ONE HUNDRED years after the Balfour Declaration, the PLO and the Palestinian masses are demanding that the UK government apologise for it and its consequences, the hell that Palestinians live in in the occupied territories, and that the UK must make restitution by recognising the State of Palestine.
This demand is supported by all of the major UK trade unions, while the Labour Party in its general election manifesto pledged that it would recognise the State of Palestine. The Tory Party – split and divided from stem to stern over Brexit, with its leadership completely disorientated after first, the Brexit shock, and then, by May losing her head, and her majority, by carrying out a major act of self-harm when she called a general election without any need to do so – has been celebrating the Balfour Declaration.
May in fact invited the Israeli PM Netanyahu to come to London to celebrate the Balfour Centenary, which he did. The May government is badly damaged and barely afloat, continuing as a government only because the Labour Party and the TUC refuse to put it out of office, since they prefer May to handle the Brexit revolution rather than themselves.
This crisis-ridden swamp is now producing, not just sex scandals and suicides, but also a frantic struggle for the Tory leadership, in which the US, the EU and now Zionist Israel have a stake. The EU has been cultivating its support in the Labour Party and the TUC; the US, through President Donald Trump’s senior adviser, Wilbur Ross, has been telling the CBI bosses just what the USA expects of them; and Israel has been having secret talks with the Tory of its choice, Priti Patel, Secretary of State for International Development, who has ambitions to be the next Tory leader.
Patel has been forced to apologise after meeting Prime Minister Netanyahu in Israel amongst 12 meetings with senior Zionists, of which the Foreign Office and PM May knew nothing. Patel has now issued an apology for holding undisclosed meetings in Israel. She had travelled to Israel and met Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, Foreign Minister Yuval Rotem and opposition leader Yair Lapid among others. The 12 meetings were organised by Conservative Friends of Israel honorary president Lord Polak, who accompanied her to all but one meeting.
After details of the meetings first emerged last week, Patel told the Guardian that Boris Johnson ‘knew about the trip’. She also insisted there had only been two meetings on her visit to Israel.
Then in a clarification she said of Johnson that he ‘did become aware of the visit, but not in advance of it’.
It then emerged that she had two more meetings since her summer holiday. Her current champion, the Jewish Chronicle, says that Number 10 knew about meetings held with the Israeli foreign ministry official Yuval Rotem in New York in September but asked Patel to keep quiet to avoid embarrassing the Foreign Office. Downing Street denies this.
PM May did not know that, while she was entertaining Netanyahu in Downing Street to celebrate the Balfour Declaration, Netanyahu had been having secret talks with one of her cabinet members who had designs on her leadership. One of the projects that Patel had been discussing with the Zionist leaders was that part of Britain’s foreign aid should be diverted to the Israeli Army in order that it could carry out humanitarian work on the Golan Heights!
The Golan Heights is illegally occupied Syria, an occupation that the UK does not recognise. The humanitarian hospital work that the Israeli army is carrying out on the Heights is tending to wounded Islamist terrorists and healing them so that they can return to the fight against President Assad’s army. These are the same terrorists that have been blowing up and stabbing to death ‘British targets’.
Patel’s plan to finance the Israeli army’s relations with these terrorists should land Britain up in the War Crimes court at the Hague. The Jewish Chronicle is saying that Patel did discuss these ‘humanitarian projects’ with May, which if true would show that support for the Balfour Declaration and the occupation of Palestine is not just a historical question but constitutes support for war crimes and war criminals today.
The crisis of British capitalism and imperialism cannot be resolved by just sacking Patel. The Tory Augean Stable has got to be cleansed as a whole. This means that the Labour movement must show its support for the Palestinian people by bringing down May and the Tory party heirs of Balfour and bring in a workers government that will bring in socialism, break with the EU and the USA and recognise and support Palestine.
This will be a milestone in smashing capitalism as a worldwide system of super-exploitation and bringing in worldwide socialism.
