In yet another shameful day at the United Nations, Britain has signalled a hardening of its position in support of the Goldstone Report on Gaza. In the General Assembly’s latest vote on Friday, Britain moved from the abstainers camp to join ranks with the likes of Iran, Saudi Arabia, Zimbabwe and Turkmenistan in supporting a resolution to breathe new life into Goldstone for another five months. Not one EU member state joined the United States, Israel, Canada and four others in opposing the move.

The resolution was a follow up to last November’s vote in the General Assembly calling for Israel and the Palestinians to mount credible investigations into allegations contained in the Goldstone Report that both sides, but particularly Israel, had committed war crimes against civilians. Britain abstained in that vote having absented itself entirely at the original vote in the Human Rights Council the previous month. Britain has therefore moved in three stages: absence, abstention, and now support.

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I am using today’s posting to recommend a landmark new book by Anthony Julius, one of Britain’s top lawyers and academics. “Trials of the Diaspora, A History of Anti-Semitism in England” (see link below), is the first comprehensive study of English anti-Semitism ever to have been published.

At more than 800 pages it is a tome to be reckoned with. But do not allow its length to put you off. It is magnificently written and can be read either from cover to cover or as a reference book to be dipped into whenever the need arises.

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A rare voice of sanity in the British establishment, Colonel Richard Kemp, the former commander of UK forces in Afghanistan, has mounted another devastating defence of Israel. In a speech at the annual dinner (which I attended) of the UK’s Zionist Federation in London last night, Kemp even revealed that prior to his deployment in Afghanistan a four hour briefing by a top Israeli general had been instrumental in formulating British tactics and strategy on how to deal with Taliban suicide bombers.

To my knowledge, such an intimate strategic relationship on such a sensitive matter has never before been revealed. If it has, it has certainly not received widespread coverage in the UK press.

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In an interview with the French newspaper Journal du Dimanche on Saturday, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner outlines his views on the Dubai assassination of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh. He also talks about the desirability of Europe and the international community recognising a Palestinian state regardless of whether Israel gives its consent and even before agreement has been reached on the state’s borders.

I offer my translation from the original French of those parts of the interview which deal with Israel and make some comments of my own below it. I submit that both the questions and the answers provide stark illustration of many of the guiding assumptions of French policy in the Middle East.

Here is my translation with the headline and the questions in bold:

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There is something very strange going on in Britain, and Israel’s detractors are hopping mad. Not, I hasten to add over the apparent use by the Mossad of six British passports in the assassination in Dubai of Hamas operative Mahmoud al-Mabhouh. Criticism on that score is both reasonable and necessary. No country can allow its passports to be used by a foreign state, let alone in the course of a secret service hit job. Britain is no exception.

What vexes them is not so much the use of the passports per se as the fact that the kind of hyserical public furore that we have come to expect whenever a stick presents itself for the beating of Israel has singularly failed to materialise. On the contrary, large sections of the British press have responded with barely disguised awe at the audacious operation that the Israelis had the balls to carry out.

The usual suspects in the Guardian and the BBC look uncommonly isolated. Witness BBC MidEast Editor Jeremy Bowen on World Service Television this morning.

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