In “Weaponising Anti-Semitism,” Asa Winstanley effectively debunks the allegations of antisemitism the Israel lobby used to “bring down” Jeremy Corbyn, but downplays the role of British imperialism in creating the Palestine problem.
The recent remarks of the former mayor of London, Ken Livingstone has ignited a debate on the extent of anti-Semitism in the British Labour Party. In support of another British Labour politician, Naz Shah, Livingstone felt compelled to remind people that certain Zionists in 1930’s Nazi Germany came into an agreement with elements in the Nazi regime to transfer German Jews to Palestine. Why he needed to drag this minor episode of European Zionist history, the Haavara agreement, into the mix in a supposed defense of Shah is bewildering. More bewildering when one considers the fact that British imperialism was the most consequential partner to the Zionist colonial settler project in Palestine in the inter-war period.
On December 3rd 2015 a statue was unveiled in honor of Richard “Dick” Cheney at the United States Capitol. Coincidentally, the previous day witnessed the British parliament, specifically the House of Commons, inadvertently honor Cheney in the debate on whether to extend the military intervention aimed at ISIS in Iraq into ISIS’s supposed heartland in Syria.
The covert alliance between the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Israel should be no surprise to any student of British imperialism. The British Empire’s drive to impose Zionism in Palestine is embedded in the geographical DNA of contemporary Saudi Arabia.
Nothing more exemplifies the historical whitewash of British rule in Palestine between 1917 and 1948…
For the average British pro-Palestinian human rights activist, the Balfour Declaration, published ninety- five years…