Al-Aqsa attack: Boris Johnson’s silence over Israeli violence is a disgrace
JVL Introduction
In an excoriating condemnation Peter Oborne rounds on Boris Johnson for his abject failure to speak out against Israel provocations in East Jerusalem after Israeli forces invaded al-Aqsa Mosque, the third-most sacred site in Islam.
And Dominic Raab was silent until he condemned Hamas rockets and called for “immediate de-escalation on all sides”, thus establishing a false equivalence between occupier and occupied…
We are, as Oborne makes clear “not talking, as Israel disingenuously claims, of a ‘real-estate dispute’. We are talking about forcible evictions are part of a state-sanctioned policy to change the demographic character of occupied East Jerusalem, which includes settlements and demolitions. It is … a struggle for the future of the Palestinian presence in the city.”
This article was originally published by Middle East Eye on Tue 11 May 2021. Read the original here.
Al-Aqsa attack: Boris Johnson's silence over Israeli violence is a disgrace
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And Keir Starmer et al
This from Johnson is only to be expected, fascists do not condemn fascists.
rogerwaters (@Roger Waters) Tweeted: One of many reasons I love Ireland and its people.
Love
R.
PS I bet the Israeli Ambassador’s answer was a hoot. So I do. https://twitter.com/rogerwaters/status/1392556084527783938?s=27
Peter Oborne gives his normal, forthright opinion – the traditionalist Tory individual who tells the truth as he sees it. But, what would he have those resisting the oppression of the Israeli state do?
Hamas are accused of attacking civilian areas; how are people in an occupation meant to hit back at the occupying power that has fenced them in and placed its own civilians all around them? How were those people under siege in earlier centuries allowed to retaliate against those enforcing the siege?
The psychological benefit of hitting back against a powerful opponent has long been acknowledged, when compared with passively suffering whatever the oppressors wish to throw at you. Will it work to deter the Israeli war-planes? Of course not. Do the fighters understand that? Of course they do.
Has the “peace process” since 2014, 2009, 1993 etc. etc. produced anything better for Palestinians?
The BBC 6 o’clock News report (10.5.21) of the police assault on Al Aqsa did the same as Dominic Raab: starting their report with the Hamas rockets and the deaths in Gaza, then mid-way saying ‘earlier …’ as a way of dealing what went on in the morning thereby disassociating the two events and blaming Hamas as the aggressor. Then Jeremy Bowen was studio interviewed describing the unfolding events as an ancient struggle for holy sites between two bickering sides.His role as Middle East Editor since 2005 (despite having been attacked for bias in 2009 and his driver being killed by Israeli tank fire in 2000) has coincided with silence over the OTP and the on-going colonisation of East Jerusalem and the West Bank. I think it is time to issue a call for Bowen to be sacked. Also I think Peter Oborne is right to describe Hamas rocket firing as counter-productive and diversionary. Nothing justifies the indiscriminate targeting of civilians. Yet the whole world was exposed to the realities of settler colonialism, apartheid and ethnic cleansing over Sheikh Jarrah, Silwan and the violation of Haram al Sharif. Now it is Gaza that dominates and Netanyahu is off the hook when he should be in jail.
I’m left asking myself a simple question. When will it be possible to release Palestinian refugees from Israel’s open air prison? Gaza is an overcrowded enclave under siege because it’s inhabitants have the temerity to demand a better future.
Has the British government really got the right to condemn the use of rockets by Hamas?Wasn’t it a British government that facilated the ethnic cleansing of the ancestors of the Palestinian residents of Gaza? Surely we bear some responsibility for the appalling conditions they live under.
Israel is targeting media outlets in Gaza. No mention or condemnation of this by MSM or the government. Hardly surprising. We don’t want the public to know too much about the horrors of this Israeli onslaught on the defenceless Gaza strip. Our little Englander supporters are not really bothered about the plight of a bunch of Muslims in a far away country. Palestinian lives are expendable to keep us all safe from these jihadists. All we need to do, is just keep blaming Hamas for all this “violence” and tell everybody to”calm it”and make out we are trying to get some pretend “peace process” back on track.