A Quick Portrayal of a Modern Hypocrite and Fool..Colonel Desmond Travers IDF

Desmond here was part of an
investigation team that descended
into the production of propaganda

This is a quick article as I need to gear up for covering the pending election. Not that the election will change a single thing in Britain anyway. British Colonels and occasionally American ones have been occasionally portrayed in the media as blimp like figures. Often this is done for amusement. However that accolade now must surely belong to Desmond Travers of the IDF. No not that IDF this IDF the Irish Forces. So who is Desmond Travers? Well he is a former Senior Officer of the IDF and was one of the panelists that produced the Goldstone report for the UN. That is the report which accused both Hamas and Israel of war crimes during Operation Cast Lead. The Goldstone report is widely used to criticise Israel. In fact it has some authority in many people's eyes as it was produced by a UN body. Even though the body itself is a complete turkey which appointed Sudan as a member on May 4th 2004! Previous members have included Syria, Libya, Saudi Arabia and Cuba. You probably get the point. That was the esteemed body for which Travers worked.

So my concerns for Travers are? Well quite simply the man is not equal to the task of performing an investigation into human rights violations. He has serious baggage, it was his intent from the start to use the report as a means of attacking Israel. This man should not be trusted to run a bath let alone mount an investigation. Read the following report in the Jerusalem Post by Alan Dershowitz. The Goldstone report was never meant to be impartial. In fact it could not possibly have been. Travers would have seen to that himself. He wanted to use the report to attack Israel. Travers has also unsurprisingly made paranoid and anti-Semitic remarks about a 'Jewish lobby'. For proof of that and a video of the man displaying his limited grasp of debating skills look at this piece by my friend Chas Newkey-Burden. Note how Travers evades the question. Also his completely contradicts himself saying that remarks about mosques storing munitions, can only be made if supported by forensic evidence. He states assuredly that no mosque did store munitions in Gaza, yet he he conducted no forensic investigation himself. He then theorises that munitions would not ever be stored in a place of worship, as his ancestors had been insurgents during the Irish war of independence. His ancestors had not done so between 1919- 1921 so therefore Hamas would never do so in 2009! What fatuous nonsense! The video is below:





Desmond Travers is a hypocrite, a political actor and not an investigator and an utterly disingenuous fool. You don't like me calling you that Des? Tough plenty of other people are and you can always sue me. Only I'll use your own words as evidence for this claim.


Full text on Travers in the Jerusalem Post below:


When Irish Colonel Desmond Travers eagerly accepted an appointment to the Goldstone Commission, he was hell-bent on revenge against Israel based on paranoid fantasies and hard left anti-Israel propaganda. He actually believed, as he put it in a recent interview, that "so many Irish soldiers had been killed by Israelis," with "a significant number who were taken out deliberately and shot (in southern Lebanon.)" This is of course complete and utter fantasy, but it was obviously part of Col. Travers' bigoted reality.

Travers came to the job having already made up his mind not to believe anything Israel said and to accept everything Hamas put forward. For example, Israel produced hard photographic evidence that Gaza mosques were used to store rockets and other weapons. Other photographs, taken by journalists, also proved what everybody now acknowledges to be true: namely that Hamas, as its leaders frequently boasted, routinely use mosques as military munitions depots. When confronted with this evidence, Travers said, "I don't believe the photographs." Of course not; they don't comport with his politically correct and ideologically skewed world-view. This is what he had previously said about why he didn't believe that Hamas used the mosques to store weapons:


We also found no evidence that mosques were used to store munitions. Those charges reflect Western perceptions in some quarters that Islam is a violent religion. ...If I were a Hamas operative the last place I'd store munitions would be in a mosque. It's not secure, is very visible, and would probably be pre-targeted by Israeli surveillance. There are a [sic] many better places to store munitions."


But that is exactly what Hamas did, despite Travers' insistence on paraphrasing Groucho Marx's famous quip, "Who are you going to believe? Me, or your lying eyes?"

Most disturbing, however, was Travers' categorical rejection of Israel's claim that it attacked Gaza only after enduring thousands of anti-personnel rockets intended to target Israeli civilians, mainly schoolchildren. In fact, Hamas rockets hit several schools, though fortunately the teachers had dismissed the students just before the rockets would have killed dozens, perhaps hundreds, of them.

