Israel has ethnically cleansed and oppressed the Palestinian people for 60 years

Israel continues to occupy, rob, humiliate, threaten and slaughter its neighbours

Israel’s military occupation of Palestine is illegal under international law and breaches countless UN resolutions

Israel is no western-style democracy. It is hatefully racist

8 Palestinians die for every Israeli; when it comes to children the kill-rate is 11 to 1.

The Israel lobby has undue influence over many elected western politicians and government ministers, distorting foreign policy

Israel’s cheer-leaders kick up a fuss about one captured Israeli soldier while 9000 Palestinians, including women and children, languish in Israeli jails.

Israel relentlessly pursues a policy of displacement, i.e. exile and deportation, economic impoverishment, land expropriation, revoking residency rights, etc, to expand its borders.

The siege of Gaza will end if the Qassam rockets stop, says Israel. No rockets are fired from the West Bank but Israel still occupies it, steals it, terrorises it and dumps toxic waste and raw sewage there.

Of the 1.4 million people squashed into Gaza, two-thirds are refugees from Israel's land-grabs. Now they are blockaded, blitzed and blasted with sophisticated weaponry paid for with US tax dollars.

Gaza's 3000 fishermen have no fuel for their boats. If they do put to sea they risk being shelled by Israeli patrol vessels.

Half the dialysis and other machines in Gaza's hospitals are out of action because the Israelis won't let spares in, or even essential drugs.

Israel is paralysing the Christian Church and terrorising the Holy Land’s Christian communities.

Knowing all this, our prime minister Gordon Brown calls the State of Israel one of the 'greatest achievements’ of the 20th century. "Let us all stand ready to help Israel find a truly secure place in a peaceful Middle East," he says in a speech to mark the entity’s celebrations.

Has the wee man lost his marbles? Jews themselves are critical of the Jewish state. In addition to the many well-known individuals who speak out, a number of organisations stand against the unspeakable abuses practiced by the Israel… Rabbis for Human Rights, ICAHD, Neturei Karta, Peace Now, Independent Jewish Voice, Gush Shalom, the human rights organisation B’Tselem and many more. Yesh Gvul supports Israeli soldiers who refuse to take part in acts of oppression and occupation. We salute them all.

Why do so many of our politicians carry on a love affair with Israel?

Jerusalem was already 2000 years old when King David captured it. Jews controlled it for some 500 years, lost it to the Roman Empire in 63BC and were finally expelled by Hadrian in 135AD. Christians subsequently ruled Jerusalem for 88 years and Muslims for nearly 1200.

In 1897 a political movement, Zionism, was founded to return the Jewish people to their former homeland after 1700-odd years and resume sovereignty by pushing the Arabs out and injecting millions of East European Jews.

During WW1 historic Palestine was 'liberated' from Turkish Ottoman rule after letters in 1915 between Sir Henry McMahon and Sharif Hussein ibn Ali of Mecca promised Arab leaders independence in return for their help in defeating Germany’s ally. 

Top people among the British and American political classes, however, had been 'massaged’ by the Zionists and the Balfour Declaration of 1917 gave their project the green light. Balfour, a Zionist convert, wrote: "In Palestine we do not propose even to go through the form of consulting the wishes of the present inhabitants of the country...."

In 1922 the League of Nations placed Palestine under British mandate. Jewish immigration was to be facilitated and Jews taking up residency would have Palestinian citizenship. 

The British government, by now sensitive to Arab concerns, issued a White Paper. "The terms of the Declaration referred to," it said, "do not contemplate that Palestine as a whole should be converted into a Jewish National Home, but that such a Home should be founded 'in Palestine’."

As WW2 loomed Britain realised that its promises to Arabs and Zionists were irreconcilable and adopted the middle-of-the-road position of a Palestinian state with a guaranteed Arab majority. Furious, Zionist militants unleashed a reign of terror, which continued after the war. Britain gave up the mandate and the United Nations partitioned Palestine, handing the Jews 57% of the territory although they amounted to only 30% of the population. Jerusalem was to be separately administered.

