Let's shred and vapourize a few million more innocents... But first we'll strangle them with sanctions, say our elected leaders

Is this what we voted for?

Is this what Western diplomacy has come to in the 21stt century?

Thank heaven for Dr David Morrison's very timely briefing document entitled "Iran hasn't got an active nuclear weapons programme, says US intelligence". Morrison is the noted political researcher from Northern Ireland. He sets out the position in easy-reading form so that even our dimmest politicians can understand.

As he points out in a covering note, US intelligence believes Iran hasn't got an active nuclear weapons programme and Israeli intelligence agrees. "When this became the view of US intelligence in 2007, President Bush had to abandon any thought of taking military action against Iran's nuclear facilities. As he wrote in his memoir Decision Points:

How could I possibly explain using the military to destroy the nuclear facilities of a country the intelligence community said had no active nuclear weapons program?

Today, President Obama should be asking himself the same question, since US intelligence is still saying that Iran has no active nuclear weapons programme.

So too should David Cameron, William Hague and the entire European Union.

Dr Morrison's report boils down to this:

• According to the US intelligence community Iran hasn't got an active nuclear weapons programme and Israeli intelligence agrees.

• The US intelligence community set out this view in a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) in November 2007 and it remains their opinion today. Their assessment was that Tehran halted its nuclear weapons programme in 2003. "We assess with moderate confidence Tehran had not restarted its nuclear weapons programme as of mid-2007..." (NIEs express the consensus view of the 16 US intelligence agencies).

• The November 2011 report on Iran's nuclear activities by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) did not say that Iran has an active nuclear weapons programme despite the impression given by the media and ministerial rantings.

• Iran has declared to the IAEA 15 nuclear facilities (including its uranium enrichment plants at Natanz and Fordow) and nine other locations. These are all being monitored by the IAEA. In its February 2012 report, the IAEA confirmed yet again there was no diversion of nuclear material from these facilities.

• The IAEA on 4 December 2007 noted that the NIE tallied with the agency's statements over the last few years that, although Iran still needs to clarify aspects of its nuclear activities, the agency has no concrete evidence of an ongoing nuclear weapons programme or undeclared nuclear facilities.

• On 16 February this year, the present director of the National Intelligence Agency, James Clapper, reported to the Senate Armed Services Committee: "We assess Iran is keeping open the option to develop nuclear weapons... We do not know, however, if Iran will eventually decide to build nuclear weapons... That is the intelligence community's assessment..."

• On the same day US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta gave the same assessment to another congressional committee, saying that Iran has not made a decision on whether to proceed with development of an atomic bomb. A month earlier, when asked about Iran's nuclear programme on "Face the Nation" on CBS, he replied: "Are they [the Iranians] trying to develop a nuclear weapon? No."

So why the mismatch between intelligence and the loud clamour for war – economic and military? The answer, presumably, is because war is good – good for business. Hence war can be highly beneficial to a senior politician's post-political career.

A Middle East nuke-free zone... really?

The international community, including the US and the EU, says it is committed to a nuclear weapons free zone in the Middle East. The only impediment, of course, is Israel's possession of nuclear weapons, which menace the whole region and perhaps beyond. Some experts believe that Israel has around 400 nuclear warheads and, naturally, various means of delivering them.

Iran has none.

Iran's nuclear facilities are open to IAEA inspection; Israel's are not.

Furthermore, UN Security Council resolution 487, in 1981, called on Israel "urgently to place its nuclear facilities under IAEA safeguards". Israel has ignored it for over 30 years.

Yet the US and the EU choose to impose vicious economic sanctions on Iran, and threaten military action, while taking no such measures against Israel, not even uttering a word of criticism.

Britain's chancellor of the exchequer, George Osborne, in December at the Conservative Friends of Israel Annual Business Lunch said:

I think Israel is right to identify this [Iran's nuclear programme] as one of the greatest threats to peace and human life in the world at the moment... Any excuse that Iran had that there was a peaceful purpose for what they were doing has been blown out of the water. There was a report recently from the IAEA which made that clear.

Did it? Has Osborne actually read the IAEA report or is he mouthing off some Tel Aviv script?

He said he recently authorized the imposition of new sanctions, "stronger than any we've ever imposed before with a country", cutting off the British financial system from the Iranian banking system.

He added: "David Cameron, myself and other prominent members of the government, as well as the many Conservative MPs who are here, are all good friends of Israel."

And at a dinner of the Community Security Trust (CST) in London recently Osborne went so far as to announce his support for the present mayor of London, Boris Johnson, in the coming election, saying that Boris, like him, was a lifelong friend of Israel, and the leader of London should be committed to securing the interests of Israel.

As if any mayor of London should bother himself with the interests of a foreign racist regime! That is not what the people of London elect him to do, nor did the people of Britain elect Osborne to fly the Israeli flag on the roof of the Treasury.

What they say and do make it very clear that Prime Minister David Cameron, Foreign Secretary William Hague and Middle East minister Alistair Burt are also Israel's ardent stooges. Cameron is a self-declared Zionist, Hague a member of the Friends of Israel since he was a juvenile in short trousers, and Burt was not just a member of that fan club but an officer.

Here's a flavour:

Cameron: "We will not stand by and allow Iran to cast a nuclear shadow over Israel or the wider region" (CST Annual Dinner, 2 March 2011)

Cameron: "I've read the reports, and I have had the briefings: they are stockpiling enough uranium to make a nuclear weapon over time. Of course, that's a huge threat to the world but it's a particular threat to Israel. Since we came into power we have wasted no time in securing tougher sanctions. We backed tough sanctions in the United Nations – and we championed and led, at meeting after meeting, even tougher sanctions at the European level. Iran needs to know if they continue on this course they will feel international pressure and international isolation". (Conservative Friends of Israel Annual Business Lunch, 13 December 2010)

Hague: "Iran's actions not only run counter to the positive change that we are seeing elsewhere in the region; they may threaten to undermine it, bringing about a nuclear arms race in the Middle East or the risk of conflict". (Middle East Statement, 9 November 2011)

Burt: "Israel's strength is a regional bulwark for good... Iran does not just threaten Israel. It threatens those who would be Israel's allies in the Gulf, and in the Arab world who need Israel as part of a common cause against a regime dangerously loose... Israel's strength is not a regional threat, but an anchor of regional stability. And the world needs Israel's values, of tolerance and justice..." (Speech to Bar-Ilan University, Israel, 10 January 2012)

Burt: "We share Israel's determination to prevent Iranian proliferation. Israel is not facing the threat of a nuclear Iran alone..." (Speech to Bar-Ilan University, Israel, 10 January 2012)

Burt: "I care as someone who has for decades counted himself as an ardent friend of Israel."(Speech to Bar-Ilan University, Israel, 10 January 2012)

These people at the heart of British government claim Iran is pursuing military objectives through its nuclear programme but provide us with not a shred of evidence. In the circumstances their propaganda offensive linked with Washington's sounds insane and is unraveling fast because no amount of media lies can hide a crude fabrication. Nobody's buying it.

If our leaders have trouble understanding the NIE and IAEA reports, help is now at hand. I suggest they get themselves a copy of Dr Morrison's "idiot's guide" before they land this country – and indeed the whole West – in more trouble than we can handle and bring down the world's everlasting hatred on our heads.
Postscript
Just as I was signing off I skimmed Obama's annual speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). It's a regular reach-for-the-sickbag occasion where the American president has to account for his commitment to the Zionist project and plead for his job. Yes sir, "over the last three years, as president of the United States, I have kept my commitments to the state of Israel. At every crucial juncture, at every fork in the road, we have been there for Israel. Every single time."

Bravo.

When the Goldstone report unfairly singled out Israel for criticism, we challenged it. When Israel was isolated in the aftermath of the flotilla incident, we supported them... and we will always reject the notion that Zionism is racism. When one-sided resolutions are brought up at the Human Rights Council, we oppose them...

And so forth. As an exercise in grovelling it has no equal, and the theme is always the same: Israel's security. But for "security" read "dominance", requiring all the other nations in the region to remain vulnerable and unresisting to predatory Israel's nuclear and military superiority, and its ever expanding borders.

"I've made it clear that there will be no lasting peace unless Israel's security concerns are met," says Obama, adding:

That's why we continue to press Arab leaders to reach out to Israel... That's why just as we encourage Israel to be resolute in the pursuit of peace we have continued to insist that any Palestinian partner must recognise Israel's right to exist and reject violence and adhere to existing agreements.

If only Israel would do the same.

And who'd have thought Obama would stoop to making mischief with that old Khomeini misquote – saying that "no Israeli government can tolerate a nuclear weapon in the hands of a regime that threatens to wipe Israel off the map".

And what about this gem: "A nuclear-armed Iran would thoroughly undermine the non-proliferation regime that we've done so much to build."

Obama tells AIPAC the only way to truly solve this problem and end the sanctions pain is for the Iranian government to forsake nuclear weapons, although, as he must have been told time and time again, they don't have any while Israel is bristling with them.

Obama sure does cut a sad figure these days.

* Stuart Littlewood is author of the book Radio Free Palestine, which tells the plight of the Palestinians under occupation. Read other articles by Stuart.

Related posts:

• Hillary Clinton at AIPAC: Bomb Iran
• WHY IRAN? Give Iran a Break!
• Why Iran won’t attack Israel

The original construction of the Orthodox Church was built in the 6thCentury, in what is now Gaza

Phoebe Greenwood, writing from Gaza City in The Guardian on 23 December, reported:

"There hasn't been a Christmas tree in Gaza City's main square since Hamas pushed the Palestinian Authority out of Gaza in 2007 and Christmas is no longer a public holiday."

The headline said Hamas had "cancelled Christmas". Could this possibly be true?

When I visited Gaza in late 2007 Fr Manuel Mussallam, the feisty old priest in charge of the Catholic community, took me and others to meet Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh and some of his colleagues. Relations between Christian and Muslim – or at least between the Catholic community and the Hamasgovernment – seemed strong enough and friendly enough for Christmas celebrations to be left undisturbed.

The very idea of a ban actually makes me smile because Scotland, a Christian country of course, saw Christmas as a papist festival and for centuries discouraged it. When I lived there it wasn't even a public holiday.

But back to the Strip... Is Hamas being beastly to Gaza's Christians? Has Phoebe Greenwood got her story straight? I wrote to her at The Guardian, pointing out that revelations of this kind in the popular British press undo the hard work activists put in to help the Palestinian cause. Could she please throw more light onto it? I've had no reply.

I'm in England and unable to contact Hamas. Phoebe Greenwood is on the spot. Shouldn't someone from Mr Haniyeh's office be given a chance to comment?

As for Fr Manuel, he has finally retired and left Gaza. The school he ran there, part-funded by the Vatican, had 1200 pupils. About 1000 were Muslim and some of these the children of Hamas leaders.

The relationship between Muslim and Christian in the Holy Land, and the potential for friction, is frequently poked and prodded simply to make mischief.

Those with a rightful cause versus those who took it away

Archbishop Theodosius Hanna (Greek Orthodox Church), on a visit to Ireland a year ago, told politicians:

"The problem in Palestine has nothing to do with religion – it is not a religious issue. It is not a conflict of Christians, Muslims and Jewish people. It is a conflict between those who are the holders of a rightful cause and those who took away that right by military might.

"Palestinian people as a whole, including Christians and Muslims, have said repeatedly that what they want is peace. We want two states that live together in peace. However, the reality on the ground is that we are extremely far away from that goal because Israel does not want peace."

Fr Manuel, who accompanied the Archbishop, told his listeners what happened when the Christian school in Gaza was targeted.

"Five Hamas ministers visited the school after it was attacked and promised they would repair the damage... A Hamas minister, a Muslim, picked up the Holy Bible thrown on the ground, kissed it and put it back on the altar. He said Muslims were forbidden to do such things to the Bible. Hamas paid more than $122,000 to repair all the damage caused.

"Afterwards I met the Hamas prime minister, Ismail Haniyeh. When he embraced me he said this, and we believed it. He said: "Go to your family, but be assured that Hamas will employ weapons against Muslims to protect Christians in Gaza." This is the reality. Christians in Palestine are not suffering persecution, because we are not considered to be a religious community, but rather the people of Palestine. We have the same rights and the same obligations."

From left: Archbishop Theodosius Hanna and Father Manuel Mussallam

It is hardly surprising that Israeli oppression aided and endorsed by western Christendom, and the grinding poverty this evil alliance creates in the occupied territories, drives some Muslims into the arms of Islamic extremism. Hamas insists that extremist acts are incidents not policy.

Fr Manuel went on to tell the Irish what things were really like under military occupation.

"We have spoken to Israel for more than 18 years and the result has been zero. We have signed agreements here and there at various times and then when there is a change in the government of Israel we have to start again from the beginning. We ask for our life and to be given back our Jerusalem, to be given our state and for enough water to drink. We want to be given more opportunity to reach Jerusalem. I have not seen Jerusalem since 1990."

He described the nightmarish system of entry and exit permits, which Israel invariably refused.