This is what Travers said about Hamas rockets:


...the number of rockets that had been fired into Israel in the month preceding their operations was something like two. The Hamas rockets had ceased being fired into Israel and not only that but Hamas sought a continuation of the cease-fire. Two had been fired from Gaza, but they are likely to have been fired by dissident groups, [i.e. groups that were violating a Hamas order not to fire rockets]." (emphasis added).

Again, Travers' rendition defies the historical record and tells us more about Travers than it does about what actually provoked Israel into finally taking action to protect some million civilians in range of Hamas' rockets. In fact Israel complied with the cease-fire, under the terms of which Israel reserved the right to engage in self-defense actions such as attacking terrorists who were in the process of firing rockets at its civilians.

Just before the hostilities began, Israel offered Hamas both a carrot and a stick: it reopened a checkpoint to allow humanitarian aid to enter Gaza. It had closed the point of entry after the checkpoint was targeted by Gazan rockets. Israel's prime minister, Ehud Olmert, also issued a stern, final warning to Hamas that unless it stopped the rockets, there would be a full-scale military response.

This is the way Reuters reported it:


Israel reopened border crossings with the Gaza Strip on Friday, a day after Prime Minister Ehud Olmert warned militants there to stop firing rockets or they would pay a heavy price. Despite the movement of relief supplies, militants fired about a dozen rockets and mortar shafts from Gaza at Israel on Friday. One accidentally struck a house in Gaza, killing two Palestinian sisters, ages 5 and 13." (emphasis added)


Despite the opening of the crossings, the Hamas rockets continued - not none, not "something like two," but many - and Israel kept its word, implementing a targeted air attack against Hamas facilities and combatants.

Not surprisingly, Travers said that he "rejected ... entirely" Israel's claim that its "attack on Gaza was based on self-defense." Instead, he compared Israel's attack on Hamas to the unprovoked Nazi bombing of "Guirnica."

Travers has repeatedly claimed that "no substantive critique of the [Goldstone] report has been received." This is an out-and-out lie. I have read dozens of substantive critiques, and have written a 49-page one myself. The truth is that Travers has studiously ignored and refused to respond to these critiques. And of course he blames everything on "Jewish lobbyists."

Nor was Travers the only member of the commission with predetermined views and an anti-Israel agenda. Christine Chinken had already declared Israel guilty of war crimes before seeing any evidence. Hina Jilani had also condemned Israel before her appointment to the group, and then said that it would be "very cruel to not give credence to [the] voices" of the victims, apparently without regard to whether they were telling the truth. And then there is Richard Goldstone, who told friends that he too took the job with an agenda, which he says was to help Israel! Why any reasonable person would pay any attention to a report written by four people who had prejudged the evidence and came to their jobs with agendas and biases is beyond comprehension.

No reporting from Afghanistan during the election.

Expect to see less of this during the election.
Even though reporting during the 1945 election
was never suspended.

Reporters are facing a 'gag' on reporting from Afghanistan in the run up to the election. Is anyone surprised? I guess not but at least Gordy managed to get his own piece of electioneering from Afghanistan done last week. That is of course before the ban will come into effect. A further example of powerful, corrupt government suiting it's own ends. Never mind the troops, I wonder if the next of kin of any casualties that occur during the period of this gag will have to wait for news. I mean will the MOD wait until after the election and then tell the families their loved ones have died, days or weeks later. It would certainly be expedient for this government to do so and in keeping with the spirit of this unnecessary restriction on press freedom.

In the words of Colonel Douglas Young Chairman of the British Armed Forces Federation:



“It didn’t happen in 1945 - there was no question of limiting reporting at that time simply because an election was happening and I don’t see why there should be any questions of that now. Are we to stop operations during this period? Obviously not, and if operations are in process they should be reported upon in the normal way.

“It is ridiculous to expect the forces to be hiding away just because there’s a general election.”

New Product aimed at deterring Predatory Clergy proves to be a success!

An altar boy protected by Priest Off












This is a funny video that is advertising 'Priest off'. After all of the troubles caused by pedophiles in the Church. A new product on the market now means such worries are over. Hat tip to Mick Hall for this. Even though I disagree with him on many things cannot fault his humour. See Video below.

