Britain's reaction to Gaza killings a danger to us - galloway  

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George Galloway
Dec 29 2008

THROUGH four decades, I've been saying to anyone who would listen that the problem of Palestine was the heart of the matter. The flaw at the heart of western relations with the east, the cancer within. For a time, only the accusatory lash about "terrorism" was the answer, and this long before al-Qaeda made the word as fatally venomous as it's become.

I was described on the front page of Scottish Field, a hunting shooting and fishing magazine, in a profile written by top Scots journo George Rosie, as "the most dangerous man in British politics". That was nearly 30 years ago, when I was in my early twenties. Such prescience. Rosie's prescience, I mean.

But I was right, too. That Palestine is a suppurating sore, poisoning the international political scene, is now a commonplace. After last weekend's massacre in Gaza, there can be few sentient beings in this or any land who doubt it.

The Israeli propaganda machine - in more or less perpetual motion for half a century - are good at what they do. Until it became impossible. Israel denied that Palestine had ever existed. Sixties PM Golda Meir actually said "there is no such thing as a Palestinian, there never has been".

The claim then was that God, the famous estate agent, had given Palestine to the Jews and, though this was thousands of years ago, this promise had now been redeemed. The truth was more prosaic. It was Britain wot done it. In 1917, British minister Arthur Balfour made a move, unprecedented, even in imperial times. On behalf of one people (us), he promised a second people (the small group of Atheistic Jews who called themselves the Zionists) the land of a third people (the Palestinians). The rest, as they say, is history.

The new Israeli narrative - taken up with cow-like docility by most British television commentators - is that the Palestinians are merely a part of the worldwide "terror" problem, and that as Britain and the US did in Iraq and Afghanistan, so Israel must do in Gaza and, if necessary, the West Bank. It's all just another theatre of the "war on terror".

Judging by the flurry of protests around the country from Leith Walk to Kensington High Street, and the unprecedented level of calls and texts and emails to my weekend radio shows, this narrative is a busted flush. France, Russia and the UN agencies, whose duties include feeding 80 per cent of Gaza's population thanks to the Israeli siege, all condemned this cowardly act of state terrorism - dropping bombs on to schools and into densely packed civilian areas.

But two dogs didn't bark. London and Washington, no doubt co-ordinating their statements, waited hours and then promptly blamed the victims. In so doing, our own Government, yet again, has imperilled the safety of our people including our servicemen and women. The axis of evil, for billions of people in this world - yes, that's billions - is the US, Britain and Israel. Its bloody footprint is smearing our television screens all over again.

The claim was God had given Palestine to the Jews and this promise had now been redeemed. The truth was more prosaic. It was Britain wot done it.


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Here's a video from the Belfast demo - all very peaceful...

This entry was posted on Friday, January 2, 2009 at Friday, January 02, 2009 and is filed under . You can follow any responses to this entry through the comments feed .

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