British judges being dangled like marionettes by Hamas: Group admits it was accomplice to UK court warrant against Tzipi Livni
If I have said it once, I have said it a hundred times on this website: there is a price to be paid for indulging anti-Zionist bigotry and it is a price which may be paid by some of the most treasured institutions of one’s own society.
British newspapers are reporting today that the anti-Semitic, Holocaust-denying terror group Hamas (no they don’t describe Hamas that way on the BBC, but it happens to be accurate) played a key role in building the case which led to an arrest warrant being issued against former Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni by a court in London 10 days ago.
The Times, in a report whose substance was repeated by the Daily Telegraph, quoted Hamas operative Diya al-Din Madhoun, who runs the terror group’s coordinating committee on such matters, as saying:
“We have provided a group of independent lawyers in Britain with documents, information and evidence concerning war crimes committed by Israeli political and military leaders, including Ms Livni.”
This all has echoes of the Goldstone Report which simply accepted at face value Hamas-supportive “witnesses” to events in Gaza during Operation Cast Lead .
But few decent people now have any illusions about the value of the United Nations as an instrument of either law or international human rights policy. The British legal system, however, draws on traditions dating back to Magna Carta which have inspired and, in important respects, underpinned institutions of justice across the Western world.
The notion that British judges are now at the beck and call of one of the most violent and bigoted terror groups in the world is not merely a cause for shame, it is a call to arms to every Briton with a basic sense of national pride.
Writing in today’s Daily Telegraph, Israeli Ambassador to London Ron Prosor warned of “the extremists who abuse the freedoms of the world’s oldest democratic legal system to mount poisonous attacks on democracy,” adding that “It is high time to restore common sense to common law.”
And so it is. But what on earth is wrong with our judicial system that such appalling abuse of the rule of law could have occurred in the first place?
Ambassador Prosor, again:
“In British NGOs, trade unions and universities an obsession to delegitimise and demonise the Jewish state has come to characterise the daily routine.”
The central problem is that the relentless demonisation of the Jewish state has now become so routine, so unexceptional, so “normal” that it has become possible to say and do anything against Israel as long as that deep-seated need to demonise is satisfied.
This is a bigotry gone wild. And, I repeat, it is not just the Jews who are now paying the price.
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For a wider rendition of such arguments, see my recently published book, A State Beyond the Pale: Europe’s Problem with Israel, which can be purchased at the following link:
To read Ambassador Prosor’s commentary, click here:
To read the Times article on Hamas and the UK courts, click here:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article6963473.ece
December 21st, 2009 at 12:13 pm
The government - which is the most anti-Israel UK government in history - has been saying for five years it will act to stop the absurdity that private citizens can obtain an arrest warrant under Universal Jurisdiction. There has been an outcry over the Livni case but even so I will not believe they are doing something until I see it.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1261364458203&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
41 MKs have now signed a petition for a boycott of British goods.
December 21st, 2009 at 12:53 pm
This is the government that agreed to talk to Hizbolla: “As ye sow so shall ye reap”
December 21st, 2009 at 3:17 pm
One more though: I think Miliband (what kind of a name is that, Miliband) is not just an Israel-hater (like his mother, mind you), but remarkably stupid as well (no wonder they promoted Ashton, the laughing stock of the EU). What does he want and realistically hope to achieve by it? Even Kadima now is up in arms against his Foreign Orifice. Does he not think that IL will dug in its heels two hundred percent in response to his policy? And a personal remark now: Miliband when for the 1st time I saw him on TV (Sky News) 5-6 years ago was very offputting and deeply unsymphatetic. I also think that his very appearance is non-statesmanlike. He is a boy-king. And rather a joke than a proper Minister.
December 21st, 2009 at 4:46 pm
Has an official of any other country had a warrant issued against them?
Robert Mugabe for example, or the anything of China? Or anybody not Jewish?
Just wondering.
December 21st, 2009 at 5:03 pm
So Hamas, via Machover, is setting Britain’s foreign policy in the ME.
Interesting. Essentially a coup d’etat conducted on behalf of a terrorist organization.
By the way - has there been a Dispatches program recently on the “Palestinian lobby”?
December 21st, 2009 at 5:04 pm
“This is a bigotry gone wild. And, I repeat, it is not just the Jews who are now paying the price.”
What starts with the Jews ends with those who stand by and watch. Always has, always will, because it represents a surrender to those who undermine the decent side of societies.
December 21st, 2009 at 5:53 pm
From a legal position there isn’t a cats chance in hell that a full prosecution would follow such an arrest if it succeeded, and the campaigners know this all too well.And if they don’t they ought to read Lord Pannick’s advice to the Jewish Leadership Council:
http://www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/25186/full-legal-opinion-sent-government-jlc
Clearly it is an abuse of process, all but for the lacuna in the law that allows anyone including Adolf Hitler, if he were alive, to have Roosevelt, if he were alive, arrested on “suspected” war crimes.
December 21st, 2009 at 8:16 pm
What an Orwellian world we live in! Hamas which is a murderous, criminal organisation seeks to utilise British courts in order to pursue their genocidal agenda?
December 22nd, 2009 at 10:44 am
“I will not believe they are doing something until I see it.” Jonathan Hoffman is spot on.
Tony Blair, when PM, promised to ban Hisb ut Tahrir as well and nothing has come of it. There is little chance of any action until after a May election. Even after May, because Cameron and Hague are a pair of political infants of whom only child’s play can be expected, resolute change is unlikely. Hague, of course, is already a failed infant leader.
“And thus”, as Hamlet says, “the native hue of resolution is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought.” Something is rotten in the state of Britain.
December 22nd, 2009 at 12:00 pm
If Israel’s opposition leader had been arrested, these would have been, I believe, some of the possible consequences:
1) An almost immediate economic boycott of Britain by millions of American citizens. Could this have been the event that pushed Britain’s economy off the cliff edge and into the abyss? I think so.
2) Mass protests in Israel leading to rioting and attacks on British property including the embassy. This would have led to an increase in attacks on British Jews and their institutions in Britain.
3) Similar mass protests in the United States but probably without the rioting and attacks.
4) A temporary breach in relations between Washington and London.
5) A permanent rupture in the good relations Britain has enjoyed with very many of her Jewish citizens.
6) A permanent exclusion of Britain from the “peace process” in the Middle East.