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As public support for Israel falls away I note that the Zionist PR machine is now trying a new tactic to win back friends and influence ordinary people in Britain.
“What would you do if your cities came under attack,” is the question fired at increasingly weary news presenters who simply want to know why Israel’s mighty military targets women, children, hospitals and schools in Gaza.
It is, actually, an easy question to respond to. Britain was under attack not so long ago during more than 30 years of IRA terrorism which targeted Birmingham, Manchester, London, Brighton, Guildford and beyond, killing around 1,800 people in the process. Despite decades of the so-called Irish Troubles, never once did Westminster respond by dispatching cruise missiles towards Belfast or Dublin. Nor were helicopter gunships, fighter jets or gunboats deployed to rain down missiles on a civilian population on the off-chance of hitting an IRA target.
More recently, a different form of terror was unleashed in London which targeted innocent commuters on 7 July 2005, killing 52 civilians and injuring more than 700 others. The British government’s response was more restrained; it did not bomb the towns in West Yorkshire where the suicide bombers lived or demolish their family homes.
Ramping up the question a little more, the testosterone-fuelled Israeli Economy Minister Naftali Bennett harangued Sky News presenter Samantha Simmonds by asking how London would cope with 200 rockets fired daily on the capital. Well, quite simply, it would not happen, because Britain has not corralled 1.5m refugees into a tiny ghetto off the M25, depriving them daily of food, fresh water and life’s other essentials. Nor is the UK refusing to let anyone enter the said ghetto with aid or trade. But that’s what Israel has done, and is doing, to the people of Gaza.
Is it any wonder, therefore, that the occupants of such a large, open air prison that is the Gaza Strip say “enough is enough”, start to resist and then fight back with anything that they can lay their hands on?
The unruffled Ms Simmonds continued politely, probing the minister for answers until he could contain himself no longer. He exploded into an unreconstructed rant aimed at the tiny state of Qatar; like a Scud missile, no one saw that one coming.
The tiny Gulf State has worked tirelessly around the clock trying to broker peace deals in the volatile Middle East. That at least one Arab State is genuine in trying to come up with a practical solution should be a cause for appreciation and celebration.
It was not to be. Bennett almost self-immolated as he shot off on another tangent calling for world football’s governing body FIFA to cancel Qatar’s hosting of the 2022 World Cup.
“We’ll have to leave it there,” said Ms Simmonds coolly. “Thank you Mr Bennett.”
Such restraint was admirable, but she could have responded by asking the minister what he thought of attempts to throw Israel out of the European football organisation UEFA due to his country’s racism against Palestinians and their national team. But perhaps I’d better leave that there.
Published in Middle East Monitor
