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Daryl McCann :The Tsar and the Sultan

Posted By on December 29th, 2016

Two demagogues have inserted their countries into a monstrous civilisational war between millennialist Shia fundamentalists and apocalyptic Sunni fundamentalists. There were always going to be consequences for such folly – the assassination of Ambassador Karlov is but one.

All of this was clarified yet again with the slaying of Andrey Karlov, Russia’s ambassador to Turkey, by Mevlut Mert Altintas, a twenty-two-year-old policeman. To begin with all we knew – and almost all we needed to know – was that (a) Altintas served in security details protecting none other President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in recent months and (b) the assailant, after dispatching Karlov, repeatedly shouted “Don’t forget Aleppo! Don’t forget Syria! Don’t forget Aleppo! Don’t forget Syria!”

Much of what Putin and Erdoğan say about the public murder of a prime symbol of Russian intervention on the side of Damascus-Iran-Hezbollah in Syria is likely to be propaganda. Turkey’s Ministry of Truth, for instance, was quick off the mark to insist American-based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen had a role in Karlov’s death. Altintas, according to this conspiracy theory, was a member of FETÖ, the term invented by Ankara to demonise the Gulen movement as a shadowy, underground terrorist entity determined to subvert the Turkish Republic. Under the headline “Great Sabotage”, the pro-government Yeni Safak newspaper explained it this way: “The pro-FETÖ assassins of the CIA have been mobilised.”

So far, at least, Russia’s version of the Ministry of Truth has been more circumspect about blaming Western intelligence agencies, and yet a smattering of Putin’s allies in the Duma made some like-minded rumblings. Frantz Klintsevich, a significant figure in the Russian parliament, speculated on the “highly likely” possibility that “foreign NATO secret services” were behind the assassination. Vladimir Zhirinovsky, another ally of Putin’s in the Duma, spoke of a “false flag operation by the West.”

The grain of truth in such dissembling is that Mevlut Mert Altintas took the action he did to protest the nascent rapprochement between Putin’s Russia and Erdoğan’s Turkey. That said, Altintas seems an unlikely agent of FETÖ or the CIA. The dramatic footage of him murdering Karlov and then denouncing the fall of eastern Aleppo makes that abundantly clear: “Only death will remove me from here. Everyone who has taken part in the oppression will one by one pay for it one by one.” A spokesman for Jabhat Fatah al-Sham (formerly Jabhat al-Nusra) later confirmed Altintas’ Salafi-jihadist sympathies. The slaying of Andrey Karlov, in other words, was retribution for Russia’s part in the Shia alliance’s recent victory in Aleppo.

The assassination of Ambassador Karlov suggests that major fault lines divide the Russian Federation and the Republic of Turkey; even if Tsar Vladimir and Sultan Erdoğan themselves would prefer an alliance between their two countries rather than enmity. Back in December 2014, for instance, Ishaan Tharoor, in an article titled “How Russia’s Putin and Turkey’s Erdoğan are made for each other”, captured the friendliness “between two of the most outspoken and demagogic statesmen on the planet” at the time of President Putin’s last visit to Ankara. President Erdoğan provided a welcome “with fitting pageantry: an escort of liveried cavalrymen on horseback, a full military salute and a series of discussions in the cavernous halls of Erdoğan’s vast, new presidential palace.”

Both leaders, Ishaan Tharoor contended, were “kindred spirits”. They were the opposite of “bleeding heart liberals” and pursued reactionary social agendas in their separate domains: Putin, the ardent nationalist and devotee of the Russian Orthodox Church, wary of gender equality and an enactor of legislation hostile to gays; and Erdoğan, the Muslim Brotherhood-style Islamist determined to roll back Turkey’s Kemalist legacy. Erdoğan and Putin were both despots who “squelched” any internal obstruction to their “creeping authoritarianism” and were united by a distrust of the West.

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The War on Israel Never Ends Settlements aren’t the issue. Many of the Jewish state’s enemies don’t even believe in its right to exist. By Douglas J. Feith

Posted By on December 29th, 2016

Last week’s United Nations Security Council resolution on Israel is a weapon of war pretending to be a plea for peace. Israel’s enemies say it has no right to exist. They claim the whole state was built on Arab land and it’s an injustice for Jews to exercise sovereignty there. Palestinians still widely promote this untruth in their official television and newspapers, whether from the PLO-controlled West Bank or Hamas-controlled Gaza. That is the unmistakable subtext of Friday’s U.N. Resolution 2334, despite the lip service paid to peace and the “two-state solution.”