Wilders on trial for telling the truth? He should not be on trial at all..

“You have enemies? Good.That means you’ve stood up for something,sometime in your life:”
Winston Churchill



Geert Wilders is on trial currently in the Netherlands. The charges against him are completely Orwellian to say the least. It's simple really you do not have to agree with everything Wilders says to see this trial for what it is. A political show trial by an elite ruling class that wishes to decide what Dutch people can and do say (and therefore think) for them. It is a travesty for democracy. Wilders may be a poor choice of martyr for some. But martyr he will become and the likelihood is this trial will boost his already soaring ratings. Personally I hope so, I think what he said in Fitna was nothing. He merely directly quoted the words and actions of others. Those others being Islamic jihadists. Either way read the blog piece by Douglas Murray for a good take on this politicised show trial. Murray is spot on. Quick note from a Libertarian, KEEP POLITICS OUT OF THE COURT ROOM. Full text from Murray below:

There is nothing hyperbolic in stating that a trial which has just started in Holland will have unparalleled significance for the future of Europe. It is not just about whether our culture will survive, but whether we are even allowed to state the fact that it is being threatened.

The trial of Geert Wilders has garnered hardly any attention in the mainstream press here. Fortunately the blogosphere can correct some of this.

Wilders is a Dutch MP and leader of Holland’s fastest-growing party, the Party for Freedom. Just a few years ago he was the sole MP for his party. The latest polls show that his party could win the biggest number of seats of any party in Holland when the voters next go to the polls.

His stances have clearly chimed with the Dutch people. They include an end to the era of mass immigration, an end to cultural relativism, and an end to the perceived suborning of European values to Islamic ones. For saying this, and more, he has for many years had to live under round-the-clock security protection. Which you would have thought proves the point to some extent.

Now the latest attempt of the Dutch ruling class to keep Wilders from office has begun. Last week, apparently because of the number of complaints they have received (trial by vote anyone?) the trial of Wilders began.

The Dutch courts charge that Wilders ‘on multiple occasions, at least once, (each time) in public, orally, in writing or through images, intentionally offended a group of people, i.e. Muslims, based on their religion’.

I’m sorry? Whoa there, just a minute. The man’s on trial because he ‘offended a group of people’? I get offended by all sorts of people. I get offended by very fat people. I get offended by very thick people. I get offended by very sensitive people. I get offended by the crazy car-crash of vowels in Dutch verbs. But I don’t try to press charges.

Yet, crazily, this is exactly what is going on now in a Dutch courtroom. If found guilty of this Alice-in-Wonderland accusation of ‘offending a group of people’, Wilders faces up to two years in prison.

If anyone doubts the surreal nature of the proceedings now going on they should simply look through the summons which is available in an English translation here. It shows that Wilders is on trial for his film Fitna. And for various things he has said in articles and interviews in the Dutch press.

Now some people liked Fitna and some people didn’t. That’s a matter of choice. But by any previous interpretation it is not the job of courts in democratic countries to become film-critics. In fact it would create a very bad precedent. I thought the latest Alec Baldwin film stank. But I don’t think (though the temptation lingers) Baldwin should go to prison for it.

I’ve seen Fitna a number of times. Recently in the House of Lords, at a meeting Wilders couldn’t attend because our then Home Secretary temporarily decided he shouldn’t even come into this country. And I’ve just watched it again. And you can do so, too. It keeps getting pirated on YouTube but I think this is a good link here.

Parts of Fitna – which is a compilation of documentary footage – are very disturbing. And very offensive indeed. The clips of Muslim clerics calling for the murder of infidels. Very offensive. The clips of Muslims holding banners saying ‘God bless Hitler’. Very offensive. The clip of a three-year-old Muslim girl indoctrinated and brain-washed to describe Jews as ‘Apes and Pigs’. Very offensive. The passage of the Koran, Surah 47, verse 4: ‘Therefore, when ye meet the Unbelievers in fight, smite at their necks; At length, when ye have thoroughly subdued them, bind a bond firmly on them.’ Very offensive.

Just to confirm – I find all these things very offensive. But Wilders didn’t say them. He is being tried for pointing out the fact that some – in some cases many – Muslims do. If there are to be prosecutions they should be of the clerics and leaders who advocate this nightmarish version of Islam. But not of Wilders.

