Melanie Phillips has written another open letter, this time to David Cameron. The one she wrote earlier, to Jeremy Hunt about the BBC, must have got lost in the post, so it’s doubtful that she had high hopes of a response to this one by return of post, or indeed ever. It’s a great letter, even if it only reaches readers of the Spectator and the Commentator, and not Prime Minister Cameron himself.
When the Israeli PM visited London the other day, it seems David Cameron told him in no uncertain terms that in order to qualify for our unshakeable support Israel must engage meaningfully with the new Hama-tah /Fat-as coalition. Their refusal to come to the table unless Israel reinstates the settlement freeze is equally unshakeable, so presumably David Cameron thinks this is what Israel must do. This, Melanie points out, amounts to a kind of extortion not unlike a Mafia style protection racket. What a pity we can’t confront David Cameron with a similar ultimatum – unless he engages meaningfully with Melanie Phillips, we’ll withdraw our unshakeable support. But he knows that’s pretty shaky already.
The trouble stems, she feels, from Messrs Cameron and Hague’s lack of interest in the subject, and their consequential reliance upon Foreign Office briefings (think Rowan Laxton) for advice on foreign policy. As they seem to be largely making it up as they go along, they can’t be following it to the letter, although inserting “Britain is a good friend of Israel” into the text must either be a baffler or a double-bluff.
Melanie’s letter puts the case for Israel with eloquence, clarity and passion. She summarises Britain’s appalling historical record of the heartless betrayal of Jews, just in case Mr Cameron is not familiar with it. She makes a powerful comparison between the world’s unanimous condemnation of Islamic terrorism and the Arab world’s determination to annihilate Israel, and asks why the world condemns the former yet encourages the latter, when the motivation behind both is identical.
She implores the PM to understand that caving in so one-sidedly to Arab demands is tantamount to rewarding the aggressor and penalising the victim, and warns him, if nothing else, to think of his own legacy.
I think we all know that to hope the PM would acknowledge the letter, read it even, is fanciful. He will get away with ignoring it because our National Broadcaster has taken it upon itself to muffle the truth about Islam and to demonise Israel. Many people are therefore prepared to overlook what quite a few others are nevertheless beginning to feel uncomfortable about. Meanwhile the BBC is merrily and expensively setting the scene for a re-enactment of the 1930s, when the cavalier downplaying of the significance of what that silly German fellow with the moustache was up to led to the unimaginable events that took place under their very noses. “Peace in our time”, the prime minister is saying, but this time round, there’s no Churchill.
The foreign office mentality is that they couldn’t recognise a true friend of our country, even if they laid down their lives for us. Too many of them, apparently, have been indoctrinated with arab/muslim propaganda that they are incapable of free thought. The whole of the UK bureaucracy needs to be purged. And emasculating the bbc, which will be taking over responsibility for world service broadcasting on behalf of the FO, would be a good first step.
Melanie Philips is a one woman wonder!
On the Moral Maze this week she utterly eviscerated some useful idiot of the BBCs dreaming…some Islamic apologist…and she has the temerity to mention things that he once said re 9/11 etc. Bad taste indeed to the BBC! Their “we are where we are…why spoil a gentle discourse by mentioning the past” mindset is salon talk History and hypocrisy are so -well old school and judgemental-even worse-“inappropriate”. Smelling salts Jenni!
Just as I can rant at Michael Mansfield without even reading his tripe in the Observer…so I can laud the mighty Ms Philips for being sound,honourable and as trustworthy as I can expect. She knows it`s an Upside Down World”. It would be far worse without her.
Number One today in my “Heroes/heroines of the Tribune” today is our Mel!
a proper star is Mel
telss it like it as and pulls no punches for the pc/lefty/izlam apology crowd
MUSLIMS BUTCHERING CHRISTIANS CONTINUES AS BLOOD BATH ERUPTS AGAIN IN BOTH NIGERIA AND EGYPT……..Posted on 08/05/2011 by KGS
While Christians are being hunted down and murdered in cold blood by marauding gangs of Muslim jihadis, Muslim organizations like the Arab League and the Organization of the Islamic Conference push their “Islamofauxbia is the greatest of all human rights violations” meme.
http://tundratabloids.com/2011/05/muslims-butchering-christians-continues-as-blood-bath-erupts-again-in-both-nigeria-and-egypt.html
Nothing on the BBC as far as I know.
ABUJA, NIGERIA — Christians in northern Nigeria were mourning Saturday, May 7, after Muslim attackers reportedly killed 17 Christians, including the wife and three children of a pastor. Several Christian homes were also burned in the village of Kurum in Nigeria’s tense Bauchi State, said advocacy group International Christian Concern (ICC).
ICC told BosNewsLife that it learned about the massacre Friday, May 6. “It is not right for anyone to kill another person, life is precious and a gift from God,” explained ICC’s Regional Manager for Africa, Jonathan Racho. No more details were immediately available, but the attack was the latest in a series of recent incidents in which hundreds of people died.
This is on top of the hundreds slaughtered in the wake of the recent elections. Our media of course is blind to the mass murder perpetrated by RoP.
As I’ve said several times before, while muslims are slaughtering Christians throughout the muslim world. I can’t get too exercised about the deaths of muslims wherever they might rear their ugly heads.
When Israel carried out the execution of Hamas leader Aziz Rantissi in Gaza, our then government made such a fuss about targeted assassinations giving Israel much stick.
