Britain's Diplomacy of Hypocrisy

by Dr. Haim Shine

If a Nobel Prize for hypocrisy was awarded, named after Machiavelli, there is no doubt Great Britain would win it for its diplomacy of narrow interests, double standards, belligerence and cynicism. At the award ceremony the Queen would receive the prize from the secretary general of the U.N., the most hypocritical institution in the world. Next to her one could find EU Foreign Policy chief Catherine Ashton, an outspoken mouthpiece for British hypocrisy who has compared the slaughter of children in Syria to the plight of children in Gaza, who have never been purposefully harmed.

Last week Britain announced it is not even thinking about returning the Rock of Gibraltar to Spain, which it conquered many years ago. The Rock sits on seven kilometers (some four miles) of land, where the Mediterranean Sea meets the Atlantic Ocean. For hundreds of years Gibraltar was controlled by Spain until it was taken by the British, but Spain has never forfeited its demand to reassume sovereignty there.

Today Gibraltar is a hub for gambling, tourism, and a tax haven for fictitious corporate headquarters. Britain has no historical rights to the Rock, yet it insists it will never relinquish it. From Britain's perspective, what was conquered by force will be held by force for eternity. 

Thousands of kilometers from London sit the Falkland Islands, off the coast of Argentina. For years Argentina has claimed the islands as its property and has been unwilling to give them up. In 1982 Britain sent an armada to protect its interests in the islands, which have a population of 2,500. Britain took the islands from the Argentinean army, which managed to hold them for a short period of time. 

For years now Britain has been at the forefront of the global effort to return Israel to its 1967 borders. It is a historically loyal ally of the Arabs, including the Palestinians, who efficiently and doggedly seek to realize their phased plan to eventually end Israel, i.e. pushing the Jews to the "Blue Line," the Mediterranean Sea. 

The academic boycott against Israel, similar to the boycott on Israeli goods from Judea and Samaria, are an expression of Britain's diplomacy of hypocrisy. Britain preaches morality to us day and night because of our grip on our national homeland, while it refuses to ease its grip on territories it conquered out of clear imperialistic ambitions. Britain should look in the mirror at its own flaws, and not try to force us, in the name of its hypocrisy, to commit suicide.

Britain's condescending attitude toward Israel began back in the first quarter of the 20th Century. Its famous promise of a national homeland for the Jewish people was never actually kept. The British, who ruled here during the mandate period (1920-1948), did not raise a finger during the Arab pogroms against the Jews in Hebron, Jerusalem, Kibbutz Hulda and Safed. We will never forget how Britain blocked the shores to prevent the immigration of Jews, including those fleeing the atrocities of the Holocaust for the safety of their homeland; we will never forget the prisoners of the Jewish underground, the freedom fighters who were sent to the gallows at Acre Prison.

We returned to Israel, among other reasons, so that others would not dictate our fates or impose their will on us. It is very important that our leaders clarify for the rest of the world that we returned home to be a free people in our own land. The price of freedom is unbearably high and we will never mortgage it out to their whims, hypocrisy or racism.

Dr. Haim Shine

Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=5361

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