There are quotes from Wilders in the summons, though. It states for instance that he has said, and he has (I love the detective-work the court implies when citing op-eds from national newspapers): ‘Those Moroccan boys are really violent. They beat up people because of their sexual orientation. I have never used violence.’ This is true. As a number of gay Dutch men and women can attest, Muslim youths are behind a rise in homophobic attacks in what used to be the most gay-friendly country in the world. Bruce Bawer and others have written about this at length. It is very disturbing. It is also a fact. There is no sanity at all in a court trying a man for saying something true.

Wilders is also being tried for saying things which some Muslims deem to be rude about the Koran. Another dangerous precedent. Will the Dutch courts now come after Ricky Gervais for the rude things he says about the Bible in his show Animals (on sale in Holland)? Why the special laws for hurt Muslim feelings? Just wait till the others get on the band-wagon! There won’t be room in the courts to prosecute the murderers and muggers. They’ll be too full up with the religious. Dutch Calvinist pastors madly petitioning for the extradition of Billy Connolly.

The whole thing is so farcical that it would be funny. If it weren’t for the fact that it is real. The most popular elected politician in Holland is on trial for saying things which the Dutch people are clearly, in large part, in agreement with. Things which, even if you don’t agree with them, must be able to be said.

Whichever way the verdict goes, it can’t do anything but good for Wilders’s poll ratings. But it is a terrible day for democracy. A political class so intent on criminalising the opinions of its own people cannot last very much longer.

Excellent Investigative Report by the Guardian on Peter Moore's Kidnapping

This is a superb report here . Peter Moore has now been released from captivity in Iraq/Iran? The Guardian are reporting that he was held in Iran which is entirely plausible given the Iranian government's long history of holding hostages. Sadly Peter's four security guards were murdered during their captivity. Anyway watch the Guardian report it is excellent and very plausible. We know the Iranian government likes to kidnap Britons, it may also have murdered them. I would like to wish Peter and all readers a happy New Year. My sincerest condolences for the families of his four colleagues from GardaWorld. Also I would like to express my admiration for the two Iraqi intelligence personnel mentioned in the film. Those guys ran incredible risks and are a credit to their emerging nation. Even if this tale overall is a sad indictment as to how Iran's thuggish theocracy can subvert an emerging democracy. Overall all the best to Peter Moore and may he have a speedy recovery.

Final Hours for Brit on Death Row in China

Time may be running out for Akmal Shaikh a Briton convicted of drug smuggling in China. Indeed by the time many of you read this he may already have been executed. I have mixed views on the death penalty. That may seem strange to some and I accept it is. But all my experiences have taught me that all governments kill to some extent or another. As such I can see perhaps cynically the argument for a just authority passing the death penalty after an individual has been tried by a jury of his peers. I mean every day western governments kill in Afghanistan and the UK government hypocritically supports that whilst being against capital punishment. That said I certainly support the calls for Shaikh to be granted clemency. I can never condone the use of capital punishment against drug smugglers. Had Shaikh received a fair trial and been convicted of murder perhaps I would think differently but I'm not decided on capital punishment per se. However I really do not want the Chinese government to kill this man.

Historian Andrew Roberts 'An Inconvenient Truth'- The History of Anglo-Israeli Relations.

Here is the full text of a speech given by historian Andrew Roberts at the annual dinner of the Anglo Israeli Association. Their annual dinner was held last night the 9th December. I have posted this from Melanie Phillip's column in the Spectator. One possible explanation for the Foreign Office's historic attitude could be that reflected in my last post about the PSC's John Sullivan. Simply put many Brits don't like Jews.

You know one way you can test the British people's attitude to Jews? Simply type Stacey Solomon (X factor singer) into Google. The list with the most hits populated by Google as you finish typing reads 'Stacey Solomon Jewish'. Funny ain't it that I don't get anything similar with any other X factor contestant? Read some of the comments about Stacey, most are complimentary the horrid ones though not infrequently come back to one thing. I'll leave that to my readers to find out. Back on topic Andrew Roberts Speech below:

'My Lords, Ladies & Gentlemen,
It’s a great honour to be invited to address you, especially on this the 60th anniversary of AIA, and I’d like to take the opportunity of this anniversary to look at the overall story of the relationship between Britain and Israel, and to try to strip away some of the myths.