"We want to see an end to this occupation, and please do not ask us to protect those who are occupying our territory."

A week ago, on Christmas Day, the Voice of Palestine website ran this news item:

DAMASCUS – Hamas Movement have offered its best wishes to all Palestinian Christians in occupied Palestine, and other countries on the occasion of Prophet Jesus' birth and wished them a happy holiday.

"On the occasion of rejoicing the birth of Prophet Jesus peace of God be upon him, the Islamic Movement of Hamas extends its sincere wishes to all our fellow Christians in their homeland Palestine, the cradle of prophecies and the land of divine messages, as well as to the Palestinian Christians in the Arab and Islamic countries and the whole world," Hamas said in a press release on Saturday.

Hamas wished this occasion to be an opportunity for uniting the Palestinian people and pooling the efforts of the world's free people to support the Palestinian cause and protect the Islamic and Christian holy sites.

In the past Hamas has shown great respect for the Christian tradition of Christmas and, I hear, Hamas officials in Bethlehem used to dress up as Santa Claus to distribute gifts to Christian children. So the question remains: has Hamas really become such a Scrooge* as to torpedo Christmas with a tree ban?

If so, it's a sure-fire way to lose friends and alienate people.

* for more about the mean-mindedness of that notorious character Ebenezer Scrooge, and his hatred of Christmas, see 'A Christmas Carol' by Charles Dickens. Scrooge eventually sees the light and redeems himself.

* Stuart Littlewood is author of the book Radio Free Palestine, which tells the plight of the Palestinians under occupation. Read other articles by Stuart.

Related posts:

• Palestine: Yet People Celebrate New Year 2011
• Bethlehem honors Jerusalem and Gaza this Christmas season
• Will the Church act to save the children of Gaza this Christmas?

O little town of Bethlehem
How still we see thee lie
Above thy deep and dreamless sleep
The silent stars go by
Yet in thy dark streets shineth
The everlasting Light
The hopes and fears of all the years
Are met in thee tonight

While carving the turkey for your family and merrily quaffing mulled wine 'midst happy laughter, remember that the romantic Little Town of Bethlehem at the centre of our childhood Christmases is now "an immense prison" in the words of Michel Sabbah, former Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, and entirely surrounded by Israel's ugly 8-metre separation wall bristling with machine-gun towers.

The good citizens of Bethlehem are cut off from their capital Jerusalem, only six miles away, the rest of the West Bank and the whole world.

Consider that the United Nations, for obvious reasons, designated Jerusalem and Bethlehem a protected international zone under UN administration. Israeli rule was not to be permitted.

Consider also that when Palestine was under British mandate Christians accounted for 20 per cent of the population and how 63 years of terror, illegal occupation, dispossession, interference and economic wrecking tactics have whittled their numbers down to less than 2 per cent.

Consider that, at this rate, there will soon be no Christians left in the land where Christianity was born... thanks to the cowardice and inaction of our political leaders.

How will the 26 bishops sitting around in our House of Lords, doing nothing, explain that to their dwindling congregations?

As usual, many Palestinians in Bethlehem and the other cities and villages throughout occupied Palestine will be unable to reunite with their families or celebrate Christmas at their holy places in Jerusalem and Bethlehem due to cruel Israeli-imposed travel restrictions. Imagine for a moment what sort of Christmas the half-starved children in blockaded Gaza are having this year, and every year... and what New Year prospects face all the other Palestinian children struggling to grow up with the Israeli army's boot on their necks.

Deep down it is not about religion at all. The struggle is between justice and a criminal conspiracy of huge international proportions, the tentacles of which spread far beyond the Holy Land and impact on all of us, even here in the deepest recesses of England's green and pleasant land.

In the New Year civil society must resolve to DO SOMETHING about it, one way or another, before the evil spins irreversibly out of control.

* Stuart Littlewood is author of the book Radio Free Palestine, which tells the plight of the Palestinians under occupation. Read other articles by Stuart.

Related posts:

• O Little Town of Bethlehem!
• Merry Christmas, Bethlehem
• Bethlehem honors Jerusalem and Gaza this Christmas season

Prime minister David Cameron has told Britain: "We are a Christian country and we should not be afraid to say so."

He was speaking on the occasion of the 400^th anniversary of the King James version of the Bible which, he said, had helped to give Britain a set of values and morals that make us what we are today.

And Cameron doesn't accept the argument about the church not getting involved in politics. "To me, Christianity, faith, religion, the Church and the Bible are all inherently involved in politics because so many political questions are moral questions."

True, but can our churchmen 'do politics'? They perpetually fail to get a result even on the Church's 'home turf', the Holy Land.

It's painful to be reminded that while Israel was planning its murderous 3-week assault on the people of Gaza (including the Christian community there), which it launched three Christmases ago, the Archbishop of Canterbury was visiting the former Nazi camps of Auschwitz-Birkenau in Poland with the Chief Rabbi to show joint solidarity against genocide.

"This is a pilgrimage not to a holy place but to a place of utter profanity," he announced. "How shall we be able to read the signs... that evil is gathering force once again?"

He needed to look no further than the prison camp that the Holy Land has been turned into by the never-ending Israeli occupation. Couldn't he sniff the stench of profanity besieging the Gaza Strip which, some claim, Israel uses as a warfare laboratory? Hasn't he noticed a strong whiff of evil in the judaisation of Jerusalem and the expulsion of its non-Jewish citizens?

And when the Archbishop visited the Holy Land in 2010 the Israelis prevented him seeing the horrors their thugs had inflicted on Gaza and obstructed him in his Christian mission there. But he still fraternised with their rabbinate and their President, and paid homage to Yad Vashem and the Holocaust, thus appearing to legitimise the blockade, the persecution of Muslim and Christian communities and Israel's contempt for international law and human rights.

The Pope fell for the same propaganda trick.

The Church clearly needs the mother of all shake-ups before it'll be capable of rolling up its sleeves and getting political.

Our not-so-Christian government

Britain as a country may still be Christian but what about its government? Mr Cameron describes himself as a "committed" Christian but only a "vaguely practising" one. What does that mean? Are Christian principles getting in his way?

Or is he sending a coded message of comfort to friends in Tel Aviv and Washington?

For Cameron also claims to be a Zionist.

He voted enthusiastically for the Iraq war, an irresponsible and un-Christian thing to do based on neo-con lies. And look what it has cost in lives and wholesale destruction. Now he and foreign secretary William Hague are upping sanctions designed to cripple the Iranian economy and bring misery to that country's civilian population. Shades of Iraq... sadistic action once again based on mere suspicion of wrongdoing, not actual proof. Is this proper behaviour for even the "vaguest" of Christians?

The political baggage Cameron has brought with him includes a foreign secretary who has been a member of Conservative Friends of Israel since his teenage years and a minister for Middle East affairs who's a former officer of that same fan club.

His defence secretary Liam Fox, now departed in disgrace, was dubbed "a champion of Israel within the government". He famously said: "In the battle for the values that we stand for, for democracy against theocracy, for democratic liberal values against repression - Israel's enemies are our enemies..."

How can it be right for Ministers of the Crown to make such ludicrous commitments to a belligerent foreign power that continually defies international and humanitarian law and, I hear, shoots children for amusement - according to a horrifying article by surgeon David Halpin, 'The methodical shooting of boys at work in Gaza by snipers of the Israeli Occupation Force'?

When Cameron became Conservative leader he proclaimed: "You need to know that if I become Prime Minister, Israel has a friend who will never turn his back on Israel." And once in Downing Street he pledged: "In me, you have a Prime Minister whose belief in Israel is indestructible...I want to be clear, we will always support Israel..."

Supporting Israel means, of course, endorsing the regime's lawlessness and criminal ambitions. Is that an option for a real Christian? And when will Mr Cameron have time to concentrate on Britain's best interests in the Middle East, which is the job he was elected for?

Furthermore Britain, like all other countries that think themselves civilised, is under a solemn international obligation to make sure there's no hiding place for the world's vilest criminals. It's a responsibility no Christian should shirk. However, when Tzipi Livni, who was responsible for mounting Operation Cast Lead and for the 1,400 deaths that followed, complained that a warrant had been issued for her arrest in London, Cameron and Hague immediately mangled our Universal Jurisdiction laws to create a safe haven for her and other Israelis wanted for crimes against humanity.

Having ensured that Madam Livni could safely go shopping in Bond Street, the devoted Mr Hague said: "The UK is committed to upholding international justice and all of our international obligations. Our core principle remains that those guilty of war crimes must be brought to justice."

The Zionist cuckoo in Christianity's nest

Cameron waxes lyrical about the King James Bible but acts as if he was brought up on the less admirable Scofield version, which has been the standard religious text on the other side of the Atlantic.

Cyrus Scofield, a convicted criminal and described by one American newspaper as "a shyster", was commissioned to re-write the King James version by inserting Zionist-friendly notes. The idea was to change the Christian view of Zionism by creating and promoting a pro-Zionist sub-culture within Christianity. The Oxford University Press appointed Scofield as editor, and the Scofield Reference Bible has been a best-seller especially in the US for nearly 100 years.

It introduced a new worship icon, the modern State of Israel, which did not exist until 1948 but was already on the drawing board of the World Zionist movement.

American journalist Grace Halsell explained the re-hashed Biblical message:

"Simply stated it is this: Every act taken by Israel is orchestrated by God, and should be condoned, supported, and even praised by the rest of us. Never mind what Israel does, say the Christian Zionists. God wants this to happen...

"Scofield said that Christ cannot return to earth until certain events occur: The Jews must return to Palestine, gain control of Jerusalem and rebuild a temple, and then we all must engage in the final, great battle called Armageddon. Estimates vary, but most students of Armageddon theology agree that as a result of these relatively recent interpretations of Biblical scripture, 10 to 40 million Americans believe Palestine is God's chosen land for the Jews."

Ultra-literal reading of certain Old Testament texts has persuaded Zionists to believe that Old Testament promises made to the ancient Jewish tribes are transferable to the largely unrelated people that comprise the modern state of Israel. They hope for, and are obviously working towards, the final battle they call Armageddon, in which Israel's enemies (and God's, of course) will be defeated. After that Jesus will return as the Jewish Messiah and King to reign in Jerusalem for a thousand years, and the Jewish people will enjoy privileged status in the world.

That is the Zionist dream of world domination in a nutshell.

We see how politicians become eager stooges, but if you are as puzzled as I am how a true Christian could possibly be taken in by Zionism, a short paper on the phenomenon is available from Sadaka [PDF].

An effective antidote is The Jerusalem Declaration on Christian Zionism, a statement by the Latin Patriarch and Local Heads of Churches in Jerusalem issued in 2006. They are in the front line. They know the score. It is summed up in a single sentence:

"We categorically reject Christian Zionist doctrines as a false teaching that corrupts the biblical message of love, justice and reconciliation."

Merry Christmas, Mr Cameron.

* Stuart Littlewood is author of the book Radio Free Palestine, which tells the plight of the Palestinians under occupation. Read other articles by Stuart.

Related posts:

• The Jerusalem Declaration on Christian Zionism
• The Unacceptable Cost of Christian-Zionism
• William A. Cook – Zionist Control of Britain’s Government: 1940-2009

Beware politicians cloaked in the American flag or diplomats sporting Union Jack kippahs...

When Marcellus, in Shakespeare's Hamlet, famously says, "Something's rotten in the state of Denmark", he means that the body politic is rotting from the top down and the corruption stinks to high heaven.

410 years later the Bard's words are especially applicable to the so-called political élite of the Western world. The stench of their corruption is assailing the nostrils of more and more people and causing mass nausea.

Thankfully some small but effective relief is available in the United States courtesy of the Council for the National Interest Foundation (CNIF), an independent non-profit concern that provides information and analysis on the Middle East and its relationship to the United States. The CNIF has been doing an excellent demolition job on US foreign policy and exposing how it is dangerously at odds with American values and national interests.

The CNIF hammers home the necessity for voters and their elected officials to be free from the undue influence and pressure of foreign countries and their lobbyists.

The US's uniquely massive support for Israel, says CNIF, has cost trillions of dollars and multitudes of lives. It has diminished America's moral standing in the world, lessened its domestic freedoms, and exposed the American people to unnecessary and growing peril.

And yet America's taxpayers give Israel over $8 million per day. And since the US is in deficit, this means borrowing the money, handing it to Israel, then paying interest on it for evermore afterwards. 10 million American families are reportedly sliding into foreclosure; but the US administration continues to heap tax money onto Israel.

It is not as if Israel is a close ally. The Israeli regime spies on America incessantly. Its forces have killed and injured numerous Americans with impunity. And Israel has repeatedly stolen US technology and passed it on to other nations, some of them America's enemies.

In 1967 Israel attacked the USS Liberty, killing or injuring over 200 American servicemen. A high ranking independent commission in 2003 found that Israel had committed an act of war against the United States. Yet the US President at the time (Johnson), and his secretary of defense (McNamara), are said to have recalled rescue aircraft and ordered a cover-up.