The Arab League and the Palestinians rejected the plan. To force the issue Jewish terror gangs committed a massacre at Deir Yassin. More atrocities followed the declaration of Israeli statehood on 14 May 1948. 750,000 Palestinians were put to flight as Israel’s forces obliterated hundreds of Arab villages and towns. 34 massacres are said to have been committed in pursuit of the new nation’s racist and territorial ambitions. 15 May marks the dark day in 1948 remembered by Palestinians as al-Nakba (the Catastrophe) and the start of the military terror that forced them off their homeland.

And the West wonders why Islam aims to "obliterate" Israel……

UN Resolution 194, re-passed every year since 1948, requires Israel to let Palestinian refugees return to their homes or compensate them. Israel refuses to comply.

In the 1967 Six Day War Israel seized what remained of Palestine - the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip. Resolution 242 ordered Israel to withdraw its troops, but again it refuses.

As a result, Palestinians today comprise the largest refugee population in the world and have endured the longest, most brutal occupation of modern times. 

David Ben-Gurion, Israel's first prime minister, said that compulsory transfer gave the Zionist project "a vast area (for settlement)...I support compulsory transfer. I don't see anything immoral in it."

Ariel Sharon was a war-criminal at 25 when his secret death squad, Unit 101, dynamited homes and massacred 69 Palestinian civilians - half of them women and children - at Qibya in the West Bank. His troops destroyed 2,000 homes in the Gaza Strip, uprooting 12,000 people and deporting hundreds of young Palestinians to Jordan and Lebanon. He masterminded Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon causing massive loss of life. An Israeli tribunal found him indirectly responsible for the massacre of Palestinians in the Sabra and Chatila refugee camps and removed him from office. Sharon was later welcomed in the drawing rooms of western leaders.

"The Palestinians can run their lives freely in the framework of self-rule, but not as an independent and sovereign state," says the manifesto of the Likud party which until recently governed Israel and may do so again. "Jerusalem is the eternal, united capital of the State of Israel and only of Israel."

The ruling Kadima party, a split-off from Likud, claims a national and historic right to the Land of Israel "in its entirety" and will keep Jerusalem and the settlements.

But the last official word on the future status of Jerusalem was the UN’s declaration in 1947 that it should be a 'corpus separatum', an international city. In any event the Old City, with its Holy Places, is in Occupied East Jerusalem and belongs to the Palestinians, not Israel.

Israel claims to be a liberal democracy but is no respecter of democratic principles. Arabs still living in Israel do not enjoy equal rights. No sooner had the Palestinians democratically elected a government than Israel and the West conspired to smash it. 

Israel has seized more than 38% of the West Bank, including prime agricultural land and strategic water resources. These areas are now off-limits to Palestinian. 80% of the West Bank’s precious water is diverted to illegal settlers, who enjoy a 24/7 supply, filling their swimming pools and washing their cars while Palestinians are strictly rationed or go without.

The 'roadmap’ endorsed by the UN Security Council requires Israel to dismantle outposts and freeze all settlement activity. But prime minister Olmert carries on regardless, approving 1900 more housing units across the West Bank and continuing to confiscate and demolish Palestinian homes and property. 

"More than 200 settlements have been constructed in the Occupied Territories, and 450,000 Israelis have migrated across the 1967 boundaries," says ICAHD (Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions).

In 2004 the International Court of Justice ruled that the Separation Wall, where it bites deep into Palestinian territory, is illegal and must be dismantled. Israel is still building it. Its real purpose, of course, is to grab more land and the all-important Western Aquifer. 

All this, together with the exclusive Jewish claim to the entire country, is designed to prevent the emergence of a viable Palestinian state. The settlements and associated infrastructure have chopped the remnants of Palestine into dozens of isolated, impoverished enclaves. Palestinians are forbidden to travel between them without military permission and their towns and villages have become prisons.

