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Opinions/Editorials Title: Has Shimon Peres forgotten the support – and lives – Britain has given Israel? Israeli President Shimon Peres’s Britain-bashing, revealed by The Daily Telegraph, only further demonstrates the bunker mentality that now passes for foreign policy in Jerusalem. This is what he said in the interview: And in England there has always been something deeply pro-Arab, of course, not among all Englishmen, and anti-Israeli, in the establishment… They always worked against us. He finished off with the sensational headline fodder: “There is in England a saying that an anti-Semite is someone who hates the Jews more than is necessary.” Immediately, the Israeli blogosphere was humming with approval for the elderly president’s outburst. Many thought he was provoked by David Cameron’s comment this week about Gaza being a “prison camp”, though the interview actually took place in early July. Hundreds of comments underneath the article expressed the bitterness, which I share, at Britain’s refusal to allow desperate Jewish refugees entry into Palestine, after they escaped Nazi-occupied Europe. But if British-Israel relations got off to a bad start, the last 30 years has been very different. President Peres and the Israeli public are quick to remember how Britain did down the nascent Jewish state. But they conveniently ignore the commitment of the British political class to Zionism and the support it has given Israel in many different ways. Like Margaret Thatcher, Tony Blair – who is now the Middle East peace envoy – was unabashedly philo-Semitic. Among his Government’s achievements was making sure Holocaust Rememberance Day became an official annual event; and the history of the Holocaust was included in the national curriculum. Also, he defied the Parliamentary Labour Party and refused to criticise Israel’s actions during the Second Lebanon War. The “pro-Arab” accusation is also over-baked. The British government must represent the economic and strategic interests of its people. That means doing business in the Middle East and, if need be, working with some pretty unpleasant regimes. President Peres surely understands this realpolitik. He was Prime Minister when Israel shared its nuclear weapons technology with the neo-Nazi Apartheid regime of South Africa in the 1970s, and developed cordial relations with some of Central America’s most brutal juntas. President Peres also appears to have bought into Right-wing commentators’ sneers about “Londonistan” and how our politicians supposedly quake before militant Islam. But what about some respect for Britain’s commitment to fighting Muslim extremism? Or paying tribute to the British soldiers who helped remove Saddam Hussein, a major threat to Israel? Or those who are now fighting and dying in Afghanistan in the war against global jihad? Finally, President Peres’s uncalled-for slur on Britain will damage his reputation among Anglo-Jewry as a respected elder statesman who once championed peace. He has succumbed to the paranoid ideology driving Israeli politics which will only embellish, as Jonathan Boyd argues in The Jerusalem Post, “a growing struggle (within British Jewry) to reconcile the realities they see with the values they believe ought to underpin a Jewish state.” The recent Jewish Policy Research survey entitled Committed, concerned and conciliatory: The attitudes of Jews in Britain towards Israel, showed Britain was far more dovish than Israel on fundamental political issues, while remaining passionate about Israel as the “ancestral homeland”. As Jeff Barak, Jerusalem Post columnist and one-time Editor of the Jewish Chronicle, wrote this weekend: The views of British Jewry, or even those of the British prime minister, are not particularly important in the wider picture of Middle East diplomacy. But they do provide an interesting insight into how a sympathetic Western audience sees the present situation. If Netanyahu is serious about direct talks with the Palestinians, he must be aware of the price Israel will have to pay to ensure they succeed. If he simply intends on playing for time and not changing the situation, then we can expect further and more damaging criticism from our diplomatic allies and a serious erosion of Israel’s international position. Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread |
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