Because it seems to me that for all the undoubted statesmanship implicit in Arthur Balfour’s Declaration of November 1917, promising ‘a National Home for the Jewish People’, it doesn’t mean that Britain has ever been much more than a fair-weather friend to Jewish national aspirations. The Declaration itself was at least in part conceived to keep Eastern European and Russian Jews supporting the Great War after the Bolshevik Revolution, and Chaim Weizmann’s preferred wording of ‘a Jewish State’ was turned down by the British Foreign Office. As David Ben-Gurion wrote at the time: ‘Britain has made a magnificent gesture … But only the Hebrew people can transform this right into tangible fact: only they, with body and soul, with their strength and capital, must build their National Home and bring about their national redemption.’

Sure enough, at the Versailles Conference and its ancillary meetings up to 1922, although Britain was given the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine, the Jewish National Home was not established. During the Mandate period there was an observable tension between the CO, which was responsible for administering Palestine and wanted to do so within the terms of the (admittedly self-contradictory) Balfour Declaration, and the FO, which feared that allowing the de facto creation of a Jewish State would alienate Arabs. In 1937 the Peel Commission recommended ending the Mandate and partitioning Palestine into Arab and Jewish states, with population transfers of 225,000 Arabs from Galilee, an outcome Ben-Gurion said [quote] ‘could give us something which we have never had, even when we stood on our own during the days of the First and Second Temples’. Nonetheless, both the Arabs and the 20th Zionist Congress rejected Peel’s recommendations, to the palpable relief of the Foreign Office, which concentrated its own opposition to it on the basis of its supposed impracticality.

Instead there was the notorious 1939 White Paper, which severely limited Jewish immigration into Palestine at precisely the period of their greatest need, during the Final Solution. A total upper limit of 75,000 Jewish immigrants was set for the fateful years 1940-44, a figure that was also intended to cover refugee emergencies. The White Paper was published on 9 November 1938 – the very same day as the Kristallnacht atrocities in Germany – and was approved by Parliament in May 1939, a full two months after Hitler’s occupation of the rump of Czechoslovakia. The Manchester Guardian described it as ‘a death sentence on tens of thousands of Central European Jews’, which in sheer numerical terms was probably an underestimation. Although the Labour Party Conference voted to repeal the White Paper in 1945, the Labour Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin – a bitter enemy of Israel - persisted in it, and it was not to be repealed until the day after the State of Israel was proclaimed.

In late April 1948, Bevin ordered that Arab positions in Jaffa needed to be protected from the Jews [quote] ‘at all costs’, and when Israeli independence came the next month, the departing British sometimes handed over vital military and strategic strongpoints to the five invading Arab armies, the most efficient of which, Transjordan’s Arab Legion, was actually commanded by a Briton, Sir John Glubb. And then on New Year’s Eve 1948 the British Government actually issued an ultimatum to Israel threatening war if Israel did not halt its counter-attacks on Egyptian forces in the Gaza Strip and Sinai. Britain was the only country in the UN that came to Egypt’s aid in this regard.

One can easily see, therefore, why when Brig-Gen Sir Wyndham Deedes set up the Anglo-Israeli Association only weeks after Israel was finally recognized by Britain in 1949 - months after America, Russia and several other states had already done so – it was much-needed. There was still massive resentment over the War of Independence; Israel was considered at best a headache by the FO; and worst of all, unlike her neighbours, she had no oil. Nor did the Suez Crisis much help matters seven years later: the way in which Israel fitted in neatly with British plans to crush Nasser ought to have endeared her to the Foreign Office, but of course it didn’t.
When in May 1967 Nasser announced the blockading of the Straits of Tiran, closing Israel’s commercial lifeline to the east, the guarantors of this international waterway – including Britain – failed to act quickly or decisively, and although Harold Wilson was proud of his pro-Israeli sentiments, his foreign secretary George Brown and the FO certainly did not reciprocate them. Britain compounded its generally lukewarm attitude during the Six Day War by sponsoring Resolution 242 at the end of it, which called on Israel to withdraw [quote] ‘from territories occupied’, in a resolution that was so badly worded by the FO that Arabs and Israelis have been able to argue over its proper meaning ever since.