Israeli aggression and defiance of international law, human rights conventions and UN resolutions, have created enormous hostility throughout the world, much of which is directed at the US as Israel's number one buddy, funder and protector. Furthermore Israel's nuclear arsenal is a menace both to the region itself and far beyond. It has refused to sign the nuclear proliferation treaty and the British American Security Information Council has found that in Israel "nuclear weapons are being assigned roles that go well beyond deterrence."

The fact that such weapons are in the hands of Israel's psychopaths makes it perfectly understandable that other nations in the region wish to acquire them as a deterrent.

US intelligence agencies have so far found no concrete proof that Iran is developing nuclear weapons. Iran, of course, is not happy to be constantly threatened with sanctions and pre-emptive strikes. It demands that the American authorities publicly apologize to the Iranian government and its citizens "for the false accusations they publicized against Tehran in violation of international norms and regulations". In a letter handed to the Swiss Embassy, which represents US interests since Iran and Washington severed diplomatic relations in 1980, Tehran also demanded compensation for material and moral damages caused by America' anti-Iran publicity campaign.

You'd think that a supposedly responsible superpower like the US would seek to re-establish diplomatic links rather than stay in a sulk for 30 years and spitefully snipe and intimidate through third parties. America is seen to have the unmistakable hallmarks of a playground bully who could drag us all into another world war.

As for Israel's war crimes in Jerusalem, the West Bank and especially Gaza, the racist regime uses American weapons in violation of US laws, killing and maiming huge numbers of civilians, women, and children.

This endless killing spree funded by American taxpayers and shielded by the US government has caused a burning hatred of the US throughout the Muslim world.

Britain, as America's and Israel's bitch, is also feeling the heat and putting herself in peril.

A red rag cover-up

Meanwhile, on the British side of the Atlantic former ambassador Craig Murray has numerous well-placed informants and is busy blowing the lid off one of the slimiest intrigues ever exposed at Westminster.

On his website Murray has penned a marvellous piece titled Gould-Werritty: A Real Conspiracy, Not a Theory. Gould is the British Ambassador to Israel Matthew Gould and Werritty is zionist stooge Adam Werrity, friend and "adviser" to disgraced defence secretary Liam Fox.

"There is a huge government cover-up in progress over the Werritty connection to Mossad and the role of British Ambassador to Israel Matthew Gould, and their neo-con plan to start a war with Iran," says Murray. He had made a Freedom of Information request for all communications between Gould and Werritty and was astonished to receive a midnight reply that his request was refused because it was "likely to exceed the cost limit".

This was like a red rag to a bull. And it coincided with attempts to obstruct MP Paul Flynn while questioning Cabinet Secretary Gus O'Donnell on the Gould-Werritty connection at the House of Commons Public Administration Committee. Flynn was repeatedly interrupted by Robert Halfon MP who, says Murray, receives funding from the same Israeli sources as Werritty and was formerly Political Director of the Conservative Friends of Israel.

Murray's concerns centre on the numerous meetings between Fox, Werrrity and Gould, and especially their "private dinner" in Tel Aviv with Mossad. Murray claims that Gould met Werritty many times more than the twice that O'Donnell listed in his "investigation" into the affair.

Murray observes: "It is now evident that not only did Fox, Gould and Werritty have at least five meetings while Fox was in power - with never another British official present - they had several meetings while Fox was shadow Foreign Secretary." He acknowledges that O'Donnell was correct in saying that what Fox and Werritty were up to in opposition wasn't his concern. But what Gould - a senior official - was doing with them most certainly was. "A senior British diplomat cannot just hold a series of meetings with the opposition shadow Defence Secretary and a paid zionist lobbyist. What on earth was happening?"

O'Donnell, replying to Flynn's questions about the dinner date with Mossad, said: "The important point here was that, when the Secretary of State had that meeting, he had an official with him—namely, in this case, the ambassador. That is very important, and I should stress that I would expect our ambassador in Israel to have contact with Mossad. That will be part of his job. It is totally natural, and I do not think that you should infer anything from that about the individual's biases. That is what ambassadors do."

But Murray is adamant. "I know from a mole that the plot involves a plan to attack Iran."

Gould-Werritty: A Real Conspiracy, Not a Theory

Gould has been photographed wearing a Union Jack kippah in a tacky attempt to convince us he's batting for Britain. Can an ardent zionist Jew be anything but an Israel-firster? You may well ask... Fox and Werritty are both zionist sympathisers, as are foreign secretary Hague and prime minister Cameron.

All of them appear firmly wedded to the principle expressed in Fox's idiotic declaration that "in the battle for the values that we stand for... Israel's enemies are our enemies and this is a battle in which we all stand together..." Fox was the man the Jewish Chronicle hailed as "a champion of Israel within the government", though of course there are many others - 80 percent of Conservative MPs for a start.

Mad, mad world of diplomacy

The American and British publics have been shamefully caught up in more than enough zionist warmongering plots. Iraq, which we subjected to 12 years of cruel sanctions and subsequently bombed back to the Stone Age, killing hundreds of thousands, was never our enemy. Libya was not our enemy. Iran is definitely not our enemy. Nor is Afghanistan; nor Syria; nor Lebanon; nor Palestine; nor Egypt.

As I write, reports are coming in that Iran's parliament has voted to expel the British ambassador, presumably in retaliation for the British chancellor George Osborne's announcement last week of fresh punitive measures targeting Iranian financial sectors, including the Central Bank of Iran. The bill now needs the approval of the Guardian Council.

The UK Foreign Office says it will to react "robustly" if Iran expels its ambassador. "This unwarranted move will do nothing to help the regime address their growing isolation or international concerns about their nuclear programme and human rights record. If the Iranian government acts on this, we will respond robustly in consultation with our international partners."

However, for some seven months this year the Foreign Office didn't bother to send an ambassador to Tehran when the last one finished his stint in March. Hague and Cameron, like Obama and Clinton, apparently think it unimportant to maintain senior level contact with the country they say is dangerous and must be crippled by sanctions or smashed by war.

Welcome to the mad, mad world of zio-British and zio-American diplomacy. Shouldn't they be straining every sinew to strengthen links with Iran, too long neglected? Or are we supposed to applaud this supremely casual attitude in the matter of key relationships that could mean life or death for millions?

The stench of "something rotten in the state" is becoming unbearable. Would the Council for the National Interest Foundation care to set up a branch here in the UK, please, and help clean up and disinfect?

* Stuart Littlewood is author of the book Radio Free Palestine, which tells the plight of the Palestinians under occupation. Read other articles by Stuart.

Related posts:

• Something Rotten This Way Comes
• Mohamed Khodr – Obama and Western Civilizations: Hypocritical Rhetoric and Righteous Holocausts
• Murdoch is not the only maggot in the rotten apple

When new recruits join British Petroleum (BP) they are fed romantic tales about how the company came into being.

William Knox D'Arcy, a Devon man, studied law and, after emigrating to Australia, made a fortune from the Mount Morgan gold-mining operations in the 1880s. Returning to England he agreed to fund a search for oil and minerals in Persia and negotiations with the Mozaffar al-Din Shah Qajar began in 1901. A sixty-year concession to explore for oil gave D'Arcy the oil rights to the entire country except for five provinces in northern Iran. The Iranian government would receive 16 percent of the oil company's annual profits.

Mozzafar ad-Din, seldom consulted on matters of state by his father, was naive in business matters and unprepared for kingship when the time came. He borrowed heavily from the Russians in order to finance his extravagant personal lifestyle and the costs of the state, and in order to pay off the debt, he signed away control of many Iranian industries and markets to foreigners. The deal D'Arcy cut was too sharp by far and would eventually lead to trouble.

He sent an exploration team headed by geologist George B Reynolds. In 1903 a company was formed and D'Arcy had to spend much of his fortune to cover the costs. Further financial support came from Glasgow-based Burmah Oil in return for a large share of the stock.

Drilling in southern Persia at Shardin continued until 1907 when the search was switched to Masjid-i-Souleiman. By 1908 D'Arcy was almost bankrupt. Reynolds received a last-chance instruction: "Drill to 1,600 feet and give up." On 26 May, at 1,180 feet, he struck oil.

It was indeed a triumph of guts and determination. The Anglo-Persian Oil Company was soon up and running and in 1911 completed a pipeline from the oilfield to its new refinery at Abadan. But the company was in trouble again by 1914. The golden age of motoring had not yet arrived and the industrial oil markets were sewn up by American and European interests. The sulphurous stench of the Persian oil, even after refining, ruled it out for domestic use, so D'Arcy had a marketing problem.

Luckily, Winston Churchill, then First Lord of the Admiralty, was an enthusiast for oil and wanted to convert the British fleet from coal, especially now that a reliable oil source was secured. He famously told Parliament: "Look out upon the wide expanse of the oil regions of the world!" Only the British-owned Anglo-Persian Oil Company, he said, could protect British interests. His resolution passed and the British Government took a major shareholding in the company. Just in time too, for World War I started a few weeks later.

During the war the government seized the assets of a German company calling itself British Petroleum in order to market its products in Britain. Anglo-Persian acquired the assets from the Public Trustee complete with a ready-made distribution network with hundreds of depots, railway tank wagons, road vehicles, barges and so forth. This enabled Anglo-Persian to rapidly expand sales in petroleum-hungry Britain and Europe after the war.

In the inter-war years Anglo-Persian profited handsomely from paying the Iranians a measly 16 per cent , and an increasingly angry Iran tried to renegotiate the terms. Getting nowhere, the Iranians cancelled the D'Arcy agreement and the matter ended up at the Permanent Court of International Justice at The Hague. A new agreement in 1933 provided Anglo-Persian with a fresh 60-year concession but on a smaller area. The terms were an improvement for the Iranians but still didn't amount to a square deal.

Iranian President Mohammad Mosaddeq, Time Magazine’s Man of the Year cover for 1951.

Iran's small share of the profits became a big issue and so did the treatment of its oil workers. 6,000 withdrew their labour in 1946 and the strike was violently put down with 200 dead or injured. In 1951 Anglo-Iranian declared £40 million profit after tax but gave Iran only £7 million. Meanwhile Arabian American Oil was sharing profits with the Saudis on a 50/50 basis. Calls for nationalisation were intensifying.

Iran nationalised its oil to achieve economic and political independence and combat poverty

In March 1951 the Iranian Majlis and Senate voted to nationalise Anglo-Iranian, which had controlled Iran's oil industry since 1913 under terms disadvantageous to Iran. Respected social reformer Dr Mohammad Mossadeq was named prime minister the following month by a 79 to 12 majority. On 1 May Mossadeq carried out his government's wishes, cancelling Anglo-Iranian's oil concession due to expire in 1993 and expropriating its assets.

His explanation, given in a speech in June 1951 (M. Fateh, Panjah Sal-e Naft-e Iran, p. 525), ran as follows...

Our long years of negotiations with foreign countries... have yielded no results this far. With the oil revenues we could meet our entire budget and combat poverty, disease, and backwardness among our people. Another important consideration is that by the elimination of the power of the British company, we would also eliminate corruption and intrigue, by means of which the internal affairs of our country have been influenced. Once this tutelage has ceased, Iran will have achieved its economic and political independence.

The Iranian state prefers to take over the production of petroleum itself. The company should do nothing else but return its property to the rightful owners. The nationalization law provides that 25 per cent of the net profits on oil be set aside to meet all the legitimate claims of the company for compensation...
It has been asserted abroad that Iran intends to expel the foreign oil experts from the country and then shut down oil installations. Not only is this allegation absurd; it is utter invention...

For this he was eventually removed in a coup by MI5 and the CIA, imprisoned for 3 years then put under house arrest until his death.

In the meantime Britain orchestrated a world-wide boycott of Iranian oil, froze Iran's stirling assets and threatened legal action against anyone purchasing oil produced in the formerly British-controlled refineries. It even considered invading. The Iranian economy was soon in ruins. Attempts by the Shah to replace Mossadeq failed and he returned with more power, but his coalition was slowly crumbling under the hardships imposed by the British blockade.

At first America was reluctant to join Britain's destructive game but Churchill let it be known that Mossadeq was turning communist and pushing Iran into Russia's arms at a time when Cold War jumpiness was high. It was enough to get America's new president, Eisenhower, on board and plotting with Britain to bring Mossadeq down

Mohammad Rezā Shāh Pahlavi, Shah of Iran.

The Shah fled to Rome. When it was judged safe to do so he returned on 22 August 1953. Mossadeq was arrested, tried, convicted of treason by the Shah's military court and sentenced to death.

Mossadeq remarked ...

My greatest sin is that I nationalised Iran's oil industry and discarded the system of political and economic exploitation by the world's greatest empire... With God's blessing and the will of the people, I fought this savage and dreadful system of international espionage and colonialism.

I am well aware that my fate must serve as an example in the future throughout the Middle East in breaking the chains of slavery and servitude to colonial interests.

The sentence was later commuted to three years' solitary in a military prison, followed by house arrest until he died on 5 March 1967. Mossadeq's supporters were rounded up, imprisoned, tortured or executed.