Bin Laden is executed to the plaudits of our PM.
Israeli agents use false passports to kill a terrorist in Dubai and suffer near universal condemnation.
SAS troops land in Libya with false passports and you can hear a pin drop.
America defends its interests, Britain defends its interests, when Israel defends its interests it has to suffer a barrage of condemnation.
Charlie,
The hypocrisy and ignorance of most western leaders and leftie-liberals is sickening. They are in the real sense of the word STUPID.
Charlie,
The SAS dont need passports! Does that make it worse or better one wonders?
Imagine the out cry if it was the evil juices deploying to Libya without passports!
Mailman
I agree with john in cheshire. I would only add that Cameron is aware of the rising anti-Jew sentiment in Britain, which is fostered by the relentless demonization of Israel in the BBC and other media. He’s only hedging his bets because he’s concerned that too much support for nasty old Israel will lose him key votes in a future election. Don’t expect the BBC to be forthcoming with any such analysis about anti-Jew sentiment in Britain and Israel, though. To them, Jews deserve what they get for supporting Israel.
David P,
I think you credit Dave with being cleverer than he really is ?
I’m not so sure. He and nearly all politicians know that attacking Israel plays well in most places, including the BBC. I accept that he’s been brainwashed with the rest of them by Palestinian propaganda, or he wouldn’t have called Gaza an open-air prison (or similar) in Parliament. But there’s a calculating awareness of how not supporting Israel too much is a good thing.
I thought your summary of Mel’s open letter put her points better than she did herself.
I usually lap up every word that Mel writes, but here I feel she has overstated her case against the land of her birth and national allegiance. While ‘realpolitic’ has mitigated the enormous strides we took towards the rebirth of Jewish Nationhood in its historic homeland, nevertheless, Britain, in the form of the Balfour Declaration and beyond, did take those enormous strides, without which, it may be argued there would be no Israel today.
We all have to do dirty things that we’d rather not in the interests of ‘realpolitic’ when the potential consequences of not doing so stand every chance of being far worse. It boils down to political judgement in the end. For reasons of ‘realpolitic, after all, past Israeli Governments were in bed with Idi Amin and the apartheid South Africa of ‘ex-Nazi’ John Vorster’.
That said, Cameron’s present calibration behind his current ‘realpolitic’ over Israel is absolutely catastrophic. As Mel states, and you state better than her. he is stoking things up in favour of our common genocidal enemies.
Maggie Thatcher once said that in her experience thing the expedient thing to do is nearly always the moral thing to do as well. Pity that we have a moral pygmy as Prime Minister against the moral collossus that Margarat Thatcher was in Office.
Thank you for the generous compliment. When I read her letter, like you I felt she may have made her plea to Cameron less effective on the principle of less is more. By over-using words like genocide you tend to put yourself in a combative position and the person you are addressing is likely to switch off.
But since Melanie Phillips is more or less in that position anyway as far as the mainstream is concerned, having been filed away under the label ‘Mad Mel’, she might have calculated that a detailed recapitulation of the whole situation was more valuable – and therefore primarily aimed at, her faithful readership – people like you and me as well as the various troublemakers who visit the comments section of her blog.
hippie and Sue,
Good points, all .
Nah, she ain’t gonna get a reply but it definately needs saying. Cameron is a proper light weight at foreign affairs and he’s kinda learning on the job. I’m not sure legacy comes into it and talk of holocaust is a little OTT. If Israel can openly ignore Barry O’Bama then Cameron issuing ultimata is not much shit.
I’m loving Benji’s soundbites about Syria – he’s standing back and quietly saying, ‘told you they were fucking mental’.
They’re ALL fuckin’ mental. How on earth can the idiot Britsh government support a bunch of rebels in any of those countries, mistakenly thinking that there is an “Arab Spring” – they’d ALL fuck us up good and proper, given half a chance – they don’t want fuckin’ democracy, they don’t know what it is (and nor do we, if the UK is anything to go by), all they want is our fuckin’ blood, and to islamify the whole sodding world. They’d better get a shift on, though, because we’re heading for a new Dalton minimum climatically, and the cold might get us first. Still, do muslims like windfarms, I wonder?
If Mel didn’t exist, we would have to invent her.
INBBC and Bowen won’t like this:
GLENN BECK IN ISRAEL.
“Beck Arrives in Israel: Glenn Reveals Information About Surprise Trip”
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/beck-arrives-in-israel-glenn-reveals-information-about-surprise-trip/
Melanie Phillips is as insightful as always, but a bit overstated here. When you compare someone to the mafia, even if it’s justified, they are unlikely to want to read further. Anyway, I doubt Cameron will read the letter. Dunno how it works but I assume a member of his staff will take a brief look at it before clicking delete.
There are some fine comments to Mel’s article. I think it was Penny who pointed out that Cameron, on a visit to Turkey condemned Israel for the Mvi Marmara and then called for anenquiry into the incident. How dumb is that – first condemn, then have an inquiry? Well, that’s in the spirit of the usual UN attitude to Israel but it’s disappointing that Cameron is both so thick and so PeeCee that he feels compelled to run with the anti-Israel pack.
Too True,
Cameron’s visit to Turkey was a disaster. It was a great boost for the repulsive Islamo-fascist Government and a slap in the face for the long-suffering secular Turks.
He is a naive idiot.