The resolution describes Israel’s West Bank towns and East Jerusalem neighborhoods as settlements that are a “major obstacle” to peace. But there was a life-or-death Arab-Israeli conflict before those areas were built, and before Israel acquired the West Bank in the 1967 war.

Arab opposition to Israel’s existence predated—indeed caused—that war. It even predated Israel’s birth in 1948, which is why the 1948-49 war occurred. Before World War I, when Britain ended the Turks’ 400-year ownership of Palestine, Arab anti-Zionists denied the right of Jews to a state anywhere in Palestine.

Officials of Egypt (in 1979) and Jordan (in 1994) signed peace treaties with Israel, but anti-Zionist hostility remains strong. The Palestinian Authority signed the Oslo Accords in 1993 but continues to exhort its children in summer camps and schools to liberate all of Palestine through violence.

Arab efforts to damage Israel have been persistent and various, including conventional war, boycotts, diplomatic isolation, terrorism, lower-intensity violence such as rock-throwing, and missile and rocket attacks. Israel’s defensive successes, however, have constrained Palestinian leaders to rely now chiefly on ideological war to de-legitimate the Jewish State.

Highlighting the “occupied territories”—in U.N. resolutions, for example—implies moderation. It suggests an interest only in the lands Israel won in 1967. But the relatively “moderate” Palestinian Authority, in its official daily newspaper, Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, continually refers to Israeli cities as “occupied Haifa” or “occupied Jaffa,” for example. In other words, even pre-1967 Israel is “occupied territory” and all Israeli towns are “settlements.”

When David Ben-Gurion declared Israel’s independence in 1948, he invoked the “historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine,” as recognized in the Palestine Mandate approved in 1922 by the League of Nations. That connection applied to what’s now called the West Bank as it did to the rest of Palestine. Because no nation has exercised generally recognized sovereignty over the West Bank since the Turkish era, the mandate supports the legality of Jewish settlement there. That’s why attacking the settlements’ legality—as opposed to questioning whether they’re prudent—is so insidious. Arguing that it is illegal for Jews to live in the West Bank is tantamount to rejecting Israel’s right to have come into existence.

Friday’s U.N. resolution is full of illogic and anti-Israel hostility. It says disputed issues should be “agreed by the parties through negotiations.” Among the key open issues is who should control the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Yet the resolution calls these areas “Palestinian territory.” So much for negotiations.

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Kerry’s Rage Against Israel The Secretary doesn’t understand why his peace talks failed.

Posted By on December 29th, 2016

John Kerry delivered a marathon speech Wednesday excoriating Israel for its settlements policy, and we hear Israeli TV stations dropped the live broadcast after the first half-hour. Who can blame them? If Israelis don’t feel the need to sit through another verbal assault from the soon to be former Secretary of State, it’s because they live in a reality he shows no evidence of comprehending.

Mr. Kerry has made the pursuit of Israeli-Palestinian peace a major goal of his tenure, conducting intensive negotiations for nearly a year until they collapsed in spring 2014. That collapse came after the Palestinian Authority announced the creation of a unity government with Hamas, the terrorist group sworn to Israel’s destruction. Shortly thereafter, Hamas started a war with Israel from its Gaza stronghold, the third such war since Israel vacated Gaza of all settlements in 2005.

We recite this history to show that it’s not for lack of U.S. diplomacy that there is no peace—and that mishandled diplomacy has a way of encouraging Palestinian violence. In 2000 then-President Bill Clinton brought Israeli and Palestinian leaders to Camp David to negotiate a final peace agreement, only to watch Palestinians walk away from an offer that would have granted them a state on nearly all of Gaza and the West Bank. That failure was followed by another Palestinian terror campaign.

Israelis remember this. They remember that they elected leaders—Yitzhak Rabin in 1992, Ehud Barak in 1999, Ehud Olmert in 2006—who made repeated peace overtures to the Palestinians only to be met with violence and rejection.

In his speech, Mr. Kerry went out of his way to personalize his differences with current Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, claiming he leads the “most right-wing” coalition in Israeli history. But Israelis also remember that Mr. Netanyahu ordered a settlement freeze, and that also brought peace no closer.