Zahedi's new government soon reached an agreement with foreign oil companies to form a consortium to restore the flow of Iranian oil, awarding the US and Great Britain the lion's share - 40 per cent going to Anglo-Iranian. The consortium agreed to share profits on a 50-50 basis with Iran but, tricky as ever, refused to open its books for inspection or verification by Iranian auditors or allow Iranians to sit on the board.

Anglo-Iranian changed its name to British Petroleum in 1954.

A grateful US massively funded the Shah's government, including his army and secret police force, SAVAK.

The West's fun came to an abrupt halt with the Islamic Revolution of 1979 and the book closed on a chapter in British enterprise that started heroically, turned nasty and ended in tears.

The US is still hated today for reinstating the Shah and his vicious SAVAK, and for demolishing the Iranians' democratic system of government, which the Revolution unfortunately didn't restore. Britain, as the instigator and junior partner in the sordid affair, is similarly despised.

On top of that, Iran harbours great resentment at the way the West, especially the US, helped Iraq develop its chemical weapons arsenal and armed forces, and how the international community failed to punish Iraq for its use of chemical weapons against Iran in the Iran-Iraq war. The US, and eventually Britain, tilted strongly towards Saddam in that conflict and the alliance enabled Saddam to more easily acquire or develop forbidden chemical and biological weapons. At least 100,000 Iranians fell victim to them.

This is how John King, writing in 2003 , summed it up...

The United States used methods both legal and illegal to help build Saddam's army into the most powerful army in the Mideast outside of Israel. The US supplied chemical and biological agents and technology to Iraq when it knew Iraq was using chemical weapons against the Iranians. The US supplied the materials and technology for these weapons of mass destruction to Iraq at a time when it was know that Saddam was using this technology to kill his Kurdish citizens. The United States supplied intelligence and battle planning information to Iraq when those battle plans included the use of cyanide, mustard gas and nerve agents. The United States blocked UN censure of Iraq's use of chemical weapons. The United States did not act alone in this effort. The Soviet Union was the largest weapons supplier, but England, France and Germany were also involved in the shipment of arms and technology.

Which brings us to today... Why are we hearing non-stop, loud-mouthed sabre-rattling against Iran when we should be extending the hand of friendship and reconciliation?

David Cameron (b. 1966) wasn't even a twinkle in his father's eye when Britain crushed Iran's democracy, and was probably carousing with his Bullingdon Club pals at Oxford while Iranians were dying in their thousands from Saddam's poison gases. What does he know?

William Hague (b. 1961) seems similarly oblivious to the dirty tricks previous British foreign secretaries pulled on Iran.

Obama (b. 1961)? He was a community organiser in Chicago while the Iranians were being mustard-gassed by chemicals his country supplied to Saddam. What does he know?

As for Mrs Clinton (b. 1947), she's old enough to know better.

So why are they demonising Iran instead of righting the wrongs? Why not live and let live?

Because the political establishment is still smarting.

They are the new-generation imperialists, the political spawn of those Dr Mossadeq and many others struggled against.

They haven't learned from the past, and they won't lift their eyes to a better future. It's so depressing.

* Stuart Littlewood is author of the book Radio Free Palestine, which tells the plight of the Palestinians under occupation. Read other articles by Stuart.

Related posts:

• Demonizing Iranian Democracy
• Dr. Stephen Sniegoski – Will Obama Opt for War on Iran?
• Iran’s Jews not for sale

Last Friday I had a 2-hour meeting with my MP Henry Bellingham, who is a minister in the Foreign Office. We spent much of the time discussing the Palestinian statehood question and the absurd sabre-rattling against Iran.

Mr Bellingham listened politely, saying he was more sympathetic to the Palestinian cause than some within the Government. He also agreed that the best way to influence Iran was to resume trade.

Of course he was anxious to defend his colleagues in the FO saying they are more often accused of being too biased towards the Palestinians. I on the other hand don't believe there's a single grain of pro-Palestinian sentiment in the whole gruesome gang of playground bullies that runs things at Westminster.

Will anything we said be translated into action? Fat chance. All the same I dropped him a thank-you note with a reminder of my concerns...

Palestinian statehood

Hearing the British Government say that it would not vote for Palestinian freedom was a deeply shaming experience considering our 94-year betrayal and non-stop preaching self-determination.

After his infamous "declaration" in 1917 Balfour, an ardent Zionist, wrote to Curzon:

"In Palestine we do not propose even to go through the form of consulting the wishes of the present inhabitants of the country. The four powers are committed to Zionism and Zionism, be it right or wrong, good or bad, is rooted in age-long tradition, in present needs, in future hopes, of far profounder import than the desires and prejudices of the 700,000 Arabs who now occupy that land."

So from the start it was pure evil.

Lord Sydenham warned:

"The harm done by dumping down an alien population upon an Arab country may never be remedied. What we have done, by concessions not to the Jewish people but to a Zionist extreme section, is to start a running sore in the East, and no-one can tell how far that sore will extend."

Sydenham would be spinning in his grave to see the truth of his words nearly 100 years later.

The United Nations Charter determines to "reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small, and to establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained".

Have we so easily forgotten?

Let us not forget also the purpose of the UN, which is to

• 1) maintain international peace and security, and to that end take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace... and to bring about by peaceful means, and in conformity with the principles of justice and international law, adjustment or settlement of international disputes or situations which might lead to a breach of the peace;
• 2) develop friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples, and to take other appropriate measures to strengthen universal peace.

Subservience to Israel

It is deeply worrying that prominent Friends of Israel are in charge of our two most important bodies, the Intelligence & Security Committee (chaired by Sir Malcolm Rifkind, and previously Kim Howells) and the Defence Committee (chaired by James Arbuthnot).

And there is no better example of our misguided obedience to unlawful Zionist ambitions than the Government's support for the US-Israeli line which insists that the only path to a peaceful settlement is for the Palestinians to return to the negotiating table.

Law, justice, liberty and human rights are non-negotiable. The correct course is to end the occupation and restore the Palestinians' lands, homes and resources, as required by law, by convention and by numerous United Nations resolutions, then see what is left to negotiate. The Palestinians may not wish to swap land. If they do, they should not have to come cap in hand and bargain for their property with a gun to their head or a military jackboot on their throat. Negotiations with as predatory, belligerent opponent that has proved time and again that it does not want peace is obviously a waste of time.

A return to the discredited "peace process" means more lopsided negotiations, continuing injustice, continuing occupation, more time for Israel to grab more land and resources, more time to create irreversible 'facts on the ground' and more time to put pressure on Palestinians to surrender their rights.

It is grossly immoral.

Russell Tribunal points the way

In its latest deliberations the Russell Tribunal proposes the no-nonsense, law-based way forward that this abominable situation has needed all along. The Tribunal finds that Israel subjects the Palestinian people to an institutionalised regime of domination amounting to apartheid as defined under international law. "The state of Israel is legally obliged to respect the prohibition of apartheid contained in international law. In addition to being considered a crime against humanity, the practice of apartheid is universally prohibited."

The Tribunal says it has heard abundant evidence of practices that constitute 'inhuman acts' perpetrated against the Palestinian people by the Israeli authorities. "The inhuman acts listed... do not occur in random or isolated instances. They are sufficiently widespread, integrated and complementary to be described as systematic.

"They are also sufficiently rooted in law, public policy and formal institutions to be described as institutionalised."

The Tribunal sets out what the UN and the international community should do to discharge their obligations. "States and international organisations... have a duty to cooperate in bringing Israel's apartheid acts and policies of persecution to an end, including by not rendering aid or assistance to Israel and not recognising the illegal situation arising from its acts. They must bring to an end Israel's infringements of international criminal law through the prosecution of international crimes, including the crimes of apartheid and persecution."

All states are called upon to "consider appropriate measures to exert sufficient pressure on Israel, including the imposition of sanctions, the severing of diplomatic relations collectively through international organisations, or in the absence of consensus, individually by breaking bilateral relations with Israel".

It wants the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court to accept jurisdiction as requested by the Palestinian authorities in January 2009, and to initiate an investigation. And it wants Palestine to accede to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.

The Tribunal calls for the UN Special Committee against Apartheid to be reconvened to consider the question of apartheid against the Palestinian people. It asks the UN General Assembly to request an advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice "to examine the nature of Israel's prolonged occupation and apartheid".

No more pathetic hand-wringing, urging and impressing while continuing to reward with association agreements and other lucrative collaboration. Firm action is what counts.

Iran

The Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission in its 2006/7 report says: "Israel is widely believed to possess both fission and fusion bombs. It has an unsafeguarded plutonium production reactor and reprocessing capability and possibly some uranium enrichment capability, along with various other uranium-processing facilities.

Israel is the only state in the region that is not a party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. It has signed but not ratified the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty. As regards biological and chemical weapons, Israel has not signed the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention. It has signed but not ratified the Chemical Weapons Convention.

In 2009, the IAEA called on Israel to join the NPT and open its nuclear facilities to inspection, expressed concern about the Israeli nuclear capabilities, and called upon Israel to accede to the NPT and place all its nuclear facilities under comprehensive IAEA safeguards.

Haaretz reports that Israel is now working on improving its nuclear weapons capabilities, according to the independent Trident commission. The rogue state is extending the range of its Jericho 3 land-to-land missiles so they will have the capabilities of transcontinental missiles.

The Guardian reported that Israel is also striving to improve and expand the capabilities of its cruise missiles, designed to be launched from submarines. Furthermore the world's nuclear states are planning to spend more than $800 billion in the coming years to modernize and upgrade their nuclear arsenals. The United States itself will spend $700 billion dollars on such projects. Other countries that will reportedly invest in upgrading their nuclear arsenals are Russia, China, Pakistan, India, Israel, France and Britain.

So why is Mr Hague rattling the sabre at Iran when the problem is Israel? In any case, Iran is far more important as a potential ally and I am pleased that we seem to agree on the need to cultivate Iran through trade. But when Jack Straw visited Tehran in 2001 he was the first British foreign secretary to have done so since 1979 Revolution. Has Mr Cameron visited? I don't think so. Similarly our foreign secretary has failed to meet Hamas, democratically elected in free and fair elections in 2006. This is poor diplomacy, which does nothing for peace and puts us all in danger.

As a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Iran has the right to acquire and develop atomic technology for peaceful purposes. Not a shred of evidence has been produced to show that Iran is developing nuclear weaponry. Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi says: "No other country in the world has cooperated as much as Iran with the IAEA." While the warmongers in the US and Israel ratchet up their dire threats, Iran's legislature is due to discuss the country's withdrawal from the NPT after the IAEA director-general released a biased report.

Britain, as a former friend of Iran (pre-1953) who owes much to that country, ought to show leadership, change the game and avert the looming catastrophe.

"Plotting" against Iran

I have long been suspicious about the appointment of Matthew Gould as British ambassador to Israel, first because Britain is not a Jewish country and therefore should not be represented by a Zionist Jew especially in the Middle East, and secondly because of Gould's earlier posting to Iran. Now Craig Murray, a former British ambassador himself, claims to have serious evidence connecting Gould with a secret plan to attack Iran while the Foreign Office and the Cabinet Secretary Gus O'Donnell attempt to evade questioning.

Craig has published his story 'Matthew Gould and the plot to attack Iran' here . Murray writes...

"Matthew Gould does not see his race or religion as irrelevant. He has chosen to give numerous interviews to both British and Israeli media on the subject of being a Jewish ambassador, and has been at pains to be photographed by the Israeli media participating in Jewish religious festivals. Israeli newspaper Haaretz described him as "Not just an ambassador who is Jewish, but a Jewish ambassador". That rather peculiar phrase appears directly to indicate that the potential conflict of interest for a British ambassador in Israel has indeed arisen.

"It is thus most unfortunate that it is Gould who is the only British Ambassador to have met Fox and Werritty together, who met them six times, and who now stands suspected of long term participation with them in a scheme to forward war with Iran, in cooperation with Israel. This makes it even more imperative that the FCO answers now the numerous outstanding questions about the Gould/Werritty relationship and the purpose of all those meetings with Fox.

"There is no doubt that the O'Donnell report's deceitful non-reporting of so many Fox-Gould-Werritty meetings, the FCO's blunt refusal to list Gould-Werritty, meetings and contacts without Fox, and the refusal to say who else was present at any of these occasions, amounts to irrefutable evidence that something very important is being hidden right at the heart of government."

The skimpiness of O'Donnell's investigation into the Fox+Werrity+Gould get-togethers leads Murray to pose the question:

"Is there a neo-con cell of senior ministers and officials, co-ordinating with Israel and the United States, and keeping their designs hidden from the Conservatives' coalition partners?"

He concludes there is "irrefutable evidence that something very important is being hidden right at the heart of government".

* Stuart Littlewood is author of the book Radio Free Palestine, which tells the plight of the Palestinians under occupation. Read other articles by Stuart.

