Posted on 03/11/2006 11:32:34 AM PST by tjwmason
Britain's dirty secret Meirion Jones
13th March 2006
Exculsive - Secret papers show how Britain helped Israel make the A-bomb in the 1960s, supplying tons of vital chemicals including plutonium and uranium. And it looks as though Harold Wilson and his ministers knew nothing about it. By Meirion Jones
Mirage jets swoop from the sky to destroy the Egyptian air force before breakfast; tanks race across the desert to the Suez Canal; Moshe Dayan, the defence minister, poses with eyepatch after the Jerusalem brigade has fought its way into the Old City. These are the heroic images of the Six Day War and they defined Israeli daring: here was a people who, it seemed, risked everything on a throw of the dice. Years later the world discovered that there was an insurance policy.
They had a secret weapon - two, to be precise.
(Excerpt) Read more at newstatesman.com ...
Payback.
The Zionist cause was bolstered by Chaim Weizmann's professional work. As head of the British Admiralty Laboratories from 1917 to 1919, Dr. Weizmann developed a process for the manufacture of synthetic acetone at a time when the British needed it desperately. He isolated certain organisms found in cereals and horse chestnuts and within a month had created synthetic acetone for British explosives. Near the end of the war the British Prime Minister, Lloyd George (a Christian Zionist), offered Weitzman an award for his assistance in the war effort. In a classic statement, Weitzman declared, "I want nothing for myself but rather a homeland for my people." This was the impetus for the Balfour Declaration.
http://www.palestinefacts.org/pf_ww1_jewish_role.php
"No one could deny that the US is pre-eminent in the world for top-class universities and education, IMHO."
Well, I witnessed some of these when I spent my childhood in the dying days of British Hong Kong in the 80s. The colonial Hong Kong government's pay scale specified that any civil servants graduating from a Commonwealth university gets a higher pay scale when compared with someone from a non-Commonwealth university. This means you got higher salary starting point if you studied at London University's King's College rather than Harvard (although a very good university by itself, KC is not quite Harvard academically).
And there was one snooty remark by the then establishment that spreaded onto streets of Hong Kong: "What worth is the US Ivy League? Unless when they match Oxford and Cambridge!" Mind you, it isn't 1914, but rather 1980s.
This is the kind of total contempt for Israel that is so much a part of the social and political landscape in the UK. Notice how they try even to take away Israel's kudos for the Six Day War.
The New Statesman is a left-wing rag, what do you expect from those bastards? The opinion of one of their journalists does not represent the opinions of the majority of the British people.
I've grown to despise the nation in which I was born and raised. How can it be otherwise when I'm surrounded by such hatred for the Jewish people and the Jewish state?
Pardon me, but as an Englishman I find this comment offensive and misleading. Let's look at some facts shall we?
1) If it was not for the Balfour Declaration then Israel would not even exist.
2) If it had not been for British resolve and resourcefulness during World War II, then you're Jewish ancestor(s) would probably have been murdered by the NAZIs and you would not exist.
3) As the article states, the UK knowingly provided nuclear materials to Israel without which it would have been unable to produce nuclear weapons before the Six Day War began.
4) As the article makes clear, the US government (Democrats at the time) would have stopped the deal if they had known about it.
5) Providing precious nuclear materials to a potentially unstable country is very risky. What would have happened if Israel had not got the nukes online in time and had lost the war, leaving the technology and materials in the hands of hostile arab nations?
Instead of acknowledging any of the relevant facts above, you twist this biasedly written (but factually correct) article around, to accuse the British people of anti-Semitism. You seem to be oblivious to your own biased behaviour.
Boycotts of Israel, regular demonisation of Israel on the BBC, threatened arrests of Israeli generals, open hatred and incitement in important newspapers, London with an openly anti-Semitic mayor
These things are all being done by leftists, NuLabour and their government stooges, not by the British people. In England more people voted for the Conservative party than voted for Labour and Blair only won because our skewed constituency boundaries gave him a majority of English MPs. In fact, across the whole UK, Labour was elected on just 21.6% of the eligible vote! This leftist government was elected on a more slender share of the vote than has sustained any British government majority since 1832.
Note that the former leader of the Conservative party was Jewish, as was his second in command, and both of them along with the current leader, are members of the Conservative Friends of Israel organisation.
The BBC has always been a leftist propaganda outlet, so what do you expect from them? Ken Livingstone (the mayor of London - for those here who don't know) is a worthless POS, he is an ex-communist for goodness sake, who cried on the day the Soviet Union collapsed! Besides, he did not know that the reporter he made that stupid comment to was Jewish at the time he made it and afterwards the incident became a political issue (which was why he didn't back down).
physical attacks on Jews at a record rate,
This is entirely due to the increasing population of Islamic immigrants in the UK, not to the behaviour of the native British people.