The lesson is that Jewish settlements are not the main obstacle to peace. If they were, Gaza would be on its way to becoming the Costa Rica of the Mediterranean. The obstacle is Palestinian rejection of Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state in any borders. A Secretary of State who wishes to resolve the conflict could have started from that premise, while admonishing the Palestinians that they will never get a state so long as its primary purpose is the destruction of its neighbor.

But that Secretary isn’t Mr. Kerry. Though he made passing references to Palestinian terror and incitement, the most he would say against it was that it “must stop.” If the Administration has last-minute plans to back this hollow exhortation with a diplomatic effort at the U.N., we haven’t heard about it.

Contrast this with last week’s Security Council resolution, which the Obama Administration refused to veto and which substantively changes diplomatic understandings stretching to 1967. Mr. Kerry claimed Wednesday that Resolution 2334 “does not break new ground.”

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UN, Obama Further Radicalize Palestinians by Khaled Abu Toameh

Posted By on December 29th, 2016

Last week’s UN Security Council resolution sent the following message to the Palestinians: Forget about negotiating. Just pressure the international community to force Israel surrender up all that you demand.

Abbas and his cronies are more belligerent and defiant than ever. They have chosen the path of confrontation, and not direct negotiations — to force Israel to its knees.

One of Abbas’s close associates hinted that the resolution should be regarded as a green light not only to boycott Israel, but also to use violence against it, to “bolster the popular resistance” against Israel — code for throwing stones and firebombs, and carrying out stabbing and car-ramming attacks against Israelis.

The resolution has also encouraged the Palestinians to pursue their narrative that Jews have no historical, religious or emotional attachment to Jerusalem or any other part of Israel.

The Gaza-based Hamas and Islamic Jihad see the resolution as another step toward their goal of replacing Israel with an Islamic empire. When Hamas talks about “resistance,” it means suicide bombings and rockets against Israel — it does not believe in “light” terrorism such as stones and stabbings.

The UN’s highly touted “victory,” is a purely Pyrrhic one, in fact a true defeat to the peace process and to the few Arabs and Muslims who still believe in the possibility of coexistence with Israel.

Buoyed by the latest United Nations Security Council resolution condemning Israeli settlements as illegal, Palestinian leaders are now threatening to step up their diplomatic warfare against Israel — a move that is sure to sabotage any future effort to revive the moribund peace process. Other Palestinians, meanwhile, view the resolution as license to escalate “resistance” attacks on Israel. By “resistance,” of course, they mean terror attacks against Israel.

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Education in Sweden: “Then Things Got Interesting” by Göran Adamson

Posted By on December 29th, 2016

She was proud of her submission, not of her achievements.

Other than that, her email was full of post-modern nonsense such as science as a “belief” just like religion. In fact, science is doubt based on knowledge, while religion is certainty based on faith. Would she, I wondered, also “deconstruct” the Koran?

She had exercised her freedom only to give it up.

She was sitting there quietly in the middle of the classroom — a Swedish Muslim all dressed in black with a white powdered face. I was lecturing on John Stuart Mill at Sweden’s University West. What did I say? I said that while religion may not be true, it still gives people a sense of belonging and trust, and liberal society cannot give you that. The liberal soup is thin, and most of us want something richer, some kind of political main-course goulash. When people say that liberal society is empty, they actually mean this: I cannot give my life any purpose, so can someone kindly do it for me? Please hand me some grandiose message to live by because I cannot figure out anything on my own. Emptiness? Well, that could be another word for limitless opportunities.

Two days later, the Muslim student sent me an email. She accused me of not being “neutral”. She wrote that I had called religious people “pathetic”. I had not. She accused me of defaming Islam, herself as a woman and as an individual student.

As for Islam, I had never mentioned it, and as for her, I had never seen her before. Possibly in her vanity, she seemed to think the lecture was about her; in fact, it was about John Stuart Mill. She said (and this shook me a bit) that she would keep me “under surveillance”; she signed off with: “The student dressed in her pride”. Too bad she could not find something else about which to be proud. She was proud of her submission, not of her achievements. If you cannot give your life meaning, perhaps somebody will chip in and do it for you.

Other than that, her email was full of post-modern nonsense such as science as a “belief” just like religion. In fact, science is doubt based on knowledge, while religion is certainty based on faith. We had given her the tools of postmodernism, and here she was trashing the fabric of Western society. Would she, I wondered, also “deconstruct” the Koran?

But I was not bothered by her email, really. Students have the right to say all kinds of things, perhaps even to write inappropriate emails to their professors. It is, someone said, a human right not to “get it”. All it takes is to talk. If a student fails to understand the basic principles of a university — free inquiry, the need to question our views — the university will introduce the student to them. So I did not reply, but calmly awaited the next step by my department.