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Russell Tribunal comes gunning for the international community

Media reports suggest that Britain will again betray the Palestinian people in the UN vote tomorrow on whether to recognise the Palestinian territories as an independent state.

The Guardian, for example, says that Britain will join forces with two other EU allies on the Security Council, France and Portugal, to abstain. Germany, the third EU member of the Council, is also likely to abstain.

"The UK had considered voting in favour of statehood but is planning to abstain because it wants to forge a common front with its EU partners. Government sources say the EU - the single biggest donor to the Palestinian authority - is playing an increasingly influential role in the Middle East. It is feared this could be put at risk if the EU fails to act collectively."

This is despite a warning from the Conservative Middle East Council that Britain will lose the goodwill it has built up recently in the Middle East if it fails to support a Palestinian state. Given the history and Britain's responsibility for Palestine prior to Israel's existence, says the CMEC, "this is the time for the UK to stand on the right side of history.

"Public opinion is strongly on the side of the Palestinians, as shown by opinion polls showing 71% support for the Palestinian bid to be an independent state. Parliament should make its voice heard rather than standing on the sidelines as a passive spectator."

If Britain abstains the Palestinians will be one vote short, apparently.

So Britain, after 94 years of chicanery, is still set on denying the Palestinian nation its freedom on the feeble excuse, this time, of wishing to forge a common front with its EU partners? Well, don't look so surprised. The British government and its Foreign Office has been a Zionist snake-pit since the days of Arthur Balfour who, in 1917, issued his infamous Declaration that the His Majesty's Government "will use their best endeavours to facilitate" the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.

Now look at the present-day line-up:

• Prime minister, David Cameron - a self-declared Zionist. He pledged: "In me, you have a Prime Minister whose belief in Israel is indestructible...I want to be clear, we will always support Israel..."
• Foreign secretary, William Hague - a member of Conservative Friends of Israel since he was a teenager.
• Minister for Middle East affairs, Alistair Burt - formerly an officer of Conservative Friends of Israel.
• Recently departed in disgrace: defence secretary, Laim Fox - dubbed "a champion of Israel within the government". He said: "Israel's enemies are our enemies".

One can only wonder how the rules and principles which are supposed to eliminate undue influence in public life ever allowed such people to be handed ministerial appointments.

Fortunately we have the Russell Tribunal to speak up and to take issue with delinquent governments and their feckless ministers. A summary of the findings of the Tribunal's latest session held in South Africa has just been made available.

The Russell Tribunal describes itself as "a court of the people, a Tribunal of conscience, faced with injustices and violations of international law, that are not dealt with by existing international jurisdictions, or that are recognised but continue with complete impunity due to the lack of political will of the international community". It takes a particular interest in the violations of international law that prevent the Palestinian people from exercising their rights to a sovereign State.

The Tribunal supports the supremacy of international law as the basis for a solution. "It will thus examine the various responsibilities that lead to the continued occupation of the Palestinian Territories by Israel and the non-application of the United Nations resolutions, from Resolution 181 of the 29th of November 1947, on the partition of Palestine, to Resolution ES-10/15 of the 20th of July 2004, that acknowledges the Opinion of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) - of the 9th of July 2004 - on the construction of the Wall by Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territories and requests all the UN Member States to acquit themselves of their legal obligations as defined by the ICJ Opinion."

The Tribunal also says it aims to help mobilise civil society in all the states concerned on the question of Palestine.

Inhuman acts against Palestinians "systematic and institutionlised"

In its latest deliberations the Tribunal finds that Israel subjects the Palestinian people to an institutionalised regime of domination amounting to apartheid as defined under international law. "The state of Israel is legally obliged to respect the prohibition of apartheid contained in international law. In addition to being considered a crime against humanity, the practice of apartheid is universally prohibited."

The Tribunal says it heard abundant evidence of practices that constitute 'inhuman acts' perpetrated against the Palestinian people by the Israeli authorities.

"The inhuman acts listed... do not occur in random or isolated instances. They are sufficiently widespread, integrated and complementary to be described as systematic.

"They are also sufficiently rooted in law, public policy and formal institutions to be described as institutionalised."

The Tribunal shows how the Israeli legal system confers privileges on Jews over non-Jews and highlights the institutionalised separation and discrimination revealed by the existence of two entirely separate legal systems:

"Palestinians are subject to military law enforced by military courts that fall far short of international fair trial standards; Israeli Jews living in illegal settlements are subject to Israeli civil law and a civil court system. The result is a vastly different procedure and sentence for the same crime, committed in the same jurisdiction, by members of a different group."

The obscurity and inaccessibility of many laws, military orders and regulations that underpin Israel's institutionalised regime of domination, is also emphasised.

"Israel must cease its apartheid acts and its policies of persecution and offer appropriate assurances and guarantees of non-repetition," says the Tribunal. In addition, Israel must make full reparation for the injuries caused by its internationally wrongful acts and for all damage that can be financially assessed.

"Examine Israel's prolonged occupation and apartheid"

The Tribunal then turns its guns on the international community. "States and international organisations... have a duty to cooperate in bringing Israel's apartheid acts and policies of persecution to an end, including by not rendering aid or assistance to Israel and not recognising the illegal situation arising from its acts. They must bring to an end Israel's infringements of international criminal law through the prosecution of international crimes, including the crimes of apartheid and persecution."

All states are called upon to "consider appropriate measures to exert sufficient pressure on Israel, including the imposition of sanctions, the severing of diplomatic relations collectively through international organisations, or in the absence of consensus, individually by breaking bilateral relations with Israel".

It wants the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court to accept jurisdiction as requested by the Palestinian authorities in January 2009, and to initiate an investigation 'as expeditiously as possible' as required by the 'Goldstone Report', into international crimes committed in Palestinian territory since 1 July 2002.

And it wants Palestine to accede to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.

The Tribunal calls for the UN Special Committee against Apartheid to be reconvened to consider the question of apartheid against the Palestinian people, and asks the UN General Assembly to request an advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice "to examine the nature of Israel's prolonged occupation and apartheid".

The Russell Tribunal shows us the no-nonsense, law based way forward this abominable situation has needed these last 64 years.

It should be enough to put ministers like Cameron and Hague in the UK, and their counterparts in other Western governments, on notice that continued support for such a rabidly racist regime will no longer be tolerated by civil society.

* Stuart Littlewood is author of the book Radio Free Palestine, which tells the plight of the Palestinians under occupation. Read other articles by Stuart.

Related posts:

• Palestinians tell Blair: you are not welcome here
• Israeli Foreign Ministry Plans New Hasbara Effort Against Palestinians
• British Apology to Palestinians

What a spectacle they make of themselves, whooping and stomping to the frenzied beat of Tel Aviv's drum, their dumb-ass chant getting ever shriller.

You can read about it on a British government website.

"The UK and many other countries have serious concerns about the Iranian Government's policies," says the Foreign Office, "its failure to address serious international concerns about its nuclear programme; its support for terrorism and promotion of instability in its region; and its continued denial of human rights..."

I really thought they were talking about Israel and had got the names muddled up. But no... "On Iran's nuclear programme, we are actively seeking a solution through diplomatic engagement and sanctions to encourage compliance by Iran with the requirements of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and six UN Security Council resolutions."

Wow, does this means that Israel, which Iran is supposed to be threatening, is an innocent victim of Iranian aggression, is a menace to no-one, is suddenly co-operating with the IAEA and is now in full compliance with all those UN resolutions?

This is hot news!

The Foreign Office goes further: "Iran's backing of Hizbollah in Lebanon, Hamas and other Palestinian Rejectionist Groups..."

Just a minute. What exactly is a "rejectionist group"? I had to look it up in the Oxford dictionary. A rejectionist, it says, is a person who rejects a proposed policy, especially an Arab who refuses to accept a negotiated peace with Israel.

Ah. So what are we supposed to call an Israeli who rejects a perfectly reasonable Arab peace deal... like "get off our land and there'll be no trouble"? What do we call an Israeli who defies international law and denies the human rights of others? An Israeli who treats UN resolutions with contempt?

"Rejectionist" Israel

Rejectionism is an Israeli thing; it's what they do, they specialise in it. Israel, let's face it, is king of the rejectionist business.

All this sabre-rattling and talk of pre-emptive strikes against Iran is getting on everyone's nerves. Iran, after all, is a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and Israel is not. What does that tell us?

The Treaty dates back to 1970 so Israel has had more than enough time to show good faith and come on board with the other 189 State parties. The NPT has more signatories than any other treaty of its kind. The only refuseniks - OK, let's stay with the Foreign Office's new buzzword - the only rejectionists are India, Israel and Pakistan.

The British government says the international community must be prepared to "respond robustly" when a country withdraws from the NPT... "The NPT is not like any other treaty and the risks associated with its abuse are uniquely dangerous. We recommend immediate discussions at the UN Security Council if a country announces its intention to withdraw. The IAEA should be required to report immediately on the nuclear activities of that country."

It's common sense really. So what about countries, like Israel, that have stacks of nukes and refused to sign up to the NPT in the first place? What about the "uniquely dangerous risks" in Israel's case? Where's the robust response? Is the UNSC addressing Israel's rejectionism? Has the IAEA reported on Israel's nuclear activities?

As a matter of fact the IAEA is quite bothered about Israel. The BBC reported yesterday:

"On 18 September 2009, the IAEA called on Israel to join the NPT and open its nuclear facilities to inspection. The resolution said that the IAEA 'expresses concern about the Israeli nuclear capabilities, and calls upon Israel to accede to the NPT and place all its nuclear facilities under comprehensive IAEA safeguards'...

"Israel refuses to join the NPT or allow inspections. It is reckoned to have up to 400 warheads but refuses to confirm or deny this."

I've seen the 400 "deliverable" nukes figure before - it's nearly twice Britain's arsenal - also that European cities were targeted.

Israel is the third or fourth largest nuclear force in the world and the only one in the Middle East. A 2006/7 report by the Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission says:

"Most unofficial estimates claim that Israel possesses a nuclear arsenal numbering in the hundreds, possibly larger than the British stockpile. Israel is widely believed to possess both fission and fusion bombs. It has an unsafeguarded plutonium production reactor and reprocessing capability and possibly some uranium enrichment capability, along with various other uranium-processing facilities."

It is the only state in the region that is not a party to the Non-Proliferation Treaty. It has signed but not ratified the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty. As regards biological and chemical weapons, Israel has not signed the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention. It has signed but not ratified the Chemical Weapons Convention.

So why is the focus on Iran and not rejectionist Israel? Israel's incessant foaming at the mouth over Iran has nothing to do with the alleged remark by Mr Ahmadinejad to "wipe Israel off the map" - a remark he never made anyway. Long before that, back in 2002 and 2004 Israel was urging the international community to target Iran as soon as it had finished in Iraq and to strip Iran of WMD.

Are we expected to believe that Israel's leaders, given their lawless and belligerent track record, are saner than Iran's Ahmadinejad? Washington and London may believe such tosh but I doubt if anyone in the Middle East would. Or anyone else in Europe for that matter. A European Commission survey finds that the public believe Israel to be the biggest threat to world peace, greater than North Korea, Afghanistan or Iran.

Eighty per cent of Conservative MPs preach that Israel's enemies are our enemies but who is listening?

War-war not jaw-jaw

Perhaps the looniest thing I have heard lately is the passage through Congress of the ''Iran Threat Reduction Act of 2011''. Hidden away where it wouldn't be noticed, under "General Provisions - Denial of Visas for Certain Persons of the Government of Iran" (Section 601), is this gem...

(c) RESTRICTION ON CONTACT. -- No person employed with the United States Government may contact in an official or unofficial capacity any person that -- (1) is an agent, instrumentality, or official of, is affiliated with, or is serving as a representative of the Government of Iran; and (2) presents a threat to the United States or is affiliated with terrorist organizations. (d) WAIVER. -- The President may waive the requirements of subsection (c) if the President determines and so reports to the appropriate congressional committees 15 days prior to the exercise of waiver authority that failure to exercise such waiver authority would pose an unusual and extraordinary threat to the vital national security interests of the United States.

It effectively bans diplomacy with Iran. Neither the President himself nor the Secretary of State nor any US diplomat or emissary is allowed to engage in negotiations or diplomacy with Iran unless the President can convince the "appropriate Congressional committees" (e.g. the House Foreign Affairs Committee whose strings are pulled by AIPAC) that not doing so would present "an unusual and extraordinary threat to the vital national security interests of the United States".

War-war is preferred to jaw-jaw. And it's no surprise to discover that this nonsense was cooked up by Reps. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) and Howard Berman (D-CA), who both lead the Foreign Affairs Committee.

How clever is it to abandon all the channels of normal diplomacy? Those who support the measure must be desperate for more bloodshed - as long as they personally don't have to act as cannon-fodder. Who can forget the chicken-hawks who casually ordered troops into Iraq and Afghanistan but would never dream of donning uniform and picking up a rifle themselves?

