Why the Israeli government is nothing like the Nazis

What I imagine goes on in Keir Starmer’s head as he rehearses defending the indefensible

~ Tabitha Troughton ~

Let me be clear. The Israeli government is nothing like the Nazis. Reports and footage from Palestine may lead people to suspect that the Israeli government is behaving like Nazis, but they are wrong, and antisemitic. They are also displaying a lack of trust in the UK government—my government—which is, frankly, intolerable.

Think about it. Would my government have invited a Nazi air force commander to the RAF’s Royal International Air Tattoo? Major General Tomer Bar, who arrived in Gloucestershire for that event this week, may be overseeing multi-Hiroshima levels of Gaza bombing, including of schools, refugee camps, and hospitals, killing thousands of civilians and creating the largest number of child amputees in the world, but he is hardly Hermann Goering. No more than ambassador Tzipi Hotovely, embraced by my administration, and a fervent supporter of the Netanyahu government, who appears to call for ethnic cleansing and the complete destruction of Gaza, is von Ribbentrop.

As for running spy planes to provide intelligence for Israeli operations, or training their soldiers inside the UK, or continuing to ship them “thousands of military items including munitions”: the fact that this government has been doing all this for the Israeli government throughout—that fact alone—should make it clear that the Israeli government is nothing like the Nazis.

Critics will carp. They will say: “We in the UK know that the Nazis were the ultimate evil. We know this, because in recent memory we fought against it, and we’ve been educated about it ever since. Now, having watched for almost two years as the horrors in Palestine marched on to genocide, in a land bombed to rubble and ashes, we see deliberately starved people lured to “aid centres”, and murdered and shattered there in their thousands. We read the plan for what even a former Israeli prime minister calls a concentration camp, for what remains of the Palestinian population. We see, after the slaughter, maiming, mutilation, starvation, orphaning or torture of thousands upon thousands of Palestinian children, that there are no plans for this genocide to stop. And it is getting worse. If this calculated and savage evil does not bear comparison with the calculated and savage evil perpetuated by the Nazis, what comparison can we draw”?

And I reply: listen. I refuse to call this a genocide, no matter how many Jewish scholars or aid organisations or doctors or experts call it just that. Israel is our ally. Yes, I did read the letter from Medecins Sans Frontières last week, asking for “moral clarity and humanitarian consistency in the face of mass atrocities”. It came with a most urgent demand that the UK government acknowledge the rulings of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and acts decisively to end the war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide committed by the Israeli government in Gaza; ends all military cooperation with Israel and suspends all arms transfers to its government; ends all material and diplomatic support to the Israeli government; and speaks out to acknowledge and condemn the genocide in Gaza.

And I reply that Quakers and priests are terrorists, that the non-violent anti-genocide protestors of Palestine Action will be imprisoned for 18 months before their trial, and that I am considering plans to get rid of juries. Meanwhile, on the day that Israel kills at least 116 Palestinians in Gaza, many of them queuing desperately for food, and another Palestinian baby is starved to death, my government arrests over 100 people for protesting against it.

Look. Reform and the Conservatives would do the same, probably worse, and enjoy it. I, on the other hand, am not enjoying the fact that I am a staunch and active ally of a government being compared, erroneously, to the Nazis. It was a relief, when the memo of a meeting between the EU Commission’s “coordinator on combating antisemitism” with EU ambassadors in Tel Aviv was leaked, that everyone focussed on her idea that bake sales for Gaza were “ambient antisemitism”.

And everyone fortunately missed the fact that “a number” of EU ambassadors at the meeting “noted how the position of their governments towards the Israeli government was hardening, also due to the pressure of public opinion in their countries”. Even the usually reliable Royal United Services Institute observed that “political goodwill among Israel’s diplomatic allies has rapidly begun to drain away”, and tentatively suggested that sanctions might be in order.

Instead, I sack Diane Abbott for speaking about racism. And, as Gaza dies of hunger, while the bombings from above continue, and in the knowledge that Allied leaders in World War 2 were, unlike the public, aware of the Holocaust at least two and a half years before the liberation of Auschwitz, I leave you with the words of former UK ambassador, Alexandra Hall Hall:

“Open the fucking gates. Shame on every world leader for facilitating the starvation and death of Palestinians. Curse Netanyahu and his right wing govt to hell and beyond. Open the fucking gates and let the food aid in”.

And people dare compare the Israeli government to the Nazis!

Photo: Number 10 on Flickr CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

The post Why the Israeli government is nothing like the Nazis appeared first on Freedom News.