The Yom Kippur War of October 1973 saw even worse bias by the FO in favour of the Arabs and against the Jews. Announcing an arms embargo ‘equally’ between the belligerents, the Heath Government effectively stopped Israel buying spare parts for the IDF’s Centurion tanks, whilst allowing them to be bought by Jordan, the only other country affected, because it was not (officially at least) a belligerent. Egyptian helicopter pilots continued to be trained in Britain, with the foreign secretary Sir Alec Douglas-Home lamely telling the Israeli Ambassador that it was better for the pilots to be training in Britain than fighting at the front. Heath even refused to allow American cargo planes taking supplies to Israel to land and refuel at our bases on Cyprus.

In the 1980s Margaret Thatcher seemed to offer a new warmth to Anglo-Israeli relations. She sat for Finchley, her Methodism chimed well with Jewish values, and she was the most philo-Semitic PM since Churchill, yet even she was stymied by the FO, especially over Intelligence cooperation with Mossad. It’s true that John Major sent a special SAS unit to seek and destroy Iraqi Scud missile batteries targeting Israel during the First Gulf War, but that was largely to remove the danger of Israel retaliating, and thereby perhaps destroying the Arab coalition against Saddam.
After 9/11 Tony Blair seemed to appreciate how Israel was in the very front line in the War against Terror, and he thus bravely refused to condemn Israel’s acts of self-defence in Lebanon, but since then Britain’s contribution to the EU’s strand of negotiating over Iran’s nuclear ambitions has been, frankly, pathetic.
One area of policy over which the FO has traditionally held great sway is in the question of Royal Visits.

It is not therefore coincidence that although HMQ has made over 250 official overseas visits to 129 different countries during her reign, neither she nor one single member of the British royal family has ever been to Israel on an official visit. Even though Prince Philip’s mother, Princess Alice of Greece, who was recognized as "Righteous Among the Nations" for sheltering a Jewish family in her Athens home during the Holocaust, was buried on the Mount of Olives, the Duke of Edinburgh was not allowed by the FO to visit her grave until 1994, and then only on a private visit.

"Official visits are organized and taken on the advice of the Foreign and Commonwealth office," a press officer for the royal family explained when Prince Edward visited Israel recently privately - and a spokesman for the Foreign Office replied that [quote] ‘Israel is not unique" in not having received an official royal visit, because [quote] ‘Many countries have not had an official visit.’

That might be true for Burkino Faso and Chad, but the FO has somehow managed to find the time over the years to send the Queen on State visits to Libya, Iran, Sudan, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Jordan & Turkey. So it can’t have been that she wasn’t in the area.
Perhaps Her Majesty hasn’t been on the throne long enough, at 57 years, for the Foreign Office to get round to allowing her to visit one of the only democracies in the Middle East. At least she could be certain of a warm welcome in Israel, unlike in Morocco where she was kept waiting by the King for three hours in 90 degree heat, or at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Uganda the time before last, where they hadn’t even finished building her hotel.
The true reason of course, is that the Foreign Office has a ban on official Royal visits to Israel, which is even more powerful for its being unwritten and unacknowledged. As an act of delegitimisation of Israel, this effective boycott is quite as serious as other similar acts, such as the academic boycott, and is the direct fault of the FO Arabists.

Which brings us on to Mr Oliver Miles. One of the reasons I’m proud to be an historian is that there are scholars of the integrity and erudition of Prof Sir Martin Gilbert and Prof Sir Lawrence Freedman who also write history. If people as intelligent, wise and incorruptible as they choose to be historians, then it must be an honourable profession. Let me quote to you, therefore, word-for-word, what a former British Ambassador to Libya and Greece, Mr Oliver Miles, wrote in The Independent newspaper less than a fortnight ago, commenting on the composition of the present Chilcot Inquiry into the Iraq War:
‘Both Gilbert and Freedman are Jewish, and Gilbert at least has a record of active support for Zionism. Such facts are not usually mentioned in the mainstream British and American media. … All five members have outstanding reputations and records, but it is a pity that, if and when the inquiry is accused of a whitewash, such handy ammunition will be available. Membership should not only be balanced; it should be seen to be balanced.’