The preamble to this junk piece of legislation states:

In the 2006 State of the Union Address, President Bush stated that ''The Iranian government is defying the world with its nuclear ambitions, and the nations of the world must not permit the Iranian regime to gain nuclear weapons. America will continue to rally the world to confront these threats..." In February 2009, President Obama committed the Administration to ''developing a strategy to use all elements of American power to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon... Iran is a major threat to United States national security interests."

Is it really?

Circulating in the background for years have been rumours speculating on the whereabouts of nuclear warheads dumped by a US B-52 which crashed in 1991. Did freelancers salvage them? Was the nuke exploded by North Korea in 2006 one of these? Does Iran have some? Is this what the panic's about?

Many people are quite sure that if the increasingly unhinged Israeli leadership, with finger on the nuke button, believed their unlawful ambitions in the Middle East were permanently thwarted, they would think nothing of taking the rest of the world to hell with them.

* Stuart Littlewood is author of the book Radio Free Palestine, which tells the plight of the Palestinians under occupation. Read other articles by Stuart.

Related posts:

• Hillary Clinton at AIPAC: Bomb Iran
• WHY IRAN? Give Iran a Break!
• Why Iran won’t attack Israel

Arthur Balfour's infamous "Declaration" was written 94 years ago this week. Palestinians, of course, don't need reminding.

And to mark the anniversary Israel ordered its warships to carry out yet another act of piracy on peaceful, innocent shipping carrying humanitarian relief to the imprisoned people of Gaza.

Let's cast out minds back.... Stephen Ostrander's simple verse cuts through all the rhetoric to the root cause of the Arab-Israeli conflict.

For centuries long
our land enslaved
by Turkish kings
with sharpened blade.
We prayed to end
the Sultan's curse,
the British came
and spoke a verse.
"It's World War One,
if you agree
to fight with us
we'll set you free."
The war we fought
at Britain's side,
our blood was shed
for Arab pride.
At war's end
Turks were smitten,
our only gain,
the lies of Britain.

The country called Palestine was "liberated" from Turkish Ottoman rule after the Allied Powers, in correspondence between Sir Henry McMahon and Sharif Hussein ibn Ali of Mecca in 1915, promised Arab leaders independence in return for their help in defeating Germany's ally.

However a Jewish political movement, Zionism, was finding favour among the ruling élite in London, and the British Government was persuaded by the Zionists' chief spokesman, Chaim Weizmann, to surrender Palestine for their new Jewish homeland. Hardly a thought, it seems, was given to the earlier pledge to the Arabs, who had occupied and owned the land for 1,500 years - longer than the ancient Jews ever did.

The Zionists, inflated by the notion that an ancient Biblical prophecy gave them the title deeds, planned to push the Arabs out by bringing in millions of Eastern European Jews. They had already set up farm communities and founded a new city, Tel Aviv, but by 1914 Jews numbered only 85,000 to the Arabs' 615,000.

Balfour Declaration

The Balfour Declaration of 1917 - actually a letter from the British foreign secretary, Arthur Balfour, to the most senior Jew in England, Lord Rothschild - pledged assistance for the Zionist cause ignoring the consequences to the native majority.

Calling itself a "declaration of sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations", it said:

"His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing and non-Jewish communities...."

Balfour, an ardent Zionist, wrote:

"In Palestine we do not propose even to go through the form of consulting the wishes of the present inhabitants of the country. The four powers are committed to Zionism and Zionism, be it right or wrong, good or bad, is rooted in age-long tradition, in present needs, in future hopes, of far profounder import than the desires and prejudices of the 700,000 Arabs who now occupy that land."

He later wrote the introduction to a book published in 1919, 'History of Zionism 1600-1919' by Nahum Sokolow, in which he said: "Conversations I held with Mr Weizmann in January, 1906, convinced me that history could not thus be ignored, and that if a home was to be found for the Jewish people, homeless now for nearly nineteen hundred years, it was vain to seek it anywhere but in Palestine."

Some opposed the idea. Lord Sydenham warned:

"The harm done by dumping down an alien population upon an Arab country may never be remedied. What we have done, by concessions not to the Jewish people but to a Zionist extreme section, is to start a running sore in the East, and no-one can tell how far that sore will extend."

The American King-Crane Commission of 1919 thought it a gross violation of principle. "No British officers consulted by the Commissioners believed that the Zionist programme could be carried out except by force of arms. That, of itself, is evidence of a strong sense of the injustice of the Zionist programme."

And the scheme was heading for serious trouble for another reason. A secret deal, called the Sykes-Picot Agreement, had been concluded in 1916 between France and Britain, in consultation with Russia, to re-draw the map of the Middle Eastern territories won from Turkey. Britain was to take Jordan, Iraq and Haifa. The area now referred to as Palestine was declared an international zone.

The Sykes-Picot Agreement, the Balfour Declaration and the promises made earlier in the McMahon-Hussein letters all cut across each other. Was it really a case of the left hand not knowing what the right was doing in the confusion of war?

After the Russian Revolution of 1917 Lenin released a copy of the confidential Sykes-Picot Agreement into the public domain, sowing seeds of distrust among the Arabs. The unfolding story, from the start, had all the makings of a major tragedy. Subsequent crimes - on both sides - flow from this triple-cross.

Apartheid and occupation: "in practice there is little difference"

At Cambridge Arthur Balfour read moral sciences, but much good it did the poor Palestinian Arabs he helped dispossess.

Described as born lazy, aloof and having an attitude problem, he was convinced of his personal superiority and wished to keep the vulgar world at arm's length. Balfour famously said: "Nothing matters very much, and few things matter at all."

He was said to be a man who would make almost any sacrifice to remain in office. In this case, he sacrificed the Arab homeland. In 1922 the League of Nations put Palestine under British mandate, which incorporated the principles of the Balfour's Declaration.

How have things turned out?

John Dugard, a professor of international law and former Special Rapporteur to the UN Human Rights Council on the situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, explains on Aljazeera the differences and similarities between apartheid South Africa and apartheid Israel.

Of course, the regimes of apartheid and occupation are different. Apartheid South Africa was a state that practiced discrimination against its own people. It sought to fragment the country into white South Africa and black Bantustans. Its security laws were used to brutally suppress opposition to apartheid. Israel, on the other hand, is an occupying power that controls a foreign territory and its people under a regime recognised by international law - belligerent occupation.

However, in practice, there is little difference. Both regimes were/are characterised by discrimination, repression and territorial fragmentation (that is, land seizures).

Israel discriminates against Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem in favour of half a million Israeli settlers. Its restrictions on freedom of movement, manifested in countless humiliating checkpoints, resemble the "pass laws" of apartheid. Its destruction of Palestinian homes resembles the destruction of homes belonging to blacks under apartheid's Group Areas Act. The confiscation of Palestinian farms under the pretext of building a security wall brings back similar memories. And so on. Indeed, Israel has gone beyond apartheid South Africa in constructing separate (and unequal) roads for Palestinians and settlers.

Apartheid's security police practiced torture on a large scale. So do the Israeli security forces. There were many political prisoners on Robben Island but there are more Palestinian political prisoners in Israeli jails.

Apartheid South Africa seized the land of blacks for whites. Israel has seized the land of Palestinians for half a million settlers and for the purposes of constructing a security wall within Palestinian territory - both of which are contrary to international law.

The "running sore" Sydenham warned of has been festering for 94 years, crippling the Middle East and turning the Holy Land into an abomination. Balfour and his clueless pals in the corridors of British power clearly had no idea of the true purpose and base methods of Zionism.

* Stuart Littlewood is author of the book Radio Free Palestine, which tells the plight of the Palestinians under occupation. Read other articles by Stuart.

Related posts:

• Qaffin: my home town against apartheid
• ‘Apartheid Israel’ week at Oxford and ‘Freedom of Speech’
• Israeli apartheid week

It makes a nice change for Palestinians to be able to chalk up a success.

And admission as a full member to UNESCO (the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation) is good news for them and bad news for their Israeli tormentors. Palestine becomes the organisation's 195th member as soon as it has ratified UNESCO's constitution.

China said yes, Russia said yes, the US and bosom-buddy Israel, Canada and Germany voted no and pretty well isolated themselves. Although 52 member states were incapable of showing a spark of common decency and abstained, the vote was nevertheless a runaway 107 to 14 victory... collapse of stout party.

Expect big sulks, hysterics and toys being thrown out of the Clinton, Obama and Netanyahu prams.

Among the abstainers was not-so-Great Britain, still too gutless to shake off the chains of subservience to the pro-Israel lobby and end its betrayal of the Palestinians.

The spiteful US State Department confirmed it would cut $60 million in funding for UNESCO. Israel's Foreign Minister, Avigdor Lieberman, had threatened that a UNESCO yes vote would harm efforts to secure a peace agreement between the two sides.

And the American Jewish Committee's executive director, David Harris, announced: "This is a sad day for UNESCO," and called the Palestinian bid "a counter-productive gambit", then trotted out the tiresome mantra that "only direct talks with Israel can bring about a two-state solution within the context of a comprehensive peace accord".

Membership of course brings important benefits for Palestinians. For one thing, UNESCO protects world heritage sites. The Israelis have has been systematically erasing Palestinian heritage with impunity, and they've been trying to put their name on Jerusalem by nominating the Old City for World Heritage status when it doesn't even belong to them. This note appears in UNESCO's Tentative List:

This concerns the property entitled "Jerusalem - the Old City and Ramparts to include Mount Zion" proposed by Israel as an extension to the "Old City of Jerusalem and its Walls" inscribed on the World Heritage List in 1981, upon proposal by Jordan. The Committee at its 25th Session (Helsinki, 2001) endorsed the recommendation of the 25th session of its Bureau (Paris, June 2001) "to postpone further consideration of this nomination proposal until an agreement on the status of the City of Jerusalem in conformity with International Law is reached, or until the parties concerned submit a joint nomination". It also refers to a resolution by the UNESCO General Conference stating that "nothing in the present decision, which is aimed at the safeguarding of the cultural heritage of the Old City of Jerusalem, shall in any way affect the relevant United Nations resolutions and decisions, in particular the relevant Security Council resolutions on the legal status of Jerusalem".

The Tentative List is an inventory of those cultural and natural heritage sites of outstanding universal value that each member state intends to nominate for inclusion on the World Heritage List.

So Palestine will at last be able to submit its important sites in its own name for inclusion and protection from Israel's malicious destructiveness, including perhaps Jerusalem's Old City and especially the Temple Mount, under which Israel has been conducting unwelcome excavations.

* Stuart Littlewood is author of the book Radio Free Palestine, which tells the plight of the Palestinians under occupation. Read other articles by Stuart.

Related posts:

• Marcel Khalifé named UNESCO Artist for Peace
• Ireland must oppose Israel’s membership of the OECD
• Preparing For The End Game: United Nations Membership For Palestine

Considering a Palestinian kid throwing stones gets imprisonment and mashed testicles!

While the whole world, it seemed, was in ecstasy over the freeing of Gilad Shalit, I was amazed to discover that the Israeli tank-gunner had been made an honorary citizen of Rome, Paris, Baltimore, Miami, Pittsburgh and New Orleans.

Knowing what we know, that's pretty sick stuff.

Europe's and America's hypocrites

Rome's mayor, Gianni Alemanno, said that honouring Shalit in this way was "a gesture of high symbolic value, with which Rome chooses to salute the values of life, of solidarity and of respect for the human rights." He added: "You cannot win using violence, kidnapping and ransom."

Has he told that to the Israeli government?

And how on earth does Shalit embody the values of life and respect for human rights?

Has Mayor Alemanno any idea of the death and destruction a 105mm or 120mm tank round can inflict? Tank gunner Shalit was deployed on the Gaza border to implement Israel's criminal policy and to terrorize the Gazan population into submission. Those tanks make frequent incursions into Gaza to shell civilian targets. When Shalit was captured in June 2006 the Israelis were already tightening their illegal blockade on Gaza.

Shalit, like his comrades, was implicated in an appalling crime against humanity and he paid the price - not to the proper authority, the International Criminal Court, which should have nailed his superiors long before now, but to the victims of Israel's military aggression.

Paris City Council and its mayor voted unanimously to honour Shalit. And President Nicolas Sarkozy wrote to the tank-gunner: "It is time that those responsible for your detention make a decision and end your intolerable and outrageous imprisonment."

Weren't any of these civic dignitaries the slightest bit concerned about the thousands Palestinian prisoners rotting in Israeli jails, many without charge and many having been in captivity far longer than Shalit.

Nael Barghouthi, a Palestinian, had been imprisoned by Israel for 33 years and was probably the longest serving political prisoner ever. His incarceration began on 4 April 1978. Wouldn't the City Council of Paris like to make him an honorary citizen? What about the good councillors of Baltimore, Miami, Pittsburgh and New Orleans? Aren't they fair-minded enough to honour Barghouti?

I doubt it, for the simple reason Barghouti was (shock-horror!) a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, forerunner of Hamas. And Hamas (shock-horror!) is listed as a terror organization. Obnoxious as Hamas is, isn't the terror organization Shalit belongs to, the Israeli army of illegal occupation, far worse?

