The annals of English history shall record you in one light or the other. You have snatched back a rudderless country out of the hands of directionless leftists – and for this, we across the Atlantic are thankful. But don’t light your cigar just yet, sir. You have failed your first test of fortitude.
Prime Minister Cameron took a step toward a Chamberlainian philosophy this last week. In a chilling statement, the PM denounced the Jewish state and embraced an anti-Semitic agenda propagated by the terrorist organization and ruling Palestinian power, Hamas. Not only did Cameron condemn Israel’s completely legal blockade of an extremist funded flotilla, but he also had the audacity to liken Gaza to a prison camp. In all due respect Mr. Cameron, the Jewish people are all too aware of what a prison camp is, particularly the few surviving with numbers tattooed on their arms. Would they not concur that a real prison camp has no access to 4 star restaurants, resorts and air-conditioned multi-level shopping centres?
Where has our ally gone? Since when does such blistering condemnation come from the historically supportive (or at least compliant) United Kingdom?
A well-placed Westminster informer had this to say about the Gaza remark:
Whatever Cameron may be from day to day, he is always and foremost a pragmatist. He does not make mistakes. So we must assume that his “prison camp” comments were deliberate, and, given that, we must therefore assume that the effects of the comments would have been predicted. Israel furious, Israel’s critics temporarily appeased. A speech like that would have gone through the Foreign Office, Downing Street, the National Security Council, and countless policy advisors. In other words, Cameron knew that what he was saying was going to hit the headlines. So there must be a bigger agenda at play here. Turkey’s entry to the EU? Winning support in the left-wing press? Appeasing his Liberal coalition partners? The only certainty is that Cameron was certain of what he was saying.
Just last week the German military was coordinating exercises for the Jewish state. This is a world upside down. Leave it to the enlightened Germans to realize the indispensable stabilizing force of tolerance and civility Israel has established within the region. Does anyone think for a moment that a Hamas-controlled state would allow such NATO military coordination within its borders? Particularly when the target of the exercises is the Taliban, Hamas’s ideological brethren?
Timing is everything. Unfortunately, it is not on Israel’s side. Treating the Jewish people with condescension is particularly in-vouge. President Obama’s disdainful, arrogant tone set a trend in March when he all but threw Prime Minister Netanyahu out of the White House. Let us not forget the Presidents bow to a Saudi King nine months earlier. The Obama Administration has conducted a policy of cooling toward Israel and warming toward the Arab world that is unprecedented. Mr. Cameron has no doubt taken pretences from his inexorably linked political counterpart and blindly added to the atmosphere of Jewish derision.
The ultimate flaw for centrists such as Cameron and leftists like Helen Thomas is their apostatizing is done from a political runway. For them, it is always in fashion to side with the faux plight of the Palestinians and never within the context of reality. Indeed, this dogma of Palestinian land entitlement is as logical as relinquishing Texas, California and Arizona back to Mexico. The argument beholds a historical ignorance and factual bias that would make a North Korean journalist proud.
In a freak act of journalistic integrity, Ashraf Abu al-Houl, writer for Egypt’s largest news paper Al-Ahram, described his recent visit to Gaza:
A sense of absolute prosperity prevails, as manifested by the grand resorts along and near Gaza’s coast. Further, the site of the merchandise and luxuries filling the Gaza shops amazed me. The resorts and markets have come to symbolize prosperity, and to prove that the siege is formal or political, not economic.
Such honesty makes few waves in a media cycle bent on portraying Israeli cruelty and Palestinian injustice. Wherein the reality remains: Hamas is enriching itself by fuelling the conflict. They follow an old prescription of keeping the people poor while their aristocracy grows richer by taxing and exploiting the masses. The Jewish people are then used as a red herring. We have all seen this before.
Sadly, this would not be the first time this century we’ve witnessed a weak-minded PM capitulating to the concept that a violent, anti-Semitic enemy had the right to lay siege upon a land because they were historically entitled to it. Thank Providence that the Jewish Nation wields one of the world’s finest militaries aided by a supportive American military not in an isolationist slumber.
Our weak-minded allies should cease playing euro zone appeasement politics with our common enemy. Cameron should follow in a strong English tradition of calling evil for what it is and meeting it with force of verb and action. Failure to do so will surely condemn him to the company of the naive idea of “Peace in our time” instead of the more rational “Never give in, never give in, never; never; never; never – in nothing, great or small, large or petty – never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense.”