A few days later, an email requesting a meeting was sent out. But she never got it. I did. How odd, I thought, but I went there and, in front of a wide-eyed administrator, explained the rise of the modern university as a realm of free discussion, unhampered by the power of the state and the church; and spoke about the principles of free speech, and cited Karl Popper, Mill, George Orwell, Voltaire, and others on the way. She looked happy.

A few days later came another email. Now I was called in for consultations with Head of the Department and the Head Administrator. “Look”, I told them, “this is a university. Do you know what that means?” They said they did. “Do you know why I am here?” I gave them the answer. “For lecturing on John Stuart Mill.”

“Ten years ago,” I went on, “I wrote an article about a performance of Ideomeneo — a Mozart opera that was cancelled in Berlin because it might offend Muslim sensibilities. The title of the article was ‘The Enlightenment may end up as a historical paranthesis.’ Do you know what the Enlightenment is about?”

I looked at them and they looked back at me.

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Iran in Syria: Russia Took Over by Heshmat Alevi

Posted By on December 29th, 2016

It appears that Iran literally gained nothing from the Moscow conference, meaning that its participation was merely of a ceremonial nature.

“The regime in Tehran is the source of crisis in the region and killings in Syria; it has played the greatest role in the expansion and continuation of ISIS. Peace and tranquility in the region can only be achieved by evicting this regime from the region.” — Maryam Rajavi, President of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, and a leader of the opposition to Iran’s regime.

The recent three-party conference held in Moscow with the participation of Russia, Turkey and Iran came to a significant end. With mainstream media emphasizing how the U.S. Administration was completely sidelined in talks that discussed the future of Syria, a different perspective also sheds light on how Iran was sidelined to an unprecedented degree. Considering that this session ended with a document signed by all three parties, one can take a hard look at the results.

This document emphasizes Syria’s independence and territorial integrity as a multi-racial, multi-religious, non-sectarian, democratic and secular state; underscores the necessity of reaching a political solution; welcomes joint efforts in East Aleppo to evacuate civilians and armed rebels; highlights the need to expand a ceasefire across the country and facilitate access to humanitarian aid; supports a possible agreement between the Syrian opposition and the Syrian government; and accentuates continuing joint efforts against terrorism and especially the Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL), differentiating their forces from those of the armed democratic opposition.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov (center) holds a joint press conference with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif (left) and Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu (right) in Moscow, December 20, 2016. (Image source: Russia Ministry of Foreign Affairs)

A closer look brings us to a preliminary conclusion that most of the articles are clash Iran’s interests. For example, Iran was, and remains, fully against the safe evacuation of civilians and rebels from East Aleppo.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani went so far as saying, “Various Islamic states… are worried about the fate of terrorists and seek their safe exit from Aleppo.”

In this document, there is no mention of the Assad regime or any language discussing its remaining in power. And importantly, while Iran went to great lengths to massacre all dissidents and annihilate the entire Syrian opposition under the pretext of fighting ISIS, this document specifically differentiates and recognizes the separate nature of ISIS and the Free Syrian Army.

The Moscow conference also emphasized the role of the United Nations in resolving the Syrian crisis, highlighting the necessity to abide by U.N. Security Council Resolution 2254. This resolution emphasizes the Security Council as the reference body, also enjoying support from the United States and Saudi Arabia. There is no reference to Assad’s future role; instead the resolution “expressed support for free and fair elections, pursuant to the new constitution, to be held within 18 months and administered under United Nations supervision, ‘to the highest international standards’ of transparency and accountability, with all Syrians—including members of the diaspora—eligible to participate.”

Taking these factors into consideration, it appears that Iran literally gained nothing from the Moscow conference, meaning that its participation was merely of a ceremonial nature.

The conference outcome makes it clear that Russia enjoys hegemony over Iran in Syria, and that Moscow has imposed its interests and road map to Tehran, leaving the mullahs no choice but to submit to the status quo. This setback of its hegemony seems a major reason why Iran needed to parade Revolutionary Guards Quds Force Qassem Suleimani in Aleppo: perhaps to boost an iota of morale into its dwindling social base.

