 not only reaffirms the Palestinians’ right to use “all available means, including armed struggle”, but also demands full respect for the basic human rights of all individuals detained or imprisoned as a result of their struggle. And it requires strict respect for Article 5 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights under which no one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. So where is the UK Government’s concern for the thousands of Palestinian prisoners, including women and children, held hostage in Israel’s jails before 7 October and the 6,000+ more abducted and imprisoned since then? And when did the UK Government ever “recognize the right to self-determination and independence” for Palestinians, who have been left to suffer foreign domination and alien subjugation for over 75 years, or “assist them in their struggle” as required? Palestinians should not have to negotiate their freedom and self-determination – it’s their basic right and doesn’t depend on anyone else, such as Israel or the US, agreeing to it. The UK disrespects that, otherwise we would long ago have recognised Palestinian statehood and been among the vast majority of nations that have already done so. Legal opinion (Wilde) has it that when 138 of the world’s states at the UN General Assembly voted in 2012 to re-designate Palestine’s status from ‘non-member Entity’ to ‘non-member State’, this had the effect of establishing statehood. Britain’s refusal to recognise Palestine is a disgrace. We promised the Palestinian Arabs independence back in 1915 in return for their help in defeating the Turks but reneged in 1917 (in favour of the shameful Balfour Declaration). We should have granted Palestine provisional independence in 1923 in accordance with our responsibilities under the League of Nations Mandate Agreement, but didn’t. In 1947 the UN Partition Plan allocated the Palestinians a measly portion of their own homeland and, without consulting them, handed the lion’s share to incomer Jews with no ancestral connection to it… thanks in large part to the Balfour stitch-up. The following year Britain walked away from its mandate responsibilities leaving Palestinians at the mercy of Israel’s vicious plan for annexing the Holy Land by military force – “from the river to the sea” – which they’ve pursued relentlessly ever since in defiance of international and humanitarian law, bringing terror, misery, wholesale destruction and ruination to the Palestinians. And now genocide. The UK Government recognised Israeli statehood quickly enough in 1949 when Zionist gangs had already carried out several massacres and shown their terrorist hand, trashing 500 Palestinian towns and villages and driving 700,000 civilians out of their homeland. But we have cruelly rejected pleas for Palestinian recognition right up to the present day. Ours is a long history of betrayal. How can we claim to be brokers for peace when we’ve consistently worked against peace? The same goes for the US. It has to be said that Hamas, however we may feel about them, are the chosen and legitimate government in Gaza after winning fair and square the last election in 2006. Their 2017 Charter is reasonably in tune with international law while the Israeli government pursues policies that definitely are not. So, knowing Palestine’s right to assert its freedom and self-determination, and its right to use armed resistance against Israel’s endless military occupation, why did Britain proscribe Hamas’s political wing as a terrorist organisation? And what gives the UK and the US the right to encourage and assist Israel in bringing about coercive regime-change in Gaza and preventing Palestinians choosing their own government? Hamas Gaza Chief Yahya Al-Sinwar (R), Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh (L) during a memorial service for Fuqaha, in Gaza City March 27, 2017. R Branding Hamas a terrorist organisation was indeed a propaganda masterstroke. It has allowed the Zionists and other pro-Israel elements within our Government to avoid having to explain Israel’s far greater terror record, and instead focus hatred on Hamas. So stories about atrocities committed by Hamas when they ‘broke out’ and went on the rampage on 7 October were eagerly absorbed and repeated by Western politicians and media even though the Israelis still haven’t been able to substantiate their claims about rape and beheaded babies. The Israeli newspaper Haaretz interviewed the Israeli army’s “ethics” chief about two major incidents that day – the order by an Israeli commander to a tank to open fire on an Israeli home knowing there were 14 Israeli civilians inside, and Israeli helicopters firing missiles at dozens of cars carrying Israeli hostages, killing them. The official narrative blamed Hamas for these “barbaric” acts which were then used to justify Israel’s frenzied onslaught against Gaza’s civilians. However Jonathan Cook, a prize-winning journalist writing from Nazareth, reports that Haaretz and the army’s ethics chief both ascribe these self-inflicted casualties to Israel’s Hannibal Directive, a classified policy requiring soldiers to