Hamas is branded a terrorist group only because it suits the purpose of a gang of Zionist psychopaths in the White House and in Whitehall. The definition of terrorism is set out in Executive Order 13224, Section 3, signed on 23 September 2001 by George W Bush. It's an activity that:

(i) involves a violent act or an act dangerous to human life, property, or infrastructure; and

(ii) appears to be intended

(a) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population;
(b) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or
(c) to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, kidnapping, or hostage-taking.

You have to laugh. The dummies are describing exactly what they themselves do.

Israel - world-class pioneer of terrorism

Another laugh is a "roll-call" of who introduced terrorism to the Middle East - Israel! Nevertheless these are the claims. Can anyone refute them? (Also, take a look at this video - " Who were the first terrorists in the Middle East?"

• Bombs in cafes: first used by Zionists in Palestine on 17 March 1937 in Jaffa (actually grenades)
• Bombs on buses: first used by Zionists in Palestine Aug. 20-September 1937
• Drive-by shootings with automatic weapons: IZL and LHI in 1937-38 and 1947-48 (Benny Morris, Righteous Victims, page 681)
• Bombs in market places: first used by Zionists on 6 July 1938 in Haifa. (delayed-action, electrically detonated)
• Bombing of a passenger ship: first used by the Zionists in Haifa on 25 November 1940, killing over 200 of their own fellows
•  Bombing of hotels: first used by Zionists on 22 July 1946 against the British administration in the St David Hotel, Jerusalem (Menachem Begin went on to become prime minister of Israel).
• Suitcase bombing: first used by Zionists on 1 October 1946 against the British embassy in Rome
• Mining of ambulances: first used by Zionists on 31 October 1946 in Petah Tikvah
• Car-bomb: first used by Zionists against the British near Jaffa, 5 December 1946
• Letter bombs: first used by Zionists in June 1947 against members of the British government, 20 of them
• Parcel Bomb: first used by Zionists against the British in London, 3 September 1947
• Reprisal murder of hostages: first used by Zionists against the British in Netanya area on 29 July 1947
• Truck-bombs: first used by Zionists on 4 January 1948 in the centre of Jaffa, killing 26
• Aircraft hijacking: world-first by Israeli jets in December 1954 on a Syrian civilian airliner (random seizure of hostages to recover five spies) - 14 years before any Palestinian.

You reap what you sow.

The only form of violent terrorism not introduced into Palestine by the Zionists was suicide bombing, the desperate last resort of people fighting illegal occupation of their homeland.

Mashing testicles for stone-throwing

Those who confuse freedom-fighters with terrorists are given valuable advice in this extract from Mhara Costello's  splendidly powerful poem:

Show me the man who will not fight, to save his child, his home, his right!
You can call him what you like, you're not in his sorry plight
Cowards stay and martyrs go, I know not where, but this I know
Speak your truth and stand your ground, fight your corner
When all around point the finger, purse the lips, pin the label "terrorist"!

So here's a question for the great and the good in Rome, Paris, Baltimore, Pittsburgh and so forth: Don't you think the lad in the photo standing his ground and throwing stones at the advancing invader shows a lot more guts than the Israeli tank gunner sitting behind his armour plate picking out soft targets among the women and children packed into the Gaza Strip?

Wouldn't they like to honour that youngster instead?

I said in an earlier article that 8,000 Palestinians were still in Israeli jails. But the figure differs in every report I see. The Voice of Palestine says its 5,300, including 22 lawmakers and nine women. Twenty-two have spent more than 25 years behind bars, which puts Shalit's piddling five years into sharper context.

Want to hear something that's even more disgusting? According to figures released by the Israeli Prison Service and Defence of Children International-Palestine, at the end of September 2011 there were 164 Palestinian children (aged 12 to 17 years) detained by Israel, including 35 between the ages of 12 and 15 years.

Probably for throwing stones at their tanks.

By all accounts Shalit was returned in good condition. He can thank his lucky stars he wasn't treated like the Israelis treated 15 years-old Benan Oudeh, whose testicles had to be amputated after he'd been badly tortured on suspicion of throwing stones at Israeli troops occupying his West Bank home town of Qalqilya in 1989. There are countless reports of how Israelis enjoy inflicting physical abuse such as sleep deprivation and suspending prisoners - even children - for long periods in agonizing positions; and countless complaints from victims who say they were severely beaten and deprived of food, water and medical treatment or access to bathrooms.

If the sentence for throwing stones at invading troops is imprisonment and mashed testicles, what should you get for firing tank shells at innocent civilians?

* Stuart Littlewood is author of the book Radio Free Palestine, which tells the plight of the Palestinians under occupation. Read other articles by Stuart.

Related posts:

• Hamas Release Animated Gilad Shalit Cartoon [Video]
• Barghouti: Shalit’s capture achieved what no dialogue could
• Hamas: don’t give in on Shalit – by Khalid Amayreh

...but spare a thought (and do something) for the thousands of Palestinians still languishing in Israel's prisons

Illustration by Carlos Latuff

On the other hand why is there such a torrent of sympathy for Shalit when the much-hyped thousand-for-one prisoner swop leaves 8,000 Palestinians still rotting in Israeli jails, some of them having languished in captivity far longer than our Israeli hero?

And for those 8,000 it's no picnic. A United Nations Human Rights Council report (A/HRC/WG.6/3/ISR/3)[.PDF] of December 2008 highlighted some unpalatable truths about life in Israel's prisons...

• use of coercive techniques to extract confessions
• use of confessional evidence obtained illegally to convict
• lack of effective mechanisms for investigating complaints of torture.
• arrests and detentions are based on secret evidence to which neither the detainees nor their counsels have access
• neither the prisoner nor his/her lawyer has the right to see the evidence against them
• repeated extension of initial detention without evidence to justify it
• large numbers detained without charges or any trial procedures
• 'administrative' detention is grounded on 'security reasons' and hearings are not open to the public.
• 'administrative' detention is regularly used against Palestinian children
• seriously bad prison conditions including over-crowding, family visits denied, arbitrary transfers, torture and ill-treatment by Israeli security, soldiers and prison guards, deteriorating health conditions and increasing deaths in custody

Even when it's a civil matter Palestinians are dealt with by Israeli military courts, which treat Palestinian children as adults as soon as they reach 16 - a flagrant violation of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. These courts ignore international laws and conventions, so there's simply no legal protection for individuals under Israeli military occupation.

As detention is often based on secret information, which neither the detainee nor his lawyer is allowed to see, it is impossible to mount a proper defence. And the Security Service always finds a bogus excuse to keep detainees locked up "in the greater interest of the security of Israel". Although detainees have the right to review and appeal, they are unable to challenge the evidence and check facts because all information presented to the Court is classified.

The UN has laid bare the evil of Israel's 'snatch squads' that prey on innocent Palestinian men, women, children and students, and the regime's cynical disregard for their wellbeing while in its clutches.

It's obvious that Israel still hasn't emerged from the swamp, and probably never will.

Commenting on the release of Sergeant Gilad Shalit, the British prime minister David Cameron said:

"I know that people across Britain will share in the joy and relief felt by Gilad Shalit and his family today. I can only imagine the heartache of the last five years, and I am full of admiration for the courage and fortitude which Sergeant Shalit and his family have shown through his long cruel and unjustified captivity. I congratulate Prime Minister Netanyahu and everyone involved for bringing him home safely, and hope this prisoner exchange will bring peace a step closer.

"Britain will continue to stand by Israel in defeating terrorism. We remain strongly committed to the cause of peace in the Middle East - with Israel and a Palestinian state living side by side in security. We will continue to work for direct negotiations to achieve that end."

Note that Cameron says nothing about the long, cruel and unjustified captivity of the thousands of Palestinians. And he badly needs re-educating on the subject of terrorism.

The Parliamentary Chairman of Conservative Friends of Israel, James Arbuthnot MP, said:

"I congratulate Prime Minister Netanyahu. Like every good Prime Minister he listened to what the people wanted and he made the tough decisions. He did the right thing. We must however not confuse this victory for humanity as a victory for Hamas. As Israel and the Palestinians continue to work towards peace and two states for two peoples it remains as clear as ever that Hamas cannot play a part in this process with their ideology intact. The UK must continue to ensure that the Quartet Principles are upheld and re-enforced."

No problems with Zionist' ideology then, Sir James?

It hasn't yet dawned on Arbuthnot that no self-respecting Palestinian wants any part of the discredited "process" he eagerly recommends. Besides being a devoted Israel flag-waver he is, worryingly, chairman of our Defence Select Committee and, laughably, a member of the posh-sounding 'Top Level Group of UK Parliamentarians for Multilateral Nuclear Disarmament and Non-proliferation', where one presumes he pleads Israel's case for not signing.

The remarks of both men, rejoicing for Shalit while showing no concern whatever for the thousands still languishing in Israel's jails, demonstrate a lack of humanity that's quite obscene.

Apparently 60 MPs and other Parliamentarians, including Arbuthnot of course, were sufficiently befuddled to sign the following CFoI petition...

FREE GILAD SHALIT PETITION

We the undersigned call for the immediate release of Corporal Gilad Shalit. On June 25 2006, Shalit was abducted by Hamas militants in a pre-meditated cross-border terrorist attack inside Israel. Captured at the age of 19, the young solider has been held in isolation ever since and is neither permitted to send or receive messages from his family.

Shalit's detention is a serious violation of international humanitarian laws governing the treatment of prisoners of war, as enshrined by the Third Geneva Convention. Throughout his captivity Shalit has been denied the most basic of rights. This cruel and inhumane treatment is a blatant and direct contravention of the Third Geneva Convention.

We, insist that Hamas immediately release Gilad Shalit, and before it does so, afford him the right of communication with his family and unfettered access for the International Committee of the Red Cross to ensure his well-being.

I doubt if this made the Hamas resistance sit up and take notice. Many of their leaders, including Haniyeh and al-Zahar, have seen the inside of Israeli prisons and all their lives have been on the receiving end of non-stop mega-violations of international humanitarian law, as indeed has the entire Palestinian population.

Shalit, we're told, was a tank-gunner deployed on the Gaza border, a teenager playing with big boys' lethal toys. Those tanks make frequent incursions into Gaza to shell civilian targets. How many innocent Palestinians did Shalit shred and how many homes did he blast? How much infrastructure (paid for by British taxpayers' aid money) did he blow to smithereens?

How many notches on his big gun barrel? Or did he keep a bung in it?

Like the rest of Israel's army of illegal occupation his job was to terrorise the Palestinians in pursuit of the Zionist regime's land-grabbing masterplan.

Hard-core depravity

Last night I watched a TV interview in which the Israeli government's propaganda chief Mark Regev called the Palestinian prisoners "hard-core killers". Tell you what, Mr Regev: killing doesn't come more hard-core than tanks, helicopter gun-ships, F-16s, armed drones and warships taking pot-shots at tightly packed civilians in the most crowded strip of land on earth. Or Israel's vicious blitzkrieg called Operation Cast Lead. Or the murderous assault on the Mavi Marmara bringing desperately needed humanitarian aid to illegally blockaded Gaza.

The kill-rate is disgustingly hard-core - Israelis slaughtering Palestinians at the rate of 11 to 1 (over 14 to 1 when it comes to children) - according to B'Tselem's statistics since the start of the Second Intifada in 2000.

And it's not just the dead. Israel's Cast Lead Operation against the Gazans is reported to have left some 5,450 injured and maimed. It also destroyed or damaged 58,000 homes, 280 schools, 1,500 factories and water and sewage installations. And it used prohibited weapons like depleted uranium and white phosphorus shells. That's hard-core depravity, Mr Regev.

And here's something else. Young Gilad Shalit was born and brought up on Palestinian territory which Israel was never entitled to. The UN allocated it to the Arabs in the 1947 Partition Plan and it was stolen and ethnically cleansed by hard-core Jewish/Israeli terror squads in 1947/48.

* Stuart Littlewood is author of the book Radio Free Palestine, which tells the plight of the Palestinians under occupation. Read other articles by Stuart.

Related posts:

• Barghouti: Shalit’s capture achieved what no dialogue could
• Hamas Release Animated Gilad Shalit Cartoon [Video]
• Hamas: don’t give in on Shalit – by Khalid Amayreh

Dangerous beliefs and connections to the political underworld made him unemployable as a British minister

Britain's defence secretary Dr Liam Fox decided to jump rather than be thrown from the battlements.

Close friend: Adam Werrity (right), pictured with groom Liam Fox at his wedding in 2005.

In his foreword to the Code, issued in May 2010, David Cameron wrote: "Though the British people have been disappointed in their politicians, they still expect the highest standards of conduct. We must not let them down."

The Code's first words - its General Principles - make it crystal clear that "Ministers of the Crown are expected to behave in a way that upholds the highest standards of propriety... Ministers must ensure that no conflict arises, or appears to arise, between their public duties and their private interests".

On overseas visits the Code says ministers should satisfy themselves that they could defend their arrangements in public. Furthermore the relevant Permanent Secretary's approval must be obtained before a special adviser accompanies a minister overseas.

