The failure of so many to know the facts of history has had pernicious effects on events through many centuries, and very much today. In mediaeval times England behaved in the same manner as much of Europe in persecuting Jewish people, for example in 1189 and 1190, when violent anti-pogroms erupted in London and York, with a massacre at the latter's Clifford's Tower, where the entire Jewish community was trapped, many choosing suicide over being murdered. In the next century the Blood Libel, an accusation that Jews ritually murdered Christian children, led to the arrest and execution of 93 Jews in Lincoln in 1255, and, following a period of economic and social hostility, King Edward I expelled all Jews from England in 1290. Nevertheless in later centuries, despite occasional outbursts of hostility, we have gradually moved away from this insane racist ideology, and in all our long history one of our proudest moments is when we stood up to the fanatically antisemitic Nazi regime, and played a significant part in its utter destruction.
However a recent study shows that a fifth of those asked held antisemitic views, with an even larger anti Jewish response in young people, with twenty per cent saying that they do not have a right to their own state. This means that a people persecuted for living in other's countries should not even be permitted one of their own, begging the question as to where these antisemites believe they should live. There is also a claim that Jews control the world, a nonsense, given that they are a population of 16 million in a world of 8,000 million.
The idea that to be anti Israel is not antisemitic is a pretence, behind which the ancient irrational hatred continues as before. Clearly youngsters, and others, are being brainwashed by the educational system, and influenced by lies in the media, particularly the BBC, into holding these deplorable views. If this continues then the moral respect which we earned at such cost in the 1940s will become nothing more than a memory. Those attending the constant anti Israel marches in London, and elsewhere, consist of a mixture of malevolent antisemites, and the usual naive, gullible, virtue signallers, who claim that they support a two state solution to the problems of the Middle East. The latter clearly have no knowledge of the past, which is littered with offers for a Palestinian state, rejected by their leaders, who have never been prepared to compromise.
In fact the Palestinians have been offered, and rejected, statehood six times in the past eighty eight years, starting in 1937 when the Peel Commission solution was refused, while in 1947, the United Nations agreed a plan partitioning Palestine into Arab, and Jewish states with international rule over Jerusalem. Jewish leaders accepted the plan, but the Arab League rejected it. Since then in 2000 the Camp David accords, masterminded by President Clinton, were declined by Arafat, the 2001 Taba proposals were also rejected, and in 2008 the Olmert offer, which U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called "amazing", saying that "Yitzhak Rabin had been killed for offering far less", was rejected by the Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas.
In fact a country called Palestine did not formally exist before the establishment of Israel in 1948, though a geographical region named Palestine was inhabited by Arabs, Jews, and others, under various empires. In reality the Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity, as their leadership claims that every suggestion is a conspiracy, and every initiative a trap. They will never agree to a genuine peace, something their useful idiots in the West seem incapable of accepting, as the truth shows their protests to be based on nonsense.
The incessant protests taking place on our streets are all just rank hypocrisy. We have seen Hamas, the terrorist organisation which the protestors support, publicly execute, without trial, a number of blindfolded prisoners, most showing signs of having been badly beaten. If the vociferous left wingers demonstrating in the West were genuine in their beliefs they would be clamouring for these executions to be stopped, and the perpetrators arrested, but of course nothing of the sort is happening. All the supposed compassion these so called progressives claim to feel for Palestinians in nothing more than a smokescreen to conceal their actual motive, which of course is the oldest prejudice of all, anti semitism. The reality is that Hamas is seeking to reassert its control of Gaza, so that these thugs can continue to terrorise the civilian population, and indulge their hatred for the Jewish people.
The speech by Prime Minister Netanyahu at the UN was a forensic demolition of the lies propagated by Hamas , and made clear that Israel is in fact fighting in the front line, defending not only their people, but also those of the democratic West against a primitive death cult, not merely against Hamas, but also against Hezbollah, and the Houthis, while preventing Iran from achieving its aim to dominate the Middle East. The fact that so many delegates refused to even listen to the Prime Minister illustrated how the UN has sunk from being a force for peace to being nothing more than a forum for the West's enemies, in conjunction with those whose constantly demand Western assistance, while rejecting the very values which the latter espouses. The hopes of those who created the organisation in the aftermath of the Second World War have been totally betrayed, and it is perhaps time that the US, and her allies, recognised that, and faced up to the fact that it has followed the League of Nations into becoming irrelevant, and decided to cease to provide the financial resources which are the only thing keeping it in existence.