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The Times and the Stars By Marilyn Penn

Posted By on December 29th, 2016

There are two American women whose obituaries were reported in today’s NYTimes: one for the actress who played a princess in Star Wars and one for a ground-breaking physicist and astronomer. The former, Carrie Fisher, achieved fame through the character of Princess Leia and later through her books about her own bi-polar disorder and drug addiction. The latter, Vera Rubin, “transformed modern physics and astronomy with her observations showing that galaxies and stars are immersed in the gravitational grip of vast clouds of dark matter.” (NYT 12/28) As significant details of her life, the Times reports that Carrie Fisher had one marriage lasting less than a year and one daughter born out of wedlock; Vera Rubin was married to another prominent physicist for 60 years, bearing four children who all earned their own Ph.D.’s

A capsule description of Vera Rubin offers that she was “cheerful and plain-spoken, had a lifelong love of the stars, championed women in science and was blunt about the limits of humankind’s vaunted knowledge of nature” (NYT 12/28) A capsule description of Ms Fisher delineates that “she acknowledged taking drugs like LSD and Percodan throughout the 1970’s and ’80’s and later said that she was using cocaine while making “The Empire Strikes Back” In l985, after filming a role in Woody Allen’s “Hannah and Her Sisters,” she had a nearly fatal overdose. She had her stomach pumped and checked herself into a 30-day rehab program.” (NYT 1228)

I’m sure that everyone who heard of Ms Fisher’s death at age 60 was saddened that this woman suffered from mental illness and drug addiction which undoubtedly hastened her early demise from a heart attack. My question is which woman had her picture and obit on the front page of the Times and what does that say about a society more interested in casual fame and derelict behavior than in genius, hard work and a purposeful life – one that should serve as the ultimate role model for women young and old.

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Mr. Obama’s Middle East policy quite nicely: “Praise Islam, ignore Christians, blame Jews.” Obama’s Treachery Exposed By Joan Swirsky

Posted By on December 29th, 2016

Mr. Obama’s Middle East policy quite nicely: “Praise Islam, ignore Christians, blame Jews.”

After watching all the pomp and circumstance of the presidential inauguration of January 20, 2009, I remember turning to my husband Steve and saying: “The sole mission of Barack Obama and his henchmen is to destroy Israel.”

Steve reminded me that there was a mountain of domestic issues awaiting the new, far-left regime, and I agreed. And sure enough, Mr. Obama and his minions proceeded to wreak havoc on job creation and on the American military, inflict strangulating regulations, amass crushing national debt, foist horrific healthcare and education systems on our citizens, and seed every government department with operatives from the Nazi-inspired terrorist organization Muslim Brotherhood, and then hand over control of the Internet to the United Nations––the most corrupt, tin-pot-dictator-driven, anti-American, anti-Semitic, American-resource-draining cesspool in our country.

But all that still left them plenty of time to enact a foreign policy that genuflected to our enemies and spit in the face of our most faithful allies, most particularly Israel.

Writer Mona Charen has said that Mr. Obama has a “genocidal hostility toward Israel.” As if to reinforce that opinion, he just engaged in his longtime habit of spitting on Jews––and also Christians––by launching his poison dart on December 23rd, right in time for Chanukah and Christmas.

After the first vote proposed by Egypt to condemn Israeli “settlements”––meaning housing on Israeli land––was canceled after President-elect Trump intervened, the vote was rescheduled in the United Nation’s Security Council when New Zealand (10,000 miles from Israel), Malaysia (where the official religion is Islam), Senegal (which is 90-percent Muslim), and Venezuela (so impoverished that people are now scrounging for toilet paper) reinstituted the anti-Israel measure, and the United States, reversing decades of U.S. policy, refused to veto it.

Resolution 2334 demands that Israel “immediately and completely cease all settlement activities in the [so-called] occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem.” It also advised all states “to distinguish, in their relevant dealings, between the territory of the State of Israel and the territories occupied since 1967″––what former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon called “Auschwitz borders.”

Despite White House denials that it had anything to do with creating the Resolution, there is no doubt that this sneak attack was hatched and orchestrated directly from the Oval Office and involved Mr. Obama himself, Secretary of State John Kerry, Susan Rice, and other of his Jew-hating acolytes. Israel says it has “iron-clad evidence” of direct involvement, and leaked documents already confirm that claim.

