Just a few weeks in the past, Boris Johnson addressed 300 of his loyal supporters at an unique lunch in a five-star lodge in London’s upmarket Mayfair for a Tory celebration fundraiser. Most of the so-called nice and good paid as much as £500 a ticket for the privilege of listening to the British prime minister, who opened with a joke about his hard-line Residence Secretary Priti Patel.
It was an outdated one, however those that’d heard it earlier than laughed and sniggered obligingly as he drew parallels between Saudi Arabia’s brutal penal system and Britain “beneath our fantastic Residence Secretary”. On condition that the regime within the desert Kingdom has an appalling human rights report and tortures and beheads folks routinely, most cheap folks wouldn’t discover such a comparability even remotely amusing.
On the time there was hypothesis over Patel’s political future. She had beforehand indicated her assist for the dying penalty as a “deterrent” though she then tried to roll again on her enthusiasm for reintroducing the last word punishment. She was additionally beneath hearth for her equally heartless and extreme measures — a few of them presumably unlawful — for decreasing immigration.
Amongst her proposals to curb the latter have been plans to put in large wave machines within the English Channel to discourage migrants from crossing in boats from France. It was an ill-thought-out suggestion that will most likely end result within the drowning of asylum seekers, refugees and their kids utilizing flimsy rafts and overcrowded boats to cross the damaging waters of one of many world’s busiest transport lanes. Nonetheless, any hopes that the pro-Israel foyer’s finest pal in parliament had had her day have been quickly dashed by Johnson himself.
READ: Hamas slams UK’s intention to label it as a ‘terrorist organisation’
Now, extra emboldened than ever, she has proved her loyalty to the foyer by saying that the political wing of the Palestinian resistance group Hamas is to be proscribed as a “terrorist organisation”. Hamas has already been so designated by the US, Canada and the EU, that means that its property could be seized and its members jailed. Till now, Britain solely banned the motion’s army wing, and relied on the EU’s designation of the political wing to cowl itself. That is now not an possibility post-Brexit, after all.
Patel says that Hamas supporters may resist 14 years in jail beneath her plans which she’s going to unveil on Friday, throughout a visit to Washington. Because of this anybody who expresses assist for the Palestinian group or arranges conferences for the organisation, can be in breach of the legislation. The controversial residence secretary says she’s going to push by her laws within the UK parliament this coming week.
“Hamas is basically and rabidly anti-Semitic,” Patel informed journalists within the US capital. “Anti-Semitism is a permanent evil which I’ll by no means tolerate. Jewish folks routinely really feel unsafe – in school, within the streets, once they worship, of their houses and on-line. This step will strengthen the case towards anybody who waves a Hamas flag in the UK, an act that’s certain to make Jewish folks really feel unsafe.”
Yvonne Ridley offered with a Diplomatic Palestinian passport by the then Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh to proceed working as a world ambassador for Palestine when she and others broke the siege of Gaza by boat in August 2008
The house secretary made no point out of the truth that armed resistance towards a army occupation is respectable beneath worldwide legislation. Nor that the Islamic Resistance Motion has by no means carried out any armed resistance exterior occupied Palestine. Furthermore, she is conflating respectable criticism and opposition to an apartheid regime primarily based on the political ideology of Zionism, with the unlawful and completely unacceptable racism that’s anti-Semitism. Anti-Zionism is most undoubtedly not anti-Semitism.
So what motivates Patel on this respect? Her cosy relationship with excessive right-wing Israeli politicians is not any secret. In 2017 this price her a ministerial function as worldwide improvement secretary within the British authorities when it emerged that she had been lower than frank with the then Prime Minister Theresa Could about fourteen unofficial conferences with Israeli ministers, businesspeople and senior lobbyists. One assembly was with the then Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. At one stage, she even “mentioned given British international help cash to the Israeli military”, a transfer confirmed by Downing Street.
In her resignation letter — she did, in spite of everything, break a number of ministerial guidelines — Patel admitted that her actions “fell under the excessive requirements which can be anticipated of a secretary of state.” After accepting her resignation, Could identified that each one dealings with Israel “have to be accomplished formally, and thru official channels.” She added that, “Now that additional particulars have come to gentle, it’s proper that you’ve determined to resign and cling to the excessive requirements of transparency and openness that you’ve advocated.”
All of that has been swept beneath the Downing Avenue carpet now, as Johnson boasts about his “hard-line” residence secretary. Maybe I ought to put together to pack my toothbrush and hand myself in on the nearest police station as somebody who has met the democratically-elected Hamas management within the besieged Gaza Strip.
READ: UK to designate Hamas a terror group to ‘combat anti-Semitism’
Nonetheless, in mitigation, I humbly counsel that it’s a mistake to ban the political wing of Hamas, for the straightforward cause that with out the motion there can by no means be a peaceable answer in Israel-Palestine. Based in 1987, Hamas gained a majority within the Palestinian Legislative Council, the Palestinian Authority’s parliament, within the final election to be held again in 2006. It’s the largest of a number of Palestinian Islamic teams. Prefer it or not, Hamas is a part of the answer and never the issue. Patel’s Zionist pals know this very effectively, which is little doubt why they’re celebrating in the meanwhile as a result of the two-state answer is being undermined by the Israeli regime. Prime Minister Naftali Bennett has voiced his whole opposition to an unbiased Palestinian state, stating overtly what most individuals have identified for years about successive Israeli governments. Why else does Israel fund a large lobbying marketing campaign in Western capitals if to not forestall the Palestinians seeing any of their respectable rights come to fruition?
That’s the reason it’s price remembering the phrases of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, a one-time Center East envoy and most undoubtedly a pal of Israel. In 2017, he declared that it was “wrong” to boycott Hamas, which has been remoted by the worldwide neighborhood ever because it gained the 2006 election. Blair admitted that he and different world leaders had been improper to offer in to Israeli strain to boycott Hamas after its election victory. “On reflection, I feel we should always have, proper on the very starting, tried to tug [Hamas] right into a dialogue and shifted their positions. I feel that is the place I’d be looking back. However clearly it was very tough, the Israelis have been very against it. However you realize we may have most likely labored out a method whereby we did – which in reality we ended up doing anyway, informally.”
Had Patel bothered to interact with Hamas in 2017 whereas holidaying within the Center East and holding her “casual” periods with Israeli officers, she would have found that the motion’s new constitution, whereas stopping in need of recognising Israel, did formally settle for the creation of an interim Palestinian state in Gaza, the occupied West Financial institution, and East Jerusalem. In different phrases, it supplied what was de facto recognition of the Zionist state. The doc additionally makes clear that Hamas’s wrestle is with “occupying Zionist aggressors”, not Jews per se.
Not all Zionists are Jews — Priti Patel is a first-rate instance — and never all Jews are Zionists. Many Jews all over the world don’t give unconditional assist to Israel. Certainly, some ultra-Orthodox Jews actively oppose the state, so Patel’s transfer won’t be welcomed by everybody within the Jewish neighborhood. Her designation of Hamas is a present for Zionism and its fanatical followers; it has little if something to do with making British Jews really feel safer. The Islamic motion is a part of the answer — simply ask Mr Blair.
The views expressed on this article belong to the creator and don’t essentially replicate the editorial coverage of Center East Monitor.