prevent Israelis being taken hostage at all costs. Cook concludes that Western media outlets are deliberately hiding the truth about this story “because it directly conflicts with the West’s ideological and strategic agenda” while the Israeli media are full of it. What now? Just to show how ridiculous our Establishment has now become in its eagerness to carry on shielding Israel, a man has appeared in court charged with wearing a green headband with writing on it said to arouse “reasonable suspicion” that he supports Hamas. The writing is the ‘Shahada’, a declaration of faith stating that there is only one God (Allah) and that Muhammad is the messenger of God. Only a lunatic would try to make a criminal case out of it. Sadly, there’s no shortage of lunatics these days among our ruling elite. And according to Reuters US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken says in all seriousness that what’s needed to resolve the situation is a Palestinian state with a government structure “that gives people what they want and works with Israel to be effective”. So the Palestinians must co-operate with a neighbour that has for decades committed horrendous atrocities against the Palestinian people culminating in all-out genocide? And whose stated ambition is to rob the Palestinians of their entire homeland? Of course, Palestinians would be wise to work with a comprehensively reformed Israel, if such a thing is possible, when it has finally convinced the world it is committed to international and humanitarian law and worthy of being called ‘friend’. But not until then. In the meantime we have the depraved sadist, Netanyahu, insisting that when he’s done with committing genocide Israel’s security needs will leave ‘no space’ for a Palestinian state …. as if only Israel is entitled to security. Israel’s supporters have tried to persuade us that all this unpleasantness began when Hamas broke out of Gaza and caused havoc among the Israeli population nearby. But, as everyone and his dog knows, Israelis have been terrorising, slaughtering, ethnically cleansing, land-grabbing, and showing utter contempt for international law and United Nations resolutions ever since (and even before) they declared statehood nearly 76 years ago. For them, committing war crimes is routine. It began with the massacres by Zionist terror gangs at the King David Hotel, Deir Yassin, Lydda and elsewhere; and all are well documented. Yet Israel has been blessed with impunity throughout that time and now ‘escalates’ its savagery to the level of wholesale genocide. Is the international community still not sufficiently sickened to end its protection and instead proscribe the rogue regime as a terrorist state? What can we the public do? That’s where BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) comes in. This non-violent movement has been building over the years. It is now poised to become civil society’s devastating economic weapon for bringing Israel and its supporters to heel if the international community doesn’t do its job. And what happens to politicians who lie? In short, nothing. That is the conclusion of one of the most depressing articles I’ve read in a long time. We hear it said repeatedly that misleading Parliament is a serious matter. But, as Dr Alice Lilley from the Institute of Government says, “The convention has always been that ministers who mislead Parliament are expected to resign, and this is set out in the Ministerial Code. But enforcing this convention is more complicated. “It is ultimately up to the prime minister to decide what happens to ministers judged to have broken the Code. And Parliament has very few powers to punish a minister for misleading it.” So codes of conduct which mention honesty, like the Nolan Principles and the Ministerial Code, are only voluntary, the assumption being that politicians will choose to behave honourably. But in recent years we’ve been cursed with ministers – and even prime ministers – to whom honour, truthfulness and integrity are alien concepts. The sad fact is, there are few sanctions in place for dealing with those who defy the conventions. So self-regulation falls down and Parliament goes to the dogs. Again, it’s up to civil society to take over and name and shame these undesirables. Stuart Littlewood 22 January 2024 Stuart Littlewood After working on jet fighters in the RAF Stuart became an industrial marketing specialist with manufacturing companies and consultancy firms. He also “indulged himself” as a newspaper columnist. In politics, he served as a Cambridgeshire county councilor and member of the Police Authority. Now retired he campaigns on various issues and contributes to several online news & opinion sites. An Associate of the Royal Photographic Society, he has produced two photo-documentary books – Paperturn-view.com. Also, check out Stuart’s book Radio Free Palestine, with Foreword by Jeff Halper. It tells the plight of the Palestinians under brutal occupation and explains to me why the Zionists who control Israel should be brought before the International Criminal Court. 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