• For 60 years Israel has terrorised and oppressed Christians and their Muslim neighbours. No Muslim or Palestinian Christian living outside Jerusalem is allowed to visit the Holy Places without special permission. Priests cannot go about their business normally or travel to see their families because Israel's new visa policy would prevent them returning to their parishes.  

• The proportion of Christians has fallen from 17% to less than 1.5% in the land where Christianity began.

• Some 30 democratically elected Palestinian parliamentarians have been abducted and thrown in jail under 'administrative detention’.

• Israel’s murder spree continues. Since the second Intifada in 2000, 4722 Palestinians including 974 children have been killed in their homeland by Israelis and thousands more maimed. 2199 were taking no part in hostilities when killed. Corresponding Israeli deaths are 573 including 84 children (B'Tselem figures up to end of April 2008).

• According to the Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission Israel has a nuclear arsenal numbering in the hundreds, possibly larger than the Britain’s. Israel is the only state in the region not to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. It has not signed the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention either. It has signed but not ratified the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty, similarly the Chemical Weapons Convention.

• Israel claims to have "withdrawn completely" from Gaza. Actually the Israeli military still occupies Gaza's airspace and coastal waters, invades with tanks, bulldozers and aircraft whenever it pleases and controls all entries and exits except the Egypt crossing, which it is allowed to 'monitor'.

• British and European taxpayers wouldn’t need to pour aid into Palestine if it had been left in peace to develop. As things stand we have to pick up the tab for Israel’s unlawful occupation, economic strangulation and wrecking tactics.

• 80% of Conservative MPs and MEPs are 'Friends of Israel’ and the Labour party is also deeply infiltrated and corrupted.

• US aid is about $3 billion annually with another $2 to 3 billion in indirect aid – i.e. military support, loan write-offs and special grants. So US tax-dollars pay for Israel’s military operations to destroy Palestinian infrastructure, which in many cases British and EU taxpayers have paid for. Gee, thanks America! The US also bribes Egypt and Jordan to co-operate with Israel.

• Israel relies heavily on the EU for its export trade and enjoys trading preferences under the EU-Israel Association Agreement of 1995, which requires adherence to the principles of the United Nations Charter. Israel disregards the terms but continues to reap the benefits. It would be relatively easy to bring Israel to heel by suspend the Agreement, and there have been many calls to do so for continual violation of Article 2, which says "respect for human rights and democratic principle… constitute an essential element of this agreement." In April 2002 the European parliament itself, with a large majority, requested the European Commission and the Council of Europe to suspend it, without success. 

• Israel is pushing for a two-state solution to guarantee the purity of its racist regime. What’s left of Occupied Palestine - those fragments raped of resources and polluted - will become a permanent cluster of ghettos, traumatised, subservient, easy to control and having no chance of prospering or posing a threat… a dumping-ground for non-Jews 'cleansed’ from Israel proper. The British government endorses this shabby plan.

• A single state solution, in which Jews live alongside their Arab neighbours as equal citizens and share the land within a common legal and democratic framework, would be fairer though not to the liking of the Zionists and their lackeys. So it is dismissed from the discussion.

Israel, headed by a man facing corruption charges, invites us to celebrate 60 years of murder, mayhem, greed, land theft, illegal occupation, human rights abuses, contempt for international law and disregard for the will of the international community… and senior figures, from the Queen downwards, send their congratulations.

Many people warned against appeasing the Zionists. 90 years ago Lord Sydenham, in response to the Balfour Declaration, said: "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 outcome? Ariel Sharon is famously quoted as saying: "We, the Jewish people, control America, and the Americans know it." Had he been available for comment today he’d probably be saying the same about Britain, with much congratulatory back-slapping from Mr Blair and Mr Brown.

-ends-

13 May 2008

Stuart Littlewood