ROBIN SHEPHERD: GUN RUNNING UK EMBASSY STAFF
UK embassy staff in Jerusalem charged with gun-running for Hamas, cat out of the bag for Britain’s MidEast diplomacy
http://www.robinshepherdonline.com/uk-embassy-staff-in-jerusalem-charged-with-gun-running-for-hamas-cat-out-of-the-bag-for-britains-mideast-diplomacy/
Friendly with dictatorships however vile, accommodating of an anti-Semitism that knows no parallel since Germany in the 1930s, and willfully contemptuous of Britain’s long term interests in the war against terrorism, UK foreign policy in the Middle East had surely reached rock bottom long, long ago. Not so. When it comes to the British Foreign Office and its relations with Israel, there are always new depths to be plumbed.
And so it is that we wake up today to the news that two staff at the British consulate in Jerusalem have been arrested by the Israeli authorities for gun-running for Palestinian (Hamas) terrorists planning to cause carnage by bombing a packed football stadium.
The Foreign Office is being quoted as saying that security procedures will be reviewed and that the Israeli authorities do not believe the incident has anything to do with the staffers’ jobs at the embassy. But how can British embassy security procedures be anything other than severely compromised when the Foreign Office itself adopts such a conciliatory line towards Palestinian terror groups?
The point should be clear. If the centre-piece of your interpretation of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians is that Palestinian terrorism is merely the product of grievances against the “disproportionate” projection of Israeli military force and the “illegal” occupation of Palestinian land, rather than the product of an utterly degraded political culture infused with steadfast rejectionism of Israel’s legitimacy and the rights of Jews to live in the Middle East, it is not going to be easy to construct a security policy which can detect potential terrorists even when they are staring you in the face.
What applies in general will tend also to apply in the particular. The fact that the British tax payer has been footing the wage bill for accomplices to terrorism at the British consulate in Jerusalem is in no way surprising. It is merely an instance of the chickens having come home to roost amid a broader policy of appeasement.
When will they ever learn?
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