By
gordon bennett
Welcome back to Blighty, Your Excellency. The weather may be brass monkeys, but you mast be really pleased to be back from the tongue-lashing you and your fellow lily-livered Israeli diplomats received from your boss, the Foreign Minister Yvet Lieberman. Just remember, no more turning of the other cheek, no more appeasement. As if...
Meanwhile, here are a few points to ponder.
Israel is supposed to be a democracy, right? -- the only one in the Middle East, in fact. So how come the country you represent wants to introduce laws that will prevent the 25 per cent of the population who aren't Jewish from purchasing land? Not very democratic, that.
Then there's the loyalty law. I don't know about you, but the proposal sounds to me awfully like Article 59 of the 1977 Soviet Constitution. Any chance it has something to do with the fact that Mr Leiberman grew up in Moldova, part of said former workers' paradise. Perish the thought.
I was at Limmud last week. It was a shame you or a member of your staff weren't there to hear what many British Jews are saying about Israel. It's no longer a source of solidarity and pride, but rather one of division and embarrassment. Is it really necessary to build yet more houses for settlers in Arab neighbourhoods of East Jerusalem? Kind of kills the idea of no unilateral moves or no preconditions in talks with the Palestinians. And what about the moratorium -- that's a joke, isn't it? There's a ke'ilu moratorium (as you would say in Israel). It's all a farcical facade, because public works in the settlements continue and roads are still being built for colonists only.
Is it really necessary to get Israel's megaphones to treat every bit of criticism as anti-Semitism? This was amply displayed on this website, when one of them even stooped to Holocaust revisionism because he didn't agree with one of Israel's many Jewish critics.
All in all, Your Excellency, I know you have a tough job, but bear in mind that for many of us, Yisrael is no longer Beiteinu.
G. Bennett
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