Britain's real dirty little secret? That Jews are no longer either comfortable or safe in the UK.
Utter nonsense. Tell that to my Jewish boss, who is a well respected university lecturer and who has just been awarded a Professorship at a major British university!
And the hatred of Israel is nearly matched by the hatred of the United States. Your closest ally? In your dreams.
More lies. You need to get out more and stop watching the BBC! Either that, or you are being deliberately misleading in order to damage the reputation of the British people. You should consider whether or not such bad behaviour will facilitate good feeling towards the Israeli and Jewish peoples in Britain, or will be counterproductive to your cause.
2) If it had not been for British resolve and resourcefulness during World War II, then you're Jewish ancestor(s) would probably have been murdered by the NAZIs and you would not exist. >directed to me is equally over the top. I've no relatives I know of Brits saved, nor any I know of who died.
Relatives, including both parents and seven uncles, five survived, who fought in Europe the last century I know all about. My impression, your island was among the nations they were helping.
You're right about the Balfour declaration. IMO, Britain turned their back on that commitment in the 1930s. Jews could have been saved by the hundreds of thousands by allowing immigration to Palestine (that's the Jewish homeland) per the Balfour declaration. As nearly a hundred thousand could have been saved by allowing them to use unused visas to the US. While many individuals risked their lives in the effort, imo no Western leader save the Pope and King Christian X of Denmark did a damn thing.
David, I agree with every word you say.
The person calling themselves Hannah Senesh clearly has some personal issues with your fine country and is not able to rationally discuss the points raised in this article.
Speaking as a Jew who has spent a lot of time in London over the years, and done a lot of business there, I don't consider the British an anti-Semitic people in the least.
Yes, they have their idiots, don't we all, but of all the countries I have visited and the people I have dealt with, my British friends top the list.
Finally, a little history for those who may not know it.
Hannah Senesh was born in Budapest in 1921. She joined the British army in 1943 and she volunteered to parachute into Yugoslavia in 1944 to make contact with resistance fighters.
She was captured in Hungary in June 1944 and was brutally tortured repeatedly but didn't reveal any information.
She was executed on November 7, she refused to wear a blindfold. She stared at her killers as she was shot.
Hannah Senesh is a Jewish hero.
The person using her name on this forum should be ashamed.
I would be glad to, but since so many FReepers would have seen that post and not realised that much of it was a distortion of the truth, then I felt obligated to point that out to you and to others who must have seen it.
2) If it had not been for British resolve and resourcefulness during World War II, then your Jewish ancestor(s) would probably have been murdered by the NAZIs and you would not exist.
>directed to me is equally over the top. I've no relatives I know of Brits saved, nor any I know of who died.
No, I wasn't directing it at you, but at Hannah Senesh.
Jews could have been saved by the hundreds of thousands by allowing immigration to Palestine (that's the Jewish homeland) per the Balfour declaration.
Yes, but at the time the British government was worried that a large influx of Jewish immigrants would have caused an arab rebellion, not to mention the possibility that the Jewish freedom fighting groups could have increased their strength and turned on British troops, as they did after World War II.
The British Empire and the Dominions took extra Jewish immigrants, but I do accept that more should have been done to help.
Anti-Semitism was a problem in the USA as well as in the UK at that time, and regrettably many of the elites did not believe that Hitler was prepared to commit genocide against the Jewish people.
"You're right about the Balfour declaration. IMO, Britain turned their back on that commitment in the 1930s. Jews could have been saved by the hundreds of thousands by allowing immigration to Palestine (that's the Jewish homeland) per the Balfour declaration. As nearly a hundred thousand could have been saved by allowing them to use unused visas to the US. While many individuals risked their lives in the effort, imo no Western leader save the Pope and King Christian X of Denmark did a damn thing."
Warrants repeating.
The British reneged on their international committment to create a Jewish state. And the Jews in the hundreds of thousands paid with their lives in the Shoah.
Some Brits would like to take credit for what a Christian minority, like Balfour, did. In reality Churchill was prevented by a Parliamentary majority from implementing the Balfour Declaration.
Only post Holocaust guilt imposed by the US and others forced the British to create the State of Israel. And even then the British screwed Israel -- took the lion's portion of the land to appease the Hashemites by giving them (Trans)Jordan and helped the Arab agressors fight the new founded state of Israel in 1948 war of Independence.
As I posted in #21 a Jewish Zionist named Weitzman helped the British win WW1. But that did not stop the British from screwing the Jews in WW2 and after.
"These things are all being done by leftists, NuLabour and their government stooges, not by the British people."
You mean like Jack Straw the anti-Israel FM?
