by Melanie Phillips
Two current sources of uproar tie Britain, the United States and Israel into a matrix of hypocrisy, double standards and spinelessness.People in the West are primed to believe that compromise is invariably the solution to conflict. But there are some issues where the agenda brooks no compromise because it is by definition non-negotiable, and where "compromise" is therefore a fig leaf for surrender.
The first was the welcome announcement by
President Donald Trump that the United States will recognize Israeli
sovereignty over the Golan Heights, the strategically crucial mountain
range that Israel seized from Syria in 1967.
Cue horror in the foreign ministries and
policy circles of the world where Israel’s annexation was denounced as a
violation of international law.
Britain’s foreign secretary, Jeremy Hunt,
tut-tutted: “We should never recognize the annexation of territory by
force,” and agreed that Israel’s claim to the Golan was illegal because
“annexation of territory is prohibited under international law.”
Similar claims were made by the United Nations and European Union. But the argument doesn’t stand up for a minute.
As Israel’s former ambassador to the United
Nations, Dore Gold, has pointed out, international law makes a crucial
distinction between the seizure of territory in wars of aggression,
which is illegal, and the seizure of territory by a state exercising its
lawful right of self-defense, which is not only legal but a moral
imperative.
Israel took the Golan when it defended itself against the aggression of Egypt, Jordan and Syria in the 1967 Six-Day War.
Syrian aggression against Israel didn’t
start there. From 1949 to 1967, Syrian forces had pounded Israeli farms
and towns in the Galilee situated below the Golan. Today, Syria is the
patsy of Iran that is constantly attempting to turn Syrian territory
into a launch pad for its genocidal war against Israel.
A state is entitled under international law
to hold onto land which continues to be used to attack it. If it was
required instead to return the land to the aggressor, this would be a
suicidal act of surrender.
Giving up the Golan to Syria would leave
the Galilee undefended against the predations of Iran, which openly
declares its intention to wipe Israel off the map.
Hunt’s comment, along with Trump’s
announcement itself, provoked scant attention in Britain because of the
all-consuming Brexit crisis – the second source of uproar – which has
sucked the oxygen out of all other discussion there.
It is impossible to exaggerate the depth of
this crisis, which has all but paralyzed the government and now
threatens not just Theresa May’s premiership but the fracture of both
the Conservative and Labour parties and the destruction of public trust
in the democratic process itself.
The reason for this pandemonium, arguably
the worst constitutional crisis since the 17th-century civil war, is
that parliament is dominated by MPs who want the United Kingdom to
remain in the European Union. They are determined to stop Brexit dead in
its tracks.
Under the default provision of an act of
parliament, the United Kingdom is due to leave the European Union on
Friday, April 12 – a date that was extended by two weeks in panic after
MPs voted down withdrawal terms that Mrs. May had agreed with the
European Union.
All subsequent Remainer proposals for a
Brexit “compromise” have failed. But refusing to accept the consequences
of the law they themselves passed, many MPs are determined to stop the
United Kingdom leaving the European Union with no deal at all.
This week, the crisis roared even further
out of control when a desperate Mrs. May sought to broker a “soft
Brexit” compromise with the far-left Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn.
That would entail a commitment to a customs
union, which would leave the United Kingdom still enmeshed in E.U.
rules. Such a compromise, therefore, wouldn’t be Brexit at all.
That’s because on Brexit there can be no
compromise. Either the United Kingdom remains under E.U. control or it
doesn’t. Leaving the European Union but remaining under its control
offers the worst of all possible worlds – having to conform to E.U.
rules but with no control over them and thus no control over its own
fate.
It would be Brexit in name only. The whole
point of Brexit, regaining the power of sovereign self-government, would
be vitiated. And every one of the “compromises” proposed by Remainer
MPs is a variation on remaining under E.U. control while pretending to
deliver Brexit.
This illustrates something with far broader
and very important implications. People in the West are primed to
believe that compromise is invariably the solution to conflict. Often,
it is just that. But there are some issues where the agenda brooks no
compromise because it is by definition non-negotiable, and where
“compromise” is, therefore, a fig leaf for surrender.
Independent national self-government is one
such issue. Another is the Arab and Muslim war of extermination against
Israel. This is now universally presented as a negotiable conflict over
land between Israel and the Palestinians, both of whom have a
legitimate claim to that land.
This is false. The Palestinians have a
non-negotiable agenda: the total destruction of Israel as a Jewish
nation-state and its replacement by “Palestine.”
As they have not only repeatedly admitted
and consistently made clear by their insignia and maps, their education
materials inciting the murder of Jews and the theft of Israeli land, and
their repeated refusal to accept a state when offered to them, their
aim remains the extermination of Israel. The “two-state solution” is
merely a feint.
Yet on both these non-negotiable issues –
independent self-government for the United Kingdom, and the Arab and
Muslim war of extermination against Israel – reality is denied by those
who tell themselves the lie that compromise is possible.
The outcome of those momentous examples of
self-deception in the name of “compromise” is the permanent war waged
against Israel’s existence and the all-too-possible disintegration of
Britain into a post-democratic future.
It is particularly stomach-churning for the
British to lecture Israel with false allegations about breaking
international law given Britain’s appalling history of doing precisely
that in pre-Israel Palestine. Moreover, the parallels between what it
did then and what’s happening in Britain now are striking.
In both cases, British politicians betrayed
their most solemn promises. In Palestine, the British broke their
promise to facilitate Jewish immigration; over Brexit, MPs are intent on
breaking their election promises to honor the referendum result.
In Palestine, the British tore up
international law by rewriting the Mandate to carve out from the
homeland promised to the Jews territory they then offered to the Arabs
bent on blocking that Jewish homeland. And currently, MPs are trying to
block Brexit by tearing up parliamentary rules and the constitutional
balance between government and back-benchers.
Both these British betrayals have entailed
pernicious consequences. Rewarding the Arab aggressors incentivized the
war against the Jewish homeland, which continues against Israel to this
day.
And if Brexit is stopped, the political
cataclysm that will probably ensue makes it more likely that a
Corbyn-led government will come to power.
The prospect of the Marxist,
terrorist-supporting, anti-Semitism-facilitating Corbyn becoming prime
minister should terrify anyone who cares about Western security, freedom
and the rule of law.
Which leads to a further reflection. Many
have pointed out that, throughout history, all who have tried to destroy
the Jewish people have not only failed but ended up being destroyed
themselves.
Perfidious Albion betrayed the Jewish
people when it closed the doors of Palestine to European Jews attempting
to flee Nazi Europe. It thus connived at the slaughter of the
Holocaust.
The Jewish people not only survived but out
of the ashes of that catastrophe have created a vigorous, flourishing
and optimistic country. Now Britain may be in the process of destroying
itself. Go figure.
Melanie Phillips
Source: https://www.israelhayom.com/opinions/of-compromise-and-betrayal-from-the-golan-to-brexit/
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