Tony Blair

I listened to Prime Minister Tony Blair addressing his fellow members in Parliament in very vehement tones and gestures, demanding the immediate release of the two kidnapped Israeli soldiers and branding Hezbollah as a terrorist organisation.

Tony Blair seems to have forgotten that but for Jewish terrorism, Israel itself would not have come into being. Has he forgotten that the Stern Gang and Mr. Begin’s Irgun Zvai Leumi blew up the southern wing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem which housed the upper echelons of the British Army and the Palestine administration, killing and wounding over 140 high ranking officials and army officers? Has Tony Blair forgotten the blowing up of the Officers’ Club in Jerusalem during the same year namely 1947, killing over 30 British Army officers? Has Tony Blair forgotten that a British Army patrol came upon two kidnapped British soldiers swinging from the branches of a tree in a small wood, and that when the patrol tried to bring down the bodies they exploded killing the patrol? The bodies of the hung soldiers had been stacked with explosives. Has Tony Blair forgotten that with an army of one hundred thousand men in Palestine, Britain ran away like rats from a sinking vessel and left Palestine to its miserable fate on May 15th, 1948 instead of implementing the UN decision to partition Palestine? Has Tony Blair forgotten that without Britain’s Balfour Declaration and the bayonets of the British Army, there would not have been an Israel? Has Tony Blair forgotten that ten thousand Palestinian combatants were killed during the 1936 - 1939 uprising?

There is little point in going back into history. Britain’s irresponsible policy will continue to poison the Middle East for decades to come.

We do not expect any apologies from Tony Blair for Britain’s crimes against the Palestinians, which are in the process of being systematically destroyed today by Israel. We do expect him however to be less vehement in his condemnations of Hamas and Hezbollah and to show a little more consideration for the thousands of Lebanese and Palestinian dead and wounded, and for the destruction which has been reeked upon Lebanon.