Ladies and gentlemen, if that’s the way that FO Arabists are prepared to express themselves in public, can you imagine the way that they refer to such people as Professors Gilbert and Freedman in private? For the balance that Mr Miles is talking about here is clearly a racial balance, that only a certain quota of Jews should have been allowed on to the Inquiry.
Of course there’s a reason why ‘Such facts are not usually mentioned in the mainstream media’, of course, and that is because it is a disgraceful and disgusting concept even to notice the racial background of such distinguished public servants, and one that wouldn’t have even occurred to most people had not Mr Miles made such a point of it.

Because there are 22 ambassadors to Arab countries, and only one to Israel, it is perhaps natural that the FO should tend to be more pro-Arab than pro-Israeli. On occasion there are remarkably good British Ambassadors to Israel – your president, Sir Andrew Burns, was one such in the early 1990s – just as there are on occasion remarkably good Israeli Ambassadors to Britain, indeed we are fortunate to have one at the Embassy today in Ron Prosor. Overall, however, such men are swimming against the tide of an FO assumption that Britain’s relations with Israel ought constantly to be subordinated to her relations with other Middle Eastern states, especially the oil-rich ones, however badly those states behave in terms of human rights abuses, the persecution of Christians, the oppression of women, medieval practices of punishment, and so on.

It seems to me that there is an implicit racism going on here. Jews are expected to behave better, goes the FO thinking, because they are like us. Arabs must not be chastised because they are not. So in warfare, we constantly expect Israel to behave far better than her neighbours, and chastise her quite hypocritically when occasionally under the exigencies of national struggle, she cannot. The problem crosses political parties today, just as it always has. William Hague called for Israel to adopt a proportionate response in its struggle with Hezbollah in Lebanon in 2007, as though proportionate responses ever won any victories against fascists. In the Second World War, the Luftwaffe killed 50,000 Britons in the Blitz, and the Allied response was to kill 600,000 Germans – twelve times the number and hardly a proportionate response, but one that contributed mightily to victory. Who are we therefore to lecture the Israelis on how proportionate their responses should be?
Very often in Britain, especially when faced with the overwhelmingly anti-Israeli bias that is endemic in our liberal media and the BBC, we fail to ask ourselves what we would not do placed in the same position?

The population of the United Kingdom of 63 millions is nine times that of Israel. In July 2006, to take one example entirely at random, Hezbollah crossed the border of Lebanon into Israel and killed 8 patrolmen and kidnapped 2 others, and that summer fired 4,000 Katyusha rockets into Israel which killed a further 43 civilians. Now, if we multiply those numbers by nine to get the British equivalent, just imagine what we would not do if a terrorist organization based as close as Calais were to fire 36,000 rockets into Sussex and Kent, killing 387 British civilians, after killing 72 British servicemen in an ambush and capturing a further eighteen? I put it to you that there is absolutely no lengths to which our Government would not go to protect British subjects under those circumstances, and quite right too. So why should Israel be expected to behave any differently?

There has hardly been a single year since Brigadier-General Deedes established AIA in 1949 when a speaker has not been able to say that Israel faced a crisis, and on some occasions – in 1956, 1967, 1973 and especially in the face of the present Iranian nuclear programme today – these were existential. At a time when Barrack Obama appears to be least pro-Israeli president since Eisenhower, the dangers are even more obvious. For there is simply no way that Obama will prevent Ahmadinejad, perhaps Jewry’s most viciously outspoken and dangerous foe since the death of Adolf Hitler, to acquire a nuclear Bomb.

None of us can pretend to know what lies ahead for Israel, but if she decides pre-emptively to strike against such a threat – in the same way that Nelson pre-emptively sank the Danish Fleet at Copenhagen and Churchill pre-emptively sank the Vichy Fleet at Oran – then she can expect nothing but condemnation from the British Foreign Office. She should ignore such criticism, because for all the fine work done by this Association over the past six decades - work that’s clearly needed as much now as ever before – Britain has only ever really been at best a fair-weather friend to Israel.

Although History does not repeat itself, it’s cadences do occasionally rhyme, and if the witness of History is testament to anything it is testament to this:
That in her hopes of averting the threat of a Second Holocaust, only Israel can be relied upon to act decisively in the best interests of the Jews.'