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John Kerry’s Final, Harmful Insult to Israel A shameful end to the Obama foreign policy.By Elliott Abrams

Posted By on December 29th, 2016

In the Obama administration’s waning days, global challenges to American interests abound. In Syria, which will be a bloody stain on the reputations of Barack Obama and John Kerry, the killing continues. The effort to free Mosul from ISIS is slowing. The rise of Iranian influence in the Gulf and the Levant, of China in Asia and the western Pacific, and of Putin’s Russia in both Europe and the Middle East, all continue. One might have thought any of these could be the subject of a final address by the president or the secretary of state.

But one would have been wrong. John Kerry delivered what is probably the last major speech of the Obama administration Wednesday, and its subject was the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and especially the growth of Israeli settlements. So the Obama administration ends where it began: obsessed with Israelis and Palestinians as if their struggle were the key to peace in the entire region, and with construction of homes in settlements and in Jerusalem as if it were the major roadblock to a peace agreement.

In a speech that was remarkable for its length, its defensive and even whiny tone, its attack on the government of Israel, and for its lack of new ideas, Kerry tried to explain both last week’s failure to veto a UN Security Council resolution and eight years of failed Obama policy. His central argument was that the two-state solution is essential, is possible, and is being destroyed by Israeli settlements. The administration did not veto the resolution, he said, because it was balanced: It rebuked Israel for settlement expansion but also rebuked the Palestinians for incitement.

The latter point is significant, and shows the fundamental failure of Kerry’s argument. The resolution passed last week will do actual damage to Israel, because calling all the settlements and even construction in East Jerusalem a violation of international law opens Israel to further boycotts and to prosecution as criminals (in local courts all over the world or the International Criminal Court) of Israeli officials or of settlers. The “balance” that moved the administration to permit adoption of the resolution was non-existent: There is in the resolution no call upon the Palestinians to stop glorifying terrorism by naming schools and parks after murderers and celebrating their “achievements.” Instead the resolution does not mention the Palestinians in that context at all and merely “calls for compliance with obligations under international law for the strengthening of ongoing efforts to combat terrorism…and to clearly condemn all acts of terrorism.” Israel is condemned but the Palestinians are never criticized in that supposedly “balanced” text.

Kerry noted in his speech that “We have repeatedly and emphatically stressed to the Palestinians that all incitement to violence must stop.” Kerry actually spoke at some length about these Palestinian practices, as if repeating how much he dislikes them strengthened his point. But it does not, because the United States has been complaining about this for all eight years of the Obama administration to no effect whatsoever. The key point is that the Palestinians are never penalized for glorifying terror and the U.N. resolution doesn’t penalize them either. The resolution will harm Israel and do nothing at all to the Palestinians, which means it is not balanced and Kerry’s argument here is simply false.

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An open letter to Theresa May by Melanie Phillips

Posted By on December 29th, 2016

Dear Prime Minister,

It was sickening to see that your government last week voted for the declaration of diplomatic war against Israel embodied in resolution 2334 passed by the UN Security Council.

Bad enough that Britain didn’t use its position as a permanent SC member to vote against this vicious resolution and thereby stop it in its tracks. Worse, far worse was that your government voted for it. In doing so, Britain signed up to propositions that repudiate law, justice and truth.

Now reports have surfaced that, yet more appallingly, Britain was actually instrumental in getting 2334 passed by helping draft the resolution and then stiffening New Zealand’s resolve in proposing it.

I don’t know whether that is correct. I suspect it may well be. I think, nevertheless, that you spoke from the heart the other week when you told the Conservative Friends of Israel of your admiration for Israel as a “remarkable country” and a “beacon of tolerance” and your warm feelings towards the Jewish people.

I also think, however, that you know little about the history of the Jews in the Middle East, the part played in that history by previous British governments or the infernal strategic aims of the people known as the “Palestinians”. I believe, therefore, you might not fully grasp the implications of supporting UNSC resolution 2334.

So let me spell out exactly what your government has done by voting in this way.

It has put itself firmly behind the attempt to exterminate the State of Israel under the cowardly cover of vacuous pieties about supporting two democratic states and opposing terrorism and incitement. It has done this by endorsing the inflammatory falsehoods and legal and historic fictions deployed by those whose purpose is to destroy the State of Israel.

It has shredded the concept of diplomatic integrity by delegitimising Israel’s legal actions in defence of its survival while legitimising the manifestly false claim to the land by those who want Israel gone.

It has put rocket fuel behind the discriminatory and bigoted BDS movement whose aim is to delegitimise Israel and bring about its destruction.

By declaring that Israel’s borders should be established on terms demanded by its mortal enemies, the British government has backed coerced surrender to aggressors bent on Israel’s extermination.