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An Open Letter to Prime Minister Tony Blair
Dr. Colin. L. Leci-
Wednesday 17th Nov 2004
Dear Prime Minister Tony Blair:
According to the media, you are going to attempt to settle what you define as, "The most critical situation in the world, which is causing instability." It has even been suggested that you wish to call a conference of the parties concerned in London, so that the issues can be thrashed out and settled to your satisfaction.
How could you publicly claim that you are a "friend of Israel both in good times and bad times," as you did at the recent Labour Friends of Israel fringe meeting during the 2004 Labour Party Conference? From my perspective, and those of numerous Jews around the world, this is just not true. Instead of strengthening Israel's hand like President George Bush, you, together with your European Union colleagues, have attempted to weaken her. You pursue policies that run contrary to those of the USA and are certainly not in the best interest of Israel's citizens.
First and foremost, I seek an explanation as to why the situation between Israel and the Arabs is your major priority. Clearly, there are more pressing issues within the United Kingdom itself concerning all its citizens that you should be addressing, rather than involving yourself in these matters. The only explanation for your focus that one can think of is the need to secure the supply of the UK's energy source - oil - since the indigenous resources in the North Sea are running down. Or, perhaps you wish to add another feather to your cap besides the presidency of the EU and the G8 group of developed countries that the UK will assume in January 2005.
There are twenty-one Arab countries in the Middle East and it appears that you wish to create yet another Arab country. Is there insufficient land and space within these Arab countries? Their vast deserts could be developed and populated by those who want yet another state, financed, ironically, by the wealth generated from their oil and gas resources.
With all due respect, I think you need reminding that in the early 1920's Her Majesty's Government reneged on the Mandate of the League of Nations with the regard to the establishment of a Jewish National Home in the Holy Land. It decided to give an Arabian Emir 80 percent of the Mandatory territory, which eventually became the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. Of the remaining 20 percent, you, together with your European colleagues, now wish to subdivide it into an Arab and a Jewish State. The area concerned is less than that of Wales, and prior to 1967 the armistice lines narrowed Israel down at its waist to less than nine miles in width, not even half the distance between central London and its suburbs. Less than the distance between Downing Street and Heathrow Airport, from where you departed to go to the USA. The Israeli diplomat, Abba Eban, described the situation after 1967 by stating that no one in their right mind can expect Israel to return to these "Auschwitz borders".
It is clear from the foregoing that if you have your way, irrespective of what certain Israeli politicians have to say positively regarding a two-state solution, this will be the end of Israel. There is no point in advising that the international community will provide Israel with cast-iron guarantees. As has happened in the past, when called upon to effect the said guarantees, the international community, including HM Government, will suddenly take fright and refuse to act, claiming that such guarantees do not exist. As your consumer advisers will tell you, there is no such thing as a cast-iron guarantee, nor, indeed, are there valid international treaties, as the latter have never been upheld in practice by any nation, but always in the breach.
The concept of yet another St. James' conference between Jews and Arabs, similar to that held in 1939, has no place today. Then, the conference took place against the background of European Jewry on the verge of annihilation by Hitler (may his name be obliterated). At it happened, the British government not only failed to fulfil its duty under the Mandate by opening up the shores and borders of the Holy Land to those who wished to escape Nazi persecution, but also deliberately refused them entry into the UK on humanitarian grounds, sending untold hundreds of thousands to cold-blooded butchery in the Nazi extermination camps.
From the initiation of the Mandate to 1939, HM Government had been responsible for appeasing the Arabs at every possible opportunity, and is still pursuing that policy even to the present day, with the nascent Jewish State and subsequently Israel having to pay the cost in terms of lives, blood and land. In 1939, there was Hitler and his bunch of Nazis in Europe; today, there is the PLO in the Holy Land. Like the Nazis, they talk openly about upholding the rule of law as if that law was sacrosanct, but in reality such law is in favour of the criminal and against humanity.
As Chaim Weizmann said to Lloyd George, "Jerusalem was our capital when London was only a marsh." If you claim that there are 'Palestinian' people who deserve a state of their own, would you be kind enough to advise at what period in history did they ever have a state of their own? Certainly, the Jewish people's claim is laid down succinctly in the Old Testament, but no such 'Palestinian' claim can be found anywhere. Indeed, artifacts going back three millennium have clearly established beyond doubt the existence of a Jewish State; otherwise, why would the area be known as the Holy Land for the last two thousand years?
One needs to look closely at the United Kingdom's overseas territories (formerly know as a dependent territory or Crown Colony), still under the sovereignty and formal control of the UK, which were acquired by a combination of war, subjugation and colonisation of the countries' residents. There is an extensive list all over the face of the earth, including: Anguilla, British Virgin Islands, Montserrat, Gibraltar, Turks and Caicos Islands , Cayman Islands, Falkland Islands, Saint Helena, Pitcairn Islands, British Indian Ocean Territory, South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, British Antarctic Territory In addition, there are the Sovereign Base Areas of Akrotiri and Dhekelia in Cyprus[1]. Only when the United Kingdom relinquishes sovereignty and formal control over this vast number of lands and people can you tell other countries how they should behave.
It is clear that having reneged on the Balfour Declaration of 1917, which itself is based on the Bible, representatives of HM Government have no right to involve themselves any longer. Nor have the Europeans, who permitted the Nazis to annihilate the majority of European Jewry.
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Colin Leci is a commentator with extensive knowledge of the Middle East affairs
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