As Werrity was not officially employed as an adviser and had no security clearance, one is left wondering why senior civil servants didn't query his frequent presence.

If there's a breach of the Code and if the Prime Minister, in consultation with the Cabinet Secretary, feels it needs investigation he is supposed to refer the matter to the independent adviser on Ministers' interests (Sir Philip Mawer). Enforcement, says the Code, is not the job of the Cabinet Secretary.

Yet the Cabinet Secretary, Sir Gus O'Donnell, is conducting the Fox-Werrity inquiry. Why?

An article in The Guardian reveals that the government has refused to set out the terms of reference of the inquiry into Fox and to explain why the issue wasn't referred to Mawer. It seems Mawer's website has been shut down, he hasn't produced an annual report for two years and has conducted only one inquiry since he was appointed in 2008.

The Ministerial Code also spells out the Seven Principles of Public Life, including this one about Integrity... "Holders of public office should not place themselves under any financial or other obligation to outside individuals or organisations that might seek to influence them in the performance of their official duties."

On the strength of that, ordinary citizens like me expect a person accepting appointment as a Minister of the Crown to be squeaky-clean, a man of honour and an impeccable patriot. How patriotic is Liam Fox though? I ask because he's the man who said: "In the battle for the values that we stand for...Israel's enemies are our enemies and this is a battle in which we all stand together..."

He's the man The Jewish Chronicle hailed as "a champion of Israel within the government".

He's a man who continually rattles the sabre against Iran which, of course, is no threat to Britain but is seen by Israel as a bitter enemy... and by Fox apparently.

Let us not forget that Iraq was Israel's enemy too, not ours, and look what happened. Liam Fox, according to the theyworkforyou.com website, "voted very strongly for the Iraq war". He's also an enthusiastic supporter of the war in Afghanistan, and he's been spoiling for a fight with Iran.

"Not just a sacking offence..."

Reports says that Whitehall sources have been concerned about Fox's "maverick" foreign policy based on the neocon agenda. Former British diplomat Craig Murray, discussing the possibility that Werrity's strings, and therefore Fox's, were being pulled by Mossad, says on his blog: "The real issue here is a British defence secretary who had a parallel advice structure designed expressly to serve the interests of another state and linked to that state's security services. That is not just a sacking offence, it is treasonable."

For years Fox has been an Israel flag-waver at the heart of British government, a man with dangerous beliefs and demonstrably weak judgment. It is inconceivable that those who appointed him could not see that he was unemployable as a Minister of the British Crown. Unless they were similarly tainted, that is.

The powerful Israel lobby will no doubt be sad to see their man go.

His Parliamentary colleagues talk of Fox "finding his way back" after a decent interval. Can they be SERIOUS? The fox won't have changed his spots or purged the stench of Zionism. Common sense says he should have his security clearance revoked and never be allowed near the levers of power again.

As for Libya, he told the Conservative Party Conference earlier this month: "Libya offered us a very clear choice: We could stand by and do nothing... or we could act. In the words of the Prime Minister our action in Libya is 'necessary, legal and right'.

"David Cameron's statecraft, leadership and resolve prevented what would have been a humanitarian disaster and we should be proud of what we have accomplished. Libya has shown that Britain remains a global player."

The RAF, he said, contributed 20% of coalition air strikes. Using high-tech weapon systems "we have prevented civilian causalities and shown that we value human life more than Gaddafi's brutal regime". That's debatable given our casual attitude to innocent lives in Iraq, Afghanistan and Occupied Palestine, and the humanitarian disasters we have helped create there. And it remains to be seen just how "necessary, legal and right" our action has been in Libya. There are deep rumblings about the conduct of the NATO operation, Britain's role and whether it wasn't just an ego-trip for the "Three Stooges" Cameron, Hague and Fox. It may be some time before the full truth emerges.

"To represent Britain in war as well as in peace," Fox told Conference, "is to represent our inherent democratic values, the rule of law and respect for life." Noble words. But his gangster friends in Israel, whose enemies he wants us to fight, represent none of those fine qualities.

His colleagues are happy to tell the media what a splendid job Fox has been doing at the Ministry of Defence. Nevertheless the MoD remains a mean-spirited shambles, a disgrace that's not fit to wipe the boots of our troops let alone order them into battle.

And few will forgive Fox for scrapping the aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal, along with the entire fleet of Harrier jump-jets and the new Nimrod spy planes, leaving us denuded of capability, stripped of important skills and weakened not just for now but for years, possibly decades to come.

I have just heard a Conservative Party mandarin on the BBC saying that Fox will be missed by the party and by the country. The party, 80 per cent of whose MPs are believed to be Friends of Israel, will of course miss him. And Israel will miss him. But this country is glad to see the back of him.

Calls are now being made for wider enquiries into the underworld connections of all ministers. High time too, but seeing who has the executive power in this land such an idea has a snowball's chance in hell of being taken seriously.

* Stuart Littlewood is author of the book Radio Free Palestine, which tells the plight of the Palestinians under occupation. Read other articles by Stuart.

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No-one connected with the old discredited peace "circus" should be allowed anywhere near the new quest for justice in the Holy Land. Too many are strangers to fair play and appear to share the mentality of gangsters and others of loose morals.

The only surprise about the Palestinians' bid for freedom at the United Nations was the panicky response of US president and the speed with which he jettisoned all pretence of integrity and political respectability.

Obama's brazen hypocrisy

Obama's speech to the UN overflowed with Tel Aviv disinformation and was a brazen advertisement for his enslavement by Israel.

After enthusing how "more and more people were demanding their universal right to live in freedom and dignity", he required the Palestinians to go cap-in-hand to their tormentor, Israel, and once again haggle for their freedom and dignity and the return of their stolen property.

Shrugging off the international community's responsibilities, he tried to put the onus for sorting out the criminal mess on the Palestinians' shoulders: "Ultimately, it is Israelis and Palestinians - not us - who must reach agreement on the issues that divide them: on borders and security; on refugees and Jerusalem."

What ignorance. What an embarrassment. Does anyone out there still look on him as leader of the Western world?

And how's this for unadulterated humbug?

The United States will continue to support those nations that transition to democracy - with greater trade and investment, so that freedom is followed by opportunity. We will pursue a deeper engagement with governments, but also civil society - students and entrepreneurs; political parties and the press. We have banned those who abuse human rights from travelling to our country, and sanctioned those who trample on human rights abroad. And we will always serve as a voice for those who have been silenced.

Cannot Obama see the excruciating irony of what he says?

The man now cuts a pathetic figure, from golden boy to crap-merchant in less than three years, a freak who prematurely accepted the top peace prize but still lacks the moral fibre to earn it. And he’s going for a second term?

It’s time to take that noble trophy off the mantlepiece, Mr Obama, and hand it back.

His speech, so heavily larded with lies, was only surpassed by the rantings of his buddy, Israel's prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, a dangerous imbecile whose finger hovers over the only nuclear button in the Middle East. Both were desperately trying to paint the the armed-to-the-teeth bully-boy as the victim. "The truth is that Israel wants peace, the truth is that I want peace," Netanyahu said, when all the evidence points the other way. He added that "we cannot achieve peace through UN resolutions".

He means, of course, that Israel cannot achieve its greedy ambitions through UN resolutions. On the other hand, the UN route is the only way Palestinians are ever likely to obtain justice.

Mahmoud Abbas - wrong man for the task

The bid for statehood had to be made, I believe. But was Mahmoud Abbas the right man to present the case? He lacks legitimacy. His presidential term expired long ago and he cannot claim to speak for a unified people. Abbas's speech was good in parts but sadly inept in key respects. Did he rise to the occasion? No, not really. Not in the way a better man might have done - with a brighter team of scriptwriters.

"The PLO [Palestine Liberation Organization] and the Palestinian people adhere to the renouncement of violence," he said, but demanded no reciprocity. Since non-violence has got them nowhere, why throw away the option, especially when Israel uses extreme violence every day?

"We adhere to the option of negotiating a lasting solution to the conflict in accordance with resolutions of international legitimacy... The Palestine Liberation Organization is ready to return immediately to the negotiating table on the basis of the adopted terms of reference based on international legitimacy and a complete cessation of settlement activities." Adopted terms of reference based on international legitimacy? What on earth does he mean? It needs spelling out.

And is he happy to negotiate while still under illegal occupation and blockade? Shouldn’t the occupation end before anything else begins?

Justice first!

Abbas said he wants to "build cooperative relations based on parity and equity between two neighbouring states" but didn't link this to the necessary requirement for parity to be established first, together with a level playing field, and for Israel to remove its jackboot from Palestine's neck. Many would say Abbas should not contemplate or even mention negotiations while the occupation, blockade and land-grabs continue.

Negotiations, in this case, mean pressuring the Palestinians to forego their rights under international law and settle for far less than they are entitled to, just to avoid a kerfuffle in the UN and save the US’s face. Abbas should insist on securing those rights first and, otherwise, asking bluntly if the United Nations has now abandoned its raft of resolutions and is letting the gangsters rewrite international law and the UN Charter in their own stinking urine to suit Israel's ambitions.

Eyebrows must have shot up when he claimed that after being mired is disunity "we succeeded months ago in achieving national reconciliation..." How much unity was behind the statehood bid? He mentioned the continuing blockade on the Gaza Strip only in passing. The vicious strangulation and wrecking of Gaza is a monstrous war crime perpetrated by Israel and an ugly blot on the escutcheon of the international community, yet Abbas made nothing of it, reopening the old question: "whose side is this guy really on?"

Gaza’s cruel suffering has unlocked huge sympathy worldwide and done more than anything else to focus international attention on the Palestinian cause. But in preparing the bid Abbas’s team, worse than useless in the past, seems to have sidelined the 1.5 million innocent people in the beleaguered coastal enclave. Who can blame Gaza’s Hamas government for wishing to distance themselves from the whole adventure? Were they properly consulted? Were they permitted to participate? Were they allowed to preview the script?

I now read that Abbas is to have deep discussions with Hamas. Better late than never, I suppose, but what incompetence (or chicanery, take your pick).

Abbas's speech made a good job of describing the Palestinian people's plight but a bad job of setting out the action required of the UN to deliver a solution. Since lopsided negotiations so obviously failed the Palestinians before and only served to buy the Israelis more time to establish irreversible facts on the ground, wasn’t it rather silly of Abbas to offer to play into their hands again?

He harked back to the "22/78 debacle" of 1993, when negotiators agreed to establish a state of Palestine on only 22 per cent of the territory of historical Palestine. "We, by taking that historic step, which was welcomed by the states of the world, made a major concession in order to achieve a historic compromise that would allow peace," Abbas reminded everyone. That huge concession - a compromise too far for many Palestinians - has been repeatedly flung back in the Palestinians’ face. As the 22/78 offer isn’t acceptable to Israel, the default position, surely, is the 1947 Partition’s 43/56 per cent formula, with Jerusalem a corpus separatum under UN protection. That was the basis on which the Israeli state was recognized, although it was declared with no fixed boundaries. Nobody, as far as I know, actually agreed to fluid, ever-expanding borders.

The outcome of Palestine’s "day at the UN" is that the Security Council has kicked the bid into the long grass while it deliberates. Meanwhile, the  Quartet, another tainted and discredited body of peace brokers that should be terminated, has issued a statement urging both sides to resume talks and setting a timetable, but not calling explicitly for a halt to construction of illegal Israeli settlements, the very thing that brought previous talks to an end. More gangster, then.

As the bid wasn’t addressed to the Quartet, they and their mouthpiece, the odious Mr Blair, should at least do us the courtesy of keeping quiet until the Security Council makes its response.

No sense of fair play

The situation is not complicated. You don't need a degree in politics or diplomacy to understand. There can be no peace under occupation. To force "negotiations" when one party has a gun to the other's head is stupid and immoral. And to force negotiations when one party continues to steal the other's lands, continues to commit war crimes and breaches every code of conduct in the book, is not only doubly stupid and immoral - it’s disgusting!

And continuing this relentless brow-beating - that’s how gangsters behave in their low-life world.

For the rules of fair play, you can do no better than look up the Laws of Cricket (as I’ve said in my musings before). All players were expected to be civilized enough to know what fair play meant, and for 250 years the Spirit of the game was unwritten. As the game spread worldwide some players were so warped they took diabolical "liberties"; so finally, in 2000, it was set down in writing.

The game "should be played not only within its Laws but also within the Spirit of the Game. Any action which is seen to abuse this spirit causes injury to the game itself." Respect is a vitally important ingredient.

For cricket, read "peace-making". The United Nations has laws and conventions in abundance but not the will to implement them despite the high-minded words of its Charter. A large injection of Spirit is needed urgently.

As the Great Umpire in world affairs the UN should not allow itself to be pushed around or deflected from fair play by pain-in-the-ass gangsters and other low-life.

* Stuart Littlewood is author of the book Radio Free Palestine, which tells the plight of the Palestinians under occupation. Read other articles by Stuart.

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