"England's Foreign Minister Jack Straw says that the world should worry about disabling Israel's nuclear capabilities as much as it is concerned with preventing Iran from going nuclear."
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1594733/posts
"International condemnation followed Israel's killing of Hamas leader Abdel Aziz Rantisi in Gaza City. 'snip'
British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw condemned the missile strike.
"The British government has made it repeatedly clear that so-called targeted assassinations of this kind are unlawful, unjustified and counterproductive."
http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/04/17/rantisi.reaction/index.html
"The BBC has always been a leftist propaganda outlet"
The BBC is supported by your tax dollars. It is a state owned news agency. If it is anti-Semitic, which we both seem to agree it is, the British people should make it shape up.
As to the increase in violence against Jews, you said --
"This is entirely due to the increasing population of Islamic immigrants in the UK, not to the behaviour of the native British people.'
So where the hell are the police, the courts and the government? Where is the public outcry? Non-existant.
"You should consider whether or not such bad behaviour will facilitate good feeling towards the Israeli and Jewish peoples in Britain, or will be counterproductive to your cause."
Threats? Jews better shut up or else? Nice. That will really help your cause -- improving the image of the British as not anti-Semitic.
I have to back David Hunter (and Eli Reifman) on this. Of course anti-semitism is present in England, as in most places. But to suggest that it is widespread, endemic or chronic is in my experience a grotesque distortion of reality. In 62 years of a not particularly sheltered life in England, I've witnessed personally only one example of anti-semitism. That was over thirty years ago: and it's stayed in my mind with perfect clarity precisely because it was so unusual.
Read my post again, I said no such thing
post 24I think Hannah may be a little over the top, but I'd suggest you direct the Brit vs Brit arguement between yourselves.
2) If it had not been for British resolve and resourcefulness during World War II, then you're Jewish ancestor(s) would probably have been murdered by the NAZIs and you would not exist. directed to me is equally over the top. I've no relatives I know of Brits saved, nor any I know of who died.
Relatives, including both parents and seven uncles, five survived, who fought in Europe the last century I know all about. My impression, your island was among the nations they were helping.
You're right about the Balfour declaration. IMO, Britain turned their back on that commitment in the 1930s. Jews could have been saved by the hundreds of thousands by allowing immigration to Palestine (that's the Jewish homeland) per the Balfour declaration. As nearly a hundred thousand could have been saved by allowing them to use unused visas to the US. While many individuals risked their lives in the effort, imo no Western leader save the Pope and King Christian X of Denmark did a damn thing.
The statistics show alarming increases in anti-Semitic incidents. Is that reflected in your experience too? If you are not Jewish you may not be aware of the vulnerability of the Jewish community.
I read this thread with a mixture of amusement and anger.
You people don't know a thing about anti-Semitism.
You are just jumping on the race bad waggon like all the others
The idea that the British are anti-Semitic is laughable.
Those of you who live in Britain are either lying or are mad and those of you that don't should shut up because you don't know what you are talking about.
Ridiculous views.
Care to point me to my post which causes you to make that statement.
My apologies sir, I wasn't directing that comment to you personally.
"And you think that makes it an anti-semitic country?"
Yes.
If 2003 was a UK record since the 1940's, and 2004 was 25% above that, what point are you making?
I think that there has been a huge increase in anti-Semitism judging by the numbers which are invariably undereported. That increase is mirrored in much of Europe. That increase coincided with the start of the second Intifada. It was so dramatic that even the EU stood up and took notice. They commissioned their first ever study on the subject late in 2003. Of course Islamaphobia has merited numerous EU studies. The results confirmed what is termed the "new" Anti-Semitism -- from Muslims who are supported by the virulently anti-Israel left. That politically incorrect conclusion was at first supressed by the EU who refused to publish their own study.
Are you also unaware that Europe voted Israel the most dangerous country?
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1076073,00.html
Do you count that as realistic? If not, to what do you attribute that result?
But please don't let my questions disturb the nap you are taking with your head buried in the sand.
"plenty of distate for israeli actions"
Yes. That is it precisely. That gets played out against all Jews all over Europe including the UK.
But even against Israel alone it is anti-Semitic. Please don't misread me. Criticism of Israel is perfectly fine. But not when it singles out Israel as the worst, most eggregious and worthy of shall we say the most "distaste."
The three 'D' - Double standard, Deligitimazation and Demonization. That's how you know it.
To what do you attribute the ""plenty of distate for israeli actions?"
I meant to post this link with post #39 since the three 'D' test is not mine.
"Antisemitism in 3-D
Differentiating legitimate criticism of Israel from the so-called new anti-Semitism.
By Natan Sharansky"
http://www.antisemitismus.net/europa/sharansky-1.htm
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